The Secret Generations (31 page)

He told her the work had not gone well that day, so he would have to return about eight that night, to finish. He would be obliged if she could take the evening off, and leave the house when he arrived. Her presence, he explained, tended to distract Miss Drew, making her less amenable. ‘No reflection on you, Mrs Drood. You know how delicate these matters can be.’

It boiled down to a question of trust between two people. A third party in the house was an added tension to the girl, especially while she was being questioned.

‘Actually I put it down to your strong personality, Mrs Drood.’

Back in the other room, he asked a couple of questions, and wrote on his pad
I have told her I shall be back at eight. She will go out
. He gave Madeline the paper, which she read and handed back to him.

Charles left at five-thirty, and went straight home.

*

On that first of many nights, he left Cheyne Walk just after seven, calling in at the Travellers to pick up a couple of good bottles of champagne, then going straight to Maida Vale where he stopped the cab on the corner of the road and walked to the house. Mrs Drood was waiting in street clothes.
‘I’m off to play bridge,’ she told him, as though this were the greatest intellectual achievement known to man or woman. ‘You asked for me to be back at midnight, and that is when I shall return. I have left a cold collation in the kitchen.’

Madeline, waiting in the larger room, smiled as she heard the front door close on Mrs Drood.
‘Why does she call it a “cold collation”?’ she asked. ‘Why can’t she say “cold supper”, like anyone else?’

Charles told her Mrs Drood
’s father had been a bishop. Madeline smiled, and went upstairs, while he arranged Mrs Drood’s ‘cold collation’, trying to make it appear more attractive.

He opened one of the bottles, poured two glasses, then called up to Madeline, who appeared at the top of the stairs dressed in a cream and brown silk wrap tied loosely with a belt of the same sheer material.

There was a hint of scent in the air, something French, he thought, and expensive, though it failed to hide the other musky smell given off by her body. Charles was experienced enough to recognize the scent for what it was. She had become sexually alive, awake and ready for him.

‘
Oh, champagne!’ She took a sip, raising her glass, then put it aside, moving close to him, resting her long fingers on his shoulder, the hand digging in like a claw, the other arm motioning towards the stairs. ‘I’ve closed the curtains, and the bedroom light has been on for the past hour’ Her eyes searched his face, as they had done before the kiss that morning. Then she smiled. ‘Can we have the forbidden fruit first?’

When he was naked on the bed upstairs, she slid out of the wrap to reveal she wore pure silk underthings, short, and very much of the Continental fashion, with lace and ribbons
– black and enticing. Charles was oddly shocked, but also amazed, for the sight of her dressed like this aroused him further. It was a new experience, he realized, for Mildred usually undressed in private.

‘
Don’t try to be gentle,’ she whispered. ‘They say it’s best done brutally, and I want you so much dear Charles.’

She cried out twice
– once when he entered her, and again at her climax – a long, almost wolf-like call. Later that evening and in the days to come, he was to hear the sound often, mingled with the words, repeated again and again, ‘I love you… so… so… love!… Love!… Love!’

It was soon apparent that, whatever she had not done before, Madeline had certainly he
ard the arts of the bedroom discussed at length by well qualified people. She became inventive in ways for which Charles had often longed, thinking it unlikely he would ever have the advantage of tasting them, for some of the acts between the new lovers were things he had only imagined, and then with a certain furtiveness, followed by a sense of guilt. She became the one lover of his life, and, though he was oddly aware of the happiness experienced with Mildred in their early years, Madeline Drew expunged all past experience from his brain. Sex, like pain, carries no true memory, for the mind recalls only the fact of things exquisite, and not the full detail of passion.

During the next week, before Madeline was finally briefed and sent, well-watched, to the aunt in Coventry, they made love on every possible occasion
– even while working.

There was often a sense of danger in it, for the couple could have been discovered at any time. This was something which seemed to heighten the excitement. On two other occasions Charles managed to find excuses to call in the evening, while, once, they performed ruttishly while the watchful Mrs Drood sat quietly only a room away.

The relationship bloomed, feeding their minds and bodies; and was to do so for some time to come. It was to Madeline’s bed that he was returning on the night of the terrible news concerning Caspar. For once, Charles altered his routine, going to Maida Vale via King Street, to offer his sympathy to Andrew and Charlotte.

‘
I have to admit, I’m dreading the sight of him when he’s brought off the train,’ Andrew said, as they went to the door. Charlotte hardly spoke, her face heavily powdered, as though camouflaged to hide the inevitable marks of grief.

*

On the following night, Giles Railton went late to the King Street house, visiting Andrew and Charlotte to enquire of his grandson, Caspar, who had now been brought back to London. Andrew had waited for three hours at Victoria Station for the hospital train.

Giles looked at Andrew as though trying to find a window to his soul, restlessly asking for details in that cold precise manner which made men fear him. He knew his son better than most. The calm, often stern and silent, courageous exterior hid a softer, more gentle heart than most people imagined. To the stranger, and certainly to his subordinates, Andrew was a determined career naval officer, showing only the attributes which went with that profession.

But Giles, who had an uncanny sense of truth, could plainly see how deeply Andrew had been seared by the terrible mutilation of his own child. He told them that Denise – his granddaughter by Marie and Marcel Grenot – would call on Charlotte the following afternoon. ‘You must use her for any help you require.’ He was almost callous in his treatment of the girl.

Caspar was now considered to be almost out of danger, and lay well cared-for at the Middlesex Hospital.

‘He’s so damned plucky.’ Andrew waved the servants away as he saw his father to the front door. ‘You know what he said, Father? He said “Well, I’ve got the set now, Papa. One arm, one leg and one arsehole.”’

