by Mary Wesley
Ned’s rages were rare and always left him afraid he had gone too far, made himself vulnerable to reprisal. He had been afraid on that occasion that Emily would repay in spiteful measure. The neighbour, from whom he would later buy a labrador pup, would understand his outburst, condone his spleen. Not so Emily. It was fear of Emily, Rose remembered, which made Ned insist she renew her promise never to leave him and she, sorry for him, aware of Emily’s hold, knowing that while keeping up his relationship with Emily he must have her to act as buffer, had promised yet again not to leave him, and she had not left him. It had been quite amusing over the years to thwart Emily and now it was Ned, dead and cremated, who had done the leaving.
43
FROM WHERE HE SAT in the Palm Court Mylo had a good view of people coming into the Ritz from Piccadilly. Each person paused to adjust from the blackout in the street to the bright lights inside the hotel. It was raining outside; people shook their umbrellas as they came in, hesitated, then dodged according to sex through the doors of the cloakrooms. Mylo watched Peregrine Pye, who had just left them, go into the men’s lavatory and come out wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella. As he headed out towards the street he passed Archibald Loftus coming in with his wife Flora. ‘I know that old buffer,’ Mylo said.
‘Does recognising a person make you feel you are really back,’ asked Victoria, sitting beside him, ‘at last?’
‘Yes, it does.’ What an understanding girl; he must get to know her better over dinner. It would have been easier tête-à-tête, but Picot was firmly of the party. They were celebrating their safe, though belated, return from France and Spain, had that day finished their de-briefing with Pye and his cohorts; there had been no fuss over Aunt Louise. On the contrary Mylo had been congratulated. Mylo smiled at Victoria. ‘Have another drink?’ he suggested. ‘Picot?’
‘No thanks,’ said Victoria.
‘Un whisky,’ said Picot. ‘I hear, by the way, that the Royal Automobile Club have a store of Pernod. The barman did not know what it was, all the Gaullistes try to get themselves invited there, some idiot spread the news. The indiscretion of my compatriots is appalling. The Pernod won’t last two days.’
‘All the more reason to hurry up and end the war,’ said Victoria, laughing.
‘Where shall we have dinner?’ asked Picot. Mylo did not answer; he was watching Ned, who had come in by the Arlington Street entrance, greet Archibald and Flora. They stood blocking the hallway, heads nodding in confabulation.
‘Let us start. Flora and I have our train to catch; we’ve managed to get sleepers, don’t want to miss it.’ Archibald’s voice carried into the Palm Court.
‘All right,’ said Ned. ‘I’ll leave a message with the page.’
Mylo watched Ned walk towards the restaurant with the Loftuses.
‘I can show you quite a passable place in Frith Street run by some Free Greeks,’ said Victoria. ‘They have a pâté which resembles liver and sometimes they have venison rumoured to come from Windsor Great Park.’
‘Sounds fine,’ said Mylo. ‘Ça te convient?’
‘Oui,’ said Picot, ‘any food is marvellous after prison. Apparently we are persona grata with your boss, Victoria? I had never cared for him until today but now he acts as though he had absolved me of a mortal sin, makes himself agreeable, or at least tries.’
‘Probably playing a new game with the Free French,’ said Mylo, laughing. ‘Playing Party members against Colonel Passy’s bureau.’
Victoria giggled.
‘They are talking of a man called Mitterand who has been over to see the General; he left last week from Dartmouth, my cousin Chantal tells me,’ said Picot, drinking his whisky.
‘Oh,’ said Victoria, ‘you are not letting the grass grow.’ She turned towards Mylo. ‘Are you catching up on gossip, too?’
But Mylo’s eyes were on Rose, who blinked as she came in from Piccadilly. She had no umbrella, her hair sparkled with rain; she had grown it longer to a pageboy cut, its ashblonde was silvery and smooth, her eyes looked dark in the strange light, darker and larger than he remembered. She bent her head, accepting the message left by Ned. She did not go into the cloakroom but walked straight on and turned right along the hall to the restaurant.
