by Tessa Arlen
“I suppose she could have been meeting someone from the base. She was found up there by Bart’s Field.”
“Curfew is at midnight.”
“And the badgers’ sett was filled in when?”
“That’s classified information.” He must have seen the incredulous look on my face because he added, “It was filled in after Ponsonby.” He put down his coffee cup and got to his feet. “C’mon, let’s go talk to Audrey. We can drive over to the hospital right now.”
It must be their diet, all that beef, eggs, and milk. Americans have this boundless energy. Even after being ditched in the icy waters of the Channel for hours, Griff was ready for action. I almost hated to quell his enthusiasm.
“Her parents went over to the hospital this morning and she was still very woozy—no visitors except family, even tomorrow.”
“Okay then, we’ll go over tomorrow: visit Audrey and then have dinner. What do you say?”
I tried not to say, “Yes that would be very nice,” too eagerly.
* * *
—
I HAD TIME to finish a chapter before Griff and I set off to visit Audrey at Wickham General Hospital. The love of Ilona’s life was missing in action. It wasn’t difficult to write about how devastated she was—the words simply poured like water from a faucet. Anxious and heartbroken, Ilona threw herself into her work, filling her hours and days with the lives and adventures of others. She could hardly eat; she barely slept. I paused. Griff had been missing for only three days and I had enjoyed a heap of toast and jam for breakfast after the air-raid drill and slept for hours that night. Perhaps I wasn’t in love with Griff after all. Perhaps I was merely infatuated. I was so absorbed in trying to sort out the difference between infatuation and love that I didn’t hear him arrive until he called out, “Aren’t you ready yet? We have to leave in five minutes; otherwise we’ll miss visiting hour.”
* * *
—
THERE IS NOTHING quite as delightful as a drive in the country on an early autumn afternoon. The Women’s Voluntary Service girls had brought in the harvest weeks ago, and the rich, nutty smell of cut wheat fields scented the golden air as we bowled along the narrow, hedge-lined lane to town. Griff had put the top of the Alvis down, so any conversation below a shout was impossible. But I was merely content to enjoy the glories of the world as it flashed past me.
“Do we go right here?” All signposts were removed two years ago to confuse any stray German paratroopers, should they ever invade.
“Yes, three miles to Wickham. At the bottom of the hill take the left fork. Thank you for doing this, by the way.”
“Doing what? You mean taking you to Wickham hospital? I promise you my motives are entirely selfish.”
* * *
—
WHATEVER GRIFF’S MOTIVES were, the moment we were ushered down the long ward to Audrey’s bed at its end, he appeared to lose all interest in whatever she had to tell us. He stood at the foot of her bed with his hands in his pockets. He had taken off his cap at least and smiled politely as he mentally absented himself from Women’s Ward 2B and let us get on with our girls’ visit.
“Hullo, Audrey.” After being driven along country lanes with the sun on my face, I found myself almost monosyllabic. A complete disadvantage if you want information from a naturally taciturn woman who had been unconscious for twenty-four hours and was now lying between sheets of pristine white with a face to match.
Her voice was low and hoarse. “’Lo,” was all I got.
“No grapes, I’m afraid,” I said, referring to the curse of food rationing.
“Don’t like ’em.” She was at her most reticent.
An awkward silence, and I bit my lip. Should I just wade in? I glanced at Griff, and he gave me a brief nod of encouragement.
“So, Audrey, what on earth happened?” I stupidly adopted the sort of Bradley heartiness, the vigorous exhuberance they commonly used at church fetes.
She sighed as if I was being particularly thick. “Someone bashed me.”
“Any idea who?”
“Let me think.” She made me wait. “Dark . . . wake up . . . half . . . village asking . . . same stupid question.”
“I’m sorry, Audrey. I was just wondering what happened.”
“Splitting head. Come to . . . point.”
“Where were you when . . .”
“You know where.”
“Before you were hit on the head.” Silence as Audrey closed her eyes as if begging for divine intervention. “Audrey, please.”
