“I suppose so,” said Alan, without much enthusiasm. “What are you planning?”
“Never mind; I can promise you it’ll be interesting.” There was a twinkle in Howard’s eye, but a good-natured one.
“OK,” said Alan, capitulating abruptly. After this day’s alarms and excursions, he felt that he had earned a break. “But what about transport?”
“We can use our bikes; it’s not very far.”
That made it a little mysterious. Within comfortable cycling distance of the airfield there was nothing except a few lonely farmhouses and a couple of villages. That any of these could provide entertainment or relaxation on a winter evening was quite beyond the bounds of possibility. But the Americans seemed good at making local contacts, and enjoyed them more than their RAF colleagues, who saw no great novelty in such functions as tea at the vicarage.
Alan was no wiser when they rode out through the main gate. Luckily, the rain that had been threatening all day had not put in an appearance, and it was pleasant and relaxing to bowl along the narrow country lanes. An almost-full moon, breaking occasionally through the clouds, gave enough light for comfortable vision. The bicycle lamps, in accordance with blackout regulations, had been dimmed and hooded so effectively that one could just manage to read print with them a yard away; they provided warning for oncoming vehicles, but that was about all.
A mile from the airfield, Alan was already lost, and let Howard cycle confidently ahead. The road ran downhill between bleak walls of mortarless stone, which looked sinister and sepulchral in the pale moonlight.
“I hope you know where the heck you’re going,” he shouted to Howard’s back, a dozen feet ahead of him. The only reply was a chuckle floating down the breeze.
They had traveled about three miles, Alan estimated, when a faint light appeared, like a will-o’-the-wisp, at an indefinite distance ahead. Somebody’s blackout was not as efficient as the law required—but in this remote corner of England, where the sound of a bomb dropped in anger had not been heard for at least two years, the air-raid wardens were inclined to be easygoing.
A few minutes later the ghostly shapes of cottages loomed up out of the moonlight; they were entering one of those microscopic hamlets that were often much easier to find on the Ordnance Survey maps than in reality. They went through it, bells tinkling furiously to warn any belated pedestrians, before Alan had quite realized that they were not going to stop; he had half assumed that Howard had found a favorite pub here.
A few hundred yards beyond the sleeping village, Howard swerved off into a small driveway. “Here we are,” he said. “‘Wit’s End’—at least, that’s what Pat calls it.”
The house ahead was a good deal better-kept and more modern than those of the village; of medium-size, with two stories, it was just the sort of home that a successful businessman might have built during the years before the war. The style was that aptly known as Stockbroker Tudor.
Howard dismounted and knocked in a masterful manner on the front door. It was opened almost at once by a large lady whose face Alan could not see in the scarcely relieved shadows. She was obviously expecting them and greeted Howard like a long-lost son, planting a resounding kiss on his cheek.
“How sweet of you to come, Howard! It’s been such a long time, we thought you’d forgotten us. Bring your friend in and let me see him.”
Alan had already received one surprise. His still-unknown hostess did not speak in the West Country dialect he had expected, but in an accent that clearly came from somewhere in central Europe.
Howard closed the front door, and the hall lights clicked on.
“Alan, meet Olga Buckingham. Olga, this is Alan Bishop.”
Alan blinked a little at the “Buckingham,” which went with neither Olga’s accent nor her appearance. She was a handsome woman in her late forties, with dark eyes and hair, and a slightly Oriental cast of features. In her youth she must have been extremely beautiful; now slightly overdressed and overjeweled (surely those stones in her rings couldn’t be genuine?), she looked like a Russian countess who had come down in the world, but not very far.
“Oh-a flyer!” she gushed, as soon as she saw Alan’s uniform. “And so young, too!” Alan colored and looked at Howard for moral support; finding none, he decided not to shatter Olga’s illusions about his status in the Royal Air Force. Fortunately her attention was soon diverted to the large parcel that Howard had been carrying on the back of his bicycle, and which he was now unwrapping with care. Alan was not surprised to find that it contained a bottle of Haig & Haig and several pairs of nylons.
