Goodnight from London

by Jennifer Robson

  “She did,” he said, and smiled at the memory. “I felt as if she’d reached over, pulled a stopper out of my chest, and let out all the hot air. I knew she was right, but I didn’t know how to fix it.”

  “And?” Ruby prompted.

  “And so I asked her what I should do. She told me to eat my lunch, and then we would start again. This time, though, she wanted me to keep two rules in mind. One, I must never underestimate the intelligence of my readers. And two, I must never get in the way of my photographer. It worked.”

  “She does have an instinct for finding interesting people,” Ruby said.

  “She does. I let her take the lead, and she led me to people, and I just started talking with them. Not in an ‘I am from an extremely important London newspaper and I should like to talk to you’ way. More, I suppose, in a ‘what a beautiful display of marrows’ sort of way. ‘Did you grow these? You did? How long have you been growing marrows? What got you started?’”

  He clutched his head in his hands, his back bowed. “I fell in love with her that day,” he whispered.

  “Oh, Kaz. I did wonder, a few times. But the two of you were so discreet. I could never be sure if you were close friends, or if there was more.”

  “There was. Never quite enough, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I finally worked up the nerve to tell her how I felt, a year or so after we met, she was kind. She didn’t laugh at me. She didn’t reject me, in point of fact. But she was clear. She might agree to be my lover, but she would never be anything more. She’d seen what happened to women who married and abandoned all their ambitions, and she swore it would never happen to her.”

  He looked up, his expression somewhat abashed. “I hope you don’t mind my telling you this.”

  “Not at all,” she assured him. “You are my friend, just as Mary is. But I am sorry. I wish . . .”

  “I stopped wishing a while ago, and it was enough, I think . . .”

  “Mr. Kaczmarek?” A doctor, not much older than Ruby, had approached as they were talking, and now stood a few feet away.

  “I’m Walter Kaczmarek.”

  “I’m Dr. Bannion,” he said. “Are you Miss Buchanan’s next of kin? Your name is given on her identity card.”

  Kaz looked briefly surprised, but nodded readily. “I am.”

  “May I sit?” the doctor asked, and without waiting for a reply he pulled over a nearby chair and all but fell into it, exhaustion a stark veil upon his young, handsome face.

  “How is she?” Kaz asked.

  “I’m afraid it’s not good. Miss Buchanan is suffering from extensive internal injuries, as well as a fractured skull and a subdural hematoma—a sort of injury to her brain. She was unconscious when they pulled her from the wreckage of her block of flats. I gather she and the other people in the building had been trapped in the cellar for some hours.”

  The horror of it was almost too much to bear. To know that her friend had been trapped and alone—that she had suffered alone for so long. Ruby looked to Kaz, whose face was twisted in a rictus of agony, and without hesitating, she reached for his nearest hand and grasped it tightly.

  “The only way to remedy such injuries is through surgery,” Dr. Bannion continued, “but we haven’t yet been able to stabilize her condition. If we were to operate now, she would almost certainly die on the table.”

  “So are you saying . . . ?” Kaz faltered.

  “I’m saying that Miss Buchanan’s condition is too grave to allow for surgery. It’s also the case that she has suffered such an acute head injury that, if she were to survive, I fear her faculties would be permanently impaired.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you saying that you can’t save her?”

  “I’m very sorry, but I think it best if we do not intervene any further. Her injuries are too extensive, and there is no reasonable prospect for recovery.”

  “Is she still alive?” Kaz asked, his voice no more than a whisper.

  “Yes. She is unconscious, and I doubt she will wake again. But she is not in any pain.”

  “May we see her?” Ruby asked.

  “Of course. She’s been moved to a bed on the ward, and there is room for you to sit with her. I don’t think it will be very long.”

  The casualty ward was dim and quiet, with curtains drawn around several of its beds. Dr. Bannion led them to one of the nurses and, after a final, whispered apology, vanished down the hall.

  “I’m Sister Milne. I’ll be here for the rest of the night. I’ll take you to Miss Buchanan now. We’ve drawn the curtains so you’ll have some privacy.”

