‘Be who you are, Billy. And be proud of yourself.’
They were standing on Torquay station. The train from Paignton had just arrived and the carriages were being mobbed by recruits. When Don suggested he get a move on to secure a seat Billy shook his head. The kids would be travelling way up the line. After two months of jelly-legs they deserved a sit-down. Billy, on the other hand, had just enjoyed what felt like the holiday of a lifetime. And one of the things he wanted to say was thank you.
Don was taller as well as older than Billy. Billy reached up and kissed him. A woman with two spaniels on a lead stopped in mid-stride, then headed for a different carriage. Billy toyed with an apology, then had second thoughts. Don didn’t seem the least bit upset.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Mind what? You kissing me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I look like I mind?’
‘Not at all.’
‘So don’t worry. You’re a lovely man. And you’re much braver than you think. Come back any time. Come back for good. Either way, I’ll be here for you.’
I’ll be here for you.
Billy stood on the train, wedged between a couple of sleepy recruits, trying to sort out his feelings. That Don had strayed across his path was a stroke of extraordinary luck. That they’d been so natural together, and so close, had been another blessing. In the theatre, had Don been a character on the page, he’d have been a privilege to play. Billy loved his patience, his wit, his big lopsided face, his absolute faith in the goodness of others. In some ways, it felt like being with Irene again, except Don’s blood pressure seemed to be even lower. That someone so wise, and so sure of themselves, could find even a splinter of promise in a battle-damaged Wireless Op was an immense relief. There might, thanks to Don, be some prospect of getting through.
Getting through what? Billy walked the half-mile back from Topsham station. It was still the same village, still quaint, still full of heart-stopping glimpses of the river but, shorn of the terrible burden of trying to pretend he was someone else, he seemed to be seeing it through new eyes. He’d been grateful for Nell’s company. It had been kind of her to try and ease some of the pain he’d been feeling. But what she wanted from him, the Billy she thought she knew, had gone. God knows, she’d tried hard enough. She was an accomplished lover. She had a repertoire of tricks. She knew what worked with him and on previous occasions they’d done OK. But now was different. Now, for whatever reason, he’d become the real Billy Angell. And that realisation had warmed him in ways he’d only ever dreamed about.
He let himself into the house. Waiting on the mat was an envelope with his name on it. He recognised his mother’s handwriting. The postmark was Bristol. The door still ajar, he ripped the envelope open. Expecting a letter of some sort he found himself looking at a telegram. Beneath it, in pencil, his mum had scribbled a single word. Sorry.
The telegram had been sent by the Station Adjutant at RAF Wickenby. Billy must have read dozens like these: the same flat prose, the same blunt sympathy. REGRET TO INFORM FLT SGT SIMON MEREDITH KILLED IN TRAINING ACCIDENT.
Billy closed the door and took the telegram through to the kitchen. It had been kind of the Adjutant to trouble himself with sending a telegram but the house was suddenly cold. Not just cold but arctic. The rest of V-Victor’s lads had presumably been scattered among the other training crews, imparting little seeds of experience to help them towards the front line. The fact that they were still alive, still airborne, was some consolation. But not much.
Why Simon? And how come he survived a full tour, cheated impossible odds, and then hit some Scottish mountain with a bunch of amateurs who didn’t know what they were doing? Billy sank into the kitchen’s single chair. He wanted Don here. He needed a listening ear. He wanted someone wise enough, and big enough, to make sense of it all.
There was a phone box down at the end of the road. He had the Palmview’s number. He could put a call through, and maybe later that’s exactly what he’d do. But for now he knew he needed to confront this news on his own. No props. No Don. Nothing but the ticking silence and the sigh of the wind in the eaves.
He made himself a cup of tea. The last time he and Simon had been alone was at the start of the summer. They’d slept until mid-afternoon thanks to a dawn return from a long trip to Stettin. It was a glorious day and they’d cycled away from the airfield and found a patch of woodland on the other side of the village.
