by Erica James
By this time my own ability for spotting patterns amongst the ‘quatsch’ – as we referred to the relentless chatter by enemy operators – had been recognised and I took pleasure in knowing that I was now of genuine use at the Park.
I first met Max in the canteen late one night when our shifts coincided. It was the day after I had found an important message secreted within the apparently innocent stream of chit chat. ‘You’re the girl who discovered that German sub tracking the convoy in the Atlantic yesterday, aren’t you?’ he said to me.
‘I might be,’ I replied in a low voice, conscious that secrecy, even amongst one’s colleagues, was vital to security. I was conscious also that he probably thought, as did quite a lot of men, that I had got above myself and should get back to the more menial work of filing and indexing.
‘That was good work on your part,’ he said. ‘How does it feel to know that you are personally responsible for saving all those lives?’
‘I was just doing my job,’ I said, certain now that he was patronising me. Under no circumstances was I going to admit that I was proud of what I had done, although, of course, I was. Especially as the officer with whom I had shared my discovery later informed me that as a consequence of what I’d spotted, the convoy had been alerted and straightaway changed course with wireless silence. It pleased me to picture the German U-boat arriving at the coordinates where it believed there to be a convoy of merchant shipping and finding nothing.
The next night Max approached me again in the canteen and setting down his tray on the table opposite me, said, ‘I believe we have a mutual friend: Romily Temple.’
‘You mean Romily Devereux-Temple?’ I answered absently, turning the page of a book I was reading, and which was taking my mind off the awful food that was served up to us.
‘Ah yes, I keep forgetting that she married. What was her husband like? Quite the roué in his day, I believe.’
I was clearly not going to get any peace to read, so closed the book with a meaningful gesture and looked him squarely in the face. ‘How did you know that I was familiar with Romily?’ I asked.
He tapped his nose. ‘Careless talk costs lives.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ I promptly opened my book again to make the point that he was disturbing me and that unlike just about every other female at the Park, his looks cut no ice with me. Somewhat arrogantly I wanted him to know that I was above such things, that I was immune to his brand of charm and attractiveness. But the thing was, I wasn’t, which made it imperative that I gave no hint that I did indeed find him extraordinarily handsome. He was the sort of man who would age well, I found myself thinking.
‘What are you reading?’ he asked, my bluntness appearing to have no effect on him.
‘Do you really want to know, or are you simply determined to gain my attention?’
‘Both, I suppose. Is that so awful? By the way, we haven’t been introduced properly. I’m Max.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m well aware of who you are.’
He grinned. ‘My reputation goes before me, does it?’
‘You’re Max Blythe-Jones, a Trinity College classicist from Cambridge with a double first. You’re also fluent in German, French and Hungarian, and you’re a rowing blue, and you’ve been here scarcely a month and have bedded more women than—’
He held up a hand to stop me. ‘You’ve been snooping in the files, Miss Flowerday,’ he said with a wag of his finger. ‘Miss Evelyn Flowerday, that is. She of the first class honours degree in mathematics from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and teacher of privileged girls at St Agatha’s School, Kent. Followed by teaching less privileged boys and girls in Melstead St Mary. Something of a comedown for a person of your calibre, I’d say. Current boyfriend is Christopher Devereux, youngest stepson to our mutual friend Romily Devereux-Temple.’
‘And now that we’re properly introduced,’ I said, ‘you can eat your meal and I can read my book.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is you’re reading.’
I held it up for him, so he could see the dust jacket.
‘Murder at Midnight’ he read aloud, and then laughed. ‘By none other than Romily Temple. Now there’s a coincidence.’
Coincidence after coincidence followed from that evening onwards. Or so Max liked to claim. The truth was he made it his business to know which clubs I had joined at the Park – the chess club, the choral and music societies, the Scrabble club and the Scottish country dancing club. It came to be that I didn’t pass a day without encountering him in one way or another. I made it very clear that I would not be added to his roll call of conquests and in accepting the situation, we became friends.
I enjoyed his company. His erudite and lively mind appealed to me greatly and by the time spring arrived, bringing with it warmer weather, we took regular walks and cycle rides together during our precious time off.
I believed he valued my friendship because it was entirely uncomplicated, free of all ambiguity. With me he didn’t have to resort to his usual tricks, which he still employed with regularity on other women at the Park. In the days before Easter he took up with a pretty and vivacious Wren, one of the many who operated the Bombe machines, but by the time the cherry blossom was being shaken from the trees he was bored of her slavish devotion.
‘It’s the thrill of the chase with you, isn’t it?’ I remarked one day when we were having lunch in a quiet country pub. We had cycled the nineteen miles to the Plough, an old-fashioned watering hole well off the beaten track and which served a decent plate of egg and gammon. Compared to the questionable food served in the canteen at the Park, it was manna from heaven. There was only so much whale meat one could stomach.
