by John Wilcox
They were silent for a moment and then he spoke. “Why do you remember, or know, about these previous lives and I don’t? Why can you recall easily, but I can’t?”
“Ah, Will, I do not know. Some of us, I think, are more sensitive than others. But we all need a little help. I was helped when I was a little girl.
“Who helped you?”
“He was my uncle. He died many years ago.”
“I suppose he was your son or your half-sister first time round, eh?”
Marie pushed him away and frowned again, more sternly. “You make fun of me again, Will.”
He realised he had gone too far and cupped her hand in both of his and brought it to his lips. “Yes I do, and I am sorry. I really am. But I can’t resist it. It all seems so very strange – and, to be honest, a bit barmy. All this changing of roles. It’s hard to believe, you know.”
She shrugged. “I do not know why. We cannot control how or where we are born. But those who love very much, very deeply, or have other close relationships do seem to stay together, in the same circle, in their various lives.”
“And Henri – Jean – what about him? Is he able to… er… regress, like you?”
“I am not sure. He only lived in the one life I can remember, at the time of Agincourt, but we do not talk about it. I sometimes feel that he knows and even that, perhaps, he half-recognised you when you appeared hiding on the field of the battle. But I cannot be certain.”
“Hmm. What about the third, the last time we were together?”
“Yes, that is very clear to me – much clearer than our time as Cathars. This was also at a time of war: when Napoleon was leading France at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. You were… now, you will not believe this.”
“Try me.”
She giggled. “Will, you were a French seaman fighting against the British and you were captured by the English navy and put into prison at Portsmouth.”
He put his hand to his face to suppress a grin.
“There. See, you are laughing again.” She took his hand and put it to her cheek. “Will, this is real. To me it is as real as looking at you today. I can see you now in thick white pantaloons, cut at the knee and with a striped shirt… what is it? Yes, jersey… and a black belt with a big silver buckle.” She looked at him through her lashes. “You were very handsome, Will.”
“Glad to hear it. And what – who – were you?”
“This is funny also, mon cher, and I will allow you to laugh at it this time. I was an English girl living in Hampshire.”
He did laugh, throwing back his head. “I am sorry, my darling, but I cannot imagine you as a Hampshire country dumpling, try as I might. You are much too French, much too Gallic and just, well, not English, although you speak the language perfectly.”
“Yes, well, you were the Gallic one then, although I cannot understand why you cannot speak French now. I have always believed that my English is good now – if it is good, that is, Will – because, deep inside me, I can recall it.”
“Oh your English is impeccable, my sweet. Now, tell me – because I really want to know – about you and me back in 1800 or whatever.”
“Well,” Marie pulled a piece of grass and sucked at the end, “you were brought into Portsmouth and put into a prison ship there, for quite a long time, perhaps a year or more. Then you were put out onto the land to work and we met when you came to my father’s farm to help with the harvesting. I remember,” she threw back her head and her eyes shone, “it was a wonderful summer and the sun seemed to shine every day. The sky was always blue and in the evening, when my father thought I was visiting a cousin in the next village, we went for long walks, through the woods and across the fields, among the wild flowers.”
They sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Gladwin said, “Oh, how I wish I could recall it, Marie! I wish I could but I can’t.”
She shook her head and her eyes glistened. “Of course not. It is not easy. Do not worry.”
“And then, what happened then?”
“Then? Ah yes. Peace was declared. It was a short peace because Bonaparte broke it and we all went back to war again. But the peace was long enough for you to be sent back to France in exchange for English prisoners.”
“But – we met again, after the war…?”
Slowly she shook her head. “No, Will. That did not happen.”
“Tell me. Not something awful…?”
She nodded. “I had your child, Will. A little boy. I was in disgrace, of course, with my parents and in the village and I had a bad pregnancy. It was very hard, dear Will, because you were the enemy, of course. I was very young – only sixteen – and I died in childbirth. Our son died, too. I do not remember him.”
Gladwin looked at her in horror. Within seconds, Marie’s story had changed from a part-mythical, half-believable saga of long ago to a real tragedy suffered by someone he loved very much. Looking at the tears trickling down the cheeks of the young woman facing him, any sense of disbelief that he harboured disappeared completely. He held her in her arms and rocked her gently on the cold ground.
