Goodnight from London

by Jennifer Robson

“You know what I mean. The Americans are our ally in nearly every way that counts. They certainly aren’t aligned with the Axis states.”

  “So you think they’ll sweep in to save us as they did in the last war?” Vanessa asked.

  Ruby broke in. “Do you mind my answering, since I’m the only American here?”

  “Go on,” Kaz urged.

  “It won’t be anything so clear-cut. The U.S. will only declare war on Germany if we’re forced to do so. If Hitler attacks us directly.”

  “And what if he doesn’t?” Mary asked. “What if nothing changes?”

  “Then we’ll keep on keeping on,” Bennett said, “and pray the Russians are as good to Hitler as they were to Napoleon.”

  “And in the meantime we’re meant to ignore the failings of our society? You think we should ‘keep on,’ as you term it, and turn a blind eye to everything else?” Kaz asked indignantly.

  “No. Of course we shouldn’t. But we need to realize that no amount of postwar planning will help us if we lose the war. Winning the war is the only thing that matters.” Although Bennett said this calmly enough, his dark eyes were animated. Either he was very happy, or he was very angry. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

  Kaz’s face was bright red, the way it got when he was spoiling for a really good argument, and Ruby could tell he was working himself up for another salvo in his argument with Bennett. She elbowed Vi, hoping she would take the hint and divert them with another topic, but her friend simply said “ow” and continued eating.

  “Shall I ask Jessie if there’s anything for dessert?” Ruby asked loudly.

  “By dessert, do you mean pudding?”

  “Yes, Mary. Sorry. Pudding.”

  “Of course there’s pudding,” Vanessa confirmed. “Jessie made her one-egg cake, and we’ve the last of the rhubarb compote to go with it.”

  That had the effect of diverting the men’s attention to the topic of rhubarb. Kaz thought it delicious; Bennett pronounced it an abomination. The conversation went steadily downhill from there.

  “Are they always this argumentative with one another?” Ruby asked Vi.

  “Nearly always. Kaz takes a stance, Bennett challenges him, and off they go. They both love it, Bennett especially. It’s the barrister in him, I think. Why do you ask?”

  “I guess I’ve never seen them together before, or not for any length of time. I’d no idea they acted like, ah—”

  “Like thirty-three-year-old schoolboys?”

  “Yes. Like that.”

  After dinner, the Tremaine sisters went downstairs to help Jessie with the washing-up, leaving Ruby to join the others in the sitting room. Vanessa had flatly refused her offer of help when they rose from the table, insisting that she’d done more than enough already.

  She perched on the sofa, in the exact spot where she’d been earlier, and tried not to think about how amusing and articulate Bennett had been at dinner. A man like him, with his intelligence and abilities, was surely wasted in some desk position in an obscure ministry. He ought to be working with cabinet ministers, or helping to plan top-secret military maneuvers, or advising the prime minister on delicate diplomatic negotiations.

  Then again, for all she knew he already was doing such things.

  “There you are.” Bennett sat next to her, his expression bemused. “I could hardly see you at dinner. Should have made Kaz switch places. The man’s a mountain.”

  “The two of you were very entertaining. Are your conversations always so heated?”

  “Almost always. I like to keep him on his toes.”

  “I know I can’t ask about your work,” she said, her nerve almost deserting her, “but don’t you sometimes wish you were still with your old unit? Where are they now?”

  The laughter fled from his eyes. “They’re stationed on the south coast.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, she floundered on. “Do you ever wish you were with them? Instead of at the . . . well, the place you work now?”

  He didn’t answer right away, his gaze locked on a spot in the middle distance. “No. Not anymore. Why do you ask?”

  “It was something Vanessa said today. She, ah . . . she said you were at Dunkirk. That you’d been awarded the Military Cross.”

  “I was.”

  “Do you mind my asking why?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t mind. Only . . . it’s not very exciting. I simply stayed on the beaches rather longer than I ought to have done. I wanted to know my men were safely away. And then . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “There weren’t many of us left, and the shells were dropping around us like ungodly hailstones. Several of my men were hit. I carried them to the boats. It took a long while, and a few of them were dead by the time we got away. But I did my best.”

  “I had no idea . . .” she marveled.

  “It’s a bit embarrassing, really. The fuss everyone made. Hundreds of men were doing the same as me, but for some reason my actions were noticed. You know how it is. The next thing I knew they were hauling me in front of the king.”

  “And then? Why did you leave, and go to work for that bureau, or whatever you call it? You must have cared about the men under your command. Why not stay on with them?”

  “Because I was asked to take up different work. It’s as simple as that.” For a moment it seemed like he might say something else, but he only shook his head. “Excuse me. I ought to see if the girls need my help in the kitchen.”

  He left the room quietly, unobtrusively, and since Kaz and Mary and Vanessa were deep in conversation at the opposite end of the room, she was left alone to fret. Why had she kept pressing him? She had secrets of her own. She knew what it felt like when someone dug too deep.

  She ought to have left him in peace.

