Reckless, Page 2

  So she wasn’t such a little girl after all.

  ‘That’s telling me,’ said Lady Astor. ‘What have you got to say, boys?’

  There followed a brief silence.

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bundy. ‘I think we all agree that this war will be over sometime next year.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ said the princess. ‘That’s what the officers at Windsor tell me too.’

  Rupert was looking at the princess’s hands. Her hands were so delicate, the nails varnished a very pale pink. She was interlacing her fingers in her lap, nervously squeezing them.

  ‘I’m so bored by the war,’ said Lady Astor. ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’

  ‘I’m not sure I would say I was bored exactly,’ said the princess.

  Her enunciation was so clear that everything she said sounded carefully considered. Her earnest gaze fell on Rupert, as if inviting him to complete her thought.

  ‘It’s a hard feeling to describe,’ said Rupert. ‘One feels bored and frightened at the same time. And then beneath it all there’s this feeling that one’s real life is waiting to begin.’

  The princess looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Then she smiled. Rupert realised for the first time that she was pretty.

  ‘It’s all right for you young people,’ said Lady Astor with a grunt. ‘Some of us are waiting for our life to end.’

  ‘Not for many years yet, I hope,’ said Bundy.

  ‘Look at that!’ She pointed at the portrait hanging by the fireplace. ‘I have that staring at me every day, reminding me how old I am.’

  ‘But it’s a wonderful portrait,’ said Troyanovsky. ‘I have been admiring it.’

  ‘Don’t you think I’m standing in an odd way? It’s because Sargent had this idea of painting me with my little boy on my back.’ She stood up and assumed the same pose as in the painting, hands clasped behind her back. ‘But Bill was only one year old at the time, and he just wouldn’t keep still, so Sargent painted him out.’

  ‘It is a very fine portrait,’ said the princess, gazing at it.

  ‘I can’t look at it any more,’ said Lady Astor. ‘Don’t grow old, my dear. It’s too tiresome.’

  ‘I would like to be a little older,’ said the princess.

  As she spoke she glanced at Rupert. This gave him an odd feeling. It was as if some secret understanding had sprung up between the two of them.

  The princess turned to Troyanovsky.

  ‘Tell me about Russia,’ she said. ‘I know so little about your country.’

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ said Troyanovsky, ‘if I’m to tell you about my country I must speak about the war. We have been fighting a life and death battle.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said the princess. ‘We all so admire Mr Stalin.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Lady Astor. ‘I met Joe Stalin.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Troyanovsky, much surprised. ‘When was that?’

  ‘1931. I went to Russia with George Bernard Shaw. We were both introduced to Uncle Joe. Shaw was all over him, of course. When it came to my turn, I said, “Mr Stalin, why have you slaughtered so many of your own people?”’

  The Russian’s teacup froze halfway to his lips.

  ‘What did he reply?’

  ‘Some nonsense about defending the revolution. What could he say? The man’s a mass murderer.’

  Troyanovsky was silent. The groove deepened between his eyebrows.

  ‘The Russians are fighting like lions,’ said Bundy. ‘We owe them a great debt.’

  ‘The revolution is still young,’ Troyanovsky said.

  ‘I hope,’ said the princess, speaking earnestly, ‘that after the war we can all go on being friends.’

  ‘I believe our nations can and must be friends, ma’am,’ said Bundy. ‘I think we’ve all had our fill of hatred. We may not always see things the same way, but I believe we can agree to disagree.’

  ‘I expect you’ll think I’m very naive,’ said the princess, ‘but I do so much want this to be the last war we ever have to fight.’

  ‘There will always be war,’ declared Troyanovsky.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Human nature, ma’am.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Bundy. ‘I believe we have the power to control our impulses.’ Quite suddenly he became vehement. ‘There’s evil in all of us, no doubt about that, but we must grow up, and accept it, and manage it. We have to live with our imperfections. You people’ – this was to the Russian – ‘you’re perfectionists. You believe you’re creating the perfect society. I think that’s dangerous. It permits your leaders to take extreme measures.’

