Spitfire

by M. L. Huie

  “I have a right to be here today, Colonel.”

  “It’s not a question of what’s right.” He moved so close to her Livy wondered for a moment if he might kiss her. “You need to pull yourself together, Livy. The Firm has been off the books for more than a year now. The war is over. You’ve got to find some way to leave all this behind.”

  “Thank you for the lecture, Daddy, but I’m a grown-up now and I make my own decisions, and I’m here to pay respects to my—”

  Tears pushed at her eyes as she tried to find the right words. Damn it, she would not cry in front of this patronizing tosser. What had she been about to say, anyway? Friend? That didn’t cover it, really. The relationship she’d had with Peter defied description. Friend, of course. But what about commanding officer, comrade, confidant? Lover?

  “I can’t have you like this inside when Clara receives that medal, don’t you see? Today is a celebration. It’s not about you. It’s about king and country. It’s about loyalty. Loyalty to what we fought for.”

  Maybe it was the vodka, or the pain in her gut, or the memory of her and Peter in that German prison—along with Dunbar’s old-hat rhetoric—that finally broke down the little decorum she could maintain. She grabbed Dunbar’s well-pressed lapels and shoved him away with sudden ferocity. The colonel fell on the grassy lawn around the monument. The tall peaked cap toppled from his head.

  “Don’t you bloody well talk to me about loyalty.” Livy spat the words at him.

  Lying on the ground, Dunbar held his hands up, prepared for an attack.

  Livy stopped. Her lungs heaved, her breath pulsing in loud gasps. Just like battle. She’d felt the same sudden urge during the war in times of crisis. Dunbar looked ready to defend himself. How she must look to him, Livy could only imagine.

  She stepped back. On the ground between them lay a folded piece of paper. Dunbar had dropped the palace’s official order of program for today’s medal ceremony.

  Livy picked up the paper, slid it inside her coat, and walked away.

  * * *

  An hour later Livy sat at a corner table in an almost empty pub off Piccadilly, sipping a vodka and tonic. It couldn’t be any later than eleven. Not a proper lunchtime for another hour, and she was—to use the Lancashire phrase—pissed as a newt.

  The faint sounds of the Victory Parade on a route down the Strand found their way through the open door of the pub and to Livy’s back table. The barman, a small man with a clean apron and a face like a rat, peered outside as if he could actually see the parade. The only other customer that morning was a sunken-faced man in a Tommy uniform from the Great War, who sat near the door slowly eating chips.

  “Looks like rain, it does,” the barman said for at least the third time in the last half hour. “Rain right on the king’s parade. Hitler’s revenge.”

  Livy took another sip of her drink and reread the George Cross citation.

  The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the GEORGE CROSS to Lieutenant Commander Peter Lawrence Scobee, Special Operations Executive. Lt. Cmdr Scobee parachuted behind enemy lines in France in 1943 and, for almost two years, organized and assisted resistance movements in occupied France.

  In July 1944 Lt. Cmdr. Scobee and members of his staff were taken to a Gestapo prison near Paris. He was executed in the prison on 10 August 1944 after being interred for more than three weeks. The GEORGE CROSS is presented to Lt. Cmdr. Scobee for his sacrifice and loyalty in the face of torture and extreme duress at the hands of the enemy in occupied France.

  Livy folded the paper. “Members of his staff.” No need for a mere member of the staff to attend the ceremony this morning. Might be distracting.

  The light from the open door to the pub suddenly dimmed. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway. His head turned toward the old man in uniform and then snapped in Livy’s direction.

  “Looks like rain, it does,” the barman said, as if by introduction.

  The man sauntered to the bar and grinned at the landlord. The light behind him dimmed his profiled features, but Livy could tell his single-breasted suit was tailored. He didn’t have a hat, and despite the barman’s grim predictions about the weather, the man had chosen to not wear a coat that morning.

  “Scotch and soda,” the new patron said. His vowels had the lazy drawl of the educated gentry, although his voice seemed like one used to giving orders. “With Haig and Haig, if you have it.”

