Poppy stood in front of Cissie Lavington’s desk, having politely refused the offer of a seat. She had been told during her training that far from putting you on an equal status during an interview, sitting down more often than not put you at a disadvantage, particularly since the chair offered to the interviewee was generally and deliberately lower than the chair of the interviewer. So she had remained politely at ease in front of her superior’s desk until she heard what was to be on offer.
‘What you’re really saying, then, Miss Lavington,’ Poppy recapped, ‘is that Scott and I should have waited to get married.’
‘Entirely your own business, my dear,’ Cissie replied. ‘What I’m saying is, if you wanted to go on working as a team—’
‘We should have waited to get married.’
‘There’s nothing I can say on the matter, doncher know,’ Cissie observed, lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘Course, one’s sorry it’s happened because you were a dashed good duo – but I’m sure you don’t really regret that you’re married. Not to such a nice chap as Scott Meynell. However, dare say you don’t like to be idle, so we’d best find you something interesting, eh?’
‘Thank you. I’d appreciate that. I don’t want to sit around Eden twiddling my thumbs.’
‘Or filing files, I’ll be bound.’
‘Not really.’
Cissie glanced up at Poppy, then returned to consulting the papers on her desk.
‘Might have to for a while, just as a stopgap, you see,’ she muttered, having reread the salient memos. ‘It appears C Section could use you.’
‘C Section? Isn’t that rather like being buried alive?’
‘A bit.’ Cissie chuckled. ‘Except I can’t see anyone burying you alive. It would only be for a short while. Till they come up with something a little more intoxicatin’, doncher know. Trouble is they can’t use you in London in case anyone would recognise you after your last op. Shame, but there it is – common sense has to prevail, and you made a pretty distinct mark during the Churchill business. Then of course, now you’re hitched—’ Cissie stopped, took a long drag on her cigarette and eyed Poppy with her one good eye. ‘There’s always this thing of gels getting pregnant, do you see. Married gels, of course.’
‘Scott and I only had one night together.’
‘All it took my parents,’ Cissie remarked, tapping her ash into her tin wastebasket. ‘Point is, these things happen, and if an agent gets preggers, bye-bye agent.’
‘So it really wasn’t a good idea,’ Poppy concluded. ‘Us getting married. Does this mean I’ll be deskbound for the rest of the war?’
‘Not necessarily, me dear,’ Cissie replied. ‘Certainly not if I can help it. You’re far too good an agent to fester away in C Section. Don’t you worry – I won’t let it go.’
After an interview with the woman in charge of C Section, Poppy wandered back through the woods to her house. The weather had suddenly changed, the promise of spring being replaced by a reminder of winter as the wind shifted, bringing snow showers in from the east. As soon as she got home, she lit the fire and, pulling her chair round in front of it, sat staring into the pile of burning logs as she tried to sort herself out.
First she wondered when she would see her beloved Scott again, and then if she would ever in fact do so. Since being married, she had found herself thinking more and more about the chances of something happening to either Scott or herself, most particularly Scott. Somehow she felt that as long as they were together they would be able to protect each other, just as they had done on their first famous mission. Prodding the logs into brighter life with a long poker, she remembered how clever Scott had been with his feints and his disguises, how seemingly fearless he was. Then, remembering so much of his careless courage, her spirits sank, knowing that his tremendous nerve and dash would always lessen the likelihood of her ever seeing him again. Scott never played safe and for that very reason he might never be safe.
Realising more clearly than ever before how easy it would be to lose him, Poppy’s feelings turned from wistfulness to sudden anger. She found herself wishing to God she had never married him, because by doing so she seemed to have killed for ever the chance of their being sent out on an assignment together. Because they were married her Section would keep choosing someone else instead of her. They might even send other young, unmarried women out with him, and as she realised this for the first time her spirits sank to zero. She had imagined almost every kind of exigency in war, but not exclusion from the work they both knew to be vital. She knew it had been wrong to agree to marry him; she should have refused so that they could stay together as agents. They could have been lovers without ever marrying, and as long as they had kept their affair secret, as long as the Colonel and Major Folkestone had not been aware of their intimacy, they could have waited till after the war was over to get married. Marriage was only a certificate, Poppy told herself. People could still be married without any ceremony, civil or religious. So damn marriage – damn marriage, damn weddings, most of all damn Scott for insisting on marrying her in the first place. She should have refused, made him wait – and by doing so stayed where she would be most needed, namely by his side, so that together they could accomplish something, they could help defeat Hitler and win the war.
After which another thought occurred to her, one that gave her a sudden feeling of hope. Perhaps Scott had insisted on marrying her in order to keep her out of the firing line. Maybe he loved her that much – enough to want to make sure that her life was out of immediate danger.
She pushed her chair back from the fire, realising that while lost in her thoughts she had slowly begun to roast. Rising, she collapsed on to the sofa away from the fire and tried to take fresh stock and make sense of the confusion of thoughts running through her head.
A small table to the side of the sofa held a pretty mahogany box which Poppy had not yet opened. Idly, she reached out and lifted the lid. There was still some sewing in it, a half-finished tapestry cushion with still loaded needle stuck neatly in one side, the piece itself folded carefully so as not to crease the work. She picked it up and looked at it, seeing a picture of a spaniel. For some reason she showed it to George who was sitting patient as ever by her feet.
‘Look, George,’ she told him, sounding ridiculous even to herself. ‘A little spaniel.’
She looked into the box once again. Originally the piece was obviously not intended to be a sewing box, for although it was stacked with skeins of silk and wool its sides were obviously made to hold wine bottles, or perhaps tea caddies. She removed the skeins and looked below them, and noticed something else. Reaching down she picked the object out with a sense of sudden excitement.
