Breakfast was another time for taking care, being sure not to mention things that those in charge would regard as better kept to one’s self. The place was notorious for ‘honeytraps’, lulling each of us into a false sense of security in the hope that we might let ourselves down – and potentially those around us, too.
But I thank God I managed to survive them, and I met, during those two weeks at Wanborough, some of the most amazing people I have ever encountered.
Not least, the man in charge of The Outfit, Major Maurice Buckmaster.
‘Your French is particularly good,’ said the tall, thin man in the suit, speaking in English. He was clearly one of the ‘bigwigs’, for everyone was more than usually careful and courteous whenever he appeared. He had an upper-crust accent that betrayed his Eton education.
Rosamund thanked him, in French, without realising who he was. Major Maurice Buckmaster was a fluent French speaker himself, having been a tutor to various French families in the early 1930s. He had gone on to be put in charge of the Ford motor company in Paris, before being repatriated when the French decided that they wanted one of their own in charge. Then came the war.
Through various vicissitudes, and having survived the evacuation of Dunkirk, Buckmaster joined the Intelligence Corps and was eventually chosen to head up Special Training School No. 5 at Wanborough Manor. He spent much of his time in The Outfit’s headquarters at Baker Street, but was a frequent visitor to Wanborough, where he liked to keep an eye on the quality of trainees coming through, some of whom were French nationals determined to fight the Nazis in the only way they could – by subversive activities.
This brief encounter with the head of STS 5, never to be repeated, was one that Rosamund would forever remember.
‘You speak it fluently. Were you taught it at school?’ he asked, now speaking in French.
Rosamund replied in the same language: ‘No, I had a French governess as a child and we spoke French all the time.’
‘Ah. The best way. I, too, learned that way. It makes a difference, don’t you think?’
‘I hope so,’ replied Rosamund.
‘Well, good luck!’ Buckmaster nodded and moved on. It was only when he had gone that she realised he had probably been testing her to see if she were on her guard. ‘Zut!’ she muttered to herself.
Major Buckmaster was an impressive figure, and it was as much by good luck as good judgement that I did not let myself down when speaking to him. The thing about constantly speaking French is that you also start to think in French, which is why I answered in the tongue that I was now accustomed to using, though Sergeant Wagstaff and his men spoke English, the better to ensure that we knew exactly what we were doing. They were tough but fair, and if I found Major Buckmaster a little intimidating, then it was probably the impression he liked to give.
The Commandant of the Manor, Major Roger de Wesselow, was rather more kindly and approachable, but he left us in no doubt as to what was expected of us – that the lives of our comrades depended on us entirely, and that we were entering an establishment which involved a high level of security: letters inward and outward would be censored, and we would be forbidden to use the telephone.
It surprised many on the course that I had never been to France, so fluent was my use of the language, but then I had travelled very little in my own country. I had never been to Scotland, for instance. I had always liked the sound of it: all those lochs and heather-covered mountains – just the sort of scenery to appeal to a girl with a romantic turn of mind.
When at last I made it there, it was not a disappointment – and neither was the company.
Chapter 14
SCOTLAND
SEPTEMBER 1941
‘Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife, and carnage drear,
Of Flodden’s fatal field,
Where shivered was fair Scotland’s spear,
And broken was her shield.’
Sir Walter Scott, ‘Marmion’, 1808
‘Yer probably think y’erve come here for a holiday. Well, y’erve not. Y’erve come here to see if you can find yer way home in the dark.’
Sergeant Wagstaff was a small and slightly built Cockney with a glint in his eye. The sort of glint that demonstrates the confidence of one who has the upper hand and is assured of victory. Wagstaff enjoyed putting new recruits through their paces – some of them scions of the aristocracy who, in many cases, had not a hope of staying the course. He was glad to see the back of them. To those who did make the grade, he reluctantly offered his respect.
After two weeks at Wanborough, Rosamund and the other two surviving recruits were transferred by train to the Scottish Highlands; here they would be unceremoniously dumped in the wilderness, given a rudimentary map and a compass, and expected to find their way to a given rendezvous at dead of night – all without being seen. It was a simple exercise, a straightforward hurdle, but one at which many had fallen in the past. The trek across bog and mountain, heather and bracken, granite and icy stream could take several days, and if you were spotted, then worse was to follow. Interrogation and lack of sleep – both discomforts which they had undergone already, but not in tandem with mountain climbing and scrambling through waist-high heather – would follow if they broke cover and revealed themselves to the sentries who were posted at strategic and unmarked positions on their route. It was the final obstacle in their weeks of training.
Rosamund veered between exhaustion and elation – exhaustion as a result of the strenuous exercise, and elation at having got this far. There were just three of them left now: Rosamund, plus the auburn-headed Eric Ridley – an older recruit from Lancashire who had been spotted in the Royal Navy and singled out for his ability to repair radio transmitters that others would have confined to the scrapheap – and the French national, Thierry Foustier, who, from the very start, had taken a shine to Rosamund.
