It was raining hard, but she felt exhilarated. She was first going to Laura’s house, to meet Laura’s friends. She’d left home early because there were very few cabs, the Underground might not be working, the buses were always packed. But the Underground was punctual even though the platforms were crowded with people sheltering from possible air raids, and she soon reached Sloane Square. It was raining harder than ever. It struck her how private London was on a dark autumn evening, no lights anywhere except when a door opened or the lowered lamps of a hansom cab shone on the road. Slithery black pavements, water sloshing from the road, a few people scuttling by. Occasionally from a public house you heard voices, but you could hardly see individual buildings. Nothing could be more depressing than the streets leading to Chester Square: dull little house after dull little house with dark doors and black window frames.
Laura’s front door led to a different, softly inviting world. ‘Miss Laura would like you to join her upstairs, miss,’ said the parlourmaid.
Laura, fresh and delicious in a fluffy negligée, was sitting at the dressing table in her pink and white bedroom, surrounded by piles of clothes. When she saw Sophia, she looked impressed. ‘Another lovely dress, darling, divine colour, and that rose-coloured sash, where on earth did you find it? You’re so clever, you’re a nurse in those ghastly hospitals and yet you have hundreds of clothes. . . The shoes, not completely right but I can help you there, it’s so lucky we have the same size feet. . . And I’m going to do something about your hair. . .’ She’d been organising Sophia ever since they’d first met aged thirteen. ‘Perfect. But, darling, you’ve not made yourself up, even one bit.’
‘I don’t have any cosmetics, I know it’s feeble. . .’
‘Sophia, you’re entering a new world, where girls enhance their natural loveliness with the help of little jars. Not crudely of course, we don’t want to look like tarts, not too much anyway. . . Sit down, I’m going to be your instructor. We’ll see what a little powder can do for you, and the tiniest bit of lipstick. Your colouring is beautiful, you hardly need anything, but the boys do like a bit of ooh lah lah – stop wriggling about – and we want to please the dear boys before they go back, don’t we?’
Sophia looked in the mirror and was shaken to see a vamp with reddened cheeks and lips and hair primped. It was like going onstage in costume – one felt self-conscious but also self-confident.
The drawing room was lit by electric lamps and warmed by a great wood fire. On a table stood plates of sandwiches, and decanters. It was much more inviting than Evelyn Gardens.
‘It’s so warm here,’ said Sophia. ‘Delicious.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura, ‘the wood’s from our country place. What will you drink, darling? I’m sorry there’s no wine, it’s hard to get anything drinkable. But Papa doesn’t mind me drinking his whisky, he gets gallons of the stuff from Scotland. Then there’s gin – the parents think it’s awfully common, but Bevan hides the bottle for me in the piano. No one ever plays, it’s a very good place. I think gin is rather nice, will you have some?’
‘Are your parents away?’ asked Sophia.
‘They’re dining with the Churchills. I wouldn’t be able to offer you a drink if they were here, they think it’s vulgar to drink before a meal. But when they’re out, I generally have a drinkie, it keeps the devils away. Fortunately they’re always out, though Papa says these days you hardly get anything to eat at dinner parties. He’s used to six or seven courses, now it’s down to three, served by the parlourmaid, because the butler’s gone. It’s so odd. . .’ she mixed the gin with something sticky and green, ‘how some people go on living just as they did before the war. We’ll have a revolution ourselves before very long, don’t you think?’ She tasted her drink. ‘Mm, delicious. Will we be shot, or shall we become lady commissars? Would I look good in a peaked cap? Don’t look shocked, darling, I know how serious things are. Try this – gin and lime, just what a girl needs. So when Mamma says, “Darling, d’you think you should be going out so much?”, I reply, “What about you? Does the war effort really require you to stay in a house party every weekend?”’
‘What a lovely drink. Gin seems an awfully good idea to me.’
