Someone at Freddy’s paper made the necessary travel arrangements and Beryl told Libby not to worry about missing the start of term. ‘You must go to Freddy in his hour of need,’ she’d said, like a character in the aunts’ romantic novels.
Hugo was less understanding. They met in the woods, walked to what Libby thought of as their bench, and she told him that she had to go to Paris to collect her injured husband.
There was something perfect and beautiful about Hugo’s fury. The way his jaw clenched and a vein at his temple suddenly bulged. He lit a cigarette with abrupt, jerky movements – not offering her one as he usually did.
‘I forbid you to go,’ he said in a clipped voice. His Mr Watkins voice. ‘I absolutely forbid it, Elizabeth.’
Secretly, his words thrilled Libby. He might have bought them a house so they could have a life together, she was having his child, but it seemed to her that he’d been slightly distant ever since he’d come back from Aldeburgh. Now, however, his ire was up at the thought of Libby with another man, even though the other man was Freddy.
Libby had often wished for someone to look out for her, to have her best interests at heart, but ever since her parents had died, she’d had no choice but to rely on only herself. Truth be told, there were times she rather enjoyed being independent so no one, not even Hugo, was going to clip her wings.
‘I’m a grown woman,’ she said sharply. ‘You can forbid me all you want and flare your nostrils and beetle your brow, but I will do as I please.’
‘You can’t go haring off halfway across the world —’ Hugo stopped as Libby scoffed at the ridiculous suggestion that Paris was halfway across the world. ‘What about the baby? A woman in your condition should be resting.’
Libby didn’t think that her condition meant that she needed to be confined until the baby arrived, but Hugo did have a point. She was only just starting to feel better and spending a day on trains and boats was always tiring for some reason. ‘I promised Millicent. He’s been shot, Hugo. And in the eyes of the law, we, Freddy and I, are married.’
‘Then the eyes of the law need spectacles,’ Hugo muttered. ‘He left you, Libby. Left you high and dry when you needed him the most.’
‘I’m not likely to forget that. Let’s not argue.’ Libby tucked her arm through his and rested her head on Hugo’s shoulder, glancing up at his face to see if he still looked angry. ‘Besides, with Freddy back in London, weakened by injury and utterly shamed that I didn’t leave him high and dry, he’s really in no position to argue about the divorce.’
Libby had expected Hugo to be pleased, but he hmmmed in a sceptical manner, then took out another cigarette. ‘Perhaps,’ he acquiesced, which was just as well because Libby was going to Paris and there was little he could do to stop her. ‘Let’s see how things settle when you’re back from your jaunt.’
When Libby arrived at Victoria station it was heaving with young men and not so young men all bound for Spain to take up arms against the Nationalists.
Libby couldn’t help but feel, as she hurried after the porter who she’d charged with carrying her case because Hugo had been quite insistent about that, they were doing the Nationalists a favour. Most of them looked like the pale, doughy men that Freddy had kicked around with, who’d only been adept at skipping out when it was their turn to buy a round of drinks, and would be useless in armed combat.
But that was men for you. Always spoiling for a fight.
The porter handed Libby and her case into the right carriage. Libby couldn’t imagine that any of the Fascist-fighting hordes would be travelling first class, but she’d only just settled herself into a window seat when the door opened and two men entered in a flurry of luggage, booming voices and pipe smoke.
Neither of them appeared to notice Libby as they went about putting their bags on the rack above the seats and discussing some fellow called Simmons who apparently needed to be hung out to dry, but then they sat down and one of them, a tall, stout man not that much older than Libby, dipped his head.
‘This must be Morton’s wife,’ he announced to the other man as if there was absolutely no reason to address his enquiry to Libby herself. ‘Damn fool, getting himself shot like that. Still, worked out rather well for me.’
Freddy was a damn fool but Libby wasn’t going to have a complete stranger, and such a rude one at that, cast aspersions on him.
‘I’m Elizabeth Morton,’ she said icily. ‘And I’ll thank you to keep any remarks about my husband to yourself, thank you very much.’
The man had a florid, round, beaver-like face – his front teeth looked as if they could be put to better use gnawing logs. It was the kind of smug, self-satisfied face that Libby quite longed to punch.
‘Chivers,’ he said, not the least bit chastened. ‘Off to Spain to replace Morton. This is Maxwell. Takes pictures.’
The other man couldn’t have been any older than twenty-five but he managed to give the impression that his top lip was curling in derision even when his face was in repose. He nodded briefly in Libby’s direction then the two men resumed their conversation as a whistle blew and the train moved off with a clumsy lurch.
Chivers and Maxwell yapped like two old women all the way to Dover. Even worse, Chivers puffed away on his pipe while Maxwell chain-smoked Turkish cigarettes, their scent acrid at the back of Libby’s throat.
‘… of course what’s happening in Spain is merely a dress rehearsal for what will come.’
‘Goes without saying. Herr Hitler has his fat sausage fingers in several of Franco’s pies.’
Libby had planned to spend the journey knitting a layette for the baby but she felt sicker and sicker, her head aching from the smoke and their incessant chatter. As the train finally pulled into Dover station, they were still busy extolling the virtues of Communism from the comfort of their first class seats and the air in the carriage was a fug.
