He folded the clothes, damp side in and picked them up from the floor to take downstairs. When he went into the kitchen, June was washing out a pail in the sink. She jerked round to face him and backed further away.
‘I’ve mopped it over with soda bic,’ she said, her eyes sliding away, her hand worrying the belt at her waist. ‘It’ll not smell a bit, I promise you.’
‘Bicarbonate of soda,’ Hugh said, picking up the pot beside the sink and reading the label. ‘Well, there’s a thing. Never too old to learn, eh?’
He stood for a moment, wondering why she was so anxious.
‘I’ll just pop these down in the laundry room, shall I?’ he said.
‘I’ll take them,’ she said quickly.
‘Don’t worry. You can sort them out in the morning. Good job there’s no school tomorrow.’
When he came back to the kitchen, June jumped again.
‘Are you all right?’ Hugh said. ‘You seem a bit rattled.’
‘I’m really, really sorry about Danny and the mess and the trouble.’
‘Forget it.’
‘You was having a fine time and I made you go early.’
‘I wasn’t having that fine a time. I’m not much of a chap for dances, to be honest.’
‘Then Danny was sick all over your car.’
‘These things happen. Last time someone was sick in my car, I had to clean it up myself. Come to think of it, I was the one who chucked up.’ He started to laugh. She gave him a nervous smile. Poor girl looked scared as hell. At first Hugh couldn’t think why. Then he remembered poor little Danny cowering away from him after he was sick. There was only one possible explanation and the thought of it made him angry and very sorry for June.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I happen to know where Millie hides old Mr Sanger’s poteen. Why don’t we treat ourselves to a nightcap? Make up for leaving the dance early.’
He clattered through the cupboards to find some glasses and fetched the poteen. This would cheer her up, surely – but no, she was still standing by the sink, looking cowed and humble.
‘Come on, June. Come and sit down.’ He beckoned to her. When she finally sat he chinked the edge of his glass against her. ‘Down the hatch,’ he said and tossed it back. Lovely. June took a few sips, then a few more. ‘He’s a capital young man, your Danny,’ he said. ‘It’s great fun having him here.’
‘He likes you.’
‘Bit of a Daddy’s boy is he?’
June shook her head.
‘Bill blames Danny for everything that’s wrong with us.’
‘Blames him? Whatever for?’
And as the evening wore on, out came the whole story. Turns out June was a country girl in another life, grew up in Kent. Fell for this waste of space one summer, one of the travelling hop-pickers when she was just fifteen and ran away with him. She was trying to explain that he wasn’t all bad but Hugh thought he sounded little better than a pikey. Her folks never forgave her, never wanted to see her again.
‘We had this little room in Stepney,’ she said, ‘and we was as happy as clams. Course, I was already expecting Danny but didn’t know it. It was a shock for Bill – his little girl old enough to have a baby of her own – and he started drinking. And when he drank…’ She shook her head. ‘He had such a temper on him. I didn’t mind so much for me but then he starts on Danny. I weren’t no match for him.’
‘Why didn’t you go back to Kent?’
‘I couldn’t, not after everything. Go back and show them they was right? I couldn’t go doing that. Thought the war was a godsend, Bill being away so much and all but when he’d come home on leave, it was worse than ever. Then bang – a great big bomb drops out of the sky and all me old life goes up in smoke.’ June smiled. The poteen had made her cheeks glow and in the low light of the kitchen she looked quite pretty. ‘Reckon Hitler done me a good turn when he sent those bombers over London. I didn’t even tell my neighbours we was being evacuated. Me and Danny, we just walked into a rehousing centre and took the first spot, and it was here. Reckon I hope this ruddy war never ends.’
Later in the evening Hugh went off to the cellar to fetch another bottle of booze. He knew it wasn’t such a great idea. He missed a step on the way down, felt his heel drum down a couple of treads and he supported himself on the wall, giggling. Down there, in the humid darkness that smelt of earth and mould, he imagined it was Millie waiting in the kitchen, looking up at him with those trusting eyes. He could see it was doing June good, talking about things. Hugh had always been a good listener. Pity Millie didn’t open up to him like that.
