Judy’s parents, Sir Arthur and Lady Melton, were away, and since Gardiner their old maid was too Judy had to check up on the house for them. She called up to Walter to tell him where she was going and that she wouldn’t be long.
‘Wait for me!’ came the anxious reply. ‘Wait, Jude! I want to come with you!’
Their evening out at the Savoy had been just the success Waldo had forecast. They had indeed discovered each other all over again. From the moment Judy stepped out of her taxi in evening dress to be met by Walter beautifully turned out in his white tie and tails, it was as if this was their first date. There had been no war, there was no hardship to endure and no personal misery or anxiety. They drank cocktails at the bar and dined at a table in a window overlooking the Thames, intoxicated by the magic of the moment. Judy had never seen Walter in such lighthearted spirits, not even when she had met him in those now distant days before the war. Somehow the times then had been so full of foreboding and the future so fraught with danger that it seemed as if they did not have time to laugh as they were laughing now, or to dance like they were dancing now, or even to flirt with each other the way they were flirting now.
As they danced after dinner to the music of Porter and Gershwin Walter felt as if he was seeing the beautiful girl in his arms for the very first time, and it seemed as though all memories of the sinking of his submarine and the terrible subsequent days in Norway that turned into years of fighting for his life as well as the lives of his new comrades were expunged from his mind. It was as if a door down a long dark corridor in his mind suddenly banged shut, and when it did so Walter felt as though his whole heart had lightened and his eyes had grown suddenly bright.
‘I love you, do you know that?’ he whispered, kissing the soft curl of her hair just above her forehead. ‘I know I don’t tell you enough, but I love you just the same. You’re a wonderful, wonderful girl and I’m a lucky man.’
‘I love you too, Walter,’ Judy replied as he danced her slowly round the floor, which at that moment seemed to hang suspended somewhere in space. ‘I’ve loved you from the moment we met and I shall go on loving you for the rest of my life.’
‘I’m sorry about how I’ve been, Judy. I didn’t mean to be like that.’
‘I know, Walter. It’s all right.’
‘I couldn’t help myself. It was as if – it was as if the sky kept falling down on me, as if there was hardly ever any daylight.’
‘It’s all right, Walter – you have nothing to apologise about. If anyone should apologise—’
‘It certainly isn’t you, my darling. You have done nothing wrong whatsoever.’
‘I think I have, Walter. But nothing deliberately wrong. I should have been more understanding. I should have been more – more loving.’
Walter eased her a little away from him so that he could look down into her eyes. He smiled at her, then kissed her once more on the forehead.
‘Nobody could have been more loving than you,’ he assured her. ‘Whenever I had one of my really black moods on – and I’d look up and see you sitting there, reading your book or doing your sewing, and you’d look back at me with those big anxious eyes, I could just feel your love. I couldn’t do much about it, I couldn’t say anything at the time – and God knows I wanted to, but I just couldn’t – but it was just the fact that – well. That you were still there. That you were sitting it out, sitting out what must have been a terrible time for you, that was what counted. Because you were still there I knew you had to still love me.’
‘Which I did, Walter. And which I do now more than ever.’
And now Walter was hurtling down the stairs of the cottage after her, still calling for her to wait, leaping off the staircase and grabbing Judy by the hands as she was getting Hamish’s lead and a coat for herself.
‘I really do want to come with you!’ he laughed. ‘So don’t you dare go without me!’
Grinning up at her he sat on the bottom step and started to pull on his outdoor shoes. Judy smiled back at him, clipping the tartan lead onto her little dog’s collar. Hamish barked joyously, knowing a walk was in the offing.
‘I’m only going to check up on the house, Walter. I’m not going to be long.’
‘I don’t care, Mrs Tate. I do not want to miss a moment of your company.’
‘OK – if you get bored that’s your hard cheese.’
‘Jolly hockey sticks!’ Walter laughed teasingly. ‘Up school and at ’em.’
‘Don’t start,’ Judy warned. ‘Or I’ll set Hamish on to you. I thought you wanted to begin clearing up the leaves?’
‘I did – but now I have other things in mind.’ Walter stood up, shoelaces tied, and kissed her full on the mouth. ‘Come along, Mrs Tate,’ he ordered. ‘At the double.’
He took Hamish’s lead from her and jogged out of the cottage in front of her. Judy laughed and ran on up the lane behind him.
‘That was a wonderful night last night,’ Judy said, when they’d slowed down to a walk to continue hand in hand. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You don’t have to thank me!’ Walter laughed. ‘I just wish we could have afforded to stay the night.’
‘I don’t. There’s nothing quite like one’s own bed.’
‘No.’ Walter turned and smiled at her. ‘No, there isn’t, is there?’
They walked along for a while in silence, swinging arms the way young lovers sometimes do, caught up in their memories of the night before and thinking hopefully of the happiness that could lie ahead for them now.
‘One thing I meant to ask you – that I have to ask you,’ Walter said, breaking it. ‘Did you flirt with Waldo on purpose, Judy? To make me jealous?’
‘I never flirted with him once,’ Judy replied with perfect truth.
‘Very well.’ Walter mock sighed. ‘Did he flirt with you on purpose?’
‘Well of course!’ Judy laughed. ‘What else did you think that was all about?’
‘I was meant to get jealous?’
‘It was Waldo’s own rendition – is that the word? Waldo’s interpretation of Othello. Better. Waldo’s rendition of Iago.’
Walter frowned as he thought about this, then raised his eyebrows. ‘Likes to sail close to the wind, doesn’t he?’
‘He has been taking sailing lessons from Dauncy,’ Judy teased.
‘He didn’t learn that sort of jiggery pokery from young bro.’
‘He got a black eye for his trouble.’
‘Lucky I didn’t knock him over the cliff.’ Walter snorted.
‘You couldn’t have done that. Waldo was too strong for you.’
‘No he wasn’t!’
‘He was, too. He managed to make sure you didn’t hit him again.’
‘I thought once was quite enough!’ Walter protested, shadow boxing as he walked.
‘Walter – Waldo’s twice your weight!’ Judy laughed. ‘And probably twice as strong!’
‘I hope he’s not twice as attractive,’ Walter said suddenly, stopping his boxing and dropping back to a walk. ‘Is he?’
‘Of course he isn’t. He’s not one quarter as attractive as you.’
‘I don’t know. He seems to have the whole of Bexham womanhood at his feet.’
‘He is not nearly as attractive as you, silly,’ Judy assured him. ‘And even if he was, so what? You’re the one I lerve.’
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to.’ Judy crossed her heart in an elaborate schoolgirl way which always made Walter laugh.
