‘It’s kind of you to join us, Miss Barrington,’ he said. ‘Please have a seat.’
Emma sank into a leather chair so deep that she almost disappeared from sight. She noticed a stack of notebooks on the senior partner’s desk.
‘My name is Sefton Jelks,’ he began, ‘and I have the privilege of representing the distinguished and acclaimed author, Mr Max Lloyd. My client visited me earlier this morning, to tell me that he had been approached by someone claiming to be a literary agent from London, who was making an accusation, a slanderous accusation, that he was not the author of The Diary of a Convict, which bears his name. It may interest you to know, Miss Barrington,’ continued Jelks, ‘that I am in possession of the original manuscript, every word of which is written in Mr Lloyd’s hand.’ He placed a fist firmly on top of the notebooks, and allowed himself the suggestion of a smile.
‘May I be allowed to see one?’ asked Emma.
‘Of course,’ replied Jelks. He removed the book on top of the pile and handed it to her.
Emma opened it and began to read. The first thing she saw was that it wasn’t written in Harry’s bold hand. But it was Harry’s voice. She handed the book back to Mr Jelks, who replaced it at the top of the pile. ‘May I have a look at one of the others?’ she asked.
‘No. We’ve proved our point, Miss Barrington,’ said Jelks. ‘And my client will take advantage of every remedy the law provides should you be foolish enough to repeat your slander.’ Emma kept her eyes on the pile of notebooks, while Jelks continued in full flow. ‘I also felt it appropriate to have a word with Mr Elders to warn him you might be in touch, and to let him know that should he agree to see you, he would undoubtedly be called as a witness, were this matter to end up in court. Mr Elders felt, on balance, that his best course of action would be to avoid meeting you. A sensible man.’
Emma continued to look at the pile of notebooks.
‘Miss Barrington, it didn’t take a lot of research to discover that you are the granddaughter of Lord Harvey and Sir Walter Barrington, which would account for your misplaced confidence when dealing with Americans. Allow me to suggest that if you intend to continue trying to pass yourself off as a literary agent, perhaps I can offer you some free advice, which is a matter of public record. Ernest Hemingway left America to live in Cuba in 1939—’
‘How very generous of you, Mr Jelks,’ interrupted Emma, before he could continue. ‘Allow me to offer you some free advice in return. I know perfectly well that it was Harry Clifton’ – Jelks’s eyes narrowed – ‘and not your client, who wrote The Diary of a Convict. If you were foolish enough, Mr Jelks, to issue a writ for slander against me, you might well find yourself in court having to explain why you defended a man on a charge of murder who you knew wasn’t Lieutenant Tom Bradshaw.’
Jelks began frantically pressing a button underneath his desk. Emma rose from her chair, smiled sweetly at both of them, and left the room without another word. She marched quickly down the corridor towards the elevator, as Mr Anscott and a security guard hurried past her on their way to Mr Jelks’s office. At least she’d avoided the humiliation of being escorted off the premises.
When she stepped into the lift, the attendant enquired, ‘Which floor, miss?’
‘Ground, please.’
The attendant chuckled. ‘You must be English.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘In America, we call it the first floor.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Emma, giving him a smile as she stepped out of the elevator. She walked across the lobby, pushed through the revolving doors and ran down the steps and out on to the pavement, quite clear what she had to do next. There was only one person left she could turn to. After all, any sister of Lord Harvey had to be a formidable ally. Or would Great-aunt Phyllis turn out to be a close friend of Sefton Jelks, in which case Emma would be taking the next boat back to England.
She hailed a cab, but when she jumped in, she almost had to shout to make herself heard above the blare of the radio.
‘Sixty-fourth and Park,’ she said, working out how she might explain to her great-aunt why she hadn’t visited her earlier. She leant forward and would have asked the driver to turn the volume down, if she hadn’t heard the words, ‘President Roosevelt will address the nation from the Oval Office at twelve thirty this afternoon, Eastern Time’.
GILES BARRINGTON
1941–1942
20
THE FIRST THING Giles saw was his right leg hitched to a pulley and encased in plaster.
He could dimly remember a long journey, during which the pain had become almost unbearable, and he had assumed he would die long before they got him to a hospital. And he would never forget the operation, but then how could he, when they’d run out of anaesthetic moments before the doctor made the first incision?
He turned his head very slowly to the left and saw a window with three bars across it, then to the right; that’s when he saw him.
‘No, not you,’ Giles said. ‘For a moment I thought I’d escaped and gone to heaven.’
‘Not yet,’ said Bates. ‘First you have to do a spell in purgatory.’
‘For how long?’
‘At least until your leg’s mended, possibly longer.’
‘Are we back in England?’ Giles asked hopefully.
‘I wish,’ said Bates. ‘No, we’re in Germany, Weinsberg PoW camp, which is where we all ended up after being taken prisoner.’
Giles tried to sit up, but could only just raise his head off the pillow; enough to see a framed picture on the wall of Adolf Hitler giving him a Nazi salute.
‘How many of our boys survived?’
‘Only a handful. The lads took the colonel’s words to heart. “We will all sacrifice our lives before Rommel books a suite at the Majestic Hotel”.’
