We'll Meet Again (8 page)

Chloe went home and later that afternoon she tackled Marcus about the rumours and all he did was laugh without explaining anything. Later that night, he was obliged to tell her.

Prue was glad to be home, but it was a home bowed down with misery. It appeared her parents were hardly speaking to each other. This was so unusual, she was immediately concerned and waylaid her mother when she went up to change for dinner. ‘Mama, what’s wrong? I never saw such long faces.’

Her mother followed her into her bedroom and shut the door. ‘Bill Stevens is dead. And Edith is blaming your father.’

Prue sat down heavily on the bed and stared at her mother. ‘Dead? How? Why is Edith blaming Papa?’

‘The Home Guard were building an underground bunker in the woods. It was all so secret and so silly. The roof caved in on Bill and he was buried. If it hadn’t been for the blacksmith, they’d never have got him out. He was alive then but died on the way to hospital.’

Prue didn’t know what to say. She was as shocked as everyone in the village must be. Bill Stevens was well known and well liked. He had taught her and Gillie to ride as soon as they were big enough to sit on a small pony and he had often told them stories of her father’s heroism in the Great War, which they only half believed. He had been a stalwart friend as well as a servant and she could not imagine Longfordham Hall without him. ‘Oh, how awful. And you say Mrs Stevens is blaming Papa.’

‘Yes. There was a team of regular sappers helping them during the day and they made sure it was safe, but your father decided to carry on digging after they’d gone. He was anxious to get it finished, heaven knows why, unless he thought the invasion was imminent. We aren’t told these things, are we? I was asleep in bed
when I heard him come in and pick up the telephone in the hall. I went out on the landing and heard him telling Doctor Hewitt there had been an accident in the wood and Bill Stevens had been hurt. I went down to ask him about it, but he just told me to go back to bed.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Of course not. I dressed and followed him back to his men. It was a dreadful scene, ghostly almost. They were in a clearing lit by a hurricane lamp hanging on a tree. There was earth piled up everywhere. Bill Stevens was lying on the ground with half a dozen men standing over him. Someone had covered him with an army greatcoat and folded another under his head. He was deeply unconscious and very dirty, but I couldn’t see any injury. Your father squatted down beside him. I was concerned that Edith would have to be told, so I went and roused her. We got back just as the ambulance arrived and she went in it with him, but he died before they got him to hospital. He was too crushed, you see, and he wasn’t a young man.’

‘Oh dear, poor Mrs Stevens. Poor Papa. He must be feeling awful.’

‘I am extremely angry with him. The whole scheme was mad from beginning to end. And a good man has died needlessly.’

‘Mama,’ she said, taking both her mother’s hands in her own. ‘This is not the time to be angry. Papa needs you.’

‘If he had told me what he was doing, I might have been able to dissuade him, but no, it had to be a secret, as if everyone in the village didn’t know something odd was going on. There were rumours that he was digging a tunnel from the hall to the station so that we could escape if no one else could.’

‘Surely no one believes that of him?’

‘Edith does.’

‘She is upset. She will calm down. Have you talked to her?’

‘She won’t listen.’ She pulled her hands away from Prue’s and walked to the window, staring out across the garden. The flowers had long gone and it was looking bleak and damp. ‘This war is spoiling everyone’s lives, making liars out of truthful men and making them do things they would never have dreamt of doing in peacetime. Your father was always open and above board and now he can’t tell his wife what he is doing, nor look me in the face.’

‘Oh, Mama, I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

‘No, just be your usual sunny self.’ She turned back into the room. ‘Let’s get changed. Cook won’t be pleased if we keep dinner waiting, though how I shall manage to swallow it, I don’t know. And I so wanted this to be a happy occasion to make up for the birthday party you didn’t have.’

‘This is not the time to be worrying about birthdays, Mama. I have Papa’s cheque and very generous it is too, and I did have a little shindig with the people at work. Tim sent me a lovely brooch, the wings of his squadron in silver.’

‘Not a ring? I wondered …’

‘Not the right time for that either.’

