Page 34 of The Dark of the Moon
We named them Edward and Amy, for those two dear people who had each played their part in bringing us together.
The Lysander missions continued relentlessly through the grip of winter, although operations were dictated by the weather as well as the moon phase and we would regularly receive word at Tangmere that the plans for a particular night had been called off. I have to admit, I felt a pang of relief whenever that happened, knowing Ben would be safely grounded once again. When he was away, I was able to take the twins over to the Bertrams’ house each day, where there were always plenty of willing helpers. The work I did there was a complete lifesaver for me, providing childcare as well as a most welcome distraction from worrying about my absent husband.
The war ground on and all we could do was pray for the safety of the agents we’d sent into the field and hope the Resistance circuits they’d established could continue to play their part in bringing the fighting to the earliest possible end. The intelligence being sent back was of vital importance, I knew. I still fretted about the fate of the ones who’d been sent to those terrible camps. Their faces haunted me: Noor, Gwido, Antoni, Maksymilian ... what had become of them? And where were Janina, Jakub and their baby girl? So many people had become lost in the chaos and fracture of war.
Ben and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary quietly, toasting each other with glasses of cider and then falling thankfully into bed to catch a few hours of sleep before the twins woke again.
The next morning, as I bustled around the kitchen, I heard little Edward give the beginnings of a cry from upstairs and hurried to bring him downstairs before he could wake his sister. I sat back down at the table, feeding him while his daddy finished his own breakfast. The heavy cloud cover that had blanketed the south coast for the past few days was breaking up and it looked as if Ben would be flying again that night.
I don’t think I had any sense of foreboding as he kissed me goodbye. No more so than at every other parting, at least. But I do remember drawing aside a corner of the blackout in the twins’ bedroom as I walked little Amy up and down, trying to sing her back to sleep after feeding her in the wee small hours before the dawn. The full moon looked down on us, reminding me of a nursery rhyme my mother used to sing me when I was little. So I sang it to my daughter now.
I see the moon, the moon sees me ...
Amy’s dark lashes fluttered against the curve of her cheek as her eyes – the same sky-blue as her daddy’s – closed. I let the blind fall again, plunging the room back into darkness, and laid her carefully back in her cot beside her sleeping brother.
I walked back to my room as quietly as my leg would allow, smiling as I thought of Ben. I thought of the way his eyes shone when he looked at me ... Those first training flights with him when he’d been my instructor with his arm in a sling ... That evening at the club, with the Attagirls, when I’d first worn that red lipstick ... Our first kiss ... I heard him reciting the words of our poem at our wedding, and it was such a vivid memory that I felt he was there with me as I slipped back under the bedclothes and turned out my bedside lamp.
He would probably be landing in France just about now. I hoped tonight’s landing would be smooth, the handover quick and he’d be on his way back to us soon.
And I wondered whether he was thinking of me. Of us, his little family waiting for him back at home.
I knew straight away the next morning.
I was expecting Ben to walk into the kitchen, back from another long night’s flying, ready for his breakfast and a few hours’ sleep. But instead, there was a soft tapping on the back door and Major Bertram was standing there. He didn’t need to say a thing. I slumped on to a kitchen chair.
‘We don’t think he was killed,’ Tony said, reaching for my hand. ‘Our contacts say the landing was compromised though. There were Germans waiting in the place of themaquisards. Someone in the network had betrayed them. The two agents and Ben were taken away. He’s missing, Philly, not dead. And we’re doing everything we can to find him and bring him back.’
And so it was that my own not-knowing began. A state of limbo, filled with despair and pain and what-ifs and empty hopes.
Upstairs, the babies began to cry. As if they could feel it as well.
Finn
Now that we had the bikes, Philly and I decided to go and explore some more cemeteries. We cycled all the way to Ars-en-Ré, near the salt marshes on the north side of the island, and Philly was very interested to see the war graves there, in a corner of the graveyard. There are 12, and it’s easy to spot them because there’s a big badge painted on the wall behind them with a crown and an eagle and the wordsPer Ardua Ad Astra, which means ‘through adversity to the stars’ in Latin. That’s the emblem of the RAF and it’s pretty cool.
She stopped in front of the very first headstone, which was forPilot Officer John Patrick Muirhead100092, and reached out her hand to touch it. The inscription said he died on the 20th July 1942 and he was only 20 years old.
‘I remember him,’ said Philly. ‘He was Scottish, a young lad from Stirling. See, it says it here on the stone. He was one of the many pilots who came through Tangmere – not flying Lysanders, but Wellington bombers.’
‘Did you know he was going to be here?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I looked up all the war graves on the island before I came. Everything’s online nowadays. I can show you when we get home if you like.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘There are two more from the same date.’
She nodded. ‘More of the same crew. Their plane went down while they were on a mission in the Bay of Biscay. At that time, the Germans had made what they called the Atlantic Wall, a line of defences stretching all the way from the North Cape of Norway to France’s border with Spain. These boys would have been on one of the missions to try to weaken it.’
I decided to make a rubbing ofJohn Patrick Muirhead. While I was doing it, Philly went and stood in front of another headstone in the next row. It said
An Airman
Of the
1939 – 1945War
Found15January1943.
She put her hand on that headstone and stayed like that for a very long time, not saying a word. The sun glinted on her wedding ring, which she still wears even though Ben has been gone for more than 70 years.
