The Other Side of Love (46 page)

She set the painted box at the foot of the cot.

“Some day, when you’re old enough to understand,”

she said softly to the sleeping toddler, Til explain about the other things.”

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i

The Vergeltungswaffe Zwei, reprisal weapon number 2, was far more advanced than the VI, or doodlebug. The dreaded V2s were fortyseven-foot-long rockets with a one-ton warhead. They travelled far faster than the speed of sound. No air-raid sirens announced their coming. They could not be heard. On 8 September the first silent predator rushed down on London, burying itself deep in the ground. The ensuing explosion reverberated like an earthquake, and people for miles around were convinced that an ammunition factory had exploded. From then on Londoners lived with the fact that there was no escape from the soundless death that could sweep down on them at any time.

Darling Aubrey,

I can’t write any of this to Wyatt - it would be hard on his morale but I can tell you. Here in London all anyone talks about is this new brand of pilotless aeroplane-bomb. The V2s, as we call them, petrify a lot of people. Myself, I prefer them to our old chums the doodlebugs, which made such a racket then cut off so you had a heartattack waiting to see if they’d land on top of you. With the V2s there’s no point whatsoever in sleeping in a shelter. Daddy of course argues with this vehemently. On the nights I’m in London, he always says,

“Better safe than sorry,”

and tries to drag me down to the basement. Poor sweetie, he’s

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never caught on that with these new-type missiles one can be both safe and sorry.

Mother - whisper the words - has once again STOPPED DRINKING!

That’s all from the home front. I must be off to the Rainbow Club. (In my opinion, we could force the entire Axis to surrender if there were some way to broadcast continuously and loudly the Bing Crosby version of

“White Christmas’.)

The truth is, I don’t want to write any more. Aubrey, I’ve been feeling a bit mopey. Have you heard from Wyatt? He’s been transferred. I suspect he’s in the thick of this awful Belgian fighting. I couldn’t bear losing a second man to the war.

You’ll hear from me sooner this time, I swear it.

God bless, and, in the immortal words of the denizens of the Rainbow Club,

“Hubba hubba’.

“The thing that’s driving me nuts’, said the very young, chubby-faced Army Air Force navigator with his left arm in a sling,

“is that you English chicks are so gorgeous.”

“We are a smashing lot, aren’t we?”

Araminta responded.

They were in the foyer of the American Red Cross’s Rainbow Club in Piccadilly. It was the second week of December 1944. Between the brightly decorated tables, a stout fir tree was lavished with ornaments, tinsel and multicoloured lights. In the Back Room, floodlights beamed jewelled tones on the gyrwhg, bouncing GIs and their English partners.

“The problem is, the best numbers are hitched.”

“That puts me right in the top flight. My husband’s with Patton’s Third Army.”

“In Belgium? You’re married to an American? Did you meet him here at the Rainbow Club?”

“I’ve known him all my life. He’s my cousin.”

|Now, that’s luck. My cousins had to go be German.”

“We have a German cousin, too.”

|No sh No kidding?”

“She lives in Berlin.”

Not much left of her home-town.”

He leaned closer, taking a long gulp of his Christmas eggnog.

“My grandfather came from Essen, and it sure gives me a creepy feeling to think soon I might be blowing the bejesus out of some Nazi pervert with my name and face. It’s something I don’t usually talk about.”

When we were children, Katy spent her summer holidays with us.

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And two summers before the war we went to New York together, to see our other cousin.”

“The one you married?”

“Yes …” But he was in love with her then, not with me.

“Probably spying on us even in them days,”

“Katy? She turns heliotrope ,every time she tells a lie. Not very good spy material.”

“They showed us a training film about the Germans. From when they’re little kids, they’re indoctrinated to kill for Der Fewrer.”

“Actually, she’s rather sweet and dreamy. Stubbornly honourable.”

“Take it from me, they’re all indoctrinated. My cousin, your cousin, the kit and caboodle of

“em would just as soon slip a knife in our ribs as not.”

