A Forgotten Place

by Charles Todd

  Then I picked up another sound. At first I thought it might be a loose shutter banging against one of the windows downstairs, before I realized it was not that at all, but a motorcar making its way along the road in front of the house, moving slowly through the ruts and dips that made the surface a washboard.

  Eager to see who it was—someone looking for my driver? Even looking for me? Someone I might speak to in the morning and beg a lift back to Swansea?—I got out of bed, ignoring the cold, and hurried to the window.

  It was a motorcar. I was sure of it. But I couldn’t see it at first. Nor its headlamps probing the way.

  And then it came into view. To my surprise, the headlamps weren’t on, in spite of the condition of the road. The only way I could identify it as a motorcar was by the dark moving shape outlined by Mr. Griffith’s whitewashed cottage. I thought perhaps it intended to stop there. That was where the road ended . . .

  Looking for Mr. Morgan?

  But it went on, continuing quietly past the door and slowly making its way down toward the former coast guard station.

  As my bare feet turned to ice, I waited, watching the rear lamp on the motorcar disappear into the darkness as it went on down the road. After a while, the headlamps came on, but it was well beyond the coast guard station’s buildings by that time, and closer to the cottage that must belong to Ellen. Then the lights disappeared.

  As if the motorcar had arrived at its destination.

  The night was silent again except for the wind.

  I scurried back to my bed, shoved my feet against the hot water bottle, and pulled the covers tight around me until my teeth stopped chattering and my body stopped shivering.

  I couldn’t help but think it was a very good thing Ellen hadn’t arrived this time on Friday night, to find an unexpected corpse on her doorstep.

  Perhaps that explained the hasty burial on Saturday morning?

  What mattered, I told myself as I finally got warm enough to drift off to sleep, was that a motorcar had appeared out here on the peninsula. Against all odds. And whether it had tried to slip in unseen or not—or simply wanted not to wake anyone—I could find an excuse to ask Ellen, or whoever it belonged to, to take me back to Swansea. Whenever it left.

  The first of the lambs was born in the early morning, and Rachel brought it back with her, to keep it in the warmth of the kitchen until the weather had passed. She and Hugh dragged a box out of the passage to the kitchen door, filled it with rags and old bedding, then put the lamb inside. It bleated, looking for its mother, but Rachel was already heating milk for it.

  “The mother is in one of the sheds. It must have been a hard labor, and she seems quite weary. I’ll take this little one out to her later on.”

  “Will it be all right?”

  “Yes, I think so. She’d tried to lick it dry, but it was shivering when I got there. When I picked it up to carry it back, she followed me, and I managed with the help of the dogs to get her into the shed. If she doesn’t reject it because it has our scent on it now, all will be well.”

  It was a gangly little thing, and Hugh was rubbing it with another bit of blanket as it found the bottle and began to suck. Its tail was spinning like a top. I’d seen young lambs do the same in fields, and I took that as a good sign.

  And then it settled back in its bedding and went sound asleep. The dogs ignored it.

  “I can remember a time when my father had ten or eleven lambs in boxes, and fires in all the rooms to keep them warm. That was a very cold winter, and we were afraid we’d lose most of them. My poor, long-suffering mother took care of them, and we kept them all alive until they could return to their mothers. It amazed me, the way each ewe recognized her own lamb. Something in the smell, I expect.”

  I waited until she had washed her hands and sat down with a cup of tea.

  “I roused up in the night,” I said, “and thought I heard a motorcar going by. Did you notice?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Rachel said, curious. “We don’t see many motorcars out here. Where did it go?”

  “I finally got out of bed to see. But it was beyond the coast guard station by that time.”

  “Ellen,” Hugh said, washing his hands in his turn after draping the bit of blanket over the sleeping lamb. “There’s only the one cottage beyond the station.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know anything to tell. I’ve never met her. But people speak of her sometimes.”

