It was inevitable that Poppy should have found herself falling in love with Scott Meynell when they were working alongside each other the previous year. Poppy had been trained by H section to play at being a rich and spoiled social butterfly in order to try to infiltrate the circle of highly placed Fascists that Jack Ward knew was operating in London, its aim being to persuade the Establishment to embrace appeasement; or, if that failed, then to bring the country to a standstill by the simple but highly effective means of assassinating Winston Churchill. Scott had already gained access to their inner circle, and by the time he and Poppy had helped bring that particular operation to a successful conclusion they had become lovers.
They used to joke about it afterwards, Scott teasing Poppy as to whether or not she would have had the courage to become his lover had she known her husband was still alive, Poppy riposting that it probably would have made everything more exciting. Sometimes, though, she wondered how she actually would have behaved if she had known that the reported death of her unloved husband at the hands of the Italian terrorists was only part of the European Fascist party’s plot to create political mayhem.
‘I don’t think you would,’ Scott said to her once when they were discussing the matter. ‘I think you’d have been too hidebound by your upbringing.’
‘You’re actually making assumptions, Scott Meynell,’ Poppy replied. ‘I didn’t really have an upbringing, at least not the one you imagine I had. First of all, although I was born in Europe, my parents were American, and they didn’t bring me up, the embassy staff did. No one spoils you like servants, you know – which is why I’ve turned out the way I have. Oddly enough, even though my mother neglected me as I was growing up, I felt I was terribly cherished.’
‘It was hardly cherishing you, marrying you off to the perfectly dreadful Basil Tetherington, was it?’
‘That wasn’t my mother’s fault. That was mine entirely. I was really awfully naïve. And since everyone else seemed to be engaged by the end of the Season, I thought: why not? No one else had ever paid me the slightest bit of attention, and besides, Basil . . . well, not only was he terribly good-looking, you know, but he was a brilliant dancer – the Fred Astaire of Belgravia.’
Poppy eyed Scott, hoping that he would show some slight frisson of jealousy, but quickly realised from his expression that his mind was somewhere quite other.
‘Hum is all I can say to that.’
‘Hum is what you say to most things, Mr Meynell. Hum covers an awful lot of things for you.’
‘What else can a chap say except hum to things like that?’ Scott sighed in mock despair. ‘Marrying a fellow like Tetherington because his toes twinkled. It isn’t really worth anything more than a hum.’
They were out walking in the winter sunshine along the shore of the larger of the two lakes in the park. Poppy had been to see some possible lodgings in the stable block that housed Eugene when he was at home, since she needed somewhere to live while she was to be working for H Section and all the bedrooms in the main house were fully occupied. Fortunately the estate had various other cottages and outbuildings that had been cleaned and tidied up to make adequate accomodation for the Nosy Parkers, as those working in Eden Park had nicknamed themselves. Scott had accompanied Poppy on her visit to a pretty dismal and dreary little flat directly above the feed rooms, which Poppy being Poppy announced to be entirely acceptable without even qualifying her opinion with the rider in the circumstances.
‘Marjorie and Kate’s little cottage is only a couple of minutes’ walk round the corner, and it will be perfect for George since we just have to open the door and we’re in the park,’ she had pointed out, unclipping George’s lead so he could wander freely as Scott and Poppy took their lunchtime stroll, both of them still having a good half an hour before they had to return to their duties.
‘Well, obviously, if George likes it, it is sold,’ Scott had agreed. ‘That was all we needed to know, wasn’t it?’
Hand in hand, with George running ahead of them as fast as his short legs could carry him, the two of them walked away from the main house along the shore of the lake, a dark mirror on this almost windless day. The spring-fed waters were fascinating in their clarity, their transparency allowing Poppy and Scott to watch several large mirror carp feeding among the dormant reeds, making loud sucking noises as they did so.
‘They sound like babies pulling on the teats of their feeding bottles.’ Poppy stared at the broad pink lips hovering on the water’s surface.
A sudden gust of winter wind caused the surface to corrugate, the tiny runs of waves shifting across the lake glinting silver in the pale sun. In a nearby patch of tall dead rushes something disturbed a pair of moorhens who left their hide with harsh throaty calls, and a sudden flap of their short black wings as they rose then landed with a splash on the water, paddling away furiously from whatever unseen menace had disturbed them.
‘Come on,’ Scott said with an urgency that surprised Poppy. ‘Come on, or we won’t have enough time.’
‘Enough time for what?’
‘You’ll see.’
Taking her hand even more firmly, Scott helped her up a steep wooded path that led away from the lake and further and further into the leafless wintry copse, at this time of year a spot where no birds sang and no flowers bloomed. And yet there was a special atmosphere to the place, even though every hasty step they took through the woodland plunged them deeper into the still, immovable winter darkness. Poppy had no idea from where the sense of enchantment might be coming, until she stood in front of the door.
They had come upon it as if by magic, since one minute they were in deep woodland, and the next standing before a faded honey-coloured stone cottage, built deliberately it seemed on a mound in a tiny clearing where it would remain hidden from all but the most curious. There was no path from the copse, just an end to the trees followed by a swathe of grass that surrounded the hummock that supported the charming little building.
Poppy gazed up at it while George stood at her feet wagging his long dachshund tail as if in approval. Scott was silent, looking not at the house but at Poppy.
‘It isn’t like any cottage I’ve seen,’ Poppy said finally. ‘What I mean is that cottages in the country are usually either very plain brick and tile, or whitewash and thatch. They’re not like this – smaller versions of old classical stone houses, with Georgian casements and a proper slate roof – and with such elegant design and proportions. I mean why? Why was it built? And all the way out here – at such a distance from the house? The other follies at Eden Park are all so visible, all set around the lakes, none of them hidden away like this—’
‘Which is the exact point of this one I would imagine,’ Scott interrupted. ‘The other follies were designed to be seen. This wasn’t.’
‘So what was it?’
‘A secret? A place of secrets?’ Scott suggested. ‘A very private place where two could play? I imagine from the situation, and the fact that it’s properly built as a dwelling place, as you’ll see . . .’ He took her hand and led her up a flight of steps that had been cut in the mound, in order that visitors happening on it from the direction from which they had arrived could climb to the stone terrace above.
‘How did you discover it? By sheer chance? Or did you know about it?’
‘I knew nothing of it,’ Scott confessed with his usual engaging honesty. ‘No, it was Eugene Hackett. He spent a lot of his childhood at Eden Park; the son was a boyhood friend from Ireland, where his parents had a holiday house. He was killed recently, poor fellow. But at any rate, Hackett thinks it’s very special. They all used to come up here for picnics, and Lady Dunne would rest here when life at the Park became a trifle too hectic.’
Scott threw open the front door and stood to one side. Poppy stepped into the little building with quiet reverence, looking around her carefully, as if she was stepping into a church, or private chapel, rather than a house.
They stood, silently holding hands, George at their feet, as they took in the small octagonal hall, the stone-flagged floor below their feet and the glass-domed skylight above their heads. All about them, thanks to the dome above, was a feeling of light and space, and although the hall was furnished only with the dry leaves that had blown in that autumn, it nevertheless had a lived-in feeling, as if any minute now a servant would bring in a mahogany table upon which he would lay a sheaf of letters and a copy of the Morning Post.
