After that, we both settled down happily, with our noses each pressed to a book and taking in the fantastic smell of aged paper.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, Daphne was kneeling at a small window, taking aim with my bow and arrow. Before I could speak, she turned to me, let the arrow go slack, and put her index finger to her mouth signaling me to keep my mouth shut. She swung around, getting positioned to shoot. I flew to her side and looked out the window. Parked in the center of a clearing between buildings was a German army truck, and standing by it were two soldiers with rifles slung on their shoulders. Mrs. DeQuick was pointing to a building far from the one we was in. She looked nervous. One of the soldiers shouted something at her and she wobbled into the building. The two Germans followed behind.
“Should we go down and defend her?” I asked.
Daphne bit her lower lip and said, “I’m not sure what to do.”
The question was answered for us, when Mrs. DeQuick exited the building. Behind her came the two Germans, straining as they each carried a steel milk canister to the truck. The one got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, as the other finished lifting crates of potatoes into the back before shutting the tailgate. Commandeering. I waved my hand like a magician conjuring a spell. “May they forevermore eat potatoes boiled and never get a French fry.”
Once the truck left the yard, we went down to the farmer’s wife. By the time we joined her, she was sitting on the edge of a well. She reached into her apron pocket, retrieving a letter and used it to fan her face. In a jumble of languages, she explained that the Germans sent somebody at the same time every week—like clockwork—to take provisions, which they never paid for. She’d forgotten all about them, what with all the excitement of our arrival.
She held the letter far from her, like an old lady who needs glasses. I noticed it had no return address, and she explained that it was slid under the door and that her husband believed it was a message from the cousin. She slipped and let out that his name was Antoine. She opened it and removed a slip of paper, looking puzzled. Shrugging her shoulders, she handed it to me. It was a receipt.
“She says she’s never been to this bookshop,” said Daphne.
I studied the receipt and seen it was made out for the purchase of a book called, Der Rote Baron. “The Red Baron!” I shouted.
Daphne started biting her nails. The Red Baron was the German fighter ace from the Great War who had crashed and died. Maybe not the best choice for a code name, I thought. The receipt was dated 29/9/42. I tried to figure out the code but was baffled until Daphne pointed out that, in Europe, the day and month were flopped backwards.
“Than it only means one thing,” I said. “We got to meet somebody on September 29th.”
“The day after tomorrow.” Daphne pointed to scribble below the title of the book. It read: 04-40. “Look here. That’s military time for 4:40 in the morning. Brilliant. And I suppose the meeting is to take place at this bookshop.”
Mrs. DeQuick invited us into the house and dished up a hearty breakfast.
“It must be nice to be a farmer,” said Daphne. “Ever since the war began we hardly ever get fresh eggs in London. We’re lucky if we get them hard-boiled and from a tin.” I looked at my egg—drippy in the center and fried, just like I liked them.
For the rest of the day: chores. Daphne gave me the lowdown on how to milk a cow and I showed her how to hoe potatoes, something we Irish can do in our sleep.
The next day we prepared for our rendezvous. The farmer drew a map for us, showing exactly how to get to the small village where we would find the bookshop. It was three or four miles away and we’d have to walk. Belgian vehicles were only permitted to travel during daylight and we couldn’t ask the farmer to break the curfew.
We left when the moon was low in the sky. The map took us down several dirt paths and avoided the main paved roads. I was half asleep and we weren’t in the mood for chitchat. The only thing I said was, “Daphne, if you keep biting them nails, you won’t have fingers.”
After about an hour we came to the village and found the bookshop. Inside the door window hung a sign that read, Geschlossen, Fermé, and Gesloten. Closed any which way you said it. Looking at her wristwatch, Daphne said, “We’re a tad early.”
We sat on a bench with a view of the bookshop and waited. At 4:40 the sign in the window flipped over; now it read: Ouvrir. “Here we go,” whispered Daphne, and we stepped up to the unlit shop.
When we knocked on the door, a lady opened it. I said, “Der rote Baron?”