  The man turned from the bar and looked around the pub as if searching for a table. He placed a cigarette with three gold bands around the filter into his mouth and lit it with a gold lighter he pulled from another pocket.

  Now this one certainly looked like the type who ought to be celebrating on the Strand as the king, the princesses, and Monty waved to the masses. Livy guessed the patron was just shy of forty, so the right age to have served. He looked reasonably fit, although she noticed signs of aging, such as gray at the temples of his dark, wavy hair and crow’s feet that deepened when he drew in the smoke from his cigarette.

  The barman brought his drink over, and the man eyed the honey-brown concoction as he dropped a few coins on the bar.

  “Rain right on the king’s head,” the barman muttered, and pocketed the change.

  The man’s arrival had pulled Livy out into the open. She wanted privacy. She wanted to sit and drink in this dark corner all day if she felt like it. She didn’t want some bloke giving her the eye or telling her, “A lady shouldn’t be alone in a pub in the middle of the day.”

  The man in the suit sipped his drink and moved in her direction. What the hell? Wasn’t this bugger smart enough to see this wasn’t the time for flirting? No, they never saw it that way. Not one of them.

  Slowly, she let her eyes drift up from her drink to meet his. He had a broken nose and a wide mouth with a big grin. Handsome. Complete trouble.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “I can see,” he said, looking at her drink. Then his eyes went down to her legs. Livy wondered if she’d wobble when she stood up to hit this cheeky Casanova.

  “You’re Olivia Nash, aren’t you?” he asked, eyes returning to her face.

  And he knows my name? “As I said—I’m busy.”

  “Yes, well, let me get to the point then.” He reached inside his coat and placed a simple, white business card on the table in front of her. “I’m the foreign manager of the Kemsley News Group, which includes The Sunday Times, among others. You’re with Geoffrey O’Toole over at the Evening Press and Journal, aren’t you?”

  Livy eyed her watch. The stranger ignored the hint.

  “If you’re content working for a third-rate paper, then please forgive my intrusion. But if you’re a smart girl, then I’d like to discuss something a little different for you. With your foreign background, you’d be ideal for our line of work. Any chance you could run round to my office Monday? I’m just up on the Gray’s Inn Road. Do you know it?”

  Livy’s mind raced through all the possible angles. A man walks into a pub, finds a lone woman drinking and manufactures a job that just happens to be in her line of work, all in an attempt to seduce her? But what else could it be? Newspaper work? No one even remotely familiar with her proofreading job would ever consider offering her a promotion. Much less track her down in a pub and dangle foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times in front of her sloshed nose.

  This might rank as one of the most elaborate flirtations in history. Or it might be something else entirely.

  “Gray’s Inn Road?”

  “That’s right. We have a modest office there.” The man swirled the ice in his glass lazily. Calm as you please.

  Not a policeman either, she reckoned. Far too sophisticated. Like he owns the world, this one. Had her landlord sicced someone on her? No, toughs who collected rent didn’t pronounce their vowels like the Patricia O’Tooles of the world.

  “I know the area,” she said, finally. Nothing about this f
elt right to her, but that’s precisely what made it intriguing.

  “Excellent. Shall we say around two, then?”

  Livy took another drink. “If I can get away from work.”

  “I’m sure you can manufacture some excuse. Oh, and I’d suggest you clean up a bit before tomorrow. You’re about to step up in the world, Miss Nash.” The man downed the last sip of his drink and then turned to go.

  “You there,” Livy called to his back. The stranger turned. “How’d you find me?”

  His wide mouth dropped down a bit as if he was disappointed she’d had to ask. “I’m a journalist. We ask questions.”

  Then he stepped out into the street, and the pub returned to its dark silence.

  An interview for a new job, just like that? She wasn’t a writer, and if this bloke knew enough to find her in this pub, then he obviously knew that as well. Whoever he was.

