The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘It’s something big,’ Mavis had told her. ‘They’re concentrating on the ports and the Rhineland. Night after night, they’ll go on – as long as the weather holds.’

  At East Markham, they’d be getting ready too. Maybe at this very moment, Danny was climbing into his aircraft, squeezing himself into the rear-gunner’s turret.

  Kate closed her eyes for a brief moment and groaned aloud. Tears squeezed themselves from beneath her eyelids. Despite everything, she loved him still. ‘Dear Father in Heaven, keep him safe,’ she prayed. ‘Bring him back, just bring him back.’

  Thirty-One

  ‘CO wants you – and the car – his office – two minutes.’ ‘I’m on my way.’ Kate scrambled off the bed, pulled her skirt straight and rammed her cap over her long hair, tucking up the stray strands as she ran towards the CO’s office.

  As she came breathlessly to attention in front of his desk, she noticed at once that Philip’s handsome face looked almost grey with fatigue – and something more. His jawline seemed hard, clenched almost, as if he were trying to conceal an anger, and yet at the same time there was an infinite sadness in his blue eyes; today there was no sparkle, no hint of mischief in them.

  ‘I have to go home urgently. Er – family illness,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘Can you drive me to Lincoln to catch the train?’ Suddenly, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, dropping his head into his hands, his shoulders slumped. ‘Oh Kate – Kate! How I wish . . .’

  For a long moment there was silence in the room. Kate bit her lip uncertainly. An overwhelming longing to comfort him made her start forward, her hand fluttering towards him to touch him, but in that instant she remembered just who he was and where they were.

  ‘Sir,’ she prompted gently. ‘Your – your train?’

  He lifted his head and looked up at her and, for a long moment, their gaze held. Then he sighed deeply and rose slowly as if his limbs were leaden. ‘Let’s go,’ he said flatly, without a shred of enthusiasm in his voice.

  As she saw him on to the train, he said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back, Kate, but I’ll try to send word for you to meet me.’ He looked at her oddly for a moment, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Suddenly he clasped her hand briefly. ‘Take care of yourself while I’m gone . . .’ Then he turned swiftly away from her, leaped on to the train and slammed the door behind him.

  Kate was thoughtful as she walked out of the station. His behaviour was puzzling. Mavis had said he was married and yet Philip seemed to avoid mentioning his wife and children – if, indeed, he had any. But if he had been called home on compassionate leave – a man in his position – then someone close to him must be seriously ill.

  As she walked along the platform, she saw two women in WVS uniform setting up a trestle-table with a tea-urn, cups and saucers. She looked closely at them but they were strangers; Miss Ogden was not one of them this time.

  Outside the station, heavily protected by sandbags piled up either side of the entrance, she moved towards where the staff car was parked. She hesitated. There was no need for her to rush back to camp. Officially, she was off-duty now that she had driven Philip to the city to catch his train. She wouldn’t be missed for an hour or so. Kate bit her lip and glanced up the hill towards the cathedral standing sentinel over the city sprawling down the hill beneath it. Almost without her making a conscious decision, her steps took her up High Street and through the Stonebow. As the road began to rise she took a turning to the left in the direction where she believed the school was. All the time she’d lived in Lincoln she had never ventured anywhere near.

  It was time to lay to rest a few more ghosts from her childhood.

  She stood before the place where the school had been and gazed at the ruins before her. On either side the buildings, though damaged, were still standing. It looked as if the school had received a direct hit.

  A woman came trudging up the hill, carrying a heavy shopping basket, a child dragging at her skirt.

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ Kate began.

  The woman looked at her with tired, defeated eyes.

  ‘Do – do you know what happened to the school?’ Kate nodded towards the demolished building. The woman glanced in the same direction. ‘Bomb fell on it,’ she explained, rather unnecessarily, Kate thought. ‘Awful, it were. My old man’s an air-raid warden. Several girls and three teachers were buried. He ’ad to dig ’em out.’

  ‘Were they . . .?’