One by one Scott opened the three doors that led off the octagon, only to discover that they all took the visitor into the reception room, a small sitting room furnished only with one dining chair, a Regency chaise longue, and a fine glass-fronted bookcase.
After this came the dining room, where there was no table, but three abandoned chairs, and finally a kitchen with an old oak table, a range and a small scullery that led to yet more service rooms. A flight of elegant stone stairs led them up to an iron-railed landing where another three doors matching those below revealed two bedrooms and a bathroom. Here there was no furniture at all, other than a three-legged wardrobe in one bedroom and an antique wooden armchair in the other, once perhaps identifiable as a Regency hall chair, but now heavily disguised under thick brown housemaid’s paint.
All the windows were dressed with wooden shutters held securely by long iron bars, making the rooms seem warmer than they might otherwise have been. Poppy opened one of them and stared out across the woods. Immediately the small room became more enchanting, lit by a ray of weak winter sunlight that was sneaking its way past her and through the gap left by the shutters.
‘This is a strange place, Scott,’ Poppy murmured, as he took her arm. ‘It has an atmosphere, as if someone is still living in it.’
‘I didn’t bring you here just for you to see it,’ Scott replied. ‘I brought you here for quite a different reason.’
‘Namely?’
Scott cleared his throat, rather too loudly.
‘I actually – well – I actually brought you here to ask you to marry me.’
He had taken both of her hands as he cleared his throat. Poppy frowned up at him, taken aback not by his proposal, but by the fear she could see in his eyes.
‘What about getting married and the war?’
Scott frowned. ‘Well let’s say I don’t think our marrying is going to bring about world peace,’ he said, drily. ‘But it would certainly make me very happy. You too, I hope.’
‘What I meant was how? How are we going to manage to get married when we have all this work to do? What I mean is – do you think it’s right to get married?’
‘I think it would be terribly wrong not to,’ Scott replied in all seriousness. ‘Particularly because there is a war on. I couldn’t live for one moment longer without you as my wife. Really, I could not. So? So what do you say?’
‘Of course.’ Poppy smiled up at the tall handsome young man still holding both her hands. ‘Of course I will marry you. You surely didn’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t, did you?’
‘I take nothing about you for granted, I hope,’ Scott told her, taking her in his arms, while relief flooded him, and his kiss echoed his gratitude at her reply. ‘Particularly between cup – and lip.’
After which he kissed her again, and again.
‘When?’ Poppy wondered. ‘When do you think we can get married? And where are we going to live? I don’t really think that little flat we’ve just seen is going to be exactly ideal.’
‘We’ll get married as soon as we can arrange it. We can organise a special licence and get hitched in a couple of days, or weeks, whatever we want. And as for where to live, you mean you don’t like this place?’
Poppy stared round her. ‘We can’t live here,’ she said. ‘How can we possibly live here?’
‘When Eugene first showed it to me, he said all that needed to be done was for him to have a word with the owners.’
‘Are you sure it’d be all right?’
‘Absolutely. Now come on – let’s go and see exactly what we have to do to get married.’
Poppy was the one to shut the front door behind them. As she did so she noticed some carving above the fine lintel of the heavy panelled door.
‘Domus Florea,’ she read. ‘Translate please, Mr Meynell.’
‘Yes. Even I with my horribilis Latinus, even I know what that is. It means House of Flowers.’
Eugene’s flight was uncomfortable and dangerous, owing to the age and flimsiness of the aircraft designated to fly him the seventy-five miles from Malta to Sicily and to the atrocious weather – a storm of such ferocity that Eugene found himself quickly accepting that they were bound to crash into the black and icy seas below them.
But somehow the little antediluvian twin-engine aircraft rose to the occasion, thanks more to the skill of its pilot rather than to the resilience of its structure, since during the worst of the storm it seemed as if the howling February gales would rip it to pieces in mid-air. At one point the engines lost all their power against the might of the wind and the plane suddenly plunged nose first for the sea. Somehow the pilot, busy screaming abuse at the gods and swearing at the top of his voice in Maltese, managed to yank the aircraft out of its death dive and level it off only a matter of a hundred or so feet above sea level, before slowly beginning to ascend once more until at long last they were seemingly out of danger.
But, miraculously, the storm abated. As suddenly as it had blown up it was over, even though as Eugene could see from his little side window the seas below them were still turbulent. But the force of the wind had undoubtedly abated because by the time the little plane was approaching the appointed dropping zone it was back on an even keel. Turning to Eugene, the pilot made a jump and drop signal with one hand and smiled before sticking his thumb up in the air. Eugene, having run all his pre-drop checks, clambered further back in the fuselage until he was alongside the door through which he was about to launch himself.
‘Gude lock, Paddy!’ the Maltese pilot bellowed. ‘Go keel the goddamn Chermans!’
After which Eugene gave a thumbs-up sign, unlocked the door, and, taking a deep breath, without thinking twice hurled himself out into the night. After counting to five, he pulled his ripcord and heard his parachute billow out with a whoosh behind him. Opening the eyes he had just tightly closed, he grabbed the sides of the harness above his head and began to fly himself down as best as he could to a ground that seemed to be coming up at him a great deal faster than he was descending.
The fact was that the plane was little more sophisticated than those first used in the Great War and needed to fly at a much lower altitude than was considered safe for parachuting. Not only was the risk to Eugene far higher; so inevitably was the violence of his landing. By using all his strength Eugene managed to control both his drift and his speed, so that by buckling and rolling as soon as he felt the ground under his feet he escaped with nothing more than a few knocks and was able to punch himself free of his parachute. Gathering it into as small a bundle as was possible, he hightailed it for the shelter of the woods that he could see silhouetted on one side of the plateau on to which he had dropped.
As he crouched in the scrub at the edge of the copse he looked for any sign of the signal that was supposed to welcome him to Sicily. He didn’t have to wait long. Hardly a minute after he reached his hiding place, he saw a small pinpoint of light flickering only a couple of hundred yards from where he was crouching. He at once responded, and waited as instructed until he heard the faintest of movements behind him in the copse.
‘Three-a-no-tromp,’ a voice whispered, feet from where he crouched.
‘Five clubs,’ Eugene returned.
‘Good. Now you wait, please.’
Eugene did as he was told, remaining motionless until he felt a tap on the shoulder.
‘Now-a,’ he was urged. ‘Come.’
There was no moonlight. In fact as they made their careful way out of the pitch-dark woods it seemed as though there was no light at all. Eugene could just make out the shape of two men in front of him, both with rifles slung over their backs; small men, both of them, who, it became quickly clear, were enviably light on their feet.
After half an hour of slow and stealthy progress they came to a road, over which they crossed before continuing through more pitch-black woodland until finally reaching a small house silhouetted against the winter sky. Eugene’s guides flattened themselves against the front wall before edging up to ease open the door. A second later they were in the house, leaving their guest outside with his back against the wall while they inspected the premises.
‘Psssst?’ A hiss indicated it was safe for Eugene to enter, which he did, closing the door behind him.
‘Safe-a ’ere,’ one of the men said. ‘We stay-a ’ere now a while. ‘Ave a smokey.’
The three of them lit cigarettes, cupping their matches tightly in hand to show the least light possible. They all leaned back against the wall to smoke in silence, the quiet outside broken only by the call of some night bird. When they finished their cigarettes they took it in turn to rest while one remained on watch.
