Dancing in the Moonlight (34 page)

Such light moments were rare in a month that turned increasingly desperate for the Allies, and sickeningly worrying for their loved ones at home. By the last week of May every thinking man and
woman in England could see that the suicidal decision by the Allies to leave the defensive positions they’d spent the bitterly cold winter so arduously preparing, and move forward to join the
Belgian Army to form a defensive line running along the Dyle and Meuse rivers, was disastrous. They’d been lured into a cunning trap and driven back towards the coast by a large German force.
Thousands of soldiers and refugees were mercilessly bombed and machine-gunned from the air as they tried to escape along the packed roads.

It was this that was occupying Lucy’s mind as she left one of the shops John had had the responsibility of overseeing late one night. As yet she had been unable to replace him, so she had
stepped into the role, which had meant an increase in her working hours to something like twelve to fourteen hours a day. Her head full of the latest report that the tanks and infantry of the
German panzers had punched through the French defences and reached Boulogne and that British forces were heroically defending a doomed Calais, she didn’t notice a figure detach itself from
the shadows and begin following her.

It was only when the soft footsteps behind her quickened, and a sixth sense caused the fine hairs on the back of her neck to prickle, that the intense darkness of the blackout became
frightening. She had seen Tom Crawford twice since Jacob had called at the house. Once, just before Christmas, his car had been parked across the road when she had returned home from a shopping
trip with Daisy one Saturday afternoon. He had waited until he was sure she had seen him, doffing his hat as he’d smiled at her through the window, and then driven off, leaving her white and
shaken. ‘Who was that?’ Daisy had asked, her eyes following the car as it sped into the distance.

‘No one.’ She’d steadied her voice, smiling at her daughter, but inside she’d been trembling. He was getting bolder.

The next time had been a few weeks ago. She had met Ruby in town for lunch, as they did sometimes, there being a cafe across the road from the shop Ruby managed that they both liked, and as they
had left the building he’d been there, straight in front of them.

‘Hello, ladies. Fancy bumping into you.’ His words had been casual, even jocular, but the look he’d given her had been long and concentrated, stripping away the last decade or
more and reducing her to a terrified young girl inside. She had stared back at him, not trusting herself to speak, and it had been Ruby who said, ‘Leave her alone. She doesn’t want
anything to do with you, Tom Crawford.’

His eyes had shot to her sister and after a moment he had nodded slowly. ‘Ah, I see. A little bird has been whispering its lies in your ear. You shouldn’t believe everything
you’re told, Ruby. There are two sides to every story.’

Ruby hadn’t grown much over the past few years but she’d seemed to grow in stature as she’d said, ‘I know what I know, and nothing you could say would make me believe any
different.’

‘Is that so?’ His voice was low, flat. ‘Did she tell you I wanted to marry her? Eh? That I was prepared to take the lot of you on and do right by her, even after she’d
led me a dance and carried on with other blokes?’

‘I never led you on. I never wanted anything to do with you, ever, and you know it. You keep harassing me and I’ll get the police involved. I mean it.’ Lucy’s heart had
been pounding in her chest fit to burst, but she’d been pleased at how strong her voice had sounded.

‘What will you tell them, Lucy? That you bumped into an old friend in the street? An old friend who happens to be a town councillor and a man with a great deal of influence in the town? Be
my guest, but they’ll laugh you out of court.’

‘Come on.’ Ruby had taken her arm and pulled her away, but once they were safely in the fishmonger’s shop she’d steered her through to the room at the rear of the
premises and shut the door so that they couldn’t be overheard. Then she had hugged Lucy, before stepping back and looking into her eyes. ‘Has he done this before, lass? Waylaid
you?’

‘Not exactly.’ Seeing Tom so close, the sheer bulk and broadness of him, had left her thoroughly unnerved. ‘Not like today. He usually just lets me know he’s there, from
a distance. Sometimes I haven’t even seen him, but I’ve felt he’s around.’

‘Why haven’t you
said
?’ Ruby had stared at her aghast. ‘You should have told me. How long has it been going on? Months? Years?’

‘Since he came to the shop that day after Perce died.’

‘And you never said.’

