The Girl on the Beach (21 page)

‘Harry! Oh, thank you, God, thank you.’ It had been the longest and most miserable twenty-four hours of her life, since the station commander and the padre had come up her garden path to tell her Harry had not returned and they feared he had been shot down. ‘Of course, they could have come down somewhere miles from anywhere and unable to contact us,’ the padre said in an effort to cheer her up.

‘You mean in occupied France?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘He could have been taken prisoner?’

‘It’s possible,’ the station commander said. ‘He could have been picked up by the Resistance. We haven’t had any contact since they turned for home. It may just be his radio malfunctioning and they’ve landed somewhere in England. If that’s the case, we’ll hear soon enough.’

They had no telephone at Honeysuckle Cottage but there was one at The Papermakers, and the landlord had sent her a message that a call had been booked for her at midday. Guessing it had something to do with Harry, she had been sitting beside the instrument, fearing the worst, for the last half-hour, and to hear his voice, sounding so normal, had filled her with unbounded relief and joy. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Canterbury Hospital. We had to come down early, couldn’t make it all the way home.’

‘Hospital!’ she squeaked. ‘You mean you’re hurt?’

‘A few bumps and bruises, nothing serious. I’ll come home by train just as soon as they let me out of here.’

‘Thank God! What about the others?’

‘Tim bought it.’

‘Oh Harry, I’m so sorry.’ She knew how close the two men had been and how it must be affecting Harry. He’d try
not to show it, of course. That’s why he used that idiomatic phrase, prevalent among airmen.

‘Yes. He was a damned good pilot besides being a good pal – but for him we none of us might have made it. I hope he gets a posthumous medal.’

‘What about the others?’

‘One broken leg, one gashed ear and broken ribs, one dislocated shoulder, nothing too serious but they’ll be in hospital a bit longer.’

‘Shall I get Mum to look after the twins and come down?’

‘Good heavens no, I’ll be on the way home in no time. I must go, my pennies have run out. I’ll ring again when I leave here to tell you when to expect me.’

She put the receiver down and burst into tears.

‘Bad news?’ Greg was standing over her with a glass of whisky in his hand.

She took the drink and gulped it down. ‘No, he’s all right. Harry’s safe. He’s in hospital in Canterbury but coming home soon. I must go and tell Mum and Dad.’ She handed the empty glass back to him and hurried out of the pub and down to the mill house.

‘The Mitchell crew, Sergeant?’ queried the sister on duty when Julie approached her. ‘What do you want to know for? Do you know any of them?’

‘No, but I was there when the plane came down. It was awful.’ Florrie had advised her not to come, that it would only upset her, but Florrie had gone off to drive the group captain to London for a debriefing and was not around to stop her.

‘It always is. I’ve lost count of the number of casualties
we get in here from Manston. It’s right on the flight path of planes coming home and many’s the one that’s come down there in an emergency.’

‘I know that, but what about the crew of that Mitchell? I’ve brought them some cigarettes and magazines. Can I give them to them?’

‘Very well. You’ll find three of them at the far end of the ward. Their injuries are not life-threatening, though I don’t think they’ll be flying again for a little while.’

‘Three? I thought there were five.’

‘The pilot died and one was well enough to be discharged; he’s only just this minute gone off to catch a train.’

‘He must have been the one who passed me coming in. I’ll go and see the others.’

‘Don’t stay too long,’ Sister called after her as she set off down the ward.

The crash must have affected him more that he realised, Harry thought, but the WAAF he had just seen was uncannily like Julie. Older, of course, and not so waif-like, smart in her uniform with her sergeant’s stripes on her sleeve. He thought she had been on the airfield when the Mitchell blew up, but in the confused state he had been in at the time, he couldn’t be sure. He had nearly stopped and spoken to her, but she had hurried past him into the hospital without sparing him a glance. The encounter left him feeling a little disturbed, as if he had seen a ghost. Oh, he knew airmen were a superstitious lot and often claimed to have been aware of an extra crew member on a flight or had seen ghosts on airfields or near the sites of crashes, but he had never counted himself one of those. And why Julie, why not Tim or one of the others from the station who had
died? Mentally he shook himself and climbed into the taxi taking him to the railway station.

He had to cross London from Waterloo to Liverpool Street and, in a moment of guilt, decided to visit Highgate Cemetery. It was three and a half years since he had stood there talking to Miss Paterson. He wondered what had become of her and whether she had managed to keep the grave tidy. He bought a bunch of lilies at an exorbitant price from a flower seller at the station and took the Underground to Highgate.

