We'll Meet Again (35 page)

Meg forced her bruised lips into a tremulous smile. ‘There’s always Folly Bridge.’

Rayner’s eyes were suspiciously bright and he nodded. ‘We’ll meet there at midnight on the evening of the May Ball, and you will be wearing your golden ball gown.’

‘I gave it away after Adele’s engagement party.’

‘Then I will buy you a new one.’

She smiled. ‘This year, next year, sometime …’

‘I know that rhyme. David used to do it with prune stones at breakfast in our digs. The landlady had a passion for serving those nasty shrivelled plums.’

Meg pulled away with a watery chuckle. ‘How lovely and normal that all sounds. I’d almost forgotten what life was like then.’

‘And it will be again.’ He brushed Meg’s forehead with a kiss. ‘Now, I must take you home. That is if you don’t mind riding pillion on a motorbike.’

‘That’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Like driving a Rolls – I don’t suppose …’

‘No. Definitely not. Driving a car is one thing, riding a motorcycle is quite another. I want you in one piece.’

Despite her gallant attempt at making light of things, Meg had to struggle to keep from bursting into tears as they parted outside the gates of Colivet Manor. The rain had stopped and the air was filled with the nutty scent of damp earth and wet leaves. It was almost dark, with just a faint greenish glow in the sky towards the west making it possible for Meg to see Rayner’s face clearly as they said goodbye. They drew apart from a long, achingly tender kiss, and then, with one kick on the accelerator pedal, the motorcycle engine roared into life and Rayner rode away at speed. Meg stood in the lane and listened until the sound faded into the night and all she could hear was the sighing of the wind in the Spanish oaks. It seemed in those silent moments as though a vital part of her being had gone with him, leaving a mere shadow to walk through the gateway and up the drive to the house.

A rustling noise in the thicket of laurel just inside the entrance made her stop and spin round, peering into the violet shadows. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she was conscious of her heart thudding hard against her ribs. There had been no sentries posted on the gates for weeks now and it was getting dangerously close to curfew time. She took a pace forward and then stopped as a black shape emerged from the bushes and lunged at her. A hand clamped over her mouth and a terrifyingly familiar voice whispered in her ear.

‘Meg, don’t scream. It’s me.’

Someone was slapping her face, calling her name. Meg opened her eyes and saw a man silhouetted against the darkening sky. Everything was hazy as she struggled to sit up and for some reason she could not quite grasp her attacker was helping her; she recognised the scent of him even as she knew his voice.

‘Meg, it’s me, Gerald. Please don’t faint again.’

‘But you’re dead. We buried you.’ She peered into his face as she tried to stand up, but was overcome by dizziness and she sank back onto the wet grass.

‘Sit still for a minute and you’ll be okay. I’m sorry I scared you.’

The world suddenly righted itself and she scrambled to her feet. ‘Scared me?’ she cried, pummelling him with her fists. ‘You frightened the life out of me. You were dead.’ She flung her arms around him, laughing and crying all at the same time.

‘Sorry,’ Gerald murmured, holding her in a rib-crunching hug.

Feeling his cheek wet against hers, Meg laid her hands flat on his chest, pushing him far enough away to see his face. Shocked at the sight of tears rolling down his cheeks, she stood on tiptoe to kiss them away. ‘You bloody idiot, Gerald. Have you any idea what we’ve all been through thinking you were dead and buried in the churchyard?’

He caught her by the wrists. ‘Can we talk about this somewhere else?’

‘Talk about it? We’ve all been to hell and back because of you. And you want to chat?’

‘I’ll explain everything, but if the Germans catch me I really will be dead.’

She shivered convulsively. ‘Fine, but let’s find somewhere a bit warmer. I’m freezing.’

‘No one must know I’m here.’

She thought fast. ‘There’s only one place you’ll be safe for tonight, but we’ve got to get inside the house without being seen.’

Meg closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘That was a close one. I thought we’d had it when von Eschenberg came down the stairs.’

‘Yes, thanks for shoving me into the broom cupboard. I’ve always wanted a mop handle rammed up my backside.’

‘Think yourself lucky it was me who found you, and stop grumbling,’ Meg said, raising a warning finger to her lips.

‘Is he in his room?’ Gerald perched on a stool next to Meg’s bed.

