‘He won’t mind the cold,’ Kitty said. ‘Berlin is cold in the winter.’ She read the letter again. ‘He says he is with lots of other people. Many Germans and some of them are Jewish. They are not badly treated and get food, three times a day. He’s organised a chess club.’
‘Does he know when he’ll come home?’
Kitty shook her head. ‘No. But he does say that some people have been released already, so he has hope.’
‘Good.’ I smiled at her. ‘We’ll keep our fingers crossed.’
‘Fingers crossed?’
‘It’s just an expression . . . of hope.’
Hope was in short supply those following weeks. Our troops were retreating towards the sea in the face of an onslaught by the powerful and well-equipped German army, and one day we heard requests on the wireless for men with small boats to cross the Channel and take our men off the beaches at a place called Dunkirk. It hardly seemed possible that we could have been defeated so comprehensively, but as the news filtered through, we marvelled at the courage of the sailors of that flotilla. They had braved constant bombardment, over and over again, to get as close to the shore as possible and to pull on board our exhausted soldiers and deliver them to the larger ships lying offshore. In the end we looked on it as some sort of victory, although it wasn’t. I knew Charlie had been with the British Expeditionary Force and worried constantly about whether he’d managed to get to a ship.
Less than two weeks later, Paris fell, without a bomb being dropped on its beautiful buildings, and the German army marched triumphantly through the streets, watched by stunned and sullen Parisians. Wilf got out just before all flights were halted and came into the office looking rattled. His usual bonhomie was dented.
‘The French government collapsed,’ he said, sitting down heavily in the chair next to mine. ‘Their army was in disarray and has now dispersed.’
‘What about that government?’ asked Geoff who was standing beside us. ‘Who’s heading what’s left of it now? What will they do next?’
‘They’re about to surrender completely. Old Marshal Pétain is convinced that signing an armistice is the right thing to do, but Laval, his deputy, wants to ally with the Jerries. I think Pétain will sack him, but he has followers. And then there are others who want to fight on. They’ve set up a temporary government in Bordeaux.’ Wilf frowned and lit another cigarette. ‘Pétain and his gang are a bunch of bloody traitors, in my opinion.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ Geoff chewed on the stem of his pipe. ‘Get as much as you can on them, who they are, etc. and write a piece, as soon as. And, Miss Blake, I want you to find out about one of the young ministers who is opposed to Pétain. He’s a general, I believe.’ He thought for a moment and then clicked his dusty, pipe-stained fingers. ‘That’s it . . . General de Gaulle.’
I met de Gaulle a few weeks later. He’d escaped to England and was setting up a government in exile. When I was shown into the office he’d been given in Whitehall, I was confronted by a man who towered over me and appeared to be rather distrustful of the British. But he was polite and ready to talk about his plans for a Free French army and a series of broadcasts on the BBC. We spoke in French, which I think he appreciated; indeed, he complimented me on my ability. ‘Most of your compatriots have no feel for our language,’ he said in his sharp, northern French accent. ‘The British are so arrogant they think everyone should learn English.’
I didn’t answer. I could think of nothing diplomatic to say. He was possibly the most arrogant man I’d ever met.
And then, in the same week, both Jacob and Charlie came home. Jacob came first, on a Sunday afternoon, looking strained and dishevelled after an upsetting ferry crossing and the crowded train journey from Liverpool. Kitty threw herself into his arms and Willi did little bouncing jumps around Jacob’s legs, yapping with joy.
‘I present no danger to the British people,’ sighed Jacob, sinking into his chair and taking the little dog on to his knee. ‘I have been told by the authorities and have a certificate to prove it.’ He rested his head on his hand and wearily closed his eyes. I noticed that the grey cardigan he wore under his jacket had a food stain down the front and that his shirt was grubby around the collar. It was so unlike Jacob, who always took such great care with his appearance.
‘Jacob,’ I said, moving towards the door. ‘I’m going to leave you now. But when you’ve had a rest, you must tell me all about it. What it was like. Who was there. I’ll write an article for the paper.’