  Rachel said, “She’s older than I am. I heard she was widowed at the start of the war—her husband was a partner in a shipping line, I think. I remember something about his heart giving out from overwork. We moved in different circles, Ellen and I, and so it was just the occasional gossip that reached my ears. Then in 1915, I believe it was, there were rumors that she’d opened lodgings close by the docks. Her husband’s family was not best pleased, but she wanted to do something for the war. Many of those places were barely respectable, and I expect she saw a need. Often the men coming in from the ships or on leave from the Army didn’t have time to travel on to their homes, and sometimes the local people took sad advantage of them. I thought it was very brave of her, even though many women felt it wasn’t quite proper for a woman of her class. Others applauded her. I sent my mother a cutting from the Cardiff newspapers about her efforts.”

  “Did you know her, growing up?” I asked.

  “She only came here in the summer to visit her grandfather. And I was too young to have much to do with her. I remember once she was talking with Mr. Griffith, and she offered me a toffee when she noticed me standing nearby. But I thought she was rather grand, with her pretty city gowns.” She smiled. “I’m sure my mother thought Ellen was rather fast. Certainly she wasn’t like the rest of us, but I realize now, having lived in a city, how different we are, out here. Behind the times, slow to change.”

  “How do the others out here make their living?”

  “They run cattle to feed the inland cities, and farm where they can. Sheep are a dying business,” she said rather sadly. “When the Army needed blankets and uniforms, we flourished again, but demand has dropped off now that the war is over.” She stared wistfully at the window. “I expect we’ll all have to leave or find some other way to survive out here.”

  “Would you go back to Swansea? Or even Cardiff?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly, then glanced at Hugh. I thought I knew what she must be silently asking him. If he would stay with her, if there were no chores to do or sheep to run . . . would he let her make a living for both of them, or would his loss of his leg make him bitter and too proud to be beholden.

  When he didn’t look up or answer, she said quickly, “I worked in Cardiff. Tom wasn’t happy about it, but I was always accustomed to staying busy out here. Like you, I wasn’t one to sit idle. And our little house didn’t need all that much looking after. I took a course, and learned to use a typing machine. It was much easier than I expected, after I got the knack of it and learned the keyboard. I was paid rather well too.”

  I wondered if that money had helped fund her return to the peninsula. To look after her parents and then to stay on until Tom came back from the war. If so, it must be running out by now.

  All the more reason for me to leave, and not be a burden on their meager resources.

  “Do you suppose,” I asked, following up on that thought, “that Ellen might be willing to let me go with her? As far as Swansea? I’m going to be overdue at the clinic soon, and people will start to wonder what’s become of me. My parents will worry, if the clinic contacts them and they’ve had no word either.” And Matron would do just that, for she thought I was with them now!

  Hugh glanced up then. “I’m not sure you can count on her. She doesn’t have much to do with the rest of us. But Rachel can send word to the cottage, and ask.”

  “Or I could walk down myself, today—tomorrow, if the weather holds,” I said, knowing how much Rachel had to do—and who could
she send? It was a very long way for Hugh, and he didn’t know Ellen.

  I don’t think either of them quite approved of my going there. But what could they say?

  I tried to hold on to my patience, listened all day for the sound of a motorcar leaving. But if Ellen had just arrived, it might make good sense to give her a day to do whatever she had come to do. Then ask my favor. But it was hard to be patient.

  We went up to bed early that evening. Rachel had been out a dozen times to look after the sheep, and she would be back at it at first light in the morning. I was restless, and lay there wishing for a book to read. Then around midnight I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke in the night. The wind had veered, for the windows weren’t rattling. I got up and went to the window. I could just see someone standing outside the Griffith cottage, and I thought he might be smoking from the way he simply stood there, not moving, for several minutes. And then he turned and went back inside.

  The odor lasted a bit longer and then was carried off by the wind. Mr. Griffith, I thought, must lead a very lonely life, there in the cottage by himself, his wife dead, his son lost in France. But he wasn’t the most approachable of men, and no doubt that only reinforced his isolation from the other men of the village.