Harry Williams, V-Victor’s skipper, had been there before them. He’d said there was a pond with kingfishers at the heart of the wood. He’d been right. Billy and Simon had abandoned their bikes and lolled in the warm grass beneath the trees, watching for the sudden flash of orange and blue over the brackish water. Simon knew about kingfishers. He said they hunted for prey from riverside perches. One of the tiny birds hovered inches above the pond, waiting for a fish to rise, and Billy watched it, fascinated. He understood about flying, about cheating gravity, about the freedom of the skies. But never this.
When the kingfishers had gone, Billy lay back on the grass, his eyes closed. Simon was talking about a walking tour he’d taken in Greece, a whole month in the Peloponnese. Successive waves of conquests had given the rugged landscape Venetian fortresses and Ottoman architecture and he said he’d trekked alone from site to site with everything he needed on his back.
Each stop on his route had shed fresh light on a winter’s reading and in September he’d returned to the school in Somerset where he taught with the feeling that he’d become someone else. It was partly, he said, the experience of sleeping rough. Out in the open, especially high in the mountains, it could be cold after dark but the huge bowl of the night sky was pricked with stars and he’d spent hours getting to know the constellations.
Leo was his favourite, the lion poised to leap, and he was also fascinated by Orion. Orion, he said, belonged to Greece. It was visible from any point on the earth’s surface but the hunter’s real home was here, among the olive trees and the rough mountain pastures. Quite how Simon had made the connection was lost on Billy but the Nav’s fascination with the night sky had stayed with him, and once Billy was flying with his new crew he spent more time than he should in V-Victor’s astrodome, scanning the heavens.
Was Simon up there with them now? A celestial presence among the teeming stars? Was this where every Nav was destined to end his days? Reclaimed by the constellations they’d befriended in the name of Bomber Command? The thought was strangely comforting and Billy folded the telegram back into its envelope.
Hours later he went to a pub in the village, looking for something to eat. Stale bread, mouldy cheese and a glass of flat beer did nothing to brighten his mood but before he left the pub he got himself a pocketful of change for the phone box. Don was on bar duty at the Palmview and the Babbacombe recruits had just got off the bus. Billy could hear laughter in the background and after a stumbling attempt to share his news with Don, he gave up. Maybe later this evening, he thought. Or maybe tomorrow.
He slept badly, tormented by images of Simon’s Lanc spearing in through thick fog, of the violence of the crash, of licks of yellow flame devouring everything inside the broken fuselage, and of the search parties trudging up the mountainside with their body bags and their stretchers. The instructor at Babbacombe, he’d decided, had probably got it right. Death in this war left nothing but a set of dog tags. And that’s if you were lucky.
He woke at dawn. He was in a sweat. Imagination had once been his best friend but these days it stalked him day and night. He lay in bed under the dampness of the single sheet, counting the days until he had to take the train north and report, once again, for duty. He knew that instructing with training squadrons could be as dangerous as ops. Aircraft retired from front-line service and barely fit to fly. Novice aircrews. English weather. Flying at night. Plus countless other factors that could gang up to snuff you out. That was fine. That was the chatter in the Mess. But downstairs on the kitchen table was the proof th
at all this bar talk was true. That even an airman as competent as Simon Meredith could disappear at dusk, never to return.
He shuddered and closed his eyes. Was this fear that he could feel? Was it as simple as that? Was he a coward? Was he yellow? Did he lack moral fibre? Or had Don been right that first night when they’d slept together? That deep inside himself there existed another Billy Angell, the real Billy Angell, who knew that war was wrong, that killing was obscene, and that somehow the bloodshed and the terror had to end?
He was back in a place he didn’t know, couldn’t make a sane decision, and he must have drifted off to sleep again because the next time he opened his eyes it was full daylight with sun streaming in through the uncurtained windows and he could hear the clump-clump of footsteps coming up the street from the river. The footsteps paused. Then he heard a rap on the door. The postman, he thought.
