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she is already fulfilling the role of quasi wife and mother to the 00 agents and therefore it is not a large step from this to real domesticity with her own husband and children. In fact we are informed that Loelia marries a man from the 'Baltic Exchange' section of SIS in On Her Majesty's Secret Service conforming to expectations as she marries within the service. However, she does not marry a man likely to die in dangerous field missions like the 00s but instead picks a stable Organisation Man.

It appears therefore that for Loelia in 1955 what she will truly miss is the independence of being a single woman earning a wage and perhaps being the object of desire for several men. This is supported by her last mention in the novel On Her

Majesty's Secret Service: 'Loelia Ponsonby had at last left to marry a dull, but worthy

and rich member of the Baltic Exchange, and confined her contacts with her old job to rather yearning Christmas and birthday cards to the members of the Double-0 section.'46 The implication is that if she had missed the work and just her fellow secretaries she would also have addressed her cards to them rather than simply writing 'yearning' ones to the men of the 00 section. Loelia still seems unfulfilled by her choice. Much in the same way she was before she made her decision she is still torn between two worlds. What her character reveals is that the secretary position many Angel spies occupy is often seen as training for a future marriage to someone within the organisation but also a way of deciding who to marry, seen with Loelia as she picks the stable Baltic spy over a OO.

For female spies across all categories their fate is often summed up simply as a choice between 'Domesticity or Death' but for the Angel category we see more of the former path taken as a way of exiting the service. This concept remains constant across the 20th century, rising in particular during conservative periods, when masculinity is seen to be under threat and there is a need for the Angel character to reinforce traditional gender roles. Yet there is another way the Angel can leave the services and still be connected to it. Marriage to another agent is a common route for Angels. Yet from the 1970s onwards we start to see a change in the Angels who exit the intelligence world through marriage: a resentment that they have married someone involved in the service who is still allowed to continue their secret, exciting life whereas they must become fully involved in domestic life and wifely duties and where necessary keep a cover identity in place.

We see this situation played out with the character of Mary Pym in the 1986 le Carre novel A Perfect Spy.47 Mary is the wife of Magnus Pym, the 'Perfect Spy' of the title who is gradually revealed to have been a double agent for the British and Czechoslovakians since the beginning of his career. Mary's role is that of the Angel wife, aware of what her husband does for a living as a diplomat and spy for British Intelligence. She supports him in his work and helps to maintain his diplomatic cover. In this sense, she has some parallels to the male Chameleon spy as she is constantly putting on a performance as the diplomat's wife, holding parties and interacting with the diplomatic community in order to ensure that her husband's true role is not discovered. But, she has not always been simply a wife and mother. The novel

47 John le Carre, A Perfect Spy (first published: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986 edition used: London: Sceptre, 1999).

reveals that Mary worked for British intelligence when she was younger but was encouraged to date and then marry Magnus to help with his cover. However, as Mary begins to suspect her husband of betrayal she gradually uses her old tradecraft knowledge to find out more information:

She goes to the north window, everything planned. She has done these things before and remembers now that she is good at them, often steadier than the men. ... I knew the game better than I realised, she thought. Jack used to praise my coolness and my sharp eye.48

Mary's knowledge of tradecraft and of spying is even acknowledged by Magnus in his suicide note as he reflects that she was a better spy than him and had been forced into a marriage to help his cover.

Nothing to Mary but he'd really nothing much more to say to her: 'Sorry I married you for cover. Glad I managed a bit of love along the way. Hazards of the trade, m'dear. You're a spy too, remember? Rather better than Pym was, come to think of it.'49

What marks Mary out as different from previous Angel characters is that she acknowledges herself that her choices in life have been dictated by social conventions and also by what men have wanted her to become. Even though Mary had been a good spy, it was believed that Magnus would be the better one as a man, and that he would need her support rather than the other way around.

Mary was ambitious as well as intelligent, as she could dream and lust and covet. But the rules of her life had been laid down for her before she entered it and had been entrenched with every death since: in Mary's family the men campaigned while the women lent succour, mourned and carried on. Her worship, her dinner parties, her life with Pym, had all been conducted on this same sturdy principle.50

48 le Carre, A Perfect Spy, 178. 49 le Carre, A Perfect Spy, 701. 50 le Carre, A Perfect Spy, 19.

Mary has been pushed into a situation where she is expected to fit around men in all aspects of her life. Her day-to-day life is affected by what Magnus' male controllers do, what Magnus himself does and finally by her son. Mary's ambitions and needs have become secondary and she has reached a stage where she is beginning to resent this. She is surrounded by resentful Angels as we see when she meets other diplomat wives and notes the way they too have been forced to sacrifice their dreams to assist their husbands: 'Great, Caroline, great. In another life it will be your turn to be the rising young diplomat and your husband's to stay home and imitate you.'51 The resentful Angel appearance in fiction from the 1980s onwards represents a crack and eventual development in the Angel category as female spies begin to question whether helping the hero is really enough for them. The development from the traditional Angel, from the beginning of the Cold War, to a doubting one towards the end demonstrates the breakdown of this category, which resulted in the emergence of a new identity. But first, the other end of the spectrum.

Whore

The Whore fulfils the other side of the traditional Angel-Whore dichotomy and is often connected with the espionage trope of the Femme Fatale. According to Philomena Goodman, 'Women [in war] who were believed to be transgressing the normal boundaries of femininity were likely to be labelled promiscuous.'52 The Whore spy constantly transgresses ideas of passive femininity through her actions. She is in control of her own destiny, rarely answering to a man, often independent including financially, she handles weapons easily and is not afraid to kill and, lastly,