For a moment or two she’d been dazed. Not wanting a reunion with him here or now; but aware that it was inevitable, that she was going to have to do it – get it over, pass it off… Meanwhile he’d disappeared – up into this ship, presumably, might appear here with them at any moment. She was showing interest meanwhile in the activity on the gunboat’s deck; they were getting that crate out of the sling, and other boxes were being carried on board. Marilyn came to her aid then: ‘We’d better go down, Rosie. If we’re going to catch this broadcast. Not essential, but—’
‘You’ve the train to catch, too.’
He still hadn’t appeared, and she remembered as they moved away that the sub-lieutenant had said something about a conference in the Ops Room – and that Ben had been carrying a chart. Late for the meeting, she guessed. Ball seemed relieved that they’d decided to go below: no doubt he’d have more important things to do, just before sailing time, than entertaining passengers.
Marilyn asked her when they were alone – the cabin door shut, her briefcase and Rosie’s suitcase open on a bunk – ‘Old friend of yours, Rosie?’
‘Oh. Not really.’ She was emptying her pockets and bag: English money, cigarettes and so forth. She wouldn’t be taking the bag, only a purse. ‘Year and a half ago, roughly. We met in Baker Street, as it happens.’
A year and a half ago, and a day and a half after Johnny had been shot down. They’d given her a few days off from her job at the W/T centre and she’d come up to Baker Street to volunteer for the field-agents’ training course. She’d made an appointment first by telephone – without any trouble once she’d mentioned that she was fluent in French – but the middle-aged Army captain who’d interviewed her – one of Buckmaster’s administrative assistants, a dug-out with ’14–’18 medal ribbons on his tunic – had been determinedly discouraging. His reason – implied, not actually stated – had been that she was in a state of shock and grief, therefore in no mental state to take a decision of such magnitude. Potentially, he’d implied, her motive might even be suicidal. Give it a few months, he’d urged gently, carry on meanwhile with the excellent and valuable work you’re doing for us down there, Mrs Ewing. Then if you still feel you want to do it, let’s hear from you again. She’d assured him that she had no death-wish whatsoever, would have volunteered much sooner except that her husband had been against it and she’d felt he needed her – to come home to, as it were. (Although she hadn’t been the only woman he’d ‘come home to’, on occasion.) On top of having an absolutely normal inclination to remain alive as long as possible, she’d pointed out, she spoke French as naturally as she spoke English, and was already a trained radio operator. He’d agreed that this made her eminently well qualified, but repeated, ‘Give it six months’, and added that officially they weren’t yet recruiting women agents. It was coming: Colonel Buckmaster had been pressing for it but as yet hadn’t received formal authority from above.
And that had seemed to be that. Depressed, frustrated, angry – on top of Johnny’s death, although the reality of that hadn’t hit her as hard as it was going to within the next few days – she’d blundered down the stairs, stalked angrily through the narrow, gloomy hallway: the door had opened just as she’d been putting her hand out to it, and the man on his way in – naval uniform, a lieutenant – had been Ben Quarry.
She told Marilyn, ‘Almost knocked me down. I was in a bit of a state, you can imagine.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, you could say I let him pick me up. We went on a pub crawl and I poured all my woes into his ear. What I needed, I suppose. He was in some Staff job… Oh, yes – in St James’, some naval department of S.I.S.?’
‘N.I.D.(C), you mean. Its chief is known as D.D.O.D.(I). I think that stands for Deputy Director Operations Division brackets Irregular.’
‘You’re just showing off, now.’
‘They run this lot, Rosie. This flotilla. So – less of a coincidence than you might have thought. Let’s get on with this, shall we?’
‘I’m going to have one last decent cigarette.’
Caporals, thereafter. Marilyn wouldn’t leave her the English packet in case she forgot and took it with her.
‘Want one?’
A shake of her blonde head. ‘Look here, now…’
She and Ben Quarry had got drunk together that night, had woken together in a single bed in the Charing Cross Hotel.
‘Here. Identity documents. Driving licence. Your late husband got it for you. No test, then. Clothes coupons – not many left, I’m afraid. And ration cards – yours, and the child’s.’
