Spies on Bikes

by Dennis Forster

  ‘Yes, Jack, we are leaving no stone unturned.’

  ‘Are all Americans rich?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The ones coming … are they rich?’

  ‘Yes, rich and powerful.’

  ‘Will they help Britain fight the Nazis?’

  ‘Whatever put that idea into your head?’

  ‘That’s what Sir Charles says … I heard him telling you.’

  ‘Did you indeed.’

  ‘Yes, I was up a tree.’

  ‘Eavesdropping?’

  ‘No, climbing a tree looking for Moses.’

  ‘Your pet ferret.’

  ‘Moses is my best friend.’

  ‘Sir Charles is my best friend.’

  ‘Do you kiss him? I kiss Moses.’

  ‘Jack, you do not ask English ladies such questions.’

  ‘Have I put my foot in it?’

  ‘Both feet … where are you sleeping tonight?’

  ‘In my den.’

  ‘Are you not scared outside on the moors, alone, in the dark, at night?’

  ‘I am not alone … Moses is with me. He is my company. The moors are my friend … they do not want to kill me because I am a Jew, like the Nazis.’

  6

  Sir Charles and Lady Elizabeth’s double bed allowed intimacy or estrangement. During their long married life together they’d used both facilities. Tonight they lay close together.

  ‘Charles, you’ve been at the garlic, when?’

  ‘Phyllis made me a cheese and garlic sandwich for supper … had it in the study.’

  ‘You should have eaten your dinner. I don’t approve of snacking. You smell like a Frenchman. I know you are fond of the stuff, but it makes sleeping with you something of a trial. Why do wedding vows make no mention of garlic?’

  ‘Write to the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Mein Kampf.’

  ‘I object to sharing my bed with Hitler … he’ll put you in a bad mood. I’m certain the man has bad breath. I don’t know why I should think that, do you? It’s just that when I see him on the newsreels I always think, “I’ll bet he has bad breath”. You’ve met him, haven’t you? Does he?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have bad breath?’

  ‘In the sense that the man has soured Anglo-German relations I suppose, yes, he does.’

  ‘Will he attack Poland?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And Neville will stand by England’s promise to protect Poland if she is attacked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will the Americans do?’

  ‘Sit on the fence unless we push them off.’

  ‘Which is why we are to play host to these Americans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do Americans like garlic? If they don’t you will have to talk to them from afar, through a megaphone.’

  ‘Or issue them with a gas mask.’

  ‘The staff are looking forward to them coming. They think Americans are glamorous … especially Bert.’

  ‘I know, he likes Americans.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘It matters not a jot whether I do or don’t. My job is to get them to spout pro-British propaganda. You will find them a varied lot. Weinberger is an oil baron … very rich, lots of influence with Congress.’

  ‘Weinberger … sounds German.’

  ‘His grandfather came from Bavaria.’

  ‘If war breaks out will he not side with the Germans?’

  ‘He was born in America. Germany, I’m sure, means nothing to him. He owes everything to the greatest democracy the world has ever known.’

  ‘I thought our English Parliament was the great exemplar of that form of government?’

  ‘I know it is, you know it is, everyone knows it is except the Americans. My hyperbole was, in a manner of speaking, a rehearsal. It is a phrase I intend to use on our guests … flattery, my dear, is an important diplomatic weapon. Mario Mancini is a professor of economics.’

  ‘He sounds Italian.’

  ‘The family come from Florence … his father sells ice cream.’

  ‘His family is in trade? I shall arrange for him to be given the smallest bedroom.’

  ‘His father has sold rather a lot of ice cream. He is a millionaire. He could buy The Hall many times over. Then there’s O’Neil and Macdonald. They are bankers.’

  ‘An Irishman and a Scot by the sound of their names.’

  ‘America is a country of immigrants.’

  ‘Are there no Anglo-Saxons in the party?’

  ‘Professor Striker … Marigold Striker.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘She’s a history professor … quite a gal by all accounts, only met her once, a face across a room. I’m told she’s a good shot. Her hobby is big game hunting. She can trace her family’s arrival in America back to the Mayflower. For the past few months she’s been touring Germany as the President’s unofficial eyes and ears. Before she joins us, she’s giving a lecture at Durham University.’

  ‘She’s not on the Queen Mary with the others?’

  ‘No, she’s an independent traveller. I’ve no idea how she’s getting here … probably by air. Americans use aeroplanes the way we use taxis. She knows the group’s itinerary and has written to tell me she will ring from Durham as soon as she is free. She is by far the most important member of the group. When you are talking to her you are talking to the President. She goes right to the top.’

  ‘You are well informed about our American guests. It would not surprise me if you knew Professor Mancini’s favourite flavour of ice cream.’

  ‘Chocolate.’

  ‘How do you know these things? After all the years I’ve been married to you, Charles, I’m never sure when you are pulling my leg.’

  ‘Our ambassador in Washington informs the FO, who tells Freddy, who tells me.’

  ‘Chinese Whispers is a dangerous game to play when the stakes are so high.’

  ‘Which is why Harry is visiting us tomorrow.’

