At Long Last Love

by Milly Adams

  Bernard and Sarah nodded. George had obviously done this before, and survived, which was encouraging. The dim lighting was switched off over the Channel. She couldn’t see Bernard, but she sensed him. The torches of the despatchers created a pattern, as they did whatever it was they did. The disembodied voice of an RAF sergeant said, ‘If you hear firing, we’re probably not going down into the drink. It’ll be the machine-gunner test-firing.’

  They flew on, the flight longer than any she had experienced before. During practice it was up, up and then out of the hatch, and down. Sarah swallowed. She was Cécile, who had worked at a butcher’s in Poitiers. She was French, she had papers, the correct clothes. She would stay alert, she would live and find Derek. She listened to the drone of the engine, felt the buffeting of the wind. She dozed, woke, looked to the side. Bernard was awake. He smiled, reached out and touched her hand. She gripped his. For a moment it was as though they clung to one another. She dozed again.

  Sarah felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Comment?’

  The RAF sergeant said, in English, ‘We’re over Tours, which is in occupied France. Not long now.’

  She sat up, rubbing her face. George and Bernard were already leaning back on the fuselage, chatting quietly in French.

  A despatcher opened the exit hatch. Sarah moved close and looked down at the moonlit Vichy ground, where there were a few street lights. It seemed for ever since she had seen lights at night. Bernard was close beside her, his arm touching hers as the ground seemed to streak away.

  On they droned, losing height. It would be soon. Her throat was too parched to swallow or speak. A sergeant came close. ‘Ground signal spotted.’ A small red light appeared on the wall.

  Plan A then, Derek, Sarah thought. Yes, Plan A, Lizzy. And all she wanted was to be safe at Little Worthy, as the three of them had been, with no war, and none of this. She tried to swallow, tried to smile at Bernard, but couldn’t. George had moved with his wireless to the hatch. He swung his feet down, his flying suit was plucked by the wind. The despatcher raised his arm, the aircraft seemed to lurch, then levelled. The despatcher murmured, ‘Five hundred feet – stand by.’

  The red light changed to green. The despatcher dropped his arm. George was gone, and all that was left was the strop of the static line, hanging down through the hole. Sarah moved across and swung out her legs. The wind snatched at them. Her heart was beating too fast, much faster than it had ever done before. The moonlit ground seemed too close. The strop would yank open her parachute. She breathed in, pushed off with her hands and the wind caught her and tossed her into a somersault.

  The canopy opened and she was spreadeagled, lying on the wind. She straightened and swung in ever-decreasing circles. She made herself breathe out, and then in, out; in, out. The signal torches on the ground were pinpricks. The swinging stopped. She was dropping like a pencil through the air, and the ground came up and whacked the air from her body, and too late she bent her knees. She fell to one side, jarred, but alive, her legs miraculously unhurt.

  The ’chute dragged her. She punched the disc to loosen the harness and the ’chute dragged it free of her. Sarah stood there panting, as though she’d run a mile. A man was heading towards her. Another was catching up with the ’chute. There was a second parachute, which crashed to the ground with her suitcase. This too was captured. It was so white in the moonlight. Surely it had been seen? Surely the Whitley had been heard?

  The man reached her. ‘Comrade, welcome to the soil of France. Welcome. I am Jean. Ah, a woman. Even more welcome. Come, quickly.’

  Sarah doubted that was his real name. Jean pulled at her arm and gathered up her suitcase. Further into the field Bernard was being welcomed. Sarah let herself be hurried to the edge of the field. Another man was there, with a shovel. There was a grave dug for the parachutes, and in they went. As she left the field, with Jean carrying her suitcase, she heard the clink of stones on shovel. If she had heard it, surely someone else could?

  She must have spoken aloud, for Jean replied, ‘Perhaps the goats, but that is all. The police are not around here tonight. We get warning. Not all are German-lovers or Pétain-lovers.’ He let go of her arm and led the party across the track, through a gate and over two fields. She could see a farmhouse. A dog barked, just once, and then tore towards them, curving at the last minute. It tucked in at Jean’s heel. Somewhere a train hooted and there was the sound of a car.

