The Parrot Cage, page 38
He took Gerry across the park to the Ritz. When they were settled in an inconspicuous corner table and he had ordered their drinks, Gerry said with almost her old mischievous smile:
‘Champagne cocktails! Well, this certainly is a celebration.’
‘Only partly, Gerry.’
Suddenly very still, she sat looking down at her hands and Andrew’s ring on her left hand.
‘Gerry, please look at me,’ he said in a voice she barely recognised. There was an indescribable expression on his familiar face, but when he smiled, Gerry found her lips curving in return.
‘That’s my girl,’ he said, taking her left hand in his. ‘Gerry, I haven’t made a catastrophic mistake, have I? I’ve begun to be nearly certain that you felt it a bit too.’
She was just opening her lips to answer him when the waiter came back with the glasses. They waited until he had arranged them and gone, and then Gerry took a deep breath.
‘Mike …’ At almost the same instant, he said:
‘I’m not wrong, am I?’
‘No, you’re not wrong, my dear.’
At that he picked up her hand and held it against his cheek.
‘Thank God, darling.’
‘But, Mike. It’s too soon …’
‘I know. I promise I won’t ask anything you don’t want to have to say yet, but I had to be sure. I’ve … Oh, Gerry, I’ve waited such a long time.’
‘Have you, Mike?’ she asked, a blush warming up her cheeks again and a much more natural smile curling her mouth.
‘Yes, what is it, nearly three and a half years, I suppose.’
‘And all that time I was being such a clot. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t see it until recently.’
‘I know.’ There was such a wealth of warm, tolerant love in his voice that she found some courage.
‘There’s something else you ought to know, though,’ she said in a determined voice, taking her hand out of his.
‘No, darling, I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, Mike. I want to tell you. It’s about Suvarov. You know, of course, that I spent months and months embroiled in a stupid girlish fantasy about him …’ She stopped, released her hand from his. Then she took a deep breath and said quite steadily: ‘But it wasn’t all fantasy.’
‘I know that, Gerry. Even Sandy could see that the chief was head over heels about you. For ages it made me despair. What had I got to offer compared to a dashing, beautiful Russian hero like that?’
She laughed a little and then murmured, ‘I’m not sure it would be good for you if I told you how much.’ Then she sobered again, took a sip of the champagne cocktail and went on: ‘But that wasn’t what I meant, even if it’s true, and I’m not sure that it is. Once, early in ’41, he and I …’
She could not say more because Mike had laid one of his hands across her lips.
‘You don’t need to tell me anything, Gerry. I’m not about to demand retrospective fidelity from you. How could I? I just want to be able to say how much I care about you and to know that you care a bit, too. That’s all … for now anyway.’
All the tension suddenly went out of her body and he watched her lean against the hard gilt chairback completely relaxed. He picked up his glass.
‘To my best beloved.’ She raised hers and echoed his Kiplingesque toast, feeling as though she were a mariner who alone had come through tempests, calms, mutinies, sickness and terror, and was at last in sight of a safe landfall.
They talked then, voraciously, telling each other all kinds of things and asking question after question, secure for the moment in their unassailable trust in each other. He ordered more champagne cocktails and then took her to the grill for dinner, before escorting her across Piccadilly to her flat.
At the top of the basement steps he took her face between his hands, studied it for a long time in the starlight and then kissed her. As he raised his head, he said breathlessly:
‘Oh, I have waited for that.’ Gerry smiled up at him, but her eyes were worried.
‘But, Mikey, I couldn’t … I mean I must wait a bit more before … I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. ‘I don’t mind waiting now that I know. Good night, beloved.’
‘Good night.’
He waited while she climbed down the precipitous stairs and unlocked her door and then he left, to walk through London, feeling weightless in his extreme elation and never even sparing a thought for anyone or anything except Gerry and what he felt for her.
Meanwhile, Flixe was sitting in front of her chief, waiting for him to explain why he had summoned her. When at last he spoke, he surprised her.
‘I feel very guilty, Flixe,’ he said.
‘But why?’ asked Flixe, smiling a little for the first time in days.
‘Because it took Mike Endlesham to tell me what I ought to have seen from one look at your face. My dear, what’s happened to you?’
She put an elbow on his desk, and rested her head in her hands. Then, not looking up, she started to try to tell him.
‘It’s not anything that’s happened to me. I’m just in a turmoil. That’s not helpful, I know.’
‘Flixe, look at me,’ he said. She obeyed, and as she looked at his face she remembered how easy it had once been to talk to him about everything.
‘Peter,’ she began, taking a deep breath. ‘Did Sandy send up that report about the woman in Laville?’
‘Yes is that it? I’m not surprised it upset you; it’s a horrible story, but it is one that’s being repeated all over France, I gather. It’s not just because she worked for us.’ Flixe shook her head.
‘That’s not the aspect that was worrying me. But she is the woman who took care of Ming, isn’t she? Don’t be angry with Ming for telling me. It was when I went to Etchingham.’
