‘Shoot me here, sir, please, shoot me before the Germans find me, please, sir.’
David could hardly bear the pleading look in the eyes of the young girl who had just confronted him. He tried to move away from her but she followed him.
‘There are rules that govern us,’ he told her gently. ‘The rules of war, the rules of the International Red Cross.’
She looked at him, despair now replacing pleading.
‘It is such a little thing to ask of you, sir,’ she told him. ‘Such a little thing to ask you to do, to save me from a far worse death, an agonising death.’
David looked around, dozens of despairing faces surrounded them.
She reached forward suddenly, trying to grab his gun and turn it on herself. David wrenched the gun back.
‘Mademoiselle, believe me, if I could do so I would certainly do as you wish, but if I shoot you, I in my turn will be shot! Take courage.’
The young girl turned away. It was impossible. She would have to kill herself some other way – a knife perhaps, or some sort of poison. Or the river beyond the camp, under cover of darkness. That would be the solution: to lie face down in the river, and stop breathing, before the Germans, now bombing them from the air, arrived in person.
Approached by a senior officer, looking as if he had just witnessed the massacring of his whole family, David took his gabbled orders with a sense of despairing relief. He was to take a petrol convoy to Dunkirk. The journey suddenly seemed very long, yet the task very small compared to trying to cope with the massacre, the despair, the horror, of these refugee camps.
Katherine looked with even greater appreciation at the German officer as he took his leave of her. He seemed taller and more handsome than ever, but then that was not very surprising, since both he and she had consumed several very smooth and very delicious cognacs from the very old bottle that she had brought up from the cellar.
‘May I visit you again, Mademoiselle?’
‘Elvira, General.’
‘Ah yes, Elvira, an enchanting Mozart heroine, but quite naughty.’ He glanced momentarily down at Katherine’s red and black dress, stockings, shoes. ‘You look so beautiful in red,’ he murmured.
‘Shocking colour for a respectable young woman, but I do look good in red, my mother always said as much,’ Katherine replied, but as soon as she mentioned her mother the word ‘home’ came to her mind. She had not thought of home for so long – home, with its fires and its paintings, its lawns and its river, home as in faces lit by candlelight, and dogs barking delightedly, and the mix and cross of voices floating up as you came downstairs. Home, as in her mother looking beautifully composed, playing the piano, laughing with her brothers. Home, and all that went with it, was what she was fighting for. All this went through her mind, not as a sequence of thoughts but as a kaleidoscope of colours, a beautiful pattern held up to the window, the better to match it with that one precious word.
‘You, I think, Mademoiselle, would look good in every colour of the rainbow.’
‘Yes, but not all at once, perhaps.’
‘All at once,’ he retorted, straight-faced. ‘And in a rainbow sequence. Now what information shall I take back to my superiors?’
‘What would you like to take back? Life here is very quiet, as you may imagine, at the moment, General.’
‘That will not be acceptable.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I will have to report some suspicious goings-on in the countryside, but you know how it is in France: so many woods and valleys, so easy to lose people, most unfortunate the suspects got away.’
‘Very good.’
‘And so,’ he paused, ‘I will have to return.’
Katherine smiled. She couldn’t believe she was smiling, but she was. She shook his hand before she shut the door, and in the seconds that followed, during which she heard his car being driven off, it seemed to her in her loneliness that she was already missing his courteous company. It was the cognac, surely? It could not be anything else. She missed company, any company, because she was missing David. Away for so long, it was only natural, but perhaps like so much that was only natural, she knew that she must not dwell on such an emotion. After all, between so many people, all the lines that David had been setting up through France and Belgium, she of the many names – the Ladybird, Elvira, Black Beauty, Diamond Lil – she was their link.
