Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  Naomi was being ironic but, strangely, Daisy was happy. It was very odd, she thought as she careered around a bend. Every night she saw destruction, tragic bereavement, and horribly maimed bodies. There was a good chance she herself would die in a blazing building tonight. Yet she felt wonderful. She was working and suffering for a cause, and paradoxically that was better than pleasing herself. She was part of a group that would risk everything to help others, and it was the best feeling in the world.

  Daisy did not hate the Germans for trying to kill her. She had been told by her father-in-law, Earl Fitzherbert, why they were bombing London. Until August the Luftwaffe had raided only ports and airfields. Fitz had explained, in an unusually candid moment, that the British were not so scrupulous: the government had approved bombing of targets in German cities back in May, and all through June and July the RAF had dropped bombs on women and children in their homes. The German public had been enraged by this and demanded retaliation. The Blitz was the result.

  Daisy and Boy were keeping up appearances, but she locked her bedroom door when he was at home, and he made no objection. Their marriage was a sham, but they were both too busy to do anything about it. When Daisy thought about it, she felt sad, for she had lost both Boy and Lloyd now. Fortunately she hardly had time to think.

  Nutley Street was on fire. The Luftwaffe dropped incendiary bombs and high explosive together. Fire did the most damage, but the high explosive helped the blaze to spread by blowing out windows and ventilating the flames.

  Daisy brought the ambulance to a screeching halt and they all went to work.

  People with minor injuries were helped to the nearest first-aid station. Those more seriously hurt were driven to St. Bart's or the London Hospital in Whitechapel. Daisy made one trip after another. When darkness fell she switched on her headlights. They were masked, with only a slit of light, as part of the blackout, though it seemed a superfluous precaution when London was burning like a bonfire.

  The bombing went on until dawn. In full daylight the bombers were too vulnerable to being shot down by the fighter aircraft piloted by Boy and his comrades, so the air raid petered out. As the cold gray light washed over the wreckage, Daisy and Naomi returned to Nutley Street to find there were no more victims to be taken to hospital.

  They sat down wearily on the remains of a brick garden wall. Daisy took off her steel helmet. She was filthy dirty and worn out. I wonder what the girls in the Buffalo Yacht Club would think of me now, she thought, then she realized she no longer cared much what they thought. The days when their approval was all-important to her seemed a long time in the past.

  Someone said: "Would you like a cup of tea, my lovely?"

  She recognized the accent as Welsh. She looked up to see an attractive middle-aged woman carrying a tray. "Oh, boy, that's what I need," she said, and helped herself. She had now grown to like this beverage. It tasted bitter but it had a remarkable restorative effect.

  The woman kissed Naomi, who explained: "We're related. Her daughter, Millie, is married to my brother, Abie."

  Daisy watched the woman take the tray around the little crowd of ARP wardens and firemen and neighbors. She must be a local dignitary, Daisy decided: she had an air of authority. Yet at the same time she was clearly a woman of the people, speaking to everyone with an easy warmth, making them smile. She knew Nobby and Gorgeous George, and greeted them as old friends.

  She took the last cup on the tray for herself and came to sit beside Daisy. "You sound American," she said pleasantly.

  Daisy nodded. "I'm married to an Englishman."

  "I live in this street--but my house escaped the bombs last night. I'm the member of Parliament for Aldgate. My name is Eth Leckwith."

  Daisy's heart skipped a beat. This was Lloyd's famous mother! She shook hands. "Daisy Fitzherbert."

  Ethel's eyebrows went up. "Oh!" she said. "You're the Viscountess Aberowen."

  Daisy blushed and lowered her voice. "They don't know that in the ARP."

  "Your secret is safe with me."

  Hesitantly, Daisy said: "I knew your son, Lloyd." She could not help the tears that came to her eyes when she thought of their time at Ty Gwyn, and the way he had looked after her when she miscarried. "He was very kind to me, once when I needed help."

  "Thank you," said Ethel. "But don't talk as if he's dead."

