Summerland

17 QUO VADIS, 30TH NOVEMBER 1938

After leaving the Blue Dog, Rachel found a telephone box, reached Joe at his club, booked them a table for a late dinner at Quo Vadis on Dean Street, and went home to change before heading to the restaurant.

She decided on just a trace of makeup and a blue dress she knew Joe liked. The restaurant itself was part of the plan: a public place would make it harder for him to run away when they got to the difficult topics. Besides, the Modernist pastel-coloured mosaic windows were glorious, a grid of green, salmon and orange.

She sat at the table alone and waited, a little cold, rubbing her bare arms.

‘Madam? Would you like an aperitivo while you wait?’ The maître d’—a small, neat Italian man—had appeared from somewhere,

‘Hm? No, no thank you. Not right now. Maybe later.’

Truthfully, she was desperate for a drink, but her empty stomach was so tense she felt like she had swallowed an ice cube. Instead she waited, played with the edge of the flawless white tablecloth and thought about what she was going to say.

The problem was that Joe never talked about the war.

It was always there, from the first time they met: a secret whose presence she could sense with an interrogator’s instinct. Against her nature, she left it alone. They shared an understanding of the things that did not need to be said. It was enough to exchange a smile or a glance that said look how ridiculous this world is.

She even knew when he was going to propose, possibly before he did himself. It was a low-key thing. They were walking along a windswept Atlantic beach in France and huddled behind a rocky outcropping when he produced a ring from his pocket, cradled it in his palm like a child who had found a pretty rock in the sand.

‘I have been thinking we should make this more permanent,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

She said yes, and he hollered, threw her down onto the sand with a rugby tackle that made her whoop as well. The sand got everywhere.

The wedding was small. Rachel wanted to hire a medium for her mother to attend but Joe refused, and that was their first fight.

‘Maybe an Edison doll if you insist,’ he said flatly. ‘But no mediums.’ Eventually, she gave in. Her mother claimed she did not mind, but thereafter she pointedly ignored Joe whenever he tried to say hello during Rachel’s weekly ectophone calls.

They gradually got to know each other over the next three years. A trickle of small things they shared, usually after they made love or during long walks around the Serpentine. Rachel told him about the early years in India, and always feeling cold when she came to England. How she tried to fit in at the Court. Joe talked about playing rugby for England. How he got into flying, during an off-season when he was looking for a rush and found that he loved looking at the world from above.

But he never, ever said anything about the war. And when she lost the baby, there were suddenly two things they could not talk about, two large stones that filled the empty space in every conversation.

Maybe in the past few weeks, she had made things worse by adding a third.

* * *

Joe arrived a few minutes late. He was in full dress uniform, khaki and medals, clean-shaven, hair freshly cut. He looked better than he had for months, and if not for the grey in his hair, he could have stepped out of the day they first met.

He gave Rachel a curt nod and sat down.

‘Was there a reunion at the club?’ she asked. ‘It’s that—well, you look jolly dashing.’

Joe’s face was set. ‘No. I will tell you later. Let’s get a drink.’

Cava materialised, and they drank it in silence. It tickled Rachel’s belly. Then she reached across the table and took Joe’s hand. He leaned back in his chair, but Rachel did not let go. She had to do it now, before she lost her resolve, before they fell back into their old pattern again like two gramophone needles in their own grooves.

‘Joe, I know things have not been right. We both know why, I think. I thought we could … we could come out, somewhere different, somewhere nice, and, well, talk about it.’

‘Rachel, I … Oh, Hell. Is talking really going to solve anything? What happened was my fault. Both with the baby, and … that night, when you brought the finches. Just let me live with it, will you?’

‘Joe, you can’t just take the blame like that. The baby, it was … all normal, until it wasn’t. Maybe if I had been more careful, it wouldn’t have—’ Her voice caught. She closed her eyes. ‘Silly me. I brought us here so I would not cry.’

Joe patted her hand. ‘It’s all right, now. It’s all right.’

She kept her eyes shut for a while and heard Joe giving the waiter their orders. Later, she had no idea what they were. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle.

‘I don’t know what happened, not with you, and not with me, the other night. I’m not a doctor. But I am pretty sure it had more to do with me than you, both times.’

‘That is not true. Maybe … if you said something about it. What happened. What they did to you. It would help me. Help us.’

Joe said nothing for a while.

‘We’ve been through this before. It would be unfair to the lads, Rachel,’ he said finally.

‘I’m not one of them. But I comprehend duty, you know I do. Maybe I could understand.’

‘I really hope you do, Rachel.’ He sighed. ‘I really hope you do. There is something I was going to tell you tonight anyway. I re-enlisted. It sounds like there is going to be a pretty good scrap in Spain. A lot of the lads at the club were raring to go, and so I thought, why not? And to be honest, I think it is best for both of us if I stay away from you for a while.’

