by Shirley Mann
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s find somewhere to have a drink. I could do with one.’
Bobby looked at his face and recognised the deep concern that she found there. She knew he had wanted to give her an optimistic update and she tucked her hand into his arm and gave him a squeeze.
‘I know you’re doing your best, Edward. It’s all any of us can expect.’
She leaned forward and gave him a kiss. He immediately responded and she found herself dissolving into his arms. This time there was no hesitation.
Chapter 33
Edward was not sure what was happening to him. He felt giddy, like a schoolboy. His two days in London had left him breathless. After that kiss outside the War Rooms, Edward Turner’s personality threatened to light up like a sparkler. It was as if he had escaped his self-imposed crusty chrysalis to find a world full of beautiful butterflies.
He had started to wonder whether the boring persona he had adopted was beginning to convince everyone a little too much – even himself. But that was before Roberta Hollis.
Bobby was having a different problem. She was having such a good time with Edward, who had suddenly blossomed into a charming, fun companion, that it had taken her by complete surprise. The serious, halting man she had first met had vanished with their first kiss and Bobby found herself touching her lips, memorising the tender, yet intense caress. She had no idea what was going on inside herself and she longed to talk to someone but did not know who.
Once she was back at work, however, Bobby put all concerns about her private life on hold as usual. There were aeroplanes to fly.
It was 5th June 1944 and she was due to fly a Hurricane to Hawarden and then a Wellington from Hawarden to Shawbury but had been told to check the weather throughout the day as it was likely to change. When she arrived at Hawarden, she managed to grab a cup of tea in the NAAFI. There were four airmen on the table next to her who looked at her with interest.
She smiled at them. ‘Afternoon,’ she said cheerily. ‘You flying from here?’
‘Yes,’ the tall, thin pilot replied. ‘We fly bombers.’
Bobby nodded and gave a slight smile.
There was a pause and then one of them, who looked too young to be in uniform, said, ‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘Just going to Shawbury, with that there,’ she said, pointing to the Wellington that was waiting by the control tower for her.
The young man spat out his tea over his cup and saucer. ‘You’re doing what?’
‘Delivering that,’ she repeated.
‘Never. On your own?’ the pilot butted in.
‘Apparently so,’ she said, resisting the urge to sound superior.
‘For God’s sake, it takes at least five of us to fly a Wellington and you’re telling us that you, a girl, do it on your own?’
‘Yep.’
Bobby finished her tea and gave them a cheerful wave. The four men watched her go with a mix of astonishment and admiration and then turned back to the overriding conversation of all pilots, that of the impending briefing everyone had been talking about for weeks. The pilot glanced at his watch, it was not long to go before they would be called in and he suspected their fate – and that of the nation – would be sealed.
The confidence waned a little as Bobby hauled herself up the ladder into the main hatch on the lower surface of the aircraft’s nose. She pulled the ladder in after her and clambered her way into the cockpit of the huge machine, having a good look around her as she went before sitting in the cavernous cockpit, which was used to housing more crew than a solitary young woman. Bobby meticulously carried out all her test checks and then took a huge breath and started up the enormous Merlin engines. They roared into life, almost making her jump out of her skin. This was a different animal to the nifty Spitfire. She started to taxi down the runway ready to take off at exactly eighty miles per hour, noticing with alarm that her every move was being watched by the RAF men she had met in the NAAFI. They were shielding their eyes against the late afternoon sun and she could not help but notice they had their mouths open just like those airmen in a field in Lancashire two years before.
By the time she reached the edge of Shropshire, the weather had closed in and the clouds were getting lower and lower. Bobby knew she was going to have difficulty flying this aircraft at a low level and urged it to get on the ground before the winds and visibility worsened.
‘So much for “flaming June” she thought, glaring at the grey clouds that were threatening to engulf her.
*
In London, Edward was standing with a group of civil servants behind the Prime Minister, who was puffing his cigar at double speed. They were watching from the sidelines in the War Rooms, as the meteorologists and strategic experts still argued about the weather for the D-Day Landings. The debate seemed a waste of time to Edward, and he suspected to Churchill too, as the convoys had already set off across the choppy seas. The Allied Forces were already committed. He remembered the way the wind funnelled between England and France and how, as a keen, young sailor, he had longed for strong winds to get the full exhilaration of the day’s sail but he hoped they would not get them today. Edward was exhausted but no more so than the men around him. Hardly any of them had had any sleep during the last week and put-up beds had appeared all over the underground rabbit warren that was the hub of the war’s strategic planning. A tea trolley appeared and there was a general buzz of excitement. Extra biscuits had been unearthed by the matronly figure of Mrs Webb, who bustled around the tea urn, handing out cups and saucers. She manoeuvred purposefully amid the leaders of the country, making sure they all had a plate and then, believing there was nothing like a bit of sweet biscuit to revive the spirits, she handed round the orange drop cookies. Scanning the room to make sure everyone had got one, she turned her trolley round, patted her pinny in place and retired back to the tiny kitchen, feeling that she too, had done her bit during this tense moment in world history.
