Commander Amanda Nightingale

by George Revelli

  Guy was startled by the swish of shower water in the next room, which settled at least the question of Luba's whereabouts. It meant she would soon be in, bare, steamy, head in a towel, and perfumed with United States Army Government Issue Palmolive soap. For a Central European, Luba paid unusual attention to personal cleanliness and her private parts were immaculate enough to show to Friends. Guy reached to the bedside table where a bottle of Scotch whisky stood with two glasses, and poured himself half a tumbler full. Luba came in with wet hair, trailing steam and wearing a khaki bathrobe.

  "Hello, kitten," said Guy in a voice so hoarse and croaky it made even him jump.

  Luba looked at the glass in his hand and said nothing. Luba never, never criticized.

  "I heard something about Monte Cassino falling," he said.

  "Great, ain't it, honey?" said Luba. "The German bastards are on the run."

  Luba had worried green eyes and teeth that looked as strong as iron. She said she was a champion swimmer but Guy decided uncharitably she was a champion floater because her breasts were much too huge for the narrow flanks, thin legs, and feet as tiny as those of Chinese girls in Victorian geography books.

  In later years he tried to recall her full name but all he could remember was Luba from Trieste, which was the way she signed herself when she wrote and told him she had had a baby boy by him and had called the child Guido. Guy Nightingale, Jr. — Guido Usignolo. He suspected, perhaps unfairly, that the document was a form letter in which "Guy darling" could be replaced by "Très cher Jean-François" (J'ai ton mignoa petit lardon qui s'appele Giannino-Frahcese), or "Hi, Bill" (Guglieltno), not to omit the possibility of "Mein lieber Karl" (Carlo). She gave neither her second name nor address in the letter. She asked for no assistance. She merely wished to spread the joy around. The Croats are so sentimental. Ask the Serbs. But here and now, in 1944, with the Allies poised to descend upon the Third Reich and rend it limb from limb, how on earth did they then plan to unscramble the egg Hitler had made of Europe, whereby an English gentleman wounded in Africa was lying in a bed in a Naples flat with a possibly pregnant Croat whore from Trieste? He used the word whore in its more generous sense. If Luba could have been sure of a bellyful of pasta in the home of her parents, she would not now be lying in bed with a ginger-headed Englishman whose breath smelled bad. If he, Guy, had had the moral courage, he would have taken off and written a novel on Mykonos rather than work in the family brewery. He was the bigger whore. The only person he could think of who was not in any way a whore was his wife, rot her.

  Guy sat up with some difficulty, making pained face. "Jolly old victory," he said.

  Luba said, "I suppose this will mean the end of your leave in Naples."

  "It had better. I want to be the first Englishman into Rome."

  "And there you'll see your friend Oriana," said Luba. "I don't see how you are so confident that she will be there."

  "She'll be there. And I shall liberate her the way she liberated me at Deauville before the war. She will be there because her mother, the old contessa, is from Cleveland in America, and I have no doubt in the world she has been playing footsie with the Fascists and the Wehrmacht and will want to make her alibis now rather than later."

  "I will be sorry to see you go."

  "No you won't. You have Colonel Rodzik of the U.S. Catering Corps to supply you with all the grub you want. All you get from me is a certain English social je ne sais quoi."

  "Wrong, wrong, wrong, Guy," said Luba speaking seriously. "You are a rare person. You are an honourable man, and a gentleman. I don't think you would give anybody a raw deal. We have had fun together."

  "In so far as my headache testifies, we have most inarguably had fun. No, Luba, we have had fun."

