The Amber Shadows

by Lucy Ribchester

  For my family

  ‘War is very like a bad dream in which familiar people appear in terrible and unlikely disguises.’

  Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

  Prologue

  ‘Damned engines. The way they shudder when they’re pulling to a halt. Sets one’s teeth on edge.’ The man in the navy blue suit moves his hands down the serge on his thighs, pulling at the trouser creases. Though it is cold in the carriage, and they are the only two in this compartment, it is also airless. Horsehair stuffing pokes through cracks in the leather seats, making his legs itch. When his trousers are straight he fluffs the collar of his shirt.

  Outside the train window the light is starting to fade. A tiny slash of fire signals the end of the sun; the rest of the sky is uniform navy. Where are they? Kent? Have they been rerouted? Have they left Buckinghamshire yet? They must be hours still from London, the fields are too pretty, the air is still too full of pollen.

  Opposite him, the other man in the carriage stirs. His suit is cream linen, his hair blond; his voice when he speaks comes out slow and lazy. ‘You know Stravinsky spent months, perhaps years of his childhood on trains. They say it influenced his music. The rhythms.’

  There is a pause of seconds. The man in navy pouts his lips; he wants to think of something to say to this, he wants to reply, but he doesn’t know if the other wants a reply. Then fate presents him with a new outlet.

  ‘You’ve dropped your book.’ He reaches to the floor.

  ‘How clumsy of me.’ The blond sticks out his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Figley’s Book of Ciphers. Ha. Not planning on fighting Fritz with that, are you?’

  ‘Gracious, no.’ The blond man laughs. ‘Gift from my father when I was a boy. I always take it on train journeys, Flick through it every now and then. Passes the time.’

  ‘I see. Family bringing you to these parts?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. Relative of mine working at some godawful Foreign Office outpost in the middle of nowhere. A manor house full of bored typists. I can’t imagine anything more torturous. You?’

  ‘I . . . work in Bletchley village. It’s small, sort of. . .’

  ‘Yes, I know the one. That’s where she works. Funny. Small world, isn’t it? Are you from there?’

  ‘No. London.’

  ‘Same.’

  Silence folds back in. The blond man closes his eyes. When he opens them again, just a peep, the man in navy looks sharply down and fidgets with the things in his pockets. ‘Suppose,’ he says, still fidgeting, ‘suppose we’re going . . . to be here all night. Night in the sidings. Mother’s roast’ll go to ruin. If there was only some way of tele-gramming while on the train. Suppose . . . at this rate . . . Do you know this happened last time I took the train? Got re-railed and ended up in Maidstone. What do you suppose causes these wretched delays?’

  The blond shrugs. ‘War.’ He wishes this navy-suited woollen agitator would shut up. He is putting him off his daydreams. And they are good daydreams. They are dance dreams. In his head, he is not in linen but silk stockings -thick, defiant, bully-for-you rationing – and a taupe velvet doublet with slashes of tawny silk. He is doing fouettes, foot cocked nice and tight on thigh, spin, one, two . . . seven, he is Basil from Don Quixote — no, he is Stravinsky’s Prince Ivan – and the orchestra is blisteringly loud.

  But the man in navy must talk. Strangers must talk to other strangers, when they meet like this, on trains, in the middle of a war. ‘Stravinsky, you say . . .’ the navy man gabbles. ‘Now there’s a funny thing. I haven’t heard his music in a long time, but you know, you remind me of someone I once knew. I’d only have been a boy myself. But he liked Stravinsky too. He was a ballet boy.’

  Now the blond looks up, takes in the other’s face: the gristly cheeks, the eyes blue, sunken back and a little darting. Does he know this man? He tries to remember who got in the carriage first. Had he been there already? But no, perhaps they got on at the same time. ‘I don’t think so, old chap. Don’t recognise you.’

  ‘No, I’m sure. I do remember. I used to work in a theatre in the West End. You’re from a musical family, aren’t you? You have a very lovely . . .’ He blushes beet, and that’s when his voice stops and he leans back in his carriage seat again. ‘Very well.’ He stares for a second longer. ‘Probably a different boy.’

