The Nurse's War

She was surprised. ‘You’re still in Spence’s Road?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? Did you think I’d moved back to Pimlico to be with Mummy?’ The mocking note made her smile slightly. He adored his parent but had always been careful to keep his independence.

‘I just wondered. People’s circumstances change so quickly these days.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I haven’t seen you for nine months. You might have got married in the meantime.’ She was grateful for the surrounding dark. He wouldn’t have noticed the flush she’d been unable to prevent.

‘Not guilty. You did a good job on me.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Then don’t try to work it out. I’ve said enough if I tell you the girls I’ve knocked around with these months since you cut me adrift have been just that—girls to knock around with.’

She felt a perverse flood of pleasure. She’d told him to go his own way, hadn’t she, and now she was feeling glad that he hadn’t.

‘So to Barts?’ He offered her his arm.

‘To Charterhouse Square. I don’t have to work this evening.’

They moved off slowly, taking care to avoid the shrouded figures continuing to emerge from the station foyer.

‘So tell me about the evil spies who live below Gerald’s floorboards.’

She couldn’t blame him for not taking it seriously. She found it difficult to accept herself. It was only the fact that Gerald was the least likely person to be haunted by imaginary fears that made her give any credence to what sounded preposterous.

‘You do know that everyone sees spies these days.’ Grayson was enjoying himself. ‘Since the Germans have been camped on the French coast with invasion likely, hysteria has reached danger level. Everyone suspects and everyone is under suspicion. Only last month some poor, benighted foreigner in Kensington was accused of making signals to enemy bombers by smoking a cigar in a strange manner. Apparently, he puffed rather too hard and pointed the cigar towards the sky.’

‘I don’t think Gerald’s spies come into that category.’ Why she was defending her husband’s paranoia she had no idea, except that some deep instinct told her that he could be right.

‘We get hundreds of reports of suspected Fifth Columnists, you know,’ Grayson was saying. ‘Strange marks daubed on telegraph poles, nuns with hairy arms and Hitler tattoos, municipal flowerbeds planted with white flowers to direct planes towards munitions factories. And so on. But in reality there are virtually no enemy agents here.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Let’s just say the Germans don’t have an effective intelligence operation in Britain. Spies should be the least of Gerald’s—sorry, Jack’s—worries.’

‘They’re not Germans. They’re Indians. He heard them speak in Hindi.’

For a moment, Grayson paused in their slow walk. She couldn’t see his face but she was sure it wore an arrested expression. ‘Does that mean something to you?’ she prompted.

‘Not necessarily. But it’s unusual to find two Indians sheltering in the middle of London with a war raging. And particularly unusual at a time like this.’

‘What’s special about now?’

‘You won’t know, but India has recently surfaced again as a hot topic among the great and the good. Germany has been hinting it will guarantee Indian independence if the country doesn’t join us in the fight, and Italy and Japan are likely to take the same view. It’s only a matter of time, I think, before the Axis offer some kind of formal pact to our jewel in the crown.’

‘But isn’t the Indian Army fighting alongside us?’

‘The Indian Army is magnificent, but we’re desperate for men. The war has spread halfway round the world. We need more Indians to volunteer for the fight, just as they did in the Great War. Germany tried to stir up Indian nationalism then, as a way of causing trouble, but now we have Congress to contend with. So far they’ve refused to co-operate unless we pay their political price—independence—and that’s been rejected outright.’

‘And if we can’t persuade them to fight on our side, will it be such a disaster?’

‘It won’t be good. And if Congress should decide to join the Axis powers, then we are talking disaster.’

‘I wonder if Gerald’s Indians are involved in some way.’