Free The Best of Our Spies by Alex Gerlis Page A

No need after all to resort to the rather complicated tale I had prepared for Matron about needing to check over some paperwork. Matron would be sorry to lose her, but quite understands.’
    Professor Newby sat still, holding his sherry glass in front of him with both hands, gently turning the glass and watching the slow movement of the drink. Edgar’s sherry remained untouched.
    ‘This has the makings of something most interesting, Captain Edgar. In the fullness of time we will grant Nurse Mercier her request. Until then, we have her exactly where we want her.’
    ooo000ooo
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    Surrey, August 1933
    Owen Quinn had spent the summer of 1933 watching and playing as much cricket as he could manage and watching his grandfather die at a hospital in Guildford.
    He was still a few months short of his sixteenth birthday, unaware that these few weeks would mark his transition from childhood to adulthood.
    The summer had started very promisingly. His grandfather’s illness that no one discussed meant that he was able to use his ticket for the Test Match against the West Indies at the Oval. The ticket allowed entry every day although the match ended early on the third day thanks to the English bowler, Marriott, taking eleven West Indies wickets. He spent the rest of the day exploring the heart of London. He walked down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament. Quinn had stood outside 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace and even gone into some of the shops in Oxford Street. He had sat by a small lake in St James’s Park eating his cheese and pickle sandwiches, before walking back to Waterloo Station to catch a train home in a carriage full of businessmen and civil servants. He could not imagine being happier.
    Cricket was still his passion. In the past year he had become taller and his slender figure had filled out enough for him to become a useful quick bowler and a careful batsman in the summer and a quick defender in the winter. His grandfather had taken to coaching him and came to watch him when he could. After one game, when Owen had taken four wickets and scored a match-winning 43 his grandfather had briefly placed an arm round his shoulder as they walked to the car. ‘You played like a proper Yorkshire man then.’ Owen knew it was meant as the ultimate compliment.
    But other passions were creeping in, though Quinn was too naive at the time to recognise them for what they were. He was in the top French class at his grammar school and towards the end of term their teacher, grateful for such a responsive group of students, took the enthusiastic class to London to see a French film that he told them all of France was talking about. Feeling at the height of sophistication and allowed to wear their own clothes, the small group of boys travelled up from Surrey in the company of Mr. Bennett, who despite his impeccable English accent which even extended to when he spoke French, still insisted on being addressed as Monsieur Bennett.
    The film was Boudu sauvé des eaux . It was a witty comedy about a businessman who saves a tramp and the effect that the tramp subsequently has on the businessman’s family. Monsieur Bennett told the boys that Jean Renoir was a very important director, but on the journey back to Surrey it was the actresses that he could not get out of his mind. It was not just their beauty. It was the style and sophistication that he had never observed in anyone in England. At night, he began to dream of them. Accepting that they were unlikely to reciprocate his interest, however fluent in French he might become, he began to return the waves and greetings of the girl across the road who was the same age as him and went to the girls’ grammar school. He started to time his leaving the house at the same time as she left hers so that they could walk to the bus-stop together. Sometimes in the evening they would stand and talk outside one of their neat semi-detached houses. They even went for walks in the park.