Evie by Julia Stoneham Read Free Book Online

him to remain in England as part of the Lucas workforce. Giorgio had accepted Edwin’s offer and on the day the makeshift internment camp had finally closed and with the necessary paperwork in place, dumped his kitbag on the mud floor of a near-derelict, tied cottage that stood to one side of the Lucas farmyard.
    The small building, which consisted of two rooms, one above the other, connected by a narrow flight of stone steps, was built of limestone, its interior, many years previously, coated with whitewash which was now mildewed and peeling. Its condition was considered unfit for Edwin’s current labourers.
    Clarissa, Edwin’s wife, was to provide Giorgio with a meal each night and with sandwiches for his lunch. He soon got the measure of the rusted iron range in his dank quarters, and whenhe finished work, would light a fire. With the small windows open to the summer evenings, he drove the damp from the abandoned building. With Clarissa Lucas’s ample food inside him and the warmth from his fire relaxing him, Giorgio began to visualise a future. He would hose the little place, whitewash its walls, replace the panes that were missing from its windows and the worm-eaten boards on the floor of the upstairs room. He would repair the pipe that had once delivered water to the granite sink. When sleep overtook him he dreamt a scene in which Evie would arrive at his door with the news that her husband was dead, a casualty of war. When he asked her to marry him she would say, ‘
Si
, Giorgio.
Ti amo molto.’
     
    While Evie was telling her story, Roger Bayliss had been deciding what was to be done with her in both the long and short term. He was not unsympathetic towards her but the situation, should it involve him, was complicated by the fact that he had recently been invited to become a Justice of the Peace, a voluntary position consisting of occasional duties at local magistrates courts. He, as he had explained to Alice, apparently met all the criteria needed to fit the Lord Chancellor’s requirements. He was an upright, educated and well-respected man, his family and his antecedents were very much part of the area’s history. He understood the rural economy, employed local labourers and had a reputation for treating them fairly. There had been the unfortunate incident when his son, a Fighter Command pilot, had been dismissed from the RAF. But the boy had been ill, hospitalised in fact, when, after being deployed to breaking point, his nerves failed him.
    Roger’s concern, as Evie reached the point in her story which had resulted in her tearful presence, here, in his dining room, was that should the situation between her and her husband escalate into more serious areas, such as assault or abduction, he himself would be disadvantaged by having any connection with it.
    Alice had been surprised when Roger got to his feet and announced that Evie, for the time being at any rate, must now be returned to Rose Crocker’s care. As she and Roger drove back to Higher Post Stone, having promised to arrange a meeting between Evie and Giorgio, Alice queried his decision.
    ‘I realise that we can’t expect Rose to house her indefinitely,’ she said, as her husband nosed the car through the lanes. ‘So why don’t we take her in? It won’t be forever. She could help Eileen with the housework and she’d be safer with us than anywhere if the husband turns up.’
    ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Roger told her and explained his concerns about the legal complications of his own involvement.
    ‘So.What do we do?’ Alice wanted to know.
    ‘The fact is that I can’t pay Rose for Evie’s keep,’ Roger told her, ‘because that could legally be seen as an involvement on my part, but—’
    ‘Is this all about the magistrate thing?’ Alice demanded, ‘Because if it means you’re not allowed help out one of our land girls when she needs us, I’m not sure I approve of it!’
    ‘But there are ways round it, my dear one,’