Jackdaws

Jackdaws Page 16

WART I ME A U STE R I T Y HAD made little real difference to Soho, the red-light district in the heart of London's West End.

The same groups of young men staggered through the streets, drunk on beer, though most of them were in uniform.

The same painted girls in tight dresses strolled along the pavements, eyeing potential customers.

The illuminated signs outside clubs and bars were switched off, because of the blackout, but all the establishments were open.

Mark and Flick arrived at the Criss-Cross Club at ten o'clock in the evening.

The manager, a young man wearing a dinner jacket with a red bow tie, greeted Mark like a friend.

Flick's spirits were high.

Mark knew a female telephone engineer.

Flick was about to meet her, and she felt optimistic.

Mark had not said much about her, except that her name was Greta, like the film star.

When Flick tried to question him, he just said, "You have to see her for yourself." As Mark paid the entrance fee and exchanged commonplaces with the manager, Flick saw an alteration come over him.

He grew more extrovert, his voice took on a lilt, and his gestures became theatrical.

Flick wondered if her brother had another persona that he put on after dark.

They went down a flight of stairs to a basement.

The place was dimly lit and smoky.

Flick could see a five- piece band on a low stage, a small dance floor, a scatter of tables, and a number of booths around the dark perimeter of the room.

She had wondered if it would be a men-only club, the kind of place that catered to chaps like Mark who were "not the marrying kind." Although the patrons were mostly male, there was a good sprinkling of girls, some of them very glamorously dressed.

A waiter said, "Hello, Markie," and put a hand on Mark's shoulder, but gave Flick a hostile glare.

"Robbie, meet my sister," Mark said.

"Her name's Felicity, but we've always called her Flick." The waiter's attitude changed, and he gave Flick a friendly smile.

"Very nice to meet you." He showed them to a table.

Flick guessed that Robbie had suspected she might be a girlfriend, and had resented her for persuading Mark to change sides, as it were.

Then he had warmed to her when he learned she was Mark's sister.

Mark smiled up at Robbie and said, "How's Kit?" "Oh, all right, I suppose," Robbie said with the hint of a flounce.

"You've had a row, haven't you?" Mark was being charming.

He was almost flirting.

This was a side of him Flick had never seen.

In fact, she thought, it might be the real Mark.

The other persona, his discreet daytime self, was probably the pretense.

"When have we not had a row?" Robbie said.

"He doesn't appreciate you," Mark said with exaggerated melancholy, touching Robbie's hand.

"You're right, bless you.

Something to drink?" Flick ordered scotch and Mark asked for a martini.

Flick did not know much about men such as these.

She had been introduced to Mark's friend, Steve, and had visited the flat they shared, but had never met any of their friends.

Although she was madly curious about their world, it seemed prurient to ask questions.

She didn't even know what they called themselves.

All the words she knew were more or less unpleasant: queer, homo, fairy, nancy-boy.

"Mark," she said.

"What do you call men who, you know, prefer men?" He grinned.

"Musical, darling," he said, waving his hand in a feminine gesture.

I must remember that, Flick thought.

Now I can say to Mark, "Is he musical?" She had learned the first word of their secret code.

A tall blonde in a red cocktail dress came swishing onto the stage to a burst of applause.

"This is Greta," said Mark.

"She's a telephone engineer by day." Greta began to sing "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." She had a powerful, bluesy voice, but Flick noticed immediately that she had a German accent.

Shouting into Mark's ear over the sound of the band, she said, "I thought you said she was French." "She speaks French," he corrected.

"But she's German." Flick was bitterly disappointed.

This was no good.

Greta would have just as much of a German accent when she spoke French.

The audience loved Greta, clapping each number enthusiastically, cheering and whistling when she accompanied the music with bump-and-grind movements.

But Flick could not relax and enjoy the show.

She was too worried.

She still did not have her telephone engineer, and she had wasted the latter half of the evening coming here on a wild-goose chase.

