by John Gardner
Maman was a Railton who had married a Frenchman. That was why she was called Grenot. The Railtons, and the large American family of Farthings, had become inextricably entwined because of Sara and Richard. Later Maman’s other daughter, Denise, had married a Farthing. The two families were like great trees, planted close to one another, so that underground their roots had entwined, just as their trunks had become covered in ivy which prevented one from seeing the true texture of the bark.
On the evening of Jo-Jo’s sixteenth birthday Maman had taken her to the rose garden and told her the truth: how she was really a Railton; how her father, who had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, had been a member of part of the Secret Service during the Great War (as they then called it); how he had helped catch a woman German agent and made her work for the British. They had become lovers, and the woman had been murdered by the Germans, but not before she gave birth to Jo-Jo. Maman was not really her mother, but Jo-Jo was still a true Railton and could, if she wanted, take her proper name when she was twenty-one. She refused immediately, telling Marie Grenot that she would always regard her as mother, and wanted no new name.
Soon after this, Jo-Jo was sent to the Sorbonne, in Paris. Her grades were exceptional, so she was asked to stay on as a junior lecturer in English. In due time Caroline came to Paris as a student.
It was through Jo-Jo’s influence that Caroline pleaded with her parents and was allowed to stay in Paris, taking a junior post, with Jo-Jo, at the Sorbonne. Richard and Sara Farthing did not really want Caroline living away from home, or in this manner. They had made her promise to return if things got too difficult. When war was declared in September 1939, Richard had even come over to see his daughter, but left feeling proud of her, and certain she would return to England if Hitler’s armies started a shooting war.
Now, like Jo-Jo, she thought of Caspar, and the conversation a month previously. ‘I work for a government department,’ he had said, and the girls knew immediately what he meant. It was not talked about among the family, but they all knew some of their kinfolk were involved in secret matters. Caspar had been Chief-of-Staff to the first head of the modern Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Mansfield Cumming: ‘C’ as he – and all his successors – was known.
‘People said you’d retired,’ Jo-Jo said.
Caspar had laughed. ‘I did. The business became very boring, and a bit unprofessional. They persuaded me back in ’38, though. Gearing things up for this show.’ He spoke of the present war, which everyone had expected in 1938. ‘Now, I feel damned awkward about asking this – and you can refuse.’ He talked to them for almost two hours, and they agreed to examine the situation if it should ever arise. He gave them simple codes: the sending of postcards which would warn them to make up their minds – Come home, or do as we agreed. The alternative was simply Come home. When he left, Caspar looked shamefaced, saying they should not discuss this with their respective parents. There was little likelihood of Caroline doing this, as Richard and Sara were in America. But Marie Grenot still lived in Berkshire.
Now, standing beside the window, Jo-Jo said it all seemed inevitable once Hitler had made his unstoppable move. ‘Damn! Everything’s been for nothing.’ There were bright-red spots of frustration high on Caroline’s cheeks. ‘What has?’
‘Living like peasants. Sharing our beds with fleas and our bread with beggars.’
‘How can we tell? We chose to do that, Caro.’ Jo-Jo had a way of suggesting a truth, then leaving it to hang in the air, waiting for the other person to speak.
At last Caroline said, ‘I suppose we go, then.’
Jo-Jo gave a sigh. ‘Right then. We burn the passports and papers. Use the ones he gave us and head west. It’s less than one hundred fifty kilometres.’
‘Jules Fenice.’ Caroline said the name as though she had known the man since birth, and wondered what he would be like – this man trained by Uncle Caspar and waiting for them in a village on the Loire, near Orléans.
First they had the job with the weapons and ammunition. Then they were to link up with Jules Fenice, whose code name would be Felix in the years to come.
They stayed in the little apartment until it was dark, burning the papers and anything that linked them to England. Then, with a few belongings packed in their cheap cardboard suitcases, they set out from the Rue de la Huchette, Paris, to the village of St Benoît-sur-Loire, within spitting distance of Orléans.
They dodged German soldiers who entered Paris in the morning, and then the French police – for France gave itself over to Hitler’s Reich during their journey, with Marshal Pétain setting up his puppet government in Vichy. They used their French papers, which turned them at a stroke from Caroline Railton Farthing and Josephine Grenot into Catherine and Anne Routon. Sisters.
They were to be known, later and to others, as Maxine and Dédé – part of a network called Tarot, which became famous, and infamous.
For the two girls the journey from Paris was a trip into fame which ended in oblivion, mystery, and intrigue.
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