by Eliza Graham
‘Enlightened self-interest,’ I said breezily. ‘We need you, Micki.’ Her knowledge of those bars in German naval ports, the things the seamen talked about, the slang they used, the jokes they told, they would add veracity to our broadcasts.
‘You can rely on me,’ she said as I left the room.
6
A lunatic asylum.
Mrs Haddon, the housekeeper of Mulberry House, frequently told us that this is what the redbrick villa had become. She’d worked for the family who’d lived here previously. They’d been the type to sip Darjeeling under the cedar tree or hit croquet balls through hoops. Her grin gave her away, though. She liked us, even though she frequently added that most people would have us all locked up and that was no word of a lie.
This afternoon, looking around what Beattie called his operations room – formerly the drawing room – I saw Mrs Haddon’s point. Micki was standing on her hands on the edge of her desk. Luckily she was wearing a pair of slacks.
She was observed by our most recent recruit, Father Becker, the Roman Catholic priest persuaded by British intelligence to leave Zurich to work for us in England. He had Swiss citizenship, through his father, so it had been easier to obtain papers for him, although the priest hadn’t been terribly keen on coming to England at first, Beattie told me. Fortunately he’d changed his mind. ‘Fräulein, your hip is too far back,’ he said.
‘Do you know much about gymnastics, father?’ I asked, in German.
‘Not personally, Sergeant Hall.’
‘Just call me Anna,’ I told him, as I’d done several times before. As usual he looked embarrassed at the very suggestion, perhaps because he was a cleric, unused to being on first-name terms with a non-related woman. Or perhaps just because he was German, and so very formal.
‘Certainly true that you can’t see a hole without falling into it, father,’ Micki said, still upside down, her hair – now worn in a single plait – dangling down like a reddish-brown rope. She seemed completely at ease being inverted.
He shook his head. ‘God didn’t grant me the gift of physical grace.’
‘You have other talents. An ability to communicate with the almighty.’ Micki lowered herself to the floor slowly and with complete control.
He nodded.
‘I can see the attraction,’ Micki said. ‘Even though you know it’s all complete lies.’
‘Micki . . .’ I needed to assert authority before a theological argument began. I’d refereed and broken up several since Micki and Father Becker had started working together. Micki would of course be doctrinally and philosophically outgunned by Father Becker, but she wouldn’t concede defeat.
‘If I killed you I’d put a stake through your heart to be sure you wouldn’t jump up again,’ Beattie had told her soon after she’d joined us. Micki had beamed.
Now that the first week of her new job had passed, she reminded me of a tiger cub: simultaneously cautious and bold. Shopping in Bedford on a rare Saturday morning away from the village I’d found a second-hand silver frame that looked as though it might fit the photograph she’d brought with her, and left it on the end of her bed. She’d never mentioned the frame, but when I came in from a Sunday afternoon walk, I’d found my work shoes polished to a gleam they hadn’t enjoyed since my WAAF days.
Tyres scrunched on the gravel outside. For a moment the three of us froze. Beattie didn’t mind shenanigans, as he termed them, didn’t actually give a damn about anything that more conventional employers might have frowned on: drinking, swearing, women wearing trousers, mucking around in work hours. As long as the intelligence was pulled out of those we interviewed or interrogated and twisted into material for our nightly broadcasts. But Beattie’s moods could change by the second, if he felt a task had been less than perfectly carried out.
It would be all right today, I told myself. Father Becker had produced yet another excellent religious broadcast script for the fictional radio priest character of Father Josef, as performed by Gerhard Meiner, a refugee actor from Bremen.
I’d sat up straight when I read the script. As usual the sermon lulled listeners into thinking it was just another state-sanctioned religious broadcast, albeit more reflective than most of them. But a few minutes in came a brief mention of the rigorous investigation of immoral behaviour on the part of some men training young German children at various holiday camps.
The script ended with a direct quotation from scripture: ‘He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.’
‘I have stretched the truth in my script,’ Father Becker said, rubbing the side of his head.
‘That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do,’ I told him.
