“I truly am sorry,” I said.
She didn’t react.
“Please don’t cry. Please don’t.” I sat beside her. “Unless you want me to join in. Might they commission us—two figures in a fountain?”
“Go away,” she said.
“No.”
“Then I shall.”
But I pulled her back. “What’s the point? You know I’d only follow. We haven’t had our tea.”
“Tea!”
“Yes. They tell me it’s the cup that cheers. It seems you need a spot of cheering. I’m not too certain why.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m not too certain why.”
“Well, in that case … in that case…”
“What?”
“My God! It only shows me how insensitive you are.”
“Why? Because I had to call your bluff?”
She didn’t answer.
“And I bet Mata Hari never spoke like that. ‘Oh, it only shows me how insensitive you are! When all the time I thought you were a gentleman!’”
She showed not the slightest tendency to smile.
I added: “‘But no! Any true gentleman would have repulsed his suspicions!’ I bet she never said that—or, at least, not very often.”
“It’s not the fact you had suspicions! It’s the vile and gratuitous way in which you voiced them.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly enjoy that part of it myself. But if I was a bastard—and yes, all right, I was a bastard—perhaps I had good reason.”
No acknowledgment of this.
“And anyway,” I asked, “how should I have set about it? Sat down with you and had a nice illuminating chat across the buttered toast and scones? Well, in fact, isn’t that what we’re doing right now? Or could be doing right now? May I pass you the buttered toast?”
“Good reason?” she enquired, coolly—belatedly. “What good reason?”
“Oh, well. You yourself mightn’t think it such a good one. And again I’m not convinced it’s in the best traditions of Miss Hari. But I was hurt. Yes—hurt! Because you mightn’t credit it: my biggest worry this morning on seeing you drive away from Waterloo was simply this. How on earth was I going to break it to you that the Laura thing was pure prefabrication?”
She didn’t comment for a moment—and when she did, Franz Mannheim might have nodded his approval.
“Just fabrication,” she corrected, wearily. “Someday someone ought to try to teach you English.”
Although she still didn’t smile, and her tone remained lifeless, I obviously saw this as a breakthrough. And took heart.
“It was easier for you,” I said. “You knew from the beginning I was playing a role. But I hadn’t the foggiest idea that you were. I believed every word you told me.”
I remembered our walk back to camp; remembered the feeling of warmth which had so convincingly pervaded it. And remembering this—feeling further encouraged by it—I laid my hand upon her sleeve.
“Well, let’s not exaggerate,” I said. “Every other word you told me. But that turned out to be enough. More than enough, unfortunately.”
She made no attempt to remove her arm. (Another memory surfaced—also, an encouraging one—the memory of when she had touched my wrist in The Tap and Tankard.) She seemed to look at me properly for the first time since we had arrived at Somerset House.
“More than enough for what?”
“Oh dear. Only somebody rather insensitive would have to ask me that.”
She still didn’t smile. She turned her gaze towards the river and waited maybe fifteen seconds before she brought it back.
“Why are you saying all this?”
“Because it’s true. No other reason. And there’s clearly no point in our lying to one another any more. Either about the big things or the little things. Though for the moment, please, don’t ask me which is which.”
A woman passed us with a pram and I smiled gravely at the infant who was sitting up inside it, as though she alone, in her fuzzy pink cardigan and pompommed pink hat, might be sufficiently qualified to pronounce.
“Do you honestly mean that?” Sybella asked.
“Yes, I honestly do mean that.”
But I still didn’t want to take anything for granted. I lacked the confidence. Seemed incapable of merely keeping quiet.
“Yes, I was playing a role—obviously. Yet at the same time, in spirit, I can swear that I never stopped being myself. And by far the greater part of what I told you was absolutely true.”
“A minute ago you used the word unfortunately. Why?”
“Well, that’s easy. Is there anything more unfortunate than somebody falling in love all by himself? And, besides, Capulets don’t ever quite set out to fall in love with Montagues. Not if they possess one particle of common sense.”
It struck me that those wretched Montagues got in everywhere. You might have thought Verona at least might be free of them.
“Although, on the other hand, I suppose I ought to qualify that a bit—I mean, if I’m being required to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, as apparently I am. You see, perhaps it’s true that I don’t possess one particle of common sense. Perhaps it’s true that in a way I did set out to fall in love.”
She waited.
“Though please don’t ask me why. From the start there was something about your photograph which … oh, I don’t know…”
I shrugged.
“In any case, your photograph was smiling.”
“And you promise me,” she repeated, “that you are now completely on the level?”
“Listen. How can I persuade you? No worthy German spy is ever supposed to leave himself exposed and vulnerable; the rulebook specifically forbids it. Yet this particular example of the species—me, in case you still need to have it spelt out—is right now feeling so exposed and vulnerable he might just as well be sitting here stark naked. My instructors would be furious. ‘Put back your clothes on!’” I let them speak in English but supplied them with a weighty accent. “‘That is not the manner in which any true gentleman ever likes to behave, no matter how repulsive!’”
