The Bench

by Nigel Jones

  He and Sophie were totally compatible and they had spent good years together as a couple. Very few men could understand what drove Sophie, or would be able to live with that drive. She often thought that Jacques was the only person she had ever met with that ability, and privately she loved his old-fashioned insistence on being her protector, provided he never actually did it.

  “When is the meeting then?” he managed to ask through gritted teeth, as she now poked him in the ribs with unnecessary force; an attack which, in private, would have resulted in them having a wrestling match followed by sex.

  “Thursday. They will pick me up at the station and take me to see someone high up,” she paused, “I think it may even be, Giap.”

  “Vo Nguyen Giap?” Jacques was startled. Giap was their top man; he had commanded the Vietminh troops twelve years previously in Dien Bien Phu. If he genuinely wanted to get a Western journalist on side then they must believe that things were not going well for the Viet Cong. Jacques knew that recently the Viet Cong had taken some devastating losses. He had a hand in some of the planning. There were over half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam along with nearly a million other Allied fighters. That is why the terror campaign had escalated. The American generals had taken this as a sign that they were getting the upper hand. The development with Sophie indicated that they might well be right.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I know that it is a very high ranking official who wants to meet me. I know what you are thinking, Jacques. I will not be the bait in some sort of trap. I want this meeting. It is the written word that will finish this conflict, not guns. If you capture or kill him, another will just appear, you know that. You said yourself that for every V.C. you kill five more appear.”

  Jacques did, and as usual Sophie was right. “Just be careful, that’s all I ask.” The conversation was over.

  Sophie turned to Saphine. “When does David go up-country?”

  “He has already gone, he went today. Last night may have been our last night together, so I sent him away drained and exhausted.” Saphine giggled.

  Jacques was well aware what that would entail and was grinning uncontrollably to himself.

  “You can stop smirking, Jack. I know what you are thinking. Come on, take me home and exhaust me,” Sophie commanded.

  They both embraced Saphine; Jacques’s embrace was slightly longer than Sophie’s. It was Sophie’s turn to smile as she dragged him away.

  On Thursday evening Jacques was anxiously waiting in their apartment for Sophie to return. It was past midnight before he heard her slip the key into its lock. Relieved, he jumped up to greet her as she stepped in to the cloying heat of the poorly-ventilated room, with its single ceiling fan whirring slowly above their heads.

  “Well? Are you alright?” Jacques shot at her.

  “Of course, cheri. It’s nice to know you care.“ She kissed him on the lips. “It wasn’t Giap, one of his top men though. He was most charming and said he had read all my work. He particularly enjoyed the piece about our escape from Dien Bien Phu, and implied it was unfortunate that we hadn’t met twelve years ago. Apparently he led the final assault on Isabelle, so it was his platoon that we had the altercation with as we left on our holidays!”

  “Where did they take you?”

  “Always the spy, my darling Jack. I really don’t know. I was blindfolded and we drove for well over an hour, but I fancy it was round in circles. It sounded noisy outside as if we were still in the city. They all wore civvies and did not bother with any unnecessary military forms of address.”

  None of this surprised Jacques and he knew there would be no more intelligence to be gleaned from Sophie’s liaison. “What did they want to talk about?” he asked.

  “That was interesting. I half expected the ‘it is useless to resist’ stuff, but it never came. We had tea and a civilised conversation about the futility of war and the pain it inflicted on people. He told me heartrending stories of his own people’s suffering, families torn apart by civil war and children turning their back on childhood to fight their oppressors. He actually said, ‘It is the same as when you fought for your country after the Nazi invasion.’ He knew all about me, Jacques. They had done their research,” she waited, “and they know all about you. He asked how my English boyfriend was, the one he nearly met in Dien Bien Phu. But he was not threatening, it was as if he was telling me there was nothing they did not know about the people who occupied his country.”

  “So he was saying, ‘it is useless to resist,’ but in a rather more subtle way.” Jacques smiled.

  “Yes, I guess he was.”

  Jacques was thinking, then smiling at her said, “So, are you going to write their propaganda?”

  “Of course, but there will be the usual liberal smattering of my own propaganda, which will totally neutralise it. Thus leaving the thinking reader as confused about what is happening in Vietnam as he was before he read the informative article. Just as confused as the writer.”

  “The usual then?”

  “Yes, the usual.” Changing the subject she said, “I need a G and T, a large one. Then I need you.” She kissed him more passionately.

  There was a loud knock on the door. It was one o’clock in the morning, but this was Saigon and it never slept. Jacques often received visitors at all times of the day and night.

  “Damn, I was looking forward to the rest of that kiss.” He walked to the door and unlatched it.

  Still wearing her stage frock and in full stage make-up that was now smudged down her cheek, stood Saphine. When she saw Jacques her dried tears started again and she flew into his arms.

  “What is it, Saphine?” asked Jacques, holding her as Sophie came to see what was happening.

  “David is dead. They have killed David.” She could hardly get the words out.

  “Cherie, come and sit down.” Sophie took her hands and led her to the sofa. “What happened?”

