Time and Time Again (35 page)

It was Cassie, of course. Cassie and the children waiting for him.

In the light at the end of the tunnel.

Why was he surprised? It was
just
like those people on morning TV shows who talked about near-death experiences said it was.

Cassie was saying something to him. He wanted to shout back that he had given up smoking. But Cassie had an Irish accent. She was speaking with Bernadette’s voice. Why would that be? And what was she saying?

Mitte
.

Why was Cassie saying Mitte? In Bernadette’s voice?

‘Mitte!’ Bernadette was saying. ‘Mitte! Have you any idea how many blooming apartment rental businesses there are in Mitte?’

He opened his eyes, experiencing suddenly a blessed and unfamiliar clarity. He blinked and blinked again to master his blurred vision and focused on the sweet face hovering nearby. The slightly freckled nose, the slightly uneven teeth. She was talking to him.

‘I visited fourteen before I found yours and each one I had to flutter my eyelids and pretend to be a poor helpless Irish colleen before they’d check their list of tenants. Still I got there in the end and I’ve been sneaking one of those funny things into your tummy ever since. I’ve had to tell them we’re engaged so they let me sit. And I pay, of course, money always talks …’

The sensation of not being delirious was very strange.

‘How long?’ he whispered.

She actually physically jumped. ‘My God!’ she said. ‘Is that you, Hugh? Are you back in the land of the living?’

‘How long, Bernie?’

‘Since you sent me to get your marvellous medicine?’ she replied. ‘Four days.’

He drifted away again for a little while and this time when he opened his eyes he felt that they would stay open. Bernadette had saved his life.

It took another week for him to get strong enough to leave and during that time Bernadette stayed with him through all of each day, leaving only in the evening. Of course, she was more intrigued about him than ever.

‘Hugh. What
was
that stuff in the funny little needles?’ she whispered many times. ‘The doctors are just stunned; they’d presumed the blood poisoning would kill you. I haven’t told them anything but it was damned hard shoving the things into you when they weren’t looking. I do think you owe me an explanation.’

‘It’s a new medicine, Bernie,’ he replied, ‘in its very early stages. They call it antibiotics,’ was all he could tell her.

But they had plenty else to talk about.

The situation in Germany was deteriorating by the day and as Stanton sat up in bed sipping soup and gathering strength, Bernadette brought him up to date on a country gone crazy.

‘They imposed martial law on the morning after the assassination,’ she explained, ‘plus a month of official mourning, so it was actually incredibly hard for me even to get into the country. The borders are pretty much closed now, certainly to Germans trying to get out, and there have been
thousands
of arrests, I mean it,
tens
of thousands, in fact. It’s pretty terrible. They’re basically using the excuse to destroy the political opposition. The army’s in control and thinks it’s got a mandate to deal with absolutely everybody it hates, which is pretty much everyone except themselves. The SPD has been banned and all the trade unions have been raided and shut down. Loads of their people are being sent away to God knows where, some sort of prison camps, it seems. There are troops and police absolutely everywhere, the whole city’s like an armed fortress. Also, for some reason they keep linking the Jews in with it all. The newspapers are convinced that socialism is a particularly Jewish idea, which I don’t follow at all, but anyway there have been lots of attacks.’

‘Official attacks?’ Stanton asked.

‘No, not
actually
official, just the mob, but I can’t say as the police have been overzealous in intervening. The poor old Jews keep swearing undying loyalty to the Crown and trying to look even more conservative than the army but it’s not doing them any good. Honestly, I thought pogroms were a Russian problem. I didn’t think they could happen in a civilized country. And speaking of Russia, the Tsar seems to have gone completely mad too. He’s announced
three months
of mourning for his “beloved cousin Willy”. He’s closed the Duma, arrested most of the deputies,
executed
some of them, and the Cossacks are thundering about the country sabring every Jew and Democrat they can find. Between Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Willy the Third, half of Europe seems to be under the control of paranoid murderous lunatics.’

‘Rosa Luxemburg predicted this,’ Stanton said.

‘Well, she was right.’

