Читать книгу Bloody Right - Georgia Evans - Страница 8

“Dad, I’m not going tonight. I can’t. And that’s flat!”

Howell Pendragon looked up from filling the teapot, almost baptizing himself with boiling water at the sheer panic in Gryffyth’s eyes and the sweat beading on his forehead. “Right you are, son,” he replied, putting the lid on the pot and covering it with the knitted cozy Helen Burrows made out of Air Force Blue wool. “Tea’ll be ready in a minute. Want a piece of toast with it?”

“Did you hear me, Dad?”

“Yes, I heard you.” Would have been impossible not to, given he’d as good as shouted. Another mark of how keyed up he was. “You don’t want to go to the party tonight.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

Howell put two mugs on the table and reached into the bread bin. “What do you expect me to say, son? You said you won’t go. You’re a grown man. I can hardly wallop you on the bum and tell you, ‘yes, you are!’ The way I did when you refused to carry your cousin Bronwen’s train at her wedding.”

“Dad, I was six at the time.”

“And now you’re twenty-six. So you won’t come. Want one slice of toast or two?”

“I don’t want any toast!”

Silly git! Not that he’d say that aloud. Howell shook his head and put four slices of bread under the grill. He was hungry and he bet Gryff was. He fetched the week’s ration of cheese from the pantry and started slicing. The lad had always had a weakness for cheese on toast. (He damn well wasn’t calling it Welsh Rarebit the way the English did.) And they had two hours to go before Alice Watson would pick them up.

Howell busied himself with plates and filling the milk jug, all the time casting glances in Gryffyth’s direction. He understood the lad’s reluctance. It was no joke for him, hobbling about on his tin leg while everyone else, old fogies to little nippers, skipped around on two. But dammit, Gryff had done nothing but mope and frown since he came home, aside from one trip down to the Pig with Andrew and Peter. He’d gone the once and refused ever after. It wasn’t good. Not at all.

“Here you are.” Howell slipped two slices onto a plate and put it on Gryffyth’s side of the table. “Come and get it while it’s still warm and bubbly.”

“I’m not hungry, Dad.”

“Maybe not, but that’s your cheese ration for the week so best eat up, or you will be.” He set to pouring tea and made himself not watch his son. But nodded with satisfaction as Gryffyth walked over to the table. He managed that far without his stick. Good. “Here’s your tea.” Howell put the mug by the plate and sat down himself.

The lad got himself into the chair, but pulling it up to the table was another matter. Howell knew better than offer to help. What grown man wanted to be pushed up to the table like a child? He took a drink of tea, noting with pleasure that Gryff was already picking up knife and fork.

He let him eat, topping up his tea and not saying much until he cleared away the plates and produced the remains of the blackberry-and-apple tart Helen Burrows had brought over yesterday.

“This is delicious,” Gryffyth said, between mouthfuls. “Just as it was when we were children. Remember how Alice and I and her brothers used to play together? Her grandmother used to bake the most smashing cakes and tarts.”

“The Pixie touch, eh?” No joking there either.

“That’s what she used to say. Said it was Devon magic.”

Good opening, that. Not what he’d planned on saying right this minute, but never mind. “Why not? Ours isn’t the only sort of magic, lad.”

“Oh! Dad! Fat lot of good that magic did me, sitting here with my tin leg.”

“Dragon magic’s no use?” Howell almost laughed. “Then how is it you were the only one picked up alive?”

He wished the words back the minute Gryffyth’s eyes brimmed with tears. Tears he blinked back with a snarl. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it, Dad? I was their sergeant and I couldn’t save them!”

Howell reached across the table and grabbed both his son’s hands, squeezing until he opened his eyes and glared his fury at his father. “Right there, lad. You couldn’t save them. There were men in the trenches died and I couldn’t save them. They’ll haunt me until I die, just as your men will haunt you. But that’s the way it is. You survived, just as I did.”

“You came home with both legs.”

“True, but seems to me, son, it’s coming back that matters. Surviving. Don’t think your fighting’s finished just because they invalided you out. It’s not. We’ve had our own war here and it’s not been nice.”

“I heard about the vicar’s wife getting hurt in the bombing, and Miss Waite being arrested as a spy.”

The lad didn’t know the half of it. “There’s a lot more, son, much more. You need to know it all, but now’s not the time. If I started we’d be here until midnight and never get out of the house.”

At least that got a bit of a smile. “Sounds like a good idea, Dad. Since I’m not going.”

Time to get down to brass tacks. “Yes, you are, Gryff, and I’ll tell you why. First off, they’ve worked and planned this for days and you can’t let them down. People have given up their food rations and done without to put this on for you. Second, everyone needs a party. You’ve had it rough, so has everyone here. Not just the bombs and the worry about invasion. We’ve done without, made do and mended, seen friends killed or missing, and Brytewood needs a party. And this, third and final,” he went on as Gryffyth opened his mouth to speak, “you’re their hope.”

