Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel

by Samantha Kate

  I must find out who he was dining with. Porterfield19 will tell me if I play my cards right.

  Sunday, 18th February

  A lovely day with R in Bath. Our relationship – if that is an appropriate description – appears to have pulled back from the brink. We caught the early train, went for a long walk around the city, then drank rather too much wine at lunch. We steered clear of talking about anything serious, but still had plenty to say. It was just on a few, fleeting occasions I got the sense that he wanted to tell me something. His eyes would go suddenly serious, his face blank – before he pulled himself back. They were momentary – perhaps I imagined them? Or perhaps he, as much as I, wants to paper over any cracks, to hold on to what we have without looking forwards or back?

  I didn’t mention the vetting and he doesn’t seem to have noticed any unusual enquiries about him. When it’s like this, there is no other person I would rather spend time with.

  Wednesday, 21st February

  007 came up, hoping to grab Bill for lunch, but he was cloistered with the OM. ‘Come on, James,’ I said, sweeping my sandwich into the drawer. ‘I’ve got no plans. You can have lunch with me instead.’ I had my coat and hat on before he could demur. We walked to a small restaurant in Pimlico, and no sooner had he sat down than he ordered a double vodka and a bottle of 1953 Château Talbot. ‘You’ll join me, Penny?’ When I shook my head, he shrugged. ‘Oh well, I’ll have to drink it all myself. Can’t let good wine go to waste.’

  ‘How are you doing, James? Really?’ I looked into those normally clear grey-blue eyes and could see nothing but a faint mistiness between the lattice of red capillaries. ‘To tell you the truth, Penny, it’s pretty bloody. I’ve been doing everything I can to try to forget it, but all I can think of is her excited expression when she talked about our future together. You know, for the very first time, I was prepared to give all this up for her. I’d have tried not to, of course, but if it came to it, and I had a straight choice, I would have chosen Tracy. I love the job, of course I do, but one can’t keep on living like a cowboy for ever. I looked into her lifeless eyes and saw a whole damn funeral procession of people I’ve killed, starting with that Japanese cipher expert in New York, then the Norwegian double agent, half a handful of Mr Big’s20 hoodlums in Harlem and Florida and a score more, including the big man himself, when the boat blew up in Jamaica, right on through to Blofeld’s apes on top of that bloody mountain. I’ve lost count, and that’s only the ones I’ve had a direct hand in. How about Vesper Lynd?21 Or Jill Masterton?22 Or Shaun Campbell?23 I as surely signed his death warrant as shot him myself. What’s the difference between me killing them and them killing Tracy? It’s all part of the same game.’

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say that would make him feel better? That he’s on the side of the angels and they deserved what they got? Where did that leave Tracy? That he was making the world a safer place for the rest of us? That he’d saved many times the number of lives that he’d taken? That we needed and valued and loved him? I let him rant on.

  ‘Then I get back to this bloody Cuba stuff – the Americans meddling in other people’s business. How many men died at the Bay of Pigs? How many more will go in Mongoose? It’s anybody’s guess. Maybe they’re right; God knows I’m no fan of the Reds, but it’s not always that cut and dried. I remember when Castro was our friend and we had an agent there who was one of his men and we couldn’t get enough of him. Now, suddenly, he’s supping with the Devil. It’s this bloody line between good and evil that seems to be getting a damn sight too fuzzy these days.’

  He called the waiter over to order a double brandy. ‘One for you, Penny?’ ‘No thank you,’ I replied, ‘and James, do you really think it’s wise?’ He took my hand and looked into my eyes. ‘Thank you, Penny. I know I can always rely on you to have my better interests at heart, but I’m quite all right. Now, tell me, what’s happening in your life?’

  In an attempt to try to cheer him up, I gave him a blow-by-near-blow account of my confrontation with Troop. He began to look a little less miserable and even squeezed out a chuckle at my description of Troop’s face when I described the nature of my relationship with R. ‘Lucky man, this R. Do you love him?’ he asked, at the end. ‘Because if you do, either give all this up and marry him – or let him go. Don’t try to combine love and this kind of work. It can only end in tears.’ He picked up the wine bottle and poured the last few drops into his glass. ‘Another bottle?’

