Guest blog: Merryn Allingham - 'Daisy's Long Road Home'

Excerpt: 

That decided her. Grayson had been adamant she must say nothing that could precipitate the danger he feared. But she wouldn’t be saying anything. She wouldn’t be involved in any confrontation. In the strictest sense, she wouldn’t be going against his wishes. If she crept to the room while the palace slept, no one need ever know. She could make a brief search and return before anyone was

awake.

She slipped noiselessly out of bed and dressed in the clothes she’d worn the previous day. Grayson was still sleeping soundly when she let herself out of the suite and tiptoed into the corridor. Despite the brave words to herself, her fingers were tightly crossed that she could find her way back to the study and without meeting a fellow night wanderer. It turned out to be a more difficult journey than she’d anticipated. On several occasions, she turned in the wrong direction and found herself looking at a blank wall or down an unfamiliar corridor, and all

the time her heart was in her mouth at every creak of a wooden door or sigh of the palace walls. But eventually she stood outside the room she sought. Its door was no

longer ajar and that halted her. She could have no idea what, or even who, was behind its blank facade. She breathed deep and gathered her courage. She needed all of it to turn the door handle.

There was nobody. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with relief and had to grasp the back of the nearest chair to steady herself. She waited until her breathing had settled before she gave the room a swift scan. She must be quick, she couldn’t afford to linger. Grayson would be awake in less than an hour and ready to leave on his own adventure. She made for the desk. It was the most obvious place to look, but a cursory glance at the papers strewn across its surface, made plain there was little to interest her here. She bent down to the drawers on one side of the desk, methodically flicking through their contents and making sure she replaced everything as she found it. One side completed, but again nothing of interest. On to the drawers on the far side. She found them locked and her pulse beat a little quicker.

This could be it. Inside could be the letters she sought, the diary, the journal, anything that Karan had written in his time in Brighton. She tugged at each of the three compartments in turn, hoping the locks were too old to withstand an assault, and forgetting in her furious concentration that she’d intended to leave no trace of her visit. The drawers remained obstinately shut. Frustration made her careless and she shuffled the papers here and daisy’s long road home there on the desktop, looking for anything that might be strong enough to break the locks. A tray of pens, a sheaf of blotting paper and a paper knife, were all she found. Nothing she could use.

But perhaps, after all, it wasn’t the desk she should focus on. The bookcases that lined every wall might hold what she wanted. She walked slowly from one set of shelves to another, searching first the lower tiers and making sure she felt behind each row of books, then when that proved unsuccessful, dragging a chair to each bookcase in turn and clambering to the very top shelves. Still nothing. It had to be the desk. She bounced back across the room.

There was a madness in her now; the more frustrated she became, the more she believed there was something in this room, something locked in this desk, something that Talin Verghese did not want to be seen. If so, it had to concern his

dead son, and she had to get those drawers open. She went back to the desk and picked up the paper knife. It looked a feeble tool, but it was the only thing possible. She bent over the top drawer and had begun prodding and poking the lock with the knife, when a voice from the doorway made her heart jump in fright.

‘Are you quite mad?’

It was Grayson. Thank heaven for that at least.

‘I have to get these last three drawers open,’ was her sole explanation.

‘What are you thinking of? This is a private office, and if I’m not mistaken the Rajah’s personal domain. And you’re burgling it?’

‘It looks bad, I know.

‘Looks bad!’ Grayson’s expression was explosive. ‘It looks bloody lethal—for us. Now come back to the room, for God’s sake.’

‘I can’t. I have to open these drawers.’ Her whole life, it seemed, depended on opening them. It was stupid, but if she had been drowning and the drawers were weighing her to the ocean floor, she would have clung to them still.

Grayson took only an instant to decide. He strode over to the desk and took the paper knife from her hand. In three swift clicks, he’d opened three drawers.

She gaped at him.

‘What did you expect?’ His anger hadn’t abated. ‘That I couldn’t open locked drawers? Now get on with it.’

She scrambled through their contents as quickly as she could, but finished desolate. ‘There’s nothing.’

‘How surprising. Now let’s get the hell out of this place.’

‘Excuse, sahib, memsahib.’ A servant had slipped from behind one of the pillars lining the corridor and was watching them from the open door. Grayson slammed the drawers shut, his face the picture of chagrin.

‘We couldn’t sleep,’ he lied blatantly, ‘and decided to explore a little and then became lost.’

‘Of course, sahib. Please to come with me. I will escort you to your suite.’

