Snapshots of War
Michael Gouda
Part 11
**
Saturday 2nd August 1941
Almost immediately, it seemed, the posters on the hoardings in the London streets changed. Now they were all variations on the theme: 'Russia's fight is ours'. Pictures of former enemy soldiers, wearing helmets that looked very like German ones but who had stars rather swastikas on their uniforms, appeared everywhere. 'Aid the Soviets - Smash Hitler.'
Peter and William listened to the news. It wasn't good. On July 12th there had been a mutual assistance agreement between Britain and the Soviet Union, but this hadn't delayed the German advance through Russia. They had captured Minsk and 'Uncle Joe' Stalin had called for what was termed a 'scorched earth policy', burning everything in front of the advancing troops, crops, fields, houses, killing the animals, so that there was nothing for the Germans to eat. But it hadn't stopped them crossing the River Dnieper in the Ukraine - wherever that was.
"The Russkies are getting really knocked about."
"Hitler's over extended himself," said Peter. "He's advancing on the Eastern front and the further he gets from home into Russia the further supplies have to travel. Then he's got to keep an army in France in case we decide to launch an offensive."
It was mid-afternoon. Outside the sun was shining and two rectangular squares of yellow sunlight lay on the grey carpet. The sound of traffic was muted in the distance. A fly buzzed desperately at the windowpane unaware that two inches above there was a gap which would allow it freedom. It was a time of lazy contentment. Both young men had started to develop that easy attitude to each other which comes from living together, getting on well together, knowing each other's moods and feelings. They had shared their lives for a month now and life seemed to be good and uncomplicated.
"What's it like being a spy?" asked William, sprawled on the sofa and trying to look alluring - not that that was difficult. He was wearing a light blue shirt, one of Peter's. To fashion-starved William, it was the height of elegance, almost of depravity. In England at that time of shortage shirts, when you could actually find them, were always white - or khaki.
"You know," said Peter, smiling, "I think you are what the Americans would call a tramp."
William looked puzzled. "Someone who dresses in rags and begs for bread?" he asked.
Peter smiled. Sometimes William was just too innocent. He was sure some of it was put on.
"I'm not exactly a spy," said Peter, returning to the original question. "I'm an agent. To be accurate, I'm a counter agent."
"So, what's it like - being a counter agent?"
Peter looked at William, his young lover's high cheek-boned face alive with interest, a smile showing his teeth, a lock of curly hair falling in a quiff over his forehead. "Actually what I do, it's not all that exciting. I'm given information, orders. I pass them on to Charlie and that's it."
"But codes? Invisible ink? Passwords? Don't you do all that sort of stuff?"
Peter laughed. "You've been reading too many thrillers," he said. "I suppose if I was really a spy, having to find out information on my own, cracking safes for plans, it would be more exciting. But my bosses do all the work for me. They think up the ideas. All I do is pass them on."
William looked disappointed. "What sorts of ideas?" he asked.
"I mustn't tell you," said Peter.
"Come on, honey, you know you want to." The words were full of innuendo. Peter was startled - as he often was - at the way William had come out of himself during the time they had spent together. Most of the time, he was no longer the shy young lad he had first known. Now he had matured and another side of him, sexy and taking the lead, had emerged.
"You are indeed a tart," said Peter, smiling.
"Yes I know. Come on though, tell me one of the plans, one that is finished so it doesn't matter now." Lying on the sofa, William allowed his knee to swing open exposing his crotch where there was an undoubted swelling. "Tell me and I'll let you..." He left the sentence unfinished, his smile and action implying all sorts of possibilities.
"You'd make a good Mata Hari," said Peter, "worming out secrets in the bedroom. I will tell you one. It has to do with the North Africa campaign. Unfortunately it did not succeed."
William was suddenly serious. He sat upright, all attention.
"There was an operation planned to relieve Tobruk in Libya. MI5 wanted Rommel to move some of his forces away before the attack started so some information had to be passed giving the impression that the allied forces were being moved to another area."
