The Parrot Cage, page 35
‘What about that young RAF officer – the knight errant of your dramatic rescue at the warehouse?’ Suvarov asked, his voice almost bitter. Flixe looked up surprised at the sound of it.
‘Johnny? What about him? I suppose I see a certain amount of him. But there’s nothing booked with him for this weekend. And anyway, planning to see Johnny wouldn’t be enough to stop me going to get Ming.’
‘Sorry, Flixe,’ said Suvarov abruptly. ‘I can’t think what’s the matter with me this morning. You’d better get back to work. I’ll put the weekend plan to Gerry when she comes in, and you can sort it out with her.’
Wondering what she had done to annoy him, and regretting that their happy moment had disappeared as though it had never happened, Flixe got up, put Gerry’s chair back at her desk and walked out of the room. When she got to her own desk, she sat down and stared unseeing out of the window at the park. She did not even see Gerry wave up at her as she crossed the road outside.
So surprised was Gerry to get no response from her sister, whom she could see quite plainly, that she stopped dead, staring upwards. A uniformed park keeper walked over to her to enquire whether anything was the matter. Gerry shook her head and hurried up to her office.
‘What’s the matter with Flixe?’ she asked Suvarov as she hung up her coat and hat.
‘Nothing as far as I know,’ he answered too casually. ‘Why? No, never mind. She was up here earlier, and I passed on to her an invitation from Diana for this weekend. Flixe will go to stay and bring Ming back with her to London on Sunday. Would you like to go too? It would mean going without Andrew: I don’t think Diana’s up to having strange men in the house … And, in any case, you two both know what Ming was doing …’ He broke off.
‘Yes, yes, I quite understand, Peter,’ said Gerry. ‘But I’m not sure I can leave him this weekend. Would Diana think me fearfully rude if I said “no”?’
‘No, of course not. It’s short notice in any case. Is Andrew cutting up rough again about your job?’ He hoped that his voice did not betray his surprise. Gerry had appeared to be getting on much better with her husband, and had certainly not mentioned him in the office, as she had always done in the past when she had been having trouble with him.
‘No, not exactly. But we had a bit of a do this morning. And if I swan in tonight and say that I’m off for the weekend, it’ll look so pointed that he’ll think it’s deliberate. If you see what I mean.’
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. What happened?’
Gerry did not want to tell him and so she simply shrugged and smiled before suggesting that she should go and explain to Flixe that she would have to go to Etchingham alone. Suvarov let Gerry go.
During the rest of the day as she checked the facts in a report of Sandy’s on the communications between various Resistance groups in France, Gerry tried but found herself unable to forget what had happened with Andrew that morning, when she had at last found the courage to tell him that they would not be able to have another child and he had cried in her arms.
Flixe went alone to Etchingham, travelling down on a Saturday morning train. The weather was superb: crisp, clear and sunnier than she could remember for months. When her taxi reached the great park at Etchingham, it seemed almost heavenly, despite the leaflessness of the deciduous trees and the lack of all flowers except a few viburnums and camellias. The perfect sweeps of lawn and water, the stark beauty of the naked trees, and the superb darkness of the cedars of Lebanon reflected in the silver-blue of the lake easily made up for the lack of summer’s prettiness.
Ming, apparently restored to complete physical health, took her sister on a walk to all her favourite places in the park as soon as lunch was over. Flixe was pleased to see Ming so serene and she was reluctant to test the serenity by asking questions, but in the end she could not resist. They were walking past a tiny ornamental temple on a little knoll above the lake when she said, casually enough:
‘Mingie, did you know that Gerry and I were working for Suvarov too?’
Ming, who had been peering into the temple through the cobwebbed windows, turned back to look at Flixe.
‘No,’ she said, smiling. ‘He never told me anything about either of you – or anyone else who worked for him. I suppose, though, that I suspected that Gerry worked for him, because it was she who brought him to see me in the hospital after Annie was killed.’
Flixe was surprised at the ease with which Ming talked of her twin, but before she could ask anything, Ming had managed to open the heavy bronze doors of the temple.
‘Look, Flixe, we can get in. Coming?’
‘All right. Oh, isn’t it pretty!’ Flixe said as she followed Ming into the little domed building. It was bitterly cold, but the sunlight picked its way through the cobwebs and lit the blue and gold tessellated floor and the intricate inlaid frieze that ringed the walls below the dome. There was a carved marble bench between two pillars just opposite the double doors Ming had opened.
‘Let’s sit for a minute, shall we?’ she said. Flixe thought that the bench looked hard and uncomfortable, but she felt strongly that this was Ming’s day and so she went and sat and disregarded the probability that she would get piles from the coldness of the stone.
‘Did you know about me?’ asked Ming, curious in her turn.
Flixe shook her blond head, pulling off the fur hat she had been wearing against the cold. ‘No; not, that is, until he lost you.’
‘Don’t sound like that, Flixe,’ said Ming, putting a gloved hand on Flixe’s arm. ‘It was not his fault. It hurt him horribly that you and Gerry were so harsh about it. And honestly, dearest, it wasn’t your business to tell him off.’
