He said he didn’t think they’d have to worry about leaving, at the end when the service was over. “Chummy’ll almost certainly make his move quickly, at the start of things. After all he asked for his contact to be in the cathedral early.”
There was a lot of, “Don’t worry, we’ll be on you like leeches” talk, and around midday Ruth and Curry happily volunteered to go out for food from the mess over in Baker Street. They returned with unappetising sausages (‘Ah sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you,’ Big Peter sang in a cracked, gravel voice), a large pile of chips, almost cold, and some bread which looked as though it had been sliced by the giant at the top of the beanstalk.
Ruth made some surprisingly reasonable coffee and as they sipped it three strong-arm boys came over from the Branch, two DCs and a DI Suzie knew by sight but not by name. They eyed her up as though they were calculating her weight at a country fête, and the DI introduced himself as Bob Lambourne. “We’re just taking a look-see,” he told her. “So we’ll know you in the cathedral.” He paused, licked his lips and said, “Actually, I’d know you anywhere.” Which Suzie thought was meant to be a compliment, though she didn’t dare say that she found it offensive.
Three other tough guy types came in later and did not introduce themselves so she presumed they were from ‘Five’ as Elsie referred to the Security Service. They were all on nodding terms with Elsie and Curry and they also seemed to be carrying out a minute and detailed examination of her form and figure.
Just after they left, Tommy Livermore came in with his new WDS Cathy Wimereux. Nobody had warned Suzie that he was coming so she suddenly found herself looking straight into his face and giving him a weak smile. He nodded in return then spoke quietly to Elsie who appeared to have been expecting him and said loudly, “That’s a pity,” then addressed everybody. “DCS Livermore has done as I asked him and felt the Richardson girl’s collar. But so far I’m afraid he’s drawn a blank.” He turned directly to Suzie, “We had hoped it might save putting you out in St Paul’s Suzie, but that’s gone for a burton.”
Tommy took up the story, saying that he’d arrested Julia Richardson at the Shepherd Street house at seven that morning. “Before we went in we gave the place a good looking over from outside,” he continued. “Nobody appeared to be watching it, or keeping a look-out.” Turning to Elsie he said they had been most discreet. “I’ve left a couple of people there with their heads well down just in case you miss chummy and he goes back there for want of anywhere else to run.”
“Unlikely,” Curry sneered.
“You never know,” Tommy squashed him, then said he’d got the Richardson girl at the Yard. “We’ve had a long talk,” he went on, “and she seems genuinely shocked about the Swede, Henderson, and she says she’s no idea who our man is; says their business has always been done over the phone. I don’t believe it for a minute, but she’s playing at being a Dumb Dora, as our Allies would say. In other words she’s staying schtum. Personally I think she knows alright, but it’ll take time once you’ve pulled him in.”
As Tommy was leaving, heading back to Scotland Yard, he smiled at Suzie and wished her good luck. She looked away and felt herself blush. After that she found that she couldn’t look any of the other men in the eye. Later she thought that Cathy Wimereux had seemed somewhat cowed and didn’t have much to say.
When Tommy’s people had gone, Curry said something about her being really well cared for tonight.
“Think we’d better let you go home,” Elsie said. “Have a bit of a rest before you get all dressed up for church. I’ll get Roy to come and take you to the car.” And Curry made some tasteless remark about her having to wear a red hat, “… know what that means, Suzie? Red hat?”
“Yes, Curry,” she said as though showing great patience to a four-year-old. “I know all about red hats meaning no drawers, and that’s about as accurate as the one Tommy told me was rife at his prep school, that girls wearing ankle chains indicated they had the curse.”
This was going a bit far; Elsie looked shocked, and Curry shut up, looking uncomfortable. Nobody laughed.
Then Roy arrived and she was surprised to see that his face was familiar.
