Every Secret Thing (13 page)

‘Can I just have a Coke with ice?’

‘Of course. Wait here, I’ll get it.’

As she watched him navigate the crush of people on his way toward the bar, she felt again that strange sensation that she’d felt in the apartment, a mingling of guilt and awareness. She watched Ken this way, in a crowd – recognising the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, so she picked him out easily even when all she could see was his back.

It was natural, really, with all of the time she’d been spending with Deacon, that she’d be familiar with how the man walked, but—

‘So you’re Mrs Deacon.’ The voice interrupted her thoughts like the bang of a gavel. She wheeled, and saw no one, until she corrected her angle of vision to take in the man in the wheelchair, beside her. His wheels had slid without a sound across the thick white carpet. Georgie hadn’t heard him coming.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said.

‘You’re not a Brit.’

She didn’t like his tone, but she said anyway, ‘I’m not, no. I’m Canadian.’

‘Thank God for that. I can’t stand Brits. Think they’re better than we are.’ He lifted his glass which, from what her nose told her, held nothing but whiskey, and twisted his mouth with contempt. He was not an attractive man – anvil-jawed and heavy, with a barrel of a chest, and arms that seemed a shade too powerful for someone so confined. ‘Bunch of damned cowards,’ he said, loudly enough to attract the attention of several people standing nearby. One of them, a kind-faced young man, glanced briefly at Georgie’s face and, taking pity on her, joined the conversation.

‘Who’s that, Bill?’ he asked.

‘Brits. They can’t even fight their own war, they need us to come finish it for them.’

Georgie wasn’t a redhead for nothing. Indignant, she felt her jaw set as she told him, ‘I think they’ve been doing all right.’

The man in the wheelchair angled a hard look up at her, as though he hadn’t expected the challenge. ‘Cowards,’ he said, more loudly still. ‘Like that husband of yours. I’d be over there fighting myself, if it wasn’t for this…’ One great hand slammed the arm of his wheelchair. ‘What’s his excuse?’

Georgie’s face flushed with anger on Deacon’s behalf, and she would have said something in his defence if her hostess had not, at that moment, appeared, with a faintly embarrassed look marring her beautiful face. The woman, Sylvia, smiled at Georgie, and her large eyes begged forgiveness. ‘I see you’ve met my husband.’ One diamond-ringed hand rested on the man’s shoulder, not so much a gesture of affection as an attempt at restraint. ‘I’m afraid he’s a man of opinions.’

‘Yes.’ Georgie kept her voice calm for her hostess’s sake. ‘I did notice.’

The young man who had joined the conversation earlier tried once again to intervene to keep the peace by extending his hand in a greeting to Georgie. ‘So you’re Andrew’s wife. Pleased to meet you. I’m—’

‘Carl,’ Deacon said, from behind her right shoulder. ‘Good to see you.’ The two men shook hands. Deacon gave a brief nod to the man in the wheelchair. ‘Bill.’

The other man grunted, but Deacon was no longer looking at him. He’d turned back to the first man. ‘You’ve met Amelia, then. Your drink, darling,’ he said, and handed the cold glass of Coke to her. He wasn’t drinking. Then, ‘Carl’s the chap who’s been doing such a marvellous job of running my gallery.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Carl, with a grin, ‘I expect I’ll be looking for work soon, though, won’t I?’

Deacon felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. ‘Actually, I was hoping to persuade you to stay on a little longer.’ He found the case; offered the cigarettes round. ‘I may be going travelling again.’

It was Sylvia who asked him, ‘Where to this time?’

Georgie took a cigarette and waited to see what he’d give for an answer. He held his lighter up for her and she felt the half-quizzical brush of his gaze as he noticed her
still-heightened
colour, and then with his eyes squarely fixed on her own he replied, ‘I’ve been offered a short-term position in Lisbon.’

Lisbon
, she thought. Her eyes lowered. So he would be flying.

The lighter clicked shut. He went on, in his quiet and casual way, ‘With Ivan Reynolds.’

That impressed those who heard it, and for a minute the talk swirled around the great reclusive millionaire and what he’d done, and what they’d
heard
he’d done, and what he might be like to work for. But Bill, in his wheelchair, ignored all the gossip and looked up at Deacon with open contempt.