Looking away from her, he raised his good hand to finger away the eggnog that curved over his lips like a child’s milk moustache. Araminta peered short-sightedly at the arrow signs on the wall.

“Berlin - 600 miles.”

‘New York - 3,271 miles.”

They were both embarrassed, he by his relationship to the enemy, she by his naively unshakeable belief in propaganda. Above the roar of voices and clinking Coca-Cola bottles rose the brassy notes of a trio playing boogie woogie in the Back Room.

“Care to dance?”

the boy asked, then blushed.

“I haven’t tried cutting a rug one-handed.”

“No time like the present,”

said Araminta, who had danced with enough wounded and drunk GIs to accommodate herself to every variation.

The Monico and the adjacent Lyons had been commandeered for the Rainbow Club: Araminta emerged on to the bitter cold of Shaftesbury Avenue. With the pilotless rockets, the blackout had been changed to a dim-out. The blue headlights showed mobs of servicemen, some of them drunk enough to stumble into the gutters. Curses rang in various languages and accents. As Araminta moved through the crowd, she caught a whiff of heavy scent, a glimpse of yellow light: a giggling whore was aiming a flashlight in the faces of a group of Free French sailors.

Araminta walked swiftly up Piccadilly. Here, slurred American voices sang:

This is number three And his hand is on my knee. < Roll me over, lay me down And do it again.

White helmets, white belts and white gaiters of a pair of American

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MPs jumped out like ectoplasm. Turning into Sackville Street to wend her way to the flat, Araminta left the crowd behind her. The moon had risen, but the skyscape was disappointing. The great silver barrage-balloons that had floated so gracefully above the chimney-tops were gone - with the advent of the Vis and V2s, the balloons had been moved to Surrey and parts of Kent.

Katy, Araminta thought, hugging her coat tighter around her. Why did I tell the boy about her? I suppose because he had a German cousin and I thought he could understand. Is he right? Is she a staunch Nazi now? Wyatt thinks so. For all I know, she’s dead.

Araminta shivered. In wartime, thinking of death is an ill omen. Kathe dead? Kathe with the tender smile and film-star hair? Kathe who had sailed home with her when Euan had his heartattack? Kathe, whom Wyatt had loved? Araminta stumbled down the kerb, regaining her balance. Serves me right, she thought. Did Wyatt have these jealous flashes about Peter?

As she thought of Peter, she felt a great rushing in the air around her, as if a huge winged creature had swooped down. In that swift instant of explosion, the electrical impulses of her brain had one final surge.

Out of the darkness stepped a shortish, exceedingly handsome man.

“So there you are, darling,”

he said.

“Peter,”

she cried happily.

Tve been looking everywhere for you.”

“They said you were killed in action.”

“What matters is we’re together,”

he said, squeezing her hand.

“It’s so marvellous, darling.”

“We won’t be separated again,”

he sai

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The freezing pre-dawn gale rushed down from the Arctic Circle to”

wrap around CI4 headquarters, a vast isolated Scottish hunting-lodge that had been built by a coal baron. Draughts prowled through the stone dining-hall which now served as a communal office. Aubrey, however, was as oblivious to the chill as to the ranks of empty desks beyond the sharp circle of light from his crook-necked lamp. The tendons of his freckled hands stood out as his fingers danced across the typewriter keys. The previous day he had once again returned from Germany, and the small stack of sheets to his left dealt with the damage inflicted on industry by round-the-clock Allied bombings of the Ruhr. There were no carbons. Everything he wrote tonight was for the eyes of the Prime Minister alone. He pulled out his summation, glancing at the capitalized heading - THE KRUPP FACTORIES

CONTINUE TO TURN OUT ARMS, THOUGH AT A SLOWER RATE - before

he inserted a fresh sheet.

His expression altered to one of unhappy determination. His mission did not include Krupp’s slave labour, but his scruples compelled him to add the information to his report.

