by Joel N. Ross
Particularly in matters feminine, about which she had become the unofficial conducting officer. It was understood that she’d brief female agents about those matters the male instructors preferred not to discuss, those matters about which they preferred not to know.
More officially, she maintained files of the rules regulating daily life in five European countries—travel, curfew, rations, paperwork. Files of fashion, music, food, slang. The details one hardly thought of but was required to know: when to apply for bread or tobacco rations, which days alcohol was not served in the cafés. She had her bijoux: local bus tickets, sales slips, matchbooks, scraps of local newspapers, photos of putative relatives. She had the duty of ensuring that all vestiges of England were gone from the agents’ possession—no English coins or cigarettes, no jewelry or ticket stubs. She checked every chemise, every watch strap—even hairstyles and table manners. She collected every scrap of gossip from returning agents and refugees, from newspapers, underground publications. She was called upon—unofficially, again—to recommend which woman should be sent into the field as a radio operator and which as a courier, which, in the rare case, as an organizer. Couriers were almost always women—less conspicuous than the young men subject to army service—and women were almost never organizers. But there were no rules: That was the first rule of covert operations.
It was her hand that posted their prewritten letters and postcards to family. It was her hand that drew up the wills. It was her hand that waved good-bye.
Harriet snipped a cluster of holly berries. Almost done. She ought to dig the borders, such as they were. Perhaps she had time for—
She paused, scissors motionless. She’d heard something from the house—not the slamming of a door or the drawing of water through pipes. No, it must have been from the street. Had she locked the front door? She couldn’t remember. Housekeeping wasn’t her strongest suit—she’d been brought up to manage a housekeeper, not a house.
There was another clatter, this one definitely from inside. Harriet lowered her face to the basket of holly berries, hiding her glow of pleasure. It was Earl, finally come home. He’d toss his overcoat over the banister, and she’d scold him for it, laughing. He’d kiss her breathless and run his hands down her waist to her bottom.
She pushed a wisp of hair from her forehead and felt dirt smear across her skin. Lovely. She must look dreadful, disheveled and muddy, her skirt and blouse in complete ruin. Hardly fit to welcome her dashing husband home. She never was, quite.
Earl once overheard her deny that she was beautiful—for she wasn’t—but admit that she was perhaps not unhandsome. He knew it was her conceit that she’d age well, as handsome women did, and be more striking at fifty than thirty. He’d laughed and called her his “handsome girl”; still, there were times when a jot of offhand beauty would have been quite welcome, thank you, and a romantic homecoming was one.
She slipped through the garden door to the sink and splashed water on her face. It was past time he’d returned.
SHE’D BEEN MISSING HIM since last week, when she was called to Ashwell to speak with the girls in Signals on a matter of some urgency. One of their duties was writing poems for agents, as messages were encrypted in the field using memorized poem codes. Original poems were much preferred to classics the German codebreakers might recognize, but some of the girls were proving a little too original:
If Stalin’s prick
Were twice as thick
As Hitler’s arsehole was wide,
He’d shriek and cry,
“Oh, Joe, I die!
Quickly—another ride!”
Harriet had spoken sharply to the girls responsible, though she suspected her censure appeared as counterfeit to them as it felt to her. Still, they’d spare their poor CO any further embarrassment; another crisis of national significance averted.
If only her personal crises were so easily dispelled. From Ashwell, she’d gone directly to Burnham Chase, and a bitter argument. She and Father had never been au fait politically, but their disagreements had always been polite . . . until Churchill. Father despised the man, while Harriet—though her eyes were not closed to Churchill’s faults—considered him unquestionably the man of the hour. The private man had private faults, which in the public man were virtues.
“I don’t nominate him for sainthood, Father,” she’d said at lunch. “But I’d rather have him for PM than any other man.”
“Churchill,” Father had said, “is a half-breed mongrel. He is unstable, unsound, untrustworthy—and not a gentleman.”
