The Traitor's Girl, page 21
In despair over the state of my hair, I was tempted to shear it all off. However, it would take too long to grow back and I needed to report for duty as an agents provocateur the following week. So with the help of a wide-toothed comb and a spoonful of oil – by then a precious commodity – I managed to ease the tangles loose. It would be months before I stopped experiencing phantom itches all over my body.
‘I’m not sure how I’ll ever repay you,’ I said to Eve with a grateful smile when I emerged at last from my second bath, feeling fragile and hollow but blessedly clean.
She stared at me. ‘You’re . . . blonde.’
I smiled and winked, enjoying her astonishment. What she meant to say was that I looked much better as myself than I had as Petrov’s dumpy secretary or a prison inmate. The muddy dye I’d used had grown out during my time in prison, but the condition of my hair had been so lank and unkempt that the true colour was never apparent. Now it gleamed pale gold, clean and blessedly free from tangles.
Just then Mrs Gardner tapped on the door. ‘Have you girls dissolved in there? Supper’s ready.’
Eve cleared her throat. ‘Let’s eat.’
Tempted to gorge myself on the scrambled powdered eggs and tinned pears which were the three women’s supper that night, I made myself take only a few mouthfuls. Still, my stomach revolted at solid food and I spent a humiliating few minutes retching into a pail the housekeeper pressed into my hands.
‘Cup of tea, dear?’ Now that I no longer smelled like a dung heap, Mrs Gardner had warmed to me considerably.
I accepted and was honoured with tea from a helping of fresh leaves. The meal brought home to me how things had changed in England since my incarceration. I felt tearily grateful for what these women were doing for me, particularly Eve, who must be sharing her rations, meagre though they were.
‘We’ll have to see what we can do about a ration book for your new identity,’ said Eve, when Mrs Gardner was out of earshot. ‘We’ll go over your legend tomorrow.’
Overwrought but optimistic, I said goodnight and went to my room early, where Eve and I were to sleep together in a double bed.This closeness might well have been awkward had I not been sure I’d fall asleep as soon as my body touched a real mattress again.
However, it did not happen that way. The habit of alertness learned in prison was by now engrained. Eve did not come upstairs for some time after I retired and I passed long, silent moments staring up in the direction of the ceiling, wishing the blackout didn’t make the darkness so profound. I couldn’t see my hand in front of me. There was a softness to this darkness very different from the bleak, unfathomable void at Holloway, though, and I was glad to be there.
As ever, my thoughts returned to Peter Durant. I was puzzled that Eve had not mentioned him yet. Had she missed the significance of my inscription in Far from the Madding Crowd? I supposed that it had been far too obscure.
I hadn’t changed my mind about taking her into my confidence. Now that my uncle was gone, Eve was my only contact within the security services. She was on the inside, close to Campbell-Brown, from what she’d already told me.
I needed to enlist Eve’s help in proving Durant a traitor. If we could just find enough evidence to convince Campbell-Brown to mount an investigation, we’d have done all we could.
My need to bring down Peter Durant had grown as cold and hard as the prison walls at Holloway. Even incarcerated with prisoners who had been shut up for their political beliefs and who came from a supposedly ‘polite’ echelon of society, one needed to become tough to survive and even tougher to thrive. I had very little mercy left in my heart.
When I thought of the thousands of brave souls that might well be lost in this war due to Durant’s treachery, I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. I’d do it, too, if not for the concern that Durant was not the only spy who had infiltrated the service. He needed to be debriefed by experts, perhaps even turned into a double agent, so that the British intelligence services could be mucked out, once and for all.
I wondered when the right time would be to broach with Eve the subject that was always uppermost in my mind. I wished I had not burned the documents in my mother’s cache; they would have been useful in convincing her. Then again, it would have been fatal for that information to fall into the wrong hands. I couldn’t have carried all those papers with me from Paris without Peter finding them and it was too dangerous to leave them behind.
