Charlotte Gray (8 page)

"I don't know why you want to give up fighters," said Borowski.

"It isn't really the planes themselves, it's this work over France that sounds interesting. It's different. They're forming a little group of pilots to be attached permanently. Sometimes you have to drop people and stores, sometimes you just have to fly over and make a noise."

"Why on earth?"

"So the Germans think that explosions were caused by bombs, not by saboteurs on the ground. Then they don't take out reprisals on the local population. It's a question of split-second timing."

Borowski looked unconvinced.

"Why don't they just get the bomber boys to do it?"

"If something actually needs to be bombed, they do. But I can learn that, too."

"But to begin with you're just transport. Oh dear." Borowski smiled.

"What a fate for a Spitfire man."

"That was a long time ago. It was a different world. Anyway, I might move on to Lysanders later. You have to land in a field by the light of a drunk French peasant's torch. It's not that easy."

"Why should they want to retrain you?"

"Because I've made Landon's life so difficult. And you know what they're like. They'll let you do anything if you just keep on at them long enough. In the meantime I've got to learn French."

"Why?"

"In case of accidents. I'm supposed to be able to get out of France on my own and find my way home. They're going to give me some sort of exam before they'll let me go. I've got to have conversation lessons from some old dame they've put me on to."

Borowski was laughing.

"It doesn't sound like you at all, Greg. Who is this French mistress?"

"French mistress, Borowski. In English we say French mistress. A French mistress is something else."

Daisy Forester returned later than usual from work and sprinted upstairs to the flat, calling out her greetings as she turned the key.

She was due to meet a new admirer later that evening and wanted to hear any news from her flat-mates first. Her expression of innocent enthusiasm faltered when she heard no answering voice and saw no light on in the sitting room. She went and knocked on Charlotte's door at the end of the hall.

Charlotte's voice softly and reluctantly answered, and Daisy turned the handle.

"What's the matter? Are you ill?"

"No. I just thought I'd have an early night."

Daisy sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Have you got a cold? You look a bit bleary-eyed."

Charlotte breathed in tightly. Her situation had seemed to require something drastic and she had decided to take Daisy into her confidence; but she had forgotten what Daisy was like she could not possibly confide in this woman.

"It's him, isn't it?" said Daisy.

What?"

"The pilot. Oh God, I knew it. It's all my fault."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh God, Charlotte, I'm sorry. I should never have interfered."

"Daisy, will you please tell me what on earth you're talking about."

"No, I won't. You must tell me first." Daisy stood up and walked over to a little boarded-up fireplace where she rested her elbow on the mantelpiece.

"You have to trust people. Charlotte. Come on."

Charlotte had to grind the words out through her learned discretion.

"I think ... I think I've gone a bit mad."

Daisy silently raised her eyebrows.

"I've developed this feeling for ..." Charlotte nodded, 'this man, Peter Gregory. And it's quite absurd. It's quite out of proportion."

Daisy's sympathetic manner could not conceal the light of intrigue in her eyes.

"Go on."

"I feel completely out of control."

Daisy smiled.

"I could tell from the moment I saw you swooning on the dance floor."

"What are you talking about? I don't swoon."

"Believe me, darling. You closed your eyes as though ' "

"was trying to keep the smoke out."

Daisy laughed, and Charlotte felt a small, unwilling smile.

"That's why I rang up and asked Ralph if he could get hold of him through Michael Waterslow. I could see you weren't going to do anything.

Don't look so shocked. They were quite happy to play along."

"It's awful. Daisy. I don't understand how I can feel like this. It's not reasonable, it's like an illness. No sane human being should feel like this, so soon, before anything has happened if ever." There were tears along the rims of her eyes. Daisy walked back across the room and sat down on the bed again.

"What we have to do now is decide on our plan of action. We just have to lay out all the alternatives and examine them. When I was at Oxford there was a girl in my college who fell in love with one of the dons.

We used to spend hours plotting how she could seduce him. Is something the matter?"

