Then he went to his safe and removed some papers which had recently come into his possession. He memorized their contents carefully, thoroughly, translated them into the code they had taught him. Then he burned the papers, and flushed the ashes down the toilet.
The next morning he visited his solicitor and made a codicil to his will. When that was done, he walked out into the sunshine and wondered what he would do with the rest of the day before he took the night train to Paris. He decided to go racing. It was more interesting being cut by people who once had been his friends on a race course than in the street. Made it more pointed. He was aware that he took an almost masochistic pleasure in the way he was now regarded by some people. And there was always the added fillip of gambling with what was, for the race course, rather large sums of money.
One other episode had disturbed those summer weeks in London for Nicole, but this time she did not speak to Lloyd about it. It had happened one morning when she had arranged to meet him at St Giles’s, and she strolled on the Embankment and into Parliament Square, wandering about enjoying the flowers in the window-boxes of Whitehall, making a half-smiling, half-reverent salute to the statue of Abraham Lincoln who sat morosely viewing the House of Commons. The city was sparkling and fresh that morning after a night of rain; she stood and looked with eyes that had become more appreciative at the whole scene ‒ the great looming tower of Big Ben, the ancient splendour of Westminster Hall, the great buttresses of the Abbey seen through the moving tracery of the plane trees. She strolled and looked, and then her eyes fell on a man who sat on one of the benches, a man whose body seemed slumped down into itself, and whose gaze was riveted on the House of Commons.
‘Brendan!’ she said. ‘Bren ‒’
He turned, and she knew at once that she had not only spoken his correct name, but that he recognized her. Then his features seemed to freeze into a stare of dismissal. They were the features of Brendan de Courcey, but features too much aged for the five years that had passed since she had seen him; his face seemed sunken and thin. He had lost the look of young enthusiasm which had made his striking good looks so appealing. The eyes he turned on her were hard and suspicious.
‘Brendan de Courcey?’ In face of his refusal to respond, she had to use his full name.
He rose from the bench. He seemed to her strangely dressed. His raincoat was soiled, his tweeds rumpled; it was a long time since his shoes had been cleaned. He stood and looked at her for a second or two, then lightly touched the brim of the pork-pie hat which had partly obscured his face. ‘Your mistake, Madam. Good day.’ And then he was striding off, and with hardly a look at the oncoming traffic, dashed across the road to the corner of Whitehall. Nicole stared after him in utter disbelief. It had been Brendan, and he had sat, staring with a seriousness that had been quite uncharacteristic of him, at a group of buildings in the heart of London. It certainly had been Brendan, but this man had nothing to do with the eager boy who had chanted the racing form and the blood lineage of the horses at Ascot as if it had been a holy litany. Even if he had reason to dislike her, why did he deny his identity? It was something she found quite impossible to talk to Lloyd about. It had been too disturbing; there had been something about this man which had frightened her, and she didn’t want to be told by Lloyd that she had simply made a mistake. She crossed Westminster Bridge then and walked along the Embankment to St Giles’s, puzzled, haunted by the air of desperate intensity which had hung over the man she had addressed as Brendan de Courcey.
At lunch she drank more wine than usual to drive out the dankness of the feeling that had touched her. Lloyd had brought Carl Zimmerman to lunch. They went to the same Italian restaurant she and Lloyd had met at during that brief and shining month when they had fallen in love. Carl Zimmerman kissed her hand with heavy and clumsy gallantry; in his movements he had always reminded her of some shambling animal, and yet in these five years, Lloyd told her, Zimmerman had become a consultant at St Giles’s, and in a few years he would be a senior consultant. He was now, certainly, one of the finest plastic surgeons in England.
‘You see, Miss Nicole Rainard,’ he said, his accent as thick as it had been all that time ago, his manner quite as maddeningly calm, ‘I did deliver all those messages. And now you are Mrs Lloyd Fenton. It is good, isn’t it, when the messages finally reach the right place?’
