by Daisy Styles
‘Get back!’ he called, as he saw them advancing. ‘Come any closer and I’ll shoot.’
By the light on the boat, Bella could see that her brother was using Maudie as a human shield.
‘Please, Edward, I beg you ‒ don’t do this!’ she implored.
Edward span around to snarl at his sister. ‘Want to talk to me now, huh? Too late. I could as easily put a bullet through you as through this idiotic friend of yours.’
Behind his back, the skipper frantically beckoned to his passengers. ‘Get a move on – be quick!’ he bellowed, with a German accent.
Edward’s collaborators rushed through the water and were hauled aboard by the irate skipper. Walking backwards with wide-eyed, gagged Maudie shielding his body, Edward also approached the boat. Bella swayed in the waves. Maudie was so tantalizingly close and yet so far away. Seeing his sister wavering, Edward fired off a warning shot.
‘Any closer and she dies.’
Concentrating only on Bella and the Brig, who were directly in front of him, Edward failed to see Raf and Ruby, who, in total darkness, were to the left of him. Realizing that he could shoot Edward sideways on without putting Maudie in danger, Raf grabbed his opportunity. Pushing Ruby aside, he fired at Edward, who turned at the last minute. To Raf’s dismay, the bullet whistled past him. As he moved quickly to take a second shot, the boat’s skipper swivelled the light directly on to Raf. Ruby looked on in helpless horror as Edward aimed his gun at her beloved. Illuminated and blinded in the dazzling glare, Raf took a bullet to the head and fell face down into the sea.
‘Raf! Raf!’ a distraught Ruby screamed, trying to pull her husband’s limp body out of the water. ‘My love, my darling, stay with me,’ she begged. She managed to drag his bleeding body on to the beach, where she desperately attempted to stem the flow of blood gushing from his head.
With his gun once again aimed at Bella and the Brig, Edward heaved himself and Maudie into the boat.
‘Get the hell out of here!’ he yelled to the skipper, who revved the engine hard and the boat bounced off over the glittering, dark sea.
Distraught at how disastrously wrong their rescue mission had gone, the Brig turned to run and help Ruby and Raf, but Bella grabbed him by the arm.
‘Maudie!’ she screamed in total despair. ‘We can’t just let her go.’
The sound of loud gunshots echoing out at sea almost made their hearts stop. The Brig and Bella ran back into the waves. They saw the boat swerve and, by the beam of its light, Bella thought she could make out Maudie throwing herself overboard. Bullets peppered the sea as her body sunk under the surface.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ cried the Brig. He flung off his jacket and started to swim towards her. Bella chased after him.
‘Stay there!’ he yelled over his shoulder. ‘Shine your torch ‒ see if she surfaces.’
Standing waist deep in the crashing North Sea, Bella, shivering more with terror and foreboding than cold, kept her torch firmly on the breaking waves. ‘Maudie, Maudie, Maudie,’ she prayed out loud. ‘Live, please live.’
Holding her breath, she saw the Brig emerge from the water, staggering under the weight of Maudie’s soaking-wet body, which he half carried, half dragged on to the beach. Bella ran to meet them.
‘Is she OK?’ she cried.
Too exhausted to speak, the Brig nodded grimly.
‘I’m going for the Land Rover!’ Tom yelled over the sound of the crashing waves.
‘Call an ambulance!’ the Brig shouted after him.
‘And the police, too!’ Bella cried.
Maudie and Raf were taken to Wells Cottage Hospital in the same ambulance. Raf was immediately surrounded by doctors and nurses, while Maudie was assessed nearby, in one of the treatment bays used to deal with the less seriously injured. Deemed to be suffering from shock, concussion and a with broken arm, she was transferred to the women’s ward, and allowed no visitors apart from the police and the Brig, who desperately needed information from her.
‘Five minutes, no more,’ snapped the feisty ward sister.
Grateful, the Brig and a burly police sergeant nodded.
‘Best not push her too much, sir,’ the sergeant warned. ‘The young lady’s had a shocking fright, by all accounts.’
The Brig, whose thoughts were in total turmoil, nodded vaguely. ‘Christ!’ he thought. ‘What have I done?’
