Armistice (26 page)

“Do the actions of a lunatic demand to be understood or should he just be detained for his own safety?” said Anthony, trying to make it sound as if he was thinking only of what was best for Jonathan Priest.

Perceval Dore shrugged. “There are men who would bend over backward to try and understand him.”

“Do you count yourself amongst them?”

Anthony launched that slur on his father's loyalty so slyly it took a moment for Perceval to catch on.

“I'm shocked that you even ask that. You are my son, my heir; of course I believe you. You are a gentleman. There's no doubt who is telling the truth. Priest must be insane. That can be his only defense.”

“But there is a problem, isn't there?” said Anthony, seizing the moment. “He's popular. He can behave as badly as he likes and men will try to understand him. He must be a favorite or he would never have been elevated to being a barrister in the first place. He has a way of making people like him—I think it's an outrage that Major James even asked me about Priest's allegation! He shouldn't have given him the time of
day! Why couldn't he accept that Fritz killed his friend? It was a war, for Christ's sake!”

“It was just after the war, wasn't it? In the following minute.”

“Are you still doubting me, father?” demanded Anthony.

“No, but those are the facts, aren't they? Forgive me, I just mean to establish the facts, not because I doubt you, but because they are our bedrock.”

“Yes, it was in the first minute of the Armistice, and I got the Kraut who did it.”

Anthony tried not to shrink as his father studied him. After a few moments Dore Senior jerked forward and grasped Anthony's forearm, clamping it to the table before he could snatch it away.

“That was well done, Anthony, well done,” enthused the elder Dore.

Philomena passed another line of shabby soldiers waiting patiently at a soup kitchen. Months after the Armistice the war wasn't over. The newspapers carried stories every day of “mopping up” exercises in Europe and outbreaks of hostilities, while here in England all these neglected men who went off to fight for their country now begged on the streets—and Jonathan, and Anthony; they were still playing out some aspect of their war. Dan was killed after the Armistice—an armistice is only a truce, it isn't the end. Is the Armistice technically ended? What will come after the Armistice—the peace? That would be nice.

She remembered the soldiers and the middle-aged woman
making the clay battlefield. When she reached the gallery the American owner greeted her like a lost friend.

“Our most frequent visitor!” she declared, smiling, and, acknowledging Philomena's large paisley bag: “Thinking of moving in?”

“I'm going home, actually.”

“And where's home?”

“Do you know the rest of England?”

“Not really.”

“Up north. Hills and moors and rain,” mused Philomena.

“I see,” said the American woman. “So you're a tourist here like me?”

“Are you a tourist?” Philomena felt that the woman lived there.

“I dunno,” admitted the American woman, laughing. “I was in Paris before the war. Came here when life started getting too uncomfortable. I was with a German man, you see,” she went on, her laughter fading.

“Oh,” said Philomena, wondering what difficulties might have resulted from that pairing.

“Mmm,” said the American, and they both looked down at their feet for a moment. “Actually, you know what? I just told you a lie. I wasn't with a German man, I was with a German woman.”

“Oh,” said Philomena again, thinking that that must have been double trouble.

“She went home.”

Philomena thought that that would have been one way of
solving the problems they might have been experiencing, but self-defeating because it meant they were parted.

“Where she died in an air raid.”

“I'm sorry,” said Philomena.

“Mmm,” said the American, looking down as she scratched the instep of her shoe on the concrete floor. “
C'est la vie, c'est la guerre
,” she said, quietly. “How about you?”

“I came down here to introduce myself to my dead fiancé's friends,” replied Philomena.

“I can understand that,” said the American woman. “I'm thinking of making that very same trip to Germany.”

Philomena smiled wanly. “I hope that you don't find over there what I found here.”

It was the American woman's turn to say: “Oh?”

Then what a relief, because Philomena told her the beginning of the story, the next bit, and the next. She wondered if she should swear her to secrecy, but that might seem rude given how open she had been with her. The American woman occasionally interrupted to ask questions for clarification as Philomena told her more of the story, but leaving some things out, as you have to, otherwise the telling of a story would take as long as the events it described, and gradually the American woman had less need to ask any questions, and Philomena arrived at the present.

“And what are you going to do now?” asked her attentive listener.

“I'm going to catch my train, and go home.”

“Mmm,” said the American woman, in that way of hers.
“You're worried about Jonathan, I can see. But there's nothing you can do about that, you know? If someone's set on doing something to themselves you can't stop them.”

“I stopped someone the other day,” said Philomena.

“Oh?” said the American woman.

But, Philomena thought, if you follow this woman's logic, William Rust might try again. And suddenly she felt that she couldn't go to the train without first reassuring herself that the shabby young soldier was alive, and at home.

“I've got to go,” she said, picking up her bag.

“Your train?”

“No. Something else.” Moving now toward the exit.

“You can leave that loud bag here if you want,” called the American woman after her.

“Thanks, but I'll manage,” Philomena called over her shoulder, tightening her grip on it.

Out of breath when she reached the tenement, she paced. How to get to see inside William Rust's room? She needed to be up as high as him, back in her recently vacated hotel room, in fact. She entered the foyer to be faced with the surly porter. He saw her and made a move to disappear into the office behind the counter, but Philomena didn't give him a chance to avoid her:

“I think I left something in my room and I'm late for my train—please, please, let me go up there. Nobody's moved in, have they? Please, please.”

The surly porter was about to decline, but he'd only just taken over from the pleasant day porter, who heard the
breathless female and came out to see who it was. It was he who said: “No, nobody's moved in yet and it hasn't been cleaned. You're welcome to go up.”