The cemetery was a haven of quiet and he strolled among the gravestones and statuary, letting the peace of it wash over him. After the turbulence of the last few days and the death of his pilot, it helped him to unwind. The grave was just as he had remembered it. The garden gnome remained stood at its head, still smiling, although the broken arm had weathered, the rawness of the stump changed from white to dirty grey. It was a casualty of the war, just as Julie and George had been, just as Tim Harrison had been, just as the thousands who had died on the beaches of Normandy were. He removed his cap and, kneeling, took the faded flowers out of the vase and replaced them with the lilies he had bought and picked up the gnome and cradled it in his hands, saying a prayer for all those who had suffered and continued to suffer, for Tim and others who had died, brave men and good pals whose like he would never see again. Giving thanks for his own deliverance, he carefully replaced the gnome to stand sentinel over the grave. Then he stood up and spent a moment in quiet contemplation, remembering the girl Julie had been. He recalled that first meeting on the beach with wry amusement, and the woman she had become,
so innocently naive, so loving, so anxious to please him. What would their life together have been like if she had lived, he wondered? How would they have changed, because everyone changed as they matured? Would they have continued to love each other through the years into old age? There was no sense in torturing himself with unanswerable questions; his future was with Pam and his children and in a few hours, God willing, he would be with them again.

‘Ted Austen, as I live and breathe, can it be you?’

Ted swivelled round to face his sister whom he had not set eyes on since, as a twelve-year-old, he had run away from home. ‘Josie, I’d never have recognised you.’

‘I’m not surprised. How old was I when you left? Eight or nine. Why didn’t you come home? Mum went out of her mind worrying about you. Didn’t you give her a thought?’

‘Yes, I did. I thought of her a lot, but I swore never to go back while the old man was alive and I meant it. How is she?’

‘She’s dead, died three months ago with your name on her lips. She kept saying if she could see you one more time, she’d die happy, but no one knew where you were.’

‘Dead?’ he repeated, shocked. ‘You mean dead and buried?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’

‘The bugger killed her. I knew he would.’

‘Then you should have stayed around to prevent it.’ She gave an empty laugh. ‘As it happens, he died first. Got run over by a bus in the blackout when he was drunk. I wanted to let you know, but I couldn’t find you.’

‘No, I move about a lot.’

‘Doing what?’

‘This and that,’ he said vaguely. That last batch of stolen ration books had sold like hot cakes and the nylons he bought from a certain Yank, whose ideas about trade were the same as his own, had brought in a tidy profit. He lived like a lord, dressed to kill and could afford to treat his lady friends generously, as long as they were generous to him. Otherwise he soon dumped them. He no longer worked the East End, the pickings in the west were much more lucrative; the toffee-nosed women had money to burn and he could get pretty well anything for money. His move to the north of the river had been a wise and fortuitous one.

He had been strolling past the Walkers’ home in Islington when he remembered they had moved with the factory to Letchworth and the house was shut up. It had been the work of a moment to break in and make himself comfortable. A nosy neighbour wanted to know what he was doing there and he had explained that he was looking after the house for the owners. ‘Too many looters about to leave the place unguarded,’ he had said. It was an argument he had used again when writing to Mr Walker to suggest he could keep an eye on the house for him and make sure no one got in. Mr Walker had no reason to distrust him and had readily agreed to pay him a small fee. It tickled Ted’s fancy to think he was being paid to squat in his
one-time
boss’s home. It was from here he ran his business. He hadn’t given a thought to the fact that it was only a few streets away from his childhood home.

‘You seem to be doing all right on it.’

‘I do OK.’

‘You could have helped Mum if you were doing so well. I helped when I could, but I never earned very much and I
married young. My old man’s in the army, gone to France I shouldn’t wonder. Good riddance to him.’

‘Did Mum get a good send-off?’

‘What do you think? I did what I could and the neighbours chipped in so she didn’t have to rely on the parish. That would have broken her heart. She’s buried in Highgate in the far corner. There’s no headstone, just a wooden cross. It wouldn’t hurt you to pay your respects.’

‘Yes, I’ll do that. And I’ll order a stone.’

‘Not much good to her now she’s gone, is it?’ she said. ‘But I suppose it will look better. And then how about visiting us and making the acquaintance of your nephews and nieces?’

‘Nephews and nieces?’ he queried. ‘How many of them are there?’

‘Two of each. My name’s Porson now. You know where to find us, I’ve taken over the tenancy of the old house.’

