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  War Baby

  Beryl Kingston

  About the Author

  Beryl Kingston is the author of 30 novels with over a million copies sold. She has been a writer since she was 7 when she started producing poetry. She was evacuated to Felpham at the start of WWII, igniting an interest in one-time resident poet William Blake which later inspired her novel The Gates of Paradise. She was an English teacher from 1952 until 1985 when she became a full-time writer after her debut novel, Hearts and Farthings, became a bestseller. Kingston continued writing bestsellers for the next 14 years with titles ranging from family sagas to modern stories and historical novels. She currently lives in West Sussex and has three children, five grandchildren, and ten great-grandchild.

  Also By Beryl Kingston

  Historical Fiction

  A Time to Love

  London Pride

  War Baby

  Hearts and Farthings

  Kisses and Ha’pennies

  Two Silver Crosses

  A Stitch in Time

  Avalanche of Daisies

  Suki

  Gates of Paradise

  Hearts of Oak

  Off the Rails

  Everybody’s Somebody

  The Easter Empire Trilogy

  Tuppenny Times

  Fourpenny Flyer

  Sixpenny Stalls

  The Octavia Trilogy

  Octavia

  Octavia’s War

  The Internet Revolutionary

  Fiction

  Maggie’s Boy

  Laura’s Way

  Gemma’s Journey

  Neptune’s Daughter

  Francesca and the Mermaid

  Non-Fiction

  Lifting the Curse

  A Family at War

  War Baby

  Beryl Kingston

  This edition published in 2019 by Agora Books

  First published in Great Britain in 1991 by Macdonald & Co

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Beryl Kingston, 1991

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To Carole

  Chapter 1

  ‘Think who you are!’ Malcolm Tremain said.

  His face was pinched by painful emotions: disappointment, stung pride, fury, and the familiar impossible anguish that wracked him every time his intentions were thwarted. It was so bloody ungrateful. He’d just spent damn nearly three hundred pounds on this woman, three hundred pounds on pearls and a black cocktail dress so that she’d look the part at this reception, and she hadn’t even taken them out of the wrapping paper. Just tightened her face into that damned awful expression of hers and drifted off to look out of the window. She hadn’t said thank you either. Bloody ungrateful. Any other woman would have been down on her knees fasting for presents like that. But not this one. What the hell was the matter with her? ‘Think who you are!’

  Bobbie stood by the window, staring down at Lake Geneva, blue-green and beautiful, three floors below them. The room behind her was too intense and claustrophobic to be borne, and particularly now that he was filling it with anger. He always swelled so when he was cross. And that made her feel hemmed in and vulnerable and horribly aware of how easy it would be to catch his bad temper and answer it despite herself. Which was something she had to avoid because it was very important to keep her emotions under tight control. If you allowed them free rein, you ended up hurting somebody. And that was something she had to avoid too. So she’d retreated to the window, the way she always did when he put her under pressure, turning aside, her head bowed, not meeting his eyes. There was no point in arguing with him because he could never be beaten. Never ever. She’d learnt that right at the start of their affair seven years ago.

  ‘Well, all right then,’ she said, keeping calm with an effort. ‘Who am I?’ Let him lecture about that for a little while, she decided, and perhaps she’d be able to think of something acceptable to say about the dress while he was talking. But she couldn’t wear it, she really couldn’t. Not black.

  Her question affronted him. And so did her appearance, stooping like that and hiding her face. It was childish. She wasn’t a shrinking violet. She was a strong, strapping woman, five feet eight inches at the very least, with straight, broad shoulders, swimmer’s shoulders as he was always telling her, and a fine head of thick, dark, naturally wavy hair, skilfully cut, of course, he’d seen to that, and very decided features when she took the trouble to emphasise them with make-up the way a woman should. Her mouth was rather peculiar, of course, didn’t seem to fit together properly. The top lip was always open and showing her teeth. And her eyes were… How could he describe her eyes? Disturbing was the only word that came to mind. Large, pale-green, round pupils, slanting eyes, like a cat’s except that they were fringed with long dark lashes, and except that they often had a withdrawn, secretive look about them, as if she were gazing inwards at some world he couldn’t share. Oh yes, very definitely disturbing. Iceberg eyes, the colour of frozen water and great depths, nine-tenths hidden. It made him cross to think of them.