As a plan, it could not have gone more wrong. And it was all under his instruction. He would have to live with this guilt for the rest of his life. He would have to ask himself over and over again whether it would have been different if he’d involved the authorities and moved things along the normal channels.
The sergeant interrupted his thoughts. ‘This way, sir.’
Beautiful Maudie was almost unrecognizable. Her glorious red hair was slicked back off her face, which was beaten black and blue, her eyes were puffy and half closed, and her right arm was in a sling.
‘Maudie,’ he murmured, sitting in the chair close to the bed. He reached for her hand.
‘Brig,’ she whispered through bruised lips.
The policeman on the other side of the bed cleared his throat and introduced himself. ‘Sergeant Ditchling, ma’am, Wells Constabulary. I’m here to ask you a few questions.’
Keen not to waste a precious minute, the Brig gave Maudie’s hand a soft squeeze.
‘They were going to kill me,’ she croaked, with great effort. ‘Edward imprisoned me in the block-house by the beach.’
‘Did he …?’ the Brig looked at the wary policeman. ‘You know, touch you, like before?’ he added discreetly.
Maudie shook her head ‘He planned to … but he was kept busy … arranging his escape.’ She spoke between ragged breaths. ‘He was constantly sending messages to Berlin.’
‘I was hoping the shot we heard was Edward being finished off by one of Germans,’ the Brig said.
‘No, sadly … other way round,’ Maudie told him. ‘One of the Germans pulled off my gag and untied me … Edward went mad. There was a struggle … Edward shot him in the head.’
The policeman seized his chance to ask a question. ‘So that was when you took your chance to get away, ma’am?’
Maudie struggled to recollect the moment of her escape. ‘Yes, there was a struggle … a lot of shouting … I threw myself overboard. Edward grabbed my arm.’ She gazed down at her bandages. ‘I wrenched away from him … jumped into the sea … I sank.’ Seeing her struggling, the Brig offered her a glass of water, and she took a sip. ‘Underwater … I tried to swim to shore.’ Tears seeped out of the corner of Maudie’s bruised eyelids. ‘Walsingham got away,’ she sobbed. ‘After all our hard work, he got away!’
‘Don’t upset yourself. I think that’s quite enough for now.’ The sergeant turned to the Brig. ‘Let’s leave her in peace and come back tomorrow.’
‘The girls send all their love and long to see you,’ the Brig said, as he rose to go.
‘Give them my love back,’ Maudie said sleepily.
On his way out of the hospital, the Brig spotted a wild and red-eyed Ruby in the waiting room with Ava.
‘They won’t let me see him,’ she cried. ‘I want to see my husband!’
Feeling helpless, the Brig sat down next to Ava, who whispered, ‘They’re trying to resuscitate him,’ she shook her head, implying that it wasn’t looking good. ‘How’s Maudie?’ she whispered.
‘Weak, exhausted, in pain,’ he whispered back.
‘You should get back to the hall,’ Ava urged. ‘Bella will be out of her mind, waiting for you.’
‘I want to stay with Ruby for a while,’ the Brig said sadly.
Hardly aware of him, Ruby stared blankly at the wall, rocking herself dementedly back and forth.
‘Please God, please, let my Raf live. Please let my Raf live.’
An agonizing half an hour later, a doctor entered the waiting room. The Brig took one look at his grey, exhausted face and knew there was no hope. He watched him approach poor Ru
by.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Boskow,’ he said gently. ‘We did everything we could to save your husband.’ He paused, and sighed heavily. ‘He’d lost too much blood and …’
His words fell on deaf ears – before he’d finished his sentence, Ruby had crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.
When Ruby came to, the Brig drove her and Ava home, in a wretched silence. What a contrast to the excitement with which they had set off earlier – full of determination to put a stop to Edward and his collaborators’ escape. The doctor had administered a sedative to Ruby before she left the cottage hospital, so she lay slumped in the back of the car in a deep, drugged sleep. Between them, the Brig and Ava half carried her to the bedroom the girls shared, then the Brig left Ava to undress Ruby and get her into bed. Racked with guilt, the Brig hurried to find Bella, who he clutched in his arms and wept.
‘God Almighty! I blame myself for all this!’ he cried.
‘Brig, you took a calculated risk and ‒’ she started to say, but he harshly interrupted her.
