As confused as she was, he nodded. ‘Yes, it is, so perhaps they’re still around here somewhere too?’
‘No.’
Sparky shook his head. ‘Gus told me that Danny was . . .’ A coughing fit stopped him from going any further as the man who was holding him carried him over the threshhold.
‘I’m sorry, but the child has had enough for now. You can talk to him later when the doctor has seen him. I’ll send him up to
Tremarfon
to check Lizzie over when he’s done with Sparky.’
Eric nodded his thanks and moved on, with Maggie running to keep up with him. Not another word passed between them until he had kicked the door to
Tremarfon
open and laid Lizzie down on the settee. Then, crossing to the kettle, he told Maggie, ‘We need to get something warm inside her. I think she’s in shock.’
Maggie nodded as she ran to fetch a warm blanket to tuck around her. Lizzie’s eyes were blank and unseeing, and Maggie felt panic beginning to rise inside her.
‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ she asked Eric fearfully.
He nodded. ‘Of course she will. But you have to understand she’s been through a very difficult time, shut away up there with a madwoman.’ He shuddered as he recalled the sight of Blodwyn’s broken body lying on the rocks. Despite what she had done, he couldn’t help but feel a measure of sympathy for her, though he doubted that Maggie would. Given what the woman had put her daughter and herself through, he could hardly blame her.
‘Let’s just keep her warm and quiet until the doctor comes, eh?’ he suggested. Nodding, Maggie turned her attention back to her child.
Much later that evening, as they sat by the fire sipping hot cocoa, a sudden thought occurred to Maggie.
‘Didn’t you find what Sparky said about Soho Gus going to see him rather strange?’
Eric eyed her curiously. ‘Strange in what way?’
‘Well, think about it. Sparky said that Gus had come to see him
during
the night, but if that’s the case, how would he have got in? And if they’re still round about here, why hasn’t Danny come home?’
‘Mmm, I see what you mean,’ he admitted. ‘But you know - you have to take what Sparky says with a pinch of salt. The child is . . .’ He struggled to find a nice way to put it before deciding on, ‘He’s a little backward, to say the least.’
‘I do hope he’s going to be all right,’ Maggie fretted. ‘If what the doctor told us earlier was true, then the poor child is far from well.’
‘He was far from well
before
today’s escapade,’ Eric told her truthfully. ‘Sparky has a heart condition and since losing his family during a raid on London, the poor little chap seems to have deteriorated. I’m amazed that he managed to lead us all that way today. Still, we need to try and look on the bright side. At least Lizzie is safe now, and if what the doctor says is true, then she’ll be as right as rain in a few days. Children are far more resilient than we give them credit for.’
Maggie looked across at the child who was still curled up fast asleep on the settee. Eric had offered to carry her upstairs hours ago, but as yet, Maggie couldn’t bear to let the little girl out of her sight.
‘I suppose now that I know she’s safe, I
should
be thinking of getting back to Coventry to look for Danny. The trouble is, the raids are still going on there and I don’t want to take her out of one unsafe situation just to put her straight back into another one.’
‘Then you have a couple of options, don’t you? One is, you could leave her here with me. The second is,
you
could stay a while longer too. The police in the village are keeping in constant touch with the force back in Coventry, and as soon as they have any news at all they’ve promised to let us know. They will call round to your mother-in-law’s to inform her that Lizzie is safe, and tomorrow you’ll need to break the news about her family being dead to her. It isn’t going to be easy for the child.’
Maggie nodded in agreement, and as she looked across at Eric she suddenly wondered how she could ever have considered him unattractive. The scars were still there, as plain as day, and yet now that she’d looked beyond them and pierced the hard front that he wore like a suit of armour, she saw a very different Eric. With the firelight playing on his thick mop of black hair he looked almost attractive, and her heart gave a funny little lurch.
Blushing fiercely, she dragged her eyes away from him to stare into the fire.
‘I really don’t know why you’ve been so kind to us all,’ she muttered. ‘All I can say is, thank you. I would have thought you’d be glad to see the back of all of us by now, after all the trouble we’ve brought to your door.’
