Chapter 1
Florence
Jack cursed under his breath, wincing in pain as he attempted to force the window shut, and Florence coughed, her throat dry and sore. Completely jammed, the window resisted, and the acrid black smoke continued to billow in.
‘There’s no point,’ she muttered. ‘Save your strength.’
‘It’ll disperse when we’re out of this damn tunnel,’ he said.
She nodded, leant back against the carriage wall, and slid to the floor where she rested her forehead on drawn-up knees and wrapped her arms around her shins.
Anything to escape the smell. Not just engine smoke, but the sour odour of unwashed bodies too, and the cheap tobacco that hung in blue-grey clouds throughout the train and clung to their hair and clothes.
Sitting in the corridor like this, crumpled and dirty and trying not to breathe, Florence felt exhausted and not quite able to relinquish the fear lodged in the pit of her stomach.
They’d been stuck in the dim light of the tunnel for more than three quarters of an hour, and they still had another train to catch before they could even dream of arriving at Exeter station where she hoped Jack’s father would still be waiting.
Eventually there was a bone-shaking jolt.
Florence lifted her head and caught Jack’s eye.
He nodded as they heard a shrill whistle and a muted cheer from the weary passengers as the wheels turned, clanking and rattling as the train awoke.
A thin, uniformed guard climbed over three or four servicemen lying half asleep on the floor by the door, their heaps of kit blocking the corridor.
Grumbling to himself, he elbowed his way around the tight group of civilians bunched up next to Jack and Florence and then tripped over Jack’s large, booted feet.
‘Westbury,’ he yelled after he had righted himself and glared at them. ‘All change for Exeter.’
Just as well he had such a loud voice. Not only was it a way to let off steam, but also all the station signs had been removed – so unless you were a local, you had no idea where you were.
Jack scowled when, very soon after that, the train pulled into Westbury station. ‘Typical,’ he said as he scrambled up from where he’d joined Florence on the floor. ‘If I’d known we were this bloody close we could have just got out and walked.’
‘Don’t think I’ll walk anywhere, ever again,’ she said, and meant it.
He gave her a commiserating smile. It wasn’t easy for him either.
As they had made their escape across the Pyrenees mountains, they had both injured themselves.
When she’d fallen badly, Jack had reached out to save her, seriously aggravating an old injury sustained when he’d made a bad parachute landing back in the Dordogne.
Her legs felt like jelly; his arm was strapped up. Fine pair they were.
As they joined the crowd shuffling towards the open door people pushed and shoved, desperate to exit the hot train and get to wherever they were going.
Fatigued soldiers longing to see their families again, no matter how briefly, had perked up, but the worn-out nurses still in their uniforms stared ahead with glazed eyes. Everyone was grey and drawn.
‘Platform for Exeter?’ Jack asked a red-faced platform guard and was told which way to go.
When the crowd were not too far from the waiting Exeter train, Florence heard two men behind her speaking in a foreign language. She froze and Jack, noticing her distress, took her elbow and propelled her forward.
‘It’s all right,’ Jack said quietly, linking arms with her. ‘Only Polish servicemen. Come on, we need to hurry.’
Florence knew the men hadn’t been German but was so tired that logic and common sense had deserted her.
She could never reveal her secret, not now, not back home in the Dordogne, nor in the Pyrenees as they dodged Nazi patrols, and not in Franco’s Spain either.
Slowly, oh so slowly, they had avoided capture as they made their way under a burning sun from the north to the south of Spain.
In Gibraltar they boarded The Stirling Castle which, before the war, had been an ocean liner, but was now a troop ship sailing back and forth between Gibraltar and Southampton.
Jack firmly pushed her up the steps and onto the next train.
‘Frome – Castle Cary – Langport – Taunton – Exeter,’ another station guard yelled.
Florence had a splitting headache from the constant noise and wished she hadn’t been forced to leave France.
This dreary worn-out England wasn’t the England she remembered.
But it would have been unthinkable to stay in France.
Unthinkable. Irrevocably altered by what had happened to her, she prayed that surely, surely she’d be safe here.