Flixe, swallowing her astonishment that poor little Ming was taking her to task with such calm determination, said:
‘But, Mingie, you’re our sister: our younger sister. I think we both felt protective – and furious with him for what he had done.’
‘I know. But you don’t own me; and you’re not responsible for me. And I owe him too much to blame him for what happened.’
‘You?’ Flixe said, surprised. ‘What did he ever do for you to make you owe him?’
Ming turned on the bench to look at her sister, smiling a little sadly.
‘His letters – if you like I’ll let you read them. They kept me alive, literally, after the bomb. They’re the most intelligent, tender, inspiriting things I’ve ever read; and I re-read them again and again. He has written to me every week since it happened.’
Flixe sat on the marble bench, feeling its coldness seeping up through every part of her, bitterly jealous of her much-loved sister and at the same time desperately grateful to Suvarov for having taken such trouble with her. Flixe had been afraid that he had persuaded Ming to work for him by flirting with her and making her fall in love with him. But never had Flixe imagined that he would have done anything so imaginative – so loving – or become so fundamental a part of Ming’s life. Flixe shifted uncomfortably on the hard stone bench.
Ming got up and held out a hand to Flixe, who took it and obediently got up herself, pulling her fur hat back on her head.
‘Let’s walk,’ said Ming. ‘It’s too cold, really, to sit about.’
‘All right,’ said Flixe, still trying to find her emotional balance after Ming’s revelation. ‘Will you tell me what happened in France? Or is it too painful?’
‘Not really. Nothing much happened to me, except that I found a friend, I found that although I was frightened I could operate, and a man whose name I still do not know may have been tortured to reveal what he was doing; if he had broken, I should have been taken by the Gestapo. I may owe him everything, and I don’t know who he is or what has happened to him.’
Flixe hardly dared to look at Ming as she listened to that extraordinary statement, but when she did she saw that Ming’s face, though serious, was calm. The things that Flixe had had to do had seemed hard at the time and she had wasted hours of self-pity and self-accusation on them ever since, but here was Ming, whom she and Gerry had always pitied and worried over, talking with such cool authority about far worse.
‘You see,’ said Ming in a meditative voice, ‘knowing the sorts of things they do to captured agents, I could hardly complain about the little that was done to me, could I?’
‘Oh, Mingie,’ said Flixe looking across the lake at the dying sun. ‘I don’t know enough to be able to answer. I should have thought that you could have complained like anything. But if you say not, then you must be right.’ Ming suddenly looked at her watch and said in a quite different voice:
‘Diana hates it when tea’s late; we’d better hurry back.’
‘What’s she like?’ asked Flixe, who had so far only been introduced to Constance Wroughton.
‘Terribly beautiful – in an ill sort of way. And full of grace. I suppose before she got ill she must have looked quite like Connie. But you’ll see for yourself any minute, Flixe. Do come on.’
Ming led the way into the Dower House through the back door, and the two of them added their muddied gumboots to the rows that stood on the terracotta tiled floor of the passage. Then she urged Flixe up the backstairs to wash quickly and join her in Diana’s drawing room.
When they got there, Flixe was surprised to find herself reluctant to look at Diana Suvarov, as though she were afraid of what she might see. But when she did look, she understood at once why Peter loved his wife so much. Her face bore the marks of pain and illness, but her tired, grey eyes were full of peace and knowledge. Diana must once have been heartstoppingly beautiful with her high forehead and superb bones; now, despite the tragedy of her illness, she would still have compelled attention anywhere. Flixe felt herself strangely moved by the mixture of courage, ruined loveliness and calm in Diana’s face.
Flixe was not surprised to see Ming lean over Diana Suvarov’s chair and kiss her cheek. When Ming straightened up, she held out a hand to Flixe, smiling at them both.
‘Diana, this is my sister, Felicity.’ Mrs Suvarov smiled and shook Flixe’s hand. Flixe felt its warmth and made herself meet the older woman’s eyes.
‘Flixe,’ said Diana, looking carefully up into the girl’s face. ‘May I call you that, too?’ Flixe, wondering whether it had been Suvarov or Ming who had passed on her nickname, nodded.
‘Yes, of course, Mrs Suvarov. It is very good of you to have me to stay.’
‘It’s a real pleasure for me. I have wanted to know you for a long time now.’
Flixe wondered why, but could not ask.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Life in RE(1)R became busier and busier as the spring approached. Everyone knew that the invasion of Europe and the second front were coming at last, although the details continued to be concealed even from the secret departments that were not immediately concerned in the planning.
There were also worrying hints about new super-bombs that the Nazis had been working on for years and had apparently just perfected. In the years since the Blitz Londoners had begun to feel a certain security in their own homes, and at the possibility of a new bombing campaign carried out with unknown but apparently sinisterly effective weapons, those in the know shuddered.
One evening Gerry tried to warn Andrew about what it would be like, but he misread her intentions and thought that she was taunting him again with his old insensitivity to what she had endured at the beginning of the war. On that occasion she protested too much and only made things worse between them, but in spite of such failures, she went on trying to be the kind of wife he wanted, and he, recognising what she was doing, did his best too. They grew slowly happier in each other’s company, and for the first time since their marriage he found himself able to let her enjoy her own friends without feeling jealous of any of them.
