The Colours of Love (21 page)

Peter let out his breath in a satisfied sigh. That’d teach him. His gaze returned to Priscilla again, and his mouth tightened. Greg’s words had rankled. She’d rather sit with that bunch of cripples from the home than give him the time of day. And he’d asked her properly too, suggesting a drink and a meal.
Uppity mare!
But he’d settle the score, if it was the last thing he did.

It was only a minute or two later that he noticed Priscilla stand up and say something to the others, before walking across to the two sitting on the wall. Within a few moments she was making her way out of the grounds of the hall and onto the lane outside, where she proceeded to walk in the direction of the Holden farm. And she was alone.

Casually he put down his glass and sauntered across the grass, his hands in his pockets. Excitement was quickening his breath and causing a stirring in his stomach. They always went about in twos and threes, these girls, as though they were joined at the hip. He wouldn’t get another chance like this one.

Once out in the dusty, sunlit lane he walked a little faster.

Priscilla had been a martyr to blinding headaches for years. They usually affected only one side of her head and were accompanied by nausea and visual disturbances, and when she had felt this one beginning, she’d known she only had a limited time to get back to the farm and lie down in the quiet of her room before she became incapacitated. Twenty-four hours and she would be as right as rain, but just at the moment the only thing on her mind was to get somewhere peaceful and dark and let the agony pass.

She hadn’t let on to the others that she’d got one of her headaches coming, knowing that they would insist on accompanying her home, and she didn’t want to spoil the other girls’ enjoyment of the afternoon. Heaven knew they didn’t get much free time. And so she’d said she wanted to check on the new foal that had been born that week, and which she’d helped bring into the world. It had been a thrilling experience and one she would remember all her life, she thought now, trying to picture the cute little baby and to ignore the throbbing in her head. But it was no good. Every shaft of sunlight was like an arrow through her eyes into the back of her brain.

She was oblivious to Peter’s rapid approach behind her, right until the moment he touched her on the shoulder and nearly made her jump out of her skin. She spun round, wincing as the movement brought the nausea close to the surface.

‘In a hurry, aren’t you?’ He stood still, his hands at his sides and a slight smile curling his mouth. ‘Where’s the fire, or is it just us yokels you want to get away from?’

In spite of her pain, Priscilla’s voice was at its most upper-class as she said tightly, ‘I have a headache, that’s all.’

‘A headache? I’ve heard women like you get headaches. Working-class lassies can’t afford the luxury of them.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous, am I? But then, that’s how you
would
see a country bumpkin like me. But for the war, those hands of yours would still be lily-white and soft as silk, wouldn’t they? And when the war’s over, you’ll no doubt make your fine friends laugh at the tales you tell of life with the peasants. I’ve got your measure, sure enough.’

Priscilla felt a curl of fear tighten her breath, but no trace of it came through in her voice as she said, ‘Don’t blame me for your inferiority complex, Peter Crosse.’

He didn’t have the faintest idea what an inferiority complex was, but the term ‘inferior’ stuck in his craw. ‘Oh, you know me name then? That’s something, I suppose.’

‘I’ve had enough of this.’

When she made to swing round, he moved swiftly, positioning himself in front of her, his legs apart.

‘Get out of my way.’ Her voice was trembling now.

‘And what if I don’t want to?’ His voice dropping almost to a whisper, he said, ‘I asked you out proper, didn’t I? Now didn’t I? But I wasn’t good enough for you. You like a uniform, don’t you? I know, I know. And then anyone will do. Black, white – you’re not fussy. You’ve got a name for yourself in these parts, you an’ that friend of yours.’

‘Then why did you ask me out?’

‘Cos I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a bit of what’s on offer, if you want the truth.’

Through the piercing headache and the lights that were now blinding her vision, Priscilla knew what was going to happen. A power bred of desperation made her suddenly thrust out her hands and push him so hard that, taken by surprise, he stumbled backwards and fell over. Turning, she ran down the lane, but hampered as she was by her physical condition, she’d only gone a short distance when she heard him right behind her. It was then that she screamed, a high-pitched animal sound of terror, but as he threw himself on her and she fell hard to the ground, the breath was knocked out of her body.

