Commander Amanda Nightingale

by George Revelli

  What Lucien had decided she did not know, but presumably would learn now. Her courage was screwed so tightly that the thought of unscrewing it was intolerable to her. And everything was ready, everything checked. Her task was to maintain radio contact with London, and she knew her role perfectly. She had been equipped with French country clothes in cheap imitation tweed. Her identity card, in which she was Yvette Angelvin, schoolteacher of Fruges, Pas de Calais, was a perfect forgery. Her cigarettes, handbag, train tickets, food coupons were all authentic. Her life history was committed to memory. Nothing had been left to chance. She had even been ordered to let her body hair grow because it was presumed a French country teacher would not shave, and her armpits had been examined only the day before by a FANY staff commander. If the petition of O'Donovan and Mazursky succeeded, it was all for nothing. She would have to return to the mess, the covert sneers of her fellow officers. It was just too awful to contemplate. Amanda clenched her teeth. If Lucien did dismiss her she decided she would complain secretly to the Minister of War, whom she knew.

  Lucien too had lit a cigarette, a French cigarette, and the sharp, hot smoke reminded Amanda of her childhood in France. He was obviously trying to choose his words in order to soften the blow as much as he could. Amanda hated O'Donovan and Mazursky and pictured them at that moment in the mess, having a celebration drink, probably with the man who had been appointed to replace her.

  Actually, Lucien's thoughts were not at all what Amanda suspected, not even remotely. They were roughly as follows: natural silver blonde hair, obviously very long when unpinned, probably falling down her back; nacreous skin; eyes quite astonishingly blue, and slanted by high cheekbones; a somewhat inbred profile descending in a straight line from widow's peak to the tip of the nose, without indent at the bridge, rather in the manner of ancient Greek statues; mouth rather too large, but sensuous, and lips incandescent even without lipstick. Chin too hard-set. A figure that made men stare in the streets, and calves that looked good even in flat Army shoes, although the thighs were a trifle too heavy and the buttocks too large, the result no doubt of a lifetime in the saddle. Hands beautifully manicured, with wedding band and engagement ring, a very expensive engagement ring, of diamonds.

  Personality: fewer marks. Too hard, insufficiently feminine. Could be a dangerous adversary, not hesitating to use her influence with people in high places to get what she wanted. Expression which said to men and women alike, "Keep your distance." Social to a peak beyond the snow line of snobbishness. Never mind; all that could be changed. To make a long story short, Lucien Schneider's long rumination was spent considering the tactics and strategy of seducing Amanda that evening.

  "Eh bien," he said at last, and Amanda jumped. "We can be sure of one thing. The weather will be better in France."

  Amanda's hopes revived. That was not the remark of a man about to give her the sack.

  "Tell me, Mrs. Nightingale," he said, "have you seen the new production of Le Lac des Cygnes by the Sadler's Wells?" He knew she had not. He had discreetly inquired. He knew also what she had been thinking because it was he who had, by the most circumlocutory means, leaked through to her the fact that O'Donovan and Mazursky were trying to get rid of her. This was the last question she had expected. Lucien, like so many good soldiers, studied the minutiae of seduction as carefully as the minutiae of making war.

  "What?" Amanda asked stupidly.

  He repeated the question patiently, and Amanda shook her head. "I have two tickets for tonight. I was to go with General Le Maistre, but he was otherwise committed and gave them to me. I wonder if you would give me the pleasure of going with me to the New Theatre, and perhaps dining with me afterward at the Ivy?"

  He had checked in advance and knew she had no commitment that night and so had no reason to refuse.

  Relief overwhelmed Amanda, so she could only gasp out, like a little girl, "Oh, yes. Please. I mean, thank you."

  Lucien smiled one of his best smiles. "Good. The theatres start so early in wartime, I think it will be best if we meet at the theatre itself, fifteen minutes before the curtain."

  Amanda rose to her feet and had to seize the desk to keep from flying through the roof.

