For once Lily was dining alone with Eric. This was what she had most wanted to happen, although it was also something that she feared since she knew he was bound to make a move on her sooner or later. But that was a risk she had to take, because without it she had absolutely no chance of succeeding. Besides, she knew that if she was not prepared to take risks she should have stayed behind a desk.
‘Don’t you so hate the Jews?’ he wondered, picking up a conversation Lily had hoped would not be rekindled, although she knew that if she could see this one through and convince him of her sympathy, she would win his trust in her completely.
‘What do you think?’ she said as disparagingly as she could. ‘My father’s import export business was quite ruined by the Jews. They bled him dry.’
‘They are an intolerable people altogether,’ Eric sighed, wiping the corners of his mouth delicately on his linen napkin. ‘The Führer is so absolutely right in wishing to cleanse the world of them. Do you not agree?’
‘If I was a man I would help him do it,’ Lily replied, privately begging her Jewish grandmother for forgiveness.
Eric laughed. ‘You are the most delicious woman, Lily,’ he said. ‘You are definitely someone I wish to be on our side. So you agree that we are the master race, yes? That the world will be a better place when we can control the sort of people who breed.’
‘If they turn out anything like you – and me,’ Lily said, sipping her wine, ‘then of course the world will not only be a better place but a much lovelier one.’
‘I would like to kiss you now, Lily. In fact I think I shall.’ He pulled her face towards him with one hand and kissed her full on the mouth. ‘You taste good. I look forward even more now to later tonight.’
Lily smiled back at him, wishing she could feel the same. But she had no alternative. He was her only way out.
He took her to his hotel, a place the Germans had requisitioned, formerly one of the best hotels in the city. He took her straight up to his huge and luxurious bedroom on the first floor, where he poured them both a large brandy.
‘Are you assuming I’m going to sleep with you, Eric?’ Lily asked as he handed her the cognac.
‘I never work on assumptions, Lily,’ he replied. ‘I only ever act on certainties.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘It is certainly no insult. But in one way it is a compliment – to you. I mean that I should wish to sleep with you. I can have any woman in this town – more or less – and not only in this town. Sometimes I have to apply a little pressure, you know? Some small reminder of what might happen to them or to someone else should they not find me as desirable as I am finding them. They always say yes. In the end.’
‘You know,’ Lily said, putting her head to one side, ‘I think one of the most attractive things about you is your complete and utter arrogance.’
‘And one of the most attractive things about you are your breasts. Now please come here – I think I have done with talking.’
As he undressed her, Lily thought soulfully of the things she was required to do for England. She had not wanted to sleep with him; she had not intended to do so. She had in fact prepared all sorts of female excuses and reasons for not doing so, but somehow she felt that if she tried anything like that on this dangerous and deeply unpleasant man, he would either sit it out and wait, or else he would simply rape her. Besides, she needed vital information from him, and what better way to get it than to sleep with the enemy?
Oddly enough, when it was all finally over and Eric lay deeply asleep beside her, Lily reflected that it hadn’t been quite such a terrible ordeal as she had feared. Storm-Trooping Eric had turned out to be a more than adequate lover.
‘Do you always sleep with your pistol under your pillow?’ Lily asked him in the morning as they sat up in bed, trying to find the energy to get up.
‘I only ever sleep with it under my pillow for good reason,’ Eric replied.
‘And what was last night’s good reason?’
‘If you hadn’t slept with me I was going to kill you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘If you hadn’t slept with me I would have known you were not what you said you were. And so I would have killed you.’
He had breakfast sent up to the room, fresh croissants and very good coffee. They sat at a table in the window watching the sun rise over the beautiful city.
‘Anyway,’ Lily began as idly as she could, knowing this was possibly the last chance she would have. ‘As I told you when we met, I used to work for the Resistance.’
‘I thought you still did?’ he replied, looking up quickly.
‘Yes, of course, I explained that. I just am not so involved with them as I was. It’s very hard since I began working for you lot as well to put in the same hours.’
Eric found this hilarious and roared with laughter.
‘How I wish there were more like you, Lily! In fact I would look more kindly on those French scum if they had a few more fighters like you. Anyhow – the reason you changed sides was because they killed your lover.’
