The Amber Shadows

by Lucy Ribchester

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘You watch too many of those films, and read too many of those bloody novels.’

  ‘Felix, stop it.’ He heard the knife in her voice and ceased his step.

  He looked at his shoes, their scuffed surface capped now with icy mud, and wandered over to a stile and began beating his toes against the wood.

  ‘This morning, I was so pleased to see you,’ she said. ‘And now . . .’

  He didn’t turn to look at her. ‘I can’t help you, Honey, unless I know what it is you’re doing. This isn’t one of your Hitchcocks. We can’t just escape together, magically knowing we’re on the same side.’

  ‘They’re not always on the same side, are they?’

  He spun. ‘Dammit, Honey, if you don’t trust me say so. What did she say to you in there?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Well then, I’d better find the platform for Oxford.’

  He began to walk away. She noticed the dip in his neck, the slope of his shoulders. He looked younger, a lot younger, from behind. She thought of what he had said on the train about his family, about finding his mother and searing off his finger with the incendiary and she felt a surge of something towards him – not guilt, not love, but some cloud of feeling, some need to be at his side, that made her pick up her step.

  ‘Felix.’

  He stopped walking.

  She picked through the dirt until she had almost caught him. She took a great sigh, in and out, and reached forward to the back of his coat where his shoulderblades rose. She touched the fabric lightly. ‘You said you worked in Hut 3. So you know Reuben MacCrae?’

  He nodded and turned but didn’t meet her eye. ‘Yes. And Steve Trindle and Robin Hass and the rest. Do you want me to name them all?’

  ‘No,’ she cried out. ‘No, don’t name a single one of them. Don’t trust me, Felix. We can’t . . . we can’t trust anyone.’ Her hands came to her face but she found the tears wouldn’t flow.

  He stood watching her for a second, and though her hands remained in front of her face, she felt she imagined a certain coldness from him. She imagined he was looking at her the way she had looked at Moira, back at the hospital. But when she took her palms down she saw nothing but fondness.

  ‘When everyone is keeping secrets, all the time, all around you,’ she said, her voice shaking, ‘how do you know what’s a safe secret and what is a dangerous secret?’

  ‘Sometimes, Honey, you are left with nothing but your own wits.’ He took a breath. ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘It’s – I can’t, Felix.’

  ‘Whatever is happening won’t go away until you tell someone. I can help you. Honey, look at me. I can help you.’ He took both her hands in his, but held her at arm’s length. She was shivering now, despite her coat, despite the mid-morning sun peeping out from behind the clouds, and she felt the same sense of release and relief pushing at her that had pushed at her inside Tiver’s study. It was comforting to tell. It would be comforting to tell him everything, to take half the burden away. She would see the secrets, like little puffs on the tails of clouds, drifting away from her mouth, all the way into the sky, very high up into the world where they would detach from her and take on a life of their own and she wouldn’t have all the responsibility for them any more.

  Very quietly she said, ‘Have you heard of The Firebird?’

  ‘The ballet?’

  They were in there, the words. She had all of them gathered in a tumult, in a swirl behind her lips and they wanted to come out. It was beyond her will to stop them now. She would tell him everything. She would do it now, quickly, before she changed her mind. ‘Do you think that every story has a truth, a definite version that is right?’

  Felix continued to look steadily at her. He was waiting for her to talk. She turned her face away and felt his hand slowly brushing the sleeve of her coat.

  ‘Oh, my brother,’ she said, covering her eyes. She took her hands down again and he was still staring.

  She gave a great sigh. ‘Once, I found a book of Russian fairytales in the school library. It was an old book, I remember finding it stuffed in beside lots of mystery novels. I’ve always liked old things, they seem more important than new ones, don’t they?’

  Felix was patient. Honey took a leafless branch from a nearby shrub and began to rub its length between her fingers.