Rachel covered her mouth with a hand. She felt the vertigo from the Tower again, a black abyss opening before her, except this time she was already falling.

‘Joe. Please don’t,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not safe. There is—’

There is a traitor helping the Soviets. She bit her lip. She wanted to come clean about Bloom, about Max, about their operation. But there was no telling what he would do, what he would think. In many ways, they did live in different countries, with different languages, with glass walls between them.

In the end, the lifelong habit of not sharing secrets won.

‘There is what?’ he asked after she remained silent for several breaths.

‘I just know it won’t go well. From something I heard at work.’

‘There are always rumours, Rachel. In any case, I can hardly withdraw now. Would make me look like a bounder. Bad for the old morale.’

‘It’s something else, it’s—’

‘Hush,’ Joe said. ‘Coming here was a good idea. But I think it is better if we don’t try to say too much. I am not stupid, Rachel. I know there is something going on with you. I am not about to judge. I … when things were really bad, I visited some places, in the East End, where you can … well. Aetheric love, they call it. I thought it would make the nightmares go away. It didn’t help, though. I am more sorry than I can say, Rachel.’

The jealousy fluttered in its cage in her breast, and she looked away. So it had been that, as she’d suspected: ectoplasm fantasies, nothing real. It still made her skin crawl.

‘I’m sure it didn’t,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to know about that.’

‘And I don’t need to know about your … work. Or whatever it is.’

Maybe he would understand, Rachel thought. She pushed against the glass wall as hard as she could.

‘It is not what you think it is, Joe. It really isn’t. Let me explain what has been happening—’

Joe held up a hand. ‘It makes no difference to me, really. I am going anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to.’

‘Joe, I need to understand why. Aetheric love I think I can just about live with, given time. But going away to a war, away from me—that is different. I deserve an explanation. And I might understand more than you think. I was a nurse for a while, remember? I saw injured people. But I’ve never understood what could have hurt you so badly you must keep it from me.’

Joe said nothing. He turned his cap in his hands and put it down. He ordered more wine and emptied his glass. Their first course arrived. Joe stared at the scallops on his plate and cautiously ate one, then put his fork down.

‘All right, Rachel. All right, then.’

* * *

It took Joe a while to get to it. He talked slowly at first, about joining up, being shipped to France. Rachel held her breath as emotions from old memories played across his face like images from a magic lantern. She said nothing, only made small noises to egg him on, practically held her breath so as not to stem the flood of words.

‘It felt ridiculous at first,’ Joe said, ‘wearing those contraptions. I did better than some of the lads: I was fit enough to carry it and walk. They did not work very well. One boy from Kent got electrocuted. I saw some films of the early experiments. One showed some poor bastard with ectoplasm pouring out of him but no control, flailing around, smashing the lab until they shot him in the head.

‘We all got Tickets, of course—all soldiers did—but it was early days, we were still afraid. The officers would try to get the boys to charge across minefields, but it just led to more fear. The ectophones were poor, things did not work so smoothly in Summerland back then, and in any case we had all kinds of ideas about the place because we did not know any better. So there the soldiers all sat, in the trenches, in a stalemate.

‘And that was where we came in, the ectotroops, tanks and flyers. I was always sensitive, even as a child, but only a little bit. Sometimes I would have this funny sensation, like a tickle in the back of my head, and see people who were not there, and crazy lights. But that was it.

‘The first time they switched the armour on—’ He shook his head. ‘You feel this fist squeezing your head and everything goes cold, a bit like those ice-cream headaches you get as a child, but all over your brain. Then … it comes. A door opens. You are … throwing up, but the stuff that spews out becomes a part of you, makes you bigger, taller. You feel like you can do anything. Some of the lads grew giant legs and the tendrils—well, you have seen them. Some were more like giant beasts made of ectoplasm, or spiders scuttering through the trenches.

‘As for me, I liked to make wings so I could fly. That was the only good part. If I had known what happened to our victims, the sources, I don’t think I would have done it. But they only told us that the Huns we killed would die and go to Summerland, as per usual. It wasn’t until our first proper scrap that we found out for ourselves how it really worked. And once we had a taste of it, it was too late to stop.’

Joe refilled his glass, drained it and took a deep breath. Rachel stared at him. She had seen the newsreels, of course, and had a vague notion of how ectoplasmic weapons worked, but had simply assumed they were powered by the energy released when a soul left a dying body. Horrific, but no more so than poison gas or artillery. Only it sounded like that was not the whole story.

Finally, Joe continued.

‘Those poor Hun kids. They died twice, first on the battlefield and then we fed on their souls until only the soul-stones were left.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Sometimes they even got us going with some of our own boys. Deserters, usually. That was the worst part.’

