Gifts of War (48 page)

“More tea?” said the young nurse, but just then the doctor appeared.

He came up to us. “You are the mother?” he said to Sam.

“Yes.”

“What’s the boy’s name?”

“Will.”

He softened his tone. “Well, Will’s going to be fine, ma’am. Not immediately, not for a few days. He’s in shock and he’s going to be a bit weak. But you were fortunate that the accident happened where it did, near a hospital. And your quick thinking saved his life. I’ve given him a junior sedative and he’s asleep. Just help the nurse with the paperwork and you can go and sit with him.”

He looked at me. “Lucky you knew about this new blood transfusion business, sir, and that you are O. And lucky that the Lister is one of those hospitals involved in the initiative you mentioned. You are quite certain that you are O?”

“That’s what the medics told me.”

He nodded. “You’re the boy’s father—yes?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” said Sam at the same time.

One evening in August I came home from the office and, as I was approaching the flat, I saw a figure rise from the bench in the small patch of green between the buildings and the river. The outline of the figure—small—was familiar and I had no difficulty recognizing who it was.

“Lottie!”

“Don’t worry, Hal, I’m not going to scratch your eyes out.”

I smiled. “This is like a film rerun. The first time I saw you, you were sitting on that very bench, when we first found the flat.”

She nodded. “I remember. But I’m only here because Sam won’t let me in—don’t worry, I don’t blame her.”

“Really? So why
are
you here?”

“Reg was shot today.”

“Lottie, I’m sorry—”

“No, no, Hal, I didn’t come for sympathy. I came to apologize.”

I looked at her.

“There was a court martial, as you said there would be. I wasn’t allowed to go because Reg and I weren’t married, but one or two of his friends gave evidence, and through them I found out who shopped him, the bastard who gave him away.”

I still said nothing.

“It was Greville.”

It took me a while to realize that this was Ruth’s man, the secretive security type whom I had last met at their engagement party at Ruth’s factory.

“Lottie,” I whispered. “How terrible. I am so very sorry.”

“Just kiss me, Hal. On the cheek, I mean. To show that you forgive me. This war, this bloody war, has divided family against family.”

I kissed her cheek. “Does this mean you’re coming back to live with us?”

“No, Hal. I loved it while it lasted. You are a good man, and you helped save me. But I’m back in the theater now, where I truly belong. Make-believe all day, every day. I’ll get by. We are—or were—one family, Hal, four sisters, and look what has happened to us. You have forgiven me, but how much forgiving is there still to do? Will we ever get over it? Good-bye Hal.”

I turned away.

“You’re with the wrong Ross, you know.”

I turned back. “What? What did you say?”

She stood next to the bench. She hadn’t moved. “You never saw it, did you? You only had eyes for Sam.”

“I don’t—”

“She doesn’t love you, Hal. There’ll always be that bloody German in the way. But I… I… remember that day in the bathroom, the day you were ill… I didn’t follow up … I’ve always wanted you.”

“Lottie!”

“I never showed it, not after that. No. I was a guest—and I could see how… how far gone you were over Sam. But I know her, Hal, better than you do. Be careful. She likes you, she likes what you can do for her. But does she love you—?”

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop. Don’t say any more. Please. We had an agreement. Whatever you think you know, keep it to yourself. I’m sorry for what happened to Reg, but don’t spoil our life, Lottie. Please go. Don’t say any more.”

I held up my hand, my fingers outspread. “Please!”

She nodded, turned on her heel, and walked away.

When I reached the flat, Sam was beside herself with rage.

“I saw you! I
saw
you! I watched everything. You kissed her! You forgave her, didn’t you?”

“Yes … yes, I did. Was that wrong?”

“Forgiveness comes easy, for you, does it? You heard what Lottie had to say about Will’s parentage when she left? It was no better than Faye’s insults all those months ago. How do you think that makes me feel? I can’t forgive her. Nor can I forgive Ruth.”

“For what?”

“For letting you take the blame when it was Greville all along who
shopped Reg. They just… they just sat back and let you take everything. That’s so … wait till I see Ruth tomorrow. She’ll think Hindenburg’s a marshmallow compared to me.”

“Sam, listen. Do you think you should take on Ruth? Do you think you should fall out with
all
your sisters?”

She came up to me then and took my hand and kissed it. “Sometimes I don’t think you know me at all, Hal. Remember that early morning at Middle Hill station? I gave up everything then, to go with you to London that very day.” She squeezed my hand. “That wasn’t done without a lot of thinking, and it wasn’t done lightly. I’m a deliberate person, Hal, you must have seen that. And I have never regretted my decision.
Never
. Do you understand? I have always known what I have to do. Ruth hid. Ruth let Lottie think it was you who betrayed Reg. That is unforgivable.”

