A Kiss for the Enemy (11 page)

‘Of course it's a betrayal,' said John Marvell.

It was October 1938. John was trembling with anger, less articulate than usual. Stephen Paterson had never seen his brother-in-law so roused. He was astonished. John was always so extraordinarily peaceable, one who invariably saw an opponent's point of view. Yet here was John, who might have been expected to be heartily relieved that the Prime Minister had reached a sensible arrangement with Hitler about these bloody Czechs and had averted a war – here was old John, white with rage about the whole thing, weeks later. It was remarkable.

He, Stephen, had on many occasions taken an aggressively hard line about the German menace. John had been pacific, understanding. Then it had come to the crunch and John had become afroth with indignation while Stephen had accepted, as any man with experience of politics must, that although the Nazis might be a ghastly bunch you couldn't start a world war to stop them incorporating into Germany a lot of Germans unlucky enough to have been born the wrong side of an artificial line. John seemed to have no sense of proportion.

Furthermore, thought Stephen angrily, John was disloyal. The Government was doing its best. If defence of the realm was the point at issue HMG was taking air defence pretty seriously. What, in Christ's name, did old John want? An expeditionary force, to march to the support of Czechoslovakia?

‘Abject!' said John Marvell. ‘Abject surrender to a man who,
as is clear for all to see, will not now rest until he has enslaved most of Europe!'

‘Steady, John,' said Stephen. ‘The PM's pretty shrewd, you know. One of the sharpest we've had for a long time. He wasn't taken in. Hitler doesn't want a war. He's a nasty little squirt and he'll get away with anything he can. But he doesn't want a war. When the PM says he's done a deal with which all parties can live, I believe him. I reckon he's done us proud.'

‘And I,' said John Marvell, ‘reckon that he's shamed us. It may be inevitable to bow to superior force. But to pretend that it's honourable is an awful thing. We're all living a lie.'

‘Nonsense, John!'

Stephen was upset. His allegiance to the Prime Minister was strong. He now half-regretted some fiery speeches about the threat of resurgent, Nazi-led Germany which he had permitted himself a year ago. One didn't want to be tarred with any particular brush. The thing was to have a sense of proportion.

‘Living a lie,' said John. ‘We know that we are weak, that we dare not outface this evil man. So we pretend he is less evil than he is, that we can deal with him on the basis of trust. We rationalize our cowardice.'

‘Nonsense, John. And what's more, even if one looks at it from the simplistic, military point of view, we've given ourselves a valuable breathing space. We're getting stronger all the time. So even if the PM's got it wrong – and I don't believe it – we'll soon be in a better position to teach Hitler a lesson if it ever comes to that. Which it won't.'

‘We will, will we?'

‘Yes, we will. I happen to know a certain amount on that side and ministers have given the Party some pretty useful briefings recently. Our armament programme is really getting into top gear. And don't forget it's not only us who are getting stronger. It's the French. And the Czechs have only lost a strip of territory and a part of their population who are entirely German – both by blood and loyalty.'

‘It's not that fact I mind,' said John Marvell quietly. ‘It's the sense that we are running away from reality.'

‘What reality?'

‘The reality that Hitler is determined to take more. And more. He's on the march.'

‘You're dramatizing.'

‘And we are frightened and prefer not to see.'

They were standing in the inner hall at Bargate, too disturbed to sit, too angry to relax, too intransigent to change the subject, to smile, to agree to differ. Stephen supposed he'd better try to break from the confines of bitter disputation.

‘Heard from Marcia lately? I suppose you and Hilda were pretty worried when things looked tricky that week in September.' For while Mr Chamberlain had travelled to Bad Godesberg, to Munich, Europe had, indeed, appeared close to war.

‘Francis Carr is a sensible man. They'll look after Marcia all right, I have no doubt. From her infrequent letters she sounds happy.'

‘How long do you plan to leave her there?'

John too, was striving to keep his voice steady, to allow his anger to cool.

