A week later, at Redhill Manor, Mrs Billy Crook went through the same kind of ordeal. This time a little girl – Martha Sara.
They sent a telegram to Billy, and received one back:
TERRIFIC VERA DARLING CAN WE TRY AGAIN SOON? IN THE PINK. BILLY
*
Dick Farthing lifted the nose of the little DH-2, seeking cloud cover. The aeroplane climbed well. You just stuck the nose up, opened the throttle and she went up-hill like a Norton motorcycle.
This was the bit he did not like, getting home after a photo-reconnaissance. You were always vulnerable in the DH-2, even at the best of times, sitting out in the front with the great Gnome rotary clattering away behind you and the wind pushing in your face and making it well nigh impossible to change drums on the one Lewis mounted directly in front. But it was worse with the huge box-like camera clamped onto the side.
Now, just as he was approaching their lines again, he saw a pair of Albatros, hunting. He flicked into the cloud, feeling the dampness on his face. When would they send the long-promised Sopwith Pups, with which the squadron was supposed to be re-equipped? Next week, the Squadron Commander had told them. Next week; next month; next year. You would not be so exposed in a Pup, and you would have more fire power; and you wouldn’t be doing any photography.
He glanced at the compass, corrected, and decided to take a peep below. It should be about right. It was. Ruined church to starboard, and behind that, the terrible stained snake of the trenches, great zigged and zagged scars, with the pock-marks and scabs stretching almost as far as the eye could see.
He banked to port and saw the farm, then the copse, and beyond it the field. There were three other DH-2s just taxiing in as he lined up, and he caught sight of an elder, bigger, sister – a two seater FE-2 – parked near the Mess.
Dick was walking back towards the Mess – a tin hut hidden in the trees – when the adjutant called out to him, saying the CO wanted a word. ‘Got a visitor.’ He raised his eyebrows.
The CO had flown with them that morning, and had only just got down himself. He sat in a cluttered office, the desk piled with paper, odd bits of flying kit on chairs, and part of an Albatros prop, splintered, nailed to the wall.
‘Get the snaps, Dick?’ The CO lit a cigarette.
‘Yea, sure. Get an Albatros?’
‘As a matter of fact…’ Major Stanley Grouse – and there were many waggish comments about his name – stopped, ‘I’m sorry, we have a guest. Captain Farthing. 2nd Lieutenant Berry, 70 Squadron.’
Dick looked hard, then grinned. ‘I know you. My God, Bob Berry. Redhill. You were at my wedding, Bob, but that wasn’t even a year ago, and you were a private then…’
Berry rose, stretching out his hand. ‘A sergeant actually, sir. I didn’t want to worry Rachel. I’d almost finished flying training. Been out here since February.’
‘Well. My word…’ Dick really did not know what to say, so Stanley did it for him. ‘Mr Berry’s come to see you. There’s a job for you with 70 Squadron, if you’ll do it.’
‘Job? I’ve got a bloody job.’
‘No, Dick. One job. One sortie. Special.’
‘What do I know about 70 Squadron?’ Something nagged at the back of Dick’s mind.
‘Special Operations, sir,’ Berry said.
‘Oh my God, yes. Yes, I do know about 70 Squadron. You do appalling things like landing people behind the lines. No thank you.’
‘Could you just hear it out, sir?’
‘Listen to him, Dick,’ almost an order from Major Grouse. ‘They’ve come to you for a reason.’
‘Right.’
‘You remember Mr Giles, sir?’
‘Can I ever forget?’
‘His daughter – the one in France. Paris. You know…’ Dick nodded, almost winking at Berry, who was obviously not going to go into the whole saga in front of Major Grouse.
‘She had two children. The boy was killed in ’14, the girl’s been working behind the lines. Situation’s difficult. We’ve instructions to pick her up, this week. Any morning between six and six-thirty. Our CO’s been to London to collect the details. Problem is, they’re really not sure if it’s her, or a trap to get one of our boys on the ground.’
