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  No one jumped at the offer. “Alphabetical order?” offered Bridget. No one disagreed, so they all filed out except Brendan, who closed the door behind them with the most Cheshire of smiles.

  “Brendan, these guys think they’ve stumbled on a den of Mata Haris. It was awful.”

  “And what did they have on me?”

  “They wondered how a bank clerk could afford to belong to a golf club and place near the top in the Ottawa Valley Amateur Open.”

  “McKellar Park Golf Club is in a farmer’s field. It is not the Royal Ottawa Golf Club. Annual membership is a measly thirty-five bucks.”

  “Still, not chicken feed.”

  “There are four of us on the club intersectional team. If our team places in the top five in tournament play during the season, we all earn free membership for the following year. We’ve managed that four years in a row.”

  “Isn’t golf equipment expensive?”

  “The pro sells us golf clubs wholesale and lends us demonstrators to try out.”

  “What about your balls?”

  Brendan’s smile broadened. Frances blushed crimson.

  He basked in her embarrassment for five seconds before relenting. “If you hit golf balls straight, miss, you don’t lose them. Besides, they’re handed out like candy as door prizes at tournaments.”

  “Okay,” said Frances. “So, you’ve no need to purloin documents to finance your golf. Is there any other reason they might suspect you?”

  “Do you mean am I trading Bank secrets for sexual favours from Larisa, the tuck shop girl at the club?”

  “I don’t know! I just don’t want to be blindsided.”

  “Larisa supposes me to be witty and giggles at my clever asides. It’s quite edifying. A canyon of cleavage is exposed when she bends over to scoop an ice cream cone. However, she struggles to figure out change for a quarter, which suggests that monetary policy is beyond her grasp or interest.”

  “Do you have any suspicions about the others here?”

  “Absolutely not. Do you?”

  “No. Okay, send in Bridget.”

  Bridget was clearly nervous. She clasped and unclasped her hands, which made Frances nervous.

  “What’s the problem, Bridget?”

  “I have no problem, miss, but my boyfriend, Lyle, joined the Royal Canadian Regiment last year. He’s down training at Gagetown and is doing swell. He hopes to be promoted to corporal soon. If I get caught up in some spy mess, that could ruin things for him. Lyle hasn’t had many chances in life. He’s finally found a place he fits in, and I’d hate to derail him. If he makes sergeant, we could afford to get married.”

  “Now, I’m reading the tea leaves, Bridget, but the suspicion they had about you concerned the influences of your father. Apparently, he has publicly pronounced his disdain for the British and their wars.”

  “Oh! Is that all?” Bridget gave a sigh of relief. “My father’s a drunk, a blowhard and a chronic liar. He’s got the Irish temper and blasphemes the government, the king, and the empire which he blames for keeping him in poverty all his sorry life. He gets stinko on the relief money that’s supposed to feed our family. Beats my mother and any of the kids who aren’t quick enough to duck. No one who’s known him for five minutes would believe a word he says.”

  “His Irish nationalism hasn’t influenced you?”

  “Oh, I like the songs and the leprechaun stories, but he’s such a hopeless person that I’m ashamed to be his daughter. Steal secrets for Liam Stanton? Ha! I wouldn’t steal toilet paper to wipe his ass.” She gulped and bit her lip. “’Scuse my French.”

  “But you still live at home.”

  “Yeah, because my salary buys the groceries that feed my kid sister and brother. I pay half the rent so we aren’t thrown out on the street. The minute Lyle gets promoted to sergeant, I’m out of the house, and I’ll take my brother and sister with me. Betray my country for my father! God have mercy.”

  “I get the picture. Do you think anyone else here might . . . you know . . . ?”

  “Are you serious, miss?” She thrust her thumb over her shoulder. “There’s not one weak link out there. They’d all go to a firing squad before they’d lend a paper clip to a Nazi.”

  “My opinion exactly. Thanks. Can you send in Claire?”

  Maddie opened the door. “Claire’s in the washroom. Might as well do me next. So, what do the big boys have on me?”