‘Lisbon,’ he said, his loud voice breaking through all the others. ‘That’s Portugal, right? They’ve stayed out of the war, haven’t they?’

Deacon said yes, they were neutral.

‘Neutral.’ Bill took a long drink of his whiskey. ‘No chance you’ll get hurt there, then, is there?’

Deacon couldn’t have missed the implied insult, but he just said, very lightly, ‘No. Lucky for me.’ And with that he looked over the crowd and said, ‘Will you excuse us a moment? There’s somebody I want Amelia to meet.’

As he steered her through the crowd he said, quite low, beside her ear, ‘You know, you mustn’t let him bother you. He drinks. I told you earlier.’ Then, as she said nothing, he added, ‘I’m sorry if he was rude to you. I shan’t leave you on your own again, all right?’

And he didn’t. True to the role of a newlywed husband, he stayed close by her side for the rest of their time there. They didn’t stay long, really. Just long enough for the word to get round of his going to Portugal, which seemed to be, Georgie decided, the main purpose of their being there this evening.

‘And will you go, too?’ someone asked her.

She didn’t know what she should say, until Deacon cut in with, ‘Oh, no, she’ll stay here. I shouldn’t be gone all that long, really, and it’s much safer keeping to this side of the Atlantic.’

A woman shook her head. ‘Oh, but you’ll miss her. Won’t you miss her?’

‘Yes, I will,’ he said convincingly. His gaze found hers and fell away. ‘I’ll miss her very much.’

They left soon after that. She wasn’t at all sorry to leave – the room had been more crowded and more noisy and more smoke-filled than she liked, and by comparison the elevator felt quite fresh and spacious. She enjoyed the silence, too, at first. But then she cleared her throat and asked, ‘Why did you tell them? About going to Lisbon, I mean.’

Her words called him out of his own thoughts. He lifted his head. ‘There’s nothing secret about that. They’ll find out soon enough that’s where I am. Ours is a rather small fraternity – news tends to travel quickly. It would seem more suspicious,’ he said, ‘if I went
without
telling them first.’

‘But you didn’t say anything before.’

‘The timing wasn’t set, before.’

‘And now it is?’

‘Yes, well, it all depends—’ he started.

‘On the Clipper.’

‘On the Clipper, yes.’

She interlaced her hands in her soft leather gloves, pushing them more firmly onto her fingers. She didn’t want to think about the Pan Am Clipper. There was a reason, she knew, why the luxury airliner didn’t run scheduled flights on a publicised flight path. These days, any aircraft crossing the Atlantic was a target.

In the quiet pause that followed she could feel that he was watching her. At last he asked her, ‘Are you very tired?’

‘No, not really. Why?’

‘Because it’s early yet.’ His smile was brief, but warm. ‘And I do think that it would be a crime,’ he said, ‘to waste that dress.’

* * *

He took her to the Roosevelt Hotel, down on Madison Ave. She never did learn just how he had managed it – whether he’d made reservations in advance, or whether he’d arranged it somehow in the few telephone calls that he’d placed from the San Remo’s lobby before they had left. She was beginning to believe that one should never underestimate this quiet man, who seemed so very ordinary till one focused carefully and tried to really see him.

She was seeing him tonight, and he looked anything but ordinary.

Not classically handsome, like Kenneth…he’d never be that…and he didn’t have Kenneth’s immediate presence, nor the easy way Ken settled into any social setting. But there was something… Georgie couldn’t put her finger on it, exactly, but there was something about Deacon that attracted her, against her strength of will.

At first, she blamed it on the atmosphere – the lighted tables, intimate; the dancing, and the music of the orchestra – Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, Deacon had pointed out, in case she’d been feeling a little bit homesick. He’d apologised for it not being a more lively jazz club, which he felt she would have preferred, but their BSC bosses had warned them away from such places. Presumably, Georgie thought, because the girls she worked with went to clubs like that, and they might run the risk of being seen.

They weren’t too likely to be spotted at the Roosevelt Hotel. None of her room-mates could afford a night like this, she thought. In the beautiful black beaded dress, sitting here with her very first glass of champagne, she felt like she’d magically stepped into one of the movies she’d watched at the Paramount.

She blamed the champagne, too, for what she was feeling. Not that she was drunk – she’d only had a few small sips – but she found it so much simpler to blame
something
for her new, confused emotions.