Foustier was, Rosamund had to admit to herself, the ultimate Gallic pin-up. A natural charmer, at whose feet women no doubt fell in battalions before the war; two years of conflict had done nothing to dent his allure. A little older than Rosamund, he was not particularly tall, but there was about him an attractive kind of insouciance. It was as if he had been born knowing what was expected of him, and confident that he had the necessary attributes to succeed. It was not a human trait that Rosamund usually found attractive, but Foustier’s saving grace was his inability to take himself too seriously. He could discourse on the works of Marcel Proust and André Gide, start an argument as to their relative merits and then, with a shrug and a smile, admit that he had never read more than a few pages of either.
Rosamund would take him to task: ‘You’re such a fraud, Thierry Foustier!’
At which the Frenchman would grin, replying, ‘Fraud? Moi? Non! Je suis charmant!’ And then he would wink and whistle the ‘Marseillaise’ as he went on with the task in hand.
Rosamund had become used to his mischief-making, and reconciled herself to the fact that at least her comrade in arms was not dull. The same could not be said for Eric Ridley, whose own ability to converse was confined to a seemingly unfathomable litany of amps and ohms and watts and volts. Rosamund would find herself smiling at him indulgently as he explained with the patience of a saint why one particular radio valve was so much more effective and efficient than another. Ridley’s saving grace was that in spite of his English being delivered with a strong Lancastrian accent, his spoken French was surprisingly good. Rosamund put it down to the fact that having a pair of earphones clamped to his head for so long, he must have developed a decent ear for accents. Most of his dispatches would be in Morse code – a system of communication mercifully devoid of accent and idiom – but it would be a great help that his French was up to par.
Rosamund would look at these two unlikely confederates from time to time, and wonder just what she had got herself into. One cheeky Frenchman and one apparently humourless Lancastrian – what a strange and unlikely pair of comr
ades in arms.
It had been months since I had heard from Harry. Not a day went by without my remembering our meetings and, most especially, the day he said goodbye. I tried to put out of my mind what Diana had said about only half of those who worked for The Outfit coming home. And, of course, I did not know whether Harry was indeed a part of The Outfit, or involved in something else altogether. I kept his letter with me at all times, carefully tucked away in the pocket of my jacket, though I knew that when I eventually was transferred to France I would have to leave it, and everything to do with Rosamund Hanbury, behind.
I realised at this point that the people who surrounded me now were the people I would have to live with and work with for the forseeable future – a future that would run into months, maybe even years. Who knew then just how long the war would last? My daily life involved building working relationships, and working relationships, if one is not careful, can so easily turn into something more personal, especially when placing one’s very life in the hands of others.
There were times, on that long trek, when Rosamund felt she was bound to fail; to fall at the final fence. Eric Ridley – slender and gangly that he was – seemed to take it all in his awkward stride, even though he had to make the journey with a radio transmitter on his back. It was as if normal feelings did not encroach upon him, and he gave little away in terms of both fatigue and emotion. It seemed to Rosamund that he would be a shoo-in for the service, for he had probably given little away in civilian life, a facility that would stand him in good stead when faced with the enemy. He appeared to be one of those people who operated on a different wavelength to the rest of humanity, but then wavelengths, after all, were his own particular speciality.
‘Are you alright?’ he would ask, whenever Rosamund looked as if she was cracking under the physical strain of their operation.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she would invariably reply, grateful for his concern yet determined to prove her worth.
‘I’ave a sister, you know,’ he confided as they butted their way up the side of one particularly steep and heather-filled gully.
‘Yes?’ Rosamund answered briefly, saving her breath for the climb.
‘She’d not be able to do this.’
‘Oh?’
‘No. Too many fags. No breath to speak of.’ He spoke in short, staccato sentences.
‘Oh dear.’
‘Pluck. That’s what you’ve got. Pluck.’
‘Thank you.’ Rosamund would have laughed had she managed to summon up the energy.
Eric himself seemed to have no trouble breathing at all. His loping strides took him higher and higher with little apparent effort. He would stop every now and again and survey the scene, but Rosamund suspected this was to allow her to catch up a little rather than for any navigational reason.
As they reached the top of one particularly precipitous slope, Eric flopped on the ground and threw off his pack. ‘Just checking me knobs,’ he said as he unbuttoned the cover of the transmitter.
Now Rosamund did laugh, and Thierry allowed himself a knowing smile.
‘How do you do that?’ he asked mischievously.
‘I give’em a twiddle and listen for the atmospherics,’ replied Eric with no acknowledgement of having said anything humorous.
‘Well, when you have “twiddled your knobs” to your satisfaction, can you tell us which way you think we should go?’ asked Thierry. He glanced at Rosamund to observe her reaction, but she was grateful to Eric for his constant solicitude and said simply, ‘I think we’ll probably be grateful for Eric’s knob twiddling before we’ve finished.’ Then she rose to her feet and added, ‘Shall we push on?’
