Authors: Stephen Benatar
It was the second I had been meaning to reread. But I became distracted, and gave further thought to the address—which was only on the first of them. In the original, it had been embossed.
The Manor House,
Ogbourne St George,
Marlborough,
Wilts.
My goodness, talk about idyllic!
In fact, it sounded
so
idyllic it almost teetered on the verge of parody: rural England at its most gracious and romantic. In a mere eight words it managed to pay homage to an illustrious ancestor of the present Mr Churchill, to the national patron saint, the legacies of the feudal system, and even to an especially stirring chapter in the military history of—I smiled—this dear, dear land, this scepter’d isle, this blessed plot. Yes,
there
lay the only wonder: that somehow it hadn’t managed to make room for Mr Shakespeare. But even so. Not bad.
Yet following on from all this high romanticism and happy pageantry … what?
Merely a telephone number and a date.
Sunday 18
th
April.
Then straight into the letter.
“I do think dearest that seeing people like you off at railway stations is one of the poorer forms of sport. A train going out can leave a howling great gap in ones life & one has to try madly—& quite in vain—to fill it with all the things one used to enjoy a whole five weeks ago. That lovely golden day we spent together—oh! I know it has been said before, but if
only
time could sometimes stand still just for a
minute
—But that line of thought is too pointless. Pull your socks up, Syb, & dont be such a fool.
“Your letter made me feel slightly better—but I shall get horribly conceited if you go on saying things like that about me—they’re utterly unlike ME, as I’m afraid you’ll soon find out. Here I am for the weekend in this divine place with Mummy & Jane being too sweet & understanding the whole time, bored beyond words & panting for Monday so that I can get back to my crowd of silly females, not always
that
sweet & not always
that
understanding. What an idiotic waste!
“Bill darling, do let me know as soon as you get fixed & can make some more plans, & dont
please
let them send you off into the blue the horrible way they do nowadays—now that we’ve found each other out of the whole world I dont think I could bear it—
“All my love,
“Sybella.”
And, as had happened on every single occasion I had read the letter, I thought it odd about the lack of apostrophes in certain places and about the way she always used an ampersand. Could she honestly believe that it saved time? Perhaps in England this represented a revived style of letter-writing. Mr Martin had adopted it, as well, although I couldn’t see William’s father as being someone generally influenced by fads—nor, indeed, very much aware of them. But actually
he
had used an ampersand both in his personal and his business correspondence. (Lord Mountbatten hadn’t; nor had Sir Archibald Nye; though was this because typewriters had been to the fore here, rather than plain fountain pens?) And I supposed, of course, that you could always put it down to mere coincidence.
Yet that sounded grudging—and why, all of a sudden, should I have chosen to sound grudging? Good heavens, wasn’t I well aware of the astonishing frequency of this kind of coincidence? How often had I come across a word or a name unknown to me on one day, and then, in some wholly unrelated context, heard it again the very next? Ironically enough, the word ampersand itself was an example. At least temporarily, therefore, the Sybella and J.G. Martin thing could be filed away—without too much fret and too much fuss—under the codename: Operation Ampersand.
In fact, just had to be.
For how could they possibly have influenced one another? I acknowledged that they
might
have corresponded—once, perhaps?—but even this I somewhat doubted; and, anyhow, just a single brief exchange could hardly have accounted for it.
Instinctively, I didn’t believe that they’d have met. Not that, if they had, meetings were in any way germane to writing styles, unless they had actually sat down together and zealously drawn up guidelines on how to achieve epistolary excellence in six easy lessons.
Which—I had to admit—didn’t seem likely.
Otherwise, we were back with coincidence.
Or, maybe, with just one last tenuous option: Bill Martin as common denominator?
Because if the major himself had employed such a style of writing, wasn’t it feasible that both his father and his fiancée, whether consciously or unconsciously, should at some stage have fallen in with it? Out of sheer admiration and a wish to emulate. Possibly unrecognized.
And out of affection, too, of course. Out of love.
But then I was struck by something else.
