by Helen Bryan
Elsie sighed and shook her head. “And all that time we knew her, we thought she was on a Land Girl committee! The detective found records of the training camps for the Auxis and the SOE where they taught all kinds of things like surviving in the field, hand-to-hand combat, how to use explosives, dynamite, and dodgy ones called ‘sticky bombs.’ At one training center the Shanghai Police trained them in interrogation. And silent killing.”
They digested this for a minute.
“Alice did some work too. Maybe that’ll help fill in the gap. Tell us, Alice.”
Alice opened her bag and took out a yellow legal pad of notes. “After she found the photo, Elsie wrote me asking what we ought to do next. Well. Joe’s nephew was at the University of Georgia doing a PhD on something about wartime France, so I went to the university library in Athens and got him to help me. He was a little surprised that his auntie Alice wanted to know about resistance movements, but he was real sweet.”
She picked up the pad and read, “‘France was mostly liberated by the autumn of 1944, but there was a big eastern push by the Allies into Germany itself. On that border of France, however, collaborators were actively helping the Germans in order to save their own skins. The Allies wanted the French collaborators eliminated, but they didn’t want it generally known that they were using specially trained agents to assassinate them. Officially the British War Office disapproved of such tactics.’ Officially.”
“You don’t think Frances—”
Evangeline interrupted Tanni, drawling, “I don’t know…but explosives? Maybe. After Alice left, remember the fire at Gracecourt that killed Leander and put Hugo in hospital? I was the only one of us still here, and some people in the village said they’d heard an explosion in the direction of Gracecourt and wondered if another bomb had exploded. Sometimes they didn’t go off right away…anyhow, it was not long after that Frances disappeared.”
“My wedding was on the thirtieth of August, 1944,” said Alice. “I rang Evangeline to tell her I was getting married and asked her to tell Frances because I couldn’t reach her. I guessed she’d gone up to London, but she had given me her pretty dressing case and I wanted to let her know I was taking it on my honeymoon.”
“And none of us ever saw her again,” said Elsie. “But our detective told us that by 1943 they were combing southern England for a spy network, with a center of operations near the Sussex coast, where they expected the invasion to take place. But it wasn’t till Graham said something this morning about a house he’s got for sale that a bell rang in my head, one of those missing pieces Bernie and I never could find. The house is near an old canal in London, and Graham’s client was worried about her child falling in. Graham said not to worry, it was filled in during the war, because at night it reflected light and the Germans used it to navigate.”
“But Elsie, what has that got to do with Frances?”
Elsie picked up another file with “de Balfort” on the cover and opened it. “This. Bernie let drop to the detective that Hugo de Balfort had wanted to marry Frances, so the detective might as well look into the de Balforts. He came back and said they must have wanted Frances’s money, because by the time the war came the de Balforts were ruined and unless Hugo married a rich woman, like his father had done, they would lose Gracecourt. But he also said the de Balforts were probably under observation by the authorities. A lot of Germans and Austrians with Nazi connections had stayed at Gracecourt before the war, a lot of them friends Hugo had made on his travels.”
“I remember Leander de Balfort spending a fortune on one crazy scheme after another, landscaping, pavilions, and deer parks and so on, to impress his friends and how Lady Marchmont disapproved of it all,” said Alice. “Aesthetes annoyed her. Hugo’s mother had been an heiress, and Lady Marchmont could never understand why Leander had wasted all poor Venetia’s fortune so irresponsibly. It was one continuous house party for years, a frightfully smart and glamorous set.” She sighed. Fifty-five years later the humiliating memory of the shooting lunch to which Lady Marchmont had dragged her still made her cheeks burn. “The women were that rather brittle society sort, with marcelled hair and rouge, all flirting madly with each other’s husbands.”
“Lady Marchmont didn’t know the half of it,” Elsie told her. “The detective said he had a hunch he wanted to follow and asked if we’d pay for him to go investigating in Germany. Bernie agreed, and a month later the detective was back with a pile of letters from Leander he had unearthed in a German archive. Got them all copied, and guess where he got the money to do all that building Lady Marchmont disapproved of?”
