The Sea Garden (23 page)

“It's no good, I like to talk,” he said. He caught her hand as they came off the dance floor and did not let it go. “Let's walk.”

London during the blackout was a ghostly place. At Piccadilly Circus the statue of Eros had been removed into storage. Ultraviolet headlamps from a single car picked out white dashes painted on the kerb to delineate it in the darkness. Black buildings towered unlit like a set in a dark theatre. They walked on towards Green Park.

“I have to leave London tomorrow,” he said.

She knew better than to ask where he was going.

In the park, he pulled her into the shadows. He brushed a strand of hair away from her temple. “I wish I could stay.”

He dipped his head. His kiss was a gentle brush of her lips.

Then, when she did not pull away, he kissed her again, and this time it was electrifying, tender yet surprising, generous and impulsive.

“I will take you home.”

He found a cab outside the Ritz, and put his arm around her shoulders for the short ride. She wondered what she would do if he insisted on coming upstairs, but he said good night gallantly on the pavement of Tavistock Square.

 

W
hat was she supposed to make of the evening? It was hard enough to decide what you thought of someone you had only just met, when you had only spent one evening together. But Xavier Descours? She thought of the way the women at F Section talked about him, the photographs in the file that had piqued their interest. Of all of them, he had chosen her. If they knew, they would all want to know where they had gone, what they had talked about, what it was like to be near to him, the focus of his attention. But she wouldn't tell them.

She wasn't sure she would even tell Nancy, not the important parts anyway. The light touch of his fingers on hers as he lit her cigarette. The way his eyes had seemed to soften in the low lamplight at their dinner table. His perfect height for her, not too tall, not too short. The easy gallantry with which he had helped her with her coat and guided her out of the restaurant into the darkness outside.

The experience had already assumed a dreamlike quality. It was like a date with a film star manufactured for the newspapers by the studios: one lucky woman reader will have the honour. . . . She could not shake off the uneasy feeling that all was not quite as it seemed. And what was the favour he had changed his mind about asking?

5

Bignor Manor

Sussex, November 1943

I
t was everywhere, the sense of being trapped. Trenches dug in parks, railings uprooted, air raid shelters and sandbags at the end of streets—brick and concrete shelters held fifty people, with two-tiered wooden bunks crammed along the length of the walls. In tube stations, the terrible smell of people pressed so closely together without adequate ventilation was worse than being smothered inside the vile rubber of a gas mask. The Anderson shelters sunk in gardens were not much better: dark and cold holes where damp permeated the wooden benches inside and left a thin cushion of moss.

When a bomb hit the road in Balham, it left a crater like the top of a volcano into which a bus had tipped nose first, its rear upended. Tramlines twisted and hung over the hole in the ground as if the route were being diverted to the centre of the earth. Shops and houses were ripped open by the blast; papers and boxes were blown off shelves, and valuable stock smashed; in private rooms, flowered wallpaper was exposed, and curtains flapped like flags of surrender.

Grey days and months passed and were clumped together in her mind, losing any brightness and elasticity, while the memory of that one evening glowed, assuming more import, taking up ever more space, pushing all else aside. Now all she saw were the streets of grime and smoke-dirt, little improved around London Bridge from the Southwark of Charles Dickens. Prisons, and tramps, and the smut of steam trains. And in quiet streets nearby families lived in houses that no longer had glass in the windows.

For weeks afterwards, she saw the city through Xavier's eyes. She felt the soft mohair of his coat, walking by her side, one hand in his trouser pocket, hat pulled down almost to his eyes, as she walked past the queue outside the Whitehall Canteen, beside the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, where society ladies served coffee to war workers under murals by Duncan Grant, and up St. Martin's Lane to the Coquille, now imbued with a magical association. She tried to picture what he was doing in France, wondered again about the unasked favour, and relived the kiss.

 

I
n November the weather closed in. The full moon was on the wane, and so far only one Lysander had made it out of Tangmere and back. Miss Acton had spent two evenings at the airfield and gone back to London. Iris had orders to stay down at Tangmere for a few more nights on the off chance that they could make the run that month and deliver three joes as scheduled from France.

In the Cottage, a radio was tuned to a music station. Iris read and chatted to Rory and Jack and other pilots who dropped by. A Ping-Pong table was rigged up and in constant use for a complex knockout tournament. There were fast and frantic darts matches (behind the plywood surround that fielded stray shots was a secret cupboard containing maps of France on silk scarves and compasses). The mess sergeants gave permission for the drivers to take anyone who wanted to go to the Unicorn pub at Chichester; the landlord was particularly welcoming to the RAF, for whom he kept special bottles of claret and burgundy, and never charged the full price. On the walls of the bar were pictures of pilots from the Tangmere squadrons and their aircraft, though the collection did not include a Lysander.

