He reached the blood-stained khaki of the final soldier in line and fell to the sand behind him, at last surrendering to the pain that blistered his mind and body.
A hand squeezed his shoulder and Laurie turned and smiled. It was Joe Morrison, his oldest friend. He and Joe had signed up together for six months’ service in July 1939, when the absolute certainty of war had yet to disseminate to the working men being recruited into the militia. Why had they even signed up? He had no idea, now.
Directly above Joe, Laurie caught sight of the first of the Stuka bombers manoeuvring into a descent at almost ninety degrees, its inverted gull wings silhouetted in the sun’s hazy periphery. The hideous, terrifying wail of the plane’s Jericho trumpet pre-empted his warning cry and the line of men dispersed chaotically, the desperation to run outweighing the certain knowledge that they had nowhere to go.
Laurie fell to his side and covered his head with his hands.
The guns opened up, loud and staccato, ripping through the sand right beside him, the wail growing to a deafening crescendo.
There were screams and shouts all around him, as bullets tore into flesh.
Laurie rolled to his front and closed his eyes, sand raining down on his back, knowing that his life was all but over.
Finally, just a few feet above the beach, the Stuka pulled up, heading into a steep climb to re-join the rest of the group circling above them. But another had just begun to dive.
The hope of rescue and setting foot back in England dissolved, escaping him like a drop of water on the sand. He wouldn’t get to see his wife, Elsie, or his mother or sister ever again. He would never have children. He would never grow old. The knowledge that he was going to die in France, all alone, crushed the final grains of his resolve. With that clarity of understanding came a weakening of his muscles and a speeding up of his heart. He urinated on himself and began to sob.
The ear-splitting cry from the Jericho trumpet signalled the imminent opening up of the Stuka’s guns.
Something—he didn’t know what—forced him to open his eyes.
With his hands clasped to his ears, he watched as the Stuka’s bomb cradles opened in the air directly above them, and four hundred-and-ten-pound bombs came hurtling down in his direction.
Paradoxically for Laurie Finch, the seconds of helpless waiting as the bombs fell, were both brief, giving him no time to react, move or speak and yet also simultaneously drawn out, allowing him the time to realise and accept his fate.
Chapter Two
21st June 1940, Bramley Cottage, Nutley, East Sussex
Elsie Finch stood at the open back door of her cottage, gazing out into the garden. It was so perfect that it could have been a painting, she thought, with a note of contempt. The sky was one simple tone of turquoise, the woods behind the garden a thousand shades of green. She exhaled as she took in the neat cobbled path that wound its way through immaculate flower beds to the orchard beyond. It was too damned perfect, that was the trouble. ‘You must open your delightful garden to the public,’ Mrs McKay had enthused last week from her high perch in the village hall, speaking on behalf of one of the several committees of which she considered herself an indispensable part. ‘We could charge a shilling entry to raise money for the war effort.’
Elsie stepped outside, leant back on the doorframe and raised one arch-shaped eyebrow, thinking about the war effort. What bloody war? Here, tucked away in the Sussex countryside, her nearest neighbour more than half-a-mile away, there was no war. She strained her ears to hear something—anything at all—but there was nothing to be heard but that wretched, empty silence. Even the honey bees, flitting and shuffling restlessly between the purple chive flowers and those of the mauve sage were silent. As she fussed with her blonde hair, pointlessly impeccable and styled in shoulder-length rolls, she was certain that, if she were to die in wartime, it would be from the slow sinking-sand monotony of what her life had become.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she murmured, just to break the pitiful stillness, as she plucked a cigarette from the packet of Wills’ Gold Flakes that she squeezed in her hand. She lit it and took a long drag, reflecting on the last few months since her wedding day. Her heart began to tighten as she thought of that blustery day, two weeks before the declaration of war, when she had become Mrs Laurie Finch. Just four weeks later, her husband had been whisked off to France with the British Expeditionary Force, leaving her here, the anxious housewife. Since that unremarkable day last August when she had ceased to be Miss Elsie Danby and she had left her job as the village school teacher—as was the expectation—her life had fallen into a ghastly routine. It was a routine no less exacting or precise than one of the dreadful knitting patterns given to her by her mother, which was now stuffed among a pile of other useless papers in the kitchen. Baking, tidying, washing, cleaning, knitting. Endlessly.
Last Sunday, in an act of churlish defiance, Elsie had not attended church, but had instead done her washing, leaving Monday to become her day of rest. Her muted sense of satisfaction and mild victory over the scourge of housewifery had been dulled by the fact that it had gone completely unnoticed. She had rather expected a visit from the vicar, one of the neighbours or perhaps Mrs McKay or another church busybody. But nobody came and Elsie’s