He looked Dick straight in the eyes. There were lines of strain around his mouth. ‘You see, I’ve never really met her, sir. Not to make a certain identification…’
‘And I have.’ Dick tightened his mouth.
‘Quite, sir. You would know her, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I’d know her, Bob. Dark hair, looks like a dream walking; answers to the name of Denise.’ He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. ‘When do we do it?’
‘Soon as possible. Tomorrow. Day after.’
Dick inhaled smoke. Day after tomorrow, he nodded. ‘Give me time to get used to one of those monsters,’ he spoke of the FE-2. ‘I suppose that’s what I fly?’
Bob Berry nodded.
‘We get cover?’
‘We’re covering you.’ Stanley Grouse stubbed out his cigarette. ‘We’ll all have to go over to Abele and have a look at the maps and orders. Going to be a long trip, Dick. You pick her up from a field the other side of Tournai.’
‘I just hope to God it’s her.’ He did not add that he also hoped he still recognized her.
*
Charles was away. Though Mildred did not know it, he had gone up North with Wood and Partridge on the trail of ‘The Fisherman’. But she remembered that he was away the moment she woke, in the darkness of her room in Cheyne Walk.
The shaking was bad and the craving even worse.
She got out of bed, remembering to put on her wrap, went to the window and pulled back the curtains. There was no moon outside.
Her whole body shook, her skull was full of bees.
She fell once, getting to the desk where she kept the things. It was a thousand years since Dr Fisher had shown her how to do the injection.
She took one ampoule, then another in case of mistakes, and carried them, with the syringe, back to the bed.
She had to go and draw the curtains again. She needed to put on the light. Shakespeare went through her head, it was catching, this Railton passion for Shakespeare: Put out the light; and then put out the light.
The flash in her head came just as she was emptying the syringe. Then her head exploded. She thought she had got the stuff into a vein before it happened, but was not sure.
It was real, and at last she knew it had happened. Knew it, remembered it – even his name. Bryden. Young Peter Bryden. Fair hair. Cheeky. Older than her and knew all about it. But she knew more, because she had read one of Papa’s hidden books. They planned it. In the woods. Oh God, no. I’ll be punished if I say I loved it; and there was blood. It hurt to begin with, but then it was all warm and nice. She wanted to do it again and again. Now, in the silence of the night, she screamed; and her mind churned with the guilt. Oh God, and then Mary Anne. Forgive! The young face of Peter, over her in the dark woods. The little pain. The big pleasure.
*
Matron did not have the stern look she usually wore when you were sent for.
‘Sit down, Railton’ She even smiled.
‘Thank you Matron.’ Something’s up.
‘I have bad news, my dear,’ Matron began.
‘Oh God, not my father. Not Papa, Matron…’
‘No, my dear. I’m sorry. Terribly sorry. It’s your mother. You’ll get compassionate leave, straight away, of course.’
But Mary Anne was not thinking about leave. It was horrible. She knew it was horrible, but she felt no sadness.
Far away, there was the noise of the guns.
Chapter Seven
The whole of Dick’s squadron flew to join him at Abele the next afternoon. By the time they arrived, he had done an hour in the more cumbersome FE-2. Dick considered it noisy and uncomfortable, but managed half-a-dozen take-offs and landings, trying to get the machine in and out using the shortest possible amount of
field.
70 Squadron’s CO – Captain Cruickshank – took him and Stanley Grouse through the essentials of the operation. Denise had been given a code name, Dot, and was never referred to by her real name.
The field chosen for her pick-up was on the outskirts of a village in open country, about ten kilometres east of Tournai. ‘Very unhealthy country,’ commented Captain Cruickshank. ‘We’ve only used it once before.’
If he approached in a north-easterly direction, Dick could taxi almost to the corner of the field. It had the only cover for miles – a small clump of trees. Dot should be waiting in the trees.
‘Make an identification, haul her on board, and get the hell out quickly,’ Cruickshank advised. Before adding the more unpleasant details, ‘If it turns out to be the wrong person, or, if she gets herself wounded on the way to your aeroplane, you shoot her. No sentiment. Orders very much from on high.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Dick groaned.
