Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  Mercifully, Awan seemed not to have picked up on the atmosphere. She disappeared back downstairs to eat the pie.

  Giles recovered himself enough to say ‘Perhaps we might talk, later?’ His voice was tight, hardly more than a rasp.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, man?’ Colin barked.

  ‘His birds have come home to roost,’ Ratton chuckled, nastily.

  Not understanding, Colin turned to me. ‘Is there a problem about food? Can you find us some dinner, Evelyn?’

  ‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘How long are you staying for?’

  ‘Just tonight. As I said, we need to speak to Mr Cressing, here.’ He turned to John. ‘After dinner, perhaps?’

  John nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Or…’ Colin seemed to consider something, briefly, ‘why don’t you dine with us,’ he turned to me, ‘both of you? What we need to discuss, it’s - well - a family matter, partly.’

  Ratton let out a shout of laughter. ‘Family!’ he repeated, ‘how apt!’

  ‘I can’t cook, serve and dine,’ I said, shortly. ‘John will come up after dinner.’

  While I prepared dinner, John and I quizzed each other about Giles. They had encountered each other in the Intelligence Corps, I discovered, but not frequently enough for John to take much notice. He had ‘a reputation’ apparently, and not as a womaniser.

  ‘He’s the last man I would have suspected, let’s say that,’ John remarked, ‘so if I’d been making a list of possibilities, he wouldn’t even have figured.’

  ‘I must have been an aberration, then,’ I said, through thin lips, ‘a thoughtless moment of madness, as he was, for me.’

  My words hovered between us. They were the truth, and I hoped they would give John comfort.

  ‘Who would have been on your list?’ I asked, presently, with what I hoped was a mischievous smile.

  ‘Kenneth,’ John said immediately, ‘he’s devoted to you, you know.’

  ‘He’s devoted to Tall Chimneys,’ I clarified.

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

  John insisted I accompany him upstairs. We entered the library where I had put out a drinks tray. Nobody seemed to object to my presence and I took a discreet seat away from the lamp. The evening had turned chilly but the men had not lit the fire or drawn the curtains. The room was cold, therefore, and I shivered, and accepted the glass of brandy Colin poured for me. His hand, as he held out the drink, was claw-like, his wrists thin and without flesh. As I looked up at him, in the muted light, his face was quite cadaverous. I put my own hand on Colin’s and began to speak. God knew there was no love lost between us, we had never been close, but he had allowed me a home all these years and over-looked my unconventional life style and he was, after all, my brother. But he shook his head and moved back to an upright chair by the table, and my words faltered on my lips.

  Ratton occupied his habitual place by the fire, his balloon of brandy perched on the mantel. He threw me a significant look and I knew he remembered, as I did, that night years before when he had attempted to abduct me. I returned his look with cold disdain.

  Giles slouched on a low settee. He was flushed and it looked, to me, as though he had drunk more than his fair share of the wine at dinner. John stood on the hearth rug and waited for them to speak.

  ‘What I am going to tell you now,’ Colin began, in a tone which would have been impossibly pompous if not for the dark note of genuine tension which undergirded it, ‘is top secret. No whisper of it must leave these walls.’

  John and I nodded. John seemed unfazed by the announcement, and I wondered again what the nature of his work in the Intelligence Corps might have been.

  ‘As you know,’ Colin went on, ‘the war in France has gone underground. The Vichy government is in charge, visiting brutalities on those found to be supporting the Allies in any way. France is a very dangerous place to be if you have any anti-German sympathies whatsoever. Nevertheless, we do have there a network of courageous operatives who are foiling the Nazi war effort at every turn; passing information, facilitating the escape of stranded airmen, sabotaging weapons and disseminating propaganda. Some of these are native French, others our own operatives, agents we have placed to oversee and co-ordinate operations. Then there is a small number who have, for a long time, seemed to ally themselves with the Nazis but who have actually been our eyes and ears. Double agents.’

  I sipped my brandy, wondering what this could possibly have to do with John or me.

  Ratton piped in from his place by the fire, a comment so random I couldn’t relate it at all to what Colin had already told us. ‘I am sorry to tell you that Mme Cressing is very unwell.’

