Lizzie thought of Carol telling her of the Americans at the base. Generally she’d said many of them thought a lot of themselves, and in the main she preferred the
black airmen. One of those could have been this man’s brother, but she still couldn’t see where this rambling account was leading. The man was speaking again and she forced herself to concentrate. ‘Matt sent for Shirley as soon as he found an empty house to rent in a little village to the back of the aerodrome called Minworth in the autumn of the same year. War seemed inevitable then, and Shirley wanted to do her bit and enrolled as a nurse in one of the hospitals in the city centre.’
‘Look,’ Lizzie said impatiently, ‘is this anything at all to do with me?’
‘I’m just painting the picture for you,’ Scott said. ‘The next part of this concerns your husband.’
‘Steve?’
Violet watched the blood suddenly drain from Lizzie’s face and said. ‘Why don’t we all sit down? That baby must be a ton weight.’
She was. Lizzie’s arms felt like lead, but she had no desire to make this interloper more comfortable, and when Celia asked, ‘Shall I make tea?’ Lizzie shook her head violently.
But before she could speak, Violet put in, ‘Just the ticket, girl. My throat feels like the Sahara Desert.’
Defeated, Lizzie sat, the child still in her arms, and Scott sat beside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must seem very long-winded, but I wanted you to get a little of the background. Can I go on?’
‘Oh, please do,’ Lizzie said sarcastically. ‘Seems like everyone else makes the decisions here anyway.’
‘That ain’t fair, Lizzie,’ Violet admonished. ‘Just let him tell the tale and then judge whether it was
beneficial or not.’ She nodded at the man and said, ‘Go on, Mr…whatever your name is?’
‘McFarland. Scott McFarland.’
‘Go on then, Mr McFarland, tell us about Steve, and it had better be good.’
‘Right,’ Scott said. ‘By early September 1940 the Battle of Britain was over and Matt was given a few days, leave. As he and Shirley were having a drink together in The White Horse, which was the bar nearby—you call them pubs, I know—they got talking to twomen there. I’m afraid one of them said his name was Steve Gillespie and both he and his friend had girls with them.’
‘Mr McFarland, you’re telling me the road I know,’ Lizzie said. ‘Steve was never faithful to me all the years we were married.’
But for all Lizzie’s valiant words, she felt suddenly cold inside and sick, like she used to feel when she smelt the perfume and make-up on Steve’s shirts or skin, or, even worse, saw the strange marks on his neck. She was glad of the tea Celia gave her, though her teeth chattered against the rim of the cup.
‘Matt said even then your husband seemed very attracted to Shirley, but he thought nothing of it as he had a girl of his own and they all enjoyed the evening.’
‘This Shirley was probably a little flattered by the attention,’ Lizzie said. ‘Most women were. People have told me women sort of fell at his feet and sometimes he didn’t have to try all that hard. There was a sort of sexual magnetism about Steve.’
Scott nodded. ‘Matt too thought him a fine man and three days later they met again. This time they
had no women with them. Matt had taken Shirley to the pub for dinner—as his spot of leave was over he was returning to the camp the following morning for a period of duty. They saw the two men as they were leaving and asked them up to the house for a drink.
‘It was as Matt was putting the coats away that a hospital appointment card fell out of your husband’s coat pocket.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said. ‘He was having treatment for the leg injury he got at Dunkirk.’
‘One thing puzzled Matt about your husband, Mrs Gillespie,’ Scott said. ‘That night, he spoke more about where he lived. In the States we’d never see houses like these, for example. But what he spoke about most was you, how beautiful you were, how kind and gentle and how much he loved you, and yet you say that he had always been unfaithful.’
‘I think Steve didn’t see the sex he had with other women as important and certainly it was something quite separate from our marriage,’ Lizzie said. ‘I don’t know how he would have reacted, or even if he would have understood, if I’d ever told him how worthless he made me feel when he went with other women.’
‘So didn’t you ever tell him?’
