To Love a Traitor (3 page)

It was enough, however, to shake Roger out of the melancholy slump he’d fallen into, and the next morning he bit the bullet and wrote to the family solicitor enquiring after the possibility of his taking articles at a firm in the capital.

Mr. Venables had always been sympathetic to Roger’s situation. He was a man of strong principles and had confided to Roger at Hugh’s memorial service that, had he been a younger man, his conscience too might have been troubled by the thought of conscription. It had been the only comfort he’d received that day. Mabel, poor girl, had been in no state to comfort anyone else. Accordingly, Mr. Venables wrote to Mr. Forrester, a friend from his days at the Bar, who had a firm in London and who, he judged, might be disposed to oblige him in the matter of a bright young man in need of a position.

Mabel was the first to congratulate Roger over his new place at Forrester & Lindley. They’d met at a tea shop in town, Mabel still in her nurse’s uniform, fresh from her shift at the cottage hospital. Outside, darkness had already fallen, and the windows were steamy. It would be a chilly journey home for both of them, but for now they were warm and snug—a little too warm, in fact, for the place was packed with well-wrapped bodies.

“Won’t you mind starting right at the bottom, working under people who aren’t half so well qualified as you?” Mabel asked bluntly on hearing the news.

Roger swallowed his mouthful of scone. “No, I don’t think so. I’m rather looking forward to having the chance to achieve something by my own efforts.”

“Oh, Roger. Everything you’ve done has been as a result of your own efforts. Well, perhaps not the City job,” she allowed. “Do you think you’ll stick this one?”

“I hope so. At least I’m doing this because I want to, not because I didn’t know what else to do. I mean to say, it was kind of Keighley to put in a word for me like that, but I don’t think the City is really the life for me.”

“No—too ruthless. All those financiers trying to get one over on each other. I shouldn’t like it myself—not that I suppose they’d let a woman set one foot in the door unless she was coming to bring their tea.” Mabel tutted at the ridiculous prejudices of the male of the species.

“You’re probably right. Speaking of which…?” Roger gestured to the pot.

“Please.”

He topped up her cup and his own. “Another scone?”

“No, thank you,” she said firmly, before going on in a lower tone. “What I really want is to know what other news you have for me.”

Roger grimaced. “None at all. I’m beginning to think it must all have been coincidence. And sheer bad luck on Hugh’s part. After all, it’s been months. It can’t have taken Sir Arthur all this time to pull out some files.” Her hand was resting on the table, and Roger covered it with his own. “I’m sorry. I’m really starting to think there may be nothing
to
find out.”

Mabel looked unhappy. “You don’t suppose he thinks I’m just being hysterical, do you?”

“No, of course not. And he certainly wouldn’t think that of me, now would he?” She managed a wan smile. Roger squeezed her hand. “No, you can depend on Sir Arthur. If he hasn’t got back to me with any news, that must mean there is no news to tell. But I will go and see him again when I’m settled in London. I’ve written him about my new job, just as a courtesy, and will let him know my new address.”

“Will you be starting very soon?”

Roger nodded. “The last week in November.”

“Goodness, that
is
soon. Where will you live?”

“I’ll get a room in a cheap hotel until I can find something. If I try to stick it at home any longer, I’ll go mad.” Roger stared into his teacup. “I wish I’d never given up my lodgings in London.”

It was Mabel’s turn to provide a comforting squeeze of the hand. “People can be beastly when they’re miserable. And they never did really appreciate you at home—well, apart from Hugh, of course.”

Roger looked up in amazement. “Hugh? He despised me.”

“No.” Her tone was firm, but then it softened. “Maybe when you were boys, yes. But going to war changed him. I think he even understood you, a little, by the time he…” She broke off, looking down at her plate. “You know, I think I would like that last scone, actually. Would you mind buttering it for me?”

Roger set to, thinking rather wistfully that Mabel must truly have been in love with Hugh to be so blind to the derision with which he’d always regarded Roger. By the time the scone was suitably buttered and topped with the last of the strawberry jam, Mabel had got herself together again.

Chapter Three

Roger’s relief at leaving his parents’ house behind him was tempered by a fair amount of nerves at the thought of settling in at his new office. Mr. Forrester’s letter requesting him to present himself on Monday morning had been a masterpiece of brevity, with no mention of whether he was aware that Roger had been a C.O. in the war. Roger supposed he must be—surely old Venables would have mentioned it at least in passing—but he should have liked to have known for sure.

