by Caro Fraser
Diana was unmoved. ‘I saw his face. You’d been arguing about more than that.’
Meg closed the cupboard and stood with her back against the sink. Her heart had begun to beat hard. ‘What on earth are you implying, Di?’
Diana hesitated. In her experience it was easy to tell if Meg felt guilty or uncomfortable, but at this moment she appeared to be neither. Still, there was no going back now.
‘That something’s going on between you and Dan.’
‘What?’ Meg gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘Are you serious? Dan?’
‘You deny it, then?’
‘Of course I deny it! What possible grounds could you have for thinking such a thing? Simply because he and I had a disagreement?’
‘I’ve seen the way you are with him.’ Even as Diana said this, she knew it sounded weak. Trying to articulate her suspicions made her realise how lacking in substance they were. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t have to pretend. Dan is my friend. I’ve always been fond of him. Yes, I’ll admit I was rather keen on him once upon a time. We all were, as I recall, you included.’ Meg regarded her sister-in-law with a frank expression, intent on maintaining a confident exterior. ‘But to accuse me of having an affair with him is laughable. Honestly, Di.’
There was a long silence. At last Diana said, ‘If I ever find out that you have wronged Paul and betrayed our family, you will be very sorry, Meg.’ She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and left the kitchen.
Meg stood by the sink for a long time, hugging herself as though cold, waiting for her racing pulse to slow. It had been an effort to lie her way out of that conversation as convincingly as she had. At least, she hoped it had been convincing. She’d had no idea that Diana had real suspicions. Things must have been closer to the surface than she’d realised. Her heart felt hollow. She had lost Dan, and now she was fighting to protect the only security left to her.
5
AFTER A WASH and brush-up, Dan walked to Claridge’s, where he managed to secure a table. He knew he’d had more than enough to drink, but he ordered more whisky all the same. Just after nine fifteen, to his surprise, Eve arrived. He stood up as the waiter showed her to the table. She looked as stylish as ever, in a grey dress of some soft material, with a gently gathered skirt and white collar. Her dark hair was fashionably rolled on top, and hung in glossy waves to her shoulders, and she looked extremely pretty. He felt a momentary exhilaration. This was the freedom he needed. Dining in the sociable bustle of a fashionable restaurant with a lovely and sophisticated woman, instead of conducting a claustrophobic love affair in snatched, secret hours in Belgravia. But even as he kissed Eve’s cheek, he thought of Meg, and the silent rooms haunted with their passion and laughter, and was filled with a wrenching despair and longing. This was a terrible mistake, but it was too late now to do anything about it.
The fact that Eve had come indicated that he was to be forgiven, but it was clear from the cool condescension of her manner that she was determined not to do so too readily. He resigned himself to playing the necessary game, and did his best to be charming and convivial. By the time dinner had been ordered, and he had finished his Scotch and Eve her cocktail, he knew he had earned his pardon – and he scarcely cared. He felt mildly drunk and strangely desperate.
‘Do you know,’ said Eve, glancing around the restaurant, ‘that at the beginning of the war they rounded up all the Italian waiters working here and put them in prison? I suppose you can’t blame them, though – you never know who might be the enemy. The paranoia of wartime.’ She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘That reminds me – the last time I saw you was when I gave you Alice Bauer’s famous list. Whatever happened about that?’
Dan remembered the brigadier’s instructions. But since Eve was the one who had given it to him, she was entitled to some kind of answer. ‘I gave it to the authorities, after I’d made my own investigations. It was as I thought. Someone had made false connections, based on all his trips to Germany before the war, and the people he knew there.’ It could be a lie, or it could be the truth. The more time went by, the less Dan felt he understood about Paul’s situation.
‘Oh. Well, I’m glad that’s all it was.’
