Where the Heart Is

by Annie Groves

  Luck was on her side, though, because another pilot coming past caught it for her, placing it down on the wing as he went by, calling out to Kieran as he hurried to join him, ‘That was a good kill of yours the other night, Mall…’

  It was safe for her to turn round now, Lou knew, but she had better things to do than gaze after Kieran Mallory like some stage-struck girl mooning over a handsome matinée idol, even if Kieran did have matinée idol good looks; better things like filling the fuel tank of his plane so that she didn’t have to be around when he came back.

  The shock of seeing him wiped out the excitement she had felt earlier, leaving her anxious and vulnerable. What was the matter with her? She wasn’t a silly young girl any more, taken in by an experienced flirt’s cold-blooded decision to use her foolish adoration for his own ends. No, she was a fully qualified flight mechanic, a Leading Aircraftwoman First Class; a girl in uniform who had won the respect of her peers and her superiors, and who enjoyed the pride that that respect gave her.

  But all that could be taken from her if Kieran Mallory saw her and recognised her, and starting telling tales in the mess about her silly naïvety when she and Sasha had first met him. She would be ragged unmercifully, she knew, by the RAF aircrews, some of whom cloaked their dislike and disapproval of WAAF girls doing what they considered to be ‘men’s’ work with often deliberately unkind and even cruel ‘joking'.

  It needn’t be as bad as that, and she mustn’t let her imagination run away with her, Lou tried to reason when she went back to the hangar. She wasn’t, after all, on regular refuelling duty–she had only been standing in. The chances of her seeing Mallory again, never mind of him seeing her and recognising her, were so slight, surely, as to be negligible.

  If there was one thing being in uniform taught you it was not to worry about the ‘what ifs’ of life but to concentrate on the here and now.

  Even so, it was with great relief that Lou watched the Coastal Defence fighters take off again half an hour later, before giving her full attention to the engine she was checking.

  NINETEEN

  Francine put down the letter she had been rereading: Brandon’s last to her, given to her at his funeral by his solicitor.

  In it he had repeated what he had already said to her.

  What I have done I have done for you, and because of you, because of the love I have for you and the love and care you have given to me. What I have done is, I believe, the best gift that I can give you. You may disagree. I may have made a misjudgement and if I have then I apologise, but if I haven’t then know that if there is a hereafter, then from it I shall be up there with the good guys, praying for your happiness.

  You have given me more than you will ever know, Francine. You have made it possible for me to travel a road I feared as a man and not as a coward, in love and not in fear.

  Forgive me if you feel I have not done ‘right’ by you, Francine, and believe me when I say that my intentions were not to do that but the opposite. Forgive me too if you think I have concealed things from you or deceived you. My motives were always ‘for you’ and not ‘against you', my decisions made out of love and my desire to repay you for all that you have given me.

  Be happy, Francine.

  Mr Haines, Brandon’s solicitor, had told her that Brandon had asked specifically that she reread his letter prior to the first meeting with Mr Haines to discuss the practicalities of the foundation Brandon had set up prior to his death, and to remember it during that meeting.

  When Francine had tried to question the solicitor in more detail he had said that there was no more he could tell her.

  It had been at Mr Haines’ suggestion that the meeting was held in the apartment Francine had shared with Brandon. Francine had agreed with him that it would be more convenient and more comfortable for her. What she hadn’t said to the solicitor was that she would also feel that Brandon was a part of what was happening because the apartment still held so many memories of Brandon for her.

  Since it was to be a formal business meeting, Francine had asked the Dorchester to send her a waiter to serve the afternoon tea she had ordered. In accordance with Brandon’s wishes she wasn’t wearing mourning but instead was dressed in a plain cream linen suit she had had made in Cairo, its jacket lined with the same delicate rosebud print on a cream background as her blouse. She had lost weight during the last sad weeks of Brandon’s life, and in her own opinion now looked unflatteringly gaunt, despite the attempt she had made to conceal this with lipstick and rouge.

  The dull buzz of the bell announced the arrival of the solicitor.

  The waiter, who had already arrived, went to open the door for her but when he returned to the drawing room, he wasn’t accompanied merely by one man but by two, one of whom naturally was Mr Haines, whilst to her shock and disbelief the other was Marcus Linton, the army major she had met and fallen in love with in Cairo, but who had then ended their relationship, thanks to the malicious lies of one of the other ENSA singers.

  Of course, Francine did her best to cover what she was feeling, summoning a professional smile for Mr Haines’ benefit as she shook his hand, keeping her back to Marcus whilst she invited them both to sit down.

  Thankfully the small ceremonial bustle of the waiter offering and then pouring tea provided Francine with some camouflage behind which to attempt to gather her composure, so that by the time they had all been served and the waiter had left, she had in place a polite social mask to hide her real feelings of shock and dismay.

  That Brandon was responsible for the presence of Marcus, Francine had no doubt. Brandon had known that she loved the major and that he had walked away from her, and her terrible fear now was that Brandon had actually informed the major of her feelings in some kind of loving attempt to ‘help’ her.

