War Bonds: A Novel of World War Two, page 28
“Holy moly,” he said. “Didn’t see this coming.”
“Nor did I,” Beryl responded. “Obviously.”
“It’s good news. Tremendous news. I’ll bet he has quite a story.” Jack said, his enthusiasm false and forced. And then he waited, knowing that whatever she said next would tell him everything he needed to know. Whether she was torn—in love with them both, maybe. Or the best possibility, for him anyway, that she’d grown to love him too much to let him go—that their bond, forged by the fires of this war, was too powerful to relinquish. From his earliest days at Kimbolton, her little boy had given him purpose, a flesh and blood reason to keep climbing up into his bomber every few days and flying into hell. This makeshift family had become his strength, had imbued him with resolute courage to face the day. Beryl had done this with her determined selflessness in the worst of all situations. He found her noble—that’s what it was—and as the word came to him, he knew what she would say and what she would do.
“I love you, Jack.” He nodded, knowing what would come next. “But I loved him first and I owe him. I owe him and Colin after all they’ve been through. We took vows. I’m his wife. Whatever I’ve meant to you, I am still his wife.”
“Right. I know. Of course,” Jack responded, suddenly on his feet, working his cap in his hands, trying to keep his voice steady, unemotional. “I’ll need to head back to the base, so…”
“Stop it,” she said. “Sit. Now.” He did. “Please don’t make this worse. You’re sturdier than that. Given everything we’ve been through, you’d better be. It’s not like we can just trade the two of you out, you know, one for the other. Colin still needs you and he will suffer if you up and disappear. Gordon’s return doesn’t change our love for you.”
Our love for you. Already so familial, friendly when Jack wished it to remain intimate, passionate.
“What would you have me do, Beryl? Help plan his welcome home bash? Am I supposed to flip a switch? Is that what you’ve managed to do in the last, oh, fifteen minutes? Because it doesn’t seem to be working that way for me. I have loved you with everything I have. Everything. I stupidly thought that there would be one honest and true thing to come out of this war—and that would be us. Us and Colin, becoming a family. Maybe we’d add another kid. I actually wondered if we would someday. We couldn’t forget the things we’ve seen and the losses… but we would get past it because through that pain, we found each other. That’s how I’ve made sense of this, Beryl.”
“And you, you have literally dragged me out of the depths, helped me limp through this, and brought some normalcy to my life. But a future? You’re young and handsome and an American soldier, Jack, and I’m older and somebody’s mother and I just imagined you wouldn’t need to settle for…”
“You’re saying I could do better? That I was doing you a favor? If it was just that, there are lots of women in London I could have climbed into bed with. Listen, Beryl, I tried like hell not to fall in love with you. That day we found out about Gordon? Which wasn’t even the truth, but anyway, that day? I planned to apologize for kissing you—planned to keep my distance. But when you let me in your life, that was it. I finally got a clue about what makes life worth living—that when you truly love someone, you’ll do whatever it takes to make them happy—to show that love. Doing that—for you, for Colin—has made me happier than I ever thought I could be. Even here, now.” He paused, lifting her hand to his mouth to kiss it. “And now your husband is returning. I thought this war couldn’t get any harder.”
She wept, leaning her head on his shoulder, knowing that the mending of her own heart meant breaking his. He held her trembling frame, hating himself for contributing to her sadness on what ought to have been a day of abject joy. “Your love restored me,” she whispered. “You held me upright when I thought I would crumple. You’ve been my anchor—Colin’s anchor. He and I are in right mind now because of the love and reassurance you lent when the worry threatened to sink us. You won that war on our behalf. We’d have been lost without our Yank.” Jack stroked her hair, bowing his head in sorrow.
Having turned out the lights and secured the back door, the vicar strode to the front pew.
“How may I help you both?” he asked, looking from Beryl to Jack, his face kind, serious.
