Schools was already shut up for the night when Juliet returned but the great ship across the road was sailing bravely on, all lights blazing.
‘Is Perry Gibbons still here?’ she asked the girl on reception in the cathedral-like foyer of Broadcasting House.
The girl consulted her log book. ‘I believe so,’ she said, reluctant to give up information. She had a pruny sort of face, as if everyone who came through the door fell short of her standards. Did they breed these supercilious girls in a special hatchery somewhere?
Juliet waited for her to give up more. (Sometimes saying nothing can be your strongest weapon.)
The girl surrendered. ‘He’s still in the Children’s Hour studio. Is he expecting you?’
‘Yes.’ Of course he wasn’t.
Despite Juliet’s protestations that she knew her way, a Boy was summoned to escort her to the third floor. They waited for the lift next to Gill’s statue of ‘The Sower’, broadcasting his seed beneath the great gilded dedication stone to this ‘Temple of Arts and Muses’. There had always been a quasi-religious tone to the Corporation. Broadcasting House itself was dedicated to ‘Almighty God’, as if the deity was looking down benevolently on the transmitters from the clouds. Was that all a front too?
The lift arrived. ‘Miss?’ the Boy said. ‘Which studio?’
There was a red light above the door and so Juliet slipped silently into the viewing booth, high above the studio. The only other person was a woman Juliet had never seen before, who acknowledged her entry with a curt nod.
Below them a company of actors was reading what seemed to be a dramatization of the Knights of the Round Table. Juliet was surprised to see that one of the actors was the shamed Roger Fairbrother. Apparently they didn’t know over here about his faux pas – although perhaps they did, because the woman sitting next to Juliet – a battle-hardened type – was watching intently, like a hawk ready to swoop on her prey. Juliet offered the raptorial woman a cigarette and they both sat silently smoking for a while. Finally, children everywhere were bid goodnight and Juliet said to the woman, ‘Perry?’ and she shrugged and indicated upwards with her cigarette.
Juliet raised a questioning eyebrow (Sometimes silence, and so on) and the woman finally spoke. ‘Music Library.’
‘Thanks.’
Juliet wound her way up the staircase to the fourth floor, although it wasn’t quite that straightforward. The layout of Broadcasting House was Byzantine and you often found yourself emerging from a lift or a staircase into an unknown land. Now she found herself outside a Drama studio on the sixth floor with no idea of how she had got there. ‘Have you seen Perry Gibbons?’ she asked a passing Boy, but it was past six o’clock and all his thoughts were homeward bound.
Another empty staircase led her further upwards. Girls in fairy tales – or girls in labyrinths – should know better, she thought. The air felt dead, yet she thought she could hear something, someone – shoes echoing on the stone steps. Tap-tap-tap. A sudden fear seized her and she pushed open a door and hurried out into a corridor. Death at Broadcasting House, Juliet thought – it was one of the worst films she had ever seen. Val Gielgud, the Head of Drama, had made and acted in it in 1934. An actor was strangled during a live broadcast. It was a good idea for a plot (she thought of Roger Fairbrother) but hammily executed.
The deserted narrow corridor spiralled endlessly around the central core of studios. Juliet was beginning to wonder if she would meet herself coming in the other direction. Tap-tap-tap. Was it shoes? Could it be a cane? A walnut, silver-knob-topped cane? Tap-tap-tap. The noise grew louder, more insistent.
Entering another stairwell, Juliet found herself unexpectedly outside the Band Room at the top of the building. Tap-tap-tap. Closer now. Something wicked this way comes. We must finish her off, I’m afraid.
There was no red light outside the Band Room so she went in and quietly closed the door behind her. The room was soundproofed, so if there was someone after her they wouldn’t be able to hear her in here. Of course, no one would hear her scream either. In the grip of outright panic now, she fumbled with the catch on her handbag and had just got an unsteady hand on the small stock of the Mauser when the hefty studio door was pushed open. Slowly, creakily, as if the door, too, was a hammy actor in a cheap murder mystery.
‘Miss Armstrong? Juliet? Are you all right?’
Perry! It was unexpectedly and overwhelmingly comforting to see him. Thank goodness she hadn’t taken the gun out of her bag. He would have thought her unhinged. She wouldn’t want him to think that. Even after all this time, she realized, she valued his estimation of her.
