After the Cabaret

by Hilary Bailey

  Chapter 24

  Greg spent the next few days on research concerning the men and women parachuted into or landing secretly in occupied France in 1941.

  Since his last meeting with Bruno, he had been increasingly worried that the old man was misleading him. Before he had embarked on his attempt to write Sally’s biography, his chief source of information about her had been the novelist Charles Denham’s Autobiography of War in which there had been no mention of her having been dropped into France. However, finally he discovered her name in a volume of reminiscences by a former SOE operative. The reference was ambiguous: ‘Among the others who played their part during the early years of the Second World War were Captain N. M. Armstrong and Miss Sally Bowles.’ Not much, but when Greg read these words in a dusty book at the British Museum his heart soared and his confidence was restored in Bruno Lowenthal. He clapped the book shut and bounded out of the library.

  That day he rang Katherine and told her. He called his editor in New York and told him. The editor was not very excited – but Katherine was. ‘Greg, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m trying to arrange a few days in London. But ring me as soon as you hear what Bruno says. God, I’m looking forward to seeing you.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Greg, with feeling.

  He was also delighted to hear from Katherine that her cousin had now agreed to rent him 13D Everton Gardens, a flat on the second floor of a forbidding red-brick Edwardian block near the British Museum, overlooking a small street and a sad square of unhappy-looking trees surrounded by iron railings.

  The apartment consisted of a sitting room ten feet by ten feet and an even smaller bedroom. It was approached by a narrow stone staircase or a minute lift with tricky folding grilled doors. In America, Greg thought, this tiny hovel, with its hissing gas fires and ancient kitchen, which resembled the sort of apartment featured in a forties public-information film, would have seemed fit only for a prisoner out on parole or an unsupported mother. However, he had come to understand that it represented a peculiar kind of British luxury, the kind, somehow, that the Katherine Ledbetters and their kin seemed able to command.

  In return for the favour, Greg saved Katherine’s cousin’s life by disconnecting the gas fire, pulling it out and clearing from behind it eighteen inches of accumulated rubble. He cleaned the fire itself and replaced it, feeling fairly certain now that neither he nor the cousin would die of carbon-monoxide poisoning due to trapped fumes escaping into the room. He decided not to tell Katherine about this, for she and others like her believed that only paid strangers were capable of doing such jobs properly. He also cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and that, with his reading, kept him occupied until the long-awaited visit by Bruno.

  On the day Bruno was due to arrive Greg stood at the window of the flat, staring down into the rainswept trees of the square. He brooded. Would Bruno lie to him? And if so, why? If the old man was, as Greg had originally supposed him to be, lonely and fairly embittered then Greg and his questions might be just an entertainment for Bruno, a way of alleviating boredom. But he doubted this, while recognising how little of Bruno’s life he knew. Bruno had shown him his flat, his shop and his car which had told Greg only that he was prosperous. He had revealed nothing of other parts of his life, such as his present friends and acquaintances or how he spent his spare time. Bruno had put Greg in a sealed box, apart from the rest of his life.

  Greg had seen from the outset that Bruno did not much like him, but he had not taken this personally for he suspected that Bruno did not much like anybody. The old man’s attitude had been civil but distant, masking, but not very carefully, a kind of contempt for Greg based on Bruno’s greater age and experience, and on what Greg had come to know as the deadly European contempt for the American, which said, silently, ‘You may be perfectly nice, but that’s easy for you. You’re soft and sentimental. You’ve been privileged. You’ve never had to find out what life is all about. We Europeans know all that.’

  Greg was also beginning to suspect that sometimes he bored Bruno. But if Bruno didn’t want to talk to him, why was he doing so? The advantage seemed to be all on Greg’s side. Could this be some terrible game he was playing, Greg thought in depression – misleading foreigners for fun?

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, homesickness swept over him. He wanted to be back in America. He wondered if he might not have been better off lecturing at Fraser Cutts and putting together a paper on some small subject requiring minutely detailed knowledge and concerning something that had happened so long ago there were no living sources, just books and bits of wood and broken pottery, not awkward and possibly untrustworthy human beings.