"You did this?" said William.
Peter nodded.
"And told Charlie this information?"
Charlie, thought Peter, yes there was the problem of Charlie. William had been so relieved when he had announced that the German letter had been written by Mr Leverton, Adele's boss at the Arsenal, so couldn't be Charlie, the German spy. So relieved indeed that Peter hadn't been able to disillusion him - especially after the fright thinking that his mother had been killed, and the loss of his home.
Later, as always, it had been difficult - no impossible - to go back on what he had said, to tell the truth. He would just have to keep a close eye on the relationship, make sure things were under control. And more than anything hope that Major Carlisle did not get to hear of the new complication.
"No, not Charlie. Another German agent." Peter did not want to go too deeply into the part he had actually played with Juan Perez. "Unfortunately," he continued, "there was an accident and the information was never sent to Rommel's command."
"So it was all a waste of time. How did you pass on the information?"
Peter hesitated. "I - " he paused " - I let him see a document."
"In code?" said William eagerly.
"Sort of," said Peter, trying to keep it as vague as possible. To tell William it was a letter supposed to be from his father was impossible.
"How do codes work?" asked William, suddenly a little boy again.
Peter laughed. "Some are very complicated, Wim. The Germans have a machine which translates messages automatically into code. It is called Enigma. It is almost unbreakable."
"Almost?"
"I believe so. On a simple level, code is just changing a letter for another one. If you write out the alphabet in a line on a piece of paper and then write it out again underneath. Cut out the two strips, then you can move one against the other so that for instance an 'A' is opposite the letter which is four places on. Then to decode all you have to do is to read off the letter four places back."
William nodded.
"But that sort of code is easy to decode because each letter always has the same coded one and in a long piece it is too simple to find the most commonly used letter. For instance in English the letter 'E' is most common so if you go through the piece and you find an 'I' is most used then it's a pretty good guess that that's an 'E' and the code is just four places moved on."
"You can have your reward now" said William, lying back seductively.
"You are insatiable," said Peter. "Let me recover from last time. I need some tea."
"I thought only the English drank tea in the afternoon. And the Dutch drank gin."
Peter moved to him, leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. William's arms came up. clasped him around his neck and pulled him down so that they lay together, Peter on top.
"What about my tea?" complained Peter.
"Just a cuddle."
"I love you," Peter said.
"I think you prove that most nights," said William, "and at other times too."
"No I don't just mean the sex . . "
"I know," said William and kissed him on the mouth, "though the sex is very good. Go on, put on the kettle. You're as bad as my mother, always wanting her cuppa."
"Bet she doesn't want other things that I do," said Peter, hoisting himself up and going towards the kitchen.
William called after him. "Did I tell you I'm going to have another little brother or sister? So she obviously does like something in that line." There was a pause. "Where are the scissors?"
"What are you doing?" asked Peter from the kitchen. "You will find them in the drawer under the table."
"Wait and see," said William.
When Peter came back in carrying a tray, with teapot, cups and saucers, a plate of sandwiches and a cake, there were two little strips of paper on the table with the alphabet on them. On another sheet of paper William had written in large capital letters:
M P S Z I C S Y T I X I V
Peter looked at it and smiled. "Three 'I's," he said. "It's too short to really follow the rules but if 'I' equals 'E' then the code is four places on." He looked at the message for a short while. "Yes, I see I am right."
He kissed William. "Let us have some tea to get our strength up and then you can prove it to me how much."
Sunday 3rd August 1941
"It's a very pretty little house," said Adele. She personally preferred something a little more modern, brick built perhaps with a bay window and a porch over the front door But the little mews house with its bright, cream-painted front door, half barrels full of scarlet runner beans trained up sticks outside on the cobbles - every available space should be used to help the war effort, enjoined the MoF - was indeed very attractive.