  Saturday, 24th February

  I went in to work this morning, on the pretence of catching up with the minutes of the last Cuba Group meeting. In truth, I was almost done anyway and after less than an hour had finished the typing and distributed copies to everyone on the circulation list. Then I wandered down to Records on the first floor, and after half an hour of chat with Alfred Brewis – the sole male presence in a stable normally full of neighing fillies – said I would be happy to hold the fort while he popped out for a sandwich. Saturdays are inevitably quiet and he didn’t need much persuading. As soon as he was gone, I dived straight into the stacks and located Sydney Cotton’s file. It was thick – and, as I discovered, he had led an extraordinary life. Born in Australia, he came to England and enlisted in the Royal Naval Air Service at the outbreak of the First War. He flew Channel patrols and invented a new, weather-proof flying suit before being reprimanded for insubordination and relieved of his command. The Australian Flying Corps rejected him on the basis of his record of having a ‘difficult temperament’ and deemed him ‘unsuitable for employment in uniformed service’. Instead, he went into private business, in the new field of colour photography, and it was as a photographer that he became involved in the RAF – flying reconnaissance for British intelligence illicitly across occupied Europe in the early years of the Second War.

  My eye was caught by the page detailing his work for Naval Intelligence in 1939/40. I’m fairly certain that Pa was involved in intelligence, as so many of his fellow Navy reservists were. It’s the only logical explanation for his strangely anodyne service record. That was what was making my investigations so difficult. Cotton’s acquaintance with Pa seemed to confirm this – there was no other mention in his file of naval work.

  I was patting the file back into place when I felt someone approaching behind me. It was Dorothy Fields,24 in her trademark little cherry-topped hat, working as usual. ‘Why, Jane, I didn’t expect to see you down here,’ she said. ‘Slumming it, are you?’ I think I regained my composure in time, although it was hard to be sure; Dorothy’s sharp eyes miss little.

  Wednesday, 28th February

  There’s something queer afoot in the Office. I don’t know what it is yet, but the OM has been unusually gruff without apparent reason. He shuts himself in his office for hours at a time with piles of old files. He has been to Downing Street twice in the last week and once to King Charles Street [the Foreign Office]. Then, yesterday, he called each of the section heads up to see him, one by one. Only Dorothy Fields stayed with him throughout.

  Bill seems as much at a loss over what is going on as I am. When I asked him, he just shook his head and said, ‘Our’s not to reason why …’ The second half of that phrase is dreadfully apt in this office.

  Having exhausted this avenue of enquiry, I descended to the powder room. The Vine25 at six in the evening usually has a line on Office events long before they become official. But here, too, I found bewilderment, though most of the personal secretaries of section heads had also felt the tension in the air. ‘CS [Chief of Soviet Section] has been buried under Red Star files for most of the day,’ said Pamela, adjusting her beret in front of the mirror. ‘He looked almost guilty when I brought in the signals.’

  ‘CME [Chief of Middle East] has been on the scrambler to Beirut ever since he got back from seeing M,’ added Janet d’Auvergne beside her. ‘He told me to go home early, that he would finish up.’

  ‘CSA [Chief of Southern Africa] left the Office after his interview and I haven�
�t seen him since,’ said Amber. ‘But then we all know he does that from time to time.’

  ‘There’s been a run on files over the last couple of days, that’s for sure,’ added a pretty young brunette from Records. ‘We’ve been running up and down the stairs like nobody’s business.’

  ‘CNE [Chief of Northern Europe] looks like he’s been hit on the head with a ten-ton weight,’ said Raine. ‘I’m really worried about him. Jane, you must know what’s going on. Is it really bad?’

  I was forced to admit that I was as much in the dark as they were. At which point the door opened to admit Dorothy. We all fell silent as she went into a cubicle. When she came out, Janet nudged me, but I just continued washing my hands. If anyone knows, it’s Dorothy, but despite using the same facilities, she’s not part of the Powder Vine and she wouldn’t appreciate being asked by any one of us.

