by William Boyd
Sergeant Mott was standing at the sawmill gates, his long baton twirling in his hand. They were all dead drunk except Lysander. Merrilees saluted and fell over.
‘Fuck off out of it, you scum,’ Mott said. ‘It’s the actor I’m interested in.’
The others disappeared in a second.
‘I’m not drunk, Sarge,’ Lysander said. ‘Honest. Just had a couple of pints.’ He was frightened of Mott.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Someone wants to see you in the office.’
Captain Dayson, company commander, had his billet in the sawmill office building across the yard. Lysander buttoned his tunic, straightened his cap on his head and knocked on the door.
‘Ah, Rief, there you are,’ Dayson said, in his usual drawl. He was a lazy man, more than happy with the internment camp job, hoping it would see the war out. ‘You’ve a visitor.’
Lysander stepped into the room.
Alwyn Munro rose to his feet. He was in uniform and Lysander saw that he had Lieutenant-Colonel’s pips on his shoulders. Promoted. Lysander remembered to salute.
‘Hard man to find, Rief,’ Munro said, and they shook hands.
‘What can I do for you?’ Lysander asked, his mind frantic with other questions.
‘I’ll tell you on the way back to London,’ he said. ‘I’ve a motor car waiting outside. Do you want to get your kit together?’
8. Autobiographical Investigations
The journey back proved strangely uneventful. I sat in the rear of a large military staff car beside Munro, with some sort of pennant fluttering on the front mudguard, as it sped towards London. As we left the outskirts of Swansea, Munro offered me a cigarette and I asked him what was going on.
‘You know what?’ he said, as if the idea had just come to him. ‘Why don’t you just enjoy your well-earned leave? Relax, indulge yourself. Next Monday morning report to this address. In civilian clothes.’
He took out a little notebook and wrote down a number and a street.
‘And what will happen then?’ I asked.
‘You’ll be given new orders,’ he said, a little coldly, I thought, implying I would have no choice in the matter. ‘You’re a serving soldier, Rief, don’t forget.’
And he wouldn’t divulge anything else. We talked in desultory fashion about the course of the war – the big attack at Aubers Ridge – and my experiences in the E.S.L.I. and my work at the Bishop’s Bay Camp.
‘I think you can consider that chapter in your life closed,’ was all he said.
So here I sit in a small hotel in Bayswater (Greville and I have sublet the Chandos Place flat) with a week of leave awaiting me. My mind is empty – I have no expectations and speculation would be fruitless. God knows what Munro has lined up for me but it must be more interesting than Frau Schumacher’s constant health issues.
Funnily enough, my little nugget of regret about my Swansea life concerns Cerridwyn. I can see her – all dressed up for her trip to London – standing outside the ticket office at Swansea station waiting to meet me. And then the nine o’clock train will leave. Of course, she’ll wait for the next one just in case, but with hope dwindling as time goes by, and, after an hour or so when I don’t appear, she will go home, cursing the tribe of men and their endless, selfish duplicities.
9. The Claverleigh Hall War Fund
‘It’s a huge success. I could never have predicted it. We’ve already made over £200 and it’s not even lunchtime. We made £500 yesterday,’ Lysander’s mother said, speaking in tones of humbled incredulity, as they stood on the main drive looking at the rows of parked motor cars and charabancs and a hundred-yard queue of people waiting to pay their shilling entrance fee to the ‘CLAVERLEIGH HALL GRAND FÊTE’ – as the banner at the gateway to the park proclaimed.
‘Bravo,’ Lysander said. ‘Lucky Belgian refugees.’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘We’re much bigger than that now. We’ve just sent another six ambulances to France.’
