In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

Denis and I had to leave shortly afterwards to catch the overnight express from Nice. As we left Maxine stood under her lighted porch, throwing us extravagant kisses, her head tilted slightly to one side with a fetching smile. She was a consummate actress and she was acting, but she had let me see the real Maxine and I had been deeply touched.

  I was never to see her again, but when we returned to Malaya I found a parcel from her waiting for me. It enclosed a copy of ‘The Four Fat Women of Antibes’, and a pretty little fretted silver cake slice that I recognised immediately. With them was a letter:

  If I had had a daughter, I would have given her this as a token of my love. It was brought to England by George Keppel’s forebears (a Huguenot family of course) and he gave it to me. A pedant will tell you it is not a cake slice at all, but a fish slice. But we have agreed, have we not, that everything is precisely what we want it to be in the game we play.

  George gave it to me when I first came to London at the turn of the century, and it has the most wonderful memories for me. Treasure it, my dear. I served you and Denis cake with it in my drawing room – a moment of sunshine towards the end of a long life full of sunshine and some sorrow.

  Maxine died in her Château less than a year later, just after the outbreak of war. She was buried in Cannes, her funeral attended, amongst many others, by George Keppel as Winston Churchill’s personal representative, and by François Diderot, the Communist Mayor of Vallauris.

  I couldn’t sleep as the Nice-to-Cherbourg Express charged through the night, and so I sat by the window, wrapped in a blanket, looking out at the racing French countryside. I can’t really describe what I was feeling. Touched, exhilarated, sobered, happy and sad, all at once. I remember tears rolling down my cheeks, and then laughing through them. I suppose I was a little mad.

  I had been admitted to the world the battleships came from.

  We stayed in London for a fortnight, staying at the Regents Palace Hotel just off Piccadilly Circus. It was cold, with snowflakes often falling into the dark, busy streets, but I was as happy as a lark in the warmth of a luxury hotel and with the fabulous city of London at my feet. Of course, I saw the city not as it was – grimy and overcrowded, its blackened streets choked by traffic – but through eyes bewitched by my reading of history and literature. I saw it as the place where Boadicea had routed a Roman legion, where Norman knights had roistered after the Battle of Hastings, where Shakespeare had scribbled down his plays – and where the Scarlet Pimpernel had courted his Marguerite.

  My only disappointment was that Denis was not as free as I had thought he’d be. In fact, during our second week he dragged himself off virtually every day to ‘talk to some people about the coming war’. It became quite a nuisance. I’d plan on a visit to the British Museum, or Hampton Court, and when I mentioned my plans to Denis he would grimace. ‘Can’t do I’m afraid. I’ve got to run down to Caxton Street tomorrow.’ I finally confronted the infuriating man, plonking him down in one of the two chairs in our room and dragging my own up close in order to stare him down. ‘You said this was to be a holiday,’ I said forcefully. ‘You said that you were going to show me the world before the balloon went up. Well, I have my doubts about that. I think you’re really here to talk to people, and I’m only tagging along.’ I wasn’t really as angry as I tried to sound but there was a grain of truth in my resentment.

  Denis sighed and leaned back, feeling for his cigarettes. ‘I really did intend this to be all holiday,’ he said. ‘But something came up, actually while we were on our way. Stewart Menzies – the chap whose name you keep shoving under my nose – is organising a group to cry havoc against our enemies if there is a war. And I’m the only chap available who can represent Far East interests.’

  ‘Are you sure this project came up while we were on our way?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘Are you sure these meetings you keep going to weren’t arranged long ago?’

  Denis looked at me reproachfully. ‘Would I lie to someone as beautiful as you?’

  Actually, I was to discover that my gay deceiver had come to London for more than tourist reasons. He was in fact helping to establish the Demolitions Section of MI6, later to become Special Operations Executive (SOE). SOE was to do the dirty work for British Intelligence during the coming war – the sabotage and the mayhem, the selective bombings and shootings. I’m rather glad I didn’t know that at the time because it might have spoilt a special time for me.

