‘I can’t stay.’
‘You must. Dolphie is right. There is no choice.’
‘There is and he knows it. We could both leave. If Dolphie only wants me as a negotiator I could do that in England or, for that matter, wait in Australia and fly to England again, or even come to Germany when it is safe. He wants me as a hostage as well as a negotiator. Negotiate or we will show the world the Countess of Shillings, and the world will see the English do not care about their own people.’
Hannelore was silent.
Sophie tried to think what to say. She could plead, but if Hannelore knew a way to escape she’d have already taken it herself. There was still the possibility of putting a message in a newspaper, but Hannelore was the only one of them who could go to Munich — the Comtesse de Brabant had an excuse for not being a native German speaker, but Sophie doubted she could pass as Frau Müller yet, except in the briefest of encounters. She would need to find out where the newspaper office was. She would need money.
‘Hannelore, will you help me? Please? If I can place an advertisement in a certain newspaper there is a chance James can arrange to get me to Switzerland.’
Hannelore stared. ‘How?’
‘I have no idea. I was sent with as little information as possible. Could you go to Munich for me?’
‘You don’t think he will have us watched?’ asked Hannelore quietly.
‘Dolphie?’
‘Of course. I may have lost my wardress but there will be others — Franz and his wife and daughters-in-law at the farm, and others in town. They will not have been told I am a traitor, of course. Merely that Dolphie wants to know where I go and who I see. This is the world of Nazis, where the son informs on his father and neighbours on each other. And he is quite right not to trust me. We know each other well, Dolphie and I. If I put an advertisement in a newspaper, he will know. He will know who responds to it, too.’
‘But Dolphie is now on our side.’
‘No,’ said Hannelore. ‘Do not ever think Dolphie is not loyal to Germany. The closer Germany is to victory, the more power we will have at the negotiating table.’
‘And you?’
‘I want peace. I do not care any more who struts around and thinks they’ve won.’ Hannelore gazed at the shut curtains, which hid the moon and all the stars. ‘My world was so large when you and I first met. I planned to advise nations, marry for national security and help mankind. But now?’ She smiled. ‘My life is “how many seed potatoes must we keep to have a crop this summer?” It is “What room shall Sophie have tonight now she does not have to share mine?”’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sophie softly. ‘My life grew wider after I left Shillings that first time. My life is waiting at home for me, too. But I have two children and a husband and . . . Lily . . . too, who will think that I am dead . . .’
Suddenly grief overcame her. She had let herself believe Dolphie and his co-conspirators would be successful. Even if she’d had to stay in Germany for months until the post-Hitler regime was stabilised, those she loved would know she was alive, that next Christmas she would be with them.
How much had Danny grown in the past six months? She was missing that subtle transition as Rose changed from girl to woman. She had not even asked Dolphie what was happening in Australia; nor had he offered either of them information on the progress of the war. Perhaps Australia was too unimportant for a Gestapo colonel to take an interest in, beyond its production of corned beef and wheat and wool, its iron ore and shipping, but surely he must know how Germany’s Japanese allies were faring in the war in the Pacific.
She could do nothing. Know nothing.
She opened her eyes and found Hannelore smiling at her strangely. ‘I still have two pigeons,’ she said softly.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Pigeons cannot fly all the way to England but they can reach Holland, which is where these ones came from. Pigeons will always return home. And they can carry messages.’
Sophie stared at her with dawning hope.
‘Very small messages that might be transmitted in code to England. A few words only.’
But that would be enough. Enough to give hope to Daniel, to Rose and Danny if they had been told she was not in Townsville. Hope to Nigel. Sophie grasped her hand and began to cry.
Chapter 33
Delicious and Economical Chocolate Oat Cakes
Make your rations go further with CARRYMAN’S Cocoa!
