MI5 and Me

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘The new gent is very generous,’ Arabella said, but she spoke behind a raised hand, making sure only I saw what she was saying.

  I was only too happy that Maria Constanza had her back to us or she might have suspected Arabella of not trusting her. As it was she put the coffee pot down in front of us in such a way that I felt she really did not feel a great deal of affection for Arabella.

  ‘She’s a spy,’ Arabella said in a low voice the moment the poor woman had left the room. ‘She thinks I don’t know that she is always listening in at doors and going through my mother’s handbag.’

  I frowned. I couldn’t understand why the maid should be spying on Arabella’s mother, or Mater. As far as I could gather, she was once a famous Society beauty and was still only interested in what could loosely be called her social life.

  ‘Perhaps Maria Constanza is just nosy?’ I ventured.

  ‘I’ll say she’s nosy – and she makes lousy coffee,’ Arabella agreed. Getting up, she threw the contents of the pot away and made some more coffee.

  ‘I don’t touch what she puts in front of me,’ she said, nodding towards the closed kitchen door. ‘Really I wonder that Mater does, but you can’t tell her anything.’

  I felt distinctly uneasy, as anyone would. It was one thing to have actor-spooks living at home, because after all my father was running them, but quite another to go into a luxurious Knightsbridge flat owned by a lady with a reputation for having very round heels, and find that the food and drink might be suspect. This was feeling the icy draught from the Cold War blowing too close for comfort.

  I returned to the subject, determined to find out more, because I knew Arabella did not get flapped easily and I could see that underneath her once again serene exterior she was uneasy, and that was not like her. I thought she might be too suspicious of the maid, but even so I was glad that she had made us fresh coffee, for my grandmother always said you never knew what foreign servants were up to, until they left.

  The following day I went into Commander Steerforth’s office hoping against hope that he would have some work to alleviate my coffee and tea breaks. He had a couple of short memos to be typed in reply to other officers’ memos, following which I sat with my shorthand notebook and pencil playing Hangman and he ruminated, something at which he was rather good.

  ‘I forgot to ask you last week. Did you attend the unfortunate first night of Dame Lily Farjeon’s play?’ he finally asked after I had observed it was his coffee break and furnished him with two iced buns and a large sugary coffee.

  I told him I had attended the first night, and then fell silent. I felt I knew too much about everything to do with that play to be able to add anything more than that it was now a well-established flop.

  ‘Dame Lily has a bit of a reputation, you know,’ the Commander said, lowering his voice. ‘An unfortunate tendency to meddle in affairs that are really above her beautiful head.’ He reached forward and placed a file in front of him. ‘We have confidential reports here about her political activities, and I can only tell you that they make interesting reading. She has even signed a petition to Save the Verse Play, which is unfortunate to say the least.’

  Commander Steerforth sighed.

  ‘I do wish actresses would just keep to what they do best. It’s so much better to be worshipped from over the footlights, tread the boards, become the magical beings created by Shakespeare and others, and leave all the politics to people who can’t do any of those things. Lift our spirits, allow us to worship you, but keep away from political people who are determined to make our lives miserable. Vivien Leigh would never get involved above her beautiful head. She is only interested in herself and her career, and that is how it should be.’

  This was as emotional as I had ever seen Commander Steerforth except when I once brought some of Mrs Graham’s very special chocolate cake from home, when his eyes had filled with what looked like something very close to tears.

  I felt I should try to defend Dame Lily without giving away anything too sensitive.

  ‘I understand that she was talked into doing the play by an old friend. Apparently she only did it as a favour to him.’

  ‘Really, is that true? In that case, no more to be said. Despite everything she obviously has a heart of gold, and in time we may even forgive her support for the Verse Play.’ He closed the file again. ‘There is nothing here of much interest,’ he said happily. ‘And if the play closed that is all that matters. She just made a silly mistake, talked into it by some left-leaning jack-the-lad. Now here is a more serious matter that has come to light.’

  He reached for another file.

  I stared at him. The name on the file was unmistakable.

  ‘Obviously we never discuss each other’s information, but I think you know the person involved here.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You have been to the premises where some of the events detailed in here have taken place.’

  I had never felt more uneasy. This was worse than my father breaking into a friend’s house. Commander Steerforth was pointing to an address that we both knew was that of my best friend’s mother’s flat.

  ‘I was there on Saturday,’ I admitted.

  ‘Saturday? Did you notice anything in particular?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, cautiously.

  ‘Anything unusual?’

  ‘There was a foreign maid.’

  ‘Did she speak Russian?’

  ‘No, but there was a great deal of vodka and caviar about the place,’ I burst out, and immediately felt as if I had handed Arabella and her mother over to the police.

  Commander Steerforth’s eyes lit up to maximum iced-bun alert.

  ‘My goodness, you have been useful.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you think you would like me to ask your father if you could go on active service?’

  My mouth went dry. I had never been someone who liked to be active, unless you could call running after the number nine bus active. The very suggestion of any kind of team sports was enough to make me report to Matron instantly.