  “His friend John came to the club and told me that Charlie Company had been ambushed,” she paused, “and David is dead.” Through her tears she managed to say, “I don’t know much more.”

  “My poor, Saphine. Come, have a drink, and you must stay the night with us.” Jacques poured her a glass of wine and his heart went out to Saphine. David had been her future, her rescuer from the hell that Saigon was slowly becoming.

  Jacques promised her that he would find out more details the next day about what had happened. He knew it would help her, knowing always did. He also knew that Saphine was a strong woman, not a fighter but a survivor. In time this tragedy would be just another stumbling block in her quest for survival through a difficult and turbulent life.

  That night, like a small child she came to their bed and climbed in. She lay between Sophie and Jacques, they tenderly held her trying to share and ease the pain of the child whose world had just fallen apart.

  It turned out that Charlie Company had encountered sporadic fire from the Viet Cong as they moved through a rubber plantation. Soon they were isolated and surrounded. The plan had been to use them as bait and the other Companies would attack the Viet Cong, but the other Companies did not arrive in time to stop Charlie Company taking huge casualties. Vietnam had defeated them again, its jungle once more proving impenetrable. A ‘friendly fire’ shelling they received from their own artillery did not help the fact that Charlie Company took huge losses. During the night their defences were breached and several men had their throats slit. David was one of them.

  Five days later Jacques and the two girls attended a ceremony at Tan Son Nhut airport as David and another fifty servicemen were repatriated to the United States in body bags. It was as close to Nevada as Saphine ever got.

  That night the three of them celebrated David’s life and hoped his death, at the age of twenty-seven, was not completely in vain.

  As Jacques poured them each another shot of cheap brandy an explosion shook the walls of the street bar. None of them even flinched, partly because the cheap alcohol numb
ed them, but also because it was becoming commonplace. It was just another attack in a crumbling city.

  The following night Saphine was once more singing in the club, and another dream began in the company of two admiring young chopper-jocks who had just arrived to start their tour of duty.

  Later that week something else happened that took Jacques totally by surprise.

  He was getting tired of the war; tired of watching young men like David sacrificed for reasons he could no longer understand. He was sitting in the bar where he had met Mac, wondering if he had survived his last month in Vietnam, unlike poor David. On the wall behind the bar the television was still flickering away, and the little girl was still walking the streets selling her roses.

  As she smiled up at him, he took a swig from the nearly empty bottle of beer. As he did so, he raised his head and glanced briefly at the flashing television screen, something he rarely did. The bottle had barely touched his lips when he removed it as his jaw dropped.

  There was no sound on the television, but there was a caption that said in Vietnamese, ‘Nazi hunters get their man.’

  “Jesus,” he whispered to himself. The person being interviewed had a face he knew so well. “Turn it up, turn it up,” he yelled at the startled barmaid.

  The face was gone and the picture returned to the newsreader in the studio. “…The lawyers who successfully prosecuted Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust, have successfully brought another Nazi war criminal to justice. And now for the weather.”

  “Jesus,” he said again. It was her, Yvette, with grey hair and spectacles. “It had to be her.”

  “Are you alright, Jacques? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Sophie had just stepped into the bar.

  “Yes, I think I have.”

  “Blimey, it’s cold isn’t it, Buster? Sorry, that all took a bit longer than I’d expected.”

  He rustled in his coat pocket and produced a biscuit. “Come on, let’s have lunch at home. It’s too cold out here.”

  The man stood up and set off down the hill with lunch still in the bag. A puzzled Buster eased himself awkwardly from the bench. Had he really been dragged all the way up here for no lunch?

  The man had never let him down before, so he set off after him. How he was expected to walk all the way home without nutrition, he was not sure. Maybe another biscuit would appear. Yes, that would help a starving dog.

  TWENTY

  “It’s warmer today, old boy, and the wind has gone. I promise we will have lunch on the bench today.”

  Jacques had not forgotten the look Buster had given him the previous morning when he stood up without giving him his food. The silly dog had sulked all afternoon and it had taken lemon drizzle cake at three-thirty in the afternoon to change his mood.

  On the walk up to the Warren he thought of Yvette’s picture on the television, but that story would have to be another day. Today was a Honeysuckle day. The day she met Sophie.

  As usual, once they had arrived at the bench his fingers traced the letters of the name before he sat down.

  By way of an apology to Buster he had prepared two lunches, a small one now and the main feast to follow later.

  To Buster’s delight the unexpected sandwich appeared with great ceremony, and was devoured with equal aplomb.

  After New York, Sophie and Jacques had become an item. Still spending long periods apart, their relationship was often carried on down telephone lines or through the written word.

  In some ways Jacques preferred the latter, or at least he delighted in reading Sophie’s letters, if not in writing his own. After all, she was a writer and managed to pen smut and filth just as well as she corresponded on war and politics. The smut and filth stimulated his groin as much as the serious writing stimulated his brain, and the beauty of her written word was that he could read it over and over again. He would often find innuendoes he had missed on several occasions previously, or unwritten words that could change a meaning. She was brilliant at making her readers think, and he was her most avid reader, both journalistically and privately.

