The Wind Off the Sea Read online

  The consequences of her parents’ irresponsibility meant that Meggie, being the honourable soul that she was, had to sell off what little there was left of the Gore-Stewart goods and chattels in order to try to pay off some of her parents’ creditors, as well as some hefty back taxes. Paintings went to auction at the very worst time, although thanks to her many good and decent connections some of the finest of the family collection went straight to private buyers for proper sums of money. Silver was sold and jewellery too, items left to her by Madame Gran and the few bits and pieces her mother had somehow managed to keep out of hock. When all duties and liabilities had been met, all poor Meggie had left was the beautiful but crumbling Cucklington House, a place that was fast becoming a white elephant as the agents kept endlessly hinting.

  ‘There really are no other assets you can realise?’ her lawyers kept asking her, unaware of the two paintings she had kept for herself, one being hers by right anyway, and the King Charles I drinking cup she just could not bear to be quite parted from since it had been her grandmother’s prize possession.

  ‘Unless you find some form of employment and find it soon, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ they kept warning her, ‘you could well be facing bankruptcy. Could you not perhaps go back to work for your former employers? After all, you had a very distinguished career during the war.’

  Meggie found this last remark hilarious, since bound by the Official Secrets Act she was quite unable to discuss the matter of further employment with His Majesty’s Secret Service. Once she had fully realised the depths of her financial difficulties, she had indeed contemplated a return to the Service, and for that reason had allowed Hugh Tate to make professional advances to her, but had soon thought better of it. For a start the pay was atrocious, and secondly, although she had actually been briefed as to the political expectations of the next few years, her heart really was not in peacetime espionage the way it had been in wartime. To her it was a totally different game. And while realising that it was just as important if not more so – with the birth of nuclear weapons and the mounting tensions between Russia and the West – she was too realistic not to know that her personality was not cut out for that kind of cloak and dagger stuff, which explained her complete rejection of Hugh’s professional advances that afternoon in his car on Bexham Quay.

  ‘We do have to repeat our warnings, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ her lawyers had persisted both verbally and by letter. ‘If you do not find some way to achieve solvency then you face the very real prospect of bankruptcy.’

  ‘Bankruptcy be damned,’ Meggie would toast, whenever she had finished her work at the Three Tuns. ‘Let them throw me into a debtors’ prison – see if I care!’

  Once the pub was closed she and Richards would sit in the half darkened lounge and reminisce, Richards sticking valiantly to his brew of big strong cups of tea, Meggie drinking cognac from a crate smuggled in from an old Breton comrade in the French Resistance.

  But memories are heady things, and inevitably, as the hours grew shorter and dawn more imminent, Richards and Meggie would either be in tears at the recollection of some tragedy, or in paroxysms of helpless laughter. As the light came creeping under the old shuttered windows, and the first rays of the autumn sun began to warm the still waters in the harbour, Meggie would light her last cigarette for what was no longer the night but was now a new day, and wander slowly home smoking and watching the gulls wheel above the little fishing boats returning, listening to the gentle awakening of her favourite place in the whole world.

  ‘And you’re not going to be enjoying life as much as you’d like to enjoy it unless you get a grip on your smoking,’ Dr Farnsworth warned her when Meggie visited him the day after Waldo had flown off to Berlin. ‘That cough of yours is if anything worse, and I don’t like what I’m hearing in your chest at all.’

  ‘Very well.’ Meggie sighed over-dramatically, narrowing her eyes at the medic. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll give up the weed altogether. Will that make you happy?’

  ‘I think it would be a wise move, Miss Gore-Stewart. Since you don’t seem to be able to cut down. I do think the only thing would be for you to give it up altogether.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘I’m very much afraid so.’

  ‘And of course, we all know how easy it is, to give up smoking.’

  ‘If you don’t give up, you could be storing all sorts of trouble up for yourself in the future, and the not so distant one at that. Suck sweets – see if you can’t find someone to get you some American chewing gum, on the quiet. But take more care – because your system is running down, Miss Gore-Stewart.’

  The doctor watched her leave the surgery, and once she was gone and the door was closed he thankfully lit up a Capstan Full Strength.

  As Meggie left the surgery she knew the wretched doctor was talking sense. She had tried cutting down, but within less than a week she found she was back to her full complement without even realising it. The trouble was not only her weak will as far as smoking went, but the fact that she had no difficulty whatsoever in getting hold of cigarettes due to the constant flow of contraband that streamed into the cellars of the Three Tuns. She was making herself ill, and she knew it without the doctor’s having to tell her. She felt desperately tired all the time, so much so that unless she was either smoking or drinking she only wanted to sleep, and not just a nap. She wanted to sleep for ever. The dry cough that had plagued her all summer was becoming habitual as autumn wore on.

