The Whispers of War Page 2

  He stood and leaned down to peel back the flap of the envelope. “Would you like me to take the things out of it?” he asked.

  “I’m not helpless, David,” Nora chided him.

  Samantha watched as Nora began to draw out bundles of paper tied with string—six in total—and a velvet bag.

  “What are they?” asked David, peering over his grandmother’s shoulder.

  Nora let out a long sigh. “My letters from the war. I sent them from all over, but you’ll be able to tell the ones I wrote when I was on leave because I always marked that I wrote them from Cranley Mews. I was so proud of that house. I bought it before the war when young women did not own their own homes. David’s uncle Colin lives there now with his partner, Greg. And I had a job, too—quite modern, really.”

  Nora picked up the velvet bag, undid the drawstrings, and tipped it onto its side. Out into her wrinkled hand fell a thin gold chain and pendant set with a deep blue stone.

  “That looks like yours,” said David.

  “David, will you go fetch my jewelry box?” his grandmother asked, her eyes still fixed on the pendant.

  “Are you okay?” Samantha asked Nora as David slipped out of the room.

  The old woman looked up, as though just remembering that Samantha was there, too. “Yes. Nostalgia has a way of creeping up on me these days.”

  Samantha watched as she set the necklace aside, undid the ribbon on one of the bundles, and pulled the top letter out of its envelope.

  “ ‘The twenty-sixth of February, forty-four,’ ” Nora read. “ ‘Dear Marie, I know if I tell you where I am the censor will only black it out, so all I will say is that I’ve never experienced a February day like this one.’ ” Nora glanced at her. “I had been dispatched to Afghanistan. I don’t think I’ve ever been hotter in my life.”

  David came back, a black leather box fashioned in the style of a small steamer trunk in his hands. He set it down next to his grandmother’s laptop and waited as she opened the box and pulled out the stacked trays. Rings studded with gems of all colors caught the light, and rows of earrings sat like bonbons in a chocolate box. Nora lifted the lid of a little built-in box and drew out a necklace on a gold chain from which hung the pendant’s twin.

  “I gave this to your grandmother, Samantha,” she said, gesturing to the necklace from the velvet pouch. Then she ran her thumb over the necklace she’d just retrieved. “This one was our friend Hazel’s. And this”—she reached into the neckline of her sweater—“is mine. It’s lapis lazuli. I had them made for us out of a bracelet I used to wear. I wanted to make sure that no matter what happened during the war, we would always have a piece of each other with us.”

  “Did you say Hazel?” asked Samantha.

  “Yes. Why?” asked Nora.

  Samantha rummaged around in her purse until she found her passport. She flipped to the identification page and then held it out for the older woman to see.

  “My middle name is Hazel. Samantha Hazel Morris. But all I know about her is that she’s a family friend I’ve never met. Who is she?”

  “Was. She died about twenty years ago. You probably were too young to remember your grandmother coming over to visit Hazel and me every five years or so,” said Nora. For a long moment, she sat silent, but then she nodded, as though making up her mind. “David, will you go put the kettle on? I think we’re going to need fortifications for this, and I’m sure Samantha is tired from her trip. A cup of tea will perk us all up.”

  “Now.” Nora turned her attention back to Samantha. “I met your grandmother in 1928, when she and Hazel and I were all put in a dormitory together. The Ethelbrook Misfits, we called ourselves that first term, although the name never stuck.”

  MARIE August 1939 to October 1939

  two

  AUGUST 25, 1939

  The threat of war hung heavy in the air, refusing to dissipate with the fog each late summer morning. It was impossible to ignore as Marie shuffled around a newspaperman who stood outside the Hyde Park Corner tube station shouting, “Britain signs on to help Poland! Mutual assistance treaty!” as he hawked the evening edition.