A half-breed mongrel, because his mother had been American. “Your grandchild, should you be so blessed, will be a half-breed mongrel.”
Father’s color deepened. “Churchill’s mother is a woman with more than one past. Churchill is a cad and a gangster.”
“He is—”
“An adventurer and a dipsomaniac.”
“Whatever his personal qualities,” she said, “he has certainly proved prescient in his objections to your Mr. Hitler, in his opposition to appeasement and—”
“Appeasement was simply the—”
“And his opposition to the fascist Mosley and his trained buffoons.”
Father slammed his glass onto the tabletop. “You will not speak—” he began, then realized the glass had shattered in his hand, though he was not cut.
The footman at the sideboard hesitated, and Father had lashed at the man’s vacillation. Was he not employed to clear the table? Was he not able to discern the glass was broken? Was he not competent to gather the debris? This from her father, who did not acknowledge the help during meals.
Harriet had placed her napkin by her plate and excused herself. She’d had Charlotte pack her bags, and been back in London by sunset.
HARRIET DRIED her face. Earl had been gone when she returned from Burnham Chase, but there was nothing unusual in that. His business was such that his days were unpredictable. She’d called the U.S. embassy and been told her husband was unavailable. She’d asked for more information and been given bland and evasive reassurances.
She accepted them. Ignorance—and the Official Secrets Act—was the price of her marriage. Earl had disappeared once, without notice, for almost two weeks. He’d returned gloatingly self-satisfied, and she’d imagined he’d cast mud in the eye of the isolationists and fascist sympathizers in Kennedy’s embassy. He enjoyed nothing more.
Well, perhaps there were some things he enjoyed more. She smiled. There was a dashing man in the front room, to be greeted by his handsome girl.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
EVENING, DECEMBER 1, 1941
“BLEEDIN’ PEA SOUP–THICK.” Rugg spat on the pavement he couldn’t see. “How the fook are we meant to find the Yank in this?”
“Chilton said”—Renard’s footsteps quickened beside him—“find him, deal with him proper.”
Rugg cracked a knuckle. “Don’t see Chilton paddling through this gloom and—oi! Where the fook are you?”
From behind: “Here, wait.”
Rugg was a head taller than Renard, and twice as wide. His stride took him farther and faster, and since the day they went off the tit, he’d been slowing for the little squit. “Speck the Yank in this? We’d ’ave more luck digging in your arse for a brass doubloon.”
“Chilton was particular.”
“We’re supposed to find a scrap of white bandage? A Yank in the dark with a crabbed hand and a mad gleam in his eye.”
“He ought be at the club, back in lock hospital, or at the Market.”
Rugg grabbed Renard for a chin-wag. “Shepherd Market. Where the fook are we now?”
Renard said he knew, stared bug-eyed into the dark.
Rugg waited for a pause, then dragged Renard over the road toward voices. ARP wardens. Screeched at him once for looting, when all he’d done was slip a few bobbins
off a pair of cold birds. Didn’t need them anymore, did they? Wasn’t theft. Was fat of the land.
The voices sounded closer, maybe a lightening of the gloom.
“Oi,” Rugg called.
The wardens stopped, their torch pissing match light.
“Shepherd Market,” he said. “Where the bleedin’—”
“Simply can’t find it,” said Renard, putting on a poncey accent. “Have rather an appointment.”
“Shepherd Market? You’re all turned about.” The warden was a man with a redbrick face and white hair that showed better than a bandage would.
“Continue straight,” the other warden said, a woman with a face like a hen. “Until you come to Vincent Square. From there—”
“Shepherd Market,” the man said. “Shepherd Market, Miss Dodd.”
The wardens bickered. It set Rugg off. All he’d done was slip a few bobbins, from nobody who’d miss them.
“And then west,” the man said. “Four, five, six streets and you will—”
Rugg heard himself make a low noise. He wanted to hook behind the man’s head, turn his face red and splattered under the white crown of hair. Then the woman with her peck, peck voice.
Renard elbowed him. “Six streets, then right and . . .”
