The waiter inquired after coffee.
‘You didn’t arrange my move?’
The coffee came. Camp Coffee essence, bitter with chicory, and milky. Peter repeated his question.
‘I arrange it? I thought you were best off in the ELR.’
Peter lit a cigarette and tentatively sipped his coffee. ‘Nick, isn’t it time you told me what this is all about?’
‘I couldn’t tell you what it’s all about, even if I knew.’ He stressed ‘all’. ‘That’s why we’re here. I will tell you some of it. What you need to know. If you accept that this is between us and us only.’ He paused for Peter to nod.
‘Has that interesting young woman of yours been in touch? Dinah.’ Peter shook his head. ‘Not at all? No message, no call, no third party with news, no unsigned postcard, no book left for you?’
‘Nothing.’ He had to look away. He would never be over her. Her dark eyes, glinting hazel. Her sickle smile. The cloud of dark hair. He managed to look up. ‘Have you any more news?’
Nick was watching him impassively. ‘Absolutely between us.’ He blew a long column of smoke out of the booth and leant forward, speaking quietly. ‘She went to the US and into Canada. She met Walter Thomas. Then the Canadian and US authorities lost track of her. Nimble, that’s your lady friend. My belief is she’ll have come back to Europe.’
A surge of questions struck Peter dumb.
‘If she were to get in touch with you, you would do her a favour as well as us – and yourself – if you could persuade her to meet me. Tell her I will take every step for her safety.’
‘She’s in danger?’ Peter’s throat was constricted. ‘That’s why she left?’
‘She might well have had more than one reason.’
‘They must have been very strong, to leave her grandfather.’
Nick seemed amused. ‘They must.’
‘But who’s threatening her?’
‘I’ve told you more than I should because I believe you need to be ready. But for the moment, Peter, that’s it.’
‘Ready?’
‘Ready if she gets in touch or you come across her or learn where she is. As I said, if so, do all you can to persuade her to meet me.’ Nick looked at his watch.
‘You said I’d be doing myself a favour. You meant clearing my name?’
‘That? No. Not to worry about that. If I can talk to Dinah, some important questions could be answered, problems squared away. Don’t ask me more.’
‘Come on, Nick. How would I do myself a favour?’ He spoke urgently. Nick was starting to gather his pipe-smoking paraphernalia. ‘You can’t leave it there. What’s this about?’
‘There’s not much more I can say at this stage.’ He relented. ‘Well … Look. Without meaning to, you got yourself into something not too healthy but of interest to us. I had you safely tucked away in the ELR, where I could keep tabs on you and, I’ll be honest with you, see what developed. That turned out to be your getting roughed up. I’m sorry. Now, blow me down, I find you’re outside the system, whisked into some top-secret freebooting outfit under a CO who’s pally with Winston’s bucket shop friends.’
‘And?’
Nick finished the last dregs of his coffee and moved his pipe cleaners to the other side of his scraper. ‘And I gather you’re back off to France. Out of the jurisdiction, as it were.’ He looked at his watch again. The waiter came with the bill. ‘And on your own?’
‘I think so. I get my orders just before I leave tonight.’
‘Talking of leaving, back in a mo’.’ Nick went over to the cashier to pay.
When Nick came back, he bent over the table, his head close to Peter’s. ‘I’m not at all sure I understand what’s going on. The colonel’s mission may very likely be completely straightforward. But my instinct is that you’re being let loose for a purpose.’ He sat down again and flattened his hands on the table. Rough and powerful, Peter noticed. They could take a grip. ‘Just keep your wits about you. Phone me when you’re back. You’ve kept my number? Speak to me or Partridge, no one else.’ He opened his attaché case and took out an orange cover Penguin Book. ‘I thought this might help while away your journey. I bought one for myself.’
Peter looked at the cover: Selected Modern Short Stories, volume two. ‘Thank you. I liked the first volume.’
‘When you phone me, have it by you. Could you leave first, if you don’t mind?’
Peter stood and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for lunch and for a very interesting conversation. I’ll do my best to keep an eye open.’
