Letters for a Spy by Stephen Benatar Read Free Book Online Page A

decided to lie down for a while. Stretched out contentedly, my hands clasped beneath my head.
    Contentedly? I wasn’t sure that I had much business to be lying anywhere contentedly. Not with the world being as it was.
    Yet at any rate—although tired—I was now feeling pleasantly fed and comfortable and free. That last word caught me slightly by surprise. But the reason for its being there was this: that for the moment I was completely my own boss. Most nights at this time I would be sitting over supper with my father and my stepmother, and although I was fond of my father—and, yes, fond of my stepmother too—I suddenly realized just how inhibiting they both were.
    (In fact, I wasn’t nearly so fond of my father as I once had
    been … not since our falling-out in the days after Kristallnacht . It was true, of course—just as he had claimed—that every nation did indeed have its share of hooliganism and thuggery. But that we ourselves could so effectively have cornered the market…! Our dispute had been bitter, and was unresolved.)
    Anyway, it was ridiculous. I was clearly regarded by the Abwehr as being adult enough, responsible enough, to be sent on a mission of no small importance to the future of Germany. Maybe to the future of the world. And yet here I was, still living in my father’s house and being expected to account for almost every minute of my spare time. My stepmother was well-meaning but inquisitive.
    I had complained to my father about this. He had spoken simply of a need for greater tolerance and understanding.
    Though just on my own part, it seemed. Not on hers.
    I recognized that the war was principally to blame: the housing shortage in Berlin. In peacetime it would all have been so different.
    No. In peacetime it was all going to be so different. I smiled, unlinked my hands and stretched my arms towards the ceiling. Here in a tiny town in the north of Wales, on Thursday 6 th May in the year of our Lord 1943, with the last of the sun slanting across the floor and highlighting the dust motes and gently catching the bottom of the bed, it actually felt, right now, pretty much like peacetime.
    It was even good to think that I myself, in some small way, could possibly be bringing it closer: the end of the war.
    This brought a comforting association of ideas. My jacket was on the back of the chair by the bed and I was suddenly inspired to reach across. Although Mr Martin’s letters were both in a side pocket, I had been carrying Sybella’s two in my wallet. I knew (nearly by heart) everything that she had written; and yet—still—I took them out again.
    It was the second I had been meaning to reread. But I became distracted, and gave further thought to the address—which was only on the first of them. In the original, it had been embossed.
    The Manor House,
    Ogbourne St George,
    Marlborough,
    Wilts.
    My goodness, talk about idyllic!
    In fact, it sounded so idyllic it almost teetered on the verge of parody: rural England at its most gracious and romantic. In a mere eight words it managed to pay homage to an illustrious ancestor of the present Mr Churchill, to the national patron saint, the legacies of the feudal system, and even to an especially stirring chapter in the military history of—I smiled—this dear, dear land, this scepter’d isle, this blessed plot. Yes, there lay the only wonder: that somehow it hadn’t managed to make room for Mr Shakespeare. But even so. Not bad.
    Yet following on from all this high romanticism and happy pageantry … what?
    Merely a telephone number and a date.
    Sunday 18 th April.
    Then straight into the letter.
    “I do think dearest that seeing people like you off at railway stations is one of the poorer forms of sport. A train going out can leave a howling great gap in ones life & one has to try madly—& quite in vain—to fill it with all the things one used to enjoy a whole five weeks ago. That lovely golden day we spent together—oh! I know it has been