Armistice

by Nick Stafford

  “I suppose you could say I’m in business.”

  “Which is …”

  “Business. Stuff. Money.” He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Stuff?” asked Philomena.

  “Too boring. How would you describe your art?”

  “How would you describe your business, stuff, money?”

  Anthony paused. Very well, she needs certain reassurances. “More than sufficient,” he replied. “That’s how I’d describe my business, stuff, money.” He widened his eyes and inclined his head, warning her that that was all she needed to know. “So, your art; describe it.”

  “I express myself,” Philomena said, as Felicity, petrified behind her smile.

  “Oh yes?” he teased.

  “I let my secrets out.” There, she’d introduced the idea of secrets.

  “So you don’t have any secrets,” asked Anthony, grinning.

  “Oh, I do,” said Philomena, flaring her eyes.

  “But you let them out, you said,” said Anthony, hooked.

  “There’s an endless supply. My secrets are replenished on a daily basis.”

  “Better out than in,” said Anthony, shifting in his seat, hoping she might say something like “better in than out” and they could proceed from there.

  “Is that your motto?” she asked, deliberately leaning forward slightly, wetting her lips with a quick flick of her tongue.

  Anthony also leaned forward, mirroring her. “Where did you go before you found this place?”

  “Somewhere else that I liked,” she fired back.

  “This sort of place?” he asked, lewdly.

  “What sort of place is this?” she asked, mock innocent.

  “Uninhibited. Illegal,” said Anthony.

  “It’s terrible that it’s illegal to be uninhibited,” she replied, reveling in her lasciviousness.

  “Isn’t it just,” said Anthony, smiling broadly. “Where are you from?” he asked, looking Felicity square in the face, and Philomena immediately panicked that he’d heard a trace of her true accent underneath her rapidly evolving alter-ego’s.

  “That’s a secret,” she said, trying to keep the flirtation alive.

  “Where do you live?” asked Anthony.

  And whereas Philomena thought that this question also indicated that Anthony Dore had smelled a rat, in fact he was inquiring if she had a place to which they might retire in order to have sex.

  “That’s a secret, too,” she said, suddenly feeling absolutely disgusted with herself, and him—though she couldn’t blame him for thinking Felicity might be willing—and disgusted with the place they were in, and for a moment she considered telling him the truth about herself and putting him right on the spot simply by asking him directly if Jonathan Priest’s allegation was true.

  “Are you really an artist?” he asked.

  “Yes. No.”

  Instead of looking bemused by her contradiction, he seemed to take it as evidence that the game of “will we do it?” continued.

  “Which?” he begged, and Philomena loathed him. And she knew that when Dan and he had met they would have loathed each other.

  “I have to go,” she said, suddenly standing up.

  “What?”

  She didn’t answer him—she gathered herself and began to walk away without any sort of farewell and without looking at him.

  Anthony realized that he was also on his feet, and that the waitress was watching him, frowning. Felicity was already at the top of the stairs, beginning to descend. Anthony resisted the urge to run after her. What the hell happened there? he asked himself. Other people were looking at him. They must be thinking he’d said or done something, but he hadn’t. That Felicity should come back and finish her drink and then they’d know that he hadn’t done anything. What on earth was going on? They’d been getting along famously, enjoying a terrific time together, and now people were staring at him! He prepared to hurry down the stairs after her but the waitress cried: “Your bill, sir!” and he had to stop to pay the bitch.

  Philomena was on the first-floor landing, on the way down to the entrance, trying not to attract attention to herself but moving more quickly than is normal. St. Peter glanced up and saw her and looked immediately concerned. Realizing that she wouldn’t be able to avoid a short exchange with him, Philomena glanced back to make sure Anthony wasn’t following.

  “Did you find Daniel?” asked St. Peter.

  She glanced back again for fear that if Anthony Dore was following her he could have heard that.

  “No,” she said, trying to sound not too disappointed.

  “Is everything all right?” asked St. Peter.

  “Oh yes,” she said, brightly. “I’ll be back another time, if that’s all right.”

  “You had fun?”

  “Oh yes. What fun!” Did that sound too shrill?

  “You haven’t collected your coat.”

