The Sea Garden

by Deborah Lawrenson

  Iris shook her head. Tonight she was waiting for the return flight. She was tired, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep properly. Where were the planes now? Were they safely over the Channel yet? She looked at her watch. It was gone 11:30. They should be. A round trip lasted between four and six hours. Iris settled into an armchair and reached for her coat to put over her legs. Hours passed. She dozed, all the while alert for a dull engine drone overhead.

  When she finally heard footsteps outside, the clock read four fifteen.

  The door opened noisily. A group of men entered, Jack among them, stamping mud from their shoes, flinging off jackets, and dropping bags. The drinks tray was raided and glasses clinked. Triple brandies all round. The release of tension was palpable. From the kitchen, like a well-oiled machine, came the smell of coffee and frying bacon.

  “Now I know I’m in England,” said an exceptionally handsome man with a French accent and a world-weary air. He turned to Iris and winked. “No more ersatz!”

  Iris clambered to her feet, feeling dazed.

  “Real coffee, mademoiselle—no more acorns and chicory, at least for now,” he said, in excellent but extravagantly accented English. He raised his glass of brandy. “To freedom!”

  “To freedom,” she replied.

  He slept in the back of the car all the way up to London. A British man with him slumped against the window, staring out with bloodshot eyes while the grey light over the trees turned pale yellow with the dawn.

  4

  Xavier

  London, July 1943

  So that was Xavier Descours.

  Until then, Iris had only seen his name in the files and heard accounts of his apparently fearless command of the air operations landing in France. Before the war he had been the manager of an electronics company, specializing in the manufacture and shipping of wireless components. He had been recruited in France to organise the supply of these to the British SOE and the Resistance, while still, ostensibly, running his business for the Vichy government. He was thirty-eight years old and had a reputation for being a cat with nine lives, a charmer who ran terrible risks; in the past year he had become more deeply involved in liaison missions for F Section and was now indispensable to the secret air service.

  Two days later he turned up at Orchard Court. He spent a long time in the large room with Colonel Tyndale and Miss Acton. The murmur of voices rose and fell, though it was not possible to hear what was being said.

  Iris served tea to two young men, undergraduate types—at least, one of them was wearing a college scarf—who were being prepped to fly into France at the next full moon. With only the six of them in the flat, there was no need to press the bathroom into service as a reception area. They drank the weak brew with little enthusiasm in the smallest bedroom office. When they were summoned into the main meeting, Iris was left alone.

  She typed up some notes while they were fresh in her mind, fragments of information she had picked up while their guard was down: the Yorkshire public school and holidays in Scarborough of one of them, and his support of Leeds United football club; the admiration for the novels of Emile Zola of the other.

  The atmosphere was depressing, with the dank cold, the cigarette smoke, and fog rubbing up against the building like a wet dog. She stood up and moved around to try to get a little warmer, was hardly thinking when she delved into the pockets of the coats that had been thrown over the back of an armchair. It was a reflex action that brought up nothing more exciting than a book of matches, some crumpled bits of paper, and a selection of bus and tube tickets that would have to be disposed of before the men went over to France.

  “What are you doing?”

  He had come up behind her soundlessly. She turned round and found she was looking directly into Xavier’s deep brown eyes. His olive skin was smooth, and he was so close she could smell honeyed tobacco, so deliciously different from the acrid tar of Senior Service.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “That is my coat.”

  “I get so used to doing it.”

  He seemed to be weighing up the possibility that she was being disingenuous. Straight eyebrows lowered; then he pulled the coat out of her hands and folded it over his arm. He walked over to the window with a confident swagger and turned. “We are supposed to trust each other.”

  “Well, of course—”

  “Do I have to prove myself to you?”

  She felt herself blushing. Then the eyes crinkled, and he laughed gently at her discomfiture. He really was an extremely handsome man, she thought, well aware of his own reputation and used to getting his own way; she would do well to watch herself.