‘Best for her in the long run.’
Dick nodded gloomily, and spent the afternoon studying maps and photographs of the area. Then, before dusk, he took the FE-2 for a final test.
*
Denise had been shopping – not that there was much to buy in Lanaken these days. After waiting for three hours she had emerged with a cabbage and half a stick of bread.
As she came round the corner of Avenue Sint-Ulrik where she lived with a married couple, both members of the network, she felt quite happy. They could make soup from the cabbage, and this was the first bread they had seen for ten days.
There were two cars and a horse-drawn van outside the house. Soldiers blocked off the road, and she could just see the couple being dragged into the van. Denise remembered what she had been told and kept on walking, turning right down the small unnamed lane which ran almost up to the church.
She had a little money, and even stopped to count it. It would probably get her to Brussels. At the station she waited for an hour, every minute an agony. The railway station would be the first place they would look. If they had got the couple, Valerie and Albert, they must know about her. Jacqueline Baune.
The train came in, and she found a full compartment. They always said choose a full compartment.
She broke the journey at Leuven. They would be watching for trains direct from Lanaken, and she had some idea of taking a local. But there were police about, so she left the station and took the autobus on into Brussels.
It was almost curfew when she knocked at Marguerite Walraevens’ door, in the Rue Medori. Marguerite’s house was the receiving office for the Biscops network, and there was a wireless there. All agents had been given escape routes. Denise drew Marguerite.
She was calm and very collected, even when she told Denise, almost as an aside, that her description had been circulated, together with another. ‘Only two of you got out. I think they penetrated the whole network, Jacqueline.’
Then she gave Denise the options, to hole up in the cellar, which could be the safest, or make a run for it. If she ran, they would send an aeroplane. That meant walking, and living rough for two days and two nights, in the cold. ‘It’s a long walk, and, if you don’t make it, there’s no second chance.’
Denise said she would make it. She wanted to go now.
Marguerite shrugged. It would be arranged. She had to pass on wireless messages at eleven forty-five. The answer would be back before dawn. Denise was given maps, and shown the best route. ‘You’ll have to memorize it, Marguerite told her. ‘You can’t take the maps with you.’
She worked until three in the morning, with Marguerite’s assistant giving her the questions and answers. At five, they said it was on. ‘Start walking about eight,’ she was told.
The first night was not bad. She made good time, and found a barn near a farm. There was straw for warmth.
The second day was not so good. The wind became bitter and cutting, while Denise’s joints had stiffened. She plodded on, over open country, sticking to cover.
By dusk she reached the rise which gave a view of the village and the field. Any elation was banished when she saw the two lorries in the village centre, and soldiers crowding around the estaminets.
*
A squadron of Sopwith Pups was landing as he returned, and the mess was crowded for the briefing.
The Pups were there for support, and the briefing took an hour. There were a lot of questions, and nobody appeared to be happy about the plan. Cruickshank closed the bar at seven, and ordered all ranks to stay on the ’drome.
They took off just before dawn, using petrol-soaked rags in oil drums to mark the boundaries of the field – a very uncomfortable way of going, as witnessed by two pilots who collided, one following too close to the other. Happily neither man was injured, but the operational strength was reduced accordingly.
Half of the Pups climbed high, with some of Dick’s own squadron. The others stayed almost at trench height, putting Dick himself at five thousand feet, with a pair of Pups watching his tail.
The day came with its usual blood-red glow, magnified by the flickering crimson flashes of the guns performing their dawn ritual. Some of the explosions lit the whole sky, and as the sun rose, behind smoky dark cloud, so the whole familiar map of horror unfolded itself below them: the earth brown, black and sand-coloured, gashed and wounded.
They crossed the German lines, and the ‘Archie’ began. Dick took evasive action, forgetting, for a second, that he was flying a slower, heavier machine, so that his first steep turn almost toppled him from the sky.
