Wives at War (17 page)

Polly leaned against the field gate and folded her arms. In the long overcoat and tweed hat she looked, he thought, like an exiled Russian princess. He felt sudden anger at Manone for callously leaving her behind.

He said, ‘I've seen the harm they can do.'

‘What who can do?'

‘The Nazis.'

‘Oh!'

‘The Paris of the North, they called it. One and a half million people lived in Warsaw before Hitler decided he wanted to own Poland too. They bombarded the city for three weeks. Food supplies were cut off and refugees, three hundred thousand of them, came pouring in from the countryside. Electricity, gas, water, telephones all knocked out. When we thought there was nothing left to bomb the Luftwaffe pilots came in low and machine-gunned the civilian population. Picked them off while they queued for bread or lined up at the water carts or tried to get the wounded to safety, while they buried their dead.'

‘You witnessed all of this?'

Christy nodded.

He spoke without emphasis for he had learned not to allow passion to distort conviction.

‘Sunday,' he went on, ‘Sunday the twenty-fourth of September, they shelled the Church of the Saviour during High Mass and left most of the city in ruins. Next morning they sent in the planes again. From eight in the morning until midnight they bombed the rubble.'

‘Where were you while all this was happening?'

‘Started out in the Savoy Hotel in Nowy Swiat Street but when the hotel took a hit I followed a family of refugees out into Marshall Pilsudski Square. Even that late in the day the Poles believed they could save the city. Poles, Jews, rich, poor, men, women and kids all running about looking for somewhere to shelter while the Civilian Committee for the Defence tried to organise its last lines of resistance. Resistance! Jesus, who could resist that onslaught; who could resist that brutal, unrelenting
blitzkrieg,
that sort of power?'

He glanced down the valley of the Clyde, at smug suburban villas and tenements, at factories and shipyards protected only by toy aircraft and comical silvery balloons, and then he went on: ‘
Blitzkrieg
isn't even real power. It's just warfare, just men and machines and organisation. Real power is yellow badges on Jews and trains leaving for Dachau and Buchenwald, trains packed with lawyers, bankers, teachers, priests, all the protectors of that once-beautiful city. What'll happen to them? God only knows.'

‘Are you trying to tell me that sort of thing could happen here?'

‘Sure it could,' Christy said. ‘And it isn't only planes and tanks and guns that'll hold the bastards off, it's the small stuff, the petty stuff too. There are other wars going on, little wars, from two congressmen squabbling about a defence budget on Capitol Hill to – well, me and you and Dominic Manone caught up in a shady deal to underwrite the downfall of the Duce.'

‘We had our first real raid two nights ago,' said Polly, almost wistfully.

‘I know. I was there,' said Christy. ‘That was nothing. You got tickled, is all. Tickled.'

‘People died.'

‘How many? Forty, fifty?'

‘Don't be so callous,' Polly said. ‘If one person dies…'

‘Sure, one is too many,' Christy agreed. ‘But one is better than one million and one million's better than having the rats running Europe. You think Fascism is the answer to anything? You think you can sort out the muddles of democracy by rounding up Jews and Catholics, gypsies and Socialists, Communists and Liberals, the schoolteachers and Gospel ministers, actors, artists, writers and—'

‘All right,' Polly interrupted, ‘I understand.'

‘I hope you do,' said Christy. ‘I really hope you do.'

‘Could it happen here?' said Polly.

‘It can happen anywhere,' said Christy. ‘Maybe there are those who would prefer to capitulate and not fight against the monster, not to spill more blood, but the monster don't see it that way and when the monster comes stalking you…' He shrugged and shook his head. ‘
Lebensraum
: you British don't know what it means yet.' He shrugged again. ‘I guess you could say that's why I'm here.'

‘What happened to your photographs?'

‘From Warsaw? Confiscated. Every scrap of film, every negative politely but firmly confiscated before I was politely but firmly booted out of Poland. I saved one roll, just one.'

‘How?'

‘Smuggled it out inside me, wrapped in a rubber contraceptive.'

‘And you sold the photographs to Brockway's, I suppose?' said Polly.

‘Nope, I ain't
that
mercenary, Mrs Manone. I gave the roll to a guy in the US Government.'

‘Because information is also power,' said Polly.

