Who’d started it all, anyway? Who’d set up the concentration camps and the gas chambers? Who’d voted the Nazis into power in the first place, screaming their Sieg Heils on cinema news-reels for the whole world to see and hear?
At the top of St James’ Street he turned right and then crossed over. Piccadilly was already thronged with tarts. All in pursuit of the Yanky dollar; there were droves of Yanks on the pavements too. Overpaid, over here, et cetera. A lot of the girls were amateurs who worked in munitions factories and took steps to avoid being on late shifts, so as to get out of their overalls and into tight skirts and lipstick and come tripping up to town.
At Hachette’s, in the bar off the curve of stairs leading down from street-level to the restaurant, there was a Coastal Forces book – as well as a Submarine book, and others – through which men on leave or in transit could contact any friends who might happen to be around. Ben glanced through it, saw a name or two but not of any particularly close mates. He drank one pint of the watery wartime beer – which cost him a shilling, but if they’d tried to sell it in Brisbane at any price might have provoked a riot – and then climbed back up, crossed the road and made his way towards the bus stop. The girls were out in force tonight, and he found himself repeating over and over, ‘No, thank you’, and ‘Not this evening, thanks.’ One of them, unwilling to accept the brush-off, joined him as he reached the bus queue, taking his arm and asking, ‘Where we going, darling?’ He gave it a moment’s thought – others in the queue were agog to hear his answer – then stooped to whisper in her ear, ‘You wouldn’t want what I got, sweetheart.’
Conveniently, the bus arrived at that moment. But she was a nice-looking kid, as it happened, and after a shrewdly assessing look at him she’d laughed; he waved goodbye to her from the platform, and she waved back, mockingly. There was only standing-room inside, but that was OK – with straps to hold on to, and he wasn’t going all that far. Swaying to the motion, he let his imagination wander: seeing that kid’s boyfriend or fiancé as a young soldier in hard-worn khaki, dented tin hat, eyes slitted against the Italian sun and with the ruins of Monte Cassino as a backdrop: and an air-letter form – which she’d have written a couple of weeks ago, already sweat-stained and slightly crumpled in his hand: Love you for ever, darling, keep yourself safe for me and please please come home soon…
Cassino had been taken by British and Polish troops just twenty-four hours ago, after some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Rocking from Knightsbridge, after ten minutes or so, into the Brompton Road… At the next stop after that a seat close to him was vacated, but with his stiff knee it would have taken a lot of getting into, and as there were only a couple of stops to go, he didn’t bother. Instead he enabled a stout, grey-haired woman to squeeze past him and drop into it. She glanced up at him: ‘Thanks, love.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He moved his stick so she wouldn’t see it.
The bus pulled in to a stop opposite Thurloe Place, then bore left – southward – and after only one more halt was in Fulham Road, where he got off – it was easy enough as long as they gave you time and a bit of room – and waited to cross the road into Pelham Crescent. Wondering where Rosie might be now, this moment. And how she was, how it was going, whether she was confident or frightened, lonely or with good people. It would make an enormous difference, he imagined. In fact that was one of the awesome aspects of the job as one envisaged it – that image of her as so utterly alone.
But he did have to stop this, he realized. Take a grip: evolve some formula in his thinking to reduce the level of anxiety. She was there – no amount of worrying would change that. And Christ’s sake – if she could stand it…
Pelham Place now: and a short way up it on this side a terraced house, mellowed brick, faded blue shutters on the windows. Crumbly brick steps: he paused at the door, found his key and let himself in. He paused again then, hearing voices – and while pushing the door shut behind him he noticed on the hall table a rather smart forage-cap that didn’t belong here. Or anyway hadn’t up to this morning. Visitor, presumably: and he didn’t want to get caught up in anything – like sitting around making bloody conversation. He started quietly up the stairs. Left hand on the banister, stick assisting on the other side, his naval cap in that hand too. The stairs were awkward – two flights of them, steep and rather narrow.
‘Good evening, Commander!’
Professor Mallinson, Ben’s landlord: beaming up at him from the hall, having heard the front door, no doubt. He was a small man with bushy white hair, round face, thick glasses; he spoke seven languages fluently and worked at the BBC.
Ben had stopped – half turning, shifting the stick and cap hand to the banister. ‘How’re you doing, Prof?’
‘Very well, thank you. But, Commander – we have a very special friend of my wife’s here, and it transpires she’s also a friend of yours!’
He needed a pee rather badly: another reason for not having wanted to hang around. And Mrs Mallinson was frankly a bit of an old cow, so whatever friend this might be… He temporized, ‘If you’d give me a minute – get cleaned up—’
‘Ben?’
She’d emerged from the living-room down there. Joan Stack. In her MTC uniform. Gazing up at him: no smile, just that rather uncertain gaze.
‘Joan…’
‘Small world, Ben… And what’s this “Commander” business?’
Chapter 18
A flash like an explosion woke her: in the contrastingly drab light that followed it she saw a hunchback with a camera stepping back from her bedside, and two other figures near the foot end of it, watching her. One of them growled in hideously German-accented French, ‘The treatment our little friend needed, look!’
