The Impregnable Women Read online

  The Impregnable Women

  ERIC LINKLATER

  Contents

  1 The Crisis

  2 Arma Virosque Cano

  3 Councils of Mutiny

  4 The Shock

  5 The Love Siege

  6 The Last Battle

  7 Victory

  Chapter One

  The Crisis

  I

  A Couple of hours before the start of the bombardment, a young man called Julian Brown, who was a teacher of English in a Secondary School in Brixton, and lived in lodgings in Plotinus Road, was wakened by his landlady, who brought his breakfast on a tray and the Sunday papers. It was his habit and philosophy to live with all possible luxury, and though his salary was so small that his luxuries could be neither many nor impressive, they were sufficient to give him an air of superiority that most of his colleagues resented. They also gave him an appetite, which he could not satisfy, for other and more splendid luxuries.

  Getting out of bed, he brushed his hair with ivory brushes, and took from his wardrobe a yellow silk dressing-gown that he had bought in the rue du Quatre Septembre. He was a devoted Francophile, and had on several occasions enjoyed short holidays in Paris, the Loire district, and Chamonix. In a pocket of his yellow dressing-gown, which he had not worn for several weeks, he discovered, indeed, a relic of his last visit to France: a copy of Le Sourire, so folded that a page of small advertisements was on the outside. Ignoring both newspapers and breakfast tray, which his landlady had put on a small table in the window, he began to read for the fortieth time these curious announcements, and by one in particular his eyes were attracted and his imagination captured. It read:

  Spirituelle, raffinée, et sympathique, délicieuse blonde aux gds yeux noirs pleins de rêves troublants... Un adorateur heureux de connaître la magie des baisers, des caresses voluptueuses et exquises, peut lui écrire. Mlle Suzy, P.P., 43 Chaussée d’Antin.

  Where but in France, he thought, was delight in sensual love so honestly admitted and so capably expressed? Where but in France did the lover prize beauty for her wit, and where else did wit, among its other witticisms, devise the most exquisite caresses? Ah, France! Let other countries teach how this or that may most profitably and swiftliest be done; yours is the better part, the teaching how to live. Let other nations serve their neighbours; you, alone and always, will delight them . . . There could, in fact, be no doubt – or so it seemed to Julian – that the French were not only the most agreeable of people, but also the most sensible, the most truly cultured, and the most deserving of England’s friendship and admiration.

  It was therefore with great displeasure that he discovered in the morning’s news, when he had settled down to his breakfast and the papers, that England, by the agency of certain financiers, had just acted in a way that might easily give offence to her dearest neighbour. It was announced that a loan of £50,000,000, for cultural and educational development in Germany, had successfully been floated in the City of London.

  The Observer, in which Julian read this unwelcome news, was careful to explain that the loan had, of course, no political significance. It was not anticipated, said the report, that even the most suspicious of foreign critics could suppose there was any connexion between it and – for example – the current crisis. There had been, as it happened, no less than three successive crises in as many weeks, and the papers, according to their several tempers, were either desperately calm or hysterically agitated.

  In the first week of July an Australian journalist called Ferret had been killed in Moscow in mysterious circumstances. The people of Russia, of their own free will, had recently demonstrated their loyalty and solidarity in a remarkable fashion; they had offered as a personal tribute to Stalin a year’s income, if they were urban workers, and the year’s crop if they were peasants. This gesture had been much admired, until Ferret revealed that some forty thousand urban workers, and rather more than that number of peasants, had been liquidated in order to make it really spontaneous, and that the nation’s gift was now being rigorously collected by the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Ferret was given twenty-four hours in which to leave Russia, and during that time he was unfortunately assassinated. It had been proved beyond doubt, however, that his murderer was insane, and had no more connexion with the Government than any other member of the Secret Police. The Soviet Government, indeed, expressed profound regret for what was a most unfortunate accident; and their apology was somewhat grudgingly accepted. But the affair had created a bad impression, and some of the newspapers had gone so far as to demand that diplomatic relations with Russia be immediately broken off.

