Letters for a Spy

by Stephen Benatar

  “Random Harvest.”

  She was disappointed. “Ah, yes—for that, I’m afraid, you will need to see the manager. And unluckily he’s just stepped out for a minute or two.”

  She explained how she herself had been working there only since last November. She neither looked nor sounded anything like the receptionist at the Black Lion, but there must have been something in her manner, or in her conversation, to transport me back to Thursday.

  “Last November?” It took me three seconds, maybe five, to assimilate this detail. “Does that mean, then…?” And it cost a real effort even to say four words.

  I tried again but it seemed I couldn’t get any further. “Does that mean, then…?”

  She regarded me sympathetically.

  “Well, sir,” she said, “all I know is I saw the film myself—when was it, now?—I think it may have been in August or September-time. Summer, anyhow. Me and my better half; we saw it at the Queen’s in Bays water. Or it may have been the Regal, Harrow Road. So I reckon it would have finished here in June. Maybe July.”

  At least she had given me a moment to recover.

  (To recover?)

  “And no revival of it since then?” I asked. “No revival at all? None, say, in early March this year?”

  “Not at the Empire, sir. Nor at the Ritz next door, which is our sister cinema, although of course it’s a good deal smaller…”

  And she proudly informed me that she hadn’t missed a single day’s work in her full six months.

  “So a revival couldn’t just have slipped me by, as it were. Besides, sir, it isn’t any part of our policy to hold revivals.”

  I had the impression she might now have been willing to forestall the manager by leading me step by step through all the intricacies of the MGM release and distribution system. But I thanked her as courteously as I could and—feeling as though I might actually need to vomit—turned away and headed for the pavement.

  Where, after a while, beneath a blown-up and violently tinted picture of airman John Wayne, I took out the serviette which Sybella had given me. She had written her address in longhand rather than in block capitals. I took out her letters, too.

  Allegedly her letters.

  But the writing wasn’t hers. (As if I’d really believed any more that it could be!) Enough said.

  Absolutely enough! It furnished undeniable proof of deception. What did it matter that the film hadn’t been showing at the Empire when she’d said it had?—Sam Spade could have saved himself that little effort of investigation. Not to downgrade it, however—purely on its own, it would also have furnished ample evidence of deception.

  Not quite so comprehensive, maybe, but still pretty damning.

  I wiped my lips on the serviette. If this was meant to be vengeance, though, it didn’t work. King Pyrrhus would surely have sympathized.

  Besides all of which, my glance was now drawn to a single fragment of sentence in the second letter. (That crossword puzzle syndrome: one delayed solution sparking off another.) The words might have been illuminated.

  I read again: “Wolverhampton—Wolverhampton for one night only…”

  Ostensibly written during her first week with ENSA: the time, supposedly, of the play being cast and of everyone’s lines being learnt and of frenetically intensive rehearsal.

  And no more than just two days into that chaotic first week … already a preview in Wolverhampton? Really? No! What an achievement for our long-suffering Lady Producer!

  Another fragment of a sentence—this time from the earlier letter. I read again: “Panting for Monday so that I can get back to my crowd of silly females.”

  Sweet Jesus!

  Was it possible?

  How in the name of God could I have seen it so many times and yet still never have noticed?

  That one little adverb.

  Back, she had said. (Had allegedly said.) Back.

  No, I didn’t like loose ends. And—who knew?—perhaps I even felt that strange compulsion to punish myself still further. I telephoned ENSA and this time, on my first shot, found the number unengaged. The Nine Till Six contingent had been performing in the play since January.

  And yes—right from the start—Miss Sybella Standish had certainly been a member of the cast.

  “Oh, and a most valuable member of the cast!” gushed the tactful and obviously well-intentioned woman to whom my call had been transferred. “I hear that she always gives a remarkable performance—yes, a truly remarkable performance!”

