Читать книгу Windflower Wedding - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 12

Keth lolled in the armchair, feet straddled, legs stiffly outstretched, and glowered at the pile of clothes on his bed and the cheap suitcase at the foot of it.

He was annoyed. Damned annoyed. With himself, but most of all with the slab-faced stranger who had made him a laughing stock. Because not only, it seemed, was he an idiot when it came to parachuting; now he had gone one better.

Half an hour ago he had acted – or was it reacted? – like an absolute fool and all because Slab Face had caught him unawares.

He jumped to his feet and strode to the window, kicking out childishly at the case as he passed it. One lock on it was broken. He would have to tie it round with string, he supposed.

He stared moodily across the grounds to the dense pinewood beyond. The clothes on the bed were all secondhand and he wondered if they had been washed. Did they have jumble sales in France and did SOE send a bod over regularly to buy up old clothes?

But he was being childish, not entirely because of what had happened in Room 22, but because, if he were completely honest, this stupid, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here mood of bewilderment was because he was afraid. He had always been afraid, only now was the first time he’d admitted it.

In Room 22 he’d been greeted with a nod by the civilian with whom he’d drunk brandy last night. The stranger who sat behind the desk – the one with the face like a concrete slab – had not even nodded, indicating with a frugal movement of his hand that Keth should sit in the chair facing.

‘We will conduct this interview in French, Captain. Name?’

That had been the start of it.

‘Gaston Martin.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-five.’ Easy. Just two months younger than himself. ‘Born the third of September.’ That was easy, too. The day war started.

‘Mother?’

‘Belle.’

‘Father?’

‘Jules Martin. Killed 1917.’

The questioning was rapid; his answers without fault. He let himself relax because his French was better in every way than that of his interrogator whose French was too perfect, too correct. Parisian French. Learned at university, no doubt. But Keth Purvis spoke the language with mam’selle’s Normandy accent; used her clichés and her colloquialisms and she had told him his pronunciation was almost perfect.

That was when his complacency was shattered.

‘Mon capitaine!’

Keth had turned his head sharply in the direction of the voice, his guard completely down, to gaze across the room, eyes questioning. That was when it happened.

The blow to his face caught him unawares. He turned, startled, knocking over his chair as he lunged across the desk.

‘What the hell!’ He grabbed at the coat lapels with angry hands, heaving the man to his feet. ‘What was that in aid of?’

Slab Face did not reply. Still shaking with anger, Keth hissed ‘Tell me!’ at his brandy-drinking companion, who shrugged without even moving his position.

‘I’ll tell you!’ With a practised move, the interrogator freed himself from Keth’s grasp, then delivered a chopping blow to his shoulder that sent him reeling across the room to fall, legs in air, near the door.

‘Get up, Captain,’ the voice drawled and because apart from being reluctant to continue the conversation from floor level, Keth needed to look his tormentor in the eyes; calmly, and without wavering, and listen to the offered explanation. Slowly he rose, dusting his sleeve, pulling straight his jacket. Then he took three steps to stand in front of the desk, jaws clamped tight.

‘All right! I’m listening!’

‘Sit down, please.’ A command, not an invitation. ‘So, Captain Purvis …’

‘Why?’ Keth demanded, all at once realizing his cheek throbbed painfully and wondering how soon it would show bruising.

‘Drink?’

‘Thank you, sir, no.’

Without moving a muscle of his face the man turned to the table behind him and poured from a decanter. Then he sat down, sighed, and said, ‘Why did I hit you? So shall we take it that you, an Englishman in German-occupied France and posing as a native, is asked for his papers by a passing patrol – which often happens, I might add – and something prompted the corporal in charge of that patrol to take you in for – er – questioning. Just a routine arrest to let his superiors know he was doing his job efficiently.

‘Let us say that I was the young, zealous officer who asked questions of you – perhaps, like the corporal who brought you in, a little overzealous because I had no wish to be sent to the Russian Front. And I would have to admit that you seemed genuine. Your answers were correct, though not too readily offered; your whole attitude, I might have thought, was entirely that of Gaston Martin.’

Keth waited unspeaking.

