Tommy Meriton was sitting at his desk in his ornate office in the British embassy in Bucharest, with his feet on a velvet stool, his backside on a velvet chair and a pen idle in his hand, trying to think of something to say to Octavia. All he’d written so far was, ‘Here I am, still among the warring tribes’ and then he’d had to stop because he’d run out of inspiration. What he really wanted to do was tell her what a bore it was to be stuck out here in the Balkans but that was out of the question. It wouldn’t be the done thing, as he was a member of the embassy, not diplomatic and all that, and in any case he was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t be interested. She rarely answered what he told her, and if she did it was in an offhand sort of way. In fact there were times when he was beginning to think that their affair was over and he’d have to find someone else. Which would be easy enough. She ought to think of that sometimes. The world was full of women and most of them had beds. It wasn’t as if he didn’t put himself out to say the right thing when he was writing to her. All that rot she’d told him about some silly woman who’d thrown herself in front of the king’s horse at the Derby and got herself killed. Emily Something-or-other. What did she imagine would happen? Stupid woman. Four pages she’d written about that and he’d made a really good fist of answering. Said how sorry he was and how sad. Perfect diplomacy. Couldn’t have bettered it. So it wouldn’t hurt her to pay attention to what he was telling her for a change. Was that so much to ask?
He sighed, feeling weary and sorry for himself. In three minutes, he thought, checking his watch, Frankie Marlborough is going to stroll in through that painted door, adjust his eyeglass and ask me if I’m ready, and then I’ll have to leave this and go off to some God-forsaken battleground somewhere and write some God-forsaken boring report about it. Supposed to keep an eye on what’s happening. And how the hell can we do that? How could anyone, when it’s just a collection of stupid warring tribes settling old scores and grabbing up as much land as they can get away with and taking revenge on one another under cover of driving out the Turks. All that rot about the London conference and how their precious armistice would bring a lasting peace and what happens? Lasts three weeks and then they all start up again and now we’ve got to have another stupid conference here. I’ve no patience with ’em. They’re all as bad as one another and someone should move in and bang their stupid heads together.
Frankie Marlborough’s predicted head appeared at the door, eyeglass and all. ‘All set?’ he asked. ‘Ready for the off?’
It was a long journey and although the first part was pleasant enough because they were travelling by train across the gentle plain south of the Danube, when they reached Sofia they were in much more hostile territory, surrounded by bleak mountains that loomed in upon them in a brooding darkness and poorly dressed men who glowered at them with suspicion. A chauffeured car and an interpreter were waiting for them outside the station, but neither were encouraging. The car was an ancient black saloon which looked as though it would be jolly uncomfortable, the interpreter a bearded man with a wall eye, who spat a stream of chewed tobacco onto the pavement before he greeted them and then spoke at length but so incomprehensibly that neither of them could understand a word he said.
‘This is a damned fool idea,’ Frankie Marlborough complained as they rattled out of the town, ‘chasin’ about the country in the middle of the night. We shall be black and blue before we get there, you mark my words, and our interpreter’s a fool and it’ll all turn out to be a wild goose chase, same as it was last time. Three dead soldiers and a pile of guns. Game ain’t worth the candle. I don’t know why we bother.’
‘I wouldn’t mind so much if the geese were to fly over better terrain,’ Tommy said. ‘Don’t they have any roads in this country?’
‘Ain’t seen one yet,’ his friend signed, ‘and I’ve been here a sight longer than you have. We’ll stop for supper in a little while.’
Supper was unpalatable, darkness impenetrable, the roads they were travelling now little better than dirt tracks, and the car was murderously uncomfortable and extremely cold. It would have been better if they could have settled to sleep but sleep was as impossible as the terrain and after several grumbling hours even breathing was difficult. After a while, it smelt as if they were driving through a bonfire and when they looked out of the window, they could see clouds of smoke and a distant dance of sparks.
‘What is it?’ Tommy asked the interpreter.
He shrugged. ‘Is Turk. No good.’
‘We’d better take a look,’ Frankie decided. ‘It might give us something to report back.’
So they stopped the car, found their torches, checked their revolvers and set out to reconnoitre.