‘Did anyone else from our platoon make it?’
‘You, me and—’
‘Don’t tell me, Fisher?’
‘No. Because if they’d sent him to Weinsberg, I’d have asked for a transfer to Colditz.’
Giles lay still, staring up at the ceiling. ‘So how do we escape?’
‘I wondered how long it would be before you asked that.’
‘And what’s the answer?’
‘Not a chance while your leg’s still in plaster, and even after that it won’t be easy, but I’ve got a plan.’
‘Of course you have.’
‘The plan’s not the problem,’ said Bates. ‘The problem is the escape committee. They control the waiting list, and you’re at the back of the queue.’
‘How do I get to the front?’
‘It’s like any queue in England, you just have to wait your turn . . . unless—’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless Brigadier Turnbull, the senior ranking officer, thinks there’s a good reason why you should be moved up the queue.’
‘Like what?’
‘If you can speak fluent German, it’s a bonus.’
‘I picked up a bit when I was at OTS – just wish I’d concentrated more.’
‘Well, there are lessons twice a day, so someone of your intelligence shouldn’t find that too difficult. Unfortunately even that list is still fairly long.’
‘So what else can I do to get bumped up the escape-list faster?’
‘Find yourself the right job. That’s what got me moved up three places in the past month.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘As soon as the Krauts found out I was a butcher, they offered me a job in the officers’ mess. I told them to fuck off, excuse my French, but the brigadier insisted I took the job.’
‘Why would he want you to work for the Germans?’
‘Because occasionally I can manage to steal some food from the kitchen, but more important, I pick up the odd piece of information that’s useful to the escape committee. That’s why I’m near the front of the queue, and you’re still at the back. You’re going to have to get both feet on the ground if you?
??re still hoping to make it to the washroom before me.’
‘Any idea how long it will be before I can do that?’ asked Giles.
‘The prison doc says it’ll be at least another month, possibly six weeks before they can remove the plaster.’
Giles settled back on the pillow. ‘But even when I do get up, how can I hope to be offered a job in the officers’ mess? Unlike you, I don’t have the right qualifications.’
‘But you do,’ said Bates. ‘In fact, you can go one better than me, and get yourself a job in the camp commandant’s dining room, because I know they’re looking for a wine waiter.’
‘And what makes you think I’m qualified to be a wine waiter?’ asked Giles, making no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice.
‘If I remember correctly,’ said Bates, ‘you used to have a butler called Jenkins working for you at the Manor House.’
‘Still do, but that hardly qualifies me—’
‘And your grandfather, Lord Harvey, is in the wine trade. Frankly, you’re over-qualified.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’
‘Once you get out of here, they’ll make you fill in a labour form, listing your previous employment. I’ve already told them you were a wine waiter at the Grand Hotel, Bristol.’
‘Thanks. But they’ll know within minutes—’
‘Believe me, they don’t have a clue. All you have to do is get your German up to scratch, and try to remember what Jenkins did. Then if we can come up with a decent plan to present to the escape committee, we’ll march to the front of the queue in no time. Mind you, there’s a catch.’
‘There has to be, if you’re involved.’
‘But I’ve found a way round it.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘You can’t get a job workin’ for the Krauts if you take German lessons, because they’re not that stupid. They make a list of everyone who attends the classes, because they don’t want no one eavesdropping on their private conversations.’
‘You said you’d found a way around that?’
‘You’ll have to do what all toffs do to keep ahead of people like me. Take private lessons. I’ve even found you a tutor; a bloke who taught German at Solihull Grammar School. It’s only his English you’ll find difficult to understand.’ Giles laughed. ‘And since you’ll be locked up in here for another six weeks, and haven’t anything better to do, you can start straight away. You’ll find a German–English dictionary under your pillow.’
‘I’m in your debt, Terry,’ said Giles, grasping his friend by the hand.
‘No, I owe you, don’t I? On account of the fact that you saved my life.’
21
BY THE TIME Giles was released from the sick bay five weeks later, he knew a thousand German words but he hadn’t been able to work on his pronunciation.
He’d also spent countless hours lying in bed, trying to recall how Jenkins had gone about his job. He practised saying Good morning, sir, with a deferential nod of the head, and Would you care to sample this wine, colonel, while pouring a jug of water into a specimen bottle.
‘Always appear modest, never interrupt and don’t speak till you’re spoken to,’ Bates reminded him. ‘In fact, do exactly the opposite of everythin’ you’ve always done in the past.’
Giles would have hit him, but he knew he was right.
Although Bates was only allowed to visit Giles twice a week for thirty minutes, he used every one of those minutes to brief him about the day-to-day workings of the commandant’s private dining room. He taught him the names and ranks of each officer, their particular likes and dislikes, and warned him that Major Müller of the SS, who was in charge of camp security, was not a gentleman, and was certainly not susceptible to charm, especially old-school.
Another visitor was Brigadier Turnbull, who listened with interest to what Giles told him he had in mind for when he was moved out of the sick bay and into the camp. The brigadier went away impressed, and returned a few days later with some thoughts of his own.
