Alan has asked me to marry him. Do not tell Ma! Not yet anyway. I’m not sure and I haven’t given him an answer (yet). Alan’s a curious Scottish Puritan. I’m sure he does love me but… BUT somewhere in among his motives at the moment there is guilt, guilt over his wife’s suicide. I can’t quite explain it but it’s as if the Puritan in Alan can’t abide waste, and if we don’t get married after all that has happened, then his wife’s suicide will have been an even bigger waste than it already is (has been?). This is a Puritan conscience working overtime. If he doesn’t marry me, it is almost as if he has made a fool of her—she killed herself for nothing. What a moral mess.
I daren’t ask how his children are. I’m sure he’d tell me if there was (were?) a problem.
Write and tell me how long you and your lady have been together. Is it bliss, sharing a comfy bed every night? (I won’t ask about sex, you always get shirty if I do.) Crikey, half this letter’s been in brackets. But do tell me all about “married” life! Pa says she’s very good-looking—I think he was quite envious! (At his age! There I go again, with the brackets.) You are a lucky man.
One tricky thing. I can’t tell this to Alan just yet—he might look upon it as treason—but I have to tell someone. I’m not sure I want to be a nurse forever. Being in this war, I’ve seen so much blood, death, and mutilation that it will last me a lifetime. Life is going to be different after the war, especially for women—we’ll have better and more varied jobs, I am sure, and that has set me thinking. I’d like to be a journalist. Is that too ambitious, do you think? I don’t think so. I’ve enjoyed writing my journal and these letters have taken me out of myself (and the letters I’ve written for others). I enjoyed it when we had a visit from those war correspondents. They were so knowledgeable, so interested in events, even though it seemed as though they had seen everything. They were funny, too—witty, I mean.
What do you think? It would be a varied life, I’d have to keep myself informed, learn to use one of these typewriter things, brush up on my punctuation and subjunctive, but it does attract me. By the time the war is over, I shall have done my bit—and then some—as a nurse.
Huge love. (Still feeling generous.)
Xxxooo
Izzy
(P.S. Just reread the above before sending it off—and you know what? I’m going to finish this letter and accept Alan’s offer right away! I’m telling you first. But I won’t tell him about the journalism thing for now.)
About a week later, I was sitting in my office working on my “Cost of a Death” report, as it had come to be called. I have to admit, Sam had been right. It was alarming how much wealth goes out of a country in a war, in terms of lost careers. The real problem we had, in making the overall calculation, was the remarriage rate. Normally, in Britain at least, before the war, most women who were divorced—and it wasn’t that many—remarried sooner or later, and their prospects, having taken a dip, picked up again. But, of course, circumstances are now very different. How many women will be able to remarry when— for a time at least, for a generation anyway—there will be so few men available? As Izzy had reminded me, it is sobering just to think about it.
While I was working on the problem that day, Nadia, my assistant, poked her head around the door. “The brigadier wants to see you. He says can you come through now.”
I frowned to myself. This was a shade on the brusque side. Normally, the brigadier was politeness itself.
I went through.
He was seated in his usual easy chair and he had someone with him. Malahyde introduced him as a Colonel Roland Moore.
“Colonel Moore is from one of our secret security outfits. I know which one but you don’t need to. I want you to listen to what he has to say. It appears you may have broken the Official Secrets Act.”
He said this as I was lowering myself onto his sofa. I allowed my frame to slump the last few inches. This was a shock.
Moore came straight to the point. “Our understanding is that you shared information with your wife that you should not have done. And that your wife has had a child with a German national.”
Naturally, they were both gazing intently in my direction.
“Am I allowed to know who made these statements?”
Moore ignored the substance of my question. “I notice you say ‘statements,’ not ‘allegations.’”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“Answer the question.”
“My wife, as you call her, is not married to me, though we have lived together since 1915. She was made pregnant by a German teacher in July 1914, in Stratford-upon-Avon, and he went back to Germany before war broke out. He hasn’t been heard of since. He doesn’t know he has a son. I may have mentioned one or two things to her, in the course of the past three years, but nothing that could be compromising or helpful to anyone else.”
“Hmm. We’ll have to see about that. Did your … lover tell you about the German?”
“Yes, of her own free will.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No,” I lied. “He had gone back to Germany more than a year before I met Sam—my lover, as you call her.”
“Why did you take her on, so to speak?”
“I fell in love with her. I can’t have children, because of a war wound, and she had a child without a father. It was convenient on her part, love on mine.”
“You didn’t do this out of sympathy with the German?”
“Of course not. I’m not a rabid nationalist but I know where my interests lie. What information am I supposed to have given away?”
“It is claimed that you gave away the identity of a German spy here in London, a certain Genevieve Afton, and that you told your wife and her sister before you told your superiors in the ministry.”
“That’s true,” I said. I explained what had happened that night, how I had been tired and shocked by what I had overheard, that my domestic relations had been important to me, and that in a moment of weakness I had described my evening. “But it was something that my wife’s sister—let’s call her my wife, for convenience—it was something that my wife’s sister had said that drew my attention to the spy in the first place. Without my wife’s sister pointing out something about the spy’s father, something that didn’t agree with what Genevieve Afton claimed in the office, I would not have spotted that she was a traitor in the first place.”