Who occupied my little garret now? I wondered. Had any of my paintings survived? I had locked up and left without much thought, never guessing that in such a short time afterwards, my beloved Paris would be overrun with goose-stepping Nazis.
I must have managed to doze a little, because when Eve climbed in beside me, I jerked wide awake with a gasp.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. There was no need for her to whisper, yet it seemed the appropriate thing to do.
I’d left her plenty of room, more than half the bed. As Eve settled herself she gave me a wide berth but she added welcome warmth to that pocket of air between the sheets. I wriggled my toes in my borrowed woollen socks and felt satisfaction spread within me along with the blessed heat. In Holloway, I’d thought I’d never be warm again.
Uppermost in my mind was the question of whether Eve had discovered the clue I’d left her, and if so, whether she was prepared to help me. But this house was not the place to discuss Peter Durant. We needed open space, where we would not be overheard.
‘Can we go to the country tomorrow?’ I whispered. ‘Somewhere green?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Eve. ‘I have a meeting scheduled in the afternoon.’
My chest ached for Beechwood Hall and its grounds, its woods and stream and its lovely wild gardens. Practically, I supposed that now those gardens must be overrun by military vehicles or dug into more vegetable rows to feed the inhabitants. Still, I longed for home.
In Holloway, I had avoided thinking about the Hall. It had been requisitioned – by which member of the armed services and for what purpose, I wasn’t sure. As my trustee, Uncle Bernard had dealt with the details.
I wondered at the sort of use to which they might put the house. It was by no means large enough for any major encampment. The grounds were thickly wooded and access difficult. I couldn’t immediately bring to mind what kind of operation would be based there.
I was about to ask if someone could collect my things from my London flat but I remembered that it had been bombed and all my possessions there lost. How lucky that I had taken my cover seriously and not brought even one item from my more glamorous wardrobe with me to town. I would not miss Caroline Granger’s dowdy tweeds and sensible shoes. Where were my things now? Surely they couldn’t have been requisitioned along with the house.
At some point I would need to get to Beechwood Hall to retrieve my escape kit. I might have asked Uncle Bernard to do so before he handed the house over to the government but that would have put him in a compromising position. That locked tin contained all sorts of sensitive material. The false identity papers were of course illegal, the pistol black market, half the cheque books and bank notes counterfeit.
The following morning, Eve brought out the hair dye – a glossy raven black. I admit I was sad at this turn of events for I’d only just reclaimed my natural blonde. A trivial vanity in the scheme of things, but still.
The mousey hair colour I had adopted when working for Dimitri Petrov had done me no favours but my ebony locks brought a new depth to my looks, contrasting starkly with my pale skin and emphasising my blue eyes. Now that I no longer kept my eyes lowered in dogged unresponsiveness, their true colour was evident. With the judicious application of kohl I could make them quite arresting if I chose.
I was amused by the role Eve had released me from Holloway to play. It was the kind of job she would find utterly demeaning.I, on the other hand, relished the opportunity to be out and about, travelling and meeting new people. Not to mention using my well-developed skills as a liar and mimic.
My job was to be tied to the Special Operations Executive, also dubbed ‘The Baker Street Irregulars’. Eve explained the background of the SOE, and its role in sabotaging German operations.
Agents were to be parachuted in behind enemy lines in France and elsewhere. They would then receive coded instructions via BBC wireless broadcasts to blow up bridges, derail trains, support, organise and arm local resistance groups and generally harry the Germans so that they would not know when or from where the next attack would come.
I liked the sound of this. I couldn’t see the point of playing by some outdated rules of engagement when the odds were stacked so high against us, and the penalty for failure so very dire.
‘But what can I do?’ I said, towelling my hair dry. After near-starvation, dysentery and lack of decent exercise for over two years, I was in no state to undertake rigorous physical training. Maybe they wanted me to teach languages but I wasn’t sure I could teach what to me was a process of immersion and natural absorption.I had never learned a language in any formal institution and didn’t know how that might be done.
