Her bedroom smelled of damp. Evelyn went to the small stove and put on the kettle, then opened her window a fraction to allow in some fresh air. The small park behind the line of terraces was empty except for the solid outline of a man and woman pressed together beneath a plane tree, his head buried in her neck. Evelyn eased off her tight leather brogues and pushed them beneath the bed. Her feet felt clammy inside her stockings.
When the kettle had boiled, she made herself a cup of tea and wandered over to the bureau by the window. The room had been advertised as furnished, which Evelyn discovered had meant only a small single bed, a rickety cupboard, and a two-shelf bookcase, but she found herself in luck when the departing lodger gifted her the antique desk. She unlatched the writing stand, breathing in the aroma of resin, and sat down. She picked up her father’s letter, slipped the paper knife under the seal, and sawed it open. Evelyn read the short note, which mentioned the local girls in Lewes enlisting in the WVS and wondered whether she might do the same in London, and began a reply.
Dear Mother and Father,
Some good news from me today. I am leaving my post at Vivian de la Croix to join the War Office. I am now the assistant to a fellow named John Chadwick in the Ministry of Supply. My wage is £3 . . .
Evelyn tipped back her chair and stared at the chipped cornices and mold stains on the ceiling. There wasn’t much more she could write, and though her parents wouldn’t detect any censorship, the thought of how much she would now have to conceal from Sally filled Evelyn with unease. She scribbled a few more lines, then went to the sink beside the window. After she had run the tap and splashed icy water on her face, she stood bent over the basin for another moment, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks, until a knock sounded at the door.
It was Mrs. Banker come to collect the rent. She bustled her way inside, her beady eyes roaming about as they always did, snagging on the rack by the bookcase where Evelyn kept her best blouses, blazer, and woolen coat. Tonight the landlady wore a flannelette dressing-gown, her misshapen ankles bulging over the sheepskin trimming of her mauve slippers. When Evelyn handed over the notes, Mrs. Banker counted them right there in front of her, making a clucking sound, before stuffing the money inside her pocket.
“Dinner will be ready at eight. Remember, Miss Varley, I don’t tolerate lateness.”
Evelyn watched her scuttle off toward the door.
“Cabbage again, is it?”
Mrs. Banker looked over her shoulder. She had the kind of weathered face that spoke of a hard life, though Evelyn had little sympathy for the old woman. She knew Mrs. Banker had always been suspicious of her. Evelyn wasn’t like her other lodgers—the landlady had said as much the day she moved in—and Evelyn had since learned that Mrs. Banker didn’t like peculiarity of any kind.
“Picked from my very garden, your most royal highness.”
As she said this, the moan of the air-raid siren started up, rattling the glass in the windowpane. Evelyn gripped the back of her chair. This was the second time the siren had gone off that week. She waited for it to quieten down, signaling another false alarm, but the low wail continued. Without another word, Evelyn strode toward the door, urging Mrs. Banker ahead of her along the narrow passageway and down the heaving set of stairs. They headed for the parlor, where Mr. Buckley from the top floor was already handing out gas masks to the other lodgers from a pile on the settee. He had been appointed the local air-raid warden and made nightly rounds of the block of terraces dressed in a pair of heavy cotton overalls and a steel helmet.
“We’ve got two minutes before a bomb lands on our bleeding heads!” he shouted.
When the masks had been distributed, he marched them downstairs to the basement kitchen and out the back door and onto the concrete patio, calling them to a halt at the brick wall. He pointed to the rockery at the far edge of the yard where the Anderson shelter stood.
“Surely that flimsy tin shed is next to useless,” someone called.
“It’s built into the ground,” Mr. Buckley pronounced indignantly, as if he had designed the contraption himself, “and will keep us safe during any raid.”
In the stark moonlight, the shelter looked a lot like a dog kennel disguised beneath a pile of rocks, and as Evelyn studied it more closely she saw it was made from little more than corrugated iron. She glanced at Mrs. Banker. The poor woman was shaking.
