Decoy

by Dudley Pope

  Two to go. The white-haired lady had gone; three men had received their awards since then. One to go. And now step forward, avoid catching a foot on the steps of the dais without looking down.

  The King looked tired, but his face was far stronger than it appeared in photographs. Naval uniform, Admiral of the Fleet. Smiling. One cushion. Incline the head, as instructed, so the King can place the ribbon of the Order round the neck.

  ‘The Aztecs are an interesting people, and it seems they get warlike when serving in destroyers!’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ No sign of the stammer which the King was said to have to control.

  ‘And your hand?’

  He remembered not to move it. This was polite conversation; a metaphorical ‘How do you do,’ and not to be answered with a medical history.

  ‘It aches just before it’s going to rain, sir!’

  ‘A useful weathercock, eh? Now — ’ The King reached for the medal, ‘you’ve been busy, even if you left our neutral friends with red faces.’

  Ned found himself walking away from the dais and seeing his mother’s upraised hand. She sat next to Clare, with a vacant chair beside them. Lt Cdr Edward Yorke, DSO, DSC, RN. It was official now, even though both the Order and the actual Cross would probably spend the rest of his life in their velvet lined boxes, except for the rare invitation or order which said, ‘Decorations will be worn.’

  Unreal…unreal… Because of the Aztec’s sinking and his wound, he had been taken to St Stephen’s Hospital to save his arm from what was known in Nelson’s day as gangrene but today was called septicaemia, and he had met Clare. Then to the ASIU and briefly to sea again. Now, with Clare and his mother, they were all at a Buckingham Palace Investiture and he had an Order slung round his neck and a Cross pinned to his chest.

  Clare tapped his knee and leaned over so she could whisper in his ear. ‘I saw an old friend collect medals for two airmen. Why would she be doing that?’

  She? There had been several women receiving decorations which they had won, but only one received posthumous awards. ‘Do you mean the white-haired woman in a grey dress?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Kelso.’

  ‘She was receiving medals for her two sons. Both have been killed.’

  When he saw Clare’s face go white he knew he had not been paying enough attention.

  ‘Boldro and Kevin? Dead?’

  Ned nodded miserably as he saw tears forming in Clare’s eyes. ‘Poor Jeannie,’ she murmured, ‘now she’s all alone.’

  It took twenty minutes to complete the Investiture and then recipients and relatives slowly filed out of the great room, and Ned realized that they were a cross-section of Britain at war. An aircraftman pink with shyness marched stiffly with either his wife or fiancée; a jaunty leading seaman with the DCM led out his mother and father. A Navy captain with a DSO was alone — victim of distance and divorce? A turbaned Sikh with a medal Ned did not recognize stopped and gazed round the room, as if soaking up enough memories to last him a lifetime. An ATS girl had a BEM and led proud parents, the mother wearing a flowered dress more appropriate to a summer garden party than a winter Investiture. RAF pilots, a Fleet Air Arm pilot, and the man on crutches, who now had a very beautiful Asiatic woman with him. Balinese, Javanese, Indochinese? Ned was far from sure, but both were proud of each other.

  As they walked towards the door and through into the long corridor they began to lose their shyness and started talking. Ned detected dozens of accents — a WAAF from Wales, another from the Midlands and another, judging by her father’s proud booming voice, from Yorkshire. An RAFVR pilot officer with a DFC tried to quieten his mother, whose penetrating tone bore a close resemblance to a Hampshire vicar’s overbearing wife.

  Then he heard a briefly familiar soft voice behind them. ‘It’s Clare isn’t it? And looking bonnie.’

  Boldro or Kevin? Did they know Clare’s husband, the homosexual pilot killed before finishing his training course? She had not loved him, but after his death had she loved Boldro or Kevin? Had his meeting with the white-haired old trout on the train been a ghastly coincidence? Doubt, jealousy, anger, each chased through him as Clare stopped and clasped the woman to her with a stifled: ‘Jeannie, oh Jeannie!’ How the devil did she come to know the woman, if not through a son?

