by June Gadsby
The brief visit to the family had been torn with mixed feelings. It had been wonderful to see the family again, but Mary had been forced to break off her engagement with Walter once and for all. She thought she would carry the guilt of it right through her life, especially since he was no longer a well man. He had survived the escape from Dunkirk, but the shellshock he had brought with him persisted, resulting in his needing hospital treatment. She would never forget the day she went to visit him in the hospital.
It had been quite a shock seeing him sitting there in a wheelchair, shaking like a jelly, eyes staring and mumbling to himself. He had cried like a baby at sight of her, then again and again at short intervals all the time she was with him. The doctors were doubtful that he would ever recover totally, and might even go further into a vegetative state.
‘What did Walter say when you broke off your engagement?’ Iris said suddenly, making her start. ‘Was he upset?’
‘I couldn’t tell him,’ Mary said with a sigh. ‘I told his parents…. Goodness, Iris, how did you know what I was thinking?’
‘You had that awful sad face on you,’ Iris said. ‘I knew it had to be either Walter or … well, you know.’
Mary knew only too well what Iris was getting at. The worst news of all had been blurted out quite innocently by her mother. Jenny West’s words rang constantly in Mary’s head. She couldn’t seem to get rid of them. That poor Dr Craig’s been reported missing, believed dead. He was supposed to be with the Dunkirk lot, but he didn’t make it, apparently. Someone saw him get a bullet, then he went down in the sea, poor soul.
‘It wasn’t meant to be, Iris,’ Mary told her friend, blinking furiously to stop the tears that were stinging her eyelids. ‘You know … me and Alex Craig.’
‘Did you and he actually … you know…?’
Mary bit down on her mouth and stared at her hands that were clasped tightly in her lap. She shook her head. ‘We had feelings for each other right from the start. I know it was wrong, but … Oh, Iris, if only he had lived … I’m sure we could have been so happy.’
‘Stop it! Stop it this instant, Mary West.’ Iris gave an agonized cry and searched for her hankie. ‘I haven’t stopped thinking about Gaston and wondering where he is and if … Oh, hell, now you’ve got me blubbering.’
Mary gave a sniff, dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, feeling ashamed. Here she was in her brand new FANY uniform and she was behaving disgracefully. There was more to life than dwelling on the bad things, like Iris and her Frenchman, and Effie who might never walk again. Walter might end his days as a gibbering idiot. And Alex … dear, sweet, gorgeous Alex, whom she had fallen in love with on such short acquaintance – he was lying under the sea, or mangled on a beach at Dunkirk and it was all for nothing. So many lives destroyed. For nothing.
Put an end to all this self-pity, Mary West. Get hold of yourself, girl, and get on with your life. You don’t stop fighting until there’s nothing left to fight for.
There was a great reunion when Mary and Iris met up again with their unit in Glasgow before going further onward to the Polish camps on the west coast of Scotland. It was a case of laughter and tears as they did a head count to find out who was still attached and who was missing. Kate Holland and Sally Ferguson were there, but Alice Leatherby had mysteriously disappeared, her absence explained in couched terms such as: I think she was going to be married. Damned good job, too, since she was so-so, if you ask me.
Everyone was sad to hear about Effie Donaldson. She had never integrated with the unit, but her reliability and her bravery had astonished them all. And then there was Anne Beasley. No one seemed to know anything about her.
‘There was always something not quite right about Beasley,’ said one girl, her face twisting. ‘Couldn’t quite make her out.’
‘She thought herself a bit above the rest of us, I think,’ said another. ‘I don’t know why, just because she’d lived in France and spoke French and German like a native.’
‘I think she was just reserved,’ Mary said, needing to be loyal to her childhood memories of times spent with Anne in France. ‘Not a people person.’
‘You can say that again. Not FANY material either, I would say. Got the jitters at the mere whiff of trouble.’