“Last . . . remember . . . saying good night.”
“You met someone up at Bart’s Field?”
Annoyance made her eloquent. “Blow me down, you haven’t worked that one out yet? Yes! I was going to meet someone.” I was pleased to notice that her voice was less feeble and her tone louder.
I glanced at Griff out of the corner of my eye. He was humming softly as he jangled small change around in his pocket. Audrey frowned at him and he apologized.
“Griff, there’s a canteen somewhere if you want a cup of coffee,” I said.
“I’m fine, thanks. Audrey, may I tell your . . . friend that you’re doing just great?” He perched on the side of her bed, ready now to participate.
“No sitting on beds!” The directive came like the lash of a whip, and for a man with broken ribs, Griff was up off Audrey’s bed like a rocketing pheasant in October. An angular, grim-faced woman with iron gray curls glued to a high forehead and eyes like black ice sprang up out of nowhere. She was dressed in the uniform of a QAIMNS ward sister: the elite military nursing corps founded by Queen Alexandra. A quick glance at the fob watch pinned to an apron crackling with starch, and she launched into the attack. “Are you family?”
“Brother and sister,” said Griff. “I was given two days’ leave to come and see our younger sister, Audrey. Ain’t that right, sis?” I was grateful that he wasn’t doing his beloved cockney accent.
Audrey smiled. But the ward sister didn’t even look at him as she smoothed and tucked in the turned-down bedsheet tightly across Audrey’s chest, for added protection against her fake brother. “Young man, it doesn’t matter to me if you broke out of a German POW camp to come here today. Five minutes and then you must leave. This patient needs her rest. Am I clear?”
Griff said she was as clear as crystal and gave her one of his special smiles. There was a minimal thaw as Sister turned and marched on to the next bed.
“No need to be scared, Lieutenant. Underneath that starch and corsetry beats a heart of gold.” Audrey was smiling now. Is there anyone in the world who can resist Griff? “Looks like you’ve seen some action.” She was flirting with him; it was quite wonderful to see. Audrey was not only playful; she was fully aware she was flirting and reveled in it.
As Griff regaled her with a lively account of his bailing out over the English Channel, I sidled over to the bedside table to admire a dozen red roses with long straight stems and no thorns (they must have cost a fortune) in a glass vase. Surely only an American could afford these, I thought, as I squinted my eyes to read the card: “Hope you’re recovered enough to go dancing on Friday! All my love, Bill.”
All my love. The American Air Force had been here just over six weeks and Audrey had managed to secure all of Bill’s love?
As Griff and Audrey bantered back and forth—he volubly, she sparingly—I realized that Audrey was one of those women who preferred the company of men. We girls were apparently an irritant, an unfortunate necessity of life. Audrey was happy to flirt with Griff, but I had to beg for her attention. “Audrey, please, we have less than four minutes . . .”
She switched her gaze from Griff to me and frowned. “Told the police. Now you?”
“Come on, Audrey. Tell Poppy. Tell her everything you can remember. Why? Because she cares more about you than some overworked
cop from Wickham does. She spent the morning, afternoon, and evening with your mom as they waited for news of you. Least you could do, don’tcha think?”
Audrey considered him for a moment and then turned her head on her pillow to me. “I met my friend at the lambing hut. He left, and I was going to go up to the village to help Mrs. Martin.”
“What time do you think that was?”
“I had to leave at a quarter to twelve.”
“Do you know who attacked you?”
Her look was derisive.
“What do you think happened to you, Audrey, up at Bart’s Field?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and Griff and I looked at each other. “Go on”—he made a circular motion with his hand. “Audrey, what happened to you?”
She pulled aside the collar of her nightdress to reveal a thick bandage; her face was the color of whey, and I realized what an effort this conversation was for her. Her hand lifted to indicate her thickly bandaged head.
“Was it a man?”
“Dunno.” She pointed a tired finger at me. “Don’t stir . . . it up . . . don’t want another Yank in . . . lockup.” Her voice faded, and she closed her eyes.