He wound a towel around himself and made his way downstairs. The tiles in the narrow hall felt icy on his bare feet. He opened the door. Another telegram. He signed for it and then stepped back inside. Telegrams all came in the same brown envelopes. And they all carried news you never wanted to hear.
Billy thought about ignoring it. He toyed with ripping it to shreds or holding one corner over a burning match. Was this the old V-Victor mob again? Was it Harry Williams this time? Or Les Atkinson, the Bomb Aimer? Or little Johnny Phelps back there in the rear turret? Was it their turn to lay down their lives in the service of Training Command? Did you really survive thirty ops to end up in a brown envelope on someone else’s door mat?
He picked up the telegram and took it through to the kitchen. Nell had found a dressing gown when they’d first arrived and he went upstairs to fetch it. Back in the kitchen, he slipped a knife under the flap of the envelope and spread the message on the kitchen table. For a moment, the words made no sense. No name. No regrets. No one killed. Then he read it through a second time.
PLEASE PHONE SHE 4987 AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. ASK FOR URSULA BARTON.
14
Sturmbannführer Huber appeared at the concierge’s desk shortly before noon. Thunderstorms had been rolling over Paris since dawn and his long leather greatcoat was pebbled with rain when Hélène stepped out of the lift to meet him. There was the same coldness in his eyes that she’d noticed the night before and the perfunctory nod of greeting gave nothing away. A car was waiting at the kerbside. The business they had to transact wouldn’t take long. With luck, she could be back in the 16th by early afternoon.
Hélène followed him onto the pavement. Across the road, a queue had formed outside a private house that served as a distribution point for bread. One of the women, recognising Hélène, gave her a discreet wave and mouthed bonne chance. You wouldn’t wish a visit from the SS on anyone.
Hélène climbed into the back of the car with Huber. He sat with his hands carefully folded on his lap, his eyes fixed on the road. Twice he corrected the driver on his choice of route but apart from that he remained silent. This is a man who’s died already, Hélène thought. He belongs in the mortuary.
Half expecting a return to the Hôtel Meurice, Hélène was surprised to find herself outside a gated house in the 12th. A soldier saluted Huber as he escorted Hélène into the courtyard, and another figure awaited them at the top of a modest flight of steps. This was an older man, short, thin-faced. He wasn’t in uniform but he obviously knew Huber.
They followed him into the house. Twice he checked his watch as they mounted the stairs to the first floor. The house was light – huge windows – and beautifully furnished. Hélène had the feeling she’d been there before but couldn’t remember exactly when. Maybe friends of Nathan’s, she thought. Back when Paris belonged to the people who lived here.
‘Come in, please.’
The older man spoke good French. He held the door open for Hélène. The room was small, even intimate. Bookshelves, an armchair, a pretty little banquette, and a desk beneath the window. Pre-war, thought Hélène, this would have served as a study or a room where you might read undisturbed in the quiet time before the shops opened again and Paris gathered up its skirts for the evening’s entertainments.
There was a single telephone on the desk. The older man had lifted the receiver and was dialling a number he checked from a sheet of paper. A muttered question from Huber brought no response except a lifted finger. Patience, please.
Hélène couldn’t take her eyes off the telephone. Would Nathan really be at the other end? And, if so, how on earth had they contacted him? Her relationship with Klimt had taught her a great deal about the power and reach of the intelligence services but there was still a kind of sorcery about what was happening. The husband she hadn’t spoken to for three long years. The husband whom she’d tried to contact only days before.
She wondered whether he’d ever received the coded birthday greetings, and if so whether he’d thank her. That, given the circumstances, could be worse than awkward. The last thing she wanted to hand Huber was any kind of reason to extend this encounter into a formal interrogation.
