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Despite having called “not it” practically the very second The Problem arose, Monty ends up being the one who has to deal with it, after all.
Immediately following the initial not-it, Bevan called Monty an overgrown schoolboy - oh, if only, how he misses those golden days of his youth - and delegated the responsibility, which is what dear old Johnny does best.
Monty, not to be outdone, re-delegated further down the chain of command; and that was where the trouble started.
He’d sent Jean, who had been eager and raring to go, as always - what a spitfire of a girl! Monty’s immensely fond of her, really - to investigate the matter. If there’s an intruder in their midst, a possible enemy spy, then Jean has ably demonstrated her willingness to Do Her Part by getting the man squiffy and heaping empty flattery onto him until he lets something slip.
(Monty’s gotten over it. Mostly. Or maybe it hasn’t even happened yet - he gets confused with the timeline, on occasion. They all do, even Hester, who keeps track of these things better than most.)
Unfortunately, despite Jean’s general skill, their mystery man did not respond well to her questioning - only kept repeating over and over that she was “pretty as a picture”, until Jean got so frustrated that there was a real chance she would break the man’s nose if she didn’t walk away right that instant. She chose the latter, which was probably wise. Less fun, but wise.
Hester had been next, intending to sternly demand to take down the man’s details for obscure secretarial reasons - Monty trusts she knows what she’s doing there, the workings of the typing pool are a mystery to him and he’d like it to stay that way - but she’d taken one look at the unidentified gentleman’s face, and, well…
It had taken the old girl a while (and some gin) to stop looking more shaken than one of those bloody martinis Fleming is forever going on about. Something about reminding her too keenly of a departed loved one. Monty’s never seen her like that before, and he’s doing his best now to erase the memory from his mind - in accordance with her own preferences, he’s quite sure. One keeps one’s chin up and muddles through, in these trying times; and if one fails in that and has a cheeky little breakdown, then it should be kept as private as possible. Hester knows this, as does Monty. They understand each other that way, and Monty will swear up to his death bed that he never saw any chink in her armour or crack in her mask as long as she'll afford him the same courtesy.
By then they'd been running rather low on personnel to throw at The Problem - there’s always the supporting MI5 cast, but switching roles was such a fuss - which really was the only reason Charles had been sent out. Brilliant lad, that Charles Cholmondeley, brighter than a lightbulb and burning with destiny's light (if only he could be made to see it); but, Lord love him, not the right temperament for any sort of field work. Monty prefers to keep a man like that safely tucked away in the MI5 basement, and only sometimes take him out for the sort of night-on-the-town that young people in 80 years’ time will write thousands of words of fanfiction about.
…ehem. Well. The point was, Charlie isn't really the type to do well when thrown straight at a Problem rather than being left to his own devices to chew through it and deliver some sort of masterplan with resignation and hope warring in his eyes. It was a bit of a miracle that he got as far as introducing himself to the maybe-spy and shaking his hand - but that early success was the beginning of the end.
Charles returned even worse off than Hester, mumbling about “horrible, horrible wet hands!!!” and utterly unwilling to face their mark again. The poor man really has quite the complex when it comes to that sort of thing - Monty can't help but wonder if the aversion to wet-handed men is related to deep-seated troutfishing trauma.
Which left Monty. And Bevan, but only one of them has the authority to pull rank in this little stand-off, so Monty it is.
“The things I do for this country,” Monty mutters sourly, fully expecting another medal or two for his troubles as he strolls over to the man who shouldn’t be here, armed with a bracing cup of tea in his (Charles’s) favourite mug and his battle smirk. Honestly, he’s not a bouncer, this is beneath his talents. Bevan should have just ordered the interloper arrested, really, without asking questions first - the chances that it’s Churchill doing an undercover inspection of MI5 is low, but in fairness also never zero. Just in case, Monty makes sure to stick out his chest a little and look extremely winsome and victoriacrossable.
“Oh, hello. A new face?” Monty approaches the mystery man with the sort of possibly misplaced confidence he approaches everyone with. This better not be someone who has worked here for five years. Again. “Ewen Montagu, Naval Intelligence. How do you do?”
He sticks out his mug-free hand. The man says “how do you do” like a proper gentleman, and shakes on it - and, good Lord, Charles was perhaps justified in his extreme reaction. The man’s hand is icy cold and wet, not just covered with a thin sheen of sweat but soaked, dripping steadily. All of him is, really - Monty would assume he got caught in a rainstorm, if not for the distinct tang of… salt?
Monty’s smile sharpens, as it tends to do when he’s thrown for the most miniscule of loops, and he gives the sort of firm handshake that is key to being taken seriously by other men. He’s been trying to teach Charlie, but it’s not going well - Jean, on the other hand, is a natural, and can grind the little bones in a palm with the best of them.
