Dead to Me Page 42

  But still there was no sign of Brian and Colin. As children were brought out able to stand up and speak, Verity went and asked them if they’d seen the boys.

  No one had.

  Wilby and Ruby arrived; they’d been delayed in getting there, as there had been other bombs over Torquay and an air-raid warden had ordered them to stay in for the time being. Wilby was distraught that the boys had not been found, wringing her hands, her face crumpled with fear.

  Verity helped another uninjured girl out. She was thirteen and called Pauline. She told Verity how they had heard the plane coming in low and one of the teachers had yelled for them to get under the pews.

  ‘I couldn’t get my left leg in,’ she said. ‘I was afraid it was going to be cut off.’

  Verity hugged her and told her she was very glad that hadn’t happened. ‘Now did you see Colin and Brian Waycott? Do you even know them?’

  ‘Yes, I do know them,’ she said, allowing Verity to clean the worst of the dirt from her face with a damp cloth. ‘They’re funny boys and they like dancing. But I don’t think they were here today. They always wave to me, and usually come and sit next to me. They definitely weren’t in the church when I got here.’

  Verity went over to Wilby. ‘I don’t think they came to Sunday School,’ she said.

  ‘Of course they did,’ Wilby insisted. ‘They are good boys.’

  Miller came over then, and hearing the tail end of the conversation, he admitted he used to duck out of Sunday School himself.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind betting they went to look at gun emplacements,’ he said. ‘They are like magnets to small boys, and I heard one of the teachers say just now that there were remarkably few boys at the Sunday School today. If you look around, you’ll see it’s nearly all girls we’ve got out. I think the boys might be off pretending to be soldiers.’

  ‘Walls Hill!’ Verity exclaimed. ‘Brian mentioned it yesterday, I’ll go there and look now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Miller said. He took Wilby’s hand in both of his, looking right into her tear-filled eyes. ‘Hold on, Wilby. We’ll come straight back if there’s no joy. But my gut feeling is we’re going to find them.’

  It took about twenty minutes of fast walking to get to Walls Hill. This was a cliff-top area with a cricket pitch and scrubby grass beyond, and an ideal place for anti-aircraft guns, as it commanded a very wide view from Torquay to Teignmouth.

  ‘Have you seen two small boys hanging about?’ Miller asked two Home Guard men. ‘Brown hair, freckled faces, grey shorts and navy-blue slipovers. Likely to ask you lots of questions.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve seen them,’ one of the men said. ‘We shot down a plane and they were thrilled about it. But we told them it wasn’t safe up here, and to go home. There were more than fifteen bombers earlier, Torquay really copped it today.’

  ‘It certainly did, St Mary’s Church bought it when it was full of Sunday School children,’ Miller said. ‘The boys should’ve been in there too.’

  ‘Oh dear Lord, no!’ the old man exclaimed. ‘Well, maybe it was good your boys were playing truant today. If I see them again, I’ll send them home with a flea in their ears.’

  ‘Where to now?’ Miller asked Verity, looking even more troubled. ‘They might have found out about the church and they’re afraid to go home and face Wilby.’

  ‘You really understand children,’ Verity said appreciatively. ‘I think I might know where they are. They said a week or two ago they were building a camp. It’s near here, on the way down to Babbacombe Bay.’

  She led the way down a track into the woods, and after about four hundred yards she heard voices. ‘I think that’s Brian,’ she said. He and his companion were hidden from view by trees and bushes, but she called out.

  ‘Come here, boys, it’s Verity.’

  There was a sudden silence which, although it only lasted for a couple of seconds, seemed longer. At last the two boys emerged looking very scared.

  ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ Verity exclaimed. ‘Come on, boys, you aren’t in trouble,’ she called out. ‘It was lucky you didn’t go to the church today, it was badly bombed.’

  ‘A man told us that, and we were scared to go home,’ Brian said. ‘We thought Wilby might send us back to Bristol. We were thinking of staying the night in our camp.’

