As ordered the day before yesterday – that appalling last day of the Finishing School course, when Paul had been killed – Eve was heading for London, due to report to Colonel Linder in the morning. David Hatton had telephoned the Priory to ask if she would accept accommodation for the night with a friend of his who had been a volunteer with the Abraham Lincolns. ‘He just wants to hear how things are now from someone who’s seen the aftermath.’
The train on which she was travelling was delayed. It had dragged itself very slowly along the last three miles of track. Although there was a bit of desultory grumbling and bored sighs among the passengers, Eve, in her withdrawn state of grief over Paul, and concern for Electra and DB, did not notice.
By the time Eve had left the Priory, DB had not returned from Boscombe. None of them had. It had been dreadful. She’d gone to see the Duty Admin Officer, hoping to get some news of them, but all that he’d said was that they were still making reports and that Eve should leave at once.
‘It should have been me, sir, in that trainer. Paul Smyth was expecting to be married soon.’
‘It’s like that – a roll of the dice – so don’t have any sense of guilt because you are alive and others are not. What have you been doing here these past weeks if you haven’t learned that?’
She had learned that. Bureau people needed to be able to walk away from death in a way others could not. That was the theory.
Now somebody on the train said quietly, almost like a moan, ‘Oh! Oh!’ and suddenly, all Eve’s self-centred thoughts were dispelled. Everyone in that compartment seemed to draw breath simultaneously. The train was moving sufficiently to reveal a panorama that was shocking.
Only weeks ago, in Spain, Eve had walked amongst some of the blitzed buildings that time was beginning to make into historical ruins as they gradually acquired a covering of weed and regrowth. The rubble that had been in the streets had been cleared, and repair and rebuilding had started. Madrid’s wounds had acquired healing scars.
But this was the raw wound.
Here she was on a high embankment, an audience for last night’s blitz. It was chilling. She had been able to cope with the blitzing of Spanish cities and towns because she was engaged in helping, doing something, carrying the injured, bringing in supplies.
To be stuck up here, looking down, was appalling. She had eaten very little since she left the Priory, yet she felt sick. Sweat formed around her mouth and her heart beat fast. She closed her eyes. Deep breaths, deep breaths.
Under collapsed buildings there could be people still bleeding and dying. There could be mothers down there, shielding babies with their own dead bodies; fathers tearing at rubble with bare hands, being pulled off by rescuers who knew that the rest of the building could fall any second. There were trails of smoke where timbers, deeply buried, were smouldering now, but any draw of oxygen could make them flare again.
The worst time for Eve in the civil war had been when, out of a clear blue sky, the centre of a small village had been blown apart. Children waiting at the bus stop, women out marketing, men doing fieldwork – there had been so much raw flesh, so much burning. She had been so absorbed in the mayhem that she hadn’t noticed the utter silence because the blast had deafened her. But the screams and cries were there, if anything worse, in her imagination and nightmares.
Those same sounds could be going on down there. Again she was deaf because of her remoteness.
She had given up God years ago, and wondered again why people still clung to the belief that they were being ‘watched over’ by a supreme being. How many times had she seen a man put a ribbon around his neck whilst he anointed another human being in dying agony? It had always made her anger rise, yet the person dying still hoped for the best. Recently she had become more accepting of such irrationality. Let people do what they liked if it helped them.
The train jerked forward a few feet and stopped again – a ‘better’ view. Firemen and street wardens were risking their necks clambering over the wreckage of streets that only yesterday had been terraces of homes. There was an amazing mantelpiece clinging to an exposed wall with an elaborate wedding-present clock balanced upon it; there was roses wallpaper, bright pink distemper showing dark patches of damp mould.
These were Eve’s own streets. Mile after mile of them had been thrown up quickly to house workers. One bomb on Lampeter Street, and the entire jerry-built lot would come down, just like these. Best thing that could happen so long as nobody was hurt. People in Lampeter Street grumbled to one another when yet longer cracks appeared in the brickwork, and the mortar turned to sand, and the bricks themselves became eroded, and frames rotted. ‘Best thing they can do with this place is put a bomb under it,’ they said. But in wishing for a bomb to be put under Lampeter Street, nobody ever thought of bombs raining down.
