Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  Her heart sank as the young corporal went round the Dilly and pulled up in front of the hotel. A sludge of memories filled her mind. A couple of years ago – ’41, just after the Americans came into the war – she was working undercover for Tommy, attached to the CID at West End Central police station.

  She had come into the Regent Palace one day when trying to track down some villains who had gone AWOL from the army and were now doing odd building and decorating jobs. While there she bumped into an immensely attractive RAF Spitfire pilot, Wing Commander Fordham O’Dell, and had spent a night with him, believing that Tommy had been unfaithful to her. It was the only time she ever cheated on Tommy, but now, as they drew up outside the hotel the memories of that time were vivid, son et lumier in her head. There, two years ago, she was playing around with the idea of leaving Tommy, and now she had done it.

  She wondered what had happened to Fordy O’Dell whom she’d first interviewed with his flight at Middle Wallop, just before Christmas 1940 when she was on her way to spend that terrible Christmas Day with her sister, Charlotte, in Hampshire. The Christmas when it all went wrong.

  They climbed out of the car, a Humber painted matt RAF blue with a roundel on its offside front mudguard, and Curry signed the chit Beryl presented to him. “You can lose yourself ’til tomorrow morning, corporal,” he told her and the girl nodded unhappily, saluted and got back behind the wheel.

  “Don’t go into the hotel,” he told Suzie, lowering his voice. “Get lost in the crowd up here,” nodding towards Sherwood Street, running alongside the hotel, taking her elbow and propelling her away from the entrance.

  As she turned her head, Suzie was aware of the WAAF corporal fiddling around in the driving seat before starting the car again and slowly moving away.

  “Into here,” Curry told her as they approached a doorway. “Hard against here, out of sight.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You didn’t notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “That girl, the corporal driver.”

  “What about her?”

  “She was very interested in where we were going. I slowed you down to let her see we weren’t actually going into the hotel.”

  “So?”

  “I want to see if she comes looking for us.”

  A few minutes later, as they stood silent in the doorway, watching tarts and their clients go by, Curry said, “There you go, she’s looking as if her life depends on it.” Sure enough the RAF Humber cruised past, the corporal’s head stretched forward, eyeballing the pavement, craning, trying to spot them.

  “Well?” Suzie still puzzled, then seeing the problem. “You mean she was told to watch us? She’s searching for us because someone’s told her to?”

  “That’s about the strength of it. I think we should have a word with her as soon as we get back to Brize.”

  “We’re going back?”

  “Oh, in due course, yes. We can’t really telephone ’cos we’ve no idea who may have asked the girl to pinpoint us, and I want to know who did the asking.”

  They went down into the Piccadilly underground and took the Bakerloo line on to Baker Street, Curry silent now, reflective. The regular, expect-em-same-time-every-night air raids had finished, yet people still automatically went down into some of the larger underground stations, spending the nights there; tiers of bunks were apparent in many of the stations, set back against the curved walls at the rear of platforms, though the chaos and stench of those early days of the Blitz were long gone.

  At Baker Street they went up into the cold night and Curry led her along to Ivor Place, where, he told her, War Office Intelligence Liaison had an office on the second floor of a small commercial building.

  Three organisations identified themselves on brass plates to the right of the door, each with its own bell push on the left of the plate. Spindlers Surgicals Ltd., appeared to be on the ground floor; War Office Annexe G8 was on the second floor; and at the top was Bran Hoffman & Co (Sales). Later, Suzie discovered that all three ventures were really part of WOIL. Taking no notice of the bell pushes, Curry let them in with his own key, going up the uncovered stairs two at a time and walking straight in through what looked like the door to a flat on the left of a small landing. Suzie followed him and they walked straight into what had originally been the flat’s hall, now converted to a general office: linoleum under foot, two metal tables, facing each other, telephones, a couple of typewriters and a pair of metal filing cabinets against the one empty wall.

  A redheaded girl with wide hips and a confident manner turned from the filing cabinet as they entered. “Curry,” she said in a somewhat proprietary manner. “You’ve just missed him – the boss that is, and … oh, hello,” as Suzie came in.

