by Alan Bardos
‘She’s going to Venice?’ Johnny almost laughed. It was typical of Libby to go somewhere like that, in the middle of a war.
‘Yes, I have been instructed that she is to transfer directly to the Milan train, when we terminate in Turin. From there she will be travelling to Venice as her final destination.’ The Conductor said, in a professional tone. No one should question his knowledge of his passengers.
‘I say, that is most awfully decent of you to tell me.’ Johnny fished around in his pocket for a tip and realised that he didn’t have any money.
‘Please, that is not necessary, just return to your carriage without any further antics.’
Chapter 10
The grand Art Nouveau entrance hall to Turin station hummed with a thousand passengers, swarming under its red and white arches. Johnny picked up a discarded ticket and fell further behind Fitzmaurice, who was hobbling along as fast as he could over the marble floor.
‘Stop dawdling, Swift, we must be back in time for our connection,’ Fitzmaurice shouted over his shoulder. Johnny allowed himself to be swallowed by a wave of commuters and watched as Fitzmaurice hurried out. Then he shoulder-charged his way out of the crowd and retraced his steps back through the station, past an arcade of shops and showed the ticket he’d picked up to an attendant at the barrier.
‘I’m sorry, signore, the old man I’m travelling with has forgotten one of his cases. Do you mind if I nip back and get it?’ Johnny said, playing the hapless Englishman abroad.
The attendant held his hands up indifferently and Johnny slipped through. There was no sign of Fitzmaurice. He collected his valise from left luggage and followed the main concourse until he found the platform for the Milan train.
He checked the time of the train and swore, it wasn’t due to leave for another two hours. There was little choice but to keep out of sight and wait. Johnny was confident that he could evade Fitzmaurice in a crowded station this size, assuming Fitzmaurice had it in him to pursue Johnny.
He spent a boring couple of hours wandering around the station. Half an hour after the Milan train had meant to depart, Johnny saw the unmistakable figure of Lady Elizabeth Smyth. Perfectly sculpted into the best couture Paris could offer and wearing a large burgundy hat, with a violet band. She was, as always, supervising an army of admiring porters, struggling with her baggage.
‘Hello, Libby, how have you been?’ Johnny asked as he reached her, effecting his most nonchalant smile.
She gave him the disdainful look of a woman bored with unfaltering male interest.
‘Lady Smyth, is this person disturbing you?’ a stubbly porter asked.
‘No, I’m bloody well not,’ Johnny said and turned back to Libby. ‘I’ve followed you halfway around Europe, the least you could do is acknowledge me.’
‘Oh, really, that is just too much,’ Libby said in an exasperated tone that Johnny knew and loved.
‘We will deal with this pest, Lady Smyth.’ The porter held his hand out to Johnny. ‘May we see your ticket, signore?’
Johnny began to get annoyed. ‘Ticket? Of course I don’t have a ticket, I’m with the lady.’
‘The lady is not to be disturbed under any circumstance.’ The porter signalled to his colleagues and they began to circle Johnny, in a well drilled formation.
‘That’s quite alright, Mario, I am acquainted with this… person,’ Libby said.
‘We have had instructions that no one is to disturb you, Lady Smyth,’ the porter replied.
Libby handed the porter some notes. ‘Look, take this and let him accompany me onto the train. He is actually my secretary.’ Libby sighed wistfully. ‘I can assure you that he is of no threat to my honour. He has difficulties of a medical nature, which my husband is well aware of.’
The porter took the money and smirked at Johnny. Then said something in harsh Italian slang that Johnny couldn't catch, and the other porters laughed.
Johnny bristled. There was only so much a chap could take. ‘Now, look here, I’ve bothered that Lady more times than… ‘
‘Do shut up and get on the train, imbecile,’ Libby hissed and pointed at the First-Class carriage. Johnny scowled, but did as he was told, amidst further laughter from the porters.
Libby's compartment was palatial in comparison to the cramped cubbyhole Johnny had shared with Fitzmaurice. As usual her bunk had been prepared in case she felt one of her ‘heads’ coming on.