  Verity pulled the boys to her in a fierce hug. ‘Can you really think we’d be cross that you are safe? We all thought you were under the rubble.’

  ‘That camp is far too near the cliff edge to be a safe place to play,’ Miller said sternly. ‘But you are in luck today. Ruby, Verity and Wilby were so scared you’d been killed that the worst punishment you’re going to get is an overload of hugs and kisses. Now come on, quick march back home, and let’s put Wilby’s mind at rest.’

  As they walked back, the boys in front of them, Miller took Verity’s hand. Like her own it was rough with hauling stones and thick with dirt. But as her dirty hand linked with his, she felt as if nothing bad could ever happen to her again, not while Miller was with her.

  Wilby and Ruby both cried to see the boys alive and well.

  ‘I ought to be cross that you played truant,’ Wilby said as she hugged the boys. ‘But just this once you’re safe from a scolding.’

  The girls and Wilby then took Brian and Colin home, while Miller stayed up at the church to continue to help the rescue workers.

  Much later that day they learned the death toll was twenty-one children, and three teachers. The vicar had cheated death because he’d slipped back home to get his glasses before starting the service, and the bomb dropped while he was gone.

  ‘I don’t know how St Marychurch will ever recover from this,’ Wilby said brokenly, sitting in the kitchen with her head in her hands. ‘It’s such a tight-knit community, the children are in and out of each other’s houses all the time, so the tragedy will hit everyone. Some of those children will be ones I’ve helped with their reading. I’ve laughed with their mothers at jumble sales and coffee mornings, and discussed their children’s little problems. I don’t know what I can say to comfort them.’

  Ruby and Verity looked at each other helplessly. None of them could believe that such a terrible tragedy had happened so close to home, and killing innocent children. They knew Wilby was right, this wasn’t something that could be brushed away and forgotten. Not for the families of those children, their neighbours, rescue workers, indeed anyone with a heart.

  ‘You’ll find the words,’ Ruby said eventually. ‘The people around here will do what they always do in times of trouble, which is to help one another.’

  ‘I thank God that Colin and Brian chose to be naughty, and cheated death,’ Wilby said. ‘But what is the world coming to when bombs are dropped on churches and kill children?’

  Ruby and Verity could do little to comfort her. This was such an appalling disaster, there were no words to soften it or give comfort.

  They tucked her into bed later with a hot toddy to help her sleep, but as Verity kissed her goodnight, Wilby caught hold of her hand.

  ‘Don’t let Miller slip away this time,’ she said. ‘I watched him with you over lunch, and I watched him up at the church clearing rubble, and I saw someone special. And someone perfect for you.’

  ‘I saw someone special and perfect for me too,’ Verity said, kissing the older woman on the cheek. ‘Now off to sleep with you, it’s been a harrowing day.’

  Miller didn’t come back to the house, and they learned the next day that he was one of the many men who worked all night by the light of torches, moving stone to hunt for both survivors and little bodies.

  He came to the house in Higher Downs Road at breakfast time.

  ‘I’m filthy,’ he said from the doorstep when Ruby opened the door to him. ‘I wondered if Wilby’s got any old clothes I could borrow. I can’t go back to the guest house I booked into like this.’

  Filthy didn’t come close to describing how he looked. He was covered in a thick film of brick dus
t, plaster and mud. His once highly polished shoes were wrecked. The suit jacket he carried over his arm was nearly as bad as the trousers.

  ‘I think we might need to hose you down in the garden first,’ Ruby laughed. ‘You look worse than a chimney sweep.’

  ‘I bought the suit to come here,’ Miller said, and laughed. ‘It’s only fit now for the dustbin.’

  Wilby took over, bringing down an old dressing gown and telling him to take all his clothes off and put it on before having a bath. ‘I’ve got a few things of my late husband’s, and I know he’d like to think they were being worn by a man who worked through the night for people he doesn’t even know.’

