Troy shrugged modestly and stifled his smile.
‘I think he was a hero,’ Mason said quietly.
‘I heard your story from a gentleman at the Free French embassy in London,’ McAfferty explained. ‘But nobody knew where you’d ended up. With so many children evacuated to the countryside it’s taken two months of letters and phone calls to track you down. I feel very bad that after everything you did you’ve been shipped off to a place like this.’
‘It’s not that horrible,’ Troy shrugged, but Mason tapped his brother’s arm and scowled angrily.
‘It’s the worst place in the world,’ Mason blurted. ‘Williams beat us and locked us up with the coal, just because I made my bed wonky.’
Troy shushed his brother. Although Williams didn’t speak French, Troy was sure he’d be listening outside the door and Mason’s whiny tone made it obvious that he was complaining.
‘He did what?’ McAfferty said indignantly. ‘How long did he lock you away for?’
Troy glowered furiously at Mason, and then kept his voice low as he answered. ‘Since last night, but please don’t let Williams know that we told you. Once you’re gone he’ll kill us.’
‘You’ll not stay one more night here,’ McAfferty said angrily as she shot up from the desk. ‘I have an opportunity for French heroes like you, Troy. Whether or not you accept my offer, I think it’s best that you both leave immediately with me.’
‘Opportunity?’ Troy asked.
‘I belong to an organisation called the Espionage Research Unit,’ McAfferty explained. ‘We’re based a few hours’ drive from here. We’re training boys like you to work undercover inside occupied France. It’s dangerous work and the training is tough, but you’re exactly the kind of lad we’re looking for.’
‘What about me?’ Mason asked. ‘Can I join in?’
‘You’re a little young right now,’ McAfferty said. ‘But we already have a couple of younger children and if the war lasts long enough, you’ll be allowed to train when you’re older.’
Mason seemed excited, but Troy was more reserved. ‘So it’s my decision? I can come and look, but I don’t have to join.’
‘Exactly,’ McAfferty nodded. ‘And no matter what you decide, I promise that I’ll never send you back to this awful place.’
Troy didn’t fully understand why McAfferty wanted to take him away, and her arrival was such a surprise that he half expected to wake up back in the coal cellar and find it was all a dream.
‘You’ll need your outdoor coats, plus gloves if you have them,’ McAfferty said as she moved towards the classroom door. ‘It’s a long drive and the heater in my car isn’t much good in this kind of weather.’
Williams stood out in the corridor. He didn’t speak French, but had followed the gist of what was going on.
‘He’s a right little liar, that one,’ Williams said, pointing an accusing finger at Troy. ‘He’s only ever been punished for good reason. You’ll be better off leaving him here.’
McAfferty scowled at Williams and, finding it impossible to come up with words that properly conveyed her rage, she slapped him hard on the cheek.
‘These boys are worth a hundred of you,’ she said furiously. ‘And I’ll be writing a formal letter of complaint to the warden, you disgraceful little man.’
McAfferty wasn’t a strong woman, but her anger had fuelled the slap and Williams looked utterly stunned as he stumbled back against the corridor wall. She took a deep breath and looked down at Troy and Mason.
‘Fetch your belongings quickly,’ she said. ‘And find some blankets for the journey. I’m going to get my car started and I’ll meet you out front.’
Williams scowled at McAfferty as Troy and Mason belted off towards their dormitory, wearing huge smiles. But he didn’t utter another word.
CHAPTER FOUR
Marc leaned against a railing outside the dentist’s surgery, waiting for Henderson with increasing irritation. His mouth and the bottom part of his nose tingled with numbness. His hands were buried in the pockets of his short trousers to ward off the frost while his chin was stained purple with the iodine painted around his mouth to prevent infection.
Like all of London, Harley Street was on a war footing. Street fixtures from kerbstones to tree trunks had been whitewashed to make them more visible during the nightly blackout. Glass panes were criss-crossed with tape to stop them shattering and sandbags had been built up around doors. The cars and trucks that sped by had white bumpers and masks over the headlamps which reduced their output to a narrow slit.