Mary saw Iris glance warily her way and guessed that she was remembering how she had fallen foul of her nerves leading the unit to St Malo. She said nothing, but gave an encouraging smile. Nobody knew what had happened that day and there was no reason for them to be made aware of it now.
They picked up the new transport from the FANY HQ and started off on the journey up the north-western coast of Scotland. Getting away from towns and the eastern coastline had brought back to them all just how beautiful Britain really was without the brutal scars of war.
The camp to which they were allocated was indeed a bleak, God-forsaken place, but the Poles gave the girls a warm welcome. It was good to see them all again, Mary thought. Especially her old friend, Jan Berwinski.
‘Mary!’ He stood before her, his arms open wide, his smile genuine and his eyes betraying the fact that he believed they had already enjoyed a special kind of relationship.
‘Hello, Jan! Oh, it’s lovely to see you again.’
The kiss was unexpected. His soft lips caressing her cheeks, his hands squeezing hers in the way that people do when there is something going on between them. Mary wasn’t disappointed, but she couldn’t put her whole heart into it. Jan still had a wife and two children somewhere, as far as she knew. The attraction was no doubt born of mutual loss and loneliness.
‘He’s in love with you, Mary,’ Iris said later that night as they sat warming themselves around a peat-stove.
Mary held her hands out to warm them, wondering how much colder it would get before winter actually set in.
‘It’s what happens to people when they are thrown together in tragic circumstances or when they share danger,’ she said, wishing she could feel more for the Polish soldier who had latched on to her as if she were some kind of guardian angel.
‘He’s really nice,’ Iris persisted. ‘You’re lucky. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet up with Gaston again. Hell, I don’t even know if Gaston Frébus is his real name!’
No, Mary thought, gazing into the glowing stove, nothing seemed real any more. It was like walking through a dream that was sometimes good, sometimes bad. The trouble was, when you woke up, one day in the future, you would find it wasn’t a dream at all, but terrifyingly real.
The next few weeks were something of a respite for the FANY girls while they tended the Polish soldiers, boosting morale as best they could. There were many social occasions when a dance would be organized and the girls would dance with the men and they would sing together around camp-fires in-between the rigorous Army training programme aimed at rehabilitating the soldiers for a return to a war that still showed no sign of coming to an end.
During the freezing days of Christmas, Mary received the most precious gift of all. It came in the shape of a greetings card from Dr Gordon and his wife.
‘“My dear girl,” Mary read the message out aloud to Iris, hardly able to contain her absolute joy. “Just had word. Alex is alive. No details as yet, but he wanted you to know. All best wishes …”
Oh, Iris!’ was all she could say.
Alex found it difficult to believe that he had been running the underground hospital at Grovignac for over a year under the noses of the Gestapo and the Vichy collaborators. French Resistance workers came and went, bringing in fresh patients, transporting others down to the Pyrenees and guiding them to freedom over the high mountain passes to Spain.
Alex waited for orders to get out, to rejoin his unit, but none came. No doubt he was too useful where he was. He was certainly kept busy and up to now, it was a miracle the hospital had not been discovered.
The Germans could often be heard engaged in ribald fun when they entertained their important guests. Fortunately, it didn’t happen all that often. However
, it was, he was sure, only a matter of time before their cover would be broken.
He often wondered whether he could trust the local Resistance man who carried messages to and fro, acting as a liaison between French and British agents.
‘Your orders, Captain Craig, are to continue your work in this hospital for the time being,’ the fellow had said when Alex tried to pump him for information. The Frenchman was pleasant enough, but he gave nothing away, appearing and disappearing with proficient ease like a ghost.
The ‘hospital’ had once been a cave, hollowed out generations ago by the then owners of the chateau, and used as a wine cellar. There was a hidden door that led through into the existing wine store and Alex and his patients had often to maintain a difficult silence when footsteps resounded on the stone stairs and there was a clink of wine-bottles only a few feet away as the Germans chose the wine for their dinner table.
