Chapter Fifty-Six
Honor
The car moved slowly through the dark and empty streets, headlights painted over in streaky black so that the light they cast was no more than a bicycle lamp.
A fog had gathered, surprisingly dense for the time of year.
That slowed them further. Honor asked Michaels to let her out at the far end of the square, saying she would walk the rest of the way.
The air raid siren started as she approached Number Five, mournful in the foggy night, and she wondered whether to continue on to the shelter around the corner.
It was almost certainly another drill, but the shelter would be a way to avoid Chips for several more hours, until the all-clear was sounded.
The idea was appealing. If only she had brought a book, to read by lantern light.
But she hadn’t, and the reality of the shelter was less appealing.
All those people. All that determined gaiety.
Andrews opened the door. ‘Miss Brigid is upstairs.’
‘I’ll go up. Would you bring something on a tray? For both of us.’
Brigid’s head appeared, startled, over the balcony then and she called down, ‘Is it really you? Come quick, Honor, for something has happened. It’s Doris.’
Honor took the last few stairs two at a time. ‘Tell me.’ A story about Minnie, and that man Albert who had been Fritzi’s fellow at Kelvedon. A chance meeting. An English voice.
‘What does it mean?’ Brigid asked when she had finished tumbling words out one after another. ‘I cannot work it out.’
‘Possibly nothing,’ Honor said, sorting Brigid’s words quickly and deftly in her mind. ‘If Albert was English all along, watching Fritzi for our side, our purposes – whatever those may be – then I don’t think any bad will come to Doris from it …’
‘But if he’s not?’
‘If he’s not …’ She paused, still trying to understand.
‘If he’s German and now pretends to be English, then he is working for someone else.
It can’t be Fritzi’s grandfather or he would not still be here.
And so, if he is German, he was watching Fritzi for the Gestapo.
But in watching Fritzi, he will have learned things about Doris.
Dangerous things. Things that mean she needs to leave Germany immediately. ’
‘How can we find out?’
‘We can’t. But we need to warn Doris either way.’
How little attention they’d paid to Albert’s disappearance, really, Honor thought then with dismay.
Chips, with his urgent desire to see his new car.
The ambassador, mind already on other matters.
Even Honor herself, frantic to get away from Chips, back to London where she could disappear deeper into her own life and leave him behind.
They had allowed themselves to believe it didn’t matter – a servant, running off – but it had.
Clearly it had. They had ignored the timing of it, the implications of that, and allowed themselves to assume all was well.
Only Doris had realised, and she’d said nothing. Or not much. Simply shouldered the knowledge and gone back to do whatever it was that she did, now with one extra piece of instability in the map she flew by. They hadn’t stopped that.
‘What does it mean?’ Brigid asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ Honor said, distraught. ‘But not knowing isn’t good enough.
We must tell Doris, in case she understands better than we do.
But I cannot get hold of her. I have tried.
I have written and telephoned – to her flat, to that restaurant, Horcher’s, that she goes to – and I cannot get her. ’
‘Chips is trying now. He says there are people he can ask …’
‘People,’ Honor repeated. ‘What people?’
‘Does it matter, if they answer?’
Honor heard the sound of a door slamming downstairs, then Chips’ footsteps, urgent on the stairs. They both went to meet him. ‘Anything?’ Honor called out as he came up. Her voice was thin in the quiet, heavy house.
‘I may have found Doris. It’s possible she’s in France. On her way home.’
Honor sat down suddenly, on the top step. Her legs felt cotton-woolish, as though she had been ill. ‘But when will you know?’ she asked.
‘We are not the only people trying to find someone,’ he said, but he said it gently. ‘In truth, it feels like all of Europe is on the move. They will telephone me when they can.’
He sat beside her on the step and tried to take her hand.
Honor pulled it away but she stayed beside him.
They would hear the telephone better from there.
Brigid squeezed in on the other side and for once Honor was glad for the broad sweep of that foolishly grand staircase, that it could fit them all.
Brigid put an arm through hers and they drew close.
Andrews hadn’t lit the hall lights and so below them was only gloom.
The house was silent and the square outside too.
It was as though all the city waited in that moment with them, on the edge, above the dark.