I could not decide the category for this story, it is a WW2 spy drama.
I posted this a few months ago and was asked to expand on it.
it is not erotic fiction, but it is about a loving wife.
Be wary, it is long, so if you like a good story, read on
If you only want sex, this is not for you.
This is a slow story, be warned.
The Spy, The Lover and the Husband. Edit.
My wonderful father died towards the end of the covid lockdowns in London. He was hit with a major stroke and became bedbound. He lost his power of speech and sight; his last seventeen weeks were the worst seventeen weeks of my life. I wished we had spent more time with him before it happened but as most people did, they stayed away to prevent the spread.
My mum and dad had us late in life and I was their first child in 1963, so I was still young enough to help where I could. Mum was in her forties when she had us all, so we never really knew our parents as young. To us they were always old.
I had tried to organize the very best care possible for him and moved into his house to help out as best I could through his last days. I arranged home help nurses every 6 hours to help change and wash him because he wouldn't have liked me doing it, he was a proud man.
My mum had died 15 years previous, so he had lived alone from the age of 84 to 99. He said just before the stroke he wished he had gone with her; it broke my heart. He never really recovered from her passing.
Covid meant he spent the last few months of his life alone. He almost made it to 100 and he had had a wonderful life, he made so many friends throughout his long life but had outlived them all.
He was a young dashing R.A.F. pilot when he met my mum, they had gone through so much together and when she passed it almost killed him. Dad had 4 children and 17 grandkids who adored him, and he put on that brave face for us, he was a kind man but grew very old very fast after mum had died.
I had the sad job of going through all of the old boxes in the attic to sort out his affairs, my brother and two sisters helped but they were hopeless, Mary just cried constantly, and Billy had no idea. My youngest sibling Alice (named after our mum) was my best friend. She was 13 years younger than me but for some reason out of all the siblings, we got on the best.
The old photos made us reminisce of better times when we were kids, old holidays and Christmas. It took days to go through them all and I took boxes and boxes home with me because I couldn't stand to be in their empty house without them.
Over the next few weeks while sorting out the funeral and death certificates, I came across a beautiful locked antique ornamental box about 12 x 8 inches. I had never seen it before, and I searched and searched but it had no key. It felt wrong to break it open, but I had no choice and did it as carefully as I could.
Inside I found loads of old photo's a couple of writing books, maps, a compass and what looked like old codes scribbled on notepads. There was also an envelope with a key labelled 'safe' with numbers on it, dad never had a safe so that was puzzling?
There were a few photos of my mum when she was about 20, she was a stunning young woman. She was standing with man who looked like a farmer, and he had his arm around her. She was lovingly looking up into his eyes. It wasn't my dad so I wondered who it could be.
One of the old writing books looked like a diary, it was a dusty old leather-bound book. It smelled musky, like old furniture.
It was all written in my mums handwriting, the other was full of names and numbers. Some of them were labelled as living in Europe. Belgium and Holland. Mum and dad didn't know anyone there as far as I knew so that was another puzzle.
I put the kettle on and sat reading mum's diary, it felt like I was invading her privacy at first, but it was wonderful. I had a window into her past that she had never talked of. I was in floods of tears as I read it and it dated right back to 1939.
It was like reading pages from another world. She was nearly 18 and still just a young girl in a dangerous time period. She had the writing skills of a woman of far more advanced years. Some of this stuff was so moving that I was in tears more often than not.
The page I was reading was dated January 17th, 1939 and detailed her trip into London for an interview of her first real job.
My mum had painted a picture of old London and the exciting steam train ride in such exquisite words that I could almost imagine being there with her.
She had got off the train at Waterloo Station and walked over the bridge to Whitehall. Her job was to be in admin with the war office, (she had never spoken of any of this to me).
I had no idea she worked there. I would have loved to have heard her talk of these old stories of her early life, why had she kept this a secret?
She got the job and started the next day. She was to be a secretary to an advisor of an Admiral Hennessey. The pay was Two pounds and ten shillings per week which was a hell of lot in those days for that type of work.
The pages were all of dull days until 3rd April 1939 when an entry talked of making tea for a mystery man and the Admiral. Mum wrote of the man making her feel weak at the knees when he had smiled at her, he was so dashing.
Admiral Hennessey had taken quite a shine to her over those months working in the office, he even knew her name which was more than most there.
"Alice, when we are done here will you drop whatever you are on and come back here, please."
"Yes Sir."
She wrote, when she knocked at his office door she was invited in, and introduced to a man she was later to know as Mr. Winston Churchill the future P.M.
This was such a revelation to me, it was intriguing, mum and dad had never spoken of any of this! Here I am reading that my mum had met CHURCHILL!!
I couldn't turn the pages quick enough, the next dozen pages had been ripped out
"Fuck!"
The next readable page was dated August 5th, 1939, a few months were missing. I searched through the box looking for them, I was distraught trying to find them. I came across a dainty gold chain and a wedding ring, with another key attached to it hidden at the bottom of the box in a false compartment.
This was getting curiouser and curiouser, I took a sip of my tea and found my it had gone cold, I glanced at the living room clock. Time had flown, I had been sitting there for three hours.
Ben came in from work at 6pm and I could not wait to tell him of my discoveries. We got mum's box out again, I spread it all on the kitchen table and we went through it together.
Ben turned the pages through the code book and looked up saying,
"Sally, this looks like weird shit! Why would your mum have these codes?"
"Ben look at this!"
It was a wedding certificate from 1941 tucked inside the other handbook to a man named Mr. Harry Taylor, to a Miss. Alice Jones.
Jones was her maiden name; it was my mum?
"Ben, what the fuck is all this about?"
"I think we need to take your mum and dads house apart love. I mean floorboards, everything. It looks like your mum had a secret life none of us knew about, probably including your dad!"
"Mum was married again?"
"It looks like it yes."
"She couldn't have been, I'd have known....wouldn't I?.....what do we tell the others?"
"Nothing yet Sal, let's look into it all first."
***********************************************
I was in dads house the very next day going through it with a fine-tooth comb. I was looking at anywhere that could hide anything, there was nothing plus where was this safe?
Every creaky floorboard had me taking it up and looking in the dusty cavities, I found nothing.
I had my bigger and much more powerful torch and clambered through the attic again, I found another two filthy boxes full of paperwork hidden under a pile of insulation.
Back home I dusted it all off and started my detective work, one was full of documents from a solicitor in Deptford south London. The other had more photos and documents, plus six really old passports, like 'really' old. Four had pictures of my mother under different names, one was of this man Harry and the last one was my dad's, they were all ancient.
