Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland MooreЧитать онлайн книгу.
would sell it as scrap for the war effort. But he was attached to the old relic.
Iris pulled her curtain across to block out the sight. The unseen swing gave a final creak of defiance, as if it was determined to have the last word. She sat on her bed and flipped back the sheets, sighing as she felt the night closing in on her. A lonely room in a strange place. And here she was grabbing a few hours’ sleep until Esther shouted up the stairs for them all to get up.
“Come on, you bunch of layabouts, let’s have you down for breakfast!”
Iris closed her eyes and stretched her aching limbs. She could hear a muffled soundtrack from downstairs. Finch laughed at something. A cup or glass smashed on the floor.
She could hear Esther exclaim, “Oops, look what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do it. It was me cardigan.”
“And who’s your cardigan attached to? Oh, mind your feet on the glass!”
Unable to sleep, Iris swung out of bed with a sigh. An owl hooted somewhere off in the fields, a late-night hunter ready to start its day. Iris’s body felt exhausted, but her mind was racing.
The swing creaked outside.
It was as if it was taunting her through the thin curtain. Her fingers edged towards the fabric to pull it back, to look outside. But she was scared; her fingers touching the fabric but not having the courage to move it. The swing creaked again. Iris could hear her breathing, her heart pounding in her chest.
Then she remembered something else that Billy Finch had left in his room. Iris opened her wardrobe and moved a wicker box. It contained letters and photographs from back home and a couple of torn magazine pages from Picturegoer magazine showing hairstyles she’d one day like to try. Behind the wicker box was what she wanted: a clear, tall bottle, half full of a bright- orange liquid. Finch’s carrot whisky. From the reactions of the others to the whisky, she knew it was a revolting drink that had the sole redeeming feature of being very strong. Should she do it?
Iris remembered the woozy feeling from the cider in the dance hall. It had helped things seem better when she was fretting about Vernon, hadn’t it? So maybe a few swigs of Billy’s stash could do the same. It would certainly get her off to sleep.
Iris took out the bottle, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. A stiff drink to help her shut out her fears was just what she needed. She winced at the taste, certain that her gums were retreating from the foul, strong liquid. She took another couple of big swigs, in quick succession, trying to swallow the liquid as quickly as possible. This wasn’t one of those drinks that you swilled around your mouth, savouring the taste. It had one purpose and one purpose only. And for Iris, it worked reassuringly quickly.
She felt her head spinning, a reassuring warmth rising on her cheeks.
The swing creaked.
But this time, she didn’t hear it. Or if she did, it didn’t unnerve her like it had before. She took a final couple of swigs and replaced the bottle back in the recesses of the wardrobe. Her little secret. A useful stash to be eked out for as long as she could, whenever she needed it. She tried to focus her eyes, but her head was woozy. Her mouth had the remnants of the vile taste and she contemplated going to brush her teeth again, but fear of bumping into one of the other girls on the landing made her stay put. They might catch a whiff of her breath and know she’d been drinking. There would be questions: where did she get it? Why was she drinking alone? Could they have some?
Iris checked that her door was locked.
She turned off the light and curled up under the sheet. The room was spinning slightly and she felt surprise that such a seemingly small amount of drink could do this. But it was strong, dangerous stuff. Just the sort of sedative she needed. She thought of Joe Batch’s smiling, rugged face and thanked him for introducing her to the delights of alcohol.
Sleep came quickly. But it wouldn’t last for long.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Was that the swing? Iris started to wake, her befuddled mind reaching and trying to place the noise. Dripping water? No, it was a more solid and insistent tapping than that. Not the swing, not water: then what?
Tap. Tap. Tap.
As Iris came round, she managed to piece it together and recognise the noise. Someone was tapping the wooden leg at the end of her bed. Tap. Tap.
She opened a bleary eye, half-wondering how someone had managed to get into her room. Then the horror hit her. The bedroom curtain was billowing and there was glass strewn like discarded diamonds across the floor. How had she not heard the glass breaking? Someone had climbed up and broken in. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t draw breath to make a sound; her lungs were like a wet tea towel that someone had scrunched up. With rising dread, she turned her head towards the source of the tapping. She knew she had to look, but she didn’t want to. She knew what she would see.
It was no surprise who she saw standing there.
In the half-light, the glinting, malevolent eyes of a small, gnarled man. Vernon Storey. A man twisted by disappointment, cynicism and unrealised dreams.
Shaking with fear, Iris pulled herself up in her bed, the sweat of fear dripping down her temples. She stared at Vernon. He’d somehow climbed up and smashed the window. And now he was standing in front of her. He grinned and raised the poker in his hand. She was dimly aware of Finch and Esther downstairs, talking. She tried to scream for help, but all that escaped was a tiny, almost comical, squeak. Clutching the poker, Vernon’s other hand drummed menacingly on the wooden leg of her bed.
Tap, Tap, Tap.
“Told you I’d come back for you, Iris Dawson,” he said softly, his yellowing teeth bared like a shark.
“Please …” Iris murmured, finding breath for a childlike whisper of desperation and hope.
He shook his head, unwilling to listen to any more entreaties. That’s not why he’d come. There was no interest in discussing the right and wrongs of her betrayal, as he saw it. Or the rights and wrongs of his crime against his son.
“Time for talking is over, Iris,” he said, moving closer, one step at a time. He knew that she had nowhere to go.
She could smell the stale sweat on his clothes, see the holes in his ragged pullover and his faded checked shirt as he got closer. His face looked almost apologetic. “Sorry it’s come to this,” he whispered. There seemed genuine regret in his voice, as if he knew he wasn’t just ruining her life but his own too. Circumstances had brought him to this point; circumstances that had meant Iris had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Suddenly, his face changed to one of determination and anger as he knew what he had to do.
He raised the poker above his head and, in a savage, fluid arc, brought it crashing down towards her.
Earlier that evening, Private First Class Joe Batch sauntered along the gravel driveway to Hoxley Manor. Stationed a few miles away in the nearby town of Brinford, Joe had never been here before. Wearing his summer fatigues uniform of khaki shirt, tie and trousers with a green belt, he glanced at fellow American soldiers dotted around the front of the house, not recognising any faces, but knowing they were comrades. He cleared his throat as he entered the cool interior of the building. He wasn’t in a hurry to get inside, but he felt he couldn’t delay it any longer. The place was just like they said it was, a slice of aristocratic history that was terribly British and terribly in need of repair. Instinctively, Joe folded his hat and tucked it into his belt as he made his way down the grand main hall towards the wards, his shoes clicking on the parquet flooring. A few months ago, the Manor had been seconded by the War Office and much of its living space converted into a makeshift medical hospital for treating men from the front lines. But it also treated men injured closer to home. Men like Private