Driving in the ice-ruts was very like negotiating the hard-baked mud on some of Spain’s minor roads, but there Eve had had the weight of a big truck to crush ridges; the neat little MG two-seater was as light as a moth in comparison. But being behind any wheel and revving a well-maintained engine gave her great satisfaction. The rear and side mica windows crackled like a bag of potato crisps.
She parked outside the main door of the store, and as she approached, it was swung open for her by an elderly doorman. A cloud of warm air was sucked out to envelop her in scents and perfumes, metal polish, linen fabric, warm dust and dampness from snow walked into the carpet. After all she had seen and been through, the scent of civilisation in a department store was as if St Peter had opened the gates to Heaven.
The doorman pushed against the door to keep out the offensive day. ‘May I help, madam?’
The years dropped away, and it was only yesterday that she and Katey had dolled themselves up and gone ‘down Town’. The Co-op had been their regular style and price range, but Handleys was beyond their territory, just an occasional Saturday afternoon treat. It was here that they stole fashion and style to take away in their minds and make up in fabric by the yard. The Co-op was good for dress fabric; you could choose it in Handleys and buy it at the CWS or Bon Marché for a quarter the price and make it up at home. She smiled to herself, thinking: Kate and I were never greeted by the doorman. I must have become posh. A woman who shops in Handleys and goes up to the tearooms. She felt happy.
‘Are you open for coffee yet?’
‘Yes, madam. First floor. Thank you, madam.’ Only one or two of the little coffee tables were taken, but the rest were laid ready for the ladies of Southsea to take coffee. Eleven o’clock was the time. This place had been the Mecca of what passed for Southsea society, and although Eve and her friend had been daring girls, they had never ventured into Handleys restaurant. They had scorned it… too toffee-nosed, too stuffy. Women did not go to Handleys unless wearing hats and gloves. Eve had a hat – the beret she had brought with her she wore close over her springy, corn-coloured curls – and she was wearing gloves, the very nice ones, hand-stitched, unlined calf that she had picked up with her coat on the journey back to England. Like the coat she wore – long, expensive cashmere styled on the lines of a military greatcoat, warm as toast, cheap as dirt – everything she had bought had been handmade and tailored. Very quick, lady. Very cheap, very good, lady. Luxury knickers and petticoats embroidered there in the doorways of open-fronted shops by little girls. She had been reminded then of her own days as a machinist. But she had been to school for nine years and been allowed to become an adolescent before she was doing similar work, and by machine.
The uniformed waitress waited patiently, pencil poised over her order-pad on a string, as Eve started to tweak off her gloves, then stopped as she remembered her hands were still in bad shape from working the Lavender Creek vineyards. ‘A pot of coffee for one and some biscuits.’
‘Fancy, chocolate or plain – or a selection?’
‘Digestive would be nice.’
Hours to idle away until her afternoon appointment with Dr McKenzie. The receptionist in the hairdressing department said that if madam would just take a seat, she would enquire whether there was a possibility of her being seen without an appointment. Yes there was. And a manicure? Yes, that would also be possible.
By the time Eve returned to the main store, the stylist had turned the curls into a long bob that dropped over one eye. The beautician had masked and cleansed her face until it glowed beneath the arsenal of cosmetics she recommended Eve would be wise to purchase – ‘This is probably the last of the luxury goods. Everybody is going over to war work.’ Eve went along with it and purchased everything suitable. It was all a wonderful experience. Her worn hands and nails had been soaked and massaged and grouted into ladylike softness, a French manicure giving neat, short nails with whitened undersides.
All the while she was within the curtained cubicle being pampered, Eve was entertained by conversations on either side of her. ‘Stocking up for the Duration’ was the topic of the day – probably of the week too. Clients for perms, washes-and-sets, and Marcel waves – and their hairdressers – exchanged bits of information in hushed voices. There would soon be a shortage of Marmite and tinned milk, black lead and hard soap for daily women; but daily women were disappearing to do men’s work. The prospect of black-leading one’s own kitchen range was frightening, added to which, the domestics would soon be on the blackmail because of the higher wages they could get in the little engineering firms and welding shops that were opening up everywhere.
