He obviously didn’t know that they had believed him to be dead, and mentioned that his leg was ‘playing him up’. He said the food wasn’t too good, he wished he had some books, and that they played football and cards. He appeared to be more concerned as to how they were.
Myles said he’d probably been told by the Germans that most of England had been flattened.
‘He was clearly thrilled to get our first letter,’ he remarked, pausing to apologize that he hadn’t brought Michael’s letters with him as Emily couldn’t be parted from them. ‘He’s delighted Emily and I are friends now, and grateful for all the news I’d managed to get about his chums in his squadron. He said a few books and parcels had come through from the Red Cross, he was reading an Agatha Christie, and he’d got quite good at sewing because he had to patch up his uniform. The rest was all questions about the family, his nieces and nephews, and about how we were all coping with the war.’ Myles paused. ‘He asked to be remembered to you and your grandmother too.’
Adele felt her eyes prickle. At their first meeting after the news that Michael was in Germany, she had insisted that Myles should not mention her in letters to his son. Emily could hardly be stopped entirely from doing this as she had regular contact with Rose and Honour, and would naturally want to inform him that they were relieved to hear he was safe. Adele would have loved to have written to him herself, but she was afraid that might give him the idea she still held a torch for him. Yet whatever she’d said, however much she knew she was doing the right thing by keeping her distance, her heart still stubbornly wanted more.
The waiter brought their meal then and Adele was glad of the distraction. Sometimes she wished she’d never got to know Myles this well, because the closer she grew to him, the more impossible the situation became.
They talked about many different things during the meal. The Siege of Stalingrad, which Myles thought would end very soon as the German army were losing so many men, Montgomery’s victories in North Africa, and the fall of Mussolini in Italy. Myles conceded that England had desperately needed America’s help with troops, tanks and planes, but he suspected that when the war was finally won, America would take all the credit for the victory as if our men had been sitting on their hands for the last three years.
‘I don’t like Yanks,’ he said viciously. ‘They act so damned superior, but where were they in the Blitz? How many of their pilots could have done what our boys did in the Battle of Britain? They swank around England in their smart uniforms, bribing the gullible with their cigarettes, chewing gum and nylon stockings. Not a real hero amongst them.’
Adele could only smile at that, for she was guilty of accepting a few pairs of nylons and bars of chocolate herself. She was tempted to tell Myles that Rose had an American admirer too, a military policeman from Arkansas called Russell. Apparently he’d stopped her in Rye to ask the way to Hastings, and had later taken her to a dance. According to her grandmother, he was a good man, but then he had brought her some tinned peaches and oil for her lamps and fixed a fence that had fallen down in a gale.
‘They aren’t so bad,’ she said, and laughed because she could see that Myles was about to launch another tirade. ‘Their men are getting killed too, and if they hadn’t come in when they did, we might have been invaded. So stop being such a bigot. The Yanks I’ve met have been charming.’
He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. ‘Just don’t marry one and go to live over there,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘No one has asked me yet,’ she grinned. ‘But I could be tempted. Imagine having any amount of butter, cheese and meat. Living in a properly heated house and not having to make do and mend. My clothes are all so shabby now, I’d give anything for a new dress.’
He looked thoughtfully at her, perhaps noticing that she had on the same dark brown dress she’d worn at all of their meetings since the summer ended, the only difference being that she’d draped a cream and brown scarf around the neckline this time.
‘You’ve had a tough life, haven’t you?’ he said with a break in his voice. ‘When I think what Diana had as a young girl! Dancing and music lessons, scores of pretty dresses and shoes. It makes me feel very sad that you had so little.’
‘It didn’t make her the happiest girl in the world though, did it?’ Adele said tartly. She didn’t like him feeling sorry for her, and she remembered Diana being sour-faced and mean-spirited.
Myles sighed. ‘No. She’s still not happy, and I often think that’s my fault. I was preoccupied with my career when the children were young, and I didn’t spend much time with them. They saw so much strife between Emily and me too. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to Diana the way I do to you.’
