‘If you didn’t have something to solve, how would I have been able to get close to you?’
His hand was resting back on the draughtsman’s sheets on the desk, and she saw it then, the diagram just above his spread palm. It was an altarpiece, with the carvings sketched out, a Madonna in a heavy draping gown, holding a child. Beneath her hood, in the shadow of the fabric’s folds, she could see the beginnings of the cheeks, lips and eyes, pencil-drawn out, to be scored and gouged into the wood. And they were unmistakably the echoes of her own face. He had built her a firebird in a cage, and now he was carving her face into an altar.
Paralysis cloyed with a feverish need to escape. He was a madman. Never had she thought in all this war that the greatest danger to her would be found not in the clutches of a German soldier, not in the lair of a Russian spy ring, but in the cave of a madman. Like the wolf in the story he had come to her in disguise, clothed in the safety of her family . . . She glanced around her. The only window was behind his head, on the other side of the desk, patched over with blackout fabric. The door led onto the dining room.
Her voice wavered. ‘How do you know about the looting, and the hoarding? Did you steal the decrypts from the Park? Do you really work in Hut 3?’
‘I work in Hut 3,’ he said quietly. ‘But not as you know it.’
‘I think I do,’ she whispered.
His head snapped up. He looked at her and for the first time there was contrition in his blue eyes. The ardour and the chivalry had drained. He was nothing but a boy, a boy like Dickie playing with stories, pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
‘Are they Park men out there?’
They both heard the click of the door handle and Honey’s neck flung round. The base scraped slowly against the floorboards. At first she could only see the figure’s shoes, but it was enough. They were the same. He was who she thought he was. ‘No, not Park men,’ he said. ‘I’m the only one.’
‘You?’ she said.
‘Yes, Honey, me.’
He took a step closer and she let her eyes travel up his trousers. If she could have named the one person in the war untouched by the horrors, the one person uncorrupted, unhardened, the one person kept pure and hopeful and unscarred by its corrosion, it would have been him.
‘Rupert.’
‘Do you think they know she’s here?’ Felix asked over his shoulder.
‘Magpie thinks she was shooed off trying to steal vegetables from the garden. But if she saw anyone we might have no choice but to shoot her.’
‘She says she didn’t see any of their faces. Do they know she’s from the Park?’
He nodded. ‘But we should all get out as soon as we can. You have the truck, enough petrol?’
Honey stammered. ‘You . . . you stole the decrypts . . . you passed the art lists to those men . . . you were part of. . . this?’
‘Honey, be sensible.’ Rupert Findlay passed his hand through his hair, gluing back the long hank of greased golden fringe. ‘We’re none of us going to come out of this war any better than we went in. You loot what you can; the sooner you wise up to that the better.’
‘But . . . where did you meet them?’
‘Them out there?’ He grinned. ‘Hotchpotch. Cambridge, Oxford, London. Where else? Honey, there isn’t much time left, for Freddie and I. We’re relying on you. We’ve promised them a good haul of Russian gold. Now come on, you must have names. Did your father mention anyone else working at the palace? Anyone we can track down?’
‘You’re as mad as Felix.’
‘I know the Russians have that art stashed. I broke into that message key myself over a year ago, you idiot.’ His teeth clenched; he leered close. ‘They took it away on a train just before the siege. Now stop lying to us. Who did he work with at the palace? Come on, or I’ll break your jaw.’
‘Steady on, old boy.’
‘Poo,’ Honey gasped.
‘Don’t call me that fucking stupid nickname! Would you call a man like him Poo?’ She watched as Rupert Findlay’s pokey little eyes, so often friendly and excitable beneath his high forehead, shifted across to Felix. And then the absurdity of the jealousy hit her. Each wanting to be a little bit of the other. Rupert – darling Poo – ran his eyes up Felix’s strong frame, his spiny, strange, exotic, indefinable face. While Felix gazed at the weave in Rupert’s trousers, the starch on his non-utility, high-thread cotton collar, the smoothness of his little pale educated hands, hands kept for the mathematics and the chess; little hands that could have painted any picture they wanted to and had it exhibited in a gallery, peopled by the friends of his family, purchased for sale to hang on their walls, if that had been what he had wanted. War was a leveller: on the field they might have fought side by side, they might have shared a billy can of water or helped the other limp. Here, stuffed together in their bleak little underworld of black-market forgeries, scrabbling for spoils, the envy flared out of each of them until it rubbed raw, one against the other.