  Marie ducked her head and hurried on, knowing that buying an evening edition of the paper would only delay her more. She’d stopped at the shop around the corner from work to pick up two extra batteries after seeing the queue at lunch, and it had taken her twice as long as she’d thought it would to hand over her shillings. Still, her handbag was heavy with the batteries now, and she knew she’d made the right choice, because if war came there was sure to be a run on them.

  If? When. She gritted her teeth and shoved the thought back as though that would somehow keep Hitler from grasping for any more of Europe.

  She was nearly panting by the time the Harlan Club came into view, its proud redbrick face embellished with a cornice of white stone—a gem even on stately Mount Street. Wallace, the doorman, stood tall in his oxblood uniform coat, ready and waiting for the arrival of any of the Harlan’s ladies as they popped in for cocktails or a bit of supper before a Friday night at the theater. She may not have been a member, but she liked to think that she might one day be mistaken for the sort of woman who could walk up to this building knowing she belonged.

  Wallace opened the door and, with a tug on the brim of his black top hat, folded into a half bow. “Good evening, Miss Bohn.”

  “Good evening, Wallace. Has Miss Walcott arrived?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not, Miss Bohn, but I’m sure Mrs. Harper will make you comfortable while you wait.”

  Drat. Mrs. Harper, the club’s receptionist, always glared at her as though Marie intended to filch the club’s silverware when her back was turned.

  “Marie!” called Hazel from the club’s lobby with a cheerful wave that sent her strawberry-blond pageboy sweeping her shoulders. “I was just wondering where you’d gotten to.”

  “Batteries,” she said, leaning over to brush her friend’s cheek with a kiss light enough that her cherry-red Tangee lipstick didn’t transfer.

  “That was me last Saturday. Forty minutes to buy two tins of potatoes, one of peas, and six boxes of matches. None of the government’s warnings against hoarding seem to be making a bit of difference.”

  “I suppose everyone’s afraid there might be rationing again.” The Harlan’s grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour. “Is that really the time?”

  “At least you’re not as late as Nora. I feel as though we’ve been waiting for her to show up whenever we meet ever since we were at school.”

  “Because we have,” said Marie.

  “Well, Mrs. Harper and I have spent the last quarter hour becoming quite fast friends,” said Hazel with a grin.

  The receptionist glared over the edge of the desk she sat behind. If the Harlan were a medieval castle, Wallace merely operated the drawbridge. Mrs. Harper was the true gatekeeper, always watching at her perch. The stout, sour-faced woman, who knew every club member on sight, had never really approved of their band of three’s habit of meeting at the Harlan on the last Friday of every month. Luckily, there was little she could do. Marie and Hazel were Nora’s friends, and while she may not have been able to guarantee them membership to the exclusive—and expensive—club, Nora had enough clout to make sure they would always be welcome as guests.

  Wallace swung the door open again, and Nora rushed in, her color high and her black handbag slapping against her side.

  “Is Scotland Yard after you? You’re practically running,” said Hazel.

  “I know, I know. I’m late,” said Nora, her gasps of breath making her cut-glass accent even more pronounced as she stooped to kiss each of them on the cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “Marie was late, too,” said Hazel.

  “No one likes a tattletale,” said Marie.

  “Like the time you told Miss Burford that I was sneaking sweets in the back of math class?” Nora asked.

  Hazel shrugged as Marie and Nora handed off their coats to Mrs. Harp
er. “In my defense, I was thirteen, and it was only because you never shared your sweets—a character flaw, I will point out, that has not improved with age.”

  “If we’re going to start the evening by pointing out all of my bad qualities, can I at least be armed with a drink?” asked Nora.

  The Harlan’s bar shared much of its design with the rest of London’s much older Clubland properties, most haunted by gentlemen whose father’s fathers had put their names down on the register the day they were born. The chandeliers were heavy brass and crystal, and gilt-edged mirrors lined three of the four walls. The pitch emanating from the room, however, was higher and altogether more distinctive, because the Harlan was entirely a woman’s domain. The Founding Few, including Nora’s grandmother, had started it in the waning years of the last century. Marie knew Nora relished telling the story of the ladies all sitting together in a Belgravia drawing room after a dinner party, talking about what an injustice it was that their husbands could swan off to their clubs whenever they felt like escaping the country or their families. Then one enterprising lady asked, “Why can’t we do the same?”

