The Words I Never Wrote

by Jane Thynne

  Irene walked on, the snow stinging her face, without even a backward glance.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ENGLAND, 1942

  Spymasters should be anonymous, Cordelia thought, but the louche, angular frame of Kim Philby was instantly recognizable as he strolled up the corridor of the first floor at Beaulieu. Something about the languid gait, the impeccable upper-class demeanor, and the tailored Savile Row suit with a white square tucked in the pocket was absolutely distinctive.

  “Kim? What a surprise! You’re quite the stranger. I’ve not seen you about lately.”

  You never asked anyone directly where they had been. Even if you did, they wouldn’t tell you.

  “I’ve been relocated,” he replied. “Though one does miss the country air.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “Tremendously. I hardly catch my breath. I don’t want to keep you.”

  “Then…?” She paused.

  “This won’t take a moment. Shall we step in here?”

  Cordelia had been headed for the storeroom where they kept supplies: wigs, cigarettes, tickets, chocolate, clothing. It was a veritable catwalk of disguise, containing everything an agent needed on being parachuted into France. The wide, bare-boarded room had the air of a theatrical costume department, and its shelves bulged with an incongruous trove of milk bottles, newspapers, and railway timetables. One box held a variety of identity papers, and another forged ration cards. Against the wall a rail of German uniforms hung; they were teaching aids for agents to learn the precise distinctions of the various ranks and services.

  Kim closed the door behind them. “I’ve heard very good reports of you.”

  “Thank you. So are you rejoining us?”

  “Afraid not.” He tucked one hand in his pocket. He seemed in no hurry to proceed. “Actually. There was something I wanted to talk about.”

  “How exciting. Is it a job?”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Not exactly.”

  In that single, telepathic instant, Cordelia understood. Philby had not come to offer her some new secretive assignment, or to promote her, or recruit her for whichever shadowy branch of the Intelligence Service he now oversaw. He was not seeking her expertise in French fashion. He had come to bring her news.

  Her knees buckled.

  “Is it…?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  On the wall opposite a mirror hung, blandly reflecting Philby’s face. His demeanor was kindly, as ever, more so perhaps. The sleek charm was subdued and replaced by a genuine compassion that animated his features as he spelled out the dreadful sequence of events.

  “You met Martin Furnish—Torin Fairchild—the night before he left for France. Shortly after that, his circuit was betrayed.”

  “Betrayed?”

  “Compromised. All members were arrested and interrogated in the Avenue Foch, which is where the Gestapo has its Paris headquarters. They were then taken to Fresnes prison, south of Paris.”

  Cordelia turned to the wall, as if its shabby olive paint could give her succor.

  “I wanted you to know, Cordelia. He held out.”

  Considerately, Philby averted his eyes as she absorbed this. Held out meant that Torin had been tortured. That he had died in pain, but honorably, enduring for the requisite forty-eight hours without giving others away. That he had suffered as much as any human could bear before spilling his secrets and being murdered, most likely with the bullet in the neck for which the Germans had coined their own, devilish name—the Genickschuss.

  In her mind she heard a rhyme.

  They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

  They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

  On the rail across the room the assembled German uniforms, Wehrmacht and SS, field gray and black, sorted according to rank, were suspended like hanged men. She could no longer bear to look at them.

  “I’ve authorized you a week’s compassionate leave. Go home. Your people are in Surrey, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t want to see them.”

  She couldn’t face the pity. The explanations. The polite sorrow for a man of whom they had known nothing. The only person she could bear to tell was Irene, and there was no chance of that. Irene was safe on an estate in Weimar, living in smug comfort with her husband, waiting out the war. Torin was dead. The Germans—all Germans, including Irene—had killed him.

  “My aunt Alice has a place in Maida Vale. I’ll go there.”

  * * *

  —

  THE KEITH PROWSE MUSIC STORE in Bond Street had a row of cubicles where customers could sit with headphones and browse records. Here young people lounged and chatted, taking turns to listen to the latest hits. No one minded if a customer didn’t buy anything.

  It was as good a place as any to bury yourself.

  Cordelia was installed in the last cubicle of the row. It was late Saturday afternoon and for the eleventh time consecutively her headphones hummed with the jaunty tones of Charles Trenet.

  Boum!

  Quand notre coeur fait boum

  Tout avec lui dit boum

  Et c’est l’amour qui s’éveille

  She was about to play the song for the twelfth time when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see a sharp, overwrought face, with a milky complexion and a brush of ginger hair.

  Even in smartly pressed khaki, Gregory Fox, former foreign correspondent and one-time friend in Paris, retained the languid air of a nineteenth-century dandy, as if he were wearing a three-piece suit and a carnation in his buttonhole. He had sprouted a thin, sharp mustache, and his sleek hair was combed back without a part.

  “Good God, Cordelia Capel! I thought it was you. Fancy finding you.”

  If he noticed her pallor and the bruises of fatigue under her eyes, he was too polite to mention them. “What brings you here?” he boomed.

  “I’m on leave,” she managed. “How about you?”