Laura peered meditatively into her glass. ‘Have fun while we can, that’s my principle. After all, after this fighting there may be no one left to marry, unless we marry a blind man, as those selfless women offer to do in the newspapers, though they always want an officer – no matter no eyes, as long as he’s a gent. How would you like to go to the altar on the arm of a hero with no legs? Harder I suppose, if he had no arms. . .’ She stared into the fire.
This depressed Sophia. Coming back to England, she’d thought she could forget the war.
‘Don’t look so miz. We’ll cheer you up. My friends and I, we have a creed. “Let’s give our brave boys a good time. They do everything they can for us – we’ll do everything we can for them.”’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Sophia. ‘D’you mean, you. . .’
‘Some of us do, some of us don’t. It may be the last chance, darling. Of course there’s the boys’ class of 1918 coming up, but we’re getting a bit long in the tooth for them. Soon I won’t stand a chance beside my little sister. She’d be coming out now, if anyone did come out any more.’ The doorbell rang and a moment later in came three girls.
For a moment Sophia felt small and nervous. They were all spiffed up, though not as their mothers might have wished. They exuded a blithe self-confidence that might well alarm anyone not from their world of high birth.
But Clarissa, Harriet and Virginia were as friendly as could be. They were enchanted to meet Sophia, bombarded her with questions, scarcely waited for the answer before hurrying on to the next question. They had to know everything, immediately, about her and her family and about nursing in France. The leader was evidently Clarissa, whose father was a peer. She was delighted that the war meant she’d not had to be a debutante but could try other things. Her father had forbidden her to be a bus conductress, so she had a job in the Admiralty. ‘I’m paid thirty shillings a week, it’s lovely earning your own money and being useful. We four, we’re a little club. . .’
‘Pathetic isn’t it really, like being back at school?’ said Virginia.
‘What can you do when there are no men around for more than five minutes? But now we’re going to be five, which is much more fun. How brilliant of you, Laura, to find such a nice new friend.’ With all this friendly attention and another gin and lime, Sophia felt much more cheerful.
When all the sandwiches had been eaten, Clarissa announced, ‘Time to go, girls. We’ve got a car. It’s Harriet’s father’s official car, with Harriet’s father’s official chauffeur. He seriously shouldn’t be doing it, but since her papa’s away, he said he would, isn’t that darling of him? And we’re using official petrol too, so naughty.’
‘I told him we’re doing our own war work, entertaining the boys back from the front,’ said Harriet, ‘and he quite saw the point. Only he won’t stay to take us home, we may have to stay till the morning, isn’t that too worrying. . .’
‘Some people think we’re bad girls,’ said Laura. ‘They talk about our Dance of Death parties, because of the poor soldier boys who go off the next day to be killed. But in my opinion they’re just jealous.’
The party was in Charles Street in Mayfair. The shutters were closed, you could hear nothing from outside. But when you went in, you realised that the house was full of people, all young, more girls perhaps than men, though the men were numerous and almost all in uniform. Sophia, who knew more than she wanted about military insignia, saw they were mostly Guards officers. They talked uproariously, they flirted, they disappeared amorously, they helped themselves to drinks from the apparently endless bottles that appeared on the sideboard under the eye of an amiable young man in a dinner jacket, who turned out to be the son of the house. It was the first time Sophia had been to a party with no servants, unless you counted Christmas gath
erings at the hospital, which were hardly parties.
Above all, they danced. They tried the foxtrot, they tripped up in the tango. They laughed loudly when a group of dancers fell to the floor and stayed there in a playful heap of warm young limbs. Sophia turned away, she did not like heaps of limbs. At one point someone said, ‘Zepps, I think I hear Zepps,’ and they quietened down till another voice cried, ‘To hell with Zepps, this is a party, who cares if we’re bombed?’ and, ‘Turn up the music, they make such a bally noise.’ There was a roaring nearby, but they ignored it. Then a pause, and, very close, an explosion. ‘They’ve probably got the Ritz,’ said someone, and they cheered. The dancing never stopped.
Sophia thought, these young men, half of them will be dead in a year, and we girls, we’ll be half-dead too. But who cares? Who bloody cares? And she had another drink.
