A Quiet Life(61)

The next morning, everyone woke before dawn with the all-clear, bleary after a short night’s sleep. Laura was planning to go back to bed for a while, but once they were in their room, Edward suddenly said that he had some papers he had forgotten about and wondered if she could photograph them immediately, as they had to be back in their place that day. Laura agreed without thinking. She knew that her work was necessary now; Edward was working such long hours that he could never have managed to cross this chaotic city to meet Stefan frequently enough to deliver papers. So she used the thin dawn light to photograph as Edward fell back to sleep for one more hour. Click, click: she heard Toby come into the house after his night with the Home Guard, and she put down the camera as he came up the stairs so that he wouldn’t hear her and wonder why someone was taking pictures at dawn.

Usually when Laura met Stefan the focus was simply on handing over the films. They had evolved a process that had become almost nonchalant: both holding a copy of The Times, they would exchange newspapers by leaving them apparently casually on a café table or a park bench between them; the films were taped inside her newspaper, and there was no need, very often, for them to speak at all. But that day the meeting place had been fixed in a square near to City Road. It was entirely empty at that morning hour, and they were unseen, so for once Stefan didn’t get up from the bench once the newspapers had been laid between them. He said he had been asked to pass on thanks for her hard work. Was she happy?

Laura did not answer at once. She had no problems doing the work, but the first few months of aerial bombardment had affected her in a more visceral way than she had expected. Sometimes in the middle of the night one felt that there was no end in sight, that the pounding and the fear would go on forever, and then when morning came it was only the breath between one night and another. She remembered the great certainties of the pamphlets she had read before the war, their airy summoning of war and victory, but it all felt so different now, in the muddle and mess of a city under attack, in a conflict in which the Soviet Union was not even involved. But she did not feel she could speak of her fear and uncertainty to Stefan, so in an effort to lay those thoughts aside she remembered what Giles had said the previous night, and she started telling Stefan about how perhaps the war might enter a new phase soon, how a friend of Edward’s was taking new research over to the States, in the hope that together the Americans and British could crack the night-fighting.

Laura caught the importance of what she had just said at the same time that Stefan did, and she was not surprised when Stefan began to grill her on everything she knew about Giles and his work. She had little enough to pass on, but when she mentioned the improved magnetron that Giles said was their precious new development, she saw how Stefan’s hands gripped The Times that he had picked up. He spoke to her for a while about what might be possible, what was needed. ‘If Edward …’ he said, but she responded quickly. No, it was not Edward who should be asked to do this to his friend. She was the one who had brought the secret to Stefan, she would see what was possible. As soon as she had spoken, she felt unsure that this was right, but then it was too late to go back, Stefan was already getting up and walking away down the grey London street.

It was a dark winter morning a couple of weeks later that Edward mentioned as he was shaving that Giles would be coming over that evening, passing through London on his journey to America.

‘Shall we meet him at a restaurant?’ Laura asked, standing at the bathroom door and brushing her hair, trying to ignore the apprehension in her stomach at his words. ‘Or will he eat at the Ministry?’

‘I’m sure they’ll feed him. If not, we can go over to the restaurant by the station after he gets here.’ Was Edward avoiding her gaze? No, he was always like that now in the mornings, a little tired and anxious. He rinsed his face and went back into the bedroom to dress, saying nothing more. Laura got dressed more slowly once he had left. Even though the conversation with Stefan had been beating in her head for the last fortnight, she still had no idea how she was to fulfil her allotted task, and all day at the bookshop the evening loomed in front of her.

For once Edward was home at a normal time, and the three of them were drinking in the living room when the doorbell rang. The cab driver brought in Giles’s suitcase, while Giles laid down a large black box with an almost tender gesture, and then took off his overcoat.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘They fed us after a fashion at the Ministry, but I could do with something more. Do you have a sandwich?’

‘I’ll go and ask Ann,’ Laura said, going downstairs. When she came back up, the black box was still in the hall. She ran her hand over it. It was large, heavy, locked. As she heard the rise and fall of voices in the living room, she quickly slid a hand into one pocket and then another of Giles’s overcoat, standing so that if someone came out of the living room they would see only her back. Her fingers touched some scrumpled paper in one pocket, a box of matches in another, but no keys. But she already knew that would be the case. Of course the key would be in the breast pocket of his jacket – where else would you keep something so precious? Footsteps behind her made her turn, but it was only Toby, who showed no surprise at seeing her in the hall apparently rehanging the coats.

She followed him back into the living room, and Edward poured her a whisky and soda. Toby had a Scottish friend who was able to keep the brothers supplied with the whisky they loved, and which Laura was becoming used to. Giles was talking about whether there was likely to be a raid that evening.