Gifts of War (26 page)

I told him what I could. That is, I told him I was in intelligence analysis, that I worked on a science team. I didn’t tell him that all I did was study out-of-date German newspapers and try to read between the lines; nor did I tell him any specifics about the ideas I’d had. I told him I’d signed the Official Secrets Act.

He listened intently. “Sounds like useful work,” he said, once I had finished. “And safe. There’s something in that, I suppose.”

“Why are you here, Dad? In London, I mean.”

“Well, the official reason I’m here is because—and this is confidential—I have been asked to be one of the editors of the official history of the war. Because of my publishing experience, because I’m now retired, because I can afford to do it without payment, because I know someone in the relevant ministry who trusts me.”

I sat back as the soup arrived. It had a brown intensity that would not have been out of place at the Ag.

“I’m impressed, Dad. Well done. But what happens if we lose the war?”

“We
can’t
lose,” he whispered. “Don’t talk like that.” He looked around the room, hoping that no one else had overheard what he took as my defeatism.

I changed the subject again. “If that’s the official reason you’re here, what’s the secret reason?”

He spooned soup into his mouth, then wiped his lips with his napkin, nodding.

“Your mother, of course. We need another opinion on her emphysema, but it has to be someone who is willing to come down to Edgewater. You know I can’t get your mother up to London.”

The soup plates were taken away and the main courses placed in front of us. Chicken, which—apart from fish—was virtually all there was in those days.

“You’re worried, Dad. I can tell. Is there anything I can do?”

“I
am
worried, yes. Your mother doesn’t say much but of course I know her very well and she’s fearful—fearful and angry—for Izzy mainly. Your mother loathes this war, as you know. She feels that it has already… well, taken part of you away, an important part. Grand-children,
for instance. And it might still kill Izzy. I don’t think she could survive that.”

“What news of Izzy?”

My father’s features softened. “Doesn’t your sister write good letters, Hal? They’re slightly naïve, though like a lot of naïve people she tries hard to be worldly. But they are
so
vivid—she’s got a real gift, I think. Her naïveté is part of their force.”

Halfway through my chicken, I nodded. “We should keep them. You never know, after the war,
Letters from a Nurse
. People will want to read that sort of stuff.”

He drank more brandy. “She sent us one letter the other day, in which she described a conversation she had overheard between two young soldiers who had been blinded by shrapnel. One had no wish to live. He did not want decades of life without being able to see, he said, and planned to kill himself. She understood that point of view, she said, she understood it very well. But the other man—a boy, really—was much calmer. He said he’d have to develop his sense of hearing and his sense of touch, that he would imagine, from then onward, that all women were beautiful. He looked forward to the sound of rain, to feeling sunshine on his cheek, to learning the different songs of birds. Once you thought about it, he said, there was a lot you could do, being blind.

“But here’s the point.” Father forked chicken into his mouth and chewed for a moment. “Here’s the point. She got it wrong. The man who
seemed
calm was, in reality, just as depressed as the other man. But while the ‘depressive’—let’s call him that—was put on suicide watch, the other man was given back his uniform, including his pistol, for the journey away from the field hospital, back to Britain. The powers that be thought he was perfect hero material, stoically bearing his misfortune with placid fortitude and good humor.”

Father paused for effect.

“First chance he got, he shot himself The other man—the ‘depressive’—was never allowed near weapons and his ‘cheerful’ colleague knew that, grasped it from the beginning. He knew he had to put on a show; otherwise he would have been isolated from the means to kill himself.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard stories like this from Izzy.

My father shook his head. “Izzy wrote all this with a sense of wonder, at what we are doing to each other, to ourselves, how people can be creative and cunning to the end, how we differ and yet are all the same, how willing we are to be misled by the poetics of the war, of death, of the impossibility of escape from the horror.” He wiped his lips with his napkin. “Of course I’m keeping her letters. Don’t tell her, though; if she gets wind that we think she’s worth publishing, she’ll change, and we’ll make her self-conscious and kill her spirit. It’s her unselfconsciousness that is so attractive. We don’t want to give her any complexes—not where she is, on the edge of danger.”

He had finished—wolfed—his chicken. He placed his knife and fork together and wrapped his fingers around his brandy glass. “Speaking of complexes, or complicated situations, it’s your turn. No ducking now. What are your living arrangements? Are you living with someone?”

I told him. I told him about Sam, about Will, about Lottie and Faye, about Whisky. I said that Sam had lost touch with Will’s father, who was at the Front. I didn’t say who Will’s father was, what his nationality was, and I didn’t say anything about Faye’s bereavement and outburst.

He heard me out in silence. When I had finished, he moved his jaw to one side and said, “So it’s as we thought. You
are
living in sin.” He shook his head. “You are pretending to be married with someone whose man could come back at any time and reclaim what’s his. Forget for the moment whether what you are doing is
right
, is moral. Is it
wise?
Do you love this woman? If you do, you could get very hurt.” He shook his head again. “It’s messy emotionally, Hal. And it’s—well, it’s hardly tidy, or clean, morally, is it?”

He looked at me for quite some time without either of us speaking. “Did your mother and I do something wrong, make some terrible mistake, bringing you up? I’m shocked and I’m disappointed. To be quite frank, Hal, I’m appalled—I can’t deny it. I
won’t
deny it. It’s not at all what your mother and I had in mind for you.”

His features were set in an icy glare.

“But I’m content, Dad. Happy. Very happy.” In for a penny, in for a pound—I banged on, defending myself, making my own case. “It makes a kind of biological sense, too—you can see that, can’t you? I don’t think you should tell Ma, though. She sounds as though she’s got enough to worry about, without a little bastard in the family.”

