I got off at Trafalgar Square and walked through Admiralty Arch and down the Mall. The Palace was flying the Union flag and looked as if it would be there till Doomsday. God knows how they got away with only one bomb. Unkind folk say it’s because they’re all Germans. You have to admit it’s suspicious. It’s an easy bombing run: follow the Thames upriver until the Houses of Parliament, a smart right, skim over the lake in St James’s Park, and bingo.
The Parthenon looked like every other club in the West End: ponderous, heavy columns and high windows. The doorway was reached up a short flight of steps.
Some lights were on inside and sure enough, there was a flunky waiting to pounce. This time I had my story ready.
“Good afternoon, sir. Can I help?”
He was way too old for the last war but looked like he’d done his part in the Great one. There’s something about an NCO that you can tell a mile off, especially if you’ve been one. Maybe it’s the suspicious eyes and the slight rocking motion on the balls of the feet.
“I hope so. My name’s McRae, Captain Daniel McRae.” His head went a bit higher and I swore his arm twitched in the reflex of a salute. “I’m an old friend of Major Anthony Caldwell. He may sign himself Major Philip Caldwell. Is he in?”
I could see the flunky’s eyes narrow a fraction. But he was good, very good.
“Caldwell, you say, sir? Major Caldwell? I’ll just check our members list. We had so many new members, many of them temporary during the war.” He walked behind his desk and picked up a big book which he carefully shielded from me. He was lying of course. These chaps know all their members by sight, by name and by inside leg measurement. He continued with the pantomime. I continued to smile.
At last he looked up. He adopted a carefully placed frown of concentration suggesting he had some delicate information to impart and wasn’t sure how to do it.
“It would seem, sir, that we did have a Major Caldwell with us. But there is an entry here saying that we can’t divulge details.”
He savoured divulge, as though he’d only just learned it. “Not even to an old friend? We served together. SOE.”
It cut no ice. A sympathetic smile grew on his face. “I understand, sir. But I think it’s possibly because you were both with SOE that we have this instruction. If you see?”
I smiled my “I-quite-understand-but-you-don’t” smile. “Can you even tell me if he’s alive or dead? I know this sounds silly. But it’s been a while.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “The instructions are clear. We can’t say anything at all about the Major.” He closed the book and the conversation.
“Can I leave a message?”
“By all means, sir. But I can’t say if it will be answered or not. If you see?”
“May I borrow some paper and a pen, please?”
I kept it short, just asking Caldwell or his relative or friend to get in touch with me. I left my telephone number. I walked out of the club fully expecting never to hear from anyone, and wondering what other leads I could trace that would earn me Kate Graveney’s up-front fee.
Three months ago I’d tried his old regiment – the Royal Signals – to see if they had an address. It was my first stop after being stonewalled by the document guardians at the SOE. I spent a whole day on the phone being sent from office to office, clerk to clerk. I finally found a corporal in the Signals records unit who was very helpful but ultimately useless.
He explained that one or two officers had been commissioned into this regiment simply as a holding arrangement while they went off and did some skulduggery in occupied Europe or at Bletchley Park. These officers never saw the inside of the mess at their nominal regiment, but it gave them a unit against which they could be paid and draw a uniform. There had been a Major Philip Anthony Caldwell associated with the Signals but he’d been demobbed. They had no forwarding address; why didn’t I try SOE?
I decided to check the hospital, St Thomas’s, just across Lambeth Bridge from Pimlico. That’s where Kate said she’d been taken. I explained my situation at the desk – a version of it anyway; the old pal act. The receptionist was a bit reluctant at first but when I took off my hat and she saw my scars in all their glory, she became more sympathetic. Maybe I should only make passes at nurses?
The girl got up and sifted through the drawers of a filing cabinet. “There’s no record of a Major Caldwell or even a Mister Caldwell, around that date, sir. But there’s lots of hospitals around this area. They could have taken him anywhere.”
“Do you have a record for Miss Kate Graveney, then?”
She searched again and paused at one file. She turned and looked at me queerly.
“Did you say the lady was brought in here with injuries from a bomb explosion?”
“That’s right.”
She became cagey. “We do have a patient coming around that time. But it doesn’t mention that sort of injury.”
Around that time? Maybe Kate got her dates muddled. But wasn’t it her birthday? “What does it say?”
The girl shoved the folder back in the cabinet and shut the drawer firmly. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about patient’s conditions with non-medical staff.” She put her professional shutters up and I could see I’d get nowhere on this tack.
“Maybe it’s just a misfiling.”
“Perhaps. These things happen.” Her smile was as bright and diamond-hard as her determination to say nothing more. My scars were getting no more sympathy. I put my hat on and left.
One thing I learned in Glasgow was never take anything for granted. Check everything. If you can’t see it, smell it or hear it for yourself, it doesn’t exist. It took me two days and a lot of shoe leather to get round the rest of the hospitals in the centre. I began with the Royal and the Brompton in Chelsea.
I then did a circular sweep that took in King’s in Camberwell, Guy’s at Westminster, over the river to St Bart’s and a big swing round to St Mary’s.
Nothing. Their records weren’t all they might be and there was a bit of reluctance to tell me anyway.
Then I decided to change tack. I’d been looking for two hospital admissions, one unhurt, one probably dead. Dead people get recorded at Somerset House. My heart sank at the prospect; there had been a lot business coming their way in the last few years. Nevertheless I slogged my way back up the Strand and joined the queue for a day to get in front of a harassed clerk. I could see the hysteria in his eyes when I asked if I could track down a certain Mr Caldwell thought to have died about a month ago.
“We’re a bit behind with the filing.” He tugged at his greasy tie. The knot looked like a boy scout had been practising his sheepshanks on a bit of string.
Knotted once two years ago, slackened off every night and tightened each morning.
“How far?”
“You mean how deep?” Definitely a glint of mania.
“Like that, is it?”
“We’ve caught up to June,” he said promisingly.
“I hope you mean June 1945? So, you’ve got a backlog of six or seven months?”
“We’re in October with births though, and marriages are November.”
“So if the man I’m trying to trace had been born three months ago you could have found him?”
He just grinned. I left him to finger his tie. I wondered how long before he’d use it to hang himself. Soon, I hoped. Post-war, and nothing worked. The machine we’d put together to win it had been broken up. All the soldiers back from the front had been offered their old jobs back, but I guess the better ones had lost some of their enthusiasm for the filing department now they’d had a taste of Paris and Rome; red wine and grateful girls.
This was keeping me fit but getting me nowhere. I holed up in my office and began to wait for either inspiration to strike or the phone to ring with an answer to my message at Caldwell’s club. I made a promise to myself if I heard nothing by the end of the week, I’d phone Kate Graveney and offer her the advance back. Maybe half of it.