I put a reassuring hand over hers, and she slid it out from underneath mine. “Don’t . . . get sloppy,” she warned me.
“I’m glad you’re pulling through, Audrey,” was all I dared say.
“I’m not stupid Doreen, or daft Ivy.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Sister’s voice warned us we had seconds left.
“Smell,” Audrey said. Her eyelids flickered and then closed. “Attacker . . . strong smell. Camphor smell.”
I froze—camphor? The only person I knew who smelled like that was Mrs. Glossop. Doreen used to call her “Old Mothballs.”
“Camphor? Are you sure?”
“Yes . . . course I am.”
EIGHTEEN
Griff and I were shown to a table in a little corner of the dining room at the Red Lion Hotel—Wickham’s only posh restaurant. A candle was lit in the center of a cloth-covered table adorned by a single red carnation in a stem vase. The lights were low and, for some reason, a dusky pink, so everyone looked as if they were suffering from pernicious anemia.
As soon as he had seated me, the maître d’ flourished two menus in front of us and left us to it. A band was squeaking out a barely recognizable Gershwin tune, and a very young woman with a paper gardenia in her hair was doing her best to sound like Billie Holliday, which is difficult to do if you come from Surrey.
Ordinarily, I would have been swamped with shyness at having a candlelit dinner with a man I found irresistible. But from the moment Audrey had said “camphor,” my mind had immediately gone to Mrs. Glossop.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but Mrs. Glossop has a distinctive reek of camphor about her. Do you think that tiny woman could tackle two healthy young girls like Doreen and Ivy—let alone someone of Audrey’s intimidating height?”
I was feeling particularly heady for two reasons: one, Audrey had survived her attack and had information to share, and two, here I was alone with Griff, and however bad it was, there was a band, and that meant dancing.
“Mrs. Glossop.” Griff considered. “How tall is she? Five feet at a pinch. I suppose she might take a woman of Audrey’s height and build by surprise. But isn’t camphor used for other things? I think we put it in liniment, but that’s for horses.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled across the table at me. “What will you have to drink? I seem to remember you like martinis. Do they know how to make them here?”
“Probably not. This isn’t London.” I remembered that the sherry in the Red Lion was that sweet stuff they call cream sherry. I suddenly felt sophisticated and rather daring. “I’ll have a gin and tonic, please.”
Before the war, the Red Lion was a pleasant place to have lunch or dinner after a day of shopping in Wickham. But in the last three years it had become the place to go if you were a serviceman looking to, in Griff’s parlance, “live it up,” because it is the only restaurant in town that has a dance floor.
One of the things snobby girls’ boarding schools specialize in is equipping their pupils for the ballroom, and I love to dance. I wanted to be taken onto the dance floor by a man who knew how to dance, the sort of thing you see Fred Astaire doing with Ginger Rogers: the Hollywood version of what we call the foxtrot.
“Do the English use liniment?” Griff asked.
“I think we use liniment on horses, and embrocation on humans. But I expect they amount to the same thing. What’s in liniment?”
“Menthol usually, and wintergreen—which is what might have made Audrey think of camphor. I would say that the smell of either or both is what she’s remembering.” He turned to the waiter and ordered two gin and tonics—with ice.
“It doesn’t sound very much like the sort of thing one of your fellow pilots would use if he was courting.”
“Pilots?” He frowned.
“I think I’m safe in saying that no one in Little Buffenden, or anywhere else around here, could, or would, send a dozen red roses to Audrey. So, they were probably from an American. An American with the first name of Bill. I read it on the card to Audrey, the one from whoever sent those roses.”
He whistled, and his eyes narrowed. “Bill? There’s only one Bill up at the base. Bill Peterson.”
I remembered an evening at the Rose and Crown. Bill Peterson, massively tall, Nordicly blond and nice-looking, in a sort of Labrador retriever kind of way, had said that he was dating a wonderful woman who could not be kept waiting. “Bill Peterson is courting Audrey!” Bill Peterson was an exceptionally good-natured man: well-mannered and kindly. I was so pleased for Audrey, I sounded quite triumphant.