With Eve’s experience of factory owners in this town, she couldn’t envisage such a turnaround in the fortunes of Portsmouth women needing work. There were, as there had always been, ‘beached women’, whose husbands and or the common-law fathers of their children went to sea for long periods of time, then would come ashore, blow their pay, and leave having given the women another mouth to suckle, clothe and feed. It could still terrify her to think how close to that life she had been.
David Hatton, on behalf of The Bureau, had provided Eve and Dimitri with a decent wad of money, some of which she now spent without guilt on a fur jacket. The assistant, wearing black with white Peter Pan collar and pearl earrings, fanned out the coat showing off the long silver, silky fur. ‘Car-length opossum, madam, a beautiful coat. Glamorous, madam. Only a woman with your colouring and figure can really wear a coat like this. It was forty guineas, but what with the problems of cold storage, it is now thirty guineas. You won’t regret it, madam.’
Eve didn’t need persuading. When she drew out a fifty-pound note in payment, the fur assistant needed to defer to the manager. Eve was enjoying herself. A coat like this would normally be paid by account. Perhaps they thought she had robbed a bank. But the long silvery fur of opossum was probably not the easiest to sell – a bit on the exotic side for her home town. More suited to London. She loved it. She had seen a film studio photograph of Betty Grable wearing such a coat and apparently nothing else.
Dimitri would love that.
The thought of surprising him aroused her. She had done as Dr McKenzie had asked and stayed away from Griffon House whilst she was interviewing Dimitri, but now she wanted to be back there.
This sudden wish to see him surprised her. Was it more than the anticipation of watching his reaction to surprising him in the seductive coat? Was this how people felt when they were in love?
Driving back to Griffon House she went back to playing Betty Grable for Dimitri.
Dr Janet McKenzie PLEASE KNOCK AND WAIT
Eve did so until the door was opened by a large, youthful, balding man; horn-rimmed glasses and a nice broad smile. ‘Miss Anders? Please come. Dr McKenzie will be two minutes.’
‘It’s OK, Eric. If you’d like to come in, Miss Anders… Just type up these notes, Eric, and you can take off.’
Dr McKenzie closed the heavy, panelled door behind her and indicated a low glass-topped table and two carver chairs, obviously part of the set of a dozen or so arranged around a long table covered with dust sheets. ‘Please take a seat.’ The room was warm from a fire of logwood crackling and flaring close by. Eric knocked and brought in a tray with the paraphernalia for tea. ‘Would you?’ Janet McKenzie indicated that Eve should pour tea. ‘I must get a footstool. I spent the morning with my legs dangling. Five foot three – the world is not made for us – and I need to make notes.’ She settled herself. ‘I love the smell of burning logs, don’t you?’
Eve nodded towards the flames. ‘Especially applewood.’
‘That’s applewood?’
‘Yes. Apple and cedar are the most aromatic – not that many people burn cedar in this country.’
‘But you know about it?’
‘My brother used to bring home chippings from work – not often, but it was lovely.’
‘Your only brother?’
‘No, I have two, both older: Ray, who was more of a father to me than my own father – he was at sea – and Ken, who was fond of the girls and was good fun, except that he wouldn’t do his share in the house. He could afford to have fun, Ray took on everything.’
Daylight disappeared as another heavy snowstorm piled large flakes on earlier falls. The only light in the room was from a red-shaded reading lamp and the flaming wood. The earlier wind had dropped, so that the snow fluttered down and the sound of any vehicles became hushed.
A wonderful sense of tranquillity – Eve felt it physically as it seeped into her tense nerves and muscles. As she breathed in the scent of the burning wood, she felt her shoulders slump and her stomach muscles relax.
‘Sisters?’
‘No.’
The short silence was filled with Dr McKenzie stirring a minute tablet into her tea.
Unaccountably, Eve wanted to tell her about Bar.
‘There is a friend – since we were twelve… we have always said that we were sisters.’
