WAS HE REALLY here? Was I imagining it? Because even as I fell into his arms, one part of me couldn’t believe it. His lips on mine and the hands which pulled my body to him could have been something snatched from my memory. That same memory of our time together, relived every lonely night; those few precious hours which sat like pinnacles of ecstasy amongst the many months of our being apart.
‘Amyas?’ I whispered, when I pulled my face away from his. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Of course,’ he laughed. ‘At least I hope so. Don’t we always kiss on this beach?’
I laughed too but then found stupid tears in my eyes. I had wondered where he was for so long and now he was here, holding me. Loving me.
‘Oh God,’ I wept. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you. I’m so happy.’
‘You don’t sound it,’ he said, kissing the soft skin behind my ear.
I dragged a hand over my eyes. ‘Idiot.’
He put his arms around me again, holding me so close that I could feel his body through his clothes and knew that he could feel mine.
‘You’re thinking of us making love in the surf,’ he whispered into my ear. I closed my eyes; the sensation was almost overwhelming. ‘So am I,’ he said, his voice choking, then kissed me again.
‘Bliss,’ I muttered and ran my hands over his chest pulling him harder to me. Suddenly, he gasped as though in pain and gave a little racking cough. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
‘What is it?’ I asked and noticed then that his face looked strained, much thinner, and that lines had appeared around his eyes. ‘Amyas? What’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No. I’m fine,’ he insisted, but I knew he wasn’t.
‘Come to the house,’ I said. ‘I’ve got people there, but it doesn’t matter. It’s only Kitty Goldstein and Marisol’s nanny.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Charlie Bradford told me you were bringing them along.’
‘Charlie? Why? How?’ I was bewildered.
‘I went to your flat, but you weren’t there. The old man across the corridor with the dog told me I’d just missed you. That you’d gone away. He wouldn’t say where, so I phoned Charlie. He told me.’
Poor Charlie, I thought. What must it have taken for him to say where I was and to guess that Amyas would come to find me. It was such a decent gesture, and so typically Charlie.
‘Good old Charlie,’ I smiled.
‘Yes,’ nodded Amyas, with a twisted smile. ‘Good old Charlie.’
I giggled. ‘Don’t be mean, Amyas. And the old man is Jacob, Kitty’s uncle and normally he’s charming. But he’s a bit frightened at the moment because there’s a possibility of him being interned. And Kitty too.’
‘I thought that’s who he might be,’ Amyas said. ‘When I heard his accent I spoke to him in German: perhaps that scared him. Maybe he thought I was checking up on him.’
We were walking towards the steps and Amyas gave a grunt and staggered slightly.
‘Amyas?’ I grabbed his arm to steady him. ‘What is it?’
‘Get me up the steps,’ he gasped. ‘I’ll be fine once we sit down.’
It was a struggle and halfway up we had to stop because he couldn’t go any further. ‘Wait here,’ I said and ran up the remaining steps to find Kitty who was sitting on the veranda with Alice.
‘Come and help,’ I said. ‘My friend is ill. He can’t manage with just me.’
‘Your friend?’ Kitty looked astonished. ‘How is Dov your friend?’ But she and Alice followed me and between us we got Amyas up to the house.
‘We’ll take him to my room,’ I said, ignoring the raised eyebrows of Alice and Kitty, and going in through the veranda doors, we laid him on the bed.
‘That’s better,’ he sighed and closed his eyes.
‘I’m getting the doctor,’ I said, expecting him to object but ready to ignore his objections. But he said nothing and, sick with anxiety, I went out of the room to call the local physician. He was a man I’d known since childhood and over the years he had been a good friend to our family.
‘Who’s ill?’ he asked. ‘Is it you, Seffy?’
‘No, Dr Jago, it’s a friend of mine. I don’t know what’s wrong, but please come.’
‘Be with you in ten minutes.’ He was an admirably brief man.
When I turned away from the phone I met the eyes of Kitty and Alice. ‘Explanations later,’ I said firmly. Leaving them staring, I went back to Amyas.