*
In France, Michel and Raoul Bisset were standing in their front room, gazing through the window in undisguised glee at the RAF aircraft above them. The streets of their hamlet were eerily quiet but they could hear the distant sounds of gunfire and could see the smoke. They had been working non-stop to put a resistance plan in place to harass the Germans from the south of the Département de Calvados to keep them away from the coastline. The two men had no idea where the troops had landed but from the direction of the wind and the sound it carried, Raoul was delighted it was in the opposite direction to where German troops had been heading earlier that week. The Allies had fooled the enemy and the two Bisset men could not have been more pleased. Raoul put his hand on Michel’s shoulder saying, ‘Vive la Libération.’ Then they both put on their boots, grabbed their rifles from the cellar and headed out to help the Allies achieve just that.
*
In the skies above Shawbury, the liberation of France was the last thing on Bobby’s mind. She was having far too much trouble keeping the huge wingspan of the Wellington on an even keel. It was her first delivery of this aircraft and she desperately wanted it to be right but there was a strange noise coming from the fuselage. She checked all her gauges and dials, everything was in order but the noise was getting louder. She tried to put down the landing gear, but there was a sickening crunch as it reached the halfway point. This was a newly-repaired aeroplane and her experience had taught her that the rush to get craft back in the air sometimes meant that problems were not automatically solved before they were released. She had two choices, either to circle with one hand while she tried to free the wheels with the other or to attempt to land. The first option was too risky – and difficult – so she had no choice. Bobby knew the control tower was watching her closely and hoped she would get the plane, and herself, down in one piece. She saw a green flare being shot off, which showed they had spotted her difficulties and were ready for a forced landing. The ambulance and fire engine moved into position.
Bob
by gulped down the panic that had risen from her stomach into her throat. There was no time for that. She had to use all her training and experience to work out the best way to get this huge aircraft – and herself – onto the ground in one piece. She looked down at the airfield below. The obvious route onto the tarmac looked hard and uninviting but there was a large stretch of grass to one side of it. She decided the softer earth was her best hope. Checking all the instruments, she made sure the nose of the Wellington was turned upwind to help her get a straight approach, then closed the throttles and tried to get the aircraft in the best position for landing, using her rudder to keep it into the wind. Her flaps had to be reduced in proportion to the wind strength but she needed all their strength to help her slow down and on top of all that, she was not sure the wheels were going to cooperate with the controls she was pushing with all her might. There were some loud noises that seemed to reverberate through the whole aircraft, making it – and her – shudder but then she felt the wheels touch down, banging, rather than gliding onto the ground.
This was the moment she had dreaded the most – keeping the wings level and slowing down gradually, but with damaged landing gear. The sooner she could bring the aircraft to a standstill the better. She slowed even more, trying to keep control but then the aeroplane listed to starboard as one wheel refused to go fully down. Even so, the fact that she was on the ground gave her just enough time to adjust the landing to cope with the wind from the other direction.
It was not a text-book landing but ended in a sudden, jolting shudder as the plane skidded to a stop in deep, muddy ruts. Bobby was flung forward against her straps and her foot was caught under the rudder pedal, which had buckled in the impact. As soon as the aircraft came to a halt, the emergency vehicles raced over but Bobby could not move. She found she was shaking and her left ankle was throbbing.
‘You all right in there?’ a disembodied voice called from the hatch below.
‘Yes,’ Bobby whispered, her voice a squeak. ‘Yes,’ she repeated louder.
‘Come on, then, out you come.’
Bobby eased herself out of the seat and put her foot down, yelping in pain as she did so. ‘I think I’ve hurt my ankle,’ she called.
‘It’s a miracle if that’s all you’ve hurt,’ the man’s voice came back and then his arm appeared to help her down.
She half fell down the ladder to land in a heap on the grass, crying out in pain.
‘My God, that was quite some landing,’ the short, tubby Erk said to her. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘And I never want to again,’ Bobby said shakily.
Chapter 34
The country was in a state of quiet satisfaction. The D-Day Landings had taken the Germans by surprise but the Allied losses had been great. There were few details released to the general public but the startling figures were on a piece of paper on Edward’s desk. He looked at them over and over again. He struggled not to equate those stark numbers with the unbidden images of the telegraph boys on bicycles all over the country, delivering their dreaded cargo to families who had hardly dared to breathe since Tuesday 6th June began. His immediate job was to coordinate the Resistance’s work with that of the encroaching Allied troops, who were fighting hand to hand across Normandy, and it was proving to be more than a challenge.
He pressed the intercom button. ‘Miss Arbuckle, would you come in a moment, please?’
Mavis Arbuckle patted her permanent wave into place and picked up her notebook. She walked into the office and stood opposite Edward, her pencil poised. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Do sit down, Miss Arbuckle. Could you please contact our French translator and get him to come in this afternoon?’
She nodded and made a note.
‘Secondly, could you see if there’s any news on Drancy internment camp? There was an escape from there last week, could you see whether anyone has been picked up – by either side?
‘And finally, Miss Arbuckle, can I ask, how would I know if a woman is in love with me?’
