Madeleine's War (14 page)

Zola whimpered again.

“I resumed one of my formal duties today, taking the night codes to the BBC.”

“Oh yes? And…?”

“I can't tell you much, but the invasion isn't far off. As a matter of fact, one of the codes tonight is about you.”

“It was? It is?” She hoisted herself up on one elbow and looked at me. One of her breasts rested on my arm. “What did it say?”

“It told a certain circuit you are coming soon and asked them to recommend a landing site.”

“Where am I going, and when?”

“I can't tell you either of those things yet. You know I can't tell you that. Not yet.”

She was silent for a moment and straightened the bedclothes. “I can understand why you can't tell me
where
I'm going. I realize that might have some bearing on where the invasion might be. It's important that's kept secret. And I know the timing may be important too. But…
but
, Matt, aren't you being just a little bit inhuman? Here we are, making love, having sex…blotting out the rest of the world, the horrible world we are forced to live in. Don't you think…You now know how long we've got, how many days or weeks it is until…until it comes to an end, at least for a while. Don't you think I deserve to know that too?”

She reached out and tugged at my chin so that we were looking directly into each other's eyes. Her hair fell onto her shoulders. “Can you…Could you make love to me knowing how long we've got, when I don't? Could you make love to me knowing it's the last time, when I don't?”

“That's just it, I don't know how long you've got, I really don't. I agree that…if I knew that tonight would be the last time we could make love, and you didn't know, and I didn't tell you, that would be, as you say, inhuman.
The invasion date and location is the biggest secret of the war, and I'm just as much in the dark as you.”

She gripped my thigh with her fingers, digging them deep into my flesh. Then she slackened her grip and lay back on the bed, blowing cigarette smoke towards the ceiling.

“Do I believe you, Colonel?”

“You have to.”

She turned to look at me. “This is the first time I have ever doubted anything you have said.”

She turned her back to me and whispered, over her shoulder, “It's a horrible feeling.”

LATER THAT EVENING WE TOOK ZOLA
for his long-delayed walk. The north side of Regent's Park was only about six hundred yards away from the flat, but it had been closed for various military purposes, so we drifted south to the Marylebone road, then east, until we came to Harley Street and Devonshire Place.

Madeleine had on a navy-blue mac, one that made her look like an off-duty nurse. She had her arm in mine and I held on to Zola's leash. We stopped every so often so that he could explore lamp posts and trees and parked bicycles. We made slow progress, but it didn't matter.

It was a simple thing, Madeleine putting her arm in mine, but it was like having an electrical jolt in your side—or, better still, it was like having a fish on the end of a rod, that quivering, restless feeling of life itself. But, really, it felt better than words can say.

Traffic swept past us—omnibuses, army lorries, ambulances, taxis, the occasional out-of-date horse-drawn cart.

“I suppose, soon, those carts will disappear completely.” Madeleine pointed at a sad, rather decrepit horse pulling a rag-and-bone cart, the driver sitting on the edge of the contraption with the reins slack in one hand, and a long, light whip in the other. “What else will disappear, once this war is over, do you think?”

She looked up at me and squeezed my arm. Another jolt.

“Newspapers,” I said. “Radio will replace them, and maybe TV as well.”

“TV?”

“Television. Don't you know what that is?”

She shook her head, so I explained and then went on. “Private medicine will go, too.”

“It
will
? How do you mean?”

“After the war people won't stand for the divisions that existed before 1939.”

“Oh yes? Why? Why not?”

I waited until we could cross the road at Devonshire Place. I had never seen so many taxis.

“There'll be big changes, once the fighting is over—you'll see. Everyone, from all walks of life, has given his or her all in this war. We can't go back to the way it was beforehand. People will want equal access to doctors and hospitals, equal access to schools, equal access to everything. And they'll deserve it.”

She squeezed my arm again. “A politician as well as a demon lover—I'm impressed.”

