‘No. I’m glad you asked. He gave me the message just in case he didn’t make it. When I went up – four of us – we were taking proposals to the chaps up top as to how they might help us get the boat up. It didn’t come off, unfortunately.’
‘Unfortunately…’ She half-smiled: then shook her head. ‘I can’t cry any more, Rufus. If tears are what you’re looking for. I’ve dried up. All last night in the train – and this morning—’
‘I am so sorry… If there was anything one could do – which there isn’t, of course… But Zoe – sorry to ask this – about your very kind invitation for supper—’
‘Supper…’ Expressionless: he guessed she was only now remembering that she’d asked him. ‘Are you saying you can’t?’
‘Would you mind awfully?’
‘Well – I suppose – no, all right. I can see you’re just about on your knees.’
‘I was at this time yesterday. No, it’s not that. But I have packing to do, and I want to clean my car’s plugs before the long trip south, and – one or two other things, then get a few hours’ sleep—’
‘I quite understand.’ Her smile was understanding, too. She could have been talking to the vicar – thanking God he was on his way. ‘Thank you for bringing me Andrew’s message, Rufus.’
He’d finished his whisky. Looking at her as he put the glass down, wondering what might be in that glossy head of hers. Having decided on the way here that he’d keep his mouth shut about the likelihood of being given a job in London: anticipating that if she got to know of it he’d have trouble – knocks on the door instead of rings on the telephone… He was on his feet, with her hand in his – answering her polite enquiry about his fiancée, confirming that she was very well, had been up at Glendarragh with him these last two days. Then hearing the manservant coming across the hall, his heels loud on the bare boards. ‘If I can be of help at any time, Zoe—’
‘Madam rang?’
‘Lieutenant Chalk unfortunately won’t be staying for supper, Henderson.’
‘Very well, madam.’ Holding the door…
She murmured – she was coming out to see him on his way – ‘Perhaps you’ll give me a ring one of these days. Let’s not lose touch, Rufus…’
* * *
‘She’d made no attempt to explain the Dymock business.’ Chalk, on the terrace, spread his large hands. ‘Not a word about all those telephone calls to me, either. It was as if one had dreamt it all – it hadn’t happened… The last time I’d been in that house had been for their cocktail party, and if I’d had no contact with her since then we might have been on terms of this kind. Entirely contrary to expectations – having behaved like that when she’d had a husband, now she hadn’t – well, I’d thought, look out! ’
‘Relief, or disappointment?’
‘I think my nose might have been put slightly out of joint. Ridiculous – seeing I’d had no intention of having any more to do with her than was absolutely necessary. But listen to this… When I was getting into my car – I’d parked it beside an Alvis Speed Twenty, which must have been her husband’s and would now presumably be hers – I looked back and she’d already disappeared, gone in and shut the door!’
‘Any reason for the brush-off that you could guess at?’
‘Not at the time. Felt I’d been made a fool of, that was all.’ He touched his page of headings. ‘I got the beginnings of an explanation a couple of months later – at Glendarragh, oddly enough, at Christmas. But we’ll come to that. Leave it now that I didn’t understand but didn’t really give a damn either. She’d intrigued me for a while – we’re all susceptible to that kind of flattery, aren’t we, being chased by a very pretty woman? But there’d been something phoney somewhere, right from the start. Dymock for instance had been pretty keen to disengage: I don’t believe for a moment that he’d been chasing her. Might have done to start with, but – anyway, her tale-telling to her husband had put the lid on it, as far as I was concerned.’ He nodded, as if confirming this to himself. ‘I’d been ready to cut and run.’
