Page 51 of These Old Lies

PART 2

18 Once More Into The Breach

London, March 1941 / Ned

The Prime Minister's request sat on Ned’s desk like a bit of rotten fruit. The typed text on plain white paper might have been innocuous in appearance, especially amid the numerous other requests neatly piled on his desk, but Ned found it impossible to ignore. He had been turning its contents over in his mind for the past hour with nothing to show for his efforts other than the twinges of what would likely be an impressive headache.

“What are you going to do?” Helen Forbes asked as she poked her head around the door without bothering to knock.

What Ned wanted to do was yell at his secretary that his answer hadn’t changed from the past five other times she had asked, and possibly toss a paperweight in her general direction.

However, as that kind of behaviour was generally frowned upon in His Majesty’s Government, Ned merely leaned back into his chair and looked towards his window. In another hour they would need to close the black-out curtains, but for now he could still enjoy the view of Big Ben in the distance. Not that Ben was giving him any inspiration that afternoon.

Ned turned back to the woman waiting patiently at the door. “You read the request. I assume you see the issue?” He gestured to the thin, single sheet of paper.

Miss Forbes read every briefing and advisory that came across Ned’s desk, making her better at her job than anyone had any right to be. “It’s war.”

“I have been to war, and that’s not a good enough reason,” Ned replied more sharply than he intended.

“Shall I draft your resignation letter then?” Her tone was as flat as if they were discussing the canteen’s lunch menu.

“So they can appoint an idiot who will say yes? And,” Ned’s mouth twisted, for this was the irony of the whole situation, “it’s war. Shouldn’t we be doing everything to save the men risking everything for us?”

“Number 10 wants the briefing for the Prime Minister’s morning box,” Helen answered, her way of ending the conversation.

Ned dropped the paper on his desk and removed his glasses. He should have been used to wearing them by now, but they always seemed to pinch his nose, or sit too heavy on his ears when he needed to think.

He was, in many respects, an old hand at making life-and-death decisions. He had been making them since he was a twenty-one-year-old officer in the trenches. The only difference was that he no longer saw the faces of the people who suffered and died because of his actions; they would just be numbers in his Monday morning briefings. Ned didn’t hold their hands as they died or wrote to their mothers.

But maybe because he had once been on the other side of the consequences of faceless bureaucratic decisions—because he had written those letters, held all those hands—these requests weighed on him.

In that moment, thinking of past decisions, he had an overwhelming desire for one of those vile trench cigarettes. The kind whose taste you’d cover up with too sweet chocolate. A ridiculous idea formed in his mind, the kind that only appeared when one was sleep deprived, desperate, and under a deadline.

Well, if he was going to be maudlin about the past, he might as well dive fully in.

“Miss Forbes, I wish to use the telephone,” he called out from his desk.

“Whom am I connecting you to?”

“Villiers Automotive in Marylebone.” The one person who might understand Ned’s dilemma.

???

Ned pulled his coat collar up against his face as he leaned against a lamp pole. As usual, he was too early and with the bloody blackout, he couldn’t even read while waiting. The lights of London had been extinguished almost two years ago in an effort to protect the city from nighttime bombing. Luftwaffe bombs had still fallen, though, flattening the East End and burning the City Mile.

Ned heard footsteps coming down the street, and even in the low moonlight, even after all this time, he recognised the broad, stocky form emerging from the mist. With that recognition brought a wave of doubt.

What on earth was he thinking? Years had passed since he and Charlie had been touch, what made him think that Charlie would want to help him?

“You had to ask for us to meet in Kensington, you posh bastard?”

Too late now for worries, Charlie was in front of him, hand extended. There were a million ways Ned could interpret the joke, the cockiness, the familiarity, and all of them could be wrong, because maybe Ned’s neglect of their friendship had in fact fully eroded their ability to understand one another.

There was only one way to find out.

???

“An art gallery?” Charlie peered around the shop that Ned had directed them into.