‘So you never saw him again?’
‘Only when we docked in New York, and I spotted him going ashore with Kristin.’
‘He left the ship with Kristin?’ said Emma anxiously. ‘Was Dr Wallace with them?’
‘No, just Kristin and her boyfriend Richard.’
‘Richard?’ said Emma, sounding relieved.
‘Yes, Richard something. I can’t remember his surname. He was the third officer. Not long afterwards he married Kristin, and we never saw either of them again.’
‘Was he a good-looking man?’ asked Emma.
‘Tom or Richard?’ asked Peggy.
‘Can I get you a drink, Peg?’ asked a young man Emma had never seen before, but had a feeling she would be seeing in profile later that night.
Emma was right, and she didn’t sleep before, during or after the visit, as she had something else on her mind.
The following morning, for the first time on the voyage, Emma was standing behind the information desk waiting for Peggy to appear.
‘Shall I prepare the passenger list for disembarkation?’ she asked when Peggy finally arrived and lifted the counter flap.
‘You’re the first person I’ve ever known to volunteer for that job,’ said Peggy, ‘but be my guest. Someone has to make sure it’s up to date in case immigration decides to double-check any of the passengers’ details once we’ve docked in New York.’
Emma went straight through to the back office. Putting aside the current passenger list, she turned her attention to the files of past crew members, which she found in a separate cabinet that looked as if it hadn’t been opened for some time.
She began a slow, meticulous search for the names Kristin and Richard. Kristin proved easy, because there was only one person with that name, and she’d worked as a senior staff nurse on the Kansas Star from 1936 to 1939. However, there were several Richards, Dicks and Dickies, but the address of one of them, Lieutenant Richard Tibbet, was in the same Manhattan apartment building as Miss Kristin Craven.
Emma made a note of the address.
10
‘WELCOME TO the United States, Miss Barrington.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emma.
‘How long do you plan to be in the United States?’ asked the immigration officer as he checked her passport.
‘A week, two at the most,’ said Emma. ‘I’m visiting my great-aunt, and then I’ll be returning to England.’ It was true that Emma had a great-aunt who lived in New York, Lord Harvey’s sister, but she had no intention of visiting her, not least because she didn’t want the rest of the family to find out what she was up to.
‘Your great-aunt’s address?’
‘Sixty-fourth and Park.’
The immigration officer made a note, stamped Emma’s passport and handed it back to her.
‘Enjoy your stay in the Big Apple, Miss Barrington.’
Once Emma had passed through immigration, she joined a long queue of passengers from the Kansas Star. It was another twenty minutes before she climbed into the back of a yellow cab.
‘I require a small, sensibly priced hotel, located near Merton Street in Manhattan,’ she told the driver.
‘You wanna run that past me again, lady?’ said the cabbie, the stub of an unlit cigar protruding from the corner of his mouth.
As Emma had found it difficult to understand a word he said, she assumed he was having the same problem. ‘I’m looking for a small, inexpensive hotel near Merton Street, on Manhattan Island,’ she said, slowly enunciating each word.
‘Merton Street,’ repeated the driver, as if it was the only thing he’d understood.
‘That’s right,’ said Emma.
‘Why didn’t you say so the first time?’
The driver took off, and didn’t speak again until he’d dropped his fare outside a red-brick building that flew a flag proclaiming The Mayflower Hotel.
‘That’ll be forty cents,’ said the cabbie, the cigar bobbing up and down with each word.
Emma paid the fare from the wage packet she’d earned while on the ship. Once she’d checked into the hotel, she took the lift to the fourth floor and went straight to her room. The first thing she did was to get undressed and run herself a hot bath.
When she reluctantly climbed out, she dried herself with a large fluffy towel, dressed in what she considered a demure frock and made her way back down to the ground floor. She felt almost human.
Emma found a quiet table in the corner of the hotel coffee shop and ordered a cup of tea – they hadn’t heard of Earl Grey – and a club sandwich, something she’d never heard of. While she waited to be served, she began to write out a long list of questions on a paper napkin, hoping there would be someone living at 46 Merton Street who was willing to answer them.
