Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (14 page)

The cottage had been home to a peasant family. It had no electricity and a dirt floor. The Germans had thrown the living-room furniture into the street and the officer had taken a table from the kitchen to use as a desk. He’d lit an oil lamp because of the sudden darkness. His telephone was clearly a new addition, with its woven cable running out through the front window.

‘Sit,’ the officer said, as Henderson dripped on the dirt floor.

The officer’s French was well below the standard of his subordinate. ‘I phone Calais and they say no. Where you get documents?’

‘Bordeaux. I was assured—’

‘You have permits correct,’ the officer interrupted. ‘But your reason for entry says
Farmer
. That is not sufficient to enter military zone.’

Henderson cursed in his head, though it was tempered with relief because his worst fear was that he’d been recognised as a spy.

‘You have to go back.’

Henderson sighed. ‘But I received these documents from the office in Bordeaux. They were sealed by a major and I was assured that everything was in order before I set off. Is there someone else I can speak to at the office in Calais or something—’

The German raised up his hands. ‘Stop!’ he said dramatically. ‘You speak too fast. My French is not good.’
much

Henderson knew he’d need all of his persuasive skills so, to the officer’s surprise, he explained again in German, deliberately adding a strong French accent.

‘You speak my language well.’ The officer smiled. ‘Where did you learn?’

‘I worked as a salesman for a German company before I returned to the family farm,’ Henderson explained.

For some reason the officer found this hugely amusing. When he stopped laughing he gave Henderson another smile and picked up the telephone again.

‘We have a lot of Germans, a lot of French and nobody understands each other,’ the officer explained. ‘Hold on, I’ll phone Calais again.’

The cottage was warm and Henderson’s wet clothes stuck to his skin as the German explained that he’d unearthed a local farmer who spoke fluent German. Henderson worried that this ability might raise suspicions, but after a few sentences the German put the telephone down.

He took Henderson’s travel permit, crossed out the word
Farmer
, wrote
Translator
in its place, belted it with a rubber stamp and scribbled in a set of initials.

‘You can drive to your farm,’ the officer said. ‘Tomorrow morning you must arrive in Calais before ten a.m. Find the German headquarters and report to the Office of Translation for a skills assessment.’

Henderson realised that this was an order rather than a request. A translation post would bring him into close proximity with German operations and was a stroke of luck, but no farmer would be happy at being taken off his land, so he made a fuss.

‘I’ve been away for five weeks,’ Henderson said. ‘My land will be in a poor state. We need to rescue as many crops as we can before winter.’

The German’s lips thinned. ‘You have a wife and three boys,’ he said impatiently. ‘They can work the land. You’re lucky to be getting into the military zone at all!’

‘Of course, sir,’ Henderson said. ‘I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful.’

‘And now I’ve phoned Calais. The office will be expecting you, so make sure you arrive – or you’ll be arrested and punished.’

Henderson offered his hand.

‘Soft hands, for a farmer,’ the officer noted, as he shook.

⁶
Luftwaffe – the German Air Force.

⁷
Grenadier – the lowest rank of German soldier, equivalent to a private in the British Army.

It was possible to walk around Bordeaux for half a day without sighting a German patrol. By contrast, the countryside between the ports of Calais and Boulogne bristled with German trucks and Kübelwagens
⁸
. At one point a curve in the road unveiled an entire hillside with hungry French soldiers dotted over it like grazing sheep. Less than a dozen bored-looking Germans kept them in place, but the prisoners didn’t bother escaping because they expected to be sent home within weeks.

The truck and Jaguar’s destination was a rural spot near the coast a few kilometres south-west of Calais. This last stretch of a seven-hundred-kilometre journey dragged, with a break to top up Maxine’s Jag from the last can of petrol and a second security stop.

Lucien and Holly Boyle grew hugely excited when they recognised their home village, then turned through the gates of a small country house with an eccentric brick turret at one end.

‘Nanny, Granddad!’ Holly squealed, as an old man lifted her off the back of the truck.

Marc and Rosie basked in the emotional reunion as they dropped on to the driveway and walked off the stiffness from a day cooped up.

‘Mummy died in a bomb,’ Holly explained anxiously, as she nuzzled her grandfather’s neck.