  He had been back to the Isle of Wight a number of times before he had cemented his relationship with Sophie in New York. Despite his pathetic threat to Honeysuckle, he could not stay away; of course he had to see her. When he had said that he did not know if he was ever coming back he instantly regretted it. She did not deserve that cruelty and he had written to her and apologised, promising that he would see her soon.

  He had gone to see her just before he left for Vietnam on his first mission as a MI6 officer. It had been just as agonising as all his previous visits. There was not even a kiss. His being there seemed to depress Honeysuckle, so much so that embarrassingly Simon asked him one day what he thought was the matter with her. “She is usually so full of life,” he’d said.

  He soon came to the conclusion that he had been right to leave. They appeared to be much happier apart, so he had left for Vietnam. Less cruelly this time, with a vow to return and a promise to write, which he had done.

  His letters contained no mention of his real business in Hanoi, but were informative about other things and of life in general. They were the letters of an older brother, as hers were of a young sister.

  Saphine had satisfied his carnal desires and that night in the jungle so had Sophie. However, through all that time he never stopped desiring or loving Honeysuckle.

  When he returned, the first thing he did was to go and see her. He went to his apartment in London first, had a good night’s sleep then got his old MG out of storage and took it for a long overdue service whilst he went for his debrief.

  The following day he set off for the island with the top off the car. He enjoyed the cool air on his face, a face he thought would never be cool again after life in Vietnam.

  Honeysuckle knew he was coming and waited on the pier for him in Yarmouth. As the ferry steamed out of Lymington he wondered how he would react to seeing her. Would his experiences in Vietnam make it easier, and more specifically would his knowing Saphine and Sophie? He was older now, would that help?

  As the ferry approached Yarmouth she stood on the pier and waved at him. A headscarf held her hair back, but it still cascaded down her shoulders, much longer than he remembered. She looked like a film star standing there. Nothing had changed, that familiar fluttering in his stomach as the butterflies reawakened.

  “Bugger!” He muttered to himself as he waved back. “No change there then.”

  His parents stood by her side. He hadn’t even seen them at first; all he could see was Honeysuckle.

  They went straight to his parents’ cottage and had tea. Audrey came from next door and it seemed that the conversation had not changed from when they were teenagers, and for that afternoon they were teenagers once again. All talk was of the past, happy times before the War. There was no mention of Simon or Lissette, the daughter Honeysuckle had failed to mention in her letters.

  It was like being in a marvellous time warp, when everything was still possible, when it was preordained that Honeysuckle would marry Jacques.

  The next day he went to Farringford where time had not stood still. His mother had told him all about Lissette after Honeysuckle had left. She had asked her to, and to beg for his forgiveness for not telling him herself.

  As his mother explained Lissette to him, Jacques found that he did not mind and was happy that Honeysuckle had someone by her side that she loved, someone who would not leave her as he had done.

  Like all good mothers, Elizabeth had bought her son a present to take to baby Lissette. So armed with a teddy bear the size of a small house he set off for Farringford.

  The hotel was obviously thriving. Rolls Royce cars, Jaguars and Daimlers littered the drive, and the grounds he’d helped to sculpt were immaculate.

  Simon stepped out of the front door to greet Jacques and the bear, which was sitting proudly in the passenger’s seat.

  “That for me? Thanks.”

  “No, you handsome
beast, it’s for your ugly daughter. How are you, Simon? It’s good to see you.” Jacques jumped from the car and shook his hand.

  “And you, old boy. Missed your face round these parts.”

  “Where is she then? This ugly monstrosity you have sired.

  With that Honeysuckle appeared at the door flanked by a puppy. She was holding the baby in her arms and a look on her face that said, ‘isn’t she beautiful? But she should have been yours.’

  Jacques leapt up the three steps to where she stood. “Well done, Honeysuckle, she is gorgeous, you clever old thing. Both of you, well done.”

  He took the baby and all he could see was the tiny Honeysuckle who had been passed to him when he was a small boy. He gave Honeysuckle a smile that made her want to cry.

  He stayed a week on the island and, on balance, enjoyed the visit. Now it was definitely easier to be near her than when he had left previously, but all the old feelings were still there. It was wonderful to see his parents, who in turn were happy to see a more relaxed Jacques.

  “Will you be coming to the New Year’s Eve Ball, Jacques?” Simon had asked one day.

  “No, Simon, I have to get back to London. I’m to travel to Washington soon and will probably be there for about a year. Unfortunately there is much to do before I go. I would have loved to.” Seeing Honeysuckle in her goddess role did not appeal to him, he remembered it too well.

  Honeysuckle’s heart sank. He was leaving again. She would not see him for at least a year. But worst of all, she knew she was happier when he was not there and that Jacques was too, yet she could not bear to think of him going.

  “If you are leaving us again so soon, you must give me this afternoon to reminisce about our childhood. Walk with me onto the Warren, Jacques, and remind me about those innocent days.”