Page 67 of The Girl with a Secret
“I want you to, as well,” Peter had replied, holding her close. “But you can’t ignore the summons.” He’d hugged her to him a little more tightly. “Perhaps it will be interesting work.”
“This is interesting work,” Rosa had protested. She’d known he was trying to make the best of it, but she’d still felt scared.
The address Kendrick had given her was not the impressive War Office building in the Horse Guards in Whitehall, but rather a branch on Baker Street she’d never heard of; there was no plaque or sign of any sort to say she was in the right place, and yet when she knocked, hesitantly, at Number 64, the door opened immediately and a plain-clothed and sober-looking man whisked her upstairs to a cupboard of an office, where she sat in trepidation for the better part of an hour, wondering what on earth was going on, before a man walked smartly into the room.
“Miss Herzelfeld.” She glanced at him uncertainly; he looked to be only in his thirties, with a full head of wavy hair and a neat moustache. He smiled at her and then stuck out his hand. “Major Thurston.”
Gingerly, Rosa took it. “How do you do, Major?” she murmured.
“Very well, thank you.” He took a seat behind the one rickety table in the room and dropped a file on top of it, so it landed with a smack.
Rosa blinked. He flipped it open and scanned the contents; from the other side of the table, she could see her own photograph on the first page. It was a file, she realized, onher.
“You came to Great Britain in 1939… on theSt Louis?” he began, glancing up at her in inquiry, and she nodded. “Worked in a Lyons teashop, interned for ten months at Camp Rushen, and then seconded to Cockfosters.” He flipped the file closed. “Fluent in German, naturally, and some French?”
“Yes—”
Quickly, without missing a beat or a blink, he switched to speaking French. “Parlez-vous bien le français, Mademoiselle Herzelfeld?”
Startled yet enjoying the challenge, she answered just as quickly. “Je crois que je parle assez bien la langue, Major.” She paused and then added boldly, “Et vous?”
He gave a short, approving laugh. “Tres bien, mais bien sûr.”
If Rosa hoped she had passed some sort of test with this little repartee, she soon discovered her mistake. The major launched into a long explanation of the work he was doing, all in French, which Rosa struggled to follow completely. He spoke of the need for secrecy, and manpower on the continent, and ways of fighting a war that to some might seem underhanded, but was necessary in these difficult and dangerous times.
“Qu’en pensez-vous, mademoiselle?” he finished. “Est-ce que c’est quelque chose que vous aimeriez faire?”
Was it something she’d like to do? He sounded as if he were asking her to attend a tea party.
“Are you,” Rosa returned in careful French, her words halting not because of the language but because of the import of them, “asking if I would like to be a… aspy?”
“Un espion?” He shrugged, smiling. “Call it what you will. I will say, the training is rigorous. Many do not pass. It will takesix months at a minimum, most likely more like nine. And after that…” He spread his hands. “We shall see.”
Aspy, in occupied France? Her? Rosa’s heart quailed at the thought. It wasn’t just dangerous, it wasinsanity. If she were caught, as a spyanda Jew… well, her life would be worthless, but worse than that, she was quite sure her demise would neither be quick nor painless. She thought of Peter’s two twisted fingers, and suspected she would be begging for such a small injury in comparison to what the Nazis might do to her.
And yet… Her fingers, almost as of their own accord, slipped into her pocket and slid round that precious piece of jewel. Sophie, doing something secretive in America, having lost the man she loved. Hannah, in France, maybe even doing something as dangerous as Rosa was now contemplating. And Rachel and poor Franz, in hiding, perhaps, in the Netherlands, fearing for their very lives…
How could she be unwilling to risk her own life when her friends were all risking theirs? How could she not want to, andgladly?
“Whyme?” she asked abruptly, and he raised his eyebrows.
“You were recommended.”
She tried not to goggle at him. “I was?”
“You’ve shown a remarkable sangfroid in certain situations,” he replied, and Rosa knew, with a sudden, leaden certainty, that he was talking about that night at the 400 Club, the role she’d been able to play. Would she be asked to do something similar… inFrance?
“Well, mademoiselle?” the major asked, smiling faintly, almost as if he already knew her answer… just as Rosa knew. There was only one answer she could give, one she wanted to give.
“Oui,” Rosa replied firmly. “J’accepte, avec plaisir.”
She was told to report to King’s Cross the next morning, to take a train all the way to Arisaig, in the north of Scotland. The journey would take two days, and she would spend the night at a boarding house in Carlisle, in the far north of England. In the meantime, she was allowed to spend the night with her family in Belsize Park, as well as collect her things from Cockfosters Camp.
Returning to the great house where she’d spent such a happy time with Peter felt like an agony. Rosa knew full well she could not tell him where she was going, or why, and yet she was achingly conscious that this would be a far more final farewell than he could ever possibly imagine. What if she never saw him again? What if she was captured and killed in enemy territory? The thought alone was enough to weaken her knees and ice her insides… and she couldn’t let him know anything about it.
All in all, there wasn’t much to collect. After a year, she found she had little more than she’d arrived with—a spare utility jumper and skirt, a change of underclothes and two blouses, woolen stockings and a winter coat.
Peter was on shift, and with a pang Rosa wondered if she would be able to say goodbye to him at all. Was she simply to creep away like a ghost, invisible, forgotten?
