Before the Poison

20

Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), February, 1942. At sea

Wednesday, 18th February, 1942 I am now in such despair that I can hardly bring myself to write. I doubt that anybody will ever read this journal, anyway, as I am sure it will soon be at the bottom of the sea along with its writer. I had thought things had been as bad as they could get, but I was wrong. We spent all day yesterday sailing towards Java, tending the wounded, as usual, changing dressings, handing out rations, trying to ease the pain with what little morphia we have whenever we could. It was a tiring day, and by sundown we were ready for sleep. The Tanjong Pinang is a small ship, and all the passengers had to go down in the hold, but in reward for our hard work, the captain let the sisters sleep on deck, where it was cooler and less crowded. Just as we were settling down to sleep, at about half past nine, we were blinded by searchlights, followed by two almighty explosions. After that it was chaos. I seemed to be unscathed, but all around me, people were dead or dying. Brenda could walk, but she had a ragged wound down her right side, and she was losing a lot of blood. I bound it up as best I could with strips of torn clothing. The smoke was making breathing difficult, and we could hardly see more than a few inches in front of our eyes. Everywhere we went, we tripped over bodies. I headed for the hold to see what I could do for the women and children down there, but a V.A.D. emerged, covered in blood, and told me it was no use, everybody down there was dead. They had received a direct hit. Nobody knew whether it was a submarine or a gunboat that had attacked us, but it did not matter. The damage was done. The ship was now listing and sinking so quickly that the only sensible thing to do was jump. I took Brenda by the hand, and together we stepped over the side. The sound of the screams in the dark was terrible, and I thought we would either be sucked down by the ship sinking, or that we would simply drown before we found any form of flotation. I kept an eye on Brenda. Even in her weakened state, she was a strong swimmer, and we were far enough away when the ship went down that the suction did not drag us under with it. The crew had thrown a number of life-rafts overboard. Brenda and I managed to get hold of two of these and fasten them together. After that, we went around searching for survivors and managed to get enough to fill the tethered rafts. When there was no room for any more, people clung on to the sides, and we drifted away into the night. I do not know what happened to the others on the ship. I can only believe that most of them are dead. Now it is just after dawn on the following day, and it feels already as if it is going to be a hot one. We have no protection from the sun. We lost two people during the night, both of whom had been clinging to the side of our raft. By morning they had simply disappeared. The children are hungry and crying already, their poor mothers trying in vain to comfort them. There is no comfort. We have no food or water. Brenda has a fever, and the wound in her side looks angry. She will need stitches and antibiotics soon, though, or infection will surely set in. When I look around, I see only the ocean, which, thank heaven, is calm today, and a few small islands dotted about. All we can do is keep trying to head west to Sumatra and hope a friendly ship rescues us before the Japanese find us.

Thursday, 19th February, 1942 Today the children all went mad.

Friday, 20th February, 1942 There was nothing to be done for the children. Heat stroke, festering wounds, starvation and dehydration took them. We lost them all, toddlers, babes in arms, all of them, and Brenda and I committed their little bodies to the sea in tears. One mother would not let go of her dead baby boy, and there was nothing we could do to make her. Later in the day, when nobody was looking, she slipped overboard with him and they both went under. By the end of the day we had lost three more civilians who had been clinging to the side. Whether they had died, weakened so much, or simply given up the ghost and let go, I do not know, but none of us left had the strength to search for them. The sun is merciless. We try to cover ourselves as best we can with what scraps of clothing we have left, but it is useless. There is no way to deflect the heat. My head aches and I feel sick most of the time. My skin is hot and dry. I am so thirsty that I think seriously about scooping up a palm full of sea water. Surely a small amount could not do any harm? The daylight also exposes us to any Japanese aircraft that might pass overhead, so we have many reasons to embrace the darkness, though it is in the dark that my fears are at their worst. We have not seen any sharks yet, but they are surely near by. They would not miss the opportunity of gorging themselves on the excess of food. I have not seen any other rafts or boats. We are alone, a painted ship upon a painted sea.

