by Pam Weaver
‘Do you know Winston Churchill?’
Ed shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Gee,’ she blurted out, ‘say that again. “I’m afraid not …”’ She looked around at her other customers, ‘Don’t you just love that English accent?’
‘Two coffees please,’ Ed said patiently. ‘And two cinnamon buns.’
‘You want coffee? Oh my mistake. I thought you Britishers only drank tea.’
Frankie was struggling not to giggle. The waitress served them and then turned her attention to some lorry drivers who had made their way into the diner.
‘We got an English couple in here,’ she announced as they placed their order at the bar. Everybody turned around to look at Ed and Frankie.
‘My brother was in England in the war,’ one of them said. ‘What part you from?’
‘The south of England,’ said Frankie. ‘Kent and Dorset.’
‘I was sent to Italy,’ said Ed.
‘Me too,’ said the lorry driver. ‘Ah, those Italian chicks …’ he turned back to the bar. ‘Sweet memories.’
‘What you doing in these parts?’ his companion asked. He was an older man dressed in a checked shirt and a grubby jacket with a zip up the front.
‘Just touring,’ said Ed rather too quickly. ‘We like to get off the beaten track and see the real America.’
The man gave him a long stare until the waitress put a plate of food onto the counter and then he turned away and began to eat.
After about an hour’s rest, Ed and Frankie set out for Greensboro. The journey took about fifty minutes. Strangely enough as they pulled out of the car park, one of the lorries seemed to be going the same way.
Cecelia had told them that Jefferson was hiding on a farm between Greensboro and Kannapolis. The landmark was a water tower on a hill. They crossed a railway line and began to look for a dirt road on the right which apparently led straight to the farm. As they turned right, Frankie was relieved to see the lorry that had been following them go straight on. Everything was going perfectly.
A few yards from the road, the land looked barren and dry. A few rather scrawny animals fed on the parched grass and a dog on a long leash barked furiously as they approached the house. Frankie had a feeling that the family on the farm must be poor. Their home was little more than a one-room shack with a small veranda at the front. Two people sat there on wooden chairs. As Ed and Frankie drove up towards them, they stood up and hurried inside the house. By the time Ed got out of the car, the man had returned with a shotgun in his hands.
‘Git off my land,’ he snapped. ‘Go on, git.’
Ed raised his hand. ‘Whoa,’ he cried. ‘You should be expecting us. Cecelia sent us.’
The man lowered the shotgun and his face broke into a warm smile. ‘Hey Martha, get on out here. The English have arrived.’
*
The couple prevailed on them to stay for something to eat and drink but Frankie and Ed decided they should return to Washington as soon as possible. As instructed, they gave the man and woman an envelope from Eldrick, which Ed guessed must be a monetary gift, and shook hands. After that they were taken across the fields. Jefferson was in a small room at the base of the water tower. He scrambled to his feet as they walked in but he didn’t look well. His face was bloodied and one eye was so swollen he couldn’t open it. His right hand was roughly bandaged but from the way he held it, Frankie guessed someone had stamped on it or at the very least broken a finger. The man helped Ed get him into the car. They laid him on the back seat, covered him with a blanket to make him comfortable and said their goodbyes.
‘If I tell you to hide,’ said Ed, ‘get down on the floor and cover yourself right over.’
Jefferson nodded miserably. ‘Yes sir, boss.’
‘I’m not your boss,’ Ed said patiently. ‘The name is Ed.’
While he’d been sorting Jefferson out, Frankie had slipped into the driver’s seat. ‘Come on, Frankie,’ said Ed, coming around the car. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘You’ve been driving all day,’ said Frankie. ‘You’re tired.’ She started the engine.
Her husband was annoyed but there was little he could do and he didn’t like the idea of hanging around in this God-forsaken place, so the sooner they got underway the better.
The dirt track was the only way into the farm and they were both relieved when they caught sight of the road. As Frankie nosed the car to the left to get onto the highway, a large open car, at a glance a 1948 Mercury 8, with two passengers seated and a third riding on the folded down soft top at the back, turned at speed into the dirt road. On the back seat, Jefferson whimpered.
