Chapter 23, Somerville College, Oxford, 25 May 1936
She was having an odd day. The calculus examination had been as mundane and frankly underwhelming as she had expected (with relief, for it signalled another one of life’s little milestones accomplished). She had thought about taking tea with one of her college-mates in town, or else cycling into the Oxfordshire countryside with the Humphrey Cobb novel (something about the French in the War) that she’d just never found the time to read. A pile of half-read, never-to-be-completed books were, she knew, silently approaching their due date for retuning to the library, stark adverts to her quick but undisciplined mind. Had it been cooler indoors, she would have loved nothing more than to wander around the College’s huge library, picking out books at whim. But the library was free of her ravaging today.
It was as she left the refectory that she knew she was being followed; he was good, (although she was aware of him, so not that good) as she had half-suspected it earlier, as she had walked to the examination, but her amateur attempts to stop and check had revealed nothing. It was all rather silly, and very tiring when she had a mathematics examination to prepare for.
But now she was sure that a man was following her. But why, she knew not. She came out of Somerville, ducked through an alleyway and onto Banbury Road. He made one (loud) misstep that reliably apprised her that he was still pursuing. She turned right on Banbury Road and made for the centre of town. His distinctive ‘tuk-thwat, tuk thwat’ gait kept her updated. He was still in pursuit.
There was an antique shop near Keble College, where Banbury Road met St Giles. She stopped, as if to check her appearance, and gazed into a mirror in the shop window. Sure enough, her pursuer blundered. The man seemed in his mid-twenties, was almost comically tall, and had tried to blend in with the student population (he looked older than your average undergraduate, perhaps he was pursuing a doctorate, or had accepted a teaching position). exceptionally light skinned, with tussled brown hair and a long, elegant nose. She found his looks more ‘magnetic’ than desirable.
“I can see you,” she said, with more courage than she felt. “Shall we stop playing childrens’ games?”
He offered a reassuringly warm smile, almost charming if it would have come from someone other than a chap following her. He seemed to consider what to do next. “How long have I been following you?” This was asked in a very casual manner, as if he didn’t care one way or the other what she said.
“From this morning,” she said calmly. “On the way to the College. And again, just now.”
The smile came again, this time less charming, she would describe it as ‘businesslike’. “Come with me? I like tea at this time of day.”
She felt a stab of fear. “Not bloody likely! All I have to do is scream and half of Oxford will descend upon you.”
“Which is why, Miss Milne: might I call you Kathleen?”
“Everyone else does,” she said, not succumbing to this blend of threats and charms.
He took that as his permission to continue. “Let us take tea, that what was you were going, wasn’t it?” He smiled again, this time curiously, as if wanting to see what reaction the revelation would produce.
She forced herself to not react. But there was something about him, dammit!
Nodding, albeit reluctantly, half-heartedly, she let him walk her to a quiet little place near Keble; she knew it vaguely, and had met a friend here once in her first few weeks in Oxford. It was dowdy, palpably down-at-heel, and also lacking in other customers.
“My name is Tarr,” he said, slowly, probing for a reaction. “I’m doing some stuff here in Oxford as part of my doctorate.” That would, she sensed, be all that she was getting from him at the moment as his tone and body language shifted, as if preparing for the change of topic.
“Well you know my name,” she said waspishly, before adding an acidic, “clearly.”
He smiled. “Oh, you have quite the reputation,” he said with innocent eyes. Despite herself, she could feel herself warming to his charm. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yup,” she said, playing ‘mum’ and pouring him tea.
“Why did you agree to come to tea with me? And how did you know that you were being followed?”
“That’s two questions,” she said with a hint of petulance. “Let us say that I was intrigued. My Oxford dance card hasn’t been busy these last few years,” she said, bluntly and without any hint of regret. To her men were something like a commodity, and she just wasn’t interested.
“Your dedication to your studies, no doubt.”
“Is that what this is,” she said, unable to stop herself from sounding slightly disappointed. He had picked that hint up too, she could see it in his reaction.
