The Parrot Cage, page 4
‘You haven’t quarrelled with Evelyn, have you?’
‘Certainly not. But I don’t think we ought to go bursting in if she’s got a house full of guests.’
‘So likely,’ said Flixe, gently sarcastic. ‘Well, I haven’t seen her for ages and I’m not afraid of her guests. I’m going. See you later.’
Gerry watched her turn Buttercup towards the Adamsons’and then urged her little sister’s pony back the way they had come. There was no one like Flixe, of course, but there were times when her insouciance was just a bit thick.
Nevertheless Gerry was glad of her sister’s company on the journey back to London on Sunday evening. Their train was unheated, vilely crowded and seemed to stop for ages at every minute station. Once they limped to within fifty miles of London the lights went out and Gerry gave up even trying to read the Penguin she had stuffed in her handbag on Flixe’s advice.
She felt so tired – and dirty – by the time they got into Paddington that she turned back to Flixe to say:
‘Shall we go a bust and share a taxi?’
‘If we can get one. But it’s more unlikely. No, look over there: it’s just not worth joining a queue like that. It’ll have to be the Underground. Thank God we’re both on the same line.’
Plunging down the stairs towards the Inner Circle platform, Gerry was buffeted and felt her toes crushed beneath the boot of a passing private in battledress. She bit back a furious reproof and hobbled on.
Felicity got off the tube at High Street Kensington, with a cheerful promise to telephone Eaton Gate in the next day or so. Gerry watched her go with regret, but Sloane Square was soon reached and she made her way off the train and up into the fresh air.
It was usually only a five-minute walk round to Eaton Gate, but that had been in the days when she could see where she was going. Now all the street lights were blacked out; no passing car’s headlights flashed across the pavements as they turned. There was nothing to help her find her way.
A slowly moving figure ahead of her held something in its hand that flashed down at the pavement every few seconds. Gerry hurried towards it.
‘Do forgive me, but I can’t see a thing in this murk. Are you by any chance going anywhere near Eaton Gate?’
‘That’s a new one on me,’ came the cheery reply, the words slurred. ‘But it’d be a jolly good approach if I had a bean to spare – or if I wanted a woman tonight, which I don’t.’
Standing blushing furiously in the dark on the edge of the square, Gerry could have wept from her frustration and exhaustion. She transferred her bag to her right hand and put out her left towards the railings, so that she could creep along the edge of the pavement. Then a memory hit her: no railings. At last she began to feel the comforting warmth of anger and with it the defiance that set her walking more firmly in the direction of Eaton Gate. She tripped often on uneven paving stones and misjudged the depth of the gutter as she stepped off the pavement to cross the road, jarring her ankle badly. But at last she turned the corner into the right street.
It was impossible to see the numbers of any of the tall, narrow houses, but she counted from the end and rang the bell of the one she thought must be right. Footsteps reassured her that at least she would be able to ask which it was and a moment later she heard the click of a switch and then the door opening.
‘Gerry,’ came the voice of her mother’s oldest friend. ‘Is that you, darling?’
‘Yes, Aunt Anna, it’s me. Thank God I’ve got here.’
‘Come in, come in,’ she said as she pushed the door to behind Gerry and switched on the lights.
Coming in out of the darkness, Gerry felt almost as though she were waking out of a nightmare. Everything from the polished golden parquet floor to the warmly flamboyant Chinese wallpaper that covered the hall walls gleamed with colour in the sudden light. Gerry dropped the shabby green canvas bag on the floor.
‘Heaven, Aunt Anna.’
‘My dear child, you look like death,’ she answered, leaning forward to kiss Gerry.
Anna Kingsley was a tall woman, slender and elegant. Her discreetly tailored Paris dress was unadorned except for a pair of magnificent diamond clips at the neck. The smooth blackness of the fine barathea set off her pale, distinguished-looking face to admiration, and the delicate silvering at her temples seemed almost like wings against the upswept dark hair.
‘Goodness, you smell delicious,’ said Gerry before she could stop herself. But Anna Kingsley only laughed.
‘It’s called Ombres du Paradis,’ she said. ‘Very expensive. But never mind that now. Come on upstairs quickly. There’s a fire and supper’s waiting. Trays, I’m afraid. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not. It’s so good of you to have me.’
‘Pure pleasure, Gerry. How’s Fanny?’
‘All right, I suppose. I mean, quite healthy and all that, but a bit … She must be miserable, I think, but she won’t ever admit it.’
‘She always was reserved – but she’s a good friend in bad times.’
‘Yes, I know. She’s very fond of you; she always says so.’
‘And I of her. Now, enough of this. You must be ravenous.’
They sat down on the huge, soft armchairs that were covered in the most impractical possible pale-yellow silk and Gerry stretched out her good flat brown shoes towards the small fire. Then she turned to the black-and-gold lacquer tray table beside her chair and felt hunger suddenly bite at her.
‘Smoked salmon, Aunt Anna! What a treat.’
‘It’s the easiest thing for a picnic supper and now that I haven’t a cook any more, it’s really the only thing I can manage.’