Deacon glanced across the table; met her eyes. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing, really.’ She turned her head to watch the couples dancing. ‘I just…’ She couldn’t express it, and so she said, instead, ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this.’

He misunderstood. ‘Perhaps you would rather have stayed at the party?’

Georgie smiled at that. ‘No. I would not.’

‘Oh?’ He seemed intrigued. ‘You didn’t like the company?’

‘I didn’t like the host.’

‘I see.’ He offered her a cigarette, and took one for himself. ‘What did he say to you that made you so upset? Did he insult you?’

His eyes were thoughtful, and concerned, and Georgie knew she’d have to give an answer, or he’d never let it go. She shrugged one shoulder, breathing out a careful stream of smoke. ‘It wasn’t about me, actually.’

‘Oh? What, then?’

‘It was more about you.’

‘About me?’ He seemed faintly surprised.

‘Yes. He implied that you…well, that you weren’t…’

He waited, and she had to put it into words.

‘He said you were a coward.’

‘Ah.’ Tapping ash from his cigarette, Deacon said, ‘Well, most people think that, I’ve told you. I’ve long since stopped letting it bother me.’

Georgie said, ‘It bothered
me
.’

He looked at her. ‘Why did it?’

She could only say, in her defence, that her reaction had been completely in character. ‘It would have bothered any wife, to hear someone say that about her husband.’

‘Yes,’ said Deacon, ‘I suppose it would.’ He looked at her again, and then looked down, his fingers pinching up a small fold of the tablecloth. After a moment he said conversationally, ‘I had rheumatic fever as a boy. I made a good recovery, but it leaves its mark, they say, upon the heart.’ He tapped his cigarette again and watched the ash fall with a hiss into the still-damp ashtray. ‘When Hitler sent his troops into Poland and we declared war, I did try to sign up, but I wasn’t accepted. My heart. Funny thing, really, that they won’t let you go and be killed if they think you’ll drop dead on the way. So they told me no, thank you. But then, one of the Embassy chaps in Brazil made it known he’d be grateful if I’d pass on anything I learnt that might be useful. A lot of fifth columnists, down there. One heard things, you know, on the street. So I kept him informed, as best I could. And that’s how it began,’ he told her. ‘That’s how I came to be here, doing this. Not the same thing, I’ll grant you, as wearing a uniform, but…’ He looked up, with a tight little smile. The pleat that he’d made on the tablecloth was very tidy, very crisp. ‘“They also serve, who only stand and wait,”’ he said.

Georgie wasn’t sure what astonished her more – the fact that he’d made such a long speech, or such a personal one.

‘It isn’t common knowledge,’ he went on. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about the things I do, to anyone.’ He paused, and smoothed the tablecloth again with his thumb, and then he added, very calmly, ‘But I didn’t want you thinking Bill was right.’

She looked at him – the quiet face, his gaze deliberately angled down, away from hers – and as she looked, she felt the weight of words unspoken pull between them, binding them, connecting them as surely as if they’d been holding hands across the table. It took time to find her voice. ‘I never thought he was,’ she said.

He raised his head at that, and met her eyes, and smiled a little. Crushing out the cigarette, he pushed his chair back. ‘Would you like to dance?’

The Royal Canadians had just begun playing a slower song, one that she recognised, one they’d made quite popular a few years back, from
Showboat
. The man who sang the words seemed to be singing straight to her, to them, the lyrics fit so perfectly with how she felt, tonight…

She stood, and took the hand that Deacon offered, and she followed where he led. She hadn’t danced with anyone since coming to New York. She had forgotten how it felt to be held by a man, to feel his hand heavy at her waist, and his fingers round hers, and the warmth of his jaw a hair’s-breadth from her cheek.

Time stopped. They didn’t speak. The room revolved, a swirl of dresses, faces, tables, dotted here and there with lights that seemed to dance, as they were dancing, to the music of the orchestra.

His hand shifted almost imperceptibly at her back, but she felt it and moved with it, letting him draw her in closer. And then his head moved as well, lowering slightly until his cheek rested on hers, and his long, exhaled breath brushed the side of her neck.

It felt so right, she thought…so comfortable, and right. She’d almost lost track of the words of the song but she focused her mind now and listened, not wanting to lose any part of the moment, no longer resisting the surge of emotion.