Alexander, his finger firmly on the button, dived into action as the leading Messerschmitt opened fire on him and shells whizzed over his head. He dived, but was followed, dived again and then saw Dougie’s Spitfire edge up recklessly close to the Messerschmitt, until he was almost touching it, and empty his gun into the fuselage. The enemy plane’s cockpit covering flew off, a trail of smoke appeared from the fuselage, followed by a sheet of flame and it spiralled, blazing, towards the earth.
“Rather him than me,” Alexander muttered. “Thanks a million, Dougie. I owe you ...”
But at that moment another plane appeared out of the mêlée and made straight for Dougie, its cannon firing. Alexander saw Dougie’s plane bank sharply away as he tried to take evasive action. He swooped and turned but the enemy plane followed him as if the pilot was intent on avenging his comrade. There was another burst of cannon fire, the tail of Dougie’s plane flew off followed by a violent explosion and the craft, enveloped in a ball of flame, spiralled slowly downwards like a firework until it reached the earth where it showered into fragments.
Alexander swooped low to inspect the burning wreckage but no welcoming sight of a figure ran from it. In moments it was reduced to ashes. His eyes filled with tears. His heart burning with rage, he soared up into the skies again looking for the plane that had killed his friend.
The Messerschmitts were scattering. Only one remained in sight and it was limping. Dougie had at least managed to prang it before it got him.
Over his RT came the command to return to base but Alexander, ignoring it, turned and tore after the damaged Messerschmitt which was trying to limp across the Channel and return to the safety of its base in France. When he had it within his sights he emptied all his ammunition into it. Momentarily he got a close-up of the pilot’s face, rigid with fear, and then a sheet of flame engulfed the plane, a wing fell off and it rolled lopsidedly many times before diving into the sea. There was a mighty splash, a furious churning of the waves and suddenly all was still again.
Alexander circled over it determined to kill the pilot if he saw him surface, but all remained calm, and after a few moments he flew after his squadron trying to make up for lost time, sure that he would be reprimanded for disobeying orders.
Alexander, cap in hand, waited in the hall of operation headquarters while around him milled personnel from all branches of the armed services. Yet he noticed no one, all faces were blurred as he looked expectantly at the door leading to the operations room.
It was five o’clock, the time they had arranged to pick Minnie up. Alexander’s heart was as heavy as lead. Time for a game of snooker before driving up to London, Dougie had said. There had not even been time to say goodbye.
“Alexander?” Her gentle voice, her smiling, expectant face were a torment to him. As he looked at her, her expression changed and he knew that his own had given everything away.
“It’s Dougie isn’t it? I knew your squadron was in action and there were losses ...” Minnie turned away biting her knuckles as if to stifle her tears.
Alexander nodded. “We had to engage the enemy over Portsmouth today ... Dougie bought it. Oh, Minnie, I’m so terribly sorry.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Minnie said hitching her bag over her shoulder. She looked so smart in her WAAF officer’s uniform, her cap half covering her dark pageboy bob.
They drove to her flat in Earl’s Court, rented accommodation for the duration of the war. Dougie had said he wanted to farm and after the war they intended to go to Scotland, breed sheep and raise a family.
The flat was rather sparsely furnished and impersonal. Alexander had been there several times before. He followed Minnie as she opened the door and put her cap and bag on the stand in the hall and shook out her hair, her actions all precise, automatic. He put his cap next to hers and followed her into the living room where she was pouring drinks. He held out his cigarette case and she took one and raised her eyes to him as he lit it.
“How did it happen?”
Alexander told her. “He saved my life but I couldn’t save his,” he said bitterly. “Now I wish I had gone down with him.”
“Then I’d have no one,” Minnie said gently. “Are you sure ... he has gone?”
“I went down to inspect the wreckage. There was no sign of life. He must have died at once. I got the blighter who went after him. It nearly got me court martialled.”
