Prune 1, White Chocolate 7 [Divide and Rule]
Title: Second Time, Worse Than the First
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution (Divide & Rule)
Flavor(s): Prune #1 (a friend is someone who has the same enemies); White Chocolate #7 (embarrassment)
Toppings/Extras: Chopped Nuts + Gummy Bunnies (also for hc_bingo square “drowning”)
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3914
Notes: Jan/Feb 1946; Edward Iveson, Julia Graves, Rudy Graves. (AU where Julia and Edward met in London, and not over her brother’s dead body. It still doesn’t go well, but at least history isn’t AU this time).
Summary: Edward’s assignment is proving to be more awkward than he expected (although Julia doesn’t think that’s a good enough excuse for having him in her flat uninvited).
***
Edward Iveson moved through the dingy bar still wearing his coat, his hat in his hand, and eyeing his surroundings with distaste as he searched for his quarry. He spotted her sitting at a table with another man beside her, a stranger to him, and that fact made waste no more time in reaching her.
“Excuse me,” he said to the man. “My seat, if you don’t mind.”
The man looked up at him slowly, then shrugged and left, enabling Edward to sit down beside the young woman. And that, he thought, wasn’t even the difficult part. He had some unwelcome things to explain to her and he was already unsure how she’d react when she saw him - if she’d remember him. He coughed and put his hat on the table. “Miss Graves,” he tried. “Miss Graves!”
She’d been leaning her head on her hands, and now she turned towards him slowly, losing her balance in the process, and looked at him.
“Good God,” he said in surprise, his heart instantly sinking further at the realisation he couldn’t avoid. “Miss Graves, are you drunk?”
She continued to stare for a while before putting her hands to her mouth as she laughed helplessly at him for what seemed to him to be at least ten minutes. Edward closed his eyes temporarily, embarrassed at how ridiculous he must have sounded - far too prissy and naïve for a place like this.
He rubbed his forehead, feeling tired. He had been worrying about explaining to her sober; he could hardly make the attempt if she was drunk. What had possessed her? Even with what little she knew as yet, it should hardly have seemed like a sensible thing to do in the circumstances. He leant forward, putting his hand to her arm cautiously. “Miss Graves, will you listen to me? I need to tell you something important.”
Miss Graves looked up again and frowned at him. “I know you,” she said eventually.
“Yes,” he said, grateful for any sort of cue. “Yes, you do. Now, Julia, please - put on your coat and come with me. I’ll tell you where your brother is.”
To his relief, she didn’t object. She managed to stand, and Edward put his arm around her, only lightly, to guide her across to the door. The room wasn’t large and he didn’t want her falling over anything on the way out, or suddenly taking against him and trying to run away.
He got her out without incident and they emerged into the dark and drizzle, Edward ushering Miss Graves further along, eager to be well away from the nightclub. He doubted that anyone else had been waiting there to pounce on either her or her brother, other than him, but it was always better to be safe rather than sorry.
Once they had reached the next street, he turned to her. “How do you feel?” he asked, hoping, if rather optimistically, that the night air might have cleared her head. He cautiously released her.
She looked at him hard, trying to make him come into focus. “Who are you? I know you, but I don’t - oops,” she finished, catching awkwardly at his coat and he steadied her again, unable to help a sidelong glance to check if anyone was watching.
“I’m Edward Iveson,” he said. “Now, look, Miss Graves -” He had to stop again, since she only tugged away from him and turned around to throw up against the wall.
Edward looked around again, embarrassed still further by the whole situation. “Oh, God,” he said under his breath. If she’d wanted to pay him out for their previous meeting, she was certainly going the right way about it.
There was clearly no way he could have the conversation he needed to have with her, and until he had, he couldn’t leave her alone. He could have tried to get her to a safe house, but he wasn’t at all sure he could get her to understand that, either, and it would in those circumstances amount to kidnapping, which was not something Edward wanted to add to his CV at this late stage in his time with MI5.
He got her into a cab, and instructed the driver to take them to her flat, and then turned his attention back to her.
“My brother,” she said, as the cab set off with a jolt; the driver seemingly having decided to tackle London’s roads at night as an obstacle course to be navigated at top speed. Edward only hoped it didn’t set her off feeling sick again.
“He wasn’t there. You said - you did say -?” She stopped and looked at him.
Edward nodded. “Yes. Look, he’s all right, I promise. He’s with us and you’ll see him again soon. We’re just trying to make sure he stays all right. You too, if it comes to it.”
She said nothing then and he couldn’t really see her reaction with only the intermittent lamplight to illuminate the cab. He had a feeling, though, that she was crying for a moment. After that, she passed out on him, and he had to hang onto her to make sure she didn’t get thrown about the cab every time the driver turned a corner.
