I was crouched behind the banister and making notes when O’Reilly shouted, “Tommy! You are summoned to the telephone.”
At first I thought it was a trick to get me out of hiding. But I looked down and saw that he was holding the receiver in his hand. As I slid down four flights of waxed banister, I wondered who could be calling me.
Maybe it was my ma calling from New York to tell me she’d found a way to get me over the Kriegsmarine infested Atlantic Ocean. I ran away from home on Long Island two months earlier, first bicycling to the Brooklyn harbor before stowing away on the Sopwith’s yacht. Later I made my way to Daphne, my brother’s fiancée, in London and onward to occupied Europe, where together we rescued Jack—who was missing in action until we found him. Now I was back in England, with my ma missing like a kid missing his front teeth.
If the Nazis didn’t surrender soon, I wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Ma said not to worry, she’d mail me a box of my favorite Christmas cookies: gingerbread men with maraschino cherry eyes. But it killed me to think my sister Mary would be the one licking the beater and bowl. She’d probably pick the cherry eyes out before my ma went to mail the box to England.
I couldn’t remember my ma’s voice, only that it sounded like an Irish jig. She sent me regular letters, written in cursive and sprinkled with apple blossom body powder. Pressing the paper to my nose was like getting a hug. Even if I was too old for that mushy stuff.
By the time my feet hit the marble landing, I was bracing for a disappointment. A transatlantic call would bankrupt the family, what with Da still taking odds-and-end jobs but finding nothing steady. It must be my brother Jack, I figured, which was just as good. He knew how to butter up a WAAF—The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force—so’d she let him use the phone at the Royal Air Force base. My brother was a Spitfire pilot and the target of every dame in the British Empire, which stretched from British Columbia clear around the globe to Singapore. Jack had the pick of the litter, and was about to marry the cat’s meow.
I grabbed the phone out of O’Reilly’s white-gloved hand and yelled into the receiver. “Jack, is it you?”
“No, it’s Daphne,” said my brother’s fiancée—the cat’s meow herself.
O’Reilly wasn’t budging: he stood one foot from my toes, looking down at me with that Frankenstein face of his. “Give a fella privacy, won’t you?” I said.
“Make it snappy and do not tie up the line,” he said. “His lordship might receive a call at any moment—one of importance to the Nation.”
“Thomas? Hello? Are you there?” said Daphne’s crackling voice, coming from the earpiece.
I put the receiver against my flannel jacket and said to O’Reilly, “Don’t you have anything more important to do? Counting bed sheets or wine tasting or something? Doesn’t the silver need polishing?”
O’Reilly growled, but backed away. “No more than two minutes, you hear?” He pretended to inspect a flower arrangement, when the whole time he had one eye on a pocket watch.
“Daphne—talk fast,” I said.
“We’ve a letter from Paris,” she said. “A very odd sort of letter.”
“We?”
“Addressed to the both of us, and sent to my address in London. From the postmarks, it looks as if it was mailed from Vichy France.” That, I knew, was the part of France occupied by the Germans just a week or two before, but in cohoots with the Nazis from the get-go. Daphne went on: “Maybe the sender entrusted the letter to someone traveling to the south of France? Amazing that it got through the censors. Why, they’ve put their swastika stamps all over it.”
“Did the censors black out parts? Maybe cut parts out using a razor blade?”
“Actually, the odd thing is—all that’s in the envelope is a blank piece of paper with no marks of any sort.”
“Smell it, would you? Does it smell like Coca-Cola?”
I knew without asking that the letter was from my friend Juliette. As I was leaving Paris, for the escape over the Pyrenees Mountains with Jack and Daphne, I told her to write to me using invisible ink. Coke was the perfect fluid: it dried invisible. But once you heated up the letter the writing became visible again. Anything acidic will do the trick.
“It smells like salad dressing,” said Daphne. “Vinegar, to be exact.”
“One and a half minutes remaining,” said O’Reilly, swinging his watch from the chain.
Rapid-fire I said, “Holdtheletteruptoalamp!” hoping Daphne could keep up.
“Hold the letter up to a what?” she said.
“A lamp! Then watch carefully. If I’m right, a message will appear like magic. Only, don’t let the letter touch the light bulb or it will catch on fire.”
“One minute,” said O’Reilly, tapping the toe of his spit-shined shoe.
Daphne started hyperventilating. “Someone has written, Help! Sophie is missing. Oh, my, it’s signed…Juliette. Why this is dreadful, Thomas. What could have happened to Sophie?”
Sophie was Juliette’s big sister, and Daphne’s best friend. We holed up at their place in Paris while we searched for my brother. I owed the Doumer family big-time: they fed me and everything; gave me a roof over my head; Madame Doumer even took me to see a guillotine. If they were in trouble, I was gonna help.
Heavy breathing come over the line. Daphne moaned.
I considered the situation from every angle and said, “My guess is Sophie ran away to work for the French Resistance and then got herself caught. The Nazis are probably torturing her. Those dirty rotten sons-of-female dogs, those low-life—”
O’Reilly was making his way back to the phone. “Thirty-seconds,” he said, tapping the face of his pocket watch. I gripped the receiver with both hands.
Just then, Lady Sopwith peeked her head out from the drawing room. “O’Reilly, oh, there you are,” she said. “May I have a moment of your time? I need help with the radiator—it’s leaking over the parquet floor again. The boards are warping. Come and see what can be done. The village plumber has been called up, you know, but you’re just as handy in a pinch.”
Thank Jesus, Mary and Joseph for Lady Sop. She’d saved me out of more than one fix. It was her idea to invite me to hole-up at Warfield Hall while I was stranded in England. If it’d been up to O’Reilly, I would’ve been given a blow-up raft, a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of Marmite, and one oar.
