Authors: Stephen Benatar
“And, darling, has that got to be your final word?”
“Completely. I only wish it hadn’t.”
But, even so, it all appeared okay. Grandma went off to put the finishing touches to the supper and the supper was delicious and we had a bottle of French wine—in common with the sherry, a long time hoarded—and then the telephone rang (surprisingly without incurring a rebuke, although admittedly we’d been a little late in coming to the table). The caller was my Aunt Connie, and Grandma asked me to go into the hall and be congratulated in person. Then she made a telephone call herself, presumably to Uncle Jack, but this time I wasn’t called upon to go to speak. And only a short while after that—a period during which she seemed more than usually distrait, not passing on what Uncle Jack had said, but disconnectedly telling us about his recent and supposedly amusing stay in the cottage hospital … only a short while after that, there came a heavy and insistent knocking on the front door. And when an incredulous and considerably shaken Gramps, with Toby at his heels, returned into the dining room, he had a couple of hefty policemen walking close behind. And the policemen had come at his wife’s urgent instigation to take into custody their German grandson, on suspicion of his having illegally entered the British Isles upon a spying mission for the Hun.
40
First, I had expected to spend the night in a hotel. The hotel room, though not large, had dwindled into a guest room. The guest room, though not large, had dwindled into a police cell.
And that initial double bed had diminished into separate single beds, which in turn had diminished into a solitary hard cot, offering nothing but a thin and scratchy blanket for its covering.
And Sybella, as the person I had naturally expected to remain the closest to, had changed into Sergeant Leighton. And Sergeant Leighton wasn’t even female.
Oh, what a comedown!
How are the mighty fallen!
Yea. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
And yet, oddly enough, apart from certain obvious factors, I didn’t really care. Plainly, I wouldn’t have chosen for any of it to happen but now that it had—and happened due to forces entirely beyond my control—it felt almost relaxing. My own part in the war was over.
I no longer had to agonize about having to come to a decision.
In point of fact, would I
ever
have come to one? I might well have gone straight to Admiral Canaris and abandoned all responsibility. (Though even that, I supposed, would have represented a decision of some sort.) Abandoned? No, perhaps I was being too hard on myself. Delegated.
And if the man was truly the turncoat they appeared to be saying…? Well, then, okay. So be it.
Amen.
But the slur was far from proven. The admiral could still turn out to be a hugely committed supporter of the Third Reich.
Therefore, whilst I realized that millions would have decried such an act of abandonment (or delegation) as tantamount to simply the tossing of a coin, I believed that it would, in fact, have been quite different.
Altogether
different.
And if my trust in Providence had been misplaced … well, in that case, what was the point of even caring? One path would be fully as meaningless as any other.
So then…
Relinquishment of responsibility.
Directly to Canaris. Indirectly to God.
Maybe I hadn’t
unalterably
made up my mind about this but it felt pretty much as though I had.
Nor did this line of reasoning seem, of itself, irresponsible. For how could someone like me have either the wisdom or the foresight to determine which was going to be the better course: to endorse the integrity of Major William Martin or to expose him as a complete and utter fraud? (And if at times I suspected that this ‘better course’ was more likely to involve a victory for the Allies, at least I kept shying away from it.) I tried to think coolly and analytically of what it was about Germany that had made my mother come to hate it so.
I tried to think coolly and analytically of what it was about the admiral that I particularly admired; and of what it was about my father that I found dissatisfying.
In truth, however, there wasn’t much room in any of my present thinking for either cool
or
analytical. I was lying on the bed fully clothed; hadn’t even bothered to remove my shoes, although they had now had the laces taken out of them. The light had been turned off. But I hadn’t been left in total darkness: a low-wattage bulb burned in the passageway and my cell door had a fanlight. The bolster I’d been given was a soft one. My pallet wasn’t soft, yet so far it hadn’t proved uncomfortable. I wasn’t in a bad way, really. Just couldn’t think too straight.
But I had no real fears concerning my future. What were the authorities likely to do: attempt to feed false information back to Berlin, using myself as a conduit? No; far too optimistic if they were hoping they could ever get away with that.
