The Face of Eve Read online

  The Face of Eve

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedications

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  The Face of Eve

  Betty Burton

  For Russ, with whom I spent many years of pretty good life (and who always had a good idea for my next novel).

  For my grandchildren and their parents – without whom life after Russ wouldn’t have much meaning.

  For the nursing and other staff at South Africa Lodge Nursing Home, Waterlooville – who kept me going in the last months of his life.

  For Yvonne Chapman – without whose support, especially during the time of several re-writes, The Face of Eve might never have been completed.

  For the St James Hospital Portsmouth Support Group, holding one another up and understanding the blackest humour of we who are confronted with the devastating reality of dementia in our ‘nearest and dearest’.

  For my many, many understanding friends and colleagues who have ‘been there for me’ as they say in all my strange actions and weird moods.

  Russ believed that we reap what we sow – I think that I am harvesting more than I ever sowed and that I have been, and still am, a fortunate woman.

  Last, but not least, my thanks to my editor Susan Opie and my agent Jonathan Lloyd for not having me sectioned.

  Prologue

  London, 1938

  The head of SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, had been given a brief by the Foreign Office. This he passed on for action to a major seconded to SIS from the army.

  The brief was this: to create a new arm of SIS – a specialist section to look into how an enemy might be attacked by unusual means from within its own territory.

  On the face of it, it was a straightforward enough assignment. Irregular warfare was nothing new. T. E. Lawrence had already used it against the Turks, and the Boers had used unmilitary tactics against the British in South Africa. The major considered the possibilities: sabotage; inciting labour unrest; use of propaganda; misleading intelligence; use of double agents; women employed as spies and couriers; anything at all that could weaken an enemy. With such breadth and complexity of the work ahead, he felt he might just as well have been given a pin and told to move the pyramids.

  Who might be most useful and reliable against a fascist enemy – for it would be fascist? Jews would be; Marxists and Communists; leftist unions; socialists generally; and anarchists, as well as the cleverer sons and daughters of the army and navy.

  Who had the creative imagination? Writers of popular fiction; artists; inventors; men who had created business empires from nothing.

  Who had the skills to carry out wild schemes? Actors and actresses; people with criminal records for theft or burglary; those with mental agility gained from practising acrostics and logistical puzzles; prostitutes and gigolos; fire raisers and explosives experts; known killers who had escaped the rope with the help of silver-tongued barristers – even the barristers themselves. There were many with skills and knowledge that might be used to subvert the enemy, the Third Reich.

  And so The Bureau was formed.

  No square-bashing, no big guns; the shiv, the garrotte, hand-guns with silencers would be the preferred weapons of these underground, anonymous recruits.

  No Colonel Blimp or Old Bill of the Better Hole.

  No notion of rules of engagement.

  No notion of fair play.

  1

  David Hatton – politically left, experienced film-maker, public-school educated, attractive to (and attracted by) women – had spent his life so far doing what he liked best: travelling the world, recording its coups and conflicts on film. As an unashamed ‘Red’ he hadn’t much in common with others of his background, which was old money, but saved from the fate of many old families, who have only land with which to bless themselves, by an injection of common blood and enterprise in the person of a grandmother with a past – she was a stage performer. What had recommended David Hatton to The Bureau were his numerous contacts all over Europe and in the United States, and the chums who had got their education, as he had, at the most prestigious schools in England.

  By the time war was declared, most of the chums were still living within the social stratum into which they had been born. Their occupations and professions were got dynastically, their social circles were very much the same as those of their parents and grandparents. They married their own kind. But landowners, City bankers, chairmen of insurance broking companies, circuit judges and magistrates did not make the best subversives – the kind The Bureau needed.

  The Bureau turned with better success to the army and navy officers known to Hatton. Inevitably, at the start, they called upon their own kind. But there were others – academics whose careers were a sinecure and often were ready to overturn society anyway.

  * * *

  Bracing his shoulders against the icy December wind, David Hatton, newly uniformed RNVR officer, left the comparative shelter of the Inns of Court, crossed the Strand and made his way to Doughty Street.

  Doughty Street was in Clerkenwell, which had always been a touch more Bohemian than Kensington or Chelsea. David had sentimental boyhood memories of this street composed of large, well-maintained Georgian houses. Thirty years ago, many of the entrances had been flanked by clipped bay trees in white tubs, and the sills held iron-railed window boxes. Aunt Cassie Pomfret, who had lived halfway along on the right as he now walked, had spoiled her nephews and nieces with parties, magic shows, Christmas treats, and treasure-hunting picnics in the walled rear courtyard.

  Aunt Cassie had been David’s grandmother’s sister and, like her, had been a beauty and an actress. Both had married into stuffy upper-class families, which they proceeded to open up to new kinds of books, fashions and ideas.

  As he passed by what had been the Pomfret house, David sprang a moment of nostalgia for the days when the windows were not taped against bomb-blast, and shuttered as they were now, but dressed with muslin curtains that seemed always on the move in the breezes.