He condensed both what he had heard from a German agent within the Krupp plant and what he had witnessed himself, briefly describing the workers”

gaunt bodies, grey faces and bleeding hands, the watery soup that supplied the day’s calories, the muddy cellars where they were jammed to sleep, the exhaustion, the illness, the dogs. <

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Halting, he sighed. As always the Third Reich reserved its most unspeakable treatment for Jews. And how could he unemotionally describe what he had seen on his last day in Essen? Though Kathe, unasked, had photographed memos from outraged army officers about the concentrationcamp factories and sent an encoded letter saying that Jewish labour was worked to death with governmental sanction, nothing could have prepared him for the reality. That dawn he had seen SS guards waving their rifles to double-march a long line of women with stars on their thin ragged burlap dresses - several of them were children who could not have been more than twelve. Terrified eyes had stared from skull faces, wooden clogs had been tied with rags to bleeding feet, emaciated bodies had been twisted out of shape by dropsy and starvation. As he had watched, one of the smallest girls had crumpled. A black boot had kicked her in the chest. The limp pile of rags had stirred on the rime-covered cobbles. The SS guard had casually aimed his rifle downwards. The shaven head had exploded like a dropped melon. Two German workers hurrying on their way to the Berthawerks had not stopped their conversation as they had separated to avoid the pool of blood and small twisted corpse. Yet from that agent within the plant Aubrey had heard of an occasional older Kruppianer who saved bread for the women - a generosity that could cost the man his own life.

Aubrey began to type again, describing the incident - the blackuniformed guard, the child’s body - which to him personalized the landscape of the Third Reich. Despite his intensive training to be aware of his surroundings, he was too engrossed to hear the green baize door at the far end of the dining-hall open.

Over the roar of the wind a nearby voice Kjid:

“Kingsmith.”

Jumping to his feet, Aubrey said:

“Majoqp)ownes. The report’ll be ready by morning, sir. But they told me you were in London.”

“I flew up.”

“In this gale?”

The major’s single hand gripped an alligator handbag.

“I’m here as the bearer of bad news, I’m afraid,”

he said gruffly.

Aubrey flinched.

“Kathe?”

“No. Mrs Kingsmith. Your sister.”

“

“Minta?”

The Major set the bag on Aubrey’s desk.

“By sheer fluke one of our people found this earlier tonight. There was a letter inside addressed to you, and thinking it might contain information he brought it directly to my flat.”

“Araminta?”

Aubrey repeated in the same questioning tone.

“A V-bomb landed not far from Berkeley Square. The handbag was blown clear of the crater.”

“But Araminta … ?”

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Tm sorry, Aubrey, terribly sorry. Your sister is dead.”

Aubrey turned away, shivering violently. Araminta? How could she be dead? Araminta, always so full of vitality. Araminta leading him into mischief. Araminta with the tip of her nose wiggling when she told some joke. Araminta with her voluptuous body and her high pretty laughter. Younger than he by a scant eleven months, the companion of his childhood, his ally against his father. Little Araminta stamping her foot and shaking her red hair. Suddenly his thoughts flashed to the splintered skull near the Krupp Berthawerks. That was death.

He touched the alligator bag.

And so is this.

Araminta, oh, Araminta …

“I’ve arranged transport so you can break the news to your family.”

“That’s good of you, sir,”

Aubrey said, taking the sheet of paper from the roller.

“The report’s finished.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Aubrey carefully covered his typewriter.

“If you could help me reach my brother-in-law by phone. He’s with Patton in Belgium.”

The gaunt leafless trees and swirling fog gave the Belgian farmhouse a surreal look. From the front the barns and grey stone house appeared deserted, but between the bare apple trees in the rear were nosed a pair of jeeps. Upstairs the windows of the larger bedroom had been shot out, and the big old bedstead and armoire had been shifted to cover the lower panes. The crushed cartridges on the floor were German, but the dozen or so unshaven men wore mud-matted American uniforms. Some had their helmets tipped forward as they slept with their head on their chest, others sprawled with cigarettes. The smell of tobacco could not drown out the odour of unwashed bodies and fear.