At Long Last Love

by Milly Adams

  They laughed together as they walked along the High Street. Just before Mrs Summers turned left, heading for her cottage at the end of Gosling Lane, she said, ‘I hear you are in the ARP in London. Even though you’re only here for a month, we do need you. Poor old Percy Evans is on his knees, toddling round after dark checking the blackouts and listening for planes. He’s never had a real alarm, and I fear he’d have a heart attack if that ever happened. On the other hand, he might raise a cheer to have blown his whistle, just once. Anyway, he could do with a break. I’ve decided I’ll sleep over on Tuesday nights to look after Lizzy, so that you can do a shift for him. I have a helmet you can use. My Jonty was a warden in ’39. Then the old fool went and died on me.’ Her voice broke, and after a moment Mrs Summers said her goodbyes and rushed off.

  Kate looked after her, remembering Jonty. He was funny and always kind. Several women walked past. One stopped and said, ‘Hello, I’m Fran, and I rent the end terrace, along from Melbury. I brought the children out of Ealing for the Blitz, and think I’ll stay on for a bit. I like the WI, apart from anything else. They’d like you to come to a meeting, I ’spect. Don’t bother about the old sourpusses – they’re just jealous. Imagine that lot stripping.’ She grinned. ‘If you need anything, let me know.’ She hurried on.

  Kate followed more slowly.

  Lizzy was waiting at the gate into Melbury. ‘I am really, really hungry. What did Mum put on the list for lunch?’

  ‘Let’s go in and see, shall we?’ As she did so, Kate realised she hadn’t actually said yes to the ARP shift, but that was Mrs Summers all over. She wondered what she thought of Ellie letting Sarah down and disappearing to the WAAF? She must remember to ask if there was any chance of the girl not liking it and returning.

  Chapter Seven

  Sarah stayed in a hotel in London on Saturday and Sunday, one that she and Derek had used on the first stage of their honeymoon almost ten years ago, but it wasn’t the same. Well, obviously, what with the windows taped across, the blackout and the darkness of the streets. She shouldn’t have come. She should have had longer with Lizzy, because this just spoiled what had been a precious memory.

  All day on Sunday she walked along the Embankment, then up to Piccadilly and finally through Hyde Park, the look of which underlined how everything was on a war footing. Little Worthy seemed cosy and comfortable and a million miles from the world she would be entering tomorrow.

  Sarah arrived at Portman Square promptly at nine on Monday and was admitted into a large flat buzzing with people; some other women were in FANY uniform too, and the men in the uniform of whatever corps they were nominally attached to. She sat in rows with them, wondering who they all were and why they had decided on this course of action: had some lost a lover, as she had, or were they here courtesy of purer motives?

  Well, it didn’t matter, because she was determined to find Derek. When she had seen the advertisement in the newspapers asking for photographs of France, it had been like a gift. She had sent hers, guessing that it might be some sort of intelligence department that needed them. They had called her in for an interview, and voilà: here she was and, if she completed her training, she’d be in France, on Derek’s trail. Not that she’d told them that, of course.

  A woman in a grey suit arrived and explained that the aims of SOE were to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe, and for this they needed circuits set up, comprising small groups of Resistance personnel and agents. To this end, the recruits would commence training and, if they passed the first month, there would be a continuation of that training.

  ‘You will be allocated a name by which you will be known for a while, but only a while. For however short a time, you must become that name. Become it, own it – do you understand?’

  They all nodded. How simple to become someone else, Sarah thought, as she was given the new name Amélie. Is this what Kate had thought, when she spent all that time in the woods? She beat down the rage she felt towards her sister, the trouble she had caused when she and Derek were newly married and renting a cottage down Gosling Lane. There had been no peace, with her father constantly knocking on the door, complaining about the girl and her wildness; and later the disgrace, and the lies she had told. And the way Kate had been able to leave, while she had to endure the burden of her father’s fury, although at least she had felt repaid by the legacy of the cottage, and her father’s shares. She felt no guilt, because Kate had received money that her father sent to start her off.

  It occurred to her only now that he must have known Kate’s address, though he had never said as much.

  The woman had finished giving her instructions, and the other trainees were rising from their seats. Sarah focused. She must not drift in her thoughts ever again, because she could die if she did. She went with the six other girls, smiling at them. They travelled by coach to who-knew-where, arriving at a large house set in sweeping grounds, but with oaks and horse chestnuts shielding it from the road.

  They didn’t know the details of the training, but were told by an instructor on their arrival that it would be conducted in French. They stood to attention in the hallway, their cases at their side. ‘The food is good and off-ration, the beds comfortable. It is only the seven of you, and you are to talk to no-one about your lives, either here or in the outside world, not even one another. Your notes home are to be weekly, and you will not repeat anything of your experiences.’

  Instructors sat with them after the evening meal, and as the evening darkened, the blackout was drawn across the windows, the table lamps switched on and they were given trays containing objects.

  ‘Take a look and remember the articles,’ one of their instructors said in French – always in French – his eyes cold, but his smile broad. It was disconcerting. He timed them for thirty seconds. He signalled. Other instructors who appeared from the shadows whisked the trays away. Then the girls had to describe what had been on the tray.

