A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  Rafe had been here before her – if not at this location then somewhere like it. And that meant – well, who knew what it meant – but she understood now what the nature of his most secret work might be and the measure of the danger he’d passed into ahead of her.

  This time, when she saw her child again, he was waiting inside the door when Nanny opened it, still wobbly on his feet, but definitely standing. She crouched and opened her arms to him, the rush of love for him overwhelming.

  ‘Sweetheart?’

  He looked at her, and glanced up at Nanny who said, ‘Go on, give your mother a kiss.’ Again, he waited, then gave a big sigh and stepped forward into her arms. ‘Mar Mar,’ he moaned, pushing his arms round her neck.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ she spoke in his ear, almost crying with relief. She hadn’t realized until now how much she’d missed him.

  She knew, as soon as she set eyes on her, that Angie was pregnant again.

  ‘I’m a bundle of nerves,’ Angie told her. ‘Something, anything I do, might make me lose it.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘That I shouldn’t exert myself in any way, and should eat well. Hah! It’s all very well saying that, but I feel sick all the time.’

  Angie was tired, Beatrice could see that, and since she had a whole two weeks off until her final bout of training, she decided to go home to Cornwall.

  The boy was fretful on the train, unused to the noise and the people, perhaps missing Angie and Nanny for, twisting and struggling on her lap, he’d sometimes turn and look at her with puzzlement as if to say, what are you doing here? He threw the food she gave him to the floor and only settled when he had his bottle. Finally, he dropped off to sleep in her arms and she watched the passing countryside as the train travelled towards the setting sun. How ordinary this was, she thought, a mother and her child. She could hardly believe that last week she’d jumped from an aeroplane.

  January 1943

  ‘You are no longer Béatrice or Simone. Your name is now Juliette Rameau and you are a children’s governess. Here, take these and study them carefully.’

  She was at another country house, this time in Hampshire. At the end of the first day, Miss Atkins and the man in charge of the French operations, Major Maurice Buckmaster, arrived from London. Beatrice was summoned to see them in a comfortable book-lined room with a view across the front lawn, where she sat in front of a big desk as Major Buckmaster described her new role. Tall, slender and athletic, Buckmaster was physically like an older version of Rafe: the same fair hair, but thinning, the same sensitive, slightly puzzled look. Miss Atkins sat quietly behind the desk but he was sitting on it, swinging his legs and perusing Beatrice with a shrewd eye. She looked down at the documents Miss Atkins had given her: a French identity card bearing a photograph of her face, coupons for food and clothing, and a faded picture of two slender, dark-headed girls, presumably Mademoiselle Rameau’s pupils.

  ‘Your immediate task, mademoiselle,’ Buckmaster said, ‘is to rehearse the story of your entire life. We will help you, of course. You must know everything there is to know about yourself, the names of your grandparents, the pets you had when you were a child, where you live, what your father did . . . the list goes on and on. You must know these details so well that you will answer as Juliette Rameau, even under the greatest pressure.’ He said the last two words with emphasis and they chilled her.

  ‘That’s very clear, sir, I see what I must do.’

  ‘Do you?’ he said, folding his arms. ‘Do you grasp that you must learn to act as Juliette always, even if the Gestapo drag you from your bed at midnight and question you? You must automatically answer as Juliette. In effect you must be Juliette.’

  She nodded, looking at him steadily now. ‘I’m ready to start work on it as soon as I’m told,’ she replied.

  Miss Atkins stood with a reassuring smile. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’ll begin immediately.’

  Chapter 27

  February 1943

  Four weeks later, sitting in the little Lysander as it flew over Normandy, nauseated by the smell of fuel and the vibration of the engines, Beatrice remembered this conversation. Concentrating her thoughts on what she had to do kept her mind focused and calm.

  The pilot turned his head and shouted, ‘There are the lights, Pickard, look,’ and the man sitting beside Beatrice pushed himself up and peered over the pilot’s shoulder.

  ‘Right we are,’ Charles Pickard said to Beatrice. ‘Ready for landing?’