‘I believe you, Mrs Tate,’ he said. ‘But there’s thousands that wouldn’t.’
Judy smiled and slipped her arm through his, walking as close to him as she could.
‘I wouldn’t blame you – or rather I wouldn’t have blamed you,’ Walter said thoughtfully. ‘If you had found him attractive and – well. And had a bit of a fling, say. Because let’s face it, I was being a pain.’
‘No you weren’t.’
‘Of course I was. But it was difficult – coming home. Coming home after all that time.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘Particularly when I found out that you hadn’t got any messages. That you thought – that you didn’t know I was still alive and kicking. I think walking through that gate back there – into the garden – I think now that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Harder than anything I had to face during the war. I had no idea what you’d think of me. Whether you still – you still felt anything. Three years is one hell of a long time. I quite expected you to have forgotten all about me – even if you had known I was still alive. I mean three years, Judy? And then suddenly there I am again, except I’m not, because I’m not the same me, and you – you hardly even knew the old me, so what were you to make of it? I’ll tell you what it was like, shall I? For me anyway. It was as if I’d taken off all my clothes in 1942 to go for a swim in the sea, left them there on the beach, only I didn’t come back again. Not for three years. Then when I did I picked up my clothes where I’d left them and expected them still to fit me – which of course they didn’t. They couldn’t. They were bound either to hang off me, or be too tight, or just look all wrong – they were never going to fit me after all that time. Poor you.’ He stopped and turned to Judy, standing in front of her in the path that led up to the front door of her parents’ house. ‘You were meant to just take it or leave it. You were meant to welcome back with open arms this stranger in ill fitting clothes who hardly knew himself let alone his wife.’ He shook his head and looked sadly at her. ‘Poor darling Judy – how I missed you. God how I missed you – not just when I was away from you but even when I was back home and couldn’t reach you. I’ve missed you so much.’
Judy took both his hands in hers and kissed him.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s all over now. Everything’s going to be all right.’
‘Yes,’ Walter said decisively, all doubts at last banished. ‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘And I suppose we’ve got old Iago to thank for it, have we?’
‘I think he played a part.’ Judy smiled. ‘But most of all I say, thank God.’
She opened the front door of her old family home with a large iron latchkey and they stepped into the cool darkness of the hall. Judy went to turn the lights on but Walter stopped her, drawing her back to him.
‘No, I like it like this, There’s something about old houses when they’re empty. Something exciting.’
Judy knew what he meant. Whenever she had been left alone in the house when she was a girl, she often felt a peculiar thrill from it, as if there was danger in being solitary. She seemed to be getting that same thrill, but it wasn’t a sense of danger that was exciting her. It was something else.
‘Do you remember?’ she asked, taking Walter’s hand and leading him through the hall.
‘Of course I remember. What sort of person do you think I am?’ He laughed
‘Do you think it was wrong?’
‘Not a bit. We thought we might not ever see each other again. Which as it turned out, wasn’t far from the truth.’
‘I used to worry so much about it. I really thought I’d go straight to hell.’
Walter smiled and held her hand even more tightly as he leaned over and opened a door.
‘What are you doing, Walter?’
‘What do you think?’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Putting Hamish in the kitchen.’
He pushed the little dog gently into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.
‘Do you think he’ll be all right in there, Walter?’
‘I think he’ll be perfectly all right in there. Come on.’
‘Do you think we should?’ Judy asked fearfully as they tiptoed in semi-darkness down the rest of the corridor towards the conservatory that lay at the back of the house.
‘Your parents are hardly going to burst through the door, are they?’
‘I thought they were before. I was convinced they were before.’
Walter laughed and opened the heavy double doors of the conservatory. At once they were both hit by the tropical warmth of the huge glassed room as well as overcome with the heady intoxicating smell of the jasmine.
‘That smell. My God, the jasmine was out then, too.’
‘Afterwards I carried the scent of these flowers wherever I was.’
Judy sighed, standing quite still, looking around, remembering. ‘It was romantic.’ She turned to him and Walter kissed her, before slowly and carefully beginning to undo the pearl buttons on her blouse.
‘But there’s a big difference this time, Mrs Tate. This time I’m not going away from you. I’m never going to go away again – not ever, I hope.’
After which he kissed her again.
And again.
And again.
‘You’ve been asked to dinner, Mattie!’ John called upstairs in excitement after Lionel had let him in and retired to the quiet of the drawing room to study his latest book on bridge technique. ‘Mattie?’
Mattie hurried out of her bedroom and appeared on the landing.
‘I’ve been what?’ she echoed. ‘Asked to dinner? When?’
John held out his hand to beckon her down to him, and Mattie hopped down the stairs two at a time, missing out the last four to jump straight into John’s arms.
‘They haven’t actually given a date yet, set a day – you know – they have a somewhat full social calendar,’ John said, slightly evasively. ‘But when I brought the subject up about you and me, instead of the usual objections et cetera, my mother smiled and said that it would be very nice if one day I brought you home to meet them properly. And have dinner.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Mattie said cautiously. ‘But you really have no idea when?’
‘Just that obviously it will be very soon, or they wouldn’t have bothered to mention it,’ John said happily, before kissing her on the cheek. ‘I think they’re sort of finally coming to their senses. Trying to be reasonable – just in case I rush off with you to Gretna Green.’
‘I wonder why they’ve suddenly started coming to their senses, as you call it,’ Mattie said. ‘As far as your father was concerned I thought we didn’t have a chance.’
‘Search me,’ John shrugged. ‘It can’t just be the success of Mamma’s exhibition. That sort of thing wouldn’t affect the dear parents’ attitude to you and me.’
‘So what could it be?’
‘Maybe what they’ve come to realise is how mad I am about you and that there’s no point in any further resistance.’ John grinned and then kissed Mattie gently on the mouth. He had discovered recently that he could resist most things, but not Mattie’s luscious, full lips.
‘Will you two lovebirds stop billing and cooing and come in here for a drink?’ Lionel called. ‘A man could die of thirst!’
‘And talking of sea changes—’ John nodded towards the sitting room. Mattie widened her eyes and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Don’t ask me. Must be something in the air.’ She laughed. ‘Or maybe in the gin!’
In his armchair by the fireside, Lionel smiled to himself as he began a new chapter on Slam Bidding. He knew exactly what the young people were talking about without even having to hear, just as well as he knew the explanation for his own change. It was nothing to do with Waldo’s and his triumph at the card table, nor indeed with the delectable as well as extremely rich Mrs Van der Beek’s growing interest in him – although he would be a fool not to admit that carried quite a considerable sway – but all to do with Waldo’s apparently idle conversation one evening subsequent to their famous victory when they were discussing how they had actually pulled it off.
