The English Agent Page 26

Yes, speaking.

  This is Dick’s mother. I’m staying at the Dorchester for a few days. Are you free for luncheon?

  Yes, of course.

  Shall we say 12.30?

  It would be a pleasure—

  Vera hadn’t quite finished speaking when there was the click of Dick’s mother hanging up. A very brief conversation, Vera thought. But then, she considered, older people often weren’t comfortable speaking on the telephone. It would be different when they met in person, wouldn’t it?

  Vera paused at the doorway to the restaurant, realising that she didn’t know what Dick’s mother looked like. He’d never shown her photographs of his family, hadn’t even talked about them much. Her eyes scanned the windowless room, brimming with tables of immaculately dressed women and portly men. She wasn’t sure what to look for, other than a woman in her late fifties. Would she be matronly and dimpled, or tall and athletic, like Dick? ‘Does madam have a reservation?’ came a voice in her ear.

  ‘Naturally, my dear boy,’ said Vera. ‘Ketton-Cremer, thank you.’

  She turned to watch the man check the open ledger on the plinth. ‘Ah yes, 12.30. This way,’ he said. She noticed his Italian accent. She wasn’t the only one to dodge the internment camp then, Vera thought. She threaded behind the maître d’ to a small table underneath a fresco of a dancing woman. There was a lamp with a crimson shade on the table, casting light upwards in a rosy aura. The maître d’ held out a chair, and Vera sat down. He said a waiter would be with her shortly. Vera looked out over the full room, hearing the voices rise and fall like sea breaking on the shore, watching the waiters in their long white aprons flow and eddy all around. A menu appeared like a wave crest, water sparkled into her glass. There was the chink of cutlery against crockery, the trill of intermittent laughter. Smoke drifted up towards the ceiling, and everyone who was anyone was here in the bomb-proof restaurant in the safest hotel in London. But where was her future mother-in-law?

  Vera’s stomach rumbled. She should look at the menu, take care to choose something suitable. It wouldn’t do to dribble gravy down one’s chin in front of Dick’s mother. But first maybe a ciggie, just to calm herself. She opened her cigarette case: Dick’s dear face half hidden behind the row of Sobranies. She plucked one out, revealing a little more of his open smile.

  As she picked up the lighter, she noticed a woman approaching her table: tall with dark, greying hair parted in the middle of her forehead, and wearing an indigo-blue dress. She walked with care, deftly sidestepping chair legs and champagne buckets, as if negotiating her way across a packed dance floor. Vera dropped her lighter, and stood up, her leg bashing the table so that cutlery clattered. This was it. Here was Dick’s mother, shadowed by the Italian maître d’. ‘Lady Ketton-Cremer, what a pleasure,’ Vera said, thrusting herself forward. A look passed across the woman’s face, a cloud passing over the sun, and then was gone. She didn’t smile, merely held out her hand, which Vera grasped. The fingers were long and cold. Vera noticed she had large black pearls drooping from her earlobes and a matching necklace: not showy, but expensive.

  ‘Shall we?’ Dick’s mother indicated their table. The maître d’ pulled out her chair and she lowered herself slowly into the seat. Vera sat back down. The maître d’ bowed, and was gone, replaced immediately with a waiter. ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Dick’s mother said, and Vera asked for the same. The waiter floated off.

  They faced each other across the small square table, and Vera could see the family likeness. Dick had inherited his long nose and high arched brows from his mother. But her eyes were hooded and pulled down at the edges, and her mouth was a thin, hard line. She looked a little French, Vera thought, with that hair and those eyes. She couldn’t possibly be, though, could she? Dick said that his English lineage went back centuries – some long-dead ancestor had been given Felbrigg Hall by Henry VIII, hadn’t he? – and that was why it was so important that she should be British. The Lady of the Manor couldn’t possibly be some foreign johnnie, he’d said. That was just the way of it. But Vera was British now, or as good as. The paperwork would be through any day, she was certain of it. And she’d be able to say as much to Dick’s mother.

  ‘Dick must have told you about me,’ Vera said, breaking the silence.

