Ian Slater - World in Flames

Zeldman heard Georgina drawing the drapes shut, and saw her mother, the heavy lines in Mrs. Spence’s face belying the determined charm with which she had tried to hide the pain of her son’s death.

“We’ll be late, dear,” she called out to Richard, who still hadn’t solved the Telegraph’s crossword. Mrs. Spence smiled at Zeldman. “Sure you don’t want to come, Commander? Being a submariner, you might have some very practical suggestions about recycling. I imagine you—”

“Leave him alone, Mother,” said Richard, folding the paper and at last making a move to haul himself out of the lounge chair. “I’m sure Commander Zeldman has far better things to do than turn his energies to the Oxshott Recycling Society. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want to.”

“Very well. The commander must do as he likes, of course.” It made Zeldman feel uncomfortable and old, being referred to as “commander,” but despite his telling them to call him “Pete,” English reserve carried the day.

“Oh, do get a move on, Richard,” said Anne impatiently.

“Yes, yes,” he said irritably, reaching for his jacket. “Suppose I must.”

“Don’t come if you’re going to be cross.” She turned to Zeldman. “Last time he came, he just sat there and harrumphed at the professor.” As Richard slipped off his bifocals, popping them into his jacket pocket, he explained to Zeldman, “Professor Knowlton. A bag of wind. Apparently he’s got some mad scheme now for the local councils to recycle shoes. Can you imagine? Last thing I’d want to wear is another man’s shoes.”

“Here,” said Anne, holding his scarf out to him. “Don’t be so negative. You thought he was crazy about everyone handing in their hair dryers.” Helping him on with his coat, she turned to Peter Zeldman. “When they make those jump-up planes—”

“Jump jets, Anne. For Heaven’s sake. Vertical takeoff and landing, to be precise.”

“Well, whatever. I’m sure the commander would like to know,” she added, turning back to Zeldman. “Did you know that the Harriers — those jets were made from layers and layers of material that had to be hand-dried? Presto! The hair dryers. It was very original. I think they’ll give him an OBE.”

Zeldman looked perplexed.

“Order of the British Empire,” Anne explained.

“OPE, more like it,” said Richard, doubling his scarf about his neck. “Order of Pompous Eccentrics. Honestly, the man’s so inflated with his own importance, it’s a wonder he doesn’t take off.”

“Well,” said his wife as they went out the door, glancing back at Peter Zeldman and Georgina, “enjoy yourselves.”

Outside, Richard turned to Anne. “I hardly thought that was necessary, Anne.”

“What?”

“Telling them to enjoy themselves. Sounds like you’re— well — matchmaking.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Good grief, woman, we’ve just got over Rosemary’s wedding. Have you seen our bank account?”

“Oh, stop fretting. It’s like chalk and cheese with those two. He’s interested, I think, but not Georgina. I’m afraid she considers him ‘unsuitable.’ “

“She’s probably right. Don’t mind putting the chap up. Nice enough, and it’s our duty really, as the government says. If it wasn’t for the American submariners, we’d be starving. Everyone knows that. No, I don’t mind billeting the chap at all. Pleasant enough. But we’re not obliged to open a marriage bureau. In any case, Georgina’s far too young.”

“She’s twenty-five, Richard.”

“Yes, and he’s what?”

“Late twenties, that’s all.”

“I’m not talking number of years,” Richard replied. “It’s a matter of maturity. She’s not ready—”

“Oh, stop fretting so. I told you, she has no interest in him whatsoever. Tell you the truth, she’s been rather rude to him. Goes about the house as if he’s not there.”

“Well, she’s studying. Her Michaelmas term paper—”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Or perhaps you don’t. Every time I see you, you’ve got your head stuck in the paper.”

“Leave off, old girl.” It was said politely but firmly— the danger signal that they were close to reliving the terrible time when they’d heard young William had been killed, Richard retreating for days at a time, saying nothing, reading, burying his grief in his own silence, and the two of them quite apart at the very time they both knew they should have been closest.

They were approaching the parish hall. “A big crowd to hear Professor Knowlton. Now, don’t worry, Richard. He’s not Georgina’s type. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“My God!” said Richard. “Look at Knowlton. Old fool. Looks like a recycled coat he’s wearing.”

“Richard! Behave yourself.”

“Yes, yes.” He glanced up at the brooding sky. Clouds were curdling ominously about one another but not yet a solid sheet of gray.

When the phone rang, Georgina jumped, her nerves on edge because of the expected Soviet missile raid, but as she rose to answer it, she pretended to Zeldman her fright was due to her having been absorbed in one of her textbooks.

“It’s for you,” she said, surprised.

As he took the phone from her, their fingers touched. He watched her walk away. The phone call was from Faslane, the village near Holy Loch, informing him the post office was holding a “familygram” for him — a fifteen-word message each submariner was allowed over a month. Did he want it forwarded to Surrey? The question about whether he wanted it “sent on” meant, however, that it wasn’t from home. Instead, it was a message to him that he must report back to the Sea Wolf within seventy-two hours. He had counted on having several more days at the Spences’—at least till Christmas — if things worked out with Georgina, but now his time with her had suddenly been cut in half.

“Have to leave tomorrow,” he said after putting the phone down.

Georgina said nothing.

At 9:17 p.m. the first Russian salvos could be heard several miles away, their distinctive shuffling noise sounding as if they were chopping the air instead of coming at supersonic speed toward their targets. Peter picked up the TV’s remote control and turned the television off, for, as well as the increasing Russian salvos, an electrical storm was coming in from the Channel. “Better not use the phone either,” he said. “Charge could throw you across the room.”

She barely acknowledged his comment, continuing to read in the soft glow of an Edwardian lamp, its light trapped by heavy blackout drapes. Finally the din of missiles exploding came several miles closer. Suddenly the power was out.

“Okay if I open the drapes?” asked Zeldman. She didn’t answer.

Looking outside at the garden pond, neglected through the winter, he could see, reflected in its icy surface, the stalks of searchlights starting to cluster and intertwine high in the sky to the east. Beyond the garden, yellow slits of headlights came to a standstill — everything stopping during the raid except for a blacked-out commuter train rumbling through the nearby culvert, making its run for the nearest tunnel.

“Right,” said Peter. “I’m off for the shelter. Coming?”

“No, thank you.” She said it as if the missile raid were a mere impertinence and that in any event, it was “too bourgeois” by half to go scuttling into the nearest shelter.

“Suit yourself,” said Zeldman, walking out through the wild shrubs of the English garden toward the shelter Richard Spence had dug not far from an old sun house.

In the momentary lighting of the Nike Hercules air defense batteries around Leatherhead, Georgina saw the ugly, leafless vines of morning glory which had strangled the best of the garden, its wild aspect the result of her mother’s neglect following William’s death. Suddenly, oppressively, the red and bluish flashes of the AA missile batteries nearby, the tang of ozone in the air, the decaying garden, seemed to leap at her in a series of strobe-lit pictures of primeval forces victorious not only in having run riot over the garden, the very semblance of civilization, but over civilization itself.