Coming Home to Island House Read online

He watched her leave the room. She was such a young and vibrant woman; perhaps it would be a blessing to her if he did die sooner rather than later. He hated her seeing him this way. She deserved so much more than to be married to a helpless invalid. Yet in his weakened state he could see things so much more clearly, and knowing that he would never again have the chance to do the one thing he should have done a long time ago, he resolved to ask Romily to do it for him: to reunite his family. He prayed that she would agree; it was a lot to ask of her.

  When she returned, tumbler in hand, she held it carefully against his mouth. ‘Nectar,’ he struggled to say. ‘Heav … enly … nec … tar.’

  Whether she understood him or not, she wiped his chin with a handkerchief before offering him another sip.

  ‘Where’s Rod … dy?’ he asked, forcing the words out through lips that no longer felt like his own.

  ‘Taking a break. You’ve worn him out with your incessant chatter.’

  He tried to smile. ‘You’re … the … best thing … that … ever … happened … to me,’ he said breathlessly. He watched her face, waited for what seemed like forever for her to understand what he’d said.

  ‘And you,’ she said finally, dabbing delicately at his chin again, ‘are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Her loving gentleness made him want to weep. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled slowly down his cheeks. Never had he cried in front of anyone before, and it appalled him that he was doing so now, but he was powerless to stop it.

  ‘Oh my darling Jack,’ said Romily, setting down the glass and putting her arms around him. ‘We’ll get through this, just you see.’

  Her words, spoken so bravely, made him weep all the more.

  Chapter Four

  The last of the guest rooms made ready for Mr Devereux’s family, Florence went over to the window and watched Mr Fitzwilliam disappear inside the boathouse down by the pond. Seconds later, he reappeared with an old wicker chair and settled himself into it in the dappled shade of the willow tree. Yet as beautiful as the setting was, there was nothing relaxed about his posture; his shoulders were hunched, and his head lowered. As Florence had seen him do before, he put his left hand protectively on his useless right arm, where the fabric of his jacket sleeve hung loosely over his stump. There was something so sad about those few inches of lifeless sleeve. Something sad too about the sight of him sitting all alone at the boathouse. Poor man, she thought; obviously seeing his old friend so ill had upset him badly.

  From what Florence knew of Mr Devereux’s estranged family, she doubted they would feel as upset as Mr Fitzwilliam. Would they even bother to come? And if they did, how would they react to the news that Miss Temple was now officially Mrs Jack Devereux-Temple? Which was quite a mouthful, however much Florence practised it! Much easier was the less formal name she had been instructed to use when she was alone with her somewhat unconventional employer: Miss Romily.

  Florence wondered what would happen if Mr Devereux died. Would Miss Romily leave Island House to return permanently to London, taking Florence and Mrs Partridge with her? Florence hoped not; she liked living here.

  At first she hadn’t thought she would take to life in the country, not when the church bells kept her awake at night, along with owls hooting and what sounded like a wild banshee howling in the darkness but which actually turned out to be a fox calling for its mate. To her surprise, though, in the few months she’d been here, she had grown accustomed to the strange noises, and now Island House felt like a proper home to her. It was somewhere safe where she didn’t have to live in fear of her beer-sodden father and brothers finding her and dragging her back home. In London, that fear had always hung over her.

  Miss Romily had been the one to offer her a means of escape from her domineering father, and Florence had grabbed that chance with both hands. Their paths had crossed, quite literally, one morning when she had stepped absently into the road and suddenly found herself thrown off her feet before landing with a heavy thud on the dusty ground. It happened so fast, but at the same time almost as if in slow motion, giving her the feeling that she was actually flying. She must have closed her eyes, for when she opened them, she found that a crowd had gathered around her. But one face stood out: the face of an elegant woman wearing the smartest red hat Florence had ever seen. Funny to think that there she was, lying in the gutter, making a spectacle of herself, the wind knocked out of her, and all she could think of was that she would give anything in the world to own a hat as smart as that.

