Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  I do hope they’re not going to talk to me, she thought.

  Everything about her attitude discouraged conversation. She opened a book and began to read with obvious concentration. There was a slight flush on her cheek, though it was not at once possible to say if this was her usual colour or whether exertion or embarrassment had raised this mild pink beneath the pale skin. There was a scattering of freckles beneath her eyes, and her eyebrows were the colour of the darkest of the different shades in her hair.

  They were almost at Berwick when the man who had first opened the door suddenly began to talk. He began by introducing himself. ‘Richard Cannerley. But my friends, like Morris here, all call me Dick.’

  ‘Charlotte Gray,’ she conceded, briefly shaking his proffered hand.

  ‘What takes you south?’ said Cannerley.

  ‘I’m going to work in London.’ She had a slight Scottish accent. ‘I wanted to do something to help.’

  ‘The good old war effort.’ Cannerley laughed, and a lock of fair hair fell down over his forehead.

  Charlotte crossed her legs and turned a little into the compartment. It was a long journey and her book was not that interesting.

  ‘And are you from Edinburgh?’ said Cannerley.

  ‘Not originally.’

  ‘I thought not. Your voice is not as . . . precise.’

  ‘No. Not an Edinburgh Mary.’ Charlotte smiled. ‘I was brought up in the Highlands. My parents moved to Edinburgh about ten years ago when my father took up a position in a hospital there.’

  ‘I see. Morris and I have been playing golf. Do you play?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I expect we’ll go along for dinner in a bit. Would you like to join us?’

  ‘No, thank you. I had some high tea with my mother before I left.’

  ‘Well, just come and have a glass of wine with us. They have an awfully good list. I know from previous journeys. My treat.’

  Charlotte looked at Cannerley with rapidly appraising eyes. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Excuse me for a minute.’

  She stood up and reached to the luggage rack for her handbag. The button on the cuff of her jacket became entangled in the string mesh and it was difficult for her to stretch up with the other hand to free it. The jacket rose up to reveal the creases of her blouse tucked into the waistband of her skirt. The skirt had also ridden up a little, showing the fine little bones of her knee. For a moment she was trapped and unwilling to stretch up further in case of some immodesty. Just as Cannerley rose to help, she managed to free her wrist and take down the bag. She disappeared through the sliding doors and down the corridor.

  ‘What’s an Edinburgh Mary?’ said Morris.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. I presume it’s someone from Morningside with that prim accent.’

  ‘You’re a fast worker.’

  ‘It’s the war, Robin. Autres temps, autres moeurs. She understands.’

  ‘What about Celia?’

  ‘Celia?’ Cannerley looked vague as he pulled out a cigarette. ‘Now what do you think for a cold evening on the train? I remember last time they had a rather good Crozes Hermitage. Perhaps she’s more of a Burgundy girl. Something full but not too heavy . . .’

  Cannerley settled back in his seat and rubbed his hand over the scarlet plush. Above him was a small rectangular mirror with bevelled edges in which Morris could see the top of his own head, where the dark, almost black hair was receding either side of a tongue-shaped peninsula. Morris had a dark, close-shaven face, small hands and a cautious, candid manner intensified by the way he so seldom blinked.

  ‘Will you be at the departmental meeting tomorrow?’

  Morris nodded. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go, but Sir Oliver insists.’

  ‘I suppose it’s the French question.’ Cannerley brushed some cigarette ash from his knee.

  ‘It’s always the French question.’

  ‘I’ve almost completed my paper. I imagine you’ll get a copy in due course. It’s B-listed.’

  ‘I hope so. I’d like to know how you pass your time. Do you think you’ll be able to get down to Woking at the weekend?’

  ‘It’s hard to see what further national emergency could arise.’ Cannerley’s voice took on a signalled languor.

  Morris did not blink. ‘I haven’t played there since the spring. The wind was terrible. On one of the par threes I had to take a wood.’