  The reproof was mild, but Daisy felt she had been dreadfully tactless. "I'm so sorry!" she said. "He's missing in action, I know. How frightfully stupid of me."

  "But he's not missing any longer," Ethel said. "He escaped through Spain. He arrived home yesterday."

  "Oh, my God!" Daisy's heart was racing. "Is he all right?"

  "Perfectly. In fact he looks very well, despite what he's been through."

  "Where . . ." Daisy swallowed. "Where is he now?"

  "Why, he's here somewhere." Ethel looked around. "Lloyd?" she called.

  Daisy scanned the crowd wildly. Could it be true?

  A man in a ripped brown overcoat turned around and said: "Yes, Mam?"

  Daisy stared at him. His face was sunburned, and he was as thin as a stick, but he looked more attractive than ever.

  "Come here, my lovely," said Ethel.

  Lloyd took a step forward, then saw Daisy. Suddenly his face was transformed. He smiled happily. "Hello," he said.

  Daisy sprang to her feet.

  Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember--"

  Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she said madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

  "I love you, too, Daisy," he said.

  Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see."

  vi

  Lloyd was eating toast and jam when Daisy entered the kitchen of the house in Nutley Street. She sat at the table, looking exhausted, and took off her steel helmet. Her face was smudged and her hair was dirty with ash and dust, and Lloyd thought she looked irresistibly beautiful.

  She came in most mornings when the bombing ended and the last victim had been driven to the hospital. Lloyd's mother had told her she did not need an invitation, and Daisy had taken her at her word.

  Ethel poured Daisy a cup of tea and said: "Hard night, my lovely?"

  Daisy nodded grimly. "One of the worst. The Peabody building on Orange Street burned down."

  "Oh, no!" Lloyd was horrified. He knew the place: a big overcrowded tenement full of poor families with numerous children.

  Bernie said: "That's a big building."

  "It was," said Daisy. "Hundreds of people were burned and God knows how many children are orphans. Nearly all my patients died on the way to the hospital."

  Lloyd reached across the little table and took her hand.

  She looked up from her cup of tea. "You don't get used to it. You think you'll become hardened, but you don't." She was stricken with sadness.

  Ethel put a hand on her shoulder for a moment in a gesture of compassion.

  Daisy said: "And we're doing the same to families in Germany."

  Ethel said: "Including my old friends Maud and Walter and their children, I presume."

  "Isn't that terrible?" Daisy shook her head despairingly. "What's wrong with us?"

  Lloyd said: "What's wrong with the human race?"

  Bernie, ever practical, said: "I'll go over to Orange Street later and make sure everything's being done for the children."

  "I'll come with you," said Ethel.

  Bernie and Ethel thought alike and acted together effortlessly, often seeming to read each other's minds. Lloyd had been observing them carefully, since he got home, worrying that their marriage might have been affected by the shocking revelation that Ethel had never had a husband called Teddy Williams, and that Lloyd's father was Earl Fitzherbert. He had discussed this at length with Daisy, who now knew the whole tr
uth. How did Bernie feel about having been lied to for twenty years? But Lloyd saw no sign that it had made any difference. In his unsentimental way Bernie adored Ethel, and to him she could do no wrong. He believed she would never do anything to hurt him, and he was right. It made Lloyd hope that he, too, might one day have such a marriage.

  Daisy noticed that Lloyd was in uniform. "Where are you off to this morning?"

  "I've had a summons from the War Office." He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I'd better get going."

  "I thought you'd already been debriefed."

  "Come to my room and I'll explain while I'm putting on my tie. Bring your tea."

  They went upstairs. Daisy looked around with interest, and he realized she had not been in his bedroom before. He looked at the single bed, the bookshelf of novels in German, French, and Spanish, and the writing table with the row of sharpened pencils, and wondered what she thought of it.

  "What a nice little room," she said.

  It was not little. It was the same size as the other bedrooms in the house. But she had different standards.

