Happy Little Bluebirds

by Louise Levene

  The other, larger carrier bag contained a matched pair of silver foxes which she draped around Evelyn’s neck and secured by getting one of the animals to bite hard on the hip of its twin. Evelyn jerked her chin away as a diamond pin was attached to her lapel.

  ‘The jewels aren’t for keeps, obviously, but the furs will make a nice souvenir when it all ends in tears.’

  ‘Surely it would be better to blend into the background in my own things? I do have clothes, Miss Broome,’ said Evelyn. ‘I’ve brought a smart frock – two frocks.’

  Genista Broome ignored her protests and sat back in her seat to admire the effect of her handiwork.

  ‘Look –’ She gestured towards the women dashing along the rainy avenue with their gay umbrellas, dodging puddles in their high-heeled shoes. A fashionably dressed matron, clearly visible beneath a brightly lit awning, was waiting for the doorman to whistle up a taxi. A collar of white fur framed her face like the ruff on a surplice, a sky-blue felt hat shaped like a child’s paper boat breasted yellow waves of hair. Evelyn watched as a tall man standing behind her leaned down to plant a fond kiss on the side of her neck, nuzzling at the fur as he did so.

  ‘Think of all this as uniform, Mrs Murdoch; you can’t wear civvies here. We’re talking Wilshire Boulevard, not Woking. You could wear Albanian national dress and sport a lizard on a lead and no one would bat an eyelid once a major studio like Miracle had put you on the payroll. What they don’t do is dowdy – not on a woman, anyway. Men, Englishmen, can get away with anything: holey socks; elbow patches; beards even. The Yanks are always a pushover for donnish disarray, Evelyn Murdoch Esquire, however dishevelled, would have had a certain bohemian allure, but on an untidy woman it just looks downtrodden, neurotic even. Believe me, you would stop traffic in Beverly Hills dressed the way you are with an unpainted face. You would look like a mad person, or a communist, foreign; in short: noticeable, a spy. Precisely what HQ don’t want. Do you understand? Jolly good. By the way, do you have any training in self-defence? Pity. Talking of which, can you dance at all?’

  ‘I’ve waltzed …’ said Evelyn.

  ‘Ah. Not to worry.’ She scribbled ‘Rumba?’ on the back of a card.

  Evelyn slipped her new gloves from their cellophane bag. Red. Not a colour Silas would have chosen (‘Wear nothing which is of a glaring colour, or which is gay, glistening or showy; nothing apt to attract the eyes of bystanders’). She began pinching the unstretched leather over her knuckles. The surface was astonishingly smooth and she delayed tackling the second glove while her fingertips caressed the back of the first (‘Let your dress be cheap as well as plain; otherwise you do but trifle with God’).

  The driver had pulled up outside the limestone arches of the railway station.

  Genista Broome wore a special puzzled face while she frisked her pockets to see if she had forgotten anything – a pumpkin? Half a dozen white mice? – and eventually produced a small cream-coloured envelope – ‘Mrs Silas Murdoch. Box No. 541, London WC’ – which she tucked into Evelyn’s jacket pocket.

  ‘As Lefty doubtless explained, Kiss’s personal mail comes from London by air courier and anything addressed to you at his box number will be sent along with it – uncensored, obviously. Lucky you.’

  Her final trick was to whisk off Evelyn’s cloche and flip the lid from the hatbox where a wigwam of crimson felt was nesting in a drift of snowy tissue paper.

  ‘Get your hat on, Mrs Murdoch. It’s showtime.’

  Evelyn pinned the stupid thing to her head then got out of the car and peered dubiously at what she could see of her reflection in the wing mirror. She poked at the tilt of the hat.

  ‘It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s back to front.’

  They had fewer than thirty minutes to spare but Genista Broome showed no sense of urgency and steered Evelyn over to one of the news-stands and began whisking titles from the racks.

  ‘Magazines are a great deterrent.’

  When they finally reached the tunnel leading to their platform they found the orderly flow of passengers for the 20th Century Limited had been dammed by a large party of young girls who were clustered around the polished wooden desks, yapping at the ticket inspectors. Genista Broome’s beady eyes scanned the small crowd and spotted two men: one bald, the other young and flaxen-haired. The bald one raised his hat.

  ‘Damn!’

