‘She questioned why I had come. And then—’
The colonel sat forward, his eyes fixed on Peter’s.
‘…well, nothing definite, sir. More the way she talked.’ He paused for thought.
‘Come on, m’boy. Get to it.’
‘She … I think she felt she couldn’t be safe in England.’
‘Not safe here?’
‘Not safe. Knowing everything she did. About her recent employer. And so on.’
‘Good God.’ The colonel sat back and exhaled. ‘I hope you don’t feel the same way.’
‘Certainly not, sir. I know we’re not like that. Besides, she didn’t tell me a quarter of what she knew, I suppose.’
‘And she was, what did you say? Adamant? Adamant.’
‘Quite adamant, sir.’
‘No problems clearin’ out?’
‘None, sir. As you instructed, I planned my exit before going in.’
‘A rule of life.’
‘“The readiness is all”, as you say, sir,’
The colonel was silent for a moment. ‘And you got back, how?’
‘I took her car, drove to Saint-Nazaire, reported back to the general’s staff and embarked with them.’
‘I’ll be damned. You’re a cool one. By the by, pull your weight with the staff?’
‘I did my best, colonel. For cover. But it was very interesting to see the general in action. Very impressive.’
Colonel Ponsonby looked put out for a moment and swirled his wine. ‘One thing more.’ He leaned forward. ‘You fired that gun twice.’
‘One test-firing, colonel.’
The colonel grunted and sat up. ‘Your actions were a tribute to Special Duties. Just as I hoped. But that Peter, I’m afraid, is as far as it goes, for the moment at least. You might have gathered over at K that the whole area of sabotage and subversion, black activities generally, is being reconsidered and reorganised. Various agencies bein’ brought together, policy rewritten, who runs what. So we’re standin’ easy for the moment while it’s all sorted out. I’m a hundred per cent sure we’ll be back in business shortly and bustin’ to go. Anyway, take some days’ leave. Yes? Hugh’ll let you know when to report.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ve earned it.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Peter thanked him for the wine and, relieved, prepared to go.
‘No need to rush off. I want to hear about the French. Damn good thing we’re on our own now. We can do things our way at last.’
Peter felt brushed by sympathy akin to affection. ‘We shouldn’t be surprised really, sir. Their generals seemed at the end of their tether, overwhelmed by the speed of the panzers.’ He described the French general staring at his map, vacant, lost. ‘And movement impossible with refugees all along the roads. And French troops in among them.’ He pictured the flood of humanity. ‘You could see why our government’s saying “Stay put” at the top of the invasion instructions.’
‘Invasion instructions.’ The colonel looked thoughtful. ‘Invasion. Invasion preparations.’ He gulped down his wine and looked more himself. ‘Before we part, one thing more about this little expedition of yours. Assassination’s off the national agenda. Attlee and his lefty friends dead against it. So the order of the day is “Just forget your operation ever happened”. Silence is golden.’ Calling to the barman to put the wine on his tab, he led the way out. The barman seemed about to say something, but shrugged and thought better of it.
On the pavement, the colonel shook his hand vigorously. ‘Thank you, Peter. You did well. I’m sure it will be recognised one day. Hugh’ll be in touch.’ He hailed a taxi. With the door open, he beckoned Peter. ‘Duke of Hesse, you said? Out of reach. Good man.’ He called to the driver, ‘St John’s Wood High Street.’ The door slammed.
****
The club was buoyant. “On our own at last. Free of the French albatross. Standing fast in our island fortress. Rising to the challenge of being alone. Now the responsibility is in the right hands.” The new litany. “Dunkirk showed what we could do with our backs to the wall. Alone, Britain can be herself.”
That didn’t surprise him. What did was the certainty among his fellow clubmen that Hitler had overreached himself. If this island fortress could hold out for the rest of the year and into the spring, as it could—well then. Germany would crack, simply crack. Famine, hostility to Hitler in the Wehrmacht, low morale in the German population – clubmen were certain these would all set in, and along with them revolt in the occupied lands. Famine there too. Nazidom would – must – splinter. The lesson? “We must build our strength to be ready to strike the final, knockout blow”, delivered when famine and our heavy bombers had done their worst.