His answer horrified me. “Who said Bill was courting?” He laughed, the sort of laugh that men make when they are with their male friends. “Sounds like he was looking to have a good time to me—in Bart’s Field in the old lambing hut.”
His answer was so offhand, and at the same time so revealing, that I was not only shocked; I was angry. “A good time—with a girl who happens to be one of the most vulnerable people I know?” I snapped.
I have no idea why I was so angry with Griff; after all, he knew Bill better than I did, and if Bill Peterson was a carefree womanizer, it didn’t reflect on Audrey, only on him. But I felt in the way he said those words that he was being dismissive—dismissive of a girl who had gone out of her way to be attractive, a girl who had been laughed at, ridiculed in our village as Big Audrey. And who was now dating an American officer who had referred to her as “wonderful.” I also hated to hear that offhand and rather crude phrase on the lips of a man I was hopelessly in love, or maybe now just infatuated, with.
He reached a placatory hand across the table to take mine. But I wasn’t having it. I put both my hands in my lap. Childish, I know, but I was genuinely shocked. A gin and tonic was put in front of me, without ice, and I took a tentative sip. It was awful. The tonic made it taste terribly sweet in a bitter sort of way, and the smell of warm gin was nauseating. I put it down and stared down at the cloth.
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Poppy. Of course he was out to have a good time. I don’t think we mean it quite the way the English do, by the way. I wasn’t being disrespectful; really, I wasn’t. It’s just that Bill has always had lots of girls hanging on his arm. He’s one of nature’s flirts.”
For some reason this made me even more angry. “And he couldn’t possibly be in love with someone like Audrey.”
“Of course he could.” He didn’t sound too convinced.
Our waiter brought sardines on toast as an hors d’oeuvre, but I was so angry I could barely bring myself to eat them. Were we English girls just something to pass the time with to these worldly men who spoke our language but always seemed to mean something else? And if we were not
prepared to “give them a good time,” was one of them capable of whacking us over the head or strangling us with their gift of stockings?
And what was worse, had I mistaken Griff’s attentiveness to our investigation as interest in me when he was only trying to find out whether the Little Buffenden Strangler was an American, or which one of us was interested in spying on his precious bloody airfield?
They say that lack of self-confidence can make for suspicion and doubt. I picked up my knife and fork and stared down at my greasy sardines, too miserable to eat. It was as if the members of the band understood my misery, because they launched into “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”
“Will you put your knife and fork down and dance with me—please, Poppy?” I looked up and saw his face across the table: his hazel eyes glowing, his smile persuasive. “C’mon. Let’s shelve this mystery for a while and do what everyone else does these days. Let’s dance and pretend we haven’t a care in the world. After all, you say to-mah-toes and I say to-may-ters, so this tune is meant for us.”
And for every other American serviceman looking to have a good time with some little girl from an English village, I couldn’t help thinking, as he got up and came around to the back of my chair and helped me to my feet. As we joined other couples on the dance floor, I made a supreme effort to push away my doubts and relax. It was so easy to follow him, because Griff O’Neal is a natural dancer.
* * *
—
IT WAS THE smell of camphor that woke me up the next morning, long before dawn. Not the actual smell but the realization that it was not only Mrs. Glossop who fills her chest of drawers with mothballs; there are other dedicated camphor and embrocation users in our village too.
Our vicar liberally slathers on lashings of the stuff for his cricket knee when the weather is damp and chilly. Mr. Angus, our butcher, uses something similar throughout the winter months for a stiff shoulder. Even Len Smith, who found Doreen under his churchyard hedge, uses wintergreen on his back after a long day in the garden. Lumbago, old cricket injuries, tennis elbow, a wrenched shoulder from hacking up raw meat: embrocation users in the British Isles at this time of year must be endless in their numbers.