Walter stepped out of his side of the bed, pulling a counterpane around his nakedness, throwing the spare bit over his shoulder, as if it were a toga.
‘Why do you think I don’t love you when we have just made love, Lucky? Do you think we could make love like that if I didn’t love you?’
Caro turned once more away from him on her pillow.
‘Oh, you know – it’s war. Everyone seems to be making love because there’s a war on. Love is being made quite as often as war, and for all the wrong reasons.’
‘War is wrong, love isn’t.’
Caro sighed. She would never say what was foremost in her mind, would never say to Walter, ‘You made love to me as second-best; it’s Katherine you really want. You want my Hitler-worshipping sister – that is who or what you want, Mr Walter Beresford.’
Walter put a hand once more to her head, but he didn’t stroke or comb her hair.
‘Love is very difficult, particularly in war,’ he told her in a tender voice. ‘But believe me—’
‘Why should I?’ came the interruption.
‘Believe me,’ he insisted. ‘I am in love with you. I couldn’t make love to you, we couldn’t make love the way we just have if I wasn’t in love with you, and if you weren’t in love with me. We fused, didn’t we?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never made love before. You tell me. No, don’t tell me.’
Caro sprang out of bed, and catching up a dressing gown she started to leave the room.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to have a wash, because you certainly couldn’t call it a bath …’
Walter put his hands behind his head and stared ahead of him, coughing slightly as he did so. Too many blasted cigarettes had given him some kind of infection. He sighed. He would be gone soon to the North Sea, paints and pencils with him, to join the convoys making their way across icy seas, running much-needed supplies back and forth between the mines, and the submarines, gone to record the courage and the bravery of the men who went unremarked, and perhaps, even like himself at that moment, unloved?
Caro bumped into Robyn outside her bedroom door. It seemed that Robyn was also heading for the bathroom.
‘Sorry, sail before steam, Caro.’
Caro looked at Robyn, her head on one side, determined to remain unflustered, unembarrassed, and nearly succeeding.
‘And by that you mean … ?’
‘I am a beautiful sailing ship, that’s what I mean!’
Robyn laughed. Unlike Caro, she looked exhilarated, as if she had just made a discovery.
‘And I am a … I am a … ?’
‘That I will not answer. I treasure my life too much!’
Caro could see the outline of Bill’s body in Robyn’s bed through the open door. So that was what was happening, and perhaps that was why Robyn was looking energetic, beautiful, and bubbling with life.
She took Robyn by her naked arm and drew her into the kitchen.
‘What are we doing?’ she asked her in a low voice. ‘I mean, what have we come to? Let us ask ourselves. We’re meant to be nice girls, and look at us!’
‘How do you mean?’ Robyn looked genuinely puzzled.
‘What would …’ Caro searched for a suitable name, avoided her own mother, and then plumped for someone close to Robyn. ‘What would Aunt Cicely say if she suddenly came into the flat now, Robyn?’
The very idea momentarily startled her companion. She put out a kindly hand and laid it on Caro’s bare shoulder.
‘“Caro, calm down. This is war.” That is what she would say.’
Caro looked up at Robyn, who suddenly seemed taller than ever.
‘What? I mean, do you really think so?’ she asked, frowning, but only after a long, long pause, during which Robyn made sure to keep the expression in her eyes both calming and understanding.
‘Of course. Aunt Cicely’s been through two wars already. What do you think she was during two wars, a vestal virgin? Of course not. She must have fallen in love, and certainly I know men fell in love with her. The past is not what we think it is, not ever.’ Robyn leaned forward and touched Caro lightly on the shoulder. ‘The past is full of secrets, and that is how it should stay, but people are not saints – why should they be? Why should the older generation be any different from us? Do you honestly think they were?’
‘Well, no, I don’t know, truly I don’t. I always thought the older generation, well …’ Caro nodded her head one way, then the other, the movement taking in both the bedrooms and, by implication, both the males in the bedrooms, in their beds. ‘I always thought they all waited, people like Aunt Cicely, until they were married.’
