Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  He said she could sit where she liked, though preferably towards the rear of the church. “Okay?” he said. “Tell her I’ll find her.”

  “That all?”

  “No, we have to exchange passwords.”

  “What d’you suggest, then?”

  Sadler had chosen something from the Bible. From the Book of Proverbs. He would say, the length of days is in her right hand. The girl would reply, and in her left hand riches and honour.

  “It’s enough,” he said. “She should get to the service early. It’ll be a full house.”

  “Will do.”

  Sadler closed the line and Julia walked slowly back through the black streets to her house.

  Inside she poured herself a large brandy from the bottle she’d managed to get for Christmas, and sat down to make what turned out to be the first of a number of telephone calls.

  She started by telephoning Daphne, who was a nice girl; as the tired joke said, she had a lot of friends, never did it with enemies. She was not a whore, never worked the streets or anything like that, but, if pressed, would have to admit that her means of support came from gentlemen who found her amusing and attractive. The gentlemen concerned were mainly officers of the USAAF and they valued Daphne when on leave between their bombing missions in B17s – Flying Fortresses – and B24s – Liberators. Daphne liked to think she was concerned with valuable war work, giving succour to members of the forces. But the truth of the matter was that while she was not a whore she could easily be classified as an enthusiastic amateur.

  “Daphne, dear. Would you like to earn a few quid?”

  “Sweetie,” Daphne all but sang. “What’s going on? When can I earn some poppy?”

  “Tomorrow evening. About an hour’s work is all.”

  “Oh, sweetheart I can’t do it, not tomorrow, I’m all booked up tomorrow. My friend Wilbur’s coming down for three days, and…”

  “What a blow. It’s such a simple business, only take you an hour, hour and a half, and you can stay dressed. Piece of cake.”

  “I just can’t Jules. No way. I can’t let Wilbur down.” She giggled, “Not that he’ll let up. Arrives in the morning and if I know Wilbur he’ll keep me occupied until very late at night. Doubt if I’ll stir outside all day. Mmmmm.”

  “Well, if you can’t you can’t dear.”

  “Some other time then Jules, okay?”

  “TTFN, Daph.”

  TTFN stood for Ta Ta For Now. Another of the interminable catch phrases from Tommy Handley’s show, ITMA – It’s That Man Again.

  She rang Sybil who worked at Boots The Chemist in Oxford Street, but Sybil’s Dad was ill in Romsey and she’d had to give up her job and go to look after him.

  Beryl and Betty were both otherwise engaged, going off somewhere over the weekend, then with their families over Christmas.

  Julia was stymied. She drew a blank with Unity, a posh girl who lived in Mayfair and would usually do anything for anybody, but she had relations visiting and couldn’t get away, “Not even for a minute, Julia. Sorry.”

  As for Irene, her husband answered the telephone and when Julia asked for her he said, “She’s gone to her bloody mother’s and I’m only on five days leave bugger it.”

  Julia was in baulk, didn’t know what to do. Then she remembered the young woman who’d come with the handsome man that afternoon and she scrabbled around to find the paper on which she’d written her name and telephone number. Suzie, that was the name, didn’t seem to have a surname, but Suzie would do.

  She lunged for the telephone.

  Ruth, the redhaired maid-of-all-work at the WOIL offices in Ivor Place was still on duty, tucked up reading Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Demetrius in a camp bed close to four telephones. She struggled out and picked up after six rings and gave the number. The caller, with a voice like a cello, asked if Suzie was there. No surname, just Suzie, and Ruth told her Suzie was out, “At a party,” she said, adding she should be in any time if it was urgent. The caller said she was Julia Richardson and could Suzie call her when she came in because it was rather important. What she had actually said was, “She could learn something to her advantage.” Julia was a sucker for that kind of flowery language.

  Ruth said she’d tell her as soon as she got back and Julia Richardson gave her the number. Ruth repeated it, then repeated it again as though she was reading what she’d just written down. “And it was Julia Richards was it?” she asked.

