The Great Betrayal

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First world edition published 2011

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2011 by Pamela Oldfield.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Oldfield, Pamela.

The great betrayal.

1. Great Britain–Officials and employees–Family

relationships–Fiction. 2. Pregnant women–Fiction.

3. Life change events–Fiction. 4. London (England)

Social conditions–20th century–Fiction. 5. Great

Britain–History–Edward VII, 1901-1910–Fiction.

I. Title

823.9′14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-128-6 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8063-5 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-365-6 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

One

‘The man’s a spy!’ said George. ‘I know he’s a spy.’

Lydia bit her lip, telling herself not to rise to the bait.

George went on, a note of triumph in his voice: ‘He’s a spy if ever I saw one! You know it, Lydia, but you can’t or won’t admit it!’

‘That’s enough, Father.’ She tried to concentrate on her sewing, tried to ignore him, tried to pretend that he was not deliberately upsetting her and tried as usual to make allowances for him. The cotton in her needle ran out, and she finished off and reached for the cotton reel to cut another length of thread.

From the corner of her eye she saw him glance towards her, his eyes searching her face for any sign that he was reaching her with his accusations. She sighed, praying for patience. He was no longer the father she had loved as a child, but that was not his fault.

Four-year-old Adam, sitting between them on the floor with a wooden engine, looked up at her. ‘What is a spy, Mama?’

‘Nothing,’ Lydia answered, her tone sharper than she’d intended. ‘A spy is nothing. Don’t take any notice of Grandpapa. He’s being foolish.’

Foolish and sometimes spiteful, she added silently. Today he was not in a good mood, and at times like today Lydia worried about his influence on her young son.

The old man leaned forward towards the child. ‘A spy is a nasty man who does horrid things! A spy betrays the people who trust him. He betrays his country. He—’

Adam looked at her anxiously. ‘Is Papa a nasty man?’

‘Certainly not! He’s a very nice man. Your papa is the best man in the world – and you’re the best little boy!’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Grandpapa is only teasing us.’

‘I’m not teasing you, Adam. I’m telling you that—’

Lydia’s patience was exhausted. She sprang to her feet, tossed her sewing on to the chair she had just vacated and, reaching for her son, pulled him to his feet. Trying to keep her voice level she said, ‘We’ll go to the park, shall we, Adam, and you can play on the swings.’

The boy’s face lit up at the prospect. ‘Will we see the man with the puppy?’

‘Maybe.’

Her father said, ‘I spy, with my little eye . . .’ and chuckled.

Adam gave him a quick glance and, puzzled by his words, snatched up his teddy bear, ran from the room and up the stairs.

Lydia followed him in a swirl of angry skirts and furious thoughts and almost slammed the door behind her. But that would have given her father great satisfaction. At least she could deny him that.

George laughed when he heard the front door close behind them. ‘Deny it as much as you like, my dear daughter, but you know it’s the truth. The man you married is not what he seems! Never has been, but you wouldn’t be told. Even now you refuse to see the signs.’

Just fifty years old, George Meecham was physically in good health but for the last year his mind had been letting him down. He was becoming confused and was struggling to cling on to what remained of his sanity.

He was sorry he had upset his daughter, but he reminded himself that he had always been able to spot a wrong’un and he didn’t trust his son-in-law one inch and sometimes he found himself voicing his suspicions.

‘If only I could keep it to myself,’ he groaned. ‘It’s not her fault, but it’s not mine either.’ The words came tumbling from his mouth, from his subconscious, and he recalled with a prickle of fear that the same thing had happened to his father in his later years.

Now, uncomfortably reminded of their common failing, George tried to console himself by a litany of things he
could
remember – like his name and address and the fact that he had once been a grocer, like his father before him. Yes. He nodded. His father had been a very successful grocer, who’d died leaving three shops in and around Brockley in south London and a very respectable house in which they now lived.

Closing his eyes, George could remember serving a customer with biscuits from the deep tin in which the assorted biscuits were arranged in layers – one of each type in each layer so that no one could complain that he had given them all the ‘boring’ ones. He smiled. He could recall the smell of the bacon as he sliced it and the sight of the dried plums laid out in their boxes and the new-laid eggs in the straw-filled baskets in which the farmer had delivered them.

‘In Parmettor Street.’ He opened his eyes. ‘Our first shop was in Parmettor Street . . . or was that our house? Is
this
Parmettor Street?’ To make sure he knew where he was, he crossed to the window and looked down, and sure enough he saw the familiar red pillar box on the opposite pavement and the young plane trees which decorated the street. ‘Yes. Good.
This
is Parmettor Street.’

