She followed him back into the living room, and Edward poured her a whisky and soda. Toby had a Scottish friend who was able to keep the brothers supplied with the whisky they loved, and which Laura was becoming used to. Giles was talking about whether there was likely to be a raid that evening.
‘God, I hope not,’ said Toby. ‘If I don’t get some sleep soon I’ll be good for nothing. It’s not the bombs that make that impossible so much as the guns in the park.’
‘Are you a light sleeper?’ Laura said to Giles. She gave her voice the bland tone that he had mocked in the past. He replied with the characteristic garrulousness that she found so irritating.
‘I’d say I was. But in fact once I’m asleep I’m all right. It’s more that I find it hard to fall asleep. My friend Grey – his work’s all in neurology – came up with an interesting finding. Most people, when they close their eyes, their brain waves immediately slow into a more regular pattern – alpha waves, they are called. For most people that’s automatic: you close your eyes, your brain waves calm down, you open your eyes, they go back to being spiky and jumpy again. But a significant minority of people, if you ask them to close their eyes, their brain waves don’t change. They remain just as spiky and jumpy, they are just as engaged as with their eyes open. And I’m one of that small minority—’
‘Is that such a breakthrough?’ Edward broke in, asking whether it wasn’t just a physical observation of something one already knew by experience, that sometimes it was hard to switch off. Giles began to argue immediately, telling Edward that it showed that people aren’t as in control of their minds as they think they are.
‘But does it show that? It doesn’t show that you couldn’t change it if circumstances were different – we’re not just machines, made to work one way only …’
‘Come on, if it’s in the patterns of your brain waves, then that’s it, you can’t just change those.’
Edward and Giles went on arguing about whether such experiments proved that one didn’t really have free choice. They seemed to believe that they could change each other’s minds if they argued passionately, that Giles could convince Edward that his brain’s patterns were already laid down for him by biology; that Edward could convince Giles that people could be changed by force of will, while Laura remained silent, smoking and looking into the fire. For once, the hated sirens and the descent into the basement came as a kind of relief.
For a long while they lay there, Toby snoring, Giles reading by the light of a small torch, until the raid began and they started to hear distant thumps and explosions and the answering clatter of the guns. As always, Laura felt excessively aware of the fragility of the walls and the ceiling. After an hour or so she crept out of the kitchen. She hoped that the others would assume she was simply on her way to the lavatory, but instead, step by soft step, she made her way upstairs. On the second floor, she shone her torch into the guestroom. Giles’s clothes from the day were folded over a chair – like Edward, he had the boarding schoolboy’s spartan neatness in his blood. She ran her hands over the pockets of his jacket, but there was nothing there apart from a folded piece of paper. Then she saw on the desk a wallet next to a small heap of change, a couple of paperclips, an envelope, and some keys. Clearly, he had emptied his pockets before taking off his jacket. There was a set of keys on a plain brass keyring, and one steel key lying separately. With her handkerchief over her fingers to avoid prints she scooped it up and put it into her pyjama pocket, where it lay heavy against her thigh.
She did not know whether this was the right key, but now she had taken the first step, she went on without considering the alternative. She went back downstairs and stepped into the hall. Yes, the key turned easily enough, and she lifted the lid of the box. If someone came up from the basement now, it was all over, but ever since she had spoken to Stefan about the magnetron she had seemed to be walking down a road with no way to step off. Luckily no one seemed to be stirring. What she saw inside the box made her heart sink. There were stacks of papers in folders, and a long wooden box. She grabbed her handbag from the hall table, and put three folders of papers into it. Immediately, she put the lid down and relocked it, and went upstairs again. She shut the door to her and Edward’s bedroom and pushed a chair against it. Checking the blackout blinds were firmly fastened, she turned on the top light and moved a side lamp onto the table too. Hoping that was enough light, she rested the camera on a makeshift tripod of a stack of books, and one by one she laid out each diagram, each set of equations, and clicked the shutter.
Time slowed. She was moving as fast as she could through each of the three folders she had brought up. She was wearing gloves now, according to the instructions that Stefan had dinned into her, so that there would be no fingerprints, and although they were thin cotton gloves she had bought just for this purpose, her palms were wet with sweat and her forehead beaded. There was no sound in the room but her short breaths and the shutter falling, but the pounding of the guns in Green Park meant she could not hear what was happening in the house. What if Toby was wondering about her absence? What if Ann was coming up to see whether she was all right? What if Giles thought of checking on his box? Yet when the guns suddenly fell silent it was worse, as the sound she was dreading, the sustained note of the all-clear, wailed out.
At least she had finished the folders she had managed to bring up with her. She moved the chair away from the door. But then she heard footsteps on the stairs. Giles, going back to his room. A physical shudder of nausea ran through her at the thought of him noticing the lost key, but carefully she tucked the papers into the waist of her pyjamas and tied a cashmere bathrobe around her. She must look bulky and odd, but as she was going to claim a stomach ache it might be all right to hold her arms around her belly. She went downstairs as insouciantly as she could. But there, on the hall floor, was a gap where she expected to see the box. She was standing in the hall when Edward came up the basement stairs and she looked past him into the kitchen. There was the box, in the basement. Giles must have moved it down there for safekeeping. Had he tried to open it? She felt sweat start on her back under her bathrobe. She went into the kitchen, where there was only Ann now, putting a kettle on the hob.