¼ cup margarine
2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup rolled oats
¼ cup sugar
Pinch salt
1½ ounces CARRYMAN’S Cocoa powder
Milk or water
A little extra sugar
Rub the margarine into the flour. Add the rolled oats, sugar, pinch of salt and cocoa powder. Add a little milk or water to moisten and stick the mixture together. Roll into balls and press down until very thin with the back of a fork. Bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Take from the oven. Sprinkle with sugar while still hot.
Ethel Carryman, July 1943
ETHEL
If paperwork could feed a nation, then Britain would be fat. Ethel Carryman gazed at the files toppling out of her in-tray and the single file in her out-tray and sighed. She took out a brown paper bag, crumpled with much use, and extracted her lunch — a Marmite and lettuce sandwich and a vacuum flask of cocoa. It was three o’clock.
She had hoped to eat in the park, avoiding the choice of snook or shepherd’s pie in the canteen. Even, perhaps, snare a few minutes of sunshine, if clouds, fog and smog coincidentally cleared at exactly the same moment. But there were the new propaganda posters’ designs to choose — and she knew that choosing actually meant wording a cogent summary of why her preferred poster would work and the others wouldn’t for the man who was nominally her superior to present at the afternoon’s meeting, as well as a few words in praise of the new slogan, whatever it might be, for the minister to amuse the House with tomorrow.
After that . . .
‘Ah, Miss Carryman.’
Ethel looked up. It was not the minister, but the minister’s even more influential secretary. Ministers came and went but their male secretaries went on until they were knighted and retired with excellent pensions to be the nominal heads of charities. Though, as Ethel had long discovered, true power resided in the hands of the secretary’s secretary, the woman who had gone to the right school with the secretary’s sisters, was discreet, intelligent, did not drink a bottle of claret each lunchtime with ‘Chummy’ and ‘Boopers’, and who was the one who chose which files, letters and phone messages arrived on the secretary’s desk. Ethel was the secretarial exception, given the job for her experience, not her connections.
‘How can I help you, sir?’
‘I’ve just been lunching with Lorrimer. He asked me if you’d mind popping around for tea this afternoon, about fourish. There’s someone he’d like you to meet.’
The other rule of the public service was that personal was political, and vice versa. James had no reason to summon her for work, nor any right to use his position to get her to visit him. Ethel had refused his invitations for two years. The only reason she could think of him calling for her now was if he had news of Sophie, but he could tell her that by phone, or, more likely, give the task of telling her to Bob, who would come and tell her quietly in person, and not summon her from the Ministry.
‘I have quite a lot on, sir. The new campaign?’
‘Oh, rubbish. That can wait till tomorrow.’
Which in fact it could. People needed calories and vitamins, not propaganda slogans.
‘Off you pop. Enjoy your tea.’ He looked vaguely amused. Most people did look amused at the thought of Ethel, a little over six feet and broad in the shoulder, not to mention the hips, with the small and dapper James Lorrimer.
She gathered her handbag, gas mask and brown paper bag. At least tea with James would mean a decent tuck in. Pe
ople like him had homes in the country where the ancient retainers, too old for active service, grew a plenitude of vegetables; they had glasshouses, or friends with glasshouses, and even retired gamekeepers who might still send a hare or partridge down to London.
The paperboys gave way to her as she strode down the street. She’d lost weight, like most of England under rationing, but she hadn’t lost size: tall as a barber’s pole and shoulders like a Hereford bull. But since Violette had taken her in hand six years back, creating semi-medieval dresses in which even Ethel had to admit she looked magnificent, she had finally not just accepted the shape of her body, but chosen to like it. Violette had been right — it was a good figure, just half as big again as everyone else’s.
Violette had also made her two dresses suitable for an office, with a jacket for each. Ethel had a dressmaker copy them in other fabrics, a bit narrower to fit austerity fashion, and shorter too — she’d always had good legs.
The line at the bus stop was so long that she had to wait for the third bus before she could get on and, even then, there were no spare seats so she had to stand. She was glad of two solid legs to stand on and enough bulk not to fall over when others bumped her as the bus swayed.
