Authors: Stephen Benatar
Then she pulled away, abruptly. She sat up and gazed wide-eyed. As if in shock.
“Oh, my God! They don’t shoot spies, do they?”
I gave a laugh that was probably as contrived as Heinrich’s had been; but did my best to reassure her.
“Like our much-maligned Dutch friend whom we keep remembering? ‘Acht, all these brutes, vhy are they
so
insensiteeve?’ No,” I said gently, “they don’t shoot spies.” I drew her down again. “Not this one, anyway. This one’s allowed to roam at will.” (My outlook had certainly undergone a change during the course of the afternoon. I now felt reasonably confident—although, I admit, not absolutely so—that I wouldn’t have to face a firing squad.) “They pretend they haven’t noticed him. Then they allow him—all in his own good time, of course—to go back to Germany.”
“What?” she said.
Then, for a second time, she sat up. I realized why. She had to be able to see me.
“At least, that’s up to you,” I said. “What I mean is—he’s allowed to roam at will so long as…”
But I could now see the look in her eye and that stopped me dead.
“So long as I don’t tell anyone he knows the truth?” Her voice had grown as hard as her expression.
“No,” I said. “That isn’t what I’m saying.”
Yet, again, she hadn’t heard; or hadn’t registered.
“So that explains all the sweet talk! Of course it does. I’m such an idiot. I should’ve realized.”
“No, listen—please just listen! If that were true, what do you think I would have done? We’d have had our tea at the Corner House and I’d have let you go on sobbing your heart out over your tragically lost love. I’d have kept up that whole ridiculous charade, with never a hint of challenge, or of confrontation, to mar one tiny, magic moment. What I
wouldn’t
have done was to allow my own juvenile emotions to clog up something which—oh, for pity’s sake!—which most people would think fully important enough to transcend all that
personal
sort of guff.”
I hoped it was a convincing argument; to myself it actually sounded unanswerable.
And thank God she
was
convinced. She leant back against me; gave a sigh.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me.”
“I shall definitely consider it.”
“And it isn’t guff! Your emotions are not juvenile.”
“Mixed up, then.”
There was a lengthy silence. “But I shall
have
to tell them,” she said, at last.
“Yes, of course you will! Of course you will! I was just getting round to that when you became Eleonora Duse and cried out you were an idiot.”
“I am sorry,” she said again.
“On the other hand, if I don’t go back to Germany the Abwehr knows at once the letters were a hoax.”
“Why?” she asked.
For a moment I had to give this question more attention than I might have thought.
“Well, I agree,” I said, “the British
could
have taken me prisoner simply because my identity was rumbled—taken me prisoner without uncovering why I was over here, despite doing their utmost to find out. But my non-return would automatically renew every doubt the Abwehr ever had about the major.”
I added, with a minuscule attempt at humour: “Renew more doubts than it ever had in the first place!”
“Yet equally,” she said, “if you do go back to Germany, you immediately announce the truth.”
A seagull had landed on the grass quite close to us. It didn’t stay long. In silence we watched the unexpected grace with which this apparently ungainly bird took to the air again.
“No,” I said, “I am not sure that I do. I am honestly not sure that I do.”
I continued to watch the seagull. Its flight now took it back towards the south bank.
“Which isn’t something I’m saying merely in order to string you along. You have got to believe that!”
After what was possibly no more than three or four seconds, yet appeared infinitely longer, she gave a nod.
“I do believe it.”
“And just as importantly: you have to make
them
believe it.”
I suddenly appreciated the immensity of my relief in being able to say all this. Of my relief and gratitude … gratitude for the things which only an hour ago I had been viewing as wholly catastrophic, but which had unforeseeably led to the present.
“I shall do my best,” she promised. “I shall really do my best.”
“And when I say ‘them’, you understand, I’m not necessarily referring to the Prime Minister and the whole of the War Cabinet.”
“Thank you. I was rather scared you might be. Yet, in that case, whom are you referring to?”
“Come now. I’m sure you don’t need
me
to tell you.”
She responded with a slow and lazy smile … a teasing smile. “Don’t I?” Once again she raised her head from my shoulder. “But I’m afraid I’ve suddenly been afflicted with memory loss, and I was hoping you might be able to cure me, by supplying the right name.”