‘Mrs Laura, are you all right?’ she said.
‘I’m really not well, Ann – could you do me a favour? I think there are some powders in Toby’s bathroom. Could you get them for me?’
Ann nodded and went out, and to Laura’s relief she was alone with the box again. Again, there was no time to think; however risky the moment was, she knelt and opened it, and slid the papers inside. Ann returned just as she was straightening up.
‘Goodness, I’m still not feeling well. I think I’ll go up again.’
She took the powders from Ann and went upstairs, as quickly as she could, into the bedroom, where Edward was lying in the bed, apparently asleep.
Presumably Giles was getting a last couple of hours’ sleep too before his journey; but she could not rest. The key was still in her pyjama pocket. She sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what on earth to do, when she finally heard movement, followed by the taps running in the bathroom. Going quickly across the hall and into Giles’s room, she put the key on the floor, half hidden by the leg of the chair, as though it had slipped from the table. And then she went back into the bedroom. Her knees seemed almost to give way as she sat down on the bed.
‘Darling,’ she said, leaning over Edward. ‘I think Giles is leaving soon.’
‘Is he?’ Edward groaned. ‘Must get up to say goodbye.’ But he did not move, just lay there, his eyes closed. Laura touched her lips to his smooth shoulder and his hand rose and pulled her to him. With an odd urgency their mouths suddenly found one another; an intense current of need seemed to pin them against one another, so fierce and hard, there was no time for her orgasm to mount and yet she still experienced an intense relief, a melting rush, as his energy was spent.
Dressing quickly, they both went downstairs to say goodby
e to Giles. When Laura saw herself in the hall mirror, she felt her exhaustion was written too clearly on her face, the dark shadows under her eyes and the rather clammy pallor of her skin showing that she had not slept. But as she met Giles’s eyes, there was no knowledge or question in his cursory glance.
‘Are you off, Giles?’
‘Just waiting for the chap from the Ministry – they are sending an escort or two with me – absurd really, you know, but it’s in case any spies get on the train. They rather wanted somebody with me overnight – they are paranoid. Makes sense after a fashion, I suppose. Have to do these things the right way.’
Eventually a knock on the door announced the arrival of his escort, a bowler-hatted man who lifted the box into the car.
‘I’ll see you when I get back, then,’ said Giles, shrugging on his overcoat. Laura watched his back, unconcerned, jaunty, as he went down the steps, and felt both sickened and superior. Edward had already turned back into the house.
‘I may be late tonight, endless meetings planned,’ he said, straightening his tie in the hall mirror. Laura wondered at his tone. Was there knowledge in it? She realised that if he did not know, she did not want to tell him, in case he might judge her. But immediately she thought that, she told herself she was being absurd. Who had brought her into this work? Had he not already betrayed his friends over and over? Did he not sit with Giles and Quentin and Alistair day after day, year after year, pretending to be on their side, in their world, and yet selling out everything they believed? Only she, only Stefan, were really in his world. And yet still Laura felt an inchoate fear that her action had gone too far, that by breaking open his friend’s work under his brother’s roof, she had broken bonds that were stronger than she knew, that had been forged over long years of friendship. She would not think of that now. She still had work ahead of her.
Before she left for the bookstore, she transferred the film from the camera to a tiny canister which she pushed into a pocket in her purse created between the lining and the outer leather. She was due to meet Stefan that afternoon, at four o’clock, in a café near to Charing Cross Road. She spent the day stocktaking in a haze of tiredness, always aware of the bag which she had left in a backroom. At last, at half past three, she reminded her boss that it was her early afternoon, and she went half running along the Strand. When she got to Charing Cross, however, she found the street was closed. ‘Time bomb,’ said a man at the barrier. ‘Don’t know where I’ll spend the night if they can’t get the thing.’
‘Don’t know why it took them so long to get started on this one,’ said a woman beside him.
‘There’ve been so many unexploded from last night, streets closed all round the West End today.’
‘They won’t think themselves so clever when our lot go over there. They’ll get a taste of their own medicine then.’
These eddies of bitterness were the same every day. Laura was tired of the impotent chorus, but she stood weakly at the barrier, not knowing what to do next.
‘Nothing to see – pass along now,’ said one of the demolition squad to no one in particular. Laura began to walk away, taking an aimless course as she thought through her options. She had a series of instructions about what to do if a meeting was stalled for any reason. There was the dead-letter drop in Camden Town, and there was the Clerkenwell tobacco shop where she could speak in code to the owner (‘Can you let me know when you will get more Quintero cigars?’) and leave them a number. Then, in theory, she would be contacted. She decided she had to try the drop first. She was desperate to get rid of the film. Although it carried no weight, it felt like a burden. But when she got to Camden Town she wondered why she had wasted her time. It wasn’t that the wall had been destroyed, but there was so much rubble and broken glass, the area had obviously been a target more than once. It seemed absurd that Stefan thought she could risk leaving something precious in the fragile fabric of this breakable city.
