A Time of Secrets

by Deborah Burrows

  I regretted saying anything when Dolly’s face crumpled. She stared at me.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, in a quivery, little-girl voice. ‘Nick?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said.

  ‘I’m too old for him,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘He wants the pretty young things.’

  I was saddened to see her obvious despair and so I tried to make it better. ‘You’re much prettier than Violet. But you work with Ross. It’s against regulations. Perhaps he doesn’t want to get you into trouble.’

  She brightened at my compliment, and seemed to consider what I’d said.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. He told me he doesn’t sleep with women at APLO. I didn’t believe him, but maybe he really meant it.’

  I was shocked that Dolly had been so brazen as to ask him, and surprised that Ross had any qualms at all about whom he slept with. Then I realised he’d told her a lie, because he’d wanted to sleep with me.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ I said, turning off the gas under the saucepan. ‘If you didn’t work with him, he’d probably be in like Flynn, as they say.’

  Dolly frowned down at her cup. ‘Well, I can’t ask for a transfer just to sleep with Nick,’ she said. ‘No matter how dreamy he is.’

  Relieved, I spooned porridge into two bowls and brought them to the table.

  ‘I still hate Violet Smith,’ she said, giving me a quick, incisive look as she picked up the milk jug. She paused, jug in hand. ‘If you ever sleep with Nick, I’ll hate you, too. I can’t help it, Stella. I’ll hate you and you won’t be able to live here any more.’

  I was stunned to realise that she was absolutely serious. I shook my head and attempted a smile. ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said.

  She quirked her lips into an expression that was half pout and half resignation. ‘If he wants you, he’ll charm you and you’ll sleep with him.’ She poured the milk over her porridge and passed the jug to me. ‘And then I’ll hate you and want you to die. Just like I do Violet.’

  I said nothing. If I allowed Nick Ross to charm me into bed, I thought, I’d hate myself.

  Dolly sprinkled sugar on her porridge and pushed the sugar bowl and the milk towards me. But when I tried to eat, the porridge stuck in my throat. Dear Lord, please don’t let Eric be dead.

  Twenty-two

  Ross didn’t mention Eric in the following days. We worked together in a fog of chilly politeness, neither of us mentioning his behaviour on Saturday night. Eric was all I could think about. Wondering if he was dead, or captured by the Japanese, or dying. I had no one else to ask, but I didn’t want to go begging Ross for information.

  Cole passed me in the corridor without a word, his face frozen into a handsome wooden mask. When I saw him at lunch on Thursday, Sam de Groot seemed out of sorts, too. I wondered if he’d heard about Eric, but I didn’t mention it. Instead we sat with the others around the big table, ate tasteless army sandwiches and discussed the American landings in Sicily and the capture of Syracuse. Also the ferocious fighting by the Red Army in Orel, Kursk and Byelgorod.

  ‘The tide of war has turned,’ said Sergeant Ayers. ‘Those Ruskies have Hitler on the run in the east. And now that the Allies are in Italy, it won’t be long before we’ve got Europe back.’

  ‘Never underestimate the Germans,’ said Sam. There was a pinched, bitter expression on his face. ‘We Dutch know that well enough.’

  ‘And what about the Japanese?’ said Faye. ‘They’re ferocious fighters and they never surrender.’

  I had a sudden, vivid image of Eric as I’d last seen him, waving before he disappeared into the night. I well knew what his fate would be if he were captured, not killed. It would be better if he’d died quickly. Hot tears were in my eyes, and I tried to dash them away surreptitiously. When I looked up Sam was watching me closely.

  He caught up to me as I was unlocking the door to my office after lunch.

  ‘Have you heard something? About Eric?’

  I shook my head. It was all top secret. I couldn’t tell even him. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You are not a girl to cry over nothing.’

  I fell back on my excuse, my lie; the one I used to explain any odd moods or strange decisions about my life – such as refusing to go out with eligible men – that infuriated well-meaning friends. ‘I was thinking about my late husband. He died in Syria in 1941.’

