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were neighbours. He had taken a flat in Park West, a Hambro-sized block in Edgware Road, which for him was only a stride away from Baker Street. My parents and I had lived there since the building had first opened, a comment on its durability. Our flat overlooked Sir Charles's and we had an excellent view of his bathroom window. CD was very security-minded when the black-out was on but relaxed his vigilance the moment it wasn't. We frequently had the privilege of watching the oversized banker wedged in his undersized bath, and Father suggested that he farted his way out.
    It was in a very much larger bath that CD had watched a gymkhana of my own.
    Park West had a swimming pool with a special facility for those requiring even more rigorous exercise than that on offer in their one-room flats. It consisted of thirty or so ropes suspended from the ceiling with steel rings attached to the ends of them. These ropes stretched across the entire length of the pool, a few feet above the water. To cultivate the muscles necessary for my dealings with the Signals directorate, I swung across these ropes forty or fifty times a morning with obsessive regularity. To vary the monotony, and because it was the only physical risk I had yet taken in the war, I frequently performed this exercise fully clothed. One particular morning I was swinging happily from ring to ring like a trainee gorilla, with my gas mask dangling from my shoulder and my bowler hat jammed firmly over my eyes, when I peered up at the balcony to see the head of SOE staring down at me with riveted astonishment. I was taught manners at St Paul's, if nothing else, tried to raise my hat, and seconds later gazed respectfully up at him from the bottom of the pool.
    Now, as he filled the doorway of my office, I was once again in the deep end. There were one or two items on my desk which CD must on no account see. I stood up, which made no appreciable difference to the view, and introduced myself. CD's bald head hovered over my desk like a barrage balloon over suspect territory. I believed that most merchant bankers were bent and hoped that this one couldn't read backwards. He sat down and enquired what I was doing.
    'Breaking an indecipherable, sir.'
    'Oh? An indecipherable. Oh. Whose?'
    'His code-name's Asparagus, sir. He's one of Major Buckmaster's agents.'
    The broken indecipherable lying in front of me contained several references to 'mon general' which CD was unlikely to mistake for Maurice Buckmaster of F section even at the end of his longest day. CD expressed interest in seeing the message and held out a giant hand. There was nothing I could do but shake it. Prompt diversionary action was necessary. I grabbed a sheet of paper covered in figures and ash, told him that these were my calculations for breaking the message and proceeded to improvise a mathematical explanation. The figures were, in fact, my attempts to work out my monthly salary after the finance department had deducted tax. Fortunately CD was quite prepared to believe that codes were beyond him. A few moments later he professed himself very impressed by what he had seen and got up to go. I had no wish to delay him.
    'I was under the impression,' CD said quietly, 'that Asparagus was Dutch.'
    I felt like melted butter.
    He was right, of course. Vegetables such as Cucumber, Broccoli and Kale were code-names for Dutch agents, who had been very much on my mind that day. The ineptitude of this lie to CD was the moment of truth for the shape of codes to come. It convinced me, and I could never go back on it, that the traditional theory that all agents must memorize their codes was totally wrong.
    If a healthy 'swinging' young man, in no danger at all except from himself, could allow his unconscious to express its tensions in a lie which even his dear old dad would have seen through, then how much worse must it be for agents under duress struggling to remember their false names, their imaginary families and the hundreds