“Now, I don’t mean to pry,” says Monty, prying, “but I’d like to ask you a few little questions. Protocol, you understand. Always these rules and regs, eh?”
Monty actually doesn’t know what protocols apply - they don’t to the likes of him, and if he just reprises this refrain in enough songs it’ll surely become the truth - but he relies on this chap not knowing, either. From the pleasant smile and the “why, of course” he gets back, he might have been right on the money there.
“Spendid, splendid.” Monty nods, if possibly even more satisfied with himself for getting somewhere after his colleagues’ failures on top of his already tremendously smug baseline roughly in the vicinity of ‘cat trapped overnight in a cream factory’. “I’ll get straight to it, then. Who are you, man, and what are you doing in..."
He falters briefly, glancing around himself, at the old curtains and the smothering nothing-dark and the stage-boards making up the floor.
"...MI5? I suppose it must be MI5, it generally is. Security of the building really isn't what it used to be, and neither's the decor."
"Me?" Disregarding his run-in with the wettest of the four elements, the possible enemy spy is really quite the looker, Monty thinks, now that he’s getting a proper eyeful of him. He has the sort of face that looks best staring out into the distance in sepia-toned photography, and he’s neatly dressed in a (wet) pilot's uniform with a modest-yet-impressive assortment of medals bleeding out from over his heart. "I'm supposed to deliver some documents, I believe."
He holds up the briefcase in his hand, fixed to his wrist, and salutes with the other like he means it, like he really believes in it, his smile full of confidence and charm and dripping with saltwater.
"Major Bill Martin. At your service, sir.”
“Ah,” says Monty, desperately attempting to maintain an expression that doesn’t make him look like he’s seen a ghost; but, well, considering… “Will you… will you excuse me for a moment, my good man?”
Men like Ewen Montagu do not flee. What follows is a tactical retreat.
“The good news: I’ve got a name,” Monty says, once he has hastily swaggered over to the other side of… the building…? Which is technically still well in earshot of their guest, but Monty knows this place, and a few steps away can translate into miles apart. He tries not to think about it too hard. More important matters at hand, in any case. “Bad news: you won’t enjoy hearing it.”
Bevan gives him a look that clearly indicates that he never enjoys listening to Montagu talk and doesn't intend to start now, which is a little hurtful. Especially since Monty’s genius (meaning mainly his own intellect, but maybe also Charlie, a little) near as won the war with Operation Mincemeat. Or will win it. Have they even come up with it yet? Monty should really check where they are on the track list.
Well, anyway.
He tells the little huddled group the name.
Nobody faints, though with Charles it’s a near thing - Monty has to steady him before he collapses onto one of the inexplicable cockney urchins.
(The little blighters have been getting underfoot quite a lot lately. Monty suspects Spilsbury smuggled them into the building inside his pockets, Jean thinks they crawl in through the vents, and Charles got five sentences into a ramble about cock(ney)roaches before Monty, feeling his own attention drift, hastily called him a genius and enjoyed how it immediately derailed that train of thought. Hester doesn’t believe the cockneys are real, as they apparently never pop up in her line of sight, and that all the rest of them are a little barmy for hallucinating the little wretches - as if that is the barmy-worthiest thing to happen in their existences - and Bevan has more important things to worry about, by and large.
The urchin catches Monty’s eye while he’s busy rubbing Charles’s back in a companionable and masculinely heterosexual manner, and promptly asks for a penny in an annoyingly squeaky voice. Monty kicks at it until it scampers off with a little “yaaaaay!”)
“Goodness gracious,” Hester breathes, shaken, her eyes gazing across the not-space at Bill’s distant figure - and then “Miss Leslie!” when Jean expresses her shock in a rather more outspoken fashion.
“Quite,” Monty agrees (with Jean), and adds “Charles, do try not to throw up on anyone’s shoes, there’s a good lad” in response to the increasingly fervent dry-heaving.
“It’s a g-ghost, Monty!” Charles snaps back, as ever picking the “fight” option between fight-or-flight with about the same bravado as a trembling little terrier yipping wide-eyed at a large bear with his tail firmly between his legs. “It’s- he- we- AAAHH!”
“Cholmondeley, perhaps you ought to sit. Breathe into a paper bag, or something.” Bevan interjects, brow creased, clearly fearing the imminent loss of a brilliant brain to a sudden stress aneurysm. “And Montagu… if this is you poking fun, then you’ll note that none of us are laughing.”
“Me? Poking fun? Johnny, you know I’m the very picture of professionalism and would never get involved in any japery,” Monty lies brazenly, which is, after all, 90% of what he currently does for a living. The remaining 10% consist of putting his feet up on his desk and looking dishy. “It’s Bill. I’m sure of it.”
