The Words I Never Wrote

by Jane Thynne

  The door jangled behind her. Not risking a backward look, she shot a glance into the mirror.

  It was an elderly woman, fussing with a heavy valise.

  The Konditorei was packed with customers exuding the unique mixture of urgency and languor that affects travelers. Some were whiling away the time with a pastry, others downed coffee with indecent haste. Irene’s eyes ran along the tables until, right at the back, almost entirely concealed behind a wooden partition, she saw a tuft of dark hair and a fedora, sticking up above an opened copy of the Völkischer Beobachter.

  A seventy-two-point headline: FÜHRER SAYS, GIVE ME FOUR MORE YEARS.

  The chair opposite was unoccupied.

  Trembling, she advanced through the fug of vapor and cigarette smoke, dodging the furled umbrellas and their trickling puddles of damp. She placed the magazine on the faux-marble tabletop. The cover of Moderne Welt featured a woman with a West Highland terrier, like Robbie, their dog at Birnham Park, and she had taken it as a good omen. Taped to the inside pages was an envelope, and inside that envelope a stamp, ebony handled, inscribed with the name Weissmuller picked out in reverse.

  She took up the menu and tried to read it, but was incapable of focusing on the words. Out loud she said, “I’m trying to decide what to have. Perhaps some soup.”

  Nerves pitched her voice high. The newspaper did not budge. She stared at its back pages in a panic. That was wrong. She had to mention the soup. But what kind of soup did she have to mention?

  Think.

  Her head hummed with static. Potato. Asparagus. Tomato. It was tomato soup. Surely it was.

  “Excuse me, but have you ever tried the tomato soup?”

  The newspaper lowered a fraction, revealing a slice of a face and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. The complexion was middle-aged, pitted with acne scars. She fixed on him so closely, he might have been under a microscope.

  The man answered courteously, carefully, as though weighing a difficult mathematical problem.

  “Some say it’s the best in Berlin.”

  It was Waldo. Irene glanced at her watch.

  “Oh my goodness, I forgot the time. I won’t have time for soup. The train I’m waiting for is about to arrive.”

  She leaped up, shielding him as he rose, picked up the copy of Moderne Welt, and placed it in a leather briefcase. As Waldo moved to leave, head still ducked, he growled, “There’s a green newspaper kiosk on the corner of the Ku’damm and Rankestrasse. Be there at midday tomorrow and I’ll have this back for you. Bring some letterhead notepaper.”

  Irene stared. That was not part of the arrangement.

  “And passbooks. Any kind of passbook you can find.”

  As he made his way out of the Konditorei, Irene froze for a moment, before realizing she had to catch up with Waldo and tell him he had made a terrible mistake. She could not possibly agree to such a proposition. She must never meet him again. It was far too dangerous.

  She dashed through the café and looked out onto the concourse, but there was no sign of him. Waldo, or whoever he really was, had vanished in the crowds.

  Making her way back up Friedrichstrasse, Irene shivered as though the wind whistling down the street was bringing more than just the threat of more rain.

  As if it was bringing the sound of war itself.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ENGLAND, 1941

  Cordelia circled the bucket of sand in the hall, entered the dining room of the hotel, and turned her head at the sound of her name being called.

  “I say. Isn’t that Margo? Margo Cunningham?”

  She pivoted toward the table where two men sat over their dinners in the soft glow of a table lamp. The one who hailed her was smoothly handsome, with a louche air and dark hair smoothed off a high brow. She approached, with a sudden, brilliant smile of recognition.

  “It is you. Margo, how the devil are you?”

  “Kim!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Forgot my manners. Hamish, this is Margo Cunningham. I’ve known her people for ages. Her brother and I were friends at school. He used to take me back to their place to play t-t-t-tennis.” He had a slight, surprising stammer. “Margo and I would team up for doubles. Haven’t seen each other for years. Margo, this is Hamish Whittle. Hamish and I were engaged in a little bit of work down here. This is his last evening with us, so we’re celebrating.”

  “How lovely to meet you, Mr. Whittle.”

  She nodded briefly, still smiling, signaling a reluctance to linger.

