The Sea Garden

by Deborah Lawrenson

  When a bomb hit the road in Balham, it left a crater like the top of a volcano into which a bus had tipped nose first, its rear upended. Tramlines twisted and hung over the hole in the ground as if the route were being diverted to the centre of the earth. Shops and houses were ripped open by the blast; papers and boxes were blown off shelves, and valuable stock smashed; in private rooms, flowered wallpaper was exposed, and curtains flapped like flags of surrender.

  Grey days and months passed and were clumped together in her mind, losing any brightness and elasticity, while the memory of that one evening glowed, assuming more import, taking up ever more space, pushing all else aside. Now all she saw were the streets of grime and smoke-dirt, little improved around London Bridge from the Southwark of Charles Dickens. Prisons, and tramps, and the smut of steam trains. And in quiet streets nearby families lived in houses that no longer had glass in the windows.

  For weeks afterwards, she saw the city through Xavier’s eyes. She felt the soft mohair of his coat, walking by her side, one hand in his trouser pocket, hat pulled down almost to his eyes, as she walked past the queue outside the Whitehall Canteen, beside the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, where society ladies served coffee to war workers under murals by Duncan Grant, and up St. Martin’s Lane to the Coquille, now imbued with a magical association. She tried to picture what he was doing in France, wondered again about the unasked favour, and relived the kiss.

  In November the weather closed in. The full moon was on the wane, and so far only one Lysander had made it out of Tangmere and back. Miss Acton had spent two evenings at the airfield and gone back to London. Iris had orders to stay down at Tangmere for a few more nights on the off chance that they could make the run that month and deliver three joes as scheduled from France.

  In the Cottage, a radio was tuned to a music station. Iris read and chatted to Rory and Jack and other pilots who dropped by. A Ping-Pong table was rigged up and in constant use for a complex knockout tournament. There were fast and frantic darts matches (behind the plywood surround that fielded stray shots was a secret cupboard containing maps of France on silk scarves and compasses). The mess sergeants gave permission for the drivers to take anyone who wanted to go to the Unicorn pub at Chichester; the landlord was particularly welcoming to the RAF, for whom he kept special bottles of claret and burgundy, and never charged the full price. On the walls of the bar were pictures of pilots from the Tangmere squadrons and their aircraft, though the collection did not include a Lysander.

  The fog thickened. When it was clear there would be no flights that night either, the call came through: Party at Bignor.

  Tucked under the rolling hills of the South Downs, Bignor Manor was less than half an hour’s drive from the airfield. It was the home of Major Anthony Bertram, one of the escorting officers who met the flights at Tangmere, and his wife, Barbara. The major was attached to MI6, but down in the Sussex countryside at the sharp end of the special air operations, interservice rivalries were sensibly forgotten, or so it seemed. The couple had two young sons, and Bignor Manor was a happy family home where—or so they told any villagers who inquired—they occasionally put up convalescent French officers. The cheery and indefatigable Mrs. Bertram would let the maid and the gardeners go, and continue without help at night, but there was no apparent subterfuge in what she was doing.

  Despite the grand name, the heavy stone and Elizabethan origins, the manor was not a particularly large house; it had only four bedrooms and was approached from a typical farm track entrance, on which it stood discreetly, well back from the rest of the small village.

  “Come on, Iris, I’ll give you a lift on the back of my bike if you promise not to scream,” offered Jack.

  “I’ll certainly come, but not on that thing. Last time my legs were completely black with soot when I got off!”

  “She’s coming with me, aren’t you, Iris?” interrupted Rory. “In a nice safe car from the ministry.”

  “Only if Denise is driving.”

  Barbara Bertram was pretty and bright, much loved by all. She made her job seem effortless, caring for so many in conditions of great secrecy, attending to her menagerie of farm animals—the hens, rabbits, and goat, the hives of bees, the dog, the cat. She was last to bed and first up in the morning, yet always had time to sit and talk, to make up a four at bridge, or to play darts with the party. She would cook bacon and eggs with a smile for the new arrivals at four in the morning. The young Bertram boys called the French “Hullabaloos” on account of the strange and guttural sounds they made when speaking to each other; neither of them yet understood the language.