* * *
Bloody hell, he had a head on him the next morning. He had no idea how he got back home. He opened the curtains with some trepidation, squinting at the early morning sun that seemed ridiculously bright but there was the Austin, parked haphazardly, down in the yard. Like a horse, that car, he thought. Knows its way home. Oops. The driver’s door was still open. That was bit of a giveaway. He ought to get down there before his mother spotted it.
Instead, he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and drained the glass of water on the side table, refilled it from the pitcher and took several more deep gulps. He’d ferret out a couple of Aspro when he got downstairs. He’d be right as rain after a good breakfast.
Despite his hangover, his mood was rather chipper. It must have been that dance with Millie. He may have forgotten several hours at the end of the evening but he remembered that.
Something was definitely going on there. She was very physical, bumping her body against him; even laughing as they spun, no reserve whatsoever. It certainly got his blood up. He was pretty cross when Ruby whisked him away. He saw the look in Millie’s eye, knew she was fed up too and that gave him a wonderful feeling. She’d wanted to go on dancing with him.
Bloody hell, if Danny hadn’t stuffed his face with sweets and sickened himself, Hugh could have danced with Millie again – all night in fact. He threw himself back on the counterpane and flung his arms above his head.
As he stared up at the ceiling, another rather unpleasant feeling crept over him, a feeling of shame and he frowned, trying to think what he had to feel bad about. It didn’t last very long, the feeling, because he realised what it was. He shouldn’t have driven the car when he was drunk. That was a pretty stupid thing to do. Never mind, he thought, sitting up. Guilt was a useless emotion. He’d learned from quite a young age that it was much better to forgive yourself.
Chapter Fifty Three
Brigsie skipped church and set off towards the Downs early. It was a long old haul over to Morney Beswick’s farm. She hadn’t slept a wink all night. Once she’d recovered from the shock of Millie’s confession, she realised something was still off kilter. Millie had seemed a lot of things that first morning of the blizzard, but frightened? No. She seemed desperate to get rid of her. Why would she do that if she were afraid the man would come back? Brigsie could think of only one reason: she wanted to be alone with him.
But could Brigsie trust her own interpretation? Or was she imagining Millie’s guilt as a salve to her own? After all, she was little better herself. She’d promised her friend that she wouldn’t tell when she knew all along it was far too late. But was it? That’s what she didn’t know, that’s what she had to find out.
She’d spent months waiting for the hammer to fall, waiting to see what was going to happen to Millie. When that constable turned up, she held her breath for days but still nothing happened. She began to think that maybe her message hadn’t got through. Perhaps it was found by someone else. Those village boys were little demons with their relentless games of Nazi hunting. Suppose one of them had taken the note, kept the buttons as souvenirs, swapping them for bits of shrapnel or spent gun casings which turned up in the fields every now and again?
After half an hour of cycling along the ridge, the land began to drop. In the distance Brigsie could see the course of the river running through the valley and below her, the thick trees which su
rrounded the village of Norrington. She let the bike freewheel down the hill. It was a beautiful morning and she could feel the air fluttering the hem of her Sunday frock as she sped along. She should be filled with joy that summer was nearly here but instead she felt a churning, insecure feeling in her guts. She knew she was breaking all the rules but what else could she do? She had to speak to Morney Beswick.
Fifteen minutes later she was cycling up the long, tree-lined track to Manor Farm. It was cool under the trees and a shiver ran over her skin, bobbling her flesh. She was glad when she broke out of the shade and onto the sun-bleached drive, which swept round in a circle to the front door. It was a handsome house, very symmetrical, three large windows each side of the front door, six on the next storey and a coat of arms smack in the middle. It looked like a giant doll’s house, as if you could swing open the whole of the front and see all the rooms and furniture inside.
She leant her bike against a stone planter by the front door and pulled on the doorbell. She heard a faint ringing in the bowels of the house, the distant barking of dogs. While she waited, she looked out across the drive. It was fringed with merry daffodils, their trumpets knocking together in the breeze but the lawn beyond had been stripped down to bare earth, ready for vegetables.
