The Forgotten Village Page 7

  Freddie descended the steep cliff steps, which wound down to the pale sandy beach, and went to look at the dragon’s teeth. Waist-height, they resembled stone pyramids that had been squared off at the top. How things had changed since he’d last been here. Still, he’d rather look at his beloved cove braced for war than covered in Germans. He’d seen enough of them in France while he was narrowly escaping with his life. The dragon’s teeth were a small price. These will certainly stop a few tanks, he thought as he raised his hand to shield his eyes from the low December sunshine.

  He stopped, bending over to catch his breath and to try to alleviate the pain that exercise brought to his ravaged chest. Scrambling up and down the cliff path wasn’t easy at the best of times. He damned the German who had shot him three years ago as he ran towards the beaches at Dunkirk. That was the last time he’d been on a beach. Until today. Feeling the soft sand underfoot brought back memories of men screaming in pain, along with the madness of the songs being sung by the troops as they waited for the long-promised boats to arrive. He thanked whichever God it was that had seen fit to save him. He’d been one of the lucky ones, even with a bullet lodged inside. He’d survived. He rubbed his chest. It always hurt more in the cold.

  Across the sand, the beach hut was still there. And Freddie was pleasantly surprised to find it was prettier than ever. The wood had been scrubbed and painted fresh, not too long ago by the looks of it. It used to be a yellowing beige colour, the wood on the verge of rotting when he’d last seen it. But now it was cream and varnished to a shine. The little porch had a brass hurricane lamp hanging from it with a candle inside. The wood of the decking was a brilliant white. He smiled. Someone had been taking care of his little hut.

  He walked closer to it and wondered if it was unlocked. As the beach was private to the estate, there had been no need to lock it in his day. But times changed and who knew what orders his brother had put in place in the last few years since his parents had passed away and Bertie had inherited the lot.

  The wooden decking creaked gently under his feet and he reached out for the door handle. But as he looked through the window of the door, he caught a sudden movement from within. Veronica was sitting inside, staring at the floor.

  He wasn’t sure what to do. She was probably here because she wanted to be alone. Would his intrusion be welcome or not? After a few seconds he decided he couldn’t stand out here all day in the cold, so he knocked gently. She looked up sharply. A flash of worry hit her face and then it faded as fast as it had appeared, replaced with a smile that reached her eyes.

  Freddie opened the door. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’ She gestured for him to come in. The hut was small, the majority of the room having been given over to a small daybed on which Veronica sat.

  Freddie leant against the doorway, his muscular frame filling the space. She was entirely aware of him.

  ‘Did you find anything in the attic?’ she enquired.

  ‘Not much. You’ve made this look nice,’ he said, looking around at the books on the little shelf and the daybed with a cream eiderdown printed with little blue flowers. ‘I assume it was you? I doubt very much it was Bertie.’

  Veronica laughed. It sounded alien to her. It was the first time she’d laughed in weeks. She was almost surprised she still could. ‘No, I don’t see Bertie as the floral eiderdown type, do you?’

  Shuffling along the daybed, she made room for Freddie. He sat down slowly, awkwardly, as far away from her as possible. She wondered suddenly if this was entirely appropriate. He was well built and she could feel his proximity to her even though he was at the other end of the seat.

  She slid a bit further along until she reached the metal bars of the headboard and then cursed herself for her obvious retreat. She watched him turn slightly so he could see her better. She felt stiff all of a sudden and he looked the same. What had he been doing all these years? Had he been happy? Had he fallen in love? The thought made her feel sick. They should have been indifferent to one another given the easy way their relationship had ended. But even now, after all this time, it didn’t feel that simple.

  He was watching her thoughtfully and when he didn’t speak, Veronica felt the need to break the unbearable silence.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Veronica shivered in the cold of the December afternoon and pulled her cardigan around her.

  ‘In the attic. I’ve—’

  Veronica cut him off. ‘That’s not what I meant. Where have you been, Freddie – these past few years? Why haven’t I seen you? Not even once since …’ She was quieter now, ‘Since the wedding? Bertie told me you’ve been busy at the factory. But you never came back here. Not once.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Freddie said. Veronica noticed him bristle. ‘When I got back I just threw myself into work and there never seemed time to make the journey down here. And then it became even more complicated as the war dragged on, especially when petrol went on the ration.’

