A Different World (14 page)

And then there was Louise. His love for her had not been a sudden revelation, it had grown slowly and inexorably as a result of a mutual need, but it was no less real for that. She was a steadying influence, a calm presence; she understood his changeable moods and soothed him, so that he was able to return to the fray with renewed vigour. He had called her his anchor and she remained his anchor through thick and thin. It was because of him she had become estranged from her parents. He despised her self-righteous father, but Louise loved her mother and he felt guilty about that. And there was Angela. He adored his daughter and the thought that he would not see her grow into womanhood wrenched his heart in two whenever he thought about it. How could he leave them?

Louise did not recognise the voice at the other end of the telephone, but she knew from the accent it was Polish. ‘Miss Fairhurst, I believe you knew Flight Lieutenant Grabowski?’

‘Knew?’ She immediately picked up on the past tense. ‘What’s happened? Where is he?’

‘I am afraid he is missing. He did not come back from the last sortie. According to the others the outward trip was uneventful, it must have happened on the return. They realised he was not with them as they crossed the Dutch coast. There was heavy flak. They think he might have been brought down …’

‘He’s not dead, then?’

‘We do not know. If he survived and was taken prisoner we shall soon hear. He might have been picked up by the Dutch people and is being sheltered by them. News of that might take longer to reach us.’ He paused, but when she did not answer, added, ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jan gave me your phone number some time ago and said if anything happened to be sure and let you know.’

‘Thank you.’

‘If there’s anything we can do for you?’

‘Let me know if you hear anything.’

‘Yes, I will.’

She put the phone back on its cradle and wandered into the kitchen in a kind of stupor.

‘What’s up?’ Jenny asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Jan’s missing.’ Her voice was flat. ‘They think he was shot down.’

‘Oh, my dear girl.’ Jenny came to her at once and put an arm round her to draw her to the settee. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘It’s not fair!’ Louise burst out. ‘Twice! Why should I lose them both, when others get off scot-free?’

‘I don’t know, Louise. But they said “missing”, didn’t they? When Tony was lost, they were quite sure, right from the first.’

‘Yes, I know. They said Jan might be a prisoner or he might have been picked up by the Dutch people.’

‘Then you mustn’t give up hope.’

‘Oh, Jenny, I am so tired of this damned war. Will it never end?’

‘One day it will and we must soldier on until it does.’

Angela, who had been playing with Cuddles under the kitchen table, a favourite spot of hers, toddled across the room on unsteady legs and tried to scramble onto Louise’s lap. Louise picked her up and hugged her, kissing the soft curls on the top of her head. She did not cry. What she was feeling was too deep for tears.

Jenny made tea and persuaded her to drink. ‘Is tea your cure for everything?’ Louise asked with a wan smile.

‘It helps.’

‘I suppose so. I’m so glad I’ve got you, you and Stan. Without you, I’d be lost.’

‘Yes, well, you are part of the family now.’ She paused to sit down beside her friend. ‘You mustn’t let this defeat you, Lou. Think of Angela. One day, she is going to grow up into a lovely young woman in a world at peace. Think of that.’

Louise looked at her daughter, sitting on her lap. She seemed to sense there was something wrong with her mother. She pulled at the ears of the teddy bear. ‘Cuddles,’ she said, endeavouring to give the toy to her mother. Louise kissed her soft cheek, set her on her feet and she toddled off. ‘Your daddy didn’t see your first steps,’ she murmured as she watched her. ‘He didn’t hear your first word.’ It would have made him laugh, because it was not ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’, but ‘Cuddles’. It was then she cried.

Faith looked down at the man who lay unconscious in the hospital bed and wondered why she had ever been afraid of him. He was only flesh and blood, after all, just like any other man. He didn’t see himself like that. In his eyes he had been put on earth to eradicate sin wherever he found it. The trouble was he saw it everywhere except in his own soul. He was a man so driven he could see no good in anyone. Thirty years they had been married. Thirty years she had endured, even allowing herself to be cut off from the daughter she loved at a time when she was most needed. But Louise could be stubborn too. She had not answered any of the letters she had written to her in secret and given to the daily help, Mrs Phillips, to post.

‘He’s had a stroke,’ the doctor told her. ‘He must have hit his head on something when he fell which caused the head injury. But we’ve got to work on him, so I think he has a good chance of recovering.’

He wasn’t dead, wasn’t even dying. She was thankful for that or she would have been an accessory to manslaughter, if not murder.

Henry had been out all day visiting his parishioners and had come home in a filthy temper, complaining that they were a godless lot. ‘Mrs Green is obviously pregnant and her husband is a prisoner of war,’ he told her. ‘I spoke sharply to her about her wickedness and told her to get on her knees, but she laughed. She laughed at me, Faith. Laughed.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘And Felicity Barlow is going about dressed like a tart. She
is
a tart. I saw her in the high street, standing on the corner with her skirt up to her backside, talking to an American serviceman. When I intervened, the man told me to get lost and pushed me over. Me, a man of the cloth. It was humiliating.’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘Of course I’m hurt. What do you expect? Everyone was laughing.’ He had been very red in the face and pacing up and down the study in his agitation.