  She seized Evelyn’s arm and began talking very loudly in a peculiar, faintly Bostonised accent.

  ‘Be sure and enjoy Chicago, darling!’

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘Krauts at six o’clock,’ she hissed, turning up her coat collar.

  A fourth-form Evelyn had once been thrown on as understudy for the manservant in The Importance of Being Earnest and her companion’s keen amateur manner and her own complete failure to respond correctly to a single cue brought the cucumber sandwiches flooding back.

  The girl leaned in for a goodbye peck on the cheek.

  ‘Act natural, for heaven’s sake!’

  Evelyn ducked her head and tried to get a look at the men from beneath her new red hat. Was she being followed? Should there be a change of plan? Was there a Plan B to change to? And what was HQ’s telephone number? But before she could ask a single question the smiling girl had planted another powdery farewell on her cheek and with a parting shot – ‘Enjoy it while it lasts!’ – she was gone.

  Chapter 2

  Back at the office, Genista Broome drew a cup of tea from the fast-cooling urn, reached for one of her telephones and put in a request for a trunk call to Los Angeles. Her colleague, Gregory Fenn, was still at his desk but the other tables were deserted.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘I expect they probably have homes to go to. I’ve still got the last post to sort. Besides, this way I avoid the crush on the subway – always a bit of a bind with a gammy leg. How was your Mrs Murdoch?’

  ‘She isn’t my Mrs Murdoch.’

  ‘Afraid she is, old girl. We all drew lots and you lost.’

  ‘Well that doesn’t make her mine. It would have been so much better if you’d gone to fetch her.’

  ‘Why? You’re the one who knows the ropes. You’ve been out there, after all.’

  ‘Only for five minutes.’ Genista Broome frowned and changed the subject. ‘I wish you could have seen her. This is never ever going to work. I don’t care how many languages she speaks. Postal censorship? By all means. Code-breaking? Very possibly. Malibu Mata Hari? Never in a million years. She’ll be back in New York before you can say “sensible shoes”. And she’ll never pass muster with those Hollywood snobs – called me “Miss Broome”, if you can believe it.’

  Gregory Fenn palmed a smile.

  ‘Oh dear. How galling for you. No sense having a title if people don’t use it. We must get you a lapel pin – or a dog collar. Such a jolly name, too. And yours for life, of course, unless you marry a royal duke or take the veil. I mean, even if you married the dustman you’d still be Lady Genista Bloggs, wouldn’t you? If you went into parliament would you be “the Honourable Lady Lady”? What do they call Nancy Astor?’

  ‘All sorts of things.’

  ‘Anyway, was that your only objection to our polyglot pal? Not everyone has Debrett’s as their bedtime reading, you know. Was she nice to know? What was she wearing?’

  Lady Genista had never learned to spot when she was being taken for a ride and Gregory Fenn chewed on another smile as she began a gleeful commentary on the new signing’s toilette.

  ‘Stood out like a nun at Newmarket: sixteen-ounce herringbone tweed: tan Oxfords; home-cut hair and a dead hat – at least I think it was a hat – and a suitcase the size of a shoe box. She claims to have two frocks in it. Probably both brown.’

  ‘Oh dear. But nice and discreet at least?’

  ‘Not especially. She was showing off at the pier until I shut her up – actually thanked the customs-shed man in Polish.’

  ‘Didn’t know you
knew any Polish.’

  ‘Only “thank you”. Our governess made us: Russian, Slovene, Armenian, Bulgarian. Manners cost nothing, apparently.’

  ‘Any of the chums about when you saw her off?’

  Lady Genista bit her lip.

  ‘That chap from the German legation was at the barrier seeing off one of his catamites.’

  ‘Oh dear. Were you seen, do you think?’

  ‘I spotted him in time,’ she lied, ‘and my hair’s quite different now.’

  ‘But if he did see you then the Murdoch woman’s cover is blown before she even starts.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t. We did a whole flowers and chocolates act on the platform and I changed my voice. Besides they wouldn’t be expecting a woman – always supposing they were expecting anybody – and Langer’s people have never been especially efficient. It did actually say “Esquire” on the Mouzinho’s manifest, which was a help.’

  A courier arrived with the evening’s dispatches and, as Fenn turned away to sign for them, Lady Genista slid a biscuit from the box concealed in her desk drawer – offer them round and you got through a packet a day.

