The Best of Our Spies (11 page)

The car pulled up in front of the main entrance and Quinn watched the driver open the rear passenger door. The man who had got out was above average height and wearing Royal Navy uniform. One of the Navy officers who Quinn had seen around the hospital from time to time was there to salute him and lead him into the building.

It was another half an hour before Quinn was summoned into the presence of a surprisingly elderly looking man, who stood up slowly as Quinn entered the room, stiffly walked over to him, returned Quinn’s salute and shook in his hand in a formal manner before leading him over to two chairs by the window.

They were in a small room overlooking the back of Calcotte Grange. The gardens behind the house had not been as manicured as those at the front and the area closest to the house was now a large vegetable garden. Wooden fences had been erected around the vegetables to keep the sheep out and one of the gardeners was repairing part of the fence as they looked out. The muffled echoes of a mallet striking the wooden posts were the only sound until the elder man finally spoke.

‘Captain John Archibald. Royal Navy most of my life. Tried to retire a few years ago, we’d bought a lovely place in Lincolnshire. Between Boston and the sea. Do you know the area?’

Quinn shook his head.

‘Very quiet. My wife had been dreaming of a place like this for years and I promised her that when I left the Navy we would find somewhere like this. Cannot see a soul from where we are, but there’s a splendid village just down the lane. Everything you need. Pub, shop, post office, church — in that order. Village green has a phone box next to the war memorial, but otherwise it is perfect. We’d been there a year when this war started and they hauled me back. Saw plenty of activity in my time, Jutland you know. But after the Great War I’d moved over to Naval Intelligence and I suppose that is why they wanted me back. And that is why I am here now.’

Captain Archibald was looking out of the window. Owen noticed his hands, which were enormous with thick fingers and the appearance of the hands of a labourer. The hammering had stopped and the gardener was trying to lead a stray sheep away from the vegetables.

‘I know you wanted to go back to sea and that’s splendid. But the doctors here are not sure you’re totally up to it. In any case, we have a much bigger job for you, greater good and all that. I work in Naval Intelligence, as I mentioned. I need people like you. You’re a bright chap. Plenty of people like doing the exciting stuff, but I understand you’re a bit of a wizard with maps and charts. Is that true?’

Quinn hesitated.

‘Well ... yes, sir. I did a degree in geography at London University. Coasts, sandbanks, meteorology – that’s what I was interested in. So when I joined up in November ’39, specialising in navigation was right up my street. I read maps for pleasure in the same way that other people read books.’

‘Well, it is good to have you on board, Quinn.’

Quinn noticed that while this was not a command, it was certainly not a question either. At no stage in the conversation had it been anything other than assumed that Quinn would be joining Archibald.

‘But I had been hoping to return to sea, sir. The doctor said that ...’

‘The doctor may have thought that was possible a few months ago but he clearly does not think so now. This is why we would like you to join us.’

‘And there really is no alternative?’

‘To not being at sea? I am sure there are plenty of desk jobs at the Admiralty, but let me tell you, we have chaps queuing up to join Naval Intelligence.’

‘I am pleased to be joining you, sir. If it really is out of the question for me to go back to sea, that is.’

‘Good chap. The doctors tell me that you will be out of here in a couple of weeks. Is that right?’

‘So I understand, sir. I am walking well now. Still a bit of pain, but I’ll be glad to get out of here and doing a job of work.’

‘That’s the spirit, Quinn. I know you wanted to get back to sea and I understand that. But you need to understand that you are going to be playing a vital role in the war effort. There will be times when it doesn’t seem like it. You will just think that you are pushing pieces of paper around. None of us knows how long this damn show is going to last, but it will not be until it is all over that you will have any idea of the part you’ve played. One other matter, Quinn: I understand that you have recently become engaged.’

‘Indeed, sir. All rather sudden ... not that we
have
to get married, please don’t misunderstand. But when Captain Edgar came to see me earlier this month it was clear that he was aware of our ... of our, relationship. I didn’t want Nurse Mercier, Nathalie, to get into any kind of trouble and Captain Edgar had urged me to do the decent thing so I proposed. And blow me down, sir, she accepted! I’m the happiest man in the world. She is the most beautiful woman and I love her very much.’

The hammering had resumed outside the window. Captain Archibald started to speak, hesitated, stopped and then spoke.

‘I was going to say, Quinn, that your private life is none of my concern, but, of course, that is untrue. Everything you do, everything about you will be my concern once you start working in my unit. But just be careful. Love is a wonderful thing, but it does have a habit of getting in the way of things. Try to keep your feet on the ground.

‘They’re discharging you from here on Friday, the tenth of April. You start with us at Lincoln House in Duke Street at nine o’clock on Monday, the thirteenth of April. Lucky for us.’

ooo000ooo

CHAPTER EIGHT

London
1942

His wedding had not been what quite as Owen Quinn had envisaged, which was hardly surprising as he had never really given much thought to getting married other than assuming that one day he would. Much more to the point, it was certainly not as Marjorie and William Quinn had ever imagined their son’s wedding would be.

Over the years, Marjorie Quinn especially had frequently imagined her only child’s wedding, even planned some details of it. It would, of course, be a day to remember. Their friends and some relations would all be invited and impressed. The sun would shine, the church would look perfect, the flowers immaculately arranged and no detail disregarded. It would be the height of taste and would inevitably mark their ascendancy in their middle-class community in Surrey. Ideally, the bride would be from their area and certainly from a similar background. She would be attractive and intelligent, though, of course, without any unhealthy modern tendencies towards independence.

Marjorie Quinn did recognise that the war could affect her plans, but had reckoned on her son simply delaying marriage until a year or two after the war. Her cousin’s daughter had married an American and that had been most upsetting, but then that side of the family were from Yorkshire.

