What Tomorrow Brings

by Mary Fitzgerald

  ‘Charlie,’ I started, when he interrupted me. ‘Look,’ he hissed, ‘we’ve gathered another watcher.’ Pretending to look for interesting shots of the trees and the river, I swung my camera around and looked through the viewfinder. Two men were walking slowly behind us but, as my lens rested on them, they stopped, turned their faces away and conjured up a conversation. It would be impossible for me to escape them, I knew that now, and looking around I realised that my imagined plan of slipping between the trees was stupid too. Most of them had lost their leaves and stood stark and bare and, even through the rain that was falling now, I would have been easily seen.

  ‘What’s that building?’ asked Charlie, pointing to what looked like a little eighteenth-century palace.

  ‘I think I read in my guidebook that it’s a museum.’

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie. He was turning up the collar of his trench coat. ‘We’ll get a couple of shots of that and then a taxi back to the hotel. I think we’ve got enough copy now.’

  While I was taking photos, I looked for Kitty, but there was no sign of her or her mother. In fact the whole park was almost deserted and I couldn’t help feeling relieved. If they hadn’t come, it was because they probably thought it too dangerous, and they would have been right. Our followers watched every move we made.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Charlie. ‘D’you know, Blake, even though I think we’ve got a good story to tell, I’ll be glad to get out of this place.’

  In the night as the train hurtled through the fields and forests of northern Germany I finally told Charlie of my plan to meet Kitty and her mother. ‘It was supposed to be by that museum in Monbijoupark, but they weren’t there.’

  ‘Thank Christ someone saw sense,’ he said. And that was all. ‘Now, Blake, where’s that dossier?’

  I sighed. ‘Under my clothes. Next to my skin and getting a little sweaty. Must it stay there?’

  ‘Yes, it must. Until we get out of Germany. Then it can go into my bag. It does matter, you know. It might help your friends if what is being done to them is revealed to the world.’

  Chapter Eleven

  London, spring 1938

  ‘I NEED TO talk to you,’ Charlie said one morning, perching on the corner of my desk. We were in the newspaper office where I now had my own corner in the foreign news department. Much to the annoyance of Monica Cathcart and her clique, I had been taken back on staff. Not as Monica’s slave, but as a bona fide junior reporter and Mr Bradford’s special assistant.

  ‘Well, we all know how you got the job,’ Monica had sneered one day in the pub, but though the spite in her voice raised a few giggles, it was not as many as she might have hoped.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I answered, more confident now. ‘The same way as you got yours?’ That shut her up, but not for long. She was a constant source of bad feeling and I think she once even went to the editor to demand that I be fired. She got a mouthful in return, and that added to her nastiness. After a while I learned to ignore her and got on with my job, and I loved it. Scouring the foreign press for snippets of news and reading dispatches from the press agencies was the stuff of my dreams. I had to collate them, then hand them over to the senior reporters, more often than not to Charlie. He went away again after Christmas, to Washington, DC, and I begged to go with him.

  He shook his head. ‘Not this time, Blake. I think you’d better stay in the office and learn your trade. Put together some small articles and see if Geoff will publish them. You know what to write, human interest based on solid information. The sort of stuff we did in Berlin.’

  Our Berlin report went down brilliantly and I was thrilled to see my name added, albeit in smaller letters, below Charlie’s byline. The photographs came out well, particularly the ones I’d taken of the graffiti and smashed-up shopfronts in Auguststrasse. They contrasted starkly with the magnificence of the Brandenburg Gate and the charming riverside scenes. I was proud of it and, knocking at his door, took the article to show Jacob.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, holding wide the door. He had a lovely flat, which always made me feel that I should take more interest in mine. Jacob’s was comfortably furnished, with deep carpets, plump, brightly coloured sofas and chairs, and small tables hosting elegant lamps and objets d’art. Paintings in gilt frames covered every wall; more traditional than the ones in Sarah’s flat, but equally displaying the family’s love of art.

  ‘I brought the newspaper to show you,’ I said, rather nervously. ‘It is an impression of life in Berlin today. I hope we got it right.’