Dinner was a sombre affair: the gamekeeper had evidently forgotten about the pheasants and they had some kind of hotpot, eaten mostly in silence, and as soon as it was over, her father disappeared into his study. Prue excused herself and went after him.

She found him slumped onto a leather covered sofa, his head in his hands. ‘Papa, Mama told me about Mr Stevens.’

‘I expected she would. She is angry.’

She sat beside him. ‘I know, but it won’t last. She loves you too much to be out of sorts with you for long.’

‘I hope you are right, but I’m angry with myself.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’

‘I oughtn’t to. We were sworn to secrecy.’ He gave her a wan smile. ‘But I know you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act and won’t pass it on. I was approached by the Ministry of Defence to form a special squad to harass the enemy if the country was ever occupied. I was asked to recruit six or seven men who would go into hiding the minute the Germans arrived. Our task was information-gathering, observing and reporting, harassing the enemy, disrupting their communications, sabotage and anything else we could think of to hinder them. And we were to do it from hidden underground bunkers. We were excavating a bunker with the help of sappers. It had to be big enough to accommodate all of us and our weapons and ammunition. And it had to have an escape tunnel in case the entrance was discovered. The main room was almost finished and we were working on the tunnel. That’s where Bill was when the roof fell in. We’d shored it up as we went. I checked the supports myself before Bill started and I swear they were all sound. But I was wrong, so wrong. Bill came across a tree root and was hacking away at it when the roof gave way. It buried him.’

‘Oh, Papa.’

‘Everyone in the village knows about the bunker now but they think I was doing it off my own bat, not because of instructions from the MOD with a time set for it to be completed. I can’t tell them there are dozens of these secret bunkers all over East Anglia.’

‘And so they believe the worst?’

‘Yes. What is it they say? The first casualty of war is truth. How right they are.’

‘What does Mama know?’

‘After what happened, I had to tell her something but not
everything. She came to the site when Bill was lying unconscious after the blacksmith pulled him out, and she could see some of it. We can’t use it now, too many people know about it, so I’ve told the men to close it up and make it safe. It was all for nothing. Bill died for nothing.’ His voice cracked. ‘Mrs Stevens blames me and I don’t blame her. I have lost a faithful servant and a good friend and I can’t forgive myself so how can I expect anyone else to forgive me?’

‘Oh, Papa, you must not feel like that. It was an accident. Mr Stevens was a casualty of war, just the same as if he were in the front line trenches, flying an aeroplane or sailing the seas. You were both doing your duty.’

He turned to smile at her. ‘Bless you, child, do you think I have not tried to comfort myself with that? The trouble is that I can’t see past the funeral and the knowledge I shall have to say something to the congregation. I don’t know how I’m going to get through it.’

‘You will, Papa, because you are strong and honourable, and Mama will come round, you’ll see.’

He sighed and patted her hand. ‘I hope you are right. You had better go back to her, she needs you.’

The funeral was held the day before Prue was due to go back to Bletchley. The whole village turned up, even the schoolchildren, who were shepherded into the back pews by Miss Green. The Earl and the Countess, with Prue between them, sat in the Le Strange pew. She was holding their hands, hoping her love and strength might flow from one to the other through her. Never in her whole life had she known her parents to be so at odds with each other and it was hurting badly. She wished Gillie were there. He was so strong he would be able to knock their heads together, which is what she felt like doing.

She listened to the Reverend Mr Bradshaw intone, ‘I said I
will take heed to my ways; that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep my mouth as it were a bridle while the ungodly is in my sight. I held my tongue and spake nothing. I kept silence, yes, even from good words, but it was pain and grief to me …’ Who, she wondered, had chosen that psalm? She squeezed her father’s hand and he turned to look at her and then at his wife. She was staring straight ahead.

The Rector finished. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end.’