It was a relief to leave the train and board the boat. Not surprisingly, Chivers regarded himself as an expert in Channel tides as well as world events. ‘A smooth crossing,’ he decided, even though any fool could look at the sea, only the faintest ripples disturbing the surface, and would have arrived at the same conclusion.
Libby found a seat on the deck. The fresh air, the tang of sea salt, would do her the world of good. Anything to get away from all those men smoking foul-smelling things who never stopped talking, as if their opinions counted for nothing unless they were being aired frequently and at great volume.
The sound of a horn almost frightened the wits out of her and then they were on their way, England at the rear, France too far in front of them to be anything more than a suggestion when she squinted her eyes and looked at the far horizon.
‘Fancy some company, love?’ Libby swivelled her head to see a shabby fellow, who looked as if he’d slept in his clothes, about to sit down next to her. ‘Can’t have you being lonely.’
‘Oh, do go away,’ she snapped, brandishing her handbag in front of her. ‘I’d like to be quiet. Is that too bloody much to ask?’
He called her a bitch as he shuffled off and Libby didn’t care. Only cared that she felt even more awful in the fresh air than she had in the stuffy train carriage. Could feel her stomach lurching in rhythm with the listing of the ship.
Oh, Lord, no! Libby struggled to her feet and just made it to the railings before she was unspeakably ill. One hand clinging to her hat, her handbag dangling in the crook of her other arm as she all but hurled herself over the side of the ship again and again and again and —
‘Mrs Morton! Whatever’s the matter? Sea’s as smooth as a millpond. I have to say, Maxwell, I’ve never met a woman who was a good traveller.’
‘Do shut up, Chivers. Go and get the poor woman a nip of brandy, will you?’
Then someone was removing her hatpin, taking off her hat, relieving Libby of her handbag, then finally and soothingly rubbing circles on her back. ‘Oh God, I’m not sure if I want to die of shame or nausea,’ Libby managed to moan.
Maxwell chuckled. ‘I’m sure you’ll die of neither and there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. My mother can’t go more than half a mile in a car before she’s indisposed.’
It took at least another ten minutes until Libby could be guided to a seat. Maxwell was waiting with a glass of soda water, which Libby gratefully took. When she’d drunk half of it, she poured the brandy Maxwell had managed to procure into the glass.
‘Thank you,’ she said a little stiffly. ‘You’re very kind.’
Maxwell waved her words away. ‘No trouble at all. You’re very pale, Mrs Morton. Here, I begged a blanket off a steward. Let’s tuck you up. You’ll feel right as rain in no time.’
Now that she no longer felt so terrible, Libby was seized with worry for the baby. Hugo had been right – a woman in her condition had no business haring off to France like this.
But she wasn’t in any pain. She no longer felt queasy, even her headache abated after she’d drunk most of the brandy and soda and had a cigarette.
‘You really don’t have to stay with me, I’m perfectly fine now,’ she told Chivers and Maxwell, but they insisted on keeping her company. Maxwell went off to get more brandy and some crackers and they talked about Freddy. How much everyone liked him, what a tremendous writer he was and how it was a damned shame that he was pulling out of Spain, but it would be wonderful for Libby to have him back home with her.
Libby refused to be drawn, but once they’d disembarked and were settled in another first class compartment, Chivers and Maxwell kept her entertained with absolutely scurrilous stories about the King and Mrs Simpson. It turned out that Wallis Simpson would no sooner be Queen of England than Libby would. Not when she had a high-ranking Nazi lover on the side. And especially not when she’d enslaved the King, who Libby had always said had a weak face, with a trick called the Chinese Grip that she’d picked up in a Shanghai brothel.
The three of them shared a taxi to a hotel in the fourteenth arrondissement where the newspaper had booked rooms for them all, including Freddy, though neither Maxwell nor Chivers knew if his train from Perpignan had arrived at Gare Austerlitz yet or what state he might be in.
‘Hopefully he’s lucid,’ Maxwell said cheerfully as their taxi pulled up outside a small, elegant hotel with a doorman who looked at them and their cases with a studied disdain. ‘Meant to give me the lie of the land before we set off for Spain.’
Libby had an image of a sweaty, feverish Freddy, his wound leaking and infected, thrashing around on sweat-damp sheets, but when she introduced herself as Madame Morton to the disapproving-looking woman behind the reception desk, she was greeted with a torrent of unhappy invective.
‘Monsieur Morton est déjà ici. Il dérangé tous mes clients avec son bruit infernal. Si égoïste!’
Libby could barely follow what the woman was saying but as she was shown to the elevator – evidently she didn’t warrant the attentions of the porter – she imagined Freddy’s feverish shouts and moans going unanswered just because he’d had the audacity to disturb the other residents. So she was quite surprised to hear the frantic clackety-clack of a typewriter being hammered by impatient hands when she reached the door of his room.
She knocked on the door, but her rapping was no match for the drumming of the keys and if Freddy was typing he was hardly on his deathbed, Libby thought exasperatedly, because he was absolutely exasperating. She opened the door and there he was; hunched over his typewriter, which was sitting on a small escritoire. He had a cigarette clamped between his teeth, a tumbler of whisky stood next to the pile of small black notebooks that he favoured and he’d discarded his shirt in favour of sitting in his vest like a navvy.