Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  Madeleine didn’t turn back, or wave. She had made her farewell in the way that she wanted. From now on she was Oak, Chêne in French, her code name.

  The aircraft reached the far end of the field and turned. What had been a throaty growl from the engine was now a scream.

  Then the plane lurched forward. For a few moments it bucked across undulations in the loam but then the grass leveled out, the aircraft’s speed increased, and, as the plane came abreast of me, its wheels lifted clear of the ground. In the moonlight its shadow raced across the turf and disappeared. I waved but, in the dark, I couldn’t make out either of the figures.

  I watched as the Lysander banked, turning towards the moon. Its sound lessened but I continued watching as its silhouette grew smaller, etched sharp against the mottled silver disc in the black sky. I watched until the sound had disappeared, till the aircraft was no more than a smudge against the shiny expanse, then nothing at all.

  FEBRUARY

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  SCOTLAND

  · 2 ·

  HER HAIR, PLASTERED TO HER FACE, hung down around the line of her jaw. Water dripped from her nose and her chin. Mascara smudges spread down her cheeks, like ink on blotting paper. The rope around her chest cut into the flesh on her arms. Her wet clothes steamed, even as she shivered in the night air. The brilliance of the arc lights bearing down on her seemed to bleach her already white skin. Behind was the dim outline of some farm buildings and, beyond them, in the distance, in the moonlight, the sea.

  “Beim naechsten Mal lasse ich Sie länger unter Wasser!” shouted the man bending over her. “Next time, I’ll leave you under the water for longer, do you understand?” he repeated in English. “Beim naechsten Mal lasse ich Sie solange bis Sie tot sind. Next time I’ll leave you under until you are dead!”

  He had all the insignia of a thug. It was not just the black uniform and the boots, the gloved hands that slapped the leather thong against his thigh in a regular rhythm, that were somehow chilling, as if distancing him from the proceedings. It was the bald head, the rimless spectacles, and the crimson birthmark snaking down one side of his face that really marked him for what he was: an ex-criminal-turned-tormenter. Men like him relished war.

  “Wie heissen Sie? Welcher Einheit gehören Sie an? Woher kommen Sie? What is your name? What is your unit? Where have you come from? What is your target? I’m…losing…patience.” He half sang the last sentence, as if to indicate he was enjoying his cruelty. Putting a gloved finger inside his collar, as if it itched, he reached forward with his other hand and lifted her chin. “Do you want to die of cold?”

  She groaned. “Madeleine Dirac. I told you, I’m not German, I’m Canadian, and I’m part of a special—”

  “No! No! Nein! We’ve been through all that. We watched you come in by plane, we saw you come in over the sea—we watched you parachute down, dropping conveniently into a restricted zone. The plane got away before we could get to you—aber ihr Glück hat Sie verlassen. But your luck ran out. Again I ask, What is your target?”

  She shook her head viciously. Her wet hair, dank red ropes like a nest of vipers, flung beads of water across the light beams and into the dark. “I’ve told you already—”

  “Enough! Genug!” He raised his head. “Hicks! Corbett!”

  Out of the gloom beyond the arc lights, two other men appeared, both in the same black uniforms but without the trimmings of rank. They lifted her, still strapped to the chair, and carried her to a metal container which, in an earlier life, had been a sheep dip, several yards long, six feet wide and six deep.

  “Now,” said the man with the birthmark, stepping forward and peeling back his sleeve with a gloved finger to inspect his wristwatch. “It’s getting late.”

  The two men manhandled Madeleine and the chair into the water. Her body disappeared. There was a thrashing in the sheep dip but the men held both the chair and the woman’s form firmly below the surface.

  The man with the birthmark waited. He was counting. When he had reached whatever limit he had set himself, he shouted, “Bring her up!”

  The men hauled the woman and the chair from the sheep dip.

  She was coughing, retching, crying, gasping for air. Her chest heaved, as water ran off her, her hair hung down before her eyes, some of it disappearing inside her mouth. She made a movement of her lips and coughed it out.

