The Wayward Wife (11 page)

‘Susan?' Vivian chimed in at once. ‘Susan had nothing to do with it. It was me who brought Robert Gaines into the fold. Credit where it's due, Basil. In your cavalier fashion, you assume that because Susan added his name to your list, Bob Gaines is her friend when, in fact, he's mine.'

‘My error.' Basil Willets bowed graciously. ‘I knew, of course, that Gaines was using you as a source.'

‘A source of what?' said Danny.

‘Information on home-grown fascist sympathisers,' said Vivian without hesitation. ‘My crowd or, rather, my brother's crowd until everything went haywire. Are you shocked, Basil? You were quite close to David at one time.'

‘A long time ago. I feel no loyalty to him now.'

‘Very wise of you,' said Vivian. ‘My brother, dare I say it, is not a jewel among men. Oh, he can be charming when it suits him but, basically, he's ruthless and has some exceedingly nasty habits. Isn't that right, Susan?'

‘I don't know him well enough to pass judgement.'

‘In that case,' Vivian said, ‘you'll just have to take my word for it. David is a grade-A shit who should be locked up in jail.'

Basil Willets cleared his throat. ‘Bit strong, Vivian. Blood's thicker than water, after all.'

‘Not in my book,' Vivian said. ‘Not in
any
of my books.'

‘Speakin' of which,' Danny put in, ‘how's the new book comin' along. Alienation, isn't it?'

‘Aliens, really,' said Vivian. ‘I'm interested in tracing the ideological diasporas of the twentieth century that began with the Bolshevik revolution and spread like wildfire throughout Europe.'

‘Which by the twisted logic of history enabled Hitler and his henchmen to acquire power in Germany,' Basil Willets said.

And, to Susan's relief, they were off and running on a topic that would keep them occupied for the rest of the evening.

She'd known when she'd married him that Danny was no rugged Scotsman who would come charging out of the heather to take her willy-nilly. He didn't lack strength or stamina but, if anything, was too considerate of her feelings, as if he felt it necessary to respect her modesty, a modesty that most women – she, at any rate – discarded with their stockings.

She had restricted herself to two glasses of wine at dinner, had refused the liqueur that accompanied coffee and, soon after nine, had pleaded an early rise which, in the circumstances, probably seemed like a double entendre, though neither Vivian nor Mr Willets had been crass enough to remark upon it.

Danny and she had left the couple at the table, not billing and cooing like would-be lovers but arguing with ever increasing heat about the ethics of government tribunals and the Acts that were currently being rushed through parliament.

‘Think she'll spend the night with him?' Danny said.

‘I doubt it,' Susan said. ‘Mr Willets is too caught up in programming to waste time on sex. When it comes down to it Viv will have to make the running.'

They'd found a cab to ferry them home, had made tea and, seated by the fire, had listened to the latest news on the wireless. Closing in on eleven, they'd found the wavelength for a broadcast from Hilversum that Danny had listened to while Susan bathed and laid out her clothes for the morning.

Now he was seated on the side of the bed clad in vest and underpants. She had fished out a clean pair of pyjamas and placed them, neatly folded, on his pillow. She flitted about the room in the new chiffon nightdress that had cost her more than a week's wages. The light of the little table lamp, reflected in the mirror of the dressing table, outlined her figure but Danny, lost in some dream of his own, seemed oblivious to it.

‘Aren't you going to change?' she asked.

He glanced up, frowning. ‘Change?'

‘Into pyjamas,' she said.

‘Oh, aye.'

He got to his feet, stripped off his vest, stepped out of his underpants and, rolling them into a ball, put them into the wicker basket by the dressing table with the rest of the dirty laundry. Susan had half a mind to hop into bed and haul the blankets over her head but the fact was that in spite of everything she needed him.

She watched him slip on the pyjama trousers and sit down on the side of the bed. He lifted the pyjama jacket, glanced at it as if he didn't quite know what to do with it and put it to one side. He had put on weight, she thought, not fat but muscle. His skin was smooth and tight and his hair, longer than she remembered it, formed a strange blond halo in the light from the table lamp.