‘If you mean our father, then say so.’

‘I still can’t quite get my head round that. It’s going to take time for me to forgive him for the way he treated Mum and me.’

‘As a matter of fact, Pa is in his room. He’s old and sick and has been ten times worse since he heard that you’d been killed.’

‘There was no way I could get word to you.’

She sank down onto her bed. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘I was hit in the first volley of shots and the force knocked me overboard. That’s the only reason I survived.’

‘How did you get ashore? Were you badly hurt?’

‘I took two hits in the chest but I didn’t know that at the time. I couldn’t feel anything except the waves trying to drag me under. I managed to kick off my boots and when I surfaced I couldn’t see the boat – or anything at all, come to that. The current must have carried me round the point. I remember being thrown against some rocks and then nothing until I was being dragged out of the water. I thought the Germans had got me, but it must have been the Vaudins. I woke up three days later in their farmhouse loft with Simone bending over me, giving me a good telling off.’

‘Simone?’

‘Somehow they managed to fetch Dr Gallienne and Simone from the hospital. I wouldn’t be here now if they hadn’t patched me up. According to Simone my chest was like a colander and the bullets had gone straight through. I was just lucky they hadn’t hit any major organs.’

‘And have you been at the Vaudins’ farm all this time? How could Simone let us go on thinking you were dead?’

‘Don’t blame her. I made her promise not to tell anyone, not even Mum. She would have insisted on coming to see me and that would have put the Vaudins in danger.’

Meg considered this for a moment and unwillingly saw the sense of it; she nodded slowly. ‘All right, I give you that. But if you’re alive, who did we bury in a grave next to Eric?’

‘It must have been Hugh. He was at the helm and Bob and I were rowing. He was only wearing an old guernsey and I lent him my jacket because he was cold. My papers were in the pocket.’

‘But someone must have missed him by now?’

Gerald shook his head. ‘His family evacuated to the mainland at the beginning of the war. He had no one close left on the island; that’s why he risked so much.’

She reached out to touch his hand. ‘And you, you fool. You risked your life and nearly lost it. Thank God you’re safe.’

‘Maybe it would have been better if I had been killed. It would have made things simpler all round.’

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Pa and Marie love you and they’ve been heartbroken thinking you were dead.’

He shot her a quick glance and then turned his head away. ‘And you?’

‘I love you too. I always have done but I just didn’t know what sort of love it was. Now I do know. You’re my brother, part of me, and nothing can change that.’

‘I’m so ashamed of the way I behaved. My feelings for you weren’t so innocent. D’you know how that makes me feel? Do you?’

Meg slid off the bed and gripped him by the shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. ‘That was a lifetime ago. We didn’t know the truth. You can’t blame yourself for that.’

‘No. I blame the man who calls himself my father.’ Gerald met her eyes this time and Meg recoiled at the desperation and anger she read in their dark depths.

‘You’re tired,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘You’re still not fully recovered. I’m going downstairs to see if I can find something for you to eat. Rest on my bed until I come back and for God’s sake keep quiet.’

She left the room silently and felt her way down the dark staircase. It was not late but the house was quiet. Unusually there was no sound emanating from the rooms used by the German officers. The darkness was suffocating and the silence eerie, but Meg was cold and ravenously hungry. She made her way slowly to the kitchen. The chill rose up from the tiled floor, nipping at her ankles like a bad-tempered terrier, but she was too hungry to care about mere physical discomfort. She found some milk in the larder, and a crust of bread, which she broke in two and shoved half of it into her mouth, chewing and almost choking on the sawdust-dry crumbs. She washed it down with a mouthful of the milk and put the rest in a cup for Gerald, with the remainder of the bread.

When she returned to her room she found him sleeping peacefully and she had not the heart to wake him. Curling up on the floor, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Meg awakened at first light, cold, stiff and wondering why she was sleeping on the floor. Then it all came flooding back and she sat up, listening to Gerald’s rhythmic breathing. He could not stay in her room and risk discovery by one of the family. She rested her chin on her knees, frowning. He had to be fed and he definitely needed to wash. The facilities in the Vaudins’ attic obviously did not run to such luxuries as warm water and soap was almost impossible to obtain anyway. She wrinkled her nose, wondering if she could sneak him into Pa’s bathroom. She could hear her father moving about restlessly in the next room and the solution came to her in an inspirational flash. She scrambled to her feet and tiptoed out of her room and into her father’s.

