Decoy (7 page)

‘No, they were the only two I had.’

‘What happens to the title?’

‘There’s a wee bairn, the son of my late husband’s younger brother.’

‘Was it your idea to buy the planes?’

‘Yes. It seemed appropriate.’

Ned pointed to the next man, who said querulously: ‘
Daily Herald
. Why didn’t you buy a few field ambulances instead?’

‘They would hardly serve my purpose so well,’ she said firmly. ‘We Scots are like the rest of the Allies: we want to kill the enemy, not carry them away on stretchers!’

She had neatly turned the question, and Ned pointed to the next man. ‘
Evening Standard
, ma’am. Will you be handing over the planes yourself at the factory?’

‘Goodness, I don’t know. They’ve only just cashed my cheque!’

The newspapermen laughed, and she was thankful when one of them, with an apologetic ‘Press Association, ma’am — I must ’phone this,’ hurried off to the nearest telephone, which Ned knew, since he passed it every day, was round the corner in Buckingham Palace Road.

The reporters obviously considered the impromptu Press conference over, and as Ned turned back to the three women, the Countess said: ‘Can we get a taxi?’

‘Why not have a scratch-round-the-larder lunch with us?’ his mother said. ‘We live just round the corner. Then we can talk as long as we want.’

Lunch was a typical ‘unexpected guest’ meal which bit into hoarded food coupons but justified the ‘points’ system, where the few issued each week could be used to buy some tinned and other foods which came under the heading of ‘luxury’ rather than ‘essential’.

Clare changed her dress for a tweed skirt and cashmere jersey and then disappeared into the kitchen to produce a cold buffet of scraps, a salad of sliced cabbage with an oil and vinegar dressing, and, as the main item, a tin of herrings in tomato sauce. Clare apologized for the fact that the cheese ration was gone, that there was only margarine left, and the meat ration was still at the butcher’s, intended for dinner on Sunday.

Lady Kelso shook her head regretfully. ‘Up in Scotland we’re very lucky. Plenty of rabbits and our own fresh vegetables. And now and again we share our venison.’

The four of them sat in the drawing room close to the one-bar electric fire, which only emphasized the chill, and Ned listened as Clare and Lady Kelso brought themselves up to date with their news. Lady Kelso was running the entire estate with the help of the former agent, who had retired before the war but had now come back, despite severe attacks of sciatica. The Ministry of Agriculture inspectors called once a week to tell him how they thought he should run the farm, but things had been a lot easier since a particular inspector had given instructions for a particular hillside to be ploughed and planted.

‘McPherson — he’s my agent — told him the hillside was so steep that a tractor would overturn, and none of the horses could work it. This inspector, a man with soft hands and clean nails and an ingratiating manner — I think he said he came from Huyton, in Lancashire, which I always thought was industrial — argued with McPherson so rudely that McPherson fetched out the tractor, hitched on the plough, and drove it to the hillside. He went back to his office for something and when he returned he told the inspector to show him how it was done. The inspector looked up the hill and promptly said he could not drive a tractor.

‘McPherson, who had gone back to get his shotgun — an ancient twelve-bore hammer gun — cocked it and told the inspector to climb up and drive.

‘I arrived just as McPherson had fired both barrels into the ground a couple of feet in front of the inspector and was reloading. I took the poor man to the railway station after giving him a whisky, and I must say the Ministry have been much more understanding since then.’

Her description of her life running the estate was, Ned realized, an outline of the kind of life one or other (or indeed both) boys would have enjoyed had they lived and when peace came again. Each had roamed the sky as a hunter, a Spitfire replacing the basket-handled sword of the forebears, but each had lost the last fight.

‘There are plenty of grouse: they seem to know there are no guns about, apart from a few poachers. The deer, och they breed so fast and do so much damage, but I hate to have them shot, though it is for their own good. Rabbits — we have so many we could feed all England if they sent up a few ferrets and nets. Pheasants — enough to keep the poachers busy. They knock them out of the trees at night.’

The conversation then turned naturally to the two sons. Clare recalled happy childhood stays with the Douglases before the war, when she was not considered by the Countess old enough to travel alone on the night train down to London. Boldro’s first stag — Clare and Kevin had been there when he shot it and, horrified, both vowed they would never shoot such a magnificent animal.