  ‘Oh,’ Veronica said. And then after a few seconds, ‘When you got back? From where?’

  Freddie pulled a cigarette out of a little silver case and put it between his lips. He offered her one and she shook her head. ‘From France.’ He snapped the case shut. She watched him flick a silver lighter out and light his cigarette. He ran his finger absent-mindedly over his engraved name. Veronica recognised the lighter and case. Bertie had an identical set bearing his name. Both had been gifts from their parents when they had each turned twenty-one. Freddie snapped the lighter shut and put it back in his trouser pocket.

  ‘When were you in France?’ she questioned.

  He pulled a small piece of stray tobacco from his tongue and flicked it away before looking at her strangely.

  ‘When?’ he replied. ‘I joined up just after you and Bertie got …’ He trailed off and avoided her glance. ‘At the end of ’39.’

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowed and then she sat up straighter. ‘You joined up? The army?’

  He laughed and then stopped abruptly, returning her gaze equally as questioningly.

  ‘You didn’t know?’ he asked.

  She shook her head slowly, her mouth open. ‘Bertie didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ He narrowed his eyes and looked out the window of the beach hut, towards the rough sea.

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me? Why would he keep that from me? I knew he wasn’t called up because he’s in government, but I assumed you were in a reserved occupation too, with the factory. I thought you were working. This whole time.’ She couldn’t believe it. Freddie had been fighting. In France. He could have been killed. Would Bertie have told her that? ‘How long were you fighting?’

  ‘Not long. I came home in June 1940.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she exclaimed quietly. ‘Oh my God,’ she repeated louder as she suddenly realised the significance of the date. ‘Dunkirk. The beaches. Were you …?’

  He nodded slowly and then closed his eyes tightly shut. He muttered something under his breath that Veronica didn’t catch. She looked at him but didn’t know what to say. The thought of Freddie on the beaches made her stomach lurch. She’d read the ministerial reports Bertie had left lying around his study about the horrors of the evacuation and then the rather different version in the news shortly thereafter.

  ‘But you’re not in the army now?’

  He shook his head. ‘I assume if Bertie didn’t tell you I went to the front, then he also didn’t tell you I got shot?’

  She stood up, staring down at him, horrified. ‘Shot? You got shot? At Dunkirk?’ She could hear the hysteria in her own voice. Freddie was nodding and laughing. ‘Why are you laughing?’ she squeaked.

  ‘I just can’t believe he didn’t tell you … any of it.’

  ‘I can.’ Veronica sat back down with a thud. ‘It’s the kind of thing he would do.’

  Freddie’s eyebrow shot up. ‘Really? No, don’t answer that.’

  ‘I’m so angry with him.’ Veronica was almo
st shouting. She hated Bertie. She’d hated him for so long, she could barely remember a day when she didn’t. Freddie could have died. Freddie had gone to fight and been shot and Bertie had kept it all from her.

  ‘How long?’ she enquired.

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘How long were you on the beaches for?’

  The smile fell from his face. ‘Long enough.’

  ‘My God, Freddie. I’m so …’ She wasn’t sure what she was – sorry, angry, frightened? She was almost shaking with the overwhelming emotions that engulfed her.

  ‘Should we ask Bertie why he didn’t tell you? I want to know now.’ Freddie gave her a sideways smile as he exhaled cigarette smoke.

  ‘No!’ Veronica was emphatic. There would be hell to pay and Veronica would be on the receiving end. ‘Don’t ask him. Don’t! Promise me. Please.’

  Freddie looked into her eyes, nodding slowly. ‘I was just pulling your leg. I won’t ask him. Of course I won’t. I promise.’