Honey’s voice dropped. ‘I don’t know quite what I’d call Felix.’ She looked again at the sordid amber box, then at the altarpiece sketches. The music ran in tinny patterns in her head, she couldn’t escape it. She squeezed her eyes and pictured the gleam in his. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?
‘Come on, Honey, when did the old pop last contact you? Was it last Christmas? Where did he holiday? Did he ever mention any names to you?’
Felix had relaxed his grip now. The pair of them stood next to one another, peering down at her, their elaborate catch, braced against the top of the Morrison shelter.
‘You idiots.’ She took a breath then leapt towards the table, stretching her arms to reach the window. She knocked over pots and crashed bowls of chemicals to the floor. Wet seeped onto her bare kneecaps but she kept going, scrambling. She felt Felix’s arms on her calves. He had a wiry strength, disguised through his tweeds and his pullovers, the strength of a man who hefted wood and sawed and hammered coffins. She saw his fists making the blue weals on Dickie’s face. And for what? For his horrid mawkish tricks, for his foolhardiness, his obsession and his greed. She kicked. She caught him on the mouth; she could feel it – a hard slice to her skin, his teeth biting down and wet saliva on her heel.
She beat with her legs again. This time she caught a jaw. She heard the breath knocked out of Rupert, and felt a crack on her ankle. But Felix’s other arm was quick and tough. She reached for the blackout curtain stapled to the window frame. As she tore it down, sending it smashing into the desk, her horror doubled for a second. There was a face on the other side of the window.
Chapter 22
It was only after a few frozen seconds that she made out the hat and the armband. The tin brim cleared into view, half a perfect green metal globe, and she saw beneath it the woman’s features, her brick-red lipstick beaconing out. Beauty is your Duty.
She was an ARP warden with a Women’s Voluntary Service ribbon wrapped round her sleeve. She knocked sharply on the windowpane. Honey, still kneeling on top of the table, felt Felix slide out of view beneath the desk. Rupert’s shadow receded beside the door. Crouched on the table, through the warped glass, she held the warden’s gaze for a moment. Could she pass her a message? What code was there for danger that could not be broken too quickly by the enemy standing by?
With tentative hands she reached for where the blackout blind had fallen. The woman tapped the glass again and Honey’s head shot up.
The warden made a rising gesture with her hands, flicking them. Her voice was muffled by the pane. Honey reached for the blind and began to lift it but the woman shook her head and tapped again. She shouted something Honey couldn’t make out. At the back of the room she could hear the two men breathing.
She slowly pulled up the sash and let the cold air rinse the atmosphere. Her skin felt hot and clammy. The breeze gripped her forearms and blasted through the neck of her dress.
‘What’s that you say?’ she stammered.
‘You’ll have to put the cu
rtain back up. But I’m afraid I have to fine you anyway. Come out and I’ll do the ticket.’
Honey looked hesitantly behind her. She could see one set of eyes in the dark, low down, Felix’s; the shine on them caught by the gaslight. He was still panting from the struggle. Rupert had squatted low beside the Morrison shelter, his round freckled face damp in panic. Honey wriggled across the desk to the open window and squeezed her legs through.
‘By Jove, I didn’t mean through the window. What’s wrong with the front door? Now what’s your name?’
Honey leaned back, strained her fingers across the desk to where her coat was lying, pulled sharply, then hopped down onto the grass, weathering the thump that rang through her ankle.
‘Can I see your identity card?’
Honey looked the girl square in the eye. ‘Thank you,’ she said, squeezing her arm, beneath the band. And then she ran.
She ran hard over the muddy frost and frozen grass. She ran over the cracking dirt and onto the path that led to the Park. She kept running, ignoring the Air Raid Warden’s cries, ignoring the stings in her soles and her ankles. She ran up to the gates. A figure stepped in front of her blocking the light from the military hut.