‘Aunt Cicely never married!’
Caro smiled suddenly. She felt comforted and at the same time a little disillusioned, as if she had in some way been deceived, or had been deceiving herself.
‘Oh, I see what you mean. At least I think I do. You mean things happened then too, but no one talked about it?’
‘Of course, ducks. Human beings are human beings. Now I must go. I am going to be hours late even if I hurry.’ Robyn leaned forward and chucked Caro under the chin as if she were a child who needed cheering up. ‘Don’t think too much,’ she advised. ‘Not too good at a time like this. Keep all thoughts for later, when we’ve won the war, and all that. Now I’m having first splash, so get out of my way.’
Caro turned back to her room. Walter was still lying across the pillows, both sets, as if in her absence he had taken possession of her half of the bed and claimed it.
Caro climbed back into bed again, and they started to make love once more.
* * *
Anthony looked at Smith and smiled, and then he smiled round at the two girls. He didn’t realise it but it was the first time he had really smiled since Meriel had been killed.
‘Thank you so much. Truly, thank you. That was a really happy evening,’ he said, and he shook the girls’ hands as if he was a head teacher, and they were pupils at a prize giving, before leaving the kitchen, closely followed by his terriers.
‘He enjoyed himself for once,’ Smith told Trixie. ‘I haven’t seen him enjoy anything since Mrs Garland was taken from us so suddenly. The shock, you know, that as much as anything was enough to make him fold his tent and put away his character. But tonight, well, tonight he almost seemed himself again.’
‘I can see what you mean,’ Trixie said with some satisfaction.
‘To give you an example, that’s the first time I’ve seen him eat anything without a book propped up against the water carafe.’ Smith started to clear away the plates one by one, in the accepted manner. ‘And he ate everything, which is another miracle. Developed the appetite of a bird, he has, since Mrs Garland went. Like doves, they were. So close that they could have been a pair of doves. And you know what?’ He paused to add water from the kettle to the tepid water at the old kitchen sink, filling up the washing-up basin. ‘When doves mate, they mate for ever. And when one of them goes, the other shortly follows, and that is the truth.’ He swirled the water in the basin with one of his large red hands. ‘I too would have liked to have gone when Beatrice’s mother was taken from me, but I couldn’t, could I, not with the little one relying on me? But if it hadn’t been for the baby, I would have liked to have gone.’
He started to put the plates, one by one, carefully in the soapy water. He washed each with all the care that he must have taken over his baby girl, and then he let the water out and rinsed each plate in the fresh water he had drawn.
Trixie watched him. He had always done ordinary tasks meticulously and with concentration, because he believed in doing everything the right way, and that there was only one way to do it: by the book.
She picked up an immaculately laundered tea towel, and started to dry the rinsed plate being held out to her, and as she did so she felt as if she was four, or would it be five, standing on a small wooden stool, helping her father, and he was saying, ‘There’s only one way to wash a pl
ate. First you rinse it, and then you soap it, and then you rinse it again, and then you wipe it with a clean cloth.’
Although there were three of them to do it, the washing-up took more than an hour, what with the soaping and the rinsing and the drying, and the boiling of kettles to make hot water. Betty made conversation with Trixie’s father while Trixie ploughed on with her thoughts that life at The Place was really one long party compared to Chevrons in wartime.
Of course Mr Garland had been right, it had been a very happy evening, but even so, glad though Trixie was that Betty would be looked after, glad that they had all thought up a good story about her missing husband, and even bought her an engagement and a wedding ring, Trixie was even gladder that she would be leaving Chevrons the following morning.
It was disappointing, but though she loved the old place, and although it was as much her childhood home as it was that of the Garland boys and girls, she was only too aware that being home, being with her father again, was making her feel shut in. At Chevrons she was still the chauffeur’s daughter; up there at The Place, although still a maid, she was also someone else.