  The spoken assumption was that their games were as important as their work. Each thought he held some part of Britain in his hands. They lunched in clubs that flanked St James’s Street; they talked to politicians, serving officers and newspapermen – not reporters, but editors or proprietors. Cannerley had been put up for membership of two clubs by his father when he was still at Cambridge and had moved over their dim parquet and threadbare rugs with ease since he came down; he was bilingual at his father’s insistence, having studied with a French tutor in the holidays from school and spent a year at university in Poitiers.

  At some stage in his education he had grasped, without exactly being taught it, the knowledge of what was right for his country. In the meetings of his department and in its dealings with other departments there was never any need to spell things out. Cannerley knew. Morris knew. Sir Oliver Cresswell, the head of the service, certainly knew.

  Morris had had to work harder than Cannerley to acquire this understanding. In his last year at Oxford he was surprised at his books by the Chaplain of the college, a gaunt man with grizzled silver hair. Despite his ascetic manner, the Chaplain was reputed to know ‘people’ in London; he had a collection of avant-garde French paintings and a bronze by Archipenko. In a college where publication by the fellows was viewed as vulgar, he had been in print three times: on Saint Augustine, on Jacob Epstein and on Greek ceramics. He had held the position of Chaplain at the British Embassy in Athens and had been briefly in Teheran. Morris at first believed the Chaplain was trying to recruit him to a homosexual prayer camp, but the Chaplain’s meaning gradually became clear, by way of digressions into European political history and the integrity of British institutions. He talked about a time of coming national emergency and left Morris with a telephone number in Whitehall. This was fourteen years ago.

  ‘By the way,’ said Cannerley. ‘We’ve finally got a man into G Section.’

  ‘That’s marvellous. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s some little Midlands crook called Fowler. He’s not one of ours, he’s one of theirs. He’s already been in France twice, blundering about, blowing up trains, recruiting a lot of reluctant villains to the noble cause of Resistance.’

  ‘ “Setting Europe ablaze”, as the PM would have it.’ The drawling manner was not quite as natural to Morris as to Cannerley.

  ‘Exactly so. And completely buggering up our operations. Anyway, a little research by our chaps has shown that several of his Brummie businesses have serious Revenue failings. He was called in for a chat last week. We pointed out that the tax man might be very interested in a closer inspection of his books.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘At this point he became most anxious to co-operate.’

  ‘What’s he going to do for us?’

  ‘Sir Oliver hasn’t decided yet. Something simple but destructive. In France.’

  ‘Destructive of what?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’ Cannerley looked suddenly worried. His manner became urgent. ‘Listen, Robin, I entered this business to do some good. That may sound awfully quaint to you. I don’t want . . . complications. Compromises. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes I think Sir Oliver—’

  But there was a noise as the door was slid back and Charlotte Gray reappeared. They went down the corridor – Cannerley in front, Morris behind, like her bodyguards. The other compartments were all full: overhead lamps in their glass shades illuminated the laps on which books were held, many face-down as their owners’ heads began to loll and jerk against the antimacassars. They had crossed the unseen Tyne and were
in the frozen fields of the North Riding; there was a flash of Yorkshire ground beneath their feet as they stepped over the coupling.

  ‘Have you found a job in London?’ Morris asked Charlotte at the table.

  ‘Yes. I’m working for a doctor’s practice, as a receptionist and general helper.’

  ‘What sort of practice?’ asked Cannerley, looking up from the wine list.

  ‘He’s a plastic surgeon. He treats amputees and people whose limbs don’t work. He helps restore movement.’

  ‘I see. And these are war-wounded, are they?’

  ‘Yes, they’re sent on to him from various hospitals.’

  The spot of mascara had vanished from Charlotte’s cheek. While she was tidying herself, she had also changed her mind about dinner. She sipped at the cream of asparagus soup, which tasted like most of the soup they had all eaten in the last year or so, of clammy green flour.

