A warden in his round helmet called out, “You all right, mate?” and Graf nodded wearily.
“It’s all over now,” the warden added. “Looks like we’ll live to fight another day.”
Graf nodded once more, to signal agreement, and the warden moved on. He spat out the sour taste of the vomit, then peeled off the gloves and let them drop onto the cracked pavement without any further contact.
Yes, he thought, you English might live to fight another day, but in the end, the time would come—thanks to brilliant and inventive men like himself—when the kaiser would ride in glory through the gates of Buckingham Palace itself. Dr. Anton Graf, he felt confident, would be not far behind in his retinue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was the strangest of sensations, and Wells had heard about it from several soldiers, after they had returned to the Front from a leave back home. One had said, “They treat me as if I’ve just been gone on a bender.” Another had said, “Even though I don’t want to talk about what I’ve seen here, it doesn’t matter—they don’t want to hear about it, anyway.” More than one had complained to him that they’d returned home to find their sweetheart had already taken up with someone else. “I told her, I’m not dead yet, love—couldn’t you have waited? It won’t be long.” A heartbroken young corpsman had shown Wells the engagement ring he had taken back, and wore now on a chain around his neck, along with his identity disc. “Let Fritz finish what she started.”
Standing on the street outside the War Office, Wells had that same sense of unreality, of disorientation. Only a short time before—the sort that could be calculated in hours—he had been mired in mud and blood, riddled with lice and overrun by rats, deafened by artillery bombardments and sniffing the air for deadly gas, even buried alive in an underground trench of lost men . . . and now? Now he had to remind himself to step back from the curb as a crowded bus went clanging by. Now he was surrounded by civilians with bowler hats on their heads and newspapers under their arms. Cars and taxi cabs honked their horns, church bells rang the hour, shopkeepers hawked their wares from open doorways—it was an unusually temperate day—and shoeblacks tried to talk him into a polish. How could this world—of bustling and benign activity—coexist with the world of death and destruction that he had just departed? Such a negligible distance separated them, but they might just as well have been in different island universes, millions of miles apart.
Remembering as best he could the vertiginous route up to the Ministry of Military Information, he climbed one flight of stairs after another, passing dozens of young men and women in uniform, hurrying about with important folders tucked under their arms, and found the door to Colonel Bryce’s office standing open.
“Come in, Wells, come in,” Bryce said. “Just airing the place out a bit.” The windows behind the desk were raised, too.
Wells gratefully took a seat, plopping his briefcase in his lap. He hadn’t had much sleep the night before, what with Rebecca’s visit, the air raid, and then the awful hallucination in the bathroom mirror. This climb up the stairs had almost finished him.
“Can’t tell you how shocked and dismayed we were at the initial news of your disappearance on the battlefront,” Bryce said.
“No more than I, of that I can assure you.”
“And how relieved we were to get the news of your rescue from Captain Lillyfield.”
Wells could see, even though it was upside down, that a copy of his first dispatch was lying on the desk. There were red pencil markings on it, something any writer could spot at a hundred paces.
“But you are well now? Everything’s all right?”
“Yes, fine, thanks.” No point in bringing up nightmares now. “Sergeant Stubb was an exemplary chaperone.”
“Yes, we thought he might be.”
“In fact, I’d like to take him to dinner at my club. Least I can do.”
“It’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.”
“For what?”
“Sergeant Stubb has been returned to his unit.”
“What? Surely the man earned a furlough at least.”
“It was at his own request.”
Wells had heard of that phenomenon, too—soldiers who felt disoriented away from the lines, or were convinced that they were letting down their comrades.
“We’ve run your first article through all the necessary channels,” Bryce said, now slipping the edited pages across the desk, “and only some minor redactions were required.”
Wells took the papers and quickly glanced over them.
“It’s just what we were looking for,” Bryce said, “giving a boost to our troops, while reminding the folks back home of the great sacrifice these men are making.”
Wells took no issue with the edits eliminating what might have been considered military information, but wherever he saw that the officious pen of some bureaucrat had tried to alter a word or passage for some putatively artistic purpose, he took out his own pen and crossed it out, writing “stet” in the margin. Who were these people to think that they knew more about writing than he did? The gall.
When he handed it back, Bryce did him the courtesy of not checking his corrections, but simply stamped it with the seal of his office and, presumably, put it aside for dissemination to the press. Normally, of course, Wells, or his literary agent, would be responsible for that, but this was not a normal assignment. He was working for the ministry, not himself.
“And I have something else for you,” Wells volunteered, reaching into his briefcase and taking out the journal that Friedrich Von Baden had given him. “It’s in German, and I don’t read German.”
Bryce looked it over, noting the dirt and stains and, inside, the cramped handwriting. “What is it?”
“A ghoul’s last testament,” Wells said, and when Bryce gave him a quizzical look, added, “It was given to me by the German deserter who saved my life.” And then, as Bryce listened with mounting astonishment, he elaborated on the strange concatenation of events that had landed him in the ghouls’ den, deep below no man’s land . . . talking to a German scientist whose research had involved equine stock. It became increasingly clear to Wells that Captain Lillyfield had relayed a much sanitized, or should he say “redacted,” account of what had occurred to him.
