Authors: Robert Ryan
‘Keeping better company than me I hope. Excuse me.’ And he went to rescue Eve from Neumann, SS or no.
LONDON, NOVEMBER 1941
W
ILLIAMS HAD LAST
visited Quaglino’s in 1938. Then it had seemed slightly stuffy and formal after La Coupole and Fouquet’s. Now, with evening dress for men the exception rather than the rule and civilians and servicemen in equal numbers, it exuded a slightly desperate jollity.
Williams, Virginia and Rose had taken a cab from the small flat near Baker Street where the women were staying—Williams was in a dingy hotel around the corner from them—and arrived to a backdrop of low rumbles and flashes as the East End of London flared fitfully under another raid. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Rose. ‘I hear if there is an alert they let you bed down in the basement.’
Virginia curled her lip. ‘I’ll take my chances in the street, thank you, ma’am.’
‘No “ma’am” tonight. Rose.’
They checked their coats—Rose revealing a svelte black-beaded dress and Virginia a silk brocade gown with a ruched bodice—and were shown to a table. Williams, who had opted for uniform (the safest dress for a male these days), pondered the reason for the evening. They were obviously on the home straight now. Williams had passed his test of obtaining a classified document by blatant bribery of a government official—it turned out to be a vital map of the Tunbridge Wells sewer system—and had been in a holding house near Guildford for more weeks than he cared to remember, occasionally brushing up on fieldcraft and weapons, but otherwise cooling his heels and fighting boredom instead of Germans. Virginia was billeted elsewhere, but on a similar regime. At least while in the city he got to use the London Transport rifle range, which was conveniently buried under Baker Street tube station, and was able to take his frustration out on paper targets.
As they sat down Rose said, ‘What a treat.’
‘Is this our last supper, as it were?’ asked Virginia.
‘Not exactly. It’s a bit of a tradition that, as your Conducting Officer, I take out my charges for an informal chat. Just to see if you have any worries. Count yourself lucky. Normally it’s a ghastly bistro on the Edgware Road.’
‘How do you stand it?’ asked Williams.
‘Well, the owner sometimes gets a chicken from his brother in the country.’
There was a pop of champagne corks and they looked over at a cheering group of young men and women. Another engagement announced, with the wedding day delayed, possibly indefinitely. ‘That’s not what I mean. How do you stand sending people off knowing they won’t come back.’
Rose snapped a breadstick irritably. ‘Might. Not won’t. A certain ratio may not … but look at our pilots. Do they think about casualty rates every time they go up?’
‘If they want to stay alive.’
‘Hmm.’
Virginia interrupted by asking: ‘So how is it we have been promoted to Quaglino’s?’
Williams shuffled, embarrassed. It was his shout, as they say. He had access to a Bugatti entertaining account for clients held at Coutt’s which had never been closed. It had sat there untouched for more than two years. Seemed a shame. But for some reason he didn’t want Virginia to know that. He was relieved when Rose just glanced up from the menu and said; ‘Oh, I fiddled some expenses for Vladimir here. Said he needed another bribe to corrupt yet more local policemen.’
Williams ordered a bottle of astonishingly overpriced Margaux, Orpen’s favourite, and they plundered the menu. There was smoked salmon, chicken, mushroom pâté, various rabbit dishes. A cornucopia compared to what regular folk were getting, he knew. No whale meat at Quaglino’s. Although if the Atlantic blockade got much worse, it might come to that, even here. Resentment against ‘posh’ restaurants was building, and he had heard talk of a five-shilling ceiling per person on meals. He scanned the prices as they ran through their orders with the waiter and realised they would burst well through that tonight.
The band started. Al Bowly with the Ray Noble Orchestra and ‘The Very Thought of You’. A few couples from the engagement table got up to dance.
‘I have something for you both.’ Rose fished into her clutch bag and produced two tissue-wrapped items and deposited one in front of each of them.
‘Do we open it now?’ asked Virginia, already unwrapping the delicate layers. ‘Oh,’ she said, with an expression a few notches short of enthusiasm. ‘How lovely.’
It was a gold powder compact, in a deliberately anodyne style that could have come from anywhere in western Europe. From his wrapping Williams produced equally plain but elegant gold cufflinks which he weighed in his hands. Their heftiness suggested quality.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and began turning one link over, trying to slip a fingernail into the hidden seam or concealed catch or whatever the boffins had dreamt up.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Rose.