  Charlotte smiled with sudden candour. ‘It’s what my mother calls billsticker’s paste.’

  There was no fish course and no choice of meat. It was advertised as steak and kidney pie and had derived from an animal rich in kidneys. Cannerley had chosen a Chambertin and started to pour. Charlotte held up her hand when her glass was half full, saying she was not used to wine, but Cannerley poured on.

  ‘You could have joined the WAAF, if you wanted to do something for the war. Or the FANYs.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Charlotte felt vulnerable on this point. It was one of the reasons why she was travelling south. She drank some wine. ‘But what about you? Why are you not in the services? Or are you on leave?’

  ‘They also serve,’ said Cannerley, ‘who only stand and wait.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Reserved occupation,’ said Morris. ‘Strategy has to be coherent. I can assure you that what we do is no less exacting and no less patriotic than any pilot, any midshipman in the Atlantic, any poor old pongo plodding through—’

  ‘I didn’t mean to doubt it.’

  Cannerley looked amused. ‘And you’re patriotic, too?’

  ‘Of course.’ Charlotte was surprised. ‘Isn’t everyone? Particularly at the moment.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ Cannerley laid down his knife and fork, apparently defeated by the pie. ‘What exactly do you love?’

  ‘I know what we’re fighting. The Nazis. I hate them with a sort of personal bitterness.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked. What are we protecting? What is it that’s so valuable? A tradition of tolerance? Great achievements? Science, exploration?’

  The pink patch beneath Charlotte’s pale skin grew a little more intense. ‘I don’t know. It’s not something you can easily put into words.’

  ‘Do you think if you’d been born in another country you would feel the same way? Or is it just something about British tolerance, British science, British exploration?’

  ‘I think so, yes. It’s the countryside where you grow up, the towns and villages, the people. The people more than anything. The buildings that make up your home.’

  ‘You must be very fond of stone or brick to think them worth dying for.’

  ‘I am. I worked for a picture gallery in Edinburgh. If you don’t protect buildings and paintings and so on then you have nothing left to honour the lives of previous generations.’

  ‘So we go to war, kill more people, to honour those already dead?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what I meant. But what about you? You told me you were patriotic. What are you defending?’

  ‘Oh, the same as you, I’m sure.’ Cannerley’s offhand tone signalled an end to the discussion.

  The waiter was standing by the table, braced like a bosun in a gale, as he gathered their plates.

  Irritated by Cannerley’s dismissive manner, Charlotte opened her mouth to continue, then thought better of it. The waiter brought a brown mousse made with powdered eggs and Cannerley poured the remains of the wine to take the taste away.

  Charlotte insisted on paying her part of the bill, and on the back of the receipt Cannerley wrote a telephone number before handing her the piece of paper.

  ‘This is the number of my flat in Ormonde Gate. I thought you might like to have it in case you ever got bored with your doctor’s waiting room. I’m sure I could find you something a little more . . . stimulating. We’re always very much on the lookout for bright girls. Do you speak any languages?’

  Charlotte stared incredulously at the telephone number in her hand, then rallied.

  ‘Yes. I speak French.’

  ‘Fluently?’

  ‘God, you sound like an interviewer, Dick!’

  Charlotte looked steadily at Cannerley. ‘Yes. My father fought in France in the last war. He used to take us back to where he had been. To visit the graves. He was . . . obsessed by it, you might say.’

  ‘And is that how you learned?’

  ‘I also went on exchanges to a French family during the summer holidays. Then I read French and Italian at university.’

  Cannerley pushed back his chair. ‘It sounds perfect. Do bear it in mind, won’t you?’

  They went back down the swaying corridors. There was nothing to see through the blinds; even the stations were only grudgingly illuminated, and passengers stumbled as they alighted. For some reason they talked in lowered voices, as though the German bomber crews might hear them. England was blacked out and afraid.

