All Clear (33 page)

But that wouldn’t take anywhere near as much courage as Charles
having to sit there at the country club in his dinner clothes and listen to radio bulletins describing the Japanese Army’s approach.

When he’d read that book Mrs. Ives had given him in the hospital, he’d thought Shackleton was the hero, taking off in a tiny boat and braving Antarctic seas to bring help, but now he wondered if it hadn’t taken more courage to stay on that barren island and watch the boat disappear, and then wait as weeks and months went by, with no guarantee that anybody was ever coming, while their feet froze and the food ran out and the weather got worse and worse.

Back when he’d been scanning the newspapers, looking for the names of airfields, there’d been a story about an old woman being dug out of the wreckage of what had been her house and the rescue crew asking her if her husband was under there with her. “No, the bloody coward’s at the front!” she’d said indignantly.

He’d laughed when he read it, but now he wasn’t so sure it had been a joke. Maybe England
was
the front, and the real heroes were the Londoners sitting in those tube stations night after night, waiting to be blown to smithereens. And Fordham, lying there in the hospital in traction. And everyone on this train, waiting patiently for it to begin moving again, not giving way to panic or the impulse to call Hitler and surrender just to get it over with. He was going to have to rethink the whole concept of heroism when he got back to Oxford.

If
he got back to Oxford. At this rate, he wasn’t sure he’d even make it to Canterbury, let alone Saltram-on-Sea.

He did, but it took him two more days of delayed departures, waits on sidings, and fruitless trips to garages. He ended up hitching rides in a half-track, a sidecar, and a turnip truck.

The truck was driven by a pretty land girl who’d grown up in Chelsea and was now slopping hogs and milking cows on a farm a few miles west of Saltram-on-Sea.

“The work ruins your hands,” she said when he asked her how she liked it, “and I despise getting up before dawn and smelling of manure, but if I didn’t have something to do, I’d go mad with worry. My husband’s serving in the North Atlantic, escorting convoys, and sometimes I don’t hear from him for weeks at a time. And I feel as though I’m contributing something.”

She smiled at him. “There are four of us girls, and we all get along famously, so that helps, and Mr. Powney’s not nearly so gruff as some of the other farmers.”

“Wait—you work for Mr. Powney?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, laughing. “Does he have a bull?”

“Yes, why? Have you heard of it? It hasn’t killed anyone, has it?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had. It’s the worst, most ill-tempered bull in England. How do you know of it?”

He explained about having waited around for Mr. Powney to come back from buying it so he could get a ride. “And I finally have.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too glad about that just yet, if I were you,” she said. “This lorry has the worst tires in England.”

She wasn’t exaggerating. They had two flats between Dover and Folkestone, and there was no spare. They had to take the tire off both times and patch it—the second time in a driving sleet—and then reinflate it with a bicycle pump.

It was half past three and beginning to grow dark before they came within sight of Saltram-on-Sea. He could see the gun emplacement, flanked now by row after bristling row of concrete tank traps and sharpened stakes.

There was razor wire all along the top of the cliff, and signs warning,
Danger: This Area Mined
. He wondered what the retrieval team had thought when they’d seen all that.

“Do you mind if I drop you at the crossroads?” the land girl, whose name was Nora, asked him. “I want to get home before dark.”

“No, that’s fine,” he told her, but was sorry from the moment she let him out. The wind coming off the Channel was bitter, and the sleet was turning to snow.

Damn it, the retrieval team had better be here after all this
, he thought, limping down into the village, his head bent against the wind, his coat collar pulled up around his neck. And the drop they’d come through had better be here, too.

At least Daphne will be
, he thought, going into the inn, but she wasn’t behind the bar. Her father was.

“I’m looking for Daphne,” Mike said.

“You’re that American reporter, aren’t you?” her father said. “The one who went to Dunkirk with the Commander?” and when Mike nodded, “Sorry, lad. You’re too late.”

“Too late?”

“Aye, lad,” he said. “She’s already married.”