In single file, they trooped back to the apartment, their feet as heavy as their hearts. As soon as the door had closed on their escort, Grayson turned to her in a fury.

‘You realise what you’ve done, don’t you? Compromised the whole

expedition. How could you?’

Despite his anger, she stood her ground. ‘I had to get into that room and this was my only chance. I can’t speak to Verghese. I can’t speak to his advisers or his servants. You’ve laid the law down on that. So how else can I get to what I need?’

‘What I need,’ he mimicked. ‘It’s always what you need, isn’t it? Everyone and everything else can go to hell.’

‘That’s not true. How can you, of all people, say that?’

She turned away from him and walked to the closed windows, her arms folded across her chest as though to keep the hurt she felt enclosed within.

‘I owe you my life, Daisy. Don’t you think I don’t remember that every single day? You’re brave, you’re determined, you’re loyal—up to a point. But if push comes

to shove, it’s what you want that will count. And with this obsession of yours, push does come to shove fairly frequently, doesn’t it? And this time, we’re talking a matter of life and death.’

‘It’s not like that,’ she said desperately. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘I never do, according to you. But what I do understand is that you’re prepared to act as selfishly as you choose. So selfishly that you’ll endanger not just your own life

but others’ too.’

She had never seen him so furious. His jaw was rigid and in the muted light his blue eyes were the darkest navy, glinting and angry. She was forced to concede then that she had done a very stupid thing and the fight went out of her.

‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I was so sure that I would find something.’

She must have been in the grip of madness, she thought, to think she could rifle the Rajah’s sanctuary and not be discovered. Even to think she could uncover any kind of clue.

‘But you didn’t find anything, did you? And just suppose you had.’ His voice was quiet but brittle. ‘Is that more important than finding Javinder, than saving Javinder?’

‘No,’ she mumbled miserably.

‘That’s what it amounts to, doesn’t it? You’ve put your own concerns before a young man’s safety and, to add insult to injury, you found nothing.’

She had found nothing and her heart ached for it.

‘I’m going back to bed.’ He began untying the robe he’d worn. ‘There’s little point in doing much else. Whatever plan I had is in tatters. From now on, they’ll be watching us every minute of the day and night.’

And without as much as a glance at her, he stalked into the adjoining room, leaving her staring at the closed door. The servants wouldn’t be gossiping after all, she thought forlornly. She was filled with sorrow, her legs weak, her feet shuffling into the bedroom they’d shared just an hour ago. The outline of his body was still there in the sheets, the pillows that had nursed his head still dented. The most

abject misery gripped her. It was as though the ribbon of her life had unspooled and, in that instant, been wiped blank. The quest, the obsession—and Grayson was right, the need to discover her history had become an obsession— had died an abrupt death. Why had she thought it so very important?

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Guest blog: Mary Nichols - 'We'll Meet Again'

In the first big raid of the London Blitz in 1940, Sheila Phipps loses father, mother and five siblings. The only other possible survivor is her brother, Charlie, but he has disappeared. With no family and no home she has no choice but to live with her snobbish and unsympathetic aunt Constance in Bletchley. Also billeted with her aunt, is Lady Prudence Strange who works at Bletchley Park where German messages are decoded. Sheila is given a job there and the two girls form an unlikely friendship, united in the need to keep what they are doing a secret, even from family and boy friends. They are not the only ones with a secret. As the war progresses, more shocking secrets come to light, which have nothing to do with the war and everything to do with the past.

Excerpt

Sheila thought she knew every inch of every road in the district. It was her home, had been her playground, was where she worked, but it had been a nightmare trying to find her way round blocked off roads, rubble spilling into streets, and a cityscape changed almost beyond recognition. The nearer she came to home, the worse it was. And then she had stopped transfixed.

This street of rubble had once been a row of terrace houses. Now you couldn't tell one from the other. Stones, bricks, bits of wood, broken roof tiles, twisted water pipes, smashed furniture, scraps of cloth and shattered glass were piled up like some giant bonfire. 'Mum,' she murmured.

Bletchley Park: the main house

'Sheila. Sheila Phipps.' The voice was almost against her ear, but it hardly penetrated her confused

brain. 'Sheila.'

She turned at last to face Bob Bennett. He was in his thirties, wearing an armband that told everyone he was ARP and a tin hat on which was stencilled 'Air Raid Warden.'

'Mr Bennett. Where's Mum? And the kids? And Pa? Where are they?'

He put his hand on her shoulder. 'Your mum and the children were at home when it happened.'

'Under that?' She nodded towards the rubble that had once been their house.

