October 1940
They were winding up their weekly editorial meeting when Kaz announced, to no one in particular, that he was going to a concert at the National Gallery that afternoon.
“Anyone care to join me? Mary?”
“All right.”
“Nigel? Nell? Peter? Ruby? Come on. A little culture won’t kill you.”
The others mumbled their excuses, but Ruby was intrigued by the invitation. “What sort of concert?”
“Classical music.”
“I . . .”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who only like modern music. Swing bands with their drums and saxophones and screeching clarinets. Stuff of nightmares,” he grumbled.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been to a Benny Goodman concert.”
Across the room, Nell let out a squeal of delight. “You’ve heard him play?”
“Only the once, about a year ago. It was wonderful.” The concert ticket had been so expensive she’d nearly fainted, more than two whole dollars, but as soon as Mr. Goodman had stepped forward with his clarinet, she’d been in heaven.
“I insist you come to the concert,” Kaz said, interrupting her reverie. “I’m certain you’ll enjoy it far more than Mr. Goodman’s startling syncopations.”
“Very well,” Ruby agreed. “If you insist.” It would certainly be something new, and that couldn’t be bad.
“When do you want to set off?” Mary asked Kaz.
“Oh, let’s say a quarter to twelve? Just in case there’s a queue. We can get something to eat from the canteen at the gallery.”
They all wandered back to their desks, their respective assignments crowding out other concerns, and Ruby settled down to the business of figuring out how to structure the story she’d been assigned: a day in the life of a Women’s Voluntary Service canteen worker. Nigel had suggested she ring up “someone” at the service and ask to be put in touch with a suitable subject, but Ruby would only adopt that approach as a last resort. A direct approach to the WVS would waste time, for there would inevitably be a tedious amount of official dithering as to who should be selected for the profile. There was also the likelihood of her being saddled with an interview subject whose personality was as lively as a piece of waterlogged cardboard.
“All set?”
She looked up to find Mary and Kaz in front of her desk. “Sorry. I lost track of time.” She stuffed her notebook in her bag and hurried after them, only stopping to grab her coat and hat from the rack in the front room. “Where are we going again?”
“Trafalgar Square,” Kaz answered over his shoulder. “The concerts are in the basement of the National Gallery.”
They turned south, walking down to the Thames and, she assumed, toward Blackfriars Underground station.
“Why have the concerts in the first place? I’d have thought people were too busy for things like that.”
“What are we fighting for, if not things of beauty like music and art?” Kaz all but barked, but then, as if realizing how harsh he sounded, he smiled at Ruby apologetically. “Sorry. It’s a bugbear of mine, this notion that we all have to put our noses to the grindstone and ignore everything else if we want to defeat Hitler. I disagree, and that is why I’m on my way to enjoy a concert of beautiful music. What can he do to stop me?”
“He can bomb the gallery,” Ruby observed.
“He already has. They had to evacuate during a concert last week—I think an incendiary dropped through a skylight into an adjoining room. Didn’t stop the show, though. They simply moved downstairs. Beautiful music won the day.”
“Let’s reserve judgment on the music,” Mary said. “That last concert we went to was something awful.”
“The Stravinsky? I loved it.”
“Not my cup of tea at all,” Mary insisted. “Give me Bach or Beethoven any day.”
“Don’t people complain?” Ruby asked. “They’re both German composers.”
“Yes, and to my sure and certain knowledge neither of them was a member of the Nazi Party,” Kaz grumbled, “so I think we can listen to their music with a clear conscience.”
“I didn’t mean that—”
“I know you didn’t, Ruby. Just me tilting at windmills. Right—here we are at the station.”
A train was pulling in just as they descended to the platform. Though it was already crowded, Kaz insisted they squeeze on regardless. It was no more uncomfortable than the New York subway at rush hour, though, and it was only for a few stops.
“What music is being performed today?” she asked once they were under way.
