The Aftermath

by Rhidian Brook

  ‘There,’ Rachael said, stepping back from the table.

  Lewis took it in. The table was set for eight and freighted with the full works: the sage-green Wedgwood dinner service courtesy of His Majesty’s Forces; the silver candelabra that had belonged to his own mother (the only family silver they possessed); place mats depicting famous landmarks of London; and Lubert’s lead crystal effortlessly gilding the whole parade. What toasts had been made with these goblets? What hopeful faces refracted in their surfaces? It was heartening that Rachael had revived her old practice of making individual place-names from white card, drawing a different flower motif beneath the name of each female guest and crossed swords or rifles for the men.

  ‘It looks splendid,’ he said, suppressing the thought that there were people on the verge of starvation just a few miles away. Besides, this dinner party was partly his idea; it was his challenge to Rachael, and she’d risen to it. With a task to implement, she had come alive, and Lewis felt an old excitement watching her.

  ‘Susan insists on sitting next to you, so, for symmetry, I will sit next to Major Burnham. I’ll put Mrs Eliot in the middle next to your Captain Thompson, the other side of the major. Do you think they’ll get on?’

  ‘Like houses on fire.’

  ‘You’re not going to start an argument with him, Lewis? Susan said you didn’t quite see eye to eye.’

  ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour.’

  ‘You can talk about anything: cricket, the weather, even politics. Just not work. See no ships. Please, Lew? For me?’

  There was something new in her: since that snowstorm, she’d stepped up to her role as lady of the house. The staff were in obeisance, and all the better for it. She’d gone to a coffee morning with ‘The Crew’, as the ladies who’d met on the SS Empire Halladale called themselves. And terms of endearment were back in fashion.

  ‘Is that right? It doesn’t look right.’

  Rachael had started to place the name cards on side plates but stopped halfway round the table. ‘Names on side plates or place mats?’

  ‘No one’s going to mind.’

  ‘These are precisely the sort of things the governor’s wife should know. Celia will have something to say. What was it she picked me up on … at the coffee morning? Oh yes: I said, “Pardon?” She said, “It’s ‘What?’ Not ‘Pardon’.”’ Rachael mimicked Mrs Thompson’s stentorian snort. ‘And then something about serving greens for dinner. “It’s not greens,” she said. “It’s vegetables, my dear.”’

  Rachael retraced her steps, moving each name card from side plate to place mat. Lewis moved his own name card from plate to mat, noting that she’d given him his favourite, the one depicting the troops on the Mall. He looked at his handmade card with its lovingly drawn criss-crossed rifles.

  ‘You’ve given me guns.’

  ‘Would you prefer a flower?’

  Her teasing question and its accompanying three-quarter look were unexpectedly flirty.

  ‘There. Now. What do you think? Really?’

  ‘I think’ – he searched for a better word than ‘splendid’ this time – ‘it looks gorgeous.’

  He touched her shoulder and was surprised to have his hand met with a clasp. He could never fully decipher a woman like Rachael, but he needed no Bletchley Park boffin to break this code.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘We’ll have to be quick.’

  ‘What about Ed?

  ‘I’ve sent him to Coventry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘He’s been staying out late, playing with some local boys. It’s all right. We’ve had a little talk. Early nights for a week.’

  Heike entered the room and curtsied, looking down at the floor, conscious of interrupting an intimacy.

  ‘Bitte. Telephone, Herr Morgan.’

  ‘Thank you, Heike.’ Lewis waited for the maid to leave.

  ‘Who would that be?’ Rachael said.

  Lewis sighed. He knew that the telephone, set up with an extension on the military exchange, took calls only from one place: his HQ. And one kind of call: urgent.

  ‘Aren’t you going to take it?’

  It was like being pulled apart by horses: the solid workhorse of duty and the skittish Arab of desire.

  ‘You go on. I’ll be up in a jiffy.’