‘My God,’ said Ed as the car sped by. ‘That was close. That idiot almost had you.’
‘More than that,’ said Frankie, her heart beginning to thump in her chest. ‘That was Lyman Spinks.’
‘Pull over and I’ll drive,’ Ed said authoritatively.
‘No time,’ said Frankie glancing into the rear view mirror as the car swerved recklessly back onto the highway in a hail of small stones and grass. ‘He’s right behind us.’
Ed turned sharply and sure enough the Mercury was speeding towards them and gaining ground. Frankie pressed the accelerator hard.
‘Get down on the floor,’ Ed barked at Jefferson.
The man was weeping now. ‘Oh God, they’s gonna kill me.’
‘No, they won’t,’ said Ed. ‘Not if we can help it.’
Frankie turned her head. ‘In this together,’ she repeated.
Ed grinned. ‘In this together,’ he said. ‘Your driving had better be good.’
‘It is,’ said Frankie but she was aware that the Mercury, a much more powerful car, was still gaining ground.
It came up behind and hit her. The jolt pushed them hard into their seats and then propelled them forward. Frankie hit the steering wheel, a painful jerk which, for a second, took her breath away but she held her nerve and toed the accelerator again. Jefferson was thrown against the back of their seats and Ed hit his head on the dashboard before rolling down into the passenger foot well with a groan.
‘Are you all right?’ Frankie asked anxiously. Somehow she had managed to keep going although her speed had been reduced. ‘Ed?’ she said anxiously. ‘Are you okay?’
When her husband lifted his head, there was blood trickling down his forehead.
He moaned slightly. ‘Yes. Are you?’
Ignoring the pain in her chest where she’d hit the steering wheel, she nodded. ‘What about our friend?’
Ed heaved himself onto his seat and looked behind. Jefferson was still on the floor but sobbing like a baby and shaking like a leaf.
That was when they heard the shot. The back pillion passenger had aimed the shotgun at them, probably hoping to blow out a tyre. The move made the driver of the Mercury lose a little ground for a while but with a more powerful engine than Frankie had, the gap between them soon became smaller.
They roared on but now the driver of the Mercury was trying to overtake. Frankie knew if he got ahead of her he would most likely slew the car across her path and they would have no escape. As the car came alongside she could see Lyman Spinks quite clearly. He raised himself in the passenger seat and undid his flies.
‘Hey babe,’ he shouted as he rubbed himself vigorously, ‘when we stop the car I’ll give you a taste of a real man.’
The man with the shotgun was aiming it right at Ed but as luck would have it, the driver of the Mercury suddenly swerved sharply to ram the side of Frankie’s car just as he was about to fire and he lost his balance. With a scream of terror, he did a backward summersault over the boot of the car and disappeared into the road. The gun went off as he fell.
Frankie felt sick but they dared not stop. The Mercury slowed for a second or two, then picked up speed again.
‘Good God, they’re not even going to stop and see if he’s all right,’ Ed gasped incredulously.
The Mercury had almost gained enough ground to pull in
front of them when a large truck appeared on the opposite side of the road, headlights flashing and horn blaring. It was travelling so fast, that there was every possibility of a head on collision if the Mercury stuck to its present course. Their aggressors had no option but to pull back.
Up ahead, Frankie could see the railway line but this time a train was coming. Unlike English railway crossings there was nobody in a signal box raising and lowering the barriers. Everything was all done automatically and as far as she could see, there were no actual gates or bars. Her heart sank as she heard a warning bell and the lights began to flash.
‘You’ll have to slow down, Frankie,’ said Ed. ‘You’ve got no choice. The train is coming.’
All her past motorbike scrambling skills kicked in and Frankie did a quick speed guesstimation. How fast was the train going? How long before the train reached the crossing? How long would it take her to get there? The train driver blew his whistle as she sped on but she kept going.
