‘What on earth are you doing?’ Millie said, raising her voice above the music.
They turned towards her. Ruby, still clinging to Hugh, stared at her with an arch look. Hugh sprang away from her as if burned and June plopped Danny onto the floor, brushing her housecoat down as she stood. The boy, unaware of a change of atmosphere, span away from his mother, holding his arms out in a circle and crashed into one of the chairs. June made a grab for him and clutched him against her.
‘Hello, Mills,’ Ruby said, reaching a languorous hand towards her packet of cigarettes. ‘We was practising our foxtrot – want to have a go?’
Millie stepped across the room and turned the wireless off with a snap.
‘You’ll run it flat,’ she said.
‘Sorry, I’m sure.’ Ruby shot a conspiratorial look at the others, sucking her cheeks in sturdily with the air of someone who could say a great deal more. ‘What do you want us to do instead then? Hum?’
‘There’s going to be a dance on Saturday, Millie,’ June said, ‘down in Shawstoke. They’re raising money to buy a Spitfire.’
‘Mummy said I can come too and watch. There’s going to be a proper band and everything,’ Danny said.
‘It won’t be late,’ June said.
‘It’s just a bit of fun, Millie,’ Hugh said but he had that infuriating expression on his face, a sort of ‘What is it now?’ look. ‘It’s a chance for everyone to forget about this damned war.’
‘Get away from all this drab,’ Ruby said, narrowing her eyes as she took a drag.
‘Lots of folk from the village are going,’ Hugh said.
An uncomfortable hush gripped the room and the pressure to break it made her feel angry. She had too many worries, too many sadnesses, to jolly everyone along.
‘Come on, Mills,’ Ruby said, ‘don’t be such a sourpuss. It’s all for a good cause and it’s not for a few days yet – there’s plenty of time for me to teach you a few dance steps so you don’t make a fool of yourself.’
‘Like me,’ Hugh said.
‘Fishing for compliments, eh?’ Ruby said, wagging a finger at him. ‘You ruddy well know you’re not half bad, big boy.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’ He picked his jacket up from the back of a chair and started to pull it on. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ he said. He looked across at Millie, resignation on his face, and headed down the passage towards the back door. She went after him,
‘Hugh,’ she said. He slowed but didn’t stop. When he opened the door, Gyp bounded out in front of him. Millie caught up with him in the yard. ‘I’ve been working all morning,’ she said. He turned, stared back at her. ‘And I get back to find you up here encouraging those women to waste time instead of getting on.’
‘It’s Sunday,’ he said flatly, pushing Gyp away rather irritably. ‘They’re not meant to work on a Sunday.’
‘I know it’s Sunday,’ – she could feel her anger rising again – ‘I suppose you think I’m being… what would you call it? Over-dramatic?’
Hugh sighed and said, ‘A bit, yes.’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m just agreeing with you.’
‘Oh…’ she felt momentarily chastened. ‘Then I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. You didn’t give that impression in there.’
Hugh gave a hollow laugh of frustration. ‘No, Millie. I was agreeing that you’re being over-dramatic. In there,’ he said, pointing towards the farmhouse, ‘I thought you behaved rather poorly.’
She stared at him, stunned.
‘Look,’ he said, reaching out a hand to placate her. She took a step back and he let it sink to his side. ‘That wasn’t your finest performance and, to be perfectly frank, it’s taken me a bit by surprise.’ She turned away but he placed his hand on her elbow. ‘Wait. Please wait. Let me explain.’
Gyp, sensing all was not right, had taken a position between them, looking up at one, then the other.
‘We’ve all been trying to understand,’ Hugh went on, ‘but you seem to use your grief as a reason to shut yourself off. You don’t have to hug your hurt to you all the time to prove how much Jack meant to you. Those girls and that little boy have their own pain to deal with. Do you ever think of that? You’re not alone in a sea of tears, but you will be if you make every one of us feel bad for trying to forget about the horror and get on with life. Only last week Brigsie came to me to ask if she could work at Steadham. She’s finding the atmosphere here pretty hard to swallow.’
