by Roland Moore
There was no way that John was dead, not after all he’d been through. All they’d been through.
A house fire in Leeds.
John was asleep inside.
No, that was rubbish. Of course, it was rubbish.
‘I want to get back to my home too.’ Siegfried’s face was more open and unguarded than she had seen before. The dark circles under his eyes and the haunted look on his face showed that he was running out of enthusiasm for what he was doing.
‘I know you do. You’ve got people missing you, haven’t you? Be wonderful if this could just end, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, it would.’
‘Listen, we’re land girls, we grow vegetables. But the thing is, we work with Germans, Italians, all sorts. And they’re all prisoners of war.’
‘And they’re treated pretty well by all accounts.’
The words came from Esther. Joyce was surprised and pleased that she was helping with what she was trying to do. Yes, together they could convince him to turn himself in. Together they could make him convince Emory to end this nightmare.
‘They joke and seem happy, honestly. They know they’re relatively safe. Their families know they’re safe. All of them are waiting for the war to end so they can go home. That could be you.’
She let her words hang in the air; and watched as the warmly comforting temptation played on the young man’s features. Siegfried nodded, his brow furrowed as he considered her words.
‘But Emory will not surrender. Not when he knows that there are people who will help us get back to Germany.’
Who were these people? The traitors among them. Sometimes there would be a march in London or Manchester, one of the bigger cities, calling for an end to the war, but Joyce had trouble deciphering the motives of such people. Were they conscientious objectors or people sick of the loss and struggle of war? Or were they agitators who were seeking a more unpleasant resolution to the fighting – one where Britain would become a fascist state? Joyce supposed that such marches were made up from all three camps. And while she understood some peoples’ weariness to the endless war they were enduring, she knew it wasn’t her way to complain. No, she would do her duty and that’s what kept her going.
That’s always what kept her going.
And it’s all she had left.
‘Do you think your messages have got through to those people?’ Joyce asked. Esther hovered by the sink, wringing the edge of her apron with nervous hands. She’d become transfixed by the conversation and had forgotten to keep an eye on the window.
‘I hope the message has reached them. We have been transmitting it over and over. We have no way of receiving a message back, so we don’t know.’
Joyce thought about the time the train had been derailed and she’d been quoted in the Daily Mail. There had been an explosive device on the line, placed there by saboteurs campaigning against the British. She knew these people were out there.
‘The Home Guard are looking for you. I could take you to the town near here. It’s called Helmstead. I could make sure you’re looked after.’
‘They would not shoot me?’
‘No, they wouldn’t. I could make sure you’re all right.’
Siegfried considered this for a moment. Joyce noticed that the gun was still on the table, the young man’s fingers idly dancing over the barrel as he contemplated her words.
‘What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure. I think—’
Joyce never found out what he was about to say as the back door opened suddenly and Emory came in, rubbing his hands from the cold. Joyce and Siegfried froze at the table; both sitting up straight. Joyce struggled to hide the guilty look on her face, but she realised that Emory was looking at Esther, who was studiously avoiding eye contact with him. Joyce knew that Emory had twigged that something was up.
‘What’s going on?’
‘The women say that we will be treated well if we give ourselves up.’ Siegfried moved towards his commander.
‘Yes, I can take you into the town and—’
Joyce never finished the sentence. Emory lunged across the table and slapped her hard around the face with the back of his hand, the force of the blow sending her tumbling off her chair. As she fell to the tiled floor, Joyce was vaguely aware of Siegfried rising from his chair to stop his commander from doing any more damage. She could hear Esther screaming, but the sound was muffled in her ears as consciousness started to leave her. But something stopped her passing out. Maybe it was the cold of the tiles that jolted her awake or an innate protection reflex; but Joyce pulled herself to her feet, fighting the pin pricks of light that were filling her vision. The room spun around her, the dresser moving fast towards her and then zooming back to where it had been. She steadied herself on the edge of the table.