  She looked down at what he’d handed her. The simple printing matched the unadorned card. It read:

  Kemsley News Group.

  Mercury Service.

  “Get it first, but get it right.”

  Foreign Manager, Ian Fleming.

  Chapter Two

  Careless women never appeal to a real gentleman. Don’t talk while dancing. When a man is dancing, he wants to dance.

  Livy put down her pencil and rubbed her eyes. She was sick to death of editing this idiotic column. Her headache had returned as well, even though she’d not had a drink since the pub two days ago. With a couple of months’ rent due in a few days, she’d have to cut back on the black-market booze. To soothe herself, Livy felt the thick embossed card given her by the stranger in the pub through the pocket of her skirt. Foreign work? Stepping up in the world? She didn’t believe it and didn’t trust him. Even though she wanted to.

  Her desk sat in the middle of the second of three very straight rows in the newsroom of the London Evening Press and Journal (the P&J to those lucky enough to work there). The uniform lines were sandwiched between two walls with one window on either side. Bathrooms and a small lunchroom faced Livy, with the administrative offices situated behind so the publisher and editors could watch over her and the other worker bees.

  The P&J resided in a soot-gray three-story building that had housed a butcher shop a few years before the war. The butcher and family had lived on the second floor, which now served as the present location of the not-so-bustling newsroom. The butcher went to war and the family moved to the country, so in ’39, the P&J took up residence. But on hot days like today, Livy, whose desk was situated near a gap in the wooden floorboards, swore she could still smell rotted meat, even though it had been seven years since the butcher had owned the shop.

  Another explanation for the stink might be the column Livy found herself proofreading. Tomorrow evening’s edition would carry a particularly gripping “Ladies’ Front” column with more advice for single women.

  Never look bored in the company of a man, even if you are, the column advised. Don’t sit in awkward positions, and remember, if you must chew gum, do it with your mouth closed.

  As was often the case when the trite verbiage of “The Ladies’ Front” became too much to bear, Livy swiveled her head toward the large window on her left that looked almost directly into the facade of a white office building. Nothing distinguished the block except an archway on the ground floor that led to a small courtyard, but its likeness to another building always took Livy back to 1943 just before her war began.

  She’d been a motorcar driver at Squires Gate Airport in Blackpool, ferrying Vickers Wellington flyboys to their bombers morning and night. Then the letter came. The blank envelope opened to reveal a tersely worded statement:

  Olivia Nash has been recommended for special service by her FANY commanding officer.

  So, on a crisp fall morning, she took the train to London wearing her tweed suit, which was a little warm for the time of year but the only one she had. In her hand she held a white card with an address in Orchard Court near Baker Street.

  The building Livy found seemed far too innocuous to be attached to the War Office. In fact, it looked like any other office building, except for the distinctive archway. A doorman met her as she entered and asked, in French, if she spoke English. He then led her to the second floor, where she met a tall, wispy sort of officer named Buckmaster.

  “Right, Miss Nash, welcome. Let me just take you down the hall to our Miss Atkins,” Buckmaster said.

  The woman waiting for Livy in the austere office at the end of the corridor looked to be about thirty-five but had the forthright stare and bearing of someone much older. Miss Atkins sat behind a plain wooden desk and calmly lit a cigarette before saying a word. A single closed manila folder lay on the desk.

  “Three years at Squires Gate in the motor pool, I see?” Miss Atkins spoke with crisp consonants and round vowels.

  “I’m a FANY. That’s my job.”

  Miss Atkins smiled at the quip, then opened the folder on her desk. “English father, French mother.” She blinked. “I see your mother was killed in an air raid at Liverpool.” She lifted her head and met Livy’s gaze.

  Maybe it was the way she addressed her mother’s death. Without any sense of false sympathy. Maybe it was the way her expression softened just slightly. Whatever it was, Miss Atkins had changed the air in the room. She acknowledged Livy’s grief, and the two women sat with it for a long moment.