‘But I’d have left that one with the old woman!’
‘Right, you should have. So you can be in a panic – if they inspect your papers in the train, for instance. You can be absolutely mortified – burst into tears, if you like. First chance you have you’ll be posting it back to St Saveur, meanwhile you’re frantic, the kid might be starving, for all you know.’
‘Well, I must say—’
‘Hush…’ Lifting a finger: and cocking an ear to the BBC, the start of apparently senseless French-language messages. One about dark clouds heralding rain, and a second to the effect that Paul’s boots had been repaired and awaited collection. Third: Au bord de la rivière poussent des saules.
‘That was it.’ Marilyn looked relieved. ‘Show’s on the road.’
The leader of a réseau in northwest Brittany would have been waiting for it too. He wouldn’t much care whether willows grew on the river bank or didn’t, but he’d be relieved to know that there’d been no snags and the gunboat was coming as arranged. The message would have gone out first at midday, and this repetition of it was the clincher.
‘Hey, just a minute…’
The Allied troops who’d landed in Sicily yesterday, Bruce Belfridge was saying, had been consolidating their beachheads, while advance units of parachute and glider troops had captured an inland airfield.
‘Watch this space.’ Marilyn switched off the speaker. ‘But look here, now…’
On the day she’d met Ben Quarry, Rosie was remembering, Singapore had been surrendered to the Japanese. Great events and very small ones, she thought: the import of them depended on where one was standing at the time. As an Australian, Ben had been particularly shocked by that news from the East, but his own private good news had still called for celebration: just as now those Sicilian beaches were pretty well obscured by her own image of a small, dark Breton cove. Marilyn meanwhile was producing more of her bits and pieces: ‘Bus tickets. Only a few weeks old, and they came from Landerneau – the station you’ll probably be using. Perhaps you took ma-in-law into town for shopping. But look – this is really quite important. A note to you from “Louis” saying he hopes he may have good news by the time you get back to Paris – “if you could bear to live and work in the sticks”, he says. Meaning Rouen, the job you’re hoping for.’
‘Did he write this himself?’
‘He did indeed. A very dependable old queen, is Louis. Well connected, too. Oh, here’s your map. And now, money…’ Some coins and crumpled, rather dirty notes, to go in the purse. ‘And look at this – snapshot of your little darling.’
‘Crikey…’
‘Fairly repulsive, I agree. But you think it’s the bee’s knees, obviously. Rosie, here’s the big money now.’
The wrapped package of banknotes, which she’d actually counted – more or less – before she’d signed for it, would serve as padding to hold the Mark III radio transceiver in place. The set was impressively compact – ten inches by seven by five, with a spool on which seventy feet of aerial was wound – and it wouldn’t have done it any good to be rattling around. Its battery was the heaviest single item. The quartz crystals were – as always – carried separately, in their own little bag inside a sponge bag with her toothbrush and other such items. Including French toothpaste, of course.
‘Cypher key.’
‘Pretty.’ Silk – like the map – overprinted with a jumble of letters. Far less bulky than the one-time pads she’d had last time. Easy to dispose of, too; you could burn each strip of silk after the transmission, and it would leave practically no ash. ‘That’s about it, then.’ Folding some rather tatty items of clothing back into the case … ‘Oh, except—’
‘Last but not least.’
The suicide pill.
‘Be sure to bring the beastly little thing back with you, eh?’
‘New kind of package?’
‘Rice paper. Don’t have to unwrap it, you see. Just pop it in as it is, and—’
‘Don’t they make it easy for us!’
They both laughed. Knowing it wasn’t in the least funny: only that for some reason you needed to make it seem so. To seem unreal – despite full awareness of the reality, and certain names and faces that sprang to mind. The odds were against you, logically they had to be; and one statistic – sufficiently unattractive to be taken with a pinch of salt – was that the average working life of an S.O.E. pianist at this stage in the battle was six weeks. Rosie felt she really could discount it, anyway: the main factor in recent German successes had been the increased efficiency of their radio-direction-finding equipment, and she’d been given special directives this time as to where and when she should or should not transmit. Never from the same place twice – not even from the same district, if she could help it, and preferably from rural areas.