  She picked up a framed photograph. It showed the family at the seaside: little Lloyd in shorts, toddling Millie in a swimsuit, young Ethel in a big floppy hat, Bernie wearing a gray suit with a white shirt open at the neck and a knotted handkerchief on his head.

  "Southend," Lloyd explained. He took her cup, put it on the dressing table, and folded her into his arms. He kissed her mouth. She kissed him back with weary tenderness, stroking his cheek, letting her body slump against his.

  After a minute he released her. She was really too tired to canoodle, and he had an appointment.

  She took off her boots and lay down on his bed.

  "The War Office have asked me to go in and see them again," he said as he tied his tie.

  "But you were there for hours last time."

  It was true. He had had to dredge his memory for every last detail of his time on the run in France. They wanted to know the rank and regiment of every German he had encountered. He could not remember them all, of course, but he had done his homework meticulously for the Ty Gwyn course and he was able to give them a great deal of information.

  That was standard military intelligence debriefing. But they had also asked about his escape, the roads he had taken and who had helped him. They were even interested in Maurice and Marcelle, and reproved him for not knowing their surname. They had got very excited about Teresa, who clearly could be a major asset to future escapers.

  "I'm seeing a different lot today." He glanced at a typed note on his dressing table. "At the Metropole Hotel in Northumberland Avenue. Room four twenty-four." The address was off Trafalgar Square in a neighborhood of government offices. "Apparently it's a new department dealing with British prisoners of war." He put on his peaked cap and looked in the mirror. "Am I smart enough?"

  There was no answer. He looked at the bed. She had fallen asleep.

  He pulled a blanket over her, kissed her forehead, and went out.

  He told his mother that Daisy was asleep on his bed, and she said she would check on her later to make sure she was all right.

  He took the Tube to central London.

  He had told Daisy the true story of his parentage, disabusing her of the theory that he was Maud's child. She believed him readily, for she suddenly recalled Boy telling her that Fitz had an illegitimate child somewhere. "This is creepy," she had said, looking thoughtful. "The two Englishmen I've fallen for turn out to be half brothers." She had looked appraisingly at Lloyd. "You inherited your father's good looks. Boy just got his selfishness."

  Lloyd and Daisy had not yet made love. One reason was that she never had a night off. Then, on the single occasion they had had a chance to be alone together, things had gone wrong.

  It had been last Sunday, at Daisy's home in Mayfair. Her servants had Sunday afternoon off, and she had taken him to her bedroom in the empty house. But she had been nervous and ill at ease. She had kissed him, then turned her head aside. When he put his hands on her breasts she had pushed them away. He had been confused: If he was not supposed to behave this way, why were they in her bedroom?

  "I'm sorry," she had said at last. "I love you, but I can't do this. I can't betray my husband in his own house."

  "But he betrayed you."

  "At least he went somewhere else."

  "All right."

  She had looked at him. "Do you think I'm being silly?"

  He shrugged. "After all we've been through together, this seems overly fastidious of you, yes--but, look, you feel the way you feel. What a rotter I would be if I tried to bully you into doing it when you're not ready."

  She put her arms around him and hugged him hard. "I said it before," she said. "You're a grown-up."

  "Don't let's spoil the whole afternoon," he said. "We'll go to the pictures."

  They saw Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator and laughed their heads off, then she went back on duty.

  Pleasant thoughts of Daisy occupied Lloyd all the way to Embankment station, then he walked up Northumberland Avenue to the Metropole. The hotel had been stripped of its reproduction antiques and furnished with utilitarian tables and chairs.

  After a few minutes' wait Lloyd was taken to see a tall colonel with a brisk manner. "I've read your account, Lieutenant," he said. "Well done."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "We expect more people to follow in your footsteps, and we'd like to help them. We're especially interested in downed airmen. They're expensive to train, and we want them back so they can fly again."

  Lloyd thought that was harsh. If a man survived a crash landing, should he really be asked to risk going through the whole thing again? But wounded men were sent back into battle as soon as they recovered. That was war.

