It was the first time Juliet had heard the name Godfrey Toby and she said, ‘He’s not actually German then?’
‘Goodness, no. There is no one more English than Godfrey.’ But surely, Juliet thought, Peregrine Gibbons – the name alone – was the apotheosis of an Englishman. ‘No one more trustworthy either,’ he said. ‘Godfrey’s been in “deep cover” for a long time, attending Fascist meetings and so on throughout the Thirties. He had contacts with workers at Siemens before the war – their factories in England have always been hotbeds for German intelligence. He is well known to the fifth column, they feel quite safe with him. I presume you are familiar with the ins and outs of the fifth column, Miss Armstrong?’
‘Fascist sympathizers, supporters of the enemy, sir?’
‘Exactly. Subversives. The Nordic League, the Link, the Right Club, the Imperial Fascist League, and a hundred smaller factions. The people who meet with Godfrey are mostly old British Union of Fascists members – Mosley’s lot. Our own home-grown evil, I’m sorry to say. And instead of rooting them out, the plan is to let them flourish – but within a walled garden from which they cannot escape and spread their evil seed.’
A girl could die of old age following a metaphor like this, Juliet thought. ‘Very nicely put, sir,’ she said.
Juliet had been working in the Registry for a tedious two months when yesterday Peregrine Gibbons had approached her in the canteen and said, ‘I need a girl.’
And, lo and behold, today she was here. His girl.
‘I’m setting up a special operation,’ he told her. ‘A kind of deception game. You will be an important part of it.’ Was she to be an agent then? (A spy!) No, it seemed she was to remain shackled to a typewriter. ‘We cannot choose our weapons in a time of war, Miss Armstrong,’ he said. I don’t see why not, Juliet thought. What would she choose, she wondered? A sharp sabre? A bow of flaming gold? Perhaps arrows of desire.
Nonetheless, she had been singled out – chosen. ‘The work we’re doing requires a special kind of person, Miss Armstrong,’ he told her. Peregrine Gibbons (‘Do call me Perry’) had a way of speaking to you that made you feel you must be a cut above everyone else – the elite of the herd. He was attractive, perhaps not leading-man material, more of a character actor, she thought. He was tall, and rather natty with his bow-tie and top-to-toe herringbone tweed – a double-breasted three-piece, beneath a large overcoat (yes, tweed), all worn with a rather careless panache. Amongst other things, she learnt later, he had studied mesmerism when he was younger, and Juliet wondered if he used it on people without them knowing. Was she to be the Trilby to his Svengali? (She always thought of the hat. It seemed absurd.)
And now here they were in Pimlico, in Dolphin Square, so that he could show her the ‘set-up’. He had taken two flats next door to each other – ‘Isolation is the best form of secrecy,’ he said. ‘Mosley has a flat here. He’ll be one of our neighbours.’ This seemed to amuse him. ‘Cheek by jowl with the enemy.’
Dolphin Square was built a few years ago, close to the Thames, and until now Juliet had only seen it from the outside. Entering through the large arch on the river side it presented quite a daunting sight – ten blocks of flats, each ten storeys high, built around a kind of garden quadrangle with trees and flower beds and a winter-dry fountain. ‘Quite Soviet in its conception and execution, don’t you think?’ Perry said.
‘I suppose,’ Juliet said, although she didn’t think the Russians would have named their housing towers after legendary British admirals and sea-captains – Beatty, Collingwood, Drake, and so on. They were to be in Nelson House, Perry said. He would live and work in one flat – Juliet would work there too – while in the next-door flat an MI5 officer – Godfrey Toby – would masquerade as a Nazi agent and encourage people with pro-Fascist sympathies to report to him. ‘If they’re telling Godfrey their secrets,’ Perry said, ‘then they are not telling the Germans. Godfrey will be a conduit to divert their treachery into our own reservoir.’ Metaphor really wasn’t his forte.
‘And one will lead us to another, and so on,’ he continued. ‘The beauty of it is that they are doing the rounding-up themselves.’