She was ‘Beatrice’ the personal maid, but she was also the ears and eyes of the place. She was Miss O’Brien’s shadow, the person upon whom she relied, her best friend. They laid plans and made schemes together, they laughed and cried together – cried when the bad news came, laughed when Miss O’Brien brought off one of what she called her ‘trickeries’, which meant that the colonel was left purring with delight and not a little quiet pride. The colonel liked success, Trixie could see that.
Of course, given Miss O’Brien’s stunning looks, the success of her schemes always and inevitably involved men. That was the point of her having a salon. Miss O’Brien was there to do, as she called it, her ‘Mata O’Hari’. A little too much to drink, a little too much to eat, a little something in their whiskies, and when the men woke up in the morning, they could only remember pleasure, not sedition.
‘The silly eejits think they’ve been in the arms of an Irish witch all night, which of course they haven’t, but don’t they always leave kissing the tips of their fingers to me, and with a look to their eyes like they’ve just lain with Helen of Troy herself. If only they all knew that I am really and truly a nun at heart!’
However, unless and until Edwina joined a convent, it seemed that they were all succeeding admirably in the task that they had been set by the colonel, which was, principally, the dissemination of wrong information, an essential part of defence work, and a very subtle one.
It was not just that Miss O’Brien was now a well-known beauty maintaining a much-graced salon, but to the apartment at The Place also came many others who were not guests, and here the kitchen played a vital role. Mrs Cherry cheerfully gave away ‘secrets’ to drivers and chauffeurs, all of whom reported back to their bosses such tasty items as that Mr Churchill had lost his mind and Mr Attlee had to stand in for him most of the time; that the British had run out of bombs; that there were no more Hurricanes or Spitfires to fly; that they were going to stop night bombing; that the King was dying and the Queen having an affair with Anthony Eden.
‘All jolly good stuff,’ the colonel said to Edwina one day. ‘But the most important rumour is to come, and when it does come, no one will be privy to this particular piece of misinformation except you and me, and two others. That is all.’
Edwina had felt both flattered and horrified, but had the good sense not to question the colonel any further. Besides, she had other things on her mind at that moment. Robert was missing.
Following their reunion dinner at Chevrons, and, as Trixie joked with Betty, worn out from all that unaccustomed washing-up, both girls slept in the following morning.
‘Good God, is that really the time? I shall miss whatever train is not going to arrive!’
Trixie hurled on her clothes, then snatched at her overnight bag. Her father would be champing at the bit, waiting to take her to the station in the old Austin 7.
‘I won’t bother with breakfast,’ she told Betty, not because she didn’t want any but because she knew that the smell of cooking and coffee and all that in the morning made Betty feel ill.
She stopped by the front door of the cottage. Betty was seated at a small table looking so forlorn that, despite the hurry she was in, Trixie was forced to hesitate before lifting the latch.
‘Been sick again, have you?’ she asked kindly.
‘Yes,’ Betty admitted. ‘I have been sick, quite a lot really.’
‘It will go. It will pass soon.’
Trixie knew that this was far from being the case, but what was the point of saying as much to Betty?
She pulled on her coat. ‘Look, Betty, I know it’s not much, being here, the cottage and that, but it’s all we could think of, isn’t it? I mean, it’s the best we could do, and maybe we will come up with something better, but you’ve had to leave your job, and there’s no point staying in London with the air raids and whatnot. Well, it wouldn’t be good for either of you, would it?’
Betty shook her head in agreement, and then, to Trixie’s horror, she leaned forward and, putting her head on the table in front of her, started to cry.
‘I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me, Trix. I feel so lonely already.’
They both knew that she was feeling as she had at the orphanage: alone, no one to help her cope, friendless, without family.
‘I told you, Father will look in on you from time to time, and you can go up to the house and eat in the kitchen with him.’ Trixie looked helplessly at the dark head, the hands covering the face. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ she said, lying. ‘Truly, I do. But Miss O’Brien needs me for everything. She can’t do her work without me, and some of it is quite vital, although you wouldn’t think so to look at the way we go on.’