Yet otherwise? Perhaps I myself was being unduly optimistic; but, despite the Treachery Act introduced over here three years before, I still didn’t think that I’d be shot; and the prisoner-of-war camps in Britain were probably neither a whole lot better nor a whole lot worse than their counterparts in Germany—wasn’t there even a good chance I might be put to work on the land? Which would actually be
fine
with me … even during the thick of winter or in the coldest part of the country. At least I’d be getting fresh air and vigorous exercise and have the satisfaction of knowing that I was doing something useful.
And if I were working on the land, I might even be able, on occasion, to see Sybella.
Not that I would actually have opted for
any
form of detention. (My thoughts were confused and circular and probably contradictory.) But if life was truly a matter of making the most of whatever got thrown in your direction, and if this was truly what God and my grandmother, between them, had decided to throw in mine…?
My grandmother…!
My grandmother, who would naturally have known nothing whatever about the Treachery Act…!
At first, certainly, I had been angry with her. Furious. Had ignored her every attempt at explanation; had even felt gratified to see the hint of tears. Yet now, of course, I had calmed down and could easily accept that she had been looking out for my own best interests as much as she had for those of England.
She would have declared the two were indivisible.
But, in any case, I myself was now out of it.
Yes. How are the lowly fallen, fallen in the midst of the battle. How are the lowly stretched out on a hard palliasse, in a police cell in the centre of Shrewsbury, with hands clasped beneath the head, legs crossed at the ankle, eyes either closed or staring up at the darkened ceiling.
I probably wouldn’t have slept much anyway; yet around midnight the storm began: that long-awaited storm.
High up in the wall there was a small barred window. At times the rain rattled against it like gunfire and the gusting wind sounded powerful enough to lift the whole building and deposit it in Oz. Sometimes the lightning appeared to be coming straight at you—at
you
, I mean, personally—and the crash of the thunder was as deafening as a bomb coming down on the house next door. I kept imagining what it must be like to be at sea. In a fishing smack or lifeboat.
So at least if the storm kept me awake it also kept my mind off my own troubles; or reduced them by comparison.
But it must have been nearly dawn by the time it blew itself out; after which I managed to doze a little; until—wouldn’t you know it!—I fell into a heavy sleep roughly ten minutes before being woken. I was awoken when a special constable brought me in some breakfast.
This man was naturally uncommunicative, perhaps, but added to that, he was tired and ready to go off duty and, added to
that
, he clearly felt a deep resentment at being told to feed a German. All he said was, “My father was killed in the last war and my two brothers have died in this. If they asked
me
, simple hanging would be too easy for the likes of you!” I didn’t worry right then about the possibility of any lynch mob. I merely hoped that, in the interim, its potential leader hadn’t spat into my tea.
But later on—at around nine—Sergeant Leighton reappeared; and showed himself just as amiable as before.
“Streuth, son, I shouldn’t think you got much shut-eye in the midst of all that! Slates blown off roofs, branches torn off trees; in some places the whole ruddy tree brought down as well! Telegraph poles—telephone lines—the lot!
We
knew it was coming … yet the Met Office (and I’m really not having you on about this!) hadn’t said a single word.” He laughed, grimly humorous. “This morning they’re trying to claim it was a freak.”
He was a gaunt man with shadows under his eyes, with pallid skin and thinning hair. In more normal times he might have been beyond retirement age: pottering about on his allotment by now, or fitting schooners into bottles, or walking in the mountains with his wife.
“But even apart from that,” he said, “I’ve got a bit of news for you.”
I suddenly felt hopeful. Eager.
“Your girlfriend came. My deputy wouldn’t let her see you but she brought your suitcase, so you’d have some shaving things and all the rest. I’ll fetch it through as soon as I’ve checked she hasn’t stowed a Mauser in your underwear.”
I smiled. “Not just my girlfriend,” I said. “My fiancée.”
I paused.
“But I wonder how she made it into Shrewsbury?”
“Search me, mate. I find it hard to understand that you’re a German.”
“Why?”
“Well—if only to kick off with—your English sounds as good as mine does, any day.”