The Claverleigh Hall charity had started shortly after the outbreak of war as a blanket-drive, a local scheme to provide warm clothing, blankets and tents for Belgian refugees. Anna Faulkner had been galvanized by their initial success and the Claverleigh Hall War Fund, as it then became, provided her with a focus for her energies and her organizing capacity that Lysander had not seen demonstrated for years – not since she had effectively run the administrative side of the Halifax Rief Theatre Company, anyway. Suddenly she had a cause and the considerable sums of money she raised meant that her voice was listened to. She started going up to London once or twice a week for meetings with civil servants at the Home Office and then senior soldiers at the War Office once the Claverleigh Hall Field Ambulances came into being. Her new plan was to open a training school for nurses to deal specifically with the most common wounds and ailments suffered by the troops on the Western Front. Who needs a midwife when you’re suffering from trench-foot? was one of her more memorable slogans and she began to be invited to sit on committees and add her name to petitions and other good causes. She was looking even younger, if that were possible, Lysander thought. That’s what having a purpose in life gave you.
‘How’s Crickmay today?’ he asked. He hadn’t seen his stepfather since he’d arrived.
‘No change. Very poorly. Wheezing, coughing. He can hardly get out of bed, poor darling.’
‘I’ve got to go back to London after lunch,’ he said.
‘He won’t be at lunch,’ she said. ‘I’ll pass on your best wishes. He’ll see you next time you’re down.’
Then she hurried away to change the brimming cash-box at the entry-gate and Lysander set off on a wander round the park, past the stalls selling jams and cakes, the coconut shy, the beer tent, the dog show, the jokey races – egg-and-spoon, three-legged, sack – the livestock exhibits and the gymkhana – keeping an eye out for Hamo, who had arrived an hour earlier and had gone in search of some seed potatoes for his vegetable garden.
He found him at the cricket nets where, for sixpence, you were granted the chance to bowl at two of Sussex County Cricket Club’s leading batsmen – Vallance Jupp and Joseph Vine.
Hamo was looking on in some amazement.
‘Some of these kids are astonishing,’ he said. ‘That nipper there just bowled out Jupp twice in one over. Very embarrassing for him – the ball span two feet.’
‘Any news of Femi?’ Lysander asked. He knew that Femi had gone back to West Africa, homesick and unhappy in Winchelsea.
‘He’s arrived in Lagos. But I don’t suspect I shall hear much more. He’s got money and he speaks good English now – he’ll be fine . . .’ Hamo looked south, towards the Channel, towards Africa, symbolically. ‘It was last winter that finished him – that and being stared at all the time. It’s amazing how rude the English can be when they see something unfamiliar. As soon as this war’s over I’ll go out and join him. Set up a business together, bit of trading.’ Hamo turned his burning pale blue eyes on Lysander. ‘I do love him dearly, you know. Miss him every second of the day. A completely honest, sweet person. Straight and true.’
‘You’re very lucky,’ Lysander said and changed the subject. ‘I hear Crickmay’s not well at all.’
‘He can hardly breathe. Some sort of terrible congestion of the lungs. Walks ten paces – has to rest for five minutes. Just as well your mother’s got this great charity thing going. Otherwise she’d just be sitting around waiting for him to die.’
They wandered through the fête. There was a big crowd gathered round an artillery piece – a howitzer – and a small, sturdy aeroplane with a blunt nose, all doped canvas and stretched wires. Lysander saw that the East Sussex Light Infantry had a recruiting tent erected and a sizeable queue of young men had formed in front of it. Swansea was waiting for them.
‘I haven’t had the most exciting war, I realize,’ Lysander said as they passed the queue.
‘I wouldn’t complain,’ Hamo said. ‘It’s a filthy awful business.’
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p; ‘However, I’ve a feeling it’s all going to change.’
He told Hamo about Munro’s visit to Swansea and his new instructions.
‘Sounds very rum to me,’ Hamo said. ‘Civilian clothes? Don’t agree to do anything rash.’
‘I don’t think I’ve much choice,’ Lysander said. ‘It was made very clear that these were orders to be obeyed.’
‘Any fool can “obey” an order,’ Hamo said, darkly. ‘The clever thing is to interpret it.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
Hamo stopped and touched his arm.
‘If you need my help, my boy, don’t hesitate. I’ve a few friends in the military, still. And remember I’ve been in a scrape or two, myself. I’ve killed dozens of men, you know. I’m not proud of it – not in the least. It’s just a fact.’
