Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  I will say this for Harry: he managed to climb up the steps to the front doors of Dingley Dell and walk inside to knock on my father’s study door without passing out. I had already joked that I would stand by with a wet towel and some smelling salts but when I saw Harry’s pallor I realised it was not such a joke after all.

  I left him going into the study and fled to the drawing room where I pretended not to have a care in the world, until my mother came to the door and beckoned to me.

  Outside in the hall, she pointed to the study.

  ‘Your father is in there making a quite beastly row.’

  I stood outside the door with her and listened. It was true. There was a beastly row.

  ‘I think they’re singing,’ I said, after a bit.

  ‘Your father is only allowed to sing when Melville’s playing,’ my mother stated. ‘If he must sing on his own he has to do it in the garden, or on the pavement outside. He knows that.’

  ‘I think he’s trying to be helpful.’

  ‘The last time your father was helpful we had to call an ambulance.’ She sighed, which made me think she had been listening to The Archers too much. ‘I had better go in and do something about all this before it gets out of hand.’

  Things getting out of hand was something that my mother dreaded even more than the Bomb. They loomed large in her life. I increasingly saw her as a martyr to the nation’s security, what with the constant dinner parties she was forced to give at Dingley Dell to keep my father’s agents happy at all times, and the likelihood of swordsticks falling apart – it was a hard life for her.

  As the daughter of an MI5 officer and not just a theatre snob, but a car snob too, I could only regret that my father had to go about in such unremarkable cars, and very often in a very dubious-looking Mackintosh. These are sacrifices that the nation as a whole cannot appreciate, but to the family of a man running undercover agents, they are very real. In the course of his work my father had to affect many different disguises. One of them he had described to me. ‘Man Leaning on Bar in Mac with Pipe’ was good cover while listening, and in this character he picked up goodness knows how much information.

  ‘You would be surprised,’ he said, ‘how much people will confide to a stranger after a pint or two, especially if he listens to them. Not many people are good at listening, you know.’

  The truth was that my father would have loved a large Bentley and a gold wristwatch, not to mention a cashmere coat, but it would have made him stand out in the places where he went to gather information. His greatest regret was not being able to get into the army on account of poor eyesight, so he’d elected to fight for his country another way, by doing covert security work in defence of the nation. As a terminally modest man, it suited him fine.

  Not that any of this was on my mind when I pushed open his study door that morning.

  The scene upon which I stumbled was extraordinary to me: my father, arm-in-arm with Harry of all people, marching up and down his study – rug rolled back – while at the same time singing what I imagined from the military sound of it must be a German marching song. But then Germans speaking German have a habit of sounding cross, even if they’re being nice and kind.

  Harry had the unfortunate air of a man being marched off to the police station.

  ‘March, young man, march!’

  Harry marched and marched again. Sweat started to bead on his forehead before my father finally stopped, perhaps remembering it was Sunday and time to go to the drinks cupboard. He shook Harry’s hand and walked off.

  On the way back to his flat Harry was speechless, and with due deference to his artistic ordeal, I did not break the silence. He spoke at last as he put his key in the front door.

  ‘If I don’t get this job on the film it will not be your father’s fault,’ he said in a sober voice. ‘He is a very forceful man.’

  ‘But why were you singing?’ I asked as we walked into the dark hall of the flat that always smelled of the kind of cooking you are very glad you are not being asked to eat. I went on, ‘My father can’t sing in tune, which is why he loves to hear Melville singing and playing. It is why he loves musicals. They are wonderful to him.’

  ‘Your father maintains that the best way to learn a language is first to sing in it. He said schools should do this, it makes learning more fun.’

  I nodded vaguely, my mind already on whether or not Harry would get the job.

  As a matter of fact, I thought of nothing else for the next few days. I so hoped that he would get the job. It would make such a difference to him.

  Time went by, as it tends to do, at a very boring and slow pace, day after day after day – and still no news. My mother knew that I was worried because I kept going to the kitchen to polish my shoes, which was so out of character that she bought me a health tonic.

  And still Harry heard nothing, and still my shoes were so highly polished they could have gone on parade at Trooping the Colour for the Queen’s official birthday.

  One day I woke up determined not to think about it any longer. And I didn’t think about it. I went to meet Harry at the coffee bar still in determined mood.

  He was already there. I sat down opposite him. The moment I saw the look in his eyes I knew that I would be paying for coffee for the next week.

  ‘Gus rang.’

  ‘At last.’

  ‘Yup. He even managed to remember my number, which is big for Gus.’

  ‘And?’

  I knew not to sound too interested so I made sure to say ‘and’ at the same time as I was beckoning to the waitress.

  ‘And I did not get the part.’

  I sighed, very heavily,

  ‘Oh, sugar, what a drying shame. After all your work.’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you? You polished up your German no end.’

  ‘I know, and they said my accent was perfect, but—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Apparently, the director told Gus, I kept sounding as if I was singing it.’

  So it was coffee on me – oh, and cake – for the next week.

