Petty Magic (31 page)

The Shadow at the Foot of the Bed

30.

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have,
A rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

—Leo Marks, SOE Codemaster

A
GOOD TEN
years after the war, a letter came for me at Blackabbey. I got a chill when I read the return address; I didn’t recognize it, but somehow I knew to whom it belonged. She had sent numerous requests for my address over the last decade, not surprising given that SOE was shut down right after the war. Such requests for information would be forwarded from one department to another and back again. She couldn’t have found me otherwise; she didn’t know my name.

But at long last some bighearted bureaucrat had found the right file and had taken the time to reply to her last letter.
I want so much to know the facts surrounding Jonah’s last days
, she wrote me.
I would be so grateful if you would agree to meet me. Indeed, I am grateful to you already
. I stared at the perfect penmanship, telling myself I shouldn’t go but knowing that I would.

Patricia Holt, formerly Rudolfsen, lived in one of those venerable buildings on Central Park East. She greeted me with a look of puzzlement, even dismay, and I asked her if there was something wrong.

“Not at all, I … well, you must have been quite young when you were recruited.”

“Hardly more than a teenager,” I replied, suppressing a smile.

She ushered me inside, and a maid appeared only to whisk my coat into the hall closet. Patricia had what was known as elegant taste, but I could tell as soon as I walked into her living room that every bit of porcelain, every plush surface, every canvas had been hand-selected for her and her new husband by someone they had no doubt paid handsomely. I lingered on a wedding portrait on the end table and realized she’d now been with her “new” husband twice as long as she was married to Jonah. No dress of parachute silk for Patricia Holt.

I looked at her, hard, and she gave me an uncertain smile as she fiddled with her diamond wedding band. She was just as Jonah had described her: plain but polished, capable yet awkward. Meeting her felt a little like coming face to face with the bogeyman.

“May I offer you something to drink, Miss Harbinger?” she said at last, and I asked for a whisky and soda.

“Thank you for making the time to meet with me,” she said as she fussed about the tray on the sideboard. “I’ve been quite fraught these last few days—thinking of it, wondering what you would be like. I was so afraid there might be … well … some degree of tension between us.”

For heaven’s sake, why make it worse by speaking of it? “You said you were grateful to me,” I began as she handed me the glass. “I wondered what you meant by that.”

“You spent every moment with him at the end of his life, and that makes you important to me as well as to him.” There was an awkward pause I filled with a healthy swig. “Won’t you come inside?” She indicated the bedroom. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

Patricia invited me to sit at her vanity table while she knelt to open the bottom drawer. The lamp beside her makeup mirror was completely out of step with the “tasteful” décor in the rest of the house: it was made of cast iron, a gnome crouching under a toadstool, with a pleated green lampshade.

“What an odd little lamp,” I said, so that anyone else would have understood I loved it.

“Isn’t it, though? It’s the one thing of Jonah’s that Alexander has let me keep. Keep out, I mean. Jonah had it on his nightstand in his boyhood.”

She pulled out a broad wooden box, laid it on the table, and raised the lid with a reverent air. She’d been waiting ten years to share her memories with someone who’d known him, someone who would care. For half an hour she sorted through everything in that box, showing me photographs and small toys from his “boyhood,” and told me anecdotes of their courtship. At one point she even asked if I, too, had lost someone dear to me. I said yes, and she seemed embarrassed. I caught a glimpse of a small packet of letters tied together with a bit of twine.

The whole thing was completely agonizing for me. I kept seeing flashes of his face in the darkness of the stable—white-whiskered in the shaving mirror—laughing as Addie’s dirndl-skirted marionette hopped up on his knee and flirted and cooed—cold and still in the moonlight as I took one long last look at him before I drew the blanket over his face and climbed out of the grave. And his hands—even now I felt his hands on me, his breath hot on my ear.

“They told me a little of how it happened,” she said. “But I think it would help if I could hear it from you.”

I was careful to tell her no more than she already knew; I didn’t even mention the
Nacht und Nebel
order. For what good? I only told her that we had gathered a great deal of intelligence, so much that Jonah spent too much time transmitting it in one go and that they were able to trace the signal to our safe house. He’d been warned only in time to destroy his notes and gather his arms.

“And where were you while this was happening?”

“We were quartered separately. It was the middle of the night. I didn’t hear of it until morning.”

She paused. “And by that time it was too late, I suppose.”

I nodded.

“Alexander doesn’t like me to speak of him,” she murmured as she laid the box back in the drawer. “He says we must try to live in the present.”

Right then something was welling in my gut—bile or bitterness, it tasted the same. Jonah deserved better than a cachet of photographs at the bottom of a drawer, and to hell with her second husband. Alexander Holt had spent the war behind a desk.

We ventured back into her living room, where she offered me another whisky soda.

“There’s—a delicate matter—I’ve been wanting to bring up,” she said once we had resettled ourselves in the leather armchairs.

I didn’t flinch; I knew she wasn’t brave enough to ask
that
question. “Yes?”

