Our Friends in Berlin Read online

  He acknowledged her lightly mocking note. ‘You’d not lack for company if you were.’

  ‘You’re joking. D’you mean to say there are –’

  ‘Of course. You don’t believe that Hitler lost all support in this country because we declared war on him? Some still think of him as the future of Europe.’

  Amy shook her head. ‘I’m not one of them.’

  They held one another’s gaze for a moment. Then Hoste said evenly, ‘Well, then. Let’s drink to that.’ He took a swallow of his beer. ‘I met a chap at dinner the other night who was complaining about the lack of romance in his life, and what should he do about it. I recommended he try your marriage bureau.’

  ‘Nice of you. But your chap says he wants romance. We set people up with a view to marriage.’

  ‘Can you have one without the other?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Amy drily. ‘For some clients – men, usually – it’s simply pragmatic. They apply to us because they need a woman around the house, or perhaps because they’re hoping for an heir. Romance isn’t always a prerequisite.’

  ‘You disapprove of that – the practical approach?’

  ‘I don’t approve or disapprove. My job is to match people I think suitable. Though I can’t deny that my sympathies vary from one client to another. Yesterday, for instance, I interviewed a lady who has suffered such loneliness I’ve made it a personal mission to find her a man.’

  Hoste pulled a doubting expression. ‘That reminds me of a line from a play I once saw – “If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t get married.”’

  ‘Sounds rather gloomy.’

  ‘Yes. You would disagree, I presume?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been married. But I don’t suppose I’d be doing this job if that was my conviction.’ Amy tipped her head in a reflective way. ‘I still wonder why you came to the bureau that day. You don’t seem to hold marriage in very high regard.’

  ‘Not true. I merely suggested that it might not be an antidote to loneliness. I don’t disdain the institution. My mother and father had a pretty jolly time of it, I think, until he got ill.’

  ‘But you’re not inspired by their example. When we met that first time at the office you didn’t look like someone desperate to get up the aisle.’

  He’ll think I’m fishing, Amy thought as she said it. But Hoste only laughed. She hadn’t heard him laugh very often – it was most unlike him.

  ‘Shall we have another beer?’ he asked, and she readily agreed. The talk turned to music, and Amy mentioned a forthcoming performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto at the Queen’s Hall. It occurred to her that they might go there together, if he wasn’t busy.

  ‘I shall make sure that I’m not,’ he replied with uncharacteristic suavity. He was full of surprises this evening. It wasn’t until the waiters began clearing tables that the lateness of the hour was borne in on them. Time had worked its mysterious trick of elasticity, stretching out a whole evening from what had seemed no more than an hour. He had asked for the bill, and she noticed when it came how many lagers they had drunk. When she rose to go to the ladies she felt a pleasant wooziness feathering her blood; not stinko, she thought, but squiffy.

  On returning she realised that something had changed. Diners were standing at their tables, and a gathered stillness held the room; Hoste waited there motionless, his ears pricked like a gun dog.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, though instinctively she already knew.

  ‘A raid,’ he said. ‘We’d better get out of here.’

  As they emerged onto the street she tipsily thanked him for dinner, but her words were drowned by the wail of the siren. Hoste, holding her lightly by the elbow, began walking south down Wardour Street. They both carried torches, though their beams were not much help against the inky immersion of the blackout. People were hurrying across and past them, seemingly taken unawares by the menace overhead. A warden’s whistle shrilled, and shouts followed. ‘Take cover!’ The noise – that terrible grinding of engines – had seemed distant, and now it was near. Amy looked up to see the night sky lousy with planes, lit up eerily by the sweeping searchlights.