  Francine, though, was too sensible to rush into the kind of questions that might betray her to even more humiliation than she suspected already awaited her. Instead she waited until Mr Haines had sipped his tea and enjoyed the bloater paste sandwiches that now passed as ‘afternoon tea', for the solicitor to explain to her the purpose of their visit.

  The solicitor’s explanation was long and windy but could be summed up essentially, Francine recognised after she had listened patiently to it, as Brandon’s decision to appoint Marcus as her cotrustee on the foundation’s board.

  ‘As you both know, the position as trustee of the foundation is one without remuneration, which you have both taken on for the benefit of the foundation. The income the foundation will derive from its assets will be yours to distribute to those who you best judge to be worthy recipients of the money within the criteria that Brandon laid down. It was his wish, expressed to me and I understand discussed with both of you prior to his death, that you will work together to this end. However, there is a clause in the charter for the foundation that allows for either or both of you to withdraw from the agreement you have already given–and signed–should you wish to do so.’

  Thanks heavens for that, Francine thought weakly. She didn’t trust herself to speak, though.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Brandon had written, and now she knew why. There was no point blaming him or accusing him; the fault was hers. She was the one who had allowed Brandon to see how much Marcus had hurt her and how much she still loved him. She had no idea what method of persuasion Brandon might have used to get Marcus to agree, as he obviously had, to be her co-trustee, other than to acknowledge that Marcus was an extremely honourable man. It could be that Brandon might have compelled him to agree by insisting that the foundation and those who would benefit from it needed Marcus. He too, after all, knew what it was to lose a child and he, like her, would not have been able to withstand the obvious need of all those children rendered lost and vulnerable by the war.

  However, there the similarity between them ended, for whilst Marcus would put his duty to be honourable first, and refuse to be daunted by the thought of working closely with her, as he had plainly known he must do, Francine knew
that had Brandon told her that he intended to appoint Marcus as her co-trustee, she would have refused to take on the role, knowing that she could not work effectively alongside the man she loved so much and who had hurt her so badly.

  Brandon had deceived her. He had lied to her by omission, by default, because he had known what her reaction would have been if he had told her what he planned to do. Francine knew that. She knew too that he must have said some of this to Marcus, so betraying her twice.

  ‘What I have done, I have done for you,’ he had written.

  ‘There are, of course, necessary formalities that will need to be dealt with: the setting up of a bank account, that kind of thing.’ Mr Haines’ voice intruded into her very private and even more painful thoughts. Francine forced herself to listen to him and concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘I have already written to Brandon’s trustees,’ he told them both, ‘and they have written back to me to confirm that the assets from Brandon’s trusts will now be transferred into the name of the foundation, with the exception of the monies Brandon left directly to you, Francine.’

  Francine nodded. She and Brandon had argued more than once over her insistence that he was not to leave her anything more than a relatively modest income, but right now she had more important things on her mind than her own finances.

  ‘I will leave you now, as I know from Major Linton that you will wish to take advantage of the opportunity provided by his leave to discuss your plans for the foundation, but as soon as I have the necessary bank mandates and so on I shall be in touch again.’

  Francine couldn’t do any more than incline her head and give the solicitor a forced polite smile. Objecting to either Marcus’s presence or his decision to remain wasn’t really an option. Apart from anything else, and as little as she relished the prospect, the future working of the foundation had to be discussed, even if that meant that she herself had to step down from her own role as trustee in order for Brandon’s wishes for it to be put into action.

  Naturally Francine was the one to escort the solicitor to the door, where she thanked him for all that he had done as he shook her hand and replaced the hat he had removed on his arrival. Francine refused to look at the coat rack and the shelf above it by the door where Marcus’s peaked cap lay.

  Her heart heavy with all that she felt, she returned to the drawing room, where Marcus was standing by the window, his bearing soldierly, his hands folded behind his back.

  The war had touched him physically as it had done all of them, Francine recognised. There were touches of silver in his hair, highlighted by the August sun slanting in through the windows, new lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes and no doubt put there by the desert sun. But the grimness to his mouth owed its presence not to the war but rather to her, she suspected.

  Dispensing with any preliminaries, as she closed the drawing room door, she told him emotionlessly, ‘Obviously we aren’t going to be able to work together on the foundation. Equally obviously Brandon’s actions were well intentioned. Even if I didn’t know that for myself, the letter he left me proves it. I am willing to take all the blame. I should never have given in to self-pity and spoken to him about you. I shouldn’t have told him—’

  ‘Anything', she had been about to say but before she could do so, Marcus interrupted her.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told him what a fool I was or how I let you down out of pride and cowardice?’ he asked harshly. ‘Why not, when it is the truth? Brandon applauded your honesty. He told me so himself.’

  When Francine couldn’t stop herself from making a small sound that was a mixture of pain and protest, Marcus seemed to understand its cause.

  ‘When he originally wrote to me asking to meet me I admit that I didn’t want to do so.’

  ‘Then why did you?’ Francine’s tone was hostile.

