by Mary Nichols
‘That’s why I can’t turn him out.’ She was very conscious of the warmth of his hand. In the three weeks they had been working together and, to all intents and purposes, living together, it was the first time he had touched her in that way. It made her realise the way her feelings were going and it shocked her. ‘But you must maintain your cover, don’t let it slip, not even with me.’
‘I’ll get a message through to London tomorrow, get them to check him out. They’ll tell us what to do about him.’
Etienne had been dropped to be his wireless operator and he had regular schedules for contacting London. His was the most dangerous job of all and he flitted about from one place to another in the suburbs of Paris, living in safe houses and pensions, one step ahead of the German detector vans. They met only when Max had something to transmit or was expecting instructions from London. The other agent was Anne Barnard who had joined them as a courier. Like Etienne, she was here, there and everywhere.
The circuit was growing all the time. Justine’s principal, Giles Chalfont, had turned out to be a real find. He was thin as a rake, with keen blue eyes and an aura of calmness which was just what was needed to restrain the more hot-headed of the group. He had been instrumental in recruiting and vetting volunteers and they were planning sabotage on an ammunition train and for that they were expecting a drop of explosives, guns, ammunition and money. They could do without the added complication of Roger Wainbridge, if that was his real name. Perhaps it really was Otto Bergman.
‘You’d better go to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll doss down on the sofa. I’ll be gone at first light.’
Chapter Ten
‘Lucy, tell me about your mother,’ Amy said. It was the week before Christmas and she had gone to spend a few off-duty hours with Lucy and Peter. The little one was pulling himself up on his feet now, shuffling round the furniture; it would not be long before he walked. He was a lovable little lad, chubby with good health and a smile to melt the hardest heart. He recognised her now and always held up his arms to her when she arrived. Now she was sitting on the sofa with him on her lap, determined to solve the riddle of Lucy’s missing mother. The girl was lonely, feeling the stigma of having a child out of wedlock, and she was wary of making friends in case the truth came out. It was sad that Jack saw so little of her and their son; as far as Amy knew he had not followed her advice and told their parents. It would soon be Christmas and after that Peter’s first birthday; surely he would find some way of commemorating that?
‘My mother, why?’ She had covered the kitchen table with an old folded blanket and was busy ironing Peter’s playsuits and the sheets from his cot.
‘I wondered if she could be found. Wouldn’t you like to be reunited with her?’
‘Yes, but she wouldn’t want to know me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of … Oh, you know.’
‘Peter, you mean? I’m sure no loving mother would hold that against you.’
‘How do I know she is a loving mother, she left me behind, didn’t she?’
Amy detected a degree of bitterness in her tone. ‘Maybe she couldn’t help it. Maybe she was prevented somehow. Maybe she thought you would be better off with Mr Storey. You’ll never know if you don’t try to find her.’
‘He’s had her declared dead.’
‘I know, but that doesn’t mean she is dead, does it?’
‘I suppose not, but it would mean he’s a bigamist.’
‘That’s his problem, not yours. So, tell me about her.’
‘I thought she was lovely, she smelt of lavender. She said it was her favourite perfume. When she put me to bed she would cuddle me and tell me stories about a big house and happy children who had all sorts of exciting adventures, climbing trees, going boating, swimming in the river, holidays by the sea.’
‘A real house? Real children?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t say. She could have been making it up. She often said I’d grow up to be a real lady. I didn’t know what she meant, but after she left, Pa would complain she had filled my head with nonsense and said the sooner I forgot the stories the better.’
‘Did something happen to make her leave?’
‘I don’t know. I know they quarrelled a lot and it frightened me, especially when Pa got angry. He shouted at her and once I saw him hit her. Then one day she disappeared while I was at school. I was eight years old. Pa said she wasn’t coming back. He said she was no better than she should be …’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, except I guessed it was nasty.’
‘Do you think he really knows where she is?’
Amy watched as Lucy switched off the iron, climbed on a chair to take the plug out of the light socket and replace the bulb. ‘I don’t know,’ she said clambering down off the chair and switching on the light. ‘If he does, then he shouldn’t have had her declared dead, should he?’
‘No, he shouldn’t. Do you think he’d lie about that?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know the truth?’
‘I’ve thought about it a lot. When I suggested to Pa that we ought to try and find her, he got very angry. In any case, I’ve no idea how to go about it.’ She picked Peter off Amy’s lap. ‘It’s time he was in bed.’
It was almost as if she didn’t want to talk about it, but Amy, having begun the conversation, was disinclined to let it drop. She followed Lucy up the stairs to the little back room and watched her as she put the child in his cot and tucked him up.
‘Do you know your mother’s maiden name or where they were married?’ Amy persisted.
‘No. We lived in a place called Eccles. I had to learn the address when I started school in case I got lost and needed to ask the way, but that doesn’t mean she was married there.’
‘What was the address? Do you still remember it?’
Lucy laughed. ‘When you learn things as a child, they stick, don’t they? It was number two Station Road, Eccles.’ She kissed Peter. ‘Now you be a good boy and go to sleep. It will soon be Christmas and then you’ll have lots of presents.’