Saturday, 21st February, 1942 Brenda went over last night. She was sleeping beside me, but this morning her place was bare. She slipped beneath the waves during the night, and I did not even awaken. Maybe I rolled over and pushed her off? I feel so guilty and so responsible. I should have taken better care of her. I should have held on to her. Why Brenda? Why Brenda and not me? There are only five of us left alive now, and one of them may not survive until the end of the day. I cannot think that any of us will survive much longer. I wonder why I am still writing this, but I always find some comfort in my oilskin tied securely around my neck. I am becoming too weak to think clearly. There really is nothing more to say. We are all dying. It is simply a matter of time. Perhaps it would be best for me to follow Brenda. How easy it would be. Some moments, I even wish the Japanese aircraft would come and bomb us. Just one quick bomb would solve everything. When I close my eyes, I am in back at Kilnsgate, and there is snow all around. I am building a snowman with Billy, but all of a sudden, it starts to move and melt, and a Japanese soldier comes out of it, snarling, with his bayonet aimed at me. Sometimes I do not know which are worse, the hallucinations or the reality. Sometimes I do not know which is which.

December 2010

Just before Christmas, we got a serious dose of winter. Schools, roads and airports closed, including Heathrow, and the train services came to a standstill. At Kilnsgate, I was cut off from the outside world for a couple of days, though the telephone and Internet still worked. When the snow stopped falling, I was able to persuade a local farmer with a snowplough to come over and dig me out, for a small fortune. I was still worried that my guests wouldn’t be able to fly in, though, as Heathrow seemed quite unable to cope with the amount of snow.

The Volvo did OK. I had driven in similar conditions many times in New England, the Midwest or to Mammoth Lakes, in California, where we had our chalet for the skiing, but there I had winter tyres, and somehow things never seemed quite as bad. I was glad I’d already done my Christmas shopping and had bought pretty much everything I needed. I was a little worried about the wine order, but when I phoned to check, they assured me it would arrive within a day or two, and they proved to be right.

Christmas came and went without any sign of Heather. She had told me on the night she came for dinner before the snow that she didn’t think it was a good idea, our spending Christmas together, and that she would visit her parents this year. I suspected that her decision may have had something to do with the tree I had decorated by myself, perhaps making her feel excluded, though I soon realised that was probably fanciful on my part. It was clearly something she had thought about and decided before she came over and saw the tree, on which she complimented me.

We had a good dinner that evening before the storms came, laughed a lot, talked about Christmas memories, then made love. I told her I understood her decision to spend Christmas with her family, that she was right. It was too early in our relationship and too soon after her separation for her to be meeting my family and friends. The only regret she had, she told me with characteristic Heather directness, was that she would miss meeting the famous Melissa Wilde. I said we might be able to arrange something after Christmas, depending on everyone’s exact schedule, and we left it at that. She didn’t stay the night, claiming she wanted to get away before the snow got too deep.

Luckily, Jane and Mohammed and Dave and Melissa all managed to get in OK, though the LA flight was delayed nearly ten hours. They had a few days to relax and get over it before Christmas itself, but the weather grew even colder, and any ice that might have melted during the day froze again at night. Even the hot-water bottles didn’t help. My American guests complained constantly. Except for Mohammed. He had lived in London for a while when he was younger and had got used to the cold. I say ‘younger’, though he was only in his mid-twenties now, an intern at Johns Hopkins with, my daughter Jane assured me, ‘amazing’ prospects.

