MI5 and Me Read online

  Intending to go and find my father and warn him, I spotted Policeman Number Three, who only turned out to be the one known as my father’s parking policeman.

  ‘Miss Lottie?’ he called to me. ‘It’s purely routine, Miss Lottie. We just need to speak to your dad.’

  ‘Not more parking tickets?’ I said in what I hoped was a genuinely sympathetic tone. ‘Can’t they wait?’

  But by then the police had gained entry, only to find themselves confronted by my father who, far from appearing disconcerted, appeared to be in rather a benign frame of mind, judging from his smile – an unusual sight at the best of times.

  ‘If you’re here to arrest me, Inspector,’ he announced, ‘I have to point out that as a Senator of the Roman Republic, I can only be arrested by a person of similar rank and standing.’

  ‘We are not here to arrest you, sir.’

  ‘Senator, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘We’re not here to arrest you, I assure you. Not unless we find due cause. We’re here, Senator – I mean, sir – because there’s been a break-in locally and the resident who witnessed it says he later saw the possible perpetrator of the crime fleeing the said house and running in this direction. After giving chase, he says he then saw the possible perpetrator entering this very house. I wonder if you could be any help in this matter, sir? Senator.’

  ‘Nullus nullus verbatim hic, alas, old chap. Sorry,’ my father replied cheerfully. ‘All our guests are invited and accounted for – excluding your own good selves. Do come in and make sure, though. I think my wife and my daughter here can back me up.’

  Not mentioning, of course, the person unknown whom my father had whipped post haste out of the action only moments ago, unobserved by anyone except me.

  After allowing the police access to the party, my father then despatched Mr Graham back to his duties but remained by the front door with me until everyone else was out of earshot.

  ‘It’s fine, Lottie,’ he murmured as we stood facing the closed front door. ‘Our bird is safely flown. But he has left us a little egg.’

  Between thumb and forefinger my father held up a very small roll of film.

  ‘Something found in the suspect’s paint box,’ he said quietly. ‘Roll of microfilm. Might be quite interesting to see the photos, I would say.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, feeling a sudden welter of relief that perhaps it had all finally in a way paid off – although if this was the case, I felt really sorry for my father because he and Van had known each other since University.

  ‘Oh, but there’s something else,’ I added, hurrying after my father before he made it back into the party. ‘Mrs Graham found this at the bottom of the box of fish.’ I handed over her findings – a plastic-covered file that contained some sheets of typed paper. ‘At first glance I thought they were just invoices – but if you take a look, you’ll see they appear to be written in some sort of code.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ my father said, almost to himself. ‘Lottie. Whatever next?’

  ‘As long as it’s all right,’ I said. ‘For a moment I thought I might have bodged it.’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ he replied. ‘Not even in the slightest.’

  The Senator of Rome then padded off into the party, to return a moment later with his friend Van held firmly by one arm, followed by the police.

  ‘No need to make a fuss,’ my father informed them, obviously to save his old friend’s face. ‘But I think this is the chap we want. All of us.’

  Nonetheless I still couldn’t help feeling guilty about my own part in the downfall of a possible spy and said as much to Arabella the next day over breakfast.

  ‘At least if it’s true they won’t shoot him, because it’s not wartime,’ she replied. ‘And let’s face it – it made the party even more exciting. Your father bravely pretending that arresting Van was just a hoax in revenge for a prank Van had played on him once. That was – that was–’

  ‘Just the ticket?’ I offered.

  Arabella smiled, sphinx-like.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Something like that.’

  I felt relieved, but I think mostly because she hadn’t said it in French.

  P.S.

  I knew I had to wait until Arabella had finished her prawn salad before she produced the buff-coloured file from her handbag. She looked round before handing it over to me. I opened the file to reveal the book I had recently just finished writing on the second-hand typewriter recently gifted to me by my father.

  ‘Of course,’ she began to say while producing her personal spoon, which for some reason I found vaguely menacing, ‘you do know this will have to be destroyed? Such sensitive material cannot be left in people’s handbags, especially not mine as I have signed the Official Secrets Act and will not go to prison for you.’

  ‘That wasn’t why I wrote it.’

  I promptly borrowed her spoon to stir my coffee, which always annoyed her.

  ‘I wrote it because I wanted to get it down somewhere. It’s more like a diary really.’

  ‘Of course, you know no one will believe it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We laughed, because suddenly we both found it hilarious to think that other people might read it and definitely not believe a word.

  ‘I hope Harry hasn’t read it,’ she said.

  ‘No, no, Harry wouldn’t read it – he only reads scripts, and then only the bits that he is in, which sometimes makes for quite a quick read, you bet.’