Amy was reminded of the wooden truck full of coloured bricks she had bought for him as she kissed him too and followed Lucy downstairs. She would bring it on Christmas Day after she came off duty. She would be working the early shift and there wouldn’t be time to go home. It would be the first time she had ever been away from home at Christmas and she would miss the fun at Nayton Manor. But with Lizzie still in France, Jack liable to be on duty and her father once more in uniform and in London, working at the War Office, it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing was the same anymore.
‘Eccles. Where is that?’
‘I’ve no idea. I know we seemed a long time getting to Nayton when we moved, but I was only five or six, so it probably seemed longer than it was. We travelled on the removal van – Mum sat next to the driver with me on her lap. Pa was in the back. At least I imagine he was because he was with us when we arrived.’
‘Do you think you were born there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It will be on your birth certificate, surely?’
‘I haven’t got it. I left in a hurry and didn’t think of it. I can’t ever remember seeing it. Why are you asking all these questions?’
‘I’d like to have a shot at tracing your mother. Would you agree?’
‘Finding out where she came from isn’t going to help with where she’s gone, is it?’
‘It might. She might have decided to go back to her family.’
‘She always said she didn’t have anyone.’
‘It’s worth trying to find out, don’t you think?’
Lucy put the kettle on to make a cup of tea and began making sandwiches, filling them with a couple of rashers of bacon she had put into the frying pan on the gas stove. ‘You could try,’ she said, slowly. ‘But if you find her and she doesn’t want to know, that�
��s it. I shan’t try again. I know when I’m not wanted.’
Amy hurried over to her and put her arm round the girl’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘I want you and so does Jack.’ She paused. ‘What are you going to do at Christmas?’
‘I’ll be here, where else?’
‘I’ll come in the afternoon, if you like. I leave off at midday.’
‘Yes, I’d like that, and you never know, Jack might get leave.’
‘No, you never know,’ Amy agreed.
According to the station medic Jack had done more than his fair share of operations and he needed a rest if he were not to become a liability. He protested but not very forcefully; he was undoubtedly tired and the loss of one of his oldest friends the week before had hit him hard. Coming down after chasing bombers and fighter escorts all over the sky, to find an empty place at the table, brought home to him his own vulnerability. He was already defying the odds. He took the chit he was given to his CO who said he wasn’t surprised. ‘Take fourteen days’ leave as of now,’ he said.
Tucking his travel warrant into his breast pocket, he waited until he was out of earshot before yelling, ‘Whoopee!’ Two whole weeks, two whole weeks in which to recharge his batteries and have a bit of fun. He hurried to his room to throw a few clothes into a kitbag. He would arrange to meet Belinda, take her out to dinner and perhaps to a dance, and propose and when she said yes, they could go to Nayton together to tell his parents, possibly for Christmas, and then …’ He stopped suddenly and sat heavily on the bed, a pair of socks in his hand.
Lucy. The mother of his son. Peter. His secret family. He could not, in all conscience, propose to Belinda until he had resolved his relationship with Lucy. And what was Belinda going to say when he told her? She might have no more to do with him. On the other hand, she might tell him she didn’t care as long as he didn’t see Lucy again. Would that be pretence on her part? If it was the truth, what did it say for her feelings towards him, that she didn’t love him enough to be jealous? And how could he promise not to see Lucy again? He ought to see her more often; his conscience was already troubled about that. What a dilemma to be in! He was too tired, too uncertain, to do anything about it. He’d go home to Nayton. Perhaps a solution would come to him while he was there.
He finished packing, cadged a lift into London and caught a train to Norwich, intending to pick up a connection to Nayton, but when he left the train his steps took him out to the bus stop for Waterloo Road.
Lucy was giving Peter his dinner, coaxing him to eat a little more of the stew and potatoes she had mashed up for him. ‘Come on, Peter, have just one more spoonful. Look, Mummy will have one to show you how good it is.’ She popped the spoon into her own mouth. ‘Yum, yum, that’s good.’ She filled the spoon again and offered it to him. He opened his mouth and in it went. ‘One more,’ she said, ‘then you can have some apples and custard. You like custard, don’t you?’
She was so engrossed in her child she did not hear the back door open, but Peter, who was facing the door, saw him and pointed, saying something in his baby language.
Lucy twisted round, dropped the spoon on the table, flew across the room and flung herself into Jack’s arms. ‘You came. I knew you would. I told Amy you would.’
He kissed her and smiled. ‘Someone’s pleased to see me, at any rate.’ He went over and picked Peter out of his high chair. ‘And how’s my little man?’
‘Give Daddy a kiss,’ Lucy told the child.
He planted a wet kiss on Jack’s cheek. Jack laughed and sat down at the table with Peter on his lap. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked him.
‘Of course he does,’ Lucy said. ‘He kisses your photo every night when I put him to bed and I talk about you all the time.’
‘Oh, and what do you tell him? That he has a father who neglects him shamefully?’
‘Don’t be silly, you don’t neglect him. You can’t help it if there’s a war on and you can’t get to see us as often as you’d like. I understand that.’