‘And Kevin never did,’ commented the countess. ‘He never went hunting, or shooting, or even fishing. I think the only thing he ever hunted after that was Germans.’

‘He certainly made up for it then,’ Clare commented. ‘How many did he shoot down?’

‘Seventeen. But he was different from Boldro: he went his own way. He’d be at home reading while Boldro would be camping in one of the glens with a couple of his friends, cooking over a camp fire.’

The Countess and Clare reminisced and Ned felt the jealousy ebb away. Clare had been fond of both boys (and young men as they grew up) but they could have been her brothers or favourite cousins. One thing was very clear, though, and it accounted for Clare’s ignorance of recent happenings in the Douglas family: the Countess neither read nor answered letters. If they came in manila envelopes they were given to McPherson, and the rest ended up, for a reason unclear to Ned, in a large zinc bin in the pantry.

The Countess stayed to tea and then took them out to an early dinner, before catching the night train back to Scotland. Ned sent his mother home by taxi before he and Clare took the old lady to the station. After the train pulled out and just as the sirens started their wailing warning that the night’s bombing was about to begin, and with no taxis in sight, they walked down the steps to the Underground.

‘It’s been an extraordinary day,’ Clare said. ‘I’m so glad I don’t have to do night duty as well tonight.’

‘As well as what?’ he turned to look at her.

‘As well as travel on the Underground with you,’ she said, blushing. ‘Officers aren’t supposed to use public transport.’

‘Find me a taxi, then: I’d sooner take it. Tell me,’ he said, ‘what would have happened if I hadn’t been sent to St Stephen’s to have this hand mended?’

‘Oh,’ she said airily, ‘if you’d gone to Haslar the Navy doctors might have made a better job of it — avoided the septicaemia, for example — but you’d have been bullied by SBAs, not me.’

‘An unshaven sick-berth attendant after a night’s bombing wouldn’t have been as fierce as you.’

‘No, but SBAs don’t wear black stockings.’

He laughed, recalling the episode when he had teased her that a stocking seam was crooked. ‘That was when I knew I loved you,’ he said, talking as thought they were in the privacy of a sitting room or bedroom, not walking round people coming up the stairs. ‘When did you, er…’

‘It’s often different with women, darling. Usually there isn’t a blinding flash as they fall in love. It is slow and insidious, like getting a cold. One feels slightly odd, and then it gets worse. Finally one has to admit to having a cold and it is far too late to do anything about it.’

They reached the bottom of the steps and walked over to the ticket machines.

‘When did you decide it was too late?’ he asked.

‘About a week before you wrote me that letter.’

‘But…’ he thought a few moments. ‘But you had hardly spoken to me up to then. A couple of blanket baths, a few bottles, half a dozen changes of dressing…’

‘And half a dozen times when I pushed your arm down into a dish of nearly scalding water and you simply grunted when I knew it must be agony.’

‘But you never said anything sympathetic; you never hinted…’

‘To be snubbed by the handsome wounded young war hero who had a girl in every port?’

The ticket machine remained silent after the coins were inserted and Ned shook it. It whirred and reluctantly produced a ticket. Then, as if ashamed of its previous tardiness, it ejected the second ticket. At almost the same instant Ned felt through the floor the vibrations of a stick of bombs landing nearby.

Ned had just sat down at his desk next morning, the first to arrive in the room, when Joan came in carrying a cup of coffee and greeting him cheerfully. ‘With Captain Watts’ compliments,’ she said and put the cup on his desk. ‘As soon as you have drunk it — he was emphatic that you take your time because this is the good coffee — he requests the pleasure of your company.’

‘Where’s Jemmy?’

‘I left him trying to sharpen a safety razor blade with a new glass sharpener he’d just bought.’

‘Honing it on the inside of an ordinary tumbler is as good as anything.’

‘That’s what he was discovering as I left.’

‘Why doesn’t he use a cut-throat?’

‘With that twitch of his? He’d cut his head off!’

She obviously wanted to say something serious and Ned gave her time, slowly stirring the coffee and folding an old newspaper whose crossword he had not finished.

‘Ned, I’m a bit worried about Jemmy. Can I say something very personal?’