‘Then I, who might have been a Gestapo officer, slapped your face, unexpectedly and seemingly without reason. And not only did you let your guard down, but you reacted exactly as your interrogator hoped you would. It’s the oldest trick in the book and you signed your own death warrant when you fell for it!’

‘Yes, but dammit, how was I to know? Wouldn’t you, I mean?’

‘You mean, dammit wouldn’t I have been annoyed, too, and the answer is yes, I would! But a Frenchman – Gaston Martin – would have called him all kinds of a pig, in French, maybe even spat in his face. Yet you, mon brave, reacted in English! One sudden slap, and your cover is blown!’

‘Okay. So I know now. It won’t happen again.’

‘It had better not. In this line of business, second chances aren’t very thick on the ground.’ The man with the face like a concrete slab emptied his glass, then left the room without a sideways glance at either of those remaining.

There was silence as the door closed softly and they listened to the unhurried tread of receding footsteps.

‘There’s a name for people like him!’ Keth muttered to his companion of the previous evening.

‘There is.’ The unknown, unnamed man who wore civilian clothes and poured generous brandies allowed himself a small smile. ‘But one day you might have reason to be grateful to the miserable bastard for saving your life. So how about a quick one before lunch? I’d like you to eat with me in my office. There are a few things to go over before you leave.’

Keth almost demanded to know when, exactly, but his new-found, painfully acquired caution warned him to wait.

‘Thanks, sir. I’d like that.’

He had tried to smile but could not, because his heart was hammering still, though whether from anger, or the sudden realization that even an unimportant operative could not close his eyes to what could happen, he did not know. In this setup, he was forced to admit, there were no milk runs and even the most straightforward in-and-out job was no piece of cake.

Now, in his room, he turned from the window and stared again at the neatly folded clothes; clothes, he supposed, that those in charge of such things would expect a French labourer to wear: well-worn trousers, a jacket and shirt, collar attached. Brown shoes which looked as if they would fit – he hadn’t tried them on yet – and a raincoat.

He snapped open the one good lock on the case to find underwear – none of it new but clean, at least – a pair of working trousers, overalls and a cap. He’d have bet on a beret, though he was now prepared to admit that the people here knew what they were about.

To complete Gaston Martin’s worldly goods were two towels and a spongebag – even that looked used – and inside the bag a razor, shaving soap, a toothbrush – new! – and a cake of dentifrice in a silver-coloured tin.

Before he left he would be given a cheap, French-made watch and franc notes and coins. Not too many, of course, because labourers weren’t expected to carry a lot of money. Gaston Martin probably lived from job to job within the boundaries of his work permit and what was left over from the purchase of his strictly rationed food, he would doubtless spend on wine. Red wine, Keth decided.

He made a note to ask more about his ration card. His food-ration documents bothered him almost as much as his claustrophopic mode of transport to an isolated inlet north of Biarritz.

He found himself wishing he had been allowed to bring a photograph of Daisy because in his present state of perplexity he found he could not bring her face into his mind’s eye, nor hear her voice nor her laugh at will. Something to do with shock, he supposed, or apprehension, or a mix of both. All he could remember was the way her hair slipped through his fingers and the feel of her lips on his. Her face, though, and her voice were gone from his rememberings. What a mess. What a damn-awful mess!

He reached for his cap and slammed shut the door of his room behind him. He needed to walk. He would walk around and around the grounds until some perplexed sentry asked him what he was about. And when he was tired of walking, he would write to his mother and again to Daisy; tell her how much he loved her and wanted her. Hell, how he wanted her!

Briefly he returned the salute of the sentry on the garden door, then stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets in a most unsoldierly way, began to walk along the crunching, gravelled paths in the direction of the distant hills, wondering just how near to them he would get before being stopped.

What was Daisy doing now? His diary was at Castle McLeish so he had lost track of her watches. The wireless was freely available here, so he was fairly sure there had been no air raids on either Liverpool or London.

He kicked out at a stone on the short-cut grass beside the path, trying yet again to bring Daisy’s face, her smile, into focus. But she remained elusive, so he straightened his shoulders, set his arms at an easy swing, and began to walk the boundaries of the grounds.