‘Which has killed Raf!’
‘You didn’t do it rashly,’ Bella insisted, as she wiped away his tears. ‘Right from the beginning, you’ve taken advice from your superiors, and you decided against bringing in the police for all the right reasons. It’s not your fault it went wrong,’ she insisted.
His breathing becoming steadier, the Brig ran a hand through Bella’s blonde curls and said bitterly, ‘And none of it was to any purpose.’ He groaned in despair. ‘The man we wanted has got clean away, and a good, innocent man has died.’
Bella leant against his rapidly beating heart. The words he’d spoken were irrefutably true. For the rest of their lives, they would all have to live with the terrible consequences.
The next morning, having heard of the tragic drama on Holkham beach, the trainees assured Ava that they could get by on soup and sandwiches. Ava was touched by their thoughtfulness, and by their kind instinct to pull together in difficult times.
‘They’re good girls,’ Ava said, with tears in her eyes, as she reported back to Bella, who was in the process of frying off onions for the start of a pea-and-mint soup. As the fumes from the onions made her cry even more, she mumbled, ‘We’ll make a stack of sandwiches twice a day.’
Ava nodded and swept a hand over her weary face. ‘And we’ll keep a big pan of soup permanently on the go.’ Sighing, she lit up a Woodbine. ‘We’ll get by somehow … Christ, we’ll have to,’ she sobbed, tears now rolling down her cheeks, too.
Later that day, the Brig came to see Bella. ‘The police have just gone upstairs to see your parents. I think you should join them.’
Bella went pale. ‘I can’t do it on my own. Please come with me?’ she begged.
Hand in hand, they made their way to the Walsinghams’ first-floor suite, where they found his lordship incandescent with fury.
‘How bloody dare you, sir!’ he bellowed at the detective inspector who had replaced the local Wells policeman.
‘It is my duty to inform you of the facts, Lord Walsingham,’ the inspector replied calmly.
Lady Walsingham laid a warning hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Are you seriously telling us that our son is a spy?’
The inspector answered curtly, ‘He is. He’s been spying for the Germans. If you have any doubts, you can check with the Brigadier here,’ he said, nodding towards Bella and the Brig.
Ignoring Lady Diana’s contemptuous snort, the Brig stepped forward. ‘I’m afraid there’s absolutely no doubt about it: your son’s been working undercover for Abwehr, the German Military Intelligence in Berlin.’
His lordship’s heavily jowled face turned livid with rage.
‘I bloody well don’t believe it!’ he roared. ‘It’s just not possible that a Walsingham son would turn against his king and country.’
Bella took a step towards her father. ‘It’s true, Daddy. His brief was to spy on Holkham airbase. He’s been feeding Berlin detailed information on the number of Lancasters on the base, and the dates and times of their scheduled bombing raids.’
‘We have undeniable evidence of his activities,’ the Brig continued. ‘His treacherous actions have caused the death of nearly fifty RAF airmen. During his escape he murdered RAF Air Mechanic 1st Class Rafal Boskow in cold blood and he also shot his own comrade dead at point-blank range.’
Lady Walsingham swayed, then, pale-faced and shaking, she sank into a chair. ‘It can’t be true …?’ she said, in a terrified whisper.
Diana sprang to her feet. ‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ she cried. ‘It would be typical of Annabelle and her middle-aged boyfriend to come up with a cock-and-bull story to humiliate the Walsinghams,’ she sneered.
Although he was red with indignation, the Brig replied calmly to Diana’s impudent accusations. ‘If you’re in any doubt, there’s documented evidence of your brother’s escape at Wells police station. He has a German passport and goes under the name Heinrich Brun. Bella and I have been decrypting his messages in and out of Berlin for weeks, all of which are documented, too. The commanding officer at RAF Holkham will verify our reports, as will the War Office, for whom I work.’
‘But you’re just a scruffy teacher!’ Diana scoffed.
‘Training code girls is only part of my brief,’ he answered, with icy control. Turning to Lord and Lady Walsingham, the Brig concluded, ‘Lord Edward is a war criminal. If he ever returns to England he will be arrested, tried and hanged as a murderer and spy. It’s our duty to inform you of the circumstances before the story’s published in all the newspapers.’