  Both Ruby and Verity had to go to work, and the boys had to go to school, although Wilby said she thought the head would send everyone home out of respect for those who had lost their lives.

  Miller was in the bathroom as the girls left, and they had to shout out that he was to be back there for supper tonight.

  ‘I don’t want to go to work,’ Verity said at the gate as they both wheeled out their bicycles.

  ‘Nor me,’ Ruby agreed. ‘But we have to. But before we go, tell me how you feel about Miller now.’

  Verity smiled. ‘In the light of what happened at the church I feel guilty that I actually feel excited about him. I was touched by the way he threw himself into the rescue work, and I desperately want to see him clean again. Will that do for now?’

  Ruby’s eyes twinkled. ‘It will. See you this evening.’

  For Verity the day seemed endless, and very busy too, as the bomb at St Marychurch was one of several around Torquay, bringing down many telephone wires. Other people had been killed too, but the church was the biggest incident and the one everyone was talking about, because of the children.

  It was hard reminding herself that it was wrong to feel anything but grief in the face of such a terrible tragedy; she was feeling grief for the dead and their families, yet at the same time her heart wanted to sing because Miller had said he’d come to woo her.

  Finally, it was five thirty and time to go home. She had no real idea of what she was going to say to Miller, but she knew she wasn’t going to tell him to go away again.

  She felt she ought to be confused, as Bevan had awoken all kinds of feelings inside her too, yet she didn’t feel confused at all. She liked Bevan a great deal, but Miller was in another category altogether. What she’d felt for him back on Hither Green Station at the start of the war was what she felt now. Was it too soon to call it love?

  She raced home on her bike, standing up on the pedals on the hills, straining to get to him.

  Wheeling her bike in through the gate, she let it drop on to the lawn and rushed round the side of the house.

  He was there in the garden, sitting in a deckchair talking to Wilby. He looked round on hearing her, jumped to his feet and smiled.

  ‘It’s been a long day waiting for you to come home,’ he said, holding out his hands to her.

  Wilby got up and said something about getting the supper.

  Just the touch of Miller’s hands on Verity’s made her feel they didn’t need explanations, promises or anything else. Those duck-egg-blue eyes were twinkling the way they always had back in Weardale Road before the war began. His generous, soft mouth was just waiting to be kissed, and it was she who moved in first.

  Nothing had ever felt so sweet or so perfect. A kiss that said the past was over and gone, taking all the hurts with it. Now they had a lifetime ahead of them to share.

  She wanted him, body and soul.

  ‘I love you, Verity,’ he whispered when they came up for air. ‘I think I did from the moment you gave me that apple, when we first met, because I felt faint.’

  ‘You mean you fainted at the sight of me?’ she teased.

  He laughed. ‘It’s been a long, winding road, hasn’t it? Maybe if I’d kissed you then, we could have shortened it?’

  ‘Maybe, but I doubt I’d have been quite so certain of you then as I am now. You once said that the garden you created in Lee Park was love made visible. Seeing you digging in that church rubble yesterday, and the way you were with the boys when we found them, that was love made visible to me. I do love you, Miller, and I think I always did too.’

  ‘But now is our time?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I think so! We’ve got the rest of the war to go through, no one knows how or when it will end, or what life will be like afterwards. But that won’t seem half so scary, if you’ll promise to be there with me.’

  ‘Even if I can’t be with you in body all the time, I promise I’ll be there in spirit, and we’ll plan together for a future when I’ll be at your side for ever.’

  Verity looked into his eyes and saw utter sincerity. It had been a long, winding road, but worth every mile of it to find true happiness and peace at last.

  THE BEGINNING

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  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  India | New Zealand | South Africa

  Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published 2016

  Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 2016

  Cover images: Woman © Muna Nazak / Trevillion Images; background woman © Gordon Crabb; landscape © Fox Photos / Hultin Archive / Getty Images

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-718-18122-2