  Frances laughed. “They’re nuts. They’re curious why a university-educated young lady from Rosedale with all sorts of opportunities in Toronto for careers or husbands would want to take a low-paying job as a government secretary.”

  “They think I’ve infiltrated the governor’s office in order to betray the nation?”

  “That’s the gist of it.”

  Maddie doubled over in laughter.

  “They also mentioned some questionable associations you were involved with on campus at the University of Toronto.” Maddie squinted in recollection. “I did belong to the young CCF — that was mostly to irk my father — very successful strategy by the way,” she said with a smile.

  “And how about the ‘MacPap Relief Fund’”?

  “Oh, yeah. A bunch of us held bake sales to raise money to help fight Franco in Spain. We put up posters and heard some speakers.”

  “You’re not a communist?”

  “Nope. You’d think they’d be more concerned if I was a Franco fascist.”

  “All paranoia is irrational. This guy who had me on the carpet must have had a terrible childhood. He trusts no one. One last thing — do you think anybody else in the secretariat might have been the source?”

  Maddie’s jaw tightened. “I’m surprised that you would even ask. There isn’t a traitorous thought in the lot. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “I agree completely. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t letting personal bias distort my judgement. Okay. Send in Claire.”

  Claire Allen, stalwart of several Bank athletic teams, was the only one of the Rascals that the major had no dirt on. Praise the Lord. Claire was a tough nut. At a Bank baseball game, a hot ground ball took an ugly bounce and hit her square in the forehead, knocking her down. She scrambled to grab the ball and fired it to first for the out, then collapsed. Frances went along when a spectator drove Claire straight to the Civic Hospital emergency ward. Her clenched teeth were her only acknowledgement of pain.

  Claire closed the door behind her, walked hesitantly over to the seat across from Frances, sat down and burst into tears. “Oh, miss! Oh, miss! Oh, miss!” was all she could get out between tears and gasping breaths.

  -4-

  Claire

  Frances rummaged through the desk drawer for Kleenex. She walked around to give Claire a hug, and gently placed the box in her lap. When the shuddering and the nose wiping stopped, Claire peeked up but her eyes could not hold Frances’s inquiring gaze.

  “Claire, you are my friend. I will not lie, but I will stand by you no matter what.”

  Claire burst into tears again. She stood up and walked back and forth in a tense, tight circuit, trying to get her breathing under control before she sat down and turned red eyes towards Frances.

  “It’s not what you think,” Claire said, misery in her voice.

  Frances’s mind raced, but her voice was calm. “Tell me what I think, Claire. Or, what I’m not to think.”

  “F . . . f . . . first . . . , ” Claire stuttered, “I didn’t steal any documents from our office. I would never betray the trust that you have shown in me, or the bond that we all share here.”

  Frances exhaled. Claire opened her mouth several times to continue, but her lips collapsed, and no words came out.

  “I’m relieved to hear that, Claire. That’s all I wanted to know.” There was a long silence. “You can go back to work if you like.”

  Claire looked up sharply to see if Frances was teasing her. It took another thirty seconds of looking down and looking up before she mustered the coura
ge to continue. “There is something . . . that I didn’t want to tell you, but . . . that you should know. Well, I didn’t want you to hear about it, but I’d rather you heard it from me than from someone else.”

  “Claire, I feel terrible putting all the Rascals through this third-degree routine. I don’t want to hear anything that you don’t wish to share freely. No one in the Bank works harder than you. You’re a pillar in the secretariat and you play on, what — five Bank sports teams, is it? Baseball, basketball, soccer . . . ?”

  “Tennis and badminton.”

  “Your private life is your private life. Now, I do have to go back before this crazy major tonight and convince him that none of us is a spy. Can you at least help me with that?”

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . I don’t know how to say this, miss. It’s that I . . . ” She took a big breath and exhaled deeply. “I like women.” Claire’s head collapsed onto her chest.