She was let in by a girl in a maid’s uniform. She looked about twelve. She was probably a bit older but still too young to enlist. She showed Brigsie into a book-lined library which smelt of woodsmoke from last night’s fire, although the room was cold and still. A longcase clock ticked gently in one corner and Brigsie went over and stared up at the dial. A chubby-faced moon peeked out from behind the brass at the top but she thought it had a rather mournful expression.
‘Miss Paterson,’ a voice said behind her. ‘What an unexpected pleasure.’ Morney Beswick strode across the rugs, two large dogs weaving around behind him.
He was a short man, but stocky with a wide, friendly face and the confidence of the well-bred. He had the powdery skin of a redhead, although his hair and moustache were a dark mahogany, just a spattering of grey around his temples.
‘You’re admiring my moon dial,’ he said, coming to rest beside her and taking up a wide-legged stance, his arms crossed. A fresh tang of the outdoors clung to him, mixed with the vanilla scent of pipe tobacco.
‘The old thing’s come into her own again. Very useful, knowing when we can expect a full moon, what with all this blackout nonsense.’
He swung round and looked at her, an expectant twinkle in his pale blue eyes.
Brigsie didn’t know where to start, didn’t know how to begin and after a couple of moments, Mr Beswick gave a grunt and walked over to the fireplace.
‘Looks like you’d better sit down,’ he said, picking up a pipe from the mantelpiece and tapping it against the inside of the grate. He didn’t light it. He peered into the bowl, twisted the mouthpiece round a few times and placed his foot on the fender. Brigsie sat on the edge of one of the chairs, holding her gas-mask box on her lap.
‘I’ve made a dreadful mistake,’ she said. Mr Beswick frowned and tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. ‘The thing is,’ she went on, ‘I thought I’d seen something incriminating and I passed it on through the dead drop and…’
Mr Beswick held up his hand and said, ‘I must stop you there. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
Brigsie jumped to her feet. ‘But you have! You’re our section commander.’
Mr Beswick flared his nostrils and glared down into the bowl of his pipe. He began to breathe quite hard, as if he’d just finished a sprint. He dropped the pipe on the chimney piece with a clatter and strode across to the open door. He closed it with care, as if he was deep in thought but when he turned, he had a face like thunder.
‘How dare you,’ he said, his tone low but sufficiently threatening to make both dogs rise from the rug in front of the grate and slink to the back of the room. ‘You took an oath to discuss your war work with no one.’
‘I have to talk to someone.’
‘The Special Duty Branch isn’t some sort of gossip club, Miss Paterson. You’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.’
‘I know. Of course I know that but I’ve accused someone of something and I was wrong and I don’t know if the message got through…’ Mr Beswick started speaking over her but she rattled on, raising her voice above his until he fell silent, ‘… because nothing’s happened to the person I pointed the finger at and I’m terrified the note has fallen into the wrong hands and I need you to send a message to military intelligence to say that I was wrong, or to ask if they got the message, or…’
Mr Beswick folded his arms and looked down at the rug.
‘It seems to me,’ he said, calmer now, ‘you don’t know what you want. It also seems to me that my recommendation to the Branch was misguided…’
‘It wasn’t.’
He quietened her with a raised hand and continued, ‘I can only thank God that the threat of imminent invasion has passed for the time being because a person like you would have put many lives at risk, including those of myself and my family.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Miss Paterson,’ he barked. Brigsie dropped her head. ‘I made it absolutely clear to you when I initially approached you to join us that there are no links – I know nothing of your dead drops, I have no idea where the transmitters are, and apart from the handful of people recruited by myself, I have no idea who signed up for this work. What I do know, however, is that you cannot be trusted and because of that, a great number of people will be put to a great deal of inconvenience.’
Brigsie heard a gentle whirr coming from the clock. She felt a terrible falling, a shrinking back of her heart. The clock began to chime the quarters, its cool sound filling the room with music but when it began to strike the hours, it sounded for all the world like a judge’s gavel, pounding the bench.