Food for the hospital inmates was provided from the chateau kitchen by way of a refuse bin, which was kept clean, but where everything left over from the Gestapo meals was thrown in, supposedly to be disposed of or fed to the pigs or the dogs.
Last night the Germans had got more exuberant than usual and a few gunshots had rung out, followed by the agonized screams of Madame Laroque, who was quickly and effectively comforted by her husband, though she could be heard sobbing well into the night. In the early hours Alex allowed himself a rare breath of fresh air. He found Serge Martin, the old gardener, sitting smoking on a broken stone wall near the shed. It was a dark, moonless night and, since it was evident by the silence that the Germans had retired and would likely be comatose until morning, he ventured out, eager to stretch his aching limbs and exercise his legs.
‘Ça va, Serge?’ he whispered from the shadows behind the old man.
Serge gave a slight nod and continued to suck on his pipe. They had become friends on Alex’s few words of schoolboy French and the old man’s limited English. It was a relief, sometimes, to talk to someone who wasn’t sick or injured or scared.
The old Frenchman lowered his pipe and turned his head and Alex saw that a tear glistened on the lined cheek.
‘Bâtards!’ Serge hissed, jerking his chin in the direction of the chateau. ‘You hear their pistols, monsieur? They kill Madame Laroque’s dogs. They do it for fun … like sport. Boum, boum, boum! They laugh. It is big joke.’
He lowered his pipe and spat furiously at the ground, then shook his head sadly. Alex could feel the weight of his sorrow. He was an old countryman. He lived off the land and in his eyes animals were creatures that worked and earned their keep as well as any man. There was no sentimentality attached, and yet here he was moved at the senseless killing of four innocent lapdogs, the much loved pets of his employers.
Alex had been worried that the dogs would give something away to the Germans, but they had been kept very much under control and only one, the tiny one they had named Chiffon, had insisted on finding her way somehow into the hospital. She was little more than a pup, only a few months old. In normal circumstances, Alex could well have adopted the wee creature. However, that was over. The dogs were no more. How long, he wondered, before the Gestapo started shooting people for fun?
The two men sat side by side a few minutes more, then, not wishing to chance his luck, Alex pressed the old gardener’s shoulder and went back down the tunnel to the hospital. He checked on his patients, but all was well. They were breathing evenly, except for one large Canadian pilot whose snoring had worried them all in case it could be heard through the thick cellar walls. Alex turned the man on to his side and wedged a shoe under his back, then slipped beneath the prickly wool blanket on his own bunk.
As he put his feet down he jumped as he touched something warm and moving. Flinging back the blanket, he could see from the light of the near-gutted candle at the bedside a shaggy face emerge, with silky butterfly ears, a black nose and huge shining eyes.
‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. ‘Chiffon, is that you?’
The tiny terrier gave a squeak of delight, pounced at Alex and proceeded to lick him all over.
‘What’s up, sir?’ Private Jenkins sat up in his bunk at the other side of the room, rubbing bleary eyes.
‘It seems we have an escapee in our midst,’ Alex said, smiling down at the dog and ruffling its soft head.
‘Lucky dog,’ Jenkins said with a frown. ‘Not so sure how it leaves us, sir. She could be trouble.’
Alex appreciated Jenkins’s point, but he didn’t have the heart to do what Jenkins obviously thought was necessary. He could no sooner put his hands around the dog’s neck and squeeze the life out of her than he could kill a human being.
‘We’ll see. I think she deserves a second chance, don’t you?’
In December of 1942 Mary was called into the office of the commanding officer, a Major William Haugh. The major was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, didn’t have much to say for himself and kept well away from the social gatherings, and the girls.
‘First of all, West,’ he said, looking at Mary sternly so that she half expected to be taken to task for some rule that she had possibly broken, ‘I’m instructed to tell you that your services are terminated at this camp.’
‘Really, sir?’ said Mary, standing stiffly at ease, hands behind her back the way she knew Haugh liked it.
‘Secondly, you are to return home for a few days’ leave.’
