Our Friends in Berlin

by Anthony Quinn

  It was strange to Amy that she’d not thought about Hoste in ages, and now she’d heard his name mentioned twice within a week. ‘I’m sorry to hear it. Does this mean that you’ll have to arrest Marita?’

  Tessa returned a cool, measuring look that unsettled her. ‘No. But it’s vital we shore up Hoste’s credibility. That means convincing Marita that he is absolutely and unequivocally the Gestapo’s man. And we’ve come up with a plan that might enable it.’

  Amy took a drag of her cigarette. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Please understand that it’s a temporary measure. Something to buy him time until the invasion plan is under way.’ She paused again. ‘So, we give Marita a new angle on Hoste. We insert someone into his life, someone who will confirm to her that he really is a Nazi spy. It’s a ruse, a huge bluff, but if we have the right person it could work.’

  Amy began to grasp her part in the deception. ‘You think that person is … me?’

  ‘You’re the only one we know whom Marita would trust.’

  ‘Even if that’s true, why would Hoste take up with me? Think about it. He’s supposed to be an enemy agent. What would possibly persuade him to give away his secrets?’

  ‘You fall in love with one other,’ said Tessa without flinching.

  Amy choked back a laugh once she realised that Tessa wasn’t joking. She took a moment to find her voice. ‘We fall in love? That’s your idea?’

  ‘It’s perfectly plausible. You’re both single. You’ve met before. Marita would be the mutual friend who brings you together. Once you “discover” his other life as a Gestapo agent you will confide it to Marita. Her trust in him will be renewed, and our network will be safe again.’

  They stared at one another. Amy slowly shook her head. ‘It won’t work. I couldn’t kid Marita I was in love with him. And I’m certain Hoste wouldn’t have a clue about pretending to be in love with me.’

  ‘Miss Strallen. You and I both know how to fake things. We put on fronts, we put on masks, all the time. We couldn’t get on with our lives if we didn’t. Now, you may tell me that you won’t do this. But don’t tell me that you can’t.’

  ‘Very well. I won’t do this. I find the whole idea absurd, and faintly sickening.’

  Tessa made a conceding expression, and waited a beat. ‘I understand. In that case I must appeal to your nobler instincts. If we do nothing, Hoste is very likely to be compromised. Once Marita knows for certain he’s one of ours, the news will crackle across the wires like lightning. Other agents will be suspected. It could seriously set back the war effort.’

  ‘Don’t put this on my conscience,’ said Amy coldly. ‘I’ve already been through it with your lot. If you need to get one of your agents out of a hole, best of luck. I’m sure you can dream up another subterfuge. But don’t ask me to be part of it.’

  She picked up the handbag she had placed on the bench and stood. In front of her the Thames flowed unanswerably on. Her eye caught on a little tug ploughing against the grey tide. Tessa had also got to her feet, and said, ‘That’s a pity – though he did say it was unlikely you’d agree.’

  ‘I’m surprised he dared to ask. Was this his scheme?’

  ‘No. It was mine. As a matter of fact I had quite a job persuading him it might work. He saw no way round the central problem.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Oh, that you detest him.’

  Amy bristled at that, and shook her head in irritation. ‘He flatters himself. Actually, I haven’t given him a moment’s thought. But the answer’s still no.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll tell him. If you change your mind –’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Tessa shrugged. ‘You know where to find me.’

  They held one another’s gaze before Amy gave another little lift of her chin in token of farewell, and walked away.

  She made her way back to Brook Street in a deep trance of preoccupation. Tessa Hammond’s level, self-assured voice was still in her ear. She had been prepared for a surprise when the Section had telephoned her, but this had outstripped her wildest imagining. You fall in love with one another. That they had the audacity – the nerve – even to ask her! She had only to think of the humiliation visited on her three years ago, him putting her under surveillance, insinuating himself into her life, then pulling the rug away to emerge as a spy … Whenever she thought of it her innards turned cold. What made them think she would consider helping them now?

