by Marc Eden
“Ah! There you are! Had a good trip, did we?”
“Yes, sir,” She was watching the soldiers. One of them was flicking his tongue rapidly over the top of his coffee cup, inviting her to look.
Sinclair gulped.
“Wonderful show, the Red Cross, what? There when you need them. Nothing too good for our boys, as they say.”
“Yes, sir.” The one she was staring at was really in need! Hamilton turned. The Americans smiled, the sex fiend saluted. Hamilton felt gratified. Respect, that’s what made the services tick. “Special Branch...they entertain the troops, you know. Probably heading out to the studios, where we’re going, to make one of their marvelous films. Ready, are we?”
“Yes, sir.” She hoisted her purse.
“Charming chaps,” Hamilton purred, “absolutely top of the line.”
Valerie looked back. The soldier had emptied his cup, and was jerking it back and forth in front of himself. She paused, to read his lips. “You’re the cream in my coffee,” he was singing. His tongue was going sideways, making love to her. He was sliding into a dance routine, and pointing to the cup. Valerie turned her own head sideways. Click! A tough shot, but she got him! From out of nowhere, an iron hand clamped on her shoulder.
Sinclair jumped!
It was Hamilton. “Come, come, my dear. You mustn’t take what I say so literally.” He’d had to come back, to get her.
“I’m sorry, sir, I thought it was someone I knew.”
“Ay?” His eyes watched the departing soldiers. “Feeling all right, are we?”
“Yes, sir. It’s just that I didn’t sleep very well last night, sir.” The voices of Brittany had spun away, into the air. She had slept like a rock.
He hoped it wasn’t anything he’d said. “Have to keep a stiff upper lip, Sinclair. Nothing but the best, you know.”
“The best? Yes, sir! I see what you mean, sir.”
Outside the station, the Rolls Royce was waiting.
They walked over. It had been freshly washed and waxed. De Beck, taking the credit, also took the wheel. Once again, Valerie found herself in the back seat with Hamilton. Patting her on her hand and expressing a vague apology for having frightened her, he was thinking of last night’s admonitions. Underneath, she was still a young girl from the country, and he had probably kept her up too late. Sinclair closed her eyes, imagining him the soldier:
Special Forces, Hamilton.
Her chin dropped to her blouse. In the bedroom of the car, time flew like a dream. Eyelids fluttering, they were floating...floating away, on a China sea of coffee cups. The limousine slowed. Pierre hit a pothole, and her dream popped! Sinclair opened her eyes. Hamilton threw her a glance, he nodded. She looked about and yawned.
“I think we had best have a good lunch here at the studios,” announced Hamilton. They had arrived at Elstree. The blazing green Rolls, their car of state, breezed through the front gates, and parked. “After, we’ll fix you up in your French clothes.”
For a Saturday, the lunch hour was scattered, the lot being mostly empty. Hamilton ate quickly, and excused himself. Ignoring her, Pierre moved over and chatted with one of the actors. Valerie looked. She had seen him in the movies, playing German villains.
Sinclair ate like a star.
A buffet, they had lots of ices, and she went back twice for dessert. She turned in her tray and walked out into the hall lined with publicity stills and posters.
It was Orson Welles!
Holding a cigar, he peered down at her, like God.
She moved along: Boris Karloff, ladies man, was sporting a purple tie. Bela Lugosi, in gleaming tuxedo, was set to bite. To her left, a frightening sight! Lightning, crackling from the coils of some evil laboratory, was making the lady’s hair stand up: it was Elsa Lanchester. Across the hall, a new one: Stewart Granger, who looked like Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Even in wartime, with most of the performers in uniform, movies were still being made. A number of the stars had enlisted early; many of them had given up their lives. She paused before a poster, and studied it. It was Leslie Howard, who had been shot down on his last mission for British Intelligence. She would never forget him as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. Now, he was simply gone. Valerie knew Hamilton would consider it an honor. She considered Hamilton. Where was he, by the way? From the other hallway, she could hear footsteps. Was he coming? She glanced over her shoulder, and checked the light. Lining it up, she blinked her eyes, photographing the poster in its entirety....
A souvenir, she would take it with her.