‘The doctor will be here soon.’ I sat down on the bed beside him. On his shirt was a small bloodstain low down by his ribs and I gaped at it in horror. ‘Let me have a look,’ I said, and pushed the shirt up. He had a small dressing taped to the left side of his chest, through which blood had leaked, and around the wound a yellowing, week-old bruise told a tale of violence.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Shot,’ he muttered. ‘The bullet went through and out the other side but the damn thing’s refusing to knit together. I think it’s infected.’
‘How did it happen?’ I cried, gently rolling him over to see a similar dressing on his back. ‘Who shot you?’
He gave me one of his familiar, careless grins. ‘You don’t want to know, Persephone darling. Safer not to tell.’
I could only stare at him. There was so much I didn’t understand, but now I was determined to get to the bottom of it. ‘You will tell me,’ I said. ‘But,’ I could hear Dr Jago in the hall, ‘after he’s gone.’
Jago was brilliant as usual. ‘You should be in hospital,’ he said after ripping off the two dressings and examining the entrance and exit wounds, ‘but I’m guessing you aren’t prepared to go.’ He gently pressed his fingers into the area surrounding the inflamed and puckered wound. ‘And I’m also guessing that how you came to be shot is none of my business?’
Amyas tried one of his usual grins, but Jago’s probing fingers had been painful and his answer came out with a groan. ‘Quite right, Doctor, but I’d be grateful if you could do what you can for me. As for hospital, well . . . I don’t think so. Persephone will look after me.’
‘Huh,’ said Jago, giving him an old-fashioned look. ‘International adventurer, are you? Someone Seffy’s met on her travels abroad? Well, I won’t pry, but I’ll dust the wound with sulpha and I’ll give you some fresh dressings. Take these pills for the pain. Stay in bed for a few days, see how you do.’ He stepped back from the bed, contemplating his patient. ‘You know, you’ve been a lucky young man. Half an inch lower and your spleen would have been penetrated and you’d probably be dead by now. But even so, there’s a bit of rib damage, I’d say, added to the infection.’ He picked up his bag. ‘I’ll come by the day after tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’ Amyas shook the doctor’s hand.
In the hall Jago looked at me. ‘Be careful, Persephone. That wound will heal, but your friend looks as if he could be dangerous.’
I smiled. ‘Not to me, Dr Jago.’
He pushed a strong hand through his thick, untidy grey hair and gave me a kind smile. He had very blue eyes and a tanned Cornish face. His parents had been fisherfolk, not of the quality that Mother had preferred, but he was loved in this part of the county. ‘Where’s this little girl I’ve been hearing about all over the village?’ he chuckled. ‘My goodness, Seffy, you’re as headstrong as ever. Taking on an orphan. I can’t see your mother enjoying that notion.’
‘Mother has gone to America,’ I said, and then gave a little laugh. ‘So we are doing very nicely without her opinion. Anyway, my daughter is in here, with her nanny.’ I showed him into the lovely white room that had been mine and Xanthe’s nursery, all those years ago. After introducing them, I left and went back to Amyas. The doctor calling him ‘dangerous’ set me thinking. It put him in a different light and I went back into the room, ready for an explanation, but Amyas was asleep.
I made us a simple supper. Amyas was still sleeping, but Kitty, Alice and I sat at the kitchen table, and for once, we were rather nervous with each other. I knew I had to give some sort of explanation, so I took a deep breath and made an attempt. ‘The man in my bedroom is a friend I’ve known for a while. His name is Amyas Troy, but you, Kitty, know him as Dov. He travels in the same international circles as I do when I’m working and when I was in Berlin the first time I told him about you. I think he must have got in touch with an organisation which he thought might help you. That was something I didn’t know about.’
‘But why is he here? Has he come to tell me about Mamma?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. He came to see me. He didn’t know you’d be here.’
Alice, who had steadily eaten throughout, butted in. ‘Why has the doctor come?’ she asked, taking another piece of bread to wipe her plate.
‘Amyas has had an accident. He wasn’t going to tell me, but, as you saw, he’s not very well, so will have to stay here for a few days.’ I reached over and patted Kitty’s hand. ‘That’s not going to stop us having a good time though, is it? We can go on the beach and tomorrow, Mrs Penney will be here to cook for us and if we’re lucky Mr Penney will take us out on his boat. Would you like that?’