Which was why you needed a battery, of course. But also, not to transmit at all if it wasn’t absolutely necessary – and/or on César’s orders – and with a limit on the duration of any one transmission. On no account any ‘skeds’, such as agents had worked to and in some cases still did. ‘Skeds’ being schedules, regular transmissions at set times, which would obviously have made things easier for the bastards.
The little rice-paper packet went into a tiny slot inside her French-made bra. Left side, not far from the armpit. Her own idea and needlework. She was buttoning her blouse now. And that was about the lot. Jersey. Coat… All right, so it was a heavy coat for midsummer, but summer wasn’t going to last for ever, and meanwhile she’d either wear it open or carry it over her arm: it had a suitably nondescript look, she thought.
It would be cold tonight, anyway. In the early hours, in that little rowing boat.
Marilyn locked her briefcase. ‘Don’t think we’ve forgotten anything. You’re clear on the details for the drops, are you?’
‘As clear as I’ll ever be.’
She’d memorized it all: the locations, names of Resistance leaders, dates and times of the drops and the phrases which would be broadcast to confirm them. All locked in her head. Not many months ago an agent had been arrested in the south with a briefcase full of written notes including the names of other agents, who’d then also been arrested. Chances were that they were dead.
‘You don’t want a pistol, do you?’ Tapping the briefcase. ‘I’ve a .32 Beretta here, if you did.’
She shook her head. ‘Thanks all the same.’
Because the risk of it being found in some routine search outweighed any likelihood of her ever using it. Marilyn agreed, ‘Dare say you’re wise. But that’s about all there is, Rosie dear. Get some rest if you can, on the way over?’
‘I expect I will.’
‘And remember, no distractions.’
‘What?’
‘You looked as if you’d seen a ghost, up there.’
‘Oh. That.’ She shook her head. ‘Surprise, that’s all. One hardly expects—’
‘You’ve got to start being Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre now – you know?’
‘Oddly enough, I do.’ She nodded. ‘And thanks – for everything, Marilyn. Heaven knows where any of us would be without you.’
They hugged each other. ‘God bless you, Rosie.’
She saw Marilyn off to catch her train back to London, waving goodbye to her from the top of the paddle-steamer’s gangway, and she’d still been there when Sub-Lieutenant Ball brought his C.O. along to meet her. M.G.B. 600’s captain was an R.N.V.R. lieutenant by name of Hughes: pink-faced, fair-haired, solid, she guessed in his early thirties. He told her that in ‘real’ life he was a solicitor in Ross-on-Wye. He didn’t chat for long, though, only long enough to offer her the use of his cabin. ‘More closet than cabin, really – but you’ll want to get some shut-eye, won’t you? Weather looks like holding for a while, you shouldn’t find it too uncomfortable.’
Even that brief meeting had been more than she’d have expected. She’d been told that the gunboat’s officers and crew were discouraged from socializing with their passengers – for security reasons, also because agents usually preferred to be left to themselves. As in fact was the case with the two other passengers, Frenchmen, who came off from shore in the motorboat after it had landed Marilyn and went straight on board the gunboat. They’d either be B.C.R.A., she guessed – de Gaulle’s lot, Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action – or independents of some kind. There were several groups or factions, not all of them the best of friends – especially French Gaullists and non-Gaullists. In fact S.O.E. and B.C.R.A. had very little to do with each other here in England, at administrative levels, largely because de Gaulle resented the existence of S.O.E. and their potential control of a secret army which he felt should more appropriately be under his wing; but agents in the field still helped each other when the need arose. Anyway, these two would presumably be landing with her in Ball’s dinghy in pitch darkness on some rocky beach: they could hardly ignore each other’s existence, and she asked Ball when he came back to her who they were. All he knew was that the name of the little one had been listed as Mitterrand and then changed to Morland. Neither would be his real name, she guessed.
Glancing round: still no sign of Ben. ‘Should I go on board too?’