Perry was already lodged in the flat – Juliet caught a glimpse of his shaving-kit on a shelf above the sink in the tiny bathroom and through a half-open bedroom door she could see a white shirt on a hanger on the wardrobe door – a good heavy twill, she noticed. Her mother would have approved of the quality. The rest of the room, however, appeared so austere that it might have been a monk’s cell. ‘I have a flat elsewhere, of course,’ he said. ‘In Petty France. But this arrangement is practical for Godfrey’s operation. And everything we need is here – a restaurant, a shopping arcade, a swimming pool, even our own taxi service.’
The living room of the Dolphin Square flat had been turned into an office, although, Juliet was pleased to note, it retained the comfort of a small sofa. Peregrine Gibbons’s desk was a beast of a roll-top, a manifold affair composed of little pull-out shelves and tiny cupboards and endless drawers containing bulldog clips, rubber bands, drawing-pins and so on, all punctiliously arranged (and rearranged) by Perry himself. He was the orderly sort, she noted. And I am disorderly, she thought regretfully. It was bound to annoy.
The only adornment to his desk was a small, heavy bust of Beethoven, who glared furiously at Juliet when she sat at her own desk – a piece of furniture that in comparison to Perry’s was little more than a rather dejected-looking table.
‘Do you like Beethoven, sir?’ she asked.
‘Not particularly,’ he said, seemingly puzzled by the question. ‘He makes for a good paperweight though.’
‘I’m sure he would be pleased to know that, sir.’ She noticed his brow furrow slightly and thought, I must restrain my inclination to levity. It seemed to confuse him.
‘And,’ Perry continued, pausing for a beat, as if he were waiting to see if she had anything more of inconsequence to add, ‘of course, as well as our special little operation’ (Ours, she thought, pleased by the possessive) ‘you will carry out general secretarial duties for me, and so on. I am running other operations as well as this one, but don’t worry, I shan’t burden you with too much.’ (Not true!) ‘I like to type my own reports.’ (He didn’t!) ‘The fewer people who see things, the better. Isolation is the best form of secrecy.’ You said that already, she thought. He must be keen on it.
It had seemed like an attractive prospect. She had been working in a prison for the last couple of months – MI5 had relocated to Wormwood Scrubs so as best to accommodate their burgeoning ranks, necessitated by war. It was an unpleasant place to work. All day long, people clattered up and down the open metal staircases. The female staff had even been given special dispensation to wear trousers because the men could see up their skirts when they were going up the stairs. And the Ladies were not ladies’ toilets at all but horrid things designed for prisoners, with stable-type doors that left you completely visible from the bust upwards and the knees downward. The cells functioned as their offices and people were forever getting locked in by accident.
Pimlico had seemed an attractive proposition in comparison. And yet. All this talk of isolation and secrecy – was she to be locked away here too?
It seemed peculiar that she was to spend her working days in such proximity to Perry Gibbons’s domestic arrangements – within breathing distance of where he slept, not to mention the even more intimate proceedings of daily life. What if she were to come across his ‘smalls’ drying in the bathroom, or smell his Finnan haddock from the previous night? Or – worse – if she were to hear him using the bathroom (or – horrors – vice versa!)? It would be too much to bear. But, of course, his laundry was sent out and he never cooked for himself. And as for the bathroom, he seemed oblivious to bodily functions, his own and hers.
She wondered if she might not have been better off staying in the Registry, after all. Not that she had been given much choice in the matter. Choice, it seemed, was one of the f
irst casualties of war.
Juliet hadn’t applied to the Security Service; she had wanted to join one of the women’s armed forces, not particularly from patriotism but because she was worn out with fending for herself in the months after her mother’s death. But then after war was declared she had been summoned to an interview, and the summons was on government notepaper so she supposed she would have to obey it.
She had been flustered when she arrived because her bus had broken down, right on Piccadilly Circus, and she’d had to run all the way to an obscure office in an even more obscure building on Pall Mall. You had to go through the building in front of it to discover the entrance. She wondered if it was some kind of test. ‘Passport Office’, it said on a small brass plaque on the door, but there was no sign of anyone wanting a passport or of anyone issuing one.
