In the Mouth of the Tiger (48 page)

I took the photograph from her. It showed a handsome young man leaning casually against a sports car. ‘The picture was taken after a car rally on the Grande Corniche in 1913,' Maxine said leaning over my shoulder. ‘Young men love speeding on the Corniche. I think it's a combination of the danger and the extraordinary beauty. There is no road on earth as dramatic, or as dangerous, as the Grande Corniche.'

I put the picture down carefully. ‘I know you helped the Belgians, and had a rescue barge close to Ypres during the battle,' I said quietly. ‘Did you see your Tony at all?'

‘Of course I did,' Maxine said. ‘That was part of the reason I was there. He was in the Guards, stationed at Ypres, and I saw him the night before he died. We dined on the barge that night, the
Julia
, just outside of Poperinge, and toasted each other in the best French champagne.' She paused, a faraway look I her eyes. ‘I could hear a barrage beginning. A deep rumble, as though the very earth was groaning. It was awful when you heard that, because it meant that there was going to be a battle. I didn't want Tony to go back to his regiment but he insisted. I became quite frantic, I'm afraid, because I didn't
want him to die. We shouted at each other, and then he drove back to the lines on his motor cycle. He was killed six hours later.'

I touched Maxine's hand. ‘He would not want you to remember the quarrel,' I said. ‘I think he would want you to remember that death is just part of the game, and that you will both laugh about it all later.'

Maxine gripped my arm fiercely and led me out onto the patio, where the late afternoon sun slanted through the ornamental trees and the sea looked suddenly dark. ‘You understand, don't you Norma?' she said. ‘We all meet up later, don't we? Somehow, somewhere, we all meet up again? And laugh about the game we've all been playing?'

I nodded without speaking.

Denis and I had to leave shortly afterwards to catch the overnight express from Nice. As we left Maxine stood under her lighted porch, throwing us extravagant kisses, her head tilted slightly to one side with a fetching smile. She was a consummate actress and she was acting, but she had let me see the real Maxine and I had been deeply touched.

I was never to see her again, but when we returned to Malaya I found a parcel from her waiting for me. It enclosed a copy of ‘The Four Fat Women of Antibes', and a pretty little fretted silver cake slice that I recognised immediately. With them was a letter:

If I had had a daughter, I would have given her this as a token of my love. It was brought to England by George Keppel's forebears (a Huguenot family of course) and he gave it to me. A pedant will tell you it is not a cake slice at all, but a fish slice. But we have agreed, have we not, that everything is precisely what we want it to be in the game we play.

George gave it to me when I first came to London at the turn of the century, and it has the most wonderful memories for me. Treasure it, my dear. I served you and Denis cake with it in my drawing room – a moment of sunshine towards the end of a long life full of sunshine and some sorrow.

Maxine died in her Château less than a year later, just after the outbreak of war. She was buried in Cannes, her funeral attended, amongst many others, by George Keppel as Winston Churchill's personal representative, and by François Diderot, the Communist Mayor of Vallauris.

I couldn't sleep as the Nice-to-Cherbourg Express charged through the night, and so I sat by the window, wrapped in a blanket, looking out at the racing French countryside. I can't really describe what I was feeling. Touched, exhilarated, sobered, happy and sad, all at once. I remember tears rolling down my cheeks, and then laughing through them. I suppose I was a little mad.

I had been admitted to the world the battleships came from.

We stayed in London for a fortnight, staying at the Regents Palace Hotel just off Piccadilly Circus. It was cold, with snowflakes often falling into the dark, busy streets, but I was as happy as a lark in the warmth of a luxury hotel and with the fabulous city of London at my feet. Of course, I saw the city not as it was – grimy and overcrowded, its blackened streets choked by traffic – but through eyes bewitched by my reading of history and literature. I saw it as the place where Boadicea had routed a Roman legion, where Norman knights had roistered after the Battle of Hastings, where Shakespeare had scribbled down his plays – and where the Scarlet Pimpernel had courted his Marguerite.

