Letters for a Spy (12 page)

After much thought I had written:

“Dear Miss Standish,

“I saw
Nine Till Six
last night and thought your performance incredible. I represent the London office of an American film company and currently we’re looking for an unknown face for a new movie. I was wondering if maybe we could meet for lunch today? I shall be in The Tap and Tankard from opening time until one-thirty but in case that’s not convenient I shall also be at Daphne’s—likewise in the High Street and just opposite the pub—from half-past-ten.

“I very much hope to see you, then, at one or other of these places.

“Yours sincerely,

“Oliver Redgrave.”

I regretted having to be so corny—and still more regretted having to fill her with such extravagant expectations. But I couldn’t think of any other way. And, after all, this was war, wasn’t it? Maybe huge decisions would depend on the strength of the bribe I offered.

And, indeed, I had tried my hardest to devise some alternative. But what? I could hardly have hoped to pass myself off as a friend of Bill Martin’s—not to Sybella—not knowing so pitifully little about him. I’d have been asked questions; would naturally have been expected to reminisce. Reminisce about schooldays or something. The pitfalls along this route were innumerable.

Anyway, of course, it was
she
who needed to reminisce. That was the whole point of it.

Even as it was, I felt far from confident that my cheap little dodge would succeed. (Whether it
deserved
to succeed was a different thing altogether.) Her friends would say, “Oh, Syb, just listen to us, please. Use your common sense. This is the oldest trick in the book. The man could be a rapist—killer—anything!”

“No,” she might say, “he’s arranged to meet me in a very public place. There can’t be any danger.”

Her friends would not be reassured.

“Oh, doubtless he’ll appear quite normal at first. Then he’ll draw you off to some dark place and pull out his penis or his bloodstained carving knife. Or both. Well, at least if you do go you’d better take a chaperone.”

Yet I didn’t believe that she would even tell her friends. My belief wasn’t rational. Was based simply upon instinct.

Perhaps I was banking on her curiosity—that, coupled with her ambition and possibly a sense of adventure.
If I pass this up, shall I always think my future, my whole life, might have been different? Might have been better?

Curiosity? Ambition? A sense of adventure?

Oh, for Pete’s sake!

Had I forgotten? Here was a woman in mourning. Did I truly expect her,
already
, to be thinking about new beginnings?

Only connect, E.M. Forster had insisted. Only connect.

Well, at any rate, she didn’t come.

Not to Daphne’s.

But in fact I had scarcely thought she would. Even if my card had been delivered without delay—and at breakneck speed—I still hadn’t given her much time.

Nevertheless, when I eventually moved across to the pub, I felt anxious. I went into the lounge bar, bought a pint of ale and took it over to a small polished table that had a chair facing the door. If she didn’t turn up this time, what lure could I possibly cast out on a second occasion; and why should I fare any better with that one? It would be easy enough to discover where the troupe had gone; easy enough to pursue it and then find my way backstage during one of the two intervals. But inevitably she’d be sharing a crowded dressing room and that—obviously—would render her difficult to get at. I hadn’t realized she was going to be so thickly … and so constantly … surrounded.

I tipped back in my chair, hoping to feel more relaxed. But I stiffened, automatically, every time the door opened.

A couple … composed of a RAF officer and a Wren…

Three elderly women, all wearing civvies…

An old man, carrying his Jack Russell…

A group of five (sixteen-, seventeen-year-olds, you might have said, but each of them in uniform), its arrival giving rise to a collective cry of welcome from beside the bar.

Door-swing after door-swing … Two-way traffic, of course, but more customers coming in than going out.

At twelve forty-two I glanced at my watch for possibly the fifteenth time. I believed I had never known any period of waiting to pass so slowly; had probably forgotten what it felt like to be a child impatient for Christmas.

I suddenly remembered the opera house in Berlin: how I had once stood outside it in the cold for more than ninety minutes. Frieda had been a girl I’d met at a party (Frieda—huh!), an attractive and apparently soft-hearted girl whom I had liked a lot. Even without that pair of tickets in my pocket—that pair of ruinously expensive tickets—my feelings of disillusion and hurt would still have been pretty much the same.