‘Don’t look like that. As if it was something only the French would do! You tell me a better reason! No, don’t bother – you are all pragmatic German and I am all emotional French! But when they accuse your lover of being a double agent, and then without a proper trial or hearing take him out and shoot him in the back of the head – you think you stay enamoured of the Resistance? Besides, now they are all Communist pigs, and I am no Communist.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Enough of that,’ Lily said, pretending to try to control her mock outrage. ‘Let’s talk about today. Today you tell me the Gestapo go and seek revenge on Cell Blue in – where is it? In the caves in the St-Estèphe area they use as their base?’
‘No, no, Lily, that is not what I said. I said nothing of the sort.’
‘But that is who you are after, surely? Cell Blue? The most potent cell here – in this area? They were responsible for – I can hardly tell – it might be easier to tell you what they were not responsible for! Guy Rochfort? He killed what – ten of your men! Pierre Dupont? He blew up four tanks last week alone! You must remember the tanks you lost?’
Eric nodded, about to interrupt but not yet allowed.
‘If you’re not going after Cell Blue, what are you doing? Who are you going after? You’re not going to let them slip through your fingers, surely?’
She was glad to see Eric visibly disconcerted for the first time. So now she let him have his go, cocking her head on one side while she waited for illumination.
‘I have issued instructions for a unit called the Red Birds to be rounded up.’
‘The Red Birds?’ Lily said aghast. ‘The Red Birds?’
‘They work from Dumeaux. They’re led by someone called Chantal – and someone called Gérard the Great—’
Lily frowned as if she had misheard. ‘Gérard was killed three weeks ago. Chantal fled to Spain, so I heard. But go on. Go on.’
‘You are sure?’
‘Eric – darling man – I have the right information. I have much better information than you, my dear. Gérard was killed in a skirmish one night when they were trying to bring in an English drop. They probably tried to cover it up because he was a very important guy – he was the area leader and very high up altogether in the Resistance – and if they know you know he is dead . . .’ Lily shrugged tellingly. ‘But you know what I think? I say you are barking up the wrong tree, and worse – you are about to make a terrible fool of yourself.’
Eric didn’t like that, just as Lily hoped he would not.
‘What was this other cell you were talking about?’
Lily told him. She told him the names of all the members, the exact location and their track record. She could do that with impunity because she knew the cell had been disbanded and that the members had moved on to pastures new under new identities, some of them hopefully to Dumeaux.
When she had finished Eric got on the telephone at once to his headquarters to inform them of the information that had come to hand and to recommend an immediate change of plan and target. Half an hour later his telephone rang and it was confirmed that the raiding party had been redirected to search the caves and mountains of the St-Estèphe area in search of a group called Cell Blue, led by two men called Rochfort and Dupont.
‘I shall have to leave now, alas,’ Eric said, much to Lily’s vast but well concealed relief. ‘I have much to thank you for.’
‘No, no.’ She laughed. ‘I have much to thank you for. Perhaps tonight you will give me something for which I shall be even more grateful?’
‘I shall give the matter considerable thought during the day,’ Eric agreed. ‘And if today we are successful in rounding up these cochons, I may even let you treat me.’
As soon as he was well and truly gone, Lily dressed and departed, leaving the hotel as if she was a resident about to return, and disappearing into the backways and alleys of the town.
She needed transport desperately, having consulted her little book of maps and seeing how far away Dumeaux was. What she had to find was a small garage with a petrol supply, and a motor car.
She asked around, with as much innocence as she could, pretending she knew the name of the garage but not the location, then the location but not the name of the garage, before being directed to a small Citroën workshop in the back streets. There were a couple of two-door Citroëns parked out the front, the sort favoured by the Gestapo when making one of their flying raids, fast, nimble cars, one of which would suit Lily’s purposes admirably. She was happy to see there was also a gasoline pump.
The proprietor was bent over the open bonnet of some other car which he was busy servicing. The first thing he knew about having a visitor was the feel of a gun barrel in his neck.
Lily told him not to say anything, just to move quietly to his office and get the keys for one of the Citroëns. She stayed behind him all the time, the gun barrel now in his back and concealed under her jacket, which she had taken off specifically for the purpose.
Once he had the keys, she walked him to the car and the pump, and ordered him to fill the car to the brim. He was about to say something but Lily stopped him by pressing the gun barrel even harder into his back. The car was duly filled. Then she walked the proprietor back to his office, opened the heavy door of a closet at the back and pushed him in. He still had his back to her for which Lily was grateful since she had no wish to see his face as she crashed what he had thought was a gun barrel but in fact was a length of heavy small-calibre lead piping down on the back of his head. As he fell unconscious to the floor, Lily locked the closet, threw the key in the rubbish bin, and getting into the Citroën drove at a steady pace out of the city.