The other thing about the pub which I liked was that few others from the Park ventured there. It wasn’t that I felt I had anything to hide in being seen with Max, but such was the hothouse environment in which we worked, tongues had a tendency to wag. I would hate for Kit ever to get wind of some piece of malicious tittle-tattle. For the most part, I was accepted as Max’s friend, as ‘one of the boys’. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the feeling of being within his inner circle and that he considered me his intellectual equal.
‘How shallow you make me feel,’ Max said in response to my observation.
‘Not as shallow as you probably make yourself feel,’ I responded.
‘Ouch. You have such a poor opinion of me, I wonder why you want to spend any time in my company.’
‘I see it as my job to reform you.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you indeed?’
‘By the time I’m finished with you I might have fashioned you into a half decent human being. House-trained even.’
He laughed loudly. Over at the bar the woman serving behind it looked our way and smiled. His laugh had the ability to do that, to attract attention. But then he had only to walk into a room and people noticed him. I often thought that it was like being out with a film star whenever we went somewhere – heads turned and eyes lingered, as though they were working out if he was famous.
Some minutes later, and while we were racing through the crossword together, he said, ‘Is that how you regard your boyfriend, Kit?’
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said, glancing up from the anagram I was focusing on.
‘Do you view Kit in the way you do me; a work in progress, somebody to fix?’
I felt a twitch of unease, recalling something I had once said to Kit, when I had used the exact same words, describing him as a work in progress. It may have been a throwaway comment I had made in a light-hearted moment, but the truth was, this was what I did. I did it instinctively as a teacher.
‘A habitual need to play God and recreate the world,’ Romily called this character trait we had in common. It was one of the reasons we got on so well, we both wanted to bring out the best in those we cared about.
‘Do you think you’re in need of fixing?’ I deflected.
‘Most assuredly. If I weren’t such a brute and a cad I wouldn’t treat women the way I do. But isn’t everyone in need of fixing?’ He smiled and squared his gaze on mine. ‘Apart from you, that is. You’re unique.’
‘I’m no such thing,’ I remonstrated. ‘I’m as flawed as the next person.’
He shook his head. ‘I disagree. You’re a woman of extraordinary ability and self-belief. I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman like you before.’
‘That’s because you’ve never bothered to get to know one before. Other than in the biblical sense.’
His smile widened. ‘And you’re going to cure me of that.’
‘Am I?’
‘You know you are. Why else do you tolerate my wayward ways? And for the record, I can think of nobody finer than you to fix me.’
There it was. The gauntlet thrown down. A seductively irresistible challenge that was impossible for me not to accept.
I should have walked away. But I didn’t. Max had found my Achilles heel – my arrogant self-belief that I could make him a better man – and I willingly allowed him to lead me to make the biggest mistake of my life. For which I would never forgive myself.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Island House, Melstead St Mary
November 1962
Florence
It was Mrs Collings’s day off and while Beatty was upstairs vacuuming, Florence was in the kitchen preparing supper for Romily when she arrived back. She would be eating alone tonight as Hope was down in London and Edmund was going over to Meadow Lodge to spend the evening with Kit and Evelyn.
Originally Romily had planned to come home two days ago, but she had telephoned Florence from Oxford to say she had decided to take a detour for a couple of days to go and see her old friend Sarah and her husband, Tony.
Florence moved about the kitchen with the ease and familiarity as though it were her own. Not surprising, given that it had been a second home to her for more than twenty years. She had spent more time in it than her own kitchen, which was very cramped in comparison.
One day she would have her dream kitchen – modern, bright and airy and full of the latest equipment, including a freezer. She wanted a breakfast bar where she and Billy could sit together on stools and look out over a pretty garden while eating their meals. A detached bungalow was what she wanted, with nice straight walls and central heating. She would have built-in kitchen cupboards and formica counter tops. In the garden she would have a patio made with that jolly crazy paving that was so popular.
Billy thought she was as crazy as that paving! He couldn’t see anything wrong in staying right where they were. ‘Living next door to the bakery couldn’t be more convenient,’ he would say whenever she brought up the subject of moving. ‘If we lived anywhere else, I’d have to get up even earlier,’ he’d grumble.
‘I’m not talking any distance away,’ Florence would say, ‘we’d still be in the village, or on the outskirts. Wouldn’t you like a bit more space around you? A bit more privacy?’
‘I’m not moving into one of those houses on the Clover Green estate,’ he’d say. ‘You can forget that!’
Florence was reasonable enough to accept that very likely they wouldn’t move until Billy decided to retire from running the bakery. Which was a long way off. But at least by then her mother-in-law wouldn’t be around. Though it would be just Florence’s luck that the old woman proved to be indestructible. The Soviet Union could drop a nuclear bomb directly on Britain and Melstead St Mary could be blown to kingdom come, but Ruby Minton would be the sole survivor. Out she’d crawl from the wreckage demanding to know what all the noise was about, and who the hell had made all this mess!
