Authors: Stephen Benatar
“In some ways, you see, Bill was fairly old-fashioned. March 31
st
was the day on which he asked me to marry him. But before we could become
officially
engaged, he said he would like to do the thing properly … and that meant asking my father for his permission. But when I first dropped a hint to Daddy—such a hint that he guessed at once why Bill was wanting to meet him—he proved unexpectedly stubborn. No getting married until the end of the war! And aren’t appearances deceptive: Bill’s father wasn’t stubborn in the least! Was all for getting in touch with his solicitor immediately, to draw up a marriage settlement!”
As Sybella finished, she was smiling very faintly. Nostalgically.
“A marriage settlement?” I said. “Aren’t marriage settlements a bit old-fashioned, too?”
“Oh, yes.” She gave a nod. “And I know just what you’re thinking.
Like father, like son
. A chip off the old block!”
“I’m not sure that I was thinking anything.”
“But, anyhow. Bill wasn’t
that
old-fashioned. As soon as we realized my father wasn’t going to budge he said, ‘Oh, to hell with it! No one’s going to stop
us
getting married, just because there’s a war on!’ And so the very next day he went right out and bought a ring and we counted that as the date of our engagement. I’m sorry, I seem to have turned what should have been a simple answer into a full-scale novel!”
“All the same, a very interesting one,” I said.
Indeed, a lot
more
than merely interesting! Without knowing it—and either intuitively or else through sheer, amazing providence—she had taken care of practically every uncertainty I’d still been feeling, concerning the major and the letters he had carried.
“But I rather wish he’d had that earlier date inscribed,” she told me. “Because as far as the world knows we were only engaged for ten short days before he died—just
ten
days—and I’d have liked the world to know that it was longer. Which is silly, isn’t it? What difference does it make?”
“Sybella?”
She looked at me enquiringly.
“Yesterday I didn’t feel that I could ask. But today perhaps I can. How
did
Bill die?”
“He was drowned,” she said.
“
Drowned
?”
“Yes. Somewhere off the coast of Spain. His plane came down in the Atlantic.”
“His plane? You mean—he was a pilot?”
“No! Good heavens, no! Bill wasn’t piloting the plane. He was a major in the Royal Marines.”
“Oh, yes, you said. I’m sorry. I forgot. Then I suppose he was on his way to North Africa?” It seemed a reasonable assumption.
She nodded. “Apparently, there were certain things which had to be delivered to General Alexander in Tunis. Hugely urgent. Hugely confidential.”
Her tone changed.
“That’s why they sent Bill! According to Bill, Mountbatten had picked him. Picked him out especially! It appears they could have sent any number of others, but they just wanted the best, he said.” (
Who
had said, I wondered. Mountbatten or Bill?)
She turned her head and looked through the window which gave onto the corridor and, for the moment, onto the patchwork of fields beyond.
“
Damn them
!” she said. “Damn them, damn them, damn them! Damn them for only wanting the best!”
I quickly took her head onto my shoulder; put my arm around her.
“Hey, it’s all right,” I said. “Hush, now—hush! Poor thing, you’ve
really
been through it, haven’t you? You’ve
really
had enough!”
There was a sudden sharp cough. The two women sitting across from one another on the other side of the carriage had both lowered their papers, both taken the cigarettes out of their mouths, and were both staring at Sybella—but with something less than their earlier seal of approval.
Yet—oh, for the love of Mike!—they should have seen that she was overwrought. They should have seen that I was trying to comfort her!
The one in the porkpie hat, however, began to shake her head; she, the more likely perpetrator of that cough.
“Careless talk, my dear … you must at least
try
to be discreet! Careless talk costs lives and even walls have ears.”
She looked about her as if meaning to illustrate this, yet didn’t look so much at the walls, which might have been the most accurate form of illustration, nor so much at me, which would
undoubtedly
have been the most accurate form of illustration—her gaze finally came to rest on the clergyman. Presumably, she was only seeking his agreement, but one could easily have thought that here was the villain she was hoping to unmask.
