Escape by Moonlight (9 page)

The back door opened, letting in an icy blast and a woman in her thirties. She was slim and chic. Her dark hair, topped by a fetching felt hat with a feather across its brim, was coiled into a roll down the back of her head.

‘Justine!’ The old lady darted forward to embrace her. ‘Take off your coat and hat and come and warm yourself by the fire. You are just in time for supper.’

Justine put a small suitcase down and bent to kiss her father’s cheek. ‘How are you, Papa?’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

She turned to hug Elizabeth. ‘Hallo, Lisabette. You have been doing sterling work on the farm, I hear, looking after everything.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Maman writes letters and so does Pierre. I know all about it.’ She turned to Max who had stood up on her entrance. ‘You must be Max.’

‘Oh, let me introduce you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Justine, this is Captain Max Coburn, a very good friend of mine who is spending his Christmas leave with us. Max, Ma’amselle Justine Clavier, my mother’s younger sister. She teaches English in a school in Paris.’

They shook hands and both said ‘How do you do’ in English.

‘Max speaks good French,’ Grandmère said, letting them know that she wanted to be in on the conversation. ‘Lisabette, lay the table, this chicken is ready to carve.’

‘What’s happening in Paris?’ Elizabeth asked Justine as they sat down to eat.

‘Nothing much. There’s a shortage of petrol and coal and it’s a job to keep warm, most of the young men have disappeared into the army, but everyone else is trying to carry on as usual. The great and the good spend their time giving charity balls in aid of the troops, and Coco Chanel has set her seamstresses to making gloves and pullovers for the army.’ She laughed. ‘She has put her label on them, so I bet a lot of them will never be worn but stashed away as souvenirs.’

‘The young men are going from the farms too,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m not the only woman trying to cope without them. Mama says the same thing is happening in England. She says Jack has volunteered for the air force, though he hasn’t been sent for yet. Amy is training to be a nurse. I didn’t think she’d be any good at it, she hasn’t seen much of life and I thought she would be too squeamish, but she says she likes it.’

‘You were squeamish once,’ her grandmother reminded her. ‘You soon learn to get over it when you have to.’

Elizabeth laughed. ‘So I was.’ She turned to Max. ‘I can wring a chicken’s neck and shoot a rabbit and
skin it. I helped pluck the Christmas goose and watched Grandmère draw it. It’s stuffed ready for the oven tomorrow.’

‘I shall enjoy it all the more knowing you had a hand in its preparation,’ Max said.

No one sitting down to the gargantuan meal the following day would have guessed there was a war on and many people were suffering shortages of food and fuel, and if any of them thought it might be the last good Christmas dinner they had for some time, they did not voice it.

Afterwards Max and Elizabeth wrapped themselves in warm coats, boots and gloves and went for a walk, Pierre and the boys went out cutting logs for firewood, while Jeanne and Justine washed up and her grandparents snoozed by the fire.

It had been snowing and the hills were white with it. The skiers were out, expert and beginners, whooshing down the slopes enjoying a holiday that might very well be the last for a long time.

‘I still think you should change your mind and go home,’ Max said. ‘This Phoney War won’t last, you know. Hitler won’t be content to sit on his gains. Either we’ll have to take the initiative and attack him or he’ll come to us. The trouble is that the French seem content to fight a defensive war. We’ll never win that way.’

‘Max, let’s not talk about it.’ She took his arm in both her hands and put her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s lovely to have you here. You’ll come as often as you can, won’t you? It’s surely easier than having to go all the way to England to see me when you get leave.’

He laughed. ‘There is that.’

They stopped in the shelter of a hut where he took her
into his arms and kissed her. She clung to him. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go back so soon.’

‘So do I. It’s been a grand leave, something to remember when I’m cold and dirty and hungry.’

‘I’ll miss you. Take care of yourself, won’t you?’

‘Of course. I mean to see this war out and ask you to marry me properly and I hope you are going to say yes.’ He put his finger over her lips when she opened her mouth to answer him. ‘Not now. Save it. It has to be special.’

‘Oh, Max.’ She reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him back.

He left next morning to travel back to Paris with Justine.

