War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  “You probably saw the program on television the other night, Sir Hugo, when they interviewed a retired air marshal who said that Military Intelligence were concerned about spies or Nazi sympathizers in southern England, that someone was believed to be sending weather reports to the Luftwaffe—their bombing raids coincided remarkably with clear weather on this side of the channel. Would that have been likely, do you think?”

  “My housekeeper has the telly on at night so I did see a bit, but the air marshal’s memory is probably not what it was, my dear. Would have been difficult to do anything like that secretly. Everyone lived so closely together in those days, you see, everyone mucking in, doing their bit. And there was a general paranoia about spies and German agents and so on.”

  “But the air marshal said…ah, do please excuse me, our war brides are disappearing into the church hall, and I must try and speak to them. Thank you for sharing your recollections, Sir Hugo.”

  Interviewing old people was exhausting, Katie thought.

  She wound up the first segment of the show, telling the cameraman to get a shot of the war brides entering the church when the time came. “So there they are, today’s special guests, the four war brides. Antoinette Joseph Zayman, a refugee. Former Land Girl Elsie Pigeon Carpenter, who married her childhood sweetheart. Evangeline Fontaine Fairfax, an American who was swept off her feet by a dashing English officer. And Alice Osbourne Lightfoot, a girl from this village who taught at the school while serving as an air raid warden. It was when she joined the Women’s Volunteer Service in London that she met her husband and was whisked away eventually to live happily ever after in the USA. Though time and distance have separated them, the ladies have come here today to share their memories and celebrate their enduring friendship, one of the happier legacies of a terrible, terrible war. Above all, this is their day and those are their stories.

  “For Albion Television’s Heart of England VE Day Special, this is Katie Hamilton-Jones. Now we go back to the studio, because it’s time for the lunchtime news.”

  Mrs. Zayman’s teenage grandchildren were tossing a Frisbee back and forth and other teenagers edged closer to join the game. The pub opened and the publican had put a blackboard outside that announced beer would be sold today at wartime prices. Lady Carpenter’s grandson wondered if the pretty girl by the old man in his Home Guard uniform would like a drink…

  The girl with the microphone who had been yammering about war brides a few feet from his deck chair had finally stopped. Through half-closed eyes Albert watched the four women follow the vicar toward the churchyard, where the new parish hall stood next to the church. Someone was missing, but he was ninety-five and his memory came and went. A musty smell rose as the sun warmed his old wool uniform, and in the distance, he thought he heard the whistle of a train…

  34.

  Crowmarsh Priors,

  Midday, 8 May 1995

  In St. Gabriel’s churchyard the new vicar gestured expansively at the shrouded tower. The old ladies shaded their eyes, looking up and nodding at what he said. Then he waved toward the overgrown churchyard. “It may not look it, but things are vastly improved since the work started, Lady Carpenter. It was a dreadful mess, hadn’t been cleared since the bomb, took ages to clear the area in front of the tower. The contractors found the graveyard sinking in some places; they weren’t sure how stable the ground was. The engineers decided it might be too dangerous to bring in heavy machinery at the back where the older graves are, so they had them trim it by hand as best they could in time for the service. But the old knight’s tomb is still over there.” He pointed toward the back of the church where a lichen-covered stone sarcophagus lay half-buried on its side.

  The ladies could see the familiar helmeted figure. Its face was now entirely worn away except for the nose, but the crossed legs, a sword, and a shield with traces of the de Balfort coat of arms were still visible. The vicar racked his brains to remember some interesting tidbit from the newly printed church brochure, on sale for twenty pence. “It’s one of the de Balforts of course. Bit of inscription still on the side. You see that his legs are crossed at the knee? That meant he went twice on the Crusades. Ankles crossed, once, thighs crossed three times. The tomb’s position is rather interesting, off by itself like that. Normally you would have expected a knight from the most powerful local family to be buried inside the church under the floor.”

  Elsie turned to Alice and raised her eyebrows. “So interesting to see it again, I’d forgotten exactly where it was,” murmured Alice, strolling toward it through the weeds and wildflowers, then leaning over as if to read the inscription.