A large portrait, in shadow, caught her attention. She went up to it. Set in a gold frame, it was a painting of Gale Sondergaard, dressed in black. A monster moon was over her shoulder, threatening the ivy-brick wall of a London mansion, lighted gable window high above the fog-drenched grounds. The air looked colder; she thought of trench coats. Turned sideways to stare, and next to it, a poster of Simone Simone:
The Cat Woman.
The girl returned to Sondergaard. The portrait stirred in her heart, like worship. Inside, of course, there would be stairs, and wouldn’t The Spy himself live in a house like this? Sinclair was peering into the window, when Hamilton walked up. Seeing no magic, he invisioned no dreams. A couple of quick blinks, and she joined him. “By the way,” the Commander remarked casually, “Charles Laughton, the husband of that actress over there, Elsa Lanchester, is a friend of a friend of our Lieutenant Seymour—chap named James Bridley.” Sinclair recognized the name.
Seymour had dropped it, trying to get a date.
Baker Street Irregular, wasn’t he?
Having made all arrangements, the Commander now led her down empty corridors, across silent stages, and into an undisclosed area in the back. He knocked three times on the door, waited, then knocked twice. Someone opened it. It looked to be a large fitting room, reeking of paints and body smells, and attended by screens.
The door closed behind them.
A pleasant, mannish-looking Frenchwoman came forward, taking Sinclair under her wing. Valerie noted her hair was rubbish-red—or was it strawberry? Hamilton introduced her to Madame Roc. She spelled it for them: “ayr-r-r, oh, si—Roak! We mak’ you look lak’ leetle baby, no?” Her voice was deep, nearly guttural. Her body was as thick as her accent. Without taking her eyes from the girl, the woman shouted instructions to her English assistant, “You there! Get clos’ from boxes closest me! Hurry up bras, n’ underwears. Stockin’ too, ask Frieda where.” Her mind, quick and sharp as a sewing needle, drank in Valerie’s figure and personality. “Yes...is special girl, this. Hey! Bring eberzing uh?” She turned to Hamilton. “How ol’ you wan’, Comman-dair?”
“Try a teenager,” Hamilton said, inspired, “a very young teenager.”
“Ah! We call gosse, you call ‘keed’. Ecole, eh?”
“A kid, yes.” That sounded about right. Hire an expert, he had told Seymour, and pay her what she’s worth. In the matching of perceived ages to current modes, Roc was the best in her field. If you had to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, you would leave it with Madame Roc.
“Is too young for college, no, Marie?”
The assistant nodded vigorously, throwing a quick glance at Hamilton. Expecting a call from Seymour, he was headed out the door.
The Frenchwoman knew her job. Her hands were fast, her mouth was full of pins. Between selections and fittings, she and Sinclair began to converse in French. In telling her about the posters, Valerie discovered Elsa Lanchester was Madame Roc’s closest friend; and that her assistant, Marie, was hoping to get a job as an actress. In English, “Eef play cards right,” Roc confided darkly, “who knows?”
Typically, Valerie was less concerned with how the clothes looked than with how she looked in the clothes. Each bit of apparel bore a French label. She stepped behind the screen and tried on several brassieres, left over from a previous fitting. They were too flimsy. A week ago, she would have loved them. Still, as Hamilton had reminded her, a brassiere
was much too obvious a place of concealment. Besides, it was her boobs, not the brassieres, that were causing her this problem. One did not fit two silk purses, of this caliber, into a single sow’s ear.
The door burst open.
“Something a bit more sturdy?” Valerie asked, her words lost in the flurry of activity on the other side of the screen.
“Give her this one,” she heard Hamilton say. He had reentered the room with a package. Something flew over the top and she put it on. “Fits!” she said.
Immediately, she took it off and looked.
The bra was constructed around a two-way, contoured elastic board. The inside pushed her in, and strapped her flat, without a doubt. The outer, stitched with cheap lace and concealing false shells, appeared to pull her out—but not very much. It was exactly what a French Catholic schoolgirl would wear under her blouse: a brassiere, for appearance’s sake, concealing breasts not yet mature enough to fill it.
Hamilton grinned. He could hear the awe.