  Minutes later, he found Rachael standing at the bathroom mirror in just her knickers, testing a necklace against her naked breasts. ‘You’d better lock the door,’ she said.

  He closed the door, but didn’t lock it.

  ‘Something bad?’ she asked, looking at him now.

  ‘There’s been a riot at the factory.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Some people have been shot.’

  ‘But … Lewis, you can’t leave now. The guests will be here in just over an hour.’

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry. I’ll try to get back before … the end of the evening.’

  She dropped the heavy necklace on the sink and covered her breasts with her right arm.

  ‘Go on then. Go and save Germany.’ She said it with an old weariness, more in resignation than anger. And then, with her right arm still covering her breasts, she dismissed him with an indifferent wave and turned away.

  Rachael answered the front door wearing the peacock-blue, low-cut, sequinned evening dress that had never been bested at any of her ladies’ guest nights before the war. Her hair was up to show off her neck and jawline; her lapis necklace drew the eye to her other strengths. She’d dressed to kill the voices in her head and show the guests that she was fully alive and perfectly able to function without her husband at her side. She was thirty-nine years old. She was not done yet.

  Susan Burnham conceded defeat before she’d even taken off her coat:

  ‘Rachael Morgan, you have quite done for us all!’ She handed over a trifle in a heavy cut-glass bowl. ‘There’s enough sherry in that for a separate drinks party. And don’t let me forget the bowl afterwards.’

  ‘You look … Tolstoyan,’ Mrs Eliot said.

  ‘I’ll take the best of that, Pamela. You look lovely, too. Both of you.’

  As the guests handed their coats to Richard, she breezily announced: ‘There’s been some crisis. Lewis sends his apologies to you all and hopes to be back in time for dessert. Or does one say “pudding”, Celia?’

  ‘Always “pudding”. “Dessert” is for other ranks.’ Mrs Thompson was so sure of her role as Minister for Etiquette that she missed the tease.

  Rachael was determined that Lewis’s absence would not be dwelt on for longer than was necessary. She allowed them a single round of reaction – ‘What a shame!’; ‘How disappointing’; ‘Poor chap’ – and then waved them to the fireplace, where Heike was waiting with their drinks. By the time the Eliots, Thompsons and Burnhams were sipping their pink gins and toasting the reunion of ‘The Halladale Crew’, Lewis had been all but forgotten.

  ‘Well, here we all are again,’ Rachael said, raising her glass. ‘To the Crew.’

  ‘The Crew,’ the women agreed.

  ‘Funny how fondly I think of it now,’ Mrs Eliot said. ‘At the time, I felt quite sick.’

  ‘It’s a good job you’re not on that ship now,’ Captain Eliot said. ‘The sea has frozen.’

  ‘Officially the coldest December on record,’ Captain Thompson declared. ‘Everyone in Camberley is saying they can’t remember one like it. Ten-foot drifts in Kent. Minus twenty in Devon.’

  ‘At least they have heating. And food.’ Ever the Crew’s nagging conscience, Mrs Eliot could be counted on to bring them back across the North Sea to the hard, hoary ground of Hamburg. ‘
We found ink frozen in the inkwells at the schoolhouse we’re using. And yesterday I saw a boy going through our bins and trying to lick an empty rice-pudding tin. He was wearing a dressing gown and had paper bags on his feet. It was pitiful.’

  Mrs Burnham sighed. ‘Pamela, can we have one evening without having to think about the suffering of the world?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage that, Susan,’ Rachael said, throwing her a look that said I’m going to set the tone tonight before seamlessly encouraging Mrs Eliot to continue: ‘How is that group of yours going, Pamela? The discussion group?’

  Mrs Eliot had found a natural outlet for her busy concern in one of the many women’s groups which Rachael had scrupulously avoided joining: an Anglo-German group started by the district chaplain, Colonel Hutton, in an attempt to encourage Germans in free debate.

