‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’ Marjorie snapped as Kate dropped and broke not her first teacup that morning, but her second.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kate replied, almost as grumpily. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’
‘I seemed to have developed butter fingers,’ Kate replied sorrowfully, bending down to clear away the debris.
‘You seem to have developed an inability to concentrate,’ Marjorie retorted, moving Kate out of her way as she set to with a dustpan and brush. ‘Not just here, either. It seems to be affecting your work as well.’
‘What does?’ Kate sat back on her haunches and stared angrily at her friend. ‘What does?’
Marjorie simply looked up from her brushing, shook her head at Kate and then continued clearing up. Kate, about to pursue the matter, thought better of it. Instead of involving the two of them in an argument she took a deep breath, got to her feet, threw aside the cloth she had been using to wipe up the spill and walked off into the yard outside the cottage.
Very well, teacups mattered, because nowadays they were almost irreplaceable, but Kate knew that what Marjorie was actually referring to was not her clumsiness in the cottage, but her seemingly incurable moodiness both at work and at home. At first she had thought it was simply not knowing where Eugene was that upset her, but now whenever Eugene vanished, usually without a word of warning, with no time to say goodbye, the pit fell out of her stomach and she realised she went into what she could only describe as a state of mourning; as if she had already lost the man she loved. It became a question not of waiting for news of his return, but of waiting for the news of his non-return – to be taken aside by Cissie Lavington, or Anthony Folkestone, and gently but officially told of his loss.
Every night she lost Eugene. Every night he fell victim to treachery and death, so that she began to dread going to bed and would stay up reading anything and everything in an effort to put off the inevitable. Finally she would stumble to her bed, usually managing to wake poor Marjorie with whom she shared one of the two tiny cottage bedrooms.
Cissie Lavington called her into her office the following morning. After staring fleetingly at Kate’s exhausted face, she started to hunt in her bag for a cigarette.
‘Don’t know whether you realise it, but you’ve made quite a few bishes lately, and what with one thing and another, and most particularly the way the war is going, we can’t be doing with bishes, not at the moment. A bish can cost a life, many lives, and we can’t have that. Files left out, mistyped memos, failing to come to work on time – it won’t do.’
‘I just haven’t been sleeping.’
Cissie nodded without interest and lit her cigarette, carefully putting it into the end of her cigarette holder and lighting it with the kind of regular, practised motion that a seamstress might use when threading a needle.
‘Look, dear. We know what’s up. It’s not easy, I know, and we don’t encourage fraternisation here, because it does so often interfere with work, but we don’t mind turning a blind eye to what goes on just so long as it does not lead to mistakes. You have been making too many, so I have to say . . .’ She paused, staring at Kate, who found her heart sinking. ‘I have to say that either you pulls yourself together, or you’ll have to buzz off to Baker Street, and you won’t want that, not at this time. So if I were you, I’d try to catch up on your kip, and improve your concentration.’
‘Yes, Miss Lavington.’
‘Good.’
Cissie, cigarette holder now firmly back in her mouth, nodded for Kate to leave, picking up a file as she did so, and starting to read it. Kate remained where she was for a moment, before taking several deep breaths and turning on her heel to go back to her work.
In order to achieve any part of his objective Eugene realised he was going to have to grab the initiative and force the play. Ever since he had taken up residence in his safe house in the tiny village of Escanti, hidden well away in the deep Sicilian countryside over thirty miles from Palermo, he had done nothing except wait and now he was both bored and impatient, a dangerous mix when it came to himself. He tried to control his growing restlessness by journeying daily into the nearby town of Putagia on the back of a hay cart to service and repair broken down and near clapped out farm machinery, as well as one or two of the very few private cars still running on the island. But since most of the machinery brought to him was beyond repair, owing to either age and infirmity or the non-existence of any spare parts, most days Eugene sat cleaning spark plugs or rebuilding primitive starting motors that he had cleaned or rebuilt the day before.
‘Patience,’ his friend and saviour Gianni kept advising him, every time he saw signs of increasing tension and irritation in the Irishman. ‘Things move more slowly here – we set our daily music to a slower beat, yes? If you start to move faster than the beat, they notice you.’
The island, while hardly crowded out with Germans, boasted a much larger alien population now that the Italian Marchettis had been joined by a large force of Junkers, Ju 87 and 88 bombers, so that as the remorseless build-up to the attack on Malta continued Eugene knew time was of the essence.
The stumbling block had been his initial betrayal. Whoever had informed on him would seem to have ruined his chances both of sabotaging the bombers and of escape.
‘Look, Gianni,’ Eugene said one evening when the two men had shut themselves in the hayloft of the barn outside the safe house. ‘We will have to make some sort of contingency plan if I’m not to remain a mechanic all my life.’
Gianni glanced at Eugene briefly, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to manufacturing a hand-rolled cigarette.
‘We know where the airfield is, how many aircraft there are, what sort of fences they have – how many guards.’
Gianni shrugged again. ‘And there are two of us, my friend. With three guns, one grenade and two rosaries.’
‘Is there no one else we can trust?’
‘I can organise three others. But five cannot take on fifty-five or sixty-five Germans.’ Gianni paused briefly to spit contemptuously on the floor to show precisely what he thought of those Italians who had thrown in their lot with Hitler. ‘We have as much chance of getting you inside there as – as I have of becoming il Papa.’ This time Gianni paused to cross himself before sticking the drooping cigarette into his mouth under his equally drooping moustache and, finally, lighting it.
‘Then we have to think of some sort of alternative plan,’ Eugene muttered. ‘Apparently we have two days at most before their first trip to Malta, so I have to get into those hangars somehow – even if I only manage to take out a couple of their damn’ bombers.’
‘They will have little trouble in taking you out, my friend,’ Gianni observed. ‘Before you even manage to let down one airplane tyre. Would it not be possible to waste your life a little more profitably?’
Eugene gave Gianni his best mock glare, drank deep from a bottle of rough red wine, tore off a hunk of staling bread to eat with his cheese and sat down on a hay bale to try to think out some sort of strategy.
For once his imagination quite failed him, and had not luck decided to take a hand Eugene’s destiny might well have been sealed before he had even been given a chance to strike a blow. His fate arrived in the shape first of a superbly elegant, but obviously sick, dark blue Bugatti which spluttered its way into the centre of Putagia’s town square, and second in the even more elegant shape that decanted itself slowly and sinuously from the red leathered interior of the car.
Eugene saw her long before she saw him, unremarkable given the fact that he was working in the dark of the tiny garage where he was employed, and she was standing in broad daylight in the town square. But even if Eugene had been standing outside his place of work it would have been doubtful if the tall, beautiful, slim woman wrapped in fox furs would have paid the slightest attention to a dirty-faced mechanic in oil-covered overalls. Yet the moment he saw the woman, despite her suspiciously over-glamorous appearance, he knew somehow his chance had arrived.
This belief was confirmed when he picked up on the conversation she began to have with two men sitting on the edge of the broken water fountain that stood in the centre of the square. It seemed she was furious that her car had broken down at this particular moment since she was expected at the aerodrome. Since the aerodrome to which she referred was the place where the German bombers were gathered for the planned air raids on Malta, Eugene sensed this might well turn into not only a golden opportunity of gaining access to the heavily guarded airfield, but perhaps his only one.
First he must make sure their glamorous visitor was directed to the garage where he was working. Despite the fact that times were hard and the region a poor one, such was the Italian obsession with cars that there was another mechanic working in the town whose reputation was considerably higher than that of the owner of the tiny workshop in which Eugene was now busy cleaning himself up, which was why Gianni had already been despatched, cap in hand, to enquire if there was anything they could do for the poor signorina.
‘You?’ Gianni had wondered, almost swallowing the remains of his cigarette. ‘You cannot even mend a bicycle’s puncture!’
‘You’d be surprised what I can do, Gianni,’ Eugene assured him, desperately scrubbing at his oil-stained face and hands with a sliver of soap that felt more like sandpaper. ‘My uncle had a motor car of precisely that make, believe it or not. The only Bugatti in Ireland, they said, and since that was the case there was no one to fix it when it went phut – which it did more often than it did not. So by sticking around the old boy – because I was dying to drive the bucket, you see – you’d be amazed and astonished at what I picked up, me boy. And even if I can’t fix her motor, I shall blind the signorina with an extravagance of mechanical knowledge, most of which will be entirely fictitious.’
Minutes later Gianni was signalling Eugene urgently to come and join the two of them in the square, the signorina now perched on one highly polished mudguard carefully smoking a cigarette, the top half of her face veiled against too much uninvited inspection.
‘Good day.’ Eugene introduced himself in his carefully rural Italian. ‘Ah – and what a beautiful car! This is the very car my dear uncle drives – and oh how he loves her! He loves her like a mistress.’
He paid no attention to the beautiful woman, devoting his consideration to the car from under whose bonnet a steady stream of steam was still escaping. Remembering how the bonnet opened, he released the catch and gained careful access to the engine bay.
‘Mamma . . .’ he whispered in distress, putting one hand to his cheek in anguish. ‘Mamma mia – please don’t let it be the gasket – please?’
With a sad shake of his handsome head, he leaned into the engine bay, cloth in hand, and began carefully to unscrew the radiator cap. As he did so, a further jet of steam escaped with a hiss from the radiator, prompting Eugene to warn everyone to stand well back in case of accident. Finally, with a dramatic flourish he released the cap fully and jumped well back himself as a geyser of scalding steam shot upwards from the water sump.
‘Mah!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are very lucky, signorina, so very lucky she did not explode with you up there in the mountains!’
Of course he had been only too aware of a pair of dark eyes watching him intently from behind the half veil, but it was only now that he looked into them with his own, as he gave a remorseful shake of his head.
‘The thought of you stranded up there is too sad to contemplate, signorina,’ he said. ‘The wolves. The bandits.’
‘Why do you think I come across the mountains?’ the woman asked brusquely. ‘Do I look like a woman from the hills?’
‘No – no!’ Eugene protested. ‘It is just that I cannot imagine there is anyone so – so beautiful in these parts, yes? So you must come from far away – the mainland even – and to do so you must come over the mountains! Yes?’
The woman pursed her lips thoughtfully as she considered the compliment, then nodded once.
‘Naples,’ she said, searching her bag for another cigarette, immediately prompting a crowd of matches proffered by practically every man in the small crowd that had gathered since her abrupt arrival. ‘So now you stop your sweet talk, signor—’
‘Marco,’ Eugene said with a small modest bow of his head. ‘Marco, please – Marco.’
‘Very well, Marco. So – enough of your charms, and tell me if you can attend to my car. I have to get out to the areodrome by this evening. It is most urgent, and I will need the car. It is not my car, you understand. The car is a loan.’
Eugene held his hands up in an open gesture, accompanying the signal with a non-committal shrug.
‘Signorina. Should she have bad gasket – should she have blown her head gasket.’ He shrugged again and raised his eyebrows helplessly. ‘No one will repair her in less than two days. Even if we have the parts. And we do not have the parts, as you must know, signorina! Such a thing would have to come from the mainland – and in these days?’
Eugene made his mouth into a large round O of despair and closed his eyes.
‘You are not from around here, are you?’ the woman suddenly asked him, standing a little back and putting her head to one side. ‘So where are you from, please? You are certainly not Sicilian.’ She made an odd gesture with one hand, closing her first two fingers on to her thumb and squeezing them together in some sort of special emphasis.
‘I am half Milanese, signorina,’ he confessed. ‘But my mother was widowed and came to live on the mainland, when I was a young boy, near to Vico Equense – Amalfi.’
‘Ah!’ she replied, holding up one slender gloved hand. ‘I thought I knew it! I said to myself – Lucia, I said. This is an Amalfi man! I knew it.’
‘Yes.’ Eugene smiled modestly. ‘Yes, you are right – and so clever, signorina. I come to see my cousin Gianni here because he has not been so well. And because he is not so well, I stay here to help him with his work. Here in his uncle’s garage.’
‘So what to do with the car, Marco? When shall I know my fate, please? The person who lends it to me, he will want it returned.’
‘Signorina, if I may – if we take your beautiful car into our workshop I can tell you – what? An hour? Maybe less. For you I do it as quick as God permits me.’
Once she had agreed, Eugene instructed Gianni to escort their visitor to the small café in the tiny town where he assured her that after Gianni’s aunt had cooked her a most memorable lasagne he would be able to tell her the fate of her car.
He knew there were two possible options open to him. If there was nothing seriously wrong with the car then he could use it as his Trojan horse, smuggling himself and Gianni into the compound containing the Junkers bombers. If on the other hand there was something seriously amiss, their visitor might decide to abort her trip to the aerodrome for lack of reliable transport, in which case his only chance lay in procuring a decent substitute vehicle that would satisfy the high standards obviously held by the beautiful signorina, who from her glamorous clothing he guessed was probably on her way to a tryst with a lover. It would be ideal, if this was indeed the case, for having come all this way their visitor would surely be loath to miss out on her lovemaking.
‘So?’ Gianni wondered, popping back from his aunt’s café in order to see how events were shaping. ‘How is the car?’
‘Sick. It’s done a head gasket.’
Gianni arched his eyebrows and widened his big brown eyes. ‘A head gasket? Hey, my friend, you really do know about Bugattis!’
‘I know nothing about Bugattis – but I know a thing or two about gaskets,’ Eugene sighed. ‘And this is one very sick motor. There’s oil in the radiator water – and in case you don’t know what that means, it means kaput. It has to be the head gasket, but even if we had a gasket kit I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to fix it? Would you?’
‘Do farm carts have gaskets? No,’ he replied. ‘So what are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to patch and pray. If my memory serves me right, I seem to remember my uncle having this sort of difficulty once when we were out on a jaunt. All he did was simply drain the radiator, change the oil and get going again – until the car began to boil, when he repeated the entire procedure. So that’s all we can hope to do – change the oil and water, and keep our fingers crossed the motor holds out for as long as we need it to hold out.’
Gianni smiled as he watched Eugene go to work.
‘Ah yes, motor cars – they are like beautiful women, no? They need the understanding of a man. Yes? They need the understanding and the touch of a man.’
‘What this beautiful woman needs isn’t a man but a car to get her to her man,’ Eugene replied, getting underneath the car to find the sump plug. ‘To judge from all her finery she’s on her way to meet someone – someone out at the aerodrome apparently. Which will suit us just nicely.’
‘You think she’s going to meet her lover at the aerodrome, eh?’
From under the bonnet Eugene laughed quietly. ‘If she’s not, my friend, then I’m not an Irishman.’
‘Then let us hope that the man who lent her this car doesn’t find out,’ Gianni said lugubriously, prompting Eugene to squint back up at him from ground level. ‘I tell you where this car comes from. Il Padrone. This is il Padrone’s – and so he lent it to her as a favour.’
‘But not to go and meet her lover, you reckon?’
‘No, no. I would very much doubt that.’
‘This woman is known to il Padrone?’ Eugene wondered. ‘How so?’
‘Perhaps she is not known personally, Marco. Perhaps it is just that her reputation precedes her.’
‘Her reputation?’
‘She is here – how we say? She is here on business.’
Eugene glanced at Gianni then returned his attention to the sump plug.
‘OK,’ he called up from the ground. ‘I know this is Italy – or Sicily rather – and you do things differently here – but how come a woman on the sort of business this young woman is on gets loaned a Bugatti by your Padrone?’
Having freed the plug and allowed the engine oil to drain away into the bucket he had placed ready, Eugene emerged from under the car and stood wiping his hands on a rag and staring at the café where they had deposited their guest.
‘You mean to tell me il Padrone was so taken with our signorina’s business acumen that he loaned her his best motor car to go gallivanting in? I doubt it, my friend.’
‘Then perhaps we ask her, yes?’
‘Perhaps we do just that. And maybe as a result we get to be done a favour.’
‘I wouldn’t say no to such a favour,’ Gianni grinned happily.
‘Not that sort of favour, pal. A favour in the shape of a lift,’ Eugene replied, tightening the buckle on the belt of his trousers. ‘Come on.’
The two men joined Lucia at her table in the café. Gianni’s aunt brought them a bottle of local red wine, three glasses carried in the hook of three stubby fingers, a plate of shining olives and a hunk of goat’s cheese then left them alone, disappearing back into the kitchen to continue cooking. Lucia regarded her two companions, folded her veil back over the front of her peacock blue hat, lit a cigarette and sat back on her chair, eyeing them both.
‘You mend my car?’ she wondered.
‘Your car will be up and running in half an hour, signorina.’
‘Lucia. You may call me Lucia.’ She smiled. ‘I shall be most grateful to you if you mend my car.’
‘Your car?’ Eugene wondered. ‘You brought it over with you from Naples?’
Lucia’s smile turned to frost.
‘That is none of your concern,’ she snapped. ‘The car belongs to a friend of mine.’
‘I wonder, does this friend know where you are? And what you’re doing?’ Eugene continued, pouring himself some wine.
Lucia stared at him, smoking her cigarette quickly and furiously.
‘Maybe I haven’t fixed your car at all,’ Eugene said with a sigh. ‘Maybe I was just kidding you.’
‘You know something, signor?’ Lucia said, all but spitting the words out. ‘I was just beginning to like you.’
‘I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Lucia,’ Eugene helped them all to some more of the local wine. ‘You have an appointment you need to keep – and so do we. You can help us keep ours, just as we can help you keep yours. But if you don’t help us—’
‘Yes, yes! OK! All right!’ Lucia ground her cigarette out on the floor under one high-heeled shoe and regarded Eugene with a pair of dark flashing eyes. ‘So what do you want, eh? Just tell me what you want and I see what Lucia can do!’
‘We need a lift – simple as that.’
‘Where?’
‘Same place as you. The aerodrome.’
Lucia frowned and then shrugged as she considered the favour. ‘Why?’
‘That’s our business. Same as your business will remain your business as long as you give us a lift.’
‘So. So I give you a lift as far as the aerodrome – and then what?’
‘No, not as far as the aerodrome, Lucia. We want you to take us in with you. We want to go into the aerodrome.’
Now the expression on Lucia’s face changed. ‘You are surely mad.’
‘We’ll be surely mad if we don’t get into the aerodrome, sweetheart. As mad as il Padrone when he finds out what you’re using his precious car for.’
‘How did you manage to get his car, by the by, signorina?’ Gianni wondered, having finished picking his teeth with a match.
‘None of your business!’
‘We’ll ask him when we see him, Gianni,’ Eugene assured his friend.
‘I tell him I have to visit a sick relative!’ Lucia exclaimed. ‘OK? OK!’
‘So?’ Eugene enquired after a moment. ‘Are you going to give us a lift or not?’
Lucia said nothing at first. Instead she glanced out of the windows and up at the dark forests surrounding the little town.
‘OK,’ she said, all but inaudibly. ‘I give you a lift.’
‘I knew you were on the side of the angels, sweetheart,’ Eugene said with a smile. ‘I could see it in your eyes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and attend to your car.’
Poppy had long ago sold the ring that Basil had given her on their engagement, sending the money to much needed war funds. In its place she now proudly wore the much less ostentatious ring that Scott had given her, a ring that it seemed had once graced his grandmother’s finger.
‘What about a dress?’
Kate and Marjorie both looked up at Poppy who was looking down at them from their cottage stairs where she was sitting, while the three of them debated the wartime problem of how to be married by special licence in a matter of days.
‘I could wear my blue velvet,’ Poppy suggested.
‘It’s not a wedding dress,’ Kate replied. ‘You can’t get married in blue velvet.’
‘I’m certainly not wearing anything from my old wardrobe,’ Poppy said. ‘Imagine getting married in something Basil had given me. That would be too gruesome for words.’
‘Nobody’s suggesting that,’ Marjorie told her.
Poppy nodded and tried to put all thoughts of her last wedding day out of her head – the quite beautiful dress she had worn, the borrowed tiara – and then the sensational dress she had worn for the first night of her honeymoon, which Basil had so detested and derided – although perhaps not quite as much as he had finally detested and derided her.
She shook her head as if to shake away the unhappy memories, trying to think of the happiness that she hoped lay ahead in her future with Scott. He was so different from the cold-hearted Basil – warm, funny and affectionate – so different. She sighed inwardly.
‘Come on, Poppy,’ Kate sighed. ‘You’re day-dreaming again. We have to get things organised. We are not going to have some dreary wedding just because there’s a war on. Hitler can go hang! We are going to make sure this is a wedding to remember – in spite of Hitler and in spite of the war. But we’re not going to do it by daydreaming. So come on, one and all! Snap out of it! Now, for a start, we have to find a dress for Poppy somewhere. Somehow. Anyone got any bright ideas?’
Marjorie frowned but could come up with nothing. Poppy reminded Kate of something she had said before, leaving Kate to come up with an idea that might prove useful.
‘There are some old clothes stored in our attic at home,’ she said, remembering. ‘Don’t know what’s there – or in fact if anything’s still there, seeing how much my mother keeps giving to Lady Alton for the Fighting Fund. I’ll have a look as soon as I get home. I seem to remember she’d kept some of Grandmother’s old stuff. Keep your fingers crossed. And don’t worry, Poppy – we’re going to make Scott’s and your wedding a day you’ll always remember. War or no war.’
Two kilometres short of the aerodrome Lucia, who had been driving, stopped the car in order to get out and check the well-being of the two men hidden away in the boot. She had pulled the Bugatti into a clearing off the road, well protected from the view of anyone else passing by so that Eugene and Gianni could get out and stretch their legs. They started to go through what was going to happen if and when they got past the guards on the gates, what Lucia was to say and do and where she was to leave the car. If all went well, by the time she left the next morning the two men would be hidden in the boot again and Lucia would leave as seamlessly as she had arrived.
‘How is the car behaving?’ Eugene enquired at one point. ‘Seems to be holding up all right.’
‘She is a little hot,’ Lucia replied. ‘As if she might want a drink.’
Eugene had taken care of that well in advance, packing two cans of water along with him in the boot of the Bugatti. Taking advantage of the halt he carefully topped the depleted radiator up, mentally crossing his fingers even harder than before when he had finished doing so.
On the road once more, within a matter of minutes they were at the gate of the aerodrome. The two men in the boot held their breath as they heard the guards questioning Lucia, only to relax as they realised that all the questions being asked in true Italian style concerned not the purpose of Lucia’s visit, but the magnificence and beauty of her motor car. They could hear Lucia lying gaily about how she had come by such a fine and rare model, the gift of some rich Neapolitan benefactor it would seem who had befriended her since she lost both her parents in some terrible boating accident off Ischia. Lucia’s imagination matched her looks, priceless and extraordinary, and after a few minutes of talk the Bugatti slowly moved forward again, the stowaways undiscovered.
As directed, Lucia parked the car, got out and released the boot catch. The two men waited until Lucia had been gone for a quarter of an hour, then slowly eased open the lid. They found she had parked around the corner from the building into which they assumed she had disappeared, with the rear end of the great Bugatti practically touching a brick wall that ran at right angles to another wall, thus providing perfect cover for them as they eased themselves out of the car.
Very few lights burned on the airfield now that it was dark, and as for patrols, there appeared to be none. Nevertheless, Eugene and Gianni held back until they were absolutely sure there were no sentries posted anywhere within their immediate vicinity, before following a route away from the building, and along the perimeter wall that ran directly towards the huge hangars. Eugene had imagined that there would be a certain number of armed guards posted at all the salient points in such a volatile location, but the further they penetrated enemy territory, the more they became aware that the security seemed to be confined to the gated areas only.
‘This is typical,’ Gianni whispered, as the two of them huddled tight in a corner, watching and listening out for the slightest movement. ‘We suffer as a race from a frightening degree of confidence. It is our worst fault and our greatest asset.’
He stopped as they suddenly heard footsteps, followed by a strong smell of tobacco that suggested the presence of ordinary personnel rather than an armed guard. But it seemed they were wrong, for round the end of the wall, not ten feet from them, appeared a short, stubby soldier, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his hat pushed back and a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth. Eugene looked at Gianni and Gianni nodded. Two seconds after the guard had crossed their path he was lying dead at Eugene’s feet.
They dragged the body into a nearby dark corner where they stripped it of its uniform and weapons and left it under a pile of sacking. Moments later Gianni was dressed as the guard and making his way towards the aircraft hangars. Eugene hung behind, crossing his fingers and praying for the doors to be open.
In the weak moonlight he could still make Gianni out as he patrolled the corner of the hangar, before he disappeared out of sight round the front of the huge building. He was gone it seemed for an eternity, long enough for Eugene to reckon he had lost him and he was going to have to either go it alone, or cut and run. But as suddenly as he had disappeared Gianni reappeared, gun slung over one shoulder while with his other arm he beckoned for Eugene to join him.
Swiftly and silently Eugene ran to him, keeping tight up against the towering black wall of the hangar beside him. When he looked carefully round the edge of the open door into the dimly lit building he saw a large array of unguarded Junkers.
‘You mean they’ve left them here for the taking?’ he finally hissed at Gianni as they stood with their backs against the outside of the door. ‘Without guards? No patrols anywhere?’
‘Unless they are hiding to surprise us, no,’ Gianni whispered back. ‘They are doubtless somewhere playing cards. Somewhere nice and warm.’
Eugene stood quite still for a moment before deciding to risk running round the edge of the hangar door, his pistol in his hand in case he came face to face with an unseen guard. Happily their first impression was right. There was no one guarding the aircraft.
‘I think we must just look for the odd sentry – like the one we just waylaid,’ Gianni whispered. ‘I keep watch at the doors, yes? And you go about the business.’
Eugene nodded, never taking his eyes off the huge bombers that towered over him. In his knapsack he had wire cutters, pliers, razor-edged knives and several small bottles of a concoction specially brewed by some back-room boys which had been designed to work as what they called a slow-stopper, in other words an additive that when poured into aircraft fuel did not incapacitate the plane immediately but took effect after about twenty minutes’ flying. It had already been tested in action already, with highly satisfactory results. At least that was what he had been told. Planes simply dropped out of the sky once the additive became active, the engines stalled so suddenly that emergency control became impossible.
He set to work at once, scaling the ladders left conveniently propped up against three bombers’ engines, finding the fuel lines, which he then expertly perforated with an instrument like a small sharpened screwdriver so that the fuel would slowly leak as pressure built up after ignition, and slightly loosening small sets of nuts which were guaranteed to work fully loose under subsequent engine vibration. Having sabotaged four Junkers in this method, he then set to work on two Marchettis belonging to the Regia Aeronautica, finding the fillers to their fuel tanks and dosing the contents liberally with the contents of two of his little bottles of lethal additive. In the cockpits of four other planes, two German and two Italian, he hid small but powerful magnets, designed to cause chaos to the bombers’ instrumentation and navigational aids, and finally he shaved the rudder wires of two more Junkers so that, he hoped, they would snap under operational pressure long before they reached Malta. All in all he managed to work on a dozen planes without interruption, although he rarely took an eye off the doorway in front of him for longer than a minute at once.
As he worked he saw Gianni half a dozen times as he patrolled with what he hoped and imagined was the dead guard’s beat. But just as Eugene was about to finish his work on his twelfth plane, Gianni went missing. At once Eugene abandoned the aircraft, slipping down the ladder by holding both sides of the steps, then running silently to the cover of the hangar doors. He strained to hear footsteps but could hear nothing, until just as he was about to ease himself back outside something – or somebody – fell against the door. Eugene froze, certain it was Gianni. He pulled his pistol out of the belt of his trousers as quietly as possible and slipped off the safety catch, a noise that to him seemed to echo round the entire airfield.
Just outside the door he heard someone moving, as if dragging himself along the ground with great difficulty. The next moment he was staring into the dead eyes of an enemy soldier, held up from behind by the small but immensely muscular Gianni. A knife was stuck in the side of his neck, exactly on the point of his jugular vein, and the gory results of Gianni’s murderous action could be seen on both the victim and the assassin.
‘Apologies,’ Gianni whispered. ‘I was about to hit him from behind but he must have sensed me. So I had to kill him as he turn.’
He made two clicking sounds of regret with his tongue before dragging the body over to the far corner, where Eugene covered the corpse with a heavy canvas sheet that was lying spare.
‘The blood.’ Eugene nodded. ‘They’re going to pick up on that blood sure as Italian hens lay eggs – and if they do before we’re out of here—’
‘Sand,’ Gianni announced. ‘It soaks up oil – so it soak up blood too, I think.’
He ran back into the building, to where there were several bags of building materials possibly left over from the construction of the hangars. The one nearest them was a half-finished bag of sand, the contents of which he proceeded to spill over the trail of blood between the door and the corpse. After this they made their way silently back to the Bugatti. The whole operation from the moment Lucia had parked the car until their return had taken just over three hours, which put the time at a little after half past one.
‘The man you just killed,’ Eugene whispered as they crouched down by the car. ‘He’d have been the guard taking over, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You are right, my friend. I see him come out of a building – the guardhouse maybe, who knows? There is a sound of laughter and shouts, yes? So I imagine this was where they all are.’
‘So he comes out expecting to find the first guard we killed, but he sees you instead.’
‘Which is the last thing he sees, yes,’ Gianni agreed.
‘We have no idea how long their shifts are.’
‘We have a pretty good idea. We start work at about twenty-two thirty hour – the first guard is already on duty when we kill him – the next guard come on three hour after.’
‘Good,’ Eugene said. ‘So the shifts – the patrols if you like – can’t be less than three hours. More likely four.’
‘More likely four, yes,’ Gianni agreed.
‘Can we believe they have only posted one guard for the whole airfield?’
Gianni shrugged as he considered the possibility. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, of course not. But we say perhaps they have maybe four guards, one for each boundary – north, south, east and west. We have taken out the guard for one boundary – this area here.’
‘They’re going to miss their little chum, aren’t they?’ Eugene asked after a moment. ‘However irregular their timings, aren’t they going to notice one’s gone missing as they march to and fro? You’re a chatty lot, you Italians. I can’t imagine they have the sort of discipline the Krauts do – no talking on duty, exact pace and length of goose-step and all that – but I can believe they’re going to miss their little fat friend. They’re also going to miss guard number one – in fact why haven’t they missed him already?’
Gianni shrugged again. ‘Who knows? Perhaps they think he go straight to bed. But they haven’t come looking yet.’
Eugene stared round the darkened airfield, no longer illuminated by the light of a moon. They had to decide on a new course of action. With two guards down the chances of their being discovered were now considerably more than doubled. They would be quadrupled if they stuck to their somewhat ill-considered plan of tucking themselves back into the boot of the Bugatti to wait for the return of their driver, which was why Eugene knew they had to take their leave of the party there and then.
‘But what of poor Lucia?’ Gianni whispered as they crept along the line of the wall that finally became a closely meshed wire fence. ‘She will be all alone, yes?’
‘She won’t know that until she stops somewhere,’ Eugene replied. ‘And with a bit of luck – if we get out of here and get on the right road . . .’
He stopped to regard the fencing. It was a good ten to twelve feet in height with a line of barbed wire topping it off. The mesh was far too tough to be cut by any of the small tools Eugene was carrying.
‘This fence runs all the way round?’
‘That is so, my friend. All the way round at this height.’
‘Then this is the way we escape.’
‘How? We never get up that height? We sure as eggs don’t get over the barbed wire.’
‘They’re going to think we did.’
A moment later Eugene had hoisted Gianni on to his shoulders, having handed him his sweater and instructing him to take off his own jacket. These Gianni then draped over the wire, so that to all intents and purposes it looked as though whoever had broken into the compound had escaped by somehow straddling the wire. They also rolled a half-full oil drum from the side of the nearest hangar and left it directly below the point of the wire on which they had draped the two garments.
‘You sure we don’t make it out like this anyway?’ Gianni wondered as Eugene surveyed their work.
‘One of us might,’ Eugene replied. ‘I flip you over – no problem. But then how do I get out? Or vice versa? We’d have to give each other a leg-up.’
‘You go. I stay.’
‘And my mother was Joan of Arc. No, we’re both going to get out – and we’re going to get out exactly the way we came in.’
They had left the lid of the Bugatti’s boot slightly open in order to minimise the noise they made on their arrival, but they had shut themselves securely away again long before a squad of soldiers was despatched from the barracks to go to look for trouble, their officer possibly having noticed the absence of two perimeter guards. Eugene and Gianni heard them alongside the Bugatti, shouting excitedly. A moment later they felt the car rock as the doors were wrenched open and a terrible feeling of despair and disappointment washed over Eugene as he realised they were about to be discovered. Gianni had obviously come to the same conclusion. Eugene could feel his body tensing against his own, just as they both became aware of the footsteps coming round the back of the automobile. A second later someone tried to open the boot, but without any success.
‘What happen?’ Gianni whispered after the noise had stopped. ‘Why it not open?’
‘Search me?’ Eugene hissed back. ‘Maybe the boot is self-locking. Maybe it’s just stuck. I don’t know!’
They heard the footsteps recede, and not another sound was heard from the squad for the rest of the night. Praying that the soldiers were satisfied that their quarry had escaped over the wire, Eugene and Gianni managed to fall asleep, before being awakened by the sound of someone getting into the driver’s seat and starting the car.
At once both men were awake, pistols drawn, safety catches off. The Bugatti drove off, slowly and smoothly as if the driver had not a problem in the world, heading, the prisoners in the boot hoped, for the main gates. Sure enough, a minute or so later the car slowed to a stop and there was a muttered conversation, which ended at last with a most joyous sound – Lucia’s laugh. The car started to move forward once again, heading, they both devoutly hoped, for the open road, the countryside – and freedom.
Once she had put a considerable distance between herself and the aerodrome, Lucia pulled the now sputtering car off the road, obviously finding a lay-by out of sight of anyone passing by before she turned off the engine and alighted from the vehicle. The next minute the lid of the boot had sprung open and the two men found themselves staring up at Lucia’s beautiful albeit somewhat exhausted face.
‘How did you do that, Lucia?’ Eugene wondered as he began to scramble out. ‘The wretched thing was jammed tight shut back there.’
‘Yes!’ Gianni exclaimed, following his companion out. ‘How you manage to open it so easy?’
‘Thank Signor Bugatti’s great imagination.’ Lucia shrugged. ‘The boot is opened by a lever in the door pillar – see?’
She took them round and showed them the security device that allowed access.
‘I notice it when I first get in the car,’ Lucia explained. ‘I thought you boys must know all about it, seeing how much you know about cars.’
Eugene grinned as he stretched his stiff body.
‘Signor Bugatti sure as hell saved our hides,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we quite have the time to let our hair down yet,’ he added, seeing the slow smile that was creeping across her face. ‘Any celebrations will have to wait until we are, as they say at the racetrack, home and hosed.’
Eugene knew it was essential that they manage to get both themselves and the Bugatti back to Putagia well in advance of any alarms being sounded at the airfield. He doubted anyone would suspect sabotage, hoping that seeing the evidence of their escape over the fencing everyone in the compound would believe that they had averted a bungled attempt to blow it up. For the present he and Gianni must get the car back to il Padrone, help Lucia get back to the mainland, and whisk themselves off the island as fast as whatever transport had been assigned to them could allow.
‘We have to move,’ he said. ‘And now.’
‘But what about the car?’ Lucia interrupted. ‘She is making these terrible noises again – and she lose power all the way for the last five or six kilometres.’
‘She just needs another little drink,’ Eugene lied, fetching the second can from the boot. ‘These cars use a lot of water. I probably didn’t put enough in the radiator when I drained it originally.’
Refilling it for the second time, Eugene didn’t bother crossing his fingers. This time he relied on prayer. He hoped and prayed with all his might that Signor Bugatti’s beautiful motor car would somehow last out the final leg of this all-important journey.
Helen was more interested in the boxes of old photographs she unearthed in the attic than the trunks full of old clothes Kate was sorting through.
‘Bognor beach, 1932,’ she said as if surprised. ‘Would you look at me in this. And look – here’s old Birdy Gardiner. Do you remember Birdy, Kate? Who always used to look after us when we went down there for the summer?’
‘Of course I do, Mum – and none of these dresses are any good. They’re all old cocktail frocks.’
‘Try that trunk at the end, dear. I think that’s the one with your grandmother’s stuff in it. And do look – here’s Geoffrey Partridge – he was a terrible old fussbudget. I wonder whatever happened to him?’
‘Why did we always go to Bognor, Mummy? We seemed to spend every summer holiday there,’ Kate wondered as she undid an old dust-covered steamer trunk.
‘It was all to do with your father’s work. There was some arrangement or other with the university. It worked out very well because you and Robert always had someone to play with, and the grown-ups always had someone to drink with, as your father used to say. Oh, my heavens, will you just look at that ghastly hat? How could I have thought that was pretty?’
‘Ah – now what is this?’ Kate wondered, producing a long white dress. ‘Oh, now this is absolutely the thing! This is just perfect!’
‘Perfect? What for, dear?’
‘You haven’t listened to anything I’ve been telling you.’ Kate laughed. ‘Too busy strolling down Memory Lane. I keep telling you we need a dress for one of the girls at Eden. For Poppy Tetherington, who’s getting married on Friday. And I would say this dress is just perfect.’
Kate stood and held up the long white dress in front of her to show her mother.
‘If you say so, dear,’ Helen replied, raising her eyebrows in wonder. ‘I can’t pretend to be abreast of the fashions nowadays, so if you say that dress will do, far be it from me to disagree.’
‘But it’s perfect, Mummy! Look! What could be more perfect than what has to be Grandmother’s old wedding dress?’
Helen glanced at the beautiful lace-trimmed dress.
‘Nothing, darling, I suppose. If only we still had it.’
‘If only we had it?’ Kate echoed. ‘What do you think I’m holding up here?’
‘Your grandmother’s old tennis dress.’
Kate said nothing to Poppy about the provenance of the beautiful white dress she presented to her with a flourish, holding it over one arm in the manner of the manageress of a bridal department.
‘Et voilà!’ she said with a huge smile. ‘Cinderella shall go to the ball after all!’
Poppy stared at it. ‘Gosh – that is beautiful, Kate.’
‘Glad you like it. Told you I’d find you something. It was my grandmother’s.’
Poppy and Marjorie both leaned forward simultaneously to feel the fine old linen, noting the lace at the neck and on the long sleeves, while Billy frowned at it curiously before giving them his opinion.
‘A princess could get ’itched in that,’ he said.
‘Hitched, Billy,’ Marjorie corrected him. ‘And we prefer the term married.’
‘Married then.’ Billy grinned before breaking into song. ‘There was I, waiting at the church . . .’
‘That’ll do, thank you, Billy,’ Marjorie ordered. ‘We don’t have the time for musical interludes.’
‘Try it on, Poppy,’ Katie urged. ‘We have to see if it fits.’
‘Of course it’s going to fit,’ Poppy assured her, holding the dress up before her. ‘I can tell it’s exactly my size. The only thing is – I don’t really think I should wear white. Do you know what I mean? Because of being married before.’
‘I don’t think that matters,’ Marjorie said, without being at all sure. ‘I really don’t think that matters at all.’
‘Yes,’ Billy said with a frown, staring down at the floor. ‘Yes, well, even if it did – even if it did matter, I still think you should wear it, Poppy.’
‘Why’s that, Billy?’ Katie said carefully, noting his sudden blush.
‘Because,’ Billy muttered, still looking at the floor. ‘Because she’d look smashin’.’
There was a long silence while Marjorie and Kate looked first at Billy, then at Poppy, then back to Billy again.
‘Good – well, that settles it then,’ Kate said briskly. ‘Billy’s quite right, Poppy. You have to wear it because you will look smashin’ in it. As he says, really smashin’. And what more could anyone want on their wedding day?’
As he drove down from London to Eden Park that day Scott was in such a state of excitement about his forthcoming marriage that he could hardly think straight, which could well explain his forgetfulness. He had never thought about marriage until he had met Poppy, but her heady mixture of reserve and devil-may-care humour, her ability to let him be himself, and her lack of vanity combined with a ready sense of the ridiculous, had quite bowled him over. And now that this was the day they were finally to be married, every other thought went clean from his happy head.
For Scott was as sure of Poppy’s love for him as he was of his love for her, even though they loved each other in quite different ways. Scott loved to adore and spoil Poppy while she preferred to keep just a little bit of distance, as if to make him wonder if he was coming quite up to the mark. Scott loved this. He knew it was a sort of game – some kind of tease – but he found it a brilliant and exciting one, which was the very reason he was so anxious to marry her: so that he could keep trying to please her. The fact that at the last minute Jack Ward had suddenly summoned him to a meeting that had, as far as Scott was concerned, gone on far too long, leaving him only just enough time to make it back to Eden Park, now did not seem to matter in the least, because he was on his way. He was on his way to get married to Poppy, and that was all that mattered. He didn’t know how long a honeymoon they would have, nor did he care. That was the nature of the life they all now lived; from one moment to the next. Some people had two hours together before being separated once more, but as far as he knew they would have more than that. They had a whole day and a night at the very least, and perhaps even longer – and what they were granted they would embrace knowing as they did that even an hour together, in war, was a lifetime.
Scott was on his way to marry the beautiful and divine Poppy, and in spite of the snow flurries and the bitter cold he was so happy he sang out loud and very loudly too – but just after he started singing, his car ran out of petrol.
‘What can I have been thinking of?’ he wondered as he pointlessly tapped and then knocked the empty petrol gauge with one gloved fist. ‘Why didn’t I check on the petrol!’
He got out of the car and stared bleakly at the equally desolate countryside.
‘And today of all days! What can I have been thinking!’
To everyone’s amazement, particularly that of Kate who had found herself largely in sole charge of the wedding arrangements, somehow or other Mrs Alderman had even managed to make a wedding cake for the happy couple.
‘Mrs Alderman,’ Kate sighed when she saw the large, three-tiered cake sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. ‘Given the circumstances that has to be the most amazing cake I have ever seen!’
Mrs Alderman nodded, an expression of justifiable pride on her face. It was. It was truly beautiful. It even had the statutory bride and groom on top of the topmost tier.
‘The best I could do in the circumstances, Miss Maddox.’
‘The best, Mrs Alderman? You are some sort of genius! How did you manage? Where did you get the ingredients?’
Kate now stood by the table, frowning at the huge white iced cake, at Cook’s masterpiece, unable to believe that with the stringency of food rationing she had been able to make and bake such a marvel.
‘I couldn’t get the ingredients, dear,’ Mrs Alderman confessed. ‘It’s not all cake at all. It’s a fake. Here – look. The top lifts off, see?’
In demonstration she lifted up the top of the cake, revealing a small dark brown chocolate cake underneath. ‘There’s the real cake underneath, see? Proper chocolate cake, using proper chocolate for the icing that is, which isn’t breaking the law, I do assure you, Miss Maddox. C Section and H Section, and all the rest of them, they all helped out, donating sugar and stuff so as at least I could manage to bake something, but we could never have done this for real. Not in a month of Sundays. Still, it’s not bad for what it is, even though I do say it meself. The clever thing about it is – the real beauty of it is – seeing that chocolate isn’t a bridal colour – the beauty of it is the false top. Something young Billy come up with.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Kate smiled. ‘That’s Billy. That’s Billy all over. And never a word about it.’
‘He’s quite a lad, young Billy, and a bit of a perfectionist, too, so he is. Wasn’t happy till we got the colour right for the icing, and he worked all hours to get the sheen on it – scrounged something from the chemist in the village which he rubbed over the paint to make it look just so – and a dashed fine job he made of it, too, even though I say it meself. It looks just the job, until you get right up close, that is.’
‘Put the top back on, Mrs A., before I’m tempted.’ Kate laughed. ‘I was up so early I’m starving. I’ve still got a thousand things to do, so I’d better run anyway – got to collect some butterfly cakes for the wedding feast from the estate bakery and then some lettuces from the vicar’s wife. Everybody’s been quite wonderful. You should see what everyone has donated. Even people who can’t come to the wedding have given us things – it’s absolutely marvellous.’
The end result, when it was laid out on the large table in the entrance of the Dunne Arms, was certainly marvellous in as much as it was the strangest collection of foodstuffs anyone was likely to see. Plates of sandwiches made from dried eggs, bottles of children’s orange juice to go with dusty half-bottles of gin, marble-stoppered flagons of home-made ginger beer, obscure pudding wines, tins of custard, bottles of jam, even priceless boxes of chocolates had been taken out of cupboards and hidey-holes and brought reverently to the reception hall to be placed on the antique lace tablecloth.
‘Scott’s been held up,’ a breathless Miss Budge reported as she hurried downstairs from her office to break the news to the wedding party that was beginning to congregate in the main hall of the house. ‘He’s only just managed to get to a telephone that’s working, and it seems he’s run out of petrol.’
‘He what?’ Marjorie echoed in disbelief. ‘He’s run out of petrol on his wedding day?’
‘It’s a borrowed car, apparently,’ Miss Budge continued. ‘From the Ministry pool, and the one thing he forgot to check – thinking there’d be a full tank – was the petrol.’
‘So where is he now?’ Kate wondered, realising Poppy would have to be informed.
‘Somewhere the other side of Framlington.’
‘But that’s over thirty miles away!’ Marjorie cried. ‘How’s he going to get here in time?’
‘He’s not,’ Kate sighed. ‘I’d better go and tell Poppy.’
The sky was fast becoming overcast, the weak winter sun disappearing behind a bank of clouds laden with snow.
Wandering disconsolately along what seemed to be a totally deserted road, Scott was just about to give up hope when he heard the backfire of a car in the near distance. Moments later a dark green Ford 8 chugged slowly round the bend and into sight, to be immediately flagged down by Scott.
‘Got a problem, chum?’ the driver asked out of his half-opened window.
Scott resisted the temptation to reply that actually he only flagged down cars for fun and explained that he had run out of petrol.
‘Not a clever thing to do,’ the driver replied, with a sage-like shake of his grey head. ‘Not seeing what old Mother Nature has in store for us.’ He nodded up at the darkening sky, then leaned across to open the passenger door. ‘Hop in, chum. I can take you as far as Shamley if that’s any good to you.’
Scott hesitated, looking back the way he had come. ‘What about my car?’
‘If there’s no petrol in it, no need to worry. Gallon of juice is more valuable than a car nowadays.’
Scott climbed in beside the driver. The man was quite right. There was no point in worrying about the car because it wasn’t any use to anyone without petrol. And it was now beginning to snow quite heavily. Staying with your sinking ship was one thing, but Scott considered that staying with a War Office motor car in freezing conditions was quite another.
‘Sorry I can’t take you any further than Shamley,’ the driver said as they drove slowly off. ‘How far are you going?’
‘Eden Park,’ Scott replied. ‘Other side of Benton.’
‘Bit of a hike, eh? Maybe you’ll get lucky in Shamley. Never know – maybe you’ll get lucky twice.’
Scott got lucky three times, particularly when the two ladies who gave him his last lift found out he was getting married and squandered the last of their month’s petrol allowance driving Scott all the way to the Park.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ he said to the two women as he disembarked.
‘Nonsense! It was a pleasure!’ the one driving barked. ‘Now hurry along with you! She won’t wait for ever!’
By now twilight had fallen, as well as a good three inches of snow that had made the last part of the journey slow going. Scott had invited the two intrepid ladies who had given him his last lift to come to the wedding, but they were determined to reach their own destination, which was only a couple of miles back, before they got completely snowed in, so he made his own way as quickly as he could along the snow-covered path that led to the heavily studded oak door of the little church that lay to the east of the main house, fully expecting to find that the wedding party had long since gone home. Instead the door was opened to him by Anthony Folkestone, who was waiting to greet him with the kind of calm smile for which the British military are justifiably famed.
‘Well done, Scott,’ he said. ‘Jolly good show. Given the weather I’d say you’ve got a jolly lucky thumb.’
‘You haven’t been waiting in here all the time, I hope?’ Scott said cautiously, looking round the little candlelit nave.
‘Not a bit of it.’ Anthony laughed. ‘Chap who gave you your lift to East Wisley telephoned the pub to say you were only an hour away, so we went on to standby immediately. Very decent of him. Seems weddings bring out the romantic in us all. Billy? You’d better go and tell the bride her groom has finally made it.’
‘Yes sir!’ Billy said in great delight, giving a smart salute in return. ‘I’m on my way!’
Five minutes later Poppy duly arrived up the aisle to the strains of the Wedding March played on the church harmonium, wearing a long fur coat over Kate’s grandmother’s tennis dress, and holding a posy made up of a bunch of paper flowers and a sprig of holly, which had been Mrs Alderman’s idea, and one she was almost as proud of as she was of her wedding cake.
The wedding service was followed by the best reception everyone thought they had ever attended. It was certainly the most original, thanks to the inventiveness and generosity of the guests, and the wonderful music supplied by the local brass band and a string quartet from the local music school. The celebration was well fuelled by a seemingly endless supply of assorted liquor that kept materialising from everywhere all evening. It mattered not that the egg sandwiches were made from dried eggs, that what should have been ham was Spam, and that the wedding cake was a fake. All that mattered was what always mattered at happy weddings – that two people so obviously in love were getting happily married surrounded by people they loved who obviously loved them too.
Finally, there being no confetti available, the newly-weds were showered with little white pieces of paper that the ever inventive Billy had collected from the hole-punchers in the Park offices. Everyone cheered the happy couple, wishing them every happiness, not to mention love and joy, all of which was certainly theirs for the first night of their honeymoon – a bliss that lasted until a dawn telephone call informed the bridegroom that he was to leave that morning on his new mission.
‘A little peremptory, wouldn’t you say?’ Poppy wondered as she followed Scott into the kitchen, doing up her dressing gown. ‘They could have given you a little longer, surely.’
‘There’s a war on, Pop,’ Scott said with a sigh, making them both some tea. ‘We’ve got to think ourselves lucky we at least had last night together.’
‘I shall never forget last night, Scott,’ Poppy admitted quietly, putting her arms round him from behind. ‘Not ever.’
‘Nor me,’ Scott replied, turning round to face his young wife. ‘And because of that I shall love you for ever too.’
‘Do you really have to go?’ Poppy sighed. ‘I mean right now?’
Her arms were round his neck and the scent of her hair was wonderful, the feel of her skin so soft that for a second he felt dizzy.
‘Don’t do this to me. You know I have to go. Right now, too.’
‘Not five minutes.’
‘Not even two, Pop. You know how it is. Orders are orders.’
He smiled at her, kissed her once, then, firmly removing her arms from round his neck, moved one step away from her.
‘It only makes it even harder,’ he said.
‘Nothing’s harder than the fact you’re going to be away,’ Poppy replied. ‘Somewhere in Europe, where the women will all be beautiful and all the handsome men away fighting.’
‘Don’t be silly, Pop. There is no one more beautiful than you. Not anywhere.’
‘Then hurry back to me.’
‘I’m on my way back already.’
He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, then left.
Even after his initial briefing, Scott had no idea with whom he was being sent to France. All he had been told so far was that he was being dropped in for what they called a quickie – a short but important mission followed hopefully by a quick and equally efficient departure, the purpose of which was to set up a number of locations to be fitted out with radio communication equipment through which could be broadcast information about enemy fortifications along the French sea coast and all relevant troop movements. As he made his way to the car that he had been told would be waiting for him at the foot of the long drive – now clear of snow thanks to the rain that had fallen overnight – all Scott hoped was that the agent with whom he was being dropped into France was up to snuff.
He saw the familiar figure of Jack Ward in the front of the large black Austin, pipe in mouth as usual, gloved hands drumming patiently on the steering wheel as he waited for Scott. There was someone sitting up front beside him, someone whose face he could not as yet make out in the early morning gloom.
‘You’re Monsieur Doncourt, young man,’ Jack said to him as he climbed into the back. ‘Here are your papers, and allow me to introduce you to your wife, Madame Doncourt.’
‘Bonjour, Hervé,’ the woman in the passenger seat said in perfect French. ‘Ça va?’
Scott stared at his new ‘wife’, into the pretty face that was smiling back at him over one shoulder.
‘I’m looking forward to this trip,’ she continued. ‘I hear there are absolutely no food shortages in France – so here’s to la bonne cuisine et le bon vin. N’est-ce pas, cheri?’
Scott just smiled politely and sat back with a sinking heart as the car moved off. Of all the people to be dropped into France with it couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be the flirt of the Park. It had to be Lily blasted Ormerod.
Late one afternoon, the sort of fine March day when Kate could almost feel the buds on the trees getting ready to burst into new life, she took herself off for a brisk walk as soon as she finished her shift, and soon found herself headed for Poppy and Scott’s little house in the woods. Poppy had told her that whenever she wanted time to herself, to think or just to relax, she could take herself off there and stay as long as she needed, even if Poppy herself wasn’t there.
‘I don’t know what it is about the place,’ Poppy had said. ‘But I’ve found that whenever I get sort of edgy or anxious it takes it all away. It’s such a special place – it’s quite extraordinary. There’s something in the atmosphere there that just seems to unwind one. Takes all one’s cares away. It’s probably because it’s absurdly peaceful, I don’t know. It’s so quiet there it’s like being in a little bit of heaven.’
Kate hadn’t really intended to call on Poppy, yet she now found herself being irretrievably drawn to visiting the house. She had no idea whether or not she would find Poppy there; nor was she even certain that it was Poppy she wished to see. Part of her hoped in fact that the house would be empty and she would be able to take a closer look at the enchanting little place. So when there was no answer to her knock, she carefully eased the unlocked front door open and called Poppy’s name, in case she might have missed hearing her.
There being no reply from anywhere within the house, Kate stepped into the hall where she stood for a long moment in silence, not looking round her, but just experiencing the sense of extraordinary calm that seemed to prevail. Strangely there was not a sound to be heard anywhere, within or without. Even the birds it seemed had fallen to silence. Inevitably she felt as if she had stepped into an entirely different world, a world that was at peace; where love and goodness reigned instead of murder and mayhem.