“No idea,” Kaz said. “Likely something traditional. From time to time they experiment with more modern selections—as with the Stravinsky that Mary was whingeing about—but they’re not very popular. Most people want the old chestnuts.”
“I’ve never heard an actual orchestra before,” Ruby admitted. “Only Mr. Goodman’s jazz band that one time.” She didn’t bother to mention the wheezing, out-of-key accordion that Sister Mary-Frances had played during Mass in the orphanage chapel each morning. That had been a torture device, not a musical instrument.
“It won’t be an orchestra today,” Kaz cautioned. “Likely just a chamber ensemble. A dozen musicians at most. Or maybe a solo pianist.”
“First you tell the girl the music will be wonderful, and then you burst her bubble by saying it’ll be one piano tinkling away,” Mary said, directing a playful frown at him. “Make up your mind, won’t you?”
“Pay her no mind, Ruby. She only comes for the sandwiches at the canteen.”
“Yes, and why not? They’re better than the cardboard and sawdust they serve up at the Old Bell.”
Ruby wasn’t sure how to insert herself into the conversation, or even if she should, so she simply listened to them bantering like the old friends they were. Was their closeness born of ease, the sort of comfort you might feel with another who had known you for years and years, had seen you at your worst, and still liked you? Or did it spring from true intimacy—the kind that arose from romantic love? She couldn’t tell, and she certainly wasn’t about to ask. But she did envy them, just a little, all the same.
As soon as the train pulled into Charing Cross, Kaz led the way upstairs. “It’s a bit of a walk,” he explained, “but it hardly seems worth the effort to change to another line just to go one more stop.”
They walked for a few hundred yards along Villiers Street, turning left when they reached the Strand, and then the great open space of the square was before them. Only it wasn’t empty at all, but rather was filled with statues and fountains and people, hundreds of people, most of whom seemed to be simply enjoying the glorious afternoon sun.
“This is . . . something,” she said at last, trying and failing to find an appropriate adjective. “We don’t have anything like this in New York.”
“Not Times Square?” asked Mary.
“It’s not really a square. More like a long sort of triangle. And it’s the farthest thing from beautiful. Just a lot of neon signs hanging off buildings.”
“More like Piccadilly Circus, then.”
“I guess so.” She had been past Piccadilly in a bus, late in the summer before the Blitz had begun, and it had reminded her a bit of Times Square.
“Over there,” Kaz said, pointing to the south, “you can see the elegant little shelter they built for the statue of Charles the First—the one who got his head chopped off.” Ruby looked and had to laugh, for the statue had been hidden under a corrugated metal shell that looked like a windmill shorn of its sails.
She looked back toward the center of the square, to the largest pillar she’d ever seen, its base covered by protective hoardings and a layer of sandbags. She knew it to be Nelson’s Column, and the hero of Trafalgar was still atop his perch, defiantly ignoring the bombers. The great bronze lions at the tower’s base, each as big as an elephant, were also uncovered.
Around the square she could see a few small craters in the pavement, topped up with gravel while repairs awaited, and some boarded-up windows on nearby buildings. But the fountains were still full of water, the pigeons were still abundant, and the spirit of the square’s occupants was, as far as she could see, still undaunted.
As they continued on toward the gallery, a building so large that it took up the entire northern side of the square, Ruby noticed a long and growing line of people snaking down the central steps and around to the right. “We’ll never get in.”
“Only a hundred or so,” Mary said. “We’ll get in, all right. Then you’ll be sorry.”
“Come on, you two,” Kaz urged them, and they hurried forward to join the end of the line. Seen at closer quarters, the gallery really was gigantic, and seemed to Ruby at least as large as the Metropolitan Museum back home. She’d visited it several times, always emerging with the feeling that, no matter how often she went, she would only ever see a fraction of its treasures.
“You said the gallery is empty?” she asked Kaz.
“Yes. Right after war was declared, the—”
“Hello there!”