  Hammond, admittedly, had not seemed put out by her brusqueness; she was a professional to the marrow. The casual, matter-of-fact way she had accepted her refusal was nearly as infuriating as the proposition itself – as though she secretly believed a mere civilian wasn’t equal to the task. I ought to have given her a piece of my mind, Amy thought, angrily. How dare the woman parachute into my life like this, asking me more or less to pimp myself for them? Good God, I ought to have slapped her face!

  By the time she was back in the office, with a cup of tea and a cigarette, calm had returned and her heartbeat was steady. A little perspective on the matter had been gained. Maddening and high-handed as the Intelligence services were, she had to accept that they were up against it, obliged to work in trying circumstances. Trying? ‘Life or death’ would be nearer the mark. With the war entering a critical stage they were presumably going to do everything in their power to confuse the enemy. And if Marita was as dangerous as Hammond said no wonder they were devising such outlandish schemes to neutralise her. It wasn’t as though Amy didn’t know how to play along. There were times when she had met Marita in company with men whose fly-by-night air invited curiosity. But whenever she pressed her for information Marita would dismiss these passing strangers as inconsequential, or else would say, ‘It’s probably better that you don’t know.’ She also allowed Marita to maintain the fiction that the plentiful funds she always seemed to have derived solely from her ‘translation work’ for a publisher. In fact, Amy had long known where her friend’s weekly stipend was coming from.

  A light knock sounded, and Johanna poked her head round the door. ‘Everything all right, darling?’

  Amy smiled back. ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Oh, I heard you stomping up the stairs before and slamming the door. I thought you might be in a foul mood.’

  ‘I’m fine. A minor annoyance that’s been cleared up.’

  ‘Righto. Well, when you’re ready, let’s go through the latest.’

  She promised to join her in five minutes. Another phrase of Hammond’s had come back to her in the meantime, when she had openly appealed to her ‘nobler instincts’. It was just a way of putting pressure on her, of course: lie back and think of England. But hadn’t she already done her bit three years ago when she alerted Hoste to Billy Adair’s seduction of Georgie? That tip-off had foiled a bomb plot, as it turned out.

  There was no use fretting over it, whatever the rights and wrongs. She had said no, and she meant it.

  She hadn’t set foot in the Ritz for years, and was struck anew by its extravagant spaciousness, its grand cornices and fawn marble, and the velvety crimson carpet she could feel through the soles of her shoes. The management had been determined to keep the war strictly outside its doors, for no spectre of the ration intruded on its table d’hôte or its cocktail list; if you ignored the distant wail of sirens and concentrated on the lounge pianist tinkling through Cole Porter you could imagine yourself back in 1934, or even 1924.

  Under the dimmed lights of the bar it took her a split second to recognise Bobby, whose face seemed to be missing some vital element of old. Yet the blue serge of her WAAF uniform and the beaming grin assured her that this was indeed her dear pal, and they hugged one another with fierce tenderness. Of course it was perfectly obvious to her now what was different.

  ‘You’re not wearing glasses!’

  Bobby fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly. ‘Contact lenses, darling. Just had them fitted today at a place on Weymouth Street.’

  Amy stared at her, d
isconcerted by the estranging nakedness of Bobby’s face. Without her spectacles she seemed oddly vulnerable, and younger. Or was it older? She couldn’t tell. It would take a little adjustment, and meanwhile Bobby was gaily racing on about her mysterious new ‘lenses’. ‘I happened to catch my reflection in a shop window and almost shrieked! Honestly, I don’t think I’d ever properly seen myself before. Who’s that creature with the gigantic noggin, I thought, and why is she slouching like that?’

  Amy laughed, and blinked. ‘They make you look so … young,’ she said, grasping the word in the nick of time.

  ‘Do they?’ she squealed in delight. ‘Well, that’s something, because they’re hell to wear. It feels like I’ve got two great goldfish bowls clamped over my peepers.’