They had laughed, and relived the earlier time, and for those hours at least, Nicole had forgotten about the encounter with the man who had worn the look that she now had begun to think of as the look of a fanatic, the sunken eyes too bright, the gaze that only saw one object. But why had he sat there, bundled in a raincoat, on a bright summer’s day, staring at those monuments of England’s Establishment?
But she did speak to Richard about that encounter with Brendan de Courcey one weekend they spent at Fenton Field.
‘Bren? You ran into him? I thought he didn’t come to England any more.’
She described the circumstances of the meeting, Brendan’s non-recognition of her. ‘But I know it was Bren. He looked up when I spoke his name. He’d changed, but not so much that I couldn’t recognize him.’
Richard frowned. ‘Damned if I know. He certainly isn’t seen about in any of the places he used to be. Doesn’t even come over to the Derby any more, though his father’s entered a horse every year. I wonder …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I saw an item in The Times. Nothing sensational. One of those shindigs that started up at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. Some IRA chap sounding off about Ireland’s ills and Partition and all the rest of it. Some people in the crowd didn’t like it, and a fight started. About six men were charged for disturbing the peace, one for hitting a policeman. The item just said that a Mr Brendan de Courcey went bail for the four IRA men. It never occurred to me that it was our Bren. I hope to God he hasn’t got twisted up in Irish politics in the wrong way. Doesn’t seem to me to be the type who’d do it the usual way ‒ you know, run for Parliament, or that sort of thing. Doesn’t seem to me the type who’d be sitting on a bench in Parliament Square. You know, just sitting … He got married, I heard. He’s got a couple of kids, I think.’
‘I meant to ask Gerry about him, but there was so much else to talk about …’
‘Gerry Agar … now there’s another odd sort. He’s hardly ever seen in London any more. But I wouldn’t suppose he’d have any IRA sympathies. That lot’s a bit too grubby for him. Gerry’s in the money business, and the IRA isn’t exactly a fashionable outfit. Funny … we’ve all split up, haven’t we?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Remember that year you were at Ascot ‒ the year you came out? We were quite a foursome, weren’t we? And all winning loads of money on Bren’s tips. Funny, I’ve never been to Ascot since that year. Don’t even have a bet on the Derby these days.’
‘Well, we all get a little more staid, don’t we? I mean we settle down. Lloyd and I …’
‘Lloyd and you are different. Yours isn’t like most marriages. And don’t ask me why. I don’t know.’
‘But, Rick, everything’s all right with you, isn’t it? I mean Celia …? You’re doing so well in law.’
‘Celia’s a good sort. The law … well, the law is beginning to bore me stiff. It’s too damn slow. I’m great if I can get cracking on something that really interests me, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what the law needs. Most of all it seems to need patience, due process, and all that. You know I’ve never been patient. I want things fast … fast. I want some excitement. If I’d had any head for money, I would have gone into the City. At least you can gamble there. Even horse races are too slow for me now. The only thing I really want is flying … and the tougher things get the better I like it. Did I tell you I made a trip out to the Persian Gulf last year? ‒ solo all the way. Celia wouldn’t come. She doesn’t like flying. You would have come, wouldn’t you?’
‘It really doesn’t matter what I would have done, Rick,’ she said quietly
. ‘That’s not the point.’
He had turned away and gone and poured himself another drink. ‘No, it’s not the point. You’re right. We’ve all gone our own ways now. Times like that year at Ascot, that isn’t for any of us any more …’
The rest of the summer she and Lloyd had toured about. Lloyd rented a car, and they had gone to his favourite places in Cornwall. They had explored the valleys of the Lake District and had driven on up past the Border into Scotland. From Oban they had taken the little steamers that ply out to the Western Isles. They had picnicked and drunk malt whisky and wine, and had made love. They had had days of sunshine, and days when the rain and strong winds drove them back to the fireside. Nicole didn’t remember that they talked very seriously. It was a period of peace, as well as love. Sometimes, she thought, it was as if they were together and alone for the first time. But there was more than that. Lloyd’s hand would touch hers, and she would look at him, and there was not only the strength of their first love, but the firm rock of these five years. Anything that had troubled her during that summer was gone, not spoken of, unimportant. She had Lloyd, completely with her and for herself alone. She had that, and the comfortable thought that when this idyllic period together was over, they were going back to Fenton Field to gather up their two sons and return to the waiting house in Boston. In those weeks she felt like a vessel filled to its brim. It was a rich, mellow, and heady liquid. She felt far older than her years because she had given the whole of her love, and had it returned.