‘There’s something else here too, George,’ she muttered to the dog. ‘A book. No – no, it’s a diary of some sort. A journal.’
Poppy sat back and began to read. As she read she got the oddest feeling that somehow she knew the writer, so familiar was the voice coming off the pages, as if she was actually eavesdropping on someone still alive rather than a woman who had lived over a century before.
First the writer described her feelings of love for the younger son of the Eden estate – how he had ridden by her father’s cottage door, stopped to talk to them all, and caught her eye. Then she told how he had returned to the house by invitation, and taken tea with them. How her mother had embarrassed her profoundly by remarking on his having asked to be allowed to return yet again, and saying it was perfectly apparent that he was taken with the youngest of her daughters; and how it seemed no time at all before they were married.
And so we are married, against the wishes of his mother, but with the final blessing of his father, who is a dear. His mother does not approve of me because I am from a different background, but has told Edward that she will not stand in his way, and that at least I have grown up on the estate! Edward says she will come round to the idea, particularly once we have children, and I am sure he is right. She sent her maid to fill the house with flowers on our return, so many of them that Edward has renamed the old place the House of Flowers and intends to carve a stone above the door saying as much. My dear husband has bought me a fine new mare, so that we can ride out together of a morning. Up every day, before even the light, and my heart pounds with excitement at the idea that Pretty Lady is being got ready for me! After all the hirelings I have ridden the idea that I have a mount of my own is truly wondrous. The estate is quite beautiful in the early morning light, and sometimes we stop by Father’s cottage, and Mother and he insist we sit down to breakfast with them. The lakes are Arthurian in their beauty in the early morning. The mist rises from them in such a mysterious way that I almost think I can see the king and his knights rowing towards me, and certainly I would not be surprised, so romantic is the light, so ethereal the feeling of the estate at that hour, with the trees dripping quietly into the waters, and only the sound of water fowl moving in the reeds.
Poppy put the book down, and turned, as George ran from beside her feet, barking at the sound of knocking at the front door, disturbing the gentle whispers inside the house, the hissing of the fire, the movement of the flames in the fireplace.
Poppy picked up the long-haired dachshund, and went to the front door. She peered out. There was no one there. There was not a soul to be seen anywhere. She closed the door again, guiltily returning the journal to its original hiding place among the skeins of wool in the mahogany box.
In spite of Kate’s assurance regarding his safety, Eugene was still a long way from home. Due to the increasingly heavy bombardment of Malta he had been unable to get an airlift out of the tiny island, forced to travel by sea instead, as far as the port of Marseille where he had managed to collect a new set of papers, and begun the long haul of getting himself from the south to the north of France where he hoped by some miracle to utilise one of the tried and true escape routes. On his travels he learned two things – first that France is a very large country, particularly when one has no transport of one’s own and is forced to rely on the goodwill of farmers and the like when cadging lifts in hay wagons and market lorries, and second that if he was given the opportunity to come back in another life as someone else, that someone else would definitely not be a plumber.
It had been the idea of his contact in Marseille that he should travel disguised as a plumber.
‘It doesn’t matter if you know nothing about plumbing!’ the man had assured him. ‘My brotherin-law is a real plumber and he knows less than I! Just stick a few pipes together – unblock the odd drain – change the washer on a tap – but above all stink! All plumbers stink, which is why no one wants to go near them! Since very few people want to know more about the plumbing than whether it can be mended they will leave you alone! Voyezvous? They want a plumber, sure! But they do not want to know what he does or how he does it! They just want him to plumb and go – comprenez? That is why it is always so safe to be a plumber, because plumbers – pooh! You will have no friends, but you will also have no trouble!’
So far his friend had proved to be right. Thanks to the ever present smell of plumbing that hung about the clothes borrowed from his contact’s brother-in-law, everyone gave Eugene a very wide berth, including the Germans he encountered before and on reaching Paris.
Having found the Rue de Rivoli, Eugene now checked the exact address he had in his hand. The famous fashion house of Blès had finally been closed down by order of Goebbels, owing to Madame’s habit of opening her doors to anyone and everyone unsympathetic to or on the run from the Nazis. Following the fall of France, when Goebbels had actually called at her salon in the hope of socialising with the celebrated couturier, she had sent him away with a flea in his ear, something to which the propaganda minister had not taken kindly. The following afternoon Madame had hoisted the Tricolour outside her Maison, at which point it was immediately closed down by the Germans, although for some reason – perhaps out of respect for her great artistry – they did not actually imprison Madame herself. The result was that Madame Blès immediately set up new escape routes and help lines for any enemy of the Third Reich who might be passing through the occupied capital of France.
Thanks to his most convincing disguise and ever present odour, Eugene was ignored by the two Nazi soldiers on patrol in the street outside Madame’s house, leaving him free to ring the old bell on the equally old door.
‘Enter!’ a man’s voice commanded from within in impeccable French. ‘And close the door behind you!’
Eugene found himself in semi-darkness in the hallway, able only vaguely to make out the figure standing in the doorway to one side.
‘My God,’ the man drawled. ‘That is a really frightful smell.’
‘Forgive me, monsieur,’ Eugene answered, the humble plumber relaying the message he had been instructed to give. ‘But I understand you requested a plumber. For the kitchen, I believe. There is a blockage under the sink.’
‘Ah,’ the man replied, with a nod, standing to one side. ‘The plumber. Of course.’
As Eugene passed him he could see the man was both handsome and extemely elegant, dressed perfectly from head to toe and sensibly holding a canary yellow silk handkerchief to his nose as he indicated which way Eugene was to proceed, along the corridor to a room at the back of the house, well away from the front door. Eugene found himself in the ante-room of the kitchens, a small apartment with shutters at the windows, furnished with a plain wooden table and chairs set in the middle of the room, where an extremely elegant woman sat drinking black coffee.