I took out a handkerchief and wiped my lips.
“Also, I know who gave you this information. He is Greville Muirhead and he is the fiancé of my wife’s other sister Ruth. The sisters fell out last week and had a flaming argument, because Greville shopped her sister’s lover who had deserted—”
“Yes, I was coming to that. Apparently you knew this man was in London but did nothing about it.”
“Because I never imagined he had deserted! Even when the brigadier here told me he thought that this man’s regiment was still at the Front, I didn’t put two and two together. What’s more, why is Muirhead coming forward? Not really out of a concern for security, but because of a domestic row between his fiancée and my wife, her sister, that’s why. Genevieve Afton was shot for treason months ago. Yes, I shouldn’t have told my wife what I did tell her, but it hasn’t affected anything.”
“Hal has a point, Colonel,” said the brigadier quietly. “He did expose Genevieve Afton, she was executed, and he has himself killed another traitor since then, on the instructions of the prime minister. His loyalty is not in doubt. At the highest levels.”
The colonel didn’t say anything for a while. “Yes, he told his wife he was going to Switzerland, when he shouldn’t have done. Another black mark.” A pause. “Brigadier, you are ultimately responsible for this audit of the war. It would be … disastrous if the main author of that audit turned out to be… well, a traitor. Are you quite happy with this man?”
“Yes,” said Malahyde quietly. “I am. I have no doubts.”
Another silence. Then: “Very well, sir. Since you vouc
h for him, I will take no further action. A report of the matter will, however, remain on his file—is that clear?”
I nodded.
“Please,” he said, getting up, “the Official Secrets Act means what it says. Wives and girlfriends are off-limits. It would be embarrassing— worse than embarrassing, much worse—if you were caught again.”
I nodded and he left.
The brigadier walked with me back to my office. “I once told my wife something I shouldn’t have.”
I looked at him. “And?”
“She comes from a very old, diplomatic family—ambassadors, private secretaries, that sort of thing. Used to running the country. She said that if I did it again, she’d divorce me.” His eyes twinkled. “It was very tempting.”
After its summer break, Miss Allardyce’s school got going again in September. In the second week, the headmistress held a cocktail party to meet all the parents. Because the school didn’t accept children until they were three, Will hadn’t been able to attend until the spring, so we had been ineligible for the party the year before.
The school, when we reached it, was in reality little more than a four-story house with large gardens front and back. The front garden looked directly onto the road: Queensgate.
Parents and children were scattered all over the house. Sherry and beer were offered, plus lemonade and, of course, water. Sam had a sherry; I stuck to beer. In the course of meeting several sets of fellow parents, I lost sight of both Will and Sam and was surprised when a small, wiry, and very energetic gray-haired woman buttonholed me. I guessed she was Miss Allardyce herself.
She was wearing a woolen three-piece with a set of expensive-looking pearls at her neck. Were we paying too much in fees, I wondered.
“You must be Mr. Ross,” she virtually shouted at me, fixing me with the sort of stare a teacher reserves for a miscreant child.
I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about and was about to deny it when I saw movement off to my left as Sam’s head jerked round in my direction. She had heard Miss Allardyce and knew what she meant before I did. Sam came toward us.
“Er … yes,” I muttered eventually. “That’s right.” It had been so long since we had used Sam’s maiden name that I had all but forgotten it.
Sam joined us.
“He’s a bright boy, your Will,” Miss Allardyce said. “I can see the family resemblance,” she added, looking at me. “He’s a natural leader, you know. The army would suit him very well as a career.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little early?” I said as forcefully as I could without sounding rude. “He’s only three and a bit.”
“Yes, but you can always encourage the little ones. They never forget what they learn early on.” And she was gone; there were other parents to meet.
Sam looked at me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have warned you. When I brought him here, to register, I never thought… I thought it might burden you if I used your name.”
“You’d better make up your mind soon,” I replied sourly. “His name is going to mean a lot to him before long. You’d better decide what it is.” And I walked off.
But not far. There was a commotion in the front garden. The children were crowding by the fence, with some of the parents standing not far off. It soon became clear what they were looking at. Some grenadiers were marching in the road, the scarlet stripes down their gray trousers very vivid in the sunshine. As they drew abreast of the school, and with a stylish flourish, the sergeant major at the front of the men suddenly barked out, “Eyes right!”
As one, the soldiers turned their heads to acknowledge the schoolchildren.
Some of the boys, impressed by this, uncertainly saluted back to the men. Will was one of them.
“Eyes front!” The grenadiers marched on and out of sight.
I turned. Sam was standing behind Will. She looked at me, mouthed that she was going home, and pulled down Will’s arm, the one that was saluting, so that she could lead him away.
Dearest Hal,
News of an “incident.” An incident that would make a good report in my new “career” as a journalist (I still haven’t told Alan).
