Page 33 of The Dark of the Moon
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I can get my bike out of the shed and we can go on some expeditions.’
‘I like that idea very much indeed,’ she said. ‘Let’s give it a whirl.’
We tried it out in the lane, once we’d unpacked the shopping. She was pretty good at it, even with her false leg, and she smiled a lot and said, ‘Not bad for a dinosaur.’
I said, ‘Much better. A dinosaur couldn’t ride a trike, not even a Coelophysis which was a biped and probably about the closest in size to a human being.’ And then we had lunch and afterwards we sat on the porch, and I recorded some more of her Life Story.
Philly
Ben had returned from a mission a few nights before, the last one in that moon period, and now we had the luxury of two weeks together before he’d be off flying again. I tried to keep my anxiety from him, but he could tell something was up.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked, as I cooked him breakfast in our cottage.
‘There’s been some news from Spain.’ I set a plate of eggs and bacon on the table in front of him and sat down, pouring myself a cup of tea. ‘It’s still pretty sketchy, but none of it is good. Antoni, Gwido and Maksymilian were betrayed by their guide as they tried to cross the border. They’re in the hands of the Nazis.’
‘That’s awful news,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘What about the others?’
‘There’s been no word of Janina and Jakub. As far as anyone knows, they’re still hiding out in France. But Marian and Henryk did manage to make it through the mountains. They crossed the border safely, but then they were robbed by their guide, who took all their money. The Spanish security police arrested them. They’re trapped there now, holed up in a Spanish jail, although I suppose that’s better than being in German hands. Our people are working behind the scenes to try to get them released, but it’s tricky with the Spanish.’
Ben set down his fork and knife and reached across the table to take my hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Philly. Maybe there’ll be better news soon, though. Don’t give up hope.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s all we can do ... hope and pray.’
I was kept busy during that time, helping train the latest Resistance fighters who’d been brought over, so I spent the days with them at the farmhouse in a village a few miles away where they were accommodated.
Major Bertram’s wife, Barbara, was kindness personified. She’d welcome the agents arriving at Tangmere on the Lysander flights, no matter at what ungodly hour they appeared. She and Tony, along with their two young sons, cheerfully shared their four-bedroomed farmhouse with up to twenty guests at a time, somehow finding space for them.
As well as instructing the French agents on the skills they’d need to help operate makeshift landing strips in darkened fields, and set up and run new Resistance networks, we tried to make their time in England as homely as we could, knowing how hard it was for them to be away from their families in that time of war and knowing the risks they’d be facing on their return. Our ‘guests’ were always eager to help with the chores or bowl cricket balls for the Bertram boys on the lawn. I’d regained my strength by then and had got used to my wooden leg. When time and weather permitted, I’d take a couple of the visitors for walks down local lanes where we’d forage for food to help supplement the thinly stretched supplies. Our French visitors were often more adept than I was at spotting the supplies that grew in our natural larder. The Bertrams did a wonderful job of providing for them, but the full extent of the operations they were running had to be kept a close secret and so it was difficult to obtain extra rations without giving the game away. We put about the story that the house was a convalescent hostel for injured French officers who’d managed to get out of France, but I think some of the locals must have suspected a bit more wasgoing on. Barbara’s chickens provided an ample supply of eggs, and the local butcher would add a few extra sausages to our order whenever he had any to spare. In the farmhouse kitchen we would make hearty stews supplemented with vegetables from the gardens of neighbours, which were quietly offered up as gifts.
Some of our ‘guests’ were regular visitors. These were the leaders of the Resistance networks, who travelled back and forth carrying important intelligence. Others only came once. When they’d been given their instructions for how to identify suitable fields for use as landing sites, how to organise the operational side of things at their end and how to help a British Special Duties pilot land a plane with the use of nothing more than pocket torches, they would disappear back to France by the light of the moon, and we wouldn’t see them again. They would either be successful, helping more agents be extracted from beneath the noses of the enemy, or they’d be denounced or discovered, captured and killed. It was a brutal time, and we were all too aware of the terrible risks they were taking.
