He had been passing by the church on her wedding day just as she was coming out on Jimmy’s arm and she took his breath away. Glorious was the only word to describe how she looked, in cream silk with a froth of veil around her lovely face. She was looking up at Jimmy and laughing at something, and James felt a stab of pure envy. No woman had ever looked at him in quite that way.
It was pure chance that he was first on the scene when she was attacked. The direction of his beat had been changed just the day before, and if he’d been on the old one he would have been walking down towards Lee Green instead of coming up Tranquil Vale. And Stokes the cobbler who came running out of the shop shouting for help would have found someone else.
She was lying crumpled on the floor, blood splattered up the wall behind her. He hadn’t known until then that she was carrying a child, but the way she had fallen made the curve of her belly obvious, and she still had one hand protectively over it, which he found deeply affecting. Once the doctor arrived, James ran up on to the heath looking for her attacker, and he thought that had he found him, he might have ripped his throat out.
Since that night he’d called on Belle on three more occasions. The first was the day after the attack when he visited her to take a statement. She had looked so pale, drained and battered then, yet she had still made the effort to give him as much detail as possible.
Then he heard that she had lost her baby, and that for a while it was touch and go whether she would pull through. But happily she did, and on each of the subsequent occasions he had had reason to go and speak to her, she looked a little better. Even after all she had been through she didn’t whine about it; in fact she had seemed impatient for his questions about it to be over, so she could ask him about himself.
People always looked at his missing fingers, then quickly averted their eyes as if repelled by the sight. But Belle asked him what had happened and how long it had been before he had been able to use his hand again. She asked what injuries the little boy he had rescued had, and said how indebted his mother must feel to him for saving her son. James had left the Railway that day feeling that his missing fingers were a badge of honour rather than something he ought to keep hidden.
He had wanted to say how pleased he was to see her looking so much better now, but he was too struck by the vivid blue of her eyes, the length of her dark eyelashes and the plumpness of her lips. He wished he was better at social chit-chat, then she might have engaged him in conversation a little longer. He would gladly have examined every one of her hats, swept her floor and cleaned the windows, anything to remain with her. But her friend was there, and he couldn’t think of anything further to say.
He was thrilled that her attacker had been caught, and he felt proud to be complimented by senior officers on all the legwork he’d done on the case. Maybe he’d even get promoted, which would round things off nicely. But in the meantime he knew he’d have to try to stop daydreaming about Belle. She was after all a married woman.
James Broadhead wasn’t alone in thinking about Belle. Jimmy was too – it was the one thing that always managed to make him feel warmer.
The march from the training camp at Etaples through France was tortuous. French roads were cobbled and very hard on the feet, especially as the army-issue heavy Ammos had not been broken in. He’d had his share of blisters – the one on his heel was now the size of a half crown – but other men had it much worse; their feet were bleeding and they hobbled along like old men.
Antwerp had fallen and the roads were a seething mass of people running away from the Germans. Some pushed handcarts or perambulators loaded high with their belongings. He’d seen one cart piled up with furniture and an old lady perched up on a chair at the top. Other people were bent almost double with the huge loads they carried on their backs. Women with frightened eyes and babies in their arms begged for milk and bread, and there were so many children and old people who looked lost and pitiful. No one seemed to know where they were going or how they would live. Jimmy thought they were like so many hundreds of sheep, following the person in front of them blindly.
From the start of November there had been continuous heavy rain, and now they had to contend with snow too. It wouldn’t have been so bad if each night they had had warm shelter and a hot meal, if they could have dried out their clothes properly and start the next day refreshed. But instead, the best they could hope for was a night in a barn – they didn’t even have tents as some of the other regiments did. Many nights they’d spent in the open, shivering with only a waterproof cape over them, and cold bully beef to eat.
Tonight as he thought about Belle, he was in a barn, and as he looked around him at men he had trained with at Etaples trying to sleep, huddled together for warmth in the straw, he wondered how many of them would even make it to fight at the front. Many had terrible coughs, some kept having to get up to go outside as they had the runs, one man had collapsed today and it was said he had pneumonia.
