The House of Vandekar (14 page)

‘Nick,' she said. ‘We're going back to the house now. But we've had a lovely morning, haven't we?'

He nodded. He looked sad, and yet he was trying to smile at her. ‘Yes. Lovely. Thanks to you.'

‘There'll be lots of lovely mornings and lovely days,' she said quietly. ‘I want you to believe that. And one day I'm going to ask you to do something very brave. Just for me.' She helped him up. ‘Will you do it?' She held him by the arms looking up at him.

‘I'll try,' he said.

One of the nurses saw them walking slowly back towards the house. She told of the incident at lunch. ‘You have to hand it to her,' she said. ‘She's bringing him back to life, no mistake about it. Out walking arm in arm they were. When I came here he was like a zombie.'

‘Yes,' one of the physiotherapists said, ‘it's amazing what true love can do!'

‘Go on –' the nurse said. ‘I've heard all that stuff about her sleeping next door, but it's a lot of nonsense.'

‘I'm not talking about sex,' the other girl insisted. ‘I'm saying she's madly in love with him. Good luck to her, I say. Let's hope he doesn't say thanks and bye-bye and walk off to the wife when she's got him well.'

‘He's not married, is he? There's never been a wife down here to see him.'

‘They're
all
married,' the physiotherapist said sourly. She had had bad experiences with glamorous servicemen in need of treatment. ‘Pass the bread, please. And the mousetrap. Thanks.'

‘Now, Nick, we're going to have tea in here for a change. This is my boudoir – that word's such a silly affectation. It makes me think of someone dripping around on a day bed. It's my sitting room, that sounds better, doesn't it?'

He looked around him; the colour of the grey silk walls and the cool Wedgwood blue was very soothing. ‘It's beautiful,' he said.

She guided him to a deep sofa, piled extravagantly with embroidered cushions. ‘You sit there,' she said. ‘I'll light the fire.'

‘No. I'll do it.'

She gave him the matches. ‘All right. Lily's going to bring us some tea.'

He knelt by the grate, the loose gloves making it difficult for him to take the match out and strike it.

She longed to take the box and do it for him, but every independent move he made was progress. He wouldn't let her go on her knees to light a fire; not long ago he'd have sat passive and withdrawn while she did so. ‘That's fine,' she said. ‘It'll burn now. I love a fire at this time of day. It starts to get cool around now. Come and sit beside me.'

There was a knock on the door. Lily came in with a tray.

‘Good afternoon, sir,' she said. ‘Madam, I managed a few sandwiches and some biscuits. I hope that's all right.'

She saw the brilliance of Alice's smile. ‘That's perfect. Thank you, Lily.' She looked so content, sitting there with him beside her. So happy. Like an old married couple. Lily chided herself for making the comparison.

Alice poured. The cups were her own, delicate porcelain. She thought, he's going to find it difficult to hold the cup. I've brought him here to get him away from that room and its associations. Maybe this is the time to do it.

She glanced quickly at him. He had fleshed out a little; he looked frail and ill but the ghastly pallor and leaden eye had gone. It was such a risk, her courage faltered. If it went wrong … You're being a coward, she thought. A coward because you're scared for yourself.

‘Nick,' she said, ‘you can't hold my best china in those damned gloves. Please take them off.'

It was the longest moment of her life. It seemed as if everything was frozen. The clock stopped ticking, the fire didn't crackle. She held her breath.

He was looking at his hands. He held them out. ‘I don't want you to see them,' he said.

‘I shan't mind,' Alice said. ‘Please take them off.'

Slowly he pulled at the one on his left hand, finger by finger.

She didn't gasp. She bit so hard into her lip that she drew a tiny bead of blood. ‘Now the other one,' she said softly. ‘The other one, darling.' She didn't realize she'd called him that. ‘There,' Alice said, and kept her eyes on his face. ‘Now you won't break my favourite cup.'

He was sobbing in her arms. She rocked him to and fro as she had never done with her own child. ‘Hush,' she murmured, ‘Hush, don't cry like that. It's all right, everything's going to be all right now.'

