Charlotte Gray (9 page)

He had been farming in Nyasaland when the war broke out. Like many of his contemporaries, he had found it difficult to settle in England and a family friend had spoken seductively of Africa. At that age he regarded his work as provisional; he was still looking, not very urgently, for what he would really do. A fierce South African neighbour called Forster told him they should at once return to England and join up. Forster was unhappy with the way some people in his own country seemed sympathetic to the Nazis and wanted to put every distance he could between them and himself. Since he and Gregory had both flown planes in Africa they should obviously volunteer as pilots. Gregory reluctantly agreed.

Another war? What did they want with another war? But he went, and thought he could fight it in a way that suited him.

He reached up from under the eiderdown and stubbed out the cigarette. Forster was the first man in his squadron to shoot down an enemy plane. Gregory confirmed it; he flew round in fascinated circles, watching the German fighter plummet through the air and bury itself in the hillside with a squally blossoming of flame. Forster was also the first man to be killed.

Others quickly followed. Every man to whom he grew close in the desperate intimacy of shared experience was able to return affection and support for only a brief time. Gregory did not feel blessed or lucky; he felt he had in some way let down the others. Perhaps he was not worthy of dying. A woman with whom he had thought himself in love began to make demands of him; she wanted to be married and have children. When he heard himself explaining to her that this was probably not the time and that he was certainly not the man, he saw how much things had changed.

He could not risk drawing someone in to this extent, when he viewed his own life with such detachment, when he saw it as impermanent, waiting for a shape. And at this ending there were no tearful smiles, but remorse and bitterness. A year ago he would have been round at Charlotte's door. He was powerfully drawn to her; she engaged not just some reflexive male desire, but a will towards friendship such as he had known as a child, when he would become besotted with some small friend and grow fractious if denied his company. A year ago it would have been irresistible; there was a pleasure in her conversation which would have seemed a guarantee against a fickle loss of interest and some woundingly short romance.

As he switched off the bedside light and searched once more for sleep, he wondered if these days he was capable of such feeling. For Charlotte's sake, it was much better not to risk it.

Charlotte was in Dick Cannerley's arms. His face was smooth, his left palm moist. He was holding her tightly to him, his right hand against her back. Their feet were in a pool of light, one of several thrown on to the floor by the low-shaded lights at the small tables round the room. The singer was wearing a white tuxedo; he put his head on one side and closed his eyes while his voice sidled up to the melody." Charlotte looked over Cannerley's shoulder and saw the clarinettist lick his lips as he raised the reed for his unctuous solo. Between the tables went a stout woman in a low-cut plum satin dress, her mouth a glistening cherry bow of lipstick; against a narrow bar with shaded violet lights were two other women, equally made-up, and unattached. The barman set out a silver tray with a bottle of champagne he had just taken from the shelf behind, and two glasses. Although the shelves were full of other bottles, champagne was the only thing that anyone was drinking.

The wire brushes made a circular pattern of sound over the cymbal and the papery drum, while the pianist's muted minor chords descended in ersatz tenderness. Charlotte blinked through the smoke and tried to loosen Cannerley's grip. He was murmuring something inaudible, perhaps seductive, perhaps an offer to make further introductions.

Maybe she should take him up: anything would be better than this nightclub, or her icy little room without Gregory.

All through lunch on Saturday Charlotte was afraid. She kept looking at Gregory and she knew it was going to happen. When he stood up to go to the bar she imagined what his legs would look like: thin, naked. When he was lighting a cigarette she wondered what the skin of his hands would feel like, not twitching the ribbed metal of the lighter wheel, but on her back. While he talked, she was thinking of what he would say to her when they were alone.

How much of this public person would he shed? Would he remain considerate and controlled, or was it such a different game that she would not recognise the creature he became? Was she supposed to do everything he wanted, or did she invite and guide him?

