Passions of War (28 page)

‘Victoria! Over here!'

She turned and saw across the street a woman with a familiar face but one she could not immediately place. The woman crossed the street, dodging between the hansom cabs and the motor cars that clogged it, and caught Victoria's hand.

‘It is you! I was sure it was. Don't you remember me? Lozengrad!'

‘Of course!' Recollection flooded back. ‘Sylvia Wallace! How are you?'

‘I'm well, thank you. And actually it's Sylvia Vincent now. I've been married for . . . gosh! . . . it's nearly a year now. And how are you? What are you doing with yourself these days?'

‘Look,' Victoria said, ‘we can't talk standing in the street. Let's go into Fenwick's coffee shop. Then we can have a proper gossip.'

Once settled over cups of coffee and a plate of fancy cakes Victoria began by describing her work in France.

Sylvia shook her head regretfully. ‘You're doing such a wonderful job! And I'm just sitting at home, being useless. After working with Mabel Stobart in Lozengrad I feel ashamed not to be doing something. I wanted to go with her to Serbia, but Martin – that's my husband – wouldn't hear of it.'

‘It's probably lucky for you he wouldn't,' Victoria said. ‘Goodness knows what has happened to them.'

‘Oh, but they are all back in England!' her companion exclaimed. ‘Didn't you know?'

‘Back? When?' Victoria demanded. ‘How do you know? How did they get out of Serbia?'

‘I had tea with Georgina MacIntosh last week. You remember her from Lozengrad? She went with Stobart this time, too. The poor things had a terrible time. They had to retreat through the mountains in awful conditions, but they finally made it to somewhere called Medua, on the Albanian coast, and got a boat to Brindisi. Poor Georgie looked worn to an absolute shadow . . .'

‘Did she mention Leo Malham Brown?' Victoria interrupted. ‘You remember Leo. She was at Lozengrad with us.'

‘Wasn't she the girl who dressed like a boy? I didn't know she went on this last expedition.'

‘Well, she did. I haven't heard from her for months and I've been assuming the worst. But if all the others got back, she must be with them.'

‘Well, I suppose so,' Sylvia said. ‘Georgina didn't mention her by name, but she did say that the whole party got through, thanks to Stobart.'

Victoria gathered her gloves and handbag. ‘I must go! It's been lovely meeting you again, but if Leo is home I must go and call on her and find out if she's all right. I can't think why she hasn't been in touch.' She fumbled in her bag. ‘Here's my card. Do give me a call and we'll get together for a proper chinwag – but please excuse me now.'

Leaving Sylvia looking slightly bemused, Victoria hurried out of the shop and called a taxi. A few minutes later she was ringing the bell at 31 Sussex Gardens. Beavis, slightly greyer, slightly plumper, answered it.

‘Beavis! Is Miss Malham Brown at home?'

‘Miss Leonora, madam? No, I'm afraid not. But Captain Malham Brown is here. Shall I announce you?'

Ralph was in the library, smoking a cigarette and reading
The Times
. He got up stiffly when Victoria entered.

‘Victoria! This is an unexpected pleasure. Come in, please. Beavis, bring some coffee, please. I'm sure Miss Langford would like a cup.'

‘No, really, thank you. I've just had coffee with an old acquaintance. Ralph, is Leo home?'

Ralph nodded dismissal at the butler and indicated a chair opposite his own. ‘Sit down, please. No, she isn't. What makes you think she might be?'

Victoria dropped into the chair, her excitement ebbing. ‘This friend I met, she was with us at Lozengrad. She told me Mabel Stobart and all her party were back in England. I felt sure Leo must be with them.'

‘No,' Ralph said. ‘Leo is in Corfu.'

‘Corfu! How do you know?'

Ralph reached into his pocket. ‘This letter arrived yesterday. Here, you can read it if you like.'

Victoria scanned the letter eagerly. It was not long. Leo explained how she had come to be separated from the rest of her group, described briefly the privations of the trek through the mountains and said that she probably owed her life to the kindness of ‘a Serbian officer'. She went on to outline the work she was doing with the international committee on Corfu and finished by expressing the hope that the letter would reach her brother and find him ‘in good health and spirits'.