  24

  First I sat absent-mindedly in some snack bar, over an untasted cup of tea, until the soldier who was sharing my table felt driven to exclaim, “Sorry, mate, but don’t you think you’ve stirred that long enough? You’re giving me indigestion!”, and I put down my spoon with a start of apology, wondering how anyone could ever kill a man in close combat … when simply the idea of ruining his pleasure in a poached egg was sufficient to induce strong guilt.

  (By ‘anyone’, of course, I meant myself. And yet I had joined the Abwehr! And yet I had become a spy!)

  Then I caught a taxi back to Abbey Road, but in the taxi the same dull ache continued … the same agonizing refrain.

  The former involved Sybella.

  The latter involved her, too.

  But more obliquely.

  Explicitly, all it asked was: Why me? Repeatedly—why me?

  Yet at least I could acquit myself. It wasn’t a phrase prompted by self-pity. Rather, it arose out of mystification; out of the basic need to know.

  Where had I gone wrong? In what totally unwitting way—in what desperately stupid, woefully amateur way—had I managed to announce my presence over here as an enemy agent?

  During our progress up Regent Street, I made myself try to review everything I had done since my arrival at Holy head—not even excluding the few words I had exchanged with other passengers on board the boat before my conversation with the neighbourly woman who had informed me about Mold being her birthplace.

  Review everything? In fact I didn’t feel as though I had actually done much.

  And what little I had done … at the moment it required a fierce effort of will simply to keep my mind on it.

  Surely nothing had happened in Wales which could have implicated me without my knowing?

  No.

  No—definitely not.

  Basically, I had just put up at an attractive small hotel and looked through its register. Not even stealthily but with the help of a kindly receptionist. (Who certainly—certainly?—wouldn’t have recognized my fountain pen as being German. And even if she had … well, what of it? More than likely ‘Orthos’ had been purchasable over here in the thirties. Failing which, there had never been any law forbidding holidaymakers from bringing back souvenirs…)

  Nor, upon leaving Wales, had there been anything underhand about my interview with Mr Gwatkin. Again, at Waterloo Place, I had been greeted by a kindly receptionist who…

  I stopped.

  Yes.

  Who had changed in her attitude towards me.

  Who had most assuredly changed in her attitude towards me.

  But it was only now that I began to pay this proper attention. At the time I had naturally been aware of it, yet it just hadn’t seemed important. She had started off by being friendly; by greeting me with a pleasantry to which I had responded, and a jokey remark about the other Mr Gwatkin being absent. But then she had altered—I had vaguely supposed she must have received a ticking off.

  Yet try to think, I told myself. Did you hear her being ticked off? No, you did not. You merely assumed it.

  But why did you assume it? Try to think. Isn’t this what occurred?

  I had given her my name, of course. Earnestly requested to see Mr Gwatkin. Told her that I needed to get in touch with a client of his—a Mr J.G. Martin.

  Nothing wrong so far.

  The woman had passed on this information. The connection had been poor. She had needed to repeat several points. It was as t
hough she were talking to someone a little hard of hearing.

  But Mr Gwatkin wasn’t hard of hearing. And the woman had grown flustered. “Yes, very well. Yes, of course, Mr Gwatkin. Yes, I will.”

  I had asked whether I myself had been responsible for her discomfiture. But no, she had assured me, oh no, the trouble had been to do with something else entirely. Yet she still found it difficult to look at me. Before the call she’d been relaxed; now she appeared harassed. Was it even fanciful to say she suddenly seemed fearful?

  “Yes, of course, Mr Gwatkin. Yes, I will.”

  Will what?

  Will nothing … apparently. Other than confirm I would be able to see the solicitor after his present client had departed.

  She had also offered me a cup of tea—which I had declined. However, she had then gone off with the declared intention of making one for herself. It had admittedly struck me as a little odd that this should be considered a good enough reason for leaving the switchboard unattended.

