by Lorna Cook
‘Hello again,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You really can’t keep away, can you?’
Melissa gave him a little wave of acknowledgement as she walked over to him.
‘Too many tourists making free and easy with their hands. That’s our problem.’ Reg indicated the photograph as he placed the final drawing pin in the picture. ‘They can’t just look. They’ve got to have a good old touch to boot.’
‘They aren’t the originals, are they?’ Melissa pushed her sunglasses onto her head.
‘Of course not. Copies. But I don’t know why the powers-that-be can’t see fit to put a laminate covering on the boards to stop the pictures dropping down. Now, let me guess.’ Reg tilted his head to one side. ‘Back for more fashion research?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Melissa said. ‘That was a fib.’
‘I know.’ Reg laughed. ‘I did rather guess you were telling me a porky. Your friend doesn’t strike me as the kind of historian to go in for women’s fashion documentaries. He’s more tanks and battleships.’
‘Is he?’ Melissa asked.
‘Yeah. You not seen his stuff?’
Melissa shook her head.
‘He’s good,’ Reg continued. ‘Makes it interesting, which you have to do if you’re on telly, really. Now, what can I do for you? Mind if we sit? I’ve got some custard creams and a thermos of tea if you want to share a cup?’
Melissa followed Reg and sat in the heavy wooden pew in front. She declined the tea but took a custard cream and nibbled while he poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea. ‘Been in here all day it has. Still, needs must.’
Melissa grabbed another biscuit when offered. ‘Thanks. I don’t really do biscuits. Bad for my waistline,’ she said, eyeing up the packet and wondering if she could snaffle a third without looking like she was on a binge.
Reg was looking at her expectantly. ‘Go on then. I can tell you’re itching to ask me something.’
‘I am. And I’m afraid it’s not about dairy farmers or fishermen, if that’s okay?’
Reg laughed into his thermos cup. ‘I’ll live,’ he said. ‘Fire away.’
Melissa took a deep breath. She felt like a lunatic again. ‘I wanted to ask you what you knew about Albert and Veronica Standish.’
‘Anything you want to know specifically?’ he asked.
‘Well, specifically, I suppose I want to know if she was all right, after the war. No, that’s not strictly true.’ Melissa’s courage grew. ‘Look at this picture,’ she said, standing up. He stood and followed her. ‘Look at their hands. His fingers are digging into her hand, he’s holding her far too tightly, his knuckles are white. And then there’s her face.’
Reg studied it hard. ‘She looks scared,’ he said slowly. ‘I did wonder about this the other day.’
‘Yes!’ Melissa was excited now. ‘Yes! This picture, it’s not normal.’
Reg turned and walked back to the pew and sat down. Melissa followed and took another proffered biscuit.
‘For someone who doesn’t do biscuits you’re making short work of this lot.’
Melissa smiled as she held the custard cream.
‘So, what are you asking me then?’ Reg said. ‘Are you asking me if Sir Albert was nasty? Yes, he was, from what I can remember. Are you asking me if he hurt her? I’ve no idea, love. He wasn’t a nice man. My mum used to hate him. She was quite scared of being anywhere near him. He used to come and collect the rents during the war after his estate manager went off to fight. My mum hated being alone in the house with him and whenever he was due she’d usually keep me back from school and pretend I was ill so she wouldn’t be on her own. My dad would be too busy in the field. I was only six when the village got requisitioned, so I don’t remember too much.’
Melissa was thoughtful. ‘Do you remember anything about her? About them? Any background? I’m trying to work out where she went. If she was safe, I suppose. After seeing that picture, I had visions of him having killed her and then having got away with it. The whole scene just looked so eerie. But the only information that shows up after they left here is a clipping about Sir Albert standing down as an MP. Nothing about Veronica at all. It just all feels so wrong.’ Melissa realised she was ranting.
‘She was there on the day we all left. I remember that,’ Reg said. ‘One of my earliest memories is that day. There was two hundred of us, or thereabouts; all with bags packed. Carts and trucks provided by the army were loaded with our belongings to take us away. Hard to forget.’
