‘I do, yes.’ Was Constance suggesting what Alston thought she was suggesting? He glanced at her. She was.
‘What’s the matter? Isn’t your place tidy?’
‘It’s perfectly tidy,’ said Alston. He had been married four years, and for the first two and a half he had been faithful. But it was eighteen months since he and Dorothy had had conjugal relations; he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it since she had had the baby. Alston had always had a healthy sexual appetite, and that hadn’t left him. So there had been a few girls, most of whom he had had to pay. At that moment Alston wanted a woman badly. This woman. ‘Why don’t I make you a cocktail and we can talk in private?’
Alston grinned as he lay in bed, sweaty, with Constance under his left arm. It was dark outside his flat now. Constance was a tiger in bed; Alston had never come across anyone like her. She had a hunger and a playfulness that had brought out feelings in him that he never knew he had, or that he had always known he had, but were kept deeply buried. It certainly wasn’t love. It was more than lust. It was a kind of joyful exuberance.
He felt much younger. And he felt handsome, as if the left half of his face had temporarily taken over the right.
They had gone back to Alston’s flat in Ennismore Gardens, a fifteen-minute walk. Dorothy, Alston’s young wife, was back in Berwickshire. Since the outbreak of war, they had decided she wouldn’t join Alston in London, where he spent most of his time with his parliamentary and banking responsibilities. Besides, it was better for their baby son Robert to be at the castle with all that fresh air.
Alston had mixed them both martinis, and explained his idea to Constance. As Marjorie had guessed, she was game. She was definitely the right girl for the job. Then, well, then they had ended up in bed.
What was it that he liked about her so much? Was it her directness? There seemed a lively intelligence about her, even though she didn’t know the difference between ‘veto’ and ‘vet’, and, like Freddie, her hatred of the Jews was of the simplistic type. Alston knew that Britain wasn’t run by Jewish financiers, nor was it the Jews who had forced Chamberlain to go to war. He thought the War Minister Hore-Belisha should be sacked because he was wrongheaded, not because he was Jewish. Alston prided himself on his ability not to be swayed by the wilder claims of some of his pro-Nazi friends.
And yet, in all his dealings with Jews, Alston had never really trusted them. Constance was right; if there was trouble, there was usually a Jew behind it. Samuel Greenberg had run from the lion in Rhodesia leaving Alston facing up to it. Bloomfield Weiss had damned near fleeced him, and a Jewish stockbroker had driven Constance’s own father to death. Maybe Hitler was on to something after all.
He stroked the black curls resting on his chest. ‘Why did you ask me about my scars?’
Constance lifted her head. ‘Why, shouldn’t I have? Was I awfully rude?’
‘No. Or at least I didn’t think so. It’s just that usually people avoid the subject. Or, even worse, they avoid looking at me at all.’
‘Silly them,’ said Constance. She pushed herself up on to her elbow. And ran her finger down the undamaged side of his face. ‘You know, half of you is terrifically handsome.’ Then she ran her finger over his scars. ‘And the other half is terrifically exciting.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ said Alston.
‘I certainly do,’ said Constance, in a tone that suggested she was offended at having her candour questioned.
Alston smiled. ‘I believe you do.’ He kissed her.
‘You know what?’ said Constance, reaching down towards his loins.
‘What?’
‘I think I’m going to enjoy working for you.’
13
St James’s, London
After his meeting with Van, Major McCaigue of the Secret Intelligence Service questioned Conrad for an hour in a small room in the depths of the Foreign Office. Conrad told him everything he could remember about his meetings with Payne Best and Stevens and the shoot-out at Venlo. McCaigue took particular interest when Conrad mentioned the list that Stevens had written out of the names of people to be evacuated from Holland in the event of an invasion, which was presumably now in the hands of the Gestapo. Conrad tried to remember the names, but could only recall three or four of them. McCaigue asked for more details about Conrad’s meeting with Theo in Leiden, and Conrad gave them.
The intelligence officer was a shrewd listener. His questions, delivered in his pleasant, rich voice with its hint of Irish, were deliberate and thorough and Conrad felt much more confidence in him than he had had in either Payne Best or Stevens.
Conrad dropped into his club for lunch, and to send a telegram to Professor Hogendoorn in Leiden. There he found a note waiting for him from his father inviting him to come to dinner and to stay the night at Kensington Square. Van must have told him about the disaster at Venlo. Conrad took the note into the library and sank into an armchair by the window.
He was lucky to be in a comfortable club in the heart of London when Payne Best, Stevens and Klop were presumably in a Gestapo interrogation cell somewhere in the heart of Germany. Poor bastards. Conrad had spent time in one of those once; he didn’t want to do it again.
That is if Klop had made it. He had taken at least two bullets that Conrad had seen.
And now Conrad was going back to Holland. He knew he had to: Van and McCaigue were right to get him to ask Theo questions, to find out what had gone wrong. But there was a chance he might not come back this time.
In which case he shouldn’t hide from his father, even though he wanted to avoid a discussion over what he was doing in Holland. So he telephoned Kensington Square and told Williamson he would be staying the night, but he might be a little late for dinner. There was someone else he wanted to see before he went.
Anneliese.
He took the tube north to Golders Green, and it was just getting dark as he walked through the peaceful tree-lined streets of Hampstead Garden Suburb. In some ways it seemed so English: neat, ordered, well kept; even the fallen leaves had been pushed by a tidy breeze into straight lines along the pavement. But in other ways it reminded him of Germany, of the bürgerlich suburbs of Berlin like Dahlem. Now Dahlem and Hampstead Garden Suburb were at war.
Anneliese and her parents lived in an upstairs room of a small white pebbledash cottage halfway up a hill. The house was owned by a widow, Mrs Cherry, who had crammed two refugee Jewish families into it. The building was in poor repair and it was clear Mrs Cherry had very little money. What was unclear was whether her motive for stuffing seven people into such a small house was kindness or greed. Anneliese’s theory was that it was both.
Anneliese herself wasn’t at home, but her parents were. They were both pleased to see Conrad, especially since he had brought along half a pound of sausages. Dr Rosen was racially Jewish, but also a devout atheist. Frau Rosen was a good rosy-cheeked Lutheran. Both of them believed in pork.
‘Are you staying for supper, Conrad?’ Frau Rosen asked in German. ‘I have enough soup for you.’ And indeed there was a pot bubbling on the little gas ring by the sink. The room itself had two beds, three armchairs, a small table and a wireless. Two stacks of books were growing ever higher. Although the Rosen family had left Germany without any the year before, one way or another they were steadily accumulating them.
‘I promised my father I would be dining with him tonight,’ Conrad said. ‘I thought I would take Anneliese out for a drink, if that’s all right.’ He had eaten with the Rosens a couple of times, but he hated to take their scant supply of food, and besides, there was only really room for three at the table.