‘I wish you were my godmother,’ said Gerry, too tired to think before she spoke. As soon as the sense of it reached her she blushed and tried to cover the discourtesy, but Anna Kingsley laughed again.
‘Don’t be silly – it’s a compliment. And if I didn’t already have those twins of yours I’d volunteer. Now, hurry up with that and get to bed. You won’t get any kind of job looking as you do tonight.’
Chapter Four
But she did get the job, after a series of interviews with different men, some in battledress, others in civilian suits. One of the sessions was conducted in French, in which Gerry felt she acquitted herself reasonably well, but she was puzzled that none of the questions she was asked seemed particularly relevant to the war. She had spent hours trying to work out sensible answers to questions about what she thought had gone wrong with the French defences and what Hitler’s intentions were towards Britain and what ought to be done when the invasion happened: but it was all for nothing. The cold-eyed interviewers seemed more interested in her life at school and with Andrew’s regiment, and even in the skills her grandfather had considered so important.
Months later she realised that what they had been trying to find out was what she was like and not what she knew. At that stage she laughed at her younger self for assuming that anyone would be interested in what a twenty-three-year-old married woman thought about Hitler’s possible invasion or strategy and tactics.
It was not until the last interview at the beginning of September that she was given any clue as to what job she might be hired to do. Then she was ushered into yet another empty, dusty room, by a Wren almost as immaculately turned out and beautiful as the one who had first explained the position of married women trying to join up. This time the man behind the bare table was Peter Suvarov, wearing the uniform of a major of an artillery regiment.
He smiled at her in the way she had remembered as he shook her hand.
‘Sorry to mess you about like this. All the mystery is thought to be necessary, but it’s over now. You’ve come through all the trick questions and games with flying colours – just as I expected. I only hope what I have to say now won’t seem a shocking come-down.’
‘I’m sure it won’t,’ she said, having been brought up to be polite.
‘I run a new, very small, semi-autonomous department concerned with an aspect of security, both internal and external. The department consists of a group of analysts – academics mainly – and me. At first that was adequate, but recent developments mean that I have to spend a great deal of time politicking – for more money, for our continued existence, for a sight of material from overseas, all that sort of thing – and we need someone to coordinate activities in the office.’
Gerry began to look interested and to feel that she might enjoy such a job. She smiled across the table as Suvarov concluded his explanation.
‘It’s an exceedingly sensitive job, requiring absolute, undeviating discretion and loyalty. And, of course, intelligence. There’s no glamour attached to it; salary is on the lowest official scale; you won’t get a uniform; our very existence is under constant threat – and if the man who had us set up in the first place loses his influence we won’t survive unless we can demonstrate our value for money. The army (or the bits of it that know anything about us) hates us; the other intelligence departments despise us. Any questions?’
‘Yes: who’s the man you spoke of? Why are you despised? And what are you actually doing?’
He laughed. ‘I told them you had the sort of bluntness that would get straight to the heart of any problem. But I can’t answer any of them. You’ll get to know all about it if you take the job.’
‘I don’t seem to have much option, sir. I’ll take it,’ said Gerry, without a moment’s thought.
‘Good girl. Start next Monday.’ He handed her a piece of paper. ‘Report to this house in Queen Anne’s Gate at eight-thirty, destroy the address and telephone number as soon as you have memorised them and never under any circumstances whatever tell anyone that that is where you are working.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Oh, and by the way, Gerry, one of our eccentricities is that we don’t call anyone sir. Christian names only.’
She could not understand why that should make her blush as she shook his hand and turned to go, but she put it down to another late effect of her long-term weakness.
Gerry’s next problem was to find somewhere to live. Although Anna Kingsley’s house was a paradise of warmth, elegance and comfort and Anna herself insisted that there was plenty of room for them both, Gerry wanted to regain some independence. She looked at innumerable sets of rooms that she would be able to afford to rent on her meagre salary and hated them all. For some reason it seemed to her to be important not to use any of Andrew’s money for such a purpose. He paid her a generous allowance, and had made arrangements with his solicitor to provide money for emergencies, but her pride insisted that she support herself while she did work of which he might disapprove.
After ten days’disheartening search she found a pair of rooms in a reasonable house at Chiswick. She thought she could bear to live in them, but she asked Anna Kingsley to inspect them before making up her mind. Anna gave Gerry a lift to Chiswick in her Riley and even before they reached the mall, she said:
‘Gerry, are you sure about this? It’s going to take you hours to get in to Whitehall every day. And Edwin – at the War Office, you know – tells me that one of the first casualties of the bombing is going to be the buses, so you might even find yourself walking in.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Gerry in a tired voice. She took off her gloves and smoothed them in her lap. ‘But anything any nearer is just so horribly expensive.’
‘Well, let me –’ Anna was beginning as she wound down her window to signal a left turn.
‘No, really, Anna. It’s terribly sweet of you to offer, but I wouldn’t dream of letting you.’
An almost mischievous smile twitched Anna’s delicate mouth as she explained.
‘I wasn’t going to offer you money. If you won’t let me put you up in Eaton Gate, I didn’t expect you to swallow that. No, I have a friend who has rooms at the top of a house in Dover Street. Last time we met he said something about most of the other tenants having fled to the country.’