Perhaps out of respect for his journey, Eugene was invited to be the first to sleep. He huddled himself into the nearest corner of the room, pulling his jacket round him for warmth and wrapping his arms tightly round his chest, allowing his chin finally to drop as if he was already asleep, while he examined the situation.
His mission, particularly vital at this point in the war, was to help try to sabotage the massive buildup of enemy aircraft in Sicily, designed to bolster the ongoing attacks the Luftwaffe were constantly mounting against the strategically vital little island of Malta. Somehow, miraculously, the island had held out throughout an offensive that had begun the previous June when the Italians launched wave after wave of their Savoia-Marchetti bombers in raids over the island. All the Maltese had to defend them were four biplane Gladiator fighters, which notwithstanding their obsolescence in their few weeks of heroic glory intercepted over seventy enemy formations, shooting down or badly damaging thirty-seven enemy aircraft.
But once the British supplemented the tiny fighting force with a handful of Hurricanes the Germans and the Italians realised they had a very real fight on their hands, if they were going to conquer and occupy the tiny island that had been so strategically important since the Middle Ages. Hence the building up of Luftwaffe units in Sicily, and Eugene’s mission to search out and sabotage as many planes as he could. He was to pose as a sympathetic mechanic, a role that Eugene had rehearsed with his usual dedication and attention to detail. Happily so, for it was this sense of detail, allied to that sixth sense that is so necessary to survival, that first alerted him to danger.
It was the cigarettes they were smoking. Because he was so meticulous when preparing what he liked to call a new role for himself, Eugene’s studies always included a painstaking study of native habits. He took a pride in knowing everything from the fact that Italians abhorred the colour purple, associating it with prostitutes, to the manner in which they smoked and drank, or insulted each other.
It was because of this attention to the tiniest detail that he had made sure Jack Ward and his associates supplied him with the correct type of Sicilian cigarette. The tobacco in these cigarettes was black, rough and pungent, a typical peasant type of smoke. But the cigarettes his companions were smoking smelt as if they were made of Virginian tobacco. Watching them from behind half-closed eyes only confirmed his suspicions.
He sat up, indicating that he had run out of smokes. Could they possibly spare him a cigarette? Without a second thought the man nearest him opened an unmarked tin, which allowed Eugene to sit back in his corner and smoke the sort of cigarette he would have greatly enjoyed in any other circumstances than the ones in which he now found himself.
He was undoubtedly in the hands of German sympathisers, which was what Jack Ward with his usual understatement would call a bit tricky. He quickly ran through his options. He could shoot them both with very little difficulty since presently they seemed far more occupied in eating a lump of bread filled with some high-smelling sausage than they were in keeping an eye on him. Two shots would take them out, and he would be gone before they even hit the floor. It was regrettable, but there was really no choice, since his only real chance lay in making good an escape.
Bluff Hackett – that’s your only chance, just good old Irish bluff.
The first part was a lot easier than he had reckoned. Pretending that he simply could not sleep because he was too keyed up, Eugene persuaded the younger of the two men to take his place in the corner while he and his friend would pass the time playing a gambling game Eugene would teach him. The younger one was soon fast asleep in the corner, his heavy coat pulled up nearly to his eyes and his face turned away from his companions, while Eugene began to explain in whispers how the game was played. The second Sicilian listened intently as Eugene muttered the directions.
‘If you win . . .’
Eugene put his hand in his pocket and produced some of the many small gold coins without which he never travelled. As always, greed very soon overcame any common sense the Sicilian might have had, as he saw the chance of winning one of the coins that were now lying on the floor in front of them, glinting faintly in the light of their cigarettes.
‘Now then,’ Eugene whispered to him in his carefully rural Italian. ‘You can have first guess. Is that coin head up? Or head down?’
As he had anticipated the Sicilian leaned slightly forward as if to try to read how the coin lay. The moment he did, Eugene struck him hard and brutally under his chin across his windpipe with the edge of one large, strong hand. He was dead before his head struck the wall behind him.
The second man was an even easier target. He was so fast asleep he would not have heard Eugene even if he had stood up and started to dance an Irish jig on the stone floor. Eugene had no need to stand up, let alone dance a jig. He simply leaned over and knocked the man stone cold unconscious with the butt of his revolver. To make sure his suspicions were correct, Eugene at once went thoroughly through both the men’s jackets. In the pockets of the man who had been asleep in the corner, the one who now lay unconscious in front of him, he found nothing more incriminating than the pack of Virginia cigarettes. But sewn inside a tobacco pouch belonging to the man with whom he had been intent on playing Spoof he found a safe pass from the SS.
He had no idea of how much time he had before his scheduled betrayal. It occurred to him as he carefully inspected the inside and then the near outside of the small abandoned farmhouse that in all probability he was not to be handed over there at all, and the intention had been to take him into the nearest town where he was meant to be finding work in a garage. It was there that the SS would be waiting for him. This meant that Eugene had two questions which he had to address. The first was how much had they known about his plans? The second, more vitally, was who had betrayed him?
From what he could see, there was no sign of any activity in the immediate vicinity of the house. The surrounding landscape was nothing but flat fields, winter-dead to everything other than the ever scavenging birds, with mountains rising into the still dark skies far beyond. In the enveloping darkness it was impossible to make out the lie of the land, but after a careful and what Eugene devoutly hoped was an invisible reconnaissance he returned inside the house to collect the rest of his small parcel of belongings.
Just as he was about to take his final leave, to his surprise he heard the man in the corner stir. Turning, Eugene dropped to his haunches and levelled the gun at the man’s temple. The young Sicilian’s eyes opened slowly. As they did, Eugene pressed the gun harder into his forehead.
The man frowned up at him and shrugged. His eyes swivelled sideways until he could take in the outline of his friend slumped on the stone floor.
‘What you do?’ he whispered. ‘What is this? We are friends.’
Eugene eyed him, then with his free hand dangled his friend’s safe pass in front of him.
‘Friends of the SS. I should cut both your throats.’
‘No! Please! No – no me! I am your friend – I swear! I do not know ’im – I not do this with ’im afore.’
‘And I don’t think he’s going to be doing it again, either.’
The man frowned and shook his head in bewilderment. As soon as he did so he put his hands to his head to hold it against the sudden pain that shot through it.
Eugene stared at him, trying to assemble some sort of plan. Without help and guidance he knew he was as good as dead, since he had no knowledge of the country into which he had been dropped other than the fact that he was to be taken to a safe house and from there to a safe place of work. He was helpless without contacts. Lacking an escort it was an odds on certainty that he would walk straight into the arms of the enemy.
His only chance of survival was to trust the Sicilian, lie low for a while and during that time change his appearance. The problem was the disappearance of the traitor lying dead against the wall of the farmhouse. When he failed to show up with his expected goods, the Germans or Italian soldiers would come out looking, and when they found his dead body they would know Eugene was at large.
They’re going to know that anyway, Eugene reasoned to himself as he stared down at his prisoner. Putting his gun back in the belt of his trousers, he nodded to the Sicilian and, after making known his intentions, enlisted his help to drag the dead man up the rickety stairs of the deserted building and deposit his corpse under the floorboards. As they placed the wooden board back over him, his compatriot spat in disgust.
