Eye Of The Needle

David was a little more ignorant than she, but he was gentle, and he took pleasure in her pleasure, and she was sure that was the important thing.

They had done it only once since the first time. Exactly a week before their wedding they had made love again, and it caused their first row.

This time it was at her parents' house, in the morning after everyone else had left. He came to her room in his robe and got into bed with her. She almost changed her mind about Lawrence's trumpets and cymbals. David got out of bed immediately afterward. "Don't go," she said.

"Somebody might come in."

"I'll chance it. Come back to bed." She was warm and drowsy and comfortable, and she wanted him beside her.

He put on his robe. "It makes me nervous."

"You weren't nervous five minutes ago." She reached for him. "Lie with me. I want to get to know your body." Her directness obviously embarrassed him, and he turned away.

She flounced out of bed, her lovely breasts heaving. "You're making me feel cheap!" She sat on the edge of the bed and burst into tears.

David put his arms around her and said: "I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. You're the first for me, too, and I don't know what to expect, and I feel confused… I mean, nobody tells you anything about this, do they?"

She snuffled and shook her head in agreement, and it occurred to her that what was really u

She was just about ready. She examined herself in a full-length mirror. Her suit was faintly military. with square shoulders and epaulettes, but the blouse beneath it was feminine, for balance. Her hair fell in sausage curls beneath a natty pill-box hat. It would not have been right to go away gorgeously dressed, not this year; but she felt she had achieved the kind of briskly practical, yet attractive, look that was rapidly becoming fashionable.

David was waiting for her in the hall. He kissed her and said, "You look wonderful, Mrs Rose."

They were driven back to the reception to say good-bye to everyone. They were going to spend the night in London, at Claridge's, then David would drive on to Biggin Hill and Lucy would come home again. She was going to live with her parents; she had the use of a cottage for when David was on leave.

There was another half-hour of handshakes and kisses, then they went out to the car. Some of David's cousins had got at his open-top MG. There were tin cans and an old boot tied to the bumpers with string. the ru

They drove away, smiling and waving, the guests filling the street behind them. A mile down the road they stopped and cleaned up the car. It was dusk when they got going again. David's headlights were fitted with blackout masks, but he drove very fast just the same. Lucy felt very happy.

David said, "There's a bottle of bubbly in the glove compartment."

Lucy opened the compartment and found the champagne and two glasses carefully wrapped in tissue paper. It was still quite cold. The cork came out with a loud pop and shot off into the night. David lit a cigarette while Lucy poured the wine. "We're going to be late for supper." he said.

"Who cares." She handed him a glass.

She was too tired to drink really. She became sleepy. The car seemed to be going terribly fast. She let David have most of the champagne. He began to whistle St Louis Blues.

Driving through England in the blackout was a weird experience. One missed lights that one hadn't realised were there before the war: lights in cottage porches and farmhouse windows; lights on cathedral spires and i

They climbed a long hill. The little sports car took it nimbly. Lucy gazed through half-closed eyes at the blackness ahead. The downside of the hill was steep and winding. Lucy heard the distant roar of an approaching lorry.

The MG's tires squealed as David raced around the bends. "I think you're going too fast," Lucy said mildly.

The back of the car skidded on a left curve. David changed down, afraid to brake in case he skidded again. On either side the hedgerows were dimly picked out by the shaded headlights. There was a sharp right-hand curve, and David lost the back again. The curve seemed to go on and on forever. The little car slid sideways and turned through 180 degrees, so that it was going backwards, then continued to turn in the same direction. "David!" Lucy screamed.

The moon came out suddenly, and they saw the lorry. It was struggling up the hill at a snail's pace, with thick smoke, made silvery by the moonlight, pouring from its snout-shaped bo

The car and the lorry collided head-on.

Foreigners have spies; Britain has Military Intelligence. As if that were not euphemism enough, it is abbreviated to MI. In 1940, MI was part of the War Offlce. It was spreading like crab grass at the time-not surprisingly-and its different sections were known by numbers: MI9 ran the escape routes from prisoner-of-war camps through Occupied Europe to neutral countries; MI8 monitored enemy wireless traffic, and was of more value than six regiments; MI6 sent agents into France.

It was MI5 that Professor Percival Godliman joined in the autumn of 1940. He turned up at the War Office in Whitehall on a cold September morning after a night spent putting out fires all over the East End; the blitz was at its height and he was an auxiliary Fireman.

Military Intelligence was run by soldiers in peacetime, when in Godliman's opinion espionage made no difference to anything anyhow; but now, he found, it was populated by amateurs, and he was delighted to discover that he knew half the people in MI5. On his first day he met a barrister who was a member of his club, an art historian with whom he had been to college, an archivist from his own university, and his favourite writer of detective stories. He was shown into Colonel Terry's office at 10 A.M.

Terry had been there for several hours; there were two empty cigarette packets in the wastepaper basket. Godliman said, "Should I call you 'Sir' now?"

"There's not much bull around here, Percy. 'Uncle Andrew' will do Fine. Sit down."

All the same, there was a briskness about Terry that had not been present when they had lunch at the Savoy. Godliman noticed that he did not smile, and his attention kept wandering to a pile of unread messages on the desk.

Terry looked at his watch and said, "I'm aching to put you in the picture, briefly finish the lecture I started over lunch."

Godliman smiled. "This time I won't get up on my high horse."

Terry lit another cigarette.

Canaris' spies in Britain were useless people (Terry resumed, as if their conversation had been interrupted five minutes rather than three months ago). Dorothy O'Grady was typical: we caught her cutting military telephone wire on the Isle of Wight. She was writing letters to Portugal in the kind of secret ink you buy in joke shops.