  Mary had been changed into a hospital gown, and apart from the bandages swathing her head she looked much as she always did, with no marks on her face or arms. A blanket had been tucked around her, and if Ruby hadn’t known otherwise, she’d have thought her friend was sleeping.

  Two chairs had been left in the curtained alcove, and now Ruby took one and drew it close to the bed. “You sit,” she told Kaz. “Take her hand. I know the doctor said she’s unconscious, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hear you. Now is the time for you to tell her everything. I’ll wait outside.”

  “You won’t go far?”

  “No. I won’t be far.”

  She closed tight the curtains, not wishing anyone to be a witness to Kaz’s farewell, and walked far enough away that she couldn’t hear him whispering to the woman he loved. She stood and shivered, wondering why they kept it so cold inside the hospital. Surely the patients needed to be kept warm.

  Kind hands took her by the shoulders and directed her to a chair. “You’re in shock,” said Sister Milne. “It’s quite natural. Wait here while I get you a cup of tea.”

  She accepted the mug, which was hot enough to scald her icy hands, and tried to take a sip. Her hands were shaking, though, and it was hard to drink without spilling.

  “Go on,” the sister encouraged her. “You’ll feel better as soon as you’ve had something to drink.”

  Ruby gulped it down, hating the taste but grateful for its cloying warmth. Presumably hospitals were allocated extra sugar rations for moments such as this.

  “If I had anything stronger I’d give it to you,” the nurse said.

  “This will do. Thanks.”

  She could just hear Kaz’s voice, a murmur she didn’t try to decipher. Eavesdropping now would be the worst sort of betrayal. So she sat and waited and drank all her tea, even the sugary sludge at the bottom of the mug, and hoped she would find the strength for what was to come next.

  “Ruby?”

  She was across the ward in a flash. “Yes, Kaz?”

  “I’m done. I . . . do you want to sit with us?”

  “Of course.” Picking up the second chair, she brought it around to Mary’s other side and, sitting, took hold of her friend’s hand. It was beautiful, the fingers long and elegant. A strong, capable hand.

  “She’s barely breathing,” Kaz said.

  Ruby felt for the pulse in Mary’s wrist. It was scarcely there, a whisper of movement, no more. Together she and Kaz sat and watched and listened, the space between Mary’s breaths growing longer and longer, until nothing remained but a final, fading wisp of escaping air.

  “Kaz,” Ruby whispered.

  “I know.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he dropped his head to the bed, his back heaving with soundless sobs. Reaching out blindly, he took hold of Mary’s cold hand and, turning it gently, kissed her palm.

  This was agony. This was loss. This was love, and it was too late, now, for Ruby to do anything about it.

  Too late to thank Mary for her friendship. Too late to tell her just how much she admired and esteemed her. In Kaz’s pain she saw her own heartache reflected, for she loved Mary, too. Had loved her as the true friend she had been. Her first friend.

  He stood, swaying for a moment, and Ruby rushed around the bed to steady him. “I’m all right,” he said. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

&n
bsp; “Yes, although it’s a bit damp.”

  “I don’t mind.” He wiped his eyes, stuffed it in his jacket pocket, and straightened his shoulders. “There,” he said. “I’m ready now.”

  RUBY AND KAZ planned the funeral while also working flat out on the magazine. There hadn’t been any question of skipping publication for a week, not least because Mary would have been outraged at the idea. Kaz spent most of the week in his office, emerging periodically for editorial meetings that invariably ended with Nell in tears or Nigel shouting at someone.

  Since Mary had never expressed any particular wishes on the subject of her funeral, it was left to Kaz and Ruby to try to arrange a memorial that would offend her as little as possible. “Probably a good thing she never said anything about it,” Kaz observed at one point. “God knows what she’d have made us do. A Viking funeral pyre wouldn’t have been out of the question.”