‘By taking a risk, of course, my dear fellow!’ Waldo had laughed. ‘Drinking from the far side of the cup no less.’
‘That is not a characteristic of mine, Waldo,’ Lionel had replied, surprised. ‘That is not the sort of person I am.’
‘You were that night, and you don’t regret it, do you?’
‘No, but I do wonder at it.’
‘You took a risk, but what were you risking? Reputation only. What other people might or might not think of you, and what you might or might not think of yourself. You weren’t risking your money – it doesn’t matter about mine because that’s academic at this point – and so you weren’t risking your livelihood, simply your reputation, and what is that anyway? Reputation is nothing without achievement and achievement is never arrived at without risk. So let’s admire risk, shall we? Let’s raise our glasses and drink to risk – because without the taking of it, we are all absolute dullards.’
The more he’d thought about Waldo’s words, the more Lionel had considered them to contain the right kind of truth. Applying them to himself, and to the way he looked at life, of a sudden changed him, in every way. To start with, he decided not to employ Ellen any more. Since he had learned to cook in the war, he would now learn to keep house and thereby ensure himself a great deal more privacy – important if Mrs Van der Beek came to visit, say, which Lionel very well thought she might.
‘It’s not doing you any good coming here, and, frankly, it’s getting me down,’ he told Ellen, making sure to take a kindly tone. ‘There’s a much better position for you at Sir Arthur and Lady Melton’s at the top of the village. I met old Gardiner in the street and she’s all for giving up now, so why not go up to the Manor—’
‘I know where Lady Melton lives, thank you, Mr Eastcott.’
Ellen had sniffed, removed her pinny, gone to see Lady Melton, and been taken on for twice the money.
For a few days Mattie had kept wondering aloud who would do the housework, to which Lionel kept replying that he would, and that it would be good for him, until Mattie had to admit that the house was a great deal cleaner now that Ellen had gone and the atmosphere a great deal more cheerful.
Lionel’s next concern had been with his daughter. If he continued to oppose Mattie’s romance, it would surely be what Waldo would call playing safe, and really what mattered now was that John Tate obviously adored Mathilda. So it might be a terrible thing to spoil their chance of happiness together. Besides, Lionel further considered, if anyone was taking risks, it was surely John and Mattie, and since they were more than prepared to do so, why not let them? Having come to his conclusions Lionel decided he would sit down and put such thoughts as he had on the matter in a letter to John’s parents, in an attempt to bring some common sense to bear on the situation. This he had finally done, which was why he was now sitting so contentedly by his fireside with a freshly poured gin and tonic and a newly opened book without a single proper care in the world.
Meggie, on the other hand, found herself suddenly full of cares. Through her agents she seemed quite unable to raise any interest in Cucklington House, at least not at the price she was asking, a price which both she and they considered eminently reasonable for such a beautiful and historic house. It seemed no-one in these days had much interest in buying a place of such architectural merit, particularly in Sussex, but more especially since poor old Cucklington House required a considerable amount of repair at a time when, due to building restrictions, repairs of such magnitude were all but forbidden. Yet Meggie had to sell. She had taxes to pay and debts to meet and no income other than the few shillings her former butler insisted she take for helping out behind the bar. Her grandmother had left her a certain amount of money for sure, but she had also very generously left her the great, grand old house without for a moment thinking how much it would cost to repair.
Then too there were the problems she had inherited from her parents. She had lost them both out of the blue when their car veered off the highway one night when they were returning home from an all night party at Cape Cod, crashing in flames at the bottom of a steep wooded valley. Typically they had made absolutely no provision for their only child, assuming in their usual feckless way that since Meggie was the apple of her grandmother’s eye their daughter had already inherited a small fortune when Madame Gran had died in 1940. Such had not, alas, been the case, and finally Meggie found herself far from rich, having inherited only a crumbling house as well as a great many effects for which little money could be raised from anywhere, shortages having extended themselves not just to food and petrol, but to people’s disposable incomes as well.
Meggie thought more about her parents now that they were gone than she did when they had been alive. During their lifetime she had thought of them hardly at all because she hardly saw them. Her father had been posted to the US at the start of the war, and what with his being in the diplomatic service, and extremely handsome with a beautiful wife, doors were opened to them everywhere, and the doors that opened in New York led to a far more enjoyable social life than the one they had abandoned in war-torn London. Within six months of settling in New York her father had resigned his diplomatic post and accepted an extremely lucrative position on the board of a highly successful firm of investment bankers. Nevertheless, the Gore-Stewarts went through their money as if they owned a private mint, Sir Anthony adding to their growing financial difficulties by his unsuccessful but compulsive gambling. By the time their car had swerved fatally off the highway, the Gore-Stewarts were not just heavily in debt, they were all but penniless.
The consequences of her parents’ irresponsibility meant that Meggie, being the honourable soul that she was, had to sell off what little there was left of the Gore-Stewart goods and chattels in order to try to pay off some of her parents’ creditors, as well as some hefty back taxes. Paintings went to auction at the very worst time, although thanks to her many good and decent connections some of the finest of the family collection went straight to private buyers for proper sums of money. Silver was sold and jewellery too, items left to her by Madame Gran and the few bits and pieces her mother had somehow managed to keep out of hock. When all duties and liabilities had been met, all poor Meggie had left was the beautiful but crumbling Cucklington House, a place that was fast becoming a white elephant as the agents kept endlessly hinting.
‘There really are no other assets you can realise?’ her lawyers kept asking her, unaware of the two paintings she had kept for herself, one being hers by right anyway, and the King Charles I drinking cup she just could not bear to be quite parted from since it had been her grandmother’s prize possession.
‘Unless you find some form of employment and find it soon, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ they kept warning her, ‘you could well be facing bankruptcy. Could you not perhaps go back to work for your former employers? After all, you had a very distinguished career during the war.’
Meggie found this last remark hilarious, since bound by the Official Secrets Act she was quite unable to discuss the matter of further employment with His Majesty’s Secret Service. Once she had fully realised the depths of her financial difficulties, she had indeed contemplated a return to the Service, and for that reason had allowed Hugh Tate to make professional advances to her, but had soon thought better of it. For a start the pay was atrocious, and secondly, although she had actually been briefed as to the political expectations of the next few years, her heart really was not in peacetime espionage the way it had been in wartime. To her it was a totally different game. And while realising that it was just as important if not more so – with the birth of nuclear weapons and the mounting tensions between Russia and the West – she was too realistic not to know that her personality was not cut out for that kind of cloak and dagger stuff, which explained her complete rejection of Hugh’s professional advances that afternoon in his car on Bexham Quay.