They appeared to be concentrating on the section above him, and nasty black puffs appeared around the Pups and DH-2s. Dick winced as one of his own squadron’s aeroplanes turned too close, losing its tail, hesitating, before it plummeted, to explode in an oily fire among ravaged trees.
*
She judged it would take her about half an hour to get to the clump of woodland, stretching back from the corner of the fields. It meant staying awake all night, and crossing the open ground at first light.
The soldiers below in the village made a lot of noise until the early morning, then things fell silent. Just her, Denise thought, the cold, and, somewhere, an aeroplane ready to get her out. As the first signs of day showed in the east, she moved down towards the trees.
The ground was difficult and she fell several times, cutting a knee, and grazing the palm of her hand. It was day now, and she felt naked, afraid, and with an intuition that all was not well.
She reached the road. The trees and their cover lay only about half a kilometre ahead, and she began to run as she heard the sound of an engine. At first she thought it was a German lorry, then realized it came from the air. They were here to get her.
Then the noise changed, and, with horror, Denise heard what could have been an echo of the aeroplanes’ engines. This time she knew it was a German lorry.
The trees lay ahead to the right. She glimpsed the aeroplane, then, glancing back along the road, she saw the lorry, gathering speed, with men leaning from the back.
The first bullets hit the bank and edge of the road. The next volley cracked over her head, and she flung herself towards the trees. Then there were cracks and thumps, and the acka-tacka of machine-guns.
*
It took almost an hour of flying by compass and map reference. Dick spotted a cross roads given to him as a navigation point realizing that he was a mile or so to the right of where he should be. He corrected, looked behind and above, aware of only one Sopwith Pup with him.
He throttled back, holding his turn, losing height, searching for the next reference point. It took an age to come up – a stream crossing his front – and, as he saw it, he also spotted the road at right angles and the field ahead.
The aeroplane was obeying him now, like a horse adjusting to a new master. Dick touched the rudder, slewing the nose, then banking to his right, taking off power, turning to line up for the correct approach.
Down to a couple of hundred feet now, with th
e field, looking soggy and dew-damp, ahead. He felt the slap of cold as a breeze rustled in and the nose lifted slightly.
One hundred feet, and the angle of the hedge in line, nose still trying to tilt down and take him barrelling into the grass. Then, as he crossed the high hedge, Dick felt the wash of the Pup making a pass to his right, following the line of the road. Even above the engine he heard the stutter of guns.
Christ! Something up. He could do nothing about it now. The aeroplane was near to stalling, the stick almost right back against his stomach. Then the thud and rumble of his wheels.
He blipped the engine to taxi at speed towards the trees, and saw the Pup passing again to his right – the pilot signalling, pointing forward, then firing again. Something on the road.
The trees came up fast, and Dick began to turn, ready to open up the engine and make a quick take-off, knowing the breeze was now stiff.
Then there she was, dragging a small brown suitcase, a thin figure in a long beige coat and black hat, running as though hounds were after her, from the trees – the little fox breaking cover.
He recognized her, but was taking no risks. ‘For this relief, much thanks,’ he yelled, and heard the answer strong, ‘For I am cold, and sick at heart.’
‘Name of the study at Redhill?’ Her face was almost level with his.
‘General’s study,’ she panted.
‘Your grandfather’s study?’
‘The Hide. For God’s sake, the Boche’re just behind!’ and she rolled into the cockpit, pulling the case in after her, just as the Pup came straight overhead, firing and swinging its tail, trying to traverse the area behind the trees. You could see the branches leap and dance, or drop as the bullets carved through bark and wood.
As he opened the engine, kicking the rudder to bring the tail round, Dick glimpsed two soldiers breaking from the trees. A second later something hissed past his head, so he banged the throttle open and began the bumpy ride over the grass.
He was leaning forward, trying to will more speed. The breeze clapped him hard on the left side, pushing the nose to the right. He would need more room, more space to reach a safe flying speed. The machine bucked, trembling, hitting ruts in the field, slowing down its forward motion. And all the time there were angry bees zipping past him.