  Greg was the son of liberal parents, his father a lawyer, his mother a former social worker. Both had been civil-rights activists in their youth. They had been freedom marchers in the South; they had worked for Bobby Kennedy. Greg had no quarrel with their attitudes, was merely slightly embarrassed and depressed by them. He felt he could go for a long time without hearing about redneck attacks, police charges on Vietnam demonstrators, tear-gas, the Scottsboro Boys or the three assassinations that had ended their era. Some of the most mortifying occasions of his boyhood had been at the annual reunion barbecue his parents held. He recalled the stoned, grey-bearded man who had tried to pull him on to his knee when he was ten and had said into his face, ‘Keep the faith, boy. All we ask is that you keep the faith.’ As soon as they could, he and his sister had found reasons not to be there on what his sister called Old Revolutionary Day.

  However, his background meant that Greg was no stranger to the idea of conspiracy, government chicanery and the abuse of power. Those who looked at him and chose to think him a well set-up, prosperous young American, innocent, unsuspecting and naïf, were, as far as he was concerned, welcome to do so. In fact, Greg Phillips had a naïveté deficit. Where hope, trust and belief in authority should have been, there was a big, black hole.

  He knew this. He thought Bruno was beginning to know it too. But he couldn’t rid himself of the nagging feeling that Bruno, like a skilled chess player, was leading him towards some disastrous end. Yet he knew, too, that he and Bruno were beginning to understand each other.

  Finally, Bruno came. Greg went down to meet him and took him up in the lift. Jammed together, they creaked up slowly.

  ‘One of my friends from Cambridge found me this flat. It belongs to a cousin.’

  ‘A lady-friend?’ hazarded Bruno.

  ‘A lecturer at Cambridge. I knew her when I studied here.’

  ‘Ah – so,’ Bruno said. The lift stopped. They got out and entered the flat. Bruno looked about him and went to the window. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I recognise the style.’

  Greg had bought provisions. Now, hoping to please his unyielding guest, he offered coffee and cake. Bruno accepted and Greg set about producing the snack.

  When this was done he placed it on a low table by the gas fire, set up his tape-recorder and said to Bruno, ‘I saw from the memoirs of a Captain Clegg that Sally was dropped over France, but he didn’t say why.’

  ‘He probably didn’t know,’ said Bruno, biting into a cake. ‘It was all secret. Pym’s doing. He must have threatened her otherwise she wouldn’t have gone – she was brave but not that brave, and you must remember, too, that Sally was a Communist and Hitler and Stalin were still allies. Whether they liked it or not, the British Communists had to go along with it. Stupid, of course. When were politics not stupid? But she had to go to France. I think it was in the early summer of nineteen forty-one.’

  Chapter 25

  Sally’s ears were full of the drone of the ancient Whitley bomber pushing across the Channel by night. She was sitting on an ammunition crate in her pink suit, which had been meticulously cleaned and restored at the expense of the British Government, which had also supplied her with makeup, stockings and the evening dress lying in a small but expensive suitcase at her feet. They had set out just after midnight from the secret airfield at Tamworth, Bedfordshire. Sally was trembling.
Her escorts in the aircraft wore fleecy jackets and big boots. All she had was a jacket draped over her shoulders and a parachute strapped to her back. The blasts of cold air from the floor of the aircraft had frozen her legs and her feet. Occasionally the Whitley gave a convulsive shake, accompanied by a rattle. The first time this occurred her two companions laughed, and the mechanic said, ‘The old girl’s been on the gin again.’

  ‘Did you work on this one after she crashed?’ the other enquired.

  ‘Yes.’ He turned to Sally, holding out a silver flask. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bowles. We’ll get you there.’

  She knew it didn’t need two of them to get her to France. They’d done it to be friendly.

  Sally took the flask and drank. ‘Quite frankly, sweetie, I’m not so worried about getting there as getting back.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ the officer said. ‘Your return ticket’s valid for six months.’ He sported a huge moustache, as many pilots did. It was intended to stick out at right angles from the face, but his drooped, giving him the look of an apprentice Viking.