  The man with the birthmark allowed her time to regain control of her breathing.

  “Now,” he said at length. “I’m not going to ask this again. Welcher Einheit gehören—What is your—?”

  “I don’t speak German!” she suddenly screamed. “Are you stupid? I’ve told you. I’m a Canadian, from Trois Rivières. Three-fucking-Rivers. I was brought up in France and England. I’m a nurse. I flew up from Manchester, for pity’s sake, in a Lysander—”

  “Quiet,” he growled. “That’s enough. We’ve wasted enough time on you. You arrived in Britain by aircraft, illegally, in a restricted zone without any paperwork, and in plain clothes. If it was a Lysander, we’d have had notification it was coming—and we didn’t. Whatever nationality you are—German, Austrian, Hungarian, Italian—it’s all the same; the way you arrived makes you a spy and, under the rules of war, I am within my rights to have you shot. Ich frage nochmal: was war Ihr Ziel? I ask you again: What was your target?”

  As he shouted and stared, the dance of the birthmark on his cheek made it look as though his face was on fire.

  She looked at him. Her hair hung down, stuck to her skin. She blew it away from her mouth. “I—am—a—Canadian.” There was another movement of her lips and this time she spat at him.

  Slowly, deliberately, he raised his arm and flicked the spittle off his uniform with a gloved finger.

  “Very well,” he said. “You want to play it like that.” Gesturing to the other men, he continued: “Take off her clothes, tie her up again, and put her against the wall over there. She’ll be easier to bury and harder to identify later if she’s naked.” He nodded to the darkness beyond where the bright beams from the arc lights reached.

  She struggled, or she tried to, but the men were too strong for her and, soon enough, she was naked and tied up again, but standing.

  The man with the birthmark changed the angle of the arc lights so that they shone at full strength on the farm wall—a long windowless barn. In front of it, the ground was covered in dark, damp patches. Blood.

  The men manoeuvred Madeleine in front of the wall. Feeling the stickiness of the blood on the soles of her bare feet, she looked down, and a whimper of despair leaked into the night air. She was thinking: How many others had been executed on this spot? And how recently? The two men disappeared beyond the range of the lights.

  The thug with the flame on his face moved forward.

  “Do you want a blindfold?”

  She shook her head. She was near to tears. “You don’t understand…I’m a—”

  “No. Halt! Genug! Enough. You’ve had your chance. We’re not brutes like you Nazis but we’re not fools either. Fly into a restricted zone in plain clothes?…You were asking for trouble.”

  He took a pace back. The two other men had reappeared, this time with rifles. They stood on either side of him.

  He took his pistol out of its holster and held it at his side.

  “I ask you one last time: What did you come here to do? What—who—is your target?”

  When she didn’t immediately reply, he raised his pistol and took aim. The other men raised their rifles and did the same.

  She was crying, but then she stopped. She shook her hair free of her face and stood up straight. Tears streamed down her cheeks but she looked them in the eye.

  There was a long pause.

  “Okay, give her a blanket,” I shouted from beyond the reach of the lights.

  A woman in a blue nurse’s uniform ran from behind me out of the dark.

  “Here you are, dear,” she murmured, putting the blanket around Madeleine’s sh
oulders. Madeleine collapsed into the woman’s arms, and she was carried away.

  The men in uniform lowered their rifles. One took out a packet of cigarettes and handed them around.

  “She did well,” said the man with the birthmark.

  “Nice tits,” said one of the other men. “Oh, sorry, sir,” he added, seeing me approach. “I didn’t—”

  “What are those?” I said, ignoring him. “Craven A? May I?”

  As I savoured the cigarette—very much against doctor’s orders—I watched as Madeleine Dirac was led away. She was clearly bewildered, as was only natural, but I was about to explain everything. First, though, she would be given a hot shower, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, fortified with hot soup—and, if she wanted one, a cigarette.