  His rumbustious twin, Rich, had been the one with some new twist to an ordinary game. Inevitably, there always came a time when shrieking and shouting got out of hand and they behaved like street children. With variations, Aunt Cassie always used the same kind of stratagem to gain control. ‘Children, I think Mr Dickens may be at his writing, and we wouldn’t like to find ourselves popping up in one of his books as the plaguy Pomdiwiggy family. Shall we go inside and play Pillows and Cushions?’ Pillows and Cushions was exactly that, two sides set about one another until they ran out of puff or Uncle Pom called for order on a hunting horn.

  Three houses further along, David Hatton looked up at the windows of the famous house in which Charles Dickens had created his Bumbles and Fezziwigs, and smiled, remembering.

  The house to which he had been invited today looked like a family home, but within it was a gentlemen’s club. The interior, which extended into an adjoining house, was new, but had the appearance and atmosphere that had not seen change in a hundred years: quiet luxury; thick carpeting; pleasant lighting; oiled hinges and wood panelling.

  A few days ago, David had received a call from Linder. ‘Lunch, ol’ man
? Club in Doughty Street. Not a gentlemen’s club, so your Labour credentials won’t be compromised, ha, ha. A dining club. Nice place, you’ll like it.’ The gentlemen’s clubs that Linder’s sort liked were not David’s own territory; never had been.

  The people he mixed with in leftish political circles believed that when the war with Germany was won there would be more than democracy, there would be equality. That was what people wanted, although David had already seen what could happen to that dream in Spain. The Spanish had thought the old rulers had gone for good. But the Republic had been destroyed, as had Rich. The old ones had returned and bombed the dream out of existence.

  He had returned home from the awfulness of the Spanish Civil War dejected, convinced that he had seen there a rehearsal for the inevitable war in Europe.

  It would be easy to become defeatist, but since he had been summoned by Linder he had hope for himself. The rumour was that Linder was recruiting for The Bureau. If what David Hatton had heard was right then he wanted to be in at the beginning.

  ‘Your coat, sir?’ The elderly attendant helped David remove his well-tailored uniform topcoat. He seldom wore formal clothes, but when he did he stood out, tall, fit and handsome in a well-worn way. David thought Linder would be impressed that he had volunteered.

  ‘If you will follow me, sir, Linder is in the visitors’ luncheon room.’

  The silence was as velvety and brown as the wood-panelled walls, broken only by an occasional chime of glass, and the rustle of newspapers.

  Not a gentlemen’s club? Well, it certainly was no Labour club.

  Although he had not met Linder for ages, David Hatton knew a great deal about his recent past – if one could believe all the reports in the financial and the social press.

  ‘Hatton! How splendid to see you.’ Linder’s hand was firm and warm. ‘Take a pew.’ He laughed genially, for no particular reason that David could tell except, he guessed, it was part of the image Linder had of himself. If others considered him to be ruthless, he considered himself to be resolute, knowing well his faults and advantages. The hardness behind his smile had helped make him a million in the City.

  ‘Sherry?’

  ‘Prefer a Scotch, if you don’t mind. It’s bloody cold out there.’ The whisky appeared on the table almost as soon as it was requested – a really good single malt, warming and persuasive. ‘Excellent stuff… OK if I still call you Lindy, or is that not on?’

  ‘I’m still Lindy, though not many call me by that name these days. Yes… Lindy. They do have good stuff here, which is why I prefer to meet people here rather than that damned draughty office they’ve given me… ’ And pointing to the menu he added, ‘Ever had “Paget’s” steak pudding? Try it… best thing they do.’

  ‘Sounds all right to me.’

  ‘We’ll talk and eat.’

  ‘Fine.’

  A steaming basin wrapped in stiff white linen arrived with the ceremony of a communion chalice. The steaming meat and suet crust after the whisky acted like the massage after a Turkish bath, and soon David was amiable and relaxed. For one thing, he could still see a bit of the old naughty-boy-of-the-class Linder, who used to be the bane of some tutors’ lives. Too clever by half, that had been his problem – and theirs.

  ‘The Bureau, what means that to yourself, Hatton?’

  ‘Something Winston Churchill dreamed up whilst he was reporting on the Boer War?’

  ‘Good! Right! Infiltration… undermining the other side… licence to commit any covert act that can wrongfoot opposition.’

  ‘D’you mean the enemy?’

  ‘Right, Hatton, the enemy,’ Linder chuckled. ‘Still thinking wearing my civilian hat. Yes! Ungentlemanly acts. Creating The Bureau isn’t entirely his idea, although, as you know, Winston was never averse to appropriating an idea here and there, if it got him noticed. But he’s the fellow who is forcing Whitehall to put their financial shoulder behind it. The Bureau will leave the cloak-and-dagger MI5 and 6 boys to do the thing they do best.’

  David sensed that Linder might be wondering how far he might go with a known leftist – lately Linder’s ‘opposition’. There might be Communists in every university and cathedral in the land, but left thinkers, especially those who frequently travelled abroad, were potential trouble.

  ‘And you are still roaming the world recording for posterity and the Picture Post?’