The troops were exhausted. They had known the attack was coming and thought they were ready, but the truth was they were beaten, beaten by a ruthless enemy who had overrun Denmark, forced Norway to capitulate and advanced rapidly across Holland and Belgium and were knocking at the doors of France, all in the space of a few weeks. The long hard winter was behind them and the spring well advanced when the so-called Bore War ended, cataclysmically for the Allies. The Netherlands and Belgium had tried to hold onto their neutrality but the German troops had ignored that and continued their relentless advance to the French border. The population of France waited for its army and the BEF to bring them to a halt.

The attack, when it came, was in the Ardennes, south of where it had been expected. Supported by bombers, German Panzers crossed the Meuse at Sedan and were on French soil. In spite of patchy opposition, some so weak as to be almost non-existent, some ferociously determined, the
invaders had turned north towards the Channel to encircle the Allied armies. Max and his men found themselves fighting a rearguard action as they were forced to withdraw inside a tighter and tighter perimeter. His orders were to hold off the enemy as long as possible in order for the troops behind him to be evacuated by sea.

The noise was deafening as shells rained down on them from enemy positions, throwing up clouds of earth and debris, and they were constantly dive-bombed by screaming Stukas. Max had lost half his men and the others, though fighting bravely, had almost lost hope. Holed up in a barn, they watched the road ahead of them, sniping at anything that moved, wondering how long it would be before they were given the order to withdraw and could make their way to the coast where they had been told there were ships waiting to take them off.

But the order never came.

‘We’re beaten,’ Grandpère said. ‘Better go while you can, Lisabette. Go over the border to Switzerland. You can get home from there.’

‘I’m not leaving you. And how do you know we’re beaten? That’s defeatist talk. And even if we are beaten, you still need me.’ They were sitting round the kitchen table after listening to the wireless while they ate their supper. The plentiful food of Christmas was a dream that had passed, leaving the stark reality of rationing and shortages. If her grandparents were to survive, she had to do all she could to help them. She was more use here than in England.

‘You are as stubborn as your mother,’ Grandmère said. ‘She wouldn’t listen either. She insisted on going to the front to be near Jacques and look what happened.’

Elizabeth smiled. ‘What did happen?’

‘She got herself pregnant, didn’t she? Came home as big as a mountain and Jacques dead. She wouldn’t have the baby adopted …’

‘I should think not. I wouldn’t either, especially if I loved the man who gave him to me. Were you angry with her?’

‘I suppose I was to start with. It was a disgrace and I felt everyone was pointing at us, but when little Jacques was born, of course we loved him. And Annelise was lucky, she met your father again and he gave her a second chance.’

‘They have been very happy together. I hope Max and I—’

‘
Sacredieu,
you are not
enceinte,
are you?’

‘No, Mamie, I’m not. But one day we plan to marry, when this war is over.’

‘You’ll have a long wait then,’ the old man put in.

‘You, Papie, are a pessimist.’ Elizabeth paused, as her thoughts went to wondering what had happened to Max. Had he got safely away with all the others at Dunkirk? It had been a massive undertaking and seemed to turn a defeat into a triumph, but was Max with them? She told herself over and over again he was a survivor, but she wished she could have some news. She had heard nothing from him for over a month and that had told her very little except that he was well. Letters from home were taking a long time to reach her too; she had no idea how everyone was coping. She had written to say she was safe and well, but she had no way of knowing if the letter had reached its destination. That was the worst part of the separation, not knowing. They had to rely on rumour fed by thousands of fleeing refugees and the heavily censored wireless for news. They listened to the BBC and knew
Churchill was now prime minister and making stirring speeches aimed at boosting everyone’s morale, but of her own family she knew nothing.

Men were tearing up the wrought iron gates at Nayton Manor. They were watched by Bernard on his way home from school. ‘Everyone has to give up their metal to help the war effort,’ one of the workmen told him. ‘To make aeroplanes and guns.’

Bernard knew about that because he had heard it on the wireless. According to the news London parks were losing all their railings and housewives were giving up their saucepans. At school they had been urged to collect scrap metal from neighbours and bring it all to school. What they collected would be melted down and go towards making a Spitfire. Bernard had liked the idea of that: doing something to aid the war effort. He had fetched a wheelbarrow from the gardener’s shed and gone round the village begging for metal. He had acquired several old saucepans, a colander, some cutlery, tins that had once held peas and carrots, a few battered garden implements and sundry unidentifiable bits of tools, which had taken the whole of one Saturday to collect. Proud of himself he had wheeled it to the field at the back of the school and added it to the growing heap.

