Transcription Page 8

  Juliet felt a spasm of pain as she remembered the little moue of vexation her mother made when she heard the Russians start up, usually just after (or perhaps as a consequence of) their cabbage supper.

  ‘Do you follow, Miss Armstrong? Juliet?’ Perry amended, softening his tone. He had admitted yesterday that he perhaps castigated her too much – her unpunctuality, her daydreaming and lack of attention, ‘and so on’. ‘It is not my job to reform your character,’ he said. (That didn’t seem to stop him trying.) She was still waiting to be seduced. It had been over a month since the otter expedition. A less resilient girl might have given up hope by now.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I am listening.’

  ‘Drop in and have a cup of tea in the tea room. Show your face. I’ve set up a little test for you – for you to rehearse your character, as it were.’

  ‘A test?’ She supposed that’s what war was – one test after another. Sooner or later, she was bound to fail.

  He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a gun. So it was not just paper clips and rubber bands in the big roll-top desk. The gun was a little pocket one. ‘A Mauser 6.35mm,’ he said. For a dizzying moment Juliet wondered if he was going to shoot her, but he said, ‘Here. Keep it in your handbag. Only use it as a last resort, of course.’

  ‘A gun?’ she said.

  ‘Just a small one.’

  It was a tea room, for heaven’s sake, not a Wild West saloon. Still, she rather liked the way the little gun nestled so comfortably in her hand.

  ‘I can give you a lesson in how to use it, if you like.’

  That sounded as if it might involve more tramping through hostile landscape, but he laughed and said, ‘We have a shooting range we use. You will still be doing all this work as well, of course,’ he said, indicating the Imperial. ‘It may involve longer hours. Don’t let me keep you. I have an engagement elsewhere.’

  She had been rather hoping he would take her to dinner to discuss her new role more, but apparently he had other plans. He had changed his tie and was sporting one far too flamboyant for Whitehall or one of his (several) clubs. He must have brought it with him from his ‘other place’ in Petty France, as his Dolphin Square wardrobe (she had thoroughly investigated his room) contained no brash neckwear. She was curious to know what his other mysterious quarters were like. Were they quite different from here? Was he quite different when he was there? Like Jekyll and Hyde.

  She was half expecting to walk in on a nest of spies, people of doubtful demeanour hiding furtively in dark corners, but it really was just a tea room. An open fireplace, quite dingy, and not much room between the oil-clothed tables. There were bentwood chairs and a scattering of quite ordinary people sitting on them, none of whom looked like Fascist sympathizers, but then how could you tell what anyone was in their heart? Really?

  She conducted a covert study of the customers. A couple of matronly Englishwomen chatting sotto voce and an older woman on her own – wearing a peculiar maroon hat that looked hand-made and sporting thick, lumpy, mushroom-coloured stockings. There was also a man in a worn suit and with a large briefcase at his feet. A salesman, Juliet thought. She knew them.

  You may be approached by someone, Perry had said. He already had people ‘on the inside’. He – or she – would speak a sentence that contained the question ‘Can I tempt you?’ and that was how Juliet would recognize them as a fellow agent. She was to reply, ‘That’s very kind of you. I think I will.’ It seemed a bit of a Faustian cypher to Juliet and the whole thing a rather silly charade.

  She read the menu. It was blotched with stains and contained mysterious items – pierogi, blini, stroganoff. Apparently they also served vodka. It wasn’t on the menu, however. ‘Just tea, thank you,’ she said, rather stiffly, when a waiter came to take her order.

  A man came in, not a bad-looking one and lacking a salesman’s downtrodden air. He sat at a table near the window, caught her eye and smiled at her. Juliet smiled back. In return the man gave her a conspiratorial little nod. Perry’s agent, she thought. She smiled at him again and he grinned and got up from the table. Oh, here we go, Juliet thought. He walked over to her and produced a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Can I tempt you?’ he said.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Juliet said. ‘I think I will.’ She took a cigarette and he sat down on the chair next to her and leant in to light it with a match.

  ‘Dennis,’ he said.

  ‘Iris Carter-Jenkins,’ she responded. It was the first time she had said her code name to anyone other than her reflection in the mirror. She could almost feel Iris inflating, taking on life like a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis.