‘She doesn't say anything about coming home,' Victoria commented, when she had finished.

Ralph responded with a wry smile. ‘No, she doesn't, does she. But you know my sister. Never happier than when she's organizing people. I expect she's in her element out there.'

‘She's obviously been through a terrible ordeal,' Victoria pointed out. ‘Aren't you worried about her?'

Ralph hesitated a moment, frowning. ‘To be quite honest, I've got to the point where I've given up worrying about her. For the last six months I haven't known whether she was alive or dead. Neither has poor old Tom. She insists on going off on these mad expeditions and she seems to have a remarkable talent for survival, so I've come to the conclusion that I just have to let her go her own way.'

‘But you must be thankful to know that she's all right.'

‘Yes, of course I am! I just wish she'd come home and marry Tom and behave like any other decent woman.'

‘Present company excepted, of course!' Victoria said waspishly.

He gave her a crooked smile. ‘All right. I know you're doing a wonderful job out there, and I suppose she is, too. I'm just tired of wondering what she's going to get up to next.'

Victoria studied his face for a moment and saw the faint lines around his mouth and the shadows under his eyes. She remembered making a cruel joke to Leo about his shiny boots and felt contrite. She softened her tone.

‘Anyway, what about you? How is the wound healing?'

‘Pretty well, thanks. It still gives me a stab if I move too quickly, but the medics say I should be able to go before a board in a week or two. I'm just praying they will pass me fit to go back to the trenches. Frankly, I'm going out of my mind here. It all seems so . . . so unreal, pointless . . .'

‘I know exactly what you mean,' Victoria said. ‘People here don't seem to understand what it's like over there.'

‘They don't want to understand,' Ralph said bitterly. ‘They just want to think of it as a glorious sacrifice. Have you seen these houses with photographs in the windows, draped in black crêpe, just so everyone knows that their son or husband or brother has died for his country? It makes me sick!'

‘Some of the letters to the papers are pretty mawkish, too,' Victoria agreed.

‘I want to shout at people that there's nothing glorious about it! What's glorious about thousands of men dying for the sake of a few yards of muddy ground?' Ralph hitched himself up in his chair and winced. ‘Mind you, I'm as much at fault as anyone, I suppose. When I have to write home to some grieving mother or wife I don't tell them their son or husband died in agony after lying up to his waist in mud all day with half his face shot off. I tell them he was shot while bravely doing his duty and let them think it was quick and virtually painless.'

‘What else can you do?' Victoria said. ‘Why make their suffering worse? But I sometimes think that if some of those wives and mothers could spend a day or two with me, and see the casualties coming off the trains and the barges, the war would be over by the end of the week. People wouldn't stand for it, if they could see the reality.'

Ralph sighed and they were both silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Look here. What we both need is to be taken out of ourselves. How do you fancy a night out?'

‘A night out? Where?'

‘Oh, anywhere you like – as long as it's not the opera! I can't offer to take you dancing, I'm afraid. How about the music hall? I feel like some good, rowdy entertainment. What do you say?'

Victoria hesitated. Once upon a time she would have laughed out loud at the notion of a date with Ralph. But he did seem to have mellowed and was not the bumptious, self-satisfied prig she had thought him before the war. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Music hall it is.'

‘Excellent! I'll pick you up around seven, and we'll have a bite of supper afterwards.'

The evening was more enjoyable than Victoria had expected. She had never been to the music hall before and initially the rowdy voices and the haze of tobacco smoke that hung over the long tables and the crowded benches gave her reason to doubt the wisdom of agreeing to Ralph's suggestion. But she had developed a taste for gin during her service in France, as an antidote to the stresses of the job, and Ralph saw to it that her glass was frequently refilled, while he kept pace with her in pints of beer. Very soon they both relaxed and allowed the convivial atmosphere to sweep them along. The chairman kept the evening going with a swing, summoning act after act on to the tiny stage. There were comics and singers and magicians and conjurers and Victoria found herself applauding and joining in the choruses with the rest. Top of the bill was Marie Lloyd, resplendent in a huge hat and a frilled parasol. Her sly innuendo, pressed home with winks and nudges, had Victoria giggling helplessly during songs like ‘A Little of What You Fancy' and ‘She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas'. Ralph roared with laughter, too, but they both sobered up and glanced at each other ruefully when she sang her well-known recruiting song, ‘I Didn't Like You Much Before You Joined the Army . . .' The mood passed, however, and they left the hall humming and holding on to each other's arms.

