The Wayward Wife (17 page)

‘That,' Susan said, ‘is none of your business.'

‘Probably not,' Basil conceded. ‘But I don't want him upping sticks right now. You know how listeners are. They love a familiar voice, a voice they feel they can trust. Why is he suffering?'

‘He thinks he should be in France.'

‘Well, we can't send him to France.'

‘He knows that,' Susan said. ‘He hates not being there, though. His colleague, Slocum, is on the ground covering momentous events for the
Post
. Bob feels he's missing out.'

‘Slocum, I assume, has neutral status.'

‘An American Press Association card, yes,' Susan said. ‘Even if Robert did manage to sneak across the Channel, chances are he'd be rumbled and thrown out on his ear.'

‘Rumbled?'

‘Denounced as an agent of the BBC.'

‘If he keeps referring to Marshall Pétain as Hitler's lickspittle and taking sideswipes at the new government in Vichy he'd be lucky if he wasn't shot,' Basil said. ‘I'm giving him all the rope I can without the ministry jumping on me.'

‘I'm sure Bob understands that,' Susan said. ‘But it really makes his blood boil to think of German tanks driving up the Champs-Élysées and Nazi officers lounging at café tables sipping Pernod while the French dance meekly to the Führer's tune.'

‘I wouldn't go so far as to call it meekly,' Basil said. ‘There are those in our government who regard it as a necessary capitulation. If Robert is eager to be on the ground floor when momentous events take place I suggest he stays put in London.'

‘Do you think we're next?'

‘Of course, we're next,' Basil said. ‘Who else is left?'

Susan was well aware that there was more to Bob's dark moods than the absence of a free pass to the Continent.

He hadn't forgiven her for her coolness when Danny had barged in on them. Lunch-hour lovemaking might have ceased but at least he hadn't broken off with her. Late-night, after-work suppers at the Lansdowne invariably wound up in Bob's bed where he took her so forcefully that she couldn't be sure if he was pleasuring or punishing her.

The Lansdowne was buzzing at all hours of the day and night. Foreign journalists expelled from France, Canadian flyers, soldier boys and assorted camp followers packed every room. Raucous parties went on into the wee small hours and the only peaceful spot in the building at present was Pete Slocum's suite, for, with Pete out of town, Bob had the apartment to himself. When any of Pete's cronies turned up looking for booze or a place to sleep Bob gave them short shrift and even friends and colleagues whom he'd known for years were turned away.

Bob was already at work when Susan wakened.

The bedroom door was open and she could make out the clacking of typewriter keys from the living room. She groped for the travelling alarm and peered at the dial in the scant light that escaped the blackout curtains.

It was not yet seven.

The valet wouldn't appear for another hour.

She knew without opening the curtains that it would be another hot day. She was weary of glaring sunlight and enamelled blue skies, of dusty streets and suffocating rooms, of restless nights and sticky sheets; weary too of her husband's silence and her lover's hostility. She climbed from the bed, peeled off her nightdress, put on her dressing gown and headed for the bathroom. She had all the symptoms of an approaching period but it was five or six days late.

Bob was still going at it hammer and tongs when she came out of the bathroom. The curtains were open and a carpet of sunlight stretched down the length of the hall. She wrapped the dressing gown about her, stepped into the kitchen, filled a kettle and put it on the gas ring then went purposefully into the living room.

Bob was crouched over a typewriter balanced on a side table close to the open window. He wore flannels and an under-vest, no socks or shoes. His hair was rumpled and a cigarette hung, shedding ash, from the corner of his mouth. A packet of paper was tucked under the rungs of his chair. A whisky glass, doubling as a paperweight, held down finished sheets and carbons.

‘How goes it?' Susan said.

He took his fingers from the keys but did not look up.

‘It goes well.'

‘Is it something for the
Post
, or for us?'

He ground the cigarette into an ashtray, picked a fleck of tobacco from his tongue then sat back and stretched his arms above his head. ‘I doubt if it's Basil's cup of tea,' he said, ‘and it's way too long for radio. I'll probably trim it for the
Post.
'

‘What's the subject?'

