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From the upper deck of the bus which carried him to Hyde Park Corner it didn’t look as if much had changed since his last brief sojourn in the capital, a couple of months before. The so-called ‘Little Blitz’ had tailed off during the past few weeks, and there were no startling new gaps in either the familiar terraces of Gower Street or the shops in Oxford Street.
He decided on impulse to walk from Hyde Park Corner, telling himself he was fed up with crowds of cheek-by-jowl humanity, but knowing in his heart that he simply wanted to delay his arrival at the house in Beaufort Gardens. Stepping through his father’s front door meant stepping out of the war, and that meant having to confront the life and family he’d left behind when he joined the Army. It meant remembering that he loathed his father.
Randolph Farnham was a sixty-two-year-old insurance tycoon who worshipped wealth, power and breeding. He’d been an admirer of the Nazis before the war, and the outbreak of hostilities had not so much changed his mind as persuaded him that it wouldn’t be wise to publicize such views. Over the past year Farnham Insurance had been more successful than most at using the small print to wriggle out of claims made by bomb-damage victims.
His wife Margaret – Farnham’s stepmother – was just as selfish and not much more likeable, but her wanton disregard of convention could sometimes seem almost admirable. At a party before the war he had stumbled across her and one of her friends’ husbands engaged in furiously silent sex in one of the guest rooms, and the look in her eyes when she noticed him had been one of pure amusement.
He had no desire to see her or his father, and in fact there were only two reasons why he ever came to Beaufort Gardens. One was that all his worldly goods – all that remained of them – had been brought here from the bombed-out cottage in Sussex; the other was the presence of his sixteen-year-old sister Eileen, on whom he doted. She was kind, interesting, lovely to look at and wise beyond her years, and quite how she had managed to become so under their father’s roof was something that Farnham was at a loss to explain. But she had. Living proof, he thought, that children had a much bigger say in how they turned out than their parents liked to believe.
He covered the last few yards and rapped on the door with the heavy knocker. Norton answered, looking every one of his seventy-three years, and ushered him inside with the usual lack of friendliness. ‘Your father has left for the office, Mr Robert,’ he said stiffly. ‘Mrs Farnham has not yet come down.’
Fuck them, Farnham thought. ‘My sister?’ he asked.
‘She is at breakfast,’ Norton said, but at that moment Eileen burst through the door at a run, a huge smile on her face.
‘Robbie!’ she cried happily, throwing her arms round his neck.
After a while they disengaged and he got a better look at her. She seemed older, he thought, though it had been only a couple of months since he last saw her. Her clothes seemed drabber than usual, but the eyes were as bright as ever.
‘Let’s go out,’ she said. ‘I’ve got two hours – we can go for a walk in the park.’
‘All right,’ he said, glad of the excuse to get out of the house before his stepmother appeared.
It took Eileen only a moment to grab a coat and they were out on the street, walking briskly across the Brompton Road and heading up Montpelier Street. ‘What are you doing in two hours?’ he asked. ‘Shopping with one of your friends, I suppose,’ he added with a grin.
‘Shopping! Where have you been? There’s nothing in the shops to buy. And I have to go to work,’ she said triumphantly.
He was suitably astonished. ‘You’ve got a holiday job?’
‘In the East End. I’m a volunteer. Oh, Robbie, it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. I’m helping in this shelter for people who’ve been bombed out of their homes. It’s run by a clergyman named Tim and two old ladies.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Everything. Cook, clean, visit people, help people sort out problems, try to trace missing relatives…’ She giggled. ‘I even helped Tim write his sermon last week.’
Farnham laughed. ‘You were an atheist last time we talked.’
‘I still am. But Tim says it doesn’t matter as long as your heart’s in the right place.’
‘Right,’ Farnham said drily. ‘You’re not sweet on this clergyman by any chance?’
‘He’s older than Father,’ she said indignantly. ‘And anyway I don’t have time to be sweet on anyone. Oh, Robbie, I’m so glad you’re here because I need a big favour.’
He sighed. ‘And what might that be?’
