‘Thank you, Eddie,’ Claire said on her return.
‘I’d reserve your thanks if I was you until you’ve tasted the delicately smoke-flavoured fried egg with the black specks, which is haute cuisine don’t you know, and the half toasted bread,’ she said, in an exaggerated French accent. She put two plates on the table, one in front of Claire. ‘I’ll get the tea.’
Claire laughed. It had been a while since she’d seen Eddie, longer since she had laughed. ‘It looks good, really,’ she said, taking a slice of toast and dipping the crust into the yolk of the egg. She could hardly remember the last time she’d cooked anything. For more than a week, while Eddie had been in Coltishall, she had lived in a dreamlike state, getting up only to go to the bathroom and make tea. She was glad Eddie was back.
When they had finished eating Eddie suggested Claire took a bath. ‘Throw in a couple of rose-scented bath cubes and have a soak while I clear away the dishes. And if you want to talk?’
Feeling emotional, but determined not to cry, Claire stood up and left the table. ‘Thanks, Ed. If you don’t mind sticking around, I would like to talk.’
‘Good. Now shoo!’ Eddie said. ‘Go and have your bath while I get this place ship-shape.’
By the time Eddie had put what remained of the food she’d bought away, washed the dishes and built a fire, Claire had bathed and washed her hair.
Sitting on the floor in front of the fire, Claire told Eddie again how she and Mitch had fallen in love in Gisoir, and how against SOE regulations she had stayed with him in his apartment in London. She told her how the Gestapo had stopped him and taken him to headquarters at the insistence of an SS officer, and about Aimée’s premature birth. ‘The worst of it,’ she said, fighting back the tears, ‘is Aimée will never know her daddy. I know she won’t be the only one. So many children will grow up without fathers, some without mothers, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.’
‘Dudley, you don’t know-- Mitch is a resourceful guy. Chances are he’ll have escaped.’
Claire jumped up and went to the sideboard. She took a map from the drawer, opened it and spread it over the table, smoothing the creases where it had been folded with the flat of her hand. ‘The Pyrenees!’
Eddie shot Claire a look of surprise. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Vera Halliday. She brought it over while you were in Coltishall. I telephoned her so many times I think I beat her into submission, or she took pity on me.’ Claire circled an area at the bottom of the mountains with a pencil. ‘Miss Halliday said that according to MI9 this is where Mitch was ambushed.’ Leaning forward, Eddie scrutinised the map. ‘In that kind of terrain, with only one way back,’ Claire ran her finger along the only visible route, ‘how could a man who had been shot by a sniper – and was probably surrounded by snipers – escape?’ Eddie didn’t answer. ‘He couldn’t.’
‘But you don’t know that for certain.’
‘And I won’t know for certain until I get back to France.’
‘You’re in no fit state to go mountain climbing, Dudley.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. If the border guards caught me, I’d be jeopardising MI9’s escape route. You can imagine what they’d do to me if I did that.’
‘Put you in chains and throw away the key?’
‘And if the Gestapo caught me? Well, we both know I’m not strong enough to withstand interrogation at the moment.’ Claire shuddered. ‘Besides, I have Aimée to consider now.’ Claire folded the map. ‘I’m not going to do anything to put myself at risk. Aimée may have lost her father; she is not going to lose her mother too.’ Claire returned the map to the sideboard drawer, came back to the table and sat down. ‘I’ve made a decision. I have been wallowing in self-pity, thinking only of myself, my loss, my pain. But I have a daughter in France who needs me – and a job that I have been trained to do, which I do well and which I hope to go back to. So I need to accept Mitch has gone, get myself fit again – mentally as well as physically – and go back to France to my daughter and my job.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Claire arrived home soaked. ‘The bloody British summer!’ she mumbled, unlocking the door to the apartments. Dropping her shopping bag and gas mask on the floor of the entrance foyer, she wedged the door open with her foot and stuck her head out. Sheltering beneath the art deco portico, she collapsed the umbrella and shook off the excess rain. It had thrown it down for days, which had made trawling the empty shops for food even more miserable. As she stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her, she heard the discordant whine of the air raid siren. She turned and looked up at the sky. It was still light. The Luftwaffe had long since stopped waiting until it was dark to drop their bombs. The maxim now, it seemed, was anytime, anywhere. Grabbing her belongings, she ran across the foyer as the ack-ack of the anti-aircraft guns in Hyde Park began firing. Opening her apartment door, she put her shopping bag down and shrugged off her coat.