They were in a narrow country lane and once they were out of the car they could see that there were fires burning about half a mile away. Houses by the look of it. Or huts. No sound of gunfire but they could hear the crackle of the flames. ‘Approach with caution,’ Frankie ordered.
It was a village of sorts, or what was left of it, and even before they reached the burning houses it was obvious that there’d been butchery there. The earth path was heaped with slaughtered cows, lying stiff-legged in dark congealing pools of their own blood. One was still alive, although her belly had been ripped open. She mooed plaintively at them as they passed and struggled to stand. Now they could see the outline of a church immediately ahead of them and more dark shapes lying on the ground, smaller shapes, sheep maybe? But the light of their torches revealed that these were not livestock but children. Little girls lying spreadeagled where they’d been dropped, their rough clothes torn and bloodstained.
‘Christ Almighty!’ Tommy said. Little girls no older than Dora and Edith, raped and murdered. What sort of people would do a thing like this? As he turned his torch he saw that one of the poor little things had had her throat cut. She was drenched in blood. The smell of it was overpowering.
‘Christ Almighty!’ he said again. ‘Christ Almighty!’ Horror had stripped him of the power of speech. He was stuck with that one disbelieving oath, repeating it over and over again. He’d heard about rapes and murders, naturally, there were always rumours and some of them pretty lurid, but until that moment it had just been words. Not this. Oh God, not this! Then the gall rose into his throat and he had to turn aside to be sick.
Frankie walked on, the beam of his torch wavering before him, a small white light among the lurid red and sulphur of the flames. The church seemed to be steaming. There was a grey-white vapour rising from the roof and the west door was badly burnt and, as they discovered when they tried to open it, locked from the outside. It took their combined strength to turn the key and neither of them spoke because they could smell the horror that was waiting for them inside.
The place was full of charred corpses, lying against the remains of the pews, piled on top of one another, old men, toothless and wrinkled, women with burnt hair, tattered children, barefooted and filthy with the grime of the fire. It was terribly obvious what had happened to them. They’d been herded into the church and burnt alive.
There are prayers you have to say for the dead, Tommy thought, but he couldn’t remember them. His mind was stiff with shock and pity. He stooped to the nearest dead child and closed his eyes, gently as though he was still alive and could be hurt by the touch. Then he began to weep, hot angry tears of outraged pity for the suffering of these tangled corpses. The men who had done this were not mere warring tribes – thinking that was glib and silly. This was something much, much worse. These men were murderers, rapists, torturers, appalling, evil, cruel, despicable. If there was any justice in the world, they should be hunted down and shot like the mad dogs they were, an eye for an eye, a split skull for a split skull, a death for a death. They should be shut up in another church and burnt alive like their victims.
The interpreter was standing beside him, chewing another wad of tobacco. How can he chew tobacco at a time like this? Tommy thought. ‘Who did this?’ he asked.
The interpreter shrugged. ‘Turk. Yesterday they come through. Two, three days.’
‘This is terrible,’ Tommy said. It was inadequate and he knew it but he felt impelled to say something.
The man shrugged again. ‘Is war,’ he said calmly. ‘Is what happen. They kill. We kill better. We kill much better. We cut throat, we take women.’ Underlit by the torch, he looked as though he was gloating, his face brutal. ‘We are Bulgar! We kill good.’
‘He speaks as though such things are normal,’ Tommy said as he and Frankie walked back to the car.
‘They are,’ Frankie said. ‘These people are like animals. All as bad as one another. This won’t be the last atrocity you’ll see, you mark my words.’
‘But even so…’ Tommy said.
‘Best not to think about it too much,’ Frankie advised. ‘Best just to write our report and get back to civilisation as quickly as we can.’
They wrote the report on the return journey to Sofia, using their torches to light the pages. By the time they were back in the embassy again it was mid morning, they’d filtered the incident into diplomatic language and they were drained of all energy.
