Veronica and I – the single-mother sluts – stood smoking outside Grindle's, waiting for our children.
'How's Sally?' Veronica asked. 'Any better?'
'I think so,' I said. 'But there are still worrying signs. She's bought a shotgun.'
'Christ
'To kill rabbits, she says. And the story about what she did in the war gets ever more… extraordinary.'
'Do you believe her?'
'Yes, I do,' I said bluntly, as if confessing to some crime. I had thought about this matter regularly and repeatedly but the story of Eva Delectorskaya was too textured, detailed and precise to be the product of a mind convulsed with fantastical re-invention, let alone on the verge of senile dementia. I had found the experience of reading the regular supply of pages disturbing because the Eva/Sally figures still refused to converge in my mind. When I read that Eva had slept with Mason Harding so that he could be blackmailed I couldn't connect that historical fact, that act of personal sacrifice, that deliberate surrender of a personal moral code, with the rangy, handsome woman who had been pacing about my sitting-room a few hours ago. What did it take to have sex with a stranger for your country? Maybe it was straightforward – a rational decision. Was it any different from a soldier killing his enemy for his country? Or, more to the point, lying to your closest allies for your country? Perhaps I was too young – perhaps I needed to have been living during World War Two? I had a feeling I'd never truly understand.
Jochen and Avril came bounding out of the school and the four of us wandered back up the Banbury Road.
'We're having a heatwave,' Jochen said.
'A tropical heatwave. That's what it is.'
'Is it like a wave in the sea? A wave of heat washing over us?' he asked, making a swooping wave gesture with his hand.
'Or,' I said, 'is the sun waving at us, making the heat blow down on earth.'
'That's just silly, Mummy,' he said, unamused.
I apologised and we wandered homeward, chatting. Veronica and I made plans to have supper together on Saturday night.
In the flat I was setting about making Jochen his tea when the phone rang.
'Ms Gilmartin?'
'Speaking.'
'This is Anna Orloggi.' It was the same woman – she pronounced her surname without a hint of an Italian accent, as if she were from one of the oldest families in England.
'Yes,' I said, aimlessly. 'Hello.'
'Lord Mansfield will see you in his club on Friday evening at 6.00 p.m. Have you a pen and paper?'
I took down the details: Brydges' was his club – not Brydges Club, just Brydges' – and an address off St James's.
'Six p.m. this Friday,' Anna Orloggi repeated.
'I'll be there.'
I hung up and felt an immediate elation that our ruse had worked and also a disturbing nervousness, knowing that I was finally going to be the one to meet Lucas Romer. Everything had become real, all of a sudden, and I felt the elation give way to a small squirm of nausea and my mouth seemed suddenly dry of all saliva as I thought about this encounter. I knew I was experiencing an emotion that I claimed to be immune to – I was feeling just a little bit frightened.
'Are you all right, Mummy?' Jochen asked.
'Yes. Fine, darling. Twinge of toothache.'
I called my mother to tell her the news.
'It worked,' I reported, 'just like you said.'
'Good,' she said, her voice quite calm. 'I knew it would. I'll tell you exactly what to say and do.'
As I hung up a knock came on the door that led down from the flat to the surgery below. I opened the door to find Mr Scott standing there, beaming, as if – through the floor – he'd heard me say 'twinge of toothache' and had bounded upstairs to minister to me. But behind him was a hot, short-haired young man in a cheap dark suit.
'Hello, hello, Ruth Gilmartin,' Mr Scott said. 'Great excitement. This young man's a policeman – a detective, no less – wants to have a word with you. See you later – maybe…'
I showed the detective into the sitting-room. He took a seat, asked if he might remove his jacket – steaming hot outside – and said his name was Detective Constable Frobisher, a name I found reassuring, for some perverse reason, I thought, as DC Frobisher hung his jacket carefully over the arm of a chair and sat down again.
'Just a few questions,' he said taking out and flicking through his notebook. 'We've had a request from the Metropolitan Police. They're interested in the whereabouts of a young woman named… Ilse Bunzl.' He pronounced it with care. 'Apparently she's called this number from London. Is that right?'
I kept my face impassive. If they knew Ilse had called here, then, I reasoned, somebody's phone must be tapped.
'No,' I said. 'I never got a call. What was her name again?'
'Ilse Bunzl.' He spelt her surname.
'I teach foreign students, you see. So many of them come and go.'
Detective Frobisher made a note – 'teaches foreign students' no doubt – asked a few questions (Was there anyone I was teaching who might know this girl? Were there many Germans signed up to OEP?) and apologised for taking up my time. I showed him out the back door, not wanting to increase Mr Scott's glee. I hadn't lied – everything I had said to the policeman was true.
I walked back through the hall, wondering where Jochen was, then I heard his voice – low, nearly inaudible – coming from the sitting-room: he must have slipped in behind us as we left, I thought. I paused at the door and peered through the crack by the hinge and I saw him sitting on the sofa, a book open in his lap. But he wasn't reading, he was talking to himself and making little placing gestures with his hands as if he were sorting out invisible piles of beans or playing some invisible board game.
I felt, of course, a spontaneous, engulfing, near-intolerable surge of love for him, all the more acute because it was voyeuristic and he had no idea I was watching – his unselfconsciousness was as pure as it could be. He set his book aside and went to the window, still muttering to himself but now pointing things out, in the room and out of the window. What was he doing? What on earth was going on in his head? Who was that writer who said that 'people lead their real, most interesting lives under cover of secrecy'? I knew Jochen better than any being on the planet, yet in some sense, in some degree, the guileless child was already beginning to develop the opacities of the growing boy, the youth, the adult, where the veils of ignorance and unknowing existed even between the people you were closest to. Look at my mother, I thought, wryly – not so much a veil as a thick woollen blanket. And no doubt the same could be said from her side, I reflected, and coughed loudly before I stepped into the sitting-room.
'Who was that man?' Jochen asked.
'A detective.'
'A detective! What did he want?'
'He said he was looking for a dangerous bank robber called Jochen Gilmartin and did I know anyone of that name.'
'Mummy!' He laughed, jabbing his finger repeatedly at me – something he did when he was either particularly amused or extremely angry. He was pleased; I was worried.
I went back to the hall, picked up the phone and called Bobbie York.
New York . 1941