His Second War Read online

  A bathroom with connecting doors joined his room with Mary’s—a large and airy room with bright chintz curtains framing a fourposter bed. Mary was at her dressing-table. On the wall beside the table was a photograph taken on their wedding day: the two of them standing side by side: he in his morning coat, she in her long satin dress. How completely, when that photograph had been taken, had she not filled his world for him. It was only six years ago. She was even prettier now than she had been then. She had not lost her looks or figure. During those six years they had scarcely had a quarrel. To all their friends they were “the perfect couple”; to all their friends, theirs was the perfect marriage. He was successful. She had money of her own. She could give his career the background that he needed. He could not have pretended to Stella that it had been anything but a happy marriage. How then had it come about that at the end of six such years he should be thinking of his home and marriage, his wife and children, as something that did not belong to his real life? How had it come about that he should have been so swept off his feet by someone of whose existence forty-eight hours ago he had been unaware, that his whole being should be absorbed, shadowed by a sense of loss. How had six happy years of marriage come to this? How had it come about?

  Was, he asked himself, the very fact that those years had been so happy, in itself the cause; had the personal relationship between Mary and himself become gradually impersonalized in the creation of a home, a nursery? The obligations of a house, a garden, servants: so that that home, without his realizing it, had become something apart from, separate from himself; so that when the war had come to make a break in his routine he had found that his home was not a part of himself at all; so that absence from it made no difference; so that Mary, who was associated with that house, had become in her turn something that was no longer personal to him; so that when this new attraction came into his life he was defenceless, anchorless.

  Was that how it was? He did not know. He only knew the fact existed. It might seem unjust but there it was. “One of those things.” Facing that fact, he felt sorry, suddenly: sorry for he did not know what, he did not know whom. For Mary? For himself? For Stella? In expression of that feeling, he laid his hand upon Mary’s shoulder.

  For a moment she remained motionless under that hand pressure. When she looked up there was a pensive expression on her face; a pensive, puzzled look.

  “I’m wondering,” she said, “I’ve been worrying a little lately about the children. If they ought to stay on here, if it’s safe, if it’s really patriotic. I wonder if they shouldn’t be in Canada.”

  THREE

  There are days in the War Office when work is desultory, when you wait for the telephone to ring, when you study intelligence summaries and read foreign newspapers. There are days when you settle down to the steady organization of your duties. There are other days when you live in a pandemonium, when telephones never cease to ring, when caller after caller pesters you, when file after urgent file is shot into your tray, when you feel that even if you stay on all night the accumulation of correspondence will not be appreciably reduced.

  It was on such a morning in the week following his “day off” that Mary rang him up. The line was bad. On the other desk his G.2, who was slightly deaf, was conducting a lengthy longdistance argument with Ordnance. Opposite him a typist for whose services he had been waiting for half an hour was waiting to be dictated to. Mary, the calmest of people at ordinary times, invariably became fussed and flustered by the telephone. She talked quickly, breathlessly. He could get no more than the general drift of what she was telling him. Words and half sentences got lost. She was worrying, she said, about the children. Was it right to keep them in England? Mightn’t they become a responsibility to everyone. Didn’t one owe it to one’s country to see that they were properly educated, that they were kept fit and healthy. Their grandmother was in Canada. A friend of theirs had decided to take her children over. They could all cross together.

  “The only thing is that I’ve got to decide at once,” she said, “this very morning. There’s such a rush for places. Daphne’s already booked. What do you think, Gerald? I don’t want to do anything you don’t want, anything you’d disapprove of. At the same time I can’t help feeling …”

  Her voice ran on. He tried to concentrate upon the problem, but the line was ghastly. His G.2 was shouting louder. A marked impatience was showing itself upon the face of the waiting typist. A staff-lieutenant bustled into the room. Seeing he was engaged he took a sheet of paper and wrote across it: “The Colonel wants to see you at once. He’s on the telephone. He wants to see you before ringing off.” It was impossible in this atmosphere to concentrate upon Mary’s problem.

  He interrupted her.

  “Listen,” he said. “Five hundred things are happening at the same time here. I’ve got to see the Colonel this very minute.”

  “But, darling. I’ve got to decide this within the next two hours.”

  “I know you have, let’s see.” He paused, trying to think, trying to concentrate, unable to do either, leaping at the easiest situation. “Let’s leave it this way. I think you’re right, but I can’t be absolutely certain. Let’s say that unless you hear from me to the contrary within the next two hours I’m in agreement.”

  The Colonel was a “hustler.” He had two telephones on his desk. A War Office and a Federal line. Usually both lines were in action simultaneously. As often as not, two officers would be standing at his desk, one whose interviewings had been interrupted, the other who was the subject of one or other of the telephone conversations.

  The colonel waved to him as he came in and went on talking.

