Cory instructed Jenny to be a good girl and go and fetch her mummy a small glass of sherry. ‘She’s had a bit of a nasty shock.’ Then he patted the boy’s head kindly. ‘Don’t worry, we believe you, son. Your dad is a very brave man, and no, I don’t think for one minute he shot any one with a gun, not even a Yank. Now look at what Grandpa has fetched for you, a nice sherbet dab from the corner shop, one each for you and Jenny. Now do you take that up to bed with you, for a treat.’
‘Ooh, thanks Grandpa, can I, Mummy?’
Sara nodded, too numbed to speak. The only rational thought in her head was a question, quite a silly one in the circumstances.
Had it all been innocent then, all those hours he’d spent with Iris? Perhaps they hadn’t been having an affair at all, but working together as British agents?
If that was so then she was the one entirely in the wrong, the one who had betrayed and ruined their marriage, just as Hugh had accused her of doing. And her husband was a hero, after all. But what was all this about dead Americans? Sara didn’t seem able to take any of that in, not properly. She just felt sick, dreadfully, dreadfully sick.
‘Goody, goody, come on Jenny.’ Drew was saying, then just as he turned to run off upstairs, he delivered his final bombshell. ‘I don’t know what Iris was saying on the wireless, Grandad, ‘cos she was using funny words.’
Cory softly enquired, ‘Do you mean funny French words, like the fishermen who come up the river, son?’
‘No, course not,’ said Drew with weary impatience, already unpeeling the paper off his sherbet dab. ‘She talked to the wireless transmitter thingy in German, like that man on the proper wireless does sometimes. Iris was a German spy, Grandpa, not a French one. Come on, Jenny, don’t take all day.’
Chapter Fifty
‘Where are you staying tonight?’ Bette asked Chad, quite casually, as she shut up the salon.
Chad cleared his throat. ‘I was thinking mebbe I’d find me a room at some hotel or other in town. Where do you suggest?’
‘You gotta be joking. You couldn’t afford the charge. This ain’t some two-bit, one-horse town, ya know?’ Her mock American accent was strong and he glanced at her in pleased surprise.
‘Hey, you got that real good.’
‘Maybe I’ll make a Yankee war-bride after all, ‘cepting that, strictly speaking, we aren’t man and wife yet, not so’s you’d notice.’
‘We been through the ceremony.’
‘There’s a bit more to being married than that, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Uh-huh! What do you reckon we ought to do about that? Don’t want to scare you off.’
She was leading him up the stairs. ‘Who said I would be? I don’t scare easy.’
Big Fat Josie had insisted on minding Matthew for the evening. ‘It’ll give you young ‘uns time to talk,’ she’d said. Without all that fussing and wailing from the nipper. I’m only next door, so I’ll bring him over later. Much later.’ And she’d given a huge, roguish wink.
Chad was following her into the tiny living room. ‘I was worried you might prefer to go back to England and marry Barney instead.’
‘If I’d wanted Barney, I’d have stayed and married him when I had the chance. Probably would have been a big mistake but I wasn’t quite so stupid as to make it. Anyway, we’ve been through all of that. Why bring Barney into it all over again?’
‘He’s a real man. He’s got two arms.’
Bette drew the blind and the room was bathed in a cool, green glow. Chad wasn’t looking at her but she would have been a fool not to recognise the heartrending vulnerability in those words. This was obviously still an issue for him, still creating a block. ‘When did it take two arms to make love to a woman?’
‘Aw, Bette. Don’t make fun of me.’
She pulled him round to face her, grasped his face between her two hands. ‘Look at me, Chad Jackson. You’re my man, right? I’ve travelled half round the world to be with you, borne your child, survived your family’s maltreatment of me, and I’m still here. I’ve stuck around. Does that convince you that I’m not leaving? Not now, not ever.’
As she talked, she was unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it off his shoulders.