Once she’d signed the check, another new word, Emma asked the receptionist for directions to Merton Street. Three blocks north, two blocks west, she was told. She hadn’t realized that every New Yorker possessed a built-in compass.
Emma enjoyed the walk, stopping several times to admire windows filled with merchandise she had never seen in Bristol. She arrived outside a high-rise apartment block just after midday, unsure what she would do if Mrs Tibbet wasn’t at home.
A smartly dressed doorman saluted and opened the door for her. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’ve come to see Mrs Tibbet,’ Emma said, trying to sound as if she was expected.
‘Apartment thirty-one, on the third floor,’ he said, touching the rim of his cap.
It was true, an English accent did appear to open doors.
As the elevator made its way slowly up to the third floor, Emma rehearsed some lines she hoped would open another door. When the elevator stopped, she pulled back the grille, stepped out into the corridor and went in search of number 31. There was a tiny circle of glass set in the middle of the Tibbets’ door, which reminded Emma of a Cyclops eye. She couldn’t see in, but she assumed the occupants could see out. A more familiar buzzer was on the wall beside the door. She pressed it and waited. It was some time before the door eventually opened, but only a few inches, revealing a brass chain. Two eyes peered out at her.
‘What do you want?’ asked a voice that she could at least understand.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs Tibbet,’ said Emma, ‘but you may be my last chance.’ The eyes looked suspicious. ‘You see, I’m desperately trying to find Tom.’
‘Tom?’ repeated the voice.
‘Tom Bradshaw. He’s the father of my child,’ said Emma, playing her last door-opening card.
The door closed, the chain was removed and the door opened once again to reveal a young woman carrying a baby in her arms.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, ‘but Richard doesn’t like me opening the door to strangers. Please come in.’ She led Emma through to the living room. ‘Have a seat while I put Jake back in his cot.’
Emma sat down and glanced around the room. There were several photographs of Kristin with a young naval officer who she assumed must be her husband, Richard.
Kristin returned a few minutes later carrying a tray of coffee. ‘Black or white?’
‘White please,’ said Emma, who’d never drunk coffee in England, but was quickly learning that Americans don’t drink tea, even in the morning.
‘Sugar?’ enquired Kristin after she’d poured two coffees.
‘No, thank you.’
‘So, is Tom your husband?’ asked Kristin as she sat down opposite Emma.
‘No, I’m his fiancée. To be fair, he had no idea I was pregnant.’
‘How did you find me?’ asked Kristin, still sounding a little apprehensive.
‘The purser on the Kansas Star said you and Richard were among the last people to see Tom.’
‘That’s true. We were with him until he was arrested a few moments after he stepped on shore.’
‘Arrested?’ said Emma in disbelief. ‘What could he possibly have done to get himself arrested?’
‘He was accused of murderi
ng his brother,’ said Kristin. ‘But surely you knew that?’
Emma burst into tears, her hopes shattered by the realization that it must have been Bradshaw who’d survived, and not Harry. If Harry had been accused of murdering Bradshaw’s brother, it would have been so easy for him to prove they’d arrested the wrong man.
If only she’d ripped open the letter on Maisie’s mantelpiece, she would have discovered the truth and not put herself through this ordeal. She wept, accepting for the first time that Harry was dead.
GILES BARRINGTON
1939–1941
11
WHEN SIR WALTER BARRINGTON visited his grandson to tell him the terrible news that Harry Clifton had been killed at sea, Giles felt numb, as if he’d lost a limb. In fact, he would have been happy to lose a limb if it would have brought Harry back. The two of them had been inseparable since childhood, and Giles had always assumed they would both score one of life’s centuries. Harry’s pointless, unnecessary death made Giles even more determined not to make the same mistake himself.
Giles was in the drawing room listening to Mr Churchill on the radio when Emma asked, ‘Do you have any plans to join up?’
‘Yes, I shan’t be returning to Oxford. I intend to sign up immediately.’