Florence had drawn a blank when searching next door for proof that Ruby was the anonymous letter writer. In haste, while her mother-in-law was watching the television with Billy, Florence had hunted through every cupboard and drawer, but not a single piece of evidence had she found. Not a hint of anything that might suggest Ruby’s hatred for Florence had taken a more malicious turn. But maybe the nasty old woman had a hiding place that Florence hadn’t found. Or she could have simply got rid of the evidence.
To Florence’s dismay she had started watching Billy in a way she never had before. She had sworn she wouldn’t allow any seed of suspicion to be sown as a result of receiving the anonymous letter, but she simply couldn’t stop herself from wondering if Billy was messing around behind her back.
To her shame she had been checking his shirts before washing them – sniffing the collars for strange perfume or searching for smudges of lipstick. She had gone through his pockets too, dreading what she might find – a scribbled down telephone number, or a lover’s keepsake.
Oh, how she wished she could talk to Romily about all this! She had wanted to when Romily returned home from America, but the moment had never seemed right. Also Romily had seemed, well, sort of unsettled. Perhaps it was having Hope and Edmund living in the house with her.
After Beatty had finished vacuuming and Florence had left everything ready for Romily, the two of them walked home in the dusk. They parted in the main street where Beatty waited at the stop for her bus, and Florence went on up to the Market Square.
The bakery was closed and assuming Billy was already home, she went next door to Quince Cottage and let herself in. There were no lights on, but even so she called out to Billy.
‘I’m home,’ she said, taking off her coat and hanging it on the row of hooks by the front door.
There was no answer.
Deciding he was probably with his mother, she switched on the hall lamp and bent down to pick up the mail from the doormat. That was when she saw the envelope with her name on it. It was just like the one she had received before.
She ripped it open and immediately wished she hadn’t.
not much of a wife are you?
no wonder your husband goes
elsewhere.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Athena Theatre, Covent Garden, London
November 1962
Isabella
‘You know, if you’re going to point that rotten little peashooter at me, you might just as well do it with more conviction.’
‘Oh, so suddenly you’re an expert on firearms, are you?’
Isabella sighed and turned to the director, Mallory Carlisle, for backup. ‘He was pointing the gun over my shoulder,’ she complained.
‘Isabella, sweetie, it’s only a dress rehearsal.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of a dress rehearsal to get things right in order to be ready for the actual performance?’
‘And correct me if I’m wrong,’ boomed the old goat at her side, ‘I am the one with more theatrical experience under my belt than this . . .’ he waved his hand dismissively in her direction, ‘than this nobody has had hot dinners.’
‘Judging by that paunch of yours,’ Isabella muttered under her breath, ‘you’ve also had plenty of experience when it comes to hot dinners.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
From the front row of the stalls, Mallory clapped his hands. ‘Let’s take a short break, shall we?’
Isabella had a dramatic flounce down to a fine art, but as she marched off the stage in a marked manner, she had to admit Hugo Gerrard gave an impressive performance himself.
Isabella had wanted to do a more modern play after The Importance of Being Ernest, but when her agent had received a call asking specifically for Isabella to join the cast for The Broken Vow, and with nothing else on the horizon, she accepted the role. She was told that the leading lady she was taking over from had walked out on the production, and Hugo Gerrard, the leading man, had refused to continue with the understudy. Opening night was in four days and Isabella had had less than a
fortnight to learn her part.
She was always up for a challenge, but Hugo Gerrard was a challenge she hadn’t bargained on. She could quite understand why the actress she had replaced had thrown in the towel. Having done very little in the way of acting for the last decade, other than a few minor parts on the television, and a cigar advertisement, Hugo’s return to the stage was being billed as ‘long awaited’ and something the theatre-going public shouldn’t miss. Nobody in the cast was allowed to utter the word ‘comeback’, not without risking a dressing down of monumental proportions, and they spent most of the time walking on eggshells around Hugo, the so-called star of the play.
‘I never went away!’ Isabella heard him roar at some poor stage hand yesterday.
Hugo was older than Isabella by thirty years and in playing her jealous lover it was a laughable piece of miscasting. As a romantic lead he was about as convincing as a coal-scuttle making advances on her. The scenes when he was supposed to be making ardent love to her were pure torture.
Two hours later, and when the rehearsal was finally over, and Isabella had changed out of her costume, she made her way to the box office where she had agreed to meet Ralph. She was keeping the promise she had made the night of the party at Meadow Lodge and was having dinner with him. After what had happened to Julia that night, Isabella regretted encouraging Ralph to dance with the poor woman. He claimed at the time that he hadn’t meant to get his stepmother tipsy, but Isabella wasn’t so sure.
She found him already waiting for her. Leaning nonchalantly against the wall and dressed in a smart suit and an overcoat with the collar turned up as he smoked a cigarette, he looked very rakish. He gave her a languid smile and kissed her cheek.