  It was through Denis’s work with ‘D’ Section that we met Alan and Mary Hillgarth. It was a fortuitous meeting: Denis and I had arranged to meet for a cup of tea in Fortnum & Masons one afternoon and we had just sat down when the Hillgarths came in and sat down at the table next to ours.

  ‘Playing truant, Denis?’ Alan had called across with a smile. Apparently he and Denis had excused themselves moments before from a meeting of ‘D’ Section people, both pleading stories of urgent business to attend to.

  ‘Not at all,’ Denis had responded quickly. ‘I’m on duty keeping an eye on you, old chap. Good thing I did, too. The lady with you is much too attractive to be anything but a Mata Hari.’

  The Hillgarths joined our table, and we got along like a house on fire. We went on to share dinner that night, and within a few days the four of us were inseparable. We found we had an awful lot in common. As well as their Intelligence connection, the two men shared a love of action: of riding horses hard, of playing cricket and rugger, of sailing, and of travelling to far and difficult places. Mary and I were also two of a kind, though our interests were quieter. We loved reading and shared many favourite authors, we loved music and history, and we both had young children. And we were both deeply in love with our men.

  Alan Hillgarth was ostensibly a normal serving naval officer, but beneath the dashing blue uniform of an RN Lieutenant-Commander he was one of Stewart Menzies’ men. A member of the Linlithgow Hunt, as I once told him, to see him start with surprise that I could know such a thing. He had been born George Evans, a regular serving naval officer, but he’d done something in South America that required him to take another name.

  ‘So we are both in the same boat,’ he said to me one evening. ‘You and I have needed to grow new skins.’ The four of us were sitting in the Spanish Court Restaurant, toying with our desserts after a delicious meal. I’d told the Hillgarths all about my change of name and nationality, and Alan had repaid my confidence by telling me about his own change of name.

  ‘They say the trick is to believe completely that you are another person,’ he said. ‘Don’t think of yourself as acting, because actors muff their lines. Be the new person, waking and sleeping.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ I said. ‘But don’t forget I don’t only have I to be another person, I also have to know what it’s like to have been brought up in a country I only saw for the first time a fortnight ago.’

  Alan frowned thoughtfully. ‘How old were you when you are supposed to have left England for Malaya with your parents?’ he asked.

  I looked at Denis. ‘My story is that I left England as a little girl. But I want to have been old enough so have known Denis before I left. That way, Denis can weave me into his own childhood background. And he could tell me real things that happened which I could weave into my own story.’

  Alan nodded. ‘Rather clever. Well, why not say you left at the age of eight or nine? At that age you’d remember a lot about family and friends but precious little about the outside world. The only knowledge you’d really have of England would be what you gathered when you came home on leave. So – do all the things you would have done on leave. Go to all the places your parents would have taken you. Albert Hall. The Zoo. Henley-on-Thames for the Regatta. Cowes, perhaps, to watch the yacht racing. Make notes – but don’t forget to destroy them after you’ve memorised them.’

  ‘I suppose what I’m really worried about is what to do when I get back to Malaya,’ I said. ‘For instance, when I’m talking to two people at once, one who knows the r
eal me, one who only knows me as Norma.’

  ‘It’s happened to Alan,’ Mary said with an impish grin. ‘He just bluffs his way through. Left a few very confused people in his wake at times.’

  ‘It gets a little easier as the years go by,’ Allan said encouragingly. ‘Having the legal status of the new you helps in a crunch. But there will be the few odd sticky moments. One little trick I have used is to hint that I had to change my name because I got involved a very hush-hush divorce. People stop asking questions in a hurry when I tell them that.’

  Mary pulled a face. ‘You were involved in a very hush-hush divorce. Mine. But that’s a story for another time.’

  Denis and I decided to take Alan’s advice. We visited all the obvious places, did all the obvious things. We even had dinner at Phillis Court, though I prohibited any drinking of champagne in case it had unfortunate consequences. After a while it became rather good fun. I was once involved in conversation with a very haughty County family over breakfast, and I’m sure they had no idea at all that my chatter about carefree schooldays in Taunton had been cribbed from Denis earlier that day.

