Loe raamatut: «Daisy's Long Road Home»

CHAPTER 1

Sussex, March 1948

Daisy ignored the doorbell when it rang. It had been a bad day and she’d no wish to entertain her prying neighbour. Half her nurses were down with influenza, but the ward was so crowded she’d had to order the few still on their feet to make up beds in the corridor. The row with Matron had been the last straw.

The bell rang again and she shut her ears to it. Until the third chime. Then she marched to the front door and flung it wide in exasperation. A man leant nonchalantly against the doorpost and she stared in amazement at him.

‘Grayson?’

‘It’s nice to see you recognise me.’ She didn’t think he meant it as a jest. And why would he? It was months since they’d seen each other.

She tried to pull her thoughts together. ‘But why are you here?’

‘I needed to see you. Can I come in?’

‘Yes, of course.’ There had been a momentary hesitation and he was quick to notice it. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying. I have a train to catch back to London.’

But why had he needed to visit, and without warning? There had been no letter, no telegram. That was worrying and she wondered what was coming. She hadn’t been wrong about the edge to his voice though. He was the man she’d loved, perhaps still loved, yet after so long apart, neither had made any attempt even to touch hands. He followed her into the small kitchen that gave straight on to the road and looked around him. She’d been here for nine months and this was the first time he’d walked through her door.

‘It’s cosy,’ he decided.

‘It’s affordable.’

‘Is Brighton so very expensive?’

He settled himself at the shabby wooden table. As always, he was completely relaxed. Only the slightly deeper creases around his mouth and the few grey hairs at his temple spoke the passing of years.

‘Not by London standards, no, but salaries here are low.’

‘And how is the job?’

She didn’t answer immediately but put the kettle on to boil. She knew the job was a source of irritation to him, and she couldn’t even boast that it was going well. Today had been the worst by far, culminating in a vitriolic exchange with her superior. For the first time, she’d answered the woman back and known immediately she’d done the wrong thing.

‘Beecham’s is a small hospital,’ she said, arranging cups and saucers on a tray. She was prevaricating, but if she showed her true feelings, she’d have to acknowledge the mistake she had made in coming to Brighton.

‘So?’

‘It can be a little insular, that’s all. Trifles can become too important. And the work itself is hardly challenging.’ She was willing to confess that much, but she wished she didn’t sound quite so weary or quite so frustrated.

‘I imagine the lack of challenge is inevitable. After the war, most nursing will seem humdrum.’

She poured the tea, trying to lose herself in the routine action, conscious she should fight a desire to confide in him. They were almost strangers now. Since she’d made the move to Brighton, they’d met only once. She’d gone up to London to spend the day with him just before Christmas. It had been a forlorn attempt to rekindle a love that had once burnt brightly. In determined fashion, they’d made their way around old haunts, exchanged opinions on the city’s new landmarks, chattered a little too much, told a few too many silly jokes, but there had been a hollowness to the day that neither could ignore. They hadn’t repeated the experiment. And now he was here, and she didn’t know how she should feel.

‘You could be right about the war,’ she said, carrying the tray to the table, her finger jabbing at a small spill of tea on the plastic tablecloth. ‘It was an extraordinary experience.’

She sat down opposite him and felt his eyes fixed on her. His gaze made her shift uneasily in her seat. He knew she wasn’t happy, she thought. As always, he knew, and she could feel herself getting ready to confess the truth.

‘Brighton might have been a mistake,’ she blurted out.

There, she’d said it, but his eyebrows barely rose at the admission. ‘I got the promotion I wanted, but the nursing is fairly basic, and though the patients are wonderful and most of my staff are well enough …’ The words were tumbling forth now. ‘It’s the pettiness that gets me down. It’s a small town and the hospital is a very small community.’

‘And who is being particularly petty?’ He was as perceptive as ever.

She allowed herself a small sigh. ‘Miss Thornberry—the matron.’

‘Ah!’

She read his exclamation rightly. A hospital’s matron was always key. They could be fiercesome women, but most were dedicated to their work and fair in their dealings. This one, though, had beaten her. The woman was constantly niggling; sly remarks that suggested that Daisy, as a newly promoted sister, wasn’t quite up to the job. For months she’d taken the criticisms in silence but today she’d had enough and let fly.

‘I expect the latest trouble will blow over.’ Her voice had a false brightness to it.

Grayson stirred his tea and waited for her to go on. He knew there was more to say and so did she. The job had certainly proved a disappointment, but the real heaviness in her heart came from elsewhere. For years, she’d lived a solitary life and felt proud of her independence. But a moment had come, and quite recently, when she’d had to accept the truth. She wasn’t just alone, she was lonely. A thirty-year-old woman who still hadn’t got life right. She missed the camaraderie of wartime, though it had taken her a while to realise it. And she missed the comfort of a good friend. If Connie were here, she could have confessed her loneliness. But Connie was now Mrs Lawson and living a new life in Canada with her doctor husband. Together they’d decided the old Empire offered better prospects than a ravaged and debt-ridden England. And then there was Grayson. How long had that taken before she recognised how large a void he’d left in her life? But that was something else she wouldn’t admit.

