Beneath Gray Skies (18 page)

-o-

“
S
hall we walk back to the hotel?” suggested Dowling as they left the State Department building, fanning his face with a handkerchief.

“Very good, sir,” said Christopher.

“Well, what do you make of them?” asked Dowling.

Christopher thought a bit. “It seems to me, sir, like they’re asleep.”

“Too bloody right, Pole. But I think they’ll wake up soon enough.”

They walked on in silence for a little while, Dowling, obviously in a good mood, swinging his cane. “That Wasserstein girl’s a looker, isn’t she, Pole?”

“Sir?” Christopher affected innocence.

“Oh come on, Pole, you must have noticed her.”

“Yes, sir, definitely good-looking, sir,” he admitted.

“And I think she might just think the same about you, Pole,” digging Christopher in the ribs with his elbow.

“Sir?” said Pole, still as innocently as he could.

“Where are your eyes, Pole? She was looking at you all through that meeting. She’d be a good catch, too, I suppose, for the right man. The Wasserstein money and all that.”

“Sir?” The puzzlement was genuine this time.

“Her family owns half the trains and ships in this country, Pole. And half the banks, too, I believe. Sorry, I do keep forgetting that this isn’t your country. I expect you to know everything about it.”

They continued walking, Christopher digesting the information he’d just been given and Dowling still fanning himself.

“My God, it’s hot,” exclaimed Dowling suddenly. “What do people drink round here, do you think?” The District of Columbia had never adopted the temperance legislation of some of the more conservative Mid-Western states. Contrary to the predictions of some of the evangelical preachers, lightning had not yet struck the Capitol, nor had the ten plagues of Egypt as yet afflicted the Republic.

“Mint juleps used to be popular where I came from,” replied Christopher. “I’m betting they have them here as well.”

“Juleps? What are those?” asked Dowling.

“Water, sugar, ice, whiskey and fresh mint, sir.”

“Sounds a touch—different,” said Dowling doubtfully. “But when in Rome … Lead on, Pole, I’ll trust your judgment on this.”

“
If ever I saw a woman who was looking for a husband and thinks she’s found him …”

“
M
onarchs of all we survey,” remarked Dowling cheerfully, sweeping an expansive arm around the vast empty room in the War Department basement where his and Christopher’s desks occupied a small corner. The room looked and smelled as though it had served as a combination storage area for records and boarding house for rats since the Lincoln presidency, and had only just been cleaned out. “Lucky for us that they had all this empty space, what?” The tone of his voice rather belied his words.

“I suppose that’s what comes of not fighting so many wars,” suggested Christopher. “All this space stays unused.”

“Must say the view could be better, though,” Dowling remarked, surveying the windowless government-issue beige walls. “But at least the fans are stopping the place from getting too hot.”

“That may be the clothes we’re wearing, too, sir.” Both men were now wearing lightweight linen suits, as did most natives of Washington.

“Well, we might as well go into native garb, given that it looks as though we’ll be here for some time.” Following their initial meeting with Gatt, the second meeting had gone very smoothly. “Given your excellent recommendation on mint juleps, I’m certainly prepared to take your views seriously on how we should be dressing here. And that sort of brings me to another point. I’ve noticed that Americans seem to use names a spot differently from the way we use them in England. Would you be dreadfully offended if I started to call you ‘Christopher’? Even if it’s only in front of the Americans.”

“No, sir, not at all. Truth to tell, I’m still not used to your English ways of doing things.”

“And of course, this means that I’m ‘Henry’, not ‘sir’, at least in this country. Reckon you can manage that, Christopher, old chap?”

Yes, sir—yes, Henry, I mean.” It felt strange. “Do you realize that this is the first time I’ve ever called a white person by his first name?”

“Good Lord, I suppose it probably is. I’d never thought about it that way, to be honest with you. Well, I’m sure there are many other people a good sight more important than me who you’ll end up calling by their Christian names if you carry on in this business the way you’ve started. Now then, Christopher, we have to begin our work, with or without our American liaison. Do you have those reports on the Oklahoma geological survey five years ago?”

-o-

T
hey were trying to disentangle fact from oil speculator’s bubble-talk thirty minutes later, when Virginia knocked on the door and came in.

“Mr. Dowling, Mr. Pole. Good morning. I hadn’t expected you to take up your posts so fast,” she smiled. “In case no-one’s told you, I’m sitting here,” and she perched on the corner of the Special Liaison (USA) desk. “Well, not exactly here, but in the chair behind the desk,” she smiled at Christopher, who smiled nervously back.

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Christopher, a trifle diffidently. “I’m Christopher, not Mr. Pole.”

“And I’m Henry,” put in Dowling, not to be outdone. “We decided it was stupid of us to pretend to be stuffy Limeys all the time.”

“Well, I don’t think either of you is stuffy,” laughed Virginia. “You’ve certainly lit the biggest fire under Vernon Gatt that I’ve seen in a long time. And at least one of you isn’t a Limey,” she added.

“Anyway, we’re delighted to be working with you, whatever we are,” said Christopher. Henry lifted his eyebrows, but neither Christopher or Virginia seemed to notice. He was going to have to keep Christopher’s mind on the job, thought Henry. Or maybe it would all die down of its own accord. He’d wait a few days and try not to interfere and see how it all played out.