  One morning in the hotel dining room I looked up from my kippered herring and saw Denis looking at a smartly dressed young girl, probably ten years old or so, sitting at the table next to ours. Somehow or other I knew precisely what he was thinking, and I put my knife and fork down quietly. ‘You must go and see your daughter,’ I said, ‘and Dorothy. I don’t mind, darling. I really don’t.’

  He looked at me, his eyes searching mine intently. And then I saw his shoulders relax. ‘I suppose I must,’ he said leaning back in his chair and shaking out the newspaper casually. ‘I suppose I must.’

  He told me later that Patricia had grown into a lovely girl, and that she had played ‘A Maiden’s Prayer’ very beautifully for him at the piano. And that Dorothy had been as much in love with him as ever. I know it must have been hard, seeing his daughter and then saying goodbye, and I know the scars must have remained, hidden deep beneath the carapace of his charming smile.

  Towards the end of our stay in London the Hillgarths invited us down for a weekend at their place in the New Forest, with the promise of some tennis and a ride in a point-to-point. I hadn’t brought my jodhpurs or a tennis frock so I spent the next afternoon shopping in Bond Street. I had hardly touched the bank account Denis had created for me so I had absolutely no feeling of guilt when I bought not only the sports clothes I needed but something for the evening as well. It was a long, slim gown in midnight blue, and naturally it needed matching shoes and a single, expensive piece of jewellery to set it off. I chose a necklace – a rather tight, thin gold chain bearing a single large sapphire that sat just beneath my throat.

  The weather had turned fine so we set off on the Friday morning, planning to see a bit of countryside before meeting up with the Hillgarths first thing the next day. We had hired a little Morris Tourer, and with Tony laughing with delight in the dickey-seat we sped out of London on the A30 to find the hedgerows alive with spring. We broke for morning tea at the Nag’s Head in Cobham, then picnicked on the Hog’s Back with the patchwork fields of Surrey all around us.

  We’d just put the picnic things away in their basket and stowed it in the boot when Denis turned to me with a casual smile. ‘Do you mind if we pop in on some old friends?’ he asked. ‘Theo used to be the family solicitor, and I used to stay with them a lot as a child. Their place is only a few miles away.’

  Theodore Gillaume literally fell on Denis with pleasure when we pulled up beside him in his driveway where he was gardening. ‘My dear, dear boy,’ he boomed, throwing his gardening gloves aside to embrace Denis in a clumsy bear hug. ‘I knew you’d be back to see us. It’s been so long, old chap. So very long.’

  Mrs Gillaume was more restrained, but I saw tears gleaming behind her glasses as she poured tea and cut up a piece of cake for Tony. ‘He never writes, you know,’ she complained to me. ‘Always catches us by surprise. Always. One day he’s going to turn up to find Theo and me long dead.’

  They both looked so old, and that possibility so likely, that my heart ached for them. ‘That won’t happen, Mrs Gillaume,’ I said firmly. ‘Not as long as I have any say in the matter. We’ll keep in touch, I promise you.’

  ‘She is a sweet girl, dear boy,’ Theo said turning to Denis. ‘Look after her, won’t you?’ He turned back to me. ‘I don’t really need him to promise me that,’ he said. ‘It’s patently clear how much he loves you.’

  After tea, Mrs Gillaume took me up the staircase to the landing. There was a large wooden box, a sailor’s chest I think, under the window, with ‘Denis’ painted across the top. ‘It’s his toy box,’ she said. ‘Denis used to stay with us for months at a time when he was a child, to get him out of London. Over the years he built up quite a collection of toys, and one Christmas we bought him this box to keep them in. It’s remained here ever since. I like to see it on my way up to bed.’

  I knelt on the carpet and opened the lid. The box was chock-full of toys – wooden aeroplanes, boats, balls and the inevitable jumble of toy soldiers. I noticed that they had been kept clean and dusted.

  ‘Would you like to see his room?’ she asked. ‘We’ve kept it just as it always was.’ She must have realised how proprietorial she was beginning to sound and hurried on. ‘We’ve had no need to change anything, you know – we’ve got lots of other rooms for guests.’