  ‘So, what’s a good-looking girl like you doing in a crummy joint like this?’ ‘Dennis’ asked. Was he basing his own character on someone in a film? A gangster, by the sound of it. Juliet had no script beyond the initial temptation. This was all part of the test, wasn’t it – to play it by ear?

  ‘Well …’ she said, ‘I live quite close by.’

  ‘Do you now?’ He had remained uncomfortably close after lighting her cigarette and she was taken aback when he put his hand on top of hers and said, ‘Close by, eh? That’s handy. Shall we get out of this dump?’ He took his wallet out and said, ‘What’s the damage?’ Juliet was confused. Was he asking her to guess the bill? Or to contribute to it? Out of the corner of her eye she saw the maroon-hatted woman get up from her table and advance towards them.

  Arriving at the table, she grabbed Juliet’s other hand and said, ‘Iris, isn’t it? You’re a friend of my niece – Marjorie.’ She smiled at Dennis and said, ‘So sorry, but Iris and I have such a lot to catch up on.’

  ‘’Fraid we were just going,’ Dennis said, standing up. ‘Weren’t we, Iris? Coming?’ He pulled her to her feet, but the maroon-hatted woman still held on (rather tightly) to her other hand. Ignoring Dennis, she said to Juliet, ‘Did you know that Marjorie’s living in Harpenden now?’

  ‘Why, no,’ Juliet said, deciding to take her cue from the woman (Don’t act, just be). ‘I thought Marjorie was in Berkhamsted.’ (Wouldn’t this have been a better coded exchange? Less liable to misinterpretation?) The woman and Dennis began to conduct a tug-of-war, with Juliet as the prize in the middle, and she wondered if they would only be satisfied when they had succeeded in pulling her apart. Luckily, Dennis, sensing a tenacious opponent, let go of the trophy and retreated to his table, muttering what may well have been obscenities.

  The victoress sat down without being invited and said to Juliet, ‘Can I tempt you to the verushka?’ Juliet was puzzled, it sounded as though she was being offered a verruca. (Luckily, it turned out to be some kind of cake.) ‘It’s the speciality here,’ the woman elucidated, ‘and it’s really rather good.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Juliet said. ‘I will.’

  ‘You will, or you think you will?’

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, Juliet thought, how ridiculous. ‘I think I will.’

  ‘Good. I’m Mrs Ambrose, by the way,’ Mrs Ambrose said.

  ‘You see, Iris dear,’ Mrs Scaife said, ‘the power behind world revolution is international Jewry. Jews have instigated widespread social upheaval since the Middle Ages, haven’t they, Mrs Ambrose?’

  ‘They have,’ Mrs Ambrose agreed complacently. Mrs Ambrose’s real name was Florence Eckersley. Perry had been running her for years.

  Mrs Scaife bit into a maid of honour. It was a delicate act for a woman of her size. She seemed fond of lace, it decorated her substantial hull in many manifestations. Dabbing her mouth neatly with a napkin, Mrs Scaife continued, ‘The Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War are just the most recent examples. Will you have more tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Juliet said. ‘Shall I pour? Mrs Ambrose – another cup for you?’ Mrs Ambrose mumbled assent; she had not been quite as refined as Mrs Scaife in her eager engagement with the little cakes.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and here they were, Juliet thought, Englishwomen doin
g what Englishwomen did best wherever they were in the world – taking tea and having cosy chats, albeit the topic of conversation on this occasion was treason, not to mention the destruction of civilization and the British way of life, although no doubt Mrs Scaife would have claimed to be a vigorous defender of both.

  Mrs Scaife’s husband was Ellory Scaife, a retired Rear Admiral who was an MP for an obscure Northamptonshire constituency as well as a leading light of the Right Club. He was currently languishing in prison along with his Nazi-sympathizing cohorts under Regulation 18b. Mrs Scaife (‘as good as a widow’) had taken over her husband’s interests. ‘Become a young friend to her,’ Perry had said. ‘See what you can find out about her activities. We think she’s rather important. And it’s rumoured that she’s in possession of a copy of the Red Book. Sniff around, see what you can find.’

  As far as Mrs Scaife knew, Iris was a friend of Mrs Ambrose’s niece – the aforesaid Marjorie from Harpenden – and was ‘having doubts’ about ‘our attitude’ towards Germany. She was ‘firmly in favour of appeasement’ and she didn’t like the way that people who disagreed with the war were made to feel so wrong-headed. (‘Just come out with some naïve illiberal sentiments,’ Perry advised. ‘But never overplay your hand.’)

