A sharper eye might have noted that she fitted a little too well into her surroundings—the empty tank which had lately been lit up and brilliant with angel fish; the white cordings on the crimson draperies, now a little grimy, the white plaster sea-horses, less gay than heretofore—the lonely woman did not stand out distinctly from these. She sat, as it were, in a faint corroding mist—the exhalation perhaps of unhappiness or ill health, or of mere weariness. She drained her glass and looked past Trimmer to the barman who said: “Coming up right away, madam,” and began splashing gin of a previously unknown brand into his shaker.
When Trimmer saw her face he was struck by a sense of familiarity; somewhere, perhaps in those shabby fashion magazines, he had seen it before.
“I’ll take it over,” he said to the barman, quickly lifting the tray with the new cocktail on it.
“Excuse me, sir, if you please.”
Trimmer retained his hold. The barman let go. Trimmer carried the tray to the corner.
“Your cocktail, madam,” he said jauntily.
The woman took the glass, said “Thank you” and looked beyond him. Trimmer then remembered her name.
“You’ve forgotten me, Mrs. Troy?”
She looked at him slowly, without interest.
“Have we met before?”
“Often. In the Aquitania.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember. One meets so many people.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“I am just leaving.”
“You could do with a rinse and set,” said Trimmer, adding in the tones of the maître d’hôtel, “Madam’s hair is un peu fatigué, n’est-ce pas? It is the sea-air.”
Her face showed sudden interest, incredulity, welcome.
“Gustave! It can’t be you?”
“Remember how I used to come to your cabin in the mornings? As soon as I saw your name on the passenger list I’d draw a line through all my eleven-thirty appointments. The old trouts used to come and offer ten-dollar tips but I always kept eleven-thirty free in case you wanted me.”
“Gustave, how awful of me! How could I have forgotten? Sit down. You must admit you’ve changed a lot.”
“You haven’t,” said Trimmer. “Remember that little bit of massage I used to give you at the back of the neck. You said it cured your hangovers.”
“It did.”
They revived many fond memories of the Atlantic.
“Dear Gustave, how you bring it all back. I always loved the Aquitania.”
“Mr. Troy about?”
“He’s in America.”
“Alone here?”
“I came to see a friend off.”
“Boy friend?”
“You always were too damned fresh.”
“You never kept any secrets from me.”
“No great secret. He’s a sailor. I haven’t known him long but I liked him. He went off quite suddenly. People are always going off suddenly nowadays, not saying where.”
“You’ve got me for a week if you’re staying on.”
“I’ve no plans.”
“Nor me. Dining here?”
“It’s very expensive.”
“My treat, of course.”
“My dear boy, I couldn’t possibly let you spend your money on me. I was just wondering whether I could afford to stand you dinner. I don’t think I can.”
“Hard up?”
“Very. I don’t quite know why. Something to do with Mr. Troy and the war and foreign investments and exchange control. Anyway, my London bank manager has suddenly become very shifty.”
Trimmer was both shocked and slightly exhilarated by this news.
The barrier between hairdresser and first-class passenger was down. It was important to start the new relationship on the proper level—a low one. He did not fancy the idea of often acting as host at the Château de Madrid.
“Anyway, Virginia, let’s have another drink here?”
Virginia lived among people who used Christian names indiscriminately. It was Trimmer’s self-consciousness which called attention to his familiarity.
“Virginia?” she said, teasing.
“And I, by the way, am Major McTavish. My friends call me ‘Ali’ or ‘Trimmer.’ ”
“They know about your being a barber, then?”
“As a matter of fact they don’t. The name Trimmer has nothing to do with that. Not that I’m ashamed of it. I got plenty of fun on the Aquitania, I can tell you—with the passengers. You’d be surprised, if I told you some of the names. Lots of your own set.”
“Tell me, Trimmer.”
For half an hour he kept her enthralled by his revelations, some of which had a basis of truth. The restaurant and foyer began to fill up with stout, elderly civilians, airmen with showy local girls, an admiral with his wife and daughter. The head waiter approached Trimmer for the third time with the menu.
“How about it, Trimmer?”
“I wish you’d call me ‘Ali.’ ”
“Trimmer to me, every time,” said Virginia.
“How about a Dutch treat as we’re both in the same boat?”
“That suits me.”
“Tomorrow we may find something cheaper.”
Virginia raised her eyebrows at the word “tomorrow,” but said nothing. Instead she took the menu card and without consultation ordered a nourishing but economical meal.
“Et pour commencer, some oysters? A little saumon fumé?”
“No,” she said firmly.
“Not keen on them myself,” said Trimmer.
“I am, but we’re not having any tonight. Always read the menu from right to left.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Never mind. I expect there are all sorts of things we don’t ‘get’ about one another.”
Virginia was looking her old self when she entered the restaurant; “class written all over her” as Trimmer inwardly expressed it, and, besides, she gleamed with happy mischief.
At dinner Trimmer began to boast a little about his military eminence.
“How lovely,” said Virginia; “all alone on an island.”