‘She is doing an eighteen-month diploma course. I believe it finishes at the end of 1939. Naturally, she may break it and come home if the situation worsens. So far, we have had no indication of anti-British sentiment making her life difficult, or anything of the sort. She sounds, as I say, perfectly happy. She will, of course, be home for Christmas.

‘Did I hear the letter box, Robert?'

The afternoon post generally arrived in their rooms in Mount Street at four o'clock. The old-fashioned letter box flap in the door, brass and heavy, dropped with a satisfying smack when mail was pushed through it on to the mat inside.

Robert walked in.

‘Two for you. Both from abroad I see. One an English hand. One –'

Anthony snatched his letters and pocketed them.

‘I imagine you want privacy while you read them!'

‘You imagine too much. I'm trying to work.' Anthony looked, unseeing, at a page of Commentary on Justinian for a further five minutes. They went very slowly. Then, after a fine display of note making, of leisurely preparation for the next day's work, he strolled to his bedroom. The first page of
Marcia's letter showed him that her troubles could wait. He tore the second letter open with trembling fingers.

Langenbach
15th October 1938

‘My darling Anthony,

Since those wonderful two weeks in London everything in life looks different. Colours are stronger, shapes more beautiful, music more melodious. Everything has become radiant. And it is all because I have found you …'

Anthony had written that life without Anna had no savour, was tedious, insupportable. He found himself, he said, bewitched, without appetite, energy or ambition. The only life he could envisage without agony was one shared with her.

‘… you were already filling my heart when Kurt came on his leave from Spain in July. I was charming to him, very dutiful. He was, as usual, hard, rough, intelligent, cynical. I know, my own darling, that you do not like to think of my husband, that I have a husband – but we all have frames in which we exist, like pictures. We cannot easily step out of them. Langenbach is my frame. I did not have to choose it. I married a cold, clever, brave man. I do not love him – you know that. But he and his family are my way of life.

Yet I must also live as Anna. When I came to England to see my grandmother in August I thought you might have almost forgotten me, or prefer to keep me at a distance. I had not answered your sweet letter. I had no claim upon you. But I could not stop myself from making the contact.'

Anthony's mind went back to ‘the contact'. He could not erase the image of Anna from his mind and he wanted her all the time – absolutely, he decided with many a frustrated groan, all the bloody time. He saw her face everywhere.

‘And what joy it brought us! With you I find warmth and ease and laughter. Of course to be your lover, your mistress (and I am proud of it) is to act a lie most of my life. With the most important part of me I am thinking of Anthony, wanting him, feeling I am part of him. The rest is mechanical – Langenbach, family, possessions. But these things are strong.'

‘Damned, bloody strong,' Anthony muttered to himself, ‘hellish strong. Of course they are.'

‘You ask me in your last letter to leave these things. My dear, it would be absurd. It is true that I love you.'

Anthony was young enough to feel that those were the words which mattered –

‘You beseech me to come to you for ever, to run away, ask to divorce Kurt. My love, believe me, I am not telling you our love was just an amusement, the passing fancy of a woman whose husband was away at the war. Nor am I saying that two weeks of love were not long enough for us to learn to know each other. I think I know you well, and you know me. But marriage and divorce and family and relations are real solid things. In Germany it is so. Also in England, I think. I cannot do what you ask. You will love others. It is perhaps better that you forget me. It is better that we say to each other – “It was beautiful. Now we say goodbye.” I kiss you in my heart. I laugh and weep when I think of you.

Anna.'

‘Nonsense!' said Anthony out loud. ‘“Better forget me!” She doesn't mean a word of it.' There was a postscript on the back of the last sheet.

‘It is best not to write here any more. If you write, send it to my grandmother's address in London.'

Anthony laughed delightedly. This was no breach, no severance. Reference to Mrs Briscoe's address surely knotted firmly once again the cord that bound them. Mrs Briscoe was discreet. ‘I have told her,' Anna had said, ‘that it is always possible letters are opened now in Germany. I have told her that if anybody wants to write to me with matters which – which might make trouble – the letter can be sent to me to her house, here in London. She will keep it. Then, when a reliable friend is in London I can make arrangements. It's not quick of course. But it is safe.'

