The Dower House Read Online Free PDF

bank.
    â€˜Going for a drink?’ the RAF type called after them. ‘Whacko!’
    Nicole waved back at him. ‘Don’t walk near his hatch,’ she warned Marianne. ‘He only wants to peep up your skirt.’
    â€˜Your English has improved out of all recognition,’ Willard said.
    â€˜Why not? I’ve nothing to do but listen to the wireless all day.’
    He looked back at the boat and nodded. ‘I guess it’s not much of a challenge to you.’ He turned to Marianne. ‘During the war Nicole was a chef in her family restaurant in Trouville.’
    â€˜To be chef in the war must have required great art,’ Marianne said.
    â€˜Oh, Nicole can make a gourmet feast of spam and rutabagas,’ Willard said. Then, to Nicole: ‘Marianne is an architect, too. But you – you’ll take up your old profession now, surely? The English could sure do with it.’
    â€˜That’s true.’ She shook her head. ‘But Tony has other ideas.’
    â€˜Such as?’
    She chuckled. ‘Oh, I’m certain he’ll tell you, Willard. You especially. Be warned!’
    These hints of an old, easy intimacy between them left Marianne feeling isolated.
    They had reached the pub. He held open the door for the two women. Nicole put a finger to her lips and peeped inside. Then she looked back at them, nodded, and, imprisoning her two dogs, inclined her head toward the bar.
    Tony was sitting on a stool scraping the ash and dottle from his pipe. He was dressed in the nondescript attire of an English gentleman at his ease, all sagging wool and leather patches; on his head, as a nautical concession, he wore a stocking cap topped out by an incongruously large woollen pompom that never settled.
    Willard, now standing immediately behind Tony, his mouth just inches from his ear, said softly, ‘I’d know the filthy stink of that secret weapon anywhere in the world.’
    Tony turned round, not slowly, not quickly. ‘Hello, Willard,’ he said. ‘I was just about to order another. What’s yours?’ Then he saw Marianne and – still without a great deal of surprise in his voice – added, ‘Good God!’
    Marianne laughed and threw her arms around his neck, giving him a mighty hug. ‘Tony!’ she scolded. ‘You are so . . . so typical !’
    Tony, in danger of overbalancing, slid round to face them, disentangling her arms in the process. He winked at her and looked Willard coolly up and down. ‘Married?’ he guessed. Willard nodded. ‘Good-oh. Actually, not much point in asking what’s yours. You can have stout or beer.’
    â€˜No Scotch?’
    Several customers laughed, making Willard suddenly very conscious of being a bloody Yank.
    They carried four half-pints of thin beer out to the river bank where they sat on the wall and luxuriated in the evening sun. ‘Warm English beer!’ Willard said. ‘And easily three percent alcohol! How I have longed for this moment!’
    Marianne sipped hers and, nodding at Nicole, said, ‘ Watering hole!’
    Willard had prepared himself for a flood of wartime reminiscences but none came. Nicole tried. She asked how Tony and Willard had met Marianne. Tony was vague. ‘During our time with AMGOT ,’ he said, adding nothing to what Willard had already told her.
    Simple loyalty impelled Willard to do no more than nod his confirmation, though he longed to tell Nicole everything, to make her and Marianne part of the same old-pals history. He tried to draw Tony out on his work with the Greater London Plan, but the man was equally laconic in his replies there.
    The two wives started talking between themselves – again, not about the past but about the day-to-day difficulties of life in London and Hamburg. Mostly it was Nicole telling Marianne about rationing, and ‘points’ for everything, and ‘Utility’ furniture, and queues and