Authors: Stephen Benatar
Very well, then. She had transferred the call. And looked relieved.
After which, she had instantly reverted from the switchboard to her typewriter. Had started pounding away on it as though she were the very model of efficiency. Had hardly lifted her eyes from her supposedly indecipherable shorthand.
And then at last I had been summoned. I hadn’t seen any departing client but had presumed there must be a back entrance … which conceivably there was, although I myself hadn’t been shown out by it. Apparently the solicitor hadn’t heard my suggestion, despite its being made a moment before the office boy might well have drowned it out beneath the rattling of his teacups.
Therefore Mr Gwatkin
might
have been a little deaf, even if in his own room he hadn’t appeared to have any difficulty about hearing. Where he
had
appeared to have difficulty was in making himself sound natural or at ease. Particularly at the onset. Gradually, of course, he had overcome this diffidence; managed to overcome it to such an extent that eventually he had launched into that scathing little speech concerning wills and irony and income tax … and from then on had given the impression of being a wholly different person—a person grown drunk at the spring of his own creativity.
Now, did
that
little circumstance happen to put you in mind of anyone? Anybody else at all?
Yet, unlike certain others, Mr Gwatkin was not a professional actor; so his initial fit of stage fright might have seemed slightly more noticeable than that of certain others.
No. He was not a professional actor. In any context of stagecraft or stage management he would have appeared—unquestionably—a fish out of water.
But a fish out of water with friends in high places?
Maybe.
High places such as the Admiralty? Such as the Naval Intelligence Division at the Admiralty?
Maybe.
Not necessarily a friend, of course; possibly a relative or a fellow club member or—yes, sure—why
not
a client? Someone, in any case, who would have known him well enough to be able to request a favour?
Maybe.
Someone who would never have revealed
why
he was requesting that favour. But someone who, in answer to a frenzied SOS by telephone, might just have spent a full quarter of an hour in priming his panic-stricken friend—or relative or fellow club member or family solicitor—on how to handle a crisis that had not been envisaged as being likely?
Maybe.
In which case…‘mincemeat’?
A codeword meaning
Emergency
?
Emergency, I need help
!
If so, how remarkably fortunate for our friend on the switchboard, not to mention her panic-stricken employer, that those telephone lines that day should have been working so very smoothly. There could have been many a time when they wouldn’t have been. No wonder she’d looked anxious.
Yet, anyhow, to return to the point where all that liberating invective had begun to flow along a different channel; to swirl about the feet of somebody depraved enough to steal from a person in uniform. Obviously a Kraut—“the only kind you could ever believe capable of doing it! But you’d think you’d be able to smell him, wouldn’t you, like rotten eggs or sewage?”
Oh, yes. Gwatkin had
known
all right.
Had not merely known but had found it blatantly hard to conceal the fact. “I’m only surprised Mr Martin didn’t mention it when he met us so soon afterwards! Oh, and by the way, why were you wanting a solicitor?”
But at least he hadn’t grown quite so intoxicated that he had lost all self-control and started to invent unashamedly—again, not like
some
whom you might want to mention—unable to resist the clever, self-regarding thrill. The piling up of detail on detail. Pelion on Ossa. The Empire on the Prince of Wales.
No, he had simply shaken my hand and shown me out. What a hero—when my hand was offered he had actually managed to bring himself to shake it! (Had he rushed off immediately afterwards, screaming for the hot water and soap?)
And he had shown me out the way I had come in, taking me past the receptionist. (With my receiving no more than a hard-faced nod from a woman who fifty minutes earlier had greeted me so pleasantly.) I had descended those impressive stairs and returned into Waterloo Place. There I had noticed the man who was chatting to the newspaper seller: the man in the battered felt hat and grubby raincoat. Had paid him scant attention, though, until I had seen him sometime later in the Strand. Had naturally lost interest again when he had turned off towards the bridge.
Yet what about that other man? The one lolling against the barber’s shop in Paradise Street, with a copy of the
Evening News
concealing the lower part of his face?
