The Magic Army Page 9

  ‘Did the war get down there very much yet?’ asked Georgeton.

  ‘The war gets everywhere one way or another,’ replied the naval officer. ‘Plymouth and Exeter were both knocked about in the bombing. There have been hit and run raids on small places. I’ve spent a lot of time there in this war. There’s still a funny sort of peace there. Devon’s always been like that. There’s not much that would change it.’

  The American did not answer. Scarlett coughed and sniffed at the air accusingly. The launch wheeled into the stone quay and they stepped ashore, walking up a length of old, cold steps set into the landing. A heavy US Army staff car with a GI driver was waiting. The Americans shook hands with the English officer and climbed into the back of the car. The vehicle moved along the dark jetty, warehouses looking on one side, fishing boats creaking in the water on the other. Georgeton switched on the interior light of the car. The driver halted, and came around to the passenger door. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to pull the blinds. It’s a black out.’

  ‘How do you find your way when everything’s so dark, and on the wrong side of the highway?’ asked Georgeton as the man tugged the blinds down and fitted them into their retaining sockets.

  ‘It’s a matter of feel, sir,’ replied the driver. ‘This is a great country for feel.’

  He returned to the driving seat and the car moved forward again. The American general opened the yellow envelope. He read carefully for two minutes, then said to Scarlett, ‘We go to London now. Tomorrow there’s a briefing. This guy Montgomery. They say he’s brilliant. But objectionable.’

  Scarlett lay on his hotel bed in London, sleepless despite the wearying journey. General Georgeton had gone to his room immediately after dinner. Scarlett had not undressed. The ceiling was lofty and dim overhead, beyond the perimeter of the bedside lamp. He got up and went to the lavatory, then, taking his coat, he went out of the room and down the wide stairs to the lobby.

  He tugged on his greatcoat and walked out into the chilled night. Immediately he was caught in the engrossing dark; different shades of blackness, something he had never thought to be possible. A few taxis and cars crept like cats through the streets, their lights filtering through slits in visors across their headlamps. Footsteps approached him and passed by without his hardly recognizing a human form. And yet they walked firmly, unhesitatingly, people alone, people in pairs and groups, talking, laughing, but never faltering even as he approached them without seeing. Some spoke with American voices. They had also become used to the dark.

  Fearing he would be lost he kept on a straight course, so that it would merely be a matter of turning and retracing his steps to the hotel. It was a long, high-built street, lined with regular trees; he could feel the dead leaves like dirt under his shoes. His eyes learned quickly; he began to pick out the lofty-roofed houses against the night sky. There came a break in the buildings, nothing more than a hole. He thought it might be a square or a small park until he realized that it was a yawning space carved by a bomb. Only a week before he had been in Washington, with his wife, in a restaurant beside the misty Potomac. The city had been flooded with its customary white light. It seemed many years ago.

  He had walked, by now a little less cautiously, almost past the vacant space when he heard a subdued groaning. Stopping, he listened. It was repeated. It sounded to be only yards away, a woman’s groan. Scarlett stopped and hesitated. There was now no other person on the pavement with him, no voices, no footsteps. The noise seeped through the darkness again, like a whimper now. ‘Who’s there?’ he called carefully. ‘Who is it?’

  The sound was stifled. Two or three low words were spoken and a torch flicked. The beam struck him in his chest, enabling him to see above and beyond it to its source. There were no faces, just a heavy naked negro jacked up between a pair of spreadeagled white legs. They were lying on a piece of canvas.

  ‘What you want, mate?’ demanded a sharp woman’s voice. It was she who was shining the torch at him.

  ‘Sorry, nothing, nothing at all,’ muttered Scarlett. ‘I just heard you … that’s all. I thought you needed help.’

  The deep brown male voice came next. ‘A don’ need no help, mister. Ah is fuckin’.’

  Scarlett backed away, stumbling over some loose rubble. He made various apologetic sounds as he retreated and as soon as he felt the flat pavement again he turned and went hurriedly back towards the hotel.

