‘Awful formal, aren’t you?’ Bert smiled.
‘He won’t be back today. He’s out on business.’
Bert looked out of the window past the wilting geranium. ‘Know where he’s gone, do you?’ he tried.
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘Mr McGuigan is working.’
‘Right,’ Bert sighed.
Mirabelle kept her pen poised.
‘Well, I was hoping to get back on the four thirty anyway,’ he conceded. ‘My name’s Albert Jennings. Best place to get me is the Red Lion in Notting Hill – though Big Ben knows that already.’
And your case, Mr Jennings?’
‘It’s a tricky one, like I said. Slightly delicate. Woman borrowed four hundred quid. And now she’s in the family way, if you see what I mean. Come down to Brighton all of a sudden to have the little blighter and there’s no sign of my money. Six weeks overdue – that’s the payment, not the baby – and plenty of interest. She said she had money coming from her uncle’s will. I want Ben to find her and see what he can do – it’s a tidy sum now. Piles up when it’s overdue, dunnit? Got no address for the lady down here.’
‘Her name?’ Mirabelle asked.
‘Foreign bird. Widow. Name of Laszlo,’ Bert smiled. ‘Romana Laszlo. Think she’s Polish or something.’ He sniffed. ‘She’s got a sister, but she’s done a bunk and all.’
‘Romana Laszlo. Well, from the name, she is Hungarian, I imagine,’ Mirabelle said, without thinking. ‘Do you have a written contract?’
Bert leaned forward and pulled a paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. He laid it on the desk.
Mirabelle peered at the signature. ‘Yes. Hungarian,’ she pronounced. ‘The Poles don’t spell it like that. It’s an interesting combination – ethnic Hungarian surname with a Catholic given name. She’s a Magyar girl, I should think.’
‘Know a lot of Hungarians, do you, Miss?’ Bert asked.
Mirabelle bit her lip, smearing cherry-red lipstick along her incisor. She really ought to be more careful. ‘I read a book about Hungary. Very interesting,’ she said lamely.
‘Right. Well, do you think Ben might get onto it for me?’
‘Yes. I’ll give him the details. Of course.’
Mr Jennings punctuated his next remark by tapping his forefinger on the desk. ‘You tell him ten per cent.’
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘The normal rate is twenty,’ she said briskly.
‘Yeah, but this is more than he picks up on any of those calls he makes down the coast. This is real money.’ He sat back.
Mirabelle considered for a moment. Mr Jennings had a point. ‘He’ll do it for fifteen,’ she said.
Bert sighed. ‘Twelve and a half, an even eighth?’ he tried.
‘You know I’m not going to budge from fifteen per cent,’ Mirabelle replied. ‘Fifteen per cent is fair.’
Bert hesitated for a moment. Then he shrugged and offered his hand.
Mirabelle shook it. ‘Didn’t catch your name,’ he remarked.
‘I’m Mirabelle Bevan, Mr Jennings.’
‘French name, Mirabelle. But you sound good and English.’
‘Indeed.’
Bert smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘expect I’ll make the three thirty now.’
‘Sign here and here, Mr Jennings.’ Mirabelle pushed a contract over the table. Bert picked up the pen and scribbled his name onto the sheet in the appropriate places.
‘Tell me, sweetheart, what did you do during the war, then? Have a good one?’ he asked as he got up to leave.
‘Oh,’ Mirabelle replied, as she always did when people enquired, ‘I was a Land Girl.’
2
Some of the bravest and the best made their contributions undercover.
At five o’clock precisely Mirabelle left the office and locked the door. With Big Ben out of commission for the next three days, she decided to take a detour on her way home past the Church of the Sacred Heart in Hove. She might as well get a head start on Bert Jennings’ case, she rationalised, and if a Hungarian-Catholic woman had a baby in Brighton, the Sacred Heart was the most likely place for a christening. There were other Catholic churches in town of course but Mirabelle happened to know that one of the pastors there was Hungarian, and she knew that because she had helped Jack to get Father Sandor the job after the war.