  This was repeated twice, with different objects, until they all remembered correctly. ‘Observation, alertness, memory: these will help you remember messages that you may well have to deliver, and could also save your lives,’ the instructor said.

  Later that evening one of the girls, Monique, laughed at a joke and said she’d tell her boyfriend before she went to bed. She was gone by the morning. It was then that Sarah realised she really was in an unforgiving parallel world. But if she was to be useful in France, it was a world whose rules she must obey.

  They sat in classrooms and learned map-reading, and tapped out Morse code. Sarah was slower than the others and as the days passed, her panic caused the sweat to pour down her back in the July heat. What if one morning the others found her gone and, instead of working here, she was taking the train back to Little Worthy? The thought of seeing Lizzy meant nothing to her, because she would have failed Derek.

  She was not sent away for her Morse-code limitations, but found herself with one less ‘friend’, as another girl disappeared at the end of the first week. They never knew why, and neither did they discuss it, as had been ordered. What they did realise was that people were watching and listening every minute of every day and any mistake was noted; any mistake that could cause harm to them or their companions. It was as though they were already behind the lines, in deadly peril.

  For the first time she felt a flash of terror, but then it was gone. What did it matter what happened to her really, if Derek was dead? And in her heart, for just that moment, she allowed herself to admit the possibility.

  Each day they increased their physical drill, rising early and running across fields before they had eaten, wrestling one another and the instructors, who smelled of sweat, but then she probably did too. Suddenly it didn’t matter whether she had washed her hands before eating, whether hairs fell into her mess tin; nothing mattered, except lasting another day.

  In the evening they added charades to their entertainment, but quite why no-one knew, and the articles on the ob
servation trays increased. ‘Enumerate them for me,’ said the instructor. ‘You must reach a point where it is second nature.’

  In bed that night Sarah wrote a brief note to Kate, her second, and tried to sleep, but her head was full of facts about the revolvers they had handled, the rifles and hand grenades, the explosives they had learned how to manage, and the letter she had just written. Had she said anything about her life here? She put on the light and double-checked again and again; but no, she had only asked about life in Little Worthy, and told Kate about making tea at the canteen as part of her FANY duties, and sent her love to everyone, and hoped the choir was proceeding well.

  The next morning she was called from the self-defence session and had to march at double time over to the supervisor’s office on the ground floor. He had her letter on the desk in front of him.

  She stood to attention. The supervisor let her, though there was a chair available. His desk was quite empty, except for the letter. She stared at it. What had she said? He looked up. His glasses glinted. The window was behind him and the sun blinded her as she faced him. He said, ‘Amélie, who is Lizzy?’

  She closed her eyes for a second, frozen. She had admitted to a sister called Kate, but that was all. She had double-checked last night that she had addressed the letter to Kate. How did they know about Lizzy? Should she say Lizzy was her sister, and perhaps pretend it was Kate’s middle name? She said, ‘A dependant.’

  He replied, staring up at her. ‘Your first letter was addressed to a person called Lizzy; this one is to Kate at the same address. You told us of a sister, but not a daughter. Let me refresh your memory: Elizabeth Baxter, whom you call Lizzy, is at school in Little Worthy, being looked after by your previously estranged sister, Katherine, whom you call Kate. Sit down, Amélie.’

  She did so, sitting bolt upright, her heart hammering. How could she have been so stupid? How had she not censored that first letter? How?

  He said, ‘We have come to understand that you lied to us.’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t. She’s not my biological child, therefore I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You’re splitting hairs.’

  ‘It’s a fact.’

  ‘Whose child is she then?’

  ‘She has become mine. But you need me, because I know France and the French so well, and my language is fluent. You might not have taken me, if I had told you at the interview that I had a child. But I’m good, you must see that by now. You’ll have to drag me out by the hair, whether it’s split or not.’

  ‘Don’t lie to us again. Your sister will stay the course for as long as need be – perhaps for the rest of her life? We can’t have your attention straying.’

  ‘Yes, she will, without a doubt.’

  It was as though he was waiting. And as Sarah watched him, watching her, she realised that this organisation probably knew exactly who was the real— No, not real, the biological mother of Lizzy. She lifted her chin. ‘My sister is getting to know Lizzy, who is her biological child, but you probably know that through your investigations. So here I am, right now, confirming it. Yes, my sister will take on my child’s care. My child who is also her child. You see how complicated it is. She is mine, but she is also Kate’s. I repeat that my sister will, without a doubt, stay the course. If there’s one person I know well, it’s Kate.’

  He looked at her long and hard and, at length, nodded, his expression grave, even sympathetic. ‘Life presents us with hard decisions, does it not, Amélie?’

  It was her turn to nod, hardly daring to breathe, her own words resonating, because she had never actually spoken of this to anyone outside the family circle: Sarah’s child, Kate’s child. It was like some sort of song chorus and, for a moment, doubt set in. Would Lizzy grow too fond of Kate? Would she herself really not return? In that case, Lizzy must love Kate. Would Kate …?

  They sat in silence. It was all too difficult, and her thoughts were fragmenting, then swirling. What on earth was she doing here?