  “Julia Richardson,” Julia said, stressing the son. “It doesn’t matter what time she gets in. Could she ring me anyway, whatever time. Tonight? Right?”

  “Hooked,” Curry Shepherd said from Elsie’s office door. He had obviously been listening in on an extension.

  “Curry, you’ll get me shot. How long have you been here?” Ruth asked in a flirty voice.

  “Long enough to see you getting ready for bed. Quite like old times.”

  “You’re a Peeping Tom, Curry Shepherd.”

  “Ah, I thought I was a Curry Shepherd. You’d best ring Suzie. Tried every trick in the book to get me to stay at her place tonight. In the guest room of course.”

  “Naturally,” Ruth looked up from under her eyelids in what was supposed to be a seductive sort of way as she started to dial Suzie’s number.

  “But I knew you’d be here, ready and waiting.” Curry continued, the leer turning to a melting smile as Ruth put her hand over the receiver rests, then picked up the phone again, preparing to redial. “There’s not really room in this camp bed.” Curry thought what a dazzling smile she had. “Not the same as in the flat.” Ruth added.

  Curry started to remove his jacket. “We’ve managed before.” He said. “What about the telephone, sweetheart?”

  * * *

  SUZIE WAS STILL getting ready for bed and wondering if she had lost her allure when the telephone rang. For a second she wondered if it was Curry. Had he changed his mind? Later she thought the disappointment must have been obvious as she answered too eagerly.

  Ruth told her what was going on and what to do, mothered her a bit, asking if she could manage this relatively simple phone call. “Just listen, make notes, that’s very important: be meticulous about the notes. Try to sound interested without being inquisitive. Remember the money fascinates you. Cash is your motivation … Oh, yes, and remember you’ve just come in from a party. Be bubbly, if you know how to be bubbly.”

  “I think I can manage, thank you. And I know how to be bubbly in all senses of the word.” Suzie told her, acidly, over the telephone. She really didn’t like Ruth but if she had been asked why she couldn’t have given a reason. Then, in a matter of minutes she was talking to Julia Richardson in the house where she lived in Shepherd Street.

  “Darling,” Julia gushed, “Thank you so much for ringing back. You did ask me if there was a job going – pin money, remember?”

  “’Course I remember. You’ve got something I can do?”

  “I think so, but I’ll have to explain because it always sounds a bit iffy…”

  “How much?” Suzie asked, trying to get into the role as Ruth had explained to her.

  “Five quid and you have to go to church for an hour or so.”

  “I don’t mind that. I’ll do anything.”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about. Put you in the picture.”

  “Please.”

  “Friend of mine supplies non-military information to the neutral Swedish embassy – stuff about costs of food, clothes, that sort of thing. And digests from the War Office official briefings to the Press. This fellow also helps in training some of our own security people, so he arranges these exchanges of information as clandestine exercises. Trainees are told a time and place where the information is to be handed over. They’re also given a description of the person who is to receive the information. It’s usually a thick envelope that’s passed to you in a public place. Right?”

  “Right,” Suzie agreed,

  “All you have to do is be at the designated pl
ace, wearing the identifiable clothes or whatever I tell you. Then someone will contact you and pass you the envelope which you bring straight to me.”

  “What does designated mean?” Suzie decided to play the dim lame brain.

  “It means where I tell you to be.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “In this case it’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Tomorrow evening. There’s a carol service there at half six. Get there early, like half-five, a quarter-to-six. Understand?”

  “Yea, ’course.”

  Julia gave her all the details, red hat, dark scarf, copy of tomorrow’s News of the World – “You’d better carry that, but make sure it’s visible to others.”

  “Won’t feel right carrying that paper into a church.” Suzie turned down the corners of her mouth, acting the part. At that time the News of the World specialised in the sexual proclivities of choirmasters, scoutmasters and clergymen, pederasty was one thing, but simply being homosexual was a crime in those days and they’d bang you up even if you were a consenting adult.