  They hurried around the edge of a farmyard and into the kitchen. ‘Brigitte, here are our guests,’ Jean said in French, always in French – always.

  She was here, in Vichy France; it wasn’t an exercise. It was real and dangerous, but vital. Sarah hoped Brigitte was really called something else, just in case Sarah fell foul of … in case they hurt her too badly. They: the monsters of her dreams.

  Jean brought them up to date on recent developments: the availability of food; the drastic rationing of tobacco. Clandestine crossings over the demarcation line into the occupied zone were possible, but not easy. He wagged his fingers at the pair of them as they ate their omelettes and bread. ‘Some funerals work well for us. Go as a mourner: one side of the demarcation line is the church and the coffin, and the other is the cemetery.’ They nodded, but they already knew this. It was how Sarah intended to move across into occupied territory when the time came, but she had no idea about Bernard. It was best not to know.

  The following morning Sarah left the farmhouse with Bernard. They walked along tracks edged with wild flowers and came to a hamlet. No-one noticed them in their well-worn clothes and shoes, though some of the villagers clumped along on wooden soles. They kept on walking into Clermont-Ferrand, where they forced themselves to stop at a café, taking seats at a pavement table. They waited to be served. Was it still right to do so? So much had changed, Jean had said.

  A waiter came to take their order of coffee. Ersatz coffee arrived, bitter and awful, though it was sweetened with something. ‘Saccharine pellets,’ breathed Bernard. They paid and walked on, looking into virtually empty shop windows, and Bernard insisted that together they tried lunch in a hotel. Would their ration cards work? The coupons were clipped without comment. The small portions stuck in Sarah’s throat as she listened and watched, and slowly remembered to relax, to smile and chat. They moved on and parted at the railway station.

  Sarah felt bereft to see Bernard take his place in the ticket-office queue whilst she looked at her watch and pretended to wait for someone. Would he pass examination at the ticket office? She looked around. Why didn’t everyone know she wasn’t French? Why weren’t they all staring? Two gendarmes stood by a doorway. Were they looking? Yes. One stared at her and nudged his companion, pointing towards her. She wanted to run, but then a voice hailed them from behind her. ‘Hello, Quentin, it’s time we met again. Come one evening.’

  The gendarmes saluted an old man who came from behind and walked towards them. The three of them shook hands and talked, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief as Bernard walked towards her, looking at his watch and bumping into her. He raised his hat in apology. ‘Dearest Cécile, we’ll meet again, but keep safe, for if you are not, I would miss you. You must know that.’

  He walked on, looking for his platform, taking the train north. Sarah queued to buy a ticket. Would she be as inconspicuous? ‘A single to Toulouse, if you please.’ There was not a flicker of doubt as the ticket was handed over.

  She took the train, recognising the countryside from her time here before the war. It seemed a world away. Well, it was, just like Little Worthy. No, she was Cécile from Limoges, and if she was stopped and questioned, well, she had come to have a brief holiday, after a bout of influenza. She sat upright as the train rocked and clicked over the points. Stay alert.

  Leaving the station, Sarah saw ancient horse-carriages, which looked as though they would fall apart if they lurched over a bump. That’s if the thin horses didn’t just give up, lie down and die. Would the shafts permit that? There were cycles that pulled passenge
r-trailers, and trams, but hardly any motor cars. Her instructions were to stay in the station hotel, which was opposite the station.

  Sarah banged the bell on the reception counter, and filled in her name on the registration card: Cécile Lamont. The room was shabby, though the bed was comfortable. She lay down, but couldn’t rest. She was jigging about like Lizzy. Her father would say, ‘For heaven’s sake, stand still.’ He had never needed to, because Sarah didn’t jig. She hadn’t done anything very much, she realised.