“Jonah’s watch,” she said. “I was wondering if you knew what became of it.”

It was on my nightstand, still telling perfect time. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“It’s just that, you know, it was a family heirloom …” She trailed off, gazing at me expectantly.

“Oh. An heirloom in your family, was it?”

She looked sheepish. “No, it was handed down from his grandfather to his father, who gave it to Jonah.”

“He didn’t give it to me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“But you do remember him having a pocket watch?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Perhaps the SS took it, then?” That she should phrase this as a question was only a small part of why she was irritating me now. Why shouldn’t I resent her for taking a job in the Chairborne while her husband was parachuting behind enemy lines? The only Nazis she’d ever seen were the POWs on the film reels.

“Very likely.” I paused for effect. “You know, I always wondered why you didn’t follow Jonah into operational service.”

She acted as though this hadn’t stung. “I wasn’t cut out for it.” She gave a weak laugh. “Surely Jonah told you that.”

“He did,” I replied. “But men too often believe they are the better judge of our shortcomings.”

She didn’t smile at this. “He was right. I hadn’t your fortitude, Miss Harbinger.” I could see she meant that as an honest compliment. “That watch,” she went on. The moment of goodwill vanished instantly. “He would have given it to his son, if we’d had one.”

This I found most infuriating of all: she never so much as alluded to their impending divorce. In Patricia Holt’s revisionist history, both she and Jonah had remained faithful to his death. (Now, I know what you’re thinking—was Jonah being fully honest when he told me they both wanted out? She married Alexander Holt a scant two months after she got word of Jonah’s death—it was in the papers—and that was all I needed or wanted to know.)

I wanted to tell her I knew she was a phony, but I decided I should be as dignified as I was able. Jonah would have wanted it that way. “But as it is,” I said, “there’s no one to give it to.”

She hesitated, and I could see she was formulating a different tack—as if asking some other way might jog my memory. Why did she want that watch back so badly? It’s not that she thought I might be lying, though of course I was; she just wanted every stone turned. Perhaps she assumed that any message that might have been folded inside was intended for her.

“Look, Patricia—the watch is gone. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Another long hesitation, during which time I polished off my second whisky soda and considered going after my own coat. Finally she said, “I am sensing some hostility, Eve—may I call you Eve?—and I am wondering why. Have I done anything to offend you?”

I let out a little snort of incredulity—couldn’t help it. She was so tiresome. “Just let me get this straight. You asked me here on account of a lousy pocket watch?”

“It’s not—it’s not just about the watch.”

I waited for her to continue but gave up. “What is it, then?” In a way, I wanted her unspoken questions to come out in an angry torrent—
Just how close
were
you? How was it that you survived and he did not?
—but I knew she’d never get up the courage.

All brains and no guts
is what he’d said. Very little heart, either.

I rose from my chair. “I think I’d better go.”

She nodded and fetched my coat as I waited by the door. “Thank you for coming, Miss Harbinger.”

I paused at the door, my hand on the knob. “Did you love him?”

She seemed even more taken aback than I expected her to be. “Why, of course I loved him.”

“Not like I did.” And I made sure to look her in the eye as I pulled the door shut behind me.

I
NICKED TWO
photographs of Jonah that day: his official SOE portrait, and another of him smiling and relaxed, shirt partially unbuttoned, sitting on somebody’s patio with a cigarette poised between his long, slender fingers. I muttered a few words as I stepped into the elevator and
whoosh
, they materialized inside my purse. I got proper frames for them and keep them displayed prominently in Cat’s Hollow. I wonder, did she ever notice they were missing?

I shouldn’t have done it, I know. He didn’t belong to either of us.

Pumpkin Day

31.

I
T’S ALL
over on the last night of October, just before five o’clock. A young man sidesteps a troupe of shrieking fairies on the front walk at Harbinger House, then rings the doorbell and holds his breath. Half a second later a young woman throws the door open and laughs a most maniacal laugh, and he sees now why the little girls were making such a racket. It’s a night for superlatives, all right, because she is wearing the most disgusting mask ever made: slithering things in her brittle black hair, glistening yellow fangs, a jutting chin with squishy purple warts sprouting hairs a foot long—and all of it unsettlingly lifelike. The foyer is lit only by a candle inside a jack-o’-lantern, and he can’t tell where the mask ends and her neck and eyelids begin.

“Hello,” says the young man.

The leering witch beckons him inside with a flick of a razor-sharp fingernail. “Come in then, love, and give us a kiss!”

“I’ll skip the kiss, if you don’t mind,” he replies with only the ghost of a smile. “Is Eve home?”

Vega sighs, stands up straight, and whips the mask from her lovely face in a single motion.

“You Harbingers are
really
into Halloween, aren’t you?”

She shrugs. “We try.”

He stares at the mask hanging limp in her hand. “So—is Eve …?”

“She’s not here,” Vega says with another sigh. This time, when she beckons him with a plastic claw still stuck on her finger, he follows her in. “You’d better sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.”