‘It doesn't really have a subject.' He paused. ‘Well, I guess it does. It's Paris, Paris the way I remember it, the way it used to be, the way it was last time I saw it.'

‘That sounds – romantic.'

He looked up. ‘Romantic? Paris was never romantic. It was lovely, yeah, a beautiful city but it was always a tough place to make your mark or, worse, fail to make your mark. I'm not sentimental about it.'

‘Will you look back on your time in London and write about it too some day?'

‘I'm not quitting,' Bob said, ‘if that's what you mean, if that's what Basil's worried about.'

‘Why are you mad at me?' Susan said. ‘It's not my fault you can't go back to Paris.'

‘Paris has nothing to do with it. Fact is, I don't like being used. If you want out of your marriage, Susan, all you have to do is say so. You didn't have to subject me to that humiliating charade.'

She seated herself on the ledge below the window and felt a little draught of cool air tickle her spine.

‘I had no idea Danny would walk in on us,' she said. ‘I didn't enjoy it any more than you did.'

‘You sure knew how to handle it, though.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Look, it's too early to argue. Besides, I'm beat.'

‘I'll make coffee as soon as the kettle boils.'

‘When are you due?'

‘What?' she said, startled. ‘How did …'

‘At Portland Place?'

‘Oh!' she said. ‘That! Eight thirty.'

He tilted the chair round to face her, an arm slung across the chair back. ‘What did you think I meant?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Are you late?'

‘No, but I'd better keep moving.'

‘Susan, are you late?'

‘Only a little. Nothing to worry about.'

‘How little is a little? A week, a month?'

‘Four or five days. It's happened before.'

The kettle had no whistle on the spout but when it boiled it rattled on the ring. She could hear it rattling now. He caught her arm before she could make for the door.

‘Is this another of your goddamned games?' He mimicked her voice. ‘‘‘Oh, darling, I'd like you to meet my husband.”'

‘I didn't call you “darling”.'

‘You sure as all hell wanted your poor schmuck of a husband to know we were screwing.'

‘He'll get over it.'

‘Is that what you're counting on? If you can't have me, you'll settle for him. Is that how it goes? Now this, this maybe-I-am, maybe-I'm-not crap. If there is a kid in your belly you know and I know and your poor schmuck of a husband knows whose kid it has to be. I've been down this route before. My duplicitous wife taught me exactly what it means to be the guy on the losing end. Your husband and I aren't competing with each other, Susan; we're competing with you.'

‘Robert, I'm sorry.'

‘For me? Don't be.' He pulled the chair against the table, ratcheted up the paper to read what he'd written, and began typing again. ‘Go make coffee. Go on, make coffee.'

She hesitated for a moment then headed for the hall.

On the day of the French surrender ‘the legionnaires', male and female, had wept. Since then there had been hardly a moment of respite for Wood Norton's monitors as they struggled to keep up with the pandemonium from the Occupied Zone.

Extra staff had not materialised and at a Monitors' Meeting, supervised by Mr Gregory, there had been a heated discussion of the need for a firm division between day and night shifts now that so many foreign stations were being watched continuously. So far, no improvements had come into effect. Russian and Spanish speakers with a smattering of German did their best to plug the gap but the burden fell on Kate and her cohorts who, deprived of fresh air as well as sleep, had the haggard, hollow-eyed look of front-line troops.

Mid-afternoon and as hot as a baker's oven in the listening hut: Kate had eaten nothing since
5
a.m. Mrs Pell had insisted on cooking breakfast, though Kate was too groggy to do it justice. Griff had donated her use of a bicycle while Danny and he shared the other. Luck had been on her side that morning. An early service bus had come by and, bike and all, she'd bundled in with Hogsnorton's other bleary-eyed civilians to begin another interminable stint on the headphones.

The pencils in Kate's tray were bitten at the ends, a habit less detrimental to health than chewing on an unlit pipe, sucking boiled sweets or puffing one cigarette after another. She knew she was fraying at the edges, though, when she stumbled over several easy phrases and mistook a quotation from Goethe for a report on the weather in Hamburg.