Mavis Arbuckle had been schooled in not betraying any of her own thoughts or emotions but this last question took her completely by surprise.
‘I’m sorry, sir, what was that?’
‘I just thought, well, you’re the only woman I can talk to discreetly and I know you would never discuss anything said in this room with anyone else.’
She sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, clutching her pencil and notepad and wondered how on earth she was going to reply. She stared at the clock on the wall, begging it to stop while she came up with the right answer.
Edward waited patiently, not even acknowledging the oddness of the non sequitur that he had just uttered.
‘I think you should ask her,’ she finally said.
‘Thank you, Miss Arbuckle. That will be all.’
Mavis went back to her desk and immediately telephoned the French translator. She then put a telephone call in place to find out more about Drancy, but finally, she allowed herself a moment to sit back in her chair.
‘I was right!’ she thought triumphantly. She knew there had been something different about Mr Turner and now she thought about it, there had been signs. His desk had become a muddle, he had let his floppy fringe get out of hand and his voice had been softer. She had actually heard him chuckling to himself on occasions.
She clasped her hands together in glee. She adored Mr Turner like a maiden aunt with a favourite nephew and it had been her private daydream over the last few years that one day a woman would also look beyond that civil service front he had perfected and find the exciting, caring and fun man underneath.
At ten past six that evening, both Mavis and Edward Turner were still in the office. Edward had been concerned about the news from just north of Louvigny where there had been some reprisals committed by the retreating German army and there were reports that some resistance fighters had been among those executed. The village where the Bisset family lived was less than two miles from Louvigny. He and the French translator had spent the afternoon trying to get a telephone call through to the network but there had been no response. He had contacted Adèle, the SOE who had been on the ground there. She had been kept busy with translations at her parents’ home in Norfolk since her emergency evacuation the night that Bobby and Elizé had been brought back but was due to come to the office at 6.30.
Mavis telephoned her neighbour to feed her cat, Tiddles, so she did not have to rush home. She knew a young woman was coming into the office and she was not going to miss the chance to meet her, wondering whether she was the one who had put her beloved Edward Turner into such a tailspin.
At one minute past half past, a tall, young, blonde woman strode into the office, peremptorily demanding to see Mr Turner. Mavis’s heart sank and she hoped fervently that this was not the one.
She showed the visitor into the office and looked carefully at Edward to see his reaction. She was delighted to see there was no particular warmth in his greeting. The woman’s code name was Adèle but Bobby would have recognised her as Marie McGill.
‘Miss Arbuckle, thank you for staying,’ Edward was saying, ‘would you mind very much getting our visitor a cup of tea? And if the urn is still hot, maybe I could have one too?’
Mavis bustled off to the kitchen, but for the first time in her professional career, she longed to be a fly on the wall in that office and not the reliably discreet secretary she had been since the age of twenty-two.
‘So Adèle, you are due to go back to France tomorrow, I believe.’ Edward was saying.
‘Yes, sir. Tomorrow. It’s a crucial time for the Resistance and they need all the help they can get.’
‘Yes, and so do we,’ Edward replied. ‘Our comms are down; more radios have been confiscated and we are concerned there have been reprisals. You managed to hide a radio before you left, I believe?’
Marie nodded but had gone pale, thinking of her family in Louvigny and her friends in the Resistance. She knew how ruthless the G
ermans were and in retreat, they would be merciless. Her grandmother had been in ill-health and confined to bed in her nightie when Marie had been forced to flee France, so she was in ignorance of the existence of the radio Marie had quickly hidden amongst her grandmother’s smalls in the old armoire. It had been a huge risk and put her grandmother in jeopardy, but Marie had had no choice, that radio could not be found. She hoped the fearsome reputation of the old lady would deter any soldier from conducting a search of her grandmother’s underwear.
‘I’m due to go back tomorrow night, sir. The Allies are making headway but not enough, I believe. No one knows about the radio as far as I know and if it’s still there, I should be able to get information to you by the usual channels. Sir, you do know it was not my choice to come out, don’t you?’ she added hesitantly.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Edward replied, uncomfortably aware it had been his decision to bring Adèle out of France. Once she had met Bobby and had helped a Jewish child, she was in mortal danger of being identified as a spy and they had lost two of those in the last month, just when they needed as much information as possible. Once the informer had disappeared, they knew that the Germans would carry out extensive searches and they could not risk their SOE being found, but now they needed her back on the ground. They were taking a huge risk sending her back in, but they needed that radio communication.
‘We may need you to get Monsieur Bisset and his son out of there,’ Edward said. ‘If they have not already been identified by the Gestapo, they soon may be, and the Germans are taking every possible revenge they can before they’re forced out. There is an escape route in place but it is dangerous, we dare not do it by air, all the radios have been destroyed except yours and we can’t get a message to them so we need you back in there to lead them to safety. Is that OK?’
Edward looked carefully at the confident face in front of him. He was in awe of these young women who were carrying out the most perilous tasks, isolated in a foreign country where they could not trust anyone. Most of them lasted no more than six weeks. His heart went out to her.