Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,8
leaned against a railing outside the dentist’s surgery, waiting for Henderson with increasing irritation. His mouth and the bottom part of his nose tingled with numbness. His hands were buried in the pockets of his short trousers to ward off the frost while his chin was stained purple with the iodine painted around his mouth to prevent infection.
Like all of London, Harley Street was on a war footing. Street fixtures from kerbstones to tree trunks had been whitewashed to make them more visible during the nightly blackout. Glass panes were criss-crossed with tape to stop them shattering and sandbags had been built up around doors. The cars and trucks that sped by had white bumpers and masks over the headlamps which reduced their output to a narrow slit.
It was only half past three, but the doctors’ surgeries for which Harley Street was famous closed early, enabling the medical men to drive their Rovers and Jaguars to the comparative safety of the outer suburbs before it got dark. Marc would be spending a night in London for the first time since the Blitz began and the exodus of smartly dressed men and their warmly wrapped nurses and receptionists made him anxious.
Where was Henderson?
Marc knew Henderson had arranged lunch with Air Vice Marshal Walker, but he’d promised to pick him up from the dentist by three at the absolute latest.
It was nearer to four when the lights in the hallway behind Marc went off. Dr Murray emerged with a bunch of keys and turned the mortise lock in the front door.
‘Is he still not here?’ Murray asked with surprise. ‘You could have waited in reception, poppet. You must be frozen stiff.’
‘Poppet?’ Marc said, confused.
Dr Murray laughed. ‘It’s an English expression. Like sweetheart, or dearest.’
‘Oh,’ Marc said. ‘Don’t worry anyway, he’s probably just got caught up in a meeting or something.’
‘Do you know where he is?’ Murray asked. ‘I could go back inside and telephone.’
Marc shook his head. ‘He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.’
‘Remember, no biting at the front of your mouth or you’ll reopen the cut,’ Dr Murray said, before crossing the street and getting into her tan-coloured Wolseley saloon.
As the skies darkened, Marc started to lose the feeling in his freezing toes and the streets became ominously quiet. Henderson had clearly forgotten and Marc decided to make his own way back to their room at the Empire and India club.
He was retracing the route he’d walked with Henderson earlier in the day, but the blackout made things confusing. A tin-hatted air-raid warden set Marc right when he asked for directions and, after a brief stop to glimpse between the sandbags into the unlit windows of Hamleys toy store, he reached the front of Henderson’s Pall Mall club.
The snooty doorman assumed that Marc was some kind of street urchin trying to sneak in and steal food, but after he’d insisted that he was staying in room seventy-three with a club member, a steward was sent upstairs to investigate his story.
‘Marco Polo, my old mate!’ Henderson slurred, as he swaggered down the thickly carpeted staircase, leaning heavily on the banister and with a tuft of his shirt poking out of his unzipped fly. ‘I’m sorry, old bean. I forgot all about you.’
‘Looks like you’ve been enjoying yourself,’ Marc said sourly. ‘Good meeting?’
Marc didn’t get a reply straight away because the doorman politely but insistently told Henderson to take himself into the bathroom and improve his appearance in line with club rules.
Marc followed Henderson and the whiff of booze into the bathroom. He’d been out in the cold for ages and his fingers were so stiff that he struggled to get his trousers unbuttoned.
‘I hate stupid short trousers,’ Marc complained, as he started to pee. ‘The wind shoots up the legs.’
‘English boys wear short trousers until they’re at least thirteen and a half,’ Henderson grinned, as he looked in the mirror patting down his hair. ‘We have a fine tradition of making our children suffer. But seriously, I’m sorry I forgot to pick you up. How’s your mouth?’
‘Bleeding a bit,’ Marc said. ‘And it throbs now the injection’s wearing off. So did the Air Vice Marshal approve? Are we getting our parachute training?’
Although he was drunk, Henderson considered his answer carefully. Marc was one of six agents undergoing espionage training and morale could collapse if news spread that the unit’s future was under review, with a strong likelihood of it being shut down.
‘Walker wasn’t much use,’ Henderson replied tactfully. ‘He said I should continue