Tommy’s letter to Octavia was still lying on the desk where he’d left it. The sight of her name made him ache to be in her arms, with a tearing, agonising yearning to be loved and comforted and as far away from this nightmare region as he could get. It was a powerful sensation and not one he’d ever felt before. Was it only yesterday that he’d sat at that desk writing ‘warring tribes?’ Dear God! How could he have been so naïve? Only yesterday and yet everything had changed. Standing there in that baroque office, he knew so exactly what he wanted and what he needed. It wasn’t a series of easy conquests. Had he really thought that? How could he have been so trivial? That was petty and selfish. What he needed now was honesty and the chance to say what he truly felt, and the only person who could cope with that was his lovely, outspoken, determined Tikki-Tavy. He screwed the offending paper into a ball and threw it away. Then he wrote a simple message.
‘Sweetheart, I shall be in Paris as soon as it can be arranged. Please, please meet me there. I will write again with details as soon as I can. I cannot wait to see you again. I miss you more than I can say. Your ever-loving Tommy.’
‘I must go to Paris, Mama,’ Octavia said, folding his letter and putting it neatly back into its envelope. Her mother raised her eyebrows so she felt she had to explain. ‘My friends have invited me to stay for a while.’
‘Oh dear!’ her mother worried. ‘Are you strong enough, my darling? It’s a long journey. I wouldn’t want you getting ill again.’
‘It’s a Channel crossing, Mama,’ Octavia said. ‘I might get a little seasick but no more than that.’ The urgency of his letter was too obvious not to be answered. That and the revealing pressure of that redoubled plea. He needed her and that was enough. After all these months of wanting to see him and wondering whether they would ever meet again, after all those puzzling, distant letters, he’d written to beg her to come to Paris. She would go no matter what her mother said.
‘But even so…’ Amy said. ‘You were so ill when you got back from that funeral. I wouldn’t want you to suffer another setback.’
‘It wasn’t a setback, Mama,’ Octavia said rather crossly. There were times when her mother’s concern, loving though it undoubtedly was, could be decidedly trying. ‘I was tired, that was all. It was a very moving occasion. We were all tired.’ She was remembering her fatigue as she spoke, the ache behind her knees as the great cortege wound through the streets, the staring crowds lining the pavements, many of them moved to tears, the dizzying scent of the flowers they’d carried, the white lilies and purple irises, the impact of so many women all wearing the suffragette colours, and marching with such strength. She’d felt so proud marching behind the hearse in the place of honour with all the other hunger strikers, wearing her silver arrow for the first time. Her pride had carried her along, that and the strength she’d felt at being in such a powerful crowd, following such a courageous martyr. ‘In any case,’ she said to her mother, ‘even if I was tired, it was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
‘I don’t think you need to worry, my love,’ J-J said to his wife, interceding before his two darlings could quarrel. ‘As far as I can ascertain, the waiters on the cross-Channel ferries are not yet force-feeding their passengers. Given a fair wind and a strong tide, I think she will be safe.’
‘It is all very well for you to make light of it, J-J,’ Amy rebuked him, ‘but health is a serious matter.’
‘And Octavia takes it seriously,’ her father said. ‘Do you not, Tavy? When do you intend to go?’
‘In a few weeks I expect,’ Octavia said. ‘They will write and tell me.’
But the situation in the Balkans was so difficult that it was August 10th and after the Bucharest conference before Tommy could wangle the leave he wanted so much.
How beautiful Paris is, Octavia thought, all those chestnut trees heavy with high summer and the city so at ease. Of course, it was the month of the fermiture annuelle, so it was deserted by its inhabitants and their usual bustle and left to the amble of visitors. The Gare du Nord was full of them when she arrived, most of them British, and as heavily laden as the chestnut trees, talking excitedly in their now foreign language. Outside in the sunshine along the Rue de Dunkerque, the touts and taxi cabs waited in line for their custom and the café tables were set out on the opposite pavement under their bright scarlet awnings primed to tempt them.
Their clarion colour was the first thing Octavia saw as she walked out of the station, sniffing the familiar air. The second was her darling Tommy, striding across the road, elegant in a cream summer suit, dodging the traffic and watching the road. Then he saw her and stretched out his arms towards her. It was such a yearning, loving gesture she ran to answer it, calling his name. It would have been hard to say which of them was more in need of the other. They tumbled into an embrace, oblivious to the smiles and nods of the passers-by, and clung together kissing hungrily. ‘Oh, my darling, darling Tommy!’ ‘Sweet, sweetheart!’