‘I told them,' he was saying, over and over, ‘I couldn't stand it. I tried, but they kept coming in and starting all over again.'

Alice held tightly to him, imagining the flickering images and the ringing screams of pain. The poor mangled hands were clutching at her. All the nails were ripped out, the fingers twisted and broken.

‘I was half drowning …' he said, ‘in the bath … I tried to drown but they pulled me out … Then they tied my hands down.' He pulled away from her and crouched, moving backwards and forwards in the agony of his grief.

‘I gave in,' he said through his rough weeping. ‘I betrayed the others. I betrayed my own wife … Oh God, I wish I was dead. I wish I was dead.'

She slipped down to the floor and knelt beside him. She put her arms round him. For a moment he resisted and she panicked. If he rejected her now, if he turned back in upon himself with the burden of that dreadful guilt … But she felt him come to her and lean, and she cried silently herself because she knew the worst part of the battle for his life was won.

‘My darling,' she said, ‘my darling, trust me, let me help you. I'll do anything, anything in the world.'

She didn't hear the knock; she didn't hear the door open. She cradled him in her arms, while Nanny and Fern stood there, staring at her. There was a bandage round Fern's knee. She'd been knocked over in the playground and Nanny had marched down to show Mrs Vandekar the result of making the child go to that dreadful school.

Nanny stood rooted, unable to believe her eyes. Making love to one of the young men. Right in her own sitting room. She gave a loud gasp and tugged at Fern to take her away. But Fern had seen too. Her knee was cut and needed two stitches. She felt sick with the pain and worse still because Nanny fussed and exclaimed while the doctor was treating her. Now Mummy was putting her arms round somebody, kissing him. It was shameful and bad, and Nanny was saying things under her breath.

Fern burst into more tears. ‘I'm going to be sick,' she said. And she was.

Alice didn't know anyone had disturbed them. She didn't hear the door close. The teatray was untouched. The fire burned low, and in the end Nick was calm enough to look at her and say, ‘How can you forgive me? How can you ever forget what I've done?'

‘Because you didn't do it,' Alice said quietly. ‘You didn't betray anyone. You thought you did because that's what they told you.'

‘That's a lie,' he said. ‘You're saying that. They said that in the hospital. I know what happened. I know they killed Janine …'

‘Nick,' she said, ‘do you trust me? Do you think I'd lie to you?'

‘If it would help me, yes you would.'

‘It wouldn't help you,' she answered. ‘Only the truth will help you now. Don't you see what's happened? You've broken the spell! You knew what would happen if you took off those gloves, and you still did it. You want to face what happened, and that's why you're going to get well. Now listen to me. Listen and believe what I'm saying.' She raised her hand and touched his face. ‘If you did give way under torture like that, I wouldn't care a damn. I wouldn't try to lie to you. I'd tell you to accept it and then forget it. Better men than you have cracked for far less. But it didn't happen that way. And I can prove it to you.'

‘How?' he asked her.

‘Just give me a few days,' Alice asked him. ‘Hold yourself together, and I'll prove the whole story is a lie.'

After a moment she said, ‘The tea's quite cold.'

‘Don't leave me,' he said, ‘I don't want to be alone.'

‘You won't be,' Alice promised. ‘You're coming upstairs and you'll stay the night with me.'

‘Lily, I'm going to London. You've got to look after Nick today.'

Lily had come in with her mistress's morning tea to find her asleep in the armchair and the flight lieutenant in her bed. She didn't doubt Alice's explanation for a moment. She merely protested at not being told. She could have given up her bed to madam, and watched over him during the night.

Alice thanked her. ‘I've been quite comfortable – I slept on and off. You can keep him company today. I've got to see someone in Mr Hugo's office.'

‘Oh? Can't Mr Hugo help?'

‘He won't,' she said shortly. ‘But there may be someone else who will. The man who sent Nicholas down here. He was in the RAF himself. If I can find him … Lily, you mustn't look at his hands. Don't say anything, for God's sake. Just chat, or read to him, and see that he eats. He'd better stay up here till I get back.'

‘Is he bad again, then?' Lily asked.

