Spies and Stars Read online

  ‘Sounds like a better thing,’ I said, looking diplomatic, which was difficult for me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll miss it – selling the Daily Worker?’

  ‘No, but I did one thing you’ll like – to celebrate getting the part, I bought up the whole tray of matches from that nice chap. Want some? He tried to stop me but I insisted.’

  ‘The whole tray?’

  ‘Yes. Do take some, Lottie. I don’t need matches, we don’t have a fire at the flat.’

  So that was why I staggered home with a load of matches, for who knew what was hidden in the boxes?

  The following morning I presented them to my father, who sighed, and walked off to a waiting taxi with a string bag full of them.

  Sometimes it seemed to me that running agents was a lot more complicated than people realised.

  THE INSECURITY FILE

  It was not often that I saw Arabella looking worried, particularly not when she knew she had a nice chunk of leave coming up and wouldn’t have to sit opposite me for a few days.

  ‘What’s up, Miss Tankerton?’

  ‘Tankerton is not my surname, Lottie.’

  ‘It is today, Tankers. It is so much your surname that I have posted it on the Section Board under “Miss A. Tankerton, missing believed lost”.’

  ‘Not funny, Lottie.’

  ‘No, I know, not funny, Arabella, just a way of getting your attention by annoying you.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you here.’

  ‘You always talk to me here.’

  ‘Not about this I don’t.’

  Again it was not often that Arabella abandoned her expression of yogi-like calm and turned her eyes towards the fire exit. The usual sphinx-like look was missing from her large brown orbs as I followed her out on to the fire escape under the pretext of having a cigarette. This was considered highly unorthodox in any other Section, but our bosses were delightfully indulgent on this issue on account of the fact that it kept everyone happy; even the ladies in files enjoyed the odd roll-up on a mild afternoon.

  ‘Don’t lean backwards, Lottie, you’ll set off alarms in the whole building.’

  I stepped forward and half-shut the security door to the hallway, leaving my foot propped up to keep it open.

  I turned and looked longingly at the relevant switch. What a thing to be able to do – empty the whole building with one little touch. I imagined all the files being hurled into the filing cabinets, all the safes being quickly locked, but most of all the tight expressions of the MI5 officers and policemen as they imagined either the Russians pouring through the building, or a fire raging. It would certainly break up the rhythm of the day. I knew Commander Steerforth would quite enjoy it, on account of having been in the navy where those sorts of things always seemed to keep happening on account of the Admiralty being full of people who really had never ever been to sea. In fact, Commander Steerforth once told me, in strictest secrecy of course, that several highly decorated admirals could not even see an ocean wave without calling Hughie.

  ‘It’s happened, Lottie.’

  ‘What’s happened, Arabella?’

  Something must have been terribly wrong because we were never this formal, repeating each other’s names like people do when trying not to forget them, and Arabella looking positively wild-eyed.

  ‘You know Section XXX? Above us?’ She pointed upwards.

  Of course I knew it. Section XXX were toffee-nosed, super-triple-vetted, and most of them highly seasoned, having spent large chunks of their lives in fascinating places looking for well-placed husbands. Or else – or so the rumour went – having raging affairs with persons in high places. The gossip alone gave them a kind of cachet among us lower orders – the combination of travel and rumoured love affairs meant they were properly sophisticated. Added to which, a little like East End criminals who wear lots of heavy gold rings to denote how many hits they have carried out, many of these ladies wore jewellery made of what Commander Steerforth called ‘fool’s gold’. I had never met any of them formally but I had often shared the lift with them, and was amazed by their aura of languid sophistication and constant references to what sounded like ‘Singa-ore’ or ‘Ma-layah’. The half-swallowed words made abroad seem even further away.

  So now I had clued into Section XXX it was time to listen to what was giving Arabella indigestion.

  ‘The thing has been sent for by XXX.’

  I could feel myself losing colour, truly I could. It was not possible, surely?