  ‘Probably.’

  He takes from his navy breast pocket a silver case. ‘Probably been sent to the front by now for all I know. Cigarette?’

  The blond man sits up cautiously now, for the question is coming. He can taste it in the air.

  Two men, of fighting age, neither in uniform.

  What can the possibilities be?

  He shakes his head softly at the cigarette case. ‘No thank you.’

  The train creaks, settling in for the night. Steam fizzes into the dusk.

  But the man in navy doesn’t ask about what he does for the war effort. Instead he says, ‘I say, how do you know that fact about Stravinsky, and the trains? That’s an odd fact to know.’

  The blond man hesitates. It is a story he has not told for a very long time, and he does not know himself quite why he said that about Stravinsky — unless it was because he wanted to tell. And if these encounters we have with strangers — these days, these hours now with nothing to lose -are not for telling the story of the person we want to be, what are they for? What time might we have left now to tell that tale or be that person?

  The blond man takes a breath. He watches his daydreams fly out of the train window and dance into the coal steam and the sidings clouds, and he begins to talk.

  EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

  BLETCHLEY, I 942

  Chapter 1

  The air was December cold, and Honey Deschamps turned the collar of her coat up as she left the Ritzy’s soggy warmth. If she hadn’t been quite so self-conscious, sitting between the courting couple in RAF and WAAF uniforms and the old smoker with the phlegmy cough, she’d have stayed for a third viewing. Partly because she had paid for a ticket, and merry-go-rounding it at the flicks was a way of staying out of the cold. Partly to put off thinking about work the next day. But mainly to reassure herself just one more time that Joan Fontaine was right to stay with Cary Grant and he wasn’t trying to murder her after all. Because the first time around Honey hadn’t been convinced.

  Mr Hitchcock had ended it all so abruptly, on the edge of that cliff. That happy little twist, after all that suspicion Grant wasn’t a bad fellow after all. Honey thought that really, really if Mr Hitchcock had played the movie out for just another ten minutes, if you could have only seen the two merry lovers after The End credit, after they’d rounded the corner of that sea-top road and were on their way back to town, just when Joan Fontaine really was satisfied that Cary Grant wasn’t about to kill her, that is when Honey thought he would have made his murderous move. Perhaps taken out a pistol, or simply shoved her over the edge.

  She had kept a closer eye on him the second time around but even then she wasn’t convinced. She thought that if it had been her in Joan Fontaine’s position, she might have just played along with him for a while longer, let him drive back down that winding road, perhaps even all the way home. But she certainly wouldn’t have trusted him. She’d have made her plans to get out at the earliest possible chance.

  Oh, it was only a silly film. But then, she thought, as she crossed the street – just missing the bumper of a car that had sped up with its slatted blackout lights dipped – that was what happened to you now: that was what had been happening a lot recently. The most important thing in the world was going on all around and all she could do was fixate on a silly film. She dodged her way past a line of Home Guard soldiers and her mind looped again
in tangles over whether Fontaine had been right or wrong to stay with him. And what it probably was, at the end of the day, it was probably actually if she thought about it, the fault of the writer. They had over-salted the sauce, made Cary Grant too villainous for cheap effect. There, it had backfired. They should have had Gregory Peck instead. She was not convinced of Cary Grant’s innocence, and Joan Fontaine couldn’t be that much of a fool.

  She ducked into the grocer’s on the corner of the high street, fumbled for the coupons Mrs Steadman had given her, bought bread and bacon for the household, and started off down the little Bletchley lane towards her billet. The town was quiet. There was a neat winter stillness in the air, a dogged calm that turned a blind eye to war anxiety, and lit its candles and drew its blackouts and sent warm smells fogging out of red-brick chimneys no matter how much rationing of food was going on.

