Half a Crown

by Jo Walton

  “Do you have a recent password?” Loy asked, uninterested in Miss Duthie’s fate.

  “Yesterday’s was hammock,” Carmichael said. “But it won’t do you any good.”

  “Hammock?” Loy asked, incredulously, and began to laugh. “It’s all so childish, isn’t it?” he said. “Look at these poor sods walking over this bridge to get their trains home to their nice little suburbs and their nice little wives, as if they didn’t have less freedom this year than last year and everything wasn’t closing in on them. Do they realize how thin a line they’re walking?”

  “I don’t think so,” Carmichael said. “Look at them. They just go straight ahead, not looking up or down. They worry about Frank’s new girlfriend and Emily’s bad school report and if they’re putting on weight and whether their wife’s being unfaithful, while all the safety nets are cut away around them. Then something frightens them, and they look up and realize they’re tightrope-walking over an abyss.”

  “You’d have liked my friend Devlin,” Loy said. “He used to talk like that.”

  “The man who’s buried in your tomb?” Carmichael remembered his wary boxer’s face and his quick smile. “I did like him. I met him once at the theater. Casing the place, probably, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

  “He’d have laughed at the thought of being buried in my tomb. I’m not sure some of my ancestors would find it quite so funny.” He dropped another cigarette end into the river. The flow of businessmen was slackening now.

  “What identity are you using?” Carmichael asked. “With your own being lost to you?”

  “I change them from time to time,” Loy said. “I have a good one for the time being. German, not Jewish, a respectable young businessman from Vienna, party member. It’s real, solid. He died in unfortunate circumstances, and all I had to do was replace the photograph.”

  “Can you sprechen?”

  “Well enough,” Loy said.

  “The Gestapo have their own people here. I don’t know anything about their procedure or precautions, so I can’t help you there.”

  “I’ll watch out for them. It would be a sight easier with a password, though.”

  Carmichael looked at him evenly. “Whatever else I might have betrayed, I’m not turning over a loyal and innocent woman to them, even if she would be fool enough to give the word to me.”

  “Worth a try,” Loy said, blowing out smoke. “Well, I should get on back and calm Breda down. Marry him! She’s always been a pacifist. She wouldn’t have me around except that I’m like a big brother to her. Her mother was my nurse. And you probably have things to do.”

  “Not really,” Carmichael said. “I’m just keeping out of sight until I can get out of town. I’m hoping I might be able to make contact with someone who can help me find my niece, but it won’t be tonight.” He’d have to approach Jacobson very cautiously indeed.

  “Well, thank you for the information, it might help a lot,” Loy said.

  “Good luck. Get the bastards,” Carmichael said.

  “I thought you were one of the bastards until tonight,” Loy said.

  “There are probably a lot more decent people around than anyone knows, going along with things for whatever reason of their own. The only problem is we can’t recognize them because they don’t want to risk breaking their cover.”

  Loy nodded and ambled back across the bridge.

  Carmichael kept on walking across the bridge, along the Embankment, down long Victoria Street, passed all the way by red buses and black taxis, until he came to Victoria Station, Pimlico, and his seedy little hotel. After the long walk he was ready for a rest, and it seemed almost more of an insult than an injury when he felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder and a voice call out, “I’ve got him, sarge!”

  29

  Betsy was waiting alone in the foyer when I got to the Ritz. She was looking around in an anxious way. There was no sign of Mrs. Maynard, or Nanny. She was wearing her mint-green Court dress, with the train looped over her broken arm, which was held in a matching mint-green sling. She had a dress bag over her other arm. She almost didn’t recognize me in Uncle Carmichael’s coat. I’d spent the afternoon washing my hair, and fighting off offers from my mother to lend me a brightening rinse, or a set of curlers. “Betsy,” I said. “Elizabeth. It’s so good to see you.”

  “I’m supposed to be having dinner in the Dorchester right now,” she said.

  “Well, so am I, for that matter,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to the cloakroom and get me changed.”

