Chapter 18 Once More Into The Breach
The Prime Minister's request sat on Ned’s desk like a bit of rotten fruit.
The typed text on plain white paper might have been innocuous in appearance, especially amid the numerous other requests neatly piled on his desk, but Ned found it impossible to ignore.
He had been turning its contents over in his mind for the past hour with nothing to show for his efforts other than the twinges of what would likely be an impressive headache.
“What are you going to do?” Helen Forbes asked as she poked her head around the door without bothering to knock.
What Ned wanted to do was yell at his secretary that his answer hadn’t changed from the past five other times she had asked, and possibly toss a paperweight in her general direction.
However, as that kind of behaviour was generally frowned upon in His Majesty’s Government, Ned merely leaned back into his chair and looked towards his window.
In another hour they would need to close the black-out curtains, but for now he could still enjoy the view of Big Ben in the distance.
Not that Ben was giving him any inspiration that afternoon.
Ned turned back to the woman waiting patiently at the door. “You read the request. I assume you see the issue?” He gestured to the thin, single sheet of paper.
Miss Forbes read every briefing and advisory that came across Ned’s desk, making her better at her job than anyone had any right to be. “It’s war.”
“I have been to war, and that’s not a good enough reason,” Ned replied more sharply than he intended.
“Shall I draft your resignation letter then?” Her tone was as flat as if they were discussing the canteen’s lunch menu.
“So they can appoint an idiot who will say yes? And,” Ned’s mouth twisted, for this was the irony of the whole situation, “it’s war. Shouldn’t we be doing everything to save the men risking everything for us?”
“Number 10 wants the briefing for the Prime Minister’s morning box,” Helen answered, her way of ending the conversation.
Ned dropped the paper on his desk and removed his glasses. He should have been used to wearing them by now, but they always seemed to pinch his nose, or sit too heavy on his ears when he needed to think.
He was, in many respects, an old hand at making life-and-death decisions.
He had been making them since he was a twenty-one-year-old officer in the trenches.
The only difference was that he no longer saw the faces of the people who suffered and died because of his actions; they would just be numbers in his Monday morning briefings.
Ned didn’t hold their hands as they died or wrote to their mothers.
But maybe because he had once been on the other side of the consequences of faceless bureaucratic decisions—because he had written those letters, held all those hands—these requests weighed on him.
In that moment, thinking of past decisions, he had an overwhelming desire for one of those vile trench cigarettes.
The kind whose taste you’d cover up with too sweet chocolate.
A ridiculous idea formed in his mind, the kind that only appeared when one was sleep deprived, desperate, and under a deadline.
Well, if he was going to be maudlin about the past, he might as well dive fully in.
“Miss Forbes, I wish to use the telephone,” he called out from his desk.
“Whom am I connecting you to?”
“Villiers Automotive in Marylebone.” The one person who might understand Ned’s dilemma.
???
Ned pulled his coat collar up against his face as he leaned against a lamp pole.
As usual, he was too early and with the bloody blackout, he couldn’t even read while waiting.
The lights of London had been extinguished almost two years ago in an effort to protect the city from nighttime bombing.
Luftwaffe bombs had still fallen, though, flattening the East End and burning the City Mile.
Ned heard footsteps coming down the street, and even in the low moonlight, even after all this time, he recognised the broad, stocky form emerging from the mist. With that recognition brought a wave of doubt.
What on earth was he thinking? Years had passed since he and Charlie had been touch, what made him think that Charlie would want to help him?
“You had to ask for us to meet in Kensington, you posh bastard?”
Too late now for worries, Charlie was in front of him, hand extended.
There were a million ways Ned could interpret the joke, the cockiness, the familiarity, and all of them could be wrong, because maybe Ned’s neglect of their friendship had in fact fully eroded their ability to understand one another.
There was only one way to find out.
???
“An art gallery?” Charlie peered around the shop that Ned had directed them into.
There were canvases on every available surface, as well as many more wrapped and stacked along the walls.
Despite the chaos, the gallery had long been one of Ned’s sanctuaries, a place where art was valued more than the people who bought it.
His visits here were one of the few remnants of his misspent years twirling with artists and socialites.
