A House Divided: An Easterleigh Hall Novel (29 page)

‘Come with me now and see your mam. She knows I'm here, and just loves you, so much. We all do, especially me.' Jack's mind was racing. Heine needed the letter, and they needed Heine to help James, but not this way, not using his son. There was no way Jack was going to let him back into that cesspool, so how else could they use that lever? He'd have to be the one to go, that's all.

‘Da?' Tim was looking at him, his head cocked to one side, as he did when he knew there was something happening.

Jack repeated again, ‘Come back with me, lad, let your mam look after you for a while.'

‘What's up, Da? Why have you come now? It's not one of the youngsters, is it? What have they been
up to?' He laughed again, and this time it sounded amused. He was patting his pockets, and drew out a packet of cigarettes. His fingers were nicotine stained. He offered one to Jack.

Jack shook his head. ‘I'm just here to check on you. I know you haven't been to the Hawton meeting rooms, and I just wondered what your beliefs were, and how
you
were, but I know that now.'

Tim threw the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table next to an overflowing ashtray. He pushed himself up and walked to the sink, running the tap onto the dirty dishes, the old water heater on the wall flaring. ‘I live in a pigsty. Help me?'

Jack tipped the unfinished meals into the bin, found a tea towel, and dried as his son washed.

Together they stripped the bed and remade it with clean sheets. Tim bundled up the dirty ones into his linen bag for the laundry as Jack tipped the ashtray into the bin, washed it, and returned it to the table. He ran a cloth over the surface of the small table at which Tim ate, and Tim put the linen bag by the front door. ‘So I don't forget it in the morning.'

He stood watching as Jack washed out the cloth, and muttered, ‘It can only be Spain. Bridie's back here, so it's not her. James was so dead set on doing something, and that's where the young men are going. It is, isn't it, and it's gone wrong? Just tell me he's not dead.'

Jack sat down at the table, exhausted suddenly.
It was all such a bloody mess, and Tim would think that he'd only come to put him in the lion's den.

Tim stood at his side, and now as he put his hand on Jack's shoulder, it was he who comforted his da. ‘You have to tell me, Da. I need to do something for you all, really I do. And I know you would have come anyway, sometime.'

Finally, Jack told him that James was a prisoner. ‘Potty has strongly advised we do all we can to get him home, and I thought that you might still be in with the Nazis through Heine, but you're not, and I'm having no part in sending you back into that situation. So I'll take the letter over there, if it still exists, and maybe he'll do an exchange.'

Tim shook his head, squatting before his father and clasping his hands in a strong grip. ‘Da, I need to do this. You must all look for the letter, and if you find it, I'll come at the weekend to collect it. It might work – they were in a right lather about getting it, and probably still are. I'll know when I read the letter. Don't worry, it will all be alright. Now you must go home, Da. I'm tired and I need to think, and I need to sleep – and tonight, maybe I will.'

Jack eased himself up. Tim said quietly, ‘Don't tell the others about my change of heart. You don't know who is around the place, reporting back to the Nazis. It's safer, Da. If I've learned nothing else from them, it's that. You have no idea how long their tentacles
are. So let the family continue to be wary of me, even to hate me. Until this is over.'

After leaving his son, Jack hadn't gone home to Easton, but driven straight to Home Farm to speak to Aub and Evie. He'd explained that his son was still in touch with his mother and would act on James' behalf, but had said nothing of the lad's feelings and beliefs, and they had not asked. Since then the families had all spent every spare moment up until the weekend looking for the letter, which Evie had forgotten all about. Finally, it was Bridie who found it, on Saturday morning, in the Hall kitchen, tucked in one of Evie's cookery bibles, which was where she had also pressed the first flowers that Bridie had picked as a toddler. She had telephoned her mother at Home Farm immediately, and pedalled like fury down the lanes to deliver it.

Bridie arrived just after the postman, who had delivered a tattered and stained note from James, saying that he could not return, not yet. In it, he explained that the note was to be carried across the Pyrenees by one of the guides.

Ver was there, and handed the note to her niece, kissing her. ‘Look at the date. It was early on and before term started, but enough of that. You've found it, the lever we've all been hunting for, so thank you, dearest Bridie. I had almost given up hope.' Her face was pale with worry. She had lost weight, as had they all.

Bridie said, ‘You need to thank Tim, it's he who has to do it.' She left for the stables, where things were simpler and she didn't have to see Tim, who was still a fascist, still happy to pop across to his Nazi mother.

Evie read Millie's letter aloud to Richard, Aub and Ver as the clock moved towards eleven o'clock. Ver sipped a sherry with hands that trembled, as they did all the time now, and would until her son returned. God knew what would happen if he didn't.

Evie said, ‘We can't let the lad see this, we really can't.' The others were looking beyond her, aghast.

Tim said from the doorway, ‘I don't need to, I've just listened to it.'

Evie folded the letter and stood quietly. Her nephew was pale and thin, but clean-shaven.

He said, ‘So the tree was their goodbye present? They're the ones who blew it up. Well, well . . .' His voice was expressionless. Was he proud of his mother? Or appalled? She couldn't tell.

She said, ‘People change, Tim.'

Behind him stood Jack, his hand on his lad's shoulder. Grace had her arm around her son's waist. Evie didn't know what to think, looking at him, for she saw Millie in the set of his chin. Would he really help them?

‘Are you sure, Tim?' She smiled, but knew it didn't reach her eyes.

‘Yes, Aunt Evie, I'm sure.' He looked at the letter, not at her. ‘It's more than time I paid another visit. She is my mother, after all.'

