The Guest Who Stayed

by Roger Penfound

  Peter and Evie honeymooned for a week near Sheringham on the east coast. It was six days of bracing walks along deserted windswept beaches and lingering meals by wood burning fires followed by leisurely nights of love making. They decided whilst on honeymoon that they wouldn’t delay starting a family. They both felt that a baby would help with their new beginning and provide a focus for their life together after the horrors of the war.

  The other important decision taken on that holiday was that Peter would accept Jed’s invitation to join him in the business, now a thriving construction company with branches in three local towns. Peter had already spent time in the business and had proved himself very capable. As an engineer by training, he was quickly able to learn the mechanics of construction. But he was also an able businessman, good with figures, calm under pressure and liked by clients. Jed had found himself increasingly relying on Peter as Jack’s health deteriorated.

  On April 7th, Jack passed away in the early hours of the morning. Jed was by his bedside and Evie was preparing a pot of tea downstairs in the parlour. Jed dozed, lulled into semi sleep by the deep sonorous gasps emitting from Jack’s diaphragm. Suddenly, they simply stopped. The silence brought Jed to a swift consciousness. He checked Jack’s pulse and felt nothing. For a few moments he simply stared at Jack – this man who had brought so much turmoil yet so much reward into his life. Because of him he now ran a successful business and was highly respected in the community. Because of him he had a daughter. Evie had told him that she would always think of him as her father. Yet for these two important gifts he had sacrificed his wife. He stood up and looked at Jack. Even in death he looked troubled. Jed bent over and kissed his forehead. Then he called for Evie.

  Less than a week later, they were all gathered again at St. Martin’s Church for the funeral. There were over thirty people present. Jack’s former drinking pals were loyal to the end and turned out in force to salute the passing of a former diehard.

  As they gathered round the grave and the Reverend Bowman committed Jack’s body to the soil – “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” – Evie thought she spotted an elderly woman dressed in a smart black suit waiting just beyond the churchyard wall watching the proceedings intently. After the committal was finished and people drifted away from the graveside, Evie watched as the woman in black walked up to the grave and stood there with her head bowed for several minutes, before turning and walking quickly away. Excusing herself, Evie ran after the woman, drawn by some deep curiosity to find out more. She reached her as she was passing through the gate and turning into the High Street.

  “Excuse me, excuse me,” gasped Evie, breathless after her dash across the churchyard. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be nosy. But I’m Jack’s, er, Jack’s – I’m Jack’s daughter. He was my father.”

  “You must be Evie then,” replied the woman in a thick foreign accent.

  “How did you know?”

  “He told me. He named you after my sister, Yvette. She died in the first war – killed by your soldiers.”

  “So, you must be …”

  “I’m Simone, her sister.”

  “But I thought you were dead too. Uncle Jack said – I mean, my father said you were both killed in a raid. They were trying to rescue you.”

  “Not us – they wanted Jack. We were better dead.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. We can’t talk here. There’s a tea shop in the High Street. Can I buy you some tea?”

  “I’ve only got an hour. I’ve got to be on the five o’clock to Norwich so that I can get my connection back to London.”

  “There’s so much I need to ask you,” exclaimed Evie as a pot of tea and two cups were placed in front of them by a waitress. “But why are you here? How did you know Uncle Jack was dead? Have you come from France?”

  “Drink your tea and I will explain,” instructed Simone, her French accent softening the command. “I am here working in London. I have been working in the office of General de Gaulle who is leader of our Free French Forces. I arrived here in June 1940 after the fall of Paris. You see, after the first war, I did not wish to marry. I knew I could never have a family, so I devoted myself to my country. I worked for the government in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, first as a secretary. But I was good and I was quickly promoted.

  When the second war came, we were divided. Some wanted to join with Marshall Petain and his collaborators to set up a new government in Vichy. Others, like me, hated the idea of collaboration with the Germans and wanted to get out. I had worked for Brigadier de Gaulle, as he then was, before the war started. So when I heard that he was going to London to set up a government in exile, I decided I must go too and join him. I got out from St. Malo on a ferry two weeks before the terrible evacuation from Dunkirk and helped the General set up his office. Now the war is over, I must return and help him again. There is important work for me to do. France has been ravished. I am leaving on Thursday.”

  “Did Uncle Jack know you were here? Had you been in touch before?” asked Evie.

  “Only at the end – about six weeks ago. Before that I hadn’t seen him since 1917.”

  “What made you contact him again?”

  “Curiosity. And unfinished business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you wanted to know what happened to Jack – your real father. What do you already know?”

  Evie drained the tea from her cup and tried to order her thoughts.

  “Well, I know he fought in the war and was involved in espionage. I know he was caught and badly tortured. He believed he was responsible for your deaths too, you and Yvette. I think he was in love with Yvette.”

  “You are right but also wrong. You see Jack was in love with Yvette but she wasn’t in love with him. She despised him. When Jack met Yvette in a bar in 1916 and tried to recruit her for espionage work, she saw it as an opportunity for revenge.”

