‘What did you say to him? I mean, did you say anything to him? You never met him, though, did you, so how would you know it was him?’
‘I never met him, no, but I saw him that time, with you, remember, that first evening I was at Chevrons? I knew his face straight away. He does look just a little like a Greek god, damn him, and of course being an artist I rarely forget a face like that.’
‘Not a very nice person behind the face, though. David is so “inside beastly”, it would make you prefer him to be ugly, wouldn’t it? Did you report that you had seen him when you got back?’
‘Of course. But no one was interested. You know the War Office: people pushing files of closely written papers around during peacetime, then war breaks out and they employ even more people to push files of papers around, only just a little faster. Oh, no, I told them all right, and they pretended to be interested.’ He put on an interested officer’s voice. ‘“Thank you very much, old boy. Done the right thing, absolutely. Dressed as a staff officer, you say? Well, well, cheeky chap. Of course we will pass it on to relevant quarters, et cetera, et cetera. So if there’s nothing more to tell us, why don’t you go and jump in the Serpentine, what?”’
Caro laughed. She hadn’t realised how much she had missed Walter’s mocking nature, his lightness of touch.
‘I wish I could feel sorry for Katherine and David, but I can’t,’ she said after a few seconds’ silence. ‘In fact, I feel quite the opposite. I feel nothing but contempt for them, and their stupid ideas. Look what it has brought us!’ She nodded to the chaos around them, the sound of dull crunches, the groans of buildings, or were they people? The sky lit not just by the moon but by the flames of the burning buildings. ‘Just look what a plain little house painter who parts his hair on the wrong side can do, thanks to the stupid people who believed him and his rotten ideas?’
Walter nodded. ‘Yes, I must admit, if I’d had a gun, I might even have been tempted to shoot Astley in the back, but I only had my sketchbook. Besides, if you broke the line at Dunkirk, you never got back into it again, so I’m afraid I put myself before the security of my country, which is not very admirable.’
‘I would have shot him in the back, no matter what,’ Caro asserted. ‘No hesitation, I’m afraid.’
David had been issued with the cyanide pill. It wasn’t difficult to reach the damn thing, and reach for it, he now realised, he would have to. As a matter of fact the only thing he felt at that moment was grateful for it, and to the Miss Abel who had doled it out to him on one of his flying visits to see Max. She kept it in the bottom drawer at SOE in Baker Street.
‘You’re only allowed one,’ he remembered her telling him. ‘Not that anyone ever needs two,’ she had added suddenly, and finally they had both smiled, because, after all, it was quite funny.
She had been a very pretty woman: dark hair and dark eyes, cracking legs. He remembered those with sudden clarity as he flung the pill into his mouth.
‘Fifteen seconds, not more,’ she had told him. ‘Very efficient, but I hope you don’t have to – well, I always say this to our people, I hope you don’t have to discover its efficacy.’
Her voice had been as pretty as her face, nicely modulated, gentle. He remembered it now quite clearly. And she was right. It was taking only a few – only a few. Quick. Shan’t get me. He smiled as he fell.
Sorry, Katherine, so, so sorry, so sorry. How much I love you, darling. Let you know that. I love you, love you, love you. Always. David.
‘Do you want to cuddle up to me?’ Walter asked Caro matter-of-factly, shortly after they had finished fantasising as to what she was prepared to do to David. ‘It’s cold enough tonight, God knows.’
Caro shook her head.
‘No, I’m fine, really. I don’t like cuddling up to people.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s against my religion,’ she replied, very much tongue in cheek. Edwina had told her that was a phrase that Irish girls used, with apparently great effect, whenever young men went too far.
‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ Walter said, sounding vaguely appalled.
‘It’s not something you should talk about, religion. It’s something that is in your heart, in your mind, but not something you should talk about, ever. Not to my mind, anyhow. I’m sorry, but I think it’s wrong. You should keep your opinions of every kind to yourself, and so say all of us, especially now. Signed Miss Perfect.’