‘How husky you are,’ he said, surprised by the timbre of her voice. ‘Have you taken a cold?’
She had grown so used to the change that she hardly noticed it. It was improving gradually and didn’t really concern her. ‘No,’ she assured him. She would have to tell him what had happened to her, but eventually, not at that moment. ‘I am quite well,’ she said, smiling into his eyes. ‘It is nothing. Kiss me again, my darling.’
So he ignored her husky voice and raised an imperial hand to call a taxi. They kissed all the way to the hotel, where they registered with such impatience that the receptionist could barely conceal a snigger and the concierge looked askance at them. And at last they were in their room and alone together and could satisfy the aching sharpness of their desire, this new, driving, painful desire to be loved and comforted. After such a rapturous greeting they knew it would be a blissful coming together. But it wasn’t. It was a disappointment to both of them. He was too rough and too quick and was demoralised to have felt so little, she was left unsatisfied and puzzled. Worse, instead of lying lazily beside her and lighting his usual cheroot, he got up again and went to stand by the window where he looked down at the boulevard, stroking his moustache and frowning.
She sat up among the tumbled bedclothes. ‘What is it, Tommy?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘This is such a beautiful city,’ he said, looking at a fashionable couple who were strolling along the pavement below him: he, suave and handsome in well-cut grey and a jaunty hat; she, tall and slender and dressed in style in a wide-brimmed hat, an elegant rose-pink suit with a long straight skirt and a belted jacket and the prettiest pointed shoes. It was a lifetime away from the mud and squalor of the Balkans. ‘People look so – oh, I don’t know – intelligent, I suppose, sophisticated, cultured, like people you can understand, people you can trust.’
‘And that makes you sigh?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted and tried to make a joke of it. ‘Potty, isn’t it?’
She left the bed, put on her glasses and joined him at the window, aware that there was more to the sigh than he’d told her. The sun streamed in through the casements to light the opulence of the room, the high bed, thick carpet, heavy furniture. It was such a solid unchanging room, a place to depend on, in a city they could trust. But her instincts roared that the world was changing for both of them. ‘What is the matter, my darling?’ she said.
He told her about the massacre, detail by appalling detail, speaking quietly and not looking at her, but gazing down at the boulevard, one hand resting on the heavy tassel of the velvet curtains. It wasn’t how he’d intended to tell her but once he’d begun he had to go on until the whole horrible business had been described. She was so appalled by the horror of the things he was saying she listened without moving. ‘Oh, Tommy!’ she said when he’d finished. ‘That’s dreadful.’
‘War is the most terrible thing,’ he said, turning to look at her at last. ‘It brings out the hatred in people, which God forbid you should ever know anything about.’
‘I know it already,’ she said. And because it was exactly the right moment, she told him what had happened to her in Holloway gaol, at first speaking quietly and sensibly but soon growing tearful at the memories she was stirring.
He put his arms round her as she wept and they clung together for comfort. ‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ he soothed. ‘You’re all right now. You’re with me. I’ll look after you. Oh, my dear darling, don’t cry.’ He was roused to the most protective tenderness. How dare they treat her so? Torturing her and making her ill and husky. Oh, how he loved that huskiness now. I shall marry her, he thought, kissing her tousled hair, I shall marry her and look after her. She can’t go on facing horrors like that all on her own. He hadn’t thought about marriage until that moment but it seemed the natural and obvious thing. He led her back to the bed and gentled her to sit down. He must start looking after her at once. ‘Dear Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘You’ve suffered enough for this cause of yours. Don’t you think so? You must stop. You really must.’
They were being so honest with one another she told him the truth about that too, wiping her eyes and her glasses. ‘I’ve stopped already,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken a job. I shan’t have the time for demonstrations and hunger strikes. Or not so much time anyway.’
He approved. ‘Well, good for you.’
