Penn shrugged, nodding, with her mouth twisting sceptically and her eyebrows raised. Her mannerisms are what you’d imagine in a pioneering farmer’s wife. ‘Well, you don’t look so healthy,’ she said to me.
I look like I’ve just emerged from a sanatorium and am about to lose a long battle with consumption. Starvation and sleep deprivation do leave visible marks, YOU IDIOTS.
‘I haven’t seen the sun for six weeks,’ I said. ‘But sometimes the weather’s like that back home too.’
‘Well, it’s sure nice,’ she drawled. ‘It’s nice to see they’re treating prisoners so well here.’
Suddenly, in one great dollop, she sloshed all her cognac – untouched, the entire glass – into my glass.
I slugged the whole lot back in one like a sailor before anyone could take it away from me, and spent the rest of the afternoon being sick.
—
Do you know what he did last night – von Linden, I mean – came and stood in the doorway of my cell after he’d finished work and asked me if I’ve read Goethe. He has been chewing over this idea that I can ‘buy’ time in exchange for bits of my soul and he wondered if I likened myself to Faust. Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.
When he left, I said to him, ‘Je vous souhaite une bonne nuit’ – ‘I wish you a good night’ – not because I wished him a good night, but because that is what the German officer says to his unyielding, passive-resistant French hosts every night in Le Silence de la Mer – that tract of Gallic defiance and the literary spirit of the French Resistance. A copy was given to me by a Frenchwoman I trained with, just after she was brought back from the field late last year. I thought that von Linden might have read it too, as he is such a Know Your Enemy type (also he is very well-read). But he didn’t seem to recognise the quotation.
Engel has told me what he did before the War. He was rector of a rather posh boys’ school in Berlin.
A headmaster!
Also, he has a daughter.
She is safe at school in Switzerland, neutral Switzerland, where no Allied bombers raid the skies at night. I can safely assert she doesn’t go to my school. My school shut down just before the War began, when most of the English and French pupils were pulled out, which is why I went off to university a bit early.
Von Linden has a daughter only a little younger than me. I see now why he takes such a clinically distant approach to his work.
Still not sure whether he has a soul though. Any Jerry bastard with his wedding tackle intact can beget a daughter. And there are a lot of sadistic head teachers about.
Oh my God, why do I do it – again and again? I HAVE THE BRAIN OF A PTARMIGAN HEN. HE WILL SEE ANYTHING I WRITE.
Ormaie 21.XI.43 JB-S
Engel, bless her, skipped over the last few paragraphs I wrote yesterday when she was translating for von Linden last night. I think it was self-preservation on her part rather than any good nature towards me. Someone will eventually discover what a chatterbox she is, but she’s growing wise to my efforts to get her in trouble. (She pointed out to von Linden some time ago that I know perfectly well how to do metric conversions and only pretend ignorance to torment her. But it is true that she is better at them than I am.)
In addition to my extra week, I’ve now been given a fresh supply of paper. Sheet music, surely also the ill-gotten spoils of the Château des Bourreaux – a lot of popular songs from the last decade and some pieces by French composers, scored for flute and piano. The verso of the flute parts are all blank so I have paper in abundance again. I was getting a bit weary of those flipping recipe cards. We are still using them for the other work.
Wartime Administrative Formalities
I am condensing now. I can’t write fast enough.
Maddie was being groomed by the SOE long before she became aware of it. About the same time Jamie started flying again somewhere in the south of England, back in Manchester Maddie was put on a course to do night flying. She leaped at the chance. She was so used to being the only girl around, there being no more than two other women in the Manchester ATA ferry pool, that it did not occur to her there was anything unusual going on.
Everyone else on the course was a bomber pilot or navigator. The ferry pilots don’t fly at night, in general. In fact Maddie didn’t fly at night for a while after she’d clocked the hours and had her log book stamped, and she had a difficult time keeping in practice because she used it so little. Since 1940 we have not come off daylight saving at all, and in summer it is double, which means for a whole month it doesn’t get dark till nearly midnight. Maddie couldn’t have used her night flying anyway in the summer of 1942 unless she’d gone up in the middle of the night, so she didn’t wonder about it. She was busy – thirteen days on ferrying and two off, in all kinds of weather, and there were so many ongoing senseless administrative formalities or blunders that a bit of pointless night training was unremarkable.
They gave her parachute training too – an equally random and apparently useless skill. Maddie was trained not as an actual paratrooper, but she learned to fly the plane while people were jumping. They use Whitley bombers for the parachute training, a type Maddie hadn’t flown before, and they flew from her home airfield – nothing about it seemed strange until she was asked to come along as Pilot 2 when I was making my first jump from a plane over the low hills of Cheshire (at this point I had no choice but to cross ‘Heights’ off my list of fears). Maddie certainly hadn’t expected me and was too sharp to take it as a coincidence. She recognised me instantly as we climbed on board – despite my hair being uncharacteristically tied back with a ribbon like a pony club competitor (otherwise it wouldn’t have fitted inside those ducky wee helmets that make you look as though you have stuck your head in a Christmas cake). Maddie knew better than to register surprise or recognition. She’d been told who this group was – or who they weren’t, anyway – six of them, two of them women, jumping from a plane for the first time.