Juliet hadn’t really caught the name of the man (Morton?) who was interviewing her. He was leaning back in his chair rather nonchalantly, as if he was waiting to be entertained by her. He didn’t usually conduct the interviews, he said, but Miss Dicker was indisposed. Juliet had no idea who Miss Dicker was.
‘Juliet?’ the man said contemplatively. ‘As in Romeo and Juliet? Very romantic.’ He laughed as if this was some kind of private joke.
‘I believe it was actually a tragedy, sir.’
‘Is there a difference?’
He wasn’t old, but he didn’t look young either and perhaps never had. He had the air of an aesthete and was thin, elongated almost – a heron or a stork. He seemed amused by everything she said – everything he said himself, too. He reached for a pipe that was sitting on his desk and proceeded to light it, taking his time, puffing and tamping and sucking and all the other strange rituals pipe smokers seemed to find it necessary to go through, before saying, ‘Tell me about your father.’
‘My father?’
‘Your father.’
‘He’s dead.’ There was a silence that she supposed she was meant to fill. ‘He was buried at sea,’ she offered.
‘Really? Royal Navy?’
‘No, Merchant,’ she said.
‘Ah.’ His eyebrow lifted slightly.
She didn’t like that supercilious eyebrow and so she gave her unfathomable father a promotion. ‘An officer.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And your mother? How is she?’
‘She’s very well, thank you,’ Juliet answered automatically. She was beginning to get a headache. Her mother used to say that she thought too much. Juliet thought that possibly she didn’t think enough. The mention of her mother laid another stone on her heart. Her mother was still more of a presence than an absence in her life. Juliet supposed that one day in the future it would be the other way round, but she doubted that would be an improvement.
‘I see you went to quite a good school,’ the man (Marsden?) said. ‘Quite expensive too, I expect – for your mother. She takes in sewing, doesn’t she? A seamstress.’
‘A dressmaker. It’s different.’
‘Is it? I wouldn’t know about these things.’ (She felt rather sure he would.) ‘You must have wondered how she managed to afford the fees.’
‘I was on a scholarship.’
‘How did that make you feel?’
‘Feel?’
‘Inferior?’
‘Inferior? Of course not.’
‘Do you like art?’ he asked abruptly, taking her off her guard.
‘Art?’ What did he mean by that? She had come under the wing of an enthusiastic art teacher at school, Miss Gillies. (‘You have an eye,’ Miss Gillies told her. I have two, she thought.) She used to visit the National Gallery before her mother died. She disliked Fragonard and Watteau and all that pretty French stuff that would make any self-respecting sans-culottes want to chop someone’s head off. Similarly Gainsborough and his affluent aristocrats posing smugly with their grand perspectives. And Rembrandt, for whom she had a particular disregard. What was so wonderful about an ugly old man who kept painting himself all the time?
Perhaps she didn’t like art, in fact she felt quite opinionated about it. ‘Of course I like art,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘You’d be surprised. Anyone in particular?’
‘Rembrandt,’ she said, placing her hand on her heart in a gesture of devotion. She liked Vermeer, but she wasn’t going to share that with a stranger. ‘I revere Vermeer,’ she had once told Miss Gillies. It seemed a lifetime ago now.
‘What about languages?’ he asked.
‘Do I like them?’
‘Do you have them?’ He clamped his teeth on the stem of his pipe as if it were a baby’s teething-ring.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought. She was surprised by how antagonistic she was feeling towards this man. Later she learnt that this was his forte. He was one of their interrogation specialists, although it seemed to be sheer chance that he had volunteered to sit in for Miss Dicker this afternoon.
‘Not really,’ she said.
‘Really? No languages? Not French, or perhaps a smattering of German?’
‘Barely.’
‘What about a musical instrument. Do you play?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a little piano?’
Before she could deny further, there was a knock at the door and a woman put her head round it and said, ‘Mr Merton,’ (Merton!) ‘Colonel Lightwater was wondering if he could have a word when you’re free?’
‘Tell him I’ll be along in ten minutes.’