‘You didn't really bring me way out here just to eat lunch, did you?'

He remarked her hesitation, her reluctance to admit that his argument was convincing. He hadn't lied about Warsaw; he would never lie about Warsaw. He said, ‘I thought Madrid was bad but under the bombing and bloodshed in Spain there was a sense of adventure, of acceptable danger. Not now, though, not now. Franco's no Hitler. He's a megalomaniac pipsqueak, sure, but no barbarian. Mussolini? Italy wouldn't be in this damned war at all if it wasn't for the Duce's overweening ambition to become the noblest Roman of them all.'

‘No,' Polly said. ‘I didn't bring you out here just to eat lunch.'

‘Why did you bring me out here then?'

‘To hear what you had to say.'

‘Well, I've said it,' Christy told her. ‘You've got my side of the story. You know what makes me tick.'

‘Do I?' said Polly. ‘I'm not at all sure that I do.'

‘Okay,' Christy said. ‘Don't try to make sense of it, just think about what I've told you and talk it over with your friend.'

‘My friend?'

‘Hughes.'

‘So Babs has been gossiping, has she?'

‘If you do decide to liquidate your holdings and turn them into cash then you're going to need Hughes' help, aren't you?'

‘Fin won't buy your story. His patriotism is only skin-deep. When it comes to parting with money he'll fight his own little war on his own little terms.'

‘Then you'll have to change his mind, won't you?' Christy said.

‘Only after you've changed mine,' said Polly.

*   *   *

They had lost the window in Archie's office and some tiles from the roof but otherwise the office in Cyprus Street was undamaged.

Archie set about boarding up the empty window, showing, Babs thought, not only a deal of application but also surprising dexterity for a schoolteacher. He popped out for an hour and returned with four planks of wood balanced on his shoulder and a bag of tools that he'd scrounged from the gateman at Simons' shipyard in Renfrew. To acquire such valuable booty, Archie must have argued his case very eloquently, Babs thought admiringly.

By the time Archie returned, she had swept up all the broken glass and together – he the journeyman, she the apprentice – they had measured and sawn the planks and hammered them into place so tightly that not one breath of air could seep through, let alone one drop of rain. Archie said he'd retile the roof too if he could find a long enough ladder. Babs was sorry that Archie's ingenuity failed on that point for the beautifully boarded window gave her not only a sense of security but of satisfaction in a job well done.

On Thursday morning Babs arrived late, not terribly late, just late enough to incur Archie's wrath, for now that the fuel repository had been sandbagged and made shipshape and firemen and workmen had gone from Cyprus Street, he would brook no excuse for bad timekeeping.

Twenty minutes to nine o'clock; the office door was unlocked and the business of the day apparently underway.

A handsome middle-aged woman was seated in Archie's office. She was clearly visible through the open doorway, and she was mad, hopping mad.

Archie, it appeared, was in need of moral support and before Babs had time to take off her coat, called out to her in his very best yaw-yaw voice, ‘Mrs Hallop. Erm – if I could possibly enlist your assistance for one moment, I would be…' Then he projected himself from the chair behind the desk and with a mumbled apology, shot out of the office and closed the door behind him, leaving the client, still fizzing, alone.

‘Who is she?' Babs said. ‘What's got up her nose?'

‘She's Belgian,' said Archie. ‘Widow of an Englishman. Very well-to-do, I gather, and exceedingly well heeled. Private means, that sort of thing.'

‘What's she doing here?'

‘Wants war work.'

‘Is she skilled?'

‘Used to be a doctor, would you believe?' Archie ran a hand over his hair. ‘In general practice in Liège, ages before the war. Married an English consultant and came to live in Paisley. He was a bigwig in hospital medicine until he died of a heart attack in October last year.'

‘Children?'

‘None.'

‘Send her to the Labour Exchange,' said Babs. ‘They're crying out for doctors.'

‘The Exchange sent her here,' said Archie. ‘Well, not exactly, not directly. She tried to enlist in the Red Cross but they turned her down because of her age. Then she canvassed the local hospitals, none of which would accept her qualifications and regarded her with deep suspicion in spite of her late husband's reputation. Paisley General offered her skivvy work, cleaning, which she declined.'

‘Can't say I blame her,' said Babs. ‘Then what?'

