Page 11 of Whispers At Dawn
‘It’s a lovely afternoon,’ the good-natured doorman remarked as they exited onto Baker Street.
Jack shot off at his usual pace and Lizzie did her best to keep up, until he turned and stopped. ‘Sorry, am I walking too fast again?’
Lizzie laughed. ‘The only way I can keep up with you is by holding onto your arm, but as that’s too risky here, I’d better start running.’
Jack slowed, and they walked side by side, arms brushing occasionally, both conscious of how they shouldn’t touch in the usual fashion when they were near the SOE.
‘Fancy an ice cream?’ Jack asked, pointing to a Wall’s ice cream vendor.
‘What a wonderful idea,’ Lizzie replied. ‘By the sounds of it, we won’t be tasting any ice cream for a while. Val told me rations are just as meagre in Vichy France as in Paris.’
‘My thoughts exactly. We’d better make merry whilst the sun shines on us.’
They waited for two small ice creams to be served and took a seat on a wall near Regent’s Park.
Lizzie licked the vanilla ice cream with enthusiasm. ‘I don’t remember when I last had an ice cream. This is delicious.’
Jack laughed and reached over to wipe her face. ‘You’ve got a big smudge of it above your lip like a vanilla moustache.’
Lizzy giggled and for a moment they were like young lovers on their lunch break, without a care.
Jack crunched the last of his cone. ‘It’s not pre-war quality, but it’s edible. Summer is officially here. Come on, darling. Let’s take a turn around the park.’
‘Lizzie rubbed her hands together and touched her lips. ‘All gone?’
‘All gone,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘You’re stunning, as usual.’
Lizzie accepted the compliment with grace and countered with one of her own. ‘You’re attracting your fair share of admiring glances. You cut such a fine figure in that uniform, Captain.’
They entered the park and started walking. ‘Gosh, last summer this park was immaculate. Look at it now,’ Lizzie said.
Her eyes took in the crushed tulips in the once pristine flowerbeds. The grass was singed in places and Nissan huts and floating barrage balloons littered the park, making it look more like a war zone than a recreational site.
The sun beamed down on the thick material of Lizzie’s uniform, and she was too warm outside for the first time since the previous summer. As she gazed upwards at the pale blue sky, she saw a cluster of fluffy white clouds drift by, as though they had all the time in the world. ‘It really is summer. It’s been a long old winter, and sometimes I thought the end would never come.’
‘This time next week, all going to plan we’ll be in Toulouse at my uncle’s château.’
‘I can barely believe it’s happening so soon. It feels surreal,’ she said, smiling into Jack’s warm eyes.
‘We’d better test each other, so we’re ready,’ Jack said. ‘My uncle used to be sharp as a whip, although he’s older now, so he might have slowed down.’
‘What will we tell him?’
‘First, we must pretend he’s not my uncle, or it will be a dead giveaway. Some of the older residents of the village may recall he has nephews in London who visited as boys. It only takes one Vichy official or collaborator to mention his sister has lived in London for over thirty years and they’ll be onto us before we’ve found a place to hide our radio.’
‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ Lizzie said. ‘So, what relation will you say you are, then?’
‘We’ll say I’m a distant cousin who has never visited before. That way, he won’t need to remember anything about my fake background. We need to bear in mind, he’s elderly, so who knows what state his memory is in. Let’s keep things as simple as possible.’
Lizzie’s eyes twinkled. ‘Talking of which, what do I need to know about you, my darling husband?’
‘You know far too much about me already,’ Jack said.
‘Yes, but I need to know about the imaginary you. If we’re to fool everyone into believing we are a married French couple, we must know everything about each other.’
‘True. Look how far you’ve come since last year. Now you’re drilling me!’
They walked on exchanging ideas they could use for their cover story, and Lizzie suggested they say they were from Brittany. She had spent a lot of time in St. Malo with her cousins and knew it well. Jack had visited Brittany several times and said he could pull it off. They agreed they would create their exact cover stories over the next few days and would test each other and be word perfect before they flew out the following week.
