The Iron Stallions (26 page)

‘It’s a long time ago now.’

‘So is George, come to that, and I have to earn a living. Everybody thinks Americans are all wealthy. I’m the original poor one.’

For the first time he realised how tired she looked. Her eyes seemed enormous and her face looked peaked and ill. There were shadows on her cheeks, she seemed to have lost weight and he saw there were touches of grey in her hair.

‘What will you do?’

Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back and managed a smile. ‘I guess I’ll find something. But I need a holiday first. I think I’ll go into the country for a while, if I can find somewhere.’

‘Why not come to Braxby, Lou? You know the people there, and my mother would have you, I know.’

There was a long silence, then she answered him quietly as if she were afraid. ‘I can’t, Josh.’

‘Where will you go then?’

‘Well–’ she shook her head as though trying to bring some sense to her scattered thoughts ‘–my friend offered. But she has a family. She’s already overcrowded.

‘
We’re
not overcrowded. Between us, my mother and I have more rooms than we know what to do with. We have two children–’

‘Yours, Josh–?’

‘They will be soon. They’re evacuees – orphans. They need someone to look after them. You could help if you felt you needed to do something in return.’ Josh paused and decided to be honest with her. ‘Jocelyn Reith was looking after them. You’ll remember her, of course. We were going to be married but when I came home from Africa I found she’d gone. Please come, Lou. You look done in, and whatever else, Braxby’s quiet. Besides, I need someone to talk to, to eat with, to have a drink with. My life went a bit wrong, Lou, like yours, and, with the second front on its way, it would be nice not to be too much alone.’

On the train going north, he probed, wondering what had happened between her and her husband.

She shrugged and gave a wry smile. ‘George and I parted without regrets,’ she said. ‘There was no fight. We just decided it was a good idea to let go before we started throwing things. But he had no family and when he was hurt I couldn’t let him die alone. Besides–’

He waited but she changed her mind, gave him her twisted smile again and looked at him with sad dark eyes.

‘We’re a couple of lost souls, Josh, aren’t we? We’ve neither of us got a damn thing.’

‘
I
have,’ Josh said. ‘I’ve got a lot really, when you think of it. I’ve got Braxby and to me that means something. I’m probably not the soldier my father was and I’m certainly not the soldier my grandfather was. On the other hand–’ he smiled ‘–it’s a different army these days, so perhaps it’s better that way.’

She said nothing, her eyes on his face, and he went on enthusiastically.

‘I’ve also got the kids, Lou. They’re bright and I think they’ll be a credit to me. I’ve started the business of adoption. There was a bit of fuss as I was a widower but my mother backed me up and it’s going to go through.’

Louise had gone strangely quiet and, seeing there were tears in her eyes, he hurried on. ‘They’d be glad to have someone around the house. I need a housekeeper, in fact. I need someone to run the place. Would you do it for a while?’

She looked up slowly and he pressed on. ‘You seem to need help and you were a friend of Chloe’s, so it would seem right to help you, especially as you’d be helping me, too.’

She considered the idea for a long time then she nodded.

‘I’ll try it, Josh,’ she said. ‘I’m not a country-woman but I could learn.’ She gave him an unexpectedly cool look. ‘But are you sure a housekeeper’s all you want, Josh?’

He smiled. ‘Just a housekeeper. Anything else would probably end in disaster, as it did with Jocelyn.’

‘When do I start?’

‘I’m due back with the Regiment tomorrow night. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve started.’

By February, 1944, Britain seemed to be shrinking fast. Inconvenience had been heaped on the hard-pressed British people for months and now, as the second front drew nearer, the whole south coast area seethed with men. First there had been the Czechs, the Poles, the French, the Dutch and the Norwegians; now there were a million and a half Americans. Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall were so crowded with lorries, tank transporters and bulldozers that dozens of streets had become one-way to help the flow of traffic.

No one knew when the great movement across the Channel would come, so passes were granted as often as possible, because it was clear that when the time came there would be no embarkation leave and, since the Regiment was in North Notts, it was easy for Josh to get home to Braxby.

