The Dearest and the Best

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘What will he be like if they do start bombing, I wonder?’ asked Joanne. She had taken his arm as they walked on.

  ‘Frightened, but splendid, I expect,’ suggested James. ‘Like most people.’

  They reached Hanson Place and she unlocked the outer door of a tall building and they walked into the shadowed hall. ‘The elevator is out of action,’ she said. ‘Because of the war, naturally. It’s five floors.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said. She went up the stairs before him and he felt the excitement and, already, the guilt rising within himself. She took another key from her purse and opened the door of her apartment. It was close and dark in there. She went to the window and pulled the curtains, then turned on the lights. It was comfortably expensive. ‘I’ve got it for three months if I need it that long,’ she said. ‘But maybe I’ll be going home before that.’

  Joanne poured two drinks and then went to the gramophone in the corner of the wide, comfortable sitting-room. ‘I inherited some records with the apartment,’ she said. ‘See if you like this.’

  She wound the handle and put the large black disc on the turntable. He stood in the centre of the room and listened. ‘It’s ethereal,’ he said when it was almost finished. ‘What is it?’

  ‘German, I’m afraid,’ she smiled. ‘Franz Abt. It’s called “Uber den Sternen” – “Above the Stars”.

  He grinned at her. ‘Well, you are neutral, after all,’ he said. He paused, then asked her to play it again. She rewound the machine and put the silver arm back to the beginning of the record.

  As the music began she moved to the wall and switched off the lights. ‘We can listen, and see the stars,’ she said. She pulled the heavy black-out curtains apart. They were on the fifth floor of the building and they looked out on the rooftops and the spread of the night sky. They stood close together and watched, before they touched, turned and exchanged their first kiss.

  James had known it would be very difficult for him to tell the lies that would be necessary. He picked up the telephone only after attempting to compose himself for the ordeal. This time, after all the occasions when the call had gone unanswered, Millie took the earpiece from the hook at once. It was breakfast time.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a mouthful of toast.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Then defensively: ‘I’m amazed to find you at home.’

  ‘Oh, come on, James,’ she replied good-humouredly. ‘I’m not always out when you ring. But I simply can’t just wait in case you call. I’m not walking hand in hand across the forest comforting lonely soldiers, you know.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said quietly. ‘There must be lots of things to do.’

  ‘Well, darling, there are. I’m working three days at the RAF station, and they’ve just got a new squadron arrived, and I’ve taken on the secretarial work for your father’s LDV. You’d be astonished how much of that there is. I’m dazed by army form numbers at the moment.’

  He almost said: ‘It’s just as well we haven’t got a family,’ but he didn’t.

  She brightened. ‘Anyway you are coming down this weekend, aren’t you? If Hitler doesn’t arrive first. We can catch up on things then.’

  Now was the time for lying. ‘No, I’m not, Millie,’ he said. It came out roughly. ‘That’s why I’m ringing. I’m sorry but . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry too.’ Her voice had been light even when they had come near to arguing. Now it dropped. ‘Something urgent?’

  ‘Only the bloody war,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve got to be on duty, I’m afraid. Very few people are getting away up here. Not even for a few hours. It’s understandable, I suppose.’

  There seemed a long interval before she answered. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Her voice lifted. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. War is hell, as they’re always saying. We’ll have to wait until another time.’

  Miserably he said: ‘I’ll try and get down during the week. Just for a couple of hours. I’ve got visits to make to units on Salisbury Plain. I could hurry over from there.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. Her voice was flat, controlled now. ‘Yes, well, why don’t you try? Let me know when it is.’

  ‘I will. Goodbye, darling. I’ll call you before the weekend.’

  ‘Yes, all right, James. I hope I’ll be in. If I’m not, keep trying.’

  James replaced the phone. He sat with his hands cradling his forehead. Well, he’d done it now. He’d told the story. That was the difficult part. He’d never been a good liar. He picked up the earpiece again and dialled Joanne Schorner’s number.