“Ja,” she said, peeking a look outside to be sure no one was spying on us. She flipped the sign back to “closed.” We followed her past bookcases and into a back room, where she turned on a light. “I speak English,” she said.
“Do you have news of my fiancé, Lieutenant Mooney?” asked Daphne, holding my hand and digging her fingernails into my palm.
“Let’s wait for my colleague.” She carried over two chairs and welcomed us to sit. I watched as she reached into her pocket for a hankie but noticed that she didn’t use it. A minute or so passed and a back door opened. A man entered the room, removing his hat. His face looked like an undertaker’s.
He and the lady also took seats, their two chairs facing ours, our knees almost bumping. The man spoke Dutch and the lady translated.
“I’m afraid that we are the bearers of bad news,” she said. Daphne began to cry and my own eyes went drip, drip. “On the morning of June 16, a Spitfire went down near the village of Nieuwege, very close to the rail line. Unfortunately, the Germans arrived ahead of us. Our people watched as German soldiers removed the body of the pilot.”
“Body?” said Daphne.
“Yes. The pilot was killed in the crash. I’m very, very sorry.” She handed Daphne the hankie and placed her hand on Daphne’s knee. I pushed back my sadness, because I knew this must be harder for a fiancée than a brother, and I wanted to be strong for her. A fiancée is practically a wife and mother. Only I wasn’t feeling strong. My muscles had all gone to mush, especially the ones in my lungs and heart. My stomach did cartwheels.
“Are you all right?” said the lady, shaking my arm. “Let me get you some water.”
I asked if there was a number on the plane. I was hoping it was another plane we were talking about and not Jack’s. The lady translated my question for the man. Numbers and letters in Dutch are like numbers in German. “Oh,” was all I could get out. The number on Jack’s plane was W3841. We was talking about his Spitfire. I asked them to point us to my brother’s plane.
“Do you really want to see that?” asked the lady. Daphne shook her head yes and then bit her lip until it was bleeding.
The lady listened to the man, then said, “He’s saying that it won’t be safe for you. You’d have to pass near a train depot and a warehouse where the Germans store munitions. The area is heavily guarded. It’s not wise for you to go there. In fact, my colleague refuses to say where the aircraft is located.” The man shook his head no, and said something I didn’t catch. The lady explained: “He’s withholding this information for your own good.”
I didn’t press, because she already gave away that the airplane was near a village called Nieuwege. It couldn’t be too hard to find.
The man had something more to say. The lady spoke: “My colleague doesn’t have exact information but says the Germans have begun taking British pilots—those killed in action—to Dunkirk for internment.”
Dunkirk. I knew exactly where that was: France.
The man spoke again and the lady said, “He offers his condolences and wants you to know that the Belgian people are grateful for the sacrifice made by your brother. He asks that you offer our heartfelt sympathy to your family.” When she said this, I thought of my ma. It was going to be me who’d break the news to her.
The two Belgians stood, and we done the same. “Is there anything more we can do for you?” asked the lady, “Any other way we mig
ht be of help?”
There wasn’t. Daphne thanked them and then we went to leave.
“If you change your mind, find me at this shop.”
We left the bookshop and stood in the middle of the street. My knees felt wobbly and my head started to spin. It was still dark, but the sky was beginning to lighten and we could hear birds begin to sing their morning songs. Daphne continued to stand in the middle of the street. I didn’t want to leave her side, not even for a split second.
Right then, all I wanted was to go home to Long Island. When I said this, Daphne didn’t say a peep. She just stood in the road and stared into space. What she finally said was, “I don’t believe it.” I figured she was saying something like, This is so horrible or I’m in shock. But what she was saying was she still believed Jack was alive. “He’s out there somewhere, I feel it. And I’m not about to give up hope.”
I wanted to say, But all the evidence says different.
