Code Name Verity (37 page)

The man we'd rescued didn't understand when we talked to him in French. He turned out to be
Jamaican
– a rear gunner in the RAF, shot down last week – perhaps they'd been hoping to get Allied invasion plans out of him? He's in good shape, they hadn't got to work on him yet, and though he'd barely eaten for a week he managed to carry out a lad whose knees had been broken –

He is a lovely man, the Jamaican, and he is here. Well, I don't think he's here in The Cottage, I think he's been sent off to the proper RAF aerodrome, but I mean that he flew back to England with me. Hid with me too, in the Thibauts' barn. He is from Kingston and has three kiddies, all girls. He followed me at a trot down the grand staircase of that dreadful, ruined hotel, with the silent, suffering boy whose legs were broken clinging to his back – me with an electric torch in one hand and Paul's Colt .32 in the other, navigating by a memorised map as usual.

We all met to count up everyone in the courtyard where the guillotine is. Last one out turned the generator back on – we had attached a timer to it. Once it was on we had 20 minutes. A couple of Lancasters were still circling overhead, daring the searchlights, and the night was noisy with half-hearted flak – a lot of the anti-aircraft guns are manned by local lads, conscripted to beef up the Occupation army, and their hearts aren't really in it when they fire at Allied planes. 20 minutes to get out of the Place des Hirondelles, and perhaps another hour to get into hiding before the all-clear.

Had to find someone close by to take the injured kid, Mitraillette managed that, and the rest of us scarpered on bicycles and on foot. Me and my Jamaican rear gunner took a tortuous route over a series of garden walls to avoid the checkpoint on the road. But we were outside Ormaie and cycling tandem, me standing on the bar at the back and him pedalling because he was so much heavier than me, when the explosion came.

It gave us such a shock we toppled over. We didn't feel it – we were just startled witless by the bang. For a couple of minutes I sat in the road laughing like a maniac, full moon and fire lighting everything, and then my rescued rear gunner very gently made me get back on the bicycle and we set off again with Ormaie at our backs.

‘Which way, Miss Kittyhawk?'

‘Left at the fork. Just call me Kittyhawk.'

‘Is that your name?'

‘No.'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘You are not French either.'

‘No, I'm English.'

‘What you doing in France, Kittyhawk?'

‘Same as you – I'm a shot-down airman.'

‘You are pulling my leg!'

‘I am not. I am a First Officer with the Air Transport Auxiliary. And I bet no one believes you either, when you tell them you're a rear gunner in the Royal Air Force.'

‘You're right about that, gal,' he said with feeling. ‘It's a white man's world.'

I held on tight round his waist, and hoped he wasn't as much of a lech as Paul or I would have to shoot him too, when we were stuck in the Thibauts' barn together by ourselves.

‘What's troubling you, Kittyhawk?' he asked softly. ‘What's making you cry so hard? Good riddance to that place.'

I was hanging on and leaning on his shoulder now, sobbing into his back. ‘They had my best friend in there – you were in her cell. She was there for two months.'

He pedalled silently, digesting this. At last he said, ‘She die there?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Not there. But she's dead now anyway.'

Suddenly I could feel though his jacket that he was crying too, shaking a little with silent, muffled sobs, just like me.

‘My best mate's dead too,' he said softly. ‘He was our pilot. Flew that plane into the ground – kept it flying straight and level so the rest of us could bail out after we were hit.'

Oh – only now that I am writing it down, only now I see that's exactly what I did too.

Funny – it seemed the most heroic thing in the world when he told me about his friend, dead amazing that anyone could be that brave and selfless. But I didn't feel heroic when I did it – just too scared to jump.

We rode through the moonlight with the flames of Ormaie behind us, and neither one of us stopped crying until we put the bicycle away.