‘Shall we make a move?’ suggested Victoria. ‘I don’t like getting to bed too late these days. The air raids taught me to treasure sleep, and I must get to the office early.’
‘But there is no raid,’ said Picot.
‘One never knows when they will start again.’
‘Let’s go, then.’ Picot stood up. ‘Ready, Mylo?’
‘There is a person I have to contact.’
Victoria stood up. ‘See you later, then.’ She walked away with Picot.
As they climbed into a taxi which had just deposited its fare at the Piccadilly entrance, Picot said, ‘You did not tell him the name of the restaurant. Shall I run back?’
‘No,’ said Victoria, ‘it isn’t necessary.’
No conversational spark lit the table where the two couples sat. Talk had been desultory, continually returning to the subject of food and the dreariness of wartime menus, Archibald’s recollections of gastronomic delights between the wars falling flat as a dover sole. When he embarked on a description of a dinner at Sachers in pre-war Vienna with an aged uncle, Flora Loftus said, ‘Oh, Archie, do shut up,’ and Ned looked down his nose, wondering when these famous old gentlemen’s sexual powers had waned or whether they had been carried intact into their graves. ‘I hope to be cremated when it’s my turn,’ he said.
‘Put it in your will, dear boy.’
‘Rose will remember.’
The party fell silent while they finished their uninspired pudding.
‘Well.’ Archie looked at his watch. ‘It’s later than I thought, we must rush to catch our train. Come along, Flora, get all your things. I shall be buried to the sound of the pipes on the hillside, that’s in my will, one shouldn’t leave these things to chance. Flora might boggle at the expense. Come on, Flora, hurry up.’
‘Don’t fuss.’ Aunt Flora none the less snatched up her gloves and bag, pushing her chair back with her ample behind. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ she said. ‘Well, dears, it’s been lovely to see you.’ She reached up to kiss Ned, kissed Rose also. ‘Pity it had to be for such a sad occasion. I wish Archie wouldn’t hurry me so, he’s afraid of not finding a taxi, he thinks just because he can’t see them in the blackout that they aren’t there.’
‘I’ll see you get one,’ said Ned.
‘It’s raining buckets,’ said Archie. ‘One would have preferred the funeral to be in the country.’ He had said this at dinner but was not afraid of repetition. ‘But Edith said—one wonders sometimes what’s got into her …’
‘Henry lived in London latterly. He couldn’t stand the house full of noisy children,’ said Rose. This had not been said before. ‘So Edith arranged the funeral in London, she thought the funeral at home would disturb the kids.’
Flora pursed her mouth. ‘Did she actually say so?’ Her eyebrows rose in shock.
‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘They have become her principal interest. She likes them better than she did George and Richard when they were little. With Henry out of the way she can concentrate on them entirely.’ This had not come out at dinner either.
‘You should not say things like that, even if you think them,’ said Ned repressively.
‘Even if they’re true?’ asked Rose pertly.
‘Let’s get you a taxi,’ said Ned to his aunt and uncle. ‘I have to get back to my office, there’s a bit of a flap on. Look, Rose, if I give you the money, will you pay the bill?’ He fumbled for his wallet.
‘Of course.’
‘See you later, then, don’t wait up.’ He took money from his wallet and gave it to Rose. ‘I may catch the night train home,’ she said, taking the money. ‘I’ll remember to give you the change,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’ She resumed her seat and watched Ned, Archie and Flora dwindle
down the hall until they went through the revolving doors into Arlington Street.
The waiter, hovering with the bill, laid it now in front of Rose. She glanced at it perfunctorily, put money on it and sat back waiting for the man to bring change.
