LITMIR.BIZ

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Jos, this is Bethany Merston, school marm extraordinaire.’

      Jos hadn’t taken his eyes from the slim figure that stood close by. She wasn’t pretty, in the conventional sense, but she had a liveliness that enchanted him. Everything about her shone: her deep-brown hair glossy beneath the April sun, soft brown eyes sparkling with a hundred different lights. She wore a faded cotton print, the dress so well washed and mended, it was a wonder it still held together. He’d seen first hand the privations suffered by the civilian population, but here they mattered not a jot. Bethany Merston transcended them.

      He had to stop. He couldn’t think like that. No involvement with the natives, that was his motto. Particularly the female natives. Those kind of affairs had been left behind in Canada. It had been work, work, work since he arrived in England. He was a professional soldier with a job to do and he needed no entanglements. Entanglement meant feelings and feelings meant loss and he’d had enough of that to last him a lifetime – however long that proved to be.

      ‘Good to meet you,’ he said stiffly.

      He didn’t sound as though he thought it good. Eddie was looking at him curiously but the girl merely nodded in reply, a curt little motion of her head. ‘Come with me, Ralph, time is precious and we mustn’t waste it.’

      Slightly bemused, the boy followed after her.

      ‘That wasn’t too friendly.’ Eddie looked across at him, his forehead puckered. The hazel eyes held a puzzled expression. ‘In fact, it was pretty darn rude and not like you, Jos, not like you at all. What’s up?’

      He felt his shoulders tense involuntarily. He didn’t need an interrogation. ‘What should be up – other than I’m hot and tired and I’ve just got back from a wholly useless mission?’

      ‘I know it was a bad call, but still… you didn’t have to be quite so abrupt. Bethany Merston is a nice woman, real nice.’

      ‘I’m sure she is, but right now all I want is to offload a kitbag that’s breaking my back and get some food. I haven’t eaten since six this morning.’

      Eddie made no reply but remained where he was, fixing his friend with a hard gaze. It seemed he was trying to puzzle something out. Finally, he said, ‘It’s still that woman, isn’t it? The one back in Toronto. Sylvie. Wasn’t that her name?’ His eyes had lost their questioning look and were now shrewd and measuring. ‘Gee, that was an age ago. She must really have messed you up. You just don’t like women any more.’

      Jos felt annoyance grow and tried to subdue it. ‘Okay. She messed me up – for a while. But now I’m definitely unmessed and that’s the way I intend to stay. And I’m fine with women but we’re fighting a war, remember, and they’re an unnecessary complication.’

      ‘They’re one of the reasons we’re fighting,’ Eddie said mildly. ‘Anyway, you needn’t worry about Beth Merston. We hardly see her. C’mon, we go this way.’

      For someone Eddie hardly saw, he appeared remarkably friendly with Beth Merston, but Jos kept this reflection to himself. Eddie’s success with women was legendary and it was unlikely Miss Merston would remain immune. Few women did.

      ‘No,’ his friend continued, as they started along the gravel path that wound its way to the left of the truck park. ‘She’s nearly always up there.’ He jerked a shoulder towards the house. ‘The old lady keeps her busy; she needs a lot of looking after by all accounts.’

      He was glad to hear it. Whatever he’d said to Eddie, meeting Bethany Merston had given him a jolt. Something about her had reached down and tugged at his soul, and he needed to stamp on the feeling instantly. Sylvie had led him a merry dance, lying and cheating her way into his life, lying and cheating her way out of her husband’s. The husband of whom Jos had had no idea. He was over that, well and truly over it, and Eddie was wrong that Sylvie had soured him. In the end she’d not been so important, a rare stumble in an abiding reluctance to get involved. But this girl was different. Every instinct was warning him that she was a far greater danger to staying heartwhole than any number of Sylvies. He’d known it the minute he’d looked into her eyes.

      His companion stopped outside a line of small buildings. ‘This is it. The one in the middle is ours. It’s about the only habitable part of the whole caboodle. Next door there’s a tool shed and the building at the far end, God knows what that was – it looks like it might have been a john, but primitive isn’t the word.’

      Jos followed him over the threshold, bending his six-foot frame to get through the doorway. He reached up and tapped the lintel. ‘Something to remember.’

      ‘Don’t tell me. I must have knocked out half my brains by now.’

      ‘You mean there are some left?’

      Eddie punched him good naturedly. ‘You’re over there.’

      There were four camp beds crammed into the small space, two along one wall and two against the wall opposite. The third side of the room boasted a narrow window, whose panes were so small and so badly streaked with dirt that only the dimmest light made its way through. Once the sun disappeared, Jos thought, you’d hardly see a hand in front of you. Several pairs of trousers, one or two serge battledress jackets and the odd shirt were hanging from nails that had been knocked into the supporting beams.

      Eddie saw him looking. ‘Our wardrobe,’ he quipped.

      ‘And these?’ Jos pointed to his bulging backpack. ‘Do we hang these, too?’

      ‘Stow it under the bed, if you can.’

      He did as instructed and sat down heavily on the knobbly mattress. It didn’t give an inch. ‘Straw,’ he guessed. ‘Ah well, no doubt we’ll be so tired we won’t even notice the lumps. But what about a shower? I could do with one before I report to McMasters.’

      ‘When you do, he’ll get you to check the camouflage again. I’ve done it twice since I got here. The tents are pretty exposed and he’s obsessive. Ever since he found out about the Messerschmitts. Did you hear about that? They attacked our guys last week at Cuckmere Haven. That’s a few miles down the road and he doesn’t want a repeat. The bastards came skimming over the water at sunrise and up the valley.’

      ‘I’m fine with the camouflage, I just need to get a wash first.’

      ‘They’re fixing a washroom for us right now. The men have already got theirs, a couple of shower blocks built in the fields.’

      ‘And I guess the colonel’s got his. He’ll be up at the house washing in luxury.’

      ‘He’s billeted there, natch, along with the rest of the senior officers, but I’m not too sure about the luxury. The house is pretty beat up.’

      ‘Who owns it anyway? It looked a sizeable place on my way up here.’

      ‘It’s large enough but at one time, I guess, it must have been a good deal larger. Seems there were farms attached. We’re camped on one, though I’m not sure who owns it now. The house and gardens belong to a little old lady called Alice Summers.’

      ‘And your friend, Bethany, is her companion?’ He didn’t want to talk about the girl and he couldn’t understand why he was.

      ‘That’s it. Beth looks after her. It was Alice’s husband who built the place. Some time around the turn of the century. Since then, it’s been more or less abandoned – you’re looking at thirty years of decay. No one’s worked the land or maintained the house. And after all the money the guy must have spent on it! By all accounts, he was real wealthy – made his fortune in buttons, would you believe?’

      ‘So one of the nouveau riche,’ Jos joked. ‘We should feel at home, the nouveau bit at least.’

      ‘The old man certainly was nouveau, a business man made good, but not Alice. She’s the real deal. Comes from a local aristo family who own next door. That’s where Ralph lives.’

      Jos stretched out on the mattress, trying

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