He opened his eyes. ‘Yes, dear Seffy. It should be told, for it was most unfair. I must tell you that I met no one who was a danger. Most of us are people who have lived here for years. Some of my companions were people who were born here. People with German names whose parents had left twenty, thirty years ago. It is so hard to understand.’
‘Well, you’re home now. Get used to being a free man and then we’ll talk.’
Alice went home that evening, for the first time in weeks, and Marisol and I were alone. In the twilight, we sat on the sofa, she was turning the pages of a pop-up book that I’d found in the nursery at Summer’s Rest.
‘Be careful,’ I warned. ‘Don’t tear the pages.’
‘Farm,’ she said, scrambling off the sofa, and went to play with the wooden farm, which she loved. I watched her, smiling. She’d grown into a pretty little girl with wavy, dark brown hair and enormous, brown eyes. ‘Sheep,’ she squeaked, standing a wooden sheep at the door of the farmhouse. ‘Go inside.’
My mind drifted back to the remote shepherd’s hut in the Pyrenees and the dreadful night of Marisol’s birth. I thought of Elena staring at Amyas, as her lifeblood drained away on the dirt floor, and my eyes filled with tears. I got down on the rug beside Marisol and gave her a kiss.
Suddenly, our peace was disturbed by a soft knock on the door and, carrying Marisol, I went to open it.
‘Hello, Blake.’
It was Charlie, in a torn and dirty uniform, leaning against the door jamb and looking as though he hadn’t slept for a week.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him into the room. ‘Charlie! Where have you come from?’
‘For God’s sake, Blake. Where d’you think?’ He gave me an exasperated look. ‘France, you idiot.’
‘Yes, yes, I know that. But you missed the Dunkirk rescue. Where have you been all this time?’
‘Never mind that,’ he grunted. ‘Give me a kiss.’
We gave each other an awkward, heartfelt hug, with Marisol squashed between us. I was overjoyed to see him and I knew that he felt the same. ‘Mama.’ Marisol was trying to wriggle out of my grasp and I said ‘Sorry’ to Charlie and broke away.
He threw himself down on the sofa and, putting Marisol back on the floor, I hurried into the kitchen and returned with a couple of glasses of whisky. ‘Here,’ I said, pushing a glass into his hand, ‘drink this.’
He was watching Marisol as she arranged all the farm animals in a row. After a minute, she picked up a black and white cow and, standing, walked over to Charlie and put it in his hand. ‘Cow,’ she said solemnly. ‘For Dadda.’
He bent and gave her a cuddle, then looked up at me with eyes swimming with unshed tears. ‘Oh, Christ. This is the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.’
After I put Marisol to bed I came back into the living room to find that Charlie had closed his eyes too and I knew that I wasn’t going to get his story tonight. ‘Come on, Charlie,’ I said. ‘Go and get into bed. You look all in.’
‘I will, if you don’t mind,’ he muttered, dragging himself off the sofa. ‘Don’t think the old legs can hold me up much longer.’
He woke suddenly just after five o’clock in the morning, and sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Sergeant!’ he called urgently. ‘Get the men . . .’ His voice trailed off as he realised where he was and I put out a hand and pulled him back on to the pillows.
‘It’s all right,’ I said softly. ‘You’re safe.’ He turned his body into my arms and we lay
, not making love but getting comfort from the closeness.
‘We were cut off,’ he said, after a while. ‘My platoon. We were trapped behind an advancing Panzer division and we couldn’t get through to the embarkation area. God, it was hell. We hid as best we could, but the land all around that area is flat and the bombardment was terrible. In the end I decided we had to try and make it by ourselves and we headed south, down the coast until we came to a fishing village.’ He paused. ‘D’you remember that fishing village in Spain, the place where we got a boat to take us around the coast?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I nodded. ‘Cadaqués.’
‘Cadaqués.’ Charlie took a deep breath. ‘I kept thinking about the white houses there and the sun going down and how it would be a great place for a holiday in peacetime and d’you know, all that time, I couldn’t remember its name. Well, the village we found was nothing like that. It was barely ten houses and nobody would open the door to us. They were all terrified of the Germans. By that time my platoon was down to only twelve men. Some had been injured and we left them at a French convent; some had been captured. Anyway, in the end, we were lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ I queried. ‘How were you lucky?’