It had been David’s idea to rent the house next door to the town brothel, and like so many of David’s ideas, it was brilliant. Their people, his people, could come and go without either the men, or indeed the girls, arousing any suspicion. No one questioned the right for Madame Prosciutto, as she called herself – because, as she once told David, she was thin and salty – to entertain the gentlemen of the town, and lately the officers of the invading German Army, or anyone else for that matter. Of course, if the war was won by the Allies, the fate of Madame in such a quiet and respectable town would be perilous, yet Katherine was sure that Madame would simply disappear before anyone could punish her, only to reappear in another disguise somewhere quite the same, to begin all over again. It was no one else’s business.
She walked slowly up to her bedroom. Soon it would be time to send a message. Sometimes it seemed to her that she was quite alone, because invariably she had so little to report, and yet now she might have a German officer in the palm of her elegant hand. Maybe she would at last receive a reply from the nameless people who worked at the other end in wherever it was. She took her shoes off, lay down on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling. It was not long before the brandy took effect, and she fell asleep in her clothes – only to be awoken a few hours later by yet another pounding on the front door.
* * *
‘You silly bloody idiot!’ the officer roared at David, who, still dressed as a staff officer, had helped him to push a heavy and powerful motor boat off the beach and into the sea, the result being that the driver, only too glad to be afloat at last, his boat now filled to overflowing with men, sped away, leaving their officer stranded on the beach.
‘Don’t worry, sir, there’ll be another one along in a minute.’
Not surprisingly, the officer, as he flung himself beside David, both of them being narrowly missed by bombs from a Stuka, did not find David’s light-hearted remark amusing. Despite his face being now decorated by sand, despite the noise – and, boy, was it noisy – the officer continued to rage.
‘Oh, do shut up, old boy,’ David finally heard himself saying. ‘You’re truly not the only pebble on this beach, and you’re not a very important one either!’
‘I will have you shot for insubordination,’ the officer screamed.
‘Oh, I don’t think you will,’ David told him, turning his back on him. ‘I am not one of your officers, sir. I take orders only from a code name, so stand in line and wait for the next bus to come along like a good chap.’
There must have been something in his tone, because the officer fell silent, eventually falling into the seemingly endless line awaiting rescue by any number of assorted craft – everything from paddle steamers to small sailing boats. For a second David reflected wryly that he would not have been very surprised to see a rowing boat from the Serpentine fetching up on La Panne beach that day.
‘Take a trip round the bay?’
David turned and found himself facing someone who obviously knew him, but whom he did not recognise. Incredibly, the man, wearing a French beret and workman’s overalls, was busily sketching the scenes on the beach as he too waited to find a place in one of the bravely approaching craft.
‘Shall I shoot you, if he doesn’t want to?’ the man asked, still sketching briskly. ‘Or are you waiting to shoot one of us, Mr David Astley?’
‘And you are?’
‘Walter Beresford, sometime mural painter at Chevrons, from where, I seem to remember, you absconded with the elder daughter.’
Walter felt a sudden punch between his shoulder blades, as David pushed him to the ground, throwing himself across the paint
er as he did so.
The explosion was very near to them. It ended in the screams and groans of its victims. For a few seconds, stunned as he was, Walter was convinced that he must be one of them, before David pulled him by the shoulder and helped him to his feet.
‘Sorry about the drawing, old chap.’ He leaned forward to speak into Walter’s ear, covering his mouth as he did so. ‘Whatever you may think or have heard, we are on the same side. My code name is Stendhal. When you get back to Blighty go to Dolphin Square and ask for Colonel Max. He’ll cut you in – probably recruit you too, knowing Max.’
A moment later he was gone, weaving his way through the bloodied chaos of conflict, or in this case, as a fleeing body dropped in front of him, the massacre of conflict.
‘Makes you sorry for ducks,’ Walter heard someone remark as yet another line of men were dive-bombed by a Stuka.
