Tom The Fatalist: A surprise inheritance, a cantankerous Victorian cricketer, a war hero, lost love and a rather dodgy Norman Bishop... by Andy Tyne

Author:Andy Tyne [Tyne, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andy Tyne
Published: 2015-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

Did he really have a daughter?

17.

The pair retreated inside the bar, arm in arm.

‘It’s true my friend,’ said Fabien as they settled into a table by the corner, each with a glass of Calvados brandy. ‘Claudette was born in August 1946 and Simone always knew she was yours. She was a blonde-haired and blue-eyed and she and Pierre were both dark-haired. I think Pierre always suspected that too, and although she always denied it the bastard made her life hell while he was still alive.’

‘Pierre’s dead too?’

‘Yes thankfully, God forgive me for saying that. He died back in 1957, drove his delivery truck into a wall whilst blind drunk. I would have killed him myself if Simone had let me. The man who came back from the war was not the man who left for Spain in 1937.’

‘Very few of us were the same people after the war Fabien.’

‘That is true Dicky, many were damaged as a consequence, but he was something else altogether. He was obsessed with war, he even tried to rejoin the Foreign Legion in 1954 so he could fight at Dien Bien Phu in the First Indochina War, which was a bloody crazy idea - he was a physical wreck, overweight and too fond of the brandy. Pierre was a bitter, vindictive drunk and Simone deserved better, far better. She deserved you Dicky, we spoke about you often, she loved you like no other man.’

Dicky gulped hard. ‘Did she ever try to find me?’

‘We tried, believe me. We contacted the War Office in Whitehall and wrote to the British Army but they kept insisting Captain Richard Meredith did not exist. Have you ever tried to find someone from a secret army that no longer exists? Nobody wanted to talk about the SOE, least of all the British Intelligence Services. The bureaucracy was unbelievable.’

‘Fabien,’ Dicky was hit but an overwhelming sense of regret, and of what might have been. ‘Fabien, Captain Dick Meredith never existed. Meredith isn’t my real name.’

Fabien looked at him quizzically. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well when I was in training I had taken a nom de plume, for security reasons you understand. I borrowed the surname Meredith from an old school teacher. It was a complete invention you see, my real name is Nagle, Dicky Nagle.’

‘Dicky Nagle? Ah! That explains everything! Simone was looking for a man called Meredith!’

‘We were trained to be especially careful about what information we shared, not just for our safety but for those people we worked with too.’

‘No wonder she could not find you. It is another great tragedy of the war. She wanted you to meet your daughter, or at the very least let you know that you had one.’

‘That would have made me extraordinarily happy Fabien, believe me. But at least I know about Claudette now. Do you think I should see her?’

‘I would insist on it, as would Simone and Claudette herself. Simone was always very careful to ensure that Claudette knew that her father wasn’t the

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