  At her side Hoste had picked up the pace, still guiding her by the elbow. He was muttering directions under his breath as they moved – ‘Just here’, ‘Next turn’ – which gave her comfort. At least one of them knew which way they had to go. The effects of the drink were quickly thinning. From the east could be heard the sound of bombs falling, the whistle, then the impact – the crump. Anti-aircraft guns barked in response. She had never been caught outdoors like this before, and it struck her anew how the sound of a raid – the planes’ long drone and the bombs’ shrieking descent – was the sound of dread itself, of fate coming for you. It was impossible not to take it personally. They were still in the grid of Soho’s narrow streets when a voice nearby cried out in fear, and they looked up to see the silhouettes of bombs against the glowering sky, three, four, five of them, tumbling down, falling almost dreamily. At a junction Hoste brought them to an abrupt halt; the street ahead was dark – and then intensely bright – as a high explosive landed. The ground bucked beneath them, and the shockwave gusted past their faces.

  This is too near, she thought, as Hoste took tight hold of her arm and hurried her onwards. Had he meant to get them to a shelter and miscalculated the distance? Perhaps they ought to have stayed inside the restaurant. A ribbon of incendiaries was coming down, and one landed with a clatter on the pavement in front of them. It fizzed in a halo of white sparks. ‘Can’t leave it to burn,’ Hoste shouted in her ear and, disengaging her a moment, stamped it out with the heel of his boot. They had ducked into another side street when a great screech rent the air, so close to them that before she knew it he had pushed her roughly into the doorway of a shop, his body smothering hers. The booming detonation, a thunderclap in her ears, came almost simultaneously with a wave of flying debris. For what seemed like minutes it rained grit and stone and a thousand tiny shards of glass.

  Though his body was still tensed against hers in the doorway they could barely see one another, such were the blinding clouds of dust. They were coughing like hags. Hoste had reached into his pocket and taken out a handkerchief to muffle his mouth. Her eyes smarted. ‘Hold on to my arm,’ she heard him say, and they began to wade through the burning air, footsteps crunching on glass. As the choking dust cloud began to clear they could just make out the pub opposite, which had taken a direct hit. There will be people dead in there, she thought; crushed and buried, or simply obliterated in the bomb flash. A few yards further north and it might have been them. She swallowed, and shuddered. The clang of ambulance bells sounded on the air.

  Hoste’s urgent pace told her they were not yet safe themselves. They had crossed Cambridge Circus and were still in full view of the bombers, circling, dropping their loads. She had an impression of being seen from a vast height, moving like clockwork toys that had been frantically overwound. Their terrible insignificance. Hoste had stopped to spit the dust from his mouth, and she took a moment to do the same. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, and she nodded. ‘If we make a run for it we’ll be back at my place in five minutes.’ And so she clung to his arm and they began to jog-trot, their torchlights weaving crazily down the empty black gauntlet of Charing Cross Road. Not another soul did they encounter before they gained the cover of his rooms in Cecil Court.

  He closed the blackout curtains on entering the living room while she hunted blindly for a lamp. When a light finally came on they looked at one another in stunned silence: they were coated head to toe in dust, as if they had just crawled from a mineshaft.

  ‘Jesus,’ he breathed, and asked her again, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so. I mean, apart from –’ She looked down at her hands, streaked with soot and dirt. She supposed her face looked much the same.

  ‘The bathroom’s through here,’ he said, leading her across the room. ‘There might still be some ho
t water.’

  In the mirror her eyes were red-rimmed from the smoke. She managed to clean herself up, though she couldn’t get the taste of burnt dust out of her mouth. ‘Could I possibly have something to drink?’ she called through the door.

  When she returned to the living room he had poured out a good two fingers of whisky for them, with a jug of water to mix it. She took a great gulp and felt its bite in her throat. Watching her, he gave his glass a quick lift and did the same. ‘Oh God!’ she cried, hand to her mouth. He had just turned his head, exposing a wound that had leaked dark blood onto his shirt collar. ‘Stay still,’ she said, edging around him; pincering her fingers she pulled out a shard of glass about an inch long, lodged just below his right ear.

  That might have gone through my eye, she thought, if he hadn’t been there shielding me.

  She asked him if he had iodine, and back in the bathroom she carefully wiped the cut clean and plastered it. The Scotch was making her giddy; she had drunk it too quickly, and had to sit down. Her ears were still ringing from the bomb blast.