The fog thickened. When it was clear there would be no flights that night either, the call came through: Party at Bignor.

 

T
ucked under the rolling hills of the South Downs, Bignor Manor was less than half an hour's drive from the airfield. It was the home of Major Anthony Bertram, one of the escorting officers who met the flights at Tangmere, and his wife, Barbara. The major was attached to MI6, but down in the Sussex countryside at the sharp end of the special air operations, interservice rivalries were sensibly forgotten, or so it seemed. The couple had two young sons, and Bignor Manor was a happy family home where—or so they told any villagers who inquired—they occasionally put up convalescent French officers. The cheery and indefatigable Mrs. Bertram would let the maid and the gardeners go, and continue without help at night, but there was no apparent subterfuge in what she was doing.

Despite the grand name, the heavy stone and Elizabethan origins, the manor was not a particularly large house; it had only four bedrooms and was approached from a typical farm track entrance, on which it stood discreetly, well back from the rest of the small village.

“Come on, Iris, I'll give you a lift on the back of my bike if you promise not to scream,” offered Jack.

“I'll certainly come, but not on that thing. Last time my legs were completely black with soot when I got off!”

“She's coming with me, aren't you, Iris?” interrupted Rory. “In a nice safe car from the ministry.”

“Only if Denise is driving.”

 

B
arbara Bertram was pretty and bright, much loved by all. She made her job seem effortless, caring for so many in conditions of great secrecy, attending to her menagerie of farm animals—the hens, rabbits, and goat, the hives of bees, the dog, the cat. She was last to bed and first up in the morning, yet always had time to sit and talk, to make up a four at bridge, or to play darts with the party. She would cook bacon and eggs with a smile for the new arrivals at four in the morning. The young Bertram boys called the French “Hullabaloos” on account of the strange and guttural sounds they made when speaking to each other; neither of them yet understood the language.

But always underlying the calm exterior was the strain of the danger faced by the visitors, agents working in occupied France and members of the Resistance. The anxiety often became irritability, especially if the weather reports continued to be dismal and flights were postponed. That was where Mrs. Bertram's perception proved invaluable. She would call in new blood and a sense of fun to lift the mood, and “Party at Bignor!” was always a popular shout. There would be supper, and the men might dance with the girl drivers like Denise, a popular redhead with dimples and a wide smile who knew all the latest steps. Thank God for those other girls, thought Iris; they made those evenings fun when all might have been too tense.

She got in the car with Denise, Rory, and another pilot known as Stamper on account of some idiosyncrasy he had in preparation for a flight; the girls knew the nickname could apply equally to his two left feet on the dance floor. Iris had never asked his real name. They drove over in convoy, the spitting hellfire of Jack's motorcycle within constant earshot.

“Worse than ack-ack, that bike,” said Rory cheerfully. His faithful collie Sam was along for the ride too, at his feet in the back of the car next to Iris.

Everyone was in high spirits. “Kindly remove your hand from my knee, Flight Lieutenant Fitzgerald,” said Iris.

“Spoilsport.”

Iris smiled to herself.

“Hope there's a decent feed,” said Stamper.

Rory scratched the dog's head. “Always is at Bignor. Eh, Sam? Might even be a scrap for you.”

Mrs. Bertram worked hard on a fine vegetable garden to keep all the visitors fed. No windfall from the fruit trees went uncollected, and every edible paring was judiciously used in the kitchen. Some of the French enjoyed gardening, and they would mow lawns and weed, or help to milk Caroline the goat, anything to keep active while they waited to fly. The Manor's potager was a model of international cooperation.

A couple of men came through, carrying a stack of cracked plates and chipped saucers and a handful of glasses to the dining room.

“Hello, dears. As you can see, no chance of any new crockery.” Mrs. Bertram sighed. “But I'm pleased to announce that we have pheasant pie on the menu tonight—well, pheasant and rabbit.”

“Though it was only supposed to be rabbit,” interjected Tony Bertram. “Lord Mersey expressly said rabbit only if you were to shoot on the estate.”

“But the pheasant—it flew in the way between the gun and the rabbit,” said a man with a French accent who was cheerfully laying knives and forks on the long table, his back to them.

“Oh, bad luck!” said Rory.

“Yes, awfully, wasn't it?” said Mrs. Bertram brightly. “We had to make the best of things though.” As was customary, she did not introduce the Frenchman even when he turned round.

Iris stepped back in delighted surprise. It was Xavier. The effect of his unexpected presence was electrifying. She stood, smiling stupidly, but he looked away.