‘Coming, Dudley?’ Eddie shouted, as she and several tenants from flats on the upper floors ran past. Claire had no intention of going down to the shelter, but as she turned to close her door she saw Eddie leaning on the wall at the top of the basement stairs, swinging her gas mask nonchalantly.
‘On my way,’ Claire sighed. With her coat over her arm, she grabbed her own mask.
‘You won’t need your coat, darling, it’s like a sauna down there with all the hot water pipes.’
‘It’s wet. It will dry quicker in the basement than it will in my hall.’
Most people had taken a cup, a chair, and something to occupy themselves with – a book, board game or playing cards. Some had even left mattresses down there. The apartments’ oldest tenant, Mr Smallman, who held everyone’s spare keys, had appointed himself air raid warden. In charge of the tea and dried milk, he was already boiling the kettle.
Claire and Eddie sat down on a wooden bench with their backs to a panel of warm pipes. They were the only tenants who had not taken anything comfortable to sit on. Neither had been in residence for long enough at any one time to warrant it. There was a sudden muted rumble, followed by a deep boom, and instinctively they looked up. ‘The bombs are close tonight,’ someone said, to which Mr Smallman replied, ‘We’re safe enough down here.’
‘So how did it go with the colonel?’ Eddie whispered. Claire grimaced. ‘That bad, eh?’
She shrugged. When the old man shouted, ‘Tea up!’ Claire went over to where he was handing out hot drinks. She waited in the short queue until he had filled every cup, thanked him, and took hers and Eddie’s back to the bench.
‘I can tell by your face it didn’t go the way you’d hoped,’ Eddie said.
‘It didn’t, but I can’t tell you about it here. Come to mine when the raid’s over.’ Eddie nodded. When they had finished their drinks, Claire took their empty cups back to Mr Smallman who, after the first air raid, had taken on the job of washing the cups and keeping the basement tidy.
It was still early when the all-clear siren sounded and the old man boomed, ‘Air raid over!’ Above the clatter of scraping chairs and people gathering their belongings, Eddie and Claire made their escape.
Claire unlocked the door of her flat and after hanging up her coat, which was now dry, she went into the sitting room and dropped into the chair. Eddie followed and perched on the chair’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Dudley. Is there anything I can do?’
Claire shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not, but thanks anyway, you’re a pal. Have you eaten?’
‘No, you?’
‘No.’ Claire pushed herself out of the chair and went to the kitchen. ‘I’ll make a sandwich. Tinned ham do?’
‘You certainly know how to spoil a girl, Dudley.’
Claire laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Pulling a silly face, Eddie pressed her lips together in a wide grin. ‘I’ll scrape the jelly stuff off and cover it with mustard and pickle – you’ll hardly taste the ham.’
While they ate, Claire told Eddie about the
meeting she’d had with Colonel Smith that day. ‘The colonel has no objection to me going back to France. He said he needed me. Apparently, any day now, there’s going to be a massive push to drive the Germans out of France. Its codename is Operation Overlord, and the colonel said it’s going to be the biggest amphibious invasion since the war began. The Boche have been fed false intelligence,’ Claire said, excitedly. ‘They think the invasion is going to take place in Calais, but it’s actually going to happen all along the Normandy coastline. If everything goes to plan, which the colonel is confident it will, Hitler and his Nazis will be pushed out of Western Europe all the way back to Berlin.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘He made me see a psychiatrist who doesn’t deem me mentally or physically fit enough to go back into the field. Though what my physical fitness has to do with him I should like to know. In his opinion – and I quote – “I would not be happy if Miss Dudley returned to the stresses and dangers of occupied France just yet.”’ Claire poured the tea. ‘In my bloody opinion the only thing that would make the trick-cyclist happy is if women were confined to the house. Better still, if they were tied to the kitchen sink.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I have no choice. Go up to Coltishall, stuff myself with canteen stodge, eat as much chocolate as I can get my hands on, do lots of square bashing and get plenty of sleep. I’ll show the mealy-mouthed, beaky nosed, pathetic little weasel--’
‘Cripes, Dudley, don’t hold back on your opinion of the chap.’ Claire began to add to the description of the psychiatrist, but Eddie put her hands up. ‘Enough already!’ she laughed. ‘So, if you’re going up to Coltishall, you’ll need your uniform. Put it on, let’s have you on parade. Chop-chop! And worry not. If it needs a nip and a tuck, I’m your gal.’
