At last, she heard Edward’s key in the door. ‘Drinking alone?’ he said in a quizzical voice as he came into the room. She poured him a drink and sat down next to him on the sofa. She was waiting for him to notice her shakiness and ask her what was wrong, but he seemed distant and distracted himself. Still, the simple fact of his presence was reassuring to her in that moment. She felt her pulse slow, as they sat for a while in silence. How clean and strong he looked. She could not imagine how to start the story of her evening, but she was about to begin, when he spoke.
‘Do you ever miss home?’ he asked.
It was an unexpected question, but at that moment she was glad to be asked something personal that did not lead her back into the shock of the evening. ‘I suppose I do,’ she said.
And it was true; something like homesickness had become stronger in her lately. She had recently had a letter from Mother that had startled her into a kind of guilt about staying away so long. Father was sick, it was clear from the letter, although what kind of illness and how serious it was had been left vague. Ellen had got married two years ago, had moved to Boston and now had a daughter. Laura could tell from her letters how for Ellen the breathlessness of being courted had already moved into the slower pace of family life.
But perhaps, if she was honest, it wasn’t her sister or her parents she missed so much as the lost rhythms of speech of her home country. Sometimes, when she talked to Americans in London, she felt a shock of what she realised was nostalgia. She was about to tell Edward this, but stopped. He would find it odd, she thought, if she talked about how American she sometimes felt. She knew what the group thought of Americans: so crass, so uncultured – and ‘so frightened all the time’, as Alistair used to say about the American officers in the Dorchester. And as new battle lines were being drawn, surely in Edward’s eyes any loyalty to her country would become more and more absurd.
Her thoughts had made her fall silent again. She tried to say something honest about how she did miss home, and her mother and sister, even though she knew how little she really got on with them. Edward listened for a while, and then got up to pour another whisky. Over the glug and gurgle of the new bottle being poured, he told her the news. They were to leave London. They were to go to Washington. In May. A shock to him as well as to her. Though obviously they had always known he would not be in London forever. Working for the Foreign Office meant a certain amount of moving around. And this was a good, an enviable posting.
‘It’s quite a promotion, actually.’
‘And I’ll see Mother, and Ellen …’ Laura’s voice sounded uncertain even to herself.
‘You were just saying how much you missed them.’
Laura was not sure what to say to that, and asked more about the job. Edward told her that it was Halifax’s doing. Laura knew that the elderly man who was forever tainted by his attempts to prevent war was now in Washington, dispatched there to try to charm the Americans. And he had called on Edward to be by his side. She felt Edward’s uncertainty. As they went on speaking, he tried to frame his hesitation as the thought of leaving London at this time, at the end of the long war. She told him it was a good time to leave, and they brushed over, with silent understanding, the real meaning of the new job. There, he would be perfectly placed for all the secrets Stefan could ever want; as the trusted subaltern of the British ambassador, he would go like an arrow into the heart of the new empire – targeted, precise. But they did not talk about that.
‘My father would have been pleased,’ Edward said at one point. ‘He talked about Washington when I first went into the Foreign Office.’ He spoke, Laura thought, as if he were fulfilling his father’s dreams rather than blowing them to dust. But Laura too, in the moment, talked about it as if it were a straightforward promotion and suggested opening one of the old bottles of champagne that were being stored for the end of the war.
As he went to get it, Laura felt that now was not the time to tell him about her evening. Here was enough strangeness. When he came back with the champagne and gave her a glass, he put out his hand and stroked back her hair with that familiar gentle gesture. ‘Yes, we’ll get away,’ he said. For a moment she believed he knew, and understood, why she wanted to leave London, why they needed to reach a new world. And so she chose to let the horror of the evening recede, and drank her champagne while they talked about planning for the journey.
A few weeks before they left for America, Sybil returned to her house. Laura worked with Ann to try to make it look its best, but it was so dilapidated now, scuffed and scarred, paint peeling, half the windows boarded up and the doors no longer fitting properly into their jambs. The mice on the top floors scurried and scratched all night, and there was a suspicious smell to the hot water in the faucets, Laura had noticed, as though something had fallen into the tank and died. As Sybil came up the stairs to the front door, both Laura and Ann stood in the hall, and Laura felt almost as though she too were a kind of maid or caretaker, a failed one.
Sybil walked slowly with her up to the first floor, running her hand over the dented banisters. ‘It’s good to be back,’ was all she said at last, and then asked Ann to bring tea to the drawing room, as if it were a pre-war spring Sunday in Belgravia. Laura and Sybil sat together on the one sofa in the room. At first conversation was difficult, and then Laura said how very sorry she had been to hear about Quentin. As soon as the words left her mouth, she was unsure that she had said the right thing, but Sybil turned to her.
‘Nobody talks about him. Father never talks about him. Toby never talks about him. It was such an awful waste, you know, they were all retreating …’ She got up, as though it hurt her to keep still. ‘He was the only person I could ever talk to.’