  “I like women too, Claire,” replied Frances. “I don’t think that would upset the major.”

  “No . . . no . . . it’s that I . . . I like women . . . more than men.” She looked up, her face in torment. “I . . . I . . . don’t know why this is. But I do.” Three great sobs escaped from her and then she hung her head and twisted a Kleenex to shreds.

  “I guess . . . what I’m trying to say is that I’ve had some friendships that were more than friendships.” Her eyes pleaded. “I didn’t choose the shape of my ears or my height, and I didn’t choose this . . . preference. It’s just part of the way I am.”

  Frances assessed this for a moment. “Your friendships aren’t my business, Claire.”

  Claire continued as if she hadn’t heard. “I know girls are supposed to be attracted to boys. I wanted to be attracted to boys. Oh, guys have asked me out on dates to the movies or for an ice cream soda and I’ve gone along. I’ve kissed fellows good-night, but there was no more emotion in the act than giving Great-Uncle Dudleigh a peck on the cheek at Christmas.

  “My parents would love me to meet a nice young man to marry. They invite single men from our Methodist church over for Sunday dinner. These guys are nice and polite and sometimes good-looking . . . but . . . I feel no spark. I . . . I don’t dislike them, I’m just not magnetized the way I was by Nora Bolton.

  “Nora plays shortstop for the Ministry of Transport ball team. The girls’ teams are fiercely competitive on the field, but we all go out for a Coke and chips afterwards. That’s how I met her a year ago. She put her arm around me in the crowd to congratulate me on my home run, and I . . . I never wanted her to let me go. I felt cocooned in warmth and affection.

  “When baseball season ended, Nora and I started to go to the movies together. She’d give me a goodnight hug that transported me. Then she asked if I wanted to go camping one weekend in late summer. We took the train up to Norway Bay after work on Saturday. We set up her pup tent in the trees near the beach. We swam and roasted wieners on an open fire and sang campfire songs under the stars. Then we . . . retired for the evening.” Claire blushed. “I . . . I had no experience. Really. I’ll spare you the details but . . . but it was wonderful!

  “So, Nora and I began this secret life. It tore me up. I was ashamed, and yet it felt so good! I had never experienced such an emotional surge. It lit me up from inside. She began taking me to a club in Hull, called the Ping Pong Club. It’s upstairs in the Chez Henri Hotel. Everyone there was . . . well . . . unconventional. Men with men, women with women, men dressed as women, women dressed as men. There was an openness that made all this seem natural.

  “My parents are strict Methodists. They’re good Christians, I guess, kind and generous, but they have a very narrow view of acceptable behaviour. The Ping Pong Club would kill them.”

  “You played ping pong?”

  Claire laughed. “Yeah, there actually is a ping pong table beside the bar. There’s a jukebox and people liked to dance to the latest hits — dancing being a socially acceptable way to hold someone close in public. Mostly I think people just relished the freedom to talk with like-minded people.”

  “That it? Just talk?”

  Claire hesitated. “There were rooms upstairs. The Chez Henri is a hotel, right? You could rent rooms by the hour.”

  “For philosophical discussions?”

  Claire blushed again. “Well, I never went upstairs, so I can’t speak with authority.”

  “You play shortstop, but you don’t play the field?”

  Claire laughed and relaxed, a heavy load lifted. “Yeah. You could put it that way — until this woman at the club started to pay me a lot of attention. Daphne was completely different from Nora. Nora had a large, athletic frame. Daphne was more on the delicate side — like a ballerina. Nora was rough and tumble. Daphne was quiet and sophisticated. Of course, I was flattered with both of them competing for my attention.

  “One thing led to another, and I gradually fell for Daphne. This wounded Nora terribly. I felt bad, because Nora had been my first experience, and we had shared a secret bond. But Nora could be bossy. To be fair, I suppose they both were controlling. I tried the ‘let’s all be friends’ approach, but neither would make room for the other.

