The Other Side of Love (38 page)

Wyatt brought his grandfather up to date on Humphrey’s newest diet and Rossie’s negotiations with the Dejong Plaza leasing agent: additional space was needed to enlarge and ride the wave of prosperity sweeping the United States.

Porteous pulled at his limp shirt-cuffs - starch was a wartime casualty - and asked:

“Any word from Berlin?”

“There’s a war on, Grandfa”

With a blow that sounded suspiciously like a kick, the door burst open.

“Darling! They said you were here!”

Araminta embraced Wyatt in a bounty of prewar perfume.

“Don’t you look magnificent in uniform!”

“And aren’t you something!”

Wyatt said. And so she was, in her smart tweed costume (tailored from an old lounge suit she’d wheedled from Euan) with a few drops of rain sparkling like diamonds on the beret that sailed jauntily above her vibrant red hair.

“But what about your uniform?”

“In the Auxiliary Fire Service we’re on trips, which are like watches in the Navy. On duty forty-eight hours, then off twenty-four hours. This is my trip off, and the moment I’m off I shed uniform and wellies. Grandpa, would you mind if I tear Wyatt away for a few minutes? Coty’s is open, and he can queue with me. We’ll be back for tea.”

An easy enough promise for her to keep. The official closing-hour for shops was four o’clock.

IV

“This damn wartime secrecy,”

Araminta said when they were a few doors up in New Bond Street, standing outside Coty’s. He, the only male in the queue, held Araminta’s umbrella high so it protected her as well as a sweet-faced Mayfair matron who vaguely resembled Queen Elizabeth.

“If only I’d known you were shipping over! These horrible shortages - you have no idea how desperate I am for lipstick and mascara and your marvellous Dreen shampoo. Ah, wouldn’t it be lovely, using proper eyebrow-pencil! With ordinary lead my face looks positively bald.”

“You’re a knockout, and you know it.”

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‘A little bit of powder and paint make a woman what she ain’t. And I’m running short of the above requirements.”

“Write out a list. Let me see what I can do.”

“Would you? Oh, thank God for Yank cousins!”

They moved up a few steps.

“What’s the dope on Peter?”

he asked.

“He’s somewhere blacked out by the censors, but methinks it’s Malta,”

she whispered.

“He might get a leave soon. Last week his oldest brother, the viscount, was killed in Burma. Peter’s second in line now.”

As Araminta spoke of death, the vivacity drained from her expression: her nose and chin seemed sharper. They moved up again.

“Wyatt, I want you to close your eyes and remember exactly what the women are wearing in New York.”

By the time they reached the counter at Coty’s, only the leg make-up that stood in for silk stockings was left. Araminta took a jar.

“Might as well hoard it until summer,”

she said cheerfully.

V

The tea served at Porteous’s Bayswater Road home was strictly Austerity: dark heavy scones made of National flour were lightly smeared with margarine and rose-hip jam.

“And now, if you two will excuse me,”

Porteous said,

“I need a bit of a rest.”

Araminta smiled fondly as Porteous held on tightly to the banister, edging up the staircase. When the first-floor door closed, she said:

“He’s been going to bed right after tea, the sweet old love. Isn’t he a marvel? Well over eighty and working a full day when Daddy’s not around. What splendid genes we’ve jpnerited, you and I.”

Wyatt fixed his gaze on the dried pampas grass in the China Export vase.

“What are your plans for the evening?”

“I was hoping you’d ask. My trip doesn’t start until ten. Shall we have dinner? Good. Let’s hurry to the flat. While I change, you can look in on Daddy and tell him what’s happening to the Fifth Avenue branch. Then we’ll go to this lovely place in Piccadilly - they have a band. They get round the five-shilling limit for a meal by charging outrageously for the wine.”

Tonight the crowded restaurant served Yorkshire ham. There was a tiny dance-floor where, packed amid wiggling noisy officers and pretty girls, Araminta taught Wyatt the

“Lambeth Walk’.

“Hoy!”

she cried, flinging up her hand.

