Daughter of Riches (21 page)

‘Des!' Nicky screamed. ‘ Bloody hell – Des!'

His insides had turned to water now, the shock of seeing his friend mown down in front of his eyes blasting through the exhaustion and the numbness. He pulled himself out of the rat-hole, running down the beach towards Des, now lying twitching oddly whilst the sand turned scarlet beneath him.

This time it was Nicky who failed to notice the enemy aircraft approaching until it was almost overhead. His head jerked around, his expression one of total surprise. Then the hail of bullets caught him, the sand came rushing up to meet him and in the midst of confusion there was nothing but stillness and a white hot pain spreading and floating him towards oblivion.

Paul, Sophia and Catherine were down at the harbour watching the little boats straggle back when they were joined by Bernard Langlois.

Bernard had been working for Charles for nine months now and he was very concerned to hear that Charles had sailed off to France. For one thing Bernard genuinely liked Charles, for another he was all too painfully aware that if anything happened to his employer he would be out of a job.

Not that there was any guarantee that he would have a job much longer in any case. Now that the war was hotting up Bernard could not see that there would be much call for an entertainments agency for visitors for he was very much afraid that in spite of all the assurances of the Tourist Committee there might not be any visitors. If this happened he was not at all sure what he would do. It was possible he would be conscripted into the array, of course, and even if he wasn't perhaps he ought to volunteer. But as long as he still had a job he was reluctant to do that – he did not want to come back and find someone else installed in the position he had come to think of as his own.

Today, however, it seemed selfish even to think of such things. On the other side of the Channel men were fighting and dying – that had to be the first concern of any decent person.

‘Is there any news?' Bernard asked, making his way over to where the Carterets were standing in a tight little huddle.

‘Of Papa you mean?' Paul said. ‘ No, I'm afraid there isn't.'

His tone was cool and unfriendly and he turned away, looking out to sea and shading his eyes against the sunlight dancing on the water. Paul was not exactly a snob but he, too, was worried about his father and his anxiety took the form of disdain for a boy he felt was his social inferior.

‘What about your brother?' Bernard persisted. ‘Wasn't he in Belgium?'

‘Yes, he was, but the chance of a Jersey boat picking him up is pretty remote I should think,' Paul said shortly. ‘Shouldn't you be working, Langlois? Isn't that what my father pays you for?'

Bernard coloured but before he could reply Sophia spurred up.

‘Paul, how can you be so rude? I'm sorry, Bernard, this is all a bit scary. We saw Joe Renouf come back just now and he said it's terrible over there, with German planes bombing everything that moves.'

Her face was pale with anxiety but Bernard thought how pretty she looked, her hair flying loose from a broad Alice band and her eyes flashing indignation on his behalf.

‘Look, Langlois, there's nothing you can do here,' Paul said. ‘We'll you know as soon as we hear anything.'

‘Thanks, I would be grateful,' Bernard replied, determined that his tone should sound neither subservient nor insolent. ‘And tell your father not to worry if he's too exhausted to come in for a day or two. I'll look after things.'

‘I bet you will,' Paul said, watching him walk off along the harbour wall and wondering just why the thought filled him with such anger.

‘I'm scared,' Catherine said, ‘I don't think Papa is ever coming back.'

It was three days now and still there was no word of him. The girls had gone to the kitchen, where Lola was making pastry, because at least there was a certain amount of comfort in being together and neither of them could bear the thought of another day spent with Paul on the harbour looking out to sea for the boat that never came. But here too the tension was almost too much to bear and Lola was glad that although she had a breakfast chef these days she still did all the cooking for the main meal herself. At least it gave her something to keep her busy and she thought it would be better if Sophia and Catherine had something to do too.

‘Catherine – I want those apples peeled and sliced,' she instructed. ‘And Sophia, you can chop the herbs to make the stuffing for the lamb. No, don't look like that … it is better to keep busy. And besides the guests will expect their dinner on time. It is no concern of theirs that we are worried.'