"No, no. I just didn't realise you'd been to Oxford."

"Try not to look so amazed. Charlotte. It's not polite."

"What did you read?"

"Greats. Anyway, we got her sorted out in the end. She used to call me Aunt Daisy afterwards. I really hated that."

"And what did you do?"

"It's not relevant to your case. Tell me, have you had boyfriends before?"

"Yes, I've had what I suppose you'd call admirers."

"But have you had a really big, passionate affair?"

Charlotte felt Daisy's question masked a more intimate curiosity. She was evasive.

"Never a great love, perhaps."

"Don't think I'm prying. I just need to know what makes you tick."

"You're sounding like a psychiatrist."

"What do you know about psychiatry?"

"My father worked as a psychiatrist for a long time. That's all."

"Shall I be honest with you, Charlotte?"

"Yes." Charlotte did not sound enthusiastic.

"I think you might do better to have a few little flings rather than jump straight in at the deep end. I like your Mr. Gregory, but I wouldn't trust him. Actually I find him a bit frightening." She looked at Charlotte's doubtful face, the eyes clouded.

"Though I suppose that's the part you've fallen for."

Charlotte sighed.

"I hadn't thought of it like that at all the way you describe, the practical details and so on. I just felt impelled to him. I felt it would be a betrayal of something if I didn't go to him. It was like a call that it would be wrong to ignore. It feels very deep inside me."

"Well, you jolly well ought to think about the practical details, I assure you. You don't want to feel " impelled" to someone who isn't there or who's got half a dozen other girlfriends."

"What would you do?"

"Well, I've told you. I think I'd play the field, go out with lots of different men and see if he came after me. Then I'd play it jolly carefully.

Don't look at me like that. Charlotte. You make me feel the most awful tart. You don't have to sleep with all of them."

"No."

"I do, but that's my choice. You can have fun just going out with them and maybe just a kiss at the end of the evening."

Charlotte didn't look convinced.

They went round the problem two or three more times, but no new vantage point was gained. By the time Daisy left Charlotte's room she had agreed, against her better judgement, to help Charlotte make contact again with Gregory. Cannerley took her to the Ritz.

"I hope you don't think it's too corny," he said, his hand lightly on the small of her back as they stepped into the bar.

"It's about the only place I know where you can still be sure of a reasonable choice on the menu."

Without consulting Charlotte, he ordered champagne. Their table was at the side and gave a good view across the room, which had a foreign, elderly air. Grey-haired men were accompanied by young women; the waiters spoke accented English. There was an unreal, and in Charlotte's eyes, slightly sinister feeling to the place. She wondered where the people ordering trays loaded with drinks had made their money; to be in this golden mockery of the Belle Epoque while from Chelsea to Poplar the streets were darkened seemed either defiant or dishonest. Perhaps it was always so with big hotels; perhaps the Ritz's ornate Parisian sister had equally camouflaged the indiscretions of Swann or the Baron de Charlus.

In the dining room Cannerley ordered knowingly from the Bordeaux section of the wine list and settled his attention on Charlotte. She wore a dark emerald brooch at the collar of her blouse and a jacket with green velvet cuffs. She was not intimidated by his show of confidence with the waiters or by his descriptions of the muscular qualities of the wines of St. Julien.

"How's your doctor? Are you happy with him? Not much of a challenge for a girl like you, surely?" Cannerley gave her a conspiratorial smile. He was a goodlooking man. Charlotte thought, with his clear skin and wide-apart blue eyes, and his fair hair that occasionally disrupted his neatness by flopping on to his forehead. She found him completely unattractive.

"Shouldn't you be putting that fluent French to more use?"

"I don't know quite what as."

"There's always a need for bilingual people, interpreters and so on. Your gift is a rare one."

"So is yours presumably."

"I suppose so." Cannerley smiled.

"I do use mine, as I think I may have mentioned on the train. France and the French colonies are part of my brief. I know there are other organisations which urgently need French speakers. You're concerned about what's happening over there, aren't you?"

