by C. J. Sansom
Coming into Victoria on the train, he had seen other craters and shattered buildings. He had felt oddly distanced from the destruction, as he had since the big raids began ten days before. Down in Surrey, Uncle James had almost given himself a stroke looking at the photographs in the Telegraph. Harry had scarcely responded as his uncle snarled red-faced over this new example of German frightfulness. His mind had retreated from the fury.
It could not retreat, though, from the crater in Westminster suddenly and immediately before him. At once he was back at Dunkirk: German dive-bombers overhead, the sandy shoreline exploding. He clenched his hands, digging the nails into his palms as he took deep breaths. His heart began pounding but he didn’t start shaking; he could control his reactions now.
An ARP warden strode across to him, a hard-faced man in his fifties with a grey pencil moustache and ramrod back, his black uniform streaked with dust.
‘You can’t come up ’ere,’ he snapped briskly. ‘Road’s closed. Can’t you see we’ve ’ad a bomb?’ He looked suspicious, disapproving, wondering no doubt why an apparently fit man in his early thirties was not in uniform.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘I’m just up from the country. I hadn’t realized it was so bad.’
Most Cockneys confronted with Harry’s public school accent would have adopted a servile tone, but not this man. ‘There’s no escape anywhere,’ he rasped. ‘Not this time. Not in the tahn, not in the country either for long, if yer ask me.’ The warden looked Harry over coldly. ‘You on leave?’
‘Invalided out,’ Harry said abruptly. ‘Look, I have to get to Queen Anne’s Gate. Official business.’
The warden’s manner changed at once. He took Harry’s arm and steered him round. ‘Go up through Petty France. There was only the one bomb round here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s all right, sir.’ The warden leaned in close. ‘Were you at Dunkirk?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s blood and ruin down the Isle of Dogs. I was in the trenches last time, I knew it’d come again and this time everyone’d be in it, not just soldiering men. You’ll get the chance to fight again, you wait and see. Bayonet into Jerry’s guts, twist and then out again, eh?’ He gave a strange smile, then stepped back and saluted, pale eyes glittering.
‘Thank you.’ Harry saluted and turned away, crossing into Gillingham Street. He frowned; the man’s words had filled him with disgust.
AT VICTORIA it had been as busy as a normal Monday; it seemed the reports that London was carrying on as usual were true. As he walked on through the broad Georgian streets everything was quiet in the autumn sunlight. But for the white crosses of tape over the windows to protect against blast, you could have been back before the war. An occasional businessman in a bowler hat walked by, there were still nannies wheeling prams. People’s expressions were normal, even cheerful. Many had left their gas masks at home, though Harry had his slung over his shoulder in its square box. He knew the defiant good humour most people had adopted hid the fear of invasion, but he preferred the pretence that things were normal to reminders that they now lived in a world where the wreck of the British army milled in chaos on a French beach, and deranged trench veterans stood in the streets happily forecasting Armageddon.
His mind went back to Rookwood, as it often did these days. The old quadrangle on a summer’s day, masters in gowns and mortarboards walking under the great elms, boys strolling by in dark blue blazers or cricket whites. It was an escape to the other side of the looking glass, away from the madness. But sooner or later the heavy painful thought would always intrude: how the hell had it all changed from that to this?
SST ERMIN’S hotel had once been grand but the elegance was faded now; the chandelier in the entrance hall was dusty and there was a smell of cabbage and polish. Watercolours of stags and Highland lochs covered the oak-panelled walls. Somewhere a grandfather clock ticked somnolently.
There was nobody at the reception desk. Harry rang the bell and a bald, heavily built man in a commissionaire’s uniform appeared. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said in the relaxed, unctuous voice of a lifetime in service. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’
‘I’ve an appointment at two thirty with a Miss Maxse. Lieutenant Brett.’ Harry pronounced the woman’s name ‘Macksie’ as the caller from the Foreign Office had instructed.
The man nodded. ‘If you would follow me, sir.’ His footsteps soundless on the thick dusty carpet, he led Harry to a lounge full of easy chairs and coffee tables. It was empty apart from a man and woman sitting in a bay window.
‘Lieutenant Brett, madam.’ The receptionist bowed and left.