When dinner had come and gone, however, with still no news, and no sign of Paul returning either, even Lola began to show signs of strain.

‘Where is that boy?' she demanded crossly. ‘You'd think at least he would come home and let us know what is going on …' She broke off as the sound of a door slamming echoed through the house. ‘Perhaps that is him now. Paul! Come in here! Where do you think you have been all this time?'

‘Now, Lola, don't use that tone. Is it any way to greet your husband?' It wasn't Paul – it was Charles! He stood in the doorway looking for all the world like a parody of his usual self, hair blown by the wind into wild quiffs that his mother had used to call ‘cockatoos', clothes crumpled, stiff with sea water and stained with oil. His chin sprouted three days' growth of beard, his shirt tail hung out of his trousers at the back. But he was grinning broadly.

‘Charles!' Lola cried, rushing towards him. ‘You're home!'

She threw herself at him and they embraced, oblivious of Sophia and Catherine, who had leaped up eagerly, and Paul, who stood behind his father in the doorway, grinning. Then she pulled away, holding him at arms' length.

‘Wherever do you think you have been, Charles Carteret? I have been worried out of my mind. And just look at the state of you!'

Charles grinned ruefully. ‘Yes, sorry about that. My motor packed up and I had to get a tow home. But the boat that helped me out came from Ramsgate and he took me back to his home port.' His voice was quite calm and apologetic – he might almost have been talking about a Sunday morning outing that had gone wrong. But his casual response was deliberate. He had no intention of telling Lola what hell it had been.

‘Did you manage to bring anyone out, or did your motor go
before
you went in?' Lola asked.

‘Oh, I managed three or four trips,' he said casually. ‘And I brought three lads all the way home with me.' Again he did not mention that one of his passengers had been badly wounded – a boy of about Nick's age with a blood-soaked bandage covering his eyes. The boy's mates had led him through the surf to the boat, keeping him afloat when he lost his footing, and hoisted him in, and Charles was very much afraid that the boy had been blinded.

Lola was nodding, satisfied. ‘Good. They are all someone's sons. And so many boats went, didn't they? I am sure one of them will have picked up my Nicholas.'

Her voice was strong and confident and Charles did not disillusion her. ‘We will wait,' she went on. ‘Soon there will be news of him, you will see.'

It came in the form of a telegram. Corporal Nicholas Carteret was in a naval hospital at Weymouth, having been wounded in action in France.

‘You see?' Lola cried jubilantly. ‘I told you he would be safe! I told you Nicky would come home!'

But the telegram had contained only the barest facts; it did not elaborate on the wounds Nicky had received and it did not tell the story of how he had been rescued.

Fortunately for Nicky two more members of his original unit who had marched with him to the sea – had seen him hit by enemy fire as he bent over Des's body and at considerable risk to themselves they dragged him to cover when the German plane went away. They knew he was badly hurt but to leave him on the beach was unthinkable. Under cover of darkness they managed to carry him down the beach, his arms straddled around their necks, his legs dragging behind him in the sand, and into one of the little boats that had managed to come in close to shore. Then as he lay helplessly in the boat they protected him with their own bodies first from the angry attack of German planes, then from the icy sea spray that washed over him as the Channel waves broke over bows never intended to withstand such seas. Nicky had been taken to Weymouth and now he was safe from the guns and the bombs and the angry ocean.

But his injuries were terrible. Luckily – or unluckily, as he was to say in his moments of darkest despair – none of his vital organs were damaged, though he needed a transfusion of four pints of blood by the time he reached the naval hospital. But one of the bullets that had torn into him had lodged in his spine, just above the waist, and it had cut clean through the spinal cord.

What Lola did not know as she tossed the telegram down and swung Catherine round and round in a fit of euphoria, was that Nicky's injuries were such that there was no hope of him ever walking again.

