The Triumph

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ Lee agreed.

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he promised her.

  ‘Oh, yes. There’s so much to talk about.’

  Presumably she would now wish to start planning the wedding. Because she assumed that once the Allies landed in Europe the war was all but over? He wished it could be as simple, and as brief, as that.

  ‘You’ll sleep in my room,’ Annaliese told him as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘I am exhausted.’

  ‘Of course. But now that I have got you, my darling, I don’t want to let you go again.’

  *

  They slept in each other’s arms, and made love again when he awoke, just after dawn. He had never felt so rested, so relaxed, so at peace with all the world. He did not want to waste a moment of the day, and as Annaliese showed no inclination to get out of bed, he kissed her, went along to his room to shower and dress — in civilian flannels and sports shirt — and then downstairs for one of Robbins’s enormous breakfasts. Aunt Philippa and Lee were already there, smiling at him.

  ‘Fergus, you darling boy,’ Philippa said. ‘Every time I see you, you seem to have grown.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be army food,’ he assured her, and tucked into the kedgeree and scrambled eggs — made from powder, but Cook could do even that successfully.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Like a top. Well, up to a point.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘I am so happy it is going to be all right, Fergus. I can’t imagine another man...but now, we really must decide what to do about it.’

  He frowned at her. ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, obviously she can’t have it,’ Lee pointed out.

  Fergus looked at Philippa, seeking information.

  ‘You mean she actually told you, just like that?’ Philippa asked. ‘And you didn’t blow your top?’

  ‘Will one of you kindly tell me what the devil you are talking about?’ Fergus requested.

  Lee and Philippa looked at him, then at each other, and then at him again.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Philippa remarked.

  ‘I thought...last night...’ Lee sighed. ‘Then she didn’t tell you she was pregnant?’

  Fergus’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You can’t be absolutely sure,’ Philippa objected. ‘And if she isn’t...’

  ‘She is, and she knows it,’ Lee insisted. Tor God’s sake, she’s had a child already.’

  ‘Will someone please tell me what is going on?’ Fergus asked again. His brain was refusing to accept what it was being told.

  ‘Your mother has this bee in her bonnet,’ Philippa explained. ‘Because Liese is two months late. It’s not conclusive.’

  ‘I am certain of it,’ Lee said.

  ‘How can she be?’ Fergus asked. ‘It is damn near a year since I was last at Broad Acres. And incidentally, last night is the first time we have ever slept together.’

  ‘She has her car,’ Lee said miserably. ‘I gave it to her. She was so fed up, stuck out here in the country...’

  ‘She used to be gone for hours,’ Philippa remarked.

  ‘I wanted to write,’ Lee said. ‘But I didn’t know what to say. And as Philippa said, I could have been wrong. I was waiting for one more month, then I was going to tackle her. But then you appeared, and went to her room — you looked so happy when you came down. I thought she must have told you, and you’d accepted it. The situation, I mean. I suppose...’ she gazed at her son. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Find out the truth,’ he said, and left the table.

  ‘Fergus,’ Lee called. ‘Don’t hurt her. Please.’

  He climbed the stairs. His brain was spinning, but he didn’t actually want any coherent thought to develop right at the moment. He was afraid of what it would be.

  He opened the bedroom door. She was sitting up, and sipping the orange juice one of the maids had brought her. Last night he had supposed he had fallen in love with her.

  What did he suppose now? But that also was too dangerous to put into thoughts.

  ‘All fed?’ she asked. ‘I thought we could take a ride this morning. It is such a gorgeous day. Doesn’t look cold at all.’

  Fergus closed the door behind himself, and locked it. ‘Can you risk riding?’ he asked.

  ‘Risk it?’

  ‘In your condition.’

  Annaliese’s face seemed to tighten. ‘What condition?’ she asked.

  ‘Mom seems to think you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant? How can I be pregnant?’

  ‘That’s what I asked her. But you must have missed a couple of periods.’