  ‘Try not to be stupid,’ he said, glaring at her averted face. ‘You know perfectly well who you are.’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I don’t.’ She was saddened by the truth of what she was saying. Outside the window it was a beautiful May evening, full of life and movement and colour, boats on the lake, strollers on the promenade, the jet d’eau a tall white plume against the sky. A strong breeze was ruffling the lake into long waves and every wave was tipped with molten gold from the setting sun. A secure, long-settled, familiar view. It was only her own character that was a mystery to her, hidden, blanked out, illegitimate, rootless.

  ‘You’re my girl,’ he said, with irritating confidence. ‘Malcolm Tremain’s girl.’

  Not Bobbie Chadwick, she thought, looking down at the yachts and dinghies skimming across the lake. Just Malcolm Tremain’s girl. It was the story of her life. She’d always belonged to someone else. Mrs Chadwick’s adopted daughter pressed into meek behaviour for fear of growing up ‘like your real mother’, somebody’s pupil urged on to success ‘for the good of the school’, somebody’s ‘girl Friday’, never a person in her own right. I’m not much better than a shadow, she thought, watching the cloud shadows drifting smoke-blue across the far side of the lake, and following the interlacing pattern of grey, gold and lilac that rippled before an approaching yacht. Lovely delicate colours, the sort she would choose for her clothes, and for furnishings too, if only he’d allow it. Not that he would, of course. He went for bold colours, like the scarlet walls and purple sofas she’d deliberately turned her back on now, like the black velvet and pearls that were still in their boxes and wouldn’t suit her. Oh dear, how was she going to cope with this? If only he hadn’t sprung it on her. If she’d had just a little bit of time, she could have thought what to say.

  He brooded behind her, wanting a quarrel, and the longer she deferred it the more urgent his need for it became. Her calm was making his anger swell up like a toad. ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said, truculently.

  ‘I am,’ she said, glancing at him quickly, feeling she ought to reassure him.

  ‘Like hell you are.’ He was standing beside the purple sofa dangling the pearls from his left hand in their long fashionable string. They glimmered in the half-light, glowing and vibrating as they spun, as though his anger had charged them with life and heat.

  ‘No really,’ she said, staring at them mesmerised. ‘They’re…’ Hideous. Like little glistening aliens from outer space. ‘…gorgeous. And it’s a lovely dress. It’s just… Well, I’m not sure black would be right.’ She found it a very difficult colour to wear, despite her dark hair. Her skin was so pale it made her look washed out unless she wore a lot of make-up, and she hated wearing pan-cake. It looked so artificial and it drew attention to her awful mouth. In its natural state her top lip rose in an awful triangular gape that showed her teeth. She was very self-conscious about it. ‘Not for this party,’ she pleaded. ‘I thought my pink might—’

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he said, flinging the pearls on to the sofa. ‘I wonder why I bother with you. I really do. You can’t go to a party with me dressed in any old rag.’

  ‘It’s not an old rag,’ Bobbie said, instinctively looking away from his anger and staring at the lake again. ‘It’s a Rive Gauche.’ It lay across the edge of the bed where she’d arranged it just before he came home with his difficult presents, a delicate pale-pink chiffon, very expensive and just the right colour to warm her pallor.

  ‘Last year’s,’ he said, dismissing the dress and its designer with a shrug of well-groomed shoulders. ‘Everyone’ll have seen it.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said, watching the approach of a firefly yacht and trying to speak reasonably. The crew were sitting out too far for such choppy water. It was a wonder they didn’t fall in.