The older man was talking on the phone. Huber had folded his greatcoat over the banquette and settled himself in the armchair. He looked attentive and expectant, and he had a pad on his knee. He might have been at the theatre, Hélène thought. He might have been a first-night reviewer tasked to pass judgement on some controversial new play.
The older man gestured for Hélène to take the chair at the desk. He gave her the phone and apologised for the quality of the line. Cross-Channel calls could be troublesome, he said. He’d tried to secure a better connection but he’d failed.
‘Is my husband there?’ Hélène was holding the phone at arm’s length.
‘Yes. You might have to shout.’
Hélène nodded. She brought the phone to her ear. All she could hear was the thin rasp of static.
‘Nathan?’ she ventured. ‘Are you there? Nathan?’
‘Louder,’ it was Huber. ‘Shout.’
‘Darling?’ She’d raised her voice just a little. Not once in her life had she shouted at her husband and now, she told herself, was no time to start.
She adjusted the phone, using her body to shield this conversation from Huber. She thought she caught just a hint of a voice at the other end. A man, certainly, but her husband?
‘Nathan? Is that you?’
Abruptly, for whatever reason, the static cleared and her husband was suddenly there, close enough to touch, his voice unmistakable. She’d always loved his voice. It was the first thing she’d noticed about him. It was a deep voice, beautifully modulated, a voice that belonged in a much bigger body. It bubbled with all the things she held dear. With irony and laughter and a rich enjoyment of other people. Nathan never made conversation. Instead he cast spells and his voice was key to that. Just now he had a question.
‘What are we speaking? French? English? German?’
Hélène checked with Huber. French. She bent to the phone again. A game like this required rules of engagement and she was determined to spell them out. No subterfuge. No pretence.
‘Listen, darling. I’m sitting in a room with an SS officer. His name’s Sturmbannführer Johann Huber. He’s probably recording this conversation. I simply don’t know. We’re somewhere in the 12th. It’s a nice house. For once our new friends haven’t wrecked it. Should I say thank you? What do you think?’
Nathan roared with laughter.
‘Huber I know,’ he said. ‘His father used to run a decent gallery in Berlin. It was called the Galerie Turschmann. He had an eye, that man. He had a collection of Koenigs including Der Magic Lanternenpfahl. You’ll remember that painting, Hélène. The crazy figures in the lamplight? The faces at the window? Well, that belonged to Père Huber, probably still does. Ask Huber if he’ll take an offer. I have friends in Sweden. Anything is possible. Tell him dollars, if he insists. Twenty-five thousand but not a cent more. Are you still there?’
Hélène stole a look at Huber. His face was impassive. He’d
yet to take a note.
‘Still here, my darling,’ she confirmed. ‘Happy birthday. I’d have loved to send you a message, a card, a letter, caviar, anything, but our new friends don’t encourage that. How do you feel?’
‘Older.’ The laughter again. ‘And you?’
‘I feel nothing. This war does something funny to time. I feel like one of those flies trapped in amber. Everything has stopped. Including me. You remember the amber we brought from Poland? That trip we made to the Vistula delta?’
‘Sorrel soup every night? Zupa szczawiowa? With dumplings? You loved it.’ Nathan had a gift for languages and a prodigious memory. A month in Poland and he could hold his own with the locals in any bar.
Huber was on his feet now. Their time on the phone was obviously limited. He’d scrawled two words on his pad. Mona Lisa? The message couldn’t have been plainer. Move the conversation along.
Nathan was still reminiscing about their time in Poland. How they’d made a friend of the young Jewish artist in Lublin who’d worked only in charcoal, producing small masterpiece portraits of old women in his neighbourhood. How they’d celebrated St Wenceslas night in Warsaw with a boisterous army of Czech students and danced until dawn.
‘I seem to remember Huber has a brother,’ he said. ‘I think he was on that crappy old battleship when they shelled the Polacks in Danzig. September ’39. First day of the German invasion. I wonder if he ever knew what he was starting?’
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