  The owner of the hat spoke; the voice was that of a posh upper-class woman. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Can you move? Or perhaps you’d better not. Not yet.’

  ‘What happened?’ Florence asked, the air now back in her lungs and a flood of pain making itself felt in just about every part of her body.

  ‘I’m afraid I knocked you down. You stepped right into the road in front of my car before I could brake. I couldn’t do a thing about it. I’m terribly sorry.’

  Another voice joined in. ‘She’s right; you did exactly that. You practically walked straight into the car. You must have been daydreaming to do that.’

  Mortified that she’d caused such a kerfuffle, Florence said, ‘I’m very sorry. Is your car all right?’

  ‘Oh tish and tosh, please don’t be sorry. And don’t give my car a second thought. Now then, do you think anything’s broken?’ The woman’s gaze travelled the length of her, eyeing up Florence’s legs and arms.

  It was then that Florence realised her dress had ridden up over her thighs, and there, for all the world to see, were the livid welts and bruises her father had inflicted on her yesterday with his belt. Shame made her face flush and she pushed the dress down.

  ‘I insist on taking you to see my doctor,’ the elegant woman said, a gloved hand outstretched. ‘It’s the very least I can do in the circumstances. Come on,’ she said to the crowd of onlookers, ‘let’s see if we can get this poor girl up and onto her feet.’

  With others rushing to do the woman’s bidding, Florence was at a loss what to say. She was too weak with pain and too dazed to argue.

  She had never been in an open-topped sports car before, and all she could do was sit in the passenger seat and hope she didn’t wake up from this extraordinary dream. Because it had to be a dream. Maybe she had been knocked unconscious and this was all going on inside her head, and any minute now she would wake up and find herself still in the gutter. Perhaps knocked over by somebody who didn’t care, rather than by a beautiful woman driving at what she now realised was an alarmingly fast speed.

  More alarming still was that when the car came to a stop, she saw that they were parked outside a doctor’s consulting room in Harley Street. Suddenly terrified that she would have to pay the man a king’s ransom, she said, ‘There’s really no need for me to see a doctor. I’m all right. Honest I am. Just a bit shaken, that’s all.’

  ‘I disagree,’ the woman said firmly, and helping Florence out of the car, she took her gently by the arm and led her up the steps to the black front door with its shiny brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. ‘By the way,’ she said, giving the lion’s head a loud rat-a-tat-tat, ‘my name’s Miss Temple, what’s yours?’

  ‘Florence, miss. Florence Massie.’

  ‘Well, Florence, I’m here to tell you that whoever caused those shocking marks on your legs had no right to do such a thing. No right at all.’

  ‘I did it to myself, miss,’ lied Florence. Just as she had when a teacher at school had asked how she’d hurt herself this time. She knew better than to admit the truth. ‘I tripped over the coal scuttle,’ she said. ‘I’m as clumsy as anything, me. Always have been.’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman replied, giving her an uncomfortably long stare, as if seeing straight through her. ‘I’m sure you are.’

  Their meeting proved to be the best thing that could have happene
d to Florence, for Miss Temple was in need of a new live-in maid. The fact that Florence had no experience as a lady’s maid – she’d been working in a laundry since she left school – didn’t bother Miss Temple a jot. ‘I’m sure you’ll pick it up soon enough,’ she’d said, ‘and the estimable Mrs Partridge, my cook, who’s been with me since forever, will take you under her wing and give you all the pointers you need.’

  Predictably, Florence’s father hit the roof when she plucked up the courage to tell him that she’d found a new job and wouldn’t be a burden to him any more. He told her that she would only leave home over his dead body, and threatened to beat some sense into her if she dared to defy him. But there was something about Miss Temple and the fact that she seemed to know how Florence had come by her bruises that gave her the strength, finally, to stand up to her father, to see him for what he was: a cowardly bully who was only man enough to hit a girl. She secretly packed a small bag of her belongings and slipped away without a backward glance and without leaving an address. She simply disappeared and, in so doing, history repeated itself, for just as her mother had run away, so had Florence. She felt a certain sense of pride in what she had done, and would always be grateful to the woman who had given her a chance to change her life.

