When Alice Met Danny

by T A Williams

  ‘So, what else did you do today?’

  Alice told Megan about her next-door neighbour in Lyndhurst Avenue and that his name was Danny. Megan was far more interested in him than in the coincidence of his name.

  ‘So what? If he and the dog were both called Rover, I could understand your concern, but Danny’s a common enough name. But tell me more. He sounds interesting.’ Then, spotting something in Alice’s eye, she pounced. ‘Aha, so he might be more than interesting,’

  ‘He must be all of ten years older than me, Megan.’

  ‘So? Look around you. It happens all the time.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. And there was something rather charming about him. Who knows?’

  At that moment the farmers’ meeting in the back room started to break up. A crowd of men and some women emerged and disappeared out of the door. Others drifted into the bar and stayed there, talking and drinking. Among them, Alice spotted Daniel Tremayne. Megan noticed where her eyes were headed and the penny dropped.

  ‘You have a thing for Daniel Tremayne?’

  Alice blushed. ‘Of course not, I hardly know him.’ She caught Megan’s eye. ‘But he is rather dishy, isn’t he?’

  Megan was looking unusually serious now. ‘I’ll give you that, Alice. He certainly is. But I think you might be wasting your time there.’

  Alice shot her an enquiring look. ‘Mrs Tinker said it was a sad story. What did she mean?’

  Before Megan could reply, Alice saw Daniel Tremayne turn his head and look across at their table. He gave a shy smile and a wave. Both women responded and, excusing himself from the group, he came across.

  ‘Good evening Megan, good evening Alice.’

  ‘Hello Daniel, want to join us?’ Megan pointed to a chair. Alice saw an expression of surprise on her face when he pulled it out and sat down. ‘So what was the big meeting about, Daniel?’

  ‘Nothing special. Just one of our regular meetings.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Farming’s a lonely job, you know. For some folk, these evenings are just about the only opportunity to meet other people and talk.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘And, boy, do they talk!’

  As he spoke, Alice had the chance to observe him at close quarters. He still looked tired. Dark rings under his eyes emphasised the pallor of his complexion, unusual for a farmer. As before, his eyes darted nervously around the room.

  ‘How’s Daisy the cow?’ Alice saw his expression soften.

  ‘She’s fine, thanks. She had managed to convince herself and us that she was in calf. The vet gave her a scan. Turns out she was imagining the whole thing.’ He gave them a smile. ‘Some expensive treatment and now she’s back out in the fields again, happy as you like.’

  ‘How many cows have you got?’

  ‘Milking cows, 462, beef cattle about half that number.’

  ‘And the cheese-making?’ Megan had finished her salad. She sat back and watched Daniel and Alice.

  ‘Mmh. Work in progress, I’m afraid. There’s a lot to learn about making cheese.’ He turned to Alice to explain. ‘We only launched into it a few months ago. Some is coming out quite good, other batches disappointing. We can’t work out what’s causing the variation. Any time you are passing, do call in. You can do a bit of tasting for us. We’d be grateful.’ He swallowed the last of his orange juice and stood up, apparently unaware of the look of disappointment on Alice’s face.

  ‘Time to go?’ Megan gave him a friendly wave.

  ‘Yes, must get back. Good to see you both. And remember, any time you’re passing…’ And he was off.

  ‘When he says “we’d be grateful”, who exactly is “we”?’ Alice had remembered to check his ring finger. There was no mistaking the wedding ring.

  ‘Just Daniel and his mother now, as far as I know. His dad died before I came to the village. His mum’s quite an old lady now, and she’s been bedridden for months. He’s probably referring to his staff.’ Catching Alice’s eye, she began to explain. ‘There’s no wife there, now, if that’s what you mean.’

  Alice gave her an innocent smile. ‘Of no interest to me at all. What could give you that impression?’ But Megan’s face remained grave.

  ‘I think it’s time I filled you in on Daniel Tremayne.’

  Alice leant forward as Megan launched into her story. She was riveted from the start.