He’d been silent all this time and she felt impelled to speak, to fill the empty air with words, any words. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is important and you haven’t travelled miles to hear me moan. It’s only that today has been particularly difficult.’

‘Don’t give it a thought.’ His gaze finally relaxed. ‘Why have friends if you can’t complain to them?’ There was a studied emphasis on the word ‘friends’, and she was trying to think how best to respond, when a loud burst of music clattered through the adjoining wall.

‘Your neighbour?’

‘She has a gramophone and she likes to play it.’

‘Noisy as well as nosy then. She watched me as I walked along the road — every step of the way.

Next door, Peggy Lee was delivering her final flourish, making it impossible for them to speak. But when the last strains of ‘Mañana’ had died away, Grayson nodded his head towards the drab cream wall that separated the two cottages. ‘I take it you’ve tried to negotiate?’

‘I have, but it made little difference and unless I’m to have a stand-up row with her—look, Grayson, forget my neighbour, instead tell me why you’re here. You said nothing about coming.’

He rocked back on the hard chair, his hands in his pockets. ‘If I’d given you advance warning, you might have made an excuse for not seeing me.’

‘I wouldn’t have done that.’

He looked fixedly at her once more, and she found herself lowering her eyes. ‘Things haven’t been good between us, you must admit,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t sure I’d see you. It was important that I did.’

‘You’re seeing me now.’

She knew she sounded impatient. She hadn’t liked the reminder of how bad things had become. And now she was over the first shock of his appearance, the first rush of pleasure at seeing again the face she’d loved so well, annoyance was uppermost. She was tired and hungry and, she thought confusedly, a little scared. Something bad was about to happen, else Grayson would never have made this trip.

He stood up and stretched his long frame. ‘Can we talk somewhere more comfortable?’

She thought it unlikely. The cottage was rented and the landlord a skinflint. What furniture he’d provided had almost certainly been bought at auction at rock-bottom prices.

‘Will this do?’ She gestured towards the narrow sofa crouching beneath the windowsill, its red moquette worn so thin as to be almost colourless. Grayson followed and perched precariously on the seat’s hard edge. He half turned so he was looking directly at her. ‘I’m going back to India. Not permanently, but I’ve no idea how long I’ll be. I thought it only courteous to a lover, or should I say a former lover, to bid her farewell.’

Daisy’s mouth dropped open. She was stunned, too surprised to speak, too surprised to dwell on being demoted to a former lover. In any case, he spoke truly. Their love seemed to have gone missing somewhere along the way, and right now she hadn’t the energy or the will to try to recapture it.

‘But why?’ she stumbled. ‘Why go back? Why go now?’

She felt stupidly upset. Twice this week India had swum into her world, seemingly out of nowhere, and left her bewildered. Ever since the package from Jocelyn had dropped through her letter box, she’d felt it burdening her mind. And now Grayson had arrived with India on his lips and the burden had just grown heavier.

He leaned back against the unyielding sofa cushion and took his time to answer. ‘Why now? Because there’s trouble. And I’m needed.’

That did nothing to calm her nerves. ‘Trouble? What trouble?’

‘You must have read about the situation—what’s been happening in India since Independence.’

‘You mean the killings? Yes, I’ve read about them. It’s been awful. But what have they to do with you?’ An unspecified fear tightened her face, until she felt her skin drawn hard against her cheekbones. Her voice must have sounded panicked because he tried to soothe her.

‘Most of them have nothing to do with me and, at the moment, the country is generally peaceful. It was the speed of Partition that caused so many problems—huge swathes of the population suddenly on the move, Hindus and Sikhs going east, Moslems west. But people are more or less settled now. Most of them have got to where they want to be, and there are only a few areas where all the old horrors—murder, arson, rape—are still going on. But they’re going on in one spot that interests me in particular.’

If he was trying to soothe her, he wasn’t succeeding. ‘And where’s that?’ Somehow she knew without asking.

‘Yes, you’ve got it.’ He’d read her mind, as he so often did. ‘Jasirapur. At least not the town itself but an area of Rajputana some distance away—sorry, I should say Rajasthan now.’

‘I still don’t see what it has to do with you,’ she argued stubbornly. ‘The Indian authorities must be in charge.’

‘Javinder has to do with me. Do you remember him?’ Grayson smiled as he put the question to her. She knew he was recalling the time they’d spent together at the cantonment hospital.

‘Of course, I remember.’ Javinder Joshi had been Grayson’s assistant in Jasirapur. She had helped nurse him back to health after he’d been badly hurt in one of the riots that had been frequent before the war.