‘And next morning you went down to London…’
(Verbatim transcription from the tape now follows)
‘Yes. Then Blockhouse – I was there – can’t say exactly, but about three weeks. Had to write a blow-by-blow account of the disaster: then I suppose I was given some job to keep me busy. I went to my sister’s for one weekend, I do remember. She’d had a son, so Guy and I were uncles – I’d written to let him know, adding my usual plea to come back home, no doubt. Then – well, I was appointed to the Operations Division in the Admiralty, just a day or two ahead of the opening of the Tribunal of Inquiry – for which I can give you a date, 4 October. Because it’s on the report, you see. But also – to my astonishment – I found I was being jacked up to Acting Lieutenant Commander. Gratifying – until one realized it hadn’t anything to do with merit. It was simply because in the Ops Division the three or four of us doing my sort of work had to take turns at being Duty Commander at weekends, and while a mere lieutenant wouldn’t fit that designation a two-and-a-half could, at a pinch. So there I was with an additional half-stripe, just to push bits of paper to and fro. Although in point of fact I had to spend most of my first month there attending the Tribunal of Inquiry’s hearings. In the Law Courts, easy strolling distance from the Admiralty. And I had Diana’s Chelsea flat to live in rent-free – in other words, to put it vulgarly, I’d landed with my arse in butter, so far as creature comforts were concerned. And there’d been one thrilling development – I’d been told at Blockhouse that I was on the list for the next Commanding Officers’ Qualifying Course. George Random wasn’t running the one that was going through then – couldn’t, like me he had to be available to the Tribunal’s barristers – but he might have had something to do with my good fortune. Selecting candidates wasn’t in his brief, but I think he might have put in a word for me. Anyway, it was great news, as you can imagine. The timing had to work out right, of course, otherwise I’d be put off to the next course after that one – losing the best part of a year. The Admiralty would have released me at the drop of a hat, in the normal course of events, but the Tribunal of Inquiry had no set time limits on it. There was this opening session which lasted about three weeks or a month, then a six-week break while the salvage people raised Trumpeter and did a post-mortem on her, as it were – then in about the middle of November we were back in Court again.
‘I’d better get this out of the way first – the Inquiry. You’ve got the report of its findings there, and you’ll see – well, I’ve told you all about it, and the same facts are there on paper, more or less, with alternative conclusions and so forth. The big question – who opened that bowcap or left it open – wasn’t answered. Certainly not conclusively. But one thing did emerge from the inspection of the boat when they’d raised her: the vent-hole in the test-cock on that tube was solidly bunged up with bitumastic paint. You’ll remember that Mike Searle didn’t use the rimer: if he had, he’d have known immediately that he was on unsafe ground, and checked with the drain – as he should have done anyway. One can assume – as the Court did – that he didn’t bother with the rimer because with a brand-new boat he’d have taken it for granted there’d be no accumulation of muck such as might have blocked the hole; he hadn’t considered the possibility that the painter might have omitted to plug the hole with oily cotton-waste before he started work.’
* * *
Some time in late October he got together with Patricia. She’d started – or so Lady Cameron-Green had indicated – as a trainee in the Foreign Office, and was living in some cousins’ house in Kensington. Chalk had a note from her giving him their name and the address, he telephoned that same evening and the following week took her to see The Drum – which was showing at the Odeon in Leicester Square, and she’d said she’d like to see it – and then to supper in a restaurant in Wardour Street.
Lady C-G’s eye to the main chance again, he’d thought. It really had been an odd thing
to have done – knowing perfectly well that he was engaged to Diana, who was out of the country. All right, she might have had no ulterior motive at all, might simply have thought they were good friends and perhaps both lonesome in the big city… But Lady C-G wasn’t all that naive, and Patricia hadn’t been in the least bit lonely. Chalk had been slightly embarrassed, didn’t tell Patricia that her mother had initiated the contact, instead allowed her to assume that he’d gone to the trouble of finding out where she was.
She was going to France in a fortnight’s time, she told him, and she’d be away about six weeks. Ten days in Paris first, then in the southwest; she’d be accompanying some old aunt.
‘But I thought you’d started work at the FO.’
‘Oh, no. Only sort of hanging around. Keeping out of people’s way, mostly, they’ve nowhere to put me. I start properly, full-time, on the third of January.’
‘So you aren’t being paid yet, even?’
‘Lord no. It’s just that the person who fixed it up thought I’d better get down here quickly and sort of clinch it. And I’ve done so.’