‘That’s not my fault.’
Hugh pursed his lips and nodded sagely. ‘So you’re the only one marching in step, is that it?’
She stood like a stone and her stillness seemed to trouble him for his eyes went round her face for a moment before he stepped forward and caught both her hands in his in a bothered but perfectly kindly way and said, ‘Make your peace with them. You may not feel like it but come to the dance to enjoy yourself on Saturday. Don’t make everyone feel bad for looking forward to it. Who knows? You may even enjoy yourself.’
He let go of her hands and bent down to pat Gyp’s head before climbing into the Austin and driving off, no backward look, no cranking down of the window for a final wave of farewell above the roof of the car.
She walked slowly back towards the house, her eyes staring past it into the middle distance. Her anger had ebbed and left her feeling mutely miserable, wretched with guilt that she still allowed Hugh to believe her glumness was caused by her widowhood.
She tried hard to remember a time before Lukas inhabited her consciousness, when the thought of swirling around the dance floor would have been the perfect salve to her depression. Perhaps she had to accept that nothing would heal her longing for Lukas and try to live her life around it, as one would with a chronic and incurable illness.
She felt she was on the crest of a sob and knew she must rein it in before she reached the door. She pushed a sleeve underneath her nose, pulled her mouth into a smile and walked into the kitchen.
June and Danny were nowhere to be seen. Ruby was fiddling around in the sink and when she turned, there was a sly look in her eye.
‘Your Hugh’s a bit of all right, ain’t he?’ she said.
‘He’s not my Hugh,’ Millie said but immediately checked herself, giving Ruby a mirthless smile.
‘Ain’t he now?’ She wormed a finger towards her and added, ‘don’t pretend you ain’t dreamed of grabbing a handful of that hair and pulling his face down to yours.’
Bloody hell, this woman was the limit. Ruby flashed her eyes in mock surprise.
‘Oh, dear. Shocked you, have I?’ She sidled across the kitchen and reached for a cigarette, all the while staring at Millie. She jetted a plume of smoke into the air before giving a wheezy laugh.
‘I wouldn’t mind feeling those rough workman’s hands on my lily-white paps, I can tell you.’ She blew a couple smoke rings, watching them as they glided, expanding into the air.
Millie could stand it no longer.
‘Why do you keep baiting me, Ruby?’
Ruby pinched some tobacco off her tongue.
‘Not baiting you, sweetheart – teasing you. You only ever tease people you like. Don’t you know that?’ And, snatching up her magazine, she drifted out of the kitchen and disappeared, the sound of her coughing echoing in the stairwell.
Poor old Hugh, Millie thought.
Chapter Forty Nine
Constable Hanratty had to wait until after the weekend before he could speak to Sergeant Turner.
‘What do you know about Enington Farm?’ he said.
‘Enington? That’s old Sanger’s place. I told you about that.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. Don’t you remember? The lad who topped himself.’
‘A lad? You said a dairy farmer.’
‘Well, that’s what he was. He took over the dairy when his father died and pretty much ran it into the ground. About nine months after war broke out, he hanged himself in h
is barn in Wigstan Combe.’
Constable Hanratty felt an easing of a pressure across his forehead as everything dropped into place – that was why the girl didn’t want to say how her husband died. He’d been a bloody coward. And he was in a reserved occupation. What the hell was he doing taking his own life?
‘Did anyone question his widow after the German was caught?’
‘I suppose they might have, but this nick weren’t handling it. That was down to your lot over at Coltenham, wasn’t it?’ The sergeant said, sitting down in his seat and getting out his tin of tobacco.
‘The RAF took him,’ Hanratty said. ‘We were no longer involved.’
Sergeant Turner massaged the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with his thumbs.
‘Nor are we,’ he said.
‘But what if she helped him.’
‘Who?’
‘The widow.’