The two rose to their feet. The woman extended a hand. She was in her fifties, small and fine-boned, smartly dressed in a blue two-piece suit. She had tightly curled grey hair and a sharp, intelligent face. Keen grey eyes met Harry’s.
‘How do you do, so nice to meet you.’ Her confident contralto made Harry think of a girls’ school headmistress. ‘Marjorie Maxse. I’ve been hearing all about you.’
‘Nothing too bad, I hope.’
‘Oh, quite the contrary. Let me introduce Roger Jebb.’ The man took Harry’s hand in a hard grip. He was about Miss Maxse’s age, with a long tanned face and thinning black hair.
‘What about some tea?’ Miss Maxse asked.
‘Thank you.’
A silver teapot and china cups had been laid out on a table. There was a plate of scones too, pots of jam and what looked like real cream. Miss Maxse began pouring tea. ‘Any trouble getting here? I gather one or two came down round here last night.’
‘Victoria Street’s closed off.’
‘It is a nuisance. And it’s going to go on for some time.’ She spoke as though it were a spell of rain. She smiled. ‘We prefer to meet new people here, for the first interview. The manager’s an old friend of ours, so we won’t be disturbed. Sugar?’ she continued in the same conversational tone. ‘Do have a scone, they’re awfully good.’
‘Thanks.’ Harry scooped up jam and cream. He looked up to see Miss Maxse studying him closely; she gave him a sympathetic smile, unembarrassed.
‘How are you getting on now? You were invalided out, weren’t you? After Dunkirk?’
‘Yes. A bomb landed twenty feet away. Threw up a lot of sand. I was lucky; it shielded me from the worst of the blast.’ He saw Jebb studying him too, from flinty grey eyes.
‘You had a bit of shell shock, I believe,’ he said abruptly.
‘It was very minor,’ Harry said. ‘I’m all right now.’
‘Your face went blank there, just for a second,’ Jebb said.
‘It used to be a lot more than a second,’ he replied quietly. ‘And both hands used to tremble all the time. You might as well know.’
‘And your hearing suffered, too, I believe?’ Miss Maxse asked the question very quietly, but Harry caught it.
‘That’s almost back to normal as well. Just a little deafness in the left one.’
‘Lucky, that,’ Jebb observed. ‘Hearing loss from blast, that’s often permanent.’ He produced a paperclip from his pocket and began absent-mindedly bending it open as he continued looking at Harry.
‘The doctor said I was lucky.’
‘The hearing damage means the end of active service, of course,’ Miss Maxse went on. ‘Even if it is minor. That must be a blow. You joined up straight away last September, didn’t you?’ She leaned forward, teacup enfolded in her hands.
‘Yes. Yes, I did. Excuse me, Miss Maxse, but I’m a bit in the dark …’
She smiled again. ‘Of course. What did the Foreign Office tell you when they rang?’
‘Only that some people there thought there might be some work I could do.’
‘Well, we’re separate from the FO.’ Miss Maxse smiled brightly. ‘We’re Intelligence.’ She gave a tinkling laugh, as though overcome by the strangeness of it all.
‘Oh,’ Harry said.
Her voice became serious. �
�Our work is crucial now, quite crucial. With France gone, the whole Continent is either allied to the Nazis or dependent on them. There aren’t any normal diplomatic relationships any more.’
‘We’re the front line now,’ Jebb added. ‘Smoke?’
‘No, thanks. I don’t.’
‘Your uncle’s Colonel James Brett, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s right.’
‘Served with me in India. Back in 1910, believe it or not!’ Jebb gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘How is he?’
‘Retired now.’ But judging by that tan you stayed on, Harry thought. Indian police, perhaps.
Miss Maxse put down her cup and clasped her hands together. ‘How would you feel about working for us?’ she asked.
Harry felt the old shrinking weariness again; but something else too, a spark of interest.
‘I still want to help the war effort, of course.’
‘D’you think you’re fit to cope with demanding work?’ Jebb asked. ‘Honestly, now. If you’re not you should say. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ he added gruffly. Miss Maxse smiled encouragingly.
‘I think so,’ Harry said carefully. ‘I’m almost back to normal.’
