Homeland by Clare Francis Read Free Book Online Page A

unreadable smile.
    He watched her cycle away up the track. As she turned into the lane, he thought he heard her call out to someone, but she was only singing. The tune wasn’t one he recognised.

Chapter Two

    A S B ENNETT turned in through the gates of the convalescent home he met a large military ambulance and had to pull over sharply
to let it past. Taking the winding drive between wide lawns and tall specimen trees at a more cautious pace, he spotted an elderly groundsman raking leaves into wind-blown piles, a bonfire venting
wisps of smoke, two nurses, but no inmates. Only as he approached the house did he see some pale faces staring gloomily out of the glass-fronted veranda that flanked the west wing.
    The house was huge and hideous, the grandiose Gothic boast of an Edwardian sugar baron. Abandoned in the twenties, it had been requisitioned at the time of Dunkirk and adapted in haste, with
thin partition walls and copious use of cream paint. Now, more than a year after the end of the war, the paint was the colour of parchment and there was talk of winding the place down, though so
far there had been no obvious slowdown in the flow of new patients.
    The half-panelled hall was dark and lofty, with high stained-glass windows on heraldic themes which threw a sinister purple and orange light over the notice boards and letter racks. The double
doors to the visitors’ room stood open, revealing knots of patients and visitors talking in church-like whispers. Bennett didn’t bother to check the room; the person he had come to see
never had visitors.
    Reaching the east wing, he diligently announced himself to the nursing sister, who looked up from her paperwork and gave him a cheery wave. ‘What brings you in today, Doctor?’
    ‘Just a quick call,’ he said.
    The day room was crowded. It had the atmosphere of a railway waiting room on a forgotten branch line. Some men were talking desultorily or reading newspapers; others stared despondently out of
the window with the air of people who know that their wait is far from over. As Bennett entered, several pairs of eyes swung his way, only to slide away again. Their awe of doctors was long gone.
They knew by heart all the medical pronouncements that dampened their hopes of an early ticket home. And when at long last there was talk of recovery and release dates, they laughed it off, for
though they longed for freedom, they feared it too: the shortage of jobs, the changes at home, the girlfriends who, during this endless drawn-out convalescence, must surely have been lured away by
healthier men with regular pay packets. While they didn’t blame the medical staff for the frustrations of convalescence, they didn’t like unnecessary reminders either, and doctors, even
part-timers like Bennett, entered the day room on sufferance.
    Bennett made for a familiar face, a young gunner with a shrapnel-peppered lung who attended his weekly chest clinic, and asked him if he knew where Malinowski might be.
    ‘The Poles don’t hang out here, Doc,’ he said. ‘You’ll find ’em in the reading room.’
    Looking around, Bennett realised it was true; there were no Poles in sight.
    ‘Get too fired up,’ the gunner remarked affably. ‘Drives us barmy. Always jabbering on in that lingo of theirs.’
    ‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ Bennett said. ‘Will I see you at clinic on Wednesday?’
    ‘Don’t have any better invitations, Doc, not at the moment.’
    As Bennett stepped into the corridor, he saw the upright figure of Major Phipps, the military liaison officer, emerging from a door ahead. Bennett hesitated for an instant, assessing his chances
of escape. The reading room was on the far side of the major, while the one intervening door belonged to a broom cupboard. It was retreat or endure, and as the major glanced up and saw him, retreat
was no longer an option.
    ‘Ah, Dr Bennett. Afternoon. What bloody weather, eh?’ The major was thin and haggard and bitter because