69

‘You’ve got a nasty cut,’ I said to Miriam. She winced as I touched her forehead. Blood flowed from the wound, two inches across. It looked deep, probably needed stitches. ‘We need to get something on it. Apply pressure and keep it there.’

I looked around. My shirt was hanging over the railing on the bridge. It was filthy, but it would have to do.

‘I’ve got it,’ Miriam said. She’d been treading water, but stopped, and slipped below the surface. When she came back up she had a ball of fabric in her hand. Her slip.

We swam to the shallower water near the bank. I wrung out the slip, and folded it. I pressed it against her forehead and it instantly bloomed red.

‘Hold it firmly,’ I said. She put her hand on top of mine, trapping it.

‘He gets like that if he doesn’t get his own way,’ she said.

‘Vaughn?’

‘My darling brother,’ she said. ‘It’s my job to take him down a peg or two. It’s the only thing he understands.’

She was shivering.

The cold water had blanched her skin, taking away the sunburn, albeit temporarily. Her shoulders were bruised. I touched them.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

She lowered herself into the water.

‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘Freddie had me carrying his art supplies across the Forest. Doesn’t like to do his own work.’

Her teeth chattered as she talked.

‘We need to get you dry,’ I said.

‘Not yet,’ she said, moving closer. I felt her breasts against my chest, her nipples brushing my skin. ‘Hold me.’

I put my arms around her and pulled our bodies closer. I was a useful heat source, and nothing more, at least that’s what I told myself. Not every part of my body got the -message, though, as I responded to the feel of her soft body against mine.

‘You do want me,’ she said. ‘A girl does wonder, you know.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ I said, as she moved against me.

‘I intend to take it very personally,’ she said. She moved her hands to my bottom and pulled us closer together.

‘You know I love Margaret like a sister,’ she said, ‘but she’s not right for you. Not for the long run. She doesn’t look at you the way you look at her.’

She kissed me, and moved her hips gently. I lowered my own hands, down her back, letting them slide over her bottom, pulling her close.

She put her hand on my shoulder, and braced herself, then wrapped her legs around my waist.

‘Miriam,’ I said.

‘Our secret,’ she said, reaching down to position herself.

I tried to be dispassionate, to weigh the pros and cons.

The pros were immediate. Short-term pleasure, no doubt. A beautiful young woman, an idyllic spot, our secret, -nobody would know. And Margaret had practically told me to -seduce her. The cons were more abstract. Disappointment with -myself, losing control. But disappointment and I were old friends.

‘Margaret’s with Vaughn,’ Miriam said, as she tensed her legs behind my waist, pulling herself onto me. She was warm inside.

She slid up, then down, clenching her bottom, the water allowing her a freedom of movement she wouldn’t have on land. She leant back, looking up at the sky, her chest rising to the surface. I bent to her breast, and I saw the bruises again, circling her shoulder. A pattern, like a strap, more defined under her arm.

I remembered Doc pulling back the shirt of the man I’d killed at Kate’s house. Checking the shoulder and shaking his head at Neesham. A moment of understanding between them. An important detail.

‘How’s your leg?’ I asked. When I’d first met her, she’d been using a cane.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘especially with you taking the weight so manfully.’

‘What was it like?’ I asked. ‘Jumping out of the aeroplane, into the darkness?’

Miriam froze, her legs wrapped around me. She looked at me, trying to decide.

She restarted her movements, the decision made, it seemed. She kissed me.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘They sent you to find the source of the radio transmissions, but your equipment was destroyed when it landed,’ I said. ‘So you were stuck listening to fences.’

‘It’s an interesting theory,’ she said. ‘But I’m not that exciting.’

She kissed me.

‘Lucky you found me,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you Aspidistra, and everyone gets what they want.’

‘Except me,’ she said. ‘You’ll go back to Margaret, I know you will.’

*

We walked barefoot across the fields, keeping to the grassy headlands. Fat raindrops plopped to the ground. Black clouds rolled in over the Downs.

‘Our secret,’ Miriam said, as a distant rumble of thunder gave us notice of the coming storm.

Margaret stood on the horizon, the farmhouse beyond. Vaughn joined her. They watched us. We obviously weren’t quick enough for their liking, because Vaughn ran towards us. He held a slip of paper in his hand, and he waved it like it was a winning raffle ticket. A telegram.

There was a boom of thunder, louder than a salvo of artillery, and the rain came on in force. By the time Vaughn reached us, halfway along the hedgerow flanking Dadswell’s Flat, it was like we were standing under a -waterfall.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Vaughn said, trying to catch his breath.

‘What?’ Miriam asked. A flash of lightning lit the black cloud from the inside.

‘The old man’s coming. Tonight.’

A jagged shard of lightning pierced the gloomy sky, reaching down to the tallest oak at the far end of the field. The same instant, a deafening crack, and the lightning branched out, across the line of trees.

‘Cook can take us in,’ Miriam said. ‘He’s one of us.’

There was a boom of thunder, and more lightning, multiple flashes building on each other. Vaughn twitched at each boom. I felt it too. We’d survived the trenches, but we hadn’t left them behind.

‘We’ll go in tonight,’ Vaughn said, in his best attempt at a command voice. It came out like a man trying to convince himself he knew the right way forwards. I’d heard that tone all too often. Invariably, it meant my men and I were heading into trouble, our lives subordinate to an officer’s need to show the world he was a man to be reckoned with.