Leaves Before the Storm Page 11

‘Unfortunately I can’t. I have a meeting scheduled this afternoon starting at one o’clock. In fact I should be there now preparing my papers.’

  ‘Another time then,’ said Megan, holding out her hand. ‘We’d be pleased to see you.’

  He took her hand and smiled and Megan smiled back. What was it that was special about him? Even Arthur was smiling from ear to ear; something about this Jim Byrne was making him happy.

  ‘Yes, another time,’ she repeated. ‘Why not tomorrow? Christmas Day, we have plenty of food.’

  ‘But what about the rationing?’ he queried.

  ‘We have a farm,’ said Arthur. ‘We can kill the fatted calf any time we like.’

  Jim looked surprised and Megan shook her head. ‘Not strictly true,’ she said, tucking Arthur’s coat into the car. ‘But we have killed the fatted turkey, and we’d be pleased to share that with you.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ he said quickly. ‘To tell you the truth I wasn’t looking forward much to tomorrow. Most of the other guys at Leckford House will be away with friends and families, but my family is an ocean away.’

  So Jim came for Christmas Day, and won over Bertha’s heart by bringing with him a pound of lard and a pound of butter. She was flushed and almost girlishly coquettish as she clutched it to her bosom. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she spluttered before rushing back to the kitchen.

  Rosie and Dottie stood side by side staring curiously at this man with the strange accent. ‘I’ve brought a bag of cookies for you,’ said Jim. ‘Arthur told me there were two young girls here.’

  Dottie held the bag and Rosie read the label. ‘Chocolate Cookies,’ she said curiously. ‘What are cookies?’

  ‘We call them biscuits,’ said Lavinia. ‘But you certainly won’t get anything as luxurious as chocolate biscuits at Torbocks’ shop in Stibbington. Not these days.’

  So Jim was welcomed into Folly House and slipped seamlessly into the family. His free time he spent playing the piano or turning his hand to anything that needed doing in the house or garden.

  Bertha worshipped the ground he walked on, and even George admitted that ‘For a furriner he’s not too bad.’

  Megan loved hearing the piano and was always happy when he was around. To her he was like another brother.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Summer 1943

  Henry gave up trying to work out what the time was, or how many years, months, days it had been since he’d been pulled from the bottom of a boat after Dunkirk. He’d been more dead than alive, they told him. But even the word Dunkirk had no meaning. They told him it was in France and that he was lucky to be alive. He said nothing. Was he lucky to be alive? He didn’t know. What did alive mean? He had no point of reference. He knew he was English, at least he presumed he was as he could speak fluent English, but apart from that there was nothing.

  He’d been told that they thought he’d been blown up, because he was virtually naked when he’d been rescued, with no identification on him at all. He was their mystery man and they’d named him Rob Roy, as that was the name of the fishing-boat that had brought him back to England. But all this meant nothing to Henry, as he could remember nothing. Now he lived each day following a routine to which he had become accustomed, gradually becoming able to do a few things for himself. He got up, was washed and shaved by a nurse, fed at regular intervals during the day, and then put to bed at night.

  But nothing had any meaning as he could see nothing. He knew no one. Could see no one. Life consisted of a dark, meaningless void: no past, no present, no future. They told him he had been like this for nearly three years. But what did three years mean? But one thing did give him pleasure, and that was music. Henry gradually became able to tune his radio to the stations he liked. Sometimes he listened to the news, but that depressed him. It was always about the war. He’d been in the war, but remembered nothing.

  ‘Probably just as well, dear,’ said his nurse. ‘The men we’ve got here who can remember have terrible nightmares. At least you are spared that.’

  Henry wanted to ask what a nightmare was, but said nothing. It would only involve another long explanation, which he wouldn’t understand.

  On sunny days he was wheeled out in a wheelchair, settled in a sunny spot out of the wind, and wrapped in a warm rug. Little by little Henry got his strength back and became able to walk a few steps. More aware of his surroundings he knew when the sun was shining as he felt the warmth on his hands and face. He knew, too that he was near the sea. He began to imagine the sea, and saw moving images in his mind: water ebbing and flowing, and sometimes he thought he could hear it. There was a faint smell in the air, which he knew was the sea. It was familiar. Perhaps he’d lived by the sea. But no matter how hard he tried the memories of another life remained firmly locked away. He shivered.