  There she was, trying to act as if nothing were wrong, about to leave without her coat. She tried to compose herself as she walked back to the cloakroom where the attendant had retrieved her garment and now helped her on with it. St. Peter smiled and opened the front door for her and she walked out, resisting the urge to run. When she heard the door close behind her she quickened her step to the road. A taxi was passing so she threw up an arm and it stopped. When it rolled away from The Gates of Heaven she sank back in her seat and deliberately exhaled because she hadn’t been breathing freely for some time.

  The streets were dark, sparsely peopled. They passed a row of shops. In a little garden or square off to the side she saw the flames of a bonfire, and men, like statues, warming themselves at it. They looked mostly young, dressed in military uniforms. Nearby at a night kitchen, hands holding ladles dished liquid into mugs offered up. For a moment she thought she glimpsed the soldier she and Jonathan had cut down—she almost called for the taxi driver to stop—but when she saw the boy’s face clearly in the flickering light it wasn’t him but one similar: another young, gaunt and pale.

  Was she in peril from meeting Anthony? She didn’t think so. He had no idea who she really was. Should she find Jonathan to tell him she’d met Anthony Dore and her opinion of him? What was the point of that? She was never going to meet Anthony Dore again, either as Felicity or herself. Failed plan. Objective not achieved. It wasn’t as if she could make him tell her anything, was it?

  As she entered The Whitehall, exhaustion washed over her. The porter barely acknowledged her while handing over the key. He was a surly one; greasy, spotty, who despite his obvious deficiencies arrogantly tried to give off that he shouldn’t be here as he was too good for the place. Philomena idly wondered if night staff were chosen for their disagreeableness, or if the unnatural world of nocturnal work had made this one the way he was. Dropping her key in her hired bag she began to climb the stairs, wishing she were going to her own bed, using the hand rail as an aid to lift her tired body.

  Anthony watched Felicity from outside the front doors. He hadn’t arrived at his vantage point in time to see if she’d retrieved a key or spoken to the staff. Was Felicity staying there, or visiting? It was a rather shabby place. The porter moved out of Anthony’s view and didn’t reappear. Anthony decided not to make inquiries about Felicity. He’d simply follow her, corner her, and demand to know why she’d walked out on him so abruptly. He slipped in through the entrance doors, swiftly crossed the foyer, and started up the stairway.

  Almost asleep on her feet Philomena was taking the last steps to her room when a figure stepped out of the shadows, startling her. She stifled a gasp.

  “Phil?”

  “Jonathan …”

  He stood back and looked her up and down. “Gosh. You look …”

  “I went shopping,” she said, truthfully, feeling somewhat guilty, then telling herself not to feel that.

  “Didn’t you just!” said Jonathan, no hint of disapproval in his voice. But there was a question.

  “It’s all hired.”

&n
bsp; Flustered, she rootled in the folds of her unfamiliar bag for the key. She wasn’t sure how she felt about finding that Jonathan had been waiting for her; checking up on her. She remembered to remember that he didn’t know about Felicity, or about her having met Anthony Dore.

  “My key,” still rootling.

  “You’ve lost it?”

  “I can’t find it.”

  Jonathan watched her search in her bag, relieved that she hadn’t just told him to get lost.

  She’d forgotten her intention never to speak to him again, and she knew she looked fantastic, if a little jaded. She thought that he must have been wondering where on earth she’d been to that time, dressed like that. It must have looked as if mourning Dan was quite low on her list.

  A stairway down, Anthony Dore could hear the soft noises and the occasional sound from two voices, a man’s and a woman’s. He heard the woman distinctly say “got them” and the man mutter something. Anthony heard a key in a lock. Believing they were about to enter a room, desperate to see if it was Felicity and a man, he inched toward the corner of the landing.

  “Can I come in?” asked Jonathan, on the threshold. “There’s something I need to tell you, that I wasn’t quite straight about last night.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He held his hands up to show he presented no threat.

  “How long have you been waiting?” she asked.

  “Not long really,” said Jonathan. “I wondered if you wanted supper. I could tell you about this thing.”

  “It’s too late for supper, now.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t when I first thought about it.”

