The Sandler Inquiry Part 12

"No.

"No matter. There's probably not much that's known, anyway.

Even I have never figured out for whom he was spying' "Which government, you mean?" he asked.

"That's right," she answered.

"I suppose there are only a few possibilities. He was on one side or the other. East or West, I mean."

Thomas's gaze, shrouded with curiosity, fixed upon the fair face before him.

"How do you know all this?" he asked.

"From the two times in my life that I saw him," she said.

"The rest of the time he was a nonperson. Officially no one would admit he existed." She laughed slightly.

"Don't worry. My mother revealed enough of the rest when I 'was a little girl. As an adult, I've drawn my own conclusions " "I'd like to hear them."

"My mother raised me until the time I was nine years old," Leslie said.

"She was a good mother. But embittered. She'd been abandoned by my father. An American man" "Your mother was British?"

Leslie nodded. She clasped her hands in her lap and sat a trifle stiffly on the wooden chair.

"A wartime romance," Leslie said.

"There were thousands of troops billeted near Exeter during the war.

British, American, Canadian, French in exile. And there were others, military and intelligence people who didn't wear uniforms. Our whole area later became a staging area for airborne troops immediately before the invasion of Normandy. But I'm skipping ahead " Leslie backtracked to wartime England. Her mother was working cla.s.s. The daughter of an Exeter innkeeper. Elizabeth Chatsworth was twenty-one in 1942. She worked in an Exeter pub which, generally, was off limits to uniformed soldiers. But many foreigners did come by. Included among them was a cultured American man who gave his name as Arthur Sandler.

Sandler, unlike most of the pub's patrons, was a loner. He would be in Exeter for several weeks, be gone for several weeks, then return. His habit when in town was to kill his evenings in the pub, staying until closing time and sitting sullenly alone, lost in thought as he sipped warm beer.

Early in 1942, he began to chat idly with the barmaid, whom he knew only as Elizabeth. She too was lonely much of the time. Then one rainy February evening, as it approached the one-A.M. closing hour, Sandler asked if he could walk her home. She agreed. The walk was only four blocks. When they arrived at the stairs to her flat, she invited him up. He stayed the night.

They were two people of drastically different backgrounds. But the politics of the world had brought them together. And each needed the other, each initially fearing loneliness in that dark year rather than feeling any deep attraction to the other. But they soon discovered that they were compatible. They enjoyed each other's company and liked each other. When Arthur disappeared at the end of four weeks, he, promised her he would return. But he couldn't promise when.

Weeks pa.s.sed, Elizabeth remained at her job, watching the days pa.s.s on the calendar, listening carefully to the censored war news, and starting to lose hope daily that her American admirer would ever return. Three months pa.s.sed. It was June of 1942. On a sticky summer evening she looked to the end of the bar and saw him. He was smiling and watching her. She let out a loud gasp, dropped the tray she was carrying, and rushed to embrace him, he returning her warmth with equal enthusiasm.

He said he'd be there for three weeks. He was, seeing her each evening, staying with her each night and vanis.h.i.+ng during the day.

Eventually he left again, only to return again. And so it continued, weeks there, weeks gone, for eighteen months. Finally she summoned the courage to ask what she'd been wondering all that time.

"When you're not here" she asked, 'where do you go?"

They both knew that he shouldn't answer. But he did.

"Austria,"

he said. She was staggered, and realized that he was telling the truth. She asked nothing further, not even which side of the war he was on. She did not want to know. Nor did she ask, at that point, whether or not he had a wife somewhere else. She considered herself lucky to have a man, even part-time. Most women she knew had none at all.

1943 pa.s.sed, then the early half of 1944. On a visit in October, he grew increasingly despondent over a period of two weeks. She asked what was the matter. Initially he refused to discuss it. Finally he did.

He said that his partic.i.p.ation in the war was reaching its final and most dangerous-stages.

"There's a strong chance," he said, 'that I might not see you again until the war in Europe is over." He paused and then with faltering calm added,

"I'm trapped in the center of a treacherous game. I suspect that I'm going to be killed before the war ends. By one side or the other."

They embraced each other. His face was away from her but she wouldn't look at him. She didn't want to let him know that she knew he was crying. When he was able, he spoke again. For the first time, he told her that he loved her. He said he didn't wish to leave her, but he'd have no choice.

"I want to do what's best for you," he said.

"If I'm lucky enough to survive the war, I'm going to come back and take you to America."

He hesitated, then added,

"If I don't come back, I want you to be provided for." Then for the first time he spoke of his origins. He stated without elaborating that back in New York he was a man of considerable wealth. On the next day, October 20, 1944, they drove from Exeter out into the countryside.

There, among green hedgerows in a small rural churchyard in the towns.h.i.+p of North Fenwick, they were married.

Thomas Daniels glanced down at the threadbare Bible in his hand.

"Ten days later," said Leslie, 'he departed during the night. He never returned, even after the war. Nine months later, I was born "And at the conclusion of the war.. ?" asked Thomas.

"My mother waited. Nothing. No communication. No letters.

No messages. No Arthur Sandler."

"Did she attempt to trace him?"

"Of course," said Leslie.

"But she ran into two walls of resistance.

One British, one American. The British authorities maintained that no such man could ever have been on English soil. Then my mother tried to trace him through the American Emba.s.sy and the United States Army Headquarters in London. Again, nothing."

"Did she show the marriage certificate and explain that she was searching for her husband?"

"Yes" she said.

"But the Americans were worse than recalcitrant.

They ere outright secretive and un trusting Do you know what they said?

They said that no such man ever existed. And they told her that if a bar girl such as she continued to make these wild accusations about marrying an American millionaire they would turn her over to the local police or a London mental hospital."

"And so?"

"And so that's how it stood. My mother raised me herself. And as the years pa.s.sed she became more convinced that a cruel hoax had taken place, with her at the center. She was stuck in her job as a barmaid in a section of Exeter which declined after the war. She was a woman without any education. She couldn't do anything to support us except work in that bar, subjected to dirty labouring men whose drunken hands wandered nightly."

"She never married?"