This gift was received with the greatest delight, Olga at once calling out, “Lucille! Elise! Look what Howard has brought for us!”
Alan was still trying to identify Olga’s accent when a door burst open and he had his second surprise of the evening. Two vivacious young ladies, who at first glance appeared to be about eighteen years old, immediately hurled themselves upon Howard with glad cries. They devoted about five seconds to him, and considerably longer to the nylons, which seemed to give them even greater pleasure. By the time they had worked around to Alan and had been introduced by Olga as “My nieces—they’re staying with me until they can go back to France,” he had come to some startling and indeed downright fantastic conclusions.
Seen at close quarters, the “nieces” (Alan was already mentally referring to them in quotation marks) were nearer twenty-five than eighteen. Lucille was a somewhat improbable blonde, Elise an apparently natural brunette, and both were very pretty. They spoke excellent English, though with a slight accent, which, unlike Olga’s, was clearly French. So that part of the introduction might be perfectly true.
What Alan found hard to believe was that his rapidly solidifying suspicion (or hope, if he were a little more honest with himself) could possibly be justified. The setup looked convincing; but here, in the remote and almost inaccessible wilds of Cornwall, two hundred miles from the happy hunting grounds of New Bond Street or Piccadilly? That was absolutely absurd…
He was still trying to get oriented when they walked into the tastefully decorated lounge. No plush fin de siècle decadence here, but a perfectly up-to-date room in clean modern style. (And why not? Alan asked himself. What did he expect—gilt mirrors and red-velvet curtains?)
Olga settled luxuriously in an armchair; Howard and Elise, with a kind of automatic reflex, homed on one settee, leaving Alan and Lucille the other. There was a prolonged silence while everybody waited for someone else to speak. Then Howard tried to break the ice with the popular catch phrase “Read any good books lately?” He was the only one of the Americans who listened regularly to the broadcasts from that mythical RAF station Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, and had not only mastered many of its jokes, but had also picked up some of its dialogue.
It worked, though not in the way he had expected. Apparently the girls were not familiar with Much-Binding, for Elise answered in all seriousness, “We never seem to have any time for reading,” whereupon Lucille instantly broke into a fit of giggles. This spread rapidly around the room, order being restored only by the arrival of a maid with a tray of drinks.
The maid was the first fully conventional item on the evening’s program; she was obviously a local girl, not another exotic import. Alan wondered what she thought of the ménage, but a glance at her placid—indeed bovine—countenance told him that there was no need to worry. Olga clearly knew how to choose her staff.
“Your very good health, ladies,” said Howard, in what he fondly believed was a British accent. (The British were usually the last to recognize it.) “And how are you today, Joan?”
Joan gave him an adoring simper and answered, “I be fine, Mister Howard,” as she refilled his glass. It occurred to Alan that there was a touching domesticity about the whole scene. Howard seemed utterly relaxed and at ease, like a busy wage earner who had come home to his family after a hard day at the office. This was a Howard he had certainly never suspected. There seemed to be a lot of
other things he had never suspected, too.
“You can leave the tray here, Joan,” said Olga, rousing herself from the armchair and walking toward the massive phonograph that occupied most of one wall. She fiddled with the controls for a minute; there was the “plop” of a descending record and a brief sibilation of needle scratch, and the room resonated softly to the “Warsaw Concerto.”
The background music had the probably calculated effect of inhibiting general conversation and leaving each couple to its own resources. Howard was already chatting with Elise, while Olga surveyed the scene with a general air of benevolence. Alan had no choice but to try his luck with Lucille, who so far had not spoken a single word to him.