  Guy lay back on the bed and put his hands on his head while Luba rubbed her body dry through her bathrobe. "Oriana," he said. "Oriana. Oriana. Black hair and sea-blue eyes, the earth's most lascivious combination. What a summer it was, the summer of 1939. Oriana. And Amanda, the perfect true-blue snow maiden, ardent for King and Empire and the Daily Mail, knitting sweaters to cover the breasts and female Fuzzy-Wuzzies and organizing collections to convert Chinese children to the Church of England. There was a girl called Vera. Explain to me, Luba, my fatal fascination for girls whose names end in 'a'. No, but there was also June. 'What is so rare as a day in June? James Russell Lowell. In June's case almost everything. But back to the a's. There was Angela. Angela Bowman-Preedy. It wasn't until years later that my first cousin, Hugh, and I learned that we had both lost our virginity to Angela within a few weeks. Angela had known Amanda at Cheltenham and did not care for her very much… so few girls do. But she also told me that she and Amanda had a crush on each other at school. Extraordinary! Angela was wilder than the Uzhbeks of Uzhbekistan. Put yourself in the picture, Luba… Imagine driving along an English country lane at eight miles an hour in an M. G., Angela stripped to the waist, her head on your thingamajig. When the climax came I all but killed a farmer and his wife, minced a gaggle of ducks, and just missed a huge truck. Angela thought it was funny. She laughed and laughed. She laughed so much she could hardly swallow what was in her mouth. Five girls I had that summer and every one was a goddess, all summery and youthful in wide hats and satin gloves. At Cambridge there was a stunning Swedish masseuse called Ulla — another 'a' by God. She pounded you and pommelled you, felt you and fingered you until you were going up and down like a yo-yo, to give you merciful release from all tensions she always finished up by massaging your member, first covering it with Vaseline and then using a vibrator. This fascinated her most of all, and she would put on her glasses to watch the effect, and then discuss in detail the velocity, parabola, trajectory, and distance of the ejaculation, comparing it not only with the occasion of your previous visits, but also with that of the other undergraduates and Fellows, and she had the gift of total recall, and the charm of utter indiscretion. If I remember rightly the record was held by a bloke called Williams. According to Ulla it flashed like a meteor over his fight eye — it seemed he dressed on the right — and spattered against the wall two feet beyond his head. Quite a chap, Williams. Played scrum half for the Harlequins and Wales, and killed at Dunkirk. Well, I hope he went down below because I'm sure they would frown on that sort of thing up above. Or maybe I'm totally Wrong and have the whole thing cockeyed, if you'll excuse the expression. Maybe that is what paradise means even now for poor Williams… Beautiful Swedish masseuses, all called Ulla, jerking him off into eternity.

  "The West Indies played cricket in England in 1939, and George Headley scored a century in both innings at Lords. It was hot and peace on earth, and Adolf Hitler just something nasty on the horizon, like an income-tax demand. Will a summer like 1939 ever come again? Or are we poisoned forever by cordite, grapeshot, and K rations and compo tea? Williams is either playing the harp or having a trident stuck up his backside. Oriana is presumably getting ready to give a farewell party to German officers and keeping enough spumante in reserve for a welcome party to the British the following evening. Amanda, the pure Amanda, of all people, getting involved in a sordid barracks-room punch-up in Scotland that becomes the talk of every officers' mess in the Middle East. The past makes memory unbearable, Luba, and as for me I'm left with wounds that hurt, from battles that are already forgotten, and can't even remember the names of them myself, and so here I am, lying with a hangover in a ponce's flat with a misplaced, misbegotten, miscreated, Balkan whore."

  Luba did not understand all this, suspected that she would not like it if she did, and twiddled her fingers, waiting for the gloomy soliloquy to end. When she felt he was finally drained of philosophy, she sat down beside him, pulled down the sheet which covered him, lifted his shirt and smiled at what she saw, thankful to be on familiar territory where the questions were easier to answer.

  She bent low over him, and Guy gave a kind of whinny, putting his hand on the top of the bobbing head. Then the telephone rang.

  "Damn," said Guy
.

  Luba removed a pubic hair from the tip of a peach-coloured tongue. "If it's for me I don't care," she said. "But…"

  "Cassino has fallen," said Guy. "Better answer."

  Luba picked up the receiver. "Pronto. Si. Si. Attenda."

