Joan was in civies: and looked terrific, of course. Couldn’t help it – she always had. In green again, this evening: in days of yore she’d known it was his favourite colour for her, and had tended to humour him in that way. A soft, mid-green, a suit made of some silky material, figure-hugging. He kissed her, out there on the pavement: ‘Joan. Lovely. Really is.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ Laughing… ‘Sure it’s not some kind of penance?’
Big dark eyes inches from his: new arrivals pushing into the pub’s entrance forcing them even closer together, when having kissed her cheek and practically inhaled a small jade ear-ring he’d been in the process of disengaging. And certainly not answering that question, was he sure: he wasn’t, not in the least. He was worried out of his mind about Rosie, news of her he’d had from Marilyn Stuart. He’d set up this date with Joan before that, unfortunately, and the only way to have got out of it would have been to call her today, at such short notice that he’d felt he couldn’t.
‘This one of your regular haunts, Ben?’
‘Not really. But convenient, I thought. Halfway house between you in your snooty neighbourhood and me in my doss-house… Look – eating takes place upstairs. More room up there, too.’
‘OK.’ A short, dark-oak staircase with a bend in it. Climbing it, saying over her shoulder, ‘Amazing, you being at the Mallinsons!’
‘Man I work with knew a guy who was moving out, that’s all. Lucky timing. Amazed me you knew them, though.’
She’d explained the background to that, mostly when he’d telephoned her to make this date. Hermione, now Mrs Mallinson, as a young and penniless war widow in 1919 had been taken on by Joan’s family as a sort of housekeeper. They’d got rid of her at some time around 1930, as one of a number of then essential economies, but Joan, aged about seventeen at the time, had been fond of her and kept in touch. They’d swapped Christmas cards and occasional letters, mainly changes of address from Hermione and from Joan’s side any special news of herself or of her brother. Hermione had had a series of comparatively short-lived jobs, all of a domestic nature and usually described as housekeeping, but she’d finally landed up with Professor Mallinson, a widower, and married him.
‘I gather the Mallinsons don’t know you and Bob are getting divorced?’
‘Yes. I mean they don’t. Bob being in the Med’s enough to be going on with.’
‘Except sooner or later – why wouldn’t you want them to know, anyway?’
‘Because Hermione’s very stern on such subjects. Used to lecture me – no end of pi-jaw… Anyway – when it’s a fait accompli—’
A young but heavyweight waitress intervened: ‘That table all right for you, sir?’
‘I’d say so. OK, Joan?’
‘Fine – backs to the wall… Ben, this is nice…’
Actually, pretty awful. With nothing in his mind but Rosie. He pulled the end of the table out so she could get in behind it, and she chose that moment, as she swung her shapely hips in, brushing against him quite deliberately, to make it worse: ‘Am I right in suspecting that you and little what’s her name aren’t seeing all that much of each other, these days?’
He hesitated: on the point of manoeuvring himself in beside her… Staring down for a moment at her wide, bright smile. The bitch was sensationally attractive. Just about every other man in the room who had a view of her seemed to be thinking the same thing. He asked her – quietly, politely, suppressing that flare of anger – easing himself in, then moving the stick over to the outside to be out of her way – better than hitting her with it – ‘Joan – a favour, please. Any other subject. Tonight especially. OK?’
‘But why, my darling? I mean all right, but—’
‘Here – menu. No – hell, drink, first. Gin, or – what, Horse’s Neck?’
‘Lovely idea!’
He’d felt he had to ask her out, after he’d met her at his digs, and guessing it was likely he’d see her there again. In any case he’d wanted a chance to make her understand that there was no prospect whatsoever of their resuming any kind of close relationship: having a lasting if somewhat confused memory of that evening six weeks earlier. But not in any negative, censorious attitude to her break-up with Bob – water under the bridge now, didn’t have to be his business anyway – but positively and emphatically because Rosie was and henceforth always would be the one woman in his life. So he’d rung Joan at her brother’s flat and dated her; three or four days ago. Four – last Thursday, aiming to fix something up for the weekend, which hadn’t been possible because she’d been going out of town. And then at the weekend – this was Monday now, June 12, D-day plus six – on Saturday, Marilyn Stuart had rung him in his office in St James’, asking him to meet her that evening – when as it happened she’d be on her way out of town, to one of the SOE country-house establishments where she’d be spending the weekend. Yes, she’d said, she did have news. She’d added, ‘It’s not good, Ben. Don’t expect it to be: it just isn’t. Only not quite as bad as it would have been if I’d had to update you a few weeks ago.’
Puzzle that one out, he’d thought: putting the phone down with a sudden hollow in his gut.
She’d met him in the Gay Nineties, which for him was an easy hobble up from St James’. He’d given himself a couple of stiff ones before she arrived: he’d known she’d be there on the dot – Rosie had told him he wouldn’t believe how punctilious she was – so he’d got there at six, climbed on to a bar stool and lit his first cigarette by two minutes past. Dreading whatever it was she was going to tell him: something that would have been worse if she’d responded to any of the messages he’d left a few weeks ago. He’d been in the ‘F Section building a couple of times on official business since then too, seeing Hallowell about passengers and munitions cargoes for Brittany, and had manfully resisted the temptation to ask whether she was around: she knew damn well he and Hallowell had to meet quite often, could have left a message of her own with him if she’d been so inclined.