'I'm afraid so. It got a direct hit. They wouldn't have known anything about it.  The rescue squad got them out. They were taken to the school to be made ready for identification and burial.'

'All of them? Every single one?'

He nodded. 'Annie was still alive when we dug them out, but she died on the way to hospital.'

'Oh.' She was too numb to shed tears. She felt as dry as the dust that lay thick over everything.  It was still very warm but she felt cold as ice and could not stop shivering.  She found her voice with a monumental effort. 'And Pa? And Charlie?'

'We haven't seen either of them. They'd be at work, wouldn't they?' Since the beginning of the war, they had been working longer shifts and free Saturday afternoons had become a thing of the past. Bob, who worked in a munitions factory when he wasn't being an Air Raid Warden, was working every other Sunday.

'Yes. They'd be due home at half past six, except Pa is in the AFS.'

'He'd be putting out fires then?'

'I suppose so. P'raps Charlie stayed with him.'

'Very likely. You can't stand here, you know. You need to report to the Rest Centre to register as homeless. The WVS will give you a cup of tea and a bite to eat and find you some clothes and a bed for the night.'

'I don't want to rest. I want to see Mum and my brothers and sisters.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Very well. I'll take you.'

He took her to a school where the bodies were laid on the hall floor in rows, covered with sheets. If the rescuers knew who they were, they were carefully labelled, though in some cases, they could not be identified. Sheila, following Mr Bennett up and down the rows, thought she must be in the middle of a terrible nightmare. He stopped and bent to read a label. Then slowly drew the sheet back from the face.

Bletchley Park: Back view of the bombe

Mum looked so peaceful, serene almost. Usually she was dashing about cooking, washing, sweeping up and shouting at one or the other of them for not tidying away their things or getting under her feet, flapping at them with a damp tea towel while wisps of auburn hair escaped its pins. Now she slept a final sleep and the lines of worry had gone for her face and she looked like the beautiful woman she had been on her wedding photograph. No wonder Pa had fallen in love with her.

'That is your Mum, isn't it?' Mr Bennett queried.

She nodded without speaking. He covered the face again and went on to the next and the next.  They were all there, except Charlie: Dickie, Dorrie, Maggie, Bobby and little Annie who had only this term joined her brothers and sisters at school. This night the school was a morgue.

'We found them all huddled together,' he said. 'Your mother was lying on top of them, trying to shield them. Of course she couldn't but it was brave of her to try.'

'I should have been there,' she said dully.  'I should have been with them.  Ma said we'd all die together.'

'She couldn't have known that, could she? What with your father and Charlie and you all at work.'

'I expect she thought if there were raids, they'd be at night when we were all at home. I don't know what Pa is going to say when he sees this.  He doesn't know does he?'

'We've sent someone to find him. Now, are you ready for the rest centre?'

'I ought to go and look for Pa.'

'Leave it to us, my dear. You can't go into that inferno and he wouldn't want to lose you too, would he?'

'No, I s'pose not.'

He took her to the South Hallsville school which had been utilised for bombed out families. They were lying on mattresses all over the floor. Some were asleep, some crying, some staring in bewilderment unable to take in what had happened to them. Some women were breast feeding babies, others nursing minor wounds; those with more severe injuries had been taken to hospital. The children's reactions were as divers as the adults about them. The cried, they laughed, they dashed about shouting and pretending to be aeroplanes with arms outstretched. Some, who had lost parents sat huddled in corners looking petrified or weeping heartbrokenly. At the end of the assembly hall a couple of tables had been set up and here Civil Defence and the Women's Voluntary Service worked side by side, taking names, suggesting places to go for the night, handing out tea and sandwiches.

Mr Bennett took her to one of the tables and introduced her, then left. He looked exhausted but she knew he wasn't going home, not yet, not until he had accounted for everyone on his patch.  He had a list of the occupants of every house and business for which he and his men were responsible and he was duty bound to match bodies and survivors against his list.

We’ll Meet Again is out in paperback now, available from bookshop and online. ISBN: 9780 7490 17040.

Mary Nichols is author of The Kirilov Star (saga), Promises and Pie Crusts (e-book), historical romance (Mills & Boon) The Mother of Necton (biography)

Website: www.marynichols.co.uk

Mary Nichols: 'Escape by Moonlight'

As usual Allison and Busby have given me a lovely cover. It is so atmospheric and perfectly reflects the story of danger and intrigue during World War II when ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary situations. I like writing about the Second World War and it amuses me to think that is it now considered history because it happened in my lifetime. And like everyone who spent their formative years during those six years, it made an indelible impression on me. It is a fund of good plots.