  Hoste was peeking through the blackout curtain, listening for the guns. ‘Sounds like it might be a long one,’ he said, and left the room for a few moments. When he returned he was dressed in his ARP serge.

  ‘You’re not going out again?’ she said, disbelievingly. ‘I thought it was your night off?’

  ‘Yes – damned inconsiderate of them to come over this evening! I’m afraid they’ll be having a hot time of it up at my station. I ought to go. But you must stay here. There’s a divan you can sleep on.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure –’

  ‘I’m not arguing with you about this. You’re to stay. At least until the all-clear. I’ll try to get back before it goes. Right?’

  She caught his eye. ‘Right.’

  He smiled. ‘Make yourself at home. Have some more Scotch. Or there’s tea in the kitchen.’ He put on his tin helmet, and gave it a double tap with his knuckle. ‘I hope I haven’t used up all my luck tonight.’

  He had spoken lightly, but his mention of luck caused her alarm. His uniform, too large for his slight frame, made him look suddenly frail, and doomed – like a Tommy about to go over the top. She had stood up and moved towards him.

  ‘Thank you for saving me – I mean it.’ She leaned in and briefly pressed her lips to his cheek. ‘I hope that brings you luck.’

  He stared at her very intently for a moment. ‘I should hope it would. And if not, well – it will make a happy memory.’ He gave a parting nod, and was gone.

  She could hear the raid racketing on outside, the implacable drone of the planes, the muffled explosions like a giant beating a carpet. An open-air madhouse. For how much longer were they going to circle up there? It occurred to her now that she should have gone with him. He was the type who would take risks, not out of bravado but out of that irrational belief in his immunity – I knew I would survive. Her being at his side might have made him more circumspect.

  A violent shiver abruptly ran through her, and she pulled her coat tight. The ashes in the grate were cold. But she found coal in the scuttle, and spent a few minutes preparing a fire with twists of paper. She felt in her pocket for matches and found none. Surely Hoste kept some about. A few minutes hunting – in the kitchen, in the living room – uncovered not a one. The cold was piercing to the bone. There had to be a fire-lighter somewhere. She opened a door that led into his bedroom. It held his air of monkishness: a lamp at the bedside, but no books. On the wall, by the window, her picture of the Tyrol was a solitary adornment. It touched her that he had bothered to hang it.

  A natural delicacy made her hesitate before the chest of drawers. But it was only a hesitation, and soon she was making a sweep of his modest layers of vests and sweaters. There was the odd cigarette card, but still no matches. With a deeper sense of trespass she found nothing in the second drawer but underthings, pyjamas, socks. The bottom drawer disclosed a miscellany of junk, old magazines, correspondence, a round tin of collars and studs, an unframed certificate from his bank, mothballs, ARP pamphlets, a pair of braces, a small bottle of hair oil. He had chucked all sorts in here. Her eye caught the gleam of something at the back, and she inched the drawer a little further out. They were dark leather presentation cases, in pristine condition. Curiosity provoked her to pick one up and undo its tiny clasp.

  At first she could hardly understand what she was looking at. Or rather, she knew what it was, but couldn’t understand how it had come to be in Hoste’s possession. She felt her heart thump hard as she checked each one of the seven other cases, and found the same thing. There, on a black silk mount, lay an Iron Cross, highest decoration of the German military.

  8

  Amy left the flat before the all-clear sounded. She had been careful to leave no sign that she had been in his bedroom. But she had dithered for a while on the threshold not knowing what to do; whether to await his return or to get out of there. The shock of it had disabled her. Her first instinct was to stay and confront him about her discovery – only she couldn’t imagine saying the words, I know you’re an enemy agent. It sounded too preposterous. But what other conclusion to draw? Then there was the obvious danger she might be putting herself in: if indeed he was a traitor, and his secret was out, he would be left with no choice but to silence her. The alternative was to pretend she knew nothing and continue from the point they had left off – kissing him goodbye, as she recalled, and wishing him luck.

