Ian Slater: WW III

Robert shook his head. “Afraid you’ve lost me there.”

She paused. They looked at each other. “I don’t think so,” she said, and they both knew that it was beginning.

“Will you go away soon?” she asked quietly.

“We’ll be casting off in ten days.”

“I meant how long will you stay here?”

“As long as I possibly can.”

“Good,” she said. Her father was coming into the dining room with the tray. “I noticed you have a biography of Bing Crosby with you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“One of my favorites, too.”

Robert Brentwood was about to say that he’d bought it for Richard Spence, but it would be a lie — oh, a harmless one, but there was something about this whole family, something good that made him want to speak only the truth. Ten days might be all that they had. “I’d be happy for you to read it while I’m here—”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to—”

“No, sir. Please. I don’t think I’ll be doing much reading. I’d like to do a bit of walking. Stretch my legs for a change.”

“Rose?” Richard Spence said, looking over his cup of steaming Darjeeling. “You’re the trail person. Over to the Downs, down to Martin, then over—”

“Yes, yes,” said his wife, “but first, where did you put the toast?”

By the time they’d finished the impromptu meal, it was near 3:30 as Richard and Anne retired, Rosemary showing Robert William’s room. It was a neat room — in what Robert thought was a very navy way — small writing desk and chair, a bed, a clean, uncluttered Victorian dresser with minor, and a picture of a young seaman — winter uniform.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

Robert Brentwood was tired, but he could not sleep for thinking of her. It was already quite clear to him that they’d be married, but he decided not to rush it. He’d ask her father tomorrow.

In the morning, a Saturday, Robert was surprised to discover, they all enjoyed a late brunch, and afterward, newspapers all round in the sun room. Being the guest, Robert got to take his pick, and while a scantily clad chorus girl under the screaming headline “DOING HER BIT FOR THE WAR EFFORT” caught his eye, he played safe and took the Sunday Telegraph. It was a mixed read, for on the one hand, it was clear that the tide had turned in Korea, the NKA in disarray, editorials understanding the American desire to push as far as the Yalu but cautioning against it as part of any long-range solution to the upheavals on the Asian front.

“Who is this awful Freeman man?” asked Rosemary.

“The American general,” said Richard. “There’s talk of them sending him over to Europe. Jolly good thing, too.” He looked over at Robert. “Sorry, Captain Brentwood—”

“Call me Robert, please.”

“Yes, certainly. Well, Robert, you must forgive Rosemary’s disapproval of this Freeman chap.”

“Oh, it’s not that I disapprove, Daddy,” said Rose. “I’ve no doubt he’s a very good soldier, but he says such awful things about them.”

“That’s because they’re awful people,” said Richard. “They blatantly attack South Korea and then expect…”

Mrs. Spence excused herself from the table and they tried to steer conversation in other directions, but inevitably it seemed to come back to the war simply because it was worldwide and day by day was affecting more and more people, the Telegraph reporting, for example, how so many of the Russian minority groups, from the Georgians to the Estonians to the Mongols, were demanding greater independence from Russian domination and how the Russian tanks had quickly put down any such aspirations, which solved nothing but merely postponed the inevitable bloodshed. And in China the “Martyrs of 1989” were commemorated by students in a silent vigil in Tiananmen Square, watched from a ring of olive-green tanks by steel-helmeted troops of the People’s Liberation Army.

“That’s why,” said Richard, “things have quieted down a bit in Western Europe for the moment. The Bolshies want to make sure their backyard’s secure before they move into France.”

“You think they will?” asked Robert.

Richard Spence was stirring the tea bag in the pot and squeezing it on the side, something he would never have done were it not for the rationing that was getting more severe all the time. “Attack France? It’s inevitable. I’m no strategist, but if you chaps keep doing your job and more of those convoys get through, Ivan’s going to have to do something.”

Robert nodded. “The French ports.”

“Exactly. I’m afraid what we’re seeing here, in Europe right now, is a lull before the next storm.” It was when Mrs. Spence reentered the room and Richard quickly turned over the war news pages that showed the map of Europe with the three great Russian prongs deep into Germany that he came across the advertisement that had been running for several days and which, like so many, in his opinion, made absolutely no sense. He pounced on it as a diversionary tactic to shift his wife’s attention away from all the battlefront news. “Here’s this madman again.”

Rosemary leaned over to Robert. “This is Daddy’s favorite hobbyhorse. Be warned.”

Richard Spence was reading it aloud: “It is vital to the national defense that you surrender immediately all your portable hair dryers to the following address…”

“What’s it mean?” laughed Robert.

“It means,” said Richard Spence, “that some damned old fool called Dr. Guy Knowlton is allowed to indulge his eccentricity despite the fact that this country is in a state of national crisis. They’re always going on about shortages, paper especially, and here they go allowing…”

“It is a private ad, Daddy,” said Rosemary. “Not the government’s.”

Mrs. Spence excused herself from the table again.

“Sorry, Mother…”

Robert forgot all about the man and the portable hair dryers and everything else about the war as he and Rosemary walked, hand in hand, across the Downs, cycled through the tree-arched byways around Martin, and fell more deeply in love.

Robert had chickened out from asking either Rosemary or her parents about marrying her but gathered his forces and did so on the second to last day of his leave.

Richard Spence was stunned. As he confessed later, it had really been Anne who, to use his potential son-in-law’s idiom, “carried the ball.” She hadn’t seemed surprised at all. But Anne Spence had already lost one child and might lose more if the Russians managed to drive through in the next great offensive and take the French ports. England would be next.

They gave their blessing to Robert and Rosemary, but Richard was still fretting on the last night before Robert would have to leave and go north to Holy Loch. In their bedroom Richard was pacing back and forth, Anne having already taken her pill, trying, despite her jangled nerves, to get some sleep. “Will you stop!” she said finally.

“Too fast,” said Richard. “It’s all too fast for my liking. Too fast!”

“Perhaps not fast enough,” his wife said quietly.

“What do you mean?” he shot back.

“None of us knows whether we’ll be here tomorrow. They might as well.”

Richard didn’t speak for a long time, and not until he was in bed did he concede the point. “Perhaps you’re right.”

In the blacked-out living room, Robert and Rosemary held each other, not saying much, neither wanting to talk about the cold fact that tomorrow he would be off again to war.

“If you want,” she began.

“No,” he said, “though I suppose you think I’m nuts.”