  ‘A girl often misses periods. I’m run down. Through worrying about you.’

  ‘Liese,’ he said, speaking as gently as he could, trying desperately to suppress the raging anger which was threatening to take control of his brain. ‘Tell me the truth.’

  She gazed at him. ‘You come back here,’ she said, ‘taking me by surprise. You throw me across a bed and virtually rape me. And then...’

  ‘Liese,’ he said again, his voice hardening. ‘The truth.’

  Annaliese drew up her knees. ‘I was so happy,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I thought...’

  ‘That having got me into bed with you, it wouldn’t matter. That if the baby was a couple of months premature no one would wonder why. Is that it?’

  She gazed at him from beneath arched eyebrows. ‘I’ll have an abortion,’ she said. ‘I was going to, anyway, if you hadn’t come back. I was just waiting to make sure.’

  ‘You consider that murder and adultery go hand in hand, is that it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. You come here, saying horrible things to me...’

  ‘Liese,’ he said. ‘If you don’t pull yourself together and start telling me the truth, I am going to do horrible things to you. If you have an abortion you will be murdering the child in your womb. Don’t you realize that?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. I don’t want the beastly thing.’

  ‘And you don’t feel that perhaps the father should have a say in it?’

  ‘Him? I don’t suppose he even knows how babies are made.’

  ‘Who?’

  Annaliese’s face closed again. ‘You’re trying to trap me.’

  ‘You have trapped yourself, Liese. I want the name of the man.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she flared. ‘You knew I wasn’t a virgin when you proposed to me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were also a whore,’ he snapped. Perhaps that wasn’t true, he thought. Perhaps he had known that all the time; Dad certainly had. But he had refused to believe it.

  ‘You...’ she swung her hand, but he caught the wrist, and then twisted it as the anger began to take control. She gave a little yelp and rolled on her face. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she gasped.

  Fergus swung his leg over her and sat on her thighs, still holding her wrist. He looked down on that beautiful back, those inviting buttocks, that seething pale yellow hair. She was absolutely the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And equally the most filthily amoral.

  ‘Tell me his name, or I’ll break your arm,’ he said.

  ‘So that you can go and murder him?’

  ‘So that I can decide what to do with you.’

  ‘You...’ she attempted to heave him off, and he bent her arm a little more. ‘Ow!’ she screamed. ‘You’re hurting me!,

  ‘Fergus!’ Lee called from outside the door. ‘Fergus, let me in.’

  ‘Not just now, Mom,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’ Another twist.

  Annaliese screamed, and began to cry.

  ‘Tell me,’ Fergus said, beginning to despair. He certainly wasn’t going to break her arm. And did he really want to know? But he had to know.

  ‘Bert,’ Annaliese sobbed, soaking her pillow.

  ‘Bert?’

  ‘Bert Manly-Smith. That huge lout.’

  Fergus released her arm, but remained sitting o
n her. His mind seemed to have gone blank. ‘When he came back for his grandfather’s funeral,’ he muttered.

  ‘That’s when he gave me this,’ Annaliese sobbed, pulling her arm up to hug it against herself.

  ‘But he’d screwed you before?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, her tears beginning to dry as she prepared to defy him. ‘He’s been screwing me every time he came home. He’s been screwing me for years!’

  Fergus got off her, and she rolled on her back. ‘Does it matter, Fergus?’ she asked. ‘I’ve screwed lots of men. And now I’ve screwed you. And I like screwing you. Does it matter?’ She held up her arms. ‘Come down on top of me, and I’ll give you the best one you’ve ever had.’

  ‘If I was to touch you, I would strangle you,’ he said.

  She sat up again. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  He hesitated. His brain seemed to have divided into two completely separate entities. One half kept telling him that this was the most beautiful woman in the world, for him, that she was the woman he had been going to marry, and that he had just spent a magnificent night with her: therefore that he must hate any man who attempted to get between them, and even more, hate her for allowing it to happen.

