The Englishman drained his drink and called to the barman for two more. ‘It sounds like just the thing I need,’ he said.
There was a moon that night over London, the sky flat and pale behind it and floating there in front of the stars a shoal of barrage balloons, silent as fish moving in a clear sea. The city did not seem so dark to Scarlett as it had done on that first night for now he had grown used to the blackness of the countryside. Vehicles and people moved about like confident phantoms.
‘Those balloons,’ asked Scarlett as they walked from the officers’ hotel, ‘did they ever get any Nazi planes down?’
‘A few, not many,’ said Bryant looking up at the dotted sky. ‘They kept the bombers at a height, which didn’t do a lot of good because they just dropped their load from there. It would be difficult to miss something as big as London.’
‘I guess the idea is that they couldn’t pick out special targets,’ said Scarlett.
Bryant laughed. ‘That’s what everybody thought when they believed that the war was going to be sporting. At the beginning. You know, military objectives only. Some hope of that. They just stayed higher and let the bombs go at random.’ He quoted: ‘ “German bombs dropped at random.” Did you see that film “Random Harvest”?’
‘Sure. Greer Garson. There’s that great last scene when she calls, “Smithy,” and Ronald Coleman turns around. What a movie.’
‘We went to see that after we got married. It was a sort of honeymoon,’ recalled Bryant wistfully. He realized he was feeling a little drunk. He wondered if Scarlett was also. The American was regarding the balloons again.
‘So they’re just up there to look pretty,’ he said. He began to count them approvingly. ‘And they sure do look pretty.’
‘You’re right,’ said Bryant. ‘I’ve thought about it like that. They gave everybody some sort of enjoyment, like Christmas decorations all year round, and just when people needed something to make them look up.’
‘We go down,’ said Scarlett. They had reached the steps leading down to the basement where the club was located. ‘There’s something satisfying about going below the ground too, don’t you know. It’s cosy and exciting at the same time. You could always get laid in a place like this. And in comfort.’
‘Laid?’ asked Bryant. ‘You mean buried?’ The American laughed.
They reached the door and Scarlett rang the bell. There was a brass plate on the door. Bryant tried to read it in the dimness. ‘It’s got a high-sounding name, which I don’t recall,’ said Scarlett. ‘But the guys call it The Wishbone Club.’
The door opened and the emaciated young man that Scarlett recognized from his previous visit hovered patronizingly. ‘Members?’ he enquired.
Scarlett answered: ‘Sure we’re members.’ He walked in, not quite brushing the man aside. ‘Is Mrs Manifold around?’
The man’s thin nose was red on his stark face, as if he had collided with something. ‘Sign please,’ he sighed impatiently. He went behind his gilt table and pushed a book towards them. Scarlett signed ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower’ and ‘General Montgomery’ for Bryant. The young man did not bother to look. ‘Mrs Manifold is in the lounge, sir,’ he said starchily. ‘I’ll call her if you wish.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll know her when I see her,’ said Scarlett easily. He moved into the comforting lounge, with its sofas, its tables and its velvet bar. ‘What a goddamn bug that guy is,’ he said quietly to Bryant. ‘Somebody should spray him.’
The Englishman was about to reply when Jean Manifold came casually towards them. She wore a long black dress, her shoulders creamy against the material. She held a glass in slim fingers and she was smiling gently. Bryant had not seen a woman like that since before the war.
Confidently Scarlett stepped forward and embraced her, but the Englishman saw at once that she was unsure of his identity. She laughed briefly and stepped back to regard him. She glanced at his rank insignia. His hands remained on her waist. She took hers from his shoulders. ‘Captain,’ she said with a slight falter, ‘how terrific to see you again.’ She said the ‘terrific’ in pseudo-American.
‘Captain, the hell,’ complained Scarlett. ‘Oscar … Oscar Scarlett. Don’t say you don’t remember.’
‘Of course I remember,’ she protested with another laugh. She embraced him theatrically, pressing herself against him. ‘Captain Scarlett. Sounds like Errol Flynn.’ She eased herself slightly away and looked towards Bryant. ‘And you have a friend. Somebody on our side.’