  ‘A little,’ his mother said, still not smiling. The waiter came back with their drinks. Vera took a sip, then offered a cigarette from her case to Dick’s mother. ‘No thank you,’ she said. Vera asked if it was all right if she smoked. ‘Well, everyone else seems to be,’ came the reply. Vera lit her cigarette. This wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. Dick’s mother seemed actually quite cold. But perhaps a little light conversation would help. They’d be best of friends by the time the dessert trolley came round, and she’d be able to write about it to Dick, later.

  ‘Are you up in town for anything special?’ Vera said, tapping ash into the china ashtray.

  ‘I have some affairs to sort out,’ said Dick’s mother. She took a sip of her drink before continuing. ‘Of a personal nature.’

  ‘And does the family always stay at the Dorchester when they’re in town?’ said Vera. Dick’s mother nodded, her gaze wandering somewhere to the side of Vera’s left shoulder. The waiter came back and asked them if they were ready to order. Dick’s mother said they’d have the consommé followed by the lamb. Vera thought it an excellent choice for them both. The waiter took the menus from them and left.

  ‘I know we’ve never met, but I feel I know you,’ Vera said. ‘Dick was forever talking about his family home. Felbrigg Hall is very close to his heart, Lady Ketton-Cremer.’

  ‘Mrs Ketton-Cremer,’ Dick’s mother said, staring directly at Vera, a frown forcing through her wide brow. ‘I don’t know what Dick told you, but there’s no title attached to Felbrigg.’

  “No, of course not. My mistake. I must have got confused because Dick said—’

  ‘Dick said a lot of things to a lot of girls, I’m afraid,’ his mother interrupted. Vera felt herself flush. ‘The Ketton-Cremers are merely country squires, my dear. There’s a coat of arms, and local duties, Justice of the Peace and so forth.’ Dick’s mother waved a hand as if indicating a list of Ketton-Cremer functions. Vera nodded. What was it Dick had said? He’d talked about Felbrigg Hall, and his inheritance, and about her being Lady of the Manor one day. She hadn’t bothered to check Debrett’s. Now she felt foolish.

  The waiter arrived with the consommé and swished the napkin onto her lap. The soup was very hot. Vera blew carefully on it, and sipped from the side of her spoon. Of course it didn’t matter that Dick wasn’t actually going to inherit a title. There was still Felbrigg Hall, and there was Dick, with his car and his plane. There would still be skiing in the winter, yachting in the summer, shooting in the autumn, and love and laughter all year round, wouldn’t there? The faux pas about the title was an embarrassment, but it didn’t matter. She sipped her soup in silence until the bowl was spotlessly clean. Dick’s mother didn’t appear hungry, and barely touched hers. The waiter took their bowls away.

  Dick’s mother clasped her hands in front of her on the thick white tablecloth, and Vera noticed how her fingers were knotted with arthritis. She noticed, too, the flash of rubies and diamonds on the ring finger of her left hand, next to her wedding ring. The skin on her hands was pale and blotched, like the dripping Vera’s mother kept in the larder.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering why I asked you here,’ said Dick’s mother as they waited for the main course to arrive.

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Vera, leaning forward, wondering whether it would be entirely appropriate to reach out and put her own hand over her future mother-in-law’s at this juncture.

  ‘Do you?’ said Dick’s mother, her frown returning. She chafed her palms together.

  ‘Naturally, Dick has written to you about us, and our plans to marry when he’s home, and he’d like you and me to meet. And I have to say it’s my absolute pleasure to finally get to know—’

  �
��Oh heavens, no,’ said Dick’s mother, cutting Vera off. ‘Dick’s dead, my dear.’

  The room suddenly contracted, as if all the knives and forks had been pulled inwards, as if Vera herself was a magnet, attracting all the sharp metal objects in the vicinity.

  ‘But we’re engaged,’ Vera said.

  ‘I’m very sorry. I thought you knew. They said there’d been a letter.’

  ‘We’re getting married,’ Vera said in a whisper.

  Just then the slaughtered lamb arrived.