‘You are to be what is called an agent provocateur,’ said Eve, mangling the French term as only a British person can. ‘When the recruits are working behind enemy lines there will be any number of traps they might fall into, some not of anyone’s making, some laid by a certain type of woman who then passes information to the Nazis.’ Her gaze flickered away.
‘Oh,’ I said, combing out my hair. ‘I thought they used prostitutes for work like that.’
Eve choked a bit and muttered something under her breath.
Unembarrassed, I stopped to light a cigarette and leaned a hip on the edge of the vanity. Frankly, I would have done almost anything to get out of Holloway and stay out – including bedding a few fit young covert agents – but I was confident of my ability to do this particular job without resorting to out-and-out seduction.
I thought of Peter and shivered. He was still out there, doing something so secret even my uncle hadn’t known what it was.
This agent provocateur caper was all well and good but I didn’t know how I’d manage to parlay it into pursuing my true objective. Perhaps the quickest way to locate Peter was to let him find me.
The terms of my release from Holloway had not been mentioned thus far. Was it temporary? I could certainly make a run for it at the end of my usefulness to king and country but it would be good to know if I wouldn’t have to. Despite my succession of desperate romances with various European nations, England was my one true love. It was the kind of feeling I forgot in the midst of the thrilling European whirl, but it was always deep within me, that need for home.
Eve went on to explain the job. ‘When their training is almost complete, SOE recruits go on 96-hour solo exercises in a particular city – Birmingham or Oxford, for example. They might have orders to scout the district, looking to make contact with likely members of the Resistance. They might be charged with spreading propaganda and finding a means of regular distribution. Whatever the mission, they are to keep the details of it secret, along with their true identities and everything else about them that we would not like to get into enemy hands. Each agent must be pitch perfect on his cover story and not deviate from it in any way.’
I was impressed at the attention to detail. For those agents dropped into occupied France, everything was French-made, from clothing to every item the agent carried on his or her person. Right down to the fillings in their teeth, which a dentist would replace for them before they left.
‘And my job will be to extract every ounce of that information from them which they are not supposed to divulge,’ I said, pleased.I all but rubbed my hands. ‘I’ll be good at that.’
In fact, I felt slightly guilty that the job would be so easy. When other women were nursing the wounded, driving ambulances, and dashing into bomb-wrecked buildings to dig out the dead and injured, it seemed that swanning around chatting up active young men and reporting on them was not a terribly self-sacrificing occupation. One must trust such an exercise would help to keep these young men alive while doing vital work. I didn’t need Eve to tell me the life expectancy of such agents wasn’t long.
Once my hair was done and I was dressed in a plain grey suit Eve had found for me, I said, ‘If the country is out of bounds, could we go to the pictures, do you think? I’d love to see Gone with the Wind.’
We walked from the safe house to the cinema and Eve made a note to get me a bicycle. ‘Haven’t ridden a bicycle in years,’ I said.
‘Well, you know what they say,’ said Eve. I chuckled. Eve had a dry sense of humour very different from my own but we were beginning to understand each other and find a rapport.
As we walked, I saw the devastating effects of the Blitz. After all that time spent in frigid semi-darkness at Holloway and longing for the freedom of city streets, the sight of dear old London’s sufferings was almost more than I could bear.
There were too many people about for me to raise the subject of Peter Durant and Eve didn’t mention our official mission, either. She spoke of other things on our way to the picture theatre, of her experiences during the worst of the Blitz and the stories of great sorrow and great heroism that played out night after night. Several times, her conversation seemed to slam against the brick wall of secrecy.I wondered what she’d been working on all this time and how her recruitment to the service had come about.
What a boon it was to sit in that darkened theatre and let the images of scarred, broken London and all the other troubles in my mind drift away as we watched Gone with the Wind. Instead of a jaunt to the country, I had to settle for Tara, but the scene where Scarlett returns after all that struggle and hardship to find her home in ruins could not fail to resonate. It was time for me to regroup, and to recover, but also to think hard about my next move against Peter Durant.