“Alexander why ...?” She put a hand on his arm in consternation.
“I disobeyed orders to return with the squadron. I’ve been reprimanded, but the CO says there’ll be no further action, and it won’t affect my promotion. I think, unofficially, he was rather pleased with me. I’ve got the highest kill in the squadron. If I hadn’t pranged the blighter it might have been a different story. Minnie ... I’m so sorry. I loved Dougie too you know.”
“I know.” Minnie’s grasp on his arm tightened. “And he loved you in his funny bluff way. He really did. You meant a lot to us both, but oh, Alexander, I shall miss him so much.”
And only then did she allow herself to break down and weep.
Chapter Six
Spring 1941
Deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside the war seemed very far away, though at night the air throbbed with the ominous sounds of enemy planes droning overhead on their way to bomb London.
The garden was full of spring blooms, and birdsong filled the air. In a wheelchair under the burgeoning oak tree Sam Turner, well wrapped up, looked towards the house as a woman, accompanied by one of the convalescent-home doctors, walked slowly towards him, deep in conversation.
About him, no doubt. Sam put aside the book he’d been pretending to read and looked up as Deborah Sadler, a bright smile on her face stood in front of him.
“You took your time,” he said truculently.
“Crosspatch.” She stooped to kiss him. “I was talking to Doctor Warner about you.”
Dr Warner held out his hand.
“I’ll say goodbye for now, Mrs Sadler. We’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
As the doctor walked back to the house Deborah took the chair next to Sam and groped for his hand. “He says you’re doing awfully well.”
“Liar!” Sam snorted. “They don’t think I’ll ever be fit to go to the front again. It will be a desk job, if that. A man who can’t walk is not much good in the army is he?”
“Sam, you mustn’t despair.” Deborah leaned towards him. “You’ve done your bit anyway. Next time you might be killed. It isn’t as though you avoided the war. You haven’t, and you got a medal to prove it.”
Sam stared broodingly in front of him saying nothing.
The Military Medal had been awarded for his bravery at the front in saving the life of a fellow soldier at the risk of his own.
The man whose life Sam had saved under a barrage of intense gunfire was now back in the war but Sam had sustained two broken legs, one so shattered it had nearly been amputated, a broken arm, a ruptured spleen, which had to be removed, together with part of a kidney. For months he had hovered between life and death. When he was well enough to be informed that his father was still missing, perhaps somewhere in Germany, he had a relapse.
Now, in the convalescent home, he seemed finally on the way to recovery. The authorities wanted to invalid him out of the army but he wanted to stay.
“Sam,” Deborah said, “I want to talk to you seriously.”
“About what?” he asked rather belligerently.
“It’s about the business. Your business, Bart’s business.”
“What about it?”
“It is rudderless.”
“I can’t help that.”
“No, I know you can’t. But if ... when Bart comes back, because truly I think he will, there will be no business left. He’ll be furious. You are clearly in no fit state to run it. So I thought ... well, Sam, don’t laugh but I thought I might see what I could do.”
“You know nothing about b
usiness,” Sam said with a derisory laugh. Like his father he could be very unpleasant when he chose.
“No, I know I don’t, but neither did you before you got into it and –”
“I’m a man, that’s different. Men have a much more instinctive head for business than women. Besides I had experience of the building trade. You’ve no experience of anything.”
Deborah looked pained. An attractive, rather faded blonde of thirty-eight, she wore a summer dress of navy Moygashel with a large white bow and a navy straw hat tilted over her forehead.
“Don’t be nasty, Sam.” Deborah drew a little away from him. “Don’t be petty and childish. You’re in a very bad mood today, so I think I’ll go.”
As Deborah rose, Sam pulled her back. “No, don’t go. Please don’t go. I’m sorry I was beastly. I am in a horrible mood today. Despite what Doctor Wilson says I don’t think I am making progress. I can do very little for myself and I can’t walk. I have no strength in my legs. I’m no good to man or beast or myself. In fact I hate myself at the moment.”