Beryl straightened, accepting the vicar’s handkerchief to dry her tears. “You know about us, do you not, Reverend?” she began.
“I do. I know you both to be fine people who have demonstrated utmost courage in difficult circumstances.”
“No,” Beryl interrupted him, shifting uncomfortably in the pew. “I mean us. Jack and me... together.”
“That is precisely what I am referring to. You are a pair of human beings, imperfect as we all are, who have looked to one another for love and comfort to help you through the cruelties of this war. God does not fault you for the love you have shown one another, nor do I. I would say it has sustained you both.”
“But now, I fear…”
“Tosh. Do not fear, dear Beryl, or as the angels tend to say, whenever something huge and earth-shattering is about to happen in the Bible: ‘fear not.’ Hear that: fear not. You two did your best, for each other, for Colin, for the Allies, I’d say. And now, with your husband returning, things will need to change. That will be enormously difficult for both of you because of the love and regard you have developed for one another. But what you must not do is make it worse with recriminations. No one set out to deceive or hurt anyone here. Be as kind to one another as you’ve ever been—let grace do its work. There can be healing from even this. Not immediately, but with time. And in the interim, think of the boy, who he needs you both to be. Summon your courage one more time for him.”
“But I love her, vicar, and the idea of losing her…” Jack’s voice choked with grief.
“If that is true, Captain, then seek her best. Be grateful for all you’ve learned in loving her, but seek the right thing for her life. Can you do that? Keeping your own wants out of it for a bit?”
Jack’s face contorted in pain. He wrestled with simultaneously wanting her to himself again, but not wanting to make the coming days harder for her. Eventually, he spoke.
“I can try, vicar. I can certainly try.”
“That’s all I ask. That and your promise to trust that God has not forsaken you, that there will be joy once again in your life. Every bit of pain and disappointment in our lives, Jack, is seed. Seed that makes us who God intends us to be and from that seed, joy will grow again. Now…” he looked at them both. “The man from the intelligence service went with the Hughes and is waiting for you at their house. He has more to tell you about Gordon and when he might come home. Under the circumstances, I think it best that I accompany the two of you to over to Boxworth Road to ease any awkwardness. Shall we?”
. . .
When they came through the door, Wilkins was seated at the Hughes’ dining table, eating a bite of lunch. Wills had made a fragrant onion soup with a veal stock the way Ginette had taught him and set out some cheeses and baguettes—very French—for the party that replaced the planned post-funeral luncheon. Wilkins was enjoying it immensely.
Colin rushed to the door, his eyes full of worry. “We wondered where you’d gotten to,” he said.
“Colin, my good man,” said the vicar, “I believe it’s time for you to stop bothering with all that worry that tends to follow you around.”
At this, Hugo let out a little snicker.
The vicar sat, drawing Colin close, speaking softly, reasonably. “Think about it for a moment: we all believed the very worst thing that could happen had happened. And did you and your mother fall to pieces? On the contrary. Despite your sadness, you grew more resourceful and more resilient and pressed your way through with the help of Ivy and her family and Jack, of course, and Buck, whom we all miss, and all your friends at school. And now, miracle of miracles, your father is returning. He returns to a family that has seen the worst and survived it. A family that is now grown, actually, interconnected with all these lovely people here. So, it would seem to me, there is very little you ought to worry about, very little you aren’t completely capable of handling—even if your mother and your friend Jack take their sweet time crossing the street.”
Colin looked from his mother to Jack and back again. It was not their delayed arrival, of course, that troubled him. It was who they would be, with each other, with him, now that his father would soon reenter their lives. How was this to work? But looking into the faces of both these people whom he loved and trusted so completely, he saw no anger, no confusion. They seemed spent, but calm, settled. And both looked on him with love in their eyes.
Jack spoke. “The vicar’s got a point, Colin. Your dad’s comin’ home. Maybe today we can enjoy the good stuff—just happiness—for a change. Forget about the war and the tough stuff. At least for today.”