  And she knew nothing, not one thing, about the work that had taken him out of active service and into a mysterious position at the Inter-Services Research Bureau. Everyone knew there were top-secret departments working on top-secret projects all over England. He might be working at a desk job, or he might be unraveling the inner workings of the German high command. For all she knew, he might have been parachuting into occupied France once a month for the past year. It simply wasn’t her business to know, and it wasn’t in his power to tell her.

  She couldn’t even cling to the notion that some kind of misplaced journalistic bloody-mindedness had driven her, for she knew full well that her curiosity was fueled by sentiment, no more. She was sweet on him, and it was her silly crush that had pushed the words out of her mouth tonight. As if knowing his secrets would also unlock the mysteries of his heart.

  She was still fussing and fretting and torturing herself when he returned, a laughing Vi at his side, a few minutes later. He talked to Kaz and Mary, he embraced Vanessa and kissed the girls, and then he came to her, kissed her cheek without looking in her eyes, and walked out the door and into the night.

  Somehow she endured another half hour of lighthearted conversation, unable to muster the energy to join in properly. She waited until everyone’s attention was elsewhere—Vi was mimicking Gertrude Lawrence—and slipped out of the sitting room. A minute or two alone in her room, just until she was feeling herself again, and she would return to the party.

  Opening her bedroom door, she all but tripped over a large object that was sitting on the floor just inside. A typewriter.

  How long she stood there, just staring at it, not daring to crouch down and take a closer look, she couldn’t have said. Only when someone came up the stairs behind her did she tear her gaze away from the machine.

  “You found it, then?” came Mary’s soft voice.

  “Yes.”

  “It took Bennett an age to track one down.”

  Ruby didn’t reply. She couldn’t.

  “Care to tell me what’s wrong?” Mary pressed.

  “You . . . you noticed?”

  “What happened between you and Bennett? Oh, aye. Was hard to miss. One moment you were all smiles w
ith each other, and the next . . .”

  “It was my fault. I asked him why he’d left active service, and I think he felt I was disappointed in him. But I didn’t mean it, not one bit. I don’t even know what he does, so how can I be disappointed? But now he’s gone and I’ve no way of telling him I’m sorry, or to thank him for the typewriter.” She rubbed at her eyes, swiping away the stupid, stupid tears. When was the last time she had cried about anything?

  “Ring him up. He told Kaz he wasn’t leaving until the morning. He should be home by now. Ring him at his flat.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You can,” Mary insisted. “Life is too short to leave things unsaid. If you hurt him, and if you want to put things right, call him now. Here—take this.” She handed Ruby a slip of paper with a telephone number scribbled in compositor’s pencil.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Kaz gave it to me just now. We both had a feeling you might want it.”

  “Thank you. I . . . I guess I’ll call him now.”

  The telephone sat in an alcove on the main floor, in what once had probably been a closet of some kind, and had its own little table and a stool for calls longer than a minute or two. Quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she dialed Bennett’s number.

  “Chancery 8015.”

  “Hello? Is that Bennett?”

  “Ruby.”

  Her hands were trembling, but somehow she managed to keep her voice steady. “I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s late. I just . . . Mary gave me your number. I wanted to thank you for the typewriter.”

  “You’re welcome.” His voice was flat.

  “And I’m sorry. What I said earlier was wrong. I don’t know what you do, obviously I don’t, but I’m absolutely sure your work is important. It must be, because otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it. And I’m so, so—”

  “Ruby,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, too. I . . . speaking about my decision to leave my unit is a sore point for me. If I could say more, I would. For now, though . . . I shouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.” A pause, as if he, too, were nervous. “Do you like the typewriter? It’s one of those folding models. And it should be lighter than your old one, too.”

  “It’s perfect. But it must have been so expensive—”

  “Stop. Just stop. It took me a long time to find that damn thing, so you’re going to keep it. Understand? I’ve no use for it—I never learned how to type. So you keep it, and use it, and if you run out of ribbons just let me know. All right?”

  “Yes,” she said, and found she was able to smile again.

  “I had better ring off. I have to leave first thing tomorrow.”

  “Will you call when you’re back in London?”

  “I will. Good night, Ruby.”

  She put the receiver back on its cradle and stole back to her room, for she wasn’t quite ready to rejoin the party. The typewriter was there, just as she’d left it. Only then, as she bent to pick up the machine, did she see the note he had typed out for her.

  to Ruby

  with my regards

  Bennett

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  July 1941

  Nearly everyone was late into work that morning. After weeks and weeks of clear skies and peaceful nights, the bombers had returned; and while it hadn’t been quite as bad as the terrible raids in May, enough damage had been done to wreak havoc on everyone’s morning commute. It had been a shock, coming so long after what everyone assumed had been the end of the Blitz, never mind that the government kept telling everyone to remain alert.

  The bombing had gone on for hours and hours, the all clear not sounding until almost dawn, and come morning, the streets had been littered with unexploded parachute bombs and sizzling incendiaries. Ruby had walked far out of her way to get to work, and when she did arrive at almost nine o’clock she found the office all but deserted. Even Evelyn, who got up at the crack of dawn every morning for her journey in from Ealing and was never, ever late, had called Kaz to say there was a bomb in next door’s garden and she had to wait for the bomb disposal crew to arrive.