‘I don’t think it’ll come to that, but thanks all the same.’
They left the crowded park, shouts and cheers rising in the air as someone breasted the tape in the sack race, and walked up the drive to the Hall where luncheon was waiting for them.
10. The One-On-One Code
The number and the street turned out to be a four-storey terraced house in Islington with a basement below a finialled iron railing, a stuccoed first floor with a bay window, and the top two of soot-blackened brick. Completely normal and undistinguished, Lysander thought, as he rang the bell. A uniformed naval rating let him in and showed him into the front room. It was virtually empty – there was a chair in the middle of the floor facing a gate-legged table with three other chairs set around it. Lysander took off his raincoat and hat and sat down to wait. He was wearing a three-piece suit of lightly checked grey flannel, a stiff-collared shirt and his regimental tie. The E.S.L.I would be proud of him.
Munro came in, also suited, and shook his hand. He was followed by an older man in a cutaway frock coat – very old fashioned – who was introduced as Colonel Massinger. Massinger had a sallow, seamed face and a rasping voice as if he were recovering from laryngitis. His thinning dark hair was flattened against his skull with copious, gleaming oil and his teeth were noticeably brown as if stained from chewing tobacco. Then Fyfe-Miller appeared, jovial and energetic, and Lysander’s mind began to work faster. Tea was offered and politely declined. In fact he realized he was suddenly feeling a little nauseous – this encounter seemed more like a tribunal – he doubted if he’d be able to drink a cup of tea without heaving.
After a few pleasantries (‘Enjoy your leave?’) he was handed a piece of paper by Massinger. Written on it were columns of numbers. He studied it – it made no sense.
3 14 11 2
11 21 2 3
24 15 7 10
3 2 2 7
And so on.
‘What do you make of that?’ Munro asked.
‘Some sort of code?’
‘Precisely. We have an agent working for us in Geneva who, over the last few months, has intercepted six letters containing sheets of paper like this.’
An ‘agent’, Lysander thought? ‘Intercepted’? What is this, he wondered, some War Office intelligence briefing?
‘This type of code is classic,’ Munro said. ‘It’s called a one-on-one cipher because it can’t be cracked – impossible – as its key is known only to the person sending it and the person receiving it.’
‘Right.’
‘What we need you to do, Rief,’ Massinger butted in, as if he was in a hurry and had to go off to another appointment somewhere, ‘is to go to Geneva, meet our agent there who will then lead you to the man who is receiving these messages.’
‘May I ask who this man is?’
‘A German consular official.’
Lysander felt a near-uncontrollable urge to begin laughing. He wondered if refusing a cup of tea had been a mistake. He would have liked something to sip.
‘And what would I do then?’
‘Persuade this consular official to give us the key that will allow us to decrypt this cipher.’
Lysander said nothing. He nodded his head a few times as if this were the most reasonable task in the world.
‘How do you imagine I might “persuade” him?’
‘Use your ingenuity,’ Fyfe-Miller interrupted.
‘A large bribe would probably be the most effective method,’ Munro said.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re completely unknown,’ Colonel Massinger said. ‘Geneva is like a cesspit of spies and informants, agents, couriers. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Any Englishman arriving in the city, whatever his cover story, is noted within minutes. Logged, investigated and, sooner or later, exposed.’
Lysander was fairly sure that his features remained impassive.
‘I’m English,’ he said, reasonably. ‘So surely the same thing will inevitably happen to me.’
‘No,’ Massinger said, showing his stained teeth in a faint smile. ‘Because you will have ceased to exist.’
‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea after all.’
Fyfe-Miller went to the door and tea was ordered, duly appeared, and they all helped themselves to a cup from the pot.
‘Maybe I put that last statement a little over-dramatically,’ Massinger said, stirring his tea endlessly. Clink-clink-clink. ‘You would be reported “Missing in Action”. And during that time you would journey to Geneva under a different identity. Clandestinely.’