‘Now where?’ Eugene wondered as they stood outside surveying a bleak wintry landscape unfolding under an ominous sky. ‘What’s our destination?’
‘We go about ten mile,’ the Sicilian replied. ‘But we take the river. We go by boat. Come. Quick now.’
He hurried Eugene off in a direction away from the road, keeping low as they traversed the field between the house and the trees in the near distance. They had just made the cover of the woodland when Eugene heard the sound of motor vehicles. Glancing back over his shoulder through the undergrowth he saw a small patrol of motorbikes and an armoured car driving along the road, one soldier standing in the car behind a long-barrelled machine gun. For a second he held his breath, but the unit paid no attention to the outwardly derelict farmhouse, driving straight past it and continuing without slowing down along the winding road that finally disappeared into the hillside.
There was a boat waiting for them, moored on the near bank, a quite ordinary rowing boat with a pair of strong oars, well concealed in an inlet that ran under some large heavily bowed trees.
‘If anyone spots us in this, we’re sitting ducks.’
‘No one will see us, my friend,’ he was assured. ‘This river is very small, and runs away from the roads. Where we go, believe me, this is very much the safest way.’
So it proved. After a bitterly cold but entirely uneventful voyage down a small meandering river, Eugene found himself decanted on the banks of a tiny little hamlet where it would seem from his first impression time had completely forgotten to move on.
Back at Eden Park, Billy was staring at his plate of fish pie. Billy hated fish and even more so when it had been made into some sort of pie, particularly when covered with a thin coating of white dried potato. He fidgeted at his place at Mrs Alderman’s kitchen table, pushing a piece of the offending offering around his plate so regularly that Mrs Alderman, busy studying the weekly ration allocations which were known as ‘Changes in the Points Value’ in her newspaper, finally looked up at him and clicked her tongue loudly.
‘Billy,’ she warned him. ‘I can’t concentrate. Not with you doing that.’
Billy, all innocence, looked back at the cook. When she had returned to her reading he transferred his gaze to the cat who was sitting as ever like Patience on her monument under the kitchen table, conveniently near to his feet. The kitchen cat and Billy were now firm friends, so much so that it seemed to know at once when there was a game on, climbing down from some cosy place near the kitchen range and slinking its way across the floor to find its new ally.
So far the score that morning stood at Billy and Cat two, Mrs Alderman nought, a long way from their best score of the previous week, which was Billy and Cat eighteen, Mrs Alderman one. That had been a golden lunchtime when the cook had been so engrossed in her reading and accompanying tongue-clicking that she had only noticed one morsel of her precious stew being fed to Cat.
Today, however, she seemed more on her guard, as if news of Billy’s favourite pastime had somehow come to her notice. She would keep looking up at odd moments, particularly when Billy fidgeted. The more she looked up, the more he fidgeted, and the more he fidgeted, the more she looked up, which was why after twenty minutes Billy and Cat’s fish pie score stood at only two.
In order to get her back to her reading for long enough for Billy to score another goal, he had to feign eating some fish, a task that made him want to retch, so disgusting was the taste of the cold and congealing forkful. Unfortunately, as he did so Mrs Alderman looked up and awarded him another stare, forcing Billy to swallow a larger mouthful than he had intended. With eyes bulging he grabbed his water glass and swallowed half the tumbler.
‘It can hardly be hot, Billy,’ Mrs Alderman remarked. ‘Seeing you’ve been sitting in front of it since before the last war.’
‘Must be the pepper, Mrs A.’
‘There ain’t no pepper on it, young man,’ the cook replied, shaking out her newspaper. ‘Can’t get any pepper these days, not a bit. That’s why they’re a-calling it white gold. Didn’t know that, did you, Mr Smarty Pants? If you wanted to make a fortune you’d be out growing pepper, that’s what you’d be doing, or whatever it is you do to make pepper, instead of sitting for half a century in front of your dinner.’
‘Wonder what they’re calling fish,’ Billy muttered, eyeing the cat, who was now busy swishing his tail in patent discontent. ‘White muck I should imagine.’
‘Fish is good for you,’ Mrs Alderman replied crisply. ‘And we’re a lot luckier than some, here at Eden Park, I can tell you, seeing how we have the lakes and the old stew ponds. Most folks in towns they don’t get no fish at all, even after queuing for it for hours and hours. So you just eat it up and be thankful.’
Mrs Alderman gave Billy one more friendly glare, then returned to her study of the food points values, pushing her glasses up her nose as she did so, unable to believe how much had changed, and how quickly, now that rationing was really beginning to be felt.
‘So what other treats are we in for this week then, Mrs A?’ Billy asked over-politely, as he surreptitiously dropped an extra large lump of what he deeply suspected might be carp down to the ever grateful cat. ‘Anything exciting on the menu?’
‘You might get some American sausage meat if you’re lucky. That’s come down some points, as has Spam. Almost as much as that awful Tor stuff you get in tins.’
‘Oh, Gawd. I hate Tor worse than I hate Spam.’
‘And you’re not to swear, young man. I told you that a dozen times.’
‘Gawd in’t no swear word. It’s a name.’
‘A name you’re taking in vain. The Lord’s name. There’s nothing wrong with gosh or golly – and you’re to mind your grammar too, and all, while I’m on the subject. “In’t no swear word” indeed! No such word as in’t, Billy, and you knows it. It’s ain’t. It ain’t no swear word. And finish up your fish.’
‘What else are we not going to get then, Mrs A?’ Billy continued, all innocence, as he saw Mrs Alderman returning to her reading. ‘Nothing half decent, I’ll bet.’
‘You won’t be getting no sugar at this rate, not according to this chart ’ere. Nor any tea. Tea’s gawn through the roof so it has.’
‘Gone, Mrs Alderman. No such word as gawn, don’t you know.’
‘I’ll give those ears of yours a good clip if you don’t look out, Billy Hendry.’
Mrs Alderman sighed and began to fold her paper up. Seeing her doing so, Billy’s heart grew heavy as he realised that gone was his chance to get anywhere near his record score. Not only that, but if she maintained her present level of vigilance Mrs Alderman would make sure he had to eat the rest of her disgusting fish pie himself.
‘I’d kill for a cup of decent tea,’ she grumbled, getting slowly to her feet and pottering over to the sink to fill the kettle, giving Billy the chance of a quick hat-trick down under the table to Cat.
‘When fisher-folk are brave enough / To face mines and the foe for you / You surely can be bold enough / To try a fish that’s new,’ Mrs Alderman recited with a sigh, banging the lid back on the kettle while nodding at Billy to encourage him. ‘You’d do well to learn that, young man, and be thankful you got something on your plate.’
‘What do you think I’m doing, Mrs A?’ Billy enquired, through a pretend mouthful of food. ‘Look – I nearly cleared up every scrap.’
Mrs Alderman looked round at that, and saw to her surprise that the boy’s plate was almost clean. She eyed him suspiciously. She knew that Billy was always up to something, and no doubt making fish pie disappear was another of his illusions. Her suspicion was always greater the more innocent his smile.
‘It’s not me I’m feeling sorry for,’ the cook continued. ‘As far as tea goes that is. It’s all them poor people upstairs—’
‘Isn’t it those poor people upstairs, Mrs A?’ Billy wondered, widening his eyes more than ever.
