by Eliza Graham
I slipped into the world of my play, feeling better. Atkins had given me an idea. She wasn’t unlike the subject of my radio play, Clara.
Clara lived with her elderly father in a castle in an unspecified part of central Europe in an unspecified historical period. Her brother was absent fighting an unnamed, remorseless enemy on the country’s borders. Her fiancé was a prisoner of war, threatened with death. Clara herself had once been a gifted archer and rider, but now took care of the castle and its inhabitants. Not a day passed without her carrying out some act of sacrifice. Her dresses had been turned into children’s outfits. Her bedclothes had been given to the homeless. Clara used her bow and arrow to shoot rabbits and deer, which she cooked for the poor and for the wounded soldiers who needed feeding up for their return to the front.
Clara could have been a sanctimonious pain in the arse, as Beattie put it, but for the fact that she possessed a sense of the ridiculous, sparingly, but, we hoped, sharply displayed in each episode. Clara noted that the donation of her last pair of rubber boots to a soldier with small feet hindered her work in the variously muddy or snowy vegetable patch. How was she supposed to provide potatoes and turnips for those in her care? Donating the family’s thickest furs to combatants meant that she and her father needed to burn more precious wood to keep themselves alive in the winter.
‘Never too heavy, never too obvious,’ Beattie would tell me. ‘Just enough parallels with everyday German life to raise questions.’ I was growing to like Clara, even hoping that she and her father would survive, that the enemy would not reach the castle and that her absent menfolk would return safely. I’d suggested making Clara into a more brazen rebel against the tyrannical king, but Beattie thought that might be laying it on a bit thick. Perhaps William would have a view.
My fountain pen was running out of ink. I searched the satchel for a pencil and caught sight of my fingernails. My hands with their long fingers were still in reasonable condition. I usually managed to find hand cream but missed seeing varnish on my nails. Nazi women were supposed to forswear make-up, but photos of officials with beautiful actresses on their arms showed that their men still savoured red lips and sultry eyes. If Clara brought down a deer with her bow and arrows and they had venison for dinner, might she apply cosmetics to complement her gown? A woman’s face was hers to do with as she wished, Clara would explain to a prim servant who expressed disapproval of her poppy-red lips. I glanced at Atkins’ blond head, bent over her knitting. Clara might knit her wolfhound a jumper out of fine cashmere for the hell of it, too.
I scribbled notes for the next episode, five days away. It wouldn’t take me long to write the script and then it would be translated by the German team.
Something was happening outside – the heavy front door to the mansion opened. Beattie himself was coming out of the house now. William followed, looking pale. I could see the outlines of uniformed men behind them.
I stuffed my writing pad and pencil into the satchel and opened the car door. Atkins muttered a warning to me. ‘It’s fine,’ I told her.
I may not have been inside this cage but I’d frequently been with prisoners of war in interview rooms, confronting the anger, despair or faint hope. This prisoner coming out smelled raw, but not desperate. His eyes burned in a face still displaying a tan acquired in the desert. He met my gaze. I was the one who looked away first. The prisoner examined me as though he were the interrogator, taking in the ruined section of my face without obvious shock but with keen appraisal. This man was just like the fox I’d seen at the park railings. As he came closer I saw he was young, probably the same age as William. His vulpine expression was probably the result of exhaustion and scanty rations. Fed and in clean clothes he might look as I’d imagined Clara’s brother in my radio play.
‘You remember the deal?’ Beattie said in German, turning back to him.
The prisoner shrugged.
‘I didn’t hear your answer.’
‘Yes,’ he muttered.
The sergeant guarding him gave him a nudge with his rifle. A truck was coming through the gates behind me. Beattie must have ordered it. The prisoner got into the back and the truck drove off.
‘An intense but interesting session,’ Beattie said as he joined me. ‘The interrogators here think he’s telling the truth when he says he had nothing to do with the shooting of the prisoners.’ He settled into his seat. ‘But while they were interrogating him he let slip something about his family. They run a hotel on Lake Constance, quite a pretty spot, apparently, popular with Party officials.’