  Behind him he heard the white woman and the negro laughing in the night. He slowed to a walk along the gritty pavement. A terrace of large houses rose on his left, their roofs outlined against the paler sky like the prows of moored ships. Abruptly, almost below his feet, it appeared, a basement door turned letting out a warm amber light. It was as though someone had opened a quiet furnace. Two men came out and from their mixed words, laughing snorts and their stumbling up a flight of stone steps, he knew they were drunk. Before the door was closed again by someone inside, he saw they were American Air Force officers.

  On impulse he called, ‘What’s that down there, fellas?’

  They halted unsteadily almost at the top of the steps and he could feel them staring at him through the dark. ‘Down there?’ said one eventually. He blew out wind. ‘Goddamn it, this guy don’t know what’s down there, Harry,’ he said with arch surprise.

  ‘Down there,’ said his companion heavily, ‘is The Wishbone Club. It ain’t officially called The Wishbone Club, but we call it that, don’t we, Ferdie, pal?’

  ‘Sure, it’s just the place you might get lucky, if you pull the right bone. Okay?’ He giggled. The drink and the darkness made it difficult for him to focus Scarlett. ‘For US commissioned personnel only,’ he said, slushing the esses.

  ‘Off limits to all other guys,’ said Harry. He gave Ferdie a tug and they rolled clumsily out on to the street, yawning and staggering through the dark, singing separate songs, neither of which Scarlett had ever heard.

  Hardly knowing why, and after a moment of standing at the top of the steps, he walked down and knocked tentatively on the door. There was no response. Muffled music seeped from within. There was a brass handle on the door. He turned it and it opened easily. The warmth of the place came out on to his face. The music remained subdued. He looked in on a lobby, fluently furnished; with gentle lighting and a shadowed pink carpet. In a low alcove on his right was a male receptionist in evening dress sitting behind a gilt table, like someone performing a one-man show. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked. The voice was cockney, although Scarlett could not recognize it as such. The man was young, incredibly sparse and wore spectacles on a nose that just escaped being mere bone. The American had the passing thought that perhaps he was too thin for military service.

  ‘Well,’ hesitated Scarlett, ‘I’d like to come in.’

  ‘You’re not a member, sir?’

  ‘No. I’ve just got here. I only got to England this afternoon.’

  For a moment he was going to be refused entry. The man’s long pink fingers were already half-raised when a woman’s voice from the far side of the foyer said: ‘He’s all right, Jimmy. I’ll sign him in.’

  ‘Right, Mrs Manifold,’ said the bloodless young man. He smiled eerily and handed Scarlett a pen. The American looked at the woman gratefully, then signed the offered book. She was wearing a slender white dress. As she walked towards him, smiling generously, the silk of the garment ruffled across the carpet. Her face was beautiful in a careful way, as though she spent a lot of time making it so. The eyes were pale enough to be fawn. The arms that came naked from the dress were shapely and pale. Scarlett began to feel happier.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘Let Jimmy take your coat.’

  Scarlett enjoyed letting the man take his damp greatcoat. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened his uniform. ‘This is very kind of you,’ he said. ‘I’m Oscar Scarlett. I only got here this afternoon, to England, I mean.’

  ‘You soon found your way here,’ she smiled. ‘That was clever navigation.
Come in with me.’

  Her fingers dropped on his sleeve as they walked from the foyer. ‘It was just an accident,’ he admitted. ‘I was only walking by on the way back to the hotel.’

  ‘Good,’ she said so that it sounded genuine. ‘I’m glad you did.’ She led him into a large but intimate room, carefully lit, with a bar and tables set around a small dance floor. A four-piece band played from a dais and three couples lolled to the tune, heads on shoulders, eyes closed, each partner apparently stopping the other sliding to the ground. There were twenty or so American officers in the place, some of them with women at their tables. ‘It’s Mrs Manifold, I believe,’ said Scarlett, smiling at her.

  ‘Oh, so sorry, I forgot. It’s Jean Manifold. Now, Oscar, what would you like to drink?’

  He laughed. ‘This gets better,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it the man who buys the drinks in England too?’