‘The escape committee aren’t in any doubt that the Krauts will never allow you to work in the commandant’s dining room if they think you’re an officer,’ he told Giles. ‘For your plan to have any chance of succeeding, you’ll need to be a private soldier. Since Bates is the only man to have served under you, he’s the only one who’ll have to keep his mouth shut.’
‘He’ll do what I tell him,’ said Giles.
‘Not any longer he won’t,’ warned the brigadier.
When Giles finally emerged from the sick bay and moved into camp, he was surprised to find how disciplined the life was, especially for a private soldier.
It brought back memories of his days at Ypres training camp on Dartmoor – feet on the floor at six every morning, with a sergeant major who certainly didn’t treat him like an officer.
Bates still beat him to the washroom and to breakfast every morning. There was full parade on the square at seven, when the salute was taken by the brigadier. Once the sergeant major had screamed, ‘Parade dismissed!’ everyone became engaged in frantic activity for the rest of the day.
Giles never missed the five-mile run, twenty-five times around the perimeter of the camp, or an hour’s quiet conversation in German with his private tutor while sitting in the latrines.
He quickly discovered that the Weinsberg PoW camp had a lot of other things in common with Ypres barracks: cold, bleak, barren terrain, and dozens of huts with wooden bunks, horsehair mattresses and no heating other than the sun, which, like the Red Cross, only made rare visits to Weinsberg. They also had their own sergeant major who endlessly referred to Giles as an idle little sod.
As on Dartmoor, there was a high wire fence surrounding the compound, and only one way in and out. The problem was that there were no weekend passes, and the guards, armed with rifles, certainly didn’t salute as you drove out of the gates in your yellow MG.
When Giles was asked to fill in the camp labour form, under ‘name’, he wrote Private Giles Barrington, and under ‘previous occupation’, sommelier.
‘What the hell’s that when it’s at home?’ asked Bates.
‘Wine waiter,’ said Giles in a superior tone.
‘Then why not bloody well say so?’ Bates said as he tore up the form, ‘unless of course you were hoping to get a job at the Ritz. You’ll have to fill in another one of these,’ he added, sounding exasperated.
Once Giles had handed in the second form, he waited impatiently to be interviewed by someone in the commandant’s office. He used the endless hours to keep fit in both mind and body. ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ was about the only Latin he could still remember from his schooldays.
Bates kept him informed about what was happening on the other side of the fence, and even managed to smuggle out the odd potato or crust of bread, and on one occasion half an orange.
‘Can’t overdo it,’ he explained. ‘The last thing I need is to lose my job.’
It was about a month later that they were both invited to appear before the escape committee and present the Bates/Barrington plan, which quickly became known as the bed and breakfast plan – bed in Weinsberg, breakfast in Zurich.
Their clandestine presentation went well, and the committee agreed that they should be allowed to climb a few more places up the order, but no one was yet suggesting that they should open the batting. In fact, the brigadier told them bluntly that until Private Barrington had landed a job in the commandant’s dining room, they were not to bother the committee again.
‘Why is it taking so long, Terry?’ asked Giles after they’d left the meeting.
Corporal Bates grinned. ‘I’m quite happy for you to call me Terry,’ he said, ‘that is, when we’re on our own, but never in front of the men, you understand?’ he added, giving a passable imitation of Fisher.
Giles punched him on the arm.
‘Court martial offence, that,’ Bates reminded him, ‘a private soldier attacking a non-commissioned officer.’
&
nbsp; Giles punched him again. ‘Now answer my question,’ he demanded.
‘Nothing moves quickly in this place. You’ll just have to be patient, Giles.’
‘You can’t call me Giles until we’re sitting down for breakfast in Zurich.’
‘Suits me, if you’re payin’.’
Everything changed the day the camp commandant had to host lunch for a group of visiting Red Cross officials, and needed an extra waiter.
‘Don’t forget you’re a private soldier,’ said Bates when Giles was escorted to the other side of the wire for his interview with Major Müller. ‘You have to try to think like a servant, not someone who’s used to being served. If Müller suspects, even for a moment, that you’re an officer, we’ll both be out on our arses, and you’ll go back to the bottom of the snakes and ladders board. I can promise you one thing, the brigadier won’t ever invite us to throw the dice again. So act like a servant, and never even hint that you understand a word of German. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Giles.
Giles returned an hour later with a large grin on his face.
‘You got the job?’ asked Bates.
‘I got lucky,’ said Giles. ‘The commandant interviewed me, not Müller. I start tomorrow.’
‘And he never suspected you were an officer and a gentleman?’
‘Not after I told him I was a friend of yours.’
Before the lunch for the visiting Red Cross officials was served, Giles uncorked six bottles of merlot to allow them to breathe. Once the guests were seated, he poured half an inch of wine into the commandant’s glass and waited for his approval. After a nod, he served the guests, always pouring from the right. He then moved on to the officers, according to rank, finally returning to the commandant, as host.
During the meal he made sure no one’s glass was ever empty, but he never served anyone while they were speaking. Like Jenkins, he was rarely seen and never heard. Everything went as planned, although Giles was well aware that Major Müller’s suspicious eyes rarely left him, even when he tried to melt into the background.