Her understanding made him feel ten times worse. He could have come before now, he could have used a forty-eight-hour pass to come to Norwich instead of staying with Belinda. ‘I’ve been taken off flying and given two weeks’ leave,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to spend some of it at home, but for the rest, I’m all yours.’
‘Oh, Jack, we’ll have the most wonderful Christmas. Amy’s going to come for dinner. Have you had anything to eat today?’
‘I had breakfast and I bought a bun at the station café, but it was so dry I fed it to the pigeons.’
‘I’ll heat this stew up again and make some dumplings. And there’s stewed apples and custard, will that do?’
‘Lovely,’ he said, momentarily thinking of the dinner he could have been having with Belinda, but then dismissed the thought as unworthy. He picked up the small dish of fruit and custard she had already served up for Peter and began feeding it to him.
They ate their meal after Peter had been put to bed, and then sat together on the sofa facing a fire made of logs which she had acquired from a man with a horse and cart who came round selling them. They had a mug of cocoa each on an occasional table in front of them. He put his arm about her and she tucked her feet under her and nuzzled her head against his chest. ‘This is lovely,’ she said.
‘It’s always great to come home to you,’ he said, and meant it. ‘You make me feel cosy and relaxed, as if none of the world’s ills can touch us.’
‘Good, that’s how I want it to be. Always. You see, I love you very much.’
‘Oh, Lucy,’ he said, choked. ‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course you do. You gave me a life when I didn’t have one.’
‘You call this a life?’
‘Oh, yes, yes I do. It’s a hundred times better than the one I had before. I can please myself what I do and I’ve got Peter. And you. And Amy and a few friends from work.’ She paused. ‘Amy said she was going to try and trace my mother.’
‘Is that what you want?’
She shrugged. ‘It would be nice to know.’
‘Does Amy know how to go about it?’
‘I told her the address we lived at before we moved to Nayton. She said she would start there.’
‘I didn’t know you knew it.’
‘I didn’t either until she asked me and I remembered. I’m not getting my expectations up because I have no idea how long we lived there and where we were before. Railwaymen get moved about a lot if they want advancement.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘I wonder if it’s such a good idea.’
‘Of course it is. Whatever the outcome, it’s best to know, don’t you think? Your mother might be sad that she lost touch with you.’
‘And when she discovers she’s a grandmother?’
‘All the better.’
She scrambled from his embrace and took the empty mugs to the kitchen to wash them up. She didn’t want to talk about her situation as an unmarried mother. Her dream of being married to Jack was just that; she was deluding herself if she thought any different. She turned as he followed her and put his arms about her from behind, nuzzling his face in the hair at the back of her neck. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
Bernard moved stealthily through the undergrowth in the wood, trying not to step on twigs which would betray his presence. It was a game he played a lot at weekends and holidays when he had nothing much to do but mooch round the village with his hands in his pockets. Sometimes he enrolled Ray and Martin to be the criminals he was tracking, but they soon became bored with it and went off to play something else. He had taken to tracking real people. Sometimes it was the Reverend Royston as he went about the village visiting people but he never seemed to do anything interesting; sometimes it was Bennett the chauffeur, or Mr Jones, the gardener, or Mrs Hutchins, who was responsible for the welfare of the evacuees. More often it was Frank Lambert or Bert Storey. He knew everyone’s habits and where they were most likely to be at any given time of day, but he was no nearer unc
overing any spies.
One thing he had discovered was that Bert and Frank, though appearing to be good friends and colleagues, really didn’t like each other, and Mrs Storey was always rowing with her husband; he often heard them shouting at each other when he was stalking round the station. The outcome was that Mr Storey would go to the Nayton Arms and stay there until closing time, while she went off to meet Mr Lambert, sometimes in his signal box, which would have meant instant dismissal if they had been caught, sometimes in the cottage in the wood. It amused Bernard to think that it seemed to be a trysting place for lovers.
On this occasion he crept up to the cottage and squatted below the window out of sight. The glass in it was broken and he could hear their conversation quite clearly.
‘He’s getting worse and worse,’ she said. ‘It was the biggest mistake of my life, marrying him.’
‘I could have told you that if you’d asked me,’ Frank said.
‘Well, I didn’t, did I? I thought you were his friend.’
‘He’s no friend of mine.’
‘Why? Because of Lucy?’
‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Nothing to do with Lucy.’
‘So you’re not still carrying a torch for her?’
‘Don’t be daft. I never was. It was Ma’s idea for me to marry her, not mine. Anyway, she’s gone now.’
‘True. Do you know where she is?’
‘No idea. Don’t care either.’
‘She wasn’t his daughter, he told me that. He said she belonged to his wife by another man and that’s why he got rid of her.’
‘Got rid of who?’ The voice was sharp.
Bernard, ears strained to catch every word, crept even closer and risked peeping over the window sill. They were sitting side by side on the floor, propped against the wall, Frank’s arm about her, a blanket over their legs. He ducked down again when Mrs Storey stirred in his arms.
‘Lucy,’ she said. ‘Who did you think I meant?’