A milk truck veered around us. The driver honked his horn a few times. On the fifth honk, just when the bumper was a few feet from crushing me, I flashed to a time not too long ago: I was sitting in a butt-torturing pew at St. Brendan’s, waiting for the moment they’d pass the collection plate. To tell you true, I was bored stiff and wanting to get home and head for the woods behind the house and climb a few oak trees, or maybe build a tree house. It didn’t matter what. Anything was better than sitting in that tomb of a church listening to the priest drone on. He was talking about three things—the three most important things in the world. One of them was hope. I remember that part because the priest yelled the word and it jolted me awake. I wasn’t all too happy about it at the time.
Something else was actually the most important thing—bigger even than hope. But hope was up there on the list—number two or three—bigger than marshmallows, bigger than gold and jewels, and bigger than four-leaf clovers—even though that was the Irish symbol of hope, come to think of it.
I felt around in my back pocket for the card my grandma sent me—only three leaves left.
But maybe Daphne was on to something. Hope is what got me this far—all the way to Belgium. It made everything tick up until now and without it I was high-tailing it to some harbor in Spain, looking for a boat out of Europe, or swimming home if I had to. I’d be back in East Hempstead—in the room I’d shared with Jack—bawling my eyes out and taking flak from Mary besides.
I was scared out of my mind then, and so was Daphne—biting her nails again. She looked into my eyes and I seen she was fighting the same thing: the thing that wasn’t hope, the thing that was give-up.
“Where do—we go—from here?” she asked, swallowing sobs.
I looked at the card, thinking I’d have to find a clover and rubber cement.
“We stick to the plan,” I said. “Find that Spitfire. And then we find Jack.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WE WENT ON WILD-GOOSE CHASES, one to a downed Hawker Typhoon. “This is an airplane Lord Sopwith’s company designed,” I said, as we surveyed the smashed aircraft. I climbed onto the wing and into the cockpit. It was my first time sitting in a real fighter plane.
“Get out of there,” Daphne said, rapid-fire.
I took the throttle in my hands, closed my eyes and imagined myself soring in the clouds—chased by a whole squadron of the German Luftwaffe. I did a few flips and rolls and came up behind them. Every one of my shots landed in their fuel tanks. The sky was bright with explosions. Daphne yelled, “Thomas Robert Mooney! You get out of that plane this instant,” which was all that saved the Luftwaffe from total destruction.
Someone pointed us to another RAF plane but this one was a bomber. I climbed in and entered the fuselage, a little terrified of what I might find. I was scared stiff there’d be stiffs in the plane, still strapped to their seats. I looked around for parachutes and only found one. The place smelled of burnt metal and rubber.
The reward for my courage came when I spotted a packet of letters, tied with a ribbon. The pink envelopes were addressed to a Sergeant Howard Hunter. I put the packet to my nose and found the letters still stunk of perfume. I put them into my jacket pocket.
After three days of searching, I was ready to call it quits. I was putting on a good face for Daphne’s sake, because I’d gotten her into this mess. But trying to be hopeful, all the daylong, was almost impossible. Hope was like the surf at Jones Beach: you felt good when it crashed on you, but it was near impossible to keep your feet planted in the sand and not fall on your backside when the tide rolled out.
That’s when we ran into Antoine again, selling potatoes at an outdoor market—the very potatoes I’d hoed. We filled him in on our search and he said, “I’ve been asking around myself and I’ve learned that there’s a Spitfire not far from here. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The problem is that you must pass close to a place that is heavily guarded by the Germans. It can only be done at night, and even then—”
Daphne knitted her hands together and said, “Please, Monsieur DeQuick—if that is your name.”
“Promise you’ll take care,” he said, after weighing the situation as well as a few spuds that he placed on a scale and then into a customer’s string bag. “I can take you part of the distance on my way home and give you directions from there. There’s no rush, because you really must wait until dark.” He pointed us to two little three-legged stools and yelled into the crowd, “Pomme de terre! Pomme de terre!”