  Ned and his mother waited, and then Clare, holding the woman’s hand, turned to introduce her. ‘Mrs Yorke… Commander Yorke, my fiancé… I want you to meet the Countess of Kelso, Jeannie Douglas.’

  ‘I’ve already met your fiancé,’ the woman said. ‘In fact, young man, I think we can shock them by admitting we spent the night together only a few days ago!’

  The plump mother of a soldier who was passing at that moment, and heard only the last dozen words, stopped with popping eyes and exclaimed, ‘’Ere, jew ’ear that?’ as her husband pulled her away. ‘Ayemeentersay, at ’er age, it’s…’ By now Ned and the three women were listening to her outraged comments and all of them were smiling at the determined husband’s back.

  ‘It’s no compliment that you accept my announcement so calmly, Clare,’ the woman said.

  ‘If you were thirty years younger I’d know I was beaten,’ a smiling Clare admitted, ‘but now I can give you a run for your money. Come on, we are in the way,’ and she led them along the corridor. Olive-green suits her, Ned thought. He had not seen that dress before.

  There was a pause as medals were put away in velvet-lined boxes, and his mother insisted Clare carried both of his, while the Countess put her three into her worn, alligator skin handbag, saying simply: ‘The newspapers,’ by way of explanation.

  As they left the Palace building and walked across the wide courtyard at the front to where the Guardsmen stood at the gates and here and there a policeman looked round at the small waiting crowd of sightseers, they saw occasional sudden spurts of white light from the flash bulbs of the newspaper photographers.

  ‘I’m dreading this,’ the Countess said, pulling down her hat more firmly. ‘Let me be in the middle, and behind you, Commander Yorke, then perhaps they won’t notice me.’

  For a few moments Ned was irritated. The old woman seemed to be making a meal out of it: the loudest cries for anonymity usually came from those who resented having it thrust upon them. After all, she was not the only Countess in the land, or the first mother to collect posthumous awards.

  As they passed through the gates a photographer swung round.

  ‘The Countess of Kelso? Hold it, ma’am!’ The flash blinded them and they involuntarily stopped, and the photographer feverishly turned the plate at the back of the camera and fitted another flash bulb, calling: ‘Just one more, ma’am!’

  By now four other photographers were crouching or squatting, cameras clicking and flash bulbs exploding, and Ned heard one say urgently to another: ‘This is ’er, isn’t it?’

  The photographers were grouped in front of them and there was no chance of moving so Ned, with an apologetic: ‘You’re trapped,’ moved to one side to give the photographers a clear view.

  As soon as they had finished, half a dozen waiting reporters crowded round and began calling questions.

  ‘Lady Kelso, did you ask for Spitfires because your sons –?’

  ‘ — cost of them? We understand the bill will be — ’

  ‘ — name them? After each son, perhaps?’

  ‘ — Glasgow Herald, ma’am, so perhaps you would care — ’

  She held up a hand firmly. ‘Gentleman, you’re all asking questions at once and I can’t understand a word you’re saying. We’ve got all day and if my friend Commander Yorke will be kind enough to act as a master of ceremonies — ’

  With his back to the newspapermen, Ned whispered urgently: ‘What’s happened? They’re not interested in just the medals.’

  ‘I’ve just paid for two Spitfires,’ she
said quietly. ‘The Douglases haven’t finished with Hitler yet. The wretched Air Ministry had to announce it to coincide with the Investiture.’

  Ned turned to the newspapermen. ‘Very well, gentlemen, ask your questions. You — ’ he pointed to a stocky, grey-haired man on the left. ‘Why don’t you start?’

  ‘Aye. Aberdeen Free Press, m’Lady. Will the Spitfires be named after your sons?’

  Ned turned and she looked at him. ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ she murmured.

  ‘I think it would be a very good idea. Will you tell the men yourself?’ He stood to one side and the Countess stepped forward, a tiny but resolute figure. By now there were passers-by standing two or three deep behind the newspapermen, and a policeman was among them.