But OK. Maybe it had been a kindness – if it was going to be better now than it would have been earlier on.
She’d arrived in uniform. He’d been drinking gin and water and she’d asked for a Horse’s Neck. They’d moved to a small table in the anteroom to the eating area, which was quiet and empty this early in the evening. She’d opened straight away with, ‘Ben, I wish to God I didn’t have to tell you any of this. It’s only because of your own insistence – and the fact you’re practically one of the family.’
The SOE family, she’d meant. He nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘You won’t thank me. Nobody’d want this kind of news.’
She was preparing him for it, he’d realized. Putting him on his mettle. No doubt she’d had to impart bad news before. And she was very fond of Rosie, he knew that. On the other hand – reminding himself again – it couldn’t be all that bad because she’d already said it might have been worse.
‘So – let’s hear it?’
A nod. ‘First thing is – brace yourself, Ben – if I’d seen you more than a week or three weeks ago I’d have had to have told you Rosie was in a car-smash in northwestern France on May fourteenth and had been left virtually for dead.’
He hadn’t flinched. Hand white-knuckled around his gin-glass.
‘But that’s not so?’
‘No. What we know now is she was alive on June seventh, day after the landings. She had been in that car smash, but she spent the next three weeks in a hospital – in Morlaix. You’d know where that is?’
‘Head of a long estuary between the Beg-an-Fry and Grac’h Zu pinpoints.’
She went on: ‘The source of the first information – that she’d been killed – was the man who was driving the car. An SIS agent. He was brought out in one of your MGBs from the Grac’h Zu pinpoint on May seventeenth. I’ve spoken to him at length, also seen his written report. He’d got Rosie out of an extremely tricky situation, I must tell you, can’t go into detail, but—’
‘Cigarette?’
‘I don’t – thanks… Ben – I must emphasize this – the man I’m talking about took a huge risk, getting her out of the spot she was in earlier that night – May thirteenth. Bearing in mind that we and SIS are poles apart, functionally – well, he risked his life for her: in fact if it hadn’t been for the crash—’
‘She’d have come out with him?’
Imagining it. Inhaling hard. That last embarkation from the Grac’h Zu pinpoint: she’d have been one of them.
Instead of which…
Marilyn took a gulp of her drink, checked the time.
‘I’m emphasizing that point because when it happened – well, she’d gone through the windscreen, and there was a lot of blood, at first he thought she was dead, then detected a very faint pulse. He doubted she’d last: but even at that, he was in a very crucial situation, there wasn’t anything he could have done for her.’ She’d glanced round, and lowered her voice still further. ‘It was in the middle of the night, they were being chased by some Hun patrol – having already broken through one road-block. He’d switched his lights off and swung into a small lane – at high speed, hit a wall, and – that was that. This was miles and miles from where they had to get to, to contact the escape réseau – he couldn’t possibly have carried her, for instance. All he could do was leave her there, and get away himself across-country. Which he did. He’s in no way to be blamed, Ben.’
‘All right.’ Swallowing more smoke. ‘She wasn’t dead, and they – someone – got her to the hospital.’
‘German military police.’ Marilyn nodded. ‘And what we know now is she was taken out of the hospital five days ago – on the seventh. We’ve heard this from SIS – who got it from some agent of theirs in Morlaix – and they say she was transferred by prison van from there to Paris, that day. She was seen being brought out to the van, and a nurse from the hospital confirmed that one, it was a young female patient who’d gone by the name of Suzanne Tanguy – which was her cover name – and two, that the Gestapo—’
‘Gestapo?’
‘Yes. They’d assumed charge of her during her three weeks in the hospital, apparently, then suddenly ordered her transfer to Paris. Ben – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I hate this, but – look, with the way things are going for us now—’
‘Gestapo had her before, didn’t they?’ Shaking a new cigarette out of the packet. ‘Christ Almighty…’
‘Ben – the way it’s going now, they must know the writing’s on the wall, they’re surely going to pay some regard to—’
‘The niceties?’
‘Well – not quite the word…’
The Normandy battle was going well, Marilyn had been right, he thought, that the Boches would at least suspect by now that they were going to lose. Once they lost Caen – which insiders were saying would enable Allied forces to break through between the German 15th and 7th Armies – they’d have to. The beachheads were all joined up, and in these first six days the Allies had put ashore more than 300,000 men, 50,000 vehicles and 100,000 tons of stores. It wasn’t any walk-over. Twelve German divisions were in action, including four of Panzers. But Allied air had destroyed every bridge across the Seine below Paris, and most across the Loire, so the enemy could only move through the eighty-mile gap between Paris and Orléans, and the airforces were hammering them hard there.