He sipped his tea. ‘I don’t know much about what happened to them afterwards. Actually, I lie. I don’t know anything about what happened to them afterwards. Before though …’ He sat up straighter, a faraway expression on his face. ‘I think it was the day before we were due to go, or maybe even a few days before, it’s hard to remember, we saw her, Lady Veronica I mean, doing something she shouldn’t have been doing.’
Melissa looked hard at Reg, waiting for more.
He continued. ‘There were two of us kids. There was me, I was the baby at six, and then there was John. He was eighteen. He’d just got his call-up papers. I remember that well enough. I was off school. It was the Christmas holidays, but the school was being shut up for good anyway.
‘We went off for a final explore, me and John. We would often poach from the Standishes. The odd bit of pheasant. My brother was a crack shot and I could run fast. He’d shoot, I’d grab, and we’d be gone.’ Reg’s eyes looked past Melissa, back to a time long ago. ‘But on this particular day we knew we were leaving the village and so we went poaching for a slap-up final tea and thought we’d take our “borrowing” to a bit of a new level.’
He sipped his cold tea and made a face. Reg offered Melissa another biscuit. Her hand reached out, but then she changed her mind, realising she was inhaling them.
‘What did you do?’ she asked.
‘They had a little hut down on the beach. It was their private beach, mind. More of a cove. It was about to be swallowed up by the army and their requisition order, so me and John went down to have a look. We’d been poaching and John said he wanted to see if the Standishes had left anything behind. My brother was head over heels in love with Veronica Standish. She’d once picked him up off the ground when he’d been thrown from our horse in the middle of the village; all his mates laughing at him. He thought she was the most beautiful thing alive. She was kind, I’ll give her that. She was attractive too. That face,’ he pointed over to the photo and whistled. ‘I didn’t have much to do with her though.’
Melissa could see why any man would be easily drawn to Veronica. She was stunning.
‘Anyway. Ever since she looked after him, John had mooned around, talking about her and thinking about her and then talking about her some more until I thought I was going to have to rip my ears off just to stop having to listen to him. We shared a room and he was doing himself a repetitive injury thinking about her … If you get my meaning.’
Melissa laughed and screwed her eyes shut. Gross.
‘Sorry to be crude. He was stepping out with a girl as well, but the moment Lady Veronica smiled down on him and helped him up, he’d forgotten this other girl and was a man in love. Doreen, I think she was called, this other girl. Might have been Jean? Anyway …’
Melissa wished Reg would get to the point. ‘And you saw her … Lady Veronica?’ Melissa nudged.
‘Oh yeah. Well, we went to the beach hut one day, which was no small effort. Those bloody cliff steps were a nightmare. Don’t think you can get to them now, mind. They’re either fenced off still or it’s all too overgrown. Anyway, down we went. Took us ages. I didn’t know anyone was in there, but when we saw them we got the fright of our lives. I didn’t know what I was looking at. I do now though. Ho, ho, I do now,’ he said, smiling. ‘But back then I just remember John pulling me away and shoving me all the way until we reached the village. And then I remember him running the last few lanes home, practically crying his heart out. I had a job to keep up.’
Reg looked at Melissa as if she was stupid. ‘What do you think was going on?’ he asked, wiggling his eyebrows for effect. ‘They were at it.’ He sipped his tea with a triumphant flourish and then made a face, realising the tea was cold.
‘Who were? Veronica and Sir Albert?’
‘Well, at the time we thought it was Veronica and Sir Albert. I only caught her face before my brother threw me away from the window, but he watched a bit longer. He was devastated. John thought she might actually secretly love him, based on their fleeting acquaintance. Oh, but he was deluded. Poor boy. This destroyed him for a while. He thought she was an angel. Seeing her in flagrante made him realise she was human like the rest of us.’
‘Who?’ Melissa repeated, verging on exasperation. ‘Who was she having sex with?’