  “Come in, Gerald, come in. Yes, this is Gerald Summerleigh. He’s just come in. I’m sure it’ll be all right for him to get down to your demonstration, perfectly all right. You can, can’t you, Gerald? Yes, of course he can. I’m most anxious that one of my officers should be there. Gerald’s just the man. He was doing that kind of thing in France. You were, weren’t you? Yes, I thought so. Doing it damned well too. No reasons why he shouldn’t start at once. What’s the map reference now and what’s the time …”

  For another couple of minutes he went on talking, half of his conversation addressed to Gerald, half of it into the telephone, assuming that each had heard the other’s answer as though he had the two of them in the room beside him.

  With a rich, deep laugh and a “good-bye old fellow” he hung up, then turned to Gerald. “That’s quite clear, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Few things could have been less clear, but nothing annoyed the Colonel more than to be told that an overheard telephone conversation had been imperfectly understood by a third party. One of the chief qualifications in fact for a G.3 in that particular section was a capacity to arrange the jigsaw puzzle of such conversations and in the course of the subsequent conference fit in such pieces as were missing. Gerald had only been in the section for three weeks but he was gradually grasping the technique of his new appointment. Only once in the last week had he found it necessary to ring back the original informant to inquire what it was all about. By the time he was back at his own desk he had an adequately clear idea of what he would have to do after he had caught the six-ten train from Euston.

  At the sight of that desk, for a moment in near-despair he closed his eyes. There was the typist awaiting him. His tray had acquired a fresh heap of files. The Staff-Lieutenant was taking on his own line, presumably taking a call of his. All this pile of work and his valise to be packed by five o’clock and in addition to all that—Mary’s message.

  Mary’s message. How important a year ago that message would have seemed: to have a wife and children pack their trunks and leave for Canada at a moment’s notice, to stay there for heaven knew how long. What a decision to have to make, and at two hours’ notice. A year ago the necessity for such a decision would have seemed a fantastic infliction on the part of fate. A year ago! But now …

  Now such a
message, such a decision, seemed a part of one with all those other messages. All those other decisions that he had taken in France, that he was taking now over the telephone at a moment’s notice. One lived from hand to mouth. One had no time to weigh, to deliberate, to ponder. One had to make snap decisions, trusting one’s instinct.

  The telephone at his side began to ring. The decision that he might be called upon to make by it might be just as momentous, just as far reaching in its results as the decision that Mary’s message had demanded.

  In war-time, the fate of lives had to be decided at a moment’s notice.

  “Yes,” he thought as he stretched out his hand towards the telephone, “yes,” he thought, “they’d better go.”

  FOUR

  From the Colonel’s instructions he had imagined that he would be away for a couple of nights at most. It was five days, however, before he returned to London late at night to find a number of telephone messages from Mary awaiting him. The third that he opened was the essential one. Their sailing date had been suddenly moved forward. They were leaving from Euston the next day at one o’clock. They were motoring up first thing next morning.

  Incredulously he stared at the slip of paper. He could not believe that it had happened. For the last five days he had been under canvas. He had been at work from reveille until after sundown. He had had no chance of writing or telephoning Mary. He had been occupied, absorbed by the series of demonstrations on which he would have to draw up a report on his return. At the back of his mind he had been aware that within a month his wife and his children would be on their way to Canada. In the same way, at the back of his mind, was the memory of his lunch with Stella, but those were both things that were a long way off, something to be gone into when he had finished this immediate job. He was unprepared for the suddenness of the move. Incredulously he stared at the slip of paper. By this time to-morrow they would have gone. This time tomorrow he would be alone; alone in London.

  Alone: suddenly as he stood there staring at that slip of paper a sudden picture flashed to him. He saw himself to-morrow afternoon back at his office after he had seen off the train. The Major would have gone in to the Colonel for a conference. He saw himself lifting the receiver of the telephone, heard himself calling for that Euston number, heard himself asking for Miss Stella Barclay, heard himself saying a moment later: “Now listen, I promised not to ring you up, but things are different. My family has gone to Canada. Yes, all of them. My wife and children. I’ve shut my house up. I’m all alone. Couldn’t we have lunch again some time?”

  Clearly the picture rose before his eyes. The brightness of its colour dazzled him. It would be different now, of course it would. There was all the difference in the world between himself as he would be to-morrow and himself as he had been last week. Last week he had been a man with obligations to another woman, a woman who had the first call upon his time; it would be different, altogether different now, when he could be hers completely, even if it was a thing to which there could be no to-morrow; who could look ahead in war-time? One had to live in the minute, and it would be a lovely minute, a succession of lovely minutes.

  Exhausted, dazed, he lifted the back of his hand against his forehead. Too many things were buzzing in his brain at once. The war, his work, Mary, his children, Stella. Thank heavens that by this time to-morrow the pressure would have been lifted, the issue cleared.

  FIVE

  It was close on noon before he was able to leave the War Office. As he swung his respirator over his shoulder it was with a “last time” look that his eye travelled round the room. When he sat next at that desk he would be a different person. He would be a man who had said good-bye for heaven knew how long, to his wife and children, a man who was about to embark on an entanglement that would lead him he knew not where. As on the previous night he lifted the back of his hand wearily against his forehead. Whatever he might or might not be he would be a man, anyhow, for whom an issue was clear at last, a man who with a settled mind could settle down to the work that awaited him.