“And you say that this Von Baden was a nobleman?” Bryce said, still studying the document.
“So he said.” Wells found it typical that Bryce’s first question would be about the man’s social standing. An ordinary conscript turning deserter would not have surprised him nearly as much.
“And a medical man, to boot?”
“Yes, with a specialized background in zoonotic bacteriology.”
“We’ll have to get this translated, immediately. Should take no more than a day.”
But Wells could see that some other part of his narrative had piqued Bryce’s interest.
“This business about horses,” Bryce said, placing the journal on his desk, his fingers drumming on its soiled cover.
“Yes?”
“You say that he told you he’d been involved in experiments with them?”
“In Berlin, and on that island in the Baltic.”
Bryce sat back in his chair, his eyes toward the ceiling as he plainly pondered what next to say.
“What I’m about to tell you is still top secret. You may share it with no one. Is that understood?”
“Understood.” Wells was irritated by the superfluous admonitions.
“Last night, there was an incident, at the Horse Guards Parade.”
“What sort of incident?”
As Wells was told the details, he sat up in the chair. An intruder had penetrated the corrals, and then been chased into St. James’s Park, where the feedlot overseer had later found a brass box, with test tubes in it. The box, which bore an inscription from the Colonial Office of Germany, had been sent on to the chemical weapons department for further analysis. In Wells’s way of thinking, the incident bore all the hallmarks
of what the Prussian doctor had told him about the planned sabotage of the Allies’ equine stock.
“May I be kept apprised of this investigation?” Wells said.
“Under normal circumstances, and given your civilian status,” Bryce hedged, “that would never be done.”
“Damn my civilian status! I’ve just put the proof of a German plot to win the war by some awful and ingenious means right on the desk in front of you.”
“I recognize that fact,” Bryce said, to mollify him, “and depending on what we learn from this journal, we may need to enlist your help again. If Winston, who inducted you into all this in the first place, is willing to back me up, I see no impediment to further disclosures.”
Then it was a done deal. Churchill was not only Wells’s friend, but his most tireless promoter. Not to mention one of the Admiralty’s most valued leaders.
For now, Wells was eager to get on with the next part of his mission, the part that he was keeping secret even from Colonel Bryce. The part he felt he owed to Friedrich Von Baden, who had proven himself not to be a ghoul—some coward lurking in Stygian gloom to scavenge the dead—but that very rare thing, a man with a moral compass . . . in a world that seemed to have lost its own.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Oh, you’re home!” Lettie said, poking her head into Rebecca’s bedroom, then calling out to her younger sister, Winnie, to come quick.
Rebecca had hoped to sneak into the house and out again without anyone noticing. “Shh,” she admonished Lettie, “I don’t want to have to deal with Mother.”
“She’s out at the market,” her sister said, perching on the edge of Rebecca’s bed—conspicuously unused from the night before.
“But did she notice that I didn’t come home last night?”
“What do you think?” Lettie replied. “She notices if an antimacassar is askew.”
“You’re not going to be out again tonight, are you?” Winnie said, breathless from running up the stairs. “Mother will pitch a fit.”
“Let her,” Rebecca said, hastily cramming a fresh blouse and skirt, and assorted other items, into the satchel on the bed. She didn’t know where she would be spending that night, or the next—right back there, or at Wells’s flat—but she wanted to be prepared for any eventuality.
“You were with him, weren’t you?” Lettie said, and Winnie put in, “That’s what Mother believes.”
“She would not be mistaken,” Rebecca said, tossing her hairbrush into the bag.
Both of her sisters blushed at once, and put their hands to their mouths. They were older than she was, but almost as unsophisticated as she had been . . . until the night before.
“My God,” Lettie said, “does that mean that you have become—”
“His mistress?” Winnie said, completing the thought.
It was a question Rebecca had wrestled with all that day, ever since awakening in the flat in St. James’s Court. Opening her eyes, she had been momentarily confused—where was her bureau? the familiar bedposts? why did she have no nightgown on?—and then Wells had rolled over to face her, and mumbled, “Morning . . . Panther.”
She had done it. She had stepped into the lion’s den—or jaguar’s, to be more precise—and lived to tell the tale.
“Good morning,” she’d replied, as if this were the most matter-of-fact way to awaken.
His hand had slid under the sheet and onto her hip, drawing her closer. He kissed her on the tip of her nose, as you would a kitten, and looked deep into her eyes.
“Did you sleep well?”
“The sleep,” she said, “of the unjust.”
He smiled. “But are you happy?”
She frowned, thinking it over. Happiness wasn’t exactly what she felt, and she was not one to put the wrong word to something. “Triumphant.”
“What,” he said, rearing back, “have you conquered me?”
“That was the easy part. I conquered myself. My own fears. I did what I wanted to, despite any social brickbats that might come flying my way.”
