War Bonds: A Novel of World War Two, page 29
She recalled how Gordon had chafed in his earliest years of fatherhood. Perhaps he had found some independence as a prisoner—as ridiculous as that sounded—but maybe some relief from the constraints of marriage and the obligations to family. She closed her eyes and considered how war left no one untouched: even the lives of those lucky enough to survive were utterly reshaped. At this moment, she wished only for peace, peace of mind, peace in the world, but she worried Gordon’s return would bring further upheaval.
“I appreciate your meeting me,” she said, standing and extending her hand to Wilkins. “I only wish I’d been apprised of all this in a more… timely manner.”
“War is a messy enterprise, Mrs. Clarke. Unfortunately, you were not the only consideration.”
“Apparently not,” she said. “Apparently not.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
What we love we shall grow to resemble.
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
London, January 1945
On the eve of each bombing mission, Jack tucked into bed early for a few hours of restless sleep. He had adhered to this schedule from the very start, routine mutating into superstition, reinforced every time he returned to base, alive if not well. Sometime after midnight, two or three in the morning, a member of the Gator ground crew who’d been fussing over the plane all night to ensure it was equipped and ready, would enter his hut to rouse him: “Mission today, Captain!” the man would whisper, giving Jack’s shoulder a shake and moving a cup of hot coffee in front of his face. The coffee quelled the biliousness in Jack’s stomach, allowing the adrenaline to course that would drive the day.
On evenings that did not precede a mission, Jack developed a new habit: throwing back multiple shots of bourbon at the officers’ club. The raucous group of airmen around him on these evenings shared a unifying goal: to anesthetize their pain in such a way they could make it to the end of this unholy war and get home. Each had lost too many friends to count in sudden, gruesome ways and found that the alcohol was the one sure tool that helped mitigate and blur the images that shadowed them. Most wondered why Jack, who had completed his twenty-five missions, continued to stay when he could rotate home, perhaps lead a training command in the States. Jack previously said he was staying because the war was nearing its decisive point and he wanted to see things through to the end. But given the change in his personal circumstances, he considered whether it was time he asked that his stateside orders to be put through.
After hearing the intelligence officer’s recounting of Gordon’s heroic escape, Jack returned to base feeling like he’d been socked in the gut. He and Beryl agreed it would be unwise for him to join the celebrants at the homecoming party for Gordon, Jack finding it painful to relinquish the place he had known, comfortably embedded into the lives of these families in Elsworth, Colin’s surrogate father, one of the Yanks sent to save them. The idea of staying after the war for mop-up and to decommission the bases across England seemed ludicrous now and would only magnify his sense of loss. Better to return home to a life and a setting that would not constantly remind him of Beryl and her son. To rum and Cokes in the shadow of a Florida palm, beneath bright, cloudless skies with sun-splashed waves rolling in the distance, to sunburned skin and bare feet he could finally—finally—warm in the hot, white sand.
He had sent hints in letters home to his parents about “special people” he’d met in Britain, hints he hoped had gone undetected so he would not have to explain anything once he got home. What he wanted now was a clean exit: for Gordon to not learn of the affair, for Colin to go on loving all of them, being proud of them. At least, that’s what he wanted in his best moments. With every shot of bourbon he ordered around the table at the officers’ club, he became incrementally less committed to his promise to the vicar to recede and allow Beryl the room to resume her life with Gordon, protecting Colin from further hurt. A better course might be to drive into London and pound on the door of her flat and plead with her to be with him after all they’d been through together. Fortunately for him, army rules forbade requisition of a jeep or staff car when a soldier was plastered. He had spoken to Beryl by telephone several times, assuring her he would comply with Colin’s keen wish to introduce him to Gordon when he returned. Colin seemed content to believe that the bond between his mother and Jack had shifted back to a safe and uncomplicated place, and they cooperated with this idea.
