Читать книгу The Sons of Adam - Harry Bingham - Страница 48

It was a week later.

Tom’s body grew thinner, his clothes grew baggier. His work at the soda factory grew ever more punishing as his body weakened. Every day, morning and evening, Mitch Norgaard told him to pick up a pen and write home asking for help. Every day, morning and evening, Tom said no. But on the seventh day, Tom caved in. Since there was nothing else to swallow, he swallowed his pride. He wrote home. He wrote to his father, Jack, and to Sir Adam and Lady Pamela.

He got no answer.

He wrote again.

Still no answer.

‘So what?’ said Norgaard. ‘Write again. Write to everyone you know. Write to everyone you’ve ever heard of. Go on writing till you get an answer.’

But Tom shook his head. War turns a man half crazy and prison camp is there to finish the process. Tom laid down his pen and never wrote again.

It was an error, understandable perhaps, but still horribly mistaken.

What Tom didn’t know was this. His first pair of letters was on a hospital ship bound for Dover when the ship was torpedoed and sunk. The second pair of letters was on a Red Cross lorry heading through the Black Forest to Switzerland. The lorry was set upon by hungry men hoping for food. The contents were ransacked. The letters were lost.

Tom would be ‘missing, presumed dead’ until the war ended or he died.