Adele didn’t know what to say to that. As a young girl she’d always imagined that wealthy people lived enchanted lives, but she knew now through talking to Myles that this wasn’t necessarily so. He sometimes said how big and empty his home in Hampshire felt, and she guessed his two older children and their families didn’t visit him very often. She thought he was a man who had many regrets, and this was yet another reason why she felt unable to distance herself from him.
Myles went back to the hotel in Bloomsbury where he was staying after he had dropped Adele off at the nurses’ home. Instead of getting into bed, he sat in the chair by the fire the maid had lit for him and thought about Adele. He wondered why he hadn’t looked ahead after their first couple of meetings and realized he was digging his own grave.
It had never occurred to him that he might grow to love her as much, if not more, than his other children. For that was what he felt for her now. Not simply affection because she was bright and warm-hearted. Nor guilt because she’d had a miserable childhood. It wasn’t just pride either, though sometimes he felt so full of it he was tempted to boast about her.
It was love.
He had always considered himself such an intelligent man, and his fellow lawyers considered him honourable. Yet here he was caught up in a clandestine relationship which, if it was discovered, might very well turn Emily and his other children against him. Yet it seemed so wrong to keep it secret.
As Myles stared into the fire, he remembered how Michael had always loved the big one they always had in the dining room at The Grange in winter. Was he imagining it right now? Seeing the table set for dinner with crystal glasses and the family silver shining in the candlelight? Did he picture his mother looking beautiful in the deep blue sequinned evening dress that he had always urged her to wear for family parties? And how would he picture Myles? Would he be dressed for the City in his dark suit and bowler hat? In tweeds and riding boots? Or in wig and gown, as in the picture which stood on the sideboard in the dining room?
Myles sighed deeply, for whatever the mental picture the boy had of his parents, Myles doubted he ever thought of his father having such a troublesome dilemma.
Michael had always been so honest. Myles couldn’t ever remember him lying about anything. So he supposed that if he was to ask him what to do about all this, Michael would urge him to tell the truth and let the cards fall where they may.
But Michael was one of the cards, Emily yet another, Ralph, Diana and his grandchildren too. What if he lost them all?
Michael was hungry and cold, huddled under one scratchy, worn blanket, on a lumpy, damp mattress. Hut C was about twenty-five feet long by fourteen feet wide, with twelve rough, three-tier wooden bunks around the walls. The floor was just planks. In the centre of the hut were a stove, a table and a couple of benches. Michael had a lower bunk and he was nearest to the stove, in deference to his disabilities. But the stove hadn’t been lit for two days now as they’d run out of fuel. Tomorrow the men were going to badger for more, but in all likelihood it would be several more days before they got any.
By day Michael could keep cheerful. He had made some good friends here, they could chat, play cards, write letters, read, and there was always ‘Goon Baiting’, the sport of annoying or tricking the guards to pass the time. With twelve English, three Americans, one Canadian, two Australians, four Poles and two Frenchmen sharing the hut, it was an interesting mix and there was rarely a dull moment. Michael found he could cope by day with not being able to join the others running around the perimeter fence, playing football, or even practising gymnastics because of his bad legs. But he dreaded the nights.
Tonight like every night he was trying to blot out the disturbing sounds of his fellow prisoners snoring, the pain in his legs and the howling wind outside, by listing all his favourite memories of England.
Playing cricket at school, the sun warm on the back of his neck, grass soft and springy beneath his feet. Freewheeling down a hill on his bike, his shirt billowing out behind him like a parachute. Rowing down the river at Oxford, the sun sparkling on the water and the ducks scuttling away in fright under the overhanging trees. His first solo flight, going up above the clouds and looking down at the awe-inspiring expanse of billowy whiteness beneath him.
He had grown adept at not dwelling on the horror of his last flight, when the plane was on fire, spinning out of control and he couldn’t get the cockpit open. He couldn’t remember it finally opening, he must have lost consciousness by then, for the next thing he knew he was on the ground tangled in his parachute. All he remembered after that was pain, searing, white-hot agony that was only halted temporarily by passing out again.