In London, then, I was being followed.
Had they also set a tail on me in Aldershot?
No. In Aldershot, unnecessary. In Aldershot there had always been Sybella Standish to keep her beady little eye in focus.
But how in God’s name had they guessed? At what point would they have told themselves I needed to be watched?
Yes, that was the abiding puzzle. What had I done but go to a solicitor and speak of my desire to contact Mr Martin?
And, anyway, there was nothing new in that. I had already been trying to seek him out in Wales—and without (well, apparently without) attracting to myself any undue attention.
Therefore where—last Friday afternoon—where had lain the crucial difference? Martin was a fairly common name. What had been the signal that had triggered the alarm? Had triggered it inside the Admiralty, let’s say? Inside its Naval Intelligence Division, let’s say? What had been the signal that had unerringly declared:
Here is a German spy
?
And following on from that, of course, why if the authorities had known, or even just faintly suspected, why hadn’t they apprehended me?
Well, who was it who had once said that—in the solving of any mystery—all you had to do was ask yourself the right question?
We were now in Abbey Road. Its absence of battle scars made a welcome change from the West End; a
very
welcome change, or so I had been hearing, from the East End. Apart from its sandbags and barrage balloons, Abbey Road was a thoroughfare with a nearly rural aspect. Tree-lined and sunlit. When I finally awoke to an awareness of where we were, my taxi must have been driving along it for roughly a couple of minutes, because already we were pulling into the left-hand kerb, outside the home of Mrs Hilling.
But I was still practically oblivious. I went on sitting in the taxi until the driver turned round and gazed at me enquiringly—until she slid back the partition and actually spoke to me.
“Mister, isn’t this the number you were wanting? Or have you now had second thoughts?”
Second thoughts?
Second
thoughts? I smiled—almost laughed. But it clearly required far less exertion to move my facial muscles than it did to move my limbs. I stepped down from the taxi and dragged my suitcase after me; closed the door, pulled out the money for the fare, gave the driver a ridiculously large tip. (But it was one which she deserved, for being the woman who had driven me in such a way as to encourage, or at any rate not impede, enlightenment.) I stepped down from the taxi and went through each of these small acts in a state of virtual automation.
Yes, well. Who
had
said it, in fact—that the only thing needed was to ask yourself the right question? The piece of the puzzle that was going to form the keystone, locking all the other pieces into place.
Because … I had just been shown the keystone.
And like St Paul (in this one respect)—St Paul set down on the road to the abbey at the end of a lengthy and despairing taxi ride—I had finally been floored; floored by the awful power of revelation. And now felt shaky. As indeed he must have.
For even the revelation granted to
him
could scarcely have seemed more God-sent or less logical: the kind of breathless leap dismissed by sceptics the world over, whether on the outskirts of Damascus or in the purlieus of St John’s Wood—the kind of breathless leap which would have failed you automatically in a geometry exam, despite that instant click of recognition from within. What had I done but mention the name of Mr J.G. Martin?
The right question! (I had realized it at last.) It had pointed me to a solution that was clean and astonishing in its simplicity. And more than that—still in time to be of service to us.
So once again, as when previously it had seemed my assignment over here had been complete, I should really have been feeling cock-a-hoop.
But I wasn’t.
In fact, I was feeling almost anything but cock-a-hoop.
The taxi driver was rejoicing, though. Clearly delighted by the size of her tip, she gave me a broad smile, touched her cap in mock salute and waved to me twice as she drove away. By then, Mrs Hilling had come to the front door and even she appeared elated. Elated by the simple fact I had returned. She asked if I’d had a good weekend and conveyed the idea she’d have been more than pleased to hear about it in some detail. A pretty woman in a flowered overall, she offered me a glass of beer and a corned beef sandwich and mentioned, quite wistfully, that it was ever so comfy in the kitchen—quiet, as well, with her two young monsters back at school and her oldest one just recently called up.