  “Do mind the nettles, Mrs. Lightfoot,” called the vicar anxiously as one stung his hand.

  “It’s all right, I’m in the garden club,” Alice told him inconsequentially. Out of sight, her age-spotted hand with the huge diamond engagement ring and a diamond-studded wedding band fumbled under the ivy. Where was it? She was sure it had been just about…there! She felt the knobby skull on the corner of the tomb, then pushed it as hard as she could to one side. Nothing happened. She pushed again, harder, remembering to twist. Frances had gotten it to work just after the bomb, but that was a long time ago. She tried once more. The ivy rustled, there was a scraping noise, and a small gap appeared as one side of the tomb shifted. She looked round to see if the vicar had heard, but he was talking animatedly and hadn’t noticed. She pushed again. There was a louder, grinding noise this time, like stone on stone.

  This time Evangeline heard. “Come look at this, Vicar. This is real sweet,” she interrupted him and immediately pulled him away to the other side of the graveyard. The others joined her to look at a Victorian stone angel standing guard over three flat sunken gravestones. “It’s holding a smaller angel by the hand.”

  “Are you sure, Mrs. Fairfax?” asked the vicar, batting at the creeper growing over the angel’s wings to have a closer look.

  “Bend down and you’ll see it. There under the right wing,” urged Evangeline. Sure enough a little angel was peeking out. “The workmen must have straightened it up again; after they bombed the church I remember it was face-down.”

  “Wot I say is, let’s go in and freshen up,” said Elsie. The last thing Tanni needed was for them to start talking about baby angels and wherever that might lead. “Then we’ll let you get on with things, Vicar. You’ll want to be outside waiting for the bishop.”

  “Oh, Lady Carpenter, I’m quite happy to stay and—”

  “Don’t let us keep you. We’d like to put our feet up for a bit, have a cup of coffee and a chat, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other,” said Elsie firmly.

  “Oh, quite. Then I’ll just pop in and make sure the coffee things are there.” The others moved on, but Evangeline slipped behind the angel’s outspread wings, took a half-bottle of vodka from her handbag, unscrewed the top, and had a big swallow.

  “Let’s get in out of the heat, it’s quite comfortable in our nice new parish hall.” The vicar ushered Elsie and Tanni inside, talking nonstop. “Lovely new kitchenette, thanks to you, Lady Carpenter. Here’s the new kettle, just the ticket. No one’s used it yet except the ladies who were decorating the church earlier—yes, good as their word, left us coffee, sugar, cups, spoons…” he rattled on. “And here’s some of that long-life milk in the fridge and a plate of sandwiches! The note on top says ‘Welcome back to the War Brides! From the Women’s Institute.’ Lovely!”

  The vicar bustled about, rattling cups and asking about milk and sugar and putting the kettle on to boil. “Tickety boo!” he chirped as it began to hum.

  “How nice,” said Tanni faintly, lowering herself onto a chair. Elsie sat down too, still clutching her gloves, handbag, and dossier. Her feet were swelling over the tops of her mauve pumps and the vicar was driving her crazy.

  Evangeline came in and, hat now lopsided, drifted over to the window that looked toward the downs. She pushed it open and leaned out. “Here comes Alice,” she said.
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  “While this boils, I’d like to know more about the fellow who was vicar during the war—Hammet, his name was. You all knew him, I’m sure. Cambridge man, I understand. I want to mention him in today’s sermon, but I’m not sure what to say about him. Haven’t been able to find out much, really. The church records went missing in the confusion after the war. Was he married? Any family? I understand he died in 1947.” He looked at Lady Carpenter for confirmation. “His heart, I believe? Strain of the war, no doubt.” He handed round mugs of coffee.

  Evangeline murmured something that sounded like, “You could say it was his heart, yes,” as she took one. “You’d never know it to look at him, but his heart gave out, just like that, one day.” She walked over to the window and pointed. “My husband is buried over there, next to his mother,” she told the vicar. “After the church was hit they extended the graveyard into that field at the back. See the fence round it? Richard and Penelope, Nell Hawthorne and the Barrowses and I can’t remember who else is back there. I plan on being buried there myself. Next to Richard.”