So he was nervous and apprehensive, but who in his right mind wouldn’t be? He was a mathematician, a back-room boy. He was a breaker of codes and not one iota brave. Not for him flying a bomber over Germany in the blackout; not for him prowling the seas in a submarine nor dropping out of a plane at the end of a parachute. He was lucky that he knew his limitations and being brave – foolhardy – was not one of them.

So he was going to occupied France and knew now where he would be put ashore and that he would be picked up and hidden away until he was needed. He was not being asked to take undue risks. Even the Enigma machine would be brought to him by some foolish brave man – or woman. Then he would be brought out again with the precious package and if he couldn’t do something as uncomplicated as that for Daisy; do it, even, for the merchant seamen who risked their lives every time they left port, then it was a poor lookout.

Wherever you are, my darling, he whispered with his heart, it’s going to be all right for us. I’m all kinds of a fool, but we will be married on my next leave and nothing on the face of the earth will stop us because I love you, love you!

It was then that it all came right and he was able to recall her smile, hear the softness of her voice as she whispered that she loved him too; that she would always love him and yes, they would be married. Very soon.

It was at times like this, he insisted as he walked briskly back to the forbidding stone house that was forbidding no longer, that he had to believe. But believe in who, or what? In God, perhaps; in miracles? On this early October afternoon he needed to believe in miracles and yes, in God too. It was all down, he supposed, to loving Daisy so much and if conditions meant taking a calculated risk, then she was worth it.

He was going to France and coming safely back! Oh, too damn right he was!

‘So how did things go, last night?’ Sparrow demanded as they cleared the table after supper. She was downright curious if only because Tatiana had volunteered nothing on her return from the theatre – except that the music had been lovely.

‘Just fine,’ Tatiana shrugged.

‘And you didn’t get yourself upset?’

‘Of course not. Why should I?’

‘No reason at all – except that you are upset! Is it the new one – the blind one? Did you find it all too much?’

‘No, Sparrow. Oh, no.’

‘Then tell me.’ She filled the bowl with water then added a fist of washing soda. ‘Because the first time you took an airman out you were full of it, and wanted to go on helping Joannie’s lot.’

‘And I still want to.’ Tatiana watched, fascinated, as the older woman lathered a block of primrose soap into a sud. ‘I really do. It was just that – well, it all seemed so spooky. Not spooky-frightening but spooky-strange, sort of. And rather nice.’

Sparrow continued her lathering without comment, agitating the water into bubbles.

‘You see, Sparrow, I’m trying to tell myself that something wonderful hasn’t happened – and it has. I told you about Tim?’

‘Y-yes.’

‘Well last night it wasn’t Tim, exactly. He was called Bill Benson. And he was Scottish and just about Tim’s height. And he had fair hair, too, and –’

‘And he was an air-gunner, like your Tim was?’

‘Yes.’ She picked up a plate, drying it ponderously. ‘It threw me, at first.’

For just a little while it had been too much to accept. It got so out of hand that in the dimness of the theatre, when Bill leaned close to whisper to her, he sounded so much like Tim she had wanted to get away; push past everyone, run out and never go back.

‘So now you’re going to pretend it’s your young man come back to you with his face burned?’

‘No, Sparrow! Don’t say that! It’s cruel!’

‘It’s fact, girl, and you’re being morbid! Your young man hasn’t come back. The one you took to the theatre last night wasn’t Tim. And I’m not being cruel about their poor faces. Far from it. I think they should all have a medal, Lord love them! But don’t get entangled, Tatiana. Your mother put you in my care and I won’t have you getting yourself upset all over again. And maybe this Bill has a young lady – maybe even a wife. Did you think to ask?’

‘I didn’t, Sparrow, because it isn’t important,’ she said softly, though she knew as soon as she spoke that it was important because she was so certain in her dreamings that the young man who sat beside her had some part of Tim in him, that she had wanted to reach for his hand, entwine her fingers in his, just as she and Tim always did in the intimate, shoulder-to-shoulder darkness of Creesby picture house. Would have, only a voice, very much like Sparrow’s, had called a warning, and she was forced to tell herself it was not Tim who sat beside her and that even to think such a thing was being unfaithful to his memory.