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe I hung around because I was still hoping that you’d come calling one day? So don’t for one minute imagine that you aren’t the handsomest man in the whole world to me, and the number of arms you happen to possess, doesn’t matter a damn.’
She was tugging off the vest he wore underneath the shirt, before turning her attention to the buckle of his trouser belt. It wouldn’t come loose and he had to help her. And all the while she was kissing him, sliding her mouth over his, pressing herself close against him.
‘Barney Willert still doesn’t get a look in, however charming he might be. Maybe when we first got together, you and me, we were both a bit insecure, me having left home and family, you with your injuries.’
She pushed him down on the bed and he gave a low moan. But she didn’t lie down next to him. Not yet. It was a warm, sunny day in June, the semi-tropical heat turning their bodies slick with sweat in seconds whenever they moved. She slid out of her cotton frock in seconds and sat astride him clad only in her French knickers. ‘But that’s all in the past. Now we have a second chance, an opportunity to get it right this time, and, thanks to Big Fat Josie, pretty good employment in the form of a business to run. What could be better?
She chuckled as she said this. ‘okay, I can think of one or two other things which might be a bit more exciting that we could be doing right now.’ Bette wasn’t even wearing a brassiere in the heat, and lifting his hand she smoothed it over her firm young breasts, hearing the low groan deep in his throat as he did so.
‘So can I.’ He reached for her then but she leaned away from him, making him wait. ‘I should have said rather than serving behind the counter in a general store, but I’m sure we can make something of it, if we work together, don’t you reckon?’
‘Aw, Bette, I’d do anything for you. It sounds great.’
She sank on to him now, rubbing herself against him, skin to skin. ‘And we can always find something more interesting to do to pass the time when we’re not working.’
She helped him to take off the false limb, unstrapping it above the elbow, and when the purple-scarred, floppy, loose section of boneless flesh which had embarrassed him so deeply was finally revealed, she kissed it. She stroked the severed stump, the scarred flesh, heard his small sob as she did so. She knew that it pained him still, for all the arm no longer existed. She remembered how she would often wake to hear him quietly crying in his sleep, or jerking and sweating and fighting the bedclothes as if he was batting out a fire. She’d calm and quieten him, hold him close and even sing softly to him as she would a child, until he slept peacefully again.
She didn’t try to soothe him now but deliberately set out to excite and captivate him. Bette kissed and fondled him, took his penis in her hand, savouring the velvety feel of it even as it hardened to her touch.
She stood up above him, slid down the satin knickers, then tossed them to one side. ‘Can’t you see anything about me that might interest you? Nothing at all worth touching, even after all this time? Don’t you know what an agony it was, Chad, sleeping beside you night after night and you not laying a finger on me? I began to despair that you ever would touch me. It’d drive any girl wild.’
She dropped her voice to a seductive purr. ‘And like I say, you’re still a handsome man, arm or no bloody arm.’
He reached for her then, pulling her hard against him so that he slid inside her as sweetly as she remembered. She rocked and pushed and felt him throb inside her, his hand still roving over her, caressing her breasts, her neck, her throat, his eyes greedily taking in every detail of her lovely body, marvelling at her beauty, at the satin smoothness of her milk-white skin, the pinkness of her flickering tongue as he kissed her over and over again.
Chad didn’t know how he’d resisted he
r all those long and lonely nights, so fearful of her revulsion and rejection he’d put all hope of love making from his mind. Now he couldn’t get enough of her, wanting, needing her more than seemed right and proper.
He pulled her beneath him, taking her with such force that Bette gasped with shock and the sheer pleasure of it.
That afternoon, they reached heights of passion she’d only ever dreamed of. Afterwards, replete and entwined, they slept a little until the cool of evening woke them. Then Bette sat up, her expression thoughtful.
‘There’s just one thing left for you to do. Don’t move, don’t get dressed, just wait for me here.’
She pulled on her cotton frock and skipped down the steps. Within minutes, she was back. In her arms was Matthew. Chad made to get out of the bed but she ordered him to stay put. And he did, his eyes fixed on the baby as Bette placed the infant on his knee.