  I’ve only just managed to talk to Porterfield about Sydney Cotton’s dining companion. I was cancelling M’s lunch reservation and asked P whether I could talk to him about something confidentially. He told me to telephone back when he was off duty. So this evening, at half past six, I spoke to him. He did indeed remember Commander Cotton, of course. He had dined on the evening of the 15th with another tall man. ‘I hadn’t seen him before, Miss M,’ he told me. ‘But he was very much the gentleman. Well-cut suit, green eyes, fair hair brushed back. Definitely a military man. I’m just trying to recall his name. Something double-barrelled. A Commander too. They ate Beef Wellington and drank two bottles of our best claret – a ’53 Château Calon-Ségur. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the Australian who consumed the bulk of it. Yes, that’s it. A Commander Derring-Jones. I knew I’d remember it.’ At that, P seemed to realise what he’d been saying and begged me not to mention his indiscretion. ‘It’s just that I feel I know you, Miss M. We’ve spoken so often now, I feel as if I do. And I would do anything for the Admiral.’ I thanked him profusely and gave him my word.

  Now I need to get back into Records to try to find Derring-Jones.

  March

  To adapt the well-known saying, ‘You can take the girl out of Africa, but you can never take Africa out of the girl.’ That definitely held true for my aunt, and also for my mother, though perhaps less so. The stories they told of their childhood in Kenya were tightly woven into the fabric of my own childhood. I would ask to hear them again and again: ‘Aunt Jane, tell me about the time Grampa shot the wounded warthog,’ or ‘… the time you got lost in the bush and were found by the Masai.’ To a great degree, when I was younger, at least, I felt as though I had lived those same experiences, alongside my mother and aunt.

  I can picture them now, sitting around our kitchen table in Cambridge, talking about the family farm near Maguga, their eyes shining a little brighter, their laughs louder and longer. I remember my aunt once trying to describe to me what Africa meant to her: the sense it gave her of feeling more alive, as if her nerve endings were more exposed; of each day lasting more minutes and being clothed in brighter colours. ‘You feel in touch with the elements,’ she told me. ‘Every day you tread closer to the line between life and death than you ever would over here. It’s not always pleasant. Sometimes it’s terrifying and tragic, but it’s impossible to feel nothing.’ I made her promise me that one day we would go to Africa together; I wanted to see the farm where she and my mother grew up, the land they both loved so much. In 1988, thirty-five years after she had left, she fulfilled her promise and I was truly fortunate to be with her in Kenya as she retrod the footsteps of her childhood.

  Jane Vivien Moneypenny was born in Nairobi General Hospital on 9 August 1931, and named after her paternal grandmother. Her parents doted on her, and recorded every detail of her early life in an annotated photograph album. There are pictures of her sitting on a beach examining shells, crawling on the floor grunting like a lion or howling like a baboon, and asleep in the dog’s basket on the front veranda of their palm-roofed farmhouse. They took her everywhere, and treated her from the start like a mini-adult. On a camping trip down the Rift Valley, when Jane was a little over two years old and Irene pregnant with my mother, they were charged by an elephant, who skidded to a stop a bare fifteen yards from them – and Jane only giggled. She was a practical child, always outside, rolling in the sand, eating insects, happy on her own or with one of the farm hands or the women who worked in the house.

  She was fiercely protective of her younger sister from the start. Even when Helena was too young to accompany her on adventures, Jane would make sure she was being well looked after, before disappearing into the bush to track wildlife. They saw other children infrequently. Their mother, Irene, did not care for socialising, and, apart from close friends and colleagues, preferred to stay at home with the family or to spend time with the black Kenyans she worked with, rather than venture into colonial society. On the occasions when they did go into town – to swim at the Muthaiga Club, or for tennis parties at the homes of their father’s government friends – the Moneypenny girls were noticeably more wild than their contemporaries, their skin more tanned, their deep-chestnut hair tangled and streaked with blonde by the sun.