  ‘It’s all part and parcel of one and the same plan,’ Mrs Scaife explained assiduously to Juliet. ‘The plan is secretly operated and controlled by world Jewry, exactly on the lines laid down by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Do you have a copy, dear?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Juliet said, although she did. Perry had lent her his own copy so that she could ‘get the measure of what these people believe’.

  ‘Let me find you one,’ Mrs Scaife said, ringing a little bell on the tea tray. ‘So good of Mrs Ambrose to bring you today. She’s such a good friend to us.’ The maid who had brought them their tea hurried back in.

  ‘Dodds, fetch Miss Carter-Jenkins a copy of the book – you know the one.’ Dodds did, apparently, and squeaked her assent before scurrying away on her errand.

  The sun was flooding into the upstairs drawing room in Pelham Place although the weather remained chill. In the street below, the trees were beginning to display their fresh young leaves. It was such a hopeful time of year and yet Denmark had just surrendered and the Germans had taken Oslo and set up a government under Quisling. Poland, Norway, Denmark – Hitler was collecting countries like stamps. How long before he had the full set?

  The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose-step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (‘The clowns are the dangerous ones,’ Perry said.)

  The house in Pelham Place seemed an odd locus for a cloak-and-dagger operation. The Scaifes’ drawing room was rather lovely, with Persian carpets and a pair of sofas covered in a sea of salmon-pink damask silk. A Chinese vase filled with narcissi sat on a side table and a fire burned brightly in the grate. The windows too were enormous, each one swathed in enough material for a proscenium arch. There was a grand piano – did someone play? Mrs Scaife didn’t look the type to place much value on a nocturne. Juliet felt her fingers spreading and curling with desire for the keys. She wondered what it would have been like to have been a child in a house like this. If she had, would her beliefs have been the same as Mrs Scaife’s?

  Mrs Scaife had two grown-up children – Minerva and Ivo. What bizarre names to be saddled with, Juliet thought. Minerva ‘hunted’ (as if that were a profession) and ran a livery stable deep in the countryside somewhere – Cornwall or Dorset, places beyond Juliet’s imagination. Ivo was not mentioned. (‘He’s rather left-leaning,’ Mrs Ambrose explained.) For all her faults, there was a certain motherliness about Mrs Scaife that Juliet tried hard not to find attractive. If it weren’t for her rabid anti-Semitism or her worship of Hitler, they might have got on. (Quite big ‘ifs’, Perry pointed out.)

  Mrs Scaife had already lost her ‘manservant’ to the war and her German maid had been interned, so now she was reduced to a cook, poor little Dodds and an all-purpose factotum called Wiggins, who lumbered around Pelham Place, filling coal scuttles and pulling weeds from the flower beds.

  ‘I wish to save Britain,’ Mrs Scaife declared, adopting a rather heroic pose over the teacups.

  ‘Like Boadicea,’ Mrs Ambrose suggested.

  ‘But not from the Romans,’ Mrs Scaife said. ‘From the Jews and the Communists and the Masons. The scum of the earth,’ she added pleasantly. ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism – that is the enemy, and if Britain is to be great again then the foe must be eradicated from these shores.’ (‘Do not equate nationalism with patriotism,’ Perry warned Juliet. ‘Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.’)

  Mrs Ambrose had begun to nod off, and if she wasn’t careful, Juliet thought, she would too. Mrs Scaife droned on, her proselytism soporific. Jews here, Jews there, Jews everywhere. It sounded quite absurd in its wrong-headedness, like a mad nursery rhyme. It must be awfully handy to have a scapegoat for the world’s ills. (Women and the Jews tend to be first in line, unfortunately.)

  It seemed unlikely to Juliet that the Jews were brewing ‘world revolution’. Although really, why wouldn’t you? It seemed like an excellent idea from where Juliet was, drowning amongst the salmon damask cushions.

  She replaced her cup carefully in her saucer, attentive to her movements, as if she might betray herself through clumsiness. It was a small triumph to have achieved an invitation to the inner sanctum of Pelham Place, but it remained a somewhat nerve-wracking audition.

  The maid returned, clutching the Protocols of the Elders of Zion before handing it mutely to Juliet with a little bobbed curtsey. She scampered away to whatever mousehole she lived in before Juliet had time to thank her.