  And what a life she had lived in the four years since that day. With Miss Romily there was always something interesting going on, and then there was the travelling she had to do, sometimes to promote a book, other times to carry out research. Often she liked Florence to go with her on her trips abroad. Last year Florence had gone to the French Riviera and to Venice, and the year before that to Paris. Oh yes, she was quite the well-travelled lady’s maid, as Billy Minton had once teased her. ‘You’re much too good for the likes of a simple country boy like me,’ he’d said in his soft Suffolk accent. ‘I’ve never been anywhere.’

  Billy worked for his parents in their baker’s shop in the village, and he always had a kind word for Florence when she passed by or called in, but then he was that sort of lad, forever with a smile on his handsome face.

  Sometimes Florence had to pinch herself to make sure that that her new life here at Island House was real, that it wasn’t a dream. No two ways about it, she had landed on her feet good and proper the day she met Miss Romily, and in return she’d go to the ends of the earth to help the woman.

  But daydreaming like this wouldn’t do, she scolded herself; there was work to be done. She had promised Mrs Partridge that she would help out in the kitchen in anticipation of the family arriving. Mrs Bunch had come in especially to lend a hand with the extra work, though all she’d done so far was sit around drinking tea and sharing the latest gossip from the village.

  As big a gossip as the old woman was, though, she was wise enough to steer clear of what people were probably really talking about, and that was Mr Devereux and his beautiful mistress. Little did they know, thought Florence with a smile.

  Chapter Five

  Hope’s visit to Cologne had been a mistake. She should never have invited herself, but she had thought that spending time with Dieter’s parents, seeing where he had spent his childhood, might help her to come to terms with his death. It hadn’t. It had made things worse.

  Her parents-in-law, Gerda and Heinrich Meyer, had worn her down with their grief. They were full of angry bitterness and appeared to hold her personally responsible for their son’s death from TB. In their eyes she had lured him away from the safety of home in Germany and forced him to live in germ-ridden England. No matter that Dieter had been living in London for nearly a year before Hope met him, that he had been there quite voluntarily.

  Gerda and Heinrich’s disapproval of their son’s choice of wife was matched only by that of Hope’s father. ‘A German!’ Jack had roared. ‘You’re marrying a German, after all they did to us? And what they’re now doing to their own people?’

  There had been no reasoning with her father, no explaining to him that not all Germans were merciless killers. Dieter wasn’t evil; he was kind and sensitive, and his coming to England to work as a teacher had been to escape all that he detested in Nazi Germany. He had been alarmed by the growing belief within his country of birth that with the shame of poverty behind them, they were now a country to be respected, a power to be reckoned with, and feared. Poor Dieter, he had been appalled to discover that there were those in power in Britain who thought Hitler a fine leader from whom much could be learned.

  Hope’s brother, Arthur, had voiced a similar sentiment and praised Hitler for having taken a country from its knees and motivated the workforce and the young. ‘Can you blame them for wanting to win back everything they lost?’ he had said when challenged by their father’s disgust, angering him further. ‘Wouldn’t we do the same in the circumstances?’

  Now, two and a half years after her marriage to Dieter – and a year since his death – Hope was seeing for herself the evil force sweeping through the country. Life in Nazi Germany had shocked her. She was shocked too that having been so consumed by grief, she had been in ignorance of just how bad the situation had become. It made her realise that it was time to lift herself out of the trough of despair in which she had willingly placed herself, believing it to be a comfort, a means to feel closer to the man she had loved.

  Without Dieter, her life these last twelve months had felt so very empty and worthless. She had tried to console herself with her work as an illustrator, but it hadn’t been enough to fill the huge void. At her lowest point, having cut herself off from friends and family – especially family – she had briefly considered suicide so she could be with her beloved Dieter. But then she had thought how appalled he would have been that she could throw away her life instead of doing something meaningful with it.

