An Unlikely Spy Read online

  “Too much something,” said Hugh, and taking in his motoring goggles and blazer Evelyn tried not to smile again.

  “Jonathan insists on driving back to Stokesay straight after the party. Jonty says his father hates sleeping anywhere but his own bed. Isn’t that odd?”

  This remark from Sally finally seemed to demand an answer from Evelyn.

  “Yes,” she said. “Very.”

  “Especially when you cop an eyeful of Hermione.” Hugh met Evelyn’s glance in the rearview mirror. “Can’t think why he’d want to sleep in that bed . . .”

  “Daddy!”

  They all laughed, the air blowing milder as the traffic at last gained pace, each vehicle pulling away from the pack. Tipping her hat forward, Evelyn sat back and closed her eyes, the last of Birmingham’s redbrick villages flitting by before the dense woodland began.

  * * *

  It was nearing dusk by the time they reached the wrought-iron gates. The far-off lights from the house glowed through a dewy gauze. Hugh took the long drive fast, the Bentley kicking up great sprays of gravel. The Wesleys owned more than a thousand acres around the manor and several surrounding farms. Most of the property was used for agriculture—cows, mainly, and some sheep as well as an orchard—but there was also a large woodland full of local native pine that began at the bottom of the lawn.

  Evelyn could remember the exact moment she fell in love with the estate. It had been her first visit, during that long, wet summer of 1931 before the new school year—Evelyn’s second at Raheen School. It felt odd now, but in another life Sally and Evelyn might never have met. Evelyn had been the scholarship girl in their eighteen-bed dormitory; Lewes was in the catchment area for the school’s annual Harwood Prize for a local girl, and when she turned eleven Evelyn was encouraged by her headmaster to sit the exam. No one expected her to win a place, least of all Evelyn herself, but for as long as she could remember she had wanted to get far away from Lewes, from its bland high street and canal, and, if she dared to admit it, from her parents’ brown stucco two-story cottage at the top of the hill. Experience, even at that young age, had always felt constrained in the sleepy, provincial town, only to be measured out in small, neat servings. She’d never been abroad, or even as far as London, but she knew another life existed, and she had read enough books to understand that going to a school like Raheen would offer her the chance to divert from the path her mother had trodden, which had left her with no real education or career, and married with a child before the age of twenty.

  “What an opportunity,” her mother had breathed when the letter from the school arrived, her fingertips hovering above the seal as though she was afraid it might burn her. “Haven’t you done well for yourself, dear.”

  “I’ll have to live away from you and Dad all year?” Amid her excitement, Evelyn had not fully contemplated what it might be like to live with so many strangers.

  “Yes, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Besides, we’ll see you on visits, and when you’re back at term break.”

  “But what about you?”

  “Me?” Her mother looked up from the letter, smiling faintly. “What about me?”

  Evelyn glanced at her father in his reading chair, the newspaper spread over his knees.

  “What will you and Dad do while I’m gone?”

  Her mother stared back at Evelyn, her smile faltering.

  “Well,” she said. “We’ll be waiting for you, of course.”

  Evelyn had nodded. There was something comforting about this pledge, a picture she could hold in her mind of her parents in the house, as reliable as the sun each morning at the kitchen window.

  Her father added with a chuckle, “But promise you won’t go and forget us, Evelyn, once you’re mixing with the finest in the realm.”

  He had never been much cowed by class. His father, Evelyn’s grandfather, had worked as a barrel man at the local brewery and had been, as far as Evelyn could tell, an awful drunk and a bully. Still, her father had grown up clever, and liked to read, something he had encouraged in her, and though too lazy to be much of an ideologue he was still suspicious of anyone who sought to rise above their station, including his own daughter. He spent most of his spare time hunched over his newspapers, worrying about Europe. “It was the ordinary folk that kept the establishment safe during the Great War—and it’ll be the ordinary folk again.” He’d always look at Evelyn as he said this, narrowing his eyes, as if he expected her to come downstairs one day in fatigues with a rifle slung over her shoulder. To lighten the mood, he sometimes read out the marriage announcements over breakfast: “Listen to this, dear. Alexandra Christabel Josephine Winifred Henrietta Gordon of Montaigne House, to marry Frederick Alfred William James Henry Upton-Rugg of Ludmere Castle . . . Honestly, that’s just greedy, that is. Why do these aristocrats need quite so many names?”

