The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom (24 page)

The following morning the news broke: Hitler had invaded neutral Norway. Within a day Oslo had fallen. The war had begun in earnest.

The British were incredulous, especially Churchill, who as first lord of the Admiralty had declared that the Germans were incapable of landing in Scandinavia. A week later, wrong-footed, British troops arrived in central Norway. Their transport ships were too bulky for the narrow fjords; men were decanted into destroyers to reach the port of Namsos, losing half their kit in the process. From there they headed south toward Trondheim, without skis or snowshoes, weighed down by their heavy lambskin coats. The engines of the planes that should have given them air cover froze in the Arctic night. There was nothing to stop the Luftwaffe bombarding them as they struggled onward through the snowdrifts, frostbitten, snow-blind.

Among those soldiers was Stan Harker, although Filomena did not know that. She knew only that his letters had ceased. Now when she went to the post office in Charing Cross Road the clerk would check the pigeonholes and shake his head briskly. She saw him do the same with other women, women she had begun, over the months, to recognize. Some were young girls who, like Filomena, were not meant to be writing to their sweethearts; others were older women, unacknowledged mistresses or faithless wives. None of them looked at each other. Late in April one of the women, a freckled creature in her thirties, began to weep when the clerk told her she had no letters. Filomena, seeing the tears drip from her chin, stepped instinctively toward her. The woman turned away at once, hiding her wet face beneath the brim of her hat. Well, thought Filomena, perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps we should keep our own secrets, after all.

A week later
Bernard Rodway was strolling through Bloomsbury to buy a newspaper when he saw Antonio on the far side of the street. His trilby was pulled low over his forehead, but it did not occur to Bernard that he might wish to be left alone.

“Antonio!” he called. “Hallo there, stranger! Where are you going?”

Antonio looked up. He could see that it would be impossible to avoid Bernard. “I am on my way to Queen Square, to the Italian hospital. My father was admitted two days ago, I'm going to visit him.”

“In that case I'll walk with you.” Amiably Bernard fell into step as they strode east along Montague Place. “We've missed you, Antonio. I can't remember the last time you came to Bedford Square for a singing lesson. Konrad keeps asking what has become of you.” The image of Herr Fischer's face sprang into Bernard's mind. Since his appearance before the Home Office tribunal he had grown more lugubrious than ever, his eyes lightless, his jowls drooping.

“I am sorry. There is so much to do, with my father in hospital, and my singing engagements. I will try to come this week, or maybe next.”

There was a newsstand on the corner of Malet Street. Bernard paused to buy a couple of papers, reaching into his pocket for small change. He read the news as avidly as a schoolboy reads comics.

“Pah,” he said as he examined the front pages. “I hate the newspapers when they're in a moral frenzy. Have you seen them? They insist that Norway was betrayed from within by Nazi sympathizers. According to them we ought to learn the lesson and clamp down on enemy aliens. The only one to talk sense is the
Daily Express,
and that's just because Beaverbrook has a Jewish mistress.”

Antonio nodded without speaking. These days he could think of nothing except those rare gilded hours in the abandoned flat beside Hyde Park; the rest of the time it seemed he was only half alive. Even his father's illness, even the progress of the war, appeared as distant as the gray grainy images upon a newsreel.

Bernard gave a grim chuckle at his paper; then, registering Antonio's silence, he glanced up from the page.

“Don't let me detain you, Antonio. I can see that you're anxious about your father.” He laid a comradely hand upon Antonio's shoulder. “These are difficult times, with so much uncertainty. You will tell me, won't you, if there is anything that I can do to help?”

Late in April
the British forces in Norway were diverted north, to join the offensive against the Arctic port of Narvik. Still Filomena had no news of Stan. She called at the post office every day now, and she detected a wariness in the clerk's expression when he saw her, fearing hysteria or rage. It is no good, Filomena thought, this is going to drive me mad. Any day now I will do something foolish. I have to take action.

The next day she was not expected at the laundry. After breakfast, as soon as Antonio had left to open the kiosk, she put on her best hat and coat, and set off for Bermondsey. She had the Harkers' address, but she had never been to Bermondsey before and as she got off the bus the unfamiliarity of the streets made them seem menacing. She walked the pavement stiffly, eyes straight ahead, trying to look as though she knew exactly where she was going.

At the street corner a woman was mopping her front step, a blowzy-looking woman with her hair tied in a yellow scarf. She straightened with a groan when Filomena spoke to her.

“I'm looking for Mrs. Harker,” she said, holding out the paper with Stan's address on it. The blowzy woman gave her a searching look, full of self-confidence. It reminded Filomena that she might speak perfect English but she still looked like a foreigner. The woman glanced at the paper, and gestured with her thumb to the next left turn, before she doused her mop in the gray tin bucket once more.

The house was narrow, built of red Victorian brick, with thin curtains pulled shut over the sash windows. Filomena hesitated. Now that she was here she had no idea how to introduce herself. Acquaintance? Friend? Girlfriend? If she stopped to think, though, she would lose her nerve. She rapped on the door with the tarnished knocker. In the neighboring house a girl of about twelve put out her head from an upstairs window and watched her, without speaking. Like the woman on the doorstep she did it as though she had a perfect right to stare.

