Letters to the Lost (42 page)

‘Let’s go.’

They moved quickly, their hands clasped so tightly that it hurt. A good pain. As they left the hall the heavens opened and he felt a jolt of primitive alarm and an overwhelming urge to protect the tiny creature cradled against Stella’s shoulder, its feet, in pink knitted boots, drawn up. Pink – that meant it was a girl, right? His heart crashed. He didn’t care if it was a girl or a boy or a baby goddamned elephant—

Impatiently he dashed the rain from his face and ripped open his tunic, shrugging it off so that he could hold it over Stella and the baby. Her closeness made his head reel. Half-running they crossed the road to the Vicarage, and she went ahead of him up the path, pushing open the unlocked front door.

Inside it was murky and cold. They faced each other in the gloom, staring helplessly for a long moment before she gave a muted cry and stepped into his arms. He held them both, her and the baby, as his heart smashed against his ribs and their mouths found each other. She smelled different; milky, womanly, but she tasted the same. Christ, how he’d missed her. How he’d craved her. His hand slid through her damp hair, cupped her cheek, his thumb pressing against her mouth as he kissed her jaw, her eyelids. He felt incandescent with love. And want. He pulled away before it burned him up, brushing the top of the baby’s silky head with his lips.

‘It’s really you, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t think – I thought – I thought you were dead.’

In the dirty light her face was as pale and luminous as a candleflame. Her eyes were huge. Haunted. Like she was looking at a ghost.

‘I nearly was. The other guys – my crew—’

He wanted to make light of it and take the terrible anguish from her eyes, but he found he couldn’t. Clearing his throat he tried again. ‘Sorry. It’s really me. I wanted to get word to you but it was impossible; it would have put too many lives at risk – the lives of people who were helping me. The only thing I could do was try to get back to you as soon as I could. If I’d known – about—’

Emotion shattered the words in his throat, and he reached out and stroked a finger down the baby’s velvet cheek. She was sleeping, the picture of rosy serenity, undisturbed by the cataclysmic events going on around her. She was clean and new and whole and miraculous; a promise of hope after the things that he’d seen.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Daisy.’

Stella’s voice was a whisper. A breath. As she spoke the tears that had been brimming and shimmering in her eyes spilled over, down her cheeks.

‘It’s beautiful.
Daisy
. . .’ he repeated reverently, trying it out. Daisy . . . His daughter . . . ‘It’s the most beautiful name in the world, and she’s the most beautiful girl.’ He bent to kiss her head again, inhaling her creamy scent and feeling an obliterating rush of adoration. ‘Sweetheart, let’s get out of here. I have a car. I told the driver to wait at the pub. Get your things and we’ll go.’

He saw panic flare in her eyes as she glanced towards the front door. ‘Where to?’

‘Greenfields Lane, for now. They’ve given me a few days’ leave before I have to report to HQ. We can work out what to do with the rest of our lives.’

She hesitated, opening her mouth as if she was about to argue, but then she shut it again and darted towards the stairs. He followed her, thrusting his arms into his jacket again. The house was like a crypt, all dark wood and dead air. Stella didn’t belong here: she never had. In the bedroom she laid Daisy in the sagging centre of the bed while she hefted a suitcase out from beneath it. From the wall, a sinuous, pain-racked Christ stared down at the sleeping baby. Dan shuddered, fighting the urge to snatch her up and cradle her. Soon. Soon there would be time—

‘I’ll get her things, if you tell me where they are . . .’

Stella was bundling clothes into the suitcase. There was a kind of desperation about her movements now, as if she was trying to outrun a hurricane that had appeared on the horizon. ‘Next door,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Her clothes are in the chest of drawers, and the nappies are folded in a pile on the shelf. She’ll need nightdresses, and nappy pins – and I mustn’t forget the ration books—’

‘Hey.’ He crossed the room swiftly and took her face in his hands, kissing her into silence. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK. She’ll have us – you and me – that’s all she needs. Anything else we can get hold of, from someplace.’ Holding her steady he captured her gaze. ‘It’ll be fine. Stella, I promise. I’m here now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

She was trembling, he could feel it against his palms. He was suddenly reminded of Cambridge, and how she’d stood at the window in the hotel and looked out, rigid and quivering with nerves. He’d thought then that all was lost and she was about to walk right out of his life forever. He’d been wrong. So maybe the sense of impending doom that was squeezing the air out of his chest right now was misplaced too.

