Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  Paget did not take any. He said: ‘We’re improving.’

  ‘But to hit a single wall strikes me as being a touch difficult.’ MacConnel leaned close and studied a sheet of paper. He saw Paget was waiting. ‘I expect you want to know what your part in this will be.’

  Paget said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘It will be in your patch, the area where you have worked before, Bookbinder Circuit, so you’ll know the locals. It will be our aim … well, your aim … to coordinate these resistance bods once they’ve done their bunk from prison. Try and keep them from fighting among themselves. You know what they’re usually like, Gaullists, Communists, general bandits. The local people will hopefully have arranged where to hide them. You’re there to sort them into some form of organisation and to make sure that Jerry doesn’t recapture them.’

  ‘Seventy of them.’

  ‘Give or take a few. You’ll be going in through the sea route.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘Soon. It has to be. The Germans will start shooting them.’

  Paget knew he would get no more information there. The conversation drifted on to how cricket might recover after the war, how restrictions in restaurants permitting two courses only at five shillings each was ruining decent dining out, how fishing in Scotland had improved now that so many former participants were away fighting.

  Just before Paget left, the telephone on the desk jangled and MacConnel picked up the earpiece. ‘Right you are. One o’clock at the Ritz.’ He held out his hand to Paget. ‘The Ritz seems to manage,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Paget, who had never been inside the Ritz. MacConnel walked with him towards the door. ‘Know anything about Verlaine?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Verlaine? It’s not somewhere I’m familiar with.’

  ‘It’s not a place, it’s a chap,’ said MacConnel. ‘Never heard of him myself. Paul Verlaine. He’s a poet, a Frog, or was. Been dead a while.’

  ‘I don’t know his work,’ said Paget.

  ‘Limericks are more to my taste. Ha! What was that one we used to have fun with in the desert? … “There once was a chap of Benghazi, whose arse got stuck in the kazi” … or something. Anyway, mug up on Verlaine, will you. We may be needing him.’

  Lyon’s Corner House was some distance from the Ritz in a number of ways, but it served a wartime tea accompanied by the afternoon melodies of a string quartet. Black-dressed, white-lace-pinafored waitresses, traditionally called nippies, clipped about, busy and balanced with trays, pots of tea, dainty milk jugs and two lumps of sugar per customer. It was a large place, but with a warm and comforting ambience, a low ceiling, peachy lighting, melodic ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’ (the rural idyll of Hitler’s home land), and the pleasant chink of china.

  ‘It’s only Joe Lyon’s, but it bucks me up just to sit here,’ said Margaret. She wore a neat hat and a fur collar on her dark costume. She unbuttoned it. ‘It’s warm,’ she said. ‘And romantic.’

  Smiling, Paget held her fingers across the table. ‘You must have a good posting to be able to get away for tea,’ she said.

  ‘The war doesn’t need me this afternoon,’ he replied.

  The waitress appeared brightly and said her feet were killing her. ‘The first thing I’ll do when shoes come off the ration’, she told them, ‘is to buy a nice soft pair.’ They sympathised. ‘Mind you,’ she added darkly, ‘as soon as the war’s over they’ll throw us old biddies out and get young girls in.’

  She brought them tea, the tray held high above the heads in the big room. ‘No cream cakes,’ she said. ‘Though we do get them.’

  But there were small buns with a few currants visible and shrimp paste sandwiches. The room was busy with conversation.

  Margaret poured the tea and her extravagant eyes came up over the pot. She laughed slightly. ‘When I tell the boys about Lyon’s they’ll think I’ve been to the zoo.’

  He took his teacup from her. She added the milk and they took one piece of sugar each with the silver-plate tongs. ‘Will they tell their father about it?’ he asked.

  ‘I doubt it. He’s as remote from them as he is from me. He says all he wants is peace.’

  ‘Don’t we all.’

  ‘He means personal peace. Inward.’ She needed to change the subject. ‘We’ve never had a real date, you and I, Martin.’

  ‘Under the conker trees,’ he smiled.

  ‘In summer. Now it’s like a bit of a dream. These days there doesn’t seem to be any room, any time, for anyone to be in love.’ The string quartet was playing ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Quietly she said: ‘I want to have a real love affair with you. A longish one.’