  “Sandwiches, ladies?”

  For a minute they all ate in silence. Alice looked at her surroundings in amazement, remembering how the old vestry had smelled of beeswax and mice. Now it smelled of new Formica.

  The vicar had settled comfortably with coffee and his fourth sandwich and did not look like moving. “I’m going to spend a penny,” said Elsie decisively. “Which way to the ladies’?”

  There was a flurry of agreement. “I might as well powder my nose,” said Alice, clutching her handbag.

  “Good idea,” said Tanni, heaving herself to her feet.

  “Excuse me, Vicar,” murmured Evangeline, putting down her untouched coffee.

  “Just down that corridor,” said the vicar, leaping to his feet and pointing down a hallway that smelled of new carpet. “I suppose I’d better get on putting together a few words about this Hammet fellow. I’ll just be in the little room at the other end of the corridor.”

  But the women’s heads were together and they were no longer listening to him.

  The ladies’ had been done up with strawberry-patterned wallpaper, festoon blinds at the windows, and pale green woodwork that matched the pale green washbasins. There was a small sitting room, with armchairs and a sofa bench with quilted covers, designed as an anteroom for brides and their attendants.

  “Got it to ourselves. Good,” said Elsie and sank down on the sofa. “Now, the reason we’re all here is to put our heads together and work out what happened to Frances.” She opened her dossier and Alice reached into her shoulder bag for a sheaf of notes. “Alice and I’ve worked out bits, and maybe we can figure the rest out. We all wondered how Frances could have disappeared without a by-your-leave. Even her father never knew what happened to her. The police weren’t interested either, but my Bernie wouldn’t give up. He fancied her, most men did, but it was more than that. I think it was—Bernie was loyal and there was something he used to insist was a last request—said he couldn’t explain until he knew for sure what had happened. He insisted his sixth sense told him something wasn’t right, but mainly, we all owed it to her to find what happened. For a long time he believed she must have had an accident, one of those wartime things, you know, people killed by bombs and never identified, or even foul play, and he put the word out with his underworld mates, offered a reward, even, but no one knew anything, not a dickie-bird.

  “Finally he had to drop it, but he never forgot Frances. Later, after he’d made all his money advisin’ the Treasury how to make banknotes and passports and things counterfeit proof, he started looking for Frances again, only this time he could afford to hire detectives. They never turned up much besides her pictures in the paper when she was a debutante and got into a lot of trouble, and something about her being due to inherit a lot of money when she got married. Rebuilding the church was the best excuse he could find for excavating down the tunnel. He always wondered if she’d gone back another time after that night…”

  “After what night?” asked Tanni. “I don’t remember what happened to the church, it was months later before I learned a bomb hit it. Yet if there was a bomb in the village I must have known it at the time. The amnesia, the doctors say, it happens if you have a terrible shock. It must have been a shock, the bomb.” Tanni’s face was suddenly pasty and the sick feeling seized her again. “Why do I feel there was something else, I’ve always felt there was something that happened! And I don’t know what it is. Oh why can’t I remember!”

  Alice exchanged a significant look with Elsie and Evangeline and all three shook their heads. Bruno had rung each of them to say Tanni was coming and to tell them that she had never recovered any memory of her dead baby, Rebecca, and the doctors were certain that she never would. As far as Bruno was concerned, she had had enough grief to bear after the war, when she learned that she had lost her parents in Auschwitz and her twin sisters at a DP camp in France. Being unable to remember Rebecca was a blessing in disguise, he said, they mustn’t worry.

  Alice and Elsie had put down the phone with a mixed sense of relief and guilt. If Tanni didn’t remember anything about that time she clearly didn’t recall their plan to rescue Lili and Klara, or that the girls were meant to be in the tunnel the night the bomb fell. That was a blessing too, more than Bruno realized. Since he had never known about their rescue operation there was no point telling him he was wrong about the girls having died in France. And now, any explanation was impossible.