Again the train jerked forward, this time inching its way into the terminus. Turning away from the destruction, Eve looked to her left, anticipating the sight that thrilled her anew every time she came into Waterloo station – the Houses of Parliament: Victorian gothic, substantial, sure of itself, looking older than its few years, reflecting its image in the brown water of the River Thames.
Her mind jumped the points from Paul, the Blitz, Lampeter Street and her future self inside the Houses of Parliament.
Stepping out into the gloom of the blacked-out roof through which not even afternoon sun could penetrate, she deposited Paul in her own Pandora’s box.
‘I heard about the crash. It must have been pretty dreadful for you.’
Even though the train was an hour late, David Hatton was there to meet her.
‘For me! For Electra Sanderson and her baby – yes. Not for me, David. I was the one that got away.’
Without rising to her retort, he guided her to a London bus.
‘I’m glad that you agreed to visit these people. You’ll like them. He’s really hungry for news from Spain.’
The bus should have taken them to Soho, but the stumbling journey was so tortuous that, having been constantly rerouted, they eventually decided it would be easier to walk.
Eve was pleased with how she looked wearing her sub-lieutenant’s uniform. Tailored on masculine lines, it suited her slim erect figure. All she carried was a black shoulder-bag and a canvas grip. David was in civvies. They were both subdued. They had walked less than a mile before her navy serge and his dark trilby were powdered with grey ash and rubble dust.
It was late afternoon by the time they reached Soho.
When, before the blackout, the neon sign ‘Archie’s’ had flared, it must have appeared incongruous against the old brickwork and timbering of the Carvery and Grill. Only a few square feet of striped awning remained but that might not have been due to war damage. Pasted to the entrance was the ubiquitous notice ‘Business as usual’.
‘Is this it?’
‘It’s better than it looks.’
A big man with greying hair came out from behind the bar and clapped both hands on David’s shoulders.
‘Davey, Davey, how’re ya, kid? You look pret-ty good to me.’
David returned the greeting. ‘I am pretty good. Tim, salud! Eve, meet Tim Redding. Tim, this is the friend, Eve Anders.’
Tim stretched out his left hand, and caught hers in a firm grip, his right remaining heavily in his jacket pocket, ‘So you’re the one? Truly glad to meet you. OK, I call you Eve? Good. Should call you ‘comrade’ according to Davey, right?’
This wasn’t the first time Eve had seen a pocket weighed down like Tim’s. Maybe the fingers were missing, or even the entire hand, resting the arm in the pocket a way of appearing almost normal.
‘Actually, I was never that,’ she replied. ‘I was a kind of ad hoc volunteer.’
‘Same difference, Eve. We were all on the right side. C’mon through, I’ll get Nancy to mash us some tea.’
He called to an older man with the physique of a wrestler gone soft, ‘Scottie, take over the bar for an hour. Put up the blackout. Don’t forget.
‘Hey, Nan, meet my old buddy Davey and his girl, Eve.’
Nan was probably fifty. She had a sharp profile of long nose and high cheekbones, and an amazingly beautiful head with long, long hair, more grey than black, hanging free down her back.
‘Davey. Eve. Welcome to Archie’s. Not that there’s much left to welcome. Will I do as himself says and mash you a pot of tea?’ She fisted Tim gently in the ribs, and he curled up as though she had floored him. The warmth of their feelings for one another exuded from their every expression.
The four of them sat at a kitchen table covered with patterned oilcloth as was used by respectable poor people in Eve’s old neighbourhood. Potato scones and strong tea were passed around.
Tim asked, ‘How’d you manage with the buses – getting here, I mean?’
‘We didn’t,’ David said. ‘We abandoned it and came on foot.’
Nan said, ‘All Hell broke loose last night.’
Tim leaned over and took her hand. ‘And when she arrived home, she looked as though she’d been in Hell.’
‘Did you get caught in it?’ Eve wanted to know.
‘Not caught,’ Tim said. ‘She goes out in it.’
