Читать книгу The Forbidden Promise - Lorna Cook - Страница 9

The smacking sound the Spitfire had made as it crashed had been nothing compared to the dreadful gurgle that emanated from the water as it sucked the plane down into its inky depths. The whoosh had been sudden. And then there was nothing but the waves as they crashed around Constance, before the loch became eerily still.

Constance swam as fast as she could towards the middle of the loch, pausing to tread water and listen for a sound, any sound that might indicate the pilot was still alive. She pulled her dress up around her waist so she could kick her legs faster.

He was dead. He must be. He’d been under the water for far too long, surely. She wished the clouds would part, allowing the moon to cast some light on to the dark water.

She called out, even though it was hopeless. ‘Where are you?’

Constance pushed her wet brown hair back from her face in order to see, although it was too dark to get her bearings. Her painstakingly pinned hairstyle was now loose and in soaked tendrils down her face.

‘Where are you?’ she called again. Foolishly, she believed if she shouted loud enough she might be able to summon him from the cold depths.

From the darkness to her left the silence was broken. A loud splash sounded as he surfaced, suddenly, violently. He’d emerged but he was flailing, splashing and gasping desperately for air.

Constance yelled that she was coming to help. The pilot was some distance from her and she didn’t know if he could hear her. He appeared unable to reply, his gasps turning to coughs as he expelled water from his lungs.

She swam towards the noise, continuing to try to reassure him. As she swam into his view he swore, startled at her arrival. He appeared to be having a fight with himself.

‘Are you all right?’ Constance called. ‘Can you swim?’

‘Yes. No,’ he said between gasps. ‘Help. It’s drowning me.’ He was trying to undo his leather flight jacket and, in a panic, had his arms stuck in the wet material. Constance reached him and trod water as she wrestled the heavy flight jacket from him. As she held it in her arms the weight of it began to pull her down and she kicked with her legs to stay above the surface.

He started kicking off his waterlogged boots and saw her struggling with the jacket.

‘Let go!’ he shouted at her.

Constance hadn’t known why she’d still been holding the jacket but she released the leaden weight. Like his plane, it disappeared into the water.

His panic seemed to rise as he struggled with his boots. Constance tried soothing him. ‘Stay calm. The shoreline isn’t far,’ she said as she trod water. ‘You must swim for it.’

The pilot followed her as she swam. She could hear his harsh breathing and sporadic coughing as he struggled to swim with boots full of water. Constance’s love for swimming in the loch had worn off when she’d reached thirteen and Douglas had no longer been around as much to share in the fun. But she still knew the loch like the back of her hand. They were swimming away from the house, towards the far side of the wide loch where the wooden jetty jutted out. That shore was closer and after all the pilot had been through, Constance didn’t think he could swim all the way back in the direction from which she had come.

She slowed to swim alongside the exhausted man, ready to drag him along if he should give up. But he continued. He asked only once how far away the edge was and after a few minutes Constance felt pebbles and sharp stones beneath her bare feet.

She turned to take his hand, to pull him from the lake. Weak from his ordeal, he grabbed her hand willingly, stumbled at the shoreline and then lowered himself down, crawling on his hands and knees out of the water. He lay on his front, facing away from her, and breathed deeply.

Exhausted, not from the swim but from panic, Constance fell down next to him. It was only as she sat still that she realised how cold she was and she began shivering. She hugged her bare arms but it was of little use whilst she was in wet clothes. The pilot turned to look at her, wide-eyed with shock, and then looked around at his surroundings. She could barely see his face in the darkness. His wet hair fell partly over his eyes, which were now trained on her face.

When he finally got his breath back he asked, ‘Where in God’s name did you spring from?’

Constance raised her hand and pointed across the water. ‘The house. But I was already down by the loch.’

He nodded and looked to where she pointed. But Invermoray House, in blackout and so far away, was indiscernible. ‘Were you on your own?’

‘By the water, yes.’ She shivered.

‘You’re cold,’ he said as he forced himself onto his hands and knees again and then turned slowly into a sitting position.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘We must get dry,’ Constance said as she stood. The thin fabric of her dress clung to her wet skin. Goose bumps covered her.

‘Where? To the house?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going back in that water to reach it.’

‘It’s too long to walk round,’ she said between shivers. She thought as quickly as she could. ‘There’s an estate cottage that’s empty. And it’s closer. If you can walk for only a few minutes, it’s just inside the tree line.’ She pointed to where spruce trees loomed high.