‘I didn’t want to worry you for no good reason. It’s not like he wants me any more, in that way. He doesn’t know for sure that Daisy is his and, like I told you at the
time, he looked at me as if he hated me when he left that day. As long as I don’t get involved with anyone – a man – he won’t do anything.’

Ruby looked more appalled, if anything. ‘But you can’t live like that, Lucy. And you’re wrong. He does still want you, it was plain in his face. He’s risen high and
he’s never been thwarted by anything in his life, that’s the trouble. The fact that you’ve refused him is what spurs him on, don’t you see? If you weren’t the way you
are, he’d have lost interest years ago. He’s a nutcase, lass, twisted, and to have pursued you all these years, tracking you like an animal, proves it.’

Ruby’s words were ringing in her ears as she walked faster now, berating herself for doing the very thing she’d made the others promise not to do – walking alone in the
blackout. But for once she hadn’t been thinking about the threat of Tom Crawford, not with Jacob and John possibly lying dead or injured so far away on foreign soil. She didn’t dare run
– the last thing she wanted was to go sprawling and twist her ankle or something – but the footsteps were right behind her now. Gathering her courage she swung around, her voice shrill
as she cried, ‘One step more and I’m going to scream.’

‘Lucy? It’s me.’

The voice wasn’t Tom Crawford’s, but neither did it belong to the scrawny, emaciated stranger she could just make out one or two yards away. Her stomach in knots, she peered through
the darkness as she told herself her memory was playing tricks on her. ‘Who are you?’

‘It’s me. Your brother, Donald.’

‘Donald?’
The voice was his, but the man in front of her looked old, at least double the thirty years of age Donald would be now. And yet the voice . . . She took a step
nearer. ‘Donald,’ she whispered, shocked beyond measure as she recognized a trace of the familiar face in the skeletal features of the skull-like head. ‘What’s
happened?’

‘I’m sick, lass.’

‘Sick?’ She stood dazed for a moment more and then as full realization dawned, she flung her arms around him. ‘Donald, oh, Donald. It’s you, it’s really
you.’

It was a second before he responded, and then his arms went round her, too, and she was hugged as he’d never hugged her in the past. ‘I’m sorry, lass, I’m so
sorry,’ he murmured over and over again, his voice breaking. ‘I shouldn’t have done what I did, I shouldn’t have left you. Can you forgive me?’

‘You’re back, that’s all that matters.’ And it was, it really was.

‘Oh, lass.’ He was sobbing, crying like a baby, and now she was the one hugging him as he wept out his deprecation of himself, incoherently in the main.

It was some minutes before they drew apart, Donald rubbing at his face with his coat sleeves and Lucy wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’
She reached out and touched his cheek with her hand and he caught her fingers, pressing them against his skin. ‘You said you’re sick? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s me stomach, lass, but don’t let’s talk about that now. I’ve got me pills, so I’m all right, but – I wanted to see you. I’ve been back a
couple of days, but I couldn’t drum up the courage to come to the house after I found out where you lived. Not after what I did. I – I thought you’d slam the door in my
face.’

‘Why would I do that?’ she said softly. ‘I love you.’ They looked at each other, their smiles shaky. Then Lucy slipped her arm through his. ‘Come on,’ she
said, even more softly. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘This is it, matey. This is the end. Would you look at that? We’re done for this time.’

Jacob didn’t turn to look at the man who had spoken – Willy Armstrong, his friend and the battalion’s comedian. But Willy wasn’t cracking one of his endless jokes
now.

They had been marching more than forty miles a day for three days to the coast, fleeing refugees constantly hampering their movements, and bombs and machine-gun bullets from the air picking them
off like ducks at a fairground stall. Jacob had become numb to the roadside human debris of the retreat, bodies and bits of bodies becoming just more obstacles to step over. Their Sergeant had told
them evacuation from Dunkirk to England was the only hope they had, and ultimately the only hope the nation had, if Germany invaded its shores. Without the British Expeditionary Force, which
contained the majority of Britain’s most experienced troops, who would defend their mothers and wives and sweethearts and children from Hitler’s Nazis?

‘Keep that in your minds, along with putting one foot in front of the other,’ Sergeant Fraser had bellowed, reminding them of it at frequent intervals until a German bomb had
separated his head from his body.