‘I see… Tell me, where exactly in the southwest – where you’re going after Paris?’
‘Saint Jean de Luz. Near Biarritz. Old friends of my great-aunt are lending us a house there. Lending her, I should have said. And Biarritz used to be one of her old stamping grounds – about a century ago.’
While only a few weeks ago, he remembered, he’d proposed to Diana – half-jokingly – that they might fly to Biarritz together, and she’d put him smartly into what she’d then seen as his place. For a while, after the hoolie night, he’d flattered himself with the thought that she hadn’t been able to hold out any longer against his irresistible masculine charm, but more recently he’d wondered whether she might not, as it were, have been putting her brand on him. He had rather flirted with Patricia in the early stages of that party: and Diana had been about to leave him to his own devices for several months. She might have decided to make sure of him.
He glanced up as Patricia offered, ‘Penny for the deep thoughts, Rufus?’
‘You want the truth?’
‘That means you’re giving yourself time to think up a lie. Come on, time’s up!’
‘And no worthwhile lie at hand, so I’m stuck with the truth. I was thinking you’re by far the best-looking girl in this room.’
‘Oh, la la!’
‘The astonishing thing is that you’re clever too.’
‘You are going it a bit!’
‘Is the aunt you’re going to France with anything to do with the cousins you’re staying with now?’
A nod: ‘Their grandmother.’
‘Grandmother?’
‘She’s my great-aunt, actually. Mummy’s aunt. Aged ninety – how d’you like that? Actually, from my point of view it’s a chance to brush up my French, but in any case she’s fun, I adore her.’
‘I thought your French was fluent already.’
‘It is, really. But there’s always room for improvement. It’s my German I should be brushing up. But—’ she grimaced – ‘who’d want to go there?’
‘Could be interesting.’
‘Could be horrible, too. Talking of Germans, incidentally – not looking too good, is it? These Sudetenland riots, and our house-painter friend rattling his sabre again?’
‘What’s the Foreign Office view?’
She smiled, shaking her blonde head. ‘Anthony hasn’t actually got round to chewing the fat with me – yet… Rufus, what about spending Christmas at Glendarragh?’
‘Lovely idea – but I’ve more or less promised Betty – the mother of my nephew—’
‘What a proud uncle! But please – make that promise less rather than more? Oh, do, Rufus?’
‘Will you be back from France by then?’
‘For Christmas, you bet I will!’
‘Well… Can I let you know? It’s very kind of you—’
‘Talk to Betty. I really must go down and see her – see it – one of these weekends… But Rufus, the parents and Suzie’d love it too. You can see your nephew any old time, surely?’
‘It’s a point. Tell you in a few days, can I?’
‘Shall I be seeing you again in a few days?’
‘If you don’t leave for France too soon, you will – I hope… But changing the subject, I’m glad Suzie’s enjoying her flying so much.’ He glanced at the waiter: ‘Thank you… You said she’s going straight for a “B” licence – which means commercial – but does she get the private pilot’s “A” licence on the way to it?’
‘I don’t know. But apparently she really is what they call a “natural”. Her instructor told Mama so over the telephone. He’s the one Diana found – and it’s on her advice Suzie’s aiming for the full commercial licence. It’s been enormously good for her, you know, and we’ve Diana to thank for it.’
‘Getting her over the other business, is it?’
‘She still has her nightmares, Mama tells me. Screams in the night sometimes – scares her half to death – Mama, I mean. God knows what it does to poor Suzie… You’ve suffered no lasting ill effects, have you?’
‘Not so you’d notice.’
Except when he let himself think back to it. When he did, he felt like a deserter. That down there, with them, was where he should have been.
Although down there might not apply now, in the present tense. The Tribunal was in recess at this time, and Trumpeter was being raised, might well have been brought to the surface by now. He didn’t envy them the task that would follow. The stuff of which a thousand nightmares might be made. The detritus: and evidence of how men had died. To know about the bodies in the escape-hatch was bad enough.
