‘There we are,’ said Toby, ‘not alone any more.’
Laura was nodding at a meaning he could not guess beyond his words, as she asked Ann if there was any more toast and coffee. They sat talking idly, and not long afterwards they heard the front door bang and Edward came down the basement stairs. The expression on his face was one Laura had not seen for so long. Without thinking of the others, she stood up and went into his arms, and he held her for a moment, smiling. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘so much going on, I couldn’t get back last night. It’s a lovely day. Shall we walk up to the park?’
Laura went upstairs and put on a dress that she had not taken out of the wardrobe yet that summer. Sleeveless and low-necked, it seemed almost too bare for the city. There were no deckchairs free, so they sat on the dusty grass under a sycamore tree. At one point Edward picked a daisy and tucked it into her hair. It fell out and down the front of her dress and, without thinking of the people around them, he bent and kissed the hollow where it had fallen. They lunched at the cafeteria by the Albert Memorial and the sparrows came to their hands to be fed. It seemed easy to talk now – about everything, about politics, yes, if they had wanted to, now that the world had fallen into place, now that good and evil were ranged on opposite sides of the great conflict, but also about why the leaves of chestnut trees looked glossy and the leaves of plane trees looked dull, or whether they should go to hear this pianist that Alistair had been raving about last week. At one point Laura misheard Chopin as shopping, and Edward laughed so much that his coffee went up his nose, and when they watched some park warden sweeping the gravel path he quoted some nonsense rhyme about how many maids it would take to get a beach clean, and she made him repeat it until she’d learned it too. They felt drunk with their sense of relief.
17
One grey Thursday Laura saw the Red Flag fluttering over Selfridges; the only splash of colour she had seen for a long while in that grimy, shattered city. Later in the day, with hindsight, it seemed like a precursor of the telephone message that Ann shouted up to her. ‘It’s for you, Mrs Laura,’ she called up the stairs, and when Laura came down Ann handed her the receiver. ‘Someone called John Adams, he says your sister gave him your number.’
It had been months – no, years – since Laura had heard from any contact, and it was as hard as ever to slot herself back into that frame of mind. She had not missed her role in that secret work. The world around her had fallen into place more coherently since the chaos of the first years of the war. Now that Londoners spoke of Russians as the bravest of all, she felt more in step with the dogged hope that was the only acceptable attitude in the city. Tired and shabby, as all Londoners were after years of war, she went on day by day shopping for rationed food and doing shifts in that half-empty bookshop, but just putting one foot in front of another felt like enough of a journey. Perhaps she should have felt proud to be called back to the bigger struggle, but going into the dim café in Balham and seeing Stefan’s familiar ugly face at a back table, she was as nervous as ever. Once she had sat down at the next table, where he could hear her speak, she hoped for some words of reassurance or explanation. But there were only two muttered passwords, and then silence.
He seemed to have aged much more than a couple of years, she thought, looking sideways at him. His hair had turned greyer and he had put on weight; when he put out his hand to his cup of coffee she thought she saw it shake. She had brought The Times newspaper with her, although she had nothing to give him that day, and she saw he had one too. She assumed it held fresh film for the Minox, and she put her hand on it in a would-be casual manner as she got up, and put it into her bag as she left the café. She had been there half an hour at most.
Rattling back on the Underground, she decided to get out at Trafalgar Square and walk along Piccadilly to see if she could find a shop Winifred had mentioned that had been selling new nylon stockings. As she came out into the pale light, she heard voices raised in a song that she recognised. It was a communist rally; red flags and the plangent tones of the ‘Internationale’. A couple of passers-by had stopped beside her to watch and she heard something about the bravery of the Red Army and how they could teach other armies a thing or two. Everyone loved Uncle Joe now.