  ‘It’s a tale of love, pain and sorrow. You see, there was once a handsome young farmer. Well, more than a farmer, really. More of a lord of the manor. He had dark brown hair and light blue eyes. He met a beautiful young girl. They fell in love and they married. They made a lovely couple.’

  The smile on her lips gradually died as her tale unfurled. ‘He had a hobby. He was mad keen on cars. He started doing rallies. He was very good at it. He and his navigator started winning a lot of races.’

  ‘You mean rallies like the Monte Carlo Rally?’ Alice found she was concentrating so hard, she had forgotten to breathe. She gasped in a mouthful of air and leant forward.

  ‘Yes, Alice. Anyway, he was spotted by one of the big teams and he turned professional. The news came through just before Christmas two years ago, and the whole family celebrated. He came to church on Christmas Day looking as happy as a man can be. Only a matter of a few weeks later, they were racing in the Scottish mountains. A tractor came out onto the road in front of them, and they crashed down a hillside.’

  Alice put her hand to her mouth. ‘And he was injured?’

  Megan nodded. ‘His navigator, I never knew him, was killed, and Daniel was badly injured. Unfortunately, it was an awful head injury, and it took him months in hospital to recover. In fact he probably never did. But the worst thing was, when he came home, he was a changed man. His personality had changed. He lost his friends and then, he lost his wife.’

  Alice sat back, saddened by the tale.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had terrible bouts of depression. He turned to drink. And, although nobody has ever told me for certain, I think he might have become violent. Whatever it was, she left him last summer.’

  ‘But now he’s getting over it?’ Alice looked across at her friend pleadingly. ‘I saw he was drinking orange juice.’

  ‘We are all hoping so. It has been awful for the whole village, really. The Tremaynes are such an important part of the place. I feel terrible for Daniel, but it must have been even worse for his mother and, of course, his wife.’

  Alice shook her head in sorrow. ‘Here’s hoping it all turns out well in the end.’

  After emptying the remains of the bottle into their glasses, Alice did her best to cheer things up, telling Megan all about the suitcase full of letters they had found at number 23. ‘And the spooky thing is that the soldier’s name was Danny.’

  ‘And his surname?’

  ‘I haven’t read them through yet. Hopefully I will find out as I go along.’ She looked across at Megan. ‘My other Danny, Danny from London, told me this was a sign from the Almighty that I should go back to uni.’

  ‘He works in mysterious way,’ Megan observed with a smile. ‘So get on with it, girl. Who are we to question the ways of the Lord? Start applying now.’

  ‘Point taken. I’m on the case at the moment. But the amazing thing about these letters is the personal insight it gives. I’ve been reading historians’ accounts of the war, and they make chilling reading. But it’s all about the hundreds, thousands killed in a certain action, on a certain day. Being able to read the real words of just one real person is amazing, sobering. I feel very privileged.’

  She gave Megan a smile. ‘And then, there’s the girl back home, the one he was writing to. He addresses her as my dearest Gladys and signs off with the words yours forever. That’s pretty affectionate stuff, particularly way back then. It must have been simply awful for the women left behind.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re hooked. That should take your mind off poor old Daniel Tremayne and his troubles.’

  Chapter 22

  Alice looked out of t
he window. It had been raining all day and it was coming down harder and harder now as the afternoon came to an end. The first week of June had been one of the wettest on record. Water was running off the thatch like a curtain. There not being any gutters on the house, the flower beds close to the walls had been swamped. Beside her, Danny the dog was doing his best to sleep, but the noise of falling water clearly disturbed him as well.

  ‘Don’t worry, Danny. It’s just rain.’ He opened an eye and looked up at her. ‘The fields are going to be even muddier tomorrow morning for your you-know-what.’ She had quickly learnt that it was best to avoid the four letter word beginning with “W” that he recognised instantaneously. Their walks that Thursday had been short and the weather had also prevented her from including a loop as far as Manor Farm. Only to taste the cheese, she told herself.

  She returned her attention to the old letters. References to mud were everywhere, particularly as she was now reading letters written in March 1916. It sounded like a quite appalling winter in the trenches.