‘It’s empty?’ he asked, a flicker of something like relief on his face. ‘No one lives there?’

Constance nodded.

‘All right. If you’re sure. But first …’ He wrestled each of his boots off and tipped out water before he stood and scooped the boots into his arms. His thick pilot’s uniform clung to him and as they walked Constance wondered what on earth the pair of them must look like.

After a minute or two he asked, ‘How much further is this cottage?’

‘Not far.’ Constance hoped she hadn’t veered off course. She’d never been out to the unused ghillie’s cottage in the dark before. There’d never been the need.

In the darkness of the forest the cottage appeared, looming suddenly. Constance tried the door but it was locked. ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘I hadn’t thought.’

The pilot leaned against the cottage wall and put his head back against it. His eyes were closed. ‘Look under the mat.’

Constance stepped off the front mat and lifted it. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said as she retrieved the key. ‘How did you know?’

‘Honest people always put their keys under the mat.’ His face was tipped up. Above them the clouds parted and the moon finally shone, bathing the pilot in light.

For the first time since she’d set eyes on him she was able to see fully what he looked like. He had a strong jawline and he was handsome. Not like a film star, although she’d not been to see too many films recently up here since the war started. They were miles from anything exciting like that. But he was handsome in the sense that if she’d spotted him walking through the village, she knew she’d have glanced at him more than once.

His eyes had opened and he was watching her. A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘Are you going to open the door?’

Embarrassed, Constance fumbled with the lock and turned the handle. As they entered, a strong smell of damp hit them. The cottage had been shut up for about nine months, since the ghillie, like all the other male staff of fighting age, had joined the war effort. The ghillie’s home, the only estate cottage not situated in the local village, had been closed up ever since and was awaiting his return.

Constance sought out a paraffin lamp on a low table and fiddled with it.

‘Don’t,’ the pilot said sharply.

‘Why ever not?’

‘The blackout,’ he replied. He was right. Constance realised the blackout blinds weren’t in place and as the clouds moved aside, the moon filtered through the windows. ‘Leave it,’ he continued. ‘For now. We need to get our wet things off before we freeze to death.’

He dropped his boots to the floor. They clunked heavily but Constance’s eyes weren’t drawn down. Instead she looked at him in horror as he pulled his blazer off and dropped that to the floor before starting on his wet shirt. He had undone at least two buttons, exposing his chest, before Constance pulled her gaze away.

‘Hurry up,’ he commanded. ‘Take your dress off. Do you want to get ill?’

‘You can’t possibly expect me to remove my dress in front of you.’ She couldn’t keep the horror from her voice.

‘I’ll turn my back,’ he offered. ‘I’ve just crashed into a bloody great lake. I’m in absolutely no condition to think about that sort of thing.’

Constance blushed that he should even mention it. After Henry’s nightmarish behaviour in the orangery, she was petrified it might happen again, here, with this pilot. She was buttoned in so tight she was unable to free herself from her dress anyway. She was sure the silk was shrinking tight against her body thanks to the water. The buttons at the back were plentiful and started at the nape of her neck and ran down the dress until they reached the top of her bottom.

He had turned his back and must have been aware she wasn’t moving as he said, ‘Are you watching me undress?’ in an amused voice.

‘No! I need your help.’

He turned, rolled his shirt up and dropped it on the floor. She’d seen her brother Douglas’s friends without their shirts plenty of times as they swam in the loch over the years but here, in this dark room with this man, it felt different. It was too private. He looked different to any of her brother’s friends – stronger, taller … just different.

When she didn’t speak he asked, ‘What do you need help with?’

Constance had momentarily forgotten about the buttons. She turned and he began unbuttoning her wet dress, his hands moving gently down her skin until he finished. The room felt still and Constance was aware only of his hands as they moved.

As her unbuttoned dress gaped at the back he moved gallantly away and she became aware of the room again. The cottage had been left as if the ghillie had simply popped out for a few minutes. Other than the presence of damp and dust, items of furniture, ornaments and books had been left in the places that they had presumably sat for the past few years. From the back of a battered armchair the pilot pulled a tartan blanket and handed it to her.

Constance wriggled out of her dress as she wrapped the blanket around her. Her wet underwear was uncomfortable and she realised she was going to have to shake that off as well if she was going to warm up. Although it was August, the air was cold inside the stone cottage.

