Gifts of War (25 page)

“Sit down,” Pritchard said. “And Sheila, sit on a chair this time, will you. I want you in my direct line of sight.”

We sat.

“This came in earlier today.” He pointed to a folder on his desk, stenciled
SECRET
. “It’s for my eyes only so you don’t get to see it, I’m afraid, but you can take it from me it’s a drawing. One of our people on the ground observed building going on north of Hamburg, on the right-hand side of the estuary of the river Elbe. She drew what she saw—and sent it to us. The scientists have looked at it. It’s what they call a ‘conning’ tower for a submarine.”

Silence.

“I was wrong. Julian, you were wrong. Hal and Sheila were right. Julian, close the door, will you?”

Julian got up and closed the door, which gave onto the corridor. He sat down again.

“Sheila, you’re transferring downstairs to the Crypt, working on interrogation reports. You too, Julian. It’s time for one of my periodic shake-ups. Hal, you’ll take over the science table. You’ll be a major from here on—but with a new set of sidekicks. The people there now
have been in place longer than you have—they won’t take kindly to you being promoted over their heads. So I’m giving you a new team. You two—” He indicated Sheila and Julian. “Go and get your things, and report back here. Hal, have the rest of the day off. Come in on Monday, and I’ll have moved people around. I’m not being wet… I just don’t want efficiency in my department affected by personal grievances, so do as you’re told—right?”

I nodded. He was entitled to run the show his way.

Sheila gave me a kiss, I shook hands with Julian, and we left in different directions.

It never rains but it pours: have I said that before? What a day it turned out to be (and here I need some of Izzy’s exclamation marks). After I left Northumberland Avenue, I had lunch by myself in a pub just off Trafalgar Square and then decided to walk home. I was in no hurry, the weather could have been worse, and I needed some exercise.

I walked along the Mall, enjoying the trees and the variegated shade they threw onto the pavement. A company of men was marching along by St. James’s Park. They had no weapons or uniforms. They had been called up and formed into units—but the shortages were so bad just then they had to wait weeks for proper equipment.

I was a little light-headed, too, of course. Everyone likes being appreciated, and promotion was both the seal of approval to the work I had been doing and meant a little more money. I didn’t exactly
need
more money from my job, but I wasn’t so foolish as to turn it down, and in any case, without telling Sam I was putting something aside for a certain little boy I was growing fonder of day by day.

Just off Grosvenor Gardens I stopped at a secondhand bookshop and spent the better part of an hour looking over two or three things that appealed to me. Through a doorway, however, I was in for a surprise.
It was a room full of old maps. There were framed maps, rolled maps, books of maps, maps of every age and size. Old maps of the world without Australia, because it hadn’t yet been discovered, with India the size of a postage stamp, with Alaska and Siberia joined. Sam would love it here. I bought her a framed map of the Caribbean islands scattered in improbable places. It would go well with her map of the Orinoco; two maps meant she now had a “collection,” I joked to myself. The shopkeeper wrapped it neatly.

One way and another, therefore, it had gone six by the time I got home.

Everyone else was there already. Will was trying to separate Whisky from his ears in the living room and the women were all standing in the kitchen, talking and drinking tea. I went into the dining room and left the package by the front door. Sam heard me pouring myself a drink—something she liked to do for me normally—and came through. She gave me a kiss. “How was your day?”

“I was promoted, to major.”

“You
were?
Oh, Hal, that’s marvelous. Well done.” Another kiss on the cheek.

“One for you?” I said, holding up the whisky bottle.

“Not just—” she began, but at that very moment there was a rap on the front door.

“I’ll go,” I said. “I’m nearest.”

It was the postman. He was holding a small brown envelope in his hand.

I signed for it, took it from him, stepped back, and closed the door.

Faye and Lottie had come out from the kitchen and were standing over Will in the living room. Sam was with them. The dog had disappeared.

I held out the envelope to Faye. “It’s a telegram. It’s for you.”

Everyone stopped breathing. Lottie let out a soft scream:
“No!”

My arm was still outstretched.

Sam breathed, “Do you want Hal to—?”

