Winter of the World

He ran to his brother. Woody was on his knees, his chest shaking, his mouth open, his eyes running with tears. There was blood all over his white linen suit, but he was not wounded. Between sobs he moaned: ‘No, no.’

Joanne lay on the ground in front of him, face up.

Chuck could see right away that she was dead. Her body was still and her eyes were open, staring at nothing. The front of her gaily striped cotton dress was soaked with bright red arterial blood, already darkening in patches. Chuck could not see the wound but he guessed she had taken a bullet to the shoulder that had opened her axillary artery. She would have bled to death in minutes.

He did not know what to say.

The others came and stood by him: Mama, Papa, and Eddie. Mama knelt on the ground beside Woody and put her arms around him. ‘My poor boy,’ she said, as if he was a child.

Eddie put his arm around Chuck’s shoulders and gave him a discreet hug.

Papa knelt by the body. He reached out and took Woody’s hand.

Woody’s sobs quieted a little.

Papa said: ‘Close her eyes, Woody.’

Woody’s hand was shaking. With an effort, he steadied it.

He stretched out his fingertips to her eyelids.

Then, with infinite gentleness, he closed her eyes.

12

1942 (I)

On the first day of 1942 Daisy got a letter from her former fiancé, Charlie Farquharson.

When she opened it she was at the breakfast table in the Mayfair house, alone except for the aged butler who poured her coffee and the fifteen-year-old maid who brought her hot toast from the kitchen.

Charlie wrote not from Buffalo but from RAF Duxford, an air base in the east of England. Daisy had heard of the place: it was near Cambridge, where she had met both her husband, Boy Fitzherbert, and the man she loved, Lloyd Williams.

She was pleased to hear from Charlie. He had jilted her, of course, and she had hated him then; but it was a long time ago. She felt like a different person now. In 1935 she had been an American heiress called Miss Peshkov; today she was Viscountess Aberowen, an English aristocrat. All the same, she was pleased she was still in Charlie’s mind. A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.

Charlie wrote with a heavy black pen. His handwriting was untidy, the letters large and jagged. Daisy read:

Before anything else, I need, of course, to apologize for the way I treated you back in Buffalo. I shudder with mortification every time I think of it.

Good Lord, thought Daisy, he seems to have grown up.

What snobs we all were, and how weak I was to allow my late mother to bully me into behaving shabbily.

Ah, she thought, his late mother. So the old bitch is dead. That might explain the change.

I have joined No. 133 Eagle Squadron. We fly Hurricanes, but we’re getting Spitfires any day now.

There were three Eagle squadrons, Royal Air Force units manned by American volunteers. Daisy was surprised: she would not have expected Charlie to go to war voluntarily. When she knew him he had been interested in nothing but dogs and horses. He really had grown up.

If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at least to put the past behind you, I would love to see you and meet your husband.

The mention of a husband was a tactful way of saying he had no romantic intentions, Daisy guessed.

I will be in London on leave next weekend. May I take the two of you to dinner? Do say yes.

With affectionate good wishes,

Charles H.B. Farquharson

Boy was not at home that weekend, but Daisy accepted for herself. She was starved of male companionship, like many women in wartime London. Lloyd had gone to Spain and disappeared. He said he was going to be a military attaché at the British embassy in Madrid. Daisy wished it might be true that he had such a safe job, but she did not believe it. When she asked why the government would send an able-bodied young officer to do a desk job in a neutral country, he had explained how important it was to discourage Spain from joining in the war on the Fascist side. But he said it with a rueful smile that told her plainly she was not to be fooled. She feared that in reality he was slipping across the border to work with the French Resistance, and she had nightmares about him being captured and tortured.