It was a curious lunch. Michael Waterslow had brought Gregory at Daisy's instruction, even though he had to be back at the airfield that evening. Charlotte was required for an extra surgery with Dr. Wolf at six. There was a hasty, organised atmosphere because they knew they all ought to be somewhere else. Daisy had chosen this hotel at Streatley-on-Thames because she remembered being taken there before the war; there was a view of the river through the window of the lounge where Charlotte could see a swan bending its neck into the reeds by the far bank. With the speared cherries in the drinks, the menus bound like illuminated manuscripts and the corridors of unoccupied bedrooms upstairs, it felt, for all its half-timbered exterior, like a place of assignation.

Gregory was drinking beer from a dimpled mug; Michael, above his gin and tonic, was expressing correct but surprisingly forceful opinions about the conduct of the war. Charlotte had absent-mindedly accepted some yellow, cloying drink in a schooner. She was looking at Gregory and thinking how much she loved him. She felt as though the organs of her "No. But it's all right." He had rolled off her and was lying on his back. She propped herself on one elbow and looked earnestly into his face.

"It's all right. I want you to. I want you to do it."

He shook his head.

"It's too much. I should never have come this far.

I was carried away. You're irresistible. Charlotte. You know that?"

"It doesn't seem like it."

"I'm sorry. You'll be grateful in the end. I'm a useless case. You don't want me."

"I do want you." She leaned over him and kissed his face all over.

"I do want you, I do."

He pulled himself away from her and rolled off the bed. He walked over to where he had left his jacket on the floor and took a packet of cigarettes from the pocket. In her embarrassment Charlotte had not noticed that he had managed to keep his shirt on. The tails hung down almost to his bony knees; his legs were as she had expected, bare, thin, slightly bowed.

He offered her a cigarette, she shook her head, and he leaned against the mantelpiece of the little boarded-up fireplace as he lit one.

Charlotte was struggling not to sob.

"I know what you're dunking." He blew out some smoke.

"I just didn't realise that you hadn't done it before. It made me stop. I should never have done it anyway. I'm so sorry. All I can say is it's better this way. You can hate me for a little while you should hate me for a little while. Then it'll be over. You'll have hundreds of men, real men, decent men, to choose from." Charlotte quelled her urge to weaken. She would not let him go. She climbed out of bed, naked and cold, and went and stood by him. He was facing the wall, to flick some ash off his cigarette, and she circled his waist with her arms as she laid her cheek against his back. Her arms slid down a little so her hands were over his abdomen.

She held on to him tightly, and, as she stroked him, her hand brushed against something; she heard him suck in his breath and felt his body tense as he gripped the mantelpiece. Although she moved her hand away he took it in his own and put it back. His flesh was warm and inflated, almost pneumatic, in her hand as she moved her fingers up and down; she was amazed by the softness of his skin. He was gripping the mantelpiece, so there was only one point at which their bodies touched. She heard him panting and she felt exultant as she quickened the imprisoning movement of her hand. When she heard him gasp, "No', she knew that it was the last thing he meant as the flesh inside her fingers swelled and seized. He turned round and kissed her, but she held on to him for a moment with her hand. Back on the bed she fixed her eyes on his as he lay beside her, then climbed back beneath the blankets. He looked shame-faced. He shook his head.

"You're a very determined woman. Charlotte."

When Gregory awoke it was dark. He looked at his watch: he was due back at the station at eight and it was now a quarter past five. He glanced down at Charlotte's head and stroked her hair.

He said, "What time are you due at your doctor's?"

"Six."

"I think you'd better get going."

Charlotte sat up with a start when he told her the time.

"God. You're right." She caught him looking at her breasts, which were flushed and rosy against the white of the sheet. Gregory wanted to take the soft, filmy tips and pull them gently with his lips, but he could see that Charlotte's modesty had been restored by sleep. She covered her breasts with her arm.

"Aren't you getting up?" she said. He shook his head.

She got off the bed and crossed the room stiffly. He saw how much she resented the intimacy of his eyes, but could not bring himself to turn them away. She pulled her underclothes on quickly, standing sideways to him in the narrow room. Her face was pink from sleep and her cold fingers fumbled on the tricky fastenings.