  “Very well.” She opened her door and stepped in.

  “Thanks,” said Jonathan, following her inside.

  * * *

  Anthony peeped around the corner, just glimpsing the man’s heels before the door shut behind him. He waited, went to the door and listened from a few feet away. He couldn’t hear anything from inside room four oh seven. He didn’t even know if it was Felicity in there.

  Inside the room Jonathan stood awkwardly, unsure where to put himself. Philomena perched on the edge of the bed, removed her shoes, rubbed her feet, wondering whether she should tell Jonathan anything of her adventures. He looked out toward the shabby young soldier’s window, and said: “I was wondering about the boy, the young sol—”

  “I don’t know,” she said, meaning she didn’t know what had happened to him.

  “Oh, I do,” said Jonathan. “He’ll survive, they tell me at the hospital.”

  “You went to see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m glad.” Glad the boy would survive and glad Jonathan went to see him. It hadn’t crossed her mind to do so.

  “His name is William Rust. He’s nineteen.”

  “I thought he was about that age. Did you find out why?”

  “No. He’s not speaking yet. His throat, you know. And they didn’t find a note.”

  “Poor lad. I thought I saw him earlier, in the street.”

  “I’m going to try and get him off. No point in charging him with attempted suicide.”

  She nodded. No, no point. There was something familiar about Jonathan being there. It was quiet.

  “Do you mind me being here?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied, surprised he asked that. Had she been telling him she did mind without meaning to?

  “Look, I should go,” he said. “You must think I’m mad. I wondered if you wanted supper and then I lost track.”

  “I would have liked supper with you,” she said quietly, almost to herself, watching Jonathan’s eye fall on something. He stopped moving toward the door and dipped his head toward the photo of Dan smoking a stick.

  “This is good.”

  “Isn’t it,” she said, not wanting him to go. “But you said there was another reason other than supper you wanted to see me.”

  Jonathan patted his pockets. “I’ve got something of his, somewhere.”

  Outside the room, Anthony Dore could hear the man’s voice had moved closer and he could almost make out a few words, but he could also hear footfalls coming up the stairs. He was going to have to move away—and fast—if he wasn’t to be caught snooping. He took off in the opposite direction from the approaching feet. As he walked further down the corridor he could tell that they had left the stairs and were walking behind him. Accelerating as much as he could without breaking into a run, for that would advertise his guilt, he saw a door marked exit that he pushed open, hoping that it looked as if he knew where he was going. Behind the door lay an uninviting service stairway. He gave in to panic and began to run down, on the verge of tripping, taking the steps two, three, or even four at a time.

  Inside four oh seven Jonathan’s hand emerged from his pocket and Philomena was astonished to see that it was holding a photograph of her. She had been about to reach out her hand to take whatever it was that Jonathan had of Dan’s but now she didn’t know what to do. Jonathan twitched the photo back and forth as if unable to decide what to do with it, either. He tried to joke: “I expect you know what you look like.”

  “That’s me in a previous life,” she said.

  Jonathan carefully placed the photograph of her on the bedside table next to the photograph of Dan.

  “Was that the thing?” she asked, suspecting that that photo couldn’t have been the thing he’d said he hadn’t been straight about last night.

  “Cognac!” said Jonathan loudly, flourishing a hip flask. “Fancy one?”

  She shook her head. Jonathan took a big swig then reached in another pocket for something else. It was a pack of cards held together in a plastic band.

  “These are the cards,” he said.

  It took her a moment to catch on. “The cards from the game?”

  Jonathan nodded. “The alleged game. I didn’t let on last night that I still had them.”

  Philomena immediately wanted to touch them, hold them. With great reverence, Jonathan handed the pack to her. “You can remove the band.”

  Philomena slipped it off and around her wrist, then didn’t know how to hold the cards.

  “You’re thinking about fingerprints, aren’t you?” said Jonathan. “There aren’t any. I stole Dore’s to test them. Got them off a glass in a bar. But these cards are too battered and sweaty and scarred to give a reliable result.”

  “That’s a pity,” she said with feeling. “That’s a damned shame.”

