Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  Charlotte said, ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time. I’ve very much enjoyed working for you, but I feel that the time has come now for me to—’

  Without listening to Charlotte, Dr Wolf had begun speaking at the same time. ‘Miss Gray, I need a receptionist I can rely on. I don’t require her to show initiative or to be an original thinker.’ There was a sarcastic weariness in his voice. ‘There were those letters I had to ask you about the other day. There was the problem with the table at my club. And now you seem unable to get up in the morning . . .’

  Charlotte, who found it embarrassing to have to break her news to Dr Wolf, was ploughing on with her own speech, looking down at her hands as she spoke: ‘. . . And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the work, it’s just that I feel I could contribute more to our effort in this war if I . . .’

  ‘I have no doubt that you are a young woman of many parts, Miss Gray, but you are not suited to being a doctor’s receptionist. I think we would both be happier if you looked for some other employment.’

  When Charlotte understood that Wolf was dismissing her, she was so surprised that she began to laugh. It was preposterous: she was only doing the job out of a willingness to help; it was not as if she couldn’t have found something more interesting to do; and then apparently not to be up to the task of answering the telephone or writing a few letters . . .

  She stood up. ‘You’re right. You ought to have a proper receptionist and I ought to do something else. I hope you don’t feel I’ve wasted your time. Of course I’ll stay till you find a replacement.’

  Charlotte was aware of an incoherent excitement starting to seethe inside her. It was edged by the cool clarity of relief: only by solving the problem had she finally brought it into full view.

  8

  DEPRESSION – THOUGH THAT seemed a limp word for the storm of black panic and half-demented malfunction – had over the years worked itself out in Charlotte’s life in a curious pattern. Its onset was often imperceptible: like an assiduous housekeeper locking up a rambling mansion, it noiselessly went about and turned off, one by one, the mind’s thousand small accesses to pleasure. So gradual was its beginning, so quick her mind’s ability to adjust, that she never saw what was happening: an unwillingness to admit that anything was wrong compounded the stealth of the disease. Sometimes the first moment she admitted to herself that she was suffering was when it started to get better. For several weeks the effort of speech had made her jaw ache; the tricks and self-delusions by which people avoided confronting the tragic lineaments of the world were an unforgivable frivolity: the air about her limbs felt solid.

  Then suddenly, one morning, she heard the post fall on to the mat and felt a minute shock of anticipation. She heard a song on the wireless and felt a stir of response. What was this strange, unknown throb? Ah yes, she remembered now: it was what you felt a thousand times a day; it was what impelled you and made living bearable. It was what she had not felt in her sealed darkness since . . . since . . . She would then weep with bitterness at how long the world had been withheld from her.

  The process by which the problem was fully revealed only when its lessening became apparent seemed parallel to what had happened with Gregory and Dr Wolf. As soon as she had left the consulting rooms, her anguish over Gregory seemed less. But this was only a beginning: in her bag was a bill for dinner on the train, and on the back was a telephone number in Ormonde Gate.

  They met again at the Ritz, where Cannerley talked a virile code of numbers and initials. The chaps in Nine might be interested, though he had a hunch that G section was the answer.

  He slid an olive off its toothpick between his front teeth and twirled the little stick in the viscous surface of his pale Martini. He was wearing, Charlotte had to admit, a beautiful charcoal suit, which shimmered and dripped from his folded body in the little gilt chair. One leg was crossed over the other and the trousers rode up just far enough to show the fine black woollen socks, the bench-made shoes and a slit of pale leg.

  Although Cannerley attempted his usual playful languor, Charlotte had the impression that he was nervous.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ she said. She wondered if they really existed or whether Cannerley was playing some game of his own devising. Perhaps he was not the glad-handing boulevardier he affected to be; perhaps he too was trapped or limited in his manoeuvre.

  Cannerley laughed, but his eyes remained still.

  ‘Leave it to me, dear girl. I’m having lunch with Bobby at his club next week. I’ll drop a word in that great big ear of his. Now can I perhaps tempt you to a bite of dinner?’

  ‘I’m afraid I already have an appointment.’ It was true. She had offered, at any rate, to cook Gregory something at the flat.

  Ten days later Charlotte received a brown foolscap envelope in the post. Inside it was a smaller white envelope. Inside that was a letter headed WAR OFFICE, with the official address in Whitehall. A heavyweight typewriter had punched its inky message into the low-grade paper. It invited Charlotte to present herself to a room on the third floor of a West End hotel. It requested her to bring the letter with her on Wednesday at 2 p.m.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment to see Mr Jackson,’ Charlotte told a large man in a stained tunic behind the Reception desk. As she said the name, she saw for the first time how much it sounded like an alias, chosen for the way it was unlikely to be garbled on the telephone. The porter said nothing, but allowed his eyes to travel slowly down Charlotte’s figure. When his inspection had reached her knees, he nodded and called over a youth in braided uniform who took Charlotte across the lobby to a lift.