We were working well behind the lines the other day, in a lull in the fighting, taking the opportunity to clean our kit and do other maintenance jobs, when a Frenchman appeared. He was in his thirties and told us he was a doctor from the nearby village of A. How he had evaded our security system I don’t know, but he had. He was in a state. He said that his wife had just given birth a short while before and that she had hemorrhaged and lost a lot of blood—could we help? He had obviously heard something about blood transfusion and our unit, but at that moment the military police turned up, together with the local commanding officer. They arrested the doctor—or at least they tried to. As they moved toward him, to take hold of him, he pulled out a gun—a pistol. Standoff. In no time at all, there we were in a small tableau: the doctor pointing his gun at Alan, and the military police, three of them, pointing their guns at the Frenchman.
The commanding officer said we couldn’t let him have any blood—it was reserved for military use. The doctor replied that we were in France and that we were all fighting to preserve France and the French way of life, that we were guests in his country, and allies. However, I am making it sound all rather more polite than it actually was—the exchange was very heated. Alan let it go on for a while, until the argument had more or less run its course, then said that he sided with the doctor, that there was a lull in the fighting and that two or three pints of blood would not affect the war effort one way or the other. He then took some bottles of blood and stepped in front of the doctor, so he was acting as a human shield. He said that he was going to leave, with the doctor, and walk to A. if need be, to help with the transfusion. He was a doctor, he said, and if he could save this woman’s life he would.
It was very dramatic. Alan and the Frenchman walked past the three guns and on toward the village. No one did anything to stop them. I ran after them and the three of us hurried unchallenged into A.
When we got there, the woman was dead. She had bled to death while we were arguing. The baby, a boy, amazingly, was alive but there was nothing we could do for the mother. We did what we could to console the doctor, who was also the father, of course. Then Alan and I returned the way we had come.
When we were a few hundred yards from the village we heard two shots. You can guess the pitiful truth: the doctor had killed himself and the baby.
So now we have made enemies of the local villagers.
When people think that wars are black-and-white things, that there is good on one side only and bad on the other side, how wrong they are. War throws up these confused situations in profusion. I was proud of Alan, that he did what he did, but it took it out of him. He has been on at me, saying we should get married. The romantic in him says that a marriage in wartime, at the Front, would be something very poignant. I tell him no. I want to get married in our tiny church in Edgewater, with my parents there and my lovely brother, with lots of flowers, masses of hymns, and our mother’s sisters in their awful frocks. Weren’t you sweet on one of the vicar’s daughters at one stage? I remember you always used to go bright pink whenever she was near. Maybe you didn’t notice but the rest of us did!!
Speaking of Ma, I also think, secretly, that having a wedding in Edgewater will give her something to hold out for—I hope so anyway. She wrote me a rather tough letter the other day, asking if I felt any responsibility for the death of Alan’s wife. All I can say is that I was to blame at some level, but I never wanted Alan to tell his wife about us; he didn’t need to, not yet anyway. I will have to meet the children at some stage, I expect, and that won’t be easy. But an Edgewater wedding is what I think about most now. With the Germans on one side, and now the hostile villagers of A. on the other, I badly need to get back to the peace and friendliness of home.
But… the war is almost over, or it looks like it. What a time it has been for
all of us. I now see why our side is called the “Allies.” Will we still be friends when the peace comes?
This is far too serious for a letter.
Who do you think I should choose as bridesmaids?
Huge love: xxxooo
Izzy
“You’ve got a letter.” Nadia, my assistant, was standing over me, a cup of coffee in one hand, an envelope in the other.
“You make it sound unusual.”
“This one is. It’s not internal; it’s from the great unwashed public.”
I saw what she meant. Being in a top-secret unit, we got all our post from other departments of government—the few departments that knew we existed—and it arrived via the internal, civil service, Whitehall-based postal service. The envelope Nadia was holding was white rather than brown, had what looked like a normal postmark and stamp, and had been slit open by the censor.
“If it got through the censor, it can’t be very important,” I said. I held out my hand and she passed it to me.
I slid my finger into the envelope and took out what was inside. I looked at the signature first: it was from Lottie. Why was she writing to me, and why was she writing to me here?
I took the cup of coffee that Nadia had made me and settled down with the letter. Its thrust was, as she put it partway through, a “double olive branch.” The first item of news was that Faye was getting married. Being Faye, it was a whirlwind romance, with an actor she had met through, of all people, Lottie; the two sisters were friends again. Faye had seen Sam and me at Ruth’s engagement party, felt ill at ease in not talking to us, and wanted to resume “normal relations,” as Lottie put it. Therefore, we were invited to Faye’s wedding, to be held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields three weeks hence; afterward there would be a party on the stage of the theater where her actor fiancé was appearing. Faye wasn’t sure what reception she would receive if she approached Sam directly, so she had asked Lottie to intervene with me.
At the same time, Lottie said, she was offering an olive branch of her own. She was sorry, she wrote, for the things she had said outside our flat that day when Sam had not allowed her in. She was sorry, she said, because they weren’t true; she’d just been “hitting out” at Sam because Sam wouldn’t forgive her.
Gifts of War Page 37