The gunboat’s engines were started at that moment. A deep, resonant growl from the other side of the old steamer. Ball told her – having to raise his voice, over the volume of sound – ‘Warming through.’ That boyish grin: ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be left behind. That’s only two engines’ worth, incidentally, we run on four once we get outside. But – yes – actually I came to suggest it. I’ll take you down. Oh, and the pilot said he’ll show you over the boat, if you like, before we shove off.’
‘Pilot?’
‘Navigator. Ben Quarry – chap you saw – you knew each other vaguely some time ago, he said.’
Vaguely… As in a glass darkly, she thought. A whole lot of glasses. Whatever had been in them. Micky Finns in that nightclub, she’d thought ever since. Some gut-rot hooch: there was a lot of it about. She was remembering, though, as she followed the boy down, the moment when she’d first set eyes on Ben. Coming down the stairs in Baker Street – angry, thoroughly depressed – down into the hall and through it to the street door, thinking God’s sake, I need a drink … Except, though – shaking her head: the tears she’d been holding at bay – since a flood of them the night before – well, strong drink such as she felt the need of might not help at all. If the reaction up there had been Yes, Mrs Ewing, you’re an answer to our prayers – well, that would have been the right medicine. Instead of which – that stupid man’s ‘Daddy knows best’ attitude… And the problem which then faced her: what the hell could she do? The idea of life continuing just as it had before Johnny’s death appalled her.
Try S.I.S.?
Yes. First thing, tomorrow. She had actually thought of them before. But having a connection already with S.O.E.
… Well – Foreign Office, a call to them might point her in the right—
The front door had crashed open, inwards, and this naval lieutenant had come barging in, colliding with her. She was only on her feet because they were grasping each other’s arms.
‘Hell -sorry—’
‘Probably my fault – partly—’
‘Definitely was not.’ Still hanging on to her. Tallish, and enough of him that she couldn’t easily have got past. ‘You know damn well it wasn’t.’
‘You’re Australian.’
‘Got it in one. Work here, do you?’
‘No. I do not.’ She’d pulled free. ‘As it happens.’
‘Meaning, if it’s any of my damn business?’
‘No – not at all. But if you’d let me by, please—’
‘You have a – kind of strained look. If it’s from being crashed into by strange Australians—’
‘It’s not.’ She made herself smile, relax a little. ‘It’s just that I’ve had a very bad day – including an interview just concluded, with an idiot.’
‘Might a drink help?’
‘It might.’ She nodded. ‘Might well. Thanks for the inspiration.’
‘What I meant was,’ – he’d put a hand on her arm again – ‘well, all I have to do here is get a signature for this’ – a long brown envelope which he’d pulled out of his greatcoat pocket: red seals on it, something secret obviously – ‘have your idiot make his mark for it, maybe. Then – fact is I’ve something terrific to celebrate.’
‘Loss of Singapore?’
‘Now don’t spoil it. I really do have something to celebrate – forget bloody Singapore. And drinking alone’s no fun, is it? Look – one for my good news, another to drown your sorrows. You can tell me about ’em – I’m deaf in one ear, I’ll lend you the other. What d’you say?’
He looked almost imploring: he really did want her company. And it was certainly a better prospect than that stinking train, cold sober, then about twelve hours’ solitary in the digs in Sevenoaks where until a day ago there’d always been the hope that Johnny would come breezing in. Sevenoaks being where she worked, and close enough to Biggin Hill where he’d been stationed. He’d got himself to and fro in an MG midget, a 1936 TC in which he’d claimed he only touched the ground at corners. She’d have to do something about that little car, she realized, ring the adjutant or someone.
She’d nodded. ‘All right.’
‘Good on you, that’s marvellous!’ He’d virtually shouted the last word. ‘Look, I’ll be two minutes, maximum. Don’t go and vanish now, uh?’
Alone, she began to wonder if it mightn’t be more sensible if she did just that. Whether either a drink or two or a sympathetic hearing mightn’t bring on the tears: the two together might just about guarantee it. It struck her again what a different world this would have been around her if that man upstairs had said ‘Yes’ – or even ‘In a month or two, when we will be recruiting women agents’…
‘That was half a minute – OK?’
