Ruby walked on through the dark, hoping to chance upon a rare street sign that hadn’t been removed for the duration, but the nearest intersection was barren of information. Perhaps she ought to keep moving. She might come across a public house that was still open, or some recognizable landmark.
“There you are,” came a familiar voice. She turned, squinting in the gloom, and was just able to make out the figure of a man, standing next to a motorcycle, only a few yards from the next corner.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“You know very well who it is,” the man said. She took a step forward, then another, and finally his face emerged from the shadows. Bennett, his expression set and grim.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.
“That may be the stupidest thing you have ever said. Come on. I’m here to take you home.”
“On the back of that?”
“Yes. I don’t have a car, and I didn’t have time to flounder around looking for a cab. There’s nothing to it—just hop on.”
“What if I fall off?”
“I think that’s the least of your problems right now. Get on. Now.”
He’d already kicked back the motorcycle’s side stand and had swung a leg over the machine. Its engine roared to life, all but deafening her.
She climbed up behind him, and it was just as unpleasant as she’d feared. Sitting astride the machine left her feeling horribly exposed, her skirt riding so high that the tops of her stockings were visible. Despite the warmth of his back, for she was pressed right against him, she was chilled through in seconds.
He was a precise and careful driver, navigating the darkened streets with ease, even though the shuttered headlamp of his motorcycle illuminated little more than a narrow yard of road in front of them. “Almost there,” he called back after they had traveled for what felt like miles and miles, and still she hadn’t been able to make out any recognizable landmarks.
He turned onto a narrow side street and braked almost immediately. If they were near Vanessa’s, it was a part of the neighborhood she’d yet to visit.
“Get down,” he told her, and switched off the ignition. He hauled the motorcycle onto its center stand and then, grasping her arm, steered her back to the main street and along for nearly half a block. He stopped at a modest entryway next to a cobbler’s shop, unlocked the door, and motioned her forward. “Upstairs,” he said flatly.
She walked up one flight of stairs, then another, and then he was brushing past her to unlock a second door.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Gray’s Inn Road. This is my flat.” He motioned for her to enter. “You and I need to talk, but I don’t want to do it in front of Vanessa, and we can’t talk in public.”
He switched on the lights, revealing a small and sparsely furnished sitting room. There was no art on the walls, no shelves full of books, no knickknacks or photographs.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“Ages. But I’m hardly ever here. Most of my things are stored at the house in Edenbridge. Do you want anything to drink?”
“No.”
“Fine. I’d better ring up Vanessa. Assuming she hasn’t died of fright already.”
A bottle of Scotch and several glasses stood on the room’s lone table, which also held a telephone. He dialed with one hand, the telephone receiver cradled in the crook of his neck, even as he poured a healthy measure of spirits into one of the glasses.
“Vanessa? It’s Bennett. She’s fine. I’ll have her home to you soon—she’ll explain everything to you then. You don’t have to worry. Yes, I promise. Yes. Good night.”
He hung up the telephone, took a healthy swig of whiskey, and finally turned to face her, his dark eyes glittering with emotion.
“Are you angry?” she asked, though she knew full well what his answer would be.
“Seething.” He downed the remainder of his whiskey in one long swallow. Returning to the bottle of Scotch, he poured another inch of spirits into his glass, then crossed the room to sit on the lone armchair.
“Why?” he asked. “Just tell me why you never thought to tell me the truth. Make me understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand. You grew up surrounded by people who loved you. I had no one. After my mother died, there wasn’t one single person in this world who cared whether I lived or died. Not one.”
He motioned to the sofa. “Sit. And tell me more.”
She perched on the sofa and took a deep breath. Where to begin? “My mother was a maid in a hotel in Atlantic City,” she said at last. “I don’t know who my father was. She never told me his name. And I was so young when she died . . . I barely remember her, to be honest.”
“What happened to her?” he asked, his voice softening.
“She died a few years after the war. In one of the later flu epidemics. I was five. I guess I was sick, too, but I don’t remember it.”
“Had you no other family?”
She shook her head. “No one. Or no one who would admit to it. I was sent to St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum in Newark.”
“A regular Jane Eyre,” he observed.
“Not really. St. Mary’s was no Lowood. Yes, I’ve read the book—don’t look so surprised.”
“What was it like there?”
“The nuns were decent, apart from one who hated me on sight. Sister Benedicta was awful, but most of the others were kind enough. I was never made to stand on a stool for hours.” This brought a thin smile to his face, but it vanished with her next words. “We were hungry most of the time, and cold, too. Our uniforms were hardly more than rags.”
“What about school? Did you receive any sort of an education?” he asked.