  ‘What’s the matter, dear? Are you cold?’

  He felt the rug being tucked firmly around his knees and knew it was his nurse Jenny speaking. ‘No,’ he said, and then asked, ‘Where am I now. What is this place?’

  ‘You’re in the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley. It’s a military hospital with more than a thousand patients set in lovely spacious grounds on the edge of Southampton Water.’

  ‘Water? What do you mean, water?’ queried Henry. ‘It smells to me like the sea.’

  Jenny patted his hand. ‘There, you’ve remembered something. It is the sea, but it’s called Southampton Water.’

  Henry slowly smiled. ‘I knew it was the sea. I could smell it.’ He drew in a breath, savouring the saltiness, then said, ‘How long will I stay here?’

  ‘Probably until you get your memory back, or we find out who you are, and when you are stronger, of course.’

  ‘And if I don’t get my memory back, and you never find out who I am?’

  He heard her sigh. ‘I don’t know.’ She squeezed his hands in hers. ‘But you will get it back. These things take time.’

  ‘But no chance of getting my sight back.’ Henry didn’t ask, rather made a statement.

  Jenny squeezed his hands again. ‘No.’

  Sitting in the fresh air, still imprisoned in the dark world he now inhabited but now visualizing the sea made him feel restless. Had he grown up by the sea? Memories were pushing at the dark boundaries of his mind, trying to emerge. Who was he? Where did he belong?

  At East End the summer of 1943 proceeded like all the other summers of the war. Rationing was harder than ever, food, clothes, petrol, even paper. The land and animals always needed tending and sometimes Megan was so tired she could hardly put one foot before the other. But she thanked God for the two land girls, as they were worth their weight in gold. During the long summer days they worked hard, sometimes only stopping when it grew too dark to continue. Bertha, after her initial hostility, had taken them under her wing and showed her admiration for them in the only way she knew how. She cooked for them. Most evenings Dottie and Rosie were given something, either a casserole, or some chops or pies and plates of buttery potatoes to carry over and put in the kitchen of the rooms the girls shared above the stables. Molly and Pat were grateful not to have to cook at the end of a long day in the fields, but Molly felt guilty and tackled Bertha about the butter she used for them.

  ‘You really must take our ration books,’ she told Bertha one day, holding out their brown paper books filled with their coupons for food. ‘You are giving us more and more and you must need our coupons for everything we’re eating.’

  ‘No,’ Bertha was firm. ‘You need your ration books for your day to day things from Torbocks’.’

  ‘But what about the butter?’ said Molly. ‘We only get two ounces a week and you are giving us more than that. We don’t want Megan and the family to go without.’

  ‘They’ll not go without,’ said Bertha firmly, ‘because every day Dottie, and sometimes Rosie, sit down there on the kitchen step and, come rain or shine, turn the butter churn with the milk I’ve kept back from the day’s milking.’ She nodded at the ration
books still in Molly’s hand. ‘Now you put those away until they’re next needed, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘Still, we both wish there was some way we could repay you,’ said Pat.

  Bertha wrinkled her forehead. ‘Can either of you shoot?’ Both girls shook their heads, and a wide smile creased Bertha’s face. ‘There’s the answer then. I’ll get George to teach you. He’s getting a bit rheumaticky for crawling through the damp grass hunting rabbits. He’s not bringing many back home these days. Now if you could shoot a few for the pot we’d all be grateful.’

  George was not keen on teaching two city girls to shoot, but was overruled by Bertha. Pat especially proved to have a really good eye, and soon there were always a couple of rabbits hanging on the back of the larder door; strung up by the hind legs, their heads in brown paper bags, their underbellies pegged open with a wooden stake. Rabbit stew was regularly on the menu.