  We had to refer to the wretched little account I had written about being in MI5 as ‘the thing’ because it was full of Top Secret material. Well, not really Top Secret, but what the authorities would consider Top Secret. And worse than that it was full of jokes, and we all knew how well jokes about MI5 would go down with MI5, especially if Special Branch heard them. I mean, talk about Arsenal versus Chelsea – that was Special Branch and MI5.

  As for the likelihood of my jokes being appreciated at home, it would be more likely to find my father voting communist. The thought of him discovering what I had done made me want to sit down, but of course I couldn’t because I was holding the fire exit open with my foot while pretending to smoke a cigarette at the same time.

  ‘We’ve got to keep calm.’

  This was getting worse and worse. Arabella never appealed for calm. She was calm itself in human form. She could have taught Gandhi calm.

  ‘We have to keep calm and make a plan.’

  I liked the bit about the plan so much I smoked my cigarette properly, and shortly after started to feel quite sick.

  Arabella regarded me with something close to spite, as well she might. It was all my fault in the first place for writing the book-thing, and making jokes about the security service, and then putting it in a file that we both were quite sure at the time would go straight to Kew and never be found again until Kingdom Come when it might make people laugh.

  ‘Of course, it was Rosalie’s file, really,’ Arabella suddenly said, frowning. ‘So what if we sent for it ahead of XXX? I mean, I could tell her I sent in the wrong file accidentally and we need to re-do the thing – not your thing, the real thing, the file.’

  She paused and stared at me, calm returning to her aura.

  ‘Why did you write it up in the first place, Lottie, all the doings that went on here? I have temporarily forgotten.’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said, assuming a Just William voice, which I can do sometimes when in a quandary. ‘I suppose I thought it would be fun for posterity to read.’

  Arabella gave me another pitying look.

  ‘Posterity won’t be interested in MI5 and all our doings here. They will be too busy watching their laundry going round in their washing machines.’

  ‘They might be,’ I said, and stopped using my Just William voice because Arabella didn’t find it funny. ‘I mean sometimes people are interested in funny things.’

  The look Arabella gave me was the one Mrs Brown might give William when his socks were covered in mud.

  ‘Ah.’

  Arabella stubbed out her cigarette very carefully on a penny, and we both thankfully stopped smoking, which we hated anyway and only did when we wanted a private talk on the fire escape.

  ‘I know someone in XXX,’ she said, suddenly. ‘Zuzu Smith-Brown.’

  ‘Is she a nice-ish sort of person?’

  ‘Zuzu is like no one else you have ever met, she really is, but she might do.’

  There wasn’t enough time for me to be curious. We had to get to this Zuzu person in what Commander Steerforth called ‘naval time’.

  Arabella indicated that the best way to get her was by making an arrangement that would intrigue her. A handwritten invitation to an art exhibition was settled on.

  It felt more than strange and even a little terrifying to be in the same position as, say, a double agent, and I know that even Arabella was feeling less than happy about what we were doing, but it had to be done this evening before the file could be brought back from Kew o
n the electric shuttle used by MI5 personnel and files – or they might just as well be returning from Never Never Land for all we knew; except in our case the file seemed to be coming back before you could say ‘Tinkerbell’ or that you believed in fairies.

  So there we were, pretending to be smart in a well-known art gallery.

  ‘Ah, there she is,’ Arabella said in a low voice. Something I’ve noticed if paintings are frightful and not at all what people would ever stick on their own walls, they always talk in low voices. It is almost as if they feel by keeping their voices at church level they will be able to escape from them quicker.

  Zuzu turned out to be so Section XXX that she was almost too good to be true. She was tall, tanned, blonde-streaked, with those long thin arms that are always lightly tanned so as to show off fine blonde hairs and slim gold wristwatches.

  Arabella indicated the exit door as soon as was possible, but not before Zuzu said to the gallery owner, ‘I’ll be back – they are wonderful.’ Which of course she didn’t mean but he was obviously thrilled if only by her smile.

  ‘Have you ever seen such a tatty talent?’ she asked rather too loudly before we had quite got through the doors to the street outside. ‘Come with me, I will drive you home.’