How sordid the table, greasy knives and forks, wine-stained glasses, crumbs, bits of food dropped off forks waved in conversation, crumpled napkins, coffee half drunk. She sipped water from her glass. They had buried Henry Malone in an immense cemetery on the outskirts of London; neither George, who was in Moscow, nor Richard, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, could be there. The rain had persisted throughout the afternoon in a race to fill the grave before the coffin was lowered into it. She had taken Edith, impatient to get back to the evacuees, to Paddington before joining Ned and the Loftuses for dinner.
The waiter brought the change. The restaurant was filling up, it was time she left, others would want the table. She calculated the tip. ‘There’s a note for you, Miss.’ Nobody had called her Miss for ages; she picked up the note: ‘Waiting for you in the Palm Court,’ it said.
The blood rushed up into her face, retreated, leaving her very pale. She felt sick, ridiculously weak. Under the starched white tablecloth her knees shook. She stood up. The waiter pulled back her chair, she ran. Mylo held her hands crushed in his: ‘You are doing your hair in a new way.’
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘What is Ned doing here? I thought he was in Cairo. I’ve been watching you while you had dinner.’
‘He was. He’s in the War Office now, plotting the Second Front.’
‘You’ve grown thinner, more beautiful.’
‘You are thin, too, and, oh, a white hair.’
‘I’ve been in prison. I wrote—did you get …?’
‘I couldn’t believe it was you, it was so censored, something about lilacs, I dared not …’
‘Are you living with him?’
‘He’s in London during the week; we have a flat; he’s home at weekends.’
‘Home?’
‘Well, it is home.’
‘And your baby?’
‘Fat and well, he’s waddling about now.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Mylo, there’s …’
‘So if I joined you and Comrade in the middle of the night, climbed up the magnolia and in at your window, I might find Ned in bed with us?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Not always?’
‘During the week he’s in London.’
‘With his mistress?’
‘Or me …’
‘That girl Emily?’
‘Well …’
‘Does she blackmail him?’
‘Why should she? How did you guess?’
‘Her child might be his.’
‘So it might, but I do not think so. Mylo, there’s …’
‘I love you so.’
‘And I love you. Mylo …’
‘Yes?’
‘We buried Henry Malone today, that’s why we were all here.’
‘A nice old boy. I’m sorry. How is your mother?’
‘So happy! She lives in London, loves every minute of life, has a stodgy lodger, they swim in the emergency water tank in her street when it’s hot. And your aunt?’
‘We brought her back from France.’
‘My God! Was she there, how terrible!’
‘She was working in the Resistance. She’s all right now, staying with friends. Somebody dropped a bomb on her house in Bayswater.’
‘Mylo?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Is this really you? Go on holding my hands like that, tightly, tighter.’
‘I want to undress you.’
‘Here? Among all these people?’
‘I could and would make love. Even on top of a bus.’
‘So could I, oh, so could I …’
‘Does your promise to Ned still stand?’
‘Yes. It does.’ Rose stared into Mylo’s black eyes; he was so thin, there were lines now, a sharp line between his eyes. One tear swilled out of her left eye, ran down to her chin: ‘Oh, darling, I am so happy.’
‘The first time I met you I asked you to marry me. Within minutes.’ He touched the tear.
‘You said we’d have to wait.’
‘So you married boring old Ned and are stuck with him and protect him and mother him and defend him from blackmail.’
‘Oh.’ How it hurt to hear this. ‘Oh.’
‘If it’s not Ned’s, whose is it?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No.’
‘Secretly Ned worries but she’s the spit of Emily and Nicholas. The bishop eventually baptised her; she’s called Laura.’
‘I’m not interested. Where shall we go and fuck?’
‘I was going home on the night train …’
‘Shall I come?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about Ned?’
‘Working.’
‘Why are we wasting time, then, in chitchat?’
‘There is so much I want to tell you …’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘I suppose it can …’
‘Let’s be on our way, then.’ He pulled her to her feet. ‘I can’t really concentrate properly with people around staring.’
‘Comrade will be so glad to see you.’
‘Then I shall start believing I am really back.’
