The Diamond Waterfall (82 page)

They left the Café de Paris, staggering up from that same entrance that only a few hours earlier …

A girl who had followed them up said to her partner, “I don't give a damn. You have to
show
them. I'm going on to the Suivi, I'm going to keep on dancing. Grab a taxi, would you, darling?”

People had congregated, it was only natural, if disgusting. Jay put his arm around Willow. Laura and Raoul, and Teddy and her major came up behind. Perhaps there weren't as many people as she thought—there only
seemed
a lot. But it was as if they pressed on her and Jay—on all of them, as they came out. Her eyes met those of a fat man in a blue muffler, his mouth half open in curiosity.

The six of them went into a hotel nearby. A number of survivors of the raid were already there. She walked dizzily, supported still by Jay. Once she turned her head: a looking glass on her left. She said, “Oh, who's that?” in a foolish trembling voice. Scarecrow almost, blue organza in stained tatters, white dust over all, blond hair gone a grayish yellow, an aging face. Blood ran down her neck.

Teddy was in a fury still. “Jay, I have to tell Isabelle's parents—”

Gerry's family. Willow said, “Who's telling Gerry's family, parents? I can't—you won't expect …”

She sat in a chair. Brandy, she had to sip brandy. They looked at her neck more closely. She had said over and over it was nothing, that it was other people's blood. But Jay said now that it almost certainly needed stitching. Charing Cross Hospital was dealing with the casualties. He said he'd take her. Laura, who seemed easy and friendly and eager to help, said she would come too. Teddy was taking care of the major, and Raoul, who still seemed in shock.

At the hospital they asked her if she wanted to stay in for the night. They said that she too was in shock.

She told the nurse who was attending to her, “Last time I was stitched up was when Tootles bolted with me.” (Oh easy nuisance … no matter of life and death then.)

“Well, what about staying in, Willow, and resting?”

But she wanted to go back home to Teddy.

“Tell me Gerry's not dead,” she said flatly.

“If I did, it wouldn't help,” Jay said. “Look, little cousin—”

She felt numb still. Not just where they had stitched her neck, but all over.

She knew she didn't believe about Gerry and Isabelle. It isn't true, she said to herself, how can it be true?
I can't bear it to be true.

“And when you turned and looked at me, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square …”

Teddy's dress was crepe, in a vivid orange. The bodice ruched, the shoulders wide and padded. Large bishop sleeves billowed as she danced.

Dancing. She had thought once, I shall never dance again. I never expected to want to, ever. She told her escort:

“Nearly two years ago now, to the day. The Café de Paris. Thirty dead— sixty or so wounded. Two killed out of our party of six. And I'm angry still. It produced in me such a rage against the enemy, like nothing in the last war, nothing I saw in the Blitz. It's irrational, but I have this hatred now, of all things German. Nazi—no,
German.
If I could actually
do
something.”

“You seem to me to be doing a lot. Working all hours …”

He was a colonel, in his mid-forties. She'd met him a few times before, refused two dates, and now given in. He was pleasant, even if he didn't dance well.

“There were angels dining at the Ritz, and a nightingale sang …”

She said, “Dreadfully sentimental, but can you imagine an evening without their playing it?”

His grip tightened slightly. “Who started it all?”

“That revue,
New Faces.
Dunkirk time, about. Someone called Judy Campbell sang it. And then all that blitzing of Berkeley Square.”

The tune had changed: “
I haven't said thanks for that lovely weekend
…” Vera Lynn had sung it. She said something …

“Oh yes, well, Vera Lynn,” he said. “What must it be like to be Forces' Sweetheart?”

“Rather nice, I should think. We all want to be loved.”

“Agreed. Only some of us go about it in an odd way.”

He spoke lightheartedly enough but with a bitter undertone. She thought probably he was referring to his wife. The marriage, she had heard, was not good. She wondered idly, Am I beginning another affair?