"You haven't got a spare pair of those, have you?"

"What?"

"The stockings. My feet get so cold when I'm flying." Charlotte, without looking round, said, "I might have an old pair. I'll have a look. My mother sent these from Edinburgh."

To spare her his scrutiny, Gregory reluctantly got out of bed to dress.

"I haven't even got time to make you a cup of tea," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Would you like me to drive you to your doctor's?"

"I'd rather take the bus. People would notice that car." They took their coats from the hall and went downstairs. Inside the front door he kissed her; then they stepped outside and he watched her disappear down the blacked-out street. She didn't turn to look back at the corner, and Gregory felt in his stomach an unexpected surge of anguish.

Gregory's French mistress set him to read from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery. She would go through a sentence first, then ask him to repeat it. A woeful expression passed across her face; sometimes she could barely wait for him to reach the end of the phrase before she remonstrated.

"No, no, you are still saying roue. The word is rue. Like this. Rue." Her lips puckered and whistled.

Gregory repeated the sound he heard, but not to Madame Fanon's satisfaction.

"Rue," she barked.

"Rue," he replied.

"Non, non, non. Rue."

"Rue: " Mais non! RUE!"

"Rue: Gregory inspected the unconvincing hairline on her neck. He thought she wore a wig, yet there was no doubt that at the front the hairs sprang naturally enough from her rounded forehead: rooted, chestnut, salted with realistic grey.

"I'm sorry, Madame Fanon, I'm afraid I'm a very poor student. Do you mind if I have a cigarette?"

She pushed a little brass ashtray across the tablecloth.

"You should say " Madame", not "Madame Fanon"

"There's so much to learn. Which part of France do you come from?"

"From Montauban." Madame Fanon seemed relieved to put Saint Exupery aside for a moment.

"It's in the south-west, not far from Toulouse.

It was the birthplace of Ingres."

"And is there any son of resistance going on there?"

"Oh yes." Madame Fanon's face worked beneath its powdery creases.

"From the beginning there has been activity in the south-west. These men and women are of independent spirit. It has always been the case in our part of the world." She stopped and looked at Gregory, as though deciding whether or not to trust him. She sighed.

"But for many people the Occupation is the opportunity they have waited for all their lives. For as long as I can remember there have been people who wanted a revolution because they believed the Republic had failed. Now with Marshal Petain they think they are achieving it. The presence of the Germans is necessary because it allows the Vichy government to act without a democratic process. No Germans, no revolution. They only wish the Germans would be more helpful."

"I see. I just imagined they were under the invader's thumb." Gregory had never considered French politics, least of all the possibility that, for whatever circuitous reason, the Germans might be welcome.

Perhaps Madame Fanon had got it wrong.

He looked about the cluttered sitting room. Madame Fanon had come hastily to join her husband in London, and the stratum of her snatched possessions lay thinly over the long-accumulated furnishings of the absent English owners. A glass photograph frame from which a boy in uniform with his hair cut en brosse grinned out manfully sat on a shelf packed with the novels of Warwick Deeping and Hugh Walpole.

"You need to practise your French. It's no use coming to me three times a week if you're not talking the language in between. Don't you have any friends who speak French?"

Gregory stroked his jaw with the tips of his fingers.

"I'll have to think about that."

When he got back to the station that night he found that his transfer papers had come through. He went to the Rose and Crown with Borowski for a farewell drink; or, in the end, to drink enough to make them incapable of remembering where anyone was going. Gregory was suddenly fired by the idea of France: if the situation was as hopeless as Madame Fanon portrayed it, then the people who cared about it, those independent spirits she described, would need the help of the big British planes ploughing through the night. It would be good, it would be purposeful, it would be. Beer was cascading down the front of Borowski's uniform as the glass yard slopped its contents from his full mouth and desperately working throat. Gregory watched Borowski's Adam's apple shuttle up and down until it stuck at the top of its run and the beer splashed out over his cheeks and blinking eyes, forcing him to lower the yard with spluttering regret.