Adele had found it surprisingly easy to persuade Charlie that she did not really enjoy the office locale for their sexual interludes. It smacked, she said, too much of the furtive, the tawdry. Sometimes he could be very understanding and perhaps he himself was a little uncomfortable - possibly for other reasons - the most prominent being the possibility of discovery. Of course no one would dream of barging in but the lapse of time between a knock and the opening of the door, the discovery of a factory girl in the room - there was no hiding place - would have given obvious grounds for suspicion.
"Can't we go to your place?" she had asked and Charlie, after only the briefest hesitations, had agreed.
"You make sure you give it a good search," Mavis had instructed when Adele had told her. "he's bound to leave you alone for a while - going to the lav. Or ask him to get you a drink - make you a cup of tea, it takes longer."
And now she was here. In Charlie's House in Wentworth Mews - funny name for a road, still her own Granby Street didn't mean much either. It was a small house more tall and wide, three storeys up with little more than a room to each floor. The ground floor was a living room with a small kitchen almost partitioned off so that the main room had a rather odd L shape to it. Presumably the bedrooms were upstairs.
It seemed natural to explore - any woman, probably most men, would have been curious to see their lover's house. Adele walked round the room, gently touched an ornament, straightened a curtain so that it let in more of the afternoon sun. "It's nice," she said.
Charlie watched her with his golden eyes. Though on the surface he seemed calm, Adele thought she detected an underlying uneasiness.
"Could I have some tea?" she asked. Charlie's eyes flicked momentarily to the clock on the mantelpiece.
"Of course," he said, perhaps a little too quickly. Was he nervous, she wondered. Surely not. Whatever it was though it had the effect of making her feel more in charge, less nervous herself. She sat down on the sofa which was covered with blue damask. Her green dress went with it, she thought, blue and green, peacock colours.
Charlie moved to sit next to her.
"Tea?" she insisted, smiling up at him. He went out and she heard him filling the kettle, the rush of water from a tap.
She looked round. Mavis 's suspicions seemed all more crazy in this nicely-appointed, almost fussy, little room. What could she possibly find that might be evidence of spying? There was nothing around which might not have been in her grandmother's old sitting room. The only thing that stood out in an alien fashion was a box-like object on a small table at the back of the room. It had some switches and dials but Adele, not recognising what it was, did not see how it could remotely be concerned with spying.
What would spies use? Adele couldn't think of anything though the phrase invisible ink came to her mind. What on earth would invisible ink look like?
A book on the table caught her eye. The cover seemed familiar. As she thought, it was 'The Maltese Falcon' by Dashiell Hammett. She had had a copy of this very book herself but had lost it in the bombing raid. There was a grey smudge of something across the cover. Apart from that it looked as if it might have been her old book.
A piece of paper was tucked inside to mark a place. She opened the book at the page. Her eyes caught a phrase. 'his eyes burned yellowly', the last sentence of chapter nine. It was a sentence she remembered from when she had first read it as it had seemed so unlikely a description, 'Eyes, burning, yellow', the ideas just didn't seem to go together. And then she remembered Charlie's eyes.
She was about to put the paper marker back when she noticed that it wasn't just a single piece of paper, in fact it was three pieces, two thin strips enclosed in another folded piece. The strips had the letters of the alphabet written on them and the paper a series of 13 letters:
M P S Z I C S Y T I X I V
What did they mean? It must have meant something otherwise why had it been written down. She puzzled over it for a while but couldn't think of an explanation. On an impulse, she put the pieces of paper in her bag - only just in time.
Charlie came in with two cups of tea. They had slopped into the saucers. He seemed almost jittery - the opposite of the calm, always-in-control person he usually was. The teacups rattled in the saucers as he handed her one and put the other down on the table.
"Drink your tea up," he said, "and let's go upstairs."
Adele felt she was being taken for granted. "What's the hurry, Charlie?" she asked. "Surely we have all night."
"I may have to go out later," he said and glanced again at the clock on the mantelpiece.
Anger suddenly surged through Adele's body, the adrenaline making her arms and forehead tingle. "I think there is something you should know," she said. "We must talk about it."