He ate his portion of sole – how small and tired compared to Pornic’s – in near silence. Perhaps they were right. But the French people revolting? Their readiness to live with defeat was what he’d brought home.
As he passed the coat racks on his way out, the member who was something in the Foreign Office introduced himself. ‘Peter Hill, isn’t it? Bruce Hendersley. If you don’t mind my saying so, you seemed somewhat unimpressed with our fellow members’ optimism.’
‘Not the idea that we’re better off alone. What I don’t believe is that the French are able to fight on. And the idea that by next year they’ll be minded to revolt seems very far-fetched.’
‘Are you speaking from first-hand knowledge, Mr Hill, or is that a London-based judgement?’
‘I know that one at least of our generals in France was very impressed with the fighting quality of the German army. As for the French people, I’m not long back and I saw how some couldn’t wait for Pétain’s peace terms.’
‘He only said they must try to end the combat.’
‘No. On the wireless, “Il faut cesser le combat” were his exact words.’
‘You actually heard his broadcast?’
Peter nodded. ‘Passing a bar.’
‘And what now for France, do you think?’
Peter thought for a moment. ‘“Il fallait en finir” seemed widespread. These are early days, but the shock of the onslaught seems to be turning the country in on itself. Some, perhaps many, might seek an answer to defeat in some form of counter-revolution, restore traditional France, rebuild on her ancient culture.’
‘Possibly allied to Germany?’
‘For Pétain and his supporters the first priority is likely to be national renewal. For ordinary people? Coming to terms with defeat. I don’t think there’d be much support – or the spirit – for an alliance against us.’
‘There you are, Hendersley.’ A group had emerged from the Smoking Room. ‘Walking back to the Office?’
‘Thank you, Mr Hill. Most interesting.’ Hendersley waved at his fellow somethings-in-the-FO. ‘We must lunch.’
****
Easy to talk of political France. In the dark of his bedroom, Peter could not shut away the headland, the villa, the sea. He could not shut away the white peignoir patterned in red.
Chapter Six
Madame Duverger was anxious. He’d not seen this stony-faced woman anxious before. The Roumanians were holding Madame his mother; she was under confinement in her hotel room. A problem with her papers, they claimed. She, Claudine-Jeanne Duverger, could not help her. He must go at once to Monsieur Anselm and see what the British government could do.
With Madame Duverger hovering, he rang Veronica. She expressed relief that he was in London. ‘I worried you might have been caught in France—’
“Caught in France”? Anselm at work?
‘Are you free to come over? On leave? Just the job. Come as soon as you can.’
****
As far as Lady Veronica knew – that was to say as far as the embassy had been able to discover, as relayed to Anselm, so it was all a bit hearsay – his mother had been on a train packed with Jews from Bukovina trying to leave when Roumanian police boarded the train and took her off, claiming her papers were not in order
. The consul managed to have her moved to a hotel in Cernauti while the matter was sorted out. Then things became complicated, ‘as they damned well might’. She paused, smoothing her WVS skirt while the parlour maid served coffee. ‘The Roumanian authorities are claiming to the embassy that your mother’s true nationality is Polish and she must be released back to Poland. Obviously that would not be the very best of ideas.’
‘What absolute nonsense. What idiots they must be. Mother may have been born in Poland, but now she’s as British as I am.’
‘Dear, dear Peter, I wish it were as easy as that. Remember your parents’ marital position. That makes the question of your mother’s nationality much more complicated. Anyway, Anselm’s looking into it, with high hopes of clearing everything up and the embassy’s securing her release. You’re to join him after lunch. I must go. We’ve all these refugees at Alexandra Palace to sort out. I’m supposed to keep an eye open for wrong ’uns.’
‘I’ve some leave. Should I go out there, see what I can do?’
