‘Your reputation for discretion precedes you, Miss Todd,’ Crighton had said when introduced to her.
‘Goodness,’ Ursula said, ‘that makes me sound so dull.’
‘Intriguing, rather. I suspect you would make a good spy.’
‘And how was Maurice? In himself?’ Ursula asked.
‘Maurice is very well “in himself”, in that he is himself and will never change.’
‘Invitations to Sunday lunch in Surrey never come my way.’
‘Count yourself lucky.’
‘In fact I hardly ever see him. You wouldn’t think we worked in the same ministry. He walks the airy corridors of power—’
‘The hallowed walls.’
‘The hallowed walls. And I scurry around in a bunker.’
‘Are you? In a bunker?’
‘Well, it’s above ground. In South Ken, you know – in front of the Geological Museum. Not Maurice, he prefers his Whitehall office to our War Room.’
When she had applied originally for a job in the Home Office, Ursula had rather presumed that Maurice would put in a good word for her but instead he had blustered on about nepotism and having to be seen to be above any suspicion of favouritism, ‘Caesar’s wife and so on,’ he said. ‘And I take it Maurice is Caesar in this conceit, rather than Caesar’s wife?’ Pamela said. ‘Oh, don’t put that idea into my head,’ Ursula laughed. ‘Maurice as a woman, imagine.’
‘Ah, but a Roman woman. That would suit him more. What was Coriolanus’s mother called?’
‘Volumnia.’
‘Oh, and I know what I had to tell you – Maurice invited a friend to lunch,’ Pamela said. ‘From his Oxford days, that big American chap. Do you remember?’
‘I do!’ Ursula struggled to come up with the name. ‘Oh, darn, what was he called … something American. He tried to kiss me on my sixteenth birthday.’
‘The swine!’ Pamela laughed. ‘You never said.’
‘Hardly what you want from a first kiss. More like a rugby tackle. He was a bit of a lout.’ Ursula laughed. ‘I think I hurt his pride – or perhaps more than his pride.’
‘Howie,’ Pamela said. ‘Only now he’s Howard – Howard S. Landsdowne III to give him his full title, apparently.’
‘Howie,’ Ursula mused. ‘I had quite forgotten. What’s he doing now?’
‘Something diplomatic. He’s even more secretive than Maurice. At the embassy, Kennedy’s a god to him. I think Howie rather admires old Adolf.’
‘Maurice, too, probably, if he weren’t quite so foreign. I saw him once at a Blackshirt meeting.’
‘Maurice? Never! Perhaps he was spying, I can imagine him as an agent provocateur. What were you doing there?’
‘Oh, you know, espionage, like Maurice. No, really just happenstance.’
‘So many startling revelations for one pot of tea. Are there more to come? Should I brew another pot?’
Ursula laughed. ‘No, I think that’s it.’
Pamela sighed. ‘It’s bloody, isn’t it?’
‘What, about Harold?’
‘Poor man, I suppose he’ll have to stay here. They can’t really call up hospital doctors, can they? They’ll need them if we’re bombed and gassed. We will be bombed and gassed, you do know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Ursula said, as offhand as if they were talking about the weather.
‘What an awful thought.’ Pamela sighed again, abandoning her needles and stretching her arms above her head. ‘It’s such a glorious day. It’s hard to believe this is probably the last ordinary day we’ll have for a long time.’
Ursula had been due to begin her annual leave on Monday. She had planned a week of leisurely day trips – Eastbourne and Hastings or perhaps as far afield as Bath or Winchester – but with war about to be declared it seemed impossible to think of going anywhere. She felt suddenly listless at the idea of what might lie ahead. She had spent the morning on Kensington High Street, stocking up – batteries for her torch, a new hot-water bottle, candles, matches, endless amounts of black paper, as well as tins of baked beans and potatoes, vacuum-packed coffee. She had bought clothes too, a good woollen frock for eight pounds, a green velvet jacket for six, stockings and a pair of nice tan leather brogues that looked made to last. She had felt pleased with herself for resisting a yellow crêpe de Chine tea dress, patterned with little black swallows. ‘My winter coat’s only two years old,’ she said to Pamela, ‘it’ll see the war out, surely?’
‘Goodness, I would hope so.’
‘It’s all so horrid.’
‘I know,’ Pamela said, cutting more cake. ‘It’s vile. It makes me so cross. Going to war is madness. Have more cake, why don’t you? May as well, while the boys are still at Olive’s. They’ll come in and go through the place like locusts. God knows how we’ll manage with rationing.’
‘You’ll be in the country – you can grow things. Keep chickens. A pig. You’ll be all right.’ Ursula felt miserable at the thought of Pamela going away.
‘You should come.’
‘I should stay, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, good, here’s Harold,’ Pamela said when Harold appeared, carrying a big bunch of dahlias wrapped in damp newspaper. She half rose to greet him and he kissed her on the cheek and said, ‘Don’t get up.’ He kissed Ursula as well and presented the dahlias to Pamela.
‘A girl was selling them on the street corner, in Whitechapel,’ he said. ‘Very Pygmalion. Said they came from her grandfather’s allotment.’ Crighton had given Ursula roses once but they had quickly drooped and faded. She rather envied Pamela her robust allotment flowers.
‘So, anyway,’ Harold said, when he had poured himself a lukewarm cup of tea from the pot, ‘we’re already evacuating patients who are well enough to be moved. They’re definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It’s probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.’
‘Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn’t it?’ Pamela said sarcastically. ‘Especially when one is English. I have several friends in Germany,’ she said to Ursula. ‘Good people.’
‘I know.’
‘Are they the enemy now?’
‘Don’t get upset, Pammy,’ Harold said. ‘Why is it so quiet, what have you done with the boys?’
‘Sold them,’ Pamela said, perking up. ‘Three for the price of two.’
‘You ought to stay the night, Ursula,’ Harold said kindly. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own tomorrow. It’ll be one of those awful days. Doctor’s orders.’
‘Thanks,’ Ursula said. ‘But I’ve already got plans.’
‘Good for you,’ Pamela said, picking up her knitting again. ‘We mustn’t behave as if the world is coming to an end.’
‘Even if it is?’ Ursula said. She wished now that she’d bought the yellow crêpe de Chine.
November 1940
SHE WAS ON her back, lying in a shallow pool of water, a fact that didn’t worry her so much at first. The worst thing was the awful smell. It was a combination of different things, none of them good, and Ursula was trying to separate them into their components. The fetid stench of gas (domestic) for one, and, for another, the stink of sewage, disgustingly rank, that was making her gag. Added to that was a complex cocktail of damp, old plaster and brick dust, all mixed with the traces of human habitation – wallpaper, clothes, books, food – and the sour, alien smell of explosive. In short, the essence of a dead house.
It was as if she were lying at the bottom of a deep well. Through a hazy veil of dust, like fog, she could make out a patch of black sky and a pared fingernail of moon that she remembered noticing earlier in the evening when she had looked out of the window. That seemed a long time ago.