by David Boyle
Xanthe’s ambassador had popped the question over a meal at the Savoy. It is strange how many turning points seem to have happened to me here, she said to herself. Though the poor old Savoy looked battered and unkempt compared to the way it had looked, so splendid in white and gold, only two years before when she had made her first visit. Now, the dust from the raids and the greenhouse glass which had replaced so many of the windows had given the great hotel a second-hand feel.
Xanthe’s heart was pounding. There was no doubt that she admired Santa Cruz. She also found him attractive, if she could maybe set aside the voluminous moustache. Their relationship had been forged in that moment of rescue at the checkpoint. She trusted him and believed he could, and probably would, be a good father for Indy – not that he knew about a child yet. It might even be her duty to say yes – but then Indy was hardly the only consideration.
“Ruperto, I have to tell you. I have a child. A child and no husband. Never have.”
The ambassador looked serious. He played with his glass of claret – perhaps the last to be drunk anywhere in London.
“That is not a rare thing these days, Xanthe. There are many like you, whose husbands, or rather the fathers of their children were not married. As I say, in wartime, life happens at an accelerated pace.”
“You mean you might accept Indigo as your own? I don’t mean pretend that he’s your son, but to bring him up as if he was?”
“I have done no less before. I have two sons, grown up and living in La Paz.”
A silence fell.
“My dear Xanthe – could you tell me some of those thoughts?”
“Sorry, I know you are waiting for my answer. All I can say is that I promise to give it within a week.”
“Then I shall wait patiently until you do.”
Was she right, she asked herself, as she made her way onto the street towards the last train home to Bletchley? Was she right to have said nothing about Indy’s father? She had allowed herself to give the impression that he had been killed, perhaps heroically in the Battle of Britain. Perhaps she owed him the full truth. Because of the way they had met, the ambassador must have realised that the woman he wanted to marry was not just an aspiring journalist.
She needed to ask him also if he would accept her continuing her writing career. Perhaps he would be one of those Latin American macho types who would want her simpering at his feet. She could not do that – not after Athens, she couldn’t.
How stupid she was not to have probed these questions. Could she pop back through the Savoy foyer to ask him? No, she would miss her train. All she could do was to set some conditions and see how he reacted.
Then she heard a horribly familiar voice behind her.
“Xanthe, good lord! How are you?”
She swung round, and in a moment, she understood where these disturbing visions of Hugh had emerged from. It hadn’t been a ghostly Lancing-Price at all.
“Ralph!”
She could say nothing more. She stared, horrified, into the face of her former lover.
“Xanthe, I was wondering when I would run into you. How are you getting on? How’s the writing?”
“I mean. Why are you here? How are you here?”
She appeared to have lost the power of coherent speech.
“Me? Oh, I slipped away, and here I am. Home, da-da!” he said, like a conjuror. “Can’t say more here, I’m afraid. Listen, why don’t we meet up next week? I’m in Westminster most days. Why don’t you give me a ring?”
Still gaping, Xanthe nodded uncertainly. There was something dreamlike about the encounter. Something she could not quite grasp.
“Auf wiedersehen!” he said, with a little wink.
IX
London, January 1942
The war had changed. The declaration of war against the United States had shifted the balance in the west – though, of course, the conflagration was now worldwide – or so informed opinion said. Hitler could have prevailed against the British and possibly even against Russia but not if he also had to fight the limitless resources of the USA.
It was no longer a private British affair, however much the British might have preferred that. There were allies to liaise with again, and the institutions of war were becoming less personal. The bureaucracy which had been flung up into the air after Dunkirk had now begun to harden and consolidate again. Xanthe’s little arrangement with Bletchley Park had to come to an end. She had said a tearful goodbye to Nurse Agnes, and she moved back into Moira’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush with the baby and all the detritus of babyhood.
But all the time, she was taking in the implications of these changes around her – and the incredible news of the loss of the Prince of Wales, her favourite battleship since it had stood alone against the Bismarck while Xanthe had been in Greece – she was also now trying to understand what it meant that Ralph was back in London. Ralph the lover, Ralph the traitor – and not just to his country. He went round and round in her head over and over again.
Clever and wounding ripostes to his final ‘auf wiedersehen’ crowded into her head, unmade and unexpressed, things she wished she had said. Other rather vital things she wished she had asked. What was Ralph doing in London? Did the authorities know? If he had taken his Westminster seat again, they must do. Had he finally decided to do the right thing and been welcomed back by the establishment like the prodigal son?
“Look, here is the real point,” she said to Fleming, once she had plucked up the courage to talk to the Admiralty about the man they had asked her to watch in Berlin. “Whatever he now says, he was a Nazi. He was one of them. I loved him, I lived with him, and I can tell the difference. He was a convinced traitor. I just can’t believe you’ve let him come home.”
