Wartime Brides by Jenny Holmes

Author:Jenny Holmes [Holmes, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529191158
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2022-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A sad sight greeted Bill and Tom as they coasted down the hill towards Raby’s ancient harbour. A cluster of cottages lay in ruins; their red-tiled roofs were caved in and their walls reduced to rubble by Friday’s raid. It was dusk and men in thick sweaters and wellington boots and women wearing shawls and headscarves had gathered by the jetty, attempting to come to terms with their loss.

One of the men stepped forward to challenge the new arrivals. He was old-school, a fisherman with grey beard and heavily lined face whose boat had been blown to bits along with the house that his family had owned for two hundred years. ‘If you’ve come to gawp like all the other nosy so-and-sos, you can turn right around and go back the way you came,’ he spat at them.

Other suspicious villagers murmured their support until a young, sprightly woman in a tight-fitting scarlet sweater and black slacks broke free from the group and approached Tom and Bill. ‘It’s all right – I know these two,’ she informed the old-timer, who lost interest and backed off.

‘Molly Chambers?’ Tom did a double-take. The last time he’d come across Molly, she’d worn her hair in pigtails. Now she was tall and shapely and her hair, cropped short in a modern style, was a lighter shade of blonde than it had been when she was at school.

‘Yes, it’s me. What brings you here, Tom Rose? I hope it’s not to take snaps of the mess that Jerry made.’ Molly gestured towards the ruined dwellings. ‘We’ve had a bellyful of that type of visitor, thank you very much: newspapermen from the Gazette – and from further afield, too.’

‘No, nothing like that,’ Tom assured her.

They were joined by a thickset man in his early twenties with dark hair and strong features. ‘Bob Waterhouse,’ he reminded Bill curtly.

Bill recognized him at once. It was none other than Lizzie’s ex-fiancé, damn it. Still, it was best to rise above old rivalries. ‘How are you, Bob? Are you still working for Hugh Anderson?’

‘No, I got laid off. I’m driving a crane for Alf Mason now.’ Bob folded his arms and rocked back on his heels. ‘I didn’t expect you to show your face round here.’

Molly raised her eyebrows at Tom. ‘No love lost there,’ she said to no one in particular. Then louder, ‘I was sorry to hear about Annie May – she was burned to a cinder, by all accounts.’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Tom admitted. ‘We were hoping for a word with Arthur Butcher.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’ Finding sly satisfaction in Bill’s discomfort, Bob gave a grim barking laugh. ‘That’s his house, right over there.’

Following his pointing finger, Tom and Bill’s gaze rested on the nearest roofless cottage. Little was left of the building except a stone chimney stack and a side gable that had been sheltered from the blast by an overhanging rock. Its fire-damaged contents were heaped by the roadside – the remains of an iron bedstead, a scorched mattress, a dented tin bath and a washing mangle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.