‘Ah, mon dieu! But what a truly terrible stink!’ she cried, in an equally elegant voice, before leaning forward to stare at Eugene. ‘Eugene?’ she said. ‘No! No! I can’t believe it! You? Enfin!’ She roared with laughter. ‘You rascal! You came here just to stink me out, no?’
They embraced, laughing.
‘Pooh! But I have more courage than you, Harvey!’ she said to her companion. ‘To embrace such a mauvais! Even so, you had best take him away and allow him to bath and change. Get him some fresh clothes, for God’s sake. It doesn’t matter whose. Yours! Anyone’s! Just get him out of those frightful garments!’
‘Ah, madame – no,’ Eugene sighed. ‘Not yet, anyway. The Germans have seen me come in so they will wish to see me go out again.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Madame agreed. ‘I just do not know how long we can put up with this smell. This is Harvey Constable, by the way,’ she added, waving a beautifully manicured hand in the direction of the elegant gentleman who had shown Eugene in. ‘He comes in and out by the back door and no one says anything. They are far too nervous I might fly the Tricolour out of the window again and arouse more local feeling, which is intense as it is. To occupy Paris is worse than to conquer it, as they are finding out. Only the prostitutes and the nightclub owners are sympathetic to the Germans – the concierges are running rings around them, but then the concierges run rings round everyone, n’est-ce pas?’
She went on to describe relevant moments of insurrection by the locals, the courage of her own concierge, and the hatred she felt for the women of easy virtue who were busy fraternising with the occupying forces. Eugene listened to her attentively, laughed at the right moments, but finally indicated that it was time for him to go. Madame agreed, telling him the procedure whereby he might return in safety later that evening.
Under cover of darkness and at the agreed time, Eugene emerged from his given hidey-hole and slipped up the back stairs of Madame’s mansion, where he was finally able to bath himself thoroughly, removing all traces of his malodorous former self before changing into fresh clean clothes, albeit those of a railway worker.
When he emerged from his room, he found himself in the company of another railway worker.
‘Are you travelling with me as well?’ he asked the transformed Harvey. ‘Won’t it be a bit rough for someone like you?’
‘I have been summoned back to England,’ Harvey replied. ‘And don’t worry – I can cut the mustard. In spite of my usual appearance I was not brought up by nannies and maids, I do assure you, nor educated at Eton. My mother brought me up herself, I sewed and cleaned in her workrooms as a nipper. So please don’t worry about me, my friend. I can look after myself.’
‘Any particular reason for your sudden return to England? Old boy?’
‘Yes,’ Harvey replied. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours. I’m going back to see an old friend of mine who needs my help.’
‘That so?’ Eugene persisted. ‘Well, well.’
‘You might know him as it happens,’ Harvey continued, with a tight little smile. ‘Jack Ward?’
Eugene frowned then shrugged. The Colonel was the last person he would have guessed to have called the dapper and elegant Harvey Constable back to England.
Madame Blès sent them on their way – after a delicious dinner of homemade fish soup, beef casserole and apple tart – with knapsacks containing small bottles of brandy, tartines, and some pieces of garlic.
‘Chew on those once you get outside,’ she advised. ‘The more French you smell the better. And may God speed you, and let you reach England before that bastard Hitler.’
As he took his first step on what he hoped would be the last leg of his long journey home, as always Eugene felt in his pocket to rub Kate’s lucky stone. For a split second he could have sworn he heard her voice and that wonderful laugh of hers, the one that thrilled him and drove him mad with love. It was only for a moment, but the sound of it inspired him and gave him the necessary spring in his step to help him cover those last long miles towards the French coastline.
Naturally they conversed in French from the moment they left Madame. Eugene was immediately taken with Harvey’s assumed singsong country accent, which he gathered was typical of certain regions around Brittany.
‘Yours,’ Harvey said after listening to Eugene speak, ‘yours definitely belongs behind a bar in the roughest part of Marseille.’
‘Good.’ Eugene laughed. ‘Seeing that’s where my papers claim I’m from.’
‘It might not be important to any German who stopped us in the street,’ Harvey commented. ‘But it would certainly be significant to any Nazi sympathiser on the lookout for bounty money. The price of turning in blokes such as us has gone sky high.’
‘I’m not sure I quite like all the French at this moment,’ Eugene remarked, lighting a smoke.
‘I’m quite sure I don’t like some of the French,’ Harvey replied, taking a cigarette out for himself. ‘I’m also quite sure I like an awful lot more.’
‘Papers, please!’
Yet again they were stopped for a routine check, and yet again they were sent quickly on their way as soon as the guards had taken a peremptory look at their beautifully forged documents.
‘Funny thing about smell,’ Eugene mused as they took a zigzag route out of the city, making first for the outlying suburban districts and thence the open countryside beyond. ‘I happen to think that there is safety in smell, and always have done. People don’t seem to see through smell the way they see through disguises, through what they suspect are iffy signatures, or phoney accents. It’s a most emotive thing, smell – more perhaps than any other of our senses if you think about it.’
‘Absolutely,’ Harvey agreed. ‘I can’t stand the smell of marigolds, or geraniums, but I couldn’t tell you why.’
‘I can’t stand the smell of petrol, and I know exactly why. It reminds me of my father taking me back to my terrible prep school in England. The smell of petrol reminds me of being parted from my horses and dogs in Ireland, and my parents of course – but them a bit less since it was their idea to send me to the wretched school in the first place.’
‘I hardly went to school,’ Harvey returned, his voice taking on a tone of some satisfaction. ‘Just enough, but not too much – like the vermouth in a good dry martini. Oh, God – how I wish I hadn’t said that.’
