The Returning Tide Read online

  Dedication

  To my parents, Jim and Kay … they have taught me that love isn’t about saying the words but what you do

  Title Page

  LIZ FENWICK

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Ebb Tide

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Lee Tide

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Rip Tide

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Stand of the Tide

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Stolen Tide

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Flood Tide

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Spring Tide

  Forty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Also by Liz Fenwick

  Copyright

  There is a tide in the affairs of men,

  Which taken at the flood, leads to fortune.

  Omitted, all the voyage of their life

  Is bound in the shallows and in the miseries.

  On such a full sea are we now afloat.

  And we must take the current when it serves,

  Or lose our ventures.

  shakespeare, julius caesar, act 4, scene 3

  Ebb Tide

  The tide rises, the tide falls

  The twilight darkens, the curlew calls

  H. WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS

  One

  Windward, Mawnan Smith, Falmouth, Cornwall

  12 September 1945

  The marquee housing the wedding party was small, but it was not needed. Under the clear blue sky, the wheat in the next field rippled in the light easterly breeze, but the sea swelled like my sister’s belly. The war was over. She had just married, and not too soon, for she was starting to show. Her groom, handsome in his US Army captain’s uniform, stood awkwardly beside her with his arm resting against her back. He squinted into the distance looking for something, something that had been lost. Innocence, I should imagine. Eventually they would head to America and, if fate were kind, I would never see my sister again.

  Touching the pearls at my neck, I turned away from the couple and my father came up to me with his camera. His hands shook. ‘Take the photograph for me.’

  I crossed my arms.

  ‘Take it,’ he barked, as if he were giving an order to the troops. His uniform demonstrated that he outranked me; he was a major in the Army while I had just been demobbed from the Navy. He had a role and I was adrift on the tide, ready to go where it would take me as long as it was away from here.

  Holding the camera in the direction of the couple, I would not look through the viewfinder. I did not want to see them perfectly framed in the September sunshine. Instead I peered over the top of the camera at the house. Until recently Windward had been a place of happiness and refuge despite the war. I pressed the shutter button, the camera clicked, I handed it back to Father then walked away. My duty was done. I’d had enough.

  In front of me the waters of Falmouth Bay glistened. Below the tide was out revealing the rocks that threatened any boat without a chart trying to navigate onto the shore at high water. My sister had always been the romantic one. She never stopped talking about love. Love. How deluded I had been. One night in London at the Savoy, I had met the most handsome US lieutenant. Just one glance from his big blue eyes and I was lost without a map and my compass found a different north. Everything changed.

  1 May 2015

  I folded the hankie I’d used to wipe the moisture from my eyes and my fingers ran over the raised embroidered image on the corner. Lily of the valley. The scent of the just-opened bells floated on the warm air. No matter how many times I’d removed the rhizomes over the years, the flowers returned annually like an unwanted weed. In front of me my granddaughter Peta, her fiancé Fred Polcrebar and my grandson Jack marked out the lawn with stakes for where the marquee would be erected in a few months’ time. They weren’t to know the importance of the date. The promise of summer heat filled this May day, while on 12 September 1945 the sun, although warm, had spoken of cooler days ahead.

  Peta was a radiant bride-to-be and Jack, her over-protective brother, was anxious and questioned every decision. He hoped this would change Peta’s mind and make her see reason. Love clouded the brain he felt and she was too young. I knew well enough that these things would run their course. They always did. I could have stopped the events of years ago but what good would it have done me?

  ‘How does it look from over there, Mrs Rowse?’ Fred unbent and shrugged his broad shoulders.

  ‘Fine, but please call me Elle.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ He walked towards me with a big grin, looking more boyish than his twenty-three years.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘It just wouldn’t be right, that’s all.’

  ‘Because I’m so old.’ I laughed at his horrified expression.

  ‘No.’ He glanced away from my lined face.

  ‘Liar. Call me Elle or Gran. Take your pick but not Mrs Rowse. You’re family now.’

  Jack coughed as he marched towards me. His beautiful mouth was twisted in a scowl and his hands were clenched into fists. He was so easy to read.

  ‘Talk to her,’ he whispered.

  ‘You don’t like the position for the marquee?’ I raised an eyebrow, glancing at the stakes in the lawn.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re on her side.’ He kept his voice low so that Fred and Peta couldn’t hear him.

  I suppressed a smile. ‘I wasn’t aware there were sides to take.’

  ‘They are too young.’

  ‘Many people marry even younger.’ Twenty yards in front of me Fred was laughing at something Peta had said.

  Jack thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

  I frowned. He shouldn’t be like this. Concern for his sister’s happiness was one thing but that wasn’t where this was coming from. It was deeper. It was his past, his parents.