‘We do have to repeat our warnings, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ her lawyers had persisted both verbally and by letter. ‘If you do not find some way to achieve solvency then you face the very real prospect of bankruptcy.’
‘Bankruptcy be damned,’ Meggie would toast, whenever she had finished her work at the Three Tuns. ‘Let them throw me into a debtors’ prison – see if I care!’
Once the pub was closed she and Richards would sit in the half darkened lounge and reminisce, Richards sticking valiantly to his brew of big strong cups of tea, Meggie drinking cognac from a crate smuggled in from an old Breton comrade in the French Resistance.
But memories are heady things, and inevitably, as the hours grew shorter and dawn more imminent, Richards and Meggie would either be in tears at the recollection of some tragedy, or in paroxysms of helpless laughter. As the light came creeping under the old shuttered windows, and the first rays of the autumn sun began to warm the still waters in the harbour, Meggie would light her last cigarette for what was no longer the night but was now a new day, and wander slowly home smoking and watching the gulls wheel above the little fishing boats returning, listening to the gentle awakening of her favourite place in the whole world.
‘And you’re not going to be enjoying life as much as you’d like to enjoy it unless you get a grip on your smoking,’ Dr Farnsworth warned her when Meggie visited him the day after Waldo had flown off to Berlin. ‘That cough of yours is if anything worse, and I don’t like what I’m hearing in your chest at all.’
‘Very well.’ Meggie sighed over-dramatically, narrowing her eyes at the medic. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll give up the weed altogether. Will that make you happy?’
‘I think it would be a wise move, Miss Gore-Stewart. Since you don’t seem to be able to cut down. I do think the only thing would be for you to give it up altogether.’
‘Just like that.’
‘I’m very much afraid so.’
‘And of course, we all know how easy it is, to give up smoking.’
‘If you don’t give up, you could be storing all sorts of trouble up for yourself in the future, and the not so distant one at that. Suck sweets – see if you can’t find someone to get you some American chewing gum, on the quiet. But take more care – because your system is running down, Miss Gore-Stewart.’
The doctor watched her leave the surgery, and once she was gone and the door was closed he thankfully lit up a Capstan Full Strength.
As Meggie left the surgery she knew the wretched doctor was talking sense. She had tried cutting down, but within less than a week she found she was back to her full complement without even realising it. The trouble was not only her weak will as far as smoking went, but the fact that she had no difficulty whatsoever in getting hold of cigarettes due to the constant flow of contraband that streamed into the cellars of the Three Tuns. She was making herself ill, and she knew it without the doctor’s having to tell her. She felt desperately tired all the time, so much so that unless she was either smoking or drinking she only wanted to sleep, and not just a nap. She wanted to sleep for ever. The dry cough that had plagued her all summer was becoming habitual as autumn wore on.
Richards kept nagging her to eat more, but due perhaps to always being on the run in Europe during the war Meggie now had little appetite. Besides, she hated eating alone and always had done. She would start out with every intention of being sensible but generally after the first couple of drinks she always seemed to forget to eat. It was the same when she was in company. Rather than hold up the party while she finished what was in front of her, she left it. The result was she was growing thin, painfully thin she considered as she looked at herself in the glass that night, too thin to attract any man and that was for certain. Not that there was any man who in her consideration was worth attracting, she thought as she sat down on the edge of her bed, lighting up what she promised would be her last cigarette ever – well, if not ever, at least for a very long time indeed. No, there wasn’t any man even remotely interested in her, and she wasn’t remotely interested in any man either.
Except now there was a man, but he was a most unlikely man, and quite possibly a highly unsuitable man as well. Yet ever since that day – the day of the Regatta, the night of the dance – hardly a quiet moment had gone by when Meggie hadn’t thought about him.
‘I mean, Waldo Astley for God’s sake!’ she said to herself, tossing and turning on her bed. ‘Of all the idiot men to get a crush on! I must have taken leave of my senses!’
And now I probably won’t ever see him again, Meggie thought in misery, as she fell back on her bed, lying there and staring up at the ceiling. I won’t see him again because he’s only going to go and get himself killed on one of Hugh’s derring-do missions, dropping off secret documents in Berlin and trying to buy information from double agents in return for black market goods. God in heaven, I thought all this nonsense was over anyway – but apparently it’s not, because apparently according to Hugh the Russkis are going to try to kick us out of Berlin anyway. Just as well I’m sleeping alone at the moment. Meggie sighed as she slipped under her bedclothes in her underwear, too tired to change into a nightgown. I’d probably talk in my sleep, blow the gaff and get sent to the bloody Tower. She fell asleep early, far too early to be tired, but still she dreamed.
She dreamed that she was wandering in a garden, and she met her beloved, long dead Davey, and he led her through sweet scented places, talking to her, making her laugh and cry at the same time, while she kept saying to him over and over again I knew I’d find you again, I knew I would. But Davey kept shaking his head and pointing ahead of her to someone in the distance. As she drew nearer and nearer, Davey seemed to drop further and further back, until he was no longer by her side, and she stood by the side of someone else.
Of a sudden Meggie woke up, her face still wet with tears, and remembering her dream she turned her face into her pillow, longing all at once for the person by whose side she knew she most wanted to be.
The cards, however, promised a dramatic turn in her fortunes, both financially and romantically. Meggie was a great reader of cards as well as other popular runes such as the position of tea leaves in an empty cup, and above all the positions of the stars and planets. She had even been known to consult visiting fortune-tellers who travelled through Bexham in the summer months, setting up their tents and attracting a brisk trade from the young, the superstitious, and the curious.
Meggie’s grandmother, Madame Gran, had never approved of fortune-telling, Ouija boards, table rolling with glasses, or any other kind of occult occupation, maintaining as she did that if there was indeed another world, then it was a world best left to itself. Put a foot in the door, she used to say, and the door will fly open and unleash something over which you would have no control.
It wasn’t until her grandmother was long gone to the next world that Meggie found out from Richards why Madame Gran had been so strict on this score. It seemed that one midsummer night at Cucklington she and a party of her friends had relaxed the rules, lowered the lights, and with the aid of a glass and a set of cut-out letters had tried to call up spirits from the other world. Unfortunately they had succeeded all too well, conjuring up it seemed the ghost of a footman who had strangled his girlfriend, and himself been killed by the other servants. Having been invited back to the house where he had been murdered, he persisted in making his presence felt in many unpleasant and evil ways, and it took several visits from the vicar to get rid of his malignant spirit. Richards maintained that after that Madame Gran had needed no convincing about the existence of ghosts, but was assured that the correct and only place for them was in the next world.