  “Don’t worry about that. Now there’s a kind of password. It’s from the Bible. Ready, ’coz you’d better learn this by heart.” She repeated The length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour, made Suzie write it down and go through it again and again until she had it off pat. Only when she was certain everything was covered did Julia break the connection.

  Suzie leaned back and digested the situation which seemed perfectly simple. The hat was no problem, burgundy would pass as red, the one with the divided crown, like a man’s trilby but lower and with a wider snap-down brim at the front, perfect match with her favourite coat, the one with the D-rings and a belt like a trench coat, with buttoned flaps across the chest, fitted at the waist and long military skirts: the coat her mum had bought for her at Fenwicks before clothes rationing came in.

  She had plenty of dark scarves, and —

  The telephone rang again.

  Curry said, “Suzie, the office has just been on. I gather we’ve got a nibble. Good show, eh?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” She sounded less than happy and wondered afterwards if she was trying to tempt Curry to come down and hold her hand.

  “You don’t sound thrilled.”

  “I’ve been a stalking horse before, and it was not the most pleasant time of my life.”

  “I thought that was being a tethered goat.”

  Clever bugger, she thought. “Same difference, Curry. I go out there and wait for the guy who killed Colonel Weaving to creep up on me. There’ll be a lot of people in St Paul’s Ruth tells me, so how are we going to be sure…?”

  “How’re we going to be sure you’re safe? That’ll be a piece of cake, Suzie. A doddle. Don’t worry about it, we’ll have all exits covered, our people will be on you all the time. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Suzie. We’re much to careful and professional.”

  She reflected that she’d heard that before.

  “Come down to Ivor Place in the morning. Nine o’clock. Elsie and some of the boys’ll be there. You’ll be fine.”

  Suzie got undressed, had a bath, stuck to the current rule of five inches of water in the bath and thought to herself that she was a bit of a prig. Obeying the five inch rule made her feel good and she thought that was a bit much, feeling happy about keeping to a restriction nobody could really enforce. She fiddled with her toes on the hot tap and let another inch of water flood into the bath.

  She felt guilty about that and when she was out, dried, powdered and in her night clothes she sat on the bed sipping a cup of milky cocoa. She really had thought Curry was interested in her. If he had been he certainly didn’t seem to be interested any more. When he had told her about Tommy’s questionable dealings over her commendation and the offer of a George Medal, she’d have sworn he’d been exceptionally interested, but now she wondered. She recalled that when she was at her first posting to CID at Camford Hill, Shirley Cox had told her that one of the other officers had said he thought she – Suzie Mountford – was a flibbertigibbet: frivolous and a bit of a teaser. At the time she had been outraged but now she wondered. Had this been how Curry Shepherd had seen her, easy and flippant? If so he really hadn’t wanted to have all that much to do with her. By the time she had the light off and was cuddling her hot water bottle, snug inside its Peter Rabbit cover, she started to wonder about the way other people saw her.

  O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us

  To see oursels as others see us.

  She remained awake for some time wondering about the reality of her way of life and the manner in which she behaved towards others. By the Church’s rules she supposed that she’d been a touch frivolous, and had certainly indulged herself with regard to the so-called sins of the flesh, but she had salved her conscience by focusing on the fact that – apart from that one night with Wing Commander Fordham O’Dell – her acts of fornication had been with the man she had intended to marry which, she felt, cancelled out much of the guilt. An elderly priest had once told her that the sins of the flesh always seem exceptionally bad to us because they are so personal, and he had gone on to say that he felt they were probably very small sins in the eyes of God, but enlarged initially by the celibate nature of those who deciphered God’s codes, and the laws made in those early days possibly did not have the same impact now, in time of war, when each day brought a new challenge and death hovered everywhere.

