by Anna Fargher
Madame Fourcade was the leader of a vast intelligence network of nearly 3,000 men and women working to support the French Resistance, who were given the nickname ‘Noah’s Ark’ by the Gestapo because they used animal codenames. My first book, The Umbrella Mouse, will introduce you to many of these brave people who I’ve reimagined in animal form. Madame Fourcade’s children, Christian (aged 12) and Béatrice (10) were targeted by the Gestapo and had their own daring escape from France into Switzerland in 1943. Madame Fourcade herself was in Paris in August 1944 and organized the delivery of intelligence revealing the enemy as weaker than rumours circulating at the time, but wasn’t in the city for the liberation.
Nor was the real life New Zealander Nancy Wake, whose ability to evade capture earned her the nickname ‘the white mouse’. To my knowledge, she never met or communicated with Madame Fourcade or Noah’s Ark, who reported intelligence to MI6 while Nancy coordinated sabotage for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), including aiding and training part of the Maquis – rural bands of guerrilla French Resistance fighters that operated all over France. She was the only woman amongst thousands of men and she became one of the most decorated heroines of WWII. Madame Fourcade also spent time with the Maquis who sheltered her shortly after she had escaped capture by squeezing through the bars of her cell in July 1944. Le Maquis means ‘thicket’, hence the bramble hideout that is sadly destroyed in Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue.
My Maquis includes some key members of the real-life Noah’s Ark who were not Maquisards: Ferdinand Rodriquez (codename ‘Magpie’), Monique Bontinck (‘Ermine’) – they married each other after the war – and Gabriel Rivière (‘Wolf’) and his wife Madeleine. They appear here so I could give them weightier roles. Gabriel was executed on 21st August 1944. ‘Spider’ was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof, aged 21. Marguerite de Macmahon (‘Firefly’) was another member of Noah’s Ark who had to flee France. Pregnant, she crawled under barbed wire into Switzerland with her three children. Noah’s Ark was truly betrayed by an agent codenamed ‘Canary’ in 1942.
In France, wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1930s and did not return until the 1990s. Gabriel and Madeline’s den near Louviers was inspired by the Louviers wolf from the 16th century. The secret phrases Madame Fourcade exchanges with them were announced on Radio Londres, a station that broadcasted coded messages to the French Resistance.
Noor, my kingfisher radio-operator, is based on the British SOE heroine, Noor Inayat Kahn, who made a failed escape attempt with Noah’s Ark’s Léon Faye in 1943. Like him, she vanished under Hitler’s secret Nacht und Nebel punishment for resistance fighters. Noor was executed at Dachau on 13th September 1944. She is a kingfisher because I think they are extraordinary.
GI Joe was not recruited into the pigeon service until 1943 and he was not at the D-Day landings. I do not know where he or Lucia di Lammermoor were at the time of these events. The sky-dogs, Bing and Brian, are inspired by two of the three dogs that parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with the 13th (Lancashire) Parachute Battalion. There is conflicting evidence as to whether Bing and Brian is one dog called Brian with the nickname ‘Bing’ or two different dogs. Two appear in Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue due to War Office records for Brian (War-Dog 2720/6871) and Bing (War-Dog 2738/6218). Either way, Brian won a Dickin Medal for bravery. I like to think of them being friends. Both survived the war.
I read many amazing books in my research for Pip’s adventures. For example, The Secret Agent’s Pocket Manual 1939-1945 taught me that saboteurs plugged wax into punctured fuel lines, but as a method of starting an engine fire. I read in Smithsonian Magazine that sphagnum moss was used in WWI to treat wounds. Madame Fourcade’s own memoir, Noah’s Ark set me on this journey in the first place. There are so many fantastic resources you can use to research the period of history that interests you most and wonderful stories can come from them. I hope I have done these exceptional animals and people justice. They all deserve to be remembered.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Seeing The Umbrella Mouse in bookshops across the country and in people’s hands both in person and online has made the last year one of the best (and most surreal) I’ve ever had. Thank you to everyone who has bought it, every bookseller, librarian and teacher who has championed it, every reader, journalist, reviewer and blogger who has shouted about it. I am beyond grateful. Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue is for you.