‘No,' Anthony thought, ‘it certainly isn't quick!' He started to read Anna's letter again. Then he glanced quickly at Marcia's:

‘Darling Ant (on)
You've got to help me. Will you please calm Mummy and Daddy down. I think they'll need it because I've written to them by this post to say I'm not coming home for Christmas.
I've got a wonderful chance to ski at St Anton with a blissful party of people and it's got to be Christmas week. I've written a
long
letter to them both but please try to stop them fussing or being hurt, or communicating with Cousin Francis to find out who the party consists of and all the Victorian stuff. Anyway, he and Cousin Angie wouldn't know, all my friends are Austrian, met through the art school, mostly –'

Before reading Marcia's letter carefully he started at once to compose a reply to Anna. His pen raced across paper. It would be, he reminded her, six months in February since she had seen her grandmother. It was already late October. His letters were likely to take time – he would write them regularly and send them, regardless of the absence of answers, to Mrs Briscoe's London address.

‘I know,' he wrote, ‘that you will be with me again in a very few months. And then I will be able to find better words, to keep you with me for ever. Let it be February, my darling – or March at the latest.'

He felt sick. March, 1939 seemed a lifetime away. Yet he also felt immensely more robust than ever before. Anna loved him. After separation, after ages, from afar, Anna loved him.

Bargate. March, 1939.

‘Anthony, my dear, we've heard from Marcia at last. She's coming home very soon, for Easter. Thank Heavens for it – it's about time.'

‘I don't blame her for spending Christmas and skiing out there, Mother.'

‘But
Christmas
!' Hilda Marvell had taken her daughter's long absence badly. ‘I hope she's not getting involved with some undesirable Viennese. Marcia's so young – naïve, an innocent. I'm sure Cousin Angela is keeping her eyes open. Marcia needs guidance, protection.' Hilda sighed. They were walking in the garden at Bargate where a few bold shrub shoots were suggesting that winter was nearly past.

‘Marcia's pretty well able to look after herself, Mother.'

‘All you children think that. You're so mistaken.'

‘Is Easter late or early? When exactly does she come?'

Marcia, it appeared, was planning to arrive on 14th March and to stay until the last week in April. Her letter had taken a surprisingly long time to arrive.

‘14th March,' said Anthony. ‘Good Lord, that's next Tuesday! I'd better meet the boat train in London and give her lunch and put her on a train down.'

Anthony had been considering how much to tell Marcia about Anna, but considering in a desultory way. Now the question was imminent. Brother and sister were close, and in one way he longed for the relief of confidences. There had been only one further letter from Anna – the courier service, via Wilton Place worked, albeit laboriously – but it had shown no diminution in love while still offering no explicit encouragement to any ambitious imaginings. As far as the immediate future was concerned, ‘Plans are uncertain,' Anna had written.
But February – Anna's six-month point – had come and gone and all she had offered was the probability of a further visit to England ‘some time in, or even before, the spring'. ‘Whatever that means,' thought Anthony miserably. She had written, too, that Kurt had been given a further leave from Spain. Anthony had groaned. It might be some sort of relief to talk to Marcia. She was too young to understand, of course, but she was a sympathetic girl. There would be complications, irritation. He could imagine –

‘What about her husband, Ant? I take it you're just her bit of fun, her fancy man? I suppose you know what you're doing – don't get into a mess, love!' He would find that sort of reaction hard to take.

On the other hand, Marcia had always been his confidante and the need to speak of Anna to somebody was almost insupportable. His closest intimate, Robert Anderson, was certainly not a suitable recipient of descriptions of Anna. He was too apt to snort impatiently at the weakness of humanity. One could talk about many things to Robert, but not easily about love. Anthony decided, as he paced the platform at Victoria Station, that he would talk to Marcia. He at once began to look forward to it, to the delicious moment when he could speak Anna's name aloud. Marcia would, inevitably, be agog to hear his news. She would be intensely curious about the state of his heart. He had arranged to take her to Mount Street, to give her lunch there before putting her on a train to Sussex. Over lunch he would talk to her of Anna.