‘Never,’ Lizzie said. ‘We never discussed it at all. Don’t look at me that way, or feel sorry for me, for I didn’t have an unhappy marriage. In his way, Steve loved me and he told me often. In the main, he was kind and generous and often good company, as your brother found out. I had also married for better or worse, and even if I’d wanted to I could never have separated him from the children he adored. But what
I want to know is how do you know all this. Was your brother a prolific letter-writer and he wrote and told you this trivia?’
‘He did write often,’ Scott said with a smile. ‘But when he joined the Air Force, because it was something he’d so wanted to do from being a child, he started a journal to record it and wrote everything down there.’
‘Then I’ll tell you what he wrote in the journal next, shall I?’ said Lizzie suddenly. ‘I know the manner of man my husband was. He went with this Shirley, didn’t he?’
‘He raped her.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lizzie said. ‘He seldom had to use force on a woman.’
‘I’m sure,’ Scott answered grimly. ‘He drove her to despair.’ He removed a letter from his inside pocket and held it out to Lizzie. ‘Read it for yourself.’
Lizzie passed the drowsy baby to Celia, who took her upstairs while Lizzie took the letter from Scott with trembling fingers, not at all sure she wanted to read it. But she knew she should and so she began to read it aloud.
My dear, darling Matt,
This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write and I know that if you are reading it I have had the courage to take my own life. I want to explain to you why I felt driven to do such a dreadful thing.
It is to do with Steve Gillespie, the Dunkirk veteran that we met in The White Horse public
house and invited home for a drink with his friend Stuart. You noticed that he was flirting with me and I said you had no need to worry, you were the only man for me. I spoke the truth and that is what I told that same man when he returned alone and drunk the following night.I was in bed and asleep when I was roused and wouldn’t normally have opened the door, but with you just recently returned to camp I thought something had happened to you.
I was incredibly surprised and annoyed to see Steve, but not alarmed at all. I told him you weren’t there and he said he knew, that it was me he’d come to see, that I had known he would, and he was glad to see I was ready and waiting for him, for all I had on was a nightdress and a wrap. He was like a stranger and he pushed his way past me and held me so that I couldn’t move. I told him to get out and I fought him as hard as I could, but I couldn’t free myself. Nor could I shout out as he had one hand clamped across my mouth, and in the end he forced me to the floor.
All the time he talked, telling how he’d lusted after me since the first time he’d seen me and he knew that I was fully aware of how he’d felt. He asked me disgusting things like if his dick was as big as yours. There was more, vile and obscene things that I won’t even write. I wanted to die as that man took what he wanted, pummelling his way into me till I cried out and sobbed with the pain of it and the shame engulfing me.
Afterwards, I sobbed further as he said that if
I complained at all he’d say I had been a willing partner, that it was something cooked up between us the night before, and how I had been ready and waiting for him in my nightgown. I knew that he, a white man and a hero from Dunkirk, would be believed before a black woman and I let out a scream.Immediately, his hand was once more over my mouth and he told me to shut up, but I couldn’t. Even as he clamped the sound, the screams were inside me still and coming out as little choking sounds, and that was probably why he punched me.
When I came to, the house was in darkness and Steve had gone, and I ran a bath. Even when I had scrubbed myself almost raw I could still smell that man on my skin and I thought I would never be really clean again. I knew too I could tell no one what he had done to me.
I remember you worrying about me when you came home a few days later, and when I refused you in bed you were hurt and confused and I am sorry about that. It was just that I couldn’t bear it.
When I knew I was pregnant I was frantic. I can’t even begin to explain the fear. I knew for certain it had to be that man’s child.
Lizzie stopped reading then, for she knew, could feel this girl’s terror and humiliation, which was written in almost every line. The tears were running down her cheeks. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I know what she was
going through. I lived and breathed that same panic for months. But this poor girl had no network of friends to support her and her family were on another continent entirely. No wonder she was desperate.’
And this was Steve’s doing, she thought. He’d done this vile thing to this young woman and driven her to take her own life.
‘I quite understand why she killed herself,’ Celia said with a shudder. ‘I considered it myself and more than once.’
Lizzie saw Scott give a startled glance at Celia, but she didn’t explain what she had meant. That was Celia’s tale to tell and none of Scott’s business. Instead, she picked up the letter again.