But he had momentarily forgotten the name of the woman he married who gave him his daughter, Lydia, and a son. Now what was the boy’s name? Frowning, he tried to concentrate. Sometimes a little effort produced a glimmer, but today it failed to produce anything of any value – until suddenly the name Robert came to him.

He gave a triumphant chuckle. Yes. Robert! That was it. So where was he now? ‘Robert, Robert,’ he muttered. ‘Wherefore art thou, Robert?’

Damned memory! It could summon up a quote from Shakespeare, but could not supply any information about his missing son. He shook his head. Robert seemed to have disappeared somewhere in the half-forgotten past, but how or why was a mystery to him now, and Lydia hated to be questioned about her brother. In fact, she hated to be questioned about anything, he thought resentfully.

‘Especially her absent husband!’

In his more lucid moments George could see that it must be irritating for her, but now he sighed, rubbing his head as though that might stimulate the return of some long-lost memories. Yes. Robert, the golden boy. He had somehow slipped away . . . but there was a photograph, wasn’t there? Or had he dreamed that?

Pushing himself up from the chair he set off in search of it, but instead he wandered into the kitchen with the vague idea of making himself a pot of tea – but once there he forgot about the tea, and a few moments later he found himself in the lavatory where he stood staring out of the small window into the small back garden.

His wife was dead, and he was at the mercy of his daughter. And there was the grandson, Adam, who should have been the light of his life. That’s what grandchildren were supposed to be. But there was something wrong somewhere, and he and the boy did not properly relate to each other. The little boy seemed rather afraid of him for some obscure reason. George blamed the man his daughter had married. If the son-in-law was a spy then little Adam was the son of a spy . . . He closed his eyes.

‘My name is George Douglas Meecham, I am fifty years old and . . . and my darling daughter married a spy!’ he muttered, his face crinkling with sudden glee. She might deny it a thousand times but
he knew
.

Lydia walked at a brisk pace in an attempt to keep up with Adam who was bowling a wooden hoop along the pavement. Her face was set in unhappy lines as she did her best to forget and forgive her father’s latest outburst. She recognized that he was getting old and moving into a twilight world, and for much of the time she tried to overlook his little cruelties. Her mother had loved him, she reminded herself again and again, and for her sake she would try to forgive him.

Adam waited ahead of her, standing on the edge of the pavement, obediently turning his head left and then right, watching the traffic. Lydia took his hand, and when it was safe, they hurried across to the pavement on the far side. Only another hundred yards and they had reached the park and were through the gates. Adam ran off with his hoop, shrieking with excitement, in the direction of the playground.

Lydia followed, keeping an eye out for bad-tempered dogs who might bother her son, or suspicious men who might offer him a lollipop and then snatch him and run off with him to goodness knows where. The fact that John had to be away so much of the time laid a heavy burden of responsibility on her shoulders.

When they reached the playground itself there were perhaps twenty children of various ages enjoying the swings, the slide and the roundabout. Mothers or nannies sat about on the surrounding seats from where they could watch the youngsters.

Lydia sat down on an empty seat, and at once the unwanted questions flooded her mind. Was John a spy? Had he lied to her? Had she been too gullible when they first met, willing to believe everything he told her about himself and his work?

She smiled as Adam returned to pass the hoop into her care.

‘The puppy man is here!’ he cried, his brown eyes shining. ‘From the paper shop. May I go and see the puppy?’

Lydia searched the little crowd and found ‘the puppy man’ not ten yards away, near the roundabout. ‘You may, but don’t go any further,’ she told him.

When Adam reached him, the man smiled and tousled the boy’s hair before turning to look for his mother. When he caught sight of Lydia he raised a hand in greeting. It was Richard Wright from the paper shop.

Never losing sight of her son, her thoughts returned to her husband, whom she still adored. John Daye, tall, dark and handsome, was the only man she had ever loved and she had been willing to accept the fact that, due to his work for the government, their married life would not be easy. He travelled for the government on various assignments which were vital to the safety of the realm. He had explained right from the start that he had signed the Official Secrets Act and could never discuss the work that took him away from home for weeks at a time. He had a passport, and that was proof in her eyes that he was what he said he was – an important member of a government team, working as a departmental courier, carrying documents of a discreet nature up and down the length of Britain and sometimes across the channel.

Naturally, she missed him when he was away, but as he had gently reminded her, he earned a very good salary and they lived better than many. When her mother had died, John had raised no objections to them moving into her old family home to care for her widowed father. At least she had her son, who was a source of great joy.