  ‘War is an extreme measure, I think.’ The Russian nodded his big head, frowning. ‘In the West, you are pragmatists. We are idealists. But you know, in spite of this, we want much the same as you. To eat. To sleep safe in our beds. To go dancing. To talk late into the night about the wrongs of the world.’

  ‘So after the war,’ said the princess, ‘when we who are young now are old enough to influence the affairs of the world, let’s agree that we’ll have no more wars.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said the young officers, raising their teacups.

  Rupert was touched by the young princess’s gentle diplomacy. He sensed that it was more than good manners, that she was genuinely distressed by conflict. What a curious mixture she was, he thought. Scrupulous in the performance of her duty; her face so serious, but still lit by the lingering innocence of childhood.

  Lady Astor now rose. This was the cue for the gentlemen to rise.

  ‘I must show our guests the view from the terrace,’ she said.

  The princess rose, smoothing her dress down as she did so. Lady Astor led the way across the adjoining library and out through French windows.

  Rupert found the princess was by his side.

  ‘So you feel your real life is waiting to begin,’ she said to him, speaking softly.

  ‘I do, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘And what will it be, this real life?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you it’ll be a life of honourable service to my country,’ said Rupert. ‘But I’m afraid all I mean is love.’

  ‘Ah, love.’

  They came out onto the terrace.

  ‘There it is,’ said Lady Astor with a sweep of one arm. ‘England. The land we’re fighting for.’

  The view was indeed spectacular. Below the terrace stretched a long formal lawn, laid out in two parterres. To the east rose a wooded hill. The river flowed round the foot of this hill, concealed by trees, here and there glinting into view. Beyond the river the land stretched for miles to the south, to Maidenhead and beyond. Above it all rose a peaceful late-afternoon sky.

  ‘Did you know,’ said Lady Astor, ‘that the first ever performance of “Rule Britannia” took place right here? Two hundred years ago, at a big party down there, given by the Prince of Wales.’

  She pointed at the long lawn below them.

  ‘So beautiful, so untouched by war,’ said Troyanovsky. ‘Hitler could have marched his armies up this valley. Instead he turned them on my homeland.’

  They strolled slowly down the length of the terrace. Once again Rupert found himself by the princess’s side.

  ‘So you’re not married, Captain Blundell?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘That is a happiness still to come.’

  A conventional enough remark, but there was a wistfulness to her tone.

  ‘I hope so, ma’am.’

  She then turned to make conversation with Bundy, and Rupert was left with his thoughts.

  ‘There’s someone for everyone, Rupert,’ his mother used to tell him. But all you had to do was look around you to know this was not true. Add together the solitary young, the unmarried, the divorced, the widowed and the solitary old, and it was hard not to conclude that loneliness was the natural condition of humanity.

  It was now time for the princess to return to Windsor Castle.
Her detective appeared as if by magic.

  ‘I’m ready, Mr Giles,’ she said.

  She shook hands with each of the young officers.

  ‘Remember,’ she said. ‘No more wars.’

  Lady Astor accompanied the princess to her car. Left alone, the young men relaxed. They stood looking out over the great view, reluctant to leave.

  ‘So where do you go next, Rupert?’ said Bundy.

  ‘India. Mountbatten’s taking command out there.’

  ‘Me, I’m in London until the second front.’

  ‘Pray it may come soon,’ said the Russian.

  ‘My dad says one more year,’ said Bundy, ‘and it’ll all be over.’

  Troyanovsky took out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the others. They both declined. He lit up, and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Your princess,’ he said to Rupert, ‘she is charming.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Rupert. ‘I thought she was lovely.’

  ‘No life for a girl, though,’ said Bundy. ‘She should be out every night dancing, not fretting over the future of the world.’

  ‘Leave that to Lady Astor,’ said Rupert.

  They laughed at that. Then the Russian shook his head.

  ‘What she said to Stalin, that I find it hard to believe.’

  ‘But she’s right,’ said Bundy.

  Troyanovsky puffed on his cigarette, frowning.