Matters didn’t particularly once they reached her home - a Victorian building, now divided up into flats. He had to drag Miss Graves out of the cab and pay the driver, while trying not to allow himself to wonder what the man thought about the pair of them.
“Come on,” said Edward to Miss Graves, having managed to rouse her somewhat now that they were out in the street. “Let’s get you inside.”
She murmured something he couldn’t quite catch, but he thought it might have been that she’d had enough, and then she slid down and sat on the doorstep.
Edward bit back exasperation, and then borrowed her bag to hunt for the key. And these places, he thought, often had the landlord or lady living in the ground floor flat and renting out the rest. If so, and they made this sort of entrance, Miss Graves would probably get politely asked to leave sometime soon.
“Hey,” said Miss Graves, stirring again, “give that back.” She tried to hit him, but thoroughly ineffectually, only over-balancing herself.
Edward turned. “All I want is the key -” He looked at her again, and then sighed, and set about picking the lock and hoped a constable wouldn’t come walking by. Not that he didn’t have his card, but it wouldn’t look good. To his relief, he got it open, and then turned back to haul Miss Graves up and in through the front door, more impatient than gentle by this time.
“You’re still here,” she said suddenly, sitting where he’d dumped her at the bottom of the stairs while he shut the door behind them.
Edward moved over to her. “Yes, I am,” he said, helping her up again, and keeping his voice to a whisper. “Believe me, I don’t want to be. Now, come on. Which is your flat?”
“I know the way,” she said, suddenly stubborn, and trying to stand alone. “You can go.”
Edward sighed. “Not yet, I can’t. Now, it’s upstairs, yes?”
~o~
Julia awoke slowly. The sun was already coming through the crack in the curtains, and she wondered unwillingly, as she opened her eyes, what the time must be. That slight movement seemed to bring all the consequences of last night to bear on her at the same moment: her head hurt and she felt thoroughly awful. She pressed her face back into the pillow and hoped everything would go away.
Memories of the previous night crept back slowly. Oh, God, she thought. Rudy! She’d been waiting for him and he’d never come. The note had been nothing but a cruel joke. Forget however rotten she felt this morning; she simply didn’t want to get up and go on any more, regardless. She didn’t know why somebody would do that, but it must be the end, she thought: Rudy must be dead, after all.
But then, she wondered, what had happened after that? She had a feeling someone else had turned up to meet her after all - she thought they’d helped her back here, but it was far too unclear. She cursed herself wearily. Trying to drown her sorrows must have seemed reasonable last night, when she could tell herself there wouldn’t be another morning, but now there was, she couldn’t help feeling it had been a terrible plan.
But surely, she told herself, the person who’d brought her back must have been Rudy after all. That didn’t exactly fit with the vague idea in her head, but who else could it have been? There was no other rational explanation. Gingerly, she sat up, and risked opening her eyes. “Rudy?” she tried, and winced at the sound of her own voice.
“Er, no,” said someone else from the doorway. “Now, don’t panic, Miss Graves, but -”
Julia wasn’t sure what current medical thought was on terror for curing a hangover, but even if it didn’t make her head stop throbbing, she felt abruptly more alert in a most unwelcome way. She gave a slight gasp and disappeared under the covers and closed her eyes, her heart thudding hard into the mattress. It was like nightmares she’d had about someone being in the room, except it was true. It dawned on her that her reaction wasn’t exactly rational: hiding under the bedclothes wasn’t going to make the stranger go away. Unless, she thought with not very much hope, she was hallucinating?
“Miss Graves -” he said again, and there was no doubt that he was definitely real. The thought occurred to her then that she had little memory of last night and she’d been more drunk than she had ever been in her life before - in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever really been properly drunk before - and the most obvious explanation was that she’d invited him back here herself.
After a moment of wondering whether or not it was actually possible to die of embarrassment, she thought further and realised that she was more fully dressed than usual for lying in bed, rather than the reverse. She still had on her blouse, skirt, stockings and underwear. That didn’t mean she hadn’t brought the stranger back, but it did at least suggest that nothing much could have happened. Julia cautiously remerged from under the covers and tried to focus on the man, but he remained obstinately blurry from this distance. He hadn’t moved past the doorway yet and he also hadn’t tried to kill her while she was stupidly cowering under the covers, so she took that as encouragement and managed to swallow back some her initial panic.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “I was hoping you were awake. I made some coffee - you should probably have some.”
Julia decided that she was at so many disadvantages in this situation that she didn’t know where to start, but she could at least remedy one of them. “All right,” she said. “But go away. I’ll come out there.”