  The duckboards are so soaked, they don’t even float when the trenches flood. Tommy Hughes missed his footing last night and ended up in it to his waist. At least he gave us all a laugh.

  Alice tried to imagine what waist-deep mud might be like. Throughout the letters, she had kept coming across the initials TF. Only tonight had she realised what they stood for: Trench Foot. This condition appeared to have affected a lot of men in Danny’s sector at some time, but, to their great disappointment, it never led to repatriation. As she read more and more of the letters, she came to realise that Danny and most of his comrades only dreamt of one thing: a cushy.

  Sergeant Harris got himself a cushy last night. He was out with a detail, repairing wire when a single German shot got him through the left knee. Skinner thinks he’ll most probably lose the leg, but the Sarg’s back to Blighty now and well out of it.

  A cushy? It took Alice a good while before she could get her head round the concept of men welcoming the prospect of losing a leg. Most of Danny’s other comrades were less fortunate. The majority of wounds down in the trenches, as opposed to “over the top” in no man’s land, were head wounds. These were almost always lethal. Some came when snatching a quick glance over the parapet. Others happened to men on guard duty, standing on the fire step. Danny and his battalion were on the Somme. In the space of four letters, roughly a week, seventeen men received shots to the head. Sixteen died. The seventeenth lost most of his ear and was back in the trenches the next day.

  There were regular references in the letters to a place simply known as our spot. Clearly, this was somewhere of special significance to him and Gladys. The memory of that place obviously took him back to happier times. It was somewhere with a beautiful, far-reaching view. He often wrote about it as somewhere wonderful to which he and she would return once the fighting was over. Clearly the thought of their spot sustained him throughout the months of hardship and deprivation.

  She glanced down at the pile. She was already halfway through the letters and she still had no idea of Danny’s identity. She was, however, beginning to assemble a few clues. On a number of occasions he mentioned Beauchamp, and on others he asked Gladys about events in “the village”. Beauchamp itself, even then, would have been too big to be considered a village, so he must have lived outside the town. Twice he referred to letters from her in which she had told of the terrible storm that had brought down the church tower in his village. She distinctly referred to it as his village, so she must have been living elsewhere, maybe Beauchamp itself. Woodcombe church tower, although it leaked like a sieve, was indisputably old and still standing. So that ruled out Woodcombe. She was searching for “East Devon Churches” on her iPad when her phone rang. It was Danny from London.

  ‘Hi Danny.’

  ‘Hi Alice. Are you still on for next Friday?’

  ‘I certainly am, but if it rains any more you will be able to windsurf all the way here.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen the reports on TV. It’s been OK in London. Anyway, I’ve booked the Lobster Pot for eight on Friday. If you tell me where you are living, I’ll come and collect you if you like. That way you can get blind drunk without having to worry about driving.’

  ‘Thanks, Danny, but that’s not fair to you. Why should it just be me getting blind drunk?’

  ‘My trainer here has made me swear not to touch a drop until after Saturday’s competition. Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it on Saturday night.’

  ‘Well, in that case, thank you. My address here is Duck Cottage, Long Lane, Woodcombe. You can’t miss it. It’s just a hundred yards up from the pub.’

  ‘I know Long Lane.’ His voice was suddenly serious. ‘I hadn’t realised you were in Woodcombe.’

  ‘So you know the village, then?’ She sounded as surprised as he did.

  There was a pause, then he collected himself. ‘Yes, yes I do. I know people there.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘I’ll tell you on Friday. Pick you up at seven-thirty.’

  Alice put the phone down and addressed the dog. ‘That’s funny, Danny. Fancy that. It really is a very, very small world.’ He gave a lazy wag of the tail and relapsed into sleep. Returning to the computer, she continued her search for local churches, but without finding any reference to a collapsed tower. When she heard the church clock chiming six o’clock, she got up and made herself a cup of tea. Then a thought struck her. She picked up the phone, dialled Megan’s number and waited for her to answer.

