Chapter 19 D-Day Minus One
D-Day Minus One
And there she was. Maud Ogilvie Redux. Right as rain and sitting at her desk when Flynn walked into the office. No one else was present, the ground was cleared for a contest. A duel.
“You exist,” Flynn said.
“I do. Did you doubt it?”
“Just for a moment. Your Scouts were here. They felt rather let down by you, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, my goodness, I knew they would manage without me. They’re resourceful wee laddies. I’m sure they rose to the challenge.”
“And your toothache, is it all better now?”
“Oh, yes. The tooth had to come out, I’m afraid. Beyond repair.”
Show me, he wanted to say. An empty socket—that would be incontrovertible evidence. But he could hardly ask her to open her mouth to allow him to check. Instead he said, “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.” He changed tack. “I thought I saw you the other night.”
“Really? Where?”
“Bow Street, outside the police station.”
She laughed. “Goodness, not me, Harry. Sounds like a case of mistaken identity.”
Mistaken identity, he thought. Another good title for a novel he wasn’t going to write. Flynn was amassing quite the canon. He changed tack again. “And the problems with the crockery in the Regatta Restaurant? All sorted now?”
She gave him a shrewd look, and he felt the rather unnerving power of her scrutiny. Her intelligence. “Crockery?” she murmured serenely. “I don’t recollect. In my defence, I have a dreadful memory.”
No, you don’t, Flynn thought. You never forget anything.
“Oh, yes, of course,” she rallied, not in the least flustered by the unspoken accusation.
“Now I think about it, there was some purported problem at the Regatta Restaurant, but it turned out to be a case of crossed wires. The crockery is to be delivered today, it seems. ‘In the nick of time,’ as Mr. Brown said.”
“Mr. Brown?”
“He’s in charge over there. Didn’t you meet him?”
Flynn could have sworn there was a triumphal gleam in her eye as she stepped neatly out of his crude trap. She really was a world-class liar. He would like to see her in contest with Lydia. It would be gladiatorial.
The Boy arrived, bringing plunder from his morning manoeuvres—a pack of Festival cigarettes.
They were manufactured in Ulster and intended for sale in the many tobacco kiosks on the site.
Maud Ogilvie took one, although she had not previously lit up in the office.
“In my defence,” she said, “I am curious as to the quality of the tobacco.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” the Boy said. (The mother again.)
“Just as well the cat has nine lives, then,” she said, puffing daintily on her cigarette.
—
“D-Day minus one, chaps,” Denholm said. He was on a War Room footing—a condition that manifested itself in the rather tight wool flannel suit he was wearing.
“Tomorrow morning at dawn’s first light we shall be scrambling ashore in our landing craft.
Hopefully there will be no Nazi gun emplacements ready to mow us down on the…
” Denholm faltered. He tried again. “On the…” He stuttered to a stop, staring into the middle distance rather like Badger’s rabbit did when it ran down. Sans carrot.
“Beaches?” Flynn supplied, trying to turn the key for him.
“Yes,” Denholm said softly. “Such utter hell, you know.”
“He was there,” Flynn said quietly to a surprised Evans.
It defied the imagination to think of Denholm disembarking from a landing craft and leading a charge up the Normandy beaches.
“A beach? Like Ramsgate?” the confused Boy whispered to Evans.
“Not quite.”
“Yes, well, one was there, you know,” Denholm said. “And yet in some ways one wasn’t. It was like a dream—well, a nightmare obviously. I was a captain in the Seventh Battalion. Green Howards.”
“First wave,” Evans said, nodding respectfully.
Denholm took his place on the podium of suffering.
“Hard to imagine when you look at me now, I know.” He laughed self-consciously.
“I cut a trimmer figure before the war. Was in the OTC at school, so that helped me wrangle a commission. Gave up the role of Lear at York Theatre Royal. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. We did it abridged in rep, can you believe? I was far too young for the part, of course, but they didn’t have anyone in the company who was old enough and still had enough marbles to remember the script.
They could have had one or t’other, but not both.
I cared deeply for our sceptred isle—still do. Felt I had to do my bit for England.”
“Britain,” the Boy amended sotto voce.
“Saw a lot of my men cut down,” Denholm said sadly.
“Dropping into the water all around me, but one couldn’t stop.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home.
So many didn’t. The ‘lads,’ that’s what I used to call them.
‘My lads.’ It makes me think of Shakespeare, you know.
Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Tragic. ”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Denholm,” the Boy said. “None of us are going to die on a beach.”
“Well, not today,” Evans said.