Laura turned and began to make her way south again. But she had never walked in this part of London before, and as the road stretched on its dusty way she began to be unsure whether she was taking the most direct route. She asked a young woman, who told her to take a bus. Laura waited at the stop for a long time before someone else told her the buses were being diverted due to another time bomb on the previous street. Laura’s once shiny patent shoes had lost the rubber to one heel at some point during her walk, so she went along with an uncomfortable limp. Finally she came to the road in Clerkenwell. The shop now stood in a row of boarded-up frontages. A scrawled notice in the window said, ‘Closed due to bomb damage’.
She began to limp back along the street, and just as she thought to wonder what the time was, ‘Here it comes,’ came the shout from across the road and the sirens began to wail. Laura knew no shelters in that part of town, and she meant to go on walking, but as she crossed towards Farringdon, a warden shouted, ‘Are you deaf?’ and she realised she could hear the thrumming of planes, already coming near. With other people, she started running towards Farringdon station. The noise was suddenly all around, and they crushed together as they entered the station. ‘Careful there, no need to push,’ voices said as they struggled into the ticket hall, stumbling over people who had already spread mattresses on the floor. A great rustling and sighing filled the air around where Laura was standing in the station entrance, as the bombers began to release their first loads.
‘Incendiaries,’ said a voice behind her, as the chandelier flares began their crazy descent. ‘Incandescent incendiaries.’
‘Incredible incendiaries,’ said another voice.
‘Inglorious, insidious, Indescribable, intensifying incendiaries,’ said the first voice again.
‘Alistair,’ Laura said, recognising the voice, but her words were covered by the rising force of the anti-aircraft guns, and she had to shout, ‘Alistair!’ before he turned and saw her, his face lit by the green-white flares of the incendiaries bursting on the road outside.
‘They’ve got St John’s,’ someone shouted, and she saw the light further away change to yellow and then blue where a gas main had been hit.
Alistair said something about this being an absurd place to meet as he struggled and failed to move closer to her. Laura replied, saying the bombardment had come early, but then she saw the station clock and realised she must have been wandering the city for hours. Her mouth was dry, her bladder burning, and someone’s bag was jabbing into her side.
She asked a ticket inspector who was trying to gather up mattresses from the people who had got there early, to encourage them to stand up to make more room, if there was more space further in. He told her that the escalators had been turned off, but people had already filled every step. ‘They’re getting it bad in Holborn,’ he said. ‘Watch yourself, what are you doing?’ The press of people was making Laura feel claustrophobic, and she had stepped into the road.
‘Wait, Laura,’ Alistair called to her. ‘Wait till this lot have dropped and I’ll come out with you.’
She stepped back in, and they waited for a few minutes that extended like elastic around the whooshing of falling bombs, the rumble of falling masonry, the dirge-like voices of the commentary of the people around them.
‘Come,’ he said, as the skies quietened. ‘Or do you want to wait it out after all?’
‘I can’t stand it, I’d rather walk.’
Alistair asked the friend he had been standing with if he was coming with them, but the young man shook his head, and Alistair and Laura went out into the exposed road, where other desperate people were beginning to emerge. As they were walking up Farringdon Road, they heard the low roar of aeroplanes again. ‘We’ll never get you back to Chester Square tonight; you should have stayed in the station.’
‘What about you?’
‘Can’t bear these nights. Tell you what, how about the Ace of Clubs, have you tried it? It’s reopened, safe as anywhere else, I would have thought, in that basement.’
Laura agreed, hardly kn
owing what she was agreeing to. She was limping again. She slid her feet out of her shoes and started to walk in stockinged feet.
Alistair shook his head, saying she was crazy to walk like that, in these streets. They were littered with shrapnel and glass, but she managed to pick her way in the glare of searchlights to the west. Somehow the madness of the situation made them elated, and they found themselves half laughing as more incendiaries fell to the west of them, until one bigger bomb sucked up the air as it fell too near and they were pressed against the side of a wall. But they went on like that through Holborn, with other scurrying ants who had come out of hiding. As they turned the corner into Red Lion Square, they saw two or three ambulances and muffled figures with stretchers. ‘Look where you’re going,’ said the person holding the end of one. It was a woman, whose gaze sought Laura’s, and Laura looked down at her burden.
‘Come on, Laura, we’re nearly there.’
They went on, but the sight of the bleeding body had taken away their ebullience. Could it have been a child? Eventually they made it to the club, and Laura walked down the stairs, clinging to the banisters. The room was stuffed with people, and a small band was desultorily playing songs from before the war. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Alistair said. ‘You look terrible.’
Laura asked for a telephone, and Alistair pointed to it at the bar. She dialled the number of Toby’s house, but the line was dead. She put out her hand to the brandy that Alistair had bought her, downed it, and then went to find the lavatory. A flagrantly exhausted face, streaks of dust on her cheeks, looked at her from the mirror. Alongside another woman Laura washed her face and hands and lipsticked her mouth. The woman beside her said something about how the noise would get you down if nothing else would, and Laura smiled the usual response.
A Quiet Life Page 20