have been depressed because you couldn’t have children … that would matter as much to a homosexual as a normal person.”
“Izzy,” I hissed in what I tried to make a menacing tone. “I repeat that I am not, not, queer—but what made you think I was homosexual in the first place?”
She took back my hand. “Well, when you were really, really ill, at the very beginning, remember that I came to see you and you were heavily sedated—completely torpedoed. Remember?”
I nodded. “I remember not remembering you were here. Uh-huh.”
“Well, I was a bit bored, hanging around for you to wake up— which you didn’t. And I couldn’t leave, because I had to wait for the taxi to come back for me.”
“Y-e-e-s … Get to the point.”
“So, well, for something to do I started going through your things—”
“Izzy—!”
“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have. Don’t get mad—you promised. But I am your sister and I did it. I’m too old for you to twist my ear off, like you used to, so there.” She grinned.
I didn’t grin back.
“And … well, in your wallet I found a photo—”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Don’t blaspheme. Or think of a new swear word. I imagined it might be a photograph of your girlfriend and I wanted to see what I thought of her, see how pretty she was, that sort of thing, but… well, it was a man, a very good-looking man, I have to say, in some sort of uniform.” She made a face. “I thought you’d fallen in love in the army— with a man. The photo had a name and address on the back, Sam someone if I remember right. I even thought of writing to him, but I didn’t—I didn’t!” she cried out as my eyes grew rounder and she could see that my temper was beginning to cook.
I took my hand from out of hers, and instead cupped her hands in mine. “That serves you right, Izzy, for sticking your nose—your stumpy button of a nose—where it doesn’t belong. And no, you’re not too old for me to twist your ears.” But I didn’t try.
What I did do was tell her the story of the Christmas truce, and my exchange of gifts with the German officer, Oberleutnant Wetzlar.
“Crikey, Hal,” she said when I had finished. “I mean, can you do that, act as a sort of messenger? I mean, it’s very romantic—I wonder if anyone would take such a risk for me—but isn’t it… well, treason? Will they shoot you if you get found out?”
“Well, I haven’t delivered my message yet, have I? And the authorities will only find out if a certain nurse tells them.”
But by now Izzy’s romantic side was moving into a higher gear, and she was ahead of me.
“Stratford’s not far from here, is it?”
It simply hadn’t occurred to me, but Izzy was right. I’d been so self-obsessed that I’d forgotten my geography. But she was on the ball; Stratford was not far away at all.
LEFT TO HERSELF, Izzy would have driven to Stratford the very next day, in our father’s car, but I didn’t want that. I wasn’t sure what I did want but I knew I wanted to move more slowly, and all by myself. What Izzy had done, however, was convince me that I preferred to hand over Wilhelm’s photograph in person, not entrust it to the post. In that way there would be no chance of me being found out, for passing on something from the enemy, but—more important, I think—Izzy’s romanticism had persuaded me that the physical hand over of the photograph, the actual event, would be an emotional moment that I wanted to experience for myself. That encounter would be wasted if I just slipped the photograph in an envelope and slid it into a postbox. Also, in delivering the letter in person I could describe the Christmas encounter between Wilhelm and me, without setting down anything incriminating on paper. Finally, I have to admit, there was also the fact that Sam Ross was an attractive woman—or she photographed well. I wanted to see her for myself, to talk to her but also to see whether, in the flesh, she lived up to her image in the photo. She had become engaged to a German—how did she feel about him now? Was she still in love with him? The more I thought about it, the more interesting the handover of that small photograph became.
By this time—the time of Izzy’s second visit—I had been