  “I say, Margo, won’t you join us, if you have the time?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly, I’m sorry. I don’t want to intrude on any business.”

  She lifted her novel—a worn copy of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers—as evidence that she was happy with her own company.

  “Nonsense. You wouldn’t be intruding. We’re finished with business and we’re on to cricket scores.”

  “I do have a very early start…”

  “We won’t keep you from your beauty sleep. Not that you need it—I must say you’re looking splendid, not a day older than when we last met, and that dress is frightfully pretty.”

  “Still the same old flatterer, Kim.”

  “Come and join us for the best dinner this side of Bournemouth.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  Kim beckoned an ancient waiter, who brought another serving of the entrée—eggs drowned in curry powder, and a port and lemonade for Cordelia. She slipped off her jacket. The dress he had admired was mint green with a square neckline. She had a small diamond nestling in the hollow of her throat and a similar diamond glinting from the clip in her hair. Her makeup was confined to a touch of lipstick, a little kohl around the eyes, and a trace of Vaseline on her eyebrows. Nothing more elaborate than befitted a woman planning to spend her evening in the sole company of a detective novel, except for the fact that she had anointed her neck and wrists with Je Reviens, each movement bringing a nostalgic waft of orange blossom, jasmine, lilac, and rose.

  They had progressed through the curried eggs and an unconvincing sherry trifle that tasted distinctly of petrol, on to a miniature glass of brandy each, before Kim stuck a languid arm over the back of his chair and said, “Enough of us. You haven’t explained what brings you here, Margo. I thought you were with the Wrens?”

  “I’ve a fortnight’s leave, so I’m visiting my aunt. She’s absolutely ancient, ninety would you believe, but sharp as a tack. She’s all on her own and Mummy thought she might like some company, but I must say I’m frightfully bored. I keep wanting to go to the beach, but my aunt insists on me reading Dickens to her. I tell you, I know A Tale of Two Cities practically by heart. It was the best of times—”

  “…it was the worst of times,” added Hamish, laughing.

  “Well, that won’t do,” said Kim, decisively. “We can’t have a girl like you withering away. You need to get out. How about the flicks? There’s a picture house here—they’re showing This England with Constance Cummings. Have you seen it?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard she’s wonderful.”

  At this point the elderly waiter reappeared with an air of hushed solemnity, tapped Kim on the shoulder, and murmured into his ear. His face darkened.

  “That’s damn annoying.”

  He scraped his chair back and dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.

  “Afraid I’m going to have to bail out for a while. There’s a telephone call about some business I need to attend to. I say, do you mind if I leave you on your own with this reprobate, Margo? Just for a short while?”

  “Of course not.” She smiled into Hamish’s eyes. “I’m sure we’re quite able to keep each other company.”

  As Kim made his way to the foyer, Cordelia leaned forward confidentially, her fingers stroking her glass. “So tell me. You know how I met Kim, but ho
w did you two meet?”

  Hamish was exceptionally handsome. In his early thirties, probably, and tanned, with a brush of hair standing up above moss green eyes and sex appeal that was heightened by the sliver of French at the edge of his accent. He must have had mixed parentage, and a childhood that was spent at least partly in France, she judged. His name was neither Hamish nor Whittle. His teeth were gleaming and regular, his fingernails buffed, and his frame, or what she could see of it, was lean and wiry. She might almost have found him attractive. In another time. Another life.

  “Kim and I knew each other way back. I was working in the City.”

  “So you’re a banker then? A reserved occupation. Lucky old you.”

  He looked uncomfortable at this. Since war had broken out in 1939, all men up to the age of forty-one were obliged to sign up for armed service. Certain occupations exempted men from conscription, yet with the war going in Germany’s favor, any man who chose not to fight found it hard to ignore the frisson of draft dodging.

  “It’s not exactly banking. I do a bit of this and that.”

  Cordelia laughed, wriggled her shoulders, and flicked a finger through her hair.

  “I’m awfully dense about finance. I always imagine it means being stuck behind a desk going through a million bank statements. I’m in awe really. I’m hopeless at arithmetic. What does ‘this and that’ actually mean?”