Julia emerged from her bedroom, not feeling much better, but having straightened her clothes and brushed her hair and managing to be upright and not horizontal at least. She crossed to the table, and he pushed a cup of coffee across at her. She eyed it suspiciously for a moment and then thought that that was a belated precaution, considering, and took it, curling her hands around the cup.
She lifted her head, taking a deep breath and ignoring the embarrassment she felt. “I don’t know what I said or did last night - but, really, you had better leave now!”
“I’d be happy to,” he said. At close quarters, he wasn’t especially threatening in appearance - apart from being a strange man in her flat, which was a special category of scary in itself. He was thin, wearing a decent if now rumpled suit, and he’d looked fairly tall before in the doorway. At the moment, he seemed more anxious than anything else. “Unfortunately, I can’t until I’ve spoken to you and you’ll need to at least drink that before you’re up to explanations.”
Julia shrugged. He was probably right, but mostly she wanted him to go away and not be there any more.
“I’m Edward Iveson,” he said, and showed her a card. She wasn’t sure what it was other than official. That was reassuring on one level and deeply worrying on another, as if the government had decided to inspect her for something terribly important at the worst possible moment.
He watched her reaction and gave a slight, wry smile: “Actually, we met once before. You didn’t like me much then, either.”
Julia drank the coffee and then headed off to the bathroom, where a quick wash and some fresh clothes did at last make her feel a little more human. The coffee had probably helped, too. When she returned to the main room, she found that Mr Iveson had disappeared into her tiny kitchen. Curious, she followed him in and found him standing there, looking into her cupboards.
“Do you mind?” she said, shutting the door of the one he was currently contemplating. “Not that there isn’t anything in there that the whole world can’t see if it wants to, but I still think it’s a bit rude to go looking.”
Mr Iveson turned. “I found the bread,” he said, absently, still glancing around, “but I was hoping you might have some eggs.”
“Well, if you spend the night in people’s flats without asking, you can’t expect breakfast to be laid on just the way you like it,” said Julia. “And, no, I don’t at the moment. Only some powdered stuff.”
Mr Iveson stopped to look at her properly. “I wasn’t proposing to eat your food,” he said. “I thought that you ought to have something. You were - ah - fairly unwell last night and I should imagine you’d feel a good deal more yourself if you could manage it.”
“Oh,” said Julia, having an unwelcome memory of that herself and feeling the warmth of humiliation steal into her face. “Well. I shall see if I can manage some porridge and if you get out of my kitchen now and are very quiet while I try, you can have some too.”
Mr Iveson raised an eyebrow. “That sounds worryingly like a threat.”
“Or,” said Julia, not yet in a fit state to defend her cooking skills, “some toast. But absolutely no marmalade. And not just because there isn’t any.”
The porridge did help, Julia found. She also reflected, on letting Mr Iveson have a much-begrudged piece of toast, some things were too inbred even to be ignored by annoyance or a hangover. She sighed and said, “There is some honey if you wanted it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mr Iveson. “You’ve already made it plain enough that I don’t deserve anything of the sort. I wouldn’t dare.”
Julia might even have smiled, but she was steeling herself for the next part. “Well, what is it that you wanted to say? Because I hope you have a very good explanation for this.”
“Your brother’s got himself involved with some interesting people,” said Mr Iveson, becoming serious again. “Not anything too alarming - a pacifist group out in Germany. Now, we’re not especially worried about that in itself, but we believe the group has been infiltrated by some far more dangerous people. We think they’re using him and we needed to have a word with him.”
Julia put down her spoon on the table, curling her fingers around it, finding it hard to think of words. She swallowed and then tried, anyway: “So - you’ve arrested him?”
“Not exactly. He’ll be here to see you soon, I’m sure. I was supposed to pick you up and explain - take you to a safe house if needed, but that didn’t seem to be a good idea yesterday. I don’t think there’s really any threat to you, but,” he said, handing her a piece of card with a number on it, “if anything worries you, if anything strikes you as odd, ring this number. Ask how your Aunty Marigold is.”
Julia took it and then looked up at him. “Aunty Marigold? Not really?”
“Yes,” he said, and gave a slight, embarrassed shrug. “I didn’t choose it.”
She took this in slowly. “But Rudy is alive? I had it in my head that you said that yesterday, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, looking suddenly more worried. “I thought I’d said. I’m so sorry, Miss Graves. To the best of my knowledge, he was picked up yesterday - he’ll be talking to my colleagues and hopefully he’ll agree to help us and there will soon be an end to it.”
Julia closed her eyes. “I didn’t quite dare to believe it. I’d had this odd note, you see, from someone, telling me that he’d asked them to send it and that he would meet me at that awful club. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t just send a telegram himself - I didn’t dare believe it was real - and then he didn’t arrive after all.”