Only one thing Lloyd did in those weeks puzzled her. He insisted on buying presents for each one of the English Fentons ‒ even though they had brought presents with them from Boston ‒ presents of mohair lap robes woven in the Isles, heavy hand-knitted sweaters, caps and scarves. Even Gavin McLeod had been included, and Nicole had protested at this. ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit much? You know how touchy Gavin is. He doesn’t like taking presents. And can you really imagine Andrew wearing a knitted tam-o’-shanter? All these rugs, Lloyd, you’d think another Ice Age was on the way …’
But he had insisted, and she hadn’t wanted to argue further. They had packed the back seat of the car with all the wrapped bundles, and turned south and headed for England and Fenton Field. They were to sail the last week in August.
2
Lloyd found her sitting in the orchard and while he said, ‘Getting a bit chilly out here,’ he still dropped down to the grass beside her. She made no answer. She was afraid to speak in case putting into words what she feared would turn it into reality. She hoped he would not speak either. If the blessed silence could just continue long enough, they would be out, and gone from here. But after postponing a sailing, and a week of listening to the bulletins from Poland, she knew that it was already too late. Events would overtake them.
He didn’t try to lead up to it gently. Even though she had known it was coming, it still was shocking when it was actually spoken. ‘I’m going to stay, Nicky. You know that don’t you?’
‘You’re going to stay …’ It was no question, just a restatement of what he had said. ‘Why are you going to stay, Lloyd?’
‘Damned if I know. I can’t put it into words. Just the conviction that half of what I am was shaped by this country. It’s going to be rough, Nicky, and I can help.’
She turned on him in fury. ‘You’re going to stay! Just like that! Some addle-pated sense of misplaced patriotism for a country that isn’t even your own ‒’
‘I’ve never cared for the word patriotism,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s too narrow. It says this country rather than that country.’
‘Well, if you don’t care for one country more than another, then why don’t you take it all the way and go to Germany? They might need you there.’
‘Oh, Nicky, for God’s sake! You’ll have to try to understand.’
‘I don’t understand. Why should I? You have your own job to do, your own place to be. What’s so damn marvellous about England that you have to stay here? You’re saying, of course, that they are going to fight. That’s what all the talk’s been about this summer, hasn’t it? Isn’t that really why you wanted to come? You wanted to find out what everyone over here was thinking. You wanted to go back to what was five years ago. You can’t go back, Lloyd. You’ve got a home, a country, a wife and two sons. You’re not free.’
‘I’m still free to make a choice, and I’m going to make it. Look, Nicky, you know as well as anyone does that there’s going to be war with Germany, and this country’s damn ill-prepared. They’ll need everyone they can get. I’ve got special skills … They don’t have to train me. I know what I can do. I won’t be winning any medals, but I will be saving some lives. And you know that some time ‒ no one knows how or when ‒ America will be in it too. I’m just coming in sooner rather than later, that’s all.’
‘No ‒ you don’t know America will come in. Who says so? What makes you so damn sure?’