She turned and walked away, leaving him staring after her. She was only twenty-four but she looked a lot older. Her hair was bedraggled and her shoes down at heel, and he seemed to remember his mother wearing that black straw hat with the flopping silk rose on it. He watched her out of sight and then went to the cemetery where he found the grave after a long search. Hidden away in the corner, its simple cross was carved with his mother’s name and the date, nothing more. For the first time in his life he felt remorse, but it did not last. He became angry – angry with his father for his brutality, angry with his mother for not sticking up for herself, angry with Josie for not trying harder to find him, angry with the world.

He was still angry when he spotted Harry Walker kneeling beside his wife’s grave. The bugger looked so
clean and smart in his uniform, his dark auburn hair sleek and shiny, he could have kicked him. He held fire, though, because he remembered the man was handy with his fists. It wouldn’t do to go about with evidence of a beating. It made his customers wary, it made the police suspicious and it wouldn’t look good when he went home bearing gifts.

The disappearance of Rosie Summers had set him thinking and he had come to certain conclusions, impossible to prove, but if he were right, Julie Monday was not in that grave. What use he could make of that he had no idea, but he smiled to himself imagining the horror on Walker’s face when he told him. He wouldn’t believe him, of course, so there would have to be telling evidence that he knew what he was talking about. A living wife, perhaps. He walked past the kneeling figure and on down the path and out of the gate. ‘One day, Harry Walker, you’ll pay dearly for what you did to me,’ he said. ‘Just you wait.’

‘I thought I saw a ghost today,’ Harry told Pam, as they sat together on the sofa with his arm about her shoulders and her head nestling on his chest. As soon as he arrived back, he had reported to the group captain to be debriefed, then run home to grab Pam in his arms and hold her so tightly she had pulled back laughing. ‘Harry, you’ll squeeze me to death. And the children want you to say hallo and goodnight. I let them stay up to see you.’

He let her go and hugged the babies, then carried Colin up to his cot while Pam followed with Louise. They went off to sleep almost at once and he and Pam crept down to sit cosily side by side to bring each other up to date on what they had been doing. It was then he mentioned the ghost. ‘I was feeling really low because Tim had died, when I passed this WAAF. She was the spitting image of Julie.’

‘There’s no such things as ghosts. You just saw a girl who looked like her.’

‘Yes, I know. I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t get
her out of my head. On the way through London, I went to Highgate Cemetery just to convince myself she was dead. Silly, I know.’

‘And did you? Convince yourself I mean.’

‘Yes, of course. There was her grave and her name and George’s carved on the stone and that silly garden gnome grinning back at me for being such a fool.’

‘There you are, then.’ She paused. ‘You aren’t wishing she was back and you weren’t married to me, are you?’

‘No, course not.’ He hugged her and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

‘But there’s always a place in your heart for your first love, is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘I suppose I am. Do you mind? It doesn’t alter how I feel about you.’

‘I can live with it,’ she said. ‘After all, how can a dead woman hurt me? Now can we change the subject? Shall I make some cocoa? Then we’ll go to bed.’ She stood up to go to the kitchen but he grabbed her arm and dragged her down again. ‘I can’t wait.’

She laughed and fell into his lap where he proceeded to demonstrate that ghosts had no power over his love for her.

Julie had gone back to Manston on the bicycle she had borrowed and returned to work. She was kept busy the rest of that day and the next. Going off duty the second night, she made her way to the mess, expecting Florrie to be back from London. Her friend wasn’t there. ‘Anyone seen Sergeant Cotton?’ she asked.

‘I saw her drive through the gates half an hour ago,’ the mess servant said. ‘Perhaps she’s gone to her billet.’

Julie went off to find her. She was going to tell her about
the three airmen, who had been so stoically cheerful and talking about getting back into the air, as if it were some game they were playing. She knew it was all show, a way of covering up their fear and hurt.

She found Florrie sprawled face down across her bed, her shoulders heaving. She ran to her at once, sat on the bed and put her hand on her shoulder. ‘Florrie,’ she said softly. ‘What’s up?’

Florrie turned a tear-stained face towards her. ‘He’s missing, Eve, missing believed killed.’

‘Matt?’

‘No, not Matt. Alec.’

‘Alec?’ Julie recoiled. It was like a blow to the stomach and for a moment she felt winded. She didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be, not Alec, not the fun-loving man who had captured her heart. ‘No. It can’t be true.’

‘It is. I rang Mum from a call box while I was hanging about waiting for the CO outside Adastral House. She’d only just heard. She was in a terrible state, crying all the time. She had to hand the phone to Dad and he wasn’t much better.’ Her words came out in jerks. ‘He said he’d had a call from someone at Brize Norton, who said the Dakota he was flying in never returned to base and they think it was shot down somewhere over the Channel.’ She suddenly noticed the stricken look on Julie’s face. ‘Oh, Eve, I’m so sorry. You’re hurting too.’

