Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  The husband she was carefully planning to betray.

  She knew she should be paralyzed by guilt, but in fact she was eager to do it, consumed by longing.

  Next she had to brief Lloyd. He had come to her apartment last night, as usual, but she could not have made this assignation with him then, for he would have expected her to explain herself and then, she knew, she would have told him everything and taken him to her bed and ruined the whole plan. So she had to speak to him briefly today.

  She did not normally see him in the daytime, unless she ran into him by accident, in the hall or library. How could she make sure of meeting him? She went up the back stairs to the attic floor. The trainees were not in their rooms, but at any moment one of them might appear, returning to his room for something he had forgotten. So she had to be quick.

  She went into Lloyd's room. It smelled of him. She could not say exactly what the fragrance was. She did not see a bottle of cologne in the room, but there was a jar of some kind of hair lotion beside his razor. She opened it and sniffed: yes, that was it, citrus and spice. Was he vain? she asked herself. Perhaps a little bit. He usually looked well dressed, even in his uniform.

  She would leave him a note. On top of the dresser was a pad of cheap writing paper. She opened it and tore out a sheet. She looked around for something to write with. He had a black fountain pen with his name engraved on the barrel, she knew, but he would have that with him, for writing notes in class. She found a pencil in the top drawer.

  What could she write? She had to be careful in case someone else should read the note. In the end she just wrote: "Library." She left the pad open on the dresser where he could hardly fail to see it. Then she left.

  No one saw her.

  He would probably come to his room at some point, she speculated, perhaps to fill his pen with ink from the bottle on the dresser. Then he would see the note and come to her.

  She went to the library to wait.

  The morning was long. She was reading Victorian authors--they seemed to understand how she felt right now--but today Mrs. Gaskell could not hold her attention, and she spent most of the time looking out of the window. It was May, and there would normally have been a brilliant display of spring flowers on the grounds of Ty Gwyn, but most of the gardeners had joined the armed forces, and the rest were growing vegetables, not flowers.

  Several trainees came into the library just before eleven, and settled down in the green leather chairs with their notebooks, but Lloyd was not among them.

  The last lecture of the morning ended at half past twelve, she knew. At that point the men got up and left the library, but Lloyd did not appear.

  Surely he would go to his room now, she thought, just to put down his books and wash his hands in the nearby bathroom.

  The minutes passed, and the gong sounded for lunch.

  Then he came in, and her heart leaped.

  He looked worried. "I just saw your note," he said. "Are you all right?"

  His first concern was for her. A problem of hers was not a nuisance to him, but an opportunity to help her, and he would seize it eagerly. No man had cared for her this way, not even her father.

  "Everything is all right," she said. "Do you know what a gardenia looks like?" She had rehearsed this speech all morning.

  "I suppose so. A bit like a rose. Why?"

  "In the west wing there's an apartment called the Gardenia Suite. It has a white gardenia painted on the door, and it's full of stored linen. Do you think you could find it?"

  "Of course."

  "Meet me there tonight, instead of coming to the flat. Usual time."

  He stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on. "I will," he said. "But why?"

  "I want to tell you something."

  "How exciting," he said, but he looked puzzled.

  She could guess what was going through his mind. He was electrified by the thought that she might intend a romantic assignation, and at the same time he was telling himself that was a hopeless dream.

  "Go to lunch," she said.

  He hesitated.

  She said: "I'll see you tonight."

  "I can't wait," he said, and went out.

  She returned to her flat. Maisie, who was not much of a cook, had made her a sandwich with two slabs of bread and a slice of canned ham. Daisy's stomach was full of butterflies; she could not have eaten if it had been peach ice cream.

  She lay down to rest. Her thoughts about the night to come were so explicit she felt embarrassed. She had learned a lot about sex from Boy, who clearly had much experience with other women, and she knew a great deal about what men liked. She wanted to do everything with Lloyd, to kiss every part of his body, to do what Boy called soixante-neuf, to swallow his semen. The thoughts were so arousing that it took all her willpower to resist the temptation to pleasure herself.

  She had a cup of coffee at five, then washed her hair and took a long bath, shaving her underarms and trimming her pubic hair, which grew too abundantly. She dried herself and rubbed in a light body lotion all over. She perfumed herself and began to get dressed.

  She put on new underwear. She tried on all her dresses. She liked the look of one with fine blue-and-white stripes, but all down the front it had little buttons that would take forever to undo, and she knew she would want to undress quickly. I'm thinking like a whore, she realized, and she did not know whether to be amused or ashamed. In the end she decided on a simple peppermint green cashmere knee-length that showed off her shapely legs.