  When Jane turned six, her parents recognised the need for some kind of schooling, but, instead of driving her to the white schools in the suburbs, Irene organised for a retired teacher, Mrs Bisby, to come out to the farm three mornings a week, to teach her – and later Helena too – and whoever of the staff’s children happened to be around and interested. The girls could already read, and did so voraciously. The house was full of books, and Hugh, in particular, loved to read to them – mainly long stories meant for older ears. Adventure books were their favourites: Swallows and Amazons, Tom Sawyer and Kidnapped were read over and over again. Hugh would also invent stories, based on the animal characters that lived in the bush around them. He taught the children to understand how the animals thought as well as acted. They would go for long walks, and he would point out clues to what had been passing through and when. From an early age, Jane developed a healthy regard for the wildlife, but she was really afraid: if you could read what they were thinking, they held no threat.

  They loved their home. It was not a large farm, by Kenyan standards, but it was fertile and beautifully situated, on a ridge, with views down into the forests of Maguga on one side, and across to the great escarpment on the other. It was a happy place; the Moneypennys treated their staff with respect and kindness, and this was repaid with loyalty. Many of their workers, both inside and out, were with them from before the girls were born until the farm was eventually sold.

  In early 1939 Hugh persuaded Irene that the girls would benefit from a more formal education and from the company of children their own age. They were enrolled at a primary school on the main road to Nairobi. Both took to it perfectly equably – Jane was a natural leader and soon had many friends – though they continued to maintain that they had learned more with Mrs Bisby.

  Jane was devastated by the news that Hugh was to go back to England for the war. Several entries in her diaries recall the emptiness she felt the day he took her for a long walk around the farm and explained what he would be doing and why he was going. ‘Look at what we have here, the freedom to go where we wish and live the kind of life we want,’ he told her. ‘I need to go and make sure that we – and others – continue to have those basic rights.’ He promised to write every week, and asked her to look after Helena and keep an eye on Irene.

  I remember Aunt Jane describing her father’s departure. The whole family took the train down to Mombasa to see him off. He was wearing his naval uniform and carrying a stick made out of wood from the farm, which Josiah, the headman, had carved for him. It was his prized possession, and he waved it at them from the ship as it gave a last hoot and sailed off towards England.

  Irene handled his departure with a breezy energy, which soon crumpled into fear and despair. Soon Jane had taken over many of the household duties; she would come home from school and talk to the farm
hands, before cooking supper and putting her sister to bed. Often she would stay up late into the night talking to her mother, in a simultaneous effort to distract and reassure.

  They lived for Hugh’s letters. The girls would race each other to the postbox at the gate of the farm to see if one had arrived, and when one had they would shout for Irene and the three of them would go and sit on the grass under Hugh’s favourite tree to read it. He was an entertaining writer, managing to make his life in England sound like an adventure – and to play down the perils of war. He made frequent mention of his new friends: Peter, Ian, Patrick, Euan and Sydney, as well as ‘the warthog’, their private code for Winston Churchill, at that time Hugh’s ultimate boss as First Lord of the Admiralty. He made war sound like a boys’ adventure, rather than the serious business of grown men.

  He never told them exactly what he was doing, though there were hints. He sent one postcard from Paris, another from Madrid. Then, in October 1940, a letter arrived which, though cheerful in tone, was more serious in content, telling of the big adventure he was shortly to embark on. He wrote special messages to each of them. To Jane, he said, ‘Remember, you are my eagle – please spread your wings and keep flying.’ She carefully glued that letter into the front of her new soft leather journal.

  Thursday, 1st March

  I’m worried about 007. His depression doesn’t appear to be lifting. He arrives at the Office late and leaves early. According to Mary, on several occasions he has failed altogether to return from lunch and although he signs off on his files, I suspect he isn’t really reading them. I know that M has progressed beyond sympathy and into irritation. Last week he summoned 007, and by the time he left, the OM was definitely angry. As the door buzzed open, I heard him saying, ‘There’s only a certain amount of slack I can cut you, 007. This is your last chance – next time I’ll be forced to take your number away permanently. Miss Moneypenny, please ask oo61 to come up straight away.’