Charlie looked as if he might protest but then he seemed to agree and sat down in the armchair opposite her. "What is it? " he asked. "Is it too important that it couldn't wait?"
Wait until after you 'fuck' me, thought Adele in anger, the crude words replacing those she usually used, ones like 'make love to me'. But that was all it was, a crude physical act. He didn't really care for her, she was sure. Tears came to her eyes but she fought them back.
"I think I'm pregnant," she said. Think? She knew she was. All the evidence was there, in fact she could see in the mirror that her figure was altering, feel the weight in her distended stomach. There was a baby there, undeniably .
Charlie was silent, looking at her, his eyes hard and impenetrable. "This is foolish talk," he said eventually. "It is not possible. I have been most careful. I cannot afford a baby. It would be most inconvenient. You'll have to get rid of it."
Get rid of it? For a moment Adele did not know what he could mean. How could you get rid of a baby? Then she realised, but could scarcely take it in. She wasn't sure what she thought Charlie's reaction to her news would be. Had she thought that he would have gone on his knees and proposed? Perhaps in her heart of romantic hearts that idea was there, though she had never actually pictured the scene. But never had she thought of an - an abortion. The very word made her feel sick. Having no idea of the reality, she could picture a dirty crone in some dark and unhygienic, bug-ridden back room, fiddling inside her with some dreadful metal instrument until the contents of her womb was dislodged. Appalled, she put her hand to her mouth and was afraid that she actually would vomit.
She breathed deeply and the nausea subsided, but still she couldn't say anything.
Charlie obviously realised her distress because he tried to comfort her. He put out a hand but she jumped back so sharply from his touch that he withdrew. "I will see to everything," he said. "You will have nothing to worry about. I shall see the problem is solved."
I - I - I. It was all 'I' with him, thought Adele, And my baby is just a 'problem', an inconvenience.
"No," she said and shakily stood up. The cup of tea which she had balanced on the arm of the sofa fell to the floor, broke and the tea spread on the light grey carpet. "I do not want to 'get rid of it'."
Charlie gave a muffled exclamation and fell on his knees, picking up the bits of china, seemingly more concerned with the spreading stain than the child inside her.
"No," she repeated. "I will not get rid of it."
He looked up, his hands holding the jagged pieces.
"We must be sensible about this," said Charlie. "You do not want to have to look after a baby on your own. You would have to give up your job."
Nothing from him of care, of feeling, of comfort, of reassurance.
"Must get a cloth," he muttered and went out to the kitchen.
Adele's horror was replaced by a mounting surge of anger which she could not control.
"You bastard," she screamed as he reappeared with a dishcloth in his hand. "You don't care anything for the life you created. You don't care for me. You only think of your 'convenience', your own pleasure. I hate you!"
He looked at her, his strange eyes hot and angry.
'His eyes burned yellowly'. She remembered the sentence from the book and as she did so the significance of the strange collection of letters struck her. It was code. It must be code. Not a long message but perhaps the start of one that had been interrupted. And why should anyone use code in wartime if he wasn't a spy? Charlie was a German spy, an enemy agent.
"Pull yourself together," he said and grabbed hold of her upper arms, his face so close she could see the fine veins on the side of his nose, a piece of something caught between his teeth.
Suddenly he wasn't just despicable, he was frightening.
"Let me alone! You are hurting!"
"Only when you're calm."
"I am calm," she said, forcing herself to be so, and thought, I must get away. His hands released her and and she rubbed where they had grasped. There would be bruises on her arms. "I want to go home," she said.
"Don't do anything stupid."
She pushed past him and out of the door, fearing for a moment that he would stop her, but he let her go. She could feel his eyes on her back as she struggled with the front door catch, at last got it open and stumbled through. In the open air she gasped, her heart beating hard and then she began to run.
Sunday 3rd August 1941
"I'll get you a nice cuppa tea," said Mavis. "Mum's down the pub. Come and sit down." They sat side by side on the chintz-covered, flower-patterned furniture and drank weak tea.