  She studied herself in the narrow mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. She looked good.

  She perched on the edge of the bed to put her stockings on, and Boy came in.

  Daisy felt faint. If she had not been sitting she would have fallen down. She stared at him in disbelief.

  "Surprise!" he said with jollity. "I came a day early."

  "Yes," she said when at last she was able to speak. "Surprise."

  He bent down and kissed her. She had never much liked his tongue in her mouth, because he always tasted of booze and cigars. He did not mind her distaste; in fact he seemed to enjoy forcing the issue. But now, out of guilt, she tongued him back.

  "Gosh!" he said when he ran out of breath. "You're frisky."

  You have no idea, Daisy thought; at least, I hope you don't.

  "The exercise was brought forward by a day," he explained. "No time to warn you."

  "So you're here for the night," she said.

  "Yes."

  And Lloyd was leaving in the morning.

  "You don't seem very pleased," Boy said. He looked at her dress. "Did you have something else planned?"

  "Such as what?" she said. She had to regain her composure. "A night out at the Two Crowns pub, perhaps?" she asked sarcastically.

  "Speaking of that, let's have a drink." He left the room in search of booze.

  Daisy buried her face in her hands. How could this be? Her plan was ruined. She would have to find some way of alerting Lloyd. And she could not declare her love for him in a hurried whisper with Boy around the corner.

  She told herself that the whole scheme would simply be postponed. It was only for a few days: he was due back next Tuesday. The delay would be agonizing, but she would survive, and so would her love. All the same, she almost cried with disappointment.

  She finished putting on her stockings and shoes, then she went into the little sitting room.

  Boy had found a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. She took some to be convivial. He said: "I see that girl is making a fish pie for supper. I'm starving. Is she a good cook?"

  "Not really. Her food is edible, if you're hungry."

  "Oh, well, there's always whisky," he said, and he poured himself another drink.

  "What have you been doing?" She was desperate to get him to talk so that she would not have to. "Did you fly to Norway?" The Germans were winning the first land battle of the war there.

  "No, thank God. It's a disaster. There's a big debate in
the House of Commons tonight." He began to talk about the mistakes the British and French commanders had made.

  When supper was ready, Boy went down to the cellar to get some wine. Daisy saw a chance to alert Lloyd. But where would he be? She looked at her wristwatch. It was half past seven. He would be having dinner in the mess. She could not walk into that room and whisper in his ear as he sat at the table with his fellow officers: it would be as good as telling everyone they were lovers. Was there some way she could get him out of there? She racked her brains, but before she could think of anything Boy returned, triumphantly carrying a bottle of 1921 Dom Perignon. "The first vintage they made," he said. "Historic."

  They sat at the table and ate Maisie's fish pie. Daisy drank a glass of the champagne but she found it difficult to eat. She pushed her food around the plate in an attempt to look normal. Boy had a second helping.

  For dessert Maisie served canned peaches with condensed milk. "War has been bad for British cuisine," Boy said.

  "Not that it was great before," Daisy commented, still working on seeming normal.

  By now Lloyd must be in the Gardenia Suite. What would he do if she were unable to get a message to him? Would he remain there all night, waiting and hoping for her to arrive? Would he give up at midnight and return to his own bed? Or would he come down here looking for her? That might be awkward.

  Boy took out a large cigar and smoked it with satisfaction, occasionally dipping the unlit end into a glass of brandy. Daisy tried to think of an excuse to leave him and go upstairs, but nothing came. What pretext could she possibly cite for visiting the trainees' quarters at this time of night?

  She still had done nothing when he put out his cigar and said: "Well, time for bed. Do you want to use the bathroom first?"

  Not knowing what else to do, she got up and went into the bedroom. Slowly, she took off the clothes she had put on so carefully for Lloyd. She washed her face and put on her least alluring nightdress. Then she got into bed.

  Boy was moderately drunk when he climbed in beside her, but he still wanted sex. The thought appalled her. "I'm sorry," she said. "Dr. Mortimer said no marital relations for three months." This was not true. Mortimer had said it would be all right when the bleeding stopped. She felt horribly dishonest. She had been planning to do it with Lloyd tonight.

  "What?" Boy said indignantly. "Why?"

  Improvising, she said: "If we do it too soon, it might affect my chances of getting pregnant again, apparently."

  That convinced him. He was desperate for an heir. "Ah, well," he said, and turned away.

