A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘Of course you could,’ Beatrice said. Her smile was light with relief.

  ‘Beatrice,’ Lucy said suddenly. ‘Can I bring someone to meet you?’

  That evening, over supper in the bar, she explained to Anthony a little of all Beatrice had told her.

  ‘Will you come and meet her?’ she asked. ‘I think you’d like her.’

  ‘But will she like me?’ Anthony said, smiling.

  ‘I know she will,’ Lucy replied solemnly.

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ Anthony said. ‘I’d like to hear some of her stories. I’ve read up quite a bit about SOE’s role in the war. I can’t believe I’m to meet a real veteran.’

  ‘Nor can I. Beatrice would be a great subject for a TV documentary. If my boss likes the idea, I’m going to ask her. She’d be excellent in front of the camera.’

  ‘It would be an amazing story.’

  ‘There’s something else I need to ask you, Anthony. Do you have a car with you?’

  ‘I do. Did you want a lift back to London on Sunday?’

  ‘That would be lovely. But tomorrow there’s somewhere I want to take Beatrice first. Do you know Saint Agnes on the north coast?’

  Chapter 35

  ‘My father once offered me a penny to climb Saint Agnes’s Beacon!’ Beatrice remarked as the car passed a distinctive-looking hill on the right. She was sitting next to Anthony in the front seat and clearly enjoying the outing.

  ‘Did you win the penny?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Of course, and in record time.’

  ‘This is Saint Agnes village, ladies,’ Anthony said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Down there, I think,’ Beatrice said, pointing past a signpost for the beach, and he turned down a narrow lane dusted with sand and lined with houses on either side.

  ‘There’s The Hawthorns!’ Lucy cried, and Anthony drew up outside a broad-fronted 1930s villa with the front garden asphalted over for cars.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind hanging about?’ she asked him as he helped Beatrice out of the car.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Anthony replied. ‘I’ll drive up the road a little and take a look at the beach. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘We’ll ring you when we’re ready then,’ she said, kissing his cheek. She took Beatrice’s arm. Now the reality of seeing Hetty was close, Beatrice was, she thought, looking grim.

  The Hawthorns’ Care Home looked a pleasant place to pass one’s sunset years. Lucy had phoned ahead and the young woman who opened the door to them said, ‘You’re to see Miss Wincanton?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lucy said, introducing Beatrice.

  ‘Come in. She’s quite bright today, so you’ve picked a good time.’ The woman showed them into a large, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house with a distant view of sand dunes.

  ‘Miss Wincanton, your guests are here.’

  A shrunken old woman tried and failed to push herself up out of her easy chair.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Hetty,’ Lucy said, rather shocked to see how much Hetty had aged since Granny’s funeral – the last time she’d seen her – and went forward to take her knotted hand. Hetty Wincanton’s watery eyes looked up at her with confusion. ‘I’m Tom’s daughter,’ Lucy said loudly.

  ‘Ah yes, dear Tom,’ Aunt Hetty said, quite clearly. Her eyes alighted on Beatrice. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘Don’t blame me. It was Lucy’s idea,’ Beatrice said haughtily.

  Lucy and the care-worker arranged two more armchairs and established Beatrice in one, Lucy in the other. ‘I’ll bring you some tea shortly,’ she said and hurried out.

  Now that they were all here, nobody seemed sure how to start. Lucy bravely dived in.

  ‘Aunt Hetty, Beatrice has been telling me all about the family and how . . . well, how Granny came to adopt my father. I didn’t even know he was adopted and it’s been something of a shock. Could you possibly tell me – did Dad know?’

  Hetty’s eyes moved suspiciously from Lucy to Beatrice and back. Then she pushed herself upright in her chair and moistened her lips.

  ‘He suspected and asked Angie once. She told him he was adopted, but asked him never to speak of it, said that it was hurtful to her and anyway it didn’t matter. His real mother hadn’t wanted him. She only gave him a short form of his birth certificate, which didn’t have his parents’ names on it. Of course, later he looked up the full version and . . .’