My only disappointment was that Denis was not as free as I had thought he'd be. In fact, during our second week he dragged himself off virtually every day to ‘talk to some people about the coming war'. It became quite a nuisance. I'd plan on a visit to the British Museum, or Hampton Court, and when I mentioned my plans to Denis he would grimace. ‘Can't do I'm afraid. I've got to run down to Caxton Street tomorrow.' I finally confronted the infuriating man, plonking him down in one of the two chairs in our room and dragging my own up close in order to stare him down. ‘You said this was to be a holiday,' I said forcefully. ‘You said that you were going to show me the world before the balloon went up. Well, I have my doubts about that. I think you're really here to talk to people, and I'm only tagging along.' I wasn't really as angry as I tried to sound but there was a grain of truth in my resentment.

Denis sighed and leaned back, feeling for his cigarettes. ‘I really did intend this to be
all
holiday,' he said. ‘But something came up, actually while we were on our way. Stewart Menzies – the chap whose name you keep shoving under my nose – is organising a group to cry havoc against our enemies if there is a war. And I'm the only chap available who can represent Far East interests.'

‘Are you
sure
this project came up while we were on our way?' I asked suspiciously. ‘Are you sure these meetings you keep going to weren't arranged long ago?'

Denis looked at me reproachfully. ‘Would I lie to someone as beautiful as you?'

Actually, I was to discover that my gay deceiver had come to London for more than tourist reasons. He was in fact helping to establish the Demolitions Section of MI6, later to become Special Operations Executive (SOE). SOE was to do the dirty work for British Intelligence during the coming war – the sabotage and the mayhem, the selective bombings and shootings. I'm rather glad I didn't know that at the time because it might have spoilt a special time for me.

It was through Denis's work with ‘D' Section that we met Alan and Mary Hillgarth. It was a fortuitous meeting: Denis and I had arranged to meet for a cup of tea in Fortnum & Masons one afternoon and we had just sat down when the Hillgarths came in and sat down at the table next to ours.

‘Playing truant, Denis?' Alan had called across with a smile. Apparently he and Denis had excused themselves moments before from a meeting of ‘D' Section people, both pleading stories of urgent business to attend to.

‘Not at all,' Denis had responded quickly. ‘I'm on duty keeping an eye on you, old chap. Good thing I did, too. The lady with you is much too attractive to be anything but a Mata Hari.'

The Hillgarths joined our table, and we got along like a house on fire. We went on to share dinner that night, and within a few days the four of us were inseparable. We found we had an awful lot in common. As well as their Intelligence connection, the two men shared a love of action: of riding horses hard, of playing cricket and rugger, of sailing, and of travelling to far and difficult places. Mary and I were also two of a kind, though our interests were quieter. We loved reading and shared many favourite authors, we loved music and history, and we both had young children. And we were both deeply in love with our men.

Alan Hillgarth was ostensibly a normal serving naval officer, but beneath the dashing blue uniform of an RN Lieutenant-Commander he was one of Stewart Menzies' men. A member of the Linlithgow Hunt, as I once told him, to see him start with surprise that I could know such a thing. He had been born George Evans, a regular serving naval officer, but he'd done something in South America that required him to take another name.

‘So we are both in the same boat,' he said to me one evening. ‘You and I have needed to grow new skins.' The four of us were sitting in the Spanish Court Restaurant, toying with our desserts after a delicious meal. I'd told the
Hillgarths all about my change of name and nationality, and Alan had repaid my confidence by telling me about his own change of name.

‘They say the trick is to believe completely that you
are
another person,' he said. ‘Don't think of yourself as acting, because actors muff their lines.
Be
the new person, waking and sleeping.'

‘It's all very well for you to say that,' I said. ‘But don't forget I don't only have I to be another person, I also have to know what it's like to have been brought up in a country I only saw for the first time a fortnight ago.'

Alan frowned thoughtfully. ‘How old were you when you are supposed to have left England for Malaya with your parents?' he asked.

I looked at Denis. ‘My story is that I left England as a little girl. But I want to have been old enough so have known Denis before I left. That way, Denis can weave me into his own childhood background. And he could tell me real things that happened which I could weave into my own story.'