“None have to,” he replied, soberly, “if we exercise discretion.”
“Discretion has never been your long suit, H. G.”
He mulled that over. “Neither has it been yours.”
“Correct. It appears we’re doomed.”
“In which case,” he said, slipping his arm around her and pulling her so close that her breasts rubbed against his chest, “we might as well make the most of it!”
He pressed his lips to hers, his bristly mustache scratching her cheek, and she felt a rush of blood pounding through all her veins, and her hips, almost as if they had a will of their own, grinding against his groin. It was somehow even more powerful than it had been the night before; then, she had been consumed with the novelty, the surprise, even the shock of a carnal embrace, and to some small extent had remained an observer, as writers are wont to do. But this time there was none of that. This time, she entered into the moment fully and physically.
“What was . . . it . . . like?” Winnie asked, and there was no question what she was referring to.
“Is it as transcendent as the romantic novels would have us believe?” Lettie said.
Rebecca did not know what to say. She hardly wanted to serve as some corrupting influence on her sisters—both of whom were pursuing careers of their own, and could by no means be considered delicate hothouse flowers—but she also didn’t want to hew to the conventional lines and downplay the enormity of the experience. Men, it was generally accepted, were consumed with desire and a commensurate enjoyment of sex, but women were assumed to be not much more than willing vessels, able to enhance their partners’ pleasure and, if sufficiently free and modern, capable of experiencing some pale simulacrum of those same sensations that the men felt. Younger writers like D. H. Lawrence were challenging that assumption (and finding their work dismissed because of it), but even H. G., in his recent novels of domestic mores, had given it a go. It was still with some embarrassment that she remembered the review in which she had described him as an old maid whose books were clotted with a sex obsession like cold white sauce. In bed, he was anything but temperate or old-fashioned, and though she had no one to compare him to, he was as energetic—and creative!—as any lover she could imagine.
“Well?” Lettie pressed. “Have you been transformed?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve become a jungle cat,” and her sisters laughed, not realizing that what they’d just heard was a confession and not a jest.
The sound of the front door opening put a stop to the conversation, and their mother’s voice called up the stairs, “Come and help me with these packages!”
“Right down,” Winnie called, then whispered, “Shall we cover for you?”
“No, best to face the music,” Rebecca replied, and with her satchel in hand, she followed her sisters down the stairs. Mrs. Fairfield was still in the foyer, with several bags from the grocer. When she saw Rebecca, standing halfway down the flight, her eyes touched on the satchel, then went back to Rebecca’s defiant face.
“I don’t need to ask where you’ve been, do I?”
“Probably not.”
“Or where you are going?”
Rebecca didn’t answer. Why prolong this?
“If you think you can lead this life, and use this house only when you find it a convenient refuge, you are mistaken. This is my house, and I make the rules.”
“Fair enough,” Rebecca replied. “I’ll take a flat in the city.”
“His flat?”
“My own.”
“With what, may I ask?”
“I work, and I’ve put some money by.” In truth, she hadn’t put much money by, and the practical implications of what she was doing were just sinking in. Still, she couldn’t back down now.
“Once a woman has gone down that path—”
Rebecca interrupted her to say, “What path is that?”
“You know perfectly well what path I mean, and once a woman has c
hosen to go down it, it can be very difficult to return.”
Rebecca saw no point in continuing the back-and-forth. Elbowing her way past her silent sisters, she went to the door and threw it open in the kind of theatrical gesture she had been taught, and usually failed to carry off, at the Royal Academy. This time, she muffed it by banging the bulging bag against the doorframe, which put her off-balance. She stumbled to the front steps before recovering. When she heard the door slam shut behind her—over her sisters’ protests—she found herself wondering what in fact she had just done. Wells had invited her to spend the night with him again, and she had come back simply to pack some overnight supplies. She’d anticipated a possible skirmish with her mother, but not an all-out war—much less one that she had apparently lost.
Without intending to, she had lived up to her adopted stage name, the reckless character from the Ibsen play. That character would never look back, and so she didn’t, either. Marching off down the street, she held her head high, despite the misgivings in her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Wells had always had a soft spot for Guy’s Hospital, as it had been the place where John Keats, a hundred years before, had completed his medical training with a dressership, or appointment as a surgeon’s assistant. Of course, what the young poet had experienced here, holding down writhing patients as doctors amputated limbs without the benefit of anesthesia, or in the dissecting rooms, where students played games poking maggots out of their hiding places in the corpses salvaged from the city prisons, had been enough to turn him away from the profession entirely—to the lasting benefit of literature. But Keats embodied, like Wells, a great curiosity about the physical world at the same time that he evinced an overwhelming literary compulsion. He wanted desperately to understand the basic underpinnings of life as much as he wanted to find a way to transcend them and celebrate, in lyrical and enduring words, the higher things. Wells sometimes wondered if his own work would hold up for so long and so well.
The Haunting of H. G. Wells Page 18