“Yes,” Denholm said, heaving a great breath into his lungs, “let’s not dwell on the past. You’re my lads now, I suppose. And lasses. Lass,” he added with a nod at Maud Ogilvie.
“At Temple Bar the greys driving the royal landaus are reined in for the performance of a traditional ceremony—the presentation of the Pearl Sword by the Lord Mayor. His Royal Majesty…”
The Festival was being launched this morning by the King with a service of inauguration in St. Paul’s Cathedral, after a royal carriage procession from Buckingham Palace with all the bells and whistles.
In the evening the Royal Festival Hall would be similarly christened with a concert programme of British music.
In twenty-four hours’ time, the real invasion would take place when a large assortment of various royals would troop dutifully around the Festival’s exhibitions, most of which were unfortunately still under construction, and the King would finally declare the South Bank open for business.
Not open to the public, of course—the hoi polloi would have to wait until after midday, when the royal party had left, before they could enjoy the Festival.
“God, it’s taken them for ever to get to St. Paul’s,” Hetty said. “Margot and I have been listening since they left Buckingham Palace. Interminable.”
They were crouched over a portable wireless in the deserted “Breakfast Bar Kitchen with Living Room.” The wireless (model DD46 De Luxe, Decca Radio and Television) was broadcasting the progress of Their Majesties and their entourage towards St. Paul’s.
The unctuous tones of Richard Dimbleby were describing the unharried progress of the great and the good, who were making their way along Ludgate.
Crowds could be heard cheering patriotically in the background.
Flynn thought of Evans telling him about Dimbleby reporting from Belsen. It was a Manichaean universe.
“Got any ciggies, Harry?”
“Sure. Margot?”
“Please. Ta.”
He took out a box of matches and thought about Lydia’s onyx table lighter. You could bash someone’s head in with it. Everywhere he went these days he saw murder weapons.
“Just as well for the Royals that they don’t pitch up here until tomorrow,” Margot said.
“Looks like everyone’s going to be working through the night to get things ready.
Even then I expect the cleaners will be sweeping us out with their brooms come dawn.
We’re on a break,” she added, “in case you think we’re slacking. ”
“You can slack as much as you want, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You could come and give us a hand in Homes tonight, Harry,” Hetty said. “I’ve got a bottle of whisky stashed away in a cupboard.” (Storage cabinets, Gaypro Products Ltd, 80 George Street, London W1.)
“Maybe.”
“ ‘After the service,’ ” Margot read out loud from this morning’s Express, “ ‘His Majesty will stand on the steps of the hallowed cathedral and declare the Festival of Britain open.’ And this is Ismay writing in the Mail: ‘The roar of traffic will be still. Only the wind and the gentle noise of doves will be heard.’ Doves? Does he mean pigeons? There aren’t doves in London, are there, apart from that one of yours, Harry? ”
“Not really mine.”
“Hark, they’ve arrived, judging by the sound of that fanfare,” Margot said.
“And as Their Majesties make their way up the steps of the great cathedral…”
“Poor King,” Hetty said. “He’ll be on his knees by tomorrow night. He’s not well, you know. Close up he looks even sicklier than Harry.” Dead before next Easter, Flynn thought.
“Harry looks all right,” Margot said. “Lot better than he used to.”
“Thanks. When were you ‘close up’ to the King, Hetty?”
“Oh, you know, presented at court,” she said carelessly, taking another cigarette off him.
“And here is the Portcullis Pursuivant, followed by the Rouge Croix Pursuivant and then the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, the Richmond Herald…”
“Hetty was a deb-u-tante,” Margot said, putting on the strangled accent of the English aristocracy. “Can’t you tell?”
“You’re just jealous,” Hetty laughed.
“Terribly.”
“Weren’t you a deb, then?” Flynn asked Margot.
“Opted out. Went to St. Hilda’s and read Philosophy. Really, though, you know,” she said earnestly to Flynn, “joking aside, it is a load of rot. The Royals are going to have to get rid of all this constipated piffle if they want to survive in this new dawn.”
“Constipated piffle?”
“Chivalric nonsense. Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, for heaven’s sake. It’s like Alice in Wonderland. The country’s stagnant, Harry. The war changed nothing.”
Flynn caught the soft thudding of cannon fire in the distance. “That’s the twenty-one-gun salute at the Tower,” Margot said.
“Margot’s very anti-Establishment, you know, Harry. Almost a Commie. I bet she’d quite like to be firing one of those cannons at the great and good.”
“God, yes, Hetty. I was pretty good on the ack-acks. Nothing like bringing the enemy down.”