‘You haven’t exaggerated at all,’ Micki said. ‘There really are perverts in those camps. My non-Jewish school friends went off to them each summer. They told me about youth leaders coming into tents at night. Or supervising shower sessions, hard-ons visible through the Lederhosen. One of the few times in my beloved homeland I was grateful for being Jewish.’
An expression of distaste covered the priest’s face.
‘You may look as though you’ve found a weevil in your bread, father, but you know I’m right.’ She glowered at him.
‘I think perhaps we are overdoing it,’ Becker said, studiously keeping his eyes on mine.
‘We need to plant a seed of doubt,’ I said. ‘To germinate in listeners’ minds.’
‘But to speak of such wickedness, is that not too much?’ he said.
‘We just want them to think that little Joachim might have a bad Erkältung and should stay at home for the camp fortnight,’ Micki said. ‘If enough of the fools do that, the Party will have a problem on its hands.’
‘I do not think you understand the audience—’
‘Oh, I understand them perfectly.’ She scowled at Father Becker. ‘And I can tell you that their husbands and sons aren’t prudish when they’re drunk in a bar groping prostitutes.’
‘It’s a question of whether a parent can trust an organisation that lets these unsavoury things go on.’ The voice, deep and melodic, spoke like us in German, from the door. Beattie. He’d let himself in silently. As always when I saw him again after an absence of whatever length, and to my irritation, I felt my blood pulsing round my veins. How long had he been standing there?
‘How reassuring that the Party has not let these accusations run on for any longer than was necessary for a thorough investigation, perhaps?’ Nice. Suggest that originally the Party hadn’t shown any interest at all in sorting this out, had hoped it would all go away until angry parents insisted on something happening and a scandal was brewing.
‘You’ve had the script checked?’ Beattie asked me. We had to have all our material signed off by Beattie’s own boss, Sefton Delmer, before broadcast. Only Beattie was authorised to make or approve amendments after this stage.
I opened my mouth, but he raised a hand to stop me. ‘Of course you have, Hall.’ Yet again he was reminding me that he was my boss. Since Lisbon it had been like this: he’d assert his authority, then chide me for not showing initiative, for not getting on with things. He’d praise me for the way I’d got Micki working so quickly for us: not just sharing her own information about German and French naval ports and the people who frequented them, but going on to interview other German refugees herself, laughing and weeping with them, reminiscing, picking their brains. Moments later he’d tick me off when the motorcycle courier I’d organised to pick up a script arrived three minutes late because she’d had to stop to mend a puncture. Sometimes I wondered whether I’d imagined that night when he’d stroked my skin and told me he wanted to breathe me in. And then we’d brush past one another in the narrow hallway and I’d feel a frisson between us.
‘And you’ve ordered the courier to take the script to Gerhard Meiner?’
‘Of course.’
‘Cancel it.’ He looked at me. I knew not to show surprise or annoyance.
‘Why?’ Micki asked.
‘Gerhard Meiner will no longer play Father Josef,’ Beattie said. ‘He has pulmonary trouble, finds it hard not to cough on air.’
‘I could perhaps assist.’ Father Becker made the suggestion with a shrug indicating he knew the offer would be turned down.
‘I’m sure your sermons were masterpieces, father,’ Beattie said. ‘But you preached from the pulpit, not over the airwaves. We need a professional actor. Someone who sounds like more of a priest on air than you do.’
Father Becker stiffened. ‘But I—’
‘You’re a real priest, yes. You just don’t sound as much like one as Gerhard Meiner did.’
What was true often sounded less truthful than what was a lie. At least, that was the way it went in Beattie’s fiefdom.
‘That is troubling,’ Father Becker said. He frowned.
Micki sniffed. ‘Gerhard Meiner is a terrible lecher. He sounds like a kindly old uncle but he has his hands down your knickers before you can say “Ave Maria”.’ She’d spent some time with Meiner, I recalled, working with him and Beattie on a possible play about German submariners.
‘Then I am relieved I cannot stand in for him.’ Father Becker smiled, but I noticed a little twitch around his right eye.
