by Peter Watson
I was relieved and relaxed into a smile. “That’s wonderful news, Al. Viv must be delighted.” Vivien was Alistair’s long-term girlfriend, who had been agitating to get married for as long as I could remember.
He nodded. “She’s pregnant, of course.”
I made a face. “By accident or design?”
He flashed his eyes at me.
“I daren’t ask. But it means we are getting married soon—that’s why I want to know.” He looked at me long and hard.
“I’m sorry, Al,” I smiled, shaking my head. “Even if it means not being invited to the great day…”
He held up the envelope with the codes in it. “Nothing in here? You must know what some of these messages mean?”
“Some,” I replied, nodding, “but by no means all. You’ll just have to pick a day and hope for the best.”
Alistair drank some more whisky and took the codes out of the envelope. He scrutinized them.
“Fougère manque pré. What does that mean?”
“Fern misses meadow.”
“Conducteur est cramoisi?”
“Driver is crimson.”
He shook his head. “This one’s in English: ‘Farm, Farewell, Fantasy.’ Do you know what any of these mean?”
“I know what the last one means, but not the others. They may not mean anything.”
He finished his whisky. “You’re invited to the wedding anyway—I’ll give you a date very soon. But…but, if you do learn something, and you are in a position to tell me…to help Viv really—it’s her day after all…”
“I shall look forward to it,” I said. “Whenever it is. But I’m not going to be able to help you, Al, you know that. Do you know anything about military affairs?”
“Not really. Not other than what I read in the papers.”
“Did you know that attacking forces, on average, lose three times the number of men that defending forces lose? If the Germans do know where the invasion is going to take place, I don’t think we have a chance. So I hope for our sakes that it’s not the Pas de Calais.”
I stood up. “Say hello to Viv for me, and tell her congratulations. Any idea what you want as a wedding present?”
“Of course.” He stood up too, smiling. “The date of the invasion.”
He came round his desk, and held out his hand. “Good to have you back. Sorry about what I did just now. It was a bit underhand of me. It won’t happen again, I promise. See you tomorrow. How’s your love life, by the way?”
“Looking up, as it happens.”
“Good! Great. What’s her name? Bring her to the wedding.”
“Madeleine. I will…unless—”
“Unless what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
I opened the door to his office and hurried out. As I descended the steps of B.H., I told myself glumly to start preparing for an unpleasant change, a change as potentially big in my life as the wedding would be for Alistair. Bigger even. Madeleine had swept into my affections when I wasn’t expecting it, and bowled me over. But by the time of Alistair’s wedding, I might have seen her for the last time.
—
WHEN YOU HAVE LIVED YOUR LIFE on your own, as I had until the point when Madeleine moved in with me, and if you don’t count a West Highland terrier as a person—which Zola would certainly have had views about—you get used to having things your own way. Apart from the needs of your job, you are a free agent—you get up when you want, go to bed when you want, do the washing up when you want, shave when you want, cook what and when you want, tidy up when you want, empty the ashtrays when you want…and all the rest.
When I got home from Broadcasting House that day, Madeleine was waiting for me. She had been to the hairdresser and her hair smelled differently. She took me straight to bed and Zola went without his walk, which was normally my first task on arriving home. He had to wait for nearly two hours and he was not pleased.
Like most of the trainees who had been through Ardlossan, Madeleine was given political instruction in the mornings after she had returned to London, but had the afternoons free. In SC2 we knew that the agents would be sent abroad soon enough, and so their afternoons were deliberately left for them to enjoy the time they had left as best they could. Madeleine, as I was to discover, as well as going to the hairdresser, had taken my flat under her wing.
As we lay on our backs on the bed early that evening, with Zola uttering the occasional whimper, because his walk had been overlooked, I raised myself on one elbow and reached for my cigarettes.
“What’s happened to the table that used to be here?” I said. In our rush I hadn’t noticed it had gone.
“I had a tidy up,” said Madeleine, rolling over and kissing the back of my shoulder. “The bedside tables go better by the sofa in the drawing room, with lamps on them. Go and have a look.”
I couldn’t tell her that was something else—besides her hair—that she shared with Celestine, who had also been manically tidy. What I did say was, “I’m too exhausted to move. At least for now. Where are my cigarettes?”
“Over there, on the desk.”
“That’s no good, it’s too far away. After a couple of hours’ sex with you, I need reinforcements to hand. A cigarette after sex is one of life’s great luxuries. You should know that.”
“I’ve just moved the furniture around a bit, that’s all. You’ll see—you’ll like it. I moved the table in the kitchen from the middle and placed it against the wall, I’ve moved the wireless to the side of the fireplace, so it’s easier to keep warm while you’re listening, and I’ve put the standard lamp by the sofa, so it’s easier to see to read at night.”
She let the last letter of that last word hang in the air.
“And you’ve moved the bedside tables.”
“Yes, the drawing room was a little lacking in furniture. We can buy two new tables at the weekend.”