‘Okay, he’s British,’ smiled Scarlett. ‘But the poor guy can’t help that.’ He turned to Bryant and then abruptly realized he did not know his first name. Bryant had never heard him called Oscar before either. Bryant held out his hand. ‘I’m Alan Bryant,’ he said politely.
‘I’m Jean Manifold,’ said the woman.
‘And I’m lost,’ said Scarlett. ‘Jesus, I just knew I shouldn’t have brought this smooth Englishman along. We just haven’t got the style.’
‘You haven’t got a drink either,’ laughed Jean. She raised one crimson-nailed finger towards the barman. He nodded and came round to the table where they were placing themselves. ‘The first round is on the house,’ said Jean. She glanced at Scarlett, still unsurely. ‘Remember?’
‘I’m not the one who forgets,’ he corrected good-humouredly. They sat back comfortably. Bryant’s despair and disappointment were still heavy within him. God, how could she have just not troubled? How could she be so casual about their marriage. What had happened to women? He glanced up at Jean Manifold, now laughing with her arm lying casually across the back of Scarlett’s neck, and saw his answer.
There were not many people in the place. Jean said it was early yet. But officers were away on duty for longer periods now. Soon, as she said, there would be none to go there at all. They would be busy with the fighting. A small pout of sadness touched her cheek.
Half a dozen American officers with attendant girls came in. The men were lively and loud; the women quiet, nervous. Just as the drinks arrived, Scarlett exclaimed: ‘Hey, that guy. I know that guy. He was at Camp Blanding, Florida, with me. He said they’d never send him overseas! Ha!’ he turned apologetically. ‘I’d like to ask him how come they did,’ he said. He rose with slight unsteadiness. ‘I won’t be long.’ He glanced at Jean and added, ‘Keep … Alan … keep him happy, will you?’
With a suspicion of a stagger he went across the floor where there was a back-slapping reunion with the other American. Drinks were placed on the bar. Scarlett seemed quickly to forget he had left them sitting at the table.
‘You don’t remember him do you,’ said Bryant with a smile.
Jean Manifold shrugged. ‘Sure, I remember him,’ she said irritatingly, again trying to sound American. ‘But you meet a lot of guys …’ She glanced up with a sort of guilt and amended it. ‘… a lot of men here. Mostly Americans. It’s not difficult to get their names mixed up.’
‘No, I suppose not. Names are something which go by the board in wartime, don’t they? Like a lot of things. We’ve been working together for weeks now, not all the time but off and on, and he didn’t know I was called Alan, and I didn’t know he was Oscar.’
‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ she said moodily. She twisted the stem of the glass in her fingers so it turned like a roundabout. ‘You don’t want to get too close to people these days. It doesn’t pay. What’s your story?’
‘I’m what I look,’ he said. ‘I work with the Americans, that’s all. I’m a sort of go-between.’
She looked at him as though she were really interested, which he knew she was not. ‘No, I mean what are you doing here? This is okay … all right for those who haven’t got anywhere else to go. No home, nothing like that.’
‘Oh, I see. Well my home is in the north.’
‘You don’t sound like that. Have you changed your accent because you’re an officer or something. Officers really don’t sound right with northern accents.’
Bryant shook h
is head. ‘Not at all. My family are from down here originally, but I went to the north when I was married, just before the war.’
‘Oh, you’re married.’
‘Yes, I’ve got a little girl. She’s called Elizabeth.’ He wondered why he wanted to tell her.
‘Where is your wife?’ asked Jean.
He frowned into his drink. ‘Well, if you’d asked me that a few hours ago I would have said she was coming to London on the train so that we could spend some time together.’
Jean Manifold nodded: ‘But she didn’t show … turn up.’
‘She didn’t turn up,’ he confirmed.
‘It happens to everybody,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I’ve heard it so many times. My husband’s in a prison camp. I dread the day we’ll have to meet again. Dread it.’