  Determined and well funded, the ladies had drummed up a membership, secured dues, and signed a lease on a property in the space of three months. From its opening, the Harlan offered respectable rooms to distinguished ladies for whom staying in a hotel without a chaperone was simply too scandalous. By all accounts, it had been a little bit home, a little bit meeting place, but mostly it had been a sanctuary.

  Now, decades later, the three friends claimed the small cluster of armchairs closest to the Harlan bar’s large iron-fronted fireplace. It would be some weeks before the weather turned cold enough for the staff to stack the grate with heavy logs and light a roaring fire, but Marie had always liked this spot, even in the warmer months.

  “I swear the Underground is worse every day. I was stuck on a train that wouldn’t move for ten minutes,” said Nora, explaining away her tardiness.

  “It’s only going to be worse if they decide to institute the blackout. Just think of it, not a single light allowed on the trains aboveground at night or in the stations,” said Hazel.

  “We’ll be living by torchlight,” said Marie, increasingly glad for the batteries in her handbag.

  “What does Nathaniel think of all this?” Nora asked.

  Hazel rolled her eyes at the mention of her husband. “He thinks the whole world has gone barmy. That all of this is just Hitler grandstanding, and that the Munich Agreement will be enough to keep him at bay.”

  The prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had held off Hitler with the Munich Agreement almost a year ago, and much of Britain had breathed a collective sigh of relief. There would not be another war, they’d assured themselves. Now it looked less and less like a guarantee of “peace in our time,” even if many people, like Hazel’s husband, clung to it with all their might.

  “But what of the Germans and the USSR signing a pact?” Marie asked, remembering a rather spirited debate a set of undergraduates were having earlier that week when she walked by them on her way to the German Department. “And the evening editions all have our treaty with Poland on the front page.”

  Hazel sighed. “Nathaniel refuses to speak to me about any of it. He thinks I’m warmongering.”

  “The thing that all of the girls in the Home Office can’t stop talking about is this new program out of Hamburg. The host claims to be a former British diplomat who’s seen the light and gone over to support Hitler,” said Nora.

  “Henrik insists on playing that,” said Marie, her lips curling in disgust at the mention of her cousin’s favorite program.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Hazel said.

  Nora leaned in, lowering her voice. “No one is supposed to be listening to it because it’s pure propaganda, so of course everyone is. I’m sure it sends the BBC into fits that it can even get through.”

  “The man who hosts it is awful. He says the worst things about the British. Naturally, Henrik finds it hilarious,” said Marie.

  “The host sounds like one of us,” said Nora.

  “He sounds like you. Not me,” Marie pointed out. When she’d arrived in this country from Munich, she’d tried to lose her accent, but no matter what she did it lingered. Most days it was soft—but recognizable nonetheless—but if she was ever angry or drank one glass of wine too many, it came out in full force. Which is why she never let herself lose her temper or indulge in “just one more drink.” She’d learned over the years that it was best to make everyone around her more comfortable by being just that little bit less. Less German, less aggressive, less objectionable.

  “Marie, have you had any word from your mother?” Hazel asked.

  She dipped her chin, wishing her friends didn’t know her so well that they’d spot a lie from one hundred paces. “Yes.”

  “But surely that’s a good thing,” said Hazel, always optimistic.

  “What did her letter say?” Nora asked.

  She unsnapped the top of her handbag and pulled out the letter, now soft from being read over and over. “Here. It’s in French.” All of her letters over the years had been in French. Hannah Bohn acted more like a nineteenth-century Russian princess than a German businessman’s wife, forsaking her native language for the elegance of French.

  “You read it,” said Hazel, nodding to Nora. “Your French always was better than mine.”