  ‘Next one,’ she said, holding up a well-tended finger. She motioned him to a table and he held her chair back while she caught the barman’s eye. ‘I’m the duty hostess tonight, so I buy the first drink. It’s the rule.’

  He eyed the place unhurriedly. ‘Duty hostess?’ he repeated. ‘What sort of dreamhouse is this, anyway?’

  ‘It’s just a social club for Unites States officers,’ she shrugged. ‘The Courtnall Club. It’s been going for a couple of years now.

  ‘The Wishbone Club?’ he said raising his eyebrows.

  She laughed. ‘That too. Some of the boys call it that. I thought you said you found it by accident.’

  ‘I did. The two drunks who were going out called it that.’

  ‘Yes, it’s got that nickname,’ she said seriously. ‘But we don’t let the committee know, especially Lady Courtnall, because it’s named after her.’ The waiter had arrived. He was old and dusty. Of course they had bourbon. Jean Manifold asked for a gin. She leaned forward. ‘So you only arrived today.’

  ‘Right this afternoon,’ he said. He felt comfortable now. The atmosphere was getting to him. He sat back in the slim chair and looked at her while she spoke. She was about twenty-five, he thought, slim and she wore a wedding ring and a diamond engagement ring. ‘We came on a flying boat,’ he continued. ‘And that’s a long ride from the States. I don’t think I’ll ever get the creases out of my bones.

  She saw he was looking at her rings. ‘No,’ she said, ‘my husband doesn’t know I come to this place.’

  He said: ‘I’m sorry. I guess all the guys ask you that?’

  She turned the rings on her finger. ‘They certainly do,’ she sighed. The drinks arrived and she told the tottery waiter to put them on her account. They raised their glasses to each other. ‘He doesn’t know because I haven’t told him,’ she said. ‘He’s a prisoner in Germany. The poor bastard’s miserable enough as it is.’

  ‘That’s tough.’

  ‘Especially for him,’ she returned. ‘I come here because it gives me company and I give company in return. Sometimes I think that’s what the war’s become, you know – finding someone to keep you company.’

  ‘I think it’s soon going to mean something else,’ he answered.

  She nodded into her gin. She was so at ease that he guessed she was merely carrying on with a conversation she had left unfinished with another man. ‘That may be,’ she said. ‘But for the past three years, anyway since the blitz, it’s been just … well, waiting. When the invasion starts, then it will be different again.’

  ‘At home we still think England’s in the middle of a battle every day. I’ve heard of GIs getting off the ships and dropping flat right there on the dock in case there’s dive-bombers.’

  She laughed laconically and said: ‘You should see this place clear every time there’s an air-raid warning. But not much is happening, is it? Not just now. It’s almost as if we’re all shipwrecked on a gigantic raft. All waiting for something to rescue us.’ She was suddenly listening to the music. ‘ “Alice Blue Gown”,’ she said. ‘I love this. Can we dance?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he grinned. He put the glass down and looked towards her attentively. She returned the glance with a flush, oddly guilty. He held out his hand and at once she clasped it fiercely. God, he thought, I’m going to bed with her.

  Immediately they were on the dance floor she moved close into him, the slim, silken body holding itself against the tops of his legs and his chest. Her full dark hair was under his chin. Without looking up she said: ‘This place is going to be quiet tonight, Ossie.’

  No one had ever called him that before. He told her and he felt her smile. ‘I can’t call you Oscar,’ she said. ‘That’s a terrible name. It’s like a cartoon name, like Walt Disney. As far as I’m concerned it’s Ossie. Is that all right?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re calling the shots.’

  ‘This place was jam-packed last night, Ossie,’ she continued. ‘New Year’s Eve. You couldn’t move.’ She paused, the band stopped playing the tune and went immediately, and a touch wearily, on to another. She remained tightly against him, her face thrust into his chest like a woman weeping. ‘Where were you last night, New Year’s Eve?’ she asked.

  ‘Last night, last year,’ shrugged Scarlett. ‘I’ve lost track. In a hut by the harbour in Lisbon, waiting for daylight. It wasn’t a great New Year’s Eve.’

