It was a grand wedding, wasn’t it, though I gave up thinking long ago that anyone’d ever get Will Stubbs down the aisle. But fair play, Mary managed it though no one can say those two rushed headlong into wedlock, now can they?’
‘Tilda!’ Helen scolded smilingly. Then raising her glass she took a sip from it. ‘And here’s wishing them all the happiness in the world!’
‘Amen to that.’ Tilda turned in the doorway. ‘You’ll think on, milady, not to forget and switch the light on?’ An illuminated conservatory would fetch every German bomber on the Dutch coast zooming in over Rowangarth and would land them with a hefty fine and a severe telling-off from the police for doing such a stupid thing.
‘I’ll remember. I think you’d better remind me tomorrow to ask Nathan to take the light bulb out.’ A conservatory was too big and awkward to black out effectively. Best take no chances. ‘And don’t wait up. Goodness knows when the pair of them will be back from Denniston. They have a key. You’ve had a long day – off to bed with you.’
And Tilda said she thought she could do with an early night, but that she would see to the doors and windows first, then check up on the blackouts.
‘Good night, milady,’ she smiled, closing the door softly behind her.
Dear Lady Helen. They would have to take good care of her for there were few left from the mould she’d been made from; precious few, indeed.
Tom Dwerryhouse hung up his army-issue gas mask, took off his glengarry cap, then leaned the rifle in the corner.
There had been an urgent parade of the Home Guard called for this evening and he and several others had had to leave the wedding early and put on their khaki for a seven o’clock muster.
It was a relief to be told that their rifles – ammunition, too – had arrived at last and he opened the long, wooden boxes only to sigh in disbelief. Those long-promised rifles – and he knew it the minute he laid eyes on them – were leftovers from the last war and had lain, it seemed, untouched and uncared for in some near-forgotten store.
He took the rifle, breaking it at the stock to squint again down the barrel. Filthy! It would take a long time to get the inside of that barrel to shine like it ought to. There would have to be a rifle inspection at every parade to let them know that Corporal Dwerryhouse wasn’t going to allow any backsliding when it came to the care of rifles, old and near-useless though they were.
He snapped it shut, gazing at it, remembering against his will when last he fired such a rifle. It was something he would never forget. He knew the exact minute he took aim, awaiting the order to fire. And his finger had coldly, calmly, squeezed the trigger that Épernay morning.
It was the bullet from his own rifle, he knew it, that took the life of the eighteen-year-old boy. Aim at the white envelope pinned to the deserter’s tunic to show them where his heart was, that firing squad had been told. But the other eleven men had been so uneasy, so shocked that he, Tom Dwerryhouse, took it upon himself to make sure the end would be quick and clean.
A sharpshooter, he had been, but an executioner they made him that day. Refuse to take part and he too would have been shot for insubordination and another, less squeamish, would have taken his place.
Then, directly afterwards, the shelling started and heaven took its revenge for the execution of an innocent and directed a scream of shells on to that killing field so the earth shook. That was when he fell, surrendering to a blackness he’d thought was death.
Rifleman Tom Dwerryhouse did not die in that Épernay dawn. He awoke to stumble dazed, in search of the army camp he did not know had been wiped out by the German barrage.
How long he walked he never remembered, but a farmer had taken him in and given him food and shelter and civilian clothes to work in. And Tom acted out the part of a shell-shocked French soldier, and those who came to the farm looked with pity at the poilu who was so shocked he uttered never a word.
The Army sent a letter to his mother, telling her he had been killed in action and his sister wrote to the hospital at Celverte, to tell Alice he was dead.
The night of that letter, Alice was taken in rape. She had not fought, she told him, because she too wanted to die, but instead she was left pregnant with the child who came to be known as Drew Sutton.
Now white-hot anger danced in front of Tom’s eyes. He flung the rifle away as though it would contaminate him and it fell with a clatter to the stone floor.
He hoped with all his heart he had broken it.
Tom stood hidden, unmoving. To a gamekeeper, stealth was second nature. Such a man must move without the snapping of a twig underfoot, learn to sink into night shadows or merge into sunlight dapples. It was, in part, to ensure that young gamebirds were not disturbed nor frightened unduly, but mostly that inborn stealth helped outwit poachers, out to take pheasants or partridge.
The sudden clicking of a rifle bolt was a sound he remembered well. Breath indrawn, he awaited the command he knew would follow.
‘Halt! Who goes there?’
‘Friend,’ Tom called clearly.
‘We’re armed. Step forward!’ A pinpoint of light searched him out, swept him from head to feet. ‘Put down that gun!’
‘It isn’t loaded.’ Slowly, carefully, Tom laid his shotgun at his feet.
‘You’re on army property. What are you doing here?’
‘I know I am. But it’s been Pendenys land for a long time – I’d forgotten you lot.’
‘That’s as maybe, but I want to know why you’re creeping around in the dark, and armed at that.’
‘A gamekeeper usually carries a shotgun.’ Tom had recovered his composure now. ‘And they creep around because that’s the best way to catch poachers. Meat’s on the ration, and a brace of pheasants fetches thirty bob on the black market. And if I’m on Pendenys land it’s because I often meet up with their keeper, doing his own night beat. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘But how did you get in?’ The soldiers lowered their rifles. ‘This place is supposed to be secure.’
‘It didn’t keep me out. If it’s security you’re bothered about, I’d take a look at Brock Covert. It’s the way I always come in at night. If you’re interested, meet me in the daylight and I’ll show it to you. Name’s Tom Dwerryhouse, by the way. I’m keeper on Rowangarth land, joining this. And I was a soldier myself once; was a marksman when you two were still messing your nappies. Could have put one through your cap badge at a hundred yards!’
‘Ah, well. Got to be sure – and you shouldn’t have been here.’ The man reached into his pocket. ‘We were just going to have a quick fag. Want one?’
‘Don’t smoke, thanks. Never did. Want a sup of tea?’ Tom fished in his game bag for his vacuum flask.
‘Thanks, mate. Name’s Watson – corporal. And this one here’s Johnny.’
‘Which regiment – or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘Green Howards.’
‘Ah.’ Carefully, in the darkness, Tom filled the cap of the flask, passing it over. ‘Yorkshire mob, eh? What’s a regiment like the Greens doing here?’
‘Buggered if I know.’ They settled themselves comfortably, young soldiers and old soldier. ‘They don’t tell us anything.’
‘Nothing changes. They never did.’
‘It’s my guess the CO doesn’t know what’s going on either though he makes out he does.’
Tom