‘Was his surname Toby?’
‘No. He was called Smith.’ Of course he was, Juliet thought. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a coffee? I’m having one.’
‘Oh, go on then, you’ve twisted my arm. Two sugars, please.’
As well as Timmy there were the twins, Christopher and Valerie, who had started school this year and were already proficient at Book One in the Janet and John series. Their father, Philippa’s husband, was called Norman and he was an actuary. (What was an actuary, Juliet wondered? It sounded as if it belonged in a zoo, along with a cassowary and a dromedary.) They moved here from Horsham. Philippa was a housewife, but during the war she was in the WAAF – best time of her life! She couldn’t decide between snapdragons and begonias for her summer bedding, ‘Do you know anything about gardening, Madge?’
‘Oh, it’s begonias for me. Every time,’ Juliet said. Each day, I expect hundreds of people die of boredom, she thought. She finished her coffee – it was Camp from a bottle, boiled up in the pan with Carnation milk. It was truly disgusting. ‘Lovely! I’m sorry, but now I really have to get going.’
She was ushered out as politely as she had been ushered in. Timmy, released from his bondage, was held aloft in Philippa Horrocks’s arms. His red cheeks looked as shiny and hard as apples. ‘Teething,’ Philippa laughed. ‘So sorry I couldn’t help you, Madge. I hope your parents have a wonderful anniversary.’
‘Thanks. By the way,’ Juliet said, pausing at the gate, next to the hydrangea, ‘the flowers on this are going to be pink. Do you know how to make them blue?’
‘No,’ Philippa Horrocks said, ‘I don’t,’ but Juliet left without letting her in on the secret.
Juliet lingered on the corner of the street, checking occasionally to see if anyone left or entered the house. Nothing. Nobody came or went; the inhabitants of the entire street might as well have been under a sleeping spell.
‘Iris! Is that you?’ someone said loudly behind her. It was such a shock that Juliet thought she might die right there on the streets of Finchley. ‘Iris Carter-Jenkins! Fancy bumping into you here.’
‘Mrs Ambrose,’ Juliet said. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘I didn’t know Finchley was your stamping ground.’
‘I was visiting a friend,’ Juliet said. ‘I thought you moved to Eastbourne, Mrs Ambrose – or should I call you Mrs Eckersley now?’
‘Florence will do.’
Mrs Ambrose was wearing a hat that was covered in feathers. The feathers were a vibrant blue, but Juliet supposed they were from a chicken and had been dyed rather than having been harvested from the unwilling body of a kingfisher or a peacock. Juliet wondered if Mrs Ambrose – with her fondness for home-made hats – had killed and plucked the bird herself. (The woman is all feathers.)
Could Mrs Ambrose’s appearance out of the blue really be a coincidence? First Godfrey Toby, then Mrs Ambrose. (It was hard to think of her as anyone else.) What had Perry said about coincidences? Oh, yes – never trust one. Who was going to be next to pop out of the box that the past was supposed to be contained in, Juliet wondered? Yet surely Godfrey and Mrs Ambrose had no reason to have ever met during the war? The only thing that connected them was Juliet herself. Her nerves were not soothed by this thought. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘Eastbourne didn’t suit me,’ Mrs Ambrose said. ‘I need a bit of life around me. I’ve opened a little wool shop just up the road from here, on Ballards Lane – run it with my niece Ellen.’ How many nieces did the woman have exactly, Juliet wondered? (And how many of them were real?) ‘Are you catching the Tube? Why don’t I walk with you?’
Why – to get me away from here? Juliet wondered as Mrs Ambrose hooked her by the elbow and walked her like a prison wardress to the Underground, chatting all the way about merino and mohair, and the virtues of Patons versus Sirdar. Juliet’s arm felt quite bruised by the time she reached the station platform. Was Mrs Ambrose still working for the Service? It seemed plausible, there had always been such an ambiguity about her, even her code name seemed to hint at it. ‘Eckersley’, on the other hand, indicated nothing beyond nieces and wool shops. She had always wondered about Mrs Ambrose’s loyalties, of course. The mark of a good agent is when you have no idea which side they’re on.
The girl on reception at Schools raised a mute eyebrow of disdain when Juliet entered.
‘Was anyone looking for me?’ Juliet asked.
