The Company of Strangers

‘Why don’t you come to my office tomorrow,’ said Rawlinson to Andrea. ‘We’ll test your skills. Eleven o’clock suit you?’

‘I don’t know where you’d send her. Not south. She can’t stand the heat.’

This was a lie, worse than a lie because the opposite was the case. Andrea, inside her dark skin, under her starling glossy hair, glared at her mother’s translucency, at the blue blood inching its way under the alabaster skin. Mrs Aspinall had a Victorian’s attitude to sun. It never touched her skin. In summer she wore marble, in winter the snow would pile on her head as on a statue’s in the square.

‘Lisbon, Mrs Aspinall, we have an opening in Lisbon which would suit your daughter’s skills and intelligence.’

‘Lisbon? But there must be something she can do in London.’

Rawlinson got to his feet, hauling his stiff leg up after him, shooting Andrea a conspiratorial look.

They followed him into the hall. Mrs Aspinall fitted him into his light coat, gave him his hat, smoothed the shoulders of his coat. Andrea blinked at that small, intimate action. It shocked her, confused her.

‘You’re going to be hot out there, Mr Rawlinson.’

‘Thank you so much for tea, Mrs Aspinall,’ he said, and tipped his hat before going down to the gate and out into the sun-baked street.

‘Well, you won’t want to go to Lisbon, will you?’ said Mrs Aspinall, closing the door.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s as good as Africa down there…Arabs,’ she added as an afterthought, making it exotic.

‘I suppose it’s because I speak Portuguese,’ said Andrea. ‘Why do you never let me say…’

‘Don’t start on that. I’m not doing battle with you on that score,’ she said, heading back into the living room.

‘Why shouldn’t I talk about my father?’

‘He’s dead, you never knew him,’ she said, throwing her tea dregs into the pot plant, pouring herself another cup. ‘I hardly did, either.’

‘That’s no reason.’

‘It’s just not done, Andrea. That’s all.’

Something wriggled in Andrea’s mind, something irrational like the first half of an equation, some algebra with too many unknowns. She was thinking about her mother smoothing Rawlinson’s shoulders. Intimacy and what brought that intimacy. Rawlinson’s leg. And why dead Portuguese fathers can’t be mentioned.

Talking to her mother was just like algebra. Maths without the numbers. Words which meant something else. A question arrived in Andrea’s head. One prompted by an image. It was a question which couldn’t be asked. She could think it and if she looked at her mother and thought it, she’d shudder, which she did.

‘I don’t know how you can be cold in this heat.’

‘Not cold, Mother. Just a thought.’

In the morning her mother produced one of her suits for Andrea to wear. A dark blue pencil skirt, short jacket, cream blouse, and a hat that perched rather than sat. Her nails were inspected and passed. After breakfast her mother told her to clean her teeth and left for work firing a volley of instructions up the stairs about what to do and, more important, what not to do.

Andrea took a bus to St James’s Park and spent a few minutes on a bench before walking down Queen Anne’s Gate to number 54 Broadway. She went to the second floor, her feet already hurting in the borrowed shoes, and the suit, built for her mother’s slightly smaller frame, was pinching her under the armpits, which were damp in the heat. A woman told her to wait on a hard, leather-seated wooden chair. Sun streamed through the lazy dust motes.

She was shown into Rawlinson’s office. He sat with his leg coming through the footwell to her side of his desk. Tea appeared and two biscuits. The secretary retired.

‘Biscuit?’ he asked.

She took the offered biscuit. The dry half detached itself from the sodden half.

‘So,’ said Rawlinson, pulling himself up straight in his chair, the air clear as after a storm. ‘Nice to have you on board. There’s just one question I have outstanding here. Your father.’

‘My father?’

‘You never include your father’s details on any of your forms.’

‘My mother says it’s not relevant. He died before I was born. He had no influence and nor did his family. I…’

‘How did he die?’

‘They were in India. There was a cholera outbreak. He died, as did my mother’s parents. She came back to England and lived with her aunt. I was born here at St George’s.’

‘In 1924,’ he said. ‘You see, I was interested in the Portuguese business. Why does Miss Aspinall speak Portuguese? And I found out that your father was Portuguese.’

‘My grandparents were missionaries in the south of India. There were a lot of Portuguese down there from their colony, Goa. She met…’

‘Your mother never took his name…’ said Rawlinson, and steadied himself to pronounce Joaquim Reis Leitão.

‘Leitão means “suckling pig”,’ she explained.

‘Does it?’ he said. ‘I see why she never took his name. Not something you’d want to have to explain every day of the week…suckling pig.’

He sipped his tea. Andrea chased a piece of dry biscuit around her mouth.

‘You’ve led a cloistered life,’ said Rawlinson.

‘That’s what my mother says.’

‘The Sacred Heart. Then Oxford. Very sheltered.’

‘I spent time here during the Blitz as well,’ said Andrea. ‘That was a sheltered life, too.’

Rawlinson took some moments to find the joke and grunted, reluctant to be amused.

‘So you’ll be all right in Lisbon,’ said Rawlinson, launching himself out of the chair, cracking his leg a stunning blow on the desk.

‘You’ll be working as a secretary for a Shell Oil executive called Meredith Cardew,’ said Rawlinson, speaking to the sky. ‘Rather a fortuitous vacancy. Last girl married a local. The husband doesn’t like her working. She’s pregnant. There’s been some accommodation arranged for you, which I will not attempt to explain but it is the crucial element of your assignment. How’s your physics?’

‘School Certificate standard.’

‘That’ll have to do. You’ll be doing some translating work. German scientific journals into English for the Americans, so you’ll have your work cut out, what with being Cardew’s secretary and all. Sutherland and Rose are running the Lisbon station. They’ll make contact with you via Cardew. A car will pick you up on Saturday morning and take you to RAF Northolt where you’ll be given your documents for travelling to Lisbon. You’ll be met at the airport by an agent called James – Jim – Wallis who works for an import/export company down at the docks. He will take you to Cardew’s house in Carcavelos, just outside Lisbon. Everything you need to know at this stage is in a file which Miss Bridges will give you and which you will read here and remember.’

He turned his back to the sun. His face, backlit by the window, blackened. He held out his hand.

‘Welcome to the Company,’ he said.