Rugg kept himself still as they prated on. But it set him off.
“Much appreciated,” Renard said, and they punted away. “We’re one blinkin’ mile off, Rugg. We’ll find the Yank soon. Keep it in the cupboard till we do.”
“If he’s there.”
“If he ain’t, he’ll be at the second place, or the third.”
“So Chilton said.” But Rugg felt a tingle on the scruff of his neck. Good to do some good again. Been too long. Find the Yank, fix him proper.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
EVENING, DECEMBER 1, 1941
HARRIET HEARD EARL clatter in the drawing room. Was he lifting her picture from the sideboard? Was there a smile on his strong, handsome face? She touched her hair—too demolished for easy repair—slid off her shoes, and slipped to the drawing room. What she lacked in oomph, she’d achieve by surprise.
His overcoat was not upon the banister. The blackout curtains were drawn, but only the wall lamp was lighted. He was rustling in the darkened parlor. She paused in the doorway to watch him. Earl was tall and broad-shouldered, but the shadows made him thinner. He was moving with uncertain deliberation. Why would he be skulking?
She almost laughed. He’d bought her an extravagant Christmas gift and was hiding it! It was unlike him, but less so than skulking. Earl was never uncertain. He did not enter a room; he commandeered it. He did not creep; he strode. He also didn’t question, didn’t dig beneath the surface. He didn’t have her self-doubt. No regrets, no fancies. No dead agents stood at his shoulders; no bulbs were planted in fantastical hope. He was perhaps without as much depth as she—and she loved him for that as much as for his self-assurance, his utter, unthinking confidence. But the shadows made him appear erratic and unsure.
“Earl?” she said.
He turned. He didn’t say “my handsome girl.”
She reached for the lamp chain, and he said, “Harriet.”
HARRIET. Tom’s world stopped.
She filled the doorway; she filled the house. There was no room for air, for light. No room for Tom. Her storm gray eyes danced. Her face shone and her hair was disheveled, her hair curled in disarranged tendrils at her long, long neck. Her hair, which smelled of lavender and sage. Her classic, inquisitive nose. Her buttermilk skin, the arch of her naked back, the curve of her spine with the two dimples at the base.
Then she saw him, and everything changed.
Harriet.
“TOMMY?”
He was wearing his good suit, now a size too large. Standing at the escritoire, one of her envelopes in his unbandaged hand. The window behind the settee was broken, the frame splintered.
He didn’t speak. He was so much like Earl, and so little. He had his height, his eyes, his voice. He used to have Earl’s presence . . . but no longer. Instead of calm command, he radiated intensity, his eyes feverish and his color high.
“You smashed the window,” she said.
“I thought you were away.”
“Do they know you’re gone?”
“I’m looking for Earl.”
“Again.”
“If at first you don’t succeed . . .” His eyes were too bright. There were marks under them, the dark of bruises.
“Tom,” she said. “You look dragged through a hedge backward.”
“Well, in this tie. Can I borrow one of your husband’s?”
“Don’t do this. You can’t do this.”
“Do you remember the last time we met?” He smiled distantly. “You were drinking chocolate.”
Of course she remembered. “No, Thomas, I don’t. I’ve been busy.”
“At Glynn’s. The cup was white; it had a blue rim. There was a smudge of lipstick when you put it back on the saucer. You told me good-bye. You said you were leaving.”
“Yes.”
“You stayed in town,” he said.
“You resigned your commission.” Keep it factual. Calm Tom and ring the hospital to retrieve him. “You drove to Canada.”
“I stopped in Philadelphia for a cheese steak. You knew I left?”
“Your mother told me. You should write her more often.”
“Your mother-in-law.”
“Stop, Thomas.”
“She tell you I was itching to fight the fascists?” He dropped the envelope onto the desktop. “I was, you know, even before ’39.”
“She knows why you left. I know why you left.”
He didn’t say anything, and Harriet wondered if he’d heard her.
“I was on Crete,” he said. “When it fell.”