There were slow footsteps in the hall, and the door creaked open. Stanley's mother had the same wide, pale face as her son. She was wearing a cotton overall and her eyes—blue like Stan's—were bloodshot. The sight of her, so like and so unlike Stan, made Filomena's heart turn over.

“Mrs. Harker?” she said.

Stan's mother lifted her chin. “Who's asking?”

“My name is Filomena Trombetta. I am a friend of your son Stanley—”

“Ah, you're the Eyetie girl, aren't you? You look like an Eyetie.”

“Yes, my family is Italian, although I was born here in London—”

“I've got your letters,” Mrs. Harker went on, in the same blank, dogged voice. “The letters you wrote to Stan. That's how I know who you are. They sent them to us, with his things.”

There was a cold ringing in Filomena's head. “What?” she said.

Mrs. Harker, seeing the shock on her face, smiled. “Oh, yes. The telegram came a fortnight ago.” She looked Filomena up and down. “If he hadn't been messing with a foreigner he'd have got married. I know my Stan, he liked to be sure of things. And plenty of girls would have been glad to marry him. He might even have had a kid by now, a grandson maybe, to carry on the family name.”

Filomena gripped the doorjamb. She could not seem to catch her breath. “But what did the telegram say? Is he dead?”

The smile was still on Mrs. Harker's lips. She waited, as though by prolonging Filomena's anguish she could somehow, temporarily, relieve her own.

“Missing,” she said at last. “Missing, believed killed. In Norway, near Trondheim. So you won't get your man after all, missy.”

Filomena gave a cry; then she pressed her gloved hands to her mouth. A vision came to her of Stan, lying abandoned in a wasteland of ice, his face turned empty to the moon.

“I suppose you'd like your letters back?” Mrs. Harker's blank blue eyes softened for an instant. “No, don't come in. I don't want you crossing my doorstep, thank you very much. You've done enough harm to my family. I'll fetch them.”

She disappeared into the house, wiping her hands on her overalled hips. Filomena took a step back, away from the door. The sallow girl next door was still hanging inquisitively from her window.

Stan's mother came back with a Huntley and Palmers tin in her hands. The tin was green, decorated with pictures of King George and Queen Elizabeth. As she approached the doorway she pulled off the lid, angling it so that Filomena could not see inside.

“There,” she said, “there are your precious letters,” and swinging the tin she let its contents fly, sluicing them across the doorstep, out into the street. The letters had been torn into fragments. They fell about Filomena like confetti, or fallen petals, or black-stained flakes of snow.

Stanley Harker was
not the only man to be destroyed by the Norwegian campaign. It brought down Neville Chamberlain, blamed by Parliament for its failure. By November he would be dead from cancer, his achievements eclipsed by that tainted word
appeasement.
In France he would always be known, scathingly, as Monsieur J'aime Berlin.

The new prime minister—Churchill—came to power on May 10. On the same day Hitler launched his long-feared, long-awaited offensive against Western Europe. British troops in Norway were shipped to France, to strengthen Allied forces there. Not that it made much difference: the Western Front tumbled like a house of cards, first Luxembourg, then the Netherlands. It was rumored that when German paratroopers landed in Holland they carried death lists of Allied sympathizers, supplied by the network of Nazis within the country.

“Belgium will be next,” Bernard said grimly to Olivia over breakfast, “and after that France. What was it that numbskull Lionel said? The French have the strongest army in Europe? Ha!”

Olivia took a halfhearted mouthful of toast, smeared with yellowish margarine. She had given her weekly ration of bacon (four ounces) and eggs (two) to Bernard, to stoke up his energy for his ARP shifts. They had begun to sleep in separate bedrooms, she in their room, he on the chaise longue in his study. I don't want to disturb you when I come in late, he had said, and the truth is, darling, it's only going to get worse.

“What do you think Mussolini will do?” asked Olivia.

“Unless there's a miracle he'll come in on Hitler's side.” Bernard sliced the top from his boiled egg. He did it casually, with no acknowledgment that it was by right Olivia's. “What would you do, in his place? If he doesn't act soon he'll miss out on the spoils of war. And he'll find it harder to defend his own German-speaking territories from Hitler's grasp.”

“So Antonio will become an enemy alien,” Olivia said, “just like poor Herr Fischer.”

For a moment Bernard did not speak; then he said: “I am afraid so. There will be more tribunals, more internments. Churchill, I fear, will be a man for grand gestures. I will do what I can for Antonio, of course I will, but you must see that the situation has changed. We are ourselves in danger now. I don't mean you and me, I mean Britain, the way we live, our whole democracy. If France falls—
when
France falls—we will be the last line of defense against the Nazis.”

There was a note of pride in his voice. Olivia looked at him in surprise. “You think it's exciting, don't you, Bernard?”

“Of course I don't. That's an appalling thing to say. We have the barbarians at our gates. How could I be excited?” Bernard's face had flushed to a dark wine-red. “Let me remind you, Olivia, that they've raised the age of conscription to thirty-six. I could be called up at any time. I could be facing the enemy within months.”

“You won't be called up, though, surely? You'll be exempt on health grounds. Your asthma.”

“We cannot be sure of that. We can no longer be sure of anything. That is what I am trying to tell you.” Bernard pushed back his chair, abandoning his half-eaten breakfast. “And thank you for reminding me of my physical weakness. It is always so delicious when a wife has confidence in her husband.”