He had vague recollections of nuns, an all-white room in which the only decoration was a large wooden crucifix. Later he was to learn that the villagers had carried him to the convent on a stretcher, and but for those nuns he would have died. Both his legs and one arm were broken, his hands and face were burnt. They had worked a real miracle on the burns, for new skin was growing again. Harry Phillpot, one of the men in Hut G who had interrupted his medical studies to enlist in the RAF, said he would only be left with slight puckering around his eyes and mouth, nothing worse than a few wrinkles.
It was his legs that bothered Michael most, for they had been broken in two places, and the nuns hadn’t had enough medical knowledge to set the limbs correctly. He limped very badly and was in constant pain, especially now the weather had turned so cold. Every day he did the exercises Harry recommended, always hopeful that one day soon he’d recover completely.
Many of his fellow prisoners talked of little else but escape. Michael was with them in spirit, but he knew he couldn’t be included in their plans, he was too much of a liability. Dreaming was a form of escape, though, and he’d become an expert at that. Sun-drenched dreams were good for forgetting how cold he was, past sporting triumphs helped the pain. Yet oddly it was the ones of memorable cold or wet days with Adele that really transported him home.
Tramping over the marsh, cycling in the rain, and best of all the freezing cold day in London, the first time they made love.
He could smell her skin and her hair, feel the silkiness of her warm skin, and hear her whispering that she’d love him for ever. There had been other women since then, but no one had ever touched him inside the way she did.
His mother had written at length about what a good friend Rose, Adele’s mother, had become to her. According to his mother, Rose had helped her achieve what no doctor had ever managed: she no longer had bad days when she had to stay in bed, and she hardly drank at all any more.
Michael fervently hoped that was true, and he was glad she had a good friend as well. Yet it was very difficult to imagine Rose Talbot, the woman who had been so uncaring about her daughter, being a friend to anyone.
He also wondered how Rose had managed to worm her way back into Mrs Harris’s life. But he supposed the only person who could tell him that was Adele. He’d like to ask her too why she went to see his mother when she first heard he was missing. It didn’t make any sense for Adele to offer her concern and sympathy to someone who had treated her so badly. Unless, of course, she did still love him.
It was that faint hope which kept up his spirits when things looked blackest.
Chapter Twenty-eight
1944
‘Do get a move on, we’ll be late,’ Honour snapped at Rose, who was scraping around the edge of her compact with a nail file, trying to utilize the last remains of her face powder. ‘You don’t need that muck on your face just to see Emily.’
They had been invited to Harrington House for supper, to celebrate the success of the Normandy landings which had begun a week earlier, on 6 June. But they both felt that the true purpose of the supper-party was because Emily and Myles wanted to show what good friends they had become. Perhaps they even hoped that in time they could live as husband and wife again.
Honour was delighted that they were friends again – she’d already packed two bottles of her gorse wine into a string bag to take with them for a toast. It was from a batch she’d laid down at the start of the war with the intention it should be drunk when it was over. They had opened a bottle after Michael was reported to be alive, and found it to be like nectar, and as Emily said Myles was always grumbling about the difficulty in getting any wine now, and whisky and brandy were almost extinct, Honour hoped he’d be impressed.
‘Is this dress too tight?’ Rose asked, putting away her compact and standing up. She smoothed the pale blue crêpe down over her hips and looked at her mother nervously.
The dress was at least eight years old and one she’d brought back from Hammersmith on her last trip to London.
‘No, it’s not too tight,’ Honour said honestly. ‘You only think that because it’s so long since you dressed up. I should think Emily will be quite envious, it’s very pretty.’
Honour privately thought her daughter looked a picture. Five years of war, shortages of food, lack of new clothes and permanent anxiety had made many women look dowdy and drained, but not Rose. Fresh air, exercise and little alcohol had done wonders. Her blonde hair shone as it did when she was a young girl, her skin glowed and her figure was taut and svelte. She’d gone to bed last night in curlers, and now her hair fell in luxuriant waves to her shoulders. Maybe the dress was a little dated – the utility clothes on sale now were very plain and sparing with material, whereas Rose’s old dress had embroidery on the bodice, and the skirt was cut on the cross so it clung seductively to her hips. But no woman on earth would not prefer it to the dull, cheaply made ones most had to wear.