The Parrot Cage, page 6
My dear Gerry [it read], If all the reports I hear are true, you must be in serious need of sleep. These disgusting-looking pink things were recommended to me by the wife of one of my generals. She says that his snores are loud enough to rattle the silver-topped bottles on her dressing table – and it is a good ten feet away from their beds. Bombs could hardly be worse, she thinks. Let me know if the earplugs help. Mrs General will be so pleased if they do. Love, Flixe.
Gerry tried to use them; but lying in blocked silence, with no idea of how the raid was progressing, proved to be so terrifying that she decided that she preferred the noise.
Throughout the first nights of the Blitz she used to lie in her bed, rigid with a mixture of resentment and fear: not so much of death in the bombing, but of what would happen later. Everyone knew that as soon as Herr Hitler had battered London into extinction, he would invade, and it was hard to see how he could be stopped. Churchill might say that the Battle of Britain had been won, but could even the heroic survivors of that struggle beat off an entire invasion once the heart of the country had been ripped out? But gradually resentment superseded fear, and anger gave Gerry a strength she had not known she had.
She soon gave up even trying to sleep during the raids and that helped too. One evening when the bombing was at its worst, her front door bell rang. When she opened it, expecting an ARP warden or some other official complaining about an infraction of their rules or checking on her stirrup pump and gas mask, she found Jeremy Oldridge, the tenant of the top two floors. Immaculately if informally dressed in thick flannel pyjamas under a flamboyant silk dressing-gown, he stood on her front-door step.
‘Good evening, Mrs Kyrle,’ he said demurely. ‘I thought I might take advantage of our short acquaintance and invite you to a chess match. Do you play?’
‘Well, yes,’ she answered, a little surprised.
‘Excellent. I can’t sleep in all this racket and it would be a work of charity if you’d play. If I’m not disturbing you, that is,’ he finished.
‘Goodness no,’ answered Gerry. ‘And in any case, I owe you far too much for finding me these rooms to refuse. Come in, please.’ She stood aside and he walked past her towards the little fireplace. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘That’s very civil of you. A little whisky would be nice.’
Gerry laughed, not at all displeased to have such a distraction from the raid.
‘Whisky I have, but I’m afraid no chess set.’
‘Never mind,’ he replied, putting his right hand into the pocket of his wonderful dressing-gown. ‘I have this.’ He held out a miniature travelling set made of ebony and ivory.
‘How pretty,’ exclaimed Gerry. ‘It looks Indian.’
‘Yes, I think it must be. I picked it up in an antiquère in Paris last time I was over there. Ah, Paris. Isn’t it desperate?’
‘Ghastly,’ she agreed, pouring his whisky and fetching herself a glass of wine. ‘Did you know it well?’
‘Well, I really know Bordeaux better. Anyone in my part of the wine trade would. But I’ve often thought of Paris as my spiritual home. And the thought of those wretched Germans trampling over the Tuileries, browbeating the waiters in all my favourite restaurants … It’s all too frightful.’
Gerry felt that there were far worse aspects to the invasion of Paris and the fall of France, but decided that Mr Oldridge was merely trying to entertain her and distract her from the noise outside, and so she smiled and pulled up a small table. He laid out his chess set.
‘I challenge you, Mrs Kyrle.’
‘I accept your challenge, Mr Oldridge. And may the best man win.’
They played five games over the next three hours and Gerry won all except the last.
‘I expect I’ve worn you out,’ he said as she eventually conceded defeat. Gerry smiled across the miniature board.
‘Well that is a work of charity in itself. I’m so tired that I can hardly hear the racket any more. I may even sleep.’
‘I hope you do,’ he said politely as he folded the board up and put it in his dressing-gown pocket. ‘It’s been delightful. Thank you very much.’
‘It was fun,’ she agreed. ‘We must do it again. Good night.’
She locked the door behind him and got into bed, to fall asleep almost at once. She was woken soon after six the following morning as the all-clear shrieked through the dawn, and smiled to herself before turning over to bury her face in the pillow and sleep again until her alarm shrilled in her left ear.
She walked into Queen Anne’s Gate that morning in a far more relaxed state than usual, thinking that if she could rely on the six hours’sleep she had achieved the night before, she might be able to cope with all the other tiresome effects of the bombing: the rarity of being able to have a bath or cook a meal because of the number of gas mains that were put out of action every night; the fear; the foul smells that hung like an evil miasma around every bombed building; even the bad temper and irritability of the analysts.
Climbing the stairs to the third floor, she acknowledged to herself that dealing with them was the part of her job that she liked the least; and yet it was probably precisely for that purpose that Suvarov had recruited her in the first place. Any of the typists already employed at RE(1)R could have done all the paperwork she had been given so far, and apart from that her job appeared to consist of nagging the analysts for their reports and trying to insulate Suvarov from their moods and petty quarrels.
He was already at his desk when she walked in, undoing the buttons of her overcoat. As usual he looked pale.
‘Are you all right, Peter?’ Gerry asked.
‘What? Yes, of course. Harassed and sleepless. That’s all.’