‘Pa, I need to talk to you.’

Ten minutes later Meg leaned over Gerald, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’

He opened his eyes and stared up at her, looking puzzled and then alarmed. She pushed him back amongst the pillows as he attempted to sit up. ‘Don’t say anything, just listen to me.’

‘What?’ Gerald cried in a hoarse whisper when she finished explaining her plan. ‘You expect me to hide in the old man’s room? I’d rather take my chances with the Jerries.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Go on then. If that’s what you’d prefer. And we’ll all end up in prison camps or shot.’

He struggled to a sitting position. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘You can and you will. No one goes into his room, apart from your mother and me. His bathroom is the only one that you could use without being seen, and Marie can smuggle a little extra food upstairs. If anyone notices they’ll just think that Pa is on the mend. Besides which, and he agrees with me, it will give you two time to get to know each other properly and sort out your differences.’

‘You expect me to forgive the man who ruined my mother and refused to acknowledge me as his son?’

‘I think you could try.’

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’

‘No,’ Meg said, pulling the bedclothes off him. ‘You don’t. He’s waiting to see you. Go now and remember that he’s a sick man. Be kind to him, Gerald.’

When they were alone in the kitchen, Meg broke the news to Marie as gently as she knew how. She could only imagine the scene in her father’s room when Marie, trembling and on the verge of tears, went upstairs with the breakfast tray.

Jane gave Meg a curious look as she hurried into the kitchen carrying Jeremy. ‘And where were you last night? Were you out after curfew?’

‘Of course not,’ Meg said, opening the haybox and taking out the pot of barley porridge. ‘I went to bed early. I had a headache.’

‘Your bloke didn’t turn up then?’ Jane set Jeremy
down on a chair and poured some milk into his beaker.

‘I went to see Pearl. Pass me Jim’s bowl, please.’

Jane passed it to her, frowning. ‘It’s Jeremy, not Jim. And I don’t believe you.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Meg said, blobbing some of the gooey, grey mess into Jeremy’s
Bunnikin
porringer.

‘Now I know you were up to no good,’ Jane said, taking the bowl from her. ‘You can’t fool me, Meg.’

There was no point in denying it and suddenly Meg felt too tired to keep up the deception. It would be better to admit that she had seen Rayner than to get into a conversation where she might let it slip that the real cause for her non-appearance at the evening meal was that Gerald had suddenly risen from the dead. ‘All right! Since I’m unlikely to be able to see him again I admit it, I went to meet Rayner. Are you happy now? Or are you shocked and disgusted that I’m no better than the other Jerrybags?’

Jane picked up the spoon that Jeremy had flung on the floor, wiped it on her apron and gave it back to him. ‘Naughty boy. Don’t do it again.’ She turned her head to look at Meg and her gaunt features cracked into a smile. ‘Not me. I had my fling with a French fisherman, Pip’s father, when I was just seventeen. Mummy and Daddy never really forgave me. They sent me to Jersey where very few people knew me. I stayed with an old aunt who employed a midwife to help at the birth, but the old hag didn’t seem to know what she was doing. If I’d had proper medical care
when he was born Pip might not have been the way he is, but I’ve never been sorry that I had him.’

‘What happened to Pip’s father?’

‘He was handsome and charming but he omitted to tell me that he was married. He went back to his wife and children in France and I never saw him again.’

‘How terribly sad,’ Meg pushed her plate away. ‘Give this to Jeremy, he’s finished his already.’

Jane scraped the porridge into Jeremy’s bowl and he spooned it greedily into his mouth, watching them with his huge, pansy-brown eyes. ‘Ta,’ he said, smacking his lips.

‘Good boy,’ Jane said, automatically. ‘It was awful at the time, but I got over it. I hope you have better luck with your German. I liked him when he was here. He was a gentleman, not like some of them.’

By day, Meg went about her work on the farm, and in the evenings, after she had listened to the BBC news with Pip and Jane, Maud and Bertrand having gone to bed as soon as the light began to fade, she went to her father’s room. In almost complete darkness she perched on the edge of the bed, and Gerald sat on a chair drawn up close so that they could converse in whispers without raising the suspicions of anyone who happened to pass the door.