There were few people on the train, and by the time it left Haywards Heath her carriage was almost deserted. Sarah had been to Brighton a few times as a child, on summer day trips with her family, the train full of eager, excited children. At the thought she might never see any of her family again she burst into tears, sat hunched over in the empty carriage sobbing quietly. She knew she should do nothing to draw attention to herself but couldn’t help it.
She had been told to get a taxi to the hotel. Brighton Station smelt of smoke but when she stepped outside the air was wonderfully clean, bitterly cold with a salty tang. She hailed a taxi and it drove her through dingy streets, then came out into the broad avenue of the Steine. She saw the domed roofs of Brighton Pavilion, George IV’s Indian palace. The taxi drove across the Steine and turned into a side-street of narrow three-storey buildings with flaking paint, hotel signs above the doors, boards with Vacancies in the windows. At the end of the road was the sea, startlingly close.
The hotel was called Channel View. There was no porter and she dragged her suitcase into a dark, poky vestibule. Behind the little counter sat a small, tired-looking woman in her forties. Sarah put her identity card on the desk. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ the woman said, then looked at her anxiously. ‘Come through and meet my husband.’ Her voice had a gentle burr, an almost rural sound. She opened a flap and Sarah followed her into a little office where a plump, balding man in shirt sleeves and waistcoat sat working on some accounts. His wife gave him Sarah’s identity card. He read it, then looked up and studied her.
‘You got down here all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You look as though you’ve been crying.’ His tone was reproving.
‘Yes. On the train. There was no-one else in the carriage.’
He looked at her severely. ‘Someone might have come in.’
Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Two days ago I was a normal housewife. Now I’m on the run, I’ve learned my husband’s a spy, I’ve no home and I don’t know if my family are all right or whether I’ll ever see them again. So yes, I’m sorry, but I had a cry.’
‘You didn’t know your husband was working for us?’
‘He never told me.’
‘Well, that’s often best,’ the man said, his voice less hostile. ‘Your family are all right by the way, we know that. We’ve been watching their houses. Your sister and parents have had Special Branch visits, but that’s all. Your brother-in-law has a lot of Blackshirt friends –’ he looked at her sharply again for a moment – ‘that will have helped.’
Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘What about my husband?’
‘There are delays in London. It may be a few days before he gets here.’
‘Then what happens?’ Sarah asked. ‘No-one will tell me.’
‘The plan’s to get you out of England. You and your husband, and some friends.’
‘How? Where to?’
The woman said, ‘Somewhere safe, we can’t tell you any more for now. I’m sorry.’ She added, ‘I’m Jane by the way, and this is Bert.’
Bert handed back her identity card. ‘We’ve got you a room here. You can go for little walks round the town if you like but don’t stray too far. We don’t have many residents this time of year, just a few commercial travellers who come and go. Best if you keep yourself to yourself.’
‘I’ve been told to say I wanted to get out of London after my husband died. I can say I don’t like all the fuss about Christmas. It’s true, I hate it.’
‘Good,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t get into conversation with the other guests, some of them have a roaming eye.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Mealtimes are on a card in your room.’ Jane gave her a key. ‘There’s hot water on if you want a bath.’
‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. As she went through the door Bert said quietly, ‘Mrs Hardcastle?’
She turned. ‘Yes?’
He smiled. ‘Just making sure you remember your new name.’
The hotel was a strange little place, with narrow corridors, small rooms, threadbare carpets. The bed in Sarah’s room sagged from the hundreds of people who had slept there before. Channel View was probably full in summer, but now the only other guests were a few middle-aged men in shabby suits who nodded to her in the dining room. She nodded back, politely but distantly. The food was awful.
For the next few days Sarah barely spoke to anyone. Several times when Jane was on her own at reception, Sarah asked if there was any word of when her husband’s group was coming, and always she was told not yet. Jane was pleasant enough but Sarah sensed that Bert was uneasy about her. She wondered if it was because she wasn’t in the Resistance, she was just a spy’s wife, an encumbrance.
She avoided the communal lounge, only going in to see the news on the old TV. On her first night she wondered whether there might be something about the policeman Meg had killed, half expecting to see her house appear on the screen, but there was nothing. They would hush it up of course. There was only the usual news – there had been a big demonstration in Delhi, the Blackshirt mayor of Walsall had been shot and injured by Resistance terrorists, the Germans were making ‘temporary strategic withdrawals’ on sections of the Central Volga. When the news was on some of the commercial travellers muttered and grunted about Communists and uppity wogs.
Sarah spent long hours in her room, reading dog-eared romantic novels that guests had left behind in a little bookcase, or sitting looking out of her window, with its view of a yard choked with bins and the backs of neighbouring buildings. During the short December afternoons she went for walks around the almost-empty town, drinking tea in little cafes. Once or twice she saw small groups of Jive Boys on the corners in their long, colourful coats and drainpipe trousers; but they looked listless and pasty, smoking roll-ups. Probably just unemployed lads, she thought, as she steered away from them. Occasionally, on walls, she saw the Resistance logos ‘V’ and ‘R’ painted, just like in London. The weather was sunny but very cold; there was ice on the pond in a little park she walked round. She thought constantly about David, where he could be, what he was doing, when he would get here. She ached with worry and longing but she was also filled with fury about his lies to her, going over his absences in her head. She knew David had loved her once, but then Charlie had died and he had turned aside from their quiet home life together to become a spy. Without a thought of telling her, taking her into his confidence. Making her into what Bert thought she was, an encumbrance. She remembered her desperate jealous anxiety when she thought David was having an affair with Carol. She determined she would never put herself through anything like that again. If David didn’t love her any more they had to part. If they survived this, if they did go on to new lives, she would not cling onto something that was dead. Walking the cold streets, the seagulls making their sad cries above her, she could have cried out, too, with desperation and anger and sorrow at the thought of losing the only man she had ever loved.
On her sixth night at the boarding house, she saw a thin man in his forties with a big, untidy moustache at the next table, reading the London Evening Standard. The headline caught her eye. ‘Fog Brings London to Standstill’. Hesitantly, she asked the man if she might see the paper when he had finished with it.
‘Of course,’ he said. He nodded at the headline. He had friendly brown eyes, like a dog’s. Sarah noticed there was dandruff on his collar. ‘I’ve just come down from the city, it’s brought chaos up there. Worst ever, some say. Lot of people in hospital. Are you from London?’ he added.