We slept back to back in that tiny loft space in the old half-timbered barn for two nights – well, one and a half nights really – played 21 for hours with a deck of dreadful obscene playing cards I'd nicked from one of Etienne Thibaut's hidey holes. On Monday, yesterday, last night I mean, we got collected by the rose lady's chauffeur and taken to collect the Rosalie for our trip to the pick-up airfield.

This was the third time the Thibauts all hugged and kissed me goodbye – Amélie creating a fuss, Maman trying to make a present of a dozen silver spoons – I just
couldn't
! And Mitraillette with tears in her eyes, first I've ever seen her choked up like that over something that didn't involve blood.

She didn't come with us this time. I hope –

I wish I knew how to pray for them all. I just wish I knew.

—

The Rosalie was waiting for us in the driveway of the big house on the Poitou riverbank. It was still light when we got there, so as not to get the chauffeur in trouble, and while they were putting the other car away the old woman with the white hair like Julie's took me by the hand, just as she'd done that first terrible day after, and led me without a word through her cold garden.

Down along the river was a pile of roses, a
huge
pile of Damask roses, the autumn-flowering ones. She'd cut every single rose left in her garden and piled them there.

‘They let us bury everyone at last,' she told me. ‘Most are up there by the bridge. But I was so angry about those poor girls, those two lovely young girls left lying there in the dirt for four days with the rats and the crows at them! It's not right. It is not
natural
. So when we buried the others I had the men bring the girls here –'

Julie is buried in her great-aunt's rose garden, wrapped in her grandmother's first communion veil and covered in a mound of Damask roses.

Of course that is the name of her circuit too – Damask.

I still don't know her great-aunt's name. How is that possible? I knew it was her quite suddenly, it just came to me in a flash – when she said that she'd used the veils that she and her sister had worn at their first communion I remembered that Julie's grandmother was from Ormaie, and then I remembered the great-aunt story, and what she'd said to me about sharing a terrible burden, and it all clicked and I knew who she was.

But I didn't tell her – I didn't have the heart to tell her. She didn't seem to know it was Julie – of course Katharina Habicht would have kept her real identity hidden to avoid compromising anyone. I suppose I should have said something. But I just
couldn't do it
.

Now I am in tears
again
.

—

Have heard a car pull up so they may be sending for me soon, but I want to finish telling about getting out of France – which will probably also make me cry – what's new.

Even started off blubbing just listening to the radio message that let us know they were going to pick me up that night: ‘After a while, all children tell the truth' – in French it's ‘Assez bientôt, tousles enfants disent la vérité.' I am sure they stuck the word ‘vérité' in there on purpose, but they couldn't have known it would make me think of the last page Julie wrote – I have told the truth, over and over.

The whole routine is so familiar now, like a recurring dream. Dark field, flashing lights, Lysander wings against the moon. Except it gets
colder
each time. No mud this time, despite last week's rain – ground's all frozen solid. Dead smooth landing, the plane didn't go round even once – I like to think this is partly down to
my
excellent field selection – made the trade-off of goods and passengers in just under 15 minutes.
That's how it should be done
.

My Jamaican rear gunner had already climbed on board and I had one hand on the ladder to follow him up when the pilot yelled down at me, ‘OI, KITTYHAWK! YOU GOING TO FLY US OUT OF HERE?'

Who else but Jamie Beaufort-Stuart – just – who else?

‘Come on, swap seats with me,' he shouted. ‘You flew yourself here, you can fly yourself home.'

Can't believe he made the offer and I can't believe I took him up on it – all so wrong. Should have been retested after the crash-landing, at least.

‘But you didn't want me to fly OUT in the first place!' I bawled.

‘I was worried about you being in France, not worried about your flying! Bad enough one of you was going without losing you BOTH. Anyway if we get fired on you're better at crash-landings than I am –'

‘COURT MARTIAL, they'll court-martial both of us –'

‘What TOSH, you're a CIVILIAN! You've not been in danger of court martial since you left the WAAFs in 1941. The worst the ATA can do is dismiss you, and they'll do that anyway if they're going to do it. COME UP!'