As she stood there, years disappeared for her, and she had a flash of how she’d felt when she had just arrived in London, freshly in love with the idea of freedom. She scanned the rows of people for a familiar face. Was that the back of Elsa’s head, there, by the banner? The woman Laura was watching began to turn. It was not Elsa, but then for a moment Laura thought she saw Florence’s dark hair a few rows in front of that; no, the woman she was looking at was not tall enough. She saw the banner they used to march with far across the square, but just as her body was about to push forward, going towards the familiar sight, her mind caught up. It was dangerous to stand here, waiting to be recognised. Long ago she had promised to turn her back on all of this. She walked quickly away, skirting the square and taking a long route to Piccadilly. One day soon, she said to herself, secrecy will be at an end.
Once the meetings with Stefan had been regularised again, they gradually began to induce less anxiety in her. In fact, they became routine, and gave a kind of structure to the weeks; they took place on Wednesdays and Saturdays, on her half-days from the bookstore. And gradually Stefan began to change their tone. In the past he had cut short every rendezvous, leaving immediately after the newspapers had been exchanged, his whole body exuding fear of discovery. But now, he sometimes chose spots where they could sit and talk, in the corners of Hampstead Heath or unprepossessing cafés in Balham or Elephant and Castle. He asked her about all sorts of subjects: who was staying in Toby’s house and what they were saying about the Soviet Union; what her friends felt about rationing and what Winifred’s role was in the Ministry of Food.… If she had stopped to think about it, of course Laura would have recognised that she was simply being pumped to provide useful information, but his attention felt flattering to her, as if he was interested in everything about her. Sometimes she found herself wondering about him, and what his life was like, and how his cover worked, but she knew it would not do to ask him anything. And in fact the one-way nature of their conversations was oddly seductive: Laura felt released from the feminine necessity of encouraging her male interlocutor to open up; she luxuriated in being the one who was listened to. All week she found herself saving up observations and nuggets of information for him.
One cold autumn afternoon they met on Hampstead Heath. Laura passed the film as usual under a newspaper on the bench between them. ‘If only everyone was as reliable as you, Pigeon,’ he said. Theoretically, she knew it was a breach of protocol for him to use her codename, or Edward’s, but they seemed to have become terms of endearment for him.
‘But Edward is—’
‘Yes, Virgil is impeccable,’ Stefan said. ‘How does he get his hands on all this stuff? Sometimes my bosses don’t believe you both are for real. Fools.’
Laura found it shocking, that suddenly bitter note of criticism. But he didn’t seem to notice that he had said anything out of the ordinary. She asked if he was having problems with other agents. She did not expect any kind of direct answer – if she had been honest with herself, she would have realised that she was just fishing for compliments. But he surprised her again, by answering with detailed irritation, opening up to her for the first time, telling her that one of his other sources had just come under suspicion.
‘For years he has brought us information not just from his country, but also from Germany. Now some of it has been checked from another source, and it is false – he is tricking us. I have to know who he is really working for now. After all, if Blanchard …’
Blanchard – Laura remembered the name, and the man, sitting there at the edge of the dance floor in his office clothes, and she repeated the name as if to remind herself.
‘You know him?’
She shook her head. She couldn’t say she knew him, but i
f it was the same – a tall, middle-aged man …
‘With a limp.’ Laura had to admit that she hadn’t seen that, but after all he had been sitting down. Stefan was irritated with her for not being more certain. He was clearly eager, even desperate for Laura to be acquainted with him. ‘I need to keep an eye on him,’ he said. Laura was trying to backtrack, explaining that even if it was the same man, she didn’t know him, in fact was only acquainted with his girlfriend, and even then hardly at all. But Stefan had already moved on, explaining that it was essential that she build on this acquaintance. ‘We used to have a good supporter in the hotel itself, one of the waiters, who would do little things for us, but he has now been called up. I need to know what Blanchard is doing and who he is talking to. He is the press attaché at the Swiss embassy, so he has many, many contacts. We can see what he does when he is not in the hotel or the embassy and we can look at his letters, but what is he doing in there, and who does he see?’