  She didn’t quite know how she got through the main course. Later she recalled the smell of roast meat, and the feeling of food, hard as cardboard, grazing her dry throat. There was the sound of a woman laughing loudly again and again at the next table, and Dick’s mother saying something in a low voice about a cheque. Knives scraped against plates. Smoke curled, mingling with the smell of gravy. Vera gulped down the rest of her drink and smoked three cigarettes in quick succession. Dick’s mother said something about a meeting with the family solicitor, probate, due process. The walls of the windowless restaurant felt suffocatingly close. Main course plates were taken. They both waved away the dessert trolley. Vera asked for a strong black coffee. Dick’s mother asked for the bill to be put on her room number. Vera felt as opaque and brittle as the tiny cups that came with the coffee pot. If someone was to hold her, she’d simply crack.

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ Dick’s mother said at last as Vera drained the last of the coffee. ‘After all, he could never have married a Jewess.’ Vera stiffened. ‘Your father’s name was Rosenberg, was it not?’ said Dick’s mother. Vera didn’t nod, simply stared at the woman, who was folding her napkin into a neat triangle and placing it on the table in front of her. How on earth had she found out? ‘You see, this way, at least Dick didn’t have to let you down. You have the memory of your affair, and of course the five hundred pounds he left you, which will arrive in due course. But I would never have sanctioned the marriage. A Jewess in Felbrigg Hall? No, that would never do. So it’s for the best, don’t you see?’

  Vera stood up. The restaurant doorway seemed very far away, but she swam towards it, like a diver returning to the surface, gulping for breath as she finally reached the cool grandeur of the hotel atrium.

  Dick was dead.

  The letter was waiting for her when she got home. It was the earliest she’d come home for months, not even mid-afternoon. But she hadn’t been thinking straight, running out of the hotel, across Hyde Park – going to ground. She had barely closed the front door behind her when there was Mother, gesturing to the sideboard, wiping floury hands on her apron. ‘You said the other day that you might have some news, so when that letter came, I decided to make frogs-in-the-morning,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the letter, before going back through to the kitchen. ‘I wasn’t expecting you home so early, though.’

  The wireless was on, the BBC orchestra playing an insufferably upbeat rendition of ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ and the smell of frying apples wafted into the hallway. Vera peeled off her gloves and undid the fastenings on her fur, hesitating to shrug it off – she felt so cold. She walked over to the sideboard.

  Miss Vera Atkins, said the neatly typed letters on the front of the beige envelope. She wondered if one of her fellow typists from the secretarial college had typed that. Most likely – they all seemed to end up somewhere in Whitehall, marrying Mr Brown types and later on getting holed up in mock-Tudor mansions in the Home Counties. Vera hadn’t wanted to end up like them, with their quotidian little lives. She’d wanted more, deserved more. And that was what Dick had offered, hadn’t he?

  She picked up the envelope and went through into the lounge. She put it down next to the pot of white hyacinths on the windowsill, glancing briefly outside to where figures scurried, buses trundled, everyone skirting the bomb crater as if by ignoring it it would simply cease to exist. She sighed and checked her watch, turning away from the window.

  Vera remembered the time she’d brought Dick here, the only time, when her mother was away in Winchelsea. He’d said there was hardly room to swing a cat. He’d said that if he had to live with his mother in a place like this, he’d probably end up throttling her. And they’d laughed. Then Vera had asked Dick when she’d get to meet his mother, and he’d said all in good time, darling, puffing on his cigar, and looking out of the window. And she hadn’t wanted to press things further because it was his last day of leave, so instead she’d said but you haven’t come all the way here to swing cats, have you? And she’d pulled the cigar from his lips and twisted her arm up and round his neck, and then, right here – they hadn’t even made it as far as her bedroom – Vera shivered, remembering the softness of his lips, the rough stubble, and the cool feel of the floorboards underneath her haunches. My sweet, my darling, my love, he’d said. And it had felt like a promise.

  Vera went over to the gas fire and knelt down to light it, the flames jumping out to burn her fingertips. The air smelled of gas and hyacinths. She took off her coat and laid it over the arm of the chaise longue. Then she picked the letter up and began to open it, slowly tearing apart the gummed edges, like prising open a secret. She pulled the sheet of paper out and opened it up. After glancing at it, she let it fall from her fingers; it rested like a blown leaf on the windowsill.

  There was a clatter as her mother came in, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and a plate of apple pancakes. She put it down on the circular occasional table, next to the armchair. ‘Here, let’s sit down and you can tell me your news,’ she said. ‘Kaffee und Kuchen, just like the old days. Remember how we always had frogs-in-the-morning when we visited your cousins in Vienna?’ She smiled, patting the seat next to her.

