tank training. The village and this house were in the way then and still are now. Not during summer though. They stop their training exercises over summer.’
Melissa’s face fell. ‘Oh, right. So it’s just going to stay like this then? Until it falls away to rubble?’
‘I suppose all we can do is appreciate it as a piece of social history now and endeavour to understand the huge sacrifice the residents made,’ he said. ‘That’s just the way it is with all those villages requisitioned during the war. Some of them were given back, but they were often unliveable by the time the army had finished with them. They’re mostly tourist attractions now.’
Melissa sighed and then busied herself getting the picnic food out of the paper bag. She’d bought some breadsticks and various dips, a crusty loaf, two kinds of cheese, some delicious-looking sliced ham, and paper plates and empty takeaway coffee cups for the water. She looked quite pleased with the little array until, ‘Oh damn. I forgot to ask for plastic cutlery to slice the cheese and ham with. We’ll just have to use fingers, I’m afraid.’
Guy sat down next to her on the grass and drew his eyes away from the building and down to the feast in front of him. ‘Impressive.’
‘Tuck in,’ Melissa encouraged.
Guy ripped off a bit of Brie. He held it between his fingers and narrowed his eyes at the building.
Melissa glanced at where he was looking and then back to him. ‘What?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said and put the cheese into his mouth and chewed. When he finished, he asked, ‘Did you know the owner of the house, Sir Albert Standish, was an MP?’
Melissa shook her head and rolled up a piece of ham. ‘Gosh, that was unfortunate. Being an MP and still having your home whipped out from underneath you, same as your constituents. No special treatment for him. Bet he wasn’t too chuffed. Was that who your grandmother worked for?’
‘He and his wife, Lady Veronica. My gran doesn’t speak very highly of him though. Bit of a bastard from what I can gather. Gran was one of their maids. I think she was the last one to leave.’ Guy frowned, trying to remember what his gran had said. ‘She loved Lady Veronica though. The family owned the entire village and all the surrounding farmland. Everyone rented their properties from the Standishes.’
‘Where did they all go? The villagers, I mean. How do you rehouse a whole village in the middle of a war?’
‘Temporary accommodation in the nearby towns. Some went to stay with family,’ Guy said. ‘My great-grandparents went to stay with relatives, I think, and then my gran joined the war effort and was posted away for a while.’
Melissa looked at the house again and then dipped a breadstick into some hummus. ‘Where did the Standishes go?’
‘Good question. They probably had a London home.’ He rolled up a piece of ham and looked back at the house.
They shared small talk and when they had finished their picnic, tidied up and walked slowly down towards the church.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing these pictures now,’ Melissa said. ‘You’ve really built this up, so it had better be good.’
‘You won’t be disappointed.’
He opened the heavy wooden door and showed her into the church, removing his sunglasses and hooking them into his shirt pocket. The church was beautiful on the inside and out. Built of the same pale brick as the Great House, it had huge stained-glass windows that dripped an array of sunlit colour onto the flagstone floor. Tourists milled about and an elderly guide whose name badge read ‘Reg’ acknowledged Guy immediately and started fussing. Guy shook the man’s hand and then raised his finger to his lips, indicating the tourists. The guide smiled knowingly, pleased to be in on the secrecy, and left Guy and Melissa to it.
Melissa pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and looked up at one of the stained-glass windows. The light was streaming through and casting glorious colour onto her, her face raised up intently, studying the glass. She was beautiful, Guy thought as he leaned against one of the pews. Almost ethereal in this light.
She turned to look at him and walked slowly towards him. He felt like his heart had lurched into his mouth.
‘Come on then, Mr Historian,’ she said quietly. ‘Show me these photos.’
He led her over to a series of boards that had been staggered around the nave of the church. Each one showed a group of properties, their owners, and had a bit of information about their family histories and what had happened to them after they had left Tyneham.
‘That’s Gran.’ He looked proud as he leaned over her shoulder to point to a photo of a teenage girl in a pinafore, her hair up in a loose bun with a few front sections falling down by her face.
‘She was very pretty,’ Melissa said and turned to smile up at Guy. He was only a few inches from her, and he smiled, a lovely smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
Melissa read each of the boards with interest and scanned the pictures of the various houses, the vicarage and the post office. At the final board, Melissa saw the same bit of blurb about the Great House that she’d read in the leaflet and looked at pictures of the house in its heyday taken from various angles. A few black and white images of the staff and owners throughout the years were on display. And then there was the portrait shot of Sir Albert Standish and his wife Veronica taken outside their house. It was larger, much more clear than the miniature version on the board at the Great House. She could actually see their faces. The caption said it had been taken by the local Historical Society. Melissa was taken aback by Veronica and Albert. They were much younger than she imagined they would be; they looked no older than their early thirties. She wasn’t sure why, but Melissa had imagined they’d be at least middle aged.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Lady Veronica was beautiful,’ she said to Guy, who turned to look. Veronica had dark hair, possibly red, but it was hard to tell in the black and white of the photo, swept over on one side so a thick waterfall of fashionable rolled curls fells down to her shoulders. She had thick eyelashes, fairly high cheekbones and was wearing a dark lipstick that Melissa guessed might be red. Melissa turned her gaze to the man standing by Lady Veronica’s side, Sir Albert. ‘Her husband was a looker too.’
‘Yes, I suppose. If you like that sort of thing,’ Guy said jokingly.
Sir Albert had a chiselled jaw and dark hair that looked like it should have fallen to his eyes but was instead firmly Brylcreemed, giving it a bit of height.
‘Imagine what their children must have looked like. Supermodels,’ Melissa marvelled.
‘I don’t think they ever had children actually. My gran never mentioned children when she worked there.’
‘That’s a shame. So there was no one to inherit the house?’
‘No. But like the rest of the village, the house was subject to a compulsory purchase order after the war. It didn’t matter that he was an MP.’ Guy nodded towards the picture of Sir Albert. ‘He never got it back.’
Melissa looked at Albert and Veronica Standish. The photograph was dated December 1943 – the same month the village had been rendered a ghost town. Had they already known when the picture was taken that they were being kicked out?
There