Again Laura tried to explain that she had only seen him in passing, and Stefan started to get impatient with her.
‘You must make an effort.’
Laura felt rebuked. She had been Stefan’s good girl all these months, and now he seemed ready to be angry with her. As she left the meeting place, she felt curiously shaky. She wanted his approval, she realised; she wanted to be told how well she was doing. Over supper that evening she asked Edward if they could go to the Dorchester again soon. She was hardly surprised by his reluctance, but pressed him, and perhaps it was because it was so unlike her to do so, he agreed.
When she and Edward walked through the doors of the ballroom, she realised that the atmosphere reminded her of nothing so much as the first-class quarters of the ship in which she had crossed the Atlantic, oppressive in its ostentation and gaudiness. But now, in this shattered city, it could not seem more out of place. There was a tackiness about it; even the glass in which she was given her cocktail was sticky, and there was no ice in it. But there was energy here too: London’s nightlife had received an injection of new blood, and there were a number of American uniforms among the dancers. In fact, it was so full that there were no tables free immediately, so they sat at the mirrored bar drinking their sweet cocktails. It wasn’t long before Edward saw someone he knew.
‘There’s Percy,’ he said. ‘Let’s pretend we haven’t seen him – he wrote a vicious review of Alistair’s first book.’ And then, with an expression of distaste, he continued. ‘There are all those Polish chaps I was in a meeting with just yesterday. I suppose they’ll come and say something.’ But instead of talking to any of these acquaintances, Edward ordered more and more to drink.
It was after midnight when they saw Nina come in, together with the overweight Swiss man Laura remembered. They were not with Amy, but with another couple, a thin dark man wearing suede shoes and a very young girl, as well as a tall man who looked too young for his shock of striking white hair. Unlike with Laura and Edward, the waiters were quick to find the group a table, and Laura and Edward went over to say hello. Nina introduced them to her friends. The girl, who looked about sixteen, didn’t open her mouth, but the dark man stood up and bowed politely to Laura. When Edward heard this man’s name, however, his smile became fixed. He nodded to the table and walked Laura back to the bar.
Laura tugged on his sleeve as they went. ‘I told you, I want to talk to Nina.’
‘That man is a notorious Polish arms dealer,’ Edward said, draining his cocktail, ‘who made his money selling weapons to Franco.’ And as soon as the drinks were finished, he insisted they left.
When Laura imagined telling Stefan that she had seen, but completely failed to talk to Blanchard, she felt angry and embarrassed. So the next morning after Edward had gone to work she telephoned Alistair. At first she chatted a little about his novel, which he said he had nearly finished, and then she moved the conversation to the point, telling him that she had been dancing at the Dorchester with Edward the previous night and had had such a good time, but that Edward was too busy to go very often, and she wondered whether they couldn’t go together, just for fun. She remembered Alistair’s easy-going attitude on the night that she had been caught by the bombardment, and sure enough he only sounded a little surprised and agreed to come and pick her up on Wednesday evening.
Alistair was just the right company for that environment. He was all interested observation and quick conversation; he was happy to steer her around the dance floor and to look around for acquaintances; there was the editor of a magazine he wanted to write for; there was an American officer he knew slightly, who asked Laura to dance. And then, when Nina came in again very late, he naturally went with Laura to greet her. This time Laura stood solidly by Nina’s table until she had to ask if they wanted to sit down, and Laura made sure she sat next to Nina.
Laura tried to give Nina the kind of sympathetic flattery that usually resonated with other women. She asked where on earth she had got that beautiful dress. She asked if she had heard recently from Sybil – how lonely Sybil must be in the countryside without her friends. She asked what she was doing now that women had been called up, what a bore it was that they were all expected to work. But to all the questions, Nina said very little. ‘Aren’t you dancing?’ Laura said at one point. ‘This band must be better than any I’ve heard since I left the States.’ This was simply a pretence at sophistication, and she was afraid that Nina could see right through it.