  His hand went back to hers. ‘We could start soon,’ he smiled.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I have to be back by nine thirty tonight. The children are with somebody.’

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll be on duty.’

  ‘In the evening?’

  ‘Yes.’ He said it firmly.

  Her eyes became mischievous. ‘All right, Martin. Tonight.’ She held her teacup as though proposing a toast. He lifted his as she said: ‘But I still have to be back at nine thirty. We’d better get a move on.’

  The house in Warwick Avenue loomed high, neglected, dark. A full-grown sycamore in the front garden rattled irritably, some ornamental masonry was lying flat where it had fallen and the path to the door was padded with last autumn’s leaves.

  ‘You’re not a burglar in your spare time, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s not much worth burgling in here,’ replied Margaret. ‘Some old bits of furniture. The rest is in storage. It belongs to my sister and brother-in-law.’ She produced a heavy key and they went up the half-dozen stone steps to the forbidding door. ‘I’ve never been here in the dark,’ she said. She took a small torch from her handbag, passed the handbag to him and found the keyhole. There was a rattle, a heavy click and then a creak and a sigh as she turned a tarnished handle and the door swung. Their feet sounded in the abandoned entrance hall. ‘Poor house,’ she said.

  She played the torch across the empty walls and halted its beam on a panelled inner door. ‘I wouldn’t come in here alone,’ she said. ‘Not at night.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ said Paget. He smiled at the pale, indistinct oval of her face and kissed her. ‘In here,’ she said, pushing the inner door she had picked out with her torch. ‘There are curtains and some of the bulbs work.’

  She clicked a switch and two grimy lights in a chandelier flickered and lit making deep shadows. There was a thick round table and some chairs, covered with dust, an almost empty bookcase, damp patches on the walls and outlined spaces where large pictures had hung, a four-seater settee and two bulbous armchairs. ‘It’s very homely,’ said Paget.

  ‘It has hidden secrets,’ she whispered, going to a cupboard below the bookcase. ‘Champagne,’ she said, holding up the bottle. ‘Well chilled. Let’s go upstairs.’

  The puny beam of the torch led their way. The staircase had once been grand, the curving banisters heavy and carved. ‘They’ll never be back until after the war,’ she said. ‘Ben’s in the Middle East and Mollie won’t come to London any more. She’s in Scotland. I come every now and again to see the roof hasn’t fallen in.’ She paused. ‘It’s the first time I’ve used the place socially.’

  ‘Wonderful place for a party,’ he said on the landing. He heard her giggle and she led him through another wide doorway. The narrow torchlight ran over a cold bed and bulky furniture; open curtains let in a pale suggestion of night sky. She went to the bed and touched a pile of blankets folded at its bottom. ‘Not at all damp,’ she said in a housewifely way. She turned her eyes on him. ‘Now what do you suggest?’

  ‘Open the champagne,’ he said.

  She said: ‘Let’s sit in the bed.’

  ‘Glasses?’

  ‘Bathroom,’ said Margaret.

  She went quickly and he heard the squealing of the tap followed by the sound of water. ‘Cobwebs,�
�� she grimaced as she came back. He could just see her face in the thin light seeping through the window.

  Martin eased the wire cage from the champagne cork and she went again briskly into the bathroom and returned with a small towel. ‘It’s cleanish,’ she said.

  Putting the towel over his forearm, he approached her closely, performed a brief bow and said: ‘Champagne for Modom?’ He used the towel to extract the cork. It came out with a sharp discharge and at that moment the London air-raid sirens began to howl.

  ‘My God,’ she laughed. ‘That bang started them off.’

  ‘You don’t want to run for shelter, do you?’

  ‘No fear. I feel quite safe here. With you.’

  There was only a little froth from the bottle.

  ‘Let’s get in the bed,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit exposed out here.’

  It seemed so strange; fifteen years after they had first met they were close together in this deserted, cold, old house in London in an air raid, and they were about to make love. ‘You go your side and I’ll stay this,’ Margaret said.

  He went to the far side of the wide bed. ‘Can you see me?’ she asked. She was sitting on the bed.