Fleming wriggled uncomfortably.
“All I can do, Xanthe, is to repeat what I have been told when I made discreet enquiries when you first contacted me. And I have been specifically refused permission to tell you this – so I am disobeying orders to do so, because, well… you know.”
Xanthe did know, of course. Because Fleming felt responsible for her predicament, falling in love and all the rest.
“I know! I know you said he was playing a deeper game, on our side. And I just don’t believe it.”
“I assure you, I…”
“You know what I mean, Ian.” She had never addressed him by his Christian name before. It marked a rite of passage of some kind, which had quietly taken place in her soul.
“That, unbeknownst to us, MI6 specifically sent Lancing-Price to Berlin in a sophisticated operation to convince the Germans that we would make peace, so they would decide that invasion was an unnecessary waste of resources. It seems to have worked. Now, if the reason that you’re so cross…”
“Cross? I’m not cross, I’m really mad. I’m furious!”
“Fine. If the reason you’re furious is that Lancing-Price misled you, then that may just prove that he was effective. Because it misled the Nazis too. And I do have to say this, Xanthe, you were also misleading him. That was the name of the game.”
Now she was really incandescent. She stood up and held the back of her chair, shaking with rage.
“Listen! How can you be so obtuse? I don’t care if he misled me – well, I do – but what worries me is that he misled us. I mean that he misled his country, who is he is working for now. Or so he says.”
Fleming stared in silence. “I know, I know. All I can say is that this question is a long way above my pay grade,” he said.
“Well, if you can’t act, then I can…”
She stormed out, pausing only to settle Indigo in his pram, but – as she did so – she realised that Fleming was right. There was nothing she could do: who would listen to her, a junior operative and a jilted lover? She was powerless.
She also recognised that, morally, these issues were hardly as clear cut as she had thought. She was angry with Ralph for misleading her, when it was also true that she had been sent to Berlin by a rival in
telligence operation, intent on misleading him. If she felt betrayed by him, he might reasonably feel betrayed by her.
But then again, her feelings were absolutely real. Could he say the same about his?
*
Dear Xanthe,
I do apologise that I am unable to advise you more than I did when we met at the Admiralty last week. We owe you a great deal, not least for sending you on what must now seem like a wild goose chase in your first operation in Berlin.
One of the points you made has struck home, and I thought it right to tell you. I have taken the matter up with the authorities and will let you know, in due course, if anything transpires.
Please give my sincere good wishes to Indigo.
Yours sincerely,
Ian
Cdr I. Fleming RNVR
*
Dear Xanthe,
I was sorry you didn’t feel able to contact me after we ran into each other, for a second time, outside the Savoy. I have been thinking about you a great deal and the time we had together, in another place (as they say!)
I hope you will forgive me for doing so, but I have made enquiries and understand that you have a baby, which implies to me that you have met somebody since we knew each either. I can understand that.
What I did want to say is how much I valued our time together, though it is quite reasonable that you should be confused about my loyalties. Especially as I bitterly regret the last time we were together was not the kind of farewell I could possibly have had in mind for you.
Let me say emphatically that I did not, will not and would never betray my country. I hope you will one day be able to accept my word on that because there are matters I must not speak about. But then, nor would I willingly betray you, who remain in my thoughts as a precious memory. And if we never see each other again, you always will.
I remain your obedient servant,
Ralph Lancing-Price
R. Lancing-Price, DSO, MP
*
Dear Ruperto,
First, my sincere apologies for my failure to keep to my promise and give you an answer to your most generous offer within a week.
I am so sorry, because you are a dear man, but I have to say no. I have realised that – as your wife – I would have, and would want, to follow wherever you go, yet I now want to see this war through. I know myself enough to expect that, although I hardly long for action anymore, I am not sure – after I have been through what I have– I could any more be able to be the quiet, biddable, reliable partner that you need and deserve.
This is a difficult letter to write because I have loved your company and have grown to admire you. Yet, since our conversation, I have had an encounter with my own past that was very uncomfortable for me. This would have to be an issue for you too, if you were to join your name with mine. I have met again, very unexpectedly, the father of my child.
I tell you this in strictest confidence. I had given him up as lost to the Nazis, but he tells me he is no traitor – as I had supposed – but some kind of hero. I don’t know what to believe, and I owe you a better, more decisive, less battered woman to love you as you should be loved.
I am so sorry and so grateful that you saw something in me worth loving.
Yours truly,
Xanthe
*
Dear Ralph,
I have written some difficult letters in my time, but this one is the toughest. It is to tell you three things you need to know.
First, you misled me in Berlin, but – for reasons I can’t explain and you probably know already – I was not quite all I seemed either.
Second, despite this, my feelings for you grew so overwhelmingly that I would have misled the whole world for you if you had let me. It is best I don’t pretend that night at the party did not break my heart because it did.