He’d called it down to her, and she’d turned, looking up at him as he came bounding down the stairs. Brown, curly-looking hair – pushing his naval cap more or less straight on it. Not good-looking as Johnny had been – Johnny had known it, too – but not bad looking, either. Blue eyes, light-brown hair, and this sort of wild enthusiasm. Raising a forefinger in warning: ‘I’ll open the door this time…’
He hadn’t changed much, either. Except for the beard. On the gunboat’s deck, cluttered with weaponry and other gear – holding both her hands in his: ‘Rosie, how absolutely marvellous!’
Familiar word, familiar tone of voice: even to the shouting, which of course was necessary, over the engines’ noise. But he looked slightly less wild than he had in her mental image of him.
‘What a surprise, Ben.’ Searching for something to say that wouldn’t reflect the past, or any lingering emotional involvement. ‘You were going off on a course in navigation – and here you are, a full-blown navigator!’
‘Be odder if I’d wound up as a full-blown pastry-cook.’
‘Oh, you haven’t changed.’
‘Give you a quick tour of this vessel, shall I? Upper deck first – before they get busy. Haven’t long, see.’ He looked across at Ball: ‘Sub, will you dump that in the skipper’s cabin?’
The suitcase. Ball nodded. ‘I was going to.’ He disappeared with it. Ben asked her, ‘How’ve you been, Rosie?’
‘All right. Fine.’
‘And you got what you wanted.’ There was a reek of petrol suddenly: then it cleared, just as suddenly. ‘Despite that bloke turning you down. Crikey, you were spitting mad, weren’t you?’
Shaking his head, gazing down at her. ‘Doesn’t it scare you mad, now you’ve got it?’
What she’d wondered earlier – whether any of them even guessed… No comment, though. She pointed: ‘What’s this?’
‘Well, OK. The guided tour.’ He reached up, grasping one of the lower rails that ran around some kind of gun-mounting. ‘What we call the bandstand. That’s a twin Oerlikon up there, twenty millimetre. And further aft here, six-pounder Hotchkiss. For’ard there’s a two-pounder and twin point-fives. And Vickers in the bridge. We’re a D-class motor gunboat, incidentally. Length one-twenty feet, crew of thirty plus four officers, displaces about a hundred and twenty tons. I did try to get in touch, Rosie. Slightly disadvantaged by not knowing your surname, or for that matter where to start – except the R.A.F. at Biggin Hill. I tried there, nobody knew of anyone called Rosie. Didn’t at S.O.E.’s ‘F’ Section either – which was a long shot, obviously, seeing as they’d turned you down.’
‘I asked you not to try.’
He nodded: glancing round, then turning back to her. ‘That’s why I – desisted.’
‘This tiny little boat is the one I’ll be landed in, I gather.’
It was on this starboard side, about midway along between the ‘bandstand’ and the six-pounder. A sailor was tightening lashings over its canvas cover. Ben nodded. ‘Ten-foot SN dinghy, special design for the job. Nick Ball’s job. Two oarsmen, and he steers from the back end with a scull, compass between his knees.’
‘Sounds – primitive…’
‘Not easy. Best way of doing it, though. And he knows his stuff, don’t worry… Christ, Rosie, I wish you weren’t doing this. Here we get to see each other again at last, and—’
‘What’s that?’
He sighed, moving aft with her. ‘Depth charge. One the other side too. Mostly for use against E-boats. Not that we go looking for them, it’s all softly, softly, this racket… And that – before you ask, and not that you actually give a damn – that’s chemical smoke apparatus. When we need to lay a screen… Better be quick now, I’ll just point out the main features. Oh, Petty Officers’ mess down there.’ He led the way back towards the bow. ‘Engine-room hatch. As you can hear… There you have the mast – carries our W/T aerials and also radar – a 291… Quick shufti in the bridge now? Up here. Very quick, skipper’ll be down in two shakes. Oh, hi, Don.’ Introducing yet another R.N.V.R. lieutenant as they came off the ladderway into the rest of the bridge. ‘Don Shepherd, our first lieutenant.’