“A bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin from the mess,” said Rory, reaching into his flying jacket and handing them over.

“I'll get some glasses. Why don't you go through to the sitting room? A few of our visitors are already having a drink there. The rest are still at the White Horse—there's a darts match against the village team. They did very well against them last time. As it's so important to make everything seem aboveboard, one of the French put one arm in a sling, pretending it was his throwing arm, of course. None of the villagers could quite believe how well he played with his ‘wrong arm'!”

Iris was taken aback to see in the flesh the man she had spent so long building up in her imagination; it was almost an embarrassment, as if he would know, just by looking at her, what had been passing through her mind in the intervening months.

“I'll let you introduce yourselves,” said Mrs. Bertram. “I need to check on the food.”

“We have already had the pleasure of meeting,” said Iris, aware of Rory's interest as she extended her hand to Xavier.

He shook it, neutrally. “
Ma chère mademoiselle
, I am enchanted—but I think you must be mistaken.”

Jack was in the sitting room, handing round cigarettes and drinking beer. Through the open glass doors to the garden, Sam's excited barks indicated that he had found someone to play with. Iris smiled and shook hands with three men, all strangers to her.

The pilots were discussing the night the Windmill Theatre came to put on a show at the camp cinema, and the fan dancer Phyllis Dixie had delighted and amazed the men when she held both feather fans out at arm's length at the end of her act. “The place went wild!” said Stamper. He sounded the same as ever, but Iris noticed that his eyes seemed dull and his face drawn as he told the story Iris had heard several times. He took a large glass of whisky from the tray Mrs. Bertram brought round.

One of the Frenchmen, a jowly man with a moustache, watched puppy-like as Barbara Bertram turned for the kitchen. “A wonderful woman.” He sighed. “The first morning I arrived, she asked me to take the mud off my boots on the metal outside the back door. Madame Barbara—you know what she did? She put all this mud in a container, and she grows little salad leaves . . . yes, now I know the name, mustard and cress . . . on it, so that when I arrive last week to make my return to France, knowing that my heart is heavy, she offers the cress salad to us, the French: salad grown on French soil!”

No wonder they loved her.

Iris listened politely, her mind churning, as another man began to tell her, in French, how a darts match had been convened at Mrs. Bertram's instigation when the discussion between rival political persuasions had become too lively. Darts was a perfect diffuser of tension, he averred; when the war was over, he was going to get himself a board.

Perhaps, thought Iris, she should ask for a game to calm her nerves. Xavier stood talking to a man she had never seen before, giving no indication that he was aware of her. Was it possible that he did not even remember her? She had never felt such disappointment.

They were joined by two more men and another young woman driver who knew Denise. Iris saw Xavier give the girl an appreciative glance, then continue his intense discussion.

 

A
fter dinner the men all helped with the washing up, throwing the plates from one to another, while Barbara Bertram averted her eyes. “Do be careful, boys. Oh, I simply can't look! Have you any idea how hard it is to get enough crockery for everyone here? I didn't have nearly enough in the first place!”

Upstairs in one of the bedrooms there was a wooden mirror on the wall—no room for a dressing table with all the single camp beds for the visitors—by which the girls brushed their hair and pencilled their eyebrows. Denise applied some powder, chatting about the French. Iris rolled her hair high over the front of her head and pinned it back to show off her earrings. She was wearing her favourite dress, of thick brushed cotton with a cherry print. Normally it brought her luck, but its talismanic properties had clearly failed this evening.

The other girl introduced herself to Iris. “I'm Aster. Two blooms together!” She was jolly in an obvious way, the kind of girl Iris was on the whole glad to have left behind at school, but it was hard not to offer some friendliness in return.

“That's a pretty lipstick shade,” said Iris.

“Thank you. A present from Paris, best not to say who from, I suppose. I say, that French joe down there . . . he's an absolute dream, isn't he?” Iris could not have failed to notice that Aster had been seated next to him at dinner. The giggles and touching of his arm had made her want to throw cold water over them.

Iris wondered whether it was worth asking which one she meant, but it was so obvious that to say anything would only draw attention to her feelings.

“He certainly is.”

“Any idea who he is?”

“Not a clue,” said Iris.

They went downstairs to find Stamper trying to explain to Xavier in very bad French how to fly a Lysander—“
et alors vous poussez ça, et vous tirez là—et Robert est votre oncle!”

“Are you planning on helping yourself to one of our planes, monsieur?” asked Iris neutrally.

“He used to be a pilot,” explained Stamper.

“Did he indeed?” Iris cocked her head.

“I most certainly was, mademoiselle. I fear it is no longer valid since I have been otherwise engaged these past few years, but I achieved a private pilot's licence before the war.”