The place looked well. All Jocelyn’s neglect had been cleared up, and even the windows outside had been painted.

‘We did it,’ Orne said proudly. ‘I did the bottom half. She did the top half on the ladder.’

Louise seemed to be a new woman and was bubbling over with enthusiasm.

‘We’ve finished the hall, the dining room and the library. Anything else can wait but, at least, you can now come home to a house that looks as if it belongs to this day and age.’ She gave Josh a forthright look. ‘It’s all straightforward now. I could leave any time.’

Josh frowned. This was unexpected. ‘Where would you go?’ he asked.

‘There are plenty of places I’ve found. One of the London publishing firms has moved to Ripon for the duration. They’d give me a job.’

‘Do you
want
to go, Lou?’

‘I can’t stay here indefinitely. It’s growing too important to me. I’m beginning to regard it as home.’

The thought of her leaving worried him. He’d grown used to seeing her about the place and he suddenly wasn’t sure what his feelings really amounted to, because more and more he found himself thinking back to the time he’d spent with her in her home in Charlottesville. And he needed her in more ways than one, because his visits, though coming often, were only short, and his mind had to be filled only with the Regiment and what lay ahead of it.

There were so many men in the south of England now, the coastline seemed to bulge, and still landing craft and small ships continued to add to the overcrowding. Large areas of London were filled with endless caravans of drab army-trucks loaded with war supplies, huge dumps of stores and strings of murderous-looking guns parked nose-to-tail just off the pavements with reserve tanks, ammunition caissons and other military hardware.

The 19th were near Leicester, close to the double-tracked road that ran north. One track had been closed and the other stuffed with tanks, lorries and guns, and all round them was rumbling of huge machines, vague shapes looming out of the darkness as new vehicles arrived. New officers appeared and were trained to the nth degree. Men like them were busy in every field and on every slope in the country. They waddled their tanks in and out of duck ponds, and a concrete facsimile of the bows of a landing craft was built so that drivers could practise loading and unloading. Practice landings were taking place on the shores of Scottish lochs where they took their machines to sea and trundled them off on to cold pebbly beaches, and the 19th. were among the first to organise launches at sea with the new swimming tanks. The weather was cold and the general in command arrived in a bad temper to announce that they would make the launchings the following day.

The next morning, an LCT with seven tanks on board slipped to sea in what appeared to be a flat calm. The naval Chief Trials Officer was not very sanguine.

‘It’s too rough,’ he announced. ‘There’ll be fatalities.’

The general studiously ignored him and, as the ramp dropped, the first tank moved forward, cocked its tail into the air and splashed into the water. Immediately, it was obvious something had gone wrong; instead of heading towards the beach, it began to drift helplessly away.

‘It’s the propeller,’ Aubrey yelled from the turret. ‘It won’t engage!’

Pandemonium broke out and everybody started shouting at once. A heaving line was thrown and a rope was passed so that the tank was held until a naval launch arrived and passed a towing line. As it took up the slack, however, the jerk was too violent and the tank swung wildly. There was another yell from Aubrey and he and his crew began to scramble to safety as the tank began to sink.

The general was none too pleased, especially when the next tank became jammed in the door of the landing craft. Depressed and unhappy, Josh tried to avoid him on the return journey but, as he stepped from the landing craft to his waiting car, the general, a man never known for his good temper, leaned over.

‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get six practice launches under your belt – every one of you – both as commander and as driver. Not only in daylight but in the dark.’

‘It’ll take a long time, sir.’

The general gestured cheerfully. ‘It’ll work out.’

Sure enough, it did, and within three weeks, they were successfully getting tanks out of the landing craft every fifteen to twenty seconds.

By this time, Josh had worked out for himself when the invasion would start. So had all the others.

‘Tide’s got to be right,’ Reeves said. ‘So has the moon. I’ve a fiver on with Syd Dodgin for the beginning of June. Somewhere between the fourth and the eighth.’