In a telephone call weeks before Gordon returned, Jack asked if he could come to London to see Beryl alone, just one more time. She agreed, suggesting they meet in public—not her flat—because even now, she worried their closeness, the attachment she still felt, might overwhelm their best intentions. He suggested the café at the Dorchester, the very place where they had failed to convene a year earlier on that day when Beryl had received the false news. Beryl was finally working the day shift at Grove Park so they could share a proper dinner. As she freshened up at her flat, she took the same care she formerly did to look her best for him, the way she had done in the months before, when she thought she was free to love him. But she paused often as she powdered her face and worked to tame her curls, dabbing at the tears that spilled down her cheeks, tears that acknowledged that this would be their last evening together.
He stood as she entered the dining room, brushing a kiss on her cheek, his eyes clouded in a way only she could detect. They ordered wine—French vineyards once again shipping to Britain—and made small talk for a bit, afraid to open themselves, to speak aloud the cost they felt in losing each other, caught together in the bittersweet intersection of the tragedy of the war and the hope they’d found in spite of it. He shared that Colin had apprised him of plans to bring Gordon to the base just as soon as he could, assuring her he could handle it because of how it would thrill Colin. She shared what she knew of Gordon’s convalescence now in Bristol, that he was healing well and would most likely be able to resume his architectural career. She paused, fiddling with her wineglass, repositioning the salt cellar and the pepper grinder, before looking up at Jack.
“There’s another thing,” she said.
“Okay. Let’s hear it,” he offered, half-thinking it had to do with him.
“It’s something odd. Perhaps I don’t have the right to bring this to you…”
“Anything, Beryl. If I can help, I want to.”
“You know how he—Gordon—worked outside the prison camp. For quite a while. Years.”
Jack nodded.
“There are things that feel odd to me, the lengths the people went to for him—the couple he worked for.”
“Well, those Nazis probably appreciated having such a fun-loving guy around,” Jack joked. She frowned. “I’m sorry. Please. Continue.”
“It seems it was the wife who protected him, got him the medicine that cured the typhus.”
“Well, good job, grandma. Typhus epidemics have killed plenty of POWs. So, what’s odd?”
“She was the one who misinformed the authorities that he had died. And she’s not a grandmother. She’s rather young and a pianist, apparently, and probably beautiful. According to Wilkins, the man from the intelligence service? She had this plan for Gordon to stay with her—with the household—after the war.”
Jack crossed his arms and looked off, considering. “How in the world would she think that could happen? Even if Germany wins this whole thing—which it can’t now—but even if it did, Gordon wouldn’t choose to stay there. He’d come home.”
“One would think so. But Gordon stopped writing to me after the news came from the War Office. So, I’m wondering if maybe he cooperated with her. Or, if… maybe… there was something between them.”
As much as Jack wanted to seize on this idea—foster and embellish and sky-write the notion that Gordon was a turncoat who had fallen under the spell of a Nazi socialite, who should be banished from Beryl’s life, from his son’s—he could not do it. He reached across the table for her hand, wishing such a narrative were true because then he could resurrect his dreams of a future with her, make extravagant promises to protect her from a man who had betrayed her. Instead, he carefully chose the words he would need to settle her heart once more.
“I’ve never been one, mind you, but Beryl, being a prisoner of war is about as bad as it gets. Desperate straits. And he was held as long as anybody in the war—no guarantee he’d come out of it. You hope the bad guys follow the rules, but when things get dicey, when they run out of food, out of room, they play fast and loose. Gordon’s goal was to survive. Working at that house, he probably got better food, stayed a little warmer. He got medicine that cured him of typhus. He said anything and maybe did anything he had to do to make it. I mean, we did what we thought we needed to do to get through this, right? You and I?” she nodded, her eyes pensive and sad. “And we weren’t under armed guard. Beryl, if I had to guess, I’d say he didn’t cooperate to please her, but to fool her. Her and her Nazi officer husband. Fool them so’s he could get the hell out of there and get back to you. Which is what he did when he got the chance. He escaped. As all good soldiers are taught to do. He did his job.”
