Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [614]
“That’s pessimistic,” he countered. “Optimism wins.”
She grimaced. It had not occurred to him that she would find this idea repugnant.
“If life’s a game. But perhaps God put us here to suffer.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I think so.”
For several minutes neither of them spoke. He found what she had said disturbed him profoundly. He thought about the implications.
“One thing underlies all of what you say,” he suggested finally. “It seems to me that all you believe concerns the past. Either people want to preserve it, or destroy it.”
“Yes. There’s such a legacy of unfairness and exploitation. It’s got to be changed.”
“Fine. But what then. What’s the future?”
“The future? Well, not as cruel as the past I suppose. Pensions, free hospitals, free schools.”
“Socialism? Labour Party?”
“Not necessarily. No. Just reform, wherever it’s from.”
“I don’t think you’re all that interested in the future.”
She paused, and thought.
“I think that may be a fair criticism,” she said at last. “With so much history around a place like this, I suppose it’s difficult not to put the past first.”
Perhaps after all this was the real secret, Adam considered, of Sarum. He wondered if perhaps Patricia would not be happier there than in the U.S.A. But then, there was no need to think about that now. They had agreed to enjoy the moment.
Although she never told him so, Patricia Shockley owed Brigadier Forest-Wilson a debt of gratitude.
It was in the last week of May that he happened to offer the high-ranking U.S. Air Force officer a lift from Southern Command H.Q. into Salisbury.
It was, so the theory went, one of the benefits of the way that F.A.N.Y. drivers were chosen that they were all, by definition, discreet and reliable. Security at Sarum was tight. As Overlord approached, if a man in a sensitive job went sick, he was liable to be whisked into isolation. But Patricia had noticed on several occasions that things were sometimes said in the back of the car which she could hear and which, she assumed, might have been secret.
Their destination was Odstock – a bleak spot, over a low ridge just south-west of the city where a collection of low buildings and Nissen huts constituted a small British hospital with an American one beside it.
As they bowled along, she only caught snippets of the conversation. But what she heard electrified her.
“Of course, if your men could take out . . .” It was Forest-Wilson speaking. “Certainly a great help . . . effective . . . trouble is, too fortified.”
“Could be done.” The American.
There was more murmuring she did not catch. Then Forest-Wilson.
“Seems too much of a sacrifice. I just don’t think anyone’d come out alive.”
“If we did, though . . . day after tomorrow?”
“Perfect. Who would you use?”
“Oh. Either some of the Ibsley or Thruxton people I guess. Leave it to me.”
The day after tomorrow. She was on the telephone within an hour.
She kept very cool.
“Darling, could you get one day’s leave – I mean a night?”
“Maybe. I’m owed a couple.”
“Downton. The day after tomorrow. Could you manage it. Just to please me?”
“I’ll ask.”
“Ask right away.”
“O.K.” He sounded puzzled. “Why then?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“I thought it was October.”
“No.” Or not, she thought, as she put the receiver down, this year it isn’t.
He confirmed the next day.
“Listen, I can do it, but are you sure you can get leave yourself?”
In fact she was not.
“Yes,” she lied.
“Only there’s a mission I’d like to volunteer for. It sounds interesting.”
“I’ll be there. I promise. By four o’clock.”
“O.K. But if you get held up . . .” Damn him. He was more interested in his blasted mission than her. “If, say, you aren’t there at five, I can get a ride back to base.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised.
She had worked it all out with such care.
Her last run was to Wilton at three in a staff car. Then another girl would take it on. She had twenty-four hours leave.
Early that morning, she had parked her own little Morris safely at Wilton. That gave her, say, forty minutes to get over to Downton. She had plenty of petrol. She guarded