‘Not a deal of good ambulance drivers sitting at home when there’s a raid on, is there, you damned Yankee?’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘Not much good if we wasn’t there with our vans.’ Explaining, ‘That’s all they are, grocery vans with the insides taken out and a few stretchers on rails. Last night there was a chap went four times into a blazing building – a council home for old people – he wasn’t much of a physical specimen, but by God, he’d got some guts. Each time, he brought out one of the old folks. Then he went in a fifth time and the whole place collapsed on him. One of our girls got her leg broke by a flying drainpipe.’
Eve easily visualised this grey-haired woman doing the same kind of runs to and from hospitals or dressing stations as she herself had done. The difference was that Eve had been twenty, but Nan Redding was old enough to be a grandmother.
‘Have another scone, Eve. You’ve not got a deal of flesh on you seeing as you’re in the forces.’ She dabbed an extra bit of butter on one for Eve and winked. ‘Being a publican has its advantages. It’s all, “I’ll scratch your back – you scratch mine.” Not that we go a lot on the spivs and black market, but our currency now is things.’
‘It’s how it used to be Out There, isn’t it, Eve? You’d know,’ Tim said. ‘It wasn’t too bad for me – Nan used to send me bits and pieces. Trouble was, I never wanted to part with any of it for barter.’
Eve really didn’t want to talk about that war – or any war. She just wanted to see Colonel Linder and be allowed to get on with her Special Ops work. But this man needed to speak about his experiences.
‘When I was coming in to Waterloo today, I saw all those houses on the south side of the Thames… just piles of rubble – Spain all over again. But things are already looking different in Madrid.’
‘The people will still see what was there.’
‘I’m not sure that you’re right. Human beings are very resilient. We have to be.’
‘Even under Franco, that S.O.B. fascist?’
‘Especially under a dictator.’
‘Then it was all for nothing?’
‘I don’t know, Tim… I wasn’t in a position to judge.’
David asked, ‘What about this area, Tim? I see a lot of broken windows and your “Business as usual” notice.’
Tim heaved his shoulders and breathed out heavily. ‘You want to come and get a gander at the back? C’mon, I’ll show you.’
As Tim Redding opened double doors, a beautiful setting sun shone directly into the house. ‘On Monday there was a whole street there, on Tuesday only the hole.’ An inadequate word, ‘hole’, for an enormous area laid waste.
After a period of shocked silence, David said, ‘It’s a miracle that this place is still standing.’
‘If Archie’s was some kinda church or chapel, it’d be a miracle, but it’s probably science. Archie’s and the rest of this side of the street were the only good buildings in this whole part of Soho – the rest were trash without a foundation to their name. Add to that the scientific fact that blast has its limitations – it’s got to stop somewhere, and Archie’s and our street was its limits. Next time, it will have a clear run. But we came through, didn’t we?’
‘What was there before?’
‘Some street-girls and their kids, some of them with their mas too; skid-row apartments for throwaway guys and girls. Eel and pie shops, newsagents, a lot of little pubs and bars. OK, the bars were dives, girls would fuck in doorways and the guys would pee in the streets… so what do you say? Hitler’s done what the borough shoulda done years ago. Betcha that’s just what people will say.’
‘That’s what they’ll say about the place where I was born and grew up.’ Eve stared ahead but was aware of the men turning to look at her. ‘It was the rough end in a rough town. Nobody asked to be born in those streets – nobody should have been born in those streets. Little girls don’t want to grow up to fuck in doorways. Boys don’t ask to be half-starved street urchins. I got away by the skin of my teeth. It wasn’t easy, and I’ve lost touch with my own kind because of it.’ She turned and gave David Hatton a wry smile.
Tim went back into the bar, and David offered his and Eve’s help.
Nan said, ‘I get to bed early on good nights for bombing. You can pretty well guarantee that with skies like this there’ll be a big raid. I’ll get my head down by nine o’clock and have about four hours. Take the front room upstairs if you like, but I’m going into the cellar. Archie’s is lucky: the cellar here can take practically everyone in the entire street.’
Tim said, ‘Raises the temperature of the beer, but who complains? At least we got beer.’