They received orders to check the waterproof sealing of their tanks. Every rivet had to be rasped clean and painted with waterproof paint. Extension funnels were fitted to the exhaust pipes and the air inlet louvres, and yards of balloon fabric were pasted round the turret ring, the driver’s visor and the gun mounting. Underneath the sealing was explosive cordtex wired to a headlamp socket so that to remove it all they had to do was switch on the lights.

By this time, Josh was spending hours in his car going to one place or another because conferences seemed to take place every day when there wasn’t an exercise, and the office safe grew more difficult to close as the secret papers accumulated. He spent the nights in his room poring over aerial photographs of unnamed beaches that showed the known locations of minefields, anti-tank guns and other defences. They were as ready as they could possibly be. They were trained, their machinery and weapons were in tip-top condition, everybody had had as much leave as could be given, and Josh had decided they’d better all settle back now and simply wait when a letter arrived from his mother.

‘I think you’d better come home if it’s possible,’ she wrote. ‘There’s been a fire and Louise has been burned. If you don’t make it you’re going to lose your housekeeper.’

He took the problem to Brigadier Rydderch who waved him away.

‘Push off, Josh,’ he said. ‘You’ll be a better commanding officer if you have no worries. Get in seven days if you can. Toby Reeves can run the show. Just leave your telephone number wherever you go.’

He drove to Braxby as if the hounds of hell were after him. His mother met him at the door.

‘It was a fault in the electric wiring,’ she explained. ‘It’s so old and it’s impossible these days to get anybody to repair anything. Louise smelled it first and got everybody outside, then she went back in and tried to put it out. By the time the firemen came, she was exhausted and burned.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In the hospital. But it’s not serious. As a matter of fact, I was about to go and fetch her home. Perhaps you’d better go instead.’

The fire had started on the landing close to where the children slept and the corridor was blackened and soaked with water all the way down the stairs. The banister and several doors were charred.

‘She saved us, you know,’ Rosanna said soberly. ‘She got Kitty in ’er arms and put a wet towel over my ’ead, and told me to hang on to ’er.’

When he arrived at the hospital, Louise was sitting in a waiting room near the reception desk, with a small hold-all containing her belongings. Both her hands were bandaged. She looked dark-eyed with worry and he crossed to her at once and, holding her shoulders, kissed her on the mouth. Her eyes immediately filled with tears and he put his arms round her and held her gently.

‘I was terrified the place would burn down, Josh,’ she said. ‘I knew how much it meant to you.’

‘You were going to leave?’

‘How did you know?’

‘My mother wrote.’

She was silent for a while. ‘Yes, I was. Perhaps I’ll stay until my hands are better. It won’t take long.’

‘Why? Why are you leaving me, Lou?’

‘I’ve told you. I was beginning to regard Braxby as my home.’

‘It is. As long as you want it to be.’

There was a long silence then her shoulders moved in a tired shrug. ‘I think I’ll go back to America,’ she said.

‘No!’ The idea of her vanishing made his voice harsh. ‘You can’t disappear like that. You belong here.’

‘For God’s sake, Josh, I’m an American. I can go anywhere I like.’

‘My grandmother was an American, too! She also felt she didn’t belong here when she first came. But in the end she did. By God, she did.’ Remembering the tiny, stout-hearted old woman who had clung on to his heritage until he was old enough to claim it stirred Josh. ‘She was a good American, but she managed to become a damn good Englishwoman, too.’

Her shoulders moved in a tired little shrug. ‘I can’t Josh. I can’t.’

‘Lou, I’m asking you to marry me!’

She stared at him, her face blank, and he pushed his case harder.

‘I love you, Lou. I think I loved you even before I married Ailsa. I’m not being disloyal to her, but I’d have married you long since, I think, if I’d known you were free.’

He’d been aware for some time of the fact that he loved her but the fire had brought it to a head more quickly than he’d expected. He’d felt he had no right to offer marriage when the second front might well make it widowhood in a matter of weeks, because no one had any idea what the cost would be. Now it no longer seemed important.

Her face was sad, bewildered and proud at the same time. She touched his face with one of her bandaged hands. ‘I know, Josh. I’ve known for a long time. And I love you. I always have. But I’ve still got to go.’