Once on the open road she could drive as fast as she liked. There was next to no traffic and what there was seemed largely agricultural. Dumeaux lay nearly twenty miles north of Rouen, and she was there in half an hour, once she had got free of the city. It was a pretty little town, a place that seemed all but deserted when Lily parked the Citroën in the square and wondered where to start looking.
On the far side of the square she noticed a blacksmith at work, shoeing a large farm horse. Like most farriers he was a strong man, built like an ox, nut brown from the sun and covered in a slick of perspiration. Working on what she liked to call her theory that such a man generally was a typical Resistance fighter, which she privately admitted was more guesswork than constructive conjecture, she approached him, admiring his skill and the fine animal on which he was working.
Then she asked him where she might find Gérard le Grand. As she did so, the thought suddenly dawned on her that if anyone was going to be called Gérard le Grand it was possibly this giant of a man.
He didn’t even look up.
‘Who is asking?’
‘A friend of Pierre Dupont. And Guy Rochfort.’
‘So? Why are you interested?’
‘I am an ornithologist, monsieur. I have come to see your famous Red Birds.’
Again he didn’t look up. He simply continued nailing the shoe on to one vast hoof held in the crook of his lap.
‘There is a very good little bar over there, m’selle,’ he said. ‘Chantal’s. The proprietor is a friend of mine. She should be able to help you. Tell her Gérard sent you.’
The first thing Lily told Chantal was of the activities of the Gestapo back in Rouen, alerting her to the fact that they were after both her and Gérard in person, as well as their cell whose code name was also known to them, as was its location. There was little doubt in either of their minds that once they had drawn a blank in St-Estèphe, or someone had double-checked their records, the Gestapo would set off post haste for Dumeaux, so the cell must disband and escape as fast as possible.
But first Lily needed the use of a radio transmitter. Since it was deemed too dangerous for her to use the one in the village belonging to the Red Birds, Lily was directed to a tiny hamlet up in the hills eight miles to the east where she was to ask for Father Roman. He would allow her to use the transmitter hidden behind the altar of his tiny church. What was more, there was a large farm on the outskirts of the hill village that might well be ideal for landing and taking off a small aircraft.
Billy and Scott had been forced to take the long route. Owing to the activities in the Channel both of the Allies and of the Germans, few merchant boats were leaving the ports along the northern French coast and no small fishing boat was willing to take the risk of making a run across the minefield that particular stretch of water had become. Nor was there any chance of an airlift since not only were they badly positioned but they also no longer had access to a radio. So they made their way home via the long and still very dangerous escape route that wound up through the very northern tip of France, through Belgium and finally into the Low Countries, the liberation of Brussels itself still a good three months away. But like many others before them, thanks to the unending help afforded them by Resistance fighters everywhere, the two men made it, finally finding berths on a merchant ship headed for Harwich that was sailing under a neutral flag.
The day they set sail, the Allied armies chose also to take to the seas, crossing the English Channel in their thousands to begin a series of terrible battles that would finally herald the end of the war in Europe. One infantry unit of the US First Division landing on Omaha Beach had cause to be particularly grateful to the unsung hero who was crossing the Channel in the opposite direction, the young man who had discovered and depicted all the enemy fortifications and gun positions along a particularly important position on top of the very cliff under which they had landed, thus arming them with the sort of advance knowledge that enabled them to surprise and knock out these resolute defences, creating an all important throughway for their following troops.
The message soon made its way to Anthony’s desk. As soon as he read it, he set about finding a way to facilitate the request it contained.
It was Cissie who came up with the answer.
‘Obviously,’ she drawled, looking at the map Anthony had spread out before him. ‘Obviously Blackbird can’t move from where she is, first because Jerry is going to be looking for her and second because he’s going to be very busy in that particular area.’
‘One has to imagine the Red Birds did as told and scooted,’ Anthony remarked. ‘If any of them fell into Gestapo hands and one of them cracked on the wheel, then our own little bird’s chances would go down to near zero. I think she’s going to have to sit this one out.’
‘I don’t think so, if you don’t mind me saying, duck,’ Cissie replied. ‘I don’t think she’ll be able to sit it out because they’re going to comb that jolly old landscape with a fine-tooth. No one pulls the wool over the Gestapo’s eyes and gets away with it – not if they can help it. And if they don’t find her themselves, you can bet yer bottom someone will blow the whistle on her. No, I think one simply has to go in and get her.’
‘Got enough petrol in the Austin, Cissie?’