  The plane slowed and began to descend.

  ‘Easy does it,’ Pickard whispered. Torch beams flashed, the plane hit the ground with a bump, bounced once and, scraping over the grass with a long sigh, drifted to a halt. Pickard was already getting the door open.

  A man and a woman waiting on the cold hilltop greeted them with hugs and soft murmurs of welcome. Beatrice knew they were Pierre and Lorraine, a middle-aged couple, farmers.

  Pierre dragged bicycles out of a nearby copse, and Pickard helped Beatrice strap her suitcase to hers. Then he shook her hand and wished her luck and stepped back into the plane. As they waited to wave it off, she looked about her, trying to match her surroundings to the details of the map she’d pored over back in England. They were looking down over a moonlit valley, patchworked with fields and farmsteads.

  Her immediate instructions were clear. She was to return home with Pierre and his wife and try to get some sleep. Early in the morning she was to cycle the twenty miles to Rouen and board a train to Paris. ‘The last time I went to Paris I was followed,’ Pierre explained. That’s why Beatrice had to go instead.

  They cycled in the cold winter air along winding country roads until Pierre turned suddenly down an unmade lane, across a little bridge and into a farmyard. She was haunted by a sense of familiarity, and it was a moment or two before she realized it was because it was similar to her grandparents’ farm. That must be thirty miles or so north of here; there was no chance at all of her being able to go and find it even if she were permitted. She pushed thoughts of her family away and concentrated on avoiding puddles.

  Inside the farmhouse, as Pierre poked the fire and set a pan of onion soup to heat, the feeling of recognition came again, but this time it was accompanied by a sense of rightness that she had come. When, an hour later, she lay down in her cot-bed under the eaves, she was sure she’d be unable to sleep for nerves. Yet it seemed only a moment later that Lorraine’s harsh whisper roused her. It was time to go.

  She dressed quickly, in the worn navy suit they’d given her, and checked her clutch bag once again for papers and money.

  ‘Dieu vous bénisse,’ Lorraine muttered, as she kissed her forehead.

  ‘Et vous aussi,’ Beatrice replied softly. Pierre had told her the night before, whilst Lorraine had been busy upstairs, that their grown-up son, their only child, had been conscripted by the Nazis and sent to Alsace to work in a factory, making shells. Six months ago, word had come that he had been killed – in a drunken fight, they were told. This explanation, Pierre did not for one moment believe. Raoul had been a gentle boy, not that sort at all. His death decided them. They’d volunteered for the Resistance.

  Beatrice wheeled her bicycle out of the farmyard, mounted it, and wobbled off down the road. She knew where to go; she carried the map in her memory.

  Some miles down the road, behind her in the distance, she heard a vehicle engine. Dismounting quickly, she wheeled the bike behind a wall and hid. It was a car, and as it passed she peeped out and saw Nazi soldiers, four of them. It was her first encounter with the enemy and it shook her somewhat. She leant back, closing her eyes, then, quickly recovering, set off down the road once more.

  The country lane fed into a wider one, that eventually met a trunk road. She knew she must leave this quickly to follow a route where it was less likely she’d be seen. The sun climbed in the sky. Sometimes she passed signs of the Occupation. A burnt-out house, a dog shot dead in a ditch. Of the people she passed, some were
friendly and wished her good day. Others avoided her eye. She never stopped to make conversation. It was her job not to be remembered. ‘You’re Juliette,’ she told herself. ‘It’s perfectly natural that you’re here, going to Paris for a few days to stay with your aunt.’ All she had to do was be Juliette. They’d have to tear the lining of her jacket to discover the precious piece of folded silk she’d brought from London, or the little pill she must take if she were captured and unable to endure it.

  At the station she parked her bike, but when she went to the window to buy a ticket, she saw a young soldier lounging by the door to the platforms. ‘Paris, billet aller-retour, s’il vous plaît,’ she said to the woman behind the window, trying to sound confident, but her fingers shook as she searched her purse for coins.

  When she passed the soldier she thought, He’ll see my fear, but he gave her a bored look and let her through.