He let out a cynical laugh. “Some hope! I come back hopping on a tin leg!”

“Yes, son, but you came back. That’s what matters. Now that you returned alive, they can hope their sons and husbands and brothers will too.”

“Hope they come back crippled?”

“Better come back like you than as a name engraved on the War Memorial on the village green. Too many damn names on that already.”

Gryff went silent, holding his empty mug in both hands. “Dad, I just dread sitting there. What the hell am I going to do?”

“You’re going to come along, meet your old friends—those who are still here, that is. Have a couple of beers, maybe a bit more, and come home again. Tomorrow we’ll have a long talk.” Time he knew what had been going on in Brytewood. Might just be a gift from the heavens that he was back. Another Dragon couldn’t do anything but weigh the odds in their favor. “Tell me, son. When did you last shift? Been awhile, I bet?”

Gryffyth stared at his father. “Last time was with you, just before I left.”

He’d expected as much. “Tomorrow night, we go up on Box Hill and we shift together. You need to be reminded what you really are.”

“Yes, Dad, a three-legged Dragon!”

“Bet you amazed the doctors. No trouble with infection in your stump? No fever? Healed faster than anyone else?”

“Yeah!” Another slip of a smile there. “Didn’t want them wondering too much. Used to joke and say we Welsh were made of stone from our mountains.”

Not too far off the truth when it came to Dragons. “Alright, then. I’ll clear the table, you go and spruce yourself up. Best put on a tie. Show everyone you made an effort.”

He actually had made a pretty good effort. Put on a clean shirt and was brushing his jacket when Alice walked in the back door. Howell smiled and restrained a sigh. He’d had hopes for her and Gryffyth. The lad needed a wife who was Other, and Alice’s Pixie blood certainly would have fitted the bill, but she was well and truly married to young Peter Watson now. And already fielding the inevitable jokes about Dr. Watson. Gryffyth would have to look elsewhere.

Once he found peace with himself.

“Good evening, Sergeant, Gryffyth. Everyone ready?”

“Evening, Alice.” The boy even managed a smile. “Thanks for coming.”

“My pleasure. It’s good to see you back. Besides, it’s not every day we get to throw a party. Ready?”

“Give me couple of ticks.” Gryffyth shrugged on his jacket, Howell fisting his hands to resist the urge to help. The lad had to do it for himself, and wanted to. And managed, even throwing on his top coat. “Cold outside?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” Alice replied, “given it’s December. But the village hall is like a tomb. I think they’re counting on body heat to warm the place.”

And a room full of sweaty dancers, but that Howell kept to himself. “All set, son?”

Howell hoped the Jerries hadn’t invented a system to measure noise. Of course if they had, they’d be on them already. The music greeted them long before they pulled up in front of the darkened village hall. There was a flicker of light from the door. Someone watching for them, no doubt, but Gryffyth missed that in the effort of getting out of the car.

But no one could miss the opening bars of “Men of Harlech” as they stepped into the hall. Nice touch, that. Howell blinked back a tear or two even if it was a trifle off-key. Best one could expect among the English, after all.

“Lovely,” he said to Reverend Roundhill as he came up to them.

“We thought the Welsh national anthem would be a nice tribute,” he replied.

Howell hadn’t the heart to tell the well-meaning man that “Land of My Fathers” was their national anthem, but Alice knew—she met Howell’s eyes and smiled. “They must have been practicing for ages.”

“They have,” Reverend whispered back as the music ended, and someone at the back started three cheers for Gryffyth.

There was no backing out after that.

He’d been right, Howell thought, as one by one and in little clusters the villagers came up to shake Gryffyth’s hand. The village needed a hero and, willing or not, Gryffyth had been cast for the role.

One he seemed to accept gracefully enough as he settled down with a beer and a plate of food.

“I think Tom Longhurst’s playing hard to get,” Gloria whispered to Mary as they cleared the buffet table.

Mary looked across the hall at Tom dancing with one of the land girls. “Good,” she replied, hoping his version of “hard to get” would soon become “no longer interested.”

“Why don’t you young things go and dance?” Mrs. Chivers said, bustling up to both of them. “I know that young man of yours, Gloria, is getting impatient. You’ve both been such a help. You go and have some fun.”

Dragged onto the floor by Gloria, Mary ended up Stripping the Willow with one of the workers from the munitions plant on the heath. As she reached the end of the line, and her partner swung her around, she looked toward the side of the hall and met Gryffyth Pendragon’s eyes.