Beryl nodded. “He did. He did.”
“And why did he escape?” He paused, leaning close to her over the table, fortifying himself to speak, his expression resigned. “He escaped because he knows he belongs with you and with Colin. Because he loves you. Still. Because he knows, as I have come to know, that there is absolutely no one like you, and not just your beautiful green eyes and your wild hair, but your heart. Your honesty. Your damn integrity, that Colin has inherited and that I have learned from. So as much as I’d like to agree with you and tell you to come away with me because he’s a son of a bitch because of whatever he’s done…” he shrugged, “I can’t say that. Your husband, I’m thinking, did the best he could.”
The ensuing silence encouraged the waiter to rush in to refresh their wine glasses, let them know the entrees were coming. Beryl failed to acknowledge his fluttering about, her expression infused with gratitude that her life and Jack’s had intertwined, even with the profound sorrow of their disentangling.
“You are good medicine,” she said. “Despite that funny accent of yours, you tend to choose exactly the right words.”
He smiled and gave a seated bow, his bent arm across his middle. “Then I have a few more for you, that I want you to remember if nothing else, so you’ll know what you’ve been to me: in the worst moments of my worst days, when I was scared as hell and thought it might just be easier to bail out of the Gator and take my chances because I wasn’t real sure I could keep going, I would picture Colin’s face. When Buck was killed and I had one engine and half an airplane, it was that trusting, hopeful face I saw, a boy who expected me and our guys to be braver than we knew we could ever be, expected us to do our jobs and end this thing. That’s how I kept doing it. First for him and later for you. So, thank you for seeing me home, Beryl. I owe you my life.”
They rode back to her flat in silence, their last private moments, without Colin, without the Hughes, without Gordon. In the days ahead, time alone together would only add salt to their wounds, so they would avoid it. Jack walked her to her door as he’d done the first time he drove her back to London and extended his hand, prompting her to laugh and lean fully into his chest, her arms around his waist. He asked if he could kiss her—”one for the road” he said—and she answered by pulling his face to hers, moving her mouth slowly, languidly over his as if she wanted to commit each part of his lips, his tongue to memory. He pulled away first, took a step back, and touched a hand to the brim of his uniform cap.
“Captain.” She responded with a salute of her own, eyes glistening. “It’s been lovely.”
“It has, Mrs. Clarke, ma’am,” he said, a catch in his throat. “Sorry to see it end.”
“As am I,” Beryl responded, “as am I.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer the deepest wounds and scars of war.
–General Douglas MacArthur
London, February 1945
She paced the length of the platform, taking shallow drafts of the cold air, too nervous even to smoke, heart hammering in her chest. Colin had stayed in Elsworth, graciously understanding that his mother wished to see Gordon alone first because it had been so very long and she wished to orient him as best she could to all that had happened to them these past five years. In their former life, Gordon had only to observe the set of Beryl’s jaw, the stillness in her eyes, to detect something unsaid between them. She hoped this ability of his might have dulled because there was so much she wished not to say today, fearing even an unsettling hint would mar his homecoming. He and Colin both, deserved more than that. Would Gordon sense her continued attachment to Jack, that apart from their physical intimacy, she felt indebted to him for how he had unburdened her, cheered her time and again? Would she give herself away when she spoke, when Jack’s name crept into the conversation one too many times? That would wound Gordon after all he’d suffered, the risks he’d taken to escape. Could he be made to appreciate the set of circumstances that had forged the bond she and Jack had shared—one that Colin continued to experience with him? Her thoughts twirled and spun as she waited and watched the many trains arrive and depart. Her mind would not quiet.