It was a well-mannered party, because these were high-bred young people who’d had good nannies. Laura and Clarissa introduced Sophia to a great many people. She had another drink, she enjoyed it less. She danced with a man with fair hair in the Coldstream Guards who said the war would be over next year, and a short man who’d been wounded but was going back quite soon and who said the Germans were exhausted, and (briefly) a man with bad breath and sticky hands who pushed himself hard against her. She bumped into Clarissa, who said, ‘Don’t drink too much, it’s beastly being ill,’ but she ignored this and began to feel extremely gay and seized hold of a shy boy, probably no more than eighteen, and pulled him into the dancing, and soon found herself with a tall man with sandy-coloured hair, she liked him very much but could not quite make out his face because he had four eyes and two noses but he held her close and she felt she was sinking into him as though her legs did not belong to her and suddenly she was not in control of herself and put her hands over her mouth and he shouted to people to get out of the way and carried her out of the room and she was aware of being very, very sick on the stairs and wishing, in some remote part of her mind, that there was no stair carpet because it was going to be so horrid to clear up the mess.
When she woke up it was daylight and she had just dreamt that a patient was ringing the bell in the hospital, but no, it was someone knocking at the door. She felt worse than she’d ever felt in her life. She had no idea where she was. Only when someone came in holding a cup of tea did she begin to remember. She was lying on a bed, fully clothed, with a coverlet over her, and that nice son of the house was grinning at her. ‘It’s noon,’ he said, ‘I think you’d better get up. Laura telephoned, she’s told your mother you’re staying with her because of the air raids, but she thinks you ought to go home now. Cup of tea?’
‘No, I think I’m going to die.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He was very nice, she thought blurrily. ‘But you should be getting home.’
‘I don’t think I can, I feel too ill.’
‘I’d love you to stay of course, but it’s a little difficult – sorry to be a rotter. . . By the way, there’s a note for you from David, the chap you were dancing with before you. . . had to go to bed.’ He laughed. ‘He called round, hoped to see you, but then he had to go out to lunch. He liked you, even though you were sick all over his jacket.’
‘Oh God, how awful.’
‘Just have a little wash, perhaps take off that make-up, which is a bit smudged. The Underground should be running. Remember, you’ve been staying with Laura. I gather your mamma’s a bit batey, there may be a Zeppelin raid on the home front.’
He was right, there was a lot of noise at Evelyn Gardens. Mamma had not slept all night, thought Sophia had been killed by a Zeppelin, would never allow her out on her own again, London was so dangerous, why hadn’t she telephoned? Sophia apologised, pursed her lips, toyed with her lunch. But all this was bearable because the little note that she had put in a special place in her handbag said that David had very much enjoyed meeting her, and would love to see her again, and was not going back to France for ten days. That afternoon he telephoned and asked if he might call, he knew this was rather prompt but in wartime you had to be. He came to tea that same day, and dazzled Lady Benson (she was grateful, when meeting someone titled, to be titled herself, it made her much more confident). When he’d gone, she said he was perfectly charming, such beautiful manners, so intelligent, so handsome. Sophia agreed.
34
‘Of course, we’re probably being watched,’ said Mark. ‘Maybe it’s that nice old lady in the corner, maybe the waiter.’
‘They can’t hear us, though, unless they lip-read. Do you think that old lady lip-reads? She seems more absorbed in her cake.’ Irene looked at her own cake with pleasure. ‘It is such heaven to be out of Germany. . . It was only when I’d struggled through the frontier controls and found myself in Denmark that I realised how glad I was.’
‘I wanted to speak to you here in the public eye, so that no one could suspect any subterfuge. I’m sure our hotel is full of spies, Copenhagen is such a meeting place. And when a British diplomat arrives, they can’t help being curious, even if he’s only wanting to see his dear sister. . .’
‘Do you really think anyone is interested in me? In Berlin I thought I was being watched all the time, but now I’m a little country mouse, I can’t seem a threat to German victory.’
