The Forgotten Village Read online

  THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE

  Lorna Cook

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

  Copyright © Lorna Cook 2019

  Cover design by Becky Glibbery © HarperCollins Publishers 2019

  Cover photograph © Shutterstock

  Lorna Cook asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008321857

  Ebook Edition © [month] 2019 ISBN: 9780008321864

  Version: 2019-02-22

  Dedication

  For Stephen

  Thanks for doing everything and being everything.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Tyneham, Dorset, December 1943

  Chapter 1: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 11: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 12: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 15: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 23: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 26: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 36: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 37: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 38: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 39: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42: Tyneham, December 1943

  Chapter 43: Dorset, July 2018

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45: Requisition Day, December 1943

  Chapter 46: Dorset, Autumn 2019

  Epilogue: Scotland, December 1948

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Tyneham, Dorset, December 1943

  Lady Veronica stood shivering in front of the crowd of over two hundred faces in the village square. She desperately hoped none of them had heard the events of last night. Each one of the villagers was a familiar face, and each looked expectantly at her and the handsome man at her side, who was gripping her hand so tightly it hurt. He was expected to say something; a few words of encouragement were all the villagers needed to assure them that they were doing the right thing. It was something they could be proud of – leaving the village, giving it over to the war effort for the troops to use for training. They were doing something that would go down in the history books as an act of incredible sacrifice for the war and for their country.

  ‘Sir Albert?’ the vicar prompted, indicating it was time to speak.

  The man at her side nodded. He stepped forward a few paces and Veronica moved with him. He gripped her hand tighter. Her fingers felt the thick gold band of the wedding ring he was wearing and she shuddered.

  Feeling dizzy, she put her free hand to the back of her head to touch the large lump that had formed. She had managed to wash away most of the blood – of which there had been plenty – but a few traces of thick, oozing red liquid still appeared on her fingers when she pulled them out of her hair. She wiped it off on the black fabric of her dress. Black for mourning. She felt it appropriate given that today marked the death of the village.

  He looked down at her, adjusting his grip, his expression blank, as if to check she was still there, as if he still couldn’t quite believe what was happening. And then he looked back towards the crowd to speak.

  ‘Today is a historic day,’ he started. ‘Today the people of Tyneham sacrifice our village for the good of the nation; for the good of the war. We leave, not forever, but until this war is won. We leave together, united in our separation, united in our displacement. This war will only be won by good deeds carried out by good people. You are not alone in sacrificing your home and your livelihood. Each tenant farmer, each shopkeeper, every man, woman and child, including us at Tyneham House – we are all in this together. And when this war is won, we will return together.’

  His short speech was met with a sea of subdued faces, but applause started the moment he had finished, despite the sadness of the occasion. Veronica was glad. She knew the speech had to be rousing enough to console the villagers into leaving without a fight, although there was nothing they could do to stop the requisition now. As the residents of Tyneham prepared to gather their few remaining belongings, Veronica closed her eyes, reliving the events of last night over and over until she thought she might scream. But she only had to keep up her façade for a few minutes longer. She would not miss this village and she would not miss Tyneham House.

  We will return together, he had said. No, thought Veronica. They would not. She never wanted to see this place again.

  CHAPTER 1

  Dorset, July 2018

  Melissa didn’t know why on earth she was doing this now. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. When she’d read about the ‘Forgotten Village’ in the local paper, it had sounded romantic: a village lost in time, dramatically stolen from its people in 1943 and given to the troops to prepare for the D-Day landings. And now it was being handed back, in part, all these years later. This vast expanse of derelict land, pub, houses, church, school, shops, and a plethora of other buildings should have been returned as soon as the war had finished, so The Purbeck Times had said that morning, but it never was. The villagers had been all but conned. And now Melissa was sitting in a painfully slow mass of traffic on her way to the grand reopening of the village of Tyneham, along with at least two hundred other vehicles – all of which were crawling along. She hadn’t been the only one eager to see the latest tourist attraction to open on the Dorset coast.

  Melissa adjusted the fan in the car, which she despairingly realised was already at maximum chill factor. It was having no effect on what had to be the hottest day of the year so far. Perhaps it was simply the sitting still, or
perhaps it was sitting still in the unbearable July heat. As she felt her sunglasses slide down her nose, she cast them off and threw them onto the empty passenger seat. They bounced off the fabric and clattered onto the side of the door’s interior. Melissa reached over to grab them again and shoved them back on her face. The heat was making her grouchy.