Her husband had departed in 1939 from this very platform and the next train in would return him home. Gordon Clarke was among the fortunate few. Across Europe, she knew, countless others had boarded trains that took them one direction only, never to return to family, to safety, to the lives they had lived simply and happily before Hitler developed his unspeakable plans. She thought of the innocent millions he packed into cattle cars, the first step of his scheme of extirpation of those he considered racially inferior. Then followed the soldiers who willingly climbed aboard trains in free countries across the world, the first stage of the years-long journey each would take to join forces to undermine Hitler’s scheme. What ironic justice it would be, Beryl thought, if the Allies could catch Hitler on a train somewhere and bomb it all to hell. She recalled how his hubristic love affair with trains had caused him to do outrageous and impractical things—dragging out the railcar used when Germany signed terms of surrender in the first world war to host the signing of the Armistice at Compiègne after France fell. He’d had a luxury railcar constructed, with silk drapes, gold filigreed fixtures, and soft leather couches—laden with drink and gourmet food and beautiful young serving girls. She’d seen photos. He’d planned to use this train to speed VIPs to Russia once he’d conquered it. Both of those railcars were in the hands of his enemies now, as Hitler, hopefully, would be in the very near future. The incursion of the Germans into the Ardennes had been repulsed; they had retreated now to defend the Siegfried Line. With the Luftwaffe shattered, could the Reich be in its death throes at last?
German rockets continued to fall over London, but Gordon’s wartime service would soon end: his medical discharge would be completed over the next few weeks. Wills, too, would soon relinquish the uniform after an upcoming ceremony, during which he would be awarded the French Commemorative War Medal as well as the Croix de Guerre for his service with the Resistance. Beryl and Colin—and of course, Gordon—would attend the ceremony with the Hughes in London. It was all Hugo could talk about. Margaret and Patsy were lobbying to come, the odds slim they would be permitted to leave the safety of Elsworth until the fighting was truly over.
The whistle sounded, and Beryl saw the train at a distance.
. . .
After he was deemed well enough to travel, Gordon had been flown from Lyon to the large airfield at Bristol. He continued his convalescence there and underwent a lengthy debrief on the movement of POWs he’d observed and his sense of German troop morale. After three weeks, he boarded the train to London, the penultimate leg of the long journey from Sagan. They would go to Elsworth after this. He and Beryl had not spoken, their communications relayed by a team of combat intelligence officers who had arranged his transport home. There had been an emotional farewell with Floyd and Al at Lyon, Gordon attempting but feeling he’d failed to fully express his gratitude for their superhuman effort after the sentry had shot him, lugging him nearly twenty kilometers inside Czechoslovakia before they’d been able to flag down help. By this point, the three were so covered in Gordon’s blood that when the Soviet tank driver had spotted them, he thought them a trio of Polish partisans whose courage exceeded their skills. The driver delivered them to a field hospital, Floyd recovering from his exhaustion enough to forcefully insist that American and British officers be contacted after the Soviets doubted their story of escape. “You cannot be Allied soldiers,” insisted the Polkovnik, who oversaw the medical unit. “Your clothes are Polish-made—your only weapons a pair of German Lugars! We have no reason to believe you are whom you say.” But after a number of days, agents arrived to confirm their tale. Then they waited to see if Gordon would survive.
As he lay on the hospital cot, willing himself to hang on, to resist slipping into death to end his acute physical pain, Al sat at Gordon’s side, smoking one acrid Soviet cigarette after another, berating him, saying Gordon couldn’t give up now. Not after getting this far. They’d already lost Graham and Melvin, and that was enough. “Listen, Lieutenant,” he whispered conspiratorially, “it’ll make a lot better story for the folks back home if you survive this, okay? Might even mean a medal for me and the Captain, bringing you out, when you were mostly dead. Holy Mother of God, your skin was whiter than the snow—just as cold, too. And now, look at you here, pink-cheeked, cozy under a couple of blankets, and these Red Army nurses takin’ care of ya. Hoo-boy, a bunch a lookers, I gotta say. But not the kind you think. I’m saying they’re even scarier-looking than the nuns at St. Bridget’s back in Philly—”
