The Traitor's Girl, page 15
The one glimmer of hope was that Peter had risked exposure to save my life. Instead of letting the Russians kill me along with Petrov – after all, the only neutralised witness is a dead one – he let me take the fall.
Had he trusted that my uncle would get me out of the murder charge, or had he wanted me hanged? Perhaps, like the rest of us in that room, Peter had not been thinking terribly clearly at the time. Perhaps he was squeamish about watching the people he betrayed being murdered in cold blood. Or had the unthinkable happened? Did he actually harbour tender feelings towards me?
One could not be too sorry about the demise of a man like Petrov. Upon reflection, I realised I was so resigned to my punishment because I was furious at myself. I deserved what came to me if I let Peter play me for such a fool. Holloway was too good for me. My mother would have been ashamed to own such a daughter.
Eve’s efforts to save me undoubtedly would have come to nothing had the higher-ups not already decided to spare me the noose. Of course many might find the noose preferable to a life sentence in Holloway. Odd the way one clings to the worst kind of life rather than face the great unknown death brings.
When you first glimpse Holloway Prison from the outside it looks like a fortress from a fairytale, a nightmarish place inhabited by an evil war lord and his inhuman army. Inside, it is worse: damp, frigid, and grim as hell frozen over. Conditions were bad enough there in ordinary circumstances. Once the Blitz began, they became almost unbearable.
They’d evacuated most of the prisoners to Aylesbury prison at the beginning of the war, but they left me at Holloway, along with many interred Germans and Russians. Not to mention a motley assortment of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Fascist followers. Most notable of these was his wife, the beautiful and infamous Diana Mitford, who was a friend of Hitler’s.
It was never said in so many words, but I understood I was to report back on any plots being hatched in those cells. As I’d suspected at the time, there was little point spying on these women. For one thing, the supposed Fifth Column activity in England was largely a figment of the British imagination, as Hitler had always believed England would throw its lot in with the Third Reich and so had not troubled to put agents in place before hostilities began. For another, British counter-intelligence had carried out several clever ruses to fool the Germans into thinking they had a network of spies on British soil when in fact they did not.
Almost all of the German spies parachuting into England had been captured and either executed or turned into double agents, in what has now become known as the ‘Double Cross’ system. With the help of British spymasters, these German infiltrators were wirelessly weaving the Nazis a web of lies and useless truths, trapping each new German agent as he landed.
The British Fascists clapped up in Holloway did not seem to me to be much of a threat. They were women who clung to an old order that had been limping along since the Great War and would not survive this one. They spoke a lot of arrant nonsense that turned the stomach but I never heard of any concrete plans of subversion.
As a convicted murderer I might have become quite a celebrity had I chosen to be lionised by the other prisoners. After all, I’d shot a Russian businessman. Even the warders gave me a measure of respect.
However, I was wary of becoming too friendly with the other women incarcerated there because I had to maintain my cover as the mousey Caroline Granger. The more intimate I became with someone, the more likely I was to slip up. When we had devised my legend between us, Vaughn and I had never anticipated that I’d need to maintain it for a matter of years in close quarters with other women. My cover would never hold up to intimate and constant scrutiny.
Any connections I formed in prison were more in the nature of alliances for mutual benefit. Thanks to Eve’s supplying me with cigarettes, I could trade them like currency for food or fuel, little though anyone had to spare. I focused my energies on trying to keep warm and fed and relatively safe when the Luftwaffe bombs hit. There was no air-raid shelter for convicted prisoners. We simply tried to stay as low down in the cells as we could.
One night during the Blitz, a bomb blasted a hole right through the prison, making a huge crater in the middle of it. In the darkness of the blackout, one poor woman walked out of her cell and fell into the abyss, breaking both her legs. Most of us were moved to relative safety in the lower levels of the prison after that.