Thierry gave a mock salute and rose to his feet. ‘En avant!’ He, like Eric, could easily butt his way through the bracken and heather, leaping across streams like a gazelle in flight. Though, noting Eric’s chivalry, he would occasionally suggest that they rest up, taking a moment to light a cigarette and talk of things other than the war – music, books that he had read, and his favourite foods. From his slender frame, no one would have guessed his liking of good food and fine wine, but then, as he pointed out to Rosamund (and Eric when he was not otherwise occupied tinkering with his radio) such things were a Frenchman’s birthright.
‘A bottle of Chateau Margaux and a plate of foie gras, that’s what I would like now.’
‘I’d settle for a bottle of brown ale and a fresh pork pie,’ cut in Eric. ‘One that you could drink the jelly from while it was still warm …’ His eyes glazed over as he was transported in his mind back to some Lancashire pork butcher where the pies emerged hot and aromatic each morning. ‘Two of them I could eat before nine o’clock, when I started work at the electrician’s. Them were the days.’ Then he took a screwdriver to his transmitter and continued with his endless tinkering.
‘What about you, Fair Rosamund?’ asked Thierry.
‘I think I’d like a bath.’
‘With bubbles?’
‘Don’t be cheeky! A hot bath followed by a cup of cocoa.’
‘Ah, now you’re talking,’ chipped in Eric. ‘Cocoa.’
‘With your pork pie?’ chided Thierry.
‘Don’t be daft. You don’t drink cocoa with a pork pie.’
‘What do you drink with it then?’
‘Brown ale, as I said. Or tea, with three sugars, in a pint pot.’
‘Sacré bleu!’
Rosamund laughed at the disparity between the two men and mused on the fact that only war could have brought them together.
They completed their first day’s trek in the required time, helped by the round white face of a full moon, and arrived at a deserted croft on the edge of a reed-infested glen just as the amber sun rose up over the adjacent mountain. The warm September day – replete with midges that would force even the most resilient enemy agent to surrender – was the time to rest up, hidden from the view of the enemy. Rosamund sat with her back against the lumpy stone wall of the croft and began to rub Germolene (the only salve to be found in the small first-aid kit) into the bites on her calves that had clearly been administered by those midges that were content to operate nocturnally.
Eric, as ever, began to unscrew the panel on his radio transmitter – things were obviously getting serious as far as its internal workings were concerned – and Thierry, throwing his backpack to the ground, fished in his breast pocket for a packet of Gauloises, lit up and sat down next to her.
‘How are you doing, cherie?’
Rosamund smiled wearily. ‘Alright. Relieved to have made it this far.’
‘Tougher than you thought?’ He nodded to himself and murmured, ‘Hard for a woman.’
‘Hard for a man,’ she batted back. Then, when they had settled themselves, she asked, ‘So where did you learn to speak English so well?’
‘I had an English governess until I was eleven years old.’
‘And are you really a Count?’
‘Of course. I am Count Thierry Foustier and my family have a chateau in the Garonne.’
‘Impressive! Perhaps I should curtsey to you whenever we meet.’
Thierry gave a short laugh. ‘Not really. Counts are ten-a-penny in France and the chateau is falling down. Well, not falling down, perhaps, but in a poor state of repair. Until I came to England to join STS 5, it was all I could do to stop the roof from leaking.’
‘What will happen when the war ends?’ she asked.
‘If we succeed, I shall go back. If we fail, it will be somebody else’s problem and I shall rely on my knowledge of German to get me by.’
‘You speak German?’
‘Ja. Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Morning hours have gold in mouth.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It is the German equivalent of “It’s the early bird that catches the worm”. Speaking German might just help us to catch the worm and win this war.’
Rosamund looked thou
ghtful. ‘I know someone else who surprised me by telling me they speak German,’ she murmured.
‘Sorry?’
‘No, nothing.’
She rather admired Thierry’s devil-may-care attitude, but suspected that beneath it lay a dogged determination to reclaim his birthright and his country.
And now, here they were, sheltering in a derelict crofter’s cottage miles away from anywhere, in the hope that their success at finding their way home would allow them to do the same in another country where the stakes were rather higher. If they failed today, they would be sent home. If they failed in France, they might never see home again.
The sun disappeared from view behind lumbering grey clouds and a cold wind began to blow, rattling a sheet of corrugated iron on the roof of the crumbling building. Much of it had been dismantled to build drystone walls which were now themselves in a poor state of repair. The wind found its way in through the doorway and the long-broken window, and Rosamund felt its chill begin to gnaw at her bones. Even the midges would be sheltering now.
Eric Ridley had fallen asleep on his radio transmitter in the opposite corner of the building; perhaps, having been used, it was warm and acted like a heater, thought Rosamund, with just a hint of envy.
Thierry was sitting with his back to the wall alongside her, his knees tucked under his chin and the collar of his coarse woollen jacket pulled up in an attempt to intercept the wind.
She began to shiver.
‘You are cold?’ he asked.
Rosamund nodded.
‘Have my coat.’ He rose and began to unbutton it.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘You’re cold, too.’
The Scarlet Nightingale Page 13