All Things Undying

by Marcia Talley

  ‘The area seemed to lie as if under a spell, beautiful still but neglected and forlorn, waiting for the touch of a magic wand to revive its normal life. But nature is never still . . . and gradually the flowers and ferns helped to hide the ravages of war.’

  Grace Bradbeer, The Land Changed Its Face: The Evacuation of the South Hams, 1943–44, Devon Books, 1973, p.94

  Stephen Bailey’s car, I decided, was key. It would have to be found.

  With Stephen Bailey living at Coombe Hill full-time, I’d have time to poke around on Three Trees Farm. I knew Cathy wouldn’t mind.

  I hadn’t heard from Alison in a couple of days, but after what I’d learned about her father from Audrey Wills, I was almost relieved. I felt guilty about keeping secrets, of course, but how could I tell her what I suspected, especially without any concrete evidence?

  I’d just stepped out of the shower when Alison finally called, but her news took me entirely by surprise.

  ‘Hannah, I’m sorry. It seems I’m always calling you for help, but I really need you this time. Dad’s gone missing.’

  ‘What? I thought he was happy at Coombe Hill.’ I wrapped the towel around my body, and sat down in a chair.

  ‘He seemed happy enough. But I just got a call from the administrator, and they can’t locate him. His room is empty, and they say his bed hasn’t been slept in. How can they have been so careless?’

  ‘Alison, it isn’t a nursing home. Your father’s free to come and go as he pleases, right?’

  Her only answer was a whimpering sound.

  ‘Too bad they don’t have any granny cams,’ I added, ‘but that’s one of the reasons you picked the place, remember? Because it seemed dignified, more like a resort hotel than a retirement living facility.’

  She sighed. ‘I know, I know. They do have a security camera at the main entrance, though, and it shows him walking out the front door and turning right. It’s time-stamped at ten minutes past two. He could have been heading for the bus station, or even the ferry. Neither one is too far a walk for a man in good physical condition like my father.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he could have gone?’

  ‘He’s old and confused. He could be wandering around Dittisham somewhere, feeding the pigeons in the park, or chatting up barmaids. Oh . . . I don’t know!’

  ‘Have you checked the farm?’

  ‘But that’s miles away, and he doesn’t have a car.’ She paused. ‘Do you really think he would have gone back to the farm?’

  ‘Alison, for his whole life, that farm was the center of your father’s world. That’s where I’d go. When my mother died,’ I continued, ‘my father held on to the home they had shared for the longest time. Even after he moved into a smaller place and put the big house on the market, he’d show up at every viewing. It was as if he had to audition the buyers. If they made sarcastic remarks about the wallpaper, well, scratch that couple off the list!’

  I was relieved to hear her laugh.

  ‘How would your father get back to Three Trees Farm?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Dead easy,’ she said. ‘The number one-twelve bus goes from Dittisham to Dartmouth, and he could catch the ninety-three from Dartmouth to Strete. Or he could have caught the ferry. Once he got to Strete, he’d walk the rest of the way, or hitch a ride with a local.’

  ‘Have you telephoned Cathy Yates?’

  ‘Why? She hasn’t moved in yet.’

  ‘I know she hasn’t. But when I saw her at breakfast, she had a sheaf of paint samples clutched in her fist. She said something about calling a cab and a meeting with contractors, so I just put two and two together. Does she have permission to be out there?’

  ‘She does. With Dad in Dittisham, I told her she could visit any time she wanted.’

  Carrying my iPhone, I returned to the bathroom. I lay the phone on the toilet lid, set it to speakerphone, and began to towel dry my hair. ‘Look, give me a few minutes to get dressed, then come pick me up. We’ll drive around Dittisham. Maybe he’s having a pint in a pub somewhere. If we don’t find him in Dittisham, we’ll drive down to the farm. OK?’

  Needless to say, we ended up at the farm.

  As we climbed out of her car, Alison said, ‘I’ll check the house. Hannah, why don’t you go around to the barn?’

  With a wave of agreement, I left Alison and wandered through the courtyard from which Stephen Bailey’s Prius had (or had not) recently been stolen, making my way, as instructed, toward the barn. Ahead of me, the barn door yawned open. Chickens scratched around in the dirt and gravel, and somewhere, a rooster crowed.