‘Looking for the gadget,’ he said. ‘I assumed these contain a map, a compass or our L Pill.’ The latter was the cyanide suicide tablet each agent would carry, just in case.
‘Sometimes,’ smiled Rose, ‘a pair of cufflinks is just a pair of cufflinks and a powder compact is just a powder compact. Another fledgling tradition. But one with a purpose. No distinguishing hallmarks, of course, but solid gold. You can pawn them if need be.’
The food arrived and it was clear that some kind of rationing was being applied in the kitchen after all. The portions were tiny. ‘Best fill up on bread,’ warned Rose.
They ate in silence for a while, enjoying flavours and textures far more delicate than they had become used to. Rose had just finished her chicken with the
Maître d’
approached and whispered in her ear.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, standing. ‘A call.’
Virginia waited until she was out of earshot before taking a slug of wine and asking, ‘What do you make of her?’
It was a very leading question. Did she mean personally or professionally. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes,’ he finally offered, noncommittally.
No. Rather clumpy I thought.’ She took another gulp. ‘I think we’ll need a second bottle. Anyway, I think she’s a phony.’
‘A what?’
‘A fake. Something not quite U about her. The shoes, maybe.’ He realised she was well on the way to getting drunk.
Rose strode over, her face dark, and for a second Williams thought she had heard them. He half considered checking the flower for hidden microphones. ‘Look, I’m sorry, you two, but something’s come up. Quite serious. I have to go back to Baker Street. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’
They both nodded and wished her good luck and Virginia suddenly burst out laughing. ‘God, I feel like you used to when teacher left the classroom. Don’t you?’
Williams couldn’t help but grin. It was true, Rose Miller had the ability to be an oppressive presence when she wanted, quite the school ma’am, no matter how she wanted to be addressed. ‘You still want that other bottle?’
‘Oh, absolutely.’
They had taken the last Margaux, so Williams settled for a rather inferior St Emilion.
‘How’ve you been these past few weeks?’ he asked her.
‘Bored. Bored, bored, bored. Bored. That about sums it up,’ she said with feeling. ‘You?’
‘Much the same.’
‘I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but when do you go?’
He shrugged. She was right. She shouldn’t ask.
‘But it’ll be soon, won’t it? I think it’ll be soon. This dinner. The cufflinks. The ghastly compact. Look, I know this is terribly forward of me.’ More wine. ‘But dear ol’ Rosie had absolutely forbidden me to look up any of my old chums in town. Says I have to get used to isolation. But it’s been so wretched in that bloody house. I wondered if …’
Williams wasn’t entirely sure if he was meant to jump in here, and if so, with what exactly. But he felt the hairs on his neck prickling.
Virginia smacked the table in mock anger. ‘Oh, do I have to spell it out?’
‘I think we should go.’
Her face brightened. ‘Now?’
‘Separately.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, man. We could dance. At least that.’
So he took her round the floor in a desultory foxtrot, trying hard to hold her chest away from his for fear that something might leach through to him, corroding his resolve like spiritual acid.
‘Do you know anyone over there? I do. My old teacher lives in Lyons. I hope I get sent there.’
He grunted.
‘Look, Vladimir. That can’t be your real name, can it? You don’t look like a Russian.’ She said this in a low stage voice. ‘Tell me the real one. At least that. Mine’s really Veronica Taylor-Stapylton. I thought having the same initials would help.’
‘Jenkins. Ron.’
She pinched his arm and he winced. ‘No, it’s not. I know it—I heard one of the instructors use it at the beginning by mistake. It’s something Williams, isn’t it?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ he said with conviction, the penny finally dropping. ‘It’s Seymour Kuntz,’ he smirked, stealing an old punchline from a Maurice joke. Her brow furrowed as she tried to read his face.
Williams applauded as the music finished and briskly walked back to the table and asked for the bill, scribbling in the Coutt’s cheque book. ‘There’s still half a bottle of wine,’ said Virginia.
‘Finish it,’ he said, putting down a pound note. ‘Here’s the cab fare back. The
Maître d’
will look after you. Sorry.’
