The Wayward Wife (38 page)

‘Good God, Cahill!' Griff said. ‘Don't tell me your wife doesn't know?'

‘Know what?' said Danny.

‘That you're setting up a little love nest for—'

‘I think that's enough, Silwyn,' Kate said. ‘It's really none of our business.'

‘Given that Jock here has blackmailed us into sacrificing our valuable leisure time to skivvy for him,' Griff said, ‘I believe I am entitled to ask, not,' he added hastily, ‘that you, my dear old chum, are in any way obligated to answer.'

‘Doesn't matter what my wife thinks.' Danny hesitated. ‘She's been livin' her own life for a while now.'

‘You mean she's still with the American bloke?'

Kate cut him short. ‘Silwyn, enough!'

The railway carriage was securely propped on bricks and heavy wooden sleepers and to judge by the profusion of weeds that had grown up around it had been there for some time. The windows were smeared with grime and the paintwork on the sides of the coach was peeling, but the interior had been neatly partitioned off to provide two comfortable bunk beds, a tiny end kitchen with a Calor gas cooking ring and a little parlour with a coal-burning barrel stove. A lean-to hut with a chemical toilet inside had been added at one end of the coach and at the other a big wooden shed to store firewood and coal.

‘Who lived here?' Kate said.

‘Farm labourer,' Danny told her.

‘What happened to him? Did he die?'

‘Naw,' Danny said. ‘He joined the navy.'

‘He was probably a young cowman,' Griff suggested. ‘Mr Pell told me that Gaydon, the landowner, got rid of his dairy herd when the war started and turned the land over to arable. How much is Gaydon rooking you for rent, Danny?'

‘Three bob a week.'

‘Highway robbery. But it isn't going to break you, is it?'

‘Mr Gaydon seemed glad enough to get the place off his hands,' Danny said. ‘When I told him it was for evacuees he even threw in a free load of coal. I've a feelin' Mr Pell might've put the elbow in. Gaydon an' he drink in the same pub.'

‘How long has the place been empty?' Kate said.

‘Six or seven months, apparently.'

‘And when is your friend arriving?'

‘Thursday.'

‘In that case' – Kate detached a pail from the handlebars – ‘we'd better not stand around chatting. Where's the water supply? We don't have to carry it up from the Avon, do we?'

‘Naw,' Danny said. ‘I doubt if Breda'd put up with that. There's a well round the back. Sweet water, Gaydon assures me.'

‘A well?' said Griff. ‘Good Lord!'

‘You can make a wish, if you like,' Kate said.

‘I wish I'd never got into this,' said Griff. ‘Too late to back out now, I suppose.'

‘Far too late,' Kate told him and, handing him the pail, sent him off to find water while Danny and she, armed with brooms, attacked the coach's musty interior to make it ready for Breda and her son.

On Sunday afternoon a small formation of German bombers flew into the Thames estuary only to be turned back by anti-aircraft fire before it reached London. The warning siren had been followed, ten minutes later, by the all-clear and Basil, on his way over from Salt Street, had barely broken stride. He had, he confessed, slept later than he'd intended and apologised to Susan who, he seemed to assume, had been at her desk for hours. Susan did not disillusion him.

When Basil asked if she'd heard anything from Bob Gaines, she shook her head and carried on typing in spite of the fact that her fingers no longer seemed to be properly connected to her brain. The call from her father had thrown her for a loop. His insistence that she put a spoke in Breda's wheel was motivated by pure selfishness, of course. He wanted to keep Billy for himself. She could hardly blame him for that; nor could she blame Danny for persuading Breda to quit London before winter set in.

She might write to Danny or try to reach him by telephone, she supposed, tell him she'd broken off with Bob Gaines and depend on Danny's sense of honour to keep Breda out of his bed. The alternative was to swallow her pride, forgive Bob his indiscretion, move into the Lansdowne and become ‘officially', as it were, his girl. Forgiveness seemed like weakness, though; a step too far just to have a man in her life.

Basil said, ‘Have you had lunch yet, Susan?'

‘No, not yet.'

‘Best go soon,' he said. ‘Before you do, however, I'd be grateful if you'd put through a call to Gaines and see what the devil he's up to. I thought he'd be here by now to deliver his piece for Tuesday. It's going to be a scramble as it is.'