‘Well,’ Reg said, ‘now we get to the good bit. John wouldn’t speak on the journey home and I didn’t know what I was looking at, at the time. But when we get through the door, he bursts into the kitchen, sees my mum and rushes over to her. I was standing in the doorway feeling a bit baffled and John pours his heart out to our mum, telling her he’s just seen Lady Veronica having sex in the beach hut, how devastated he is, how he’s madly in love with her, and can’t believe she’d do this to him. Deluded see? Anyway, Mum can’t get a word in edgeways and John says how he can’t believe that Veronica’s having sex in the beach hut with her devil of a husband when everyone knows what a monster he is, when I look round the corner and realise she can’t possibly be having sex with her husband.’
‘Why’s that?’ Melissa was utterly breathless.
‘Because sat at our kitchen table, counting out the final rent money my mum had just given him, face as white as a sheet and eyes like saucers, was Sir Albert Standish.’
CHAPTER 19
Melissa couldn’t believe it. Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Reg in disbelief. She didn’t know which bit of the story to process first. Veronica Standish had been having an affair. Sir Albert had found out.
Reg looked fairly triumphant at having told a story that had shocked and amazed his audience of one.
‘Bloody hell,’ Melissa said. ‘Did Veronica know that Sir Albert had found out?’ she asked.
Reg shrugged.
‘What did Sir Albert do next?’
Reg screwed up his face.
‘Are you OK?’ Melissa asked after a few seconds.
Reg opened one eye. ‘This is my thinking face.’ He closed his eye again and Melissa waited.
‘I think he just got up and left. I don’t remember anyone speaking at all actually. I do remember that he left the little pile of coins he was supposed to have taken. That was a big deal. My mum didn’t touch them for hours. Kept saying he’d come back to collect them. But he didn’t. They were still there when I went to bed. My last night in that little cottage.’ He narrowed his eyes as he thought. ‘There was something about a note. What was it?’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t remember now. Anyway, that’s where my information ends, I’m afraid. We were all gone from the village the next day anyway and then we had much bigger things to think about. John got called up and he went off to war. He was an excellent shot, but the Germans were better and he died a few months later on D-Day.’
‘Oh, I’m so so sorry,’ Melissa said, reaching over the pew and taking his hand in hers.
‘Thank you. He was a good big brother. He went off for training broken-hearted. My mum said he wasn’t the same after the Lady Veronica incident. I was so young I can’t really remember much about him other than a few things, including that day. That day I’ll never forget.’
He stood up and stretched his back out. ‘If there were consequences for Lady Veronica, I didn’t know anything about them, I’m afraid. Like I said, the next day, we were all standing in the square listening to Sir Albert’s speech, although I can’t remember what he said now. She was there, I recall. Then we all slowly left the village family by family and we were never allowed to return. And that, as they say, is that.’
Melissa blew out a puff of air from her cheeks and exhaled the word ‘Wow’ very slowly.
‘Wow, indeed.’ Reg chuckled.
Melissa tried to process what Reg had told her. Veronica Standish had been having an affair right under Albert’s nose and he knew. What the hell had he done about it? She remembered a time when her own mother had dropped a Waterford crystal fruit bowl at home and her father had flown off the handle, screaming and shouting for hours about how precious it had been, how expensive, how stupid she was. And that had just been a bloody fruit bowl. If her father, a man who wasn’t notoriously violent but who had the shortest fuse Melissa had ever seen on anyone, could react like that over a bit of dropped glass – what in God’s name had a man like Sir Albert done on the back of finding out that his wife was having an affair. Melissa dreaded to think.
‘So, it was the next day you all left?’ she asked.
‘That’s right. There or thereabouts. Maybe a day or two later. I can’t remember, love. I’ve been to sleep since then.’ He winked. Reg offered her another biscuit and she looked absently through it.
‘No thanks. I wonder …’ she said, getting up and walking to the final photo board. Reg, already on his feet, followed her. ‘I wonder if this photo was taken before or after Sir Albert found out.’ She looked at Albert’s deadly expression in the Historical Society’s photograph and at Veronica’s face, full of fear. Of course he knew. Was Sir Albert planning his punishment or already exacting it? ‘And you’ve no idea who she was sleeping with?’ Melissa asked.
