weeks had passed since Operation Jacaranda, the first four of them spent waiting in Salerno for new orders. Anzio had been a failure, the frontal assault on the Gustav Line had bogged down around Monte Cassino, and no one seemed to know what to do with those elements of the SAS still in Italy. At the end of February they had been shipped home to a cold and damp England, then sent north to the colder and damper Ayrshire hills, where the rest of the Regiment was already in training for the invasion of France. By now Farnham and his companions in the crowded compartment thought they knew every muddy trail in the Glentool Forest.
Neil Rafferty had the same ready smile as always, but Farnham was certain that the newly promoted sergeant had been more affected by the experience than any of them. He was more serious, less inclined to scoff at others’ cynicism, and occasionally seemed remarkably on edge for someone previously inclined to sail through life so blithely.
The change in Mickie McCaigh was not so noticeable. He had always been cynical in a witty sort of a way, but nowadays an edge of bitterness sometimes showed through.
Ian Tobin seemed the least affected. Maybe there was a lack of depth to the Welsh lad, but Farnham felt fond of him nevertheless. He had that sort of dogged desire to do the right thing which some found intensely irritating, but which Farnham’s own family history had taught him to value.
As for himself, he had spent most of the past few weeks with the feeling that he was sleepwalking through the war. The days and nights in Italy had been intense, and the sense of anticlimax had been correspondingly profound. He couldn’t wait for France. Though at this rate, he thought, as the train reluctantly dragged itself free of Dumfries station, they would be lucky to reach London this year. These days there were many stories of soldiers spending their entire leave on the seriously overcrowded trains, arriving home just in time to set off again.
Still, Farnham thought, if it wasn’t for his sister he would just as soon spend the time on a train. He certainly had no wish to spend it with his father and stepmother.
A game of pontoon occupied the four of them until they reached Carlisle, where they had to change trains. The relevant platform was thronged with people waiting for the next London express, which was apparently already running half an hour late. This at least gave the SAS men a chance to stock up on food for the night ahead – the chances of a restaurant car were thin indeed – so, while Farnham and Tobin guarded their bags and a spot dangerously close to the platform edge, the other two purchased a mound of dubious-looking sandwiches from the station buffet. Chewing on an unidentifiable selection from the pile, Farnham gazed thoughtfully at the line of clapped-out locomotives stabled alongside a disused platform. Everything was wearing out, he thought. Germans or no Germans, this war was going to be around for a long time.
The train eventually arrived, and for the first two hours they had to make do with a crowded section of corridor, but at Preston a group of Engineers in the adjoining compartment got off. Night had now fallen on the outside world, and they had to read the names of the passing stations through the small diamond cut in the blackout screen. Inside the carriage visibility wasn’t much better, thanks to the ever-thickening fug of cigarette smoke.
It was midnight when they reached Crewe. Tobin left them there, hoping his connection to Swansea was also running late. The others watched as he was swallowed by the unlit station, feeling more than a little envious. He might not find a train but at least the buffet would be open.
Their train continued south, stopping more and more frequently, or so it seemed to Farnham, who alone in the compartment seemed unable to sleep. He woke the snoring Rafferty at Bletchley, and watched him stumble off in search of a Cambridge train, hoping that a week with his wife and baby son would restore him to his old carefree self.
An hour or so later the train finally rolled into Euston, leaving him and McCaigh to emerge, somewhat bleary-eyed, into the pale grey light of a London dawn. They breakfasted together in a crowded greasy-spoon in Eversholt Street, and then went their separate ways, McCaigh heading down into the Underground while Farnham, suffering from too many claustrophobic hours on the train, waited for a bus.
From the upper deck of the bus which carried him to Hyde Park Corner it didn’t look as if much had changed since his last brief sojourn in the capital, a couple of months before. The so-called ‘Little Blitz’ had tailed off during the past few weeks, and there were no startling new gaps in either the familiar terraces of Gower Street or the shops in Oxford Street.
He decided on impulse to walk from Hyde Park Corner, telling himself he was fed up with crowds of cheek-by-jowl humanity, but knowing in his heart that he simply wanted to delay his arrival at the house in Beaufort Gardens. Stepping through his father’s front door meant stepping out of the war, and that meant having to confront the life and family he’d left behind when he joined the Army. It meant remembering that he loathed his father.
Randolph Farnham was a sixty-two-year-old insurance tycoon who worshipped wealth, power and breeding. He’d been an admirer of the Nazis before the war, and the outbreak of hostilities had not so much changed his mind as persuaded him that it wouldn’t be wise to publicize such views. Over the past year Farnham Insurance had been more successful than most at using the small print to wriggle out of claims made by bomb-damage victims.
His wife Margaret – Farnham’s stepmother – was just as selfish and not much more likeable, but her wanton disregard of convention could sometimes seem almost admirable. At a party before the war he had stumbled across her and one of her friends’ husbands engaged in furiously silent sex in one of the guest rooms, and the look in her eyes when she noticed him had been one of pure amusement.
He had no desire to see her or his father, and in fact there were only two reasons why he ever came to Beaufort Gardens. One was that all his worldly goods – all that remained of them – had been brought here from the bombed-out cottage in Sussex; the other was the presence of his sixteen-year-old sister Eileen, on whom he doted. She was kind, interesting, lovely to look at and wise beyond her years, and quite how she had managed to become so under their father’s roof was something that Farnham was at a loss to explain. But she had. Living proof, he thought, that children had a much bigger say in how they turned out than their parents liked to believe.
He covered the last few yards and rapped on the door with the heavy knocker. Norton answered, looking every one of his seventy-three years, and ushered him inside with the usual lack of friendliness. ‘Your father has left for the office, Mr Robert,’ he said stiffly. ‘Mrs Farnham has not yet come down.’
Fuck them, Farnham thought. ‘My sister?’ he asked.
‘She is at breakfast,’ Norton said, but at that moment Eileen burst through the door at a run, a huge smile on her face.
‘Robbie!’ she cried happily, throwing her arms round his neck.
After a while they disengaged and he got a better look at her. She seemed older, he thought, though it had been only a couple of months since he last saw her. Her clothes seemed drabber than usual, but the eyes were as bright as ever.
‘Let’s go out,’ she said. ‘I’ve got two hours – we can go for a walk in the park.’
‘All right,’ he said, glad of the excuse to get out of the house before his stepmother appeared.
It took Eileen only a moment to grab a coat and they were out on the street, walking briskly across the Brompton Road and heading up Montpelier Street. ‘What are you doing in two hours?’ he asked. ‘Shopping with one of your friends, I suppose,’ he added with a grin.
‘Shopping! Where have you been? There’s nothing in the shops to buy. And I have to go to work,’ she said triumphantly.