  Curry introduced them. The redhead was Ruth, “General factotum,” he said.

  “General bloody dogsbody more like.” She wore a dark red suit, the skirt well cut so that it showed up the outline of her thighs as she walked with her fine, firm strides.

  “Keeps us in order, does the typing, filing, takes the telephone calls, makes the coffee and adds a hint of mystery to the place.”

  “Not all the typing,” she said, shuffling papers and taking a file over to the desk. “I share that…”

  “With a little blonde who comes in a couple of times a week…”

  “Every other day,” Ruth corrected. “And she has a name. Jocelyn.”

  “Very posh, yes.” He laughed, pronouncing it powsh. “We share her with somebody.”

  “We share her with her husband who’s a wounded hero.”

  “That’s the one. Where’s the boss gone?”

  “Elsie’s across the road,” which Curry told Suzie later meant he was over with the SOE people in Baker Street. Special Operations Executive, the people at the really sharp end of setting Europe ablaze as Winston Churchill had commanded: spies, saboteurs, resistance organisers.

  “He leave a message for me?” Curry asked.

  “Yes, he said come back tomorrow. He’ll be in around nine. Very important.” Stressing the ‘very’. “Longing to see you.”

  “I bet he didn’t say that.”

  “He said imperative, actually.”

  “Good. Okay, Ruth, we’ll get off and hide in some nearby woodshed. You here all night?”

  “’Course I am. Guarding the Crown Jewels.”

  “’Course you are.”

  “They’ll eventually give you a key,” Curry told Suzie as they went downstairs.

  “I look forward to that.”

  “Then you’ll have it ready if some poor sod gets a nosebleed, slip it down his back.”

  They went out into the night and he asked where she had to go, where she lived?

  “Not far. Just Upper St Martin’s Lane.”

  “Come on,” Curry said. “There’s a good British Restaurant in Baker Street, up towards Oxford Street.” He must have caught a look on her face, “If a British Restaurant’s not below you.”

  British Restaurants had been opened by the government early in 1940 to ensure that anyone could get at least one, cheap, good and coupon-free meal a day and the standard was high.

  “Why should British Restaurants be below me?” she caught hold of his arm, a little off balance in the dark.

  “Hoi polloi eat there, the proles. You were Tommy’s girl weren’t you? With Tommy it’d be the Ritz, Savoy and clever little Italian places in Soho. Knew all the good eating houses, I’ll bet.”

  “He did, rather, yes.” Her mind circled the meals she’d had out with Tommy Livermore. Yes, the Ritz and a lot of clever little places. Tommy always knew where you could get good or different food. There was a French place in Marshal Street he swore ran a regular boat to join the fishing fleet off Normandy, went into Cherbourg with them, picked up homemade sausages and smoked hams, then slipped out after a couple of days. She never knew what to believe when Tommy got going. Later she had reasoned that the good food had something to do with having a privat
e income. She remembered going to a party with him, at the Savoy, and being amazed at the amount of food and drink that were consumed in one evening.

  “Why should that make any difference, being Tommy’s girlfriend?” she asked now. “Heaven knows I’ve eaten in all kinds of places: like the canteen at West End Central.” Curry gave a little one-note laugh. “And I’ve eaten in British Restaurants before.” She bridled. “On numerous occasions.”

  The British Restaurant at the top of Baker Street was in fact a very good one in which they ate well. Thick vegetable soup; braised tongue with mashed potatoes and carrots; treacle tart and custard; tea and bread and butter. True the bread was not of the finest texture, more your off-white, battleship grey colour, but it was all edible and cost only one shilling and ninepence each.

  “I wonder what the poor people’re doing tonight,” said Curry.

  “Probably eating cake.” Suzie with her dopey grin that she was starting to perfect. Then she thought, the poor people, that’s a very Tommy remark. “So,” she continued, “So, there’s Ruth, then Jocelyn every other day. Elsie’s the boss, how many others are part of War Office Intelligence Liaison?”