  "I look forward to it," she gushed, and left in such a hurry she almost forgot to salute. As soon as she had gone, he moved as lithely as a dancer to the window and silently opened it. The rain had stopped, and there was even an indication of a weeping sun emerging through the clouds. A covered jeep was parked outside and a girl in FANY uniform sat in the driver's seat reading the comics in the Daily Mirror. As soon as she saw Amanda come out, wearing her raincoat, she struggled out to open the canvas door for her.

  Amanda apparently noticed a bulge in the girl's cheek. "Jackson, you are chewing gum again."

  "Madam, I'm not," said the girl looking innocent. "I swear I'm not."

  "Don't lie to me, Jackson," said Amanda. "I've told you before that what you do in private is your own business, but I won't have you behaving with filthy G.I. manners while you are wearing the FANY uniform. Swallow it."

  "May I spit it out, Madam?"

  "You may not. Swallow it."

  The girl gulped. Amanda stooped and entered the jeep. Lucien looked to see if the girl would put her tongue out or make a grimace at Amanda's back, but she didn't. The jeep splashed away. Lucien closed the window, rubbed his hands, and contemplated the immediate future with reasonable optimism.

  Back in her London flat, Amanda found a letter from Guy, marked in large letters, "Opened by H. M. Censor." She had other things on her mind besides Guy, but she sat down at her writing table to read it. It was written on the stationery of a Naples hotel, a standard procedure which enabled soldiers to let their families know where they were. It was one of the many illogicalities of the war that soldiers were forbidden to say where they were, but if they wrote on hotel letterhead the letters were allowed through.

  "My dear Amanda. Naples is… Naples. The scugnizzi follow us in clouds wherever we go, either begging or selling. They even buy and sell us. They trade us for Americans and Poles, our value varying in accordance with our largesse. There is a large shell hole in the dome of the San Carlo, but the opera is magnificent. If anything, the hole improves the acoustics. You can tell your father that the Anglican church in Naples has been reopened, but do not add that I am studiously shunning it. I have made a discovery, an itinerant Rumanian black market operator, Mihai Nemencu, swept here on some gale of history beyond my comprehension. White suits, an Alfa Romeo, and United States Army petrol in unlimited supply make him quite a fellow to know, and he has taken me to restaurants such as I have not known since the war began. Meanwhile the scugnizzi scrabble for our cigarette butts — not, mind you, as hard as they scrabble for the cigarette butts of the Yanks. We English are very much the poor relations of this war. But it could be worse. We could be French! What a wretched rabble they are. They don't even fight. They leave that to the ghoums and the Senegalese. By the way, I heard a most curious piece of gossip in the mess. I talked to a girl in the FANYs who did not know I was your husband. She told me you were involved in a fight, single-handed against three other FANYs, and beat them all up, putting one in the hospital. Why didn't you write? A husband is interested, you know, when he hears that his wife, whom he has always considered a most gentle and proper daughter of the cloth, gets into bar-room brawls. My word, Amanda, you are unpopular. Why do the other girls detest you so much? My ears burned. Though not so much as the girl's when she found out who I was…"

  Amanda threw the letter down, making an incomprehensible noise, and read no more. She took off her clothes, bathed, dressed in a more formal drill uniform, added a touch from the last remaining drops of prewar French perfume. She then went down in the elevator and found, to her delight, that an evening sun was shining, matching her mood. She descended into the tube station and took a train to Leicester Square.

  Chapter Three

  Nightfall in London, in wartime. Splashes of moonl
ight through arabesque meshes of scorched girders, matted triangles and rhomboids of lights on pale weeds in the shells of blackened buildings. Berets of red and green and black. Shoulder badges of screaming eagles, desert rats, red devils, symbols of the military mythos — legends created in sand, dust, mud, mountain, jungle. American soldiers, nature's answer to cubism, with their round bottoms rolling around Piccadilly Circus, round cheeks chewing, arms around round girls, leaving trails of Camel cigarettes, Blue Gillettes, silk stockings. Pubs, frenetic with soldiers and girls. Cinemas, queues. Theatres, Macbeth, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary, Sweet and Low with Hermione Gingold singing a satirical number called "Thanks Yanks" since whose arrival "Not a taxi's been seen on the ranks". On stage, consumptive young men star, rejects of the recruiting offices, fretting their hours on the stage, until the actor-soldiers come home.