‘Juliet,’ he said, taking hold of both her hands. ‘It’s been a long time. I heard you were back in London. It’s so lovely to see you.’ Blimey, she thought, when did he start touching people? He seemed genuinely delighted to see her – she could feel the warmth in his lovely smile. He had been wounded, broken, and now he seemed healed. ‘Did you get lost?’
‘A bit,’ she admitted.
‘I know, the place is a nightmare,’ he laughed. ‘I get lost on a regular basis. You were looking for me?’
They walked to the lift together, the corridors and stairwells rendered harmless by his presence. And yet. Tap-tap-tap. She looked around nervously. Perhaps she was unhinged. ‘Did you hear that?’
Perry gestured silently towards a man walking slowly along the corridor, the white cane in his hand tapping on the wall. Despite his darkly tinted glasses you could see the opacity of the eyes behind them as he grew near.
‘Can I help you?’ Perry asked, touching his elbow gently.
‘No, thanks, it’s all right,’ the man said, rather brusquely. He passed them by and went tap-tap-tapping on his way.
‘Shot down in flames over the Ruhr,’ Perry said quietly. ‘Poor chap. He’s in Mrs Dale’s Diary.’
Perry took her to Mirabelle and they had Raie au Beurre Noisette and a Tarte aux Pruneaux. A whole bottle of Burgundy. He was wearing a tailored three-piece grey pinstripe, expensive and very well cut, and was looking rather handsome. He suited middle age. I might have married this man, Juliet thought as they chinked glasses. I would have eaten well, if nothing else, although ‘nothing else’ would have been the order of the day.
‘It’s very nice to see you,’ he said. ‘I looked for you this afternoon across the road. I’m crossing the Rubicon with a rather keen girl of yours.’
‘Daisy.’
‘Yes, apparently she has sisters called Marigold and Primrose. A bouquet,’ he laughed. ‘Or perhaps just a spray.’ He laughed a lot more, she noticed, now that there wasn’t a war on. Or perhaps because he was more comfortable with himself. Juliet thought it might be the other way round for her, on both counts.
‘Yes, well,’ she said, ‘I try not to talk to Daisy too much. It only encourages her. Perry?’
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to ask you about something.’
‘Oh, what?’
‘I saw Godfrey Toby a couple of days ago.’ If he says ‘Who?’, Juliet thought, or ‘Oh, good old Toby Jug,’ I’ll pour the dregs of the Burgundy over his head.
Perry saved himself from this unholy baptism. ‘Godfrey Toby? Good Lord, there’s a name from the past. How’s he doing? I thought he was relocated. The dominions. Or the tropics.’
‘The tropics?’
‘Or Egypt, perhaps.’
‘I heard Vienna,’ Juliet said.
Perry shrugged. ‘It’s all the same, isn’t it? It’s somewhere else. Not England.’
Juliet took the note from her bag and pushed it across the table. Perry read it silently and looked at her enquiringly. ‘This isn’t Godfrey’s writing.’
‘No, of course not. Do you know whose it is?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘It was handed in at reception, with my name on the envelope. By a man who I think is following me. A woman too, actually. Working in tandem, I think. I wondered if they might have something to do with Godfrey’s info
rmants.’
‘The neighbours?’ Perry said. He smiled at the word and the memory, as if they had been rendered harmless by the passage of time. ‘Surely not. How would they know who you were – or where you are now, for that matter? You were quite anonymous to them. Weren’t you?’
‘It just seemed a bit of a coincidence,’ Juliet said. ‘Seeing Godfrey like that and then getting the note. You told me not to trust coincidences.’
‘Did I?’ he laughed. ‘I don’t remember. But I’m concerned that you think someone is following you. What did he look like – this man?’
‘Quite short, has a limp, pockmarked skin, a drooping eye.’
‘Goodness, he sounds like the villain in a film. A touch of the Peter Lorres.’ He went to the cinema now, she thought. And knew the names of the actors. How times had changed. What else did he do these days, Juliet wondered?
‘And the woman. I wondered about Betty or Edith – I never saw their faces.’