“No no,” he said reassuringly. “In addition to your scientific studies, you have occasionally been politically active. Speeches at Labour movement evenings, a well-received deconstruction of capitalism.”
So that’s it! He’s a sodding red! She couldn’t help herself smiling. “Is that what this is? You think that because I pointed out that the British economy has some serious structural problems that I’m a bloody Bolshevik!” The proprietor, the classic Agatha Christie spinster caricature, frowned passive-aggressively.
He realised now that he may have blundered. “Ah, I thought that you viewed this as a crusade.”
“It’s maths, m’dear, pure numbers. A girl from my corridor showed me some figures and I did the adding up. Simple numbers.”
“But you chose Somerville,” he ventured, but much less cocksure, “because of its agnostic culture.”
“I chose Somerville,” she said, firm in correction, “because they’d have me. It was they what chose me, not the other way around.”
He squirmed, quite obviously now. “I’m very sorry for the mistake,” he said, trying to extricate himself gently. “I’d seen you,” he said, in a way that made her not believe him, “about and asked some questions. I thought that if we agreed on politics we would…” his voice tailed off.
She felt a pang of sympathy. “I’m sorry if my conduct has confused you,” she said, in no way believing either her own words or his. “Look, I’ll pay the dragon over there, you can pop off back to your digs.” He nodded miserably, distracted by other thoughts, and stalked from the building. She was dimly aware of another figure entering as ‘Tarr’ left.
“Katherine Milne,” the voice said in a perfect ‘RP’ accent. “Would you mind coming with me, please.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh bloody shit, she thought.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A summons to see the legendary Warden of the college was not unusual. Being dragged out of a tea room by a man in an overcoat (in May!) most certainly was.
“Miss Milne,” the man said, in his precise voice. “You will sit there,” there was a fleeting, but again very exact gesture to a chair facing them. Next to the man, Helen Darbishire, the Warden of Somerville College, looked around the room, her eyes flitting between Kathleen and the window; it offered a truly lovely view of Somerville’s grounds.
The man opened a buff coloured folder. Milne was a sharp woman, and realised that if she was, truly, in trouble, that there would be more ‘officialdom’ to this affair. She allowed herself to relax slightly, but remained vigilant, and also intrigued.
“Broadly bluestocking, Middle Class background,” he said, giving the first hint of his character. Milne felt a rush of righteous indignation, but calmed herself; she probably, to this suave older man, was a ‘jolly hockey sticks’ ‘bluestocking’ type.
“Uh huh,” she murmured.
He took her grunted acknowledgment as agreement. “Father dead, an ex-India Office administrator, left the legacy that pays for your studies here.” She realised that, as he said this, this was important to him; most students had access to private income and a student paying her way from seemingly nothing would attract suspicion. Which made her certain (or almost certain) that her interviewer was something ‘official’.
“There is a mother,” Darbishire murmured. “Visits occasionally. Very respectable, Liberal inclination.”
“Yes yes,” he said testily. “Now, you’re going to talk, and I am going to listen. I may interrupt, but only to clarify certain details. Believe me, Miss Milne, when I say that I am very interested to know what you know.”
She wasn’t sure if this was a threat, or reassurance, or just matter-of-fact. She felt a sudden spark of fear. Next to her, Darbishire shook her head, as if ruing, on Kathleen’s behalf, her getting into such a silly situation.
It’s not like I’m caught out, she thought, knowing of at least one unwanted pregnancy at the College during her three years there.
“What am I talking about?” She said this with what she hoped was bravado. He seemed to like it.
“Today you met with a man, I saw him, I arrived as he left.”
“Which was of course,” she said sarcastically, “an utter coincidence.”
“You and I know that it was not. I would have you tell me about your contact today, and every other contact that you may have had with him. I may, as I have already said, stop you from time to time to ask for ‘follow up’ information. Ah,” he said as another man, a younger man, entered Darbishire’s study, “right on time. Take a seat at the back, keep a full note please.” Despite the civility the older man was absolutely in command. He turned to Milne. “Your story, please, Miss Milne.”