Designed by Helena Rubinstein, close friend to Emily Blackstone, the brassiere had arrived by morning courier from Bletchley Park.
“Compliments of the Royal Navy!”
“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” sang her voice, from the other side. “Dammit!” She had it on backwards, stuck on a clasp.
“How’s that?” Hamilton perked.
“Nothing, sir!” In the steamed room, her voice rang like a bell. “Ready when you are, sir!”
Hamilton looked to Madame Roc, and nodded.
Clothes landed! She prepared them fast, dressing quickly. She stepped out.
“No, no,” objected Hamilton, whose experience in fashion was limited to black neckties, “dress her down again—younger!”
Madame Roc raked a thick hand through Sinclair’s hair.
“ ‘Youn-gurh,’ m’sieur? If she is any youn-gurh, she will be an egg!”
“Do it,” Hamilton said. He studied Valerie’s face. “And when you come to the makeup, make that face no less than twelve.” He would settle for fifteen. “I shall be back.” He spun on his heel and walked out of the fitting room. Madame Roc strode over, slamming the door behind him and sticking out her tongue.
“Que fait-il? Rien!”
Marie raised an eyebrow.
The Frenchwoman sighed heavily, and set to work again. When she was satisfied, she took Valerie over to makeup, which also served as the operating room. There, the French woman and her helper put on white frocks and masks. Valerie got up into a barber’s chair. They tucked a sheet around her, cranking her back. From above, Madame Roc leaned down.
“N’est-ce pas que c’est beau?”
Someone was taping her arm.
“Well, she’s certainly different,” the voice of Marie said.
Flat, with eye pads, the thrust of a needle: three sharp punctures, painful as a hook, tiny drops of blood...her eyes were watering. Her lip felt crooked. The anesthesia had come, cloying in her throat, like sweet chocolate.
“Elle est sortie, eh?”
The world blacked out.
“Bon!”
The surgery was subtle: the young girl’s face stung terribly in the darkness—occasionally, the snipping of an instrument. An hour passed. Voices faded, and there was very little talking...distant, salve and wet-packed gauze, cool on her raw skin. The pads came off. They raised her up and she felt dizzy. Hamilton had not told her about the surgery. A little nip and tuck, he’d said.
Sheets were flapped.
Roc was radiant.
The conversion of her hair was next.
“First, cham-poo,” instructed the Madame, “then cut heem, n’treem.” The hands of the assistant flew through Valerie’s hair like birds. The hair was cleansed. Again, into the barber’s chair for the flashings of razor and scissors. From the laboratories at Bletchley Park, a secret rinse was applied which turned the coarser hair of the adult into the softer sheen of childhood. Following closely on the heels of staccato instructions, Marie deftly completed the first part of MI.5’s latest stratagem:
The Construction, and Care, of the Military Creature.
“It’s nice baby, no?” Madame Roc smiled broadly, and patted Sinclair rapidly on the cheek, which stung. She then had her undress and lie flat on a brown massage table draped with an enormous towel. ’Allo? Madame Roc had come to the phone number, written on the girl’s leg. She bent her head, to read it. Hmmm. Had the Commander already wired her? She poked. “Theese ’phon nombre, what ees?”
“Oh, that?” Valerie raised up. “Just a phone number...from a friend.”
“Get reed of this nombre,” Roc said to Marie.
Valerie panicked! She had not yet recorded it.
“Lay down, you!” Marie poured some liquid on it, then dabbed it with a cloth. Roc directed. Sergeant Blumensteel was gone! The French Resistance had rubbed him out. “Ees from boyfren’, no?” These two were not interested in boys. Both women now worked fiercely. From foul-smelling pots, Valerie’s body was quickly covered with the waterproof makeup. The eyes of the assistant shone like a blackbird. The girl was then hoisted upright, and great attention was given to her hands and face. Because of Roc’s genius, it was already in the process of accelerated healing. The Intelligence community, sequestered in their windowless rooms, had first dibs on advanced procedures and medicines. Outside these secret enclaves, the public might get them later. “The smell and the itch, she will go. Get op!”
“Get dressed!” said Marie.
“He wan’ child,” the older woman observed, hard voice soft, “he get child.”