  The two young men saved her from having to find an answer by emerging from the other room, visibly more relaxed as they talked cricket. Even so, she recognized the forced nonchalance of the chatter, and the shot of excitement and purpose that sharpened their features. Iris handed them their coats with a smile and showed them out. Xavier remained standing by the window.

  When she returned, he sniffed in distaste at the cold remains of the tea she had still not cleared away. Then he looked up with another smile that lit up his face.

  “I am going to take you out for dinner,” he said. It was not an invitation, it was a statement. “I want to walk up past Trafalgar Square to the Coquille in St. Martin’s Lane with a pretty young woman.”

  She ignored the compliment. “You know it then, the Coquille?”

  “I used to go there before the war.”

  Iris had heard of it, but never been.

  “And the Wellington pub in the Strand,” he went on, “is that still there?”

  “I think so.”

  “It’s short notice, I know—but do you accept my invitation?”

  “I’m not sure why you’re asking me.”

  “Oh, come now. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me!”

  “But I—what—” She had to look away, fearful of giving him any more encouragement.

  “No need to be embarrassed. I am flattered.”

  “I’m sorry, you really have made a mistake.”

  “Please, as I say, there is no need for dissembling among us here—surely?”

  Iris felt herself reddening.

  “So. Let us start again. Would you care to have dinner with me, mademoiselle?”

  As he spoke, Miss Acton appeared behind him in the doorway. She stopped, clearly having heard.

  Iris felt as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but Miss Acton nodded her approval.

  “All right,” said Iris. “Give me ten minutes to tidy up here.” She scooped up the tea tray and dumped it in the kitchenette, then grabbed her bag, straightened her skirt and stockings, and attended to her makeup as best she could in the black-tiled bathroom mirror.

  In Trafalgar Square, the fountains were empty of water. A huge hoarding advertising “War Savings” was wrapped around the base of Nelson’s Column. It was not yet dusk, but there was already a queue outside the Duke of York’s Theatre in St. Martin’s Lane, not long reopened after suffering bomb damage in 1940. The title of the play on the billboards was Shadow and Substance.

  “Perhaps we should see it. It might offer us some help,” said Xavier.

  “It might. I think the subject is faith—though the story is about Ireland and the Catholic Church.”

  “Faith, ah—faith is what we must all keep.”

  Iris, feeling unaccountably ill at ease, did not respond. She never felt like this with any of the other men she went out with. But with this man . . . she did not know quite what she was doing here with him. He was not a stranger exactly, but someone she knew only by reputation. Perhaps that was what was making her feel uncomfortable, unable to ask questions and provide the light chatter that would normally come naturally on an evening out.

  Xavier, on the other hand, showed a hawk-like curiosity about the streets she took for granted, wanting to know about everything they passed: the sheet music hanging in a s
hop window, the words and music for “Mexicali Rose,” “Hurry Home,” “If I Didn’t Care”; the poster that read “Let Music Lighten the Black-out.” What music did she like; did she play an instrument?

  The glass in the shop window was taped into crisscross squares. Sandbags, nine or ten deep, were propped against the walls. She was used to the sight now, like the barrage balloons that floated in the sky above central London, but what did he make of it all, this Frenchman who worked behind the lines in Nazi-occupied France?

  At the Coquille they were whisked into another world of starched white linen and battalions of silver cutlery. The atmosphere was womb-like, cocooned from reality. “It hasn’t changed!” he exclaimed, visibly gratified. “There’s no need to be unsure of yourself, you know,” he said. Was it his experience living on the edge that gave him the ability to read her so accurately?

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “I’m always hungry. It’s hard not to be.”

  It was out of the question to discuss anything to do with work in a place where they might be overheard. Presumably, anyone who heard his French accent would infer that he was one of the numerous Free French who had pitched up in the capital. He took charge of the menu, expressing delight at the prospect of quail. A good claret was ordered after discussion of the selection on offer.