‘It’s them poor people upstairs I feel sorry for,’ Mrs Alderman continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Them poor hardworking bods, doing their best to help win the war, and all I can give ’em as refreshment is a cup of near dishwater. Disgraceful, that’s what I say it is. Don’t know what the government can be thinking, expecting this famous war effort they’re always on about when a body can’t even get a half-decent cup of tea.’
During this speech, to his quiet delight, Billy was able to score another fish hat-trick, bringing the score up to Cat and Billy nine, Mrs Alderman nil. Unhappily there was neither enough left on the plate to break the existing record nor indeed enough time, as Mrs Alderman suddenly leaned over and whisked away his plate.
‘And another thing I cannot abide is people sittin’ in front of cold food,’ she grumbled. ‘Particularly ungrateful people.’
‘’Ow can you say such a thing, Mrs A?’ Billy replied, all hurt innocence. ‘Look ’ow much I’ve eaten. Look ’ow well I done.’
‘’Ow well I have done, Billy. And what’s that funny noise— Oh, no. It’s not the bloomin’ cat being sick, surely?’
At the realisation that the last scrap he had dropped for the cat must have been both too large and too bony and if he wasn’t careful the game would be up entirely, Billy was out of his chair in a moment.
‘Thanks, Mrs A!’ he called as he scrambled to the door. ‘Thanks for the pie – but I suddenly remembered I got to see Major F! He said he had some news about my invention!’
‘You and your inventions,’ Mrs Alderman grumbled, doubling over her considerable bulk in an effort to find the still vomiting cat. ‘And if I find you been feeding Maudie—’
But Billy was gone, and with him any chance Mrs Alderman had of finding out whether it was the cat, or her charge, who had been responsible for the mealtime felony.
‘Blimey,’ Billy said to himself as he scampered upstairs. ‘If this war’s worth winnin’, it’s worth winnin’ for an end to Mrs A’s fish pie for good an’ all!’
‘You’re late,’ Marjorie chided him as Billy skidded through the outer door of Major Folkestone’s office.
‘I’m right on time,’ Billy retorted. ‘Right on the blooming chiming of the church clock. Listen, Marge.’ He started to feign the tolling of the old clock.
‘You’re still late. Too late to save me from having to say yes to a drink.’
Marjorie glared back over her shoulder at Major Folkestone’s inner door, which had just closed fast behind her.
‘That’s not my fault, Marge. Any ’ow—’
‘How. Anyhow.’
‘That’s your beeswax. You can look after yourself.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Marjorie sighed. ‘You will when you’re older.’
‘All you had to do was make an excuse,’ Billy grimaced. ‘If you don’t want to go out with him, tell him something stupid.’
‘I’ve run out of excuses, Billy! Anyway, even if I do make an excuse he always gives me the Monday then.’ In response to Billy’s puzzled stare, Marjorie went on to explain. ‘If I say sorry I can’t tonight, Major – or tomorrow – or Friday – he just says fine. How about Monday then?’
‘So this time . . . ?’
‘This time I found myself – because I couldn’t think of anything – saying all right, tonight then. If you’d only been on time, Billy, I wouldn’t have been caught, would I?’
‘I was bang on time! Look! Look – it’s slap bang on two o’bloomin’ clock.’
‘You look a complete mess, Billy. Come here.’
Marjorie frowned and pulled her self-adopted teenage brother towards her, trying to make him look a bit more respectable before he kept his appointment with her boss. His long wool socks had fallen round his ankles, his striped scarf was knotted like a hangman’s noose round his throat, his tie was halfway round to the back of his neck, one side of his shirt collar stuck up towards his chin while the other was entirely invisible under his tie, and, to top it all, he had his jumper on not only inside out, but back to front.
‘You’re going to end up in a back room here with all the other loonies,’ she grumbled. ‘Inventing things totally as daft as you, and the rest of them.’
‘Has he said anything about my pilotless bomb yet, Marge?’ Billy asked, his voice dropping to a whisper as the door to the inner office opened and the figure of Miss Budge appeared, a stack of files under one arm.
‘No. But then he wouldn’t. Not to me anyway,’ Marjorie told him, easing him towards the open door.
‘So what’s he want to see me for then?’
‘You’ll soon find out, won’t you? Go on.’
With one final push Billy was inside Major Folkestone’s office.
‘Afternoon, sir,’ Billy said, giving a more than creditable salute.
‘At ease, young man,’ the major replied. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
Billy cast a quick look round the desk to see if he could spot any trace of the file on his soon-to-be-famous pilotless bomb, but to his amazement nothing was visible.
‘Can I ask you something, sir?’
‘Not now, Billy.’ Major Folkestone cut him short. ‘I have a busy afternoon and you’re the very smallest part of it, I’m afraid. Here.’
‘I was only going to ask—’
‘Not now, Billy. That’s an order.’
Anthony Folkestone indicated for Billy to sit down at a table and handed him a pencil and paper.
‘Take a dekko at that, young man, and tell me what you make of it. Should be child’s play to you, with your knack with codes.’
Billy frowned down at the sheets of paper on the table in front of him.
‘Even Marge could crack this one, sir,’ he told the major loftily, after a few minutes. ‘It’s easy-peasy. Boring, actually.’
‘I’m quite sure Marjorie could not crack it, Billy – just as I’m sure it isn’t what you call easy-peasy. Or boring.’
Billy gazed up at him and as always Anthony Folkestone got the strangest feeling. It was as if the boy was possessed not just of a knack but of something else, a capacity about which he had no real understanding, but which seemed to be visible in his eyes, as if there was quite another person than young Billy Hendry looking back out at you.
He had already proved that he had a highly precocious ability to add columns of figures at a glance, and to translate basic codes as accurately as, and sometimes more quickly than, most of the professional code-breakers at Eden Park.
At first Anthony Folkestone had not given much thought to Billy’s precocious ability, which was hardly surprising since Billy’s vague urchin look and unmilitary manners certainly did not suggest a hidden genius, and his eternally cheerful manner would have been more suited to a delivery boy. So Anthony was inclined to put his odd talents down to general quirkiness, deciding not to look beyond what was on offer – namely the boy’s innate ability to decipher codes, in exchange for which Anthony willingly put up patiently with what he considered to be Billy’s wilder flights of fancy, so many of which Marjorie, with sisterly love, faithfully placed on his desk, and which still sat unexamined under a pile of Top Secret documents.
‘This is just another of them triple letter do-dahs, sir,’ Billy said with what he considered to be a sniff of some sophistication. ‘You know – we’ve ’ad ’em before.’
‘Yes, I know we’ve had them before, Billy, but I am not as able as you to work through them as quickly. If I was I wouldn’t bother you with them, but the boys have their hands full enough trying to decipher stuff concerning attacks on our supply convoys. This has just come through, and since you’re around . . .’
Anthony petered out, realising his reasoning was beginning to sound feeble. He knew he used Billy for this sort of decoding because he was not just on hand, but very fast, although Anthony was at pains not to tell him so.
‘I told you, sir,’ Billy continued, in a vaguely patronising voice, ‘the Ds? And the Vs – you replace them with Gs and Hs, then you replace them again with—’
‘I know, Billy, you’ve told me a dozen times, but it doesn’t really make the slightest difference because codes are not my subject, and really I don’t understand a blind word, so be a good chap and—’
‘You want it in German, sir?’ Billy interrupted. ‘Or do you want it in King’s English?’