  ‘You don’t believe in love either.’ He expelled a short breath and I smiled at his frustration with me.

  ‘I was happily married to your grandfather for twenty years.’ I reached out to touch Jack but he’d moved too far away.

  ‘Yes, but you were in your forties.’

  ‘And that makes a difference?’

  ‘It does.’ He shook his head and walked into the house.

  Peta hammered in the last stake with the mallet. Confidence oozed from her. She knew what she wanted and was moving towards it with a conviction that made me envious. Fred took her hand in his and kissed her forehead. Young love. True and pure. Could they make it against the odds?

  I turned away from them towards the solid front of Windward that faced the bay. It had once been a house full of happiness. I’d thought things had turned around with Andrew and me,
but darkness thrived in the unlit corners waiting to ambush the unsuspecting. Right now each granite stone seemed to be held in place with mortar made of pain and loss. Seeing Jack’s outline through the drawing room window I knew it was not just my own pain and loss, but this generation’s as well.

  Peta stopped under the bank of trees and picked a shoot of lily of the valley. She breathed in the scent and her face lit up. She turned and walked towards me with the delicate stem adorned with pure white bells between her fingers. ‘The return of happiness,’ she said, handing it to me. It was far too late for that. Peace was the most that could be asked for.

  5 May 2015

  Peta cast me a repentant glance from across the room and I glared back. She knew this would be the last thing in which I would want to take part in any manner, but I sat on the sofa with a camera pointing at me. My ankles were crossed, shoulders held down, chin lifted, as my grandmother had demanded of us. Around me, Windward still felt like my grandmother’s house rather than mine, despite the sixty-nine years since she’d passed away. In all that time, little in the house had changed.

  The young woman from the BBC cleared her throat, looking fearfully excited about talking to me. ‘Mrs Rowse, this is a picture of you taken on VE Day.’ She held up a glossy print in the space between us. The image was of a woman wearing a WRNS uniform in the arms of an airman. The woman’s smile would have lit up the London skyline if it hadn’t already been properly alight behind the two figures, the first time it had been so in years.

  I knew that face, the smile, those eyes.

  ‘It’s a wonderful shot,’ the young woman said, ‘and it captures the feeling of joy so well.’

  I nodded. It was a silly picture and it irritated me that my hat was askew.

  ‘Was that your boyfriend? Fiancé?’

  ‘No.’ I took it from her, my hand shook.

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. The war in Europe was over and like everyone I wanted to dance, to sing, to celebrate.’ The happiness was palpable that night. Well, it had been for most people. The young woman studied the picture and I could see her creating a fairy tale, but the story the picture told was a lie. It simply captured a moment before everything altered. I breathed in, making an odd sucking sound.

  ‘Such a wonderful photo.’ She looked at me, trying to see the link between the jubilant woman in the photo and the old one in front of her. About the only thing the same after all these years was the nose. The eyes were no longer bright, nor as deep an amber. Time had altered all other resemblance.

  ‘Photographs are rarely what they appear to be.’ I handed the print back to her.

  She frowned, placing it on the table. ‘It’s a picture of happiness on VE Day.’

  ‘It is.’ I turned away. On the table by the window in a small silver frame was a picture of my mother alone, sitting elegantly in Windward’s garden. The photograph didn’t reveal how broken she was – lost almost totally in a world in her head. The sunlight’s angle at this time of day highlighted the thin layer of dust covering the patina of the table’s walnut veneer. I couldn’t remember when I’d last dusted or polished. Someone had to be doing it.

  ‘It’s obvious you were thrilled the war was over.’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked away.

  ‘Now tell me about your war. It’s so important to hear from those who lived through it.’

  In a few days it was the seventieth anniversary of victory in Europe. It was history now, and they wanted to save it for future generations so that the past wouldn’t be forgotten. But some things should be forgotten, and my war was one such thing.

  ‘I believe you worked at HMS Attack.’

  I nodded; she’d done her research.

  ‘Can you tell me what it was like as a Wren and telegraphist?’

  I straightened my back, remembering the ballet mistress hired by Grandmother to ensure my sister and I deported ourselves properly. We had done everything in unison. Our movements were so precisely matched when we were young, no one could tell us apart.

  ‘You recorded the messages from the boats.’

  I focused on the reporter, as images floated through my mind. They were fragments, really, snapshots of past times, as if I were flipping through an album – but then I frowned and shut the album, before it went further.

  ‘I know this must be hard for you.’

  The movement of the clock on the mantelpiece … dit dah, dit dah … the letter ‘A’ on continuous repeat. I opened my eyes wide. She had no idea.