I have to confess that when I first heard Mohammed’s name, and that he was a doctor, I expected a rather earnest and disapproving young teetotaller, but he turned out to be a Goons fan with a keen, off-the-wall sense of humour, and he was not averse to the occasional glass of wine, or to celebrating Christmas with us heathens, for that matter. He was, however, still a member of the medical profession, and I always feel a bit guilty being around doctors when I’ve had a few drinks. I always imagine that they’re ticking off another year with every sip as they look at me. But Mohammed put on a silly hat and pulled crackers with the rest of us. He also ate everything I put in front of him and didn’t say no when I pulled out the single malt at the end of the meal. Jane helped me with the dinner, and I was glad of both her help and her company in the kitchen. It made me realise how much I missed her. And Laura. She had her mother’s good looks, that was for certain. Jane and Mohammed slept in the big guest bedroom, and neither mentioned anything to me about strange reflections in the mirror.

Mother rang from Graham’s on Christmas Day. She’d had a terrible journey, she said, but she was all right now, except there were too many noisy children around. I reminded her that some of them were her own great-grandchildren, but she went on to complain about not understanding the television programmes because they were all in French. I gave up on conversation then and just listened. My son Martin called later from his in-laws’ home in San Francisco and wished us all a merry Christmas, and the rest of time the phone remained silent.

We didn’t stay in the house all the time, of course. Despite the weather, my guests still insisted on seeing Yorkshire, so I took them to Hawes, Reeth, Castle Bolton and York. I also wanted to show them the Buttertubs Pass between Wensleydale and Swaledale, and drive them up to Tan Hill for a pub lunch, but that was out of the question. The road conditions were too icy and dangerous, with sheep wandering the unfenced tracks and the occasional chasm on one side or the other. The weather also ruled out the coast, but I think everyone had a good time.

Whenever we went out, say to the Shoulder of Mutton for Sunday lunch, I began to feel like an outsider in Yorkshire all over again. Apart from me, they all had American accents, even Mohammed, and I hadn’t so much noticed while I was living over there, but Americans tend to speak rather loudly in public. The whole subject of foreigners abroad is, I know, a contentious one, and in my experience there’s not much worse than the Yorkshireman abroad, where nothing is ever quite as good as it is ‘back ’ome’, except the weather, of course. Still, people would stare at us, and it was hard to ignore their occasional expressions of disapproval, such as when Dave questioned why the Brits couldn’t even deal with a simple snowstorm, as if someone in the group had told an off-colour joke or farted too loudly. I realised that they saw me as part of the offending group. Even my old acquaintances the Wellands smiled thinly and kept their distance.

Melissa certainly put an interesting spin on things, though. Plenty of people had teased Dave when he married her – both had a couple of divorces behind them, and at thirty-five she was quite a few years younger than him – but it was a true love match. In private, Melissa Packer was an intelligent, down-to-earth, funny, slightly clumsy and sensible woman, but most people knew her only as Melissa Wilde, from the action films or the sexy siren roles she played on the big screen. She was also gorgeous, and it was all natural, from the pearly white teeth to the firm breasts, glossy back hair, curves, full lips and long legs. She worked out every day, of course, but there was no surgery involved in Melissa’s beauty. She also did her own stunts and had a black belt in karate. Naturally, a lot of people recognised her in public – some had, of course, recently seen her in Death Knows My Name at the Station, in which she played the femme fatale – and quite a few jaws dropped. One or two people even came to ask for her autograph, which she obligingly gave.

Perhaps our most interesting evening, though, and the one that spun me off in a wholly unforeseen direction on the Grace Fox business, was the evening of our Richmond pub crawl.

‘This woman you’re obsessing on,’ said Dave quietly, while we were wedged into a corner of the tiny snug of the Black Lion, along with what seemed like a team of rugby players. An acoustic folk group was playing in the dining area, and they had charmed Melissa into singing a number with them. She had made a couple of alt. country albums before the movies took over her life, and she hadn’t lost her touch. The audience was rapt. ‘Love Is Teasing’ had never sounded so good. Even the rugby players were listening. Jane and Mohammed had opted for a quiet evening at home, as they hadn’t had much time for themselves lately, and neither was particularly fond of pubs.

I took a long swig of Black Sheep. ‘Grace Fox,’ I said. ‘And I’m not obsessing. I’m just interested, that’s all.’