‘How I too wish you hadn’t, pal.’
They walked on through the night, keeping near the railroads on which they were meant to be working, until dawn granted them sight of their first green fields.
‘Danger’s quite exciting, though, don’t you think?’ Harvey wondered, stopping to drink in the view before them. ‘I quite enjoy all this – and of course you enjoy it a whole lot more if you hate the Nazis. My mother clothed a lot of Fascist women, as it happens. She fitted them out in their glad rags, which is indirectly how I came to be brought into the Service. She listened to their conversations while she was fitting them, to everything they had to say, and passed it on to me to pass on to a certain gentleman who lived in a certain block of flats in Victoria. Finally I came to meet Madame Blès, again through my mother. They’d started out in the same cutting room as young girls, crossed the Channel several times in pursuit of their careers, and in doing so grew to loathe the international Nazi set as much as we all did, and still do – bad cess to them all. Quite satisfactory when you think about it.’
Before moving off on what they hoped really was the very last leg of their journey, they ate their last tartines and drank the last of their brandy. Eugene looked towards the horizon and took a deep breath.
‘Yes,’ he said in deep satisfaction. ‘I was right, Harvey. Take a good deep breath. You can smell the sea.’
‘You trust people too easily, Lily,’ Scott said crossly as they left a small, dimly lit café on the outskirts of the tiny village of Gesore some ten miles inland from St-Valery where they had just made initial contact with the man who was supposed to be the first in a line of Free French who had promised to help them find the necessary locations for a small but all important number of radio transmitters, apparently all ready assembled and waiting to be collected. ‘You use your charms, and when they fall for them – which the French are bound to do—’
‘Thank you,’ Lily said tartly. ‘Compliments always welcome.’
‘You think that’s fine – you can trust them, because they can’t take their eyes off your – off your assets.’
Lily eyed him from under her plain French beret, said nothing and went on walking down the road that finally led back to the small pension where they were staying, ostensibly as a newly-wed couple up from the country on honeymoon. Lily was finding it as hard as Scott to share not only the same roof but also the same bedroom, but for different reasons. While Scott found Lily nothing but a quite specific pain in the neck with her openly flirtatious manner and her deliberate emphasis on her sexuality, which Scott was convinced would and could only finally get them into deep waters, Lily was finding Scott oddly attractive – oddly because he was one of the few men she had met who seemed totally immune to her charms. She knew of course that he had just got married and no doubt sworn his undying love to Poppy, a choice Lily found strange since she had always thought Poppy both reserved and more than what Lily considered a little eccentric in her manner and her attitudes. Why the dashing, debonair, and undoubtedly courageous Scott should have thrown his cap into her particular ring Lily could not imagine, since to her way of thinking women who did not exude their sexual persona had to be by rote rather dull. For the life of her she could not imagine Poppy in bed with Scott, let alone being inventive enough between the sheets to keep Scott’s interest alive – at least not for very long. Even though what they were actually on was a highly dangerous mission rather than a quiet and private little honeymoon, Lily had fondly imagined that once they had been flown out of England and dropped into France things would change. Thrown together in a highly dangerous situation, the adrenalin would rush, and past associations – however recent or serious – would be set to one side while they concentrated on doing their work and, most important, on surviving. And to Lily the best way of guaranteeing one’s safety would seem to be to have a strong, handsome and courageous man, while not necessarily in your bed, at least in your pocket.
Sadly, so far the only signs of interest in Lily shown by Scott had been the very opposite of what she had hoped. Ever since they had arrived he had done nothing but criticise and order her about. The ordering about Lily did not object to so much since she found it rather exciting, but the constant criticism of her attitudes and behaviour was beginning to irk her. She had flirted quite deliberately with the somewhat coarse but really quite handsome young Frenchman who was their contact, less to arouse the Frenchman’s passions than in the hope of igniting some sort of jealous flame in the heart of her companion. But it seemed she had failed, since the moment they were out of earshot of the café Lily found herself the target for yet more of Scott’s somewhat acid criticism.
‘You’re behaving as though this is some sort of holiday,’ Scott snapped when he had caught up with her.
‘Isn’t that how we’re meant to be behaving? Or would you rather I started behaving like a spy?’
‘You are meant to be behaving as if we have just got married. And girls who have just got married do not go round flirting with every bloody Frenchman they meet.’
‘Language.’
‘So just try and behave.’
‘The girl I’m pretending to be likes to flirt,’ Lily said with a sideways look and smiled at the handsome man striding alongside her. ‘That’s how I’ve decided to play her.’
‘You’re not in a play, Lily. You’re in a war. This is a war you’re in – we’re both in – so perhaps rather than thinking of it as some sort of light comedy—’
‘I didn’t say it was a comedy,’ Lily retorted, dropping her voice as they arrived at their pension. ‘Of course it isn’t a comedy. It’s a drama. A huge drama. I don’t see the harm in thinking of it as that.’
‘If you’ll perhaps let me finish? I would rather you dealt with it as a hard reality, rather than play-acting. In my estimation—’
‘Look—’
‘In my estimation it would be safer all round if you came to your senses. I certainly don’t want to be taken out because of your determination to play-act.’
‘You won’t be,’ Lily assured him. ‘I may have a fondness for play-acting as you call it, but I certainly don’t have a death wish.’
Scott gave her one last glare, then knocked on the rough wooden door that was closed against all comers at this time of night.
A peephole slid open, an eye regarded them from the other side and then the door was silently unbolted.