Dazed, she felt Peter pull her into the grass verge and down a small slope, to what in winter was a boggy channel, but in the summer months had dried out into a mass of tall ferns and wild plants. He had one hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her screaming again, but, even half-fainting as she was, she fought him. She felt her dress being yanked up over her thighs, and then his hand was groping at her knickers and his fingers were probing at her bare flesh . . .

Kenny didn’t know what it was that had alerted him to Peter Crosse leaving the harvest celebrations so soon after Priscilla. Perhaps there had been a furtiveness to the other man’s demeanour, or maybe it was simply that he knew the farmer’s son had his eye on her, although Priscilla had made it clear she wasn’t interested. Something had made him uneasy anyway, and although he had felt slightly absurd, he had found himself following the broad-shouldered figure of the other fellow, but at a distance.

He had lost sight of Peter in a curve in the lane when he heard the scream, a scream that curdled his blood. And then he was running, his boots sending dust and tiny stones scattering into the warm, still air.

Peter was so intent on what he was trying to do that he wasn’t aware of Kenny until a roar like a charging bull elephant caused his head to swing round. And then Kenny was on top of him, the force of his body knocking Peter sideways, off Priscilla and head-first into a tangle of vicious brambles at the side of the ditch.

Priscilla raised herself to her knees, and in the brief respite as Peter swore and pulled himself free, Kenny managed to haul her as best he could with his crippled hands away from the small gully and up onto the lane, saying urgently, ‘Get away from here,’ as she gasped and spluttered incoherently.

And then Peter was on him, growling curses, and the two men were having a fight that was terribly ill-matched. Not only was Peter taller and heavier than Kenny, but Kenny’s maimed hands – with skin that was still tissue-thin – put him at a hopeless disadvantage. A knockout blow sent Kenny to the ground, and as his head rang, he felt the other man’s hands around his neck as Peter sat astride him.

With blood leaking from his crippled hands, he grappled at the hands locked in a stranglehold at his throat, but his clawing fingers didn’t have the power to make any impression. He thought how strange it was that he was going to meet his end like this, on a quiet lane in England, after surviving the horrors of the last years, when a thwack above him released the iron vice on his windpipe and brought him back from the edge of unconsciousness. And then Priscilla was cradling his head in her lap, screaming and crying, and he heard muffled shouts somewhere in the distance.

Kenny just managed to turn his head and see Peter Crosse spreadeagled beside him, knocked out by the massive lump of wood that Priscilla had wielded like a club, before he relaxed into the blackness that was rushing to meet him.

PART FOUR

The End of the End

1945

Chapter Thirteen

Eliza McGuigan stared at her son, and Caleb stared back at her. The two of them were sitting in the kitchen enjoying a last cup of tea before they turned in for the night, after Eliza had listened to
Evening Prayers
on the wireless. She always listened to
Evening Prayers
because Caleb’s father, Stanley, was in the artillery somewhere in Germany, and she felt it was a way of staying in touch with him. She liked to imagine him, wherever he was, listening too and thinking about her. Not that she knew for sure whether it was broadcast in Germany, but she didn’t want to know. She preferred to think it was, and feel comforted. Now she said weakly, ‘Did I just hear what I thought I heard?’

Caleb nodded, his cup halfway to his mouth, as it had been during the announcement. A few seconds before, just as
Evening Prayers
had been due to start, the familiar voice of Stuart Hibberd on the BBC’s Home Service had said, ‘Here is a newsflash. The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead. I repeat, the German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.’

There had been no further comment; no speculation as to whether the report was correct or a figment of wishful thinking, and no change to the normal schedule of programmes.
Evening Prayers
was already beginning.

‘They wouldn’t say something like that if it wasn’t true, would they?’ Eliza asked shakily.

‘It’s the BBC.’ It was answer enough.

‘So you think he’s really dead? That it’s over?’