‘I’m grateful to you for bearing with me. I know that inside your bookish outside there’s steel, more than people think. I hope Pat’s was all right for you.’
‘Better than being roughed up. I’ll keep it in mind. Can’t imagine your friend Bill gracing it.’
The eyes smiled. ‘Good sailing.’
****
At home, he had to assemble his kit, decide what else he might need. If he was quick, he could go back to Lord’s via Gloria. The Browning – long-barrelled, heavy, worn – had the air of being retrieved from some Flanders battlefield, perhaps from a dead officer’s icy grasp. He would also take the German major’s Mauser automatic, which he had tucked away, neat and powerful, and, of course, his lucky charm, Podger’s razor.
Nick had left him going round in circles. Who or what was Dinah? What did she know that placed her in such danger that she’d sacrificed her grandfather? What had he been to her, drawn along in her wake, dragged into some unspecified danger? If he was being “let loose”, who was doing the letting? Nick knew he had “more steel than people think” – Nick and Aunt Frances must have talked. He decided against ringing her.
The afternoon post had come. A letter from Ella, nearly a month old and covered in censors’ stamps. As he turned it over in his hand, Madame Duverger came in and asked if he had heard from his mother.
‘No. I haven’t had much chance after all. Haven’t you heard from her, Madame?’ He tucked the letter into his kit to read later.
‘She is late with her photo-commission.’
‘Which has taken her where?’ Why did he always have to learn about his mother through this woman?
‘Bukovina and perhaps western Ukraine. Madame is looking at refugees for her story.’
‘I expect getting through is difficult. I’ve just had a letter from Ella that’s been delayed for nearly a month.’
‘She has never been late and keeps in touch always.’
‘She has her journalist’s credentials and publishers’ letters.’
‘The general your father is worried. Perhaps you do not know how dangerous it is there for a woman, even such as your mother.’
‘I’m ordered away for a few days.’ She was about to leave the room. ‘I’ll be sure to phone when I get back.’ His mother was a woman of infinite resource and guile; if anyone could manage, she could. Had she gone to meet Dinah’s family?
****
What a pest! Gloria half shut – the rear of the tearoom had been closed for strengthening – and the remainder very full. As he hesitated in the entrance, on the point of turning away, a hand fell on his shoulder.
He would not immediately have picked out his former classics teacher, now a dark-suited Professor Chiasmus, almost ordinary in a clean white shirt and Trinity tie. A glance down showed black shoes completing the professor’s sartorial transformation. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘Welcome, I hope.’ Chiasmus was rushing into an explanation of his sudden appearance. ‘Time for Jove’s feast. Or at least tea. I was waiting for a former pupil. Methinks she bain’t be coming. So if you would like to take her place and her tea?’ He pointed to a table in a series of dividers along a wall. A mound of cigarette ends, an empty sandwich plate and a crust of apple tart signalled a long wait. ‘I’ll order a fresh pot.’
‘Thank you, Rhees. I’m afraid I haven’t all that long. I have to report for duty on the other side of town.’
�
�Brevity will intensify the pleasure. You were in France?’
‘Only in the final days. We were lucky to get home.’
‘And now a sergeant, preparing to defend our native shores?’
‘Awaiting orders. And you, Rhees? Working to keep up national morale? How is the world of film?’
‘I have moved on since we last met: it was decided that I’m too nicely verbal a person for the world of celluloid. “Show, don’t tell” is the opposite of how I work.’
‘There has to be commentary. Elegant, concrete, poetic concision.’ Peter gestured. ‘Your very virtues, Rhees.’
‘And for aye about working men, and women, mines and factories, shovelling coal and feeding furnaces, half-naked children skipping in slum courts, and office workers opening tins in radiant suburbs. The MacNeices and Spenders and Day Lewises are ripe for it. Here sits a man too lyric and vine-drenched.’
Hadn’t Chiasmus been a vociferous Marxist in his teaching days? ‘You couldn’t write
“She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gas-works …”?’