Ralph took her to the Café de Paris for supper. They ate oysters and drank white wine and Victoria began to feel a languorous euphoria enveloping her. Ralph, she decided, was good company and not nearly as objectionable as she had found him before the war, and it was pleasant to be seen on the arm of a handsome man in uniform. When the taxi stopped outside her flat it seemed just common good manners to invite him in for coffee. Anyway, she told herself with a suppressed giggle, he was perfectly harmless. ‘I might as well be with my maiden aunt!'

Quite how it happened that she found herself kissing him, she was never sure; but then suddenly she was flat on her back on the sofa with Ralph on top of her. There was a brief, undignified scuffle with underwear, a moment of violent thrusting and then he pulled away with a choking sound and turned his back on her.

Muzzy-headed, she pulled herself together and straightened her clothes, but he was already heading for the door.

‘Ralph!' she called. ‘It's OK! Come back.'

‘It's not!' he replied, his voice strangled. ‘It's not. I'm sorry!' And the door of the flat banged behind him.

Next morning Victoria telephoned Sussex Gardens, to be informed by Beavis that Captain Malham Brown had gone to the country for a few days. He was still away when her leave came to an end.

Twenty

Leo sat beside Sasha Malkovic on a bench overlooking Corfu harbour. Almost two months had passed since their arrival and at last the rain had stopped and the sun was warm on her shoulders. In the crystalline air the rocky shores below them dropped sharply into sea that shaded from turquoise to sapphire, while the slopes above were silvered with olive groves and punctuated with the sharp exclamation marks of Cyprus trees.

‘It's beautiful, isn't it?' she said.

Sasha stirred and grunted. ‘Is it? For me, rocks and water and those twisted trees don't constitute real beauty. That requires green pastures and tumbling rivers and rich orchards.'

Leo sighed. ‘I know. You're pining for Serbia.' She touched his sleeve. ‘Don't give up hope. We will go back, one day.'

‘We?' He looked at her.

‘Yes, of course. I miss it, too.'

He looked away again. ‘You should go home.'

‘Why? There's nothing there that matters to me.'

‘What about your family? They must be worried about you.'

‘I have no family, except my brother'.

‘And your fiancé. What about him?'

The question gave her a shock. She had not mentioned Tom since meeting Sasha again. ‘You know about that?'

‘Naturally. You became quite a celebrity in Belgrade, when you were there. The local papers soon picked up on the announcement of your engagement. It did not come as a surprise. It was obvious that Tom was in love with you.'

‘You're wrong!' Leo exclaimed. ‘It was a ruse, a deception. I had to get out of Belgrade after . . . well, you know why. I was still underage and Ralph was my guardian. He would not allow me to go home alone, so Tom agreed to the engagement. It suited us both, but we never had any intention of marrying. You must know that! I could never have considered marrying anyone . . .'

‘I assumed,' he said, ‘that you had decided that marriage to an old friend would be preferable to the life of a single woman.'

She stared at him. ‘How could you think that? How could you believe that I would do something so . . . so venal? Did you really think that I was unable to face life independently, without a man to support me?'

He glanced at her and then away again. ‘What else was I to think?' The tone was abrupt, but she saw the colour rising in his cheeks.

‘I thought you knew me better than that,' she answered.

He was silent for a moment. Then he turned and took her hand. ‘Of course I should have done. Forgive me.'

‘I understand,' she conceded. ‘It was a difficult time, for both of us.'

He frowned. ‘I don't understand why Tom agreed to the deception.'

‘It suited us both. You were wrong to think he was in love with me. A platonic relationship was all he wanted. Tom has no interest in women.'

He looked surprised, even slightly shocked, and she realized that he was uncomfortable with the idea that she even knew about such matters. But he recovered himself and continued. ‘All the same, he must be worried about you – and your brother, too.'