‘My sister sent me a box of earplugs as a defence against the noise of the raids. I’ve only used a pair. Would you like the rest? They really do keep out the noise – if you’ve strong enough nerves to put up with the terrifying silence.’
He looked up and his face softened so much that she found herself smiling gaily back at him. Then he shook his dark head.
‘No, but thank you – and your sister. Look, could you go and chase up Philippe? His report on the Communists is overdue. He promised it for Tuesday.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she answered and, as soon as she had hung her hat and gas mask on the coat rack by the door, went downstairs again.
There she was presented with a familiar sight. Philippe and Michel standing about two feet from each other near one of the filing cabinets, yelling French insults at each other. Gerry sighed. She had learned to read French easily as a child, and could understand most of what the two men said to each other, but she was not happy speaking it.
‘Look here,’ she said loudly in her own language. ‘Will you two stop it? The chief is upstairs trying to work and with you two bellowing like a pair … of rutting stags, he can’t hear himself think. And he looks as though he’s been awake all night.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ asked Mike Endlesham, shaking with silent laughter at Gerry’s simile. She glanced at him for a moment, recognised that he was laughing at her yet again and turned back to the two Frenchmen, wondering whether to ask about their quarrel or try to distract them with questions about recent French history. She had used the technique once or twice before and had listened patiently to lectures about the divisions in French society since the Great War; about the Dreyfus case; about Marshal Pétain; and about Michel’s great hero, General de Gaulle, who was about to save France’s honour virtually single-handed.
Just as she put her question about how Marshal Pétain could have struck such a chord with the majority of French people that he had been allowed to sign an armistice with their worst enemy, Madge pushed open the door of the analysts’room with her tea trolley. The clatter of cups and Madge’s breezy Cockney voice were punctuated by a burst of sardonic laughter from behind her and she turned to face Michael Endlesham.
‘Well, Mike? How have I blundered now?’ she asked with a defensiveness that his often bitter teasing had taught her.
‘My dear child,’ he answered in the patronising tone that always infuriated her, ‘how can you be so blind? Haven’t you noticed from our reports yet? Perhaps you don’t even read them. It is we who are France’s principal enemy, and always have been.’
‘Is that true?’ Gerry asked Philippe, as she accepted a slopped cup of tea from Madge and two Rich Tea biscuits. ‘I mean I know we were during the Hundred Years War and all that, but since the last war, at least, surely we’ve been allies?’
‘Ostensibly,’ answered Mike before Philippe could get a word in. Gerry turned back to face him. ‘But when a member of the Vichy government can announce that it would be better for France if Germany won the war than us because then France would be able to take advantage of German weaknesses and rule all Europe…’
‘Can you blame him?’ demanded Michel, ‘after Mers-el-Kebir?’
Gerry had no need to ask for explanations about that. The newspaper reports after the action in July had been quite illuminating enough and still appalled her whenever she thought of them. After Petain’s armistice with Hitler, something had had to be done to ensure that the French fleet was not used against the British. The French naval commanders had been given several options: to join the fight against Hitler, to be towed to some far-away neutral port for the duration, to scuttle themselves, or to be sunk. At Mers-el-Kebir in North Africa, they had refused to cooperate and had indeed been sunk. Thirteen hundred French sailors were killed.
‘And Dunkirk,’ added Michel in a voice of deliberate provocation, ‘when you British ran away and left us at the Germans’mercy.’
‘You bloody swine,’ shouted Mike, his face almost the same colour as the dirty eau-de-nil wall behind him. Gerry, who had never seen him so upset, wondered what on earth could be the matter. Remembering her errand, she gulped the remains of her sweet tea and asked Philippe for his overdue report.
‘It is nearly finished, Gerry,’ he said in a wheedling tone of voice. She laughed.
‘Nearly is not enough, Philippe. The chief said I must not leave this room without it. How long will you take?’
‘Ten minutes. No more. I promise.’
‘All right; I’ll wait. And Mike can explain about our national enmities.’
She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and was relieved to see that his face had resumed its normal colour. He shrugged.
‘Well, if you’re really interested …’ She assured him that she was and he fished in one of his wire baskets for printed evidence of the way the British were hated in France. He produced underground newspapers and Communist posters that had been smuggled out of France and eventually reached the offices of RE(1)R. From them she learned that Britain was pursuing an imperialist war and that France must resist it if she was to remain free; if not she would become nothing more than a British dominion.
Having been brought up to think of Communists as close relations of Satan, Gerry was able to dismiss most of their propaganda, but one poster made her so angry that she could not stick to her normal policy of not interrupting Suvarov’s work, and when she handed him Philippe’s report half an hour later, she let him see some of what she was feeling.
He listened patiently, but he did not answer, and so she tried again:
‘I suppose it’s not surprising that people who believe the sort of thing that Communists believe should—’
At that Peter interrupted:
‘Do you know what Communists believe, Gerry?’
Brought up short by his quiet question, she answered honestly after a moment’s thought.
‘No, not really. Just that they hate us and want a revolution and want us in Russia’s power, which I suppose is really the same as Hitler’s now that Russia’s made that shameful treaty with him.’
‘One day, when there’s more time, I’ll tell you what real Communists want and then you’ll understand a bit more.’