Emory was shaking Esther to shut her up, but the screams kept coming. Siegfried had his attention on his commander, his hands gripping Emory’s arms as he tried to pull him away from Esther. Her hysteria wasn’t going to stop unless they stopped.
‘No, leave her!’ Siegfried pleaded.
Joyce could feel the numbness in her cheek being replaced with a pulsing, insistent pain. Had he broken her cheekbone? She didn’t have time to give it more than a passing thought.
The room swam around her again as she tried to focus her eyes. She looked at the thing on the table that could end this nightmare. The pistol had been left, temporarily forgotten.
Joyce moved towards it.
Time slowed to a snail’s pace. Emory was shaking Esther, desperately trying to pull his arm back far enough to strike her into silence. Siegfried was trying to stop him. Joyce reached out a shaking hand. The barrel of the pistol was facing her, and she couldn’t reach the handle from where she was. So she grabbed the end of the barrel and pulled it quickly towards her.
Emory spotted what she was doing and struggled to free himself from the entanglement with Siegfried and Esther. But Siegfried assumed he was trying to better position himself for another angled attack on the woman. He gripped his commander more tightly.
‘Let me go, you fool!’ Emory screamed. The fear in his eyes made the young man realise what was happening. He followed his commander’s gaze. But as Siegfried relaxed his grip, they both knew that Joyce had got the gun.
Joyce turned it quickly round in her hand, almost fumbling it and dropping it. But she managed to point it in Emory’s vague direction as she gripped the handle, her finger on the trigger.
But she had under a second to enjoy this turn of events. Emory launched himself at her, sending her tumbling to the floor. She cracked her elbow on the table as she went down. Her finger pressed on the trigger and she felt the heat of the barrel as the bullet came out and skimmed the edge of her trouser leg. It zinged across the floor, imbedding itself in the bottom of the sink cupboard, sending splinters into the air in a small cloud of dust. Joyce hit the back of her head on the ground, sending stars into her eyes. She could feel Emory’s weight on top of her and smell the staleness of his clothes. He pulled back a meaty fist and went to strike her, but Joyce managed to wriggle to one side, unbalancing him. She clawed at his face with her free hand, the other trapped underneath him. The gun had been lost from her grip in the fall and was now under the table.
She could see Esther trying to reach her, but Siegfried was holding her off. The look on the young man’s face spoke of betrayal as if Joyce’s words had been designed only to deceive him. He wasn’t going to help her.
Joyce struggled with Emory on the floor, feeling her strength draining as she fought him. He pushed himself up, one hand holding her against the floor and tried to manoeuvre his other hand so he could land a punch. Joyce was holding the top of his arms but her prone position meant that she couldn’t get any power to push him off. She remembered his injury and how it hurt him to use his right arm and dug her fingers into where she remembered the wound was. Emory yelped and batted her hand away angrily. There was fury and pain etched on his fa
ce. He pinned her to the floor with his forearm across her neck and pulled his other hand into a fist. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t avoid it. There was a grim inevitability to what was going to happen. Joyce braced herself for the punch.
But then someone knocked at the door.
Chapter 11
‘La la la-laaa la la la laaala.’
Mrs Arbuthnott was swaying and singing in time to the music. Her face was flushed as she cajoled some other villagers to join in. Soon the whole room was singing along.
But Henry was looking weary; his charming bonhomie and eagerness blunted by hours of smiling dutifully and making small talk in a hot room.
Connie eyed him with sympathy. She felt similarly exhausted. He’d been sitting at the small upright piano and she’d been standing singing by it for nearly an hour. They’d finished their third rendition of ‘(There’ll be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover’ and Connie was heartily sick of the song. She also felt a catch in her throat, a nagging reminder that she hadn’t warmed up her voice properly. Doctor Channing had hoped she’d take it easy. But there was fat chance of that.