Jack had been happy to pull strings for Sandor. The department owed him for bringing what – with typical Allied understatement – had been called ‘highly sensitive’ information out of France when most other channels were closed and every radio transmission on the continent was being monitored. The priest had access to the Vatican and had used the Catholic Church’s own lines of communication to do what he thought was right. He was trusted by the Nazi junta and ministered to several senior SS men stationed in Paris. Sandor had put his life on the line every day for years.
When he turned up in London after the war Jack shook the priest’s hand warmly and slapped him on the back. ‘You deserve any help we can give you,’ he promised. ‘I take it you don’t want to go home.’
‘Well,’ Sandor said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I’ve come all this way now ...’
By then the Soviets had closed the Hungarian border in any case. Jack was always generous to his operatives and he was happy to sort out entry papers and get onto the diocese to see what they could come up with. Encouraged by the department’s glowing report of the man’s character and despite his disappearance from church duty for what was, by then, several months, they suggested a vacant position at the Sacred Heart.
‘A ministry by the sea!’ The priest had been delighted. ‘Thank you, Jack. Thank you so much.’
Now, years later and with a lot of water under the bridge, Mirabelle hovered uncomfortably on Norton Road in front of the wooden gate that led to the entrance. She glanced at the row of small shops further up the main road. Two women with brightly-coloured net shopping bags were gossiping outside the greengrocers. Mirabelle brought her eyes back to the Church. It felt no better. The Victorian building reared up in front of her like a pale sleeping monster. Her hands were trembling and her fingers were cold. But the truth was that she was drawn here and had been for a while. Romana Laszlo was only an excuse. Jack was buried in the small graveyard behind the building. It was ironic, really. He had given up his faith years before he died.
Mirabelle had never visited the grave. By now, she realised, there would probably be a headstone or a plaque. The thought made her queasy and she wasn’t sure she could face it. Besides, there was no point in causing embarrassment or trouble for Jack’s wife or his girls – that would be spiteful. Better by far to remain Jack’s most covert operation. At least that’s what she’d believed for almost two years. Now, though, despite her longstanding rationale for staying away she was here at the door, and the truth was she loved Jack as much as ever.
‘Damn it, damn it,’ she whispered as she paced along the paving stones. Finally Mirabelle drew up her courage, took a deep breath and walked slowly through the gate, keeping her eyes straight ahead. The clicking of her heels echoed across the tiled floor. The Church was deserted. Her vision adjusted to the gloom as she moved down the aisle. Tentatively she peered into the enclaves on either side but there was no one at prayer. Then, from a door near the altar, a stocky man in a cassock with the face of a rugby player emerged into the heavy atmosphere like a cannonball.
‘My daughter,’ he nodded. His accent was Irish. ‘Have you come for confession?’
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘I’m looking for Father Sandor,’ she said, her voice suddenly croaky
‘Can I not help you? I’m Father Grogan.’ He gripped her hand in a firm shake and Mirabelle felt rather glad she was wearing gloves.
‘I’m afraid it’s Father Sandor I need to speak to,’ she said.
‘Ah well, I’ll fetch him.’ Father Grogan disappeared back through the door.
Mirabelle sat in a pew and stared at the altar where Jack’s coffin would have lain.
/> Suddenly she heard the heavy iron handle of the door creak and then, looking up, it seemed as if Father Sandor’s smile lit up the whole church.
‘Mirabelle!’ he shouted, his accent as strong as ever. He rushed forward and flung his arms around her. ‘What are you doing in Brighton?’
Mirabelle’s heart sank. Like everyone else, Sandor didn’t have a clue about what had happened. He probably thought she was still beetling away in Whitehall. The priest grinned, waiting for Mirabelle to reply. She didn’t want to lie – and no matter what her personal convictions, she especially didn’t want to lie to a man of God.
‘I’m looking for a Hungarian girl called Romana Laszlo,’ she said. ‘She is having a baby. She came to Brighton recently and I wondered if you’d heard of her. I thought she’d be bound to come here – for a christening.’
Sandor shrugged his shoulders expansively. ‘No, I don’t have a parishioner of that name. Come. Come with me. It’s so good to see you. I will put on the kettle and make us a cup of tea.’
