Charlotte Gray (15 page)

When he had finished dressing he stood by the bed and gave her body one last glance, straining in the almost-full darkness, as she lay deep in one of her death-like sleeps. He was moved by a paradoxical sense that there lay like an invisible film over the practical volume of her rib cage and the bumpy spinal cord with its vital wiring, something personal, something essentially hers, that transcended the facts of her physical incorporation. He wanted very much to stroke the line of her thigh and hip, to kiss the mandolin-shaped cheeks, childishly bare; but he feared to wake her, so instead drew the sheet carefully over her and tiptoed from the room.

He found himself inexplicably reluctant to walk the few steps down the passage to the front door; he wished he had told her what he was really going to do. He took a piece of paper from the hall table and scribbled a note on it.

"Charlotte Satisfactory.10.21 pm. A bientot XX' He went back to her room and left it on the bedside table.

Gregory had been driving for three quarters of an hour through the night when he felt a sudden pressure rising in his ribs. For a minute he thought he was going to vomit, and he pulled the car over to the side of the unlit country road. He climbed out and stood by the door.

Something was struggling to come out of his chest and was making his arms and hands shake.

He held on hard to the top of the open door, fighting to control himself. A volume of packed air erupted from his mouth in a cry. He bent over the bonnet of the car to steady himself and found that other wild exhalations were struggling to follow the first. Soon he was sobbing like a child.

While he knelt on the ground and held his face in his hands he had the curious feeling of standing simultaneously outside himself. In a detached way he could picture the strange figure he made, weeping for no apparent reason in his uniform. His vision was detached, but it was not dispassionate, because he felt a dreadful pity for this second person.

The reflexes of his body had shown him what his mind had refused to admit. He had not been able to absorb as well as he had thought the things the last two years had shown him. He was still young, and he had seen in that short time things that normally only old men knew.

And then there had come this woman.

When he thought of Charlotte, Gregory felt a terrible exhilaration. Out of all the death had come this redeeming chance. When he thought of the passion she had so transparently conceived for him, he felt singled out by an extraordinary fortune. The chance that of all the women in the world, the one he loved (and with relief he admitted that this was what he felt) the thought that she should actually reciprocate his feeling seemed a possibility of incalculably long odds. His incredulous joy at his good luck was almost as exhilarating as the emotion itself.

He slumped down in the seat of the car. The most terrible aspect of it was the timing. It was only when it was too late to tell her that he had finally understood. In a few days he would be gone, and he might never come back.

Charlotte wrote to Gregory from Scotland. She pictured him taking the letter to his billet and lying down on his hard bed to read it. It pleased her to think of his fingers where hers had been; she imagined the cigarette smoke that would curl from his hand and billow from his lips, sardonically smiling at her letter. My Darling Peter, I expect this is against all the rules and I will be shot as a spy if anyone knows I've written, so don't leave this letter lying around. How are you? I do miss you. I think about you in your horrid cold plane and your poor feet freezing. I miss you.

I arrived at the end of a course at Inverie Bay. The others have been shown how to use Bren guns and Sten guns and how to creep up on the enemy at night and kill silently with their bare hands. I look at those hands with their manicured nails holding cocktails in the evening and have to suppress a giggle. I wonder if the Germans know what's coming. I seem to have missed all the violent stuff, for which I'm grateful. I have been taught by a man with whisky breath how to transmit by morse; some of this I remembered from the Girl Guides. Don't laugh. Yesterday an old trawler man took us out in a rowing boat. The idea is that we should be able to pick up parachutes or stores that have landed in the water. You know how careless those wretched R.A.F boys are with their drops ... Anyway, this old chap was very nattering and told me I had a natural feeling for a boat, "which was surprising. It was extremely hard work, as the wind was whipping across the bay and the waves were smacking into the side of the boat. My poor arms.

Every night we have to put on our uniforms for dinner. They're not nearly as flattering as Daisy believed: they are rather scratchy and my skirt is too tight round the middle no rude remarks, please. The food is variable, often quite good fresh herring and mackerel, homemade bread, but a bit heavy and too reminiscent of'

home for my liking. The others on the course are mostly English girls from the Home Counties. There is a girl called Marigold with whom I have become quite friendly. She is very good at the cross-country runs and the obstacle courses. It is perfectly clear to me, and I imagine to the instructors, that I am no good at all at these things. However, since I've started the course I have to finish it. They will then decide what job, if any, to offer me.

Driving the Brigadier's car, I imagine, will be just about all they will think me up to. This is a pity, because I do very much want to go to France and do something worthwhile.

Next week we are going to Manchester, where we will be trained in parachute jumping. Even I can manage to fall out of a plane, I should think. Before that, however, there are two important dates: first, the 3685 hour cross-country trek, which is famous for being very, very tough indeed "Believe me, lassie, ye'll be lucky if ye can get yer wee shoes on fer a week afterwards' - a good deal of that rather gloating talk from the whisky-breathing wireless instructor), and the day after that: tea with mother. I tried to explain that I had no free time, everything very hushhush and so on, but she had insisted we meet in Fort William, and is making a special journey from Edinburgh to come and see me. We do in fact have two days off before Manchester, so I can't very well say no.

Some of the girls have apparently been given instruction in how to resist interrogation. For some reason this involved two of them being told to take their clothes off while they were questioned by two "Gestapo' officers. So that there was no question of impropriety the large woman who runs the dormitories was present as a sort of chaperone.

Marigold said she thought this woman's interest was rather more unhealthy than that of the men!

I will be back in London at the beginning of the week after Manchester where I will wait to hear my fate. Will you be able to come up to town?