‘Everyone,’ the girl said with a subordinate shrug.
‘I was out and about doing some research, since you don’t ask. For the Looking At Things series.’
‘What were you looking at?’ the girl asked indifferently.
‘Finchley.’
The girl glanced at her and frowned. ‘Finchley?’
‘Yes, Finchley,’ Juliet said. ‘Terribly interesting.’
‘And everything is transient, after all, isn’t it?’ Juliet mused over a rather disconsolate cup of coffee with Prendergast. It had started as a relatively cheerful discussion about classroom feedback for a series for Seniors called Can I Introduce You?, but somehow an assessment of Can I Introduce You to Sir Thomas More? had led them into the doldrums. ‘People become hopelessly caught up in dogma and doctrine …’
‘Isms,’ Prendergast said, shaking his head dolefully.
‘Exactly. Fascism, Communism, capitalism. We lose sight of the ideal that propelled them and yet millions die in defence of – or attack on – those beliefs.’ Juliet thought of the fugitive flamingo. Where was he?
‘People are dying for capitalism?’ Prendergast asked curiously.
‘Well, people have always died having their labour exploited for other people’s profit. All the way back to the Pharaohs and beyond, I suppose.’
‘True, true. Very true.’
‘Yet what does it all mean in the long run? And religion is the worst offender, of course. Sorry,’ she added, remembering his Methodist ‘calling’. (Although how could you forget?)
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, Miss Armstrong,’ he said, raising the papal hand again, this time indicating dispensation. ‘What is faith if it cannot rise to a challenge?’
‘Doctrine’s just a refuge though, isn’t it? If we were to admit that essentially nothing has meaning, that we only attribute meaning to things, that there is no such thing as absolute truth …’
‘We would despair,’ Prendergast said softly, his bulldog face wilting.
‘L’homme est condamné à être libre,’ Juliet said.
‘I’m sorry, my French is a little rusty.’
‘Man is condemned to be free.’
‘Are we talking existentialism?’ Prendergast queried. ‘Those French fellows?’
Can I Introduce You to Sartre? Juliet thought. They hadn’t done that. Too challenging for the Seniors – for everyone, really. Huis Clos. No Exit was how they translated the title. The play had been broadcast on the Third Programme after the war. Alec Guinness and Donald Pleasence. It had been rather good.
‘No. Not existentialism, not really. More like common sense,’ Juliet said, avoiding the ‘ism’ of pragmatism to mollify Prendergast.
He put his hand on top of hers, a gesture of kindness. ‘We have all walked in the valley of the shadow of death. Do you despair, Miss Armstrong?’
Hardly ever. Occasionally. Quite often. ‘No, not at all,’ she said. ‘And anyway, if everything is pointless, then so is despair, isn’t it?’
‘It can leave you rather adrift though,’ he said. ‘Thinking, and so on.’
They fell silent, each considering their own state, driftless or otherwise. Juliet quietly moved the weighty Prendergast paw from her hand and he roused himself and said, ‘I thought Socrates was right on the button, as it were.’
They had come full circle, Juliet supposed, back to Can I Introduce You? It was a self-explanatory title for a series about figures from history. Somewhat different from Have You Met? for Juniors. (Have You Met a Fireman? Have You Met a Nurse? And so on.) ‘Yes, he wen
t down well,’ she agreed.
‘Quite the radical in some ways, wasn’t he?’ Prendergast said. ‘The Seniors seemed to respond well to that.’
‘They’re at an age when they’re beginning to think for themselves,’ Juliet said.
‘Before the “isms” take over.’
‘I liked Charles Dickens myself,’ Juliet said. ‘Michelangelo was “disappointing”. The Teachers said that the pamphlet that accompanied it didn’t have enough pictures and I suppose that is rather the point. Christopher Wren went down quite well. It had the Great Fire, of course. Disasters are always popular with them.’
‘Florence Nightingale?’ Prendergast asked.
‘Flimsy.’
‘Chaucer?’
‘Boring. That’s the Seniors talking. The Teachers didn’t seem to have an opinion on him.’
‘Oliver Cromwell?’
‘I wrote that one,’ Juliet said.
‘Did you? Oh, excellent, that was very good.’
‘You’re just saying that.’