  Eighty miles away his wife walked out of the cool house and into the garden. It was a grey morning, the sky blank as a sheet, the air mild. A forest pony was cropping the hedge. She shooed it away brusquely. The tears in her eyes surprised her. The herbaceous blooms seemed to fuse together. Was it disappointment or was it fear? She failed to answer her own question. She did something she had never done before. She swore violently and took a flying kick at a low-hanging pink rose, smashing it and sending its fine petals flying over the lawn.

  It might have been peacetime that Sunday. Londoners, as if they sensed it might be their last day off in the sun, went to the countryside, to hilly Hampstead Heath, to the trees at Epping on the city’s north-east fringe, and to the towns along the River Thames to the west.

  John Colin, the small boy, was staying with Mrs Beauchamp and when James was about to leave to meet Joanne he saw the child was looking out of the old lady’s window, leaving the smudge of his nose on the glass as he turned round. ‘Are you going out today?’ asked James.

  ‘I think we are,’ answered the six-year-old. ‘But Mrs Beauchamp has got things to do first.’ The final sentence was blurted out: ‘I want to see my mummy.’

  Mrs Beauchamp came in from her small kitchen. She looked with sharp sadness at James. He appreciated the look and walked back into his own room with the housekeeper behind him. ‘All the week he’s been waiting for his mother, sir,’ she whispered. ‘He’s been with the nanny. Mrs Perkins was supposed to be here by now. The nanny expected her three days ago, after the Germans getting to Paris and everything. But she hasn’t turned up . . .’

  The elderly woman began to poke at her eyes with her apron. ‘The poor little chap’s been waiting all that time. He was here all day yesterday with me. Every time he sees a woman walking along the street he thinks it’s his mum and he waits for the door to ring and it doesn’t.’

  She gazed at him as if he might be able to help. ‘It’s such a shame,’ she said. ‘It upsets me. I don’t know who to ask. You’d think she would have got a message through somehow, wouldn’t you?’

  James frowned. ‘She was with the British Hospital in Paris, wasn’t she?’ He moved towards the telephone directories. ‘There must be a London number or something.’

  Mrs Beauchamp regarded him anxiously. ‘I don’t want to interfere, sir, you realize that. But it does upset me.’

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said. He sat with the directory at the phone. Then he closed the directory and rang a Whitehall number. Mrs Beauchamp went back to her room where the small boy still gazed from the window. James called four numbers before he had a conversation with a duty officer at the Foreign Office. He replaced the phone and opened Mrs Beauchamp’s door, beckoning her to come in.

  White-faced, she asked: ‘What, sir? What’s gone and happened?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Mrs Beauchamp,’ he said kindly. ‘The hospital was evacuated from Paris on Thursday but by that time there was no way out to the north and the entire staff seems to have gone south-west in two buses. They either went towards Bordeaux or towards the Spanish frontier.’

  ‘I don’t rightly know what direction that would be,’ she said, a little shamefaced. ‘But as long as she got out.’

  ‘The roads are crammed with refugees . . .’

  ‘And they’re bombing them, poor souls,’ she said. ‘I heard it on the wireless.’

  ‘The bus
es are marked with big red crosses, so I was told,’ he said to reassure her. ‘But there has been no contact since they quit Paris. The man at the Foreign Office said he will endeavour to discover what has happened.’

  ‘That’s going to be hard to tell John Colin,’ she said. ‘He can’t just keep staring out of the window if his mum’s in Bordeaux or Spain or wherever it is. I’ll have to tell him she won’t be here yet.’

  On an impulse which surprised him, James said: ‘I’ll take him out, if you like.’

  Mrs Beauchamp looked taken aback. Her eyes were damp again. ‘That would be very nice indeed, sir. I’m sure he’d like that.’

  ‘I’ll take him down to Hampton Court,’ said James. ‘I was going in that direction anyway . . . with a friend. Perhaps they still have the boats on the river.’

  The sight of the old palace of Hampton Court that Sunday, with its crowded riverside, surprised James and astonished Joanne. The little boy said he did not know there were so many people in the whole world. ‘The British,’ remarked Joanne looking about her with a sigh, ‘have no idea when they’re cornered.’