‘Calm down, Henry.’

The doorbell rang and she had gone to answer it to find Felicity Barlow’s father on the step. He had stormed past her into the study without speaking and slammed the door shut leaving her on the other side of it. She heard him ranting at Henry about his abuse of his daughter. ‘You’ve no right to speak to her like that. In front of a crowd of people, too. Who are you to judge? My Felicity is a good girl. I want a public apology.’ She heard Henry’s equally angry answer as she made her way down the hall to the kitchen. He had really overstepped the mark, this time. The sound of a crash had sent her rushing back.

Mr Barlow was standing over an unconscious Henry and blood was pouring from Henry’s head. ‘I only gave him a little push,’ he had said. ‘He just fell and hit his head. Honest to God, I didn’t mean to harm him.’

Believing he had caused the injury, she had bundled him out of the back door with instructions to go home and then called an ambulance. She told the ambulance men and the doctor that she had been in the kitchen when she heard a crash and had run back to find him on the floor. She said nothing of Mr Barlow; she didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing there and why the men were quarrelling. It would have resulted in an investigation which would have made public the sort of man Henry was and the kind of life she led with him. She could not bear it. Being told it had been a stroke didn’t change anything.

‘Will you be all right?’ the nurse at the bedside asked as the bell went for the end of visiting time and she stood up to leave. ‘Is there anyone who could come and stay with you? A relative perhaps?’

‘No, there’s no one. I’ll be fine.’

She went back to the vicarage and tried to clear up the mess in the study. She righted the desk lamp, picked up papers that were strewn about, set an overturned chair back on its legs and tried to scrub the blood off the carpet. The stain defeated her, so she abandoned it and went into the kitchen to make herself a meal which she could not eat. She scraped it into the bin and set about washing up. Her mind was whirring like an overworked fan; what had she not done that she should have? What had she answered to all the questions put to her? Had she contradicted herself? She could not remember.

Hearing the front doorbell, she dried her hands and went to answer it to find an agitated Mrs Barlow on the step. ‘What happened?’ the woman demanded.

‘What do you mean?’

‘My Wally stormed out of the house saying he was going to kill the Reverend. He was angry enough to do it too. Then my neighbour said the Reverend had been taken off in an ambulance
and now Wally’s disappeared. He didn’t come home.’

‘My husband is not dead, Mrs Barlow. He’s had a stroke.’

‘It wasn’t anything to do with Wally, then?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, thank the Lord for that. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

Faith watched her hurry down the drive, then went back into the study and used Henry’s keys to open his desk and took out his diary. She would have to cancel his appointments and the confirmation class he took every week. She had not realised before how many young girls he was giving instruction to and the book was full of instances of the wickedness of his parishioners and the need to chastise them. They revealed a man not quite right in the head. Would he need that again? She made a note of the appointments, then tried the next drawer. It was then she found Louise’s letters, a whole pile of them flung unopened, together with those she had written herself. How had Henry come to possess those? She had begged and begged him to let her write to their daughter but he had been adamant and must have guessed she would try and do it in secret and browbeaten Mrs Phillips to hand them over.

She sat down heavily on the high-backed chair Henry used at his desk and began reading. She had kept her self-control all through the day’s ordeal, answering the doctor in monosyllables, careful not to give anything away of the turbulent emotions that seethed below the surface. But that facade cracked as she read, and tears streamed down her face. ‘Louise, oh my dear child,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s too late, all too late.’

Jenny had talked it over with Stan and they had decided that Louise would have to know sooner or later. ‘Better do it this evening, after the children have gone to bed and I’m in the bar,’ he had said.

So here she was pretending to read the newspaper, while Louise marked school exercise books.

‘Lou, I think you ought to see this,’ Jenny said, tapping the newspaper.

‘Why, what’s in it?’

‘See for yourself.’

Louise took the paper and scanned the headlines. ‘The tide of war is turning in the Allies favour’ was one. ‘The enemy faces defeat in Tunisia’ was another. Others were about the air campaign against European targets and one, more disturbing, reported that the Germans had unearthed thousands of bodies in Katyn Forest in western Russia, more than four thousand of them, nearly all Polish army officers. They had their hands tied behind their backs and each had been shot in the back of the neck and tumbled into a mass grave with their identification still on them. ‘The Germans are accusing the Russians,’ it said. ‘They have asked an independent medical team to investigate it. The Russians are blaming the Germans. They say it is a ploy on the part of the Nazis and Polish government in London to undermine the Soviet Union. The Polish government is asking for a Red Cross enquiry.’

‘This is dreadful,’ she said. ‘Jan said something about officers disappearing when he heard from his brother …’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Jenny said, pointing at an article headed: Crime soars in the capital. ‘I meant this.’

Louise dutifully read it. Besides a flourishing black market, looting and robbery were escalating, it said. It went on to give examples, some of them violent in nature, and ended: ‘No one is immune. The Reverend Mr Henry Fairhurst was attacked on the street in Edgware yesterday. It is a sorry state of affairs when a man of the cloth, a highly respected churchman, going about his business of preaching the gospel and succouring the needy,
should be attacked in this way. He is in hospital. His wife is at his bedside. The police are looking for the culprit and ask anyone who has information about this or any other crime, to contact them immediately.’