I’d never visited Lake Constance, the large stretch of water at the bottom-left side of Germany, very close to Switzerland, but I’d heard about its balmy climate and scenery.
‘Quite a few people of interest still come and stay at the family hotel,’ William said, seating himself beside me.
SS. Senior Nazis. Off duty, relaxed, enjoying the mild climate and views, drunken and indiscreet, perhaps. I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle. Beattie looked at me and grinned. ‘You’re salivating, too, aren’t you, Anna?’
The use of my Christian name indicated I was in favour again. Beattie always liked me most when I was showing what he called my under-surface, the part of me that liked to exploit and spin, the part that hadn’t lived up to my vicarage childhood. I felt the same connection with Beattie we’d shared in my hotel room in Lisbon.
‘Where are they taking the prisoner now?’
‘They wanted to ship him to Canada with the others, but I persuaded them to send him to an Italian POW camp not far from us. He’s quite a fellow. Told me I could hang him for all he cared if I let him have a shower first.’
‘How does he know who’s staying at the hotel if he’s been away in the army for years?’ I asked.
‘The pay book shows he’s had several leaves at home,’ Beattie said. ‘And his sister writes to him using a family code.’
I knew the kind of thing – references to pets and uncles and aunts.
‘Can we verify his information?’
‘We have a contact, a mushroom seller, would you believe,’ Beattie said. ‘He’s just across the water in Switzerland but crosses over regularly. He can tell us if the information Schulte passes on sounds reasonable.’
Who ordered what at the bar, or from room service? Favourite champagne. Cream cake preferences. Already my mind was racing ahead, composing snippets about high-ranking Nazis tucking into pastries, town dignitaries showing off local wines and fish freshly caught in the lake, while most Germans found their rations shrinking by the month. Women – who exactly popped up to the bedrooms with these men after dinner when their wives didn’t attend the conferences?
Beattie nodded at me, reading my mind. ‘We’ll milk him.’ He took out a linen handkerchief and held it to his face momentarily. ‘That place,’ he said.
‘But interviewing him in a POW camp?’ With other prisoners curious about what was going on, even if they were Italian, not German?
‘I’m arranging for him to get some farm work so we can talk to him by himself.’
‘He’s an officer.’ Officers weren’t obliged to carry out labour.
‘If he volunteers, he can work. And he will because he’ll be bored out of his mind alone with the Eyeties.’
Keep an intelligent man digging up root vegetables or spreading muck in near solitary conditions and he’d be glad to have someone to talk to. ‘He’ll have to work somewhere where there are other prisoners,’ William said. ‘So the military police can watch him.’
‘Isn’t there a farm not too far from us where the son was taken prisoner in France and then the father died?’ Beattie tapped his fingers on his attaché case, waiting for me to pull the name out of my memory.
‘Waites Farm,’ I said. ‘They were talking about it in the—’
‘Blue Anchor,’ Beattie finished, smirking at my expression. ‘I know you sneaked off there with Micki, Hall, disobeying my orders.’
He could
only know this because he’d been in the pub himself on that same occasion two nights ago. He let me stew for a few minutes. ‘Now, how’s our priestly broadcast shaping up, Nathanson?’
William took the script out of the leather folio case he carried and set himself to studying it.
‘You need to sound like that kindly priest who muttered Latin over your dying mother and made you feel better.’ Beattie paused. ‘When you meet our real-life Father Becker he’ll provide the role model. Avuncular, speaking more in sorrow than in anger. Keep that tone up until the end when you drop the little bombshell, or should we say, millstone, about the nonces in youth camps feeling up the children. Then sound like the righteous and angry voice of God. But don’t overdo it.’
William swallowed.
‘You’ll get used to it.’ Beattie folded his arms. ‘Hall did, and she came from a vicarage.’ He smiled to himself.