  They sat back against the wall of the hut. Veronica stole a glance at him every few seconds. He was as handsome now as he’d ever been. Perhaps more so. Briefly she was transported back to an easier time, before the war, before things between them had gone so awry so suddenly. Before Bertie. When Freddie and she had talked, when they’d kissed, when she had been so in love with him it hurt. But he hadn’t loved her. How stupid she had been. How easily she’d been talked out of waiting for Freddie to act. And how easily she’d allowed Bertie to lead her away; so forcefully, so assuredly. She wasn’t sure who she hated more, Bertie or herself? There was no point now wishing everything had been different. It was too late for all that.

  ‘Where did you get shot?’ Veronica ended the silence that had fallen between them in the beach hut.

  He pointed to the right side of his chest.

  She closed her eyes, letting the horror of the whole situation sink in. She’d tried not to think about him over the years. But perhaps if she had allowed herself to think about him, really think about him, she could have somehow kept him from getting shot. She knew it was a stupid thing to think.

  And now he was unavoidably here and still alive.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked in what she hoped was her calmest voice.

  ‘Now? Yes, just about. I get by on one and a half lungs,’ he joked. ‘It rather put me out of action. I’m like some sort of horse that’s been put out to pasture. Not able to do anything useful. Just the factory.’ He looked downcast.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Freddie.’

  He smiled at her, taking her hand in his. ‘Don’t be. I’m still alive.’

  Her heart lurched at his touch, once so familiar and now so alien, and she fought her instinct, which was to pull her hand away. Instead, she let it rest inside his gentle grip, closed her eyes, and for a brief moment pretended the last five years hadn’t separated them.

  ‘I think I should like that cigarette now please,’ she said.

  Veronica and Freddie climbed the cliff path back to the house in silence. Freddie walked behind her on the narrow climb and she wondered what he was thinking but didn’t dare turn round to glance at him. Could he tell just by looking at her how she really felt, how she’d always felt about him? She knew he didn’t feel the same way. He never had done.

  ‘We have a couple of hours before dinner.’ She turned towards him as they both made their way inside the gothic porch. He was so close he almost bumped into her as she turned round. Her first instinct was always now to defend herself and, flinching, she put her hands up. But she was in no danger of an attack from Freddie. She knew that. Her hands were still on the thick wool of Freddie’s coat and he glanced down at her touch against his chest. She cursed herself for waiting a fraction too long before letting her hands fall. They stood under the arch, shielded from any possible onlookers. As he moved his hand a fraction, Veronica half-thought he might be reaching for hers, but he let it fall by his side and neither of them spoke. The expression on his face had softened. She wanted to pour her heart out. Even if he was long past caring now – even if he had never cared – she wanted to apologise for the way things had ended. There was nothing she could say that would undo the damage she’d caused.

  She tried desperately to recover herself and recall what it was she’d originally turned to say to him. Eventually she remembered.

  ‘You’ll need to change for dinner, I’m afraid. Have you brought suitable things?’

  ‘Oh, good lord, Bertie still doesn’t go in for all that bother, does he? Is he not even marginally aware the world is drastically changing around him?’

  ‘He thinks if we uphold the old traditions then nothing will change.’

  Freddie laughed and threw his hands up. ‘The house is being requisitioned. Everything is changing.’

  Veronica hushed him. ‘Freddie, please,’ she begged. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. Don’t let him hear you.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Freddie looked down at his crumpled trousers and conceded defeat. ‘I’ll change.’

  ‘We have drinks at six and dinner at seven, precisely. Please don’t be late. Bertie doesn’t like it,’ Veronica said.

  As she turned towards the front steps, she thought she saw Freddie roll his eyes.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dorset, July 2018

  Guy was at the front door of his grandmother’s bungalow, knocking for the fifth time in ten minutes. She wasn’t deaf or slow on her feet and he’d given her more than enough time to get to the front door from wherever she was inside the house. But now he was starting to get worried. He dialled his grandmother’s landline and heard the phone ring inside. It went to answerphone and he hung up. It was a blisteringly hot day and he wondered if she might be in the garden, so he tried the side gate and when it didn’t budge, he reached over and fumbled in vain for the bolt but couldn’t quite reach it. Moving back, he gave himself a few feet for a running jump and leaped up the gate, hooking the front of his shoes into the thick wooden cross-bar so he could vault over. He was half over when his grandmother’s neighbour appeared.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ the elderly man said. ‘Thought I could hear a lot of noise round here.’