‘You are droll, Miss Armstrong.’
Was that a compliment or an insult? It hardly mattered either way. She was deflected from considering further by Daisy appearing suddenly at her elbow. You would think the girl moved on silent castors. Her face was a mask of tragedy.
‘Is something wrong, Daisy?’
‘I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, Miss Armstrong, but I thought I should give you the bad news straight away.’
‘What?’ Juliet said, a tad impatiently. She was tempered to bad news – she had been through a war, after all. Not so Prendergast, whose hand flew to his mouth in anticipation of some fresh horror.
‘It’s Miss Timpson,’ Daisy said. She took a dramatic pause, previously employed by the Small Girl with leprosy.
‘She’s dead?’ Juliet guessed, robbing Daisy of her moment.
‘Dead?’ Prendergast echoed, aghast.
‘She did look rather poorly. I saw her just last night,’ Juliet said.
‘Poor Joan,’ Prendergast said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I thought she was having a bunion removed. She’s in a better place, I suppose.’
‘We must hope so,’ Daisy said solemnly. An undertaker would readily employ her.
Bugger, Juliet thought. She was going to have to see Past Lives through to the bitter end now. She didn’t feel she had the fortitude for all those Tudors, they were so relentlessly busy – all that bedding and beheading. ‘I must get on,’ she said, abandoning Daisy to Prendergast. Or perhaps the other way round.
Juliet was sorry now that she had given Joan Timpson second-hand grapes, she would have taken her something unsullied had she known it would be her final meal on earth. Discounting members of the medical profession (and perhaps not even them), Juliet was probably the last person Joan had spoken to. ‘How lovely,’ she had said, picking a grape off the bunch. As last words go, they were pleasant ones.
Juliet returned to the sanctuary of her desk to brood. On Godfrey Toby, on Mrs Ambrose and on the flamingo. Was there some way in which the Czech’s disappearance could be linked to Godfrey’s reappearance?
The flamingo had flown, but where had he landed? Did flamingos fly? She thought of them as flightless birds, but her knowledge of ornithology hadn’t progressed since Perry Gibbons’s attempts to educate her.
And there he was! As if by simply thinking his name she had conjured him up out of thin air. He was walking past the open door of her office in the company of Daisy Gibbs. What was he doing over on their side of the road? Was he looking for her?
The ghosts of the past were gathering. Perry, Godfrey, Mrs Ambrose. A congregation of the past. Who would be next? Not Cyril, she hoped.
Neither Daisy nor Perry glanced in at her. Juliet felt slighted yet relieved. It was curious how you could hold two quite opposing feelings at the same time, an unsettling emotional discord. She felt an odd pang at the sight of him. She had been fond of him. She had been his girl. Reader, I didn’t marry him, she thought.
A few minutes later Daisy returned along the corridor, sans Perry. She knocked on the door.
‘I can see you,’ Juliet said crisply. ‘You hardly need to knock.’
‘I have some correspondence – Teachers – would you like me to answer it?’
‘Yes, please, I thought we agreed you would. What’s Perry Gibbons doing here?’
‘Mr Gibbons? Oh, Mr Prendergast is borrowing him from Children’s Hour, to do an Our Observer for us. Julius Caesar – crossing the Rubicon, alea iacta est and all that. The die is cast—’
‘I do know Latin, thank you, Daisy.’
Juliet had a sudden unexpected memory – one of Perry’s ‘expeditions’, to St Albans (Verulamium – at first she’d thought it had something to do with worms) one wet afternoon to see a Roman villa. A very well-preserved mosaic floor, he’d told her. It covers the hypocaust. Hypocaustum from the Ancient Greek …
She had been vexed with him about something, but now she couldn’t remember what.
‘Have you met Mr Gibbons?’ Daisy asked. Juliet heard capital letters. Can I Introduce You to Perry Gibbons? He would have made quite an interesting subject.
‘Once or twice.’
‘The man’s a polymath!’
‘Sometimes you can know too much, Daisy.’
‘Miss Timpson’s funeral is on Monday, by the way. The Department’s sending a wreath.’ Daisy lingered. Juliet waited. ‘We’re contributing.’
‘How much?’ Juliet asked.
‘Five shillings each.’