She nodded and then said shyly, ‘Will you teach me to swim?’
I raised my eyebrows at that. ‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘But we might need a bit longer than a few days. You go and have a look in Xanthe’s room. She’s got plenty of swimsuits that should fit you. Tomorrow morning we’ll go in the sea.’ Her face brightened. After all, she was still only a girl and even though her last few years had been full of worry, she hadn’t lost that childlike desire to try new things.
‘I’ll go and look now,’ she said excitedly. ‘If you’re sure your sister won’t mind.’
‘She won’t,’ I replied, with total confidence, knowing that if she ever came down to Cornwall again, Xanthe would throw out all the clothes she’d left in the wardrobe. ‘Try everything on. All her clothes.’
When we were alone I looked nervously at Alice. Apart from the one question she had been very quiet. ‘I know you’re thinking something,’ I said. ‘What is it? Ask me.’
She put down her teacup. ‘He’s Marisol’s father, isn’t he? You can’t deny it. They’re like two peas in a pod.’
‘He is,’ I said. ‘But I’m still not her real mother.’
I don’t think she ever really believed me. Nobody who hadn’t seen me in the previous year believed me, but I didn’t care.
She got up and took the dishes to the sink. ‘He means a lot to you, though.’ Her back was to me when she said it and I wondered whether to keep up the pretence of mere friendship that I’d told Kitty, but Alice continued, ‘I could see it straight away. You have that special look together.’
‘He means the world to me,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’
She turned round. ‘No, Miss Seffy. I don’t mind at all. I had a lover once and I’d have waded through the waters of hell for him. So you carry on.’
I gave her a hug and our real friendship started from then.
I looked in on Amyas. He was awake and seemed a bit better. ‘D’you want something to eat or drink?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing to eat, perhaps some tea?’
I made the tea as I knew he liked it, without milk and with a slice of lemon, and took it into the bedroom. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Better for seeing you, my darling.’
‘That makes two of us,’ I grinned. I wanted explanations but, as ever, I didn’t really care what he’d done. I just wanted to be with him.
‘Get into bed.’ Amyas, moving his arm carefully, threw back the sheets. ‘I want you here, beside me.’
‘Yes.’ And, obedient as a slave, I undressed and slipping into the bed put my head on his shoulder.
‘Like old times,’ he whispered, and closed his eyes.
I woke when the grey light of a new day was beginning to creep into the room, I had slept deeply and dreamlessly and now I was concerned that he might have needed me in the night and I hadn’t heard him call out, but he was on the veranda, wrapped in a blanket and watching the fishing boats setting out.
‘I love this place,’ he smiled when I dropped a kiss on the back of his neck. ‘I could stay here for ever.’
‘Why don’t you?’ I took his hand. ‘Stay with me.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘Not possible, my love. Simply not possible. Things to do. Places to go.’
I sat for a while, holding his hand, watching the light turn from grey to pale lemon and then, as the water caught the rising sun, to the sparkling blue and gold of a Cornish morning. ‘You know, Amyas, it’s time you told me,’ I said. ‘I want to know who and what you are.’
‘Who I am?’ He chuckled. ‘I’m Amyas Troy to you. To Kitty, I’m Dov.’
‘And to your parents?’ I asked quickly, knowing that he would try and skate over further revelations. ‘What do they call you?’
‘Both my parents are dead.’ A breeze blew in off the sea and he pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders before continuing. ‘My father, before I was born, and my mother when I was fourteen. I was brought up by my mother’s cousins.’ He gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘My mother and I were passed around from family to family and from country to country. None of them wanted us, really – too shaming for a respectable group like them.’
‘What shame?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘My father was a gangster, involved in the mob. He was executed.’
I gasped. ‘What?’
He grinned and turned to me. ‘No, not by the state, but by his rivals. And even though it was hushed up, my family hated to even think about it. So, I was the bastard of a poor girl who had not only had a child out of wedlock and by a thug but, much worse, outside religion.’
‘What religion?’
‘She was Jewish.’
‘And your father?’