‘My dears.’ Madame Daumier sighed sentimentally as she carefully rebolted her front door. ‘I was becoming concerned for my little lovebirds. Ah.’ She pinched and squeezed Lily’s cheek, hard enough to make Lily’s eyes water, then winked at Scott. ‘It is so late, I was afraid for you. There was a convoy through the town only half an hour ago and of course you are well after the curfew.’
‘It seems no one pays much attention to the curfew at the moment, madame,’ Scott replied. ‘There are cafés and bars open all over the place.’
‘Not for long, monsieur. My husband tells me we shall have troops garrisoned here maybe this week – certainly next. All this coast here – well. I have never seen such activity. Maybe the invasion, yes? Although may the Lord forbid it – but every day more troops, more guns, more everything. Not really an ideal place for your honeymoon, perhaps?’
Scott wasn’t quite sure how to read the look he was getting from his landlady. He wondered if she already suspected that a couple such as Lily and he would hardly choose this tiny village outside Trouville on the Normandy coast as the ideal place for their honeymoon unless they had perhaps some other reason. Or had she already detected flaws in what they both hoped were their perfect accents? Scott was confident that because of his family background he could pass as a Frenchman, but privately he had worried about Lily, even though he had been assured by Jack Ward and Anthony Folkestone that she too had the right credentials to pass as an authentic Frenchwoman. Not that he could fault her accent for a moment; to his very well tuned ear it sounded as if she spoke perfect French, fitting the region she avowed she was from both by her accent and her use of argot. Neither could he fault her manner. Lily seemed to have adopted an entirely new character to fit her assumed identity, even though the character she had chosen to play was not one Scott would have sanctioned had he known about it in advance.
Madame Daumier was still staring at him as he made his excuses and prepared to climb the stairs to bed.
‘Is there something wrong, madame?’ he asked, believing as always that it was much the best to wrong-foot any possible opponent by pre-guessing them.
‘No, monsieur, no – far from it,’ she replied with a smile, putting a heavy hand on his forearm. ‘You are such a good-looking couple – and such a charming pair. I just hope and I pray . . .’ She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes briefly, then clasped her well-worn hands at her waist and shook her head. ‘I lost my own son, monsieur. He was killed in the Ardennes. The so-called impassable Ardennes. Puh.’ Madame Daumier shrugged and puffed in contempt. ‘He was in the Light Cavalry. Imagine – with no anti-tank guns – without a decent tank – how are they meant to stop the might of a Panzer division? They couldn’t even slow their progress. That wretch Gamelin.’
Lily frowned at Scott for illumination.
‘General Gamelin,’ Scott repeated. ‘Perhaps a little too old for the game as it is played now.’
‘Too old?’ Madame Daumier opened her big brown eyes to the full. ‘He is the sort of soldier who should only fight in peacetime. Too old? He charges like a bull into the Low Countries, sacrificing our lambs everywhere – then as soon as he sees a German he holds up his hands. What a waste. What a waste.’
She shook her head, tightened her mouth, then put her hands back on to Scott’s forearm. ‘I look at you, monsieur, and I see my son. Shall I tell you why? He had the same look in his eyes. He had just that look you have in your eyes when he went away. He had the very same look.’
In their room, Scott stood with his back resolutely to the bed, staring out of the window and smoking a cigarette while behind him Lily undressed herself as was the routine, accompanied by an ever increasing number of sighs.
‘You know this really isn’t necessary, Scott?’ she remarked as she pulled her sweater over her head. ‘I know you don’t fancy me – that you don’t like me in fact – so this charade really isn’t necessary.’
‘So you say each and every night, Lily. And while I agree that it might not be necessary, it’s altogether sensible.’
Lily smiled as she dropped her skirt from trim waist to pretty ankles, reckoning that Scott at least was beginning to admit that she had some sort of allure, otherwise he would never have made that remark. All she had to do, she figured as she slipped into the bed dressed in just her silk French knickers and matching brassiere, was see it out. Married Scott may be. In love even, she admitted. But that love and that marriage were a long way away right now, and if she was going to risk her life, or perhaps even lose it, then she was going to enjoy it right up to the last moment.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed, Scott?’ she asked as factually as she could, not wishing in any way to pre-empt her game. ‘You must be as tired as I am after all that excitement.’
‘In a while, Lily,’ Scott murmured, still with his back turned. ‘I’m going to smoke another cigarette first. You go to sleep.’
‘Sure thing, boss,’ Lily replied, lying on her back and letting her long hair fall either side of her face. ‘Just try not to wake me when you do finally climb in.’
Little chance of that, Scott thought to himself as he lit a fresh cigarette. I shall as usual doze in the armchair until I am absolutely sure you are asleep, and then and only then shall I crawl quietly under the eiderdown – but not under the sheet.
‘Good night,’ Lily sighed from behind him. ‘Sleep tight.’
Scott said nothing. He just stood smoking his cigarette and looking out into the dark night.
While below him, hidden in the untended shrubbery, Madame Daumier watched him for as long as he remained at the window, before she too disappeared into the darkness.
The first inkling Marjorie had that something was up was when the air raid siren sounded at the Park and everyone vacated the building to take to the caves in the woods – everyone except Major Folkestone, who remained at his desk; and Marjorie, who was detained by Major Folkestone; and Jack Ward who suddenly and almost silently appeared from an adjacent room.
As soon as the building was empty, Anthony Folkestone and Jack Ward hurried out of the room, summoning Marjorie to follow.
‘Might I ask what’s up, sir?’ she wondered. ‘Is there some emergency?’
‘Not your business, young woman,’ Jack growled at her as they hurried along a corridor. ‘Yours to do and die, get it? Not ask questions.’
‘Just do as we say, Marjorie,’ Anthony Folkestone said. ‘And you’re to say nothing about this at all. Understood?’