‘You’re quite right. No one should talk about their religious beliefs, especially not now. In fact if you can point out to me, please, which religion has taken a stand against the Nazis, I will join it immediately.’
‘Well, that’s not something you should talk about either, so you’ve broken the rules already,’ Caro remarked, and then she sighed. ‘As a matter of fact no one talks about anything much nowadays, if you ask me, except which nightclub they’re going to, which bomb missed them, and where to get something which tastes like food!’
‘I have some chewing gum. Like to try a piece?’
‘I don’t think I will, as a matter of fact.’
While a vague smell of peppermint filled the air Caro felt her spirits plummeting. Somehow Walter was turning out a disappointment, not at all how she might have imagined him, had she given him any thought over the last months, which of course she had made quite sure not to do.
‘Are you going to climb into uniform and join the Blues and Royals, or something?’ she asked, pointedly staring at his long civilian coat and old-fashioned hat.
‘Now you mention the Guards, I heard a funny story about them,’ Walter said suddenly, still chewing on his gum. Perhaps in reverence to the story he suddenly took the gum out of his mouth, and stuck it behind a chimneypot. ‘A friend of mine was taking the parade at Knightsbridge Barracks with their colonel. All the troops were brand-new recruits, and all that, so naturally the colonel expected the usual chaos, but no. “Good God, Captain,” he murmured to my friend. “Never in my life have I seen such brilliant marching from recruits.” My friend replied, straight-faced, “Well, you wouldn’t have, sir, because what you are watching are the first two rows of the chorus from Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years!”’
They both laughed, after which Walter put out a hand and leaned on Caro’s shoulder as, it suddenly seemed to her, he had been doing since she first met him.
‘To continue, since you asked, no, I am not climbing into uniform, as you put it. Neither the army nor the navy want anything to do with me on account of my weak chest, so it seems I am destined to join the Artists’ Rifles. Tomorrow night I shall be going down to the bowels of the earth to paint the people in the Underground.’
‘I don’t know why they all want to go down there.’
‘Quite simple. The above-ground shelters are, to put it plainly, above-ground coffins. They are built not of concrete, but of sand and lime, which means they have the nasty habit of collapsing on anyone who takes shelter in them. That is why the people use the Underground stations.’
‘The smell is already terrible. One of our officers told me she nearly passed out on her first-time duty down there. I’m on tea duty again next week, lucky me.’
Walter didn’t look in the least bit interested by this, but went on after a few seconds, still leaning on Caro’s shoulder, ‘The trouble with all-out war is it means there’s actually too much to paint, but, as they say, someone has to do it, and when it comes down to it, I am not cut out for soldiering. What artist is? So I shall be down the East End or down the Underground, or wherever I am needed, to record this terrible struggle which our nation is undergoing.’ He paused. ‘The trouble with the British in peacetime is that we will insist on enduring in silence when we shouldn’t, but when it comes to a war, precisely because we have the habit of endurance, we are masterly.’
A part of Caro thought that it was cowardly not to join up, and yet another part of her realised that Walter had been chosen to paint the people, to paint the war, and since he would b
e in London he would be putting himself in the line of fire, and since he was brilliant he would be using his talents to their best ability. So, all in all, it really made sense not to send him where he would be less than useful. She stopped feeling let down and started to look at him in a different light – literally too – because the lights of the city fires seemed to be filling the sky. For a short time they were silent, watching, watching, always watching. It seemed to Caro that the whole of London was on fire, and only they were not.
Once the sound of the fire engines, the ambulances, and the people had eventually died down, Walter turned to Caro as if he had suddenly remembered something he had long wanted to ask her.
‘I wonder where Katherine is now. I meant to ask Astley when I saw him at Dunkirk, but – you know how it is – so busy regretting that I was unarmed, I forgot.’
Caro saw at once from the expression on his face that he still minded about Katherine: that it still mattered that she hadn’t noticed him, that she taken nothing from his arguments against the Nazis, that he had had to resign himself to the fact that Katherine’s mind had been turned by her obsessive love for David.