She kept him waiting for an answer until they were safely across Knightsbridge. ‘I don’t want to go back to school until after the war’s over,’ she said as they entered Hyde Park. ‘I’m much more useful where I am. And I’m learning so much more!’
‘Yes?’ Farnham asked, knowing full well what was coming.
‘So will you talk to Father for me?’ she pleaded.
‘I’ll try, but I doubt he’ll listen.’
‘Just soften him up for me, then I’ll move in for the kill.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, Eileen,’ he warned her.
She turned her blue eyes on him. ‘I won’t. But I have to ask, don’t I?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he agreed. Something in the way she said it set off an alarm bell in his mind, but she left him no time to think it through.
‘So what are you doing?’ she asked.
They had reached the edge of the Serpentine. ‘Playing Cowboys and Indians in the Scottish hills,’ he said wryly. ‘Getting ready for the big day, like everyone else.’
‘And when will it be?’
He grunted. ‘You’d better ask Churchill that. Or Eisenhower.’
‘It’ll be soon though, won’t it?’
‘I should think so.’
‘And you’ll be part of it?’ She sounded worried now.
‘Me and a million others,’ he said lightly, but she wasn’t to be put off so easily.
‘Robbie,’ she said, ‘I know it’s been awfully hard for you. Since Catherine died, I mean. And I know you can’t bear the thought of working for Father when all this is over, but there are lots of other things you could do.’
‘I know,’ he said. For some reason he felt close to tears.
‘I suppose I’m being really selfish,’ she went on, ‘but I need my brother and I just want you to be careful.’
He put an arm round her shoulder and squeezed. ‘I promise I will,’ he said.
By the time McCaigh had taken the Circle Line to Liverpool Street and the LNER stopping service to Stoke Newington he felt as though he’d seen enough trains to last him several lifetimes. Three hundred and sixty miles in twenty-four hours, he told himself as he took the short cut through Abney Park cemetery. Fifteen miles an hour. He had always been good at arithmetic.
His mum’s welcome more than made up for the rigours of the journey. She plied him with another breakfast – his Uncle Derek had apparently been present when certain items fell off a lorry in nearby Dalston – and went through all the local gossip. One family they all knew in Kynaston Street had been killed by a direct hit only a couple of weeks before.
‘Has it been bad?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing like the real Blitz. And everything’s much better organized these days. We quite enjoy it down the shelter these days, what with bingo and all that. Or at least your dad and I do. When the siren goes Patrick’s usually nowhere to be found.’
‘He’s at school now, isn’t he?’
She shrugged. ‘Supposed to be, but I doubt it. He’s been helping out with the fire wardens lately – real proud of himself, he is. He must have lied about his age – either that or your mate Terry took pity on him. At least it’s stopped him moaning on and on about how the war’s going to end before he has the chance to join up. Way he talks you’d think it was like being in the films. And I don’t want you encouraging him, either,’ she added with a threatening look.
‘I won’t,’ he promised.
She believed him. ‘When you came home last time I thought you were keeping something back, but I didn’t like to pry.’
‘Nah,’ he said, ‘not really. We were on this op in Italy – eight of us – and four got killed. Felt a bit close to home, I suppose.’
‘Not surprised.’ She got up to pour them both another cup of tea. ‘Bloody Eyeties,’ she muttered as she put the cosy back over the teapot.
He laughed. ‘Matter of fact it was Eyeties who helped the rest of us escape from the bloody Krauts,’ he told her.
She looked at him. ‘But you’re all right?’
‘Yeah, you know me.’ He changed the subject. ‘How’s Dad?’
‘He’s at work, if you can call gazing at trees work.’ Donal McCaigh was the head park keeper at nearby Clissold Park. He’d been a trainee teacher just before the last war, but several exposures to mustard gas in the Ypres salient had left his lungs permanently impaired, and forced him into an outdoor career. ‘He’ll be home for lunch. So should Patrick, though I think he’s got a game this afternoon.’
McCaigh’s sixteen-year-old brother had been an above-average footballer since he could walk, and most of the family were hoping he’d get a chance to turn professional after the war. The exception was his mother, who wanted him to go for something with a future. ‘If he hasn’t,’ she added, ‘he’ll just be bouncing that damn ball against the wall out the back all bloody afternoon.’