So, Kathleen began her tale. The older man sat, silently, listening with keen interest while the younger man scribbled furiously. He only interrupted her once.
“How did you know that it was the same person, following you?”
“The gait: he had a distinct ‘tuk-thwat, tuk thwat’ way of walking.”
“Extraordinary, go on.”
At the end of her tale, he looked at Darbishire, who nodded, once. “It fits her character,” she said evenly.
“Does it,” the older man said tonelessly. “Are you a communist?”
“No, I am not,” she was beginning to get irritated.
“A socialist, then? Ms Darbishire here says that she wanted your help in securing a Margaret Roberts’ help in the restoration of the Colleges organ, but that you refused.”
“A dislike for religion does not,” she responded calmly, “make me Lenin.”
“But you do challenge the established order?”
“I believe that the numbers suggest we aren’t doing the best with our resources,” she said, defiantly.
“But you’re not a communist?” He was persistent.
“I’m not anything,” she said with an odd pride. “I’m simply an airy mathematician who never gets asked out by intriguing men.” Helen Darbishire frowned disapprovingly at this.
He sat back in his chair. “Tell me, Miss Milne, what do you make of his invitation?”
“I’ve told you,” she said with exasperation, “I’m not interested in that extreme political stuff. I thought that he wanted to court me,” she frowned at using such an archaic term, “but it turns out that he was…”
“…recruiting you,” the older man said. “You’re not the first, and I doubt you’ll be the last. Your description is, unsurprisingly, the best that I have of Mr ‘Tarr’, and while I believe that he will lie low we will circulate your description to our friends in the Colleges.” He turned to Darbishire. “Could you do that?” She nodded.
Milne was irritated. “Recruit me? For what?”
The older man spoke. “Isn’t it obvious? For the cause. Yours is the third occasion of a young student who has rather opaquely made a declaration or statement that could be interpreted as ‘left wing’. A few days later, this chap appears. He tries to judge the student’s real conviction, and if it is real, he invites them in…”
“…into what?”
“That, Miss Milne, is what I am still attempting to clarify.”
“Could I help?”
The man shook his head. “Not really,” he frowned. “Now that you’ve said ‘no’ I doubt that you’ll ever seen him again. But thank you for the description, it is by far the best that we have received.” He paused, a moment, and then offered a very faint smile. “Perhaps you would walk with me, for a few moments.” Milne pulled a ‘yuk’ expression which attracted a flash of anger. “Miss Milne,” he said in a good approximation of a schoolmaster’s voice, “I have interviewed hundreds of young people of both genders and all inclinations. To suggest, to quote your testimony earlier, that I would ‘try something funny’ is less alertness on your part and more accurately something approaching arrogance. Shall we?”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
He waited until they were safely out of range of any would be snooper, but the grounds of Somerville were so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
“They saw something in you,” the man said. Kathleen wrinkled her nose in dismissive response. “It’s true. They knew that you had a sharp mind and hoped that you would work for them.”
“Who are they?”
He looked affronted, for an instant, and then shrugged. “I’m not precisely sure, yet. I believe that they are extremist, which given the nature of your conversation with him suggests Communist. But beyond that, we’re frankly struggling for evidence. Anything that I tell you at this stage would be conjecture.”
“I see,” she said simply.
“Were you tempted, to follow up on the offer?” She shook her head emphatically. “What if I made the offer? Would you help your country, your people?”
“Doing what?”
He answered more obliquely than she’d hoped for. “You have applied for a range of postgraduate stuff. And some of it overseas. That could be of interest, you could take the mood of the people you study with. And then? Perhaps employment with us. A sharp mind, like yours…”
“…I’d be a spy?”
He rolled his eyes. “I like to think of it as a ‘contact’. You’d keep in touch with Whitehall, send us the choice cuts from your station. If you’re interested, you could spend a few weeks with us in the summer, get some training, and then commence your studies.”