I scowled at him. Was the dig at my background meant to remind me of that night in Lisbon? He glanced at me again and for a moment I thought I saw something more serious in his eyes.
As we left London behind, I became aware of William watching me. This time he was sitting to my right. Was he fascinated, as some people were, by the rippled skin on my cheek?
I busied myself with my pencil and writing pad.
8
William shifted in the rear of the Austin as we drove to the studio that evening, checking yet again that the script was safe in his folio case. He really hadn’t had much time to read it. We slowed at the gatehouse. Atkins wound down the window and we showed our papers. I felt the familiar rush of pride as the guards waved us through and we pulled up outside the main door. The building consisted of a central three-storey, tower-like brick structure, stepping down on each side to a two- and then one-storey level. The plain lines and metal-framed windows were modern and quietly confident in appearance, a contrast to ostentatious Nazi architecture. Even the guards’ Alsatian dogs appeared calm, if alert.
I’d probably never be able to tell anyone about this studio and what I did here, but I could still revel in its existence and the fact that people from all over Europe worked together in it. I drew in a breath as we entered. The studio still held on to its new-building smell, too: clean metal, linoleum and fresh wood – an increasingly rare and morale-boosting feature.
Beattie, as usual, spent some minutes talking to the girls on the switchboard situated just inside the entrance. Sometimes he brought them bars of chocolate. Most of them were former General Post Office telephonists or had worked for Thomas Cook. Dealing with travellers whose wagons-lit tickets had been wrongly allocated was good preparation for handling furious air marshals ringing up to complain about coverage of air raids on German cities. More importantly these women had experience in switchboard technology and telephony and understood how the complicated wires and connectors to the transmitter masts worked.
I took William through to the studio, on the way pointing out the rooms housing the files and research, which all kinds of people came to read, and the soundproofing tiles. ‘Nobody could get through the guard post, but even if they did, they wouldn’t hear a word of what we broadcast here.’
‘A secret world.’ He shook his head. ‘What an achievement.’
‘It is. And the public will never really know what went on in here.’
For that matter, I didn’t know half of what went on at the studio.
‘Excuse me.’ A uniformed girl dashed past us, sheets of paper clutched to her chest, on her way to hand the latest intelligence to someone or other. Everyone had signed the Official Secrets Act and it had been made clear that the consequences for blabbing would be unpleasant, possibly even deadly. I still found it hard to believe that British authorities might shoot a kid of nineteen or twenty. We weren’t as bad as the Nazis, were we?
The studio housed a scrambled telephone line, linking us to someone anonymous but high up in the RAF who’d pass on details of bombing raids in Germany for Beattie to insert into the evening news broadcasts. Names of streets badly hit, names of residents – taken from telephone directories – we could provide all the details before the official German radio stations could. Sometimes we’d add a little comment about the Luftwaffe facing penalties for its failure to shoot down British planes.
I showed William the shower block and lavatories and studios. ‘We often use live bands or classical ensembles – the Germans do love their music. Our musicians are some of the best you’ll hear. We captured a whole touring orchestra in North Africa and persuaded them to play for us.’
William laughed. ‘I’m picturing double basses and saxophones being solemnly taken into captivity and interrogated.’
‘Stranger things have happened here.’ I looked over my shoulder, aware as always that I needed to keep my voice down. ‘We’ve also got an American swing band when we want something jazzier. That kind of music’s been in short supply in Germany. It seems to be going down well.’ The aim was to make the programmes coming out of Milton Bryan irresistible.
‘Doesn’t swing music give the game away that we’re not broadcasting from Germany?’
‘We tone it down so it’s a little more . . . Chemnitz than Chicago. The bandleader doesn’t approve but it’s a fine balance.’
We passed Sefton Delmer’s office. ‘That’s the big boss’s room,’ I said, in the same lower voice. ‘Our Mulberry House research unit will move over to an office here eventually. Much more convenient.’
‘But no more throwing the ball for the terrier in the garden?’ The distraction therapy seemed to be working on William. He’d met the dog and the rest of the team very briefly in Mulberry House before coming over here.