He winced at my use of that word and nodded glumly. “At least you’re not lonely. We were worried, both of us, that you would be … well, solitary in London.”

I grinned. “No chance of that. The job is hard—long hours, anyway—and Sam has three sisters. There are always people coming and going at the flat—it’s known as Gare Montgomery.”

He almost smiled.

I think he was in part relieved that I hadn’t become some sort of freak because of my sexual predicament, and in part disappointed, too, that I hadn’t met a girl from a “good” family. Had Sam been a university lecturer, say, rather than a schoolteacher, he would have been far happier.

“I won’t tell your mother just yet,” he said. “You’re right about that. Let’s see what this other doctor has to say and we’ll go on from there.”

I nodded. Though they had been distant, I had always got on with my parents, and I wanted their good opinion.

But I wanted Sam more.

With Faye gone, the flat was a good bit quieter, emptier, less unpredictable than it had been. I thought I’d be pleased—and I
was
pleased that the odious Cyril was out of our lives—but I found that, if I didn’t so much miss Faye herself, and her tempers, I did miss the extra level of busyness, of noise, bustle, and, yes, chaos that she had brought with her. Since she had been gone, Penrith Mansions was a little less of a railway station.

Sam felt differently. The arguments and shouting matches about Will’s paternity had upset and wearied her, mainly because, I think, she realized that it would always be an issue among those who knew. Lottie never said anything, at least not to me, but she offered herself more often than usual for babysitting duty. On those evenings she still avidly buried herself in her books and magazines on the weddings and parties and affairs of the aristocracy. In my presence she never behaved as if Will were anything other than 100 percent British.

A few days after Faye had left, however, Sam tackled me. It was a Saturday, early evening, and the three of us—Sam, Will, and me— were visiting a fair in Battersea Park. There were about three of these fairs a year and we all loved going. They were, truth to tell, a bit tacky but they were a change from our normal routine, and Will—especially, naturally—was entranced by the bright lights, the music, the smells of candy floss, fried food, and the sheer exoticism of the occasion.

I had to keep my eyes open for him. He was as curious—as brave—as ever. If he could, he would walk—stumble—right up to machinery and peer in, oblivious to danger, poking his fingers where they shouldn’t be poked, grabbing chains that shouldn’t be grabbed, gurgling away triumphantly when we dragged him out of danger. He knew he’d gone too far and got away with it.

Halfway through the evening—it must have been eight-thirty, long
past Will’s bedtime (as he well knew, but kept very quiet about)—I bought him some candy floss. We were both standing there, our cheeks covered in laces of colored spun sugar, when Sam suddenly whispered, so that Will couldn’t hear, “We’ve never really talked about it, have we—Will’s father being German, I mean? Except that first day, in the rain, in Middle Hill. You didn’t even say much when we had to walk through those placards outside the Bechstein Hall. Do
you
think I was wrong to do what I did?”

Faye’s outburst was preying on her mind.

It wasn’t easy replying, with so much sugar lace in my mouth, but I was grateful for it as a delaying device. This was not a subject I wanted to discuss. I made a show of chewing and swallowing.

“Sam, please. After your sisters, I am the first person you told about Wilhelm. Did I let it stand in the way then? Don’t make yourself all… all upset about it. Have some candy floss.”

But she wouldn’t let it drop. She picked up Will.

“Why can’t Faye see that it happened
before
the war. Wilhelm wasn’t the enemy
then!
I mean, it couldn’t have happened after war broke out. He had a brother and always wanted a sister, just as we sisters always wondered what having a brother would have been like. He said he was very competitive with his brother, whereas competition, although it was there, was always muted between us sisters. At school Wilhelm’s brother got better marks, but Wilhelm was better at sport. Faye couldn’t see—wouldn’t see,
nobody can
see—that Germans are
just like us
.” She made a sound, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “I hate it that she’s gone and… well, that we’ve lost touch.” She bit her lip. “But what she said to you was unforgivable and ungrateful.”

“Well, she
has
gone,” I said. “And taken the awful Cyril with her. Look on the positive side.”

Sam wouldn’t be comforted. “They can tell other people. That would be …”

“Who are you worried about?”

“Well, Hal, you work in a sensitive job.”

I stepped forward and kissed her cheek, even though we were in public, even though my lips were sticky with candy floss. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” I whispered, “but I think I’ve done enough in my job to prove my worth, to show I’m not a spy or a German sympathizer or anything like that. But this is silly, Sam. The people I work with wouldn’t care, if they knew. The people I work with are rationalists.”

“Well, the people
I
work with are not!”

I was stunned.

She turned and started walking back in the direction of the flat. But the crowds were thick—it was Saturday night, after all—and I soon caught up with her.

“What is it?” I said. “What’s happened at school?”

She bit her lip again. “Nothing. Nothing really. It’s just that— well, one day last week, in the staff room, some of the other teachers were talking and one woman said that a child in her class had just had his father killed, at the Front, with her mother pregnant. She said that the child’s family didn’t know how they were going to survive—they were a family of three children, soon to be four, with no breadwinner now. That started everybody off. Oh, Hal, everyone was so anti-German, so vitriolic.”

She put Will back on the ground and held his hand as we fought our way through the evening crowds. “I met Wilhelm at a fair like this—just like this,” she said, straightening up. “We were standing next to each other, shooting pellets at something, and we got talking, laughing at how hopeless we were. It was the most natural thing in the world—or that’s how it seemed then. Now,” she sighed, “it’s beginning to be a burden, the most unnatural thing I’ve ever done, falling in love. I know that the teachers at school… if they were told the truth … I’d be shunned, and out of a job in no time.”