That morning when she’d left her flat and taken a taxi to Baker Street, she had kept her eyes open as Curry had advised and quickly noticed a grey Vauxhall behind them, then overtaking when the cab pulled over to drop her. As she walked on to Ivor Place she saw the car again, first coming towards her, then, a few minutes later driving past in the other direction. There was a tall, greying, somewhat nondescript man at the wheel. So she took the registration number and reported it to Curry as soon as she arrived at the Ivor Place house. He had simply nodded and told her she’d done well to keep her eyes open.
Now, Roy was ushered in, the same grey man who had been trailing her car this morning – another member of the WOIL team, their best driver who would be taking her down to St Paul’s tonight. A taciturn man with a nice smile that lit up his face and eyes when he used it. I’ll be safe with him, she thought, because he was the kind of quiet man who exuded confidence.
Roy told her he would pick her up in Upper St Martin’s Lane spot on five-thirty. “I’d like to get the car into a good parking place near St Paul’s so that I can scoop you up once the fireworks are over,” he said, and Suzie remarked that she wasn’t expecting any fireworks.
“That’s the thing in this game,” he said. “It’s when you’re not expecting them that they do the most damage,” a remark said so seriously that it made her twitchy.
* * *
IT WAS STILL light when she left her building, at the top of Upper St Martin’s Lane at just gone five-twenty and started to walk towards the Strand and Charing Cross, wearing her burgundy coat with the collar high around her neck, the matching hat with the brim cocked over her right eye, and a wine red scarf, knotted neatly in the way Americans called an Ascot. She carried her best square leather handbag with a copy of the News of the World protruding from the top.
It would be light for some time yet, with British Summertime in effect all year round now – Double British Summertime in the late spring until late autumn, to help the farmers. There was a heavy gun-metal sky; complete cloud cover and occasional gusts of a bitter wind coming up from the river.
The grey Vauxhall pulled up just as she reached the intersection with the Strand, Roy pushing the passenger side door open and Suzie making a fuss as she got in, thanking him and nodding, just in case, though she knew it was unlikely anyone – apart from the people attached to WOIL – would be watching. They already knew Cyclops was more concerned with the obvious affairs close to him than anything at a distance. He certainly didn’t have the necessary manpower, and anyway probably wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to do the job thoroughly.
All the official cars were fitted with a mirror on the passenger side as well as the one for the driver, and Suzie adjusted it now, keeping her eyes moving from road to mirror, guardedly watching for surveillance.
She wondered briefly if it had been wise to arrest Julia Richardson at this early stage as she could well be the one person in his small network whom he may just try and contact before the carol service
They hardly spoke during the journey towards the square mile of the City of London where St Paul’s, with its great familiar dome, stood out from the rubble and devastation which had visited the area in December 1940. During that night of holocaust over 30,000 incendiary bombs were dropped into the City, gutting almost all the buildings, including the Guildhall and eight churches, it was amazing to think that Christopher Wren’s great masterpiece had been left almost unscathed.
As she looked around her during the journey, down Fleet Street and onto Ludgate Hill, Suzie thought how drab the buildings appeared, sooty and sombre, as tired as the British people were with the war, drained and depleted by the constant strain, the ever-present worry, news of deaths and concern for the future. There also appeared to be a thin, tangible mist hanging in the old streets at thi
s time of the year, as though some grim life fluid was seeping from the roads and stone of the structures and ruins that now punctuated these environs.
Suzie moved in the front seat, craning upwards to see the Dome of St Paul’s rising to over 300 feet above the pavement and she realised that she felt more than anxiety. Her tummy turned over in a flutter and she could sense the fear deep within her as Roy brought the car to a halt at the bottom of the long steps leading up to the west façade. He slipped from the driving seat and trotted round to the pavement, reaching for Suzie’s door as she opened it. A military police sergeant seemed to appear out of the pavement and Roy nodded to him, slipping an official-looking card to him. The redcap nodded, said something and pointed to his far right.