The offices of Forrester & Lindley were in a narrow, old-fashioned street not far from Lincoln’s Inn. As Roger hesitated by the door, a brace of bewigged barristers, pink-ribboned court briefs in hand, strode importantly past, no doubt on their way to the Law Courts on the Strand. Their gowns fluttered in their wake like the wings of a couple of great bats. One of them sported a particularly fine military moustache, which must have looked very dashing when he was in his khakis but was an unfortunate incongruity with his present attire.

Roger supposed he would become quite familiar with such sights, working here—or at least, he would if he could ever manage to set foot in the place. Time to stop procrastinating. Squaring his shoulders, Roger pushed open the door.

A brief and uncomfortable meeting followed with Mr. Forrester, whose few pronouncements, although delivered in a genial enough tone, were either ambiguous or inaudible or both. Upon escaping from this ordeal, Roger was shown around his new place of work by Miss Smith, the senior typist, who was a tall, spinsterish woman of early middle years and no curves whatsoever. She introduced him first of all to the two younger typists, who greeted him with almost predatory warmth. One was called Miss Pargeter, and the other either Miss Street or Miss Streep—Roger hadn’t liked to ask Miss Smith to repeat the name a third time. He resolved to ask Miss Pargeter to do his typing until such time as he might be able to find out for sure.

Miss Smith then took him up the stairs to show him where he would be working.

“Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Phillips?” she said, ushering Roger through the door. “This is our new clerk, Mr. Cottingham.”

As an articled clerk, Roger didn’t rate an office of his own, nor had he expected to. He was to share a room with two other men, both in various stages of learning how to be a solicitor. And both of them more senior than he was.

The nearer of the two, a thickset young man with dark hair, stood to offer his hand. From the grunt of difficulty and the walking stick hooked over his desk, he was either lame or had a tin leg. “Albert Mitchell.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Roger said hurriedly, shaking his hand.

“Hmph. Well, as long as you don’t spout socialism all day, I’m sure we’ll get along fine.” Mitchell sat down again and bent his head back to his work, courtesies duly observed.

Roger blinked, wondering why on earth the man would think him a socialist.

In the far corner of the room, a sandy-haired fellow with thick spectacles looked up from a sheaf of documents he’d been trying to persuade to lie flat on his desk. They immediately curled back up at the sides as if eager to be tied up once more with the pink ribbon that lay beside them. “Pleased to meet you. Wait a minute—don’t I know you?” He peered at Roger’s face for a moment, then smiled and nodded. “Winchester, am I right?”

“Ah…” Roger wanted to swallow, but his mouth was suddenly far too dry. “Actually, I was at Eton.”

“Not talking about the school you went to. I’m right, aren’t I? Course I am. Phillips, Fred Phillips—I spent two and a half years in Winchester. On and off, as you might say. I remember you. One day you was there, and the next you wasn’t. What happened, then? Did they get you in the end?”

Roger frowned. Now he thought about it, the man did look familiar, although there was something different… “You didn’t use to wear spectacles?”

Phillips snorted. “Broke ’em, din’t they? Nasty, vindictive lot, those imperialist army bas—begging your pardon, Miss Smith, those army fellows. Near on every time they sent me back to barracks, it happened again. Spectacles
off
. Apply
foot
. Ten-
shun
! Never broke me, though, and that’s a fact. So go on, where’d you end up?”

Mitchell raised his head briefly. “Oh, leave the man alone. Not everyone’s proud of their penal servitude.”

“Not everyone’s got a right to be proud, but Mr. Cottingham and me, we was martyrs for the cause of peace. Prisoners of conscience. Still, it’s an ill wind, I always say. Never would have took up law if it hadn’t been for all that time in prison.” Phillips nodded. “Anyhow, I’m pleased to welcome a fellow objector to the firm. You’ll fit right in, I’ve no doubt. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Just as Mitchell had, he bent his head once more to his papers.

Roger didn’t quite know where to look. He supposed it was inevitable his past as a C.O. would come out in his new place of work—but not even in his most pessimistic moments had he thought it would be within the first half hour.

Miss Smith took pity on him. “Mr. Cottingham? We should finish the tour. Are you quite all right?” she asked in a low whisper once the door had closed behind them. “You’ve gone rather pale.”

“I…wasn’t really expecting that,” he said weakly.

She laughed. “Mr. Phillips? No, most people don’t expect him. I think Mr. Forrester’s idea is that he’ll be good for the less well-off of our clients. More approachable. And you mustn’t worry that people will look down on you here for being a conscientious objector,” she added, piercing to the heart of Roger’s concerns. “Mr. Forrester made his views about tolerance and respect for every man’s convictions quite plain during the war, so anyone who didn’t agree with him has had ample time to find a new position.”