Perhaps it was this final barb that toppled her defences.
“Well, at last!” I exclaimed. “At last!”
I shot one arm into the air.
“Oh, praise the Lord, Miss Standish! That is far more the way your photograph was looking!”
“How can you be a German spy? You must be the least likely German spy in history. Well, German or otherwise.”
“And, if it could talk, far more the way it would have sounded, too! Yes, hallelujah! A hundred times—hallelujah! And incidentally yours is an assessment which those instructors would wholeheartedly agree with. In fact you seem to be so much one of them I fear you may be fighting on the wrong side.”
This could have been quite hopelessly misjudged. I instantly regretted it.
She said: “And what actually made you assume that?”
“I was being crass. I’m sorry. It was nothing but a stupid joke.”
“No, I don’t mean that.”
“You don’t? What, then?” I tried to think back.
She gave a slightly crooked smile.
“That you might have fallen in love all by yourself.”
I stared at her.
“You see,” she added, after a pause, “perhaps most of the time my own role was no further from reflecting the truth than yours was.”
“It wasn’t?” I said at last, weakly.
“And do you know something? The ordinary man in the street might have thought we were both supposed to be at least of average intelligence.”
“Then how about this?” I asked. “Just for the time being? The ordinary man in the street can go and take a running jump.”
32
She had taken off her hat and put it in her lap. Her head was resting on my shoulder. She said, eventually:
“I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me something? The name of
the person I’ve just been kissing?”
I did so. It turned out that she hadn’t absorbed the half she had already heard. She didn’t even remember she had heard it.
“Are you certain you told me?”
“Positive,” I said.
“Oh, well, I suppose you were making so little sense then—overall—that it’s scarcely surprising if I simply stopped listening. Anyone would have … I mean, anyone with the slightest claim to sanity.”
“You sound like my grandmother.”
“Thank you. She must be a very lovely person.”
“She is.”
“I can hardly wait to meet her.”
Nevertheless, she spoke the name aloud and then repeated it more softly: Eric Anders.
Erich Anders.
“It’s going to seem quite strange,” she said, “getting to think of you as that.”
“Yes, I’m sure. You knew me for so very long as something else.”
“Precisely. But perhaps in time I’ll grow used to it.”
Her tone became bleak.
“Except that … I was forgetting, of course! Time isn’t something we’re going to have a lot of.”
I stroked the top of her head. “You think this war is going to last forever?”
“Maybe not—but what will happen to us while it does? In particular … what will happen to you? They’ll probably make you a prisoner of war, won’t they? And when they do that…?”
Then she pulled away, abruptly. She sat up and gazed wide-eyed. As if in shock.
“Oh, my God! They don’t shoot spies, do they?”
I gave a laugh that was probably as contrived as Heinrich’s had been; but did my best to reassure her.
“Like our much-maligned Dutch friend whom we keep remembering? ‘Acht, all these brutes, vhy are they so insensiteeve?’ No,” I said gently, “they don’t shoot spies.” I drew her down again. “Not this one, anyway. This one’s allowed to roam at will.” (My outlook had certainly undergone a change during the course of the afternoon. I now felt reasonably confident—although, I admit, not absolutely so—that I wouldn’t have to face a firing squad.) “They pretend they haven’t noticed him. Then they allow him—all in his own good time, of course—to go back to Germany.”
“What?” she said.
Then, for a second time, she sat up. I realized why. She had to be able to see me.
“At least, that’s up to you,” I said. “What I mean is—he’s allowed to roam at will so long as…”
But I could now see the look in her eye and that stopped me dead.
“So long as I don’t tell anyone he knows the truth?” Her voice had grown as hard as her expression.
“No,” I said. “That isn’t what I’m saying.”
Yet, again, she hadn’t heard; or hadn’t registered.
“So that explains all the sweet talk! Of course it does. I’m such an idiot. I should’ve realized.”
“No, listen—please just listen! If that were true, what do you think I would have done? We’d have had our tea at the Corner House and I’d have let you go on sobbing your heart out over your tragically lost love. I’d have kept up that whole ridiculous charade, with never a hint of challenge, or of confrontation, to mar one tiny, magic moment. What I wouldn’t have done was to allow my own juvenile emotions to clog up something which—oh, for pity’s sake!—which most people would think fully important enough to transcend all that personal sort of guff.”
I hoped it was a convincing argument; to myself it actually sounded unanswerable.
And thank God she was convinced. She leant back against me; gave a sigh.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me.”
“I shall definitely consider it.”
“And it isn’t guff! Your emotions are not juvenile.”
“Mixed up, then.”
There was a lengthy silence. “But I shall have to tell them,” she said, at last.
“Yes, of course you will! Of course you will! I was just getting round to that when you became Eleonora Duse and cried out you were an idiot.”
“I am sorry,” she said again.
“On the other hand, if I don’t go back to Germany the Abwehr knows at once the letters were a hoax.”
“Why?” she asked.
For a moment I had to give this question more attention than I might have thought.