  We followed her obediently to her car, which I walked past only to be caught by the arm and pulled back to it.

  ‘Here we are, here’s Rollo,’ she said, laughing. ‘Rollo, meet Arabella and Lottie.’

  Rollo was an old Rolls-Royce. Arabella, who knew everything about cars, immediately lit up and murmured his details. She even knew the date he was manufactured. There was just time enough for me to be impressed before I climbed in and sat back, lost in admiration for the old motor’s gorgeous interior. Just like Arabella, Zuzu already seemed to me the sort of girl who was everything I could never be.

  And now she turned out to be even more so as she drove the old Rolls through traffic lights, shouting to us: ‘I’m colour blind! Tell me, is that green?’

  She seemed too good to be true. From that moment on I felt that somehow or other she would be a great ally and that the dreaded file would be found and my stupid little account of life at MI5 with it, and everything would turn out better than expected.

  At the coffee bar we made a plan. Zuzu would look out for the file. The moment it came into her Section she would pounce on it and sweep it off to a safe place where no one would find it.

  ‘Not the lift shaft again?’ Arabella moaned, referring to an incident in our Section when a previous incumbent – Laetitia – who before leaving England, and just as well, dropped a number of files down the lift shaft on the sound reasoning that no one in MI5 would ever look there.

  ‘Oh, I think so, don’t you?’ Zuzu said, stoutly. ‘After all, it works, and as we all know, if something works you do it. It is the first rule of the military, isn’t it? That’s why they have all those code words, so they act but don’t think. Thinking is not something the military are allowed to do.’

  Arabella was starting to look bored, so I quickly suggested a plan for signalling the arrival of the dreaded ‘thing’. Arabella, as I remembered, had secured it into the back of a particularly thick file.

  ‘Why didn’t you burn it?’ Zuzu wanted to know.

  ‘Posterity,’ Arabella said, briefly, before ordering another coffee. ‘We thought it would be funny to have it found in fifty years’ time so that everyone would know what it was really like to be in MI5 in our here and now.’

  ‘Oh, I know, like those tins and bottles people bury under buildings and trees.’

  Zuzu lit a cigarette.

  ‘We just don’t understand the sudden need for the file,’ Arabella mused. ‘It’s not your Section staff.’

  ‘I know.’ Zuzu nodded and blew a superb cigarette ring before continuing. ‘It’s probably Major Jones-Littleton. He will ask for things from Kew, or Scotland, or heaven only knows where. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked for the Crown Jewels to be sent from the Tower. If he thinks he is on the trail of something, he is a nightmare. I could never even mention the lift shaft to him; he would have the bottom of it swept in no time at all.’

  It was then that I thought I saw a look come into Arabella’s eyes, a look that I did not like to see. It was the look of a person who has had a great thought. Myself, I am all for avoiding great thoughts; if you look at the history of the world people having great thoughts always seems to lead to trouble. I mean think about it. A glass of wine and thou beside me in the wilderness – that is a nice small thought, but make it bigger and it becomes – yes, but what kind of wine? And whose wilderness is it? And do the Council know you have planted that tree?

  However, Arabella’s big thought did not come to fruition until later. And it seemed that it was Zuzu’s cigarette that had prompted it.

  We were on the fire escape again, pretending to have a gasp of nicotine, when Arabella eyed me with intent, never an easy moment. Have you ever imagined Gandhi eyeing you? Well, no, of course not, and I will say it might have been a bit different and all, but even so that kind of eyeing of you can make you feel strangely unable to think about anything except what the person in possession of those eyes wants of you.

  ‘I have worked out a plan,’ Arabella began. ‘It is actually quite simple.’

  Here again, like great thoughts, I have a fear of simple plans, because if you think about it, no plan is ever really simple. It just appears so to the person possessed of the great thought.

  ‘We haven’t had a fire drill since you came to the Section, have we?’

  I had to agree we had not.