‘I’m not angry,’ he said. ‘Yes, it is she. And we’re doing our best to get her over here. It’s been tricky, but I can tell you now that she will be in London in a month or so.’ He stared carefully at Flixe and then said: ‘I can’t help feeling that there’s more, though, Flixe. Can’t you tell me?’
‘There is a bit,’ she said carefully. ‘But the question I wanted to ask you is, could she be the daughter of Anna Kingsley’s that you told me about?’
‘No, dearest Flixe,’ he said very gently, almost as though he had understood the other things that she could not say. ‘That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. Miss Kingsley’s child has been safe in Switzerland for eighteen months or so.’
‘She got her out then?’
‘Yes. And it was when we found out about the Swiss escape that we understood what all the letters had been about and were able to clear her off the list of suspects.’
‘Thank God,’ said Flixe and burst into tears. He let her cry for a couple of minutes and then offered her his handkerchief. When she was wiping the tears out of her eyes, he swivelled his chair round so that he was looking out of the window and she could collect herself in some privacy.
‘There is one thing I’d like to say to you, Flixe,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Any parallels you may have been drawing between what you did for us here and what certain Frenchwomen are being punished for are illusory. The cases are quite different, and if you are drawing any such parallel, I want you to stop at once.’
It took Flixe a moment to find her voice, for she had forgotten that he had always known everything she was thinking. Then, folding up his wet handkerchief and pushing it up the sleeve of her jersey, she said:
‘Easier said than done.’
‘I know. But you must try. Because there is no comparison. Will you promise to try?’
‘All right, Peter,’ she said, her voice threatening to break on his name. He swung his chair back and, looking at her once again, said:
‘Good.’
She worked at it, throughout the autumn and winter, and eventually found a certain easing of her mind. But even so, she felt divided from both her sisters by the difference in what they had had to do and what she herself had done for the war. In sad envy she watched Gerry and Mike Endlesham finding more and more delight in one another’s company every week, and Ming apparently letting Johnny Blenkarne fall in love with her. He could usually be found in Anna Kingsley’s flat in the evenings, dining with them or collecting Ming to take her out dancing.
Flixe herself could not have loved either man, and she was genuinely pleased for her sisters, but still she felt cut off from what she saw as their innocence. It was an innocence that allowed each of them to confide endlessly in her, unaware of most of the things she was thinking. Gerry was bothered by the disloyalty of falling in love so soon, after her husband had been killed and Flixe tried to keep the asperity out of her voice when she put her view that since Andrew was dead it would not matter to him one way or the other.
Gerry, who was sitting on the floor in Flixe’s flat in front of the hissing gas fire, twisting her rings round and round on her finger, looked pleased.
‘I suppose you’re right. And I can’t run my life for ever wondering whether I’m upsetting his mother.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Flixe, pouring a cup of tea for each of them.
‘D’you think I’m doing the right thing?’ asked Gerry, accepting a cup.
‘In being in love with Mike Endlesham?’
‘No,’ said Gerry, smiling into the red and blue flames of the small fire. ‘I couldn’t have helped that. But in saying I’ll marry him?’
Flixe sat down on the floor beside her sister and hugged her, saying, ‘Gerry, I didn’t know it had come to that; it’s wonderful news. You’ll do so much better with Mike.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ she answered happily. ‘But, tell me, Flixe. Why do you think so?’
Flixe, recognising that Gerry longed to talk and hear about Mike’s qualities, did her best.
‘Because he’s much more intelligent than Andrew was; because he loves you for what and who you are; not as material to be shaped to fit his mould of the ideal wife; because you have chosen him yourself, without reference to our parents; because he sees further than Andrew ever could in a million years.’
‘Yes,’ said Gerry, sighing. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, Flixie, I know. I’m being childish. But it’s extraordinary to feel so happy after everything that’s happened. All those mistakes and unnecessary agonising. And all the time there was Mike and I simply didn’t see him.’
‘How did you learn to see?’ asked Flixe, still trying generously to give Gerry her opportunity to talk.
‘It just sort of happened without my noticing. I mean, one day I was down in the analysts’room collecting some stuff and he just looked up from his work and grinned at me and then I realised what I’d actually been feeling for ages. And luckily he turned out to have been feeling it too.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Flixe. Then she added in a careful tone: ‘What does Suvarov say?’
‘Nothing,’ answered Gerry looking startled. ‘I didn’t know that he knew anything about it.’ At that piece of naivety, Flixe allowed herself to laugh.
‘Oh, Gerry, you are a clot. Not only do you and Mike have beacons flaming in your eyes that would tell anyone what was happening to you, but Suvarov could see through six brick walls to what was being hidden. Anyway, he and Mike seemed to be talking about it downstairs when I left the office this evening. Never mind; he’ll talk to you about it in the end.’ Flixe could feel the ice in her mind hardening at the prospect. Ever since Andrew’s death she had tried not to let herself think that with Gerry free at last, Suvarov might allow himself to love her. Now with the added spur of Mike’s obvious devotion, perhaps Suvarov might not be able to resist. Flixe took a deep breath.
‘Now,’ she said decisively, ‘shall I take you out to dinner to celebrate?’
‘All right, Flixie. Thank you.’