  Then she said, “Your mother was a Parisian, I believe. Her city—her country—is overrun by the Boche. We here at the Firm are sending young men and women like yourself to help those who are fighting behind the lines. Now, you speak French like a native. You’re young, smart, and from what I hear more than capable. Your commanding officer at Squires Gate wrote that you subdued a German POW awaiting transfer?”

  “He thought I’d be easy, that he could get past me.”

  “It says here you knocked him unconscious.”

  “I might’ve done.”

  “No doubt. The thing is, Miss Nash, that anger you seem to be holding on to can either serve you or destroy you. So, I can recommend today that you be sent to Scotland for training, but first I need to know if you’re willing to take what drives you and use it. Do you understand me? I suppose that what I’m saying is I sense you would like to do more for your country than just being an RAF chauffeur?”

  Livy’s laughter surprised even herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this light, this excited. She still didn’t know exactly what this “special service” might be, but now she’d willingly follow wherever Miss Atkins led her.

  “If you’re asking if I want to get off my arse and fight this war,” Livy said, “then the answer is, where do I sign?”

  Miss Atkins didn’t flinch. She took a long drag on her cigarette, put it out in a glass ashtray, and opened the manila folder.

  “Well, then, you sign right here.” She pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. At the top it read, OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT.

  Much later, after all the training, Livy and the others returned to the building at Orchard Park, which she now knew was headquarters of Section F (France) of the SOE (Special Operations Executive). Again she met with Miss Atkins in the plain office on the second floor. Smoking one cigarette after another, Miss Atkins complimented Livy’s firing-range scores.

  “Sergeant McHugh rated you the highest among all recruits in clandestine training,” she said. “Even higher than the men. On the other hand, I’m not sure you’d make much of a paratrooper.”

  Miss Atkins then told her she would be flown into France at the next full moon to become the fourth member of the MANDOLIN circuit.

  “MANDOLIN is the Firm’s primary network outside Paris,” Miss Atkins said. “Your commanding officer is already in place along with three members of the resistance. You’ll be the circuit’s new courier. You’ll deliver messages to our other circuits, as needed. Your organizer, Lieutenant Commander Scobee, is one of our best people in France. You�
��ll be in good hands. Still, this is dangerous work, Olivia. No point in softening it. If you’re caught, you’ll either end up in a Gestapo prison or shot on sight.”

  * * *

  “Ya all right, Livy?”

  The question jolted Livy out of her daze. The voice, which came from her immediate right, belonged to Myrtle Dickinson, a sweet girl from Burnley who had taken to Livy from the day she started work. Livy felt thankful for Myrtle’s Lancashire solidarity among the stuffy P&J proofreaders. Most of the other women on staff had husbands and kids in London, and little tolerance for an errant comma. Since both Livy and Myrtle had the misfortune of having been born north of Wigan, naturally the pair had been pegged as bumpkins incapable of tying their shoes, much less understanding the nuances of the King’s English.

  “Can’t seem to get through this latest column, Myrtle. Want to give it a read?”

  Myrtle nodded like a smitten puppy, her cat-eye glasses bobbing on her nose. She loved “The Ladies’ Front” so much that Livy couldn’t bring herself to tell Myrtle it was complete rubbish.

  “The Ladies’ Front” had been the brainchild of the man in the corner office, Geoffrey O’Toole, publisher and founder of the P&J. The column had begun during the war, or so Livy had learned during her orientation, to help boost the morale of women holding down the fort at home while their men were away in France, North Africa, or Burma. The column had helped make the paper’s modest reputation. Then again, reputation implied status, and the only status the P&J had among the other London newspapers was its lack of pages and its editorial devotion to “what makes Britain great.” A thorough read of “The Ladies’ Front” seemed to suggest that Britain’s greatness could be maintained only if women kept their mouths closed.

  Myrtle perused the column as if reading Sanskrit, but Livy’s brief respite from the drudgeries of life at the P&J was short-lived. The familiar smell of hair tonic preceded the arrival of newsroom lothario Jeremy Huggins.