“And so you decided to get drunk?” said Mr Iveson suddenly, as if he couldn’t bite back the urge to criticise her any longer. “If you had any doubts about that note or why you were there - then why on earth would you think that was a good idea? It was hardly sensible anyway, but in that case -”
Julia raised her head sharply; too sharply. She gave a wince. “That was my affair,” she said, but she couldn’t leave it at that; she didn’t owe him an explanation, especially not if he was going to shout at her, but she couldn’t help the urge to defend herself against his disapproval. “It wasn’t like that.” She swallowed, finding it more effort than she’d expected to continue. “My family left here before war broke out. I stayed to finish school, and I didn’t hear any news of them for all that time. I told myself they must be alive, or at least Mother would be, maybe Rudy, too, even if something had happened to Christy. I made myself believe it, rather than think otherwise and give up. But the first thing I heard after the war was over was from a family friend, that Mother had died and they thought Christy had too. I’d been waiting - hoping - all that time. I know far worse things happened everywhere in the war, but it was still - rather a blow. Finally, I got a letter from Rudy - and then nothing since until this note. When it turned out that wasn’t from Rudy, or so I thought, I didn’t care. I didn’t care what happened next, I just wanted not to be there, not to know about any of the rest of it. And I didn’t exactly mean to get so drunk, even then, but - it seems I did somehow -”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr Iveson, halting her. “You’re right - it’s none of my business.”
“Well, exactly,” Julia said. “And it’s hardly as if it’s something I make a habit of - and I think it’s very unfair of you to turn up the one time I do something like that and lecture me, especially if your people - whoever you are - are the ones who stopped Rudy from getting there in the first place.”
Mr Iveson got up, and she put her head down on the table.
“I do remember you now,” she said, her voice muffled. “That party. You weren’t very nice to me then, either.”
“Don’t lose the number,” he said. “And if your brother isn’t being co-operative, try and persuade him - for his own sake, not ours. Don’t forget to telephone that number if you need to.”
She raised her head again. “You want me to spy on him for you, you mean?”
“No,” said Mr Iveson. “Hardly.”
Julia knew there was something else she had to say before he left, much as she didn’t want to. “Mr Iveson,” she said, as he reached the door. “I suppose, despite everything, I should say thank you. For seeing me home, that is. I’m not going to thank you for staying here, or for spying on us.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Mr Iveson, “and I don’t suppose it’s very much, I am sorry about that.”
~o~
Edward walked back into the safe house where they’d been talking to Rudy Graves. “Sir,” he said, catching his superior, Captain Andrews. “How is it going?”
“He doesn’t know anything, he says; he’s just here to see his sister. Not well, I’m afraid. Still, it’s his bloody funeral, not ours. We shouldn’t have too much problem keeping tabs on him now.”
Edward paused, rubbing his forehead. He hadn’t really slept on the previous night. He’d dozed off here and there, but Miss Graves’s tiny sofa was no sensible place to try and spend the night. “May I try?”
“Five minutes,” Andrews said. “We’re letting him go then.”
Edward walked into the soulless dining room of the safe house, and sat down opposite Rudy. Having left Julia only half an hour or so before, the resemblance between them was unmistakable, and not merely because Rudy was glaring at him as much as his sister had.
“Mr Graves,” Edward said. “I’m sure you’ve heard everything my colleagues have had to say, so I won’t repeat anything, but maybe before you walk out, you might want to consider your sister.”
“Is that a threat?” said Rudy. “Because there must be someone I can complain to about that.”
Edward leant forward. “No, it isn’t. We’ve both got people giving us orders and none of them care all that much about what happens to you or your sister or me. The people currently using you certainly don’t give a damn. You might be ready to die for your principles, or just because you can’t believe people like us, but you might want to stop and think about her. You’re all she’s got left and I get the impression she’s not going to take it well if anything happens to you. It’s not out of the question, either, that she could get hurt if things go wrong. Would you want that?”
“You seem very concerned about my sister,” said Rudy suddenly, in an accusatory manner that Edward found highly irritating and entirely beside the point.
“What I was hoping, Mr Graves, was that you might be - you damned well ought to be!”
Rudy stared back at him. “Well, I am, but I don’t know anything about any of this. What I’d like is for you people to let me go and see her, that’s all.”
It wouldn’t be all, thought Edward as he left the room. He wished he’d been able to leave the service last week, not next month. He’d been here for long enough; he’d done his job well, and he’d even enjoyed it, but lately he kept coming up against the cost: the way the secrecy cut him off from other people, the lies, but most of all, how easy it was to think of people as pieces in a game, until you lost one and found that no amount of rematches could bring them back.