‘We met two French soldiers who said they weren’t about to give up, like so many of their compatriots had done. They went down to the harbour and stole the only fishing boat that was moored. “Come aboard,” they shouted and we did.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘The fisherman stood on the harbour wall screaming at us as we chugged away. I didn’t know what half the words meant, but the French soldiers did and just laughed.’
‘When did you get home?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday morning, about five o’clock we landed close to Chichester. Train journey to London – which I paid for with the money I had left in my wallet, for all my men and the two frogs – then debriefing, and here I am. With you. Which is where I’ve longed to be for weeks.’
I kissed him and we made love slowly and tenderly, as Charlie always did. He regarded making love as an expression of just that. It was never explosive or exciting or even, as it was with Amyas, magical, but in a way it was almost better. It meant something.
Marisol woke a little later and I got up. When Alice came in at eight she was surprised to see Charlie sitting at the kitchen table, watching Marisol feeding herself cereal. She had a piece of bacon in one hand which she’d pinched from Charlie’s plate.
‘Home then, Mr Charlie,’ Alice said, taking over the supervision from him and wiping away the dollops of milky rusk from Marisol’s face.
‘Yes, Alice. But I have to go, now.’ He looked up at me. ‘More debriefing and then down to Dorset. I’ll be back in London, though, in a couple of days.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ll do a show, what d’you think?’
‘Perhaps.’ He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘I’d better get moving. Bye, ladies.’ Marisol and I had kisses and Alice a friendly squeeze on the shoulder before he left.
‘He’s a gentleman,’ said Alice. ‘You could do a lot worse.’
When I told Geoff that Charlie was back from Dunkirk he gave one of his rare smiles. ‘Thank Christ,’ he said and vigorously banged out his pipe into his new metal ashtray. ‘Perhaps now he’ll come to his senses and settle down as a war correspondent.’
‘That would hardly be settling down,’ I laughed. ‘It could be just as dangerous as being in the army.’
‘You know what I mean, Miss Blake,’ Geoff frowned. ‘Don’t be difficult. Now, I need a piece about the foreign royal families who’ve escaped the Nazis and come to Britain. See if you can get an interview with any of them.’
I left his office knowing that I was being further sidelined. Writing about royal families wasn’t really what a good foreign correspondent should be doing. Geoff knew it and so did I. Wilf was gradually taking over Charlie’s role and even if I was regarded as a good journalist by many people, it appeared I was only good when Charlie was around. I should have been angrier than I was, but part of me was thinking how lovely Marisol looked and I was also thinking about Jacob and how pale and tired he’d been on his return from the Isle of Man. Had I lost my desire to strive for the top? I think I had and, what was worse, I didn’t really care. Still, I phoned around various contacts and spoke to the newspaper’s royal correspondent and wrote up what became a much-praised piece about Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, the King of Norway and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. I enjoyed writing it, I loved the different stories of how they’d escaped and could imagine how, with a little tweaking, it could make a fantastic piece of fiction.
‘You know, dear girl,’ said Wilf, ‘you’re a bloody good writer. My wife said that your piece was better than any of the stories she’s been reading lately. And she should know, she’s never out of that damned library.’
I laughed, pleased with his praise, and didn’t really mind when Geoff asked him to go to America to gauge opinion there.
When Charlie came back to London he took me out to dinner at the Café de Paris. Despite the war and the shortages that were beginning to bite hard, it was still a smart place. Those men who weren’t in uniform wore dinner jackets and the women either cocktail dresses or longer evening frocks.
I found a pale lilac dress in my wardrobe, and I’d been to the hairdresser, who’d made a valiant effort to shape my hair into a victory roll, but failed dismally. Instead she found a black velvet Alice band and deftly arranged my hair around that. It looked good. Charlie had said as much when he came to pick me up. ‘You’re very glamorous tonight,’ he grinned. ‘An absolute knockout.’
‘Idiot,’ I frowned, but I was pleased.