By one o’clock I had more or less persuaded myself that this second Freda wasn’t going to show up either. (Although, really, there was no legitimate comparison.) Another thirty minutes remained until the expiration of my deadline—yes, I realized that—but equally it was now about three and a half hours since I had delivered the envelope. In three and a half hours she could have crossed between the camp and the High Street ten or twelve times. If she had truly meant to come, she could have been with me at least two hours earlier. Easily.

An entirely forlorn hope, therefore. I wasn’t so surprised. I had been patently over-optimistic.

Perhaps I should have said on my postcard: “I need to speak to you about your dead fiancé.”

Confronted the issue head-on. Seen where that might lead me.

Into jail, most like.

She came at seventeen minutes past one.

16

She was wearing an elegant green dress, woollen, with narrow lapels and short sleeves; it had self-coloured buttons down the bodice and a self-coloured belt emphasizing the trimness of her waist. On her head she wore a light brown pillbox, the same shade as her gloves and shoes and handbag: a shade that harmonized not only with her hazel eyes and bobbed hair, but even with her legs, which were bare and carefully made up. The lipstick whose absence I had mourned from the fifth row of the stalls, along with the impression of any colour in her face, was today discreetly present. She looked good. Extremely good.

And scarcely was she through the door than I was on my feet and walking towards her.

“Mr Redgrave?”

“I’d almost given you up,” I said.

And since this was true I now felt considerably more at my ease. If she’d arrived ten minutes earlier, I shouldn’t have been able to greet her with at all the same composure. I was reminded of my telephone call to Lucy—and of Reggie’s most opportune assistance.

“But why?” she asked. “Oh, I’m not late, am I? Didn’t you say you’d be here until half-past?”

“Yes, I did. Definitely.” I found it hard not to stare. She was prettier than her picture.

Then, as we shook hands, she added: “And I only received your note about an hour ago—shamefully, whilst I was still in bed! On Sunday mornings, you see, we’re inclined to pamper ourselves.”

At the time, I didn’t question this, but afterwards…? Only an hour in which to get ready, then walk the near-mile between the barracks and the pub? I doubted it. Her pencilled stocking seams appeared too straight; her nails too newly polished; her make-up too perfectly applied. And also—despite my first impression of her appearance—I now thought she seemed no more rested than she had looked the night before, while playing Freda.

Yet should it come as a surprise that she wasn’t managing to sleep?

“What will you have to drink, Miss Standish?”

“A dry sherry, please … if they have one.”

They had. She sat across the table from me and as she twined her fingers round her glass and made over-lively conversation she reminded me of Mr Martin—or, rather, of Mr Gwatkin
telling
me of Mr Martin … the connection was probably the sherry. She had taken off her gloves, and it was at this point I could have felt tempted to challenge her on her duplicity: on her defamation of the camp’s delivery service. I decided against it, though. I also banished the reminder of Mr Gwatkin. She helped me there—simply by talking.

“My goodness, only imagine if I
had
been late? Or if your note had got even more delayed? Or—heaven forbid—if it had been
lost
? Goodbye to my whole big Hollywood career!”

Her remark had been satiric. In case I hadn’t realized this she ended on a laugh.

“Not that at the moment I’m positively relying on that—my whole big Hollywood career!”

She was an actress … an actress still very much playing a role. Her laughter wasn’t natural. Her gaiety was forced. I wanted to say to her: Please don’t.

I wanted to say to her: I promise you I understand. Don’t feel you have to sparkle.

But my reply came out only in kind.

“I’m afraid it’s terribly clear that you regard me as a sham.”

“No,” she protested. “No! How could you possibly think such a thing? All I meant was … can I quite believe in fairy tales?”

“Oh, well, as to that,” I said, “I’m sure you can’t. Who can? Especially in the midst of a world war? A fairy tale is Lana Turner sitting at a soda fountain in Schwab’s in LA, drinking a milk shake and filling out a sweater! Your performance last night was built on years of solid hard work and frustration and disappointment. Blood, toil, tears and sweat. Not the sort of thing to find its way into the fairy tales!”