It was only half past three, but the doctors’ surgeries for which Harley Street was famous closed early, enabling the medical men to drive their Rovers and Jaguars to the comparative safety of the outer suburbs before it got dark. Marc would be spending a night in London for the first time since the Blitz began and the exodus of smartly dressed men and their warmly wrapped nurses and receptionists made him anxious.
Where was Henderson?
Marc knew Henderson had arranged lunch with Air Vice Marshal Walker, but he’d promised to pick him up from the dentist by three at the absolute latest.
It was nearer to four when the lights in the hallway behind Marc went off. Dr Murray emerged with a bunch of keys and turned the mortise lock in the front door.
‘Is he still not here?’ Murray asked with surprise. ‘You could have waited in reception, poppet. You must be frozen stiff.’
‘Poppet?’ Marc said, confused.
Dr Murray laughed. ‘It’s an English expression. Like sweetheart, or dearest.’
‘Oh,’ Marc said. ‘Don’t worry anyway, he’s probably just got caught up in a meeting or something.’
‘Do you know where he is?’ Murray asked. ‘I could go back inside and telephone.’
Marc shook his head. ‘He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.’
‘Remember, no biting at the front of your mouth or you’ll reopen the cut,’ Dr Murray said, before crossing the street and getting into her tan-coloured Wolseley saloon.
As the skies darkened, Marc started to lose the feeling in his freezing toes and the streets became ominously quiet. Henderson had clearly forgotten and Marc decided to make his own way back to their room at the Empire and India club.
He was retracing the route he’d walked with Henderson earlier in the day, but the blackout made things confusing. A tin-hatted air-raid warden set Marc right when he asked for directions and, after a brief stop to glimpse between the sandbags into the unlit windows of Hamleys toy store, he reached the front of Henderson’s Pall Mall club.
The snooty doorman assumed that Marc was some kind of street urchin trying to sneak in and steal food, but after he’d insisted that he was staying in room seventy-three with a club member, a steward was sent upstairs to investigate his story.
‘Marco Polo, my old mate!’ Henderson slurred, as he swaggered down the thickly carpeted staircase, leaning heavily on the banister and with a tuft of his shirt poking out of his unzipped fly. ‘I’m sorry, old bean. I forgot all about you.’
‘Looks like you’ve been enjoying yourself,’ Marc said sourly. ‘Good meeting?’
Marc didn’t get a reply straight away because the doorman politely but insistently told Henderson to take himself into the bathroom and improve his appearance in line with club rules.
Marc followed Henderson and the whiff of booze into the bathroom. He’d been out in the cold for ages and his fingers were so stiff that he struggled to get his trousers unbuttoned.
‘I hate stupid short trousers,’ Marc complained, as he started to pee. ‘The wind shoots up the legs.’
‘English boys wear short trousers until they’re at least thirteen and a half,’ Henderson grinned, as he looked in the mirror patting down his hair. ‘We have a fine tradition of making our children suffer. But seriously, I’m sorry I forgot to pick you up. How’s your mouth?’
‘Bleeding a bit,’ Marc said. ‘And it throbs now the injection’s wearing off. So did the Air
Vice Marshal approve? Are we getting our parachute training?’
Although he was drunk, Henderson considered his answer carefully. Marc was one of six agents undergoing espionage training and morale could collapse if news spread that the unit’s future was under review, with a strong likelihood of it being shut down.
‘Walker wasn’t much use,’ Henderson replied tactfully. ‘He said I should continue trying to arrange your parachute training through proper RAF channels.’
Marc sighed as he shook himself off and moved towards the sink to wash his hands. ‘But on the train down here, you said Superintendent McAfferty had already tried everything. You said your meeting with Walker was critical.’
‘You’re a sharp little bugger, aren’t you?’ Henderson laughed, as his voice became loud. ‘No pulling the wool over Marc’s eyes, eh? Air Vice Marshal Walker’s a pissant pen-pusher. A bureaucrat! He’s been in charge of the Special Operations Executive for eight months and all they’ve done is push bits of paper around. Walker is incapable of seeing the benefits of anything that he can’t fit into a vellum file.’