“We’ll be safe in there,” Evelyn said, putting an arm around her. “Mr. Buckley is right.”
“And how can you be so sure, missy?” But there was no malice in her voice and she shrank into Evelyn, grabbing at her hand.
They filed into the shelter one by one. The roof was so low they had to sit slumped over with their heads almost in their laps—it was lucky the Newcastle twins, great hulking lads, had never returned from the exchange. The siren wailed relentlessly and the air inside soon grew thick and stale. Evelyn could hear sobbing—Mrs. Banker, maybe—and someone broke wind. She closed her eyes, aware of the tremor in her lips, and in her hands, which she clasped together in a kind of prayer. She had never imagined any danger would touch her here, in the middle of London, and she was rocked by her own naivety. Imagine, she could die in Earl’s Court tonight, and it felt savage to be confronted by her own mortality while pressed against these wriggling strangers. There was so much of her life she still had to live; she hadn’t realized how desperate she was for it until that very moment, and trapped inside that pitch-dark shelter she experienced an awful mix of despair and gratitude for the revelation.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before the first siren stopped and the all-clear commenced a stirring cry—half an hour, perhaps, though it felt longer. After spilling back out into the fresh night air, they all stood in a circle in the middle of the patio, grinning at one another and staring up at the sky. There was no hugging or crying, as one might expect; no false sentiment, though Mr. Buckley did raise a fist and holler, “It’ll take more than that, you friggin’ Boche bastards!” before he took off to inspect the other houses on the street.
Within a few minutes, order had been restored, with Mrs. Banker complaining that her dinner would be ruined. But while the rest of the lodgers filed inside, Evelyn stayed out in the garden, pretending it was for a smoke. Instead, she prowled about the paved courtyard, kicking at the tall grass, swiping at the low-hanging ivy. She felt queer, something almost inflamed coursing through her, as if she could walk into the street and flip over a taxi or snap a lamppost in half, and she fought the urge to howl at the twinkling night with the joy of it all, and the terror.
It was only later, after she had climbed into bed, that she remembered the letter to her father propped against the bureau ledge. She got up and placed it in her handbag for the morning. Then she went to the window, wondering about the couple beneath the tree. For some daft reason she expected them to still be out there, tangled in their embrace, amid the threat of bombs falling from the sky. But she couldn’t see them; the gardens were as murky as a pond, the only movement the faint whisper of a squirrel in a low branch, the glimmer of a fox.
March 1948
Five
IT WAS SPITTING fine rain as Evelyn headed toward Euston Road. Last night felt distant, like a long-forgotten dream, and in the pale light she could see how conspicuous a woman like Julia would be in this part of town. Still, Evelyn checked over her shoulder on each corner, relieved to find the streets empty. The butcher’s and the grocer’s, on the other hand, were crowded—the locals came early for the best fresh meat and vegetables—and as she browsed Evelyn was pushed around as though she’d strayed into the middle of a rugby scrum. In the end, she bought a loaf of bread, a small square of butter, milk powder, a cut of lamb, something off the bone for a stew or a broth, and some beets, carrots, and a turnip. It wasn’t much for the week, but she never had much of an appetite. She had hoped for some coffee, too—the proper kind, richer than the horrible silty stuff served everywhere now—but Mrs. Grundy had run out, and so she asked for
a small box of tea and cigarettes instead, tucking it all away in her basket.
Evelyn trailed back toward the flat, her head bent against the bitter wind. Most Saturdays Stephen wandered over from his small bedsit on Tavistock Place to accompany her to the shops. Though it had usually only been a matter of hours since he’d last seen her, he was always in a talkative mood, describing the latest book he had been reading or relating some story from the morning newspaper. Evelyn enjoyed these conversations, admiring the way his mind worked; there was something unpredictable about it, and having set aside that part of herself for so long she found her own mind gently exercised once again. She wondered if he spoke to his friends in the same eager manner. She’d met a few of them—one time at a dinner party, another at a pub in Highgate—and they had displayed such polite, wide-eyed curiosity that Evelyn wanted to know just quite what Stephen had told them about her.