He brought her to him, put his arms about her and dug his fingers into the small of her back. She pressed herself against him, shivering when he drew her closer and, trapping her between his knees, looked up.

‘Susan,' he said softly, ‘who's Robert Gaines?'

Early in the morning of Friday,
10
May, Griff, Danny and Kate were dragged from their beds by a messenger from Wood Norton and, half dressed and
sans
breakfast, were bundled into a billeting officer's Morris Eight and driven at breakneck speed to the gates of Wood Norton estate where an armed sentry called out, ‘Advance and be recognised' and, without awaiting a response, urgently waved them through.

The new huts had been erected in the nick of time, for every monitor, editor and supervisor on the roster had been called out, even those poor devils who had just finished night shift. Within minutes of their arrival Griff and Danny were hunched at the long table in the editing room and Kate was seated on a bench in M Unit's monitoring hut with a pair of earphones clamped to her head listening to a German announcer from Zeesen unleashing a torrent of justification for the Nazi attacks on Belgium and Holland.

There was no question now of a watching brief.

Every word of every bulletin from Germany was recorded, translated and transcribed, while French-speaking ‘legionnaires' brought in the news from Paris, which, as Griff remarked to Danny, through a mouthful of cold coffee, was just this side of hysterical.

In the open yard at the back of the Oxmoor Road substation, amid trailer pumps and coiled hoses, a Divisional Officer, smart as paint even at that hour of the morning, assembled both night-and day-shift crews at the change and, in formal tones, announced that at five thirty that morning Wehrmacht troops, accompanied by armoured and motorised divisions, had entered Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

While there was every reason to suppose that the Allied forces would repulse the onslaught, he went on reassuringly, the nation must be on its guard, extra precautions taken and as a consequence – he cleared the gravel from his throat – all leave had been cancelled.

‘Oh, bugger,' Fireman Clarence Knotts whispered into Ronnie's ear. ‘That's my weekend in Monte up the spout.'

‘It's no joke, Clary,' Ronnie told him.

‘No,' Clary agreed, ‘I don't suppose it is. Our turn next, do you think?'

‘Yep,' Ronnie said. ‘It's only a matter of time.'

Breda was in too much of a rush to get Billy off to school to pay attention to the news and the wireless was turned down to nothing much more than a murmur. She was vaguely aware that the announcer's voice sounded marginally less monotonous than usual but, running late, shrugged off an impulse to tune in properly.

She was halfway to school, Billy trailing behind her, before the raucous shouts of a newsvendor touting the latest editions alerted her to the fact that something big had happened across the Channel.

At the school gate half a dozen anxious wives had gathered, aprons and headscarves fluttering in the breeze.

‘Heard the news, Mrs 'Ooper?'

‘What news?' said Breda, as Billy scampered off to join his chums. ‘Is it bad?'

‘He's done it again.'

‘Done what again?' said Breda.

‘Adolf – 'e's gone for 'Olland now.'

‘Like Denmark wasn't enough for 'im.'

‘Won't be no room for dodgers now, Mrs 'Ooper. They'll be weeded out an' sent to fight proper, you'll see.'

‘If,' said Breda, ‘you're referrin' to my husband, he ain't no dodger. He's an auxiliary fireman.'

‘White feather, that's what 'e is.'

Breda had suffered taunts before but never so directly.

Most of the women had husbands in the army and one, Mrs Baskin, had lost a brother when his ship had been torpedoed by a U-boat. None of Breda's nearest and dearest was anywhere near the front line, on land or sea, a fact that obviously rankled with the other wives.

‘You won't be sayin' that, Mrs Collins, when your 'ouse burns to the ground,' Breda snapped.

‘Never 'appen. Not 'ere.'

‘Yeah,' said Breda. ‘Tell that to the Dutch.'

Then, with a last glance at Billy playing happily with the other kiddies in the mud-caked yard, she walked away before she said something she might later regret.

‘But what does it mean, dear?' said Nora. ‘What does it mean for the likes of us?'

‘Didn't Matt tell you?' Breda said.

‘He was gone before the news came on.'

‘Well, don't ask me,' said Breda. ‘I'm as much in the dark as you are. Ronnie'll tell us, he gets 'ome.'