  Sam ducked his head, eyes not meeting mine. ‘I’m so sorry, Stella.’

  *

  Ross was at Avoca that evening as I came home late from work. He had Violet in tow and they were descending the stairs, obviously heading off to dinner, dancing or a show. Violet’s smile was smug as she brushed past me with an air of suppressed excitement. Ross nodded, but I thought I saw mischievous malice in his eyes.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said, smiling. Hating him.

  I knew it wasn’t his fault that he’d been the one to tell me about Eric, but it was the manner in which he’d told me that upset me so much.

  During my final year at boarding school in England, the headmistress, Miss Samson, would invite the senior girls to take tea with her, while she attempted to prepare us for life in the world.

  ‘Never show it if you dislike or are contemptuous of someone,’ she’d said once. ‘Never let them know how you feel. Always smile; always treat such persons with the utmost courtesy. Then the power is with you.’

  ‘Enjoy your evening,’ I said in a bright, cheery voice.

  *

  ‘Honestly, Stella. I can’t think of anything more boring. An AWAS party at Sally Bourke’s house in Kew. It’ll be nothing but juvenile conversation and attempts to jitterbug.’

  Dolly was sitting on the couch peering at her face in her compact, pouting ferociously as she reapplied her lipstick. She rubbed the top lip over the bottom and smiled at her reflection.

  ‘I like Sally,’ I said. ‘And Sam will be there, as well as others from AWAS.’

  ‘The non-commissioned officers and the privates.’ She made a face at the mirror. ‘No thank you. Anyway, I’m meeting Stanford at the Oriental.’

  ‘Doesn’t Nick Ross often go to the Oriental?’

  Dolly looked up. ‘There’s no need for that face, Stella. I’m not going there to moon over Nick Ross.’ She tucked her compact into her satchel and busied herself looking for something in its depths. ‘I’m over the man. I don’t care who he sees. Lance Cole is right – Ross is vain, arrogant and irrelevant.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Glad to hear you say it.’

  Dolly screwed up her mouth in a grimace and I ducked as she threw a cushion at me. ‘It’s all lies, of course. I’m still crazy about him. I wish I knew why.’

  *

  Sally’s parents lived in a grand old house in Kew. It took me a couple of tram changes to get there. I walked up the avenue, peering at the numbers on letterboxes until I found her house, which had curved bay windows and a curved front porch and was set in a manicured garden. The entrance hall was wide, wood panelled and welcoming, and led to a lounge room that was full of servicemen and AWAS girls. An older couple, whom I assumed were Sally’s parents, were flitting around with trays of beer and food. The strains of ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’ wafted from a phonograph, and couples were dancing on a section of bare boards where furniture had been moved away and the rug had been rolled up.

  I was nudged, and turned to see a glass of beer being handed to me by an AIF private. I thanked him, took the beer and looked around for someone I knew. Sam de Groot was sitting in a chair at the side of the room, watching the dancers, so I wove through the crowd to join him. When I got closer I saw he was sitting with Mary, who was chattering away as usual.

  ‘. . . but then he said, “We’ll have to have references and we’ll have to check your background for security.” So when that was all done I went to rookie school – where I met Faye and
Stella.’

  Sam was gazing at her, seemingly transfixed. In my experience, taciturn men such as Sam often were attracted to bubbly little women like Mary. I greeted them and sat beside them on the floor as Mary finished her tale.

  ‘. . . to Captain Molloy at Goodwood, and he told me, “This is a bigger oath that you are to swear now and if you break it and tell anything to anybody about what you do here, then you can be shot under national security regulations.” My word, but that scared me. Even Mum and Dad don’t know where I work.’

  ‘Then stop talking about it now,’ I said.

  She flushed. ‘It’s Sam. I was just saying how I was picked to be in –’ she lowered her voice at last ‘– in APLO.’

  ‘Loose lips sink ships, Mary,’ I said. ‘Be like Dad and keep Mum. You know all that.’

  ‘No one was listening.’ Mary looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘Anyone could have been listening,’ I said.