I squinted at Beattie. ‘Can’t we patch Meiner up for this evening?’ We had so little time to sort out a replacement. Mentally I scanned the Germans and Austrians in the village, trying to recall the sound of their voices, whether they could pick up a part speedily. But they were journalists, editors and writers, not actors I could imagine in this role.
‘We couldn’t stop him medicating himself,’ Beattie said primly.
Micki snorted. ‘You mean he’s overdone the dope.’
I glanced at the clock. Six hours before the evening broadcast. It would only irritate Beattie to point this out. We’d have to use some pre-recorded dance music to fill in the gap left by cutting the religious slot. Or there might be a spare Gerhard Meiner broadcast recorded onto a wax disc we could use. We’d produced additional recordings for emergencies, but we’d already used up two of them to cover previous pulmonary incidents.
‘I have a replacement.’ Beattie gave a modest little smile.
I sat up straight.
‘He’s too young to act the same Father Josef role, so we’ll need a new character, but that’s to our advantage. Poor Father Josef went too far and needed helpful correction.’ He nodded at Father Becker. ‘Add something at the beginning of your script about state and religion working together, blah blah blah.’
Father Becker started writing notes on his pad, his eyes sharp as he concentrated. Not for the first time I remarked on his adaptability. Plucked from his life as a priest in Switzerland, transferred to this strange little team, two members of which were women and very unlike the devout female believers he’d previously known. Until 1942, when he’d moved to Switzerland, Father Becker had worked in a parish in Cologne. It was this pastoral role as much as his help with refugees that had made Beattie so keen to bring him over here.
‘Our new radio priest – shall we call him Father Friedrich? – will be played by this recruit to our cause.’ He looked at me. ‘Don’t glower like that, sergeant. No time for me to get you involved. The housemaster only found Meiner paralytic on his bedroom floor this morning.’
The German refugees and former prisoners of war working for us were housed in private accommodation in the village. We called the people who kept an eye on them housemasters or mistresses because their role was to allow their charges enough freedom to do their best work, but not enable them to get up to anything that might have the locals muttering about spies. The system was not unlike that of an enlightened boarding school.
‘When I realised Gerhard Meiner was out of the game, I immediately telephoned my contact at the cage,’ Beattie went on.
The cages were centres run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section, or PWIS, though PISS was Beattie’s preferred acronym. PWIS detained the more interesting German prisoners. There were several cages within easy driving distance of the village, but when Beattie used the definite article he was only ever referring to the Kensington cage in the prosperous London borough. It housed SS and Gestapo prisoners, along with some particularly vicious Wehrmacht regulars. He’d worked hard, easing his way inside the fiercely guarded holding centre with hard-won paper sign-offs, supplemented with some of the bottles of whisky kept in his office. ‘There’s nobody in the cage suitable for broadcasting,’ he said. ‘Though PISS did tell me something else interesting, more of which in a moment. Then I remembered William Nathanson.’
‘William Nathanson?’
‘British subject, served in the RAF until he was injured, but born and schooled in Prague for the first nine years of his life, speaking both German and English. A bilingual upbringing not unlike my own or that of our esteemed chief.’
Beattie was referring to Sefton Delmer, born to an Australian father and German mother, growing up, like Beattie, in Berlin.
‘Nathanson could do a radio padre who sounds educated but can talk in punchy sentences, without—’
‘Ridiculously long sentences that make you wait five minutes for the verb,’ Micki finished for him.
‘Theological, but of the people,’ Father Becker said.
‘Good way of putting it, father.’ I was trying to cheer him up after the earlier rejection.
‘When you’ve finished.’ Beattie was staring coldly at me.
I stared back at him, staying just on the right side of insubordination.
‘Can this William Nathanson act, though?’ Micki asked.
Good question, I thought.
‘Yes, he’s had some stage experience and did a bit of radio before he joined up. He was the navigator in a Halifax. Survived a crash landing but can’t fly any more.’ Beattie turned his gaze to my desk. I didn’t like to keep all my papers tucked away in a drawer out of sight. That was the way ideas, cross-references and interesting connections slipped from your mind. Unless you were Beattie, of course. The man’s mind was an enormous portmanteau internally and ruthlessly organised by sorcery.