‘You don’t speak German.’
‘I feel I nearly do. I’ve been working on so many of these now, I got quite a few words in German now, sir. Want to hear?’
Anthony Folkestone stared at him, trying to conceal the astonishment he was feeling.
‘It’s not quite as good as my French, sir,’ Billy noted modestly. ‘But Mr Hackett says it’s coming on.’
‘Mr Hackett’s been coaching you?’
‘No, sir. Just criticising, if you like.’
Anthony picked a pencil out of the holder on his desk and began to tap it rhythmically on his desktop.
‘To get back to the message, Billy. What does it say? And I don’t understand why it should be in German. It’s meant to be from one of ours.’
‘It is, sir. It’s just been sent in German probably as a decoy – since it’s from Popeye.’
‘Popeye?’ Now Anthony was genuinely surprised. ‘I see.’ He put his hand out to take the message. ‘We’d better have that sent to translation at once.’
‘Don’t need to really, sir. Says he’s landed OK – but one of his welcoming committee was a d.a.’
‘A d.a.?’ Anthony tried not to look surprised.
‘Double agent, sir,’ Billy stated, all innocence.
‘I know what d.a. stands for, thank you, Billy.’
‘He’s all right, sir. He killed the bloke and the other one’s genuine. Popeye’s in his safe house now, and starts work on the cars tomorrow.’
Anthony resumed his pencil tapping feeling a little as if he was working for Billy rather than the other way round.
‘I have to remind you, young man, of your position here. You are not meant to work out the full message; you’re just meant to break the code, nothing more.’
‘It’s all right, sir. I know what would happen to me if I broke the Official Secrets Act. You really don’t ‘ave to worry. Not on my account. If I ever broke the Act I would be for the big drop, I know that.’
Billy ran his finger expressively across his throat before getting to his feet, already restless and bored, and looking for something else to occupy him.
‘Thank you, Billy. You’ve been a great help, as usual.’
‘Maybe you’ll have a moment soon to have a dekko at that file Marge gave you? It’s over there, on the cabinet.’
Anthony nodded, at the same time looking away.
‘Of course. Thank you, Billy. That will be all for now.’
Billy realised that this was the moment to skedaddle, as he himself would put it, but he hated leaving Major Folkestone’s office, always liking to hang around, feeling that while he was there he was nearer to the centre of things at Eden Park. He stopped by Miss Budge’s desk.
‘What you doing, Miss Budge?’
He found himself addressing her back as she was leaning forward, tidying one of her desk drawers.
‘I’m sorting through the kit for our people, Billy, that’s what I’m doing, passports, identity cards, cyanide pills, all that.’
Billy stared into the now quite open drawer.
‘Blimey,’ he breathed. ‘I think I know what they are, all right, don’t I? One bite and you’re a gonna, yes?’
Miss Budge too stared into the drawer at the cyanide pills which were routinely doled out to all agents. ‘Quite correct, Billy,’ she told him factually. ‘As a matter of fact, I consider these to be the kindest thing we do for our agents, quite the kindest.’
She shut the drawer and locked it, putting the key into a box on her desk.
Billy walked out of her office filled with excitement. He could not wait for the day when Miss Budge would dole him out a false passport, identity card and cyanide pill.
‘Of course I couldn’t go and fall in love with someone ordinary, like a soldier,’ Kate found herself moaning later that evening after she, Marjorie and Billy had finished dinner in the kitchen of the cottage. ‘Someone who might be posted to Catterick; someone to whom I could send knitted socks and mufflers. No, I couldn’t do that, could I? I had to fall in love with someone in H Section. Which means I will never ever know where he is – or how he is – or what he’s doing.’
‘A soldier’s not that much better,’ Marjorie remarked, standing in front of the fireplace to check her appearance before leaving to meet Anthony Folkestone for the dreaded promised drink at the pub. ‘Soldiers don’t remain at Catterick, and when they’re posted abroad you don’t know where they are either – specially not if they’re taken prisoner.’
‘I know,’ Kate interrupted. ‘I know, but at least they’re taken prisoner. If I just knew how Eugene was. It’s not where so much, just how, really.’
She fished a cigarette out of her bag, lighting it with a spill she ignited from the wood fire burning in the grate. Billy, who was busy as usual drawing in one of his exercise books at the table, glanced at the girls, wondering if there was any way of cheering Kate up by telling her that he knew that Popeye, otherwise known as Eugene Hackett, had landed safely. Then, recalling the image he was careful to keep in his head for such times – himself lined up against the wall at the back of the stable yard being executed by a firing squad under the command of Major Folkestone – he merely sighed and went on drawing.
‘At least someone is in love with you, Kate,’ Marjorie said, pursing her lips and wishing she had some lipstick, more for her own vanity’s sake than for any effect she wished to have on that evening’s date.
‘You got Major Folkestone.’ Billy grinned up from his place at the table. ‘He’s got a fantastic pash on you, Marge, you know that?’
‘That’s quite enough out of you, Billy,’ Marjorie returned. ‘I’m having a drink with him simply because he’s my boss.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Billy teased.
‘Yeah,’ Marjorie replied, doing up her headscarf and coat and disappearing out into the night.
As she crossed the parkland by the light of the all too bright moon, Marjorie wondered as always whether, just as she was about to escape for the evening, the air raid siren would sound and she would have to take shelter. It wasn’t so bad when she was in a party of people, and they were well out of the grounds, because then they could hide themselves away in the nearest dugout, but if they were in the house and the word was they could be either targeted or simply in line for enemy bombs being jettisoned on their return journey, they very often had to go into the elaborate procedure known as Operation GOHQ, which entailed everyone’s grabbing as many of the latest Top Secret files as they could manage – chaos in other words. From that moment, all such information was their own personal responsibility while they made their way to a warren of well-equipped caves. These hiding places ran to everything from bedrooms with bunks and knitted blankets, and living rooms fitted out with the latest radio equipment, to offices with full sets of secure filing cabinets, a small chapel, and even a makeshift emergency operating room complete with side ward.
The caves were a good mile from the main house and camouflaged from the sight of anyone approaching at land level, or spying from overhead, access being obtained by way of a series of tunnels whose entrances were again brilliantly concealed behind trapdoors hidden deep in the woodlands. Possibly an invading force would find them sooner or later, but only, so the Nosy Parkers joked, if they had a strong nose for drink and cigarettes, as well as a prior knowledge of the small underground village.
On top of that, escape tunnels had been fashioned from the complex so that if the dread day ever dawned when England was invaded and the inhabitants of Eden Park were apparently cornered below ground, some if not most of them would be given the chance to run towards the sea, where the underground caves finally finished.
Happily, the evening of Marjorie’s rendezvous with Major Anthony Folkestone was uninterrupted by any air raid warnings, which made it even more strange that as Marjorie made her way to the bicycle sheds she actually found herself praying for one, just so that it would get her out of her date.
‘Ah, there you be, Miss Hendry.’ Anthony Folkestone was certain his voice had risen a good octave as he stood staring at the pretty girl now standing in front of him.