‘Whatever. Do you think there’s a story in it?’

‘Do I think there’s a story in it? It is a story, Dave. A terrific one. A fantastic tale. I just don’t know the end yet.’

‘But you know what I mean. Is it a movie?’

I did know what he meant. Ever since I had read Grace’s journal and seen the photographs, I had been hearing fragments of music that were beginning to coalesce in my mind – I hadn’t written anything down yet – and I had come to call it ‘Grace’s Theme’. It meant that I was thinking in movie terms, although I knew without even playing it that ‘Grace’s Theme’ was also the missing part of my piano sonata, the part that would give it coherence, dimension and meaning. And if Grace had me thinking about movies, which was totally arse backwards, as I’m usually among the last to get involved, then I should have known that Dave, with his cinematic and narrative instincts, wouldn’t take long to cotton on.

We had already been to the Turf, the Fleece and the Unicorn, and we were slowly making our way towards the market square. Though it was only a few days after Christmas, it was a Thursday night, and the town was jumping, the holiday spirit still in top gear. We left the Black Lion, much to the chagrin of the band, and headed for the Castle Tavern.

‘Jesus,’ said Melissa as we entered the cobbled market square, still strung with Christmas lights. ‘Those girls are hardly wearing anything at all and it’s freezing out here. Look at those heels!’ She glanced at me. ‘Are they hookers, Chris? You never told me Richmond was full of hookers.’

‘Shush,’ I said, putting my fingers to my lips. The girls might well be slight and scarcely clad, tottering about on the icy cobbles in high heels, but their boyfriends were big strapping lads, squaddies from Catterick camp, some of them. Still, I’d have backed Melissa in a fight with any one of them. I had got used to the groups of young girls who went around most of the winter in short skirts, skimpy tops and high heels, but I could see how they might confuse a visitor. ‘It’s an old English tradition,’ I said. That covered a multitude of eccentricities.

Melissa shivered. ‘An unhealthy one, I’d say. Are we nearly there yet? I keep thinking I’m going to slip any moment and break my neck.’

‘We are.’

Word must have spread about the group of crazy Americans, because as soon as we entered the pub, the conversations quietened down and people glanced in our direction. It was a mixed crowd, some kids, but quite a few pensioners and middle-aged couples, too. I saw Wilf Pelham sitting with a group of cronies down the far end, and he waved at me. Forgiven, then. I waved back. I wanted a chat with him, anyway. There was no band, and the piped music wasn’t too loud to drown out conversations, which soon began to pick up again all around us.

‘My shout, I think,’ said Melissa with a glance towards the crowded bar and a mischievous smile. ‘Isn’t that what you Brits say?’ In only a few days, with a true actor’s ability to mimic, she had picked up plenty of British terms and could even manage a fair imitation of the Northern accent. Geordie, which you heard a fair bit around Richmond, still defeated her.

‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘I’ll go if you want.’

‘Why? It looks like fun. Is it unladylike?’ she mocked me, putting her hand on my arm. Then she sloughed off her coat, handed it to Dave and plunged forward into the crowd. Dave laughed, and we managed to squeeze ourselves on a bench and cadge a stool for Melissa from the next table. If she needed one, that was. She seemed to be more in the mood to play the house, and I saw her already engaging the people next to her at the bar in conversation. They were clearing a way for her to get served before them as if she were royalty. Such is the magic of the Hollywood star. Or Melissa’s charm. Pretty soon she would be playing darts with them. And winning.

She soon came back with the drinks – I’m not sure what kind of beer mine was, but it was in a pint glass and it tasted all right – and perched on the stool. Heather had said she would try to join us at some point in the evening, and I had given her a rough plan of our route. I kept checking for her out of the corner of my eye, hoping she would make it. I knew she wanted to meet Melissa, and I was looking forward to seeing her again.

As it turned out, she walked into the Castle not long after we’d got there, with that way she had, slinky but not overdone, picking me out almost immediately and smiling at me. She obviously knew some of the people at the bar, because she stopped here and there to say hello or wish them a happy new year before she joined us. I suppose in her job you got to know the locals.