Roy smiled and turned to face Suzie, looking up towards the church, as Suzie faced away from it. “I’m going to park somewhere over there,” he raised his left arm, pointing to what was Suzie’s right. “I’ll pick you up here, bottom of the steps as soon as I can get to you when you come out. You’ll be easy enough to spot with that cheeky red hat.”
Suzie nodded and smiled a thank you, grateful that he had not gone on with the old adage about red hats. Then she slowly turned and began the walk up those long wide steps towards the west door wondering what the next hour or so would bring.
It crossed her mind that she had always loved and treasured the run up towards Christmas.
Chapter Nineteen
SHE HADN’T BEEN inside St Paul’s since 1939 when she had been briefly attached to the Vine Street ‘nick’, and so had forgotten how its size hit you in the face, opened your eyes and gave you a sense of wonderment. The vastness of the interior, with the great pillars and the dome reaching up above the transept, made one feel puny and brought to mind the colossal disposition of God’s creation when set against the infinitesimal nature of mankind.
From a sidesman she took a leaflet containing the order of service, then settled in a place at the end of a row, some six seats from the back, the cathedral already starting to fill up.
Most of the congregation were in uniform and there was a buzz of expectation throughout, memories of peacetime Christmases flooding back, friends smiling and nodding to one another across the chairs, people arriving, senior military officers with their ADCs, many from the women’s services crowding in, ATS, WAAFs and WRENS looking smart and spry, faces shining some like children, some ‘other ranks’ girls being squired by officers. Civilians were in the minority and mainly middle aged or elderly. Since 1939 regular congregations at churches and chapels had grown: in times such as this people turned back to God as a rock in their lives, an anchor, an eternal hope.
The ARP, Fire Service, Police and Ambulance Services were also well represented, a whole cross section of life, she thought. When the war finally ended they would probably lose this feeling of a universal cause where all were, to use Shakespeare’s phrase, truly a band of brothers dedicated to defence and defeating the Nazi might. Suzie felt an extraordinary pang of sadness at the thought of this sense of common purpose filtering away, the world she knew returning to the daily round and common task of a peacetime existence. Immediately, of course, she felt guilty at not wanting to lose this esprit de corps that was inevitably welded to war. Did it mean that she didn’t really want the war to end? Even with all its attendant horrors. She looked around, with a shy smile on her face, as though to misdirect anyone who might read her mind.
There were two big Christmas trees standing near the chancel, candles were lighted and flowers decorated everywhere: holly, ivy, Christmas roses, even the pagan mistletoe. The whole church took on a paradoxical sense of normality, as though the war was a thing apart and nothing to do with the congregation or what they were about to celebrate here.
Suzie tried not to be furtive as she looked about her, glancing down at the Order of Service and then up again, each time in a different direction, trying to see if there was anyone she recognised. She thought she had glimpsed the bulky figure of Little Trevor Haines over to her right, but when she looked again he was gone. She saw no signs of Curry or the men from ‘Five’ or the Branch which she knew was good, for it meant they were skilfully hidden among the congregation. She searched among the backs of peoples’ heads to see if she could recognise anybody from the recent past, but the only familiar face was a girl she had been at school with, Janet ‘Eggy’ Eggmore, now a dark beauty in a WAAF officer’s uniform, unbelievably poised. Fancy, she thought, old Eggy grown up and confident with a Flight Lieutenant glancing at her adoringly.
As though spotting an old school mate wasn’t bad enough the organist now started to play ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ which was their favourite voluntary music back in the chapel with the good Anglican nuns at St Helen’s. So, in her head she slid away from the present back into the childhood past of schooldays when life was reasonably safe, Daddy and Charlotte were still alive and the centre of her world was warmed by happiness.
The organist moved smoothly into ‘Sheep may safely graze’, another piece of magic, holy music from the past, but suddenly someone stood beside her chair. Her stomach turned over, dragging her back into the present as she looked up to see a tall, RAF officer, a Squadron Leader with pilot’s wings on his left breast above a strip of medals, including a DFC and bar, visible through his unbuttoned open greatcoat. He smiled and indicated the chair next to her, asking quietly if it was empty. She nodded and hunched back to allow him in.