She smiled. There was something thrilling, and intoxicating, about his proposal.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GAME NOTES
My second agent is recruited. And, quoting Blackadder, she…is…a…woman…
I’ve tried to match the recruitment to a, well a recruitment, aiming for something more interesting than ‘hey, let’s be a spy’. You may struggle to believe it, but there is some basis for this post. As is so often the case with intelligence history, the truth is even stranger than fiction. While the five Cambridge Spies were probably the most successful group of foreign agents ever recruited by the Soviet Union, they were not the only graduates from leading British universities the KGB recruited in the 30s. They were simply the five most successful agents from a much larger KGB recruitment pool.
The slow release and discovery of original material has revealed that the KGB was also active at Oxford, where its strategy to enlist for Stalin young Englishmen, and women, focussed on recruiting promising graduates and then let them loose to join the ‘organs of the state’ with the aim of burrowing, as moles, deep into sensitive British government departments. There is no evidence that the KGB achieved anything comparable in Oxford to its agent recruitment at Cambridge. However, this was not through lack of trying on the part of the KGB. One attempt came with a Soviet agent known to be codenamed 'SCOTT', who was active at Oxford University in the 30s. I’ve suggested that this is the man attempting to recruit Kathleen Milne, his name was Arthur Wynn, who graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge (like four of the five Cambridge spies) and then moved to Oxford for postgraduate work. He was an active Soviet talent spotter for the KGB while he was there. However, Wynn was criticised by Moscow for providing too many names of known Communists, who would inevitably attract security attention, and thus not be suitable as Soviet penetration agents. While there is
some evidence that students were recruited, Milne is not one of them!
And so, she joins a (deliberately vague) British agency. To be fair to the record of Helen Darbishire there is no evidence that she was a recruiter for the British security agencies (or that she wasn’t, mwah ha!), but she was a well-regarded member of the Somerville staff in 1936 and so I used the name for a spell of realism. Margaret Roberts was another ex-Somervillian and one of the founding students from 1879, and did indeed act with Darbishire to restore the college organ.
@DensleyBlair: The next update will focus on Chamberlain.
@Bullfilter: The formal Court dress adopted by Baldwin is a bit G&S isn’t it?! I just figured that a Baldwin desperate for help would ‘dress to impress’.
@TheButterflyComposer: Ha! I am delighted that G&S is now linked to the AAR!
@Specialist290: I don’t actually disagree too much; my own opinion of Chamberlain has shifted significantly from the classroom definition to something (hopefully) more balanced. As we’ll see (hopefully) when I update at the end of this week (that is not an undertaking!), he is clever, but is far more slippery (domestically) than he is given credit for. I also don’t think that he was that awful as a Chancellor.
@Captured Joe: I’m going to let the QM situation fester awhile before updating you on it…
@stnylan: Baldwin is exhausted by this stage. Whether he can (or wants to) come back is something we’ll explore as the summer plays out.
@TheButterflyComposer: It’s a pretty awful situation that you’ve described there…
@Kurt_Steiner and
@TheButterflyComposer: Ah,
The Butterfly Effect. So, I like to think of
The Butterfly Effect as an epic documentary narrated by Ken Burns and in the finest traditions of truly excellent public service broadcasting.
@stnylan's wonderful
The Thorn of the Rose is clearly some Netflix / Amazon Prime funded, wonderfully captivating vampy / horrory / sci-fi esque serial (delete as appropriate as the story develops). What about
ARP (and for that matter,
KFM)? BBC fodder?
As to the updating rate, I genuinely lost all interest in virtually everything last week, and I don’t know why.
@El Pip: I think that you’re very fair on the Chamberlain character there, actually. As for the QM, thank you, I get why I could be seen to negative, I am not critical (well hugely critical) on Queen Mary, I just think that she was, by 1936, not particularly dynamic.
@El Pip: Yup, Ken Burns.
@TheButterflyComposer: – Now you come to mention it, there is something vaguely late Victorian to Pippy. Yes, I’m sold…
@DensleyBlair: Pretty grim, isn’t it?
@Captured Joe: 
@Bullfilter and
@TheButterflyComposer: I’m a huuuuuge G&S fan. I commend
Trial by Jury and
Iolanthe in particular.