  “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, honestly, but I lost control of the situation. I had to make a choice and I chose Daphne. Nora stopped speaking to me after ball games. Next, she sent me letters calling me a double-crosser, along the line of ‘if you really loved me you would never have hurt me.’ I didn’t want to hurt her, but I couldn’t give her all she wanted from me. Daphne became my focus. Then Nora threatened to tell my parents all about us. To tell the Bank my secret.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her boss at the Ministry of Transport needed to take her on a cross-country trip to inventory railway freight car stock for the war effort. She’s been gone almost six weeks.

  “I fear every mail delivery. I know our secret makes me vulnerable. She’s not a Nazi, of course. She never tried to pry secrets out of me. But if the wrong people found out or she exposed me . . . ” Her voice trailed off. “Now you won’t trust me anymore.” Claire broke into tears again.

  Frances got up and gave her another hug. “Relax. I don’t deny this is a surprise, but your personal life has not threatened the Bank so far. If anyone does pressure you for confidential information, will you come right to me so we can sort it out?”

  “How can we sort it out?” she cried. “I’d be fired. My parents would disown me! What will Brendan and Bridget and Maddie think of me now?”

  “Claire, think about it. Would Nora really want her relationship with you to become public knowledge? She has as much at stake as you do with friends and family. I’m sure she doesn’t want to lose her job either. Try to calm her down. Write her a letter of support and apology. Do not write anything incriminating. Keep it along the line of ‘deeply cherish our friendship and your support over the last year. By turning in a new direction, I did not mean to disappoint you,’ kind of a thing.

  “The Rascals don’t have to know. Anyway, I’d bet the Bank that none of them would bat an eye at any of this. They might be a little surprised, but they are one with you in everything we share here. We all have our weaknesses, but it’s the strengths we each bring to work every day that will win this war. And let me be clear, I am not saying that your special friendships are a weakness, any more than my preference for blueberry pie over apple is a weakness. I am sorry that you feel the need to hide something from your parents that is so important to you.

  “Really, the security of the Bank is my only concern, Claire. The Bank employs us. In return we owe the Bank our loyalty. Will you give me your word that if anyone does try to blackmail you, you’ll let me know immediately?”

  “How can you . . . how can we . . . ?”

  “We’re smart cookies, Claire. We’ll figure this out together. I will never abandon you if you are true to the Bank. Promise?”

  Claire sighed deeply. Like a lost child playing out her last hope, she surrendered.
“Promise,” she said.

  -5-

  Round Two

  Governor Towers met with department heads in the boardroom for a working lunch, then left the Bank early to finish packing for his train trip south. Was it disloyalty, or loyalty, that kept Frances from raising the treason issue with him? She knew better than anyone how hard he worked and how desperately he needed a holiday free of care.

  Frances trudged through the snow to the Shefford Apartments for round two, bolstered by her discussions with Sir Lyman Duff and the Rascals. Major Philpott was cleaning his fingernails with a penknife. Without looking up, he said, “Time is short, Miss McFadden. We need your full and speedy cooperation, or there will be consequences.”

  “A threat, Major?”

  “You are the prime suspect in a case of espionage that could lead to a charge of treason. On the strength of that alone, I could have you jailed without bail pending further investigation.”

  “Could you? With no fear of a charge of wrongful incarceration?” replied Frances. “After our meeting last night, I sought some legal advice.”

  “What!” he exclaimed. “You breached the Official Secrets Act?”

  “I did not. I simply asked some general questions about the law dealing with treason and espionage.”

  “Enlightening?” asked Commander Evans as he lit his pipe.

  “Indeed. I learned that four things are required to get a treason conviction.”

  First, you need to prove that a secret document actually was stolen, yet the Bank of Canada hasn’t reported any documents missing.”

  “True,” agreed the commander, “but isn’t it possible that documents could be taken from Governor Towers’s office without being noticed?”

  “Possibly,” admitted Frances. “But as no such document has been reported missing, how could you prove espionage in a court of law with no hard evidence?”

  “But we have the evidence.” The major could not manage a simple sentence without gloating.