‘He’s gone missing and, since he’s one of our intelligence officers, London is interested in finding him. Which is where I come in. I was the SIS man in Jasirapur before Independence and a close colleague of Javinder’s. They reckon I have the best chance of discovering what’s happened to him.’

‘I don’t see that at all.’

Why was she so anxious to stop Grayson going, she wondered, when she’d allowed herself to drift from him with hardly a backward glance? And what could he do if he went to India? The country was vast, Rajasthan was vast. If the people on the ground hadn’t been able to find Javinder, why should Grayson be successful?

‘Surely, someone in the local office must have searched for him?’

‘In a desultory kind of way, I imagine. But they don’t have the manpower and the situation is confused. Thanks to Partition, we’ve had the greatest migration in human history and that includes the civil administration. Add in the fact that the Europeans have all but disappeared, and India has been left running the show on a skeleton staff.’

‘It still doesn’t make sense. Why send you? It’s years since you’ve been there. There must be someone else they could send, someone who’s worked in India more recently.’

‘Apparently not. The security service only ever had a small presence in Jasirapur and nearly all the ICS officers who worked alongside me have either retired or returned to England.’

‘Javinder can’t just disappear. He’s probably taken leave of absence. Maybe someone in his family is ill and he’s had to take off quickly, without notifying anyone.’ She sounded desperate, she knew. And there was a part of her that was.

‘Unfortunately, he has just disappeared. Javinder is responsibility itself. He would never simply take off. I’ve spoken to the current admin team and they’re pretty sure he was investigating an unusual spate of violence that broke out a few months back. They think he had a lead as to who was behind it, but naturally as his work is secret, he told them virtually nothing. They were guessing, though they can’t be sure, that he was travelling north.’

Daisy was silent for several minutes and, when she spoke, her voice was devoid of emotion. ‘It’s going to be dangerous, isn’t it?’

‘It could be. Javinder may have been a little too successful in discovering the culprits. That’s why I wanted to say a proper goodbye.’

The threat hung in the air and her stomach cramped with tension. He had been in danger before and she knew how that felt. She didn’t want to feel that way again but here she was, before he’d even left the country, feeling sick at the thought that he might once more be walking towards serious trouble. She swallowed hard.

‘And you’re going alone?’

‘No.’ His face had grown sombre but now it broke into a warm smile. ‘That’s the good thing. I’m taking Mike.’

‘Mike Corrigan?’

‘The very same.’

‘But surely he’s never had anything to do with India? I remember you telling me that he’d always worked in Eastern Europe.’

‘True enough, but wherever he’s worked, he’s a good operative and a good friend. And the trip will be a kind of swan song for him.’

She tried mentally to calculate Corrigan’s age. ‘He’s retiring? I wouldn’t have thought him old enough.’

‘Not retiring. He’s being moved. New brooms are sweeping through the security service and his injury has made it difficult for him to work in the field. He’s been seconded to another part of the organisation. To a section that’s strictly admin—so no more adventures.’

‘I know his leg was bad, but he seemed to manage.’ Mike’s limp hadn’t appeared to impede him when Daisy and he had met during the Sweetman crisis. But that might no longer be the case. Sweetman had forced him into crashing his car and Mike had ended up with broken bones and a split head.

‘He’s managed okay, more or less,’ Grayson agreed. ‘But by the time you met him, he hadn’t worked abroad for some years. And since the incident with that fanatic, his health has become more of a problem. His leg has always given him stick but now he’s experiencing giddiness, fearsome headaches, that kind of thing. Smashing into a lamp post head on isn’t to be recommended.’

‘So why are you taking him? I know he’s been a very good colleague, but if it’s going to be dangerous, surely you need someone who’s completely fit?’

‘Mike will stay in Jasirapur. He’ll be my man in the office while I travel further afield. I need someone back at base that I can trust absolutely. And it will be easier to hunt for Javinder on my own. That way, with luck, I won’t draw too much attention to what I’m doing.’

It seemed a little too pat. It was unlikely Grayson would take a man who had no experience of India whatsoever, on a journey that could be extremely dangerous.

‘Is that the real reason he’s going with you, or is there something else?’ She knew how close the two friends were.

His blue eyes lit with amusement. ‘You’ve got me well and truly taped, haven’t you? I suppose I want to do Mike some kind of favour. He’s been dealt a rotten hand and I feel sad for him. He makes the best of it, but there’s no disguising that being forced out of ops and into pen-pushing has come as a real blow. He jumped at the chance of a last grab at the old life.’

‘I imagine that having a close friend with you might be helpful.’ She couldn’t quite keep the doubt from her voice.

‘Enormously helpful. With Mike in charge, I won’t have to worry what’s happening in Jasirapur while I’m up country. And he’ll make sure I get everything I need, when I need it.’

He’d already planned his strategy. He was determined to go and nothing would dissuade him. But why that was making her so dejected, she couldn’t understand. It was natural to worry for a friend about to embark on a perilous journey, but in her heart she knew there was more to it than that.