  THE INVITATION

  Arabella and I first became friends at the War Office. In some ways it was unavoidable since we sat opposite each other tapping away at our ancient Underwood typewriters. Happily, a bit like Dermot and Harry in their shared room at the flat, Arabella and I were complete opposites. To begin with she was very beautiful, and I was not. This was not false modesty on my part. Not even Mrs Graham, who quite liked me, had ever been able to say more of my looks than ‘you’ll do’.

  Then there was the question of our temperaments. Arabella was organised and considered. When faced with a crisis of any kind, she pulled back and assumed a sphinx-like expression that always boded well because it meant she was thinking, which was not something I did unless I was on a bus, and then only if no one was sitting next to me.

  At this particular moment in time Arabella was looking even more sphinx-like than usual. I had told her something – well, confessed would be a better word – and it had sent her into a mentally crossed-leg position accompanied by the dream-like trance that gave her eyes the look of someone seeing far into the future.

  ‘I don’t think that is a very good idea,’ she announced, at last.

  I could not but agree with her.

  ‘Whose idea was it, exactly?’

  I know I was looking uneasy. I must have been, because Arabella abandoned her trance-like state and offered me a Polo mint.

  ‘It was Melville’s idea,’ I said, taking one. ‘He put it up to my father. He likes Harry and doesn’t want to see him starve. Being an actor is eighty per cent starvation, Melville says, and he thought it might help Harry to have a bit of money. At the moment he only eats cornflakes for lunch and a Marmite sandwich for supper. The other day his tummy rumbled so much when we were in the coffee bar the manager called the plumber.’

  Arabella flared her nostrils lightly, which was one of her more endearing habits
when she was thinking hard.

  ‘I can see what Melville means about trying to create some sort of income, but he surely doesn’t know Harry too well?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t know Harry very well at all,’ I agreed. ‘Melville has tried to put him off acting, but that would be like trying to put me off coffee.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought he did know Harry – even suggesting such a thing. But the thought of Harry working undercover is terrifying. He finds life in the open difficult enough.’

  I had to agree with Arabella. What on earth would Harry be like coping with aliases and passwords – and, worst of all for Harry, not being able to tell anyone what he was up to? Because keeping his trap shut was not something Harry had ever done, at least not in front of me.

  ‘Probably nothing will come of it,’ Arabella said in a kindly tone, which we both knew meant that she hoped to goodness it wouldn’t.

  Unfortunately, I knew that something had already come of Melville’s suggestion. My father had called me into his study and announced that he wanted Harry’s address. I would have given anything to tell him the wrong one, but I was not that brave. If your father was an MI5 officer you had to be a complete duffer not to realise that treading the straight and narrow was a better choice than being sent on an exchange visit with a Russian agent. So I watched my father with a sinking heart as he wrote down Harry’s address very carefully. Following this he told me he would write Harry a letter, which I knew would begin: ‘If you care to come to the Cleveland Hotel on a date of your choosing I may be able to help you with something of interest regarding your future.’

  I knew this was how MI5 letters always began, because my father had told me that this was the kind of letter he had received before the war, when he was invited to join MI5 instead of climbing into a uniform. Now he sealed the envelope and gave me the letter to post to Harry. As I was walking to the post I found myself tempted to throw it in a bin, but once again I did not dare, for the very good reason that the non-arrival of Harry’s letter would have placed me under suspicion, which in turn could lead to that dread of all dreads – an interrogation.

  So I posted the letter and waited for the inevitable repercussion, which happened in only a very short space of time.

  Harry arrived white-faced at the coffee bar, and since he was carrying the letter it was obvious that it was not because we had changed our daily meeting place to somewhere cheaper.

  ‘Was this your idea?’ he demanded, looking fraught. ‘And why would your father want me to have lunch with him? He says he has “something of interest to impart to me”.’

  I shook my head. My head-shaking implied it was nothing to do with me, which it truly was not.

  ‘Whose idea was it then?’

  I knew you must never betray your sources, so I went on shrugging my shoulders and looking dumb, which was not difficult for me. Quite apart from anything else, I knew that Melville would get into Harry’s bad books for life if I told him the suggestion had come from him, however well intended.

  ‘Your father wants me to meet him for lunch at the Cleveland.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice. The food is so good there.’

  ‘I can’t meet him for lunch at the Cleveland – my only suit is at the cleaner’s.’

  ‘In that case, just write back and thank him and say you will have to wait for Sketchley’s to send your suit back. He will quite understand.’

  Harry looked close to suicide.

  ‘Why does he want me to go to lunch with him? I mean why? I am only a two-bit actor, what possible interest could I be to him?’

  I tried to look vague and innocent, and after failing horribly I sipped my coffee and wished we were back in the more expensive coffee bar where there was a view of the High Street, which was always such a nice distraction when things got awkward.

  ‘What can he want with me?’

  I looked at Harry. He had the air of someone who had just seen something worse than terrible; he had seen something incredibly embarrassing. I sometimes thought that embarrassment was actually one of the worst sorts of tortures. I mean, who would not rather break their arm than be laughed at because their skirt was caught up in their shopping?