But for just a moment, until she regained control of her feelings, Tim had not died in a crashed bomber on Holdenby Pike. Tim survived, dreadfully burned and blinded, too, her foolish heart insisted, and had come back with a different name. And even his name was uncanny. Tim Thomson. Bill Benson. Even the cadence was there.

‘Well, if it isn’t important, you’ll maybe stop trying to rub the pattern orf that plate and shift yourself so we’ll be done in time to listen to Tommy Handley! And maybe it’d be better if our Joannie sent you someone different next time.’

‘No!’ She said it much, much too quickly. ‘I mean – well, I promised Bill and Sam I’d see them both again next week. We got on well together the three of us, and Sam is such a help with Bill. I couldn’t go back on my word, Sparrow. Not the word of a Sutton.’

‘Well, if you say so. Only don’t go filling your head with day dreams or you’ll get hurt again – especially if he’s married. And there was a letter for you from Liverpool. I left it on the hall table. Did you see it?’

Sparrow knew Daisy’s handwriting; had known Daisy since she was a little thing in her mother’s arms, and living in Hampshire.

‘Sorry – I didn’t look, actually. I’ll read it later. And don’t worry about me, Sparrow – though I’m glad, really, that you do. It was just that meeting Bill Benson last night was a bit of shock, that’s all. I’m fine now. It’s all under control. I know what I’m doing.’

But did she know what she was doing, she thought that night as she lay snug and cosseted in bed and thought about Tim Thomson and Bill Benson. Because she didn’t know what she was doing if she were scrupulously honest, and to say she did was like spitting into the wind, which was a very unladylike thing to do – apart from being messy!

She turned over with an exaggerated sigh, then plumped up her pillows. Frightening though that meeting had been, she knew there could never, ever, be another man in her life after Tim. And that was a pity, really, because never to be able to fall in love again was a terrible thing to have to accept; like becoming a nun and not being able to go back on your word.

But those three wonderful months she and Tim spent together were worth a lifetime of being alone. Indeed she was, she thought, very lucky to have met Tim at all. If she hadn’t gone to the dance at Holdenby Moor aerodrome she would never have have known the joy of loving completely and being completely loved in return.

She smiled softly and sadly and said good night to Tim as she always did, then made her mind a blank, because she must not think about Bill Benson. Perhaps Sparrow was right and Joannie should ask some other volunteer to take him out on the town.

Trouble was, she had promised, and anyway, next week she would most probably wonder why she had ever thought Bill Benson was in the least like Tim. There could never be another Tim Thomson. Not ever. It was as simple – and awful – as that.

Drew and Kitty leaned against the landing-stage railings, thighs touching, hands clasped, gazing across the river to the Cheshire side. Sharp against the skyline the jagged outlines of bombed buildings were gentled by a setting sun that scattered the river with a sparkle of rubies.

‘Kind of beautiful, isn’t it?’ She smiled up at him. ‘If it wasn’t so sad, I mean. Wish I could paint. It’s so dramatic.’

‘Then I’m glad you can’t because knowing you, your canvases would either be terrible, or very good indeed.’

‘And in this case,’ she pointed to the wartime skyline, ‘scary. Y’know, honey, it’s like we’re standing back, looking at something we’ve no power to do anything about; all of us puppets, having our strings pulled.’

‘We’re nothing of the kind! You and I are living, breathing people. We have minds of our own and we’re going to be married,’ Drew said firmly. ‘And one day, all this will be behind us. Last time, Mother said, when they thought their war would never end, it was suddenly all over.’

‘Sure, and they had to pick up the pieces and wonder if it had all been worth it, just as our generation will wonder.’ She turned her back on the stark outlines that were already being dimmed and softened around the edges by the blocking out of a scarlet sun behind a tall, distant building. ‘And I know we have minds of our own, darling, but sometimes there’s no choice but to do things we don’t want to.’

‘Like?’ He pulled sharply on his breath.

‘Like me coming over here to work with ENSA and being willing to go anywhere, kind of …’

‘So you are leaving Liverpool! Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I didn’t want to spoil tonight, I guess. Because in a few hours you’ve got to be back on board and next time you dock I’ll be gone. To London.’