  ‘Mr Hunter. How are you?’ Guy said from his awkward position, straddling the gate.

  ‘Looking for your gran?’ Mr Hunter asked. ‘No one told you?’

  ‘Told me …?’

  ‘She went in to hospital this morning. Fell over and broke her hip. Your mum was with her. Went in an ambulance she did.’

  Guy wobbled on top of the gate. ‘No!’

  ‘She was talking and telling everyone to stop fussing, so I doubt she’s a corpse just yet. Had one of those little mask things on. Very annoyed at being stretchered into the ambulance though.’ Mr Hunter gave a chuckle.

  ‘Oh God,’ Guy said, throwing his leg back over and landing with a thud on the crazy paving. ‘Thanks.’ He rushed towards his car.

  ‘Get your mum to let me know how she is, will you?’ Mr Hunter called as Guy slammed the car door and sped towards the hospital.

  Melissa had wandered around Tyneham again to soak in the atmosphere after Guy had left to have tea with his gran. And then she’d run out of things to look at and had forced herself into the car and back to the cottage. Hours later, she looked at her watch. Where was Liam? She exhaled loudly as she thought about what to say to him about the restaurant booking. And everything else. She had no idea how she was going to begin and yet she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. She suddenly felt nervous and tried to think about something else.

  And then Guy popped in to her head. He had promised to ask his gran where Veronica and Albert Standish had ended up after the army requisitioned the village. Melissa couldn’t now unsee Veronica’s eerie expression in the photograph. There was something about it that was bothering her and would do until she knew what had happened to the woman.

  Veronica and Albert had probably gone to London and lived happily ever after, but Melissa just wanted t
o know now.

  She pulled her laptop out of its case. With any luck, she could connect to the internet and wait the interminably long time for a page to load. One quick search would provide the answer to her short-lived quest to find out where Veronica and Albert Standish had gone.

  While she waited for the laptop to connect with the online world, she went to the kitchen to flick the kettle on. It had been hours since she’d been at Tyneham and so she pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket to check for any messages, but there was still no news from Guy, so she shoved it back again and wandered over to the computer screen.

  Melissa tapped ‘Veronica Standish’ into the search engine. Over 100,000 results appeared and Melissa clapped her hands together in anticipation until she reached page three of the search results and realised absolutely none of them were the Veronica Standish she was looking for. She added ‘1943’ to the search term and a few results appeared, but none of them looked particularly relevant. Then she deleted ‘1943’ and input the word ‘Tyneham’. A mention of Veronica and Albert in reference to the ‘ghost village’ of Tyneham simply listed them as among the two hundred and twenty-five residents who were displaced during the requisition of the Dorset village. There was nothing there that she hadn’t already found out from Guy or from the boards in the church.

  She pulled her phone out to look again. Still nothing from Guy. Melissa clunked it face down on the table and then reached forwards and turned it over so she could see the screen. Just in case.

  With no further information about Albert or Veronica Standish on the website, Melissa was left half wondering if she’d hit a dead end. She searched just for the husband’s name instead. A plethora of information came up.

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ Melissa said, and edged forward on the sofa to look at the results. There were a lot of parliamentary speeches he’d made and she read a few of the summaries. They were dull and mainly about issues related to farming or fishing in Dorset in the war. There were other references to the house and to him and then she found something interesting that she didn’t quite understand in a link to an old newspaper article. In January 1944, Sir Albert Standish had quit as an MP. A by-election had been called and he’d been easily replaced by the looks of things. The newspaper article was short and fairly tedious and Melissa got up to make a cup of tea, feeling strangely disappointed. One month after they had left Tyneham, Albert Standish had stood down as an MP. Perhaps it was a protest at having his home requisitioned. Perhaps it was just a perfectly normal thing to do, quit when you no longer lived in your own constituency. Perhaps Albert and Veronica had gone to live in London after all, happily ever after.