Louise let the paper drop in her lap. ‘I’ll have to go to her.’

‘Of course. I’ll see John and tell him what’s happened. I’m sure he’ll stand in for you.’

Louise was unsure of her welcome but as soon as her mother opened the door, she knew it would be all right. They hugged each other and then Faith made some Camp coffee and they sat on the sofa in the drawing room to drink it and talk. ‘And this is Angela,’ Faith said, drawing the child onto her lap, but she wriggled so much Faith let her go and she climbed onto Louise’s lap, sucking her thumb.

‘How do you know her name?’ Louise asked. ‘Did you get my letters after all? Why didn’t you write?’

‘I did, lots of times. I found the letters two days ago when I was going through your father’s desk, every single one of them, and all yours to me.’

‘He kept them from you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘You know your father, Louise, better than most.’

‘Yes. So tell me about this attack. I read about it in the paper.’

‘As usual the paper got it wrong. He did have an altercation in the street and was pushed over, but he wasn’t hurt. I don’t know how the paper got hold of it, but there were a lot of people about at the time so I suppose it’s not surprising. The truth is he had a stroke after he got home and hit his head on the corner of his desk when he fell. It cut his head open.’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s alive, though it is too early to say whether he will recover fully.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum. Is there anything I can do? Should I go and see him?’

‘No, I shouldn’t. He looks dreadful and he won’t know you. Let’s have some scrambled egg. I’ve got some dried egg and some bread I can toast. You can tell me all about Angela while I get it ready.’ It was obvious that her mother did not want to talk about what had happened. ‘She is like you, don’t you think?’

‘She’s more like Jan. Her hair is fair like his.’

‘Is that her father?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a funny name.’

‘It’s Polish.’

‘Polish! Oh, Louise, how could you?’

‘He is the most wonderful man you could ever wish to meet,’ Louise said. ‘He is kind, considerate and generous and he adores his daughter.’

‘But you have not married him?’

‘No, he has a wife in Poland.’

‘Oh.’ She paused to absorb this. ‘But he will divorce her and marry you?’

‘He can’t. For one thing he is Catholic and for another he loves his wife.’

‘I don’t think I want to meet this Jan, if that’s the way he goes on.’

‘You couldn’t anyway. He’s been posted missing.’

Faith stopped buttering toast to look at her daughter who met her gaze unflinchingly. ‘Judge not lest you be judged,’ she said.

Louise managed a laugh. ‘Whatever do you mean by that?’

‘It was something I thought of when I read your letters. I was not there to help and guide you when you needed me. I am to blame that you went off the rails and I am truly sorry for that.’

‘Mum, I make my own decisions. You don’t have to blame yourself. I know how it was with Father but I hoped you would defy him and come and see us.’

‘I dare not, Louise. I was brought up to believe in the sanctity of marriage and the marriage vows I made: love, honour and obey. The love and honour were eroded years ago but I could not break myself of the habit of obeying.’

‘And when Father recovers and comes home, will you still obey him?’

‘No. I am stronger now.’ She put scrambled eggs and toast on two plates and put them on the kitchen table. ‘Come on, let’s eat this while it’s hot.’

Louise stayed two days and during the whole time she felt that there was something her mother was not telling her, but however much she hinted she learned no more. She needed to get back to school; John couldn’t stand in for her indefinitely.

‘I’ll come again soon,’ she said as she hugged her mother goodbye.

Faith stood at the garden gate and watched until Louise had turned the corner, then she went back inside. There was joy in her heart. Henry’s stroke had had one happy result.

It was a lovely day, the sun was shining and, though it was still cold, people were out on the streets, going about their business, visiting the parks with their children and trying to pretend all was right with the world. Everything was far from all right. Looking out of his attic window, Jan could see the grey of German uniforms and the black muzzles of rifles interspersed with the civilian suits
and colourful frocks of the inhabitants and it was the presence of those uniforms that kept him incarcerated in the attic.

He was lucky to be alive and he knew it. If half his tail fin had been shot off after crossing the coast, he would have had to come down in the sea and that would almost certainly have been the end of him. He had watched the other aircraft disappear out of sight, knowing the Spitfire was going to crash. But there were houses below him, a church and a busy market square. If he bailed out, the aeroplane would dive into the town, causing untold damage and loss of life and he couldn’t let that happen. He had deliberately turned away from it, not easy with only half a tail, looking for a way to bring his Spitfire down without it costing anyone’s life, his own included, if he could manage it.

He had been losing height rapidly and by the time he had left the town behind he was too low to bail out safely. He just missed the top of some trees and then there was a strip of farmland in front of him. It rushed up to meet him. The Spitfire buried its nose in the ground and juddered to a stop. He was thrown violently forward over the control panel and hit his head on the Perspex of the canopy.

He had regained consciousness to find himself in a bed with his leg encased in plaster and a nurse bending over him. ‘Where am I?’

‘In hospital,’ she answered in English. She was a pretty girl, very young with soft grey-green eyes that reminded him of Louise.

‘A prisoner of war?’