  ‘The story of the firebird was the first one I read. When Dickie began to dance, I realised then that I’d heard it before. Prince Ivan goes on a quest to find the firebird who has been thieving his father’s golden apples. He saddles his horse and heads into the woods and he meets a wolf who tells him where to find the bird, but he also tells him that he must not touch its golden cage, or else the Tsar who owns it will awake and catch him in the theft. Of course Ivan, being just like Dickie, ignores this, he’s so in love with the glint of the cage, he wants that too.’

  Felix’s brow was creased but he was listening.

  ‘Sure enough the Tsar wakes and captures him, and as punishment he sends him on a quest to steal a golden horse. Again, the wolf warns him, this time not to touch the golden horse’s golden bridle, but again he can’t help himself. That in turn wakes up the next Tsar, who, as punishment, sends him on a final quest . . . to steal a princess. But the prince falls in love with the princess and doesn’t care to give her up to the second Tsar. And at this part I get muddled and I can’t remember how he gets out of the pickle. I think he fakes his own death.’

  Felix nodded. ‘You have a good memory for tales. But I can’t see what this has to do with—’

  She interrupted him. ‘When I told that story to Dickie, he was angry. Not confused, but spitting hot with rage. Oh, he was just a boy, I know, but it was frightening. “What a stupid thing to say. Everyone knows the story of the firebird is the way Stravinsky tells it.” He played me the record. He made me sit in the nursery while he played it on the gramophone, and I just remember wanting to cry, because I felt trapped. But he insisted. He insisted. “This is the story. This is the right version. This is the only version.” I don’t know why I’d forgotten about that day, but I had, until yesterday.

  ‘In Dickie’s version – Stravinsky’s version – the prince comes upon the firebird in his father’s garden. “Listen,” he said. “This is the part when the prince dances round the garden. Listen, hear, the instruments each represent magic. Listen.” And I thought I was stupid because I could hear orchestra, nothing but a tangle of orchestra. But I wanted to please him because he was older, he must know better, mustn’t he? He must know the truth.

  ‘So the prince catches the firebird in the garden. And he steals her feather as a pledge that if he is ever in trouble, she will come to help him. When he finds himself in an enchanted castle, surrounded by imprisoned maidens, captured by an evil Tsar, he has to summon the firebird to save them all. She comes to rescue them and she makes all the evil spirits dance until they fall dead.’ Honey sighed.

  Felix was frowning. ‘You think that you are the firebird, that someone is summoning you . . . or Dickie faked his death . . . I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that at all. It’s just . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘He was so excited to correct me, he was so certain of the truth. He danced the steps himself, hysterical little flourishes he’d learned in his ballet classes.

  “‘Stop it,” I said. I can see myself, looking away, afraid of him, afraid of the energy he had. But he didn’t stop. He was manic. He danced as if he would explode. He had a child’s determination. “Ivan steals the egg that has the soul of the sorcerer. And the sorcerer drops dead.” And he fell then. I remember watching him fall, and listening to him crack his shins on the ground. He believed in the fairytale so much, it exhausted him; he was living it through as he told it. That’s how much power a story had over him.’

  She opened her eyes. Felix had pulled her closer; her head was resting on his clavicle, her cheek against the knot of his tie. ‘What
made you think of The Firebird now?’ he whispered.

  ‘I . . .’ She clutched the thorny branch in her hands. The words were still there, they were all still in there, the secret waiting to come out. She steadied her breathing.

  But at the last second she couldn’t say it. ‘I just want to know: if you believe a story, does that mean it’s true?’

  ‘Honey, I can’t help you unless I know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘What if. . . what if the truth is somewhere in between two stories?’ She looked up and saw his expression. He was staring ahead. He had lost patience. She had lost him. ‘Felix, I can’t tell you. I can’t. You have to trust me. Felix, someone is sending me things, strange things, and I don’t know why, or who.’

  He reached both of his arms around her and wrapped her close to his chest. She rested her head and felt his heart beat through the light shirt, through the stripes of the old school tie.

  There were no trains back to Bletchley for over two hours, so they caught a lift in a farmer’s wagon, bumping along beside crates of apples and cabbages in a bitter wind. Honey whistled to the driver to let her out as they passed Wavendon. She took Felix’s grubby hand to help her down, and watched him pull his coat in around him against the wind as the wagon left. When they were in the distance she saw him bend and slyly steal an apple from a crate. The truck rattled out of sight and the lightness she had felt beside him washed away. She felt leaden as she turned towards the high street.