“Oh, lady, lady, this won’t do! I suppose you’ll tell me next you’ve even forgotten his rank?”
She nodded, helplessly.
“Well, supposing we closed our eyes and stuck a pin in a paper and came up with … how about lieutenant, say? Or lieutenant commander? Would that bring anything back?”
“Army or navy?” she asked.
“Tut, tut, Miss Standish—and there you are, almost the toast of Aldershot! Applauded to the rafters! But didn’t they tell you? They don’t have lieutenant commanders in the army.”
She looked impressed. “All right,” she said. “We’ve got the rank. Let’s have his name. I’ll make it easy for you if you like: you need only supply the first letter.”
“But you still don’t think I can, do you?”
“No shilly-shallying, if you please! The first letter of the party’s name?”
It was now my turn to be impressed. It couldn’t be coincidence; I realized that she must be setting out actually to lay ghosts. I thought her almost as courageous—admittedly for slightly different reasons—as she had appeared to me yesterday, in Manor Park.
“Hmm,” I said. “Shall we try M again? Yes, why
not
try M again? It worked for me before.” Once more I gave her a wink—possibly a degree less repulsive than my previous one. “But, this time, not M for Martin. That would be too boringly repetitive and I feel we need to ring the changes. So this time, my love—well, what would you say to … yes, let me see, now … I think I’m feeling lucky … yes, what would you say to … M for Montague?”
33
“You may still be one of the most unlikely spies in all of recorded history. But I do have to say this. You’re certainly not one of the least effective.”
“Thank you. Mainly, though, I’ve just been lucky.”
“No, I don’t accept that.”
“Why not? I ran into you, didn’t I?”
“You’re also,” she said, “a most excellent debater.”
“In that case then, as my reward, won’t you tell me how it happened?”
“What—that you ran into me? It must have been written on the roll call of destiny. In letters ten feet high.”
“That much I know. But now I’d like to hear about the small print.”
“What part, exactly? There’s a lot of it.”
“Paragraph forty-seven. The one that deals with ENSA. You really are with ENSA?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Not in counter-intelligence?”
She shook her head.
“So how did you get drawn in? Is the lieutenant commander a friend of yours?”
“Both a friend
and
a relative—well, in a way, that is, because I actually grew up calling him Uncle.”
She explained.
“You see, the Manor House at Ogbourne St George belongs to Ewen Montague’s brother-in-law. But my mother’s been the housekeeper there, and my father the head gardener, ever since I was small. We had a cottage in the grounds. Right from the beginning we were treated like family—my sister and I, in particular.”
For a moment she looked reminiscent but swiftly checked whatever digression might have occurred to her.
“Anyway, a bit earlier this year, I happened to be around one Sunday when Ewen paid us a flying and impromptu visit; having belatedly decided that he liked the sound of the address!
The Manor House, Ogbourne St George.
Apparently its very Englishness was hard to beat; would prove, he said, practically irresistible to the Boche. (Meaning
you
, my darling, in case you still need to have all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed!) Of course, at that stage no one had a clue as to what he was on about; merely knew that he wanted to cadge some of the stationery. It was only as an afterthought that he looked at me and asked if he could have a snapshot. ‘We might want to play a little trick on Jerry,’ he said—I quote verbatim.” She smiled. “And
that
, Mr Anders, is the story of how I came to be ‘drawn in’, as you so eloquently put it.”
I myself didn’t smile.
“But his asking for a snapshot—didn’t that make your parents feel uneasy? (Your parents, at the very least.) A bona fide address? A bona fide occupant of that address?”
“Well, yes, I suppose it did, a little. But we wanted to help. And he assured us we had nothing to worry about. No one was ever going to call.”
Sybella laughed.
“Uncle Ewen, the soothsayer!”
“No. Uncle Ewen the incredible optimist. Did he
honestly
imagine we wouldn’t bother ourselves to check up?” I suddenly felt angry. Not only indignant—angry.