Marc looked warily towards the bathroom door, fearing that Henderson’s rant would attract the sniffy doorman. ‘Why don’t you keep your voice down?’ he said nervously. ‘You can’t hit the bottle and give up on everything. If you’d done that in France we’d both be dead.’
‘This is different,’ Henderson explained. ‘On operations it’s you and your wits fighting for survival. I can play that game. But you can’t beat bureaucrats. They clamp down with their fangs and suck your lifeblood.’
‘Calm down,’ Marc said soothingly. ‘We’ll have a snooze up in our room and talk it over with McAfferty when we get home tomorrow.’
Henderson gave Marc a warm smile. ‘You’re like the son I’ve never had, you know that?’
Marc was an orphan and the remark meant a lot to him, but it would have meant a lot more if Henderson hadn’t been roaring drunk.
‘Come to the bar,’ Henderson smiled, as he headed out of the bathroom, barging into the door and crashing it noisily against the wall. ‘We can get pissed together.’
‘I’m twelve,’ Marc pointed out.
Henderson’s wild laugh drew a withering scowl from the doorman as he stumbled back upstairs with Marc in tow.
‘I know the sniffy look on that pompous ass’s face,’ Henderson said loudly, as they reached the stuffed rhino’s head mounted on the first landing. ‘He’ll have me up before the committee on charges of ungentlemanly behaviour.’
Henderson stopped and gave a salute to nobody in particular before starting up towards the next floor. Marc begged him to go upstairs and rest, but Henderson insisted on heading back to the first-floor bar.
Marc felt horrible when he reached their room on the fourth floor. It was spartan and cramped, with two narrow bunk beds against the wall. There was a dilapidated sink and a grimy window which gave a moonlit view over St James’ Square. The only consolation was that the heat rose upwards to this top floor and the warmth was wonderful after standing outside for so long.
Marc caught sight of his face in the mirror and decided to clean off the caked blood and iodine, but the maid who’d straightened the beds had taken the hand towel and not replaced it. He remembered seeing a pile of towels in the shower and toilet down the hall, so he took a short walk and grabbed one.
‘Good god, boy!’ an elderly fellow roared from behind as Marc headed back to the room. ‘This is an outrage!’
Marc turned to see a man with a neat ginger moustache charging out of the bathroom behind him. He wore an army officer’s trousers and a white vest and his cheeks were lathered with shaving foam.
Marc was startled by the shout and instinctively reverted to his native French as he turned around, ‘Pardon, monsieur?’
‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, boy?’ the officer roared. His voice was loud and boy came out like a bullet out of a gun.
‘There’s no towel in my room,’ Marc explained.
‘What?’ the officer yelled. ‘Speak up, speak up.’
Marc realised that the officer was deaf. ‘No towel,’ he repeated loudly, before pointing at the door of his room. ‘The maid took it away.’
‘That’s a bath towel,’ the officer said, as he ripped it from Marc’s hand. ‘Not to be removed from the bathrooms under any circumstance under club regulation fourteen, paragraph nine F.’
Marc couldn’t understand why the elderly officer was so concerned, but apparently he regarded towel theft as a crime comparable to rape or murder.
‘I just wanted to wash my face,’ Marc explained.
‘French, aren’t you?’ the officer said suspiciously.
‘Oui, monsieur,’ Marc said.
The officer’s look of contempt suggested that being French was one of the few things in the world more serious than taking a towel.
‘You can wash your bloody face in that bathroom and use the towel in that bathroom. But you can’t take a towel away! What’s the matter with you, boy?’
What’s the matter with you? Marc thought to himself, but he didn’t say anything.
Marc remembered what Henderson had said a few moments earlier about pen-pushers and petty-minded bureaucrats and this fellow seemed to be a perfect example.
‘I’ll wash in the bathroom then,’ Marc said, shaking his head with contempt as he walked back down the hallway and stood in front of a sink undoing the top buttons of his shirt.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the first six months after Britain declared war on Germany more people died as a result of blackout regulations banning outdoor lights after darkness than were killed in combat. Things improved as people adapted, but driving remained precarious, especially in snow and ice.