  He advanced on her, standing beside her at the window, sure of his quarrel, right on the edge of it. ‘No,’ he said bitterly, ‘you wouldn’t. It’s not your job that’s on the line.’

&
nbsp; The new note in his voice alerted her at once. Now this was serious. This was more than a silly row about a dress. Compassion for him washed away her irritation. She’d always felt responsible for him, almost from the very first, accepting that it was her function to support his career, to ensure that he was the star personality he had every right to be. She did it willingly because it was rewarding to know that she was the power behind his dazzling persona. It increased her sense of worth, even if it was hard work.

  ‘On the line?’ she said, meeting his eyes at last. Yes, this was serious. There was strain on his face as well as anger and his ears were going red. ‘But your job’s not on the line, surely. Jerry Latimer said it was superb TV. Run-for-ever stuff.’

  ‘It’ll run three more weeks,’ he said, his ears blood-red. ‘If that. It’s folding already.’ He hadn’t meant to tell her any of this, but that gentle sympathy of hers was too tempting.

  That accounts for the temper and the indigestion, she thought. ‘Oh Malcolm,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm, ‘how long have you known?’

  Her concern altered the direction of his anger. ‘It won’t matter in the long run,’ he said, feeling cross with himself for having told her, and trying to make light of it just in case she felt too sorry for him. The dividing line between her sympathy and her pity was just a little too close for his comfort. ‘I’ve got plenty more irons in the fire. It’s just a bit annoying. All that hard work down the drain. I’ll soon find something else, don’t you worry. I’m meeting someone tonight in fact. Someone from NBC. Might get to work on the Watergate hearing. How about that?’ The Senate Watergate Committee had begun its hearing a mere five days ago and the papers were full of it.

  Now she understood the presents. They were to help him make an impression. Poor Malcolm, she thought, looking through the half-open bedroom door at the pink chiffon, the expression on her face yearning and regretful, already half-way to defeat. To be out of a job. It was the worst thing that could happen to him. His work was the most important thing in his life.

  He caught the glance and saw his opportunity, turning on the charm in that abrupt, disconcerting way of his, putting one arm tenderly round her shoulders. ‘So you’ll wear the black, won’t you, Sugar Pet?’

  The cloying pet-name irritated her. He always won these quarrels so easily and recovered from them so quickly. She was annoyed by his careless success and her lack of fighting spirit. Sympathy had wrong-footed her, as it so often did. But the thought of that black velvet and those hot alien pearls was so uncomfortable that she couldn’t bring herself to say yes to them, even to further his career. Not yet. Not quite yet. ‘Um,’ she said, returning to her study of the lake. If only he didn’t always have such very good reasons for making her do what he wanted.

  The little sound was enough to satisfy him. He beamed at her profile. ‘I must shower,’ he said cheerfully, ‘or we shall be late.’ And he strode off into the bathroom at once.

  It was peaceful once he’d gone. She stood by the window, looking down at the lake, listening to his voice singing tunelessly under the gush and rush of the shower, and willing herself not to think of anything. It was a trick she’d learnt as a little girl when her mother was giving her a pep-talk on how she ought to behave and she was aching to rebel. Focus your eyes on something more or less interesting and empty your mind. That was the trick.

  The sun was low on the horizon now, there were fewer promenaders about and most of the yachts were in, but the scene was more beautifully coloured than ever. The lake shone like pewter under a glowing yellow sky and the last returning yacht bobbing towards her over the rough water was exactly the colour of Victoria plums, with sails as creamy and mottled as junket and twin showers of golden sparks arching from either side of its advancing prow. The charm of it began to soothe her and when the yachtsman swung the boom across to go about, she watched the movement of the sail with real pleasure.