‘Talk to Anselm. And come by again soon. I want to hear all about your adventures. Have you heard from dear Ella? Her drawings of our chaps in the desert have been very well received.’
****
‘Go out there? Under no circumstances,’ declared Anselm. Getting his mother out was best left to the professionals. Just as important was the fact that he was a member of His Majesty’s armed forces. ‘Can’t have a British soldier badgering the Roumanian government and police, and generally making a nuisance of himself.’
‘The Roumanians can’t possibly be right, can they?’
‘We must damned well show them they aren’t.’ Anselm’s tone, unusually vigorous, became more measured. ‘But questions of nationality can be complex. Relinquishing the original nationality and acquiring another. Was the first properly sloughed off? Was the second properly taken on? Were there subsequent territorial changes of allegiance? As a lawyer, you’ll see the potential for creating confusion, even difficulty. And in your mother’s case, goodness knows, there are additional complications.’ He looked down the length of his club’s great library where they sat at one end and shook his head.
‘Such as? Please explain.’
‘Not without your father’s and mother’s consent. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect me to breach their confidence.’
‘She’d been travelling freely in Roumania and had her work published. I saw some in a French magazine. Why suddenly won’t her papers do?’
Anselm sniffed. ‘The Roumanian interior ministry aver they had information of significance from Paris. So the ambassador reports.’ Anyway, at this stage delay was the essential strategy. Delay first and foremost. Hold off removal to Poland. Keep up, if possible ratchet up, the diplomatic pressure so that Bucharest wanted an end to the matter. Produce the paperwork or sufficient paperwork to get her home. He was turning the Home Office inside out to get all the relevant records and liaising with the FO to keep her plight on their agenda at this crowded time.
‘Keep in touch with me, please Peter. Very good thing you’re on leave. Please don’t try any funny business. None of your Special Duties bravado. By the way, I’m glad that outfit’s being wrapped up. Wouldn’t be surprised if you were offered something else.’ He stood up and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. ‘Your father has had to be ordered to stay in his theatre or face a court martial.’
As they parted under the columned front portico, Anselm turned to him. ’If we take things step by step, I’m sure we’ll get your mother back here.’ He sighed. ‘Or better still, out to Egypt. With a bit of luck, your parents could finally marry and put an end to all this pother.’
****
Tight with fear and rage, Peter walked aimlessly away. His mother was in danger and he could do nothing. He hadn’t grasped how perilous her situation was. Expelled to Poland. German-occupied Poland. The embassy obviously had other priorities. Anselm had talked of additional complications in a situation already prone to confusion. He was only “sure we’ll get your mother back”. “Sure”. The language of unmeant promises. His mother trapped in some stuffy Czernowitz hotel-room; some leering guard peeping at her through the keyhole, while she agonised over transfer to Poland. What had she been up to? She must know her status. So confident of getting by with her warmth, wit and charm.
The words “information of significance from Paris” troubled him. Dinah was go-between for a senior Soviet agent in Paris. She’d sent that last letter of hers to a Paris address. Raymond Steiner came from Paris. His henchman Filon, of course. Did his mother’s plight lead back to Dinah? He felt sick, trembling with alarm for his mother and with impotent rage. Had his naive obsession with Dinah led to this? In Pornic, hadn’t Elisabeth truly seen him for the innocent he was?
He realised his wandering had taken him along Cork Street. There was the mews. A painted sign showed a bird raising its wings out of flames. The Risen Phoenix Gallery. Rozalia Gutmannova’s gallery. Rozalia had held his hand and warned him of danger. If he could have the touch of her hand again …
Her slim figure rose from a desk at the far end of the deserted gallery. ‘You have returned. How good it is to see you. Thank you for looking in.’ As she spoke, she walked up the gallery to greet him where he stood inside the entrance, unable to move. ‘My dear, how you are troubled.’ She touched his temples with her forefingers, holding him for a moment. ‘Terribly troubled. ‘She locked the door and turned the sign to “Closed”. Taking his sleeve, she drew him down the gallery and into the back room marked “Private”.