‘I wasn’t thinking cars, Tony, you oaf. I was thinking planes. ’Ickle planes.’
‘Any ideas for ’ickle pilots? Everyone’s awfully busy, I’m afraid, as you’ve probably noticed.’
‘As it happens,’ Cissie said, ‘I think I know the very person.’
Poppy went to collect the plane herself, for the very good reason that she wanted to see Trafford again in order to get all tips she could for the dangerous mission she had readily agreed to undertake.
‘Any news ’bout the old man, sweetie?’ Trafford wondered after she had greeted her friend. ‘Or is it still a case of no news being good news?’
‘That’s it, I’m afraid, Traffy. But actually I do believe that. They do have a habit of telling one the worst PDQ at the office. So I have this feeling . . .’ Poppy smiled, holding up crossed fingers.
‘You betcha, Pop,’ Trafford agreed. ‘And won’t there be a party when he touches terra firma, eh? Now, to the matter in hand this – er dodge of yours. Obviously you’re going to have to try to miss their blooming radar, sweetie, which means going in very low where poss, because in Tiger Tim you won’t be able to go très high. Since most of the ballyhoo’s going on west at the moment, one hopes Jerry’s eye won’t be quite so on the ball over the northern coast – but even so they’ll take a pot-shot at you if you get in their sights. Best way to avoid that sort of nonsense is to bunny hop – as if you were hedgehopping, really. Fly in over the coast in a series of hops, up and down, up and down – should keep you off their screens because they won’t be able to get a good line on you for long enough to pick you up as an enemy aircraft. Same goes for the flak – just keep flying at various altitudes. In a way, dear girl, the lower the better, but then of course they’ll have the weather ears on and they’ll hear you if you’re too fudging low. Whatever you do, and however you do it, when you reach target – which I’m too damn’ sure you will – your very bestest bet is to touch down, but don’t stop. Keep Tiger Tim moving and get your pickup to run like stink and jump on board while you’re still motoring. You can get them those instructions before you go, roger? Because when Jerry gets wind of some beastly little antique flying in over his head he’ll run his fat little legs off after you in order to shoot you out of the sky, so get in and out FAYFC. Fast as you fudging can. When you’re flying back, as you leave the airfield, keep low. Oddly enough it’s harder to hit a low flying aircraft at speed when it’s right over head than higher up when you can take its measure. You’ve simply got to make it très, très difficile to take a pop at you, then just fly like budgery till you see the White Cliffs de Dover and hear dear Vera singing. I have an even better idea. Why don’t I make the flight? I’m a lot older and much more disposable than you are, so why don’t I make the flight? Yes, that’s settled – I shall make the flight and you shall stay here and go to the ball.’
‘If you try any of that nonsense, Traffy,’ Poppy warned her, ‘the boys have promised to help me lock you up in the hangar until I get back. Got that?’
‘Should never have taught you how to fly, dear thing,’ Trafford sighed. ‘Because this is just the sort of lark I was born for.’
Once it had been confirmed that Blackbird had received her orders and would be ready to be collected at 0130 hours the following morning, Poppy was given the green light. Anthony drove her personally to the airstrip from which Billy had taken off on his mission and at which Poppy had discovered hers had been aborted. Now she had the chance to make good the terrible disappointment she had suffered that night by performing one of the most difficult collection jobs undertaken by the Service during the entire war. She had of course no idea of the identity of the Blackbird, other than that the agent was one of the Colonel’s most valiant bogeys who simply had to be collected, not only to save the agent’s life but because of vital information the Blackbird had collected.
Poppy mentally prepared herself for the ordeal facing her, hers not to reason why. It was hers to do and hopefully not to die. She had been sick with nerves all the previous night, spending the dark hours hugging her little dog to her in her bed as, unable to sleep, she tried to imagine everything that could and possibly would happen to her so that she would be ready for all contingencies. But in the small hours the more she thought about it the more absolutely terrified she became, until abandoning hope of any further sleep altogether she decided to get up, make herself something hot to drink and sit by the fire until dawn came up when she knew her sanity would be restored.
It was restored long before the sun began to rise in the east, gently flooding the woodlands round her little house with a magic light that fingered through the trees like long dazzling golden wands, filling the first hours of the new day with gentle brilliance, a shining that seemed to bring with it a new sense of hope, which in its turn brought fortitude and restored the confidence of those whose belief had wavered during the troubled hours of the night. But Poppy’s calm and confidence was finally restored before the rise of the sun. It came back to her when once again she found herself taking the diary from the little mahogany sewing box beside her chair, and when she had finished reading it she knew without a doubt that she would prevail.