McCaigh grinned.
‘You should be thinking about going to university when the war ends,’ she told him, the bit now firmly between her teeth.
‘I’ll probably be past thirty!’ he said.
‘Won’t matter,’ she said emphatically. ‘They’ll be taking all ages after this. And you’ve got most of the family’s brain rations – why waste them? I tell you, Mickie, there’s a lot of things are going to be different after this war, and a lot of opportunities. You want to be prepared.’
‘I’ll give you another lecture tomorrow,’ she said, laughing. ‘Now why don’t you catch up on your kip. I’ve made up the other bed for you, and I’ll wake you for lunch.’
It seemed like a good idea, and his head had no sooner hit the fresh pillow than he was out for the count.
Neil Rafferty had been lucky with his connection at Bletchley, and the sun was just clambering above the houses beyond the sidings when his train drew into Cambridge. There were no buses in the station forecourt but the house he and Beth had rented for the past two years was only a twenty-minute walk away, and it felt good to be stretching his legs after such a long journey.
Even as a child he had loved this time of day, and the grandparents who had brought him up had never had any trouble getting him out of bed, or at least not when the sun was shining. He had never known his father, who had died on the Somme before he was born, and he had no memories of his mother, who had succumbed to the postwar flu epidemic. His father’s parents had taken him in and he had grown up in their Cambridge house, surrounded by his professorial grandfather’s books and the model cars and ships which his father had once laboured to construct.
He would visit them later that afternoon, after spending the morning with Beth and the baby.
The thought of his wife made him lengthen his stride. He hadn’t seen her for more than a month, and there hadn’t even been a letter for over a fortnight, but he was hoping that this visit would be special. It could hardly turn out as badly as the last one, which had coincided with her time of the month. In two days she’d hardly let him touch her.
This time they had a whole week, and he felt better already. The last couple of months hadn’t been easy, but as he walked through the Cambridge streets in the early morning sunshine Italy seemed a long way away.
Rafferty was not a man given to introspection – his mind gravitated to the practical, to problem-solving – but he had spent quite a lot of time trying to understand why those few days in Italy had affected him so deeply. No simple explanation had occurred to him – it had, he decided, been a combination of factors. The brutality of the Germans had shaken him, and he supposed that the deaths of the four SAS men had brought home his own vulnerability. Jools Morgan had always seemed so indestructible, then bang, he was gone. Somehow it had all become real in that moment – not only the war and soldiering but the life he lived outside all that. Beth and the baby. England in the sun.
He passed the end of the road where his grandparents lived, resisting the temptation to drop in for just a few minutes. Another two turnings and he was approaching his own front door. The house was nothing special, just a two-up two-down, but the ivy they had started was already threatening to engulf the front room window. Too impatient to rummage through his bag for the key, he banged twice with the knocker.
Beth opened the door with a smile on her face, and he reached forward to take her in his arms. She backed away, the smile gone, replaced by surprise and something else. ‘Neil,’ she said instinctively. ‘Don’t…’ And then she saw the expression on his face. ‘What are you…didn’t you get my letter?’
There was suddenly a hole where his stomach had been. ‘What letter? What’s happening?’
She just stared at him, as if she didn’t know what to say.
‘What letter?’ he repeated.
She gulped. ‘I’ve fallen in love with someone else,’ she said, the words spilling out in a rush. ‘I wrote and told you. I’ve been waiting for a letter. I didn’t expect…’
‘Who?’ he asked, as if it mattered.
‘An American. His name’s Brad. I told you everything in the letter.’
‘I never got a letter.’
She stood there in her dressing gown, a piteous look on her face. ‘I’m sorry, Neil. I couldn’t help it. It just happened.’
He stared at her, and in the silence heard someone move upstairs. ‘He’s here?’ he said incredulously, anger rising in his voice.
‘I had no idea you were coming. I was waiting for a letter,’ she said again.
They both heard the feet on the stairs, and Rafferty felt his anger spread through his limbs like a hot flush. As the uniformed legs came into view he took a step forward, fist clenched, impervious to reason.