Although they had been out drinking in a group before, Marjorie had never previously really bothered to dress herself up, since she had considered that having a few weak drinks in the pub hardly merited putting on her glad rags, particularly since she now only had one pair of decent stockings left to her name.
But this evening, partly out of boredom and a feeling of inner greyness induced by the notion of having to go out on a date with her boss, and partly out of a devil-may-care let’s-see-what-happens attitude, she had decided to make herself look as glamorous as possible. Besides, as she had reasoned to herself while she set her hair carefully and applied the very last drop of scent out of the little blue Evening in Paris bottle she had been given the Christmas before by Billy, nowadays she had so little chance to dress up glamorously, she might as well dress up for Anthony Folkestone as for anyone else, even if she did have to arrive on a bicycle.
She had chosen to wear an old-fashioned frock that she had recut and resewn, adding to it a lace collar and cuffs she had found at the Clothes Exchange. Over it she put on a tight little crossover angora cardigan that her late Aunt Hester’s next door neighbour had knitted for her while she and Billy were still living with Marjorie’s aunt. Anthony Folkestone, who was used to seeing her dressed mostly in wool – including very often an old army forage hat pulled well down over her hair to try to prevent excessive heat loss in the freezing building, not to mention mittens and thick home-knitted stockings – could now hardly believe his eyes.
Not that Marjorie did not always look pretty in her customary office outfit of layers of woolly jumpers and lisle stockings. As a matter of fact, in his opinion, she always looked quite adorable, but she never looked remotely glamorous. Now she looked exactly that, which was probably why he found himself becoming tongue-tied.
‘Is something the matter, Major?’ Marjorie asked, feeling suddenly disconcerted, as she observed her boss staring at her as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
‘No, Miss Hendry,’ Anthony replied slowly. ‘No, nothing at all. Nothing at all is the matter. No. At least I don’t think so. No.’
There was a short silence, which Marjorie judged really should be broken.
‘You’re looking very smart, sir, if I may say so.’
She smiled at him. She herself felt surprised at how different he too looked out of uniform in a sports coat, checked shirt and regimental tie, and dark trousers. She could still do without his carefully manicured moustache, which she realised must make him look much older than he possibly was, but even so, the first impression she had of her escort for the evening was altogether more favourable than she could have previously guessed.
Anthony Folkestone stood staring down at Marjorie in fascinated silence for a few seconds more before he managed to ask her what she would like to drink.
‘What do you think they have, sir? Do you think they have any gin? Last week they were very short of gin, and I don’t really fancy sherry. Which is all they usually have.’
‘Let me see, Miss Hendry,’ Anthony replied, turning to the bar.
‘Perhaps you could call me Marjorie, sir. After all, we’re not in the office now.’
‘Of course not. In that case, please call me Anthony. Although of course when we do get back to work—’
‘I quite understand, sir.’ Marjorie laughed. ‘Sorry. Anthony. It’s just – it’s just I’ve never been out for a drink with my employer before. Which is not all that surprising seeing that really you’re my first employer. Anthony. It is with an H, isn’t it? Your name? I’m never quite sure whether all Anthony’s have H’s or not.’ She stopped.
‘Mine does, Marjorie. But you don’t have to try to pronounce it,’ Anthony joked. ‘I think normally it’s only Americans, like Poppy Tetherington – she’s American – she wouldn’t have an H if she was called Anthony.’
He stopped as he saw Marjorie staring at him.
‘Not that she would have ever been called Anthony, or Antony, come to think of it, would she? Seeing she’s a girl, but none the less I know what I mean.’ Ravaged with embarrassment, he turned quickly to the bar. ‘Excuse me?’ he called to the landlord and started to enquire as to the situation regarding the supply of spirits, which was much safer ground, particularly since the barman immediately drew Anthony further along the bar, which meant Anthony found himself feeling almost faint with gratitude, as it gave him time to recover a small portion of his self-esteem.
‘He says if we go into the inner saloon,’ he explained to Marjorie on his return, ‘he’ll see what he can do.’
Anthony took Marjorie through to the tiny back bar, a private room that was generally reserved for ladies or members of the gentry. Tonight it was all but empty except for one portly gentleman who had fallen asleep in the corner by the fireplace, with a newspaper folded over his face as if he was sunbathing on a beach instead of trying to find warmth and comfort on an evening in what was to turn out to be one of the coldest winters in living memory.
In the end Marjorie drank gin and orange, while Anthony preferred his gin pink. After the landlord had revived the fire with a handful of fresh logs, and the portly gentleman had suddenly woken to finish his port and stagger off half asleep and half drunk into the night, they found themselves alone, and at once fell into a dreadful silence.
‘It’s odd, don’t you think?’ Anthony said after what seemed to him to be half an hour, but was actually only about a minute. He leaned forward to throw a cinder of burning wood that the fire had spat out on to the thin carpet back into the fire. ‘We work together every day. As my secretary you know everything about me. Work is very personal, particularly in our field, and yet quite impersonal in that I think we all feel we can’t really get to know each other without perhaps endangering what we do.’
‘I’d hate to think I was doing anything that might jeopardise someone’s safety by having a drink with you.’
They both smiled briefly, knowing what the word someone meant. Someone meant an agent, someone in the field, someone risking torture and death.
‘No,’ Anthony replied slowly. ‘No, I don’t think we’re going to put anyone’s life in jeopardy. Most especially not you. You are the model of diligence.’
‘Me?’ Marjorie looked at him in surprise. ‘I’m nothing more than a glorified assistant.’
‘You’re a great deal more than that, Marjorie. A great deal more. Now, how about another drink? I think I can persuade mine host to part with a little more of his precious gin.’
Marjorie hesitated before accepting. Normally she would never have given such an offer a second thought, since nowadays treats and luxuries were few and far between, and alcohol was not something the rest of the country was able to enjoy in any great quantities. Yet a feeling of caution overtook her. Anthony was after all her boss. She certainly could not imagine Miss Budge, his new typist, swilling gin in the pub with the major.
‘Oh, come on,’ Anthony urged her with polite good humour. ‘I have no wicked intentions of trying to get you tipsy or anything.’
‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just—’
‘I know. You can’t help thinking of me as your boss. It must be very hard – and if you’d rather just have one drink and go home, I’ll quite understand.’
Marjorie looked at the anxious face that was looking back at her, all of a sudden aware of the kindness in Anthony Folkestone’s eyes. She had always thought of his demeanour as a study in seriousness and efficiency, but looking at him now – and it might well be owing to alcohol – she realised that he had a really very sweet expression.
‘Thank you,’ she finally told him, with a smile. ‘I’d love another drink.’
The talk stayed small for the next drink, centred safely round the subject of whether or not they enjoyed working at Eden Park, and what a wonderful house it was, and how unimaginable it must be to live as a family in such a place.
‘We used to stay here before the war,’ Anthony said, resuming the conversation after he had lit them both a cigarette. ‘The odd thing about it is that you don’t feel as if you’re staying in a great house. You’d see what I mean if it was furnished the way it was before it was requisitioned. It had that indefinable English country house style. What the French call le désordre britannique. You know, rugs on the floor, dogs at the fire, chintz covers, old paintings.’
‘You say you used to stay here,’ Marjorie asked carefully, having picked up on the we. ‘You and – what? Your family? Your parents?’
Anthony looked at her as he smoked his cigarette, as if deciding whether or not to tell her.