  ‘I don’t have any news,’ Vera replied, appalled. Why had she mentioned anything to her mother? Then she picked the letter back up and passed it across. ‘It’s only this.’

  When her mother looked at the paper, her face broke into a grin. ‘But that’s wonderful. Your naturalisation certificate – you’re as British as I am now. You’re safe; we’re all safe: you, me, Ralph and Guy. I’m so happy. Wonderful, wonderful.’ She started to pour the coffee. ‘But how strange, I thought it was something else altogether.’ She looked up at Vera. Vera looked away. ‘I thought it had something to do with that man you’ve been seeing,’ her mother continued.

  ‘Why ever would you think that, Mother?’ Vera said.

  There was a knock at the door. Her mother moved to get up, but Vera told her not to bother, glad of the excuse to get away from the clatter of crockery and the desperate cheer. The hallway was dark and cold. She opened the front door. It was only Mrs Littlewood: hair like candyfloss and smudged lipstick. ‘Postman delivered this to the wrong door, dearie,’ she said, holding out an aerogramme. ‘I thought you’d want it soonest – your mother said you were expecting some news.’

  Vera took the tissue-thin paper and put it in her pocket. She didn’t recognise the handwriting. ‘Thank you. Won’t you come in, Mrs Littlewood.’ Anything to relieve her from the pressure of a conversation with her mother.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude.’ Mrs Littlewood’s pink lips twitched.

  ‘Not at all. It would be a pleasure. Mother has just made some apple pancakes. It’s an old family recipe – we call them frogs-in-the-morning. Do come in and try some.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure?’

  Vera nodded, standing aside so the front door was wide open, and Mrs Littlewood bustled inside. Vera ushered her into the lounge. ‘I’ve invited Mrs Littlewood to join us – it’s been so long since we’ve had her round,’ said Vera, ignoring her mother’s raised eyebrows. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll just pop into the kitchen for the extra things.’ Vera’s face felt as if it were cracking with the effort of smiling.

  She went through to the kitchen, pulling a teaspoon and cake fork from the drawer, and taking a side plate and cup and saucer from the cupboard. Her hands were shaking so much that she dropped the cup.
It smashed on the tiled floor. Her mother called out, asking if everything was all right, and Vera replied that she’d be through shortly. She put the things down next to the sink and took the aerogramme from her pocket, tearing it open.

  Dear Miss Atkins

  I am sorry to have to tell you that Dick was killed in action during an attack on the airfield. It is unbearable to think about, and I know it will grieve you very much. The RAF will have already contacted his family, but he asked me to write to you personally, in the event of anything happening to him. He gave me two addresses for you, work and home, but given the nature of this news, I thought you’d prefer to receive it at home. He was a very special friend, a good man, and my heart goes out to you at this time.

  It was signed by a Wing Commander Edward Montague. Vera thought that this must be the ‘Gu’ Dick had referred to in his letters.

  So it was true. It was like someone taking out a thick black pencil and underscoring her grief: Dick is dead. She crumpled up the aerogramme and stuffed it into her pocket, like a used handkerchief. Then she took out the dustpan and brush and swept up the broken china. It wasn’t just her hands shaking now, her whole body seemed to convulse. But she wouldn’t allow it. No, she would not give in.

  ‘Vera, dear, are you sure you’re all right?’ Her mother’s voice was laced with twin strands of concern and impatience.

  Vera checked her watch. She went back to the lounge and took her coat from the end of the chaise. ‘You may as well use my things,’ she said to Mrs Littlewood, who had taken off her slippers and had her stockinged feet stretched out towards the gas fire. ‘I have to go, now.’

  ‘But you’ve only just got back,’ said her mother.

  ‘Is it to do with that letter, dearie?’ said Mrs Littlewood, turning to look at her.

  But Vera didn’t answer either of them. She pulled on her coat, checked her watch, and left, slamming the front door behind her.

  Very Mayfair, madam, Vera thought sadly, catching sight of herself in a passing bus window. In her fur coat and red pillbox hat she was still the epitome of pre-war glamour. She was still the woman Dick had fallen in love with. But what did that matter, now?