  She shrugged apologetically at Guy as though it were her fault. Guy accepted the receiver quickly, while Luba sat naked beside him. "Yes… Yes… Pronto, dammit… Yes, Nightingale speaking. Who? O.C. Troops? What have I got to do with O.C. Troops? This is Major Nightingale of the Seventh Armoured. Are you sure you have the right bird? You aren't looking for Sparrow or Lark? Hold off a bit, darling, I can't concentrate when you do that to me… Not you. What do you mean, urgent? I don't have any business with you. There must be some mistake. Are you sure? Me? Guy Graham St. Hellier Nightingale? Listen, I'm expecting to rejoin my company any minute now and I don't want to come to your place unless it's as urgent as you damn well say. All right. If this proves to be a waste of my time I promise you I shall be pretty insubordinate to O.C. Troops." He replaced the receiver. "That's funny-peculiar," he said.

  "What's funny?"

  "That telephone call."

  "Does it mean the end of your furlough?"

  "Leave, kitten, not furlough. The Yanks have furlough. The French have permission. We British have leave. No, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Officer Commanding Troops, Naples, who is in charge of the embarking and disembarking of troops, says he has an urgent personal message for me."

  "Are you going?"

  "I suppose I must."

  "You can't go like that," said Luba. "You are unshaven, dirty, and you reek of garlic and Strega."

  "How to become a swoop in one fell wop, I mean the other way around," said Guy.

  "I'll bathe you very carefully, and shave you, and get you ready. But you are too tense. Relax. I'll relax you… like this…"

  "That isn't relaxation."

  "Why don't you divorce Amanda, and marry me? Then I can get a British passport and go to the United States."

  "Don't be daft," said Guy tensely, lying on his back, and Luba said no more.

  * * *

  O.C. Troops proved to be an elderly colonel who smoked a pipe in the accepted theatrical style. He had few awards to lend dignity to his various royally granted orders but his chest was thick with rows of 1914–18 campaign ribbons. He was a very kindly man, like a large dog who sees his master more clearly than the master sees himself. He told Guy to sit down, gave him permission to smoke and looked disappointed when Guy took out cigarettes rather than accept the personal tobacco that was mixed in Bond Street for him only, and a few thousand others. He told Guy what he knew, while his adjutant stood deferentially by, like the yes-man in a prewar Hollywood story conference. He did not know much but even so it was almost enough to make Guy faint.

  "The message I have is from the War Office, transmitted directly to them from Downing Street," he said. "It appears your wife undertook a mission of extraordinary danger inside occupied France. She was captured and severely tortured, but escaped in time to save the entire Resistance apparatus in Normandy from ambush and destruction. Not content with that she had acquired German intelligence of major importance with which she returned to England. I am assured she is physically sound but after passing on her information, suffered a bad nervous collapse. Only natural in the circumstances."

  "I don't know what to say, Sir," said Guy completely bewildered. "I just don't know what to say."

  "Of course you don't, Nightingale," said O.C. Troops. He smiled reassuringly under heavy eyebrows and tried to look like C. Aubrey Smith Guy decided, but only succeeded in getting as far as Nigel Bruce. "I have a little more to add from my own personal deduction and experience. Your wife will certainly receive a high decoration. Certainly the O. B. E., perhaps the George Medal. Judging from this however, I would not be in the least surprised if she received the George Cross itself."

  "The George Cross! It's impossible. The George Cross is equal to the Victoria Cross."

  "It's only my personal opinion. But an achievement of that importance seems to me to merit the finest that our England can give."

  Guy was silent, trying to get his teeming thoughts into perspective, and O.C. Troops spoke again. "I am sure that your wife, after a few months in the English countryside with her husband by her side, will be as fit as ever."

  "Months!" Guy exclaimed. "What do you mean, months?"

  O.C. Troops beamed. "Yes. You are granted compassionate leave for an indefinite period. This office is drawing up priority documents for you to catch air transport connections at Algiers and Gib."