The image came like a clear snapshot: water swirling around herself and Bar, clinging tightly to one another as they leaped into a woodland pool. ‘She created a ritual to unite us – you know how girls do – she said, “We’re two halves of the same whole, Lu.” And I believed then that we may have been.’
‘Lu?’
Eve looked up sharply.
Janet McKenzie said, ‘You said she called you “Lu”.’
Eve went silent. She must tell this woman, this Bureau psychologist.
‘Is Lu a pet name you have outgrown?’
‘No. I used to be Lu – Louisa Vera.’ McKenzie nodded encouragingly, professionally, allowing her client time to consider how to talk about something that was vital and large in her life.
‘All this you see here, this Eve Anders, is a person handmade by me – a bespoke woman.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Lu was born into the lowest stratum of society. She hated it – the poverty, the ignorance, the acceptance of it by my… by her own kind. When she was still a girl, she decided that she would get away… somehow.
‘Eventually she escaped because she was lucky, she was clever and she had a mentor – a school head who encouraged her to aim high, to be ambitious. Before that, though, there was that whole summer of Lu with Bar – living away from the squalor that her / my mother and brothers tried really hard to keep out of the house.’
‘I’d like to know a bit about Bar.’
Eve spoke quietly, staring into the flames, unaware of the conflicting messages – a soft smile and a sad look in her eyes. ‘We were born six months apart, each of us on the turn of the year. She is dark, born at the winter solstice. As a girl I was even fairer than I am now. I was born midsummer. We said that we were two halves of the same person. She was very fey… pagan. She was everything that I was not, but I’m sure that I would have easily changed places with her, or gone to live with her. She could cast spells… tried to teach me all the magic of the woodlands. There was one occasion when I believe that I did almost get there.’ The flames flickered wildly in her vision, though she was unaware that tears were coursing down her cheeks. ‘Girls of twelve have such wonderful and simple ideas of how easy it all is.’
‘But it’s not, is it?’
Eve shook her head and accepted the tissues Dr McKenzie offered. Reluctantly she withdrew from the flickering sun through birch trees reflecting on the surface of a green pond.
‘I’m sorry. I am not normally a crying sort of person.’ She regained some composure by refilling their cups.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘I don’t mean, are you forever blubbing and snivelling.’
‘I know.’ There was something not right about expressing feelings to a complete stranger, yet that is what Eve wanted to do. It felt to her as though here was this doctor – an empty vessel into which she could pour the sludge of bad memories that had turned sour and frightening in the pit of her stomach – and this doctor was glad to have her do so. It was a ridiculous thought. ‘Sometimes I do feel like crying, but it is not what the Wilmotts do.’
‘The Wilmotts?’
The name was out. Drawing her gaze away from the fire, Eve met Dr McKenzie’s quizzical look.
‘Until I was nineteen, I was Lu Wilmott.’ She gave the other woman a look that might have been construed as defiant – or proud. ‘And then I made myself Eve Anders. That’s really all there is to it.’
‘Miss Anders, you realise that to me you are a complete stranger. All I have been given is the facts of your life in this slim file. I have discovered that you and Major Vladim have a relationship – and that is all. The fact of that relationship is perhaps for another time. Before that, I should like to get to understand a little about you,’ she smiled warmly, ‘what makes you tick, so to speak.’
Eve felt a sudden apprehension. ‘I just told you.’
‘You commented that crying is not what the Wilmotts do, then immediately became defensive. Is it the crying, or is it the Wilmotts?’
Again that same desire to tell. ‘It is because I am defensive – I have a lot to defend.’
‘To lock away?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it about crying?’
She thought for a few seconds. ‘It is crying that…’ The words wouldn’t come.
McKenzie waited patiently, but Eve appeared to have dried up.
‘You are finding this difficult to say?’
‘Of course I am. I am not the sort of person who…’
‘Who?’
‘Who can talk about… I like to be private. I don’t want people to get the idea that they know me.’
Eve didn’t notice the slight look of satisfaction that appeared in McKenzie’s eyes.