  The dance went on. His limbs felt stiff from the travelling. He knew his heart was beating against her face. Casually, sleepily, she took her hand from his shoulder and brought it down between their bodies until it was touching inside his trouser leg. ‘Can you take me home,’ she asked, quietly, still without looking up at him. ‘I feel I want to go home early. It’s only around the corner.’

  *

  It was not so dark when they left. A low quarter moon had moved across the sky and cast into outline the buildings and the trees of the street. He walked with his arm about her. He remembered walking home from high school dances like that once. She was almost submerged in the huge collar of her coat. ‘My husband,’ she said suddenly after they had been walking in silence, ‘Mike. He was a pilot. Brought down over Germany. Do you know what they were doing?’

  ‘Bombing, I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Leaflets. Dropping bloody leaflets,’ she said bitterly. ‘Telling the Germans they were naughty and advising them to surrender. Seven boys in that squadron were killed, including my brother. Dropping bits of paper.’

  They had reached a heavy house with a flight of smeared steps reflecting a damp moon. At the top she took a key from her bag and turned to him wearing a serious smile. He thought that, after all, she was going to say goodnight.

  ‘Will you come in with me for a few minutes?’ she asked politely. ‘I’d be glad if you would.’

  He put his hand against her neck. It was cool, almost dank. ‘Yes, sure,’ he said.

  She led the way into a hallway, dark and narrow, closed the door and turned on the light. A flight of stairs went up into gloom. She turned and opened a door on his right. ‘It’s in here,’ she said. ‘It’s a self-contained flat. They’ve been quite easy to get since the blitz. I’ve lived here since nineteen-forty. The cat is called Morgan.’

  The cat elongated his black and white stomach along a couch of deep satin cushions. ‘The cat and the settee are alike,’ she smiled. ‘Elderly but elegant.’ Scarlett could see that despite her apparent confidence she was unsure. She had taken her coat and put it in a cupboard. ‘It’s quite cold in here,’ she said, putting her hands to her bare upper arms. ‘The coke ration gets short at the end of the month, so the radiators don’t get hot. Would you like a drink?’

  Scarlett moved forward and put his arms confidently about her. ‘You’re always offering me drinks,’ he said. ‘Is this some kind of ploy?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied simply. She eased her lips towards him and kissed him with studied gentleness on his lips. He did not press her but let her lie against his neck, her ample hair under his jaw. He had a quick memory of holding hands with his wife over that table by the Poto
mac only a week ago. At once she seemed to detect the thought.

  ‘You married, Ossie?’ she inquired.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Take off your coat. You won’t feel the benefit when you go.’

  ‘No,’ he said vaguely. ‘I guess I won’t.’ He climbed out of the coat. She had gone away to the other end of the room and was taking some glasses and bottles from a cabinet. ‘How long?’ she said over her shoulder. ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Two years. Nineteen-forty-one. A week after Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘That was a busy time for weddings,’ she smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how many Americans I know were married that week.’ He was looking at her from the other side of the room, still surprised at her. She brought a bourbon with ice back for him. ‘Adultery,’ she confided, ‘is, you’ll find, very nearly as good as the real thing.’

  Firmly he took her glass and put it on the low table by the couch. He put his next to it. His arms went around her again, resting against her backbone under the soft dress. ‘Listen, now listen,’ he said. ‘Are you for real? I mean, things don’t happen like this. Not for me. I’ve never been an angel …’

  ‘Few soldiers are,’ she said with a soft briskness. ‘It doesn’t go with the job.’ She regarded him and he her, their eyes inches apart. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if you want an explanation, there isn’t one. You were looking for company, you may not admit it but you were. And I’m feeling like company. Where will you be tomorrow?’

  He shook his head. ‘Some place … Devon …’

  ‘Exactly. Miles away,’ she confirmed. ‘People can’t afford just to hold hands now. I know, I’ve tried it. You end up writing letters. There’s no time, Ossie.’ She smiled slightly. ‘On the other hand, if you feel you must go, go now, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that,’ he said. ‘I’m staying.’