  I could hardly suppose that John’s corpulent, bed-ridden wife was an active fifth columnist but I couldn’t make any other sensible connection to the previous conversation. ‘Is she..?’ I stammered.

  John threw me a satirical look. Colin murmured a deprecating, ‘No, no.’

  ‘But it would be a powerful inducement for Mr Cressing to return to France,’ Ratton suggested.

  ‘Not very powerful,’ I demurred, but John looked down at the rug.

  ‘Her villa is on the coast, an easy place to gain access to,’ Ratton went on.

  ‘But less easy to escape from,’ I remarked.

  ‘Indeed,’ Giles, who, up to this point had spoken not a word, put in, ‘Madame Cressing lives such a very sequestered life there - she is quite the recluse, these days. The Gestapo have no interest in her villa and it isn’t watched. I have that on good authority. But in any case, given your previous relations with the Germans…’

  ‘Previous relations?’ I queried.

  John gave me a look full of meaning I couldn’t interpret.

  Giles went on as though I had not spoken. ‘You would naturally reassume your former role.’

  ‘However you choose to play it,’ Colin concluded, ‘having gained access, you would be contacted.’

  I stood up. ‘What on earth are you suggesting?’ I asked. ‘John has no relations with the Germans. He does not care about Monique and has no intention of putting himself in her power again. He is too ill to undertake such a journey in any case, and couldn’t possibly make any contribution to the underground movement in France.’

  ‘Evelyn,’ John said, ‘don’t you remember what Colin said, earlier?’

  ‘Monique isn’t family,’ I spat. The acrid burn in my throat was nothing to do with the brandy; it was jealousy, hot and sour.

  Once again, the men - Colin, this time - went on as though I had not spoken. I found the habit quite maddening. I might just as well have not been in the room, but I sat back down in my chair as an act of defiance: they would not squeeze me out of the conversation. ‘The position of the villa will make getting into France very easy. John will have a safe haven, a place where Gestapo eyes never look, but, if they do, he has a valid reason to be there; his wife is dying, the perfect cover. And (contrary to what some may believe) he does have a history of co-operative relations with the Germans which will stand him in good stead, if necessary. One of our operatives is in danger, grave danger. Only John can extricate her. Without him, she is lost.’

  ‘It’s a woman?’ I gasped.

  ‘It’s our sister,’ Colin said, and he looked at me, properly, for the first time.

  ‘Amelia?’

  ‘None other.’

  ‘She has been working for us for the duration of the war,’ Ratton explained, as though he had been privy to Ministerial secrets and covert operations instead of just a carpet-bagging opportunist who had made his fortune from the suffering of others. ‘She went to Germany with the Mitford girls but unlike them she didn’t swallow the Party rhetoric hook line and sinker. She went along with it, and reported back.’

  I turned to John. ‘You met her, in Berlin?’

  He nodded. ‘Many times.’

  ‘You were her…’ I struggled to find the term.

  ‘Contact?’ Ratton supplied it for me.
/>   ‘Yes,’ John confirmed it.

  Suddenly I wanted to be alone with John. To have Colin and Ratton observe how thoroughly I had been hoodwinked by John Cressing was humiliating in the extreme. I wanted to question him in an arena where my obvious ignorance wouldn’t be so embarrassing.

  ‘So,’ I attempted a tone of mild curiosity, ‘when you were in Berlin, it wasn’t entirely because of an exhibition?’

  ‘There was an exhibition,’ John admitted, ‘but, no, it wasn’t the only reason for my stay there.’

  ‘It was just a cover,’ Ratton crowed, as though anyone with half a brain could have known it.

  ‘And she introduced you to..?’

  ‘John made a number of valuable contacts while he was in Berlin,’ Giles confirmed, ‘but mainly, what he did - what they both did - was establish the appearance of a connection between them which the Germans then believed they could exploit.’

  Light dawned. I gave a dry laugh. My lover, the double agent! ‘You’ve been providing them with information? Ever since?

  ‘Mis-information,’ John qualified.

  ‘Peppered with enough truth to make it stick.’ Giles lifted his brandy glass to his lips but discovered it was empty. He waved it hopefully at Colin, but Colin, either wilfully or actually, failed to recognise the gesture.