‘We’re recruiting a lot of people, Harry,’ Miss Maxse said. ‘I may call you Harry, mayn’t I? Some because we think they’d be suited to the kind of work we do, others because they can offer us something particular. Now, you were a modern languages specialist before you joined up. Good degree at Cambridge, then a fellowship at King’s till the war came.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ They knew a lot about him.
‘How’s your Spanish? Fluent?’
It was a surprising question. ‘I’d say so.’
‘French literature’s your subject, isn’t it?’
Harry frowned. ‘Yes, but I keep my Spanish up. I’m a member of a Spanish Circle in Cambridge.’
Jebb nodded. ‘Academics mainly, is it? Spanish plays and so on.’
‘Yes.’
‘Any exiles from the Civil War?’
‘One or two.’ He met Jebb’s gaze. ‘But the Circle’s not political. We have a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid politics.’
Jebb laid the paperclip, tortured now into fantastic curls, on the table, and opened his briefcase. He pulled out a cardboard file with a diagonal red cross on the front.
‘I’d like to take you back to 1931,’ he said. ‘Your second year at Cambridge. You went to Spain that summer, didn’t you? With a friend from your school, Rookwood.’
Harry frowned again. How could they know all this? ‘Yes.’
Jebb opened the file. ‘One Bernard Piper, later of the British Communist Party. Went on to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Reported missing believed killed at the Battle of the Jarama, 1937.’ He took out a photograph and laid it on the table. A row of men in untidy military uniforms stood on a bare hillside. Bernie stood in the middle, taller than the others, his blond hair cut short, smiling boyishly into the camera.
Harry looked up at Jebb. ‘Was that taken in Spain?’
‘Yes.’ The hard little eyes narrowed. ‘And you went out to try and find him.’
‘At his family’s request, as I spoke Spanish.’
‘But no luck.’
‘There were ten thousand dead at the Jarama,’ Harry said bleakly. ‘They weren’t all accounted for. Bernie’s probably in a mass grave somewhere outside Madrid. Sir, might I ask where you got this information? I think I’ve a right—’
‘You haven’t actually. But since you ask, we keep files on all Communist Party members. Just as well, now Stalin’s helped Hitler butcher Poland.’
Miss Maxse smiled placatingly. ‘No one’s associating you with them.’
‘I should hope not,’ Harry said stiffly.
‘Would you say you had any politics?’
It wasn’t the sort of question you expected in England. Their knowledge of his life, of Bernie’s history, disturbed him. He hesitated before answering.
‘I suppose I’m a sort of liberal Tory if anything.’
‘You weren’t tempted to go and fight for the Spanish Republic, like Piper?’ Jebb asked. ‘The crusade against fascism?’
‘So far as I’m concerned, Spain before the Civil War was rotten with chaos, and the Fascists and Communists both took advantage. I came across some Russians in ’37. They were swine.’
‘That must have been quite an adventure,’ Miss Maxse said brightly. ‘Going to Madrid in the middle of the Civil War.’
‘I went to try and find my friend. For his family, as I said.’
‘You were close friends at school, weren’t you?’ Jebb asked.
‘You’ve been asking questions at Rookwood?’ The thought angered him.
‘Yes.’ Jebb nodded, unapologetic.
Harry’s eyes widened suddenly. ‘Is this about Bernie? Is he alive?’
‘Our file on Bernard Piper’s closed,’ Jebb said, his tone unexpectedly gentle. ‘So far as we know he died at the Jarama.’
Miss Maxse sat upright. ‘You must understand, Harry, if we’re to trust you to work for us, we do need to know all about you. But I think we’re happy.’ Jebb nodded, and she went on. ‘I think it’s time we got down to brass tacks. We wouldn’t normally dive straight in like this but it’s a question of time, you see. Urgency. We need information about someone. We think you can help us. It could be very important.’
Jebb leaned forward. ‘Everything we tell you from now on is strictly confidential, is that understood? In fact, I have to warn you that if you discuss any of it outside this room, you’ll be in serious trouble.’
Harry met his eyes. ‘All right.’
‘This isn’t about Bernard Piper. It’s another old schoolfriend of yours, who’s also developed some interesting political connections.’ Jebb delved in his case again and laid another photograph on the table.