Claire’s mouth fell open. ‘You can’t sew a button on, Mountjoy.’
‘Who said anything about buttons?’
‘I’ll get the uniform,’ Claire said, leaving the room laughing.
When she returned wearing her WAAF uniform, Eddie gulped. ‘Good God, Dudley. Forget a nip and a tuck, that jacket needs major surgery before you go anywhere in it. It isn’t damn fair. I put weight on just looking at a bar of Cadbury’s. You eat it as if it isn’t rationed and you’re skinnier now than you were when you came back from France.’ Eddie lifted the shoulders of Claire’s jacket into place. ‘Good Lord, Dudley, when did you last try this on?’
‘When Noah was a lad.’
‘That recently?’
Claire took the jacket off. ‘I’ll take it in to Vera Halliday tomorrow. She’ll have it altered for me.’ She pulled on the waistband of the skirt. ‘It needs taking in, or the belt. I don’t suppose you’ve borrowed it?’
Batting her eyes in surprised innocence, Eddie pretended she didn’t know what Claire was talking about, but she couldn’t keep it up. As a rosy blush began to bloom on her cheeks, Eddie started to giggle. ‘I might have borrowed it. I do have one or two of your belts upstairs in my drawer,’ she said, leaping up and running out of the room. ‘Back in a jiff.’
‘I’m going to give my sister Bess a quick call,’ Claire shouted after her, ‘so leave the door open.’
Claire picked up the telephone. She longed to see her mum and dad, sisters Ena and Bess, but she couldn’t until she’d been to Coltishall. On her way back to London she would stop off as she had done before. In the meantime she would write. The operator came on the line. ‘Number please, caller.’
‘Lowarth 154, please.’
‘Trying to connect you, caller,’ the operator said after a few seconds.
Claire hoped it would be all right to telephone Bess at Foxden Hall. Her parents didn’t have a telephone. No one in the village did except Mr Clark, the local taxi driver, Mrs Moore at Woodcote’s shop and post office, and of course the vicar. The vicarage was at Mysterton, which was close to Foxden, but when the vicar delivered a message it was usually one you didn’t want to receive.
‘You’re connected, caller,’ the operator said, and immediately Claire heard Bess’s voice.
‘Lowarth 154.’
‘Hello Bess, it’s Claire.’
‘Claire? Oh my-- How lovely to hear from you. How are you? It’s been so long.’
‘Didn’t you get my letters? My friend said she’d posted them.’
‘Yes, I meant since we had spoken. It’s wonderful to hear your voice – and to know you’re alive,’ Bess whispered. ‘Are you going to get up to see us?’
‘I’m going to RAF Coltishall. I’ll try to call in on the way back.’
‘Mam and Dad would love to see you, Ena too. She has been very quiet lately, almost withdrawn. I think she’s really missing you.’
‘I’m missing her, mum and dad too. I’d love to see them, but I can’t promise anything. I don’t know when I’ll have to go back... to the south coast,’ she added, in case anyone was listening in to the call. ‘Do you think you could get Mam to go to the post office tomorrow for eleven, and I’ll telephone her?’
‘I’m sure I can. I’ll have to tell her you’re going to phone though, or she won’t go. You know what she’s like. Give me your telephone number in case we get cut off. The lines are terrible at the moment.’
‘I can’t do that, Bess.’ There was a knock on the door. ‘My friend Eddie’s at the door. I’ll speak to you tomorrow morning. Give Mam and Dad my love – and Ena.’