Hours later and we were lying in the back of a horse drawn cart, covered with hay. Antoine DeQuick called to us when we reached a crossroad and then he pointed in the direction we should go. “Good luck to you both,” he offered. “And if you have any trouble, backtrack to the green barn. Beside the barn, on the north side, is a small hatch leading to a root cellar. It’s very hard to spot. I know where it is because this is where my friend keeps the beer he brews.”
The sun was still high in the sky, but it was nippy and you knew that fall was coming. Leaves on trees were turning red and orange and yellow. We only talked to remind each other of the directions. They were written on my palm. “There’s the stone barn with a thatched roof, where we turn to the left,” I said.
“Now let’s look for the small path leading from that well,” said Daphne.
“There’s the silo we are looking for.”
A few minutes later and Daphne pointed a finger. “The green barn.”
“Bingo.” I looked from my palm to a rock wall and the gate we had to pass through. We stood frozen and I said, “Shush,” putting a finger to my mouth. Both of us cupped our ears and listened to the sound of a coming train. We moved on to a whitewashed wall. Daphne crouched behind the wall and I took a peek over the other side. Just as Antoine said, there was a warehouse and on top sat a heavy artillery gun pointed toward the sky.
Beside the warehouse stood a train depot—used by the Germans to load and unload munitions. A few outbuildings must’ve served as barracks. There was a train stopped on the track—the one we just heard. A handful of farmers worked the field between the depot and where we hid. I spotted two German soldiers at the entrance of a fenced area, each toting rifles and standing stiff as ironing boards. One held onto a leash attached to a German Shepherd. Another soldier had some other kind of gigantic dog.
We were both petrified of dogs. I figured the Nazis trained their dogs to pick up the scent of Englishmen or Americans—just like the Swiss trained their Saint Bernard’s to sniff out skiers with broken legs. Daphne doused herself every morning with the perfume Jack got her last Valentine’s Day. He’d bought it in London and that had me worried.
Once we got to the train depot, all we had to do was follow the track north. In less than a half-mile we’d come upon the Spitfire. We’d have to wait until the cover of darkness to make our way down the tracks, since the gun post on the roof would have a view of our path.
Daphne unwrapped a hunk of Mrs. DeQuick’s cheese and the remains of a loaf of bread. With my mouth full, I mumbled, “I
f this ain’t it, I think we need to go home. All these downed British planes make me think we might be losing the war.”
“Don’t be such a bloody pessimist,” she snapped. “And would you please stop saying ain’t!”
She’d never spoke mean to me and it stung. Stung like a scorpion. I felt pretty lonely just then—like the last man on earth. It was Daphne who looked upset though. She sniffled, took my hand in hers and rubbed circles in my palm. “I’m sorry little brother. Don’t mind me. The truth is, I love your grammatical foibles because they remind me of Jack.”
The wind cut through my jacket, the flannel one I’d left home with when it was still summer. A gust blew a tear right off of Daphne’s rosy cheek. I knew she was cold also, because her teeth chattered. She was wearing a light cotton dress. I removed my jacket and handed it to her. She rewarded me with a quick kiss on the forehead. “That’s much better, Thomas. You are a such a gentlemen.”
She’d called me Thomas. I liked it because it sounded grown-up. I didn’t mind being called Tommy either, the nickname for a British soldier.
We waited so long my leg fell asleep. Now the sun was set and the moon was getting higher in the sky. Luckily, it was the phase where there’s a sliver of light—a waning crescent it’s called. I peeked over the wall and seen that the farmers had gone home. The gate into the German base was shut and the two soldiers were nowhere in sight. The locomotive hissed out steam and moved from the station, headed to Oostende. Everything was quiet in the immediate area. There was the faint sound of artillery fire—ack-ack, it’s called—at least a quarter-mile away to the south. Hopefully the Germans had all gone to bed. I hurried back to Daphne and said, “C’mon. Time to move.”
We both ran like racehorses to a position behind a small storage shack that stood a few feet from the track. We had a new angle on the fenced in area, where we spotted several soldiers. All of them wide awake. They were singing Nazi songs. I could tell.
Telegram For Mrs. Mooney Page 12