  He rotated a lever inside the cage and they moved heavily upwards. They stopped at the third floor with a juddering suddenness and the boy hauled back the metal doors; Charlotte stepped out into a dim corridor. The youth set off ahead of her, dragging his feet soundlessly along the strip of carpet. Charlotte saw the tired acquiescence in his bobbing shoulders as the room numbers rose into the high three hundreds on her right; every now and then they passed a fire extinguisher and a notice pointing the direction of the air-raid shelter. There was the distant clank of a tea trolley, as though life were sustainable in these twilit corridors without reference to the world outside.

  The bell-boy deposited her at a door with no number and knocked. Charlotte put a florin in his hand to hasten his departure; she did not want the youth to see her meet this Mr Jackson. He moved off quickly as the door opened and Charlotte found herself looking at a slightly built man of about forty with buck teeth and thick glasses. He had a pale, froggy look, a damp handshake and a broad, nervous smile.

  ‘Have you brought that letter with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlotte pulled it out of her bag and handed it over. Jackson held it close to his face to read it, then visibly relaxed.

  ‘Jolly good. Now come and sit down. Frightfully uncomfortable, I’m afraid, but we just have to make do with what we’re given.’

  There was a trestle table in the middle of the room covered by a green baize cloth. The washbasin in the corner had been partly concealed by a board on which a pile of papers was dangerously balanced; the hard little chair on which Charlotte sat down was also of the willingly collapsible type. She noticed that Jackson lowered himself very gently on to his, as though he had learned from hard experience. Provisionally poised, he gave her another welcoming smile, like the headmaster at a boarding school inexpertly trying to reassure his new pupils. He slipped Charlotte’s letter into the jacket of his suit, and it occurred to her that there was no longer any evidence of who had asked her or of where she had been.

  ‘Now then, Miss Gray. I think the best thing is if I try and put you in the picture a little bit. Then I shall ask you one or two questions about yourself. Does that sound agreeable? Jolly good. I’m not going to give you a lot of technical stuff. All you need to know is that I work for something called G Section. We answer to a parent group which in turn answers to the Chiefs of Sta
ff Committee and ultimately of course to the War Cabinet. What we’re concerned with, quite simply, is France.’ He gave a short tenor laugh.

  ‘I understand that you’re a fluent French speaker and of course that’s jolly handy. It’s a great shame that our two languages are so incompatible. At least, I mean the accents are. We’ve had a few awfully good people we’ve had to turn away because although they speak fluent French they couldn’t pass themselves off as French for a minute because of the accent. Anyway. Our work in France comes broadly under two headings. The first of these is organisation. We try to help local Resistance people to set up reliable networks. The other thing we do is sabotage.’

  Jackson’s cheery manner had a frightening effect on Charlotte; it made her think nostalgically of the gassy comfort of Dr Wolf’s rooms.

  ‘Now most of the people who work for us are volunteers from the services. My job is to take a look at them and see what they’re made of. People sometimes have funny reasons for volunteering. One of the most common, you know,’ he said, pausing and looking humorously but straight into Charlotte’s eyes, ‘is that they’re crossed in love.’

  Charlotte raised an eyebrow and smiled politely at this absurdity as Jackson chortled to himself.

  He became serious again. ‘We need brute strength sometimes – quick, athletic types who are not afraid. We also need patient, crafty people who are discreet and good at organisation. Then of course we need various bods at home, though they mostly have a special technical skill with documents or some such – forgers, cipher people and so on. We recruit from all sorts of unlikely places.’

  Charlotte, thinking of her inability to keep up with Dr Wolf’s letters as well as her deficiencies as a saboteur, began to explain to Jackson that perhaps they had better leave it there; but he seemed not to hear her protests and rode over her interruptions as though in the middle of a prepared speech.

  ‘Discretion is in fact the absolute keystone of the whole thing. Of course one gets tied up in a tremendous amount of red tape with the War Office, who insist on making lists all the time. In a way that makes it all the more important for us to be utterly and totally discreet. Are you good at that sort of thing?’

  This time he was looking away, towards the lace curtains that covered the window, but Charlotte had the feeling that he was still somehow able to take in her response.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think that’s one thing I probably am good at. But, listen, I don’t think I’m very suitable for—’

  ‘Let me finish, Miss Gray.’ Jackson gave an extra little laugh to palliate any rudeness. ‘I’d like to tell you one other thing about us. Most of our cipher clerks are teenage girls – jolly good they are too. Many of our staff are women – not just clerks and telephonists, but wireless operators and linguists who run the training schools. We also have women agents in the field. I’m just telling you this in case you were thinking your sex is a disqualification. It most certainly isn’t. However, I must tell you that women who do go to France are subject to particular danger. No woman is allowed to go without being fully put in the picture.’ He looked benignly at Charlotte.

  ‘I see. What sort of work do you think I might do?’

  ‘That entirely depends on what we find out about you. I would think the most likely thing at the moment is that we might find a use for you in one of our training schools. But you never know. Did you have anything particular in mind?’

  ‘I thought I’d like to go to France. It’s a country I feel very strongly about. But I can see from what you’ve just told me that I’d be quite unsuited to the sort of things you need. The thought of me planting a bomb or something . . .’