  At a carriage door Mary was waiting for him beside the children. His heart twisted at the sight of her. On all sides of him there was rush and bustle. It would have seemed from the congestion that half of England was evacuating the wives and children. Everything was noise and flurry. (Train after train was leaving for the north.) No one knew from which platform any train was leaving. No one could find their carriages. Perspiring porters toiled in the wake of agitated mothers, infants screeched. It was typical of Mary that she and those for whom she was responsible should form an oasis of calm in the desert of this confusion. Daphne was there and Daphne’s daughter and the two nannies who were making the trip as far as the embarkation port. The luggage was neatly stacked upon the racks. A luncheon basket had been ordered. Mary herself was chatting casually to Daphne. She smiled as he came up.

  Of course, she said, she understood why she hadn’t heard during the week from him. There was a war on, wasn’t there. She was only thankful that he had managed to get there in time. The children would have been so disappointed if he hadn’t! Disappointed? Would they? He supposed they would. At the moment his son was mainly concerned with the contents of the lunch basket that would be opened as soon as the train started. He kept asking his nannie what was in it. Was there any chicken? How many strawberries were there. What kind of a cake was it? While his daughter, whose first visit this was to London, was completely entranced by the crowded animation of the scene. It was only in retrospect that his presence here would be of matter.

  He looked self-questioningly at the girl. When they next met she would have no idea of who he was. Himself he would hardly recognize her. In three years’ time what would be left of the boy who was now so concerned over the contents of the luncheon basket? They would recognize each other right enough, but even so they would be strangers. Mary would be the same person when he saw her next. They would be able to pick up the threads where they had dropped them. But with his children it was a different matter. He was losing four years out of their lives. All the memories that he had of his parents over those equivalent four years would be lost for him, lost and never known. It was a real parting, this. Yet even so there was no sense of parting. They were making all of them light conversation. There was so much to say that there was no point in trying to say anything and there was the guard waving passengers into their carriages.

  He crossed to Mary; he put his hand upon her arm, above the elbow, squeezing it. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll be all right.”

  She turned. She looked him in the eyes. Then very slowly smiled. They were closer, he felt, in that moment than they had been for months. But already the guard was outside her carriage. “All passengers in the train, please.” With a little laugh she turned away, clapping her hands. “Come on now, children, in you get.”

  She made a mock of shooing them in as though they were a flock of geese, chattering as she did so, issuing final exhortations. “Now don’t overeat in the train, Peter, and mind you look after Barbara. Give my love to Grannie, and don’t lean out of the window. Write as soon as you’ve learnt how. Stand back now while I shut the door. That’s it. Now you can lean out. Say good-bye to Daddy. Do everything your Aunt Daphne tells you …”

  She was talking quickly, breathlessly, in the way she talked upon the telephone, in the way that ordinarily she never talked.

  “And don’t forget, Nannie,” she was hurrying on: hurrying on so fast that at first he did not realize what was happening, that he did not grasp the import of her standing beside him talking through the open window; even when he had half grasped it he could not believe that he had correctly grasped it.

  “If you’re not careful you’ll get left behind,” he said.

  “Left behind. What do you mean?”

  “Surely you’re going too?”

  “Me going! Whatever made you imagine that? Of course I’m not. There’s much too much here for me to do. Daphne dear, I can never tell you how gr
ateful I am to you for all of this. You’ll cable, won’t you, the very moment you arrive and, Nannie, I’d like you to wire as soon as you’ve seen them on the boat.…”

  Breathlessly the voice ran on.

  She was still chattering seven minutes later when the train drew slowly from the station; she was still chattering as she turned away, as she slipped her arm through his.

  “Fancy your imagining that I was going,” she was saying. “It’s all right for Daphne. She’s a Canadian. She’s just going home. But me. When there’s so much here that I can do. The children will be perfectly all right with their grandmother. We’ll let the house, of course. We shan’t have any difficulty in that. Then I’ll enlist in the A.T.S. or I might get some post in a government office. That mightn’t be a bad idea, if you stay on at the War Office. But even if you don’t I might be able to get work near you. Anyhow, there’ll be the week-ends.”

  Breathlessly her voice ran on in the way that it never did except when she was flustered by the telephone. He took a quick sideways glance at her. It had happened so quickly, so unexpectedly that he could not yet realize that it had happened. He wondered what she was thinking. From the fact that she was talking at this pace he could guess at the strain which she had undergone these last days, after she had come to her decision. But her forehead was as clear as ever. He could not tell what thoughts were passing behind that smooth, soft mask. Not that it really mattered. The facts were in themselves enough—that in the last analysis he had proved more important to her than her home and children; that he was now all that she had got; that there was only themselves now; that they were back again where they had been six years ago, before nurseries and servants and the responsibilities of a house and family had come between them. He had got back the companion he had lost. He had asked for a clear-cut issue and he had it.