‘And he’s counting every moment,’ said Bryant seriously. ‘It must be terrible when you’re stuck behind wire and you don’t know when it’s all going to end.’
‘Don’t tell me, please,’ she sighed. ‘I feel guilty as hell about it. But I can hardly remember him, you know, that’s the awful part. Any more than I can remember your friend Oscar over there. Now, after all this time, I just don’t seem to be able to keep my mind on his face. I’ve got pictures of our wedding day. But every time I look he seems to fade away a bit more. Soon he’ll be gone altogether, just a stranger.’ She pouted and gave a brief, hard laugh. ‘I can’t even recognize myself holding that bouquet,’ she said. ‘Bloody fool that I was. Still am for that matter.’
Bryant said: ‘Will you have a drink?’
‘Why not? I’ll probably get plastered tonight. I do sometimes. Quite often.’
‘You look very good on it,’ said Bryant genuinely. ‘It must suit you.’
‘Thanks. Up to now, all right. But I’m going to look bloody raddled by the end of the war.’
‘I think most of us will,’ he pointed out. The waiter approached and she ordered the same again, a Vodka Collins. Bryant did not know what that was. He had a scotch and he ordered another for Scarlett who was laughing, leaning over the bar with the other group. ‘I think he’s forgotten us,’ smiled Bryant. A small band clambered without enthusiasm on to a draped rostrum.
‘He’s just getting his own back because I’d forgotten him,’ shrugged Jean.
They were in the club until one in the morning. By that time it had grown crowded and curtained with smoke, with the band playing without inspiration above the voices. Then Americans began to leave, some with women; others, most of them staggering, without. Bryant had drunk a lot but he was surprised to find himself still calm. Jean Manifold was outwardly the same, as she had been the whole evening. Scarlett was sitting at their table again with his buddy from Camp Blanding, bemoaning the idiocies of the US Army and the war. Bryant sized him up. He would have to get him back without attracting a lot of attention at the officers’ club, although he imagined that they were not unused to drunks there.
‘What fouls me up,’ Scarlett was saying loudly. His collar was undone and his hair had fallen damply across his forehead. ‘Is that after all this goddamn time, years, we still have to have these old, old fucking destroyers as escorts. This is supposed to be modern war, for Chrissake. And we get these things that should have been on the scrapheap since the first fucking war …’
He paused and saw Bryant and Jean Manifold regarding him across the table. ‘So what?’ he said defiantly but with some guilt. ‘So goddamn what? Listen, pals, the GIs don’t feel so crazy about being out there in that cold English water, with those old English ships. Garbage, just garbage.’
‘They’re old American ships,’ put in Bryant, realizing as he said it that he was adding to the error.
‘I don’t care whose old ships they are, they’re still old. If our boys got attacked by the Germans they’d have no chance. No shit chance at all. So there. Those things can just about crawl in the water …’
Bryant said: ‘Oscar, we’d better go.’
Scarlett looked around guiltily. ‘Come on. We’re all friends in here,’ he said as an excuse. ‘It don’t matter what I say in here.’
‘Even so, we’re leaving,’ said Bryant.
‘I’m just going,’ added Jean Manifold.
‘Okay, we’re leaving,’ said Scarlett. ‘If you say so, we are.’
He stood heavily, swayed, but straightened himself with exaggerated care and began to make for the door. ‘I’d better get him back to the club,’ said Bryant. Jean smiled, a little tightly he thought, then went to get her coat. He helped her on with it when she returned. It was a fur, well looked after. He helped Scarlett who was struggling with his greatcoat, pulling up the trapped collar for him.
‘You’re very patient,’ said Jean Manifold without great interest. She was peering into her handbag. ‘He’ll have to learn to look after himself someday, you know.’
‘I realize that,’ said Bryant. He suddenly appreciated why she was offhand. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I’ll get you a taxi, if I can find one.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m only round the corner. Just walk me to the corner. Can we get Andy Hardy that far, do you think?’ He was astonished at the scorn in her voice.