‘Well,’ Nina said in a tone of indifference, ‘Chéri doesn’t, you know.’
Laura was surprised to hear her inappropriate endearment for Blanchard, but she turned to Alistair, sensing an opening. ‘You’d love to dance with Nina, I know you would.’
Once they had got up, the space between Laura and Blanchard was empty, but Laura could not believe how hard it was to flirt with a man who did not seem interested in her. There was no energy there between them, and so Laura found herself acting in an absurdly exaggerated way to try to make him notice her, batting her eyelashes as he lit her cigarette, brushing his fingers as he passed her glass, and even touching his leg with hers lightly under the table. She felt like a wind-up doll, turning on a music box, while Blanchard watched her sleepily, with the manner of someone who was used to being amused rather than exerting himself to amuse.
At first Laura was relieved when the other couple she had seen them with before – the Polish man and the young girl – came over to the table, but then she realised that meant the men would talk to one another rather than to her, and when she spoke to the young girl she did nothing but smile.
‘Don’t worry about Ingrid,’ said Victor. ‘She doesn’t talk much.’
‘You like quiet women,’ observed Blanchard.
‘She makes some noise in bed,’ Victor said.
‘That’s where I like a woman to be quiet,’ Blanchard said. Laura tried to break into the men’s conversation with a funny story about life in Toby’s shelter, but she felt her voice falling shrilly over the table and she was aware that she was much too callow to amuse these dissolute, secretive men. When Alistair came back to the table, she was trying to draw Ingrid out, but either because Ingrid was scared of her or had poor English, she only answered in monosyllables.
That Saturday afternoon she went to meet Stefan with a sense of a job badly done. In the café in Balham with steamed-up windows, she told him that it was pointless trying to stalk Blanchard at the Dorchester, that Edward refused to go and she could not ask Alistair to take her again, he could not afford it. Stefan cut the meeting short with an air of disappointed resignation, and Laura was surprised how she replayed and replayed his manner, how much it hurt her. At the next meeting he told her briefly that she had to try again, and before she had time to reply he was gone. This time in The Times newspaper was a brown envelope, and in the envelope was a stack of five-pound notes. Clearly, Stefan had decided to assume that the only barrier was the one she had mentioned, that she could not ask Alistair to treat her.
When she teleph
oned Alistair, he seemed puzzled by her desire to go back to the Dorchester. She understood why; it had been an uneasy evening at best. Laura looked at herself in the hall mirror as she talked to him, and saw herself raising her eyebrows and laughing as she told him how lovely it was going out dancing when everything else was so grim. ‘My treat, this time,’ she said, and wondered how foolish she sounded.
Each time she and Alistair went back to the Dorchester over the next few weeks, she had to put on that persona; she had to become that woman who was a bit of a butterfly and couldn’t see when others weren’t quite in the mood to join her. Every time it became a greater strain. She knew that really she was too dull for Nina and her friends; she had to learn to drink much more than she was comfortable with, and stay out until the small hours, laughing at their jokes.
‘I hate it, Stefan, and I’m not learning anything about anyone. They just flirt and drink. It’s horrible.’
Stefan nodded. Now that this had been going on for a couple of months, he too had realised that Laura was learning nothing except the way that Blanchard liked to get drunk with his girlfriend on his nights off. But if Laura expected to be released, she was disappointed by his next words.
‘If you can get into his room alone just once, I want you to put a bug into it. Then we can hear him. Then we will know. He must be making contact with the other side somehow. We need to know what he is telling them.’
Laura did not even know what he meant by a bug.
‘A listening device – like a radio receiver.’ Stefan’s voice was impatient. It was too cold for them to meet outside, and they were in that little café again. Laura suspected that the owner was a Party member and that was why Stefan felt at home there, but she had felt safer in the old days when they used to meet in open spaces. Their conversations were always so rushed here, and she felt that she had not even really heard what Stefan was saying before she had agreed.
A Quiet Life Page 22