She smiled at him and nodded, and he saluted her. A Johnny type, she thought – smoothly handsome. Too smooth – as Johnny had been. He’d turned to Ben: ‘Shoving off any minute, you know.’
‘Right.’ Ben pointed. ‘The wheel. And this is Petty Officer Ambrose, who handles it, steers us hither and yon.’
‘How do, miss.’ A voice called from a voicepipe, and he stooped to it. Ben pointed again: ‘Down there – where we’ll go now, out of these blokes’ way – is my plot. Chart-room’s another word for it.’ He went ahead down steps into a cramped, low-roofed space with a chart-table on this port side – a chart spread on it, which was how she knew what it was – a rack of books, manuals – some dials and switches and so forth. Windows gave a view forward and to the sides. A voice called, ‘C.O.’s coming aboard, sir!’
‘Down here now, Rosie.’ Another ladderway, this one near-vertical. ‘Galley flat, we call this. Wardroom’s here to port; French passengers’ll be dossing in there. That’s the galley, next to it. And this side, starboard – officers’ heads – lavatory, with a washbasin, the one you can use – then this is the W/T office, and last but by no means least, skipper’s cabin. Door at the end there leads into the for’ard mess, some of the ship’s company’s living space. Are you a good sailor, by the way?’
‘Rotten.’
‘Looks like it’s going to be smooth enough, anyway. Here you are, C.O.’s cabin – all yours. But Rosie—’
The noise had doubled, suddenly. He paused, touched his good ear. He was deaf in the other, she remembered him telling her that evening in London, from having been blown up in a motor torpedo boat in the winter of 1941. Telling her now, ‘That’s the two centre engines warming up. We leave harbour on just the outers, go on to four then and work up to cruising speed. Twenty-three knots, this trip. Rosie – you’ll need something to eat before you turn in, won’t you?’
‘Since you mention it…’
‘So come up to the plot, when you feel like it, after we’ve sailed. I get the pleasure of your company, you get some nosh. Sandwiches – all right?’ She was in the cabin, and he was stooping in the small doorway, on the point of shutting it. There was a lot of noise and movement overhead by this time. ‘Rosie – tell me your surname?’
‘Can’t. Not allowed to. Sorry.’ Then, seeing his expression, ‘Honestly, Ben. Officially I can’t.’ Officially, in fact, she didn’t have one at this stage; only her code-name, and the French pseudonym, which wouldn’t have been any use to him. Eighteen months ago she hadn’t let him know it, because – well, partly because it was Johnny’s name, not hers. Her thinking had been confused and contradictory even before she’d got drunk, but essentially she’d wanted to be herself, not Johnny’s widow. She’d told him – told Ben Quarry, in the taxi after they’d left Baker Street – that her name was Rosie, and that she’d been born Rosalie de Bosque.
Alone in the cabin, she kicked off her shoes and got up on the bunk. Remembering that taxi-ride: that she’d still been asking herself what the hell she was doing, but telling him ‘My father was French. A lawyer – actually in Monte Carlo. He died when I was twelve. Until then we hardly spoke anything but French, but we came home then – Mama being English, family here, and so forth.’
‘Where, exactly?’
She hadn’t answered this. Hadn’t told him anything about her wireless-operator’s job in Sevenoaks, either. So – she realized now, without any really clear recollection of her reasons at the time – she’d obviously not wanted him to be able to track her down.
Because she’d had some intention right from the outset to behave the way she had?
She was sure she hadn’t. Not even a thought of it.
She’d told him about Johnny at some point: she’d thought she had, knew it now because otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to find her via Biggin Hill. On a more practical level, though, she might have not wanted to be traceable because at that stage she couldn’t have been sure she’d want to see him again.
He’d told her – in the New Yorker, in Park Lane, to which they’d taken the taxi from Baker Street – ‘I speak a few words of French, myself. Very few, mind you.’
‘Australian schoolboy French?’
‘Uh-huh. Australian-messing-around-in-Paris French. I was there a couple of years, but most of my chums weren’t French speakers, and I’m no linguist. Middle ’37 to September ’39. Trying to be an artist, would you believe it?’