‘Why don't you call him? At least he listens to you.'

‘Doesn't he listen to you?' Basil said. ‘I thought—'

‘What
do
you think, Baz?' Bob Gaines said from the doorway. ‘That Susie has me by the tail? You don't have me by the tail, sweetheart, do you?'

Leaning against the doorpost, hat tipped back and trench-coat belted tightly about his waist, he might have stepped from one of the gangster films that Ronnie had been so fond of. He spoke in a laconic tone of voice, as if he had rehearsed his lines.

In that moment Susan knew there could be no possibility of forgiveness.

Bob pushed himself away from the door and handed Basil a cardboard folder. ‘That's your stuff for Tuesday,' he said. ‘Timed to nine minutes but you may want to chop it down since I won't be reading it.'

Basil held the folder in two hands and pressed it to his chin as if he intended to open it with his teeth. He said, ‘Just what's going on here?'

‘I'm resigning.'

‘You can't,' Basil said. ‘You have a contract.'

‘With an in-built, iron-clad separation clause,' Bob said. ‘You should've paid more attention to the small print before you signed me up.'

‘Tuesday, what about Tuesday?'

‘I'll be on my way to New York.'

‘You're going home?' Susan said.

‘I sail for Lisbon tomorrow morning to pick up a ship for the States. God knows how long it'll take me but – yeah, I'm going home.'

‘Why, Bob? Why?' Basil said.

‘I've had enough of England, enough of the BBC and—'

‘You've had enough of me,' Susan heard herself say.

‘Too much of you, maybe,' Bob said.

‘Are you taking her with you?' Susan asked.

‘Who?'

‘That – that girl?'

‘Tina? Are you crazy? She was good between the sheets but that's an end of it. She knew it was just a fling. At least she didn't bore the pants off me.'

‘What?' Susan got to her feet. ‘What did you say?'

‘She didn't try to lay her guilt on me or make me out to be a bastard because I couldn't fix her life for her. She knows how to have fun and let go. No boring pap about commitment. The only thing I'm committed to is my career and right here, right now in this sticky old flytrap you call the BBC, my career is foundering.'

‘That,' Basil said, ‘is one of the most ridiculous excuses for resigning I've ever heard. Whatever may be going on between you and Susan—'

‘He's a coward,' Susan said. ‘Don't you see, Basil? He's a moral coward. What will you do, Robert, when you can no longer remain uninvolved? Where will you hide then? Cairo, Marseilles, Casablanca …'

‘Russia,' he said. ‘The
Post
has promised me Russia.'

‘Perfect!' Susan said. ‘Ideal! When you pick up a girl in Leningrad you won't even have to talk to her.'

‘At least she won't be made of ice.'

‘I think,' Basil said, ‘that's enough.'

‘Go back to your husband, Susan,' Bob told her. ‘That's all you ever wanted to do anyhow. Go back to your poor dim schmuck of a husband and play games with him. Me, I'm out of here.' He stepped to the desk and shook Basil's hand. ‘I can't say it's been much of a pleasure, Baz, but I wish you well. I wish you luck, you and Vivian. Keep your heads down and stay healthy.' He turned to Susan. ‘You too, I guess. You too,' and then, without another word, he was gone.

‘Well,' Basil said, after a pause, ‘that's a shocker, a real shocker. What are we going to do now?'

‘Find someone else,' Susan said. ‘Someone better.'

‘Don't tell me you have someone in mind?' Basil said.

‘For the programme?'

‘Yes, for the programme.'

‘Unfortunately not,' said Susan.

Susan was the last person Breda expected to see wading through the crowds in Paddington railway station that blustery Thursday morning. She was having a hard enough time coping with her emotions without having to face up to the woman who had married Danny Cahill. Ronnie had never been second-best, certainly not. She had loved her husband as much as she had ever loved anyone, but she had loved Danny Cahill too with a possessive kind of affection that her marriage to Ronnie hadn't dented but that Susan's marriage to Danny most certainly had. Now, by several ugly quirks of fate, she might have Danny all to herself again.