Laura was surprised. She had only observed a rather cold, almost needling relationship between Sybil and her brother in the couple of times she had seen them together. She wondered if Sybil was not guilty of putting on the rose-tinted glasses of the bereaved, but she did not judge her for that. And then she wondered what it meant for Sybil’s marriage, if she could not talk to Toby. She simply said, however, how sorry she was.
‘At first I just couldn’t face seeing anyone,’ Sybil said. ‘It was a relief, burying myself in the countryside and helping with the evacuees. But I have to face reality now. Toby says there will be a general election quite soon, and he wants me around.’ People were coming back to London now that the end was in sight, she said, adding that it was such a pity that Laura and Edward would be leaving soon. Laura could not quite tell, in the formality of her tone, whether she was really sorry or not. Surely she would be glad to have her house back to herself, and indeed, over the days before their departure, Sybil seemed to be trying to do what she could to remind herself of its former splendour. She brought some of the rugs out of storage and had them laid through the big drawing room, but against their glossy warmth the dirty walls looked more depressing than ever, Laura thought.
And a couple of weeks after she returned to London, Sybil asked some of their friends round for drinks. It was still not the time to bring people together, Laura felt; the city was too chaotic, the mood too uncertain, with war not yet over, even if the endgame had begun. But there seemed to be a kind of imperative, for Sybil, in pretending that they could recapture the social ease of the past, and Laura tried to match her alacrity, sitting with her and Toby and Edward in the living room, a glass of Scotch and soda in her hand, as though she was looking forward to the evening.
Laura had met Stefan, she assumed for the last time, that afternoon. He had told her to meet him in a cinema – a new and unexpected instruction. It had been full and she had had difficulty finding him in the fourth row as instructed. Under the cover of the blaring newsreel he had told her the passwords that other contacts might use in America, and thanked her for trying with Blanchard, although even in the dark she felt his disappointment that the bug had not been fitted. Then his attention had turned back to the screen. She had never mentioned to Stefan what had ha
ppened to her that evening because of his failure to detain Blanchard; her mind was closing over the experience, burying it deep. And as the newsreel rolled in front of them that afternoon, she was reminded how trivial her own little actions would always be. There above them, in irrefutable black and white, the horrors of fascism, so much greater than anything she could ever had imagined, were being uncovered at last. A cold silence fell through the cinema as they watched the walking corpses. The heroism of the Soviet Army could now never be forgotten. Perhaps this was why Stefan had asked her to meet him here, so that together they could be swept back into certainty.
When Alistair came into the room that evening, complimenting Sybil on her dress, complimenting Edward on his new job, all smiles and dapper gestures, the memory of the night in the Dorchester stirred, and Laura felt the fear again in her stomach, but she kept her composure. She noted how Alistair spoke to her, as if they shared some complicity after those nights of drinking. When Toby said something about the election and the serious mood of the public, Alistair responded in an undertone to her that if the Germans couldn’t close the Dorchester, the Labour Party never would. That was the price she had to pay for making him take her about; his assumption that she was the social butterfly she had pretended to be.
But for some reason she still felt at ease with him; he was full of smiling confidence that evening. His novel had finally been published and the reviews had been prominent, even admiring. She had not liked the book; set in a dystopian future, it had shocked her in its obvious belief that the world was set on a path into misery. That seemed a strange view to take now that the world was in fact emerging from the fog of war. While she was reading it she had wondered, did he see everyone like that, like the people in his book – easily controlled, easily cowed? But now he was charming, exuding warmth and teasing her about the life she and Edward would have in Washington, imitating some American officer from the Dorchester and his belief that America was leader of the free world.
Just as she was laughing at what he said, Winifred came in and Laura got up. She wanted to find out what Winifred thought of her imminent departure, and the two of them stepped out onto the balcony that looked out over the huge square. It was not yet time for the blackout. They could stand there, facing away from the room, into the fading light, and Laura could tell Winifred how grateful she was, how she remembered the first time her cousin had brought her here.
But Winifred cut her off, as though Laura was being too sentimental, and asked her instead if she had read Alistair’s novel. Laura confessed she hadn’t liked it.
‘You see, it’s what I’ve always said – he doesn’t really believe in people’s full humanity. That’s how he sees us, like the regimented idiots in his book – the only person Alistair believes in is himself.’
Laura thought Winifred was being too harsh, but rather than argue with her she asked after Giles, and whether he would be coming by that evening. He was still working too hard, Winifred said, it was impossible for him to get away. ‘He always thinks he is on the verge of some great discovery. I don’t think he will recognise us unless we are plotted on some graph.’
‘No … Does he have a girlfriend?’ Laura realised she had never heard about any relationship of his.
Winifred looked at her in an almost pitying way. ‘You are an innocent. You must have noticed that girls aren’t his thing at all.’ It was Winifred’s prickliness in conversations like these, Laura thought, that did not always make her a relaxing person to talk to at parties, and in a way she was not sorry when they had to step back into the room, as the blinds were rolled down. ‘It won’t be long now,’ someone was saying. ‘Soon the lights will be going back on.’
‘And how boring will that be,’ came a reply. ‘How will we hide our vices when the cloak of darkness is snatched off us? Our nakedness, darling, all exposed again.’ It was Nick, who seemed drunk, even though it was so early.