VI

Euan still had his cold on Christmas Eve. Araminta telephoned Elizabeth to explain that she was staying in town to see that the poor darling had some sort of holiday dinner. Porteous went along to

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Quarles as planned, a porter hauling the valise heavy with American chocolates and toys that Wyatt had brought for Elizabeth’s evacuees, half a dozen bombed-out waifs who rampaged through the gracious country house.

Wyatt, though, stayed in London. He and Araminta attended matins at St James’s Church in Piccadilly.

Christopher Wren had designed St James’s Church. Now only the south aisle remained standing. Debris mounded in the sunken churchyard. A sullen odour of burned wood and dank earth clung to the anteroom, and the same dour smell pervaded the bricked-up south aisle. A strip of cheap shiny blue fabric covered the damaged wall behind the altar, and netting flapped where the stainedglass windows had been. Inside the gallant shambles, Araminta and Wyatt shared a prayer-book. The pages were singed at the edge, and the cover was warped from firemen’s hoses. Instead of the reverberating chords from the Grinling Gibbons organ-case carved with golden cherubs, a pianist energetically thumped at an off-key upright piano. Clouds of breath hovered about the choirboys as they sweetly sang of joyous tidings. On the way out, Wyatt shoved a crumpled banknote into the offertory box.

Araminta moved closer to him.

“Darling, have you noticed that I’ve been positively the heart and soul of discretion? Not one single tactless question about you and Katy cutting off the engagement.”

“We never were official,”

he said.

“And no need to avoid the subject. Call it part of the growing-up process. It’s over.”

Araminta’s brightly lipsticked mouth curved in a Mona Lisa smile. Wyatt’s forced laugh told her that he hadn’t quite doused the torch for their cousin. She touched her gloved finger above her engagement ring. Well, she adored Peter, but that didn’t mean she might not have a quiver or so to spare for this large sexy body close to hers.

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Hitler, after conquering the west coast of Europe from the Arctic Ocean to the Bay of Biscay, set out to protect his new empire. German engineers, with an unlimited labour-supply from occupied territories, worked their underfed ragged

“recruits”

a minimum of twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Cement bunkers, pillboxes, observation-towers and heavy-artillery embankments bristled along the twenty-four hundred miles of coastlBTe. To further fortify the beaches that faced the English Channel tire engineers installed ranks of twisted steel formations called hedgehogs and sowed four million mines deep in the sand.

Across the narrow strip of sea-water from this formidable barrier, in southern England, American officers whipped around in jeeps and staff-cars as they selected sites for airbases and encampments. Wyatt was attached to one of these units.

That winter of 1942, the reports from all Allied fronts, though vetted, were inescapably edged in black. South Pacific strongholds fell like ripe plums into Japanese hands. Rommel, the Desert Fox, swept deeper through British forces into North Africa. Hitler’s fanatical refusal to allow his armies to retreat in Russia had been steeply paid for in German blood, but his forces remained poised at the heart of the Soviet Union. Wyatt, like most civilian and armed torces personnel in England, heard the news with a grim expression, but was too busy to fret. His legal surveys and suggestions occupied him. His small amount of free time was filled by an attractive, sexually

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innovative ambulance-driver. He didn’t return to London until the last week in April.

A few days before his leave, he mailed a note inviting the Kingsmith clan to dinner at the Washington Club, the American Junior Officers”

Club in London.

Araminta responded:

Mother never leaves her evacuees. Daddy’s foraging around in Hampshire attics to gather up the so-called antiques your branch devours. And you know Grandpa, he never goes out at night. Which leaves only me. You can beg off with no hard feelings.

Wyatt sent a note by return mail.

Pick you up at the flat at seven on Saturday.

II

Araminta opened the door wearing a form-fitting black silk dinnerdress. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes glittered.

“Look who’s here!”

she said, drawing him into the lounge-hall.

Peter, his feet up on the ottoman, a bottle of malt whisky on the table at his side, looked like an RAF pilot in a Hollywood film. Wyatt didn’t sit down. After a couple of pleasantries, he said:

“The last thing you two love-birds need is a third wheel.”

