Pantheon (30 page)

They were from across the United States, almost all yesterday’s rather than today’s. He started with the
Chicago Tribune
and its headline: ‘Leading Congressman brands Roosevelt a “warmonger”.’ He read the first few paragraphs, which were plainly slanted in favour of the congressman and against the President. Was this what people here were thinking, that to come to Britain’s defence against the bloody Nazi menace amounted to ‘warmongery’? He could feel the bile rising in his throat. He shoved the paper aside, searching for some word on the war itself. He flicked through the
Boston Globe
, eventually finding, on page four, a story headlined ‘Stoic Britons gird themselves for invasion’. It was accompanied by a photograph of the ‘Home Guard’, the renamed Local Defence Volunteers that James had seen parading in the college quad, under the command of Bernard Grey. He wanted to weep for his country: weeks, if not days, away from Nazi conquest, with only a few feeble geriatrics to protect her. And America, her young, strong child, standing aside, refusing to help.

Dorothy ordered a bottle of wine and James didn’t bother to object. He drank more than he ate, listlessly turning over the steak that had been laid before him. As the sky outside turned a deep red, then indigo and finally fell into darkness, she tried to get him to discuss what they had learned, to speculate and theorize about George Lund and the secret fraternity of the Wolf’s Head Society, but he was sick at heart and could barely respond.

She tried a different tack. ‘So how long have you been married?’

‘It will be four years this winter.’

‘She as smart as you?’

‘Smarter.’

Dorothy whistled. ‘And what is she smart about?’

‘Her subject is biology.’

‘I bet it is.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Scratch that. You fall in love right away or she play hard to get?’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Or maybe
you
played hard to get? I could see you doing that. You’re the type.’

Without meaning to, James found himself telling the story – of the People’s Olympiad in Barcelona, of the outdoor swimming practice, of his confusion over Florence’s departure for Berlin. Dorothy nodded in the right places, asked the right questions. Not that he needed prompting. Once he started he found it hard to stop. He could hear his own voice, calmer and quieter as he talked about his wife and their life together. He found it comforting, as if the next best thing to speaking to Florence were speaking about her.

‘And you left Spain in thirty-nine, right?’

‘No, we left in thirty-seven.’

‘Why’s that? You lose faith?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Why then?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Oh, you never say that to a reporter, Dr Zennor.’ She lightly smacked his hand, the touch of her skin sending a current through him. ‘That just makes us more interested. Or in my case,
intrigued.
’

‘What intrigues you exactly, Miss Lake?’

‘You, exactly, Dr Zennor.’

Feeling uncomfortable, he shifted the subject back to Florence, like a man returning to the warm part of the bed. He found himself describing her – her height, the muscles of her back, her posture. He was speaking about her athletic accomplishments, how she had trained for the Olympics, but the effect on him was more direct than that. Not for the first time, the physical memory of his wife recalled his desire for her. He had a memory of her stepping out of the shower, her skin glistening, the shape of her visible under the towel and how, when she spotted him gazing at her, she let the towel fall to the floor …

‘So what went wrong, Dr Zee?’ Dorothy Lake lit another cigarette, dipping her head to meet the lighter, so that James caught the scent of her hair. That too sent a charge through him, one that somehow combined with the yearning he felt for his wife, the longing for her touch, to produce an effect that confused him. He pushed away the sensation by trying to address her question.

‘You’d have to ask Florence.’

‘What would she say if I did?’

‘That I became unbearable. And that she feared for our child.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the war.’ James, now smoking too, inhaled deeply. ‘And because of me.’

‘You? You didn’t hurt the baby, did you?’ For once the alarm was genuine, a look that made James wonder if this was Dorothy Lake’s real face, if the rest of the time she was posing.

‘Never deliberately.’ He saw Dorothy’s reaction. ‘I never hit him, for Christ’s sake! There was an accident with a boiling kettle. A near-miss. Nothing happened. But it could have.’

‘And you blame yourself?’

‘I deserve the blame.’

‘You’re very hard on yourself, do you know that? I’ve noticed that about you. It’s very unusual in a man.’

James looked up at her, with a faint smile. ‘How old are you, Miss Lake?’

‘I’m twenty-one.’

‘And yet you know all about men.’

‘I know plenty.’

‘Yes? And why’s that?’