Her eyes were fixed on his, huge and imploring. ‘Dan . . . You have to understand . . . She’s not . . . yours.’

Her voice was little more than a shivering breath, but the words hit him with a physical pain, like the lash of a whip. His lungs heaved in air and he floundered for a straw to clutch.

‘But . . . But y-you didn’t sleep together . . . ?’

She closed her eyes, and tears ran across the backs of his fingers. ‘Just once, remember? It seems like that was enough.’

He pulled her against him, wrapping his arms tightly around her and burying his face in her hair as he fought back bitter disappointment and impotent rage. At Charles Thorne and what he had done to Stella. At himself. A memory of that afternoon in the little house on Greenfields Lane suddenly came back to him with astonishing clarity: the taste of whisky on their lips and the smell of autumn and woodsmoke. She’d begged him to leave her with the hope of a child, and he’d refused. The one thing she’d ever asked of him. He’d wanted too much and he’d aimed too high. He’d been so careful. He’d tried to protect her, but in doing so he’d extinguished all doubt. All hope.

Fiercely, gritting his teeth against his own stupidity and arrogance he whispered into her hair, ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn if she’s his or mine. I love her already because she’s a part of you. She’s yours, and she’d be
ours
. Our daughter—’

She broke free of his embrace and tipped her face up to his, parting her lips as she sought his mouth. ‘I love you,’ she sobbed, between kisses. ‘I love you so much. I didn’t dare hope—’

He smoothed the hair back from her wet face. ‘You shouldn’t have doubted. Don’t ever doubt how much I love you, Stella. Now please, let’s get your things together and get out of here.’

On the bed the baby slept on as they packed hurriedly, then Stella gathered her into her arms while Dan took the suitcase and they left the oppressive bedroom. In just a few more seconds they’d be free of this house and he would be able to breathe again, and surrender to the flood of emotions that had risen in him. All those months in France – every footsore step of his journey North, all the waiting and lying low in safehouses, the claustrophobic hours spent hidden in lumbering carts and stinking lorries – it had all been to bring him to this point. He felt lightheaded with exhaustion and exhilaration. Reaching the top of the stairs their hands brushed and he captured her fingers, squeezing them tight and raising them to his lips. He kissed them, and below, in the hallway, the front door opened.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’

In Dan’s mind, Charles Thorne had taken on the aspect of an ogre, but the man who stood at the foot of the stairs was laughably ordinary; tall and thin and typically English with his colourless hair and pink complexion and ridiculously misplaced indignation. It would have been easier, somehow, if he had been the monster Dan had imagined, and if he hadn’t had one empty sleeve pinned into the pocket of his jacket. Instead of hatred, Dan felt only pity, and distracted irritation.

‘Charles—’

Stella was in front of him on the stairs. Dan couldn’t see her face, but he heard the fear in her voice and felt the sudden tension radiating from her body like a forcefield. Irritation hardened into dislike.

‘Reverend Thorne. Stella and Daisy are coming with me.’ Dan kept his tone reasonable. He willed Stella to keep moving down the stairs – if her husband tried to stop them Dan would have no trouble getting past him – but she stood rooted to the spot on the top step. A few feet below, Charles Thorne’s face set into a mask of rage.

‘I don’t think they are.’

‘Charles, please . . .’ Stella said. ‘
Please
. . . I’m sorry it’s happening like this, but you know as well as I do that our marriage was a mistake. We tried –
I
tried to make you happy, but it’s no good. We don’t love each other – not how we’re meant to. You know that.’

Her courage and bravado, and the slight tremor in her voice made Dan’s heart turn over. Her husband remained unmoved. He gave a brief, mirthless laugh.

‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple. We’re married. Those vows were made in church, before God. You can’t just decide it was a mistake because you’ve had your head turned by some . . .’ His pale eyes flickered dismissively in Dan’s direction, ‘flashy Yank.’

