elaborate peaks and windows. I’m hazy about architecture, but think I can spot the Victorian’s hand when I see it.
These looked older. Who would that be? George? Edward? But which? Why couldn’t they invent a new name for a new king? Good King Danny had a ring to it.
I wandered down the High Street, window shopping and enjoying the outing. I had an hour to kill before my meeting with Mrs Caldwell. A weak sun broke through the clouds and I saw faces lift and turn towards it like daisies. I treated myself to a Times and read it over a pot of Tetley’s in a little tea-shop. I scoured the front page in case there was a job for an ex-cop, ex-soldier, ex-SOE agent with a hole in his head. Nothing sprang out. I then got into the meat of it; it made the Sketch look like a comic. There was talk of the first meeting of the new United Nations Organisation in five days’ time. The big guys who ran the place were flying into London with high hopes for a new and better world order.
The scale of their dreams threw me for a bit. Almost sounded hopeful.
I sat up and looked around me. Nice folk were doing ordinary things, like eating jammy doughnuts and talking about the weather. And here I was, ensconced in a cosy cafй with a couple of quid in my pocket and most of my faculties in working order. Life wasn’t so bad, was it? How had I let it get so narrow? I should just kiss the past goodbye and get on with the present. As my dad used to say, the future never comes. I resolved there and then that whether Caldwell was alive or dead, I’d let it all go. There were a thousand stories more tragic than mine out there. Maybe I’d go back to Glasgow. Why should I be afraid to go home? Or maybe I’d stay in London. It was ten degrees warmer down here.
But first I had some business to finish. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and walked back up the hill with my raincoat slung over my shoulder and my hat tipped back like Sinatra’s sailor cap in Anchors Aweigh. I was whistling I Fall in Love too Easily as I turned down Willoughby Road, but the trees and tall houses and solemn gentility soon shut me up. I turned right into Willow Road.
More quiet elegance. It wasn’t the sort of area I would have picked for Caldwell. Too neat and placid somehow. Caldwell was a city bloke, a clubbish sort of chap who liked to be at the heart of things.
Willow Road runs at an acute angle from Willoughby and gently downhill. For the first 50 yards the tall terraces face off against each other. Then suddenly there is only the one side, the right side, as the street runs into a broader road coming in from the left. Then the heath starts and rolls up a grassy slope and into dense thickets of shrub and trees. I carefully noted the lines of sight.
The Caldwell house was one of the first batch. It was tall enough – four storeys – for four Kilpatrick families. A short path and a little flight of steps led up to the front door which was capped by a wooden porch painted green. I saw a curtain flick in the first level window as the gate swung closed behind me and thwacked into its socket.
A guarded middle-aged woman answered my knock. She fitted the house, but not my idea of the wife of Major Tony Caldwell. She seemed too reserved, sullen almost.
On the other hand, you usually find the extrovert needs someone to lord it over.
Caldwell wasn’t quite a bully, but he certainly liked getting his own way.
Unless her appearance belied her strength of character, Mrs Caldwell would have been no match for our Tone. Which probably explains Kate Graveney. Which reminded me, I would have to watch what I was saying here.
“Mrs Caldwell? Sorry if I’m a little early…” I took my hat off.
“No, no it’s quite all right. You must be Mr McRae. Or is it Captain? It was in your message.” Her voice was tight with nerves. She held the open door for me and tried not to stare too hard at my face, at my scars. She hung my coat in the hall.
“The rank was handed back with the uniform. It’s just plain Mister. Danny, if you’re OK with that?”
“Mister it is, then. Go in.” She pointed into a room off the hall. “Please take a seat. I’ll make us some tea.” She kept touching her mouth and avoiding my eyes. What did she have to feel guilty about? She wore a good dark frock and her brown hair was carefully combed back and pinned up in a style she probably hadn’t changed since she was sixteen.
As she went to the kitchen I looked around. It was a good-sized room in a tall thin house, but a bit stark and smelling of polish and stale air. It was clearly the “best” room, with an outlook on to a back garden with high hedges to keep out the neighbours. The antimacassars sat in perfect regimen on the backs of two brown armchairs and a couch. There was a heavy wood table and chairs, and an upright piano squatting on a plain brown rug. On the piano were photos. I got to my feet and walked smartly over. Sure enough, it was Tony Caldwell, in all his army finery, smiling out at me. There was a black ribbon edging the frame.
Another photo showed Tony and Liza – Mrs Caldwell to me, obviously – smiling and looking several years younger.
“I see you recognise him.” Mrs Caldwell had silently materialised. She was bearing a tray with all the tea accoutrements on it.
“Yes, of course. As I explained…”
“… you used to work together in the SOE.” She began clattering cups around.
“Right. And I was trying to look him up. Someone said… well that he was…”
“Dead?” Her eyes looked accusingly at me, as though I might have something to do with it. Then she was dabbing away at them.
“I’m sorry. That was very clumsy. I…”
She was shaking her head. “No. It’s all right. I still can’t believe it. To go through the whole war and then… a bit ironic, don’t you think Mr McRae?” She was pouring tea as she spoke.
“So Major Caldwell is dead? I’m very sorry.”
“He died, as you may have heard, in a friend’s flat. An unexploded bomb. Which finally did. Explode, I mean. There’s a lot still lying around they say. But that doesn’t seem to make it any less stupid. Do you believe in fate, Mr McRae?”
She went on without waiting for a reply. “I used not to. Now I’m not so sure.
Sugar?”
“Two please. I’m afraid there’s been a lot of fateful events these last few years. We’ve all lost something.”
“What did you lose, Mr McRae?” Her voice was sharper suddenly, and I caught a glimpse of steel beneath the softness. Her eyes seemed brighter, more penetrating.
“My memory.” I pointed to the scar. She’d already noticed it and only glanced briefly at my forehead. “I lost the best part of a year of my life. Only some snatches come back to me. And it’s hard to know what’s memory and what’s imagination.”
“Does it matter? It’s sometimes better not to remember.” Her lips pinched tighter. This woman needed more sugar in her tea.
“You may be right, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d like the chance of choosing what I want to forget. That’s why I wanted to find Tony. He recruited me to SOE and briefed me for my mission. I wondered what other gaps he might have been able to fill in for me.”
“That’s all you remember? Tony sending you off?” She was quite still now, as though this was the most important bit of our conversation. I assumed she was hungry to hear about him, to rub his memory. I thought I should oblige.
Tony organised six months of training at stations, as we called the several country houses scattered around England. I expanded my repertoire of unarmed combat. The Seaforth Highlanders had kept it simple: head first, then the boot.
Glasgow rules. Not cricket, but then we weren’t big on cricket. I learned explosive handling and radio communication, and buffed up my schoolboy French to a level that might fool a deaf German but would be ridiculed by a native speaker. Despite my protestations about the number of red-haired Frenchmen, they made me dye my hair black to look less conspicuous. At the end of my training Tony met me in Baker Street.
He took personal charge of the last session which went on all day, repeating and repeating our instructions and our communications plans till he was satisfied.
He had quite a temper if you got it wrong; his handsome face would go red, his eyes would pinch up, and his voice would rise a few notches till he got control again.