‘But you have had close relationships?’
‘You mean love affairs, sexual relationships?’
‘If you like.’
‘Yes. I’m quite good at that.’ She smiled wryly. The other woman must suppose that she spent half her life on her back. Well good. She could think what she liked.
‘You can let yourself go with something as powerful as an orgasm, but crying terrifies you?’
Eve found herself blushing at her interrogator’s bluntness. ‘It doesn’t…’ She had never uttered the word ‘orgasm’; she felt that it would come out ‘organism’ and she would feel foolish. ‘Sex is never going to go on for long. Even when it’s good, you know that it’s going to stop, it is always under control. Well, I mean that it is something that has a boundary, a limit to it.’
‘But not responding to a need to cry?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Losing control?’
Eve nodded.
‘How about anger?’
‘The same. I don’t know why you need to ask. It is obvious.’
‘It is not obvious to me. Expressing anger is a healthy emotion.’
Eve didn’t comment.
‘I can see that you are angry.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘I don’t mean the kind of fractiousness that you are feeling now – some authoritarian figure asking you questions that you really don’t want to answer – that’s not anger. Why are you answering me?’
Eve retained her poise and looked directly at her tormentor. ‘To be perfectly frank, only because I want to be part of this set-up. The officer who recruited me said that The Bureau was made for me and I for it. And he’s right. So I’ll answer any damned question you like just so long as you tell them that I am normal enough to be one of them.’
‘You think The Bureau needs normal people? Really? What normal person would want to become a secret operative? The Bureau needs an appearance of normality, of course, but their best people will be extraordinary abnormal people, people with vision and a crazy kind of dedication. Normal people don’t always see far beyond the ends of their noses – would you agree?’
Eve shrugged her shoulders.
‘You, Miss Anders, are, I believe, far above a normal person. I still know very little about you, but the mere fact of your relationship with an officer of the Russian Army who has jumped ship, so to speak, and become a man who must be seen as a traitor in his own country, is—’
‘A traitor?’
‘No?’
‘He is a good and loving man who gave up everything to rescue two orphans and get them away from the war.’ She had said more than she intended. Maybe Dimitri had not mentioned that.
The other woman got up to balance a new log on the others, the dry, curling bark of which flared at once, giving the dark skin of her noble nose a kind of luminescence. Eve wondered about that. She had known a man in Spain with that same proud profile. He had been a doctor too, working in a bombed-out hospital; even in the midst of that mayhem he had appeared cool and capable. It was all in his narrow skull, with the skin so tightly stretched that every contour was visible. Dr McKenzie had that same quality, the haughty length of her nose exaggerated by the severely bunched hair at her neck.
Turning her head away from the fire, she said, ‘You are an ambitious woman?’
‘Yes, I would say so… very ambitious.’
‘Do you think that you could forego marriage and children to satisfy that ambition?’
‘Yes.’ Eve was ready to blurt out the fact of her miscarriage when the log toppled into the hearth.
‘You seem very positive.’
‘I am.’ I see where this is leading, Eve thought. They were playing cat and mouse with Eve’s control over wayward emotions.
‘When was the first time you felt real anger – I mean something so powerful that it left you feeling afraid of it?’
Another image, from an angle that looked down into their mother’s grave as Ray and Ken and the bearers stood, toes to the fake grass. Ray and Ken in dark suits and ties, and white shirts with stiff detachable collars, their shoes polished to the hilt; Lu in a borrowed tam-o’-shanter and a coat with the hem altered. All the Wilmotts – except her father who was, as ever, on the other side of the world — in their ‘deep black’, showing grim respect that they did not feel. They had never liked Vera Wilmott because she was an outsider.
‘At Vera Wilmott’s graveside when Lu realised that she was never going to finish her education and that Vera didn’t really die from the tumour, she died because she was so poor and Lu couldn’t go to grammar school for the same reason. To get medical treatment or an education you have to make sure that you don’t live in that kind of poverty.