-o-

A
s it turned out, the next few days turned out to be busy. Several Americans, most of them with suspiciously military-looking haircuts, occupied most of the remaining desks in the room. Dowling had reserved the few left unoccupied for the British agents who were due to arrive over the next few weeks.

At the British request, the Americans had mounted a Marine guard outside the door, whose job it was to check the passes of all people entering the room and to record all movement in and out in an attendance log. Each pass was signed by both Dowling and Gatt, and carried a photograph of the bearer.

Part of Christopher’s job was arranging with Virginia where all the visiting British were going to stay.

“I think you and I are going to have to move out of the Willard,” said Henry. “Treasury in London are going to throw a fit when they see the bill. The Second Secretary at the Embassy called me in and complained about the cost for forty-five minutes on end when he got the latest bill from there. Anyone would think he was paying for it all out of his own pocket. Mind you, I don’t remember drinking that many juleps, and I’m sure you didn’t drink them all, either.”

“Why don’t we rent a big house?” suggested Christopher. “All the British could have a room each, and we could get in someone to cook and clean for us all?”

“Like student digs or something? Excellent idea, Christopher. Keeps us all together, keeping an eye out for each other, saves on money and so on. Ask Virginia to find us somewhere, would you, old chap? Make sure it’s in a neighborhood where we’re not going to attract a lot of attention, and at the same time we can easily see what’s going on around us. We’re meant to be doing the watching, not being watched ourselves.”

-o-

D
riving around the suburbs with Virginia in the sunny Washington weather proved to be one of the most pleasurable things that Christopher had yet experienced in his life.

She took him round Georgetown in her little two-seater roadster, and queried him gently, but with probing questions, about his earlier life.

“When did you first realize you were a slave?” she asked.

“I’m not sure if I ever really realized that I was a slave as such,” replied Christopher. “You have to understand that most people I knew were either white, and gave orders, or were black and took the orders. I guess I was about ten years old when I first realized that some of the black folks I saw downtown didn’t have masters. Then I wondered what was different about them. Truth to tell, I felt kind of sorry for them.”

Virginia looked at him, with genuine wonder in her eyes. “Why in the world would you feel like that?”

“Miss Justin who owned me was real nice to us all. She was kind, generous even. Of course we had to work for her, but she made sure we could all read and write as well as we were able, even though she wasn’t rightly supposed to be doing that. She lent us books to read and made sure we all learned something about life outside. We had to keep it all a secret, you understand.”

“From what I’ve seen of you, she must have been a good teacher. Of course, she had a good student.” She smiled and laid her fingers lightly on his sleeve. Christopher felt something like a shock run though him.

“Thank you,” Christopher smiled back. “When we fell sick, she’d make sure that we had all the medicines we needed, and even called in a doctor for us. So I felt sorry for those poor folks who had no-one to care for them. When I got older, I realized that I couldn’t move around or leave Miss Justin, but it was my home, and I never really wanted to leave her.”

“So how did you feel when she actually did give you your freedom?” asked Virginia. The fingers stayed on his sleeve. Henry had told her the previous day a little about how Christopher had come to be working with him.

“Kind of strange, I guess. Like I said, I wasn’t too happy about leaving her. I still miss her, you know. We talked together quite a lot. Sometimes we were serious, but often we would just be talking about little things. I was excited, I guess, when I left. And you know, I was shocked from what had happened, you know, the beating and all that.” Virginia’s fingers tightened a little on Christopher’s arm. “And I was real scared traveling on the railroad all the way to Richmond. They’d given me the right papers and all, but if you’ve never been to the Confederacy, and even then unless you’re black, I guess you don’t know how bad people can be sometimes. Cruel, of course, you’d expect that. But the worst thing is that they ignore you. On the train, I heard one of the conductors call to the other, ‘How many in that car?’ And the other one answered, ‘Nineteen people, and one Nigra in the back’. I wasn’t a person, see, as far as they was concerned. But the British Legation in Richmond was fine. They certainly were surprised to see me, though, when I mentioned this Brian guy to them.”

“And then they sent you to London?” asked Virginia. With a pang of regret, Christopher felt the hand remove itself from his arm, but then it moved itself to cover his own hand. It felt kind of … nice.

“That was a shock. Long boat trip, and then the English weather. Have you ever been to London?”

“No, why?”

“Take lots of warm clothes with you if you do. I like to froze my ass off— Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that,” he hurriedly babbled.

“Don’t worry. I’ve heard the word before. If you promise not to tell anyone else, I can tell you that I’ve even used it myself a few times, you know.”

“Thank you. Very sorry about that. What was I saying? Oh yes, London. Those Limeys don’t seem to mind cold and rain, I swear. They actually seem to enjoy it.”

“And how’s Henry? Do you like working with him?”

“Oh yes. At first, I think he didn’t want an American working with him. Black or white or any kind of color. He doesn’t seem to care about what race a man is—but he does seem to care about what sort of person you are—I suppose he’d call it being a gentleman.”

“Well, if he thinks you’re a gentleman, I’d have to agree with him,” Virginia replied.

Christopher felt his cheeks growing warm. “Thank you,” he mumbled. “Now I think Henry and I get on all right. But these Brits, you know. It’s really difficult to know what they’re thinking sometimes. Not like Americans.”