by H. B. Lyle
“Good evening, Mr. Wiggins.” An amused, upper-class, familiarly crisp woman’s voice stopped him from further protestation. He turned.
Constance, also dressed in fine traveling garb, peered at him from under the wide brim of a straw hat. “I trust you holidayed well?”
“Holiday? What the hell’s going on?” he said, glancing first at Kell and then back again.
“I must say, Wiggins,” Constance went on. “Your complexion is positively peachy. You look as if you haven’t had a drink in weeks.”
“I haven’t had a drink in weeks. Ask him.” He punched a thumb in Kell’s direction.
“Enough of the pleasantries,” Kell snapped. “Need I remind you that I am your employer, I pay your wages, I set the terms. That’s how this works.”
Wiggins bristled.
“It’s so instructive to see the Secret Service at work,” Constance interjected. “It really does remind one of the necessity for keeping women out of such roles; we are too emotional, too hysterical, too indiscreet. We would be forever bawling at each other on public thoroughfares.”
The three boarded the boat to Amsterdam soon afterward, Kell and Constance heading up to first class, Wiggins in the bowels of third.
At dinner, Constance pleaded indisposition and left the dining room early. Kell glanced up as she left but didn’t go after her. She took a turn around the first-class deck. Far out across the Channel, she could see the faintest yellow dots, the electric lights on the ports and islands of northern France and Belgium. Soon the whole world would be alight, aflame with electrification, and never again would one be able to disappear into the black night.
She ventured down to the lower decks, to second class and then finally to third. Sure enough, leaning against the rail, facing out to sea away from her, bottle by his side, she found him.
“Evening, Mrs. Kell,” he said, without turning.
“Mr. Wiggins.” She joined him at the rail and gazed out into the blackness. The whirr of the engines was louder here, and the swish-swash of the water on the hull felt faster, more hurried. “Do you mind?”
He shrugged. “What’s going on with the chief?” he said suddenly.
Constance stiffened. She hadn’t expected that at all.
“Wiv the booze and that,” Wiggins went on. “He looks like he’s drinking more than me.”
“I really don’t think . . . well . . .” she trailed off. She’d been about to give him the haughty double barrels, the “How dare you talk about my husband like that . . .” But the truth was, she hadn’t noticed, and the embarrassment silenced her.
Wiggins took another swig from his bottle, wiped his lips, and turned to her. “Why are you here?” he said, breathing rum into the space between them.
The light was low and she couldn’t read his expression. She knew Wiggins, though, and knew he’d spot a lie. “Because he asked for my help.”
Wiggins nodded slowly. “How’s the old ducking and diving?”
“We still don’t have the vote, if that’s what you mean.”
“Would it make any difference?”
“Of course—politics matters. Politics is everything. Women must stand together, we must defeat our oppressors, we have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Through the shadows, she saw Wiggins raise the bottle in something like a salute. “I’ll take your word for it, ma’am.” He took a big gulp, wiped his mouth, and then went on. “Here’s hoping my tips came in handy.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him, that’s not what this is about,” she said. “I would never hurt him.”
Wiggins nodded again and looked out to sea.
She walked back to the stairwell but then stopped, thought for a moment, and turned to him.
“And what are you doing, Mr. Wiggins? Why are you here?”
“Remember, we are on holiday,” Kell said as they entered the splendid red-brick palace that was Amsterdam’s central station.
“Does that count for me too?” Wiggins muttered.
“You’ve just been on holiday—for months it seems.”
“I’ve told you, it weren’t a holiday.”
Kell waved away the protests. “Get a porter. We’re on the eleven eighteen to Bremen.”
Wiggins disappeared into the throng and Kell turned to Constance. “Thank you once again, my dear, for coming.”
“Are you going to tell me why I’m here? Why we are?” she said, adjusting her hat.
