And Is There Honey Still For Tea?

by Peter Murphy

  ‘You just need to let us know,’ he replied. ‘We will send someone to explain the position to the judge. You needn’t worry about it.’

  Guy ordered another martini and some more coffee for me.

  ‘You will receive details of each assignment from a contact,’ he said. ‘I am not sure who it will be yet, but he or she will let you know where and when and what sort of character or document you will be dealing with, and so on.’

  He lit another cigarette.

  ‘We recommend that you make up some good story about why you will not be called up for active service. Something you can talk about in chambers without looking foolish. Whatever it is, the Service will supply you with any documentation you may need to back it up. And I understand that those barristers who remain in practice will be covering for those who are away on war duty, doing work for them, passing on the fees, that kind of thing. Make sure you do that, won’t you? We don’t want you to draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘What do I tell Bridget?’ I asked. I truly had no desire to lie to her, and I did not see how it would be possible to keep it from her anyway.

  ‘Tell her the truth,’ Guy replied immediately. ‘We have already vetted her, and she comes up white as snow. Just get her to sign the form.’

  ‘The same one you are about to get me to sign?’ I asked.

  ‘You are a prophet, my dear,’ Guy replied. ‘A veritable prophet.’

  36

  My wartime duties started slowly. But they seemed to escalate with the onset of the Blitz in September 1940. Several hundred people in London were killed on the first night of the Blitz alone, 7th September, and it soon became clear that my mission of staying in place to be available to MI6 was not a soft option either at work or at home. Chelsea was not a safe area, and the Luftwaffe inflicted heavy damage on the Inns of Court, the worst, which included the almost total destruction of the Temple Church, towards the end of the Blitz in May 1941.

  Not long after the Blitz started, I evacuated Bridget to the Manor. She did not want to go, but it was the only thing that made sense. There was no reason for both of us to remain in London and, as travel became more difficult and my work increased, it became obvious that I would not be able to devote any attention to the running of the estate. If there were to be food shortages, as was being predicted, the Manor could play an important part locally in growing fruit and vegetables on a larger scale than before, and there were plans for some of the tenants to introduce livestock. Mr Bevan was getting on in years, and there was a need for someone younger to take over active management of the land. Besides, my mother was slipping further and further into her isolation, and it was only right that someone should be with her, even if she was rarely fully aware of their presence. It seemed only a matter of time before she slipped away altogether, and indeed she did, early in 1942. So we agreed that Bridget would live there for the time being and I would join her whenever I had some leave and travel was possible.

  The frequency of interrogations increased rapidly from the autumn of 1940. For the most part the men and women I talked to were wholly innocent, people with German family or connections who seemed threatening to the authorities as more and more bombs rained down on London and the war suddenly became real. After an hour or two it usually became obvious to me that they had no hostile agendas, but rather were genuinely distressed about the position in which they found themselves, and we released them with our thanks for their time. But there were one or two very different cases. One man I interrogated, who had German family on his mother’s side, had been found with a wireless transmitter in his room on the top floor of a boarding house in Chiswick. Those old-fashioned radio sets weighed a ton, and the police said it was a miracle he had not brought the ceiling crashing down into the flat below. It turned out that he had no particular feelings for Germany, but was bitter towards the Government because of a long period of unemployment. He had a keen mind, and he had put his free time to good use, learning to operate the radio, becoming fluent in Morse code, and teaching himself the basics of cryptography. Once I had clearly established that history, MI5 took him over, turned him, and put him to work for them under closely supervised conditions. They would not tell me any more than that. He was lucky. Later in the war he might have been tried for high treason and hanged. Another man, whose native language was German, was unmasked as a spy and took little trouble to conceal the fact. He was dealt with accordingly.

  From that time on, there was a steady stream of work, both in interrogations and translations of captured documents, but it was not enough to prevent me from maintaining my cover as a practising barrister who spent some time taking on work for those who had gone abroad on war service. There were two other barristers who worked for MI6 in the same way. We were not supposed to know who the others were, but the Bar is a small, close-knit profession. My social life, in the evenings and at weekends when MI6 did not need me, was rather surreal. The Reform was open, but it still reminded me too much of Roger, and I found myself more and more drawn to the house at number 5 Bentinck Street. Bentinck Street is a short distance north of Oxford Street and just east of Portman Square, so it was not too far from my home. Anthony and Guy occupied one floor, and another was occupied by Tess Mayor and Pat Rawdon-Smith, two delightful ladies known for their beauty, charm, and wit, who had been the Grandes Dames of Cambridge Society in Anthony’s day and were now charming wartime London. I had an open invitation as, it sometimes seemed, did every young man within striking distance. Life at number 5 seemed to be one long party; in retrospect, that was probably mainly because of Guy, for whom life generally was one long party. In fairness, though, we all entered into the spirit. We were loud, drunken and boisterous, and sometimes reckless about black-out regulations; I am sure that, at least subconsciously, it was an act of defiance directed against Hitler, the Luftwaffe, and everyone who threatened our way of life. It was as if we were daring them to do their worst and be damned. They tried; bombs did fall pretty close from time to time, but number 5 Bentinck Street, and its hedonistic occupants, lived to tell the tale.