“Where?”
“According to the letters, his German friends had persuaded him that a Nazi takeover in England would be good for toffs like the de Balforts, that it was the only way to save Gracecourt. They paid Leander a lot of money in the years before the war, laying the groundwork, like, for marching into England. But Leander spent it all. Those pools, that water-garden thing? They were designed by a famous German architect who was a big Nazi supporter. But the Germans didn’t take over in England as fast as Leander’d hoped. So he was desperate for money and depended on Hugo to marry Frances for her fortune, like he’d got Venetia’s.”
“You mean Leander de Balfort was one of those traitors we were supposed to watch out for?” Alice was appalled. “To think that anyone in our midst…” She was overwhelmed.
Elsie snorted. “There’s worse! Leander’s Nazi friends knew he was desperate to carry on the de Balfort line. To string him along, they let him into a secret, that they were doing experiments—all that nonsense about breeding a master race people didn’t hear about until after the war. He was promised the de Balforts would benefit from that. And…here’s a copy of Leander’s reply. He wrote them about how he had found ‘a perfect specimen of Aryan womanhood’ for his son. He goes on about how as an ‘artist’ he wanted to design a master race of de Balforts by breeding his son and Frances, and if the Nazi doctors were right, they would have twins over and over again. He got quite excited about Frances having twenty or thirty de Balforts, who’d each go on to have twenty or thirty, and so on till England was crawling with the little buggers. Makes you sick, it does. And here’s the copy of that letter.”
They passed it round in silence. Then Alice noticed Tanni looked as if she might faint and forced her head between her knees.
The vicar knocked again. “Ladies? Everything tickety boo in there? It’s nearly time for the service and the bishop’s car has just pulled up.”
Elsie glowered at the door and lowered her voice. “So Hugo was under a lot of pressure from his father to get Frances to say yes. I don’t know whether Hugo knew what his father was doing. The letters don’t say anything about bombing the church or the tunnel…”
“What tunnel? You said something about a tunnel before,” said Tanni. No one knew what to say. “Let’s get back,” she went on. “Shifra and Chaim will be worried.” She felt ill and breathless—another anxiety attack from the nameless thing that haunted her. The room began to close round her the way it always did. She did her deep breathing exercises as she had been taught, but her heart was pounding. She had to get out of there.
“Ladies!” bellowed the vicar, rapping sharply at the door. The bishop was a stickler for punctuality.
They stood and smoothed their clothes and picked up their handbags.
“We’ll finish later,” said Elsie. “Now we’ve got this ruddy service to get through.”
Outside St. Gabriel’s the procession was forming. Two acolytes holding crosses fidgeted while the bishop, the vicar, the churchwardens, and twenty elderly residents of the Princess Elizabeth Convalescent Home milled at the entrance. The men all wore their old uniforms, and some had medals. Several of the women were in service uniforms. Those who were not wore hats and gloves. They all stood as upright as they could manage. All had canes or walkers.
Inside everyone was standing, waiting for the procession and for the four war brides to
walk down the aisle and be seated.
At the door of the church Elsie closed her eyes and remembered her wedding day, Bernie fidgeting at the altar, his look of relief as she came toward him in the splendid wedding dress, careful step-pause-step-pause, on Albert’s arm. Watching Bernie’s eyes widen at her appearance, then taking her hand from Albert and hanging on to it for dear life. Saying “I will” too loudly. She bit her tongue hard to stop the tears from spilling over. “Gran, come on now,” whispered Graham, giving her arm a little tug.
Tanni took her place between her grandchildren and was followed by Evangeline and Alice, who had chosen to walk together.
“Thought they’d never make it,” muttered Katie to the cameraman as the war brides and their escorts moved slowly down the aisle between the pews, which were draped in red, white, and blue bunting. “But what a great shot.”
35.
Crowmarsh Priors,
Evening, VE Day 1995
The service was over, the bishop had blessed the new buildings, there had been a lavish tea on trestle tables in the marquee on the green. Several elderly inhabitants of the Princess Elizabeth Convalescent Home sat together with a last cup of tea, walkers behind their chairs.