He was on such good terms with the owner that the old dealer had flipped on the lights, told Ned to take as much time as he needed, and went back upstairs to his dinner and radio play.
As Charlie turned to examine the paintings, Ned let himself have a moment to enjoy the sight of the other man.
Charlie’s hair was more grey than brown now, and he had finally succumbed to some softness around the middle.
The clear blue eyes were the same, though.
A few freckles on the pale skin. The familiar grace of movement.
“This looks like something Ellie drew when she was little.” Charlie looked sceptically at a painting filled with long oval figures circling each other in dance.
“You aren’t as philistine as that. The rawness is part of the technique. Although, if your daughter can draw like that, I know some galleries she should talk to.” Ned found he still felt awkward talking to Charlie about his family. “Have you evacuated the children out of the city?”
“Betty says we need Frank to help tend to the shop.” Was Charlie’s son that old already?
“Ellie has been in Cornwall almost a year now. The couple that took her in are elderly, but a decent sort, and she writes often. Betty doesn’t like her being so far away, though.
” From Charlie’s expression, Ned guessed that Charlie didn’t like the situation much either.
Charlie looked around, clearly trying to change the subject. “For something called cubist, there aren’t a lot of squares.” Then he smirked, showing Ned he was winding him up on purpose.
“I knew William for a while, actually.” Ned had almost forgotten that fact.
“When you were a Bright Young Thing?”
“I should have never taken you to those jazz clubs. In any case, William and his wife lived in Fitzrovia for a time. He was nearly insufferable, going on and on about his French influences.”
“A pretentious artist? I’m shocked.” Charlie crossed his arms and turned to look directly at him, pinning him down with a simple stare. “So, what’s the matter? We haven’t heard from you in what, almost a year?”
Ned didn’t want to calculate if Charlie was correct. “I write.”
“Christmas cards drafted by your secretary,” Charlie corrected. “And then you ring out of the blue in the middle of the afternoon asking to meet. Immediately. In an art gallery.”
Charlie’s bluntness put Ned more at ease than any awkward pleasantries. Charlie could still see through Ned’s overwrought manners to the fears, anxieties, and demons that Ned kept hidden from everyone else.
Ned pointed to the next painting on the wall, another of William’s pieces, in the same cubist style. “I wanted to show you this.”
Charlie went still, his pale skin going even whiter as his hands clenched and his jaw locked. “Jesus Christ.”
Ned generally avoided this painting. A morass of figures slithered across the canvas in broad stripes of colour, so different from the sombre greens and browns of most war art.
The reds, pinks, yellows, and blues each contrasted in their own sickening ways.
William had used the same technique as with the dancers, but there was no joy in the arching figures in this painting, with hands over mouths and eyes silently screaming in pain.
A gas attack. A scene that Ned instantly recognised. Remembered. Hated.
“Imagine a situation where I’ve been asked to draw up a plan to use gas against our enemies.” To Charlie’s credit, he didn’t react, but waited for Ned to explain. “Obviously, if I was to disclose such a thing to you, it would be a violation of national secrecy.”
Charlie nodded, meeting Ned’s eyes, confirming that he understood perfectly what Ned meant and what he needed. Of course, Charlie had some experience at being discreet.
Ned continued, “We can’t risk holding back any tool when the nation’s survival hangs by a thread. When the lives of our nation’s children are in the balance.”
Two specific faces jumped to mind—bright and round, with their father’s curly hair.
“You think we’re losing the war?”
“We certainly aren’t winning.” As a public official, Ned should never admit such a thing, but the facts spoke for themselves.
“Yet, there are also plenty of rational arguments against gases. The indiscriminate killing. The fact that you open the door for your enemy to respond in kind. Dammit, the wind blows the wrong way, and you kill your own men.” Ned gestured back towards the painting with its vivid horror.
“Then there is also this. You lived through gas attacks, we both did. You know the smell, the screams. How can that whole bloody quagmire of a Great War have meant anything if we repeat the same evil?”
Ned had thought the painting would help explain his dilemma to Charlie, but as he stood in front of it, Ned realised it was he who had needed to be reminded. To have the courage to explain his indecision.