  ‘I am not suitable to be active, Commander,’ I said, making my voice sound suddenly reedy and weak. ‘I never usually say anything, of course, but my health is not the greatest. Why, even to get in here – I can tell you now, I was convinced I would not pass a medical.’

  ‘They don’t have medicals here,’ Commander Steerforth said, and then he frowned. ‘Perhaps they should.’ He made a note on his pristine notepad. ‘I will bring that up at the next Section meeting. We really should keep an eye on our health, and that of our agents, it is only sensible. Particularly agents … they might have anything.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘So you don’t think you are up to active service?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ I sighed. ‘I like the idea, of course. I want to do everything I can to help MI5 and be an asset to them. I want to defend our country against Trotskyists and people who sign petitions to Save the Verse Play, but I just don’t have the stamina. My mother has always said I was born feeble.’

  ‘You’re outstanding when it comes to choosing cakes,’ Commander Steerforth said, after a short pause while he obviously tried to think of something I was good at. ‘Top marks. I have put that on your monthly assessment, that and the fact you take shorthand so well. My last secretary, the late Laetitia, used to fall asleep all the time.’

  I sighed inwardly in relief. I had obviously passed my monthly behavioural assessment.

  ‘That was very kind of you, Commander,’ I said before returning to my Section. I thought no more about it until he called me back the following afternoon.

  He looked excited, as if a very brilliant thought had arrived at last.

  ‘They’ve got a spiffing Victoria sponge fresh in,’ I told him. ‘Really good and squishy, lots of jam. One of the waitresses’ mother has taken up making them.’

  I knew at once that a hugely important notion must have come to him when he failed to take me up on the Victoria sponge.

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p; ‘I have been thinking, overnight and again this morning, about you. While I appreciate you are not the type to go on active, active service, for health reasons and so on, nevertheless it seems to me that you could go on inactive service.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, my voice returning to weak and reedy.

  Commander Steerforth pushed his chair away from his desk so that he faced me full on, which he never usually did. It was ominous.

  ‘You are, at this moment, uniquely positioned to be on inactive service. Nothing need change in your life, which is why it is called inactive service, but you can be of great use in the case of the lady whom the Service is now calling Mater Hari.’

  I was to spy on Arabella’s mother? The very idea was appalling.

  ‘I haven’t even met the lady in question, Commander, only had coffee in her flat, and seen a whole lot of vodka and caviar. That’s not enough to make me an agent surely?’

  ‘It is quite enough,’ he replied robustly. ‘Why, I have known people become agents just because they heard someone talking foreign on a train. Spies are made like this. Added to which,’ he gave me an appreciative look, ‘you are so unlike one, who on earth would take you for a spy? No one in their right mind would ever suspect you to be any more than a pretty young popsy.’

  I thought for a minute. I knew he meant well, but I still didn’t like the idea of being a popsy at all. It sounded like the sort of person who was always doing the Charleston on a table top, or coming out of a wine cooler in a bikini in the middle of a regimental dinner. I indicated this to Commander Steerforth, and he laughed rather too loudly.

  ‘That is exactly what I mean,’ he said. ‘It is exactly why no one will suspect you – you are just what they used to call “too-too” to be suspicious.’

  ‘Yes, but even so, I would suspect me, really I would. I would be the first person to suspect me, simply because I am not at all suspicious,’ I insisted.

  ‘Good thinking. In that case we had better make sure you do something suspicious and then no one will suspect you. Leave that to me. It might take time, but I am sure I will be able to come up with something.’

  ‘What about the Victoria sponge?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Shall I bring you a piece?’

  ‘Of course, of course, and by the time you come back I will have something for you.’

  Thankfully Commander Steerforth did not come up with something so quickly; even so my journey home was miserable. Although I had only a vague idea of what a cleft stick might be, I knew I must be balancing in one, and I was certainly on the horns of a dilemma.

  My father was standing by the drinks cupboard. I thought he might be able to help me get out of being on inactive service, but since Hal had just come into the room and they were about to take their drinks into the garden and mutter, which men seemed to have a habit of doing, I knew this was not the time to ask him. Besides which, the whole idea was highly sensitive, seeing that it involved Russian gents lurking about luxury flats in Knightsbridge. I didn’t even know whether I should tell him, and worse than that, there was always the risk that he might undertake to bungle a burglary at Mater’s flat.

  That night, for the first time in many months, I flung open my bedroom window and made another attempt at getting pneumonia. Unfortunately I only got cold, and ended up having to take myself off for a hot bath, during which I tried to think of some other way out of my current situation.

  I did not want to spy on Arabella’s mother, but neither did I want to let down Commander Steerforth, my Section, and my country. I plumped for a plan I had quite often plumped for before – I would do nothing. I would leave it to Fate and Commander Steerforth, and hope that nothing came of his bright idea.

  The trouble with doing nothing, I realised the following Saturday, is that nothing very often leads to something. To my great consternation, Commander Steerforth had come up with something for me to do, and as a result I was once more having coffee with Arabella.