Because her eyes were open, she supposed. She’d seen and heard that one before – seen him sort of through her eyelashes when pretending to be asleep or half asleep. A day or two ago: or – God knew… But the French one – French voice now – no, he’d been here too. More recently, she thought. Asking her, ‘Zoé? Is it all right, calling you Zoé?’
Stooping for a closer view: dark-haired and slim, almost boyish – less than thirty anyway, twenty-five, maybe. He had an Arab or Turkish look about him. The German was pale, wide-faced, with a bulge of neck over his collar. Both in civilian clothes. The Frenchman could be Gestapo too, she supposed. The German certainly was; the ward sister had told her he and others with him had been taking a close interest in her condition and progress, had talked initially of removing her to some other location, but had been dissuaded from this by the doctor. As an alternative they’d insisted on her isolation at this end of the ward, with guards stationed outside there on the landing, keeping an eye on her through the glass-topped doors.
Some pin-up, she thought, that snap would be. Maybe hideous enough to defeat what she guessed must be its purpose.
‘Feeling stronger, are you?’
The Frenchman: leaning close so that she smelt the Gaullois on his breath. His expression was solicitous, even earnest. Fairly repulsive, therefore, in the circumstances; she turned her head away. As if he’d care how she was feeling: except in their own interests, of course, to move her. She’d never seen him at such close quarters as this. The Boche had the blunt, crude features that she remembered from another place and time. Well – Rouen. Not the same man but the same type. Himmler-type porcine features, matching the fat neck. He’d just told the photographer in his guttural French, ‘Get it developed and deliver it to my office. If I’m not back there myself by then, see Leutnant Greber.’
‘Very well…’
He left them. She had a brief sight of the uniformed guard on the landing as one swing door opened and clashed shut. The swarthy one – the Frenchman – addressed the German: ‘I could take it to Paris, if you like?’
‘No.’ The German added, with his pale eyes on Rosie: ‘Haven’t finished with you here, yet.’ Then to her: ‘You’re lucky to be alive – d’you realize that – Zoé?’
It was their first use of that name. She realized, though – le Guen. Anything he knew: since evidently they had connected her with the ‘Zoé’ he’d have told them about… She supposed she must have known they had…
‘Is—’ she licked dry lips – ‘Zoé, is that my name?’
‘Your code-name. You’ve also been calling yourself Suzanne Tanguy. Remember?’
She turned her head slowly, carefully on the pillow. It was morning, daylight out there, but gloomy, overcast. She muttered, ‘No, I don’t remember anything. Or hardly anything.’ She was going to stick to that. She thought that so far they were accepting it: or at least not actually disbelieving… Looking around – eyes only moving now, keeping her head as still as possible – as if she’d only just arrived, didn’t recognize any of her surroundings despite having been here for the past two or even three weeks, however long it was. This end of the ward had only her in it, but there were sounds from the other side of the drawn curtains separating her from the rest of it. She glanced back at these two: it was important to play the part well, not overplay it – for instance by asking questions of a kind which she’d obviously have asked of the doctor or the ward sister – so they’d know she was putting on an act.
Except she mightn’t have remembered their answers anyway. Play it naturally, she thought; there was quite a lot she truly did not remember very well. She asked the Frenchman, ‘If I’m Zoé, what’s my other name? And am I supposed to know who you are?’
‘Your other name’s Suzanne Tanguy – as this officer just mentioned. While we’re at it, my name’s Marchéval. André Marchéval.’
‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled, shrugged… ‘I am here – well, mostly to help you, Zoé.’
He had a quiet way of speaking, she thought perhaps in a deliberate effort to have his voice sound deeper than it might otherwise have done. There was something decidedly fishy about him, anyway. Deep, quiet voice matching the sympathetic smile: his eyes smiled too – crinkling up, impressing her with his sincerity. There could be very little in the world as loathsome as a French Nazi, she thought.
He pointed at the German with his head. ‘You know his name, of course.’
Staring at him blankly… ‘Do I?’
‘Major Johan Hammerling?’
Of the Geheime Staatspolitzei. Gestapo for short. She asked Marchéval, ‘Is today the thirtieth, or thirty-first? Sister did say, but—’
‘Second of June. A Friday.’ That smile again. ‘Lost a few days, eh?’
‘Do you remember the smash?’
The German had broken in with that. She let her eyes drift to him. ‘Smash…’
‘Car crash. How your face got to be the way it is. Have they let you see it in a mirror yet?’
‘What?’