‘No,’ she said, sadly. ‘It’s not good. It’s cowardly. I wouldn’t tell anyone but you, but I’m afraid it’s the truth. I can’t face being force-fed again. I’m going to work so as to get out of the way.’ She was torn by her cowardice, deeply, deeply ashamed of it. ‘Things are going wrong, Tommy. It’s only two months since Emily Davison died. Only two months. We had that wonderful funeral procession for her and there was such sympathy for us. I thought we’d made our point at last, that people understood what we were saying. But I was wrong. They’re treating us like criminals again, Mrs Pankhurst is ill, Sylvia’s in Holloway, we’ve had three suffrage bills put through Parliament in the last three years and they’ve defeated every single one. We haven’t made any progress at all. I feel we’re going backwards.’
He kissed her. ‘And what is this work you’ve taken?’
‘I’m going to teach in a national school,’ she said. ‘I start in September.’
A job’s no bad thing, he thought. It doesn’t matter why she’s taken it, it’ll keep her occupied and out of prison until I can leave Bucharest. ‘I only have six more months to serve,’ he told her, ‘and then I shall come back to England and marry you. How would that be? At Christmas, if you like, or in the summer. You’ve only to say the word. And then when I’ve got my next appointment you can come and live with me, wherever it is. It might be Paris. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? What do you think?’
She was so surprised that for a moment she couldn’t think what to say. If he’d proposed to her after that first amazing summer at Eastbourne, she would have accepted him without a second thought, but so much had changed now that she wasn’t sure. She’d adapted herself to this disjointed life of theirs, accepted that he couldn’t marry until his work and his father allowed it, grown accustomed to the deceptions that had been necessary to hide their meetings, even down to wearing a wedding ring. Most important of all, she was committed to teaching now. It would be unfair to take on a position at the school and leave it after a term. She steeled herself to tell him they must delay.
‘I would rather wait for a couple of years,’ she said. ‘Until the summer after next perhaps. We don’t have to rush things, do we?’
‘Dash it all, Tavy,’ he said, feeling rather put out, ‘I thought you’d like to get married. Most girls do.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to marry you,’ she explained. ‘I do. Very much. I always have. It’s just… If I marry, I shall have to leave my job – they don’t allow teachers in national schools to be married – and I’d like to do it for a little while at least. To prove that I can. We can go on as we are, can’t we?’ It was a genuine question because he was looking so disturbed she needed to be reassured.
‘But you do love me?’ he said and that was a real question too.
‘More than ever.’
‘And you’ll marry me in two years’ time?’
‘Of course.’
‘Always providing there isn’t a war, I suppose.’
That sounded alarming. ‘There isn’t going to be, is there? I thought it had gone quiet. The Times said the London conference had arranged an armistice.’
‘I’m not talking about the Balkans,’ he said. ‘The armistice didn’t work. They’re fighting again already. It’s all they ever do. No, it’s not the Balkans.’
She was suddenly alarmed. What was he trying to tell her? That everything was worse than she thought? ‘What then?’
‘There could be a war between England and Germany,’ he said. ‘Our ambassador says he can see it coming. You must have heard rumours.’
She had, of course. Her father’s dinner guests had talked about the possibility of it, and there’d been an article in The Times about how many horses would be needed if a war broke out – she’d been appalled at the huge numbers they’d estimated for – and when the old king died, all the newspapers said his diplomacy would be sorely missed and hinted that a war with Germany was imminent. But she’d assumed it was rumour and no more. People were always talking about wars of one kind or another.
She got up and walked back to the window, needing a pause to get her thoughts in order. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I have heard things. But it’s only talk, isn’t it? It can be avoided, surely?’
‘There’s no knowing,’ he told her sadly. ‘The Balkans is full of bloodthirsty maniacs and they’re all scared stiff of one another so they’ve made alliances with every major power in Europe – Great Britain, Germany, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, everyone. It’s a powder keg down there. It only needs a spark to set it all off. Anything could happen.’
Below the window the chestnuts shifted in the afternoon breeze and the taxis darted about like water beetles on the shining blue of the boulevard. ‘Then we must hope it doesn’t,’ she said.
She looked so sad and bleak he was stirred to pity for her all over again, and pity triggered desire. ‘Come back to bed, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t good last time, was it? I mean…’
It was so nearly an apology and so very unlike him to offer one she was quite touched by it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t but we’ve got a month to make up for it.’
‘Starting now?’ he hoped.
She walked back to the bed and stooped to kiss him. ‘Starting now,’ she said.
‘Oh, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘I do love you.’