That seemed like a lot, but you weren’t supposed to haggle over a funeral wreath, Juliet supposed. She sighed, opened up her purse and counted out two half-crowns into Daisy’s waiting palm, as pink and clean as a kitten’s paw.
‘Do you know what she died of?’ Daisy asked, with the air of someone who did.
‘No. Do you?’
‘Yes,’ Daisy said. ‘Mr Lofthouse told me.’
‘Charles?’ Juliet waited but no more was forthcoming. ‘Are you going to tell me?’ she prompted. Oh, she thought, please don’t say she choked on a grape.
‘Yes. Tumours. Everywhere.’ Rhymes with rumours, Juliet thought. ‘She soldiered on.’
‘Don’t use clichés, Daisy. It’s beneath you.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Anyway,’ Juliet said, ‘I’m popping over the road. To Duplicating.’
Their Roneo machine had given up the ghost. ‘Oh, Roneo, Roneo, wherefore art thou?’ one of the secretaries said (a little too frequently), and Juliet thought crossly, why does everyone misinterpret that line? She had grown, over the years, to feel proprietorial over it.
For some days now, every time they wanted something copying they had to go over to Broadcasting House. Everyone liked the little break it gave them. They could have sent a Boy, of course, but why should they have all the fun?
‘I can go to BH for you,’ Daisy volunteered. ‘I’m sure you’ve got more important things on your plate.’
‘No, really I haven’t. I’ll go.’
‘Oh, let me.’
‘No.’ Soon Daisy would be wrestling her to the ground to gain possession of the sheaf of papers in her hand. Most of them were blank. She wasn’t going to Duplicating. She was going to the Concert Hall to listen in on a recording of the BBC Dance Orchestra. She knew the producer. The tea girl brought them tea, but they eschewed her plain biscuits in favour of the fruit cake that the producer’s wife made for him. He was very world-weary, but then so was Juliet. They had kissed once, quite briefly, an act of solidarity rather than lust.
Juliet sensed a heavy atmosphere when she came back from the Concert Hall. ‘Did something happen?’ she asked Daisy.
‘Lester Pelling was sacked,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot to bear when we’re still reeling from the news about Miss Timpson.’
‘Sacked?’
‘Hauled over the coals. Mr Fairbrother – Miller, First Serf and understudy Cook – remember him?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, apparently he swore during the broadcast.’ Daisy dropped her voice to a prim whisper. ‘A particularly bad word.’
‘Fuck?’
Daisy blinked.
‘It wasn’t Lester’s fault,’ Juliet said. ‘And there’s no proof that anyone swore. There’s no record. Literally.’
‘Well, Lester admitted knowing about it,’ Daisy said, giving an offhand, rather judgemental kind of shrug.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Did you see Lester?’ Juliet asked Charles Lofthouse.
‘Who?’
‘Lester. Lester Pelling. The boy who was sacked.’
‘Was he a Boy? I thought he was a Junior Programme Engineer.’
‘Yes, he was,’ she said patiently.
‘He cried,’ Charles Lofthouse said. ‘Still, someone had to be blamed, I suppose. The boy was our sacrificial lamb.’
‘He has a name,’ Juliet said. He’s called Lester. And he wants to be a producer. And his father’s a bastard. And he cried. Juliet felt a knot of pain at the thought. Huis Clos. No exit. He’s not dead, she reminded herself.
‘Prendergast tried to save him, of course,’ Charles said. Good old Prendergast, Juliet thought. ‘You know what Walpole says.’
No, obviously she didn’t know what Walpole had to say on the subject of a Junior Programme Engineer. How vespine you are, she thought. A mean, crippled wasp. She would like to swat him out of existence. Juliet supposed she should feel sorry for him, the leg and so on, but he had survived and others hadn’t. Someone she had once been close to had died in the Café de Paris that night and Juliet had witnessed the aftermath of the carnage in the mortuary, so really a leg seemed a small price to pay.
‘No, what does Walpole say, Charles?’ she said wearily.
‘The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel,’ he said, pompous with the knowledge.
Fräulein Rosenfeld shuffled towards them, clutching her Intermediate German like a life raft. ‘Is it true, poor Joan is dead?’
‘Gone and never to return,’ Charles Lofthouse said.