Rachel had heard rumours that ‘primers’ had been required for ectotanks before battle, soldiers sacrificed to power the weapons, but it was a different thing to hear it from Joe. And if they completely annihilated enemy souls—that went completely against the Dimensionists’ claims of humane warfare. She felt incandescent anger, suddenly. It would cause a scandal if it ever got out. Maybe it needed to get out.

‘That is one reason you never talked about it, isn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘You were told to keep quiet.’

Joe looked ashamed. ‘We all agreed that you could never understand it if you weren’t there. It was the only way out of that hell of mud and guts and worse—what else were we supposed to do?’

‘I am not judging you, Joe. Thank you for telling me. Please go on.’

‘The other reason I never talk about the war is I don’t remember that much. You get lost in the flood when the souls come. There is this rush, like the best rugby match I ever played times ten, running forward, getting in a scrum, wrestling away the ball. And the noise, the gunshots, this howl that fills you. Here, back home, it is always too quiet. And I feel so weak. This is probably what it’s like to be a ghost. Everything just passes through you.’

‘You never seemed like a ghost to me,’ Rachel said. ‘Stay here. You don’t have to go back to all that.’

‘Rachel, I do. Not for our boys, not for duty. But because I miss it. Because it’s too hard without it.’

Rachel stared at him. His eyes were red. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

‘There you have it,’ he said.

She tried to feel sorry for him, tried to understand this had been done to him, he could not help it. But he was still choosing war over her.

The main course, braised veal, sat untouched between them, getting cold. The smell made Rachel nauseous.

She had thought herself so clever, so very modern, persuading him to open up, to talk about his emotions. Just because a traitor had tricked her into feeling better about herself. She had been a fool.

She stood up and flung her napkin to the floor.

‘No, I won’t have it,’ she shouted. ‘I will not have it. It’s not fair.’

A soft muttering spread across the tables as the other diners turned to look at her.

‘Rachel, please, sit down,’ Joe said in hushed tones.

She could barely look at him. But she could not bear to storm out, with everyone looking. Avoiding that had been the whole point.

She took a deep breath and sat back down.

‘This is what I was afraid of, Rachel,’ Joe said. ‘It’s why I didn’t want to tell you.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘Wednesday next week. I can stay at the club until then.’

I don’t want you to, Rachel wanted to say, but the words did not come out. She picked at the edge of the tablecloth again.

‘It’s no trouble, really,’ Joe said. He was putting up a brave front now. ‘I’ll come by and say goodbye before I go.’

Joe spoke to the maître d’ quietly, apologising for the disturbance, slipped him a note, paid the bill and left. Rachel sat alone, surrounded by untouched food. In spite of the candlelight and conversation inside, the mosaic window looked dull and dark.

* * *

A drowsy, half-dressed Susi let Rachel into Max Chevalier’s flat half an hour later. Most of the animals were asleep and Rachel waited in the freezing conservatory while the girl sent an ectomail to Max, who was somewhere in the Summer City.

Finally, Susi wheeled in the Edison doll.

‘I met with Bloom today,’ Rachel said, without preamble. ‘The situation has changed. Tell me: if we give Bloom something, chickenfeed, whatever, how confident are you that we can track him to a meeting with his handler?’

‘In all honesty, it is difficult to say,’ Max replied. ‘He could be using dead drops. We will watch him, of course, but it will be hard to get evidence unless we actually catch him with a handler. It will have to be something big, something urgent, something that requires an in-person meeting. But you really should calm down, Mrs White. Has something happened?’

Rachel took a deep breath. She had not stopped to think and did not want to stop now. What mattered was preventing Bloom from doing anything that would prolong the situation in Spain.

She had never thought it possible to be jealous of war.

‘It’s Spain. We can’t wait any longer. The stakes are too high. Bloom asked me for a file from the Registry. What I want is a plan to collar him if he gets it.’

‘Mrs White, this is most unwise. You want him to trust you. If we act too quickly, all our work will be for nothing. You don’t want to short-circuit the process, believe me.’

‘Bloom is under pressure. You said it yourself. He is desperate for this file, I know it.’

‘Are you sure there isn’t something else affecting your judgement? I hate to suggest this and contradict myself, but if there is a Summer Court investigation going on, should we not consider working with them?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘As soon as there is even a hint that the target might be Bloom, the investigation will be shut down from above, just like what happened to me. No, we have to get evidence. Besides, I told you—I don’t trust Roger.’

The Edison doll’s eyes were unreadable.

‘Very well, Mrs White. There is a stage where the agent’s instincts must take over. I will get my teams ready to hunt.’ He made a small trilling sound. ‘One more thing, though. You must be ready to shield your emotions better this time. You will be hiding something, and it will be very obvious to him. Think thoughts that you feel guilty about. Do something naughty beforehand if your conscience is clean.’

There was a click and the voice was gone, but the room’s dim electric light twinkled in the doll’s nyctoscope eyes, like the ghost of amusement.