summer weather she had read about before her arrival. She couldnât remember having seen a substantial cloud. Now, wrapped in her towel, she retrieved her bits of laundry. Doing so reminded her that she would at some point have to go back to the flat in Whitstable. Her things were there. It was her home. She would have to do it today. But even if she accomplished her return in the daylight, night would come and she would have to stay there. In one way, though, going back was going to be a relief, she thought. She had begun to doubt the fact of the intrusion. When she went back she would see the physical evidence. Sheâd have the fact of it affirmed before she aired the room and discarded the cigarette butt and threw the ashtray away.
And she would have a witness. David Lucas had offered to come back with her and help her put a deadbolt on her door and window.
âIs this a ploy, David? Like brandishing a copy of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
?â
âWhether itâs a ploy or it isnât,â he said, âit has more practical value than those strategies would. From your point of view.â
âThatâs true.â
âIt isnât, by the way. It isnât a ploy.â
âGood,â she said. âI wouldnât want to think you were wasting your time. Iâm very grateful, though.â
He smiled. The smile was inward, for him rather than her.
âWhat?â
âYouâre pretty tough, arenât you?â he said.
âMaybe American women are different.â
âIâve met American women before,â he said.
âIâm not that tough, David,â she said. âIâm not so tough as I think Iâm going to need to be.â
Her therapeutic Sunday in the library had yielded few salient facts about Slapton Sands. On the Monday she did better. She sourced a Church commission report concerning claims of looting and vandalism levelled against departed American troops once the native population had been allowed back into their villages in the late summer and autumn of 1944. Pictures, plate, gold Communion goblets, even christening fonts, had disappeared from churches thathad afterwards been smashed into ruins, their stained glass shattered, their roofs torn and holed. Subsequent papers, including the answer to a parliamentary question, showed that the contents of the churches had in fact been removed, faithfully inventoried and painstakingly stored. The damage to the fabric of the churches turned out not to be the work of bored and drunken GIs made vindictive by a bout of homesickness. The churches had been damaged by shellfire. The American military had used live ammunition in its practice assaults on the Start Bay beach heads. Some of the shells had gone astray. Tacitly, it was assumed that some of the churches and other blasted buildings had been used for target practice. It was hard to hit a target precisely with a gun mounted on a moving platform. And a moving platform was exactly what a battleship comprised in a ten-foot swell.
Sheâd found aerial photographs of Slapton Sands taken for the purpose of updating Ordnance Survey maps in the summer of 1948. There had still been rationing in Britain then, she recalled, examining the black and white prints on an epidiascope, adjusting the focus, searching for detail, for clues. There had still been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unexploded bombs in Britainâs Blitz-damaged cities. Much of London still lay ruined. Regeneration was a decade away, the bravely symbolic Festival of Britain on Londonâs South Bank still three years hence. Britain then had been insular, monochromatic, engaged in the grim economic hardship of victory.
The aerial pictures were of very good quality. They had needed to be, taken as they were for the purpose of precise geographic reference and plotting. They began to get grainy only when magnified to a point where the features they showed became so
And she would have a witness. David Lucas had offered to come back with her and help her put a deadbolt on her door and window.
âIs this a ploy, David? Like brandishing a copy of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
?â
âWhether itâs a ploy or it isnât,â he said, âit has more practical value than those strategies would. From your point of view.â
âThatâs true.â
âIt isnât, by the way. It isnât a ploy.â
âGood,â she said. âI wouldnât want to think you were wasting your time. Iâm very grateful, though.â
He smiled. The smile was inward, for him rather than her.
âWhat?â
âYouâre pretty tough, arenât you?â he said.
âMaybe American women are different.â
âIâve met American women before,â he said.
âIâm not that tough, David,â she said. âIâm not so tough as I think Iâm going to need to be.â
Her therapeutic Sunday in the library had yielded few salient facts about Slapton Sands. On the Monday she did better. She sourced a Church commission report concerning claims of looting and vandalism levelled against departed American troops once the native population had been allowed back into their villages in the late summer and autumn of 1944. Pictures, plate, gold Communion goblets, even christening fonts, had disappeared from churches thathad afterwards been smashed into ruins, their stained glass shattered, their roofs torn and holed. Subsequent papers, including the answer to a parliamentary question, showed that the contents of the churches had in fact been removed, faithfully inventoried and painstakingly stored. The damage to the fabric of the churches turned out not to be the work of bored and drunken GIs made vindictive by a bout of homesickness. The churches had been damaged by shellfire. The American military had used live ammunition in its practice assaults on the Start Bay beach heads. Some of the shells had gone astray. Tacitly, it was assumed that some of the churches and other blasted buildings had been used for target practice. It was hard to hit a target precisely with a gun mounted on a moving platform. And a moving platform was exactly what a battleship comprised in a ten-foot swell.
Sheâd found aerial photographs of Slapton Sands taken for the purpose of updating Ordnance Survey maps in the summer of 1948. There had still been rationing in Britain then, she recalled, examining the black and white prints on an epidiascope, adjusting the focus, searching for detail, for clues. There had still been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unexploded bombs in Britainâs Blitz-damaged cities. Much of London still lay ruined. Regeneration was a decade away, the bravely symbolic Festival of Britain on Londonâs South Bank still three years hence. Britain then had been insular, monochromatic, engaged in the grim economic hardship of victory.
The aerial pictures were of very good quality. They had needed to be, taken as they were for the purpose of precise geographic reference and plotting. They began to get grainy only when magnified to a point where the features they showed became so
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