Commander Amanda Nightingale

by George Revelli

  "No time. I shall shower at the club."

  "Oh, of course, I forgot. You French don't bathe much, do you. Oooo, Lucien, stop twisting my arm. You are just like all the rest. As my husband always says, Wogs begin at Calais."

  Amanda, in her lace slip, sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched Lucien shaving and swearing into the mirror as he nicked himself on Guy's razor.

  "Guy always uses a cut-throat," she said. "He thinks it is more manly. I suppose it compensates for something or other."

  "Ridiculous people, the British," Lucien muttered. "At some point in history, all their sense of priorities got muddled up, and what was the result of the muddle? The Americans. De Gaulle will cut you Anglo-Saxons down to size one day, my friend. You will see."

  "I advise you not to try," said Amanda with spirit, "because it will be you French who are cut down to size. Whom do you want to take on? Most English people and Americans don't like the French anyway. It is us, the few people who consider France a special kind of jewel, who would die for France, who kept the fire of France alight these last four years. If de Gaulle turns on us, whom is he turning on? 'We few, we happy few, who love France. And once the jewel is stained, once the image is smashed, all France's horses and all France's men won't be able to put it back together again."

  "Who cares?"

  "I care. That fault lies with you French. You have all sorts of savoir faire, not to mention je ne sais quoi. But you lack aplomb."

  "What's aplomb?"

  "Aplomb is what Sir Francis Drake had when he was playing bowls, or what you French would call pétanque. Aplomb is the following: 'I was playing golf the day the Germans landed. All our men had run away and all our ships were stranded. And the thought of England's shame, nearly put me off my game. That's aplomb."

  "One of the things that impresses me most, Amanda, is your vast command of English vers burlesque."

  "Doggerel," Amanda prompted, and the idea pleased her. "You mean, like Miss Buss and Miss Beall?"

  "Yes."

  "And 'Round and round went the great big wheel'?"

  "Exactly."

  "I never thought of that. Maybe I shall edit an anthology after the war."

  Amanda giggled. Still in her underwear she flitted about the apartment, washing one of the two breakfast cups, and destroying any evidence she could find of alien companionship. She picked up the standard lamp, straightened the hunting print, changed the sheets on the bed with a practised housewife's hands. "Can't leave them as they are," she said. "I think they would stand up by themselves. Mrs. Hutchinson would smell a rat or something. I'm full of the most indecorous analogies this morning. Can't imagine for the life of me why."

  She made no attempt to dress, as Lucien buttoned the jacket he had worn the night before at the Ivy. She sat on a kitchen stool with her hands on her bare knees and admired his figure and bearing. He pulled her to her feet and kissed her. "Please," she said. "No other girls."

  "On my honour as a Frenchman," he said.

  "A bientôt, chèri, топ amour," she said.

  "I'll see you in France," said Lucien.

  "Mon amour, топ amour, топ amour, топ amour, топ amour. I cannot wait. The absence will kill me."

  Schneider lifted a finger like the schoolmaster he once was, "La Rochefoucald wrote, 'L'absence diminue les mediocres passions et augmente les grands, comme un vent qui éteint le bougie et allume le feu'."

  "I am a forest fire already," said Amanda.

  "There will be no coming back after the invasion," Lucien said. "Once we are in France, we are in France to stay. We will be with de Gaulle when he enters Paris…"

  Amanda tossed her hair from side to side until her face became a mist of silver silk. "Say that word again," she said.

  "What word?"

  "Paris. Say it again."

  "Paris."

  "Toi et moi?"

  "Toi et moi."

  "Alone?"

  "A la folie."

  Amanda said, "I would like to die at this very minute. Paris just a word on my lips. Me in your arms."

  He kissed her and, at the door, saluted, flathanded, in the French army manner. After that he was gone. She watched him walking down the street in the direction of Marble Arch. The morning was all spring sunshine. Two taxicabs with their flags up slowed tentatively as they passed him but he strode on. Two Americans passed him and recognizing, in a vague way, authority, saluted him sloppily. He replied indifferently and disappeared.

  Amanda's hand was on her heart. The word Paris seemed to have made it stop. She had not thought of Paris in years. Somehow in the war one didn't think of Paris. The thought of Paris under the German jackboot was too obscene. She swayed a little and had to sit down, light a cigarette.