  ‘Are you and Theo related to Denis?’ I asked. Standing in the little room – full of boyish clutter – I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Theo was Denis’s legal trustee until he turned twenty-one,’ Mrs Gillaume said flatly. She sounded a little hurt that I had asked. ‘Denis had money given to him by his mother’s family.’ She was about to say something more but stopped herself.

  We left far too soon for the elderly pair, who stood arm in arm in their driveway as we pulled away. For all the world like parents saying goodbye to a beloved son.

  We had arranged to meet the Hillgarths at the Copper Kettle, a renowned New Forest rendezvous point on the A31 at ten the next morning, and decided to spend the night just outside Winchester in order to be within easy striking distance. The Book and Candle was a quintessential English village inn, with a thatched roof, daub-and-wattle walls, and heavy oaken beams. The days were still short so it was dark before we had unpacked, and we tucked Tony into bed and dined early in the quaint, musty little dining room.

  ‘You are very special to a lot of people, darling,’ I said after we had demolished decent helpings of steak and mushroom pie. ‘Does it ever weigh on you, all those people with all their expectations?’ I had been thinking of Tim and his cronies in Malaya who seemed to regard Denis as something of a minor god, and of Maxine, and the Gillaumes. And of me too, I suppose.

  Denis laughed. ‘Don’t inflate my ego too much,’ he said. ‘I do enough of that myself.’ But then he was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You can never live up to everyone’s expectations, so you concentrate on living up to your own.’

  ‘The Gillaumes would very much like to be more involved in your life,’ I said gently. ‘Couldn’t you let them in just a little bit more? It would make them very happy.’

  Denis moved restlessly in his chair. ‘I’ve sorted out my life the way I want it to be,’ he said almost sharply. ‘The Gillaumes are lovely people but I’ve moved on. I don’t want to go backwards.’

  He sounded almost selfish and his words stung me. ‘I suppose that’s why I haven’t seen any of your family,’ I said. ‘You have moved on from them too, no doubt. But I do feel for them. It must hurt to be left behind.’

  Denis was now definitely angry and he folded up his napkin carefully and flung it on the table. ‘Please leave my family out of this, Nona. They are my concern, not yours.’ He got up abruptly and stalked out of the room.

  I must have been tired because I just sat there, stupid tears gathering in my eyes. What a silly girl I’d been to imagine myself a part of Denis’s bright and s
hining future. It was his future after all, and he would no doubt move towards it as soon as he wanted to, leaving me behind. I suddenly saw a picture in my mind’s eye of Mrs Gillaume uselessly dusting those toys in the sailor’s chest above the stairs. The little boy she was dusting them for had moved on and left her behind, but she simply couldn’t accept the fact.

  Then Denis was behind my chair and had put his arms around me. ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly into my ear. ‘I know I can be an awful beast at times.’

  ‘You called me Nona,’ I said tonelessly. ‘That’s the code word to send me back, isn’t it? Back to being that ragged little Russian émigré girl you picked up in Argyll Street.’

  Denis stared at me, the hurt in his eyes so profound that I just had to bring his face down to mine and forgive him with a kiss.

  We met up with the Hillgarths at the Copper Kettle the next morning, and enjoyed coffee and toast in the oak-beamed parlour while Alan outlined plans for the weekend. ‘We’ve got quite a crowd coming,’ he said almost apologetically. ‘It would have been nice to have just the two of you for your first weekend at Millward Hall, but the Fates have decreed otherwise.’ He turned to Denis. ‘Stewart Menzies and Admiral Godfrey are down in this neck of the woods, and so is Drage, and Manisty, and Robbie Draper. So Menzies thought we might all take the opportunity to meet and have an informal chat about what’s going to happen in the Far East when the conflagration comes.’

  ‘Blast Stewart,’ Denis said equably, and Mary nodded vigorously in agreement.

  Millward Hall was a large, impressive Elizabethan home constructed in brick mellowed by the centuries to an attractive pale orange. It was set deep in beautiful parkland and when we arrived several expensive-looking cars were already parked on the gravel turning circle by the marble front steps. We climbed out of the little Morris Tourer and I flung my arms impulsively around Denis and hugged him tight. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ I asked him. ‘It’s like stepping into a photograph from Country Life.’