‘Of course.’
The colonel looked down at Frank. ‘What’s he on?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Largactil. It’s a sedative. I gave him a heavy dose to quiet him while I got him oot.’
‘Looks done in, poor bugger.’
They left Ben with Frank and went back downstairs. The colonel showed David and Geoff into a big dining room. The television was on with the sound turned down, a quiz show, Isobel Barnett in an evening dress. A statue of the four-armed god Shiva stood incongruously on a Welsh dresser. David looked at it. ‘Pagan stuff, I know,’ Colonel Brock said, ‘but it’s very well done.’ He turned to Natalia. ‘I’d better get to the radio, let them know you’ve arrived. Elsie’s got it in the kitchen.’
‘Thank you.’
David asked, ‘Is there any news of my wife? Someone was being sent to pick her up.’
‘I haven’t heard anything.’ The colonel looked at him sympathetically. ‘I’ll ask.’ He went out. David and Natalia and Geoff sat down at the dining table.
‘Maybe no news is good news, old chap,’ Geoff said.
‘If they’ve got her safe, you’d think they’d have let us know by now.’
The colonel’s wife came in with a large tray containing bowls of vegetable soup, a loaf of bread, some butter. Geoff got up and helped her lay it on the table. ‘Short commons tonight, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We’ve sent our housekeeper on holiday for a few days, since we heard you were coming.’
The colonel returned and sat at the head of the table. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said to Elsie. ‘You’d better get back to the radio.’ He looked at David. ‘No news about your wife yet, Fitzgerald,’ he said gently, ‘but London might not have been able to get through. There’s been a lot going on with this Jew business. Elsie will come and tell us if anything changes.’
‘Thanks,’ David said.
‘I’m told the chap upstairs is pretty important?’ Colonel Brock said.
‘He could be, sir,’ Geoff answered.
The old man raised a hand. ‘Don’t need to know the details. I gather Churchill’s been personally involved with this one, though.’ He looked at Natalia, a little uneasily David thought. There was another silence while they ate the thick, flavourless soup. David suddenly felt very tired. He thought, about forty-eight hours ago I was sitting in my office, at work. How fragile our lives are, how a day can turn them inside out.
Geoff said, to break the silence, ‘You have a lot of Indian mementos, sir.’
‘Yes. Served there thirty years. My son’s out there now, God help him. Rioters broke his bloody arm with a brick in Delhi last year.’
‘I worked in the Colonial Office. I was in Kenya for quite a while.’
The colonel smiled. ‘Wondered if you’d been out in the Empire. Your tan hasn’t quite faded.’ He grunted. ‘Quieter out in Africa. The blacks know their place. God knows how it’ll all end in India.’ Geoff set his lips, but didn’t reply. The colonel continued, ‘Lefties in the Resistance say we should pull out, and even Churchill seems to have accepted that now. I suppose I must, too, though it’s not what I joined the Resistance for.’
‘Why did you join, sir?’ David asked.
Colonel Brock pulled himself upright. ‘Because it was cowardly to surrender the way we did in 1940. I always knew it’d end with these Nazi thugs dictating to us. Winston was right, we should have let them try to invade and fought them off.’ He looked at them fiercely. ‘I know I’m an old relic of Empire, my views aren’t popular in the Resistance any more. But it’s hard, when you see your life’s work falling apart. God knows what sort of mess the Indians will make of independence if they get it.’
He got up abruptly. ‘Let’s have something stronger.’ He crossed to a tray of drinks beside the statue of Shiva. He poured whisky for them and, quaintly, a sherry for Natalia. As he passed the glasses round the door opened. David looked up sharply, hoping it might be the colonel’s wife with news of Sarah, but it was Ben, carrying a tray. He laid it on the table. ‘Yer wife said tae bring this doon when I’d done,’ he told the colonel. He was deliberately exaggerating his Glasgow accent.
‘Your chap still sleeping?’
‘Frank? Aye, like a wee bairn. No’ bad soup, mate,’ Ben said to the colonel with a grin. ‘Compliments to the wife.’ The old man answered, ‘Thank you,’ stiffly, as Ben went back out. The colonel looked at the door and grunted, ‘He’s a Communist, you know, that chap. Outranks me in the movement, likes to remind me of it.’
‘He’s done brave work tonight,’ Natalia said quietly.
‘Oh, I don’t question his courage. Just worry that one day his lot will put me up against a wall.’ Brock gave a humourless laugh, then took a long slug of whisky and stood up. ‘I’d better take that dog for his evening walk, or he’ll be restless tonight.’
David was deeply asleep when Ben woke him at four. For a second he thought he was in bed at home and it was Sarah shaking him awake, then he remembered everything and his stomach went as cold as the dark little room.
‘Ready to take over?’ Ben whispered.
David nodded and got up. Geoff was still asleep, breathing regularly. David asked quietly, ‘Is there any news? About Sarah?’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, pal, no’ yet.’
David dressed quickly, then followed Ben across the corridor to Frank’s room. Inside Frank lay curled up, his hands one on top of the other by his head, like a child praying. ‘Not a peep out of him,’ Ben whispered. ‘Here, the colonel’s left a cardigan out for you, it’s cold. He’s no’ such a bad old sod, I suppose,’ he added grudgingly. ‘For one of his sort.’
David nodded; he didn’t want to wake Frank. He thought, let him sleep through, wake in daylight. He looked at him, deeply asleep. He thought of the hell Frank must have been living through, his attempted suicide. He wondered if he had been trying to take his secret with him. He wished he had written to him more often these past few years. Even back at Oxford, Frank’s hopeless, desperate vulnerability had made David fear that one day something bad would happen to him.
He looked at the orange-and-blue covers of the Magnet in the corner. He remembered reading it himself as a boy. Colonel Brock’s son would have lain on the bed reading the same public-school stories. He was out in India now, on the wrong side so far as the Resistance was concerned. David remembered his mother telling him off sometimes for reading comics, such nonsense she called them, so common. He realized now how lucky he had been, the only child of devoted parents, top of the class and good at sport, like the heroes in the Greyfriars stories. Yet he had always resented the demands people made. He didn’t want to be special, just ordinary. But had people really asked that much of him? He looked down at Frank’s thin, unhappy face, and felt a renewed sense of purpose; Frank knew something that could help the Germans and they had to stop them getting it, whatever it took.
He had meant to stay awake, he had been on night watch plenty of times during the Norway campaign, but the armchair was comfortable and he must have fallen asleep because suddenly he was being shaken again, and it was full day. He blinked in the sunlight, then stared at Natalia. She was looking down at him, smiling a little ironically. She wore a white roll-neck pullover, like someone in the navy; it suited her. ‘Oh God,’ David said. ‘I fell asleep—’ He turned round quickly. ‘Frank—’