  A week later, the Italians, having newly signed with other powers a non-intervention pact in respect of the small civil war that was raging in Rumania, had permitted Bucharest to be bombarded by twenty-two Savoia-Marchetti aeroplanes that carried, in addition to their bombs, the Italian colours. By certain rather doctrinaire observers, this was held to be an infringement of their promised neutrality.

  And thirdly Herr Hitler, whose energy the years had nowise diminished, had again startled the world, and France in particular, with a tendentious speech. Since the alleged theophany at Berchtesgaden in 1971 his manner had become increasingly Messianic, and he had shown a curious fondness for Israelitish metaphor. He had more than once mysteriously referred to the fact that Moses, or Mosheh – one who leads or draws – was merely the Egyptian for Führer; and he persistently spoke of the land of Canaan. In his latest speech it became evident that Canaan was bounded on the west by the Bay of Biscay, on the east by the river Dnieper; and the whole of France was roused to indignation by this immoderate geography. In Paris several people were killed when a gigantic demonstration of protest – called by no less a body than the Institute – came into collision with rival processions, equal in size and as patriotically angry, summoned by Catholic and Communist organizations.

  French fears, moreover, had hardly been allayed by a pronouncement of Sir Joseph Rumble, the British Foreign Secretary. The accumulated gravity of the situation had been recognized – and even, it was hoped, dispelled – by a statement broadcast by him as spokesman for the British Government. It was officially understood that he had promised that Britain would stand by all her commitments. Actually he had said: ‘We desire peace, and come what may we shall continue to desire it. But we would hardly be accounted wise if we were to purchase peace at a price which would invalidate the rewards of peace; and though I may safely say that this country will never lightly disregard the mutuality of its obligations – should we be confronted with the alternative of military action or seeming acquiescence in a war of apparently unprovoked aggression – yet I repeat, what I have so often said before, that our policy is and must be, in the largest and most generous interpretation of the term, a matter of accountancy. Nevertheless, our word is pledged, and should an act of aggression be proved against any nation subject to, or acquiescing in, such judgement, then the world may rest assured that this country will view such an act with its most grave displeasure.’

  This statement was ill-received in France, and the Matin declared that a far sterner warning was needed to make insensate Germany pause. The Écho de Paris went further, and said that all France would deplore so bald an admission that England’s policy now, as always, was nothing more than self-preservation. In vain had France fought so long her noble and unselfish battle for Peace and Liberty and the Democratic Principle; she need no longer look to England either for help or sympathy, but must depend on her own strength, and draw closer to her great ally, Russia....

  In these circumstances, thought Julian, it was monstrous that a few bankers and other financiers in London had been allowed to lend Germany so large a sum of money as £50,000,000. A representative of the group, Mr Cyril Mordecai, had explained that the loan was made in the ordinary course of international business. But would France believe that? The French, despite their many good qualities, were inclined to a rather tiresomely logical interpretation of events. They were apt to believe that deliberate actions were not wholly meaningless, and they nearly always took a serious view of financial operations. Would they accept Mr Mordecai’s assertion that sums of £50,000,000 travelled insignificantly across the continent in the normal course of international business? It seemed very unlikely.

  The succession of crises had been taken more seriously in France than anywhere else. It was reported that M. Blum – breaking the silence which traditionally surrounds a President – had solemnly stated that France, now wholly and deliberately isolated, was surrounded by enemies; and certainly this belief, though it might have been incorrectly attributed to M. Blum, was fairly general in Paris, where the atmosphere was by turns infected with prodigious gloom and bellicose excitement.

  Much perturbed by the indiscretion of Mr Mordecai and his friends, Julian paid little attention to the rest of the day’s news, and failed to see a small paragraph that described a shipping mishap at Toulon.