  David felt his hackles rise. He had always been serious about his work, which he saw as documenting an alternative history, that of the great mass of humanity. ‘Look here, Linder, if you want me in your bloody Bureau don’t trivialise what I do. I take exception to that. I’m not a holiday snapshot merchant. I consider that I’m doing a better job than men shut up in their dreaming towers.’

  ‘And you look, Hatton – apologies if I offended, but the role of The Bureau is going to be vital to the outcome of the war – in Europe especially. I have a lot of people to find and it’s just common sense to go for people one knows and trusts. You wouldn’t be here if The Bureau – meaning myself – didn’t think your work is important and that you have what we want. And yes, I do want you in.’

  David felt a bit foolish for overreacting. ‘OK. I’m not some kind of prima donna but I hate it when friends assume that, because I never go anywhere without a camera, I will do their wedding photos.’ He straightened up in his chair and dropped the chummy pose. ‘MI5 and MI6 exist so why The Bureau?’

  ‘Our secret services have been too gentlemanly for too long.’

  ‘The secret services gentlemanly? Come on, Lindy.’

  ‘Compared to what The Bureau will be.’

  ‘There are SIS agents who would turn in their own brother but—’

  ‘Those fellows know only how to sit in hotel rooms in Batavia and pay for snippets of gossip from the locals. You won’t find SIS agents sitting on hillsides waiting for ammunitions trains to cross bridges they have dynamited. But you know a bit about that.’

  ‘You’re referring to my time in Spain?’

  ‘Of course. Did you know that the Soviets have a virtual university for their secret agents? GPU. GPU agents are professionals, the best bar none. The Bureau will take a leaf from their book so that none of our people will go into the field unfit and untrained. Nor will they be in any doubt as to their role.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘To fight dirty with the best specialists we can muster – even if that means getting a forger or safe-breaker out of prison. The Bureau will take on very special operations. There will not be a shortage of money, agents will be well paid, but nothing is recorded. If we take you on, you will cease to exist officially,’ he chuckled again, ‘so you will never receive a demand for income tax.’

  ‘Neither, I imagine, will I be insured or receive any kind of pension?’

  ‘You’re not short of a bob, old boy.’

  ‘I’m not, but what about those ex-cons?’

  ‘They’ll get plenty of cash – it’s up to them if they don’t put some under the mattress. Are you in?’

  David grinned. ‘Bet your life – but you already knew that, Lindy.’

  ‘Been a long time in the financial world, ol’ boy. Pays always to have a plan, and to know who fits where. Glad to have you in, Hatton. Go and see Faludi – remember Faludi? Of course, who could forget old Fancy Pants?’

  ‘Faludi’s a decent chap.’

  ‘Of course he is, otherwise he wouldn’t be my number two.’

  * * *

  ‘Services Research Bureau’ showed on the worn door plaque of offices in Baker Street, London. There had recently been an increase in traffic in and out of the dusty-looking building. It was from here that Colonel Linder was creating Winston Churchill’s bastard branch of the secret service.

  Lieutenant David Hatton was meeting Captain Faludi. Linder, Faludi and Hatton – similar social class, similar education, very different characters. As fellow boarders, Faludi and David Hatton had been on better terms than either had been with Linder
. Linder was a snob, Faludi and Hatton were not. Now the three were officially members of the armed services – Colonel Linder, army; Captain Faludi and Flag Lieutenant Hatton, Royal Navy.

  Captain Faludi’s naval rating clerk knocked and put his head round the door. ‘Will you want a cuppa when your visitor arrives, sir?’

  ‘That would be nice. And try to find some sugar; that substitute stuff is vile.’ Like Hatton, Faludi’s voice was gentle, and his matinee-idol looks were very well suited to navy uniform.

  When Linder had talked with Faludi about compiling an initial list of men he knew well enough to trust – together with a subsidiary list of any likely women, David Hatton had not been in the top dozen, but when Hatton’s file came up, Faludi saw that Hatton was ‘the goods’. One should not listen to gossip, especially that picked up when weekending in country houses. It was probably true that Hatton was very much a ladies’ man, and that he had enjoyed a rather exotic life in the world of films and publications. Faludi had not seen him for some while – except in the way one does see old friends at weddings and funerals – and was pleased to discover that he had turned out better than most of their particular college set. Perhaps the actress grandmother had brought something lively to the old family. He had noticed that same effect upon other families – his own being one. Great-grandmother had valued her independence above everything – except perhaps her looks – and when these began to fade she married an English lord and infused his future lineage with good common Mediterranean blood.

  In David Hatton, Bazil Faludi felt certain that he had found a like mind. Linder had seen him and passed him on – the seal of approval.

  Faludi heard his naval orderly’s cheerful voice. ‘Cap’n said you was to go right on in, sir. Bring you a cuppa? Proper sugar.’

  ‘Hatton! Good to see you again. You look well; the togs look good.’

  David Hatton took the outstretched hand, then patted the insignia on his shoulder. ‘Off the peg. Looks a bit new, but I’ll wear it in. Good to see you too, Faludi… should call you “sir”, of course. Thanks.’ He took the chair Faludi indicated. ‘Linder says you are dealing with miscreants, reprobates and oddballs like me.’