Father Sandor’s tea had quite a kick. He had developed a fondness for brandy. Mirabelle sat at the vestry table and sipped silently as the priest made conversation, fussing over her and saying how happy he was in the parish. Brighton suited him, he said, and Hove was like a village.
‘So what have you been doing?’ he asked eventually. ‘Still sorting out everyone’s problems?’
Mirabelle shrugged. She had thought about going back to the department and taking up the threads of her old life without Jack. They would have had her back in London like a shot but leaving Brighton meant leaving so much behind – the memory of the little time they’d had together, the shadow of the life that could have been. She shook her head.
Father Sandor tried again. ‘What did this Romana Laszlo do, Mirabelle? Why are you looking for her?’
At least this was a question Mirabelle could answer easily. ‘She borrowed a lot of money in London. Four hundred pounds.’ It seemed so trifling now.
‘I see. But that’s not what I mean,’ he persisted. ‘What did she do in the war?’
Mirabelle couldn’t stand it. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But ...’ Sandor hesitated and then decided not to pursue the matter. ‘Well, now you’re here, would you like to visit Jack’s grave?’
Mirabelle sprang to her feet with her heart racing. Bile rose in her throat. She couldn’t. It was a daily haunting as it was. Seeing his name carved in stone would only make things worse. It had been a mistake to come here. ‘No. Thank you. I have to be going.’ She felt panicky. ‘Sandor, if you find out anything about Romana Laszlo will you call me? Here.’ She wrote down the office number on a scrap of paper from her bag.
Sandor took it. ‘This is a Brighton number. Are you on an operation? You can tell me, Mirabelle. Are you undercover?’
Mirabelle’s eyes sank to the floor. She wished the stone slabs would swallow her. ‘I’ve never been in the field, Sandor. I was intelligence, not operations, remember. And I don’t even do that any more. I’m not here to do anything good or worthwhile. I’m simply looking for Romana Laszlo because she owes someone some money. Please just let me have any information that comes your way.’
And now you think you shouldn’t have come at all,’ he said with a smile, still trying to engage her. The priest’s blue eyes were like pools. Those eyes had seen a lot over the years. ‘I’m sorry. It was clumsy of me. My nose always bothers me. But I don’t need my nose to see you are upset, no?’ Silence. Sandor laid his hand on her arm. He knew that if she didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t make her. It was only that, in his experience, talking usually helped people who looked as tortured as the wide-eyed elegant near-widow before him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mirabelle excused herself. She felt horribly ashamed. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’
Walking home Mirabelle stopped at the newsagent on the main street and bought her Evening Argus without even glancing at the headline. She found herself unable to make small talk with the man on the till and was grateful that the shop was busy. On autopilot, she strolled towards the front door of her building and let herself in, climbing the airy staircase to the first floor. Inside the view was wonderful. It was always wonderful. The sea. The sky. The changing panorama of the light as the clouds moved. Mirabelle laid the paper on the pile. Since 11 August 1949, the day of Jack’s death, she had found herself unable to throw away a copy of the Evening Argus. Now there were over five hundred of them piled up against the wall with the edition containing the worst possible news at the bottom. Buried for one year, seven months and two days now.
No one had come to tell her that sunny day. No one had offered her sympathy or sent flowers. Jack had covered their tracks very carefully. So when she’d sat by the window to read her evening paper the news had come as a complete shock. ‘Prominent local businessman, forty-nine years of age,’ the article said, ‘recently returned to Brighton after being demobbed. Mr Duggan died suddenly of a heart attack this morning in the street outside his family home. He had a distinguished war record.’ It didn’t say a word about the fact that he’d bought this flat for her and he was planning to divorce his wife and live there that autumn when his girls went up to Oxford. He had twin girls, you see, and he loved them very much.
‘It’s 1949 and after all we’ve been through, why shouldn’t we have each other?’ he’d said. ‘It’s only making it happen gently. I can see the lawyer when the girls have left for college. I’ll arrange everything. But, Belle, will you have me? A divorced man more than ten years older than you?’