It was difficult to know a safe gambit, but “How long have you been in England?” seemed fairly foolproof. It led him by short, easy stages to the discovery that she had been in the country since 1940, that she liked England very much, but that she was homesick for Paris, where her parents were (she hoped) still living. By this time Alan was beginning to feel very sorry for her, though perhaps the excellent whisky (so much better than any they ever saw in the Mess) may have had something to do with the remarkable speed with which he became sympathetic. In a very few minutes the space separating them on the sofa had shortened to the vanishing point. When Alan looked up some time later, he discovered that Olga had tactfully left and that he had been equally unaware of the discreet departure of Howard and Elise. It was all so smooth, so pleasantly inevitable, that when he stopped to realize what was happening, it was almost too late.
“What’s the matter, Alain?” queried Lucille anxiously, as he edged out of her clutches and straightened his tie. (His hair would have to wait—there was nothing he could do about it now.)
Like a trapped animal, Alan swept the room with his gaze, wondering through which of the doors Howard and Elise had vanished.
“Someone may come in,” he answered lamely.
The limpid blue eyes staring into his were extraordinarily innocent, almost childlike in their candor. That was confusing; it did not agree with the sophistication of her neatly painted lips and penciled eyebrows, nor with the heady fragrance of her perfume, the range of which was sufficient to reach his end of the sofa.
“That’s all right,” Lucille reassured Alan. “No one will bother us in my room.”
Alan shot to his feet and started to orbit the sofa. It was a highly eccentric orbit; some of its perturbations were due to the whisky, but most of them sprang from profounder psychological causes. Though he would have hated to admit it, he was still, at twenty-three, as near a virgin as made very little practical difference. Not counting the near miss with Elsie Evans, his total sexual experience added up to a couple of inconclusive fumblings with another of the neighborhood girls, a highly refined encounter with the clergyman who had (very briefly) run the local scout troop, and a more satisfactory contact with a lady who had been smuggled into the Thomas Coram Technical Institute one night by his enterprising classmates. That, however, was more of a catharsis than a rapture. He had sometimes wondered, listening to his companions’ accounts of their exploits, whether he was really undersexed or whether it was merely lack of opportunity combined with excess of scruples. There was no lack of opportunity now; then what was the trouble? Could it, said a faint voice from the subconscious, all go back to his interrupted rendezvous with Elsie Evans, and the memory of Miss Hadley’s icy disapproval?
Lucille watched these gyrations with calm confidence. She had seen them so often before, and they always ended the same way. Soothing the qualms of inhibited Englishmen was a specialty of the house, and the effort was often surprisingly worthwhile.
It took Alan, as she had calculated, about two minutes to spiral back to the sofa. In that span of time he had suppressed any scruples, and decided that pleasure took precedence over prophylactics. The house was very quiet, apart from the subdued background of the phonograph, when they went hand in hand into Lucille’s room. They might have been alone in the building, though Alan was acutely conscious that they were not.
The huge, square bed was resilient, Lucille even more so. Matters were proceeding, though not too quickly, to a satisfactory climax when Alan was thrown off his stride by the classic interruption. The doorbell rang.
“Don’t worry, Alain,” whispered Lucille, playing a xylophone solo on his vertebrae. “Olga will answer it. I expect it’s that nasty old air-raid warden. This is the only house he bothers about.”
Alan could well understand that, but it did not help to restore the status quo. He lay in the warm darkness, straining his ears through the night, now only half aware of the skillfully passionate little creature upon whom, only seconds ago, all his senses had been concentrated. The phonograph had by now run out of ammunition, so he could hear the door opening and Olga saying, her voice edged with annoyance, “You should have telephoned us.”
“We tried,” came the answer, “but the line was out of order. So we thought we’d just drop around.”
“And what’s more,” said a second voice, “if I find anyone else here, I’ll knock his bloody head off.”
“Oh my God!” gasped Alan, disentangling himself in one swift movement and bounding out of the bed. It was not the implied menace of the words that upset him, though they were alarming enough. What had started him frantically grabbing his scattered uniform was the fact that the voice, slightly disguised by alcohol, was without question that of his tough and exceedingly pugnacious colleague Sergeant McGregor.