Alan nodded. ‘Rather clever. Well, why not say you left at the age of eight or nine? At that age you'd remember a lot about family and friends but precious little about the outside world. The only knowledge you'd really have of England would be what you gathered when you came home on leave. So – do all the things you would have done on leave. Go to all the places your parents would have taken you. Albert Hall. The Zoo. Henley-on-Thames for the Regatta. Cowes, perhaps, to watch the yacht racing. Make notes – but don't forget to destroy them after you've memorised them.'

‘I suppose what I'm really worried about is what to do when I get back to Malaya,' I said. ‘For instance, when I'm talking to two people at once, one who knows the real me, one who only knows me as Norma.'

‘It's happened to Alan,' Mary said with an impish grin. ‘He just bluffs his way through. Left a few very confused people in his wake at times.'

‘It gets a little easier as the years go by,' Allan said encouragingly. ‘Having the legal status of the new you helps in a crunch. But there will be the few odd sticky moments. One little trick I have used is to hint that I had to change my name because I got involved a very hush-hush divorce. People stop asking questions in a hurry when I tell them that.'

Mary pulled a face. ‘You
were
involved in a very hush-hush divorce. Mine. But that's a story for another time.'

Denis and I decided to take Alan's advice. We visited all the obvious places, did all the obvious things. We even had dinner at Phillis Court, though I prohibited any drinking of champagne in case it had unfortunate
consequences. After a while it became rather good fun. I was once involved in conversation with a very haughty County family over breakfast, and I'm sure they had no idea at all that my chatter about carefree schooldays in Taunton had been cribbed from Denis earlier that day.

One morning in the hotel dining room I looked up from my kippered herring and saw Denis looking at a smartly dressed young girl, probably ten years old or so, sitting at the table next to ours. Somehow or other I knew precisely what he was thinking, and I put my knife and fork down quietly. ‘You must go and see your daughter,' I said, ‘and Dorothy. I don't mind, darling. I really don't.'

He looked at me, his eyes searching mine intently. And then I saw his shoulders relax. ‘I suppose I must,' he said leaning back in his chair and shaking out the newspaper casually. ‘I suppose I must.'

He told me later that Patricia had grown into a lovely girl, and that she had played ‘A Maiden's Prayer' very beautifully for him at the piano. And that Dorothy had been as much in love with him as ever. I know it must have been hard, seeing his daughter and then saying goodbye, and I know the scars must have remained, hidden deep beneath the carapace of his charming smile.

Towards the end of our stay in London the Hillgarths invited us down for a weekend at their place in the New Forest, with the promise of some tennis and a ride in a point-to-point. I hadn't brought my jodhpurs or a tennis frock so I spent the next afternoon shopping in Bond Street. I had hardly touched the bank account Denis had created for me so I had absolutely no feeling of guilt when I bought not only the sports clothes I needed but something for the evening as well. It was a long, slim gown in midnight blue, and naturally it needed matching shoes and a single, expensive piece of jewellery to set it off. I chose a necklace – a rather tight, thin gold chain bearing a single large sapphire that sat just beneath my throat.

The weather had turned fine so we set off on the Friday morning, planning to see a bit of countryside before meeting up with the Hillgarths first thing the next day. We had hired a little Morris Tourer, and with Tony laughing with delight in the dickey-seat we sped out of London on the A30 to find the hedgerows alive with spring. We broke for morning tea at the Nag's Head in Cobham, then picnicked on the Hog's Back with the patchwork fields of Surrey all around us.

We'd just put the picnic things away in their basket and stowed it in the boot when Denis turned to me with a casual smile. ‘Do you mind if we pop
in on some old friends?' he asked. ‘Theo used to be the family solicitor, and I used to stay with them a lot as a child. Their place is only a few miles away.'

Theodore Gillaume literally fell on Denis with pleasure when we pulled up beside him in his driveway where he was gardening. ‘My dear, dear boy,' he boomed, throwing his gardening gloves aside to embrace Denis in a clumsy bear hug. ‘I knew you'd be back to see us. It's been so long, old chap. So very long.'