Mirabelle had been so happy she’d run around the flat half-naked, scattering pillows in her wake, whooping for joy. ‘Yes, I’ll have you! Yes! Yes!’
They had shared a gin and tonic in celebration and made love on the floor.
Two months later poor Jack was buried in the Church of the Sacred Heart by a wife he scarcely spoke to any more, who had no idea that after what Jack had seen and done during the war the idea of a God or a church was beyond him.
It had been a long day. Seeing Sandor had brought it all back – memories that she had pushed down now surfaced in a flood. Mirabelle removed her shoes, poured herself a glass of whisky and sniffed it. She took a sip and then, with shaking hands, she sank down on the pale blue sofa and finally let the tears stream down her cheeks.
3
HA HU HI: I am going to Paris (radio code used by double agent Eddie Chapman)
It was colder today. The spring weather was always unpredictable. Mirabelle stared out of the office window. Two men dressed for a dance were heading home after a long night at the Palais. Their laughter floated up as they sheltered out of the drizzle to light their cigarettes. Pulling her brown cashmere cardigan around her slim frame, Mirabelle closed the window. She hadn’t slept well. She put the notes she had taken about Romana Laszlo’s debt on Big Ben’s desk. Then she wondered whether to throw out the dying geranium and be done with it. The mail sat unopened. Clicking back into work mode, as if she had taken a painkiller, Mirabelle slit open the first envelope with the small dagger she kept on her desk. She removed the cheque. She’d go to the bank later. Then, as she picked up the second envelope, the phone rang.
‘McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery.’
‘Is that you, Mirabelle?’ The priest’s voice was distinctive.
‘Hello, Sandor.’ Her heart sank.
‘I have something for you,’ Sandor said.
‘My boss is going to deal with this one,’ Mirabelle replied crisply, ‘but I take it she’s turned up, then?’
‘Romana Laszlo? Hmmm, yes.’ There was an awkward pause and then Sandor sighed. ‘She is dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Both she and the baby. She was in labour and there were complications. It was late last night. I’m sorry.’
Mirabelle felt her fingers tingle. She felt inexplicably responsible. ‘That’s dreadful,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor girl.’
‘She died with only her doctor in attenda
nce so she did not receive the last rites. I will officiate at the funeral tomorrow. She has a sister coming from London and they want it to be quick. Often this is the case and I understand she was widowed recently so there is no husband to mourn her or the baby. Mirabelle, there is something troubling me. Something strange. I talked to her friend, the doctor. She was staying with him, and I said I also am Hungarian and where was she from, Romana? And he told me Izsak.’
‘Yes?’
‘I know Izsak. I know every Catholic family in the area. I probably know every non-Catholic family, too. It’s a small place and I ministered there – it was my first job when I came from the seminary. Four little villages and Izsak one of them. Two years I lived there and I never heard of anyone with a daughter called Romana. This girl was twenty-two, this Romana – she would have been twenty-three next month. Before the war, if she came from a family in Izsak she would have been the age of a schoolgirl. I should know her. But I don’t.’
Mirabelle’s curiosity was pricked, a tantalising flashback of her former life echoing down from London to her sequestered existence by the sea. It felt as if Jack was calling her. Still, she fought against her instinct. Sandor’s information was interesting, but, telling herself she had to be practical, she dismissed it immediately. If a debtor died it was Big Ben’s job to claim the money from the estate. That made what she had to do purely administrative and therefore rather easy. Nothing else mattered. Not these days.
‘Thank you, Sandor. Tell me,’ she moved on calmly, ‘do you know who the executor is?’
‘There is a lawyer. Peters. I should think he must be the one.’
‘Thank you.’
Sandor sounded eager. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Mirabelle? Will you send someone?’
Mirabelle sighed. After the way she’d felt yesterday, she wasn’t going back to the church ever.
‘No, that won’t be necessary, Sandor. I have everything I need now. Thank you.’
Sandor hesitated. ‘You know where I am,’ he said at last, ‘if you want to talk.’ Then he rang off.
Brighton Belle Page 2