It was not a face Harry had ever expected to see again. Sandy Forsyth would be thirty-one now, a few months older than Harry, but he looked almost middle-aged. He had a Clark Gable moustache and heavily oiled hair, already starting to recede, swept back from his brow. His face had filled out and acquired new lines but the keen eyes, the Roman nose and wide thin-lipped mouth were the same. It was a posed photograph; Sandy was smiling at the camera with a film star’s smile, half enigmatic and half inviting. He wasn’t a handsome man but the photograph made him appear so. Harry looked up again.
‘I wouldn’t have called him a close friend,’ he said quietly.
‘You were friendly for a time, Harry,’ Miss Maxse said. ‘The year before he was expelled. After that business involving Mr Taylor. We’ve spoken to him, you see.’
‘Mr Taylor.’ Harry hesitated a moment. ‘How is he?’
‘He’s all right these days,’ Jebb said. ‘No thanks to Forsyth. Now, when he was expelled, did you part on good terms?’ He jabbed the paperclip at Harry. ‘This is important.’
‘Yes. I was Forsyth’s only friend at Rookwood, really.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you had an awful lot in common,’ Miss Maxse said with a smile.
‘We didn’t, in a lot of ways.’
‘Bit of a bad hat wasn’t he, Forsyth? Didn’t fit in. But you were always a steady chap.’
Harry sighed. ‘Sandy had a good side too. Though …’ He paused. Miss Maxse smiled encouragingly.
‘I sometimes wondered why he wanted to be friends with me. When a lot of the people he mixed with were – well, bad hats, to use your phrase.’
‘Anything sexual in it, Harry, d’you think?’ Her tone was light and casual, as when she spoke of the bombs. Harry stared at her in astonishment for a moment, then gave an embarrassed laugh.
‘Certainly not.’
‘Sorry to embarrass you, but these things happen at public schools. You know, crushes.’
‘There was nothing like that.’
‘After Forsyth left,’ Jebb said, ‘did you keep in touch?’
‘We exchanged letters for a
couple of years. Less and less as time went on. We hadn’t much in common once Sandy left Rookwood.’ He sighed. ‘In fact, I’m not sure why he went on writing for so long. Maybe to impress – he wrote about clubs and girls and that sort of thing.’ Jebb nodded encouragingly. ‘In his last letter he said he was working for some bookie in London. He wrote about doping horses and fake bets as though it was all a joke.’ But now Harry was remembering Sandy’s other side: the walks over the Downs in search of fossils, the long talks. What did these people want?
‘You still believe in traditional values, don’t you?’ Miss Maxse asked with a smile. ‘The things Rookwood stands for.’
‘I suppose so. Though …’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder how the country got to this.’ He met her eyes. ‘We weren’t ready for what happened in France. Defeat.’
‘The jelly-backed French let us down.’ Jebb grunted.
‘We were forced to retreat too, sir,’ Harry said. ‘I was there.’
‘You’re right. We weren’t properly prepared.’ Miss Maxse spoke with sudden feeling. ‘Perhaps we behaved too honourably at Munich. After the Great War we couldn’t believe anyone would want war again. But we know now Hitler always did. He won’t be happy till all of Europe’s under his heel. The New Dark Age, as Winston calls it.’
There was a moment’s silence, then Jebb coughed. ‘OK, Harry. I want to talk about Spain. When France fell last June and Mussolini declared war on us, we expected Franco to follow. Hitler had won his Civil War for him, and of course Franco wants Gibraltar. With German help he could take it from the landward side and that’d be the Mediterranean choked off to us.’
‘Spain’s in ruins now,’ Harry said. ‘Franco couldn’t fight another war.’
‘But he could let Hitler in. There are Wehrmacht divisions waiting on the Franco-Spanish border. The Spanish Fascist Party wants to enter the war.’ He inclined his head. ‘On the other hand, most of the Royalist generals distrust the Falange and they’re scared of a popular uprising if the Germans come in. They’re not Fascists, they just wanted to beat the Reds. It’s a fluid situation, Franco could declare war any day. Our embassy people in Madrid are living on their nerves.’