  ‘I remember. It only had my name on it, not Guy’s,’ Beatrice broke in, her voice trembling. ‘The local Register Office had been bombed and the girl was filling in for someone. She told me if you weren’t married you didn’t put the father’s name on. She was wrong, as it transpired. I could have done if I’d wanted, but by the time I found out it was too late.’

  ‘How sad that Granny wouldn’t tell him anything,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I imagine she found it too difficult,’ Beatrice said. ‘But perhaps he did, too.’

  ‘And he never said anything to me or Mum. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. He was ashamed. People used to have a proper sense of shame.’

  Lucy was taken aback by this. ‘You mean about being adopted?’

  ‘About being illegitimate.’

  That was an old-fashioned word, Lucy thought. She didn’t think that would have been her father’s reason. Beside her, Beatrice shuffled restlessly.

  ‘I don’t know what she’s told you,’ Hetty went on, ‘but I’ll be surprised if it’s the whole story.’ And suddenly, she began to ramble. ‘I don’t know why she ever had to come to Carlyon in the first place. Nobody asked me, not little Hetty, no.’ Lucy quickly realized that Hetty was talking about her childhood. ‘They thought I didn’t matter; shovelled about, I was, from house to house, always in the way. My mother didn’t want me, you know. She as good as told me once. Said she’d finished having her family and then I came along.’

  Lucy stared at her, bewildered, then looked at Beatrice, whose horrified gaze was absolutely riveted on Hetty .

  ‘So along comes Miss Prim here and nobody notices poor Hetty any more. She pretended to be nice to me, but I knew what she wanted – to be like one of us – and she wasn’t.’

  ‘Hetty,’ Beatrice said to her, ‘that’s plainly ridiculous. It wasn’t like that at all. They did care about you. They always did.’

  ‘Did they?’ Hetty said. ‘Well, it never felt like it. It was always Ed this and Angelina that. Even Peter had a better time than I did. And then,’ here Hetty addressed Lucy, ‘she goes and has a baby and there’s no father, though we knew who the father was, didn’t we? Angelina’s young man.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rafe – Gerald’s brother. She took him. Beatrice took Rafe from Angelina.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Beatrice said. ‘Stop it, that’s nonsense.’

  ‘It’s not nonsense. You gave the baby to Angelina and went away and Angelina had to look after him. And then you came and wanted him back and Angelina wouldn’t give him to you. Serves you right.’

  There was a silence and then Beatrice said to Lucy, ‘I don’t think she’s quite right in her head.’

  Hetty heard her and looked mutinous.

  Lucy was thinking about something else. She said, ‘Auntie Hetty, do you really believe that Tom’s father was Rafe?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Did you . . . is that what you told Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Sometime after Angelina’s funeral he came to see me. I told him the truth, the whole story. How she, Beatrice, had abandoned him. Angie would never speak about it to me or to anyone, but I knew the truth.’

  So that’s why Dad was so interested in Rafe, Lucy realized.

  Beatrice said tiredly, ‘Hetty, you weren’t there a lot of the time. You only knew bits and pieces of what happened.’

  ‘That may be, but I was always watching and listening. I could work it out. I saw what kind of person you were. Even afterwards you kept trying to ge
t him back, didn’t you? By sending all those birthday cards and letters. Angelina never gave them to him of course. He found them when she died and opened them. Brought them when he came to see me.’

  Beatrice gave a little gasp. ‘Why didn’t she give them to him? Oh, that is cruel.’

  Lucy said gently, ‘Perhaps Granny was afraid, Beatrice. That he would reject her and go and find you. I think she loved him so much.’

  ‘He said that, too,’ Hetty remarked.

  ‘Do you mind telling me what you mean?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘It’s what he told me. He couldn’t go and look for you because that would be betraying Angie’s memory. He was surer of this after what I told him, about you abandoning him. Much surer.’

  ‘I haven’t found those letters,’ Lucy told Beatrice. ‘They weren’t among the things my stepmother gave me.’

  Hetty muttered something.

  ‘What? Do speak up,’ Beatrice said, frowning.

  Hetty repeated triumphantly, ‘I took them from him and I burnt them.’

  After this there was another long silence.