After the movie, we found ourselves wandering in Regent’s Park, a favourite haunt of Eve’s.
In the open space now, Eve glanced around before she said, ‘I read the message in your book.’
That made my footsteps falter, but I quickly resumed my former gait. ‘And?’
‘Odysseus,’ said Eve, her voice throbbing with intensity. ‘You think it’s Peter Durant?’
With only the slightest hesitation, I nodded. That day in the cells at the Old Bailey, I’d made the snap decision to trust Eve with the information. There was no point backing down now.
‘I know it is,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m almost certain. I saw him identify himself to NKVD agents.’ I told her what had really happened with Petrov.
‘I knew it,’ she muttered. ‘I knew it was something like that.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ I said, wanting to assuage her conscience, which I knew still smarted at my incarceration. ‘The true circumstances were completely bizarre.’ I still wondered if Peter had intended to publicly embarrass the service by leaving me there like that, or whether it was the only way he’d seen to save my life. Maybe he’d depended on MI5 to hush it up. But then why tip off the police?
Eve was still staring at me. ‘Then Caroline Granger isn’t your real name.’
I shook my head and told her everything as concisely as I could. My name, my mother, our time in Spain and about Beechwood Hall. I needed to get back there and I needed Eve to help me. But the most important thing was to bring down Peter Durant.
Eve shook her head. ‘I wonder if he knew all this. Not about Durant but the rest. ’Course he did, the wily bugger! That’s why he put me there.’
‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who knew?’
‘Never mind. Listen, I’ve met this Peter Durant. You’ll never guess where.’ She didn’t wait for me to guess. ‘Beechwood Hall. He’s heading up some kind of interrogation facility there. All hush-hush. They say it’s to test out the students but from what I’ve seen, the cells in that basement appear completely authentic. As if they’ve been used in the past for real prisoners, not just pretend ones.’
That was a lot to digest. How had he done it? Not only had Peter inveigled the service to requisition Beechwood Hall, but he’d persuaded them to put the house at his disposal. This seemed an intensely personal violation. I’d thought Peter had lost the power to hurt me but the news that he now commanded my home cut deep.
‘Interrogation,’ I repeated and Eve explained.
Why would a Soviet agent want to be stuck out in the country running a finishing school for SOE recruits? Perhaps he’d had no choice. Or perhaps that wasn’t all he was doing at Beechwood Hall.
I asked, ‘What is this organisation I’m working for? Is it the SOE or some other section?’
‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ said Eve. ‘You make all your reports to me. I pass them on to Campbell-Brown.’
‘And Peter knows it’s me. He knows you got me out of Holloway. How did he seem to take that news?’
Eve tilted her head. ‘I’m not sure. At first, I thought he was going to veto the idea. But it was as if he couldn’t resist.’ Her gaze was oddly penetrating. ‘He might have a hold over you – whether that’s imaginary or real or a bit of both, I can’t say – but it seems to me like you have some kind of hold over him, too. Listen,’ she added before I could fully digest this nugget, ‘we ought to make a contingency plan. I mean, what if you buy it in an air raid or something?’ She said it with that casual brutality that our generation seemed to have adopted somewhere along the line. ‘What if I do? We ought to bring Campbell-Brown in on it.’
I licked my lips. The more people who knew, the more likely it was that Peter would be forewarned. ‘Look, who is going to believe a couple of women like us against someone like Peter Durant? He has friends everywhere, including Campbell-Brown.’
‘You’re right. They went to Eton together. Would you believe it?’ Eve chewed her lip. ‘All we have is that list of operations and your word on the whole Odysseus thing. Don’t forget they sent Vaughn to Beirut. But look, without Campbell-Brown’s help I can’t even get to the files on those operations you say Durant scuttled. I think we need to take the chance on him.’