  As it happened, Lucien and Amanda met again only once. It was not in Paris. The meeting was brief.

  Half an hour later, Amanda was transformed. Her hair was pinned up. She wore her battle dress. "Good morning, Mrs. Hutchinson," she said. "You are looking very well. How is your husband? I have written out a list of the things I want you to do, and I have left the food coupons on the dresser in the kitchen. Don't vacuum the living room because the lights seem to have fused for some reason or other. Yes, I heard from my husband yesterday. He is on leave in Naples. He didn't mention his wound, so I imagine he is feeling well." Mrs. Hutchinson had no reason whatever to suspect that her mistress had been raped only the night before.

  Chapter Five

  It was a night classically designed for deeds of daring, a white moon in a warm sky painting the sleeping Kent countryside into a dapple of silver and jet black. No one spoke in the car, or scarcely moved except to make a cigarette glow brighter. Mazursky sat in front beside the driver, half-turned towards his companions. Amanda regarded the nape of the driver's neck, his ear, his jowl. He wore a khaki beret without insignia, and his hair seemed to start above his ears as though he cut it himself. He was a youngish man, who drove prudently, incuriously, and he wore a gold wedding ring. She wondered whether he knew that within a few hours his charges would be in a country held by the enemy, and if he did know whether he would care, or think more about it than about his next cup of Naafi canteen tea. He was a man who fitted himself unquestioningly into the mould of the army, as before he had cast himself in some anonymous role which brought him a week's pay, seven quid, in cash every Friday. He was not the stuff of the warrior. He was the fetcher and carrier of a nation's army, with a modest part to play, and he played it modestly. He would probably not die in this war, and yet he would if he were commanded to. In his very anonymity he was the stuff of England, making love with orthodoxy to his wife, begetting children, all without question.

  They passed through silver villages. How beautiful they must look from the air, lubricious in moonlight, how deliriously orgiastic to bomb. To bomb villages like this, sleeping and unaware, must give the same pleasure as dropping a heavy stone onto an anthill. There was no light except nature's, no glimmer from the blacked-out houses. It was so long since she had seen lights that she could scarcely remember what a street looked like illuminated after dark. She tried to imagine neon lighting, and she literally could not. Dear England! How lovely she is in war. She regarded O'Donovan now, gazing unseeing out of the window lost in his own thoughts, just as she was lost in hers. He was such a good-looking young man. Did this Irishman love England too? Or did he just love fighting? The Irish were supposed to hate the English, and yet they flocked into England's armies whenever there was a war. They died too. And Mazursky, the Polish-Canadian. He was an insignificant-looking man with a Slav face, yet inclined to be rather donnish when allowed to talk. Did he ask himself what he was doing, driving through Kent on a mission of great danger when he should, by profession, be working in a government office in Ottowa? She imagined him as a child running through the streets of Montreal, picking up his appalling French accent. He was not real. Nor was O'Donovan, nor the driver. Nor was she, for that matter. We are all figments of each
other's imagination, she told herself. We only exist when people think of us. She was pleased with the thought, but honest enough to suspect it was not wholly original.

  They reached the road leading to the airfield. The driver was stopped by the sentry who checked the identification of each person in the car, fastidiously, with care, examining the photographs, and flashing a blue torch at each face in turn, lingering only a fraction longer on Amanda's. After that he waved them through. They drove along the edge of the landing strip just as a Lysander aircraft, clumsy as a corncrake, was taxiing to a halt. Three soldiers armed with old-fashioned Enfields signalled to them to stop. A group of men and women climbed awkwardly out of the aircraft and stretched. They were mere silhouettes, two-dimensional, like black cardboard cutouts.

  "Arrivals," O'Donovan commented tersely, with that kind of studied calm that excited men affect when they say to others, "Don't get excited."

  Amanda's heart pounded. The figures, waiting to be assembled, moved formlessly and lost shape, intermingling like a Rorschach test. These people had come from France, out of the jaws of hell into which she, Amanda, was actually going, and she regarded them with awe. They had been tested. What had they seen, what suffered? Had the little group, now herded and moving, heavy-laden, toward a hangar, killed Germans? Blown up bridges? Had they suffered losses? Whatever they had done or not done, they had lived to tell the tale. But had they been brave. Had they had the opportunity to run away, and resisted it? Their constrained, weary movements seemed almost stiff with bravery.