  ‘Dead? Oh, no – only the headmistress was killed. T’others were hurt, like, but they’ve got over it.’

  ‘How dreadful!’ Kate murmured automatically, but she was thinking, ‘Miss Denham is dead.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the tired woman was finding new vigour in her recounting of the event, now she had an interested listener. ‘A lovely woman, she was, the headmistress. All the girls loved her . . .’

  ‘Loved her? Miss Denham?’

  The woman’s gaze was mystified. ‘Who? Who did you say? Don’t know no Miss Denham. No, the headmistress was called Miss Ogden!’

  Kate gasped. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Knew her, did you?’

  Kate nodded, sick at heart. Immediately she felt contrite, ashamed of her moment’s fleeting glee at the thought that Miss Denham had been killed. Now she was being punished for her uncharitable thought for unkind Fate had taken the woman who had shown her genuine kindness.

  Kate continued up towards the cathedral. In the peaceful atmosphere she knelt in prayer for Miss Ogden. Outside again, she walked back down Lindum Hill in a daze, hardly knowing where she was going. Then she found herself in a street she knew very well. In the nine years she had lived in the city she had walked along it hundreds of times to and from work. Kate smiled and quickened her pace.

  The door opened upon Peggy. She stared at Kate for a moment and then gave a squeal of delight.

  ‘Kate! I hardly recognized you in your uniform . . .’ Peggy flung her arms round her and gave her a swift hug, then stood back, holding Kate by the arms. ‘Let me look at you. Oh, you do look smart.’ Excited as a young girl, Peggy almost dragged the laughing Kate through into the back room. ‘Mother, look who’s here!’

  Although she passed hurriedly through the front room, there was still time enough for Kate to notice its tidiness with a stab of disappointment; not a paper pattern nor a length of fabric to be seen – not even a stray pin. When she stepped through into the back room, she saw why. Mrs Godfrey was sitting near the fire hunched in her chair.

  ‘Mother’s not so well these days, Kate, since we lost Father,’ Peggy explained softly, and Kate nodded, understanding. The whole family had mourned the kind and gentle man. ‘But she keeps cheerful,’ Peggy was saying, ‘and she loves visitors.’

  Indeed, it seemed to be true, for at the sight of her, Mrs Godfrey’s wrinkled face seemed to light up. ‘Why, my lovely Kate. Come in and sit down. Make a cup of tea, Peg, there’s a dear. I can’t get about now, it’s my legs. What I’d do without our Peg, I don’t know,’ and her gaze went fondly to her daughter.

  The time flew by as they chatted. Mrs Godfrey wanted to know all about the family at Fleethaven Point and Kate found herself telling the two women all about the bombs, and even, though haltingly at first, about Danny’s marriage to Rosie. As she talked she was surprised to find it became easier.

  ‘I’ve just been up the hill – to look at the school.’

  ‘Really?’ Peggy could not hide the surprise in her voice.

  ‘I met Miss Ogden on the station a while back, handing out cups of tea to the soldiers. She was kind to me when I was there—’ Kate gave a wry laugh. ‘She was the only one who was, mind you.’

  ‘Ah yes, poor Miss Ogden. She took over as Principal seven or eight years ago now.’

  ‘What – what happened to Miss Denham?’

  ‘She retired. Went to live in the country with her sister who’d also been a headmistress somewhere.’

  So Miss Denham was living
somewhere comfortably in retirement, whilst poor Miss Ogden was dead.

  Sometimes, Kate thought bitterly, Fate really got it wrong!

  ‘Drive the long way round, Kate,’ Philip said as he got in beside her on his return. ‘If everything’s all right, I’m in no hurry to get back. I seem to have been away a lot longer than a week.’

  ‘Everything’s fine. There was an op on last night and everyone got back safely. Well – more or less,’ she grinned. ‘B-Baker’s undercarriage jammed and he had to do a belly-landing. Honestly, Jeff landed that kite as if it were a glider.’