‘Not a word, young woman,’ Jack muttered. ‘Or we’ll have you in the Tower.’
‘Take all these files – here,’ Anthony said to her, handing her folder after folder from a filing cabinet in the first office they entered. ‘Take them back to my desk and put them in the bottom drawer. Then come back here.’
There had to be a security leak, Marjorie concluded as she hurried back along the corridor. There had to be a leak and this was obviously an Emergency with a very large E.
When she got back the two men were still working their way systematically through the filing cabinets, checking and double-checking heavily numbered and marked files before putting them in a pile for Marjorie to collect. Some of the files were so old they made Marjorie sneeze as she carried them back to Anthony’s office, while others were so flat it was obvious that there was nothing in them of note. Yet Marjorie realised, like the old dusty ones they all had to be checked, because if there was a leak the vital facts could well have been disguised and buried in some old folder somewhere.
As she set down yet another set of records on Major Folkestone’s desk, Marjorie suddenly gave a shiver as she took in the reality of the situation. If what she thought was true, then there was a traitor within the gates of Eden. One of the Nosy Parkers was an enemy agent.
After all the necessary files had been stowed away in Anthony’s office, a signal was given to sound the All Clear. Fifteen minutes later the place was back to normal, the rooms echoing to the clatter of typewriters and telephone bells and the corridors to the clacking of heels. Some four hours elapsed before Jack Ward came back into Anthony’s office and carefully laid a file down in front of his junior.
‘Thank you,’ he said to Marjorie. ‘That will be all.’
After Marjorie had gone, Jack nodded to the file, and began to relight his pipe.
‘Let me know your thoughts,’ he said. ‘I know mine.’
It was one of the older files, dating back to before the war, and from the details on the front there must have been some sort of muddle up between departments because the file actually belonged to Baker Street and not to Eden Park at all. Theoretically no one from Baker Street would be employed at Eden Park, but none the less all the information contained in the file pointed to the named girl as the number one suspect.
Anthony read the details not once but four times, to make sure he understood the matter absolutely. Then he closed the file and shut his eyes tightly while he took it all in. The matter was even worse than he thought, because not only had someone infiltrated their security at a critical level, but if what he had read was correct then the young woman responsible had not only been placed in the Service by Jack Ward, but worse – she was his god-daughter.
Several days later Anthony Folkestone was surprised by the sound of direct knocking on his office door.
‘Not now, please,’ he called back sharply, barely looking up from his paperwork. ‘Busy!’
‘It’s only me, sir!’ came an all too familiar voice.
‘Billy,’ Anthony sighed, clucking his tongue as the boy pushed open his door. ‘How did you get past Miss Budge? Though knowing you there’s not a lot of point in asking that.’
‘Miss Budge isn’t out there, sir,’ Billy replied, standing in the doorway, one-legged, removing something sticky from the sole of one shoe.
Major Folkestone looked up, frowning slightly.
‘Probably gone to powder her nose. Although she usually tells me when she’s leaving her post.’
‘Why’s it called that, sir? Powdering your nose? Why do girls always say they’re going to powder their noses when—’
‘Billy.’ Anthony Folkestone stopped him in his tracks, amplifying his authority with a sharp tap on his desk with the pencil he had in his hand. ‘If you have something on your mind. I have a lot of work to do.’
‘S all right, sir, I don’t mind.’
Billy wandered round to the front of the major’s desk, picked some pencils out of a mug and began carefully to sharpen them to perfect points with his pocket knife, leaving the wood shavings to fall where they may.
‘I was just wondering, sir, if you haven’t heard nothing about my pilotless bomb thing, that’s all.’
‘If I have heard anything.’
‘That’s it, sir. If you in’t heard anything.’
Anthony avoided looking at the young man, instead leaning over and carefully brushing the shredded pencil shavings into the adjacent waste bin.
‘Not exactly, Billy,’ he replied. ‘Not as such.’
‘I saw the folder out on Miss Budge’s desk, sir—’
‘You had absolutely no right to be looking at anything on my assistant’s desk, young man.’
‘I weren’t, Sir. I was passing by and I saw it, right on the top of the In pile. On top of all today’s stuff. Stuff that’s just come in.’
‘You still had no right, Billy.’
‘I couldn’t help it, sir. It was as clear as mud, sittin’ there like. Right slap bang on the top.’
Anthony glared at him, then went to the door to call for his assistant who appeared almost at once in response, as if she had been ready for the summons.
‘Today’s files, please, Miss Budge. Anything new that’s just arrived if you’d be so kind. Good. Thank you.’
Having finished sharpening the major’s pencils, Billy now turned his attention to attending to the wick on the desk lighter, pulling it up to make it longer then carefully cleaning and trimming it with a small pair of scissors he had just made appear from the other end of his knife.
‘I bin thinkin’ about the desert, sir,’ Billy said, as if to fill in the silence that had fallen. ‘You know – what it must be like to fight in the desert and all that.’
‘Interesting,’ Anthony replied without any actual interest, reading some documentation that was now in his hand.
‘Bloomin’ big, the desert, in’t it?’
‘Are you referring to any particular desert? Or just “the desert” in general, I wonder?’
‘The Western Desert, sir. Where we’re fighting.’
‘No doubt you have thoughts on that matter as well, I suppose.’
‘Not really, sir.’ Billy shrugged. ‘’Cept it’s bloomin’ big – and supply lines must be more important than ever.’
‘Look, Billy,’ Anthony said in exasperation. ‘Why don’t you just run along and join up, eh? The army won’t be able to carry on till you do.’
Billy eyed the major, whom he happened to rather admire, but said nothing. He hadn’t meant to irritate him, but as Marjorie was forever telling him, he seemed to have the ability to get under people’s fingernails just at the wrong moment. So rather than infuriate one of his heroes even more, he fell to silence, looking down at his shoes, turning his toes inwards as he did so and pulling his mouth to one side.