Giles gave a bleak smile and said that he would visit Caspar as soon as possible. In the event, he could not go to the Middlesex until almost the end of the month.

In the meantime, Vernon Kell was directing Charles in the matter of Madeline Drew, unaware of the deep feeling which had grown between them. At the beginning of the last week of September he joined Charles, for hours on end, at the Maida Vale house. Together they took Madeline through her paces, giving her careful contact names, signals to use once someone from the German service got in touch with her, two addresses to which she could write or telegraph, and one to which she could run in the event of danger.

Mainly to test the small team of men and women who would be watching her, it was decided that Madeline should spend the 26 and 27 September at the Carlton Hotel; behaving as though waiting for someone.
‘Or merely passing time,’ Kell said. She was to go out, act normally, and, finally, take a train to Coventry.

They sat in the same little room where Charles and Madeline had first kissed. In the garden the trees were now almost bare, and the early bonfires of autumn sent smoke drifting, like the aftermath of battle, across the neat fences and hedges. Kell nodded at her.
‘Railton here will visit you on the final evening,’ he said; and Charles saw her sudden glance as his superior made the error of using his true name. There was a sign of recognition, even – he imagined – a hint of concern, rising behind her irises.

The next days were so cram
med with instructing and deploying the team of watchers, that the incident all but slipped Charles’ mind.

At a little after seven on the evening of 27 September, the day before Madeline was due to leave for Coventry, Charles arrived at the Carlton, where he had arranged to meet the girl in the Grill Room.

They talked about the war: the latest terrible news that three armoured cruisers, the
Aboukir
,
Hogue
and
Cressy
, had all been sunk in the North Sea, five days before, with the loss of sixty-two officers and one thousand three hundred and ninety-seven men.

‘
It’s almost unbelievable!’ Like the rest of the country, Charles was stunned. ‘Three capital ships at one blow.’

News from France appeared a shade more heartening; and
they soon turned from the harsh tragedies to other matters.

Their short meal completed, Madeline took her leave. Charles paid the bill and left some ten minutes later, taking great precautions not to be observed, slipping through a staff entrance to get to her room on the fourth floor.

They made love as though the world was about to end, for who knew when they would meet like this again? Through it all, Charles spasmodically wondered if this would be the last time he would touch her; the last time their lips would meet; the last time he would hear the endearments; feel the final gout of pleasure between their locked, straining bodies.

The room was almost in darkness, the curtains not drawn, and the dying light of a chill late September evening slowly turned the furniture into menacing shapes across the room. Charles lay on his back, and Madeline, propped on one arm, peered at his face, ill-defined in the darkness.

‘Charles?’ The questioning tone made him turn his head. ‘You
will
make sure I’m watched, and looked after, won’t you?’

‘
Of course.’ An arm went up and round her neck. ‘As long as you do everything we’ve told you.’ He moved his body to face her. ‘Madeline, you won’t do anything stupid will you?’

‘
Don’t be silly. How…?’

His hand gently touched her mouth.
‘I should warn you, my dearest, that my superiors would stop at nothing if you did. I could not help you. They would eventually find you wherever you tried to hide. I know some of them. If you were abroad you’d end up with a slit throat.’

Her hand touched his cheek.
‘Major Nicolai’s people can also be brutal. Don’t worry, darling Charles. I want to be safe, for I look to a time when we shall be together for always.’

The guilt rose, bile in his throat. He stayed silent, thanking God he did not have to look her straight in the eyes.

‘Isn’t that what
you
want, Charles?’

‘
Of course.’ But he knew there was no conviction in his voice. He was this girl’s slave, but would never dream of leaving Mildred.

There was a long silence among the dark s
hrouded furnishings and shadows around the bed.

‘
Your real name’s Railton, isn’t it? Charles Railton, not Charles Rathbone,’ she said at last.

He agreed. She was not supposed to know.
‘It was my superior’s error, using my real name the other day.’

He saw her head nod against the white pillow.
‘It’s only that I’ve heard the name before.’

‘
Oh?’

Her hand moved to his thigh as she asked if he had a sister, or cousin,
‘…A relation, married to a Frenchman, called Greenot, or Graneau?’

‘
Why?’ Suddenly her hand, which usually resurrected him quickly after a sexual encounter, did nothing, as though he had become emasculated by her words.

‘
Tell me. Have you some relation like that?’

‘
Yes.’ He told her, ‘Marie, my cousin. Why?’

‘
It may be of value. I don’t know. But that’s where I heard the name Railton before. In connection with your cousin, Marie… was it Grenot?’

He nodded. How? Where?

‘Major Nicolai, and others, gave me some of my training: specialist things like inks and ciphers, at a house they have in Courbierrestrasse – Number Eight. They also called the house simply Number Eight. Courbierrestrasse is in the western part of the city; I’ve already told you about the place.’

He remembered.

‘The other day, when your Mr Vernon – though I don’t suppose that’s his real name either – called you Railton, I became worried. I’d heard it before and knew it was connected with something very unpleasant, but I couldn’t remember what. Then last night it all came back. Isn’t it funny how the brain holds everything, like a book only you have to search for the right page?’

He waited silently for her to continue. From outside there was the sound of traffic in the streets below.

‘There was a man called Steinhauer working at Number Eight.’

‘
What about Steinhauer?’ All gentleness now gone from his voice, his brain alert to memories of the name Steinhauer, which he knew so well because of its connections with the barber shop ‘post office’ in the Caledonian Road.