Faye stepped forward and took the envelope from me. As she did so, I noticed that—once again—she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. She gripped the envelope in her fingers, crumpled it up, and stepped across to the window. With her back to us, she fumbled with the envelope, ripped it open, and took out whatever was inside.

For a moment no one moved. Not even Will. The rest of us stared at Faye’s back, now hunched over, as she reread the paper in her hands.

Then her frame began to shake, slightly at first, but with gathering force, and she threw back her head—and screamed at the ceiling.

“Nooooo!”

Sam and Lottie rushed toward her, but before they could reach her she had turned.

“Noooooo!”

Tears were streaming down her face; lines of smudged mascara covered her cheeks, making her look as though she’d just climbed out of a mine.

“He’s dead! DEAD!” she screamed, webs of spittle forming at the corners of her mouth.

Lottie and Sam moved her to the sofa. I went through into the dining room and poured a large whisky into a glass, which I took back to her.

She was still sobbing, her frame heaving, tears tumbling down her cheeks.

Sam handed me the telegram she had taken from her sister. It was brusque:

Faye gripped the whisky but didn’t drink it. She simply stared at the carpet in front of her, rubbing her eyes with the ball of her hand. Lottie gave her a handkerchief for her runny nose.

After a few minutes, the sobbing subsided and I said, as gently as I could, “Would you like some water instead?”

Silently, she shook her head. She hadn’t really heard me.

Then she said, “Where’s the telegram?”

“On the sofa beside you,” whispered Lottie.

I had replaced it there.

Faye took it and held it close. She read it again, and burst into tears again.

Sam picked up Will and carried him through into his room, shutting the door behind her.

Lottie and I waited for Faye to quiet down again. Lottie sat next to her, rubbing Faye’s shoulder. I sat across from the fireplace, sipping my whisky.

Eventually, Sam reappeared and made a drinking movement with her hand. I went through to the dining room and poured her a Scotch. Then she sat on my lap and we waited.

Nothing much happened that night. After about another fifteen minutes, Faye got up and went into her room. We heard her crying again, but then she fell silent and we assumed she had gone to sleep.

The rest of us went to bed early and in silence.

In our room I silently handed Sam the package I had retrieved from near the front door.

“For me?” she whispered.

“To celebrate my promotion. I couldn’t know what was going to happen the minute I arrived home.”

She unwrapped the package.

“Oh, Hal,” she said quietly. “It’s lovely—a lovely idea.” She stepped
across the room and we embraced. We kissed but not… not ardently. She drew back and whispered, “Sorry, it’s not—”

“I know,” I said, putting my thumb to her lips. “It’s not the moment. I couldn’t know. Don’t worry.”

Sam shook her head. “You were wounded, Tony’s been killed. Three children didn’t come to school today—they stayed home with their mother because their father, away at the Front, has been killed.” She touched my cheek with her fingertips. “How many men are going to be left, when this war is over?”

It was not immediately clear who she was thinking of…

“Our father liked the Caribbean,” said Sam, placing her hand flat on the map. “He went there a few times.” She sighed. “In fact, he liked it so much he changed the company he worked for, to one that only had ships going to the Caribbean.”

She leaned over and kissed me.

As we settled into bed and I put out the light, she murmured, “That was a lovely thought, Hal. The map, I mean. It brought back a lot for me.”

She turned and kissed my shoulder. “And don’t worry, tonight’s not… not the time. But I’ll make it up to you.”

The next day was a Saturday and Sam, Lottie, and I were at the breakfast table when Faye appeared. Her hair was disheveled, she hadn’t washed the smudged mascara off her face, and she looked wrecked.

Will was again wrestling with the dog in the living room.

Faye sat down at the kitchen table without speaking, and Sam poured her tea in the way that she knew Faye liked it—strong and sweet.

“Toast?”

Faye shook her head. She sipped her tea.

Lottie leaned forward. “Don’t take it so hard, Faye. There’s always Cyril.”

“Lottie!” whispered Sam urgently, but it was too late.

Faye jerked back, dropping her tea, which went everywhere.

“What do you know about anything, Lottie!” Faye shouted, getting to her feet, scraping the chair back and knocking it over. “How many men have you ever had, you sour-faced stage hag. Look at you! No job, no man, no brains—and no fucking hope in any direction.”