‘Dunno, girl. Shut your eyes, take a deep breath…!’

‘He thinks of very little but sex. It’s almost an obsession with him. There, I’ve said it now and I’ve probably broken all the rules, like “Never discuss women in the mess, chaps”.’

Ned shook his head. ‘If you’re worried, come to Uncle Ned. But answer some questions. Are his demands bothering you?’

‘No, not
bothering
me; in fact — ’ she broke off, embarrassed.

‘You look well on it. You enjoy it?’

‘Yes. Just like the next girl.’

‘So what are you really worried about?’

‘Well, I feel he ought to have other interest than just me — and bed.’

Ned raised his eyebrows and looked at her directly. ‘If you love each other — and I don’t want to hear about that,’ he said hastily — ‘then think of what else he could get obsessed by. As a submariner, and with this bombing, obviously he could get obsessed with death. As a lieutenant, considering what we get paid, he could be obsessed about money. The way things are going out in the Atlantic — ’ Ned waved at a wall chart showing the ocean from Europe to the coast of the United States ‘ — he could be obsessed by U-boats, the progress of the war… There’s plenty to be obsessed about. To be obsessed about sex with the girl you love — well, compared with death, money, bombs, torpedoes or losing the war, it seems a good choice!’

Joan reached out impulsively to grip his shoulder. ‘You’re right. That’s how it is with you and that nurse, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, we try to live just for each day — and each night.’

‘She must have been terrified when you went off to sea with that convoy.’

‘She didn’t say. I was, though.’

‘That’s hard to believe,’ Joan said, gesturing at the two medal ribbons.

‘I’ve a very special reason for staying alive now,’ Ned said quietly. ‘It makes a difference…’

‘I hope it will with Jemmy. But you know his problem?’

‘The confidence business?’

‘Yes. It
isn’t
cowardice,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s just that the responsibility for
other
people’s lives is more than he can take.’

‘Now,’ Ned amended.

‘Yes, now. He was all right for months. Obviously he was, since he’s regarded by the Press as one of our submarine aces. But…’

‘It happens easily enough. But command is like riding a bicycle. You never quite forget how to do it, although after a bad crash you might be nervous for a while.’

‘Ned, you’d better go in to see Uncle. But thanks for listening. You’re right. I feel a lot better already.’

‘I should leer and say you’ve been looking better for quite a while. Does wonders for a girl’s complexion, they do say!’

He found Captain Watts smoking a cigar, the wreathing smoke making him seem a handsome Satan smiling a welcome at an outer door of hell. Ned’s view of the head of ASIU as satanic was increased as the welcoming grin enquired if he had enjoyed his coffee. ‘Would you care for a cigar?’

‘Too early for me, sir,’ Ned said warily, thinking that a cigar this early rated with a tot of whisky to get the world in focus.

‘Yes,’ Watts said amiably. ‘I agree. However, they help me think, and we’ve a lot of thinking to do today before the sun goes down.’

For the second time in less than ten minutes, Ned raised his eyebrows.

Watts’ grin had gone. ‘You remember what we were talking about after we saw the PM?’

Ned looked round to make sure the door was closed. ‘Of course, sir.’

‘And you have a shoal of ideas.’ It was a statement not a question.

‘No, sir.’ How did one explain that a morning spent at a Buckingham Palace Investiture was not exactly a good preliminary to thinking about Hydra and Triton? And that, he admitted, was an excuse for the fact that he had puzzled a good deal about it anyway and could think of nothing. At least, several ideas had surfaced and sunk back again, waterlogged with embarrassment.

Watts puffed at the cigar. ‘The pressure is being applied. I spent an hour with the First Sea Lord and then an hour with the First Lord. Mr Alexander is a skilful Labour politician whose only concern is to square his own yards: I had to take along a signed report, and then add to it in my own handwriting in his presence the burden of what I had just told him.’

‘What did Admiral Pound have to say, sir?’

‘Just telling me that ASIU must get cracking. Wanted to know what ideas we had. Incidentally I forgot to mention to you that any intelligence derived from Enigma is called “Ultra”. They don’t want anyone to use the word Enigma: if the Teds heard, it’d give the game away. Seems Enigma machines were on sale commercially years ago but none of our intelligence people were interested.’