  Sir Charles and Lady Elizabeth had two daughters but no sons. For this reason they rather doted on their nephew Harry. Sir Charles loved the young man just enough not to be blind to his faults. Lady Elizabeth, on the other hand, had no such reservations. She thought him ‘dishy’ and a splendid catch for any female on the look-out for a husband. Sadly the blood link was too close for her to think of him as a prospective son-in-law.

  ‘I thought his visit was social? He’s coming to stay because he needs a base from which to go into town. Pruney’s having a birthday party at the Assembly Rooms.’

  ‘So he is, but he is also bringing me information, in the shape of a letter, from one of his American relatives … a lady who is privy to conversations beyond the detective powers of even His Majesty’s American Ambassador.’

  ‘About our American guests?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have turned the ‘boy’ into a spy. Charles, how could you?’

  ‘He is not a ‘boy’, he is a young man. At his age I was in the trenches.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘Intelligence gathering, my dear, is akin to throwing a fishing net into a fast-flowing river. Sometimes you use a fine mesh, sometimes a large, depending upon what you want to catch. The mesh in the American net I am hauling in, with the help of Harry, is of the finest mesh. It catches the give-away ‘sour look’, the ‘raised eyebrow’, the ‘indiscreet remark’ when someone, for a moment, drops their guard.’

  They switched off their bedside lights. They kissed goodnight.

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Marigold,’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘It will be nice having another woman around. Does she have children?’

  ‘She’s not
married.’

  ‘I do hope she’s not one of those women who dislike children. I’d be surprised if she didn’t like George … everyone likes George.’

  ‘He is our grandson. We are prejudiced.’

  ‘You’ve not forgotten he’s coming to stay with us? At the moment you have so much on your mind.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What you will be like if war is declared, I dread to think. What about Jack? We’d better keep him away from the Americans. You find his practical jokes amusing … they make me anxious. I never know what might happen next. He doesn’t understand that some people are scared of snakes.’

  ‘They were only grass snakes.’

  ‘What if they’d been adders?’

  ‘But they weren’t … you told him about the Hitler Youth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good’

  ‘You know where he is sleeping tonight?’

  ‘His den.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘By your tone of disapproval. When I was his age I used to sleep out on the moors all summer … Mike and I together, it did us no harm.’

  ‘Mike is too familiar.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘What if Jack puts a frog in the Americans’ coffee?’

  ‘If Professor Striker is as good a shot as our file on her states she might shoot him with his own pea shooter.’

  ‘Does he have a pea shooter?’

  ‘I don’t know … I’d be surprised if he didn’t. When I was his age I had one.’

  ‘Do you think George will get on with Jack?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not a sage … go to sleep.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow will be a busy day … George is coming, the Americans will be arriving and in the Meadow Field the Hitler Youth will be camping. I will tell Phyllis to make chocolate ice cream for Professor Mancini … do you think that would be a good idea? Charles … are you asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  7

  In her cabin Marigold re-read Byker-Harrison’s note. What she knew of the Irish Republican Movement she knew from friends of Irish descent. Irish Americans disliked, even hated, England. In support of their ‘cause’, meaning an independent Ireland, these Anglophobes were forever organising fundraising events; innocent sounding events like coffee and cake mornings and, for a dollar, guess the number of plastic shamrocks hidden in a jar of sweets. The money raised they handed over to the hard men of the Republican Movement. She recalled an article she’d read in the New York Times that Republicans had begun a new campaign of violence in England. They’d blown up some building or other in London. As sure as eggs made omelettes England and Germany were preparing for war. In any coming conflict the Southern Irish would side with the Nazis. The Leprechaun would not be able to resist tweaking the Lion’s Tail. An alliance between Germany and Eire made sense.

  And where, if he wasn’t already at the bottom of the sea, was Byker-Harrison? It worried her that he’d not showed up for dinner. Even in America, nice, innocent people did not carry a ’45 or whatever it was he had in his holster. If the CIA hadn’t told her to keep an eye open for this man Doyle she’d have put money on the Englishman’s note being a hoax. The stratagems men were capable of concocting to get themselves into her knickers never ceased to amaze her. And some of the old guys were the worst.

  The knock on the door made her jump.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The storm is getting worse,’ said the steward. ‘All port holes must be made secure. It is an order.’

  Storm or no storm she only let him in after she’d checked his ears. On his way out she asked him for the cabin number of the Englishman with one arm. When he claimed not to know she waggled a high value Deutschmark note under his nose and suggested he might like to find out.

  ‘Fraulein,’ he said, ‘Gunther is sick. I do not wish to be sick like Gunther.’

  8

  Jack stood close to his den’s entrance, but not too close. Birds never flew straight to their nests.

  After the storm every branch and twig dripped water. A blanket of humid air hung over the darkening fields.

  Aunt Elizabeth, as she liked to be called, had given him much to think about. Sleeping in his den would help him chew over what she’d told him. His attic bedroom in The Hall gave him nightmares. On nights when he relived the murder of his mother and father, its sloping ceiling threatened him like SS men wielding batons. When this happened, he controlled his mind by learning English words and proverbs from a book given him by Sir Charles. He liked the proverb, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. To help him understand its meaning he’d changed it to, ‘Better to kill a Nazi in your gun sight than wait for an opportunity to kill more’.