She was on the point of declaring herself too tired to go on when a friendly hand closed on her shoulder and a mug of tea and a plate of tinned salmon sandwiches appeared at her elbow.

‘Chin up, my little chickadee,' said Griff. ‘It'll soon be Christmas.' Then he planted a kiss on top of her head and hastened back to the editing hut.

The best fires, Ronnie had learned, were not necessarily the biggest. The one he'd enjoyed most had been a small but smoky affair in the attic room of a spindly tenement at the far end of Dockside Road. Mercifully there had been no loss of life unless you counted the two budgerigars who'd died of fright when Clary Knotts, brandishing an axe, had snatched up their cage and carried it down one of the ladders that were supposed to be off-limits to auxiliary firemen.

Ronnie had been first into the building. He'd charged up four flights of stairs and, following procedure to the letter, had got down on his belly and opened the garret door an inch or two in case the draught created a searing blast of heat.

At this point in the proceedings an old lady, clad only in a big pair of floral bloomers and obviously deficient in any knowledge of the chemistry of combustion, had yanked open the door and, using Ron's head as a stepping stone, had gone leaping down the stairs, wailing like a banshee.

Somewhat dazed, Ron had groped his way into the acrid smoke that the old lady's husband had managed to generate using nothing but a frying pan, a blanket and a bolster. First he'd dived for the stove and switched off the gas, then, aware that saving life was his priority, he'd smacked the frying pan from the old boy's grasp and, grabbing the smouldering blanket, had smothered the burning fat with it.

Unfortunately, this action had released another cloud of thick smoke that had poured through the half-open window and prompted Mr Reilly, the Station Officer, to order the building cleared; an order that, unfortunately, came too late for Clary Knotts, who had already hooked his ladder to the window ledge and clambered into the garret to rescue the hysterical budgerigars.

It had all been a huge joke to the rank and file, not so funny for the Station Officer who'd been on the carpet before the Divisional Commander and had, in turn, read the riot act to the ill-disciplined Oxmoor Road auxiliaries and put Ron and Clary on extra duties as a punishment for insubordination.

At first telling Breda thought the story hilarious. When Ron repeated the tale she found it less amusing and by the third or fourth recounting saw nothing in it to laugh about, for it had finally dawned on her that Ron's job was dangerous.

She was beginning to realise that there was more to this war than evacuations and rationing, gas masks, identity cards and stupid laws that could see an innocent woman imprisoned. Therefore, she wasn't entirely surprised when Steve Millar, minus motorcar, appeared at the school gate one morning in early July dressed in a pair of old grey flannels and an open-neck shirt.

‘Spare me a minute, Breda?' he said.

‘Sure,' she said. ‘What's up now?'

He put an arm about her, a big, muscular arm and, while the other wives watched askance, gave her a cuddle.

‘It's your old man,' he said. ‘They grabbed your old man.'

Breda's mouth went dry. ‘Where?'

‘Brighton.'

‘What was he doin' in Brighton?'

‘Hidin' out while he waited for papers.'

‘Oh!' Breda said. ‘Is he in jail?'

Steve still had an arm about her and, slipping it to her waist, steered her away from the nosey women to a quiet corner by an ARP hut. He stopped by a pile of spilled sandbags that no one had seen fit to remove and gave her a cigarette. Breda shakily guided the ciggie to her mouth and let Steve light it.

‘Look,' he said, ‘nobody knows where Leo is. All we can say for sure is the coppers scooped him up in Brighton along with a gang of fakers. They nailed Harry King too, nailed him good an' proper.'

‘In Brighton?'

‘No, in London,' Steve informed her. ‘Best guess is your old man handed the coppers Harry on a plate. They'll have Harry up on criminal charges, which means a jury trial with sworn witnesses, including me an' Vince. The boys in blue don't want no fuss right now so they've given me an' Vince a choice: enlist or be arrested. They reckon Vince an' me will look more convincing front of a jury if we're in uniform. Better a soldier than a convict, right?'

‘What about my daddy? Where's he?'

‘Chances are they've interned him or maybe deported him to somewhere like Quebec.'