Meggie appreciated her grandmother’s caution, and yet now could not resist consulting her pack of cards night after night, obsessed by the idea that they might either confirm or deny this sudden and unexpected change in her emotions. At first it seemed she was to be disappointed, and that the indications of any change in her fortunes were just yet more marsh lights. For a start Waldo failed to return from his trip when he had been expected to do so, at least according to Hugh from whom Meggie learned unofficially that the trip had not been expected to take more than a week. Yet it was now well over ten days since Waldo had left Bexham and there was still no sign of his return. Unable to tell her more, Hugh tried to reassure her by saying that there was nothing at all to worry about, although of course privately Hugh knew very well that anyone pursuing the sort of business Waldo Astley was pursuing in Berlin ran the very real risk of being killed by either side, which was precisely what Meggie imagined.
On top of which she had developed an acute and rather severe chest infection as well as her ongoing cough, a contagion that raised her temperature alarmingly and made her take to her bed, a place Meggie only ever used for either sleep or pleasure. Finally, bored to distraction by her confinement, Meggie dosed herself up with aspirin and returned to work at the Three Tuns where she promptly passed out the same evening trying to help shift beer barrels in the cellars.
In answer to a call Dr Farnsworth reluctantly paid a visit to Cucklington House the following morning, where he found her being nursed with devotion and solicitude by Richards who had left the Three Tuns in the charge of Neil, a new young barman he had just taken on to help him cope with the increase in business.
‘She’s been quite delirious during the night, doctor,’ Richards said. ‘Her temperature went up to over 103 at one point and I’ve had to change not only her night things but her bed sheets, twice.’
‘It’s this wretched influenza bug,’ Dr Farnsworth said, with a shake of his head. ‘It’s knocking everyone over like ninepins, and quite rushing me off my feet. I’m going to put her on a course of M&B. She’ll also need two aspirin every four hours and plenty of liquid to replace all this lost fluid. If she worsens, call me at once – otherwise I’ll be in again tomorrow morning. She should respond to the M&B pretty quickly. I’m finding most of my patients are up and about within the week provided we hit this wretched bug early enough. So long as she doesn’t miss a dose and you keep her well topped up with aspirin, we should see this temperature down within a day or so.’
Worryingly enough, far from beginning to fall as predicted Meggie’s temperature shot up to 104 the following night. She became more and more delirious before falling into what Richards feared might be some sort of coma, and he was forced to call Dr Farnsworth out once more, this time in the small hours of the morning.
After much grumbling on the other end of the telephone the doctor turned up on the doorstep of Cucklington House with his flannel pyjama trousers showing underneath his tweed suit and distinctly reeking of whisky.
‘Think I’m going down with the damn’ thing myself now,’ he grumbled as Richards let him in. ‘All these blasted house visits, of course. Still – that’s how it goes. Occupational hazard.’
‘Miss Gore-Stewart is critically ill, doctor,’ Richards announced in his gravest tones, slipping back to his former role. ‘Otherwise I would not of course have bothered you.’
‘You’re a doctor now, are you, Richards?’ Farnsworth muttered as he followed Richards up the stairs. ‘Not content with being a pot man you’re a doctor now, are you?’
‘I am merely reporting on the state of the patient, doctor.’ Richards stood aside and admitted the doctor into the sickroom where Meggie lay on her pillows, her beautiful face ashen, her hair matted from sweat.
Dr Farnsworth put down his Gladstone bag, sneezed, and wiped his nose on a large red spotted handkerchief, before feeling his patient’s forehead.
‘I’d say the fever has abated,’ he said, straightening up and pulling a thermometer from his jacket pocket. ‘If I’m not very much mistaken.’
Placing the thermometer carefully under one arm of the still comatose Meggie, Dr Farnsworth then helped himself to a good swig of some sort of syrup he took from his bag and blew his nose loudly.
‘Bit of a scourge this, Richards,’ he said. ‘Hope you don’t get it or we sufferers won’t even be able to drown our sorrows at your noted hostelry, will we? Not what we want at all. If the pub closes, Bexham closes. Not even Hitler managed to close the Three Tuns. Not even the Little Corporal managed that.’ He sneezed again.
‘If you come to my hostelry and do that, Dr Farnsworth, then there’s every chance I shall contract the bug, and then the Three Tuns will be forced to close, believe me.’ Richards sniffed.
‘Hmmmm,’ Dr Farnsworth said with a sideways look at the upright figure beside him. ‘I should imagine all your organs are far too well pickled by now to succumb to any infection.’
‘You may well be right, Dr Farnsworth,’ Richards replied, permitting himself a small smile. ‘Alcohol is indeed a very fine preservative, which is obviously why you have stayed healthy for so long. Why we enjoy your custom at the Three Tuns so regularly.’
‘I was right,’ Dr Farnsworth said, ignoring him, having retrieved and examined his thermometer. ‘Ninety-nine point two. I would say we are well and truly out of the woods.’
‘Thank God for that.’ Richards turned away, about to go in search of fresh bedlinen. ‘She’s been that delirious, telling me to move the rats off her bed and the spiders off the walls, I really thought I’d lost her.’
And from that moment Meggie’s luck changed, just as the cards had predicted, for the very next day Richards took a telephone call from her lawyers on her behalf, explaining that his patient was still far too weak to take the call in person. As soon as he had heard the good news, Richards replaced the telephone and sighed with relief. Then he proceeded upstairs at his usual dignified pace even though the news he was about to break was exceptional.
Meggie was propped up on a pile of freshly slipped pillows, her hair brushed, a little lipstick applied to her mouth and a tiny bit of colour to her cheeks. Snatched it would seem from the jaws of death she looked prettier than Richards could ever remember seeing her, her frailty and helplessness adding to her innate and captivating beauty.
‘Now, Miss Megs,’ he began, coming to the side of her bed with his hands held folded in front of him. ‘I forbid you to get out of bed and jump with joy when I impart my glad tidings. You may be allowed one small shout of pleasure if you wish, although even that may bring on a coughing fit so I’m not really sure, not at all.’
‘What is it, Richards?’ Meggie asked anxiously. ‘I heard the telephone ringing.’
‘Indeed. And for once it has rung with glad tidings. As we know, this dear place has been up for sale for some time now—’
‘We have a buyer?’ Meggie’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Well?’