  “ ‘Dear daughter,’ ” Nora read, translating as she went. “ ‘We are well. The Schmieds asked after you yesterday evening as they always do, and Horst in particular was interested to hear that you had not been back to Munich in so many years. He says he misses you.’ ” Nora glanced up at her. “Who is Horst?”

  Marie blushed and waved away the question. “Just a boy I used to play with. Skip down to the middle of the page.”

  “Spoilsport,” said Hazel.

  Nora skimmed down and resumed reading. “Here we are. ‘You know that nothing bores me more than these questions you ask about politics. We did not send you away to school for you to cultivate an interest in things that are no business of a young lady.’ Well, that is rich.”

  “Keep reading,” said Marie.

  “ ‘It’s fortunate for you that your father is more amused than insulted by all of this,’ ” Nora read. “ ‘He tells me to write that he would never do anything to sacrifice the health of the business or our life here in Munich. He doubts there will be any war at all, and that the very best thing for him to do is to remain a friend to everyone.’ So they’re taking a stance of neutrality?”

  Marie leaned over and plucked the letter out of Nora’s grasp. “So it would seem.” Mutter acts as though the threat of war is a mild irritation, while it is all I can think about.

  “What does the rest of the letter say?” Hazel asked.

  “One of their neighbors’ daughters had her fourth child, and that same woman’s youngest has joined the League of German Girls and already has a half dozen boyfriends. She also asks when I’ll stop wasting my time in England and come home to marry. Of course, it would be a man carefully selected from an appropriate family—probably one in metal or who makes a part that Vatter could use in his engines.”

  “And you still don’t think they would ever join the Nazi Party?” Nora asked. “There are all sorts of stories…”

  “No,” said Marie firmly. “Vatter has too many foreign contracts at the factory to want Germany at war, cut off from the rest of Europe. It almost killed the business during the last war when my grandfather was still alive. He will not want that again. Honestly, can’t we talk about something else?” she asked.

  Nora’s eyes darted over to Hazel. “Can I ask how you’re doing?”

  The gentleness of Nora’s voice—usually so direct and forceful—belied the importance of the question. Marie could see Hazel digging her fingers into her thigh, grounding herself.

  “I’m as well as can be expected,” said Hazel.

  Marie glanced a
round to make sure no one was listening and lowered her voice. “Did you go to the doctor?”

  Hazel bit her lip and nodded. “He says there’s nothing more that can be done. We just need to keep trying, but we’ve been trying for six years. Ever since…”

  Moving in tandem, Marie and Nora each picked up Hazel’s hands.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” said Nora.

  Hazel shook her head. “I want you to ask. It’s just difficult. I should know by now not to become excited, but this one was almost three months along. I thought we might finally have a chance.”

  The yearning in Hazel’s voice tore at Marie’s heart. She knew how badly her friend wanted a baby. How every month Hazel would tense with anticipation. How often she’d been disappointed. How elated she’d been the three times she’d realized she was pregnant. How each of the miscarriages had knocked Hazel back, threatening to plunge her into the darkness that had swallowed her when she’d lost her first baby, just weeks after marrying Nathaniel.

  “Enough,” said Hazel, tipping her head back and blinking rapidly as though fighting tears. “There’s too much depressing talk in the world right now. It’s our Friday together. Let’s enjoy it.”

  Pierre, the Harlan’s long-standing bartender, set down their usual drinks in front of them, and each of the women took a moment to sip from hers.

  “Tell us what happened at the agency this week,” said Nora, leaning her chin in her hand so that her bangles—all gifts from her grandmother—clinked as they settled halfway down her arm.

  A little glint lit up Hazel’s eyes, and Marie couldn’t have been more thankful for Nora’s ability to pull Hazel back into the light.

  “You won’t believe me when I tell you,” said Hazel.

  “This is promising,” said Marie, smiling gamely.

  “The Repeater is back.”

  Nora snorted as Marie groaned, “Doesn’t that man have any pride?”