(It could be someone else in the know, pulling a prank on them. Could be an enemy spy trying his hand at psychological warfare.
But Monty’s hand is still damp from the ocean around the coast of Spain, leaving salty residue in the creases of his skin - and he knows, he knows it’s Bill. He made that man, him and Charlie and Jean and Hester, modelled and shaped him out of the corpse Spilsbury found for them, and he’d recognise their Bill among a crowd of thousands.)
“Bloody Hell,” Bevan curses softly, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Then what is he doing here!? He should be on the submarine already, shouldn’t he?”
“He should also be dead!” Charles splutters, something vaguely hysterical in his tone. He is ignored - this happens when one is Charles Cholmondeley, unfortunately.
“No, sir.” Hester interjects too, and she is acknowledged. “He should be on a coroner’s table in Spain, by now.”
“Oh. We’re that far already?” A heavy sigh. “All the more reason to get matters back on track. We can’t do the glitzy finale with him walking around, it’ll throw everything off.”
(“He’s supposed to be dead,” Charles whines softly, clearly still rather preoccupied with that point. Jean pats his shoulder.)
“Quite right.” Monty squints over at Bill, who continues to wait patiently and heroically to Do His Duty for King and Country (and Monty’s Big Break In The Movies). “Permission to go and talk some sense into him?”
“Monty!” Charles squawks in alarm, grabbing at Monty’s arm as if to hold him back. “He might be- I don’t know! Vengeful!? W-we should get a priest of some sorts, to-”
“We don’t have a priest in the cast,” Jean points out. “But also, me and the secretaries could try and…” She makes a hand gesture that presumably indicates that she and the other ladies are sick of waiting for a guy to die and vacate a promising position. Monty makes a mental note to not walk into the typing pool when outnumbered, anymore.
“Your enthusiasm is noted and appreciated, Miss Leslie.” Bevan inclines his head to her. “We’ll let Montagu attempt diplomacy first. When he fails-”
“When!? Johnny! Have some faith!”
“-we’re sending you in,” Bevan continues, unfazed. “Cholmondeley, let go of Montagu, his hand is losing circulation. Montagu - do try to not muck this up, man.”
Monty cheerfully salutes - with more than two fingers, because he does respect the chain of command, mostly - and makes his way back over, until Charles’s fretting and Jean’s under-her-breath complaining have faded away.
Bill did not mind the interruption, and easily lets Monty steer him to a nondescript bench tucked away somewhere. Monty decides it’s a park scene. Maybe St. James’s, it’s got a good reputation for spywork specifically. He sprawls on the bench, and throws a calculating look over at Bill, who sits with perfect posture, yet still somehow appearing very much at ease. The briefcase is resting on his legs, seaweed tangled around the handle and the handcuff.
“So. Bill, my boy.” Monty begins again. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. “This haunting business of yours - it’ll have to stop. If there’s anything you want, I will see if something can be arranged, but this is not on.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir.” Bill smiles with earnest cheer. His lips are shaped just so to perfectly kiss his girl when he comes home; and also a dull cold-suffocated blue.
“Don’t you, really? That’ll make it more difficult. I’m talking about this.” Monty gestures around them. At himself. “This little war-theatre of ours. We’ve all got our roles to play, and you’re not performing yours. Why?”
“I’m supposed to deliver some documents.”
“So you are. But not to us, old chap. You do know that, don’t you? They’re supposed to fall into German hands.”
“Hand important documents over to Jerry?” Bill’s smile is picture-perfect, unfaltering. It belongs under a newspaper headline, or should lie pressed between the pages of a history book. It looks a bit like Monty himself in the mirror, and yet not quite enough like it. “Sir, I would never be so careless with classified information.”
“Ouch. Point taken.” So he does know, the smug arse. Monty feels oddly proud of the man, deceiving like the best of them. “You’re not… blaming us, are you? For…”
He trails off. The not-truly-drowned man sitting in a puddle of Atlantic Ocean will surely catch his drift.
“No,” Bill says. He means it, this time - of course he does. Major William “Bill” Martin is the sort of man who means these things. “I gladly gave my life for the war effort.”
“Ah! But you didn’t, did you?” Monty points out, shrewdly. “In various ways. You’re a story we made up- no, don’t give me that look, Billy, I don’t mean anything by it. There’s no shame in being made up. Hell, one could argue that I’m no more real than you, by now.”
Bill angles his head, politely inquisitive. “Aren’t you?”