Evelyn paused beneath a shopfront awning to adjust the bulk of her wicker basket. If the sky was clear, Stephen sometimes managed to coax Evelyn over to Clerkenwell Road where a few Italian grocers still ran their weekend stalls—many had been interned during the war, but they were slowly returning to London. After packing her basket full of onions, garlic, and tomatoes, Stephen would steer her toward the vendors wearing tweed coppolas who sold cured meats, olives in jars of oil, and blocks of pungent-smelling cheeses. When he spoke Italian to them, Stephen’s manner changed—he became loud, cheeky even, making them laugh. Everyone seemed to know him; the old men called him Stefano, and Evelyn bella ragazza, stuffing her already overflowing basket with sprigs of dried basil and oregano, smiling and patting her hand. And through all this garrulousness, Evelyn would catch Stephen watching her with a warm intensity that made her stomach flip. Later he’d cook for her back at the flat, simple but delicious meals like gnocchi in a rich tomato sauce with a fresh green salad, while Evelyn read by the fireplace and drank wine.
“Don’t you men all hate cooking?” she once remarked as he stirred the pan on the stovetop.
Tea towel flung over his angular shoulder, Stephen had smiled her way and said, “I love cooking for you.”
It was in those moments that a visit to Rome seemed like the most uncomplicated thing in the world, thought Evelyn as she stopped on the corner of Euston Road, waiting for the traffic to pass. That the past was well and truly behind her.
After dropping off her groceries at the flat, Evelyn took a bus toward Pimlico. The weather had turned foul, rain sleeting in violent bursts across the street, but as she hurried across Vauxhall Bridge, she still paused at the railing to gaze at the brown river churning beneath her. It was not a thing of beauty, the Thames, but there was something mesmerizing about the way the current moved in different directions. Evelyn couldn’t understand how the water did that, following its haphazard course beneath the granite arch. It was a long way down. She had heard that hitting the river from such a height had the same effect as landing on concrete—a person could split their stomach open with a belly flop—and she clenched her eyes shut against the thought of it.
Evelyn waited in the empty bus shelter on Wandsworth Road. The rain began to ease, though the wind had picked up, sending old sheets of newspaper scraping along the street. Ordinarily, if she wasn’t working Saturday afternoons at the bookshop, Stephen would collect his car after their visit to the shops. He liked to take day trips, and if the weather was fine they’d often motor over to Guildford for lunch by the canal. Evelyn looked forward to these outings all week, though now she wondered if Stephen knew this. She wasn’t exactly effusive, never being quite sure how to express her feelings, but she wished that she had said something, anything, to make him understand what that time away from London meant to her, how it took her out of her own head. She had hoped Stephen might have stopped by the flat this morning, or telephoned, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t. She tried not to think about what it would mean if he never got in touch.
When the bus arrived, Evelyn sat upstairs, studying the view of the Chelsea riverbanks as they lurched along Nine Elms Lane. The Battersea power station came into view, smoke belching from its enormous white stacks. The bus stopped at the dogs and cats’ home opposite the park as the sun hid farther behind the dark clouds. She got off at the next stop and walked through the underpass at Clapham Junction, an inbound train rattling and groaning on the tracks overhead. The morning had grown colder, and Evelyn drew her coat tight as she strode on toward Lavender Hill. The area was a poor, rough one, the houses desolate—row after row of dingy, low-set terraces built right up to the edge of the pavement. The air looked thick and dirty, and Evelyn glanced around for any garden, trees, or even a bit of grass, finding none. There were a few scruffy children playing hopscotch at the top of one street on the edge of an estate. It was still odd to see children outside; Evelyn always assumed there weren’t any left, as if, like so many of those young men, they had never come back to London after the war.
