by David Boyle
She agreed to meet Hugh Lancing-Price during a brief slot he had, a rare day off, when she went up to London, as promised, to see her employers off Fleet Street. She and Hugh met at a Lyon’s Corner House in Trafalgar Square, with the lions mothballed for the war, under huge advertising hoardings for war bonds.
“How are you getting on?” he asked her and, to both of their great surprise, she burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s the first time I’ve left Indy. Sister Agnes is good at wielding a bottle, but even so – well, you know.”
“Listen, I know what’s worrying you. And I’m going to help, if I can – if I survive, and I’m feeling more confident that I’m going to. It’s nearly a year since Dunkirk, after all. What’s the date today? May the ninth? Yup, things are going well and, if they’re not going so well for you, then I am going to step in to help…”
“I don’t see how you can, Hugh.”
For the first time since Berlin, she felt like folding herself into someone’s arms.
“Oh, I can, you’ll see,” he said munching most of his butter ration for the week in one mouthful of scone. “I’ll write to you when I get back.”
*
Something about the meeting cheered her enormously. She wasn’t sure why – Hugh had hardly explained himself, but perhaps it was that, for the first time in so many months, she felt loved. Also his sheer optimism – perhaps it ran in the Lancing-Price genes. She walked with a spring in her step after she left him, down the Strand, past the battered Savoy Hotel, where she had first met Ralph. It was a beautiful day, and even the London dust and the bomb sites seemed to be smiling a little.
She did not analyse what Hugh had said, nor really what he meant. It was obvious that he had spoken from the heart about some scheme he had to support her, that was drawn from love, not from some calculation about the costs and benefits, economic or social.
She walked a little more confidently to meet Bob, in the New Yorker office – a glorified coalhole, as he put it, near the Bank of England.
“So where’s the baby?” he said. “I can’t believe you came all this way – where are you staying now? – without bringing the baby in to see his Uncle Bob.”
“Sorry, Bob. I couldn’t bring him on the train really, could I? I’m not sure that the Blitz is the right place for a baby. Certainly not my baby,” she added defensively.
“Quite right, honey. Quite right. Now the old man in New York’s not so keen on the toilet paper piece. Says the idea’s disgusting – but liked the way you wrote it.”
“Who?” said Xanthe, suddenly confused.
“You know? The proprietor! Ross. And he’d like you to do another. From Greece.”
“From Greece? Why from Greece?”
Xanthe’s head was spinning. This was unexpected.
“Well, to be frank, I don’t rightly know. Because it used to be his policy, once a girl has had a baby, to say bye-bye and thanks. But I’ve noticed it’s changed here now there’s a war on. There was never an editor quite so conservative as Ross, but blow me if he hasn’t changed too.”
“Yes, but Greece? The Nazis invaded there a few weeks back. It’s a war zone.”
“Sure it is, but we don’t have Liebling in Europe anymore and we want something more… I dunno… punchy!”
Something about this offer bothered Xanthe, but she found it hard to put her finger on exactly what.
“Well, it’s too kind of him to ask me, I sure am grateful for the offer, but – as you say – I’ve got a young child to look after now. I’d love to be able to help – and I really mean that – but I just can’t.”
*
It was only later, as she walked back along the Victoria Embankment towards the underground station, that she began to wonder about Greece. The fingerprints of Fleming were all over this. Greece – that was where he mentioned sending the fake Enigma signals from. That was the place, wasn’t it? She was being manipulated into going. That was all there was to it.
On an impulse, she turned left into Whitehall and headed for the Admiralty, past the Home Guard units guarding the ancient doors, and the piles of sandbags.
“Can I speak to Commander Ian Fleming? I’ve come a long way.”
“I’m sorry, miss. Commander Fleming is at sea.”
A powerful sense of disappointment gripped her, then frustrated rage. That was their standard response to women or lovers or fiancées, she bet her bottom dollar.
“Could you please tell him, immediately please, that Xanthe Schneider is here to see him?”
She looked fiercely and steadily at the doorman. Wordlessly, and without looking up, the elderly man on the desk gave a message to what looked like a boy scout, who wandered off down the darkened passageways.
Only a few minutes later, an unkempt young man in RNVR uniform arrived and asked her to follow. Once again, she was showed into the room with the bath and, five minutes or so later, the door burst open and Fleming appeared.
“You’re too late! Too late!” he chanted. “We go tonight.”
Xanthe forgot her rage immediately, and just felt a sense of loss.
“To Greece?”
“Yes, of course to Greece. I hear you’ve had your job offer. Greece is the place because everything is up in the air there. It’s in chaos, as you might expect. Nobody has time for correct procedures; nobody really notices or expects anything. Most of our forces have withdrawn to Crete, and our Luftwaffe man is in Athens. So, yes, Greece it is!”
He must have detected how deflated she felt because he looked suddenly kinder and opened his folder on the desk.
“Have a look at this, if you’d be interested.”
Fleming unveiled another couple of aerial photographs.