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘Then I’ll start.’

  Her shape began to move as she took off the jacket with the little fur collar, then the skirt, and opened out one of the folded blankets. ‘I’m getting in the warm,’ she said.

  He took his clothes off down to his underwear and they climbed into the bed, quaintly still sitting, sipping from their glasses. ‘Margaret,’ he said quietly. ‘You are still wearing your hat.’

  She let out a squeal and attempted to pull it away but it got snared by the pins. He helped her disentangle her hair. They fell against each other and kissed and laughed again. He kissed her down her shoulders and her neck. Then she pulled his RAF vest over his head, threw it aside, and bit his chest playfully.

  She let him take the brassière away from her breasts and they eased each other gently down into the rough and immediate warmth of the blankets. ‘I’ve waited for this’, she whispered, clutching him, ‘for years.’

  ‘I’ll try not to lose you again.’ As he said it he knew that, in only a matter of hours, they would have no choice.

  ‘God almighty,’ she said. ‘What wasted time. You’re never going anywhere without me again, Martin. We are going to be together always. After the war. Things being what they are, who knows what’s going to happen to us. But when it’s over we’ll be together – and faithful.’

  The scratchy blankets oddly comforted their skins. She caressed him and he put his tongue to her breasts. ‘Let’s start now,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t let’s wait.’

  He rolled above her and her legs spread at his touch. Then a diffuse silver light moved across the window. Margaret said: ‘Searchlights. Don’t stop.’ Outside, the beams were probing the night sky. For a moment the room became lighter.

  ‘Now I can see you,’ said Margaret. ‘By search-light.’

  ‘And I can see you.’

  It seemed that from just outside the window sounded the massive crack of an anti-aircraft gun firing from Regents Park, followed by another and a third. Margaret squealed. He covered her with his body and they clutched each other at the long whistling scream of a falling bomb. The explosion shook the room, the glass of the window fell in and the ceiling came down as they lay petrified together in the bed.

  Margaret cried out again and he held her as they heard the screeching descent of another bomb. ‘Under the bed!’ he shouted, jumping over her and pulling her to the carpet. He tried to push her naked body below the bed. The bomb exploded a street away. Choking dust erupted from floorboards and carpet. A standard lamp fell on its face. Glass was flung around the room. Again the guns sounded and the house trembled.

  They lay shivering and naked, holding each other on the floor by the bed. The gun fired another salvo and as a pathetic encore, a single picture clattered from the wall.

  They sensed the action above them move away.

  ‘Oh, Martin,’ she sobbed, half laugh, half cry. ‘When will we ever do it?’

  ‘At this rate after the war,’ he said.

  Cold air came through the shattered window. Covered with plaster from the ceiling, coated with grit from the upheaval of the room, they crawled out. There was a smell of smoke. ‘Don’t say the sodding house is on fire,’ she complained. He staggered to the window. ‘It’s down the street,’ he reported. ‘Something is blazing down there.’

  ‘Oh, Martin,’ she said, sitting naked among the debris. ‘I’ll have to go home.’ He sat beside her and they hugged each other hopelessly. The champagne bottle was still upright and he picked it up and offered it to her with a wry smile. She drank it from the neck, then handed it to him. ‘Bastard Hitler,’ she said. ‘Spoilsport.’

  Paget was picked up by a civilian car, a cumbersome Humber driven by a uniformed woman, at eight the next morning. The driver was young and neat with a face like a coin below her cap and straw-blonde hair pulled back behind her neck. The tone of her voice was upper class and she had the flash of FANY on her shoulder.

  ‘Do you know where we are going, sir?’ she asked within a few minutes of beginning the journey. Men were clearing the streets after the previous night’s air raid; firemen were still playing hoses on the smoking wreckage of a line of shops, their stocks piled outside. A man in a grey suit, probably the proprietor, stood arms stretched sideways in a shattered shop window like an actor on a small stage.

  ‘No. I hoped you might know,’ said Paget.

  ‘Bournemouth,’ she replied, regarding him in the driving mirror. ‘About four hours if we’re lucky. Five if we’re not. Everything is ready there.’