It had been a relatively quiet night with nothing much more than a shower of incendiaries sent down from Goering's assassins, though, according to Matt, who got all his news from the
Daily Express
these days
,
fires were raging in Berlin after a huge RAF bombing raid, and Hitler was having fits.

With money Nora had given him Matt had bought them breakfast at one of the vans and in shabby, half-ruined Fawley Street Breda had said goodbye not only to Shadwell but to her mother, her father-in-law and in a queer sort of way to Ronnie too.

Nora had wanted to accompany them to the station, to snatch a last precious hour with her daughter and grandson but Matt had said his foot wouldn't stand up to it; besides, she didn't have time, not when they'd be heading for Euston to catch a noon train to Liverpool to link with the night boat to Dublin.

So there in Fawley Street, not two hundred yards from Brauschmidt's high-class butcher's, where Ronnie had served his apprenticeship, not three hundred yards from the fish bar in which Leo had met his femme fatale
and less than a mile from the spot where Breda's brother, Georgie, had been struck down in the wake of the Cable Street riots, there they parted, not knowing if or when or where they might all be together again.

Nora had wept buckets; Breda too.

Bewildered and truculent, Billy had butted his granddad in the belly when Matt had tried to hug him and, until they'd squeezed on to the bus with the other refugees, had growled, snarled and sulked. Only when he saw his grandma running alongside the bus with tears streaming down her face did he cry too, two big fat tears trickling down his cheeks, his bottom lip, no longer pugnacious, trembling like a raspberry jelly.

The government's scheme to evacuate as many women and children as possible from the East End before winter made living in shelters a serious hazard to health was in full swing. The major railway stations swarmed with young children and their harassed mothers and Paddington, just reopened after its recent pounding, was no exception.

With Billy trotting by her side and clutching two bundles containing their few belongings, Breda was in no mood for confrontation. She cut across the narrow concourse in the direction of Platform
4
which, a porter informed her, was where the train for Evesham would depart as soon as it was assembled.

The platform was already crowded with women and children, though just where they were all going, Breda couldn't imagine. There were soldiers, too, laden with kitbags and packs, a little troupe of RAF bandsmen awkwardly burdened with cornet and trombone cases and, in the same muddled group, a Guards' officer lugging a bag of golf clubs.

‘Breda. Breda. Over here.'

She swung this way and then the other, bobbing her head, but it was Billy, at hip height, who spotted his aunt first.

Susie was standing not far from the platform gate and, Breda thought uncharitably, looked less like a million dollars than a couple of bent pennies. She wore an old tweed coat and a tweedy sort of skirt that was far too large for her and a knitted cap that would have looked better on a trawler man than it did on an employee of the BBC.

‘What you doin' 'ere?' Breda asked.

‘Danny asked me to see you off safely.'

‘Danny? How did you—'

‘He telephoned,' Susan said. ‘Took him ages to get through, but he did in the end. He told me what train you'd be on and asked me to give you these.'

‘What?' said Breda suspiciously.

Susan held out a brown paper bag. ‘It's not much. Couple of veal and ham pies, some cut cake and a bottle of ginger pop. I had no idea it would be so busy.'

Breda shifted one bundle to her armpit and reached for the brown paper bag but Billy, stepping up, carefully detached it from his Aunt Susan's hand and, after peeping inside, pressed it securely to his chest.

‘Yum?' Susan said.

‘Yum,' Billy agreed and almost managed a smile.

‘Is this a peace offerin'?' Breda said.

‘I'm sure I don't know what you mean,' said Susan.

‘Yeah, but I'm sure you do,' Breda said.

‘Danny's not doing it for you. He's doing it for Billy.'

Breda sighed. ‘Long as he ain't doin' it to get back at you, that's okay with me.'

‘Danny isn't the spiteful type,' said Susan. ‘He's far too down-to-earth to take revenge. Not,' she added, ‘that I'd blame him if he did.'

‘You still got your feller,' Breda said. ‘Ain't one man enough for you, Susie?'

‘My – my “feller” has gone back to New York.'

‘Oh, really?' Breda said. ‘Why didn't you go with 'im?'

‘I have work to do here.'

‘Does Danny know – about your feller, I mean?'