  ‘He’s a great pilot.’ There was a pause and then he added softly, ‘And how about you? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’

  It was already dark as she drove up the hill and out on to the Wragby road. About five miles from Suddaby, in open country, Philip said, ‘Pull in over there, Kate. Let’s take a breather.’

  She drew the car to a halt on the wide grass verge. Below them the ground sloped away across fields of ripening corn, almost ready for harvesting, yet in the light from the full, bright moon in a clear sky the countryside seemed different shades of grey. With a shock, Kate realized it was almost a year since she and Danny had joined up.

  ‘A bomber’s moon, Kate,’ Philip murmured, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I wonder where they’re headed for tonight?’

  ‘Who? Us – or them?’

  He gave a wry laugh. ‘Both! It’s mad, isn’t it? It’s all absolutely mad. A waste of young lives.’

  ‘But, sir . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m as patriotic as the next man and I know full well what we have to do. But – oh, dear Lord – just sometimes I get so sick and tired, so desperately tired, of seeing all those fine young men flying off into the sky and knowing that by the law of averages some aren’t going to come back.’

  ‘I know – I feel exactly the same sometimes.’

  ‘I thought you did,’ he said, so quietly that she almost didn’t catch his words. In the car, side by side, there was an intimacy between them that had nothing to do with a commanding officer and his driver.

  Kate was emboldened to ask softly, the use of his Christian name coming naturally at this moment, ‘And how about you, Philip? How are things with your family?’

  He gave a long, deep sigh. ‘So-so,’ he replied, his tone non-committal.

  Kate stared at him but his face was in heavy shadow and she could not read his expression. Questions buzzed around her brain, but Philip volunteered no more and she could hardly pursue the matter.

  He pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to pack it, more, it seemed, to give his hands something to do, rather than because he needed to smoke it. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked her, indicating the pipe.

  ‘No – no, of course not.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said in staccato clauses between puffs, ‘we had – better be – getting back.’

  As she started the engine and eased the car off the grass verge and down the incline, Philip said suddenly, ‘Am I imagining things, or is that aircraft?’

  Kate opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment a small bomb fell into the road about two hundred yards in front of them. The whole world seemed to explode in a flash and Kate gave a cry and swerved. The car bounced across the grass verge and settled, nose-first, into a ditch. Kate groaned and thought, irrationally at such a moment, there I go again falling back into my bad ways!

  ‘Out the car, quick!’ Philip was out of his side and scrambling round to the driver’s side. He tugged at the door. ‘Open the door, Kate.’

  ‘I can’t – it’s stuck.’

  ‘Slide across to the other side,’ he shouted, and struggled back round the car again. He bent and reached in to grasp her hand and pull her out. She fell out of the car into his arms.

  ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’

  ‘No – no . . .’

  ‘Come on then, we must get away from this car. If a bomb drops on this, we’ll be toast.’

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her after him, thrusting a way through the hedge and into the cornfield. They waded through the waist-high corn until they were almost in the centre of the field and well away from the car. Above them, the sound of an aircraft came steadily nearer.

  ‘Down, Kate, down!’ Even as he spoke, Philip pushed her to the ground and flung himself on top of her, his body shielding hers, his hands covering her head protectively.

  The bomb fell a hundred yards from them, and the earth shook beneath them. Soil erupted and spattered down all around, and they could smell the burning cordite. Kate gave a shriek and put her arms round Philip’s back, burying her face into his neck. The noise of the plane was growing fainter, yet they lay there tense and waiting for the sound of more bombers.

  ‘I think,’ Philip murmured, ‘they’ve gone.’ They could smell the burning crater but now there was a beautiful silence, the whispering wind rippling through the corn and the pitiful cries of birds, disturbed from sleep and flying in disorientated circles above them, the only sounds. Philip shifted his weight a little, but made no effort to get up. He put his right arm under her neck and the other around her waist and bent his face towards her. ‘Oh, Kate, Kate . . .’ Then he was kissing her, gently at first and then with increasing urgency.