Could
Sybella and J.G. Martin have ever met? I still strongly doubted it, but how long did you normally delay a meeting between your fiancée and your father? Weren’t you rather keen to have it happen? At the very least, wasn’t your
father
rather keen to have it happen? And that engraving on the ring revealed, incontestably, the date of the engagement. 14.4.43.
Which led us on to another point. Mr Martin had written to his solicitor on 10
th
April. “I have considered your recent letter concerning the Settlement that I intend to make on the occasion of William’s marriage.” Which definitely suggested, didn’t it, that he must have contacted Gwatkin on the subject at least five or six days earlier?
Yet that either meant his son had confided in him some considerable time before he had actually proposed and been accepted—which, to my mind, seemed improbable—or else that we were now up against a
further
very odd coincidence. (No! “Since in this case the wife’s family will not be contributing to the Settlement…” Things had all too clearly been discussed.)
I continued to lie on the bed; told myself that for the time being I must file away the Settlement in the same pending folder as the ampersands. Told myself that nothing could have thrown me quite so forcibly as Mr Martin’s disappearing act—and yet look at how quickly an explanation for even that had come to light. I told myself that if I slid down any further into this whirling mass of inessential detail I should soon be incapable of making out a single thing … the wood for the trees, the words for the letters.
So what should I do? Plainly this. Take a deep breath and relax. Bid a final farewell to pedantry. To pedantry and to an attitude that warned inexorably of Jack declining into dullness. (I could now hear the sounds of a piano and of singing floating up from the taproom.) Bid a final farewell to…
Well, to downright perversity, why not? For when was I
ever
going to learn? Just because Sybella’s mother had said, “She’s not been home for several weeks,” and just because Sybella’s letter had been written—from home—on Sunday 18
th
April, I was
already
seriously debating whether two and a half weeks could properly be described as several. Having—only ten seconds ago—declared my fixed intention to reform!
(And perhaps from the viewpoint of a doting mother two and a half weeks could certainly be described as several. Possibly to a doting mother seventeen days could appear as practically interminable. “Good gracious!” she might have said. “Seventeen days? Is that all? I must be a
much
better parent than I realized!”)
So there you are, then. Maybe, in that case,
not
downright perversity after all. There could still be hope.
I turned to Sybella’s second letter.
This one had been scrawled on lined foolscap, torn from a student’s notepad.
In fact, the writing hadn’t started out as a scrawl; but it had rapidly degenerated.
Once more, no salutation. The only form of heading was the date.
Wed, 21
st
.
“We’ve been given half an hour off—oh, blessed dispensation!—so here I am scribbling nonsense to you again. Your letter came this morning just as I was dashing for the coach—holding everybody up,
as usual
! You do write such heavenly ones. But what are these horrible dark hints you’re throwing out about being sent off somewhere—
of course
I won’t say a word to anyone—I never do when you tell me things, but it’s not abroad is it? Because I won’t have it, I WON’T, tell them so from me. Darling, why did we go & meet in the middle of a war, such a silly thing for anybody to do—if it weren’t for the war we might have been nearly married by now, going round together choosing curtains etc. And I wouldn’t be sitting here in Wolverhampton—Wolverhampton for one night only—though of course we will be coming back—yes, I
know
, you dont ever need to tell me, doing the thing which normally I love the best but which at the moment seems really to be getting on top of me—it may be doing something (one prays!) to slightly sweeten the war for some lucky few (what impossible arrogance!) but it isn’t doing anything actually to
shorten
it. Is it? Whereas what you’re doing…
“Dearest Bill, I’m so thrilled with my ring—scandalously extravagant—you know how I adore diamonds—I simply can’t stop looking at it.
“I’m going to a rather dreary dance tonight with Jock & Hazel, after the show of course, so I’ll only have to stay there for an hour or so. I think they’ve got some other man coming. You know what their friends always turn out to be like, he’ll have the sweetest little Adam’s apple & the shiniest bald head! How beastly and ungrateful of me, but it isnt really that—you know—dont you?