That was the background – some of it – as of tonight. To Ben, it was all background. In the foreground and his own focus was just Rosie.
Joan asked him – having talked about her brother Gareth, who was in Italy and had been all right when he’d written her an air-letter card about a fortnight ago – ‘Has the invasion changed your job much, Ben?’
Small-talk. They’d both had fish pie, she’d eaten hers and he’d had some of his, then offered her a pudding which she hadn’t wanted, so ordered coffee and brandy… Convivial evening and small-talk with one’s former bedmate. With Rosie in some Gestapo cell?
You needed a shutter on your mind.
‘Ben?’
‘Yeah – sorry. My job, you asked about – started me thinking… No – the answer’s no, not much different. Hardly at all, really.’
The flotilla was being worked harder, that was about all, but his own work related only – or primarily – to their activities in the moonless periods. In the one that was coming very shortly, for instance, there were the usual crossings scheduled, agents and supplies to be landed and others – shot-down airmen too – to be brought out. One rather special commando-type operation – an SAS team who’d be conducting a reconnaissance in collaboration with a Free French paratroop mission, linked to a possible landing in strength on the west coast of Brittany – was to be conducted by MGB 600, Ben’s old ship. There was plenty going on. Brittany was still full of Germans. It also had – according to latest estimates – thirty thousand Résistants under starter’s orders, as it were.
He told her, ‘Goes on much the same. How’s the MTC?’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, us. Wouldn’t think I worked at all, would you?’ She picked up her glass. ‘I do, actually. In fact that’s what I was doing all weekend – and back to it tomorrow. Here’s to you, Ben.’
‘And to you. But – if you could bear it, Joannie – I’d like to explain something very personal and – well, important.’
‘If you absolutely must…’
‘Yes. Sorry, but – I know I shut you up, just then—’
‘I hit a raw spot. Not another word until it’s better – or worse, whichever.’
‘It’s not what you think. Nothing even remotely like you’re guessing. And this is very serious, Joannie. What I want to say first is – well, just that I’d like it if you and I could stay friends. You know how I’ve felt about you and Bob, but that’s not the point. Point is that I love Rosie and there’s nothing short-term about it, as soon as I can I’m going to marry her. You’ve got to realize that – it won’t change.’
Toying with her glass… ‘So how come you’re on your own now, day in and night out?’
‘Rosie’s in France. That’s how come.’
‘In France.’ Gazing at him: frowning. ‘Since when?’
‘This time – well, the night we bumped into each other in the Wellington – I was drowning my sorrows, she and I’d have been together that weekend, and—’
He tossed back his brandy. Nobody would have given it any stars. ‘I’d tried to persuade her not to go back, but…’ He shook his head. ‘I know it won’t do us any good in the long run, but we’d better have some more of this. If you can stand it?’
‘Oh – you know me… This France thing – your Rosie – nothing to do with the invasion – no, obviously—’
‘No.’ Signalling to the waitress. ‘Nothing at all. And this isn’t the first time she’s been – over there. But as it happens, just at this moment it’s – particularly fucking awful. If you’ll excuse my French.’
‘I think – broadly speaking – I’m beginning to catch on.’
‘Not a thing one’s supposed to talk about. Only for you to understand – well, what I was saying then. But it’s creasing me up, Joannie.’
‘It would. If I’m guessing correctly. Well – God, wouldn’t it… SOE – right? Oh, you poor darling… But why now suddenly – is it some crisis, or—?’
‘No. I mean yes. But – as I said, subject’s verboten. In any case – oh…’
‘Get you something, sir?’
The waitress: he nodded, touched his brandy glass. ‘Two more – large ones again, please?’
Joan murmured as the girl left them, ‘If there’s one bunch of people I really do quite desperately admire—’
‘Me too. So desperately, it hurts. Here – smoke…’
He walked her to her brother’s flat, kissed her goodnight in a brotherly manner and set off limping back to Pelham Place. A long haul – on one engine, as it were – but it was a fine night with a magnificent display of stars, and he was in no hurry to go to bed and for a third night running not sleep until it was about time to turn out again. Dreams were bad too, when you did drop off – including the happy ones, waking up then to reality. What you needed – and he was having to fight hard to hold on to – was fundamental hope – faith, might be the word. In which connection – this hit him suddenly, as he was crossing Sloane Square – unaware as yet, of course, that most of the spoiling of his sleep tonight would be due to the first flying bombs landing in south London, in the early hours – might do worse, he told himself, than recall to mind a lecture given him by Bob Stack, Joan’s husband – soon to be ex-husband. Talking about Rosie and her intention of returning to the field, and Ben’s fretting about it, Bob had jeered at him: ‘Scares you witless, Ben? How about her? How about bloody thousands of ’em – wives of bomber crews for instance, d’you think they’re not bloody terrified?’
Well – OK. Not that the circumstances as they were now had been foreseeable then, in the context of that pep-talk. They’d been – envisageable, certainly. But – leaving Sloane Square behind now, heading for Draycott Avenue – he told old Bob in his mind, Easy to talk like that, old mate…