‘My wife and I,’ he finally replied. ‘Jane and I.’
‘I didn’t – I mean I didn’t realise . . .’ Marjorie stumbled, wondering why she suddenly felt let down. ‘I didn’t know . . .’
‘No, no, Marjorie. I’m not married. Not any more. Jane died three years ago, from peritonitis. Just over, actually – three years and two months.’
Unsurprisingly, Marjorie didn’t know what to say. Why should she? Outside office hours, despite the fact that they sometimes worked an eighteen-hour day, she barely knew the Anthony Folkestone at whom she was now looking.
‘What a terrible thing.’
‘We’d only been married six months.’
‘Six months?’
‘Six months.’ Anthony nodded and threw his spent cigarette into the fire. ‘But really that’s quite enough of that. I didn’t mean to mention it. It just sort of came up, because we were talking about Eden. That’s what we always used to call it, you know, just “Eden”. Well, still do really, at least those few of us who knew it before. I was at school with the son – with David. He and I used to spend long idyllic summers here, so when it was requisitioned by the War Office for security work it seemed the family thought of me. They knew the sort of thing I was doing, in outline anyway, so they used their influence. Which is how I found myself back here. So it’s not coincidence – it was the family’s wishes, which kind of doubles my responsibility. Besides looking out for foreign bogies, got to keep an eye on the place for them. Some sort of thank you, if you like, for everything they did for me before the war, parents in India and so on, quite lonely in the hols, you know the sort of thing.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Marjorie agreed. ‘Well, I hope so far they would approve. We seem to have been pretty well behaved, haven’t lit fires in the ballroom or any of that kind of thing.’
‘Couldn’t have asked for a better crowd. Thank heavens the army didn’t take it over. They’d have completely wrecked the place. You’ve no idea what soldiers get up to in other folk’s homes. No, it doesn’t bear thinking about, the army at Eden.’
‘What about your friend – David, wasn’t it? The son.’
‘He was killed not so long ago.’ Anthony glanced away from her, remembering how the two of them had used to sit in front of the pub fire together. ‘We were in the same regiment. I got invalided out – a bullet in the back on manoeuvres – which is why I was sidelined to a desk, but David got sent to North Africa, poor chap. Now, I’m going to have one for the road – taking ruthless advantage of mine host because he said he doesn’t know when he’s going to get his next gin delivery. And you? But of course, if you would rather not . . . ?’
‘As long as you promise that if I fall off my bike on the way back you’ll help me back up.’
‘It’s a promise.’
As he went to the bar Marjorie pretended to check her appearance in the compact she had taken out of her handbag. A drink with Major Folkestone was turning out to be a little different. He was obviously one of the many walking wounded.
‘Now shall we talk about Billy and his famous design for a bomber without a pilot?’
Anthony sat down again, obviously determined to steer the conversation away from the past. Marjorie smiled as she always seemed to when Billy was mentioned.
‘Oh, Billy. He is such a strange boy. No one would think, from how he is now, at Eden Park, no one could imagine how he was as a child, timid and frightened, always seeing a shadow as a ghost, and a ghost as a tiger come to eat him. And yet now look at him. He’s become a sort of prodigy; never stops drawing and doodling, thinking of things, adding up figures before anyone can blink. I don’t know what’s going to become of him eventually, but he certainly has gone from one extreme state to another, bless his cotton socks.’
‘There’s some medical term or other for it,’ Anthony said thoughtfully, as they finally finished their drinks and started to wrap themselves well up in preparation for their bicycle ride home to Eden Park. ‘I can’t remember the exact official description, but I know there’s an acknowledged medical state which some children go into when they suffer shock early in life – sometimes some do say before they’re even born, though I don’t quite see how, but then that’s as maybe.’ He paused before continuing. ‘Apparently the child turns in on him or herself, and because they’re not say as normal in behaviour or appearance as their contemporaries, they’re inclined to get sidelined. And during this period in their young lives they develop all sorts of odd gifts and abilities. Interesting, isn’t it? My father’s a doctor, and he told me all about it. He specialises in children’s conditions, and for his sins got laughed at when he first put his theory forward, although I gather they’re not holding their sides quite as much now. He had retired, but now, of course, with the war on, he’s needed more than ever, alas.’
‘Do you think that might have happened to Billy?’
‘I think it could have done, or it might be that he was just born brilliant. Some people are, lucky devils.’
As they cycled home in the bitter cold, keeping up a good pace, since it really was too cold to hold any sensible sort of conversation, Marjorie thought about the evening.
On the one hand she knew she had spent most of the evening feeling oddly inadequate, yet now she felt more alive than she remembered feeling for a long time, and not just because the icy wind was stinging her eyes and freezing the tiny areas of cheek still exposed above the scarf in which she had muffled her face. She thought perhaps the reason why she felt different was because an older man had not only wanted to take her out, but ended up talking to her quite simply as a friend.
In fact that was the last really cogent thought Marjorie had for the time being, for the next moment she found herself flat on her back on the heavily iced gravel driveway, having lost control of her bike as they turned into the entrance. In a moment Anthony was on his knees, his own bike discarded to lie on its side with the front wheel still spinning as he attended to his fallen companion.
‘Marjorie?’ He leaned over her, his expression a great deal more anxious than Marjorie could ever remember before, his breath hanging on the frozen air. ‘Are you all right? That was an awful fall. I do hope you haven’t hurt yourself – not broken anything?’
Marjorie tried to sit up, shaking her head slowly. She had given it quite a bang when she had fallen off.
‘No, I’m fine, thank you, Anthony. At least I think so. Except I believe I might have hurt my wrist.’ She felt her right wrist gingerly, noting an apparent sprain.
Anthony, still kneeling beside her, took her injured wrist in his hands and carefully felt for broken bones.
‘I don’t think there’s anything broken. I think you might have sprained it – or at best given it a nasty twist.’
‘I’ve scraped my knees, though.’ Marjorie laughed, looking down at the damage. ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing – these were not only my best stockings, they were my very last pair. I took the corner too fast. It was entirely my fault.’
‘It doesn’t really matter whose fault it was.’ Anthony eased her gently up to her feet. ‘A nasty fall is a nasty fall. Now, do you think you can make it up the drive? Or shall I put you on my bike, and give you a push?’
Marjorie laughed again and brushed some snow off her coat in order to try to cover the embarrassment she was feeling.
‘I’m fine, honestly. I just think I’ll walk for a while rather than ride. Until I stop seeing stars.’
Anthony smiled back at her and together they walked slowly up the long driveway, pushing their bicycles. The wind seemed to have dropped now; it was certainly less cutting than when they had been cycling, and the parkland glimmered and glinted with frozen snow under a big pale full moon. The lakes were completely frozen over, and the great trees were still laden with heavy drapes of snow. Above them, high in the dark sky hung the real stars, millions of miles away in a heaven where there was no war raging, no death and famine, no murder and massacre – or at least none of which they knew – while underneath, shadowed in the nightlight, the outline of the great house stood in fine silhouette. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, other than the faint hooting of a hunting owl somewhere in the nearby darkened woods.
‘No wonder you all called it Eden,’ Marjorie sighed as she took in the beautiful landscape, and she turned to Anthony, but when she saw the look in his eyes she quickly turned back to the landscape once more.