  By now Lavinia had moved into Folly House as the WD had requisitioned the dower house and put three naval officers in there, as Leckford House was bulging at the seams with all the extra personnel who’d been drafted into the area.

  Lavinia grumbled. ‘Even the forest seems to be getting crowded these days. Wherever you look there are soldiers, sailors and airmen.’

  It was true. The fields attached to the enclosures, normally kept for herding cattle, started sprouting neat rows of camouflaged tents, then soldiers moved in and set up camp, and guards were posted on the gates. Great patches of heathland were concreted over and turned into runways for the aircraft which began to arrive. Everything was camouflaged. Posters were displayed in Stibbington post office, the library and all the banks saying: CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES, and there was a general air of secrecy and anticipation. Mrs Fox now cleaned for the naval officers in the dower house, and then was engaged for the rest of the time cleaning at Leckford House.

  ‘You’d think she was a general herself,’ scoffed Bertha. ‘Giving herself such airs and graces, telling everyone she meets that she is bound by the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘Perhaps she is,’ said Lavinia.

  ‘What, a general?’ joked Arthur.

  ‘No, bound by the Official Secrets Act. There’s a lot of very hush-hush stuff going on up there.’ She turned to Megan. ‘Doesn’t Jim ever say what he does there?’

  Megan shook her head. ‘Not to me,’ she said.

  ‘Nor me,’ echoed Arthur.

  They all now regarded Jim as part of the family. It was as if there had never been a time without him. Megan couldn’t imagine life without him. He was teaching Rosie the piano, and she was a very apt pupil.

  ‘I think Rosie is exceptionally gifted,’ he told Megan. ‘In fact, I think she may well be good enough eventually to be a professional musician. When I leave here, you must promise to make Arthur continue to teach her.’

  Megan added that task to the long list of things to do, although somehow she couldn’t imagine Jim ever leaving. But of course he would, as would all the people camped around them, together with the equipment and the boats being mustered in the river Stib. Yes, they would go once the war in Europe really started. But for the moment she was happy that they were there, since she was supplying HMS Mason, as Leckford House was now called, with fruit, vegetables and milk, and it all boosted Folly House’s income.

  Jim was a frequent visitor, letting himself into Folly House to play the piano whenever he could get away. When she was deep into marking up the official returns for the Food Office, a job she hated, she would pause and listen, then smile. With music in her ears even the hated Food Office returns didn’t seem so bad.

  The previous summer, in the long evenings, when Rosie was in bed and supper was over, Megan and Jim had started riding the two ancient hunters, Major and Lady Penny, out into the depths of the forest. Henry had put the two old horses out to pasture at the beginning of the war despite Silas Moon’s suggestion they be sent to the knackers’ yard, but now they were enjoying their new lease of life. Both Megan and Jim found a new pleasure when riding through the forest; there the circle of life was unchanging; it was another world far away from the stresses of war.

  Two years passed and they got to know each other well as while they rode they talked. Megan told Jim about growing up in the rectory with her father and brother, and how she’d always wanted to live in Folly House; a dream come true when she married Henry. But she didn’t mention that her marriage had been a disappointment, or that Gerald had forced himself on her on the wedding night. Those dark guilty secrets she kept to herself.

  She learned that Jim came from Sandwich in Massachusetts, New England, and that he wasn’t married but was engaged to his childhood sweetheart, a primary schoolteacher called Betty. He showed her pictures of his fiancée. She was small and blonde, standing outside her parent’s home, a white-painted clapboard house on the edge of a creek by the sea.

  ‘It all looks very neat and tidy,’ said Megan.

  Jim Laughed. ‘It is. We have a few old houses in Sandwich, but there is no house like Folly House, rambling and odd-shaped because of all the bits and pieces added on over the centuries. That’s what I love about England and the English villages, their sense of timelessness.’

  Jim told her that in peacetime he’d taught engineering at Boston University, although he’d always dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, but Betty hadn’t thought that a very secure career; she approved of engineering.

  Later, when the war started, he’d decided he couldn’t stay on the sidelines in America and watch Europe, which he loved, being destroyed by the Nazis, so he’d volunteered to work as a design engineer for the British at Leckford House. Betty hadn’t approved, but he’d come anyway.