Vincent was waiting inside the greasy spoon on the corner. Evelyn spotted him through the front window as she crossed the quiet street. He hadn’t changed: still tall and stooped, still dapper in his Oxford shoes and Italian coat, still pale and dark, though with some steel-wool gray in his hair. There was something comforting about the familiarity of him, even after all these years. Evelyn swallowed at the painful lump in her throat, a bit of weak sun finally reemerging as she pulled open the cafe door.
Presided over by an elderly Cypriot, Zafer’s was a clean, unassuming establishment with formica tables spaced evenly around the narrow interior. A few down-and-out-looking men sat hunched over their plates of eggs and beans, half-drunk mugs of tea beside their trays. The air was humid with the pong of old socks and unwashed bodies. It was not somewhere she imagined Vincent spent much of his spare time, but there was also no chance of running into anyone either of them knew, which was probably why he had suggested it.
Now, sitting across the sticky table from one another, Evelyn finally got a better look at him under the fluorescent lights and saw that the years had not been kind to him. His skin was not so much pale as jaundiced, and his forehead, which he dabbed at now and then with a silk handkerchief, had a damp sheen to it. After adding a few sugars he drank his tea with elbows planted on the table, a gesture not of nonchalance, Evelyn realized, but in an effort to keep himself upright.
“How have you been keeping yourself, Evelyn?” he asked after coughing into the handkerchief. “Still at the bookshop?”
She had a sip of tea. Of course he knew. They had probably sorted it for her, the job, like a belated going-away present.
“I’m glad Mrs. Foy kept you on. She’s a good old stick.”
“And you?” Evelyn set down the tin mug. “Still with Section 5?”
“Good grief, no. I moved over to Special Branch years ago.”
“No more decryption?”
“I still dabble. But I hunt reds now—or haven’t you heard?”
She had heard—it was hardly a secret. It didn’t matter to people like Vincent who the enemy was, as long as there was one.
“And do you still see much of Bennett?” she asked lightly.
Vincent shook his head.
“He’s no longer in the Service?”
“No. At the BBC, actually. Does some program on the wireless all about birds.” He peered at her with his red-threaded eyes. “He’s rather good, I’m afraid. Just recherché enough to be charming.”
“And did you two ever . . .”
“No.” Vincent pressed his lips together. “No, that finished some time ago. Never really started, in fact—so not all that much to end.” He spread his hands across the checkered tablecloth; they were even thinner and bonier than she remembered, a blue vein pulsing at his knuckle. “So, you had a little run-in. Who was it?”
“Julia Wharton-Wells.”
Vincent raised an eyebrow. “I see. Did she recognize you?”
Evelyn nodded. “We spoke for a few minutes. About nothing of consequence.”
She picked up her mug then set it down again, suddenly incredulous. “She has a daughter.”
“Yes.” His mouth twitched. “You sound surprised.”
Evelyn stared at the oily surface of her tea. “I suppose I always thought her life would have stopped.” She didn’t add, like mine did.
“Do you think she’s still in play?” Vincent asked. “Only we haven’t heard any chatter.”
Evelyn thought of Margaret and the way Julia had looked at her, like her own heart was beating inside the little girl’s chest.
“I doubt it.”
“And did she threaten you?”
“Not directly. But she gave me this.” From her handbag, Evelyn drew out the postcard of Judith in the Tent with Holofernes and handed it across the table. Vincent scowled, giving it an impartial shake.
“It was . . . it was in the Onslow Square house when I visited Randall. The original . . .” Evelyn paused. “It’s Judith betraying Holofernes—don’t you know it? It’s an allegory, for goodness’ sake.” She was growing agitated, exasperated even, as she sensed Vincent’s interest waning. “Julia knows it means something to me.”
“All right, all right. I’ll file a report, though I’m not sure Section 5 will do much for you, all things considered. I could be in strife just for meeting you. Too many cobwebs . . .” Running a hand through his hair, he tried to smile. “Meanwhile, I’d lie low for a while if I were you, maybe take a trip somewhere. Have you friends who could put you up outside London?”
An Unlikely Spy Page 9