She and Henry hadn’t played together for a few months. Life and the war had got in the way, as had the waning interest of their erstwhile, self-appointed manager, Frederick Finch. Recognising they weren’t going to be the cash cow that he hoped, Finch had ambled off to other more lucrative ideas on which to waste his time, but the crowd of old folk in the village hall were lapping it up.
‘Can you play ‘White Christmas’ for us, Reverend?’ An old woman in a green coat asked. It was Mrs Fisk, one of Henry’s admiring coterie of pensioners. She hadn’t taken her coat off or indeed unbuttoned it during the whole meal. And as the temperature in the hall was uncomfortably warm with such a large number of people, this was no mean feat. Perhaps she was trying to hide a stain on her blouse. Connie realised that’s what she would do. Mrs Fisk was made of stern and upstanding stuff. She sat with her friends and Henry fans, Mrs Arbuthnott and Mrs Hewson. All three women talked in hushed tones about how wonderful the vicar was. All three of them would sing along with Connie as she sang. All three women would look down their noses at Connie. They thought, like a lot of people in Helmstead, that Henry could have done better. They thought that Connie was fast and flighty.
But Connie hoped that she’d shown them how committed she was by how happy Henry seemed in their marriage. For her part, she loved him, with his floppy fringe and his puppy-dog enthusiasm. She loved how she could still embarrass him with an off-colour joke or lewd comment and his face would flush and his hands would fiddle unnecessarily with his hymn book or whatever he was holding. It was a good pastime that warmed her heart.
‘Please play it,’ Mrs Hewson chimed in. ‘It’s my favourite Bing Crosby.’ She, like the others in the coterie, was looking straight at Henry for his consent. None of them bothered looking at Connie. This meant that Connie felt safe in the knowledge that she could curl her lip in contempt. She wasn’t their flaming dancing monkey. Shouldn’t she and Henry have the opportunity of a Christmas break too? But instead, here they were waiting hand and foot on the old people of Helmstead and ensuring that they had a good day full of cheer and companionship. Henry caught the curl of her lip out of the corner of his eye. He smiled apologetically at his wife.
‘We’ll make this the last one then, shall we?’ A compromise to appease all parties.
‘Yeah, this is all you’re getting!’ Connie’s words came out slightly too forcibly. Mrs Fisk recoiled slightly as if she’d seen something unpleasant.
As Henry played the introduction to the song, Connie got ready to sing. Her voice should hold out for one more song. As she launched into the words, she watched the pensioners swaying in their seats. They’d forgotten that they were in a pokey village hall during a war, with the cold remains of a Christmas dinner in front of them. Instead they’d been transported to the dances they used to go to; the times when they were younger, and music had shaped their nights out at sweaty dance halls. The romance of music moved them, and Connie found that she in turn was warmed by their rosy, happy expressions. One old couple held hands as they listened, the woman nodding in time to the music; the husband transfixed by Henry’s playing. The day had taken them all out of the war for a few hours’ relief from their worries and anxieties.
Connie felt pleased that she’d stayed, and as she finished the last verse, she noticed that two new people had arrived. Self-consciously, Richard Channing and Lady Hoxley were making their way in, full of comforting smiles and hellos. But was Channing wincing as Connie sung ‘White Christmas’? Flaming cheek. She had a good mind to put him straight. Everyone told her she had the voice of an angel. But as the song finished, Channing clapped earnestly along with everyone else. The new arrivals were attracting a lot of attention and Connie was amused that people had straightened themselves up and adopted a more serious demeanour as the Lady of the Manor had appeared.
Lady Hoxley squeezed past some chairs to make her way to the piano.
‘It seems like it’s been a marvellous success, Reverend,’
Henry nodded and extended a hand to take Connie’s, to draw her into the conversation. Connie wasn’t sure of what to say and said something inappropriate.
‘You wouldn’t believe how much these people can eat!’
Ellen Hoxley nodded as if she’d said something fascinating and non-contentious and gave an anodyne answer. ‘It’s the highlight of a lot of these peoples’ year.’