  In August 1914, when the war began, everyone had been convinced that it would be over by Christmas. Men had rushed to volunteer, in a hurry to join in the great adventure and come home with stories to tell their children and grandchildren about the Great War. Only it hadn’t turned out the way they’d expected. By the new year, it had become a stalemate, and would drag on with no end in sight.

  But what if it had ended by Christmas? A brief brush with glory, and then all the men would have home. So many lives saved, so many men like Hugh still whole. No gassed lungs, no Spanish influenza, no nightmarish months in the trenches. I thought of all the young men I’d known who hadn’t survived. And Mr. Griffith’s son and Tom Williams and the two dead soldiers in the village churchyard and Hugh’s Welsh companies might have been spared.

  It didn’t bear thinking of.

  Climbing back into bed, stretching my feet out to the hot water bottle, I lay awake, remembering.

  On the other side of the wall, I heard the faint sounds of Hugh moving restlessly about his room. I didn’t know if he was in pain or just found it difficult to sleep. Many amputees did. We tried not to give them laudanum to help them. It was addictive, and in the end a worse life. In the wards I could sit by a bed and talk to the patient until sleep came. There was nothing I could do for Hugh.

  The next day, which dawned clear and bright and brisk, I did what I could in the house, and then after we’d had the midday meal, and Hugh had gone out to a shed to mend a leather strap, I asked Rachel if it would be a good time to go down to the cottage. She hesitated, and then said, “Well, I don’t see why not. It isn’t as if she’s got a houseful of guests. I don’t even know why she bothers to come back, except to keep an eye on the cottage. You’d think she might pay Mr. Griffith or myself to look in on it from time to time. Cheaper in the long run.”

  “A sentimental connection,” I suggested.

  “I never knew what the story was about Ellen,” she said with a frown. “I was far too young for gossip. I don’t remember her mother at all. Just her grandfather. I don’t think Ellen’s mother ever came down here with her. Even though Ellen’s mother had grown up here. Someone from Ellen’s father’s family would bring her, then come back to fetch her. I often wondered if there had been a falling-out between her mother and her grandfather. But if that was true, why did Ellen visit her grandfather at all? It’s not as though he had a grand house and entertained there.”

  “Who did Ellen’s mother marry? I gather it wasn’t someone from the village.”

  “I never knew much about him. Well, I probably never thought to ask. It was just Ellen—her grandfather—and her mother. They were the only ones anyone talked about. I vaguely remember someone saying he was wealthy, someone important in Cardiff. Ellen’s mother went to school there. I expect that’s how she came to meet him. There was money, obviously. Ellen’s pretty clothes, her pretty manners. I did think it was very brave of her to come all the way here.” She smiled. “Cardiff might as well have been on the far side of the moon—I had never been there of course, and I could never quite be sure whether it was a place of delights or a den of iniquity.” The smile turned sheepish. “It really depended on who was talking. We had a rector by the name of Black. He didn’t think much of cities, not in his sermons. Sodom and Gomorrah, in his view. Which only made cities seem all the more attractive to us, the younger ones. Come to think of it, I don’t believe many people out here had been to Cardiff either. Well, it was a seaport, you know. And they are notoriously evil places.”

  We laughed, and then I went up to put on the apron I’d ironed just that morning, brushed my coat, took some polish to my boots, and with my nurse’s cap, set out.

  It was farther than I’d expected. I’d walked past Mr. Griffith’s cottage to the overlook where I could see the sweep of the pretty bay. As I continued down the incline, the wind toyed with my skirts and cap, and I was glad I’d brought my gloves, because it still had a bite to it. I came to the now derelict coast guard buildings. I wondered if they’d kept a boat in the bay or down by The Worm. Or if they were just a watch station, keeping an eye on whatever ships were crossing the sea, reporting any enemy vessels but not giving chase themselves.