Viv was desperately worried. It was almost a month now since Dunkirk and she had heard nothing from Nicky. Surely if something terrible had happened to him she would have heard? So why didn't he write? Was he still in France, his whereabouts kept secret for reasons of security, or was he amongst the ‘missing'? Viv thought she would go crazy not knowing. But then the whole of her life seemed to have taken on a nightmare quality these days.

The war that had once seemed so distant now seemed terrifyingly close. From the south-facing cliffs it was easy to see the pall of black smoke hanging over the French coast as the retreating Allies burned their oil dumps; the Jersey Defence Volunteer Force were busy drilling up at Fort Regent and a whole army of British troops had arrived, digging trenches, erecting fences and mounting anti-aircraft guns in the People's Park. The schools were closed to allow the children to help with the potato harvest – with so many young men away fighting the farmers were desperately short-handed. But Vivienne saw it all through a fog of misery that clouded her every waking moment and invaded her dreams.

This is my punishment for what I did, she tortured herself. Perhaps now I will never know what it would be like to have Nicky's child.

How ironic it seemed though that a decision she should have taken so lightly should have affected her so deeply. Dr Bodell had warned her, of course, of the way she might feel but she had not listened. Now there was a hollow sadness that never seemed to leave her and she woke night after night from tormented dreams, her face wet with tears though she scarcely knew why she was crying. Sometimes she thought it was because of Nicky. But at other times she knew it was because she was longing for her dead baby.

Throughout those bright summery but nightmarish weeks Viv watched and waited for news. The tired and anxious circles beneath her eyes darkened and deepened and she lost weight because she felt too sick to be able to eat properly. But even when France finally fell she did not realise fully the seriousness of the situation though like everyone else she was frightened to think that the Germans were just the other side of the narrow strip of water. And it came as a complete shock to her when her mother broke the incredible news that the British intended to pull out their troops.

‘What are you talking about?' she yelled at Loretta. ‘What do you mean – the Channel Islands are not going to be defended? You've got it wrong. You must have!'

‘It's true I'm afraid, darling.' Loretta's voice, which had once graced English provincial repertory stages, was light and musical. ‘Isn't it a beastly nuisance? They say because we are so close to France it would be practically impossible and the best thing for everyone is to completely demilitarise.'

Viv stared at her mother in disbelief.

‘But if we aren't defended surely the Germans will move in and take us over?'

‘I expect so. As you can imagine, I've had Daddy on the telephone already insisting we evacuate immediately. He says he is arranging to rent a manor house in Essex for us and wants me to organise a flight straight away.'

Viv turned cold with horror, her mind flying, as it always did, to Nicky. If they went dashing off to Essex how would she ever get news of him? He wouldn't even know where to find her!

‘We're not going, are we?' she asked.

Loretta shrugged. ‘ Well, I expect so, eventually. But I did tell your father no strutting little German was going to panic me into simply turning on my heel and running. I need a few days at least to decide what to take with me and arrange for everything we are leaving behind to be stored.'

Viv almost wept with relief. Thank heavens for her mother's stubbornness and panache! It offered her a small reprieve at least. But the days slipped by and as the arranged departure date of the last Saturday in June came closer with no word of Nicky desperation began to grip her once more. She had no alternative but to go with her mother. But before she went at least she could swallow her pride and visit Nicky's family to try and find out if there was any news and leave a forwarding address. They were not a very friendly lot and the prospect was a daunting one but Viv shrugged off the slightly nervous feeling they instilled in her. Nothing mattered except contacting Nicky and besides she already knew which of the family she was going to see. It certainly would not be Lola, who did nothing to hide her disapproval and dislike of Viv. But Charles had an office in town and Charles was far more accessible. Besides, Viv had always felt a good deal more confident dealing with men than with women. If anyone could tell her something about Nicky it was Charles.

And so, late on the afternoon of Friday, 28th June, Viv took her open-top tourer and set out for St Helier. As she drove, a little too fast, through the narrow lanes a German plane skimmed overhead leaving a white vapour trail in the clear blue sky but she thought nothing of it. German planes had been cruising over the island for the past few days now – this was probably just another one.