‘Well done,’ Jack had said when he told him he thought there was enough there for at least one Spitfire. ‘We’ll soon have old Jerry beaten.’ Jack was in the air force and flying Spitfires, but he came home now and then on leave. Bernard wondered what had happened to the portrait he had been painting of the railway-crossing girl. She had disappeared before Christmas and there was a new woman operating
the crossing gates since Mr Storey had married again.

He had told Edmund about the picture and Edmund had sneaked into Jack’s room to look for it, but he couldn’t find it. According to Edmund, he must have misunderstood what was going on; Jack wouldn’t look twice at the likes of a railway worker. They had had a fight over it, but had made it up when Edmund had conceded that if Jack had come across a girl being attacked, of course he would wade in to help, but that didn’t mean there was any more to it than that. Bernard didn’t believe him but, for the sake of peace, had agreed he was probably right.

He wished he could go home. He had a new brother now, called Joe. Ma had brought him down to visit them, but she still wouldn’t take them home. He had only one more year at school after this one and then he’d leave and find a job and he’d go home whether she wanted him to or not. Cissie wouldn’t mind, not now. Cissie had grown so fond of Annie that she had stopped fretting for her mother. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. As for Raymond and Martin, they had become real Norfolk dumplings, were even beginning to sound like them, calling each other ‘bor’ and dragging out their vowels. He wondered if they would ever settle back in London among grimy streets and back-to-back houses.

He watched the men loading the gates onto a lorry and turned to go up the drive to the house. Lady de Lacey, in her WVS uniform, was cycling towards him. She went everywhere on her bicycle now they couldn’t get petrol for the big car.

She dismounted when she saw him. ‘Have you got homework to do, Bernard?’

‘Yes, My Lady.’ The polite address tripped easily off his
tongue now, though he didn’t see that she was any different from any other woman except, of course, she was rich. ‘It don’t seem right, do it, takin’ the gates away?’

‘No, but we must all make sacrifices if we are to win the war.’

‘As soon as I’m old enough I’m going to join up.’

She smiled at him. ‘I hope the war is over long before that happens.’

‘Jack likes it. He said it was great fun.’

She chuckled. ‘He would say that. Now run along and do your homework before you go out again.’

Annelise remounted and went on her way to her WVS meeting at the village hall, musing about Jack. He did seem to be enjoying life but, as far as she knew, he hadn’t seen any action yet and she hoped he never would, but that hope was fast dwindling. Since the horror of Dunkirk, the Germans had continued their relentless advance; according to the news, the heavy guns could be heard in Paris. How long her countrymen could hold out, she did not know. She feared not long and then the beautiful city of her homeland, the scene of her idyllic honeymoon, would become just another conquest for the barbarian. And then what? Lizzie and her parents were constantly in her thoughts. How they were coping, she had no idea; there had been no letter for months. Lizzie probably didn’t even know that Max was missing.

She cycled along Nayton’s country lanes savouring the warmth of the afternoon sun, her nostrils full of the scent of the cow parsley growing in the verges, half listening to a noisy blackbird calling from the hedgerow. It was so peaceful, it was difficult to believe that everyone was
gearing themselves up to resist an invasion. Charles had been worrying the War Office to give him something useful to do but all that happened was that he was given command of the Nayton Local Defence Volunteers. With their armbands and tin hats, all the uniform they had so far, they drilled with brooms for rifles and listened to lectures. According to Charles, they were grittily determined to hold off any Jerry who had the temerity to invade their homeland. It was too amateurish for words.

She dismounted at the station and wheeled her cycle through the pedestrian gate and across the tracks, saying good afternoon to Mrs Storey who was on her knees weeding the patch of station garden. ‘It’s a beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?’

‘For them as hev time to enjoy it, mayhap.’