Kell looked at her as she did so. The bustle around them faded, and all he could see was her beauty, unhurried, secure. He almost put his hand out to touch her. Instead, he waited until she looked directly at him. “If I had come alone, or with Wiggins even, it would have been suspicious. Together, we at least look as if we’re touring.”
A brief shadow crossed Constance’s face as he talked, but she quickly stifled a yawn and replied, “Oh, I know I’m cover—that’s what we wives do so well, isn’t it? Provide the decoration on the arm.” She sighed. “Cover for what, though, Vernon?”
“’Ere’s a go,” Wiggins said as he appeared through the crowd with a porter. “This lot speak better English than me.”
“Sir?” the porter said, pitching up his cart beside them.
Kell barked at him in Dutch, astonishing Wiggins. The porter stowed the bags and trotted off. “There a lingo you don’t know?”
“Oh, he has no trouble with languages,” Constance said. “He is very good at how to say things. What to say, that’s the problem.”
Kell paused. He looked between the two of them, sharp as knives. Only the great detective himself could hold a candle to these two. “I will tell you everything,” he said at last. Any thoughts of keeping the bulk of the mission to himself melted under their twin glares. “Once we’ve made the compartment. Wiggins, you are in third, but you had best come and join us when we are underway. I can brief you both then.”
Wiggins nodded curtly. Constance pulled on her gloves. “That’s all very well, Vernon, but how on earth am I meant to pretend we are holidaying in Bremen? Oh, good day, mein Herr, we’re just here to admire your country’s heavy industry. Yes, that’s right, and the industrial shipping. And fishing. Or maybe we are fanatics of the Hanseatic League? North Sea birdwatchers? What’s our cover story?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
“Come in,” Kell called.
Wiggins hesitated at the door to the first-class compartment. He’d walked through the packed train, batted away the attentions of three separate ticket inspectors, and was now going to be briefed on yet another mission for Kell.
The long days of enforced sobriety on that benighted Quaker ship had revealed a number of things to him, not least how much he needed to be in London. He’d worked out a way that would help him track down Peter, for one thing, and he was determined to sort out Tommy once and for all.
But it was Vernon Kell who paid the bills. Wiggins rested his hand on the door a moment longer. Constance had asked him why he was here—and was this his answer, money? Certainly, it was the best pay he’d ever had or was ever likely to get. Trying to find two-bob spies around the ports and factories of Britain wasn’t the worst thing to do for such a wage, although it was as boring as biscuits.
He rubbed his hand on the highly polished walnut panel of the door, and thought of all those street kids he knew long ago; he thought of poor missing Millie and her little sister in her Lambeth shit pit; he thought of all the lives left unlived for want of a shilling, and he wondered if he should really be working, fighting, for the people who lived their lives behind walnut panels and spoke of King and Empire. What had the Empire ever done for him and his?
An inspector appeared at the far end of the carriage. Wiggins glanced up, then entered the compartment.
Constance sat by the window, her back perfectly straight, her head turned out to the landscape. Nail-thin trees whipped past.
He sensed the silence that had been in the room, unbroken until he entered. A beast of a silen
ce, a monster; he could almost smell it. Kell sat opposite Constance at the window, but somehow as if on another train. He gestured for Wiggins to sit at the far end of the bench seat. The sleeping berths had not yet been made up.
“Mrs. Kell and I are posing as holidaymakers. You are my man,” Kell said finally. “We are going to Bremen.”
“I know that,” Wiggins said.
“I believe everyone in Holland knows that,” Constance added. “You seem so keen to announce it to all and sundry.”
“It’s cover.”
“It’s pantomime. Act naturally, we have every right to be here.”
“She’s right,” Wiggins nodded.
“Although,” Constance went on, “why we are here is a different matter entirely. I would so like to know. Last-minute dashes to Germany are, of course, very charming, but I do have engagements back in London.”
“We’re on a rescue mission,” Kell said finally.
“Oh, Christ,” Wiggins said. “Don’t tell me.”