  She rose, leaving her suitcase unpacked. It held little, now that she had given Jean the money and the forged documents for his group. All that remained were a handful of clothes and her revolver, still packed in the false bottom. She was to head for Le Petit Chat café for instructions and had memorised the route. She struck out to the east. The people were as grey as she, the town as weary. Everywhere there were photographs of Marshal Pétain. Also, stuck on a shop window, she saw instructions for sending parcels to the thousands of French prisoners-of-war stuck in Germany, probably being used as labourers. Was Derek in a British POW camp?

  Sarah sat at a table outside Le Petit Chat and ordered a coffee, ersatz again. She sipped it as the day drew to a close. People passed, returning from work, shoulders slumped. Across the street, walking slowly but firmly, were what she felt were two Vichy Gestapo. She sipped again, but the coffee was still foul. An old man came out of the café and walked past her table, blocking her view of a horse-drawn taxi-carriage. She craned her neck past him, watching and listening to the clip-clop, keeping an eye on the Vichy Gestapo as they turned down a side-street. She felt the thudding of her heart. She concentrated on the horse; the ponies in the New Forest had been smaller.

  Sarah sipped again at her coffee, and only then did she see the folded newspaper on her table and closed her eyes. She had missed the drop. Whoever was responsible was a professional, whilst she, clearly, was not. She beckoned to the waiter and paid, picked up her handbag and her newspaper. She tucked it under her arm and strolled back to the hotel, looking in shop windows, checking reflections, alert to the activity around her.

  She diverted down an alley, knowing it would come out to a parallel street where she would turn towards the east. She looked both ways before crossing the road. No-one stopped to tie a shoelace, or hid behind a newspaper. She eventually found her way back to her hotel room. She checked her suitcase. The hair that she had stuck on with spittle was still there, so no-one had breached it. She read the coded message written on the edge of the front page of the newspaper, which used the last verse of her chosen poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost, as a key.

  It gave Sarah a route to follow tomorrow. It was then that she would receive a message to take on to somewhere she didn’t yet know of. She slept, exhausted, and not hungry. In the morning she tucked the revolver into her jacket pocket and found a café for a bread roll for breakfast, and took barely a sip of ersatz. She made her way to where her bicycle would be and cycled along the route she had memorised. After two hours she had met no gendarmes, no challenges, and pulled up at the opening to a track where a fallen tree lay. She sat on it and waited, her bicycle upended as though it had a puncture – just in case anyone became curious. If they did, she would say that she was waiting for a friend who would help.

  Eventually a girl appeared on a bike, hurtling past without a second look. Sarah continued to wait. She checked her watch. She might be well south of the occupation line, but she was still in danger, and there were still allied agents at work; and others who were the enemy. It was cat-and-mouse, and she was the mouse. After another ten minutes she would leave, in case the contact was blown. If compromised, she would head for Paris immediately. There she would use the emergency drop, and might be of use to another circuit.

  Sarah caught a glimpse of a bicycle approaching from the other direction and ignored it, continuing to act as though she was waiting for help. The rider stopped just behind her. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She reached for her revolver in her jacket pocket.

  A girl said, ‘Bonjour. I feel the rain could make things dark, but I have promises to keep.’ She had included the three words: dark, promises and keep.

  Sarah kept her hand on her revolver as she pushed herself up from the verge, brushing her hair back and tucking it behind her ear. ‘The wind sounds worse in the woods, which is where I’m headed. I wish I could stay on the road, if I’m honest.’

  The girl nodded and turned down the lane. Sarah followed her, bumping and rattling around and over the ruts until they reached a copse. The girl headed into it, so Sarah followed, only drawing to a halt at a charcoal-burner’s kiln set up in a clearing. The heat was comforting. They stopped. All around the grass was flattened. An old man came from the trees, a rake over his shoulder. He must be the charcoal-burner. He ignored them. The girl gestured to Sarah to dismount. She did so, leaning the cycle against her hip.

  The girl cycled away, crunching over the twigs, and at the same time a man’s voice behind her said, ‘Take your hand out of your pocket.’ Sarah hadn’t heard him approach, and fear clutched at her. The charcoal-burner began raking. Sarah removed her hand from her pocket. She was patted down, and her revolver removed. ‘Welcome,’ said the man, still standing behind her out of sight. ‘Now, read this message, memorise the map and deliver it to Renaud tomorrow.’ Over her shoulder, the man handed her a scrap of paper. ‘You can cycle from Toulouse; the meeting point is halfway to Revel, the map shows precisely where. It is there that you will be told what it is you must do.’