Superintendent McAfferty had hoped to be on familiar ground before dark, but getting lost earlier in the day meant that she had to make the entire drive through the blackout.
Troy and Mason huddled together under blankets in the back seats, their breath turning to steam in the unheated air. McAfferty drove in a stooped position, squinting at the road with her nose almost touching the windscreen.
It was easy to lose concentration. Fortunately the boys kept her alert, by babbling away in French. Mason told McAfferty everything, from their mother dying shortly after his birth to their cruel treatment by Mr Williams.
It was gone seven when McAfferty stopped at a guard post, with a wooden gate blocking the road ahead. Troy raised an eyebrow when he spotted a yellow-and-black sign with thunderbolts painted on it.
THIS AREA IS NOW A RESTRICTED
MILITARY ZONE
DANGER FROM UNEXPLODED SHELLS
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
‘Home, sweet home,’ McAfferty said cheerfully as the guard raised the gate and the little Austin puttered onwards.
The next few hundred metres took them up a gravel road. The trees beside it were interrupted occasionally by the ruins of cottages that had been on the wrong end of artillery shells. A sharp left took them into an evacuated village, with boards covering most doors and windows. The only occupied buildings were a sizeable farmhouse and an adjacent school building.
McAfferty parked between these two buildings and told the boys to be careful not to slip as they walked up the icy front path and through the unlocked front door of the house. After shutting the door behind herself, McAfferty sat at the bottom of the stairs and began unlacing her shoes as the boys stamped feet and rubbed their hands to get warm.
‘Oh, me feet are killing me,’ McAfferty sighed, before shouting out. ‘Anybody home?’
The shout caused a skinny-legged boy to bolt out from a conservatory at the back of the house. He wore baggy white shorts and a blue-and-white striped rugby shirt that was much too big for him.
‘Keep the noise down,’ the boy said anxiously. ‘Mrs Henderson’s asleep. She’s got one of her headaches and she’s in a mood.’
‘Oh we don’t want to upset Mrs Henderson, do we, Paul?’
McAfferty smiled.
Paul looked at the two new arrivals. ‘Mrs Henderson’s a bit moody,’ he explained, as he pointed up at the ceiling toward the bedroom directly above.
‘You seem to be running nicely,’ McAfferty noted. ‘Is your ankle better?’
Paul shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s mostly better,’ he stuttered. ‘But I still get twinges and that.’
McAfferty aimed her hand at the two new arrivals and made a formal introduction. ‘Paul, I’d like you to meet our new potential recruit, Troy LeConte, and his younger brother, Mason. Troy, Mason, this is Paul Clarke, one of our more reluctant trainees.’
Paul smirked guiltily at McAfferty’s description, as he shook Troy and Mason’s hands. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said politely.
‘Paul, I’m going to make Troy and Mason something hot to eat. Perhaps while I’m cooking you could take them across to the school building and introduce them to the others?’
Paul pointed back towards the conservatory he’d emerged from a few moments earlier. ‘I’ve got to finish feeding for Mrs Henderson first. I’m halfway through and I don’t want to get it mixed up.’
‘Ahh,’ McAfferty smiled. ‘OK then, why don’t you introduce Troy and Mason to our eight-legged residents, then you can take them across to meet the gang after they’ve eaten?’
‘What are you making?’ Paul asked. ‘I’m pretty famished myself.’
‘I’ll look in the cupboard,’ McAfferty said. ‘I’ll do something quick. Mushrooms on toast, or bacon. Do you boys like bacon?’
Troy nodded eagerly. ‘We haven’t eaten since our dinner last night.’
‘Need feeding up then.’ McAfferty grinned. ‘And how Paul can eat so much and stay so skinny I’ll never know.’
As McAfferty headed into the kitchen Troy and Mason followed Paul down the hallway and into a ramshackle conservatory at the back of the house. A pair of paraffin heaters filled the space with a sweet smell and kept the temperature close to thirty-five centigrade.
Along the walls lay glass cages. Mason approached and got a fright as he saw a huge hairy-legged spider sitting on the sawdust floor beneath a rotting tree stump.