She sat him on a couch and made him mint tea. In the mews it was quiet, with only the occasional shout from men loading furniture into a van from a flat further down. He was trembling. She sat in sympathetic silence with him, then rose and went behind the couch, put her fingers on his throbbing temples and began gently to rub away the tension. Her fingers were cool and soft. His tension, the rage and fear, flooded up and away under her gentle pressures.
As she withdrew her fingers, he felt again that slightest of electric charges he’d experienced outside her flat. ‘Thank you. That was wonderful. I can’t think what came over me. You have magic fingers.’
‘I do it for my father when he feels life is too much.’ She made more tea. ‘You have had bad news, but will come through it.’
‘I feel a fool.’
‘Why? Peter Hill is not human?’
‘I feel responsible.’
‘Yet isn’t this something you can’t control?’
‘In some ways, I am responsible. Not directly. Actions of mine that seemed so … so unquestionable. Seemed so harmless. Innocent. I look back and suddenly they are links in a chain.’
‘That you could not see then—or have foreseen.’ She gestured at the gallery. ‘Like a painting, the whole design is there in a detail, but you have to be able to look at the complete work to see that.’
‘Something similar. I’m sorry I can’t show you the work.’
‘I won’t ask. I imagine it’s to do with your colonel’s secret organisation on the floor above mine.’
‘You know?’
‘Everybody in the block knows.’
‘No.’ He managed a smile. ‘Not my colonel. It’s to do with my mother. She’s having trouble with the Roumanians over her papers and they’re threatening to deport her to Poland.’ She took his hand and stroked it. ‘Our embassy and the Foreign Office are working on it. I’m furious with her for landing herself in such a pickle. And furious with myself that something I did might have caused her problem, as well as frustrated that I can’t do anything.’
‘I will ask my father. It might be he knows someone in Bucharest who can be bribed. They are very corrupt. Ring me or drop in again when you can.’
‘Thank you. I’d do anything, of course.’ He finished his tea. ‘I must let you reopen. You’ve been closed far too long, looking after me. I can’t thank you enough for your kindness.’
‘I owe you thanks too. With your advice,
I could persuade my father to send the paintings out of London. Not all. The flat still has the Matisse and some sketches he’s particularly fond of. You must promise to see them. Yes?’
She went behind the desk and began to collect the papers strewn across it. ‘Actually, I was about to close. I have to meet a client in the Ritz. Walk down with me. If we’re a bit early, a glass of champagne will lift the spirits.’ She pouted. ‘Or do you have to report?’
‘I’m on leave. You have already lifted the spirits. But they could do with more.’
‘Then wait a moment while I tidy up.’
Chapter Seven
His leave seemed endless.
Uncertain when the call might come from Hugh or perhaps Colonel Ponsonby himself, he filled his time from day to day. Anxiety was his constant companion, over his mother, the possible link to Dinah. He went to see Totosh to say hello and deal with the kennel fees – how pleased the collie was to see him; how hard it was to tear himself away – and paid a visit to Edmond Bloch and Lucienne. Edmond was on the Belle Marie, picking friends up from coves on the Brittany coast, but Lucienne promised to give the collie a home when his time in kennels was up. She was finding some work as a singer, entertaining French exiles.
He was following the news avidly. The Germans sent the French government – now in Bordeaux – terms for an armistice. After a fruitless attempt to haggle, Pétain signed them: he saw it as a question of “France, her soil, her sons”, of securing the basis to renew La Patrie.
In the club, the terms were assessed as ‘clever – not nearly as harsh as might have been’. They were also quietly explored for what Hitler might offer an unbeaten Britain, its fleet and empire intact.
An advertisement for training in unarmed combat caught his eye – “Prepare to meet the invader!” – and led to his passing a weekend in a grim Stepney gym being thrown about, half-strangled, and threatened with knives and guns by an old China hand and a veteran of the International Brigade, learning to watch, anticipate, act.
Innocence To Die For Page 31