Crikey, ten more minutes of this cross-examination, Juliet thought.
‘So …’ he said – a small word that seemed freighted with significance. More business with his pipe only added weight to the load. Had the War Office begun to ration words, she wondered? ‘You’re eighteen?’ He made it sound like an accusation.
‘I am.’
‘Quite advanced for your age, aren’t you?’
Was he insulting her? ‘No, not at all,’ she answered robustly. ‘I am completely average for my age.’
He laughed, a genuine bark of mirth, and glanced at some papers on his desk, then stared at her and said, ‘St James’s Secretarial College?’
St James’s was where well-bred girls went. Juliet had spent the time since her mother’s death attending night classes in a ramshackle college in Paddington while she worked as a chambermaid during the day in an equally ramshackle hotel in Fitzrovia. She had stepped through the doors of St James’s to enquire about fees and so felt justified in saying now, ‘Yes. I started there, but I finished somewhere else.’
‘And are you?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Finished?’
‘Quite. Thank you.’
‘Good speeds?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Juliet was puzzled; it sounded as if he were sending her on her way. (God speed?) Because he didn’t think she was finished. She wasn’t. She was extremely unfinished, in her own opinion.
‘Speeds – typing and so on,’ he said, waving his pipe around in the air. He was clueless, Juliet thought.
‘Oh, speeds,’ she said. ‘Yes. They’re good. I have certificates.’ She didn’t elaborate – he made her feel mulishly uncooperative. Not the best attitude in a candidate in an interview, she supposed. But she hadn’t wanted a clerical job.
‘Anything else you want to tell me about yourself?’
‘No. Not really. Sir.’
He looked disappointed.
And then, in an offhand manner – he may as well have been asking her if she preferred bread to potatoes, or red rather than green – he said, ‘If you had to choose, which would you be – a Communist or a Fascist?’
‘It’s not much of a choice, is it, sir?’
‘You have to choose. There’s a gun to your head.’
‘I could choose to be shot.’ (Who was holding the gun, she wondered?)
‘No, you couldn’t. You have to choose one or the other.’
Communism, it seemed to Juliet, was a kinder doctrine. ‘Fascism,’ she bluffed.
He laughed.
He was trying to extract something from her but she wasn’t sure what. She might pop into a Lyons for lunch, she thought. Treat herself. No one else would.
Merton took her by surprise, standing up suddenly and walking round his desk towards her. Juliet stood up too, rather defensively. He moved closer and Juliet felt oddly unsure about what he intended to do. For a wild moment she thought he was going to try to kiss her. What would she do if he did? She had received plenty of unwanted attention in the hotel in Fitzrovia, many of the guests were travelling salesmen away from their wives and she could usually fend them off with a sharp kick to the shin. But Merton worked for the government. There might be penalties attached to kicking him. It might even be treason.
He put out his hand and she realized that he was waiting for her to shake it. ‘I’m sure Miss Dicker will run her eye over your bona fides and so on and get you all signed up to the Official Secrets Act.’
Did she have the job then? Was that it?
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You had the job before you walked in the door, Miss Armstrong. I just needed to ask the right questions. To be reassured that you are honourable and upright. And so on.’
But I don’t want the job, she thought. ‘I was thinking of joining the ATS,’ she said boldly.
He laughed, the way you might laugh at a child, and said, ‘You will do more good for the war working with us, Miss Armstrong.’
Later she learnt that Miles Merton (for that was his entire name) knew everything about her – more than she knew herself – including every lie and half-truth she told him at the interview. It didn’t seem to matter. In fact, she suspected that it helped in some way.
Afterwards she had gone to the Lyons Corner House on Lower Regent Street and ordered a ham salad with boiled potatoes. They still had good ham. It couldn’t last, she supposed. The salad seemed a meagre choice if they were all soon to starve in the war, so she added tea and two iced buns to her order. The Corner House’s orchestra, she noticed, was already depleted by the war.
After her meal she walked over to the National Gallery. Having been reminded of Vermeer, she had intended to look at the two of his works that were housed there, but discovered that all the paintings had been evacuated.