‘Sorry, love, no idea at all. My brother thought it was Sir Albert. Was shocked to his core to find him sat at our kitchen table. But then we only saw the back of the man’s head, so could have been anyone. And, remember, I was only six and had no idea what I was even looking at in the first place. As far as I was aware, John was mistaken and that was it.’
‘Reg, you have been fab.’ She hugged him tightly and he laughed with embarrassment. ‘Thank you,’ Melissa said.
‘All I’ve really done is told you a sad story. If you find out who she was with in that beach hut, will you come and tell me? You’ve got me wondering now. Do you know,’ he continued as Melissa walked towards the church door, ‘I’ve still got my brother’s letters he wrote home. He wrote them to my mum, but I’ve got all sorts of bits and bobs from when she passed away. I remember reading something in there about Lady Veronica. Probably just him moping about her. I’ve not read them since I was about thirty when my mum passed on. But I’ll have a look when I’ve had my dinner. I’ll give you a call if you like? See if I find anything interesting.’
‘Yes please.’ Melissa keyed her number into Reg’s ancient mobile phone.
Reg looked at his watch. ‘Time to lock up.’
Melissa helped Reg lock the church for the night and they munched the last of the biscuits as they walked back to their cars. A few of the other guides were milling around, preparing to leave.
‘So,’ Reg said as he eased himself into his car. ‘Guy Cameron seems nice. You can’t have been together long if you’ve not even seen any of his documentaries?’
Melissa felt her face redden. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we’re not … We aren’t … We’ve only just met. We hardly know each other. I’ve only just come out of a relationship. It would be totally inappropriate.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Reg raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re protesting a lot there though, aren’t you?’ He chuckled.
Melissa cringed. Reg had a point.
‘Goodnight, Reg. And if you find anything—’
‘I’ll call you, I promise.’
Reg was still chuckling to himself as he drove past her and out of the gate. She was grateful for the warmth of the sunshine outside after leaving the chilly church. She pulled out her mobile phone on the way back to her car but noticed she had no signal. Of course, she remembered Guy telling her that Tyneham didn’t
have a phone mast anywhere nearby. Time was knocking on and she was far too shaken by what she’d learned. Did she go back to Guy and tell him? Or did she drive home and call him from a motorway service station en route to London when she had a bit of signal? Choices choices.
Melissa stood by her car and turned to look back at the village in the orange glow of the early evening sun. Tyneham had taken a strange hold on her. She didn’t want to leave Dorset. She didn’t feel done with the village yet. What had started as a little stroll around a tourist attraction had turned into a quest. It was Veronica, Melissa pinpointed. Her story just got stranger and stranger the more Melissa found out. And it was Veronica’s situation that made for uncomfortable comparisons, with that of Melissa’s mother but also, in some very small part, with Melissa herself. If Melissa had been transported back to 1943, stepping in Veronica’s shoes, would anything have been different? Yes, probably with the power of modern hindsight. Liam’s surliness was unacceptable but Sir Albert’s confirmed menacing behaviour was something else entirely. She strongly suspected he had been a violent individual and if it had been her, she would have clopped him over the head with a frying pan the first moment he’d raised his fists to her. And then she’d have done a runner. But in 1943, there wasn’t the luxury of telephone helplines. And, unlike Veronica, Melissa had her own money, if not a huge amount, which made a new life a possibility in this day and age for someone like her. She sighed. It was feasible Veronica had been stuck with Sir Albert for a variety of reasons, not least social and economical. Leaving your husband wasn’t the done thing, regardless of what they were like. Maintaining a stiff upper lip appeared to be the norm. And as a result of her dalliance, Veronica’s punishment had been … what exactly? Melissa still had no idea what had happened to Veronica.
So she had been married to a man who had a nasty reputation. And now Melissa knew that Veronica had been having an affair and that Sir Albert knew this. That changed everything. So what happened next?