  ‘Which bit do you think they will definitely find unbelievable?’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘Laetitia dropping the security films down the lift shaft. Definitely a bridge too far in the believability zone.’

  ‘Really? I think Trigata is the bit they’ll have trouble believing.’

  ‘Yup. They’ll find that too fishy, won’t they?’

  ‘How about the actors and the film? That might be a bit of a push for them.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed. ‘And Hal being set up as a political figure, all that trouble ending with a wartime buffet.’

  Arabella tapped the file in front of us, suddenly looking nervous.

  ‘This is highly dangerous material. It will have to be destroyed,’ she insisted. ‘Unless …’

  She resumed her usual sphinx-like expression.

  ‘Unless we think of something else, which we should be able to do.’

  I knew I had to come up with something.

  ‘You mean like burying it in a garden somewhere for future generations to dig up and find?’

  ‘That’s about right,’ Arabella agreed. ‘You haven’t told your father about it, of course?’

  ‘Gracious, no, he would have a twin fit. He would think,’ I tapped the file, ‘of this as letting down the Service. Have me put up against a wall and shot. For bringing the Service into ridicule and disrepute, and so on.’

  The thought of him reading the contents of the file really rather silenced us.

  ‘So,’ Arabella continued, ‘there is only one copy, and I take it it’s anonymous.’

  ‘Unless the authorities track down the owner of the Olivetti with the two worn Ss.’

  ‘You see,’ Arabella continued as if I hadn’t spoken, which was a habit of hers, ‘my point is this. You have made a record of the way things really were, and let’s face it, it would be a pity if it were all lost forever. I mean, Rosalie and the Commander, the ladies knitting in Files, all the different adventures we had … they are a sort of tribute to the good-heartedness of what my old granny used to call “folk”. Good folk and true, working away in the defence of our lovely country, full of integrity, and so much fun, really. Because we have had fun, haven’t we?’

  I nodded. I had never known Arabella like this. She was almost sentimental.

  ‘So what do you think we should do with it.’

  I too tapped the file. Now we were discussing things so deeply it seemed more like a ticking bomb between buff-coloured covers.


  ‘I think,’ Arabella announced, ‘that we should put it in an SF and hide it at the back of Rosalie’s files.’

  ‘Why Rosalie’s?

  ‘Because she was in SOE during the war and no one will ever dare touch anyone in SOE. Too jolly brave, etc. We will hide it there under a mountain of her older files, and when the old files get taken away, which they always do, and stored at Kew under wraps for fifty years, there will be your account of MI5 in the fifties. QED. Fool-proof … completely fool-proof. The chaps at Kew can never be bothered to look through all the files. They just hurl them into the right spots, and rush off for a cup of tea. I know because Rosalie told me. It rather annoys her, actually. She says they must have buried a great deal that could have been useful, but there’s nothing to be done about it.’

  ‘I think you may have had what Harry calls a super wheeze.’

  ‘I think I may have too,’ Arabella agreed, her expression at its most solemn.

  ‘So you hide my book inside Rosalie’s old SF files, knowing that no one will go through them? Off to Kew they go, only to be opened up to public scrutiny in fifty years’ time?’

  I looked past Arabella with a dreamy expression as I imagined, in the distant future, solemn-faced people wearing little white gloves, all staring wide-eyed at my account of life in MI5 in the nineteen fifties.

  ‘Supposing they trace it back to us?’

  ‘Who cares?’ Arabella replied, shrugging. ‘But one thing it has proved, Lottie, is that Olivetti did not live in vain.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, surprised. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Actually – I don’t know about you – but wouldn’t you give anything to see the look on the faces of those white-gloved military historians? They really won’t believe a word.’

  ‘Yet you know, and I know, everything in the book happens to be true.’

  ‘Which is why no one will believe it.’

  I sighed, pretty deeply, because of course I knew Arabella was right.

  END

  P.P.S.: Let’s face it, you didn’t – did you? Not a dicky bird of it. So take off the little white gloves and go home.

  In Memoriam Terence Brady 1939–2016

  Wherever he was there was joy and laughter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charlotte Bingham wrote her first book, Coronet Among the Weeds, a memoir of her life as a debutante, at the age of 19. It was published in 1963 and became an instant bestseller. She went on to write a further memoir, Coronet Among the Grass. Her father, John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, was a member of MI5, where Charlotte worked as a secretary. He was an inspiration for John le Carré’s character George Smiley.

  Charlotte Bingham went on to write thirty-three internationally bestselling novels and, in partnership with her late husband Terence Brady, a number of successful plays, films and TV series including Upstairs Downstairs and Take Three Girls. She lives in Somerset.

  charlottebingham.com

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © Charlotte Bingham, 2018

  Charlotte Bingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

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  eISBN 978 1 4088 8816 2

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