When I leave Dr Rosenstein, Ingrams is waiting for me and leads me through the garden. It’s one of those May mornings that are almost too perfect to be real: fine weather, unusually warm, but the garden full of golden-green light and the colour of the blossom and flowers. I feel a pang as we pass through the side door and through the dining room into the main hall and stairs, but I know it’s best to rest and reflect, as they put it at Woodlands, after my session. At the top we turn right, to the south wing of the house. ‘This is where the lady of the manor would have her rooms,’ I tell Ingrams. ‘Though in a very hot summer, she might move to the north wing.’
‘You know more than I do about the history of the house.’ Ingrams’s accent is that of south London.
‘I like looking at the old documents in the library.’ They let me read the old books and family papers. It’s a harmless enough occupation.
‘I like hearing you talk about it.’ Ingrams is a kindly sort.
‘You see the way the floor level rises?’ I ask him. ‘That’s because this part of the house is Queen Anne whereas the original building is older, Elizabethan.’
‘So old.’ Ingrams looks impressed. ‘You told me the house was shelled during the Civil War?’
‘That’s why this part was rebuilt. It could have been worse. One son was a Roundhead. There’s no portrait of him, probably because a lot of the Roundheads were Puritans and disliked vanity. The other was a Cavalier – that’s his portrait.’ I nod at a young man dripping feathers and velvet, ‘The family saved their property by dividing their loyalties.’ That’s the conclusion I’ve reached from reading the archive materials.
Ingrams frowns. ‘Sounds a bit devious. As though they couldn’t make up their mind what they believed in.’
We’ve reached my door. ‘It saved them all ending up on the wrong side, the house completely lost to them.’
‘All the same, brother against brother. That’s harsh.’
‘Very harsh. Especially for the mother.’
‘The mother?’
‘I’m just imagining how she might have felt,’ I say. But it’s not just imagination. Why do I know that a mother would feel such a split so intensely?
‘You’d be a Cavalier, Maud,’ Ingrams says, probably trying to keep my spirits up. ‘Fancy clothes. Nice jewellery and ringlets.’
I certainly used to love those things. Evening dresses – where did I find them in the war? Nightclubs. An officer or two flirting tenderly with me: Lydia Bennet in the blackout.
We’ve reached my bedroom. ‘Must have been hard for that Civil War family.’ Ingrams is still frowning. I like the way he reflects on things I tell him.
‘They made a promise to themselves to do what was best for the family.’
‘Dangerous things, promises,’ Ingrams says as he unlocks the door.
Especially if you break them. All kinds of promises are made in wartime: promises to be true to a man or a woman, to fight for your country, to keep secrets.
I had to sign all kinds of papers in 1943, even before they told me I had been accepted into the service. I can’t describe the details of my work to Dr Rosenstein. She will have to inject me or place those cathodes back on me to make me tell her.
Even from the beginning they made it clear it was all hush-hush.
4
London, October 1943
‘It goes without saying that this is all confidential. You know what you signed,’ the man at the interview told Maud. This was the second time she’d come to the almost airless room in a modern office block on Baker Street. On the first occasion she’d had a very general chat with a man and a woman, unsure what it was they were really trying to get out of her. She wondered if she’d ever see Robert again, half-thankful that he wasn’t here this afternoon.
‘What’s in your head could be your contribution to the war effort: small things that come together,’ today’s interviewer went on. ‘Things you knew about particular places in the past, things you know now, your powers of observation, of persuasion. Of being able to melt into the background at some points and then take control at others. It’s only been in the last year or so that we’ve started training women.’
‘Oh.’ Maud couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say.
‘Do you think you’d be interested in work like this?’ the man asked in Serbo-Croat.
‘I’ve certainly never done anything like it before.’ Her answer came quite naturally in the same language. ‘It sounds interesting.’
‘We’ve heard reports that you’re good at observation.’
She nodded.
‘And you have parents in this country? Including a Croat mother?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And your mother doesn’t feel any divided loyalties? With Croatia becoming a puppet state of the Germans?’
‘My mother regards Hitler as a huge pain.’
He looked down at the file in front of him, expressionless. She’d probably said the wrong thing, made her mother sound frivolous, herself too by association. She wished she could read what was written about her. ‘Not all Croats favoured the unification with the Serbs after the Great War, did they? Some would have preferred to remain with the Austrians or Hungarians. Your mother wasn’t one of them?’
Maud noticed that they were continuing in Serbo-Croat. ‘She was happy enough when we lived in Kosovo Province in Serbia. I remember her inviting the Serbian engineers’ wives to play cards and tennis at the cottage we lived in.’ They’d called it a cottage, and with its red roof and white walls it had a homely appearance, but it had actually been a spacious enough house, with a large garden. She felt a pang at the thought of the cottage. Who lived there now? The Italians had invaded Kosovo first, but now they’d gone. Was some Nazi living in their old home, ill-treating the mine workers and standing out on the terrace at night, admiring the stars and smelling the scent of the last roses of the year, roses Maud’s father had planted?