‘How are you feeling, Mrs Jameson?’ Channing had a stern look on his face. Connie realised that he wasn’t impressed that he’d caught her exerting herself.
‘Much better thanks. It’s done me the world of good to get out of the vicarage and come down here. Mind you, I didn’t know I’d be singing for me lunch though!’
Channing laughed good-naturedly.
‘Connie’s going to take it easy after this,’ Henry volunteered. ‘Aren’t you, darling?’
‘Yeah, I’m not doing the washing up or nothing.’
‘Quite right. You can say that’s doctor’s orders.’
‘See, Henry? I told you Doctor Channing was a proper doctor that knew his medicine,’ Connie laughed.
As Henry offered Channing and Lady Hoxley a glass of wine, Connie watched as the old couple who’d been holding hands left the hall. They were still hand in hand as they bid their farewells and then they were framed briefly as silhouettes in the doorway as they left. She hoped and prayed that she and Henry would still share that sort of love when they were that age. She felt blessed to have found her soulmate. She was lucky.
Unlike Joyce.
She wouldn’t have that luxury.
Channing and Lady Hoxley sipped their wine, with the good grace of guests who knew it was below par but who drank it anyway. They were talking animatedly to Henry about what he had accomplished with the Christmas meal. Connie caught snatches of the conversation, but her thoughts were with Joyce.
Connie felt the responsibility of checking that her friend was all right. Well, there was no way she would be all right, but it would be good to help her deal with her grief, wouldn’t it? That’s what friends did.
Connie watched Henry as he extolled the virtues of all the people who had been helping him: the verger who has opened the hall and set up the tables and chairs; the townswomen who had collated the rations of people in Helmstead; the ARP Warden who had badgered local farmers for donations. Henry was a good man. He was a man who had changed her life for the better, and a man whom she loved unconditionally. She couldn’t imagine how Joyce was feeling. As she collected the sheet music from the piano and put it in Henry’s leather bag that was sitting on his piano stool, she decided that she would head off to see Joyce straight away.
‘Anyway, I’m pleased that you’re on the mend, Mrs Jameson.’ Lady Hoxley made a move that made it clear she was about to leave.
‘Yes, thanks.’ And then Connie thought of the question she needed to ask. ‘Is th
ere any word on the German airmen, Lady Hoxley?’
Channing shifted uneasily. Connie assumed that this was because the news wasn’t good. Or because there was no news. Maybe they hadn’t found them.
‘The Home Guard is still searching. I believe they found the remains of a camp that the men had set up near Gorley Woods. Near to where you were attacked.’ Lady Hoxley smiled tersely.
‘I’m going to see how Joyce is getting on this afternoon. I can’t let her rattle around Pasture Farm thinking about her John.’
‘That’s commendable,’ Lady Hoxley smiled her consent. ‘I plan to telephone the police in Leeds to see if they have any more details about what happened. It seems odd that John would perish in a fire and yet there are no reports about what happened to his brother.’
Channing looked distinctly uncomfortable and Connie was momentarily distracted by his apparent unease. Maybe he too was troubled by the fate of John’s brother. His eyes darted quickly around as if deciding what to say next.
‘I don’t think you should be rushing around, Mrs Jameson. Not so soon after having a blow to the head.’
‘But I’m fine now.’
‘And I’m a doctor, Mrs Jameson.’
‘Surely a little walk over to Pasture Farm won’t harm the girl, Richard?’ Lady Hoxley looked questioningly at him. ‘The air would do her good. And besides she’s been singing and helping here.’
‘I would strongly advise her not to go, Ellen.’
‘I know!’ Lady Hoxley was struck by an idea, ‘If you’re worried about her walking over there, why not take her in your car? You could keep an eye on her and ensure she’s not in any medical danger.’
Lady Hoxley looked pleased with herself.
Channing looked as if he’d accidentally torn up a winning football pools ticket.
‘Well, I don’t want to be no trouble.’