Meanwhile, Daphne was sobbing on the other end of the line. “My dear Sophie, oh dear, dear, darling Sophie. Oh Thomas, I hope it isn’t as you said.”
“Look Daphne, sorry I said what I said,” I said. “You know how my imagination gets going. Maybe she did join the Resistance but had to go underground.” I liked the idea of having another friend in the Resistance. They were my heroes, after all. Right up there with the Royal Air Force and the American Air Force.
“Be off that telephone by the time I return,” said O’Reilly as he goose-stepped to the drawing room.
Daphne was hiccupping now. I said, “I bettya Sophie ran off with some fella. Probably one of them Frenchies who pose buff for her paintings.” Sophie was an artist. Her paintings were what my ma would call indecent: fellas with everything hanging loose. I added, “She probably eloped to the Riviera wearing one of them berets and forgot to leave a note. Heck, Daphne. Would you stop crying already?”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Daphne—all drawn out, like she was trying to buy my story. I helped her along:
“Something like that is how my ma ended up in New York. Her big sister was supposed to go and work as a maid, but ran off with an Irish farmhand the night before the boat was sailing. Didn’t tell anyone. My ma sailed in her place and had to work her fingers to the bone to send money home to Ireland. And all ’cause her sister disappeared with some farmhand.”
Static electricity filled my ear while Daphne got herself together. Meanwhile, I let my wheels spin. I figured that my first guess was the right one: Sophie was in tight with her sister Juliette and with her ma—who she called Maman. She wouldn�
�t of run off without telling them.
“Wouldn’t she have left a note?” said Daphne, reading my mind and making a good point. Even I’d left a note when I ran off—in my ma’s top dresser drawer where she hid a secret stash of chocolate mints. But Sophie was practically a grown-up: eighteen years old. If she wanted to elope she’d invite her family along, her maman to bake a three-story cake, Juliette for a flower girl, Daphne for maid of honor.
It was obvious: the Nazis had her.
People in Paris were getting carted off left and right. Alvar Lidell talked about it on the BBC news, which the Sopwiths tuned into every night. Hitler’s plan was to wipe out Jews, socialists, Gypsies and jazz musicians. And Sophie was the artsy type, dressed like a Gypsy, listened to jazz, and hob-knobbed with socialists. You can’t go around wearing berets and smocks without the Gestapo noticing. Not in occupied Paris, anyway. And her best friend, Daphne, was half-Jewish on her mother’s side.
I was the first to pipe up. “We’re got to act fast before the trail grows cold.”
“But whatever can we do, stuck here in England?” said Daphne.
“There’s an airline flying from Whitchurch to Lisbon, Portugal,” I said. “I read about it in the paper. The Luftwaffe tried to shoot the plane down the other day.”
“And you want us to book tickets?”
“From Lisbon, it’s an easy train ride to Paris. I’ll round up maps tonight and work out a route. Lord Sopwith has ones he keeps in the library.”
Thomas Robert Mooney, we are not going back to occupied Europe. My parents were frantic the whole time I was over there…not that they knew where I was at the time. They thought I’d run off and eloped.” She laughed. “If I’d had any idea how desperate the situation was over there, I never would have let you talk me into going. I’m not nearly as naïve now. So get the idea out of your head.”
“Okay,” I said, ignoring her. “Then we have a plan. Meet me at Whitchurch Airfield tomorrow morning at sunrise.”
“Thomas Rob—”
As luck would have it, just then O’Reilly ripped the phone out of my hands and slammed the receiver down. As he grabbed my elbow, pulling me to a table full of tarnished tea sets and jars of polish, we heard the phone ring again.
“No need to answer,” I said. “You know how girls can rattle on—all chatty when a fella wants a little peace and quiet.”
O’Reilly sneered. “At your suggestion, I’ve decided it’s time to polish the silver. Lady Sopwith is in full agreement.” After a snicker he said, “It’s high time you pay back for the food you consume. So get to work young man, and no dilly-dallying. Give it elbow grease.”
End of sample
Release date: August 2018
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AUTHOR'S NOTES
MESSAGE FOR HITLER is a work of fiction, but some of the characters are based on real people who lived and died during World War II.
Tommy is based on my own da, Thomas Robert Mooney, who was a child when his oldest brother, Flight Lieutenant John “Jack” Mooney, flew with the RAF Eagle Squadron.
Jack was a 20-year-old Spitfire pilot, engaged to marry a 17-year-old London girl named Daphne. About all I know of the real woman comes from a newspaper article quoting a letter that she’d written to my grandmother when Jack was missing: “I’ve put away the trousseau for a while but I’ll be taking everything out again soon as I know he’ll be back.” The character of Daphne is built entirely from that one line.
Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith (who wasn’t actually knighted until 1953) was an English aviation pioneer and yachtsman. His Endeavour challenged the America’s Cup in 1934 and 1937. Warfield Hall is in Berkshire; I have taken the liberty of relocating it to Hampshire.
In September 1942, the Eagle Squadrons were transferred from the RAF to the Eighth Air Force of the U.S. Army Air Forces. In A Message For Hitler I’ve delayed the transfer by a few months.
At the Imperial War Museum in London, you can ask to view a two second film shot from Jack’s Spitfire as he fires upon a German mine-sweeper.
And, while you’re in London, drop by the building that once housed the Eagle Club: 24-28 Charing Cross Road. There just happens to be a fantastic burger shop on the ground floor. Raise a glass and toast the American RAF Eagle Squadron.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CATE M. RUANE spent years working as a copywriter and art director at advertising agencies in New York City and San Francisco. Born and raised on Long Island, she now lives in Asheville, N.C. She is the author of Telegram For Mrs. Mooney.
www.catemruane.com
Message For Hitler Page 22