“Oh, but I disagree,” she said. “Look at
Cinderella
!”

I looked at
Cinderella
. I had never envisaged it as being any part of a secret agent’s brief to look at
Cinderella
.

“Yes, you’re right. So, from now on, please don’t believe anything I say. All you should believe is what I wrote on my postcard. You’re a fine actress.”

“Thank you. That’s kind. And it makes me feel so fortunate, too.”

“Deserving. Not fortunate.”

“No—you misunderstand me. Beginning from this morning, I’m taking a few days off. So if some lucky star hadn’t brought you here to Aldershot just in the nick of time…!”

“Really?” I said. “Well, then, I’m the one who’s fortunate.”

“I’m curious, though. What lucky star
did
bring you here to Aldershot just in the nick of time?”

“Oh.” I took a long pull at my beer and then had to pause to wipe my mouth. “Oh, simply some silly little mix-up. Absurd but providential.”

I added quickly: “Both me and RKO.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’re the
two
who are fortunate. And please don’t tell me you haven’t heard of RKO.” I looked at her severely. “RKO Radio Pictures? RKO Radio Pictures,
Inc
?”

“Well, yes, naturally I have. Although you’re probably right: could I have felt completely certain if I hadn’t caught that
Inc
?”

“Exactly. But I expect you’re growing impatient to be told about the film?”

“Very much so.”

“Hold onto your seat, then. We’ve just acquired the rights to a novel called
Laura
. And it’s a project which has got us all tremendously excited.”

“That’s very good to hear.”

“As a matter of fact I have a copy of it right here beside me.”

I retrieved the book from where it lay on the chair next to my own, most of it covered by my trilby. It was the novel I had bought in Mold. Its plot concerned a detective investigating the murder of a young woman. He was supposedly hard-boiled but during the course of his enquiries had begun to fall in love with the dead girl—partly because of her portrait over the mantel but partly, too, because of everything he was finding out about her. As it turned out, though, Laura wasn’t the girl who’d been killed. The real victim, her face rendered unrecognizable by the shots fired into it at the front door, had actually been a friend—a friend who had not only borrowed Laura’s apartment for the weekend (with its fatefully soft lighting in the hallway) but also her housecoat. The book was a love story as well as a murder mystery.

Sybella looked at its dust jacket and blurb; read the novel’s opening paragraph.

“And what part would I be playing?” she asked. “If the screen tests and everything proved okay?”

“Oh, didn’t I make that clear? You, Miss Standish, would be given the leading role. Laura.”

“No!” she said. “No! I don’t believe it!”

“Well, how can I convince you?”

“Only with unparalleled difficulty, I should imagine.”

“Clearly, then, from now on I’ll have to concentrate on being Herculean … superhuman…”

“Yes, that might help.”

She flipped through the book with an awe-filled and distracted air.

“But do you really think they’d accept an English girl in the role of an American?”

“It
has
happened before,” I murmured, drily. “And not so very long ago, either.”

Her expression still betrayed mistrust.

“And just look at what you did with Freda,” I went on. “With
her
accent. And, basically, how much difference can there be? If Vivien Leigh could do it so can you.”

She answered in the same light tone.

“Indeed, in terms of accent, New York could be even
easier
than Atlanta. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“And furthermore—who knows?—they might put it in the script that Laura had been raised in England.”

She briefly returned my smile. But almost immediately shook her head.

She said: “Things like this don’t happen.” She had reverted to
Cinderella
.

I nodded, understandingly.

And guiltily.

Reminded myself that I probably couldn’t have got her here in any other way. Reminded myself that there was no secondary role in the novel that she could possibly have played; the doomed girlfriend had featured only as a corpse.

“No,” I said, “you’re right to be sceptical. In this life you do need to protect yourself. ‘There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.’ Who was it who wrote that?”

“Some aspiring actress in Hollywood?”

“Bull’s eye!”

And now her laughter seemed more natural. She gave the impression of someone obliged to attend some especially daunting party, who, against all the odds, had suddenly realized that she was having a good time.