‘That sort of infantile industrial particularity, no—’ Rees almost spat. ‘I have the deepest sympathy with the unemployed, but lines like
“Moving through the silent crowd
Who stand behind dull cigarettes,
These men who idle in the road,
I have a sense of falling light…”
simply depress the spirit, not elevate it as poetry must if it’s to legislate.’
‘And you’ve taken yourself off to the civil service?’
‘Rhees Rees has been awarded respectability—at last. In the Foreign Office am I – and methinks rather enjoying it. A former pupil came to my aid, found me a refuge as a third private secretary, some research duties. Old Cambridge chums and I have formed a select FO secretaries’ after-hours drinking club where we can exchange information and gossip.’
‘Gossiping sounds more agreeable than lying out in the fields waiting for the panzers.’
‘Aren’t we all waiting for them? Have you heard anything, Peter?’
‘In my lowly station, nothing for an FO gossips’ club.’
He looked at his watch and began to excuse himself. ‘This has been a happy chance, though I’m sorry the young lady’s not come. Thank you for her tea.’
‘An open-minded secretary of remarkable attributes that she shares with unusual generosity. By the way, how is your fascinating young woman? The mysterious dark lady from Bukovina who held you in thrall last time we met?’
Carefully without expression he said, ‘Dinah? Her grandfather’s been interned. You know he was a professor of German in Vienna, a great student of Novalis. She left the country.’
‘I’m sorry. You seemed so close and so happy. But you manage to keep in touch, I hope.’
‘The war …’ Peter let his sentence trail away and shrugged.
‘My poor friend. But where there’s a will … “Passion lends them power, time, means, to meet, tempering extremities with extreme sweet.”’
Rhees Rees’s small, penetrating eyes bored like screws into Peter’s eyes; fingernails bitten to the quick were gripping his teacup.
‘I’m sorry to say, sorry to disappoint you, there’s been no keeping in touch of any kind, nor hint of it.’ Rees’s eyes stayed on his. ‘Could you watch my kit for a moment? I’ve learned “clever when you can, fool when you must”.’
When he returned, he remained standing to ask, ‘By the way, how’s the figures of speech book? Did you track that phrase down – Eros pantwn deilian hairei, phrenas Ate, “Love makes us brave, foolhardiness blind”? – I thought it might read “Blind love makes us bravely foolhardy”. Though that could make it antithesis not asyndeton.’
Rees was speaking as if there had been no interruption. ‘You can’t but miss her I expect. So intense, so different. You are actually engaged? Or an understanding between you?’
‘Understanding, Rhees? Understanding is the word. And miss her? Yes. I would do anything, go anywhere to see her again. I must be off. But if Dinah and I get together, we’ll all meet. I know you made quite an impression.’
Rees, still clutching his cup, looked after him, the sharp interrogation of his eyes replaced with a reflective look.
****
He was early and the warmth of the bright June evening drew him into the churchyard in front of The Mansions, to stroll pensively along the paths between luxuriant acacias and catalpas on the edge of bursting into bloom. There she was, back in his life. Like the jack-in-the-box when the catch slips, springing up, making you jump. Or a sudden reflection behind you in the mirror when you thought you were alone.
****
‘Hello, sergeant. Your rank now entitles you to take the lift. You mustn’t let sergeants down. Did all go well at Section K?’
‘With the kind help of the very attentive and efficient lady clerk, yes, thank you, sergeant.’
‘A family-run enterprise, solid and reliable through the ages. Tea? The colonel has just to polish off some business, so drop your kit and help yourself to a cigarette.’ He put down his book and pushed the packet of De Rezke Turks across the desk. ‘Back in a trice.’
Peter leant over to pick up Hugh’s book. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. It looked well thumbed.
‘A constant companion. A great help in time of troubles.’ Hugh put a cup of pale tea in front of Peter. ‘I hope magnolia is acceptable.’
‘Are you intending the priesthood?’
‘Yes, though not in present circumstances. I’ve succumbed to the other persuasion, you see. So there’s a family bargain: I see out the war and they’ll stifle their Anglican distaste. I can’t be a conscientious objector, so they’ve fixed me up here.’