‘Clearly,’ Mr Beswick continued, ‘it is quite impossible for you to remain a member of the Special Duty Branch…’
‘No. I beg you…’
‘It’s completely out of the question that you continue this work, Miss Paterson.’
‘I want to go on serving my country.’
He gave a sort of amazed guffaw, shook his head as if clearing it and said, ‘Well, you’d better use your imagination then. You certainly can’t stay in the area as a Land Girl.’
‘I don’t want to leave the Land Army.’
‘You should have thought of that before you came bleating to me. It’s too late now. Make your excuses to Mrs Sanger if you must, but be gone by the end of the week. And by the way, I must remind you that you remain bound by the Official Secrets Act. I would like you to leave now.’ He opened the door, waiting with his head bowed until she passed through.
She felt so shaken she was quite unable to get up onto the saddle of her bicycle. Instead, she pushed it wearily along the dark tunnel of trees, the sprockets clicking like a metronome. Her mind was so scattered, she didn’t know what to do next – tear out her hair, pluck out her eye, throw herself into a river. Her shame clamoured in her ears and she wanted to shrink from the world, disappear without a trace.
She reached the end of the drive and hauled herself onto the bicycle. She weaved along the lane, too weak to get up any speed. She knew she could never face Millie again, never face Hugh or June or Ruby. She had to leave the farm, go back to the ATS.
She’d trained as a mechanic at the start of the war but switched to the Land Army when winter came. She’d hated working in those freezing garages and hangars, her nostrils full of the smell of petrol and fumes.
Now, it seemed a fitting hell to return to. Her penance would be giving up these huge skies, these vast fields, these endless horizons. She would forego the nip of a fresh dawn for the misery of lying on icy concrete, underneath a filthy engine. She would turn her back on the close comfort of women friends and return to the male world of crude banter and puerile putdowns.
As she cycled between
the verges, already padded with billowing cow parsley, she knew she must banish herself from this Garden of Eden to pay for the awful mess she’d made of everything.
Chapter Fifty Four
Lukas couldn’t sleep. He was fairly certain a couple of his ribs were cracked. Turning over in bed was ludicrously painful. His head thundered from the beating and he could feel the contusion at the base of his calf throbbing and stiffening.
It wasn’t the pain that kept him awake; it was the thought that Fleischmann and his mob would come for him in the night. Rumour spread like wildfire through the camp; if they got wind of his interview with a British officer, he was a dead man walking.
He looked across to the dark shape of Fischer sleeping in the next bed. He’d be all right. Fischer stayed safe by playing the ass. Provided he wasn’t stupid enough to intervene when the Rollkommando came to get him, they’d quickly loose interest in him.
A feeble pre-dawn glowed grey in the window opposite. He heard the faint sound of boots walking carefully on gravel. It sounded like two, maybe three soldiers. The balloon of anxiety that had been growing in his chest all night burst and an odd sort of ease, resignation perhaps, swept through him.
He pushed himself up in the bed. Spikes of pain lanced deep into his body, making him wince. He swung his legs out and, holding onto his side, bent to retrieve his boots. He didn’t want Fischer to see him dragged away. He would go quietly, fight for his life once he was out of the hut.
His struggled to work his swollen ankle into the boot, grunting with pain. The handle of the door rattled quietly, the cool air of dawn swept up the dormitory. Lukas stood. Two bulky figures walked towards him.
They had guns.
These weren’t Rollkommandos. These were English guards.
Of course. Captain Trevelyan. He wasn’t going to let his asset stay in the camp a moment longer than necessary.
One of the guards handed him his jacket and coat, the other mimed that he must put them on. When Lukas opened his mouth to speak, the guards lifted the muzzles of their guns and shook their heads. The more solid of the two leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Clear your locker.’ Lukas recoiled. The guard’s breath smelt of rusted nails and bad meat. ‘Take everything. You’ll not be coming back.’
A Dangerous Act of Kindness Page 24