  ‘Maybe he just wants to give you a good lunch because he knows you’re having trouble getting work?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘If that were the case he would have asked me round to Dingley Dell.’

  ‘You don’t have to go.’

  ‘I do. You know I do. I have to go.’

  Harry brightened suddenly.

  ‘Maybe Sketchley’s will lose my suit?’

  The day of the lunch it was quite obvious that Sketchley’s had not lost his suit. In fact, Harry looked very smart, and I said so in that rather irritating way that girlfriends do when they want to make someone feel better who is resigned to feeling terrible.

  ‘You know where the Cleveland is?’ Harry nodded. ‘At least you will have a good meal; you could do with eating something other than cornflakes.’

  Harry nodded again, speechless with fear. ‘What’s the best way to cope with your father?’

  ‘I don’t know really.’ I thought for a second. ‘Let him talk, perhaps?’

  ‘He’s not going to start singing again, is he?’

  ‘No, no, he hardly ever sings, that was just a one-off to try to help you get a part.’

  We were at the bus stop. Harry looked so frightened I gave him a quick hug, which made him have another thought just as the bus was arriving and he was hopping on to it.

  ‘He’s not going to make me marry you, is he?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ I called out, horrified. ‘You’re not what he calls suitable.’

  There was just enough time for Harry to look relieved before the bus drove off and I turned to go back to the War Office.

  ‘You’re looking pasty,’ Arabella observed, with some satisfaction.

  ‘I’m feeling pasty,’ I admitted miserably. ‘Harry’s having lunch at the Cleveland with my father.’

  ‘Oh, crumbs,’ Arabella said, winding a triplicate of A4 and carbon paper into her typewriter. ‘That is a turn up for the worst.’

  I agreed before going into Commander Steerforth’s office to take dictation.

  I was always cheered by Commander Steerforth. I had only to see him and I felt better. I thought it was something to do with his having been in the navy. This particular morning he was humming a little snatch of Gilbert and Sullivan, and as we both knew the words we were able to form a little duet with the bit that goes ‘the Ruler of the Queen’s Nav-ee’.

  As soon as that was over I whipped out my shorthand notebook and waited expectantly, pencil poised.

  ‘You look pasty,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘I am feeling pasty,’ I admitted.

  ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

  I looked at the dear, dear Commander and thought for a minute. I knew he was currently escorting Arabella’s mother and they were having a nice time being decorous and going to theatres and operas and musicals and art galleries, and shopping at Harrods for very small things that could be carried home very easily. They were both single and enjoying life, and it suddenly seemed to me that it must be so nice to be single and middle-aged and enjoying life together after lots of other bits of life that had perhaps not been so enjoyable. ‘I would not want to burden you with my problems, Commander Steerforth,’ I told him.

  ‘I should burden me if I were you,’ he said happily. ‘Once you’ve been in the navy you’ve heard everything, you know.’

  ‘It’s just that Harry – the man I am going out with at the moment … he’s an out-of-work actor – is having lunch with my father today.’

  Commander Steerforth rose to his feet and went to the window. There was a dreadful silence. Eventually he turned back and shook his head at me.

  ‘No wonder you’re looking pasty,’ he said quietly. ‘I wouldn’t want to have lunch with your father, and I’m not an out-o
f-work actor.’ He paused before going on. ‘Your father is one of the most frightening men I have ever had to deal with.’

  My boss looked across at me, his expression at its most serious.

  ‘Why is he so frightening?’ I asked, although I certainly would not disagree with this.

  ‘The reason he is so frightening,’ Commander Steerforth stated, after pausing to consider, ‘is because he never, ever gets angry, and people who don’t get angry are always feared. If you have noticed, when he is – shall we say – disquieted, he drops his voice, lower and lower and lower where most men raise theirs. Shouting is not something your father will ever have done.’

  I nodded silently. It was true.

  There was another long silence as Commander Steerforth left his position by the window and sank slowly down into his chair.

  I waited before putting up a defence of my father and his frightening reputation.

  ‘He can be very nice sometimes. I mean he tried to help Harry with his German accent for a film – it wasn’t his fault it didn’t have a very good outcome.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he is the best pal in the world, I know that, but this poor chap, this Harry – I feel sorry for him.’ The Commander shook his head, and then brightened suddenly. ‘But perhaps something nice will come of the lunch, for once.’

  I didn’t like that ‘for once’. And all the time I was taking dictation I thought of poor Harry on the bus, and then making his way into the Cleveland, and my father probably already at his table, waiting, because I knew he was always early for the good reason it put him at an advantage over people. Something else he had told me, but which I failed to practise myself because if I was early for someone they would just think I had got the time wrong.

  I don’t know what I thought would happen to Harry, but I certainly could not have imagined what did happen. The telephone on my desk rang. I knew it could not be Commander Steerforth because I had just seen him going off to meet Arabella’s mother at the Royal Opera House. It was well past packing up time, which at the War Office was six o’clock, and I should have been flinging myself towards a ‘vanishing nine’ as the number nine buses were known to their regulars.