‘May I brief Lieutenant Nathanson before this evening’s broadcast?’
‘I need him this afternoon.’ Beattie looked at his watch. ‘For the other business in Kensington I mentioned.’
He was taking this newcomer with him to the cage. Not me.
‘What’s that face for, Hall?’ We’d switched to English.
‘Nothing, sir.’ He’d know by my use of the address that I was stewing over something, as he put it. ‘Is the lieutenant going to be working with us here as well as doing the radio part?’
‘That’s what I was planning. He’s talented.’
He rearranged the papers on top of my desk, lining them up on the blotter, setting the fountain pen parallel with the top edge. ‘Those places . . . A lot of the men who operate the Kensington cage are . . . Not the finest of English manhood. It’ll be hard enough getting Nathanson in, but a woman would be out of the question.’ Micki was watching us, forehead puckered, trying hard to keep up with the conversation.
‘They think I’d faint? Need smelling salts?’
He scowled. ‘I nearly passed out myself last time I was there. I interviewed some poor sod who hadn’t been given access to a lavatory for forty-eight hours while he was made to stand.’
Bad smells. Bruised and bloodied men. Fear. Anger. Too much for a woman. I’d shown Beattie what I could accomplish when we’d been in Lisbon, but now he was pushing me back into my basket. My right cheek seemed to throb as it did at times of emotion, something to do with damaged nerves, the doctor had told me. I prayed the throbbing wasn’t visible.
‘Can I at least come in the car with you to Kensington?’ I switched into German. ‘Sir? I can brief Lieutenant Nathanson while we drive.’
‘What about Father
Becker’s script?’
‘It’s nearly ready,’ I said.
Father Becker gave a gasp.
‘There’s time for you to finish it before we go,’ I said. He moved to the desk on which his German language typewriter sat. ‘The lieutenant can read it as we drive. If he has any questions I’ll be there to answer them.’
I felt a need to protect my position. Beattie frequently praised me for my editorial work. But in the early hours of the morning, when red ants seemed to run across my scarred face and I couldn’t sleep, I worried that he’d discover an appalling error in something I’d written and send me back to East Anglia.
I wanted to see Beattie with William outside the office, assess this newcomer’s relationship with him, note any potential threat to my position.
Beattie was still rearranging my desk. I wished he’d stop. He might like papers neatly piled one on top of the other, but I preferred my own system. ‘Can’t I come with you? Sir?’
‘Oh, all right.’ Sometimes Beattie would suddenly accede to a request for something stretching the bounds of what was allowed. Then he’d follow by refusing something silly: his signature on a pencil order or a few hours off to visit the dentist. ‘You can always go for a walk in Kensington Gardens.’
I was about to say something in riposte but stopped myself. If Beattie’s interview went on for hours I could find a bench and work. It was a fine spring day, a good time to sit in a park. Outside the window the budding boughs of a chestnut tree were rocking in a gentle breeze.
Thinking of captive men who’d done awful things having the details beaten out of them didn’t match the atmosphere engendered by the garden. Or match the framed embroidered biblical quotation hanging on the wall above my desk: ‘There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil, but joy for those who promote peace.’ The words were so inappropriate for a room full of people like us that Beattie had laughed when he’d first seen the embroidery and insisted on it remaining.
Beattie was fiddling with the pencils on my desk. Despite his bravado, he hated the Kensington cage. He preferred to use what was given to him freely, often willingly, from men who’d had enough of the war or Hitler. Beattie was devious – a liar, some might say – venal, over-ambitious. But I knew violence wasn’t his bag. Brain power and a kind of electrical energy got him what he wanted. And obsession with detail. On the occasions I’d accompanied him to the studio I marvelled as he double-checked everything, from the electrical plugs and the microphones to the broadcasters’ warm-ups. I’d seen him eyeing the soundproofing tiles, pulling a chair from under a desk so he could stand on it and rub a finger round the tile edges to make sure they were adhering to the wall properly. He’d check the locks on the studio doors – on both sides. The studio technicians would give him detailed daily reports on their equipment inspections. He’d talk to the guards outside and to the girls who operated the switchboard just inside the front door.