  But the other half kept suggesting: Aren’t you really relieved? So you had a great screw, but do you really want to be married to Liese von Reger? Did you ever? You never loved her. You fell in love with a woman who just drifted through your life and who you will never see again. So what are you so angry about? Didn’t you cheat first, with Monique Deschards? Probably not, if Liese was to be believed. But he had believed he had done it first, and he had still done it.

  Well, then, Bert Manly-Smith! Again the aggressive part of his brain was shouting, that bloody little swine, always polite, always trying to do his best while he was fucking the pants off his CO’s fiancée. But the sensible part of him was recognizing that if Annaliese offered herself, there was hardly a man in the world could refuse her, and more than that, to go back to the encampment now and have a set-to with Bert could only result in a catastrophe for the regiment, just as they were about to undertake the biggest action in their history. An action which was going to end the war and get Dad back, safe and sound. To do anything to jeopardize that would be far more criminal than anything either Bert or Annaliese might have done.

  Besides, he could not prevent a ghastly little thought from sneaking into his mind. The regiment was about to go into the fiercest action in its history. Casualties would probably be very high. There was no saying that both he and Bert Manly-Smith would survive — or either of them.

  Time enough to worry about what happened next when they were both back home. And if Bert did come home, well...no doubt he and Annaliese deserved each other.

  Annaliese was gazing at him, trying to interpret the various expressions which flitted so rapidly across his face. ‘Fergus?’ she asked.

  Fergus went to the door, unlocked it, allowed Lee into the room. She looked from one to the other. ‘Fergus?’

  ‘It seems you were right, Mom,’ Fergus said. ‘And Annaliese is pregnant.’ Carefully he closed and locked the door again. ‘The father is Bert Manly-Smith.’

  ‘Bert? That boy?’ Lee looked dumbfounded. ‘He was always so polite.’

  ‘One of the ways to a woman’s heart,’ Fergus agreed.

  ‘But...what are you going to do?’

  ‘She wants to have an abortion,’ Fergus said. ‘I am against that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lee said. ‘Of course, it isn’t legal, but...’

  ‘I am not interested in the legality of it, Mom. Annaliese is going to have that baby.’

  ‘You mean you’ll take him as your own, like Ian?’ Annaliese asked, eyes shining.

  ‘No, I will not take him as my own,’ Fergus told her. ‘His father is Bert Manly-Smith. But I am prepared to adopt little Ian. In fact, I insist upon doing so.’

  ‘You mean we are still going to be married?’

  ‘No,’ Fergus said. ‘You are going to marry Bert Manly-Smith, as soon as the war is over. Until then, you are going to live here, and behave yourself. Mom, I want that car taken away, and Annaliese is only to go out accompanied by either you or Aunt Philippa. She will have her baby, and she will sit tight until we come home from the war, at which time she and Bert will be married. And at that time we will arrange to look after Ian.’

  ‘You...’ Annaliese had gone quite pale beneath her suntan. ‘You think you can just tell me how to live my life?’ she demanded. ‘Decide who I am going to marry? Who is going to have the care of my children?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fergus said. ‘Because you don’t have any choice. You attempt to leave Broad Acres, and I am going to have you locked up as an enemy alien. And you try any funny business, and you go out on your ear without a penny when they release you from an internment camp. I don’t think even Dad will argue about that. You should try realizing that I am really being very good to you; many men would throw you out now. But you are my brother’s widow, and the mother of my nephew. So you can continue to live here, in total luxury, until Bert comes home. But you had better goddamned well behave yourself.’

  Annaliese stared at him, then looked at Lee. ‘You are going to allow this to happen?’

  ‘I entirely agree with Fergus,’ Lee said.

  ‘Well, you would,’ Annaliese grumbled. ‘He’s your son. I’m just a helpless orphan.’

  ‘Whom we took in,’ Lee said severely. ‘And made one of the family. I think you have behaved quite disgustingly. I don’t see how Fergus could possibly be more generous.’