  Hamish didn’t reply. His face remained impassive, but she saw the conflict behind his eyes, so she retrieved two cigarettes from her packet, lit them, and leaned forward to place one between his lips.

  “Forget I asked. I like a man of mystery.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. And even if you told me, I probably wouldn’t understand. When it comes to money matters, you might as well be speaking Greek.”

  A question mark of ash landed on the tablecloth between them. She slid a hand down her stocking and idly scratched her leg. Around them, the tables of diners were thinning out, the guests drifting up to their rooms, or back to their shuttered homes. The waiter materialized, wielding a tray.

  “Coffee or tea? Sir, miss?”

  “Tea please.”

  “And for me.”

  The waiter produced a pale green china pot, a steel pot of practically tepid water, two tea bags, and a doll-size jug of milk. Hamish busied himself pouring and dispensing, before seeming to summon up courage, and with a quick glance toward the foyer, ascertaining that Kim had still not reappeared, he said, “I was thinking, Margo. You seem great fun. I was wondering if there’s any chance that we could…”

  “Could what?”

  “Meet again. Tomorrow night perhaps? See that film you were talking about?”

  “I’m busy tomorrow. But what about Saturday night? Or next week?”

  “I won’t be here next week.” His eyes were fixed on hers, imploring.

  “Why won’t you? Where will you be? Back in the City? Stuck behind a desk?”

  It was well judged, this appeal to his vanity, the need not to be thought dull.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  Hamish was fiddling with his teaspoon, balancing it between two fingers and tapping it gently against the tablecloth like a diviner, searching for a wellspring of guidance.

  “The thing is, just…between you and me, I’m being sent abroad in the next few days. It’s top secret.”

  Her lips parted, and her voice quavered. “How thrilling.”

  “I’ll be behind the lines.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “Yes. And I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “You don’t know if you’ll be back?”

  “I suppose so. This might be the last time you see me.”

  He reached out a hand. “So it would be nice to go with the thought of a beautiful girl like you in my mind.”

  Cordelia gave his hand a quick squeeze. “That’s very flattering. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say yes.”

  She smiled, smoothed her hair, and drew back her chair. “Would you excuse me a moment?”

  Out in the foyer she found Kim leaning against the telephone booth smoking. They exchanged a few words before she returned to the table and reached for her jacket. The young man’s face paled.

  “Was it something I said?”

  “It was everything you said. I’m sorry, Mr. Whittle, but if you can’t keep quiet over a girl drinking port and lemon, I don’t think you’d give the Gestapo much trouble.”

  He stared at her, openmouthed.

  “You’d be a liability in the field. A threat not only to your own life but to others.

  “Also,” she picked up her copy of Gaudy Night, “you put milk in your teacup first. If you’re trying to work out who’s English, I’m afraid that’s a dead giveaway.”

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS IN THE WINTER of 1940 that Henry Franklin came back into her life.

  Cordelia had returned to England in 1938 and moved into a flat on the King’s Road, just along from the Black House, Oswald Mosley’s Fascist headquarters, whose followers could be seen at all times of the day parading in their paramilitary uniforms, peaked caps, and armbands up and down the road. Their tramping boots were echoed by the sound of the girl in the flat above, who was learning to tap-dance, her every step and error hammering on the wooden floorboards, and the constant thud of a ball in the next-door yard, where a gap-toothed seven-year-old named Charlie Grainger worked on his ambition to play football for England. Though at first Charlie’s game had driven her mad, after a while Cordelia had come to admire his technique, and had used all her sugar ration to make him a cake for his birthday.

  As for the noise, she decided if she couldn’t beat them, she would reciprocate with the clatter of her typewriter.

  Every morning she would take out the Underwood, reel in the paper, and begin. It didn’t matter what—her thoughts, her impressions, the events of the previous day. Her emotions. She loved feeling the energy sparking out of her fingertips as she began to shape her words. She realized that while language did not create her feelings, it did clarify them, and finding the right expression deepened the experience itself.