They stayed that way for perhaps two minutes, she now sobbing and he murmuring words of comfort and endearment. Eventually, she pulled away gently, wiped her eyes and stood.
“So you see, dear Will, how I knew you immediately when we met this time. I had been waiting so long. I had married Henri because he was so persistent and I knew that I could help him here – and I was not sure that you would come this time. But I have always been waiting for you.” She wiped her cheeks and looked down at him with an expression of fierce possession. “And this time, Will, we shall be together and have a full life. I know it. It must be. I have waited so long…” Her voice tailed away into a sob.
He struggled to his feet and held her. They stayed locked that way until Gladwin gently began leading her back to the farmhouse.
CHAPTER 7
Kathleen looked about her with consternation. Emerging from the tube at Trafalgar Square was like stepping onto another planet. The train journey had been bad enough, with its two changes and the anxiety of finding her way onto different platforms to find trains which bore no sign whatsoever of their destination – how were you supposed to know where they were going when you couldn’t understand a word of the gabbled station announcements? But nothing had prepared her for the bustle of this big central point of the whole empire. Huge red buses, black taxi cabs, pre-war cars still wearing their black-out masks, horses and carts – the latter more more familiar to her– they all oleaginously stirred around Nelson’s Column with no apparent urgency, emitting fumes and noise. The pavements were worse. She clung to the iron railings that marked the beginning of the descent to the tube, half fearful that she would be swept into the surging mass of people that hurried by, intent, seemingly unlike the traffic, on getting somewhere very, very quickly. Hereford, her only previous experience of a big city, had never been like this.
She looked again at the scrap of paper in her hand. It was headed ‘The Air Ministry, Northumberland Avenue, London SW1’. No number. Fred had told her that Northumberland Avenue was off Trafalgar Square and that she would easily find it, but which way to go? The Square seemed huge. Which of the many spokes from this teeming hub was Northumberland Avenue? She could be here for hours and miss her train home. She consulted her watch. Only two hours to go!
She waited until she saw a man in Air Force blue approaching. He would know. She stepped out. “Excuse me,” she said, “but could you direct me to the Air Ministry?”
“The what?”
“The Air Ministry.”
He pulled a lugubrious face. “Sorry, duck. Got no idea.” And he walked on without a backward glance.
Kathleen frowned. Fancy an airman in London not knowing where the Air Ministry was! A policeman, that’s what she wanted. But, although there were plenty of uniforms swarming towards her, the familiar domed helmet and dark blue were nowhere in evidence. Well,
she said to herself, it’s no use hanging on to this rail like a child in a swimming pool; you’re a grown woman, Kathleen Gladwin, walk out and find this blinking Northumberland Avenue. It can’t be far.
And so it proved: a wide thoroughfare lined with huge granite buildings marked by sandbags still guarding their entrances and, despite the fact that bombing had stopped months ago, their windows still carrying strips of 1939 sticky tape. Finding the Air Ministry, however, was another matter and it took several abortive climbs of massive steps and enquiries of commissionaires before she found her destination.
“Excuse me,” she said to the RAF policeman on duty at the door, “but I’ve come to see Squadron Leader Lansbury.”
“Who?”
“Squadron Leader Lansbury. I’ve come to talk to him about my husband, see.”
The policeman smiled. “Well,” he said, “I’m not exactly acquainted personally with that officer, but if you go inside and talk to the Sergeant at the desk on the right I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.”
Kathleen took her turn in the big, echoing entrance hall waiting until the desk Sergeant could talk to her. “What department is he, Miss… er… Madam?”
“Oh, I don’t know that. Just the Air Ministry.”
“Well, do you have an appointment?” The Sergeant’s tone had now become distinctly peremptory. A queue was stretching behind Kathleen.
“No, but he said he would be happy to give me more information when he could. He said so in this letter, see.”