  ‘It’s become very popular. Although I suspect most come for the free biscuits and a warm room. They sit around, rather stiffly at first, but with the aid of the tea they soon thaw out. We’ve had some wonderful discussions – arguments even. We had a fascinating one about the differences between the English and German character. And last week we debated: “Should a woman’s place be in the home?”’

  ‘Depends on the home,’ Susan cut in, making no attempt to disguise her evident impatience with all this ‘humanitarian indulgence’.

  But Rachael was interested. Mrs Eliot had found something practical to do with her nervy earnestness and she looked invigorated by it. ‘Go on.’

  ‘They’re not used to debate at all – or to disagreeing publicly with the majority. But they’re getting the hang of it. It’s harder for the younger ones. They’re fine with the games. But the discussions are a challenge. Most of them are disillusioned and suspicious and seem to have no hope.’ Rachael thought of Frieda. ‘Colonel Hutton is trying to show them that they have a future. That there is some meaning and purpose to life.’

  ‘Like eating and drinking and not banging on about life’s meaning!’ Susan said. She really was in combative mood tonight.

  ‘Ignore her, Pamela,’ Rachael said, before taking the jug of gin from Heike and turning to the men. ‘More gin, gentlemen?’

  Lewis was almost clairvoyant at anticipating when to charge someone’s drink, and Rachael had made a special note to self to keep everyone’s glass replete at all times. The captains were fine, lost in discussing the Edrich–Compton run-feast of the cricket season just gone. The major, however, was standing slightly apart, rotating his glass, which was already almost empty. Rachael went and filled it without asking.

  ‘It’s nice finally to meet you, Major. Susan talks about you a great deal.’

  In truth, he was not the man Rachael had imagined: her composite picture of him, constructed from Lewis’s reports and Mrs Burnham’s anecdotes, sketched a cold, ambitious ideologue whose ruthless determination to rid the zone of the Nazi virus had rendered him a humourless bore; she wasn’t expecting this shy, almost diffident, man with dark, Levantine looks. His outward modesty – it might have been a studied self-deprecation – undermined his stern reputation. Perhaps Lewis had got him wrong.

  ‘I see you’ve covered the stain.’ Susan Burnham’s eyes had landed, as they were bound to, on the new picture above the fireplace.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must be an improvement on what was there before.’

  ‘It wasn’t … what we thought.’

  ‘You asked him?’

  ‘He was quite … affronted.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘I did.’

  Rachael didn’t want to loiter here; she clapped her hands to get her guests’ attention. ‘Shall we go through?’

  Mrs Burnham screwed up her eyes. ‘Mrs Morgan, you are showing something quite new tonight.’

  Heike served the first course, a clear onion soup with a kick that had everyone commending the cook after the third spoonful. The conversation stayed shallow and cross-table until the main course arrived and Rachael decided to commit to Major Burnham, whom she’d sat beside her. If he’d been quiet and vague during the group banter, one on one he was acutely focused.

  ‘Must be serious. If Lewis couldn’t leave it until the morning.’

  Rachael wasn’t sure what she was meant to know or say about it. Like most military wives, she was so used to not discussing manoeuvres and missions, it was quite natural to keep information vague. ‘He’s conscientious about everything that happens in his district,’ she responded.

  ‘For our tomorrow he gives his today?’ Burnham said.

  It was the subtlest of digs, but it teased out one of her own: ‘He’s certainly fighting the peace as hard as he fought the war.’

  ‘In some ways, peace is harder. The enemy is more difficult to spot.’

  ‘Lewis doesn’t like the word “enemy”. He’s banned it. But he’s quicker to forgive than I am.’

  ‘Maybe he has less to forgive than you.’

  Lewis had once said that forgiveness was the most powerful weapon in their armoury. And although Rachael thought this true in some abstract way, Burnham articulated what she believed but couldn’t say: that it was easier for Lewis to forgive because he had not experienced the loss the way she had. It had all been at a distance for him; she had been there. She quoted herself: ‘I’m not sure you can measure it.’ But this was taking her in the very direction she wanted to avoid.