‘Same way a birdwatcher knows about birds. I pay attention.’ She held his gaze after she spoke, lifting the cigarette to her lips, letting her eyes close for a fleeting moment as she sucked on it and inhaled, then looking at him again. In the end, it was he who broke the contact.

‘So what’s your story going to say then?’

‘I don’t think I have enough to go on yet. We need to find out more. The wife didn’t give us much, did she?’

‘No.’ He decided not to mention the widow’s impassioned, urgent final message.

‘Other than that she doesn’t believe Lund committed suicide.’

James sat back. ‘How do you know that?’ He pictured Lake on the other side of the closed door, her ear pressed to the wood, hearing Margaret Lund’s warning.

Not for my sake. For yours.

Dorothy took a sip of wine, licking her lower lip afterwards like a cat. ‘Oh, sometimes you just know, don’t you? Call it woman’s intuition.’ She briefly touched his hand as she said that, her fingers as cool as they had been when they had shaken on their deal all those hours ago.

‘It’s a lovely evening,’ she said as they headed outside. ‘I’m going to walk a bit. Care to join me?’

James looked at her – this young woman who knew how to get a man to talk and how to listen, whose hair was a perfect, lustrous honey-blonde, who through the cloud of cigarette smoke still managed to smell so alluring – and settled on his answer. ‘I’m tired, Miss Lake. I enjoyed our dinner very much, but I’m going to turn in.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you back to the Club.’

The stroll was short, but seemed to take an age. His chest seemed to be crackling with a kind of static energy; he was breathing unevenly. Neither of them said a word.

At last they were at number four hundred and fifty-nine. He was about to knock on the door when he felt her hand on his arm. She guided him round so that they faced each other.

‘Good night, my handsome Englishman,’ she said, and she moved her face close to his. He could have moved at that moment, but he did not and, an instant later, he felt her lips touch his. Lightly, the slightest brush of her mouth, but the taste – of the wine, of her lips – was strong. Combined with the smell of her perfume, the freshness of her skin, it was intoxicating. One second became another and another, until he felt the first tiny touch of her tongue.

Suddenly, and without conscious volition, he sprung away from her, appalled. Reaching in his pocket for the key Walters had given him, he pivoted and opened the door of the Elizabethan Club, mumbling, ‘I really am dreadfully sorry. Good night.’ He stepped inside, shutting the door loudly behind him.

He pressed his head hard against the wall. What had he just done?
What the hell had he just done?
Florence’s last message to him, delivered twice, had been a declaration of love – and how had he rewarded her? By embracing an American girl, a perfect stranger. Kissing her …

But he had broken away, he told himself. He had resisted. But not straight away. He had held that kiss for at least a second or two; he had not rejected it immediately. No wonder Florence had left him. He was a loathsome rat, unworthy of her love. He lifted his head and let it fall against the wall and then did it again, harder this time. How could he have done such a thing?

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.’

Immersed in guilt and self-disgust, James had not heard the butler approach.

‘It’s just I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Know what, Walters?’ James tried to compose himself.

‘That a lady came here looking for you today. An English lady – with a little boy.’

The butler might as well have slapped him in the face. The effect of Walters’s words was instant, as if he had been abruptly woken up. James stared at him for a while before speaking, then peppered him with questions.

‘When were they here?’

‘About four o’clock this afternoon, Dr Zennor.’

‘And how old was the child?’ He locked the butler with a gaze that did not waver.

‘I’m not good at these things. I’d guess he was—’

‘How tall was he? Show me how high he stood. Here? Or higher? And tell me again, what she said. Her exact words, please.’

‘I opened the door to her and she said she had heard an Englishman was staying here, a Dr James Zennor and she wondered if she could speak to him.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Please Dr Zennor, you’re making me a little uncomfortable staring at me like this. Please. Let me tell you what happened my own way.’

James exhaled. He had to get a grip on himself, not to descend any further, not now. Florence and Harry here, in this very spot a matter of hours earlier: the very thought of it made him feel light-headed. He took a deep breath and followed Walters as he shuffled out of the hallway and into the first sitting room. Too agitated to sit, James grasped hold of the top of one of the high-backed leather chairs.