“Here we are. There’s the picture I showed you a couple of weeks ago, with Bismarck next to the dockside. Here she is two days ago at anchor in the middle of the harbour. It is time, or nearly time, but we need to know exactly when. Our man is about to fly out, heading for an island off the Greek coast, where he will go on to Athens to meet one of our radio operators. Then hey presto! The game is truly afoot, as they say.”
His excitement was almost physical. It was also infectious.
“Now, come with me, Xanthe,” he said, high with adrenalin. “I’ve got some people you’re going to meet.”
He shepherded her into the corridor and through some more doors, past uniformed young men and women carrying piles of papers.
“Xanthe Schneider, this is Captain Winn, who runs the submarine tracking room. Xanthe is a journalist for the New Yorker, researching how we are fighting the Battle of the Atlantic. That’s right, isn’t it, Xanthe? The ‘Battle of the Atlantic’? That’s our new phrase, courtesy of Mr Churchill.”
Xanthe was taken from room to room, through the strange Georgian building and out into the Citadel and the bombproof structures underneath it, meeting people, nodding, smiling and shaking hands. She felt a little like royalty.
By the time she was back outside in Whitehall, it was evening, and time to meet Moira in Euston. She felt absolutely drained but also buoyed up that Hugh Lancing-Price had been so supportive and that there was a job offer waiting for her if she chose to accept it. Which she had no intention of doing.
It was dark as she boarded the Bletchley train and she laid her head back. As the train drew out, she heard the platform announcement that a raid was in progress. Strange that she had heard no siren. The usual procedure was to run the train slowly through the area where the raid was taking place, reducing the risk of sparks that might be visible from the air, and hope for the best. The train slowed. There was a palpable rising of the temperature and people studiously closed their eyes in the blacked-out carriages.
Some minutes later, and in the distance, she could hear the muffled thuds that were probably explosions. They appeared to be driving towards it. There was one explosion that seemed to kick the carriage and then no more, as the train picke
d up speed and they knew they were out of the worst, but the thuds continued in the distance. Who was getting it? The tiny New Yorker office? Fleming at the Admiralty? Moira, heading home on the crowded underground to Shepherds Bush? She couldn’t know. It was pointless trying to imagine, and it certainly didn’t help her peace of mind. All she could do was to get home safely to Indy.
*
Hugh’s promised letter failed to arrive the next morning. Nor did he call in the evening, as he had promised to try to do. Perhaps that was hardly surprising. Trunk calls were getting increasingly difficult, so she tried not to be disappointed. The news was full of the devastating raid on Westminster and the destruction of the House of Commons. They obviously felt this was not news that could be censored.
It was at teatime the following day, that she was asked to go downstairs because a friend was on the telephone. But Hugh’s voice was not on the end.
“Is that Xanthe Schneider?”
“Speaking,” she said.
“I’m sorry to telephone you out of the blue. My name is Tug Roberts. I’m a friend of Hugh Lancing-Price…”
“Oh God,” said Xanthe. “No… not Hugh!”
“I found a note by him in his diary with your telephone number, and I thought the only way I could reach you was this. I’m afraid I have bad news.”
How many times has he had to have conversations like this, she wondered?
“Might he be a prisoner?” she said, clutching at straws.
“I’m afraid not. He was killed in the raid on London. He helped to carry a child in Westminster out of a burning house. I gather he would have been given a medal.”
“Why do you say ‘would’ have?”
“I believe they’re a bit reluctant to give out posthumous medals. It’s not considered good for morale. I think that’s pretty crazy. He was a lovely man and, as I say, my friend too. I’m ever so sorry. He spoke of you many times.”
“He did? What did he say?”
“He… well, he said he loved you. I hope you don’t mind me saying.”
Xanthe stifled a sob.
“He never told me. I’m very grateful to you, Tug, for having the courage to tell me.”
*
As she pushed Indigo around the lawn the next day, in his pram, she felt overwhelmed with rage – first with Hugh for being so careless with his life, for not telling her what he felt – and then with herself for not telling him, well, anything much about herself.
By the time she had finished a lap of the garden in the sunshine, the rage had turned against the Nazis. For killing the kindest of her friends. For keeping her from her father. For the deaths of so many, every day, and children too, from one side of Europe to the other. She realised this was an anger she felt, not despite the baby but because of him. It was on Indigo’s behalf. So, yes, she said to herself. Yes, for Indy’s sake – so that he might not take his turn as a Nazi victim one day – she would, if necessary, go back on active service. Next time, she would accept Fleming’s offer – if there was a next time – and she would go.
She was not English. She felt so different from them in their cold and damp. She was not, and never would be, one of them. But this had become her war, and she felt she could no longer carry on as if she could opt out. If Fleming felt she had special knowledge or abilities which made her vital, then she would just have to use them.
*
That night was another tough one. Indy would not sleep. Time and time again she thought she was able finally to drift off, only for the siren to begin. So when she got downstairs in the red-brick pile which was still all she had as a home, and Fleming was waiting for her, she had practically made up her mind, exhausted though she was.