They had laid out the French clothes, she would wear them in France. Sinclair put them on. Marie picked up the telephone and Madame Roc walked the girl, whose face was throbbing, over to the full-length mirror. “Nous nous regardons,” she clucked. Valerie peered into the glass:
“Oh my god!”
She wasn’t in the room; she was in the mirror. What she was staring at, lips slightly parted, was the likeness of another. The face, trapped in time, aflame from surgery, was colored like oils, running in a fire. Her hair, dyed black, had been cut into a pageboy bob, shaved high at the nape, Catholic convent style. Her eyebrows were thickened; and her brown eyes seemed ten years in the past. The darker skin, accompanying, had taken her just this side of puberty. This is what she was seeing, but it was not what others would see. As the mirror obverses, so would the woman: for no spy has ever seen her own face. Framed in the glass, a part of the living picture, was a door like the ones in the movie posters. As though from another time, it burst open; and Hamilton and Pierre walked quickly into the room.
She turned around...
There, where the woman had stood, now stood THE WEAPON, as child; a very dangerous child. Petite, clownlike, a child of the trapeze, Churchill’s answer to Werner von Braun had tears in its eyes.
Valerie Sinclair had utterly vanished!
Valerie Marchaud had taken her place.
Roc handed her a handkerchief and slapped her on the butt. “What you think, Com-man-dair?”
It was the opinion of MI.5 that mattered.
Hamilton did not immediately answer. Bruises covered, were they! Hands behind his back, he walked around his protégée observing her from various angles. With a mused look, her tears stopped, Valerie’s eyes followed him. At last, his face lit in a broad grin of recognition: “I do believe, gentlemen, we are looking at what the Americans call ‘jailbait.’ ” He turned to Madame Roc. “Well, done, sir!”
Madame Roc beamed: it was high praise.
As for the glasses, de Beck was trying to make up his mind. An ass-bandit, staring at her bodice, his assessment was direct: he liked them young, not flat.
Seeing the Frenchman perplexed, Hamilton said, “I thought glasses would make her look more ordinary, more studious. Doesn’t it fit the picture? She can discard them if you think...”
Pierre shook his head.
Valerie walked over to the mirror. She fussed with her blouse. “I look th
e blimey kid I did in Malta,” she told them, her voice sounding a little cracked. Reacting like a father, Hamilton cleared his throat. He threw her a glance: that British attitude would have to go.
Hers, not his.
Pierre perked up. “You lived in Malta?”
“Why yes, my mother is part Maltese.”
“Mine’s French,” Pierre said. He was having trouble in appearing not to notice. Damned if hers wasn’t, too! “You’re gorgeous, Marchaud.”
Valerie blinked.
“Excellent!” said Hamilton. “Well now, Lieutenant, if you will, they have some clothes for you...girl clothes, you know. Leave what you’re wearing with Madame. Bring your uniform along. Pierre? Why don’t we wait outside?”
The men left.
They gave her some odds and ends to wear, befitting her age. She stripped, and got into them, wearing the new bra. Following Hamilton’s instructions, Marie packed up her uniform. Sinclair was looking about for a cigarette. Roc told her to help herself. The half-empty pack was there on the counter, tangled in ribbons and scissors. Valerie pulled one out. It was French, black tobacco, a Gauloise. She sniffed it, putting it in her pocket. The assistant was tossing in some belts into a bag; a pillbox hat, light blue; junk jewelry. Madame Roc looked up. She was at the sink, drying her hands. “T’en fais pas!” The Frenchwoman shouted. “Com’ back, eh?” They had other clients, waiting.
“Si tout va bien...”
The assistant handed her the bag, opened the door.
“See you,” chirped Marie.
Dusk was falling and de Beck drove them back to Waterloo Station. The Commander and the girl would train to Polperro. Commissary had packed them a box lunch, for supper. It rode on top of the bag. Stashed up front, Pierre had his own.
Along the way, Hamilton gave him instructions.
Pierre would meet him at the The Red Lion later tonight, at 2400 hours, and drive him to Portsmouth. Hamilton had a full day tomorrow scheduled with Seymour. De Beck would drop the car off at Free French Headquarters, Castor, making his own way back on Sunday.
They would not see him again, until the marina.