He scribbled something down. ‘We carried out some research into the mine and those who worked there.’
So that’s how they’d traced her? Had he come looking for her in the nightclub? How had he known she’d be there?
He put the cap on his fountain pen. ‘You were schooled over here, Miss Knight, once you’d reached twelve?’
‘Yes. My father finished at the mine and then took a job in Belgrade until the war started. Then they moved back here.’
‘To . . . Shropshire?’ He was scanning one of the sheets. Perhaps any doubts about Mama were outweighed by her having roots in such a solidly rural county. Maud’s lips gave an involuntary curl. The man in front of her – he hadn’t given her a name – looked at her enquiringly. She told him what she was thinking.
He looked at her emotionlessly. ‘Do you like country life yourself, Miss Knight?’
She hesitated, reluctant to sound like a slattern. ‘It’s relaxing to be in the country and just put on some breeches and boots and wear a scarf round my hair.’
‘You like the active life?’
‘I enjoy walking in the countryside with my parents. Canoeing off the Dalmatian coast. In Shropshire we go out shooting. Sometimes we ride. I like these things, too.’ She’d always enjoyed motion, movement. But there were other times she liked being completely still, dead still, Mama called it, apparently in her own world. She told the man this too, for the purposes of honesty.
He moved on to asking her about her friends. This was an area where she felt vulnerable. There weren’t many of them, not other women. She told him this quite openly. ‘They seemed to move into war work and do useful things. I don’t seem to have as much in common with them now.’
‘You didn’t volunteer for a uniformed job yourself?’
‘I couldn’t quite think what I could do.’
‘Really? A girl as clever and physically fit as yourself?’
How to explain that she’d felt almost nauseous at the prospect of returning to living and working in close proximity
to other women again? School had been bad enough. Had this man or others in his team spoken to her old schoolmates and teachers? They seemed very thorough.
‘May I ask you something?’ she said. He sat a little straighter, eyebrows raised, but nodded at her to continue.
‘How did you know to send R—, your colleague to me?’
He was silent for so long she thought he was going to ignore the question. ‘When we wanted to recruit French agents we asked people to send in photographs they’d taken of their holidays in France. Some of the terrain they’d caught in their snapshots was useful. We asked several of the women to come in and talk to us. We were particularly interested in females because they can blend more easily into a civilian background. French is a reasonably common language and people of all backgrounds speak it fluently.’ He paused.
‘But Serbo-Croat isn’t usual at all,’ she said. She remembered how she’d whispered to herself in the language at school because there was nobody else other than her mother who could speak it.
‘No.’ He paused as though to let her know that what he was telling her was more than he would ordinarily tell. ‘We examined all the families of British expatriates working in Yugoslavia over the last few years in various areas and industries, finding out how old their children were, where they lived and anything else that was of interest.’ He looked down at his notepad. ‘There weren’t that many names to look at. Because of the nature of . . . the work, we were originally thinking of men, not women.’ He folded his arms, making it clear that he would tell her no more. ‘We’d actually been interested in the Kosovo mines for some years, reckoning that they might be resources that would eventually catch Hitler’s eye.’
‘Would I be providing information about the mining industry?’ She saw herself sitting with an important Yugoslavian delegate, acting as an interpreter or helping with reports on the capacity lost to the Germans. But why all these interviews and strange questions if this were the case?
‘If we take this further you’ll find out more.’ He stood up and the interview was over. She walked out, still wondering what had prompted Robert to hunt her out in that nightclub.
She hadn’t heard anything for another week. The next telegram simply told her that she should make her way by train to a small Surrey town. She would be able to claim expenses and her employer had been informed that she would be absent from work.
‘We’d parachute you into Yugoslavia.’ Robert Havers smiled at her startled expression. ‘If we go ahead with this operation, that is.’
This interview was being held in a draughty house on the outskirts of a Surrey market town. She hadn’t seen anyone else waiting to be interviewed. Robert was more solicitous towards her on this occasion, insisting on taking her coat for her. As she handed it over she caught the woody scent of him, very faint, but there all the same. For a moment she felt a return of the giddy feeling. It was simply nerves about this interview, she told herself, nothing to do with this man.
‘What is the operation?’ Maud rubbed her hands together, wishing she’d kept her gloves on but taken her hat off. Its brim cast a shadow over her left eye and Robert had sat himself slightly to that side across the desk, making it hard to read his expression. Perhaps this was what he had intended. She pushed her chair so it was slanted an inch to the left. Surprise passed briefly across his face.
‘You’d go into northern Yugoslavia.’
Into a war zone? On active service? ‘I . . .’ She put a hand to her throat. ‘But . . . How?’
His neutral expression warmed. The change made her feel confused. ‘Can’t really tell you all the details at the moment.’
Questions bubbled in her mind. ‘Would I have to pretend to be Yugoslav?’ She was clutching the edge of her chair. Robert leaned back in his own seat, seemingly relaxed. Maud herself felt even more nervous; the air in the room seemed somehow denser.
He shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t be that kind of agent. You’d be too easily caught out. Yugoslavia’s not like France, with a huge civilian population trying to live an apparently normal life under occupation into which you could blend. If you were selected, you’d wear uniform and work alongside the Partisan groups who’ve started gaining large amounts of Croat territory and need our support.’
She wasn’t sure whether wearing uniform would make the work more or less dangerous. ‘Partisans?’ she asked. ‘That’s Tito’s army?’
She’d read a little about the Partisan leader in the newspapers.
‘Yes. He’s the best opposition to the Germans at the moment. But the Germans wouldn’t necessarily be your only enemy in Croatia.’ He paused. ‘You’ve heard of the Ustaše?’
She thought. ‘Croat fascists?’
‘That’s right. With their own militias who share some of the views of their German masters, but are apparently so brutal that even the Nazis complain about them. And then there are the other groups: the Chetniks, in particular, the remnants of the pre-invasion Royal Yugoslav officers. They’re mainly Serbs, as Serbia dominated pre-war Yugoslavia, and mostly oppose the German invasion, too. Their leader is a man called Mihailović.’ He looked at her sharply as he said the name. She didn’t recognise it and said nothing. ‘We used to favour the Chetniks, supplied them, carried out missions to meet them. Their war aims seemed to fit our own better than the Communists’.’ He paused for a moment.
‘But as I said, it seems the Partisans are apparently the ones now killing the most Germans.’ Again he looked at her, as though to see how she’d responded to the bit about killing. ‘The Partisans and Chetniks hate one another – it’s pretty much an extension of the old Croat and Serb antipathy. If you work for us you won’t necessarily know who your enemy is until he’s shooting you. Do you think you could manage that kind of danger and uncertainty, Miss Knight?’ The words were formal, but he was leaning forward, looking almost eagerly at her.
She considered her answer. People sometimes accused her of poring over simple questions and being too literal, but she had the feeling this man valued honesty. ‘I think so.’
‘And do you think you could help the Partisans kill Germans?’
Kill another sentient being? She didn’t even like swatting flies, preferring to open windows and bat them out if at all possible.
‘You’re giving it careful thought. That’s good.’ Robert leaned back, looking approving. She felt flustered, yet flattered that she seemed to have pleased him.
‘You might have to kill people yourself, though that wouldn’t be your prime role. We’d be asking you mainly to pass on information between us and the Partisans about parachute drops and landings.’
How was it that she, Maud, who dealt with appointments and prescriptions, was having this conversation about parachute drops and landings?
‘We want to provide them with weapons and other supplies, and encourage them to help us pick up downed Allied airmen and POWs who’ve escaped from camps in Slovenia.’
‘Oh.’ She scrabbled around for something less inane to say in response but failed.
‘You don’t need to tell me your answer now,’ he said. ‘But you should know that if we pursue your application, there’ll be training courses at various locations.’
Had she actually applied for this work? Hadn’t they, whoever they were exactly, come looking for her?
‘At least two or three courses.’
Perhaps he thought her surprise arose from the variety of training.
‘Different sites specialise in different kinds of things,’ he told her. ‘General fitness. Orientation. Survival skills. Wireless. Surveillance. There’s so much to learn. We’ll tell you more if we proceed.’ Robert stood. ‘I need to remind you again that you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. Even if we don’t take things further, it may be that we have to . . . deposit you somewhere for a few months.’
Deposit her?
‘For security. Just until what I’ve told you becomes a bit out of date.’
‘I really hope I’m suc
cessful then, and don’t have to be deposited.’
He twinkled at her before switching back almost instantly into his more formal manner. ‘Thank you for coming in, Miss Knight.’ He stood up. ‘The driver will drop you back at the railway station.’
5
Late May 1947
In preparation for my next session with Dr Rosenstein I have written notes in the black notebook. I’m trying to remind myself of how it felt to be interviewed by Robert and the others, and selected for the Yugoslavian operation. I still worry about letting out too much information and say as much as I go into her consulting room.
‘Don’t worry, Maud, it’s the people rather than the operational details that we are focusing on for now. Getting back to Robert Havers, the interviews with him pushed you through a range of emotions?’ Dr Rosenstein shuffles the papers on her desk. ‘But you’re not sure how much of that was to do with the nature of the work and how much of it was to do with Robert Havers himself.’
‘It was hard to untangle the personal from the professional,’ I tell her.
‘From what you’ve told me, it seems the two of you went through a series of pushes and pulls.’
I look puzzled.
‘He turned cool and professional, pushing you away, and then became warmer and more personal, pulling you towards him. Keeping you wondering what his next move would be?’
‘At first I thought his manner was part of the interview process. You needed to be adaptable, to handle sudden changes and reversals to do our work. But I don’t know.’ I put a hand to my forehead. ‘I couldn’t tell what he was feeling.’
She puts down her papers and flattens the insides of her wrists against the desk, looking at me without saying anything. ‘And the switches in his manner continued when you went over to Cairo to finish training?’
‘Yes. There were more of us by then, so I thought it might be different. But then he brought in the cake.’
The Lines We Leave Behind Page 3