There wasn’t much room, so I jumped up, gave her a quick kiss and let her have my spot. I introduced her to Melissa and Dave, then said I’d be back in a minute and went to have a word with Wilf. When Heather saw where I was going, she rolled her eyes, but it was an indulgent roll. Then she leaned forward and started chatting animatedly with Melissa, and I was forgotten. Even before I got to Wilf’s table, the two of them got up and Heather led Melissa over to some people clustered around the far end of the bar. In seconds, they were all chatting away like old friends. Pretty soon Melissa would be best friends with everyone in the pub. She was good like that. Dave, left to his own devices, was talking to the middle-aged couple sitting next to him.

‘Hello, lad,’ said Wilf. ‘Sit yourself down.’

I sat and rested my pint on the table. ‘How are you, Wilf?’

‘Fair to middling. When you get to my age you think every little ache and pain’s a herald of the end.’

‘So you haven’t got cancer?’

‘Not as I know of. Just what they call acid reflux. They stuck that tube down my throat and had a shufti, then gave me a new prescription. Them new pills do the trick.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Isn’t that Melissa Wilde with your friend over there?’

‘I’m surprised you recognise her.’

‘I keep my eyes open and my ears to the ground.’ He gave me a mischievous glance. ‘I went to see Death Knows My Name at the Station a while back.’

I groaned and put my head in my hands.

‘Nay, lad, it weren’t so bad. Tha’s no Bernard Herrmann, mind you.’ He studied Melissa, who was talking animatedly with the people Heather had introduced her to. ‘Good Lord, if I was twenty years younger…’

I laughed. ‘More like fifty, Wilf.’

‘Hey! None of your lip. I could tell you tales would make your toes curl.’

‘I’ll bet you could. And by the way.’ I pointed to Dave. ‘That’s her husband over there.’

‘Then he’d better keep an eye on her, little bloke like that. Some of those lads up there, their reach exceeds their grasp when they’ve had a few, if you follow my drift.’

‘I don’t think he’s got anything to worry about. Dave can take care of himself.’ So can Melissa, for that matter, I might have added.

‘They’ll be friends of yours, then, from the movie business?’

‘Yes.’ I told Wilf how I had come to know Dave and Melissa through my work, then we made small talk about Christmas for a while. Wilf had spent the holidays with his daughter and son-in-law in Blackpool until their constant bickering had driven him back home. ‘I wouldn’t bother going at all if it wasn’t for the little ’uns,’ he said. ‘But a man can’t ignore his own grandchildren, can he?’

‘No,’ I said, feeling a bit guilty about not seeing my own grandchild this Christmas.

Someone brought Wilf another pint, and he took a long swig and wiped his lips with the back of his gnarly hand. ‘So how’s your investigation going?’

‘It’s not really an investigation,’ I said, feeling rather silly. ‘Anyway, whatever it is, it seems to have stalled.’

‘So where do you go now?’ Wilf asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’ve been reading her journal.’

‘Journal?’

‘Yes.’ I told him about Louise and Grace’s scant possessions. ‘It’s amazing, what she saw, what she did. She was everywhere.’

‘Aye,’ said Wilf. ‘We often forget what role the women played while the men were busy trying to maim and kill each other.’

‘It makes her seem less likely to have killed anyone as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Maybe it was a disgruntled patient,’ Wilf said. ‘I’ve told you what a sadistic bastard Old Foxy was.’

‘So he lacked a good bedside manner. That’s not unusual in a doctor, and it’s hardly a motive for murder.’

‘Depends what he did and to whom.’

‘I’ll take it under advisement.’ I sipped some more beer. ‘I’m still interested in that young lad in uniform who Grace had lunch with in Richmond shortly before it happened.’ I explained about how my original theory had been shot down by Louise Webster’s discoveries.

