Greenway House, 18 September 1942
Frank Scaldwell let himself out into the courtyard. Above, leaves rustled in the trees. A storm would come in the night, perhaps. Best get his turn through the grounds over with.
A little rain wouldn’t deter a fifth-column man, would it? A German invader?
He’d heard some little gal had been handing out white feathers in Plymouth. As though it was her call who could go and fight and who was a coward. He’d heard she’d handed a feather to a veteran of the Great War and he’d had his fun with her, asking next time for the whole goose.
Frank started on the path to the top garden, small steps, his left knee a little stiff. Slowly. One unseen root might send him sprawling. What good to anyone to have him laid up, or worse? Imagine dying in the war by falling down a hill in the night and breaking one’s neck.
Home Guard or no, there’d be no parades for a man like that. No honors at his burial.
These days, one had to think about the end. One’s own but also the deaths that caught one by surprise, wedged under one’s skin. Certainly he’d been gutted by the loss of Vera’s nephew but for him it was the nurse’s death, Gigi. Young woman, bright. How had it happened? Four months since they’d heard of her death and he still didn’t understand. He’d put her out of the mistress’s car at the station for the north train as she’d asked, safe and sound. Then she was found dead and further south. They spoke of suicide but he hadn’t found her melancholy at all. They’d had a good talk about the estate and his duties, the Home Guard, the trespassers on the grounds. She’d thought he meant the fellow who’d been killed, but he set her straight. It had only been some blighter with a twisted ankle, using a fallen branch for a walking stick and hoping for a shortcut to the quay.
Perhaps she had been a bit melancholy, as she’d grown quiet then, and rode the rest of the way to the station in silence. He thought Greenway was a place people didn’t want to leave, even when they thought they must.
Now the night was coming quickly and he wished he had a walking stick himself. Why hadn’t he brought a torch? He went slowly in the dark, feeling his way through the turns of the path as though he’d been born to Greenway land.
And now he would have to leave it. The Admiralty would take the house. The requisition moved forward and soon a crew of sailors would turn his mistress’s fine home into a barracks.
He’d sensed it all along, that the mistress, working every connection, making every argument, would lose the battle. Soon, the children and their keepers would be cast off to another spot, and their shores would become a barricade. Greenway, a last defense.
Frank didn’t know yet where he and Vera would be sent, or if anyone would think of them at all.
He followed the zigs and zags of the far end path down the uneven grade back into the woods, puffing breath. He’d like to see a German attempt these grounds.
At the boathouse, he checked the saloon, had a lookout from the terrace. For some reason he got the feeling someone had been there, a chair moved, a magazine turned over. He couldn’t pinpoint it but went below to check the old plunge pool more carefully than he would have. All clear.
Of course all clear. What did he expect? To find a Nazi hidden in the bath, flicking through one of Mrs. M.’s books?
But he might, mightn’t he? That was at issue, whether or not the Jerries might stop bombing them from above and come in for a dance. He never thought they would, but then he never thought he’d hear of their churches bombed, their towns gutted. For a moment, he put himself in the place of a younger man, a man who waited for his true life to begin, but had the time ahead for riches, for a piece of land to call his own, for all his potential to be realized.
He might have told the Register count taker he was three years younger and still been safe. But he hadn’t. He had stretched his age in the other direction, lied. Was there a white feather for him and all? Who kept score?
If he had trouble living with himself, he only had to think of Hart. They’d traced a handkerchief of his from the nurse’s body to his surgery, and found a set of trinkets from the houses of dead men. Bodies would be exhumed. The village wagged their tongues, trying to suck all the poison from the story. He’d never liked the man but—a murderer?
The noise began as a gnat at his ear. A mosquito. He swatted it away but the sound grew until he understood.
The air-raid sirens at Dittisham began to scream.
Frank raced back up to the terrace and looked out along the river. The ’planes came roaring overhead, chewing the air toward Dartmouth. He hurried back out into the trees, breath quickened. The droning grew small and was gone. The trees quieted around him until the night creatures began to make their noises, cautious.
The girl he tried to help was dead. The coward’s white feather was as much as he had coming.
When he recovered himself, the night had closed in. How long had he stood there?
He hurried up the footpath and when he reached the battery, he crouched at the wall, one hand on a cannon. Cannons left over from the wars of long-dead men. It made no sense to him, that another generation would choose slaughter. They were not meant to fight their lives away. They couldn’t be. He looked out over the water, gathering his wits in the blessed silence.
Across the river, a small light glowed.
His righteousness rose up and swallowed the last of his fear. What fool in Dittisham broke the blackout orders? Why not light a beacon for Nazi ’planes to attack by?
Was it Dittisham? Frank marked the far shore. The light seemed to be coming from the middle of the river. Something caught on the anchor stone? As he watched, the glow moved, danced. Almost as if—
Fire.
Frank stepped back from the battery’s edge and watched the floating candle of the boat drift down the river. He closed his eyes and waited out the thrumming of his blood in his ears.
He’d make the full rounds, down to the quay, up to the road to Maypool, the next estate. They had ’vacs there, too. He wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight anyway, not with boats blazing down the bloody river.
He would need a torch. The switchbacks to the quay were tricky in the dark, with a steep grade besides.
Frank was still on the middle path when he heard the gnat start up at his ear again. No mere pest. He fought the hill and the pain in his creaking knee and ran.