  Jacob smiled. ‘We have seen it, dear Seffy, have we not, Willi?’ The little dog gave a yelp and thumped its tail against Jacob’s belly. It seemed to approve. ‘Your article was much talked about at the synagogue the other day and I was so happy to tell them that you are my friend. You did well.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I smiled and then I said, ‘Oh, Jacob, I wish I’d been able to persuade Sarah and Kitty to leave Berlin. It’s not a good place for them any more. You can’t imagine how horrible it is close to Auguststrasse. Many people are leaving and Kitty would love to, but Sarah . . .’ I shrugged. ‘She thinks things will get better. I’m sure they won’t.’

  His face was sad as he stroked Willi’s smooth little head. ‘No, they won’t, Seffy. But my sister has always been a stubborn girl and her memories of Felix are still so very strong. I tell her, remember him, of course. He’s there, in your head, already. You don’t need the place.’

  ‘They kept the money, though,’ I said, trying to cheer him up. ‘So, when she’s ready, they’ll be able to come.’

  ‘I hope it’s soon enough.’

  He drew me into his flat and made me sit while he prepared a cup of coffee for me. It tasted so like the coffees I’d had in Berlin that I was back there, looking at the grand buildings and watching out for the SS. I thought of Amyas, who had been there too, and wondered where he was.

  ‘So, dear Seffy. How are you, now?’

  I smiled. ‘I’m well. I’ve got my job back and I’m happy. I love being at the newspaper.’

  ‘Good,’ Jacob nodded. ‘We were worried for you, before, Willi and me.’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ I reassured him.

  I was. I’d got over the terrible grief of losing Amyas and our child. I knew that I would always love him, but now I could be more rational about it and accept that he wouldn’t love me in the same way. We had a connection that would never be broken. In a way, I was almost happy with the situation. I had a life now, a working life, and that’s what I’d always wanted. So I meant what I said. ‘I’m fine,’ I repeated.

  I’d spent Christmas alone in my flat except for having Jacob and Willi for dinner on Boxing Day. Jacob talked about the old days in Berlin while I told him about our house in Cornwall. ‘You can wake up in the morning and the first thing you see when you get out of bed is the Atlantic Ocean. It’s glorious.’ Then, I half whispered, ‘I fell in love there.’

  ‘And he let you down.’ Jacob reached across the table and patted my hand.

  I blushed. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. ‘Yes, I suppose so, but . . .’ I shrugged. ‘That’s over.’ I got up and took a bottle of brandy from the sideboard. ‘Let’s have a drink, Jacob and remember the good times.’

  In the new year, I’d met Xanthe for tea. She’d come home with von Klausen for the Suffolk house party, but he’d gone back to Germany after that. ‘He had to join his wife in their schloss for Christmas,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it tiresome of her? It seems she put her foot down.’ She squealed a giggle, causing the other people having tea at the Ritz to look round. ‘I bet that foot is a size ten.’

  I gave her a ‘be quiet’ scowl and she returned to delicately pulling apart a cucumber sandwich, rejecting the tiny amount of bread in favour of the tiny amount of cucumber. Then she gave up eating altogether and lit yet another cigarette, putting it into a tortoiseshell holder. After taking a deep lungful and blowing out the smoke, she looked around to see if she could see anyone she knew
.

  ‘How was the house party?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, fun, darling. Such fun. Wolf fitted in wonderfully and made great friends. Binkie’s cousin, can’t remember his name, is at the Foreign Office and he took Wolf there for the day to have a look round. They became good pals and Wolf said he’d enjoyed himself enormously.’

  I bet he did, I thought, and prayed that Binkie’s stupid cousin hadn’t shown von Klausen too much. ‘So what are you up to now?’ I wasn’t really interested. Xanthe’s comings and goings were always an endless round of events so outside my realm of interest that we could have been born on different planets.

  ‘I’m going back to Berlin next month. I’ve taken a suite at the Adlon. Then Monte in June. Binkie’s taken a villa there for the season and I’m to be his special guest.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, almost shocked. ‘Are you sleeping with him too?’