I explained about my mother having been born in Acton Burnell.
“And are you honestly a spy?”
“Yes.”
“And spying on what?” he asked. “Or who?”
“I was sent here to investigate one of your own agents. Somebody who was doing his best to misinform us.”
“So what you’re saying then—tit for tat?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I don’t mind spies. What most people really can’t stomach are the traitors. Take that Lord Haw-Haw, for example. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“He broadcast on the wireless about our clock in the town square being four and a half minutes fast.”
“And was it?”
“Still is. You don’t think we’d take any notice of what a squirt like him says?”
But I wondered less about Lord Haw-Haw than about the sort of person who would pass on to Berlin such a worthless scrap of information in the first place. I wondered, sourly, if they could ever, possibly, derive any satisfaction out of their work.
Yet this was merely an extension of my irritation about the word ‘traitor’: that it could be applied to a man like William Joyce, who was the current Lord Haw-Haw, and at the same time to a man like Willy Canaris. It seemed almost as undiscriminating as having Barabbas, in the eyes of the crowd, being viewed as an equal of Jesus.
Yet despite all this, I became aware I’d only been half-listening. Half-listening, at best. Basically I was still wondering how Sybella had got into Shrewsbury.
I was still picturing the struggle she must have had with my suitcase.
And I was remembering, too, her outcry at the moment she had actually realized why those policemen had come to the house. Remembering how she had tried to reason with them; and how she had afterwards tried to place herself defensively in front of me, almost clinging to my arm when they had ordered me into the car.
Nor was this all. On one level my disorganized brain was wondering (as it must have wondered some fifty times before) what sort of night she would have passed; and whether she had even bothered to undress and go to bed. It was also wondering how Ewen Montagu would have reacted on receiving her SOS … because presumably she’d have managed to send one before all those telegraph poles and telephone lines had got blown down.
Her confusion must have been overwhelming. I only hoped the shock she’d sustained wouldn’t permanently influence her attitude towards my grandmother. Nor towards me, come to that. I hadn’t behaved well.
Still, there wasn’t much that I could now do, other than pray about it and ask for pen and paper. When I’d shaved, then had a fairly decent wash, Sergeant Leighton brought me a copy of the
News Chronicle
. He handed it over with a grin.
“We’ve just received a telegram about you. I’d say you’ve got some crafty old friends out there, haven’t you? Fair made me chuckle, don’t mind admitting it.”
I forgot about pen and paper.
“Instructed me to get to a telephone that worked—and get there pronto! Then to ring up the Admiralty. Ask for some bloke and use the word
mincemeat
before I did so! (Is that what you’re going to make of us, my son, mincemeat?) But I repeat—all highly entertaining. Nearly as good as them Falcon pictures you can see at the Odeon.”
He pulled one of his unusually long earlobes, pensively.
“Yes, you and your mates! Some cheek! Ring the blinking Admiralty, indeed! The very thing, so I’m told, your girlfriend was going on about last night—I hear she even tried to ring the number herself but kept on being connected to the news theatre at Victoria Station! Sorry, not your girlfriend, your
fiancée
! So she was trying it on even then—quick-thinking young woman, I’d say! Resourceful. That’s something I admire!”
“There,” I said, “you see! Right from the beginning she was telling them to ring the Admiralty! Doesn’t that convince you?”
“Oh, nice try, my son. Nice try. I know
you’re
not a crackpot.” He laughed. “Can’t quite speak for your girlfriend yet.”
“Yet?”
“That’s right—we’re hoping to interview both her and your grandparents before the day is out.”
He gave a cheerful nod and left the cell.
And left me, as he locked the door, with something new to think about.
Montagu obviously wanted to have me released; his telegram couldn’t mean anything less.
But it was nearly half past ten, and if I missed that train at 11.23, I shouldn’t get to Anglesey on time. And if I didn’t get to Anglesey on time, then Operation Mincemeat was kaput. (Whatever my report concerning it. Whatever the reaction of the admiral on reading my report concerning it.) Because I didn’t see what explanation I could possibly give for not being on Amlwch beach by 15.00 hours.