“Can we? And do you have any more plans for my flat? Is the bed as you like it?”
She chuckled. “The bed’s fine. Though I wonder what the people in the flat underneath make of all the noise.”
I turned over and kissed her breast. “You make most of the noise, so you’d better go down and apologise—”
“I do not! Take that back, or I’ll never do…you know…again.”
I sighed, got out of bed, retrieved my cigarettes from the desk, and lay back down again. I lit two cigarettes and passed one to her.
Zola whimpered again.
“I resumed one of my formal duties today, taking the night codes to the BBC.”
“Oh yes? And…?”
“I can’t tell you much, but the invasion isn’t far off. As a matter of fact, one of the codes tonight is about you.”
“It was? It is?” She hoisted herself up on one elbow and looked at me. One of her breasts rested on my arm. “What did it say?”
“It told a certain circuit you are coming soon and asked them to recommend a landing site.”
“Where am I going, and when?”
“I can’t tell you either of those things yet. You know I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”
She was silent for a moment and straightened the bedclothes. “I can understand why you can’t tell me where I’m going. I realize that might have some bearing on where the invasion might be. It’s important that’s kept secret. And I know the timing may be important too. But…but, Matt, aren’t you being just a little bit inhuman? Here we are, making love, having sex…blotting out the rest of the world, the horrible world we are forced to live in. Don’t you think…You now know how long we’ve got, how many days or weeks it is until…until it comes to an end, at least for a while. Don’t you think I deserve to know that too?”
She reached out and tugged at my chin so that we were looking directly into each other’s eyes. Her hair fell onto her shoulders. “Can you…Could you make love to me knowing how long we’ve got, when I don’t? Could you make love to me knowing it’s the last time, when I don’t?”
She gripped my thigh with her fingers, digging them deep into my flesh. Then she slackened her grip and lay back on the bed, blowing cigarette smoke towards the ceiling.
“Do I believe you, Colonel?”
“You have to.”
She turned to look at me. “This is the first time I have ever doubted anything you have said.”
She turned her back to me and whispered, over her shoulder, “It’s a horrible feeling.”
—
LATER THAT EVENING WE TOOK ZOLA for his long-delayed walk. The north side of Regent’s Park was only about six hundred yards away from the flat, but it had been closed for various military purposes, so we drifted south to the Marylebone road, then east, until we came to Harley Street and Devonshire Place.
Madeleine had on a navy-blue mac, one that made her look like an off-duty nurse. She had her arm in mine and I held on to Zola’s leash. We stopped every so often so that he could explore lamp posts and trees and parked bicycles. We made slow progress, but it didn’t matter.
It was a simple thing, Madeleine putting her arm in mine, but it was like having an electrical jolt in your side—or, better still, it was like having a fish on the end of a rod, that quivering, restless feeling of life itself. But, really, it felt better than words can say.
Traffic swept past us—omnibuses, army lorries, ambulances, taxis, the occasional out-of-date horse-drawn cart.
“I suppose, soon, those carts will disappear completely.” Madeleine pointed at a sad, rather decrepit horse pulling a rag-and-bone cart, the driver sitting on the edge of the contraption with the reins slack in one hand, and a long, light whip in the other. “What else will disappear, once this war is over, do you think?”
She looked up at me and squeezed my arm. Another jolt.
“Newspapers,” I said. “Radio will replace them, and maybe TV as well.”
“TV?”
“Television. Don’t you know what that is?”
She shook her head, so I explained and then went on. “Private medicine will go, too.”
“It will? How do you mean?”
“After the war people won’t stand for the divisions that existed before 1939.”
“Oh yes? Why? Why not?”
I waited until we could cross the road at Devonshire Place. I had never seen so many taxis.
“There’ll be big changes, once the fighting is over—you’ll see. Everyone, from all walks of life, has given his or her all in this war. We can’t go back to the way it was beforehand. People will want equal access to doctors and hospitals, equal access to schools, equal access to everything. And they’ll deserve it.”
She squeezed my arm again. “A politician as well as a demon lover—I’m impressed.”
I stopped, turned towards her, and kissed the top of her head, savoured her smell. “You don’t have to be a politician to see what’s going on around you. Wars do that, shake things up—kill off bad old ideas and bring in new ones.”
“What will happen to SC2 after the war?”
“We’ll be disbanded, I suppose,” I said. “MI6 don’t like us: we’re competition. They’ll want us out of the way once peace returns.”
“And people will never know we existed? Is that what’s going to happen?”
“It’s possible,” I said, nodding. “If you have children, after the war is over, you can never tell them what you did.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. We had turned off Marylebone Street into Harley Street, where the shadows were growing longer. Doctors here still wore their traditional uniform of striped trousers, black jackets, and waistcoats, and some had bowler hats. Taxis were setting them down and picking them up.
“Now,” I said, breathing out and clearing my throat. “It’s your birthday next week—”
“How did you know that?” she cried, turning to me.
“I saw your file, remember? At The Farm.”