Third, you must also know this. There has been nobody else. When you hear my baby’s birthdate, you will know that it is your child. You have a son called Indigo. I do not need anything from you, so please don’t put on your very English mask of concern.
I know you will ask me what I want. I have no idea, except that I would like you to know your son. But if you pretend to me anything at all, I will know it, and we will never meet again.
Yours sincerely,
Xanthe
Epilogue
London, February 1942
It was a dull, overcast day in February when Xanthe found herself wandering across London Bridge again, towards Guy’s Hospital. There was the smell of smoke on the breeze, though there had been no raids for weeks, as far as she knew. Perhaps this is just how London smells, she thought. Weeks had also gone by since she decided to make the trip, Turing had departed for the USA to liaise on cryptography, and Bletchley was expanding very fast. It was a new world, ushered in by the Pearl Harbour attack, and she no longer felt nearly so welcome there.
She found the familiar gaunt figure nursing a greasy cup of tea in the same café where she had met him, under the railway bridge.
“Professor?”
“For goodness sake, please do not call me that!” said Wittgenstein, looking around nervously.
“Sorry,” said Xanthe. “Listen, may I sit down? I have something to say.”
Judging by the look of dawning recognition on his lined and sensitive face, it was clear that the philosopher was only just beginning to recognise her.
“You are Miss, um, from naval intelligence? Miss, er… I am most terribly sorry that I have forgotten your name.”
“Xanthe. Xanthe Schneider.” She smiled encouragingly at him.
“Of course! Delighted to see you again, Miss Schneider. Are you here to ask me to write another letter? My brother has not, perhaps inevitably, kept me informed about what happened. If indeed anything did.”
“No, no, definitely not. Just to say that I was most enormously grateful for your help a few months ago and to your brother too. I can’t thank him directly, but I can thank you.”
Wittgenstein took another sip of tea and offered Xanthe her own cup. She shook her head gratefully.
“Well, I can’t really say what happened, I’m afraid – in fact, my boss was pretty shirty about the idea of me coming here to thank you at all. But I can say that it seems to have worked – at least, I don’t think it could have gone much better. And we have, I hope, shortened the war as a result.”
“I am glad. Thank you for telling me, despite your boss.” Wittgenstein looked far more pleased than he ought to have.
“Well, I don’t think intelligence types are very good at saying ‘thank you’. I suppose they’re afraid it will lead to ‘careless talk’.” She laughed a little.
“Miss Schneider. I understand completely. In fact, I believe you have done a brave thing staying human despite your involvement in the war.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ve managed braver…”
She laughed. He didn’t. Then she suddenly realised why she had been so determined to come.
“Professor? I mean…” she whispered. “May I ask you something? A question about life. About love?”
Wittgenstein took a deep breath.
“About love, I fear I am a novice. But life, maybe.”
In very basic, not to say coded form, she set out before the great philosopher her dilemma about Ralph. A man with Nazi sympathies, who came home again, having been prepared to help them – and she did not know whether it had been out of fear or courage or conviction – but who was the father of her son and who she nonetheless loved. What should she do?
Wittgenstein sat listening intently, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world that this young lady should unburden herself in this way, then he began to pace fast around the café.
“Let me ask you a question, Miss Schneider. Do you love him for what he is or despite what he is? The reason I ask” – he said, racing ahead before she had the chance to come up with an answer – “is that love is about courage. It is not, or should not be, about what you can rece
ive through love – it is about what you can achieve through it. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Very well then, let us come to some kind of arrangement. I am feeling friendless at the moment. If you will come to the flicks with me next week, then beforehand we can discuss the question and see whether it is a real problem or just a confusion of terms. What do you say?”
“The flicks?”
“You know – cinema, movies. Have you seen Stagecoach? Because I think life is a little like that. There are terrifying ordeals along the way and challenges and important decisions too. But in no way is it supposed to be fun. Do you understand what I mean?”
Xanthe stared at him, trying to work out what to say.
“You are a serious young lady. I was impressed with you when we met the first time. It seemed to me that you had risen above the narrow dictates of wartime, and you had kept your humanity. I hope you will not be insulted when I say that you have not been educated into uselessness, like so many of the people I have met in Cambridge. You will not understand my philosophy, but then almost nobody does.”
“I really can’t pretend I’m a philosopher.”
“My dear Miss Schneider. That is precisely why I am willing to help. I promise I will think about your problem, and together, we will come up with an answer. Then we will go on to the Picture Palace and see They Died With Their Boots On. How about it?”
“Thank you so much, Pro… I mean Dr Wittgenstein. I would be ever so grateful.”
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[AR1]Yes? Sorry, don’t get this one!
[MS2]‘person’? ‘a person’? no, I think this is right!