She handed him the letter. ‘I will do what I can,' he said simply, then turned and left, his parents by his side.

Ver ran after him. ‘Thank you, Tim.'

‘It's my pleasure,' Evie heard him call, his voice still expressionless. Would he, Millie and Heine sit around the dinner table in Berlin, mocking them? Were Jack and Gracie to be hurt all over again? Questions, questions, when all they could do was to wait.

Before Tim left, his father took him into Aub's study and they telephoned Potty. A few days earlier, Jack had told the Colonel about Tim's change of heart and willingness to co-operate, and Potty had agreed with Tim that it was best to pretend to everyone else that he was still a fascist, because Nazi agents were almost certainly active, especially within the BUF circle. Now Jack read out the letter to see if Potty felt it was enough of a lever.

Tim listened too, his head pressed hard against the earpiece.

Once Jack had reached the end of the letter, Potty said, ‘It might be enough, because it does mention Heine by name, but if they think Tim could be useful to them in other ways – intelligence, for instance – they might be prepared to put themselves out a bit more. Put Tim on, would you, Jack?'

Tim took the receiver, and now it was Jack who pressed his ear against the receiver. Potty said, ‘Strange bit of business, dear old pumpkin. I did a trace for the police records on your mother's case. All gone. At about the same time a constable with fascist affiliations left the force and bought a fish and chip shop in Hartlepool – in 1936, about the time of your father's wedding, actually. I'm wondering if a package was delivered to your mama and Heine at about that time. Not via you, was it, Tim?' His voice was quiet now.

Tim shook his head. ‘Absolutely not.' Then he paused. ‘The only package I delivered was from Sir Anthony to do with the rehabilitation project.'

‘Ah, of course. Good idea, that, what?' There was a long pause. ‘Telephone me from Newcastle, a public telephone if you will. I do so enjoy novels such as
The Thirty-Nine Steps.
One learns so much. I will beaver through it, and others, to see if there are more things writ large that might keep you safer.' The line went dead.

Tim watched Bridie as she leaned on the fence observing David and Estrella with Terry. He'd been glad she hadn't been at Home Farm, because he couldn't meet anyone's eyes, after all he'd done to them. Now he had an apology to make to this girl. Estrella was riding, wearing a pair of Bridie's jodhpurs, and David was near the mounting ramp, giving instructions. Tim heard Bridie laughing quietly, heard her call, ‘Leave her be, bossy boots. Let the girl feel her way.'

Tim said, ‘Who's the bossy boots?'

She swung round. ‘I heard you were coming. I thought it would be best I wasn't there. You'd think I told, and besides, I sent you away—'

He cut across her, ‘You didn't tell them I hit you, you didn't tell them I was poking around in your house and Easterleigh Hall's study for the letter, so what is the ticking off you gave me in comparison? Walk back with me?'

She shook her head. ‘I'm needed here. But thank you for agreeing to take the letter, or rather, the copy of the letter. Da and Uncle Jack said Uncle Potty had given some odd advice, something to do with
Thirty-Nine Steps
and other books? Dear old soul, I think he's going a bit batty.'

Tim shrugged. ‘Yes, perhaps Potty is a bit cracked, but he's a good old buffer. It's little enough for me to do. Don't fret, Bridie, I'll do all I can to get him home, but it might take some time.'

She turned back to Terry. ‘Thank you,' she said. ‘I'm really grateful.'

He walked slowly towards the garage yard where he'd parked his motorbike, wanting to say more, but unable to do so. She was so grown up, so beautiful, so cold. Well, he was still a fascist in her eyes, and in those of the rest of the family, and must remain so, but not forever. He strode on, feeling happier at the thought.

As he walked he was sure he was being watched, and swung round. He was, by Bridie. She waved. His heart lurched. Confused, he felt the breath struggling in his chest, and he couldn't believe how much he wanted to stand and look at Bridie, with whom he had swum in the beck when they were young, Bridie who had told no-one that he was searching their homes, who had tried to help, though he had punched her. She was so extraordinary. What had happened to the child she once was? He realised: she had become a woman.

From this minute it was as though his world had been turned upside down, because he had always loved her, but this was different. He knew, without a doubt, he would not only kill for her, but die for her. He started to walk back towards her, but she turned away to watch Terry, leaving him bereft.

He roared off to Newcastle, permitting himself the space of the journey to think of her eyes, her soft, blonde hair, the tilt of her head, her defiance. He allowed himself to smile, to remember their days as children, but once he arrived at his bedsit, it
was time to think of what needed to be done, and nothing else.

He telephoned Potty again from a public telephone box. The old boy told him he'd asked some questions, and a club member knew someone in Newcastle who would copy the letter quickly. ‘So helpful, dear boy, to have membership to so many clubs. One hears the most useless information that suddenly comes in handy.'

Tim photographed the letter, and took the film to the man Potty had recommended. He took the original letter to a safe deposit box, also as Potty had advised, because Heine might baulk at helping once he had the original of the ‘lever'.

He then re-read all his mother's earlier letters to him. He absorbed the gushing, the need for the forged letter, the words of love, which now rang sickeningly hollow. There were later ones, asking if he had received her letters.
Why aren't you replying?

He had been mulling this over and decided that he would tell Millie that he had only received this last one, that she must have put the wrong number on the envelope. But no, saying she had written the wrong number wouldn't work. Millie wasn't stupid. He would think about that, and come up with something better, something that could be checked by their snoopers. He realised then that he was learning to think like them.