She knew how she looked. Hardly a square centimetre of her head, face and neck where skin hadn’t been broken. They’d cut all her hair off, shaved a lot of her skull. Her head had taken the brunt of it; there’d been slivers and crumbs of glass to pick out of the abrasions, the sister had told her. Her face was covered in some yellow ointment, but there were no other dressings on it now. Her head was bandaged, eyes had been covered when she’d first come round. She’d smashed the car’s windscreen with her head, the doctor had told her, appeared to have had her head right through it. She didn’t remember the smash itself or events immediately preceding it; her last memory was of a distant view of bombs falling where she’d known the Château de Trevarez to have been, and Michel Prigent’s voice telling her she’d live to fight another day. Another memory that seemed really no less recent was of being in hospital in Nice desperate with worry over how long it was taking her father to get there. Actually she’d been seven: she’d been knocked down by a cyclist who’d been travelling very fast and caught her on a downhill corner where she knew very well she should not have been running across the road; it hadn’t been the fault of the boy on the bike at all. She’d given the matron her father’s office telephone number in Monte Carlo because her mother had been away in England. She’d been black and blue all over, she remembered, but only worrying about her father – in the Hispano-Suiza which even when he was in no great hurry he drove like the wind: she’d had a terrifying vision of the big car leaving that coast road at a bend, hurtling out over the sea…
Hadn’t thought of it in years. But it was as clear as yesterday. She remembered bursting into tears when Papa had come dashing in.
The ward sister had told her she’d been found in the wreck of a car forty or fifty kilometres south of Morlaix – where she was now – and brought to the hospital by Feldpolitzei who’d then notified the Gestapo. As far as the hospital staff had known, she was just a road casualty – until the Gestapo had shown up. They’d been back several times, talked about taking her away and then settled for posting the twenty-four-hour guard on her. Nearly three weeks ago. The Frenchman, she thought, had only been here in the last day or two; earlier on they’d all been Germans and in uniform.
She’d wondered if the Frenchman might be ‘Hector’. Had had some reason for this which for the moment she’d forgotten, but remembered having thought about when she’d woken during the night. Last night or the one before. Some link between Marchéval and whatever one had known about ‘Hector’. Bob Hallowell hadn’t mentioned his real name, she thought. Wouldn’t have. But there’d been some reason… Beginning to get it then: suddenly had got it. A German voice – could have been Hammerling’s – asking in clumsy French, ‘Are you certain you never saw her before? Even allowing for the state she’s in?’
For the fact was she looked like something out of an Egyptian tomb. And this might have been several days ago, when she’d have looked even worse. It had sounded as if they’d brought him to look at her and maybe identify her. Conclusion therefore that he’d been an insider, in SOE himself, therefore possibly ‘Hector’. But he’d said yes, he was sure. She’d been comatose most of the time, at that stage, genuinely so although with memory piecing itself together, and capable of both speech and fairly lucid thought – in exchanges with the sister, particularly – but definitely spending more time asleep than awake. It was coming back to her now – this theory about Marchéval: she’d heard him affirm that he’d never set eyes on her until that moment, and add something like, ‘Of course, once she’s fit enough to be moved—’
‘Oh, yes.’ German voice. ‘She’ll tell it all, then.’
Statement of fact. With which, in the light of her experiences in Rouen, she could not have argued.
Only hoped she might get away with the loss of memory. If she played it right. And – touch wood – if they’d swallowed it this far…
‘All right, my child?’
The ward-sister. A little shrimp of a woman, in Holy Orders of some kind, with a sweet expression and alert, intelligent brown eyes. Like little monkey’s eyes. Here now, attending to her: the German and his French collaborator must have left and she, Rosie, must have dropped off for a while. She was still sleeping quite a lot. Hadn’t realized she’d dropped off, but must have. Aware now though of the sister’s fingers very, very lightly touching her cheekbone and then that temple: light, cool fingers offering comfort, reassurance. Smoothing the pillow then…
‘Thank you, Sister. You’re so kind.’
‘They’ve taken themselves off, anyway. Took your picture, eh?’
‘To identify me, I suppose.’
‘Will they have some way to do it?’
‘May have. I don’t know.’ Actually it was frightening. Depending on whether there might be a matching photograph in existence, in some file in Rouen or Paris: Paris, probably, there’d been a reference to Paris, she thought. Yes, the Frenchman. But they might only be trawling, hoping to find a match.
‘Sister – I may have asked this before – I meant to, perhaps I did… The clothes I was wearing when they brought me in—’
‘Laundered and pressed. I did tell you – you asked, and—’
&
nbsp; ‘May I see the blouse?’
‘You may. But we had this conversation before, you know, and I told you then – if you were asking about those horrible capsules?’
She’d hoped she’d dreamt of that prior conversation. Obviously had not. Had been confusing dreams and reality, at times… But the cyanide – that was an option gone, an escape route blocked off.
‘What did you tell me then, Sister? I don’t remember—’
‘Our pharmacist took them for analysis.’ She saw Rosie’s lips move, to frame another question, and anticipated it. ‘He was instructed to dispose of them. This is a place of healing, child!’
* * *
The doctor was three-quarters bald, with dark bags under faded-looking eyes. He’d patiently answered questions which she’d almost certainly asked before – on such subjects as the purple bruise on her arm where they’d given her a transfusion when she’d been first brought in, and his near-certainty that her skull had not been fractured. Concussion, yes, but not lasting brain damage. The pains she’d had in her head would have resulted partly from the impact and bruising but might also have been a lingering after-effect of the transfusions – transfusions plural, she’d noted, that time. She shouldn’t worry about her face, he told her; there’d be very little scarring, when it had all healed over. It wouldn’t take long, either. Even her scalp, where the lacerations had been much more severe: by the time her hair had grown again, none of it would show. Well – perhaps a little, just here on the forehead, this side…
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