  “Whatever are you wearing? Is that a man’s coat?”

  “It’s my uncle’s coat,” I said. “Wait until you see the frock I have on.” I undid the buttons on the coat as I walked.

  “Don’t show me any more of it, I think I’m going to have to burn it!” Betsy said, and giggled. We were giggling as we went into the ladies’ room. Betsy fingered the frock. “What is that made of?”

  “Polyester,” I said. “It doesn’t crumple, it really doesn’t.”

  “I don’t think it will ever catch on,” she said. Safely inside I took off the coat and navy blue frock and put them on one of the spindly little gilt chairs. “That bra is beige!”

  “I know! But it’s very comfortable.”

  “Where did you get it?” she asked.

  “Ever such a nice little fat Jewish woman who kept a shop. I don’t know if she’s all right. The people I was staying with were arrested. I managed to get away, but they didn’t.” The thought of the Bermans sobered me.

  “Jews?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s not true, what they say about them. They’re actually ultra-clean, and while they do funny things, they’re very nice. And they had the sweetest little children, and they could all speak Hebrew, even the tiny ones.”

  “You sound as if they’d quite converted you,” Betsy said, taking my presentation dress out of the bag, all pink satin and white lace. “But I’ve always been quite sure they weren’t as awful as people said. I mean nobody could be. Besides, I remember in the parade they looked just like anyone, only having things thrown at them. That poor little girl with blood on her face.”

  “You’re a much nicer person than I am,” I said. “Where are the flowers?”

  “Mummy has them in the car. She said she wasn’t coming in here in case, she’s waiting outside. She really didn’t want to do this, I had to threaten to run away. And I was thinking, if they might have been listening about where we were going to meet, on the phone, then won’t they know you mean to go to the palace?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. That wasn’t in Raymond’s book.”

  “What book? Who’s Raymond?”

  I was halfway through stepping into the dress, and I hesitated. “Raymond’s my stepfather,” I said.

  “Your what? I thought you were an orphan.” Betsy was looking at me as if I’d sprouted wings.

  “I’m only half an orphan and the other half is an abandoned child. My mother ran off when I was six, then two years after that, my father died. My mother didn’t want me, or I was always told she didn’t, but she was alive. I never mentioned her in school because, well, she keeps a pub in East London, and who would. I never told you because you already thought I was an orphan, and it seemed too complicated to explain.”

  “Did you visit her?” Betsy asked.

  “No, but my aunt Ciss kept me up to date with the gossip about her. I always sent her Christmas cards. And I thought of her when I escaped, because I knew nobody knew about her, she had no official connection with me, but she’d take me in. And she did. And Raymond, who’s her second husband, reads Dennis Wheatley and spy books and knows what to do, or thinks he does. They’re frightfully sweet, actually. Do me up?”

  Betsy came around and started on the row of hooks and eyes that fastened my dress. It was hard for her with one hand, and went slowly. “Why do you want to go, anyway? Didn’t you say it’s all pointless? And especially now.”
>
  “There’s something I want to tell the Queen,” I said. “I know it sounds idiotic, but she is the Queen, it is her country in a way, and she should know. There’s a plot to do with the Duke of Windsor, and there are people out there who arrest people like me just because they can, just because they want to.”

  “It isn’t idiotic at all,” Betsy said. “I’ve always felt like that, but I’ve never felt as if I could say so.”

  “It was my mother and Raymond who made me see it like that,” I said. “She is like that to them. And I can speak to her, and I should.”

  “Whether or not it’s in Raymond’s book, might they be waiting at the palace to arrest you again?”

  “They might,” I said. I shivered at the thought, and Betsy hugged me, crushing my dress and hers.

  “Was it very awful?” she asked.

  “Simply unbearable,” I said.

