Beware of the Trains (26 page)

A week before the raid I was home on forty-eight hours’ leave, and it was then that I saw Margaret for the last time. I was helping my father carry a sail from the Yacht Club hut to the
Land of Promise
, and she was standing at the very edge of the Estuary. gazing across it as the Inspector had done six years previously. The tide was full, and an east wind that whipped the grey water into millions of little wavelets was tangling her fair hair and moulding the old mackintosh which she wore against the lines of her body. She did not look round, and I, poor fool, hesitated to speak to her because of some trivial squabble we had had on my previous visit. She lies in Hartford churchyard. Now and again I put flowers on the grave.

¹
I had better say at once that Captain Vanderloor definitely did not leave the
Vrijheid
after he returned to her from the
Land of Promise
.