Wilf scratched his stubbly chin. ‘All this raking up the past has had me feeling quite nostalgic these past few weeks. You said you got the impression this was an old friend and that he would have been a young lad when the war started?’

‘Yes. If she’d had a child in, say, 1931, he would have been about eight then and twenty-one in 1952.’

‘But she didn’t.’

‘No. I was wrong about that.’

‘Well, there were lots of young men in uniform then. What with National Service, and the garrison being so close by.’

‘Someone from her past? Someone she met during the war, perhaps? The person who saw them mentioned that he had an odd sort of birthmark on his hairline.’

Wilf gave me sharp glance. ‘Are you sure about that? You didn’t mention that before.’

‘Is it important?’

Wilf nodded over towards Heather and Melissa. ‘I’d keep an eye on them two, if I were you. Yon Frankie Marshall’s well over the limit, and he’s moving in a bit close to Miss Wilde for comfort.’

‘They can take care of themselves. What did you mean asking me if I was sure?’

‘Billy,’ Wilf said.

‘The evacuee?’

‘That’s the one. They took him in just after the war started. The government started shipping them down from Tyneside pretty soon that September. He’d have been about seven or eight then. Stopped with the Foxes until around Christmas, then his parents took him back home again.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason. It was the “Bore War”. Not much happening. Lots of parents took their kids back. Then, of course, after April 1940, when the Germans marched on Norway and Denmark, well… things heated up again. Then there was Dunkirk. Anyway, I remember Billy because he came to our school for a while and we used to play with him sometimes. Nice enough lad, but a fish out of water. City boy. Couldn’t seem to get a grasp on our country ways. I think his dad managed a shoe shop in Newcastle High Street or something. I remember he had a Geordie accent, and most of us couldn’t understand him. Some of the kids used to tease him mercilessly, but he took it all in good sport. He was well enough built, so if he’d wanted to, he could have given one or two of the worst a good thumping, but it wasn’t as if they tried to bully him or anything. He was a quiet kid, mostly, as I remember, a bit passive. Very nice lad, though. Nicely dressed. Clean. He must have been very unhappy underneath it all.’

‘Why?’

‘The teasing, the strangeness, being so far from home – or so it must have felt – missing his mum and dad. Not that he let his feelings show. Besides, I can’t see being stuck out at Kilnsgate with old misery-guts Fox could have been a lot of fun, can you?’

‘Surely Grace would have been there? And Hetty?’

‘I suppose so. Some of the time. Still…’

‘What happened at Kilnsgate during the war? I seem to be picking up all kinds of bits and pieces, and I can’t help but find myself wondering if it had anything to do with what happened later.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just the way things seem to connect. Grace meeting this Billy shortly before her husband’s death. I mean, she probably hadn’t seen him since 1939, when he was only seven. Grace being away overseas for quite a while. You said before that the house was taken over by the military for a while, very hush-hush.’

‘Oh, aye. Off limits. You couldn’t even get through Kilnsgarthdale from one end to the other. They were tough, surly buggers, too.’

‘How do you know?’

Wilf grinned. ‘Well, you don’t think we didn’t try, do you? Most of the time if kids went prowling around, they understood it was a harmless enough game. I mean, most of the soldiers weren’t that much older. It wasn’t so long ago they’d been up to the same mischief themselves. They’d usually send you off with a few choice words and a smile on their faces. But not this lot. They were older. And harder. We found a weak spot in the barbed wire once and the sentry found us and pretty much marched us off at gunpoint. I don’t think he would have actually shot us, but it was frightening enough.’

‘Any idea who it was?’

‘No. A lot of these units were top secret. They’d come and go, and no one even knew their names, or acronyms, if they had any. As far as I know, none of them came into town to socialise like the regular troops billeted up here.’

‘But there must have been some speculation?’

‘Oh, aye. We all assumed it was Special Operations Executive. A bit James Bond. In fact, I think Ian Fleming even had something to do with them.’