  ‘Susan warned me that you are a good interrogator. How is the whole questionnaire process? Are you rooting out the criminals?’

  ‘It’s too easy to obfuscate. It’s why I make a point of interviewing as many people as we can. In the end, there’s no substitute for looking them in the eye.’

  ‘Can you tell? By looking them in the eye?’

  Burnham looked Rachael in the eye. His own eyes – the long lashes and tiger-yellow irises – were disarmingly pretty.

  ‘The ones you think might be guilty, from their demeanour or history, often aren’t. I questioned an ex-colonel this week who was trying to get into business. In person, he was classic Prussian: authoritarian, belligerent, unrepentant. Hated the Southerner. Used to having his way. But he utterly despised Hitler and the Party. As many Prussian military did. He was clean. The people I really want to interview – need to interview – avoid the process of filling out the forms altogether. The big fish tend to have the contacts – or the resources – not to have to work, so they don’t bother with the forms.’

  ‘Have you caught many?’

  ‘Not enough. We’ve imprisoned about three thousand.’

  ‘That seems a lot.’

  ‘Not when you consider that a million questionnaires have been filled out.’

  ‘How many will you be satisfied with?’

  Burnham lined his crystal goblet before the flame of the candle, refracting the light. ‘It’s not about numbers, Mrs Morgan.’

  Rachael felt for a moment what someone being questioned must feel under his scrutiny. Whatever it was that motivated Burnham, it seemed to go deeper than just doing his job. Despite the self-control, the separation of emotion and intellect, there was something overly managed about him. She suspected that his motivation was not as rational as he liked to project.

  ‘What made you choose interrogation?’

  Burnham set his knife and fork down and dabbed his mouth with his napkin.

  ‘Now you’re interrogating me, Mrs Morgan.’

  Rachael laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just … intrigued as to what made you choose your line of work.’

  Burnham poured himself a glass of wine. It was the reflex of a man used to controlling the rhythm and di
rection of a conversation, and he was signalling the end of this one.

  ‘This is a good hock,’ he said.

  Rachael left it there and, over the rest of the main course, they talked about the merits of German food compared to English, a subject quickly hijacked by Mrs Thompson. As the plates were being cleared away by Heike, Mrs Eliot pointed out that Lewis had not yet appeared. She expressed a hope that he was all right and proposed a toast: ‘To the Governor of Pinneberg.’

  Rachael had forgotten she had given a time that Lewis would be back. She’d mentioned it to protect him and to keep the guests happy, but she hadn’t for a moment believed he’d actually appear. In fact, she now realized that the evening had passed without her once thinking of him. She’d felt a certain liberation in having to conduct things herself, and had even entertained the thought that her good form could be attributed to his absence. Was she better off without him? When she raised her glass, she felt she was toasting not her husband but some faceless official she’d never met.

  ‘And a toast to the hostess,’ Captain Eliot added. ‘I’d say that was a first-rate meal, Mrs Morgan. To Rachael.’

  ‘To Rachael.’

  ‘It was all the cook, Greta’s, work. Not mine.’

  ‘My compliments to her, too, then.’

  ‘I will make sure she gets them – although whether she “receives” them or not is another matter. She’s very resistant to my attempts at being civil.’

  ‘Our cook is frightful,’ Mrs Burnham said. ‘All kinds of airs and graces: “Mina Farter waz unt Nopleman!” But then it turns out that she isn’t making it up. I didn’t believe a word of it until she showed me her jewellery. My God.’ Mrs Burnham pulled back her shawl to show the brooch at her breast. It had a topaz the size of a walnut. ‘Three hundred cigarettes and a bottle of Gilbey’s.’

  Mrs Thompson gasped her approval. ‘Good Lord. It’s exquisite.’

  ‘Well, Keith has given up smoking. We have extra to spend. And we must do what we can to help. I think she was delighted.’