‘There you are, Chad Jackson. Meet Matthew, your son. That’s what we are after all, your family.’
He gazed upon the child, ran a finger over the soft curve of his cheek, gazed into the wide brown eyes, alert with curiosity, and so like his own. ‘Aw Bette, did a guy ever have as sweet a gal as you, and as fine a son as could be found anywhere in the country, in the whole damn world. Have you any idea how much I love you both?’
Bette chuckled as she pulled off the dress once more and snuggled in beside him. ‘I hope I’m going to have many years in which to discover how true that is.’
Chapter Fifty-One
It was the longest night Sara could ever remember. She’d talked to her father about these revelations for some hours before, finally, he and Hamil had gone off to inform the authorities. In any other circumstances none of them would have paid any credence to the ramblings of one small boy, but the wireless transmitter was a physical presence before their very eyes, providing evidence for the child’s words.
Not that Drew understood the significance of what, exactly, he’d accused his own father of doing: that if Iris was a German spy, then Hugh might be too. Like all other small boys who had grown up during war-time, it had all been exciting fun, and fiction and reality had become rather mixed up.
And where was Iris? If she’d gone back to her mother’s in Truro, why hadn’t she taken the wireless set with her? What was it doing in Hugh’s boat?
Sara sat in her bedroom with the door locked and listened to her husband come in after closing time, as he usually did. She heard him noisily making himself a drink in the kitchen, clearly irritated that she hadn’t waited up to make him some supper as he demanded.
It took some time but at last she heard him climb the stairs and go to bed. Even then she couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning as she went over and over the conversation, trying to remember everything Drew had said.
Could it possibly be true? Sometimes she convinced herself that they’d got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick, or that Drew had. He was only a child, after all. How could he possibly understand what his father was up to?
But then she would come back to the puzzling, and indisputable existence of the wireless. One that was clearly not British, as Cory had been at pains to point out to her, and Sara could think of no possible reason for a German radio transmitter to be on Hugh’s boat.
Would the authorities come right away? Would they wish to interview him or just walk in and arrest him? Or would they simply dismiss the whole thing as a small boy’s fantasy?
Perhaps that’s all it was. Drew must have got it wrong. Hugh had always seen himself as the town hero, and surely that’s what he was. Sailing out to France to save stranded British pilots.
Or was that simply a cover for something much more sinister?
So here she was again, right back where she started. Going round and round and driving herself very slightly mad.
They came for him just before dawn, their presence heralded by a loud banging on the door and then a crash as they burst it open. Sara was out of bed in a flash, her heart pounding almost as loud as the noise the soldiers were making.
Grabbing her cotton dressing gown, she stood out on the landing and watched in horror at what seemed to be a veritable throng of military police filling her house. They marched up her stairs, crowded in the small hall, and while some were clearly searching the rooms downstairs, others were already in Hugh’s room yelling at him to get dressed, to jump to it.
What seemed to be only moments later they were leading him out, still in his pyjamas though with a raincoat over the top, hands held in a restraint behind his back.
For the briefest second his eyes met hers. ‘You’ve got what you always wanted, Sara, your freedom. Apparently at the expense of mine. I hope you’re satisfied.’
She could think of no response. Her teeth seemed to be chattering and Sara felt nothing but an intense cold and a very real desire to vomit.
‘Move it!’ said the officer in charge.
She clasped hold of the banister rail, as if fearful of falling. Hugh said nothing more as he was ushered out of the house with surprisingly little fuss.
Only when he was gone, and all the guards with him, did the officer turn to address her. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs Marrack.’ Then he too was gone and the house echoed with silence.
Sara found she could no longer sustain any strength in her limbs and sank to her knees. Two small pairs of arms came about her neck. ‘Mummy, don’t cry, Mummy. We’re here to help you. We love you, Mummy!’
‘What you doing here, girl?’ Sadie stood, arms akimbo, filling the doorway with her ample presence.