  Alice hoped Evangeline wouldn’t let something slip. “Evangeline, you were the last one of us to see Frances,” Alice said quickly before Evangeline could blunder on about Rebecca.

  The cherries bobbed as Evangeline nodded. “It wasn’t long after the fire at Gracecourt. She must have been catching the London train, because she wasn’t in her Land Girl uniform. She waved as she went past the house. I remember it clear as day. I never told anybody this, but I had made her a promise, that if anything happened to her…but you knew Frances—you couldn’t imagine anything happening to her, and I kept expecting her to reappear. I’ll tell you in a minute what I promised. You go on, Elsie.”

  Elsie continued. “A few years ago, when Bernie was sick with the chemotherapy, he liked me to read him the papers. One day I spotted this in an article about wartime France.” She reached into the dossier, took out a newspaper photograph, and spread it on the vanity unit. “Recognize anybody?” The caption said: “Unidentified Wartime Photo of French Resistance.” The others crowded round to look.

  “Who is it? I never saw any of those people before,” said Evangeline after a moment.

  “Can’t say I have either,” said Alice, peering through her bifocals.

  But Tanni exclaimed, “Yes!” and pointed to a woman in a head scarf and rough shoes. She was talking to someone out of the frame, oblivious of the person with the camera.

  There were gasps as the others peered more closely. “It looks sort of like Frances, I guess, but…”

  “I’m sure it’s her. Definitely.”

  “It’s Frances. I’d recognize her anywhere,” Tanni said positively, “but the thing is, she’s pregnant. Look at her!”

  They looked at each other. “What on earth was she doing in France? And who could the baby’s father be?” asked Alice. “Some Frenchman?”

  Evangeline shook her head, cherries bobbing wildly. “Noooo…that’s part of what I’m going to tell you, actually I think it was…”

  The vicar knocked on the door. “Ladies? Everything all right in there?”

  “Fine! Thank you. We’re putting our feet up for a minute longer,” bellowed Elsie. She lowered her voice. “No idea who the father was. But first things first. Bernie hired another detective right away, first time he’d taken an interest in anything since they made him retire from the Treasury. Even went into remission for a bit. The detective learned that the photo was probably taken sometime late in 1944, probably near the eastern border with Germany.”

 
“But how did she get there with a war on?”

  “I know! Bernie and me asked ourselves that over and over. It kept us awake nights. Then Bernie has an idea. He invites an old Treasury mate, who’d been in Military Intelligence during the war, to dinner, poured enough expensive wine to drown an elephant down his throat and showed him the photo. The mate hemmed and hawed, pretended he had no idea, but that was because they weren’t supposed to say anything about what they’d done in the war. We could tell he was startled, but Bernie always got what he wanted. He kept topping up the bloke’s glass and finally he said she’d been recruited for something undercover, because he definitely remembered the girl in the picture from one of the training centers, an admiral’s daughter, he said. Stunning girl, but clever too, very determined. One of the controllers, funny little man, was half in love with her. The woman in the newspaper photo looked plainer than he remembered her, but he said that was probably a disguise and he was dead certain it was the same girl. So Bernie asked ‘Was Frances Falconleigh her name?’ and the man said ‘That was it!’

  “A few days later the mate rang, said something’d occurred to him. All the Special Operations Executive agents dropped behind enemy lines were accounted for after the war, alive or dead, and he’d checked, but no Frances Falconleigh was among them. So she wasn’t SOE, at least not in the beginning, but she might have been recruited for Churchill’s secret British resistance thing, the Auxiliary Units. They went through the same training as the SOE and by the autumn of 1944 a lot of SOE agents in eastern France had been betrayed and arrested, tortured and executed, or sent to concentration camps. Someone like Frances, trained for an Auxillary Unit, might have been parachuted into eastern France to take a captured SOE agent’s place. He seemed to remember Frances was keen to be posted to France, but she was young and they felt she might be a bit of a loose cannon.”