Johnny lost no time opening a bottle of something bubbly that had been left on ice and soothed away the humiliation Libby had inflicted on him. ‘I can’t believe you said that to the porters...’ Johnny trailed off under Libby’s withering stare.
‘I had to tell them something to explain why a married woman would have a strapping young man like you in her compartment,’ Libby said, taking his glass away and throwing it out of the window.
‘You think that I’m strapping?’
‘Johnny, you really are the most puerile person,’ Libby said and poured the rest of the bottle away.
‘I’m not too puerile for you to risk having in your compartment, though,’ Johnny said.
‘Yes that was a momentary lapse in judgment.’ Libby glared, in what Johnny hoped was a sign of affection. ‘You can, after all be quite diverting.’
‘Diverting? You don’t seem very surprised to see me, Libby.’
‘No? Well, I did ask George to save you from the firing squad. I presume it’s something to do with that.’ Libby spoke as if it was an everyday occurrence.
‘Yes, I’m quite shocked that you did that. I suppose the world would be a much duller place for you without me in it. Or why else would you…’
‘Johnny, please, detail bores me,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘I must say, it was rather presumptuous of you to have someone write to me like that and expect me to kowtow before my husband.’
Johnny grinned at the idea of her kowtowing before anyone. ‘Yes, sorry about that, it was a bit of a misunderstanding actually. I hadn’t meant for my corporal to write to you at all.’
‘I beg your pardon, you didn’t even want my help?’ Libby reddened and stood up.
‘Sorry, I meant I didn't think that you would help me. After the last letter you wrote to me. It was pretty unequivocal,’ Johnny said.
‘Oh, Johnny, do stop wallowing in self-pity, you know I live in the here and now. One can say many things about you, Johnny, but you were never self-indulgent. That would require depths of understanding for which you are not capable.’
‘Actually, you mistake me, Lady Smyth. The only thing I’ve been wallowing in is the memory of our previous train journey. And since we’re here, maybe we should wallow in that together…’ Johnny trailed off. He was out of practice and had been too literal. Libby rolled her eyes.
‘At last, yes please. After all that drivel, I was starting to wonder if the war had actually blunted your sword.’ She pouted. ‘You can still perform, can’t you? You haven’t been wounded or gone lame, after all the money I gave the porters?’
‘I’m sure her ladyship will find me to be in satisfactory working order,’ Johnny said cupping her face in his hands.
‘I expect a damned sight more than satisfactory.’
Johnny pulled her towards him and kissed her lightly on the lips and moved his hand down the back of her dress, searching for the fastenings.
‘Ouch, what are you doing now?’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Johnny said, resisting the urge not the rip the thing off her.
‘Oh, you’re quite useless.’ Libby pushed him away and neatly removed her dress, revealing a violet taffeta chemise that matched the ink of the letter she’d sent him.
With all the preliminaries achieved and his passage secured, Johnny was able to relax and glory in the moment. The way things were going he doubted that he’d have many more. Libby lay in his arms, briefly appeased, but he knew that it was just the quiet before the storm returned.
He buried his face in her thick honey blonde hair
and was disappointed to find that it didn't smell of disinfectant. 'You smell like a summer meadow.'
'And you stink of soil and cheap brandy,' she murmured.
Johnny was slightly hurt but supposed it must be true. Staff Nurse Lee-Perkins had done her best to clean him up, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd taken a bath.
He moved his hand over Libby's long tapering body, to her small, pink breasts. Everything about her had the utmost economy and the least amount of excess. Anything else would simply have been gauche. She was quite different from his bouncy Staff Nurse, and he adapted his new line appropriately. 'I thought women like you only existed in the imagination of classical sculptors.'
‘That sounds like something you've said before,’ Libby purred. 'But I quite like it, you never used to be so fanciful.'
‘That’s what happens when you spend months in a muddy ditch, dreaming of this moment. I want to be as familiar and as expert with your body as I am with my rifle.’ Johnny was pretty sure he hadn't used that line before.
