‘I wonder where Frank is, Lil,’ Edie murmured, but she dare not even speak Beth’s name so deep was her anxiety for her daughter.
But just when they thought the tide had really turned in favour of the Allies, Germany unleashed a new and deadly weapon; the V-1 rockets or doodlebugs, as they became called. By July, parents were sending their children out of the cities yet again.
‘Did you hear them going over us yesterday, Lil? Archie reckons they’re not aimed at us though. They’re on their way to the cities, Sheffield, most likely.’
‘The reprisals will start, Edie. The Germans took drastic revenge on ordinary civilians – whole villages sometimes – for any German officers killed by the French Resistance, and now I expect they’ll think it’s payback time. D’you know, I can find it in my heart to feel sorry for the German women and children. I shouldn’t think they ever wanted a war any more than we did, but they’re going to take the brunt of the retaliation when the Allies get there.’
‘Aye, you’re a more forgiving soul than I am, Lil.’ Edie smiled. ‘There ought to be more folk in the world like you.’
‘Well, somebody ought to put a stop to it. If they go on playing tit-for-tat, it’ll never be over.’
Thirty-Five
Emile suppressed a shudder as he faced Maurice and the men ranged behind him. He knew only too well what was happening right now to girls and women who had fraternized with the enemy. They were being humiliated and ostracized – or worse. Sometimes, whole families were being punished for collaborating during the dark and difficult days of occupation.
‘She was not a collaborator – far from it. She—’ Whatever he had been going to say was cut off as Maurice barked an order.
‘Hold him.’ Two burly men ran forward, caught hold of Emile and held him fast. Though he struggled, in his weakened state after months of living rough in the woods, he was no match for them. ‘Search everywhere. Even the house. I know she was living with the Détanges. What I don’t know is, whether or not they’re collaborators too,’ the man said in his deep, rumbling voice.
‘No, no,’ Emile shouted. ‘They’re not. You know they’re not, Maurice.’
The big man turned on him. ‘I know you’re not, Emile. We all know you’ve worked with the Resistance since the early days. But are you sure about your parents? Can anyone be sure of their neighbours or even of their family any more?’ There was a bitter note in the man’s voice as his cohorts searched the farmhouse and the outbuildings.
Stay hidden, Beth, Emile prayed silently. He twisted his head to see his elderly parents being hustled out of the house and into the yard. His mother was shaking, his father angry and struggling against the men who held him.
‘Monsieur,’ Maurice turned to him. ‘We suspect you and your wife were collaborators.’
Raoul spat on the ground at the man’s feet. ‘How dare you?’ he boomed. ‘When my son risked his life every day for the likes of you to stay safely in your homes? I didn’t see you living in the woods, Maurice Arnaud, or your family going short.’
Maurice clenched his fists and took a step towards Raoul, but then he stopped and contented himself with a glare filled with loathing, saying only between gritted teeth, ‘I’ll not hit an old man and, for the sake of your son, you’ll not be harmed, even though you supplied the enemy with food.’ His glance included Marthe, still being held by one of his men.
Raoul glanced around the surly villagers. ‘But tell me – all of you – didn’t you do what the occupying forces told you to do – to save your lives? What good would it have done to deny them food? They’d have taken it anyway and likely killed us too. We did not collaborate, but we had no choice.’
‘Yes, you did,’ one of the men holding Marthe said. ‘I’d have sooner burned my farm to the ground than let them have my crops and livestock.’
Raoul, still being held fast, twisted to look at him. ‘Ah yes. François, the shoemaker. Don’t try to tell me you never mended a German’s boot.’ The man’s glance dropped to the ground. ‘And you, Lucas, the blacksmith, did you never shoe a German horse? And you, Victor, did they not buy meat from your butchery?’
‘I always kept enough back for the villagers,’ the man protested. ‘They were always fed first.’
‘Never mind all that now,’ Maurice snapped. ‘We all did what we had to do, we accept that now, and there’ll be no reprisals against you, Raoul. But tell me, where is the girl?’
Raoul answered swiftly. ‘Gone.’