  ‘Hi Megan, I’ve got a query for you. Of an ecclesiastical nature.’

  Megan affected a bored tone. ‘Sorry, I’m afraid it really does say “Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s ass.” I regret to disappoint you, but that’s what it says, however nice the man may look.’

  ‘No, Megan, nothing to do with the scriptures, or asses. Who might know about a church here in East Devon, whose tower collapsed in floods in 1916?’

  ‘Mmh, nowhere springs to mind, but leave it with me. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow in Exeter with about a hundred other members of the diocese. Some of them look as if they’ve been around since 1916. I’ll ask a few people. Is this to do with your pile of letters?’

  ‘Yes, I’m trying to find out more about this Danny.’

  ‘How far have you got?’

  ‘He’s on the Somme. It’s spring 1916.’

  ‘Aha, well I’ve got one thing for you, if you haven’t got there already. I thought the date, first of July, was familiar, so I looked it up. That was the first day of the battle of the Somme. It was the bloodiest day in British military history, before or since. If the letters finish then, I’m afraid he was probably one of the thousands who died there.’

  Alice replaced the telephone and reflected, as she had been doing all week, upon the horrors of war. Apart from those who were killed, there must have been hundreds of thousands, maybe millions injured. Thought of injury made her think of Daniel Tremayne. Of course, he would have had the best treatment modern medicine could provide. In contrast, there must have been so many soldiers who survived the battle but were left with life-changing injuries. It was all so terribly sad. She returned to her reading. The very next letter contained a line that must have summed up the thoughts of men all along the western front, on both sides of no man’s land.

  A shell landed on a dugout just a few yards away from us last night. Everybody in it was killed. There were seven names missing at roll call, but we only found bits of two of them. We all keep looking at each other, wondering when it will be our turn.

  Chapter 23

  Friday was still wet, but, unexpectedly, Saturday dawned bright and clear, although the roads still ran with water. Alice pulled on her wellies and took Danny the dog down for his morning walk. The fields were not only muddy, but partially flooded. She found herself having to follow a circuitous route around the edges of the fields to avoid the worst of it. The Labrador, on the other hand, clearly loved it. While she did her best to avoid the water, he flung himself i
nto it with gusto. From time to time he would come back to shake himself all over her. She didn’t mind. It was lovely to see him enjoying himself.

  When she got round to the far side of the biggest field, she realised that she was close to Tremayne land. After a few moments’ hesitation, she called the dog and set off in the direction of the house.

  They emerged from the fields onto the drive. It curved gently up from the road, over a cattle grid and on through elegant parkland, the fields studded with specimen trees of all types. As she approached the house, the drive forked. To the left it curled round towards the front of the house, while to the right, it led into the farmyard. The yard gates were closed and she could see that it was full of black and white Friesian cows. She decided to head for the house.

  In front of the beautiful old Georgian house was a wide gravelled turning circle, with a fountain in the middle. A dirty Land Rover was parked alongside a slightly cleaner Range Rover. She found herself checking the badges on the back of the Range Rover as she walked past. There was no mention of Evoque or Sport, so she assumed this was just an ordinary type. Danny would know, she thought to herself. As she approached the front door, it opened and the other Danny, Daniel Tremayne, came out.

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ She gave him a smile. ‘I was going to ring the doorbell, but my boots are so muddy, I was afraid of messing up your porch.’

  ‘Good morning, Alice.’ He looked pleased to see her. ‘Don’t worry about your boots. After all the rain, there’s mud everywhere.’ Danny the dog trotted up to him, tail wagging. ‘This is Mrs Tinker’s dog, isn’t it? Hello, Danny. I haven’t seen you since you were a little puppy. How’re you doing?’ He looked up at Alice. ‘I could never forget his name, could I?’

  ‘Be careful, he’s soaking wet.’

  Daniel bent down and stroked the Labrador affectionately. ‘He’s grown up into a fine-looking dog. But tell me, what’s the news of his mistress? How’s Mrs Tinker?’

  Alice shook her head sadly. ‘Getting weaker and weaker, I’m afraid.’