  I decided they were there simply to keep watch, because I could see no way to get down to the bay from up here.

  And the station wasn’t all that large. Thirty men? Possibly forty, to maintain twenty-four hours’ watch. They would require quarters, barracks, kitchens, dining hall, watch rooms, and equipment. I walked over to the front of the building and peered in the lower windows.

  The interior was bare, what I could see of it, with the exception of stacks of iron cots in one large room, and stacks of tables in another. A desk and chairs in what must have been an office. But the windows had been painted over so that I could only look through the scratches in the paint. They would have had to be blacked out, or they’d have been seen, lit at night, far out to sea.

  For all I knew, the coast guard might have sites all around the end of the headland where they stood watch by turns, keeping an eye on sea traffic. But the question was, how did they alert anyone, if there had been anything of importance to see out there? A submarine charging batteries, enemy war ships, or even troop carriers. These bays and headlands, like areas in southeastern England and even in Cornwall, were ideal places to land spies and saboteurs.

  The coast guard must have had radio or telegraph facilities, and I looked, finding where the wires were attached to one end of the buildings. But the wires were gone, and there must not have been high poles, too easy to identify through field glasses, a warning that the Navy had a post somewhere out here. Perhaps they were somewhere inland. Too bad the telegraph hadn’t been left for the village to use.

  I’d put off my errand long enough and walked on.

  In the distance, The Worm was so vividly green in the sun that I could see just how raiders from Ireland or even the Vikings might give it a wide berth. A living thing, waiting for them to come within reach.

  I wondered that The Worm hadn’t had the opposite effect—with a private dragon like that to protect the people living out here, there must be something worth protecting. That could have made the peninsula appear to be an even more tempting target.

  The cottage was still a good forty yards away. How on earth had Ellen’s elderly grandfather managed out here with no one to keep an eye on him or see to his needs? How had he managed that incline to attend services at the village church?

  Why had he chosen such an isolated bit of land?

  Finally I was close enough to see it well. There was a touring car at the door, large enough for several people, and the shutters were hooked back, letting light into the rooms. The cottage was only one story, but it rambled
, as if it had been added to over time. I could see smoke coming out of several of the chimneys, and I walked up the overgrown path to the door, knocking on the wood frame.

  The cottage was a weathered gray, in need of paint, but since no one lived here, it wasn’t surprising that it hadn’t been kept up over the years. Still, it seemed sound enough, I thought, built to withstand the storms and stay dry.

  No one came, and so I knocked again.

  Finally the door opened, and a woman stood there, staring coldly at me. I wondered if this was Ellen.

  Or if she’d brought someone with her. How full had the motorcar been, coming down?

  A worry, that!

  But in a way she fit the description that Rachel had given me. I put her age at thirty-one or -two, perhaps as old as thirty-five. That should be about right. She was fairly tall, slim and dark-haired, with a face that might have been quite pretty once but now had harsh lines around the eyes and the mouth, as if life hadn’t been kind to her. She was wearing a very attractive dark green woolen dress cut in a fashionable style, and there was a pretty shawl around her shoulders that reminded me a little of the shawls that Rachel made, although the colors were not as soft and full of light. Still, the effect was one of money and position.

  “Ellen Marshall?” I smiled, introduced myself, and asked for a moment of her time.

  “Are you collecting for your service?” she asked, frowning.

  “No, I’d come to the village to look in on a former patient, and now I need to return to Swansea as soon as possible. My leave is nearly up, and I’m expected at the clinic in Gloucestershire. But I’ve discovered that there’s no way to inform the firm to send my driver back for me.” There was no reason to tell her I’d been more or less stranded here. “I was wondering if you might have room in your motorcar to carry me as far as Swansea. Or perhaps you could carry a message to the firm for me?”

  I found myself hurrying through my explanation because she was standing there glaring, giving me no indication that she cared a whit about my situation—much less intended to help me.