‘Vera Wilmott, my mother, was young… and had once been elegant and pretty… a student teacher swept off her feet by one of the handsome Wilmotts. She shouldn’t have been dead; if they hadn’t been so poor she wouldn’t have been, but she had had to sit at home stitching ribbon trimmings on garments. The money hardly paid for the gas to light the room in winter. Her womb got diseased.
‘You said that anger is healthy. What good does it do? Lu didn’t know what to do with it. If that’s right, then why did she run away, making a show of herself in front of the Wilmotts? Actually, she wanted to make a show of herself – throw herself upon her mother’s coffin and sob her heart out.’ Eve fell silent, covering her terrible anxiety by drinking tea.
‘Miss Anders,’ Dr McKenzie’s tone was firmer now. ‘I’m sure you know how this works – I cannot recommend you to The Bureau knowing that you are vulnerable. You are a really very special person, you know. If you have only half the talents that are here in your file, The Bureau will not want to lose you to the ATS or the WRNS. Your vulnerability is your past. We have to talk about it. You have to say things out loud. It won’t be so terrible.’
‘If we can talk about Lu… She was angry. She was furious. Lu wouldn’t thank me for crying so long after the event. But I feel her heartache as much now as she did then. And her guilt. Vera dying let Lu down; Lu felt guilty that she was angry with Vera. Vera’s womb had produced a daughter with huge ambitions and a talent for learning, the same womb that developed cancer and deprived Lu of her mother’s gentleness and of the one thing they both had wanted – for Lu to get an education and get out of the poverty they lived in.’
Again Dr McKenzie leaned forward so that her noble nose was close. ‘Lu probably had a mother as good as they come, and she did not deserve the treatment handed out to her. It wasn’t Vera’s fault that she let Lu down. Am I right?’
‘Of course you’re right! But she was bursting with anger, and it was centred upon the body in the coffin. She didn’t know what to do about such overwhelming anger. So she ran away. She made a show of herself in front of the Wilmotts, she hurt Ray and Ken, and left them to the disdain of the Wilmotts.’
‘Where did she run to?’
‘Not far, but to a part of the beach that’s dangerous when the tide’s coming in.’
‘And…?’
‘Lu wasn’t stupid enough to do anything too serious. She tore down some warning notices – broke them up and hurled them into the waves.’ Eve gave a faint, wry smile. ‘Sheets of plywood don’t break easily. Then they come flying back with every gust of wind. She hurled big stones at them, but the stones bounced off. Poor kid, her tantrum was so pathetic.’
‘Why do you think she didn’t throw herself on her mother’s coffin and sob her heart out? For God’s sake, this was her mother who had been dealt a loser’s hand. Don’t you think that the girl was entitled to rail against what brought her mother to this? Why didn’t she show her anger? She was entitled to, wasn’t she?’
‘You don’t understand people like us. This is my home town, you know. Did you know that?’ Dr McKenzie made a note.
‘Eve Anders has come home to Lu Wilmott. I could take you to where generations of Wilmotts have put up with being cheap labour. But Lu got out. She knew there was something better.’
‘You said “people like us” – who are they?’
‘My people.’
‘You mean Lu’s people?’
‘No. Yes.’
‘Shall we talk for a minute about this?’
‘About what?’
‘Eve Anders’ involvement with Lu Wilmott – Louisa.’
‘No. She’s Lu.’
‘Well then, Eve Anders’ involvement with Lu.’
‘Must I spell it out?’
‘It would be easier for me.’
‘Three years ago, Lu Wilmott got on a train here in Portsmouth, and when she got off at the other end, she was Eve Anders. She / I took nothing of my old life except a couple of mementoes.’
‘And it worked?’
‘Yes.’
‘I would really like to know what Lu’s reaction was when you rejected her in favour of Eve Anders.’
‘Rejected? I haven’t rejected her.’
‘Very well – secreted her. Go on, please, tell me something about her.’
Eve leaned back, drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She latched her fingers and circled her thumbs one round the other. A smile lighted her face. ‘People said that she was a fire-cracker, always going off in all directions.’