  It was during this period that I lost my naïveté and saw clearly what I should have seen long before. Guy was still with MI6, and I saw him from time to time in connection with work. Donald had been promoted to Second Secretary at the Foreign Office in the wake of his heroic role in the evacuation of the staff of the British Embassy in Paris just before the city fell to the Germans. To my amazement, Anthony had been recruited to MI5. Kim Philby had returned to London after a long period abroad as a war correspondent, during which time he had covered the Spanish war from the Nationalist side; had been awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco personally; had been based at Arras until the Allied forces had been compelled to evacuate; and had now joined MI6, working under Guy in Section D. Finally, the light dawned. I knew all these men to be committed to socialism on some level or other. But each of them had pursued career paths which gave them solid establishment credentials. They all had the perfect cover. As did I.

  * * *

  Once I had lost my naïveté, I saw all too clearly that it was only a matter of time. I was waiting for it; and at the end of June 1941 it happened. Anthony and Kim took me aside one evening at number 5. They led me to a quiet room upstairs where we could be well away from the party that was going on at full tilt on the ground floor. Kim had brought a bottle of whisky and three glasses. He closed the door.

  ‘Your reports, and the transcripts of your interrogations have been attracting some attention within the Service, James,’ he said, having opened the bottle and dispensed the first round. ‘I have spoken to a number of high-ranking officers in various departments. The general feeling is that they are of unusually high quality. Your fluency in German gives you an insight which other interrogators lack. They have been found to be useful right across the Service, and some have been passed to the High Command.’

  I felt a flush of pleasure as h
e spoke. I did take my work very seriously, and my intense involvement with German now had more than made up for my lack of use of the language after coming down from Cambridge. Whoever had thought of using me had been right. I found that I could gain considerable insight from listening, not only to the subject, but also to the often unguarded exchanges between the subject and the interpreter.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I am pleased to hear that.’

  There was silence for a few moments.

  ‘Anthony and I would like to make your work available more widely,’ Kim said eventually. I sensed that he was feeling his way gingerly. That was unusual for Kim, whose conversation was always brisk and to the point. He was building up to something. I fancied I knew what it was, but I was nervous and felt no inclination to intervene; not just yet, anyway.

  ‘You know, of course, that Hitler has invaded Russia within the last few days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That makes an enormous difference.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course. The Soviet Union is now an ally.’

  I nodded. Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in August 1939, to the general dismay and confusion of all of us who had admired the Soviet Union’s support of the Republican forces in Spain, and its general opposition to fascism. Coming in the wake of Stalin’s purges and the recall of many Soviet agents to Moscow to face show trials and summary executions, the Pact had cost the Soviet Union a good deal of the support it had among left-leaning intellectuals in Great Britain. Many were no longer able to turn a blind eye and assume that the Revolution was just going through a few growing pains. But on 22nd June, in what was widely seen as an act of sheer madness, one which ignored all the lessons of history and summoned up the ghost of Napoleon, Hitler had torn the Pact up and sent his forces hurtling across the tundra towards Moscow. The Pact was dead, and the Soviet Union was indeed an ally; but whether that meant that Stalin could be trusted was a matter which I, along with many others, seriously doubted. I could feel Kim reading my mind.

  ‘I share your reservations about Stalin,’ Kim said, with a glance at Anthony, who nodded but said nothing. ‘We all do. Even before the Pact, there were the purges, the summary executions, the show trials …’

  ‘The mass murders,’ I added.

  ‘Yes,’ Kim agreed. ‘There was all of that. But, for better or for worse, we have to live and work with him for the time being. The Revolution is young, and it is being managed by human beings, some of them flawed. I believe very strongly that the Russian people will find their equilibrium in due course, and that they will establish a form of government consistent with the aims of the Revolution, but a government which attaches high importance to the welfare of the people, the cultural life of the State, the propagation of socialism. But at present, they are facing a crisis of life and death, and we have a common enemy, whom we must defeat at all costs.’

  He poured more whisky for all of us.

  ‘James, the fact of the matter is this. Your reports and transcripts would be of enormous value to Russia, not only in terms of information, but in terms of insight into the mind of the Nazi regime. I don’t want to overstate their importance. You can only report on the people you interrogate, whose knowledge may be limited, and whose insight may be deficient. But this is a war in which information is vital, and you never know what value a particular piece of information may have.’

  I took a long drink. Kim refilled my glass immediately.

  ‘If that’s the case,’ I pointed out, ‘surely the Government could send the reports to Moscow directly. That would give them the chance to censor anything they didn’t want the Russians to know.’