  She thought much about the choices she had made in life, in particular the dreadful rift that had taken place when her father was killed and the numbing shock of her mother’s second marriage to the sometimes loathsome ‘Galloping Major’. Then of her time with Tommy Livermore, her career advanced much sooner that she could possibly have hoped when she was put on a clear track as one who would be especially needed in the Force once the war was done. But it was her relationships with those she was called to work with that caused her the most confusion now.

  Eventually she dropped into sleep, her mind in chaos, the slumber proving to be fitful and restless, her sleep, heckled by vivid dreams in which she was chased across shifting sands by faceless men who eventually caught up with her, reaching for her neck with clammy hands that finally woke her to the Sunday morning. It was a Sunday last time, she reflected, Sunday 29th December 1940, the night of the second great fire of London, the night when Tommy Livermore baited a trap with her. And now, three years later, Suzie knew that she would again put her life on the line out of a sense of duty and loyalty to her king and country.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “YOU KNOW YOU don’t have to do this, Suzie,” Elsie Partridge looking straight into her eyes, smoothing a hand across his bald pate. “Nobody’s going to think badly of you if you pull out now.” But looking around the room, at Curry Shepherd, and the two men she had just met – Big Peter Hammill and Little Trevor Haines – she knew their eyes were saying the opposite. If she pulled out now they’d always have a mark against her name, if not on paper then certainly in their long memories.

  Suzie was glad that Big Peter and Little Trevor were on her side. She wouldn’t have wanted them as enemies with the likelihood of running into them alone on a dark night. The only thing humorous about Peter and Trevor was that Big Peter was a short, wiry man while Little Trevor was built like the proverbial brick washhouse, and tall with it. It was clear that they knew their job, which she suspected was to pulverise people, with maximum force. They spoke in grunts and nods, and the pair of them showed a great deal of care for her and were now given to patting her on the arm, followed by a head-rolling wink coupled with the words, “Suzie? Okay, girl?” or just “Suzie,” with the exaggerated wink.

  Curry was already there when she arrived just before nine o’clock, having taken a taxi to Baker Street, then walking down to Ivor Place. Ruth was also in the office and the pair of them looked slightly blurred around the edges, dishevelled and not as razor sharp as they might have been. Suzie’s mind turned quickly to thoughts of how they may h
ave spent the night, and she again cursed herself for the silly imaginings that had led her to think any attractive male would automatically find her equally tempting. The plain truth of the matter was she wanted a change and fancied Curry Shepherd rotten. Not an edifying state of affairs.

  Elsie came in muttering something about needing coffee and hearing news that Winston was much better. There was a ensuing conversation in which Suzie, earwigging madly, to use Tommy’s expression for listening in to other people’s conversations, gathered that the PM was abroad again on one of his jaunts to meet President Roosevelt and others in Cairo, she thought, where he had been taken seriously ill.

  Peter and Trevor came in soon after nine-thirty and they sat around for a couple of hours talking about how things should be arranged later in the day. They discussed the options they could use inside the huge cathedral, or how they could cover the steps and the doorways outside. They also debated how to prevent things from going wrong and Suzie felt moderately cheerful by the time Elsie made his speech about her not having to do what it was obvious they all wanted her to do: set herself up so they could nail Cyclops as they all now called him.

  Elsie Partridge had a good deal to say about the disposition of his people outside the building and the crowding there would be during the arrival and departure of some of the congregation. “A number of important people’re going to be there,” he told them. “Military, Royal Air Force and Naval staff officers will arrive and leave by car, as will whoever’s going to represent the PM – I gather that’ll be Mrs Churchill, with Anthony Eden4 in tow. So there’ll be the usual jumble outside, crowding and delays: though there’ll be a couple of brace of military police sergeants marshalling the traffic, which will help.” He told Suzie to keep an eye out for them, “If something goes wrong, head for them, otherwise keep away. We don’t want anybody really close because we’ve got to give Cyclops air, a clear run.”