The Forgotten Village

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‘When?’ he replied. ‘I joined up just after you and Bertie got …’ He trailed off and avoided her glance. ‘At the end of ’39.’

She looked at him, her eyes narrowed and then she sat up straighter. ‘You joined up? The army?’

He laughed and then stopped abruptly, returning her gaze equally as questioningly.

‘You didn’t know?’ he asked.

She shook her head slowly, her mouth open. ‘Bertie didn’t tell me.’

‘Bloody hell.’ He narrowed his eyes and looked out the window of the beach hut, towards the rough sea.

‘Why didn’t he tell me? Why would he keep that from me? I knew he wasn’t called up because he’s in government, but I assumed you were in a reserved occupation too, with the factory. I thought you were working. This whole time.’ She couldn’t believe it. Freddie had been fighting. In France. He could have been killed. Would Bertie have told her that? ‘How long were you fighting?’

‘Not long. I came home in June 1940.’

‘Oh my God,’ she exclaimed quietly. ‘Oh my God,’ she repeated louder as she suddenly realised the significance of the date. ‘Dunkirk. The beaches. Were you …?’

He nodded slowly and then closed his eyes tightly shut. He muttered something under his breath that Veronica didn’t catch. She looked at him but didn’t know what to say. The thought of Freddie on the beaches made her stomach lurch. She’d read the ministerial reports Bertie had left lying around his study about the horrors of the evacuation and then the rather different version in the news shortly thereafter.

‘But you’re not in the army now?’

He shook his head. ‘I assume if Bertie didn’t tell you I went to the front, then he also didn’t tell you I got shot?’

She stood up, staring down at him, horrified. ‘Shot? You got shot? At Dunkirk?’ She could hear the hysteria in her own voice. Freddie was nodding and laughing. ‘Why are you laughing?’ she squeaked.

‘I just can’t believe he didn’t tell you … any of it.’

‘I can.’ Veronica sat back down with a thud. ‘It’s the kind of thing he would do.’

Freddie’s eyebrow shot up. ‘Really? No, don’t answer that.’

‘I’m so angry with him.’ Veronica was almost shouting. She hated Bertie. She’d hated him for so long, she could barely remember a day when she didn’t. Freddie could have died. Freddie had gone to fight and been shot and Bertie had kept it all from her.

‘How long?’ she enquired.

‘How long what?’

‘How long were you on the beaches for?’

The smile fell from his face. ‘Long enough.’

‘My God, Freddie. I’m so …’ She wasn’t sure what she was – sorry, angry, frightened? She was almost shaking with the overwhelming emotions that engulfed her.

‘Should we ask Bertie why he didn’t tell you? I want to know now.’ Freddie gave her a sideways smile as he exhaled cigarette smoke.

‘No!’ Veronica was emphatic. There would be hell to pay and Veronica would be on the receiving end. ‘Don’t ask him. Don’t! Promise me. Please.’

Freddie looked into her eyes, nodding slowly. ‘I was just pulling your leg. I won’t ask him. Of course I won’t. I promise.’

They sat back against the wall of the hut. Veronica stole a glance at him every few seconds. He was as handsome now as he’d ever been. Perhaps more so. Briefly she was transported back to an easier time, before the war, before things between them had gone so awry so suddenly. Before Bertie. When Freddie and she had talked, when they’d kissed, when she had been so in love with him it hurt. But he hadn’t loved her. How stupid she had been. How easily she’d been talked out of waiting for Freddie to act. And how easily she’d allowed Bertie to lead her away; so forcefully, so assuredly. She wasn’t sure who she hated more, Bertie or herself? There was no point now wishing everything had been different. It was too late for all that.

‘Where did you get shot?’ Veronica ended the silence that had fallen between them in the beach hut.

He pointed to the right side of his chest.

She closed her eyes, letting the horror of the whole situation sink in. She’d tried not to think about him over the years. But perhaps if she had allowed herself to think about him, really think about him, she could have somehow kept him from getting shot. She knew it was a stupid thing to think.

And now he was unavoidably here and still alive.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked in what she hoped was her calmest voice.

‘Now? Yes, just about. I get by on one and a half lungs,’ he joked. ‘It rather put me out of action. I’m like some sort of horse that’s been put out to pasture. Not able to do anything useful. Just the factory.’ He looked downcast.

‘I’m so sorry, Freddie.’

He smiled at her, taking her hand in his. ‘Don’t be. I’m still alive.’

Her heart lurched at his touch, once so familiar and now so alien, and she fought her instinct, which was to pull her hand away. Instead, she let it rest inside his gentle grip, closed her eyes, and for a brief moment pretended the last five years hadn’t separated them.

‘I think I should like that cigarette now please,’ she said.

Veronica and Freddie climbed the cliff path back to the house in silence. Freddie walked behind her on the narrow climb and she wondered what he was thinking but didn’t dare turn round to glance at him. Could he tell just by looking at her how she really felt, how she’d always felt about him? She knew he didn’t feel the same way. He never had done.