  “Why revenge? What had Jack done to her?”

  “Jack had done nothing. It wasn’t Jack – it was the English. First, you need to understand Yvette. She was pretty, she was charming and everyone loved her. Unlike me – I was plain, not very clever and people ignored me. My parents made it clear who they preferred. But Yvette was scheming, always using people to get what she wanted. Two years before the war she met a young Englishman who had come to stay in a nearby chateau to improve his French. Robert, I think his name was. They were both young – she was eighteen and he was nineteen. Yvette fell for him. He was handsome, he came from a wealthy family and she wanted to marry him. So she used all her wiles to trap him. For a young man it was impossible to resist. Whatever my sister did, she did well. And that included sex. The poor boy didn’t stand a chance. Soon Yvette was pregnant and she thought she had him. But she hadn’t reckoned with his parents – aristocrats I think you call them. Well, they arrived all posh and arrogant and said there was no chance of their son marrying Yvette. It would ruin their plans for him. So they paid my parents – I don’t know how much but it was a lot – to bring up the baby. Then they left with Robert.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “She was born later that year. But she died within a matter of days. Apparently, she suffocated in my sister’s bed.”

  There was a pause.

  “Do you think she just died in the bed?” asked Evie cautiously.

  “Who knows?” replied Simone with a brusque flick of her wrist. “It happened. It was probably for the best. Soon after that my parents became ill and died within months of each other. They wouldn’t have been around to look after the baby and Yvette certainly wasn’t going to look after her.”

  “But how does all this affect Jack? Why did she want to take revenge on him?”

  “Because she hated all English men. That’s how she was. She was all or nothing. She saw it as an opportunity to get back at them all.”

  “But she had an affair with Jack. They made love. How could she do that?”

  “Oh, that was
no problem for Yvette. Sex and love were not the same thing for her. She knew how to use her body to make a man completely dependent on her and then she would use him.”

  “But she was still working with Jack, running the network, supplying information – you both were.”

  “I thought I was but that was all a sham. Yvie was working with the Germans. They knew all along what was going on and they were using us to supply false information to the English. Jack had begun to suspect that there was a leak somewhere down the line and thought it might be me. He’d always been suspicious of me and he knew that Yvette and I didn’t get on. Maybe Yvette had poisoned his mind against me.”

  Evie felt drained by the news. She suddenly felt desperately sad for Jack, believing all along that he and his men were saving lives and shortening the war but, in fact, he was simply leading them straight into a trap. And she felt sickened by Yvette in whose memory she was named. But one question still puzzled her.

  “If Yvette was collaborating with the Germans, why did they capture you both and torture you? Surely you should have been rewarded?”

  “She had served her purpose. And the Germans feared there were other groups of partisans doing the same thing. So they wanted to make an example of us. They wanted to show others what would happen to them if they collaborated with the English. So they beat us and tortured us horribly – as they did to Jack and his men. We were forced to watch as they did things to each of us. It’s something you can never forget. It wakes you in the night and you still scream in fear – just as we did then.”

  “But how did you survive, Simone? How did you escape?”

  “You heard the English organised a raiding party. Not for us – we were expendable. They wanted to get Jack and his men out before they gave away too much information. Well, just before they arrived, I had broken. Everybody has a breaking point and I had reached mine. I started telling them the names of all our agents – people we’d kept secret from them. So they dragged me off to an office in another part of the building so they could type the list. That’s like the Germans – always methodical. Then when the attack happened, I was left tied to a chair whilst my guards went to join the fight. But then the English threw their grenades into the building and brought the roof down. Yvette was killed outright and most of the Germans too. I was buried under rubble but survived. Some of our partisans got me out the next day. I was unconscious for weeks and took months to recover. But I knew I had been badly damaged inside and I knew a normal life was out of the question.”

  “So you traced Uncle Jack – my father – and you told him all of this?”

  “I had to. I didn’t know he was dying but I felt he should know the truth. I needed Jack to know that I hadn’t betrayed him. I wanted him to know that the love of his life was no sweet angel. She was scheming and self centred. I wanted him to go to his grave knowing that.”

  Evie could still sense the venom in her voice.

  “I can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through,” she began, “I just know that war is responsible for so many terrible things and for damaging so many lives. I’m married now to a man who was captured by the Japanese and badly beaten. He’s very troubled.”

  “Then you are very brave and I wish you well – both of you. Now I must go. I have told you all there is to tell.”

  “Wait! Wait a minute. How did you know that I was Jack’s daughter? Did he tell you about all the years of lying and deceit?”

  “He told me recently in a letter, yes. He was very worried that you would be furious – refuse to see him. I told him he was stupid. No girl can shut out her father – not for long. When she looks at her father she sees her husband in thirty years. Anyway, in France it is not so bad to have a lover. Many people do that.”

  “But they don’t all live in the same house together.”

  “We do what we have to do. You didn’t suffer. You had two men who loved you in different ways. Why is to be normal so good? I have to leave now to get to the station.”