Good God. Had the man sent a memorandum to all staff detailing Roger’s past? He almost asked it aloud but changed his question at the last minute. “Mr. Mitchell—I couldn’t help noticing his leg. Did he serve? He, ah, didn’t seem to take offence at what Mr. Phillips said about the army.”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t. Mr. Mitchell was a Flying Corps man. He was hit by shrapnel and spent the last year of the war in a prisoner of war camp, poor man. But he says it’s made him more sympathetic to pacifists, not less. He probably won’t say that to
you
, of course, but you mustn’t mind his manner. Give him a month or two to warm up to you. And try not to be browbeaten by Mr. Phillips’s polemic. He’s forever hoping to convert the rest of us to his high ideals, but to give him his due, he doesn’t lose faith when we prove resistant.”

“That’s rather a relief. I was worried he saw in me a kindred spirit, but I’m afraid my political leanings, if I have any, aren’t really in that direction. You know,” Roger went on after a moment, “I’m surprised he didn’t get a medical exemption from service. With spectacles as thick as those, his eyesight must be dreadful.”

Miss Smith’s expression became pinched. “It may well have been a great deal better before the war. I’m afraid he strained his eyes terribly, poor boy, doing without his spectacles in prison. And of course, he
would
keep reading his law books while he was there.”

The more Roger heard other C.O.s’ stories, the more he felt he had nothing to complain of. “I only spent a year in gaol, you know,” he admitted. “After that, I was doing war work in London. The absolutists had a much rougher time of it.”

“I’m only glad,” Miss Smith said thoughtfully and with odd deliberation, “that my son was too young to fight. I shouldn’t have liked him to go through what your generation did.”

Roger started. “I’m so sorry—I’ve been addressing you incorrectly all morning. I thought you said your name was
Miss
Smith.”

“It is,” she said coolly, looking him straight in the eye.

Good God, Roger thought a touch hysterically. A brace of conchies and an unmarried mother—what next? Would the tea lady turn out to be a former brothel madame fallen upon hard times, and the messenger boys, Piccadilly renters? He took a deep breath. “And what does your son do now?”

“Mr. Forrester was kind enough to give him a job here,” she said with a smile. “As a messenger boy,” she added, apparently oblivious to the moment of exquisite discomfort Roger experienced on the reflection that he might quite easily have inadvertently blurted out his unfortunate—ridiculous—suppositions.

Roger breathed a silent prayer of thanks to whichever guardian angel had the morning watch on his tongue.

After a long day of desperately trying to absorb all the new information that was continually thrown at him, Roger was really quite inordinately glad to be walking back to his hotel just off Charing Cross Road. Not that the welcome there was particularly warm or the surroundings particularly cheering—the place was of that sort best described as shabby genteel, and the majority of his fellow guests were no-longer-young ladies of straitened means—but at least he could close his door and have some blessed peace and quiet.

He was glad, though, he’d taken this step. The first week or so in the Admiralty had been equally trying, but he’d found his niche there and rather thought he would manage to do the same in Forrester & Lindley.

Phillips had proved surprisingly easygoing about Roger’s lack of any particular socialist leanings. Mitchell too, on hearing Roger’s confession that he simply couldn’t face the thought of killing a man, had merely grunted, “Then you’d have been a bloody waste of space on a battlefield—better off staying out of it, in my view.”

As he’d promised Mabel, Roger had written to Sir Arthur to let him know his new temporary address. No longer expecting much from that quarter, he was surprised to receive a reply almost by return of post. It was neatly typed, wished him well in his new job and—curiously—exhorted him not to do anything about finding lodgings, as “I may shortly have something in that line to offer. Yours, Sir Arthur Walmesley (pp S. Pendleton).” There was absolutely nothing relating to Hugh’s death.

Damn it. Should Roger have mentioned the name that had come up in Mabel’s conversations with the men, after all? But no. If there had been anything to find out about Matthew Connaught, Sir Arthur would have found it, forewarned or no.

That was that, then. The trail, if it even existed, was cold. Roger didn’t relish the prospect of writing to Mabel to tell her so—might as well wait until he’d actually spoken with Sir Arthur, in any case. Still, it was kind of the old man to offer to help him find digs. It’d save him a vast deal of bother, and might even mean he’d get the place at an advantageous rent.

Two weeks went by, and Roger was starting to wonder if he should send Sir Arthur a polite enquiry about the lodgings. But when he got back to his hotel on Friday night, he found a telegram waiting for him, inviting him to an appointment with Sir Arthur the following morning.