‘Poor Linda.’
‘Oh, don’t pity me. I’ve had eleven months of perfect and unalloyed happiness, very few people can say that, in the course of long long lives, I imagine.’
I imagined so too. Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other’s company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pinpricks. Nannies, cooks, the endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one’s very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, Alfred’s not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honey-dew, and that is an incomparable diet.
The old woman who had opened the door to me came in and said was that everything, because, if so, she would be going home.
‘Everything,’ said Linda. ‘Mrs Hunt,’ she said to me, when she had gone. ‘A terrific Hon – she comes daily.’
‘Why don’t you go to Alconleigh,’ I said, ‘or to Shenley? Aunt Emily and Davey would love to have you, and I’m going there with the children as soon as Alfred is off again.’
‘I’d like to come for a visit some time, when I know a little more what is happening, but at the moment I must stop here. Give them my love though. I’ve got such masses to tell you, Fanny, what we really need is hours and hours in the Hons’ cupboard.’
*
After a great deal of hesitation Tony Kroesig and his wife, Pixie, allowed Moira to go and see her mother before leaving England. She arrived at Cheyne Walk in Tony’s car, still driven by a chauffeur in uniform not the King’s. She was a plain, stodgy, shy little girl, with no echo of the Radletts about her; not to put too fine a point on it she was a real little Gretchen.
‘What a sweet puppy,’ she said, awkwardly, when Linda had kissed her. She was clearly very much embarrassed.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Plon-plon.’
‘Oh. Is that a French name?’
‘Yes it is. He’s a French dog, you see.’
‘Daddy says the French are terrible.’
‘I expect he does.’
‘He says they have let us down, and what can we expect if we have anything to do with such people.’
‘Yes, he would.’
‘Daddy thinks we ought to fight with the Germans and not against them.’
‘M’m. But Daddy doesn’t seem to be fighting very much with anybody, or against anybody, or at all, as far as I can see. Now, Moira, before you go I have got two things for you, one is a present and the other is a little talk. The talk is very dull, so we’ll get that over first, shall we?’
‘Yes,’ said Moira, apathetically. She lugged the puppy on to the sofa beside her.
‘I want you to know,’ said Linda, ‘and to remember, please, Moira (stop playing with the puppy a minute and listen carefully to what I am saying) that I don’t at all approve of you running away like this, I think it most dreadfully wrong. When you have a country which has given you as much as England has given all of us, you ought to stick to it, and not go wandering off as soon as it looks like being in trouble.’
‘But it’s not my fault,’ said Moira, her forehead puckering. ‘I’m only a child and Pixie is taking me. I have to do what I’m told, don’t I?’
‘Yes, of course, I know that’s true. But you’d much rather stay, wouldn’t you?’ said Linda, hopefully.
‘Oh no, I don’t think so. There might be air-raids.’
At this Linda gave up. Children might or might not enjoy air-raids actually in progress, but a child who was not thrilled by the idea of them was incomprehensible to her, and she could not imagine having conceived such a being. Useless to waste any more time and breath on this unnatural little girl. She sighed and said:
‘Now wait a moment and I’ll get your present.’
She had in her pocket, in a velvet box, a coral hand holding a diamond arrow, which Fabrice had given her, but she could not bear to waste anything so pretty on this besotted little coward. She went to her bedroom and found a sports wrist-watch, one of her wedding presents when she had married Tony and which she had never worn, and gave this to Moira, who seemed quite pleased by it, and left the house as politely and unenthusiastically as she had arrived.
Linda rang me up at Shenley and told me about this interview.
‘I’m in such a temper,’ she said, ‘I must talk to somebody. To think I ruined nine months of my life in order to have that. What do your children think about air-raids, Fanny?’
‘I must say they simply long for them, and I am sorry to say they also long for the Germans to arrive. They spend the whole day making booby-traps for them in the orchard.’
‘Well that’s a relief anyhow – I thought perhaps it was the generation. Actually of course, it’s not Moira’s fault, it’s all that bloody Pixie – I can see the form only too clearly, can’t you? Pixie is frightened to death and she has found out that going to America is like the children’s concert, you can only make it if you have a child in tow. So she’s using Moira – well, it does serve one right for doing wrong.’ Linda was evidently very much put out. ‘And I hear Tony is going too, some Parliamentary mission or something. All I can say is what a set.’
*
All through those terrible months of May, June, and July, Linda waited for a sign from Fabrice, but no sign came. She did not doubt that he was still alive, it was not in Linda’s nature to imagine that anyone might be dead. She knew that thousands of Frenchmen were in German hands, but felt certain that, had Fabrice been taken prisoner (a thing which she did not at all approve of, incidentally, taking the old-fashioned view that, unless in exceptional circumstances, it is a disgrace), he would undoubtedly manage to escape. She would hear from him before long, and, meanwhile, there was nothing to be done, she must simply wait. All the same, as the days went by with no news, and as all the news there was from France was bad, she did become exceedingly restless. She was really more concerned with his attitude than with his safety – his attitude towards events and his attitude towards her. She felt sure that he would never be associated with the armistice, she felt sure that he would want to communicate with her, but she had no proof, and, in moments of great loneliness and depression, she allowed herself to lose faith. She realized how little she really knew of Fabrice, he had seldom talked seriously to her, their relationship having been primarily physical while their conversations and chat had all been based on jokes.