  Honey’s eyes had grown more and more accustomed to the dark over the past few years. Was it the carrots? Mrs Steadman certainly seemed to think so, boiling them into pulp, mashing them into soups, baking them into cakes. She could see her own ice-breath as she strode, and it was curiously pleasing. It reminded her of childhood and Christmas, snow and pantomimes. She remembered the poster she had seen for the Park’s Christmas revue, and like a magic trick it dropped the curtain on her happiness, the frosty pleasure of the walk, the finicky problems of Joan Fontaine.

  Tomorrow she was back on day shift. She would be back at the Typex machine, trying to block out the tower of paper that fluttered taller the more she churned through it, filtering out footsteps and noises, curt calls from one room to another, the shunt of the wood pulley dragging messages between huts, tweed legs, ladies’ chatter.

  She sighed. Not all days were frantic, not all tweed-wearers were curt.

  She had passed the dusty terracotta brickworkers’ houses and was almost at the front gate to the cottage. The wobbling weft of the thatched roof was swimming out of the dark. Ridiculous billet. Like something Lewis Carroll would have imagined. It was called Yew Tree Cottage and was set in a clutch of three ancient buildings huddled together like witches, all wattle and daub, probably tradesmen’s dwellings when built, but swelled through time into antique curiosities. How an odd couple like the Steadmans had ended up in such a place she had no idea.

  She was so deep in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t see the figure leaning against the blacked-out lamppost in front of the gate. In fact she didn’t see him until he coughed and said ‘Excuse me’ in a soft voice. And even then it was not his face but the sense of another face much lower down that Honey’s gaze was drawn to. Two bold wet eyes and a worried expression gazed at her from either side of a thin pointing nose.

  ‘Dear me.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss Deschamps, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ The man took a step closer and Honey saw in the glaze of cloudy moonlight that he was dressed in an overcoat, with a frayed trilby shadowing his brow. At his feet, on the end of a long ribbon, was a greyhound, sniffing the air in short bursts as if tasting the smoke from nearby chimneys.

  The first thought that came flooding in was that they were hauling her in for an emergency midnight shift. It would just be the night for it to happen, when her brain was foggy from too long at the Ritzy. The second was that there was a problem with Dickie. Every time some stranger called her name or startled her, she assumed it must be some hot water or pickle her brother had got into. And thirdly at the back of her mind were warnings about fifth columnists and perverts. But this man had a dog, and villains didn’t usually have greyhounds.

  ‘What a darling thing.’ She dropped to her haunches, pulled her gloves off and ran her fingers into the silk behind the dog’s ears. It turned its worried eyes on her, stuck its nose close and began sniffing her breath.

  ‘Nijinksy.’ The man smiled and tugged gently on the ribbon. ‘He is something of a tart, you know.’

  ‘Nijinsky.’ She almost snorted. She gave a little shivering laugh. ‘I never heard that for a dog. But it’s perfect. Have you ever seen the real one?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. With the Ballets Russes. Could only have been two or three at the time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Look, I’m sorry I startled you.’ The man reached under the belt of his coat, ran his hand up his torso and pulled out a brown paper package. Even in the gloom she saw the faded red of an airmail stamp and the black crown of the censor smearing its top surface.

  ‘You are Honey Deschamps? I mean Miss Deschamps?’ ‘You’re an odd sort of postman. Is that for me?’ He didn’t seem in a hurry to hand it over.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘I just rather thought it might be urgent, and was finishing a shift anyway.’

  He must have seen the confusion on her face. ‘It came to our hut, by mistake. You know that messenger girl. The one with the . . . I’m terribly sorry, I should have introduced myself. It’s just I’ve seen you around the Park so very much I sort of feel I know you a little already, isn’t that strange?’ He spoke quickly, his eyes flicking to and fro. He still hadn’t yet introduced himself, but she clocked him right then and there for who he was.

  It would just be like one of the Hut 3 boys to call his greyhound Nijinsky. Very well, at least he wasn’t Cary Grant come to murder her.

  She drew in a breath and extended her hand for the package. This time he gave it to her. It was too dark to see anything properly but the government stamps, a faint address in a flourishing hand and the traces of a postmark in the top corner. It was heavier than she expected for something the size of a bar of shortbread, and there was a faint scent about it. Or perhaps that was coming off him. Most likely it was broken soap samples from her stepfather’s factory.