  But always underlying the calm exterior was the strain of the danger faced by the visitors, agents working in occupied France and members of the Resistance. The anxiety often became irritability, especially if the weather reports continued to be dismal and flights were postponed. That was where Mrs. Bertram’s perception proved invaluable. She would call in new blood and a sense of fun to lift the mood, and “Party at Bignor!” was always a popular shout. There would be supper, and the men might dance with the girl drivers like Denise, a popular redhead with dimples and a wide smile who knew all the latest steps. Thank God for those other girls, thought Iris; they made those evenings fun when all might have been too tense.

  She got in the car with Denise, Rory, and another pilot known as Stamper on account of some idiosyncrasy he had in preparation for a flight; the girls knew the nickname could apply equally to his two left feet on the dance floor. Iris had never asked his real name. They drove over in convoy, the spitting hellfire of Jack’s motorcycle within constant earshot.

  “Worse than ack-ack, that bike,” said Rory cheerfully. His faithful collie Sam was along for the ride too, at his feet in the back of the car next to Iris.

  Everyone was in high spirits. “Kindly remove your hand from my knee, Flight Lieutenant Fitzgerald,” said Iris.

  “Spoilsport.”

  Iris smiled to herself.

  “Hope there’s a decent feed,” said Stamper.

  Rory scratched the dog’s head. “Always is at Bignor. Eh, Sam? Might even be a scrap for you.”

  Mrs. Bertram worked hard on a fine vegetable garden to keep all the visitors fed. No windfall from the fruit trees went uncollected, and every edible paring was judiciously used in the kitchen. Some of the French enjoyed gardening, and they would mow lawns and weed, or help to milk Caroline the goat, anything to keep active while they waited to fly. The Manor’s potager was a model of international cooperation.

  A couple of men came through, carrying a stack of cracked plates and chipped saucers and a handful of glasses to the dining room.

  “Hello, dears. As you can see, no chance of any new crockery.” Mrs. Bertram sighed. “But I’m pleased to announce that we have pheasant pie on the menu tonight—well, pheasant and rabbit.”

  “Though it was only supposed to be rabbit,” interjected Tony Bertram. “Lord Mersey expressly said rabbit only if you were to shoot on the estate.”

  “But the pheasant—it flew in the way between the gun and the rabbit,” said a man with a French accent who was cheerfully laying knives and forks on the long table, his back to them.

  “Oh, bad luck!” said Rory.

  “Yes, awfully, wasn’t it?” said Mrs. Bertram brightly. “We had to make the best of things though.” As was customary, she did not introduce the Frenchman even when he turned round.

  Iris stepped back in delighted surprise. It was Xavier. The effect of his unexpected presence was electrifying. She stood, smiling stupidly, but he looked away.

  “A bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin from the mess,” said Rory, reaching into his flying jacket and handing them over.

  “I’ll get some glasses. Why don’t you go through to the sitting room? A few of our visitors are already having a drink there. The rest are still at the White Horse—there’s a darts match against the village team. They did very well against them last time. As it’s so important to make eve
rything seem aboveboard, one of the French put one arm in a sling, pretending it was his throwing arm, of course. None of the villagers could quite believe how well he played with his ‘wrong arm’!”

  Iris was taken aback to see in the flesh the man she had spent so long building up in her imagination; it was almost an embarrassment, as if he would know, just by looking at her, what had been passing through her mind in the intervening months.

  “I’ll let you introduce yourselves,” said Mrs. Bertram. “I need to check on the food.”

  “We have already had the pleasure of meeting,” said Iris, aware of Rory’s interest as she extended her hand to Xavier.

  He shook it, neutrally. “Ma chère mademoiselle, I am enchanted—but I think you must be mistaken.”