“We got the bare minimum. I guess there didn’t seem much point to it, since we were all sent out to work when we were fourteen. Mainly as domestic servants, although some girls went to clothing factories. I was lucky.”
“In what way?”
“I was sent to work as a live-in maid. The family took no notice of me. As long as I got my work done, they didn’t care what I did in the evenings. So I saved up my wages and started attending classes at night. It took me four years to earn my diploma from secretarial school. As soon as I was done, I moved to New York and found work as a stenographer.”
“You didn’t remain one.”
“No. When I was at secretarial college, I met a woman who worked at a magazine, and she just loved her work. When she talked about it, I could see myself at a magazine or newspaper. Writing stories for a living. Doing work that I really enjoyed.”
“But? I sense there’s a ‘but’ at work here.”
“I couldn’t get my foot in the door. I applied for so many positions, but I hardly ever got a response. The few times I did hear back, they said I needed experience first. I think that was just their way of turning me down.
“Only once did I get as far as an interview. It was for a position as an editorial assistant at a woman’s magazine. There was another girl waiting at the same time as me. She didn’t have any experience in journalism, but she had a college degree. And she had a plain American name. Emily Miller—I still remember it. Of course she got the job. And it made me wonder if that was all I needed. A different name.
“So I did it. I changed my name and said I had a degree I hadn’t earned. It was wrong. I knew it then, as I know it now. But I did what I felt I had to do at the time. Can you say you would have done any differently?”
A long pause. “No. I can’t.”
“It was a lie I told once, after five years of dead ends, and haven’t repeated since. I had hoped I could leave it behind—the lie, that is. I figured that if I ever needed to look for another job, I’d just put down my years at The American and that would be enough.”
“Lies are dangerous things. They’ll eat you up from the inside eventually.”
“Really, Bennett? Really? Because you are the last person who should be lecturing me about the importance of truthfulness. Your whole life is a lie—”
“Hold on—”
“Do you honestly think any of us believe that you’re a pencil pusher in some obscure ministry? I’ve heard the talk, you know. About all the false names and made-up departments, and how you’re really all a pack of—”
“Stop. Just stop. You know I can’t talk about it. To begin with, if I did, and if I were found out, I would end up in prison for a very long time. That is not an exaggeration designed to make me look mysterious and dashing—it’s the truth. But it’s also the case that I took an oath, a solemn and binding oath, to keep quiet about my work. And that’s what I have done—I have kept quiet. I haven’t lied to you, not once. Name one instance.”
“You say you work at the Inter-Services Research Bureau.”
“Which is one name, among many, for the branch of the government that employs me. More than that I cannot say. Anything else?”
“That time you had a black eye and scratches all over your face. You said you’d been knocked off your motorcycle by a tree branch. Is that what happened?”
“Yes. That’s how I was injured. And since we’re being honest with one another, I will admit that I have been hurt other times over the course of the war, but never seriously. Never badly enough that I was in hospital for more than a few days.”
“Have you ever left England? As part of the work you are doing?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dangerous? Could you be killed?”
“Yes. But that’s true of any soldier or officer in this war.”
“Were you the reason they let me go?”
Rather than meet her eyes, he focused on the dregs of whiskey in his glass. “Not directly,” he said. “I’ve a few well-connected friends, that’s all. I vouched for you, and that was enough.”
“But why? You said earlier that you were angry—why didn’t you just let them deport me, or send me to an internment camp?”
He looked up, his expression aghast. “Do you think so little of me, so little of our friendship, that I’d allow such a thing to happen? I was—I am—angry with you, but not because you lied about your name and education, and came to England with the help of doctored papers. I don’t care a fig about that. I’m angry because you endangered your future, your entire career, over a few silly lies. If only you’d told me, Ruby, I would have helped. I would have believed you.”
“I know,” she said. “I want to believe. I want to have friends I trust. It’s only that . . . I was alone for a long time. I learned to be careful. And it’s a hard habit to break. Can you at least see that?”
“I can. But can you also see that I am your friend? That I care about what happens to you?”
It wasn’t a protestation of love, not really, but it tore at her heart all the same. “I can,” she said at last.
“Good. I’d better get you home.”
“I guess Vanessa will be waiting.”
“At the front door, if not on the stoop. And you need to know—I wasn’t talking out of school just now. I will help. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get a copy of your original birth certificate sent over, and once you have that, you can apply for a new passport from your embassy here. I’ll make sure there are no roadblocks.”
“So I’m back to being Ruby Schreiber? It doesn’t even feel like my real name anymore.”
“I don’t see why you can’t keep writing as Ruby Sutton—your nom de plume, if you will. Although Schreiber is a fitting last name for someone in your profession.”
“Really? I don’t speak a word of—”
“It means ‘writer,’” he said with a fleeting smile. “And that is why it fits.”