  Richards kept nagging her to eat more, but due perhaps to always being on the run in Europe during the war Meggie now had little appetite. Besides, she hated eating alone and always had done. She would start out with every intention of being sensible but generally after the first couple of drinks she always seemed to forget to eat. It was the same when she was in company. Rather than hold up the party while she finished what was in front of her, she left it. The result was she was growing thin, painfully thin she considered as she looked at herself in the glass that night, too thin to attract any man and that was for certain. Not that there was any man who in her consideration was worth attracting, she thought as she sat down on the edge of her bed, lighting up what she promised would be her last cigarette ever – well, if not ever, at least for a very long time indeed. No, there wasn’t any man even remotely interested in her, and she wasn’t remotely interested in any man either.

  Except now there was a man, but he was a most unlikely man, and quite possibly a highly unsuitable man as well. Yet ever since that day – the day of the Regatta, the night of the dance – hardly a quiet moment had gone by when Meggie hadn’t thought about him.

  ‘I mean, Waldo Astley for God’s sake!’ she said to herself, tossing and turning on her bed. ‘Of all the idiot men to get a crush on! I must have taken leave of my senses!’

  And now I probably won’t ever see him again, Meggie thought in misery, as she fell back on her bed, lying there and staring up at the ceiling. I won’t see him again because he’s only going to go and get himself killed on one of Hugh’s derring-do missions, dropping off secret documents in Berlin and trying to buy information from double agents in return for black market goods. God in heaven, I thought all this nonsense was over anyway – but apparently it’s not, because apparently according to Hugh the Russkis are going to try to kick us out of Berlin anyway. Just as well I’m sleeping alone at the moment. Meggie sighed as she slipped under her bedclothes in her underwear, too tired to change into a nightgown. I’d probably talk in my sleep, blow the gaff and get sent to the bloody Tower. She fell asleep early, far too early to be tired, but still she dreamed.

  She dreamed that she was wandering in a garden, and she met her beloved, long dead Davey, and he led her through sweet scented places, talking to her, making her laugh and cry at the same time, while she kept saying to him over and over again I knew I’d find you again, I knew I would. But Davey kept shaking his head and pointing ahead of her to someone in the distance. As she drew nearer and nearer, Davey se
emed to drop further and further back, until he was no longer by her side, and she stood by the side of someone else.

  Of a sudden Meggie woke up, her face still wet with tears, and remembering her dream she turned her face into her pillow, longing all at once for the person by whose side she knew she most wanted to be.

  The cards, however, promised a dramatic turn in her fortunes, both financially and romantically. Meggie was a great reader of cards as well as other popular runes such as the position of tea leaves in an empty cup, and above all the positions of the stars and planets. She had even been known to consult visiting fortune-tellers who travelled through Bexham in the summer months, setting up their tents and attracting a brisk trade from the young, the superstitious, and the curious.

  Meggie’s grandmother, Madame Gran, had never approved of fortune-telling, Ouija boards, table rolling with glasses, or any other kind of occult occupation, maintaining as she did that if there was indeed another world, then it was a world best left to itself. Put a foot in the door, she used to say, and the door will fly open and unleash something over which you would have no control.

  It wasn’t until her grandmother was long gone to the next world that Meggie found out from Richards why Madame Gran had been so strict on this score. It seemed that one midsummer night at Cucklington she and a party of her friends had relaxed the rules, lowered the lights, and with the aid of a glass and a set of cut-out letters had tried to call up spirits from the other world. Unfortunately they had succeeded all too well, conjuring up it seemed the ghost of a footman who had strangled his girlfriend, and himself been killed by the other servants. Having been invited back to the house where he had been murdered, he persisted in making his presence felt in many unpleasant and evil ways, and it took several visits from the vicar to get rid of his malignant spirit. Richards maintained that after that Madame Gran had needed no convincing about the existence of ghosts, but was assured that the correct and only place for them was in the next world.

  Meggie appreciated her grandmother’s caution, and yet now could not resist consulting her pack of cards night after night, obsessed by the idea that they might either confirm or deny this sudden and unexpected change in her emotions. At first it seemed she was to be disappointed, and that the indications of any change in her fortunes were just yet more marsh lights. For a start Waldo failed to return from his trip when he had been expected to do so, at least according to Hugh from whom Meggie learned unofficially that the trip had not been expected to take more than a week. Yet it was now well over ten days since Waldo had left Bexham and there was still no sign of his return. Unable to tell her more, Hugh tried to reassure her by saying that there was nothing at all to worry about, although of course privately Hugh knew very well that anyone pursuing the sort of business Waldo Astley was pursuing in Berlin ran the very real risk of being killed by either side, which was precisely what Meggie imagined.

  On top of which she had developed an acute and rather severe chest infection as well as her ongoing cough, a contagion that raised her temperature alarmingly and made her take to her bed, a place Meggie only ever used for either sleep or pleasure. Finally, bored to distraction by her confinement, Meggie dosed herself up with aspirin and returned to work at the Three Tuns where she promptly passed out the same evening trying to help shift beer barrels in the cellars.

  In answer to a call Dr Farnsworth reluctantly paid a visit to Cucklington House the following morning, where he found her being nursed with devotion and solicitude by Richards who had left the Three Tuns in the charge of Neil, a new young barman he had just taken on to help him cope with the increase in business.