  Now, in the light of the suffering she had witnessed here in Germany, her grief had felt like a narcissistic act of self-pity that she had clung to for much too long. The persecution and collective hatred for Jewish people was everywhere, in the everyday casual violence they endured, but more particularly in the increasing number of laws created to make it impossible for them to live a decent life.

  Even Hope had been targeted by a group of schoolboys dressed in their Hitler Jugend uniforms when she was returning from seeing Dieter’s sister and husband. Her presence in a Jewish neighbourhood and the fact that her hair wasn’t blonde but a mousy shade of brown was sufficient cause for the boys to jeer and taunt her. One of them had deliberately tripped her up and then laughed coarsely as she scrabbled on the ground to retrieve her bag. Another boy had spat at her.

  Yet this paled into insignificance compared to what her sister-in-law, Sabine, and her husband, Otto, were subjected to. Hope was on her way to see them now, taking the tram across the city, glad to be escaping the suffocating company of Gerda and Heinrich for a few hours.

  It was her last day before returning to London tomorrow and she couldn’t wait to board the train that would take her to the Hook of Holland, where she would catch the boat to Harwich. Yet for all her eagerness to leave, she would be desperately sorry to say goodbye to Sabine and Otto, and their dear little baby daughter, Annelise. Hope and Dieter had planned to have a family of their own one day, but now she had to make do with being an aunt to Annelise.

  Otto Lowenstein was a doctor, but because he was Jewish, he was banned from working in his old hospital. Now all he could do was secretly treat Jewish patients in their own homes. Twice in the last year, since Kristallnacht last November, when synagogues were torched, Jewish homes, schools and businesses vandalised and hundreds of Jews beaten up and killed, Otto had been arrested for no real reason, and later released. It happened all the time apparently. He and Sabine had married before 1935, when a new law forbade mixed marriages. Gerda and Heinrich, both devout Roman Catholics, had been against the marriage, just as they had disapproved of Dieter marrying an English Protestant girl.

  Sabine and Otto lived in a run-down area that bore all the signs of th
e discrimination and hatred they and their neighbours were subjected to. A number of shopfronts were boarded up and painted with the yellow Star of David, and the words ‘Filthy Jew’ or ‘Death of the Jews’ scrawled in large letters. There was nobody about, the streets as good as deserted. Remembering the route she had taken two days ago, Hope clutched the basket she was carrying and walked fast, trying not to give in to the uneasiness she felt. It was here that the group of boys had taunted her.

  She turned left at the newspaper kiosk on the corner of Neuhofstrasse and became aware of an odd smell. Then fifty yards later, as she turned into Annastrasse, she stopped in her tracks at the sight that met her. The building on her left had been a bakery when she’d last seen it; now it was a burnt-out shell, a blackened carcass with smoke rising from the rubble, the warm air thick with dust and the acrid smell of charred wood. A flag with a swastika had been pushed into the blackened ruins. Shocked, Hope pressed on, stepping around the broken glass that was glinting in the sunshine. The area was nothing like the smart leafy street where Gerda and Heinrich lived; here the turn-of-the-century buildings were in a poor state of repair, with blackened walls and peeling paintwork.

  With Annelise in her arms, Sabine answered the door almost immediately, as though she had been standing just the other side of it waiting for Hope’s knock.

  ‘Thank God you made it,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I was worried you might have changed your mind.’ She spoke excellent English, just as her brother had. She hastily kissed Hope’s cheeks and ushered her over the threshold of the ground-floor apartment, which had the benefit of a small garden. It also had the disadvantage of being an easy target for objects thrown through the window that fronted the street.

  Hope followed her down the dingy narrow hallway with its pervading smell of damp and into the shabby high-ceilinged drawing room where the paucity of furniture – the better stuff long since sold to make ends meet – testified to the daily struggle of their lives.