  “Imagine the ‘I do’s,’” Evelyn would say. “They’ll go on for hours.”

  “And can somebody tell me what’s wrong with plain old Freddy Rugg?”

  But as Evelyn had watched her mother place that letter from the school on the mantelpiece, she had seen something fleeting in her eyes, her manner almost deferential as she muttered, “We’ll have to buy the girl some new clothes,” before returning to the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong with what she’s got?” her father grumbled, his own woolen jumper in desperate need of some fresh darning at the elbow. “We’re not made of money, you know.”

  But the next week her mother had taken Evelyn to London anyway, visiting Bourne & Hollingsworth on Oxford Street, where they bought a pair of white T-strap sandals, a navy pleated skirt, and a few smart cotton blouses, and as if that wasn’t enough, afterward Evelyn was treated to tea and pastries at Maison Bertaux on Greek Street before they caught the evening train home. It had been strange seeing her mother among all the noise and life of the city, wide-eyed and almost girlish in these unfamiliar, exciting surrounds. Later, after her mother had swapped her smart coat for a damp apron and pair of old plaid slippers, Evelyn wondered if the trip had given her pause to reflect on the dips in her own fate, and how her circumstances might have played out if the coin had landed differently for her, but these were questions she did not know how to ask.

  Her father had accompanied Evelyn to her new school a few weeks later. Raheen stood on the Sussex Downs and the wind was blowing salty off the Channel as they crossed the front lawn. It was an enormous campus, with tennis courts, a hockey pitch, and a swimming pool, while to the west were the fenced-off paddocks of the school’s farm and orchard. A dark-haired woman had been waiting on the front steps. She extended a hand to Evelyn’s father.

  “Frau Schneider. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Varley. I’ll escort Evelyn upstairs.”

  Evelyn felt her father tense beside her. Taking off his hat, he blinked back at the teacher, then turned to Evelyn, almost stricken.

  “I guess this is goodbye.” He patted her on the shoulder and gave her a scratchy kiss, something he never did. But as he passed over the heavy suitcase, he leaned in again to whisper, “Just remember to be yourself, all right, dear? Don’t mind what the others might say. Be yourself and you’ll get on just fine.” Then, without another word, he rammed his hat back on and stalked away, his shoulders stooped against the wind.

  Evelyn watched him until he disappeared, then looked up at the clock tower. “What an opportunity,” her mother had breathed again as they packed Evelyn’s new clothes from London; she seemed to believe that her daughter could step from one world into another as easily as they had passed through the department store’s revolving doors. But as she walked up those front steps with Frau Schneider, Evelyn knew that the abyss had cracked wide open; that while she had finally left Lewes, the town would never leave her, and she was stuck, no longer certain of who she was or where she belonged.

  Evelyn had trailed after the teacher through the cold, empty corridors until they came to a high-ceilinged room at the end of a passageway, inside which
about half a dozen girls were hanging up tunics and shaking down quilts. Frau Schneider directed Evelyn to the bed by the bay windows, a label inscribed Varley attached to the foot. As soon as she had gone, the other girls set down their things and crowded around Evelyn’s bed.

  “I’m Cynthia Buckland,” announced one who appeared to be their leader. She had long hair in a plait and a small upturned nose. “You’re local, aren’t you? One of our charity cases?”

  Evelyn stared back at her. “I won the Harwood Prize,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “I say, will you get an earful of that! We don’t have a Sussex interpreter on staff, do we? I woon de Harrwood Pryze, if that’s whatcha mayne . . .”

  The other girls tittered. Cynthia peered into Evelyn’s suitcase, drawing out a blouse on the tip of her finger like it was rubbish dredged from a drain. She held it aloft, turning in a circle for all to see.

  “Visit the summer sales, did we, Varley?”

  Cynthia gave Evelyn a hard look, but Evelyn held her gaze. With few scholarship girls at Raheen, she had expected some tiresome strutting; she knew there was bound to be a hierarchy in this place, with herself at the bottom of the pecking order. But that didn’t mean she would be intimidated.