  —

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Madeleine Dirac was shown into my office in the set of buildings that we in the organisation I worked for called “The Farm.” It was true that it had once been a farm and it was still surrounded by three hundred acres of woodland, arable meadows, and rocky cliffs overlooking the shore of the North Sea. But it had other uses too.

  “Office” is rather a grand word for what in fact was—or had been—a stable before the war, and still had one of those doors where the upper half spends much of its life open. Now, however, as the time was well past midnight, past 2:00 a.m. in fact, and it was still early February, both halves were firmly closed.

  Maps, mainly of France, lined the walls, as well as various charts, showing when the full moons were due.

  A small fireplace burned coal. There was a desk, with a telephone, a sofa, and two easy chairs. Madeleine Dirac sat in one, I sat in the other. Fresh coffee—not the usual wartime chicory substitute—brewed by my aide-de-camp, sat on the low table between us and a half-bottle of Scotch. We were alone.

  Madeleine Dirac looked almost elegant in her tidy nurse’s uniform and slightly prim black lace-up shoes. She had run her fingers through her hair, which was still wet and fell about her shoulders. But she hadn’t put on any make-up and she looked pale.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  She moved her head from side to side, as if she couldn’t make up her mind what to say. The edges of her hair sparkled in the firelight, making her look younger than she was.

  “I’ll sleep tonight, yes,” she said, smothering a yawn with her hand. “But—but what on earth was going on out there? An hour ago I thought I was about to die. It was not a nice experience. What have I just been through?”

  “Too tired for a whisky?” I leaned forward and lifted the bottle. “Maybe a little Scotch with your coffee? Might give you a lift.”

  “Good idea. My mother sometimes has whisky in her tea. But I’m not letting you off the hook. What was—all that?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough. That’s why we’re here now, in this room, alone. Certain things have to be settled tonight.”

  “What things? Why tonight? I’m lost.”

  Her voice was strangely intimate, yet deep and musical, with a Canadian lilt to it.

  I poured the coffee, and the whisky, and handed them across.

  I put more coal on the fire. Then I crossed the room, picked up a file from my desk, and sipped my whisky as I opened it.

  “Madeleine Dirac, aged twenty-five. Born Trois Rivières. Three-Fucking-Rivers”—I looked up and smiled—“on April 20, 1919. Father: Didier Dirac, a dental technician from Louzac originally, in the Limoges region of France. Mother: Victoria Beale, a seamstress, from Chester. Educated at St. Mathilde’s Ursuline Convent, Quebec City, and St. Hilaire Convent, Louzac, after your father decided he missed France. All correct so far?”

  She nodded and sat further back in her chair.

  “Father died 1933 in a shooting accident, after which your mother sold the failing dental technician’s business. Eventually, you immigrated to England, where your mother had been born and grew up. Settled in London, though your mother subsequently moved to Blakeney on the Norfolk coast. That was later, in 1938. From 1938 until 1942 you worked as a translator for a publisher. In 1942 you changed jobs, helping to train soldiers to speak French—”

  “I wanted to do something more useful in the war. It doesn’t sound like much the way you say it.”

  “Relax. I’m testing the file, not you…Last year, 1943, after approaching the commanding officer of the translation unit, you joined FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Is all that correct?”

  “Yes, yes. I wanted to work for the war effort, do something…you know, practical. But all I got to be was a trainee nurse.”

  I nodded. “While you were training, I understand you saved the life of a mounted policeman. How did that come about?”

  She pulled a face. “You have been digging. One afternoon, when we had some free time, a few of us nurses on the course went out together. We went to look at Whitehall—you know, Downing Street, Scotland Yard, Horse Guards Parade. While we were there, part of a barrage balloon that they keep flying over the government offices exploded with a bang and one of the policemen’s horses was startled and reared up. The policeman fell to the ground, hit his head, and had a heart attack. I was nearby, so were the other nurses, and we knew what to do. That’s all.”