Charlotte looked up from her plate. They were both eating jugged hare and carrots; the menu had not been as full as Cannerley had imagined.

"Yes, of course I am. I almost feel as strongly about France as about Britain. The thought of Nazi uniforms in French streets and villages makes me feel quite ill."

"Quite a lot of English people are working there. They drop them in by parachute."

Charlotte laughed.

"Is that what you're suggesting I should do?"

"Not quite." Cannerley smiled and leaned forward.

"I don't think those pretty ankles are quite sturdy enough for that sort of thing." Charlotte said nothing.

Cannerley sat back again.

"All right. It's none of my business. In any case, we hardly ever speak to other organisations. If ever you did think you'd like a change of job, though, I could probably put you in touch with someone."

Charlotte nodded. She found the idea of herself as some sort of secret agent both alarming and ridiculous. She was not sure of the extent to which Cannerley was playing with her merely to amuse himself: perhaps he found some erotic charge in portraying himself as a dispenser of dangerous assignments to young women; perhaps he thought it would make him seem glamorous.

"Lots of smart young women are doing their bit, you know," he said.

"The fanys are as posh as Queen Charlotte's ball. You needn't think it infra dig."

"That isn't what I thought at all. I'm not a snob. I just thought it didn't seem realistic for someone like me who's had such a quiet life."

Cannerley poured the last of the wine into her glass.

"Nothing seems realistic these days, does it? The world's upside down. Anyway, I shan't bully you. There's just one other thing."

He didn't have time to tell Charlotte what it was, as a couple approached their table. The man wore a dinner jacket, the woman a dress with beads and tassels across the bust.

"Hello, Dick, you old devil. Fancy finding you here. I thought you chaps never left the office. You remember Sylvia, don't you?" The man stood grinning by the side of the table. He had grey hair and a sweaty, indoor complexion; a scarlet cummerbund had been pushed down to an angle of forty-five degrees by the belly it restrained.

Cannerley sprang to his feet and embraced the woman with apparent fervour. He introduced Charlotte, and the man shook her hand with a conspiratorial chuckle in Cannerley's direction. His appreciative gurglings prevented Charlotte from hearing what his second name was, but Cannerley addressed him as "Roly'.

"Are you going on?" he asked.

"Rather," said Cannerley.

"Shall we team up?"

Peter Gregory was sleeping badly. He had a narrow bed in a low-ceilinged cottage. The mattress offered sinking reassurance when he was tired, but on bad nights the woollen blankets knotted themselves round him and the lower sheet was drawn up into corrugated ridges by his continual turning.

Moonlight glanced through a space in the curtains and spilled a track across the floorboards, prompting his mind to turn at once to visibility, cloud base, instruments.

He was twenty-eight years old, but there were one or two lights of grey in his cropped and uncombed hair. He climbed out of the deep mattress, crossed the room and hauled a packet of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his tunic. He switched on the bedside lamp, which shed a tight glow beneath the circle of its floral shade. In it he could see a green glass ashtray and a book, face-down, broken-spined. So mean was the little pool of light, that when he actually wanted to read he had to balance the lamp on the headboard, behind his right ear.

He sat up to smoke, then found he was too cold and had to lie beneath the eiderdown with the cigarette sticking out from his lips like a periscope. He whipped his hand out and knocked the ash off as fast as possible, so he could get his fingers back in the warmth. His feet were iced up from the walk across the room. His mind was on Charlotte Gray. Once, he had been able to indulge his admiration, his desire for women in such a way that they seemed to expect little from him. There were mild reproaches when an affair ended soon after it began (he had found another woman, he was posted somewhere else, it was only a lighthearted thing); but something in the way he behaved allowed the women to escape intact with a sentimental letter, briefly brimming eyes, but then smiles and bravado and no feeling of betrayal. He wished he could recapture that lightness, but he felt that it sprang from an innocence of which he had been deprived. It belonged to another time.