Eventually, I knew what I had to do and that was to end my life and prevent you being shamed further. I love you too much to allow that to happen, so though it breaks my heart I must say goodbye, my darling Matt, the one true love of my life.
Lizzie could barely read the last words. Her eyes were blurred and the lump in her throat threatened to choke her. Celia wiped her own eyes with the back of her hand and said, ‘How did she die?’
‘She hung herself,’ Scott said. ‘Matt found her lifeless body hanging from the stair-rail on the landing when he came home for a spot of leave. It was estimated she had been there for three days.
‘The military told me that after the police had been informed, Matt disappeared for thirty-six hours.’ He
looked Lizzie full in the face and said quietly, ‘That’s when the attack on you must have taken place.’
Lizzie’s eyes opened wide in horror. ‘Your brother was the one who attacked me?’
Scott nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
Lizzie’s head was reeling. ‘What was it?’ she said. ‘A sort of tit for tat?’
‘It turned out that way,’ Scott said. ‘Although Matt hadn’t gone looking for you, but Steve. He made that quite clear in the journal.’
‘How did he know where to find him?’
‘The appointment card,’ Scott said. ‘He’d taken little notice of the address at the time, but when he found Shirley’s body and read the letter it was as if the card was in front of him it was so clear. And then the last time they’d met Steve had told him so much about the type of house and area he lived in.’
Steve! It all came back to Steve, who liked to put it about a bit, who saw no harm in it, thought it just a bit of fun. But then he’d met a woman who wasn’t attracted to him sexually, who’d spurned his advances. That must have dented his ego. That’s if he believed her and didn’t think she was playing hard to get. In the end it didn’t matter, for he took her anyway, and according to the letter punched her into silence. That was out of character, for since the night he had grabbed her when she’d tried to break off the relationship, before they were married, or the time when he had shaken her when she’d had a go at his mother he’d not laid a finger on her. He’d shouted and got cross, but he had never touched her and was always gentle with the children.
However, she knew it was an unfeeling and quite callous man who’d come back from Dunkirk. Had the war brutalised him? Could the war be blamed, or some facet or flaw in Steve’s make-up? ‘It’s so hard to take in,’ she said.
‘I understand that,’ Scott replied. ‘Believe me, when I read the journal I could scarcely believe the words on the page.’
‘Why didn’t he come here himself?’ Violet demanded. ‘Why send you, and months after the event?’
‘Matt was shot down on his first mission after he returned to duty,’ Scott said. ‘He was a rear gunner and the whole plane was blasted to bits. When his effects were sent over, Mom couldn’t bring herself to look at them at first and I didn’t even know they’d arrived. By the time she felt strong enough to go through his things, America was in the war. She sent the parcel Matt had left for me with the journal and the letters, but I was in the army and could do nothing until we were drafted over here to share an army barracks with some British units in a place called Sutton Coldfield. I came the first chance I had.
‘Matt wasn’t a bad man, really he wasn’t. That’s why I told you all that stuff at the beginning so you might understand.’
‘Oh, don’t worry yourself,’ Lizzie said bitterly. ‘I understand all right. Anyone would understand a vicious attack and violent rape.’
‘How was he so sure it was Lizzie he went for anyway?’ Celia said. ‘In the blackout couldn’t it have been just about anyone?’
Scott shrugged. ‘I can only tell it as he
wrote it,’ he said. ‘Apparently, after finding Shirley like that he took off into the night, walking for miles until the grief subsided a little and was overtaken by furious anger and hatred for the man who had violated Shirley and caused such a tragedy.
‘Sometime in the early hours he set out to find Steve. He hid in your yard that morning and watched you leave for work and tailed you. Then he returned to the house to search for Steve and was frustrated at finding the house empty.
‘All day he hung about the streets, but was careful to keep out of sight. His intense grief and anguish probably needed some outlet, I would think, and it was towards afternoon, he said, when he thought of you. That, as you said, would be a form of tit for tat, because just as Shirley, who he loved dearly, was taken from him, he decided to take Steve’s wife, whom he had claimed he loved.’