  Dissembling was beyond her for the present, and she sneaked out of Cecil Court like a thief in the night. The raid had moved away from the West End by then, but such was her preoccupation she barely noticed the ochre glow of the city on fire, the clang of fire engines and ambulances tearing up the streets. All she could think about was that inconceivable discovery in his flat. From the start she had marked his oddness, though it had seemed to her eccentric rather than sinister. When he had challenged her about Nazi politics and her visit to Nuremberg she had thought it merely an intellectual playfulness on his part. She didn’t suspect for a moment he was an ‘enemy within’. How could he be, this ARP warden who risked his life fire-watching and herding people into shelters each night?

  Unless this was part of some elaborate double bluff, a way of hiding in plain sight. It was quite possible. Hoste had talked only this evening about British people who still believed Hitler to be ‘the future of Europe’. Evidently he was better acquainted with the type than she’d thought. In this light, his obsessive interest in Marita Pardoe made sense. Her unapologetic passion for the Fatherland would naturally attract someone sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Had they in fact been in cahoots with one another without telling her? That she herself might be their dupe – it brought her to a halt on the pavement – caused her a sickening dizziness. No, no, it couldn’t be; and she began turning the possibilities over again, trying to recall tones of voice, facial expressions, that she might have misinterpreted.

  Nothing had been resolved by the time she got back to Queen Anne Street. She let herself into the flat and, in a trance of fatigue and alarm, made some tea. She sat at the kitchen table. Every time Hoste came to mind she fell into a terrible swoon of doubt – and, she had to admit, regret. For it wasn’t just that she felt in his debt for having saved her life mere hours ago. That kiss for good luck she had given him had come from an impulse of protectiveness; and from something else, too, possibly something romantic. What’s more, his look had seemed to answer in kind. He had felt it, she was sure – it will make a happy memory, he’d said. It had crowned the end of an evening when they’d lost all track of time, so beguiling had they found one another. Then, once the raid had descended, he had guided her to safety. That too had felt like more than an act of gallantry. She wished she had Bobby there to talk to. Her last letter had hinted at her feelings for Hoste, and Bobby’s reply, begging for more details, had somehow made him even more intriguing to her.

  From a distance not far off she heard another explosion. A bomb with a
delayed timer, or else some poor devil had been trying to defuse it. A few more to add to the night’s casualties. Those death-dealers up there – could it really be that this man she thought she knew was on their side? Still at the kitchen table, she made a pillow for her head on crossed arms. She didn’t stir from this exhausted position for some time.

  They were clearing up for days afterwards, filling the hospitals, the mortuaries. The sweeping up of broken glass sounded like breakers rolling upon the shore. It had been the heaviest raid on London so far, but like a storm blowing itself out, a calm followed. People craned their necks upwards every day and found empty skies. The sirens were still on alert, but the planes that had traced the snaking ribbon of the Thames were gone. In June the Nazis invaded Russia, and a new phase of the war began.

  After leaving Amy in his flat that night Hoste had ventured to the station at Holborn; he found all hands to the pump putting out fires. Incendiaries, flaring up with Hydra-headed malignancy, had bathed the area in a ghastly glow. The fire services could not cope with the volume, and often the decision to save one building came at the conscious sacrifice of another. By early morning rescue men, their faces masked, were toiling to extricate bodies from the mangled mass of debris. At one point Hoste saw a line of corpses laid out and shrouded in hopsack, waiting their turn for the mortuary van. He felt the cut on his neck throb, and thanked his stars. An inch or two nearer and the glass might have severed a vein.

  When he had returned to the flat, in the poky dawn light, Amy had gone. It surprised him that she hadn’t bothered to light a fire; the room was stone cold. He saw that the bed he had made up for her had not been slept in, either. In the kitchen the bottle of Scotch had been replaced on the shelf and the glasses lay washed on the draining board. For some reason this bit of household tidiness depressed him; he’d rather have found the evidence of their camaraderie intact, and her asleep on the divan. When she had cleaned his cut there had been something – a tenderness – that moved him. He had thought she would stay. He had also meant to show her the Tyrol sketch he had hung – to assure her of how much it had been appreciated. Well, next time he would.