Caleb nodded. ‘This time it really is the end of the end.’ There had been so many false expectations, but as the new year had come into being, the colossal investment and sacrifice of D-Day had started to pay dividends. Thousands of fighting ships, assault craft, merchant vessels, aircraft and more than three and a half million men had been flung into Europe, and as the sixth year of the war had begun, victory had seemed within sight. For the next three months epoch-making events had followed one another in breathless succession.

Remembering these, Caleb said now, ‘It was on the cards, Mam, from the time the Allies crossed the east bank of the Rhine and Montgomery penetrated into the Ruhr. Mussolini’s gone and the German forces are surrendering unconditionally. Aye, it’s over.’

‘Oh, lad, lad.’ Eliza burst into tears. ‘I want to believe it, but I’m scared to.’

‘It’s all right, Mam. It’s all right.’ Even as he spoke, Caleb asked himself how it could possibly be all right: for them, for Britain; even for the ordinary people in Germany, who had been fed a tissue of lies by a madman who had caused such unbelievable sorrow. Countries had been all but destroyed, and for what? For what?

His mother must have read in his face something of what he was thinking, because she took his hands, saying through her tears, ‘It’s the future we’ve got to think of now, lad.’

He couldn’t answer her as he would have liked to. His mother was a good woman and he loved her, but the terrible discoveries that had been made by the Allied troops advancing into Germany were beyond her comprehension. Everyone knew that Belsen, Buchenwald, Nordhausen and other concentration camps existed, but few could imagine what had gone on within those places. And the truth, as the newsreel cinemas were portraying, was unimaginable. Caleb had chosen to go and watch those newsreels because he had needed to know the stark, unvarnished truth. His mother had not. And he understood. Still, it coloured his hope for the future – any future – in a world where such things could take place. He wouldn’t insult the animal kingdom by calling the perpetrators of such unspeakable crimes ‘animals’. They were monsters, fiends, demons. But ones who walked on two legs and were made in the image of their Creator. How was that possible? Such thoughts kept him awake most nights and haunted his days, until he thought he would go mad. He had read the reports from the BBC correspondent, Richard Dimbleby, who had been the first reporter into Belsen, the world of nightmares. And they had given him nightmares, sure enough. The ghastly bestiality was unthinkable to the human mind, and yet it had happened.

‘Caleb?’ His mother shook his hands gently. ‘Do you hear me? You have to think of the future now.’

‘I know, Mam. I know.’ He extricated his hands from hers and finished his tea. If any good at all could come out of those concentration camps, it was that their existence alone justified the war. No one could have any doubt – after Belsen and Dachau and Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, and all the other terrible names that were going to be engraved in the history of infamy – that the sacrifices that had been made to stop the Nazis were worth it.

He glanced down at his legs. To all intents and purposes he looked whole and, since he’d had the prosthesis, his outlook on life had changed at a personal level. True, the stump was sore at times, and he had the occasional stubborn ulcer on it, which he had to bathe in neat methylated spirit, the most effective and cheapest way to avoid infection; but he’d come to terms with that. He could walk tall again, and felt like a man rather than a cripple. He’d said the same to Esther in one of his letters, and she had written back that he had always been a man, as far as she was concerned. His heart had jumped at that, and then he’d read on and she had added, ‘Same as Kenny and Harold and the others.’

He glanced at his mother, who was now sitting with her eyes shut listening to
Evening Prayers
. He had told her about Esther and her circumstances – all of it, except the way he felt about her. But he dared bet his mother had cottoned on anyway; she was a canny old bird, his mam.

He waited until the programme had finished and his mother had switched off the wireless and dampened down the fire in the range with slack and wet tea leaves, before he said casually, ‘I was thinking I might suggest to Esther that she looks for somewhere round here, once she leaves the farm. It’s familiar territory to her, being from Chester-le-Street, and with her being on her own with the bairn, a friendly face or two is no bad thing.’

His mother stopped what she was doing and turned to face him, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I thought she’d got this servant of hers – Rose – with her?’

‘Aye, she has, but Rose isn’t really a servant any more.’

‘So she’s not on her own then.’

He shrugged.