I still have to pinch myself that the little story I wrote on my phone during my commute on the London Underground has come this far. Huge thanks to my agent, Chloe Seager, for seeing something in Pip and me in the first place, and her enduring support, kindness, wisdom, dedication and dry wit. And to the rest of the team at Madeleine Milburn – you are a lovely bunch to know. To my editor, Lucy Pearse, for her encouragement, intelligence, insight and imagination, and for believing in The Umbrella Mouse in such a way that now there is also Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue. To everyone at Macmillan Children’s Books for everything they have done for me, especially Jo Hardacre, Kat McKenna, Emma Quick, Sarah Clarke, Emily Bromfield, Sabina Maharjan and Corinne Gotch. To Samantha Stewart for copy-editing and to Nick de Somogyi for proofreading. To Sam Usher, an extraordinary illustrator.
To my grandfather, Squadron Leader Thomas Philip Fargher, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, her children Christian and Béatrice, Noah’s Ark, Nancy Wake and the Dickin Medal winning animal heroes whose incredible experiences have inspired Pip’s adventures.
To Waterstones for making The Umbrella Mouse your Book of the Month and giving it the best exposure a debut author could hope for. I will never forget seeing your windows adorned with cuddly mice and yellow umbrellas and I am forever thankful. To all your booksellers, Sue Chambers, Meg Burrows, Becca Wynde for organizing events and Fiona Sharp for nudging Disney to make a movie!
To my local independent booksellers in Suffolk: Johnny and Mary James at Aldeburgh Bookshop and Catherine Larner at Browsers Bookshop in Woodbridge.
To Sainsbury’s and Book Trust for giving The Umbrella Mouse your fiction prize in 2019.
To all the authors who have been so kind: Michael Morpurgo, Gill Lewis and Claire Fayers for their quotes, and to all the other supportive authors I have come to know both in life and online. To Mel Taylor-Bessent for having me on Authorfy.
To James Smith & Sons Umbrellas in London. Thank you for backing The Umbrella Mouse even though I blew up your shop in 1944, which never happened.
To Matthew Cobb for writing Eleven Days in Paris that informed the historical context of this book. To Lynn Olson for her biography, Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, which was published in the UK just after The Umbrella Mouse and expanded upon Madame Fourcade’s truncated and badly translated memoir, Noah’s Ark.
To Christopher Beaver (late 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards) for answering various battlefield queries from muzzle flash to explosive detonators. To my sister in law, Sophie Fargher, for checking my German insults. To Karlo Zelencic, for helping me with my Australian slang. To Sally Walton for generously letting me stay in her Paris flat for a week while I was researching. To Jonathan Holt at the Tank Museum, who helped me figure out Tiger tanks. To Steven P Wickstrom for answering my questions about herring gulls. To Cressi Downing, Clare Povey and James Rennoldson from Writers & Artists for encouraging me when I doubted myself at the very start of this journey.
To my parents Tim and Lizzie and my siblings Zoë, Matthew and Ed. I’m extremely lucky to have you. To my husband James, my heart. To the rest of my family and friends, I’m so glad I know you.
And to you dear reader. Thank you for joining me for Pip’s last hurrah. I really hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves as much as I have.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Fargher was raised in a creative hub on the Suffolk coast by an artist and a ballet teacher. She read English Literature at Goldsmiths before working in the British art world and opening her own gallery. The Umbrella Mouse was her first book, which she wrote on her phone’s notepad during her daily
commute on the London Underground. It was the winner of the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Prize for Fiction and selected as Children’s Book of the Month in Waterstones.
Anna lives in London and Suffolk.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Sam Usher graduated from the University of West England and his debut picture book Can You See Sassoon? was shortlisted for the Waterstones Prize and the Red House Children’s Book Award. He is particularly admired for his technical drawing skill and prowess with watercolour. Also a talented pianist, when he’s not holding a pen and wobbling it at paper, you’ll find him perfecting a fiendishly difficult piece of Chopin.
Praise for The Umbrella Mouse
‘Move over War Horse . . . an enchanting first novel’ Telegraph
‘An ambitious and wonderfully well-achieved first novel’ Michael Morpurgo
‘A spellbinding tale of bravery and hope, where courage is found in the smallest of heroes’ Gill Lewis, author of Sky Hawk
‘An exquisite children’s book’ Telegraph, 50 Best Books of 2019
‘Brims with courage, friendship and adventure’ Bookseller
‘A stunning debut novel’ Oldie
‘The wartime background is vivid and completely convincing and Pip and her animal comrades are beguiling characters’ lovereading4kids.co.uk
Also by Anna Fargher
The Umbrella Mouse
First published 2020 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2020 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5290-0400-7
Text copyright © Anna Fargher 2020
Illustrations copyright © Sam Usher 2020
The right of Anna Fargher and Sam Usher to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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