‘And was she?’
‘Oh yes. At any one time she could be the Maid of Orleans, Queen Boudicca, Ellen Wilkinson, Helen Keller or Catherine the Great. One of her last performances was in front of a meeting of factory workers. She organised them into a union… got a medal for it.’ She breathed out deeply again and stretched her fingers, then laughed. She didn’t know why, except that in the first time for months, Lu was very close. Comforting. ‘And had she known you, I’m pretty sure that she would have been you as well.’
The doctor laid one finger on Eve’s arm. ‘She did better than that, she became Eve Anders. I can’t believe that she’s not proud of you.’
‘You think so?’
‘An idealist fire-cracker concealed in intelligence and beauty? I know so.’
‘She wasn’t ashamed of educating herself and using her intelligence to get away.’
‘Which is what she did.’
‘At a price, of course. When Lu Wilmott became Eve Anders, it had to be—’ she made a sharp chopping motion – ‘at a single stroke and ignore the pain.’
‘And it must have been very painful.’
‘Yes. But it was the only way, a clean cut.’
‘How did you deal with the pain?’
‘I took myself off to Spain where for a year or so I did crazy things like driving trucks up to the front line, picking up pieces of Spaniards blown apart by other Spaniards until there was nothing to do except run for it.’ She saw her skinny, bedraggled self, armed with a carving knife and carrying a piece of bread and – what was it, some meat? – she could no longer remember the detail – and joining the trail of refugees as it went through Barcelona, taking a half-alive baby and a disturbed adolescent with her.
‘And?’
‘She ended up here, spilling her guts to a head doctor.’
‘I like the idea of the fire-cracker girl. Exciting idea. You are proud of her, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Dr McKenzie gave her a warm, generous smile. ‘As she must be of you, Miss Anders.’
‘She keeps me on the straight and narrow.’
‘You make a good pair, and I would like to get to know you better. We shall be seeing something of each other, I’ve no doubt.’ She rose to stand a fireguard in the hearth. ‘Look, I’m afraid our time is up. Would you like to straighten up and powder your nose? That door leads to a cloakroom. By the way, did you find Handleys?’
‘I did, and the car was wonderful… thank you. I saw the store in an entirely different light from when Lu and her friend Kate used to go on an occasional spree. Hobnobbing with the nobs, showing off, getting above herself, making out that she’s better than her own sort.’
‘And was she?’
Positive and firm: ‘Yes.’ Then quieter and gentler, ‘Yes, she was.’
‘Why?’
‘Because her mother told her that she was.’
‘Did you get some leather boots?’
‘Oh yes.’ She smiled. ‘And a spontaneous coat – a three-quarter fur jacket.’ She grinned like a girl. ‘I can’t believe I did that. The assistant said that it was exactly what this weather called for.’
Dr McKenzie nodded at the dark swirling outside the window. ‘No mistake about that.’
‘But, for God’s sake, that coat had nothing to do with the weather. I was already wearing a warm coat. I wanted it because it was so gorgeous. You see, she’s still there, going off like a fire-cracker.’
Dr McKenzie shook hands firmly and smiled. ‘Going off like a fire-cracker, or an ability to appraise the situation and make a quick decision? Now, I must fly… I’ll leave you to take your own time. Go when you feel ready, no one will disturb you. By the way, Miss Moncke would like you to call into her office when you finish here. Best of luck with your new career.’
New career!
Implying that she was suitable for The Bureau?
The face that stared back at her from the bathroom cabinet mirror as she blotted cold water from her eyes was the face that she had not seen in months. Confident, untroubled and lively.
The spirit of Lu was strong. Eve looked her in the eye and smiled. Stick with me, kid, and I’ll show you a good time.
‘Dimitri, come and see.’ There was no reply, so she opened their connecting door. The room was immaculately tidy, not even his soldiery row of brushes and comb; it felt uninhabited. A frisson of worry clenched her stomach as she opened the wardrobe door and found it empty.