‘I’ll light a fire,’ the pilot said. He moved around the room, fixing the stiff fabric wood-framed blackout blinds into place.

‘You’re still wearing your wet trousers,’ Constance said. ‘Look upstairs. The ghillie might have left some clothes behind.’

The pilot nodded and assembled the fire in the grate, forming a tripod out of a few logs of wood and balling up some newspaper from the basket, throwing it into the middle. He found matches in a pot on the mantel above, struck one against the wall and started a small fire in the grate.

‘Warm yourself up while I find us some things,’ he instructed.

Constance sat on the thinning rug by the fire and pulled the blanket tight around herself. The fire worked its magic and she stretched her bare legs out in front of her, wriggling her toes as the heat from the flames licked them gently. She marvelled at how she could be in the middle of her birthday party and then, only an hour later, soaked to the skin and alone in a cottage with an RAF officer whose plane had crashed into her loch. After a few minutes the pilot came downstairs wearing a pair of dry trousers and a thick blue woollen pullover.

‘They smell of mothballs but they’re dry,’ he said as he stood next to her, offering her a pair of men’s trousers and a thick white jumper that he’d found. He held out his hand and she grasped it as she stood. She said her thanks, took the clothes and went upstairs to put the trousers and shirt on. She rolled the waistband of the trousers over a few times but they were far too big and she kept her hand on them as she descended the staircase for fear they might drop to the floor.

Constance sat back down in front of the fire and tucked her wet hair behind her ears. The pilot sat next to her, the firelight casting him in an orange glow.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

She told him. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Matthew.’

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘I watched you crash; it was awful. It must have been so frightening for you. I thought you must surely be dead.’

When he replied his voice was quiet. ‘I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t see a bloody thing. I kept trying to restart the engine but I knew it was no good. In hindsight I should have thrown open the hatch and bailed out much earlier on but I thought, one more turn of the engine should do it, she’ll start up on one more turn. Goes against everything I was ever taught, given the old thing had been completely shot up. It’s nothing short of a miracle she glided like she did. Full of bullet holes. I had no idea I was landing on water. If the moon had been out I’d have seen. Bit of a shock when I bounced and the cockpit started filling up.’

Constance exhaled. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Can you?’ Matthew enquired, his eyebrows raised. ‘Ever been shot at by the enemy, falling down to the ground with no idea where the ground actually is?’

She felt chastised. ‘No.’ She was quiet.

A log shifted in the grate sending sparks high up the chimney.

‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I should be thanking you. Instead I’m being abominably rude.’

‘It’s all right,’ Constance replied.

‘No. No it’s not. My mother would turn in her grave if she knew how easily my manners had failed me.’

Constance smiled. She wanted to say it was all right again. Why couldn’t she think of anything else to say?

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both focused on the fire that lit the otherwise darkened room. She wondered if anyone would be missing her back at the house and whether the pilot was in any condition to trudge through the forest in the middle of the night. Perhaps, given his ordeal, it would be best to wait until morning before they set off so no one caught her in men’s clothing.

‘What will you do?’ he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

‘Do? About what?’ Constance turned to look at him.

‘About me?’ Matthew looked at her. In the light of the fire she could see his eyes were a pale green. She’d never seen eyes that shade before. They shone brightly and contrasted curiously against his dark brown hair.

‘Well I rather thought, if you preferred, we should sit it out here and you could rest for a while and then in the morning—’

‘Constance, can I trust you?’ he interrupted her.

She swallowed as he said her name. ‘Yes, I think so.’

Matthew laughed. ‘Well if you don’t know, then how do I?’

‘Yes, yes you can trust me.’

‘I need you to help me,’ he said. ‘I need you to … hide me. Just for a short while, I swear to you. Just long enough for them to think I’m dead. Will you do that?’

Constance’s mouth dropped open. He had been so brave. He had been shot down and now, clearly, he was addled by his trauma.

‘Who do you want to think you’re dead?’ she squeaked in disbelief.

‘All of them. The whole bloody lot of them.’

‘But …’ she started. ‘Your squadron? You don’t want me to telephone someone, have them pick you up, have them look after you?’

‘No, I do not,’ he said. ‘Tonight is the last night I participate in this god-awful war. And if I have to pretend I’m dead in order to achieve that then so be it.’