She jutted out her lower lip, threw the bill across the table and watched him leave in pouting silence.
He half stumbled into the fresh air, realising that he, too, was unused to such a quantity of red wine with hardly any food. Rose was across the street, leaning on her staff car, driver behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. The air was tinged with the acrid fumes of burning buildings far away down the river, the sky smeared with red as if sunset had been called back for an encore, disrupting the otherwise velvet-black of the darkened city. He walked across to her.
‘I was going to give you five minutes more.’
‘And if I’d fallen for her cut-glass charms and tottered out arm in arm with her?’
‘You’d be on a train to the Highlands where you’d be eating haggis and tossing the caber for the next year. Lift?’
‘Another charade?’
‘No. Show’s over for tonight. This is off duty. What do you want to do?’
‘It’s your town more than mine.’
She opened the door to the Humber. ‘Hop in.’
The place was half the size of a tennis court but Williams could have sworn five hundred people were crammed into the space. It was a basement somewhere not far from Leicester Square, with no external sign he could discern, and a retired pugilist with an interesting nose on the door, although he didn’t seem too keen on turning anyone away.
The band, nearly all octogenarians, apart from a negro sax player, were playing fast jazz, and the crowd—everything from spivs to serving officers and all points in between, danced as best they could in the constricted space.
After ten minutes of feet and elbow they gave up and Rose shouted in his ear. ‘There is a quieter bar up top.’
He followed her up a back staircase to a small, rather smelly room done out in purple velvet. The only other customer was a snoozing sailor. Rose fetched a couple of scotches from the barmaid and tucked them into a corner booth and, to his surprise, whipped a curtain across. ‘In case clients want a bit of privacy.’ Now Williams realised the girls who looked like tarts working the dancefloor were probably just that. ‘But it doesn’t usually get busy till later.’
Williams looked down at the seats, but they seemed clean enough.
‘No, not here, you fool. They just soften them up in the booths. Promise them the world. Deliver the rather tarnished goods next door.’
‘How do you know about this place?’
‘John Gilbert?’
‘The lock-picking instructor?’ Gilbert ran the Beddington breaking and entry course.
‘The problem with the racket is that almost everyone comes from a very nice background.’ She made the word harsh and truncated. ‘And this isn’t a nice war. Johnny is a former safecracker and burglar. He brought me here to meet some of his friends. When you go over your identity and ration card will look just like the real thing. One of Johnny’s friends. You will have a great deal of money at your disposal, thanks to Ronnie Cann. Took him a while to switch from fivers to francs, but I think you’ll agree he does a nice job. Johnny’s got us a first-rate pickpocket, too. He’ll be starting as an instructor. As soon as we can get him out of Dartmoor Prison.’
Williams started to laugh. ‘So, you employ everyone from debs to dips?’
‘Rogues to racing drivers.’
Williams swallowed some scotch and loosened his jacket. The body heat from below seemed to be bleeding through the floorboards. ‘So. Is this really pleasure?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m having a good time.’
‘That’s a nice frock, by the way.’
‘Frock?’ She flicked some of the beads. ‘Frock? It’s a Molyneux, I’ll have you know. And bloody expensive.’
Williams wondered if she was drunk, or if this was an act like Virginia’s. ‘So no business?’
She gave a lopsided smile. ‘Perhaps a teensy bit.’
‘Go on.’
‘Two things. What do you make of Virginia?’
‘As a seductress? Or a spy?’
Rose laughed. ‘I’ll settle for special agent.’
‘A disaster.’
‘Why?’
‘Too good looking. Every man in every room she enters will look at her. Germans will offer to carry her bags … and if the bags are full of radio …’
‘I take your point.’
‘And she’s got English written through her like a stick of rock. Oh, she can speak the part, but there is something very brittle about her, something the French haven’t got. Furthermore, I have absolutely no idea why she would want to do something like this when there must be a thousand other ways to help the war effort …’ There was a silence. ‘You did ask.’
‘I know. Thank you.’ She didn’t want to tell Williams it was too late. Her own doubts, especially over why such a young beautiful girl would put herself in such danger, had been overruled. Virginia had the green light.
‘What was the second thing?’
‘Less tricky. Could you kill someone? In cold blood?’