  “I think she’d have understood we’re doing our best,” Ruby had said, too tired and heartsick to find humor in Kaz’s observation. “I did hear back from the vicar at the Scottish church in Covent Garden. We can have the service at eleven o’clock on Thursday. Vanessa has offered to host the reception afterward, too.”

  “That’s kind of her,” Kaz said absently.

  “I can’t help asking . . . have you heard . . . ?”

  “From Bennett? No. I left a message with his work, but haven’t heard back. If he can be there, he will.”

  “Of course. I had better get back to my desk.”

  “Ruby?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for sitting with me. Having someone else there made it bearable. I’m not sure how I’d have managed otherwise.”

  “It just seems so unfair. To have lived through so many nights of bombing, and to be killed now. We’ve all been assuming the Blitz was over. Weeks and weeks without a raid, and then this.”

  “It is unfair, but that’s true of nearly everything about this war. For that matter, life itself is unfair. Your only chance is to grab hold of happiness when you have it, and enjoy it for however long it lasts.”

  Their eyes met, and after a beat or two of almost unbearable silence, they both burst out laughing.

  “She’d have had your head for that, Kaz.”

  “She would,” he admitted. “Now, back to work you go. I’ll let you know if I hear from Bennett.”

  BENNETT’S CALL DIDN’T come until the morning of the funeral. It awoke Ruby just past dawn, the phone ringing so persistently that she’d staggered downstairs, still half asleep, determined to slam the receiver down on the person who was so inconsiderate as to call at such an ungodly hour.

  “Yes? Who is this?” she barked into the phone, forgetting Vanessa’s insistence that she always answer by citing their telephone number.

  “Ruby? It’s Bennett.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in England, but I’m a few hours away. Ruby—I’m so sorry. I only got word this morning.”

  “Have you spoken with Kaz?”

  “Yes,” he said wretchedly. “He seemed to understand.”

  “Of course he does. I do, too. And it doesn’t matter, because you’re back now. Can you make it in time? The service starts at eleven.”

  “Yes. I’ll be a bit rough around the edges, but I’ll be there.”

  He walked up just as they were about to enter the church, and after embracing Kaz, he took her arm and they sat together in the front pew, flanked by Kaz and Vanessa. When it was time for the first lesson, it was Bennett who rose and made his way to the lectern.

  “A reading from the book of Solomon:

  “My beloved speaks and says to me:

  Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

  for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come,

  and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.

  The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;

  they give forth fragrance.

  Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  September 1941

  Another Monday morning, and as Ruby dragged herself up the steps to the PW offices she was assailed with the depressing knowledge that five and a half days of misery were waiting for her.

  It had been a little more than two months since Mary’s death, and Kaz showed no signs of emerging from the fog of grief that clung to him like so much poison gas. She had tried to help, asking tentatively if he wanted to talk with her, then inviting him to come to dinner with her and Vanessa, or even go to the Old Bell for lunch, but nothing could tempt him from his desk and the solace of work.

  And there was no end of news to keep them busy. Crete had been lost to Axis forces at the end of May, the German invasion of the USSR had begun a month later, and by the end of the summer the Soviets seemed perilously close to defeat. And when that happened, Kaz never tired of telling anyone within earshot, Hitler would once again turn his attention to Western Europe and the long-delayed invasion of Britain. It was only a matter of time.

  Ruby was convinced that Kaz was drinking at the office, unremarkable behavior among most newsmen she knew but entirely out of character for her editor and friend. She’d smelled something sharp on his breath the week before, and later that afternoon he had tripped over his words more than once during their editorial meeting. It didn’t help that he wasn’t eating properly, his clothes all but hanging off his broad shoulders, and from the look of his hair and stubbled face he was long overdue for a good bath.

  She tried calling Bennett at home, again and again, but he was never there, and Vanessa didn’t have a telephone number for him at work. The only person who knew how to reach him was Kaz, and if Bennett had been in contact with his old friend, Kaz wasn’t saying.

  What made it all the harder was that she, too, missed Mary desperately. There were moments, over those bleak days of late summer, when Ruby would have given anything for a dose of her friend’s canny advice, or a glimpse of her rueful smile. Even Mary in one of her foul moods would have been enough to leaven Ruby’s spirits.