The congregation murmured ‘Amen’ and the Earl rose and went to stand beside the coffin. Everyone watched him expectantly. He cleared his throat several times, then put his hand on the coffin, as if drawing strength from it. ‘Bill Stevens was more than a servant to me,’ he said. ‘He was my companion and friend through thick and thin. We served together in France in the Great War when we were young. We grew old together. But this war is different. It involves the whole population, men and women, old and young, servicemen and civilians. It is total. Bill understood that. He wanted to do his duty to protect those he loved and he died doing it. I …’ He paused to collect himself. ‘I regret the manner of his death more than I can say and my thoughts are with his wife and family at this sad time …’ His voice trailed away. He looked down at the coffin. ‘Goodbye, Bill, my friend, may you rest in peace.’ And with that he stumbled back to his seat. Except for Edith Stevens who was sobbing quietly, the congregation was utterly silent, there was not even a cough, a murmur or the rustle of hymn book pages. Prue could almost feel their stares on the back of her neck.

The Rector read the twenty-third psalm and the service ended with the singing of ‘Abide with Me’, after which they followed the coffin to the newly dug grave for the interment.

It was over and yet it was far from over. No one would ever forget what had happened; tongues would continue to wag. Edith would go on grieving for a long time and she would continue to vilify the Earl. Prue prayed that her mother would come to understand why her husband had behaved in the way he had and be reconciled with him. All three walked back to the Hall in silence.

After luncheon Prue decided to go for a ride. It was often the first thing she did on arriving home, but this time she had not felt like leaving her mother. But Copper needed some exercise and so did she before returning to Bletchley and the sedentary job of translating German communications in smoky Hut Three.

It was when she went to the stables that it hit her. Stevens was not there to saddle her mare. The stables were deserted and the three horses whose home it was were looking over their stalls as if questioning why no one was busy around them. Even the stable boy was nowhere to be seen. She stroked the three noses, one by one. ‘I know you are sad, we all are.’ Hearing a sound, she climbed the stairs above the stable which had, many years before, been the living quarters of the head groom, and there she found sixteen-year-old Terry, sitting on a rickety chair crying heartbrokenly. He scrambled to his feet when he saw her. ‘My lady.’

‘Terry, I know it is a very miserable day, but the horses don’t know that, do they? They still need looking after and it’s up to you to see to them now.’

He wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Off you go then.’

He preceded her downstairs. ‘Shall I saddle Copper for you, my lady?’ His voice was watery but he was no longer crying.

‘No, I’ll do it myself. You look after the others.’

She saddled up, mounted and set off for the heath, but today
there was no joy in her ride. The war had come to Longfordham with a vengeance and her cosy life was changing irrevocably.

Sheila missed Prue. Without her friend’s leavening influence, life at Victoria Villa was miserable. Aunt Constance never left off grumbling and scoffing at her. What had she to be so superior about? She had a nice house and didn’t seem short of money, but money and a house did not bring happiness, not as there had been with Pa and Ma in West Ham. Sometimes the sadness rose to the surface and on those days she wanted to hide herself away and be miserable in private. But Victoria Villa wasn’t an easy place to be private in. Her aunt had no patience with displays of emotion, maintaining they were a sign of weakness. Prue said she understood how she felt, but how could she? No one who had not been through the same tragedy could understand. She spent her off-duty time in her unheated bedroom, sitting on the bed with the eiderdown round her to keep warm and wrote her journal and letters to the Bennetts, to Janet and to Chris.

‘Dear Chris,’ she wrote. ‘I went to the pictures with my friend Prue last week. We saw
The Wizard of Oz.
It is really for children but I enjoyed the singing and it took my mind off the war for a little while. We went to a dance too, to celebrate Prue’s twenty-first birthday. She has lots of friends and some of them danced with me, but I would rather be dancing with you.’ Unable to talk about her work, she went on to write about the town and the countryside in autumn. Running out of things to say, she concluded, ‘I hope you are well and able to keep warm. Write to me soon, Love from Sheila.’

After that she turned to the notebook she used to write her journal letters to her parents. She imagined them at home, eagerly waiting to hear from her and so she let her mind and pencil
run away with her. It was all there: her homesickness, her first impressions of her aunt, her job as a post girl, her friendship with Prue which made it all bearable, although she was careful not to say anything about her work in case the book was found by someone who had no business knowing about it.