Caro knew she shouldn’t tell him about Katherine’s scarf, and yet she couldn’t help herself.
Of course Walter remembered the scarf, as he remembered every detail of that unimaginably beautiful young woman. He could even recall her voice, still the light voice of a girl, and yet at times suddenly becoming oddly deep as if she smoked too much in secret, or went to bed too late, or stayed up too much, or was prone to nervous attacks.
‘Could the scarf have been put there by someone else, do you think? I mean, is that a possibility? Perhaps she could have given it to a friend, who, seeing your car open, passed it on for some sort of joke?’
Caro shook her head.
‘I hadn’t been long in London. No one else would have known my car, or rather Katherine’s car. No, somehow Katherine must have seen me in her old coat and skirt, the one she had left behind for me at Chevrons, or the one she failed to pack because she perhaps didn’t like it. Whatever the truth, the sight of me in her suit must have reminded her of the fact that she still had the scarf that she wore with it, and knowing her as she used to be, before David did something to her mind, she would have taken it off and tied it to the steering wheel, and then watched me, from somewhere secret, go back to the car and find it. She would have loved that. That would have been the old Katherine. And of course when I did find it, she would have found the whole thing killingly funny. She laughed a lot in the old days, and that was really why she was more beautiful then than later, when you knew her, because she loved to laugh or, as they say now, shriek. “My deah, we shrieked.”’ Caro paused, but neither of them laughed at her customary mimicry. ‘She so loved life in those days, when we were growing up. Life was her – well – her beach ball, really. She always seemed to be running about with it, throwing it above her head. She seemed to have all the promise of a golden summer day, but now who, please tell me who, finds anyone beautiful who has no laughter in them?’
Walter gave her an odd look. ‘I’d forgotten your queer old-fashioned way of expressing yourself,’ he murmured, and the hand on Caro’s shoulder grew a little heavier as he sighed as if her chatter had brought back memories of happier days or, perhaps more realistically, as if it had brought back the particular happy days when Katherine was sitting to him, and Caro would be at the bottom of the ladder talking to him while he was working.
‘But as you say,’ Walter continued, ‘where would Katherine be now? If she had been in London before war broke out, she would certainly not be here now. She might be in Germany, she might be anywhere.’
Caro stared ahead of her. Katherine in Germany? With the enemy? It was a terrible thought. Her beloved sister might even now be standing beside Hitler, or Goering. She might be wearing a swastika on her arm.
Caro put out her arm to steady herself.
Walter bent down, staring at her anxiously.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course. I just haven’t eaten since God was a boy; felt a bit faint suddenly.’
Walter pointed at the now lightening sky.
‘We’ve done our bit for the moment. Come to my flat. I’ll make you a dried egg omelette and a very large gin.’
‘What an irresistible offer,’ Caro said, laughing a little shakily.
‘You’d be surprised how tasty I can make a dried egg omelette.’
She followed him down the stairs from the roof. It was nice to be with Walter. It was like being at Chevrons, only not, and it really did not matter that he still held a torch for Katherine, not a bit, because wherever Katherine was, she certainly wouldn’t be feeling the same about him.
As it happened Katherine was somewhere in France, lying in bed unmoving, woken by the sound of David’s voice calling to her urgently in the darkness.
Growing up in an unspoiled part of the English countryside, Katherine had always accepted as natural that spirits and ghosts existed, that there were two worlds, the practical and the spiritual. She and everyone else at Chevrons frequently saw the spectre of an old gardener in eighteenth-century-style clothes walk past the kitchen window, and watched the ghost of a cat walk through a bedroom wall, or heard sounds of a choir singing where once there had been a family chapel.