“Not so loud, Faye,” said Sam, softly but urgently. “Will might hear.”

“Not in front of the little Fritz, you mean? The little sauer-fucking-kraut.” Faye pointed her finger at Sam. “It was the fucking Germans who killed Tony. It was the fucking Germans who started this war and forced us to live like… like
this
.” She slapped the kitchen table. She pointed at Sam again. “How could you, Sam—fuck a German, I mean? How could you
sleep
with the enemy?”

“Faye,” I said, stepping forward.

“Don’t you interfere, Hal. This is not your fight. This is not your family.”

“Faye!” screamed Sam. “Take that back!”

“I’ll take nothing back,” growled Faye. She pointed to me. “He’s not Will’s father, he’s not your husband.” She glared at Sam. “Just because you’ve got yourself a war hero, Head Girl, a baby and a flat in Chelsea, you think you’ve got it made. How long do you think you can get away with it—eh? The boy’s a German, a Kraut, a Fritz, a fucking
Kaiserkind
, and once the world knows, where do you think you’ll be, Madame Mont-bloody-gomery. I’ll tell you where you’ll be. You’ll be—”

And she burst out crying and collapsed against the kitchen wall.

Sam and Lottie went to her and shepherded her back to her room.

When they reappeared, Sam came up to me and kissed my cheek. “I am
so
sorry, Hal. You shouldn’t have been put through that.”

“I think she may have picked up some anti-German feeling from Cyril,” I muttered. “And some of his aggression.”

I’ll make sure she leaves today, said Sam, kissing me again. “Tomorrow at the latest.”

I nodded. I didn’t like Faye leaving under those circumstances, but at least it meant I didn’t have to see the odious Cyril ever again.

The waiter shuffled across the lunchroom and leaned on the table when he reached us, breathing heavily and seemingly exhausted. He picked up the pad, on which my father had written our orders, and wheezed, “I’ll send the wine waiter, sir.” Then he launched himself on the long way back to the kitchen.

I had never liked the Athenaeum, bang in the center of clubland, in St. James’s, wedged between Pall Mall and the Duke of York steps. I hadn’t joined many clubs at Cambridge and when my father had asked if he should put my name down for his club, I had said no. I was developing a noisy home life, people came and went all the time, and the flat had now been christened, among our friends—and Sam’s sisters and their friends—“Gare Montgomery.” It was very different from my upbringing, but I loved it. What did I need a club for?

But with my job in the War Ministry, just off Trafalgar Square in Northumberland Avenue, the Athenaeum was a short walk from the office and it made good sense to meet my father there. He was spending one night in London.

My father was a brandy-and-soda man. He didn’t drink to excess, exactly, but he thought nothing of a couple of brandies at lunchtime (and quite a few more in the evening). He rarely drank wine, so when
the wine waiter arrived my father briskly ordered his “usual,” which the wine waiter was expected to remember, and did; then he looked at me. I chose a small carafe of the house claret, barely more than a glass.

“Let me look at you,” my father said, as the wine waiter retreated. “Your mother asked me to check on your weight, the shine of your skin and hair. She’s worried you aren’t eating properly. She wants to know if you’ve got a girlfriend yet.”

I put out my tongue and held out my hands, palms down. I said, sarcastically, “Tongue clear, fingernails shiny, all vital signs good.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. “And the other thing, the girlfriend?”

“That’s complicated, Dad. Why don’t you tell me about Ma? Izzy told me she’s not as good as she might be.”

The drinks arrived. The waiter placed my father’s brandy and soda in front of him and tipped half the contents of the carafe into a glass.

“Your mother is not well, Hal. That’s true. Not at all well. Emphysema, it’s called. In effect, because she smokes so much, her lungs are impaired—they’re only about seventy or eighty percent efficient. That means she has to breathe two or three times as hard as you and me to get enough oxygen into her blood, and that puts pressure on her heart. She has this dreadful cough, which doesn’t improve her mood—and as you know, her mood is not all that sunny at the best of times.” He drank some of his brandy. “This damned war doesn’t help, of course. She takes the stupidity of the military so personally.” He helped himself to some bread from a small basket between us. “Speaking of which, tell me about this job of yours.”