Then – gone, lost astern, as Jacqui straightened the car and began to pick up speed.
Postscript
‘So that was Rosie’s “finale”, as she described it to me.’ Marilyn Stuart, tall, white-haired, drew herself up and saluted not as she’d been taught to in the Wrens sixty years ago, but army fashion – maybe even German army fashion. This was in Marilyn’s cottage in East Sussex – in a long, low room with a timbered ceiling and, on a grand piano, a silver-framed portrait of the Group Captain she’d married just after the war. He’d been quite a bit older than her, and she was now in her eighties. Saying – about Rosie – ‘Imagine it – from an SD major, who at any time in the previous four years would have had her shot!’
‘It must have been tricky getting back into Paris that night – fighting in the streets, tank battles even—’
‘They got through, anyway. And on the way – yes, I remember now – it was the di Mellili girl who had the brilliant idea of contacting Michel Jacquard. Remember, the one-armed Free French paratroop commandant who picked Rosie up out of the field where she’d otherwise have died? Rosie had last seen him in Metz, when he’d been moving to another job: and Yvette di Mellili knew him quite well – he’d had quite a bit to do with her boss, Derek Courtland – and she knew the job he’d been transferred to was Maquis and Resistance liaison on the staff of General Leclerc: French Second Armoured Division, which Clausen had just told them was breaking into Paris. Yvette piped up with, “Then Michel Jacquard must be there!” And they got in touch with him through – oh, what was his name—’
‘Leblanc?’
‘The Resistance man Rosie had been working with, anyway. Yes. Leblanc. And it speeded everything up for them, of course. Jacquard had a direct line to us, we knew him well. Splendid man. Although he took a bit of a shine, Rosie told me, to that – what was her name. Clausen’s then girlfriend – I was telling you, she rattled on about him in the car, Rosie said—’
‘Jacqui. Jacqueline Clermont.’
‘Yes. Michel couldn’t have had long to do anything about it, mind you; we had the three of them out of France in two shakes. Rosie really had been through more than enough by then. I was very much aware of it, I hated her going straight back in after the dreadful time she’d had.’
‘Saved Yvette’s life for her, anyway.’
‘Yes. In more ways than one. That girl should have been – well, a long-term psychiatric casualty, but—’
‘Rosie’s spark of genius.’
‘You could call it that. Her instinct. And the guts to act on it, no messing about or dithering!’
‘You don’t know whether she’s still alive, you said.’
‘No. Christmas cards stopped coming, and after a few years I stopped sending them. We’d started off well – not just cards, letters all about the land-clearance contract they’d taken on – then I realised I wasn’t getting answers, and it came down to cards, and finally, as I say—’
‘Nothing from Ben?’
‘No. On the cards it always used to be “from Rosie and Ben” – and for an address, although of course I had one, she’d sometimes put “Beyond the Black Stump”. Australian for “back of beyond”, I gather. But – as I say – they petered out and—’
‘You’d imagine that even in the wilds of Australia, when she was after all mildly famous – books and newspapers, references to her as “Rosie GC”, and all that—’
‘Think she wouldn’t be allowed to disappear without trace, wouldn’t you? I agree – extraordinary. I did make a few enquiries, but I had very few contacts out there – and didn’t know anyone who’d known them… Ben, though – he only got back from his trip to Norway about a week after we’d got Rosie out of Paris, and – this is a point – until he arrived in Lerwick in the Shetlands he was firmly under the impression that she was dead. We’d told him so – I had – Lise’s story, all that. And then – I don’t recall every detail, but when we got the astounding news – from Derek Courtland, wasn’t it – that she was alive and kicking strongly, well, Ben was out of reach, perhaps he’d already left for Norway – so getting our news when he docked in Lerwick must have been – oh, staggering…’
‘Must indeed.’ I’d had an account of Ben’s Norwegian adventure from a Canadian former MTB skipper who’d been a close friend of his. This man had written to me from Ottawa and later we met in London, where he gave me the gist of it as retailed to him by Ben. I told Marilyn, ‘He had a hair-raising time getting out of a fjord they were in. There were German patrol-boats prowling, and that launch’s engines were as noisy as an MTB’s, apparently. The dilemma was whether to creep out very slowly on one engine – which was still fairly thunderous – or go flat out, bust out – although with rocks and little islands all over the place…’ I saw she wasn’t following this very closely, and cut it short. ‘They made it, anyway. Must have been near enough the same time as Rosie, Yvette and Jacqui were dicing with death getting back into Paris. Incidentally, what happened to Jacqui?’
‘Jacqui. That one again.’ Fingers to her temples, concentrating… ‘Oh, yes. She went off with some Yank.’
‘Clausen didn’t show up then?’
‘Not that I know of. He may have, later on. We’d packed up “F” Section long before VE Day, though. No, I have no idea, frankly don’t care too much. Rosie and Ben, though – they were absolutely blissful! They got married at Caxton Hall and – tell you, I’ve never seen two people so madly happy. Really in seventh heaven – and we all were, for them… I think, you know – I’ve often thought about it – that if later on anything had happened to either of them, the other might well have chosen to disappear… Am I barmy, or does that make sense to you?’
Factual Note
Henri Lafont with Pierre Bonny and other members of the Gestapo of Rue Lauriston were arrested on Lafont’s farm at Bazoches at the end of August 1944 by French police and FFI. The gestapists offered no resistance. Before leaving Paris Lafont had smashed all the bottles in his wine cellar, ordered Bonny to destroy the files and handed out forged papers to those who wanted them; and a day or two before departure the gang had shot down in cold blood a truckload of 34 résistants in the Bois de Boulogne. It is on record that the killers then ‘departed singing’. The trial of 12 of them before a special tribunal opened in Paris on December 1st, the defendants including Lafont’s nephew Paul Clavié and henchman Louis Engel, both of them outstandingly sadistic rapist-murderers. Bonny, Milton Dank records in The French Against the French (Cassell, 1978) tried to save his own neck by informing freely on his fellow gestapists, while Lafont based his defence on his honorary German citizenship, claiming that a ‘German’ could not be guilty of treason to France. Three defendants who were still in their teens were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the other nine were executed by firing-squad on December 26th at the Fort de Montrouge. Lafont showed no emotion – he had in fact accepted responsibility for all the gang’s crimes – but Bonny, having tried so hard to exculpate himself, died in tears.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by Little, Brown
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
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Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 2001
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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ISBN 9781788630382
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events ar
e either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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