‘It seems unlikely. Surely if anyone was going to be made to “pay” by them, it would be Godfrey himself. You were just a typist, after all.’ (Well, thanks, she thought.) ‘Godfrey was a good chap,’ Perry continued thoughtfully. ‘Played with a straight bat. As they say. I always liked him.’
‘Mm, me too.’
‘How is he?’
‘I don’t know, he wouldn’t speak to me.’
‘Good Lord, why ever not?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you might know.’
‘Me?’ Perry said. ‘I haven’t seen Godfrey in ten years, not since I left the Service.’ They both fell silent at the memory. I shall be leaving you, I’m afraid, Miss Armstrong. He spread his hands on the tablecloth as if he might be trying to levitate the table. ‘I’m sorry about that time, Juliet,’ he said softly. ‘You know … everything that happened.’
She put her hands on top of his and said, ‘It’s all right. I understand. I mean, heavens above,’ she laughed lightly, ‘the BBC would collapse from a staff shortage without its contingent of men like you.’
He winced and, removing his hands from beneath hers, said, ‘Men like me?’ A frown pinched his features. ‘The majority is not always in the right, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘You just feel as though you are.’
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve never felt myself to be in a majority.’ She felt rather cross with him. It wasn’t as if she’d been to blame for how it ended.
‘Shall we have a whisky?’ he asked, and they were friends again.
He was in Holland Park now, he said, so they shared a taxi as far as Kensington.
He opened the cab door for her and said, ‘We should do this again,’ and kissed her fondly on each cheek. She steadied herself for a moment with her hand on his shoulder and felt sad.
‘I can ask around about Godfrey,’ he said. ‘But I’m not really in touch with anyone any more, you know.’
‘You don’t still work for the Service then?’ she said, trying to sound as if she were making a joke of it.
‘Of course not. What makes you think that?’ He seemed excessively amused by the idea. ‘They don’t want “men like me”, as you know. Not the ones that get caught anyway. This cabbie’s getting impatient. Let’s say goodbye. Have a nice weekend,’ he said. ‘Are you doing anything?’
Goodness, Juliet thought, he’s learnt the art of small talk too.
‘I’m going to the seaside,’ she said.
‘How nice. Have a lovely time.’
The air felt different, Juliet thought as she entered her flat, as if someone had disturbed it with their presence, yet all the small precautionary measures that she had made before leaving this morning were still in place – the thread of cotton between the front door and the jamb, the hair laid across a pile of books, the tiny dressmaker’s pin that would fall out if her bedside drawer was opened. Nonetheless, she had the distinct feeling that someone had been here. I am unravelling, she thought. Like a ball of wool.
She washed this morning’s breakfast pots and made a cup of cocoa. When all else failed, the mundane remained.
Fish, chips, peas, bread and butter and stewed tea, eaten at a table covered in a gingham cloth in a café overlooking the crashing, rattling waves of the English Channel on a blustery, sunny day. A hooligan posse of gulls wheeled noisily overhead, almost as realistic as the Effects boys in Manchester used to be. The air was imbued with the scents of the seaside – sewage, vinegar, candy-floss. This is England, Juliet thought.
She had been telling the truth when she said to Perry that she was going to the seaside. She arrived in Brighton before lunch. It was Saturday and the sudden good weather had brought the crowds out, although it was still bitterly cold if you got caught in the wind nipping off the sea. As the train slipped out of the capital’s grimy grasp, Juliet was surprised at how good it felt to elope from London.
So far she had done what everyone else did – strolled along the pier, walked on the pebbled beach, wandered in the Lanes and gawped at the Royal Pavilion. She had been here only once before – in wartime with the RAF pilot who had courted her before lying down with his head in his mother’s gas oven because of his missing leg. He had been the nearest Juliet had ever come to the ordinariness of marriage. They had registered in a guest house as husband and wife, like hundreds, if not thousands, before them. Brighton was a sleazy destination but they had been content for two whole days. That was 1943 and by then the war had ground on for so long that they had forgotten what it was like to be at peace, and any snatch at happiness seemed worth it.
‘Finished with that?’ the waitress asked, grabbing her plate.
‘Yes, thank you, it was delicious.’ The waitress, a woman in her late forties, wrinkled her nose slightly. Juliet supposed ‘delicious’ was the kind of word that spoiled middle-class women down from London employed. And it was only fish and chips, after all, but it had been excellent. Juliet was the sole person in the café. It was open all day, but now it was stranded in the afternoon lull.