“The more the merrier when it comes to pub-crawling,”

Peter said. Despite his relaxed smile, his left eye blinked rapidly.

“Absolutely,”

Araminta said, holding on to Peter’s arm.

“We can’t leave you high and dry.”

“Just for the first round of drinks, then,”

Wyatt said.

The head waiter, effusively greeting Peter by name, led them through the noisy smoke-hazed West End cafe to a tiny round table by the dance-floor. As they sat down, Peter said that in the old days this table had been reserved for the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson.

“I joined them once or twice.”

Swank of this type was utterly alien to Peter but then he was sozzled. He had put away most of the bottle before they left Euan’s flat, and ever since had been steadily belting down whatever alcoholic beverage was available. From guarded allusions, it was obvious that Araminta’s guess had been correct: Peter was stationed on Malta. Malta, Britain’s Mediterranean island, nicknamed by the BBC

“our unsinkable aircraft-carrier’, was used by the RAF to take off on raids over Rommel’s heavily guarded North African bases. In return, Malta was bombarded so mercilessly that a few days ago King George VI had awarded the entire island the George Cross

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for heroism. No wonder Peter drank and his eye twitched.

They ordered pommes de terre a la reine and boeuf a la maison with a red wine. They were served an excellent Beaujolais with reddish salt meat and sauted potatoes.

“

“But, Adolf, I can’t bear Spam and chips,”

“

Peter said in a heavy German accent.

Araminta held her fork over her upper lip to simulate a moustache.

“

“If this is all they eat in England, so why are we winning the war, then?”

“

“

“You dummkopf, Adolf,”

“

Peter responded.”

“We aren’t winning.”

“

It didn’t seem funny at all to Wyatt, but Peter and Araminta laughed frenziedly.

Wiping her eyes, she said:

“I have to find the loo. Go ahead and eat; I’ll be right back.”

Peter, Wyatt and most of the nearby males watched Araminta’s curved hips swing provocatively in the black silk.

“On this leave I’d rather thought we would marry,”

Peter said ruminatively.

“Great idea there.”

“Doesn’t seem the fair thing, though.”

“Because of your parents?”

“Bugger them.”

Peter poured another glass of wine.

“Because the grouse season’s open.”

“Time to lay off the sauce, Peter. You’re not making sense.”

“Aren’t I, though? In season the grouse are fair game. The hunter’s there with his gun. The grouse take flight. Bang, bang, bang. Doesn’t care which feathers the birds have, the hunter aims and pops away.”

The mismatched eyes, blinkifc and bloodshot, fixed on Wyatt.”

“There’s another one,” says he. Bang bang it’s dead.

“There’s another.” Bang bang again. Another bird drops out of the sky. Quite an impartial fellow, the hunter. Sometimes an unlucky grouse buys the farm the first season, sometimes one lasts a bit. But it’s a law of nature. Long enough in the air, and every grouse is bagged. No, don’t try to contradict me. There’s no arguing with natural laws. Eventually the hunter has us all, whichever side. Talk to Luftwaffe prisoners and you’ll hear the same story in a different language.”

Sounds like total bullshit to me.”

The season’s open and we’re all fair game.”

“Like hell,”

Wyatt said without conviction. What right had he, unblooded in battle, to argue with the Honourable Peter ShawcrossMprtimer, whose chest was covered with fruit-salad ribbons.

Doesn’t seem fair to Araminta to make a widow out of her. At least this way she has her own family. Mine can be turds, y’know. Except for old Shawcross.”

He raised his glass to his late brother, the viscount, the heir.

“And he, poor bugger, he’s gone.”

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Til order us some hot coffee.”

‘After … You’ll help her get over it, won’t you?”

‘Jesus, Peter.”

“Good. Knew you would.”

Peter’s head fell forward into the plate of fried potatoes and Spam. He had passed out.

Araminta telephoned the station officer asking for leave because her fiance was in town: the station officer, a bulky ex-Navy salt who fondly called his redheaded driver Carrots, noting that the Luftwaffe was not waxing heavy, granted her request.