‘We’ll need a studio mascot,’ I said. Again I lowered my voice. ‘I was thinking of a German-speaking parrot. A good mimic of someone like Himmler. Imagine the havoc we could cause on air.’
He laughed again.
I took him into the studio we used each evening for our hour-and-a-half schedule and showed him how to adjust the microphone height.
‘Good quality equipment,’ he said, looking closely at it.
‘Nothing but the best. It’s so much better broadcasting live than using all those records. I was always bracing myself for the needle to get stuck in a groove and play the same words over and over again, though the technicians know their stuff and would have jumped in.’
‘You can’t always rely on the equipment. Sometimes it comes down to humans doing their bit.’ He ran his fingers over the edge of the desk, looking pale.
‘Would you like a few minutes to rehearse?’ I asked him.
‘Please.’ He gave me that boyish grin. ‘I don’t know why I feel so self-conscious suddenly. It’ll be fine once the light comes on.’ He nodded at the bulb that would switch to red minutes before the broadcast and then to green as we went on air. ‘This isn’t like the stage, is it?’
There was nobody to feed off. ‘The announcer’s a steady hand and we’ll be just there in the cubicle.’ I pointed at the small glass-windowed control room, where I’d sit with Beattie. ‘I know you’ll do a grand job.’
‘That means a lot, thank you.’ He massaged his temple. I noticed his hands trembling.
‘It’ll be over before you know it.’
William took his notepad out and wrote something. ‘It helps,’ he said, ‘to have it all in writing. Then I can’t get mu—’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t listen to me. I’m not a flapper, honestly.’
I left him to rehearse and went to talk to the studio technicians. Everything was well prepared, as always. The weather had been checked: no storms expected that might affect the performance of the transmitter or masts. I found Beattie in another of the studios, eating what smelled like a freshly baked meat pie.
‘Sorry, Hall, I grabbed the last one from the canteen hut.’ He looked down at the plate. ‘Actually I think I might have had the last two. They might be able to find you a biscuit?’
I hadn’t eaten since lunch and my stom
ach suddenly remembered this. Micki would have asked the landlady to save a portion of the rabbit stew she’d cooked for us, but I wouldn’t get that until much later. Hopefully the canteen might have something left.
‘Lieutenant Nathanson’s nervous,’ I said, ‘but seems well prepared.’
‘Good.’ Beattie nodded at me to sit down with him. ‘I know Nathanson.’ He pushed the plate away. ‘You’ve made a bit of an impression on him. Not just because of your famed intellect, either.’
I tried to give him a hard stare.
‘What with Father Becker making eyes at you as well, it could get complicated in the front room.’
‘Father Becker?’ I heard the incredulity in my voice. ‘He’s dedicated to a life of chastity.’
‘Perhaps he wants to take this opportunity to let rip a little. Bedfordshire has that effect on some people. It’s the breezy air and all those pine trees. Ask that lot up at Woburn Abbey.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Because priests can’t have normal masculine responses to attractive women? Or because you’ve got it into your head that you’re now irredeemably flawed?’ He said the words gently but I felt them like a slap.
I looked at my watch. ‘Much as I value your analysis of my situation, there’s no time for this now. Sir,’ I added, hoping he couldn’t hear anything in my voice that might suggest what he’d said had shaken me.
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I may not have time to help you again.’ As I stood up, he put a hand on my arm. ‘Anna,’ he said. ‘You’ve done a good job taking him under your wing.’
I looked at him.
‘I mean it.’
Five minutes to go. I left Beattie with his empty plate and returned to the studio. An engineer was examining the microphone, glancing at the control room where his colleague would be checking amplifiers and circuits. Watching this calm, methodical routine always reassured me. I knew the exchange with Beattie was part of a process of antagonism that Beattie himself sometimes needed to go through when he was under pressure. First night with a new radio character. And a new actor. We were all on edge. William still looked pale. I poured him a glass of water.