  In a minute he was asleep.

  Daisy lay awake, her mind buzzing. Could she slip away now? She would have to get dressed--she certainly could not walk around the house in her nightdress. Boy slept heavily, but often woke to go to the bathroom. What if he did that while she was gone, and saw her return with her clothes on? What story could she tell that had a chance of being believed? Everyone knew there was only one reason why a woman went creeping around a country house at night.

  Lloyd would have to suffer. And she suffered with him, thinking of him alone and disappointed in that musty room. Would he lie down in his uniform and fall asleep? He would be cold, unless he pulled a blanket around him. Would he assume some emergency, or just think she had carelessly stood him up? Perhaps he would feel let down, and be angry with her.

  Tears rolled down her face. Boy was snoring, so he would never know.

  She dozed off in the small hours, and dreamed she was catching a train, but silly things kept happening to delay her: the taxi took her to the wrong place, she had to walk unexpectedly far with her suitcase, she could not find her ticket, and when she reached the platform she found waiting for her an old-fashioned stagecoach that would take days to get to London.

  When she woke from the dream, Boy was in the bathroom, shaving.

  She lost heart. She got up and dressed. Maisie prepared breakfast, and Boy had eggs and bacon and buttered toast. By the time they had finished it was nine o'clock. Lloyd had said he was leaving at nine. He might be in the hall now, with his suitcase in his hand.

  Boy got up from the table and went into the bathroom, taking the newspaper with him. Daisy knew his morning habits: he would be there five or ten minutes. Suddenly her apathy left her. She went out of the flat and ran up the stairs to the hall.

  Lloyd was not there. He must already have left. Her heart sank.

  But he would be walking to the railway station: only the wealthy and infirm took taxis to go a mile. Perhaps she could catch him up. She went out through the front door.

  She saw him four hundred yards down the drive, walking smartly, carrying his case, and her heart leaped. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran after him.

  A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. "No!" Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far away to hear her.

  He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.

  She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.

  Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of Ty Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.

  After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.

  v

  On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London, and that evening, Wednesday, May 8, he was in the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons, watching the debate that would decide the fate of the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.

  It was like being in the gods at the theater: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his uncle Billy among the Labour M.P.s down in the packed chamber.

  Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.

  The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour M.P.s but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at him: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague, and it was made more wounding by the chorus of "Hear, hear!" that arose from both sides of the chamber.

  Lloyd's mother and the other female M.P.s had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The prime minister accepted the challenge, and--in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness--appealed to his friends to stand by him.

  The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce "nonintervention" by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultraconservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.

  "And yet," said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, "Chamberlain isn't really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is first lord of the Admiralty, and your mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done--Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia--it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something that isn't really his fault."

  "Everything is ultimately the prime minister's fault," said Lloyd. "That's what it means to be the leader."

  Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was
thinking that young people saw everything too simply, but to his credit Bernie did not say it.

  It was a noisy debate, but the house went quiet when the former prime minister David Lloyd George stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.

  He was merciless. "It is not a question of who are the prime minister's friends," he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. "It is a far bigger issue."

  Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.

  "He has appealed for sacrifices," Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. "There is nothing which can contribute more to victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office."

  The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.

  Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering, sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamor.

  He sat down at eleven P.M. and the vote was taken.

  The voting system was cumbersome. Instead of raising their hands, or ticking slips of paper, M.P.s had to leave the chamber and be counted as they walked through one of two lobbies, for ayes or noes. The process took fifteen or twenty minutes. It could have been devised only by men who did not have enough to do, Ethel said. She felt sure it would be modernized soon.

  Lloyd waited on tenterhooks. The fall of Chamberlain would give him profound satisfaction, but it was by no means certain.

  To distract himself he thought about Daisy, always a pleasant occupation. How strange his last twenty-four hours at Ty Gwyn had been: first the one-word note, "Library"; then the rushed conversation, with her tantalizing summons to the Gardenia Suite; then a whole night of waiting, cold and bored and bewildered, for a woman who did not show up. He had stayed there until six o'clock in the morning, miserable but unwilling to give up hope until the moment when he was obliged to wash and shave and change his clothes and pack his suitcase for the trip.

  Clearly something had gone wrong, or she had changed her mind, but what had she intended in the first place? She had said she wanted to tell him something. Had she planned to say something earth-shaking, to merit all that drama? Or something so trivial that she had forgotten all about it and the rendezvous? He would have to wait until next Tuesday to ask her.