‘No. But you could become one.’ He beckoned the waiter, ordered more hot chocolate. It was snowing outside but the café was embracingly warm and pretty with its chandeliers and cream walls and red velvet banquettes and tinkle of silver and crockery.
She blinked at him. ‘How do you mean, I could be?’
He sat up straight, peered into one of the huge mirrors that adorned the room. ‘Irene, I have been officially asked to make a request of you. We want you to look for some information. No, don’t speak, just listen. Ah, here’s the chocolate, thank you, we enjoy it so much. Sugar? Just listen. We want you to find out where Thomas is posted. Or perhaps you know already?’
‘No, he can’t tell me, it’s secret information.’
‘You could find out, if you tried. He’d probably tell you.’
‘Why do they want to know that?’
‘Won’t you have another cake? They’re so good. We have reason to believe that the Germans are planning a major attack on the western front, now that the Russians have withdrawn from combat. We believe they are planning to do this as soon as the weather is better, before the Americans send major detachments of men and weapons to Europe – which they can’t really do before next spring. We need all possible information about their plans. At this stage we can read most of their ciphered messages, but there are still many gaps.’
She had stopped eating, was staring at her plate.
‘Irene, try to look as though we are having a light conversation.’
‘What d’you want me to do, throw my arms in the air and yodel?’
‘No, just smile and look cheerful. We have to disguise our feelings, sometimes.’
‘Quite what are you asking me to do?’
‘I’m asking you to talk to Thomas, see what you can extract from him. He visits you quite often, you say. Find out where he is stationed, what his duties are.’
‘Like Delilah and Samson, you mean.’
‘Yes, but there’s no need to cut off his hair, and he won’t be arrested.’
‘Are you sure? And what about me? I’d be in trouble, if anything were found out.’
‘Look, the old lady is leaving. If necessary, Irene, you may have to go through his papers.’
‘His papers? Go through his papers?’ She was surprised at Mark, she had never seen him in this mode, so determined, so steely, almost cold.
‘When he comes to Salitz, doesn’t he bring papers?’
‘What do you want me to do, say, “Darling those papers look so fascinating, do let me have a look”?’
‘I want you to use subterfuge. Yes, I know this may seem distasteful, but we have to abandon those old ideas of propriety and honour, circumstances don’t allow them. I w
ant you to send him out of the house for an hour or two on an errand, you can invent something. Send the child away at the same time, and the maid. Say you need a rest – only make sure he doesn’t take his briefcase with him.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘Then look through the papers, extract any information you can about building projects, the construction of railheads, accommodation for troops. You will need to send details in a letter to Mother but in code and in invisible ink. I will explain. . .’
‘I can’t do this. I’d be betraying my husband.’
‘You will be serving your country.’
‘Is England my country any more? I live in Germany, my husband is German, my daughter is German. . .’
‘We must think beyond those old loyalties. You are a citizen of Europe, of the world.’
‘That’s just the sort of thing Thomas would say.’
‘Don’t you see? The Germans will never win the war, not even now Russia has withdrawn. They may win a campaign or two, but now that the Americans are in the war, Germany’s beaten. Can’t you see it, living in that miserable, starving country? Can it possibly be victorious?’
She was silent.
‘What you can do, dearest sister, is help bring the war to a close. You may help to make the war end sooner than any of us imagine. Think of that.’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want more men to be killed, just so you can indulge the luxury of personal scruples?’
‘And if he finds me out, or my letter is intercepted. . .?’
‘Be brave, Irene, you always were brave.’ And he stared into her eyes, it was quite unsettling.
She pushed at her uneaten cake with her fork. ‘And you, Mark, do you act as a spy? Is that a part of your duties?’
‘No, I just have to keep my eyes open. I do what has to be done. Duty, you know. Duty.’
‘I never believed in that sort of duty.’
‘You don’t need to, living in Salitz. You can enjoy the pleasures of withdrawal and artistic self-expression. But you believed in duty when you stayed in Germany in 1914, didn’t you? Duty to your husband and your new family?’
The Iron Necklace Page 20