That was what Ted Welland had told me, I remembered. ‘But nobody actually knew, or said that was what it was?’

‘No.’

‘And what were they doing here?’

Wilf shrugged. ‘No idea. Training. Planning. Like I said, you couldn’t get near the place.’

‘Would Billy know anything about it?’

‘I can’t imagine why. It was after Billy’s time. Tell you what, have a word with old Bert Brotherton. No, sorry, he can’t help you, he’s long gone now, along with his son Fred. Sometimes I forget. Talk to his grandson. He might know something.’

‘What are you talking about, Wilf?’

‘Your neighbours, the farm down the lane, over the hill. It’s still in the family, far as I know.’

I realised with a guilty start that I hadn’t even been and introduced myself to my neighbours yet. Still, they hadn’t come to see me, either.

‘What do they know?’

‘I’ve no idea, but it was their farm that had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 1942, and old Bert always blamed the folks at Kilnsgate. Still, he was a bit of a cantankerous old devil. Always going on about them. Blamed them for Nat Bunting’s disappearance, too, apparently. But that’s Bert for you.’

Nat Bunting, I remembered, was the mentally challenged young man who had disappeared from the area during the war. What on earth could he have to do with anything? ‘Did he say how or when?’

‘No. He tended to ramble a bit, even then, did old Bert Brotherton.’

‘Do you happen to know Billy’s second name?’

‘Can’t say as I remember. We just called him Billy. But I do remember the birthmark. Most of the time he kept his hair in a fringe so nobody could see it, but the first week of school – clean or not – there was an outbreak of nits, maybe from some of the rougher evacuees in the area, so we all had to have our heads shaved, and the school nurse rubbed lethane on to get rid of them. Smelled something vile, it did. Anyway, with his hair short, you could see the birthmark, like when he had a military haircut years later, I suppose, when someone saw him with Grace. But Billy was really embarrassed by it and took to wearing a cap most of the time, till the nits had gone and his hair grew back. I’ll bet it was Billy, all right.’

I reached into my inside pocket for my iPhone. I had managed to download the photos and text Louise had given me, and I turned to the photo of Grace and the young boy standing in the garden of Kilnsgate. I showed it to Wilf. ‘Is that Billy?’

He stared at the iPhone in admiration. ‘That’s a clever gadget,’ he said. ‘Aye, that’s Billy, all right. By the looks of the weather and all it must have been taken shortly after he got there, before school started. September 1939. Lovely long summer. That’s Billy. And that’s Grace. But you know that already.’

‘What would Billy want with Grace after all those years?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe he was just in the area and he dropped by to say hello and happy new year? He was in uniform, you say, so the odds are he was at Catterick, maybe doing his National Service. Perhaps they were sending him off to war and he came to say goodbye.’

‘What war?’

‘There’s always a war. Korea. Kenya. I was in Cyprus, myself.’

‘Will there be records? You know, official records?’

‘Probably. It was quite a major operation, the evacuation, but it was a bit chaotic, too. It was supposed to be organised, and they had local “dispersal centres”, where they tried to keep friends, brothers and sisters and school parties together, but it didn’t always work out that way.’ Wilf sipped some beer. ‘Someone said it was a bit like an old Roman slave market in some places. You know, the farmers would come along and pick the strong, sturdy lads who could help out on the land, and the town families picked young girls who could give a hand around the house. The local bigwigs opted for the clean, nicely dressed kids, of course. Records? I don’t know. There’d have been a local billeting officer, for example. But I think you’d have a job on your hands tracking any records down after all this time, don’t you?’

‘I know someone who could help,’ I said, almost to myself. I noticed Heather glance over at me and frown. Was she annoyed that I had been talking to Wilf for so long, or were things getting a bit difficult over there? I smiled at her. She made a face and went back to talking to Melissa and the crowd that surrounded them.

