She shook her head. ‘No, she’d wonder why I was so worried about it. It’ll have to be casual.’ Eileen frowned, obviously still uneasy. She looked at her guests. ‘It looks like you’re staying in London another day or so. The submarine’s waiting in the Channel now, but it’s a question of when the weather’s going to be right for you to be picked up – I can’t say yet where from.’
Geoff had come down and was sitting by the fire, looking pale and sweating. He shook his head. ‘So there actually is a submarine waiting for us?’
‘There is.’
David thought, it’s real, it could happen. He said to Eileen, ‘Any word on my wife?’
‘She’s all right. She’s out of London, near where you’ll be leaving from.’ Eileen hesitated, then added, ‘Only an hour away.’
Natalia gave her a warning look. David thought, she’s right, the less everyone knows, the safer we are.
When dinner was over Eileen asked them to split the night watch, Ben first. After eating they all sat in the living room, except for Natalia, who went upstairs, to David and Geoff’s bedroom, for a rest. Geoff coughed frequently; with six of them packed into the living room, most smoking, the room had quickly become a fug. Eileen suggested Geoff go and sit in the front room. Frank asked if he could rest upstairs for a while. Ben looked at David, who nodded; Frank had given him his promise to do nothing stupid.
They watched the news; London was at a standstill because of the fog, emergency rooms in all the hospitals full of people with weak chests. A couple more women had been attacked by assailants they hadn’t been able to see, hit on the head and their handbags taken. One had been knifed. Sean grunted, ‘The good lord save them, as my mammy would have said. Only he doesn’t.’
‘You were brought up a Catholic?’ David had noticed that unlike other Irish homes he had visited, there was no Catholic imagery anywhere in the house.
‘We both were,’ Eileen said. ‘You?’
‘No, my parents weren’t believers.’
A look of sadness crossed her face. ‘How can anyone believe in the Catholic Church, after what they’ve done to support all the Fascist regimes – in Spain, Italy, Croatia?’
Sean nodded agreement. ‘Ireland too, that’s no paradise. Did anyone see that film the Pope made a few years ago?’
‘I did,’ David said. ‘Pius XII walking in his garden, showing the world the way of peace. As though he didn’t live in this world at all.’
‘Live in it. Ha.’ Sean growled. ‘He helped build it. That’s why they even show him on British TV now.’
At the end of the news there was an extended interview with Beaver brook about the new reduced tariffs on trade with Europe, Beaverbrook pugnacious and optimistic, the interviewer respectful as usual. The Jewish deportations were not mentioned. The Prime Minister said that on his recent visit he had formed the closest relations with Dr Goebbels, praised all the propaganda minister had done for Germany. Sean said, ‘The wind’s shifting further to Goebbels all the time. If Hitler dies, who will he go with, Himmler or Speer?’
Ben agreed. ‘Beaverbrook’s making Goebbels his insurance policy. Bet it was Goebbels who got him to promise he’d get rid of the Jews when he went to Germany. A personal favour.’
David went upstairs to check on Frank, who was sitting on the mattress massaging his bad hand. He looked up at David. ‘It’s sore tonight.’ He winced. ‘It doesn’t like the damp.’
‘Hopefully we’ll be off in a day or two.’
‘Where?’
‘We’ll know when it’s safe for us to know.’
Frank said, ‘Natalia came in to talk to me for a while. She’s nice, she understands things. She told me about her brother. He had problems too. Women – they mostly don’t understand, they can be even worse than men. But she’s not like that, is she?’
David smiled. ‘No. She’s pretty special.’
‘I told her about school.’ He looked at his hand. ‘You know, sometimes I wonder what my life might have been, if my mother had never met Mrs Baker, if I’d never gone to Strangmans. There’s a physicist in America who thinks the world we live in is only one of millions of parallel worlds, existing alongside each other, each different in tiny little ways. Maybe worlds where everyone is happy.’ His face clouded. ‘And maybe ones where everyone was killed by the atom bomb. I try not to think about that.’
‘We’re stuck in the world as it is,’ David said. ‘It’s a bad place but we have to do the best we can.’
‘That’s what Natalia said.’
‘I’m going to sleep here while Ben goes on watch. Leave Natalia to rest in my room for a bit.’
‘I’m ready to go to bed, too.’
‘I’ll leave you to get ready, go and have a last fag.’
‘Okay.’ Frank smiled a gentle little smile again. ‘Thanks, David,’ he said. ‘Thanks for everything.’
David passed the room where Natalia was resting. He heard movement inside. He hesitated, then knocked quietly on the door. She called to him to come in. She was sitting on the side of the mattress, the one he had slept on last night, brushing her hair. She smiled at him.
‘Couldn’t you sleep?’ he asked.
‘No. Usually I can sleep anywhere, but not this evening.’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.’ David closed the door. ‘You’re right. I will tell people I’m Jewish. But I want my wife to be the first to know.’
Natalia looked at him. ‘Will she be unhappy about it?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. But she’ll care about there being yet another secret, so I want to tell her first.’
‘That sounds – right.’
He shook his head. ‘Ever since our son died – it’s strange, you’d think tragedy would bring people together, but just as often it drives you apart.’
She looked at him seriously. ‘My husband – he had a secret from me, too. I told you he was German Army Intelligence, you remember? The Abwehr?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was posted to England, at the end of 1942; the year we had seen the Jews taken away in the summer. We married just before we left, in Berlin. My brother was not long dead. He was a cipher clerk, at Senate House.’
‘Hasn’t the Abwehr been dissolved? There was talk of some plot to kill Hitler.’
‘Yes. In 1943. I don’t know what sort of Germany the officers would have created –’ she smiled sadly – ‘something old-fashioned and proper, I think, Gustav was a very old-fashioned man.’
‘Was he involved?’
‘Yes. He never got over that time we saw the Jews, on that train. Someone betrayed the plotters, we never knew who. A lot of the Abwehr people were executed. Others who the Nazis weren’t sure of, like Gustav, were sent to the East. To posts they would not return from. There were even suspicions about Rommel, you know, but nothing was proved.’
‘How did you find out your husband was involved?’
‘When he was posted to Russia, I stayed behind. He arranged it.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Then one day, not long after he was killed at the front, in 1945, the Resistance contacted me. That was in their very early days, Churchill was still in Parliament, but he could see what was coming. They had already set up networks of supporters, people who could help with intelligence. And I was working as an interpreter; I met many of the Germans who came here. The Resistance had been in touch with my husband, you see, he was working for them, he had become what you call a double agent. He told them I might help them, if anything happened to him. But while he was alive he never told me. He wanted to protect me, as you wish to protect your wife. I think he also wanted me to know he had opposed the Nazis.’ She looked at David, smiling her sad smile. ‘So, I too know about secrets, brave people with secrets.’
‘And you decided to join the Resistance?’ She’s lived this dangerous life for seven years, he thought.
‘Yes. Because I had nothing left. And I wanted to get back at them. For Gustav, for my broken country, for my brother. And to try and end Europe’s nationalist frenzy. It’s not just vengeance, you know, I want something better, a better world.’
