The Bench

by Nigel Jones

  Jacques looked up at his father, the man whose nationality had shaped his own life. “I know.”

  “Then you must go, mon fils. Find a life that will make you happy.”

  “What about you, Papa?”

  “Ha! How do you think I got on before you were born and during the War?”

  “Okay, okay, point taken. I will think about it, Papa.”

  “Pass me that pot. You are a terrible fisherman anyway.” The moustache rose to tickle his ears as he grinned.

  Two more visits to Farringford without being able to take Honeysuckle in his arms and the decision was made.

  When he was demobbed, as part of his final debrief he was offered a job working for the Ministry of Defence in MI6, which had amalgamated with the Special Operations Executive. He had declined, but now it seemed the perfect escape from the hollow life he found himself living. The life that was slowly drowning his spirit

  He telephoned his old handler, Vera Atkins, and left for London seven days later.

  Before he left there was one thing that he had to do, something he found as hard as anything he had ever done.

  He telephoned Honeysuckle and asked her to meet him where, as children, they had watched the dogfight between the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt.

  When he arrived she was already there. Standing with her dark curls blowing in the wind that whistled up from Alum Bay below. She wore a tweed skirt and tight-fitting sweater that hugged her figure. It wasn’t cold, yet exposed on the Warren she looked vulnerable, as if she’d rushed out without picking up her coat or a hat, anxious to get there as quickly as she could.

  When he’d called she was in her office thinking about him. When he spoke, she knew instantly why he wanted to talk to her. Instinctively she knew that he was leaving, he didn’t have to say anything. She almost ran from the office to her car, and drove as fast as she could the short distance to the Warren.

  Jacques stopped about five yards away and watched her, as always his heart accelerated. She hadn’t heard him approach, tears were rolling down her cheeks when she turned and saw him.

  “How long have you been watching me?” she half-whispered.

  “All your life,” he replied. He raised his arms and she stepped forward into his embrace without speaking. There she cried until there were no more tears.

  Eventually she managed to say, “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “London.”

  Then the question she needed to ask. “Will you ever come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her tears started again. She had pushed him away; she had always known that she would.

  “That was another shitty day, my dear Buster. Some might say bitter sweet. I finally knew that nothing had changed between us, yet there I was about to change it all. It happened right here, exactly where this bench is.”

  Buster looked up. The man was obviously going mad. After remembering, he always seemed to want to engage him in conversation instead of getting out the sandwiches.

  NINETEEN

  “Come on, fella, no lunch unless you move your backside. We won’t stay long but we haven’t been out for days, it never stops raining. Come on.”

  The mention of lunch made Buster stir his stumps. He didn’t much like wet and windy anymore, but the man obviously missed the bench so he ambled over towards the door.

  The man put his arms into the old jacket and donned his favourite hat. It was a hat that a surfer would wear. Lissette had given it to him some ten years previously as a joke, after watching him hanker after being sixteen again whilst he was watching the kids surf at Brook Chine. He seriously considered buying a windsurfer before Sophie and Honeysuckle pointed out the possible shortcomings in his ability to handle it. So Lissette did the next best thing. She bought him a beany knowing he would love it because a seventy-year-old should not be wearing a beany, and Jacques did not like being conventional.

  Lissette was Honeysuckle’s daughter, attractive but not as striking as her mother. She had been born in 1955 and conceived while Jacques and Sophie were fighting their way out of Dien Bien Phu.

  With Lissette had come a puppy. Two more followed and dogs became a much-loved fixture at Farringford. Part of the experience of staying there was to be greeted by at least one wagging dog when you arrived.

  As he pulled the beany over his unfashionably long thick grey hair, he smiled as he thought of Honeysuckle and Lissette surrounded by their dogs.

  Outside the wind was raw but it wasn’t raining and he’d missed the walk to the bench, not to mention his time sitting on it.

  “Come on. Keep up, Buster.”

  He had one eye on the television attached to the wall behind the bar. The other was watching a small child approach each American G.I. in turn, as they walked with their chosen lady of the night. Some of them would buy a single red rose from the angelic child, whilst others, more mean spirited, came very close to clipping her behind the ear for bothering them.

  Jacques had watched the child for several months and concluded that had she been allowed to keep any of the profits she would be the richest child in Saigon. In reality, each time her basket was empty she was relieved of all the money by a thoroughly distasteful character who would almost certainly have the same child working as a prostitute the second she began to grow breasts.

  Saigon had changed since he had left at the end of 1954. Now the American Dollar was king, and with it had come an American culture that the Vietnamese living in Saigon had embraced because it had brought them wealth.

  The little girl stepped onto the curb and offered one of her roses to a heavily muscled Marine sitting at a stool next to him in the street bar. He was not a mean-spirited man, Jacques could see it in his eyes, and so he bought two and handed them to the girls that had been serving their beer from behind the bar.

  “You a journalist, buddy?” The sergeant turned and smiled at Jacques.

  “No, I’m with the British Embassy. Boring stuff I’m afraid. I leave the writing to the clever ones.” Jacques offered his hand. “Jack, how do you do?”