The following morning, Gerry waited in some anxiety for the arrival of their chief. He came about ten minutes after she had sat down at her desk. Standing in the doorway holding a tiny bunch of red roses, he smiled.
‘Congratulations, Gerry,’ he said. She stood up and waited while he brought the flowers to her. Then he kissed her hand, and when she smiled her thanks, he patted her cheek.
‘Gerry, I’m so happy for you and young Mike. It’s the best thing I’ve heard for months.’
‘You know that nothing’s to be announced till next June.’
‘Yes, Mike said. And perhaps this bloody war will be over by then.’
‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But d’you think it’s possible?’
‘Possible, yes. Certainly in Europe. I was bothered after the Arnhem fiasco, but things are looking better now. God knows what’s happening in the East, though,’ said Suvarov, taking off his overcoat and walking across to his desk.
‘It’s been almost like two completely separate wars, hasn’t it?’
Gerry contributed, wondering why he had so quickly changed the subject. Ashamed though she might be to admit it, she was infinitely more interested in Mike and herself than in the war. ‘One knows almost nothing of what’s happening there – except those ghastly stories about the railway and the camps.’
‘I know. One way and another I’d say this really has been what they call a just war.’ Suvarov unlocked the middle drawer of his desk and started to read his confidential papers.
‘Monte Cassino?’ Gerry asked, aware that he wanted to work, but herself too emotional to settle down so soon. ‘Saturation bombing of civilian targets?’
Peter looked across at her, half-irritated, half-amused that his anxious, intelligent assistant should be behaving so like a seventeen-year-old. Gerry sat and blushed in silence. After a while he found an answer of a sort.
‘There have been mistakes and cruelties on this side, hideous ones. But I still think that the balance is with us this time.’
Gerry was to think of that conversation often as news came back from the Allies’slow and bloody advance into the heart of the Nazis’world, especially in the spring when the first reports appeared after the liberation of Hitler’s concentration camps. Then moral scruples about what the Allies had done to ensure victory came to seem irrelevant in the horror that was revealed.
Ming came down to Gerry’s basement flat on the evening after the first report had appeared in The Times and asked if she could have a drink. Gerry had had a heavy day and her head was aching so badly that she longed for bed, but Ming so rarely asked for anything that Gerry could not refuse such a simple request.
Of course, Mingie. Come in. I’m afraid I’ve only got gin and It. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s not actually the drink I’m after.… But if you’d rather have wine yourself, there’s masses of Anna’s upstairs. She’s out this evening, but I know she wouldn’t mind if we had some. Shall I get it?’
‘Only if you want it. Gin and It’s fine for me. Sit down, Ming, and tell me what’s bothering you.’
Her sister looked rather surprised and then shook her head.
‘Nothing special. I’ve just been reading that article about the camp. D’you think it’s true?’ Gerry sat down on the lumpy sofa, smoothing Anna’s old-rose silk shawl behind her, not at all sure what to say. The camps were a subject about which she could hardly bear to think, let alone talk. At last, Ming sat back in the wing chair.
‘I don’t see how it couldn’t be, do you?’ said Gerry. ‘I mean we knew that there were camps, and why should anyone make up something so … Oh, Ming, all the words one could use seem so debased. I mean, we all talk about an unspeakable meal, or a terrible book. What can one say about something like Belsen?’
‘I know. It’s not going to be possible ever to see the world – or people, or oneself – in the same way again. It makes what’s happened to all of us seem so … minute in comparison.’
Gerry was silent for some time, wanting to encourage Ming to talk out all the things that she must have been thinking ever since her twin had been killed, but not at all sure how to prompt her, or whether in such a context she should even try. At last she said:
‘Mingie, what has happened to you since your fifteenth birthday is not “minute”, however many much worse things have happened to other people.’
‘Perhaps not. But it makes me ashamed of the things I’ve been thinking.’
‘Such as?’ asked Gerry, but Ming shook her head, unable to say that ever since she had been rescued from the warehouse, she had felt desperately, achingly guilty that she was safe and well and surrounded by people who loved her whenever she thought of Annette and the unknown man who had brought the message to her in France. Now there were all these discoveries of inhuman torture on an immense scale, and she felt even worse: self-centred and self-indulgent.
Every day as she sat at her dull work in the postal censorship office, Ming wished that she could find out what had happened to Annette and the nameless Englishman, but Peter had told her nothing and there was no one else she could ask. Johnny, sweetly protective of her though he was, could know nothing and she had found herself unable to talk to him about either of them.
‘Ming, have you had any food today?’ asked Gerry suddenly. Ming shook her head again. ‘Then you must have some now. I’m afraid it’ll be wretched powdered scrambled egg, unless you’d like to go out.’
‘Oh, no, Gerry. Thank you. But I couldn’t … Not today.’
‘All right, I’ll do some eggs. Put on the fire if you’re cold – if there’s any gas that is. I won’t be long.’
She went into the tiny kitchen and started laboriously stirring the two tablespoons of greyish egg powder into the requisite four tablespoonfuls of water, pressing the lumps against the side of the bowl as the magazines said you should. She was just melting the last of her margarine ration into a saucepan when she heard a knock at the door.