‘At least at night all planes are grey.’ Anthony smiled as he walked Poppy towards what in daylight would have been a bright yellow aircraft. ‘I just wish we could have got you something a little nippier. A little more up to date.’
‘I’m actually happier with Tiger Tim, sir,’ Poppy replied, doing up her flying jacket and checking the straps on her parachute. ‘I don’t suppose my pickup will have had time to put on something as sensible as a parachute?’
‘Doubt it very much, Poppy. But then we hope you won’t have reason to need parachutes.’
‘Not with me driving, sir,’ Poppy grinned. ‘Particularly at the heights I intend to travel. Wouldn’t have time to open.’
The ground crew, having finished their last preflight checks, legged the pilot on to the wing and stood ready to spin the engine into life.
‘Good luck!’ Anthony called. ‘Safe home!’
‘Mine’s a brandy!’ Poppy called back. ‘As in large!’
Then she was off, speeding down the runway, taking off perfectly and disappearing into the darkness of the skies above them.
She flew over South Foreland, north of Dover, and thence just south of Ostend where she understood the defences were more suspect. Her information was perfectly correct since over the Belgian coastline her plane did not come under fire once. In fact she had a completely clear passage as far south as Ypres where she experienced her first flak. At once she dropped to an even lower altitude than she had been keeping, flying now at two hundred and fifty feet while zigzagging across the night sky, until crossing the border of Belgium and France she turned her little plane north of Lille to head due southwest across Picardy, again to fly unmolested south of Amiens and thence to her destination east of Rouen.
She had expected to meet more flak around Amiens, but it appeared no one had either spotted or heard her tiny craft as it battled across the night sky. She was now back at her proper cruising level, the plane was flying perfectly, and her time was spot on. Poppy took several deep breaths and then plotted the rest of her course, estimating that she had twenty-five minutes’ flying time left before touching down in a mown field eight miles east of Dumeaux, a field that would be temporarily lit by a flare the moment those waiting heard the sound of her aircraft.
One minute ahead of schedule Poppy began her descent, aiming only for a map reference, unable to see anything but darkness down below ahead of her. Fifteen seconds later the field was suddenly lit by the vivid glaring light of a flare, allowing Poppy to see the strip that had been prepared and to make a vital life-saving last minute adjustment to her approach, an approach that otherwise would have had her crash straight into a huge oak tree that stood slap bang in the middle of the field.
‘Nobody thought to mention the blasted tree, of course,’ she muttered through clenched teeth, as the wheels below her touched down and the plane took a violent upward bounce, owing to the rough terrain.
Holding level and steady, Poppy endured three more hops of diminishing proportions before the aircraft had in her estimation properly landed, whereupon in line with her orders she kept travelling at speed towards the end of the allotted runway, before throttling back enough to allow her to swing the plane round one hundred and eighty degrees ready for immediate take-off. Again in line with her orders, she began to taxi back along the field, intending to hit the throttle a hundred yards from her turning point.
At first she thought there was no one out there, but then, after thirty yards of taxiing, she saw a figure break cover and begin to run as fast as possible towards the side of the plane. The person was about fifty yards from the Tiger Moth, which would allow just about enough time to grab hold of the rope they had left tied on the struts of the right hand wing for this very purpose, and haul themselves up and on board in one neat but demanding move.
‘I hope whoever it is, is fit,’ Poppy remarked to the plane, watching her land speed. ‘Because they’re only going to have one crack at it.’
Looking over the side of her cockpit, Poppy could see her passenger, dressed in a flying suit, a helmet already on and buckled tight, grabbing for the trailing rope.
‘Come on!’ Poppy yelled over the noise of the engine. ‘Grab it! Grab it and pull!’
Her passenger could not possibly have heard in the mayhem, but now the flying-suited figure had grabbed the rope and to Poppy’s delight and relief had pulled themselves expertly on to the wing and then equally expertly into the seat in the open cockpit in front of Poppy.
‘Well done!’ Poppy screamed. ‘Now hold tight!’
Giving the plane full throttle, Poppy turned her full concentration to getting them back airborne. As the plane accelerated down the field, she heard the first shots, and saw the flashes from the muzzles of some of the guns now trained on them. A bullet crashed through the fuselage in front of her, followed seconds later by another that tore through the fabric just behind her seat, but the plane was still stable and accelerating fast.