‘They’ve taken Hugh away. Arrested him. God knows what will happen to him.’
‘I think we can guess the answer to that one. He’s committed treason, hasn’t he?’
‘Hush, not in front of the children. Come on, let’s get them back to bed.’
‘Mebbe I’ll make them some breakfast,’ Sadie suggested.
Would the shaking never stop? Sara could remember little of the last several hours since the soldiers had left. Tears had been shed, some vomiting, Jenny putting a glass of sherry into her hands. That seemed to be all her children did for her these days. The children. Where were they? How long had she sat here on the stairs, wrapped in her dressing gown, in shock? She couldn’t remember. How had it come to this? When had Hugh turned traitor, and why? Was his jealousy such that he would let innocent men die simply because they were American?
She remembered now. Sadie had the children. She could hear her mother talking to them downstairs, saying something about how they must be quiet and good for Mummy. Something about Daddy not being well and having to go away for a bit. She could hear Drew’s piping voice asking if Grandma would read him some more of Rupert Bear.
Could they forget so easily? Could she hide the reality from them? Dear God, she hoped so.
Cory explained to her later what would happen. Hugh would be tried as a traitor and, if he was found guilty of treason . . . She’d stopped him at that point, didn’t wish to consider what would follow such a verdict.
Jealous, unfeeling husband though he might have been, she wouldn’t wish such a fate on him, not in a million years.
Drew’s childlike confession of his father’s secrets were later backed up when connected with a tale told by two surviving American aircrew of a rescue attempt that had gone badly wrong for them. The boat had apparently not spotted them, or at least had turned to leave at the crucial moment, resulting in the drowning of several of their comrades.
Evidence was also found among Hugh’s belongings of petty pilfering. Officers returned to search his room, and The Ship, and several items were found in his possession which had clearly been ‘lifted’ from ships where he was present to supposedly rescue the crew. Looting, wasn’t that what they called it?
Nor was Iris with her mother. She hadn’t been seen since earlier in the summer when she’d been spotted heading out to sea in Hugh’s boat. It could only be surmised that something dreadful had happened to her an
d, when challenged, Hugh had apparently admitted it. He agreed that they had indeed been lovers, and confessed to having ‘tossed her in the water’ when she became a ‘problem’, declaring that she’d got what she deserved, since she’d not kept her word over the money.
What a terrible death, to be drowned by your lover.
It was the final, damning evidence. Within hours he’d been transported out of Fowey to Exeter jail where he would be tried, and no doubt convicted of murder and treason. His final words to Sara that she had gained her freedom at the expense of his, rang in her head, proving to be cruelly accurate.
But what kind of freedom could it be without Charlie? He’d caught his train and left, knowing nothing of this.
What was worse, Sara hadn’t the first idea where he lived, or how she could contact him. He lived somewhere in Boston, that was all she knew.
Another morning, another day to get through. Sadie again hovering in the kitchen, making beans on toast for the children. Trying to do something to help and getting under her feet. Sara wished her mother would go home and leave her to cry in peace, to wallow in her misery. Instead, she kept asking stupid questions. ‘Aren’t you going to do something?’
‘What can I do?’
‘You could go and find him?’
‘Find who?’
‘Don’t play dumb with me, girl, I’m yer mam. You know who I’m talking about, your Yank. Aren’t you going to find him and tell him what’s happened?’
‘Charlie’s gone. Caught his train last night, yesterday afternoon, I don’t remember which but he’s gone back to the US.’
‘No, he ain’t, none of ‘em have. They’re all still up at Windmill having a knee’s up.’
‘What?’
‘I heard they weren’t leaving till tomorrow night.’
‘Oh, my goodness, are you sure?’
Her mother grinned. ‘Why don’t you go and find out. I’ll mind the children.’
Sara was out of the door, running along the Esplanade, up Daglands Road, slowing to a walk up the steep incline as she ran out of breath.
For All Our Tomorrows Page 38