Xanthe would have loved to be here, I thought, and it made me realise with a pang of guilt that I hadn’t thought about her in weeks. Charlie must have thought of her too, because, as our pink gins arrived, he asked, ‘Have you heard from Xanthe?’
I shook my head. ‘Not a word.’
He shrugged. ‘She’s back with von Klausen, I’ll bet. And will be despised by the Germans as well as the British.’
‘I know,’ I muttered. ‘But then, she’s always been an idiot.’ I took a sip of my drink and looked around the room. ‘Don’t let’s talk about Xanthe,’ I said. ‘Tell me what’s happening with you.’
‘The thing is, Blake, I’ve been seconded from my regiment. I’ve got a promotion to captain and I’m getting a desk in Whitehall. It’s a sort of Intelligence job, which I can’t tell you about, so don’t ask me anything more.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m just glad you’ll be out of the fighting.’ I noticed his face change, but thought he was scowling at me for being silly. Besides, I was listening to the band and looking at the dancing.
‘Come on,’ he smiled, getting up. ‘Let’s have a go.’
Later, we walked home through the dark streets, slightly drunk, but happy. There had been no air raids so far this evening, but Charlie kept looking at the searchlights which criss-crossed the night sky. ‘You’re waiting for a raid, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘Mm,’ he nodded. ‘It’s such a clear night, perfect for bombing.’
I thought of Marisol and almost ran along the pavement to my flat.
We were home just before the siren sounded and managed to get everyone to the shelter in time. Jacob and Kitty sat with us on the hard wooden bench in the cellar of a large office block and Alice held on to Marisol, who hadn’t woken up. Strangely, it was Alice who was most affected by the raids. ‘I hate them,’ she moaned. ‘I hate the Jerries.’
I held Charlie’s hand. ‘If this carries on,’ I whispered to him, ‘I’m going to send Alice and Marisol down to Cornwall. Jacob and Kitty can go too if they want.’
‘Good idea,’ Charlie said. ‘You should go as well.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I must stay at the newspaper.’ The explosions were getting nearer and louder. People had stopped talking and now sat, looking up, as though searching for the next bomb. Suddenly there was the famil
iar whistle, then silence, before an enormous shattering explosion.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Alice as bits of plaster rained down on us, and I heard others in the shelter murmur prayers and give little shouts of terror. What a way to end it all, I thought, strangely removed from the immediate fright, here underground, with my little family.
When the all clear sounded we made our way out of the shelter to the rubble-strewn road. Acrid smoke hung in the air and ambulances, their bells clanging, were making their way from across the river, while fire engines hosed down the smouldering buildings.
Our house hadn’t been touched, nor any in the square, but we were all shaken by the closeness of the destruction. ‘I’ll organise it in the morning,’ I said to Charlie, as we walked into my living room. ‘They must go to Summer’s Rest. They’ll be safe there.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right.’ He bent down. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ He was holding an envelope which must have been pushed under the door. ‘It’s addressed to you.’
‘How odd.’ I took it from him. ‘It must have been delivered during the raid.’
‘Open it.’
Inside was a single piece of paper with two sentences written on it: ‘Xanthe safe in Portugal. Meet me at the Hotel Avenida Palace, Lisbon, as soon as possible.’
It was signed, Amyas.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lisbon, 1940
HE WAS THERE, in a white suit and sunglasses, standing by the reception desk in the marble-floored lobby of the Avenida Palace and still so utterly and unbelievably handsome that my heart turned over at the sight of him. It was clear that in the year since I’d seen him, and despite my loving Charlie, my feelings for Amyas hadn’t really changed. In a heartbeat, I could have run to him and thrown myself into his arms, blissfully ignoring any semblance of propriety. Behaving like a helpless, wanton, victim of desire.
But I was mindful of being in Lisbon, in a public place, a place which, although neutral, Charlie had insisted could be as dangerous as Madrid, if I didn’t keep my wits about me. So I waited for a moment, just drinking in his beauty and remembering the nights at the house in Cornwall, where he’d taught me the intricacies of love. Or perhaps, my sensible head told me, it was only the intricacies of sex, but, oh God, I had been transported into another world. Amyas’s world.
What Tomorrow Brings Page 34