‘Come upstairs, I’ll show you your room.’ Eve’s and David’s bags were standing side by side where Tim had placed them. Eve was nonplussed and looked from the bags to Nan. Nan gave Eve a sheet to cover her uniform and a pair of dungarees and a top. ‘If you have to move fast, just grab these and you’re dressed in thirty seconds. I sleep in mine.’ Then she read the uneasiness on Eve’s face. ‘Tim thought that you and David… You’re not, are you?’
Eve shook her head. ‘He’s my superior officer. But we have known each other for a long time. I thought he had arranged bed and breakfast.’
‘I’m sorry, Eve. You don’t think… ?’ Nan stopped and helped Eve hang her jacket.
‘What, Nan? That David thought he might get me into bed?’
‘I’m sure not.’
‘So where was he expecting to sleep?’
‘I’m sorry, Eve. Tim must have assumed…’
‘That I was yet another of the Hatton girls? Don’t worry, Nan, I know all about his reputation.’
‘Tim got the impression that you were the one.’
‘I am.’ She smiled delightedly at Nan Redding. ‘But not the one for Lieutenant Hatton.’
‘OK, I’m glad we sorted that out before Tim put his foot in it.’
When Eve had stowed her bag and changed, she and Nan sat at the table, ripping some beautiful damask banqueting-size tablecloths into strips and squares, and rolling them into bandages and slings. A clock somewhere chimed the half-hour.
‘Half-past nine,’ Nan said. ‘Time I got my head down. You could come down in the cellar with me, if you like.’
‘I would.’
‘Did you hear that?’
Eve listened.
‘Big guns, a long way off.’
Tim came in with David. ‘I’ve called time. Not that there’s anybody drinking. Scottie’s collecting up. Did you hear the guns?’
‘Yes, I was just saying to Eve…’
‘Dover guns. You can always tell. That means we’re for it again. Put the light out, Davey.’ Tim opened up the door to the big space. The sky was as clear as could be, with no lights showing in the whole of the great city, stars were shining brightly. A good bombing night. ‘There! You heard that.’
As he said it the warning siren began to wail.
Eve was glad that she had changed into briefs, shirt and dungarees. Now she slipped on her rubber-soled navy-issue brogues. Nan, in the back room, wearing a tin hat marked ‘Ambulance’, was thrusting a flask into a khaki shoulder-bag.
‘Can you do with another pair of hands, Nan? I’ve done it before.’
‘You’re on. There’s a tin hat in the bar… somebody left it. Take that, and here…’ She handed Eve a generous-sized jacket. ‘It gets cold around dawn.’
‘How about me, Nan?’ David asked.
‘Thanks, love, but you’d only be in the way. Eve knows what has to be done. See you when we see you, Tim.’
Eve grabbed her gas-mask case and gave David a sloppy salute. ‘I’ll see you when I see you… sir.’
Nan was off almost before Eve had slammed the door of the converted van. ‘I have to check in at the emergency station and say who you are. You’ll get a tag to wear.’
It had been nine-thirty when the siren had sounded. By eleven o’clock, Nan and Eve were collecting injured people on the canvas stretchers and taking them for minor emergency treatment at Red Cross stations, or to hospital for the more serious injuries.
No time for the dead now; they were left for later.
The two women scarcely had time to speak except about what they were doing.
At some point in the night, the van’s engine went dead. Before Nan could finish ‘Oh shi—’, Eve was under the bonnet.
‘Spark plugs oiled up. Got any spares? OK. In my gas-mask case – spare knickers and a bottle of perfume.’ The only light was from a torch held close by an ARP warden. ‘Try her now, Nan.’ The engine sparked into exquisitely perfumed life, Eve thrust the black-oiled knickers into her pocket and they were off again. Into the intense flare of incendiary bombs, and the endless thump and crump of high explosives, and the hiss of water gouting from hoses, and the balls of orange flame that burst through tinder-dry timbers of old roofs.
Dawn came so clear and beautiful that it was almost impossible to believe that the sun would be rising on the city that had just been through a night of such black and red terror. Yet it was not the same city. With every night of the blitz, London was changed for ever. Acrid fumes from steaming old bricks and mortar, escaped gas, burst sewers, a terrible stench of burned fur from a furrier’s still smouldering – when the all clear sounded after a raid that had lasted nine hours, Hell had come to London.