  ‘I was like Betty in the beginning,’ said Megan. ‘I didn’t want to hear about the troubles in Europe. I blocked my ears and thought if I didn’t think about it everything bad would go away and that we’d remain here untouched by the war. I was selfish. I know that now.’

  ‘Poor Megan,’ said Jim. ‘But it has touched you, hasn’t it? You’ve lost your husband.’

  Megan didn’t reply. She couldn’t tell him that although part of her wanted Henry to be alive and well, she wasn’t missing him as much as a wife should. In fact, when she was riding out with Jim it seemed that it had always been like that, that just the two of them existed, and that Henry had never been part of her life. She also knew that slowly, little by little in their snatched hours together, she was falling love with Jim. She loved everything about him. The way he tilted his head when talking, his gentle laugh, the touch of his hand. But she wasn’t free to love him, nor he her, and so Megan didn’t allow herself to think about the future. She just lived for their brief moments together.

  One evening they went further than usual and reached a sheltered hollow right in the middle of the forest, where the grass was short and springy, nibbled down to a green carpet by rabbits and deer. A small New Forest brown trout stream meandered through the hollow, reflecting golden splashes of light on to the leaves of the trees bending low over the water.

  Jim jumped down and lightly tethered Major to a nearby blackthorn bush, already laden with sloes almost ready for picking. He held out his hand and Megan put hers in his and slid down from her mount to stand beside him. Jim tethered Lady Penny beside Major and, still holding Megan’s hand, drew her down on the bank beside the stream.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘About what will happen to us when this war is over.’

  Megan shivered and took her hand from his. Suddenly the sunny glade seemed chilly. ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ she said. ‘I want us to go on like this for ever.’ The words were blurted out before she could stop them.

  Gently Jim took back her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Look at me,’ he said softly. ‘You know we can’t go on for ever like this, don’t you? Fate has thrown us together, but now we have to decide what happens next.’

  Later, Megan was never quite sure who made the first move
or even how it happened. But one moment they were looking at each other, and the next moment she was in his arms and they were kissing. They made love. Gently, tenderly at first and then with increasing passion, and Megan suddenly realized that she had been waiting all her life for this man. It all seemed so right, their bodies moved in harmony, fused together in ecstasy, and when at last they lay quiet in each other’s arms it was Megan who spoke first.

  ‘I didn’t know it could be so wonderful.’

  Jim stroked her hair, and kissed her bare shoulder. ‘Nor did I, my darling.’ He was quiet for a moment and then said, ‘I do love you, you know. More than I can ever say.’

  ‘I love you too,’ Megan whispered. ‘But I have a husband and you have a fianceé.’

  Jim sighed, rolled over and positioned her more comfortably in the crook of his shoulder. He kissed her slowly, then said, ‘Betty wrote me last week. She’s found another man. A man who is staying in America and not running off to fight a foreign war. That’s what she says.’

  Megan propped herself up to turn and look at him. ‘You sound as if you don’t mind.’

  Jim sighed again. ‘I fell out of love with her a long time ago, but I didn’t want to hurt her. We were both too young to get engaged, and now we’re grown up. Both of us. I’m glad she’s found someone to love, especially since I’ve fallen in love with you. I didn’t plan this, I didn’t even want to, but I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘I think I fell a little bit in love with you the very first day I met you,’ said Megan. ‘I suppose I married too young as well. But now I feel guilty. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know whether Henry is alive or dead.’ She paused, then said softly, ‘It’s wicked, I know, to hope that he never comes back.’ There was silence, then she repeated, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Jim sat up and began to pull his shirt back on. ‘There’s nothing we can do at the moment,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait for you, and you will have to wait and find out whether Henry is coming back. We both have to wait until the war is over.’ He took both her hands in his and looked very serious. ‘I will have to leave here eventually and go on active war service, I can’t tell you when or where, but when I come back we will decide what to do. If you still love me, and can bear to leave Folly House, we can make a life together.’