  On the train, an old lady with a basket on her lap chattered about her daughter, whom she was going to visit because she’d had a baby, and Beatrice listened politely. Actually, the talking took the edge off her nervousness. The others around her remained quiet and watchful. When two Gestapo officers came along the corridor, looking into all the compartments, she understood why.

  Leaving the Gare St-Lazare, she forced herself not to stare about her as though she didn’t know what she was doing. She bought a newspaper at a kiosk, then, since there was no hurry, set off on foot for the Luxembourg Gardens. She had visited Paris only once, as a girl of seven or eight, and remembered gay accordion music, and the pretty trees of the Champs Elysées, the groups of men sitting outside the cafés laughing and chatting over carafes of wine and games of draughts. Now the atmosphere was subdued, and there were men in Nazi uniform everywhere. She knew not to meet their eyes and was alarmed when one stopped her and tried to chat, offering her a cigarette. She refused politely, as Juliette Rameau would have done, smiled and hurried on.

  She reached the gardens at a quarter to three, and visited a public convenience nearby where she locked herself into a cubicle. There she cut several threads in the hem of her jacket and wormed the precious silk out of its hiding place. As she was straightening her clothes, someone tried the door and she held her breath. ‘Pardon,’ said a woman’s voice and she relaxed.

  In the park, she found the small fountain as she’d been directed. Nearby was the bench she wanted, but an old man was sitting there. She walked on for a while, pretending to enjoy the sun and the flowers, and when she returned was relieved to see that he’d gone. She sat down on the bench, peeled off her gloves, shook open her paper and tried to read.

  After a few moments, a stranger sat down next to her: a quiet, serious-faced young woman whose severe black suit complemented her graceful figure.

  ‘Un bel après-midi, n’est-ce pas?’ the newcomer murmured. She had lovely creamy skin, Beatrice saw as she lowered the paper. It was beautiful against the black. She noticed too that the pulse at the woman’s collar beat too quickly; she, like Beatrice, was nervous.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Beatrice replied, as though making polite conversation. ‘Vous avez lu le journal aujourd’hui?’

  ‘Non, j’étais trop occupée, mais j’aimerais bien le lire.’ Good, she was definitely the expected contact.

  ‘Voilà, prenez-le. J’ai fini.’ She folded the newspaper and offered it to the woman, who took it, and with it, the little piece of silk hidden inside. On the silk was a hand-drawn map that another agent had brought back to London. By this circuitous route, the Resistance could plan an act of sabotage.

  ‘Merci, madame. C’est très gentille,’ said the woman, glancing at the headlines in a casual fashion, before putting the paper in the shopping bag at her side.

  ‘Je vous en prie,’ Beatrice responded politely and stood, picking up her gloves.

  She forced herself to walk away slowly, though she badly wanted to distance herself from the map and the woman. The job she’d come for was done, and she felt quite light-hearted, but knew she must still be vigilant. Tomorrow night, all being well, another plane from another hillside near Rouen would take her home, but anything could happen to prevent that.

  It almost did. At the gates, on some strange impulse, she paused and looked back, only to be dazzled by the sun. Walking on again she collided with someone, a man. ‘Oh!’ The ‘S’ of sorry was on her lips, and she realized to her horror he was a German soldier. He gripped her arm to steady her.

  ‘Excusez-moi, Fraulein,’ he said, and smiled at her.

  She smiled back shyly, then set off once more, her mouth dry, a pulse thudding in her ears.

  ‘Fraulein!’ he called and she made herself turn round. He was holding up one of her gloves and there was an expression of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘Ah, merci,’ she murmured, going to take it from him. He was a pleasant-looking youth of nineteen or twenty and had dealt with her kindly, but this made no difference to the strength of her revulsion.

  She took a different route back to the station, as she’d been briefed. She passed along a side street by the rue de Rivoli, lingering by the shopfronts, fascinated by all the beautiful things for sale. It was a toy shop that caught her eye. There in the window was a wooden engine, painted bright red. She stopped and stared at it for a moment. Why not? She opened the shop door and went inside.