‘Yes. As you say, the paranoia of war. People get fearful. Their imaginations are heightened to the point where they’ll take the tiniest suspicion and turn it into reality. Or what they think is a reality.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Perhaps being in a war drives everyone a little mad. Maybe they do and say things they never would otherwise, if life were normal.’ It was only because of the war that Meg had allowed herself to become his lover. It wasn’t real to her, just another escapade, one she had grown tired of. ‘It makes people dishonest.’
‘Why do you sound so angry?’
‘Do I? I’m sorry. Let’s order some wine.’ Dan scanned the wine list and ordered a bottle of claret. ‘So, tell me how you are, how work’s going.’
‘Going, soon to be gone.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’ve been called up. I’m joining the WAAF. My training starts in two weeks, at some deathly place in Gloucestershire. Can you see me in uniform and wool stockings?’
‘I’m sure you’ll look very fetching in uniform, and your legs will always be delectable whatever you put on them,’ said Dan with a smile. He felt he was buckling under the strain of being charming.
The waiter brought and poured the wine, and the food arrived. Over the meal they talked about mutual friends, about the paper, and about the war, but Dan was conscious of the effort he was having to make. The occasional silences hung heavily.
At the end of the meal, Eve rested her hand lightly on his. He stared absently at her slender, white fingers.
‘Is there something you need to talk about?’ she asked gently. ‘It feels like you’re hardly here at all.’
He drank the remains of his wine – he had drunk most of the bottle, since Eve had had only one glass – and wondered how she would react if he unburdened himself about Meg. He toyed with her hand, stroking the soft spaces between her fingers, hoping to feel some kindling of desire. Sleeping with Eve would be a way of cauterising the wound, marking the change. It was definitely what he should do. He no longer belonged to anybody. If Meg wouldn’t separate from Paul, then it was over. He looked up at Eve.
‘It’s been a rough time. Though no harder for me than for every other soldier, I expect. I think I’m just exhausted – body and soul.’
‘You’re also rather drunk, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I am. And I wish I were drunker.’
‘That’s not very flattering.’
Dan suddenly felt very tired. He couldn’t maintain the façade much longer. ‘It’s not about you. It’s about all the things I don’t want to think about.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Why don’t we go back to your house in Belgravia for coffee? I still haven’t seen it, you know.’
‘No.’ It came out sharply, and he tried to soften his tone, adding, ‘It hasn’t been lived in very much. Rather cold and bleak.’
‘Well, then, let’s go to mine instead.’
His eyes searched hers, and he wondered what it was that allowed her, after the months, years of silence, to accept him so readily, to be prepared to take him to her bed without question or argument. Love, he supposed. He knew, in an abstract way, that he should feel bad about this, but his sense of guilt, never the keenest among his small stock of moral susceptibilities, seemed to have been utterly blunted. He continued to stroke her hand, then her wrist, waiting for the familiar tingle of desire. It didn’t come. Perhaps the alcohol was to blame. It would be better when they were at her place. He suddenly felt the most extraordinary sensation in his skull, as though his mind had turned to glass, and was shivering into tiny fragments. A shudder passed through him.
He was conscious of Eve taking her hand away, and her voice saying, ‘Oh – Dan, wou
ld you give me a moment? There’s a friend of mine over there that I haven’t seen in an age. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Eve left the table. Dan sat staring at the tablecloth, waiting for the cold, shattering sensation in his brain to settle. He signalled to the waiter and ordered a large brandy.
Eve returned a few minutes later and sat down, glancing at the brandy. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
The glow of anger that burned through Dan seemed to rise volcanically from the depths of the last two years, fusing the bleak terror of the last undercover mission with the suppressed sense that everything he knew and loved had shown itself to be false and fragile; he was drunk, teetering on the civilised edge of normality, only just able to contain himself. His fingers tightened and relaxed on the stem of the brandy glass as the washing sense of despair subsided like a tide at the back of his brain.
‘Yes, I’ve had more than enough of just about everything.’
He drained the brandy, and as he set the glass down his hand was shaking visibly. Eve stared at him in alarm. ‘Let’s get the bill.’