  ‘The day will come,’ he said slowly, ‘when you will ask yourself not what is right, but what is possible.’

  ‘Who’s the pragmatist now?’ said Bundy.

  ‘I think I can claim that honour,’ said Rupert, peacemaking. ‘We British have a long history of calling a spade a spade, and then getting some other fellow to do the digging.’

  Bundy smiled his smile at that.

  ‘But your princess,’ said Troyanovsky, ‘what she said to us, that was good. No more wars.’

  ‘We’re all with you there,’ said Bundy.

  ‘So we must make it be so,’ said the Russian. ‘We three.’

  He put out one large hand. Rupert understood his meaning, and clasped it. After a moment Bundy put his hand on top of theirs.

  A solitary plane appeared in the far distance and buzzed slowly across the sky. The sun dropped below the clouds and threw shafts of golden light over the landscape. Rupert felt a sudden rush of fellow feeling for the other two. Partly it was this odd triple hand-clasp that they seemed unable to break, and partly the conviction that such a moment would never come again. There really was a symbolic power to their presence, joined together on the long terrace, looking out over England.

  ‘No more wars,’ said Rupert. ‘Wouldn’t that just be something?’

  PART ONE

  Warning

  1945 – 1950

  1

  It was the colours they all talked about, the ones who witnessed the Trinity test. A brilliant yellow-white light, a searing light many times brighter than the midday sun. Then a ball of fire, an orange-red glow. Then a cloud of coloured smoke pouring upwards, red and yellow, like clouds at sunset, turning golden, purple, violet, grey, blue. Observers ten miles away saw a blue colour surrounding the smoke cloud, then a bright yellow ring near the ground, spreading out towards them. This was the shock wave. When it arrived there was a rumbling sound, as of thunder.

  Brilliant white, fire-red, orange, gold, purple, violet, grey, blue. Sunset skies and thunder at dawn in Alamagordo, New Mexico.

  *

  President Harry S. Truman was not in the country. He had sailed for Europe a week earlier on the USS Augusta. It was an uneventful crossing, with an orchestra to play during dinner, and a different movie shown each evening. A Song to Remember, To Have and Have Not, The Princess and the Pirate, Something for the Boys. The president was on his way to the final meeting of the wartime Allies at Potsdam, just outside Berlin. He was dreading it.

  Truman had never wanted to be Roosevelt’s vice president. ‘Tell him to go to hell,’ he replied to the offer. ‘I’m for Jimmy Byrnes.’ But Roosevelt wanted the plain-speaking man from Missouri, and he got his way. During Truman’s brief three months in the vice presidency, Roosevelt neither informed him nor consulted him. When Roosevelt died and he found himself president, Truman told reporters, ‘Boys, I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you … ’

  After a further brief three months as the leader of the free world, with the war in the Far East still raging, Truman now faced the task of standing up to Stalin. The Potsdam Conference would decide the shape and future of the postwar world.

  The Augusta sailed up the Scheldt estuary cheered by Belgian and Dutch crowds, and docked at Antwerp on Sunday, July 15 1945. A C-54 plane called the Sacred Cow flew the president and his party to Berlin that same day. The Potsdam Conference was due to begin on Tuesday, July 17. Harry Truman felt seriously out of his depth.

  *

  The presidential entourage took up residence at No. 2 Kaiserstrasse, in the movie colony of Babelsberg. The grand but ugly yellow-painted villa had been built in the 1890s by a wealthy publisher, and most recently was occupied by the head of the Nazi film industry. It stood in tree-studded grounds on the banks of Lake Gribnitz. Truman said the building put him in mind of the Kansas City Union Station.

  That evening, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson received a coded telegram from General Groves, who led the Manhattan Project, the top secret mission to build the atomic bomb.

  Operated on this morning, diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations.

  Stimson at once took the message to Truman. Truman was pleased but cautious. He would wait for the full report.