  He knew what she meant. ‘I got as far as Bournemouth last time,’ he said. ‘But then I was recalled.’

  ‘As happens,’ she said. ‘Unless that occurs again we will continue to the embarkation point tomorrow.’

  Her tone was official, almost prim, as if she had learned her instructions by rote. His mood was not for conversation anyway and he eased himself back in the deep rear seat of the Humber, closed his eyes and wondered about Margaret.

  As they had attempted to clean themselves of the dust and the rubble in the house they had discovered there was no water. They tried to brush the debris from them in the eerie half-light coming through the gaping window. There was ceiling plaster in their hair and sticking to their naked bodies.

  ‘The bomb must have fractured a main,’ he said.

  Sneezing with the dust, she began to laugh softly but with an edge of hysteria. ‘Oh, Jesus, Martin. What can I do? I can’t pick up my children like this.’

  She followed him into the bathroom. The floor was white with lumps of ceiling. He looked down the grim dim hole of the toilet pan, then closed the lid, stood on it and lifted the top of the high cistern. ‘Water,’ he said, inserting his hand.

  ‘Oh, thank God. Good job we didn’t use it. I’ll get something.’ She went out and reappeared with the champagne glasses. He ladled the stale water from the cistern and she plugged the sink and poured it in. She began to wash her face with it. ‘Horrible,’ she said.

  Thinking of it now as the car travelled through the London suburbs, downcast and worn, he began slowly to smile. He wondered if he loved Margaret, if she loved him. He leaned deeper into the seat and slept for an hour. When he woke the girl was driving through Surrey, heading for Hampshire along the A30, heavy with military traffic. Several times they were stopped at barriers by British and American military policemen and she had to produce a pass. Each of them threw up a brisk salute as she drove on.

  She said to Paget: ‘I’m Penelope, by the way. Penelope Bryant-Cross.’

  ‘Is this what you do all the time?’ he asked. ‘Drive?’

  ‘This is the job FANY have given me. Not very glamorous. I’ve volunteered for parachute training but they’ve turned me down. Supposedly I’m too small and light. They say I’d be
blown off course. It’s a pity. I’ve got good French, I went to school in Arles. But the chances seem to be diminishing anyway. We’re running out of war.’

  ‘What happens when we get to Bournemouth?’ he asked. ‘The last time I came, when I was recalled, I had supper and went back.’

  ‘This time you’ll be billeted in a nice apartment,’ she said, still primly. ‘It’s my job to look after you. It’s a pity it’s not summer, sir, we could go on the sands.’

  Outside the window they could see the coils of rusty barbed wire curled along the dark-yellow beach. There were brick and concrete pillboxes decaying on the rainy esplanade, apertures for machine-guns gaping like empty eye sockets; protective sandbags had turned green and split, their contents fallen out and hardened to cement. Invaders were no longer expected.

  ‘What a view,’ said Penelope, pulling back the curtains. The apartment was across the wet road from the sand and the grubby waves that reached the shore from the metallic sea. At the extreme ends of the view were outcrops of land, smudgy shadows. A few disconsolate-sounding gulls struggled with the early afternoon wind.

  She remained peering at the desolate scene and said: ‘A chaperone can be arranged if necessary.’

  ‘A chaperone? Oh, I see. Well, if you would like …’

  ‘Not for me,’ she said turning in to the room. ‘For you. Some people might consider this a compromising situation.’

  Paget laughed and said: ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘You wouldn’t like him anyway,’ she said. ‘He’s a retired lighthouse man with a fearful pipe and a nasty cough. But he is available.’

  Dismissing the subject she said: ‘You’d like a cup of tea, I imagine.’ Paget said he would. He was surveying the flat. It had a bereft air, the furniture was 1920s, there was an amateur painting of Boscombe over the fireplace and a disfunctional calendar still fixed on October 1943. An almost denuded bookcase in grim, dark wood occupied part of one wall and there was a moquette armchair in front of it. A second armchair was opposite and a settee at right angles, all in a faint mauve. ‘A holiday flat before the war,’ summed up Penelope. ‘Requisitioned. There’s quite a number along here. I don’t imagine anyone uses them now, apart from people like us.’