The American was built like a tank; but that wouldn’t have stopped him. What did was the child in the man’s arms, his own child, its tiny hand caressing the American’s cheek. The child looked at him as if he was a stranger.
Beth’s small voice broke the silence. ‘Neil, this is Brad. Maybe we should all sit down and have a cup of tea.’
Rafferty looked at her as if she was mad, and she thought better of the idea.
‘I think maybe you two need to talk,’ Brad said, handing the baby to Beth. For one minute Rafferty thought he was going to be offered a handshake, but the American must have seen the look in his eye. ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he told Beth. They didn’t kiss each other but they didn’t need to. Brad nodded at Rafferty and walked out through the still-open front door.
Beth walked over and pushed it shut. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ she said quietly.
He followed her through in a daze, and sat down heavily on one of the chairs they’d found in a flea market just before their marriage.
She was putting on the kettle. ‘I am really sorry, Neil,’ she said, her back turned away from him, and for one mad moment he felt like leaping up and hitting her, hitting her till she changed her mind.
‘I didn’t want to put you through this,’ she went on, turning to face him.
He tried to think. ‘How long have you been…how long have you known him?’ he asked, wishing he could think of something to ask which would make a difference.
‘We met at Christmas, but nothing happened until March, after your last trip home. I didn’t mean to fall in love with him,’ she said. ‘I tried not to, but…it just happened. And once it had happened…’
He understood the words, but he still couldn’t take it in. ‘Do Gran and Grandad know?’ he asked. Another meaningless question.
‘They may have guessed something was wrong, but I haven’t told them. I thought you should.’
He looked at her, shaking his head. ‘Why?’ he asked, and she knew he wasn’t talking about his grandparents.
She put a hand over his. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just happened.’
He shrugged off the stranger’s hand and got to his feet. His son, now ensconced in the high chair, was looking at him with an anxious expression. ‘We’ve got to talk about Ben,’ he said.
‘I know…’
‘But not now. I need…’ He needed to get away, to run, to cover his head and howl. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he told her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
He grabbed his bag, yanked open the door and stumbled out into the sunshine.
Ian Tobin walked through the door of the family shop in Landore, Swansea, soon after eleven, having spent half the night on the platform at Crewe and another frustrating couple of hours waiting for a replacement engine at Llandrindod Wells. In retrospect this journey would come to seem like practice for the week ahead, most of which he would spend hanging around waiting for people.
He had known that his parents would be busy in the shop, but he had not expected to find Megan with a job, much less one in an engineering factory, and his disappointment at not having her to himself during the days was tinged with a disapproval which he did his best to keep to himself. They spent every evening together, sitting in the pub on Monday and Tuesday as the rain came down, then cycling out to Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower Peninsula when the weather cleared up on Wednesday. There they walked hand in hand on the empty beach, interrupting her stories of the working world every now and then for a lingering kiss. After an hour of this she seemed to suddenly notice that the beach and the grassy valley above were still too wet for lying down, and the disappointment in her voice made him feel hot all over.
It seemed to him that she’d grown up a lot in the past few months. She was more assured, she dressed more daringly, she even argued with him. And her language had certainly grown more colourful. Her brother Barry, who had been in Ian’s class at school, had always sworn like a trooper, but Megan’s newly expanded vocabulary had more likely been learned from the women she now worked with.
Tobin told himself that he liked the changes, that she had always been a bit too worried about what other people thought, but a feeling of ambivalence persisted. And when, on the following night, in the back row of the cinema, she not only let him put his hand up her skirt but also stroked his cock through his taut trousers, he was almost as surprised as he was excited. Back home he jerked himself off and lay there panting, wondering if she really wanted to go all the way.
For his last night of leave they had planned another trip to the beach, but in her lunch-hour she called him and said they’d been invited to a party. He had been looking forward to having her to himself, but she was so obviously excited at the prospect that he found it impossible to object. ‘It’s in Danygraig,’ she said. ‘Barry’ll take us in the car.’