  Someone came in to powder her nose then, and I don’t know what she thought when we sprang apart guiltily. Betsy finished doing me up, then we both did our own faces, from Betsy’s makeup bag, with towels over our dresses. After our faces were on, we did my hair—Betsy’s was already up, and sprayed with so much lacquer and stuff that it felt like a butterfly’s wings. I just put mine up normally. People came in from time to time, some of them girls we knew who were dining at the Ritz before their presentations. In a moment when we were alone, Betsy put on my pearls, and I put on my lapis-and-gold pendant. Betsy had brought them both in her makeup bag. “But doesn’t your mother know about your pearls?” I asked.

  “I don’t care what she knows; I want to wear yours,” Betsy said.

  “You are the best friend I have ever had,” I said.

  I pulled on my long gloves, and helped Betsy on with her single glove. Then we looked at each other in the mirror, a perfect pair of empty-headed debs, or so you might think. Despite Betsy’s sling we looked all right, and at the higher end of all right, come to that. We shrugged at our reflections and went out to where Mrs. Maynard was waiting.

  The car crawled up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, flanked by other cars full of debs all with the same destination. Mrs. Maynard didn’t say a word to me all the way, and hardly more to Betsy. At last we came to the ceremonial guards, the pair of beefeaters in their scarlet uniforms and big black bonnets. With them were a couple of Watchmen. One of them peered into the car, and I saw it was Sergeant Evans. I shrank back in my seat, my heart hammering.

  “Mrs. Maynard, Miss Maynard, and Miss Royston,” Mrs. Maynard said, handing over our papers and invitations. The driver was having his own papers checked out of the front.

  “Why, Elvira!” Sergeant Evans said. “I’m so glad to see you’re where you ought to be.”

  “Is there a problem?” the other Watchman asked, handing the driver his papers back. He was a stranger to me.

  “No, just greeting an old friend,” Sergeant Evans said.

  “Give my regards to Jean,” Betsy said, naturally friendly.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Evans,” I said, making my stiff tongue move in my mouth at last. To this day I don’t know for sure whether he was supposed to arrest me or not, but I suspect very much that he was.

  We drove on. Before very long, we came to the palace, where we got out of the car, which went off somewhere to wait. Mrs. Maynard handed us both our flowers, which were posies we had to carry, and went in to an anteroom. We had our invitations checked again there by a very superior female secretary, and then we were told to stand in line in the corridor. The line was very long. “I’ve been told you can wait two hours,” Betsy said. “And they don’t let you go to the toilet.”

  Mary Carron was in front of us, with her mother, so her sharp comments kept us entertained as we moved very slowly forward. “I’m sure I’ve forgotten how to curtsey,” Betsy said.

  “You’re lucky, if you do anything wrong they’ll just blame it on your arm,” Mary said. “Have you ever seen anything as hideous as that Grecian urn?”

  Eventually we inched into the Throne Room. It was enormous and very splendid and eighteenth-century, with a painted ceiling and huge pillars. The Queen was sitting on the throne, very formal. She was wearing robes and a small crown, and she sat straight-backed and still. I was surprised how young she looked, and how pretty. She also didn’t look the faintest bit bored, though it must have been incredibly tedious. Ambassadors and people like that and girls who had already been presented that night were standing around the walls, in Court dress, which meant uniforms or knee breeches and tights for the men. Some of them had rather good legs, but it was very revealing of those who didn’t. Nearly all the debutantes were in white, or cream, or very pale pastels, and the men were in dark colors or black, and I understood for the first time why the conventional comparison for debutantes was to blossoms. All together like that, in little clumps along the wall, there really was a resemblance.

  There was a carpet we had to follow. We inched forward along it. Mary Carron’s mother took her forward, gave her name, she went on alone, curtseyed, smiled, backed away, and retreated. Mrs. Maynard went forward, and we went with her. You have to be presented by someone who has themselves been presented, it’s as if it was a real introduction—though of course, Mrs. Maynard would have been presented to George VI. Betsy’s turn came. She looked very pale. She touched my pearls with her good hand and gave me a wan smile. She went forward, swept a very good curtsey, rose up, backed away—you’re not supposed to turn your back on the Monarch, and this backing away is the bit they spent the most time rehearsing, because it’s harder than it looks. Betsy managed it all very creditably, and then, of course, it was my turn.