  In the near distance, a flash of red distracted me. I didn’t recall ever seeing Stephen Bailey wearing red – he tended to favor clothing in the blue and yellow spectrum – but it could have been Tom Boyd, the man-of-all-work who Cathy had agreed to keep on, at a generous rise in salary.

  But the red sweater didn’t belong to Alison’s father, or to his former handyman. It was worn by Cathy Yates, bent over a long-handled spade.

  I called out to her. ‘Cathy!’

  She looked up from whatever she was doing, resting her hands one over the other on the handle of the spade. ‘Hannah! What brings you all the way out here?’

  ‘Alison and I are looking for her father. He’s run away from Coombe Hill, and this is the first place we thought of to look.’

  ‘I’ve been here over an hour, but I haven’t seen him. I’ll keep an eye out, though.’

  The noon sun was hot, and sweat glistened on Cathy’s brow. She peeled off her sweater and tossed it aside. A bottle of spring water sat on the ground near her feet. She unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and dabbed her mouth daintily, considering she was using her sleeve.

  ‘Why are you digging?’ I asked.

  Cathy pointed with the spade. ‘What does that look like to you?’

  ‘A concrete slab?’

  ‘No. It’s the remains of a brick and concrete air-raid shelter with steps leading down to it.’ I recognized the quote from a passage in Ken Small’s book.

  ‘It doesn’t look like an air-raid shelter to me,’ I said gently.

  ‘It’s here! It fits the description perfectly, Hannah!’ She thrust the spade repeatedly into the dirt at the base of the concrete slab. ‘These are the steps, I’m sure of it.’

  They were, indeed, crumbling steps, but the steps weren’t attached to anything, in my opinion, that remotely resembled an air-raid shelter.

  ‘Hey!’ somebody yelled.

  Cathy and I turned to see Stephen Bailey striding toward us. He was waving both arms over his head, as if attempting to flag down a runaway train. ‘I wouldn’t go digging around there if I were you, missy.’

  Cathy stared the old man down. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Unexploded shells,’ he said simply. ‘Time was we let bullocks out to roam the fields as mine detectors.’

  Cathy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Were you the farmer that Ken Small mentioned in his book?’

  Bailey’s smirk was tinged with amusement. ‘Not me. I told you you’d not find American bodies here in Devon.’

  ‘Isn’t this the remains of an air-raid shelter?’

  ‘No. Used to be my dairy barn. More than a hundred and twenty years old, it was. Blew away in a wind storm back in October 2000.’

  Cathy stuck her spade into the ground, mashed down on it with her foot. ‘I’m thinking that the steps went down about here.’ While we watched, she turned over another spadeful of earth and added it to a growing pile to her left.

  Bailey scowled. ‘This is still my property, Ms Yates, and I’ll thank you to put down that spade and leave, right now.’

  Cathy glanced up from her digging. ‘No, it’s not, Mr Bailey. You agreed to sell the farm to me, contracts were exchanged, and I gave you a sizeable deposit.’ She looked pointedly at her watch. ‘In point of fact, my solicitor just called to say that everything’s moving along very smoothly. For the money I’m paying him to settle things as quickly as possible, he’d b
etter be right.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘You’re welcome to stay, however. I know how hard it must be for you to let go of something that’s been in your family for so long.’

  Bailey blinked rapidly. ‘You can’t have done. It’s too soon.’

  In point of fact, Stephen Bailey was right. Until formal completion, he still owned Three Trees Farm, but Cathy was thinking like an American, not a Brit. Contracts had been exchanged, money had changed hands. In Cathy’s mind, it was a done deal.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, ask your daughter,’ Cathy said. ‘Here she comes now.’

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Alison was indeed chugging up the drive. ‘There you are, Dad!’ Her tone was cheery, impossible to tell that she’d just spent the last four hours worrying about her father, searching bus, train and ferry terminals that offered service from Dittisham to points out in all directions. ‘Hi, Cathy,’ she added with a friendly wave.

  Her father looked like a little boy lost in a large department store. ‘She says I don’t own the farm anymore, Alison.’

  Alison reddened, but skirted the issue. ‘You sold it to Mrs Yates, remember?’

  ‘I did no such thing!’ he blustered. ‘I agreed to sell it to some bloke in London, going to grow organic vegetables or something daft.’