  “But you took the lead.”

  “Someone had to.”

  “But why you?”

  “I can be bossy. My mother says I used to be a bit of a tomboy.”

  “He came round, the policeman?”

  “Oh yes, we were very close to him when it happened. His heart didn’t stop for very long—seconds only.”

  I sipped my whisky. “FANY is not always what it seems. Sometimes it is exactly what it seems, but not always. That episode impressed your superiors. You were watched.”

  That got her attention. She sat forward. The shifting light from the flames of the fire flickered across her face “What do you mean? Watched by whom?”

  I tapped my teeth with my whisky glass.

  Despite her ordeal, and the late hour, there was a morning briskness about her.

  “We needed to know how excitable you were. What your memory is like, what level of scientific and technological knowledge you are comfortable with, how well you fit in with others, whether you like to be a prima donna or are happy in the background, how fast you learn, whether your French is as good as it should be, given your background, whether you have an accent. All that took time.”

  She looked at me. She was thinking back, trying to remember being watched, wondering why she hadn’t noticed. She closed her eyes. That was when I first noticed that her eyelashes settled on her cheeks like the marks of birds’ feet on sand.

  “Did you ever notice being watched?”

  Would she answer honestly? That was important.

  She shivered and gripped the skin under her chin with her forefinger and thumb. “Cree-py,” she breathed, breaking the word into two. But she shook her head. “There was once, one time, we had some French people to look after in FANY, wounded soldiers, they said, who’d been evacuated from France. I was called in to interpret. But later I heard some of the so-called Frenchmen speaking English. So why then did they need an interpreter? But by then the emergency—if it was an emergency—was over.”

  “Yes, that was a test.”

  “Creepy twice over. What was I being tested for?”

  “You are about to find out.”

  I refilled our whisky glasses. “From 1940 until the end of 1942 I worked in France, behind enemy lines. In 1942 I was injured—it wasn’t the greatest moment of my life, I have to admit. I recovered, but it affected my mobility and I was invalided home. That, too, is another story. However, while I was in France I noticed something, two things, in fact. First, that although the French have an active and spirited Resistance, because the country is occupied the Resistance workers are always being caught, and tortured, with the result that their lines of communication are penetrated by the Germans. Secondly, I noticed that the most important activity
in the Resistance, from our point of view, the British point of view, is communication. Disparate Resistance units, and our sabotage circuits, have to communicate securely with each other and with us in London. But where communication is concerned, women—and not men—are the better couriers.”

  She was looking intently at me.

  “Why? They are better couriers because all able-bodied men across the Channel should be working for the war effort, either in France or in German factories. They cannot move around unnoticed. But women can.”

  She was listening avidly now. Still no sign of tiredness—her gaze searched my face.

  “And so, later in 1942, after I had drawn this to the attention of my army superiors, a decision was taken, at the very highest level—by Churchill himself—to authorize the training of women, to be dropped behind enemy lines, to act as couriers and, occasionally, as wireless operators in deepest France, la France profonde. Very occasionally, as explosives experts.”

  “Did you meet Churchill?”

  “Just that once.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Taller than I’d expected. He didn’t say much, but he listened, asked the other people at the meeting if they had any arguments against the use of women—”

  “And—?”

  “I can’t go into details. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m not the sneaky kind. Why did the PM go with your plan? Are you a hero or something?”

  “Not at all. I got a medal for the sabotage I carried out over there, before I was injured, but now I’m…Well, this is where we get to the meat of the matter.”

  She took her shoes off and pulled both her legs under her. “Okay.”

  “I’m inviting you to join something. It’s not a something you can apply to join—you have to be invited. The number of agents in this something is few, because sabotage in France risks sparking reprisals from the Gestapo. In response to the blowing up of bridges or railways, for instance, the Nazis round up people at random and execute them, or take them off to labour camps in Germany. But some sabotage occurs, to keep up French morale and prepare them for the invasion, when it comes.”