“DAPHNE’S
MARRIED
?”
MIKE SAID, PUSHING HIMSELF AWAY
from the pub’s counter.

“Aye,” her father said, placidly toweling a glass dry. “To one of the lads what was putting in the beach defenses.”

I obviously didn’t need to worry about accidentally breaking her heart and keeping her from marrying anybody else
, Mike thought ruefully.

“Beach defenses,” the pipe-smoking fisherman he’d talked to on the quay snorted. “Didn’t know much about defenses, if you ask me. Couldn’t defend himself against your Daphne, could he now?” He nudged Mike. “Looks like you couldn’t either, eh, lad?”

There was general laughter, under cover of which Mike asked, “Can you tell me where I can find her?”

Daphne’s father frowned. “I don’t know as that’s a good idea, lad. She’s Mrs. Rob Butcher, and there’s naught you can do about it.”

“I don’t want to,” Mike said.

Her father scowled.

“I mean, I don’t want to make trouble. I just need to talk to her about something. She wrote me a letter—about some men who were asking for me—and I need to ask her if she knows where I can get in touch with them. Or maybe you can help me. Daphne said they came in—”

Her father shook his head. “I know nothing about any men, and as for Daphne, she’s in Manchester with her husband.”

Manchester
? That was more than two hundred miles from Saltram. It would take him at least two days to get there by train. If he could even get on one. They’d be jammed with soldiers going home on leave for Christmas.

“I don’t suppose you have a phone number where she can be reached?” Mike asked. “Or an address?”

“You’re not thinkin’ of goin’ there to make mischief, are you?”

“No, I just want to write to her,” Mike lied, hoping the address wouldn’t be a post office box.

It wasn’t. It was an address on King Street. “Though I had a letter from her yesterday saying their lodgings were very unsatisfactory,” Daphne’s father told him, “and they were hopin’ to find somethin’ better.”

Let’s hope they didn’t
, Mike thought, writing the address down.

“If anyone comes in asking for me, tell them I can be reached here,” he said, giving him Mrs. Leary’s address and telephone number. He congratulated him on his daughter’s marriage, then set out for Manchester.

It didn’t take two days. It took nearly four of fully booked trains, delayed departures, missed connections, and compartments crammed full not only of soldiers but of civilians with packages, plum puddings, and, on one leg of the journey, an enormous unplucked Christmas goose. Apparently no one in England was obeying the government order posted in every station to “avoid unnecessary travel.”

He didn’t reach Manchester till late afternoon on December twenty-second—by which time Daphne and her new husband had found “something better.” He limped all the way to King Street, only to be sent back across town to Whitworth. And then the landlady, who looked exactly like Mrs. Rickett, wasn’t sure Daphne was in. “I’ll go and see,” she said, and left him standing at the door.

Please let her be in
, he thought, leaning against the doorjamb to take the weight off his aching foot.

She was. She came halfway down the stairs and stopped, just like she had that first day in Saltram-on-Sea. “Why, Mike,” she said, her eyes widening, “I never expected to see you in Manchester. Whatever are you doing here?”

“I came to find you, to ask you—”

“But didn’t Dad
tell
you? Oh, dear, this is dreadful! I didn’t mean for you to find out like this! You’re a lovely boy, and now you’ve come all this way, but the thing is, I was married last week.”

“I know. Your father told me,” he said, trying to get the right mixture
of heartbreak and resignation into his voice. “I really came about your letter.”

“My letter?” she said, bewildered. “But I didn’t … I thought about writing and telling you about Rob, but I didn’t know where you were or what you were doing, and I thought if you were off covering the war, it would be unkind—”

“No, the letter you wrote me about the men who came in asking about me,” he said, pulling it out of his coat. “There was a mix-up with the mail, and I just got it.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding vaguely disappointed.

“I went to Saltram-on-Sea to talk to you about it, and your father told me you’d gone to Manchester and that you’d got married. Congratulations to both of you. Your husband’s a very lucky man.”