They traipsed along the corridor for what seemed like an age then, thank God, Florence spied two seats and, stumbling over her own feet, she hastily claimed them.
Once settled in the carriage, she leant her head back in relief.
She would survive this, she told herself.
She had survived much worse. And then she fell asleep, vaguely aware of the station stops and only opening her eyes properly when Jack shook her and told her they were almost there.
She glanced out of the window as the train pulled into Exeter station and then came to a shuddering, screeching, stop.
She spotted a poster with a head and shoulder image of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and a quote from him, too.
‘Let us go forward together’ it proclaimed.
Yes, she thought. We all need to go forward, and she would just have to find a way to stop herself from looking back.
She felt light-headed as she and Jack straightened up, then stood to stretch their legs and smooth down their crumpled clothes. Tired, hungry, filthy dirty, they were home.
Home, she sighed. Where was that now? It was Jack’s home they were going to. They retrieved their bags from the luggage rack overhead, climbed down from the train and made their way out of the station.
Forty minutes later as Jack’s father, Lionel, drove them downhill along a bumpy gravelled track, Florence caught her first glimpse of the Devonshire cottage.
She gaped at it from the front passenger window, blinking rapidly and feeling she’d arrived in the borderlands between what was real and what was not.
Thatched and tucked into a cosy space between green forested hills, it had surely grown out of the meadow that lay in front of it.
A fairy-tale cottage. And, except for the suicidal scuttling pheasants attempting to escape the wheels it was completely silent.
There could be no greater contrast between what they had been through than this and just the sight of it revived her.
‘A place to restore the heart and soul,’ Lionel said with a knowing look back at Jack as they drew closer. ‘Glad to see you safely back in Blighty, son.’
‘Two sides of the house are backed by hilly oak thickets,’ Jack said, on a more practical note. ‘A steep hill slopes down to the house on the third side and, as you can see, a brook and water meadow borders the approach. Magnificent walks in every direction.’
‘Like a sanctuary,’ Florence said, breathing properly for the first time in weeks. ‘And the hills standing guard.’
‘Hope it will be a sanctuary for you, my dear,’ Lionel said and coughed awkwardly, as if that might have been a bit too personal for a first meeting.
Florence smiled at him.
‘Can’t drive across the brook in winter, mind.
Have to park this side of it, but you can always cross by foot on the stone slabs over there when the water is flowing,’ he added.
‘Will be absolutely fine now though. Had a go at mowing the lawns myself, but the grass was too long and too thick. Needs a scythe, Jack.’
‘I don’t think I’ve seen a more romantic place in my whole life,’ Florence said, glancing at the teeming wildflowers, the tangled rose bushes, and the clematis cascading over the front of the cottage. ‘Mind you, the climbers need a good pruning.’
‘Like to garden, do you, my dear?’ Jack’s father asked.
He was tall and solidly built, a bear of a man with a full head of grizzly salt-and-pepper hair and ruddy cheeks.
Probably a little too fond of a glass of port, she thought privately.
She did her best to resist the image of her garden at home in France as it flashed into her mind and almost stopped her breath.
She swallowed. ‘I adore gardening,’ she managed to say.
‘She’s something of an expert, Dad,’ Jack added.
Lionel drove over the shallow brook and pulled up outside the cobbled pathway to the house, near a massive horse chestnut tree. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Meadowbrook. But for the farmer’s wife, you won’t see another soul. And the old boy up at the manor never comes down here.’
‘I love it,’ Florence said. ‘Thank you so much for driving us. Sorry we’re so filthy.’
‘Not at all. The house has been well aired and there are a few basic supplies. Bread, milk, bacon, and so on.’
‘Thanks Dad,’ Jack said and clapped his father on the back. ‘I don’t know about Florence, but more than anything I need to sleep.’
Florence glanced down at the ingrained dirt in her nails. ‘Me too and tomorrow a bath.’
Jack gave her a weary smile. ‘I think that can be arranged. Come on. Ready to go inside?’