  She found the Station Inn Moira had named and savoured the warmth inside the thick doors. Her eyes adapted to the dark as she approached the counter. A short woman with hair bound tightly in a turban was wiping beer taps.

  ‘I’m looking for someone who lives here.’

  ‘No one lives here, love, they’re all passing through.’ She slapped her cloth on the bar and began rinsing through the taps.

  ‘Is there a Polish boy?’

  ‘Can’t help you with nationalities.’

  ‘Piotr . . . something.’

  ‘Can’t help you with first names.’

  ‘I’d know him if I saw him.’

  The woman leaned her arms on the counter. ‘Are you on official business?’

  Honey was wrong-footed by the coolness of the woman’s gaze. Her eyes were large and assessing. She roved them up and down Honey’s clothes as she began to place beer mats at sparing intervals along the counter.

  Honey shook her head. ‘No, I met him at a dance.’

  This brought a smile. ‘Listen, I don’t want any nonsense around here. I don’t want any funny business on my property. You know what I mean. War or not, it’s not right. And especially when you got people to keep an eye on . . . foreigners.’ She said the word slowly. ‘You have to be careful to keep yourself clean when folk are suspicious of you already.’ She finished with the beer mats and leaned on the counter again. ‘Look, love, if you wait here he’s sure to be down later.’

  ‘What, just wait here?’ Honey caught the panic in her voice as she looked around the small saloon. The place was dark, heavy-beamed, with a loveless atmosphere. Although the walls were bunker-thick, they made the air close rather than welcoming warm. Their paint was old and chipped and they were coated in horse brasses and farming tools all pinned at odd angles. It was not a place that whispered cosy inn.

  The woman sighed. ‘I’ll put a note under his door. Who shall I say?’

  ‘He won’t remember my name.’

  ‘I’m trying to help you.’

  Honey sighed. ‘I’ll write it.’ She accepted the torn sheet from the ledger book the landlady passed her. With the pen in her hand, however, her mind went blank, and the absurdity of the situation rose before her. In haste she scribbled, ‘Hello, it’s Honey Deschamps, friend of Moira Draper’s. I wondered if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ She scored it out. ‘Dear Piotr, we met at the airmen’s dance at Wavendon a few nights ago. Moira Draper introduced us.’ She asked for another piece of paper. Why was it so hard to navigate the social codes of introduction?

  Formalities, indirect requests: we are all cipher clerks and cryptanalysts, she thought, as she wrote in a fierce, determined hand: ‘Piotr, sorry to use your first name but it’s urgent. Will you meet me in the bar downstairs? I’ll be waiting. Honey Deschamps – from the airmen’s dance.’

  She looked up and the woman was watching her, amused. She folded the paper once and handed it over. The woman disappeared and Honey heard the tramp of footsteps on the stairs behind the bar. She sat down at one of the heavy tables and picked at the edges of a tile on the wall, a brown one with a pastoral scene painted on it.

  When the landlady came back down there were two sets of footsteps. The face of the boy Honey had seen the other evening materialised from the gloom. In the dark, with his hair hastily combed and his jumper on back to front, he looked terribly young. They were all so young, these children that had left their homes, their countries.

  She stood and stuck her hand forward. He looked at it warily. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘Moira Draper.’

  He gave a single nod, then looked down at his wristwatch.

  ‘Can I buy you a sherry?’ she asked.

  He crossed the small space of flagstones between them and shook her hand softly. There was still caution in his eyes.

  ‘You see, the thing is, I didn’t say thank you to you properly for helping me when I tripped.’

  He almost snorted. Then bit by bit his smile evened out. ‘I think I’d like to have a walk, you know. It’s a sunny day, I saw from the window. It’s nice of you to come by.’

