Night had fallen by the time they left the office, but the moon that greeted them as they stepped outside was full and fair and cast enough light, at least to Ruby’s blackout-attuned eyes, to cast every detail of the streetscape into sharp relief.
Rather than turn left and continue along to the street, Bennett paused and, looking over his shoulder at the ruins of St. Bride’s, asked, “Do you mind?”
“If we visit? Not at all.”
Although the steeple rose high above them, the church beneath was a barren shell. Its roof was gone, burned away by the same fires that had destroyed Ruby’s lodgings, and within the nave nothing remained but cold, old, soot-stained stone.
“Everyone talks about St. Paul’s having survived,” Bennett said as they stood at the edge of the fenced-off ruin, his eyes fixed on the desolation before him. “Yet something like fifteen Wren churches were destroyed during the Blitz. Just look at this place.”
“Did you ever visit it before it was destroyed?”
“Many times. I’m the furthest thing from a religious man, but I loved this church. And this is only one example of what has been, and still will be, destroyed. Europe will be a charnel house by the time this war is done.”
“It’s a building, Bennett. I don’t know . . . I can’t find myself moved to care. Not the same way I care about what happens to people. So many have died already. So many are starving or suffering.”
“I don’t disagree. The thing is . . . no one remembers the tide of human suffering from the last war. Never mind we were all brought to our knees by grief. No matter that we vowed it would be the war that put an end to war. Yet here we are, a quarter-century later, and we’ve forgotten. All that grief has been washed away, and with it our memories.”
“It won’t last forever. You know it won’t. And when it’s over, you can create new memories. Happy ones.”
“I wish I could believe you. I wish—”
“We should go,” she said, though she was reluctant to interrupt him.
“Yes, you’re right. Enough of my pontificating. I brought my motorcycle with me—do you mind?”
“No,” she said, although she was a little nervous of it. At the same time, she rather looked forward to sitting behind him, her arms locked around his middle, the heat of his body keeping her warm.
Jimmy and Maria greeted them joyfully, and their dinner—a carbon copy of the one they’d shared when she’d first come to London—was as delicious as she remembered from her first visit to the café.
Ruby told him of Christmas with the Tremaines, Kaz, and Uncle Harry, and how they’d made do with braised rabbit for lunch and, horror of horrors, elderberry wine for the toast to the king, since Harry’s wine cellar had finally been depleted. Bennett admitted to having missed Christmas lunch entirely, and though her heart seized at the idea of him alone and hungry while she’d been happily surrounded by friends, she didn’t press him for details. And then, lingering over the bottle of vinegary wine that Jimmy had unearthed, they talked of nothing much at all, until it was nearly ten o’clock and Bennett was hollow-eyed with fatigue.
The house was still and quiet when he brought her home, and as she couldn’t bear to see him go, not just yet, she asked him to stay on and share a cup of tea in the kitchen. Sitting at the homey old table, the cats twining around their legs, gave Ruby the odd and entirely unreliable feeling that all was right with the world. But perhaps, just perhaps, it was a taste of a future, of a shared life, that might yet be.
“You’re leaving again,” she said at last.
“I am. I won’t be back for a long while.”
“Will you come back to us? To . . . to me?”
His hands enveloped hers. “I hope I will. I want it more than anything.”
“I want it, too. I want you safe and whole and free of the obligations that take you away from me. But you need to know that I do understand why you must keep the promises you made. I do. Because if you broke them, you see, you wouldn’t be the man I know. The man I . . .” She faltered, unable to go on.
He nodded, but rather than say anything, he simply looked in her eyes, and it was a long time before he spoke again.
“I must go.”
They started up the stairs, Ruby a few steps ahead, but when they were only halfway up he caught at her hand and gently turned her around.
“Ruby,” he said, his eyes darkened by grief. He framed her face with his hands, his big hands that were so warm and gentle, and he kissed her with such sweetness, such yearning, that she felt she must surely die from the pain of it.
At last he pulled away, his mouth coming to rest against her ear. “Don’t come to the door with me. Don’t look back.”
And she obeyed him. She let him brush past her, heard him walk down the hall, heard the soft click of the front door as it latched behind him. And only then did she sit on the stairs, her knees giving out, as she, the girl who never cried, let the tears stream down her face until her eyes were dry and she could cry no more.
PART IV
Then we saw the coast of France. As we closed in, there was one LCT near us, with washing hung up on a line, and between the loud explosions of mines being detonated on the beach, one could hear dance music coming from its radio. There were barrage balloons, looking like comic toy elephants, bouncing in the high wind above the massed ships, and you could hear invisible planes flying behind the grey ceiling of cloud. Troops were unloading from big ships to heavy barges or to light craft, and on the shore, moving up brown roads that scarred the hillside, our tanks clanked slowly and steadily forward.
—Martha Gellhorn, correspondent for Collier’s Weekly
(August 5, 1944)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
June 1944
Everyone at PW was gathered around the wireless set in the main office when Ruby arrived at work that morning.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Shhh,” Nell chided. “It’s happening. Our forces are landing in France.”