A man had come up on Kaz’s other side and was shaking his hand. Peering around the large form of her editor, Ruby was surprised to see Captain Bennett. He moved on to kiss Mary’s cheek and then, coming face-to-face with Ruby, bent his head to kiss her cheek even as she extended her hand for him to shake.
“Hello, Ruby. Lovely to see you again.”
He was in uniform, though there was something subtly different about the insignia on his collar and shoulder tabs; if only she were better at remembering such details. He looked far less tired than he had in July, the shadows beneath his eyes much less pronounced. And his eyes—she hadn’t forgotten how blue they were. As dark and deep a blue as a brand-new pair of denim jeans, and if there was a more American way to describe them, she couldn’t imagine what it was.
Suddenly she realized she was staring. “You look well,” she said, the imprint of his lips still warm on her cheek. “It’s been a while since I saw you last.”
“Yes. Sorry about that. I’ve been away since the summer.”
She’d enjoyed their dinner, and it had been a bit disappointing when she hadn’t heard from him afterward. Funny how she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on that last thought until this exact moment, standing in the sunshine, seeing him again.
And it was silly to let such a small thing bother her. She was not, and had never been, the sort of girl who would allow herself to sit around moping when there was interesting work to be done. Life was about far more important things than dinners with handsome British army captains.
“Glad you could get away,” said Kaz. “They keeping you busy?”
“Not very,” he said agreeably. “I’m working at the Inter-Services Research Bureau now,” he explained for Ruby’s benefit. “No one seemed to mind when I said I’d be taking a long lunch today. Shows my importance in the grand scheme of things.”
They reached the doors, and there was a moment of détente when she tried to pay for her concert ticket and program, only to be ignored by Kaz, who paid for all four of them.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, “since I all but blackmailed you into coming along.”
“May I at least buy your lunch?” Ruby asked.
“You may not,” he said gruffly, but softened his words with a smile.
The canteen, which was staffed entirely by volunteers, had been set up in an empty upstairs gallery. There were long tables filled with trays of ready-made sandwiches and slices of cake, and at one end a row of urns dispensing tea and coffee.
“Cream cheese and dates, ham and chutney, cheese and chutney, sausage roll,” recited the volunteer who came forward to serve them.
“Ham and chutney, please,” Ruby ordered, and was furnished with a sandwich that looked, as Mary had promised, far more tempting than their usual lunch fare at work.
“Station cake farther along, and tea and coffee, too. Cashier is at the end. Next, please.”
The station cake, on closer inspection, was a sort of pound cake studded with bits of dried fruit. “Dried plums, my dear,” explained the volunteer doling out slices. “Can’t find glacé cherries for love or money these days. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”
“Oh, no thanks. I’ll be fine with this.” Ruby had learned to be leery of what passed for coffee in London, since it invariably turned out to be hot water tinted with a few drops of tinny-tasting coffee extract.
“Eat up, everyone,” Kaz commanded. “We’ve only a quarter hour until the concert begins, and I don’t much feel like standing.”
Their sandwiches and cake devoured, they joined the stream of people making their way down to the basement and a large but low-ceilinged room. At its far end, a magnificent grand piano stood on a raised stage.
“I wonder how they got the piano down the stairs,” she whispered to Mary as they took their seats about halfway back.
“Good question. Carefully, I expect.”
She ended up seated between Mary and Captain Bennett, with Kaz on Mary’s other side. “Can you see all right?” the captain asked. “We can switch seats if you like.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“When the concerts started last year, they were upstairs—I can’t remember the name of the room. At any rate, the musicians were directly under a huge glass dome. Beautiful venue, but not a wise place to be during an air raid. No one wants to see Myra Hess skewered by broken glass.”
“Myra Hess?” she asked. “Is she one of the musicians?”
“Yes, and the woman who had the idea of holding these concerts. Quite a remarkable person. If we’re lucky she’ll be performing.” He pulled his program, now rather creased, out of his breast pocket and scanned it quickly. “Not today, alas. Haven’t heard of either of the musicians, although they’re usually pretty good. I do like the pieces they’ve chosen.”