‘First, I have to tell you a few things.’ He rested his forearms on the table, leaned forward, and began to talk in a low voice. He took her through each day of the last operation in Norway, from the rank claustrophobia of the submarine, through the nerve-paralysing terror of the glacier climb, the hours spent lying, sodden and frozen to the bone, waiting for night to fall, the bowel-clenching fear of the operation itself, to the days spent walking, exhausted and starved, in search of refuge and in constant fear of German patrols. Eve tried to soothe him, to stop the flow of words, but he had to talk until it was all told. Then at the end, his voice trembling, he said, ‘And the worst of it is, I don’t see the point. I don’t see the point in any of it.’ He flattened his hands on the tablecloth. At least they’d stopped shaking.
‘You’re emotionally exhausted. In fact, I’d say you’re not entirely well, Dan.’
His eyes had been fixed on his empty brandy glass as he talked. Now he looked at her with tired, dead eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have told you any of that. But I had to explain to someone. I don’t understand why I’m here, now, sitting in this restaurant, while most of the others are in some concentration camp – or maybe worse. I survived without rhyme or reason, just to go back and do it all over again. With any luck, I won’t survive the next time. I think I’d rather not.’
‘Don’t say that.’
He passed a hand over his face. ‘I’m drunk and full of self-pity. I’m sorry. But I’m utterly washed up. I can’t see any future. I feel empty. And terrified. I shouldn’t have invited you here tonight. Do you want to know why I did?’
‘I’m not sure I do.’ She signalled to a passing waiter for the bill.
‘Very wise. I won’t tell you. You wouldn’t like it.’
‘You’re drunk. I’m going to ignore everything you say.’
There was silence until the bill arrived. Dan fumbled for notes in his wallet, and paid.
Outside, the doorman hailed them a taxi.
‘I should go home,’ said Dan. ‘I shouldn’t do this to you. All this. So bloody unfair, the way I treat you.’
‘Yes, it is. But I don’t mind. Go on, get in.’
They got into the cab and Eve gave the driver her address in Marylebone. Dan closed his eyes as the taxi rolled slowly through the darkness.
They reached her flat and went in. Eve clicked on the lights in her sitting room. The flat was on the ground floor, small, but furnished with Eve’s characteristic good taste. Dan stood in the middle of the room in his overcoat. He felt exhausted.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ asked Eve.
‘I don’t think so, thanks.’
She went close to him and put her hands gently on either side of his head. He looked into her eyes.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘Why isn’t there some other man in your life?’
‘There could be. Maybe there has been. But they don’t matter. I love you. And you know how it is when you love someone. You’ll put up with – anything.’ She kissed his mouth lightly. ‘It’s not very clever of me to tell you that.’ She kissed him again more deeply, and he tried to respond, but there was only emptiness. ‘Come to bed,’ she whispered.
Her bedroom was chic and feminine, softly lit, and smelt delicious. I love the way women live, though Dan hazily. The double bed looked so enticing that he found himself wishing wearily that Eve wasn’t there, so that he could just fall into its softness and sleep away his unhappiness. But she was busy loosening his tie and unfastening his shirt buttons. I will do this and it will mend everything, thought Dan. Those wretched days within touching distance of Meg had been enough to drive him mad with frustration. She didn’t want him, but here was a woman who did. He began to undress Eve in turn, pausing to kiss her, hoping that if he could inject some urgency and enthusiasm into everything, he might begin to feel desire. It was presently eluding him. As they lay together naked, Dan marvelled at how the skin and smell of one woman could intoxicate and excite, and the skin and smell of another, every bit as soft and fresh, have no effect whatsoever. He could not respond to even the cleverest of her caresses, and eventually he rolled away from her, his eyes shut, resting his knuckles on his forehead.
Eve kissed the skin of his stomach. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she murmured.
‘I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I should never have called you. It was entirely wrong.’
‘Dan, you’re tired and not very well. You just need some rest. You’ll be better in the morning.’
There was no point in explaining further. She would find out in due course. Another blow, another needless piece of cruelty on his part. What a mess he was making of everything.