  Only when he was certain no one was watching did he duck down and disappear under a clump of gorse. Rainwater trapped in its prickly canopy soaked his neck … the first water in many days to touch any part of his body, washing not being one of his priorities.

  After much wriggling on his stomach and elbows he stood up in a cave lit by light coming in through a fissure made when the house size boulders making the outcrop had crashed together millions of years ago.

  To make the cave ‘homely’ he’d tied miniature besoms of rosemary and thyme to the roots of plants growing through the cave’s sandy ceiling.

  They reminded him of a flower shop in Berlin, a Jewish shop whose owner, because he was a relative, gave his mother a discount. ‘Put it in Jacob’s money box,’ the Ashkenazi would say; ‘use it to buy the boy an umbrella for a rainy day.’

  He fed Moses. For his meeting with Aunt Elizabeth in the room called the drawing room but which was not used for drawing, he’d left the ferret tied to a root. Aunt Elizabeth would have screamed if he’d taken his best pal into the house, maybe even fainted. Moses liked disappearing up women’s skirts.

  And Phyllis wasn’t much fonder of his pet, either. ‘Let me make myself clear, young Jack, I don’t mind feeding the little brute but don’t bring him into my kitchen. I’ll give him board but not lodging.’

  In the fading light he watched Moses tuck into a meal of chicken scraps provided by Phyllis. Phyllis’s bark was worse than her bite. An English expression. English was a funny language.

  He worried about taking away Moses’s freedom. He knew he wouldn’t like to be kept on a leash. Moses only struggled when you gave him too many kisses.

  Jack’s bed for the night was a wooden pallet strewn with heather. He’d made it himself. Mike had given him the wood. He’d brought it into the cave in pieces.

  In the cave he kept a diary of the animals he saw through the fissure … badgers, foxes, squirrels and the big stag. He recorded how they behaved. When he grew up he’d a vague idea that he’d like to work with animals. The big stag was the one Mike wanted to shoot.

  With his bow and arrow he liked to think of himself as a hunter. At the same time he did not want to kill the stag. He did not want Mike to kill it. He wanted it to be left alone. From his den he’d seen it many times but had never told Mike. If such a beautiful animal were shot from his den he’d never sleep in the den again. He’d made up his mind about that.

  Shooting Nazis from the den was different. Through the fissure he could see the Meadow Field. Out of his fingers he made a pretend gun. In the direction of the Nazis’ proposed campsite he fired many shots.

  Wednesday 30th August 1939

  1

  The sun was shining. Water vapour, as visible as breath on a frosty day, rose in wisps from the sodden ground, evaporating away yesterday’s downpour.

  Over breakfast Sir Charles told his wife, ‘Wonderful, don’t you think, Nature’s ability to recover? I mean after yesterday’s battering who’d have thought our gladioli would ever stand up straight again? But they have. Wonderful, quite wonderful. Today is going to
be a scorcher, mark my words; if I’m wrong I’ll grow a Hitler moustache.’ He cocked an ear at an open French window. ‘Listen … you can hear the grass growing … it’s that sort of day. Take my word for it. Pass the marmalade. I’ll warrant my melons will be growing faster than the pointers on a watch move. If it’s like this tonight we might dine al fresco.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Be a dear and pour me another cup of tea.’

  ‘You always just have one cup.’

  ‘This morning, if it’s alright with you, Charles, I am going to have a second cup … it’s the heat … it’s making me thirsty.’

  ‘I think I’ll join you.’

  Lady Elizabeth’s mind was on gazpacho. For dinner she wanted a chilled soup like she had when she stayed with Freddy and Dot at their villa in Cannes. Would Phyllis have a recipe? She so hoped Freddy would not be ringing her husband. The scrambler meant she couldn’t listen in. Freddy’s official calls invariably meant trouble. Freddy was making it difficult for her to forget the storm clouds gathering over Europe.

  Sir Charles tried, unsuccessfully, to stop thinking about Hitler by thinking about melons.

  In the ‘melon house’ he chatted with Tom, his head gardener; should they increase the depth of the hot beds?

  In a conversational lull the gardener asked, ‘Will it come to war, sir?’

  Sir Charles was thinking how to answer the question on everyone’s mind when he spotted not one but three snails on a melon. He unstuck them from their breakfast.

  ‘I’ve never seen that before, Tom.’

  ‘The little bugger’s done it again,’ exploded the embarrassed gardener. ‘He’ll get me the sack, he will. It’s the refugee lad, sir. It’s his sense of humour. He puts them on the melons to tease me. If I catch him I’ll put the hosepipe on him.’

  ‘I suspect he’d rather like that.’

  ‘He’ll be watching us.’

  ‘No doubt waiting for us to shout and scream … best pretend we’ve not noticed his devilment. If we don’t react he’ll get bored … stop doing it.’

  ‘He’ll not stop until I have no melons for her Ladyship’s dinner parties … snails and melons don’t go together, sir; lamb and mint sauce do, sir, but snails and melons don’t.’