Walter shoved his regrettably sketchy drawings back into his rucksack and joined the end of a long line waiting for a boat. It seemed hardly days since he had been quietly painting the portrait of an eminent French lawyer in the Midi when the Germans broke through the French defences. In common with just about everyone, he had foolishly imagined that he had time on his side, not appreciating that the Germans would march through France virtually unopposed, the result being that he had reached Dunkirk and the coast at precisely the same time as the German Army. Now, despite the bombardment, or perhaps because of it, he was glad to find himself still alive, but doubtful that he could count on any more luck. He tried to concentrate on the detail of what was around him: boats coming in, others being pushed out, the overhead warfare, the blood red of the blue sea, the incongruous bright of the sunshine determinedly floodlighting and highlighting the horror around him.
Someone ahead of him muttered, ‘Where’s the RAF? Why is no one defending us?’
‘They can’t send in the RAF because, in the event that we are invaded, we would have no air power left to defend ourselves. It is just too much of a risk.’
‘Balderdash,’ the man seated opposite Robyn stated calmly. ‘Utter balderdash. Our army should be defended now, not allowed to become target practice while most of the RAF sit on their backsides and do nothing to defend them.’
‘The whole idea was ridiculous, sending a British Expeditionary Force over to France to say boo to Hitler. What did they imagine was going to be the outcome? Germany, frightened to death, throws in the towel and surrenders to an underequipped British force? If you ask me, there is no such thing as British understatement, only underequipment.’
Robyn leaned forward, putting her finger to Eddie’s lips.
‘No, not another word of this seditious talk. If anyone hears us we will be thrown in jug, and left to moulder there for the rest of the war, and that is the truth.’
Robyn could see that the word ‘seditious’ meant quite nothing to Eddie. He was still determined to fulminate.
‘I can hardly go anywhere in RAF uniform without someone muttering, “And where were you when you were needed at Dunkirk, old boy?” It’s a crying disgrace. We could have taken them on and put them to flight.’
Robyn still said nothing, but sipped at her drink instead. She knew that the whole idea of not sending in the RAF was anathema to young pilots like Eddie, who were fed up with not being allowed to get at the enemy, and the sooner the better, but she also knew that when Eddie said he could hardly go anywhere without being asked where the RAF was when needed at Dunkirk, he actually meant that he was feeling too embarrassed to go to the pub, and that was making him uncharacteristically irritable.
All the talk everywhere they went was the same. The humiliation of Dunkirk was a hair shirt to the nation as a whole, and a particular horror to those, like the Nursing Yeomanry, who had been drafted in to help with the horrifying injuries, particularly oil burns.
‘Come on, ducks …’
‘Not a good word to use at this time, Robyn. Those poor so-and-sos at Dunkirk, that’s all they were: sitting ducks for the Stukas to enjoy their fairground fun – blam, blam, blam.’
‘Come on anyway, Eddie. We’re meant to be going out for a dance, not staying in for a grumble.’
Eddie looked at her. Robyn was the epitome of every girl with whom he had ever thought he might fall in love. Tall with a proud head carriage, slim figure, and fabulous legs.
‘How about staying in and not grumbling?’
‘Sorry, Eddie old thing, just not possible at this moment.’
‘Why?’
Robyn gave him her sweetest smile. ‘I am starving with hunger, and dinner at the Berkeley is heaven on wheels.’
‘Allez, allez then, cherie, and the first one to touch the table has to pay!’
Naturally Robyn was the first to reach their table, but she could not have cared less; she would have paid for dinner for eight if need be, so much did she feel herself to be in love with Eddie.
Edwina was dining at the next table. She waved at Robyn, and blew Eddie a kiss from her long, elegant fingers.
‘Obviously someone you know?’ Colonel Atkins stated drily, feeling an unexpected dart of jealousy as the young man blew a kiss back to her. ‘Known each other long?’
‘No, not really. He is going to become engaged to one of my friends, that’s all.’
Colonel Atkins did not smile. Everyone was getting engaged, marrying, starting wild affairs with unsuitable people – that was the effect war had. The behaviour of the normally quite respectable had become quite extraordinary.
‘I take it, as of this minute, you are not becoming engaged to anyone in particular, Miss O’Brien?’