“Oh God no. I mean, let's not kid ourselves, I rather doubt that the real Ewen Montagu was blessed with these girls." Monty gestures, empathetically, at the breasts perfectly perceptible as a swell underneath his suspenders. An attractive swell. He’s rather fond of what the bosoms do for his figure. More men should be in possession of a pair of baps. "Admittedly, we had a whole musical number about All The Ladies taking over for the lads, but I wasn't even singing in that - or, well, not as me, at least. Ensemble cast, you know."
Bill nods, smiling his amicable picture-perfect smile even as more saltwater puddles around him. Monty slides a little further away on the bench.
"Point is - we're all more than a little made-up, these days - some of us used to be not quite real even when we were... real. Alive. More than what's left of us now." Monty pauses. "Or maybe less. I certainly do feel bigger than life, these days. Even bigger. It's grand, being a historical figure, Billy my boy!"
His eyes go a little glassy for a moment, his rough voice softening.
"It's grand, being history, and a hero on top of it."
"You hardly need to tell me." Bill chuckles, impossibly charming. "It's all I ever was."
"That you were, good man." Monty raises his mug in a toast. "To heroes - present company very much included."
Bill toasts along, with the fine crystal they provide at the Ritz, filled with even more murky seawater. Monty doesn't let it faze him.
"We're stories more than we are people. Not just you, Bill, not even just you and I, but all of us here. Stories being told and retold and changed and added to and forgotten. I like this most recent iteration of our story, personally - it's great fun, isn't it? Bloody good fun!" Monty laughs, spreading his arms. "And I'm fantastic in my role - Hester and Jean and Johnny do well enough for themselves, of course, but the standing ovations are mostly for me, I'm quite sure. Charles, bless the poor lamb, is a bit more complicated. Just not convincing, at the core of him, not suitable for the sort of story that... hm."
Monty takes up his mug for a sip, and then pauses, glancing down at the face on it.
"Oh, watch this. A little magic trick."
He taps the picture on the mug, identical to that of the man anxiously wringing his hands as far away from Bill as he can get in their purgatory of darkness and curtains - even their expressions shift in unison.
A wave of his hands, a little like a magician, like a conman, like an actor... and the image changes to an old black-and-white photograph of an entirely different man. This one is static, unmoving.
"There's Charles." Monty shakes the cup with a wry grin. “I prefer our version, honestly. He's very sweet, isn't he? Not quite adoring enough, but I trust we'll get there.”
Another gesture, and it’s their Charlie again, his likeness shy and uncertain on the mug.
“He doesn’t deal well with it, our Charles. With the Situation. Maybe the worst of all of us. It’s that scientific mind of his - he likes hard facts, fixed sets of rules. History, rather than a story. The simple biology that keeps a man alive and ceases functioning when he’s died. He’s terribly frightened of you, on account of your walking about when you’re so definitely dead, Bill old boy.” A huff of a chuckle. “But so am I, since 1985. So is he. I do hope he’ll come around to just accepting it, someday, and just play his role. It’s a great deal easier that way.”
(Monty worries for Charles, he really does, even in the mess that is his standing with the others in the final act and those glimpses of a post-war future they never really get to see for very long. He wonders sometimes if that specific glimmer of intense Charleswards-directed fondness is owed to the medium alone, or if the ‘real guys’ were ever… no, no, probably not. It’ll be like the breasts, a matter of adaptation. Of reinterpretation. He doesn’t mind so much - and he’s quietly glad not to mind. It’s a kinder world, one where nobody minds, regardless of whether or not.)
“For what it may be worth to you, I am sorry,” Monty says, finally, staring out at a place that they’re valiantly pretending is St. James’s park. “I’m not the man who is responsible for how the thing was done, not really, but I’m the closest we’ll get without involving Colin Firth. And I sincerely apologise for the whole mess of it, and the whole mess of how it’s been remembered in the history books. I’m getting at least some of a bollocking for it in this version of events, if that changes anything.”
He glances over at the little group of all the people that not-quite-exist in this world, in his world, watching. Waiting. He beckons them over.
“And it ends with you. Jean and Hester, Charlie and I and what became of us, even Major Bill Martin - all irrelevant, in the very end. Not the point of it.” Monty turns back to the man on the bench beside him. “This story always ends with you.”
There is no saltwater now. No pilot’s uniform, no smile fit for the moving pictures. Only a man, thin to the point of starvation, exhaustion and desperation giving his eyes a glazed sheen, wrapped in a ragged coat. Monty gives him a lopsided smile, as real as it can be, coming from the likes of him.
“So. Shall we finish telling it, old boy?” He asks, holding out his hand.
Glyndwr Michael hesitates - and then takes it, with a hand that is dry and whose living warmth has not quite faded yet.
They take their bows all together, all six of them, the men and women who once were, and no longer quite are. Joined pairs of hands, raised up together - and then down as one.
The people greet them with deafening cheers.