I stopped, turned towards her, and kissed the top of her head, savoured her smell. “You don't have to be a politician to see what's going on around you. Wars
do
that, shake things up—kill off bad old ideas and bring in new ones.”

“What will happen to SC2 after the war?”

“We'll be disbanded, I suppose,” I said. “MI6 don't like us: we're competition. They'll want us out of the way once peace returns.”

“And people will never know we existed? Is that what's going to happen?”

“It's possible,” I said, nodding. “If you have children, after the war is over, you can never tell them what you did.”

She didn't say anything for a moment. We had turned off Marylebone Street into Harley Street, where the shadows were growing longer. Doctors here still wore their traditional uniform of striped trousers, black jackets, and waistcoats, and some had bowler hats. Taxis were setting them down and picking them up.

“Now,” I said, breathing out and clearing my throat. “It's your birthday next week—”

“How did you know that?” she cried, turning to me.

“I saw your file, remember? At The Farm.”

“Yes, it's true. I can't help it.”

“I've got you a gift, but it has to be secret.”

“Oh yes? I love secrets—when I know them.”

“Yes. I've bought some petrol on the black market. I thought I could bring the Lagonda out of mothballs and take you to see your mother.”

She squeezed my arm. “That's very sweet, Matt. But there's a problem.”

“There
is
?”

“Yes. Knowing my birthday was coming up, I wrote to my mother, and she wrote back. She sent the letter to my digs and I only got it yesterday, when the girl who would have been my flatmate if I'd stayed in Wembley brought the letter into the political course.”

I frowned. “And that's a problem because…?”

“My mother lives in Blakeney, on the Norfolk coast—and she told me in her last letter that, from the Wash to the Bristol Channel—all around the southern coasts of England—only authorised personnel, and registered locals, are allowed within ten miles of the sea. It's a precaution so that any German spies stand out more clearly. And that means we can't visit her. She could come up to London, but we wouldn't need the Lagonda for that.”

I felt angry with myself. “Yes, of course. I should have spotted that.” I thought for a moment. “Or…we could meet your mother somewhere just outside the exclusion zone?”

She shook her head. “Would that work? It would be expensive, don't you think? Would local taxis have petrol for that—for something so trivial and not war-related? Rationing is tight.”

I was silent, thinking.

“I know what would be a perfect birthday present.” She squeezed my arm.

“What?”

“Why don't we visit
your
mother? She's nowhere near the coast, is she?”

“No, she's in Malvern. We
could
go there. Don't you want to see your own mother before you go abroad?”

“Yes, yes, I do, of course. But I think it will be easier if she takes a train and comes up to London.”

“Are you sure? I thought…I thought my idea would be perfect for you, but I admit I had forgotten about the coastal exclusion zone.”

She squeezed my arm again. “This way, we'll have the best of both worlds, and see both mothers.” She bit her lip. “I'm sorry what I said earlier, about doubting you. I shouldn't have said it—I shouldn't even have thought it.”

I took my turn in squeezing her arm. “You have no cause to doubt me—I promise.”

We looked across the street, to where a young woman was wheeling a pram. A young boy was riding a three-wheeled bicycle alongside her. As
we watched, he almost rode off the kerb into the road, and his mother pulled him back and slapped him across the neck, shouting, “Brian! If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times—be-
have
!”

Madeleine winced and breathed, “If we…If you and I carry on the way we just did, in bed I mean, and I get pregnant…what then? Would you like children, Matt?”

I gave a throaty chuckle, but didn't answer her directly. “If you and I carry on the way we just did, as you put it, for much longer, it will be a miracle if you
don't
get pregnant in that time. Which would be good in a way, because we wouldn't send you out into the field if you were pregnant. But…and don't take this the wrong way…If it should emerge, when you're in France, that you
are
pregnant, we can always bring you home. In fact, we'd insist on it.” I looked down at her. “You know the statistics as well as I do, Madeleine. The chances are evens that you won't last—”

“Don't keep saying that!” Madeleine dug her nails into my arm. “Of course I know the bloody
sta-tis-tics
! You don't forget your chances of dying.”