  “Full strength’s about eight.” Curry kept his voice down remembering the warning advertisements – Careless Talk Costs Lives and Tittle-tattle lost the battle.

  “How can full strength be about eight?”

  “Give or take a couple. Sometimes we have to get people seconded to us – special skills people…”

  “Like me?”

  “Your skills are mainly being a woman.”

  “You mean you didn’t get me in for a particular job?” She didn’t care for his last remark.

  “We did, actually. That is apart from being allowed an experienced female officer on the strength.”

  “So what’s the special job?”

  “Elsie’ll tell you.”

  “You mean you can’t or you don’t know?”

  “Meaning I’m not allowed. I know but Elsie has a better view of the overall picture. How’re you going to get home?”

  “I’ll get home in a taxi – if I can find one. If not, it isn’t that far to walk … Well it is, but … How about you?” she trailed off, nowhere to go with this particular line.

  “Oh, it’ll take me a couple of hours. I’ve got to get out to New Malden.”

  “You live out there?”

  “Yes, I do. Murderous journey.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What’ve you got, some sordid little flat?”

  “Bedsit with a small kitchen and use of bathroom. All mod cons, as they say. Running hot and cold sausages, place mats, stainless steel cutlery, all those lovely middle class necessities, silver napkin rings, fish knives.”

  “Dead sophisticated, Curry. You can come home with me if you like.”

  “Oi-oi.”

  “I have a spare room. You’re very welcome.” Being a straight bit of goods, not a flicker, not a smile, no wrong messages. Keep it simple, she thought.

  Curry said it would certainly be easier to get into Ivor Place if he stayed at Suzie’s flat. “We’d get in easily from St Martin’s Lane.”

  “Well then,” grin and shrug. “It’s not even my flat. Not strictly speaking.” She went on to tell Curry about the flat belonging to her mum and the need to keep it dark because of her stepfather Ross Gordon-Lowe. Just in case her mother had to do a midnight flit.

  “I mean, he’s okay – in small doses – but old Major Ross Gordon-Lowe DSO is often hard to take. Not absolutely certain that’s his real name. I think the Gordon part is actually simply another Christian name,” a charitable statement, she considered, because Ross Gordon-Lowe was in many ways a pompous, pedantic old bore.

  Now, over the braised tongue and treacle tart, she told the troubled history to Curry Shepherd while he made sympathetic noises.

  “In the end, he was quite good though a bit of a prune when it came to Tommy.” She bit down on a large slice of treacle tart and sucked in on the custard making a little moan of ecstasy. “Lord, I love treacle tart.”

  “In what way, a prune?”

  “Thought chatting to Tommy was like gossiping with royalty. Oh, and I love the custard. My mum made the best custard ever.”

  Curry smiled and shook his head, a sign that he was falling for her winning ways, she decided and so asked him if he wanted to avail himself of her spare room.

  “Avail myself? Well I’ve got to say that I could be talked into it. Just thinking about riding out to New Malden makes me tired and depressed.”

  “I could do you bacon for breakfast,” she give him her best smile, the winning one.

  “Consider me talked into it then. Do you hoard bacon or what?”

  “One of the benefits of Tommy was the by-products we got from the Home Farm at Kingscote Grange, the family seat.”

  So they managed to get a cab to Upper St Martin’s Lane and Suzie showed him around her small flat, and made up the bed in the spare room, hoping he wouldn’t use it. And as she went round she kept remembering Tommy because, of course, he was here: the smell of him, his tobacco, his scent; couldn’t get it out of her head: little waves of nostalgia.

  Then she made Curry some cocoa, which he liked, and drank in the kitchen idly flicking through the Ministry of Food leaflets: Step lively with Potato Pete or Dr Carrot, or Food without Fuel, Kitchen Goes to War and the others she had neatly stacked on the dresser.

  “This looks good,” and he read from a recent Food Facts, “Date and Nut Loaf, All Clear Sandwiches. Oh my God, Trench Cake, Mock Fish. Ugh, Rook Pie. You don’t really cook stuff like this do you?”