Archie glanced at the office door. There was no sound from behind it but Babs thought she could sense frustration thrumming in the air.

‘The Exchange suggested factory work,' Archie went on. ‘That's fine. That's okay. The widow's willing. They ship her round for interview by Personnel at Mainbridge Munitions, who keep her hanging around virtually all day while the labour committee hems and haws about her Belgian origins. They're totally boggled by her and eventually decide not to accept her. Now she's really mad, blistering mad, for she knows dashed well it's not her Belgian origins that bother them so much as her posh accent and expensive clothes.

‘She hotfoots it back to the Labour Exchange, shouting the odds. There's no placating her. Small wonder: an able-bodied, intelligent woman who wants to contribute because she has family still in Flanders and hates the Jerries and nobody will sign her on. Ridiculous! Absolutely bloody ridiculous! So this morning, not knowing what else to do, they ship her round to us.'

‘What can we do for her?'

‘I haven't the foggiest,' said Archie. ‘She's been dumped on us only because she's too hot to handle. I'm blue-blind if I'll let her go to waste, though, but I do need a little time to evolve a strategy.'

‘I'll make tea,' said Babs.

‘Big help you are,' said Archie, and went back into his office.

*   *   *

The woman's name was Evelyn Reeder and from the moment Babs clapped eyes on her she realised that the problem was not merely her age, sex or the fact that she hailed from Belgium. Whatever her name had been before marriage or whatever name her husband had been blessed with at birth, it was patently obvious to Babs that Mrs Evelyn Reeder was a Jew.

All the floating prejudices, all the overt slanders that applied to the tribe of Israel came popping into Babs's head and she experienced a little shiver of revulsion and at precisely the same moment a little shiver of revulsion
at
her revulsion, a confusing amalgam of guilt and distaste that almost caused her to drop the tea tray into Mrs Reeder's lap.

Spotting Babs's alarm, and deducing the reason for it, Archie hastened to an introduction: ‘Mrs Reeder, my assistant Mrs Hallop.'

The woman turned her head. She had a long neck and a strong chin and – how could Babs ignore it? – a fine, hooked, hawklike nose that set off her heavy-lidded, jet-black eyes to perfection. She looked, Babs thought, like an oil painting, so luxurious, rich and opulent that at first you were daunted, then you were fascinated. She could only imagine the effect that Mrs Reeder might have on men but you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the effect she would have on the little tin gods of industrial middle management.

Babs put down the tray and offered the lady her hand.

‘Who are you?' the woman said. ‘What can you do for me?'

She had only the faintest trace of an accent and sounded not so much angry as supercilious.

Babs felt herself bristle. She stepped back and busied herself pouring tea. Tea, tea, tea: the answer to every problem. Mrs Reeder didn't want tea. Mrs Reeder wanted work yet she, Babs Hallop, was doing the usual thing, dishing out the brown stuff like a hollow character in a radio play. ‘Milk, Mrs Reeder? Sugar, Mrs Reeder?'

‘I have no time for your tea,' Mrs Reeder said. ‘I have to find a job.'

‘It isn't money, is it?' said Archie in a soft wheedling tone.

‘No, it is the – the priority.'

‘Necessity,' said Archie, even more softly.

Oh God, Babs thought, don't let him start on English lessons, not now, not with this woman. If he starts on English lessons she'll brain him with the tea tray, and if she doesn't, I will.

‘Yes,' Mrs Reeder agreed. ‘A necessity.'

‘How large is your family in Liège?' Archie asked.

‘Mother and Father are there. I have a sister and her husband in Amsterdam and two brothers, doctors like me, in Brussels.'

‘Have you heard from them since the Germans occupied the country?'

‘No.'

Archie nodded. ‘So you're entirely on your own, Mrs Reeder?' he said.

‘Yes.'

Polly, it was Polly all over, except that Mrs Reeder's husband was dead, not merely absent. Babs had a vision of the woman wandering about some gaunt mansion in one of the high-class villages that hid themselves among the trees of rural Renfrewshire. She saw a shadow of Polly in the Belgian widow: alone, and alienated by her own cleverness. But Polly still had Mammy and Bernard to fall back on and this woman's family was lost to her. She had nothing, nothing but style, money and her skills to protect her from the ravages of petty bureaucracy.