Nan and Eve passed a trail of Archie’s neighbours who had been sheltering in the cellar. Nan wiped a hand across her tired and blackened face and kissed Eve roundly.
‘You’re the best mate anybody could wish for, Eve, and don’t let anybody tell you different. This place is yours any time you want to stay – always supposing it’s still standing. Just remember to keep some satin knicks and a bottle of French perfume in your bag.’
Nan’s neighbours must have wondered about her and the grimy woman grinning at one another in the cold dawn light.
Tim had sandwiches ready, and a pot mashed as Nan liked it. The two women plunged into the thick bread.
‘Davey went off with his camera just after you left,’ Tim told Eve.
She nodded. ‘I guessed he might. He’s good at that. One picture and the whole world understands.’
Tm going to get my head down for a few hours,’ Nan said. ‘If Tim’s done the boiler, there should be enough hot water for a bit of a bath. Take no notice of the four-and-a-half-inch mark Tim painted on. That’s for high-class folks who bathes every day.’
Eve half filled the Victorian bath and slid under until only her face was above. She imagined that she could still hear the jangle of bells that had gone on all night – ambulances, police, fire brigade; the sharp crack when a wall split from its support; the rumble and crash as roofs fell in; shovels scraping rubble; ARP and first-aid volunteers calling for quiet, then listening for response from someone buried beneath the rubble.
After fifteen minutes of relaxing, she shook out her uniform, put on a clean white shirt, and went down to say thanks to Tim Redding. He looked up expectantly as she stood her things by the door and put her hat on. ‘Far to go?’
‘North side of the Thames, by Waterloo Bridge. My meeting isn’t until later this morning, but I want to drop off my stuff at left luggage.’
‘You’d best go by the underground. Buses will be all to hell. Want me to tell Davey a message?’
She grinned. ‘He knows where to find me – he probably knows my movements better than I do.’
‘He’s a hundred-per-cent good guy.’
‘He’s my boss, so who am I to argue with that?’
The city tube stations were used as deep air-raid shelters where every night Londoners went down to get a night’s sleep. Some went down early – families with blankets and bags of food and drink, others came in from nightclubs and theatres, still in their glad rags, some in uniform. Early morning saw a double flow of people – those going up to see if their houses or rooms were still standing; those going down to get the tube to work and see whether their office or shop was still standing.
The long escalators weren’t working, so that the people who had sheltered underground had a long steep climb.
Today, a dowdy, bedraggled mother, carrying baby and bags, was trailed by a toddler still half asleep and grizzling. A woman in a smart Chanel suit picked up the child and carried him, his tousled head snuggled against her pearl earrings.
Then, on the platform, a naval officer, still the worse for wear, was being helped to his feet by a man who might have been a paper-seller in the Strand. Eve’s mind played with the possibilities. If the entire population suddenly found itself living and working and fighting alongside people they would never have come in contact with before – except as boss and floor-worker, mistress and maid, shop-girl and society woman – perhaps the old class war was done for.
Having deposited her bags at left luggage, Eve walked out from the terminus into the surprising golden morning and down to the Thameside walk: sun glittering on the peat-brown water; tugs hauling cargo; a few boats dragged along by staid, grey-painted and camouflaged vessels that must belong to the navy; small dinghies crisscrossing to pontoons and landing stages. Buses and trolley buses passed back and forth over Waterloo Bridge, Westminster Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge.
Hell might have come to London last night, but the city was up and running this morning. Eve leaned on the Embankment wall, counted her blessings and discovered there were many.
She still had plenty of time to cross the river to the building that housed some of the secret services offices. She chose Westminster Bridge to cross. From her induction time at Baker Street and the Scrubs, she knew her way about London. She thought: after the war, I could come to live in London… or Spain if things change… before I retire to Ryde. She smiled. The problem for her was that she easily fell in love with places.
All part of the excitement of being alive.
Once on the other side, she went again to look at Queen Boudicca who, it was supposed, would soon be in some subterranean safe house.
Eve liked Queen Boudicca. She had discovered the stone statue during her induction weeks. It didn’t really matter whether the queen was mostly legend, she was symbolic of Ancient Britain and of the strength in women that modern times had obscured by hats and feathers and lessons in frailty.