Probably you will have done your trip to France by then, "Charlotte'

permitting. I do hope you can come up and we can start to have our evening routine again. I miss your sad old face and the horrid things you say and do when there are just the two of us. You can't write to me here, but you could write a letter to the flat in London to wait for my return.

Do you love me just a little bit?

I send you my biggest, biggest kisses. Charlotte.

One of the reasons Charlotte had wanted to come on the course was somehow to shock Gregory into an increase of feeling: perhaps if he felt she were demonstrating her independence of him he might recognise the true extent of his dependence on her. She had not been sure that she would ever, really, go to France; but, now she had seen the other women who had volunteered and recognised that they were not much different from her no stronger, no braver, no better at the language the prospect of her actually going had become real.

Meanwhile, she needed reassurance. She wanted to be told by him, not once but many times, that he needed her; she wanted him to tell her that the compromises she had made with her modesty for the sake of his desires were understood; more than anything, she wanted him to tell her that he valued her. All this, she thought, as she sat on the stopping train to Fort William, without seeming weak or clinging. It was a hot afternoon, and from the carriage window she saw a fisherman on a stool by a narrow river.

While his right hand gripped the rod, he was waving his left back and forth by his neck to drive off the midges. It was strange to see this placid scene: Scotland, France ... Were men now fishing off the banks of the Seine near Monet's house at Givemy? Why were they not fighting?

How many citizens did it take to wage a war, and what was the responsibility of the ones who did not? Someone must carry on with the ordinary business of working, eating, going to bed: somebody must fish.

Could you in all conscience play your line across the seething waters of the Garonne at Toulouse, knowing that where it met the sea at Bordeaux the docks were patrolled by German soldiers? You voted for a government, then did what you were told: no one could really ask for more. And what right had she, a foreigner, to interfere?

Charlotte waited at the station for the Edinburgh train and saw her mother's familiar but ever stouter figure step down on to the platform.

She waved from the ticket barrier, then turned away so she would not have to hold her mother's gaze while she walked the length of the train.

Amelia Gray's powdery cheek dabbed against her daughter's unmade-up skin and, nominal contact made, recoiled.

Charlotte took one of her bags, which bulged with her unvarying baggage of knitting, library books and presents wrapped in tissue paper.

For Charlotte there were vests, handkerchiefs and chocolates, which she unwrapped in the hotel lounge while they waited for the waitress to bring tea. Amelia, satisfied by Charlotte's gratitude, settled back in the floral covered armchair. She was a big, handsome woman, run to fat, whose waved brown hair was shot with grey. Her fussing indulgence worked hard to compensate for her natural reticence and her fear of scenes, storms or emotions.

The waitress wore a frilled apron and a white cap clipped to her hair with pins that Charlotte noticed as she laid the heavy tray down on the low walnut table. Wisps of cress trailed from the sides of bulging egg sandwiches; three different kinds of cake were fanned about a willow patterned plate.

"Tell me how you're getting on with this course."

"We've finished. Tomorrow I'm off to Manchester, then back to London."

"What's it for, though?"

"The fanys. You know, the First Aid ' " I know what the fanys are. Mary McKechnie's daughter is a fany too.

Are you going to be a driver?"

"I expect so, yes."

"So why do you need to go on a course?"

"I'm not really supposed to say. You never know who's listening."

"Really, Charlotte." Amelia laughed.

"I'm your mother."

There was a pause in which Charlotte could have said more, but after a moment's awkwardness she could tell that her mother was relieved not to know: her curiosity was formal.

"How's father?"

"Ooh, you know. He's just... father."

"Busy?"

"Of course. Very busy. They're making a lot of changes at the hospital and he wants to be involved in the reorganisation."

"Are you seeing much of him?"

"He's getting back very late."

"And have you heard from Roderick?"

"Yes, I have. I had a nice letter from him the other day. His battalion's still in Lincolnshire, but they're hoping to go overseas soon. They don't know where yet. He says he's very fed up with all the training. He wants to get out there and do something."

"Typical Roderick."

"Yes."

"Are you worried?"

"No. He knows how to look after himself' Amelia poured some more tea for both of them. She took a piece of cake, her third, then put it down again. Something effortful was clearly going on. Charlotte thought.

"Of course I do worry about you both of you." She was looking down at the table.

"I wish you'd get married. Charlotte. Have you got a young man?"

"Not really."

"It's none of my business, of course. I just..."

"Go on." Charlotte felt embarrassed by her mother's obvious discomfort but thought that, having come unusually close to frankness, she should be encouraged.

"I sometimes ask myself whether I really did enough for you when you were a child." Amelia's face was tense with effort. Charlotte said nothing.

"Perhaps I was not a very good mother."

"In what way?"

Amelia could go no further, and Charlotte, who could see the effort she had made, took pity on her.

"It's all right," she said, and patted her arm. She felt her mother's instinctive flinch at being touched.

"You say that. Charlotte, you say it's all right. But I don't really know what you think. I never have."

"It's all right. Mama. It's all right."

Eventually Amelia said, "I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't. Not usually." Charlotte had not even been aware of lighting a cigarette.

It was Gregory's fault.

"Remember what your mother told you," the parachute instructor called leeringly to the women as they queued up to do their preliminary jumps from a fourteen-foot tower.

"Legs together."

"I wonder how many times he's said that," said Marigold, standing with Charlotte in the queue.

The next day they jumped from a plane. Charlotte was grateful for the dispatcher's uncompromising shove; short moments of terror were followed by a feeling of powerless ecstasy as the canopy jerked open.