“Tommy—does the hospital know you’re gone?”
“They treated me like some kind of hero. The Yankee volunteer. Fighting the good fight. But I wasn’t, not like my men. Manny and Rosenblatt, Tardieu, O’Rourke—those kids were world-beaters, Harry.”
“Whilst you are . . .”
“You know what I am. You know why I signed.”
“And it’s my fault? Is that what you want, to hear that I’m to blame? You drove to Canada on my account? It is my fault that you’re”—she gestured to his hand, to his heart—“injured? That you hurt? Did you come here to show me what I’ve done? Is that why you’re here?”
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“Stop hiding behind Earl, Thomas. You’re a child no longer.”
He cringed at the tone. Good. If she could lash him back to the hospital with her words, she would. If the only way to compensate for the cruelty she’d done him was with more cruelty, she would be cruel.
“Look at yourself.” She turned on another lamp, then another as she approached. “You’re three years younger than I, but you could be Father’s age. Do you know what your mother told me? Yes, my mother-in-law. She always preferred you—Earl was such a healthy young animal.”
Something sparked in his eyes, and she said, “You know precisely what she meant. As do I. She said the wrong brother went to Annapolis, the wrong brother to Amherst. She’d have you a professor, Tom, a poet or a priest. Look at yourself. You’ve the eyes of a refugee. No country, no home, no family. You—you’re injured. I’m sorry and I—”
“It’s not shell shock.” Tom put his hand on the back of her slip-satin chair. “I’m steady. I’m—”
“I’m sorry, Tom. It must be very hard. But you can’t continue in this fashion. Do you understand me? This cannot continue.”
“Earl’s gone.” Tom lifted a snap-brimmed fedora from the chair and turned it over in his hand like a jeweler with a gemstone. “He’s vanished.”
&nb
sp; “He has his work, as I have mine.”
“They don’t know where he is. Bloomgaard doesn’t know. Nobody knows. He’s gone. Evanesced. He had a meeting with a Nazi agent—in London, an agent of the—”
“I won’t hear this. Don’t speak of his work.”
“He’s gone to ground, Harriet. They don’t know where.”
“Do you imagine Earl punches a time card? He’s a cowboy, in the company of cowboys. He does what he likes.”
“Ever hear of a place called the Rapids?”
“No.”
“I need to look through his papers.”
“You certainly may not.”
“Harriet.”
“No,” she said.
“I need, I need—”
“Thomas, no.”
“Earl,” he said, and there was something terrible in his voice.
It became very silent and very still. Harriet put her hand on his arm. “It’s nobody’s fault, Tommy. It’s war. People die.”
“You used to love me.”
THE FIRST TIME Tom saw Harriet, she’d been seated across a snowy expanse of tablecloth. The heavy crystal glasses sparkled, the silver gleamed, and the waiters had been so resplendent in their jackets and gloves that Tom wanted to salute.
It was the sort of affair he hated. Dinner party for sixteen guests, with enough conversation for four. Maybe he’d been good at it once, under his mother’s amused tutelage. He knew which fork to use, and not to spit in the gravy boat. But he’d been most recently under the tutelage of the Fifteenth Infantry, the “Can Do” regiment, in Tientsin, and they didn’t much care where you put your elbows.
He’d been in China that December of 1937, when the Japs launched a surprise attack on the USS Panay in the Yangtze River. Dropped fifty bombs in an hour, then strafed the crew who’d waded to shore. But the U.S. had stuck it to them. Demanded a couple million for the gunboat—the first U.S. Navy vessel ever lost to enemy aircraft—and a sincere apology, too. Yeah, stuck it hard.
Not long after, the Fifteenth had been withdrawn from China. Late spring, Tom found himself on leave in D.C. and his uncle strong-armed him into a monkey suit for the evening’s bacchanal. A new British security coordinator had been appointed, and was doing what he could to heal the rift between the Brit and U.S. intelligence agencies—including dinner parties. All one happy family.