‘Sorry, Billy,’ Anthony muttered. ‘Got some problems. Didn’t mean to snap.’
‘That’s all right, sir,’ Billy said with one of his sudden grins that had the ability to lighten anyone’s mood. ‘I didn’t mean to irk you.’
‘Irk?’ Anthony smiled in return, amused by the odd choice of word. ‘You weren’t irking me. I’ve just got a few things on my mind.’
‘Yeah.’ Billy nodded. ‘I bet.’
Anthony frowned, and stared at Billy, wondering what he meant by his reply. But the boy was just looking back at him quite ingenuously, as if his remark had been meant as nothing more than sympathetic. Any further thoughts fled, however, as after a brief tap on his door Miss Budge appeared holding a small clutch of files which she handed over to her boss. As Anthony took them and began to sort through them, Miss Budge turned and smiled her usual kindly smile at Billy, putting a hand out to ruffle his hair. Seeing it coming, Billy stepped smartly back, at the same time lowering his eyes to regard the plump, kindly figure with what he hoped was his best ’ere leave off look, a look which seemed to leave Miss Budge, as always, unruffled.
‘Yes,’ Anthony said after a short space of time that seemed the length of a light year to young Billy. Anthony closed the file, having first removed a covering letter which he slid into his top drawer. ‘Good,’ he continued. ‘It appears the boffins were most impressed by your ideas, Billy, but I’m afraid it also appears that you’re a bit too smart for them. They say that while the idea is absolutely first class, they just don’t have the science.’
The look on Billy’s face was such that Anthony quickly tried to make up for the disappointment the boy was obviously feeling.
‘Ahead of the field yet again it would seem, Billy Hendry. Jolly good.’
‘Could I see what they say, sir? Please?’ Billy held out one hand carefully. ‘If that’s all right.’
‘No can do, Billy, alas. Not just comments about your idea, but a lot more stuff. All HC. Sorry about that.’
‘Understood, sir. Absolutely. Still. Want to hear my ideas ’bout the desert now?’
‘Not right now, Billy. As I keep saying – got work to do.’
‘As I see it, what they’ve got to do—’
‘Some other time, Billy.’
‘They got to shore up Tobruk proper, that’s what they got to do, sir.’
‘Some other time. Billy? Now tell Miss Budge I need her again, would you? On your way out.’
‘Honest, sir—’
‘On your way out, Billy – which is now.’
Billy pulled a face and ambled out, one of his socks falling down round his ankles. He stopped to pull it back up in front of Miss Budge’s desk. She had for once failed to notice him, so busy was she sorting through the letters and business on her desk. After he had pulled up his sock Billy glanced down at her desk, but seeing nothing of interest he closed the office door behind him, only to bump into a tired and unshaven Eugene.
‘Hey, Billy Hendry. The very man I wanted to see.’
Eugene stopped to pretend-box the boy, and Billy at once tucked his right hand under his chin and led quickly with a series of left jabs that Eugene parried easily, before feigning hurt.
‘Haven’t lost your touch, eh? My little gossoon.’ He laughed. ‘Getting faster be the minute, too, I’ll swear.’
‘Where’ve you been?’ Billy wondered, still dancing round the big man. ‘Where’ve you been now?’
‘Ah-ha! And wouldn’t you like to know, me little spy?’ Eugene replied. ‘I been to London to see the king.’
‘They’ve turned down my plans for a bomb without a pilot,’ Billy said, stopping his boxing now, and standing with a heavily wrinkled nose. ‘Said they in’t got the science.’
‘Knowing how far advanced you are technically, Billy boy, sure they’re probably bang on the mark. Maybe they should just enlist you straight into the Department of Pointy Heads and have done with it.’
‘My plan’d work, Mr Hackett,’ Billy insisted. ‘All they got to do is make a fuel.’
‘Tell you what, Billy boy,’ Eugene said, pretending to land a couple of rights to Billy’s head. ‘We’ll work on it ourselves, just the two of us, in the evenings. I got plenty of lighter fuel and paraffin, and you have a head full of ideas. We’ll be a matchless pair.’ He put out a hand to ruffle his hair.
‘Don’t,’ Billy warned. ‘I really got to hate that.’
‘I know. I used to hate that too.’
Eugene waved a farewell, and ambled into Anthony Folkestone’s office where the major was ready for him, standing behind his desk holding a long ruler behind his back as if it was a swagger stick.
‘Welcome home, Hackett,’ he said, with a nod. ‘Mission accomplished, I imagine.’
‘You tell me, Major,’ Eugene replied, relighting the half a cheroot he still had to smoke. ‘I did my bit. We did our bit – Gianni and I.’
‘We’ve had reports of three bombers down in the Med between Sicily and Malta. Not shot down, down, straight after take-off, so that is something. Damned good show.’
‘Ta,’ Eugene replied with a glance over a plume of smoke from his cheroot. ‘But it wasn’t without a certain amount of difficulty.’
‘No, always the same, I’m afraid. The best laid plans et cetera.’
‘As you know, Major, they were expecting us. One of the two-man welcoming committee was a double agent. I found papers on him.’
Anthony gazed at him steadily, before sighing deeply and sitting down behind his desk with an air of doom and resignation. He indicated for Eugene to sit opposite, which Eugene did, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
‘You and I know there’s always that risk, Hackett. But with this operation . . .’ Anthony stopped to shake his head and then light a cigarette. ‘I’d have said security was as watertight as it could possibly be on this one. A small but vital op, nursed through from inception by the Colonel and myself, but as you know there is always a chance of a leak. These things happen. Double agents are the bane of our work. I sometimes think we can cope with everything, except them.’