The plumbing, never reliable, was destroyed by the air raids; the toilets overflowed and stank. To make matters worse, everyone had dysentery from the lack of hygiene in the kitchens and I felt as if the reek of the place had taken up permanent residence in my nostrils. Mercifully, after a while one ceases to notice the stench.
Holloway was so cold that to keep warm, women would burn anything that came to hand in their chamber pots, along with a drop of scent if they had any. Diana Mosely ordered her fur coat sent in and was given special dispensation to take more than one bath a week. She was subject to most of the privations everyone else endured, however, despite the lies the papers printed about her privileges. I’ll say one thing for her. She kept the other prisoners’ morale up and fought hard to improve the abysmal conditions there.
After years in that place, my body was slowly wasting away.I did my utmost to keep fit with exercise in my cell and gulping in the relatively fresh air in the prison yard. The life took its toll on my health, however, and rationing meant that the food, never good at the best of times, grew steadily worse.
Because I maintained my cover, my uncle and aunt couldn’t visit me and my friends all thought I was travelling abroad. The only friend Caroline Granger had in the world was Eve.
She seemed to feel a sense of guilt – or at least responsibility – about my incarceration, though as far as I knew there was no reason why she should. Most of the food she sent me was filched by the guards before it ever reached me, so I asked her to stop sending it.
Eve wrote to me often but she never made even the most glancing reference to the message I’d so cleverly concealed in that Thomas Hardy book. Every interaction I had with the outside world was monitored, so I didn’t dare try to drop clues in my letters or during her brief, infrequent visits. Eve had joined the WAAF but she couldn’t talk much about her work. Seeing her in her smart uniform made me feel restless and impatient. I wanted to be doing my bit, not stuck there in prison.
One day in 1941, when the worst of the Blitz was over, I received a startling note. ‘I’m going to get you out,’ she wrote to me – rather grandiosely, I thought at the time. ‘Be ready.’
Wryly amused at the dramatic turn of Eve’s correspondence, I set aside the note to burn for kindling later. ‘Don’t send me empty promises,’ I murmured. ‘Send me a blanket, for pity’s sake.’
Of course I never would have been at all sanguine about going to prison had there not been a plan to get me out. My uncle intended to let a good amount of time pass before he made the move to extract me. I didn’t know how he planned to achieve my freedom but my incarceration was all part of our plan.
Peter Durant had to believe me his creature. He had to know that I had not betrayed him. I’d gone to prison rather than link his name to the Russians. I’d suffered in this hellhole longer than I’d ever imagined I’d have to. Surely that would be enough to earn his trust.
Then the Blitz came and it seemed as if I’d be killed in a bomb blast before I’d ever get out of Holloway. My uncle had grown increasingly busy due to the conflict and I worried that he had all but forgotten me. Any internal investigations into traitors might,I thought, well lose precedence to the exigencies of war.
Then one day a very quiet, very discreet gentleman called Mr Vincent came to visit me. I recognised him at once as an associate of my uncle’s, although I’d never known him by this name. His face, always lugubrious, had an extremely troubled expression as we sat in a cold, uncomfortable meeting room with a splintery wooden table and two collapsible chairs.
‘Don’t spare me,’ I said quickly. ‘What is it?’
‘Miss Granger,’ he said, correctly using my cover name. ‘I’m so sorry to inform you that your uncle has been killed.’
‘M-my uncle?’ Two reactions collided within me: the knowledge that he meant Uncle Bernard, and the vain, stupid hope that this was some kind of ruse, and that my real Uncle Bernard was alive and well and sending me some sort of coded message that involved lying about some fictional relative’s demise.
But my hope was short-lived. One of Hitler’s Satan bombs had razed a building near Piccadilly and Uncle Bernard had been one of the many whose lives were lost in the rubble.
I recognised the address as belonging to my uncle’s mistress. The news of his death would be particularly hard for my aunt, who must also have known the significance of that location. I wished I could have been there to comfort her.
I asked Mr Vincent if there was any other message for me. He regretted that there was not.
