Otto beckoned the sommelier. The elderly man hurried forward, bowing. ‘A votre service, monsieur. What do you wish to order?’ He picked one of the most expensive wines. ‘Merci, monsieur. Merci, merci …’ The wine waiter bowed several more times, retreating backwards, and scurried off. Stephan watched, amused.
‘They cannot do enough for us. It’s really quite funny. Do you think they imagine that we shall instantly shoot them dead if we are not satisfied? If our food is not cooked as we like, or the wine is corked? I hope your English will be as anxious to please when we are in London.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘They are a stubborn lot, that’s true. It’s a great pity that so many of them escaped. Three hundred thousand or more! One has to admire their nerve. Of course, we would have polished them off easily if we had not been halted. It was crazy to stop us. Still, in reality, they are finished. Within the space of three weeks we booted them out of France, within five we are in Paris. Their army has been defeated, their tanks and weapons lost. What can they do now? We can walk into their country whenever we choose.’
‘They still have their Royal Navy. And their Royal Air Force.’
‘Our Luftwaffe sank six of their destroyers at Dunkirk and our U-boats will finish off the rest. As for the RAF, they are useless. The Luftwaffe outnumbers them and our pilots and machines are vastly superior. There will be no problem. So long as I am not sent to fight against the Russians this winter, then I think I am going to enjoy this war. Ah, here is the wine.’ When it was poured, Stephan raised his glass. ‘To victory.’
Otto drank. He set down his glass. ‘Unfortunately, because of what happened at Dunkirk, I’m not so sure that we shall ever achieve it.’
There is silence in the room as I finish speaking. After a moment or two he says, ‘Was Anna killed?’
‘The bullets caught the bows of the Rose just where she was sitting. She died later in hospital in Ramsgate. The corporal was killed outright. And two of the soldiers. Matt and Guy and the third soldier were in the stern and they were unhurt.’
‘That’s the way it happens in war. In life, too. It’s all luck.’ He looks at me. ‘You’re Lizzie, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m Lizzie.’
‘I thought so. Well, what happened after that? I’d like to know.’
‘Guy fought in the Battle of Britain and won the DFC. He used to spend some of his leaves at the house in Wimpole Street and we’d sit and talk up in the attic. He always blamed himself for Anna’s death. And I don’t think he ever really got over it. He was a squadron leader when he was killed over France at the time of the D-Day landings.’
He grunts. ‘His luck ran out. I’m sorry. And Matt?’
‘Matt qualified as a doctor at the end of the war and we were married soon after. I served in the WAAF as a code and cypher clerk until then.’
‘And the German?’
‘Otto went on to achieve high rank in the army. He was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945 and spent ten years in a labour camp in Siberia before he was released. When he came to England to find us he was like an old man. It was sad. He died a few years later.’
‘Huh. Can’t feel too sorry for him myself. Fought for the Nazis, didn’t he, when all’s said and done? What about the cocky one – Stephan?’
‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘Nothing good, I’d say. He won’t have enjoyed his war as much as he thought he was going to. Did you find out about Anna’s family? Whether they ever got to Switzerland?’
‘Yes, they did. And after the war they went to join their relatives in America.’
‘So she did save them, after all.’
‘Yes, but they lost Anna.’
‘Another of life’s little tricks,’ he says.
‘The aunt and uncle who were left behind in Vienna died in Auschwitz. So did the friend, Mina, and her family. And all the Fischers. And so did the mother of Daniel. Daniel is a well-known violinist now. You may have heard of him?’ He shakes his head. ‘Never listen to that sort of thing.’
There is another silence. He heaves himself up out of his chair and puts the pipe on the mantelpiece. ‘We’d better take a look at the boat.’
I follow him out of the back door of the bungalow and down the pathway of a neglected garden. ‘Don’t bother much with it these days,’ he tells me. ‘No reason to.’
I can see her mast sticking up at the far end of the garden. She’s lying beside a rubbish dump and smothered by nettles, her open deck covered with a faded green tarpaulin. We trample down the nettles and haul off the tarpaulin. I look at the old boat. The varnish has peeled away, her planking is bleached to silver-grey and in places it has rotted. She has lost her red sails, her oars and what little she had in looks, but none of her dignity. I know at once that it’s the Rose.
‘I told you she was a wreck,’ the old man says defensively. ‘Haven’t looked at her for years.’ I point out where the bullet holes were repaired and the initials carved on the port bow: GR, MR, OvR, AS, EE. He runs his fingers across them. ‘Never noticed them before.’
I take the plunge. ‘Will you sell her to me?’
‘What do you want to do with her? She’s not much use. You can see that.’
‘I don’t want to sail her. I want to give her to a museum. As I said, she’s rather special.’
He is staring at the boat. ‘No, I won’t sell her.’ My heart sinks. ‘I won’t sell her,’ he goes on. ‘I’ll give her to you in exchange for something. Do you still do painting?’
‘Yes. It’s my job.’ I earn quite a lot doing so, but I don’t say so.
‘Then I’d like you to paint me a picture of her the way she was then. I’d like to have that. I’d hang it over the mantelpiece so’s I could look at it when I’m smoking my pipe. That would be the payment.’
We shake hands on the deal and walk back up the path. ‘Otto was quite right, to my way of thinking,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t us that was finished at Dunkirk, it was Hitler. He let us get away and that was the beginning of the end for him. We had time to get back on our feet, we won the Battle of Britain and he lost the chance to invade us. After that, we and the Yanks could get at them with our bombers and plan for D-Day. If we’d lost our army it could have been a very different story.’
He walks with me to the car. ‘Don’t forget about the painting.’ I give him my promise. As I get into my car, he says, ‘I forgot to ask about the dog. What happened to him?’
I smile. ‘Guy kept him. He took him everywhere with him, to all his postings. When Guy was killed, his parents looked after him at first until Matt and I were married and then he came to live with us. The children loved him and he lived to a ripe old age. Guy called him Valiant – from The Pilgrim’s Progress.’
I drive away down the potholed track. In the rear-view mirror I can see Mr Potter still standing by the gate, looking after me. I know exactly how I’m going to paint Rose of England for him. I shall paint her in oils, in all her glory and in her moment of history, rescuing men from the beaches of Dunkirk.
Postscript
There is a Little Ship, very similar to Rose of England, though beautifully preserved, on display in the Imperial War Museum in London. Tamazine is the smallest surviving open fishing boat to take part in Operation Dynamo, mounted to attempt the seemingly impossible evacuation of the British Expeditionary Forces from France in 1940. She is clinker-built, fourteen foot and five inches long and without an engine. She went over to ferry troops from the beaches to off-lying ships and came back saturated with blood. Her owners presented her to the museum where she bears permanent witness to the miraculous deliverance.
About the Author
Margaret Mayhew was born in London and her earliest childhood memories were of the London Blitz. She began writing in her mid-thirties and had her first novel published in 1976. She is married to American aviation author, Philip Kaplan, and lives in Gloucestershire. Her previous novels, Bluebirds and The Crew, are also
published by Corgi.
Also by Margaret Mayhew
BLUEBIRDS
THE CREW
and published by Corgi Books
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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THE LITTLE SHIP
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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781446486177
First publication in Great Britain
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Corgi edition published 1999
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