  ‘Agrishare Limited is my company, Mr Bailey.’

  Bailey froze, back ramrod straight, his arms dangling. He glared at Cathy, then turned to his daughter and gave her a look so malevolent that if looks were arrows, she’d have dropped dead on the spot.

  ‘Busted!’ I teased.

  Alison grinned sheepishly, and we watched her father slump and stalk off to the barn.

  ‘Do you . . .?’ Cathy began. ‘Maybe somebody should go and talk to him? I might have been a little harsh just now.’

  Knowing, or rather suspecting, what Stephen Bailey had been up to lately, I had no inclination to raise my hand. He could pout in the barn forever, for all I cared, or at least until the police came to cart him away.

  ‘No, no,’ Alison told her. ‘He’ll sulk for a bit, then he’ll be fine. And who knows? The way his memory’s been lately, he may forget that the whole thing ever happened.’

  With Stephen Bailey temporarily out of the picture, Cathy hefted her spade and began another assault on the foundation of the old dairy barn. ‘I can tell there used to be steps here.’ Her spade took another bite out of the soil.

  I had a very good idea why Bailey didn’t want Cathy, or anybody, digging in this particular spot, so when Cathy looked up and said, ‘Hunt up another shovel, will ya, Hannah, and lend a poor working girl a hand?’ I spread my arms helplessly and shrugged in a who-me? sort of way.

  I was saved by the reappearance of Stephen Bailey.

  At first, I was relieved. Then I saw he was carrying a shotgun over his arm, almost casually, break action open. As he walked, he fed a shell into each chamber, then flipped the gun closed with an ominous clack.

  Bailey was closing with single-minded intent on Cathy Yates who had her back to him and was digging with such concentration, accompanied by her own incessant chatter, that she was oblivious to the danger he represented.

  Her spade bit into the ground. ‘Well, what’s this?’ She tossed the tool aside, bent at the waist to get a closer look, and peered into the hole.

  ‘Dad!’ Alison’s voice was low, urgent.

  ‘You stay out of this, Alison.’ He took several more steps in Cathy’s direction, but she still didn’t see him. ‘Stop digging. Now!’

  Cathy jumped into the hole, bent over for a moment, thrust her hand into the dirt. ‘There’s something down there, Mr Bailey, and I . . .’ Her head came up and she sucked air, finally noticing the shotgun pointed straight at her chest.

  ‘Climb out, and move away from the hole,’ Bailey instructed, motioning her aside with the business end of the gun. When Cathy didn’t budge, he tugged on the bolt and slammed the shell home.

  She raised a hand in surrender. ‘Now look, Mr Bailey . . .’

  ‘I said move!’ His finger twitched where it rested on the trigger.

  Cathy’s fists migrated to her hips, her arms akimbo. ‘You lied to me, Mr Bailey. You told me there were no bodies here. But what am I looking at right now, huh? Tell me that?’

  The woman had chutzpah, but I already knew that.

  She held out a fist, slowly uncurled her fingers. ‘What’s this, then?’

  From where I stood, something glittered like a cat’s eye on her open palm. I moved my head slightly to the right. Another flash.

  ‘And down in this hole?’ Cathy continued, her eyes still locked on Alison’s father. ‘There’s a bit of khaki fabric in that hole, that’s what. I don’t know what else I’ll find down there, but if that fabric is a piece of uniform, then it could belong to somebody’s son, or husband, or father.’

  ‘Alison, where did your father get the gun?’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh, God, he kept one in the barn,’ she whispered back, her voice quavering. ‘I completely forgot about it.’

  I grabbed her arm and squeezed reassuringly. I touched my lips with an index finger, then indicated that I was going to work my way around behind her father. His attention was so focused on Cathy that I hoped he wouldn’t notice me.

  ‘Put the spade down,’ Bailey ordered.

  Cathy obeyed, thrusting the tool into the pile of dirt. ‘You don’t really want to hurt anybody, do you, Mr Bailey? Why don’t you put the gun away?’

  Suddenly, the shotgun exploded. Alison’s father staggered back with the recoil, his eyes wide in astonishment.

  Alison screamed.