‘We have a couple of hours before dinner.’ She turned towards him as they both made their way inside the gothic porch. He was so close he almost bumped into her as she turned round. Her first instinct was always now to defend herself and, flinching, she put her hands up. But she was in no danger of an attack from Freddie. She knew that. Her hands were still on the thick wool of Freddie’s coat and he glanced down at her touch against his chest. She cursed herself for waiting a fraction too long before letting her hands fall. They stood under the arch, shielded from any possible onlookers. As he moved his hand a fraction, Veronica half-thought he might be reaching for hers, but he let it fall by his side and neither of them spoke. The expression on his face had softened. She wanted to pour her heart out. Even if he was long past caring now – even if he had never cared – she wanted to apologise for the way things had ended. There was nothing she could say that would undo the damage she’d caused.

She tried desperately to recover herself and recall what it was she’d originally turned to say to him. Eventually she remembered.

‘You’ll need to change for dinner, I’m afraid. Have you brought suitable things?’

‘Oh, good lord, Bertie still doesn’t go in for all that bother, does he? Is he not even marginally aware the world is drastically changing around him?’

‘He thinks if we uphold the old traditions then nothing will change.’

Freddie laughed and threw his hands up. ‘The house is being requisitioned. Everything is changing.’

Veronica hushed him. ‘Freddie, please,’ she begged. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. Don’t let him hear you.’

‘Fine, fine.’ Freddie looked down at his crumpled trousers and conceded defeat. ‘I’ll change.’

‘We have drinks at six and dinner at seven, precisely. Please don’t be late. Bertie doesn’t like it,’ Veronica said.

As she turned towards the front steps, she thought she saw Freddie roll his eyes.

CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_93911eba-3b98-5d1a-bcc2-f95df59d5bde)

Dorset, July 2018 (#ulink_93911eba-3b98-5d1a-bcc2-f95df59d5bde)

Guy was at the front door of his grandmother’s bungalow, knocking for the fifth time in ten minutes. She wasn’t deaf or slow on her feet and he’d given her more than enough time to get to the front door from wherever she was inside the house. But now he was starting to get worried. He dialled his grandmother’s landline and heard the phone ring inside. It went to answerphone and he hung up. It was a blisteringly hot day and he wondered if she might be in the garden, so he tried the side gate and when it didn’t budge, he reached over and fumbled in vain for the bolt but couldn’t quite reach it. Moving back, he gave himself a few feet for a running jump and leaped up the gate, hooking the front of his shoes into the thick wooden cross-bar so he could vault over. He was half over when his grandmother’s neighbour appeared.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ the elderly man said. ‘Thought I could hear a lot of noise round here.’

‘Mr Hunter. How are you?’ Guy said from his awkward position, straddling the gate.

‘Looking for your gran?’ Mr Hunter asked. ‘No one told you?’

‘Told me …?’

‘She went in to hospital this morning. Fell over and broke her hip. Your mum was with her. Went in an ambulance she did.’

Guy wobbled on top of the gate. ‘No!’

‘She was talking and telling everyone to stop fussing, so I doubt she’s a corpse just yet. Had one of those little mask things on. Very annoyed at being stretchered into the ambulance though.’ Mr Hunter gave a chuckle.

‘Oh God,’ Guy said, throwing his leg back over and landing with a thud on the crazy paving. ‘Thanks.’ He rushed towards his car.

‘Get your mum to let me know how she is, will you?’ Mr Hunter called as Guy slammed the car door and sped towards the hospital.

Melissa had wandered around Tyneham again to soak in the atmosphere after Guy had left to have tea with his gran. And then she’d run out of things to look at and had forced herself into the car and back to the cottage. Hours later, she looked at her watch. Where was Liam? She exhaled loudly as she thought about what to say to him about the restaurant booking. And everything else. She had no idea how she was going to begin and yet she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. She suddenly felt nervous and tried to think about something else.

And then Guy popped in to her head. He had promised to ask his gran where Veronica and Albert Standish had ended up after the army requisitioned the village. Melissa couldn’t now unsee Veronica’s eerie expression in the photograph. There was something about it that was bothering her and would do until she knew what had happened to the woman.

Veronica and Albert had probably gone to London and lived happily ever after, but Melissa just wanted to know now.

She pulled her laptop out of its case. With any luck, she could connect to the internet and wait the interminably long time for a page to load. One quick search would provide the answer to her short-lived quest to find out where Veronica and Albert Standish had gone.

While she waited for the laptop to connect with the online world, she went to the kitchen to flick the kettle on. It had been hours since she’d been at Tyneham and so she pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket to check for any messages, but there was still no news from Guy, so she shoved it back again and wandered over to the computer screen.