However, as befitted a man of the cloth, particularly one who was so pre-eminently Chaucerian, being both rotund and round-faced and having a suitably jolly demeanour, he didn’t appear too dismayed at having been found out.
“Ah.” Even his voice was plummy and his manner of speech consistent with his image; so consistent, indeed, that perhaps he
was
a fifth columnist. “How right you are, dear lady. ‘Switched-on switches and turned-on taps … make happy Huns and joyful Japs!’”
This seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the present situation, but surely he must have supposed that in some way it had; for having delivered the couplet with all the authority of an old actor manager who was now gloriously embarked upon his definitive rendering of Lear, he smiled gently, and improvingly, upon the four of us and then retired, contented, behind his week-old copy of the
Church Times
.
We others all looked at one another in a state of some confusion; and no further reference was made by anyone to the subject of careless talk.
Nor to the undoubted wisdom of trying to save energy—wherever and in whatever fashion any of us could possibly contrive.
Nor even to the birth, engagement or death of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. Sybella had recovered her equilibrium. Her head now rested on my shoulder once more and I had put my arm back round her. We both closed our eyes and actually succeeded in dozing a little during the next twenty minutes or so. Then the ticket inspector slid open the door and, with his arrival, I awoke to rediscover Sybella’s and my own newfound, entirely natural-seeming, intimacy. I had never smiled at any ticket inspector quite so benevolently.
23
I felt good again.
At Waterloo I saw Sybella into a taxi, having arranged that we should meet at half past four. She had given me her telephone number in case of hitches—jotted it down, along with her address, on a paper serviette; apparently she always carried two or three in her handbag. There was only one drawback. She went off with my pen. This wouldn’t have mattered, except that it was German. But at least the brand name was unobtrusive and made it sound more Greek than German.
Orthos
. It had been careless of me to bring it over here—careless but not catastrophic.
At any rate, nothing like that could spoil my mood. After I’d waved Sybella off in her taxi I caught one myself. I was driven to Coventry Street. There, without the slightest problem, I booked two seats. If the performance had been sold out, I would have bought tickets for another show and suggested to Sybella that she should now try to put some distance between herself and what had happened; would simply have told her I had given away those earlier reservations. I felt tempted to do this, anyway. It would have been much more fun to go to a different revue and hear her laugh spontaneously at sketches that were unfamiliar. But unfortunately—since I had the option—I knew that I was honour bound to stick to my word: present her with a further chance to grieve.
So I turned away from the box office hoping very much that I had made the right decision. I looked at the photographs outside the theatre; Sid Field—I assumed it was Sid Field—gave me a cocky, reassuring grin. Therefore, as I covered the negligible distance between Coventry Street and Leicester Square, I was thinking less about the rightness of having booked the tickets than I was about the name I should now have to invent: the name of the girl I had originally meant to accompany me to the theatre. Indirectly or otherwise, Sybella was sure to ask—and, going on recent past experience, I thought it might easily be
otherwise
. I laughed. Even the minor aggravation of my unwieldy suitcase—although it was amazing how people’s shins still seemed irresistibly drawn towards it—couldn’t cause any dent in my exhilaration. I wondered if this part of London was always so busy on a Monday morning: a Monday morning in the middle of a war. Actually, there were remarkably few civilians. It was mainly a kaleidoscope of uniforms, both men’s and women’s, both overseas and British. Most of the men had girls upon their arms, many of whom were laughing and vivacious. (But not one of whom, naturally, could ever have measured up to Sybella!) The chance meeting of eyes—of strangers’ eyes—elicited, almost automatically, a warm and friendly smile. Yesterday, in Manor Park, the relative absence of men had seemed surprising; today, in Leicester Square, it was the absence of children that one noticed. As I slowly made my way down the left-hand side, I said a little prayer that everybody’s leave would be a happy one.
Especially, I meant, Sybella’s.
Yet wasn’t it a fraction odd, perhaps, that ENSA was already allowing her some? After only three weeks?