They had to detour around bomb damage twice — the V2s seemed almost constant now — and stopped once at a roadblock to let some big wig pass in a black car with flags, the kind of car James might have sent for her if she had lifted the phone and told him she was coming.
The bus arrived at the stop at last. Ethel manoeuvred around women lugging string bags bulging with cabbage and extremely small white packages that might be precious cheese or meat or a single well-cradled egg, made her way down the steps, coughed twice at the mixture of bus fumes and fog, walked around the corner and up the marble stairs of James’s town house.
The door opened before she pulled the bell. Harrison must have been told to watch out for her. Harrison was seventy if he was a day and probably inserted a broomstick under his uniform each morning to keep his bearing erect.
He opened the library door for her. ‘Miss Carryman, sir.’
James stood by the fire. Ethel told herself she did not at all wish she had stopped at home to change into the Violette creation James had once said made her look like a Valkyrie about to carry lucky warriors to Valhalla. He’d called her from the office, so an office suit was what he was getting. She also repressed a desire to tell him to sit down, have a decent tea and then a nap. He looked . . . older. Faded in some way, though his suit was as immaculate as ever. He eyed her with strange wariness.
‘Ethel, so good of you to come. I would like you to meet Miss Nichols. I’m sorry to call you from work, but Miss Nichols has to leave London this afternoon. Miss Nichols, this is the friend I spoke of, Miss Carryman. Ethel, please do sit down.’
‘Yes, please. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Nichols.’ She looked at the girl curiously as she sat in the chair opposite. Slender, dark-haired, early twenties perhaps, and with a look that said she was coping splendidly, which meant that she had something major to cope with. Not in uniform, which Ethel would have expected with determined eyes like that.
Miss Nichols bent to the teapot. ‘Tea, Miss Carryman? It may be a little strong.’ She and James already had a cup, weak and black.
‘Can’t be too strong for me. I haven’t had a proper cuppa since rationing.’ She helped herself to a cucumber sandwich — definitely a product of James’s hothouse — then a slice of game pie and then two more slices. James’s plate held the crumbs of an oat cake. The girl’s plate did not show signs that she had eaten food at all. Ethel had begun on the fruitcake before she broke the silence.
‘Both of you look like you need a decent feed. Tuck in.’
Miss Nichols gave a polite smile. ‘Thank you, but I’m not —’
‘Eat,’ ordered Ethel. ‘You’ll feel better with a lining to your stomach.’
‘I am quite —’
‘Eat.’
Miss Nichols hesitated, then reached for a sandwich. She nibbled it, looked surprised, then took the largest slice of fruitcake. Ethel put another slice of game pie on her own plate, then offered the plate to James.
A gentleman could not refuse. James Lorrimer could not refuse. He knew she knew it. He gave her the smallest of smiles, accepted the plate, took a fork and began to eat.
‘Well?’ prompted Ethel at last. ‘You didn’t ask me here to eat game pie, though I’m grateful for it.’
‘I asked Miss Nichols if she would mind repeating her account of . . . some events . . . to you. She kindly agreed. I should make it clear that while she does not work for the organisation I am part of, she was given clearance to speak to me.’
Ethel raised an eyebrow. Was Miss Nichols MI5? Or SOE? But there were dozens of smaller operations. None of them were associated with the Ministry of Food, but there was always gossip between the ‘Chummys’ and ‘Boopers’ of officialdom, nor were they always careful not to be overheard.
Harrison quietly brought in a plate of hot toast — not buttered: James would not have his farm’s produce allocated to butter his toast. Instead the toast was spread with what Ethel decided was a clever mix of stewed apple, to give the required butter-like moistness, and fish paste to add flavour. She would pass the idea on, though the idiots who approved the Ministry’s recipes seemed to want nothing more adventurous than covering boiled peas with the paper the butter had been wrapped in, to give the eyes what the palate would not receive. The Women’s Institute though . . . this might be a good recipe for them.
Harrison retreated, closing the door, after a faint nod from James that meant they were now not to be interrupted.