“Well, I agree,” I said, “the British could have taken me prisoner simply because my identity was rumbled—taken me prisoner without uncovering why I was over here, despite doing their utmost to find out. But my non-return would automatically renew every doubt the Abwehr ever had about the major.”
I added, with a minuscule attempt at humour: “Renew more doubts than it ever had in the first place!”
“Yet equally,” she said, “if you do go back to Germany, you immediately announce the truth.”
A seagull had landed on the grass quite close to us. It didn’t stay long. In silence we watched the unexpected grace with which this apparently ungainly bird took to the air again.
“No,” I said, “I am not sure that I do. I am honestly not sure that I do.”
I continued to watch the seagull. Its flight now took it back towards the south bank.
“Which isn’t something I’m saying merely in order to string you along. You have got to believe that!”
After what was possibly no more than three or four seconds, yet appeared infinitely longer, she gave a nod.
“I do believe it.”
“And just as importantly: you have to make them believe it.”
I suddenly appreciated the immensity of my relief in being able to say all this. Of my relief and gratitude … gratitude for the things which only an hour ago I had been viewing as wholly catastrophic, but which had unforeseeably led to the present.
“I shall do my best,” she promised. “I shall really do my best.”
“And when I say ‘them’, you understand, I’m not necessarily referring to the Prime Minister and the whole of the War Cabinet.”
“Thank you. I was rather scared you might be. Yet, in that case, whom are you referring to?”
“Come now. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you.”
She responded with a slow and lazy smile … a teasing smile. “Don’t I?” Once again she raised her head from my shoulder. “But I’m afraid I’ve suddenly been afflicted with memory loss, and I was hoping you might be able to cure me, by supplying the right name.”
“Oh, lady, lady, this won’t do! I suppose you’ll tell me next you’ve even forgotten his rank?”
She nodded, helplessly.
“Well, supposing we closed our eyes and stuck a pin in a paper and came up with … how about lieutenant, say? Or lieutenant commander? Would that bring anything back?”
“Army or navy?” she asked.
“Tut, tut, Miss Standish—and there you are, almost the toast of Aldershot! Applauded to the rafters! But didn’t they tell you? They don’t have lieutenant commanders in the army.”
She looked impressed. “All right,” she said. “We’ve got the rank. Let’s have his name. I’ll make it easy for you if you like: you need only supply the first letter.”
“But you still don’t think I can, do you?”
“No shilly-shallying, if you please! The first letter of the party’s name?”
It was now my turn to be impressed. It couldn’t be coincidence; I realized that she must be setting out actually to lay ghosts. I thought her almost as courageous—admittedly for slightly different reasons—as she had appeared to me yesterday, in Manor Park.
“Hmm,” I said. “Shall we try M again? Yes, why not try M again? It worked for me before.” Once more I gave her a wink—possibly a degree less repulsive than my previous one. “But, this time, not M for Martin. That would be too boringly repetitive and I feel we need to ring the changes. So this time, my love—well, what would you say to … yes, let me see, now … I think I’m feeling lucky … yes, wha
t would you say to … M for Montague?”
33
“You may still be one of the most unlikely spies in all of recorded history. But I do have to say this. You’re certainly not one of the least effective.”
“Thank you. Mainly, though, I’ve just been lucky.”
“No, I don’t accept that.”
“Why not? I ran into you, didn’t I?”
“You’re also,” she said, “a most excellent debater.”
“In that case then, as my reward, won’t you tell me how it happened?”
“What—that you ran into me? It must have been written on the roll call of destiny. In letters ten feet high.”
“That much I know. But now I’d like to hear about the small print.”
“What part, exactly? There’s a lot of it.”
“Paragraph forty-seven. The one that deals with ENSA. You really are with ENSA?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Not in counter-intelligence?”
She shook her head.
“So how did you get drawn in? Is the lieutenant commander a friend of yours?”
“Both a friend and a relative—well, in a way, that is, because I actually grew up calling him Uncle.”
She explained.
“You see, the Manor House at Ogbourne St George belongs to Ewen Montague’s brother-in-law. But my mother’s been the housekeeper there, and my father the head gardener, ever since I was small. We had a cottage in the grounds. Right from the beginning we were treated like family—my sister and I, in particular.”
For a moment she looked reminiscent but swiftly checked whatever digression might have occurred to her.
“Anyway, a bit earlier this year, I happened to be around one Sunday when Ewen paid us a flying and impromptu visit; having belatedly decided that he liked the sound of the address! The Manor House, Ogbourne St George. Apparently its very Englishness was hard to beat; would prove, he said, practically irresistible to the Boche. (Meaning you, my darling, in case you still need to have all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed!) Of course, at that stage no one had a clue as to what he was on about; merely knew that he wanted to cadge some of the stationery. It was only as an afterthought that he looked at me and asked if he could have a snapshot. ‘We might want to play a little trick on Jerry,’ he said—I quote verbatim.” She smiled. “And that, Mr Anders, is the story of how I came to be ‘drawn in’, as you so eloquently put it.”
Letters for a Spy Page 20