“Ah,” she said, not willing to admit she knew as little about classical music as he likely did about baseball.
“They’re starting with Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Pianoforte in A Major, then a short intermission, then Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E Minor. The greatest of our modern composers. Beautiful piece, although I prefer his cello concerto.”
“It sounds like you know a lot about classical music.”
“My mother was a musician. A pianist, although she never performed professionally. Really more of an avid amateur.”
“Did she make you learn, too?”
“Yes, although I was awful about it. Would much rather have been climbing trees or breaking the conservatory windows with a cricket ball. Of course I’m glad now that she made me keep on.”
A round of applause signaled the arrival of the musicians, two men dressed in uniform who bowed before turning to their instruments. The violinist stood alone at center stage, while the pianist was joined by a young woman who sat on a stool to his side.
“To turn the pages,” Captain Bennett whispered in her ear.
Silence . . . and then music, sublime music that filled her thoughts, her senses, obscuring all but the sweeping, plaintive notes of the violin and the precise delicacy of the piano. It was mesmerizing stuff, and Ruby leaned forward, eagerly drinking it in. What little classical music she’d ever heard on the radio had seemed stuffy and ponderous, but this was magic. This was sunshine made audible.
With one final flourish they were done, and so caught up was she in the performance that she jumped a little when everyone began to applaud. Glancing at her watch, she realized that nearly half an hour had passed. It had felt like only a few minutes.
“Did you like it?” Captain Bennett asked quietly.
“I did. I had no idea . . .”
“It’s lovely, and not performed nearly often enough.”
“There’s more, though, isn’t there?”
“Yes. They’ll be back in a minute for the Elgar. It’s very different to the Mozart, but I think you’ll like it just as much. Possibly even more.”
The Elgar sonata was indeed different, so heartfelt and romantic that it left her breathless and shaky and nearly dizzy with delight. She turned to Captain Bennett in astonishment as the musicians took their bows.
“I knew you’d like it,” he said.
“Did you say the composer is English?”
“Was. Died five or six years ago. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Only that it’s the most un-English thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Why? Because it’s so passionate?” he asked, and though he tried to put on a serious face, he couldn’t quite keep his smile in check.
“I guess,” she said, stifling a giggle.
“Hmm. I’d say you need to get to know us better. Come on—time to go.”
They made their way outside, a slow process given the hundreds of people who had crowded into the basement, and waited for Mary and Kaz to join them.
“Mary and I are heading back to the office,” Kaz said, “but you should go on home, Ruby. No point in coming back when I’m just going to send you packing an hour later.”
“I’ll come with you,” Captain Bennett offered. “My flat isn’t far from the Manchester.”
“Don’t you have to get back to work? It’s only half-past two.”
“We keep odd hours at the bureau. They won’t mind.”
Even bankers kept longer hours than that, but who was she to argue? They said goodbye to Kaz and Mary and walked north along Charing Cross Road, presumably in the direction of the nearest Tube station.
“I thought we’d take the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross,” he explained after a few minutes. “We can change there for Aldersgate. Unless you were wanting to go somewhere else?”
“No, home is fine. I have a lot of reading to do.”
They just managed to squeeze onto the next train, and although it felt a bit uncomfortable, standing only inches from a man she hardly knew, she wasn’t crazy about the idea of getting any nearer to the complete strangers who were pressing close on every other side.
“I’m sorry for having vanished,” he said after a few minutes in which she studiously avoided making eye contact with him. She looked up, and was surprised to see that he really did look apologetic. “I’ve been away for months. I only returned last week.”
“I understand,” she said, wondering where he’d been and what he’d been doing, although if he’d wanted her to know, he surely would have explained.
“I did keep in touch with Kaz while I was away. He said your editor at The American has given you a column.”
“He has. They call it ‘Dispatches from London.’”
“Do you enjoy writing it? I presume you haven’t had any difficulty in finding subjects to write about.”
