to me, the intimate details she had let surface, her self-absorption, I began to see that she was feeling the strain of living alone with a young child, with no one to share the burden—psychological, financial, practical. And her future was bleak.
A gust of wind swept in a flurry across the surface of the Avon.
As for Izzy, she would be arriving at the Front by now. I felt a mild anxiety on her behalf but she, I knew, would be all fired up and excited. I couldn’t help grinning at the river. The Germans had better look out.
I thought back to our last evening, our dinner at the Crown and the “lecture” she had given me. The news from the war just then was mixed. Five thousand Austrians had been killed in defense of Galicia and the Australians had announced they were going to make munitions to help us. Various schemes to enable British companies to trade with the enemy via China had been exposed and stopped. On the other hand, Venice had been bombed—why on earth had the Germans done that? Poison gas had been used against the Russians, and British losses, so far, the government said, amounted to 258,000. In London a free buffet for soldiers had been installed at London Bridge, Emmeline Pankhurst had held an impassioned meeting about what women could do for the war effort, and there had been a big meeting of children in aid of Serbian relief Concerts were being held at the Aeolian Hall in aid of the French. Several art galleries had organized exhibitions of war art, in aid of the troops.
That all seemed to emphasize Izzy’s point of view: London was the place to be.
Later that morning, in class, we were given some German newspapers to read, papers that were several weeks old and, we were told, had reached us via Switzerland. We were to read with two aims in mind: to be aware of words, terms, and usages that we were unfamiliar with, and to see what we could analyze and predict about German civilian morale, from the tone of the articles. The last part was an interesting exercise but, at about eleven o’clock, I was called out of class and asked to report to Major Romford’s office, and at double-quick time. Oh God, I thought, now what?
His office, lined with box files and stinking of tobacco, was near the main entrance on the ground floor. It had a door made of frosted glass. The door was partly open but I knocked anyway. No point in getting off on the wrong foot.
“Come in!”
He was sitting there, all mustache and uniform, writing, but looked up immediately. He glared at me but said nothing. Instead, he nodded, down and to his left. I could see that the telephone was off the hook.
I picked up the receiver in trepidation. Use of the telephone was new to me. Izzy had said during our dinner at the Crown that our mother wasn’t well. I could think of only one reason for this call.
“Oh, oh. Yes sir, of course. Yes.” It wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all.
“These bloody phone things can be unreliable, so I’ll come to the point. Two points, really. You hearing me all right?”
“Yes sir, loud and clear.”
“Right. Well. Point one, you were right about the German figures. Spot-on. I’ve checked and I’ve double-checked and you were bang on the button. I would have phoned before but we’ve had a flap on. Fortunately, it was a misprint in my lecture, so it’s not a mistake we’ve made in our actual policy. Thank the bloody Lord. But that’s not the point. You spotted a mistake, an important one, and I owe you a vote of thanks.”
I said nothing.
“You there?”
“Yes sir. Thank you.”
“But I can do better than a vote of thanks. That’s point two. Am I right in thinking that you are learning very little in Stratford?”
“Well, there are a lot of new technical words I’m learning, new scientific concepts, that sort of—”
“Yes, yes, but you can learn all that down here.”
“Sir?”
“I want you down here, Montgomery, and I want you P.D.Q. You can start Monday—yes?”
“At what, sir, and where?”
“Now, don’t be obtuse, man. You’ve been too long with the cows. I’ll be doubting my own decision if you go on like that. I want you here, in the Ministry of War. Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square. As an intelligence analyst.