“There are some other troops there in training,” he conceded, “but I don’t have much to do with them. I command the defense.”
“Oh, damn the war,” said Virginia. “Tell me more about the Aquitania.”
She was not a woman who indulged much in reminiscence or speculation. Weeks passed without her giving thought to the past fifteen years of her life—her seduction by a friend of her father’s, who had looked her up, looked her over, taken her out, taken her in, from her finishing-school in Paris; her marriage to Guy, the Castello Crouchback and the endless cloudy terraces of the Rift Valley; her marriage to Tommy, London hotels, fast cars, regimental point-to-points, the looming horror of an Indian cantonment; fat Augustus with his check book always handy; Mr. Troy and his taste for “significant people”—none of this, as Mr. Troy would say, “added up” to anything. Nor did age or death. It was the present moment and the next five minutes which counted with Virginia. But just now in this shuttered fog-bound place, surrounded by strangers in the bright little room, surrounded by strangers in the blackness outside, miles of them, millions of them, all blind and deaf, not “significant people”; now while the sirens sounded and bombs began to fall and guns to fire far away among the dockyards—now, briefly, Virginia was happy to relive, to see again from the further side of the looking-glass, the ordered airy life aboard a great liner. And faithful Gustave who always kept his crowded hour for her, with his false French and his soothing thumb on the neck and shoulders and the top of the spine, suddenly metamorphosed beside her into a bare-kneed major with a cockney accent, preposterously renamed—Gustave was the guide providentially sent on a gloomy evening to lead her back to the days of sun and sea-spray and wallowing dolphins.
*
At that moment in London Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole, lately promoted head of his most secret department,
was filing the latest counter-intelligence.
Crouchback, Guy, temporary Lieutenant Royal Corps of Halberdiers now stationed with undefined duties at Mugg at H.Q. X Commando. This suspect has been distributing subversive matter at night. Copy attached.
*
He glanced at Why Hitler must win.
“Yes, we’ve seen this before. Ten copies have been found in the Edinburgh area. This is the first from the islands. Very interesting. It links up the Box case with the Scottish nationalists—a direct connection from Salzburg to Mugg. What we need now is to connect Cardiff University with Santa Dulcina. We shall do it in time, I’ve no doubt.”
Colonel Marchpole’s department was so secret that it communicated only with the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Marchpole kept his information until it was asked for. To date that had not occurred and he rejoiced under neglect. Premature examination of his files might ruin his private, undefined Plan. Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war.
*
Full, Dickensian fog enveloped the city of Glasgow. Day and night the streets were full of slow-moving, lighted trams and lorries and hustling coughing people. Sea-gulls emerged and suddenly vanished overhead. The rattle and shuffle and the hooting of motor-horns drowned the warnings of distant ships. Now and then the air-raid sirens rose above all. The hotel was always crowded. Between drinking hours soldiers and sailors slept in the lounges. When the bars opened they awoke to call plaintively for drink. The mêlée at the reception counter never diminished. Upstairs the yellow lights burned by day against the whitish-yellow lace which shut out half the yellow-brown obscurity beyond; by night against a frame of black. This was the scene in which Trimmer’s idyll was laid.
It ended abruptly on the fourth day.
He had ventured down about midday into the murky hall to engage tickets for the theater that evening. One of the suppliant figures at the reception-counter disengaged himself and jostled him.
“Sorry. Why, hullo, McTavish. What are you doing here?”
It was the second-in-command of his battalion, a man Trimmer believed to be far away in Iceland.
“On leave, sir.”
“Well, it’s lucky running into you. I’m looking for bodies to take up north. Just landed at Greenock this morning.”
The major looked at him more closely and fixed his attention on the badges of rank.
“Why the devil are you dressed like that?” he asked.
Trimmer thought quickly.
“I was promoted the other day, sir. I’m not with the regiment any more. I’m on special service.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“I was seconded some time ago to the Commandos.”
“By whose orders?”
“H.O.O. H.Q.”
The major looked doubtful.
“Where are your men?”
“Isle of Mugg.”
“And where are you when you’re not on leave?”
“Isle of Mugg, too, sir. But I’m nothing to do with the men now. I think they are expecting an officer to take over any day. I am under Colonel Blackhouse.”
“Well, I suppose it’s all right. When is your leave up?”
“This afternoon, as a matter of fact.”
“I hope you’ve enjoyed it.”
“Thoroughly, thank you.”
“It’s all very rum,” said the major. “Congratulations on your rapid promotion, by the way.”
Trimmer turned to go. The major called him back. Trimmer broke into a sweat.
“You’re leaving your room here? I wonder if anyone else has got it.”
“I’m rather afraid they have.”
“Damn.”
Trimmer pushed his way forward to the hall porter. Instead of theater tickets, it was train and ship he wanted now.
“Mugg? Yes, sir. You can just do it. Train leaves at twelve-forty-five.”
Virginia was sitting at the dressing-table. Trimmer seized his hair brushes from under her hands and began filling his sponge-bag at the wash-hand-stand.