  She waited, and into the silence came Derek’s voice, his laugh. Of course, that’s why she was here. Her hands balled into fists, and her resolve stiffened again with every passing second. Would she be sent away? No, she had meant it: they’d have to drag her out.

  At last he nodded slightly and gave her the letter. ‘If you are going to stay, you have to be consistent with your lies; in fact, you have to be a lie. Post this. Let me discuss the situation with others.’

  The supervisor pulled a folder from his drawer. She left, shutting the door and walking away. She couldn’t do anything wrong again, she knew that; and if it took a lie to remain, then so be it, because how on earth could she know Kate, after so much time, and all that the girl had done to the family in the past?

  She passed a window and looked down to the back lawn. The self-defence session was over and just two instructors remained, practising on one another. She ached from the bruises she had collected during the week, but thought she could probably kill someone now without a second thought. How could the change in her be that quick? Well, perhaps because every second of every day and night was creating a different world in which to exist and survive.

  She paused, nodding at the thought, then came back to the present, knowing that right now she needed to make her way to the start of the trek across the hills, which would begin in … She checked her watch. It would begin in ten minutes.

  As she walked down the corridor in her plimsolls she heard a voice. Surely it was Victoire’s, but she should be in the changing room, donning her already grubby civilian kit. She stopped and peered round the corner. Victoire was on the telephone. Sarah pressed herself back against the wall, her mouth quite dry. Phoning was a clear breach of the rules – forbidden and serious, for any outside contact apart from a weekly letter was prohibited. What should she do? Victoire was so nice, so desperately keen to help out behind the lines; and her knowledge, not just of French, but of Danish and German, was so good that she was invaluable.

  Sarah almost crept past the corner and towards the changing rooms. How could she tell the supervisor, when she herself had perhaps been given a second chance? How could she be responsible for ruining a wonderful girl’s chances and for breaking up the group, for they had all bonded so closely? Besides, everyone would hate her, and she wasn’t used to that.

  She checked her watch. They would be leaving soon for the trek up Morgan’s Hill. She entered the changing rooms, and the others looked up. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just an administration thing.’

  They had learned that they didn’t share anything. Victoire slipped into the changing room behind Sarah, and they both changed into their mufti, putting on ordinary shoes. It was like a dress rehearsal, because they’d not be wearing walking boots or plimsolls if they were being chased.

  Sarah jogged out of the grounds, with Victoire ahead of her. Victoire was fitter than the rest of them, as though she’d been doing this for a lifetime, and she almost bounced as she ran. They had each been given a map and would separate, as the directions scribbled on their maps dictated. Sarah’s map led her into a copse and then through the other side. She was slipping and sliding on the sodden ground; she carried a rucksack half filled with wood, and had slung an unloaded rifle over her shoulder.

  The breath was heaving in her chest, and the rifle was banging against her side. She stopped running and walked thirty paces, then ran thirty; the ‘rifleman’s progress’, their instructor called it. It was energy-efficient. She checked her map, and last night’s rain dropped onto it, from the canopy above. How on earth could Victoire run as she did? How was her Morse code so efficient? Some were just quicker at learning, she supposed.

  She ran out of the woods and up, up to the crag. She breathed in the cool air, watching Victoire stride downwards. The girl was just too perfect. Sarah watched her for a moment longer and then realised the truth of it. She ran down, driven by desperation, because she had just realised why Victoire was so able. She was a pla
nt, and it was a test. She tore down the hill, not even stopping when she reached the end, but hurtling past the check-in instructor and thrusting her map at him. ‘I can’t stop, I need to see the supervisor.’

  The instructor nodded his consent. Sarah dumped her rifle on the table provided alongside him, ripped off her muddy shoes in the changing room and, in her stockinged feet and mud-splattered skirt, ran along the corridor, slowing as she arrived. Panting, she knocked.

  The supervisor called, ‘Enter.’ He sat there, the sun still shining in through the window.

  Sarah said, ‘I have to tell you, though I don’t like snitching, that Victoire used the telephone.’

  He stared at her and reached into his drawer, pulling out a sheet of paper, not a folder, unscrewing his pen, checking the time and writing it on the paper. Reading upside-down was another skill that had been encouraged.

  He asked, ‘When did this occur?’

  She told him. He wrote that down, then looked up at her. ‘Two hours between witnessing it and reporting the said infringement. Why was that?’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell on her, because Victoire offers so much that we need.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘Suddenly she didn’t add up. Her Morse is too good, she runs too well, she’s too nice. I guessed she was a plant. I’m late, but I’m here, and I reported her in the end.’

  He sighed. ‘Sit down, Amélie. Now listen. Those two hours could have killed you, out in the field – and your group. The only reason I’m letting you stay is because of your powers of observation. You realised there was something wrong with Victoire, so you’re learning. But you need to hone this, and we will be helping you do so. Now it’s ever onwards; and if you pass each section, perhaps we’ll get some sort of use out of you, but don’t count on it. You’ve a long way to go. Dismissed!’

  She about-turned.

  He said, ‘Amélie, you’ve had your one chance, and you won’t get even that out there. Don’t muck up again.’