  Lucy glanced at Beatrice and was astonished to see that the old lady’s eyes were swimming with tears. She placed a hand on Beatrice’s arm. ‘Oh, don’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Beatrice said, finding a handkerchief. ‘I’m used to the fact that he never came to find me. It’s the thought . . . well, I have a picture in my mind of him finding all those things I sent him – the birthday cards, the airmail letters, oh, with the little drawings I did – and reading them all, and perhaps learning that I loved him.’

  The care-worker returned with a tray of tea. She took one look at the anguished expressions of everyone in the room and said to Hetty, ‘Are you getting upset again, Miss Wincanton? It’s not good for you, you know. I’ll get your medicine.’

  Lucy followed her outside. ‘She does seem very worked up. Is this normal?’

  The young woman checked the label on a bottle and shook out a pill. ‘It’s worsened, I’m afraid, since her little stroke,’ she said. ‘Early stages, they think.’

  ‘Dementia? But she sounds so lucid. It’s what she says that’s so worrying.’

  ‘She does say whatever comes into her mind, that’s the trouble. It can be a bit rude or hurtful sometimes. I really shouldn’t be telling you this. You ought to speak to her doctor.’

  ‘I understand,’ Lucy said.

  When she returned to the room she was astonished to find that the tenor of the conversation had changed radically. Beatrice and Hetty were chatting quite amiably.

  ‘Do you remember the picnics on the beach?’ Beatrice was asking.

  ‘And fishing in the rockpools,’ Hetty said, her eyes shining. ‘And the secret steps from the cove.’

  ‘To Carlyon.’

  Ah, Carlyon,’ Hetty said. ‘I can’t bear to think of it being gone.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘What happened to Carlyon, Hetty?’ Lucy asked softly.

  ‘Burnt to the ground,’ Hetty said, her expression clouding like a child’s. ‘And Mother with it.’ After a moment, she said, very slowly and clearly, ‘She was living there by herself, after the war when I was away at school. The doctor had given her pills, to help her sleep. She often complained she couldn’t sleep. She must have taken them and forgotten her cigarette. She sometimes did, you know.’

  ‘I remember, she did,’ Beatrice sighed. ‘Poor Oenone.’ ‘That’s so dreadful,’ Lucy whispered. ‘And it’s never been rebuilt. Who owns it now?’

  ‘Peter,’ Hetty said. ‘Though he never wanted it.’ Then she looked straight at Lucy. ‘Peter told me he was leaving it to Tom, but Tom’s dead. So, Lucy, Carlyon will one day be yours. Not long now, I shouldn’t think – poor old Peter.’

  In the car on the way back to St Florian, Beatrice surprised Lucy by remarking, ‘You know, I’m thinking that I’ll drive over and see Hetty again. It might help her to talk more. She’s a crusty old thing, but she must be lonely. And she remembers, Lucy. It’s so nice when you’re old to talk to others who remember.’

  Epilogue

  That evening, after supper at the hotel, Anthony and Lucy took the narrow path over the headland to the beach as the moon was rising. She let him help her down from the rocks onto the sand. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Later they found the path over the dunes and walked back to the house where he was staying and up the stairs to his room. There, very gently, he made love to her.

  It was as they lay together afterwards in the darkness that he finally began to tell her what he’d been through, hesitantly at first, but with more certainty, as he relived the events. She supposed it was the dark that freed him to speak. She lay very still, just listening; some instinct told her that he did not need her to ask questions or pass comment, only to listen. And anyway, she thought, compared to what he’d been through, what did she know about anything?

  They’d been in Helmand Province, he said, guarding a dam. The area was particularly dangerous, everyone knew that, not only because of insurgents, but because of unmarked areas of landmines. They were of the type, it seemed, designed to maim rather than kill, and every few days there came some awful new tale. Who, after all, can stop children treating ruined buildings as a playground or taking a short cut home across the fields? Everywhere these things were hidden, undetectable until too late.

  It was in response to an urgent call that they set out that afternoon, he driving, Gray next to him in the armoured vehicle, bucketing down a mountain road to rescue a patrol which had gone where they shouldn’t to help such a child – and had paid the price.