“What are you doing? Did you get the tickets all right?”
“I’m sorry, it’s off. Recalled for immediate service, my dear. I can’t explain. War on, you know.”
“Oh God!” she said. “Another of them.”
Slowly she took off her dressing-gown and returned to bed.
“Aren’t you coming to see me off?”
“Not on your life, Trimmer.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be all right. I’m going to sleep again. Good-bye.”
So Trimmer returned to Mugg. He had enjoyed his leave beyond all expectation, but it had left him with a problem of which he could see only one solution, and that a most unwelcome one.
*
While Trimmer was in Glasgow Tommy Blackhouse had been called to London. In his absence a lassitude fell on the Commando. In the brief hours of daylight the troops marched out to uninhabited areas and blazed away their ammunition into the snowy hillside and the dark sea. One of them killed a seal. Card playing languished and in the evenings the hotel lounge was full of silent figures reading novels—No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Don’t, Mr. Disraeli, the Chartreuse de Parme and other oddly assorted works of fiction passed from hand to hand.
Jumbo Trotter completed his work of filing and indexing the waste paper in the orderly room. He had transformed himself for the time being into a captain of the Home Guard, pending “posting” to R.N.V.R.
He and Guy sat in the orderly room on the morning after Trimmer’s return. They both wore their great-coats and gloves. Jumbo was further muffled in a balaclava helmet. He had Don’t, Mr. Disraeli that morning and was puzzled by it.
Presently he said:
“Did you see the letter from the laird?”
“Yes.”
“He seems to think the colonel promised to give him some explosives. Doesn’t sound likely.”
“I was there. Nothing was promised.”
“I rather like a bit of an explosion myself.”
He resumed his reading.
After a few minutes Guy shut No Orchids for Miss Blandish.
“Unreadable,” he said.
“Other fellows seemed to enjoy it. Claire recommended this book. Can’t make it out at all. Is it a sort of skit on something?”
Guy turned over the papers in the “pending” tray.
“What about Dr. Glendening-Rees?” he asked. “I don’t think Colonel Tommy is going to be much interested in him.”
Jumbo took the letter and re-read it.
“Can’t do anything until he comes back. Can’t do very much then. This reads like an order to me. H.O.O. H.Q. seem to send us every crank in the country. First Chatty Corner, now Dr. Glendening-Rees. ‘Eminent authority on dietetics’… ‘original and possibly valuable proposal concerning emergency food supplies in the field’… ‘afford every facility for research under active service conditions.’ Can’t we put him off?”
“He seems to have started. I daresay he’ll liven things up a bit.”
A letter had lain on the table all the morning addressed in sprawling unofficial writing. The envelope was pale violet in color and flimsy in texture.
“Do you think this is private?”
“It’s addressed ‘O.C. X Commando,’ not to the colonel by name. Better open it.”
It was from Trimmer.
“McTavish has put in an application to see Colonel Tommy.”
“The fellow who was chucked out of the Halberdiers? What does he want?”
“To join the Commando apparently. He seems very eager about it suddenly.”
“Of course,” said Jumbo tolerantly, “there are lots of fellows who aren’t quite
up to the mark for us, who are quite decent fellows all the same. If you ask me, there are several fellows here already who wouldn’t quite do in the corps. Decent fellows, mind you, but not up to the mark.” Jumbo gazed before him sadly, tolerantly, considering the inadequacy of No. X Commando.
“You know,” he said, “they’ve issued N.C.O.s with binoculars.”
“Yes.”
“I call that unnecessary. And I’ll tell you something. There’s one of them—Claire’s C.S.M.—queer looking fellow with pink eyes—they call him a ‘corporal-major’ I believe. I overheard him the other day refer to these binoculars of his as his ‘opera glasses.’ Well, I mean to say—” He paused for effect and continued on the original topic.
“I gather McTavish wasn’t a great success in his own regiment. Sergeant Bane got it from his sergeant that they threw him out of a window the day before embarking for Iceland. Or was it a horse-trough? Anyway, they knocked him about a bit. There was a lot of that sort of thing when I joined. Ink baths and so forth. No sense in it. Only made bad fellows worse.”
“Colonel Tommy’s coming back tonight. He’ll know what to do with him.”
Tommy Blackhouse returned as expected. He immediately called for the troop-leaders and said:
“Things are beginning to move. There’s a ship coming for us tomorrow or the day after. Be ready to embark at once. She’s fitted with A.L.C.s. What are they, Eddie?”
“I don’t know, colonel.”
“Assault landing craft. These are the first lot made. You may have seen some of them on your Dakar jaunt, Guy. We start full-scale landing exercises at once. H.O.O. are sending observers so they had better be good. Issue maps to everyone down to corporals. I’ll give details of the scheme tomorrow.
“I haven’t been so lucky with replacements. O.C.s don’t seem as ready to play now as they were six weeks ago, but H.O.O. have promised to bring us up to strength somehow. That’s all. Guy, I shall want you.”
When the troop-leaders had left, Tommy said: