Page 11 of Tides of Resistance
‘I’ll be back before you know it, Ma, and we can go to the cinema together.’
‘What a lovely idea. I was sorry to miss Cary Grant’s latest picture. Talking of which, that GI Joe fellow has been around for Evie again, you know. I will admit he is rather handsome, but I worry about him breaking her heart. She’s so impressionable. When this is all over, he’ll be footloose and fancy free on his way back to America.’
‘Of course, you worry, Ma. It wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t, would it?’ Lizzie cast an indulgent smile at her mother and offered a silent prayer of thanks that her mother didn’t know what she would be doing tonight. In some ways, it was easier that she must keep her activities a secret.
Violet brought Lizzie and her mother a light lunch and then it was time to say goodbye. She had bid farewell to her father and sisters that morning at breakfast, and Pa’s eyes were distinctly watery when he hugged his daughter as though he never wanted to release her.
‘I must go now,’ she said to her mother who sat at the circular table in the drawing room.
‘So soon? Where’s your case, darling?’ she asked as Lizzie slipped her coat over her shoulders and placed her hat firmly onto her chestnut waves.
‘It’s at work. I organised it all yesterday,’ Lizzie said. That was another lie. The price of keeping her clandestine activities hidden was that she was now a practiced and extremely accomplished liar. The truth was she couldn’t take anything that wouldn’t fit into a small waterproof pouch.
Contrary to what she told her mother, Lizzie didn’t leave for her new assignment that afternoon, butinstead cut through the park to the station and entered Baker Street HQ where a small team waited to brief her on the latest intelligence from Northern France and what she should expect since her last visit.
That evening at the flat she dyed her hair black and when her glossy waves were almost dry, she appraised herself in the small bathroom mirror. Her disguise reminded her of when she’d coloured her hair for a mission in Paris. She laughed at the memory, but her mirth was short-lived and morphed into an aching nostalgia for her dear friend and sister-at-arms, Hannah.
Early the following morning, Val waited in the back of the car when she stepped outside. On the drive to the Royal Navy basein Portsmouth, she briefed Lizzie. ‘Tonight is the fourth night after the new moon. Unlike your previous drops where the full moon was your friend, for the submarine insertion we need just enough light for you to swim to shore but not so much that the German night watch will spot you.’
Val fished into the pouch she extracted from her handbag. ‘Here are your documents.’ It was good practice to give an agent their documents just as they were about to leave, so there was less risk of them being stolen.
Lizzie took them out one by one, checking the details of her identity papers with a practiced eye. ‘All looks in order,’ she said, meeting Val’s gaze.
Val nodded and slipped the pouch back into her handbag for safekeeping.
‘Look how far you’ve come since you were the new recruit who didn’t know how to jump out of a plane.’
Lizzie smiled, despite the tightness forming in her chest. ‘Well, it’s hardly something they taught us to do at school in Jersey.’
‘Quite right. If we’d known what was coming, perhaps they might have done. We certainly all could have been better prepared.’
They sat in silence for a while, and Lizzie gazed out of the window as the streets showed signs of a new day and the vehicle swept them away from London and along the quiet road towards the coast. The sky was a moody grey shot with stabs of pink as if the morning was trying its hardest to be pleasant but wasn’t quite up to the task.
‘Black hair suits you,’ Val said, piercing the silence.
Lizzie touched her hair. ‘I don’t know about that, but hopefully it will do the job and throw anyone off the scent who might vaguely recognise me from a previous mission.’
‘The odds are long you’d bump into someone from a different city, but it’s always worth taking extra precautions. What we must avoid is the Boche having your description on file, so the more frequently we change your identity, the more we’ll confuse the hell out of them.’
Val switched smoothly to perfect Parisian French, and Lizzie took her cue. The cover story the SOE constructed for her was as the daughter of her aunt’s friend from Paris. It meant she wouldn’t be expected to speak in Brittany-accented French. They talked like Parisians all the way to Portsmouth. Cover stories were a fine art, and Lizzie let her new identity fill her mind and permeate her soul until she almost convinced herself she was indeed Mademoiselle Rose Rousseau from Paris.
After various preparations, the clock ticked slowly by as Val waited with Lizzie in a little room at HMNB Portsmouth. After what seemed an age, at 5 p.m. on the dot, the duty watch officer knocked briskly and Val gave him permission to enter.
‘Good afternoon, it’s time to go, miss,’ he said, looking from Val to Lizzie.
Waves of mounting tension gripped her chest like a vice as she jumped to her feet, and they left the room in a solemn line.
They emerged on the naval waterfront, and Val escorted her towards the jetty, and they followed the submariner in his blue uniform.
Gulls screeched overhead, and the smell of diesel hit Lizzie as they approached thesubmarine. Its engines growled as it lurked on the concrete quay waiting to transport her to the coast of St. Malo—the city of Nazis.
All around them was a hive of activity, with dockworkers securing lines. The sea lapped against the hull, and oil slicks glimmered in the light. Lizzie shivered at the thought of slipping out of the submarine and swimming in the freezing Channel. Was she up to the task? A doubtful voice whispered in her head.Just because you swam at Portelet Bay doesn’t mean you are up to swimming in the Channel in the middle of the night and infiltrating a Nazi-occupied port.
She pushed the scary thoughts to the back of her mind. This was no time to let panic grip her. It was too late now, anyway. The mission was about to begin, and there was no turning back.
It was a fine line between the adrenaline of excitement and fear, and she took a deep breath, consciously drawing on the former, knowing it would get her through.
Val glanced up at the sky. ‘You’re in luck, Seagrove. The weather looks like it will hold for a smooth crossing.’
