Poetry by Eileen Hay

I’m “puppy-sitting” for a friend

And oh, he is so sweet!

With rolls of fat and too-large paws He’s clumsy on his feet!

“Which bars?”

“Miss Warren, I can’t know all the bars. My job takes time as well as skill.”

“You could list all the local papers in Bristol, and where the BBC’s studio is, and –”

“An engineer trying to tell a British agent how to do his job?”

Jane pressed the crumbs of her rock cake together.

“It’s just that if one had a map, and a route drawn through all those places, and if one knew the habits of a Nazi one had been tracking for . . .” she counted ostentatiously on her fingers “. . . fifteen months, one might have oneself a plan.”

“Plans, plans. This is spy-craft, not a fête.”

“Ever run a fête?”

“Nope.”

“It’s hard.”

“I bet you’re good at it.” Eliot was like all men, Jane observed: rub away at the veneer, spend some time face-to-face over a teapot, and you began to see the cracks.

He was actually frantic to hand this Ffoulks-Roberts over for interrogation and a prison sentence.

“I’m supposed to report at the end of the fortnight,” he said quietly.

“With or without your Nazi sympathiser?”

“Well, with, obviously. I will get him. I’m going to start just as soon as I’ve seen you to a train to Paddington.”

“I can look after myself.” “I’m sure that’s true.”

“So you follow your man – use his every habit, every movement, and eventually you nab him with his target behind the bike sheds.” He sniffed.

“A bit more complicated than that.”

It seemed to Jane that he could go about this with a lot more rigour.

If he noted the rituals of his mark, and knew the city and its points of interest, could he not identify three things: where Ffoulks might go next, who he might meet there, and at what moments these encounters might occur?

“It seems to me that Mr Ffoulks has a plan and you don’t,” Jane said.

He looked at her.

“I’m always open to ideas,” he said.

“Really?” Jane asked. “I might incorporate your suggestions.” He grinned.

“They’re copyright. Jane Elizabeth Warren, Miss, twenty-fourth February 1940,” Jane said. “But I could bring them –”

“If you think you’re joining me, then you’ve got another think coming.”

“You have three maps of Bristol at different scales?” He frowned.

“Got a note of every available telephone, Lyons Cornerhouse and pub? Know where he might buy toothpaste?”

“Of course not. Toothpaste?”

Jane shrugged.

“He’s bound to brush his teeth and, from what I could see, he was travelling very light indeed.

“Got a local directory?” Jane patted her bag, and Eliot raised his eyes to heaven.

“Tell me about your boyfriend who’ll break my nose if I put you in danger.”

“There isn’t one, as well you know, because I was on my way to a new life in aerospace engineering, until you messed up my –”

“Oh, yes,” he interrupted. “No boyfriend. Well, all right – you can tag along, overnight maybe, until I’m up and running. I’m the boss, mind.”

Less than 24 hours later Jane found herself in a gentlemen’s convenience in the Kingsdown area of Bristol.

She was standing on the lavatory seat, with her accomplice standing an inch away with his little portable tape recorder in his hand.

They stared at each other as a plummy-voiced man passed money and instructions to a youth they’d seen leaving the office of a local newspaper.

Jane thought she’d burst if she held her breath any longer.

When the external door slammed shut and two sets of footsteps hurried away, she exhaled like a steam engine.

“I told you! I looked at that route map I drew, and his bed and breakfast hotel and the likely spots, and I just knew!

“Did you get it on tape?” “Yup.” His eyes were shining. “This is it! I can get to the police now, and have him brought in.”

Jane rummaged in her pocket for a piece of paper.

“There’s a phone box on the corner of Henrietta Street and Alfred Place.”

“You and your lists!” he said. He flung his arms around her.

In the frantic past few hours she had almost forgotten her attraction towards him, and she was suddenly embarrassed.

“It smells something awful in here,” she said.

“Let’s get out,” he said, looking very awkward, too, in the enclosed space.

“Um, you’ll be wanting to get on.

“I will naturally inform the agency of your efforts, and so on and so forth.”

They burst out into the fresh, damp air.

“Great job,” he said. “Yes,” Jane agreed. “Ffoulks has no idea you’ve got him.”

She hesitated, unable to think of a way to stay with him. She felt desperation rising in her throat.

“You ought to make that call.”

There was no reason for her to hang around. It was done. She could not possibly stay another night in Bristol. Even if she had the money.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” Jane replied. “Great job.”

A bus approached, dark green and slick with rain.

“The number three,” Jane said. “It passes the hotel.”

“So you can pick up your bag –”

“And catch the next one to the station, yes.”

“You should be a tourist guide with your encyclopaedic mind.”

“I’m just organised.”

Jane got on the bus feeling numb, despite her triumph.

****

Three weeks later a letter arrived at her parents’

Croydon house. It was an offer of a job in research from the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

The letter read: Your name has been resubmitted by a government department.

Jane imagined Miles Eliot in an office, champing at the bit to be back in the field, but pausing to apply to his superiors for her.

Jane had taken a temporary job in a radio repair shop and on this chilly Sunday her diagram of career progression was smoothed out on the kitchen table, yellowing.

The Bristol offer was marvellous, but her heart was not in her to-do lists, not in quite the same way as it had been.

That now seemed like a distant memory, and she wondered if it had ever really happened.

Then a note came from Eliot himself, smudged and blotchy.

Jane recalled a conversation in which she had extolled the virtues of regular fountain pen maintenance to Miles Eliot, and he had laughed at her.

Possible debrief required,

the note said. If available, meet on down platform, Paddington, Thurs 21st.

Then the handwriting changed and so did the ink colour. Jane smiled, suspecting that he had sat in front of the note mulling what to say, and that his pen had run dry.

She wondered who had suggested the debrief, or, indeed, if anybody had.

****

Rain was coming down in sheets as Jane waited on the platform.

Passengers huddled undercover by the hoardings but she got wet – there was no way she was going to be hidden from view at a moment like this.

He came out of the smoke, running, his brown mac flying behind him, and Jane caught her breath.

She had been waiting for the next kiss, and now . . . now it was only seconds away.

The End.