The radio operators had the most dangerous job of all. Sometimes the awful news would filter back to us that one of them had been caught. I remember coming into the kitchen one morning to find Barbara sitting at the table with her head cradled in her hands. When she looked up, her face was wet with tears. She’d just heard that one of our recent guests had been shot. I recalled he’d been a quiet man, very conscientious as he practised operating a radio to improve his speeds before leaving us and going back to France. We’d discovered he was a farm labourer back in his home country, and he’d loved nothing better in his spare time than to tend the vegetable garden at the farmhouse. Barbara told me that because he’d been uncovered as a member of the Resistance, only his very close family could attend his funeral. If other members of the local community had gone, they’d have been arrested and possibly executed too. But they’d found a way to pay their respects to thisneighbour who had given his life in resisting the enemy, because in the window of every house along the street where the coffin passed, a vase of flowers had been placed: field poppies, ox-eye daisies and cornflowers – the red, white and blue of the French flag.
On Easter Sunday, after we’d been to the morning service in the church, Ben and I climbed through ancient holloways leading up on to the tops of the Downs. Easter was late that year and the centuries-old pathways etched into the escarpment were already overhung with blossom, a lush carpet of wild garlic leaves releasing their pungent scent beneath our boots. He took my hand and helped me up the steeper sections where I struggled a little with my new leg. I was relieved when we reached the top, walking with easier strides across the close-cropped grass on the chalky ground. Up there, I held his hand again and told him that he was going to be a father. The wind wrapped its arms around us as we stood looking out across the low-lying fields below to where the sea flung handfuls of sequins into the spring sunshine, and my heart sang with the joy of that moment.
But then, all too soon, the moon entered its second quarter and Ben was off flying Lysander missions once again and I lay alone in our bed in the cottage, curling myself around the burgeoning curve of my belly, as I prayed for his safe return.
My work with the agents being taken to France continued to occupy my days. Alongside the French who’d be brought across for basic instruction were the more thoroughly trained British agents who were being inserted into the intelligence networks on that side of the Channel as well. One in particular remained with me. Her cover name was Madeleine, although on the afternoon before she left she confided in me that her real name was Noor and she was of Indian and American descent. She’d been in the WAAF before training to be a special agent, so she knew a bit about planes and was especially interested to see the Lysander that would be flying her to a field in northern France that night. From there, I knew from Major Bertram,she would be playing a dangerous role as a radio operator in one of the important ‘circuits’, as we called them, operating on the outskirts of Paris. She was instantly likeable, petite and self-effacing.
As I showed her around the village, she confided in me that her main concern was for her mother. ‘She has no idea I’m doing this. I’ve asked them not to tell her if I go missing. They send messages to the families, you see. I’ve said only to tell her the truth if they know I’ve been killed. I don’t think she could bear it otherwise, the not-knowing.’
I nodded, remembering Amy. Those days when we’d hoped for news ... the not-knowing was indeed the hardest bit.
So, a couple of months later, I was horrified to hear that her particular network had been disrupted. The message had come through that most of her colleagues had either been arrested or had scattered. But the agent we knew as Madeleine remained at her wireless set all through the summer, doggedly continuing to transmit vital intelligence. Ben heard from his contacts that she’d been offered a place on a flight out but had refused to leave. She couldn’t hold out indefinitely though. In mid-October, she was arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo at their Paris headquarters, and then sent to a camp. At that point, the messages about her stopped. And so the not-knowing began all over again ... It was a grim pattern we were becoming all too used to. I thought of Noor’s mother, back in London, and wondered what they were telling her, whether they were respecting her daughter’s last wishes on leaving Britain to protect her from that dreadful limbo of hope while fearing the worst.
There was one bit of good news, though, among the distressing messages that trickled through. In July, I learned that Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski had finally been freed from prison in Spain. They’d been extracted via Gibraltar and brought to Britain.
‘I assume they’ve been assigned there to Bletchley Park with you?’ I asked the colleague who phoned to tell me the news.
‘No, they’ve been sent to a separate Polish cryptographic station in Hertfordshire, to work on deciphering German SS codes there. What a waste! Honestly, it’s like using racehorses to pull a cart,’ she grumbled.
‘Well, at least they’re safe,’ I said. There was a pause. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any news of the others?’
‘No, nothing. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, though. Promise I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’
It was hard not to become too attached to the people we encountered. But we had to carry on, knowing how important the work was, and our routine, mapped out by the moon’s phases, continued inexorably as the seasons passed.
By autumn, I was so huge I could hardly move. Our baby twins arrived on the first day of December, born beneath the fingernail sliver of a new moon. So Ben was there to hold them in his arms as we laughed and cried tears of joy, happy they were here safely and that our little family would be together for Christmas.