***
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution (Divide & Rule)
Flavor(s): Prune #1 (a friend is someone who has the same enemies); White Chocolate #7 (embarrassment)
Toppings/Extras: Chopped Nuts + Gummy Bunnies (also for hc_bingo square “drowning”)
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3914
Notes: Jan/Feb 1946; Edward Iveson, Julia Graves, Rudy Graves. (AU where Julia and Edward met in London, and not over her brother’s dead body. It still doesn’t go well, but at least history isn’t AU this time).
Summary: Edward’s assignment is proving to be more awkward than he expected (although Julia doesn’t think that’s a good enough excuse for having him in her flat uninvited).
***
Edward Iveson moved through the dingy bar still wearing his coat, his hat in his hand, and eyeing his surroundings with distaste as he searched for his quarry. He spotted her sitting at a table with another man beside her, a stranger to him, and that fact made waste no more time in reaching her.
“Excuse me,” he said to the man. “My seat, if you don’t mind.”
The man looked up at him slowly, then shrugged and left, enabling Edward to sit down beside the young woman. And that, he thought, wasn’t even the difficult part. He had some unwelcome things to explain to her and he was already unsure how she’d react when she saw him - if she’d remember him. He coughed and put his hat on the table. “Miss Graves,” he tried. “Miss Graves!”
She’d been leaning her head on her hands, and now she turned towards him slowly, losing her balance in the process, and looked at him.
“Good God,” he said in surprise, his heart instantly sinking further at the realisation he couldn’t avoid. “Miss Graves, are you drunk?”
She continued to stare for a while before putting her hands to her mouth as she laughed helplessly at him for what seemed to him to be at least ten minutes. Edward closed his eyes temporarily, embarrassed at how ridiculous he must have sounded - far too prissy and naïve for a place like this.
He rubbed his forehead, feeling tired. He had been worrying about explaining to her sober; he could hardly make the attempt if she was drunk. What had possessed her? Even with what little she knew as yet, it should hardly have seemed like a sensible thing to do in the circumstances. He leant forward, putting his hand to her arm cautiously. “Miss Graves, will you listen to me? I need to tell you something important.”
Miss Graves looked up again and frowned at him. “I know you,” she said eventually.
“Yes,” he said, grateful for any sort of cue. “Yes, you do. Now, Julia, please - put on your coat and come with me. I’ll tell you where your brother is.”
To his relief, she didn’t object. She managed to stand, and Edward put his arm around her, only lightly, to guide her across to the door. The room wasn’t large and he didn’t want her falling over anything on the way out, or suddenly taking against him and trying to run away.
He got her out without incident and they emerged into the dark and drizzle, Edward ushering Miss Graves further along, eager to be well away from the nightclub. He doubted that anyone else had been waiting there to pounce on either her or her brother, other than him, but it was always better to be safe rather than sorry.
Once they had reached the next street, he turned to her. “How do you feel?” he asked, hoping, if rather optimistically, that the night air might have cleared her head. He cautiously released her.
She looked at him hard, trying to make him come into focus. “Who are you? I know you, but I don’t - oops,” she finished, catching awkwardly at his coat and he steadied her again, unable to help a sidelong glance to check if anyone was watching.
“I’m Edward Iveson,” he said. “Now, look, Miss Graves -” He had to stop again, since she only tugged away from him and turned around to throw up against the wall.
Edward looked around again, embarrassed still further by the whole situation. “Oh, God,” he said under his breath. If she’d wanted to pay him out for their previous meeting, she was certainly going the right way about it.
There was clearly no way he could have the conversation he needed to have with her, and until he had, he couldn’t leave her alone. He could have tried to get her to a safe house, but he wasn’t at all sure he could get her to understand that, either, and it would in those circumstances amount to kidnapping, which was not something Edward wanted to add to his CV at this late stage in his time with MI5.
He got her into a cab, and instructed the driver to take them to her flat, and then turned his attention back to her.
“My brother,” she said, as the cab set off with a jolt; the driver seemingly having decided to tackle London’s roads at night as an obstacle course to be navigated at top speed. Edward only hoped it didn’t set her off feeling sick again.
“He wasn’t there. You said - you did say -?” She stopped and looked at him.
Edward nodded. “Yes. Look, he’s all right, I promise. He’s with us and you’ll see him again soon. We’re just trying to make sure he stays all right. You too, if it comes to it.”
She said nothing then and he couldn’t really see her reaction with only the intermittent lamplight to illuminate the cab. He had a feeling, though, that she was crying for a moment. After that, she passed out on him, and he had to hang onto her to make sure she didn’t get thrown about the cab every time the driver turned a corner.