  Sally handed back the flask but he pushed it back to her. ‘Take another nip,’ he said. ‘We’re over France now.’

  ‘How long?’ she asked. She continued to shake with cold, fear and anger. She was furious with Pym for making her do this. Hadn’t there been anything she could have done to stop him? No, she thought, there hadn’t. He had threatened, as they said in plays, to tell all and she hadn’t the slightest doubt that he would have done so, the bastard.

  The mechanic tapped her knee. ‘Feeling all right about the jump?’ he asked. Sally nodded.

  ‘Jolly good show,’ said the officer.

  The exit from the plane was a hole in the floor, a yard square. She had practised jumping through such a hole many times, at Templeford. You sat on the edge, legs dangling. Then, to put it crudely, they pushed you out to land on the mattress beneath. But this was different. She hoped, as she was falling, that the parachute would open. If it did, she’d have to start hoping they’d dropped her over the right spot, a clearing, not on top of trees or into a lake – or straight into German hands.

  And, of course, they all hoped they wouldn’t be attacked in the air before she could even jump.

  Now she sat, her legs dangling into space, buffeted by air, her bottom on the edge of the hole, as the young officer said to her, ‘We’ll be back to pick you up in a week or two, then. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sally said, through stiff lips. ‘Safe trip back.’

  The other said, ‘I think you ought to be going now.’

  He took hold of Sally’s shoulders and she went out and down into a rush of air. She pulled the cord of her parachute. By now she knew it wouldn’t open – some Nazi sympathiser had probably packed it at the factory – she was going to die and that was that. Her skirt blew right up – and the parachute opened. She swung down and down over the darkened landscape of northern France. Up in the sky she heard the plane turn and head away, back to England.

  ‘Plucky girl,’ the fair young man said to his companion. ‘Pretty, too.’

  ‘Hope she makes it,’ said the other.

  They had both been awake for sixteen hours and were asleep before they landed.

  ‘Whoops!’ Sally landed in a field, remembering to throw herself sideways on landing so that she didn’t hit the ground on her feet. She lay, winded, on grass, with her eyes tight shut. She just knew that when she opened them she would be surrounded by German soldiers with rifles. She had sailed down with her suitcase and now it was lost. Oh, God. Oh, God. She opened her eyes slowly. Yes, she was lying in a field, alone. A cow ambled up to look at her.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said a voice, her own. She was all tangled up in her parachute, which lay behind her, billowing up whitely. She groaned.

  ‘Shh,’ a man’s voice hissed. Strong arms were pulling her to her feet. In the darkness she made out a tall figure in a dark jacket. He held her against him as he cut away the harness.

  ‘My suitcase,’ Sally said, in French.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. They searched the field, Sally falling over tussocks. Her feet went into a cow-pat. It was very quiet.

  ‘Got it,’ he called across the field, softly. She stood up, with a sigh of relief. He rejoined her. ‘What about the password?’ she said faintly.

  ‘Bugger the password.’ From somewhere, he had produced a spade and went over to the parachute. He picked it up, dragged it towards a hedge, dug a hole and buried it.

  In the narrow road he looked at her critically. ‘I like the suit. It’s very smart. But God knows why you’re wearing it.’

  A lorry was parked nearby. Once inside it, Sally opened her case and struggled into a mac. She put on a headscarf.

  ‘Well, that’s better,’ he said, and started up the engine.

  A few minutes later, as they bumped along the road, he said, ‘You’re going to Paris with my brother. He’s taking a consignment of beef there for the Germans. They’ll fill his lorry with sacks of concrete for the return trip. Got that?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If we’re stopped, you’re a widow. We’ve sneaked off for fear of the neighbours. Why that suit, in God’s name? Is it Chanel?’

  ‘You have an eye.’

  ‘I used to sell dresses.’

  They arrived at a gate, turned in, entered a farmyard. Inside the dark kitchen, lit only by one candle on a table, sat a second man, in a cap. He stood up as they entered, and said, ‘Bravo! We’re loaded up. Bonsoir, Madame. Would you like to eat before we start?’

  ‘I’d rather go now.’

  ‘Good.’