Why did we let ourselves become such pathetic creatures? I’m strong, the girls in the factory were strong, the women who fought in Spain were strong, the girls at the Finishing School were strong. So, why are we at such disadvantage? Maybe the war would change that. Women were taking over men’s roles everywhere. Nan, like the women going to the front line in Barcelona, did their day’s work and then went into the battle.
Boudicca was an awesome, voluptuous woman attacking in a war chariot whose wheels carried blades to scythe through the legs of the enemy – an aggressive, bloody, ancient queen yet essentially a woman with firm breasts bared to face the enemy. How glorious the woman was. The angle of the head tossed nobly back made it impossible to see her expression, but her whole story was in the steadiness of her figure as she grasped reins controlling the racing horses and the dreadful war chariot. How limp Eve’s own beliefs seemed in the face of this warrior woman who was prepared to take the fight to her enemies.
Eve hoped that the ancient queen would not be removed to a place of safety. It would be too demeaning.
When Eve arrived at Colonel Linder’s office, she found Phoebe Moncke and Janet McKenzie there. No Colonel Linder.
Phoebe was brisk. ‘Take a pew, Lieutenant Anders. Relax, first names until we come to some conclusion.’
Eve saluted, then nodded and said hello to Janet. Janet – dressed in neat pale peach linen that could only have come from America – looked good, her brown skin shining with health.
Phoebe leaned back in Linder’s leather chair. ‘What we have here today is a bit of a rum situation. Understood, of course, that nothing said here goes out of this room, even if the idea is dead in the water?’
‘Of course. Why is it necessary to tell me?’
Janet said, ‘What Phoebe means is that this is a wacky idea and whether it works or not, nothing will be official, no paperwork for the archives – nothing attributable. Phoebe and I have gone round and round with one another and we still arrive at the same place: stalemate. Go on, Phoebe, you tell it your way first.’
‘Well, Eve, Colonel Linder has now got a whole string of Bureau people – or, as we must now say, SOE agents – graduating from the Finishing School. As you now know, SOE does secret and dangerous work. Every undercover operation behind enemy lines means danger to agents and resistance groups alike. There will be men taking on the roles of railway workers, or timber fellers, women posing as hairdressers or… or anything. They will be the means of contact between people here and people there. In France, there is a resistance movement, in Greece… and the opposition to General Franco is not dead. In Holland and Belgium there will be operations that only SOE people will be capable of doing. We’re the experts, the practical people, the disruptive element. Leave special intelligence infiltration to SIS.’ She took a breath as though about to dive into water.
Eve knew all this. Why was it necessary to repeat it? Phoebe and Janet had obviously planned a strategy, a double act, so she let it run without commenting.
Janet got up and propped her bottom on a desk, standing where she could watch Eve’s reaction. Eve knew what Janet was doing. The second stage of the strategy was about to emerge – to test Eve’s reactions. Which was why this was an informal meeting – just three women speculating. Drinking tea.
‘A biscuit, Eve?’
‘No thanks, Janet.’
‘I see you’ve clung on to your thin body.’
‘Slim body. I’m keeping it for the benefit of the cut of my uniform. I’m very fit.’
Phoebe plunged in. ‘You’ve seen a fair bit of the work our boffins do – absolute geniuses at forging ID papers, disguising radios. Any one of our boys or girls who are dropped into occupied territory will have every detail of equipment authentic and perfectly disguised for their assumed role… and it’s getting better all the time. However…’
Janet took over. ‘No one knows better than you, Eve, that one tiny detail overlooked could easily cost an agent’s life. We all worked really hard to get everything exactly right to cover you in Spain. It was a very costly operation.’
‘All the time I was there I wondered whether I was value for money.’
‘Finance isn’t the problem – it is the safety of our people. Did it ever occur to you that in Holland a man’s shirt collar is fastened with a vertical buttonhole, not horizontal as here? An undercover agent in a French café orders café noir. Why does the Gestapo come to collect him?’
Eve shrugged.
Phoebe answered. ‘Because he or she wasn’t aware that there is nothing except black coffee in France now. The Gestapo aren’t fools. The devil is in the detail. Like us, they know. SOE is building itself a reputation as unassailable.’