After letting the stillness settle around her Kate wandered into the little sitting room. Wherever Poppy was – and whatever the reason for her absence – the place was as immaculate as always, a fire for the evening already set in the hearth, piles of books ready on a table by the sofa, and a vase of freshly picked wild daffodils on top of the upright piano. Even though the fire was as yet unlit, the house was as warm as it might be on a late spring day, rather than a bright and windy March one. With a feeling of sudden contentment, Kate sat on the old but still comfortable sofa that stood to one side of the fireplace, kicked her shoes off and tucking her legs up under her sat staring out of the window opposite.
She knew she must have been asleep because the light had changed. As she last remembered it the sun had been shining straight into the south-facing room. But now it was shining from the southwest, slanting its rays across the floor and leaving Kate in shadow. Yet she had no recollection of even feeling drowsy, let alone falling asleep. She must have dropped off quite suddenly.
Nor could she remember dreaming. In fact as she sat up slowly, staring out through the window and listening to the birdsong that now seemed to fill the woodlands, she tried as hard as she could to recall some sort of image or memory from her sleep, so sure was she that she had in fact dreamed. But none was forthcoming.
Yet she was certain that Eugene was safe.
How she knew this she had absolutely no idea, since the more she concentrated the more she seemed unable to retrieve anything from her subconscious memory. But the fact was etched firmly in her mind. Eugene was alive and on his way back to her. That much was certain. It wasn’t a belief, nor a hope – it was an absolute conviction.
She sat there in the shadows for a long time, at ease for the first time in days. Finally she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and called his name out silently in her mind, time and time again.
Crouched under a heavy tarpaulin on a heaving fishing boat headed south across the Mediterranean from Sicily to Malta, Eugene felt far from safe. There was still this last leg of his dangerous journey to be safely negotiated, so rather than think of what might be were he to survive, he simply concentrated on staying alive. Gianni, Lucia and he now lay hidden on board a trawler to which they had been transferred from the tiny fishing smack the Resistance had organised to transport them away from a half-hidden cove on the Pássero coastline, hopefully on their way back to Valletta and safety.
The Maltese crew had hidden the three of them – much to Lucia’s disgust – in empty crates stinking of fish which they then covered with other crates full of fresh fish. They draped their cargo under huge, heavy oilcloths in the prow of the boat before turning round to head back to their beleagured island, showing no lights and sailing the craft by a mixture of ancient nautical skills and sheer derring-do.
On arrival and disembarkation in Malta, he and Gianni were at once whisked off to a safe house high in the hills and away from the beleaguered port of Valletta. Lucia bid them a fond and tearful farewell before being escorted away by a young fisherman who could not believe his luck when she gratefully accepted his offer of a hot bath and a change of clothes to be borrowed from his sister.
‘You will come and see me in Naples!’ she called after the departing Eugene. ‘After the stinking war is finished!’
‘I shall, I shall!’ Eugene shouted back, with all fingers tightly crossed. ‘You are a magnificent woman. And a very brave one too!’
‘You will not go, of course,’ Gianni sighed as the van taking them to their safe house chugged up the hillside.
‘Of course I won’t.’ Eugene smiled in return. ‘But you will.’
For some reason Gianni found this hilarious, and slapped Eugene on the knee in delight.
‘What’s so funny, Gianni?’ Eugene wondered, usually the first to see the humour of any situation.
‘Nothing is funny, my friend!’ Gianni replied, shaking his head. ‘Not with a mother like mine!’
Eugene smiled back, wondering how it was that a man as brave and as resolute as Gianni could deny himself the pleasure of paying a visit to the luscious Lucia for fear of a smack round the ears from his mamma.
Kate tried to tell Poppy of the strange sensations she had experienced at the House of Flowers when she called there on the morning that Eugene landed safely in Valletta.
‘It was this odd feeling of assurance. Of certainty if you like. And the more I think of it, the more convinced I am that I wasn’t dreaming.’
‘If you weren’t dreaming,’ Poppy wondered, ‘then what?’
‘I don’t know, Poppy. I really don’t know.’ Kate sighed and shook her head. ‘Yet I must have been asleep because it was suddenly so much later in the day. A good two hours or so, judging from the sun. I know this sounds silly, but I had the sort of feeling that I wasn’t there. Or rather that I hadn’t been there – not during the time I was meant to be asleep.’
‘I’m sure you were, Kate.’ Poppy smiled. ‘I must tell you, it’s that sort of place. I often find myself suddenly dropping off for no reason at all, then waking up just as suddenly a couple of hours later.’
‘Do you dream during those times?’
‘I really can’t say. I never seem to be able to manage to remember what I’ve dreamed.’
‘I had this feeling I’d been in another place. Another world almost. Or – better – another time.’
‘Old houses are funny places. They seem to retain something of the past, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe that’s what it is, Poppy. Or maybe your lovely home has just got magic.’ Kate smiled and shrugged as they climbed the stairs of the great house on their way to work. When they reached the top, they went their separate ways, Kate to her office and Poppy in to see Major Folkestone.
But when she was invited by Miss Budge to go into the inner office, Poppy was surprised to find the major in the company of Jack Ward.
He was standing with his back to her, staring out of the main window, smoking his favourite briar pipe thoughtfully, legs slightly apart and hands clasped behind him. After the greetings were over, Jack Ward simply nodding his acknowledgement without turning round, Major Folkestone invited Poppy to sit down opposite him.
‘I’ll come to the point,’ he said. ‘Straight to the point, in fact. We need to talk to you about you and your husband.’
‘Is something wrong, sir?’ Poppy enquired. ‘Nothing’s happened to Scott, has it?’
‘Not at all,’ Jack said from the window, staring out at something in the far distance. ‘Other than him getting married.’
‘I understood there were no objections on that score, sir.’
‘There weren’t,’ Jack replied. ‘Still aren’t. But there are reservations now, I’m afraid.’
Poppy frowned at Anthony, hopeful of some explanation.
‘It’s rather put the kibosh on any further work in the field,’ Anthony explained. ‘At least as far as you and Scott go.’
‘I thought you were quite happy with us as a team, sir.’
‘Absolutely. You and Scott work very well together,’ Anthony replied carefully, holding a freshly sharpened pencil between his two index fingers. ‘You’re absolutely first rate as a team.’
‘Were,’ Jack said. ‘You were absolutely first rate as a team.’
‘We can’t send you out in the field together any more,’ Anthony continued with a glance at his superior, who was still staring out of the window. ‘In circumstances such as these, we do not use married agents, or even agents who are emotionally involved with one another.’
‘I see, sir, of course,’ Poppy said. ‘Of course.’
‘That is why we didn’t send you off together on the mission your husband has been sent on,’ Jack said, turning round at last and looking at Poppy over his spectacles. ‘It wouldn’t have been sensible to put a couple of agents into the field who have such a close personal affiliation. Your feelings for each other would obviously affect your mutual judgement.’
‘In no way does this affect the perception we have of the two of you individually,’ Anthony interposed hurriedly, seeing the look of obvious disappointment in Poppy’s eyes.
‘Of course not,’ Jack agreed, relighting his pipe. ‘It isn’t just for our sake either. It’s for your own good. You know as well as I do – you drop your guard for one moment – just one . . .’ He looked up again at Poppy over the flame of his match. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean, young lady.’
‘Of course, sir. Will that be all?’
‘Not quite,’ Anthony said, consulting the file on his desk. ‘We’re as anxious to get you back into play, as it were, as you are. So you’re to go along now to see Miss Lavington who will go through your new briefing with you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Poppy replied, preparing to leave. ‘Thank you for letting me know about Scott and me.’
Once she had left the room Jack turned to Anthony Folkestone.
‘God help young Scott if she ever finds out who he has been dropped into France with.’
‘I don’t think it would worry young Poppy, sir. Poppy Tetherington isn’t that sort of girl.’
‘Poppy Meynell, you mean,’ Jack muttered. ‘And as for her not worrying about it, I wouldn’t put money on it, Tony. Not if I were you.’
Jack turned back to stare out of the window. Anthony Folkestone was a first rate officer in every way. But one thing he obviously didn’t know much about was women.