  They were standing on the white bridge above the thickly moving Thames. The sun was spread along the river and its grass banks, the warm brick towers of the palace that Cardinal Wolsey gave to Henry the Eighth raised themselves royally above the abundant trees. People sat by the riverside spread around with picnics, children paddled and boys swam in the green water; people moved like an army along the towpath, they gazed at the old palace from without and within. The women were in bright dresses, the men in shirts, the many servicemen perspiring in uniform. Boats were on the river and from one below the bridge came a gramophone song, a South American rhythm. Carmen Miranda sang, ‘I, I, I, I like you verra much.’

  There were ice-cream vendors, two with newly lettered signs proclaiming: ‘Not Italian. Maltese Citizen’, and another: ‘British Through and Through’, despite the name ‘Antonio Niccovelli’ about his tricycle. A crowd had gathered about a third seller and two policemen were in the act of escorting him away. A third policeman mounted the coloured tricycle and pedalled it with slow precision in the same direction. ‘A Wop, that’s what he is,’ a man told his wife and spellbound children.

  Joanne waited in a line for ice-cream while James walked with John Colin along the towpath to where a man was hiring out boats. ‘Just got them back from Dunkirk, sir,’ joked the vendor, a brown smile creasing his face. ‘Rescued ’undreds these did.’ He manoeuvred the tiny skiff to the wooden jetty and James climbed aboard, lifting the wide-eyed boy after him.

  The boat man, who was elderly, was wearing an LDV armband over his striped shirt. There was a long scar on his face. ‘Malay States, sir, eighteen-ninety-three,’ he said mysteriously, seeing James’s glance.

  ‘You’re ready to fight again, I see,’ smiled James, nodding at his armband.

  ‘As much as I can, sir,’ replied the man optimistically. ‘They’ve put me in charge of amphibious warfare.’

  Joanne arrived with the ice-creams and the boatman, grinning at the little boy, called: ‘Here comes mum.’

  She climbed lithely over the side and James pushed the flat craft clear of the grass and rowed it carefully out into the stream. The boy shouted with delight and spread the ice-cream across his face. Joanne sat at the other end of the boat and regarded James enigmatically. ‘I never thought I’d spend a day like this,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he responded. ‘It’s like something from some time that’s past.’

  He rowed them out into midstream, close by islets, where luxurious swans lay and willows shadowed the surface. Fingers of sunshine drifted through the branches. The little boy gazed at the swans and observed they had very big ducks on this river. For a while he seemed to have forgotten his mother.

  There were many other small boats on the Thames, mostly hired punts and skiffs like their own, but one or two under sail, trying to catch the brief wind. But there were no powered boats. They had all been locked away or beached for the long winter of war. One had burned out at its moorings, its creamy bow charred.

  Few people spared it a glance. They walked, even strutted, about in the sunshine, with the same enthusiasm as the many craft criss-crossed the water. To Joanne it was like a speeded-up movie. As though people were trying to cram a whole summer into one afternoon.

  After an hour they brought the skiff back to the wooden landing stage below Mr Turk’s boathouse, a famous place on the Thames. The Turk family had been boatmen and swan-keepers for generations. When he had helped Joanne ashore and made sure that John Colin did not slip into the river between the low hull and the wooden jetty, James paid for the hire and made a remark about the burned-out motor cruise along the bank, lying on its side like a shot animal.

  ‘Came back from Dunkirk she did,’ said the brown boatman. ‘Right as right. Not a scratch on her. First night back she caught fire. They reckon there must have been an unexploded incendiary lodged in her somewhere.’ He looked at the wreck reflectively. ‘First casualty we’ve had along here. Don’t suppose it will be the last.’ He studied James as if he thought he could trust his judgement. ‘I don’t reckon they’ll invade, though, do you, sir? We’ve got our navy waiting for them if nothing else, and we’ve got a bit of an air force.’

  He apparently did not expect any reassurance from what might be official sources, and he looked surprised when James asked him, ‘What will you do if they do come?’ Joanne was watching the conversation keenly.