‘It’s Honey Deschamps, Hut 6,’ she stammered.
‘Papers,’ he called. And then again when she didn’t slow. ‘Papers. Stop there, calm down and get your papers out now.’ He fumbled at his waist and raised his revolver.
Her hands felt as if they were slipping through water. No matter where she touched she couldn’t get purchase on her coat. The fabric seemed to tear and shiver away from her. At length her hand found her pocket and plunged.
The papers weren’t there.
The Military Policeman shifted the gun from one hand to the other and stepped closer.
She tried the other pocket. Nothing. Then the inside ones.
‘Miss, calm down. I recognise you but I need to see your papers. I can’t let you in without.’
She heard a scuffling of the dirt behind her. ‘You dropped them. Goodness me, you’re a terror to keep up with.’
The beam of the Military Policeman’s torch struck the figure behind her and Honey turned, nursing dread, her hands at her stomach as though they would somehow protect her.
Felix’s face was washed with sweat and he was working hard to control his breathing. In his hand he held up a small packet of papers and bounced them against the air, twice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I haven’t opened them.’
‘I know you,’ the guard said. ‘What are you doing here this time of night? Your lot don’t work nights.’
‘Actually we do,’ said Felix smoothly. ‘But not for another half hour. I was returning the papers to the lady. She dropped them at the cinema. Very careless, you might say.’
The Military Policeman extended his arm and took the documents from Felix. He kept the torch beam high on his face. Felix held up his other hand as if surrendering. He shot a sidelong glance at Honey. Her stomach curdled.
The neck she had kissed and held, the ears, the dip in his chin, the hard line of his jaw; they were all monstrous. His jugular pulsed where before it had been tender. She wanted to lunge forward with her teeth bared, push him to the dirt. Instead she had to watch while he retrieved, hot and creased from his trouser pocket, his own papers, and passed them for inspection.
In the time it took for him to do so the pasty face of Rupert Findlay had appeared at the fringe of the torch beam, clammy as a wheel of cheese.
The policeman waved them all through. As Honey went to slip her identity card back into her coat she felt Felix’s hand deftly intercept her and his voice in her ear. ‘I think I’ll take care of those for now, thank you. And before you scream or do anything that will make us all into traitors think on the consequences, idiot. What you did, with me in that truck this afternoon. I could have it broadcast on the wireless stations. I could have it printed on flyers. I could spread it like wildfire round this Park. They hire good girls here, you know. That’s what I heard. And the ones who aren’t good . . . well, you know where they bundled your friend Moira.’
The words stunned her. She was only distracted from the horror of his face when the clock on top of the stable chimed half past eleven. Half an hour until her shift began.
Rupert pulled Felix’s sleeve. ‘How are we going to get her out of here?’ He cast his eyes in the direction they had walked from. The red caps of the Military Police had now faded into a torchlight blur.
Felix gripped Honey by the elbow and opened his mouth.
Suddenly voices sprang out of the trees. A man holding a banjo and a girl with two sprigs of holly in her hands skipped forward, laughing. Both were wearing carnival masks. Felix twisted his grip so that his arm was about Honey’s waist and laughed heartily to the couple. The man pinched the woman’s shoulder – she was a Wren by her uniform underneath – and they veered off towards the house.
‘Fun in the recreation club tonight. Christmas masquerade.’
Honey slithered from his grasp and ran for the house. But she hadn’t gone two steps when Rupert’s leg shot out to trip her up. Felix grabbed her forearm as she fell.
‘Don’t be an idiot, Honey,’ Felix said slowly. ‘Don’t be a fool. I’m not sure I quite meant to be so spiteful. I . . . I’m in shock, to be truthful. Honey, you have to trust me. If you find us a lead to contact him, we’ll find a way to get that stuff smuggled into Britain. And your father too. What’s safer for him? Out there on the battlefields of Russia? And the art, I mean, God only knows if wood and paint that old can survive without being properly looked after. We’re doing this not just for ourselves; but for you, for him, for the art.’
She looked at Rupert Findlay. He was pursing his lips, scowling, the way he always scowled thoughtfully when he asked about her mother.