I
HAVE BEEN
sitting in the gloomy kitchen all afternoon alternately weeping into my hankie and helping myself to far too much of the children’s loot. I know he’ll come tonight, but I just can’t stomach the prospect of saying good-bye to him once and for all.

“At least there’s
this
way,” Morven says reasonably. “You can have your good-bye but he’ll never know it’s you.”

I don’t want to say good-bye. I want to keep on going as we are. But they tell me a girl’s got to grow up sometime and that I’m lagging just a bit in doing so at the age of a hundred and fifty.

“Besides, someday he’ll want to settle down,” says my sister, “and the longer you let it go the worse you’ll feel in the end.”

“I can’t imagine feeling much worse than this,” I mumble into my teacup.

“I know how to cheer you up! We’ll go to London tonight! You can travel all over the world again, just like you used to. We’ll have the time of our lives.”

I am fairly certain the time of our lives has passed long since, but I manage to refrain from saying so.

In good time night falls, the doorbell rings, and Vega answers it wearing that grotesque face that’s only a mask when she takes it off. I can hear Justin’s voice over the kiddies squealing on the lawn. Morven squeezes my hand before she gets up to brew us a fresh pot of tea. I hear two sets of footsteps coming through the dining room and I draw a deep breath.

To my surprise, his eyes light up when he sees me. “Mrs. Harbinger! How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you for asking, Justin. Will you—will you have a cup of tea?”

“Do sit down, Justin,” Morven says as she cuts a slice of ambrosia cake. “Vega has made your favorite. You did say chocolate spice cake was your favorite?”

“Oh yes, thanks very much,” he says, and tucks in with enthusiasm.

“It isn’t as good as Granny’s,” Vega says, blushing, and while this is true the cake is still awfully good.

With eyes sore and stinging I watch him eat, and a change comes over his face as he remembers his original purpose. “You said Eve isn’t here?” he asks once he’s swallowed. “Where is she?”

My sister puts a steaming cup in front of him. “There’s nothing in the world a cup of tea can’t make right. Drink up, dear. It’s cinnamon tea, very good for the digestion.” The teacup Morven gives him is the cup Helena used to give all the girls who came here looking for solace in the midst of their crumbling marriages, but it has no such effect on him.

“Thank you,” he says, “but you aren’t answering my question. Where is Eve? I’ve been calling her for weeks.”

“She’s … she’s gone away for a while.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“We—we’re not sure, exactly.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure? She just took off?”

“I—” I start to say, but Morven stomps on my toe.

“I’m very sorry, Justin, but she’s always been a capricious girl. We can only hope that in time she’ll grow up a bit.”

He stares at the floor. “I just don’t understand it. She’s—she’s broken up with me, without so much as an
e-mail?
Oh,” he says, laughing bitterly. “I forgot. Eve doesn’t have an e-mail account.”

“Not an e-mail,” I say as I push a small envelope across the table. “A letter.”

Dear Justin
,

You may be quite angry with me for taking off like this, and I suppose you have every right to be. We’ve had a
lovely time together over the past year, but it couldn’t possibly have lasted and I thought it best to end, as they say, on a high note. I’m not going to try to explain my reasons. All I can do is wish you a long and happy life and hope that when you do think of me on occasion, it’s with as much fondness as I will remember you
.

Love
,

Eve

It took me three hours to compose that letter, and by the time I was finished I had fulfilled that classic cliché: a wastepaper basket brimming with crumpled stationery.

He tosses the letter aside and kneads the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Suddenly he looks very tired. “How can she say she loves me and then do this? Explain it to me. You all know her better than anybody.”

“She also left you this.” I pull out a small box wrapped in brown paper and slide it across the table.

Without looking at me Justin tears off the wrapping, opens the box, and stares at the pocket watch. Then he drains his cup, sets it on the saucer, and fixes me with bright eyes. It’s a queer look, a deliberate look, almost as if he knows that I am hiding something. Oh, he
knows
we’re all hiding something; he’s a smart boy, after all. But it’s me he’s staring at, me he’s looking to for an answer. “Is she all right?” he asks me. “Is she safe, and happy?”

Happy—
hah!

Every Harbinger holds her breath, and for one long moment the kitchen is still as a morgue. Finally I manage a nod, and in a blink his demeanor has shifted from imploring to angry. We are the aiders and abettors of the only girl who has ever hurt him.

“Thank you for the cake,” he says stiffly as he tucks the letter and the box containing the watch into his inside coat pocket. Then he rises from his chair, pushes it neatly under the table, and walks out of the kitchen for the last time.

Once the front door has slammed behind him I lose all composure. I cry as if I’ve lost Jonah all over again. I cry and cry, and as they pat me on the shoulders my sister and nieces look at me with frightened eyes. Aren’t I supposed to be the fearless one, the one to whom all sentiment is a show of weakness?

Never mind what might have been
.

Carry on and carry out
.

Nostalgia poisons the present
.

What a load.