‘No reason I shouldn’t.’
‘Want ice in that?’
‘Please.’ In her gimlet. Swirling it then to get some of the ice to melt and weaken it. ‘You haven’t yet told me what the good news is that we’re celebrating.’
He touched her glass with his. ‘My imminent return to seagoing. That’s what.’
‘Good thing, is it?’
He’d swallowed some whisky. ‘Nothing short of bloody marvellous. Even miraculous.’ He put the glass down half-empty. ‘Is this going to bore you, Rosie?’
She’d laughed. ‘Bit late to worry about that.’
‘I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. I was at sea – Coastal Forces, small, fast craft called M.T.B.s. Motor torpedo boats. Wearing one stripe, not two; I joined as an O.D. – Ordinary Seaman, that stands for, don’t ask me how – then got commissioned, for some reason, and shortly after – well, blown up, sort of. Winter of ’41, this was, night action off the Dutch coast. We got a real pasting – Hun destroyers – but we got the boat back – that’s to say the others did – with me in it, not all that conscious. Which is why I don’t have a functional eardrum now on this side, and I was thereafter no bloody use to Coastal Forces. See, in M.T.B.s, and M.G.B.s. – gunboats, no torpedoes – we’d often enough stop engines off that coast or on the convoy route and lie quiet in the dark, listening for E-boats. Hear ’em for bloody miles, when you’re out there. But lacking one eardrum…’ He’d paused, and engaged the barman’s attention: ‘Same again, please.’ Glancing back at Rosie: ‘OK?’
‘Second and last – as agreed.’
‘But I haven’t told you my story yet. And there’s still yours to come … Where’d I got to – well, the naval hospital at Haslar, is where I was. And this lieutenant-commander – something to do with Coastal Forces, I forget what. Must have included officers’ appointments, anyway. This was after they’d stitched me together, I was about ready to come out. Spring of last year. This bloke sort of ticked off various items – M.T.B.s., talks some French – must’ve shot that line when I got commissioned, so it’d have been on my record – ditto pre-war residence in Gay Paree, and yachting – before I’d left Brisbane I’d sailed quite a lot. Anyway, the geezer winds up with “So happens, Quarry, there’s a staff job in London needs filling, connected with all those things, including Coastal Forces. And as you’re now unfit for sea duty…’
He’d raised his new glass. ‘Here’s to you, Rosalie.’
‘And to your seagoing. But how come?’
‘I was fed up to here with the desk job. When all your chums are at sea – you know… In St James’ is where I’ve been working, a department of Naval Intelligence run by an R.N. four-striper, name of Slocum. Some character, I tell you – it’s thanks to him I’m getting back to sea. He’s swung it on the grounds that in Coastal Forces – well, motor gunboats – a navigator doesn’t need sharp ears, not like a skipper and a first lieutenant do. Navigator’s stuck below with his charts. And I’ve done some navigating. So they’re giving me this crash course down at Bursledon – in Hampshire, eh? – and as long as I pass out of it well enough – which believe me I bloody will—’
‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Bet your life, Rosie. And life then begins again.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. Must say, Rosie, you’re a peach. Let’s have a drink. I want to hear what these troubles are you said needed drowning. Barman—’
‘Why did you leave Australia in the first place?’
‘Glutton for punishment, aren’t you? Yeah – same, please… Rosie, this will bore you. When you’ve heard enough, shut me up. Answering the question, though – my dad wanted me in his business, which is timber. He had a Master’s ticket in the Merchant Navy – British – settled out there after he’d met and married my Aussie mother. He was going to build boats – her brother was in that business – but he sort of branched off. Cheers, Rosie… Fact, it was the boat interest got me sailing – from about knee-high onwards. That, and painting, I’d wanted to paint since I don’t remember when. So, ’37, when I left College, he said OK, son, give it a go if you have to, take a year off then join the business. I wanted to see England and Europe too, and – you know, Paris being where all the painters go, that’s where I went. Worked my passage cutting up cabbages and stuff in the Strathmore’s kitchens – P. and O. Line – lovely ships, those Straths. And there I was – Paris, London, all over. Mostly Paris. Full of bastard Boches now – doesn’t it make your flesh creep?’