“None at all. Some weeks I don’t know where to begin . . . there’s so much I want to say. I usually fall back on describing something I’ve seen or experienced personally. Nights in the shelter, the morning after a raid. Conversations I’ve had with people who’ve been affected. That sort of thing.”
“Kaz certainly likes what you’re doing. Both your columns and the pieces you write for PW.”
“He does?” And then, although it was pathetic of her to ask, “What did he say?”
“Among other things, he said you’re able to make a story moving without manipulating the reader. And that you never cut corners, no matter how pressed you are to get a story finished.”
“That’s . . . that’s very nice of him,” she stammered. “I’m glad that Kaz is pleased with me.”
“So you’ll call him Kaz, but I’m Captain Bennett to you?”
The man was determined to confound her. Why should he care what she called him? “Your first name is Charles, isn’t it?”
He groaned softly, his face twisting in mock disgust. “Yes, but I’m not fond of it. For some fool reason, my mother decided to name me Charles Stuart, always the both names together, after Bonnie Prince Charlie. Never mind that the man was an asinine dullard.”
“So what am I supposed to call you? Charlie? Chuck? Chaz?”
“Ha. No, Bennett is fine. Just Bennett.”
“All right. Bennett, then.” Somehow this seemed even more daring than referring to her editor as Kaz.
“See? How hard was that?”
Once the train arrived at King’s Cross, it took them a while to make their way from one platform to the next, since people had already begun to stake out spots in anticipation of the evening’s raids. Ruby thanked her lucky stars, and not for the first time, that she had such a safe and congenial place to shelter each night.
The platform for the Piccadilly line was already crowded, and two trains came and went before one arrived that wasn’t already bursting at the seams.
“So you were saying you’d just started at the—” she began, but stopped short when he frowned and shook his head.
“Not here—sorry. Too many people.”
Only when they had left the train, and were walking up the steps at Aldersgate station, did he bend his head to explain, his words tickling at her ear.
“I am sorry. It’s just that I’m not meant to talk about my work at all. Probably overcautious of me, I know.”
“Not at all. None of us are meant to talk about anything important. At least that’s what the posters on the Underground say. Is it interesting, though? The work you’re doing?”
“In fits and starts. A lot of the time it’s actually pretty boring. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but at times it’s even more boring than being a barrister.”
“I’d have thought being a lawyer—a barrister, I mean—would be really interesting. Being in court, you know, and standing in front of a judge. Arguing about life-and-death things every day.”
“Not in my case. I specialized in international law. Trade relations and treaties.”
“So you don’t miss it?”
“I do, at times. I certainly miss my colleagues. What I don’t miss is that damn wig.”
“I . . . what? A wig?”
“In Britain judges and barristers wear wigs in court. A periwig, actually. Imagine the sort of thing your George Washington would have worn. They’re made of horsehair, so they itch like mad.”
“Where is your wig now?” she asked teasingly. “At the bottom of the Thames?”
“Now there’s an idea. No, it’s bundled away for the duration, along with my robes. God knows when they’ll see the light of day again.”
They’d been standing in front of the Manchester for several minutes, she realized. Perhaps he was going to ask her out for dinner.
His next words put paid to that notion. “I had better be going—I’ve another engagement this evening. Otherwise I would ask you to come to dinner again.”
“I don’t mind. I should try and get some work done before the first siren goes off. I can’t believe we haven’t had any yet today. Perhaps—”
“No, they’re coming. Don’t doubt that. Promise me you’ll go to the shelter, will you? People are getting killed because they’re tired and they stay in bed when the sirens sound. Even if the hotel isn’t hit, there’s the shrapnel to consider. It can fly through the window and cut you to pieces.”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I always go.”
“Good. Well, good night, then.”
“Good night, Bennett. Thank you for walking me home.”
He turned away, crossing the street and disappearing back down the steps to the Underground station, and only after he’d vanished from sight did she go inside, to the solitary comfort of her room, to read and work until the siren began its nightly wail.