  The morning wore on, and one by one everyone appeared—everyone except Mary. Lunchtime came and went, and still she didn’t come in.

  “I rang her at home, but there was no answer,” Kaz said worriedly. “Even for her this is awfully late.”

  “Why don’t you go by her flat, then?” Ruby suggested. “Maybe she’s under the weather and doesn’t feel like getting out of bed to answer the phone. She did say she’d been feeling a cold coming on.”

  “Yes, that’s probably it. I’ll walk over now.”

  An hour passed, then another. Mary’s flat was on Eagle Street, just off High Holborn, less than a mile away. It should only have taken Kaz a half hour, at the very most, to get there. So why hadn’t he rung back with news?

  Ruby waited and fretted and tried to work, and still there was no news. And then, when it was almost six o’clock and everyone else was packing up to go home, the telephone on her desk rang.

  “Picture Weekly, Ruby Sutton speaking.”

  “It’s Kaz.”

  “Where are you? Did you find Mary? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m at University College Hospital. Mary . . . her block of flats took a direct hit last night.” His deep voice broke. “It took a long while for them to . . . for them to dig her out.”

  “No. No, it can’t—”

  “They whisked her away. I had to find a cab and follow. I . . . I just got here, and no one will tell me anything.”

  “Tell me where to go. I’ll be right there.”

  “The casualty entrance. I’ll be there, or somewhere nearby.”

  She left seconds later, not bothering to see if anyone was still in the office to lock up. On the cab ride to the hospital, which felt like forever but took little more than fifteen minutes, Ruby pushed away images of the countless buildings she’d seen leveled by bombs and focused on the survivors she had interviewed. No one she knew was stronger, tougher, or more invincible than Mary. No one. She would be, had to be, all right.

  Rushing through the doors to the casualty entrance, Ruby skidded to a halt in front of the duty nurse’s desk. “I’m here to see Mary Buchanan. Mr. Kaczmarek asked me to come. He’s already here.”

  “Yes, of course,” the woman said, her expression carefully blank. “Come with me.”

  Kaz was slumped in a chair at the very far corner of the waiting area, his head in his hands.

  “I’m here,” she said, touching his shoulder.

  He looked up, nodded, and motioned for her to sit next to him.

  “Why are we waiting?” she asked.

  “The doctors are still examining her. I don’t know what’s wrong with her yet. How bad it is. The nurse would only say that her condition is ‘grave.’”

  So they sat and waited, and no one came out to tell them what was happening, and minute by minute the pool of choking dread rose higher and higher in Ruby’s chest, until it threatened to eclipse every thought in her head. Why was no one coming to tell them what was happening?

  They sat in silence for another quarter hour, and then Kaz shifted, settling his elbows on his knees, and tilted his head to look at Ruby. “Did Mary ever tell you the story of how we met?” he asked.

  “No. Only that she’d known you for years.”

  “She was the first photographer assigned to me when I came to London. I’d left the Liverpool Herald behind, convinced the grass would be greener in the big city. John Ellis had written a fulsome recommendation for me, far better than I deserved, and it had earned me a position at the very bottom of the editorial ladder at the Evening Standard. For my troubles I was sent out on the women’s beat, and to my everlasting shame I considered it a blow to my pride. Mary was the photographer for my first assignment.”

  “I fear for you already,” Ruby said. “What was the story?”

  “We were sent off to som
e market town in the depths of the Cotswolds. I’ve forgotten the name. It was the end of September and they were having their Michaelmas fair. As far as I can recall, it was some sort of landmark year—their seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary or something like that.

  “We were lent a little car, though again I’ve no memory of where it came from. Likely it belonged to someone at the magazine. Fool that I was, I insisted on driving, even though I barely knew the clutch from the brake.”

  “I’ve driven with Mary,” Ruby said, recalling their breakneck journey up to Coventry. “She’s not much better behind the wheel.”

  “Oh, she’s a skillful enough driver. Just not a cautious one. So—we drove out there, and I was so, so nervous around her. She was about a hundred times smarter than me, and so glamorous and confident and regal that every bit of male pride I had just shriveled away.”

  “What happened at the fair?”

  “Nothing very dramatic. I was convinced I could find an edge to the story, some approach to it that would make my editor sit up and take notice of me.”

  “And did you?”

  “Of course not. It was a country fair, more or less the same country fair that had been held in that same market town for three-quarters of a millennium. Insofar as there was a story, it was in the people we met. But I was so busy trying to impress Mary and find some different angle that I hardly talked to anyone there at all, and when I did I talked over them. I didn’t ask questions and I didn’t listen.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She didn’t give me a hard time, not at first. Mainly just let me blunder around like a great idiotic bear and scare off every single person who might have brought some life to the story. After a while, she suggested we have lunch at the local pub. It was probably early afternoon by then, and when we sat down to eat she told me to listen and not say a word until she was done. She told me I was new and evidently needed some help, and so she would give me some advice. She said that I was ruining the story and unless I learned how to shut up and listen I would never amount to anything as a journalist.”

  “Did she have that look on her face? The one where her eyebrows go up and she fixes you with the stare? The one you feel down to your toes?”