Sergeant Turner broke off from lighting his pipe and stared at Hanratty until the match burned down to his fingers and he flicked it away with a curse.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Hanratty put his hands on the desk and leant forward.
‘She said he was injured. How the hell did she know he was injured? Even I didn’t know he was injured. He was bloody well injured after I got my hands on him, but before?’
‘You been up there asking questions?’
‘Yes.’
‘What on earth…?’
‘She lied to me. I asked if there were any more farm buildings and she didn’t say a thing about a barn in some combe.’
‘Whoa there, Constable. It sounds as if you’re putting two and two together and making five. I completely understand that this whole business is nearer to your heart than the rest of us, you being there when he was captured and all, but you haven’t got time to go sniffing around on some sort of hunch.’
‘It’s not a hunch. I told you, the man had Brylcreem in his hair. Where did he get that from if he wasn’t tucked up, all cosy, in an English farmhouse?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care. We’ve got real police work to get on with.’
‘And bringing a Nazi collaborator to justice isn’t real police work?’
Sergeant Turner rested his pipe on the ashtray folded his arms across his chest. Hanratty could see he was stumped and pressed his advantage home.
‘I’m going to go and have a look at this barn,’ Hanratty said.
‘Not in my time, you’re not, Constable.’
The sergeant unfolded his arms and leant forward in a conciliatory way and said, ‘I understand. I do. You’ve had a brutal time of it and now you’re stuck out here in the sticks. But what we’re doing is just as important to the war effort as what you chaps were doing over in France. It may not be as exciting or as dangerous, but if we don’t keep the home front solid, we’re not going to win this war.’
Hanratty wasn’t going to be put off so easily. The very next afternoon he had free, he cycled over to Merewick and up the long, steep hill to the Downs. As he puffed along Lumber Lane, the roof of a dark barn rose up into his field of vision, crouching in a small valley below the track. He braked hard, his back tyre skidding forward with a rattle of stones. The dairy lay ahead, just below a ridge of land. This must be Wigstan Combe.
Stowing his bike in a hedge off the track he began to make his way down into the valley. The deeper he went, the more oppressed he felt by the armpit warmth trapped in the fold of land. Tiny buds of primroses, still buttoned to the earth, glittered on the banks either side and as he passed through the sun-blonde spaces between the trees, the beauty of the place began to infuriate him. It seemed to shine a light on the world’s ugliness even more brightly.
The barn was dappled with a latticework of shadows, the entrance alive with flames of new green, jumping up where ears of wheat had fallen to the ground the year before. A chattering flock of sparrows rose into the air. He stepped around the vast, broken door and into the hushed interior. It was huge, like a great cathedral, the sun scissoring in where tiles were missing from the roof.
He walked around the barn with his hands behind his back, peering round partitions, gazing up at the blue sky between the rafters.
Then he saw it. A blackened circle of ash.
He squatted down and poked at the pile with his finger. It was damp and clumped together but as he peeled the top away, he saw the charred edge of what looked like fabric, bright yellow against the black.
With trembling fingers he lifted it out and blew on it.
There were markings, a fragment of a grid in blue ink, 100km clearly visible and a black line marked 40 degrees.
It was the burnt edge of a map.
* * *
Constable Hanratty brought his fist down hard on the desk, making Sergeant Turner’s tin of pencils rattle.
‘What the bloody hell else do you need?’ he said.
‘Calm yourself, Constable,’ Turner said, getting to his feet moving around to the other side of the desk. ‘I am perfectly happy to pass the information down the line to HQ at Coltenham but I won’t have you storming up there and flinging unsubstantiated accusations around.’
‘Unsubstantiated? A Nazi was holed up on that woman’s farm.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I bloody well do know that.’
Turner raised a hand a calm him and said, ‘It could have been kids. They run wild up there in the summer. What more glorious a playground than a derelict barn? They probably made a camp, had a fire…’
‘And burnt a map?’
Turner shrugged. ‘Could be.’