The engine was idling. He had the parking brake on and there was just about room for us to change places once he'd hopped up on to the edge of the cockpit – didn't even have to adjust the seat as we are exactly the same height. He gave me his flying helmet.

I couldn't bear it. I told him.

‘I killed her. I shot her.'

‘What?'

‘It was me. I shot Julie.'

For a moment it seemed like there was nothing else that mattered or had any meaning in the whole world. All there was in the world was me in the pilot's seat of that Lysander and Jamie perched on the edge of the cockpit with his hand on the sliding canopy, no noise but the idle roar of the engine, no light anywhere but the three small runway flares and the moon glinting against the dials. Finally Jamie asked a brief question.

‘Did you mean to?'

‘Yes. She asked me to – I couldn't –
couldn't
let her down.'

After another long Lysander moment, Jamie said abruptly, ‘Now don't start weeping, Kittyhawk! Court martial or not, you have to fly the plane now because I don't trust myself quite, not after that confession.' He managed to unwedge himself from the edge of the cockpit and swung lightly from the wing strut to the access ladder at the back. I watched him climb into the rear cockpit and after a moment heard him introducing himself to my Jamaican friend.

FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE

I slid the canopy shut and began to run through the familiar pre-flight checks.

Then just as I started to put power on, this hand on my shoulder.

Just like that – nothing said. He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she'd done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers.

And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings.

So I am not flying alone now after all.

I am running out of paper.
This notebook of Etienne's is nearly full. I have an idea what to do with all of it though.

With that in mind I don't think I'll put down the Machiavellian Intelligence Officer's name. Didn't Julie say he introduced himself with a number at her interview? He introduced himself as himself this afternoon. Awkward to write about it without using a name though. John Balliol, perhaps, that's a good ironic name, the miserable Scottish king William Wallace lost his life defending. Sir John Balliol. I'm getting good at this. Perhaps I should join the Special Operations Executive after all.

Oh, Maddie-lass, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS.

My interview with Sir John Balliol had to be in the debriefing room – I suppose they do briefings there as well as debriefings, but that's what everybody calls it. It had to be there, didn't it, because it had to be done properly. Sergeant Silvey took me down. I know Silvey is soft on me, he always has been, and I think he is broken-hearted over Julie, but he was dead stiff and formal escorting me to my interview – awkward, you know? He didn't like to be doing it. He didn't like it that I was locked in either. Argued about it with the squadron leader. Doesn't matter – it's all down to protocol in the end, and the bottom line is that I shouldn't have taken that plane to France in the first place.

So I got marched down to the debriefing room under guard, and as I walked in I was suddenly shamefully aware of what a ragamuffin I am
always
– like a Glaswegian evacuee! – still wearing the French photographer's wife's climbing trousers and Etienne Thibaut's threadbare jacket and Jamie's boots, the same clothes I've been wearing for the past week and a good deal of the past two months, and by the way, the same clothes that I was wearing when I blew the Ormaie city centre to blazes. No feminine wiles to fall back on – I stepped into the whitewashed stone room with my heart going berserk against my ribs like a detonating engine. The room was exactly as it had been the first time he met me there nearly two years ago – two hard chairs pulled close to the electric fire, pot of tea under a cosy on the desk. It didn't smell like the interrogation room in Ormaie, but it was impossible not to think of it.

‘I'm afraid this may take some time,' Balliol said apologetically, holding out his hand to me. ‘I trust you managed to get some sleep last night?'

He didn't have his specs on. That must be what caught me out – he just looked like anybody. Then the way he offered his hand to me. I was instantly in Ormaie again, in the cobbled street with the new key and the old plans in my pocket and my heart full of hatred and bloody-mindedness – and I shook his hand and answered through my teeth,
‘Ja, mein Hauptsturmführer.'

He looked quite startled and I am sure I went red as a tomato. OH MADDIE WHAT A WAY TO BEGIN.