With that, he turned and left the room. For the sake of her family, Bella hung back, but the hatred in their eyes told her she was unwelcome.
‘You bloody little bitch!’ screamed Diana, and threw her empty glass at the wall.
Closing the heavy door quietly behind her, Bella also left the room.
31. Requiem
Ruby managed to haul herself from her bed to make arrangements for her husband’s funeral. The cheeky, laughing, giggling girl had died along with Raf. Her voice was flat and lifeless, her hair had lost its glossy sheen and her wonderful dark eyes no longer sparkled.
‘I just want to die, too,’ she cried, over and over again.
Her grief was so great nobody could reach her. She had been given medication, as she hadn’t seemed able to cope, and walked about like a zombie, doing exactly what she was told. When she wasn’t prostrate with grief, she washed up, cleared plates, served lunch like somebody in a trance, and she could often be found outside, standing in the back yard, smoking in the spot where Raf had always parked his jeep. United in their losses, Maudie and Ruby tried to help each other through the dark and painful early weeks of their grief. Though the RAF had informed Raf’s parents in Poland of their son’s tragic death, Maudie had offered to write a letter in Polish from the daughter-in-law they’d never met.
‘You can tell them how happy you were together,’ Maudie urged. ‘How in love you were, how proud he was of his RAF uniform, how much he admired Captain Kit.’
Ruby stared vacantly at Maudie. ‘I don’t want to think of those things,’ she sobbed, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks.
‘But it would help them,’ Maudie said softly. ‘Imagine their grief ‒ they can’t even come to their son’s funeral because of the war in Europe.’
Ruby gave a reluctant nod. ‘All right. If you think it will help them.’
Maudie squeezed her hand. ‘It will, I’m sure.’
Ruby insisted on making all the funeral arrangements. Oddly enough, visiting the ancient Walsingham shrine every day gave her life some purpose. She loved the chapel where she and Raf had married; it would be there that his body would be taken before the requiem Mass, to rest in peace overnight. Consulting with the Catholic priest who had married them, Ruby took great care with the details: the flowers, the hymns and the readings. The one thing she had no interest in at all was the wake, so Ava, Bella and Maudie took control of the
arrangements. With Peter’s help, game was found, and Bella made one of her wonderful pies, Ava cooked cheese pasties and corn-beef fritters, while Maudie made Raf’s absolute favourite pudding: deep-fried apple fritters with custard.
A vigil was kept the night before the funeral. Bella, Ava and Maudie joined Ruby in the tiny chapel, which was lit only by the glow of candles. Dressed in the blue RAF uniform he had been so proud of, Raf lay in his coffin, his head wound partly covered by his navy-blue cap. Ruby draped rosary beads across his chest and kissed his cold lips. As the poor, heartbroken girl wept herself dry, her friends gathered in a tight circle around her. Maudie’s tears for her lost love flowed, too; her Kit had had neither coffin nor grave.
Ava said, ‘Let’s say some prayers.’
Doing so brought a strange peace to them all, and they stayed there, praying, till the Sisters of St Margaret, who cared for the shrine, came to lock up.
The next day, Dodds drove them back to the medieval shrine, which was packed to bursting point with Raf’s RAF friends. A blaze of summer flowers – roses, lilies, sweet peas and carnations – graced the altar, their heady perfume blending with the incense the priest used throughout the hour-long Latin Mass. As the concluding hymn, ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’, was sung, the Brig was surprised to see Lady Caroline Walsingham at the back of the chapel.
‘Your mother’s here,’ he whispered to Bella.
Bella gazed in astonishment at her mother, dressed in an elegant silver-grey suit and a large hat adorned with black and silver feathers. As the organ played, several of Raf’s closest friends lifted the coffin on to their shoulders and followed the priest, who was swinging the censer, that contained incense they left the chapel and walked slowly to the cemetery, passing golden barley fields speckled with bright red poppies on their way. When the coffin was lowered into the black earth, Ruby completely broke down. Almost unable to stand, she was supported by Bella, Maudie and Ava. As puffs of incense circled into the clear blue sky, where swallows swooped and swerved, the priest dropped heavy clods of earth on to the closed coffin.