‘You’re dragging Edward back to America, I hear?’ he said, his attention coming to rest on Laura for the first time that she could remember.
She answered in a serious way, explaining that they were going because Edward had been promoted, turning to him for corroboration, but he was at the other side of the room, sitting on the arm of the sofa, talking to Toby.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Nick said as Laura went on talking, ‘he’ll be covering for old Halifax in the land of the free. They’ll work him hard. He’ll miss us, he’ll miss all of this so much.’ They all seemed to be looking at Edward suddenly, but he was oblivious, deep in conversation, his legs crossed, looking so elegant and assured, Laura thought, the old happiness stirring as she revelled in the knowledge he was hers.
Alistair also said something about how Edward would miss London, and then how lucky it was that Edward had lost his Red sympathies after university. Nick grunted a laugh. ‘Bloody lucky he kept his boss sweet, more to the point, even when Halifax was trying to suck up to Hitler before the balloon went up. Edward knows how to keep older men happy, doesn’t he? I remember how old Carruthers could hardly operate in 1941 unless Edward was taking the minutes.’
Then both Alistair and Winifred started talking at once, Alistair asking Nick whether he was likely to go back to the BBC after the war, and Winifred telling Laura she must be sure to send her some American stockings once she was settled in Washington. Laura was not sorry when Nick turned away from them and crossed the room towards Edward. As she watched, Nick walked up to him and trailed his fingers across the nape of Edward’s neck to get his attention. As Edward looked up, he bent towards him, whispering in his ear.
Laura’s attention was now being claimed by Sybil, who wanted her to ask Ann to bring up more glasses, but soon she had had enough of the evening. As soon as she could, she left the room and went up the wide carpetless staircase, into the bedroom with its boarded-up windows where they had lived out the long years of the war. She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the sound of voices coming up through the floor. She knew she wouldn’t miss the group, this drunken and solipsistic circle, who seemed uncowed by the devastations of the last few years. For a while she felt, lying back on the bed, that she might miss this dark city, this scarred house, the first frame of her love. But there will be more rooms that hold happiness, she thought; wherever Edward is posted will simply be a new frame. We will carry our happiness with us. She held onto that sense of promise as she fell asleep.
Earth
Washington, 1945–1950
1
‘What a pity that Edward couldn’t come this weekend.’
The words were bland, but Laura felt their hard undertone. She had come alone to where Ellen was spending the summer on Cape Ann, because Edward was too busy, in his first months in Washington, to get away. For the week she had been there, she had felt her solitude as a failure. So often she had rehearsed her re-entry to her family, and in her mind she had been an object of admiration, with her husband by her side, her tales of living through the bombardment and her European experience putting distance between herself and them.
But as soon as she had arrived she felt a different reality surround her. She had not moved on from the way she had always been seen by Ellen. She was still the little sister who needed to be corrected and pitied; the same little sister whose dress always seemed to be dirty and crumpled after a day at school, while Ellen’s remained pristine; whose breasts remained flat while Ellen blossomed into curves; who stood alone for hours at the first evening party Ellen had taken her to when she was just fifteen, until Ellen had got some unwilling boy to dance with her. Laura did not speak about such memories with Ellen, but they were there, and sometimes an echo would become almost painful.
That afternoon she had tried to amuse Ellen’s daughter while Ellen and her maid prepared the house for Mother’s arrival. It was the first time she had looked after such a young child, and when Janet began romping around the living room, pulling cushions off the sofa, Laura sat happily in the middle, glad to see her laugh. The
re was a wildness about her that came unexpectedly from her small frame. Then Ellen burst in and was irritated by the mess and the noise, and she remembered how Ellen had always been so angry when Laura played with her things when they were children. That doll that Laura had been so jealous of, the one with the long hair made of yellow wool – once Laura had tried to comb the hair and pieces of it had fallen out in chunks. The memory stuck like a barb as Laura asked in a meek voice if there was anything else she could do, paying tribute to Ellen’s competence.
Ellen asked her to put a couple of lanterns out on the porch while she gave Janet her bath. It was at that moment that she said what a pity it was that Edward could not be with them, and Laura found herself apologising again for his absence. Surely Ellen understood, Laura thought to herself, that the needs of the embassy in the endgame of the war might overtake the need to come and introduce himself to his sister-in-law.
After tying the lanterns onto the wooden frame of the porch, Laura stayed out in the garden, sucking her finger where a splinter had lodged under the nail. It was too early to light the lanterns, the day was not yet fading. It was as though the ocean were giving up a last luminosity to the sky, and everything was bathed in a salty light. This house that Ellen and Tom were renting for the summer, a worn family home filled with braided rugs and old bric-a-brac, was in a fine setting. Its yard ran all the way down to where grass gave way to pebbles at the edge of the shore. But all she had heard from Ellen during the week she had been there were complaints: the living room was too small, the bathrooms too few, the kitchen too inconvenient down that narrow corridor, and their hired maid too lazy.
A Quiet Life Page 24