  I was astounded. I gulped down the brandy and held out my glass for more, a request which Colin did not ignore. ‘The two of you have been working hand in glove,’ I fathomed. ‘She passing real secrets back from what she could gather in Germany, in exchange for false information from you in return.’

  ‘You have it exactly,’ Colin said.

  ‘But the Germans think you’re both on their side.’ The deviousness of such an operation, not to mention the danger of it, was stupefying. And here was I believing he had been occupied in translating boring documents or perhaps listening in on mundane radio transmissions.

  ‘Amelia has been an invaluable source of intelligence throughout the war. She is trusted. I should say: she was trusted. But recently…’

  John looked uncomfortable. ‘My contact has been less frequent, these past few months. It must have stretched our cover too thinly.’

  That was my fault, I realised. My depression had distracted John from his work. Had it in some way left Amelia exposed?

  ‘They think you’ve gone off her,’ Ratton chuckled.

  ‘Gone off her?’ I blurted out. ‘What basis of relationship do they imagine exists between you?’

  Ratton gave a sort of guffaw which he turned into an artificial cough at a glance from Colin.

  ‘They believe we’re lovers, of course,’ John declared, ‘what else? Or they did do.’

  The upshot of the meeting in the library was John was to depart with the men in the morning. He would be smuggled somehow into France and hole up at Monique’s villa until he could make contact with Amelia, form a plan and get her to safety. The men agreed it in the face of my arguments and in the end I simply had to give in.

  Neither John nor I saw a wink of sleep that night. I railed at him as I had no right whatsoever to do, with the father of my child upstairs in the house and the ghost of my would-be lover an ever-present spectre between us. Were he and my sister really lovers? Or had that been just a front? How much time had they spent together? Under what circumstances? In company with others, or alone? What was she like? Did he think her prettier than me? Had she asked, at all, about me? My jealousy knew no bounds.

  ‘A fine time you’ve been having of it,’ I flung at him, ‘fucking Cinderella and the ugly sister! Perhaps you’d have liked us both together!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Evelyn,’ John said. He answered each question like a man under Gestapo interrogation; effectively name, rank and serial number, neither confirming nor denying. That the man I loved could be such a stranger to me, and could withhold the truth with such patient stoicism, appalled me, and although he comforted me, and reassured me, and held me while I wept, it was in the mildest, most non-committal terms, and I felt further from him than I had ever felt before.

  In between placating me, John began to pack a few belongings into a bag, and stifled paroxysms of coughing.

  ‘See! See!’ I crowed, as he hacked over his handkerchief, ‘you aren’t well.’

  But nothing I could say would deter him. ‘I am doing it for your sister,’ he insisted, ‘she is a brave woman, in terrible danger which only I can rescue her from.’

  His remark only made it worse. In my head Amelia was the other ‘me’, my alter-ego, the person I might have been if I’d been born higher up the family tree. She was the worldly, sophisticated, courageous woman I would never be - not because I did not have it in me, but because she had had all the opportunities. Now she would have John, too.

  ‘Why?’ I wailed. ‘Why does it have to be you?’

  ‘And then there’s Monique,’ he went on, adding fuel to the already burning fire. ‘If she’s really ill, (and I have no reason to question it) I really ought to go to her. I owe her something…’

  ‘You owe her nothing!’

  ‘Evelyn, darling, you don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I sobbed, ‘I don’t.’

  By this time it was almost dawn, and I was putting together the makings of a scratch breakfast. My sleepless head swam with that unreal sensation that all this was a dream or would prove to be a terrible joke.

  John sighed. I could feel him summoning patience from a cache which was almost empty. He stood behind me at the table while I smeared a parsimonious amount of margarine onto bread, and put his arms around my waist. ‘If I’m caught, we have a ready-made cover story,’ he explained, as though to a child. ‘They think we’re passionately in love. Our communiques are coded as love letters. According to them I’m a man so far gone I hardly need the excuse of Monique’s illness to rush back to Amelia’s arms, as they believe. If I didn’t use it as a pretext, I think they’d be suspicious. They think I’m one of them, so they won’t intern me. Colin will provide me with a dossier of information to take with me. It will be so nearly true, so hard to prove or disprove, by the time they find it’s a smokescreen we’ll be home and dry. But probably they won’t even know I’m in the country. I’ll wait at Monique’s villa and Amelia will get to me one way or another, and a boat will pick us up.’