Julie couldn’t cry. She was numb. All their love, all their hopes and plans, all gone. No, she could not, would not believe it. ‘“Missing believed dead” doesn’t mean he’s definitely dead,’ she said, with a strange kind of fury which made her snap it out, but the anger soon abated and left her clinging on to the only thing that gave her
hope. ‘He might be picked up. There’s still time.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’ Florrie sat up and scrubbed at her eyes. ‘We’ll just have to go on hoping.’

‘What about Matt?’

‘He’s all right. I spoke to him first. He told me it was pandemonium over in France. The weather was so bad half the troops didn’t land where they were supposed to. He got his glider as near as he could to the right spot to release the tow, but he had no idea whether it had got down all right. And the ground troops were having a tough time of it. He was getting ready to go again with reinforcements. We didn’t have time to talk any longer.’

‘Then we will go to church and pray for them both, pray for them all and all those left behind to wait and worry.’ She was determined not to give way to misery, but it was oh, so hard.

‘I’m ruddy starving,’ Trooper Langford muttered. They had only been issued with rations for twenty-four hours and some of those needed mixing with water and heating up. Alec would not let them light a fire and they had eaten everything else

‘So am I,’ came from Corporal Glover, a sentiment echoed by the rest of the stick. ‘Can’t we knock up one of these Frenchies and ask for food?’

As Alec had anticipated, they had been well scattered on landing, some coming down in trees, some on one side of a river, some on the other, and it had taken until dawn to get them all together again. They were way off the map as far as the invasion was concerned and had no idea where they were, nor the name of the river, nor, come to that, if there were any enemy troops nearby. For all they knew
their parachutes had been seen coming down and they were already being hunted. And would the French inhabitants be too frightened to help them? They might even hand them in. He had ordered the men to bury their parachutes and lie low and they had spent the whole of the following day hiding in woods.

Alec had ventured out into the open at dusk to try and work out where they were. He thought they ought to strike out in a northerly direction but he’d lost his compass and the cloud cover was too thick to see the stars. He could see a village a little way off and ventured up the road towards it. He heard the sound of a motorcycle and dived into a ditch. It roared past him, a helmeted German riding it. He emerged from the ditch and went back to his men. ‘There’s Jerries about; we’ll wait until dark and cut across country.’

Cutting across country was more difficult than he imagined. The area was heavily wooded in places and where there were no trees it was criss-crossed with waterways, some merely ditches, but others several feet from bank to bank, which engendered some debate whether they should try to wade or swim across or whether to try and find a bridge. Bridges, he felt sure, would be guarded. After he had insisted on wading across, holding their weapons above their heads, they emerged wet, cold and too fed up to carry on walking, only to come across a bend in the selfsame river, which meant they had to wade through it again.

‘I don’t reckon you know where we’re going, Sarge,’ Langford said, after they had spent three days hiding and three nights walking.

‘We’re going to find our own lines.’

‘Are you sure you know which direction they’re in? I
haven’t heard a single shot in anger, so we must be a long way from where we should be.’

‘We knew that when we jumped.’

‘Yes, but the Frogs are supposed to be our allies, so I don’t see why we can’t ask them. They might give us something to eat too.’

‘Shut up moaning, Langford,’ the corporal told him. ‘And be quiet. D’you want the whole German army down on us?’

They stumbled on in the darkness unable to see where they were putting their feet. Sometimes the ground was firm, sometimes it was marshy. The wind was strong and rain spattered on their heads. June it might be, but they had never felt so wet, cold and hungry.

‘I can’t believe we’re so far from the action, we can’t even hear it,’ Corporal Glover said quietly so that the rest of the stick could not hear. ‘Are you sure we’re going in the right direction, Sarge?’

‘No, I’m not sure, but it’s best to keep moving. Sitting on our arses waiting to be taken prisoner is not an option.’

‘D’you think they know at home what’s happened?’

‘The invasion? No doubt there’ll have been some sort of announcement. I don’t suppose they’ll give away many details.’

‘No, I meant what’s happened to us, being missing an’ all.’

‘The pilot will have reported dropping us, won’t he? Perhaps in hindsight he might be able to pinpoint where. In any case, the sooner we find the rest of the battalion the better.’

‘Yes, but where are they all? You can usually hear Colonel Luard’s hunting horn for miles.’

‘He won’t be blowing that now, he’ll be stuck into the job he was given.’

‘And doing it without us.’