  3

  CHARLOTTE HAD BEEN to London only twice before in her life and had recollections of nothing much more than the moving staircases in the Underground. She had been frightened as a girl that she would not get off in time and had made a little hop as the stairs collapsed and slithered back beneath the floor. Her mother had taken her to a department store where she had bought fabric for curtains and some school shoes for Charlotte. Then they had been to an Edwardian hotel somewhere near Piccadilly Circus where a waiter with shiny hair wheeled a great chariot of hors d’oeuvre to the side of the table. On a second visit there had been a theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue whose rococo decorations interested Charlotte more than the winsome drama. When the famous actress sauntered on to the stage with an expectant modesty the whole audience applauded, which Charlotte thought was silly. That was almost all she remembered, apart from the names – Cambridge Circus, Oxford Circus, Bakerloo.

  She spent the night of her arrival from Edinburgh in the station hotel, and the next day through her taxi window she saw the undamaged mansions of Harley Street as they sped west along the Euston Road. Caught by a blockage in Sussex Gardens, the driver diverted through the burrows of Paddington, and Charlotte looked up to see what at first she thought was slum clearance. Two of the little terrace houses had been excised from the row; while the bricks and structural supports had been blown out by the blast, tenacious bits of stucco made a tidy proscenium arch. A fireplace and a sofa were suspended intact on the first floor like cut-out scenery in a children’s theatre.

  The driver told her that parts of London were obliterated and parts of it untouched; there seemed to be no reason why the German bombers should have been so vengeful towards Battersea and Chelsea and so lenient on neighbouring Victoria. The taxi pulled up in a small street behind Old Brompton Road; it was an area that was neither safe nor specially targeted, but in any event the bombing of London had, for the time being, come to an end.

  The driver helped Charlotte out with her suitcases and left her looking up the steps to the front door. She felt anxious to get inside. Any misgivings or unassimilated fears she might have felt were buried and sealed with the efficiency of long habit. There were four bells by the front door and she could see a white two-core flex run up from the one named FORESTER over the ledge below the first floor and in through a hole drilled in the front windowsill.

  The window was pushed up in answer to her ring and a young woman’s head poked out.

  ‘Charlotte? I’m on the telephone. Let yourself in and come up to the first floor. Catch!’

  A single key on a piece o
f pink ribbon came spinning down and landed on the step. Charlotte let herself into a dark hallway. There were two bicycles and a pram on the lino floor as well as an old walnut dresser. When she had heaved her suitcases past the obstacles she paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up: a narrow strip of worn orange carpet wound up past a windowed half-landing; she breathed in, expecting the boarding-house smells of cooking, cats and gas geysers, but found it smelled only of hyacinths.

  The door of the first-floor flat was open and Charlotte put her luggage down in the tiny hall. Above a table with a bowl of bulbs and numerous magazines was a small gilt mirror. She unpinned her hat and shook down her hair before replacing the tortoiseshell comb; she could see the young woman who had opened the window waving theatrically to her to come into the sitting room. As Charlotte entered, she put down the receiver and came across the room.

  ‘I’m Daisy. That was Ralph on the phone. I thought I’d never get rid of the little pest. Sorry about the mess. It’s – well, it’s just a mess. Sorry.’

  Charlotte looked around. There was a tea tray on a low table in front of the fireplace; it was laden with crockery she could tell was yesterday’s by the way the milk had separated from the cold leavings of tea. There were newspapers and magazines all over the floor and women’s clothes draped across the various chairs. The room was very cold.

  ‘How was your journey? Bloody awful, I expect. I hate trains, don’t you?’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad. There were two men in my compartment and we had dinner together. The food wasn’t up to much, but—’

  ‘You are a quick worker! Did they ask for your telephone number?’

  ‘No, but one of them gave me his.’

  ‘What a beast! What a horribly ungentlemanly thing to do – to make you do the ringing. Don’t you dare. Was he gorgeous?’ ‘It wasn’t really like that. It was a question of him perhaps being able to help me with a job.’