If he was Cyclops’ messenger, she thought, he was nobody she’d seen before. Then she realised that he had, in fact, been in the officers’ mess at Brize Norton. Not the doctor who’d been in to see them after the car explosion, but someone else. The GPR Mess at Brize, as they were leaving. She remembered him now with his corn hair and flourish of a moustache, and a basso profundo voice that gave her a tiny attack of goose pimples as she stood waiting to get into the car, after the bomb, when they were waiting to be driven up to London on their way to see Elsie Partridge. Yes, of course.
What a good choice, she thought. Cyclops may well be a bit of a clot in some directions – taking pot shots at them, trying to blast them to eternity with a car bomb – but he couldn’t have picked a nicer looking fellow who now moved past her and began settling himself into the seat close to her. So close that at one point his left knee briefly touched her right knee as he was fiddling with a large and bulging brief case. No doubt, she decided, the brief case carried whatever was to be passed over to her.
It was an old and smooth leather job, like a large music case complete with straps, handles and buckles, little straps pulling the soft leather cover over and into place. He fiddled with the case on the floor, then pushed it under his chair, the top part of his body swinging round in a series of exaggerated movements. Maybe he wasn’t going to get the package out yet. No, stood to reason, he’d go for it towards the end of the service. All she had to do was wait. Piece of cake.
At that moment the organ burst into a series of fanfare chords and the procession began. She had thought it would all start with ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ so it rather took her by surprise that the processional was the Advent hymn, ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel, to free thy captive Israel’. A tenor sang the first two lines in a rich deep brown voice and when they all joined in she was thrilled to hear the RAF officer’s bass profundo voice next to her rejoicing in the Christmas words.
Led by an acolyte carrying the cathedral’s processional cross, the choir, in their red cassocks and snow white surplices came swaying down the aisle, the boys singing their hearts out, all looking like little angels with the men following them, the delicious sound swallowing Suzie and again directing her towards the past and memories of life when her father still lived and life was comparatively straightforward.
The clergy followed the choir, the Dean of St Paul’s and other Cathedral clerics, then, tonight, the Bishop of London and his chaplain. And it was the bishop who said the Bidding Prayer before they began to sing again, an abundance of caro
ls pointing the way towards the meaning of Christmas. They sang ‘Away in a Manger’ that so reminded Suzie of the days at school when they would listen to the very small girls singing that carol and smiling at the way they bobbed at each mention of Our Lord’s name; then ‘In the Deep Mid-Winter’ which always made her smile as it had been her favourite carol as a tiny child and she couldn’t pronounce ‘snow.’ In later years her father had done an imitation of her rendition which, after the first verse went –
‘No had fallen ‘no on ‘no. ‘No on ‘no
In the deep mid-winter, long ago.
There was the first lesson – the lovely one from Isaiah with the hugely comforting prophecy, written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ and containing the words:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Suzie would freely admit that she could be an emotional woman at times, and also that this passage from the Bible with its world of hope always made her want to hug herself with the joy of it all at Yuletide. It happened every year when she heard those words, and the line in ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ that went … And Christmas Comes Once More. These were triggers of happiness and she really didn’t care if anyone thought her sentimental or even silly. For her they underlined the great and eternal wheel of praise that is the Christian year. That’s how she had been brought up, and she rejoiced in it.
Then they sang ‘In dulce jubilo’, a carol that taxed her memory and sentiment, for this was something she used to sing with her father, he doing the melody with her providing the descant. The recall of those things and the happiness that lay in her recollection brought tears to her eyes and she clung to the back of the chair in front of her in an attempt to calm herself and control her shaking body. It took a considerable act of self-discipline to bring herself back to the present and subjugate her physical reactions.