‘And Amelia is part of the bargain.’
‘She threatened the veil if she wasn’t included.’
‘Your twin?’
‘Younger by ten minutes, I’m glad to say. The opposite of yourself.’
‘Hill, instanter.’ Colonel Ponsonby’s voice cut across Hugh’s. ‘Instanter meaning now.’
****
‘You’ve the extra stripe up, I see, sergeant. Well done. Everything ship-shape? Sidearm?’
‘Sir. And knife.’
‘Hope you won’t have to use that. Un-British. Well, Lavell thought you were the right stuff. Not that Special Duties or the Section is his cup of tea. Board of Trade waste regulations or machined-parts export permits more up his street.’
‘Sir.’ Tea was not quite the phrase. A bottle of Emu Australian red wine stood on the colonel’s desk, a glass, half full, at his elbow.
‘Well done. Now, your orders.’ The colonel went across to the filing cabinet and turned its combination lock. He returned to his seat holding a yellow file with a diagonal red stripe. From a small metal spectacle case, he took a pair of wire-framed spectacles and put them on. The overhead light reflected in the lenses so that his eyes became invisible. In silence, he thumbed through the file, then, without raising his head, he spoke slowly and firmly. ‘The objective of your mission in itself is straightforward. However, the raison d’être of this Section is unconventional missions handled in unconventional ways. Carrying out this mission may require some flexibility or improvisation on your part. If circumstances require, you will not hesitate to demonstrate how members of this Section can be flexible, imaginative, buccaneering. You understand?’
‘Sir.’
‘You will make your way to the French port city of Nantes. There you will establish contact, address supplied, with a Madame Marie Lagrange. You will escort her back to London, leaving at the earliest possible opportunity. Embarkation will be possible at the ports of Saint-Nazaire or La Rochelle. You will have a movement order for yourself plus one unnamed.’
‘Sir.’
‘According to my information, it is possible that Madame Lagrange will not wish to accompany you, that she will actively refuse. Why, I know not. Now liste
n carefully.’ The silver-white lenses were impenetrable. ‘In such a case, the risk is then that she might fall into German hands. You will ensure that there is no possibility of this happening.’
‘No possibility?’
The colonel raised his head. ‘I repeat, no possibility.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m not sure I have followed you.’
‘Under no circumstances can she be allowed to fall into German hands. I think I have made myself clear.’ The colonel spoke quietly but with extra deliberation. ‘Under no circumstances. Your reputation suggests you will have no problem with that.’
‘Sir, you are ordering me to kill her rather than risk her capture?’
‘The Germans must not have her. You are sent to ensure they do not. One way or another.’
‘Sir, I can do my utmost to persuade her to come back with me.’ He let the words hang in the air, then spoke with care. ‘But if she will not, I, a British soldier, am required to kill her, a civilian, a woman, in cold blood?’
‘As your commanding officer, I have made your orders perfectly clear, sergeant.’ He stressed the rank. ‘You need no more. You will do what is necessary to fulfil your mission. You will obey your orders: in the event of your failure to persuade her to return, you will not allow her fall into enemy hands.’
‘I must have your direct command, sir.’
The colonel was silent, looking at Peter, his eyes obscured. Eventually he spoke. ‘If she will not come with you … she cannot be allowed to continue …’ He poured himself some Emu wine. ‘Very well. This mission has been entrusted to Special Duties.’ He took off the spectacles. ‘You will kill her. In the interests of our country. You have your direct command.’
He seemed surprised, perhaps gratified, to have uttered it. ‘You will kill her. Now, let’s get down to details.’
Chapter Three
Lying on his bunk in the bowels of the destroyer, Cherbourg-bound with the general and his entourage, he uneasily weighed the circumstances in which he, Peter Hill, had accepted an order to shoot … possibly shoot … probably shoot … to kill, a civilian; was now on his way, possibly, probably to carry it out. There was also the matter of this “reputation” he’d apparently acquired.
Innocence To Die For Page 26