A smile grew on Colin’s face and his shoulders, which he had not recognized were raised and tight with tension, relaxed in relief. “I can’t believe you’re going to meet him. My dad. I can’t believe this is real, you know? This is the kind of thing Hugo and I used to dream about—this very thing with our dads and you and… well… Buck too.”
“That would have been even better, wouldn’t it? If Buck were here.”
. . .
After they’d all had a bite of lunch, they gathered in Ivy’s sitting room as Wilkins recounted the events that would culminate in Gordon’s return to them. He painted broad outlines of the escape from Sagan—leaving out the relationship with the commandant’s wife, saying simply that the escapees had stolen a car and fled. Hugo provided color commentary, imagining they had crashed through the gate of the prison camp in a hail of bullets, Lieutenant Clarke at the wheel. Wilkins neither corrected nor affirmed Hugo’s imaginings, believing the Lieutenant himself could provide all the details he wished once he was home. The group, said Wilkins, ran into a sentry in the mountains at the Czech border; two soldiers—both British—were killed and Gordon was critically wounded in his right shoulder. Instead of abandoning him there in the snow, two Americans, Captain Floyd Harris and Sergeant Al Balducci, carried him across the frontier to safety. They eventually flagged down a Red Army tank outside Kalinov, which transported Gordon to a field hospital where, after a week’s time, he stabilized. A surgeon scrubbed his wounds to obviate infection and the shoulder began to heal, but the bullet remained lodged in his torso. So, he and the others travelled on a series of puddle-jumpers from Zagreb to Bologna to Lyon, skirting Austria and southern portions of the now-failing Reich. Once in France, Lieutenant Clarke had undergone more surgery to remove the bullet and in only the past few days, had turned a corner, begun to eat solid food, and communicate with his nurses and doctors.
“For this reason,” concluded the intelligence agent, “we thought it best to wait as long as we did to bring you news of his survival.”
Beryl understood the rationale, the need to cloak Gordon’s mission as it progressed. But she resented the way the cold calculus of it all played out against real life, magnifying Jack’s hurt, complicating her situation.
“And when’s he coming?” asked Hugo. “When can he travel?”
“In a few weeks’ time, I would say,” said Wilkins. “You’ll be having a grand start to the new year, to 1945. Let’s hope it’s a sign of good things to come for all of us.”
“Man,” said Jack, turning to Beryl. “What a lucky, lucky guy,” and all those present—except perhaps the twins and Marigold—knew that Jack referred to more than Gordon’s fortuitous escape. Standing beside him, Ivy placed a hand on his back and rubbed, her palm circling in quiet recognition of the crushing loss Jack worked so hard to conceal.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Any fool can tell the truth,
but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
–Samuel Butler
London, January 1945
After Andrew Wilkins’ revelations on the day that did not, in fact, turn out to be the day of Gordon’s memorial service, Beryl was left to wrestle with a series of unanswered questions. Why had her husband been seized with the notion to steal a vehicle and run for the border at this point in the war? Did he fear the Nazis would liquidate his prison camp? There was grave talk across Britain about just that possibility, something Gordon must have anticipated. And what of the time he spent in a private home outside the camp? Did the War Office or the intelligence service know if this had made him a target, placed him at greater risk? And mixed up in all of it: his survival of the typhus. Why had he not written her in nearly a year—not a single letter—after she received the false news from the War Office?
Once back in London, Beryl made her way to Baker Street to seek out Wilkins to ask questions she did not want to investigate in front of her son. After a string of secretaries and clerks made a series of awkward excuses why she could not wait for him in their offices, why she could not set up an appointment, the man himself finally telephoned her and agreed, reluctantly, to a conversation. He suggested they meet at the Cross Keys Pub near Covent Garden, wishing to keep her away from the office, away from those who might inadvertently reveal the peculiar specifics of Lieutenant Clarke’s activity in Poland.