“I had a telegram from my opposite half in the foreign section,” Kell went on. “Cunningham, or C.”
“You mean Mansfield Cumming,” Constance said.
“I knew it,” Wiggins muttered to himself.
“How did you know his name?” Kell asked Constance, surprised.
“Go on, Vernon, your Secret Service Bureau isn’t as secret as all that.”
Kell glowered. “Cumming, yes, if you must. He has sponsored a mission into Germany. Two Marines.”
“Bernie and Viv,” Wiggins interjected. “I knew it.”
Constance looked between the two men. Kell relented, again glaring at Wiggins. “Captain Bernard Trench and Lieutenant Vivian Brandon, Royal Marines.”
“What’s the gen?”
“They are gathering information on German naval fortifications. But apparently the mission is going awry. Cumming was so concerned with the last report that he’s come out to Germany.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Cumming himself is in trouble. He’s not really equipped for field work. He doesn’t even speak German. I fear his arrest daily. He sent a distress signal from Bremen. We are to find him first.”
Wiggins blew out his cheeks. “But what are we doing? I thought we was domestic only?”
“And I thought we were going on holiday,” Constance added.
Kell looked at them both, took a breath, and told the truth. “It’s all up. The Bureau, my job, your job. We are almost certain to be dismantled. Transferred into the functions of Special Branch, if my guess is correct. If Cumming is arrested, captured by the German police, anything like that, then it’s curtains for us all without another word. Our whole future depends on this.”
“Your future,” Wiggins grunted.
“You think Special Branch would give you a job? Would pay you what we pay you? Or do you think you’d find yourself back debt-collecting for Leach?”
Wiggins didn’t reply.
“But conversely,” Constance mused, “if you—we—make a success of this mission, then the threat to the Service might abate?”
“My interest is primarily the safety of Cumming and his men, of course. But . . .” he shook his head softly “. . . it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Does Soapy know you’re here?”
“Of course not. We are unofficial. Totally unofficial.”
A silence settled once more, though unlike the one that greeted Wiggins when he first got into the carriage. Constance nodded thoughtfully, looked at her husband for a moment longer, then picked up her guidebook. The train rattled rhythmically, lulling them all for a moment, each in a world of their own. The smell of fresh coffee came wafting down the carriage.
Wiggins got up. “Better get back in my place,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to be caught in the wrong class.”
“No,” Kell said. “No, that wouldn’t do at all.”
Dear Dinah
I am so sorry that I didn’t turn up at the latest meeting in Hampstead. I feel especially rotten, since I had urged you so ardently to attend. I hope the night wasn’t a total chore.
I should explain . . .
Constance flung down the pen in exasperation. How could she explain? What would she say? Oh, so sorry, Dinah, I couldn’t make the meeting that I insisted you come to because I am on a secret mission deep inside Germany to rescue two spying Royal Marines, neither of whom, I am given to understand, are suffragettes themselves . . .
She stood up from the writing desk and took a turn around their grand hotel room. Kell had taken one of the better suites, as befitted a couple on holiday. It had three sets of high windows, a dark wooden circular table, and an elegant settee.
Relations with Dinah and her gang had rather deteriorated, and they wouldn’t be helped by her no-show of the night before. Constance picked up the half-written letter, shook her head sadly, and rolled it into a taper. She leaned up to one of the oil lamps and set the paper alight. It burned and blackened in her hand before she tossed it into the unmade grate.
Standing on her bare feet, Constance stepped into the middle of the room, thrust out her hands, and bent her legs.
“Is she the friend?” the tall stranger whispered to Dinah, as the group walked up the stairs at Golden Square. They’d pushed through the green door and were heading up to “jujitsu,” though Constance still had no idea what this meant.
“Shh,” Dinah giggled to the stranger.
“She’s so old.”
Dinah batted the stranger and threw a nervous glance at Constance. “At last,” she cried. Constance pretended not to have heard.