  Cynthia dropped the blouse back into the case and sighed. “Dinner’s at six. I’m sure you’ll find your way there. Just follow the stench of boiled cabbage.” Then she turned on her heel and stalked back down the aisle.

  Evelyn counted her footsteps across the dormitory. Eight, nine, ten, her breathing returning to normal. But when she thought again of her father—listen to this, dear—she felt her eyes sting.

  After the other girls had drifted off, Evelyn finished her unpacking, then stood at the window and stared out at the darkening sea. There was something cruel about such an outlook from the dormitory, she thought, as if to remind them there was no pathway to escape. When she heard a noise in the doorway Evelyn found a short, ungainly girl with pale hair and a babyish face shuffling along the aisle. She came up to the bed next to Evelyn’s, swollen eyes briefly cast her way. The label on the foot read Wesley.

  She sat on the edge of her bed. “You’re new this term too? I think we’re the only ones.” The girl sniffed. “I’ve been told they’re always harder on the new girls.”

  Evelyn gave her a smile before turning back to the window, her eyes fixed to the sliver of moon now hanging low on the horizon.

  This was how Evelyn and Sally came into the same orbit, clinging to one another as lonely people often did. Cynthia and her friends picked on Evelyn whenever they could, about her accent, her clothes, and the perceived gaps in her education. Her crimes were not knowing anyone of importance, nor ever having traveled or eaten fine food. They laughed when she told them her father was a clerk, which finally made her weep under the lukewarm shower one night. She could bear their insults, but there was something uniquely humiliating about them finding fault with her parents.

  “I know it’s hard, but it’s not really about you,” Sally said. “They just don’t like anyone different.”

  Sally had managed to avoid the ire of most girls at Raheen. She wasn’t studious like Evelyn, failing to grasp even the most basic concepts in every subject, while some vague claim to injury always excused her from gymnastics or hockey. And she certainly couldn’t hold a tune. But she was a happy person—such a rare attribute in that bluestone prison. The vagaries of school life never seemed to touch her, and Evelyn came to respect this aspect of her nature, seeing how it inured her friend from the harshest trials. And the truth was Sally didn’t care where Evelyn came from or what her father did. She valued her loyalty and her cleverness—qualities that, according to Sally, meant Evelyn was certain to go far. Sally was generous, too, sharing her clothes, her books, and the parcels of sweets her mother sent each week in the post. Of course, she could afford to be generous: her family was one of the wealthiest in England. Their money came from Sally’s great-grandfather, an entrepreneur who had made his fortune in buttons, and the Wesleys, Evelyn learned on their weekend strolls along the rugged clifftop path, were acquainted with many people of importance and influence. Politicians, captains of industry, diplomats, even royalty.

  “Daddy knows everyone there is to know,” said Sally, pushing an aniseed-flavored gobstopper around her mouth. “Fingers in all sorts of pies. When the time comes, he’ll set you right, Ev.”

  They had stopped at the lookout, the sea beneath them churning, the Brighton marina the size of a toy model below. This was how they spoke to one another in the depths of their isolation, picturing this great, bright future, though Evelyn had no notion of what being set right meant back then.

  Still, when the Wesleys first invited Evelyn to stay she had been wary, expecting Sally’s parents to be grown-up versions of the Raheen girls, full of mockery and derision. But when she had arrived at Crewe on a humid morning, Evelyn discovered the whole family waiting on the otherwise empty platform—Sally, her parents, even their English pointer puppy, Tortoise. They had all motored over from Onibury to welcome her.

  “We’re so pleased to meet you at last, Evelyn,” Elizabeth Wesley had said before crushing her in a musky hug.

  They drove back through poky villages and lush green forests, Evelyn up front, squeezed between Hugh and Elizabeth, while Sally lounged in the back, Tortoise’s head out the window, his floppy brown ears whipped back in the wind. Around bends and kinks in the road, over streams and bridges—gorgeous countryside that grew more rural the deeper they traveled into south Shropshire, the road winding through the heather-clad hills of the Long Mynd. Then, after nearly two hours, they turned up the drive, Evelyn straining across Elizabeth’s lap, awed by the sight of the manor sitting like a medieval castle at the top of the rise. It was made of sandstone and had more than a hundred rooms—some, Sally claimed, that even she had never been inside. The south face, which they approached at speed, was all columns and pilasters and open parapets, and as Evelyn gazed up toward them she imagined artillerymen hiding behind the stonework, cannons poised, as though the family were preparing for battle.