“Oh, but I’m the lucky one,” she said, blushing. “Rob’s wonderful, so kind and brave. He’s working on repairing the docks just now, but he’s put in for combat duty. He’s determined to do his bit for England. I said, ‘You
are
doing your bit. You’re seeing to it England doesn’t starve, aren’t you? It may not
look
as grandly heroic as shooting Germans or sinking U-boats, but—’ ”

And if he didn’t cut her off, he’d be here all night. “If I could just ask you a couple of questions.”

“Oh, of course. Where are my manners, keeping you standing in the door like that? Come through to the parlor. Would you like some tea?”

He’d love some tea—he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast—and he’d love to take the weight off his foot, but he didn’t want to do anything to encourage her to talk longer than she already was. “No, thanks, I have a train to catch. You said these two men came into the pub asking for me.”

Daphne nodded. “Twice. The first time they asked everyone in the pub if they knew a war correspondent named Mike Davis, and Mr. Tompkins said
I
did, and they asked me if I knew how they could get in touch with you.”

“And did you tell them?”

“No. I remembered what you said about letting you know straightaway if anyone came round asking for you. That’s why I wrote to you instead of giving them your address.”

Mike groaned inwardly. “Did they say why they were trying to get in touch with me?”

“No, they said it was something to do with the war, and that it was very important that they contact you, but they didn’t say what it was.”

“Did they tell you their names?”

“Yes. Mr. Watson and Mr.…” She frowned and bit her lip. “I can’t remember, it began with an H, like Hawes or …”

“Mr. Holmes?”

“Yes, that was it. Mr. Watson and Mr. Holmes.”

That cinched it. It was the retrieval team.

“They knew all about you having been at Dunkirk and in hospital,” Daphne said. “They said one of the nurses told them you might have gone to Saltram-on-Sea.”

Which meant they’d traced him as far as Orpington, but they obviously hadn’t talked to Sister Carmody or she’d have told them he was in London. “What did they look like?” he asked. “Were they in uniform?”

“No. Civilian clothes. Very posh, and very posh accents, and they were both
terribly
handsome”—she cocked her head flirtatiously—“though not so handsome as you, speaking quite impartially. I’m a married woman, you know.”

Yes, I know
.

“You said they came in twice,” he said, trying to get her back to the subject at hand. “The same day?”

“No, they came in on, let me see, when was it? The first Saturday in December, I think.”

When he was in Oxford, trying to find out whether Gerald Phipps had been there.

“And then they came in again the next night, and that was when Rob got jealous and told me to stop flirting with them, and I said, ‘I wasn’t flirting, and even if I was, you’ve got no call to tell me not to, Rob Butcher. I’m not your wife,’ and he said, ‘I wish you were,’ and the next thing you know he’s been to Dover and got a special license so the vicar could marry us straightaway. Dad wanted us to wait, but Rob said no, who knew what might happen tomorrow or how much time we might have together, and then he found out he was being sent here, and—”

“When the men came the second time,” Mike finally managed to get in, “what did they say?”

“They said if I
did
hear from you, to contact them immediately, and they wrote down their address for me. I meant to send it on to you, but then in the excitement of the wedding and all, I forgot. Oh, it was a lovely wedding. Rob looked terribly handsome in his uniform, and the church was all decorated with holly and—”

“Do you remember the address?”

“No.”

Of course not
.

“But I’ve got it. I put it”—she frowned in consternation—“now, where
did
I put it?”

Please don’t say you stuck it behind the bar, and now I’ll have to trudge all the way back across the country to Saltram-on-Sea for it
, Mike thought.

“I put it … oh, I know,” she said. “I put it in my vanity case so I wouldn’t go off without it. It’s upstairs. Hang on.” She started up and then turned to look at him over the railing. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

Not anymore
, he thought.

“I mean, the authorities aren’t after you or anything?” she asked, concerned.

“No. I think I know who the men were. They’re a couple of guys who were on the boat with me coming back from Dunkirk. Reporters.”

“Oh, I wish I’d known they’d been at Dunkirk. I could have asked them about the Commander and Jonathan. They might know what happened to them.”