  But behind the blackout curtains there were still, here and there, pools of elegance, where there was candlelight and chafing dishes — chafing very little, it is true, but with white table linen, and silver solid enough to give confidence in England's struggle. One such, during the war, was the Ivy Restaurant, just behind Cambridge Circus. Into this Aladdin's cave now walked Amanda Nightingale and Lucien Schneider, and their arrival created a momentary silence. Everyone at the crowded tables looked up, the American colonels with their English Wrens, the British majors with their wives, the pale actors with their pale men friends, the luminaries of the black market in their Savile Row suits: Amanda without make-up, so young and so English, carrying the fresh air with her in her cheeks; her uniform giving her an air of rather lost and lonely valour, which made older people, for some reason, feel like weeping.

  Lucien, in the uniform of Fighting France, looking aloof and sardonic, was a perfect match for Amanda — a lean, snarling dog held on a leash by a small girl. They were shown a table of privilege, and contemplated the menu without enthusiasm, while the sommelier fled in search of dry sherries.

  "One is thankful for small mercies," said Lucien. "Since the liberation of North Africa we have been able to get a little Algerian wine in England."

  They ordered consommé and sole.

  "When does your husband get back from Italy?" Lucien asked.

  "Heaven knows," said Amanda. "I got a letter from him today, and he is on leave in Naples. But his battalion is at Monte Cassino, and I don't think they are having a good time. I am very worried."

  Lucien knew she was lying. He smiled thinly, and made himself more Gallic in the English image. One of Amanda's strongest qualities was her instinctive self-assurance. Lucien's plan was to keep her as far off-balance as he could for the rest of the evening.

  "Are you having any… ah… friendships while he is away?" he asked innocently.

  Amanda's sherry stopped halfway to her lips. She smiled him a beautiful smile that made him admire her teeth. "No, Commandant," she said, "I am not."

  That was that. No qualification. No addition. No arriere-pensée. Just a beautifully articulated brush-off. Lucien smiled to himself. It was going to be easier than he thought. Consommé was served. The sommelier quite unnecessarily sniffed the cork of the Algerian Royal Kebir, and filled the glasses with the purple wine.

  "Why not?" Lucien asked.

  Amanda had not expected that quite so bluntly. She thought the subject was over with, needed a moment to think it over and replied inadequately. "I'm just not, that's all. I don't."

  "Why not?"

  "For one thing," said Amanda, slightly annoyed at the turn the conversation was taking. "I am the daughter of a very prominent clergyman in this country."

  "Ah!" Lucien exclaimed. "Pardon me for being momentarily taken aback. As a Frenchman I always find it difficult to imagine priests having daughters. But surely, if the stories we heard in France before the war are true, the daughters of English clergymen are supposed to be the most immoral of all English girls."

  Amanda laughed, more relaxed. She was used to this. "Younger daughters, perhaps. My younger sister, Jennifer, is quite fearful, always having affairs with G.I.s and so on and so forth, and I have to keep covering up for her with Daddy. But my father is Dean of Northminster Cathedral, and will almost certainly be the next Bishop of East Anglia. Mummy died when Jennifer was born, and as my father never remarried, it put a considerable weight of responsibility on me. I have to Show an Example, in capital letters, as it were."

  She paused while the sommelier refilled their glasses.

  "Such as?" Lucien asked, well pleased with the conversation so far.

  "Such as what?"

  "Give me examples."

  "Such as, I was captain of the cricket team at Cheltenham. Chairman of the Cheltenham Old Girls' Association. I am chairman of the Northminster Young Conservatives, which had lapsed, of course, for the duration. Chief Eagle of the Girl Guides, Vice-Chairman of the Northminster Cathedral Preservation Committee. Name it, and I am probably chairman of it."

  "Don't you get bored?"

  "Not really. Actually I rather enjoy good works."

  "And now, while you are beautiful and alone, no parachute officers try to sweep you off your feet?"

  "Oh, I suppose I get my share of passes," said Amanda. "But never more than once, or rarely. I suppose I wear my respectability on my sleeve."

