Chapter 23 Lilias #3
The door to the outbuilding was lying at an angle, half off its hinges.
Lilias pushed at it until it gave enough for her to gain access.
Immediately the sound of barking increased.
The dog didn’t quite sound like Compass, but who knew how Compass might sound if something dreadful had happened to him?
Lilias pressed on urgently towards the sound, unwilling to allow the spark of hope to be snuffed out.
Inside the building, the smell of excrement was overpowering.
There was a cage at the far end of the room.
Sensing her presence, the dog inside it began to scratch frantically at the floor, whining and yapping frantically in its desperation to be free.
“Compass?” Almost suffocating in the stench, Lilias squatted down in front of the cage, peering in through the darkness. The dog was some sort of terrier, like Compass. But it wasn’t Compass.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Lilias said, her voice kind even though she was devastated. The dog was desperately thin, its ribs showing through its coat. “Let’s get you out of here, shall we?”
A voice shouted at her from the doorway, making her jump out of her skin. “Get your hands off that there cage, missus!” Cook. He must have crept up under the cover of his dog’s desperate barking.
Lilias stood up. “Mr. Cook. I was just—”
He came further into the building. “You was trespassing, that’s what you was doing, missus.”
She lifted her chin. “I did try the front door, actually, only there was no reply.”
“Don’t give you no right to come snooping round here.”
“No, indeed. And I wouldn’t normally consider doing so, only I was looking for my own dog, actually.”
“That little rat of yours? Gone missing, has he? Good riddance, I say,” Cook said nastily. “If’n he were here, he wouldn’t be in no cage. He’d be dead on the blasted rubbish heap.”
“He hasn’t been here, then?”
“Haven’t seen the little bastard since I saw him with that vaccie lad of yours.
Out with his all-swagger-and-no-substance dad, he was.
” Cook took a step nearer to her. “Now, I’ll thank you to get off my property, missus.
And you and yours can keep off, an all. And that includes dogs, vaccie boys, and jumped-up gangsters. Got it?”
Lilias nodded. “As clear as crystal, Mr. Cook,” she said, stepping round him more calmly than she felt. As vile as Cook had been, there hadn’t been a shred of evasiveness about him. Neither Compass nor Harry had been here, she was sure of it.
So where in the devil’s name were they?
Just before she left the building, Lilias turned back to look at Cook. “Mr. Cook, do feed your dog soon, won’t you? The poor thing looks at death’s door.”
Her request was met by a predictable string of expletives, and she made her escape, grateful for the enclosed space of the car, even though the stench of the old barn and the dog’s desperate existence had permeated her hair and clothing as well as her nostrils.
Poor creature. How was it right that such beings as Cook could be allowed to go about their foul day-to-day business when men like Harry were drafted to fight?
Cook must only be a year or two over the top age of the draft.
It simply wasn’t fair. And where, oh, where was Harry?
Her thoughts had come full circle. Could it possibly be true that Harry had lost his nerve and run away somewhere rather than turn up to fight?
It seemed as if this was exactly what his wife thought he’d done, for, the very next day, a letter arrived from Nadine.
You have no doubt heard about my husband’s disappearing act to get out of fighting. I cannot tell you how ashamed I am. Nobody here is speaking to me because of it. They turn their backs on me and gossip, and all because Harry is a lousy coward. I don’t know how that is my fault, I’m sure.
Anyway, I’ve had enough of being stuck here on my own dealing with it all. I want my David back here. I should be grateful if you would put him on the 10:00 train from Norwich on Wednesday. I will be on the platform at Liverpool Street station to meet him.
Yours,
Nadine
Lilias gave a moan, one trembling hand lifting to cover her mouth, just as Ruth came down the stairs.
“What is it, Lily?” Ruth asked, taking Lilias’s hand with concern.
Lilias handed her the letter. “It’s David,” she said. “His mother wants him home.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Ruth, scanning the letter’s contents. “Whatever is she thinking? Oh, I see. But that can’t be true, surely? I can’t believe Harry would ever . . .”
David appeared in the kitchen doorway, and Lilias tapped Ruth’s foot with her own to stop her from saying anything more.
She might be about to lose someone else she adored, but she wasn’t the important one in all this.
David was. Even if he did have a mother who wanted him near her for entirely selfish reasons.
Frantically, Lilias’s brain tried to find a solution, a way to convince Nadine not to take this step, but it kept returning to the harsh reality that Nadine was David’s mother, and as such, she had the right to decide whatever she liked.
Somehow, and she would never know how, Lilias managed to find a smile for David. “I have some news,” she said. “It seems your mother cannot do without you any longer. You’re to return home this Wednesday.”
David didn’t speak. Since his father’s abrupt departure and Compass’s disappearance, he’d been very quiet. Now he just stared at Lilias, tears filling his eyes, and at the sight of them, she crumpled, the smile and the bright tone of voice vanishing like a conjuring trick as she caught him to her.
“I shall miss you so very much,” she told him as sobs racked his slight body. “But we’ll keep in touch, and you must come and visit when this ghastly war is over and done with. It will be all right, darling. It will be all right.”
Lilias didn’t deposit David like a parcel on the 10:00 a.m. to Liverpool Street station on Wednesday.
She took him herself, keeping up a steady stream of conversation to ease their emotions, speaking of her travels with her father to Egypt and to the Middle East, the birds in the sky, church steeples—indeed, anything that came into her mind.
She had to keep on talking, because whenever silence fell, it seemed to her the chuffing of the train was saying, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it . . .
Neither she nor David had cried again since she’d first given him the news of his imminent departure, and nor did they when they alighted the train at Liverpool Street station to find Nadine waiting on the platform as arranged.
“Hello, David,” Nadine said to her son after a tight-lipped smile in Lilias’s direction. “I’m glad to have you back. It’s been awful lonely all on my own. Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”
Lilias had never heard Nadine speak in such a friendly way to her son, but even so, David didn’t move, his gaze focussed down on the station platform, his hand still clutching Lilias’s.
“David, say hello to your mother,” Lilias urged him gently.
“Hello, Mum.”
Lilias gave him a little push, and he went over to Nadine to give her a kiss.
“What are all these tears about?” she asked. “You’re home now, aren’t you? Where you belong.”
David remained silent, giving an almighty sniff and wiping away his tears on his coat sleeve.
Finally, Nadine seemed to get impatient. “Come along, we’ve got a bus to catch.”
“Goodbye, David,” Lilias said, feeling as if her heart would break.
He looked up at her. “You . . . you will tell me when Compass gets home, won’t you?”
Lilias swallowed. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll let you know right away.” But Nadine was already walking along the platform, taking David away from her, and very soon they were both lost in the crowd of passengers waiting to board the train.
And as the days passed and Compass still didn’t return home, Lilias wrote to David, anyway, telling him about one of the chickens who’d taken to sitting on a pebble, believing it to be her egg, and a willow tree Symonds had had to chop down after a particularly high wind.
Until one morning another letter arrived from Nadine, requesting that Lilias stop writing, its fat envelope containing her unopened letter to David. And Lilias went for a lonely walk and sobbed as if her heart would be broken forever.