Maurice’s lip curled. ‘To her friends in Germany, no doubt. Well, let me tell you, the officer who helped her escape has been shot by his own people for helping her.’
‘Maurice,’ Emile now spoke quietly. ‘She worked with us – she was one of us – sent from England as an agent. She was the wireless operator and at times a courier for our circuit. She kept us in touch with London. It was she who radioed when we needed a drop or to get escapees out. And she sent the messages that sent us arms.’
They all knew that the Resistance movement had been active here and several of the villagers had helped airmen to find the route home.
For a brief moment, Maurice looked uncertain.
‘What about the time Julien Lafarge was betrayed? He was arrested and tortured before being shot and then five men from our village were shot in reprisals for having helped two British airmen. Are you saying that girl had nothing to do with all that?’
‘I am,’ Emile said calmly.
‘Then who did betray him? It wasn’t one of us’ – Maurice gestured with his hand towards the group of men ranged around him – ‘so who?’
Emile shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I think the “safe” house where the airmen stayed in the village sometimes was no longer safe. That’s where they were found.’
‘You think the British airmen betrayed Julien?’
‘No, I don’t. Not for a minute. I think it was just bad luck that the Germans raided that particular house. Whether or not they had a tip-off, I don’t know.’
‘The airmen were questioned,’ Victor put in. ‘Henri Lafarge saw one of them brought out from the German headquarters across the road from his shop when they were being taken back to a prison camp. He’d been badly beaten – he could hardly walk. The German soldiers had to drag him to the lorry. They flung him in the back. Brutes, they were.’
‘And you think you’re any less of a brute, because I know exactly what you’re planning to do if you find that poor girl,’ Raoul said.
Some of the group had peeled away and were wandering into the outbuildings and even into the farmhouse. With a supreme effort, Emile kept his gaze firmly fixed on Maurice’s face; he didn’t want to give away any hint as to where Beth was hiding.
There was a moment’s pause whilst some of the men shuffled their feet and murmured to each other, their uneasy glance coming back to Maurice. And then came the shout that Emile had dreaded to hear. ‘She’s here. In the hayloft. We’ve got her.’
Emile met Maurice’s accusing gaze squarely, but he kept silent. Two men appeared out of the barn dragging Beth between them.
‘Fetch a chair from the kitchen,’ Maurice barked. ‘And tie her to it. Philippe’ – he beckoned the village barber – ‘get your scissors ready.’
Emile struggled again, but he was held fast.
‘You barbarians,’ Raoul shouted. ‘She’s no more a collaborator than you are, Maurice Arnaud. Let her go.’
Maurice spun round and shook his fist in Raoul’s face. ‘Hold your tongue, Détange, else the same will happen to your wife for having sheltered her.’ Raoul glared at him and then his wrinkled face fell into lines of disappointment and sadness. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, Maurice,’ he said softly now. ‘Yes, we helped her, we sheltered her, but she was working with us, for us. If you don’t believe me, look at her feet. There’s the proof.’
‘Take no notice of him, Maurice,’ Philippe said, brandishing his scissors as Beth, her eyes wide and frightened, was tied to one of
Marthe’s kitchen chairs. With an expression of fiendish delight, Philippe grasped a handful of Beth’s hair and hacked at its roots. Her dark locks fluttered to the ground and were blown away by the wind. Beth bit down hard on her bottom lip and kept her gaze fixed on Emile’s face. She could see tears in his eyes; this brave man who had suffered countless dangers was shedding tears over the loss of her hair. The sight of his acute distress was almost the undoing of her. The image of his smile, of the love in his eyes even though it had never been spoken of between them, had kept up her courage during her time of captivity, but to see him now – and he was weeping openly – was harder to bear than the indignity she was suffering.
When Philippe had cut away as much of her hair as he could with his scissors, he drew a razor from his pocket and without soap or water ran it over her head, leaving small cuts and scrapes on her scalp. Then, with a cruel smile, he stood back to admire his handiwork.
‘And what would your German lover think of you now, eh?’ he smirked.