‘I do know all this. Keef’s attention to detail provided me with a wardrobe of clothes fit for a millionairess, remember.’
‘Because that is what you were,’ Phoebe said.
‘And because your psychology was right, the two together – your training and the props – made you invincible,’ said Janet.
‘So?’
‘So, you were a guinea pig. I had time to spend with you. Only you and Miss de Beers to concentrate on at that time.’
‘And Paul?’
‘He was a gift. Except for a list of venues, he—’
‘You know he’s dead?’
‘Of course we know. It was a very sad accident, a great loss to SOE.’
‘And to his wife-to-be and their baby.’ There was a silence which said that they didn’t know. ‘He told Wilhelmina de Beers and me a few hours before. We were a threesome.’
Janet said, ‘Three SOE agents, Eve.’
‘I know that, Janet. But human beings do tend to form close relationships. They end – it hurts – we deal with it – bury it along with all our other emotional trash.’
‘Eve, we should talk about this. We will make a date.’
‘Now,’ Phoebe said, ‘every few weeks trained people are coming out of our various training establishments, or being recruited.’
‘And,’ Janet went on, ‘they come out brilliantly trained, psyched by me and my team, but vulnerable. The vulnerability matters, but more to some than others. Most at risk are those who will go into Occupied Europe to live supposedly ordinary lives – except, of course, that they will be working for us.’
There was a short silence during which Phoebe and Janet looked at one another.
‘Oh, come on, please,’ Eve pleaded. ‘It’s a bit one-sided that you have an agenda for this meeting and I don’t know what the hell all this preamble is for. Tell me what you have cooked up that you want me to do, but don’t like saying.’
‘It is Colonel Linder’s idea,’ said Phoebe, ‘and I think it is a good one, and so does Janet. Janet has written a paper on prostitutes. I’ve read it and I think it’s brilliant. It’s not about the obvious reasons why men use them, it is about their use as confidantes.’
Janet said, ‘My study was in several countries and in many strata of various societies, and what I discovered is that a quite large percentage of men don’t necessarily want sex, they simply want to talk, need to talk, and will pay the going rate for that. The need to tell is overwhelming. There is an element in talking that can free a man of sexual inhibitions – in short, he can get an erection that had been held back by his subconscious. And, of course, there is that very masculine trait – showing off to a woman. Even males who have no sexual problems will use prostitutes as a listening ear.’ Janet smiled broadly. ‘I was pleased to learn that it is usual to charge for that too.’
‘The confessional, with no Hail Marys to pay,’ Phoebe said. ‘Some men have egos the size of Texas.’
Janet said, ‘That’s good in a secret agent – the attitude ‘I can do that!’ And not only men – we are no different. It is your ego, Eve, your pride in yourself, knowing that you are better, more competent, are ambitious… your ego is one of your greatest assets. But you are not egotistical.’
‘Is my ego the size of Texas?’
‘It may or may not be with you and with me,’ Janet laughed. ‘I’m not so sure of Phoebe – we don’t need anyone to admire our competence.’
Phoebe said wryly, ‘Well, thank you very much, Dr Freud.’
‘No, no… not Freud – the man who thought he knew what made women tick and got us completely wrong. Actually, Phoebe’s ego is interesting. She has always known how good she is – hers is the size of Texas. However, she likes to confuse people by her scatty manner and dress. What she says is, “Look at me, aren’t I an interesting and scatty woman?” whilst hiding her great intellect within. Now, what is interesting with Phoebe here is that when one does discover her abilities, one is overawed. Didn’t you feel that when you first saw her sitting in her tricorn hat and gold lace?’
‘I did, yes. Quite a transformation.’
‘And very satisfying to any Texas-sized ego – right, Phoebe?’
Phoebe smiled and nodded. ‘In a party-trick kind of way.’
‘The thing is with Phoebe, she has no need to boast. You and I have seen both Phoebes. But what if she was, say, the canteen lady at Griffon House with a senior WRNS officer inside? She might, just might, just once, want to let one other person know. Actually, Phoebe, you wouldn’t, but it makes my point.’
‘Which is? If you don’t mind me asking, because it’s all as clear as mud to me,’ Eve said.