  Sarah read the note again and again, making sure she had it fully memorised. She held it up. The man reached over her shoulder and took it.

  Sarah’s revolver was replaced in her pocket. The girl who had led her to the clearing reappeared. Sarah, sensing what was expected of her, mounted her bicycle and followed the girl out of the clearing. At the edge of the wood the girl stopped and, without a word, pointed down the lane, before riding back through the trees.

  All week Sarah worked in her designated role as courier, cycling first to one place and then another. She felt the bike could do it all without her, for it knew the feel of her hands on the handlebars, and of her bottom on the saddle, so well. She knew nothing of the bigger picture, but a circuit was clearly being formed. Perhaps Vichy would one day be occupied? There was already a sense of menace, reinforced by the French gendarmes and ersatz Gestapo, though so far she had seen no German troops.

  Each evening she returned to the hotel, and one night as she finished cleaning her revolver, she heard gendarmes pounding up the stairs. She waited with her gun just behind the door, fear gripping her throat. They pounded past and hammered on a door at the end of the corridor, taking someone other than her away.

  The next day two gendarmes stopped her outside a small town, but they were young and gave her documents just a cursory look. The following day, there were several ersatz Gestapo at a roadblock. Sarah was with many other cyclists, one of whom had a dog, which, when his master was pulled to one side, rushed around, barking and biting. The Vichy Gestapo shot it. In the uproar, three cyclists wove at speed through the melee and continued, turning off at the first opportunity. They were not challenged. Sarah was amongst them.

  The weeks merged, one into the other, until October drew to a close and at last Sarah was given orders, via a newspaper drop at a café, to head for a hamlet abutting the demarcation zone, at which there was to be a funeral the next day. She took the train and, following her memorised instructions, walked to the hamlet in the cold, pouring rain. What an appalling day for a funeral, she thought, but a wonderful day for her, because the rain made it difficult for any border guards to see what was what. She joined the mourners, who said nothing, but just closed ranks around her, their umbrellas hiding her as they passed over the border to the cemetery. There, one of the mourners came to her side and pulled at her arm. He muttered, ‘Such a sad day for a friendly and debonair gentleman.’

&n
bsp; ‘Debonair’ was the password. She relaxed. He led her to a farm, where she stayed until he collected her in the morning, when they caught a bus into the nearest town. Here, she made herself behave as though she had been walking amongst the German soldiers, and Luftwaffe pilots, for the last two years.

  The guide left, ignoring Sarah as he walked back to whatever life he lived; and heaven keep you safe, she called silently. She felt abandoned as she made her way to the station, where the announcements were being made in French and German. She stood amongst the weary crowd, waiting for the Paris announcement. Everyone seemed to be avoiding eye contact. Did they wonder who their neighbours really were? Was this fear something you ever became used to? Would she? At last the train to Paris was announced, and soon she might be with a team. At last she might see Bernard again. At last she might hear on the grapevine of British escapees, for so far no-one had let anything slip, and of course she couldn’t ask, or that personal information might identify her, if she was captured.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Reverend Tom Rees breathed a sigh of relief. It was ten thirty on Sunday evening in early November, and Pauline had agreed that it was time for bed, saying, ‘I was thinking the same, darling, and it’s raining outside, so perhaps we should …’ She meant only one thing.

  He said, turning off the wireless and almost running into the hall, ‘All is well, I have an umbrella.’ Pauline followed, her face taking on the petulance that came and went, depending on whether or not people agreed with her.

  He snatched her raincoat from the coat-stand, jiggling it to encourage her to hurry and slip her arms into the sleeves. Then he grabbed his umbrella and practically ran her to the pub, using the excuse of the weather. When they stood together outside the rear door, she said, ‘I suppose there’s another audition tomorrow after school, followed by interminable discussions about the actual make-up of this dreary little show?’