  Odd, too, that when she came back she had forgotten her cup of tea. But I hadn’t really thought about it. Why should I? I had vaguely supposed she might have gone to the lavatory—whilst there, had remembered something important which required her immediate attention.

  I hadn’t at all supposed that on leaving reception she had hurried straight into the office of Mr Gwatkin. I hadn’t at all supposed that her suggestion of tea could have been merely a subterfuge. To indicate normality. To cover up confusion.

  But what if the solicitor had said something like this on the telephone? “For Pete’s sake, woman, stall! Say I have someone with me, then get in here fast! But calmly … we can’t afford to make him suspicious. Why not offer him some tea? And if he says yes—well, he’ll just have to wait for it, that’s all.”

  Or was I simply imagining things again? After all, what had I done?

  Nothing. Nothing but mention the name of J.G. Martin.

  And wasn’t it more likely that Mr Gwatkin was indeed with a client but hadn’t been able to locate some crucial piece of correspondence? “Oh, yes, you may claim it hasn’t been misfiled, but would you please come in to show us—right away!” He could at first have been overriding almost everything she had been trying to tell him; which was why she had needed to repeat herself.

  Yet—in that case—why the cup of tea?

  No. I couldn’t make sense of it. It didn’t hold up.

  But anyway. What next?

  Well, the poor woman had returned to her position at the switchboard, that patient, undemanding switchboard. Currently, the office didn’t—not in any way—give off the air of busyness that her appointments book had promised.

  And probably just as well. Even during a lull as pronounced as this one her agitation appeared unabated.

  If not positively enhanced.

  But then?

  She had put through an outside call.

  And, unexpectedly, this had soothed her. Not because of any actual conversation but because the individual she had wanted had proved accessible—she obviously hadn’t supposed her task was going to be an easy one. Transferring the call to Mr Gwatkin she had shown her relief not only in her face but in every detail of her posture. The metaphorical deep breath—the evident sense of relaxation—these had provided me with a gentle amusement. I’d scarcely given a thought to the indirect cause.

  The individual she had wanted…?

  No, previously this person hadn’t held much interest for me. But now, during the course of my present taxi ride, every aspect of my visit to the solicitor’s had suddenly become of interest. Overwhelming interest. And now I endeavoured to concentrate on one specific moment passed in the reception area of Messrs McKenna & Co. I tried to rid my mind of every last hovering thought of Sybella and of the attendant mire of depression she had cast me into. I remembered—in connection with that name the receptionist had asked for—some chance association flitting into my head.

  And just as swiftly out of it—tarnation! But I thought that in some way it might have related to clothing.

  To tailoring? To outfitting? The image of a dog-eared receipt flashed upon me. Gieves was the shop in Piccadilly where the major had bought his handkerchiefs and shirts. But that lost association had nothing to do with Gieves.

  My attempt at recollection faltered when I became aware (and did so for no reason at all which I knew of) that we were passing Lord’s cricket ground.

  I had come here once with my granddad. That must have been nine years ago but I recognized instantly the slab of white stone commemorating the world of sport … with at its centre, amongst the golfers and the footballers and the cricketers, a near-naked athlete clearly symbolizing the link with Graeco-Roman times. It was strange to reflect that, on the last occasion I had viewed this, my life had been so vastly—almost, I would have said, poignantly—different. I could even recall the feel of Gramps’s arm lying companionably across my shoulders as we had stood there looking up with interest at the detail on the slab. Play up, play up and play the game. The sculpture had been extremely new then, and evidently in those days that slogan, so quintessentially British, had not appeared in the slightest bit risible. Only 1934?

  But now the taxi had pulled away from the traffic lights.

  So, all right, then. Not Gieves.

  And not Austin Reed.

  Nor Aquascutum.

  Nor Montague Burton. Nor—

  But—yes!

  Yes! That was it!

  Montague Burton. The fifty-shilling tailors.

  That name she had asked for on the telephone…

  Montague!

  Montague! Montague! Montague!

