Coming Home Read Free

illuminated, their windows decorated for Christmas with tinsel wound around boxes of tangerines and jars of bath salts tied with scarlet ribbons. Even the ironmonger had done his bit. USEFUL AND ACCEPTABLE GIFT said a handwritten card leaning against a ferocious claw-hammer which sported a sprig of artificial holly. She passed the last shop, at the very top of the hill, which was the local branch of W. H. Smith, where Judith's mother bought her monthly
Vogue
and came each Saturday to change her library book. After that the road levelled off and the houses fell away, and without their shelter the wind asserted itself. It came in soft gusts, laden with moisture, blowing the drenching mist into her face. In the darkness this wind had a special feel to it and brought with it the sound of breakers booming up on the beach far below.
    After a bit, she paused to lean her elbows on a low granite wall; to rest after the stiff climb and get her breath. She saw the blurred jumble of houses slipping away down to the dark goblet of the harbour, and the harbour road outlined by a curved necklace of street lamps. The red and green riding lights of fishing boats dipped in the swell and sent shimmering reflections down into the inky water. The far horizon was lost in the darkness, but the heaving, restless ocean went on forever. Far out, the lighthouse flashed its warning. A short beam, and then two long beams. Judith imagined the eternal breakers pouring in over the cruel rocks at its base.
    She shivered. Too cold to stand in the dark, wet wind. The train would be leaving in five minutes. She began to run, her boot-bag thumping against her side; came to the long flight of granite steps which dropped to the railway station, and hurtled down them with the careless confidence of years of familiarity.
    The little branch-line train waited at the platform. The engine, two third-class carriages, one first-class carriage, and the guard's van. She did not have to buy a ticket, because she had a School Season, and anyway, Mr William, the guard, knew her as well as his own daughter. Charlie, the engine driver, knew Judith too, and was good about holding the train at Penmarron Halt if she was late for school, tooting his whistle while she pelted down the garden of Riverview House.
    Travelling to and fro to school in the little train was going to be one of the things that she was really going to miss, because the line ran, for three miles, along the edge of a spectacular stretch of coast, incorporating everything that one could possibly want to look at. Because it was dark, she couldn't look at it now as they rattled along, but knew it was there just the same. Cliffs and deep cuttings, bays and beaches, delectable cottages, little paths and tiny fields which in spring would be yellow with daffodils. Then the sand dunes and the huge lonely beach which she had come to think of as her own.
    Sometimes, when people learned that Judith had no father, because he was on the other side of the world working for a prestigious shipping company called Wilson-McKinnon, they were sorry for her. How awful to be without a father. Didn't she miss him? How could it feel, not to have a man about the house, not even at weekends? When would she see him again? When would he come home?
    She always answered the questions in a vague fashion, partly because she didn't want to discuss the matter, and partly because she didn't know exactly how she
did
feel. Only that she had known, always, that life would be like this, because this was how it was for every British India family, and the children absorbed and accepted the fact that, from an early age, long separations and partings would, eventually, be inevitable.
    Judith had been born in Colombo and lived there until she was ten, which was two years longer than most British children were allowed to stay in the tropics. During that time, the Dunbars had travelled home once for a Long Leave, but Judith had been only four at the time, and