‘Cucklington has been on the market alas without success for some time now and your agents decided, as you know—’
‘Stale bread, Richards,’ Meggie interrupted. ‘We all know the state of play, their latest ruse being to invite sealed bids, and the highest wins. Desperation point, I should have thought.’
‘And the closing date was yesterday, which of course neither of us was in any fit state to remember, was we, dear?’
Meggie kicked the bedclothes feebly and groaned at Richards, wishing he would get on with it, something of which he never seemed capable.
‘No we wasn’t,’ she retorted. ‘Now get on with it, you daft old bat.’
‘Three bids, Miss Megs. Two absurdly low, at least a thousand pounds under the last asking price – and one …’ Richards deliberately let his voice peter out, raising his eyebrows ever higher and making his mouth ever smaller.
‘One what, Richards? One what for God’s sake?’
‘One – preposterously and absurdly high.’
‘High?’ Meggie bit her lip and her long-fingered, pale-skinned hands moved restlessly across the top of the sheet. ‘Absurdly high?’
‘Preposterously so. Unbelievably so. Laughably so.’
‘So it’s not genuine then? Someone larking about, do you mean?’
‘Most certainly not, Miss Megs. The bid enclosed a banker’s cheque as a deposit should the bid be successful, and your man is conferring with his man e’en the noo to confirm the details.’
Meggie frowned again and then puffed out her cheeks.
‘So go on – tell me. How preposterously, absurdly, ridiculously high was the winning bid?’
‘Hold on to your wig, milady.’ Richards sighed dramatically. ‘It was five thousand more than was originally asked.’
‘Five thousand?’ Meggie gasped. ‘Five thousand pounds, Richards?’
‘No, five thousand brass farthings, you silly scarecrow. Of course it’s five thousand pounds.’
‘Good grief,’ Meggie said, all but inaudibly. ‘But if this is true—’
‘It’s true, it’s true. You’re not delirious, you’re not dead and gone to heaven. You’re better, your temperature is down, and to cap it all some lunatic is going to pay you five thousand pounds too much for this dear old wreck of a mansion.’
‘But who?’ Meggie wondered, eyes popping. ‘Who would be potty, crazy, or even stupid enough to do that?’
‘Search me, your high and mightiness. Some madcap by the name of Pat – Pat for Patrick I imagine – Mr Patrick O’Henry, apparently, an eccentric Irish inventor, so they tell me.’
‘Mr O’Henry has to be quite some inventor to be willing to pay that sort of money for dear old Cucklington, Richards.’ Meggie sighed. ‘And you do realise what this means. Don’t you?’
‘I do indeed, Miss Megs.’ Richards sighed in return. ‘It means at last I might be able to claim all the back pay I’m owed.’
The only setback to the change in Meggie’s fortunes was the continued non-appearance of Waldo Astley whose absence became more noticeable with each passing day, not only to Meggie but to everyone who had become involved with him in the deceptively short space of time he had been in Bexham.
Peter and Rusty Sykes awaited his return without knowing anything about the sorts of risks he was running yet with a feeling of mounting concern, as if instinctively they realised that whatever it was their employer was doing it was certainly not in the normal run of things. Rusty was also anxious because her father and her brother Mickey had been hard at work on the Light Heart to meet the deadline set down by Mr Astley yet now he was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any word from him, and what was worse the money he had deposited against the repairs was fast running out. Judy Tate awaited his return because she was dying to tell him how well things were going between her and Walter, just as Loopy was hardly able to contain her eagerness to see him again. She thought even Waldo, with his seemingly unstoppable enthusiasm and optimism, would not be able to believe that before Loopy’s exhibition had finally closed she’d managed to sell another eight paintings. Even the Reverend Anderson prayed for a quick return. He and Waldo had become good friends over the months, their opening dialogue about the poverty of the vicar’s sermons having been a turning point in the clergyman’s life, since shortly after that he had discarded his books of pre-prepared sermons and begun thinking for himself. The fine and unexpected result of this was that his preaching had improved immeasurably and with it had grown a true affection for his maverick parishioner. Naturally Hugh Tate found himself praying for the safe return of his intrepid young agent, a man whose audacity and courage he had admired from the time he first met him in the bar of the Paris Ritz in 1945, only hours after the liberation of the city.
But most of all Waldo’s safe return was prayed for by Meggie Gore-Stewart, who’d at last realised that she had finally and much against her better judgement of course, fallen in love with the engaging American of the dark eyes and the mysterious ways. The Highwayman, as she liked to think of him, seemed to have kidnapped her off her chair that evening at the dance, and galloped recklessly off with her emotions.
But still there was no word.
In desperation Meggie sought out Hugh, only to be answered with a sad shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. Waldo Astley had gone to Berlin, had arrived safely, had posted his continued presence and then, once again, disappeared.
The days became weeks, and while Meggie gradually seemed to recover from her fever, and dutifully joined in the celebrations at the Three Tuns that accompanied the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to her dashing naval prince, it seemed to her that instead of the future Queen of England walking down the aisle it was her and Waldo, while the bells of the Abbey became those of the ancient Saxon church of Bexham, pealing out merrily across the estuary in celebration of one of the most unexpected marriages in their recent history.
But now it was December, and the days were growing colder and shorter as everyone prepared for Christmas, hoping against hope that this winter was not going to be as severe as the last, as well as that the absence of their American friend had not become a permanency. But as the children opened fresh doors on their home-made Advent calendars and hung them back on their bedroom doors, there was still no news from Berlin.
Then, just as dramatically as he had disappeared, Waldo Astley returned.
He was first seen walking down Bexham High Street with what seemed to the people who knew him an even larger cigar than ever clamped between his perfect white teeth, his arms full of parcels wrapped in shining red paper.
What the people who saw him did not know, but Rusty and Peter Sykes knew, was that this was not his first day back. They had been surprised by him a good ten days before, but had been sworn to secrecy when he arrived at the dead of one night with his left arm in a sling and a deep scar running down his forehead through his left eyebrow to finish on the top of his cheek. Naturally Rusty was the first to wonder why the secrecy was necessary when everyone had been waiting for so long to welcome him home. Equally naturally, Waldo told her to mind her own business.
‘Your wife’s bossier than my old mammy,’ he grumbled good-humouredly to Peter. ‘I don’t wish to see anyone, and I don’t wish anyone to know that I’m here, and that’s all there is to it.’