  The colonel said: "We're setting up a kind of underground railroad, all the way from Germany to Spain. You speak German, French, and Spanish, I see, but, more importantly, you've been at the sharp end. We'd like to second you to our department."

  Lloyd had not been expecting this, and he was not sure how he felt about it. "Thank you, sir. I'm honored. But is it a desk job?"

  "Not at all. We want you to go back to France."

  Lloyd's heart raced. He had not thought he would have to face those perils again.

  The colonel saw the dismay on his face. "You know how dangerous it is."

  "Yes, sir."

  In an abrupt tone the colonel said: "You can refuse if you like."

  Lloyd thought of Daisy in the Blitz, and of the people burned to death in the Peabody tenement, and realized he did not even want to refuse. "If you think it's important, sir, then I will go back most willingly, of course."

  "Good man," said the colonel.

  Half an hour later Lloyd was dazedly walking back to the Tube station. He was now part of a department called MI9. He would return to France with false papers and large sums in cash. Already dozens of German, Dutch, Belgian, and French people in occupied territory had been recruited to the deadly dangerous task of helping British and Commonwealth airmen return home. He would be one of numerous MI9 agents expanding the network.

  If he were caught, he would be tortured.

  Although he was scared, he was also excited. He was going to fly to Madrid; it would be his first time up in an airplane. He would reenter France across the Pyrenees and make contact with Teresa. He would be moving in disguise among the enemy, rescuing people under the noses of the Gestapo. He would make sure that men following in his footsteps would not be as alone and friendless as he had been.

  He got back to Nutley Street at eleven o'clock. There was a note from his mother: "Not a peep from Miss America." After visiting the bomb site, Ethel would have gone to the House of Commons, Bernie to County Hall. Lloyd and Daisy had the house to themselves.

  He went up to his room. Daisy was still asleep. Her leather jacket and heavy-duty wool trousers were carelessly tossed on the floor. She was in his bed wearing only her underwear. Thi
s had never happened before.

  He took off his jacket and tie.

  A sleepy voice from the bed said: "And the rest."

  He looked at her. "What?"

  "Take off your clothes and get into bed."

  The house was empty: no one would disturb them.

  He took off his boots, trousers, shirt, and socks, then he hesitated.

  "You're not going to feel cold," she said. She wriggled under the blankets, then threw a pair of silk camiknickers at him.

  He had expected this to be a solemn moment of high passion, but Daisy seemed to think it should be a matter of laughter and fun. He was willing to be guided by her.

  He took off his undershirt and pants and slipped into bed beside her. She was warm and languid. He felt nervous: he had never actually told her that he was a virgin.

  He had always heard that the man should take the initiative, but it seemed Daisy did not know that. She kissed and caressed him, then she grasped his penis. "Oh, boy," she said. "I was hoping you'd have one of these."

  After that he stopped being nervous.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1941 ( I )

  On a cold winter Sunday, Carla von Ulrich went with the maid, Ada, to visit Ada's son, Kurt, at the Wannsee Children's Nursing Home, by the lake on the western outskirts of Berlin. It took an hour to get there on the train. Carla made a habit of wearing her nurse's uniform on these visits, because the staff at the home talked more frankly about Kurt to a fellow professional.

  In summer the lakeside would be crowded with families and children playing on the beach and paddling in the shallows, but today there were just a few walkers, well wrapped up against the chill, and one hardy swimmer with an anxious wife waiting at the waterside.

  The home, which specialized in caring for severely handicapped children, was a once-grand house whose elegant reception rooms had been subdivided and painted pale green and furnished with hospital beds and cots.

  Kurt was now eight years old. He could walk and feed himself about as well as a two-year-old, but he could not talk and still wore diapers. He had shown no sign of improvement for years. However, there was no doubt of his joy at seeing Ada. He beamed with happiness, burbled excitedly, and held out his arms to be picked up and hugged and kissed.

  He recognized Carla, too. Whenever she saw him she remembered the frightening drama of his birth, when she had delivered him while her brother, Erik, ran to fetch Dr. Rothmann.