‘I . . . I’m not sure how much to say . . .’ began Miss Nichols.
‘Everything except surnames, places and dates. Miss Carryman can be trusted completely.’
I wouldn’t be too sure of that, matey, thought Ethel, deciding on another sandwich. A few more and she could give the sausage and mash she’d been going to eat tonight to the kiddies and their mum and gran — a family she’d taken in as refugees when Poland fell.
Miss Nichols’s face looked calm, but her fingers trembled on her cake fork till she consciously stilled them. ‘Very well, sir. It was not . . . not long ago and abroad. I was to replace . . . I’ll call her May. May was acting as liaison with a resistance group and we were to, well, that doesn’t matter, because we didn’t do it.’
She cast a quick glance up at James, still impassive in front of the fire. ‘May was due to . . . to leave . . . the next day, after she’d seen me settled. We were packed into the back of a lorry — German. I was trying to remember how to . . . how to use the equipment we would need . . . when I heard someone outside yell “Juden raus!” May peered out, then shouted at our driver. “Halten Sie!” Our driver was pretending to be German, of course.’
Ethel glanced at James. This was top-secret stuff and none of her business, neither personal nor professional. But she could not interrupt Miss Nichols now.
‘The lorry we were in stopped, and May told the driver to reverse. I peered out as we backed up, then stopped. We were outside an orphanage. Every door and window was shut, every curtain pulled, and out the front was a lorry, pretty much like ours, with a group of children in the back, a few more clambering inside and two cars.’
She glanced at Ethel. ‘I don’t know if you are aware, but some orphanages in France have been sheltering Jewish children when their parents are deported to labour camps. The Germans have begun to search each orphanage, inspecting the children, their papers.’
Ethel nodded. She had not known, but was not surprised.
Miss Nichols looked at — through — the wall, seeing the memory. ‘The next thing I knew May had her pistol out. She shot the lorry driver in the head.’
Miss Nichols’s voice was carefully factual now, as if describing the anatomy of a wasp. ‘He fell out. Some of the children screamed at the sound of the shot, but they couldn’t see what was happening,
not from the back of the truck. May yelled to me, “Come on!” She scrambled out. I followed her. May gestured to the children’s lorry and told me, “Get in and drive!” Then to the others still in our lorry, “Drive on!”’
She stopped, as if for breath or words.
‘Continue,’ said James.
‘Yes, sir. I clambered into the driver’s seat just as May shot another of the Germans. The engine was running. Our lorry accelerated down the road. I had to turn the children’s vehicle around to follow it, so I saw May pick up the second man’s machine gun. I could hear it fire as I drove down the road.’
‘You escaped with the children?’ asked Ethel quietly.
‘Yes. There were nineteen of them. We heard later that May had killed five soldiers and wounded seven others. There was no pursuit.’
‘And the children?’
‘Are safe. As safe as any child is just now. They’ve been separated, each one taken to another area, far enough away so no one will recognise them, to farms mostly. Farming communities tend to be more tightly knit and of course children can be useful, too, especially when they are needed for the harvest or planting and so can’t go to school. So many children are orphaned now, or their mothers need to work so they are sent to aunts or cousins. A new child is not remarkable. Dark hair is cut short and bleached blonde. I . . . I think they will be safe.’
‘And May?’
‘She had been shot when I last saw her, in the rear-vision mirror,’ said Miss Nichols too calmly. ‘But she was still firing. I don’t know if she died there, but we were told she died before she could be questioned. I think . . . I hope . . . she died before they could take her away.’ Her hand still trembled as she reached for the teapot, poured half a cup, stewed now, then used both hands to lift it. She sipped, not looking at either James or Ethel.
‘Thank you,’ said James quietly. ‘I know it isn’t an easy story for you to tell.’
‘On the contrary, sir. I would tell it as many times as I am able, if it weren’t classified and might endanger others. May saved nineteen children. I wish every one of them could know her name and tell their children, too.’
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 25