‘How will Ronnie know?'

‘Ronnie knows everythin',' said Breda confidently. ‘Maybe we should turn on the wireless since there'll be more news comin' in by this time.'

‘No,' Nora said. ‘You just leave the wireless alone.'

‘You can't keep your head in the sand for ever, Ma.'

‘I've got cakes to make.'

‘Cakes ain't gonna be enough to satisfy 'em today.'

‘I'll put the pan on for doughnuts then.'

‘Oh, God!' Breda sighed and, tying on her apron, went out into the dining room to serve the paying customers who, that particular forenoon, were few and far between.

Richard Dimbleby, the BBC's sole foreign correspondent, was somewhere in France with the BEF when Hitler's great offensive began. While Dimbleby recorded reports for later transmission, little Basil Willets went one better and pulled off a coup with the first broadcast of
Speaking Up for Britain
which aired on the Home Service at
8
p.m. and at two in the afternoon across the eastern seaboard of America.

Thanks to Bob Gaines's connections, and a transmitter in Rotterdam, the first edition of
Speaking Up
began with a live eye-witness account of the Luftwaffe's attack on an Allied airfield in Holland by an excitable young English-speaking Dutchman who, by sheer ill luck, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. BBC sound engineers succeeded in capturing the thud-thump of explosions and the whine of dive-bombers behind the Dutchman's commentary until, abruptly, transmission ceased.

Even on a day crammed with news, Robert Gaines's silence – two beats, three beats, then four – and his softly uttered response to the breakdown, ‘
He's
gone
,' was enough to make the most casual listener sit up and po-faced journalists on both sides of the Atlantic reach for their typewriters.

A stranger to British reticence and the art of turning a blind eye to the obvious, Bob paused once more and, in that same level tone, said, ‘I fear we may not hear from Pieter again,' then, putting the script to one side, delivered an unsentimental prayer for his colleagues in the Low Countries.

‘Oh, Jesus!' Mr Willets, a man not given to profanity, murmured. ‘Now we're in for it,' as the telephone on the wall of the control booth rang and rang again.

‘I believe we may have a link with Washington, DC,' Bob Gaines continued, ‘where Mr Burton Wheeler, Senator for Montana and spokesman for the America First campaign, is waiting to tell us what
he
makes of today's developments.'

By which time Susan was already sprinting down the hall to fetch anyone in the guest lounge who might be willing to cross swords with America's most vociferous isolationist.

Billy, worn out with play and stuffed with corned beef hash and suet pudding, had fallen asleep curled up on the carpet in front of the fire. He made no protest when Breda undressed him and Ronnie carried him upstairs to bed.

By five to eight Ronnie and Breda, also fed and watered, were seated close to the wireless set which, for some reason, was acting up. Studio voices kept fading in and out as if there were lightning in the air and even Ronnie's expert twiddling of the tuning knob couldn't quite find the wavelength and make the dashed thing settle down.

It was more by accident than design that the American announcer's voice came through loud and clear, followed by an interview from ‘an Allied airfield somewhere in Holland' delivered in staccato English by a young Dutchman against a background of thumps and thuds that Ronnie instantly identified as an aerial bombardment.

‘Susie's not there, is she?' Breda said.

‘No, no, 'course not. She's in London.'

‘What's that?' Breda hissed. ‘It's fadin' again.'

She reached for the tuning knob but Ronnie grabbed her wrist and held her off and they were caught, frozen in the moment, brow to brow, when the American announcer uttered the words, ‘He's gone.'

Shaking his head, Ronnie said, ‘Poor bastard.'

Breda, bewildered, whispered, ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, what's happenin'?' Then, a few minutes later: ‘Is that Susie's friend, Vivian, talkin'?'

‘Yeah,' Ron said. ‘It is.'

‘What's she doin' with an American in Washington?'

‘Tearin' him to pieces, by the sound of it,' said Ron.

The office phone was ringing off the hook. Basil Willets told Susan not to answer since he'd had enough excitement for one night. He would come in early on Saturday morning to deal with the protests that would inevitably descend from on high for, as he put it, ‘too much reality is one thing our lords and masters cannot stand.'