Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland MooreЧитать онлайн книгу.
Frank wasn’t like that. But her protestations were ignored as rumblings of a mob mentality started to rise slowly within the large group. Finch thought they had to find Frank to get him to account for his actions. Esther thought they should call the police. Vernon urged them to do both things, a fury in his eyes. The man wanted justice for his son. When they finally found Frank Tucker, he seemed shocked by the news. Walter was dead? Frank seemed to crumple before their eyes, crushed by the intense regret that he felt. He must have hit the boy too hard. In the end, there was no need to call the police because Frank had turned himself in when Vernon had accused him of murdering Walter. If he was under suspicion, then he wasn’t a man who would run away. And Iris guessed that Frank probably believed he was responsible. After all, he had given Walter a savage beating. Perhaps one of those blows had later proved fatal.
And now, as Iris stood by the grave, her attention wandered as the Reverend Henry Jameson committed Walter’s body to the ground. With the words washing over her, she found herself glancing slyly at the mourners. Mrs Gladys Gulliver, the town’s busybody and self-appointed moral barometer, sniffing, in a mixture of indignation and judgement; Fred Finch, the ebullient farmer, nodding his head sagely at the words; Connie Carter, Iris’s glamorous friend, smiling encouragingly as her husband, the vicar, delivered the words. And then there had been Vernon Storey, dressed in his best suit and looking suitably stern-faced. Something troubled Iris about this man. Something was wrong. It wasn’t only the fact that when he had delivered an impassioned eulogy about how he had lost his boy, when the words seemed so out of kilter with their actual lives. Something also troubled Iris about when Vernon had scrunched his face up and cried; she’d noticed that no tears had come. She wondered if that was normal. Could you cry without tears?
Frank would know.
But unfortunately Frank had been arrested and was being kept in the village police station. Iris wanted to go to see him later, after the funeral. But first she needed to pay her respects to Vernon. That would be the decent thing to do. That’s what a lady would do. Her mum might be proud of her doing that. She clutched her handbag, as if it was a protective talisman, and edged nearer, listening as Henry’s words of comfort were carried by the gentle breeze.
When the service was over and the good and the great were dispersing, she approached a brooding Vernon. By this stage, her mind was so muddled. If Frank thought he’d done it and Vernon thought he’d done it, then surely that was the end of the matter. It might have been a tragic and regrettable accident, a fight gone too far, but Frank Tucker would hang for his crime. Iris felt bereft that her friend, Frank, had done this. Since she’d arrived at Pasture Farm, Frank had been like a surrogate father for her, guiding her and helping her as she navigated life as a Land Girl. He had been teaching her to read and write, painstakingly giving her lessons in the evenings. He was a good man. If he was guilty, then it was such a waste.
“Sorry about Walter,” Iris stammered.
“Not your fault.” Vernon scowled. “It was that flaming friend of yours. He battered my boy.”
Iris was taken aback by his ferocity and found herself involuntarily taking a step away. The Reverend Henry Jameson tried to console Vernon with a warm smile. It wasn’t the time or the place for such outbursts.
“Why did he have to go back to that barn?” Iris asked. It was a casual expression of regret that this was the one decision that had led to Walter’s demise, nothing more. She hadn’t intended it to be a searching question, but the answer surprised her.
“He didn’t,” Vernon said gruffly.
“Really?” Iris asked.
“He didn’t go back, you silly girl.”
“Are you sure?” Iris wanted to say she had definitely seen Walter walk away from the barn after the fight. He must have gone back. There must have been a rematch. But Vernon was obviously in no mood for splitting hairs. And the reverend was right; it wasn’t the time or place. Vernon left her in the graveyard, her head swimming with a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.
As the last remaining mourners left, Iris kept her word to Frank Tucker and went to see him at the police station. The only policeman in the station was PC Thorne. On secondment from nearby Brinford, PC Thorne had found himself in the unenviable position of serving three villages and two towns as their sole source of law enforcement. All the other police officers had been conscripted into the armed forces. He didn’t really have the time or inclination to help Iris, but he knew he was duty-bound to do so.
Iris was allowed to see Frank for five minutes and she was led into a cold room with a table and two chairs, walls decorated with half-green and half-cream walls. Frank was brought in. He was pleased to see her and tried to be pleasant and humorous towards her; as if they were just talking in his shed after dinner. But Iris could see the fear in his eyes; his shoulders stooped with defeat, his hair lank and unwashed. Had he already given up? She knew that he would be put on trial for this and, if found guilty, he would be hanged by the neck.
“How are you?” Iris said, somewhat redundantly.
“The food isn’t as good as Esther’s, but at least there’s not so much yakking at meal times.” Frank shrugged.
“You’ve come here just to get away from all us Land Girls, haven’t you?” She smiled. Frank smiled too, warmth in his eyes. But the warmth bled away as an awkward silence filled the room. Then Frank sighed and told Iris what he wanted to happen. His words surprised her.
“I don’t want you coming again,” he said. “This isn’t how I want you to remember me.”
“Don’t talk daft. You’ll be back,” Iris said bravely. “You’ve got to help me finish writing a letter home, haven’t you?”
“Someone else will have to teach you.” He nodded, closing the matter in his mind. Iris felt a little foolish for trying to lighten the mood at the wrong moment.
“I mean it, Iris. You forget about all this. Remember those evenings when you’d be chewing your pencil and I’d be helping you trace the alphabet. You remember those times, eh? Not these ones.”
Iris knew better than to question such finality. His mind was made up and any entreaties she made would likely make his veneer of control snap. And she didn’t want to show that lack of respect to a man she admired. So she decided it would be best to come straight to the point and tell him what had troubled her at the graveyard.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why did Walter come back for a rematch?” she asked.
Frank looked puzzled. She guessed that it all seemed a bit irrelevant to him now. What did it matter? As far as he was concerned, he’d killed a man and that was that.
“What do you mean?”
“I saw Walter Storey walk away from that fight a few minutes after you left.”
“Yeah, but he died from what I did to him. The body is a strange old thing. Maybe it took time for the injury to kill him.”
“What was he like after the fight?” Iris persisted.
Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose and thought about what had happened. “We’d had the fight. I’d given Storey a beating and left him in the barn. The boy wasn’t unconscious or anything. There didn’t seem to be any cause for concern.”
“And what happened then?”
“What are you getting at?” But Iris’s insistent look made Frank realise that she needed an answer. “I walked to my shed and got on with mending a couple of rakes. That’s when you came to see me.”
“But I saw Walter leave the barn.”
“What are you saying?” Frank was clearly confused by what she was trying to tell him, so Iris decided she had to spell it out.
“You must have had another fight with him. A rematch?”
Frank shook his head. No, definitely not. “Maybe he came back to the barn looking for me and then collapsed?”