“Look darling, I’ve got next Sunday & Monday off for Easter. I shall go home for it, naturally,
do
come too if you possibly can, or even if you can’t I’ll dash up to London & we’ll have an evening of wild gaiety—(By the way Aunt Marion said to bring you to dinner next time I was up, but I think that might wait?)
“Oh dear. Here comes our ‘Lady Producer’ who feels by rights she should be directing Thorndike & Evans & Ashcroft rather than the likes of little old us—although actually she’s quite sweet, quite long-suffering, we really shouldn’t bait her as we do.
“So masses & masses of love for now & a wholly tremendous kiss from
“Sybella—your very own Sybella, who adores you.”
I returned both letters to my wallet.
Your very own Sybella, who adores you
… And I switched my thoughts back, abruptly, to the one sentence which I always found particularly encouraging. “But what are these horrible dark hints you’re throwing out about being sent off somewhere—
of course
I won’t say a word to anyone—I never do when you tell me things…”
Indeed, I had once again found this sentence so highly encouraging that as a result I remained more or less conscious of it during the whole of the time I later spent in the taproom … where I passed an enjoyable couple of hours amongst roughly a dozen welcoming people, including the receptionist, who were grouped convivially about the piano and belting out such songs as ‘Louise’ and ‘Thanks For The Memory’ and ‘See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have’ and, perhaps a little more surprisingly, ‘Lili Marlene’. However, I warned myself not to set too great a store by it, that long and reassuring sentence—our lives, of course, were full of disappointment.
(Yet I hope I didn’t actually think of it like that! Not simply because of the sentiment’s banality but because I was aware that my own potential disappointment could be as nothing compared to that of others.)
Whatever the reason, though, Sybella plainly hadn’t managed to return home for Easter. But at least, I assumed (and surely
some
assumptions ought to be permissible), that she had been able to dash up to London for that evening of wild gaiety—and probably much sooner than expected: the Prince of Wales theatre tickets had been for the second house on Thursday 22
nd
, the very day after she had written from Wolverhampton. The very day prior to Good Friday. And only two days before her warmly adored and professionally up-and-coming fiancé—who wrote such heavenly letters and was so scandalously extravagant and who might have been going around choosing curtains by now if he hadn’t met Sybella in the middle of a war—only
two
days before her warmly adored fiancé was either drowned or drowning, or about to be drowned, in a cold and clearly unadoring sea.
9
I didn’t like loose ends. I arrived at the Carlton Grill shortly before two. It wasn’t a good time to have chosen. The obsequious maître d’—smilingly effusive to those who had reservations, or even to those who hadn’t but might still be hoping for a table—was merely irritated by somebody who only wanted to ask questions: namely, about whether a certain booking had been made for a date over two weeks earlier and, if so, whether or not it had actually been taken up. He coolly enquired whether I was a plain-clothes policeman. I said, no, I was simply a private individual attempting to trace the movements of a missing relative. He hardly troubled to hide his exasperation; brusquely dismissed me with a sop—i.e., a reluctant suggestion I should come back after four.
So, from the grandeur of the Carlton Grill, I crossed the Haymarket to a snack bar, where I had a sandwich and some not very good minestrone.
But then a speedy return to grandeur. Across Pall Mall and into Waterloo Place.
No 14 was an impressive mansion built of Portland Stone. But here the magnificence was principally external. Although one of the original functions of this house had no doubt been to provide a sumptuous ballroom, lit brilliantly by chandeliers, now its meanly partitioned pokiness wasn’t even enlivened by a solitary low-wattage bulb.
Yet, dim as its interior was, and far removed from the heady days of Beau Brummell and of the present King’s somewhat unstable forebear, there was still enough penetration of daylight, just, to enable visitors to read the nameplates near the entrance. And I saw that McKenna & Co., Solicitors, had their offices on the first floor.
The staircase itself remained imposing. But in place of a footman to announce my name and a fashionable duchess to receive me at the top, there was now only a shabby green-painted door with, beyond that, a motherly-looking typist who sat at her desk before a switchboard.