  ‘Presents! Oh, Bea!’ It was worth it to see their faces.

  The little boy grabbed his train with both hands and put it to his mouth. ‘No, like this,’ Bea said, extricating it gently and showing him how to push it along the floor. ‘Woo woo!’

  ‘Oooo,’ he said, snatching it up and banging it on the ground, an expression of pure joy on his face.

  Angie cried out as she unwrapped her gifts: an enamelled powder compact and a lipstick. Even Nanny had something: a warm scarf. There was soap for the household, too, and hairgrips.

  ‘Bea, where did you get these things?’ Angie asked, staring at her friend in wonder and suspicion. ‘They’re French.’

  It’s easy if you know the right people,’ Bea said, enjoying herself. How easy it was to lie now, even to friends. But she couldn’t tell them the truth. It was her duty not to.

  ‘What is it you’re doing?’ Angie persisted. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Somewhere exotic, that’s all.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Miss Angie, how often have I told you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?’ Nanny said, stroking the soft wool of her scarf. ‘It’s not for us to know.’

  ‘I’ll take them back if you don’t want them,’ Bea said, smiling. She’d known that she risked being conspicuous by buying the gifts, but she hadn’t been able to resist.

  ‘You will not!’ was Angie’s indignant response. ‘But what have you got for yourself? You must have something.’

  Beatrice brought out of her suitcase a tissue-paper package. She opened it and shook out a long silken dress, a lovely fragrance of Chanel wafting through the air.

  ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ Angie breathed, fingering the soft fabric. ‘It’s the wrong style for me, but it’ll look perfect on you.’

  Beatrice had stared at the dress in the shop window for some time before plucking up the courage to go inside. It was a black and gold evening dress, made of some filmy material that folded up to nothing in her luggage. When she tried it on in the dressing room, it had fitted exactly, as though made for her. ‘I’ll take it,’ she’d told the unsmiling shop assistant. She paid for it in a cloud of elation, trying not to think that she was handing over half the money they’d given her for emergencies. She’d pay them back for it somehow, she’d told herself.

  Later, she heard her mission had been important. As a result of her delivering the map, the Resistance had succeeded in blowing up a bridge over the Seine, thus destroying a vital route for the movement of German tanks.

  She also learned that the shop where she’d bought the dress was frequented by Nazi officers buying gifts for their mistresses. No wonder Madame had
looked at her so frostily.

  During March and April 1943, Beatrice flew through moonlight on two further missions to Normandy. The first time she posed as Juliette again. She was there for a month as courier for a British agent known as Henri and his wireless operator Georges, her job to carry messages between two local Resistance groups who, she finally worked out, were in the final stages of plans to destroy a Nazi arms depot.

  Two Gestapo officers who noticed the regularity with which the pretty dark-haired girl cycled to Rouen from a town fifteen miles away and back again later in the day, stopped her once and examined her papers. They found no reason to doubt her story – that she was going to her place of work, teaching the children of a lawyer in a well-respected firm, and let her go. When, the night before the raid was to be carried out, she was flown back to England, she wondered whether, after the explosion, these policemen would notice that Juliette Rameau had vanished and visit the law firm she’d mentioned to find that Julien Defours, whose name was still over the door, had in fact died, a childless widower, the year before.

  The second visit was much shorter. She had to meet the surviving members of a network that had been infiltrated, and collect a list of coded names. Radio contact was deemed unsafe, so the only way the list could be got out was by giving it to Beatrice, who this time carried false papers in the name of a farmer’s daughter, Elise Fontaine.

  Between missions she stayed in Dinah’s apartment, paying snatched visits to Sussex, but since she was often expected to be in London for briefings or debriefings, or, once, was sent away for further training, she couldn’t stay long. It was a strange existence, completely without routine or any sense of past or future. Everything was about living for now.

  In the evenings she’d socialize with some of the other agents, often wearing her Parisian dress to go dancing or dine out, not caring about other women’s jealous looks. They didn’t know how she was risking her life. She wasn’t going to dress dowdily just to please them.