44
THE WIND WAS COLD at the top of the hill. She looked out across strange country. There is something daunting in a view seen for the first time, its concealments manifold, a challenge that mocks. She turned away, retraced her steps. As she walked she retraced her life.
Why had she not told Mylo, during those days and nights they spent together, about her miscarriage? It should have been easy, but for four days, while their love bubbled and boiled, frothed and spilled over, distilled into an essence of happiness, she could not risk spoiling it.
When Mylo left, she retreated into the familiar minutiae of everyday life at Slepe, drowning herself in domestic detail, relying on it for consolation until he would reappear.
He told her hardly anything of his part in the war; she accepted that he to-ed and fro-ed to France, that other lives would be risked if she talked. Ned, too, made a mystery of his work; secrecy was normal at that time. With the bulk of the population, she relied for news on a diet of newspapers and radio, remained in virtual ignorance. When, after the war, she read its history, she was amazed at what had been going on, that dull men like Ian Johnson, Ned and Harold Rhys had performed feats of courage while she and thousands like her stayed at home complaining of draughts and minor deprivations.
She had told Mylo about the miscarriage when she saw him next. He had telephoned, suggesting blithely that she drive him into Cornwall ‘for a job’, that they picnic on the way, possibly spend the night together, that they use some of the petrol set aside for emergency. (The days when the Germans were expected to invade were long gone; the boot was now on the other foot.) Ned was in London. Rose leapt at the chance. She filled the car with petrol, packed an overnight bag, met Mylo off the train and drove off.
Comrade stood on the back seat, her head thrust through an open window, ears flapped back by the wind, a long and perfect day stretched ahead.
They drove across Devon, left Exeter behind, took the high road over Dartmoor. They were happy; there was no need to talk; sometimes they sang, pleased at the sound of their own voices. They stopped at a moorland pub for a drink, ate their sandwiches in the car near a high tor, watched Comrade chase a rabbit.
‘Where are you going in Cornwall?’
‘Newlyn. We could spend the night in Penzance. I may find I have to go on to the Scillies.’
‘Why?’ she had asked stupidly. ‘Whatever for?’
‘To catch my boat.’
‘A boat? You didn’t tell me you were off again—you said a job. A boat?’
‘’Fraid so.’
Taken by surprise she had heard herself whine, ‘I don’t want you to go.’
‘Don’t be silly, darling. It’s my job.’
‘Must you? I shall never get used to this constant wrenching apart.’
‘I must.’
‘Can’t somebody else go?’
He had said harshly, ‘Shut up, don’t spoil our day. If I’d thought you would be difficult, make a scene, I wouldn’t have suggested this outing. I thought it would be wonderful to be with you. I was supposed to go down by train anyway, not joyride with a girl.’
‘If you want to go by train, I can drop you at the station at Plymouth,’ she had said acidly, ‘and go home.’
They had glared at each other, fearing and hating each other and what they did. She remembered screwing the top of the thermos on so hard she had difficulty in getting it off later. Mylo had walked away from her. When she looked after him he was urinating in the bracken. She packed the picnic basket, called Comrade sharply, sat waiting for him in the car with the collar of her coat turned up. When he rejoined her she slammed the car into gear and drove on. Neither of them spoke for some miles.
When the road forked and turned south to Plymouth, she asked neutrally, ‘Plymouth, then?’
Mylo said, ‘Not unless you want it that way.’
‘I don’t.’ She drove on west through Tavistock. After some more miles they both spoke at once, saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ Laughter eased their gloom slightly.
Going over Bodmin Moor, Mylo said, ‘I’m sorry I was so short. I was told some lousy news yesterday.’
‘What?’
‘Victoria. You know, the girl in Pye’s office?’
‘What about her?’ She remembered Victoria’s disturbing eyes all too well.
‘She got news that both her fiancé and her brother have been killed.’
‘On the same day?’
‘The news was on the same day. They were both in submarines. No great future in them.’