  “Living it up for a weekend in London before I rejoin my unit tomorrow. Can’t say, of course, but we’re being sent somewhere hot.”

  “And with your complexion.”

  “I know. I’m a martyr to sunburn.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Savoy.”

  “Very grand.”

  “Not what it used to be, I’m afraid. If you’re free, why not come to dinner and take a look?”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THEY WERE CHILDREN, Aunt Alice, who had no daughters of her own, had sometimes taken Irene and Cordelia to tea at the Savoy as a prelude to the theater or ballet. Cordelia remembered huge windows giving onto the Thames, and the light of chandeliers spilling magically over the dancers circling on the gleaming floor. Now, although the band was still playing for the benefit of men in uniform and their girlfriends in neat tailored suits, the plate windows were boarded up and heavy curtains drawn to keep in the light.

  “If you think this is bad, you should see the sleeping quarters,” remarked Gregory, lifting a brandy Alexander to his lips. “They have a ‘snore warden’ who does the rounds and shakes anyone who dares to disturb the peace. But it’s still infernally noisy.”

  “So how do you sleep?”

  He tapped his nose. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve found a little corner for myself. It’s reserved for the Duke and Duchess of Kent, but a delightful chambermaid lets me know when the royals are out of town and makes up a bed for me. It’s terrifically snug.”

  Cordelia took a sip of her brandy and felt it burn at the back of her throat. She let Gregory chat on, with his reminiscences of Paris and his tales of army life, and gave what she could only hope were enthusiastic responses. He made occasional references to Torin, and pried a little, but she did not yield. She wanted to tell hi
m the terrible news, the information that eclipsed all else, but she couldn’t. It was as though giving utterance to the fact would make it real.

  Eventually, unable to endure the chat any longer, she said, “Shall we dance?”

  The dance floor was a whirlpool of evening dress, uniforms, suits, and swirling skirts moving in joyful abandon to Snakehips Johnson and his band. Cordelia longed to dance like a dervish, until the music obliterated everything but her pounding feet and giddy head and there was no more room in her brain for Torin or misery or death. At the end of every number she urged Gregory to continue, and for almost an hour he kept up, until eventually he laughed gamely and came to a standstill.

  “Have some pity on a chap, Capel! You’ve far more stamina than me. I’m going to have to stand easy.”

  “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

  “Delightful as this is, I report to my company at oh seven thirty hours.”

  He hesitated, keeping one hand on her waist. “My quarters aren’t all bad, you know. I suppose you wouldn’t like to come up for a cup of cocoa?”

  “It’s late…”

  “I have a Savoy hamper with a box of crackers and a rather nice tin of pâté that needs eating.”

  The appeal of being seduced, casually, uncaringly, for the momentary diversion of sensual experience, for the sheer feeling of a man’s flesh against hers, was astoundingly strong. As if it would for one second obliterate the pain of missing Torin.

  “I can’t, Gregory, I’m sorry.” She rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “My aunt’s expecting me. And besides, you’ll need your beauty sleep.”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE BUS BACK to Aunt Alice’s flat, it was not Gregory’s invitation that preoccupied her, however, but another matter. A question that had been at the back of her mind ever since Philby’s disclosure; a niggling, insistent question drowned out by grief.

  Kim Philby had always been impossible to read; he wore his charm like chain mail and it was tighter than armor to penetrate, so most people never tried to fathom him, let alone question what he knew. But how did Philby know that she and Torin were even acquainted? Had their relationship been so obvious when they met in the Bournemouth hotel? Had their passion blazed like neon over the starched linen of that restaurant table? Or had a member of the hotel staff told him of their encounter in room 39, the night before Torin was sent into France?

  Eventually she gave up wondering. Whatever the truth, Torin was dead.

  Nothing mattered now.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  BERLIN, JANUARY 1945

  Villa Weissmuller,

  Am Grosser Wannsee,

  Berlin

  January 27, 1945

  Dearest Cordelia,

  It’s been more than seven years since I last wrote, and of course there’s no point now. I might as well write on the wind, or use invisible ink like a spy, because I can never send this to you and you can never receive it. But I used to enjoy our letters so much, and there’s precious little enjoyment left in Berlin, so I thought I’d write again. I did try keeping a diary, but it was fearfully dull—I found myself writing an awful lot about the weather and which plants were flowering in the garden. It was exactly like the kind of conversation one used to make over tea with Aunt Alice and I could just picture your face, so I gave it up. Besides, a letter makes me feel I’m talking to you, just like old times.

  I’ll start with the astonishing fact that I’ve become a nurse…

  Irene found she had a natural gift for medicine. Perhaps it was her grandfather’s scientific legacy, but once conscripted she enjoyed the simple logic of the job, being part of a team, following procedures, working to a strict routine with tasks so pressing that they crowded out every other thought in her mind. Her training, at the redbrick gothic Charité hospital in Mitte, was brief and intense. She learned to give injections and take blood. To fix splints on broken limbs and empty bedpans without being sick. To wash bandages and rubber gloves and swab the lips of dying men. The male medical orderlies had all been sent to the front, so she was also trained to give first aid during daylight raids by American bombers. She had been issued a metal tag engraved with her name that could be broken in two if she was killed, one half to be sent to her next of kin. She had deliberated over whose name to give, and in the end she had put down her sister-in-law, Gretl.