‘I will – and Claire? I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too, Bess. Night!’
‘Goodnight!’ she heard her older sister say, and she placed the telephone on its cradle.
Grumbling, Claire ran to the door. She had told Eddie to leave it open. ‘Miss Halliday!’ A searing wave of panic shot through her body and her legs began to shake. Had Colonel Smith’s secretary brought bad news?
‘Captain Mitchell is alive,’ Vera Halliday said immediately.
Claire gasped. Frozen to the spot, hardly daring to believe that the man she loved was alive, she whispered, ‘Alive?’ Miss Halliday was smiling. ‘Mitch is alive,’ she heard a small voice that sounded like her own say.
‘Yes. Colonel Smith received word as I was leaving the office. He asked me to telephone you tomorrow, but I thought you’d like to know tonight.’
Claire couldn’t take it in. For months, years, she had believed that the man she loved was alive. Then, for the sake of her sanity, when she was told he had been shot and left for dead in the mountains, she made herself face the fact that he could be dead, and had given up hope of ever seeing him again. Claire stared at Vera Halliday. Suddenly aware that her visitor was standing in the hall, she gathered her wits. ‘Come in,’ she said, showing Miss Halliday into the sitting room. As she turned to close the door she saw Eddie leaning over the banister outside her flat. ‘Mitch is alive,’ she said in a daze. Eddie whooped. ‘Miss Halliday is here. Come down.’
Eddie shook her head. ‘I don’t think I should,’ she whispered. ‘You can tell me what she says later.’ As she turned to go inside, Eddie hissed, ‘Dudley? Daddy gave me a bottle of hooch last week. I’ll bring it down when Miss H has gone and we’ll celebrate.’
Claire put her thumbs up and returned to the apartment. She asked Miss Halliday to take a seat and offered her tea. Vera Halliday sat down, but politely refused the tea. ‘Are you sure it is Mitch who is alive, Miss Halliday?’ Claire asked, sitting next to her.
‘I’m sure, my dear. I don’t know the details, but the leader of a Maquis group that you helped in Paris got a message to the wireless operator in Gisoir via Antoinette Marron at the Paris safe house. Loosely translated, Captain Mitchell knew he wouldn’t be able to make it across the Pyrenees and pretended to be dead so his fellow escapees would go on without him. And as you know they did. When night fell, the captain rolled into a ditch and covered himself with vegetation.’
Claire took a shivering breath. ‘But the temperature at night… It’s so cold.’
�
�Thankfully not as cold at that time of year – and not at the foot of the mountains.’ Claire looked at Vera Halliday, her eyes pleading for more news. ‘He was found by a retired doctor who, with the help of a couple of members of the Maquis, carried him to his house.’
‘Carried him? How badly was he hurt?’ Claire forced herself to ask.
‘We don’t know. He was shot in the leg once, maybe twice, we can’t be sure.’ Claire put her hand up to her mouth and gasped. ‘He couldn’t climb the mountain, but that doesn’t mean he was badly injured, just that he was brave and sensible and didn’t want to put the lives of his comrades in danger.’ Miss Halliday smiled and looked into Claire’s eyes. ‘I don’t know many able-bodied men who could cross the Pyrenees. I must go,’ she said, standing up. Claire stood up too, and in shock showed her guest to the door. ‘Captain Mitchell is alive, Claire. Hang on to that,’ Vera Halliday said.
Claire guided her across the dark entrance foyer to the main door. ‘As soon as we have any news as to where Captain Mitchell is, I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, get some sleep. You look exhausted.’ Vera Halliday opened her handbag and, after fishing around for a couple of seconds, produced a handful of food tokens. ‘Go to the shops. Buy some food. You won’t be any good to Captain Mitchell if you’re not well – which,’ Miss Halliday said, ‘by the look of you, you are not.’
Claire opened the street door. Vera Halliday hesitated. Claire sensed the colonel’s secretary wanted to say something and looked questioningly at her. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I know you want to get back to France.’ Claire nodded. ‘There is an important drop coming up, but Colonel Smith is reluctant to send you. If you want to go back to France, you must get yourself fit.’
China Blue (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 3) Page 24
