The Diamond Waterfall (89 page)

He rang the bell again. As the uniformed man came to take her away, he said in a brisk, businesslike voice without looking up, as if he were an employer speaking to his secretary:

“We shall see what a holiday in prison—with some amusements of course—at least,
we
shall find them amusing—we shall see what that will do for you. And for
us.”

“This is the BBC Home Service. Here is a special bulletin, read by John Snagge. D-day has come. Early this morning, the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face of Hitler's European fortress …”

At last, at last! Wanting it so much, the Second Front, except that it couldn't happen without people being killed—and that could mean
Jay.

This year had been black enough, grim enough already—because of what had happened in January. Jilly and the baby had gone to spend the New Year with Jilly's parents in Battersea. Why, why,
why?
Sudden violence of renewed
raids, after a lull, and then the Little Blitz, as it had been christened since. Big or little, it left many dead. Among the victims in a street where six houses were razed: Jilly, her parents, and the baby. Willow, no Teddy to weep with, wired frantically to Jay. White-faced, she sat with Diana and wondered what they could do for Michael.

When she spoke to Michael on the phone, she wanted him to cry the way she was crying, but he talked in an odd sort of voice so that she knew he
ought
to be crying. “It's a really bad show,” he kept saying, “a knock like that. A bad show.” She thought how he didn't have anyone now because of Jilly's parents. Jilly had had a brother who was a prisoner in the Far East, that was all. Probably there were aunts, uncles, and so on. But …

Both Michael and Willow had leave around Easter and she tried to arrange for him to come with her to Wales. Friends of Diana's had a cottage near Colwyn Bay. But she couldn't persuade him. All he said was, “I want to keep on flying, I'm all right
flying.
I'll pay them back. I'll
get
them!”

It started the dreams off again, of course, the mixed-up dreams. They always went back to the Café de Paris, as if somehow that violence had set a pattern. (Except the violence went back, didn't it, to Reggie, and the
terrible thing?)
When she had tried to picture, after seeing newsreels, the fighting in Italy, and how it must have been for Christopher, her mind had filled with images of Isabelle and Gerry. Gerry she couldn't see properly, but Isabelle in her red frock and her black curls covered in dust
(I never saw her dead)
lay like a broken doll. Perhaps the other dead looked like that too. Jilly, the baby …

And, oh please, God, what is happening to Teddy,
what is she doing?
I'm under no illusions now. When I was informed it was secret work somewhere in Europe … I should like to be told more, so that I would at least know
what
to worry about.

The absurdity of the messages. The latest one told her only that Teddy was “well when we last heard …” (And when might that have been?) In Willow's dreams too, men, women, children wandered over Europe,
without homes,
lost. She hated now so terribly that word
lost.
I lost my mother, Michael lost his wife and son, Teddy lost … losing, loss, LOST. She remembered something Teddy had said about
her
war, in 1914. The sound of weeping. So now, everywhere, millions must be
weeping.
Such tears, why doesn't the world drown? Why are we not drowned?

The first excitement of the landing armada—four thousand ships. Willow and Diana sat huddled over the wireless in the evening. At tea breaks, they devoured newsprint. Fingering the names of Norman villages in the atlas, tracing the steps forward—and, too, the steps back.

In the meantime Germany had a secret weapon—the flying bombs. They called them doodle-bugs, and they were perhaps the most frightening of all.
Some mothers and children, evacuated, arrived in Harrogate and the district. She tried not to be reminded of Jilly.

And then Jay—there
must
be ways of keeping him safe. She woke in the mornings dry-mouthed, fearing that something had happened to him and
she didn't know yet
Each day, all day, she hedged him around with love. What else could she do? We must all love each other—what is left of our family.

Christopher, who had been taken prisoner in Italy. She thought, I have to believe he is safe. It isn't like what we've heard about prisoners of the Japanese … He
should
be all right. But she had not been able yet to tell him that he and she were all right. That they would marry as soon as victory came.