  After hasty farewells, Sally and Pierre Legrand were on their way to Paris. This time, though, the lights of the lorry were on.

  ‘How are things here?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Bad – but they’ll get worse. What about Britain? We see their bombers visiting you.’

  ‘The raids on London were worse last year. I think if they’d kept it up it would have been over.’

  ‘We listened to the BBC and wondered. What a mess.’

  ‘It’s useful, being an island.’

  He did not ask her anything about herself. And, in spite of the fear, as they got closer and closer to Paris Sally’s spirits rose and she began to feel excited.

  As dawn came they picnicked under a hedge in a field outside Paris. It would be safer to enter the city, which was under curfew, when it was busier. The air was full of birdsong. Pierre raised a glass of red wine. There was a slice of bread in his hand.

  ‘À vous, Madame.’

  ‘À vous, aussi.’

  He did not wish her luck.

  Chapter 26

  In the Bloomsbury apartment Greg Phillips looked at the big flat face and the sturdy old body opposite him. He had a dizzy feeling, as if he had gone through the looking-glass. He pulled himself together.

  ‘So, how did Pym blackmail Sally into going to France?’ he asked doggedly.

  ‘I didn’t know anything definite,’ said Bruno. ‘But after she came back – what an arrival that was! – she told me something. I put two and two together. It was in May,’ he said, ‘and there’d been terrible raids on Liverpool, Belfast, Clydebank, Southampton, Plymouth, Portsmouth. In London alone twenty thousand people had been killed. The damage was appalling. I saw people weeping in the streets.

  ‘Poor Vi – her house was already half ruined and then more bombs came down and finished the job. They were all in the shelter down the road, and when the All Clear sounded they came out – she and her two brothers – and walked up the street in all the smoke, at dawn, and there was no house, just a pile of rubble. After they’d been three nights in a rest centre Vi found a flat through her agent’s secretary. It belonged to a chorus girl who’d joined the ATS and she said they could have it as long as they left a corner for her in case she needed it when she was on leave. It was two big rooms upstairs in a Victorian terrace house in Pimlico. The kitchen was a curtained-off area in the front
room, the bathroom was along a passageway. After living in the rest centre, which was full of bombed-out people sleeping on cots in a converted school hall, babies crying, Vi thought it was the Ritz.

  ‘Anyway, Sally persuaded me to help her and the Simcoxes to take whatever they’d saved from the ruins, which wasn’t much, from the rest centre to their new place. Think of me, twenty-one, all skin and bones in one of Briggs’s old suits, carrying a sack full of pots and pans from Westminster Pier, where we got off the bus, to Pimlico. Vi had an old pram, piled high, Sally had two suitcases. Vi’s small brother was carrying a canary in a cage. My God, what a spectacle! I felt humiliated, as only a working-class boy from Berlin could. The streets were full of gaps. You could look up at the sky through the windows of the houses. Or there’d be a wall gone, and half the floor, with a sofa, or a bath hanging over into the void. It was a brilliant day but everyone was pale. The rationing was beginning to hit – we were always hungry. And you didn’t get much sleep because of the raids.

  ‘So, we had taken our walk, with the Simcoxes and all their remaining worldly goods, and seen them in, and then we got a bus back in the direction of Pontifex Street. I was looking down into Trafalgar Square. It was a sea of uniforms – French sailors with pom-poms on their berets, nurses in scarlet-lined cloaks, soldiers in turbans, in bush hats, in kepis. The sight of the world in arms to defend this island should have been encouraging, but constant bombardment and lack of sleep had got us all down. And I said to her, in a low voice, “I don’t think this can go on.”

  ‘All she said was “Hang on – it may be all right,” in that cheerful voice she had. She was wearing trousers and an old shirt and plenty of lipstick, as usual. She’d brought a year’s supply back from France. And other stuff, too. My God, we could have killed her at Pontifex Street, as she wafted about in a cloud of Je Reviens. We kept thinking of cognac and sausage and all the other things she could have brought instead. As I say, we were hungry. Instead, she’d got cosmetics, scent, underwear, a pair of shoes. She’d probably risked her life to get them.