“The song's been banned in the States.”

“Why's that?” he asked.

“Because it doesn't actually
say
the couple are married.”

“Ah. Yes. A dirty weekend.”

They were back at their table, and drinking Algerian wine. Dining and dancing in 1943—it was what one must expect. And the food … ubiquitous rabbit. Fricasseed or, as tonight, curried. (Is it cat sometimes? she wondered.)

They danced again:
“The last time I saw Paris.”

“This is better—quickstepping's more my mark. …
‘The last time I saw Paris' …
1937. A two-hour wait for the Dijon Express, and just the Gare de Lyon restaurant for sustenance. Could have been worse.” He twirled her around. “And when did
you
last see Paris?”

“In 1939, July,” Teddy said.

“Last fling, was it? Know her well?”

“I lived there.”

Voice, face, alert.

“Really? That's interesting.”

“Why?”

“Oh, other people—what they do, why they do it. … Did you live there long?”

“Since 1922.”

“So if it hadn't been for Jerry,” he said. “Nearly twenty years. French good?”

“Possibly somewhat Belgian, but yes, very. I learned it well in the last war—a family from Bruges. The daughter was my age.”

“Which is? A gentleman never asks, but I'm interested—you look too young. A small child then, in the last war?”

“I age with the century. It's convenient, and I don't have to think.”

“Fit? Are you fit?” He asked it idly enough, but she sensed interest. My God, she thought, he can't be planning Free French basketball.

“I don't play games—”

“I didn't suggest it. Health, stamina, resilience?”

“You're quizzing me. I can run for a bus without noticing and I'm never ill. Good enough?” Her tone was sharp.

“Sorry. I'm being boring.”

At the table he picked up the empty bottle. “Another Algy? I'll summon the waiter—”

“It can give one a frightful head, and I have to be up early. I'm on a seven a.m. And these cold mornings … one thinks sometimes it will
always
be wartime.”

“Please sit down, Mrs. Nicolson. I'm sorry, this room does have a somewhat depressing appearance. Wartime and all that. A hotel bedroom of the smaller variety. I wrote to you, invited you here, Mrs. Nicolson, because I think you could possibly be of help to us. I know your present war work is essential—”

“Driving ambulances? Yes. Though with the bombing a little quieter—”

“Let's hope it stays that way. I'm told your French is excellent and that you know France well. Paris in particular.”

“I lived there, yes.”

“And you hope one day to go back?”

“Not
hope. Shall.”

“I see. Good. And the day now perhaps not so far away as it was once. And a lot nearer than when your French friend was killed in March of '41.”

“You seem to know a great deal about me. Who's been talking to you?”

“Yes, I think so. But favorably. A suggestion that you are perhaps the sort of person—intelligent, fit. The stage in the family—so you have some acting ability, perhaps? French-speaking, habituée of Paris. Not young but with mature outlook, experience of life. There might be something for you. Work—”

“Work where I could use the language? I—”

“Work where you'll be able to use no other. In the country itself, in France.”

“That's ridiculous, and hardly likely.”

“Mrs. Nicolson, what does the word
agent
mean to you?”

“Spy. Anarchist. Joseph Conrad.”

“I see. Yes. Well. Let me put it this way, then. We are an organization. We train men and women to work in France alongside the Resistance movement there. Our agents are dropped into the country, where they act as wireless operators, saboteurs, couriers. Sabotage is a very important part of our work. Messages have to be taken—often long distances—and people accompanied across France. A great deal of the work is boring, monotonous. Quite unlike any possible fantasies you may have of the spy world. But however humdrum, it is
never
without danger.”

“Scarcely surprising.”

“For an agent, the penalties of being discovered are very serious. There's always the possibility he or she will fail to return. The Geneva Convention— you would count as a spy.”

“How many have
failed to return?
In ordinary language—how many have you lost?”