  When the waiter left, he was silent for a few seconds. She was caught in another of his disconcerting stares. Sitting so close to him felt heady, even though he was doing everything to put her at her ease.

  “What do you want out of life, Miss Nightingale?”

  “Well . . . that’s a very big question.”

  It was one Iris was not sure she had ever been asked, and perhaps she had never even asked herself.

  “Too big, perhaps. I understand.”

  He crossed his hands on the table. Lightly tanned hands that looked strong and weathered by an outdoor life despite his elegant city clothes. He leaned forward smiling.

  “In that case, tell me about your favourite place.”

  His voice was low. His full attention made her feel dull in comparison, but she had to say something. Then she shook herself. Why shouldn’t she have some enjoyment? How was this so different from being out with the pilots and chattering away to them? What was it about him that made it so much harder?

  “There’s a spot down by the river on the Embankment where I go to think. I should probably give you a much more exciting answer, but if you want an honest answer that’s the best I can give. Now, you tell me yours.” It still wasn’t a question, but she was making some progress.

  He smiled, as if the thought alone of his favourite place was enough to fill him with pleasure. His teeth were straight and white, with a tiny imperfection at the front, where the bottom row had started to cross.

  “When I was a boy I had a boat, just a small rowing boat, but to me it was a magic carpet. I used to take it out with my friends, and we would jump into the sea off the side and swim. But I also loved to go out by myself to a bay enclosed by rocks. I had a device my father made for me, a wooden box with a glass bottom that I could press into the water over the side of the boat and see what was under the water so sharply it was like a cinema screen. The precision of it amazed me. I would spend hours leaning over the side of the boat, my back becoming deep brown as oiled wood in the sun, just watching the shoals of fish. There are fish there that you would not believe—all painted in exotic colours, darting here and there among the rocks.”

  He seemed far away as he spoke. The pictures he made were of a place teeming with vibrant life: first the fish, then the birds, against a backdrop of fruit stolen from orchards, flowers and pines and, everywhere, the sea. She had never seen anything like the scenes he described. The years she had spent abroad had been in the white mountains of Switzerland and its grim forbidding valleys, brown and industrial. Lausanne and Montreux. The ordered grey streets of Zurich. And now the fog and grime and smoke of London, bleached of colour by the war.

  The food arrived, and he told her about his boyhood wish to become a fisherman, to spend whole days on the sea all year round.

  “But alas, real life made its unreasonable demands. I had to wake from my dream. So I went to university in Lyon, and became an electrical engineer. The rest I am sure you know.”

  He was serious suddenly, and checked his watch.

  “Will you excuse me for a few minutes? I have to make a telephone call.”

  He was gone for much longer.

  She sat at the table in a happy daze, sipping the good wine. The restaurant was packed, and the hum of conversations rose. She thought of the risks he had run and shivered involuntarily.

  “Did you get through?” she asked when he reappeared.

  “Eventually.”

  He poured some more wine, and she noticed that his hand was shaking. Whatever he had been attending to had upset his natural ebullience. She would not ask.

  They ate a dessert of cheese and some apple slices while he asked her about her family and Switzerland, and her social life in London, though she sensed she had lost his full attention.

  Xavier turned to gesture for the bill.

  He offered her a cigarette and lit it. They smoked in silence. Mostly he looked at her, until she dropped her eyes, as if he was trying to communicate something without words that she was unable to understand.

  “What is it?” she asked eventually.

  “I want to ask you a favour.”

  “I see.”

  “You are resilient, aren’t you? As resilient as you are beautiful.”

  She didn’t know what to say. He was making her nervous again. “I’m wondering what you are buttering me up for.”

  He hesitated, seemed about to say something, then held back. He stubbed out his cigarette in the china ashtray shaped like a shell and asked brightly—perhaps too brightly, “So what do we do now, Miss Nightingale?”