‘Yes, it must be hard work keeping the station tidy, but I must say you make a very good job of it. The flowers are lovely. Lucy used to keep it nice too. How is she getting on in her new job?’ Lucy’s sudden disappearance had been the gossip of the village for a while. Had she done something wrong and been dismissed? Had she got herself pregnant and gone away to have the baby in secret? Had she quarrelled with her new stepmother? Mr Storey had been unforthcoming but according to Mrs Storey she had left for a better job.

‘Don’ know. She don’ keep in touch.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but perhaps you’ll hear from her soon.’ She remounted and went on her way as a train drew into the station behind her. There was something strange about that girl’s disappearance, but it was none of her business and she put it from her mind.

Lucy left the doctor’s surgery and made for home. What he had told her had been no surprise; she knew what was wrong with her. No, not wrong, she corrected herself, she wasn’t ill and having Jack’s baby was not wrong; she didn’t care what anyone said. She hoped Jack would be pleased about it.

He had been as good as his word and found her a job in an engineering factory making aeroplane parts and a little two-up two-down terrace cottage in Waterloo Road. ‘Better than a miserable room with a landlady breathing down your neck all the time,’ he had told her. ‘You can please yourself what you do and I can visit you if I want.’

‘And will you want to?’

‘Of course. We can finish the portrait.’

‘But I don’t think I can afford the rent, it’s more than for one room, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.’

‘But you can’t do that. It’s not right.’

‘Of course it’s right. I’ve got plenty of money and nothing to spend it on but pleasure and if it is my pleasure to help you, what’s wrong with that?’

She had not continued to argue; it was nice to have someone who cared enough to want to look after her. She would find some way to repay him.

The house was supposed to be furnished but had only the bare necessities and he had taken her on a shopping spree to add a few things of her own to make it more homely. He had even bought her some clothes because, remembering how her father had said her mother’s clothes belonged to him, she had brought only the minimum with her. She liked to imagine it was like being married, except Jack was not there all the time. His family at Nayton Manor claimed
him, but he had dropped in sometimes on a Saturday or a Sunday and had his tea with her. Then he had joined the Royal Air Force and disappeared for weeks to do his training. When he came on leave it was a joyful reunion, so joyful she had thrown herself into his arms, kissed him exuberantly and allowed him to stay the night.

He was a thoughtful and tender-hearted lover and she gave herself to him willingly and lovingly and if the result was a new, smaller edition of Jack de Lacey, well, that was all right by her. She had never been so happy in her life. The only drawback was the lack of a wedding ring, and though she told herself she didn’t care whether they were married or not, she did wonder what her neighbours and workmates might think, so she bought herself a cheap ring in Woolworths.

She’d have to keep working until the last minute, but as the factory needed every hand it could get with so many of the men leaving for the forces, she didn’t think they’d get rid of her until she was too big to sit comfortably at her workbench. One thing she had not done and never would do, was contact the man she had called Pa for so long. Nor would she write to Jack to tell him her news; she would wait until he came to her. She wanted to see his face when she told him.

He came a week after the news had broken about Dunkirk. He looked haggard and exhausted, too tired even to talk or eat. She didn’t bother him but let him sleep the clock round, and it was not until the following morning when she put a huge breakfast in front of him and he had demolished it, he came alive again. ‘Thanks for understanding, Lucy,’ he said, taking her hand and putting it against his cheek. ‘I needed to sleep. I couldn’t go home
like that, they’d have quizzed me about what was wrong and I couldn’t tell them. They’d have been too upset.’

‘You don’t have to tell me either, if you don’t want to, but perhaps it’d be better out than in.’

He was silent for some moments, then went on. ‘It was awful. We were sent to Dunkirk to keep Jerry from bombing our troops on the beach. There were thousands and thousands of them in long lines waiting for anything afloat to come and take them off, and there wasn’t a scrap of cover except a few dunes. The Stukas came screaming in and mowed them down. And even the men who reached the ships weren’t safe. Many were sunk, even the hospital ship with its red cross. When I flew low, I could see the sea and beach were full of debris and dead bodies. I never learnt to hate before but seeing the merciless way the men were strafed, and not being able to do much but chase the buggers off, made me furious. I went after them and I might have downed one. One! That was all I could do. And I kept thinking of Max and wondering if he was down there in the middle of it all …’