  ‘Oh...I hate you. I hate you both. I hate you all!’ she screamed, and threw herself across the bed on her face, to give the appearance of weeping.

  Fergus jerked his head, and his mother accompanied him outside. ‘I really am most sorry to stick you with this, Mom. But there is nothing else I can do.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. It’ll give me something to do. But Fergus...what about Bert Manly-Smith?’

  ‘What about Bert Manly-Smith?’

  ‘Well...aren’t you...well...’ her shoulders rose and fell.

  ‘Aren’t I going to confront him, and punch him on the nose? Or challenge him to a duel? This is 1944, Mom. Perhaps fortunately.’

  ‘But you’re going to have to tell him, something. Say something to him.’

  Fergus shook his head. ‘I don’t propose to say anything to him, at this moment. And I don’t want anyone else to say anything either. I want you to monitor Annaliese’s mail, and make sure she doesn’t write him.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Mom, Bert and I have to lead our men into action. The Regimental Sergeant-Major has at least as big a role to play as the Colonel in the life of the regiment. I expect him to be at my shoulder all the time. I don’t really want him at my shoulder with all this on his mind.’

  ‘Oh, my God! You don’t think he’d kill you?’

  ‘I’d prefer not to think that. But I know he wouldn’t be very efficient. And neither would the regiment. Mom, we’re in something that is bigger than Annaliese’s squalid little lusts. You must understand that. And so must she.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lee said. ‘Of course you’re right. You are beginning to remind me of your father. You go and win your war, and I’ll look after the home front. But Fergus...bring Murdoch home with you, please. I have a notion we are going to need him.’

  *

  Fergus returned to the encampment, a day early, and fortunately so, for the very next day they were visited by General Montgomery, who was apparently touring his entire command.

  ‘As of this moment,’ he told the assembled officers. ‘All leave is cancelled, and all mail as well. Thus I am at last in a position to let you know what we are going to do.

  ‘Now, as you know, while General Eisenhower is in supreme command of this operation, code-named Overlord, by the way, I have been placed in command of the actual assault. I must tell you firstly that the plans for this assault were drawn u
p before I was given my assignment, and that when I studied them I realized they were inadequate. I therefore insisted that the area of assault be increased, and naturally that the forces under my command also be increased. This will make our success the more certain. However, it has also meant a certain delay. The initial target date, a full moon and a high tide, was intended to be next month, May. This cannot now be achieved. But we will be ready on the appropriate dates at the beginning of June.

  ‘My intention is to assault, simultaneously, beaches on the Normandy coast immediately north of the Carentan estuary and between that area and the River Orne. The object is to secure a lodgement, from which we will be able both to seize the vital Caen road centre on the left, and swing back to occupy Cherbourg on our right, with the use of its port and its airfield.

  ‘Under my command will be two armies, our Second, commanded by Lieutenant-General Dempsey, in which this brigade will serve, as part of the Seventh Armoured Division, and the first American Army, under General Bradley. We have two additional armies in reserve, the First Canadian, under General Crerar, and the Third American, under General Patton.

  ‘The assault itself will be an infantryman’s affair. It will be their task to make the initial lodgement, destroy such of the enemy as have survived our preliminary bombardment, and create a bridgehead. With them will go the sappers to clear the minefields. Before the infantry assault, we shall have dropped two airborne divisions behind the enemy beach positions, and these will have caused as much disruption as possible, and will form interior beachheads, as it were, with which it will be our task to link up as quickly as possible.

  ‘The armour will form the second wave. We have got to have reasonably unobstructed beaches to put your vehicles ashore, and we have got to have inland targets for you to move against; we don’t want your tanks to become bogged down on the sand. However, landing the armour will take time, for obvious reasons. I am pleased to tell you that this brigade will be the first ashore, in advance of the rest of the Seventh Armoured Division. If all goes well, you will land on the morning of D-Day. I anticipate that the entire division will be ashore not later than two days after that.