  ‘Well, sir, like I said, the LDV here will be using the boats for operations, but the minute we know we’re done, when there’s no way out, then I’ll scuttle the lot.’ His deep eyes turned sadly to the jaunty little fleet moored at his feet and then out into the boats busy on the back of the river. ‘Mind,’ he said, ‘that’ll be a terrible hard thing for me to do, because I been here since I was a bit of a kid, the eighteen-eighties, would you believe, with Queen Victoria on the throne, and some of these boats were here before me.’ He rubbed the dark brown wood of a gunwale. ‘And they won’t be making things like this any more. They’re too good to be made in the future.’

  ‘But you’d still sink them?’ asked Joanne.

  He quickly picked up her accent and smiled. ‘Yes, ma’am, just like you would do in your country if you was invaded any time. I’d rather have them at the bottom of the Thames than have the Gestapo going out in them on a nice Sunday afternoon.’

  Mostly in silence they returned the short way to London on the train that went from Hampton Court’s wayside station to Waterloo. It was a comfortable and composed silence. Even the little boy seemed to understand it. He sat against the window and looked at the suburban scenes that rolled by. The sound of the train drifted back as the line turned and the breeze came from a different quarter. John Colin moved his head from side to side, keeping childish time with the rhythm.

  As they travelled they could see that the same mood as had been evident on the river was there in the gardens and houses, the streets and the parks that moved by. People were out enjoying the sun as if it might not be available again. They sat on chairs in their small, square gardens, alongside their sheds and greenhouses, having tea on little tables or upturned crates; one man sat alone by a dingy stream, fishing and eating something from a paper bag. In streets children leaped through whirling skipping ropes or played chasing games in gritty patches of sunlight. Others sailed boats on a park lake where lovers stretched blatantly on the grass paying no attention to a group of Local Defence Volunteers rehearsing unarmed combat only a few feet away. The train had paused at a station and James watched the elderly men and youths grapple with each other before a small audience composed almost entirely of uproariously laughing children. As he watched, one man detached himself from the group to chase the children away, pointing them angrily to some distant part of the park. Couples walked dogs between beds of ordinary flowers, bicycles were parked against trees, and an old woman spread out like a queen fed pige
ons from a park bench. The sky was moving towards evening but clear and fine. A Salvation Army band played at a dusty junction with a few singing onlookers grouped about it. Birds sounded at stations, urchins threw stones into a murky canal, a man watered his geraniums. There was no sign of the enemy.

  They reached the echoing roof of Waterloo and the scene was changed. Servicemen were everywhere, carrying kit and rifles, clinging to wet-cheeked sweethearts, looking askance at destination boards. A military policeman was giving directions to a thin soldier who looked scarcely capable of lifting his kit. His girl, in a skimpy dress, was reluctant to release her hold on his arm. Eventually the soldier moved towards the train, encouraged by the MP. The girl called after him like a wraith, ‘Careful, Bertie. Don’t do nothing dangerous.’

  Music was coming stridently over the station loudspeakers, not martial music but the ditty called: ‘Run, Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Run, Run, Run’. It was a catchy tune and a sailor with a kitbag went by whistling it like an echo.

  They took a taxi back to Joanne’s apartment and James went on to his with the little boy. John Colin rushed into Mrs Beauchamp’s arms as soon as they had closed the front door of the flat.

  ‘Any news?’ asked James, just forming the words without sound.

  Mrs Beauchamp, holding the little boy, shook her head.

  ‘Is my mummy coming?’ asked John Colin.

  ‘We’ll hear by tomorrow, I know we will,’ lied the old lady. ‘Come on, I’ve made a lovely cake.’

  ‘We had ice-cream by the River Thames,’ the boy told her. ‘And we saw swans and we went in a boat that the man is going to sink when the Gestapo come. He said so.’ James touched the child awkwardly on the shoulder. John Colin turned, and, at Mrs Beauchamp’s prompting, shyly said thank you for the day. ‘And thank you to the lady,’ he said.

  Mrs Beauchamp remained in the room when the boy had gone. She looked flustered. ‘I hope it was all right, sir. I answered the phone about an hour ago and it was Mrs Lovatt.’