“Clearly on the mend,” Ben said, remembering the smouldering look he was giving Pamela. He was tempted not to mention her presence and thus let them be caught, but instead he cleared his throat. “Pamela is in with him now.”
“Pamela? How lovely.” Lady Prescott beamed. “I expect her mother telephoned her with the news, and she came straight down. How is she doing? We’ve certainly missed her.”
“Doing well,” Ben said. “Looks a little tired, but we’re all working too many hours with night shifts and fire-watching duty.”
“Doing your bit. That’s what matters,” Sir William said heartily.
“Are you here for long, Ben?” Lady Prescott asked.
“Not sure. A week maybe?”
“We must have you to dinner before you go back. It’s been too long since we’ve had a dinner party. I promised Lord Westerham’s lot, too. And your father, of course.”
“You’re very kind.” Ben nodded solemnly. “I should be getting back.”
“Good to see you, my boy,” Sir William reiterated and took his wife’s arm as they went into the house.
Ben stomped home to the vicarage, fighting back his growing anger. He should never have gone in the first place. Jeremy and Pamela obviously hadn’t wanted him there, couldn’t wait to get rid of him. And to see the way they looked at each other. Ben blinked to shut out the memory.
You’re a fool, he said to himself. If you’d wanted her, you should have made your move while he was missing and presumed dead. You could have comforted and reassured her, and she might have come to rely on you, and then maybe . . .
He shut off this thought because he knew he would never have betrayed Jeremy. Pamela might have been the one he yearned for, but Jeremy was his friend. And now he supposed they’d marry and live happily ever after. He made the decision to put Pamela from his thoughts once and for all and to get on with his life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
All Saints vicarage, Elmsleigh
May 1941
The Reverend Cresswell was sitting in his study, staring blankly out of the window where a blackbird was singing on the wicker fence. He was roused from his trance when Ben knocked politely and came into the room.
“Sorry to disturb you, Father,” he said.
“What’s that, my boy? Oh, not at all. Not at all. Trying to come up with a theme for Sunday’s sermon.” He sighed. “So difficult these days. You can’t preach hellfire anymore. They all know about hell only too well. So it has to be encouraging and uplifting. But how can you tell them that God is on our side when the Germans are told the same thing? I’m thinking Daniel in the lion’s den. Trusting God against all odds. What do you think?”
Ben nodded. Since he’d gone off to Oxford, he had found it harder and harder to believe in his father’s version of God. Of course, he never told the old man, but since the accident and then the outbreak of war, he had begun to wonder whether God existed at all.
“Do you still have an ordnance survey map of the area?”
“Should have, somewhere. Try the second drawer in that bureau.” He watched as Ben opened the drawer and found it crammed full of papers. “Planning to do some walking along the footpaths while you’re here?”
“I may.” Ben dumped the tangled mess of papers on the table. “Really, Father, these need sorting out. Do you want me to do it for you while I’m home?”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate it,” Reverend Cresswell said. “I never seem to have the time to get around to it. Of course, Mrs. Finch would love to get her hands on my study, but it’s strictly out of bounds, except that I allow her to run the carpet sweeper over the floor. If I let her have her way, she’d have everything in the room stacked neatly and alphabetically, and I wouldn’t be able to find a thing.”
Ben smiled. He put aside a pamphlet on preparing for confirmation, one for last year’s church fete, a programme for Gilbert and Sullivan at the D’Oyly Carte, and sundry letters, before he unearthed a map of France, one of Switzerland, and then the one he wanted. “Ah, good. Here it is,” he said. “I’ll start sorting this stuff for you later, but I need to borrow this now, if you don’t mind.”
“If you’re thinking of walking, check with me first. You may find some changes. New people have bought the old oast house beyond Broadbent’s farm. Arty types from London, one gathers. Needless to say, they haven’t been near the church.” He smiled. “But I hear that they’ve tried to block the footpath from going through their grounds. People have told them they can’t do it. Old right-of-way from the village to Hildenborough. But I don’t think it’s had much effect. And in wartime, nobody is going to bother with a court case.”
“I’m not worried, Father,” Ben said. “Plenty of other places to walk. So have you met the new people yet?”
“Can’t say I have. I gather they frequent the pub occasionally. Two men from London. One of them a well-known artist. Dr. Sinclair said he’d been for sherry with them, and the paintings were frightful. All red-and-black daubs, he said. One of them is Danish. Hansen. But he’s not the famous one. Some sort of Russian name. Stravinsky? Something like that.”
While his father spoke, Ben spread out the map on a table. He took a ruler and rotated it in a five-mile radius. There was a broad area of flat land toward Tonbridge. Lots of fields to land in. So if the parachutist had really chosen Lord Westerham’s field, then, realistically, his contact had to be within walking distance. That meant the Farleigh estate, the village cottages, the bigger houses on the green: his father’s vicarage, Dr. Sinclair, Miss Hamilton’s, Colonel Huntley’s. A couple of farms came within this radius: Highcroft’s and Broadbent’s. And then Nethercote, the Prescotts’ estate, a half mile from the village. That was it.
Ben sighed. He’d known the people in the village all his life, unless there were any recent arrivals apart from the oast-house men. And the colonel and Nethercote and Farleigh. They were all as true blue and English as you come. Nobody who would want to aid the Germans. He came to the conclusion that they had got it wrong. The man who fell was not a spy trying to pass a message to a contact. He had to be an accident: a man who fell from a plane by mistake, in the wrong place.
But he’d been commissioned to investigate by a powerful and senior man. So he had to carry out the assignment and do it well. He folded up the map again. “I’ll keep this for the moment, if you don’t mind.”
Reverend Cresswell looked up and nodded. “What? Oh no. By all means, keep it.” He looked at his son. “So why are you home?”
“Why? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Of course. But I just wondered whether that leg of yours was proving too much of a hindrance, and you weren’t really able to . . .”
In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II
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