The women walked into a large, first-floor room with sun-flooded windows and a long mirror. Constance’s heart dropped still further. She had hated dance classes as a child—pointless, inelegant posturing presided over by a succession of cruel-boned ancient Mesdames. It looked as though Dinah had decided to inflict that schoolgirl humiliation on them all once more.
“Ladies, line up, please.” Constance was startled out of her reverie. A sharp, aristocratic voice rang out across the studio.
A small woman appeared from the corner behind them. She was barely five foot tall and she wore a loose-fitting dress and no shoes. She bounced out in front of them like a dancer, all lithe power, physical poise, and unstated but obvious strength. “Don’t slouch!” she cried.
Constance and Dinah’s gang gathered in a line. A few more filed in behind them, all women, mostly young. Constance glanced in the big mirror and noticed that she was definitely the oldest, apart from the teacher.
“Welcome,” the teacher said. “My name is Edith Garrud. When we are in this room, in session, you may call me ‘sensei.’ Now, straighten your shoulders. You may have breasts but that is no reason not to walk tall.” She smiled surprisingly. “I know I am not tall, but I feel tall, I feel strong, and that starts with your posture. Who here is wearing a heeled boot or shoe?”
Most of the hands went up.
“Off! There is a bench there. In fact, all shoes off. If you can’t stand on your own two feet, what use are you in the battle? Eh? In the future, everyone must come in pumps.”
The women scattered to the walls to unlace their boots. Constance squeezed next to Dinah. “What is this?” she whispered.
But Dinah had bent her head away, toward the woman next to her, the stranger.
“Up!” Edith cried. Constance scrambled into position, unused to taking orders but strangely compelled by the pint-sized mistress of the studio.
“Jujitsu is about balance and harmony. With yourself, with your body, and with those around you. It is about using others’ strength against them, it is about exploiting their own power and using it to your own ends. It is about defense. You!” She thrust out her arm at Constance. “Here!”
Constance stepped forward.
“Spread your legs wider, put your bottom out. Don’t be shy. Shyness is the bane of our sex, shyness holds us back from debate, from politics, from equality. Thrust your bottom
out, bend your legs. That’s better, yes, yes. Well done. Now, attack me!”
Constance held the stance, then she bent and slowly pushed first one arm then the other in front of her. She held the pose and looked in the costume mirror of the hotel room. Not that old, she thought, though she couldn’t shake the sound of Dinah’s giggle. Was she embarrassing herself? Should the radical arm of the movement be for the young only, for the childless? She twisted around slowly on one foot, then thrust her right arm out in a fist, keeping the other fist tucked into her ribs.
Pleasure flowed through her despite her somber mood. She had stood in Edith’s jujitsu class like Saul on the road to Damascus, reborn. The pleasure of using her body, of stretching, of feeling its power, and the thought that with more instruction, and constant practice, she should never again fear physical attack, gave her hope that fear of force, that one sphere of male superiority she’d always bowed to, might become a thing of the past.
She flexed, twisted slowly, and breathed. Looked at herself once more in the mirror. She would not give in—to middle age, to the hotheads, to anyone. She would rescue Dinah from the rash radicals, she thought, as she described a wide, scything arc with her right hand, just as they were here to rescue Brandon and Trench. She would describe too a new way to fight the fight, she would take the young women with her, she would—
“What an earth are you doing?” Kell cried from the door.
She straightened immediately and turned to see her husband, with two astonished men behind him.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, smoothing down her skirts with as much grace as possible. “Do come in.”
“You will excuse my wife,” Kell muttered. “She is . . . unusual.” He gestured to the table. “Constance, may I introduce Sir Mansfield Cum—”
“Cunningham,” Cumming growled. He barely met her eye as he limped toward the table.
“Cunningham indeed, and this is—what shall I call you?”
“H2O.” The man stepped forward to take her hand. He brushed his lips across it in one well-practiced move. “Enchanté, et cetera. I must say, Kell, you didn’t warn me of your wife’s beauty.”