Dan’s pulse was loud in his ears as it pumped anger through his veins. Every reflex in his body was directing him down the stairs to grab Charles Thorne and throw him across the hall and out of their way. It took the last of his strength to hold back, for Stella’s sake. Stella and the baby.

‘It’s more than that, Charles. I l
ove
him. I didn’t know what love was until I met him, but I do now. Please Charles – I’m begging you – let me go.’

‘We have a child,’ he said coldly. ‘What about her? Do you just expect me to relinquish my daughter; all my rights as a father to your fancy man?’

‘Don’t talk about
rights.
’ Dan’s words escaped though tightly clenched teeth. Both his hands were balled into fists, held rigidly at his sides, and even to his own ears his voice sounded like the snarl of an animal. ‘If you’d behaved like a decent human being you wouldn’t have a daughter. You have no
rights.
’

‘Dan—’ Shaken by the blast of his anger, Stella turned. Standing on the step below him she had to tip her face up to look at him and the light from the mean little stained glass window at the top of the stairs cast a yellowish tint across her cheek. It reminded him of the bruise she’d got from her husband’s hand. In her arms the baby slept on, folded in on herself like a flower.

‘I think you’ll find that I have,’ Thorne said. His tone was stronger now; more certain, more arrogant. ‘I am her husband. It is my name on the child’s birth certificate. You’re in England now, airman, not the Wild West. We have the oldest and best legal system in the world, and I can assure you that the rights of a husband over an adulterous wife are robustly upheld.’

It was too much. The final thread of Dan’s self-control snapped and he made to launch himself down the stairs to the man at the bottom, ready to beat his self-satisfied face into a bloody pulp. But in the same second Stella moved towards him; stepping up, putting herself and the sleeping baby between him and the object of his fury.

‘
Don’t
Dan, please . . .’ It came out as a sob. ‘It’s no good.’

He staggered backwards until he hit the wall behind him, thrusting his fingers into his hair in impotent despair as she pressed against him, holding him with her free arm, trying to contain his rage and anguish.

‘He
raped
you, Stella! He beat you and he . . . raped you.’

‘How dare you say those things in front of my wife?’ Thorne’s voice rang with icy outrage from the hallway below. His face was white but his cheeks were mottled crimson. Turning, he stepped to the side, as if making way for Dan to come down the stairs. ‘I think it’s time you left now.’

‘You fucking hypocrite. You
did
those things.’

Charles Thorne didn’t flinch. He remained where he was, standing like a sentinel at the foot of the staircase, staring at a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall in front of him. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said stiffly, as if he were addressing the Madonna, instead of Dan. ‘The things that take place between a married couple are private, and entirely legal.’ He gave a blustering little laugh. ‘A man can’t
rape
his own wife.’

‘The hell he can’t,’ Dan said in a low voice. Stella’s cheek was against his shoulder, Daisy’s head resting over his thudding heart. His arms were around them both and he wanted to keep them safe like that forever. ‘And he can’t keep his wife against her will either.’

‘No, he can’t.’

For a moment Thorne sounded almost reasonable. A jolt passed through Stella’s body, and when she lifted her head there was hope written across her tearstained face.

‘Let me make myself clear,’ Thorne continued. ‘Stella is perfectly at liberty to leave. I won’t try to stop her.’ He looked up with a thin-lipped smile and gestured vaguely to his empty sleeve. ‘I think we all know that I couldn’t, even if I was the kind of man who would resort to force.’ The smile hardened as his pale eyes rested on Stella. ‘You can go with him, but be assured of this: there will be no divorce. And the child stays here. If you leave, to live against the word of God with another man, you will not see her again.’

Stella gave a gasping cry, breaking out of the circle of Dan’s arms. ‘But I’m her
mother
. . . She
belongs
with me.’

‘Then you have to choose. To go with him. Or to stay with your daughter.’

And that was when Dan knew it was hopeless; when the strength that had driven him from the moment the first blast had almost knocked his fort out of the sky and kept him going on his perilous, painful, frustrating journey through France finally deserted him. Blindly he groped for the stair post and held on to it for support as his vision darkened and a vortex of panic swirled around him. He wanted to say something to make it all right. To make it how he’d imagined it would be as he walked those endless miles, when he’d thought that all he had to do was stay alive and get back to her.