Kathleen handed the letter to the Sergeant who took it with a sigh and read it. He looked up. “Ah, your husband. Missing is he?” His manner was now that of a concerned parent. “Now, just you take a seat on that bench there while I try and trace the officer concerned. I can’t promise that he’ll be there or that he can see you, mind.” A startled thought occurred to him. “Here – you haven’t come from…” he consulted the letter, “Brecon on the off chance that he’ll see you, have you?”
“Yes. The letter says that he would be happy to give me more information and it’s been more than a month since I had the telegram, like.”
“Oh lord! Well, just take a seat and I’ll do my best.”
His best was good enough because within four minutes Kathleen found herself in a small, badly-furnished office on the third floor, sitting facing Squadron Leader Lansbury, a lookalike for Frank Phillips, the announcer – the short one – with his round spectacles and scrubby little moustache. Kathleen felt somehow comforted.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Gladwin?”
“Ooh, thank you. That would be lovely. I’ve had nothing since leaving Brecon at eight this morning.”
“Then I think we can perhaps manage a biscuit as well.” He went to the door and spoke quietly to the WAAF Corporal sitting in an outer office. “Now.” He sat down and ran the flat of his hand over the few oiled strands of hair that did nothing to cover a pink tonsure. He was, Kathleen surmised, forty or so. Clearly not aircrew, although he was a Squadron Leader, an heroic rank she always associated with Spitfires and Hurricanes, Douglas Bader and people like that.
“I am afraid, Mrs Gladwin, that I have no real further news for you. I just wish that perhaps you could have telephoned me first, before making this long journey.”
Kathleen shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, well. We don’t have a phone, of course, and the public one at the end of our street has been out of order for the duration, see. I suppose I could have p’raps used one in the factory where I work but I didn’t like to ask because it would have been long distance, wouldn’t it, and expensive? So, in the end, I thought the best thing was to come and see you and…” her voice tailed away a little… “see what hope there was, like. Always better to talk face to face, I say.”
Lansbury smiled. “Of course. Difficult to do, mind you, in times like these, but I know what you mean. Ah, the tea. Good. Mildred has managed to get a sandwich as well. Splendid. Now, let’s see. Let me tell you all we know.” He consulted a cardboard file and read in silence for a while. Then he looked up at her, blinking behind his glasses. “Your husband’s Lancaster was shot down on the way home, somewhere over the Pas-de-Calais – that’s quite near the French coast at the Channel, you know. Damned bad luck, in fact.”
His voice was kindly but measured and Kathleen could sense that what was coming was not going to be particularly acceptable. She gripped the tea mug tightly.
“We had reports from other aircraft on that trip that two parachutes were seen leaving the aircraft. Now, that can’t be verified. It could mean that others also got out or, I’m afraid, it could have been an erroneous report: a scrap of cloud being mistaken for a parachute canopy, that sort of thing. What we do know for certain is that Flight Lieutenant Gladwin’s aircraft did not return from its mission, and that it must have crashed.”
Now,” he leaned forward. “Forgive me for speaking bluntly…”
“Oh, I’d rather you did,” interrupted Kathleen. “It’s the not knowing that so terrible, see.”
“Of course. I quite understand. The trouble is that we don’t know anything for certain at all and, Mrs Gladwin, it is not the Air Ministry’s job to speculate, you know. Formally, I am not supposed to be talking to you like this at all, but you have made such a long journey that I want to be as helpful to you as I can.”
“Yes. Thank you very much, sir. I am very grateful, indeed I am.”
“No, no.” He stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “Anyway, the likely options or chances for your husband are these – and this is where I am forced to be frank.” He put began using his fingers to enumerate. “One: he was unlucky and went down with the aircraft and was killed. Two: he escaped, landed safely and was captured by the Germans and was placed in a Prisoner of War camp. Three: he landed safely, was captured and was shot out of hand by the Gestapo. Four: he landed safely and managed to gain help from the French underground – the resistance fighters – and they are trying to smuggle him home through the system they have established for just this purpose. There could be other options but these are the likeliest ones. Sounds a bit brutal, I know, but you should know these facts, although please don’t quote me.”
He sat back in his chair and Kathleen frowned as she tried to assimilate what she had been told. Lansbury was looking at her over his glasses. She was obviously meant to respond at this point.