  ‘Yes… I want to call the aeroplanes…’ Ned guessed she was trying to think of a phrase, and leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

  ‘I want to call the aeroplanes “The Kelso Reply”. I hope the Royal Air Force men can paint that on each aeroplane…with the name “Boldro Douglas” under one, and “Kevin Douglas” under the other.’

  ‘With the crest, ma’am?’

  ‘That would mean a lot of work for the artist.’

  ‘I doubt they’ll mind,’ said the reporter in his calm Aberdonian accent.

  Ned pointed to the next man. ‘The Telegraph. My Lady, are there any other Douglases to carry on the fight?’

  ‘No, they were the only two I had.’

  ‘What happens to the title?’

  ‘There’s a wee bairn, the son of my late husband’s younger brother.’

  ‘Was it your idea to buy the planes?’

  ‘Yes. It seemed appropriate.’

  Ned pointed to the next man, who said querulously: ‘Daily Herald. Why didn’t you buy a few field ambulances instead?’

  ‘They would hardly serve my purpose so well,’ she said firmly. ‘We Scots are like the rest of the Allies: we want to kill the enemy, not carry them away on stretchers!’

  She had neatly turned the question, and Ned pointed to the next man. ‘Evening Standard, ma’am. Will you be handing over the planes yourself at the factory?’

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know. They’ve only just cashed my cheque!’

  The newspapermen laughed, and she was thankful when one of them, with an apologetic ‘Press Association, ma’am — I must ’phone this,’ hurried off to the nearest telephone, which Ned knew, since he passed it every day, was round the corner in Buckingham Palace Road.

  The reporters obviously considered the impromptu Press conference over, and as Ned turned back to the three women, the Countess said: ‘Can we get a taxi?’

  ‘Why not have a scratch-round-the-larder lunch with us?’ his mother said. ‘We live just round the corner. Then we can talk as long as we want.’

  Lunch was a typical ‘unexpected guest’ meal which bit into hoarded food coupons but justified the ‘points’ system, where the few issued each week could be used to buy some tinned and other foods which came under the heading of ‘luxury’ rather than ‘essential’.

  Clare changed her dress for a tweed skirt and cashmere jersey and then disappeared into the kitchen to produce a cold buffet of scraps, a salad of sliced cabbage with an oil and vinegar dressing, and, as the main item, a tin of herrings in tomato sauce. Clare apologized for the fact that the cheese ration was gone, that there was only margarine left, and the meat ration was still at the butcher’s, intended for dinner on Sunday.

  Lady Kelso shook her head regretfully. ‘Up in Scotland we’re very lucky. Plenty of rabbits and our own fresh vegetables. And now and again we share our venison.’

  The four of them sat in the drawing room close to the one-bar electric fire, which only emphasized the chill, and Ned listened as Clare and Lady Kelso brought themselves up to date with their news. Lady Kelso was running the entire estate with the help of the former agent, who had retired before the war but had now come back, despite severe attacks of sciatica. The Ministry of Agriculture inspectors called once a week to tell him how they thought he should run the farm, but things had been a lot easier since a particular inspector had given instructions for a particular hillside to be ploughed and planted.

  ‘McPherson — he’s my agent — told him the hillside was so steep that a tractor would overturn, and none of the horses could work it. This inspector, a man with soft hands and clean nails and an ingratiating manner — I think he said he came from Huyton, in Lancashire, which I always thought was industrial — argued with McPherson so rudely that McPherson fetched out the tractor, hitched on the plough, and drove it to the hillside. He went back to his office for something and when he returned he told the inspector to show him how it was done. The inspector looked up the hill and promptly said he could not drive a tractor.

  ‘McPherson, who had gone back to get his shotgun — an ancient twelve-bore hammer gun — cocked it and told the inspector to climb up and drive.

  ‘I arrived just as McPherson had fired both barrels into the ground a couple of feet in front of the inspector and was reloading. I took the poor man to the railway station after giving him a whisky, and I must say the Ministry have been much more understanding since then.’