‘Your new identity will be that of a Swiss railway engineer,’ Munro continued. ‘Your arrival in Switzerland, your “return home”, as it were, will cause no notice. You will contact our agent and receive further instructions.’
‘Am I allowed to know what this is all about?’
Munro looked at Massinger. Massinger stopped stirring his tea.
‘It’s very complicated, Rief,’ Massinger said. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been following the war news closely, but this year we have embarked on several significant “pushes” – big attacks – at Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge and recently at Festubert. They haven’t been complete disasters but let’s say we failed signally in almost all of our objectives.’ He put his cup down. ‘It was as if we were expected, if you know what I mean. Trenches opposite were reinforced, new redoubts built, reserves were in place for counter-attacks, extra artillery behind the support lines. Almost uncanny . . . We suffered very, very heavy casualties.’
His voice trailed off and he looked, for a second, a worried and almost desperate man.
Munro took over.
‘We think – to be blunt – that, somewhere in our high command, there is . . .’ he paused, as if the concept were eluding him. ‘No, there’s no other way of putting it – there’s a traitor. Passing on intelligence of our forthcoming attacks to the enemy.’
‘And you think these coded messages are evidence,’ Lysander said.
‘Exactly.’ Fyfe-Miller leaned forward. ‘The beauty of this is that, as soon as we have these codes deciphered, we’ll know who he is. We’ll have him.’
Fyfe-Miller was staring at him with that odd hostile-friendly intensity he had. Lysander felt his mouth go dry and a muscle-tremor start up in his left calf. Fyfe-Miller smiled at him.
‘We know what you can do, Rief – remember? We’ve seen your capabilities in Vienna, seen you in action. That’s why we thought of you. You speak excellent German and you’re an unknown face and an unknown quantity. You’re intelligent, you think on your feet.’
‘I don’t suppose I can do anything but volunteer.’
Munro spread his hands apologetically.
‘It’s not an option available to you, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Not volunteering.’
Lysander exhaled. In a way, he thought, being backed into a corner was better than being asked to do your duty.
‘However,’ Massinger said, ‘there is the matter of your outstanding debt to His Majesty’s Government since the Vienna business. Somewhere above one thousand pounds, now, I believe.’
‘We would see this mission as payment in full,’ Munro said. ‘A recognit
ion of the somewhat unorthodox nature of the task we’re asking you to perform.’
‘Fair exchange is no robbery,’ Fyfe-Miller said.
Lysander nodded as if he knew what he was talking about. He kept hearing Hamo’s words: any fool can obey an order – it’s how you interpret it that counts.
‘Well, that’s an incentive, at any rate,’ he said, with admirable calm, he thought. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
Everybody smiled. Another pot of tea was called for.
11. Autobiographical Investigations
Fyfe-Miller then took me upstairs to a bedroom. On the bed was a suitcase that he flipped open.
‘It’s your new uniform,’ he said. ‘You’re now a lieutenant – on lieutenant’s pay – attached to the General Staff. We’ll take you up to the line – we think we’ve calculated the best place – and you can go out on a patrol one night –’ he stopped and smiled. ‘Don’t look so worried, Rief. You’re going to have masses of briefings before you go. You’ll know the plan better than your family history. Why don’t you try it on?’
Fyfe-Miller stepped out on to the landing while I undressed and put on my new uniform, complete with red, staff-officer flashes on the lapels. It fitted perfectly and I said as much to Fyfe-Miller.
‘Your tailor, Jobling, was very helpful.’ He looked at me and smiled one of his slightly manic grins. ‘To the manor born, Rief. Very smart.’
Once again I wonder what machinations have been going on behind the scenes. How had they known about Jobling? Perhaps not so hard to find out, I suppose. I think of these three men and their new influence over me and my destiny: Munro, Fyfe-Miller and Massinger. A duo I know – a little – and an unknown. Who’s in charge of this show? Massinger? If so, whom does he report to? Is Fyfe-Miller a subordinate to the other two? Questions build. My life seems to be running on a track I have nothing to do with – I’m a passenger on a train but I have no idea of the route it’s taking or its final destination.