Out of the corner of her eye Katie saw Elsie and Alice walking across to Evangeline, who was heading for the parish hall. She turned and the three came over and spoke to Tanni, who took money from her handbag and gave it to Shifra and Chaim. “But not too much to drink,” she ordered, in Hebrew. The teenagers grinned, then set off toward the pub where the young people had collected and were busily eyeing each other.
Katie moved in quickly to get her interview.
Elsie knew she had to get it over with, so she answered her questions and wished the girl would stop tossing her hair about. “Yes, my husband would have been pleased the church was rebuilt,” said Elsie, not really concentrating, just agreeing to what Katie said so she would finish the interview and go away. So annoying when she was trying to concentrate on putting the last pieces together. Her big hat nodded steadily as she distractedly fielded Katie’s questions. “Yes, he died two years ago. Yes, it was a great pity. Yes, good to hear the bell ring again. Yes, brings back memories. Romantic gesture, yes it was, my husband was very romantic. Oh, yes, rags to riches, you could say that. Yes, yes…the war feels like yesterday, just like yesterday. You put it so well, love.”
Katie gushed her thanks and moved on to the large woman in black.
“My memories?” asked Tanni bleakly. “What do I remember?” She sounded astonished to be asked.
“Tell her about the wedding dress for Lady Carpenter, Bubbie,” prompted Shifra.
“Ooh, yes!” gushed Katie, flashing a wide-eyed “oooh” look at the camera. “The ladies will want to hear about that!”
Tanni warmed to her subject, explaining where they had gotten it and a little more about clothes rationing, how they’d made new clothes out of old ones, and how she had sewed for the village.
After she finished, Alice and Evangeline looked up from their tea to see Katie and her microphone hovering. “Now I want to hear all about our last two war brides! Tell our viewers all about yourselves, how you met your husbands and what you did in the war!” Katie burbled. “What are your most lasting memories of the war years?”
Alice looked thoughtful, as if she had trouble remembering. “Um, well, rationing of course. Food and clothes were in short supply and most people were terribly patriotic and tried to make a little go a long way. Make do and mend, you know. Victory gardens. Andersen shelters in the gardens. Evacuees. Trying to keep morale up, not let the side down…quick weddings. Like mine.”
Katie said, “Ooooh!”
“Not what you’re thinking, dear. It was just that you had to make up your mind quickly with the war on. No dawdling.”
“How long had you known Colonel Lightfoot before he popped the question?” asked Katie.
Alice smiled. “A weekend. We met on a Friday night and married a week on Monday at a church near my husband’s air force base. I pulled strings and got leave. He pulled strings and found a chaplain.”
“I remember the music,” said Evangeline dreamily. Her handbag was open and Katie saw a bottle of vodka.
“Now there’s something no one else has mentioned yet!” said Katie. “The music! Those jolly singsongs! ‘Roll out the Barrel,’ ‘We’ll Meet Again, Dame Vera Lynn,’ ‘Bluebirds Over/The White Cliffs of Dover…’”
“No, I hated singalongs. I’m talking about swing and jazz,” said Evangeline, looking off into the distance. “The Lindy Hop. Jazz clubs in Soho. Glenn Miller.”
“Oh, yes, Glenn Miller!” said Katie.
“Yes, I’ve got a big collection of records. I knew someone once…a musician in Paris…always wanted to play with Glenn Miller. He used to send me records…all the records he played on…my husband, Richard, just loved listening to them. After he was torpedoed at sea and…never very well after that, and the thing he liked best was those records. I had to play them for him every day…then the fellow I knew…Glenn Miller asked him to join the band, they were going to France and they needed to replace one of the band members who was sick…he was on the fatal flight.”
Simon prompted through her earpiece, and Katie turned to the cameras. “For those of you too young to remember, Glenn Miller was a famous American bandleader who used to travel to entertain the troops, just like Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn. Unfortunately his plane disappeared over the English Channel in…”
“December 1944,” said Simon.