  The one thing she could not write about was Torin. When she’d met him it was as though everything she had been before—all her life to that moment—was no more than the stem of a plant pushing up through the earth to feel the first, dazzling touch of the sun. Since he’d left for Spain, in June 1937, there had been four letters and then no more. The final one had reported heavy fighting around Barcelona.

  In return she wrote to him, over and over, in letters she never sent.

  She carried Torin’s letters with her everywhere. She kept them in her wallet so that every time she took it out to buy a ticket, or produce a ration card, she would see them. She knew every inch of them, the precise shape and size, the slant of the writing, the torn edge, the crease of the fold. When she touched them, she imagined running her fingers across the skin of his face. When she read the words aloud, it was as though he was still in bed beside her. She felt the ache of his touch on her as though he had been physically torn from her side. She fed on the thought of him, like a starving animal on scraps.

  * * *

  —

  ONCE WAR BROKE OUT, in the autumn of 1939, the Blackshirts disappeared and London filled with men in different kinds of uniforms. On the day of Chamberlain’s declaration, Cordelia stood with the crowds outside Downing Street, like the audience of some terrible play, all thoughts with the gaunt, pin-striped figure, tight as a furled umbrella, broadcasting from within.

  This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state o
f war would exist between us.

  A state of war.

  She watched helplessly as events unfolded. Once Austria was annexed and elderly professors were forced onto their knees, to scrub the street with toothbrushes, there could no longer be any doubting the Nazi barbarity toward the Jews. When France was overrun she sat in the cinema, enduring the newsreels of Paris in a kind of frozen fear. Pictures of the citizens fleeing, by foot or bicycle or car, cars with mattresses on their roofs and windscreens shattered by machine-gun fire. The heaving mass choking the road.

  Then the Nazis turned their attention to England. In September 1940 they began to rain bombs on London, their explosions echoed by machine-gun fire as British fighters tackled the raiders. The Ministry of Information banned precise reports of bomb damage, so broadcasts produced cryptic reports: A church famed in a nursery rhyme has been hit. People became experts in ammunition and could tell the difference between bombs simply from the sounds they made; incendiaries landed with dead thuds, whereas high explosives unleashed crumps that shattered windows. Everyone prayed for low clouds, because they meant no raids, and when people looked at the sky, they shared a single thought: Is the weather good for the Germans? If you glanced up it was sometimes possible to see a flash of bright metal against the blue, but at ground level everything was different shades of gray: pigeon gray, dust gray, and porridge gray, from the bombed-out buildings to the gas masks and the faces and the rain on the streets.

  London was like a prizefighter, battered but still standing.

  * * *

  —

  CORDELIA JOINED THE CIVIL Defence Service, accessing bombed-out buildings and retrieving the dead and injured. Fighting the damage aboveground was preferable to huddling in the dank dentist’s waiting room atmosphere of an air-raid shelter, or squashing onto an underground platform, or lying down between the rail tracks, trying to sleep beneath a scrap of scratchy blanket.

  One day the sirens sounded and she dashed out of the flat to find a dogfight in the skies above Chelsea. A German fighter was being chased by a Spitfire, unloading its bombs along the King’s Road in the process. A great thud sounded from the corner of Flood Street and shouts went out to take cover, but a few seconds later a terrific explosion rent the air overhead and Cordelia flung herself to the ground. When the all clear sounded she struggled back in the direction of her own flat, passing a succession of wraiths running out of the hair salon on the corner, their wet heads white with dust. Another woman passed, wearing a fur coat and carrying an aspidistra. The skeleton of a burned-out bus had been blasted into the air and now rested on its nose, right up against the front wall of her block, its side still proclaiming the great taste of Hovis. Shards of glass carpeted the pavement, and while her own house was still standing, right next door, in the block that housed Charlie Grainger and his family, only huge slabs of masonry and a heap of rubble remained. Joists and timbers lurched at all angles like a Modernist painting. Already the fire, rescue, and ambulance services had arrived and neighbors were working with bare hands on the debris, scrabbling through the masonry for survivors. Cordelia joined them until her hands bled, but it was a fruitless search. At one point someone passed her carrying a child’s foot. A small, battered boot was still attached.