  “He would have claimed any fingerprints were from another game, on another day,” said Jonathan, resignedly.

  “But you said he and Major Chiltern hadn’t met before in the war,” said Philomena, countering his apathy.

  “My word against his, again. He would also have argued that I couldn’t prove that Major Chiltern had always owned the cards, so he, Anthony Dore, could have played a hand with a previous owner. Or that Major Chiltern had lent them to another man with whom Dore played cards. Basically, if it isn’t possible to trace the pack from new and prove that they had only ever been in Major Chiltern’s possession then even a crystal clear set of Anthony Dore’s prints on them wouldn’t suffice.”

  Philomena felt more guilty that she wasn’t telling Jonathan about meeting Anthony. To cover it she fanned the cards and said: “Everyone plays brag. It’s not a proper game like poker or something.”

  Jonathan glanced at her for confirmation that this was a non sequitur.

  “Yes, there’s no strategy to brag that I can see,” he agreed. “Once the cards are dealt it’s just bloody-mindedness.”

  At which Dan had excelled, thought Philomena. Jonathan took another swig of cognac from his hip flask.

  “Damn Major Chiltern. If only he’d mentioned it or written to anybody about the run up to that card game. Dore couldn’t have known that he hadn’t when he lied that there wasn’t a game. Lucky bastard. I put an ad in the Times—anonymously. Asking for anyone who’d spoken to Major Chiltern on his last day, or re
ceived any letter from him, to reply—also anonymously if they wished.”

  “Anthony Dore’s lack of guile might indicate that he isn’t using any, that he has no need to,” said Philomena.

  Jonathan studied her, his eyes piercing hers for once. “Are you playing devil’s advocate?” he mused. Before she could answer he added, “You’re right to be skeptical.”

  She didn’t know what more to do with the cards so she replaced the elastic band and handed the pack back to Jonathan. Both resumed looking out of the window. A distant door banged shut. Faint footsteps.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said, warming to a subject that had been nagging at her.

  Jonathan looked at her, scared. But: “Yes,” he said.

  “How seriously did you think about killing yourself?”

  Jonathan glanced out toward William Rust’s window. Then he couldn’t return Philomena’s gaze. He gulped some cognac. “I’m still here.”

  He looked hounded, cornered, did something, fought it, made some shift inside, shrugged.

  “After my allegations were dismissed I went on a bit of a bender. I wanted to do something, to act, but there was no clear thing to do. The war had ended, the guns were silent, there were no more explosions, but I felt all that was still going on inside me. I tried to write you a letter but I couldn’t get the wording right. I know I sent you one eventually but it was very much diluted. By the way, may I have a look at Dore’s letter to you?”

  She knew exactly where it was so it only took a moment to find and hand over. Jonathan read it, shaking his head.

  “The next day,” he went on, “I went to Dan’s makeshift grave where it said, ‘killed in action’ and I thought, this just won’t do, this just isn’t on, this is a lie.” He handed Dore’s letter back to Philomena. “I looked for Major James but he’d already packed up and gone. I didn’t even know if anyone else was aware of my allegations. But soon I had a visit from a chaplain named Gillies. It didn’t go well. He offered me comfort; I asked him what he thought was the truth about my allegation. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about. He’d heard I was in difficulty. I think he knew that I’d made an allegation, but not what it was. He told me that I should tread carefully—I should know that, especially as I had been a barrister before the war. I asked him what he was before the war, a man of God? I started swearing a bit I’m afraid. I said, ‘You fucking believe me though, don’t you, God-man? I can see it in your eyes. Even though you might not know the sordid details, you know that what I alleged is true.’ You can see how far gone I was, how close to the edge. He swore back at me; ‘I dinna fucking will inything, actually,’ he said. Fair play to the chaplain. He was Scottish. I can’t do a Scottish accent. But he said: ‘The fucking war’s over and I’m going to go home and forget aboot it and if I wis you, I’d do the same. Forget it, drop it, or you will ruin your promising career.’ To which I inquired if the chaplain had been offered a nice little tenure somewhere. I was just being out and out rude by now so he turned on his heel and muttered something about praying for me. I remember shouting at his back: ‘I’m going to tell God about you!’”