And suddenly Sam, strong Sam, whom Deborah had never seen weep in his life burst into tears.
“Oh, Sam!” she said sinking to her knees beside him. “Oh, Sam don’t cry.”
Then her own eyes filled with tears and she rested her head on his lap.
Deborah had had a lot of sadness in her own life. She’d been a wayward child and, as an adolescent, had run away from home with an itinerant labourer, and given birth to an illegitimate child. She had subsequently married Bart, then deceived him. When he found out he had divorced her.
They had two children, Helen and James, but Bart had believed James was not his son, but the son of her lover, and had disowned him.
In fact James, now five, grew more and more like Bart every day. There was no mistaking whose child he was, but in view of what had happened to Bart, and if he was never to be seen again, it didn’t really matter now.
Deborah was a dutiful mother to her two children. Helen was in a boarding school in the west country, but James was at home with her. The son she’d had when she was nineteen she never saw. He’d been adopted by relatives of her stepfather and was apparently very happy. Everyone had decided it was better that way: to make a new beginning. She never ever thought about him now.
Her relations with her mother Sophie had always been difficult and there was little hope that they would be mended. Her half-brother Sam had always been considered a problem and Deborah had had little to do with him. Both Deborah and her sister had resented him and a kind of muted feeling of antagonism had existed between them. However, in time, a grudging feeling of respect had developed between Deborah and Sam, people of similar characteristics and experience, because they had both been rather unpopular members of the household where the favourites were Deborah’s elder sister Ruth and Tim Turner her younger half-brother. It had become a case of Sam and Deborah against the rest.
Deborah was a woman who was bored and unfulfilled; a rather spoilt, selfish creature who looked her age. She would have liked to have done some war work, but the jobs available seemed even more boring than her present life and she had little real sense of patriotism. She joined the WVS and did one thing and then another and then gave up.
Sam’s terrible injuries at Dunkirk had given Deborah a much needed good cause. He became her war work and she threw herself into his welfare, going to see him at least once a week, discussing his progress, or lack of it, with his doctors, generally rousing him as much as she could and trying to help to dispel his natural gloom and cheer him up.
The thought of taking over from Bart and making a success of his business was a challenge that appealed to her. She had spent far more time in the office than she let on to Sam, mainly in an effort to find a clue to the mystery of what had happened to Bart. It was a year since he’d disappeared and not a word had been heard from him or about him. It seemed so unlike Bart to vanish in that way.
“Dad would never have disappeared of his own accord,” Sam said as if he could read her mind. “He must have been captured because of what he did for the Jews. He must be dead.”
“Don’t say that.” Deborah had little affection for her ex-husband but she wished him no harm. She dried her eyes and looked up at Sam. “You know Bart. He’s probably working undercover.”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “He would have got in touch with us. He’d find a way. He’s dead or he’d have let us know.”
“In that case,” Deborah slowly rose to her feet and sat down again next to Sam, “I think you ought to let me help with the business until you’re fit to take over, or at least try. I think it’s the very best thing. Don’t you?”
“If you like,” Sam said and then, sighing deeply, “Sometimes I
wonder if I’ll ever be fit myself to do anything again. Sometimes I wish Jack had kicked me away from the boat and left me to drown.”
August 1941
“She’s lovely isn’t she?” Lally, who had been studying Minnie practising her croquet strokes on the lawn, looked sideways at Alexander. Half asleep in a deckchair beside her, he nodded. Exhausted from almost non-stop combat duties he was enjoying a rare spot of leave and Minnie had joined him as Lally’s guest. Lally had always liked Minnie, and had she had her way she and Alexander would have been married years ago. But Alexander had been in love with Mary Sprogett and Minnie also had married someone else.
Now only a missing woman seemed to prevent that happy outcome of Lally’s dreams.
“I wish we knew about Irene,” Lally said sitting back and folding her arms behind her head.