Matters didn’t particularly once they reached her home - a Victorian building, now divided up into flats. He had to drag Miss Graves out of the cab and pay the driver, while trying not to allow himself to wonder what the man thought about the pair of them.
“Come on,” said Edward to Miss Graves, having managed to rouse her somewhat now that they were out in the street. “Let’s get you inside.”
She murmured something he couldn’t quite catch, but he thought it might have been that she’d had enough, and then she slid down and sat on the doorstep.
Edward bit back exasperation, and then borrowed her bag to hunt for the key. And these places, he thought, often had the landlord or lady living in the ground floor flat and renting out the rest. If so, and they made this sort of entrance, Miss Graves would probably get politely asked to leave sometime soon.
“Hey,” said Miss Graves, stirring again, “give that back.” She tried to hit him, but thoroughly ineffectually, only over-balancing herself.
Edward turned. “All I want is the key -” He looked at her again, and then sighed, and set about picking the lock and hoped a constable wouldn’t come walking by. Not that he didn’t have his card, but it wouldn’t look good. To his relief, he got it open, and then turned back to haul Miss Graves up and in through the front door, more impatient than gentle by this time.
“You’re still here,” she said suddenly, sitting where he’d dumped her at the bottom of the stairs while he shut the door behind them.
Edward moved over to her. “Yes, I am,” he said, helping her up again, and keeping his voice to a whisper. “Believe me, I don’t want to be. Now, come on. Which is your flat?”
“I know the way,” she said, suddenly stubborn, and trying to stand alone. “You can go.”
Edward sighed. “Not yet, I can’t. Now, it’s upstairs, yes?”
~o~
Julia awoke slowly. The sun was already coming through the crack in the curtains, and she wondered unwillingly, as she opened her eyes, what the time must be. That slight movement seemed to bring all the consequences of last night to bear on her at the same moment: her head hurt and she felt thoroughly awful. She pressed her face back into the pillow and hoped everything would go away.
Memories of the previous night crept back slowly. Oh, God, she thought. Rudy! She’d been waiting for him and he’d never come. The note had been nothing but a cruel joke. Forget however rotten she felt this morning; she simply didn’t want to get up and go on any more, regardless. She didn’t know why somebody would do that, but it must be the end, she thought: Rudy must be dead, after all.
But then, she wondered, what had happened after that? She had a feeling someone else had turned up to meet her after all - she thought they’d helped her back here, but it was far too unclear. She cursed herself wearily. Trying to drown her sorrows must have seemed reasonable last night, when she could tell herself there wouldn’t be another morning, but now there was, she couldn’t help feeling it had been a terrible plan.
But surely, she told herself, the person who’d brought her back must have been Rudy after all. That didn’t exactly fit with the vague idea in her head, but who else could it have been? There was no other rational explanation. Gingerly, she sat up, and risked opening her eyes. “Rudy?” she tried, and winced at the sound of her own voice.
“Er, no,” said someone else from the doorway. “Now, don’t panic, Miss Graves, but -”
Julia wasn’t sure what current medical thought was on terror for curing a hangover, but even if it didn’t make her head stop throbbing, she felt abruptly more alert in a most unwelcome way. She gave a slight gasp and disappeared under the covers and closed her eyes, her heart thudding hard into the mattress. It was like nightmares she’d had about someone being in the room, except it was true. It dawned on her that her reaction wasn’t exactly rational: hiding under the bedclothes wasn’t going to make the stranger go away. Unless, she thought with not very much hope, she was hallucinating?
“Miss Graves -” he said again, and there was no doubt that he was definitely real. The thought occurred to her then that she had little memory of last night and she’d been more drunk than she had ever been in her life before - in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever really been properly drunk before - and the most obvious explanation was that she’d invited him back here herself.
After a moment of wondering whether or not it was actually possible to die of embarrassment, she thought further and realised that she was more fully dressed than usual for lying in bed, rather than the reverse. She still had on her blouse, skirt, stockings and underwear. That didn’t mean she hadn’t brought the stranger back, but it did at least suggest that nothing much could have happened. Julia cautiously remerged from under the covers and tried to focus on the man, but he remained obstinately blurry from this distance. He hadn’t moved past the doorway yet and he also hadn’t tried to kill her while she was stupidly cowering under the covers, so she took that as encouragement and managed to swallow back some her initial panic.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “I was hoping you were awake. I made some coffee - you should probably have some.”
Julia decided that she was at so many disadvantages in this situation that she didn’t know where to start, but she could at least remedy one of them. “All right,” she said. “But go away. I’ll come out there.”
