FROM FITZROY'S PRIVATE DIARY (EXTRACT 6)
My career in the service began with naïveté and death. The naïveté was my own. Fortunately, the death was not. Perhaps it would have been better if it had.
One day, I will share that story with someone, but I have never yet met anyone to whom I could tell the whole truth - regardless of whether or not they signed the Official Secrets Act. Of course, when this all happened, it didn’t even exist. Word of a gentleman and all that. The idea that a woman could ever enter the service would have been despatched with scorn. However, the idea that a woman might be a rebel was quite different.
When I emerged from school, no one quite knew what to do with me. My father certainly didn’t want me at home. My brothers and sisters were all set on breeding with their spouses. In fact, before I even reached the age of fifteen, I believe I was an uncle. Cecilia, or Catherine, or maybe Helen? I never could keep all my sibling’s offspring in mind. After all, the youngest of them was a decade ahead of me. None of them wanted a young man of unknown capability under their roof. They sent me to Oxford. I can’t say I worked for my place, but I have an unusual facility with language. I see it as patterns and codes, both of which I am especially good, if I say so myself, at solving.
So, there I was at Oxford, studying - or meant to be. I despised the attempt to learn about cultures without visiting them, and the linguistic studies didn’t even make me break a sweat. Suffice it to say I was not popular with my fellow students. Although the daughter of one my professors had a fondness for me, I thought it better to be discreet.
By the time the Long Vac had come around, I had planned an expedition worthy of a first-rate explorer. My father did not lack for money, so I felt confident that he would gladly shell out for me to go on my travels. If once there, dangers prevented my return, I did not think he would mind particularly or perhaps even notice.
However, my plans were thwarted when I received a copperplate invitation to visit an old acquaintance of my fathers at this club. By this time, I had everything in readiness and was due to be away within forty-eight hours. I often wonder what kind of life I might have had if I had ignored that summons.
I met with – let’s call him Mr Minister – and he bought me an excellent brandy. I sat back in the wing backed leather chair in the cosy brown and red room and sipped my libation, never dreaming that my world was about to be turned upside down.
‘Your father has been in touch,’ said Minister. ‘He appears to feel you are drifting a bit.’
‘I am afraid I do not follow, sir,’ I said.
‘He makes you a discretionary allowance, does he not?’
I nodded, feeling embarrassed.
‘And you are aware that on your twenty-first birthday next year you will inherit the proceeds of your mother’s dowry?’
I expect at this point I gaped like a fish. I had always assumed my father had married my mother for her money. She was certainly beautiful, but half his age and he already had numerous offspring.
‘She insisted it was invested for you. I believe it is now a tidy sum. The family solicitor will be in contact with you, doubtless on your birthday. But it is too vulgar to speak of money, suffice it to say, you will be a man of means, able to live your life more or less as you wish.’ He paused and lowered his chin to give a stare I could only assume he meant to be meaningful. Back then, I was as about as respectful to the average older authoritarian as I am now.
‘I presume you are trying to impress upon me that I will no longer be dependent on the allowance my father gives me?’
He gave a grumbling, phlegmy cough. ‘One side effect, I suppose. No, what I meant was that you are free to make something of your life in a way others are not.’
‘In what way?’
‘Good heavens, man! By serving King and Country of course.’
In those days it was really as simply as that to get recruited into the service. The fact I didn’t need money, and therefore to be paid, along with coming from the right stables, and not being so inbred I couldn’t count my own toes, wrapped it all up in a bow for them. Whether or not I had aptitude for the profession was neither here nor there. I would learn or I would die. As a younger, and unwanted son, dying would do my father the ultimate favour of some aged gentleman discreetly coming up to him at his club and letting him know I had done ‘rather well’, dying for King and Country. My father, in all likelihood, should this have occurred, would have been the most pleased with me that he had ever been. I was rich, well-bred and dispensable – the perfect fit for a junior spy in those days. So, instead of my long imagined and wanted trip, I was sent off to a discreet house in the country where I learnt the rudiments of self-defence and brushed up on my sword play and shooting. At the latter I was something of genius. When they started trying to teach me codes, I ended up showing them how to improve theirs.
Imperceptibly, I moved from dispensable to mildly useful. At this point my training diverted firmly into observation and information extraction by subtler means.
I remember telling my instructor I didn’t care who asked me, but I wasn’t turning into some ‘damn gigolo’. I always remember his reply. ‘I don’t know, old chap. If I had the choice between threatening a man and ultimately taking his life, or bedding his wife, to learn his secrets during pillow talk, I know which I’d chose.’
He was correct, of course. I have come to know that in so many ways the company of women is more pleasant than that of my own sex. Intelligent women, who are overlooked by both their husbands and society, make the most enchanting of companions.
But, back to my first assignment. I was sent off to observe what was feared to be machinations of the Black Hand. Being rather green and caught up in emotional tides that run high during a revolution, I rather fell in love with someone, but it was not to be. Many people died.
Upon surviving, which was, I admit only to these pages, more by chance than skill, I realised three things. Firstly, that despite the ending of my first mission, I loved this work. Secondly, that being a spy needs to preclude close associations for the safety of others. Thirdly, I needed to devote myself to spycraft training if I intended to survive my next encounter.
I walked out of Oxford University with barely a backward glance. My family assumed, en masse, that access to my mother’s money had turned me into a wastrel and I began my new life. Naturally a loner and an observer, I felt I had found my calling. When my father cast me off, it only increased my general happiness in life as all my familial obligations dissolved overnight.