“Xanthe, I’m sorry. But I have to make one last request to you,” he said.
“How strange. I was just thinking about you. What happened to your man? I assume that’s why you’re here?”
Fleming looked embarrassed, just for a split second, but she caught it.
“Appendicitis on the plane out. I mean, not his fault and all that. But what can we do? We want to go ahead if we possibly can, but we have nobody else who really understands Enigma. Might you… possibly go? It will be a fortnight tops and you’ll be back here.”
“Two weeks? You promise? I only gave birth six weeks ago for God’s sake…”
“Of course, I can’t promise, but that’s what we are planning for. Really.”
The decision seemed suddenly obvious. She wondered fleetingly if her real reason was because she was so miserable, but she dismissed the idea.
“Ok. Ok, Ian. You’ve worn me down. For Indy’s sake, and if you promise, solemnly, to look after him if anything happens to me, and we can have some kind of contract along those lines between us, then I’ll go. So many people are having to leave their children to fight, so why not me? Yes, I’ll go, dammit, I’ll go.”
A wide smile of surprise and delight had crept across Fleming’s face.
“I was hoping you would say that. I have a car waiting and promise to have you back in that fortnight…”
“And you’ll write a proper contract about Indy.”
“I promise. I’ll be his guardian – but you’ll be fine and back with him before the end of the month. Welcome to Operation Snow in Ibiza.”
4
Aegina, May 1941
When Xanthe stepped, in her bare feet, carrying her shoes, up the beach of the island of Aegina, it was the middle of the night. It smelled of figs.
“Good luck, ma’am,” said the blacked-up sailor, who had rowed her over, in a stage whisper.
“Thanks, Steve, bye!” she whispered back.
There was a house ahead of her, visible against the night skyline. Xanthe walked over the rocks, onto the edge of a small beach, and behind a bush. She cleaned the camouflage off her face, put on her shoes and sat, waiting for the sun to rise. She would not know exactly where she was until there was more light.
There was a sudden crack to her left. She froze, then ducked down behind a boulder. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught with her replica Enigma machine in pieces. It was one of a number which Hut 8 had used to work out the wiring of the real ones. The pieces looked more like incongruous, ill-fitting pieces of old typewriters, but you couldn’t risk it, could you?
The crack turned into rustling, which in turn came close enough for her to hear a kind of saliva-swilling sound, accompanied by grunting. It was a goat, feeding on the olive trees. She relaxed, and the light began to seep into the sky.
Xanthe had been promised that they were sending her to Aegina because the German invaders had not arrived there yet, but as the sun began to peep over the horizon behind her, there was an almost continuous buzz of planes overhead – on their way southwards. If the Nazis had shifted their assault onto the retreating British in Crete, that would make her doubt some of the assurances she had been given in London.
She had set out only four days before, in a converted bomber with extra fuel tanks and some senior civil servants, heading for the besieged island of Malta. She felt sick and desperately unimportant. Nobody took any notice of her. She ached for Indigo and bitterly regretted her decision to take this gamble – for what? Not for these supercilious types, that was for sure. She tried to keep her tears a secret, but nobody even looked. Her stitches ached, her breasts seemed to have rediscovered the impulse to manufacture milk, and she felt exhausted and uncomfortable. Her body yearned for the baby.
There was hardly time to see the rubble that Valetta had been reduced to, nor the smoking ruins in the distance from the airfield, before they were refuelled and in the air again, and heading for Alexandria. With every mile they flew, she felt colder and sicker and missed Indy the more. Why did she leave? Why did she agree to leave so unprepared?
She carried with her some instructions about how to meet up with one of the thirty wireless operators who had been left behind in and around Athens when the British and their allies had pulled out. She carried, n
ot just those telltale pieces of a working replica Enigma machine, but also various versions of the message they wanted to send, written in German, together with details about who was supposed to be sending it and his various call signs and authenticities.
By the time she had left, she had also been fully briefed about General Hans Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe chief of staff, now in charge of operations in Greece. Fleming had told her that Jeschonnek had been chosen because of his relaxed approach to using the Luftwaffe code, which they knew at Bletchley as Enigma Red.
She had been given a long briefing to read about the Bismarck, which she was supposed to have read on the flight and left on the plane. She had forgotten this in her distress and had left with it, but was trying to remember whether she had managed to leave it on the submarine – or whether it was still hidden among her belongings and would need destroying.
She also carried various bits of paperwork to support her identity as a reporter on the New Yorker: a US passport in the name Shirley Johnson, a Turkish visa dated in April – to support her story that she had been in Greece, on the island, since before the invasion in April – and a letter from New Yorker proprietor Harold Ross commissioning her for a series of articles from occupied Greece, dated shortly after the invasion. It asked those who saw the letter to afford her the facilities of the international press. It felt a little unfair that she should be making use of these privileges for war work. She allowed herself a moment’s guilt.
Finally, she carried the tools of her trade – a genuine portable typewriter, her notebooks, assorted pencils, the phone numbers of various New Yorker stringers and the offices and addresses of other American correspondents in Athens.