Eric was temporarily at a loss as to how to answer her. Just a few short weeks ago he had hated having to take a child into his home, and yet now he missed Danny more than he could ever have dreamed. And Maggie; since she’d been staying with him he had started to enjoy coming home to a friendly face and a cosy house. He realised with a little jolt that he would miss her terribly when she left. The realisation angered him. What sort of silly game was he playing anyway? Hadn’t he seen quite clearly the look of revulsion that had crossed her face the first time she saw him? Why should she think any differently about him now? He had promised himself that he would never allow himself to love anyone ever again, and yet here he was, letting his heart rule his head.
‘Well, think about what I’ve said,’ he told her, rising abruptly. ‘I’m off to bed. Would you like me to carry Lizzie up for you?’
‘Yes, please.’ Maggie had the strangest feeling that she had somehow upset him, but had no idea how. Eric was a very hard man to understand, as she was discovering. Warm as a blanket one minute and then cold as ice the next.
Sighing, she followed him to the settee where he lifted Lizzie, who didn’t even blink, into his arms. Maggie ran up the stairs ahead of him and opened her bedroom door, then crossing swiftly to the bed she threw the bedclothes back and asked him, ‘Would you put her in here? I’d like her in with me tonight, if you don’t mind.’
He laid the child down as if she was made of china, and then backed towards the door. Pausing with his hand on the door handle, he looked at mother and daughter, and the sight of Maggie tenderly tucking her child in touched him deeply. It seemed such a very long time since anyone had looked at him with love shining from their eyes. Closing the door softly, he made his way along the landing to his lonely room.
Deep into the night, Eric tossed and turned as sleep evaded him. Eventually, he slipped out of bed and pulled his trousers on before quietly creeping along the landing and down the stairs. Samson stirred from his place in front of the fire when Eric entered the kitchen, but when he saw his master he laid his head back on his paws and went straight back to sleep.
Moving to the kitchen window, Eric stared out into the black night. The wind was howling through the trees, making them appear as if they were involved in some twisted macabre dance. He found himself thinking of Danny, hoping desperately that he had found shelter somewhere.
Strangely restless still, he padded across the hall and into the dining room. After clicking on the light he again stood in front of his late wife’s portrait. Staring up into her lovely face, a great sadness overwhelmed him and he felt the urge to cry.
‘You must miss her very much.’
Spinning around, Eric found Maggie watching him with a look of deep sympathy on her face.
He opened his mouth to tell her to mind her own business, but then snapped it shut again. He was tired of always being on his guard; tired of the guilt that gnawed away at him like hungry maggots day and night. Maggie of all people must know how he felt. After all, she had lost her own husband not so long ago. He wondered if she hurt as he did.
Suddenly realising that he wasn’t wearing his eyepatch, his hand instinctively flew up to cover the empty socket where his eye had once been.
‘You don’t have to do that in front of me.’ Her voice was kind. ‘In fact, I think you look far nicer without it.’ She led him to the door and, after clicking off the light, ushered him towards the kitchen where she sat him down in a chair.
‘Now,’ she told him, ‘I’m going to spoil
you
for a change. I’m going to make us both a nice hot drink, with some of that shortbread I made the other day, and then we’re going to talk. I think it’s time - don’t you?’
He watched as she bustled about the room rattling cups and spoons and looking for all the world as if she belonged there. When she eventually joined him, she sipped at her cocoa and looked at him solemnly over the rim of her mug. She said not a word, and the only sound to be heard was the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
It was Eric who eventually broke the silence when he asked, ‘Do you miss your husband?’
‘Not really.’ Somehow Maggie felt that she could be truthful with Eric. ‘Our marriage was never a bed of roses, if I am to be honest, and I’d be a hypocrite to say it was. But it wasn’t his fault - not really. I think I have to shoulder the worst of the blame.’