The only trouble was they seemed to be running out of runway.
Poppy tried her best to make out how much field she had left but with the flare having long since died it was sheer guesswork. If she had done her job properly she knew she should have about fifty yards to spare before she needed to be wheels off the ground, yet at the back of her mind she suspected that because she had been concentrating so hard on getting her passenger on board she might have taken her eye off the ball for just a little too long, hitting the throttle five seconds later perhaps than she should have done, and thus sacrificing those precious fifty yards.
She was right. Those fifty yards had gone.
Yet somehow, miraculously, thanks probably to the little extra purchase Poppy had on the joystick as she went for lift-off, the Tiger Moth was off the ground and up in the air, although if Poppy could have seen by how little its wheels missed first the huge hedge at the end of the field and then the roof of the enormous barn over which it had to climb she might possibly have fainted. None the less they were airborne and flying, Poppy wheeling hard right at once to try to disconcert the gunmen on the ground who were still determined to bring the little aircraft down. The Resistance were playing their usual brave role, staying in place to shoot it out with the Germans rather than fleeing to safety once the plane was in the air and their job done, an heroic act that by taking out four of the ten German guns without doubt saved Poppy and her passenger from a fatal hit.
In another half a minute they were both out of range and out of sight, banking in the opposite direction now before climbing up high into the night sky. Below them the little band of Resistance fighters stole away in their own darkness, with only one injury and that a nowhere near fatal one. They left behind them five dead Germans and three wounded ones, after a small valiant battle of great importance won by yet more unsung heroes.
Poppy knew she would not have enough fuel to return the way she had come, so instead of flying northeast she turned the biplane north to head for the Dieppe coastline, an area she knew to be well defended but one that offered the shortest run home, directly over the Channel and Beachy Head where as long as they didn’t hit any trouble she intended to land somewhere in the Downs behind the cliffs. Unfortunately they flew almost straight into trouble.
It happened well before they reached Dieppe. After half an hour of uninterrupted flight the sky was suddenly ablaze with the flak of anti-aircraft fire. Looking around her, Poppy at once realised it was not directed at them at all, but at a squadron of bombers to the east of them, a dozen huge aircraft lit up by the brilliance of the ack-ack and silhouetted against the night sky like a school of enormous flying whales. They were flying alone with no fighter escort, obviously on the home run after a mission. Even as she was watching one of the bombers took a direct hit and began to spiral out of control spinning slowly and inevitably to a fatal crash below.
The next thing they knew the sky was full of German fighters, homing in on the squadron for what looked like a duck shoot. As yet it seemed no one had spotted the tiny biplane on the very outskirts of the action as Poppy tried to hold a steady course north, and because so far they were both safe and unnoticed Poppy decided to lose height, to drop down as far as it was safe to do so, hoping to be able to hide away in the darkness as well as the cloud cover below. But then, in the mirror she had fixed in her cockpit, she saw the flare of guns behind her, guns aimed right at the Tiger Moth.
Bullets tore and screamed past her, some – how many Poppy had no idea – tearing into the lower wing on the starboard side. Knowing that one moment more of hesitation would spell death, Poppy dipped the nose of the aircraft, killed the engine and dropped it straight into what she hoped would look like a fatal spin.
It seemed to work since the pilot of the Messerschmitt, having circled to come back and finish the job, must have seen what he thought was a death hit as the biplane spun apparently out of control to disappear into the clouds below, for instead of pursuing his victim to make sure of a strike he banked hard and fast to join the rest of his comrades in attacking the bombers.
There was no time to scream. Whatever Poppy’s passenger was thinking, they certainly did not seem to be panicking. Not that Poppy had any free time to study the habits of her fellow traveller – but she could see a pair of gloved hands gripping the edge of the cockpit as the Tiger Moth spun deliriously earthwards.
‘Traffy,’ Poppy muttered to herself. ‘All I can say to you at this moment, Traffy, is that you had better have done your stuff – and you too, Bruce!’
If the engine didn’t kick back into life at once they were dead. Poppy knew that, but then she also knew that if she had not killed the engine and deliberately spun the plane they would both be dead anyway, or if not dead as yet, burning slowly and horribly as the biplane spun faster and faster out of control.
But they were still alive, and while they were still alive there was hope – particularly once the engine coughed and spluttered into life at Poppy’s second attempt. Now all she had to do was control the spin and pull out of the dive.
