Night Over Water - Ken Follett [108]
Harry was amused. Here was further proof that he had been born lucky: the wealthy children, driving in big black cars, wearing coats with velvet collars and eating meat every day, had envied him his barefoot freedom and his fish-and-chips.
“I remember the smells,” she went on. “The smell outside a pie-shop door at lunchtime; the smell of the oiled machinery as you go past a fairground; the cozy smell of beer and tobacco that comes out when a pub door opens on a winter evening. People always seemed to be having such fun in those places. I’ve never been in a pub.”
“You haven’t missed much,” said Harry, who did not like pubs. “The food is better at the Ritz.”
“We each prefer the other’s way of life,” she said.
“But I’ve tried both,” Harry pointed out. “I know which is best.”
She looked thoughtful for a minute, then said: “What are you going to do with your life?”
It was a peculiar question. “Enjoy myself,” Harry said.
“No, but really.”
“What do you mean, ‘really’?”
“Everyone wants to enjoy themselves. What will you do?”
“What I do now.” Impulsively, Harry decided to tell her something he had never revealed before. “Did you ever read The Amateur Cracks-man, by Homung?” She shook her head. “It’s about a gentleman thief called Raffles, who smokes Turkish cigarettes and wears beautiful clothes and gets invited to people’s houses and steals their jewelry. I want to be like him.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be silly,” she said brusquely.
He was a little hurt. She could be brutally direct when she thought you were talking nonsense. But this was not nonsense; this was his dream. Now that he had opened his heart to her, he felt the need to convince her that he was telling the truth. “It’s not silly,” he snapped.
“But you can’t be a thief all your life,” she said. “You’ll end up growing old in jail. Even Robin Hood got married and settled down eventually. What would you really like?”
Harry normally answered this question with a shopping list: a flat, a car, girls, parties, Savile Row suits and fine jewels. But he knew she would pour scorn on that. He resented her attitude; but all the same it was true that his ambitions were not quite so materialistic. He very much wanted her to believe in his dreams; and to his surprise he found himself telling her things he had never admitted before. “I’d like to live in a big country house with ivy growing up the walls,” he said.
He stopped. Suddenly he felt emotional. He was embarrassed, but for some reason he wanted very badly to tell her this. “A house in the country with a tennis court and stables, and rhododendrons all up the drive,” he went on. He could see it in his mind, and it seemed like the safest, most comfortable place in the world. “I’d walk around the grounds in brown boots and a tweed suit, talking to the gardeners and the stable boys, and they’d all think I was a real gent. I’d have all my money in rock-solid investments and never spend half the income. I’d give garden parties in the summer, with strawberries and cream. And five daughters all as pretty as their mother.”
“Five!” she laughed. “You’d better marry someone strong!” But she became serious immediately. “It’s a lovely dream,” she said. “I hope it comes true.”
He felt very close to her, as if he could ask her anything. “What about you?” he said. “Have you got a dream?”
“I want to be in the war,” she said. “I’m going to join the A.T.S.”
It still seemed funny, to talk about women joining the army, but of course it was common now. “What would you do?”
“Drive. They need women to be dispatch riders and ambulance drivers.”
“It will be dangerous.”
“I know. I don’t care. I just want to be in the fight. This is our last chance to stop Fascism.” Her jaw was set firm and there was a reckless look in her eye, and Harry thought she was terribly brave.
He said: “You seem very determined.”
“I had a ... friend who was killed by the Fascists in Spain, and I want to finish the work he began.” She looked sad.
On impulse, Harry said: “Did you love him?