  Jackson smiled. His eyes, like the hall porter’s, took in her tailored suit, her hands folded in her lap. ‘My view is always to keep an open mind on these things. Training brings out extraordinary qualities – things people never expected. First of all, though, I think we should establish whether or not we should even go that far. I want you to tell me about yourself.’

  Jackson stood up carefully, pushing himself up slowly with his hands. Although this should have put her at a disadvantage Charlotte did not feel intimidated. As she answered his questions about her family background she thought his humorous face acquired a reassuring quality; he seemed pleased by her father’s war service and asked her to tell him more about it. He was particularly interested by the fact that Charlotte had also read Italian at university: the Italians, he told her, were expected at some stage to occupy the part of France east of the Rhône, and the thought of someone trilingual excited him.

  ‘I’m not fluent, I’m afraid,’ said Charlotte. ‘Not in Italian.’

  ‘But you are in French?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you understand the political situation?’

  ‘Does anyone?’

  ‘Ha. I doubt it. What do you make of the return of our friend Monsieur Laval?’

  ‘I don’t feel qualified to say. Instinctively I feel it’s somehow sinister.’

  Jackson nodded his head in a brisk, approving way. ‘Of course, it’s hard to say . . . I encourage our people not to worry about the complications, but just to keep one thing clear in their minds and that is that the fight for France is not lost. In that respect the Vichy government is quite wrong. For two years they have taken defeat as a fait accompli and tried to manoeuvre for a place in the new German Europe. They have viewed British resistance as perverse and likely to collapse at any moment. Even with America in the war they still think a German victory is inevitable. That is what the whole Vichy philosophy, what I think they would call their Realpolitik, is founded on, and I must tell you, Miss Gray, that it is a fatal error. We are not finished. We are going to win.’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘Yes, I hope so. I think so.’

  ‘Now tell me, if you will, a little about your feelings for the country.’

  Charlotte spoke slowly, trying not to sound sentimental, though she was aware that none of the words she used seemed to have much practical bearing on what she might actually do. Jackson walked slowly round the room, occasionally nodding his head as she talked.

  ‘I have a feeling,’ she said, ‘that some almost perfect pattern has been lost . . . not just in the obvious fact of the Occupation but in the way that it has been dealt with. I think that even when I first went to France as a schoolgirl one could sense that something was unravelling. That was ten years ago. There seemed to be a feeling that people were fed up with politicians and wanted somehow to take the law into their own hands. It was very difficult for a foreigner to understand because to me it looked such a beautiful place, both Paris and the provinces. It seemed untouched by modern developments, as though it had hardly changed since the nineteenth century. Of course I could understand that the politicians were not exactly great statesmen – people like Daladier and Laval and Reynaud and all these characters who seemed to crop up in one another’s governments. I don’t think even they themselves imagined they were men of great vision. But the contempt people seemed to feel for them was almost anti-democratic. I had the feeling that most French people wanted to do away with parliament and get back to something more straightforward, more dictatorial.’

  ‘And now they have that wish. Marshal Pétain saved them once before, in 1916. He was the hero of the Great War.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m sure he’s a good man. But there’s something wrong, isn’t there? I doubt whether someone who saved you once, in his youth, can do it a second time, in his old age. It’s as though the French have turned their backs on the problems of the present and run back to Grandpa and told him to take the modern world away.’

  ‘And presumably you know what our aim is in France?’

  ‘Well, you’ve told me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But in practical terms what this means is that we are encouraging the French to disobey their government – though I use the word “government” reluctantly, since one must doubt its real legitimacy. The means at our disposal a
re also what you might call “anti-democratic”. We aren’t going round organising meetings at which we air the anti-Vichy point of view; we’re using guns and explosives. Even the organisational side of our work is only a prelude to violence. The trouble is, Miss Gray, that this message is still falling on fairly stony ground. A large number of people welcome the Vichy government and deeply respect the Marshal, but an even greater number are motivated by a fear of something worse – of civil disorder. They fear that the Resistance, such as it is, would be the prelude to a full-scale Communist revolution. So they cling to the idea of stability, of law and order, and turn their face away from the actual shape it takes.’

  ‘Obviously you know much more about this than I do. I haven’t been to France for five years.’

  Jackson stopped circling the room and resumed his position on the opposite side of the table from Charlotte. ‘That’s quite enough politics, Miss Gray. What I’d like to do, if you’re agreeable, is recommend you to the people who run our preliminary course. You can have a look round, and see what you make of them. Then we can go ahead with some training if you’re still keen.’

  ‘So you’re going to take me on?’

  ‘I’m bound to say that I’m jolly impressed. Before you begin in earnest you’ll have to see the old trick-cyclist.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The psychiatrist. It’s absolutely routine. All the chaps do it. He asks a few questions about your family and then shows you some funny squiggles and asks if they remind you of a baby’s cradle or a house on fire or some such thing. A lot of mumbo-jumbo, really, but the nature of the work, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, does attract the occasional misfit. You don’t look very sure. It’s nothing personal, Miss Gray.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. I quite understand.’

  ‘Jolly good. Well, you’ll be hearing from us. Don’t try to reach me, just wait till you hear. Do you think you can find your way back to the lift?’