  She tried to change the subject. "Do you know Cheltenham?" she asked. Lucien shook his head. "A lot of people laugh at it, but it is a really fine school. I wouldn't hesitate to send my daughter there." Amanda laughed. "Cheltenham is the school that inspired the famous quatrain: 'Miss Buss and Miss Beall. Cupid's darts never feel. So different from us. Miss Beall and Miss Buss'."

  Lucien looked at her, blank.

  Amanda pursued it hastily. "Miss Beall and Miss Buss were two schoolteachers at Cheltenham in the last century. Terribly spinstery. Cupid is Cupidon. You know about Cupidon?"

  "Oh yes, I know all about Cupidon," said Lucien, and Amanda said to herself, "Damn."

  "You don't feel Cupid's darts much yourself, do you?" Lucien asked.

  "No, I don't. Please, Commandant, do let's talk about something else?"

  "Why?"

  "Why? Because it is childish and I have too high a respect for your intelligence, and yourself as a person."

  "Why does the subject bother you?"

  "It doesn't bother me. It bores me, which is worse. If you want to know, I am the embodiment of what you Frenchmen think English girls are, while most of them are emphatically not. Je suis frigide. You can call it what you like. The girls in the mess say I am frustrated or repressed, or this, that, and the other, and they can say what they want because I am used to it. In fact, I am perfectly happy with my lot and have no interest in changing it. The ballet was lovely tonight, wasn't it? I thought Beryl Grey danced brilliantly, simply brilliantly."

  "Is that why you are so tough with your girls?"

  Amanda's slanting eyes widened and then contracted, like those of a cat that quivers to spring before realizing it is overmatched. "What do you mean? I do my job as well as I can. If I didn't, I would not be associated with you now."

  "I mean that I have heard stories, and you are not very popular among your fellow officers."

  Amanda flushed, annoyed. "I would rather be understood than liked, if that's what you mean. There's a war on. I'm not like some of the girls in the mess who think it is some kind of a popularity contest."

  "But, franchement," said Lucien, enjoying himself, "do you have to go to church twice every Sunday?"

  Amanda was becoming angrier. "I don't see anything wrong with that. My father brought me up to fear God. If that affects the war effort adversely, I must say I would like it explained to me."

  "Now," said Lucien, "I have heard much talk of that fight you had with three fellow officers in Scotland about three months ago. There were fists involved, no?"

  Amanda put down her knife and fork with force enough to draw the attention of other diners. "What tales have those bitches been spreading about me?"

&nb
sp; Lucien put his hands up deferentially, as if in self-defence. "Don't start on me," he protested, laughingly. "No stories. It is in your confidential report."

  "What did it say?" Amanda demanded furiously.

  "Just that you offended three officers while you were on your battle course at Arisaig. They went for you, and you roughed them all up very severely, so badly that one was in the hospital for a month."

  "Didn't it say, what they did to me? They were three against one, you know, which is pretty cowardly if you ask me."

  "It did say that you too were quite badly knocked around."

  "To put it mildly," said Amanda with feeling. She cut her sole into small cubes and ate with fastidious bites, angrily.

  "Tell me about it."

  "Why on earth should I?"

  "I need to know."

  "I hate to think about it, let alone talk about it. Why do you need to know?"

  "Because it secured you your present assignment."

  "How?" Amanda asked, astonished.

  Lucien said, "O'Donovan and Mazursky asked me to have you replaced by a man."

  "That I happen to know," said Amanda.

  "They did not want the responsibility of a woman on such a mission. I almost agreed. They are both good fellows, and I need them at their peak. Until I went over your dossier and read about the fight. You have courage, Mrs. Nightingale, so I decided to keep you."

  Amanda laughed, partly in relief. "Poor Phoebe Smith. She was the one who led the ganging-up on me. That would really fill her cup with woe. Not only did she get a walloping, she even helped me get assigned to the kind of mission she is dying to have."

  "Now tell me about it."

  "It is a most painful story. Thank you, garçon, I shall have the mousse au chocolat…"

  Amanda described briefly what happened. "And to think it all came about for no other reason than that I gave a party to celebrate Guy's getting the Military Cross, and didn't happen to invite them. I mean to say I'm not snobbish or anything like that, but there are limits."