Edwina gave him a smile that would have launched the Queen Mary. ‘No, not anyone in particular, just everyone in general, Colonel Atkins.’
The smile was so compelling, the small teeth so white, the green eyes so fascinating, that for a moment Colonel Atkins forgot that he was meant to be having dinner to recruit a new agent.
‘Well, well, well, that is entirely to be wished for, as it happens. That suits our purpose most admirably.’
Edwina’s heart sank. She knew that in some way she was being singled out, and she had the feeling that she knew who in particular had chosen her, and he was a stocky, cigar-smoking politician, who was now leading the country in place of Neville Chamberlain.
‘I have to confess I am actually in love with one man, though, Colonel Atkins,’ Edwina said, a little too hastily. ‘Nothing to do with the war particularly, everything to do with coup de foudre.’
‘Ah, the old lightning bolt. Well, no one can argue with the force of that, I am sure. Struck by lightning, struck by love – no difference, I understand.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ Edwina agreed, remembering Robert’s expression.
‘He has actually just returned from Dunkirk, and pretty miffed he is too at all the incompetence: no air cover, French troops pushing our lot aside, our lot rescuing their lot before our lot, and heaven only knows what else has gone on, or not gone on.’
‘It isn’t good – hasn’t been good – but we can’t give them the air cover we would like, for obvious reasons.’ Colonel Atkins gave Edwina a significant look.
‘No,’ Edwina agreed, realising that the look must mean ‘no aeroplanes to spare for that particular enterprise’. ‘Perhaps not. However, the fact that most of the Expeditionary Force have returned is surely a miracle.’
‘And they are still returning, my dear. Even as we speak our people are still returning in their hundreds, and on board every kind of craft.’
‘I wish I’d been allowed to get over there instead of being ordered back to London. I mean, what does it look like if one is in uniform but not taking part in any of the main events?’
‘You will not be in uniform for long, my dear, believe me. If what I think is going to happen to you does indeed happen, you will be very far from being uniform-clad. Not that you don’t look handsome in your uniform,’ he added quickly, seeing the look in the green eyes.
‘Fla
ttery will get you everywhere, Colonel, dotey,’ Edwina murmured, at the same time only too happy to see the potted shrimps arriving, albeit that they were being presented in such a very round shape they could only be tinned. ‘Ah, les crevettes sont arrivées. How delightful.’
‘Yes, the shrimps are indeed arrived at last.’ Colonel Atkins put his napkin across his knees. ‘Delicious. I used to love to go shrimping. Did you shrimp in Ireland?’
‘Naturally, Colonel Atkins, in fact I shrimped so long that I once got caught by the tide, and was forced to spend the night on the rocks, before being rescued by the local fishing fleet.’
‘Is that so?’ The colonel looked momentarily impressed.
‘No, of course not. But I did always hope that would happen. I loved adventure, but was never let off the lunge rope for long enough to enjoy any for very long.’
‘So that was the reason you came to England from Ireland?’
‘Naturally, as so many of us have, leaving behind a sighing, regretful—’
‘But neutral nation.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea, Colonel Atkins?’ Edwina dabbed her lips with her napkin. ‘No Irish man or woman is ever neutral, gracious no. They are fiercely partisan, never neutral! So it is now that those that can’t swim across the Irish Sea to help in the war are staying at home and sending parcels of food to everyone and anyone, most particularly their thousand upon thousand of kissing cousins in Liverpool and Manchester.’
All this chatter, all this talk, why would the English never get to the point? Edwina wondered.
If you dined or lunched with an Irishman he would settle down to the point straight away, after which everyone could enjoy the rest of the meal. Not so the English – with them it was always silence, and then the weather, more silence, and then more weather, yet more silence, and yet more weather.
‘How’s your tapestry coming along, Colonel Atkins?’
The colonel’s expression was solemn. ‘It is finished, and ready to be mounted.’
‘Well, that is good,’ Edwina replied over-brightly. ‘And what is going to happen to it now, I wonder?’
Goodnight Sweetheart Page 18