But what was she going to do? She wondered how long it would take her to pick up the rudiments of telephone engineering herself.

She had no difficulty with technical things.

She had built a radio at school.

Anyway, she needed to know only enough to destroy the equipment effectively.

Could she do a two-day course, maybe with some people from the General Post Office? The trouble was, nobody could be quite sure what kind of equipment the saboteurs would find when they entered the chateau.

It could be French or German or a mixture, possibly even including imported American machinery-the U.S.A.

was far ahead of France in phone technology.

There were many kinds of equipment, and the chateau served several different functions.

It had a manual exchange, an automatic exchange, a tandem exchange for connecting other exchanges to one another, and an amplification station for the all-important new trunk route to Germany.

But only an experienced engineer could be confident of recognizing whatever he saw when he walked in.

There were engineers in France, of course, and she might find a woman-if she had time.

It was not a promising idea, but she thought it through.

SOE could send a message to every Resistance circuit.

If there was a woman who could fit the bill, it would take her a day or two to get to Reims, which was all right.

But the plan was so uncertain.

Was there a woman telephone engineer in the French Resistance? If not, Flick would waste two days to learn that the mission was doomed.

No, she needed something more sure.

She thought again about Greta.

She could not pass for French.

The Gestapo might not notice her accent, since they spoke French the same way, but the French police would.

Did she have to pretend to be French? There were plenty of German women in France: officers' wives, young women in the armed services, drivers and typists and wireless operators.

Flick began to feel excited again.

Why not? Greta could pose as an army secretary.

No, that could cause problems-an officer might start giving her orders.

It would be safer for her to pose as a civilian.

She could be the young wife of an officer, living with her husband in Paris-no, Vichy, it was farther away.

There would have to be a story about why Greta was traveling with a group of French women.

Perhaps one of the team could pose as her French maid.

What about when they entered the chateau? Flick was pretty sure there were no German women working as cleaners in France.

How could Greta evade suspicion? Once again, Germans probably would not notice her accent, but French people would.

Could she avoid speaking to any French people? Pretend she had laryngitis? She might be able to get away with it for a few minutes, Flick thought.

It was not exactly watertight, but it was better than any other option.

Greta finished her act with a hilariously suggestive blues song called "Kitchen Man," full of double-entendres.

The audience loved the line: "When I eat his doughnuts, all I leave is the hole." She left the stage to gales of applause.

Mark got up, saying, "We can talk to her in her dressing room." Flick followed him through a door beside the stage, down a smelly concrete corridor, into a dingy area crammed with cardboard boxes of beer and gin.

It was like the cellar of a run-down pub.

They came to a door that had a pink paper cutout star fixed to it with thumb- tacks.

Mark knocked and opened it without waiting for a reply.

The tiny room had a dressing table, a mirror surrounded by bright makeup lights, a stool, and a movie poster showing Greta Garbo in Two-Faced Woman.

An elaborate blonde wig rested on a stand shaped like a head.

The red dress Greta had worn on stage hung from a hook on the wall.

Sitting on the stool in front of the mirror, Flick saw, to her utter astonishment, was a young man with a hairy chest.

She gasped.

It was Greta, no question.

The face was heavily made up, with vivid lipstick and false eyelashes, plucked eyebrows, and a layer of makeup hiding the shadow of a dark beard.

The hair was cut brutally short, no doubt to accommodate the wig.

The false bosom was presumably fixed inside the dress, but Greta still wore a half-slip, stockings, and red high-heeled shoes.

Flick rounded on Mark.

"You didn't tell me!" she accused.

He laughed delightedly.

"Flick, meet Gerhard," he said.

"He loves it when people don't realize." Flick saw that Gerhard was looking pleased.

Of course he would be happy that she had taken him for a real woman.

It was a tribute to his art.

She did not need to worry that she had insulted him.

But he was a man.

And she needed a woman telephone engineer.

Flick was painfully disappointed.

Greta would have been the last piece in the jigsaw, the woman who made the team complete.