They had laughed and made love and laughed again, and the months had slipped by with no time for anything but laughter and love. Enough to satisfy her, but what about him? Now that life had become so serious, and, for a Frenchman, so tragic, would he not have forgotten that meal of whipped cream as something so utterly unimportant that it might never have existed? She began to think, more and more, to tell herself over and over again, to force herself to realize, that it was probably all finished, that Fabrice might never be anything for her now but a memory.
At the same time the few people she saw never failed when talking, as everybody talked then, about France, to emphasize that the French ‘one knew’, the families who were ‘bien’, were all behaving very badly, convinced Pétainists. Fabrice was not one of them, she thought, she felt, but she wished she knew, she longed for evidence.
In fact, she alternated between hope and despair, but as the months went by without a word, a word that she was sure he could have sent if he had really wanted to, despair began to prevail.
Then, on a sunny Sunday morning in August, very early, her telephone bell rang.
She woke up with a start, aware that it had been ringing already for several moments, and she knew with absolute certainty that this was Fabrice.
‘Are you Flaxman 2815?’
‘Yes.’
I’ve got a call for you. You’re through.’
‘Allô-allô?’
‘Fabrice?’
‘Oui.’
‘Oh! Fabrice – on vous attend depuis si longtemps.’
‘Comme c’est gentil. Alors, on peut venir tout de suite chez vous?’
‘Oh, wait – yes, you can come at once, but don’t go for a minute, go on talking, I want to hear the sound of your voice.’
‘No, no, I have a taxi outside, I shall be with you in five minutes. There’s too much one can’t do on the telephone, ma chère, voyons –’ Click.
She lay back, and all was light and warmth. Life, she thought, is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them. The early morning sun shone past her window on to the river, her ceiling danced with water-reflections. The Sunday silence was broken by two swans winging slowly upstream, and then by the chugging of a little barge, while she waited for that other sound, a sound more intimately connected with the urban love affair than any except the telephone bell, that of a stopping taxicab. Sun, silence, and happiness. Presently she heard it in the street, slowly, slower, it stopped, the flag went up with a ring, the door slammed, voices, clinking coins, footsteps. She rushed downstairs.
Hours later Linda made some coffee.
‘So lucky,’ she said, ‘that it happens to be Sunday, and Mrs Hunt isn’t here. What would she have thought?’
‘Just about the same as the night porter at the Hotel Montalembert, I expect,’ said Fabrice.
‘Why did you come, Fabrice? To join General de Gaulle?’
‘No, that was not necessary, because I have joined him already. I was with him in Bordeaux. My work has to be in France, but we have ways of communicating when we want to. I shall go and see him, of course, he expects me at midday, but actually I came on a private mission.’
He looked at her for a long time.
‘I came to tell you that I love you,’ he said, at last
Linda felt giddy.
‘You never said that to me in Paris.’
‘No.’
‘You always seemed so practical.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I had said it so often and often before in my life, I had been so romantic with so many women, that when I felt this to be different I really could not bring out all those stale old phrases again, I couldn’t utter them. I never said I loved you, I never tutoyé’d you, on purpose. Because from the first moment I knew that this was as real as all the others were false, it was like recognizing somebody – there, I can’t explain.’
‘But that is exactly how I felt too,’ said Linda, ‘don’t try to explain, you needn’t, I know.’
‘Then, when you had gone, I felt I had to tell you, and it became an obsession with me to tell you. All those dreadful weeks were made more dreadful because I was being prevented from telling you.’
‘How ever did you get here?’
‘On circule,’ said Fabrice, vaguely. ‘I must leave again tomorrow morning, very early, and I shan’t come back until the war is over, but you’ll wait for me, Linda, and nothing matters so much now that you know. I was tormented, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, I was becoming useless in my work. In future I may have much to bear, but I shan’t have to bear you going away without knowing what a great great love I have for you.’
‘Oh, Fabrice, I feel – well, I suppose religious people sometimes feel like this.’
She put her head on his shoulder, and they sat for a long time in silence.
*
When he had paid his visit to Carlton Gardens they lunched at the Ritz. It was full of people Linda knew, all very smart, very gay, and talking with the greatest flippancy about the imminent arrival of the Germans. Had it not been for the fact that all the young men there had fought bravely in Flanders, and would, no doubt, soon be fighting bravely again, and this time with more experience, on other fields of battle, the general tone might have been considered shocking. Even Fabrice looked grave, and said they did not seem to realize –
Davey and Lord Merlin appeared. Their eyebrows went up when they saw Fabrice.