Adele had returned with a damp cheek and swollen red eyes. dabbing at her nose with a soggy handkerchief after a bus journey which, she felt, had lasted for a week. People sitting opposite her had stared with compassion and no little curiosity at her blotched face and the tears running down her cheeks. One woman with a considerate expression had asked if there was anything she could do but Adele had said no, turning away and hiding her face.
"He didn't care," she sobbed. "He was more concerned about the bloody tea stain on the carpet."
"Men," said Mavis sympathetically. "I told you he was a wrong-un."
"He wanted me to get rid of it!"
Privately Mavis thought this wasn't such a bad idea but all she said was, "You're better off without him."
"How can I be?" burst out Adele. "How can I bring up a kid on my own. I won't have a job, won't have any money coming in. What am I going to do?" At this fresh realisation of her circumstances, she broke into renewed sobs.
Mavis sought to distract her. "How far is it gone?" she asked.
Adele had to stop crying to think. "The first time was back in June," she said. "At the most two months." Then it flooded back. "But people will notice soon. I can see the bump already."
Mavis looked at her curiously. She had had rather more familiarity with pregnancies than Adele had. One of her sisters already had two children. Her mother had seemed to be perennially pregnant. "Not yet," she said. "It can't show yet."
Adele stood up. "Look," she said, and turned sideways on so that Mavis could see the distinct protuberance, the bulge that advertised her shame.
"That's not two months," said Mavis with a certain finality. She touched the stomach and felt it with her open hands, running them over the area. Adele started at first, withdrawing from the stroking hands, but they were comforting and she felt a warming pleasure from their feel. They roamed and then down towards her crotch, gently caressing.
Adele gasped as the fingers committed a familiarity.
"No," said Mavis, taking away her hands. "That's not two months, more like five I'd say, perhaps even six."
"It can't be. Are you sure?"
"Stake my oath on it."
"But... " Adele thought back five months, back to March and realised. She began to laugh. Suddenly it seemed desperately funny. "It's Chalky's," she said, through the exploding bouts of laughter, "It's my Chalky's baby." She could scarcely believe the feeling of relief that had changed everything.
Mavis stared at her as if Adele had just become a candidate for Colney Hatch, the lunatic asylum. "I don't know what you're laughing at. Whoever's it is, it's still a problem."
"No, you don't understand. Mum liked Chalky. Dad was his best friend. They won't mind if I have Chalky's baby. They'll help me to look after it. It'll be all right. Better the bastard of a dead hero than that of a German spy."
"Charlie? You think he is one?"
"Oh yes, I forgot to tell you - what with everything else. I found something at the house." She opened her bag, took out the pieces of paper she had discovered marking the place in 'the Maltese Falcon' and showed them to Mavis. "Look it's a code."
"What does it mean?" asked Mavis.
Adele shrugged. "Don't know," she said. "But that's not the point. What with the letter in German and this, surely that's proof. We've got to do something about it."
For someone who had originally insisted that Charlie was a spy, Mavis now seemed more than doubtful about how to proceed. "What can we do?" she asked.
Adele, though, had a new-found confidence, born from the sudden removal of her fears. "Go along to the Police Station," she suggested. "Tell the Sergeant."
"Old Sergeant Prentice," said Mavis, somewhat dubiously. "He wouldn't take much notice of me."
"Only because he caught you with your hand in the sweet counter at Woolworths."
"That was when I was seven," said Mavis. "but old coppers have a long memory."
"Would he actually recognise you now?" Adele looked at Mavis's long blond hair freed from the constraints of the snood she normally wore for work, her bright lipstick - there was little of the seven-year-old face that was in the photograph on the mantelpiece.
"The neighbourhood copper? He's seen me grow up."
"Then we'll have to do it anon - anon - without him knowing who we are. Perhaps we could telephone."
"From the callbox. They couldn't trace us that way."
They carefully planned what they would say. In a way it was like acting in a film.
**
End of Part 11