  “Not a bad pile, is it?” Hugh said, giving her a wink, and Evelyn had felt a flutter of hopefulness that this might be a place where she could find real belonging.

  * * *

  Now, eight years later, Hugh brought the car around the back of the house and pulled up by the old stables near the east wing. There beneath the gaslight at the servants’ entrance stood Parker.

  Hugh hauled himself from the driver’s seat and bent over to inspect something in the gravel, eventually raising a piece of stone the size of a cricket ball into the fading light.

  “More crumbling, Parker?” he asked as the butler strode toward him.

  “Yes, sir. Yesterday’s wind brought down half the spire. My apologies—I thought we’d cleared the debris away.”

  As Hugh tossed the stone aside, Evelyn’s eyes were drawn to the nearest turret, scarred with a jagged crack the shape of a lightning bolt.

  She followed Sally inside and up the stairs to her bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, Sally’s room was small and plain, the cream walls bare, with only a faded pink floral barkcloth hanging at the window. Despite this austerity (or perhaps owing to it, Evelyn always thought) the room could have belonged to a child, a timelessness captured in the unmoving eyes of Sally’s dolls who occupied the chaise longue in front of the pine cone–filled hearth. There were a dozen guestrooms in this part of the manor, but Evelyn always slept in Sally’s room. Sally insisted on it; said it was like bunking in halls, though how that was a comfort Evelyn didn’t know. Not that she ever protested—the bedroom did have a splendid view over the front lawn and the Italianate fountain of Neptune, which Evelyn studied from her position by the window seat after she had changed, her feet tucked beneath her while a warm breeze rustled the curtains.

  “Is that all you’ve brought?”

  Sitting at the dressing table and dusting her cheeks with powder,
Sally pointed to Evelyn’s suitcase at the end of the bed.

  “I’m only staying until Sunday, remember?”

  “What about tomorrow night? Your dress?”

  Evelyn stood up and went to stand at her friend’s side, examining the various compacts and lipsticks and blushes. None of it was Vivian de la Croix. “I thought I’d borrow one of yours.”

  “Did you?” Sally smiled and sprayed some perfume about her throat, watching in the mirror as Evelyn drifted across the room and began flicking through the dresses on the rack inside the oak cupboard. “Maybe the turquoise?”

  “You think?”

  “It goes well with your skin. I’m too chubby for it now, anyway.”

  “You are not.” But Evelyn could see that Sally had put on a few pounds over the summer. All that rich food, no doubt. Evelyn, meanwhile, was thinner than ever. Whatever Mrs. Banker’s skills might be, they were not found in the kitchen.

  “Did Daddy say?” Sally murmured, applying some mascara. “Julia is home from Germany.”

  Evelyn’s hand brushed the turquoise gown, the silk cool against her fingertips.

  “Is she? Since when?”

  “Arrived back in Harwich last week. We hadn’t heard a peep from her in months and were starting to worry—and then poof! She was on her way from Rotterdam.”

  It was a long time since Evelyn had seen Julia Wharton-Wells, though she had heard all about her eloping to Berlin with a much older man, their wild parties in Prenzlauer Berg, and, more recently, their separation. Sally had narrated these stories breathlessly—Julia was her only cousin, almost like a sister since the death of her mother, Hugh’s sister. She must be about twenty-six now; she had been in her final year when Evelyn started at Raheen.

  “Is she coming tomorrow night?”

  “Mm.” Sally set down the mascara, blinking slowly at the glass. “I should think so. You know Julia. Never misses a party.”

  “What about her husband . . . Has he traveled over with her?”

  “Hans? Good Lord, no. Daddy would have him shot on sight. He’s a brute—like that was a surprise. Anyway, I think they have divorced. Julia has about as good taste in men as her mother did.”