  The Ritz was Bobby’s choice, as of course were the reckless martinis which had just arrived. With her first cold sip Amy felt a renewal of confidence and a wild little surge of fondness. Bobby Garnett – no one apart from her mother ever called her Roberta – was in fact her oldest friend; they had been at school in London together, and though their paths had diverged a bond of almost glandular tenacity had held fast. The Garnetts were an aristocratic family – the sort that never had much money – and Bobby grew up with one foot in the world of giggling debs and house parties, the other in a rackety milieu of dismal bedsits and pawned jewellery. Her voice, which Amy loved, was a husky drawl that always sounded on the edge of laughter, as if she had just stepped out of a Coward play. Bobby had some talent for writing and drawing, though she barely made a living from either. Before the war she had dabbled, illustrating for fashion magazines, learning to paint at evening classes, working at Liberty as a buyer in the ladies’ department, this last only because it earned her a discount on clothes, which she adored above all things. Even in her WAAF serge she looked chic.

  ‘I bought it at Gieves,’ she explained, ‘and made a few alterations. I couldn’t bear to be dowdy, even in a uniform.’

  On joining up Bobby had been posted to the RAF station at Inverness, a place she admitted she had never heard of till that moment.

  ‘How is it there?’

  ‘Well, it’s perked up a bit since I last saw you. There are dances again, and with all the ships coming in we can usually depend on company.’

  ‘I seem to recall you were stepping out with someone …’

  ‘Er … the Norwegian? That came to nothing. I’ve been seeing the captain of a Dutch freighter. And last week I met the sweetest young Scots chap, Mungo, who took me out on a shoot. Though of course I was terrified by the noise of the guns. You remember as a girl I used to leave tea parties for fear of the crackers? Anyway, next thing he’s going to teach me is the Highland fling.’

  ‘Gosh – lowlands and highlands. You run quite a broad church,’ said Amy, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh yes. All denominations welcome …’ And at that she began a more detailed account of what had been happening romantically, acting out scenes in an expert repertoire of different voices and gestures, then switching back to her own ironic commentary. From another, such monologues might have been insufferable, but Bobby’s natural drollery and self-mocking instincts were only endearing. It was the way she played both the stooge and the narrator in the hilarious shambles of her life that captivated Amy. Another round of cocktails came and went before Bobby allowed a hiatus in this part of the evening’s entertainment.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, squinting over her glass at Amy, ‘you’re looking ever so femme du monde, I must say. That dress is divine. How’s the matrimonial business?’

  ‘Oh, rolling along. Did I tell you we’re expanding to the provinces? Jo has just negotiated the lease on a place in Bristol.’

  ‘Good heavens! Who knew there were so many lonely hearts out there? Well, you two did, obviously.’

  ‘We celebrated our fifth anniversary the other week. It’s funny, d’you remember that summer when war was coming, we were convinced the numbers would dry up and the bureau would have to close? And then business just took off – tripled, in fact.’

  Bobby shook her head wonderingly. ‘I suppose there’s nothing quite like tying the knot to take one’s mind off being bombed into smithereens.’

  ‘I think it made people feel a bit safer. Like a charm against misfortune.’

  ‘Either that or they’re terrified of being alone. A friend of mine in the WAAF – Flora – told me about a chap who declared out of the blue he was madly in love and wanted to marry her. She’d only known him a couple of months. Well, she took him back home to dinner, just to test the water. Do you know what he did? Talked to the mother all evening, and more or less ignored Flora until she’d gone to bed! – can you imagine?’

  ‘Don’t tell me she married him …’

  Bobby closed her eyes and shuddered. ‘Heavens, no. Even Flora’s mother – who’s rather grand – thought he was a twit. The next day she said, “If that is being in love, the condition has greatly altered since I was young.”’

  A few moments later she glanced at her watch. ‘Now, we’d better get cracking.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ asked Amy.

  ‘Darling, I’ve only got a forty-eight, and I intend to squeeze every last drop out of it. I’ve reserved a table for us at Quo Vadis – so drink up!’