  ‘It was entirely my fault,’ said Sam. ‘We were chatting and we began to swap stories of our lives. Please do not berate Mary.’

  I let the matter slide and we began to talk about the war, the weather and the party. When Mary left us a little while later on the beer run, I turned to Sam.

  ‘She’s only nineteen, and she’s an innocent girl,’ I said, looking at him with a frown. ‘You’re a lot older than her, and much more worldly.’

  Sam almost smiled. ‘I have no designs on little Mary’s virtue. She . . . reminds me of someone I used to know. A harmless flirtation, that’s all this is. It takes her mind off those two.’

  He gestured to where Faye and Jim Pope were performing the contorted steps of the jitterbug in the centre of the room. Faye was flushed and smiling, and Jim was gazing at her with an unfocused expression that my father would have described as gormless. I thought he looked like a man in love.

  I raised the corner of my mouth in a wry smile. ‘Sorry, Sam. I’m rather protective about the girls I went through basic training with.’

  ‘Very laudable,’ he said. ‘But in this case, unnecessary.’ He became very sombre. ‘Lieutenant Cole tells me that Eric Lund has been killed. I am so sorry, Stella.’

  The room was suddenly darker and when I tried to swallow, my throat seemed to close up painfully. I turned away from him, as if to watch the dancing, and said nothing. So it was true: he was dead. All the dreams and hopes and fears that had been Eric Lund, all that was good and bad, all that made him human, were gone. I remembered his smile, his voice, his habit of sketching, the feel of his body when he held me, the sweet tentativeness of his kiss.

  ‘I hate this war,’ I said.

  *

  I went to church with Mrs Campbell on Sunday morning. It wasn’t something I did often. I wasn’t Presbyterian, but I wanted to pray for Eric’s soul and I didn’t want to go to church alone.

  At first, as the service began, I was filled with rage at the unfairness of war, almost consumed by bitterness that was close to hatred when I looked at the congregation. All the churches were full now; they had been since the start of the war. I hated the smug faces of the people I saw, hated a god that had taken a man like Eric away from me just when I had found him. But my anger dissipated as I looked around me. Everyone in that church knew someone who faced the sort of dangers that Eric had faced. Everyone knew someone who would not be coming home. By the time the service ended I was calm.

  I had planned to spend Sunday afternoon painting, but it was rainy and I wasn’t in the mood anyway. I stayed home, trying to sketch Eric’s face. My sketches were not well drawn, because it was difficult to remember what he looked like with any clarity.

  Eventually I gave up, and by five o’clock I was lying on our sofa, trying to read a novel my father had sent me: The Moon is Down, by John Steinbeck. It was compelling, but the futility of the deaths of the people in that small Norwegian town – German and Norwegian – as the Norwegians carried out their slow, silent, waiting revenge only made me want to cry. I’d liked the German artists I’d met in Paris, whose main aim in life had seemed to be to drink as much beer as possible and to sing ribald songs. I’d liked Knut Grimdalen, a young Norwegian sculptor who lived near me in Montparnasse. His hair was the colour of corn silk, his cheekbones were sharp and high and beautiful and his eyes were glacial blue. I hated to think that Knut might be part of Hitler’s slave labour force, or (more likely) risking his life in the resistance movement. I laid the book down.

  Violet’s sultry contralto slid under the door, floated into the lounge room and slipped into something more comfortable. ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ was a beautiful song, and she was singing it well.

  ‘I wish she’d just shut up.’ Dolly’s voice was shrill as she entered the lounge room and sat in an armchair. ‘I hate her stupid voice.’

  ‘Is she practising?’

  Dolly’s hands were clenched, her face red. ‘Nick’s over there. I saw him go in an hour ago. I hate her.’

  In a quick movement she stood and went over to the table by the window where she kept her cigarette box. She extracted a cigarette with shaky hands and lit it with a match. For a few seconds she stood there, seemingly transfixed as she watched the slow creep of the flame along the wood. When it reached her fingers, she shook out the match quickly, as if surprised it had caused her pain.