  ‘In the first place,’ Kim replied, ‘I doubt that would ever happen. The Government has as little trust in Stalin as most people in the West, and even if they did choose to send some information to Moscow, as you say, it would be censored. It would have to go through so many departments, so many vetting committees, that it would probably be whittled away to almost nothing by the time it arrived.’

  I shrugged. ‘That may well be so,’ I agreed. ‘But we have to leave that to the Government to decide, don’t we? The longer the war goes on, the more closely we work with Russia, the more contact will open up. The Russians may ask us to share intelligence with them, and I daresay we would, in return for whatever they may have to offer.’

  I paused. I knew where we were going now. The time had come to get to the point.

  ‘In any case, I sign the form every time I hand in a report and a transcript. I can’t …’

  ‘I know what we are asking you to do,’ Kim said. ‘Technically, it is illegal.’

  ‘Technically?’ I blurted out. ‘There is nothing technical about it, Kim. If I were to be caught doing something like that …’

  ‘You would land in trouble,’ he replied. ‘Yes. The fact that you were helping an ally would be some mitigation, but you would still be in serious trouble. Yes, I know that. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to. You are free to say no and walk away now. I suppose, ultimately, it’s a question of where your real loyalties lie.’

  I turned my head away.

  ‘But loyalty is not a simple matter, in my experience,’ he said, ‘whether it is loyalty to a woman, a cause, or a country. There are so many factors that influence it and, contrary to popular belief, it may change, legitimately in my view, according to circumstances. Loyalty is not an absolute value, James. Isn’t that what we learn by living our lives? We may grow up believing in something – religion, King and Country, the British way of life, whatever it may be; and then something happens to make us shift our loyalty. In some ways it is not even a matter of choice. Sometimes, things happen, and we are compelled to change our allegiance. I think you understand that without my telling you, but it may help to know you are not the only one walking along that path. Some of us have been there before you, and many more will follow after. All you can do is be true to your conscience at any given time.’

  I stared into my glass. I wondered what Anthony thought about all this. He had said not a word. But I felt his eyes on me, and they were speaking more loudly and conveying a message more clear than any words he could have uttered. We are Apostolic brethren, they were saying; we believe in the Revolution, we believe in socialism; we have seen the evils of fascism and the misery of capitalism; we want to end it; the Russians are the only ones who have lifted a finger to help us; they tried to help in Spain; they tried to come to Roger’s aid, they tried to save him; and now the fascists want to destroy them, they are fighting for their lives; surely we owe them something?

  So we did. But it was also more personal. We were Apostolic brothers. He had shared the first horror of Roger’s death with me; he had held me until the horror melted away into oblivion; he had brought Bridget to care for me; and he had sent a wreath to Roger’s memorial service. And that, in the end, was what mattered. It is an ironic truth about human decisions that even those which have the most far-reaching consequences often seem to be made in the blink of an eye, and for reasons that are not altogether logical. The reality may be that the decision-making process has taken years – years of inner change and reflection informed by many events, many ideas, many people – and the emerging decision may have escaped our conscious observation. But by the time the truth finally floods unchecked into the conscious mind, the decision has been made, and there is no turning back. And so, in that moment, with Anthony’s eyes on me, I knew my life had changed. I still had a fig leaf: I was not betraying my country, simply helping an ally in a time of desperate need. I did not consider that what I was about to do was spying, and I do not regard it as such today. But the issue of principle had been decided. The only question that remained was ways and means.

  ‘Why can’t you copy them within the Service, and send them to whoever you think they should go
to?’ I asked. Even three months later I would have kicked myself for asking such a naïve question. But Kim showed no impatience. The tension in the room had vanished.

  ‘May I speak completely frankly?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘James, things are changing,’ he replied. ‘Entre nous, Guy will probably be moved out of the Service later in the year. It’s either that, or move him up the chain of command, and there are those higher up who have some question marks about him. They may want to send him back to the BBC for some time. So he may be out of the picture. I will not be staying in Section D. I have put in for the Iberian section, which I’m likely to get because of my history in Spain. There is a lot going on in Spain and Portugal. Both countries may be nominally neutral, but the Wehrmacht is very active there, so there is work to do. It’s a bit off the beaten track, but I’m hoping that it will lead me on to Italy and North Africa, where I can have more influence. But the important thing is this. If it works out, I will be reporting to a Major Cowgill, a military bureaucrat of the worst kind – no imagination, a stickler for rules and regulations, a man who loves nothing more than counting paperclips. There would be no way for me to copy documents which have no direct relevance to his department.’

  He paused to take a drink.

  ‘No, the only way to do this is to hand the materials directly to someone who can take charge of them and pass them on without delay.’

  Kim looked at Anthony. Until this moment he had been nothing more than a spectator, although for me, an influential one.

  ‘Arrangements have to be made,’ Anthony said. ‘Now that we have your agreement, I will ensure that someone contacts you. He will use the name “Alex”; and he will assign you a work name.’

  He smiled.

  ‘We all need to give ourselves something of a new identity from time to time, James, don’t we?’