Sitting on the bed that had last been used for patching up their quarrel, she knew that he was gone. Phoebe Moncke wanted to see her and this was why. She would put on fresh make-up, have a cigarette and go downstairs. The snow whirling past the window was relaxing; she felt very fatigued and her eyes were sore. She fell asleep but could still see the snow.
The silent, feathery flakes soon slanted into a blizzard into which Dimitri was disappearing. He wore the clothes in which he had escaped Spain; he was Josep Alier again. The guards at the border crossing looked at his papers, then pushed him around; Josep Alier was a peasant. The guards became aggressive and the girls clung to Eve, terrified at the fierce argument that was soundless. She told them to hush and be good. Suddenly the Josep Alier coat was torn from him and he was transformed back into the Russian officer Major Vladim, as she had first seen him. There was a quick rat-tat-tat and bloody holes appeared in his uniformed back. He did not move, but stood there as though the bullets had not touched him, even as his blood ran down. Rat-tat-tat again. As he began to topple she shouted, but strange, unidentifiable noises drew her attention away from Dimitri dissolving into the blizzard.
Rat-a-tat again. ‘Miss Anders? Miss Anders?’ It was a young woman in uniform. ‘Sorry to bother you, but Miss Phoebe would like a word.’ The snow had resumed to its earlier gentle fall. The cigarette she had lit had burned out in the ashtray. She found it difficult to drag herself back into awareness.
‘OK, I’ll be right down.’
Phoebe Moncke, businesslike and serious, handed Eve a single sheet of paper folded but not in an envelope. ‘The major asked me to give this to you.’
‘Has he left already? Where—’
‘Nobody tells me anything, darling.’
‘And if you did know, you wouldn’t say.’
‘Couldn’t say, darling, couldn’t. No, not at all.’
‘Of course. Thanks for this.’ She slipped the folded sheet of paper into her jacket pocket with no hope that she would learn much about where he had gone.
Back in her room, she sat in the armchair and listened to a woman humming contentedly as she moved around opening and closing drawers, taking over Dimitri’s room.
Eve,
What I can think as I make you this note is only that maybe you have not seen my handwriting. How strange, but I can not think of any occasion what we have written anything. I think that you must write in large, hasty clear letters. I should be most interested in how you think of this handwriting. I expect that you must write your English words with strong strokes of the pen (you see I do know good grammar) for you are the very strongest woman I have known – and that also includes my dear babushka who was not afraid of howling of wolves. Also you are a good woman. I will ask to send money to Jess for Genia and Posa. Salud dearest of all compadres.
Your most loving and faithful man,
Dimitri Vladim.
Their lives had become fused, fasciated like saplings that are pressed together, growing a single trunk until there is room and then they divide.
All that about handwriting was not his message; the message was in the word compadre – ‘friend’. Was he admitting that their affair was over?
It was very chilly in the room, and could have been warmed up a bit had she been willing to draw the thick-lined curtains, but she was loath to shut out the gently falling snow and the sea lapping against ice that had formed when the last tide had receded.
The sea had frozen.
She would bet that kids from her old school had been down there, daring one another to do something, anything, to get a bit of fun out of the novelty of frozen sea. Nothing like these weeks of Arctic weather had happened in her memory and probably in memories going back generations. Snow and ice like this never came to a coastline sheltered by the Isle of Wight and warmed by the waters of the Solent.
She hoped that she would not have to stay long here. Whilst she stayed here in the salubrious Southsea area of the town, she was unlikely to come across any of her old friends. She had moved on and could not go back… would not.
She would do anything rather than that.
With the departure of Dimitri, she had, so to speak, cleared her emotional decks; she was responsible for no one but herself. Whatever happened from here on, she had nothing to lose.
On day two Eve was called for interview with Captain Faludi.
They were in one of the many rooms at Griffon, transformed from costly bad taste into basic offices furnished by the Ministry of Information. He greeted her with the same kind of handshake, firm, dry and warm, as Janet McKenzie’s had been, then invited her to sit opposite and proceeded with an interview that took the form of an informal conversation during which he took notes.