They sat at the small, polished table amidst patrons energized by news of the Allies’ success in Germany and the anticipation that their loved ones might soon return home. After offering a bit of an update on what he knew about when the war in Europe might actually end, Wilkins launched into a sanitized account of Gordon’s wartime exploits. Beryl leaned back in the banquette, listening, arms folded, cigarette between her fingers. Lieutenant Clarke, said Wilkins, gained unusual access to the camp commandant’s home when it was learned he was a skilled architect and builder. He completed a large project in the garden over a number of months and was then assigned to general maintenance of the house—a rather large manor house with an extensive garden along with a separate guest house. When he fell ill, the commandant and his wife secured an anti-infection medicine for him and the treatment proved successful. Some months after that, he and his group of escapees used the resources the lieutenant had gathered over many months at the house—weapons, cash, maps—to execute an escape. A treacherous journey to the relative safety of Czechoslovakia followed “and now,” he concluded, “the Lieutenant is headed home in the very near future.” He lifted his beer in salute.
Beryl sat quietly in the din of the pub, considering the still-spare details Wilkins provided.
“They treated him with this new medicine?” she finally asked. “A POW? Is that common?”
Wilkins looked at her steadily, eyes unblinking. “It is not.”
“So, explain it.”
“It appears the commandant and his wife found your husband extremely valuable to the running of the household and developed a sense of obligation, or perhaps appreciation, towards him, given his fluent German and the other talents he brought.”
“The commandant and his wife,” Beryl repeated. “The commandant of a prison camp concerned himself with one British prisoner to this extent. How lovely of this officer, as Nazis are not entirely known for this type of compassionate behavior. I’m most indebted. I shall have to send a note to express my profound thanks.” She returned Wilkins’ stare. “What are you not saying, Mr. Wilkins?”
Wilkins took another sip of beer, then another small step toward the truth, deeply hoping he’d be able to avoid spilling details that would injure this woman.
“Well, the old wife truly believed she could not manage the house without your husband, so she apparently pressed for the medication.”
“How is it the Red Cross recorded him dead, then?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” he lied, “but it seems the woman was utterly worried about the poor quality of her help given her hosting responsibilities as the wife of the commandant, that she wrongly believed she could keep your husband in her employ—well, not employ, actually, because he was not paid of course—but anyway, she thought if the British army believed him dead, she would gain some latitude with him. She believed the Germans would win the war, and perhaps, that she could retain him on her household staff.”
“Retain, you say.” Beryl took a deep pull from her cigarette, considering what would cause this woman to believe herself entitled to retain an enemy combatant once the war had ended. Perhaps she believed the combatant would choose to stay. “As you’ve spoken, Mr. Wilkins, I’ve conjured an image in my mind of these people—from what the newsreels show us of our German enemies, from the propaganda posters we see now all over London. I picture the commandant officious, self-important, all brass buttons and bluster, and with the wife, I see a sturdy German matron with her hair in a bun in her dirndl skirt and wool tunic. Wide and solid. Am I correct in this, would you say?”
“Half-right,” he said.
“Which half?”
“You have described the commandant well.”
. . .
Beryl pressed him further, learning the woman was much younger than the commandant, a pianist of some talent who had studied in Paris. It was not a hard leap to conclude she had grown dependent, overly attached to Gordon, a man closer in age, ultimately saving his life by supplying the typhus treatment. But another detail truly unsettled Beryl: the notion that Gordon had sufficient access over many months to the commandant’s private quarters to pilfer items to use in the escape. Had he not been under guard? Had he been alone in the house with the wife, month upon month, and was that what inclined him to stop writing to Beryl a year ago? Even before that, his letters had been odd and empty, impersonal messages without a tender thought or a sign he yearned for her or for Colin and the life they had shared. It had contributed to her despair, the all-consuming loneliness for which Jack became the antidote, first as a friend and then as her lover.