His mother was clearly surprised, but told him that she understood. Emma gave him a huge hug, and said, ‘Harry would be proud of you.’ Grace, who rarely displayed any emotion, burst into tears.
Giles drove into Bristol the following morning and parked his yellow MG ostentatiously outside the front door of the recruiting office. He marched in with what he hoped was resolution written across his face. A sergeant major from the Gloucesters – Captain Jack Tarrant’s old regiment – stood smartly to attention the moment he saw young Mr Barrington. He handed Giles a form which he dutifully filled in, and an hour later he was invited to step behind a curtain and be examined by an army doctor.
The doctor placed a tick in every box after he’d thoroughly checked this latest recruit – ears, nose, throat, chest and limbs – before finally testing his eyesight. Giles stood behind a white line and recited the letters and numbers on demand; after all, he could dispatch a leather ball coming straight at him at ninety miles an hour, to the most distant boundary. He was confident he would pass with flying colours, until the doctor asked him if he was aware of any hereditary ailments or diseases in his family. Giles replied truthfully, ‘Both my father and grandfather are colour-blind.’
The doctor carried out a further series of tests, and Giles noticed that the ums and ahs turned into tut-tuts.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr Barrington,’ he said when he came to the end of his examination, ‘that given your family’s medical history, I will not be able to recommend you for active service. But of course, there’s nothing to stop you joining up and doing a desk job.’
‘Can’t you just tick the relevant box, doctor, and forget I ever raised the damn subject?’ said Giles, trying to sound desperate.
The doctor ignored his protest, and in the final box on the form he wrote ‘C3’: unfit for active service.
Giles was back at the Manor House in time for lunch. His mother, Elizabeth, didn’t comment on the fact that he drank almost a bottle of wine. He told everyone who asked, and several who didn’t, that he’d been rejected by the Gloucesters because he suffered from colour-blindness.
‘It didn’t stop Grandfather fighting the Boers,’ Grace reminded him after he’d been served with a second helping of pudding.
‘They probably had no idea the condition existed back then,’ said Giles, trying to make light of her barb.
Emma followed up with a punch below the belt. ‘You never intended to sign up in the first place, did you?’ she said, looking her brother in the eye. Giles was staring down at his shoes when she delivered the knock-out blow. ‘Pity your friend from the docks isn’t here to remind you that he was also colour-blind.’
When Giles’s mother heard the news she was clearly relieved, but didn’t comment. Grace didn’t speak to her brother again before she returned to Cambridge.
Giles drove back to Oxford the following day trying to convince himself that everyone would accept the reason he’d been unable to sign up and intended to continue his life as an undergraduate. When he strolled through the college gates, he found that the quad resembled a recruiting centre rather than a university, with young men in uniform outnumbering those wearing subfusc. In Giles’s opinion, the only good thing to come out of all this was that for the first time in history there were as many women as men up at the university. Unfortunately, most of them were only willing to be seen on the arm of someone in uniform.
Giles’s old school friend Deakins was one of the few undergraduates who didn’t seem uncomfortable about not signing up. Mind you, there wouldn’t have been much point in Deakins taking a medical. It would have been one of the rare exams in which he failed to get a tick in any box. But then he suddenly disappeared, to somewhere called Bletchley Park. No one could tell Giles what they got up to there, except it was all ‘hush-hush’, and Deakins warned Giles that he wouldn’t be able to visit him at any time, under any circumstances.
As the months passed, Giles began to spend more time alone in the pub than in the crowded lecture theatre, while Oxford began to fill up with servicemen returning from the Front, some with one arm, others with one leg, a few who were blind, and they were just in his college. He tried to carry on as if he hadn’t noticed, but the truth was, by the end of term, he began to feel more and more out of place.
Giles drove up to Scotland at the end of term to attend the christening of Sebastian Arthur Clifton. Only the immediate family and one or two close friends were invited to the ceremony that took place in the chapel at Mulgelrie Castle. Emma and Giles’s father was not among them.
Giles was surprised and delighted when Emma asked him to be a godfather, although he was somewhat taken aback when she admitted that the only reason she’d even considered him was that, despite everything, she had no doubt he would have been Harry’s first choice.