‘Look, Nicky,’ he said wearily, ‘I’ve thought about this thing until I’m sick of it. I’m sure. I can make all sorts of excuses ‒ or apologies ‒ to you, and I know it won’t make one bit of difference. You’ll never know why, and I can’t put it into words. I’d feel pretty foolish if I tried. People don’t make patriotic speeches these days. It isn’t fashionable. If I were a lawyer or stockbroker or someone in insurance, I’d have been out of here weeks ago. I’d say I was just cluttering up the landscape because they’d have to teach me from scratch. Oh, I’ll learn plenty, because we’ll see casualties with injuries we’ve never even dreamed of. It’s got to do with being a doctor. I’ve got something to offer here and now. You don’t become a doctor, Nicky, to make money or to have an easy time. To start with, it isn’t even easy to become one. The grind sort of gets into your bones when you’re doing those years of training. You never expect ease from then on. You don’t become a doctor to have it easy. England gave me something when I was sort of drifting. I might have stayed on here for ever if it hadn’t been for you. When I finally knew that you wanted to marry me, going back home seemed an even better idea than the sort of flight I’d been thinking of then.’ He paused, and then started again slowly, ‘Nicky, I’ve never tried to say this to you. There was so much else. When you told me that time about New York, about your mother and your grandfather’s will, and I knew that you’d run from Blanchard, and were prepared to run from a marriage to Ashleigh just two days before it was to have taken place … Well, after that, Nicky, I knew Boston was the only place for us. You needed an anchor. You needed a family. You needed to be away from England and away from the gossip. If we’d stayed here at that time, our marriage wouldn’t have had much of a chance because everyone would have been scrutinizing it too hard ‒ trying to see if you’d regretted opting for a doctor without two pennies after ‒’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lloyd! None of that ever mattered …’
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I had only one thing to offer you. That was a sense of family, of belonging. I knew they’d look you over in their Bostonian way, and I knew they’d take you in. Some would love you, some would be envious of you, and some would just accept you as someone who’d joined the ranks. The Fentons. That’s what I had to offer. And it’s been a wonder every day of my life since then to look at you and see you expand and open up, like some sort of plant that someone had brought in out of the rough weather. So leaving England did that for me ‒ for us. But England is some kind of drug for me. I’m addicted. And I know I’ll be of some use ‒ more than some use. I’ve got highly specialized skills, Nicky. They don’t come easily, and they’re not easily found. So I’m giving them back.’
‘England didn’t give you those skills! You became a doctor in a place called Boston, Massachusetts. Remember that? Your training was paid for by Boston Fentons. So if you’ve got such very special skills, why aren’t you giving them to your own country? If you’re so certain that the United States is going to come into the war, why aren’t you offering your very special s
kills to the Americans? They’ll need them too. Charity begins at home, Lloyd.’
‘I will ‒ of course I will. The moment the States is in it, I’ll transfer. The Army or Navy will have any doctor who offers. There won’t be any trouble. I’ve made enquiries about that.’
‘Oh, have you? You’ve got it all planned, then. You’ve always had it planned. And you never talked to me about it. Never!’
‘Why should I worry you? There was always the possibility that Chamberlain would go for appeasement again. I didn’t see the sense of volunteering for an army that Hitler could simply order to lay down its arms. But it’s been clear for quite some time that no matter how they tried to stave it off, either England would fight or become a minor dependency of Germany. And if England fought, you could bet that the Empire would. And eventually America would. Like it or not, there’d be some way of pushing her into war. And I planned to change then. I’d come back to you and the kids. We could have some time together. But there’ll be more than one Boston Fenton joining up ‒’
Nicole felt the warm flush of rage. ‘What do you mean! You’d come back to me and the kids. Are you really so cracked you think I’d leave England if you’re determined to stay here? You can’t be that mad! If you stay, I do too, and so do the boys!’
‘Nicky, you can’t stay. It’s going to be bloody awful here, as well as bloody dangerous. There’s going to be civilian bombing. This little corner of England’s only a few minutes’ flying time from the coast of France. You’ve got to go on that ship at the end of the month. I can’t risk you and the kids, Nicky. I can’t!’
‘You’ll just have to. If that’s your choice, then I have the right to a choice too. I married Lloyd Fenton. I intend to stay as close to him as circumstances permit. I intend to stay here. Those very special skills you talk about … well, neurosurgeons aren’t thick on the ground. They’re not going to post you to some isolated little place in the Highlands. I’m going to stay where I can see you every minute of every day I can. I’m selfish, Lloyd. I always have been. I mean to keep you. If you think you’re sending me back to Boston to spend all my days with two little boys instead of the man I married, then you’re mistaken. I’ll stay here at Fenton Field.’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 36