Patricia had broken a silence with ‘I do wish she’d stuck to Guy.’
He agreed: ‘Not only for her own sake, either.’
‘Oh, he’ll come through it all right.’ She’d put her hand on his. ‘You’ll have him back here before much longer. You will, Rufus.’
‘I might tell him to whiz up to the Pyrenees, hop over them and meet you in Saint Jean de Luz?’
‘What a lovely idea.’ Smiling, and her hand tightening… ‘Do come for Christmas?’
Diana wrote, early in November –
This place would be heaven if only you were here too – and of course if Mummy wasn’t so ill. I’m glad I came out, because it’s giving her such pleasure. But she hasn't long to go – the doctor says it’s a miracle she’s hung on even this long – and while I don’t want to seem callous I really think it might be for the best if she passed on – peacefully, in her sleep, please God – while I’m still here. Because otherwise she’s going to be miserable when I go and I’ll feel absolutely dreadful to be leaving her.
Good idea to spend Christmas at Glendarragh. Was it their idea, or yours? If I had to bet, I’d say it might have been Patricia’s. Be a good boy now, Rufie. I often think – and dream – of those two days we had in London. Only wish I hadn’t been so rushed, but it was still heaven, a heaven I’m longing to get back to – but you know that, don’t you? And I was thinking too – if, touch wood, that wretched Inquiry ends in time for you to join the next course, you’ll have your own command by about this time next year – won’t you? If so, why not make an honest woman of me then?
Give my love to Guy when you write. Tell him I think it’s plain stupid to be hanging on out there, risking life and limb to absolutely no purpose. Now the Spanish government’s had to move out of Madrid, down to Barcelona – and Franco took yet another town last week, some place called Gijon? – the Republicans don’t have a vestige of a hope, do they?
I must run. Doctor’s arriving to see Mummy. Darling – keep the lovely letters coming, I love you…
He saw Patricia twice more before she left for France. She had a busy social life anyway, and he had as much party-going and so forth as he’d have wanted, mostly through brother-officers at the Admiralty. Weekends were as often as not spent at his sister’s house in
Kent. Betty had taken his defection over the Christmas holiday without too much grousing, and he’d had a note from Lady Cameron-Green confirming Patricia’s invitation.
Suzie had put a note in with her mother’s.
Very much looking forward to seeing you at Christmas. Or before – why not? Any news of Guy? When you next write to him, please give him my love. Flying is heaven – an escape to another world – and I might never have done it if Diana hadn’t come along!
He’d written back with the news of Guy, which amounted only to the fact that at any rate a fortnight ago he’d been alive and kicking and had described himself as having become ‘a reasonably competent soldier’. But after this enquiry from Suzie, he’d written to him again – second letter in a week – saying he’d heard from her and that she’d asked after him and sent her love. He added that he knew from Patricia she was still having nightmares, and if he – Guy – could find it in his heart to write to her – just a friendly couple of lines, old chap? – he’d be doing her a great kindness. He’d added, Then, to do us all an even greater one, come on back to England!
Whether or not Guy received that letter, he didn’t know. None of his letters from Spain had mentioned Suzie. His last – scribbled in pencil on smudgy paper torn from some notebook – had ended with Don’t write us off yet, Rufus. Great things are in the wind.
Nearer home, a new policy called ‘Appeasement’ was in the wind. The first outward and visible sign of it came when Halifax, Lord President of the Council, visited Hitler in an attempt to arrange a peaceful settlement of German claims to Sudetenland. He’d gone with Chamberlain’s backing but without the knowledge of Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, and had offered Hitler settlement of this and other points at issue – including Austria and Danzig, the so-called Polish Corridor – in the Germans’ favour as long as they refrained from war.
Most people were pretty sure by this time that war was one of many things Hitler was not going to refrain from. While German newspapers – Patricia had told him this – were full of articles and editorials claiming that war was being forced inexorably on the peace-loving German people by the pernicious influence of international Jewry in Britain, France, Poland and elsewhere.
Not Thinking of Death Page 27