As he was going down to breakfast the following morning, Giles noticed a light coming from his grandfather’s study. As he passed the door on his way to the dining room, Giles heard his name come up in conversation. He stopped in his tracks, and took a step nearer to the half-open door. He froze in horror when he heard Sir Walter saying, ‘It pains me to have to say this, but like father, like son.’
‘I agree,’ replied Lord Harvey. ‘And I’d always thought so highly of the boy, which makes the whole damn business all the more distasteful.’
‘No one,’ said Sir Walter, ‘could have been prouder than I was, as chairman of the governors, when Giles was appointed head boy of Bristol Grammar School.’
‘I’d assumed,’ said Lord Harvey, ‘that he would put those remarkable talents of leadership and courage he displayed so often on the playing field to good use on the battlefield.’
‘The only good thing to come out of all this,’ suggested Sir Walter, ‘is that I no longer believe that Harry Clifton could possibly be Hugo’s son.’
Giles strode across the hallway, past the breakfast room and out of the front door. He climbed into his car and began the long journey back to the West Country.
The following morning, he parked the car outside a recruiting office. Once again he stood in line, not for the Gloucesters this time, but on the other side of the Avon, where the Wessex regiment were signing up new recruits.
After he’d filled in the form, he was put through another rigorous medical. This time when the doctor asked him, ‘Are you aware of any hereditary ailments or diseases in your family that might prevent you from carrying out active service?’ he replied, ‘No, sir.’
12
AT NOON the following day, Giles left one world and entered another.
Thirty-six raw recruits, with nothing in common other than the fact that they had signed up to take the King’s shilling, clambered aboard a train with a
corporal acting as their nanny. As the train pulled out of the station, Giles stared through the grimy third-class window and was certain of only one thing: they were heading south. But not until the train shunted into Lympstone four hours later did he realize just how far south.
During the journey, Giles remained silent, and listened attentively to all those men around him who would be his companions for the next twelve weeks. A bus driver from Filton, a policeman from Long Ashton, a butcher from Broad Street, a builder from Nailsea and a farmer from Winscombe.
Once they disembarked from the train, the corporal ferried them on to a waiting bus.
‘Where are we going?’ asked the butcher.
‘You’ll find out soon enough, laddie,’ replied the corporal, revealing his birthplace.
For an hour the bus trundled across Dartmoor until there was no sign of houses or people, just the occasional hawk flying overheard in search of prey.
They eventually stopped outside a desolate group of buildings, displaying a weathered sign that announced Ypres Barracks: Training camp for the Wessex Regiment. It didn’t lift Giles’s spirits. A soldier marched out of the gatehouse and raised the barrier to allow the bus to continue for another hundred yards before coming to a halt in the middle of a parade ground. A solitary figure stood waiting for them to disembark.
When Giles climbed off the bus, he came face to face with a giant of a man, barrel-chested and dressed in a khaki uniform, who looked as if he had been planted on the parade ground. There were three rows of medals on his chest and a pace stick under his left arm, but what struck Giles most about him was the knife-edge crease in his trousers and the fact that his boots were so highly polished he could see his reflection in them.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ the man said in a voice that boomed around the parade ground; not someone who would find any use for a megaphone, thought Giles. ‘My name is Sergeant Major Dawson – sir, to you. It’s my responsibility to turn you from a shambolic rabble into a fighting force in just twelve weeks. By then, you will be able to call yourselves members of the Wessex, the finest regiment of the line. For the next twelve weeks I will be your mother, your father and your sweetheart and, let me assure you, I only have one purpose in life, and that is to make sure that when you meet your first German, you’ll be able to kill him before he kills you. That process will begin at five tomorrow morning.’ A groan went up which the sergeant major ignored. ‘Until then, I’ll leave Corporal McCloud to take you to the canteen, before you settle into your barracks. Be sure to get a good night’s rest, because you’ll need every ounce of energy you possess when we meet again. Carry on, corporal.’