  I was hardly aware of my name being called and my advance. I curtseyed, of course, but I don’t know if I managed to smile. As I rose I gave the hand signal that meant I wanted to talk to the Queen, and she nodded, and looked at me a little more closely. I backed away, and an equerry in knee breeches came up to me and checked my name—he had it right—and said that Her Majesty would summon me later. I went to stand beside Betsy.

  Mrs. Maynard was almost quivering with disapproval. I don’t know what Betsy had had to threaten to get her to agree to do it in the circumstances, but it must have been dire. “I have been presented,” I said to her.

  “Indeed,” she said.

  “Nobody can deny any longer that I am a lady,” I said.

  “Nobody could ever have a moment’s doubt that you are a guttersnipe and a jailbird, and if they did, talking to you for five minutes would put them right,” she said, and turned her back on me.

  Betsy rolled her eyes at me. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, loudly enough for her mother to hear. “Ignore her.”

  “When I graduate from Oxford and start earning money, why don’t you come and keep house for me?” I asked.

  “Like the Ladies of Llangollen?” she asked, her eyes lighting up.

  “Though of course, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I might still have to flee the country. I don’t know where Uncle Carmichael is.”

  “If you have to flee the country, I’ll come too,” she said in my ear.

  Debs kept coming in, curtseying and rising up and backing away with relieved expressions. Their mothers, or whoever was presenting them, also looked frightfully relieved. It really was all a mummery, but yet it did mean something. It was an affirmation of class, and an announcement of coming of age and marriageability. If my Hottentot anthropologist had been there he’d have pinpointed it that way at once.

  At last the flow of debs ceased. I saw the equerry talking to Sir Guy Braithwaite, the Foreign Secretary. The Queen got down off the throne and went out through a little door to the side. Then the equerry moved through the crowd, collecting the people who had said they wanted to speak to the Queen. There seemed to be hundreds of us, but in fact it was fewer than twenty. He led us, and Sir Guy, through the little door and into a charming little drawing room, also with a painted ceiling, but with a fireplace and very good but ordinary c
hairs and sofas and dark stuffy oil paintings of dogs and fruit. The Queen was sitting on one of the sofas.

  The equerry murmured to us that we should sit elsewhere and wait, and the Queen would summon us one at a time, and we should watch as the previous person left. She called someone up right away, and chatted for a moment or two. I sat beside Elizabeth Mitchell, and she complimented me on my dress and my pendant, and I complimented her on her dress and her flowers, which were lovely, dark anemones. Mine were white roses, very conventional. They’d probably been part of Sir Alan’s bouquet. I wondered where he was and if he was all right. I didn’t want to marry him, but I wanted him to be all right.

  It seemed like ages, but it probably wasn’t, but I still didn’t have my watch so I couldn’t tell. At last the Queen caught my eye, and I went up and sat beside her on the sofa.

  I’d been thinking all afternoon about what I was going to say, but even so I’m afraid it didn’t come out very well rehearsed but all pouring out as fast as I could go. “There’s a plot against you, ma’am, led by the Duke of Windsor,” I said. “And you should know that Scotland Yard are just locking people up if they don’t like them, they arrested me and kept me without sleep all night and asked me questions and stole Betsy’s pearls and my watch, and it isn’t right, it isn’t the right way to do things. And they arrested all the Bermans just before they were going to have dinner, and they hadn’t done anything except hide me.”

  The Queen blinked, as well she might. “Tell me about this slowly,” she said, and she led me through it all in detail. I don’t know how long I was talking to her, but far longer than any of the others had been.

  “And I think they’ve arrested my uncle Carmichael,” I said, at last. “His man wasn’t there to answer the telephone.”

  “He’s always seemed a loyal man,” she said, musingly. “But he’s Normanby’s creature. I have to have my own people around me, my own organization. I’ve never known him well, although he was head of the Watch.”