  The Araby, a British ship of 5,600 tons, had collided with a French destroyer and then rammed the breakwater. Both vessels had sunk, and were lying in the fairway in such a position as to endanger incoming traffic. The Araby had been leaving port about nine o’clock on Saturday night, and the destroyer had been inward bound. There had been, it was feared, considerable loss of life, and the captain of the Araby, Mr Peter McCombie, of Leith, was under arrest. He was very angry when arrested, and had assaulted the police so violently that two of them had required medical treatment. The Press Associ
ation stated that Captain McCombie was alleged to have been drunk at the time.

  II

  The motionless sunny air was already tainted with a little smell of urban heat, and Plotinus Road, as always on a Sunday morning, was quiet and peaceful in a sort of yawning emptiness. There was neither traffic on the road nor hurrying people on the pavement; but under his window Julian could see half a dozen attentive children. They were patiently staring at the house opposite, which for the last three days had been the object of unusual and almost national interest. Rose Armour was there, watching by the bedside of her dying mother.

  Not for many years had an English actress been so well loved in England or so highly esteemed in the more critical atmosphere of America. She had become famous at the age of eighteen, when she had been given a small part in a poor comedy at the Garrick Theatre. She had little to do. She had to laugh and be kissed. But so infectious was her laughter that half the house joined in, and a moment later, being most casually kissed, she had kissed in return, quick and passionate, with such ardour in the movement that half the house felt, as though it were an electric shock, the full force of young love. She had become the chief attraction in the play, and by prolonging its unworthy life had conclusively demonstrated her talent by saving for its backers a considerable sum of money. But her career on the legitimate stage had been short, for it was soon discovered that she had a charming voice, and thereafter her public had preferred to see and hear her in musical pieces.

  She had also acted for the films, and in the cinema her success had been as immediate as in the theatre. Unlike the great majority of cinema actors, she had resisted the flattening effect of her new medium, and her playing was so lively that many of her more simple admirers used to say, ‘She comes right out of the picture and sits in your lap’. Her vitality was irrepressible, her physical charm more than sufficient, and she never forgot, or was tempted to conceal, her humble birth. Now, when she was world-famous and exceedingly rich, she had come rushing home at the first words of her mother’s illness, and because her mother had always refused to leave the little house in Plotinus Road –to her mother, indeed, since she had stopped the taking of lodgers, it seemed a house of extravagant dimensions – Rose Armour had returned to its narrow rooms, and might have been happy enough had it not been for the nearness of death.

  At her arrival, and for some little time after it, the street had been crowded with reporters, press photographers, and the general public. But Rose had pleaded for quietness, for her mother’s sake, and now she was visited only twice a day by half a dozen of the most tactful newspaper-men in London, and the street had emptied of all her clamorous warm-hearted admirers except the obstinate children of the neighbourhood, whom no human power could keep away.

  To Julian Brown her coming had been unusually disturbing. In the privacy of his own mind he admitted without shame that he wanted above all things to be a great lover. To go with splendid ease from this proud mistress to her who was more gay, from one who was spirituelle et raffinée to another whose grands yeux noirs shone with a melting warmth; there surely was the top of luxury and the very heat of the sun. But now the nearness of Rose Armour had driven all his other dreams away, and he curiously resented this enforced fidelity that put him on the same level as half the love-sick hobbledehoys in Britain. Despite his passion, he regretted his lost freedom, his heroic and never-achieved promiscuity; and once, essaying to break the spell, he had with a reddened face refused to look at Rose when they happened to pass in the street. But in truth it mattered very little whether he looked at her or not. Her image was too clearly fixed upon his mind to need renewal.