Julia emerged from her bedroom, not feeling much better, but having straightened her clothes and brushed her hair and managing to be upright and not horizontal at least. She crossed to the table, and he pushed a cup of coffee across at her. She eyed it suspiciously for a moment and then thought that that was a belated precaution, considering, and took it, curling her hands around the cup.
She lifted her head, taking a deep breath and ignoring the embarrassment she felt. “I don’t know what I said or did last night - but, really, you had better leave now!”
“I’d be happy to,” he said. At close quarters, he wasn’t especially threatening in appearance - apart from being a strange man in her flat, which was a special category of scary in itself. He was thin, wearing a decent if now rumpled suit, and he’d looked fairly tall before in the doorway. At the moment, he seemed more anxious than anything else. “Unfortunately, I can’t until I’ve spoken to you and you’ll need to at least drink that before you’re up to explanations.”
Julia shrugged. He was probably right, but mostly she wanted him to go away and not be there any more.
“I’m Edward Iveson,” he said, and showed her a card. She wasn’t sure what it was other than official. That was reassuring on one level and deeply worrying on another, as if the government had decided to inspect her for something terribly important at the worst possible moment.
He watched her reaction and gave a slight, wry smile: “Actually, we met once before. You didn’t like me much then, either.”
Julia drank the coffee and then headed off to the bathroom, where a quick wash and some fresh clothes did at last make her feel a little more human. The coffee had probably helped, too. When she returned to the main room, she found that Mr Iveson had disappeared into her tiny kitchen. Curious, she followed him in and found him standing there, looking into her cupboards.
“Do you mind?” she said, shutting the door of the one he was currently contemplating. “Not that there isn’t anything in there that the whole world can’t see if it wants to, but I still think it’s a bit rude to go looking.”
Mr Iveson turned. “I found the bread,” he said, absently, still glancing around, “but I was hoping you might have some eggs.”
“Well, if you spend the night in people’s flats without asking, you can’t expect breakfast to be laid on just the way you like it,” said Julia. “And, no, I don’t at the moment. Only some powdered stuff.”
Mr Iveson stopped to look at her properly. “I wasn’t proposing to eat your food,” he said. “I thought that you ought to have something. You were - ah - fairly unwell last night and I should imagine you’d feel a good deal more yourself if you could manage it.”
“Oh,” said Julia, having an unwelcome memory of that herself and feeling the warmth of humiliation steal into her face. “Well. I shall see if I can manage some porridge and if you get out of my kitchen now and are very quiet while I try, you can have some too.”
Mr Iveson raised an eyebrow. “That sounds worryingly like a threat.”
“Or,” said Julia, not yet in a fit state to defend her cooking skills, “some toast. But absolutely no marmalade. And not just because there isn’t any.”
The porridge did help, Julia found. She also reflected, on letting Mr Iveson have a much-begrudged piece of toast, some things were too inbred even to be ignored by annoyance or a hangover. She sighed and said, “There is some honey if you wanted it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mr Iveson. “You’ve already made it plain enough that I don’t deserve anything of the sort. I wouldn’t dare.”
Julia might even have smiled, but she was steeling herself for the next part. “Well, what is it that you wanted to say? Because I hope you have a very good explanation for this.”
“Your brother’s got himself involved with some interesting people,” said Mr Iveson, becoming serious again. “Not anything too alarming - a pacifist group out in Germany. Now, we’re not especially worried about that in itself, but we believe the group has been infiltrated by some far more dangerous people. We think they’re using him and we needed to have a word with him.”
Julia put down her spoon on the table, curling her fingers around it, finding it hard to think of words. She swallowed and then tried, anyway: “So - you’ve arrested him?”
“Not exactly. He’ll be here to see you soon, I’m sure. I was supposed to pick you up and explain - take you to a safe house if needed, but that didn’t seem to be a good idea yesterday. I don’t think there’s really any threat to you, but,” he said, handing her a piece of card with a number on it, “if anything worries you, if anything strikes you as odd, ring this number. Ask how your Aunty Marigold is.”
Julia took it and then looked up at him. “Aunty Marigold? Not really?”
“Yes,” he said, and gave a slight, embarrassed shrug. “I didn’t choose it.”
She took this in slowly. “But Rudy is alive? I had it in my head that you said that yesterday, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, looking suddenly more worried. “I thought I’d said. I’m so sorry, Miss Graves. To the best of my knowledge, he was picked up yesterday - he’ll be talking to my colleagues and hopefully he’ll agree to help us and there will soon be an end to it.”
Julia closed her eyes. “I didn’t quite dare to believe it. I’d had this odd note, you see, from someone, telling me that he’d asked them to send it and that he would meet me at that awful club. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t just send a telegram himself - I didn’t dare believe it was real - and then he didn’t arrive after all.”