Amyas laughed. ‘Who knows? She told me he was a French Catholic, or perhaps Italian, or Spanish. Even my poor little mother wasn’t sure.’
The story did explain a little about Amyas; his obvious rootlessness and careless attitude towards a moral imperative, for a start. And his ability with languages must have come from living in different countries. But it seemed to have been a lonely life, even when his mother was alive. I had another thought. ‘What did she call you? Your mother, I mean. Were you Amyas to her?’
He shook his head. ‘David,’ he said. ‘I’m David da Costa.’
‘But why Amyas? Amyas Troy?’
‘Why not?’ he replied, maddening as ever. ‘Amyas denotes love and Troy, well . . . it’s a good name for a poet, don’t you think?’
‘But you’re not a poet.’
He looked back towards the ocean. ‘I wanted to be. As a young man. That was the life I’d planned for myself. But then other things intervened.’
I wanted to ask more but I could hear Marisol talking and Alice moving about. Soon Mrs Penney would be here to make breakfast and I would have to explain Amyas’s presence to her. ‘I have to get dressed,’ I said. ‘And you must get back into bed. Could you eat something this morning?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, catching my nightdress as I walked past him and squeezing my thigh. ‘Suddenly I’m starving and no sex as an excuse. It must be all the confessions.’
By the time I was dressed Mrs Penney had arrived and was in the kitchen with Alice. ‘Where d’you want your breakfast, Miss Seffy?’ Mrs Penney asked, busily frying bacon and breaking eggs into the big black pan.
‘Could you lay it on the veranda, please, and I need breakfast for Mr Amyas too.’ Inside I was quaking, waiting for her horrified expression and the torrent of disgust that she would surely direct at me, but she didn’t turn a hair. I shot a look at Alice, who waggled her head and gave me a wink and I knew that she’d managed to talk Mrs Penney around.
‘I’ll put it on a tray for him.’ Mrs Penney kept her back to me, but her shoulders stiffened and I knew she was holding back her temper.
Marisol was on Alice’s knee, having her breakfast, and I went to sit beside them and when Alice had finished I reached over and took my daughter into my arms. ‘Let me have her,’ I said and looked into her little face. Oh, she was so beautiful, such a little doll.
‘That little maid is the image of her father,’ Mrs Penney snorted, but because I was in such a happy mood and because Amyas was here with me, I refused to take offence at her disapproval.
‘Yes, she is,’ I laughed. ‘The absolute image.’ I looked up and saw Mrs Penney and Alice exchange meaningful glances. ‘And he hasn’t seen her since she was born, so I’m going to take her into the bedroom. I’ll let you get on. I think Miss Kitty will want breakfast when she gets up, but probably not bacon.’
‘Not bacon?’ I heard Mrs Penney saying in a scandalised voice as I left the room and went down the corridor.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ I said, going into the bedroom, and I put Marisol down on the bed beside him. She crawled up to him and touched the bandage that was around his chest. He stared at her for what seemed ages and she looked back just as curiously; when he looked up I was astonished to see tears in his eyes. ‘D’you think she’ll ever know that I killed her mother?’ he whispered.
‘Oh, Amyas,’ I said and put my arms around him. ‘Please, don’t think that. You gave this perfect child life and she has made me so very happy.’
‘But she did say it.’ He reached out to touch Marisol’s hair and watched as her pink lips broke into a cheeky grin. Then he leant over and held her close to his wounded body. ‘Isn’t it strange, Persephone,’ he sighed. ‘This little girl might be the best thing I’ve ever done.’
Mrs Penney knocked at the veranda window. ‘Your breakfast, Miss Seffy, and I have a tray here for Mr Amyas.’ She came into the room and, putting the tray down on the chest of drawers, boldly took Marisol out of Amyas’s arms. ‘You make sure you eat your breakfast, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the little maid to Miss Weaver. It’s time for her bath.’
I was astonished. Somehow Alice had persuaded her to accept Amyas and now she was being nice to him. When she left Amyas laughed. ‘So me being in your bed isn’t a crime any more?’