  Her tinkling laugh echoed across the room. ‘Don’t be silly, darling. We’re friends, good friends. And I’m not sleeping with him. Not really. Anyway . . .’ she adjusted her little mink pillbox hat and stood up. ‘I have to go. I’m meeting Mummy for cocktails at the Savoy. Shall I give her your love?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother.’ Although I was curious; it wasn’t like Mother to have cocktails. What had come over her?

  The maître d’ clicked his fingers and Xanthe’s mink coat arrived, which she shrugged over the shoulders of her cream wool suit. She looked exquisite, as always. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she added, pulling on her gloves. ‘There was a bit of a to-do in Berlin before I left. That Amyas friend of yours disappeared and that common little person was all over the place looking for him.’

  ‘Really? What happened?’ My stomach was rising into my chest but I tried to give the impression that I didn’t care. I think she bought it.

  ‘No idea,’ Xanthe said. ‘I left the next day. Bye.’

  I sat alone at the table for five minutes, trying to calm down. Where was he? Why had he left? Had something dreadful happened to him? Xanthe had been talking about an event that had happened two months ago and it was quite possible that he was back with Mrs Cartwright now, for if Amyas had wanted to come to me here in London he knew where to find me.

  And he hadn’t.

  A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, there was a knock at my door. When I opened it I was confronted by the small, overdressed figure of Elvira Cartwright. While I was still gaping at her she pushed past me into my flat.

  ‘I know the bugger isn’t here,’ she said flatly. ‘Because I’ve had you watched these last two months. Everything you’ve done’s been reported back to me. But you might have had a letter or a phone call. And I want to know.’

  ‘How dare you have me followed.’ I was spitting with fury. ‘I’ll report you to the police.’

  ‘Tit for tat, young woman.’ She wagged her finger at me. ‘Your mam had me watched, didn’t she, eh? Elvira Cartwright never forgets. Where is he, then? Where’s my boy?’

  ‘If you mean Amyas, I don’t know. Why should I?’ My heart was beating fast and I struggled to keep the wobble out of my voice. ‘Maybe he’s had an accident?’ I could hardly bring myself to say those last words.

  She scowled. ‘He’s had no bloody accident. He’s gone, hasn’t he. Taken all his clothes and the money and the jewellery I had in the hotel safe. The bugger’s done a flit.’

  I stared at her, not knowing what to say. It was typical Amyas. So completely without morals that he took what he wanted, whether it was love or property. Unable to stop myself I burst out laughing: the thought of him emptying the safe and making off with this horrible woman’s money and jewellery was utterly delicious.

  Mrs Cartwright went white with fury and raised a hand as though to hit me, but instead grasped the heavy gold chains about her neck, her eyes looking daggers at me.

  ‘I haven’t seen him or heard from him,’ I said, and tried to keep up the pretence that I’d only met him briefly. ‘There’s no reason why I should have.’

  ‘Come off it,’ Mrs Cartwright snarled, and for the first time since barging in took a moment to glance around my living room. ‘By God,’ she said. ‘What a dump. I can see why Amyas wouldn’t come here. Whatever else he is, he knows a bit of classy furniture. I spent good brass on my house and it looks it, too.’ She directed her malevolent gaze back to me. ‘I know what went on in Cornwall. You’re a bit of a trollop when all’s said and done and he’s nothing more than a randy tomcat.’ She reached up and adjusted the fur tippet draped around her shoulders, so that the fox’s evil face was staring at me. It was not unlike her own. ‘But listen here, young woman,’ she spat, ‘he’s my tomcat and even if he did pinch my stuff, I want him back. And I’ll get him. Make no mistake.’

  ‘I think you’d better leave.’ I’d had more than enough of Mrs Cartwright.

  ‘Aye, I’ll go. But if you see him, you tell him that the jewellery is paste. The real stuff is in the bank.’ She laughed sourly, showing her small yellowed teeth. ‘He’ll get nowt for it.’

  After she’d gone I sat in the chair by the window and thought about Amyas. He was such a bastard, but I didn’t care. And I laughed again. He would know as well as she that the jewellery was fake. The thing was, would the person he sold it to?

