Winter of the World

Daisy was not sure why she was bothering. She did not love Boy – had not loved him for a long time. She was in love with Lloyd Williams, still in Spain on a mission he could not say much about. But she was married to Boy. He had been unfaithful to her, of course, with numerous women. But she had committed adultery too, albeit with only one man. She had no moral ground to stand on, and in consequence she was paralysed. She just felt that if she did her duty as a wife she might retain the last shreds of her self-respect.

The doctor’s office was in Harley Street, not far from their house though in a less expensive neighbourhood. Daisy found the examination unpleasant. The doctor was a man, and he was grumpy about her being ten minutes late. He asked her a lot of questions about her general health, her menstrual periods, and what he called her ‘relations’ with her husband, not looking at her but making notes with a fountain pen. Then he put a series of cold metal instruments up her vagina. ‘I do this every day, so you don’t need to worry,’ he said, then he gave her a grin that told her the opposite.

When she came out of the doctor’s office she half expected Boy to renege on their deal and refuse to take his turn. He looked sour about it, but he went in.

While she was waiting, Daisy reread a letter from her half-brother, Greg. He had discovered he had a child, from an affair he had with a black girl when he was fifteen. To Daisy’s astonishment the playboy Greg was excited about his son and keen to be part of the child’s life, albeit as an uncle rather than a father. Even more surprising, Lev had met the child and announced that he was smart.

It was ironic, she thought, that Greg had a son even though he had never wanted one, and Boy had no son even though he longed for one so badly.

Boy came out of the doctor’s office an hour later. The doctor promised to give them their results in a week. They left at twelve noon.

‘I need a drink after that,’ Boy said.

‘So do I,’ said Daisy.

They looked up and down the street of identical row houses. ‘This neighbourhood is a bloody desert. Not a pub in sight.’

‘I’m not going to a pub,’ said Daisy. ‘I want a martini, and they don’t know how to make them in pubs.’ She spoke from experience. She had asked for a dry martini at the King’s Head in Chelsea and had been served a glass of disgustingly warm vermouth. ‘Take me to Claridge’s hotel, please. It’s only five minutes’ walk.’

‘Now that’s a damn good idea.’

The bar at Claridge’s was full of people they knew. There were austerity rules about the meals restaurants could sell, but Claridge’s had found a loophole: there were no restrictions on giving food away, so they offered a free buffet, charging only their usual high prices for drinks.

Daisy and Boy sat in art deco splendour and sipped perfect cocktails, and Daisy began to feel better.

‘The doctor asked me if I’d had mumps,’ Boy said.

‘But you have.’ It was mainly a childhood illness, but Boy had caught it a couple of years back. He had been briefly billeted at a vicarage in East Anglia, and had picked up the infection from the vicar’s three small sons. It had been very painful. ‘Did he say why?’

‘No. You know what these chaps are like. Never tell you a bloody thing.’

It occurred to Daisy that she was not as happy-go-lucky as she had once been. In the old days she would never have brooded about her marriage this way. She had always liked what Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone with the Wind: ‘I’ll think about that tomorrow.’ Not any more. Perhaps she was growing up.

Boy was ordering a second cocktail when Daisy looked towards the door and saw the Marquis of Lowther walking in, dressed in a creased and stained uniform.

Daisy disliked him. Ever since he had guessed at her relationship with Lloyd he had treated her with oily familiarity, as if they shared a secret that made them intimates.

Now he sat at their table uninvited, dropping cigar ash on his khaki trousers, and asked for a manhattan.

Daisy knew at once that he was up to no good. There was a look of malignant relish in his eye that could not be explained merely as anticipation of a good cocktail.

Boy said: ‘I haven’t seen you for a year or so, Lowthie. Where have you been?’

‘Madrid,’ Lowthie said. ‘Can’t say much about it. Hush-hush, you know. How about you?’

‘I spend a lot of time training pilots, though I’ve flown a few missions lately, now that we’ve stepped up the bombing of Germany.’

‘Jolly good thing, too. Give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.’

‘You may say that, but there’s a lot of muttering among the pilots.’

‘Really – why?’

‘Because all this stuff about military targets is absolute rubbish. There’s no point in bombing German factories because they just rebuild them. So we’re targeting large areas of dense working-class housing. They can’t replace the workers so fast.’

Lowther looked shocked. ‘That would mean it’s our policy to kill civilians.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But the government assures us—’