  Over dinner Bobby’s natural urge to gas relaxed, and by degrees she encouraged Amy to talk more expansively. Amy ate little but drank a great deal, which she felt she’d been doing quite often of late. Wasn’t everyone drinking more now? Having performed the comedy of her recent romantic misadventures, Bobby was bright-eyed with curiosity as to what she herself had been ‘getting up to’; Amy’s shrugging replies couldn’t help sounding, in contrast, rather wan. She told her about being introduced at the anniversary party to Captain Bellamy, and his gallantry in walking her home, but she baulked at recalling those forlorn words she had spoken in reply to his humorous sally.

  ‘You mean, you didn’t even ask him in for a nightcap?’ said Bobby, her face creasing in disappointment.

  ‘I was awfully tight. The poor man almost had to hold me upright.’

  ‘Hmm. I dare say he was hoping to hold a lot more besides. Really, darling, what are we going to do with you?’

  Amy sighed, and sensed the alcohol loosening her guard. Before she could prevent herself she said, ‘You know, Bobs, I sometimes wonder if I’m capable of real love.’

  Bobby stopped drinking mid-gulp. ‘What on earth d’you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Oh, I can do all the flirting and chatting and making myself agreeable, that’s just instinct. But I hardly ever feel – you know – a real passion. I don’t know what it is to be carried away.’

  ‘But you’ve been out with heaps of men. They can’t all have been duffers.’

  ‘No, they weren’t,’ said Amy quietly, ‘but that’s not the point. Some of them I really liked, and I was sorry when it ended. But when I look back I’m not sure if I can honestly say I was in love. With any of them.’

  Bobby retracted her chin sharply. ‘That can’t be true. What about Mark? And Graham? You were with him for ages –’

  ‘Don’t, please, Bobs. Don’t go through them all. I couldn’t bear it.’

  They fell into a silence, lost for the moment in their own thoughts. Amy looked down at her dinner, some sort of fish, almost untouched. She couldn’t quite remember ordering it. She signalled to the waiter for another drink. Across the table Bobby was staring at her, perplexed. The turn of the conversation had suddenly knocked the wind from her sails.

  The waiter had cleared their table before she spoke again. ‘You said “hardly ever” just now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you’d hardly ever felt passionate. Which suggests that you have felt it at some point.’

  Amy frowned at the quibble, and seemed to dismiss it. But Bobby’s enquiring gaze was like a door held open, waiting for an answer. ‘A while ago, I thought – I got to know someone, but no –’

 
‘Who?’

  ‘No one. It was no one. I’d made a mistake, that’s all.’

  Another round of drinks arrived, which provided Amy with an opportune moment to drop the subject altogether.

  Later, a taxi took them from Soho to Queen Anne Street. Bobby was staying the night, and once they entered the front room of Amy’s flat she almost hurled herself onto the couch. It was half past midnight, and though both of them were, as Bobby put it, stinko, Amy went off to fetch the gin. A nightcap wouldn’t make any difference in their state. When she returned from the kitchen she found Bobby hunched over her kitbag, rummaging for something.

  ‘Here,’ she said, drunkenly handing over a brown paper bag. Amy, puzzled, opened it to find two pairs of silk stockings and a bottle of Helena Rubinstein Apple Blossom perfume.

  ‘Oh, Bobs,’ she said, tearing open the latter and spritzing her neck with the scent. ‘You’re such a dear.’

  All sorts of contraband came Bobby’s way, mainly off the boats; she called them the perks of the port. ‘Here’s how,’ said Amy, handing her a tumbler of gin, and they clinked. The room, lit only by a tiny corner lamp, was steeped in shadow. As Amy fixed the blackout curtains against the window she recalled a song from earlier in the evening, ‘Love for Sale’, and began singing softly. Bobby joined in.

  She went to fetch blankets and a pillow for Bobby, whose voice she could hear running down like a used battery. The overnight train from Inverness and the evening’s booze had done for her. Amy made the bed around her friend’s slumberous form and tiptoed out.