  “Made a rook pie last year.” Bouncy, all capable woman. “Delicious, but you’ve got to be careful to use only the breast meat because the rest’s foul, bitter and horrid,” she scrunged her face up comically.

  As they said goodnight on the landing outside the master bedroom door she simply stood there looking a bit pathetic trying to be a woman in need of protection, arms hanging straight down by her sides. Don’t act predatory, she told herself. Just look as if you need keeping safe. Head up to him; big eyes. She even asked if he needed anything.

  “No,” he said.

  “Pajamas? I’ve got some of Tommy’s if you…” realising that was quite the wrong thing.

  “No,” he said coldly. Flat.

  “Oh, damn. Sorry.” And she was.

  Her reward was a chaste kiss on the forehead which left her lying in bed wondering if she had something wrong with her.

  Perhaps he’s queer, she thought. No, she had learned to spot queers while she was at West End Central. Anyway, it was against the law and she very much doubted if there was one queer copper in the Met, let alone among the secret squirrels.

  Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow they would see Elsie and he’d let her into the charmed circle: tell her about her real job. Then she thought what a slut she was, trying to seduce that nice Mr Curry Shepherd. Jeerusalem, if only.

  It was an unfulfilled Suzie Mountford who dropped into sleep that night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  LINNET DROVE THEM back to Brize Norton, both of them wrapped in their overcoats, freezing and silent in the jeep, their hair collecting rimes of frost in the open vehicle. Sadler thought that it was now they should be talking, out in the open not as they had done in the public house, in the Eagle and Child. It was what Ritter, Klampt and Osterlind had taught him in Hamburg back in 1938. Never talk about the work inside; always get out and away from buildings they said, and he’d disobeyed them. But then he’d disobeyed them in so much: about recruiting Linnet, about the folly of the melodramatic inquisition of Tim Weaving leading to the death of Weaving and his lady friend.

  The wisdom of clandestine warfare said that, given time, everybody cracks under a good interrogation; some people crack faster with torture, some dig their heels in and put up the shutters, sometimes seeming to revel in pain. Weaving had been of the latter kind, not even beginning to crack; showing immense cour
age: giving them only a couple of generalisations before he died because Sadler had become overzealous, angry with the man’s bravery. It was so stupid of Linnet, killing the woman like that. Weaving knew immediately that he was never going to leave that cellar alive: and when you know that … well, he had nothing to lose.

  Then there was the other idiot thing he had done – trying to kill the two spy-catchers, if that was truly what they were.

  He wondered if he was going out of his mind, if he was starting to lose the sacred trust he had sworn to Deutschland and the Führer. In the 1930s, the concept of National Socialism had him by the throat then, and was present in him as though it were mingled with the blood running through his veins. The historians taught that he who rules Berlin rules Europe, and after Hitler came to power the other leaders of Europe looked like the namby-pamby weaklings they were. Neville Chamberlain, ineffectual, peace at any price, didn’t stand a chance against a man of the Führer’s vision.

  It was said that when somebody asked Hitler why on earth he had signed the non-aggression agreement, in Munich at the end of August ’38, the one the British Prime Minister brought back and waved around at Croydon aerodrome – Peace in our time – the Führer had said, “He seemed such a nice old man, so I thought I’d give him my autograph”. Hitler had broken the mould as far as single-mindedness was concerned, while the old divisions between ruling classes and proles ground on archaically in England.

  Sadler had been totally dominated by the Nazi ideal, for him it was like a drug, or as though he had been hypnotised, which in some senses he had in falling under Hitler’s spell. For Sadler it was both the power and the glory. Yet now, and only occasionally, he questioned it, as if there was a weakness, a chink in the steel of his will, a fissure through which doubts assailed him. He became terrified of these suggestions of a loss of faith. He considered that he was like a holy man going through the dark night of the soul. To him it was no real threat, yet on the drive back to Brize Norton on that frosty night before Christmas, things started to go seriously wrong in his head.