Uncle Bernard had seemed so indestructible, so eternal. I’d trusted to his steadfastness as I’d trusted to little else in the past two years. Something as randomly impersonal as a bomb should not have been the end of him.
My shock and grief turned gradually to fear. Dear God, how was I to get out of Holloway without my uncle’s help? He must have planned a failsafe in case of accident, but if he had, he had not told me of it. I waited in vain for another message, or for my release, but neither came.
My one hope of getting out of Holloway now rested with Eve. Please God, let her find a way before I gave in to despair.
ANNABEL
‘I’m going to feed the geese,’ said Simon the next morning. ‘Want to come?’
‘What, so they can finish me off this time? No thanks.’
‘Come on. We’ll go for a walk in the woods. Get some fresh air. It will do both of us good after being cooped up inside.’
The two of them had by tacit consent spent the morning in their respective rooms, Simon working on his book and Annabel listening to more of Carrie’s adventures. She had an appointment at Wyncham Manor to look through the costumes with Vi after lunch, so she might as well stop now.
Simon fed the geese and left their pen open so they could wander once they’d finished.
‘They look so benign, don’t they, waddling about like that,’ said Annabel. ‘As if they’d just stepped out of a nursery rhyme.’
‘Who could guess they were capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm on innocent young women?’ said Simon, grinning.
‘Hitchcock should have made a movie about it,’ Annabel agreed.
They left the geese to guzzle and set out on their walk. Following a bridle trail through the woods, they tramped over carpets of shining damp leaves, breathing mist into the cold, crisp air.
It struck Annabel that although she’d poured out her life story and discussed her grandmother with him in intimate detail, she didn’t know much about Simon. He was originally from Cambridgeshire, he told her, but he’d lived in London since graduating from Oxford.
‘Why not Cambridge, if you lived close by?’ said Annabel.
‘It’s precisely because I lived close by that I didn’t want to go to Cambridge,’ he answered with a laugh. ‘I couldn’t wait to get away.’
He didn’t speak much about his childhood, except to say that he was one of four – three boys and a girl – and that they got together occasionally but they weren’t close.
‘You seem a bit of a loner to me,’ said Annabel. ‘I’d never have guessed you’re one of four.’ When he made no comment on that, she added, ‘And after graduation, did you get a job on a newspaper? Did you always want to be a journalist?’
He laughed. ‘What is this? An inquisition?’
‘No, it’s just that I don’t know anything about you and you seem to know so much about me.’
‘Believe me, you’re a far more interesting subject,’ he replied. She let it go but she noticed he’d effectively turned the spotlight away from himself once more. She’d rarely met a man who was more self-effacing. Most wouldn’t shut up about themselves if given the slightest encouragement.
They heard the stream before they reached it, and now Annabel understood where the expression ‘babbling brook’ came from. The water seemed to chatter and giggle like a delighted toddler as it rushed over the rocky bed below.
They came to the bank with its weeping willows dipping lazy fingers in the water. The wooden footbridge that arced over the stream looked like something out of a fairytale. ‘Imagine growing up here,’ breathed Annabel as they both leaned on the top rail of the bridge, watching the stream flow beneath them. ‘What a childhood that would be.’ She felt a stab of sorrow for little Fay, abandoned by her mother so young.
And now history seemed to be repeating itself. Had Carrie taken off, not because she was in danger or frightened by the vandals, but because she couldn’t cope with the prospect of seeing Annabel, the child of the daughter she’d abandoned all those years ago? For the first time, Annabel wondered if she should simply give up and go home.
Simon gathered a handful of twigs and gave half of them to her. ‘Have you heard of the game from Winnie-the-Pooh?’
But she wasn’t listening, taking the twigs and fingering them pensively.
‘What is it?’ said Simon, his voice softening. He leaned on the rail next to her. ‘Hey, it’s been a rough couple of days, hasn’t it?’
She avoided his gaze, staring into the glinting tawny depths of the stream below. She dropped one of the twigs and watched it land in the rush of water and slip beneath the shadow of the bridge.‘I can’t help wondering if Carrie’s avoiding me.’