‘That even those of us who play the game close to the chest have our egos to deal with.’ Eve thought of Alex, and her drinking and her pillow-talk with Duke. As far as Alex was concerned, Duke might have been anybody.
‘…“courtesans with good manners”.’ Eve had missed the start of Phoebe’s sentence. ‘Colonel Linder’s description… more polite than mine. I’d call them “FiFi”.’
‘Please, Phoebe, put it in words that a simple country girl like me can understand.’
‘Colonel Linder has asked me to see how you would react to organising a few very special trained women. They would be SOE.’
‘As courtesans?’ Eve started to laugh, then stopped short. ‘You’re serious? Train nice girls to become prostitutes?’
‘No, no,’ Janet said, ‘courtesans, geishas. They need not be sexual encounters. Seduction is an art that can be taught… learned. If necessary, I could talk about the techniques, but we have in mind one woman who knows a lot about it. It would be your job to arrange for the man ready to go on his first operation to meet one of these women. The men will be those about whom I am not one hundred per cent confident – who might succumb to a pretty woman, who might be a pretty enemy agent.’
‘Do you mind telling me why you’ve asked me?’
‘You’re the cat who walks by itself. Were you always like that?’
‘I suppose I was; I never had much in common with the children I grew up with. Being the cat who walks by itself doesn’t mean loneliness.’
‘I know,’ Janet said.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I think running FiFi requires a person who can stand aside, be uninvolved but concerned. These girls must be respected for what they are willing to do, and this couldn’t come from a person who doesn’t respect herself. You respect yourself.’
Eve had never had a better compliment.
‘This is not an assignment I could order any agent to undertake,’ Phoebe said. ‘Will you do it?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Lieutenant Hatton said that you’d agree.’
Eve left the office still warm from the glow of the compliment, but raging inwardly that David hadn’t told her what to expect.
David Hatton was waiting for her in the foyer of the building, wearing the same civilian clothes he had worn yesterday. Good God, was it only then?
Stiff and erect, Eve approached him.
His smile vanished when he read her expression.
‘You shit!’
He flushed and then went pale. ‘Eve!’ he said mildly. ‘Language, language.’
‘Don’t you dare language me!’
He caught her elbow firmly and guided her out into the September sunshine and on to the Thames Embankment, where yellowing plane trees were shedding a first leaf or two. Jaw clenched and still stiff, Eve allowed herself to be seated outside a tiny riverside café that also served an underground station.
David laid a packet of cigarettes and a lighter on the table and went inside without asking what she wanted.
She extracted a cigarette and was shocked to see how much her hands were shaking as she lit up.
He brought out two cups of tea, plus a filled teapot, and four biscuits. ‘No choice.’
Accepting the tea, she held the cup in both hands to steady the tremble.
He took a cigarette and lit it.
They had been able to let a full five minutes pass since she had attacked him with the words that had obviously shocked him.
‘Now, can we discuss the problem you have with me?’
She sipped the tea. It was not only very strong. It was excessively sweet. She expressed her distaste.
‘Drink it, Eve. Sugar’s good for occasions like these.’
‘Oh, really?’ she said sarcastically. ‘And what kind of occasions are these?’
‘Rage on your side, anger on mine. Adrenalin high, blood sugar low.’
‘Oh God, David, you are so smug!’ But he was right. Within a few minutes the trembling stopped.
In a calmer voice she said, ‘You poke around in my life – not for the first time – you discuss me, give people advice on how to approach me. Don’t deny it! Your fingermarks are all over this FiFi job.’
‘They need to be, Eve. In the end, I am the one who must carry the can if it fails.’
‘It won’t fail, David. I will see to that. I might detest setting up this little operation, but I shall set it up good.’
He tapped his cigarette nervously. He was not good at hiding his reactions.
Eve knew he felt intimidated. You’d break under questioning, David, she thought. Lancing College doesn’t harden you up a quarter as much as Lampeter Street Girls’ School.
‘What’s the joke?’
‘Just us, David. “Tango Man and the Cat Who Walks by Itself.”’
Looking directly at her, he said, ‘You used to be Tango Girl.’
‘History, David. Another place, another life.’