Rusty suspected that there was actually a good deal more to it than that, because she had gone through an experience that had left her scarred and wounded as well. She knew how memories could haunt a person and said so, which made Waldo growl at her; but instead of asking her to leave for stepping so far out of line, which she was quite sure he would, after a long while and several deep sighs he told her to sit down by his bedside while he took her into his confidence.
‘It’s not these silly injuries that are plaguing me, Rusty. Sure, they hurt at the time and they still hurt me now – but it isn’t them that’s the bother. It’s what I saw. That’s what gets to you, as you know. It’s the real life dilemmas that stay with you – people’s pain and misery and despair. You know what I’m talking about so I can say it to you, Rusty. The things I saw in Berlin – they’ll stay with me for the rest of my days. And there was damn all I could do about it. There’s damn all any of us can do about it. We complain about what it’s like in this country – how things should be better having won the war – but we’re OK. I mean we are really OK compared with what those folks in Berlin are going through right now. Believe you me, they’re going to take a long time to shift, the memories I have of those people. Oh boy.’
Rusty said nothing because there was nothing she could say. She just stayed with him as he lay there in silence, and watched an almost shocking tear rolling unashamedly down one of his cheeks before he turned his face from her and fell into a deep and troubled sleep.
Five days before Christmas, everything changed when Rusty heard the sound of whistling coming from inside his bedroom and moments later saw her employer emerge dressed in his best dark suit and crisply laundered white shirt and best red silk bow tie. He smiled at her, donned his famous black slouch hat and left the house with his arms full of presents for his friends, all of whom he called on in turn, leaving their houses only when he extracted from them a promise that they would tell no-one else of his return.
He called on Lionel, whom he found in company with his daughter Mattie and her friend John Tate. He dropped into the vicarage and enjoyed a tot of hot whisky and lemon with the Reverend and Mrs Anderson; he paid his respects to Richards and his loyal band of locals in the Three Tuns. He called in on the Tates and found them all busy decorating their tree, Loopy, Hugh, Walter, Judy and Dauncy. It was hard to know who was the most astonished or pleased to see him out of them all, and finally he knocked on the door of Cucklington House, with only one red-wrapped present left.
Meggie opened the door. When she saw who it was she laughed, burst into tears, laughed again and finally and thankfully threw her arms around his neck.
‘Remind me to go away a lot more often, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ he said, smiling broadly, the expression in his eyes unseen over Meggie’s shoulder. ‘Or is this the sort of greeting you always extend to Santa Claus?’
‘You’re such a bloody fool,’ Meggie said, wiping away her tears quickly. ‘And a bloody awful sort of man to boot.’
‘In that case don’t boot me out,’ Waldo replied. ‘At least not until you see what I’ve bought you.’
‘I haven’t bought you anything,’ Meggie lied. ‘But only because I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I thought you’d just taken off – in the same way as you arrived here. Out of the blue. In a puff of smoke. And I’m not opening this now – it’s unlucky.’
She took the carefully wrapped present and put it under her Christmas tree, which was decorated with pre-war lanterns lit from inside by tiny bulbs, large real glass baubles, and strange-looking pieces that her grandmother had collected down the years and had always put away on Twelfth Night until the following December when once again it was time to deck the halls and house with holly.
‘Why should you worry about ever seeing me again?’ Waldo asked, his face all innocence. ‘Why, the last time we saw each other—’
‘No.’ Meggie held up a hand, at the same time crossing to the drinks tray. ‘Don’t talk like that – don’t let’s talk about it at all. You disappeared and I think you did it just to frighten me. I do not like people disappearing. A lot of people have disappeared from my life, there one minute and gone the next, and I don’t want it to happen any more.’
Seeing her expression Waldo pulled her back towards him and took her hands in his.
‘If you’re thinking how I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘Of what I’m thinking—’
‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re all dressed up,’ Meggie said, interrupting him. ‘Now you sit there and enjoy your drink while I go and change.’
‘You don’t have to change. You look great; so glam.’
‘I want to look even more glam, as you call it, thank you.’ Meggie tossed back her blond hair and smiled at him, putting one hand to his cheek. ‘So just preserve that soul of yours in patience, as Richards used to say when we were growing up, and wait for a transformation.’
‘You’re the boss.’ Waldo smiled, took the hand that was held to his face and kissed the palm. ‘Just don’t be long. And by the way – what’s the occasion?’
‘It’s Christmas, fathead. And we’re going to a party.’
They didn’t have to go far – in fact they didn’t have to go anywhere, because the party was being thrown by Meggie right there in Cucklington House. Having changed into a stunning albeit pre-war cocktail ensemble of matte crêpe tunic jacket with a velvet front matching the underlying dress, and found a precious pair of silk stockings and her favourite evening shoes, Meggie brushed her hair until it shone – adding the final embellishment of jewelled combs either side of her face – then hurried down the back stairs straight to the kitchen and her emergency larder. As she prepared a tray of cold chicken, fresh ham and cheeses and took out a bottle of chilled Bollinger from her ancient pre-war Frigidaire – the food and drink having been of course provided by Richards and his team of trusty smugglers from the Three Tuns – from upstairs she heard the sound of Waldo playing carols on her Blüthner.
As she came closer to him, walking quietly down the service corridor and out across the hall, she could now hear him singing as well. He was singing ‘In the Deep Midwinter’, which just happened to be her favourite carol, and he was singing it in a beautiful round baritone, filling the house with Christmas and her heart with unaccustomed joy.
She stopped outside the drawing room and waited until he had finished.
‘Don’t you know anything a little more – well, you know – festive? Something we can all sing?’ she remarked casually, putting the tray down. ‘Something those of us without wonderful deep brown velvet voices can sing? Instead of all this recherché stuff?’
At once a poker-faced Waldo began to play a terrible pub-like version of ‘While Shepherds Watched’, the words of which Meggie immediately amended to the schoolgirl version.
While Shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated round the tub
A bar of Sunlight soap came down
And they began to scrub!
Waldo shook his head tragic-sad at her, as if she was a hopeless cause, and transposed the carol at once into a minor key, which made it impossible for Meggie to continue singing her mock version.
‘Clever clogs,’ she said, opening the champagne. ‘Spoilsport.’
‘I’m a musical puriste, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ Waldo said in his best Grand American, very Harvard, very Long Island. ‘I simply cannot sta-and the classics being traduced.’
‘All right, Schubert.’ Meggie sighed, sitting beside him on the piano stool, their champagne on the piano before them. ‘Play me “White Christmas” then. I just love “White Christmas”. Gives me goose bumps.’
‘I’ll sing it only if you let me kiss your goose bumps better.’
‘That’s a deal.’
And it was. They were both as good as their word.