‘Frankie!’ Ed screeched. He tried to snatch the wheel but she buffeted his hand away. ‘For God’s sake stop! You’re going to kill us all.’
She knew then that she had no choice. Even if she took her foot off the accelerator immediately, the time it would take to slow down would probably mean they’d plough into the side of the train anyway. The Mercury 8 was right up behind them hell bent on ramming into the back of her, so she had to keep going. Pressing her foot down hard, she raced to get to the crossing before the train. Beside her, she heard Ed take in his breath noisily.
They only just cleared the crossing right in front of the oncoming train but as they hit the rails, the front wheels of the car left the road and for a few seconds they were planing. Frankie landed with a crash onto the grass verge on the other side of the tack and struggled to keep control. She dared not let the car roll or go down the ditch. The wheels spun madly as she hit the ground. Had the Mercury 8 managed to get across as well?
The train driver blew his whistle a third time and she heard her husband let out an anguished cry. It was only then that their car stopped moving. They were facing in the opposite direction. Frankie caught a glimpse of the Mercury 8 still heading towards them then she turned her head away. There was a loud bang and a couple of seconds later, Ed scrambled out of the car to be sick. Jefferson sat up and began to laugh and shout. ‘You done it! You done it!’
Frankie, shaking and crying, looked up again. The train was still travelling but it was slowing down. Of the Mercury 8 and its two passengers, there was no sign.
*
When Frankie and Ed got back to Washington with Jefferson, they had an ecstatic welcome. Frankie was still in a state of shock and spent a couple of days huddled in a corner while her brain tried to come to terms with what had happened. Whilst she was glad to have rescued the boy, she was ashamed that she had put all of their lives in such mortal danger. She had to stop being so gung-ho about everything. Parenthood brought with it responsibility, she told herself. If things hadn’t turned out the way they had, Lillian might be an orphan.
When the family talked things over, she wondered how Spinks could have known she was in the area.
‘I don’t necessarily think he knew you were coming for Jefferson,’ said Ed, ‘but I remember that chap in the diner who asked us why were in the area. He gave me a funny look, didn’t he?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Frankie. ‘It must have been his lorry that followed us.’
‘And when we went down some obscure dirt track,’ Ed went on, ‘he put two and two together.’
‘Lyman Spinks recognised me when the Mercury turned into the lane,’ said Frankie. ‘That’s certainly the moment I recognised him.’
Jefferson had spent a couple of days in hospital. There wasn’t a lot wrong with him apart from some nasty bruises, a broken finger and a small fracture in his cheek bone but he was still traumatised by the whole thing. The doctor told Selma time would heal all and by the end of the second week, he was beginning to improve. Everybody knew it wouldn’t be long before he picked up the threads of his struggle to put an end to racist Jim Crow practices as well.
Forty-Nine
Ardsheal Road, Broadwater, August 19th 1951
The day of Derek’s adoption and Barbara and Norman’s baby girl’s christening was bright and sunny. Frankie looked around Barbara’s lovely garden and smiled. It was so peaceful here. All that had happened in America seemed a million miles away now. The thought of that perilous journey cast a shadow across her mind and she shuddered. One slip, one mistake and everything could have turned out so differently. Somebody up there must have been watching over them that day.
She missed Romare’s family. It had been particularly hard for Cecelia and Eldrick to say goodbye to Lillian but there was always the hope that one day they might get together again. Right now, her only feeling was that it was good to be back home.
‘All that business with Conrad Merriman?’ Frankie had whispered into her friend’s ear when she and Barbara were alone.
‘Oh, I never told you,’ said Barbara. ‘Norman wrote a reply telling him I’d made it all up and I had a letter from his lawyer telling me he would not be pursuing the matter any further.’
‘Will you ever tell Derek?’
‘Possibly when he’s much older,’ Barbara told her. ‘It would have to be my word only, because of that false declaration Mum made on his birth certificate. As you said, there’s no way it can be proved.’