  His mission complete, the man looked lost. ‘I got your billet address from Winman, in 6. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Ah.’ Winman was Head of her hut.

  ‘It’s a funny little cottage, that.’ He peered past her down the garden path. The dog had taken an interest in the gate, sniffing it thoroughly with a low whine.

  ‘Rabbits.’ She pointed backwards with her thumb. ‘They keep them in the hutch.’

  ‘Ah. Lean times.’

  ‘Well, not really with a hutch full of rabbits. And they breed like . . .’

  ‘Badgers?’

  ‘Exactly. Badgers. I was going to say bears.’ The silence was awkward. ‘But rabbit pie does get a little dull after a while. Do you hunt with him?’

  ‘No, he belonged to the man in the farm where I was first billeted. He didn’t want him. Nijinksy, wait.’ The dog was pulling towards the edge of the garden fence, roused by the rabbity scent.

  ‘I bet he didn’t give him that name either.’

  The man smiled. His face was blurred by the dark, but he looked handsome underneath the shadows of that hat. The muscles of his face were exaggerated, clinging to his cheekbones like gristle. Honey thought for a tiny second, with the cold and the late hour and the act of kindness, that she might invite him for a cup of cocoa. But as soon as the thought hit her she batted it away. Ridiculous. Hut 3 man, steady on, Deschamps, she told herself. Smelly tweed most likely lurking beneath the coat. A chessman’s brain, a mathematician? Worse, a classicist? Added to that Mrs Steadman would most likely hound him back down the street as far as the Eight Bells, holding her broom at a threatening angle.

  ‘Well, thank you very much for coming out of your way. For a parcel. I mean, I could quite have got it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ He touched his frayed hat brim, and tugged on the ribbon of the dog, and they both walked away in the direction of the brickworkers’ cottages. She watched the funny dainty jog of the greyhound’s hindquarters making double-step with the man. What an odd couple they were. It was as his pace quickened into its natural rhythm that it struck Honey she had seen him before. There was something in his walk. But she couldn’t think where. It wasn’t the Park, she was certain. But Bletchley was tiny. It could have been the station or
the butcher’s or outside the Eight Bells.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried out. ‘Excuse me, wait, will you?’ A short trot in her corkboard heels and she had closed the distance between them. The parcel hung heavy in her left hand while she reached into her pocket with the right. She felt her fingers touch brown paper, then grease. With her fingernail she split off a tiny sliver of bacon rind. The dog had smelled it already and perked up. Honey dropped it into his mouth. The ridges of his teeth snagged on her fingers but he took it gently, swallowing it with a snap.

  From the short run, her cheeks felt hot against the cold air. ‘Can’t resist a hound. My grandfather used to race them. Bigger ones, mind.’

  The man was smiling, a fond, tight smile. First he looked at Honey, then at the dog. He suddenly extended his hand. ‘Felix, by the way. Felix Plaidstow.’

  She accepted his clutch. His palm was textured and dry, dead cold. ‘Honey Deschamps. Well, you know that.’ She wiggled the parcel. As they touched she became aware of the bacon grease still on her fingers. He really had very handsome eyes, the sort of eyes she imagined Russian men might have, cut like gems. Blue perhaps. The thought made her begin to witter. ‘Of course you know my name, from the parcel. Or you wouldn’t have sought me out, which was extremely nice of you. I’m excited to see what’s inside. Must be better than rations. Early Christmas present, I don’t doubt.’

  She let go. For a second his hand stayed poised where she had left it. Then it faded back into the gloom by his side.

  ‘I really had best be home, I just wanted to give the bacon to the dog. It was extremely, awfully nice of you. People do such small kindnesses these days, I mean, if one was to say the war had a silver—’ She finally managed to rein in her tongue. He was staring at her with an unreadable, tiltheaded amusement.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, brightly like an idiot. ‘Thank you again.’