And now they were within sight of their objective – or what was left of it. Much of Dunkirk was on fire and the smell of burning machinery and corpses hung oppressively in the choking air.
Above the heavy black pall of smoke, German and British planes were engaged in a fight to the death, but the limited resources of the RAF couldn’t compete with the enemy’s low-flying
Stukas, which were ripping into the endless columns of British troops on the undefended beaches and blowing them to kingdom come.

Even as they watched disbelievingly, a bomb blew a mighty crater into the sand, a number of soldiers fell into it, dead and alive, and another bomb covered them over.

‘It’s a slaughter!’ Willy’s filthy, dust-caked face was stretched in horror. ‘They’ve brought us here to finish us off. No one’s going to get out of
this alive.’

Privately Jacob agreed with him, but they were standing with a couple of young conscripts who looked as though they should still be in short trousers and who were plainly terrified.
‘We’ll get out,’ he said quietly. ‘The Corporal said it’s not just the Royal Navy that’s coming for us, but fishing boats and the like. We’ll show Hitler
what’s what. We look after our own.’ He called to the Corporal, who was a few yards away. ‘Isn’t that right, Corp? We’ll live to fight another day.’

The Corporal, who had taken over when Sergeant Fraser was decapitated the day before, limped over to them. He’d had a machine-gun bullet lodged deep in his foot for the last five days, but
had still led the marching. He was a Newcastle lad, born and bred, and in happier days he and Jacob had had many a friendly, if heated, discussion about their respective town’s football
teams. ‘Oh aye, man,’ he said now, grinning. ‘We’ll all live to see Newcastle knock the living daylights out of Sunderland, that’s for sure. Now get lively and dig a
trench; it’ll be a while before it’s our turn to depart these fair shores and there’s no need to make the Germans’ job simple for them by providing easy targets, is there?
There’s been enough griping that you want a rest, over the last few days. Now’s your chance. An’ once you’ve got a brew on, I’ll have two sugars in mine, all right?
An’ a couple of Garibaldis to go with it.’ Jacob grinned back. They had no supplies and no one had eaten for three days. Even their drinking water had come from streams and rivers, and,
in the last resort, muddy ditches.

Over the next forty-eight hours, amidst the bombing and shelling, all they could do was wait their turn and watch what was happening. Hunger was a worse enemy than the
Luftwaffe’s attempted annihilation, and Jacob wondered if they were simply going to starve where they sat or stood.

Dunkirk’s bomb-damaged breakwater was still serviceable, allowing some of the waiting troops to be taken off by larger boats. The rest were picked up directly from a ten-mile stretch of
beach by small craft largely manned by amateur sailors. British, French and Belgian ships of all sizes – from destroyers to private motor cruisers – were part of the operation. But it
wasn’t easy. Both large and small craft had difficulty getting their human cargo out to the waiting British destroyers, because they were quite a long way out, due to the shallow waters of
the harbour. And the German bombs rained down incessantly.

Before their rescue, the waiting troops were forced to stand out in the water waiting for the boats and small craft to take them on board. When Corporal Potts came limping over to marshal them
into position, Jacob had to will himself to move forward. The sea was running red in places, with body parts and dead bodies floating side by side, and the thought of just standing there – so
near and yet so far from rescue – was worse than the endless hours of waiting their turn on the beach.

But if he wanted to get back home, back to Lucy, he had to take the chance. And he wanted to, more than life itself. One thing had crystallized in his mind over the last hellish weeks. He was
going to tell her how he felt. Spell it out. No talk of friends or old times’ sake or any of the other rubbish he’d been hiding behind. He was going to tell her he loved her and always
would, that she was the only woman on Earth for him and he wanted her to wait for him. He didn’t care that she was wealthy and could no doubt buy him ten – twenty – times over.
After what he’d seen and had to do, that was so unimportant it was laughable. He had let his hurt that she’d disappeared from his life and married another man and had his baby, and his
pride that she had become too wealthy and successful to approach, keep him silent. She might not love him like she’d clearly loved her husband, but she did have some feeling for him. He had
seen it in her face and heard it in her voice that last afternoon before he had left. He had let her slip through his fingers once, admittedly through no fault of his own, he qualified, but he had
spent nearly half of his life to date without her.