  Guy did not know whether his thoughts flashed first to Oriana and then to his company, or vice versa. "But, Sir," he said. "We are advancing on Rome. I can't leave the battalion now! We'll be there in forty-eight hours."

  O.C. Troops looked Guy in the eyes. He was an old soldier. He had served at Passchendaele and on the Somme. He had been at Dunkirk. All his life he had seen courage and cowardice, side by side. He tried not to show the profound emotion he was feeling. He jabbed the butt end of his pipe in the direction of Guy's D.S.O., his M. C., and then the two gold wound stripes on the forearm of his sleeve. "Don't you think," he said softly, "that the Nightingale family has done its bit… for England?" He shifted his seat in his chair. "The war is entering its final phases. Nightingale. After the war, life in England will be hard for many years to come. We might even get a socialist government. We are going to need men like you, and women like Mrs. Nightingale to maintain the principles of England's glory."

  "Shut up, you old ass," said Guy, but not loud. Aloud he said nothing. He was thinking of Rome.

  An Army girl knocked and came in with a sheaf of documents warm from the typewriter. O.C. Troops put his pipe between his teeth and signed them, then handed them to Guy. "Here are your papers. Priority… all the way."

  The officers rose together and shook hands. Guy shook hands with the adjutant, put on his beret. At the door he saluted immaculately, and left.

  The adjutant, who had listened in silence, spoke after Guy had gone. "Good type Englishman that, Sir," he said.

  O.C. Troops blew his nose loudly, and his eyes glistened. "One of the best," he said. "One of the very best."

  Guy, dazed and furious, went to the nearest pasticceria and dialled Luba's number. "You can knock me over with a feather, kitten," he said. "It seems that instead of being married to a fucking nuisance, I'm married to a fucking heroine."

  * * *

  Three days later the Americans and the British landed in Normandy. Rome fell. Priority or no priority, Guy spent a week quite happily kicking his heels in Algiers, and two weeks of frustration in the backwater of Gibraltar before he could get transport to England. The impact of his first sight of Amanda made the doctor catch him by the arm to save him from falling. Guy was led from the private ward of the hospital where Amanda lay, his face a queasy grey.

  "I think I'm going to be sick," he said.

  "No you won't be," said the doctor. "Come with me." He took Guy by the elbow, led him into his office and poured two whiskies and soda. Guy slumped in a chair, shuddering.

  The doctor put his finger tips together and prepared to speak professorily. His back was to the window, and against the gorgeous summer day all Guy saw was a silhouette etched in fire, and the brilliantly formed landscape of jagged ruins outside.

  "I will probably seem either fatuous or callous, Major," said the doctor, "when I say what I am going to say. But I wish to urge upon you one piece of advice, namely not to worry. There is nothing, or almost nothing to worry about. Everything physical that was inflicted on your wife was superficial, and the effects have all but disappeared. You saw her. When she was brought in four weeks ago, her body was covered, literally covered, with bruises caused by punches and kicks and the scourging of whips. All those have gone."

  "I wish I could have spoken to her," said Guy.

  "Yes, but unfortunately we had to put her under
sedation. She is still too emotionally upset to see you. She was coming along quite nicely until only yesterday, when she suddenly went berserk. I think she sensed your coming, although she knew nothing of it, and she was ashamed of her head, although, as you saw for yourself, the hair is growing quickly. It took three nurses and myself to hold her down. If I had been a medical man of an earlier day, I would have put her into a straight jacket. Personally I wish you had remained in Italy, uninformed, until she had more fully recovered."

  "So do I," said Guy, but only to himself.

  "To think," he said aloud, with bitterness, "that after all she went through with the Gestapo, it was our gallant allies who shaved her, gallant allies whom she was actually saving at that very moment from ambush. I have seen the French in action and they are no good. Pretty good at shaving women though."

  "Now this you probably do not know," said the doctor, "and it will probably shock you: the Germans branded an obscenity into her thigh just below the vagina…"