  ‘She’s been quite delirious during the night, doctor,’ Richards said. ‘Her temperature went up to over 103 at one point and I’ve had to change not only her night things but her bed sheets, twice.’

  ‘It’s this wretched influenza bug,’ Dr Farnsworth said, with a shake of his head. ‘It’s knocking everyone over like ninepins, and quite rushing me off my feet. I’m going to put her on a course of M&B. She’ll also need two aspirin every four hours and plenty of liquid to replace all this lost fluid. If she worsens, call me at once – otherwise I’ll be in again tomorrow morning. She should respond to the M&B pretty quickly. I’m finding most of my patients are up and about within the week provided we hit this wretched bug early enough. So long as she doesn’t miss a dose and you keep her well topped up with aspirin, we should see this temperature down within a day or so.’

  Worryingly enough, far from beginning to fall as predicted Meggie’s temperature shot up to 104 the following night. She became more and more delirious before falling into what Richards feared might be some sort of coma, and he was forced to call Dr Farnsworth out once more, this time in the small hours of the morning.

  After much grumbling on the other end of the telephone the doctor turned up on the doorstep of Cucklington House with his flannel pyjama trousers showing underneath his tweed suit and distinctly reeking of whisky.

  ‘Think I’m going down with the damn’ thing myself now,’ he grumbled as Richards let him in. ‘All these blasted house visits, of course. Still – that’s how it goes. Occupational hazard.’

  ‘Miss Gore-Stewart is critically ill, doctor,’ Richards announced in his gravest tones, slipping back to his former role. ‘Otherwise I would not of course have bothered you.’

  ‘You’re a doctor now, are you, Richards?’ Farnsworth muttered as he followed Richards up the stairs. ‘Not content with being a pot man you’re a doctor now, are you?’

  ‘I am merely reporting on the state of the patient, doctor.’ Richards stood aside and admitted the doctor into the sickroom where Meggie lay on her pillows, her beautiful face ashen, her hair matted from sweat.

  Dr Farnsworth put down his Gladstone bag, sneezed, and wiped his nose on a large red spotted handkerchief, before feeling his patient’s forehead.

  ‘I’d say the fever has abated,’ he said, straightening up and pulling a thermometer from his jacket pocket. ‘If I’m not very much mistaken.’

  Placing the thermometer carefully under one arm of the still comatose Meggie, Dr Farnsworth then helped himself to a good swig of some sort of syrup he took from his bag and blew his nose loudly.

  ‘Bit of a scourge this, Richards,’ he said. ‘Hope you don’t get it or we sufferers won’t even be able to drown our sorrows at your noted hostelry, will we? Not what we want at all. If the pub closes, Bexham closes. Not even Hitler managed to close the Three Tuns. Not even the Little Corporal managed that.’ He sneezed again.

  ‘If you come to my hostelry and do that, Dr Farnsworth, then there’s every chance I shall contract the bug, and then the Three Tuns will be forced to close, believe me.’ Richards sniffed.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ Dr Farnsworth said with a sideways look at the upright figure beside him. ‘I should imagine all your organs are far too well pickled by now to succumb to any infection.’

  ‘You may well be right, Dr Farnsworth,’ Richards replied, permitting himself a small smile. ‘Alcohol is indeed a very fine preservative, which is obviously why you have stayed healthy for so long. Why we enjoy your custom at the Three Tuns so regularly.’

  ‘I was right,’ Dr Farnsworth said, ignoring him, having retrieved and examined his thermometer. ‘Ninety-nine point two. I would say we are well and truly out of the woods.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Richards turned away, about to go in search of fresh bedlinen. ‘She’s been that delirious, telling me to move the rats off her bed and the spiders off the walls, I really thought I’d lost her.’

  And from that moment Meggie’s luck changed, just as the cards had predicted, for the very next day Richards took a telephone call from her lawyers on her behalf, explaining that his patient was still far too weak to take the call in person. As soon as he had heard the good news, Richards replaced the telephone and sighed with relief. Then he proceeded upstairs at his usual dignified pace even though the news he was about to break was exceptional.


  Meggie was propped up on a pile of freshly slipped pillows, her hair brushed, a little lipstick applied to her mouth and a tiny bit of colour to her cheeks. Snatched it would seem from the jaws of death she looked prettier than Richards could ever remember seeing her, her frailty and helplessness adding to her innate and captivating beauty.

  ‘Now, Miss Megs,’ he began, coming to the side of her bed with his hands held folded in front of him. ‘I forbid you to get out of bed and jump with joy when I impart my glad tidings. You may be allowed one small shout of pleasure if you wish, although even that may bring on a coughing fit so I’m not really sure, not at all.’

  ‘What is it, Richards?’ Meggie asked anxiously. ‘I heard the telephone ringing.’

  ‘Indeed. And for once it has rung with glad tidings. As we know, this dear place has been up for sale for some time now—’

  ‘We have a buyer?’ Meggie’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Well?’

  ‘Cucklington has been on the market alas without success for some time now and your agents decided, as you know—’