‘A Nazi map?’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No, but I can make a bloody good guess. Bright yellow? It’s a night vision map and look at the calibration. It’s in kilometres, not miles. It’s German.’
‘I’m sure the bods over at Coltenham HQ will look into all that. Write your report and get it over there but for the love of God, leave it up to them to decide if it’s worth pursuing.’
Hanratty thumped out of the room, slamming the door with such force, it bounced open again.
Chapter Fifty
When the door into the hall opened, Millie was hit by a shock of sound – drums and double bass anchoring the trumpets and trombones in a boisterous swing-time rhythm, snatches of Alexander’s Ragtime Band bursting through. Huge Union Jacks hung like banners down the walls, and red, white and blue buntings crossed high above her head. Underneath, the room swayed with villagers, towns folk, Land Girls and soldiers. She was feeling even more uncomfortable than usual, knew she didn’t look at all like her usual self. In the interests of diplomacy, she’d submitted to Ruby’s badgering and let her ‘gussy everyone up’ for the evening.
June insisted Millie went first. Ruby emptied out her gas mask box onto the kitchen table – she’d chucked the horrible old mask away. It smelt foul – and stirred around among the cylinders of lipstick, plucking up a stub of pigment, worn to a chisel shape by her lips. As she brought it close to Millie’s mouth, there was an overpowering smell of fags but Millie couldn’t tell if it was coming from the lipstick or Ruby herself. Then Ruby clicked open the top of the mascara case, spat and began to work the brush into the block. Millie felt June’s eyes watching Ruby’s every move, felt the poor girl’s rising excitement; she was to be next. As Ruby approached with the caked brush, Millie shuddered.
‘Now, get going on your legs, Mills,’ Ruby said. ‘You may have to water that coffee down a bit more when you’re dry, I’ll draw the seam up the back. All right?’
She combed sugar water into Millie’s hair, pulled and backcombed it into a Victory roll, stiff as a helmet on top of her head. The pins were giving her a headache already but Ruby was trying, if nothing else. Even June looked quite pretty in a sturdy way, and Danny? He looked much the same, shy and excited even though he only had his school uniform to wear, his soft hair slicked back and darkened with a smear of Brylcreem that Ruby had
unearthed from the bathroom cabinet.
The swing number ended and the woodwind and strings trickled out the opening bars of The White Cliffs of Dover as a singer, far prettier than Vera Lynn, craned her neck towards the microphone. Millie felt a dig in her ribs and Ruby hissed in her ear, ‘Pucker up, honey; he’s coming in on the beam,’ and Millie saw Hugh striding across the room towards them, looking quite fetching in a fresh Viyella shirt and waistcoat, his hair brushed back off his face. Was he going to tease her about her bright red lipstick and Victory roll? He kissed Ruby on both cheeks, pecked at June and leaned down to shake Danny by the hand before turning towards Millie.
‘My,’ he said, ‘you look… I don’t know.’
Terrific, she thought. Trust Hugh. Completely guileless. Ruby broke into the pause by grabbing his hand and saying, ‘This one’s mine, big boy.’ And with that they were gone, into the press of khaki.
Millie followed June to buy a glass of punch. She spotted Brigsie on the other side of the room, still wearing her Land Girl jodhpurs but stripped down to her shirt, pumping a soldier’s arm up and down as she pounded round the floor. Brigsie saw her but looked away immediately.
June was settling young Danny down on the edge of a platform that ran along the back of the hall. Millie thought it was the first time she’d seen June looking old enough to have a son. Ruby had set her hair in a chignon down her back, plaited and curled, and the bright bolero made her look quite sophisticated.
‘You can see from here without getting trodden on, Danny,’ June said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a poke of sweets.
‘Where did you get those from?’ Millie said, checking over her shoulder that no one had seen.
‘A friend of Ruby’s gave it to me.’
‘Who?’
‘Ray Townsend. You know. That fellow who comes and picks her up a lot.’
A Dangerous Act of Kindness Page 22