Betty straightened up. ‘Of course you must go,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll be all right. You’ve been so good to me. But … but I – I feel so afraid, somehow.’
‘Don’t be. Everything will be all right, you’ll see. And I’ll come and visit as often as I can.’
Betty wiped her eyes on a tea cloth, and followed Trixie to the door.
‘Yes, I know you will,’ she agreed, also lying. ‘But, but one thing, Trix?’
Trixie turned at the door.
‘Yes?’
‘How are we going to cope with my husband? I mean, when shall I get the bad news that he’s been killed? I don’t know what to do about that.’
‘I’ll let you know. Don’t you worry, Miss O’Brien will think of something. She’s a wizard at that kind of thing, or I should say Irish witch, really.’
They bumped cheeks.
‘Try to keep zipped, as Mr Fleming would say.’
Betty nodded. ‘Of course. Sorry, I was just being silly.’
‘No, you weren’t. Understandable, really. After all, you’ve never had a baby before, but I believe when it gets nearer the time you will feel much better, and then Father will fetch the doctor and all that. You know, he has promised.’
Betty tried to smile. ‘Off you go,’ she told Trixie. ‘He’ll be waiting to take you to the train.’
She waited until she could no longer hear Trixie’s high-heeled shoes crunching across the gravel, and then clattering on to the path that led back to the main house. Then she went back to the kitchen table and, putting her head in her hands, she started to cry once more. She sobbed until she could cry no more, and then she lay down on the bed and fell fast asleep, only waking when daylight was fading.
Edwina looked at Trixie, and said nothing for a minute or two.
‘I don’t know who can help you with that kind of thing,’ she admitted, before turning back to the bed where Trixie had laid out an exquisite evening two-piece consisting of black trousers and a white embroidered jacket sparkling with tiny false diamonds and jet beads. ‘The colonel would be the only person who might be able to help you,’ she went on in a much lower voice. ‘He doe
s false passports and suchlike things. But I can’t ask him. You’ll have to ask him. He’ll start thinking wrong things if I ask him, start thinking I’m asking for one for myself. You know the way people do: “My friend would like a false driving licence.”’
Trixie held up the evening jacket, searching it for the slightest imperfection, and finding none she waited until Miss O’Brien had stepped into the evening trousers.
‘To think that no one would speak to you if you wore slacks before the war,’ Edwina murmured. ‘And now look at us. No one will speak to us if we don’t.’
‘It’s not quite come to that yet.’ Then returning to her original subject, Trixie said, ‘We won’t need the telegram for quite a few months.’
‘Best to wait until there’s a dust-up somewhere, and then kill him off,’ Edwina said absently. ‘Although why Betty can’t just say she’s lost him and that’s that, I don’t know.’
‘It’s a small village where Betty is. No one would help her if they knew … you know. And it’s not what you could call salubrious, is it, Miss O’Brien, having a little baby with someone you’ll never see again?’
Edwina looked quizzical. ‘Absolutely not, no, I don’t suppose it is; but then war’s not exactly salubrious either, is it?’
‘No war is a dirty business, I agree, Miss O’Brien. Now sit down at your dressing table while I arrange your necklace for you.’
Trixie placed the brilliant piece around Edwina’s neck, and as she did so she thought of Miss Katherine and her long, swanlike neck, and she thought of how much they all hated her now, and how she had betrayed her country. She hoped that what they were doing was right, bombing and bombing and more bombing, laying waste everything that lay between them and victory, and she couldn’t help hoping that one of the bombs had hit Katherine Garland.
* * *
Marie-Christine stared at Katherine. She understood exactly what she was saying, she appreciated exactly why she was saying it, but she wished to heavens she did not have to hear it.
‘Of course this one will be different,’ she agreed, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But of course. And I understand for you there is only one way, and that is forward, and more, and more forward. You have been so much on these short missions, but now you must take on something much bigger, of course.’
Goodnight Sweetheart Page 29