  Not until the last of the group had disappeared did the sentries sign to the driver to proceed. From her briefings she knew that arrivals were carefully segregated from departures. She had wondered why, but she wondered no longer. They would be too disturbing. They were like creatures from another world whose touch meant contamination. She wished she had not seen them at all. The car passed the silent Lysander, warm as a dog, and stopped outside the curtained doorway that led to the officers' mess.

  It was like all other officers' messes she had known, except smaller, painted the colour of guano. Behind the bar hung the regulation picture of Mr. Churchill, looking pugnacious, cigar in mouth, and beside it the King in naval uniform, his face grave and understanding, almost Christ-like. Amanda blinked from the darkness outside and took in the crowd of officers standing at the bar. They were mostly army, but there was also a civilian Amanda recognized from Baker Street, and a couple of R.A.F. flying types who regarded them with curiosity, evidently the men who would be transporting them to France.

  A pleasant-faced girl in the uniform of the Women's Air Force detached herself. "Yvette," she said. "I am Margaret Gregson. Will you come with me." As Amanda followed, she saw an army officer addressing her two colleagues.

  Gregson led her to a changing room where her French wardrobe and equipment were laid out. The girl carried a list of items, clipped to a board, and a pencil was stuck behind her ear. Amanda stripped to the skin. Normally she disliked being naked in front of other women, but the impending events were too momentous to allow her to give more than a passing thought to the subject. Gregson took each item of her clothing as she removed it, and hung it neatly on a hanger, listing each in turn.

  She handed Amanda a garter belt, and Amanda examined the sign on the tab. It said Modes-Rouen. She pulled on a pair of lisle stockings and wriggled into cheap cotton pants.

  "Gruesome," she said, and Gregson gave her a weary smile, as though every woman who passed through her hands made the same obvious comment. Amanda fitted on a rough, ill-designed brassière. "Really," she said with genuine asperity, "I know there is a war on, and the poor French have been under the Nazis for years, but I would not have thought they had so completely lost their flair for clothes." She pushed away the cotton slip. "The weather is warm," she said, "and I don't intend to wear any more of these horrors than are absolutely necessary."

  "As you wish," her companion said. "It can go into your suitcase."

  "Where it will remain all summer, I promise you," said Amanda.

  She put on a frilly shirtwaist which was quite attractive, a skirt in cheap imitation tweed and a matching jacket, then flat-heeled shoes with wooden soles. Her luggage was itemized and checked against the list: a canvas suitcase, change of underwear, a print dress, another pair of shoes slightly more elegant, with high wedge heels, suitable for town wear. Toilet articles, all French, all authentic, were put into a separate plastic toilet bag. Amanda divested herself of her wristwatch, her wedding and engagement rings, which Gregson placed carefully on velvet in a small strongbox. In return, Amanda fastened on her wrist a French watch of nondescript style, with a plain round face and ordinary numerals in Bodoni type.

  Gregson gave her an imitation crocodile handbag, her French identity card and ration book, a packet of Gauloises. But it was the last contribution that made Amanda break out in goose pimples, a small automatic revolver and a clip of cartridges. "I think you will find it will fit into your handbag," said the girl, "and you must get rid of it as quickly as possible, on your organizer's orders. It is only for use in case of trouble after landing."

  Amanda weighed it in her hand. With deliberation, she fitted the clip of cartridges into the butt. It was now fully loaded. She snapped the safety clip open and shut, and weighed it again. Suddenly she caught sight of her face in a mirror, and the expression startled her. She was smiling, a kind of inhuman, diabolical smile. Actually she had been thinking with admiration about the «Firm». It forgot nothing.

  She asked, "How about my transmitters?"

  "Those will be parachuted to you, and picked up by the Maquisards. You must be as unencumbered as possible on landing, or you will be too quickly tired."