  Her description of her life running the estate was, Ned realized, an outline of the kind of life one or other (or indeed both) boys would have enjoyed had they lived and when peace came again. Each had roamed the sky as a hunter, a Spitfire replacing the basket-handled sword of the forebears, but each had lost the last fight.

  ‘There are plenty of grouse: they seem to know there are no guns about, apart from a few poachers. The deer, och they breed so fast and do so much damage, but I hate to have them shot, though it is for their own good. Rabbits — we have so many we could feed all England if they sent up a few ferrets and nets. Pheasants — enough to keep the poachers busy. They knock them out of the trees at night.’

  The conversation then turned naturally to the two sons. Clare recalled happy childhood stays with the Douglases before the war, when she was not considered by the Countess old enough to travel alone on the night train down to London. Boldro’s first stag — Clare and Kevin had been there when he shot it and, horrified, both vowed they would never shoot such a magnificent animal.

  ‘And Kevin never did,’ commented the countess. ‘He never went hunting, or shooting, or even fishing. I think the only thing he ever hunted after that was Germans.’

  ‘He certainly made up for it then,’ Clare commented. ‘How many did he shoot down?’

  ‘Seventeen. But he was different from Boldro: he went his own way. He’d be at home reading while Boldro would be camping in one of the glens with a couple of his friends, cooking over a camp fire.’

  The Countess and Clare reminisced and Ned felt the jealousy ebb away. Clare had been fond of both boys (and young men as they grew up) but they could have been her brothers or favourite cousins. One thing was very clear, though, and it accounted for Clare’s ignorance of recent happenings in the Douglas family: the Countess neither read nor answered letters. If they came in manila envelopes they were given to McPherson, and the rest ended up, for a reason unclear to Ned, in a large zinc bin in the pantry.

  The Countess stayed to tea and then took them out to an early dinner, before catching the night train back to Scotland. Ned sent his mother home by taxi before he and Clare took the old lady to the station. After the train pulled out and just as the sirens started their wailing warning that the night’s bombing was about to begin, and with no taxis in sight, they walked down the steps to the Underground.

  ‘It’s been an extraordinary day,’ Clare said. ‘I’m so glad I don’t have to do night duty as well tonight.’

  ‘As well as what?’ he turned to look at her.

  ‘As well as travel on the Underground with you,’ she said, blushing. ‘Officers aren’t supposed to use publi
c transport.’

  ‘Find me a taxi, then: I’d sooner take it. Tell me,’ he said, ‘what would have happened if I hadn’t been sent to St Stephen’s to have this hand mended?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said airily, ‘if you’d gone to Haslar the Navy doctors might have made a better job of it — avoided the septicaemia, for example — but you’d have been bullied by SBAs, not me.’

  ‘An unshaven sick-berth attendant after a night’s bombing wouldn’t have been as fierce as you.’

  ‘No, but SBAs don’t wear black stockings.’

  He laughed, recalling the episode when he had teased her that a stocking seam was crooked. ‘That was when I knew I loved you,’ he said, talking as thought they were in the privacy of a sitting room or bedroom, not walking round people coming up the stairs. ‘When did you, er…’

  ‘It’s often different with women, darling. Usually there isn’t a blinding flash as they fall in love. It is slow and insidious, like getting a cold. One feels slightly odd, and then it gets worse. Finally one has to admit to having a cold and it is far too late to do anything about it.’

  They reached the bottom of the steps and walked over to the ticket machines.

  ‘When did you decide it was too late?’ he asked.

  ‘About a week before you wrote me that letter.’

  ‘But…’ he thought a few moments. ‘But you had hardly spoken to me up to then. A couple of blanket baths, a few bottles, half a dozen changes of dressing…’

  ‘And half a dozen times when I pushed your arm down into a dish of nearly scalding water and you simply grunted when I knew it must be agony.’

  ‘But you never said anything sympathetic; you never hinted…’