‘She believes the assassination was a reactionary plot to deal with the Left once and for all.’

‘Well, of course it is! Everybody with any sense at all has worked that out. What else could it possibly be?’ Bernadette said vehemently. ‘Why would any real Socialist have done this? This has got to be a plot. I’m not saying it was
official
but the army’s behind this for sure. Kaiser Bill just wasn’t war-like enough for them. It’s no coincidence they did him in while he was opening some tram lines. They gain so much from this and the Left loses everything.’

It really
was
a credible theory. A bloody sight more credible than the truth.

Stanton thought about Apis and the Black Hand. They were army officers but that hadn’t stopped them killing their own monarch for the greater good of Serbia. And of course military coups had been a major feature of his own twentieth century. History had almost lost count of the times army generals in RayBan sunglasses had bumped off legitimate heads of state.

‘It’ll calm down in the end,’ Stanton said.

‘I hope so.’

They were talking on the day Stanton was scheduled to leave hospital. His wound would still require care while it healed fully but the infection and blood poisoning had gone completely, to the utter astonishment of the doctors. From time to time they would put their heads round the door and shake them in disbelief.

‘It’s been wonderful of you to do all this, Bernie,’ Stanton said. ‘You know I would have died if you hadn’t come.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ she said. ‘And if I hadn’t gone and got whatever it is you made me get.’

‘I can’t believe that you just dropped your life and came to find me … it’s very sweet.’

‘Well, I don’t know what life you think it is I’ve dropped, Hugh. I’m the original bored and pointless rich girl. Like most of my class, highly educated for absolutely nothing.’

‘But the struggle? Women’s rights? That’s what you were going back for. When we parted, in Vienna.’

‘I’m afraid that’s all gone a bit by the wayside at the moment. The Ulster Crisis has just taken over
everything
and most women have forgotten about sex solidarity in order to take sides on that. You’ve no idea how violent things have—’

‘Bernie,’ Stanton interrupted, reaching over and taking her hand, ‘when I was delirious and you were talking to me, you said a lot of stuff about yourself and your feelings …’

Suddenly he was aware that he didn’t want to talk about politics at all. The subject had never interested him very much. He wanted to talk about her.

‘Oh that,’ she said, reddening into one of her delightful blushes. ‘I was just sort of trying to keep you going really. Prattling away. It was probably a good thing you were delirious, otherwise you might have died of boredom before your little needles could get you better!’

He squeezed her hand a little more firmly.

‘I
think
I remember you telling me that you had been thinking about me and that you wanted to see me again. Was that just prattling?’

For a moment she looked away, staring nervously at the coverlet. Playing with it with her free hand. Then she looked Stanton in the eye.

‘Yes, well, perhaps I did say that but it’s all rubbish, isn’t it? What with all that emotional baggage you lug around inside that mysterious big locked bag of yours. And the way you shot off like a startled cat first thing in the morning in Vienna.’

Stanton tried to say something but she went on.

‘No, no, I didn’t mind. That was our agreement and you stuck to it and I had a lovely breakfast on our balcony before walking out with my head held high. So don’t worry, Mr Stanton, I haven’t come here expecting you to fall in love with me in exchange for playing nursemaid. To be honest I was happy just to be out of Ireland. It isn’t much fun at all at the moment, or Britain in general for that matter. I mean, it’s not like here, we’re not arresting whole classes of people, but there are still plenty of troops on the streets.’

Stanton had wanted to continue talking about her. To tell her that she was wrong and that he had been thinking about her every day since Vienna. But this news took him back completely.

‘Troops? On the streets? In
Britain
?’

‘Goodness, of course you don’t know, do you? We’ve been so busy talking about Germany I’d forgotten to say what’s been going on at home. It’s all happened in the last few days. Ever since Mr Churchill was killed.’

For a moment Stanton actually choked on his soup.

‘Churchill?’ he spluttered. ‘Killed? In 1914?’

‘Of course in 1914, what other year would it be? It was the most terrible thing. He was addressing a public meeting about Home Rule. His usual line, saying that it was treason for the Tories to threaten to support the army in resisting the law by force. Which, of course, it damn well would be. And then somebody shot him dead.’

