James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“What about his father … ” Bliss began, then corrected himself, “I mean Rupert’s father — the old Colonel. Didn’t he realise it wasn’t his son?”

“His eyes were bad — chlorine gas in the trenches at Ypres. He died a few months later … heart attack.” She paused in memory of the proud old man slumped, blue-faced, at the feet of his son’s impersonator — his hands clawing at his chest in rigor.

“I’ll put it down to the gas, Mrs. Dauntsey — shall I?” the wily old doctor had said, ceremoniously taking the stethoscope from around his neck and placing it into his bag in a gesture of finality, while giving her a knowing wink.

“Yes, please, Doctor, if you don’t mind,” she had replied, and Dr. Fitzpatrick’s fraudulently penned death certificate had cost her a thousand pounds, but what was the alternative? “Death by shock.” But who wouldn’t have had a heart attack in the Colonel’s place — learning, simultaneously, that his beloved son was a queer, something of an idiot, and dead? And, to cap it all, discovering the man he’d been nursing as a hero for the past few months was not only an imposter, but was also his son’s lover.

Daphne was catching on. “Do you mean …”

Samantha touched her arm to quieten her, but Doreen turned to her friend, her eyes wide open. “Yes, Daphne. I was so stupid I didn’t realise I was living with the wrong man. Not that I was living with him in the true sense. He stayed in the turret room most of the time — crying I think, though it was difficult to tell.”

Daphne jumped up excitedly. “So who was he?”

“You met him — the best man at our wedding — sham wedding.”

“Captain David Tippen of the Royal Horse Artillery,” pronounced Bliss sagely, feeling the need to prove he’d done his homework.

Daphne’s face pinched into confusion. “David Tippen — What sham wedding?”

Doreen sank back into memories of her marriage, still flabbergasted to think she had been so gullible — realising she had been so bowled over by a proposal from the Colonel’s son that she never really questioned his motives. But memories of the ceremony itself were murky, everything and everyone appearing through a screen of smoky glass, much as it had at the time — more alcoholic than euphoric. Rupert had made all the arrangements, even choosing her dress — and her hat. “Trust Daphne Lovelace to laugh at my hat,” she remembered saying — but to whom, and when …?

Rupert had only invited his aide-de-camp, (“Done up like a dog’s dinner,” Daphne had shrieked to her friends afterwards), and his father — the old Colonel. But when he announced that Arnie, the odd-job man, and his wife would be the only witnesses Doreen had dug in her heels, insisting on a “proper wedding,” with a maid of honour and bridesmaids; what was the point of a wedding if it wasn’t to brandish one’s trophy in front of one’s friends? In the end, with less than an hour to spare, she settled for Daphne and a clutch of handmaidens dragged out of the Mitre. “What about your parents?” Rupert had asked, showing some feelings at the last minute. “No,” she had shot back fiercely, knowing they’d find fault with him; knowing they’d voice the same concerns which she’d worked so hard to keep buried. “Why you, Doreen?” her father would question. “Why not some tight-assed little bitch with a plum in her mouth, and a stuck-up mother twittering on about how rationing was playing havoc with her dinner parties? — ‘Haven’t had a decent truffle for absolutely ages; and caviar? Pah — lease, don’t even mention it, my dear.’”

Doreen surfaced with one clear recollection of the ceremony. “I remember the vicar with that stupid sing-song voice,” she said, looking inquisitively at the faces surrounding her as if she was coming around from anaesthetic. “Major Rupert Wellington Dauntsey,” he said. “Do you take this woman — Doreen Mae Mason …” Her voice and memory dimmed for a few seconds, then she seemed to bounce back to life. “Rupert said, ‘I do,’ but he never did,” she continued forlornly. Then she repeated, “He never did,” as if to remind herself.

Three pairs of eyes forged into hers, demanding an explanation, but she sank back into her own private darkness, leaving them to watch her changing expressions as she wove together images of the wedding night out of a thick blanket of fog: Rupert, an officer and, apparently, a gentleman, in full ceremonial uniform, pouring her yet another champagne; brushing his lips off her cheek; guiding her upstairs and leaving her to marvel at the wonders of an en-suite bathroom, at a time most people still crept to the outhouse in the middle of the night, and Hollywood agents dickered over bathroom clauses in film stars’ contracts.

“Mrs. Dauntsey …” tried Bliss, concerned that time was running out, but she was already far away, her face warming to the dreamy memory of hot water gushing out of a polished brass tap — unlike her parent’s stinky gas geyser scaring the life out of her every time it belched into life, then pumping squirts of lukewarm water into a tin bath until the meter swallowed the last of the coins.

Doreen had found good reason to forget the wedding ceremony, even at the time, but the joy of instant unlimited hot water was so overwhelming she had lost track of time, turning the tap on and off until she could write her name on the bathroom mirror with her finger. Finally, with the important bits washed and powdered, she staggered into the bedroom and swayed, intoxicated as much by the sight of the richly carved four-poster bed, with heavily embroidered tester, as by the champagne.

With her eyes still closed she allowed herself a cautious smile at the memory of the silky sheets; the eiderdown pillows; the giant wall tapestry depicting a mythical battle, with near naked angels lifting the vanquished from the field — someone’s sanguine concept of a soldierly heaven; and the Chippendale dressing table laden with sweet smelling pomanders, and cut crystal bottles so delicate she was afraid to touch. Then her face clouded as the memory darkened and she saw herself swimming fuzzily against a tide of drowsiness, struggling into the satin nightgown, the one Daphne had hurriedly bought for her as a wedding present, then watching as the bed spun wildly away from her and she crashed, unconscious, to the floor.

“It was quite a honeymoon night,” she laughed drily, rising back to the surface, greedily slurping tea to wash away the rekindled taste of bile which had made her vomit all over the bed in the morning. “I think he put something in my drinks,” she added, recalling how she had struggled to pull herself awake through a porridgy sludge, testing her hooded eyes against the morning sunlight and unfamiliar surroundings, while distorted images of the previous day’s ceremony swam slowly into view. Understanding had came through the fog like the beam of a car’s headlights — a fuzzy glow that suddenly bursts into a blinding flash. “I’m married,” she screeched, and lurched upright in bed only to find her husband, the marriage certificate and his aide-de-camp all gone. In their place was a little man with a pneumatic drill trying to hammer his way out of her skull.

“Married,” she spat and opened her eyes to the realisation that those around her were holding their breath. “Rupert left me alone in that damn place,” she explained. “And I was so woozy in the morning I didn’t know if we had or not … anyway, until my little visitor came a week later I was sure I was expecting.”

Daphne and Bliss exchanged glances — Daphne with a lopsided “told you Rupert wasn’t the father” smirk.

“Don’t ask,” mouthed Bliss, guessing she was itching to discover the true identity of Jonathon’s father; knowing that just a month or so after Dauntsey’s departure someone must have stood on guard in his place.