‘How charming.'
‘I need to remember you as you are, every inch of you, every blemish, every mole, every hair, each tells the story of this moment.’
‘I’m not Braille.’ Libby sounded amused by the idea, then her voice almost softened. ‘So you will go back then?’
‘I have to…’ Johnny felt queasy at the idea, but he couldn’t see what else he could do.
‘You can’t go back to your regiment, you’ll be shot,’ she said, turning to look at him.
‘No, well, I was thinking about joining the French Foreign Legion,’
‘That doesn’t really sound like much of a plan, Johnny.’
‘I don’t know what else to do, I have a duty. I’ll get off at the next station and make my way back to France somehow. Could you lend me some money?’
‘Really, I find that most insulting. Here we are naked in bed together, living the moment you have apparently been dreaming of for months and you don’t know what else to do apart from run off!’
Johnny could feel her hand urgently running up the inside of his thigh and whatever he’d been talking of was lost on the winds of lust.
Johnny felt at peace for the first time in months, as their train chugged its way across the Venice causeway. The winter sun reflected on the lagoon around them, burning off the early morning mist and picking out murky greens and blues in the water.
They alighted the train and were greeted by a light snow and the usual swarm of porters. One of them even snatched Johnny’s valise out of his hand.
Johnny held Libby’s arm and guided her through the pillared platform and out onto a large piazza in front of the station. Mist hung over the doom of a spectacular church on the opposite side of a large canal, which was lined with a collection of elegantly decaying renaissance and medieval palaces.
The smell of the sea and the sound of screaming gulls reminded Johnny of his childhood seaside holidays in Wales. He looked at Libby. Venice to him was a seductive blonde and the promise of carefree nights, gliding through moonlight canals in this fairy tale city.
The porters had hailed one of the teaming gondolas and Johnny moved down the station steps towards them, with Libby.
‘You’re a slippery bastard aren’t you, Swift?’ A soft Irish brogue stopped Johnny in his tracks. Fitzmaurice was standing in front of him.
‘Fitzy, have you followed me all the way here?’ Johnny went to push past him and found a revolver stuck in his guts.
‘I’ve told you, I do not appreciate being addressed in that manner,’ Fitzmaurice said, and for a sick man, he could put a lot of bile into his words.
Two men grabbed Johnny’s arms before he could knock the pistol aside. Fitzmaurice sneered, ‘You needn’t have run off like that, you could have come along for the pilgrimage and still made our connection. We were all travelling on the same train. As it is, I dread to think how far behind you are on your Turkish. Call yourself a scholar of languages?’
A cold wind blew maliciously through the piazza and Johnny looked at Libby, not believing it to be true. He’d allowed himself to be tricked by her. ‘You planned all this. Doesn’t anything matter to you?’
‘Oh, Johnny, really. George needed a way of ensuring you stayed on the train.’ Libby smiled enigmatically. He’d been beguiled by her, again, and now she was casting him out of paradise. ‘It is not as if you’ve been living a blameless life, not if the scratches down your back are anything to go by. Don't presume that this was anything more than it was.'
‘I can’t believe Sir George would use you like that,’ Johnny said.
‘The using was my idea, a little treat to start my hols, since you turned up on my doorstep, so to speak.’ Libby smiled.
‘Sir George knows you well enough, one glimpse of his wife and you’d stay put and go wherever he needed you. Which is with us, now come on, these good men have waited for you long enough.’ Fitzmaurice indicated the two men holding Johnny.
‘I trust I can rely on your discretion, gentlemen,’ Libby said, pointing at Johnny as if he were a stray dog they were going to put down. ‘Now I’ve delivered him to you.’
‘Lady Smyth, we would never betray your confidence,’ Fitzmaurice said mortified at the very idea.
Johnny slowly allowed himself to be pulled down the rest of the station steps, towards a waiting motor launch.
Chapter 11
‘Do pay attention, Swift.’ Johnny ignored Fitzmaurice and pushed his plate away.
