David couldn’t answer; he felt suddenly choked. Tentatively, Carol put out a hand to touch David’s. He withdrew it sharply, and she reddened a little. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘I understand.’
‘It helps to get away from things at lunchtime, do something different.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
There were more recitals, more quick lunches, after that. She told him of her problems with her mother. And sitting together at the concerts, she would try to make sure their bodies touched. He hated what he might be doing to her. But his commitment to the Resistance was hardening and so, slowly, was he. He learned, in Soho, more of the truth behind the propaganda in the press and on the BBC; the strikes and riots in Scotland and the North of England, the chaos in India, the endless savagery of the German war in Russia. He saw the increasing confidence of the Blackshirts on the streets as the Jews, marked by their yellow badges, shuffled along, eyes on the ground.
It was January before he managed to see the key. Watching her, David had seen that at work Carol kept it in her handbag, always giving it to the porter before they went out. At their last concert David had noticed she seemed a little distracted. She told him over lunch that her mother was being especially difficult, and had accused her daughter of taking money from her purse, which was absurd because it was Carol’s salary that kept them both. She feared the old lady might be going senile.
He worked out how he might do it. The following week he suggested another concert, in Smith Square. Carol agreed enthusiastically. He said he would get the tickets on his way home. On the day of the recital, bringing a file into Registry, he went over to her desk. She was splitting one of the secret files into two, carefully moving documents from one folder to another. As usual, David was careful to avoid glancing at them; she was well trained and whatever Carol felt about him she would have noticed that. ‘Looking forward to the concert?’ he asked.
He saw that sparkle in her eyes. ‘Yes. It should be good.’
‘What seats are we in?’
She gave him a puzzled smile. ‘You’ve got the tickets.’
‘No, no. I gave them to you.’
She stared at him. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday. I’m sure I did.’
She closed the files carefully, picked up her handbag and, as he had hoped, opened it on the desk. She took out her purse, then bent her head to look through the compartments. The bag lay open. David looked round quickly but no-one was watching them; their friendship was stale gossip now and Dabb, the Registrar, was busy checking a file. David bent over a little, enough to see into the bag. There was a powder-puff, a packet of cigarettes and the key on its metal tab. Squinting, he made out the numbers stamped onto it: 2342. He stepped away just as Carol looked up from her purse.
‘They’re jolly well not here.’ There was anxiety in her voice.
David took out his wallet, checking. With an expression of surprise, he pulled out the tickets. ‘I’m terribly sorry. They were here all along. I am sorry, Carol.’
She sighed with relief. ‘For a moment I was frightened I was going potty, with all this worry over Mother.’
Walking back to his own office David had to stop at the gents. He went into a cubicle and was violently sick. He crouched, breathing heavily; the vomiting relieved the almost unbearable tension he had felt since getting the number, but did nothing to assuage his shame.
And so he began to come in at weekends and photograph papers from the secret files. At least once a month he met in Soho with Jackson, Geoff – who was indeed the Resistance agent in the Colonial Office – and Boardman, a tall, thin man from the India Office, an old Etonian like Jackson. The quiet discussions in the squalid Soho flat went on for hours, while next door a prostitute – another Resistance supporter – plied her trade, cries and bumps occasionally audible through the wall. David learned more and more about the fragility of Fascist Europe. The Depression and the demands on her economies to feed the gigantic, endless German war effort in Russia were sucking the continental countries dry, while labour conscription to Germany was sending young men in France and Italy and Spain literally running to the hills. On the other side of the world Japan was as deadlocked in its war with China as Germany was in Russia. Its strategy towards the Chinese was the same as the Germans towards the Russians, summed up in their policy of the ‘three alls’: kill all, burn all, destroy all. Recently Jackson – who David knew now was in the Foreign Office – had told them the rumours that Germany was in political trouble were true. The reason Hitler never appeared in public was that he was seriously incapacitated by Parkinson’s disease, barely lucid enough to take decisions, hallucinating about Jews with skullcaps and sidelocks grinning at him from the corner of the room; hallucinations were sometimes a symptom of the latest and severest stage of the disease. Following Göring’s death from a stroke the year before Goebbels was his nominated successor but he had many enemies. Factions representing the army, the Nazi Party and the SS were all circling and plotting.
He learned more about the Resistance, too, an alliance of Socialists and Liberals with old-fashioned Conservatives like Jackson and Geoff, who loathed Fascist authoritarianism and who had come, sadly, to realize the Imperial mission had failed. Their numbers were growing all the time, and violence had become necessary to destabilize the police state.
Natalia was always there; listening avidly, always smoking. David didn’t know what her politics were, knew only that she was a refugee from Slovakia, a far corner of Eastern Europe of which he had barely heard. At meetings she said little, though what she said was always to the point. As time passed he began to see her look at him in the way Carol did, and Sarah once had. He didn’t respond, but something in the way she was both focused and committed, yet somehow rootless, stirred him unexpectedly.
He stubbed out his cigarette. This Sunday he had to copy some papers for the next High Commissioners’ meeting detailing possible South African military assistance to Kenya. Then he had to photograph a secret paper which he had heard of but not seen – about the Canadians supplying uranium to the United States for their nuclear weapons programme. It was known the Germans were working on nuclear weapons, too, but with little success. Apart from anything else they lacked uranium; they were mining it in the former Belgian Congo but had lost a huge consignment which the Belgians had shipped to the United States just before the colony was annexed by Germany in the peace treaty with Belgium in 1940. He also had to find anything he could on New Zealand’s threats to leave the Empire. That made him think of his father; he was happy there, kept asking David and Sarah to join him. With a sigh, David put the camera in his pocket, picked up the bulky High Commissioners’ file, and went out.
He walked along the corridor, stepping quietly. He could have photographed the High Commissioners’ file in his office, but papers were best copied in bright artificial light, and the room where the secret files were kept had an Anglepoise lamp. In the Registry, he opened the flap of the counter and walked over to Carol’s desk. There was a pile of stubs in her overflowing ashtray. He went up to the frosted-glass door, took out his duplicate key, and opened it.
The room was quite small, with a table in the centre and files on shelves. He knew his way around the filing system intimately now. The Anglepoise lamp with its powerful bulb stood on the desk.
He laid the High Commissioners’ file on the table and began taking the buff envelopes, each with a red diagonal cross, out of their places. It took an hour to find the documents he wanted, rapidly scanning them to check their relevance, then extracting them and laying each one neatly on the desk with the papers he needed from the High Commissioners’ file. He worked efficiently, calmly, very quietly, always with one ear cocked for sounds from outside. Then he switched on the Anglepoise lamp and carefully photographed the documents, one by one. When he was finished David switched off the light, replaced the camera in his jacket pocket and started returning the secret papers to the files piled on the table, stringing them quickly through the tail-tags.