We weren’t allowed to talk to the pilots either. I made three jumps that week – the women do one less training jump than the men, AND they make us jump first. I don’t know if that’s because we’re considered cannier than men, or braver, or bouncier, or just less likely to survive and therefore aren’t worth the extra petrol and parachute packing. At any rate Maddie saw me twice in the air and never got to say hello.
I got to watch her fly though.
You know, I envied her. I envied her the simplicity of her work, its straightforward nature, the spiritual cleanness of it – Fly the plane, Maddie. That was all she had to do. There was no guilt, no moral dilemma, no argument or anguish – danger, yes, but she always knew what she was facing. And I envied that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don’t suppose I had any idea what I ‘wanted’ and so I was chosen, not choosing. There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
Thirteen days’ flying and two days off. Never knowing where she’d get her next meal or spend the night. No social life to speak of – but moments, now and then, unexpected and unlooked for, of solitary joy – alone in the sky in the cruise, straight and level at 4000 feet over the Cheviots or the Fens or the Marches, or dipping her wings in salute to a passing vic of Spitfires.
With Tom as her co-pilot (she was his senior by 100 hours’ flight time) she delivered a Hudson to RAF Special Duties. You have to take a pilot assistant with you when you ferry a Hudson. The Moon Squadron use them for night-time parachute drops, the Hudsons being bigger than the Lizzies, not so suitable for short-field landings. They sometimes land them if they have a lot of passengers to pick up. Maddie had flown a few other twin-engined bombers before (like the Whitley), but not a Hudson, and she slammed the tail a bit when she landed. Afterwards she spent a long time examining the tailwheel looking for prangs with three of the local ground crew (who decided there was nothing wrong with it). When she and Tom finally went into
Operations to get their ferry chits signed, the radio chap told Maddie politely, ‘You’re to step into the debriefing room in The Cottage for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. They’re sending a driver. Your second pilot had better wait here.’
That was because The Cottage is fairly out-of-bounds, even to people landing at the big airfield on legitimate business. But of course Maddie herself had been there before.
She swallowed an anguished sigh. Court martial? No, it was just a heavy landing. Tom had supported her loyally when they were talking about it with the ground crew and the Air Ministry would laugh if she tried to file an Accident Report. She’d be court-martialled for wasting their time. Oh – she thought – what have I done now?
The smart and charming First Aid Nursing Yeomanry girl who does the driving for the Moon Squadron didn’t ask Maddie any questions. She is trained not to ask her passengers any questions.
No room in The Cottage is so severe and forbidding as the debriefing room (I do know). It was formerly a laundry (about 200 years ago), I think, all limewashed stone walls and a big drain in the middle of the floor, and only an electric fire to heat it. Waiting in this tiger’s lair for Maddie was our dear friend the English intelligence officer with the pseudonym. I suppose you may want to dig his pseudonym out of me, but it’s rather pointless – could be anything now. He wasn’t using it any more when he interviewed Jamie early in 1942 and he certainly wasn’t using it when he cornered Maddie in the laundry.
The spectacles are unmistakable, and Maddie recognised him straight away and was so immediately suspicious she didn’t step through the door. He was leaning casually against the shabby deal desk which is all the permanent furniture in that room, flexing his bony hands in front of the electric fire.
‘Second Officer Brodatt!’
The man is charming.
‘Beastly rotten to surprise you like this. But one isn’t able to arrange such meetings ahead of time, you know.’
Maddie’s eyes widened. She felt like Red Riding Hood staring at the wolf in Grandma’s bed. What big eyes you have!
‘Come in,’ he invited. ‘Do sit down.’ There was a chair, there were two chairs, pulled up in front of the heater. Maddie could see that it was all set up as informally and cosily as it was possible to make this bleak little room. She swallowed again and sat down, and found the presence of mind to say something at last.
‘Am I in trouble?’
He did not laugh. He sat down next to her, leaning over his knees with concern drawing a line down his forehead. He said sharply, ‘No. No, not at all. I’ve a job for you.’
Maddie recoiled.
‘Only if you’re willing.’
‘I’m not –’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t do that kind of work.’
This time he did laugh, a brief and quiet sympathetic chuckle. ‘Yes you can. It’s air taxi work. No intrigue attached.’
She stared at him with tight-lipped scepticism.
‘It doesn’t mean anything will change for you,’ he said. ‘No special missions to the Continent.’
Maddie gave him the ghost of a smile.
‘You’ll have to do some night landings, and you’ll have to be available as needed. There won’t be any advance notification for these flights.’
‘What are they for?’ Maddie asked.
‘Some of our people need fast and efficient private transport – travel when and as needed, there and back in one night, no messing about with petrol rationing or limited speed on country lanes or awkward railway schedules. No risk of being recognised on a station platform or through the window of a motor car at traffic lights. Does that make sense?’
Maddie nodded.