They’d spent half the day steaming across the Adriatic in a passenger ferry, every turn of its screws taking him further away from his obligations and into Sir George’s pipe dream.
‘We’ve stood you a bottle of wine, the least you could do is listen,’ Fitzmaurice said in his grating Irish brogue.
Johnny’s listlessness wasn't helped by his travelling companions, who’d arranged for a passable lunch to be served in their cabin and had spent the entire meal discussing the fact that Johnny had ordered wine.
‘Did we really delay our departure for this drunken sot?’ Eady, one of the men who’d accosted Johnny outside Venice Station, asked. ‘If this wasn't a forlorn hope before, it surely is now!’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll be in Athens with enough time to conduct the negotiations,’ Fitzmaurice said.
‘Hardly,’ Whittall, the other man from Venice station, snapped. ‘It’s February already, the fireworks are bound to begin in a few weeks.’
‘Do you actually think that this thing will work?’ Johnny asked, finishing the wine.
‘We wouldn’t expect someone who places himself at the whim of a woman to understand the intricacies of diplomacy,’ Fitzmaurice said, making it clear that he thought that to be the worst thing any man could do, and it finally broke Johnny’s indifference.
‘I’ve fought for my country and I mean to go back. I owe it to my men, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.’
Fitzmaurice looked at the other two. ‘So there is more to him after all.' He grimaced at Johnny. ‘Now listen to me, Swift, you can do far more for the men at the front with us, than you ever could if you went back.’
‘You actually believe that we can bribe the Turks into abandoning the war?’ Johnny asked dryly.
‘It’s worth a try, dear boy,’ Whittall said languidly. ‘I was a merchant banker in the Ottoman Empire for many a year and I can tell you that there’s nothing the Young Turks leadership needs more than money. The country is just about bankrupt, fighting another war will finish them off.’
‘That will be the thrust of our attack,’ Eady said. ‘There are currently three people in the Turkish Government who wield enough power and influence to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The first, Cemal Pasha, is currently in Egypt trying to take the Suez Canal from us. So we don’t need to concern ourselves with him. The second Enver Pasha, the Minister of War is the most prominent of the Young Turks.’
‘Enver’s a slippery customer. His father was a bridg
e-keeper, his mother an Albanian peasant who laid out the dead. Now he’s a minister and thinks he's some kind of reincarnation of Napoleon and Frederick the Great,’ Fitzmaurice jeered. ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit.
‘The swine seized my house and vandalised six of my Aubusson tapestries,’ Whittall added bitterly.
‘Enver is a lost cause as far as we’re concerned. He’s enamoured with all things German and dragged Turkey into the war, without the full support of his Government in his quest for glory,’ Eady explained. He reminded Johnny of Laszlo Breitner, a Hungarian civil servant he’d met in Sarajevo, who was as precise as he was ruthless.
‘Our third and best choice is Talat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior. He’s an opportunist who will go with whoever’s most convenient to his purpose. He is also said to be resentful of the number of posts that have been given to Germans in the Ottoman Army. It is that division which we intend to exploit. Playing Talat's opportunism and resentment off against Enver's dreams of military greatness.'
‘It all sounds very plausible,’ Johnny said, finally feeling some drive. This was really a chance. If what they said was true, he could actually help to end the war.
‘I'm so glad you approve, Swift,' Whittall said with a hint of sarcasm. 'We will conduct the negotiations, using you as a point of contact between ourselves and our intermediary. Fitzmaurice organised a network of spies when he was at the Embassy in Constantinople and they will be keeping an eye on things.’
'No doubt my people will have to pick up the pieces when you make a hash of things,' Fitzmaurice barked.
‘When we dock in Greece, Fitzmaurice, Whittall and I will make our way to Athens. You will be sent onto Salonika. From there you will take the train through Serbia to Bulgaria and then onto Constantinople.’
'You can take the train straight to Constantinople?' Johnny asked.
'Our friend Eady here was a civil engineer on the Berlin to Baghdad Railway and he assures us that one can,' Whittall said, turning to Eady.