He had long ago understood that Jeremy Oldridge from the top flat represented no threat at all, and the three of them dined often with Anna Kingsley and Ming, who was now back in London, living in Anna’s flat and working peacefully in the postal censorship office. Andrew had never much liked Anna Kingsley, but he recognised that she cared for Gerry, and since Anna’s affection could not possibly take anything away from him, he learned not to resent it. And Ming had never aroused in Andrew the mixture of anger and jealousy that Flixe had been able to cause by a word or a look or even by her handwriting on the envelope of a letter to Gerry. Sometimes when Gerry was kept late at work, Andrew would even go up to Anna’s flat of his own accord for drinks or chats with the two of them.
Ming, for her part, found him dull and was as surprised as Flixe had always been that Gerry could ever have loved him, but she could recognise unhappiness when she saw it and tried to be kind. So many people had been kind to her – Annette who was still risking everything in France every day, Diana, Anna Kingsley, Peter Suvarov, and her two elder sisters – that she felt she owed kindness to anyone who needed it.
Gradually Andrew began to relax, and as his clutching demands on Gerry grew less urgent, she found it easier and easier to turn to him in affection. By the beginning of June, when the Allied armada had crossed the Channel to fight the Nazis face to face, she even found herself missing Andrew while he was away on some course outside London, and waiting eagerly for his return.
He reached the flat just as she had finished preparing his favourite rationing dinner of cheese and potato fritters, which she had cooked in the last of the fat.
‘Gerry darling, you are kind to make my best supper,’ he said as he came up behind her in the little kitchen and kissed her neck. She turned round, smiled and kissed him full on the mouth.
‘I’m glad you’re pleased. And I thought we might open one of the last of Jeremy’s bottles of claret.’
‘Why?’ Andrew asked, going into the bathroom to dump his briefcase and overcoat. ‘Are we celebrating something?’
‘Well I thought perhaps we might,’ called Gerry, raising her voice and drawing the cork out of the wine bottle. ‘What with Overlord, and you and me, and the war looking finally as though it might get won.’
‘Oh, Gerry, your language is getting a bit tied up, isn’t it? Never mind. It’s a good idea. Let’s celebrate. D’you want me to lay the table?’
‘Please,’ she said, loading up a tray for him to carry through to the sitting room. ‘How was the course?’
‘Pretty dull – at least compared to what’s going on in France,’ he said, arranging knives and forks on the little round table in the window.
‘You must wish that you could have gone with them,’ she said gently.
‘Yes I do. It seems unfair somehow to have been in at the beginning – a regular – and then have to wait on the sidelines when the amateurs all go over for the victory. A bit like a schoolboy who has worked hard all year and is then dropped from the team just before the match.’
‘But there’s a long way to go before victory, isn’t there?’ she asked, knowing the answer perfectly well but happy to let him give her some husbandly information, and a little amused to realise how irritated she would once have been by his characteristic analogy between the war and a cricket match. Since those bad days she had been able to see past the childishness of his way of expressing things, past the inherited and the regimental ways of thinking to the man inside, the man to whom she had first responded, the man she still loved.
‘Yes, of course. Jerry isn’t going to surrender easily. Still, we’re doing all right so far,’ said Andrew cheerfully.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she answered and then voiced a quite genuine thought: ‘I just wish that we didn’t have to bomb French towns and villages – think of all those civilians, who are our allies really, being killed just because they’re in the way.’
‘What about all the civilians here – and even in places like Cologne?’
‘That seems different. At least we and they belonged to belligerent nations,’ answered Gerry, absent-mindedly sprinkling salt over her potatoes and cheese.
‘Well if the French hadn’t given in so easily at the beginning, they would be too. Don’t think about it, love. It won’t help you get through the time till victory and it won’t do them any good.’
She smiled. ‘No, you’re right there,’ she said. ‘Eat up while it’s hot, Andy.’
When they had finished the wine and washed up the dishes, he took the drying-up cloth out of her hands, hung it on its hook over the sink, and then turned her round to face him.
‘Thank you for our celebration,’ he said seriously. ‘If it means what I think it means, I’m very happy, darling. Does it?’
‘Yes, I think it does. And I’m sorry it took me so long, Andrew.’ He kissed her and when he felt her lips move under his, he hugged her tightly in his arms.
‘Gerry,’ he said, raising his head at last, ‘I know that if I hadn’t been so thick it would have happened much more quickly.’
‘Or I so violent in my growing-up. I just didn’t know how to do it any other way. I know that I hurt you often.’
‘We both hurt each other. And we’ll hurt each other again – it’s part of the human condition. But while there are still moments to be had like this, it’s worth all the hurt. Come to bed, darling.’
She, turned, keeping one arm around his waist, and together they walked into the bedroom.
Two evenings later Flixe was sitting at her desk, trying to ignore her particularly bad period pains so that she could finish the report she was trying to write, when Gerry walked in to say that Suvarov wanted her upstairs. She unfolded her arms from around her stomach and got up from her chair. When she reached his office she said faintly:
