by Annie Murray
That night the men moved Laurie across the fields to the attic of a house in the nearby village. They delivered him onto a big, hard bed. The reasons for this house being chosen soon became apparent. It was a family home, and he often heard the sound of children downstairs and out in the garden at the back. There was a small, high window in the attic, facing over the garden. Once, he said, when he managed to stand on the chair to look out, he saw two little boys wrestling and tumbling on the grass. At that moment, though, the householder – a thin, worried-looking man in his thirties – came into the attic and rushed over to Laurie, pulling him furiously away from the window.
‘Non!’ he cried, adding a torrent of furious instruction: Laurie must not let his face be seen at the window, at any cost.
He knew what a risk this family was taking for him. The father of the family was called Maurice. He indicated to Laurie that his wife was aware of their guest in the attic, and the maid had to know as well, but that he had not told the children.
Maurice’s old mother lay mortally sick in the room below the attic. Each day one of the nuns from the local convent came to the house to help nurse the elderly lady. Occasionally, as these duties were performed, Laurie heard a low moan rise through the hefty floorboards, and sometimes he heard her making sounds in the night. The nun, a young woman with anxious brown eyes below a white veil, took the opportunity on these visits to play her part in the resistance by ministering to the fallen British airman. She and Maurice did their best to set Laurie’s mangled leg, rigging it up with wooden splints.
‘She dressed all my cuts. I had blood all over the top part of me, when I got there, from this.’ Laurie tipped his head to show the scar on his jaw. ‘Luckily, the position I’d been lying in, and the collar of my jacket, must have helped push the wound closed. I would have lost a lot more blood otherwise. But she patched me up.’
‘What wonderful people,’ Marjorie said, her eyes filling. ‘Oh, I want to go and thank them, bless them all!’
Laurie nodded. ‘Everyone was marvellous. And there were a lot of others to be even more grateful to, further down the line – there was a line, literally: an escape line. It was incredibly dangerous for all of them. Maurice’s family wasn’t part of it officially; they were just keen to do anything that meant going against the Germans. But I knew that every day I spent there I was putting them in danger. For the time being, though, it was no good me trying to go anywhere, with my leg in the state it was in.’
‘You should see it,’ Marjorie said to the others. ‘It looks terrible. I don’t know how you managed to walk all that way . . .’
‘It wasn’t easy, but I would have done anything to get back home,’ Laurie said. He looked at Sylvia again and reached for her hand. She felt as if she was overflowing with happiness.
‘I stayed there for the best part of three months. The leg healed up gradually, though we could all see it wasn’t right. Eventually I started to hobble around. Maurice would come up after dark and take me down into the garden. It was wonderful to be outside, although walking was pretty grim at first because I was lurching all over the place, but I had to get started. I just had to get out of there – for their sake as much as mine.
‘The main thing was, I had to be able to walk, and by the time it had stitched itself together, I could, after a fashion. They got me some local clothes and country boots, like they wear. I still don’t know how they made the arrangements. All I do know is that one day Maurice announced that he had my papers, and that we were going to Brussels. If anyone challenged me, I was to pretend to be deaf and look to him to answer. I was dressed as a farmhand, and my hair had grown by then. They gave it a rough cut, like a farmhand’s, and what with my limp and my deafness, I was supposed to look a bit simple. It seemed very risky to me, but I was so glad to be off.’
Laurie leaned forward, picking up his glass with difficulty. He looked round at them all. ‘I’ll never forget those people. I know their surname was Lambert, but to this day I don’t know the names of all the family. I saw the wife just as I left. She looked very happy that I was going! It was better that I didn’t know any of them.’ He took a sip and sat looking thoughtful.
‘The bravery of all those people was incredible. They hated the Germans so much, loathed having them in their country. They saw helping airmen like me as getting back to the fight. One of them, who I met in the safe house in Brussels, spoke English. He said there were signs up in the city saying that men who helped Allied airmen would be shot. The women would be sent to camps in Germany.’ He looked round the room again. ‘I owe them my life. I don’t know how many of them have lost theirs, helping blokes like me.’
Fifty-Nine
‘But how did they get hold of all these different papers for you?’ Stanley asked, as Laurie began to describe the complex, dangerous journey home that he had made. He explained that he was helped by an escape route called La Comète.
‘They had people forging them – using papers of people who’d died. And we had to learn not to stand out as foreigners. It wasn’t just the clothes. They’d say, “Don’t march about like a serviceman, slouch a bit!” But of course I was lurching about like a cripple anyway. They said, “Always carry your knapsack just on one shoulder, not two.” They’d given me an ancient, worn out thing to carry. It was a strange thing really. All the while normal life was going on, farmers milking cows and carts of stuff going about the place. You could kid yourself that there was nothing to worry about. And then you’d see them: Germans, or one of their signs up on the walls; “AVIS,” it would say – a public warning to everyone. And it hit you: if you were to get caught . . .
‘The first leg was Brussels to Valenciennes. I had a Belgian passport – then a French one. And then, to cross the line – the Démarcation into the Vichy part of France – there’s a permit called an Ausweis . . .’
‘Well, how the hell did they do all that?’ Stanley asked. He was sitting right forward on his chair, completely gripped by everything Laurie had to say. Sylvia found the whole account nerve-racking in the extreme, and even though Laurie was here now, safe, it was fraught with imaginings of all the catastrophes that might have been.
‘I was in a sweat all the way across France, because I’d been given papers from a bloke who was years older than me. I was scared stiff someone would take a close look. When we left Paris, this German came along the train checking, and I was – well, brown-trouser job almost . . .’
‘Oh my Lord!’ Marjorie breathed again.
‘He was just asking for my papers when the whistle went and he had to get off the train. The other snag was the passengers. They would keep trying to talk to you and, with my French being as bad as it was, I spent most of the journey across France pretending to be asleep! We went to Bordeaux and then headed south. You have to cross the mountains near the coast – they’re too high in the middle. So we went to Bayonne and crossed from there.’
‘You walked over the mountains!’ Marjorie said. Her face was constantly stretched in surprise.
‘Most of the guides were smugglers before, I was told,’ Laurie said. ‘And they frogmarched us over so fast we could hardly keep up.’
‘But your leg?’ Sylvia asked.
‘It wasn’t easy, I’ll say that. Even that part of the mountains is covered in snow. There was a group of us. One bloke, a Londoner, was already pretty sick, but he was adamant that he could make it. He collapsed and died in the middle of the night . . .’ Laurie looked down for a moment to indicate that he didn’t want to go into too much detail. ‘We walked non-stop for about fourteen hours. The best moment was when the sun came up. It was beautiful – I’ll never forget it. We’d just got across the river close to the Spanish border: it was an amazing feeling. We got well inside Spain, ten miles at least, and thought we were safe – and then we ran into the Spanish police.’
‘I thought Spain was supposed to be neutral?’ Marjorie said indignantly.
‘The Gestapo are there, even so. And the S
panish are still rounding up enemies of Franco. There were a lot in the prison in Zaragoza – and in the camp.’ Only much later did Laurie tell Sylvia about the terrible conditions in Zaragoza prison, the daily sounds of torment and shootings. For now, he spared everyone the details.
From there he had been transferred eventually to the squalid camp at Miranda del Ebro, where the British Consul had arranged for his release and that of three others. They were driven in a diplomatic car to Seville and hidden in a Norwegian boat, which was leaving the port for Gibraltar. From there they were flown home.
‘Ten hours sitting on the floor in a Dakota,’ Laurie said. ‘It was about the most uncomfortable part of the whole journey! Did we care, though? Couldn’t have cared less!’
There was almost too much to take in. But the main thing to absorb that night was that he was home and alive. That was all that really mattered now.
It was well into the small hours when everyone got up to go. Paul had fallen asleep and had to be woken, grumpy, to go up to bed.
Sylvia stayed behind, and everyone understood that she and Laurie needed to be alone.
‘You’ve got an early shift tomorrow, haven’t you, love?’ Pauline asked as she went, but she was teasing.
‘I don’t care,’ Sylvia said. ‘I don’t need to sleep!’
The Goulds said their goodnights, both his parents hugging Laurie close before they went up to bed, which brought tears to Sylvia’s eyes. They were not often a demonstrative family – especially Stanley.
‘Good to have you back, son,’ he said, releasing Laurie and clapping him on the shoulder.
‘It’s good to be here, Dad.’
The women exchanged smiles at the understatement of this.
After all the goodnights, Sylvia and Laurie were left alone. Silently they moved into each other’s arms and stood for a long time, holding each other without speaking. Sylvia drank in the feeling of him, the wonder of his body – strong, but very thin at the moment – and the familiar smell of him, this man she had believed she would never see again. Laurie stroked her back and shoulders, also as if reassuring himself that this was real. When she turned her face up to look at him, their eyes met, then their lips. She closed her eyes, losing herself in a long kiss, finding the taste of him again after all this time – here, alive, the man she had believed she would never hold or kiss again.
After a time Laurie drew back and took her hand.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said and they settled by the fire on the hearthrug, their arms around each other.
‘Let me see your leg,’ she said.
‘It’s not very pretty.’ Laurie seemed almost embarrassed. Rolling up his trouser leg, he showed her where the shinbone had been broken in two places. It did look a mess, neither joint being set evenly.
‘What will they do?’ she said, running her hand down the misshapen limb. It felt very strange, with bits protruding where they should not be, the flesh scarred and raw over it.
‘I’ve got to go into hospital in a couple of days, down at RAF Halton. They’ll reset it – straighten it out, I hope. They might be able to sort out my hands a bit, too.’
‘Oh, love.’ She took his hands and kissed the scarred palms. ‘That looks agony.’
‘It wasn’t too nice. But they’ll want to get me sorted out.’
She sat up abruptly, staring at him as the realization hit her. ‘My God!’ Horror filled her. ‘They won’t want you to go back, will they? No, they can’t make you!’
Until that moment it had not occurred to her. Now that Laurie was here, it felt as if it was over – he was home, and out of it. Surely they couldn’t make him go back and start it all over again? The thought was unbearable.
‘I’m afraid so. I’m not out of it yet. But it’ll be a while. The leg will take a few months, and who knows? Things are turning, from what I hear. Maybe it’ll all be over.’
‘No – oh God, no!’ She leaned against him, her arms tightly around him. ‘I can’t let you go again. Oh, if only it would just stop,’ she said, tearfully. ‘It’s like a machine, grinding everyone up.’
Laurie held her tenderly, unable to say the reassuring words that she most wanted to hear. Sylvia wiped her eyes, not wanting to give way to her feelings at the thought of Laurie leaving again. They sat in each other’s arms, quiet for a few moments, looking into the remnants of the fire.
‘You’re what’s kept me going, all the way through,’ Laurie said. ‘I just thought about you all the time, and about how much I love you. I’m just sorry for what I’ve put you through – you thinking I was a goner . . .’
‘We did think so,’ she said. She couldn’t bear to recall it. ‘Anyway, you’re here now. You’re a miracle! We’re the lucky ones.’
‘The thing is, Sylv.’ Laurie hesitated, gazing into her eyes. ‘I’d like to say – I mean, all I want is to ask you to marry me, for us to be together forever. But I feel I shouldn’t, just in case. For us to get married, then for something to happen . . .’
‘Oh, my love,’ she said, full of clashing emotions of joy, relief and dread. She kissed his cheek, his loving, familiar face. ‘You’re all I want. Of course I want to be with you forever.’
‘It feels like tempting fate, to make promises. To hope we’ll have the future. So many of the lads . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
Quietly she said, ‘The thing is: I’m yours. Whatever happens.’
‘You’ve always been the best,’ he said. ‘D’you know that? I’ve never met anyone who was a patch on you.’
‘Oh.’ Sylvia laughed, leaning her head against him. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘You’re the best.’ Laurie kissed the top of her head and they sat quietly, her shoulder against his chest. Faintly she could feel the beat of his heart. And Sylvia always felt this was the moment when they really made their promise to each other.
Sixty
August 1943
After his return home Laurie spent six months invalided out of the RAF, at first in hospital while his leg was operated on and reset, then at home. The doctors also managed to make some repairs to his scarred hands. It was a very happy period for Sylvia, knowing that he was home and safe, and she was able to visit him from time to time. When at last he came home to finish recuperating, they had a blissful few weeks together.
At that time Audrey was talking about going back to work. She was loath to leave her little boy, but was restless sitting at home when there was work to be done. Pauline, who also felt guilty that she was not doing enough, seemed relieved to have a grandson to mind, as her contribution to war work. Sylvia and Laurie also sometimes helped out with looking after Dorian. Sylvia knew, when they sat together playing with the little lad, that they were playing at families. Perhaps it was this, along with the pressure of knowing that he would soon have to go back, that gradually made Laurie change his mind about marriage.
‘I want you as my wife more than anything,’ he said. ‘I just don’t want to make a widow of you.’
‘If anything happens, I want it to be with me as your wife,’ Sylvia told him, ‘not just waiting to be married to you.’
Laurie was recalled to his squadron in Lincolnshire at the end of August 1943, and Sylvia thought she had never dreaded the dawning of a day so much. As in the old days, they had to say their farewells before she went to work, at five in the morning when it was barely light, in the hall of the Goulds’ house. Sylvia had barely slept the night before, and got up feeling sick and exhausted. Laurie quietly let her into the house.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, as they stood with their arms round each other.
‘Me neither.’
There seemed nothing else to say. She didn’t want to pour out her choking fear and dread. Everything there was to say had either been said already or would be of no help this morning. She wanted him to remember her smiling, not weeping and complaining.
They held each other close, as if memorizing every line of each ot
her’s bodies, then she drew back and looked up at him. ‘I’ll have to go.’ She was determined not to cry. Forcing a brave smile, she took his face gently in her hands. ‘I love you so much. I’ll be here, always.’
She saw the emotion in Laurie’s eyes. He leaned over and kissed her, lingering for a few seconds, as if he could not bear to move his lips away from her cheek. ‘That’s all I need to know. That’s everything.’
She stepped out into the mild darkness, feeling as if she was being torn apart.
That evening she wept to Audrey, ‘I know that his being alive is everything. That’s all that matters. But now that he’s flying again, I’m so frightened that our luck won’t last.’
‘I wish I could just say it’ll be all right, Sylv,’ Audrey said sadly. ‘Let’s hope and pray it will, even if it is all in the lap of the gods.’
Sylvia never knew how she got through the weeks after Laurie was wrenched away from her again. All she could do was hold herself strong and find something to look forward to. But during Laurie’s first leave in September they decided to get married as soon as possible. The next six weeks were a flurry of arrangements and excitement. They were also a time more full of dread for Sylvia than any other time. Was it tempting fate – could she ever truly be married to Laurie? Every day of those six weeks she lived in terror of receiving a telegram and of all her hope and joy being snatched from her again.
They tried to be in touch every day. She would go to the telephone box along the street and dial the number at the base, trembling until she heard his voice, especially if it was the day after she knew he had been flying at night. She was a bag of nerves, and felt badly about the fact that her loving someone in Bomber Command affected the whole family. Mom and Dad could see that she was living on a knife-edge. The whole family loved Laurie and, after all he and Sylvia had already been through, it was unbearable to think that it could all so easily happen again.