This is the story of two girls, Elizabeth de Lacey and Lucy Storey, both from the Norfolk village of Nayton, the one wealthy and privileged, the other the daughter of the local stationmaster, poles apart but linked by war.

Elizabeth is holidaying with her maternal grandparents in Haute Savoie in 1939 when war breaks out. Along with her aunt, Justine, she becomes involved with the French Resistance helping allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war over the Swiss border, which becomes more and more risky as Germany takes over the whole of France. Lizzie's life is one of secrets, betrayal and danger culminating in a fierce battle between the resistance fighters hiding in the mountains and the Germans determined to wipe them out. The death of a cousin, the demise of her grandparents and falling in love with Roger, an SOE agent, add to her anxieties. They are in terrible danger and the only way to save them is to fetch them home to England. But that is not as easy as it sounds.

In England, Lucy works for her bullying father at the Nayton railway station. She secretly loves Jack de Lacey, Elizabeth's half brother, but she knows he is way above her socially and in every other way, but when he saves her from being raped, their friendship deepens into love. But there is class prejudice and a mystery surrounding Lucy's past to overcome. It takes Jack's other sister, Amy, an inquisitive evacuee living with the de Laceys, a German bomb and an explosion on the railway line to bring everything to a head in Lucy's world.

Excerpt

Elizabeth propped her bicycle against the barn door and stood a moment to watch a buzzard circling above the meadows, searching for prey. She saw it plummet to earth and then rise clutching something in it talons before it flew off towards the line of trees higher up the slopes. She loved this little farm in the foothills of the Haute Savoie, home of her maternal grandparents. To her it was a place of holidays, a place where she was free to wander about the paths and meadows, to enjoy the shade of the woods, to cycle along its narrow paths, swim in the lakes, ice-cold though they were, and come back to huge delicious meals, cooked by Grandmere. In the summer everywhere was lush and green, the meadows where Grandpere's cattle and goats grazed were dotted with wild flowers. Higher up, above the forest, the peaks of the alps poked upwards, bare rock in summer, covered in snow in winter.

The summer would come to an end soon, though it was taking its time this year, and she would go home to make up her mind what she was going to do with her life. Would Max ask her to marry him? Would she say yes? She was not altogether sure. She loved him, but was she ready to settle down to domestic life as the wife of a regular soldier? Wouldn't she rather have her own career, do something useful, learn to live a little first? And if there was a war, what then? Max had said war was inevitable, even after Chamberlain came back from Munich waving that piece of paper which he said meant `peace in our time' All it did, according to Max, was give the country time to step up its armaments, build more ships, aeroplanes and tanks, and train more troops in readiness. Would there be work for her to do in that event? After all, in the last war, women had done all sorts of jobs normally done by men and done them well too.

Scattering the farmyard chickens, she turned towards the house. It was a squat two storey building, half brick, half timber, with a steeply pitched, overhanging roof so the snow would run off it in winter. It was surrounded by a farmyard but there were a few flowers in a patch of garden on the road side, and pelagoniums tumbled in profusion from its window boxes. It was not large, but roomy enough for her grandparents to have brought up three children: Pierre, who lived a few kilometres to the west of Annecy and had his own small vineyard; Annelise, Elizabeth's mother; and Justine, who had been born when her mother was in her forties and was only nine years older than Elizabeth. She taught at a school in Paris.

The kitchen was the largest room and the warmest - too warm in summer because the cooking and heating of water was done on an open range. A large table, flanked by two benches, stood in the middle of it covered with a red check cloth. It was laid with cutlery and dishes taken from the dresser that filled almost the whole of one wall. Grandmere, her face red from the fire, was standing at the range stirring something in a blackened pot that smelled delicious. She was a roly poly of a woman, dressed in a long black skirt, a yellow blouse and a big white apron. Her long grey hair was pulled back into a bun.

`Where's Papie?' Lizzie asked. Brought up by a French mother who had brought her and her siblings to visit her parents frequently as they grew up, she was completely bilingual.

`He went into Annecy to see the butcher. The old cow is past milking and will have to be slaughtered. He said he would be back in time for dinner.' To Marie Clavier the midday meal was always dinner, the evening meal supper.

Elizabeth busied herself fetching out the big round home-made loaf, glasses and wine in a jug which she put ready on the table. `I saw a buzzard dive for a mouse just now. It always amazes me that they can see such a tiny creature from so high up.'

Her grandmother laughed. `What is it they say, "eyes like a hawk"?'

