William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Thanks, Tremlett, that’ll be all for the moment.”

He looked through Keogh’s claims and noted the dates he’d been to Dover over the past months; then he turned to Vandenbrook and collated their respective journeys — some days they tallied, some days they didn’t. However, he noticed that Vandenbrook very rarely stayed in Folkestone — his accommodation claims were for hotels in Deal, Hastings, Sandwich, Hythe and once in Rye. Probably keen to get some golf in, Lysander thought, leafing through the dockets, or else wanted to be away from the Directorate organization — sensible man.

♦

There was a knock on his door. Lysander put the bottle of champagne back in the ice-bucket and crossed the room, trying to stay calm, and opened the door. Hettie stood there, smiling, as if this encounter were the most natural and normal in the world.

“What a funny little hotel you chose,” she said, stepping in. “My room’s minute.” Lysander closed the door behind her, feeling as if his chest were stuffed with hot, rough wool — an ill, constrained breathlessness stopping him speaking. He sensed a weakness flow through him, as though his knees might buckle and he’d fall to the floor.

“Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?” Hettie said, unpinning her hat and throwing it on to a chair. “Let’s take our clothes off now — then we can drink our champagne.”

“Hettie, for heaven’s sake —”

“Come on, Lysander. Race you.”

They kissed. He felt his lips on hers and then her tongue in his mouth. They undressed and Lysander opened the champagne and poured it. He noticed Hettie had kept her hosiery on and her high-heeled shoes and her jewellery. Jet beads at the neck, a cluster of ivory bracelets.

“Why are we doing this?” he asked, faintly. “This way.”

“Because I know you, Lysander. Remember?” she said, almost scoldingly. “Because I know what you like.” She strode around the room, unselfconsciously, checked that the curtains were properly drawn. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? To be naked in a hotel room in Pimlico drinking champagne…” She glanced down at him. “My — you seem to agree.”

She came over to him and he touched her breasts and drew her close. Again, oddly, he felt like weeping — as if some form of destiny were being fulfilled, here in this unassuming room; that he was here with Hettie in his arms, once more. This was the problem with her, he acknowledged — or, rather, this was his problem with Hettie — it was like being with no other woman. He had never felt this need, this strongly, with anyone else.

She kissed his chest and he put his arms around her. She hugged her small body against his.

She raised her face and whispered, “I’ve missed you.” Then she took him in her hand and led him compliantly to the bed.

The Directorate of Movements had opened and maintained branch offices in Dover and Folkestone since the end of 1914, the easier to supervise the loading and despatch of the millions of tons of stores that were sent out to France each week. They were staffed mainly with former port authority officials and clerical workers but, every few days, Keogh and Vandenbrook would make a routine journey to oversee the office work or, more likely, sort out problems.

Looking through the departmental memoranda on Monday Lysander saw that two cargo vessels had collided in the Channel, one of them sinking with the loss of ‘600 black labour drowned (approx.)’. Osborne-Way had added a note in the margin in his small crabbed schoolboy’s hand, ‘Attn. Capt. VdenB.’ Lysander asked Tremlett where Vandenbrook was and he came back with the information that he had not come into the Annexe that morning but had gone straight to Folkestone to ‘sort out the steaming mess’.

Lysander told Tremlett to have a railway pass made out for him and he caught a train to the coast from Victoria before noon. At Folkestone he negotiated with a taxi-driver who grudgingly agreed to stay with him until midnight for £ 5 cash. Lysander thought of the soldiers in the trenches earning their eighteen pennies a day for their unique version of the diurnal grind. Still, the mobility might be essential — he had a feeling Vandenbrook wouldn’t be spending the night in Folkestone.

He had the taxi park a little way up the street from the Directorate offices in Marine Parade and settled down to wait. It turned out to be a long one, Vandenbrook not emerging until seven o’clock that evening. A motor car drew up and he climbed in. They headed out of town, going west along the main coast road towards Hythe. Vandenbrook was dropped off at the front door of the Dene Hotel — a neat brick and hung-tile, two-storey building with a garage at the rear and a modern extension, just off the high street on the lower slopes of the hill that led up to Hythe’s principal church, St Leonards. The car drove away, returning to Folkestone. After five minutes, Lysander followed him in.

The reception lobby was a low, beamed area with doors off to a saloon bar and a dining room and a fine curved oak staircase that led to the bedrooms on the first floor. Far more comfortable than the Commercial Hotel, Folkestone, he was sure, and where Directorate staff usually stayed, so Tremlett had informed him. Lysander saw fresh flowers in a bowl on the reception desk and read the posted menu outside the dining room where he noted a simple but classic choice of English dishes — a roast, a saddle of lamb, devilled kidneys, Dover sole. He felt suddenly hungry — no wonder Vandenbrook preferred to find his own lodgings.

He went into the bar and chose a seat where he had a view of the lobby through the glass-paned door. He ordered a whisky and soda and thought he’d wait until Vandenbrook came down for dinner and surprise him. They would have a laugh about it and at least he’d eat a decent meal before he caught the last train back to London.

He sipped his whisky and lit a cigarette, his mind turning inevitably towards Hettie and the night they’d spent together. She could only stay until morning, she had said, as she had to meet Lasry in Brighton, where they were going to look for somewhere to live — Cornwall was beginning to pall, so far away, and Bonham Johnson was urging them to be closer to London. She promised Lysander that she would come back to London for several days as soon as she could think up an excuse that would appease her suspicious husband. Lysander thought he might rent a small service apartment in a mansion block somewhere central where they could safely spend time together — he was growing tired of hotel life, anyway, and god knew how long he’d be stuck in the Directorate of Movements, searching for Andromeda. He wasn’t anticipating his investigation of Osborne-Way with any great pleasure. He’d have to be exceptionally cautious, take real pains not to be –

His mother walked into the hotel.

His first instinct was to rush out into the lobby and surprise her, but something made him shrink back in his seat. She was wearing a fur coat and one of the new, fashionably smaller hats. She spoke to the receptionist and a porter was called and sent away. Luggage? Was she staying the night? The mâitre d’ emerged from the dining room and shook her hand, obsequiously. She must be known here…She was led away towards the dining room and out of his line of sight.

Lysander would have liked to put this encounter down as one of life’s many coincidences. Coincidences — the most extraordinary coincidences — happened all the time, he knew, and in a manner that would make the laziest farceur blush. But life’s strange congruences were not applicable here — every suddenly aching bone in his body was telling him that this was no accidental coming-together of the respective orbits of Vandenbrook, Rief and Anna, Lady Faulkner. Then he saw Vandenbrook come down the stairs, cigarette in hand, and turn into the dining room. He knew instantly that he was going to his mother’s table, that this rendezvous had been planned, but decided to wait five minutes before he sought his ‘ocular proof’. He strolled out of the bar and pretended to consult a map of Hythe conveniently hung to one side of the dining-room door. It was ajar and he could see at an angle into the salon. There was a fireplace and a dozen tables, half of them occupied. And there in the corner was his mother, accepting a glass of wine poured by the sommelier, and there across the table from her was Christian Vandenbrook. They toasted each other — they seemed familiar and relaxed — clearly this was not their first introduction. As they talked and consulted the menu, Lysander saw that they were displaying all the timeworn and conventional feints and poor disguises of lovers meeting in a public place and hoping the real nature of their relationship would be invisible.