“And so you decided to get drunk?” said Mr Iveson suddenly, as if he couldn’t bite back the urge to criticise her any longer. “If you had any doubts about that note or why you were there - then why on earth would you think that was a good idea? It was hardly sensible anyway, but in that case -”
Julia raised her head sharply; too sharply. She gave a wince. “That was my affair,” she said, but she couldn’t leave it at that; she didn’t owe him an explanation, especially not if he was going to shout at her, but she couldn’t help the urge to defend herself against his disapproval. “It wasn’t like that.” She swallowed, finding it more effort than she’d expected to continue. “My family left here before war broke out. I stayed to finish school, and I didn’t hear any news of them for all that time. I told myself they must be alive, or at least Mother would be, maybe Rudy, too, even if something had happened to Christy. I made myself believe it, rather than think otherwise and give up. But the first thing I heard after the war was over was from a family friend, that Mother had died and they thought Christy had too. I’d been waiting - hoping - all that time. I know far worse things happened everywhere in the war, but it was still - rather a blow. Finally, I got a letter from Rudy - and then nothing since until this note. When it turned out that wasn’t from Rudy, or so I thought, I didn’t care. I didn’t care what happened next, I just wanted not to be there, not to know about any of the rest of it. And I didn’t exactly mean to get so drunk, even then, but - it seems I did somehow -”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr Iveson, halting her. “You’re right - it’s none of my business.”
“Well, exactly,” Julia said. “And it’s hardly as if it’s something I make a habit of - and I think it’s very unfair of you to turn up the one time I do something like that and lecture me, especially if your people - whoever you are - are the ones who stopped Rudy from getting there in the first place.”
Mr Iveson got up, and she put her head down on the table.
“I do remember you now,” she said, her voice muffled. “That party. You weren’t very nice to me then, either.”
“Don’t lose the number,” he said. “And if your brother isn’t being co-operative, try and persuade him - for his own sake, not ours. Don’t forget to telephone that number if you need to.”
She raised her head again. “You want me to spy on him for you, you mean?”
“No,” said Mr Iveson. “Hardly.”
Julia knew there was something else she had to say before he left, much as she didn’t want to. “Mr Iveson,” she said, as he reached the door. “I suppose, despite everything, I should say thank you. For seeing me home, that is. I’m not going to thank you for staying here, or for spying on us.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Mr Iveson, “and I don’t suppose it’s very much, I am sorry about that.”
~o~
Edward walked back into the safe house where they’d been talking to Rudy Graves. “Sir,” he said, catching his superior, Captain Andrews. “How is it going?”
“He doesn’t know anything, he says; he’s just here to see his sister. Not well, I’m afraid. Still, it’s his bloody funeral, not ours. We shouldn’t have too much problem keeping tabs on him now.”
Edward paused, rubbing his forehead. He hadn’t really slept on the previous night. He’d dozed off here and there, but Miss Graves’s tiny sofa was no sensible place to try and spend the night. “May I try?”
“Five minutes,” Andrews said. “We’re letting him go then.”
Edward walked into the soulless dining room of the safe house, and sat down opposite Rudy. Having left Julia only half an hour or so before, the resemblance between them was unmistakable, and not merely because Rudy was glaring at him as much as his sister had.
“Mr Graves,” Edward said. “I’m sure you’ve heard everything my colleagues have had to say, so I won’t repeat anything, but maybe before you walk out, you might want to consider your sister.”
“Is that a threat?” said Rudy. “Because there must be someone I can complain to about that.”
Edward leant forward. “No, it isn’t. We’ve both got people giving us orders and none of them care all that much about what happens to you or your sister or me. The people currently using you certainly don’t give a damn. You might be ready to die for your principles, or just because you can’t believe people like us, but you might want to stop and think about her. You’re all she’s got left and I get the impression she’s not going to take it well if anything happens to you. It’s not out of the question, either, that she could get hurt if things go wrong. Would you want that?”
“You seem very concerned about my sister,” said Rudy suddenly, in an accusatory manner that Edward found highly irritating and entirely beside the point.
“What I was hoping, Mr Graves, was that you might be - you damned well ought to be!”
Rudy stared back at him. “Well, I am, but I don’t know anything about any of this. What I’d like is for you people to let me go and see her, that’s all.”
It wouldn’t be all, thought Edward as he left the room. He wished he’d been able to leave the service last week, not next month. He’d been here for long enough; he’d done his job well, and he’d even enjoyed it, but lately he kept coming up against the cost: the way the secrecy cut him off from other people, the lies, but most of all, how easy it was to think of people as pieces in a game, until you lost one and found that no amount of rematches could bring them back.
***