  ‘And you know how Commander Steerforth loves a bit of excitement and doesn’t really get much? So why don’t you suggest to him that he sends a memo to Head of All Sections to suggest a fire drill? That way we can get Zuzu to hand us the file, we can chuck the ‘thing’ down the lift shaft, and hand back the file when she returns. All tickety-boo.’

  I must admit, I was lost in admiration. So much so that I was sorely tempted to lean back and set off the fire alarm straight away. However, we had to get Zuzu to agree first, which of course she readily did.

  ‘Superb, Arabella, just give the word.’

  Commander Steerforth was as thrilled with the idea of a fire drill as we had hoped. He took over the whole proceedings with élan, charm, and the kind of enthusiasm that could have had the whole world dancing the Sailors’ Hornpipe.

  As soon as possible all Sections were informed. We were put on alert, and everyone became really rather excited because no one had caught any spies lately and everyone was privately wondering whether we ever would again. A general alarm should ginger things up a bit.

  Zuzu as expected came to the fore. She was ready with the dratted file, and Major Jones-Littleton so busy seeing to his security arrangements that she later said she could have walked out of the building with a whole set of security keys, let alone the file.

  It was thrilling to see everyone rushing about doing what they had to do, and all the ladies in files saying it was so exciting and reminded them of the Blitz, and everyone pulling together. Zuzu zipped up and down the stairs and the wretched ‘thing’ joined the other causes of embarrassment that had been thrown down the lift shaft by Laetitia. So it had all worked to Arabella’s plan . . . except that when Zuzu zipped back upstairs again, sliding the file out of sight on top of a cabinet, Major Jones-Littleton was waiting for her at her desk. It seemed that on doing a spot check to see that everything tallied with what had been there before the fire drill began, he had noticed the file missing from her tray.

  At that moment in time I would have joined the other files in the damp darkness below the lift, but not Zuzu. She squared up to the Major, or so at least we gathered later.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Zuzu smiled as she recounted this and lit a cigarette, which she enjoyed for a couple of puffs before taking up the story again.

  ‘I told him that he was on the wrong track. That the file he
had been on about getting out of Kew was a total waste of time, and I knew this because my uncle was a general who had been on that particular trail and it had ended in a no-go area, which not even our dear Prime Minister would breach … and we all know what a success he has been, don’t we? So I told him I had hurried the embarrassing thing straight back to Kew before someone realised he had hooked it out.’

  ‘Did he buy that?’

  ‘Of course. Majors have a fear of generals that never leaves them.’

  ‘Who is your uncle, this famous general?’ Arabella asked, because I was half-frozen with admiration and could find no words.

  ‘I have no idea, darling, none at all,’ Zuzu said, smiling. ‘But I expect I will find one soon.’

  Arabella’s eyes assumed their normal sphinx-like state. Seeing this, I knew we were home and dry. As long as Arabella had that look I felt our little world was safe, and so it seemed it was, until Zuzu added one more thing, that extra bon mot I did not want to hear.

  ‘By the way, I thought it such a shame to throw away your account of life in MI5, never mind the file.’

  ‘It’s been nothing but a pain.’ I shuddered.

  ‘Now come on, I want to buy us all a glass of champagne at my club and then off we will go to dinner. I know a little place in Kew. Rollo can take us, and we can all drink to state secrets and enjoy ourselves. Joy and life and laughter… that is what it is all about.’

  So that is what we did. We drank to fire drills and fictitious generals, then Arabella, possibly exhausted from all the excitement, decided to take some leave and go to Paris for no better reason than to see if it was still there. I knew what she meant. Places can be like a tracing of a drawing. As long as it is still on the tracing paper, it is fine, but when you try to put it back down again over the original, it never quite fits. But at any rate she was taking her mother, and they were going to see an elderly aunt who lived in splendid bohemian isolation near the Sacré Coeur, from whence she had never been known to descend on account of all the steps.

  ‘You and Zuzu can stay at the flat while we’re gone,’ Arabella offered. ‘Nearer to Harrods for Zuzu.’