  Jack was in the sitting room, handing round cigarettes and drinking beer. Through the open glass doors to the garden, Sam’s excited barks indicated that he had found someone to play with. Iris smiled and shook hands with three men, all strangers to her.

  The pilots were discussing the night the Windmill Theatre came to put on a show at the camp cinema, and the fan dancer Phyllis Dixie had delighted and amazed the men when she held both feather fans out at arm’s length at the end of her act. “The place went wild!” said Stamper. He sounded the same as ever, but Iris noticed that his eyes seemed dull and his face drawn as he told the story Iris had heard several times. He took a large glass of whisky from the tray Mrs. Bertram brought round.

  One of the Frenchmen, a jowly man with a moustache, watched puppy-like as Barbara Bertram turned for the kitchen. “A wonderful woman.” He sighed. “The first morning I arrived, she asked me to take the mud off my boots on the metal outside the back door. Madame Barbara—you know what she did? She put all this mud in a container, and she grows little salad leaves . . . yes, now I know the name, mustard and cress . . . on it, so that when I arrive last week to make my return to France, knowing that my heart is heavy, she offers the cress salad to us, the French: salad grown on French soil!”

  No wonder they loved her.

  Iris listened politely, her mind churning, as another man began to tell her, in French, how a darts match had been convened at Mrs. Bertram’s instigation when the discussion between rival political persuasions had become too lively. Darts was a perfect diffuser of tension, he averred; when the war was over, he was going to get himself a board.

  Perhaps, thought Iris, she should ask for a game to calm her nerves. Xavier stood talking to a man she had never seen before, giving no indication that he was aware of her. Was it possible that he did not even remember her? She had never felt such disappointment.

  They were joined by two more men and another young woman driver who knew Denise. Iris saw Xavier give the girl an appreciative glance, then continue his intense discussion.

  After dinner the men all helped with the washing up, throwing the plates from one to another, while Barbara Bertram averted her eyes. “Do be careful, boys. Oh, I simply can’t look! Have you any idea how hard it is to get enough crockery for everyone here? I didn’t have nearly enough in the first place!”

  Upstairs in one of the bedrooms there was a wooden mirror on the wall—no room for a dressing table with all the single camp beds for the visitors—by which the girls brushed their hair and pencilled their eyebrows. Denise applied some powder, chatting about the French. Iris rolled her hair high over the front of her head and pinned it back to show off her earrings. She was wearing her favourite dress, of thick brushed cotton with a cherry print. Normally it brought her luck, but its talismanic properties had clearly failed this evening.

  The other girl introduced herself to Iris. “I’m Aster. Two blooms together!” She was jolly in an obvious way, the kind of girl Iris was on the whole glad to have left behind at school, but it was hard not to offer some friendliness in return.

  “That’s a pretty lipstick shade,” said Iris.

  “Thank you. A present from Paris, best not to say who from, I suppose. I say, that French joe down there . . . he’s an absolute dream, isn’t he?” Iris could not have failed to notice that Aster had been seated next to him at dinner. The giggles and touching of his arm had made her want to throw cold water over them.

  Iris wondered whether it was worth asking which one she meant, but it was so obvious that to say anything would only draw attention to her feelings.

  “He certainly is.”

  “Any idea who he is?”

  “Not a clue,” said Iris.

  They went downstairs to find Stamper trying to explain to Xavier in very bad French how to fly a Lysander—“et alors vous poussez ça, et vous tirez là—et Robert est votre oncle!”

  “Are you planning on helping yourself to one of our planes, monsieur?” asked Iris neutrally.

  “He used to be a pilot,” explained Stamper.

  “Did he indeed?” Iris cocked her head.

  “I most certainly was, mademoiselle. I fear it is no longer valid since I have been otherwise engaged these past few years, but I achieved a private pilot’s licence before the war.”

  She was about to ask him where he had learned to fly when Rory marched up with Aster, both of them distinctly put out to find Iris so intent on listening to the handsome Frenchman.