  ‘I would love to meet your mother,’ I ventured – this being part of the Steerforth Notion. ‘I’ve heard so much about her, especially how beautiful she is. She has been painted by everyone famous, hasn’t she?’

  Arabella nodded, but the expression in her eyes was one of deep suspicion. She was no fool, as I knew well, and once she moved off her bed of nails, she could put three and three together and come up with some amazing results.

  ‘You can meet my mother,’ she announced, after a pause, ‘always providing you tell me why you really want to meet her?’

  For no reason I remembered Melville telling me that Noël Coward had been in the habit of smuggling currency after the war, and that he used to say to the Customs Officers ‘do hurry up, my feet are killing me, it’s all the pound notes in my shoes’, which apparently the Customs Officers always found hilarious, and as a result they let him through even faster.

  I stared straight-faced at Arabella.

  ‘I want to meet your mother so I can spy on her,’ I said.

  Arabella started to laugh.

  ‘Of course that’s why. Well, as a matter of fact, she is actually awake and Lover Boy is away, so you can certainly meet her, but don’t be surprised when you do. She is quite a number is Mater.’

  After a short interval we went through to the drawing room and waited. Eventually a sound was heard. It was Mater. She was singing and rather well too, I thought, although Arabella raised her eyes to heaven as if to indicate that this was just something we would have to put up with.

  In Mater came, and I could see at once why so many famous painters had once begged her to sit to them. She was older now, of course, but still inexpressibly lovely. Her golden hair and blue eyes, her high cheekbones, her delicate features, were quite extraordinary.

  ‘You’re Lottie,’ she announced, looking at me. ‘You’re exactly how I imagined you.’

  This set me back. I had no idea why anyone like Mater should ever have spent any time imagining what I would be like.

  ‘How do you do?’ I greeted her. And then, in a moment of inspiration, added, ‘You are even more beautiful than I imagined.’

  It was creepy, but it seemed to work because she smiled and sank back against a mountain of silk cushions.

  ‘Actually Lottie is here to spy on you,’ Arabella told her, and Mater laughed.

  ‘Spies, spies, spies – that is all people think about nowadays. Bad enough during the war when they would keep locking up nuns, poor things, but now every other person with a foreign accent has to be a spy. The whole thing is nonsense, and such a waste of public money. Half my friends are foreign, and they are always under suspicion. It is just so irksome for them.’

  I was impressed that she obviously knew that her friends were being watched, and I wondered whether the Steerforth Notion was not as new to the thinking of MI5 as I’d imagined. It was really rather strange for Mater to come out with this so soon into our acquaintance.

  ‘Fetch me a vodka, would you, Arabella?’

  Most older women drank gin or sherry. I had never heard of any of my friends’ mothers or my mother’s friends drinking vodka. This was all too Ninotchka for words. And I was suddenly afraid I was being drawn into a situation that might be going to prove too much for me. The ghastly thought crossed my mind that I might even now be called upon to be on active rather than inactive service.

  Arabella returned with vodka and Mater took an appreciative sip of it.

  ‘So much that the authorities do to my friends is so obvious,’ she continued. ‘For instance, listening in to telephone conversations. The moment you pick up the receiver’ – she reached for her impressively Hollywood-style white telephone on the table beside her – ‘hear that? It clicks!’ She seemed very pleased that she was being tapped. ‘I mean you would think that someone would tell them we all know when that happens not to say anything that might make life difficult for our foreign friends. It is really too silly for them to be bl
ind to how obvious they are.’ She looked at us. ‘I am always saying to Arabella, if only she worked somewhere interesting like MI5, instead of the boring old War Office, I would get her to tell someone higher up in the government what cracking asses they are making of themselves. You would never find the Russians being so obvious, but they have been at it, as it were, for centuries.’

  Russians being ‘at it’ was a particularly unfortunate phrase, which was probably why Arabella left the room in search of a bitter lemon for us both, leaving me alone with Mater.

  ‘So your father works in the War Office too. How very dull for him. Does he find it dull?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I lied. ‘He finds it very dull, particularly now there are hardly any wars on.’

  The telephone rang. Mater picked up.

  ‘No, this is not Trigata,’ she said in a resigned tone. ‘No, it is no good your insisting. This is not an import–export business – it is the private residence of one who is growing increasingly irritated by your calls. We do not stock anything you would wish to acquire. Goodbye.’ She picked up her drink and sipped at it for a moment. ‘Really, what is happening around here when people seeking an import–export business will not leave us alone?’

  I did not think too much about that interruption, at least not at that moment, until as an agent on inactive service, I reported back to Commander Steerforth the following Monday.

  ‘Nothing happened at all, but she does know … no, all her foreign friends who are under suspicion, they all know … that their telephone calls are being tapped. There is a click before you hear the normal tone. It is quite obvious, apparently.’

  Commander Steerforth stared at me.

  ‘A click, did you say?’

  ‘Yes, quite a loud one,’ I said, exaggerating, full of self-importance.