“Yes, it’s true. I can’t help it.”
“I’ve got you a gift, but it has to be secret.”
“Oh yes? I love secrets—when I know them.”
“Yes. I’ve bought some petrol on the black market. I thought I could bring the Lagonda out of mothballs and take you to see your mother.”
She squeezed my arm. “That’s very sweet, Matt. But there’s a problem.”
“There is?”
“Yes. Knowing my birthday was coming up, I wrote to my mother, and she wrote back. She sent the letter to my digs and I only got it yesterday, when the girl who would have been my flatmate if I’d stayed in Wembley brought the letter into the political course.”
I frowned. “And that’s a problem because…?”
“My mother lives in Blakeney, on the Norfolk coast—and she told me in her last letter that, from the Wash to the Bristol Channel—all around the southern coasts of England—only authorised personnel, and registered locals, are allowed within ten miles of the sea. It’s a precaution so that any German spies stand out more clearly. And that means we can’t visit her. She could come up to London, but we wouldn’t need the Lagonda for that.”
I felt angry with myself. “Yes, of course. I should have spotted that.” I thought for a moment. “Or…we could meet your mother somewhere just outside the exclusion zone?”
She shook her head. “Would that work? It would be expensive, don’t you think? Would local taxis have petrol for that—for something so trivial and not war-related? Rationing is tight.”
I was silent, thinking.
“I know what would be a perfect birthday present.” She squeezed my arm.
“What?”
“Why don’t we visit your mother? She’s nowhere near the coast, is she?”
“No, she’s in Malvern. We could go there. Don’t you want to see your own mother before you go abroad?”
“Yes, yes, I do, of course. But I think it will be easier if she takes a train and comes up to London.”
“Are you sure? I thought…I thought my idea would be perfect for you, but I admit I had forgotten about the coastal exclusion zone.”
She squeezed my arm again. “This way, we’ll have the best of both worlds, and see both mothers.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry what I said earlier, about doubting you. I shouldn’t have said it—I shouldn’t even have thought it.”
I took my turn in squeezing her arm. “You have no cause to doubt me—I promise.”
We looked across the street, to where a young woman was wheeling a pram. A young boy was riding a three-wheeled bicycle alongside her. As we watched, he almost rode off the kerb into the road, and his mother pulled him back and slapped him across the neck, shouting, “Brian! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times—be-have!”
Madeleine winced and breathed, “If we…If you and I carry on the way we just did, in bed I mean, and I get pregnant…what then? Would you like children, Matt?”
I gave a throaty chuckle, but didn’t answer her directly. “If you and I carry on the way we just did, as you put it, for much longer, it will be a miracle if you don’t get pregnant in that time. Which would be good in a way, because we wouldn’t send you out into the field if you were pregnant. But…and don’t take this the wrong way…If it should emerge, when you’re in France, that you are pregnant, we can always bring you home. In fact, we’d insist on it.” I looked down at her. “You know the statistics as well as I do, Madeleine. The chances are evens that you won’t last—”
“Don’t keep saying that!” Madeleine dug her nails into my arm. “Of course I know the bloody sta-tis-tics! You don’t forget your chances of dying.”
We walked on for a few steps. Zola was straining at his lead. And
he was panting, getting thirsty. At Park Crescent, we turned for home and crossed over the main road.
Madeleine squeezed my arm once more. “Forget the statistics, Matt. I will either survive or I won’t. Answer my question—would you like children, a son maybe?”
“In theory, I’d like children,” I said at length. Nodding across the road towards the young mother with the pram, I added, “I’m not sure I want that sort of children.”
“You’re not allowed to choose your children,” she replied. “Whoever arrives, arrives.”
“What about you?” I said.
“How do you know I haven’t got some already?” she answered. “I’m old enough.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But if you had, you would surely have mentioned him or her—or them—by now.”
She paused. Then, “I’d like your children,” she said softly. “I can’t say that about every man I meet.”
For much of my adult life, there’d been a war on. Before that, I’d been in the army preparing for a war that might happen. Children had not loomed large in my concerns. But now…could I see Madeleine as a mother, myself as a father?
“I think I could get used to the idea of a daughter, more easily than a son.”
She chuckled. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m not sure. I have a sister. I think she’s nicer than me. More responsible, she thinks of others more, remembers birthdays and things like that.”
“Maybe I’ll meet her one day, if I make it through.”
“Yes, I’d like that. You’d get on with Alice, I think.”
It hit me then. It had been hovering about for a while but it hit me that evening. That if Madeleine didn’t make it through, my own life now was going to be…almost as badly damaged as hers would be. I would survive physically, yes, but…No, no point in going down that road until…unless it arrived.
We were passing Marylebone Station now, with its ornate glass and wrought-iron forecourt. Ahead of us the pavement was blocked. There were wooden barriers, painted red and white, two policemen, with dogs, a heap of rubble and a group of men looking into a crater in the ground. One of the policemen was moving towards us but I recognized the signs and knew what was happening, what had happened.