“That's not the sort of information—”

“Two can play at question and answer. And by the way, aren't you, and this place, something to do with the War Office? Perhaps you could tell me the truth, then, about the Dieppe raid last summer. I wasn't happy with the official line.”

“Not our department. Mrs. Nicolson, I think perhaps, to change the subject … Can we go back a little? I'd like to ask you something more about yourself, if I may? What have you, who have you, in the way of dependants? Close relatives?”

“A nephew, married, in the RAF. A niece—she's nineteen, working for the Ministry of Aircraft Production.”

“Yes. I want to ask you also … Could you
live a lie,
Mrs. Nicolson?”

“It depends on the lie. Yes, I could.”

“Are you courageous?”

“Possibly not.”

“Or possibly—yes? Mrs. Nicolson, what I've told you, all I have spoken of today, is of course confidential. I would expect you to respect this confidence. I should like you to think about it all very carefully. In fact, it is very important that you give it considered thought. Remember, there is
no shame
in refusing. Better to refuse than find later you should never have accepted.”

Her mouth was dry. She looked for water but could see none. A handbasin in the corner. What must have been a simple hotel bedroom …

“Go home quietly. As you drive your ambulance around in the next week or two, think about what I've said. When you're ready, then let me know, yea or nay.”

“If it's yea,” she said, “how soon could I start?”

“Well then,” Mrs. Parr told Willow, “there's been a big victory in Africa. They've got that General von something and I don't know how many took prisoner. They said it on the news, you'd have heard if you'd not been snoring. And what about your breakfast? It's all dried up now, is your scrambled egg.”

Willow stifled a yawn, expecting to hear from her landlady that if only she didn't stay out so late nights, she'd be bright in the morning. That was as may be. The other piece of good news, which Mrs. Parr had told her before the news of victory in the North African campaign (which
must
mean Jay would be safer.
Please,
God.), was that another girl would be coming to share her billet. Three weeks alone with Mrs. Parr had been much too much.

She looked at her plate and felt nauseated. The food's origins as dried egg powder were very obvious.

“I have to queue, you know,” Mrs. Parr said. “You girls don't have the worries I have. Sitting on your backsides all day, coming home to a nice hot meal.”

“I meant to say I'm not in for tea tonight. Some of us are going to a dance in Knaresborough.”

It was her second billet since coming up to Harrogate. The first had been a really lovely house in York Place, also run by a widow. They were four girls there, and then the landlady had become too ill to have billetees.

Altogether Willow had been nearly three months in Yorkshire. She did clerical work for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, using some of the typing skills she'd learned from the Triangle. She had never finished there, because she'd left London almost immediately after the Café de Paris incident.

Mrs. Parr had three housedresses in flowery patterns: a red, a blue, and a yellow, all with a brown background. She wore curlers in the morning, and if she planned to go out in the evening would be wearing them still when Willow came back at six. With them out, her hair looked like two rows of greasy sausages, and reminded Willow horribly of their owner's cooking.

Till now Willow had been the only billetee, succeeding a Miss Mason, who had gone back south. Willow had realized from the first day that it wasn't going to be easy.

The piano, for instance. The piano took pride of place in the small front room:

“You'll not touch that?” Mrs. Parr had said, the day she arrived.

“I can't actually play the piano,” Willow had explained.

“I just want it clear between us at the start. If folk
play
it, there's anything might happen to a piano. It does it no good, having its keys struck.”

May 1943. Two years and two months since the Café de Paris. She thought she must be over it by now, but was not sure. It didn't seem like it when the dreams came, the nightmares. It was as if the two terrible times in her life had been joined together and made one. She was back in the eerie half-light, in the Café de P. Her legs buckled under her. She was rooted then.
She could not move.
She was looking for her Gerry—she was looking for her mother. If she could
move,
then she'd be able to rescue her. Only Willow could save her. “Fm coming,” she would try to call out. “Don't worry,
I'll save you.”
But just as she couldn't walk, neither could she talk.