The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [184]
What could poor Henry do? Now in his fortieth year, he was not used to living anywhere other than the Ritz, and the Germans who had caused Wimbledon to be canceled were also occupying the George V in Paris and the Negresco in Nice. As the weeks passed and daily an invasion seemed more certain Henry came to the distasteful conclusion that he would have to return to a neutral Cairo until the British had won the war. It never crossed his mind, even for one moment, that the British might lose: After all, they had won the First World War, and therefore they must win the Second. “History repeats itself” was about the only piece of wisdom he recalled clearly from three years of tutorials at Oxford.
Henry summoned the manager of the Ritz and told him that his suite was to be left unoccupied until he returned. He paid one year in advance, which he felt was more than enough time to take care of upstarts like Herr Hitler, and set off for Cairo. The manager was heard to remark later that the grand pasha’s departure for Egypt was most ironic; he was, after all, more British than the British.
Henry spent a year at his palace in Cairo and then found he could bear his fellow countrymen no longer, so he removed himself to New York just before it would have been possible for him to come face to face with Rommel. Once in New York, Henry bivouacked in the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, selected an American manservant called Eugene, and waited for Mr. Churchill to finish the war. As if to prove his continuing support for the British, on January 1 every year he forwarded a check to the Ritz to cover the cost of his rooms for the next twelve months.
Henry celebrated V-J day in Times Square with a million Americans and immediately made plans for his return to Britain. He was surprised and disappointed when the British Embassy in Washington informed him that it might be some time before he was allowed to return to the land he loved, and despite continual pressure and all the influence he could bring to bear, he was unable to board a ship for Southampton until July 1946. From the first-class deck he waved goodbye to America and Eugene, and looked forward to England and Barker.
Once he had stepped off the ship onto English soil he headed straight for the Ritz to find his rooms exactly as he had left them. As far as Henry could see, nothing had changed except that his manservant (now the servant to a general) could not be released from the armed forces for at least another six months. Henry was determined to play his part in the war effort by surviving without him for that period, and remembering Barker’s words: “Everyone knows who you are. Nothing will change,” he felt confident all would be well. Indeed, on the bonheur du jour table in his rooms at the Ritz was an invitation to dine with Lord and Lady Lympsham in their Chelsea Square home the following night. It looked as if Barker’s prediction was turning out to be right: Everything would be just the same. Henry penned an affirmative reply to the invitation, happy with the thought that he was going to pick up his life in England exactly where he had left off.
The following evening Henry arrived on the Chelsea Square doorstep a few minutes after eight o’clock. The Lympshams, an elderly couple who had not qualified for the war in any way, gave every appearance of not even realizing that it had taken place, or that Henry had been absent from the London social scene. Their table, despite rationing, was as fine as Henry remembered, and, more important, one of the guests present was quite unlike anyone he could ever remember. Her name, Henry learned from his host, was Victoria Campbell, and she turned