  ‘It’s important that we hear your words. Have you spoken about your experience before?’

  ‘Spoken about it? We couldn’t.’ Did they tell the young nothing these days?

  ‘It’s important you tell me, tell us, before it’s forgotten, lost.’

  ‘Some things are better off lost.’

  She frowned. ‘I know you were working during Exercise Tiger, on the day when the German E-boats came among the convoy of US forces that were preparing for D-Day.’

  I closed my eyes. This was what she was after. 28 April 1944. This was my war – the last words of men dying. Even now they whispered in the back of my head, becoming louder. I had tried for years to keep them silent, not allowing them to be heard. This reporter thought I would want to recall it, bring it all back – their pain, their fear, and their dying words. Help us. I could hear it now. My finger twitched, tapping out the Morse. Opening my eyes I stared at her. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

  The reporter pressed her lips together. ‘I’m sure the memories are painful.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder,’ said the reporter.

  I squinted at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you talk to anyone about it after that day?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Today’s world. They talk about everything. The television and papers regale me with details of everyone’s sex lives, as if I cared. Nothing is private and they keep trying to make themselves perfect, but nothing is. Nothing is meant to be. ‘We didn’t talk because of the Official Secrets Act and the threat of court martial.’ I stood and walked to the window, catching my reflection in the glass. An old woman stared back at me. The clock spoke to me, bringing back all the Morse. That was the language of my war and I didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  Voices echoed off the tiled floor in the hallway. What had happened to the Turkish carpet that used to soften the entrance? That was one small detail that had changed. My grandmother had loved that carpet for its rich, colourful shades. The intense sunlight that filled the hall most days had bleached the depth from the tones. It had worn threadbare in places where many feet had walked over the years, including the paying guests. I smiled. That was how Andrew had walked back into my life, across that carpet.

  The warmth of the carpet’s colour had contrasted with the stark black and white floor tiles. It was not the most practical of floors for a country house surrounded by fields. Muddy footprints felt impossible to lift from the white tiles, once we no longer had help washing it daily. Grandmother had chosen those tiles without ever considering a life without hired help. I laughed and then remembered – I had tripped over the carpet recently and Jack had rolled it up and put it away. I understood why he’d done it, but I also hated having to give in to my frailties.

  ‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Jack’s voice betrayed no emotion as it drifted in from the hall. Since I had these new hearing aids it was harder to tune people out. There had been advantages to being quite deaf.

  ‘No, not really.’ The reporter sighed. ‘I suppose with a bit of editing we can use it on the day. It would really help to have more, though.’

  He laughed. It was the laugh he used to divert, the one I knew so well. He kept himself closed, off limits. His wry amusement acted to protect him. His mother’s death had broken him and his father’s death less than
a year later had finished the job.

  ‘She has so much valuable information. It’s clear she’s not lost her faculties.’

  There was silence and I pictured Jack, eyebrow raised and disdain spread across his face. He was an ally. I understood him. No one else did, although many had tried. Women fell at his feet but he walked all over them. None that attempted to catch him for themselves had broken that solid steel cage he had put himself into thirteen years ago. He blamed love – and I could understand why; I did too, if for entirely different reasons. Only Andrew, Jack’s grandfather, had chipped away at my own steel, making holes that had allowed me to breathe sometimes.

  Love. For Jack, love equalled death. He would never risk it again. For me, it equalled loss.

  ‘Can you have a word with her?’ asked the reporter.

  ‘I suggest you try again tomorrow,’ Jack replied.

  ‘Do you think that will work?’ Her voice rose in excitement.

  ‘No, but then you will have tried.’

  Although I couldn’t see them, I sensed her disappointment from here. Jack did try and bring joy and hope. Such a shame he wouldn’t let it into his own life. It was a waste. That was what my mother had told me years ago in one of her lucid moments. Let it go, she’d said. Make the best of what you’ve been given. I could never let go, but eventually I had let someone else in, just a bit. Andrew had been a patient and kind man. I’d tried to be a good wife and stepmother.

  ‘I think she’s still suffering from what she lived through.’ She coughed.

  ‘She may well be but she won’t tell you about that.’ I heard the footsteps across the hall. ‘It’s not what that generation did.’

  The door closed and Jack entered the library. ‘You weren’t very obliging.’ A smile hovered around his mouth and touched his eyes. He was a handsome boy, like his grandfather in many ways, but fair where Andrew had been dark.

  ‘No.’

  He sat opposite me. ‘She didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘What good is it to tell her about my war?’

  He picked up the photograph that she had left behind. He looked from it to me. ‘You are so beautiful, Gran.’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘No, still are.’ He looked over the top of it.