‘All right,’ Walters began. ‘There was a knock on the door just after four or so. A quiet one, kind of uncertain. I opened it and there was this lady there, holding her son’s hand. She looked kind of nervous. She didn’t even come in at first, just asked if you were here and if she could speak to you. I told her I was expecting you back later. I asked her in, but she said no. Just could I tell you she’d called. The little boy seemed shy: he kept staring at me from behind his mother. I don’t think he ever saw a black man before. Round-eyes, he had. Very quiet.’

‘Very quiet.’
Yes
, thought James.
That sounds like Harry.
‘And can you describe what she looked like, Walters?’

‘A tall lady, sir.’

‘Very beautiful, very straight-backed and upright? With smiling eyes?’

‘She looked very kind, sir.’

‘Kind, yes … ’

‘Though she looked worried too.’

‘Did she tell you how she knew I was here?’

‘Yes, sir. She did. She said she had seen you. In town.’

James felt himself unsteady again, as if his legs were about to give way. The thoughts were rushing into his brain so fast, they were falling on top of each other. If Florence had seen him, why hadn’t she rushed over to him immediately? Where exactly had she seen him? And when? Surely not today, when he was with Dorothy Lake? Had Florence seen the two of them just now … His stomach twisted. What if he had come all this way, if he had crossed the Atlantic, only to be rejected as a faithless husband now, here in America? He cursed himself and his weakness all over again.

It took a moment to compose himself. At last he said quietly, ‘And did she leave anything for me, a card or a letter?’

‘She just had me write down her details, so that you could get in touch with her. I’ll go get them.’

James watched the butler shuffle off to the backroom that seemed to serve as both his office and his home: there was certainly no other bedroom in evidence, and yet he seemed to be at the club day and night. James waited a while, pacing and clenching his fists. But even the thirty-second delay was too much. He walked out of the sitting room, meeting a returning Walters in the hallway.

‘Here it is, sir.’ The old man passed him a small square of paper.

It was as if a slab of stone had landed on James’s chest.

Elizabeth Goodwin, staying with Mr and Mrs Swanson, New Haven. Telephone number …

The words were swimming on the page, the disappointment clouding his vision. His head began to throb, the pain from banging it against the wall suddenly asserting itself.

The butler must have seen his desperation because he began muttering some kind of reassurance, the words lost and muffled in James’s ears.

What an idiot he had been, once again succumbing to foolish optimism. The warning sign was there in how Walters had described the appearance of the woman at the door:
kind,
he had said
.
Florence certainly could be kind and generous. But kind was not the first word any man used to describe her. If it had been Florence at the door, Walters would not have hesitated to have agreed that she was stunningly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

So this was one of the other Oxford mothers, who had somehow tracked him down to the Elizabethan Club. Where had she seen him? And would she be the one who would, at last, tell him where he could find his wife and child?

From up here, he had a clear view over the treetops towards New Haven harbour. For the first time he realized what a beautiful place this was, no doubt lush and green in the springtime, scenic even in the arid summer. And yet he was barely two miles away from Yale.

He had called Mrs Goodwin first thing this morning, just after seven – the moment he felt it socially acceptable to make a telephone call. Her American host, Mrs Swanson, had sounded wary, but Mrs Goodwin herself had been perfectly polite. She explained that her son was attending summer school during the daytime hours and that she would not have a chance to meet till 4.30pm at the earliest.

‘Why don’t I meet you at the school?’ James had suggested. To his surprise she had agreed, and so he had hired a taxi to take him up the winding, tree-lined road to Hopkins Grammar School for Boys. En route he had looked on in envy at the large family houses, with their lawns, an occasional tyre swinging from a tree or basketball hoop on a post. Such space compared with the cramped, ration-book England he had left behind. But it was not America’s prosperity he envied, typified by the sleek, curved black motor car now purring along behind the cab – a moving sculpture in metal, topped off by natty white rims painted on the tyres – no, it was not America’s wealth that made James pity his own country. It was the peace. The peace of that woman there, checking her roses, or of that old fellow in the house next door, oiling the garden gate. No Yale colleges were given over to organizing munitions or fish and potato stocks. No men here had to learn how to polish their boots like mirrors or clean a rifle. No mother in America had to fear her two-year-old son would die under a falling bomb or be crushed by a Nazi jackboot, as Florence had feared for Harry. How serene this summer morning seemed. And yet, under the same sky, even at this very moment, he knew there was a continent at war with Britain – and that shabby, grey Britain was fighting for its life.