  Fenn picked up the mailbag and limped across the office to the wall of pigeonholes behind his colleague’s desk.

  ‘Has Colonel Peyton been given the glad tidings?’

  ‘HP doesn’t know a blind thing about it,’ she snapped, ‘because HP, typically, has far bigger fish to fry and buzzed off to Bermuda before London’s cable had even been decoded. He’s setting up that new mail-interception unit.’

  Fenn rested his walking stick against the side of her desk and took the relevant flimsy from its folder: SUBJECT DOUBLEPLUS ABLE LINGUIST STOP WIDOW DENTIST STOP NO FAMILY TIES STOP DISCREET RELIABLE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT ZERO NONSENSE STOP.

  ‘Zero nonsense,’ sighed Fenn. ‘Oh dear. What fun it all sounds. You ought to put in a report about spotting Langer just now, cover your tracks, or you might find yourself getting blamed for the whole fiasco. Whose fault is it, in actual fact?’

  ‘Do you remember HP getting cosy with that film-producer person at the Fourth of July beano we all had to go to? Zandor Kiss.’

  ‘Is that a name you made up?’

  ‘Oh do keep up. Kiss: large white moustache; Hungarian; did that Florence Nightingale thing Churchill liked so much?’ Her colleague still looked blank. ‘You do remember.’

  Fenn shook his head. ‘Probably when I was away at the vet’s having the knee mended.’

  ‘Well anyway, he and HP got chatting about the need to win over the Yanks and the next thing you know the Colonel decided they should join forces. He spent a week or so out West spreading the good word (this was all before Bermuda) and next thing you know Mr Kiss – who appears to have friends in extraordinarily high places – persuaded the chaps upstairs to post Colonel Peyton to Los Angeles on a more permanent footing so that he could hover on the fringes and generally run his eye down the fifth column. It then dawns on Kiss that Saucy doesn’t speak a word of German so he sets about supplying him with a multilingual sidekick.

  ‘HP said we had to humour him but I think he secretly hoped that red tape in London would strangle the whole thing at birth, and we all thought we’d heard the last of it when up pops old Lefty Bannister who had been buttonholed by Kiss over drinks at Claridge’s and told to jolly well get a move on. Lefty then insists on taking the entire matter in hand, conducting the interviews himself and generally riding roughshod. Within forty-eight hours the post had been filled and “Evelyn Murdoch” was tucked up on a ten-day boat from Lisbon all arranged at top speed at the Very Highest Level, money no object. When I suggested they might like to save a few dollars by sending him out steerage, Kiss said it would be “bad for studio presteesh” and insisted on a first-class cabin and deluxe drawing rooms for both trains. I thought Kiss might cut up rough when he eventually found out that “E. J. Murdoch” was a she-Evelyn rather than a he-Evelyn, but when I rang Los Angeles last Friday to break the news all he said was, “Ah yes! I remember! Fluent Hungarian.”’

  She glanced again at Evelyn’s paperwork. ‘Conversational Hungarian, it says here – not that she has any conversation: “Leave me alone. We have not been introduced” is probably about the size of it. You’d think a linguist would at least be talkative – hardly any point otherwise.’

  ‘What do Hungarians talk about, I wonder?’ mused Fenn ‘“My goulash has been struck by lightning”? Are there a lot of Hungarians in California?’

  ‘Not really. Just sentiment on Kiss’s part, I reckon.’ Genista Broome squinted crossly at the application form. ‘“Schools attended” gave nothing away sex-wise – some Nonconformist dump – but you’d have thought “Marital status: war widow” would have been some kind of clue. We fired off a rocket to London last week as soon as we realised a monumental blunder had been made, but they stuck to their guns – as you can see from that snooty cable – and Lefty said he couldn’t see the difficulty, silly old fool.’

  ‘Is there a difficulty?’

  ‘Of course there’s a ruddy difficulty. Our lucky linguist was due to rough it with Henry in that lovely Hollywood flat – chaps mucking in together.’

  Gregory Fenn manoeuvred painfully into a chair, interest rekindled by Her Ladyship’s obvious annoyance. Henry, eh? Lovely flat, was it? How did she know it was lovely? Was the departmental gossip true?