The surly porter seemed about to protest, but the pleasant porter held out the room key. Philomena grabbed it and sped up the stairs. Once in the room she dashed to the window. Across the way, there were no signs of life in William Rust's room. She felt the energy go out of her. Her shoulders became too heavy. Then her head. She leaned on the dusty windowsill and rested, standing up, enervated. Footsteps arrived in the doorway behind but she was too tired to look. Someone cleared their throat.

“Have you found whatever it is, miss?”

It was the surly porter, being less surly than usual.

“No,” she said, without turning.

“Was it valuable?”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Why was he asking that?

“It isn't money or anything, no.”

Her attention was taken by the flicker of a flame in the recesses of William Rust's room. She could see tantalizing glimpses of a figure as it lit a lamp. The figure came closer to the window, pulled up a chair, and sat. William Rust was returned to his room opposite. The only difference to him was that he had a brace around his neck. He saw her and, with a shy smile, raised a hand in greeting. She reciprocated and carried on looking toward him for a while but he made no further movement. Tears poured down her cheeks
unchecked. William Rust was all right; therefore Jonathan could be all right. She could go home now.

She smeared her tears across her cheeks with her hands, brushed past the surly porter in the doorway, mumbling “thank you.”

When she got to Euston she had just enough time to write a letter and post it before her train.
Dear Jonathan
, she began, but didn't know what else to say … Give up? Apologize to Anthony Dore? Don't kill yourself? Don't kill him? Her train appeared on the departures board. She couldn't find the words in the short time available. She'd compose the letter as and when.

She walked onto the platform and along the train, peering into each carriage, seeking one that contained another female. There. She stepped up, nodding to the older woman. Philomena hoisted her luggage bag up into the rack and made herself comfortable on the bench seat opposite. She opened her leather everyday bag and located her ticket, ready for the inspector's approval. She fussed at her hair and watched the engine's steam drift past the window. She handled the sheaf of envelopes. On top was the photo of her that Jonathan had had. Part of her wished he still had it. If she “returned” it to him, that would be inviting further contact … Would she ever see him again? Her hands started fidgeting. They were back. A life of their own. Her fingers flicked through the sheaf of envelopes and stopped. Something was missing. Trying to damp down her panic, she began to sort through them—she always kept them in the same order—there! One was
out of place. Outside, the guard's whistle sounded and doors slammed shut. She began to breathe more heavily as she searched through the sheaf for the out of place letter. No, no. It was definitely missing. She looked up to the older woman opposite, pleading.

“Whatever's the matter?” the woman gasped.

“I've lost one,” Philomena whispered hoarsely and stuffed the sheaf of papers into her open bag, yanked her hat on, opened the carriage door, dropped her bag, picked it up, screamed because someone slammed the carriage door shut again, yanked the window down, reached out to the handle and forced the door open once more.

“It's departing,” a guard shouted, “you can't detrain!”

“Your bag in the rack!” her fellow passenger was shouting.

“Throw it after me!” yelled Philomena.

Ignoring the guard keeping pace with her carriage Philomena pushed the door wide open and leapt off the moving train, striking the guard a glancing blow. She fell to the stone platform, right onto her back. She lay dazed, full length for a moment, her belongings scattered around her, erupted from her everyday bag. In her prone position she watched, dazed, as her paisley bag landed further up the platform and skidded to a halt. Another guard ran alongside the train and succeeded in shutting the open door.

As other people began to arrive on the scene, Philomena hauled herself up, stuffed her belongings back into her bag, collected her paisley, apologized profusely to everyone without making eye contact, and hurried shakily away.

At the hotel she caught the surly porter skulking behind his desk.

“You're worried that somebody took something from my room, aren't you? You know somebody's been in there, don't you? Did you let somebody in there?”

The porter said nothing.

“Deny it,” she challenged, “deny it.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said the porter, unable to maintain the veil over his shiftiness.

“Liar,” she retorted. “He paid you, didn't he?”

And before he could respond she marched out of the hotel and hailed the first taxi.

The darkness thickened as they drove. Lights showed in the windows in the square when she burst out of the vehicle as it came to a stop outside Anthony's house. She marched up the stone steps and hammered on the front doors. A servant opened one of the pair, and, keeping his booted foot behind it, took her in with a contemptuous glance.

“Stop it and go to the side,” he hissed.

Philomena ignored him. Still possessed by the same demon energy that had propelled her off the train she hammered on the door that remained closed and shouted that she wanted to see Anthony. “Get Anthony here, now. Get Anthony here! He's got my letter! Anthony Dore has one of my letters!”

Inside the house Anthony appeared at the top of the stairs and his father emerged from a ground-floor room. They listened for a few moments. Anthony felt his head go fuzzy. Perceval went to a window looking onto the porch and peered out.
It was the girl, wasn't it? What the hell was she up to? He shot a quizzical look at Anthony, who was transfixed. Outside, Philomena was still shouting that Anthony had her letter. Looking out of the window again, Dore Senior saw another taxi pull up. He caught sight of Major James squinting out from this one. At the same moment Philomena looked about herself for the first time since she'd begun hammering the doors. She saw Major James trying to hide in his taxi, swept down the steps toward him and began pounding on his window: “What did you tell the judge? Anthony Dore's father; what did you tell him?”

Major James ordered his cabbie to drive and it sped away. Telling herself to stop ranting and raving, Philomena looked back up at the Dore house. The judge was bearing down on her; servants spread out on the steps behind him, a phalanx of flunkeys. Philomena opened her heart and beseeched, “Please can I have my letter returned to me? Please.”

“Get back in your taxi and leave before the police arrive,” roared the judge.

Pressed back against the cold metal of the motor car, she fumbled behind her for the door handle and climbed in. The driver didn't need telling that he should drive on. Judge Dore was close enough to stare in at her through the flimsy glass, eyes burning, as they pulled away.