  And suddenly the little boat shuddered like a frightened animal and began to keel over, its boom striking the yachtsman with such force that he was projected backwards through the air, and its creamy sail hitting the water with a thud she could hear even through the glass of the window. Then everything happened in an odd slow motion that kept her watching by the window quite unable to move or speak. The sail darkened, folded in upon itself, swirled in the black water and sank out of sight, dragging the boat down after it. In one long stunned minute the keel was hauled into the air. She could see it quite clearly, shining in the golden light, turning like a cleaver. And then she realised with a tremor of alarm that there was no sign of the yachtsman, no dark head bobbing in the water, no arms clinging to the hull. Probably on the other side, she thought, trying to still her fear, where I can’t see him. But the boat was rotating in the water, swinging through a hundred and eighty degrees, and there was no sign of anyone anywhere. Oh God! What’s happened to him?

  Her fingers were already on the telephone dialling the number of her local jetty. Quick, quick, answer me.

  ‘Oui madame?’

  ‘Il y a quelqu’un en danger sur le lac,’ she said. ‘J’ai peur qu’il ne se noie.’

  There were people gathering on the promenade below her, huddled together, pointing and watching with the tense, focused excitement that is always the first sign of any modern tragedy. She watched them as she gave the position of the yacht.

  ‘Dépêchez-vous,’ she urged, ‘je vous en prie.’

  ‘D’accord.’

  I ought to go down, she thought, and try and save him. I shouldn’t just sit here and watch. And for a few seconds she had a fantasy image of herself under water, using her swimmer’s shoulders to dive down and drag the yachtsman clear.

  ‘It’s all yours,’ Malcolm’s voice said cheerfully behind her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shower. All yours. I’ve finished.’ He was striding into the bedroom pulling his bathrobe after him. ‘Oh, come on! You’re not still standing by that wretched window.’ There was no annoyance in his voice now that he’d got his own way, just his happy teasing note.

  ‘There’s a yachtsman in trouble,’ she said, still watching.

  ‘You’ve got twenty minutes,’ he said, tying his bathrobe and settling himself before his mirror. Just nice time to perfect his image. He’d invested a lot of money on his dressing-table so that his image would always be superb. He’d installed a large looking-glass on the wall and surrounded it by three banks of light bulbs in the theatrical style so that he could see exactly what he would look like in the television screen. Or to be more accurate exactly what his head and shoulders would look like, for being rather shorter than he would have wished he usually avoided long or medium shots and contrived to do most of his work in flattering close-up, sitting down in a well-lit studio. That way he could always be sure of looking his best. And if he was going to land a job with NBC, he’d certainly got to look his best tonight.

  ‘He’s been under for such a long time,’ Bobbie said sombrely. ‘I think he’s drowned.’

  He deflected her concern with a wave of his make-up stick. ‘People don’t drown on Lac Leman,’ he told her.

  ‘This one has.’ The rescue launch had arrived at the scene at last and they were righting the yacht but there was no sign of the yachtsman.

  ‘How do you know?’ he said, powdering his cheeks with short, deft dabs. ‘It’s quite dark. You can’t possibly see what’s going on.’

  Bobbie looked back into the room to the blaze of light round the looking-glass. Malcolm was busily applying mascara, his head tilted, and his right elbow steadied against the dressing table, concentrating hard. The peculiar angle of his head meant that she could see two images of him, one in the mirror, full-faced and brilliantly illuminated, the second in profile, lit by the sunset reflected through their picture window. It gave her the most unsettling sensation because the two images didn’t match. In the mirror he was the golden boy of the TV screen, tanned, blue-eyed, with that wide, handsome brow and that open smile and that shock of boyish blond hair; in the dying sunlight she could see the receding chin, the beginning of jowls, and just behind his ear a small grizzled patch of undyed hair that his weekly hairdresser must have missed. It was like looking at two completely different people, twenty-eight and covered in make-up on screen, forty-two and seedy in profile, and in the wavering emotion of that moment she wasn’t sure she really liked either of them.