  The landlady watched as he took his coat from a hook at the bottom of the stairs. Honey opened the door for them both, and the woman went back to wiping the tables and didn’t ask anything more.

  ‘They came to visit me the night after the dance.’

  They were on the edge of a village green. The wind pricked and both their eyes had watered over. Honey wiped hers with the back of her hand. ‘Who came?’

  He shrugged. ‘Park men. Secret service men. I don’t know. But they told me it’s best not to talk to you girls. Best if I stick to my own work at Wavendon.’ As soon as he’d spoken he looked away as if the mention of work at all was already too much.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about work.’

  ‘You said it was urgent.’

  ‘Is there a spot we can go to?’ Honey was shivering in her patched summer coat. He looked impatiently down the high street for a few seconds, then said, ‘Come on, this is the best place for quiet.’

  He led her into the yard of the nearby church and they sat under a yew tree. She didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer what made him choose the spot. She wondered if he prayed there. He wore a cross at his throat. It wasn’t a Catholic church, but then it was wartime. How many people had he left behind and did he know what had happened to them? These were the questions that burned the edges of Honey’s mouth but she could not ask them.

  She unclipped the gas mask box. He started, then frowned.

  Hastily she pulled out the scraps of paper where Moira had made the rubbings of the codes, and the scribbles of equations. He took one look at the pencil scrapings and his eyes widened.

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  He stood up.

  She leapt to her feet. ‘These aren’t from the Park. I haven’t stolen them. It’s not the work there. It’s just . . . Moira said because you were a mathematician. She didn’t tell me what you did, just that you might be able to help.’

  He shook his head. ‘I . . . those men. If I am to continue here, I don’t want to . . . I’ve seen what happens to people. There is a prison they put them into in London and I’m claustrophobic and . . . you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘They’re not from the Park. They’re not Enigma.’

  He thrust his finger to his lips and hissed at her. ‘You don’t say that word out loud. Not here, not anywhere. If you care about your country—’

  �
�I care about my father.’ He was still standing but the flare in his cheeks, the animated sting in his eyes, diluted a little. ‘I don’t know who is sending me these, but I think my father might be trapped in another country. I think . . . these are from him.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  She took a breath and sighed. And then the lie came pouring out. Or the truth, or the halfway in between, or whatever the story was that she had believed. Had. She didn’t tell him about Dickie. She didn’t tell him about Figley’s Book of Ciphers or Captain Tiver or her other suspicion that the whole thing could still be a trick. She only told him about her father and the exile, Stravinsky and the compositions, the wild, unfathomable compositions, and how they had led him to the palaces, to guard Russia’s treasures. And somehow telling the story made a little burnished spark in her chest and she felt as if she had brought Dickie back to life just a little, for those few moments. Even so as she spoke the details seemed to disconnect a notch and she saw the gaps between the facts; facts Dickie had told her that had sparked across those divides with his enthusiasm when they came from his lips. She felt herself slipping back to the tale Tiver had told; it was a betrayal of Dickie, and yet she couldn’t help it. Only the ciphers and the amber would tell the truth.

  Piotr listened quietly. He didn’t say anything but when she finished, he took the papers out of her hands. ‘You must burn these as soon as you’re finished. You don’t play around with cryptanalysis. Even talking about it is dangerous.’

  ‘I know.’ She thought of the girl, Betty Somebody, disciplined for coding letters to her sweetheart.

  Piotr kept the papers close to his body. The tops of them flapped in the breeze. She noticed a small scar on the side of his neck below his ear, a tiny little scar, the classic kind, like a winding sailor’s rope with ladder bars across it, that could have been there for years, or months, or just weeks. Why was she asking a boy she had never really met to help her crack ciphers she couldn’t even tell to her friends? But what choice did she have other than to trust Moira? People’s lives now were won and lost on trust, and it was something that couldn’t be quantified by the amount of time you had known someone; it couldn’t be unravelled, or deciphered, or made plain. There was no code of confidence to crack inside every person, no Enigma machine that scrambled integrity, which could be unpicked by knowing the right key. Trust lay in the murky ponds out of reach of anything but animal instinct.