Melissa tapped ‘Veronica Standish’ into the search engine. Over 100,000 results appeared and Melissa clapped her hands together in anticipation until she reached page three of the search results and realised absolutely none of them were the Veronica Standish she was looking for. She added ‘1943’ to the search term and a few results appeared, but none of them looked particularly relevant. Then she deleted ‘1943’ and input the word ‘Tyneham’. A mention of Veronica and Albert in reference to the ‘ghost village’ of Tyneham simply listed them as among the two hundred and twenty-five residents who were displaced during the requisition of the Dorset village. There was nothing there that she hadn’t already found out from Guy or from the boards in the church.

She pulled her phone out to look again. Still nothing from Guy. Melissa clunked it face down on the table and then reached forwards and turned it over so she could see the screen. Just in case.

With no further information about Albert or Veronica Standish on the website, Melissa was left half wondering if she’d hit a dead end. She searched just for the husband’s name instead. A plethora of information came up.

‘Oh, here we go,’ Melissa said, and edged forward on the sofa to look at the results. There were a lot of parliamentary speeches he’d made and she read a few of the summaries. They were dull and mainly about issues related to farming or fishing in Dorset in the war. There were other references to the house and to him and then she found something interesting that she didn’t quite understand in a link to an old newspaper article. In January 1944, Sir Albert Standish had quit as an MP. A by-election had been called and he’d been easily replaced by the looks of things. The newspaper article was short and fairly tedious and Melissa got up to make a cup of tea, feeling strangely disappointed. One month after they had left Tyneham, Albert Standish had stood down as an MP. Perhaps it was a protest at having his home requisitioned. Perhaps it was just a perfectly normal thing to do, quit when you no longer lived in your own constituency. Perhaps Albert and Veronica had gone to live in London after all, happily ever after.

She sipped her tea and sat back down on Liam’s terribly stylish, uncomfortable sofa. The article was unsatisfying. There was no mention of Veronica, but then why would there have been? If it wasn’t for the fact that Veronica had looked a bit odd in the photograph, Melissa wouldn’t care that there had been no information about the couple on the boards in the church. Perhaps that was just Veronica’s un-photogenic smile and Melissa was barking up the wrong tree. But no, she knew she wasn’t. She wished she’d taken a picture of the photo on her mobile phone. Remembering Veronica’s face, even a few hours later, was difficult, but it had been fear on her face. Veronica looked utterly frightened, that much Melissa could remember.

Melissa closed the laptop lid and then looked at her phone again. She tapped her fingers on the table and looked around guiltily. Even though she knew she was alone, she was embarrassed by what she was about to do. Melissa reopened the laptop and when the screen lit up, she typed ‘Guy Cameron’ into the internet search engine and waited for the results to load.

Then, suddenly, the front door opened and Liam walked in, stopping when he saw her.

‘Oh, hi, you’re home,’ he said.

Melissa jumped. ‘I thought you’d still be surfing,’ she blurted.

‘Not today no. Too much wine yesterday. Thought a day out of the sun was wise.’

The wine. The table for two. And where had he been today if not surfing? Melissa took a breath.

‘Listen, Liam, I need to talk to you.’

‘Why are you looking him up?’ Liam interrupted, moving closer to Melissa’s computer. ‘That bloke off the telly,’ he clarified.

Melissa was flustered. She’d not seen Liam long enough to even mention Guy to him. She’d spent two days with another man and hadn’t so much as told her boyfriend where she’d been or who with. She realised now it was also because she’d been worried, not wanting to get into an argument. But it wasn’t like Liam had asked either. She felt even guiltier when she realised the two days with Guy were the nicest days she’d had in ages and certainly the best she’d had on this particular holiday.

Liam nodded towards the computer screen as a row of attractive, smiling press shots of Guy littered the page. ‘He does those boring history programmes on TV.’

Melissa looked at the screen. ‘Oh, right, yeah. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t watched any.’ She shut the laptop quickly and turned to face him again.

He shifted from one foot to the other and she dared a question.

‘Where have you been today, Liam?’

It took her boyfriend of eight months a few seconds to respond.

‘You’re right.’ He ignored her question, sinking down on the sofa opposite. ‘We do need to talk. This, us, I’m not sure it’s working anymore,’ he said, looking sheepish.

‘You’re seeing someone else.’ It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. But the moment she said it, she knew it was the truth.

‘Shit.’ Liam reddened. His head shot up to meet her gaze. ‘How do you …?’

‘For how long?’ Melissa demanded.

Liam ran his hand through his hair. ‘Don’t take it personally,’ he started.

Melissa’s eyes widened. ‘What? What do you mean by that?’

‘It’s not you,’ Liam started.

‘Are you serious?’ Melissa raised her voice. ‘It’s not you it’s me,’ she mimicked. ‘Exactly how long has this been going on?’ she asked again.

‘That’s why you shouldn’t take it personally.’ Liam looked at the floor. ‘A while.’