“Oh dear,” she said and took a sip of tea. “What… er… usually happens when they are shot down, then?”
The Squadron Leader lifted his eyebrows. “Depends on lots of things: how badly the plane was hit, how high it was when it was struck, whether the survivors fell into the hands of the German army or of the Gestapo, or were handed over to the Gestapo, and, I suppose, how enterprising our chap is in terms of surviving and getting help from the French resistance. Now, trying again to weigh the chances: we know – or we think we know – that two chaps got out of the kite, so your husband has a two-in-seven chance of being one of the parachutists. So far, only a few aircrew have been executed by the Gestapo, although I have to say that it looks as though this disgraceful practice is growing as our raids increase in intensity. And, if he has been able to contact the resistance and gets put into one of the escape lines, then he has a fifty-fifty chance of getting out, according to our recent experience.”
“When will I know?”
He shrugged. “I wish I could tell you. Usually, we hear pretty quickly, via the Red Cross, if a chap has been killed or been put in the bag – that’s a POW camp. But, forgive me, if he has crashed in a burning plane there is often not even an identification disc that can be salvaged, so we never do know for certain. Only time will tell. And, if he is on the escape route, often we don’t know till he turns up in Spain or Switzerland or wherever. So, I should say you could know within three months if the news is bad in terms of his death being confirmed, or good in that he’s gone into the bag. Much later, though – perhaps, say, six months or even longer – if he has managed to escape. So
rry, but I can’t be more precise.
Kathleen drew in her breath and her eyes widened. “So… perhaps I might never, ever know?”
“That is a possibility, I’m afraid, although assumptions have to be made, of course, after a certain period of time...” his matter-of-fact tone slipped into embarrassment for the first time, “for legal reasons, and that sort of thing, you know.”
“Yes, well, thank you.” Slowly, she placed her mug onto the edge of his desk, then gave him a sharp glance. “What do you think of his chances, then?”
“What? Oh…” Lansbury began to reply, then thought better of it. “I’m sorry, Mrs Gladwin but I honestly couldn’t say. I wouldn’t wish to give you false hope, you know. That would be very wrong of me. On the other hand, your husband was a fine chap, DFC and all that, and very experienced. If he did manage to bale out, I would back him to survive. Try and be positive, if you can, my dear.”
“Be positive. Yes. Well, thank you. You have been very kind.”
“Another cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. I have a long way to go and much to think about. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Not at all. I promise that as soon as we know anything at all we will contact you. Now, Mildred will see you out. Have a safe journey home.”
*
Kathleen stood on the steps outside the building and, for the first time, allowed a tear to trickle down her cheek. She dabbed it with a handkerchief but as soon as the RAF policeman began to move towards her, a concerned look on his face, she blew her nose and slipped back into the continuous mass of people crowding the pavement below. She wanted to be anonymous and just get back home.
At Paddington she found her train well enough this time and she closed her eyes as it pulled out of the station. A strange maelstrom of thoughts swirled around in her head. What had she learned? Little enough in consequence, but it had been worth the journey. She doubted if the kindly Squadron Leader would have been so confiding – even with the very few facts he possessed – if she had telephoned him from the factory. Fred had offered to let her use the phone in his office and it wasn’t the cost that had daunted her. It was the fact that she was always uncomfortable using the phone and she just knew that she would not have been able to think, with just that voice coming into one ear. Now, after looking into those sympathetic but still slightly embarrassed eyes behind the spectacles, she sensed that Bill had gone. Her Bill, cold, awkward Bill, her husband, was almost certainly dead. The chances of him surviving had to be so small that he must be dead. She knew – although Bill had never told her – she had read that the German fighters always went for the rear gunners first, to put them out of action so that they could attack the bomber from behind at leisure. If only two men had escaped from the blazing plane then the odds were that Bill wasn’t one of them. The husband of Doreen Evans, her in Assembly at the factory, had been a navigator who had been shot down over Germany. Within a month, she had learned that he was safely in a Prisoner of War camp. A month. She counted the days on her fingers. It was nearly five weeks now since that telegram had come. She would have been told if he had been captured. There seemed little grounds for hope.”