Slowly, Beth turned her face towards him, gathered a globule of spittle in her mouth and spat at his feet. Incensed, the man drew back his hand and struck her across the face with such force that she fell sideways, only the restraints kept her from falling off the chair to the ground.
With a roar, Raoul pulled himself free and strode across the yard. He knelt beside her and cradled her head on his shoulder. He glanced up at Maurice and then bent and untied the laces of Beth’s shoes. As he slipped them off her feet, the men drew closer and saw for themselves where her toenails on her left foot had been wrenched out.
For a brief moment, Maurice looked shame-faced, but then he muttered, ‘That’s no proof. They could have done that to her to cover the truth.’
‘You think so, eh?’ Raoul said bitterly. ‘Well, let me tell you, Emile is right. The English sent this girl over here as a wireless operator. Her cover was here, working on my farm. She has risked her life and this is the thanks you give her.’ As Beth began to come round, he stood up. ‘Release my wife and Emile and get off my land. You’re not welcome here any more, Arnaud. Nor any of you.’ He waved his arm to encompass them all.
As the men, muttering amongst themselves, turned away, Emile untied the bonds fastening Beth to the chair and tenderly carried her into the farmhouse. Now that they were out of earshot, her courage failed and she clung to Emile, sobbing against his shoulder whilst Raoul tried to comfort Marthe. She, too, was weeping inconsolably. ‘Oh Leonie, poor Leonie. Look what they’ve done to her. The brutes! How could they do that after all she’s been through?’ It was difficult after all the months of using Beth’s cover name to call her anything else. It would take time for the fear of being in daily danger to lessen. And it would be a long time before the memory of Beth’s humiliation – and hurt – suffered at the hands of both the enemy and, now, their own people would be erased.
Emile held her close and kissed her shorn head trying to show her by his loving action that what had happened made no difference to his feelings for her.
‘You must go home,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll get you home.’
But, with her face buried in his chest, she shook her head. ‘I can’t. I can’t go home looking like this. I can’t ever go home.’
Thirty-Six
May 1945
‘It’s looking like it’s finally over, then. We’re all just waiting for an official announcement from the Prime Minister, but plans for the celebrations are starting already.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Edie frowned, ‘but when are they all coming home? That’s what I want to know.’
‘I expect Irene and Tommy will be the first to come back. There’s no need for them to stay in the countryside any longer, is there? I can’t wait to see our Tommy. Fancy, he’s going to school already, so Irene said in her last letter. And your Reggie will have grown too. He’ll be school-leaving age now, won’t he? You can hardly credit it, can you?’
‘It’s been a long time,’ Edie sighed. ‘I just wish we’d been able to see them more often, but it was always difficult, wasn’t it, even though they were only a few miles away?’
Lil said nothing. The war had made it even harder for her to eke out her earnings; she hadn’t been able to afford many jaunts into the countryside.
‘But I’ll tell you summat, Lil. I’m not letting our Reggie go to sea. It’ll be over my dead body if he does.’
‘What about Frank? D’you reckon he’ll go back to sea when he does get home?’
Edie shrugged. ‘I expect so. It’s all he knows.’ She paused, remembering the quarrel with Archie. ‘If he can find owt, that is.’
They were silent for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts about the changes that were to take place soon.
‘So,’ Edie said at last, ‘when can we take down the blackout and start trying to get back to normal?’
‘Normal?’ Lil murmured. ‘What’s that?’
‘Well, y’know, before all this started. Get back to how we was before.’
Lil eyed her friend sorrowfully as she said softly, ‘Edie, duck, we’ll never get back to how things were before the war.’
Edie placed her cup gently back onto its saucer and met her friend’s gaze. ‘Then,’ she said, resolutely, ‘we’ll just have to make a new life, won’t we?’
‘Edie – I’ve had a letter from Irene. They’re coming home on Tuesday.’
‘Aw, Lil, that’s grand. What about Reggie? Is he coming an’ all?’
Lil bit her lip. ‘She doesn’t say, Edie. Sorry.’ Suddenly, Lil seemed ill at ease. ‘I’ll have to go, duck. I’m going into town to do a bit of shopping. Owt you want?’