  Cathy seemed paralysed with shock. She clutched her left arm, hugging it against her body as a scarlet stain began to leak through her blouse and between her fingers. ‘Well, got down sat on a bench! That crazy old fool just shot me!’

  Even with blood running down her arm, Cathy Yates managed to keep her profanity clean.

  ‘I – I – I . . .’ Bailey stammered, drooping like a rag doll. ‘I didn’t mean . . . my finger just . . .’

  I shoved past him, heading straight for Cathy, peeling off my jacket as I ran, thinking I could use it as a tourniquet. Lessons learned at Girl Scout camp die hard. ‘Call 999!’ I yelled at Alison whose shoes seemed riveted to the ground.

  ‘Dad?’ she wailed.

  ‘Your cell phone, Alison! For Christ’s sake, call an ambulance! Your father can wait.’

  I was ripping Cathy’s sleeve open to check the seriousness of her wound, and Alison was busy punching numbers into her phone, so neither one of us noticed when Stephen Bailey, still carrying the shotgun, disappeared into the barn.

  Alison charged into the house to fetch some clean cloths, while I stayed with Cathy. ‘Do sit down, girl. You’ve got buckshot in your arm.’ I propped her up against the pile of dirt, using her sweater as a cushion.

  Alison was back in a moment carrying some dishtowels and a can of Coca Cola. ‘I can’t believe my father . . . Oh, God, Hannah, is she going to be all right?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said as I wrapped my jacket tightly around Cathy’s arm in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

  Alison held out the Coke.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  She shrugged. ‘I thought Cathy could use the sugar or something.’

  Cathy forced a smile. ‘Thanks. Maybe later. First, I’ve got something to show you.’ She uncurled her fingers. A man’s signet ring, set with a red stone that reflected the sun like tiny tongues of fire, sat on her open palm, both stained with blood.

  It’s a signet ring of some sort, with a red stone, Susan had said. Once again, Susan Parker had been tee-totally right.

  ‘You should recognize this, Hannah.’

  I bent down to get a closer look. ‘May I?’ When Cathy nodded, I picked the ring off her palm and examined it.

  ‘It’s from the Naval Academy,’ I explained to Alison. ‘Class of ’thirty-nine. See here on this side? It’s i
ncised with the initials USNA. And on the other, there’s a thirty-nine.’

  In spite of her wound, Cathy was still on task, her face bright with victory. ‘Ken Small was right all along! Americans are buried here!’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. That bit of fabric you found in the hole? Land Army Girls wore khaki uniforms, too.’

  Cathy and Alison exchanged glances that suggested that I’d lost my mind.

  I turned the ring, now drinking up the sunlight for the first time in sixty years, so they could read the inscription I suspected I would find inside: Anthony J. Rockefeller.

  ‘Rocky,’ I said aloud.

  ‘Who?’ Cathy sounded confused, and I couldn’t blame her.

  ‘I’ll have to explain later,’ I said. ‘But in the meantime, if he’s still alive, I think Rocky would like to know that a beautiful young girl named Violet didn’t simply walk out on him.’

  The keening of sirens split the air. Followed by a deafening boom.

  Stephen Bailey had sat on a milking stool in Feckless’s stall, put the barrel of the gun under his chin, and used the remaining shotgun shell on himself.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Perhaps I should believe in a hereafter, in a consciousness that zips through the air like a Simpsons rerun, simply because it’s more appealing – more fun and more hopeful – than not believing. The debunkers are probably right, but they’re no fun to visit a graveyard with. What the hell. I believe in ghosts.’

  Mary Roach, Spook, Norton, 2005, p.295

  After an overnight stay in the hospital, Alison was released to the care of her husband, daughter Kitty, and a competent therapist, all of whom encouraged her to take a long vacation with a drastic change of scene.

  After her father’s funeral, of course.

  Alison and Jon and been secretive about their trip, but we volunteered to drive them to the airport. From Heathrow, we’d head north to the outskirts of Cambridge, to the American Cemetery at Madingley. Cathy Yates would come along, too, although her arm was still cradled in a sling.

  Just before leaving, we learned that Violet Johnson’s body had been positively identified from her ration book and identity card contained in the brown leather handbag that had been found with her body on Three Trees Farm. Violet had been claimed by a distant cousin living in Kent and would be buried there, next to her entire family, all of whom, it turned out, had perished in the war.