Yet, annoyingly, I also had a duty to be fair. I remembered Franz Mannheim’s opinion—with which, actually, I had been partly in agreement. “
In fact, Anders, do you know what I think? That in sending you over to England we’re wasting your time.
”
But even this couldn’t soften my resentment.
“Check up on what, exactly?” Sybella’s tone had become wistful. “The contents of those letters? Although Ewen told me many bits and pieces regarding the set-up in general, naturally he couldn’t tell me anything of its underlying purpose. I’ve no idea who wrote those letters—nor to whom they were going or what they said. None whatsoever.”
She made me chuckle.
“Oh Lord … my own, sweet, shameless little Mata Hari!”
“And I thought I was being so crafty.”
“Only sweet. Only shameless.”
“But I don’t see why I shouldn’t know.”
“I’m not sure that I do. Even if careless talk
does
cost lives and clergymen who look like Friar Tuck are never to be trusted.”
However, I swiftly returned to my study of the small print.
“Ewen Montague clearly confided all those ‘bits and pieces’ while he was priming you for Aldershot. He can’t have had a
lot
of time in which to get you ready.”
“I might say that’s the understatement of the year!”
“I think I was hoping you might say a little more.”
“All right, then. What? That last Friday we were playing at Biggin Hill? That when we arrived he was already waiting near the main gates? That when I saw him I felt not only flabbergasted but
scared
, guessing immediately what he was there for? That on Friday night Peggy went on as Freda but in spite of this Ewen kept me up until practically half past four.”
“And I don’t suppose you slept very much even after that.”
“Well, that’s something! I’m glad you understand at least a
fraction
of the inconvenience you’ve been putting us through.”
I smiled. “But he must have been so quick off the mark!” I exclaimed. “What time did your coach arrive at Biggin Hill?”
“We’d come down from the north. Shortly after four?”
“You’re pulling my leg!”
“No. Why?”
“Because I wasn’t at the solicitor’s till shortly after two!”
She didn’t understand the reference.
“All I know is, you spoke to my mother on Thursday; the family happened to be out that evening. She alerted Ewen almost the minute you’d put down the phone.”
I gave a whistle.
“Was your mother an actress, too?” I remembered how relaxed she had sounded. “In that case I’d say you could
easily
employ her as your understudy.”
“I’ll tell her. She’ll be pleased. Shall I also pass on your apologies for having cut her off?”
“Oh, how could she possibly have thought that?”
“Search me. But there’s one thing I
won’t
let her think, not even as my understudy. That she could ever have learnt such an
incredibly
complex part half as swiftly as her daughter!”
“Could anyone—Ewen Montague included? Did he stay in touch with you over the weekend?”
“Oh, yes. On Saturday he phoned twice. First during one of the matinée intervals. Then back at camp, after the evening show. Seemed surprised that I hadn’t heard anything. Was it you, though, waiting there opposite the stage door?”
“It was!”
“Oh, you poor love! How pathetic!”
“Utterly.”
“Of course, I rang him on Sunday as soon as I’d received your card. He called straight back—spoke for nearly
two
hours. That’s why I couldn’t make it to the pub a little earlier.”
She raised a hand, spread wide her fingers, pouted. “Scarcely had the time to paint my nails!”
“Well, from your own point of view it might have been better if you hadn’t. Although I’ve got to say that they looked good. So—by the way—did the rest of you.”
“Well, thank you. But
I’ve
got to say that Ewen thinks of everything—no matter how rushed he may have been. On Friday afternoon, would you believe, he even turned up with clothing coupons! So I had a lovely time, Saturday morning, taking my mind off scary thoughts of
you
and ransacking the shops for an outfit that would boost a nervous girl’s morale.”
She laughed.
“Well, thinks of
practically
everything … I couldn’t get any silk stockings!
Why
might it have been better if I hadn’t painted my nails?”
“Because Freda’s weren’t painted the night before. So, naturally, I had to put you down as a duplicitous little baggage right from the beginning.”
“I don’t see why.”
“
Oh, alas and alack, I only got your note about an hour ago, while I still lay sleeping in my bed!
”
“In other words,” she said, severely, “you’re talking of nothing more than everyday, universally accepted, totally endearing feminine wiles?”