‘Don’t think so, Lil. I’ll have to go myself tomorrow.’
‘Ta-ra, then.’ Lil scuttled away and it wasn’t until she closed her own back door behind her and leaned against it, closing her eyes for a moment, that she let out a sigh of relief. She had indeed had a letter from her daughter but she hadn’t taken it with her to Edie’s in case her friend expected to be allowed to read it. When the rare letters came from Frank to Edie, or, even rarer, the postcards from Beth, Edie had always let Lil read them. And she, in turn, had always shared her letters from Irene with Edie, but today she couldn’t show her friend this particular letter. There was news of Reggie but Lil didn’t want to be the one to tell his mother.
‘I’ve had a letter an’ all,’ Edie said on the Monday evening when Lil came round for tea. The two women often shared tea together when Archie was away. ‘From Reggie. He definitely doesn’t want to come home. He wants to stay in the country. Did you know?’ There was accusation in her tone.
‘No – yes, I –’ Lil was suddenly flustered, but she couldn’t carry on a deliberate lie. There’d never been any secrets between the two friends, not in all the years they’d known each other. She sighed heavily. ‘Irene mentioned it in her letter, but I didn’t tell you then because I thought mebbe she’d got it wrong – or he’d change his mind.’
Edie sniffed but said nothing, though her tone was a little stiff when she said, ‘Well, evidently he hasn’t. He’s so taken up with the farming way of life that he wants to stay there.’
‘At least he won’t be wanting to go to sea, Edie,’ Lil said with surprising craftiness.
Edie wrinkled her forehead and, mollified a little, she said, ‘That’s true, Lil. I hadn’t looked at it like that. But – not to want to come home to us – I can’t understand that.’
‘He’s not so far away. It’s not as if they went into Derbyshire like Mrs Griffin’s children. When things get easier, you an’ Archie’ll be able to go and see him and he’ll come home every so often, surely.’
‘I – dunno.’ Edie was clearly still upset to think that her youngest son didn’t want to come back home. She’d lost one already; Laurence was never coming back. She couldn’t bear to think that she’d lose another.
‘Still, there’s Frank,’ Edie went on, making a supreme effort to cheer up. ‘He’ll be home soon and th
en him and Irene can find a little house somewhere near. We’ll be able to see little Tommy every day. He’ll want to come to see both his grannies, now won’t he?’
Lil nodded, but she was chewing her lip nervously. It had to be said. ‘They say that our lads won’t get home immediately. ’Specially, those that went in a bit later on in the war like – like Frank.’
Edie stared at her for a moment before saying flatly, ‘Oh.’ She turned away, muttering to herself so that Lil hardly heard. ‘But at least he will come home.’
Lil cleared her throat, trying to change the subject. ‘When’s Archie due in? Will he be here before Tuesday?’
Tuesday loomed large in Lil’s world. It would be so good to have Irene and Tommy home again and to have company in the house, even if only until Frank came home and the little family wanted to set up in their own home. At least she’d have them with her for a few weeks, maybe even months.
‘No, he’s not due back until the middle of next week. Still,’ Edie turned back towards her friend with a smile, her good humour restored, ‘it’ll be nice for you an’ me to have Irene and little Tommy to ourselves for a bit, won’t it? And Shirley’ll be home any day. In her letter last week, she said she’d got leave soon.’
Lil nodded, relieved that Edie was once again seeing the positive side of things.
At that moment Edie’s back door opened with a rattle and Jessie breezed in, ‘Right,’ she said, without any kind of formal greeting, ‘are we organizing a street party tomorrow, then? Like we did for the coronation in thirty-seven? It’s what our street does best.’
Edie and Lil, sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of them, looked up at her in amazement. It was late – even by Jessie’s standards – to be paying calls. Tea, which Edie and Lil often shared when Archie was away, was over.
‘Party? What sort of party? It’s nobody’s birthday, is it?’
‘No, but the war’s over. VE day’s set for tomorrow and Mr Churchill’s going to speak to the nation.’
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