She snuggled close to him, drawing up the covers, and kissed him softly. ‘Get some sleep.’
He closed his eyes gratefully, and was unconscious within minutes.
*
He woke a few hours later, his heart thudding, his mouth dry, and his brain on fire. He lay for a while, going over the events of the last twenty-four hours. What on earth was he doing here? He turned his head. Eve lay sleeping soundly next to him. He needed to get out of bed as quietly as possible, gather his things, get dressed, and leave. He couldn’t face the alternative, which was to wait till morning and tell her it had all been a mistake, that she wouldn’t be seeing him again, ever. He might be brave about some things – and even that was in doubt – but not this.
Gently he pushed back the covers, sat giddily for a moment, then got out of bed. He went down on all fours, feeling around for his clothes, unable for the life of him to remember where various items had been discarded. He found his trousers, his socks, his underpants and one shoe. Where the hell was the other? And had he taken off his jacket in here, or in the living room? What about his overcoat? In the darkness he pressed his forehead to the carpet and let out a groan of misery. He heard a rustle from the bed, and staggered to his feet, clutching his clothes. Eve sat up and switched on the bedside light. For the first time in the past seven hours, as he looked at her he felt a rush of desire. Her hair was tousled in a dark, soft cloud, and her full, pale breasts grazed the top of the sheet as she stared at him. He sat down on the end of the bed.
‘Were you trying to leave?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid so.’ He caught sight of his shirt and tie and bent down to pick them up. There was silence in the room for a moment, then Dan said, ‘I’m not in a good way. I meant it when I said I shouldn’t have rung you.’ He put on his shirt and began to button it.
Eve leaned across and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I don’t understand why you have to leave. Stay and get some more sleep, and we can talk about it over breakfast.’
Dan took a deep breath. ‘You might as well hear it now.’ He sat threading his tie through his fingers. ‘The fact is, Meg and I met again just a few days after I last saw you. We’ve been having an affair for the past two years. Yest
erday we had a row about her leaving her husband, which she refuses to do. I looked you up because I thought… I wanted to see if I could get over her. And I find I can’t.’ It was several seconds before he could look at Eve. Her eyes seemed enormously large and dark, brimming with misery in the pinched whiteness of her face. ‘You see? I treat you like a cad, and you let me. It’s no good.’
‘I let you? So I’m to blame?’
‘I didn’t say that. I just wish you didn’t love me. I wish you’d hung up when I called you last night.’
‘So do I. But for rather different reasons. You only want to be spared embarrassment and… and squalid explanations. You don’t care about my feelings.’
‘I do. I bitterly regret causing you pain.’
‘No, you don’t. You didn’t think twice about lying to me and using me.’ She flung aside the sheets and blankets and got up, snatching a dressing gown from a nearby chair. ‘All that stuff last night about your desperately dangerous mission – no doubt that was just to make me feel sorry for you so that I’d let you sleep with me.’
‘That was your idea, if you recall. Not mine. And it didn’t turn out too marvellously, did it?’ Dan stood up and put on his tie. He still felt drunk. ‘And if we’re on the subject of lies, why the hell did you tell Meg that I told you about her? Spite and jealousy, I assume.’
‘God, you’re detestable. Get your things on and get out.’
Dan finished dressing and put on his shoes. He went to the bathroom briefly, then to the living room, where he found his jacket and overcoat. Eve appeared in the doorway.
‘Look,’ said Dan, ‘you don’t know how much I regret all this—’
‘Please. I think I’ve heard enough about your regrets.’ Her eyes were black with anger. ‘When you dropped me last time, I felt rejected, used. And such a fool. I hated you. Then it began to wear off, the way feelings do. Last night, I’d forgotten I hated you. That was the mistake. I won’t forget this time.’
There was nothing more to say. Dan didn’t want it to end on this note, but perhaps it was inevitable. He felt vile, mentally and physically. He picked up his overcoat and left quickly.