  It seemed to make sense.

  Every morning Irene left home before dawn, as the sun, bleached of color, nudged into the sky. Her journey was desperately slow, the roads cratered by bombs and the subways entirely unlit due to the blackout, which meant groping down stone steps to a packed train, where it was standing room only. Commuters swayed in silence, women in torn clothes and ripped stockings, their faces as beige and pitted as the potatoes they survived on, their mouths covered with scarves to muffle the fumes. No one wasted water on washing, especially not with the Ersatzseife, sandy, crumbly bars of fake soap that stank of carbolic.

  Irene swayed with them, looking out of the smeared and broken windows at a city transformed.

  The old world seemed to have vanished like smoke from the cigarettes that no one could anymore afford to buy. In shops, empty boxes were arranged alongside a sign saying NUR ATTRAPEN, just for decoration, and milk bottles were filled with salt to make it look like their owners were still in business. Bombing had lent Berlin a theatrical appearance. The gutted buildings stood like proscenium arches, and empty windows framed carefully composed still lifes of furniture and standing lamps. A bath, connected only by its pipes, hung in midair. Often, streets were still ablaze after a night’s bombing, flames hungrily ravaging the ruins, walls crashing down in a hurricane of sparks. At various points in her journey Irene would see the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, the Ufa Palast, and the zoo, all destroyed.

  Then she would glimpse the Tiergarten, where Martha Dodd had taken her horse riding.

  The horses had all been eaten.

  * * *

  —

  ONE MORNING SHE WAS called into the nurses’ recruitment office. The head nurse, the Oberschwester, a woman with a face as sharp as a scalpel and a frizz of steely curls, scarcely looked up.

  “As you might know, Schwester Weissmuller, our troops suffered a major assault last night.”

  “Yes. I realized.”

  Six years into the war, the tide of casualties was often the only clue to what was happening. There was no point listening to the wireless; any news on Greater German Radio was as fake as the margarine that people now spread on their bread. Everyone was exhorted to listen to the radio. Ganz Deutschland hört den Führer mit dem Volksempfänger! Yet the whole of Germany had listened to the Führer, Irene thought, and look where that had led them. The only possibility of real news came from the BBC, and tuning in to that was an offense called moralische Selbstverstümmelung—moral self-mutilation—punishable by death.

  “Your station superior reports that you show a steady will under pressure, so I have decided you should be redeployed to a place of greater need.”

  “Thank you, Frau Oberschwester. May I ask where I’ll be working?”

  “Wedding. Iranische Strasse.”

  One of the most important skills a nurse learned was to react without emotion and total detachment, no matter what one was faced with, so Irene absorbed the instruction with complete composure.

  “Isn’t that…?”

  The nurse peered over her pince-nez. “The old Jewish hospital. Yes. You won’t be tending Jews, of course. No one’s wasting resources on non-Aryans when we could be helping our Wehrmacht.”

  “When do I start?”

  “Today. They’re expecting you.”

  She turned back to her papers. “Heil Hitler.”

  * * *

  —

  THE JEWISH HOSPITAL HAD changed out of all recognition. T
he spacious compound and buildings had been taken over for the treatment of wounded soldiers and the manicured gardens dug up for vegetables.

  Irene was immediately swallowed in a nonstop round of nursing. All day she was on her feet, boiling water, pushing trolleys around the wards, dispensing medication, and dressing wounds. She could treat the worst injuries without flinching, whether they were arms or legs blown off or grievous mutilation from blasts and gunshots. Life clung to these men like the tattered shreds of their uniforms, and pain took them in its jaws as savagely as a dog shaking a rabbit, but it was essential to stay focused when picking shrapnel out of their wounds without anesthetic, or stuffing the bleeding gashes in their flesh with gauze. It was harder, however, to remain composed when a delirious man on the point of death, his face sheened with sweat, called out for his mother.

  The first time it was a teenager, his upper lip barely dusted with hair. When Irene crouched beside him, he seized her hand in a freezing grip, as strong as a baby’s first grasp, and refused to let go.

  “Mutti?”

  She hesitated, but there was no sedative left, so an impostor’s comfort was the best she could offer.

  “I’m here.”

  His eyes locked on hers with a son’s trusting love. His teeth were chattering, although he was running a fever. She hoped the delirium would mask some of the pain.

  “You’re here, Mutti?”

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  The boy had been hit in the head by shrapnel and part of his skull was caved in. By rights he should not even have made it off Dorotheenstrasse, where he’d fallen. Without intervention his survival was counted in hours, but there was no chance of surgery. Nor did anyone want to re-dress the bandages on his head in case part of the brain became dislodged, so the wound was left to suppurate and the dressings were soaked in scarlet.