‘It would seem not. I think Mrs Penney and the rest of the village have decided I’m an eccentric. There are lots of them in Cornwall, you know, so we should be all right.’ I went to get his tray. ‘Now eat. I want you well again and strong.’ I couldn’t bear to see him brought so low, low enough for tears. It was so unlike the Amyas I knew.
Kitty and I went down to the beach later that morning. She had found one of Xanthe’s swimsuits and was mad keen to get into the sea. We walked hand in hand through the little waves and then, when we were thigh-deep, I told her to lower herself in.
‘Ooh!’ she squealed. ‘It is cold.’
‘It’s the Atlantic Ocean,’ I said. ‘Now watch me and try to do the same stroke as I am doing.’ I swam alongside her and then helped her to do the same, paddling up and down, practising the arm and leg movements of the breaststroke until we were both tired. She went to lie on the beach then, smiling and happy and I was glad. Her life had been difficult for years and would continue to be, but at least this was a break from it all.
That evening, after supper, when Alice was listening to the radio and Kitty reading in her room, I went in to Amyas. He was still in bed, lying back with his eyes closed. ‘I’m not asleep,’ he said, when I stood beside him wondering what to do. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, this and that.’
‘Whether to tell me the truth about who shot you?’
‘That and other things.’
I climbed on to the bed beside him. ‘First, tell me who shot you. And don’t fob me off.’
Amyas frowned. ‘The truth is that I don’t know who exactly shot me. It was someone guarding a place I was trying to break in to. It was probably an SS soldier.’
‘In Germany? Last week?’ I was amazed. ‘Christ, Amyas, I was in Germany last week.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw you, once.’
‘But why didn’t you . . .’
‘I couldn’t. Not then. It wasn’t safe.’
Not safe? What the hell had he been doing? I stared at him, hoping to compel him to give me answers. ‘Where were you?’ I asked. ‘I mean, where were you breaking in?’
‘A place called Sachsenhausen. It’s a camp.’
‘Yes, I heard about it from Paul Durban. He was going there with someone else. He asked me to come too.’
Amyas smiled. ‘Did he? Well, thank Christ you didn’t go. I was the someone else – me and a couple of other men.’ He shook his head. ‘Stay away from that young man, Seffy. I think he’s got some sort of a death wish, because he shows absolutely no fear. He’s as mad as a bag of frogs.’
‘But why were you breaking in?’ I couldn’t understand. Normally people broke out of camps. ‘What the hell were you trying to do?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know. My colleagues thought they could get some of the political prisoners out.’ He shrugged. ‘It was stupid; not properly planned. When we were spotted they got away and I was the one who was shot. Paul Durban stayed behind, though, and helped me. He got me out of Berlin.’
I lay back and thought about it. Was he telling me the truth? Was he lying because, like his father, he was a gangster? What he’d told me was a fantastical story. A story with a Scarlet Pimpernel essence to it, but, then, I knew Amyas was an extraordinary man. Dr Jago had joked about him being an ‘international adventurer’, so maybe I could believe it. But if it was true, what else had he done and what else did he plan to do? I grabbed his hand. ‘Don’t do anything like that again,’ I begged. ‘Please. I don’t care which shady organisation you’re involved with. Don’t let them persuade you.’
‘Persephone, my love, my organisation is far from shady. And I can’t say no to them. They own me.’
‘Nobody owns anyone,’ I asserted, absolutely sure of myself. ‘You can be your own man.’
‘Sweetheart, it isn’t that easy.’ Amyas turned and put his arm around me.
‘Why not?’ I cried. ‘Are you obliged to someone? Mrs Cartwright?’
‘Mrs Cartwright?’ Amyas laughed. ‘No, of course not. I used that disgusting woman to get close to the people I needed to watch. She was a means to an end.’
‘You stole her jewellery and money.’
‘So I did. It was too easy and I needed cash to get to my next destination in some sort of style. They can be very mean, you know.’
‘Who?’ I asked, now utterly bewildered. ‘Who can be mean?’
Amyas started kissing my neck and ran his fingers along my breast. I could feel myself melting and knew that very soon I would be under his body and submitting myself to his touch. It took an effort to gather my senses, but pulling my face away from his I muttered, ‘Who, Amyas. Who can be mean?’
‘Why, the government, of course. The British government.’