‘You know, you could do a lot worse than the local papers,’ Wilf said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘As it happened, Billy was the area’s first evacuee. I don’t mean he came by himself or anything, there was a trainload or more, but it was just announced that way, officially, like, to make a bit of a story. Dr Fox and his wife wanted to set an example, see, be the first to take in a city evacuee. I think Old Foxy saw it as a mark of his status, or something like that, and of course the billeting officer was a patient of his. I’d imagine he could have found himself on the receiving end of a big nasty needle if he hadn’t gone along with it. Needless to say, they could have taken twenty or more, that big house of theirs, or yours, now, but the good doctor only wanted the one. A nice one, of course. And the first. He got Billy. Anyway, it wasn’t such a terrible mismatch, as so many were. If Old Foxy hadn’t had a bit of influence, he might have got stuck with half a dozen slum kids, and who knows what would have happened to Billy. Anyway, there was a story about Billy in one of the papers. Photo and everything. It might be of some help.’

‘Which paper?’

‘Can’t say for certain, but it would have been the Northern Despatch or the Northern Echo, most likely. Those were the papers we took back then.’

‘What was the date?’

‘I don’t know, do I? It was seventy years ago, for Christ’s sake. It was early September, though, I remember that, not long after war was declared. That doesn’t give you a lot of ground to cover.’

I heard a grunt of pain and a glass break over by the bar.

‘I told you there’d be trouble,’ Wilf said.

I turned in time to see Melissa twisting Frankie Marshall’s tattooed arm up his back, his face pressed down on the wet bar towel. A glass had tipped over and rolled to the floor. The young barman was torn between doing something and fear of getting involved. Melissa leaned forward and whispered something in Frankie’s ear. He nodded as best he could for a man in his position, and she let him go. He shook himself off, scowled, picked up his jacket and stormed out of the pub. One or two of his mates laughed when the door closed behind him. Before anything else was said, Dave hauled himself over to the bar and bought a round of drinks for the house. That brought cheers, and the incident was quickly forgotten, the glass was swept up and everyone returned to their evening of fun. Nobody bothered Melissa or Heather again, and some of the lads even started to regard her with a certain expression of awe. She broke a few hearts that night, and Dave was probably the envy of the town. I remember him once asking me, not so long ago, ‘What on earth does she see in a short, fat, balding Jewish guy like me?’ I couldn’t answer him then, and I can’t now. Put it down to the mysteries of love.

We didn’t stay much longer. The incident took some of the wind out of our sails, and we’d all had more than enough to drink. The pub-crawl idea quickly lost much of its appeal, as I had suspected it would. I thanked Wilf for our little chat, wished him a happy new year, and set off with Dave, Heather and Melissa to get a taxi outside the Green Howards Museum.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked Melissa as we walked carefully up the cobbled square, keeping an eye out, just in case Frankie Marshall had gone to seek reinforcements.

‘He grabbed my tit,’ she said. ‘Wanted to know if it was real.’

‘He wouldn’t be the first,’ said Dave.

Melissa shoved him playfully. ‘Yeah, but he didn’t do it in a nice way.’ She linked arms with Heather and they started singing ‘Love Is Teasin” as we got into the waiting taxi. Dave and I quietened them down, though the taxi driver was one of those types who has seen it all. As long as we didn’t vomit all over his upholstery, which the sign said would cost us a?50 soiling fee, he didn’t much care what we did or said. ‘Most of your friends were real gentlemen,’ Melissa said to Heather. ‘I had a really good time.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Heather, clearly thrilled at Melissa’s approval. But she didn’t want to come back to Kilnsgate, not with Jane and Mohammed staying there. I could understand that. We made arrangements to meet in a couple of days and dropped her off at the Convent. As the taxi headed for Kilnsgate, Melissa dozed on Dave’s shoulder, and I thought about what Wilf Pelham had just told me. I should have a chat with my neighbour, for one thing. Then there was the evacuee. Billy. I couldn’t see how yet, but maybe he was the missing piece in all this. I prayed he was still alive and able to tell me why he had met Grace shortly before her husband’s death.