  ‘Why is this taking so long?’ she asked, thumping the steering wheel with the palm of her hand.

  It wasn’t really the heat, or even the traffic, that had annoyed her. It was more the fact her boyfriend, Liam, had promised her a romantic fortnight away in Dorset, but he had in fact spent every waking moment so far knee-deep in surf and rip tide, or whatever else he did while paddling in and out of the coast on his board. Where was her romantic holiday? Melissa had tried to understand; agreeing that it was wonderful the weather was so excellent for surfing. Of course he should go and enjoy himself. After all, he’d paid so much money for his weekend pad in Kimmeridge, which he’d bought as an escape from his boring but overpaid job in banking. He deserved to let loose. But she hadn’t expected to be alone every day. She’d tried surfing with Liam when they’d first got together eight months ago, but he had no patience with her, especially when it became apparent she was never going to be able to even stand up on the board, let alone master catching a wave. He’d put up no fight when she suggested she leave him to it. But Melissa was a bit surprised that every day since they’d arrived, Liam had gone surfing.

  When she’d asked this morning if they should do something together, something touristy, he’d simply said ‘maybe another day’. Alone and bored and on the umpteenth walk around the chocolate-box village of Kimmeridge, she’d popped into the newsagent, hoping to pick up a couple of glossy magazines to read while Liam was out. The woman behind the counter had been reading the story on the front page of the local paper.

  ‘Not before time,’ she’d said as Melissa approached the counter. ‘Utter disgrace, keeping it out of bounds this long. They’re still not allowed back there to live.’

  ‘Who aren’t?’ Melissa had enquired, simply out of politeness.

  ‘The residents of Tyneham, of course. Ex-residents, I should say.’ The woman tapped the front cover. ‘The village is reopening today.’ She shook her head. ‘After all this time. That’ll be a sight to be seen.’

  The bell above the door had sounded as another customer entered and queued politely behind Melissa. And so, without really thinking, Melissa reached over to the newspaper rack and took a copy out for herself, glancing quickly at the headline: Forgotten Village Returned. She paid for her magazines and the paper and stepped out into the sunshine to read the lead story. She was no longer interested in the celebrity gossip and overpriced fashion; instead it was the potted history of a long-abandoned village that kept Melissa’s eyes on the page. Perhaps it wasn’t her usual kind of holiday activity, but it was something to do.

  Armed with the paper and the crumpled map she kept in the glove compartment, Melissa had ventured into the countryside expecting a quiet day wandering around the so-called forgotten village, perhaps with a handful of pensioners doing the same. But by the time she finally parked, guided into a makeshift parking bay, Melissa fancied she might have made a mistake coming to Tyneham. If the hundreds of cars were anything to go by, it was going to be busy.

  The launch day was evidently a big deal to the local area. She wondered if anyone here had been among the people who, the paper had reported, had felt robbed every single day since the winter of 1943 when the army had requisitioned the entire village, every single home and all the surrounding farmland.

  Melissa fell in to step with the other tourists along the gravel path and down to a small stage, where she was handed a leaflet and welcomed warmly by a kindly elderly man wearing his luminous yellow jacket with an air of pride. She returned his smile as she took the leaflet and he moved on to the myriad people behind her to offer the same.

  Melissa looked past the stage and saw a large red ribbon stretching from one new-looking gatepost to another. She sighed, realising there was going to be a big song and dance going on before she’d be allowed in to have her five minutes nose around the few decrepit buildings. After that, she’d leave. Maybe Liam would be back from the beach early today and they could go out for dinner or just sit in the cottage garden and drink wine, watching the sun go down. They hadn’t done that once since they’d arrived in Dorset.

  She was pulled from her thoughts as a man walked on to the stage. The riotous round of applause that accompanied his entrance stopped her thoughts of make-believe wine and sunsets.

  Melissa stole a glance at the leaflet she’d been handed. Tyneham will officially be reopened to the public, for daily summer visits, by TV historian Guy Cameron, it said. Next to the text was a smiling black and white photo of Guy Cameron: floppy brown hair and laughing eyes. She folded the leaflet up and thrust it into her jeans pocket, none the wiser as to who he actually was – some kind of celebrity, apparently.