  And appended to some rank or other in the navy. Admiral, vice-admiral, rear-admiral? Captain, commander, lieutenant commander?

  Oh, yes—again, yes! “I’m phoning on behalf of McKenna & Company, Solicitors. I should like to speak to Lieutenant Commander Montague, please.” That was what I had heard her say. There had been some other word attached, a word sounding remarkably like ‘mincemeat’ and I remembered wondering what she could actually have said?

  In retrospect, I supposed that what I should have wondered was whether I myself could in any fashion be involved, instead of merely continuing to sit there and idly leaf through Punch. But service titles were everywhere at present. Why should this Lieutenant Commander Montague, whoever he might be, have stood out as being anything other than some perfectly ordinary client? What legitimate reason would I have had to feel alarm? I hadn’t been acting conspicuously: nothing remotely cloak-and-daggerish. All I had done was to ask for Mr Gwatkin and to mention knowing Mr Martin. How on just the strength of those two things could I possibly have thought myself involved? That would have been over-imaginative. Fanciful beyond question.

  Very well, then. She had transferred the call. And looked relieved.

  After which, she had instantly reverted from the switchboard to her typewriter. Had started pounding away on it as though she were the very model of efficiency. Had hardly lifted her eyes from her supposedly indecipherable shorthand.

  And then at last I had been summoned. I hadn’t seen any departing client but had presumed there must be a back entrance … which conceivably there was, although I myself hadn’t been shown out by it. Apparently the solicitor hadn’t heard my suggestion, despite its being made a moment before the office boy might well have drowned it out beneath the rattling of his teacups.

  Therefore Mr Gwatkin might have been a little deaf, even if in his own room he hadn’t appeared to have any difficulty about hearing. Where he had appeared to have difficulty was in making himself sound natural or at ease. Particularly at the onset. Gradually, of course, he had overcome this diffidence; managed to overcome it to such an extent that eventually he had launched into that scathing little speech concerning wills and irony and income tax … and from then on had given the impression of being a wholly different person—a person grown drunk at the spring of his own creativity.

  Now, did
that little circumstance happen to put you in mind of anyone? Anybody else at all?

  Yet, unlike certain others, Mr Gwatkin was not a professional actor; so his initial fit of stage fright might have seemed slightly more noticeable than that of certain others.

  No. He was not a professional actor. In any context of stagecraft or stage management he would have appeared—unquestionably—a fish out of water.

  But a fish out of water with friends in high places?

  Maybe.

  High places such as the Admiralty? Such as the Naval Intelligence Division at the Admiralty?

  Maybe.

  Not necessarily a friend, of course; possibly a relative or a fellow club member or—yes, sure—why not a client? Someone, in any case, who would have known him well enough to be able to request a favour?

  Maybe.

  Someone who would never have revealed why he was requesting that favour. But someone who, in answer to a frenzied SOS by telephone, might just have spent a full quarter of an hour in priming his panic-stricken friend—or relative or fellow club member or family solicitor—on how to handle a crisis that had not been envisaged as being likely?

  Maybe.

  In which case…‘mincemeat’?

  A codeword meaning Emergency?

  Emergency, I need help!

  If so, how remarkably fortunate for our friend on the switchboard, not to mention her panic-stricken employer, that those telephone lines that day should have been working so very smoothly. There could have been many a time when they wouldn’t have been. No wonder she’d looked anxious.

  Yet, anyhow, to return to the point where all that liberating invective had begun to flow along a different channel; to swirl about the feet of somebody depraved enough to steal from a person in uniform. Obviously a Kraut—“the only kind you could ever believe capable of doing it! But you’d think you’d be able to smell him, wouldn’t you, like rotten eggs or sewage?”

  Oh, yes. Gwatkin had known all right.

  Had not merely known but had found it blatantly hard to conceal the fact. “I’m only surprised Mr Martin didn’t mention it when he met us so soon afterwards! Oh, and by the way, why were you wanting a solicitor?”