After planes, Cal liked trains. They brought out the boy in him. Memories of long journeys across the wet flatlands of Pennsylvania and Maryland as his father shuffled the family between New York and Washington. Fonder memories of backtracks in the heart of rural Virginia as his father indulged him rarely in pleasure trips on the Norfolk and Western – riding for the fun of it – where trains the size of mountains moved at the speed of a horse and wagon, snaking through the countryside and crawling down Main Street in little towns for whom Main was the only street.
From Poole to Waterloo he could see nothing. The blackouts were drawn tight, and the compartments packed. Passengers sat four to a side.
Soldiers in uniform sat on their kitbags in the corridors, and a group of weary, dishevelled NCOs played poker in the mail van. The station porters yelled out the names of the stations at the tops of their voices – still people missed them.
He did not know what to say to anyone. Ruthven-Greene said it all. Cal had rarely seen a man quite so affable, quite so banal – a master of inane chat – and he talked without, as Cal heard it, telling a single truth. Years of practice, he assumed – since Reggie could not tell the truth about what he did in the war he seemed to have achieved a believable cover so plausible he uttered it without any consciousness of it not being true. The fate of all spies, to believe one’s own lies. Reggie chatted to the district nurse, to the naval lieutenant going home on leave, to the rural archdeacon going up to town to meet the bishop, and told them all he was an oatmeal buyer for the Highland Light Infantry. An army marches on its stomach, he said, quoting Napoleon, but a Scottish army marches on porridge, he said, making it up as he went along. And then he asked them a hundred nosy questions, recommended a few nightclubs to the Navy man, asked the nurse about her family and sang snatches of his favourite hymns for the clergyman. Cal nodded off to the sound of ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam . . .’
At Waterloo Reggie nudged him and said, ‘Shall we share a cab? You could drop me at the Savoy and then take it on to Claridge’s.’
Cal demurred. He’d trust to the cabman’s sense of geography. Reggie would tell him the Savoy was on the way to Claridge’s even if it wasn’t.
In the back of the cab as they crossed the Thames Reggie handed Cal a card with his name and the Savoy’s address and telephone number on it and said, ‘We’ve got tomorrow off. I suggest you get some rest, see a bit of the town and report to your blokes at the embassy on Monday. I’ll see my chaps and give you a bell before noon.’
‘My blokes?’
Reggie stuck his hand into his jacket pocket and brought out another of his many-folded bits of paper.
‘A Major Shaeffer and a Colonel Reininger. D’ye know ‘em?’
‘I’ve met Shaeffer. On my last visit in ‘39. I’ve known Frank Reininger all my life. When I was a teenager he was based in Washington. My father sat on one of the House Defence Committees – Frank liaised. I guess you could call him my father’s protegé. E pluribus unum.’
‘Well he’s the chap you report to.’
‘Reggie – you could have told me that in Zurich.’
‘Need to know, old boy, need to know. If Jerry had nabbed you, the less you knew the better.’
Cal was getting used to the jolts, the sudden reversals of tone and timbre – the instantaneous way the fact of war came home in a blunt sentence. Now, Reggie swung back the other way
‘Uncle Sam does you proud doesn’t he? Claridge’s. Pretty damn swanky.’
‘You’re staying at the Savoy!’
‘No, old boy. I’m living at the Savoy. And I’m paying for it. It’s not the same thing at all.’
And back again.
‘Had a nice little house in Chester Street, round the back of Buck House. Got blown to buggery just before Christmas.’
The cab swung off the Strand into the north forecourt of the Savoy. Reggie stepped out and took his bag from the front.
‘Do you fancy a nightcap?’ he said.
‘Thanks Reggie, but I’d rather hit the sack.’
‘Are you sure? You’ll find a lot of your countrymen knocking about the place. I saw that newspaperman the other day – Quentin somebody or other. And wotsisname Knickerbocker. And Clare Booth Luce stays here too. You know, the woman from Time. Or is it Life?’
As if by magic, another cab disgorged Mrs Luce exactly as Reggie spoke her name. Cal saw him wave to her. She waved back. A smile. A glimpse of those familiar high cheekbones and too-prominent upper lip. That clinched it, if tiredness had not – the last thing Cal wanted was to while away an evening being Congressman Cormack’s son once more for the benefit of the American press. He’d rather face a Panzer unit than the barbed tongue of Mrs Luce should it turn out that his father was currently out of favour with America’s other First Lady. He told the cabbie to drive on and left Reggie lugging his bag, in search of porter, reporter and a stiff drink.