The day was gone
The night came on
The monks and the friars they searched till dawn When the sacristan saw
On crumpled claw
Come limping a poor little lame jackdaw No longer gay
As on yesterday
His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way
His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand
His head was as bald as the palm of your hand His eye so dim
So wasted each limb
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried: "That's him!"
"Sure enough, they found the ring in his nest."
Paul nodded, smiling. Flick knew he would have nodded and smiled in exactly the same way if she had been speaking Icelandic. He did not care what she said, he just wanted to watch her. She did not have vast experience, but she could tell when a man was in love, and Paul was in love with her.
She had got through the day on autopilot. Last night's kisses had shocked and thrilled her. She told herself that she did not want to have an illicit affair, she wanted to win back the love of her faithless husband. But Paul's passion had upended her priorities. She asked herself angrily why she should stand in line for Michel's affections when a man such as Paul was ready to throw himself at her feet. She had very nearly let him into her bed-in fact, she wished he had been less of a gentleman, for if he had ignored her refusal, and climbed between the sheets, she might have given in.
At other moments she was ashamed that she had even kissed him. It was frightfully common: all over England, girls were forgetting about husbands and boyfriends on the front line and falling in love with visiting American servicemen. Was she as bad as those empty-headed shop assistants who went to bed with their Yanks just because they talked like movie stars?
Worst of all, her feelings for Paul threatened to distract her from the job. She held in her hands the lives of six people, plus a crucial element in the invasion plan, and she really did not need to be thinking about whether his eyes were hazel or green. He was no matinee idol anyway, with his big chin and his shot-off ear, although there was a certain charm to his face-"What are you thinking?" he said.
She realized she must have been staring at him.
"Wondering whether we can pull this off." she lied.
"We can, with a little luck."
"I've been lucky so far."
Maude sat herself next to Paul. "Speaking of luck," she said, batting her eyelashes, "can I have one of your cigarettes?"
"Help yourself." He pushed the Lucky Strike pack along the table.
She put a cigarette between her lips and he lit it. Flick glanced across to the bar and caught an irritated look from Diana. Maude and Diana had become great friends, and Diana had never been good at sharing. So why was Maude flirting with Paul? To annoy Diana, perhaps. It was a good thing Paul was not coming to France,
Flick thought: he could not help being a disruptive influence in a group of young women.
She looked around the room. Jelly and Percy were playing a gambling game called Spoof, which involved guessing how many coins the other player held in a closed fist. Percy was buying round after round of drinks. This was deliberate. Flick needed to know what the Jackdaws were like under the influence of booze. If any of them became rowdy, indiscreet, or aggressive, she would have to take precautions once they were in the field. She was most worried about Denise, who even now was sitting in a corner talking animatedly to a man in captain's uniform.
Ruby was drinking steadily, too, but Flick trusted her. She was a curious mixture: she could barely read or write, and had been hopeless in classes on map reading and encryption, but nevertheless she was the brightest and most intuitive of the group. Ruby gave Greta a hard look now and again, and she may have guessed that Greta was a man, but to her credit she had said nothing.
Ruby was sitting at the bar with Jim Cardwell, the firearms instructor, talking to the barmaid but at the same time discreetly stroking the inside of Jim's thigh with a small brown hand. They were having a whirlwind romance. They kept disappearing. During the morning coffee break, the half-hour rest period after lunch, the afternoon tea time, or at any opportunity, they would sneak off for a few minutes. Jim looked as if he had jumped out of a plane and had not yet opened his parachute.
His face wore a permanent expression of bemused delight. Ruby was no beauty, with her hooked nose and turned-up chin, but she was obviously a sex bomb, and Jim was reeling from the explosion. Flick almost felt jealous. Not that Jim was her type-all the men she had ever fallen for were intellectuals, or at least very bright-but she envied Ruby's lustful happiness.
Greta was leaning on the piano with some pink cocktail in her hand, talking to three men who looked to be local residents rather than Finishing School types. It seemed they had got over the shock of her German accent-no doubt she had told the story of her Liverpudlian father-and now she held them enthralled with tales about Hamburg nightclubs. Flick could see they had no suspicions about Greta's gender: they were treating her like an exotic but attractive woman, buying her drinks and lighting her cigarettes and laughing in a pleased way when she touched them.
As Flick watched, one of the men sat at the piano, played some chords, and looked up at Greta expectantly. The bar went quiet, and Greta launched into "Kitchen Man":
How that boy can open clams
No one else can touch my hams
The audience quickly realized that every line was a sexual innuendo, and the laughter was uproarious. When Greta finished, she kissed the pianist on the lips, and he looked thrilled.
Maude left Paul and returned to Diana at the bar. The captain who had been talking to Denise now came over and said to Paul, "She told me everything, sir."
Flick nodded, disappointed but not surprised.
Paul asked him, "What did she say?"
"That she's going in tomorrow night to blow up a railway tunnel at Marles, near Reims."
It was the cover story, but Denise thought it was the truth, and she had revealed it to a stranger. Flick was furious.
"Thank you," Paul said.
"I'm sorry." The captain shrugged.
Flick said, "Better to find out now than later."
"Do you want to tell her, sir, or shall I deal with it?"
"I'll talk to her first," Paul replied. "Just wait outside for her, if you wouldn't mind."
"Yes, sir."
The captain left the pub, and Paul beckoned Denise.
"He left suddenly," Denise said. "Rather bad behavior, I thought." She obviously felt slighted. "He's an explosives instructor."
"No, he's not," Paul said. "He's a policeman."
"What do you mean?" Denise was mystified. "He's wearing a captain's uniform and he told me-"
"He told you lies," Paul said. "His job is to catch people who blab to strangers. And he caught you."
Denise's jaw dropped; then she recovered her composure and became indignant. "So it was a trick? You tried to trap me?"
"I succeeded, unfortunately," Paul said. "You told him everything."
Realizing she was found out, Denise tried to make light of it. "What's my punishment? A hundred lines and no playtime?"
Flick wanted to slap her face. Denise's boasting could have endangered the lives of the whole team.
Paul said coldly, "There's no punishment, as such."
"Oh. Thank you so much."
"But you're off the team. You won't be coming with us. You'll be leaving tonight, with the captain."
"I shall feel rather foolish going back to my old job at Hendon."
Paul shook his head. "He's not taking you to Hendon."
"Why not?"
"You know too much. You can't be allowed to walk around free."
Denise began to look worried. "What are you going to do to me?"