When his eyebrows rose in confusion she slowly began to tell him of her life. She told him about how she had fallen in love with David, and the way she had betrayed him, albeit unknowingly, with his twin brother. And as the sorry tale unfolded, the tears slid unchecked down her cheeks.
Eric listened in silence and thought he had never heard such a sad tale in the whole of his life. ‘But David is home again now, isn’t he?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but he’s not the David I knew any more. Too much has happened to him - to both of us, if it comes to that. All I care about now is being reunited with Danny, then I’ll find somewhere for us to live, and we’ll get on with our lives again.’
‘That might be easier said than done.’
She stared at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that things don’t always work out as we’d like them to. I’m a prime example. After Georgia died I bought this place and thought I could leave the heartache and the guilt behind. But I couldn’t. It has a habit of following you.’
‘But why should
you
feel guilty?’
For a moment Maggie was sure that he was going to shut down again as he normally did whenever he spoke of anything personal. Then he took a deep breath and told her, ‘If my wife hadn’t married me against her family’s wishes she would still be alive today.’ His mind began to skip back over the years, and suddenly all the feelings he had bottled up inside for so long poured out of him.
‘Georgia was very upper class compared to me. You know - born with a silver spoon in her mouth and all that. I met her at an art exhibition in London, and from the moment I set eyes on her, I knew she was the girl for me. The biggest shock was that she felt exactly the same way about me. I could hardly believe my luck. I was a struggling young artist living in a dingy basement in the Charing Cross Road, but she didn’t care. Neither of us did, as long as we could be together. The problem was, her family had other ideas. She had a cousin who was an up-and-coming barrister, and it seems that from when he and Georgia were young, the families had earmarked them for marriage. They were totally appalled when Georgia announced that we wanted to get married. “What can he offer you?” they asked her. She just laughed and said that as long as we could be together, she’d be happy to live on dry bread. They then told her that if she went ahead with what they called “this foolhardy idea”, they would stop supporting her. So - to cut a long story short - we went ahead and got married, and that’s exactly what they did.’ His eyes had taken on a faraway look as Maggie waited for him to go on.
‘We lived in that little flat for three years and at first it was really hard. Georgia had to go out and get a job to make ends meet. I told her that I’d do it but she wouldn’t let me. “You’re going to become a well-known artist one day,” she told me. She believed in me, and sure enough, slowly my paintings began to sell. After a time I told her we could afford to move to somewhere better, but by then she was quite happy where we were. She had the knack of making a home out of nothing, a bit like you, I suppose, so we decided to stay where we were for a while longer and save every penny we could. My big break came when I began to do illustrations for children’s books. That’s how I earn my living now. I post them off to London each week and at the end of every month I get a cheque. Anyway, one night I was a bit behind with my work so I decided to stay up late and carry on. The light in the flat wasn’t very good, especially at night, so when Georgia went off to bed I lit some candles and stayed up at my drawing-board. I was tired and must have fallen asleep. The next thing I know, there’s someone hammering at the door and the flat is full of smoke. One of the candles must have fallen over and set fire to the drawings I was working on, and the whole place went up like a box of kindling.’ He paused and had to take a deep breath before going on. ‘By the time the firemen had broken the door down I’d headed off to the bedroom to try and get Georgia out . . . and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in hospital the next day.’ His eyes were so full of raw pain that Maggie could almost feel it.
‘I got these.’ He touched the scars on his face. ‘But Georgia didn’t make it. She died from smoke inhalation.’
‘Oh, Eric, how
awful
. But you shouldn’t blame yourself. It was an accident.’ Maggie’s heart went out to him as she tenderly wiped the tears from his cheeks, and suddenly he was sobbing in her arms as she cradled him against her chest.
In that moment she felt closer to him than she had ever felt to anyone in her whole life. Probably because they had both suffered so very much and were continuing to suffer.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next morning, Lizzie developed a raging temperature. Maggie was almost beside herself with worry as she mopped the child’s sweating brow again and again with a cool flannel. Eventually, Eric decided to walk down into the village and get the doctor to come back up to
Tremarfon
to look at her.