We walked on for a few steps. Zola was straining at his lead. And he was panting, getting thirsty. At Park Crescent, we turned for home and crossed over the main road.

Madeleine squeezed my arm once more. “Forget the statistics, Matt. I will either survive or I won't. Answer my question—would you like children, a son maybe?”

“In theory, I'd like children,” I said at length. Nodding across the road towards the young mother with the pram, I added, “I'm not sure I want
that
sort of children.”

“You're not allowed to choose your children,” she replied. “Whoever arrives, arrives.”

“What about you?” I said.

“How do you know I haven't got some already?” she answered. “I'm old enough.”

“That's true,” I said. “But if you had, you would surely have mentioned him or her—or them—by now.”

She paused. Then, “I'd like
your
children,” she said softly. “I can't say that about every man I meet.”

For much of my adult life, there'd been a war on. Before that, I'd been in the army preparing for a war that might happen. Children had not loomed
large in my concerns. But now…could I see Madeleine as a mother, myself as a father?

“I think I could get used to the idea of a daughter, more easily than a son.”

She chuckled. “Why do you say that?”

“I'm not sure. I have a sister. I think she's nicer than me. More responsible, she thinks of others more, remembers birthdays and things like that.”

“Maybe I'll meet her one day, if I make it through.”

“Yes, I'd like that. You'd get on with Alice, I think.”

It hit me then. It had been hovering about for a while but it hit me that evening. That if Madeleine didn't make it through, my own life now was going to be…almost as badly damaged as hers would be. I would survive physically, yes, but…No, no point in going down that road until…unless it arrived.

We were passing Marylebone Station now, with its ornate glass and wrought-iron forecourt. Ahead of us the pavement was blocked. There were wooden barriers, painted red and white, two policemen, with dogs, a heap of rubble and a group of men looking into a crater in the ground. One of the policemen was moving towards us but I recognized the signs and knew what was happening, what had happened.

“Let's cross back over the road,” I said quickly to Madeleine. “It's an unexploded bomb.”

I led the way into the road, waving to the traffic so it slowed. “If they thought it was about to go off, we'd have been kept much further away. But we're safer on the other side of the road, even so. Come on.”

The traffic lights in Lisson Grove had changed to red and we were able to scuttle across the wide expanse of tarmac. Madeleine picked up Zola and carried him.

“These men earn their wages. There must be unexploded bombs all over London.” She set him down on the sidewalk again.

We walked quickly for a couple of hundred yards.

After a while we slowed. “I should think we are beyond the range of the bomb now,” I murmured.

I reached across and held her hand. “That was a good thing to say, that you would like my children. Look…I'm not very good at this sort of situation. I think I fell for you the first time I saw you, months ago, that night at The Farm. God knows when you fell for me…but it's only in
the last few days that we have…that the slow burn caught fire. So I don't know…are you saying—with what's coming up, all the uncertainty—are you saying you want to get married…is that what's on your mind? You did it once before, after all.”

She didn't reply straightaway.

She stopped, to let Zola inspect the base of a tree.

“It's crossed my mind, of course it has. And yes, it's what I did before. But not this time, Matt. I don't think so. Not because I don't…I like it just the way we are. We haven't known each other long—you're right there…Getting married wouldn't change anything. I thought it would with Philippe, but now I don't think so. We'll either survive the war or we won't. And our feelings will either survive or they won't—marriage won't change that, I don't think so anyway.”

She looked up at me and smiled, her eyes growing rounder. “Look at what happened in
Casablanca
—their love survived but bigger events got in the way, and they both accepted that, and went their separate ways. Remember that famous line, when Bogart says, ‘We'll always have Paris!' Who is to say the same won't happen to us, that events won't intervene? We'll always have Scotland—and now Lisson Grove.” She laughed again. “It's not Paris, exactly, but it's just as much…It has been wonderful, Colonel.” She squeezed my hand. “It still is.”