No, for heaven’s sake—why? Had I never heard of a little thing known commonly as
compassionate
leave? Of course I had. Even in Germany that phrase existed.
(Why had I thought
even
in Germany?)
But, anyway, the point was—it added up! The whole thing added up! “Panting for Monday so that I can get back to my crowd of silly females.” A description, I now saw, possibly penned with some forethought and bearing in mind the preferences of the major.
Yes. 19
th
April. Three weeks ago exactly.
And then: “Here comes our ‘Lady Producer’ who feels by rights she should be directing Thorndike & Evans & Ashcroft rather than the likes of little old us.” Again—insidiously appealing.
That had been written on the Wednesday. Two days into rehearsal. And the play had been scheduled to open on the following Monday.
A fortnight. I frowned. Her family had certainly been fairly quick off the mark, hadn’t it? I tried to imagine my own family responding with a similar alacrity. Not only her parents but her sister—her aunts and her uncles—her cousins and her granny too. Already, it appeared, they had all rushed off, helter-skelter, to see
Nine Till Six
. Descended on it in stampeding droves.
Well—and why not? How far, for instance, was Wolverhampton? (I meant, of course, from Marlborough … or, at least, from the general locality thereof.) Wouldn’t a journey to Wolverhampton have been reasonably straightforward? And over the past couple of weeks there could easily have been closer or more convenient venues. Why did I even have to think about it?
(“Oh, my darling, how you do so like to split hairs!” I could recall my mother saying this when I was five or six years old. Later my father would rephrase it a little differently. “Why will you never accept
anything
you’re told?”)
Clearly, it was not a very lovable characteristic: a person’s being so mistrustful; my satisfaction grew tinged with regret. But also with resolution. (
Renewed
resolution; I remembered the previous Thursday evening.) Now I didn’t grip the handle of my mother’s suitcase so much in mild impatience. Now I gripped it for connection. For communication.
So,
yes
, I thought. Why couldn’t they all have gone together to the same performance, not only a convivial and supportive family outing but a commendably practical one too, pooling the petrol coupons? And, okay, Sybella’s mother
might
have seen the play so often that she could apply to be her daughter’s understudy; but obviously on occasion you just had to make allowances for a touch of poetic licence. She might have been twice? Three times? My parents were right. Why did I always have to be so literal-minded—to interpret and analyse and doubt?
Good. I was at peace once more, and although it was perfectly true (I grinned shamefacedly) that I was now all set to check on something else, something else that simply didn’t require it, this was only through sheer force of habit—and because I was right there on the spot—and because I still needed to prove myself a professional.
Yet, in the fullness of time, habit could and
would
be broken.
Just not today, however.
I reached my destination some five minutes after I had left the Prince of Wales. From one box office to another.
The Empire was showing
Mademoiselle France
, the Joan Crawford picture I had read about in the
Express
. (‘Miss Crawford isn’t making all the sacrifices implied in the script … Dressing like a refugee is certainly not in her contract.’)
I consulted my watch. The first performance of the day was probably half over—many of its patrons, no doubt, already beginning on their lunchtime sandwiches.
I asked if I might see the manager.
The female clerk, bespectacled, mousy-haired, none too busy while the actual film was showing, glanced pointedly at my suitcase.
“May I enquire what it’s about?”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, I haven’t come to sell him anything. I just wanted to know when a particular picture would have been playing here.”
“Oh … Possibly I could help?”
“
Random Harvest.
”
She was disappointed. “Ah, yes—for that, I’m afraid, you will need to see the manager. And unluckily he’s just stepped out for a minute or two.”
She explained how she herself had been working there only since last November. She neither looked nor sounded anything like the receptionist at the Black Lion, but there must have been something in her manner, or in her conversation, to transport me back to Thursday.
“Last November?” It took me three seconds, maybe five, to assimilate this detail. “Does that mean, then…?” And it cost a real effort even to say four words.
I tried again but it seemed I couldn’t get any further. “Does that mean, then…?”