‘Isn’t this a bit sudden?’ Waldo wondered as he sat with Meggie in his arms on the sofa before a roaring log fire. ‘And before you laugh, I’m serious.’
‘No, on the contrary, Mr Astley,’ Meggie replied. ‘I think it’s a little late. I hate wasting time – and when I think of the time we’ve wasted. All that lovely, long hot summer. All those swims, those walks, that lazing on the beach. It’s purely criminal the time we’ve wasted not being together.’
‘You hadn’t got a good word to say for me,’ Waldo observed. ‘I know. You hadn’t got a good word to say for me, about me or to me—’
‘And didn’t you know? That is always a sure sign.’ Meggie laughed, with another toss of her hair. ‘Besides, you wouldn’t even look my way, so you are certainly not one to talk, Mr Waldo Astley.’
‘I was dazzled. Blinded. Terrified by your charms.’
‘Et ta soeur, as they say in la belle France.’
‘It’s true. No it isn’t – because I did look at you. I looked at you a great deal and it was you who wouldn’t look at me. The day of the famous Regatta. When you were helping in the Three Tuns – in that low cut red dress of yours, and your hair all awry. You looked so different from your usual cool, poised self. I couldn’t stop looking at you.’
‘I know.’ Meggie smiled. ‘I know.’
‘You do? Well now, I sure would like to know how – you never looked at me once.’
‘Women can feel these things. I’m not sure about men, but women certainly can. Anyway, there’s a mirror behind the bar.’
Waldo laughed and lit his cigar. ‘You still wouldn’t look, though.’
‘I danced with you at the hop afterwards, didn’t I?’
‘Sure you did. No, as a matter of fact, you didn’t. You let me dance with you. You looked past me the whole time. In fact you spent the whole time looking over my shoulder. I got the distinct impression you thought I’d been rolling in a cow barn and wouldn’t touch me with a haymaking fork.’
‘Shows what you know. I didn’t dare look at you. I didn’t dare dance with you – because I didn’t know what would have happened. I felt out of control.’
‘I wonder why?’ Waldo mused. ‘I felt just the same.’
‘So, as the saying goes – we were meant for each other. Big sigh.’
‘You’re making fun.’
‘Only because it’s so serious.’
‘I have a favourite cliché, too. Then they woke up and found it was all a dream.’
‘Could be, could be.’ Meggie looked at him and then kissed him tenderly. ‘Somehow I don’t think so – except—’ She stopped, remembering a specific dream, and frowned. ‘Except, sometimes one does dream, and the dream does change one’s mind.’
‘Let’s dance,’ Waldo suggested, of a sudden, getting to his feet. ‘I want to dance with you again.’
‘I’m out of needles,’ she replied. ‘Rather, I mean the gramophone is. I forgot to get some new needles.’
‘We don’t need the gramophone. I just want to dance with you.’
‘Very well,’ Meggie agreed. ‘What do you intend to do? Play the piano one-handed while we dance round the stool?’
‘No. I shall be both the band and the singer, and we shall smooch. OK?’
‘Suits me.’
Waldo opened his arms to her and took her in them. She felt as if she had always danced with him, it was that good a fit. He sang ‘The Nearness of You’ as they danced, and after that he hummed it. She held him and he held her and the room went round, and the world too.
Later, as they undressed each other, she saw the wound in his shoulder. ‘How did it happen?’ she whispered, shocked.
‘Someone shot me. And missed,’ Waldo whispered back.
‘They didn’t miss. They hit you.’
‘They missed killing me. Sucks boo to them.’
‘Who wanted to kill you?’
‘One or the other. I don’t know. I was where I shouldn’t have been – which was where I should have been because I had to – and someone let someone else know, someone who shouldn’t have known – and the consequence was someone took a shot at me.’
‘Six inches lower. God, Waldo, another few inches.’ Meggie stared at the scar.
‘It didn’t happen, Meggie.’
‘And what about your face?’ She gently kissed the scar that ran down as it were through his eye. ‘What happened to this dear, beautiful face of yours? Was that a bullet, too? Looks more like a duelling scar. Have you been duelling in Germany?’
Waldo laughed and kissed her right back. ‘No duel,’ he told her. ‘I was drunk – and walked into a glass door. In the hotel.’
‘You fool.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘What did you mean to do?’
‘I didn’t mean to do this, Meggie. But, boy, am I glad I am.’
‘Why didn’t you mean to do this, Waldo? You against this sort of thing?’
‘Not on political or religious grounds. No. Not on moral grounds either. When I say I didn’t mean it to happen – I didn’t mean that.’
‘He thought he saw an elephant, sitting on the stair.’
‘Would you be shocked to know that this is the first time?’
‘The first time what? That you’ve made love? Don’t tell me that!’
‘That I’ve been in love. I never thought I would fall in love. Now – come here, Miss Gore-Stewart, before I pass out from desire.’
‘Do you have the photographs with you?’ Meggie asked as they sat downstairs by the fire, much later, having a midnight feast from the tray Meggie had prepared for their dinner.
‘They’re at my house.’ Waldo drained the last of his champagne and stared at his glass with something close to regret.
Having finished her food, Meggie suddenly longed for a cigarette, but resisted, in spite of knowing there was an emergency pack locked away in the desk. To distract herself she poured them both another half-glass of wine then turned the empty bottle on its head in the ice bucket. ‘So. There are just two. And that’s all you have to go on. Two snapshots and the words Bexham 1917 written on the back of one of them.’
‘Not a lot, is it?’ Waldo agreed, taking a cigar from his coat pocket.
‘And nobody has been able to help.’
‘It’s a long time ago now. Who’s alive who’s going to remember? I don’t even know what month the photographs were taken or where. I know that my father must have been here, because it’s his writing on the back. That’s all I do know.’
‘Maybe he had a relative here. He’d have to have some reason – because I’m absolutely sure there were very few Americans in 1917 who were choosing Bexham in little old West Sussex for their vacations. He must have known somebody here.’ Meggie wrinkled her nose and looked at him. ‘They must have had a love affair or he wouldn’t have tried to burn the photographs, or rather someone wouldn’t have tried to burn them.’
‘Then maybe it went wrong and left him the bitter man I came to know all too well? I always had the feeling that he had been happy once, but that it had ended suddenly. That happiness had been snatched away from him. That’s why I came here, just to see …’
‘Just to see?’ Meggie turned to look at him as he fell silent.
‘Just to see,’ he said again, and then finally smiling at her, ‘what would happen. And look what has happened. Like him, perhaps, I have fallen in love for the first time – in Bexham.’