Alibi by Eileen Enwright Hodgetts

Author:Eileen Enwright Hodgetts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerge Publishing
Published: 2019-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Ralph Pemberton buttoned his shirt and replaced his tie. The examination had gone the way he expected.

“We can’t take you, Mr. Williams, not with your bad heart. You’ll have to sign up for the home guard, or fire watch, but we can’t make a soldier out of you.”

Ralph, in the guise of David Williams, made an indignant protest even taking on the Welsh accent that he assumed appropriate for David Williams, age thirty-six of Cardiff, now responding to his call-up papers.

“Are you sure? I really want to serve my country.”

“You wouldn’t last five minutes. I’m surprised you didn’t know about the state of your heart. You need to go and see a private doctor. Your heart could fail you at any minute

Not yet, Ralph thought. I can’t give up yet. His heart was hammering and his head was spinning. This was how it was every time. Army doctors looking for signs of heart disease could always find it in Ralph. His heart, weakened by rheumatic fever, skipped and jumped at the best of times and the pressure of impersonating another man sent it into a flat spin just like a damaged Spitfire spiraling down into the Channel.

He walked to the door clasping David Williams’ call up papers now embellished with a rubber stamp of denial. Williams would not have to fight. Ralph despised Williams just as he despised every other draft-dodger he had impersonated. If it wasn’t for the children, he wouldn’t do it.

The children! His brief stay in jail had delayed his efforts. Even now the ship could be leaving Liverpool and setting off across the Atlantic bound for North America or even striking out across the Bay of Biscay and turning south toward Australia. The newspapers no longer talked about overseas evacuation; not since September when the SS City of Benares had been sunk in the Atlantic and eighty-one children had died. The government said they were no longer sending children overseas but Swaffield knew better; Swaffield said the ships were still departing.

Thank goodness he’d decided to ask Mr. Gilbert’s friend Swaffield for help. Almost a month had passed since the day that Swaffield had found him leaning on his broom, out of breath and out of hope.

“What’s the matter with you Ralphie?”

“Nothing, just taking a breather.”

Swaffield had given him a sympathetic look which was strange in itself. He had never thought of Swaffield as the sympathetic type.

“It’s more than that. Come on, spill the beans, tell Uncle Rodney all about it.”

“It’s my wife, Sheila, she’s missing the children and making my life a misery. I know they have to be evacuated but she worries about them, you know. She’s heard rumors about children being sent to Canada and Australia. I tell her that’s not going to happen but she can’t seem to put her mind to rest.”

“Wives!” Swaffield exclaimed. “What’s a man to do with them?”

“I don’t know,” Ralph replied before he realized that Swaffield was not really asking a question.

“So,” Swaffield said, leaning back against the wall in the very place where Ralph wanted to sweep.

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.