  She took a last sip of her wine. “I believe there’s a rather fascinating series of lectures on at the School of Art in the Charing Cross Road—‘The Continuity of the English Town.’ Daily lecture, free to the public. Just the kind of improving programme we recommend to all our visitors.”

  He laughed.

  “Do you dance, Miss Nightingale?”

  “I love to dance. But only in appropriate circumstances.”

  “And where would be an appropriate place close by?”

  “Well . . . the Opera House at Covent Garden is a dance hall now. They took out all the seats. It’s rather spectacular, with the band up on the stage.”

  “I would like to see it,” he said casually.

  “It’s not far to walk. I can tell you how to get there.”

  “You could show me, surely.”

  “I could.”

  “You could then accompany me inside.”

  “Just to look, with no dancing?”

  “It would be a shame not to dance.”

  “But would it be appropriate, given . . . our positions?”

  “Perhaps not. But shall we throw caution to the wind?”

  The place was thronged. He bought her gin and orange that made her light-headed and reckless after the wine. It seemed too good to be true, the light touch of his hand on the small of her back, the warmth of his hand in hers. Hard to tell if he was a good dancer or not: the place was packed with crowds as rough and temporary as the floor, the men in uniform, the giggling girls and the loudness of the band in a place designed to carry sound. They shuffled around, awkwardly, bumped into other couples.

  “It’s no good, I like to talk,” he said. He caught her hand as they came off the dance floor and did not let it go. “Let’s walk.”

  London during the blackout was a ghostly place. At Piccadilly Circus the statue of Eros had been removed into storage. Ultraviolet headlamps from a single car picked out white dashes painted on the kerb to delineate it in the darkness. Black buildings towered unlit like a set in a dark theat
re. They walked on towards Green Park.

  “I have to leave London tomorrow,” he said.

  She knew better than to ask where he was going.

  In the park, he pulled her into the shadows. He brushed a strand of hair away from her temple. “I wish I could stay.”

  He dipped his head. His kiss was a gentle brush of her lips.

  Then, when she did not pull away, he kissed her again, and this time it was electrifying, tender yet surprising, generous and impulsive.

  “I will take you home.”

  He found a cab outside the Ritz, and put his arm around her shoulders for the short ride. She wondered what she would do if he insisted on coming upstairs, but he said good night gallantly on the pavement of Tavistock Square.

  What was she supposed to make of the evening? It was hard enough to decide what you thought of someone you had only just met, when you had only spent one evening together. But Xavier Descours? She thought of the way the women at F Section talked about him, the photographs in the file that had piqued their interest. Of all of them, he had chosen her. If they knew, they would all want to know where they had gone, what they had talked about, what it was like to be near to him, the focus of his attention. But she wouldn’t tell them.

  She wasn’t sure she would even tell Nancy, not the important parts anyway. The light touch of his fingers on hers as he lit her cigarette. The way his eyes had seemed to soften in the low lamplight at their dinner table. His perfect height for her, not too tall, not too short. The easy gallantry with which he had helped her with her coat and guided her out of the restaurant into the darkness outside.

  The experience had already assumed a dreamlike quality. It was like a date with a film star manufactured for the newspapers by the studios: one lucky woman reader will have the honour. . . . She could not shake off the uneasy feeling that all was not quite as it seemed. And what was the favour he had changed his mind about asking?

  5

  Bignor Manor

  Sussex, November 1943

  It was everywhere, the sense of being trapped. Trenches dug in parks, railings uprooted, air raid shelters and sandbags at the end of streets—brick and concrete shelters held fifty people, with two-tiered wooden bunks crammed along the length of the walls. In tube stations, the terrible smell of people pressed so closely together without adequate ventilation was worse than being smothered inside the vile rubber of a gas mask. The Anderson shelters sunk in gardens were not much better: dark and cold holes where damp permeated the wooden benches inside and left a thin cushion of moss.