Alexander didn’t reply.
“I mean whether she was alive or not –” Lally went on, but Alexander interrupted her.
“Please, Mother, drop the subject. There is no possibility of me and Minnie marrying now or, perhaps, ever. We both know that and we never discuss it.”
“I’m sure she loves you.”
“It is too early for either of us to think of anything like that. When you have been happily married, as we both undoubtedly were, it is far too soon to be thinking of anything else. Dougie has only been dead for a year, and of course I can’t stop thinking about Irene and what might have happened to her; but I won’t know until the war is over, and maybe for years after that.” Alexander glanced at his watch. “What time are they coming for lunch?”
“My goodness!” Lally also looked at her watch and got up. “They will soon be here. I’ll go and make sure that Cook has everything in order.”
As Lally crossed the lawn Alexander smiled to himself. Cook would have had everything ready for hours, if not days. A family party was just what Lally enjoyed, redolent of the old days when huge family parties were regular occasions at Forest House. Lally loved to entertain and did it so well.
Minnie, her croquet mallet in her hand strolled over to him and slumped onto Lally’s vacated chair. Lying back, shading her eyes against the sun, she remained silent looking about her.
“It is so beautiful here,” she said. “I can’t believe ... just a year ago, on a day like this Dougie died.”
Alexander held out his hand and Minnie took it and pressed it.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you, Alexander. With my parents abroad and Ronald at sea I would have been completely alone in the world.”
Alexander said nothing but continued to hold her hand. Then, eventually he said, “We both needed each other for comfort. It was meant.”
“I’m rather nervous about meeting your family,” Minnie said lightly as if anxious to change the subject. They relied a lot on banter to avoid a discussion of real feelings, maybe in case it should reveal too much.
“Nothing to be nervous about. You’ll love them and they’ll love you.”
“I already love Lally, but then I’ve known her for such a long time.” Minnie paused and looked at him, hesitating before saying, “You never told me, Alexander, or perhaps you don’t want to, how Lally came to ... well, I know she�
��s not your real mother.”
“I’ll take you to my mother’s grave one day.” Alexander, now thoroughly wide awake, sat up. This, perhaps, was the moment when banter was rightly put aside. “My mother was an ordinary working-class woman called Nelly Allen. I saw her once but then only from a distance. She was very beautiful. She and my father, Carson, had an affair when they were both very young and he was living in London where she worked as a barmaid.
“Carson was ordered by his family to return home, for some alleged misdemeanour, and left without knowing Nelly was pregnant. He tried to find her but couldn’t. After I was born Nelly and Massie, her friend, who now looks after Kate, left me on Lally’s doorstep just with a note with my name, but Lally adopted me and only years later was it revealed who my parents were. By then Nelly had died here of tuberculosis. Carson had heard that she was ill and brought her to Pelham’s Oak. That is why Connie left him. The rest you know.”
As Minnie sat staring wide-eyed in front of her Alexander said, half-jokingly, “I guess that’s left you speechless.”
“It is quite a tale,” she murmured breathlessly.
“I hated my family for a while. I eloped with Mary to spite them. Then Mary died when she had Kate and ... that just about closes the circle I think. I was incredibly callous towards Lally, and ungracious; but they were all so wonderful and understanding and patient with me that, in the end, it was all right. I feel so lucky to have discovered my birth right, to have a family like this, to know who I am. I have been incredibly blessed ... but unlucky in love. I mean unlucky in that I loved two women and lost them.”
Alexander started at the sound of cars coming up the drive.
“That will be them,” he said jumping up and glancing at Minnie reassuringly as she hung back. “Be brave.”
It took Minnie some time to work out who was who in this large and rather bewildering family, and they weren’t all there by any means. She was surprised at the number of young or fairly young children and then Carson, who had taken to her immediately, explained who belonged to whom and where their missing parents were.
In Time of War (Part Six of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 8