  ‘Oh dear. Oh yes, a shared bedroom. I think I saw that movie,’ he said. ‘Clark Gable. Perhaps they can hang a sheet down the middle? Has Mr Kiss made suitable provision?’

  ‘Didn’t turn a hair. Said his secretary will sort something out and it vazzn’t a problem. Nothing ever is a problem for those film people. They’d get a herd of buffalo if we asked nicely.’ The lipsticked lips pouted. ‘I wouldn’t have minded if they’d sorted out someone with proper experience.’

  ‘Cheer up, she’ll probably be out on her ear in a fortnight if HP doesn’t get back from Bermuda pretty sharpish – there’s not much point her being there with nobody to translate for. She’ll be completely surplus to requirements.’

  ‘Oh I daresay Kiss could find her something to do. Overmanning is rife out there. Chap I know got a cushy little job with one of the studios just telling them what kind of armour to put on. I suppose if all else fails we can always drag her back east. The Library bods might take her: they’re not particularly particular.’

  ‘Oh I say, have a heart. I wouldn’t wish the British Library of Information on my worst enemy. “Cruel and unusual punishment”, I should call it. HP always says it’s an elephants’ graveyard for academic deadbeats and incompetents. They do nothing whatsoever except write memoranda and make tea. No one in the outside world even knows they exist. Do you know how many telephone calls they received the day war broke out? Zero.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll just send her home.’

  ‘They can hardly send her across the pond a second time,’ reasoned Fenn. ‘She only made it by the skin of her teeth as it was. Perhaps they’ll take her on here? All those languages would come in very handy and there’s careless talk of a reshuffle. Jolly well hope it’s true. I’m hoping for promotion to Deputy Press Liaison in the FO’s news department. The cove in charge can’t manage the whole show alone, his liver won’t stand it. Liaison. Doesn’t it sound marvellous?’

  Gregory Fenn drained his teacup and smiled at his colleague in happy anticipation of this glamorous new role.

  ‘I do feel a bit sorry for her in a way.’ Lady Genista’s tone did not convince. ‘There she was, minding her own business in Postal Censorship, merrily scissoring out anything verboten, and then this happens – but it serves her right for learning all those languages. Eight! Including Yiddish, of all things.’ Lady Genista’s overpainted lower lip stretched unpleasantly tight and the tendons of her neck fanned out above her collar as she exaggerated the capital ‘Y’. ‘You’d have thought Special Ops might have shown an interest? Perhaps her accents aren’t up to snuff?’

  ‘Ticklish blig
hters, accents,’ agreed Fenn, ‘although the real giveaway is no accent at all. Especially in Germany, apparently: Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians. They can hardly understand each other half the time.’

  He took another look at the file on the desktop. ‘Japanese? Nobody, nobody, speaks Japanese. I even wonder if they do really – the Japanese, I mean. Have you tried? I was sent on a course last winter, depths of Cornwall. Hopeless.’ He turned the page. ‘French, German, Italian …’

  ‘Mother half Swiss – which can’t have hurt. Father was very eager (according to Lefty’s notes). Quite a lot of it was done by correspondence but school hols frequently spent on the Continent.’

  ‘Mis-spent?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘Still … “on the Continent” …’ a wistful smile‘… doesn’t sound especially Nonconformist.’

  ‘Methodist.’ Genista Broome indicated the relevant box on the form. ‘I say, you don’t suppose Lefty Bannister’s a Methodist, do you?’

  ‘God no. Drinks like a fish. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. Some sort of Wesleyan old-boy network? It’s the only thing that makes any sense.’

  ‘Methodists? Don’t be absurd,’ said Fenn. He removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. Like all of his gestures, it had the deliberate, artificial look of a Shavian stage direction or Humphrey Bogart registering deep thought. ‘It may all be for the best, you know. The trouble with giving a man that kind of job is that chaps create difficulties, much harder to work a cover story. These America First types can get very white-feathery – “Why aren’t you fighting for your King and country, young man?”. A man on the loose in Hollywood might have made matters very awkward unless he had a glass eye or a club foot – or a smashed knee.’ He looked ruefully down at his flannels. ‘I’ve caught one of our esteemed colleagues aping my limp before now in unusually hawkish company – Christian Matrons for War Relief, all that malarkey.’