‘More tea?’ the waitress asked, hefting an enormous brown enamelled teapot in Juliet’s direction. She wasn’t local. Her accent carried a nasally estuary twang.
‘Yes, please,’ Juliet said. The tea was horrendous, thick and sludgy brown like the river she had left behind in London. ‘Lovely.’
The waitress lived in one of the many rather seedy terraces that were set back from the sea-front. Her name was Elizabeth Nattress, but she had once been Betty Grieve. Betty, Dolly and Dib, Juliet thought as she sipped her tea. Dolly and Dib. She suppressed a shudder, but she wasn’t sure if it was the tea or the memory that had caused it.
Betty Grieve had divorced her husband during the war and a second marriage had changed her identity, but she was still the same woman who had once been given a war merit second class, a Kriegverdienstkreuz, by Godfrey Toby for ‘services to the Third Reich’.
Hartley had raided the Registry for the current whereabouts of Godfrey’s informants, complying with unusual docility. The good thing about Hartley was that he didn’t play by the rules. Of course, that was one of the bad things about him, too. Juliet supposed he must be in a lot of trouble with Alleyne over the fugitive flamingo.
It turned out that MI5 had kept tabs on Godfrey’s informants. Walter had stepped in front of an express through-train at Didcot station two years ago. (‘He seemed perfectly normal when he left for work in the morning,’ his wife said at the inquest.) Edith had moved to a Christian community on Iona. Victor had been conscripted and died at Tobruk. Everyone else in the wide web of sympathizers seemed accounted for, all of them defeated and subdued now. Juliet had conjectured that the woman in the parrot-patterned headscarf might be Betty Grieve, but now she could see this was a ridiculous idea.
Betty was pouring the tea rather resentfully, so perhaps she had been hoping to put her feet up before the tea-time rush instead of dancing attendance on a lah-di-dah customer.
The man behind the fryer was taking the opportunity of the hiatus in trade
to clean up. He was Stanley Nattress, Betty’s husband, the man who had taken her away from her past. Both Betty and her husband were wrapped tightly in white overalls, like swaddling. Stanley’s overalls were spotted with grease. Only the best beef dripping used, a message above the fryer advised.
‘It seems busy for this time of year,’ Juliet said conversationally.
‘Sun brings ’em all down here,’ Betty said, as if to follow the sun was evidence of low moral fibre.
‘Not like the war, I suppose,’ Juliet said. ‘You had all those fortifications, that must have put people off.’
‘I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t here during the war, I was in London.’
‘Oh, so was I,’ Juliet said brightly. ‘Not that I agreed with it, you know. The war, and so on. Thank goodness you can say that now without people trying to lock you up for your beliefs.’
Betty slammed the teapot down on the counter and stared suspiciously at Juliet. ‘The war’s over,’ she said. ‘Gone. I never think about those days.’ She scowled at Juliet. ‘We have to work every hour of the day to make enough money out of this place. And we have our own troubles.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything,’ Juliet said contritely, although she wasn’t, not in the least.
Sensing distress, Stanley came round to the customer side of the counter.
‘You all right?’ he said to Betty. He put his arm round her. It was rather touching to see a public display of affection from such a big, lumpish man.
‘We were just talking about the war,’ Juliet said.
‘That’s all gone now,’ he said. He gave Juliet a long look and said, ‘Isn’t it?’ What did he know about his wife, she wondered?
‘Yes, of course it is, and thank goodness too,’ Juliet said, springing to her feet. ‘Now, how much do I owe you for the fish and chips? Oh, and is there a Ladies on the premises?’
Betty snorted at the idea, but Stanley said, ‘There’s a privy out the back you can use.’
In the back yard a rather sullen girl, thirteen years old – Betty’s niece, according to the Registry, orphaned in the Blitz, who lived with the Nattresses – was preparing potatoes. (What handy creatures nieces were.) The girl took a potato from a galvanized bucket at her feet, peeled it and dropped it into another bucket. Her hands were begrimed with dirt and every so often she used her sleeve to wipe snot from her nose. In retrospect, the fish and chips Juliet had eaten seemed less delicious.
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