They arrived soon after eight, having driven through the blacked-out streets in Barry’s decrepit Austin Seven. She had told him not to wear his uniform – ‘Let’s pretend there isn’t a war on for a few hours’ – and he had been forced to wear a pre-war suit that still, despite his mother’s best attentions, smelt of mothballs.
The party was being held in one of the few standing houses on a bombed-out street. Its owners had obviously long since vanished, taking their furniture with them, but the increase in dancing room more than made up for the lack of places to sit down. There were already about thirty people crammed into the two downstairs rooms, and more continued to arrive as the night wore on. There seemed no shortage of records to play on the precariously perched gramophone, but whoever was in control of the selection obviously liked Duke Ellington.
In the kitchen there was more food and alcohol, both in quantity and variety, than Tobin had seen since the beginning of the war, and later, while he was waiting for Megan to return from the toilet, he saw fresh supplies arrive in a plain Morris van. The deliverers all seemed close friends of Barry’s, and Tobin thought he recognized a couple of them from schooldays. An hour or so later he found himself talking to one of them. ‘What’s your unit?’ he asked, just to make conversation. The man gave him a surprised look, then burst out laughing.
Tobin watched him walk away, wondering what he’d said. He had to admit that he felt pretty drunk, but…
‘Why don’t we go outside for some fresh air?’ Megan suggested, appearing at his shoulder. Her face was flushed, and he thought she looked very lovely.
They went out the back door, and she pulled him through the yard, where several couples were happily groping at each other, and into the alley which had once run along behind a lively street. Despite a clear, starry sky, the night seemed warm, and they walked arm in arm past the strange wilderness of broken houses to the edge of the docks. In the distance the black shapes of ships and the angular silhouettes of the serried cranes were clearly visible in the darkness.
Megan turned with her back to the wall, pulling him to her, and they kissed for a while, tongues entwining. He cupped her right breast and gently kneaded it, and after a while she undid the front buttons of her blouse, deftly loosened her bra, and let him get his hand inside. Her nipple grew nearly as hard as his cock, which she was rubbing up against as they kissed.
‘I can take my knickers down,’ she said breathlessly.
A sliver of panic cut through his drunken desire, and he searched for its source. He hadn’t got a johnny, and in any case she was drunk. This was Megan – he shouldn’t be taking advantage of her. ‘I haven’t got any protection,’ he heard a voice say, and it was his own.
‘Oh shit,’ she said softly, and the delicious grinding of her stomach against his cock came to an end. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘but you do want me, don’t you?’
‘Oh God, yes,’ he murmured. ‘It’s just…’
‘That’s why I love you,’ she said, ‘because you take care of me.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘I think we should be getting back. I don’t want Barry to think we’ve left and go without us.’
They walked back to the party, which was now pumping Glenn Miller into the air. Quite a few people had left though, and Barry, who now had a redhead in tow, announced himself almost ready to join them. First though, he had some settling up to do, and Tobin saw a large wad of notes change hands.
Early the following morning, lying in bed and thinking about the long trip back to Ayrshire, his sober brain started making the connections his drunken one had missed. The booze and food had been black market – that went without saying – but Megan’s brother was obviously one of the local kingpins. Tobin had always rather liked Barry, and had felt really sorry for him when he failed his physical back in 1940, but this was something else. And the man who had laughed when asked about his unit – he had to be a deserter. Which explained the ‘no uniform’ thing – probably half the men there had been deserters. Having a good time and making money while others died for them.
That made Tobin angry. Deserters were worse than conchies, who at least were willing to do dangerous jobs which didn’t involve fighting.
But what could he do? He felt like reporting the whole business, but he couldn’t do that without shopping Megan’s brother.
He would talk to her about it, he decided, and later that morning, as they waited on the platform at Swansea Victoria for his train to be brought in from the sidings, he did.
‘I don’t like deserters, either,’ she said, ‘but Barry’s not a deserter – he just gets people stuff they want. Most of it comes in from Ireland, so nobody goes short. And he’s my brother.’
‘I know he is…’
‘So what can I do? If we report the deserters he’ll probably get into trouble, and that’ll break Mum’s heart.’ She looked up at him. ‘Maybe you could talk to him. He likes you.’