  Her arms were about his neck and she twisted her body towards him. She felt him unbutton her jacket and suddenly his hand was warm and gentle on her breast. His fingertips, trembling slightly, caressed her nipple which hardened immediately under his touch. Her lips parted and his kiss became deeper, probing, yet tender.

  ‘Oh, Kate, I love you, I need you . . .’

  She was returning his kisses with matching ardour, drowning in the new sensations her body was experiencing, lost to all sense and reason, awakened from innocence to the sensations of passion . . .

  ‘Oh, I wish we could stay here for ever,’ he murmured, cradling her head against his chest as he lay on his back looking up at the moon and stars. She was quiet, a gentle smile playing on her lips, savouring the tumult of emotions, enjoying the aftermath of an ecstasy she had never even guessed existed between a man and a woman. His fingers were stroking her hair, touching her cheek, and then he lifted his head to kiss the top of hers, nuzzling his face against her hair. ‘My dearest Kate.’ Then as her silence lengthened, there was an anxious question in his voice. ‘Kate?’

  She did not speak but lifted her head, seeking his mouth. She heard him groan deep in his throat. It was the answer he sought. His arms came strongly about her, pulling her on top of him.

  They made love again, slowly, savouring every moment, every touch, until desire claimed them once more.

  ‘I suppose we shall have to go,’ he said reluctantly, some time later. He got up and held out his hands to help her up. Standing, he pulled her close to him, searching her face, pale in the moonlight. Gently he bent down and kissed her forehead and then her mouth. Kate put her arms about his waist, hugging him to her. It had happened so suddenly, and yet so naturally; she had no regrets.

  They had begun to walk across the field, their arms about each other, when they heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  ‘Come on, we’d better hurry. If they spot the car, they might stop.’

  They reached the edge of the field as the RAF policeman got out of his jeep and slid down the sloping grass verge towards the staff car, nose first in the ditch.

  ‘It’s okay, we’re here,’ Philip called, holding aside the hedge for Kate to squeeze through.

  A torch was shone in their faces and then flicked off quickly. ‘Oh, sorry, sir. Are either of you hurt?’

  ‘No, we’re fine. There was an air-raid. A bomb fell on the road in front of us and we landed up in the ditch and then took cover in the field. We thought it safest to get right away from the car.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Can I give you a lift back?’

  ‘Yes, please. I just want my bag out of the car . . .’
>
  ‘I’ll get it, sir.’

  He held open the door of his jeep for Kate and Philip to climb in, closed the door, retrieved Philip’s bag and returned to his own vehicle. ‘If you say there’s been a bomb up ahead, sir, I’d better go another way. Is that all right, sir?’

  ‘Fine.’ The jeep’s engine burst into life and under cover of its noise, Philip whispered, ‘Take as long as you like.’ In the darkness, he reached for Kate’s hand and held it until they had passed through the gates of Suddaby Station.

  The next morning, with a fresh staff car, Kate drew up outside the CO’s office. Before she could get out of the car to open the rear door for him, Philip came bounding out and got into the front seat of the car, slamming the door and grinning at her. For one dreadful moment she thought he was going to kiss her there and then in front of the whole station, but instead, he leaned back against the leather seat, stretched his long legs, and gave a self-satisfied sigh.

  ‘Drive.’

  ‘Sir – shouldn’t you – er – sit in the back?’

  ‘Drive! Into the country.’

  An impish smile curved her mouth. ‘Where?’ she asked in an innocent tone. ‘To the nearest cornfield?’

  ‘Shameless hussy!’ But he was smiling fondly at her as he said it.

  Confused now, she bent to touch the starter button. ‘Sir – you really shouldn’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Can’t help it,’ he said, never taking his gaze from her. ‘I don’t know when I last felt so happy.’

  She gave a little gasp of surprise and turned to look back at him, but the look on his face told her that his words were genuine.

  She had never seen him looking so relaxed and contented. His face looked years younger and, with the lines of worry smoothed from his forehead and a sparkle in his eyes, he was even more handsome than ever.

  ‘Go back to where we parked last night and, no, I don’t mean the cornfield. The top of the hill, you know where I mean?’