  “The guys call me Mac.” Mac took his hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”

  “ Have you been here long, Mac?”

  “Just finishing my extended tour, man. I’m going back to The Big Apple in a month’s time. Can’t come soon enough.”

  “I’ll bet. Are you a Yankees or a Mets fan?” asked Jacques.

  “Yankees, of course! You know about baseball? Never met a Brit who knew anything about it.”

  “I don’t know much, but I spent some time at the U.N. in Manhattan and went to a few games. It’s great, but I’ve never played, it‘s hardly played in Britain.” He smiled at the Goliath sitting next to him. “Who are you with, Mac?”

  “1st Force Reconnaissance Company. I’ve been here eighteen months now.”

  Jacques knew why Mac was drinking quietly in a bar on his own. “You’ll have seen some bad stuff then.”

  “Yeah.” He instantly changed the topic of conversation. “You want another Tiger, man?“

  “Sure, but it’s my round.” Jacques called in fluent Vietnamese for two more beers. They eventually appeared, lukewarm, in front of them.

  “Damn! You can’t get a cold beer in this place. Cheers anyway, Jack.”

  Jacques had met a number of men like Mac since he’d been in Saigon. The majority were decent human beings who had aged ten years within six months of arriving, just as he had once done in France. A large number of them were even younger than he had been. He’d seen boys who did not even shave blown to pieces and others killed whilst half-crazed on drugs, walking oblivious to any danger into a waiting bullet. This war was everything he had warned Sophie it would be all those years ago when they had left Saigon the first time. In fact it was far worse.

  As he had expected, he had been sent to Washington a month after he’d returned to London, and over the course of the next year he worked with the A
mericans in the Pentagon imparting his knowledge and opinions about all things Vietminh. He made a number of friends in high places. Unfortunately for him, those connections had resulted in a request for his services just as the bloody war was about to kick off, and now he was one of the very few British personnel who were actively involved in the Vietnam War, albeit in an unofficial/official capacity. He found himself reflecting, ‘all because I could speak French fluently at the age of seventeen.’

  Jacques felt a tap on his shoulder and he swung round to have the lovely Sophie position herself between his legs and plant a hello kiss on his lips.

  “Well it has been real nice talking to you, Jack. Looks like you got a prettier friend now. I can’t watch, it reminds me too much of home.”

  Jack laughed and introduced him to Sophie. Though now in her early forties, Sophie’s appearance and smile was too much for the young Marine sergeant. Charmingly, he made his excuses and left them alone.

  “Nice guy,” said Sophie.

  “Yes. He’s entering the darkest hour. One month of a nineteen month tour to go. You get twitchy.”

  “You don’t seem to.”

  “I will when I’ve got a month to go, believe me.”

  Jacques actually did very little front line work these days. His role was more in the training of intelligence gathering, but just occasionally he would still step out with the boys. He’d never worked with the 1st Reconnaissance or he would probably already have known Mac.

  “Are we going to see Saphine tonight?” asked Sophie.

  “Why not, we haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks have we? Come on, we’ll get a bite to eat at the club too.”

  Saphine came over as soon as they walked into the club and threw her arms around them. She was still staggeringly beautiful and was in love with a cavalry captain who had promised to take her back to Nevada the second Uncle Sam would let him.

  It was not a hollow promise, David Spurnyak the 3rd was besotted with Saphine and had been from the day he walked into the club and laid eyes on her. From that day, he had followed her around like a puppy.

  Saphine had met him six months previously and liked him a great deal. She did not love him anyway near as much as she had loved Jacques, but Jacques had never asked her to marry him and she knew that he never would. David Spurnyak the 3rd had asked her to marry him and he was rich, he was very rich or at least his family was. They owned a farm in Nevada, which, Saphine had worked out, was three times the size of Saigon. They also owned vast tracts of land in the desert near Las Vegas. Saphine knew all about Las Vegas and its potential. Yes, David Spurnyak the 3rd was a good catch, and though she was twelve years older than him she looked younger. So she was younger.

  There was something else, another reason why she could not have Jacques. Sophie had Jacques, and Sophie was the best friend she had ever had so she was happy for her.

  Jacques and Sophie made a handsome couple. They were right for each other. There had never been any talk of marriage and Sophie suspected there never would be, but she did not care, she had Jacques. At least she had 95% of him and that was enough, and when they were not together she ached for that 95%.

  It hadn’t happened suddenly, in fact it had taken years but her wait had paid off. After they had returned to Europe he had written her a number of letters and she had replied to them all. They talked on the telephone, often for hours on end. Then he wrote from America, where he was working, and told her what life was like in his temporary posting to the United Nations in New York.

  Quite by chance, and after a great deal of lobbying by her, she persuaded her editor to allow her to do a piece on the U.N. and its effectiveness/ineffectiveness in solving the world‘s problems and disputes. One week later, armed with a ticket to John F. Kennedy Airport she went to see Jacques. She vowed that they would either end up as lovers, or she would finally consign him to the list of people she would always love but never have. To date, it was a list of one. It was a fine sentiment, but in reality she knew she could not walk away from him.