  “But there’s so much still to talk about. Can I take your address?”

  “No, I don’t want to be a part of your life and it’s better for you that we don’t meet again. I’ve answered some questions for you but don’t linger in the past. Live only for the present. Let the past die with the people who made it.”

  With that she walked smartly out of the tea shop and disappeared from view.

  After Jack’s death, Flora finally agreed to marry Jed, but they decided to make their home in Flora’s house so that she wouldn’t be confronted on a daily basis with spectres from the past. Evie and Peter set about modernising Hope Cottage and preparing it for the family they hoped to raise there. The cottage was greatly improved, with a new kitchen and living area. An extension was built to the side of the house with a modern bathroom and an extra bedroom. Jed’s old work shop was demolished and a double garage erected to house Peter’s pride and joy, an Alvis Speed 25, which he kept in mint condition and only took out onto the open country lanes of Norfolk in the height of summer. As Hope Cottage grew and regenerated, Evie and Peter looked forward with great contentment to their future.

  When Evie found out that she was pregnant in late November 1947, friends and family alike were delighted. Only in the inner family, where the secret of Evie and Peter’s kinship was a closely guarded secret, were there unspoken worries.

  Michael was born in August 1948. As she lay exhausted in the delivery suite at the cottage hospital, Evie sensed something was wrong. She had heard the baby cry but still the doctor and midwife hadn’t brought the baby to her. They were huddled around the bundled infant talking in hushed voices. Then suddenly Peter was in the room, drawn into the huddle.

  “Peter, Peter, what’s going on? Somebody tell me.” Evie called out in anguish.

  Peter turned and came straight to her side. He took hold of her hand.

  “It’s a little boy. He’s beautiful. But he’s got an impediment. One of his legs isn’t formed properly. I’m so sorry, darling.”

  In the days that followed, with countless visits by specialists and consultations with doctors, they learned that with time the deformity could be corrected. It would take many years and countless operations but by the time he was in his mid teens, the doctors had confidence that he would be walking.

  After the initial grief, Evie and Peter came to terms with the situation and determined that they would do all they could to give their son a full and happy life. And so began a period which, in many ways, were golden years. Evie and Peter decided that they had better not have any more children and so all their attention was devoted to Michael. Soon, every conceivable place of interest in Norfolk had been visited and the three of them ventured further to seek out new adventures and interesting places to explore.

  Flora and Jed happily settled into the role of grandparents and provided back up and child care as it was needed. Flora had lost touch with Emma. The rift came soon after Jed had written to Emma in Mississippi telling her that Jack was her father. He felt that this was the right thing to do when Evie learnt the truth about her own paternity. But whilst it had been possible to help Evie come to terms with the news and adapt to her new identity, Emma was far away in an alien culture and there was no way to support her and help her through the emotional turmoil and anger which would result from the news.

  Autumn 1952

  It was a normal morning. Peter was preparing to go to the office and Michael was playing with his cars on the floor of his bedroom. Evie shouted to Peter from the bathroom.

  “Peter, come here quickly. I want you.”

  She was standing by the bathroom mirror with her skirt on but no top.

  “Peter, I think I’ve found a lump. Look, here in my right breast. See what you think.” Peter felt a damp perspiration form over his forehead as he placed his fingers gently on Evie’s right breast. This is what they had always feared but seldom spoken about. Alice had died of breast cancer and probably her mother before her.


  “I can feel something but it’s probably nothing. I’m sure I’ve read that most breast lumps are just fatty tissue – nothing to be worried about. Perhaps you should pop down to see Dr. Morgan, though.”

  “No, Peter. I want you to take me to the hospital. I don’t want to take any chances. Will you take me this morning?”

  It was a week before the tests were completed and then the terrible news from the consultant.

  “I’m afraid the news isn’t good. The tumour is malignant and we fear it may be an aggressive strain of cancer. I’m so sorry.”

  Their world once more was plunged into turmoil and despair.

  “How much pain can one family take?” cried Peter one night as he stood outside the house venting his anger on the vast black void above him.

  Slowly the need to plan and prepare took over from the anguish. Evie was offered treatment but decided she wasn’t prepared to suffer for what would probably be only a few months added onto her life.

  Evie was nursed at home and she and Peter spent precious hours together in her final days.

  “Talk about me to Michael will you, please, Peter? Keep me alive in his mind. I’d rather I lived through your lips than through letters. Tell him how much I loved him and tell him how much I loved you too. I want him to know that we really were in love.”

  The Guest Who Stayed: Chapter 23 – August 1960

  The swell from the grey sea rocked the liner slowly from side to side as she ploughed through the featureless ocean. Emma stood on the small third class promenade deck. The cold seeped through her coat but it was better than the claustrophobic quarters in which she was forced to make this return trip across the Atlantic.

  She thought back to her previous crossing, a ‘bride ship’ they’d called it, with hundreds of other girls like her going to the United States to join their GI husbands and sweethearts. How full of hope and excitement she’d been. How happy to leave a dismal and gloomy Britain at the end of six years of war.