  Gregson next gave Amanda two lists to check and sign, one for the clothes and accessories she had removed, the other for those she had put on. She signed impatiently, without looking. They were ready now, and the two girls looked at each other, silently at first. Much of an age, much of an education, both of which made communication difficult. Their growing up had taught them to reject rather than embrace. Then Margaret Gregson held out a hand, and smiled a smile that curled downward rather than up, and Amanda realized with surprise that her apparent indifference of manner was concealing emotion. There were tears in her eyes. Amanda accepted the proffered hand. "Good luck, Yvette," the girl said. "I don't think I would have the courage."

  "It's not courage," said Amanda, feeling a long way away, and talking as though she were in a dream. "It's a job. It's doing what one is told to do. It's like… driving a car."

  Suddenly she was hideously embarrassed by her appearance, her dowdy clothes against the trim uniform of her companion. She felt strange, as though she were acting in amateur theatricals as she had done from time to time at Cheltenham.

  "Shall we go?" Gregson asked, and Amanda wanted to say "No." Instead she nodded, her head low, and reluctantly followed the girl into the mess, where a noisy group stood drinking. She saw, with relief, that O'Donovan and Mazursky were there ahead of her. "Thank heavens," she murmured into Gregson's ear, "that men change faster than women. I had been feeling like an utter fool." Gregson squeezed her arm comfortingly. Her two comrades in arms looked odd against the assorted uniform colours of khaki and R.A.F. blue. O'Donovan wore a beret, and a French peasant blouse, with a hunting sack slung over his shoulder. Mazursky had been given a rather more bourgeois disguise, as became his role as courier: soft hat, grey tie and shirt, and a cheap, double-breasted suit that was too tight for him. O'Donovan was in the middle of a philosophical discourse on berets in general.

  "…They were first worn by the ancient Greeks some two thousand five hundred years ago," he was saying. "Later on, in the third century, the peasants were not permitted to wear them, as they were reserved for the upper classes. The berets in the Basque province of Spain are divided into three sections. At one time each section had its own distinctive colour: Viycaya, blue; Quipuzcoa, red; Avala, white; but now they all wear blue
… Oh hello, Yvette. Here comes the third member of the Norman bourgeoisie."

  Amanda accepted a gin and tonic. "I'm glad my father can't see me now," she said, smiling edgily. " 'Glass in your hand again, Amanda, he would say."

  "How do you feel, Commander Nightingale?" asked the senior officer present, an elderly Squadron Leader with ribbons from the First World War, forgetting the rules.

  "I feel like a complete idiot in this turnout," said Amanda. "I must stand out like a sore thumb. I hope I'll get used to it by the time it is necessary."

  "My name is Fawcett," said an RA. F. officer. "I am your chauffeur." He wore huge handlebar moustaches under which buckteeth protruded in a rabbit-like smile. He carried the ribbons and bar of the D.F.C.

  Conversation was loud but business-like rather than escapist. Nobody was trying to pretend that the future would not happen. The civilian from Baker Street asked about weather conditions, and was told by Fawcett, "Spot on. We are at absolute midpoint between the end of the moon's first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter. The moon is high now but will have set a little by the time we land. Ideal landing conditions. It should be a jolly good show."

  Amanda tried to keep the irritation from her voice. She detested the schoolboy slang of the R.A.F. "Do you have any news of Lucien? " she asked.

  "No," said the civilian, sniggering, "and we don't expect any until you send some." This caused a mild, general laugh, in which Amanda joined, hoping she was not blushing.

  "When did Lucien go?" Mazursky asked. "I mean, exactly."

  "Two days ago," said Amanda, just a shade too quickly and it made O'Donovan look at her.

  "Will someone give me my last English cigarette?" Mazursky asked. "I hate French cigarettes."

  "How about a Canadian, a Caporal?" said the commanding officer, and Mazursky put his palms together in front of him as though offering up a prayer of thanks.

  Amanda noted the flurry of matches and lighters and suddenly realized that they, the three of them, were held in some kind of reverence by the men and women around them, among whom were men who had won major decorations in combat. She was already a heroine before she had been put to the test and she felt ashamed. Although her heart was beating, it all seemed quite easy, straightforward. It had all been explained to her beforehand, at Arisaig, and Aylesbury, and Abingdon, in all her courses.