‘That’s all,’ Poppy thought as she began to go through the procedures as taught to her in her crash course of flying at the aerodrome. ‘I simply have to control the spin, get the nose up and kick on. Child’s play really, compared with being on a mad Arab mare bolting out of control.’
Derek and Trafford had both done their job. But then as both Derek and Trafford would have readily volunteered they had a star pupil, someone who was a naturally gifted pilot. Not many tyro pilots could have survived the spin and stall Poppy had encouraged; in fact a lot of experienced pilots would have encountered great difficulty in saving themselves from such a situation. Yet within a quarter of a minute Poppy had pulled the plane out of its death spin and had it back flying on an even keel.
By way of thanks her passenger half turned round in front of her and gave a double thumbs up. Poppy responded by thumbing up in return, while privately thinking they weren’t out of the woods yet. Even so, now they were far below the cloud cover it became plain and level flying until they reached the Dieppe coastline where Poppy once again anticipated trouble.
Expecting more anti-aircraft fire she dropped down even lower, hoping to fly over the coast at not much more than one hundred feet. Her only problem might be encountering some lethal object of the same height or higher than her plane. But having carefully charted her approach along the flatlands before arriving at the low lying coastline itself, Poppy reckoned the risk was minimal, so from a hundred and fifty feet she took the plane fifty feet lower and hoped for the best.
Again her luck held until she was over the dunes and heading for the sea – but then just as she hoped she had made it to relative safety she heard a burst of high-powered shooting break out from below and then behind the plane. Easing the joystick back she felt the plane begin to climb at once, only for it suddenly to shudder as a hail of bullets ripped into its tail area.
‘Damn, damn,’ Poppy swore as she felt the plane begin to falter. ‘Damn, damn and double damn.’
Checking both flaps and rudder she got the impression that she still had control; at least, enough control to fly the aircraft in a straight line, as long as the enemy scored no more hits from what she imagined had to be a heavy machine-gun nest somewhere in the sands over which she had just flown.
Next she breathed in briefly to see if she could smell fuel, but again mercifully she drew a blank. To judge from the signals Poppy was getting from the figure in the front seat, her passenger was also unharmed. Hoping they had escaped relatively unscathed, she eased the stick back in an attempt to climb higher, but the little plane faltered, failing to respond. Poppy eased the stick back even further and at last the nose rose and the plane began to climb, though how high she had no idea since when she checked her instruments she found the altimeter was no longer functioning, along with all the rest.
Understanding that as a result of the hit she had lost her instruments, Poppy took stock and thought ahead. As long as the plane had suffered no other serious damage, particularly to flaps and rudder, then provided she made enough height they might just be able to limp home. She could only guess at their height, which was worrying since the course she had plotted was designed to take them in right over the massive cliffs at Beachy Head. It would therefore seem only sensible to replot their route and try to get home by diverting west to come in over the relative levels of Brighton Beach, hoping they had either enough height to clear the Down directly behind the town or enough aircraft left to make an emergency landing there.
But when she tried to steer the plane left she got no response, only a drop in height. Quickly she eased the plane back up to the height she hoped she had been maintaining, only for the engine to splutter, miss and splutter again. At once she adjusted the fuel feed, and, miraculously, seconds after doing so – seconds that felt like minutes – she felt the engine begin to fire again on all cylinders, although now when she asked it to climb it stayed resolutely level.
Again she tried to turn to the left, and again the same thing happened. The same thing happened when she tried to steer to her right, although at least when she tried this direction the loss of height was not accompanied by any loss of power. Even so, there was no way Poppy was going to be able to change the direction in which she was headed without going down in the drink. She was faced with Hobson’s choice. Swallowing hard, Poppy flew straight on at her present altitude.
Guessing at both her airspeed and the distance, Poppy calculated they were still about twenty-five miles from the English coastline. Even though her instrumentation was down, she knew they were travelling a long way short of full speed, estimating from the sound of the engine and from the difficulty she had in gaining altitude that their speed was probably no greater than eighty knots, which meant they should be arriving at Beachy Head in between fifteen and eighteen minutes’ time, provided she could sustain her current rate of velocity. The fact that she saw the huge cliffs looming up in front of her in the pale light of a moon that was at last clear of the cloud cover that had earlier saved their lives meant she had miscalculated.
It also terrified the life out of her, as well as suddenly giving her heart. For although they were much nearer the cliffs than she had estimated, the fact that they had arrived there sooner than her calculations had suggested could only mean that somehow they had picked up air speed, which in turn meant that Poppy might now be able to get the plane’s nose up. She was going to have to do so, because as she stared ahead of her at the cliffs that seemed to be rushing towards her, she realised they were flying in at a height of at least fifty feet below their top. If she couldn’t gain height, and quickly, they were dead.