But to marry a Frenchwoman, with no family — and a nurse, which was almost trade ... it had all been too awful for Marjorie to contemplate. Of course, William had soon changed his tune when he first met the girl. It was hard to deny that she was ...
attractive
, one had to acknowledge that. But Owen had known her for just a matter of weeks when they became engaged
and
he was a patient of hers. It all seemed too hasty and a not a little improper. She wondered whether the whole business may have been the result of any of the medication that Owen was on.

She certainly never imagined that the first time she would meet her son’s bride-to-be would be when they were actually engaged. In a way, she blamed herself. They ought to have visited Owen more often after he was taken to Calcotte Grange. But the journey from Surrey involved a series of train journeys and that took forever and the trains tended to be crowded with soldiers, many of whom were not British.

As soon as they heard of the engagement in late March they had come up. William’s brother had managed to get hold of some extra petrol coupons and they were able to use his Ford Anglia. On the journey up, they had agreed that they would take Owen aside and do their best to talk him out of it. He had always been such an
impetuous
boy. William said it was because he was an only child.

The day was a disaster from the start; at least it was from Marjorie Quinn’s point of view. As soon as they arrived at Calcotte Grange Owen and the girl piled into the car and they headed off to what she had to admit was a most agreeable tea-room, where they had a small area to themselves by a roaring fire. William could hardly take his eyes off this Nathalie from the moment he first saw her. The girl and Owen actually
held hands
the whole time and even
kissed
in front of them. She drank tea without milk and smoked constantly. She ignored most of Marjorie’s carefully rehearsed and very polite questions about her life in Paris and kept asking for amusing stories about Owen as a boy.

The one positive aspect of the whole sorry situation was that at least Owen was not going back to sea, which she had never been happy about. She did like the sound of the new job in London. It seemed important, although Owen insisted that he was not allowed to tell her anything about it.

The young lovers arrived in London in April. The Navy found them a tiny flat in Pimlico, from where you could hear the trains at Victoria Station on a still night. They also put in a good word to allow Nathalie to return to her old hospital, St Thomas’s. She would live in the nurses’ home until their wedding in June.

That had taken place in a grim church in Chelsea. The vicar had a streaming cold but no handkerchief and for some unaccountable reason was unable to pronounce ‘Owen’ properly. He was so slow in both speech and movement that the ceremony felt more funereal than matrimonial. It rained for the duration of the wedding and for some time after. Marjorie and William had invited a dozen friends and a similar number of relatives. Owen had invited the two or three chums from school whom he had been able to contact, along with another Navy officer from his new office. Nathalie had brought along three other nurses, none of whom she seemed to know particularly well, but who all spent most of the ceremony dabbing their eyes.

And that was it. Barely thirty of them in a damp and dimly lit church that could accommodate at least ten times that number. Marjorie Quinn did turn round at one stage during the ceremony and spotted a tall man in the very back row, well into the shadows. He was wearing a dark coat and his face was obscured by a wide-brimmed trilby. She did wonder whether he was one of the Yorkshire relatives, they were the kind of people who would not remove their hats in a church, but when she next turned round the tall man was no longer there. She decided he was simply a passer-by seeking refuge from the rain.

And so on a wet day in June 1942, Owen Quinn, aged twenty-four, married a Frenchwoman two years older than himself.

ooo000ooo

Now it was September and Owen Quinn was surprised at the ease with which he had taken both to his new role in Naval Intelligence and to married life.

The Navy had been what he considered to be surprisingly helpful in finding them the flat in Alderney Street in Pimlico. He really had not realised that they went to that kind of trouble. It was a tiny flat, he had to admit that. The kitchen was little more than a galley and the small lounge which led off it had to accommodate two enormous old armchairs, a pair of rickety side tables and a stained dining table. The narrow bathroom was always draughty but having spent eighteen months at sea and the best part of a year in hospital, Quinn had no problem with the flat, unlike his new wife.

It was an improvement on the nurses’ home, but for her, the bedroom was the only room that Nathalie was happy with. Somehow they had managed to get the double bed that his parents bought them into it and from then on the bedroom became the focal point of their home life.

It was hard to predict Nathalie’s shifts at St Thomas’s. Sometimes it would be long days, occasionally a week of nights, which he hated. Weekends were difficult to plan. She did seem to work more Sundays than not, which he could not really understand but she promised him that she was not being asked to do any more than her fair share. She assured him that working more Sundays meant she was not required to work so many nights. Her Sundays at work did mean that he could go down to Surrey for lunch with his parents.

There was a war on after all and at least they were together. She more than made up for it in their time together. On the occasions when he found himself alone in the flat and becoming maudlin, he would remind himself of how his life had changed in little more than a year. Clinging to the plank of wood in the sea off Crete, he thought his life was over. Now, not only was he alive but he was married to a woman he loved and who had previously existed only in his dreams. His life, he had to admit to himself, was as near perfect as he could have wished it to be.

Be careful what you wish for, he very occasionally reminded himself. But he would chuckle when he did so. He now seemed to have what he had always wished for and there really did not need to be anything he had to be careful about.

On the rare days when neither of them was working they would go for long walks. She liked to explore London. Owen had lived in the capital as a student, but Nathalie brought a totally different eye to it.

She would spot sights that he had walked past many times but never seen. She would be thrilled at the names of little streets or delighted at a small shop only selling buttons, or appalled at the food shops which she said were disgusting. He would remind her that there was a war on, but she insisted that the food shops and the steamy cafés they would sit and drink in were proof that the English did not care about food.

They would walk along and Nathalie would always look up. Her long hair would drop further down her back, resting sensuously in that spot halfway down it which he would always caress before they fell asleep. She would marvel at the tops of the buildings and the strange creatures carved into them or protruding from the walls.