Luc Boyle welled up as he hugged his granddaughter. His wife Vivien squeezed Lucien and kissed his grubby face. The couple were in their late fifties and wore typical peasant clothing, but small touches such as Luc’s Swiss watch and his wife’s soft shoes betrayed the fact that they owned land, rather than working it themselves.

‘I thought I might never see you two again,’ Vivien sniffed. ‘We had a card in the post yesterday. Your daddy is being held prisoner in Lille, but he’s safe at least.’
finally

As they ran into the house, Lucien hugged a fat servant before roughhousing with the Boyles’ youngest son, a sixteen-year-old named Dumont.

The party from Bordeaux took turns bathing in the house’s impressively large tub while one of the Boyles’ servants scrubbed their filthy clothes. Vivien pulled a half lamb from her oven and served up a meal extraordinary in both quantity and quality. Wine flowed and the adults turned a blind eye as Marc, PT and Dumont competed to drink as much as possible.

When everyone was stuffed the kids went into the back garden to enjoy the last of the sun. Lucien and Holly chased around, Paul and Rosie pushed them on a rope swing, while the three older boys crashed out on the lawn.

While the kids mucked around, Henderson and Maxine went into the drawing room and discussed more serious matters with Vivien and Luc over brandy.

Luc puffed on a small cigar as he quizzed Henderson about his life and his family. Henderson was the worse for half a bottle of wine, but still had to remember details of a complicated back story that tangled fact and fiction.

The truth was that after identifying a list of lost children from the Pas-de-Calais region using Maxine’s missing-person records, Henderson selected Lucien and Holly because documents found on their mother’s body showed that they came from a village situated between the ports of Calais and Boulogne that would be ideal for spying on a German invasion of England.

He’d also found a diary containing a telephone number for the dead woman’s parents-in-law. This not only made communications easier, but indicated that they were wealthy and likely to be in a position to help him out.

Over the course of several phone calls, Henderson had explained his position and thrashed out a deal with Luc Boyle. Henderson had told Luc that with so many refugees marooned in southern France there was no work and he needed a job to feed his four children.

He’d heard that there was plenty of work in the north for those who could get there and said he could obtain the paperwork required to enter the military zone. Henderson offered to bring Boyle’s two grandchildren home. In exchange Boyle would provide Henderson with a few months’ free accommodation on a farm.

‘There’s one minor detail I couldn’t discuss on the telephone,’ Henderson said awkwardly, as Vivien poured him another cognac. ‘My German contact told me that it would be easiest if we all travelled under one name. So my name and that of my family is now Boyle. It will be best if you tell the locals that I’m a distant cousin, or something.’

Vivien raised an eyebrow as she passed back Henderson’s glass. ‘Even people who’ve lived here their whole lives can’t get back into the area,’ she explained. ‘So people are sure to ask where you’ve come from.’

‘The Boche are short of translators,’ Luc said. ‘It’s lucky that you turned out to speak such excellent German.’
remarkably

Henderson knew that the presumption of using his family name was likely to stick in Luc Boyle’s throat and the couple clearly sensed that there was more to Henderson than met the eye, but they were ecstatic at the safe return of their grandchildren and apparently happy to let the matter slide. At least, for the time being.

*

Marc woke on a bare mattress in a musty room with sunlight shining through a crack in the roof and a puddle in the far corner. A burp sent acid surging up his throat and for a horrible instant he thought he was going to puke over his blanket.

His head thudded as he looked around and saw PT’s boots on the floor beside him. Marc remembered the wine and a bumpy midnight ride in the back of the truck, but had no recollection of the building in which he’d awoken.

If anything, the holey-roofed bedroom was a high point of the cottage. Green stalactites of mildew hung from the ceiling in the cramped hallway and damp seemed to be consuming the building from within. A step and a door that scraped along the floor because the top hinge had rotted loose led into a kitchen.

‘Eggs?’ Rosie asked brightly, as she thrust a sizzling pan in his face.

‘Get off,’ Marc groaned, clutching a hand over his mouth before scrambling past PT and Paul and running out the back door where he spewed red vomit over a honeysuckle bush.

PT yelled through the open door, ‘Dirty beast.’

‘Poor lamb,’ Maxine said sarcastically, stepping out into the fresh air behind Marc. She’d swapped her usual stockings and smart blouses for rubber boots and an overall. ‘Looks like someone can’t handle their wine.’