After about fifteen minutes he asked, ‘Lieutenant Hatton says that you appeared keen to join The Bureau. What do you know of it, then?’
‘Nothing at all. But I know Lieutenant Hatton and I guessed that he would not suggest me if he didn’t believe that I could do the work, or that I would not enjoy it.’
‘Do you often make such snap decisions?’
Hm. That was a tricky one.
‘Quick decisions, yes. A snap decision is probably not thought through.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m quite good at thinking on my feet… quickly. Also I was ready to come home and it seemed an opportunity I should take.’
‘Not because you particularly wanted to?’
‘No, yes – I mean I did want to. I was just saying that he didn’t need to persuade me.’
‘You insisted that Major Vladim should accompany you?’
‘I didn’t actually insist, but I did think that we should stick together.’
‘It does appear to be a little insistent if you—’
She felt he was needling her, and she wouldn’t have any of it. ‘As I said, sir, I thought that we should stick together. He had helped me escape from Spain; I could hardly come home and leave him there. He was… is, a refugee.’
‘And absconded from his regiment.’
‘He did. And his country. He gave up everything when he helped me to get out with the children – I expect you have all that on our files, sir.’
Faludi nodded. ‘Probably not all. Are you romantically involved?’
She gave him a direct unblinking look. ‘Is that relevant?’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you mind telling me why?’
He looked back at her, rather surprised to discover that Hatton was probably right. The dossier that he had provided gave a picture of a working-class girl, idealistic, clever – Hatton suggested great intelligence, well, time would tell – and loyal. Hatton, or someone, had dug very deeply into the past of this beautiful, but rather snooty young woman.
‘You realise that before I even asked you to attend this interview my people had done their research?’
‘Yes, I had realised that.’ A small smile, mostly in her eyes. ‘Not much good wasting time on unknown candidates.’
‘So, how committed are you to this… ah, liaison with Major Vladim?’
‘There has never been any commitment on either side. But I do feel loyalty, and I believe that he does too. But I can only speak for myself.’
He frowned a little at this. ‘Do you mind that your life is in a folder somewhere?’
‘Yes, I mind very much but…’ She shrugged.
‘But what?’
‘It is necessary. If you were to accept me, I’d want to be confident that there had been a thorough check on my colleagues.’
He looked at her thoughtfully. She was so straight-laced and correct. He could not imagine her driving a supplies lorry to the battle front, or living openly and unmarried to a Russian officer. He could, however, imagine her having some sort of a fling with Hatton. Hatton’s women had always been elegant and lovely.
‘Can I be sure of that, sir?’
‘I’m sorry? Sure of what?’
‘That you don’t recruit people less loyal and dependable than I am. I am, you know. Loyal and dependable.’
‘I believe that you are. As, I believe, are the other candidates who have been selected.’
He turned a page. ‘Tell me about walking out on your employer.’
Eve felt her neck become flushed, but luckily it remained hidden by a georgette scarf. ‘What do you want to know about it?’
He shrugged and made a slight gesture with an open hand. ‘You mentioned loyalty and dependability.’
‘My loyalty was to the women I worked with. My employer treated his workers unfairly – he played on their vulnerability knowing they were in no position to complain. I was in a strong position. I am not badly educated, I am articulate and, as I have said, I am loyal and dependable. My co-workers depended upon me. I told him that he was a bad employer – and then I left. Also, and this is something Lieutenant Hatton couldn’t have reported to you, my employer thought that he was entitled to sexual favours. Factory girls are as entitled to respect as any others.’
That’s you put in your place, Faludi, he thought. She’s turning this interview on its head.
Yet he didn’t mind. She fulfilled his own requirements for the new kind of agent The Bureau would need. The Bureau had sent Hatton fishing for the Russian, but it appeared that they had caught something almost as rare.
‘Thank you, Miss Anders. I can tell you now that you are acceptable to The Bureau, and Colonel Linder will confirm your appointment at once.’
‘Thank you, sir. I am very pleased to hear it.’
On her file he noted ‘NKA’. Nothing Known Against.