“In December 1944. Tragically many of his band were on the plane too,” finished Katie.
Evangeline nodded.
“Excuse us,” said Elsie, and the four women moved away.
The fete was in full swing. The caterers had finally cleared the marquee tables of the tea things, then replaced them with huge tubs of ice holding bottles of beer and white wine, corks drawn and replaced, or red wine left open along the serving tables, with an array of plastic glasses, and squash for the children. A huge barbeque had been lit. Trays of sausages and kebabs had been brought out from a refrigerated lorry, and there were mountains of rolls and pita bread and vast bowls of salads. Young mothers in summer dresses who had moved from London to the country for the children’s sake sipped white wine and agreed on the impossibility of a school run all the way to Tunbridge Wells, while their husbands held plastic mugs of beer and asked each other if they had talked to the fellow in the tie who was big in property and thought prices in Crowmarsh Priors could only go up.
Albert Hawthorne’s pretty great-granddaughter brought Albert a half pint of stout from the Gentlemen’s Arms. “Know wine doesn’t agree with you, Granddad. The barman wouldn’t let me or Graham pay for it when he heard it was for you,” she said. “It’s because you were in the Home Guard with his grandfather.”
“You’re good lass, Lizzie,” murmured Albert, taking a long drink. He’d need the lav soon, and that young man in the navy blazer and fancy tie hanging around Lizzie like a fly around jam could help him get up. He settled back in his deck chair and wondered why stout didn’t taste as it used to.
“Why are they going back to the church?” said Lizzie. “They must have forgotten something.” The four war brides were walking away in a little group. The vicar didn’t see them go, because he was talking animatedly into Katie Hamilton-Jones’s microphone about the crisis of faith today.
Katie was looking desperately over his head, hoping for a glimpse of her mother’s friend, the recuperation home’s titled patroness, to interview next.
“That old man has joined them, the one with the scarred face, Sir Hugo de Balfort,” said Lizzie to Graham. “I guess they must all be a bit emotional, like you said your gran was, walking into church. They probably want a quiet chat away from the cameras. You can’t get a word in edgewise with that woman bouncing around, sticking her microphone in your face. They look a bit tired now; they’ve all got canes to lean on. I heard your gran as
king some of those people from the home if they could borrow theirs for a bit. She thinks of everything, doesn’t she?”
“Come keep us company and have a chat, Hugo,” Elsie murmured to Sir Hugo as they gathered round him, “we’re just going back to the church to pay our final respects in private. Get away from that bloody girl and her microphone.”
“Delighted, ladies.” He fell into step as they detached themselves from the crowd.
“You of all people must have noticed an omission in today’s service,” said Elsie, puffing a little.
“Frances Falconleigh,” said Evangeline.
“Ah, who? Frances,” said Sir Hugo. “What became of her? I think I was rather smitten by her at one point. Dashing girl.”
“We want to show you something,” said Alice.
“At your service, naturally, ladies.” Sir Hugo bowed slightly.
They reached St. Gabriel’s.
“Come with us,” said Elsie. “It’s round the back.” Elsie leaned on her cane as she walked. Her feet were killing her and it had been a long day. “Come round the side here.”
“Ah, the old knight’s tomb,” said Sir Hugo, “interesting story about that…”
“Frances first. She found out that you and your father were signalling to the Germans during the war,” said Elsie flatly. “They always knew someone near the south coast was doing it. And that the signals were coming from near Gracecourt. It was you.”
“Certainly not!” spluttered Hugo. “Preposterous! How would I—or father who was an invalid—signal to anybody!”
“Your father spent a lot just before the war, money he didn’t have once he had run through your mother’s fortune. The estate was in debt, on the verge of being sold. It would have been the end of the de Balforts at Gracecourt Hall. Bernie checked. But suddenly there were new tennis courts, new stables, and the water garden. And if anybody knew how to get money from crime it was Bernie, but even he, with all his contacts, couldn’t trace how you’d managed it. But on your Grand Tour, you made friends with some Germans who later visited you at Gracecourt and offered your father a great deal of money in return for some favors.”