Джеймс Хилтон - So Well Remembered

“And as a result of that you’re sort of interested in the middleman, eh?”

“That’s it,” George agreed. And then, to steer the conversation very gently: “I remember his father expected so much of his career.”

“Well, he was a brilliant fellow—no doubt about that.” Sprigge paused, then added: “Wasted, though, the way things turned out.”

“Wasted?”

“Perhaps that’s too strong a word. But he’d have done well in the regular Diplomatic if he’d stayed in it… and also if… well, anyhow, perhaps it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t. Not ALTOGETHER his fault.”

George said nothing.

“Of course I’m only repeating things I’ve heard—but there was said to have been some scandal about his wife—an earlier divorce or something. And then other matters… later… well, one shouldn’t gossip.”

“Did you meet the boy?”

Sprigge shook his head. “He was at school in England. I suppose he’s of age now to be in the fighting somewhere.”

“Aye,” said George thoughtfully. He would have liked Sprigge to go on chattering, but just then a fellow club member said ‘hello’ in passing and Sprigge insisted on making an introduction—Henry Millbay, the name was, which to George seemed familiar though he could not exactly place it. Millbay shook hands, declined a drink, and regarded George with a certain friendly shrewdness while, to re- start the conversation, Sprigge went on: “We were just talking about Jeff Winslow—the one who was in Malaya… Boswell knows the family… Ever meet him out there, Millbay?”

Millbay shook his head, and the subject was dropped.

Half an hour later, after talk that would have been more agreeable had he not been thinking of other things all the time, George remembered an appointment and took his leave; but in the club lobby, as he was retrieving hat and coat, Millbay overtook him. “I’m a busy man too,” he commented, with just the slightest derogatory implication that Sprigge was less so. “Wonder if we’re going in the same direction?”

They found they were not; nevertheless Millbay kept George chatting for several minutes on the pavement outside. Presently he said: “I didn’t want to talk much in front of Sprigge, who’s the biggest male gossip in London, but he said you knew the Winslows—Jeff Winslow…”

“I didn’t actually know HIM,” George answered.

Millbay’s glance quickened. “Oh, you mean you knew her?”

George experienced again, and for the first time in years, that old sensation of a fist grasping his insides. “Aye, but a long while ago.”

“Rather remarkable woman.”

“Aye.”

“She’s just home from a Jap prison-camp in Hong Kong. I saw her the other day.” Something in George’s face made Millbay add: “Part of my job, you know, to interview repatriates. The idea is to get information about the enemy. They all knew plenty, but it was mostly horrors… Of course HER story was particularly interesting to me because I’d known her and her husband before the war… Remarkable woman.”

“Aye.”

“Even if I hadn’t known that already I’d have thought so after interviewing some of the other women. They said she looked after English and American children in the prison-camp. Seems to have been so bloody fearless that even the Japs let her have her own way as often as not. Anyhow, she got the kids extra food and medicines when nobody else could.”

“What about her husband?”

“She didn’t know. Nobody knows. After the first few months the Japs took to separating the men from the women and shipped the men to another camp —some said in Japan itself. Incidentally, she needn’t have been interned in the first place—there was a chance for some of the women to get away, but she insisted on staying with Jeff. At the Foreign Office we’re still pressing enquiries about him, but so far without luck, and it’s hard to be optimistic.”

George then asked, so softly that he had to repeat the question: “Do you know anything about the boy?”

“He was in the R.A.F. and got smashed in one of the Berlin raids. I think he’s discharged now, and up at Cambridge. The mother’s staying at the family place in the country.” Millbay paused as if to give George time to realize where the conversation stood again, but George, though realizing it, said nothing. Presently Millbay smiled and added: “I’ve told you a lot—now you tell me something. What did you think of her?”

“Of… HER?”

“Yes. Of Livia Winslow.”

The utterance of the name made George stammer: “I—I thought she was what you called her—REMARKABLE.”

“Did you know her at all well?”

“Aye, pretty well… but years ago, as I said.”

“Then maybe you can answer one specific question—was she— er—when you knew her—politically—er— reliable?”

“Politically RELIABLE? What’s that?”

“Rather vague, I admit… but perhaps elastic enough to describe something a diplomat’s wife should be. After all, Jeff had to handle fairly important matters—important, I mean, to British policy.”

“And you’re asking me if she always agreed with that policy? How on earth do I know? But I can tell you this much— I don’t always agree with it, and if that’s become a crime lately, by all means put me down on your black list.”

George had reacted normally to a familiar stimulus, and Millbay reacted normally to that type of reaction, with which he was equally familiar. He smiled. “We’re not as stupid as all that, Boswell, even at the Foreign Office. And our black list is largely a grey list—or should I use the phrase ‘neutral tints’?” He paused a moment, then asked quietly: “Did you know her when she was in Ireland?”

“No.” George caught the alertness of Millbay’s glance and countered it with a more humorous alertness of his own. Suddenly he laughed. “Look here… what are you driving at? Are you a detective or something?”

Millbay also laughed. “I might be the ‘something’. To tell you the truth, I’m just a Government official who once wrote a few novels.” George then knew where he had seen Millbay’s name, and also why he had not clearly remembered it; he was not much of a novel-reader. Millbay continued: “Perhaps that’s why I’m handed all these war-time psychological problems. They’re quite interesting, though, as a rule… Take this woman we’ve been talking about —from all accounts she’s top-notch for sheer physical and mental courage against appalling odds. Yet all that—and every novelist knows it—doesn’t guarantee that she couldn’t be a complete bitch in other ways. Did you, incidentally, ever discuss Hitler with her?”

“Good God, no—the time I knew her was years before Hitler was even heard of. You’re not suspecting her of being a Nazi spy, are you?”

Millbay laughed again. “Stolen treaties tucked away in the corsage, eh?… Hardly… So you don’t think she’d have made a good spy?”

George answered: “From my judgment she’d make the worst spy in the world.”

“What makes you say that?”

George answered: “Of course it’s long ago that I knew her, but people don’t change their whole nature. What I mean is—if they’re… well, outspoken… not always too tactful…”

Millbay touched George’s arm with a half-affectionate gesture. “Thank you for confirming my own private opinion. I never did believe there was anything really wrong with her in THAT way—especially on the basis of the incident that gave rise to most of the talk… You heard about it, perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. What was it?”

“Some big dinner-party in Batavia, with a crowd of officials, attachés, army people, and so on. I was told about it by several who were there. Before the war, of course—1932 or 1933. Conversation turned on Hitler, and most of what was said was unflattering— especially from the viewpoint of the career diplomat. Suddenly Livia said —‘Isn’t it odd that people who profess to follow a religion founded by a carpenter are so ready to sneer at someone for having once been a house-painter?’ Quite a sensation! Of course she was tabbed as pro-Hitler after that, but I really don’t think she had to be. I think she could have meant exactly what she said… Because it IS odd, when you reckon it up. With all the perfectly sound reasons the democracies have for hating that man, they choose to sneer at him because he once followed a trade. How do house-painters feel about it, I wonder? If I knew any, I’d ask ‘em.”