They were in the main bank clerks, shop assistants and factory workers, and there were a couple of school teachers, not men used to the outdoors. The training period at Etaples might have toughened them up to some degree, but this long march was gradually weakening them to the point where dozens more might become seriously ill.
Jimmy felt he was holding his own, but then he’d hauled heavy barrels around from the age of sixteen in all winds and weathers and his working days had always been long too. Plus he had several layers of warm, woolly underwear beneath his uniform. Yet as he lay back on his pack shivering he couldn’t help but wonder how much worse it was going to get.
He’d heard the bad weather had brought something of a lull in hostilities at the front, but Captain Brunskill had said they needn’t think that meant they were going to be idle, as the trenches and holes the British Expeditionary Force had dug to protect themselves from the German artillery when they’d first got there were rudimentary. Their job would be to improve and extend the trenches to command a satisfactory field of fire.
Jimmy wished he had not been so hasty in enlisting. It was clear to him now that the Germans had a formidable army, and it was said that a huge proportion of BEF had already been decimated at Mons and in what they called the Race to the Sea. Those men were seasoned soldiers, small in numbers perhaps compared to the size of the French army, but tough as old boots and trained to the hilt. Now all England could offer to swell their numbers was Kitchener’s Army, a ragbag of young lads who had left their homes in search of glory.
Jimmy couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the barn – the fire they’d lit earlier outside had been put out by the rain – but he could hear snuffling, snoring and coughing, and he wondered too how many of the men were crying silently, wishing they hadn’t been caught up by patriotism or followed their friends who wanted to join up. But they were here now and in a few days’ time they would be at the front. There was no way back except with a serious injury; even the dead got buried here.
Chapter Nine
Constable Broadhead pushed his way through the throng of people in the vestibule of the court at Lewisham to catch Belle and Mog before they left. ‘I just wanted to thank you for giving your evidence today,’ he said to Belle. ‘It can’t have been easy for you.’
Belle smiled weakly. It certainly hadn’t been easy for her to wait to be called into the court room as a witness surrounded by dirty, bedraggled people who smelled bad and looked at her balefully. She had been cross-examined about the robbery and the injuries she sustained and, even worse, had to tell the court that she’d miscarried too. But Constable Broadhead had been very kind to her, and she didn’t want to make him feel he’d added to the distress she had suffered.
‘I’m just relieved it’s over and that he won’t be robbing or hurting anyone else for some years,’ she replied. ‘And you did very well to bring him to justice.’
Archie Newbold had been found guilty on all seven counts of robbery with violence and had been sentenced to ten years in prison. She was just one of several witnesses, but the judge had singled her out to compliment her on the sketch she’d drawn of Newbold, which had made the man in the dock stare menacingly at her and make her feel fearful.
It was mid-January and snowing outside. Belle felt chilled to the marrow and completely wrung out, but not just by the trial. Yesterday they had read in the newspaper that there had been Zeppelin bomb attacks in Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in which twenty-eight people were killed and another sixty injured. Added to that were the ever-lengthening lists of those killed in action. It seemed to Belle that a very dark cloud was hanging over England, which was not going to roll away any time soon.
‘May I take you both for a cup of tea to warm you up?’ Broadhead asked, as if he sensed how she was feeling.
‘That is very kind,’ Belle replied. ‘But I think with this snow we’d be better to hurry along home.’
‘Who is that?’ Mog asked the policeman, indicating a tall, thin man wearing a dark coat and trilby hat. He was leaning against the wall by the court exit and looking towards them. ‘He seems to be taking a great deal of interest in us. I noticed him in the court room.’
Broadhead glanced at the man. ‘I expect he’s a reporter. He’s probably hoping to speak to you. If you like, I’ll come out with you and see you into a cab; that should deter him.’
Belle hadn’t noticed the man before, but having no wish to speak to anyone further that day, she took Mog’s arm and allowed Broadhead to lead the way to get them a cab.
But as Broadhead started down the steps, the tall man moved right into the path of the two women. ‘Miss Cooper, isn’t it?’ he said, holding out his hand to shake Belle’s.