  Violet began to sing ‘Green Eyes’. I wondered if she was serenading Ross, whose eyes could be distinctly green on occasion. Dolly was still by the window, looking out as she took slow drags at her cigarette. She stubbed out the butt and lit another.

  ‘I wish I could wreck her pretty little face.’

  ‘Dolly, stop it,’ I said sharply. ‘Saying such things doesn’t help.’

  She dashed away tears with her free hand. ‘Do you know what that little witch said to me yesterday? She said I was too old and obvious for someone like Nick Ross, and I should stick to my elderly American.’ A white handkerchief, edged in lace, was pulled out of her sleeve and applied to her eyes. She blew her nose and walked across to sit beside me on the couch. ‘Stanford’s only forty-eight.’

  ‘I can’t see Ross ending up with someone like Violet,’ I said, moving my legs to give her more space. ‘He’s easily bored, and she’s not the most scintillating of conversationalists. The other day she referred to people who collect stamps as philanderists.’

  That made Dolly laugh. ‘She’s always coming out with howlers like that. Stupid girl.’ She regarded me darkly. ‘It’s not her brain he’s interested in.’

  I hesitated, thought about whether I should say anything, then barged in anyway. ‘Dolly, you can’t do the running with someone like Ross. Let him do the chasing.’

  ‘But he isn’t going to, is he? Chase, I mean.’ She moved her head so that the smoke she was exhaling wouldn’t blow into my face. When she turned back to me her upper lip curled. ‘Look at me. Dolly Harper, crazy over a man I can’t have. It’s . . . ridiculous. God, I hate Violet Smith.’

  She crushed her cigarette into the ashtray on the table by the couch. ‘It’s so easy to arrange for someone to be hurt,’ she said in a low voice, as if she was talking to herself. ‘I know people who’d murder their mother for five pounds.’

  ‘What? Dolly . . .’

  She seemed to freeze, then a slight shudder moved through her body. When she turned her head towards me, her face was bland. She smiled. ‘Only joking. As if I’d ever hurt anyone. She’s just a silly little girl and she’s annoyed me.’ Her shoulders lifted in a pretty shrug, like a Frenchwoman would give to show unconcern when her mind was in turmoil. ‘Damn them both to hell. They deserve each other.’ She got up and went to get another cigarette. ‘Why don’t we have a drink?’

  I put her to bed at ten. By then she felt no pain and all was silent in Violet’s flat.

  Twenty-three

  Lieutenant Cole caught me in the corridor early the following morn
ing.

  ‘Please come into my office, Sergeant.’

  He held open the door and waited. I followed him into the office but stood close to the door as he walked to his desk and sat down behind it. He gestured towards a seat in front of his desk.

  ‘I’d like to apologise for my behaviour the other night.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, sir.’

  ‘Please sit down. No need for formality when we’re alone, Stella.’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, I feel uncomfortable with informality at work.’

  Again he gestured to the chair. I sat down.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t “sir” Nick Ross all the time.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do.’

  ‘What about outside of work? He’s got quite a reputation with the ladies.’

  I wanted to wince at the clichéd euphemism.

  ‘I don’t see him much outside of work.’

  ‘I think that’s not true. I think you see him regularly. When he visits Violet Smith, for example.’

  ‘Just in passing, sir.’

  ‘Is she well?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘She’s still seeing a lot of Lieutenant Ross?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘He’s a busy man, Ross. I keep up my intelligence on him.’

  I wondered what it was that he wanted to tell me, find out from me.

  ‘Found anything interesting in those reports you’ve been reading?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘We’re all waiting with bated breath to hear what you and Ross discover.’ He got up from his chair and moved to perch on the front of his desk about a yard away from my chair. ‘I think there’s more to this assignment than Ross has been letting on.’

  He looked at me, expecting an answer. I fell back on the usual.

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘I think he’s trying to undermine the brilliant work being done by Destro . . . Did you say something, Sergeant?’