‘Somebody?’

‘An Ulsterman, a Unionist. The man didn’t try to hide. He was proud of it. Said it was Mr Churchill who was the traitor for trying to break up the United Kingdom and that he was a patriot defending the King’s realm. You can imagine that the country’s in uproar and not all on Mr Churchill’s side either. I can tell you a lot of people are calling the murderer a hero. Meanwhile Ireland’s gone berserk. Bombs. Riots. Armed Republicans openly on the streets in Dublin.’

Stanton felt cold. He actually felt tears welling up in his eyes.

‘Hugh? Are you all right? You’re shaking. I mean, I know it’s dreadful news but there are plenty of people calling for calm too …’

Stanton lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.

‘Bernie, you don’t understand. Churchill was
essential
. He saved us—’

‘Saved us? From what? He’d got the fleet up to speed certainly, but fat lot of good that’ll do anyone since everyone’s far too busy tearing apart their own country to fight anybody else’s. Look, I liked him myself, he was brave over Ireland and by no means the worst man in government on Suffrage, but he was just a Cabinet minister. What do you mean, he saved us?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Stanton replied, pulling himself together. ‘I just think he might have been destined for even greater things, that’s all. Who knows, it may be that great things won’t be required.’

‘I’m afraid I think they will be. Everyone in the whole country is at each other’s throats. Carson’s men have taken control in Belfast with their hundred thousand rifles and the army’s
refusing
to go in and sort them out. This isn’t the men, mind, it’s the generals! I think the way the military is acting here in Germany is giving them ideas. Some regiments have actually issued statements saying they won’t enforce Irish Home Rule whatever the law says. It seems to be only the King’s personal intervention that’s stopped them marching on Westminster. So you can imagine that nobody’s bothering much about women’s votes at present. Quite frankly, it’s beginning to look like there might not even
be
a parliament for women to vote
for
. So you see I was really quite happy to give it all up for a bit and come here and play Florence Nightingale. There’s more to life than politics, eh? I mean, one does have to
have
a life, after all. Well, I do … but perhaps you don’t want one. Or do you?’

‘Yes, Bernie,’ he said, now taking her hand in both of his. ‘I do want to have a life. I want it very much.’

The following day Stanton settled his bill, thanked the doctors, who were still shaking their heads in wonder, and left the hospital. With Bernadette’s help, he made his way down the massive steps of the hospital and into a taxi.

On entering his apartment he had expected to find empty bottles and rotten bread and cheese on the table where he had left his supper on the night of the Kaiser’s death. Instead the place had been cleaned; fresh food had been put on the shelf and fresh flowers on the table. The bed had been made with clean sheets and the window opened to air.

‘Surprise!’ Bernadette said. ‘
Slightly
against my principles to clean up after a man but since you still have a bullet hole in your stomach I thought I’d make an exception.’

Glancing across the room Stanton noticed bags in the corner that weren’t his. Bags he’d last seen in a hotel room in Vienna.

Those bags must have been empty because all of Bernadette’s clothes were on hangers in the cupboard.

‘Bit presumptuous?’ she asked.

‘No, not at all,’ he assured her.

‘Well, you’re obviously going to need a nurse for a bit while that wound heals properly so I thought it might as well be me. But, honestly, I can pack up and go again just as easily if you—’

He turned to her, took her in his arms and kissed her.

‘Come to bed,’ he breathed through the kisses that she was returning.

‘What about your stomach? The wound?’ she gasped.

‘I’ll risk it.’

‘For heaven’s sake, don’t burst your stitches. You just lie flat on your back and let me make all the effort.’

FOR THE FOLLOWING
week Stanton remained in the little apartment speedily regaining his strength. Bernadette shopped for him and cooked for him and cared for him and every night they made love.

And it was love. Stanton knew that. He was in love with another woman. Something he’d never imagined was possible.

Bernadette sensed his guilt.

‘You feel like you’ve betrayed your wife, don’t you?’ she said in the small hours of one morning, sitting up in bed smoking her post-coital cigarette.