‘Poor Merlin has the wrong kind,’ Davey said to Linda.
‘The wrong kind of what?’
‘Pill to take when the Germans come. He’s just got the sort you give to dogs.’
Davey brought out a jewelled box containing two pills, one white and one black.
‘You take the white one first and then the black one – he really must go to my doctor.’
‘I think one should let the Germans do the killing,’ said Linda. ‘Make them add to their own crimes and use up a bullet. Why should one smooth their path in any way? Besides, I back myself to do in at least two before they get me.’
‘Oh, you’re so tough, Linda, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be a bullet for me, they would torture me, look at the things I’ve said about them in the Gazette’
‘No worse than you’ve said about all of us,’ Lord Merlin remarked.
Davey was known to be a most savage reviewer, a perfect butcher, never sparing even his dearest friends. He wrote under several pseudonyms, which in no way disguised his unmistakable style, his cruellest essays appearing over the name Little Nell.
‘Are you here for long, Sauveterre?’
‘No, not for long.’
Linda and Fabrice went in to luncheon. They talked of this and that, mostly jokes. Fabrice told her scandalous stories about some of the other lunchers known to him of old, with a wealth of unlikely detail. He spoke only once about France, only to say that the struggle must be carried on, everything would be all right in the end. Linda thought how different it would have been with Tony or Christian. Tony would have held forth about his experiences and made boring arrangements for his own future, Christian would have launched a monologue on world conditions subsequent to the recent fall of France, its probable repercussions in Araby and far Cashmere, the inadequacy of Pétain to deal with such a wealth of displaced persons, the steps that he, Christian, would have taken had he found himself in his, the Marshal’s, shoes. Both would have spoken to her exactly, in every respect, as if she had been some chap in their club. Fabrice talked to her, at her, and for only her, it was absolutely personal talk, scattered with jokes and allusions private to them both. She had a feeling that he would not allow himself to be serious, that if he did he would have to embark on tragedy, and that he wanted her to carry away a happy memory of his visit. But he also gave an impression of boundless optimism and faith, very cheering at that dark time.
Early the next morning, another beautiful, hot, sunny morning, Linda lay back on her pillows and watched Fabrice while he dressed, as she had so often watched him in Paris. He made a certain kind of face when he was pulling his tie into a knot, she had quite forgotten it in the months between, and it brought back their Paris life to her suddenly and vividly.
‘Fabrice,’ she said. ‘Do you think we shall ever live together again?’
‘But of course we shall, for years and years and years, until I am ninety. I have a very faithful nature.’
‘You weren’t very faithful to Jacqueline.’
‘Aha – so you know about Jacqueline, do you? La pauvre, elle était si gentille – gentile, élégante, mais assommante, mon Dieu! Enfin, I was immensely faithful to her and it lasted five years, it always does with me (either five days or five years). But as I love you ten times more than the others that brings it to when I am ninety, and, by then, j’en aurai tellment l’habitude –’
‘And how soon shall I see you again?’
‘On fera la navette.’ He went to the window. ‘I thought I heard a car – oh yes, it is turning round. There, I must go. Au revoir, Linda.’
He kissed her hand politely, almost absentmindedly, it was as if h
e had already gone, and walked quickly from the room. Linda went to the open window and leaned out. He was getting into a large motor-car with two French soldiers on the box and a Free French flag waving from the bonnet. As it moved away he looked up.
‘Navette – navette–’ cried Linda with a brilliant smile. Then she got back into bed and cried very much. She felt utterly in despair at this second parting.
20
THE air-raids on London now began. Early in September, just as I had moved there with my family, a bomb fell in the garden of Aunt Emily’s house in Kent. It was a small bomb compared with what one saw later, and none of us were hurt, but the house was more or less wrecked. Aunt Emily, Davey, my children, and I, then took refuge at Alconleigh, where Aunt Sadie welcomed us with open arms, begging us to make it our home for the war. Louisa had already arrived there with her children, John Fort William had gone back to his regiment and their Scottish home had been taken over by the Navy.
‘The more the merrier,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘I should like to fill the house, and, besides, it’s better for rations. Nice, too, for your children to be brought up all together, just like old times. With the boys away and Victoria in the Wrens, Matthew and I would be a very dreary old couple here all alone.’
The big rooms at Alconleigh were filled with the contents of some science museum and no evacuees had been billeted there, I think it was felt that nobody who had not been brought up to such rigours could stand the cold of that house.
Soon the party received a very unexpected addition. I was upstairs in the nursery bathroom doing some washing for Nanny, measuring out the soap-flakes with wartime parsimony and wishing that the water at Alconleigh were not so dreadfully hard, when Louisa burst in.
‘You’ll never guess,’ she said, ‘in a thousand thousand years who has arrived.’
‘Hitler,’ I said, stupidly.
‘Your mother, Auntie Bolter. She just walked up the drive and walked in.’