  Having finished his breakfast, Julian took from his wardrobe a uniform tunic and a Sam Browne belt, and began to polish brass and buttons and the already gleaming leather. He was a lieutenant in a Territorial battalion of Royal Fusiliers, and this Sunday was the occasion of their annual Church Parade. His colleagues, at the school where he taught, disapproved of Julian’s military enthusiasm, for most of them were inclined to a pacifist doctrine and Left-wing politics. But Julian appreciated the sensation of power that he had when his commands were instantly obeyed by tall and disciplined men in uniform – by tautly attentive men who marched and turned or stood immobile at his word – and he knew that war, if it came, would produce other excitements than those of the battlefield. War was a moral laxative of the strongest kind, and one who was fighting his country’s battles, if he avoided being killed in them, might well become a great lover in the intervals of sterner service. He would also have the profound satisfaction of fighting for France; most probably on the very soil of France. For England, of course, would be on the French side.

  The uniform suited him. He had a good figure and carried himself well. His long thin jaw and high-bridged nose had a very soldierly appearance under his service cap, and his uniform, which had cost more than he could properly afford, was as smart as that of any Regular officer.

  And how excellent it was, he thought, to wear a sword! It had been the proudest of all weapons, and though it might now be regarded as little more than an ornament, it was still the most gallant of ornaments. No one who carried a sword was not ennobled by it. He wished that Rose Armour could see him, no longer a schoolmaster, but an officer with a sword at his side.

  III

  The auxiliary ketch Freya, with her sky-darting white Bermuda sails and shapely hull, made a charming picture on the ruffled blue water of the Channel. There was a light south-westerly breeze, and she was reaching easily, with St Catherine’s Point about three miles on her starboard quarter. Sailing the boat was her owner, Colonel Scrymgeour, lately in command of the 2nd Grenadier Guards and now Deputy Director of Military Operations and Intelligence; and with him in the cockpit were his wife, Lady Lysistrata, and Mr Eliot Greene, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

  In appearance they were distinguished – and oddly distinguished – by very striking and curiously dissimilar features. The Colonel had a flat Mongolian countenance, with heavy eyelids and a broad and heavy mandible; Mr Eliot Greene was Latin and loquacious, dark and aquiline, with raven hair and brilliant eyes; and Lady Lysistrata might have sat as a model to Praxiteles. Her Grecian features were inherited from her great-great-grandmother: after playing a notable part in the defence of Missolonghi, her great-great-grandfather, the eccentric third Marquis of Lovenden, had married an Acarnanian peasant girl.

  For some time the pleasant sounds of sailing – the soft shearing hiss of cloven water and the returning melody of the little bow-wave – were uninterrupted by speech. The day was very fine, a tempered sunlight being enclosed by distant haze, and the circumstances favoured peaceful contemplation rather than gossip or debate.

  But presently Lady Lysistrata, whose active mind was proof against any environment, turned to Mr Eliot Greene, and said, ‘Oughtn’t you to have stayed in London, Eliot? And wouldn’t you have stayed if you had any sense of responsibility?’

  ‘I have a very definite sense of responsibility,’ he answered, ‘but I have taught it not to diffuse itself.’

  ‘You mean you can leave it in a pigeon-hole and forget about it. But who’s in charge, if anything happens during the week-end? The Prime Minister and Rumble are both at Loven Bister, and I don’t believe there’s a Minister left in town.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, Lysistrata. The political prophet is less certain than the meteorologist, and even the best of depressions can tumble off its isobar. There’s time enough to put up your umbrella when it starts to rain.’

  ‘I think,’ said Colonel Scrymgeour reflectively, ‘that I’ll try out the new Genoa.’

  ‘There are occasions,’ said Lysistrata with unfriendly vehemence, ‘when I come to the conclusion that masculine authority is always either cynical or incompetent; and often it is both together.’

  ‘That sounds well, but it isn’t true. Tony, for instance, is most decidedly not a cynic, and his competence is notorious.’

  ‘If you’re in the Army, it isn’t very difficult to get a reputation for competence. Even a cripple looks fairly fast where everyone else is bedridden,’ said Lady Lysistrata.