Checking that she had the throttle set to maximum, which indeed she had, Poppy prayed hard and set her hands either side of the joystick. Her passenger was unmoving, all attention seemingly fixed on the mountain of white chalk and stone ahead of them. Checking the distance and able only to guess at it, Poppy reckoned the distance that lay between them and certain death could be no more than a quarter of a mile, and given that they must be travelling at nearly one hundred miles an hour that gave them approximately a quarter of a minute to gain sixty feet, in a plane that seemed unwilling to rise another sixty inches.
She pulled the joystick back, not hard but with utter determination, the sort of purpose designed to will Tiger Tim not to fail her. For two, three, four, five seconds there was no response at all, other than the chilling sound of a splutter as all at once it seemed the engine was about to cut out altogether and the plane, simply glide silently into the cliffs to explode with a shattering concussion and a life-enveloping ball of flame.
But it didn’t. Instead the splutter seemed to galvanise the engine into stronger life, and suddenly Poppy saw the nose start to lift. She eased the joystick back even more, knowing that she was running the risk of over-cooking the climb yet having to take that risk since it was the only chance left for survival. And as the nose lifted so the plane climbed slowly, inexorably and then with a sudden surge as if the plane had got inspiration from a vortex of air beneath its wings. Whatever the explanation it was now climbing surely and steadily, and as Poppy dared to look directly forward at the solid mass of cliffs that had been about to take away two lives, she saw it falling away beneath the Tiger Moth, at first by only a matter of feet as the little plane cleared the very edge of the stone and chalk massif, so near in fact that Poppy swore the undercarriage was about to catch and bring them down head first; yet on the plane climbed until now they were flying a good thirty to forty feet over the grassland below, when it could climb no more. Then, once it had reached its safe height, it began to falter the way a winged bird sometimes does, fluttering and tipping before it crashes to the ground.
The moment she felt the plane begin to fail Poppy hit her internal emergency button, knocking back her airspeed instead of panicking and trying to increase it. The Tiger Moth steadied, just long enough for Poppy to trim the craft sufficiently to get her level; then she dropped the nose by a matter of a few degrees, just enough to begin an uncontrolled descent towards the downland that was now coming up to meet them, but not so much that they would nosedive into the ground. Enough in fact to leave her some control over the descending plane, enough to lift the nose, which she did, just enough for the plane to level itself – which it did – then to cut the engine – which she did – and for the plane to glide in to do an emergency landing – which it did.
Poppy closed her eyes, held on to the side of the cockpit, prayed and sat out the bounces. The Tiger Moth, brilliant little plane that it was, bounced six times, each bounce lower than the preceding one, but never tipped and never nosedived. It kept its equilibrium, landing and running in a long uncontrolled semicircle on top of the cliffs until finally it hit a shelf of grass, a ledge firm enough and strong enough to halt its progress and to tip the plane slowly up on to its nose so that it rested on its now shattered propeller, its rear wheel spinning slowly and silently while the occupants sat at first too stunned to move.
They jumped even though there was no smell of fuel. Having got themselves unstrapped they stood up in their tipped up cockpits and leaped sideways out, landing on the wings and sliding forward. As soon as their feet hit the ground they ran. They ran harder than they had perhaps ever run until they were a good hundred yards from the crashed plane, where they threw themselves face down on the ground to await the inevitable explosion.
There was none. Whatever had happened to the plane – and judging from the amount of bullet holes in the rear fuselage plenty had happened to the plane, including half a dozen entry points not six inches behind Poppy’s seat – the fuel lines had remained intact. Wires must have been damaged, broken in all probability – the same with any electrics and with pressure lines – but the fuel supply was intact, and, since the electrical system had failed, there were no sparks to ignite any possible fire.
Poppy stood up, still gloved and helmeted, put her hands on her hips and surveyed the little plane with love and pride. If it had been smaller she would have gone and hugged it.
Next to her, her passenger was also staring at the crash site, before turning to Poppy and removing goggles and helmet, throwing her arms around her. ‘I don’t care who you are, you’re a blasted genius. Marry me, please? Please!’
Poppy, seeing who her passenger was, took her own goggles and helmet off and smiled back.
‘You might just want to reconsider the last part of your statement.’
‘Poppy?’ Lily stared at her. ‘Poppy! ’