‘Yes, it does.’ She’d sipped at her gin. ‘Ever sell any paintings?’
‘One. Just one damn canvas, ever. I took some to London, they wouldn’t look at ’em. The one I sold was on the Dover-Calais boat – to a Yank. He was pie-eyed, really stewed… So – what you’re wondering – I got jobs now and then. Kitchen work mostly, and a delivery van one time. Family kept writing come on home, and I kept saying yes, on my way next month. Always telling myself, This’ll be breakthrough month – you know?’
‘There must have been a girl.’
‘Painting, is what there was.’
‘And a girl.’
‘You’re really gifted, Rosie. Put a shawl over your head and sling some beads on, crystal ball on the table: I see a girl…’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Oh.’ A shrug. ‘Have it your way. I don’t know. She only slummed for a while, went back to greener pastures.’
‘Poor you.’
‘Poor me, hell. Barman!’
‘Oh, now look—’
The boat was moving. On her back in this little box of a cabin she’d become aware of a change in the engines’ note and rhythm, and felt some kind of motion. Changing again now: getting clear of the old paddle-steamer’s side, she guessed – trying to visualize it, interpret the variations in sound and vibration. Conscious also that this was the moment of severance of contact, that from here on she’d be on her own. No further refreshing of memory, for instance: code-names, addresses, telephone numbers…
Buckmaster hadn’t mentioned the drops, in his resume this morning, and she was glad he hadn’t. The intention was that she’d tell no-one at all, except the Resistance people who’d receive them. If Buckmaster had remembered it you could bet he’d have said something like, ‘You’ll keep César informed, of course’: and she’d have had to. It was S.O.E.’s own business, no-one else’s. A different thing entirely from the S.I.S. operation. But as he hadn’t issued any such instruction, she could stick to what had been agreed. Even allowing for César being – as Buckmaster had said – ‘gilt-edged’: suppose for instance he decided – wrongly – that it was all right to bring the suspect Romeo into it?
Romeo was the stiffest fence she’d be facing, at the start. He might be perfectly OK but if he had been turned by the Germans – as Baker Street suspected – they’d have her on toast. Unless César had sorted him out before she got there, and decided to stay clear of him. But on the S.I.S. job, ‘La Minette’ was potentially no less dangerous, and there was no way to stay clear of her – no matter what Maurice Buckmaster thought… She’d been the protégée of an independent agent known as ‘La Chatte’, who’d been playing both ends against the middle to no small effect. A year ago, this had been. ‘La Minette’ – meaning kitten – had only been doing odd jobs for her – entertaining men for or with her had been her primary function up to the time of La Chatte’s arrest. La Chatte had then saved her own neck by agreeing to work for the Germans, and at the same time she’d got rid of her part-time employee, presumably because she couldn’t trust her to toe the new line. Otherwise, why sack her – when she (La Chatte) was still in business? ‘La Minette’ might therefore be fundamentally anti-German, and clever enough not to have let the Germans know it. Whether or not S.I.S. had other reasons for believing this, one didn’t know, but it was the basis on which they’d decided she might be useable: her value being solely that she was – allegedly – Colonel Walther’s mistress.
“La Chatte” was out of it. She’d sold the Germans the idea of her working for them right in the heart of S.O.E., in London, the Gestapo had connived at her ‘escape’ from their custody and an S.O.E. agent whom she then contacted had allowed her to believe he’d swallowed her story whole. He’d taken her to England with him on board a gunboat of this 15th Flotilla, and she was now in Holloway women’s prison. But she’d made her mark, all right. German use of her radio, probably with her as the pianist, had convinced S.I.S. and Naval Intelligence that the warships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen had no intentions of leaving Brest; and in the middle of February of last year – a few days before Johnny’s death and Rosie’s first visit to Baker Street – they’d broken out and escaped up-Channel to German ports.
The engines were fairly deafening now. All four, Rosie guessed. And the gunboat’s angle in the water was changing, its bow lifting as it gathered speed.