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Charles had gone into the diplomatic service and excelled. He had held high posts in many of the European capitals and, briefly, in Washington. His charming and intelligent American wife had always been an asset. All that information was public. When Lucas had first entered the service, he had found it difficult to keep total silence about his work, but over time it had become habit. Apart from anything else, he did not want to burden any of his family with the nature and secrecy of what he did, the kind of decisions he had had to make. The higher he rose in the service, the more discreet he had to be. Everyone knew that “loose lips sink ships,” and no one talked about troop movements, what was done in which factories, or any such subjects.
Josephine seemed to have grown tired of waiting for him. “Supper time, Toby!” she called cheerfully, and the dog sitting beside Lucas shot to his feet and pattered after her eagerly. He knew quite a large vocabulary of human words, and “supper” was prime among them. He followed so closely behind her that had she stopped, he would have bumped into her.
Lucas smiled and rose to his feet as well. He walked out slowly, past the bookcase that held all his favorites, the books he had read and reread. There was plenty of poetry, especially the more recent ones like Housman, Sassoon, and Chesterton. The ones that stayed in your heart. There was a very worn volume of Shakespeare, which if left to itself fell open to either Hamlet or Julius Caesar, and a Dante similarly well used, particularly Inferno. It was so appropriate.
If a man could only learn that you are punished not for the sin, but by it, and you thus become less than you could have been, how much that would change you.
What was also there—and he could not always bring himself to look—was a photograph of Mike, his only grandson. It was one Elena had taken, practicing her portraiture. He was nineteen, in army uniform, smiling out at the room. It was one of the last images taken of him, and it had caught his warmth and his optimism so well. It was hard to believe he would never come home.
Lucas went out this time without looking at the photograph, although that made no difference—he could see it in his mind, even with his eyes closed. He could remember Mike’s last leave. How he had enjoyed it so much, made the most of every hour, almost as if he knew he would not come back. But all men in wartime feel that. Everyone had lost friends, people they had grown up with, as well as new friends made in the horror and loneliness of war. It was a comradeship like no other. Mike had always told wild, silly jokes. He had been so intensely alive that Lucas found it hard to believe when the telegram came.
Did everybody feel this? The denial? The bewilderment? Then the long, slow pain of grief eating away at you? Eating away at the heart? The soul?
Margot had lost her husband in the same week, on the same battlefront. He could remember her face as if it was yesterday. That look came back again sometimes, when she thought no one was looking. Poor Margot, she was still lost in so many ways. There was nothing Lucas, or anyone else, could do. Elena had tried, as had Josephine. Even Charles, who had been so close to her.
Lucas reminded himself of these traumas as he went across the hall and up the stairs, because he needed to be patient with Charles, and with his son’s determination that there should never be another war like the last one. Other men should not mourn their children as he did. That was the only decent thing the war could give the next generation: the conviction that it should never happen again.
Lucas knew thousands of men who felt the same. There had to be another way, no matter what it cost. Those who had fought and returned felt it so deeply, one had only to look in their faces, in their eyes for any argument to die.
Charles had lost his only son. Lucas still had his, and whatever their differences, he must not quarrel. He must not for Josephine’s sake. She knew enough about war to think of it realistically. She had spent a lot of the time during those years working at a decoding center outside London. Lucas knew something of her work, though he could not share his own with her.
His friend Peter Howard was one of the few with whom he could speak openly, and they were still close. Howard was his one liaison with MI6 and the secrets he still knew, the actions he still contributed to. Technology had advanced, codes were mostly different, but human nature was the same, in its weaknesses and its strengths.
As Lucas prepared himself for the evening ahead he looked at his own face in the mirror: lean, aquiline, and, at first glance, ascetic. Only with a closer examination did one see the humor and a certain gentleness about the eyes.
* * *
—
Charles and Katherine arrived exactly on time, as Lucas had known they would. Katherine was a uniquely elegant woman, not quite beautiful but, better than that, full of character. She was a little taller than average, and very lean. She managed to make herself graceful, and to dress with individuality. Tonight she wore a long charcoal gray silk dress that was all soft lines, very flattering to her angularity. It looked completely effortless, but that, too, was one of her gifts.
She came in now with the cool evening breeze behind her. With a friendly greeting about the promise of an enjoyable evening, she smiled at Lucas and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He returned it, lightly, realizing that, as always, he had no idea what she was thinking, in spite of her words.
Charles was right behind her. “Evening, Father,” he said with a smile. He looked every bit the diplomat: graceful, immaculate, neat black mustache adding a dash to his face.
Lucas held the door wider. “Come in. How are you?”
Charles came into the hall, the men shook hands warmly, and Charles hugged Josephine. She hugged him back with sudden warmth, as if it surprised her how much she cared.
They went into the drawing room. The deep red and blue Turkish carpet had withstood a generation; the Dutch painting of a harbor scene, all in muted shades of blues and grays, had hung there longer than any of them could remember, almost like a window whose view never changed. There was an inner peace to it, a timelessness that governed everything else. The curtained French windows looked onto the garden, but even though it was May, they were closed now, islanding the room from the rest of the world, at least visually. Emotionally, it could not be done.
They had barely sat down when Charles began to speak of the most current news. “I know he’s a bit eccentric in his manner,” he said, referring, as they all knew, to Oswald Mosley. “But he’s the only one so far to grasp the nettle. We can’t go on spending like this. Hasn’t the Depression taught us anything? This is the last time in the world that we should think of rearming, let alone building more ships! We simply can’t afford it!”
“It would give employment to men desperately needing it,” Josephine pointed out. “The shipyards, in particular.”
“We don’t need warships, Mother,” Charles replied patiently. “The war is long over, and we have all realized that such a global disaster cannot ever be allowed to happen again.” His face was pinched. He could not even mention the word “war” without remembering the loss it had brought, not only to him personally, but to almost every man with whom he had been at school and university, every friend of his entire life.
Lucas ached for him. He understood his son with a recollection of grief that was bone deep, but he simply did not agree. He kept silent with difficulty. They would have one family dinner without the anger that lay barely below the surface of all their political disagreements.
Josephine regarded her son patiently. “It will be a little late to build them when we do need them,” she pointed out. “Shipbuilding takes a long time, and a lot of men.”
“And a lot of iron, steel, and other materials that could be far better used for houses, trains, or if you must build ships, for the Merchant Navy,” Charles responded. Without looking at Lucas, he went on, “You’re listening to Father, and he’s listening to Churchill.” He lowered his voice and made an obvious effort to take the sharp edge off it. “Churchill is finished, Mother. He’s yesterday’s man, with yesterday’s ideas. I know Mosley is a bit…vulgar, at times, but a lot of what he says is true. And look at what Mussolini has done for Italy! When you get the infrastructure right, the roads, trains, draining the marshes and building houses and factories, you get the people united and self-disciplined, you can achieve miracles.”
“It might work well for Italians—” Josephine began.
“It does work for them!” Charles insisted. “There’s no ‘might’ about it. Ask Margot when she gets back. She’ll tell you.”
“Or Elena…” Katherine suggested.