  Jacques met her in a chauffeur-driven black limousine and they were driven into town where again, quite by chance, she was staying at the same hotel as him.

  Her plan to finally become his lover was not that difficult. Jacques had decided that a life of occasional six-monthly kisses with Honeysuckle did not qualify as a sex life. He deserved more, some happiness and a proper relationship. So he had decided a long time before she’d booked herself into his hotel that he and Sophie would become lovers.

  Within seconds of getting into the limousine they were once again back in their comfortable relationship with its charged sexual tension. That evening he took her to his favourite restaurant in Greenwich Village, and that night they made love as if they were in back in the jungle.

  Since that time, work had kept them apart for long periods, which only heightened their need for each other. And now they were back in Vietnam where it had all begun, still doing the jobs they had been doing all those years ago.

  Saphine’s core audience had changed from her Hanoi days. Western faces, mainly officers and embassy staff, occupied over half of the seats. The grunts found their entertainment in the houses where Saphine had grown up and where she had become a woman. Vietnamese society still came to see her, but not in the numbers that they once had.

  If Saphine had not worked in the club, Sophie and Jacques would probably not have frequented it. They liked their own company when they were able to be together, not wanting to share each other with the world. But when they were there they enjoyed it. It was always lively and Saphine’s voice was still spellbinding, and Saphine herself always a delight to be with.

  However, on this particular night Saphine was not her usual effervescent self. Sophie picked up on it immediately. “What’s wrong, Saphine?”

  Saphine smiled weakly. “David has only one month to go before he can return to America and they are sending him up-country. He says all the paperwork for my visa is coming soon, but I am scared. It is just a month, what if something happens to him?”

  Jacques interjected, “He will be fine, Saphine. Do you know where he is going?”

  “Phuoc Tuy Province, I think,” replied Saphine.

  Jacques wondered at the wisdom of anyone telling a Vietnamese person plans of a military action. Sure, Saphine was safe and he trusted her completely, but she only had to tell one other person and all security is breached. The problem was that half the United States Army had girlfriends and my, how they like to boast about their exploits.

  He knew instantly what the operation was about. He was party to all such planning. It was to be a U.S. search and destroy mission intended to lure out the Viet Cong D800 Battalion, a crack unit of highly trained insurgency troops that were wreaking havoc. He did not know who would be assigned to the mission, but it would appear that the 1st Infantry Division, 2nd Battalion 16th Infantry, Rangers in which David commanded Charlie Company, had drawn the short straw. It was a mission that Jacques was not at all happy about, but one that his new employers thought essential. If the Vietminh had been ruthless, then the Viet Cong, who fought a guerrilla war in the South, had taken ruthless up a notch. They did not fight by the rules; they even made the French Resistance look like amateurs.

  “He should be fine in that one, Saphine. Don’t worry,” he said to her with an encouraging smile on his face, but with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Saphine perked up. “So, how are you two love-birds?”

  “Very well.” Sophie kissed Jacques on the cheek, whilst he put his arms around her waist and playfully nibbled her neck.

  Saphine giggled as she watched her two favourite people in the world at play. “What are you working on, Sophie?”

  “I’m doing another piece on the Viet Cong and their increasing use of terrorist tactics and assassination to achieve their goals. Like the My Gonh Restaurant bombing and the medical centre they attacked last week. The targets are increasingly becoming civilians, and any g
overnment official seems fair game. Innocent people going about their business just get caught in the fall-out. They have taken terror to another level, we never targeted civilians in the Resistance, and it is a scary development. Even poor farmers are held at gunpoint and their crops stolen to feed the guerrilla army, and if they resist their fellow countrymen shoot them. I want to find out more about these people, is it a political doctrine that motivates them or a hatred of having their country occupied by foreigners? I’m trying to set up a meeting with them and get some interviews.” Sophie was excited.

  “And I’m not happy. What if they kidnap you, or worse?” Jacques was angry.

  “Then you will come and save me. Like you always do, my English hero.” She felt his biceps as if he was Popeye, than added, “But they won’t do any of that. They want their story told and their propaganda printed in the world’s press.” She hesitated a second before she turned to Jacques, and knowing what his reaction would be she said, “Actually they contacted me and have already assured me of my safety.” She winced, waiting for the backlash.

  “What? They said come and talk to us and we promise you will be all right. What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  “I’m a respected journalist who is published worldwide. They need the power of my pen to get their message out there. If it is a good message, I may write it, if it is not then that is what I will write. Don’t treat me like a little girl.”

  “You are a little girl.”

  “No I’m not.”

  Saphine exploded with laughter. It stopped their argument in its tracks. They did not argue much but when they did it always developed into a childish squabble, which they would both soon recognise and laugh about. They were strong characters, life had made them so, and disagreements happened. The disagreements were very often about Sophie’s safety and Jacques noble, but unnecessary, desire to protect her. “Don’t be so stupid,” she would say, “I can look after myself.” A fact he knew to be true. Other than Honeysuckle it seemed that all the women Jacques associated with were nigh on being Amazons, and if Honeysuckle had been two years older she would probably have become the most formidable of them all.