From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 38)

I was about to debrief Hope for the first time. We were sitting in the dining room of my club, which had so many influential members that it could still rustle up decent food, even during wartime. The tables were in full regalia, with shining silver candlesticks and a little crystal vase that held a single red rose to mark that it was ladies’ day. This was not so much decoration as a necessity, in case any aged general from the Great War stumbled in unawares and was startled into a heart attack by the sound of a female voice in his hallowed sanctuary!

Hope sat opposite me, toying with an exceptionally fine plate of food. She wore a silver evening gown that made her look very elegant - or it should have done. In some ways she was the very image of her mother at that age, except Euphemia would never have slouched, or treated a potato in any way other than to gobble it straight down. It occurred to me that Hope was not simply nervous. She was frightened.

She had no cause to be so on edge. She was on a probationary mission, and she wasn’t even aware of being on it for most of the time. If anything, she should have been angry with me for tricking her into it. Euphemia would have been incandescent if I had done such a thing to her.

Naturally, Hope hadn’t got everything right. She’d made a couple of blunders, and lost two potentially minor assets, but nothing of any great significance. Did she think I would blame her? For a first attempt, I thought she had done pretty well, and I was debating how much praise I should give her. Certainly, she had done better than many of the callous youths I was normally sent to train.

The introverted attitude she displayed was so out of context with times I had spent with her as a child. I still remember when she would still rush into a room when I came to White Orchards, yelling ‘Godfather! Godfather!’ with her arms outstretched in welcome. I’d sweep her up in a hug and she would squeal and giggle delightedly.

It was true that when she became a young woman, I distanced myself somewhat, though I thought she still held me in some affection. She often treated me as a confidante in her letters as she tried to work out what to do with her life. However, mindful of that young girl, presumably somewhere still inside, I had withdrawn my attention in person. For my age I was (and still am) far from unattractive and receive plenty of welcome female attention. I was concerned there was a chance that, having spent much of her childhood secluded in the fens, that she might have formed what was then known as a ‘pash’ for me. Something that, in later life, would have placed a barrier between us. Accordingly, when she went up to Oxford, I went down and took her out for dinner at least twice a term, but little more. I never sent her gifts of money, as Bertram’s absurd insistence of creating a trust for their offspring with Euphemia’s inheritance means that Hope has more money than she knows what to do with.

But I had arranged introductions to all the interesting people, and even managed to get her into the private libraries of some of my acquaintances. She is a confirmed bibliophile. I’d rather imagined that when she came to live in London, we would have established a firm friendship, with me playing the role of an affectionate uncle-type figure. However, this new war changed everything.

The young woman who sat before me is more like a frightened child than a sophisticated woman about town. She looked unable to take on a tenth of the tasks I that needed to set her. I ruthlessly crushed my desire to hug her, as if she were still that child I remembered (besides, physical expressions within the club’s boundaries are expressly discouraged, except for a hearty slap on the back, or the faint quivering of a gentleman’s moustache, when the occasion warrants it).

Still, I would have liked to take her hand, and to have told her not to be scared. I wanted to tell her I was still the Godfather she knew and used to adore. In being able to see her, both as the child she was and the young woman she has become, I felt like an aging tiger. And when I had seen some of the men at the club looking at her in a manner that I deemed inappropriate, it took an extreme effort of will not to unsheathe my claws and rip their throats out. I wanted to protect her, as much as I could, until she found a man worthy of her, or whom, at the very least, she loved and who loved her back. However, right here, right now, she looked as if she might flee from the room at the slightest provocation. This was not the Hope I knew. It was clear that I would have to be the one to establish the relationship.

I had suggested pudding and had persuaded her to choose the trifle. It’s always far too overloaded with sherry and I hoped the unaccustomed intake of alcohol (she had been drinking lemonade with her dinner) would dissolve some of the barriers between us.

I resolved to still ask her to work for us. Her mother and I had never intended her to follow us into the service. We had trained her, albeit without her knowledge, in surveillance and evasion - but that had merely been as protection against any of our old enemies tracking her down. But now that war was here, at least I could keep her under my watchful eye in the service. I hoped that our professional relationship would evolve into an adult version of the one we enjoyed in her childhood years, although it was clear to me that this would involve considerable effort on my part. I wanted my Hope back. I wanted her respect, certainly, but never her fear. I have watched over her all her life, so the thought then that she might withdraw completely from my life was more painful than I could bear. This was when I began ‘Campaign Hope’.

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