Being called by her maiden name was a jolt. It made Belle falter and look to Mog for help.
‘I know you are Mrs Reilly now, but you were Belle Cooper, were you not?’ he said, his tone oily and knowing, his eyes a yellowish-brown.
In a flash of intuition Belle felt he must have connected her with the trial of John Kent, the man who had abducted her and sold her into prostitution because she witnessed him murder one of her mother’s girls. Kent was hanged before she married Jimmy, and she had believed when she moved to Blackheath that her past was buried and forgotten. But to deny the name of Cooper would be pointless and make her look as if she had something to hide.
‘Yes, my maiden name was Cooper,’ she said, trying very hard not to show any anxiety. ‘Have we met before?’
‘Constable Broadhead has got us a cab,’ Mog said, tightening her grip on Belle’s arm to indicate they should get away quickly. ‘We must go, can’t keep him waiting when it’s so cold.’
‘Blessard,’ the man said, still holding out his hand. ‘Frank Blessard of the
Chronicle.
No, we haven’t met before but …’
Belle cut him off by shaking the proffered hand. ‘Good to meet you, Mr Blessard, but we must rush now.’
As she and Mog hurried down the steps she was aware he had half pursued her with the intention of asking her something else, but she didn’t turn her head, and asked Broadhead if he would like to ride back with them to the village.
‘That is very kind of you. I was intending to catch the tram,’ he said, his face lighting up at the offer. ‘But if I’m not imposing, it would certainly get me back a great deal quicker.’
‘That man Blessard who spoke to us said he was with the
Chronicle
,’ Belle told Broadhead once the cab was moving. ‘I don’t know that newspaper. Do you?’
The policeman grimaced. ‘A gutter rag. Good job you cut him short, he’d be hoping for more gory details than he got in court. If he approaches you again, just send him on his way. I’ve got no time for those jackals, they pick over a case and if they can’t find any sensational story, they make it up.’
The snow had turned to driving sleet by the time they got back to Blackheath and Belle paid the driver, bade goodbye to the policeman and hurried indoors with Mog.
Garth was in the kitchen. ‘Did it go well?’ he called out as they took off their outdoor clothes and boots. ‘The kettle’s on. How long did the rat get?’
The two women joined Garth in the kitchen, going over to the stove to warm their hands. Mog told Garth the verdict. ‘But Belle’s a bit shaken, a journalist there knew her as Cooper.’
‘You don’t want to put no mind to that,’ Garth said, going over to Belle and putting one big paw on her shoulder. ‘Your maiden name’s no secret. Plenty of people round here know it, you was living here for months afore you was wed to our Jimmy.’
‘That’s all very true, but why would he use the name of Cooper when I’d only been called Reilly in the court? And there was something slimy about him,’ Belle said, leaning against Garth’s big chest for comfort. ‘I think he was at Kent’s trial.’
Garth hugged her to him. ‘There now, don’t you be worried about that. They never brought up nothing bad about you in that trial. I’d say he got a bit excited cos you’ve been a victim of a bad man again. That’s like human interest, ain’t it?’
‘Course it is,’ Mog said stoutly. ‘You being so pretty ’n’ all, your hubby off at the war and you being so clever as to do that picture of that villain. Noah would tell you there was a time he’d bite off anyone’s hand to get such a good meaty story.’
‘Maybe I should telephone Noah,’ Belle said, looking from Garth to Mog. ‘You know, get his advice. Somehow I don’t think I’ve seen the last of that man, and I need to know how to deal with him if he turns up again.’
‘As if you haven’t got enough to worry about with Jimmy,’ Mog said.
Belle was well aware that Mog was susceptible to extreme anxiety where Belle’s well-being was concerned, and so she felt it best to reassure her.
‘I’m not too worried about him, he’s fine really, just grousing in his letters cos he’s missing us all and fed up with being cold and wet all the time,’ she said lightly. ‘He said his feet aren’t nearly as bad as most of the other men’s. And if he can’t grouse to us about it, who can he grouse to?’