Ruby let her coat fall to the floor and rushed to stand close to the wireless.
“A new phase of the Allied air offensive has begun.” This sentence opened what was described as an extremely important warning broadcast in our European service this morning by a member of the staff of the supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary force. This new phase, the speaker said, will particularly affect people living roughly within twenty-five miles of any part of the coast. The supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary force has directed that wherever possible an advance warning shall be given to . . .”
“Emil, I want you down at the MOI this morning,” Kaz said. “Ring me with updates as often as you can. We just might be able to pull through a half-decent cover story by this afternoon.”
“Isn’t it better to leave the issue as it is?” Emil observed mildly. “How much more are we likely to know by this afternoon?”
“I’m not saying we should scrub everything,” Kaz said. “I’ll rewrite my editorial. Explain that we were going to press as the landings began, but will have a special issue next week. If we can find an image that’s strong enough for the cover, we can go with that, and link the cover image to my editorial. That way the issue won’t be stale-dated by the time it goes on sale.”
“What about a map for the cover?” Ruby suggested. “One with the landing sites, and graphics with as much information as—”
Kaz was shaking his head. “That’s fine for the interior, but not the cover. I want faces on the cover.”
“What can I do?” she asked.
“You and Nell can go through our photo library. See if we’ve any decent shots of Eisenhower. Even better if he’s standing next to Churchill or the king. Frank, you get on the phone with the agencies and see if anyone has shots from yesterday. Soldiers waiting with their kit, for instance.”
There was no time to talk or even think beyond the task at hand. Ruby and Nell spent the hours that followed paging through hundreds of contact sheets that da
ted as far back as the beginning of 1942, yet no matter how long they searched the pile of possibilities, what they unearthed remained disappointingly modest.
They gathered around the wireless again at one o’clock. The news was encouraging, at least in terms of what was being reported. Kaz, unsurprisingly, remained skeptical.
“We won’t know the truth of it for a while,” he insisted. “They’re not going to tell us about the casualties, not yet, but they’ve got to be significant. I’ve been to those beaches in Normandy. They’re flat and rocky and there’s nowhere to hide. What did Churchill say just now? ‘The fire of the shore batteries has been largely quelled’? Perhaps, but not before the landings began. God only knows how many men were killed before they set foot in France.”
They listened to the remainder of the reports, and then it was back to work for another hour. Kaz summoned them at two o’clock with the happy news that Emil had unearthed a series of photographs, taken the day before, of GIs waiting to board their ships for the first leg of their journey to France.
“They’re still being vetted by the MOI,” Kaz explained wearily, “but Emil is confident they’ll pass.”
It was just enough. They pulled a double-page spread from the front of the book and replaced it with Kaz’s editorial, several of the photos, and a map of the landings that Mr. Dunleavy had drawn. On the cover: a picture of an American soldier, his pack on the ground beside him, his eyes fixed on the far horizon.
“Well done, everyone,” Kaz pronounced. “I’m off to the printers. Go home and get some rest. Everyone except Ruby. I need you for a minute.”
She followed him to his office and watched as he rummaged through one of the drawers. Coming around the desk, he motioned for her to sit down, and then he held out an envelope.
“What is this?”
“I had a call from Uncle Harry last night. He was concerned about Bennett. You see, when Bennett is ‘away,’ as it were, Harry receives a card on the first of every month. It’s a form, really, that says he continues to be in good health, or something along those lines.”
“Harry hasn’t received this month’s card,” she said, her voice so calm that it surprised her.
“Nor the previous month’s card. And they’ve come like clockwork before. Each time Bennett has been away, doing whatever he does for months and months, the cards have come.”
“Do you think something has happened?” she asked, very glad that she was sitting and not expecting her legs to hold her up.
“I don’t. In the absence of any real proof, I refuse to accept that Bennett is injured or dead. But I did make him a promise, and I’m carrying it out now.”
Kaz placed the envelope in her hand. “He told me about the postcards before he left this last time. He asked me to give you this if they stopped coming.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know, but you should probably read it in here. I have to go to the printers now, but I’ll be home tonight. You can ring me there if you want to talk about anything.”
He squeezed her shoulder, as if to warn her, and then he was gone.
My dearest Ruby,
I’ve thought of writing you such a letter any number of times, but something always stayed my hand—fear of saying too little, or perhaps of saying too much. And I was always certain I would come back to you, always, until today. In a few hours I will leave England again, and I cannot be sure that I will return.
I do not say this to upset or hurt you—quite the contrary. Only to prepare you, if you do receive news that I have not survived, for you have borne enough shocks already in the course of this long and terrible war.
You have been my friend, Ruby, and more than that, I think. You have been my North Star, my point of light in a darkened sky, the steadfast beacon guiding me home. (I beg your pardon for such poor poetry, but these are the words that come to mind as I leave you.)
If I were a braver man, I would have told you this to your face, your lovely face that haunts my dreams and blesses my waking hours. I so wanted to empty my heart and confess all, that last night when we sat in Vanessa’s kitchen after dinner at the Victory Café. I very nearly did.