  ‘Dodds is an utterly hopeless girl,’ Mrs Scaife sighed. (Mrs Scaife possessed a large vocabulary of sighs.) ‘She’s so reluctant to dirty her hands with housework that you would think she was a Brahmin. Of course, the girl came straight from an orphanage. They have a scheme where they train them to be domestics. All I can say is that they don’t train them very well. We had a very good German maid but, of course, they interned her. She’s on the Isle of Man. She was Category A, but after all the fuss about Norway and now Denmark that has been changed to Category B. She’s a maid, for goodness’ sake, how can she be a threat to anyone?’

  ‘Have you visited her on the Isle of Man?’ Mrs Ambrose asked, perking up suddenly. Perry was always interested in any communication with internees.

  ‘On the Isle of Man?’ Mrs Scaife asked incredulously. Mrs Ambrose might as well have asked if she’d visited someone on the moon.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Mrs Ambrose said with an inoffensive little laugh. ‘Silly me. Whatever was I thinking?’ In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, ‘Iris is an orphan too.’ She made it sound like an accomplishment.

  Mrs Ambrose retrieved her knitting from her bag. She was always accompanied by her knitting, although it seemed to Juliet that she was forever working on the same thing – it never appeared to grow or take on any particular shape. ‘Iris has some … questions,’ she said. ‘Doubts. Criticisms even. Of the war and our part in it.’

  Juliet was able to parrot quite a lot of what Godfrey’s informants said. ‘Yes, it’s difficult to retaliate when people say it was the Germans who started it, because then you’ll just draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘How true,’ Mrs Scaife said.

  ‘Well, I say, “I do wish it hadn’t been us that started the war.” That usually stops them in their tracks.’

  ‘Iris works in the War Office, you know,’ Mrs Ambrose said.

  ‘Oh?’ Mrs Scaife said.

  ‘Frightfully dull stuff,’ Juliet said. ‘Filing, mainly.’ Mrs Scaife looked disappointed and Mrs Ambrose’s needles paused warningly mid-stitch. ‘But that’s how wars are won and lost, isn’t it?’ Juliet added hurriedly.

  ‘Yes. I suppose it is,’ Mrs Scaife said thoughtfully. ‘I expect
you see all kinds of things.’

  Mrs Ambrose resumed the relentless clack-clacking of her needles. ‘And Iris’s fiancé is in the Navy,’ she murmured. ‘I expect he sees all kinds of things too.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Ian,’ Juliet said helpfully. ‘He’s on HMS Hood. Oh, no, I shouldn’t have said that! It’s probably a secret!’ I am the picture of innocence, she thought.

  ‘I shan’t tell anyone,’ Mrs Scaife said soothingly. She was also rather good at feigning innocence.

  Juliet pretended to examine the horrid little book. ‘Thank you for this, Mrs Scaife, I look forward to reading it.’

  ‘Oh, call me Rosamund, dear,’ Mrs Scaife said and Juliet sensed a little flutter of gratification on the part of Mrs Ambrose, like a director observing an actress succeed in a part.

  The telephone rang, an intrusive sound in this genteel atmosphere. The device stood on a little Louis Quinze commode by the window and Mrs Scaife launched herself off the salmon damask to answer it.

  Juliet leafed through the pages of the Protocols, feigning interest in its fraudulent contents while eavesdropping on Mrs Scaife. The Scaifes’ phone was tapped but so far the tapes had yielded little of interest.

  The telephone conversation seemed – disappointingly – to concern the subject of pork chops and was being conducted, presumably, with Mrs Scaife’s butcher, unless ‘pork chops’ was some kind of code. A butcher in the East End had recently displayed a sign that said ‘If you eat pork you’re welcome here’, an anti-Semitic message that proved too subtle for most of his customers. Special Branch arrested him, but Juliet supposed he was back plying his trade by now.

  Surely the Scaifes’ cook would be the one who dealt with the butcher? Mrs Scaife didn’t seem the kind of person to bother herself with the domestic hum-drum. Juliet glanced at Mrs Ambrose to see if the same thought might have crossed her mind, but she continued to knit and purl placidly. It was her very passivity, Perry said, that made her so good – everyone thought she was a harmless old lady, albeit one with extreme Christian views and a violent loathing for Communists. ‘She came to us via the Militant Christian Patriots,’ he explained.