Gerry’s tense face relaxed as she contemplated the possibility of swapping Chiswick Mall for Dover Street.
‘You might well be able to take over one of their leases for a bit. Let me ask him to dine, and we’ll see what can be done.’
‘You’re an angel, Anna,’ said Gerry with feeling. ‘Now we’ve come this far, I think we’d probably better look at the rooms, don’t you?’
‘Why not?’ said Anna easily. But when she had inspected them, she turned very courteously to the landlady and explained that after all they were not really suitable. Gerry smiled at the woman apologetically and privately hoped that she was not going to regret turning them down so soon.
But Anna’s friend, duly summoned to dinner, proved to be very helpful. He confirmed that he was the only tenant left in the house and undertook to find out whether any of the absent ones could be persuaded to sublet to Gerry for a sum that she could afford to pay. Too worried about where she was going to live to think about much else, Gerry took in very little about the man except that his name was Jeremy Oldridge, that he looked about thirty-five, behaved pleasantly and seemed to be on very good terms with Anna Kingsley.
Three days after the dinner, he telephoned to say that only the basement tenant had replied to the agent’s enquiry, but that if Gerry were prepared to live there, it was hers for the asking.
‘Mr Oldridge, thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I mind about it’s being a basement. May I bring Anna round to have a look at it?’
‘Yes of course. I’m afraid that I cannot leave the office just now, but the agent will give you a key if you call at his office.’ He gave her the address and half an hour later she and Anna were unlocking the door to the flat.
It consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom with a lumpy-looking four-foot-six bed, a very small and squalid bathroom and an even smaller kitchenette. Instead of sneering at the flat’s lack of amenities or referring to the grime that smeared the heavily barred windows or the depressing smell of ancient dust and mildew, Anna simply pointed out that from Dover Street Gerry would be able to walk through Green Park, across the Mall and down through St James’s Park and be in Whitehall within a quarter of an hour of leaving her front door. Gerry, obediently refraining from correcting Anna’s assumption that she would be working in Whitehall, agreed that the position alone made the gloominess of the rooms worth putting up with, and added bracingly that she would hardly ever be at home during daylight hours and so she probably would not even notice it.
Anna smiled at her valiance and produced what comfort she could.
‘It really won’t be too bad, Gerry, once you’ve cleaned the place and let some fresh air in, and if I lend you some lamps and rugs and things it’ll become habitable quite quickly.’
‘Anna, you don’t have to do that. I shall probably spend hardly any time here and you mustn’t feel responsible for me. I have no claims on you.’
‘No one has any claims on me, Gerry. I have never subscribed to the philosophy that to be human you have to give other people rights to your time, money, sympathy and what-have-you. I think it’s vital for sanity that you’re free to give them where you want and stop giving them when you want.’
Gerry, smarting still from the slap Andrew had dealt her when he refused to let her join up, envied the older woman’s freedom as a prisoner envies the people he can see through the bars of his cell. Before she could find anything to say, Anna went on:
‘But I have endless spare bits and pieces which I very much want to give to you so that you can brighten up this basement.’
‘Thank you, Anna. That’s terribly kind of you.’
‘Good. Come on, let’s go back to Eaton Gate and raid the attics. I think you should build on that rusty colour of the tiles in the fireplace. You’ll never make this place look light, so why not have it warm and cosy?’
‘Whatever you say, Anna.’
‘Good. Come on.’
Later that afternoon, Gerry found a taxi and loaded it with all the things Anna had provided and then spent a happy evening pottering about arranging her loot. There was a vividly embroidered shawl in old rose and gold to spread over the dingy sofa; there were two lamps converted from famille rose porcelain jars, and a shabby but pretty old French needlework rug in tones of the same subdued browny pink. With a few books and a picture or two the room would be quite bearable, almost attractive. The minute slip of a bathroom would need serious scrubbing to make it usable, but she could tackle that the next day.
Soothed by the whole business of being able to create her own surroundings, not in the least lonely, she washed in cold water at the sink in the small kitchen, and got into bed. She was just deciding that the book Anna had lent her was rather dull when the telephone rang.
‘Gerry? Is that you? It’s—’
‘Flixe!’ she cried, not waiting. ‘How lovely of you to ring. Are you in London?’
‘No. But I probably will be next week. Aunt Anna’s just been on the telephone and she gave me your number. I thought I’d welcome you back to the land of the living – and congratulate you on getting the job.’
‘So you got my letter? Good. You’re a duck to ring.’
‘How are you feeling, old thing? Better?’
‘So much better, Flixie,’ Gerry answered, smiling down into the black Bakelite receiver as though her sister could see her expression down the wires. ‘You can’t imagine.’
‘Not nervous about the work?’
‘I don’t think so … I mean, a little, but not seriously. Sorry I can’t tell you anything about it.’
‘Don’t be a clot. I can’t either. And anyway, we’ve nearly had three minutes. Best of luck. I’ll see you next week.’
‘Yes. We might have lunch. Will you telephone when you get back?’