  ‘In which case, why do you even need to go?’

  ‘In case, in case, Evelyn,’ he said, unable to prevent a note of exasperation from sounding in his voice. ‘These things are so layered in deceit and lies, half-truths, whole truths, different agendas. Different people know different things; one lie does not fit all. How can I explain it to you? You just have to trust me.’

  ‘Trust you?’ The notion was laughable. But then, John’s arms around me were almost all that held me up.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The men gathered on the gravel in the first glimmer of dawn after a light breakfast, and began to stow away their bags.

  Giles took the opportunity to pull me to one side, and we walked on the lawns below the terrace where, I recalled we had walked before.

  If I expected complaints and recriminations, I was not to have them. Giles looked peaky, despite his fleshiness. His hand trembled as it held his cigarette. I wondered whether he had become too dependent on alcohol - he certainly looked as though he could use a drink now. But his tone was gentle and conciliatory. ‘I ought to thank you, really,’ he began.

  ‘Thank me?’

  ‘You could have made things awkward for me,’ he went on, ‘about the child, of course, I mean.’

  ‘Why would I have done that?’

  ‘Well,’ he hesitated, awkward, unsure how to continue. ‘I presume I imposed myself on you. At the very least, I don’t suppose I behaved like a gentleman.’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  The blush of dawn spread across his cheek. ‘I thought at the time something had happened, but I had been very drunk, nothing was clear to me. When y
ou didn’t make any sign I decided I had dreamed it, imagined it. It suited me to believe so, I suppose.’

  I smiled, ‘I took the blame - if there was any - onto myself. I certainly had no intention of causing you embarrassment or of being a burden.’

  ‘Ironically,’ he said, ‘though it would have caused tongues to wag in some circles, it would have stilled others. But that’s by the bye. Let me say this: if there ever is anything the child needs, you must tell me. She seems a nice little thing - very pretty, like her mother. I don’t suppose I’ll ever have children of my own. I’m not the marrying kind.’ He threw me a look, and I sensed confidences he would offer, if he could, but a slamming car door brought our conference to a close. ‘I won’t impose myself now, even if I did then. But that isn’t to say I absolve myself of responsibility.’

  ‘You’re very good. But Awan thinks John is her father, and he has been a father to her in every way. She needs no other.’

  On the drive, the motorcar roared into life. It was time to say goodbye. Giles gave an old-fashioned bow. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘remember what I have said.’

  John kissed me before he got into the car, and then it drove off and into the throat of trees at the bottom of the drive, and I was alone at Tall Chimneys once more.

  Although, of course, not absolutely alone. Kenneth and Rose and their boys were like hawsers; they anchored me and kept me safe. If John felt increasingly like a stranger, they felt more like family than ever and I clung to them.

  The weather that autumn was mild and dull, much like my life at Tall Chimneys while John was away. I worried about him but nursed, also, a bitter resentment against him; he had kept secrets which might have been in the national interest but which had not been in mine. The more I found out about him only went to show how much more there was I did not know. My failure to get to the hidden heart of the man infuriated me. And yet. And yet. Again and again he came back to me. In times of crisis he had not deserted me. If he gave me reason to distrust him then there was ample evidence also that he was reliable.

  For the foregoing months of the year my depression had lent me a leaden indolence which would scarcely permit my limbs to stir or even the smallest modicum of enthusiasm to be generated for anything at all. But now I found myself restless and ill at ease. I took again to the woods, meandering beneath the dripping trees and forging carelessly through the rivulets and spongy bogs of the woodland. I walked to the village on occasion, and bought things I did not need from the village shop just to have an excuse for the journey, to use up time which had never seemed to hang so heavy on my hands before. There were several new babies in the village, nine months or so since the departure of the airmen. Did their mothers, I wondered, cringe with shame at the evidence of their licentiousness, as I had done? Would they suffer the withering looks and tart accusations which had been levelled at me? At one time I would have felt a sort of kinship with them, a kind of sisterhood of defiance, but now I felt utterly out on a limb, separated off from any association we might have shared. It reminded me with a pang, though, that but for the honourable behaviour of Cameron Brook, I too might have had another baby to take care of.