Marc’s only reply was a desperate, ‘Oh god,’ as he leaned forwards and threw up for a second time.

Rosie was more sympathetic and passed out a glass of tap water for him to wash his mouth with.

‘Why didn’t someone stop me drinking?’ Marc groaned, as he staggered back indoors, clutching at his aching sides.

‘If you’re stupid enough to try out-drinking a sixteen year old who’s twice your size, you can deal with the consequences,’ Maxine said.

Marc looked up at the rotting roof beams, tattered chairs and rusted kitchen range. ‘How did we end up in this crap-hole?’ he asked.

‘You should have seen Henderson’s face when we arrived here last night,’ PT said, grinning. ‘He was raving, saying that Luc Boyle was a lying bastard and all sorts. There’s no electric and the farm buildings are in an even worse state than this heap.’

‘It’ll clean up well enough,’ Maxine said optimistically, as Rosie dished eggs for Paul and PT which made Marc heave again. ‘And we’re well out of harm’s way.’

‘Where is Henderson?’ Marc asked.

‘He’s taken the bike into Calais to meet with the Germans,’ Maxine explained.

‘How far’s that?’

‘About thirteen kilometres,’ Maxine answered. ‘But there’s no petrol left for the Jag and turning up in a lorry might look peculiar.’

‘We’d better get the roof fixed in that bedroom,’ Marc said. ‘Judging by the size of the hole, me and PT might drown in our sleep if it rains again.’

‘I’ve made a list,’ Maxine announced. ‘Rosie and I are going to scrub this rotten house top to bottom and then unpack everything from the truck. PT said he saw some sheets of metal in the back courtyard and he’ll try patching the roof. Charles wants to transmit this evening, so Paul’s job is to unpack the radio and find a good spot for a transmission. Which leaves Marc to deal with the animals.’

Marc looked slightly stunned. ‘What animals?’

Maxine smiled. ‘According to Luc Boyle, this land was abandoned three months back and it hasn’t been worked properly since the tenant farmer and his son got conscripted into the army almost a year ago. Now, I’m led to believe that you’re our resident farming expert.’

Marc baulked. ‘I did some labouring for a farmer when I lived at the orphanage, but I’m no expert. I spent a few months working in the fields before I got assigned to mucking out cows.’

‘I told you he understood cows,’ Rosie said brightly. ‘You can go and sort out Muriel and Sarah.’

‘Please,’ Marc begged. ‘Anything but dirty stinking cows. All they’re good for is eating and shitting. And how do you know their names?’

‘I don’t,’ Rosie said. ‘I named them this morning when I went out for a look around.’

‘Besides, I’m not an expert.’

‘You might not know much,’ Maxine said, ‘but I’ve never set foot on a farm, Charles certainly hasn’t and PT, Paul and Rosie are all city kids. So you’re an expert compared to any of us.’

‘Why bother anyway?’ Marc said. ‘Henderson and PT have got loads of money. We can just buy food.’

‘We’re supposed to be a poor family living on a farm, you idiot,’ Rosie said. ‘How suspicious is it going to seem to the locals if we leave the land to grow wild and start splashing money around?’

Marc ate half a slice of bread and sipped at a cup of cold water before Maxine drove him out to work by slamming doors and deliberately banging metal pots around as she cleared out the kitchen cupboards.

His first proper look at the farm was a shock. Marc had worked with a farmer called Morel when he lived at the orphanage and was used to neat barns and carefully tended crops. Here, all he could see in every direction was backbreaking work: two fields up to his neck with stinging nettles, a rusted hand-plough, a well with no bucket and a shed-over-a-hole toilet set in a bog filled with buzzing flies.

Animals had been released to fend for themselves when the tenants left three months earlier. The chicken cages were crusted in lime and the overgrown grass around them was strewn with feathers where hens had fallen prey to foxes. There was a goat pen, but no signs of life within, and two pathetic cows fenced inside the field furthest from the house.

As Marc walked an overgrown footpath towards the cows he caught the familiar smell of manure and was surprised to find that this infused his head with an odd nostalgia for the days he’d spent on Morel’s farm near Beauvais. In particular he remembered Jae Morel, the farmer’s good-looking daughter, who’d been the closest thing he’d ever had to a girlfriend – until he accidentally knocked her into a manure pit.