I pointed out of the window. “Down there, Lottie was lamenting how war divided family against family. You don’t have to do this.” I was confused. Did I believe Lottie, the unkind and unpleasant things she said? Was it true, or had her grief made her spiteful, jealous of her sister? Did I believe Sam?

“What does Lottie know? Yes, I do have to do this, Hal. I’m yours now,
yours
. We have
our
family. The three of us and your parents … and the dogs, of course.” She grinned. “That’s our family now. You saved Will’s life, Hal. You’re his father. We can’t go back. He even has your mannerisms. He loves shiny shoes and puts his jaw to one side when he’s irritated—have you noticed?”

She paused, and then added gently, “I’ve let Wilhelm go, Hal. Seeing you and Will in the bath together, with all that shoe polish as war paint, the blood thing in the Lister Hospital—that’s what childhoods are made of. You know, I actually think Will loves you more than he loves me. Maybe that’s natural—you are a man, after all. And Ruth put all that at risk. I can’t have that.”

She put her hand on my arm. “I tell you—Ruth won’t know what’s hit her tomorrow Poison gas is too good for her!”

About a week later, I was sitting in my office working on my “Cost of a Death” report, as it had come to be called. I have to admit, Sam had been right. It was alarming how much wealth goes out of a country in a war, in terms of lost careers. The real problem we had, in making the overall calculation, was the remarriage rate. Normally, in Britain at least, before the war, most women who were divorced—and it wasn’t that many—remarried sooner or later, and their prospects, having taken a dip, picked up again. But, of course, circumstances are now very different. How many women will be able to remarry when—
for a time at least, for a generation anyway—there will be so few men available? As Izzy had reminded me, it is sobering just to think about it.

While I was working on the problem that day, Nadia, my assistant, poked her head around the door. “The brigadier wants to see you. He says can you come through now.”

I frowned to myself. This was a shade on the brusque side. Normally, the brigadier was politeness itself.

I went through.

He was seated in his usual easy chair and he had someone with him. Malahyde introduced him as a Colonel Roland Moore.

“Colonel Moore is from one of our secret security outfits. I know which one but you don’t need to. I want you to listen to what he has to say. It appears you may have broken the Official Secrets Act.”

He said this as I was lowering myself onto his sofa. I allowed my frame to slump the last few inches. This was a shock.

Moore came straight to the point. “Our understanding is that you shared information with your wife that you should not have done. And that your wife has had a child with a German national.”

Naturally, they were both gazing intently in my direction.

“Am I allowed to know who made these statements?”

Moore ignored the substance of my question. “I notice you say ‘statements,’ not ‘allegations.’”

“You’re splitting hairs.”

“Answer the question.”

“My wife, as you call her, is not married to me, though we have lived together since 1915. She was made pregnant by a German teacher in July 1914, in Stratford-upon-Avon, and he went back to Germany before war broke out. He hasn’t been heard of since. He doesn’t know he has a son. I may have mentioned one or two things to
her, in the course of the past three years, but nothing that could be compromising or helpful to anyone else.”

“Hmm. We’ll have to see about that. Did your … lover tell you about the German?”

“Yes, of her own free will.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No,” I lied. “He had gone back to Germany more than a year before I met Sam—my lover, as you call her.”

“Why did you take her on, so to speak?”

“I fell in love with her. I can’t have children, because of a war wound, and she had a child without a father. It was convenient on her part, love on mine.”

“You didn’t do this out of sympathy with the German?”

“Of course not. I’m not a rabid nationalist but I know where my interests lie. What information am I supposed to have given away?”

“It is claimed that you gave away the identity of a German spy here in London, a certain Genevieve Afton, and that you told your wife and her sister before you told your superiors in the ministry.”

“That’s true,” I said. I explained what had happened that night, how I had been tired and shocked by what I had overheard, that my domestic relations had been important to me, and that in a moment of weakness I had described my evening. “But it was something that my wife’s sister—let’s call her my wife, for convenience—it was something that my wife’s sister had said that drew my attention to the spy in the first place. Without my wife’s sister pointing out something about the spy’s father, something that didn’t agree with what Genevieve Afton claimed in the office, I would not have spotted that she was a traitor in the first place.”

I took out a handkerchief and wiped my lips.

“Also, I know who gave you this information. He is Greville
Muirhead and he is the fi
ancé
of my wife’s other sister Ruth. The sisters fell out last week and had a flaming argument, because Greville shopped her sister’s lover who had deserted—”

“Yes, I was coming to that. Apparently you knew this man was in London but did nothing about it.”

“Because I never imagined he had deserted! Even when the brigadier here told me he thought that this man’s regiment was still at the Front, I didn’t put two and two together. What’s more, why is Muirhead coming forward? Not really out of a concern for security, but because of a domestic row between his fiancée and my wife, her sister, that’s why. Genevieve Afton was shot for treason months ago. Yes, I shouldn’t have told my wife what I did tell her, but it hasn’t affected anything.”