  He should have seen it – how many times had they been warned, after all? – and he did, but not until it was too late. The glint of a wire stretched across the road teased his awareness for a split second. Then they were upon it.

  The blast threw the vehicle up in the air. Somehow he was tossed clear, but Gray, poor Gray, was engulfed by a fireball. He didn’t stand a chance. Anthony would remember his friend’s screams for ever.

  As Anthony lay in the field hospital, recovering from minor burns, from broken ribs and shock, he played over in his mind again and again what had happened, trying to make sense of it. He couldn’t.

  Things he’d done or hadn’t done tormented him. If only he hadn’t been driving so fast. If only he’d been concentrating harder, maybe he’d have seen the tripwire in time. Worse, worse even than this, was the fact that some automatic instinct had made him turn the wheel – not consciously, he wouldn’t ever have done that – but he’d swerved, all the same, and it was Gray’s side of the vehicle that caught the full force of the blast.

  They sent him to talk to someone. It helped, but not much. Eventually they’d packed him off home on three months’ leave and here he was, at the end of it, still bewildered and hating himself.

  ‘They’ve all been so bloody kind; I’ve been tortured by kindness,’ he said.

  No one had blamed him, not even Gray’s family. Their acceptance and forgiveness were extraordinary. When they’d suggested he go and stay in their holiday house in St Florian he’d gratefully taken up the offer. Here he could feel a connection to Gray from happier days.

  ‘Do you feel ready?’ she felt able to ask. ‘To go back, I mean?’

  ‘In some ways yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m in a vacuum here. I need to do something.’

  ‘But in other ways . . . ?’

  She watched him draw on his cigarette. For a while he said nothing, just lay thinking.

  Finally he said, ‘Did Gray die for a just cause? It’s very hard to know. But I have to believe so or else I can’t go back. How could I?’

  ‘Do you have to go back? If you don’t want to, I mean?’

  ‘I do want to,’ he said. ‘I feel I owe it to Gray – and to all of them. It would be like deserting if I didn’t. I have to do it.’

  Lucy sighed. She didn’t understand properly, how could she? But she thought she
had an inkling. The things he was saying, well, it reminded her of Beatrice. It was all about duty, yes, but about love as well. About not putting yourself first.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I think in the end I will.’ In the dark she felt his hand find hers. ‘It’s odd. We hardly know each other,’ he said, ‘and yet I feel at some deeper level we do.’

  He rolled across and she found herself looking into his face, felt his breath on hers. She reached up with her other hand and touched the sandpaper skin of his jaw, the softness of his lips.

  ‘Lucy, my Lucy,’ he whispered, taking her hand and kissing the fingertips. Then he bent his head and joined his mouth to hers. She drew him to her, and for a while there was no need to say anything.

  Afterwards, falling asleep in his arms was the most natural thing in the world. She felt she was where she belonged.

  Author’s Note

  Beatrice Marlow is a fictional character, but inspired by various real-life SOE agents, including Violette Szabo and Odette Churchill, who were mothers of young children. I am indebted to the many books that I consulted about the Second World War, and in particular about the SOE F-section (headed by Maurice Buckmaster with Vera Atkins), and the FANY. Among them are: A Life in Secrets by Sarah Helm, Carve Her Name With Pride by R J Minney, Odette by Penny Starns, Debs at War by Anne de Courcy, In Obedience to Instructions by Margaret Pawley, London at War by Philip Ziegler, How We Lived Then by Norman Longmate and Cornwall at War by Peter Hancock. An article I found at www.kentfallen.com about the Pluckley Remount Depot was helpful, as was Emma Smith’s excellent memoir about growing up in Cornwall between the wars, The Great Western Beach.

  Thank you to Bill Etherington, whose article in Eaton Parishes Magazine about the FANY set the hare running; to Frank Meeres of the Norfolk Record Office who was kind enough to read my script; to Sarah Hammond and Roger Pearson who advised me about sailing; and to my mother, Phyllis, who brought me up on stories of her wartime childhood, when the family had goats and, like Hetty, she kept a Rabbit Notebook.