  Marcus removed his cigarettes from his tunic pocket and offered her one. Francine hesitated. She had stopped smoking when Brandon had had to stop, and although she hadn’t missed them, now suddenly she felt she needed their calming effect. She regretted her decision, though, when she automatically reached for the table lighter to light up her own cigarette and was then obliged to offer it to Marcus. Instead of taking it from her to light his own cigarette he leaned forward, his cigarette between his lips, replacing the packet in his pocket as he did so, so that she had no alternative but to ignite the flame and hold it against his cigarette for him. This close she could see the dense darkness of his thick eyelashes as he looked down at the cigarette. Her hand started to tremble. Marcus reached out to cup his own round it to steady the flame–a simple, automatic gesture that meant nothing and yet at the same time was so intensely intimate that she felt its effect all through her body.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  Francine shook her head, replacing the lighter on the side table as she took a seat on the sofa opposite the one Marcus had chosen.

  ‘When Brandon wrote to me, he enclosed with his letter a sealed envelope with another letter in it, which he said I must read only if you were truly important to me, as he believed you to be. If he was wrong then he directed me to destroy the letter unread.’

  Francine felt so nauseous and light-headed that she had to stub out her cigarette.

  ‘I should imagine that anyone’s natural curiosity would incline them to open it.’ Her voice was brittle with tension.

  ‘Only those who have never felt the agony of a flame’s burn are curious to see what effect it might have,’ was Marcus’s grim response. ‘The truth is that Brandon’s warning inclined me more to destroy the letter unread than to risk a return of the pain I thought I had already overcome. In fact, I did put the letter to one side but then later–much later, in fact, in that dark hour when everything is stripped away from the human heart apart from its greatest yearning–unable to sleep I retrieved the letter and read it.’

  Francine bowed her head.

  ‘Brandon’s opening lines stressed that you knew nothing of what he was doing, or of what he was writing. He told me that had you known you would have stopped him. He told me that he risked angering you and, even worse, hurting you, but that he believed the risk was worth taking for the sake of your ultimate happiness.’

  Francine couldn’t bear any more. ‘It’s not Brandon’s fault, it’s mine. I should never have told him. He was so … so grateful to me for what he saw as my compassion that he couldn’t believe that it was possible for someone else not to … not to …’

  ‘Love you as he believed you deserved to be loved.’

  ‘Brandon felt that all the giving in our marriage was on my side, but it wasn’t. I needed him just as much as he needed me, albeit in a different way. Whilst I was there with him when he needed someone, he gave me the purpose that I needed to … to go on.’ Francine stood up, unable to keep still any more, pacing the floor in her tension and her dread of the humiliation she knew awaited her.

  ‘There’s no need for you to say any more, Marcus. I can guess what Brandon told you. I can’t deny that I did tell him about… about my feelings for you, but that was because I wanted to be honest with him, not because I wanted him to approach you on my behalf. Whatever once existed between us is over. It ended when we parted in Alexandria. This attempt of Brandon’s to bring us together again, however well-meaning, has to be intolerable for both of us.’

  ‘What is intolerable for me is that out of fear and mistrust I allowed myself to be persuaded that you didn’t really love me.’

  Marcus’s words, so grave and so unexpected, brought Francine’s pacing to an unsteady halt.

  ‘Then I compounded that lack of judgement and miscarriage of justice against you by covering my guilt with the erroneous belief that your reasons for marrying Brandon were mercenary rather than the charitable act of compassion Brandon himself wrote in his letter to me that they actually were. You have much to blame me for, Francine, and little reason to forgive me.’

  Francine didn’t want to hark
back to the past or to risk being overwhelmed by her own emotions, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘I suppose it is something that exists between men and from which women are excluded that you seem to have been able to accept Brandon’s defence of me when you were not able to give me the opportunity to put to you myself my side of the story you were spun in Egypt. I didn’t know until I was actually on the ship how we’d both been tricked by Lily. I tried to get off to tell you but the gangplank had already seen raised.’

  Francine’s voice betrayed the emotion she remembering feeling as she had tried so desperately to attract his attention as he walked away from her–but had failed.

  ‘Not that it matters now,’ she added quickly. ‘We’re both old enough to know that the intensity of war fosters a false intimacy in relationships that were never meant to last. I’m just sorry that Brandon didn’t tell me what he planned to do. If he had I could have saved us both the embarrassment of this situation. When I told Brandon that I… that I still loved you it was simply as a deterrent to his own proposal.’

  Francine had started pacing again, her back to Marcus as she spoke, which was why she didn’t realise he had moved until she felt his hand on her arm. When she turned automatically to face him he reached for her. His arms tightening around her, he bent his head to kiss her, fiercely, hungrily, as though he had missed her and ached for her every single minute they had been apart, just as she had for him.

  For several precious heartbeats Francine gave herself up to his passion, sharing it, wanting it, registering that he was trembling beneath the force of it as much as she was herself, but then reality cut in, forcing her to step back from him.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘We can’t do this. It isn’t right.’

  ‘Because of Brandon? He wanted us to be together, he said so in his letter to me.’