This particular night she had woken up as if she had heard a shot, or as if she had fallen from a height of some kind, and as she did so she had quite definitely heard David calling to her. It was not surprising, because he had always been able to do that. He could call to her in his thoughts, and she would know the time and the place exactly. It was something they had taken pride in being able to do ever since they were children growing up on neighbouring estates, recording the time and the thoughts exactly, and when they were older, and fell in love, it was only natural that they should continue.
‘Heart on heart, the two beating as one,’ David would murmur to her, after they had made love the first time. ‘No one will ever understand our relationship – no one, not even us. It’s just a fact when two people have always been as close as we are, twin souls, a matching half making one whole, we will always and ever know what is happening to the other. There will be no need for spoken words.’
So it seemed that David had called to her. She was sure of it. He had called to her that he loved her, that he had been caught, but that he would always wait for her. Her heart seemed to grow leaden with the weight of the knowledge that she would never see him again in this world, and yet when would she be told?
She stared into the darkness, calling back to him in her thoughts, willing him to answer her, but knowing that where there had once been a voice there was now only silence, and the sound of the wind rattling the windows, and a world so empty that she might have been the only person left in it.
Later, when the doorbell downstairs had rung out, and Katherine, now dressed in black, went down to answer it, she hoped for one long despairing minute that she might be wrong, that it might after all be David, and briefly her step grew faster and lighter, and she ran to answer the heavy old oak door. After all, if David was dead, someone would have let her know, and since she had as yet received no message, perhaps, oh please, please, perhaps she had been wrong. She flung the chain aside and pulled forcibly on the old door, peering out into the night, hoping to see David’s handsome face, the blue eyes sparkling with his particular brand of daredevil mischief, hear his infectious laugh.
But it was not David. It was ‘the General’, as she had nicknamed him.
Katherine opened the door wider.
The General smiled and walked in, removing his cap.
Katherine stared after him as she shut the door, and because she had momentarily, and unforgivably, forgotten that she was meant to be a Nazi, for a few moments it did not occur to her that he, of all people, would have news of David.
‘Elvira.’
His boots were making that oddly military sound that tall boots
on male feet always did, bringing back memories of other floors, other riding boots on other feet.
‘You are early tonight, General,’ she smiled, calm-eyed, beautiful, but at the same time glad that the high neck of her dress would be covering the pulse in her neck, hoping that he would not notice if she had lost colour.
‘Yes, yes, I am early, Elvira.’ He looked troubled. ‘It has not been a good day. I fear that two or three of our people might have been uncovered by the Maquis.’
‘Really? Oh, but that is terrible.’
‘Yes, it is terrible. They were brave young Nazis, like yourself, posing as members of the Resistance.’ The General sighed, his patrician features momentarily filled with compassion. ‘Well, perhaps we should thank God that they are dead. No one would want to fall into the hands of the Maquis, Elvira, not if they think you are a traitor.’
‘No, indeed not.’
Katherine turned away to hide her fear. David had been posing as a communist, a member of the Maquis. He had been working for two sides. To the Nazis he was pretending to be a member of the Resistance, and to the Resistance he was a British spy working for them. Only London knew his double identity, and that he was, in fact, working for them. What had gone wrong? Katherine closed her eyes momentarily. Had she heard him calling to her? Maybe spending so much time alone meant that she had gone mad; maybe it was not he who had been caught or uncovered, maybe it was someone else.
‘I have put out our favourite cognac,’ she called back to the General, who was following her up the stairs to the first-floor drawing room. ‘I had a strange feeling that you might be early tonight.’
‘I was quite certainly in no mood to visit Madame’s establishment next door.’
As Katherine started to pour the precious liquid into what now seemed to her to be increasingly familiar glasses, the General continued, ‘It seems that the Resistance became suspicious of two or three of our people, and they came after them just as one of them was contacting Nazi headquarters in Nice by radio.’ He sighed, taking his glass from Katherine. ‘There will be reprisals, of course, but they will be a waste of time. Nothing will stop the Resistance, or the communists, and reprisals will only fuel their determination.’
Goodnight Sweetheart Page 21