  The instant she walked through the door, she knew something was wrong. Evelyn was crying—levelheaded, sane, endlessly sensible Evelyn, who never seemed to get upset, and had soldiered through the days and weeks after Mary’s death with nothing more than reddened eyes.

  “What is wrong?” Ruby asked, her heart seizing with fear. “Has someone . . . ?”

  “No, no. It’s only . . . Captain Bennett and Mr. Bennett are here. Kaz isn’t coming back.”

  “What?” Ruby gasped. “Ever?”

  “Sorry, no—just for a while. They’ll explain it all, they said. You might as well go on in.”

  Ruby rushed down the hall, desperate to learn what had become of Kaz, but the door to his office was shut. Behind it, she could just make out Nigel’s voice, rising and falling, and then Bennett’s, more than an octave lower, measured and calm. Everyone else was in the main office, and by their expressions they shared her apprehension. If Kaz was leaving, what would become of them? What would become of Picture Weekly?

  Evelyn came down the hall, and one by one they joined her at the big table. There were so few of them, really, for Kaz hadn’t tried to replace Mary, instead relying on freelancers and agency photographs. Without Kaz, how would they put out the magazine? He was its beating heart—without him, what was left?

  The door to his office opened, and footsteps sounded in the hall. First through the door was Nigel, who looked oddly pleased with himself. He was followed by an elderly man who had to be Mr. Bennett, their publisher. It didn’t seem right, in that moment, to think of him as Uncle Harry. Ruby had pictured him as a rather doddery old fellow, but this man was tall and slim, with piercingly blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows. He had once been a judge, she recalled, and seeing him now, she was certain he had been a formidable presence in the courtroom.

&nb
sp; Last of all was Bennett himself. His eyes met hers briefly, but there was time for nothing more, and she could discern nothing from his studiously neutral expression.

  “Good morning,” Mr. Bennett began. “As you all know, our dear Kaz has not been himself since Miss Buchanan’s death. I confess I was unaware of how poorly he was feeling until I visited him over the weekend. I was so concerned that I rang up Captain Bennett, who is not only my nephew but also Kaz’s oldest and closest friend. He immediately traveled to London, and together we were able to persuade your editor to take a short leave of absence.” Mr. Bennett paused, allowing the weight of his words to settle over them all. “Kaz is coming to stay with me in Edenbridge until he is well enough to resume work.”

  “What will happen to PW?” Peter asked, giving voice to their concerns. “To us?”

  It was Nigel’s turn to speak. “Mr. Bennett has asked me to assume the editorship until Kaz returns. It is his hope that nothing will change, and I have promised him that we shall go on as we did before.”

  “I’m afraid we must ask most of you to shoulder some extra work,” Mr. Bennett added. “Kaz has been trying to take on some extra staff for some time now, but the Ministry of Labor has been singularly unhelpful in that regard.”

  He turned to look at Ruby, his bright blue eyes capturing and holding her gaze effortlessly. “We hope, Miss Sutton, that you will agree to take on the role of acting assistant editor. Kaz was most insistent.”

  If the proverbial pin had dropped in that instant, she certainly would have been able to hear it. “Me? He wants me to do it?”

  “He does.”

  The notion of her having been selected for the role, rather than Peter or Nell, was so startling and unexpected that she simply stared at the men sitting across the table, her brain struggling to attach words to the sentiments running through her head. Bennett nodded, his calm confidence lending her strength, and Mr. Bennett—Uncle Harry—appeared to approve as well.

  But Peter’s face was pale and drawn, and when she tried to meet his gaze, to offer up an apologetic smile, he frowned and looked away. The sneer that animated Nigel’s blandly handsome features was similarly discouraging, and in that moment she was reminded of her conversation with Mary on the train back from Brighton, just days after she’d arrived in England. How men like Nigel and Peter wouldn’t hesitate to fight dirty if she got in their way. How she had to watch out for Nigel most of all.