‘You don’t approve of them, do you, Peter?’ The horrified tone of her voice made him laugh, but he answered seriously enough.
‘No. But one of the saddest things in my life was discovering that an ideal like that, which has so much in it designed to help humanity, should in operation have turned out to be so inhumane.’
‘I’m sorry. I suppose I wasn’t thinking about what I said, and it’s true that I really don’t know anything about it. I didn’t mean to annoy you.’
‘You didn’t. And if I hadn’t an appointment in ten minutes’time I’d have started your education right now. Never mind; there’ll be another time,’ said Suvarov, picking up the file he had been reading.
That episode marked the beginning of a change in their relationship. Because he had shown her something he really minded about as he talked to her, Gerry felt that she was beginning to get to know Peter as someone more accessible than the occasionally frightening senior officer she had been employed to assist. She began to allow herself to talk more openly over their whisky each evening, even expressing her doubts about what they were supposed to be doing and asking whether the internal government of France would ever really be the business of the British.
Peter Suvarov seemed pleased that she was interested enough in the politics of France and its occupation to ask questions, and he answered them with growing ease. One evening about four weeks after she had started work, he reached for the whisky bottle at about six o’clock as usual. It had been a bitterly cold day, and Gerry had had to replenish the small coke fire every hour or so since she had arrived that morning. By six, the room had at last warmed up. The last coals were glowing red in the black grate, the green-shaded reading lights on each desk threw circles of light on to the polished wood. There were no sounds except the gentle hiss of the fire and the clink of glass on glass as Suvarov poured the whisky. The room seemed miles away from anywhere else, small and intimate, and Gerry was glad that Eynsham had chosen that evening to work later than usual. She smiled at her chief and asked him how he had come to work for the department.
Peter handed her a glass and went to sit back in his chair, with his feet stretched forward on to his desk, and began to explain to her why he had been anxious to have a part in RE (1)R and why it was such an important place to work. He told her that he could see little point in fighting only to defeat the enemy if the post-war world were to remain as it had been before.
Gerry was a little puzzled and asked Peter what kind of world he wanted. He rubbed his thin hands across his face and smiled at her.
‘It would take a long time to explain it all, but we ought to be fighting for a better, safer world; one in sympathy with basic democratic ideals. The only way even to begin to work for such a world is to ensure that countries liberated from the Germans are eventually put into the hands of people who want the same things as we do.’
‘I see,’ said Gerry, watching him more carefully. ‘But there’s more than just that, isn’t there? Tell me about the world you want, Peter. What would it be like?’ He laughed again.
‘Oh, it’s simple things I want, Gerry: in my world, everyone has enough to eat, free access to the best medical care and the best education; everyone has the right to a say in how their country is governed; no one need fear arbitrary imprisonment or forced labour. There is no censorship. There is no death penalty. And so on.’ Gerry listened, but protested.
‘But we haven’t got all of those things here.’
‘No, my dear, of course we haven’t. But we are nearer to achieving some of them than the occupied countries can be,’ he said.
‘Well, even so,’ said Gerry, curious to see how earnest he had become, ‘it does sometimes seem a bit premature. I mean, until there is the faintest possibility that we might win and be in a position to do anything at all about the occupied countries.’ Peter laughed once again, his eyes narrowing, as he answered.
‘We’ll win. I’m sure of it.’ She smiled back, warmed by his certainty.
‘I wish I could sound so sure when I try to calm the boys down when they get bolshie.’
‘It’s only a knack. I’m sure you’ll learn. But I’m glad you’re trying. Most of them have good reasons to be depressed even without the war news.’
‘Oh?’ she said, hoping for more. ‘Tell me about them.’ Suvarov took his feet off the desk and explained with uncharacteristic stiffness that he did not intend to pass on personal details about any member of his staff to one of the others. Gerry blushed and changed the subject, but she filed the hint away in her mind and found it comforting to think that perhaps Michael Endlesham’s antagonism might have its roots in his own troubles rather than in her failings.
The personal business of his staff was the only subject that Suvarov considered to be taboo; on every other topic he was happy to talk and seemed more open and approachable than usual. Gerry found herself hoping that Eynsham would not appear at all. She rather liked him, and he had occasionally defended her against the more vicious of Endlesham’s outbursts, but on that particular evening she wanted her chief to herself. When they eventually put the guard in front of the fire, switched off the lamps and left the building, it dawned on her that they got on rather well together.
After that evening she began to watch him, and the more she watched the more concerned she became for him: he seemed to be fighting on about five fronts simultaneously and only to her and to Eynsham did he ever allow himself to seem discouraged. It was no wonder that he usually looked ill. Like the rest of them, he could not be getting much sleep. Gerry increased her efforts to see that the information from downstairs was properly presented, accessible, as accurate as possible, and filed in a way that made it quick and easy to find again so that he would not have any friction in the office that she could prevent.
For some reason her concern for Suvarov made it easier to deal with the analysts, and as she ceased to expect them to beat her in their games of one-upmanship, she found that they ceased to play them. Even the sarcastic and bitter Mike Endlesham showed her a more human side, and began to let her see some of the real despair behind his mocking exterior.