She thought sometimes these days of the Diamond Waterfall, lying in its bank vault in York. It was once to have been worn by Jilly. She could not remember what it looked like, if she had ever really seen it. She imagined it sometimes, its brilliance hidden, resting on its velvet bed, in a case within a case within a metal container box, underground. If they had found anything of Jilly and the baby, were they in a box underground too?

The weather was very hot, very dry. The grass looked parched. Diana said one morning:

“This evening we'll sit with our parachute silk. I've got a petticoat pattern off Olga. If Dame Parr has a church meeting we could have the wireless to ourselves.”

Straight after work, Diana went to the library in Victoria Avenue while Willow sat in the Valley Gardens, reading the new
Picture Post
with photographs of the landings. Looking at them was like looking at the Pathé news-reels in the cinema: it only made her more worried for Jay. She tried to imagine a life
without Jay,
and her stomach knotted. She felt cold and shaky.

She walked up Harlow Moor Drive, turning off for Valley Mount. When she came into the billet, Diana wasn't back yet from the library. At once she heard Mrs. Parr, loud with indignation:

“At the fishmonger's, I'd to queue
one hour,
all on account they said there was cod come in, and then what do I get? ‘Oh Mrs. Parr, I'm sorry there's only its head left.' Well, you girls will just have to make do.” Her voice rose and fell.

“There's mail for you, Willow.”

A letter lay on the tray in the hall, near the umbrella stand, addressed to her with a box number. She didn't recognize the writing—the sender's name on the back was G. M. D. Selwood.

“Dear Willow,” it began. She couldn't concentrate on any of it. She looked again at the envelope.
G. M. D. Selwood.
The name swam, suddenly seemed sharp in black ink.

“Don't just stand there,” Mrs. Parr said, “it's not bad news, is it? That
comes in telegraphs. And where's Miss Rowe? She never said about not having her tea. Half an hour and it'll be on the table, all washed up before ‘Monday Night at Eight.'”

The handwriting was awkward to read.

… such a difficult letter to write, there isn't a way it can be done right. Now perhaps, Willow, you won't be so very much surprised to receive this. I've just learned that you've been looking for me. If I'd known about you,
I
would have looked for
you.

It's very important that I
do write
this, however much I despair of expressing myself. Willow, I knew nothing. Not even the sad, terrible story of your mother. I know now that is was made much of in the English newspapers, but that year, 1937, I was working where we didn't have time or inclination to keep up with news, unless it was of wars and alarums. And even then—

I know if I
had
read of it, I would have broken my self-imposed silence and written to your mother, and to others in your family. I would have tried desperately, if it had not been too late, to do
something.
But
I knew nothing.
And above all
I knew nothing of you.
If I had even seen, all those years ago, the announcement of your birth, I should have known. I would never have mistaken you for premature. I would have understood everything.

Your mother was very brave, and very beautiful. It is more than twenty years now since we met—I won't say anything now about the whole sad story, for which I take the whole blame. You, I think, must be the most lovely, most happy thing to have come out of so much sadness.

For myself, my wife died in 1929, and that was the only time I made any attempt to find out how things had gone with your mother. Before, we thought it wrong—for either of us. Even then I didn't write directly to her, I wrote to the vicar at Flaxthorpe, asking for general news of the Firths. His words, which I remember so well, were “Sylvia married several years ago and lives in Ireland where they run a hotel. There are at least three children of the marriage.” I felt then that I knew enough, that she was all right. And better off without me.

After my wife's death I stayed in the same sort of work because of the children, but by 1935 the youngest was able to cope and I fulfilled an ambition, a calling I suppose that I had had for years, to work among the really poor here in Africa. I've been at this Medical Mission since 1940, and was in another in the north, even more hidden away, from '35 to '40.

Now, if you are wondering
how
it is you have heard from me—it was my stupidity and carelessness making me so difficult to trace.