  Stamper helped himself to more whisky and started telling another of his stories: “. . . It was a lone raider, and he didn’t stand a chance against our guns—took a direct hit. Flew on for a mile, then made a terrible sound as it smacked into the ground. We jumped into a car and raced over. It was a Dornier, great big crate of a thing, broke up on impact into at least five pieces. Three bodies in the wreckage, and three live bombs. Flames shooting over the fuselage. My revolver was loaded and I was mustard keen to use it to arrest some live Germans . . . sadly, not to be.”

  Music rose louder from the gramophone. The singer warbled about the spell of Paris and an April dawn. Iris, sitting on the sofa, closed her eyes and clenched her hands together to dig her fingernails deep into the flesh of her palms.

  “Are you praying, mademoiselle?” asked Xavier, coming to stand in front of her. “And if so, what for?”

  She said nothing.

  “I’ll be looking at the moon . . . but I’ll be seeing you . . . ,” sang the gramophone.

  She would not ask him.

  For a second she thought he was looking at her in the same way he had in the Coquille restaurant. But then Barbara Bertram passed with a tray of glasses. He caught her hand and brought it up to his lips. “Chère Madame Barbara,” he said fondly, taking the tray and placing it deftly on a sideboard. “Would you do me the honour of allowing me this dance?”

  His high spirits were infectious. Soon all the girls were dancing. “He’s quite something, isn’t he?” whispered Aster as she finished a turn round the floor with Xavier. Her colour was high, flushed from the dancing in the too-confined space in his arms.

  “Quite something,” agreed Iris, the edge of sarcasm in her voice lost as Aster was swept away again, this time by the jowly Frenchman with the moustache.

  Mercurial—that was Xavier, the one all eyes were drawn to, with his olive-skinned good looks, the easy manner and appreciative story-swapping with the men, the chivalrous manners with a dash of flirtation to disarm the women. Even Sam the collie was charmed, returning again and again to his side for Xavier to rub his head and stomach until the poor creature rolled over in ecstasy.

  At one point Xavier went out through the glass doors to the garden. She half heard an argument in French outside, but Iris could not see who it involved. When he returned, his expression was closed; then, in an instant, he seemed to don a mantle of social gaiety, and the petulance lingering about his mouth was gone.

  He came straight over to her. “Is it our turn to dance at last?”

  Iris accepted his hand and his arm around her. His fingertips on her back were light, barely touching the material of her dress, but she felt every connection as they began to move. In his warm hand, hers was secure. It was an od
d conjunction of intimacy and awkwardness. He looked into her eyes, saying nothing. When she responded in kind, he pulled her closer. She concentrated on the present: she was in his arms again; Xavier Descours was flesh and blood. How much of our lives are spent wholly immersed in the present moment? It seemed to Iris that it was not very much at all. Not nearly enough.

  Was this silence a mark of their complicity—or did he really not remember her? They danced on, to all intents as strangers.

  Then she was whirled away by Rory and Jack, then Stamper, and Rory again. And they drank and laughed until she felt like crying.

  The following night the moon rose early like a beacon, then was smothered by clouds and rain. The operation was forced to stand down. There would be no more November flights.

  Xavier’s appearance at a gathering at the 400 Club on Leicester Square a few nights later was noted in the ladies’ washroom on the half-landing at Norgeby House.

  Iris listened, downcast, as a new girl from Colonel Tyndale’s office described him as “that ravishing Frenchman” who made her dance so often her feet were aching. All morning at Orchard Court Tyndale had been in a foul mood. And now Iris knew why: according to his chatty new typist (perhaps a mite too chatty?) there had been a run-in with RF Section—République Française, the Free French. Ever since General de Gaulle set up his government in exile in June 1940, they had operated their own secret service department from a house in Duke Street. They brooked no interference from anyone, least of all the British, as they dropped their own agents and formed their own circuits in France.