The river ferry came broadside on to the landing stage and they looked down, not speaking, to watch the gangway fall with a clatter and people hurrying across it.

‘Let’s not go dancing.’ It was Drew who broke the uneasy silence.

‘No. Let’s go back to the digs.’ To Ma MacTaggart’s cheap theatrical lodgings; to Ma, who never thought to remark that the bed in the room Drew took for the night was never slept in.

‘Mm. You can tell me about it, then.’ It wouldn’t seem so awful when they lay close, and warm from loving, Kitty telling him she was to be based in London as they feared she might be; would not seem so bad when they were so relaxed they could imagine London to be only a sixpenny tram ride away. ‘And London will be good for your career – all the theatres.’

And the bombing, his mind supplied, because it would start again, nothing was more certain. When Hitler was done with Russia the full force of the Luftwaffe would be hurled at Britain once more. Not that Hitler was getting all his own way there now. The German armies had been halted and held, and in some places thrown back. And Moscow was no longer threatened, though Leningrad’s siege had yet to be broken.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Kitty whispered. ‘You sure were scowling.’

‘I was thinking about the war in general and Russia in particular and how it might not always be very safe when you get to London.’

‘I’ll be just fine, darling.’ There was a churning of water between the landing stage and the ferry as it made its way back towards the Cheshire side. ‘For one thing, I’ll be with Sparrow and Tatty, and for another I’ll be out of London on tour a lot of the time.

‘On tour,’ she giggled. ‘Sounds like I’ll be doing the provincial theatres before the show opens in the West End, when really we’ll be playing gun sites and aerodromes and village halls; any place there are men and women in need of cheering up. You’ve no idea, Drew, what a wonderful audience they are. They stamp and whistle like crazy. It makes me feel real good, like I’m a star and they’ve all paid pounds and pounds just to see me.’

‘You always did like an audience, Kitty Sutton. You knew even when you were little how to play to the gallery. Do you know what a precocious brat you were?’ Smiling, he tweaked her nose.

‘Guess I must’ve been pretty awful,’ she laughed.

‘You still are. You come into a room like a force-eight gale, demanding to be noticed – just like you slammed into my life that night on the dockside. Suddenly I knew what it was like to be hit amidships by a torpedo.’

‘And I love you too.’ She reached on tiptoe to kiss his lips lingeringly which was something nice girls shouldn’t do in public, then they began to walk towards Bold Street and the little street off it, where Ma MacTaggart lived. Now, Drew thought, he had another picture of Kitty to store in his memory and take out and live again when they were apart.

Kitty, silhouetted against a red evening sky and the stark, bombed buildings on the far bank of the river; Kitty so beautiful that it made him wonder why it was him she loved and not someone as good to look at as herself; Kitty’s English half that loved the Mersey and to stand at the Pierhead watching the river ferries that churned across it. Kitty, warm and flamboyant, whose lips silently begged him to make love to her each time they kissed.

He had been so ordinary before the night he saw her behaving so badly in the too-small, too-cheap red costume. That night he fell in love with his Kentucky cousin; deeply, desperately, in love. What Gracie would call, he supposed, a hook, line and sinker job. Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton, his raison d’être.

He quickened his step, the sooner to get to Ma’s and the bed he would share with her. They would love, then she would fall asleep in his arms, her ridiculous baby-soft curls tickling his nose. And in the morning when she opened her eyes and smiled and said, throatily, ‘Hullo, you,’ they would make love again because it would be the last time for only God knew how long.

He took her arm and she demanded to know what the hurry was and he told her she knew damn well.

‘And, Kitty, hear this! Next time I get long leave we’re getting married and no messing – even if it’s a special licence job!’

She said that was fine by her, because maybe being deliciously unconventional and doing what nicely-brought-up girls shouldn’t do every time they found themselves within spitting distance of a double bed was wearing a bit thin now.

‘You’re right, Drew. Reckon we’ve come as far as we can and I guess you should make an honest woman of me. Come to think of it, it might be nice to be Lady Sutton.’

She stopped walking and gazed up at him with eyes so blue and serious and appealing that he took her in his arms, right there in the middle of Bold Street, and kissed her hard and long.

And didn’t give a damn who saw them!