‘You’re a consistent pilot, a superb navigator, sharp as a tack and exceptionally discreet. There are plenty of men and several women better qualified than you, but none, I think, as appropriately suited for this particular taxi service. You remembered my name. You’re well aware of our work here and you keep quiet about it, except when you send us a recruit. If you take the assignments they’ll be given in the most straightforward manner through your ATA ferry pool. S chits, secret, with a report required. You won’t be told anything about the men and women you’ll be taxiing. You’ll already know most of the airfields.’
He is really very hard to resist. Or perhaps Maddie just couldn’t ever pass up a flying opportunity.
‘I’ll do it,’ she said decisively. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Tell your assistant pilot you left your clothing ration coupons here on your last flight, and we’ve kept them for you –’
He thumbed through a file folder, held something up at arm’s length, then put it back with a sigh and pushed his heavy spectacles back up his nose. ‘Getting old,’ he apologised. ‘The middle distance is going now too! Here we are.’
He pored over the pages again and produced Maddie’s clothing ration coupons. Her stomach turned over. She never found out how he got them.
He handed them to her. ‘Explain to your colleague you were called in here today so we could return these and give you a lecture about taking greater care with your personal papers.’
‘Well, I jolly well will be more careful with them after this,’ she told him fiercely.
—
God, what a mess, I have to stop here until I stop crying or it will all be illegibly smeared
sorry sorry sorry
Ormaie 22.XI.43 JB-S
ATA S Chits (Secret)
At first it was much as he’d said – very little in Maddie’s life changed. For six weeks she heard nothing. Then twice in a week there were chits marked ‘S’ and bearing her own special code name – just an alert to let her know she was ‘operational’, as it were. But the only way the job really differed from a normal taxi run was that the chaps she picked up weren’t obviously pilots.
After that there were special flights that came regularly, but not frequently. Every six weeks or so. They were all prosaically dull. For taxi work Maddie was put back to flying small training and ex-civil aircraft, open cockpit Tiger Moths and a Puss Moth or two. Apart from the occasional night landing, there wasn’t much to the actual flying that Maddie found challenging.
There was one Lysander flight that was memorable because her passenger travelled with two guards. There is an armoured bulkhead that separates the Lysander pilot from her passengers – you can send her notes or coffee or kisses through an opening the size of a page, which she is able to shut against you if she wants, so that you cannot shoot her. Not that shooting your pilot would get you anywhere fast, except down, in a Lysander, as you would not be able to take over the controls.
Maddie was safely separated from her would-be assassin, if he was an assassin. She was never afterwards sure whether that passenger had travelled as a prisoner under guard or a liability under protection. At any rate they must have been very crowded with three grown men in the back of the Lysander.
Then at last there was me.
Maddie was interrupted in the middle of a bedtime cocoa, very cosy, at home with her gran and granddad in their house in Stockport – Maddie’s Operations officer rang and asked her to make a flight to another airfield that night, collect someone and deliver that someone elsewhere, all to be done ASAP. She’d be told where to go when she got to Oakway, but not over the telephone.
It was September a year ago, a gorgeous, glorious, clear and windless night, some of the best flying weather Maddie had ever known. She scarcely had to fly the little Puss Moth, merely to point it southward along the darkling hills. A great big wonderful waxing bomber’s moon was rising as she arrived at the pick-up airfield, and Maddie landed just before the local squadron took off. She taxied to the Operations hut as the brand-new Lancasters were leaving. The demure Puss Moth shuddered in the wind of their passing, like a marsh hen among a flock of grey herons – each thrice her wingspan, each with four times as many engines, heavy with the night’s fuel and payload of explosive, off to deliver vengeful destruction to Essen’s
factories and railway yards. Maddie taxied her little plane to the apron in front of the Operations hut and idled the engine, waiting. She’d been told not to shut down.
The Lancasters roared past. Maddie watched with her nose pressed to the windscreen and for a second didn’t notice the passenger door being opened. Ground crew, caps pulled low and faces hidden in the wing’s shadow, helped the passenger in and fastened her harness. There was no baggage apart from the indispensable gas mask in its haversack, and as usual Maddie wasn’t told her special passenger’s name. She saw the silhouette of a peaked WAAF cap and could sense that the passenger was hugely keyed up, taut with excitement, but it never occurred to Maddie that she might know this person. Like the SOE drivers, she had been instructed not to ask questions. Over the purr of the engine she shouted emergency exit instructions and the location of the first-aid kit.
Once airborne, Maddie didn’t initiate conversation – she never did with special passengers. Nor did she point out how splendid the black and occasionally silver landscape was below them in the moonlight because she knew that part of the reason this person was being flown to her destination at night was so she couldn’t guess where she was going. There was a gasp from the passenger when Maddie, all business, unclipped the Verey pistol from the side of her seat. ‘Don’t worry,’ Maddie shouted, ‘it’s only a flare gun! I haven’t got a radio. The flare lets them know we’re here, if they don’t hear us buzzing them and put the lights on for us.’
But Maddie didn’t need to let off her firework display because after circling for a minute or two, the runway lights blazed up and Maddie put her own landing light on.
It was a straightforward landing. But not until the aircraft had come to a full stop and the engine shut down did the passenger startle Maddie by leaning over and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.