‘You’re a child,’ she whispered to him. ‘How can you care about paintings, how can it matter, the fate of an old chair? If I knew where the Pushkin Palace art was I’d tell the world, so the people in the fields outside Leningrad could chop it up for firewood. By God, what does it matter what art there is, if we haven’t a world left?’
‘You don’t mean that, Honey,’ Felix muttered. ‘What world is left if we destroy what reminds us we are beautiful?’
‘Come on.’ Rupert’s tweed arm pulled her to his weedy body. ‘Just come to the Eight Bells with us. We could have your father on the road to Britain by midnight. I know commies, spies, people who can help.’
‘You’re not listening. He doesn’t exist.’
She looked around her for an escape route and her eyes fell on the bench that ran along the front of the lake. It was frosty and the sparkles of ice on the wooden seat caught prickles of moonlight. Further up at the mansion, shouts were coming from the windows of the recreation club and Christmas carols were pouring out. Over on the other side of the lake Hut 11 was rumbling, picking over the ciphers of the night.
She looked at the lake and imagined a tiny paper boat upon it, and in that paper boat, tiny fragile paper sailors, all listless, all giving their fate up to the stars; all sinkable when saturated, drowned. She wished, just for a second, that she could know what it was to be at sea, to fight a war with her body and not her mind.
Her mouth opened to scream but Rupert was quick as a weasel and had his tweed sleeve across her throat. ‘Come on,’ he said, beginning to haul her towards the feathers of ice at the lake edge.
‘What are you doing?’ said Felix.
Honey rammed her heel down onto Rupert’s toe but he dodged in a quickstep.
‘She’ll fall – you’ll slip. Come back.’
‘She’ll do as she’s bloody told.’ Rupert continued dragging her but he was reedy and weak and she slipped her arms free.
‘Felix, you won’t let him . . . you said . .
‘Cooperate, Honey. It’s your last chance.’
‘But I can’t cooperate. None of it was true, why won’t you listen to me?’
Felix t
ook a step towards her and she closed her eyes. Rupert had steadied himself and had her arms pinned to her waist again.
She screamed.
There was silence as the noise sliced into the blackout. Then, on the other side of the park a scream answered, followed by a loud guffaw. Snow was beginning to fall.
‘Get that away from my blouse!’ came a cry from the lawn in front of the house.
‘Help!’ Honey yelled.
‘Help me!’ the voice came back. ‘They’re going to bloody freeze me to death.’ The laughing rose.
‘They killed Dickie,’ she cried out.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Rupert shot. ‘Or you’ll wind up before the firing squad. We’ve got enough on you to put you before a tribunal for treason. Stealing decrypts, discussing codes.’
‘But I didn’t—’
‘And who are they going to trust more? A Cambridge boy, or a bloody woman typist?’
‘Felix.’
‘I’m sorry, Honey. It’s gone too far. We can’t be found out.’
Rupert was still grasping her, Felix ahead. Her only escape was the ice. She plunged down to the dirt, slipping Rupert’s arms, and ran for the lake. The glassy plate spread out, its frayed edges seeping into lace along the bank. The centre looked solid, but appearances could be deceptive. Its surface was battle-scratched from skates and sleds. She heard scrabbling behind, felt fingertips clutch for her coat and took the first step, her eyes closed.
She expected it to crack, but it held. She took another step. Her foot slid to the side and her arms flashed out to steady her.
‘Come back. Honey, it’s not safe.’ Felix’s voice came behind her, yards away.
She took another step, slipping again – the whole thing seemed made of oil – and carefully turned, but she couldn’t see their faces in the dark. Her strides had been big; she had gone further than she thought, and still she stood. But her weight was slight and she was only in cork shoes.
On the banks the black shadows of tree branches crisscrossed the grey surface of the night. Her arms became a balancing pole. She tried to think back to how Dickie held his arms when he did a grand jeté. Once she had learned to do a grand jeté too. That was something that was real. These were the things that had happened. There were things that were real from her childhood. He had not taken it all away, erased it all in forged amber.
The Amber Shadows Page 31