I hope to return to you—I long for it more than anything—and yet I know it is unlikely. So I will say farewell, and I will thank you for your friendship and regard and, if I have not misjudged you entirely, your love.
All I ask of you, now, is that you be happy—do not look back and mourn what might have been. Go on and be happy and never stop writing, no matter what. Write your stories and discover the world, and if you think of me, think only that I loved you for you, you alone, you and nothing more. Only you.
Bennett
WHEN RUBY ARRIVED home, well past seven o’clock, it was to find Vanessa and Jessie preparing a late supper in the kitchen. There was comfort to be found in peeling potatoes and scraping carrots, and by the time they sat down to eat she felt calmer, if not happier. She would never be truly happy until she was certain Bennett was safe.
Their talk at dinner was light, for they needed a respite from the drama of the day’s events, but when the hour drew near to nine o’clock Ruby followed Vanessa into the library and stood by the wireless for the news. It began with the king’s address to the nation and the empire; and if his voice was rather more halting than usual, his message was all the more steadfast and determined.
“Once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time the challenge is not to fight to survive, but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause. Once again what is demanded from us all is something more than courage, more than endurance. We need the revival of spirit, a new unconquerable resolve.”
“Nicely done, once again,” Vanessa said, bending to switch off the wireless. “The dear man struggles so, but it does make you—Ruby? Whatever is wrong? Why are you crying?”
“This,” she said, and pulled Bennett’s letter from her cardigan pocket. “Kaz gave this to me. Bennett has disappeared. He’s had no news—Uncle Harry, I mean. He usually gets a postcard from Bennett’s work at the beginning of every month, but there’s been nothing for more than two months now.”
Vanessa read it through, and when she looked up again her eyes, too, were swimming with tears. “My darling girl,” she said.
“If only I’d told him how I felt. If only . . . I don’t know how I can bear it.”
“It was his choice,” Vanessa said, and she took Ruby’s hands in hers. “Obviously he has never said a word about what he does, not one word, but he did tell me, once, that it was his choice. He had no wife, no children, and his parents were dead. He said it was better for him to risk his life than a man with people who depended on him.”
“What about you?” Ruby sobbed. “He’s a son to you, and a brother to the girls. And what will Kaz do? First Mary, and now his best friend?”
“And you, my dear? Don’t you need him, too?”
“Vanessa, don’t. Please don’t.”
“There, there. I understand. I do. And I don’t think you should give up, not just yet. A few missing updates are not the same as a death notice. For now, I choose to believe he is alive—and I think you should, too. Focus on your work, just as he is surely doing—”
“And find my unconquerable resolve?” Ruby whispered.
“Yes. Just as the king said. Find your resolve, and it will see you through.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With D-day came the V-1 flying bombs, as many as a hundred a day. Though the destruction they wrought was nothing like as lethal as the bombardment of the Blitz, the panic they induced was nearly as awful.
There was never any warning. Before long, Ruby lost count of the number of times she had been walking down the street, feeling reasonably cheerful, the sun full on her face, and the next moment found herself cowering behind the nearest post office box or parked car as a building at the end of the block exploded into flames. People nicknamed them doodlebugs, but she couldn’t think of one thing that was funny about
the flying bombs and the terror they sowed.
A month passed, then another, and there was no renewal of the reassuring postcards to Uncle Harry. Yet Ruby couldn’t bring herself to give up on him, not without any definitive news that he was lost. It was that scrap of belief that she clung to, a buoy of hope in a sea of despair.
Work was another solace, although she soon began to chafe at the restraints that Kaz continued to place on her and everyone else at PW. No matter how many times she asked to go over to France, to report from a safe distance behind the front lines as so many others were doing, he flatly refused. Instead, Kaz relied on freelancers for stories from France, claiming that it was cheaper for the magazine to do so, at least until the Allies had gained a firmer hold on Europe.
Ruby tried to be patient, yet it was agony to be left behind—and all the more so once she read Martha Gellhorn’s description of stretcher-bearers ferrying wounded to the hospital ships, or Lee Miller’s dramatic accounts of field hospitals, devastated French villages, and pockets of German resistance amid the ruined streets of Saint-Malo. The nadir was a copy of The American, sent to Kaz by Mike Mitchell, which featured a cover story by Dan Mazur on the liberation of Cherbourg.
“It’s an overcooked piece of tripe, Ruby. I don’t know why it bothers you,” Kaz observed calmly.
“You know why. You know I could have written that story ten times better.”
“Yes, but I don’t much care what happens to Dan Mazur. If you get yourself killed, however, I won’t have a decent night’s sleep again for the rest of my life.”
“If I were a man, you would let me go,” she persisted. “And you wouldn’t make him feel guilty for asking.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. Certainly my reasons for holding you back have nothing to do with your sex. You’re as capable as any male journalist I’ve ever met, and every bit as tenacious and brave. Far more so than that cretin Dan Mazur.”
She ignored his praise, though it would make a fine memory to focus on as she tried to fall asleep that night. “Well, then? If I’m so good—”
Goodnight from London Page 25