‘Between us I think we’ll manage. We’ll soon find out when the fresh air hits him.’
They were among the last people in the place. The starved-looking young man and one of the elderly waiters were waiting to close the door behind the two. They had been hovering near the table a few minutes before.
Once they had climbed the steps, assisting Scarlett, who had begun to sing moodily, and gained the street, the American stood more firmly and began to walk with reasonable steadiness. He walked next to Bryant with Jean Manifold walking on the inside, near some walls which at one time had been embellished with iron railings.
‘Look at that,’ said Jean waving her hand airily above the low wall that remained. ‘Took the lovely railings away. This war takes everything away, even the railings.’
Out in the air she had become a little fey. She performed a slightly girlish hopscotch between the indistinct paving stones. ‘They were always useful to lean on, the railings,’ she said. ‘They’d be very useful just now.’
She stopped Bryant by holding his arm. Scarlett wandered on a few steps and then, realizing his supporters had been left behind, he sauntered back. He said nothing but stood swaying dumbly as if trying to work out what was taking place. Bryant was conscious of the woman’s well-formed face in the dimness. She stared up into the buttoned night and said, ‘The stars look nice don’t they. Nothing’s gone wrong with the stars.’
Bryant smiled. ‘A lot of people never noticed the stars before the black out,’ he said.
‘You’re right, you know,’ she nodded, beginning to walk again. Scarlett was again momentarily caught adrift but he quickly shambled after them, like a dull child not wishing to be left behind.
There were no other people in the street. The wind seeped around the tall corners of the Victorian houses. A policeman appeared wearing a steel helmet, a clumsy revolver, and riding a bicycle. He shone his torch on them and wished them a steady goodnight. They returned the wish and arrived outside the house where she lived.
‘I’ll be safe from here.’ She smiled slightly at Bryant.
He felt disappointed. ‘Oh, yes, good,’ he hesitated. He returned the smile. ‘I’d better go and get Andy Hardy back.’
Scarlett had begun singing another song. He sang softly and sentimentally:
‘I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own,
A doll that other fellas cannot steal.’
‘We’d better go,’ laughed Bryant. He moved forward and kissed her calmly on the cheek. He felt her face move in a smile as he did so. They parted and he attempted to lead Scarlett along the pavement. The American began to stagger again.
Her voice came from behind. ‘Alan,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you’re going to make it.’ That pseudo-American again. ‘I guess you’d bette
r bring him in. I’ll get some coffee.’
Bryant turned and looked back at her, bulky in her coat, standing in the dark. A small, tight sensation grew in his chest. He turned Scarlett and walked back to the house. ‘That’s if you want to,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ he said looking towards the American. ‘I think it might be a good idea.’
Scarlett was singing without tune as they mounted the cracked steps in front of the house; he seemed to need something more substantial on which to lean. As she opened the door he all but fell into the front hall. He spread his hands with drunken extravagance. ‘Home again,’ he said.
Jean guided them into the close sitting-room. A lamp was glowing in a corner, she switched on two others; kneeling in her evening dress and fur coat, she put a small shovelful of dusty coal, with a curious touch of domestic pride, on the dying embers of a fire. ‘Every night I time it perfectly,’ she said. ‘If I make it up before I go out it’s just right when I get back.’ She put the shovel down and wiped her hands against each other. ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ she said strangely. ‘Perhaps it will be all right. You never know with these things.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ said Bryant. ‘How does the coal ration last?’
‘Not too badly.’ She moved towards a door which he guessed led to the kitchen, on the way taking her coat from her shoulders and throwing it with care across the back of the deep sofa, where Scarlett was already stretched, his eyes dropped, his lips moving but silent. ‘Gone, I’m afraid,’ she decided. ‘Bye bye, baby.’
She went into the kitchen and Bryant wandered to the door after her. He remained leaning against the jamb, watching her. ‘I stay in bed nearly all day, especially now, at this time of the year,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I go out shopping or to the pictures with friends. But I don’t need the fire all day, so that saves the coal ration.’
The Magic Army Page 31