‘I don’t suppose we were the only ones dropped off course.’

They had come out on a country road and looked up and down for signs of traffic, but it appeared empty. ‘There’s a farmhouse up ahead,’ the corporal said. ‘Couldn’t one of us knock on the door while the rest cover him?’

‘OK.’ Alec stopped and turned to gather the men about him. ‘We’ll keep on the road and recce that farmhouse. Corporal, you take half the men and go round the back. If there’s any sign of a Hun, give a whistle to warn us and then make yourselves scarce. The rest of you follow me and cover me. I’m going to knock on the door.’

Their caution was in vain, because as soon at they entered the farmyard a couple of dogs set up a ferocious barking. Alec swore as the door of the house was opened and a middle-aged man stood in its frame. ‘Who’s there?’ he called in French, squinting into the darkness.

Alec gave up trying to hide and walked boldly forward. ‘
Je suis anglais
,’ he said, holding out his open hands to show he meant no harm.

‘
Anglais, mon Dieu!
’ This was followed by a stream of questions at such speed Alec’s schoolboy French could not keep up with them.

‘Germans?’ Alec interrupted this. ‘Where are the Germans?’

The man shrugged and pointed up the road in the direction they were going.

‘Good job we didn’t keep going,’ Langford said.

Alec ignored him and continued to address the farmer.
‘We are hungry and thirsty.’ He pointed to his mouth. ‘Have you food and drink?’

By this time the rest of the men had come up behind him. The man came out of the house and beckoned them to follow him. They did so cautiously as he led them round to the back of the house, where those Alec had sent there emerged from their hiding places among the outbuildings, rifles pointing, startling the Frenchman who thought the whole British army must be on his doorstep.

Reassured by Alec, he led them into a barn, lit a hurricane lamp and pointed to a heap of straw. ‘
Attendez
,’ he said, turned on his heel and went back into the house by a back door.

‘You reckon he’s gone to alert the Jerries?’ Corporal Glover asked.

‘Could be, though he didn’t seem antagonistic. We’ll post a guard where he can see anyone coming along the road. Corporal, take Smith with you. Any sign of Jerry, you double back and we’ll make for that group of trees over there. If you can’t get back, make your own way there.’

Some of the men flopped onto the straw, others, too nervous to relax, paced up and down. Several minutes later the farmer came back with a young woman; both were carrying trays of food which they set down on the floor. There was a tureen of soup, some mugs, bread, cheese and pickled onions. ‘Eat,’ she said in English. She was, he decided, about nineteen or twenty, dark-haired and tall, but thinner than girls of her age back home. It made him wonder what life was like under the occupation. Did they have enough to eat?

‘You speak English?’ he queried, as the others, needing no second bidding, dipped mugs into the soup and set to filling their stomachs.

‘A little. My father has no English and you frightened him.’

‘Tell him he has nothing to fear from us. We are here to liberate France.’

She turned to translate and the man seized Alec by the hand and shook it vigorously, then went round and shook everyone else by the hand, speaking volubly as he did so.

‘Has the invasion begun?’ the girl asked Alec. ‘We heard rumours that the Americans and British had tried to land but they had been driven back into the sea.’

‘God help us if they have,’ Langford said.

She turned to look at him, but did not comment and continued to address Alec. ‘You are a long way from the sea.’

‘Yes. We are part of the advance and parachuted in four nights ago but we were blown off course. We are trying to find our way back to our own lines. Are there Germans about here?’

‘In the village. If they find you here, there will be reprisals.’

‘I understand. We are keeping watch and will go if there is any sign of Germans coming.’

She nodded towards the fast-dwindling food. ‘Eat, Sergeant, before your men finish it all.’

‘Langford, if you have finished, take Martin and relieve Corporal Glover,’ he said, helping himself to a mug of soup. ‘Tell them there’s food.’ Langford and Martin disappeared and he turned back to the girl. ‘Have you a map I can look at?’

She turned and spoke to the farmer and he went off and came back with a map. They spread it out on the floor and knelt down to look at it with the aid of the lamp. ‘We are here,’ she said pointing.

‘Good Lord, we’re thirty miles adrift,’ Alec said. He studied it more closely. ‘I remember crossing the river just there. And again there. And we went into that wood.’ He laughed. ‘Twice. I reckon we’ve been going round in circles.’ He looked at the girl beside him. ‘Where are the Germans?’

‘All around.’ She pointed at places on the map. ‘They were here and here and here. They may have been moved to go and fight.’

‘It’s nearly daylight,’ Alec said, folding the map and returning it to her. ‘We’ll have to wait for dark again. May we stay here?’