Now the mission was in doubt again.

She was angry with Mark.

"This was so mean of you!" she said.

"I thought you'd solved my problem, but you were just playing a joke." "It's not a joke," Mark said indignantly.

"If you need a woman, take Greta." "I couldn't," Flick said.

It was a ridiculous idea.

Or was it? Greta had convinced her.

She could probably do the same to the Gestapo.

If they arrested her and stripped her they would learn the truth, but if they got to that stage it was generally all over anyway.

She thought of the hierarchy at SOE, and Simon Fortescue at M16.

"The top brass would never agree to it." "Don't tell them," Mark suggested.

"Not tell them!" Flick was at first shocked, then intrigued by that idea.

If Greta was to fool the Gestapo, she ought also to be able to deceive everyone at SOE.

"Why not?" said Mark.

"Why not?" Flick repeated.

Gerhard said, "Mark, sweetie, what is all this about?" His German accent was stronger in speech than in song.

"I don't really know," Mark told him.

"My sister is involved in something hush-hush." "I'll explain," Flick said.

"But first, tell me about yourself How did you come to London?" "Well, sweetheart, where shall I begin?" Gerhard lit a cigarette.

"I'm from Hamburg.

Twelve years ago, when I was a boy of sixteen, and an apprentice telephone engineer, it was a wonderful town, bars and nightclubs full of sailors making the most of their shore leave.

I had the best time.

And when I was eighteen I met the love of my life.

His name was Manfred." Tears came to Gerhard's eyes, and Mark held his hand.

Gerhard sniffed, in a very unladylike fashion, and carried on.

"I've always adored women's clothes, lacy underwear and high heels, hats and handbags.

I love the swish of a full skirt.

But I did it so crudely in those days.

I really didn't even know how to put on eyeliner.

Manfred taught me everything.

He wasn't a cross-dresser himself, you know." A fond look came over Gerhard's face.

"He was extremely masculine, in fact.

He worked in the docks, as a stevedore.

But he loved me in drag, and he taught me how to do it right." "Why did you leave?" "They took Manfred away.

The bloody fucking Nazis, sweetheart.

We had five years together, but one night they came for him, and I never saw him again.

He's probably dead, I think prison would kill him, but I don't know anything for sure." Tears dissolved his mascara and ran down his powdered cheeks in black streaks.

"He could still be alive in one of their bloody flicking camps, you know." His grief was infectious, and Flick found herself fighting back tears.

What got into people that made them persecute one another? she asked herself What made the Nazis torment harmless eccentrics like Gerhard? "So I came to London," Gerhard said.

"My father was English.

He was a sailor from Liverpool who got off his ship in Hamburg and fell in love with a pretty German girl and married her.

He died when I was two, so I never really knew him, but he gave me my surname, which is O'Reilly, and I always had dual nationality.

It still cost me all my savings to get a passport, in 1939.

As things turned out, I was just in time.

Happily, there's always work for a telephone engineer in any city.

So here I am, the toast of London, the deviant diva." "It's a sad story," Flick said.

"I'm very sorry." "Thank you, sweetheart.

But the world is full of sad stories these days, isn't it? Why are you interested in mine?" "I need a female telephone engineer." "What on earth for?" "I can't tell you much.

As Mark said, it's hush-hush.

One thing I can say is that the job is very dangerous.

You might get killed."

"How absolutely chilling! But you can imagine that I'm not very good at rough stuff.

They said I was psychologically unsuited to service in the army, and quite bloody rightly.

Half the squaddies would have wanted to beat me up and the other half would have been sneaking into bed with me at night." "I've got all the tough soldiers I need.

What I want from you is your expertise." "Would it mean a chance to hurt those bloody flicking Nazis?" "Absolutely.

If we succeed, it will do a very great deal of damage indeed to the Hitler regime." "Then, sweetheart, I'm your girl." Flick smiled.

My God, she thought; I've done it.

THE FOURTH DAY Wednesday, May 31,1944