16
One can never tell when the most peculiar skills and talents may suddenly prove useful. When he had been under training, Alan had learned how to dress and undress in two minutes flat; little more time was allowed between lectures and PT drill. Now he beat even his best record, and was fully presentable, if disheveled, while Olga was still arguing with her visitors in the hall.
“Is there a back way out?” he asked anxiously.
“Why are you making such a fuss? There’s nothing to worry about. Olga can handle Mac.”
“It’s all too complicated to explain now,” said Alan. He did not doubt Olga’s ability to cope with most situations, but he had seen McGregor when he was drunk and knew that he could be a very awkward customer. The house was getting much too crowded.
They tiptoed out through the kitchen, where they found Howard and Elise taking a fond farewell. Howard was already dressed for the road, and his cheerful, relaxed expression only made Alan’s own frustration more acute. As soon as Howard saw his face, he gave a quite unsympathetic smirk. “It serves you right,” he said. “You shouldn’t have wasted so much time.” Alan did not deign to reply; he was too busy trying to file as many memories as possible for future reference.
He had never felt quite so foolishly conspiratorial in his life as they pedaled softly away into the moonlight. Not until they had passed through the sleeping village did he call over his shoulder to Howard: “Thanks for a very interesting evening. But there are a lot of things I’d still like to know—”
“So would I,” said Howard. “What was all the panic about? I thought you and Mac were good friends.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Alan answered, a little testily. “It’s—er—a matter of discipline. It would have made me the laughingstock of the unit. You civilians have nothing to worry about, but officers and men aren’t supposed to mix off duty. Especially in a place like that. And besides, Mac might have lost his temper; he can get nasty when he has a few under the belt.”
“And you were afraid he would have beaten you up?”
“He might have behaved,” said Alan with dignity, “in a way that would have made our future relations difficult.” He added, in a pensive afterthought, “I once saw him throw a man through a NAAFI window.”
“Sorry—I didn’t hear that,” said Howard, who seemed to have difficulty in keeping up with him.
“Oh, never mind. I’d like to know what an establishment like Olga’s is doing here in the middle of
nowhere.”
“You call this nowhere?” said Howard. “There are ten thousand men within a five-mile radius. Besides St. Erryn, there’s that big experimental airfield over at Davistowe.”
“I hadn’t looked at it from that point of view,” Alan admitted.
“Don’t go so fast—I can’t keep up.”
“Where does she come from, anyway? And is Buckingham really her name?”
“I think so. When she was young, she married an Englishman—not for long, I gather—so that she could get a British passport. She had quite a place in Paris, and left it when the Germans got too troublesome. Then she was bombed out of London, and now she’s waiting for things to quiet down so that she can go back. Elise says that she came here because there used to be a ‘Croix de Lorraine’ squadron at Davistowe.”
“Huh—the Free French,” grunted Alan. Then he realized that the adjective was not completely accurate. “Can I settle up with you for the whisky and nylons?”
“Of course not,” Howard answered, to his slight relief. “It was my idea—and anyway, I gather you didn’t have much luck.”
“That,” grumbled Alan, “was entirely Mac’s fault. And how does he know about the place? For that matter, how did you find it?”
“Top secret. Radiation Lab doesn’t disclose all its techniques.”
“Oh, come off it!”
“Well, the ‘D’ Flight officers told us; they inherited Olga from the Frenchmen. But we’ve been asked not to advertise—Olga’s in retirement and doesn’t want a beaten track to her door. You were lucky that Lucille took a fancy to you.”
Alan did not answer: he needed time to think. A new and highly disturbing element had come into his life. He did not know whether to be grateful to Howard or angry with him—but it made no difference either way.
He was not quite ready to admit it, for the inhibitions of his upbringing were still powerful. But sooner or later he was going to see Lucille again—and next time he’d make damned sure that Mac did not come barging in at the crucial moment.