William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

♦

This morning Munro took me to a military firing range east of Beckton and instructed me in the use of the Webley Mark VI Service Revolver. I fired off many dozens of rounds at the targets and was fairly accurate. It was a powerful weapon and my forearm began to ache.

“I hope I won’t be called upon to use this thing,” I said.

“We try to foresee every eventuality, Rief,” was all he replied. “Have you ever thrown a grenade?”

“No.”

“Let’s have a try, shall we? The Mills bomb. Very straightforward as long as you can count from one to five.”

Back in Islington he gave me certain crucial pieces of information. The address of a safe house in Geneva. The secret telephone number of the military attaché at the consulate — ’Only to be used in the most dire emergency’. The number of an account at the Federal Bank of Geneva where I could draw the funds necessary for the bribe. And an elaborate double-password that would enable me to identify Agent Bonfire — and vice versa, of course.

“Take your time but commit them to memory, I suggest,” Munro added. “Or if you can’t rely on your memory have them tattooed on a very private part of your anatomy.”

I think I can certify that this is Munro’s first attempt at a joke.

♦

I dined with Blanche last night at Pinoli’s in Soho, one of her favourite places. She was about to start a run of The Reluctant Hero at the Alhambra and told me that the theatres were as busy as peacetime. I felt envious, experiencing a sudden urge to rejoin my old life, to be back on stage, acting, pretending. Then it struck me that this was precisely what I was about to do. Even the title of her play was suddenly apt. It rather sobered me.

“I do like you in your uniform,” she said. “But I thought you were a private.”

“I’ve been promoted,” I said. “I’m off to France soon. In fact…”

She looked at me silently, her eyes full of sudden tears.

“Oh, god, no,” she said, then gathering herself added, “I’m so sorry…” She looked at her hands — at her missing engagement ring, I supposed — then she said, abruptly, “Why did it all go so wrong for us, Lysander?”

“It didn’t go wrong. Life got in the way.”

“And now a war’s got in the way.”

“We can still be —”

“Don’t say it!” she said sharply. “I detest that expression.”

So I said nothing and cut a large corner off my gammon steak. When I bit into it I felt my crown go.

♦

“I can make you another,” the Hon. Hugh Faulkner said to me. “But, in the present unfortunate circumstances, it’ll take a while.”

“Just stick it back on if you can,” I said. “I’m off to France any day now.”

“Five of my Varsity friends are dead already,” he said gloomily. “I don’t dare to think how many from school.”

There was no reply I could reasonably make so I stayed silent. He said nothing either, kicking at the chrome base of the chair with the toe of his shoe. I was sitting in Hugh’s special reclining chair in his clinic in Harley Street.

“We all need a bit of luck,” I said, to bring him out of his lugubrious reverie and to stop the tap-tap-tapping of his toe.

“Well, you were damn lucky you didn’t swallow it, there’s a stroke of luck for you,” he said, holding the crown up to his powerful overhead light. “Amazing to think they used to make these out of ivory.” He unbuttoned the cuffs of his coat and rolled them back. “Open wide and let’s have a look.”

I did so and Hugh brought the big light close and peered in my mouth. He was wearing a three-piece dark suit and a tie I recognized but couldn’t place. He started to poke around in my mouth with his sharp metal probe.

“Actually, I have to say that your teeth look in fairly good condition —”

“ Aaargh! ”

“Sorry, sorry!”

He had touched a nerve or else pushed his pick deep into a soft smudge of decay.

I was pale and sweaty. Rigid.

“My god, Hugh…Jesus! That was agony.”

“Sorry. I just touched that big filling at the back — upper right second molar.”

“Is it rotten?”

“No, no. There’s nothing wrong with the tooth,” Hugh said, chuckling. “What you felt there was an electric shock. Two bits of metal touch and the saliva acts as an electrolyte. Ouch! It’s like a piece of silver foil when you break off a chocolate bar. You know, sticking to the chocolate. You start to eat and — a little electric shock. Nothing wrong with your teeth.” He stepped back and ran his hands through his hair, smiling apologetically. “Anyway, let’s stop messing about and stick the thing back on.”

THE ELECTROLYTE

When I saw your face at the door

In a dancing dream of dervishes

It was like a probe touching a molar

(Electrolyte of love).

Then I saw you true.

The evening mist gathers in the valley

My hands I move

And fold it flat

Into a neat square bundle

And give it to you.

I’m sitting in my old bedroom at Claverleigh. I’ve just been in to see Crickmay to say goodbye. I’m off tomorrow — to France. The sound of Crickmay’s breathing is like some ancient wheezing pump trying to empty a flooded mine. Air and water intermixed.

He managed to gasp goodbye and squeeze my hand.

Outside in the corridor Mother seemed upset but under control.

“How long will you be away?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. A month or two, maybe a bit longer.” Massinger had not been precise. All duration would be determined by operational necessities and by Agent Bonfire.

“He won’t be here when you come back,” she said, flatly.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll be fine. I could spend twenty-four hours a day on the charity, if need be. I don’t know what I’d have done without it, actually. We’ve a staff of six now in the office at Lewes.”

“That’s wonderful.” I kissed her cheek and she took my hands, stepping back to look me up and down.

“You look very handsome in your uniform,” she said. “Your father would have been very proud.”

I feel hot tears in my eyes just thinking about this.

Munro and Lysander lunched in Aire, a dozen miles behind the front line. Apart from the fact that everyone in the restaurant was male and in uniform, Lysander thought, the gustatory and vinous experience was pretty much the same had they been there in 1912. They ate an excellent coq au vin , drank a carafe of Beaujolais, were presented with a selection of a dozen cheeses and rounded the meal off with a tarte tatin and a Calvados.

“The condemned man ate a hearty meal,” Lysander said.

“I admire your gallows humour, Rief, but I have to say it isn’t called for. You’re going to experience no — or at least minimal — risk. We’re going to a quiet sector — only three casualties in the last month.”

Lysander wasn’t particularly reassured by Munro’s palliative: a casualty was a casualty. There might only be one casualty this month — and it might be him. And yet everyone would be applauding the increasing quietness of the quiet sector all the same.

They were driven by staff car to the rear-area of the southernmost extremity of the British lines, where the British Expeditionary Force’s First Army abutted the French Tenth Army. They passed through the town of Béthune and turned off a main road to drive down farm tracks until they reached the billet of the 2 / 10 thbattalion of the Loyal Manchester Fusiliers. A log-and-fascine road led them to a meadow fringed with apple orchards and filled with rows of bell tents. A sizeable field kitchen was in one corner and from a neighbouring pasture came the shouts and cheers and thumps of leather on leather that signalled a football match was taking place.