  History on TV wasn’t really up her alley, except maybe in the form of a costume drama. Bonnets and corsets and strapping gents striding in and out of lakes in white shirts were far more her thing.

  Clapping along with everyone else to welcome Guy Cameron onto the stage, she slowly edged her way out of the crowd and stood to one side, grateful for a bit of space in the heat.

  It seemed this historian was a popular choice as the clapping went on a bit too long in Melissa’s opinion. While he talked, Melissa pulled her hair off her sticky neck and up into a high ponytail and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose.

  ‘For so many years I’ve heard tales about Tyneham and it’s always intrigued me,’ he started. ‘The people who used to live here, what happened to them? Where did they all go? What did they do? How did they react when they were told they had only a month to pack up and leave, not knowing when they’d be allowed back? Not knowing that they wouldn’t be allowed back. A whole community, displaced …’ He paused for a few seconds and the drama of his sentence lingered over the entranced crowd.

  Melissa looked around briefly as he cast a spell over his audience.

  ‘The village was requisitioned in its entirety,’ he looked down at his notes briefly, ‘with a promise to be returned during peacetime. Perhaps there should have been a tad more contractual detail about exactly when in peacetime.’ He gave a smile and the crowd laughed enthusiastically. Melissa pressed her lips together, stifling a smile.

  ‘Tyneham holds a special place in my heart.’ He was sombre now, and the crowd’s mood changed with him. ‘I was brought up only a few miles from here. My grandmother came from Tyneham, and she was here when the announcement came that she, her friends, family, and employers would all have to leave. I’ve heard first-hand how she felt, but for everyone involved it was different. I’ve always thought the coming together of a community as it was being ripped apart was tragically ironic.

  ‘But now we get to see the village once again, not as it was, but as it is now. While you can walk the streets, the buildings are damaged by time. Only the church and school are intact and open to the public and I encourage you inside both, to see photographs of the way the village used to be and other exhibits. But for now, seventy-five years after it was requisitioned, I’m happy to declare Tyneham Village officially open.’

  With the sound of clapping once again, he stepped off the stage and a young woman, visibly overjoyed to be part of the proceedings, handed him an enormous pair of ceremonial scissors. He looked taken aback at the sheer size of them and said something to the woman, which made her roar with laughter and flick her hair. He snipped the ribbon and it fluttered to the ground.

  At that, the surge started and visitors were shown through by guides in luminous yellow jackets. Melissa watched the crowd head through the gate, but waited for the bottleneck to disperse before she entered the fray. She watched the TV personality as he chatted affably with a handful of visitors. He posed easily with people for photos and signed copies
of books, which Melissa assumed he must have written. He smiled throughout and she thought it must be exhausting being a celebrity: the permanent smile and the demands on you by the public. As soon as one doting fan left Guy Cameron’s side, another appeared. Melissa cast him a final glance before she slipped past him and through the gates, into the forgotten village.

  An hour and a half later, a golf buggy whizzed by Melissa and took a turn ahead past the derelict village square. She was rifling inside her bag looking for a non-existent bottle of mineral water to quell the beginnings of a headache. Her head snapped up to see the historian, whose name she had already forgotten, on the buggy, looking incredibly embarrassed as he overtook the tourists. He gave a few of them a little wave of recognition and Melissa laughed, half wondering why he didn’t just go the whole hog and give them a royal wave.

  Melissa trudged on up the hill and stopped to look at her map. She was now ragingly thirsty as she wiped stray strands of her ponytail off her neck. All that was left up here was Tyneham House, more affectionately known as the Great House, the leaflet told her. The note against it simply stated that it had been home to the Standish family, who had owned it for over three hundred years until they, like the villagers, had found their home commandeered from underneath them. They had been given a month to leave.

  What’s good for the goose, Melissa thought as she folded up her map and tucked it into her back pocket. She’d been walking for ages and had become ridiculously hot while looking inside the farm buildings and dilapidated cottages. Many of the ramshackle buildings were hidden within the woodlands that surrounded the village and the whole atmosphere was proving deliciously eerie. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand she chastised herself that in the impromptu act of getting in the car for a day out, she had forgotten water. Her mouth was dry, but there wasn’t a café or gift shop on site from which to buy a drink. She couldn’t believe what an oversight it was given the amount of tourists present. They were never going to make any money this way. She resigned herself to giving the church and school a miss and calling it a day – just after she’d had a little peek at the manor house.