Betty Burton - The Face of Eve

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 wouldnt 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.

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.

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 hadnt 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 Davids grandmothers 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 wouldnt 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 gentlemens 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 gentlemens club, so your Labour credentials wont be compromised, ha, ha. A dining club. Nice place, youll like it. The gentlemens clubs that Linders sort liked were not Davids own territory; never had been.