‘But now the adoption has gone through, you really are his mother,’ said Frankie.
Barbara smiled. ‘It took me a very long time to realise what I had got,’ she said. ‘I kept saying I wanted to be loved and now I can see that even though I didn’t like it, what Mum did was first and foremost because she loved me. And as for Norman … just look at him, the silly man. Daft as a brush.’
She was smiling contentedly and they watched as Norman walked around the garden showing baby Wendy, not even three months old, all the flowers and telling her their Latin names. After a minute or two, Barbara excused herself to go and join him.
Frankie took a moment to look around at all the people who meant so much to her. Barbara and Norman, of course, and Derek, pleased as punch and so smartly dressed in his first ever suit with long trousers. He was beaming like a Cheshire cat so no one could doubt how happy he was to be Derek Hammond. Then there were Aunt Bet and Uncle Lorry sitting together on the big swing seat. Aunt Bet was giggling like a schoolgirl as Uncle Lorry pushed it higher with his feet. Older and less able to do what they wanted to do, they were looking forward to retirement in a lovely little bungalow in Goring-by-Sea. What a debt of love she owed them, but even as the thought crossed her mind, she could hear the voice of her long-dead first husband saying, ‘Love is a gift.’
Doreen and her husband Terry were laughing with Frankie’s cousin Alan and Thérèse, his lovely French wife. They were probably talking about babies. Both women were expecting again and their other children ran around the garden enjoying themselves. Frankie sighed happily. There were times in life when you felt nothing could be better, and this was one of them.
Alice, Barbara’s maid, wandered around the garden with a tray of drinks and for the first time since she’d got here, Frankie frowned. She became aware of someone standing beside her and turned.
‘You look miles away,’ said Ed.
‘I was just thinking about something young Alice said,’ Frankie replied. ‘Did you know that the Worthing town councillors want to tone down the music in the dances in the Assembly Hall?’
‘No,’ he said feigning surprise. ‘I didn’t.’
‘It’s hardly fair, is it?’ said Frankie. ‘Young people enjoy jazz and rock ’n’ roll and why shouldn’t they?’
‘Why indeed,’ said Ed with a grin.
Frankie slipped her arm through his. ‘Sorry, I’m getting my gander up again, aren’t I, and I promised you rescuing Jefferson would be the last time.’
‘You carry on, my darling,’ Ed teas
ed. ‘You wouldn’t be you without a little of your gander up about something.’
She nudged his arm playfully. ‘I’m a lucky girl to be loved by you.’
He brushed her ear with his lips in that deliciously sexy way she loved and whispered, ‘My darling, the pleasure is all mine.’
Acknowledgements
I grew up in a time when people kept secrets. Adopted from birth, I was sixteen before I discovered that my natural father was an American GI and eighteen before I knew he was black. I had two siblings, who shared the same mother but we all had different fathers. It was 2013 before I found my brother and by that time my sister had died.
Writing this story has been my first venture into the world of the black American GI. I have always known that life was hard for them but I never realised just how difficult it must have been. They were patriotic people who loved their country but were held back by prejudice and in some cases spite. Linda Hervieux’s book Forgotten and Graham Smith’s When Jim Crow Met John Bull helped me understand the unfairness of it all. The characters in my book are totally fictitious but I have tried to express the frustrations and pain they must have felt.
Doctor Drew is real. He helped to plan a safe way of processing and storing large quantities of blood plasma, ensuring its contamination-free arrival in Britain and Europe. There is no doubt that he saved many hundreds if not thousands of lives during WW2. Although he was known as the ‘father of the blood bank’, the Red Cross in America excluded African Americans from giving blood so Drew himself could not be part of the very programme he had devised.
On a personal note, I am grateful to the Avon team for their encouragement and help to make this book the best it could be. Thank you to my agent Juliet Burton who is always so patient with me and I would never have managed it without the love and support of my long-suffering husband who is still waiting for his tea!
Keep reading to discover recipes inspired by the book and to read a special short story from Pam Weaver.