They heard the noisy splutter of the ancient van her grandfather used to drive into town and two minutes later he came into the kitchen, followed by his black and white mongrel. `It's all arranged,' he said, sitting in his rocking chair by the hearth to remove his boots. He wasn't a big man, but had a wiry strength that years of working a farm single-handed had bred in him. He had thin gingery hair and an untidy beard streaked with grey. `Alphonse Montbaun will come for the cow at the end of the week. He'll cut it up and keep it in his deep freeze for us.'

`Will you buy another?' Elizabeth asked him. She had become inured to the idea of eating cattle she had seen munching grass on the slopes. Grandpere had called her soft when, as a small girl on her first visit, she had recoiled at the idea.

`I think I'll get a couple of heifers and introduce them to Alphonse's bull.' He came to the table and sat in an armchair at its head while his wife ladled the soup into bowls. `When are you going home, young lady?' he asked.

Elizabeth laughed. `Do you want to be rid of me, Papie?'

`You know I don't, but the rumours are flying. The German army is gathering on the Polish border and this time it won't be like Czechoslovakia; there'll be no appeasement. You'll be safer, at home.'

`Sacre Dieu!' the old lady said, crossing herself. `You are never suggesting we are not safe here?'

`I don't know, do I? But we haven't got an English Channel between us and the Boche.'

`We've got the Maginot Line.'

`A fat lot of good that will do against aeroplanes and bombs.'

`Albert, you are frightening me. It was bad enough last time, I don't want to go through that again.'

`Perhaps you won't have to. If they come, our armies will drive them back again. That nice young man who came to stay earlier in the summer will see to that.' The `nice young man' was Captain Max Coburn who had come to share a few days of his leave with Elizabeth. He had charmed her grandparents with his old-fashioned manners, his smart uniform, his blue eyes, golden hair and neatly clipped moustache. It had been a glorious few days, the weather had been perfect and she had taken him all round her favourite haunts: the glittering ice-cold lakes, the little hamlets with their agile goats and the canyon at the Devil's Bridge Gorge, not to mention the breathtaking scenery with Mont Blanc crowning it all. Not until his last day had either of them mentioned war.

`It's going to come, Liz,' he had said. `Hitler will not be satisfied with Czechoslovakia; he wants the Danzig corridor and he'll go for Poland next. Britain and France will have to honour their commitment to help. Don't stay here too long.'

`Oh, Max, you can't think the Germans will come here surely?'

`I don't know, but I would rather you were safe at home in England.'

`And you?'

`I'll go where I'm sent.'

`I hope you're wrong. I couldn't bear to think of you in the middle of the fighting and Papie and Mamie put in fear of their lives. They remember the last war so vividly. Perhaps I should try and persuade them to come home with me.'

`Yes, do that. I'm sure your parents would approve.'

`Mama has tried to get them to come to Nayton many times over the years but Papie would never leave the farm. He always said he wouldn't trust anyone else to look after his livestock: cows, goats, chickens and his beloved dog. And I think he is a little in awe of Papa, though he would never admit it.'

`Surely not? Lord de Lacey is the mildest of men and he adores your mother.' Her paternal grandfather had died when she was small and her father had inherited the baronetcy and Nayton Manor, her Norfolk home.

`I know.'

Everyone in the family knew how her father had met her mother; it was a tale Papa loved to tell. Already a widower, though childless, he had been a major in the British army in the Great War and had been taken prisoner and shipped off to Germany. He had jumped from the train on the way and made his escape. Annelise, who was working in the hospital at Chalons at the time to be near Jacques, her soldier fiancé, had found him wounded, hungry and thirsty in a ditch, too weak to move. She had fetched help and he had been carried on a stretcher to the hospital where she continued to look after him until he was strong enough to return to duty. He had not forgotten her and when the war ended in November 1918, went to see her at her home in Dransville before going back to England. By then she had a small son, Jacques, whose father had been killed in the fighting.

They had fallen in love and, defying the conventions of the aristocracy and the ill-concealed disapproval of Papa's friends, were married in March 1919. He had adopted Jacques. Nine months later Elizabeth had been born, then Amy in August 1921, and finally young Edmund in 1927.

`I hope you are wrong. I hope you are all wrong,' she had told Max. `I can't bear the thought of people being killed and maimed. Why can't governments settle their differences without going to war?'

He had no answer to that and the following day had left to rejoin his regiment, but he left her wondering about her grandparents. Would they come to England with her? `My Channel crossing is booked for the ninth of September,' she told them as they ate their soup. `I don't see any need to go before that.'

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