Mary’s brow creased into a complex frown. ‘Might I ask why, sir?’
‘I am not at liberty to say anything to you at this moment, West, except to congratulate you on being promoted to captain. Word is you have carried out exceptional duties above and beyond your status. Well done, my dear.’
‘Oh!’ Mary exclaimed, still none the wiser, but she knew better than to question Army personnel, and especially the officers, when they issued an order from HQ. Why they had pushed her rank up to captain was beyond her. All she had done was her duty.
Not knowing whether to be excited or disappointed, Mary said goodbye to her fellow FANY members. Iris was tearful and claimed that the war would not be the same without her. And she said a special goodbye to Jan, who was more than a little perturbed at losing her, although he, too, was due to leave the camp very soon in order to join an Allied unit, having done a long stint counselling and helping to train his fellow Poles. Their relationship had remained pretty much platonic, though it was clear that Jan would not have objected if it progressed on a more personal level.
‘Mary,’ he said with a break in his voice, ‘one day, I hope we will meet again. I pray that it will be so.’
‘That will be nice, Jan,’ she told him, gripping his hands and giving him a brief kiss on both cheeks. ‘In the meantime, I wish you all the luck in the world.’
‘I will carry you here, for ever,’ he said, patting his heart. ‘May God keep you safe, Mary.’
‘And you too, Jan,’ she responded sincerely, adding: ‘And your family.’
They both knew that the likelihood of Jan’s wife and children still being alive was minimal, but neither one of them could bear to voice these thoughts.
It was a total surprise, to Mary when she received an invitation to Sunday lunch at Anne Beasley’s home. It was waiting for her on her arrival in Felling and Jenny West was more than a little put out, and understandably so.
‘I’ve hardly seen you since this damned war started, our Mary. How dare they think that you’d rather be eating with them on your first Sunday home?’
Mary grimaced and kissed her mother on the cheek. It was unusual, she had to agree, but something told her that it might be important to go. Besides, she was curious to know what had happened to Anne.
‘Don’t worry, Mum. You’ll have me here for Christmas.’
Jenny rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t expect the usual roast turkey and stuffing, love. There aren’t any to get any more. I’ve ordered one of Mrs Halyard’s ducks, but how I’m going to make that stretch to six people I don’t know
. Your dad’s hoping to get his hands on a joint of pork, so we might have a roast with crackling. One of his pals from the pit runs the pig club, but nothing’s certain these days.’
‘Never mind, eh? We’ll be together and that’s the main thing.’
When Sunday came around Mary presented herself at the front door of Anne Beasley’s home, but was puzzled to find that Anne was not there. She was even more puzzled to find that the other guests were a rather mysterious looking man, who was introduced as Mr Smith, and Miss Frances Croft, looking thin and gaunt and even more unsmiling than ever. Mrs Beasley fussed over her guests with a worried frown and seemed as if she couldn’t wait to be dismissed. When Brigadier Beasley suggested that she had things to see to in the kitchen she rushed off with an expression of profound relief.
‘Perhaps I can help you, Mrs Beasley?’ Mary called out after Anne’s mother, but the woman took no notice and the brigadier got up immediately to close the door.
‘Mary,’ he said, fixing her with a beady eye. ‘There isn’t time to beat about the bush. This is quite out of the ordinary and you would normally be required to do a few months’ training, but we’re hoping to waive that in order to expedite things.’
‘What things, sir?’ Mary said, feeling an uncomfortable shiver touch her spine.
‘You have, no doubt, heard of the Special Operations Executive … the SOE?’ the brigadier said, with a swift glance at Mr Smith who was studying Mary carefully.
‘Yes, of course,’ Mary replied, feeling the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stir alarmingly. ‘Some of the FANYs have been enrolled, I believe.’
‘Well, Mary, we would like to know if you would volunteer to go into France in order to do some very important work for us.’ He cleared his throat noisily before going on. ‘We wouldn’t ask, but quite frankly, my dear, you are the best candidate available to us at this time.’