‘These things happen, they most certainly do,’ Eugene agreed with a nod. ‘They happen in the most organised families. But it isn’t a good thing. Not if it’s coming from inside. Had I not despatched the fellow, God knows how many of our contacts in that region would have gone down.’
‘My thoughts entirely.’ Anthony tapped some ash into his tin ashtray and then, rising, went to unlock and open the map on his wall, the one that contained the precise locations of dropped agents, which was always kept locked except in the most confidential of meetings.
‘See here, Hackett,’ Anthony continued. ‘These black pins. Ten of them all told. They’re agents – all down. Fine – we all know you win some, you lose some. But six of those went down within the last three weeks. And they were all briefed and despatched from here. From Eden Park.’
‘So.’ Eugene looked at the end of his cheroot, blew it back into a brighter form of life and then regarded Anthony Folkestone with a narrowing of his large eyes. ‘So that means we have – what shall we call it, d’you think, Major? Yes – I’d say somewhere or other we have to smoke out a rat here, wouldn’t you say? Which reminds me – did I ever tell you about the time my cousin in Kerry put a blowtorch to the bottom of a pipe to smoke out a rat and the flame shot out the top, caught his haystack on fire and burned down the barn? No. Well, never mind, eh? Let’s just hope that it doesn’t happen to us.’
Even though Kate had known Eugene was safe she was still overcome by his homecoming; so much so that for the first few days following his return she had become so shy with him she had found herself actually having to think up things to say to him.
In what seemed like the vast amount of time they had been separated she had rehearsed many conversations they might have when she saw him again, including discussions on various suitable topics, vague debates concerning the future ambitions of them both – although not anything that smacked of a joint future just in case it might sound too forward – and, naturally, exchanges of views about subjects of general interest to both of them. She had some of these imagined conversations off pat, only to discover to her consternation that they all fled from her memory the moment she saw Eugene, and she was left feeling as wordless as any ingénue.
She could not imagine the disappointment that she must be causing him, but then Kate had forgotten the man with whom she was in love. She had quite forgotten how wonderfully voluble he was, how excitingly outspoken; how much he loved to talk, and when he wasn’t talking how much he loved to hold and kiss her, seeming oblivious of her sudden shyness, and more than making up for her own awkwardness by his gaiety and observations. It made everything better and also a whole lot worse – better in that he was back and they were together once more, but also worse, because the longer they were together the more the dread of their inevitable parting seemed to hang over their every moment.
‘I’ll tell you what, Eugene,’ she suggested in desperation one balmy evening as she sat at his feet on the far bank of the great lake. ‘Let’s defect to Ireland.’
‘Shame on you for the good Englishwoman you are,’ Eugene mock-scolded her. ‘That is tantamount to treason.’
‘A tantalising idea, do admit.’
‘The best idea I’ve ever heard. Come on – we’ll saddle up and away. They’ll never catch us if we take the byways.’
Kate sat between his legs and leaned back against his chest.
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could, though?’ she said wistfully. ‘Blasted war. We could escape it all – if we just took off. They’d never find us. Never in a million years.’
‘Good heavens no,’ Eugene replied lightly. ‘The last place they’d look for me would be the bogs – and the last person they’d think you’d run off with would be that rascal Eugene Hackett. Let’s hear your next grand idea for our future.’
‘You could suddenly develop a limp. Or short sight.’
‘And you could turn round and kiss me.’
What made it worse for Kate was that Eugene always seemed to be in such indomitable high spirits. Nothing ever seemed to get to him, rattle him or depress him. Sometimes he might fall to silence, but his silences were short and usually well rationalised. He would carefully explain what he had been thinking and why, and such was his plausibility that Kate never doubted him for a moment – until a week or so after his return when they were out walking one evening he fell into the longest silence she had known from him.
‘OK,’ she said, finally tiring of skimming stones across the placid waters of the lake while Eugene sat on a bench some little distance from her. ‘Enough is enough. Have you finally taken a vow of silence?’
‘What?’ Eugene looked round at her in genuine surprise, as if he had forgotten all about her presence. ‘I’m sorry, Katie – what was it you said?’
‘Eugene.’ Kate threw her last flat stone in a perfect duck and drake across the glassy lake, put her hands on her hips and turned to him with a shake of her blonde head. ‘You haven’t said a word for what seems like weeks.’
‘Fine. So I’ve been thinking. I like to give the old brain a workout now and then. Keeps it ticking over.’
‘No point in offering you a penny for them, I suppose?’
‘None at all, darling one – none at all.’
Eugene got up from the bench, threw away the end of the cheroot he had been smoking so thoughtfully, and wandered off along the path past Kate, for once without taking her arm or her hand. Kate called after him, finally having to break into a trot to catch him up.
‘Is it something I said, Eugene?’ she managed to get out, as she caught his arm.
‘You? Never.’ Eugene turned and looked at her but didn’t stop walking for a moment. ‘You could never say anything to upset me. Other than you didn’t love me any more. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘I thought there might be someone else—’
Eugene kept on walking. ‘It’s worse than that. Much, much worse.’
‘What could be worse?’ Kate persisted, trying to keep the tone that was in danger of growing sombre as light as she could. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’
Eugene suddenly stopped and, taking her by both her hands, confronted her.
‘Yes you can, Katie,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t think of us for once. Put us to one side and think carefully of what could be worse. Of what could be worse here – that could affect not just us.’
Kate was there in one. She had got it even before Eugene had clued her in. Something that would affect everyone – something that would affect Eugene and her – something that might already have affected them. She knew what it was. Something they all dreaded.
Treachery.