Yet, whereas at any other time I might have responded more graciously, I now made the excuse that I’d already eaten and in addition had a headache; told her that what I really needed was to lie down.
“Ah, yes,” she said, “I didn’t like to say anything, it wasn’t my place, but I felt quite worried you might be overdoing it! Coming up to London for a change of air is one thing. But gallivanting all around the country with that heavy old suitcase of yours…!” She wagged a gentle finger in reproof. “Your regiment isn’t going to take you back, you know, not until you’re properly in the pink again; and you can’t hope to pull the wool over
their
eyes, any more than you can over
mine
!”
(In the meanwhile she was under the impression that for the most part I was spending my convalescence tranquilly in Mold, carrying on with my architectural studies and living with my sister who had lately become a Land Girl. My sister, Priscilla.)
But for the present, she explained, she hoped I wouldn’t mind that she had to put me in a different room. Not knowing for sure if I’d be coming back, she had given the larger one, only about an hour ago, to a nice young couple who had spotted her advertisement on the newsagent’s board at the corner of Belgrave Gardens.
“So let me show you your new room—and on our way up I’ll get you some aspirin; they’re kept in the medicine chest in the bathroom. Oh … and, Mr Andrews … you’ve had an urgent message from your friend Mr Smee. I think he’ll be so relieved to know that you’ve got back to us safe and sound.”
She paused on the stairs, to reassure herself that I could manage with my suitcase.
“Still, I only wish I hadn’t forgotten to enquire after the health of that nice mother of his. Such a cultured woman, you know. She used to be an actress.”
Right at this minute, however, I could have told her I had precious little time for cultured women who used to be, or still were, actresses.
But it was definitely perverse how, also right at this minute, everything conspired to remind me of them.
Everything
. Even something so unlikely you’d almost have sworn it couldn’t happen.
A small framed notice hung over the washbasin in the room I’d now been given. This was a card written in red Gothic lettering but otherwise unadorned. I dully wondered who had judged it worthy of the piece of glass—of the passe-partout, the backing, even the length of wire.
“Switched-on switches and turned-on taps
Make happy Huns and joyful Japs!”
And what was especially painful about that—to have felt such a very happy Hun myself at the moment I had first encountered it! To have felt happier, indeed, than for several years I’d even have considered possible.
No, stop it, I said, stop it this instant, just think about the task at hand!
In spite of which I vividly recalled the expression in her eyes.
Oh, please! Not again! You can’t—you cannot—have forgotten yesterday! Colonel and Mrs Musket, of the Royal Army Dental Corps?
Was that only three hours ago, that silent but renewed and desperate plea for restraint?
A fleeting voyage through a fool’s paradise. And ‘fool’ was truly the appropriate word. Even if that paradise had proved solid, I could scarcely have felt sadder for having lost it. I remembered her comment about missing someone. Like homesickness, she had said.
But, no doubt, a comment just as sham as all the rest.
Anyway, if for nothing else, I ought to feel thankful that there’d been this telephone message from Buchholz. Which meant that I didn’t merely have to stay up in my new room and think. Or do my best
not
to think.
Which meant that I didn’t merely have to stay up in my new room and wonder. Or do my best
not
to wonder.
(Wonder if I really had to see Sybella Standish tonight. Really had to sit beside her at the Prince of Wales. Really had to sit beside her and simulate enjoyment.)
But that would have been pure self-indulgence—my even wondering about it. I had no option. Under no circumstances must she be allowed to realize I had cottoned on.
Or was I wrong? Perhaps there did remain one further option.
To throw myself out of this top-floor window. The small yard beneath was paved in concrete.
However … I smiled wanly and I shook my head.
It might hurt a little.
25
I went into the post office on the corner of Marylebone High Street and Weymouth Street. If I
was
being tailed (as I felt sure I was) I still didn’t believe that anyone would actually follow me in—the space was too confined, as well as being too public. But even so I remained facing the doorway; I stood in a quiet corner and filled in the lettercard I had just bought.