‘No, please, don’t think that,’ said Simon. ‘I know she wouldn’t have gone unless she felt there was no other choice.’ When she didn’t respond, he added, ‘I mean, you’ve listened to the tapes. If there’s one thing you can say for your grandmother, it’s that she’s no coward.’
Annabel dropped another twig. ‘Sometimes people who aren’t afraid of physical danger are terrified of emotional upheaval. She’s done it before, Simon. She ran from her family in Australia.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ he admitted. ‘It must have been hard for your mother and for Carrie’s husband, too. But until we know the circumstances, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s only been a couple of days.’
He was right, she supposed. She pitched another twig into the swirling stream, then nodded. ‘Okay.’
He made a move towards her as if he might hug her or put his arm around her shoulders but stopped himself. With a smile that seemed to her a little forced, he held up a twig from his own bundle, ‘Now, how about a contest? Best of three?’
Pooh-sticks was a simple game requiring no skill at all, but Simon’s competitiveness and his blatant attempts to cheat rallied Annabel’s spirits. She set off for Wyncham Manor with a smile on her lips and a great deal more optimism than she’d felt that morning.
Wyncham Manor was a rambling grey stone house, surrounded by parkland and paddocks and fields. Annabel gathered from the locals that Sir Dennis Fenton owned most of the district and was rapidly buying up more.
In the way of these grand houses, the approach was a long one. As she drove past a fenced horse paddock, Annabel saw Vi, trotting along on a dappled grey horse, as poised and correct as if she were competing in a show jumping competition. Sometimes riders looked slightly ridiculous bobbing up and down like that, but not Vi.
When she saw Annabel, she walked her horse over to the fence. Annabel stopped the car and wound down the window. ‘I came to use the sewing machine for the costumes. Is it a bad time?’ They had made the appointment but perhaps Vi had forgotten.
‘Sorry! Lost track,’ said Vi. ‘Look, go down to the house. Someone will let you in. I’ll meet you there. Be as quick as I can.’
Annabel drove on to the house, hoping she wouldn’t encounter Sir Dennis, and was relieved when a young woman answered the door. Annabel introduced herself and added, ‘Vi is out riding but she told me to come to the house to wait.’
‘Oh, you’re here for the sewing machine, aren’t you?’ said the woman. ‘That’s so kind of you. My Rebecca is in the nativity play so we’re all grateful to you for stepping in. I’m Steph, by the way. I’m the housekeeper here.’
Steph was not at all what Annabel would have imagined a housekeeper to be. She was young, about thirty, perhaps, and wore jeans and a chambray shirt, with a plain elastic tying back her strawberry-blonde hair.
‘Come into the kitchen and have something while you wait. I’m afraid Vi’s very particular about grooming her horses after she’s finished riding. She might take a while.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Annabel. She was in no particular hurry. Wyncham Hall was everything she’d imagined in a grand country house. Spacious and imposing, with ancient furniture and paintings of Fenton ancestors in gilded frames.
The kitchen surprised her, however. Rather than being located in the basement, as at Beechwood, an enormous modern kitchen with all the mod-cons was situated on the ground floor.
‘This wing was added on in the Victorian era,’ Steph explained. ‘The family lives here while the rest of the house is mainly for show.’
In fact, it was a similar idea to Carrie’s granny flat, if executed in a far more splendid fashion.
The kitchen managed to incorporate state-of-the-art appliances and bench space while retaining a traditional feel that harmonised with the rest of the house. An informal dining area with a refectory table and low benches flowed into a stunning glass conservatory looking out over the perfectly tended back gardens.
‘How glorious,’ said Annabel. Snuggling up here in the winter sunshine with a book and a mug of tea in one of those wicker chairs would be pure heaven.
‘I never get tired of that view,’ agreed Steph. ‘Not that there’s much chance to admire it, but still.’