  Stimson ate privately that evening with his assistant, Harvey Bundy. Stimson was now in his late seventies, and in poor health. He had his suspicions that he was being cut out of the key decisions on the war. Bundy, brought in by him as his Special Assistant on Atomic Matters, was an old friend, and like himself a Yale man, a Skull and Bones member, and a lawyer.

  ‘You think we’re going to have to do this, Harvey?’

  ‘Have to, no,’ said Bundy. ‘Going to, yes.’

  ‘You think the Japs’ll surrender anyway?’

  ‘You’ve read the Purple intercepts,’ said Bundy. ‘We all know they’re desperate for a way out.’

  ‘It may take an invasion.’

  ‘Please God, no,’ said Harvey Bundy. ‘My boy Mac’s joined the Ninety-Seventh; he’s determined to get in some real fighting. His division’s slated for the push into mainland Japan. Kay’s half crazy with worry.’

  ‘If this gadget’s half what they say it is,’ said Stimson, ‘there’s no way your boy’s going to see action. You tell Kay to relax.’

  *

  The next day Truman had his first informal meeting with Stalin, at what was now called the Little White House. They discussed how to handle the continuing war with Japan. Intercepted cables revealed that the Japanese were pleading with the Soviets to broker a peace deal short of unconditional surrender, that would leave the emperor in place. The Allies wanted the Soviets to enter the war against Japan, late though it was. Stalin readily agreed. The declaration would be made by August 15, he said.

  Fini Japs when that comes about, wrote Truman in his diary.

  That evening a courier arrived carrying General Groves’ full report on the Trinity test. Truman read it at once, and gave it to his secretary of state, Jimmy Byrnes, and to Henry Stimson. Stimson showed it to Harvey Bundy. It was electrifying.

  ‘For the first time in history,’ Groves wrote, ‘there was a nuclear explosion. And what an explosion!’ He estimated its power at the equivalent of twenty thousand tons of TNT. He described the blast effects with memorable details. A steel tower evaporated. A window was broken over a hundred miles away. The light of the explosion was visible from El Paso, almost two hundred miles away. A blind woman saw the light. Groves called it ‘the birth of a new age, a great new force to be used for good or evil. No
man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power has ever occurred before.’

  Later, alone with Harvey Bundy, Stimson pondered the mighty issue before them.

  ‘Are we unleashing a monster here, Harvey?’

  ‘You want my opinion,’ said Bundy, ‘I’d say we can’t come this far and spend this much money and not use it. And that’s not even an opinion. Once it can be used, it’s going to be used.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You ever get given a new toy for Christmas? You ever got told you can have the shiny new toy, but you can’t play with it?’

  2

  In the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, near Kandy, the old capital of Ceylon, the midday monsoon had just begun. Captain Rupert Blundell, caught by the sudden downpour on his way from Forward Projects Planning to the main gate, where a staff car was waiting for him, took shelter in the arch between the twin trunks of a giant Java fig tree. Crouching in the embrace of its rough bark, he watched the torrents of water hammer the brown earth and form miniature cascades between the tree’s spreading roots. Overhead the branches reached outwards and curved down, forming a natural pavilion. All round him the humid air hissed and the stiff leaves crackled, the ground popped and bubbled and the run-off gurgled, as the monsoon rain streamed through bamboo groves and palm avenues, past the huts and tents of Divisional HQ, to the looping embrace of the Mahaweli river.

  Beyond the veil of rain he saw two men go by, moving in slow circles, as if dancing. Both were drenched to the skin, beyond caring about shelter, laughing, shouting to each other. He watched their rotations as they came nearer, and saw that between them they had a monkey on a string. The monkey bounded up and down and from side to side, but with each bound they tugged on its string, forcing it back to its position between them.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ they cried. And, ‘A right crackerjack we’ve got here!’

  It was like watching two parents taking their toddler for a walk in the rain, only without the love.

  As the monkey passed by it made a sudden spring for the fig tree and got its fingers round one of the low bendy branches. For a moment Rupert saw its face. Its big black-rimmed eyes were staring in terror, and it was uttering shrill screeching noises. Then the string jerked and it fell back, shivering the branches, causing a spray of water to fill the air.