  Over the next few weeks, I waited for him to come, listening for the late night knock at my door and answering my few phone calls with a thumping heart, in case it was him. Once, on a rainy afternoon, I thought I saw him walking on the opposite pavement in Fleet Street and I dashed across the road, but the man disappeared into a building and was lost.

  Stop it, I told myself. He’ll come to you in his own time. Get on with your life. And so I did.

  I loved my job and worked hard to learn all that I could and when Charlie perched on my desk one day, I was ready for whatever he wanted.

  ‘I’m going back to Spain,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ I replied, my mind working overtime with the organisation of tickets, press passes and getting myself geared up to do any research he required. ‘What d’you need from me?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said, his eyes smiling behind his rimless glasses. ‘Let me see. First, I need you, Blake. You’re coming with me.’

  I was excited and struggled to keep a cool head. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Shall I get tickets for Madrid?’

  ‘Hold hard, Blake.’ He slid off the desk and pulling over a chair, sat beside me. ‘We’re going a different route. I was thrown out last time I was there, my reports got back to them and they didn’t like it. Either side. So this time my plan is to follow someone who is joining the International Brigade. That means we go to Paris first. I want to discover something about the organisers – who they are, what makes them tick – and that means I have to get close. What d’you think?’

  ‘I think it’s a splendid idea, but where do I come in?’

  ‘Well, think about this. We go to Paris together, you rent a room or something and I join up for the Brigade. I’ll get information out to you and you can dispatch it back to the paper, or maybe collate it for an article . . . I haven’t worked it out entirely, yet.’

  ‘But what happens when they send you to Spain?’

  ‘I’ll go along with it. I’ll go on whichever route they send me and you can follow, as a reporter, of course. I want you to go as far as the border and then hang around for my dispatches, if and when I can get them out. You’ll have your press pass so you’ll be safe in France.’ He gave me one of his twinkly-eyed smiles. ‘You up for it?’

  I grinned. ‘Of course I am. When do we start?’

  Over the next few days, Charlie and I planned our expedition. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the war in Spain has been going on for nearly three years now and, from what I gather, the Brigade are beginning to wind down. I might not be accepted but I’m going to try.’ He frowned. ‘I should have done this before, but better late than never. I must find out about the people and the organisation, so . . . when we get to Paris, we’ll par
t company. Apparently the taxi drivers are mostly left wing and know where the recruitment office is so will take men who ask there. I’ve done a bit of research . . . yes, I know that’s your job, but anyway there is a bar very close to the Gare Saint-Lazare, where some of the recruits and the recruiters go. If you can get a room nearby, then we could meet and I’ll give you what I’ll have learned.’

  When we arrived in Paris I watched him go and then made my way to the rue Saint-Lazare, where I took the room in the bar that Charlie had mentioned.

  Monsieur Heulin, who owned the bar, was curious. ‘An Englishwoman wanting to stay here? It is strange.’

  ‘I want to tell the readers of my paper about the real Parisians. Everyone’s written about the artists and the poets, I want to write about the people, the ones who actually live and die in the city. My editor is looking for something different.’

  He rubbed a hand over his blue chin and pursed his lips. I knew he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t really care, so he reached in the till and took out the key to one of his upstairs rooms. ‘You will have Antoinette and Simone as neighbours. They’re quiet girls and they won’t bother you. They work at night.’ This last was accompanied by a wink and a suggestive waggle of his hand.

  As I went up the greasy back stairs to the room I smiled to myself. I was living above a cheap bar with a couple of prostitutes for neighbours. What would Mother think? It couldn’t have been more different from my previous foreign assignment in the Hotel Adlon. The room was tiny and smelled of the rubbish that was piled in bins beneath the window. I had a bed, a lamp and a couple of hooks on the wall to hang my clothes, and behind a bead curtain there was a lavatory and a shower cubicle. But, sitting on the bed with the typewriter on my knee, I was happy.

  I’d been there only a day when Monsieur Heulin knocked on my door. ‘I need a waitress, someone to watch the place when I go out. I can pay just a few francs. Are you interested?’ he asked.

  I was going to say no, but then I realised that if Charlie came in I’d be able to talk to him without a problem. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a go.’