Alice's tired face lit up. ‘No, Lily. He's come through. He's himself now. You'll see. But I've something vital to do for him, and then he'll be able to take up living properly again. Oh, it won't be soon, but in the end he'll be really well.'

Lily nodded. ‘I said you'd do it. Don't worry about him, madam. I'll take care of him.'

‘I know you will,' Alice said. ‘You've always taken care of me. Now run the bath and put something out for me to wear. Something pretty. I'm going to have to work on this Group Captain Wallace.'

When she was shown into his office in Baker Street, Alice was surprised to see how old the Group Captain was. He was well into his fifties and quite grey.

A call to Hugo's old number had got her transferred. Wallace was very friendly, and said of course they could meet if she felt he could help Nick Armstrong. No, he wasn't at the War Office, he was in an overspill, an old building in Baker Street. Close to the Waxworks, he said, making a joke of it.

He was surprised by how beautiful she was. He wasn't a man who had read the society columns before the war or was interested in the frivolous lives of the very rich. He had been a don at Oxford. He had served in the Royal Flying Corps at the end of the First World War; his rank reflected his seniority in the newly formed intelligence unit proposed by Churchill. SOE – Special Operations Executive. Set Europe ablaze, the Prime Minister had commanded. Men like Nicholas Armstrong were spirited into occupied France to do just that. And a great many of them, women included, were captured. Unlike Hugo, Wallace saw no reason to withhold the broad outline of what had happened. Armstrong was one of a group landed by felucca on the Mediterranean coast. Their job was to make contact with the French Resistance and organize them into groups. They were to sabotage important German targets, establish networks of other groups throughout France, and be prepared to suffer torture if they were taken alive. Armstrong was a very exprienced operator and this had been his third mission in France. On this occasion he and several others had been captured by the Gestapo. He was on a train bound for Mauthausen concentration camp when the Resistance derailed it. In the confusion he had been rescued and was eventually picked up by the felucca and returned to England. She must have seen for herself the wreck he had become after his ordeal.

‘Yes,' Alice said. ‘I saw it. And I also saw that nothing positive was being done to help him. I had a fight with our medical officer because he wanted to send Nick back to Princess Mary's. After that it was a mental hospital. Probably for life. I wasn't going to let that happen to him. And it won't now. He's so nearly well, Group Captain Wallace. He's put up such a fight to get back to normal!'

‘I have a feeling you've done quite a lot of fighting for him,' Wallace said. Such a pretty woman, and such a determined one, in spite of the ultra-feminine approach to him. He saw through it immediately. He admired her, and her dogged refusal to give up on a hopeless case awoke his sympathy. He didn't give in easily either. He wondered what his colleague, the austere and serious-minded Hugo Vandekar, made of this singular devotion to another man.

‘Was his wife on this mission with him?'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘His wife? Good God, no. Why do you ask that?'

‘Because he thinks she was,' Alice replied. ‘He thinks he betrayed her to the Gestapo. He told me … They killed Janine. That's what he said!'

Wallace frowned. ‘It's a delusion, of course. His wife's in England. In London, as a matter of fact.'

Now it was Alice who stared. ‘In London? Why hasn't she been to see him?'

‘Because she's left him,' he said. ‘She's living in some style with one of our American allies. A Colonel Chuck Wallace. Same name as mine, but no relation, I assure you.'

‘Does she know what happened to him?'

‘Indeed she does. Of course, nobody realized he was harbouring this appalling delusion. How did you find out?' He looked at her with the steely appraisal he reserved for potential recruits to his organization. Not only a very determined woman, but a very intuitive one to have succeeded where the army psychiatrists had failed.

‘He told me when he broke down,' she said slowly. ‘It was terrible to see him. He cried and cried. I've never seen a man tear himself to pieces like that and I've been with burns cases when they looked in the mirror for the first time. It all came flooding out. How he'd been nearly drowned, and then they ripped his hands to bits. He said he'd told them everything, betrayed everyone. Including his wife. She was dead, he said. I can't believe this. Why? Why should he think that?'

Wallace thought for a moment. ‘God knows. God knows what they said to torment him. Anything, and when you're half mad with that kind of pain, you'll believe anything.'