The newspaper advertisement. Did you place it? It was sent to me by a Reverend Muncey in Nairobi. He knew me some years ago in my first mission. In fact the cutting was sent to me by several people, but with Muncey, something in the name rang a bell with him—he followed his hunch, looked up everything—and told me what
I wish need never have happened.
Dearest Willow, what you too must have suffered.

I should tell you I have a married daughter in New York, and a son in the Navy in South Africa. Another daughter is a nurse in Rhodesia. It would be nice if the mail allows an exchange of photographs. I shall send you mine in a few days' time and I shall expect one from you.

I would have come to England on some sort of leave in about 1940 if it had not been for the war. Now, Willow, I shall
certainly
come when all this is over. And I can't believe now that it can be so very long. I shall also visit the States.

Mrs. Parr was almost shouting. “I don't think you've heard a
word
I've been saying.”

Oh, but she was overwhelmed. Thank you, thank you, Jay. Thank you.

She thought it was the worst about Jay when, three days later, she heard the news of Michael, first from the family lawyer, then later that day, with more details, from one of his RAF friends. Michael's Liberator had gone after a Focke-Wulf Condor which was stalking and attacking a convoy in the Atlantic. He had damaged its port engines so badly that it had crashed. In the meantime he too had been hit, and he too had crashed.

The tears, deep down as in a well—they just waited.

This time it was Willow sobbing in Diana's arms. She said, “I know, I know—why should his luck be better than anyone else's? But he's lasted so long! I don't think, Di, he really wanted to go on after Jilly and the baby. In a way, they took away what he was fighting
for.”

She thought, To find a father and lose a dear cousin, all in three days. Dearest Michael, that I ever thought I didn't like you! Remembering the time at Clare, hiding in his wardrobe.

Laughing, crying, she said to Diana, “I gave him a terrible time, also his friends … then going to his party and spoiling it for him. I was a bit of a brat. And oh, I did love him!”

She knew they were being deported. Even if the prison guard had not told her, she would have guessed from the route the coach was taking. The Boulevard de Strasbourg, the statues of two women above the clock at the entrance to the station. The Gare de l'Est for travelers to Germany.

There were about eighty of them in two ordinary coaches with un-blacked windows. They had been warned not to knock, wave, or cry for help. Not to draw attention to themselves in any way.

On the way they had been held up by a convoy of troops, bound, she supposed, for Normandy. She had learned of the landings a few weeks back, on the prison grapevine. Although it had raised morale, it had done nothing for prison conditions. Panic reigned, the anger of those cornered. But they were not yet so desperate that they would ingratiate themselves. A rumor had started almost immediately that many prisoners were to be moved. No chance of her being in France to be liberated.

It was a warm summer's day, yet, tired, undernourished, unkempt, dirty, verminous, she felt a cold in her bones as if she brought prison damp with her. The dank smell of defeat, the nightly screams. The sobbing (including her own). Although the pain had only been in the first days, when they still thought she had information. They must in the end have become bored, and have come to believe she knew nothing, was just silly Monique Liebert. But of course she must stay here, even though half forgotten, mixed up now with political prisoners, people apprehended for any number of different offenses.

Loneliness. Who knows, she thought, what will become of me now? I don't regret what I did, it is not as strong as that, but where has the anger gone, the
pride?
Only the fear remains.

I know, of course, that it was Ferdy. I was shopped by Ferdy. For what? Money? What was I worth? What he knew about me, was able to tell them, was very little, and nothing at all about my
real work.
Yet he, they, were not stupid. As they said, an Englishwoman, a former resident, living under a false name, pursuing a career quite out of character—what else were they to suppose but clandestine activity?

She felt a great wave of anger, and helpless fear. How odd, she thought with desperation—nearly sixty years ago my mother was imprisoned by her own father, locked in her own room so she wouldn't try to become an actress,
and she escaped, helped by the Uncle Harry I never met, who died on the eve of my birth.