28. Basque Country

The parishioner of the kind priest in Nantes kept his word. After smuggling his charge safely out of Nantes, Harry was passed on to another worker, who guided Harry south. After many weeks of being on the run, Harry met the Resistance worker who would lead him and other escapees over the Pyrenees. Though thoroughly daunted by the journey that lay ahead of him, Harry knew that if he had to scale every mountain between France and Spain to be reunited with Diana, he would do it – even if it killed him.

That night before his journey into the Basque Country, Harry dreamt of his first meeting with Diana. She had been wearing her pale-blue WAAFs uniform but had removed the jacket in order to sit more comfortably in the chairs ranged around the wide mapping table that dominated the Ops Room. Even from the gallery, as he puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, Harry could see Diana’s long, slender legs, narrow waist and full bosom. When she stood up to rearrange the position of the markers, her shoulder-length silver-blonde hair fell in a silky curtain over her pale, intense face and, as she turned towards him, Harry noticed how big and blue her eyes were.

‘The colour of summer cornflowers,’ he thought dreamily.

It soon became perfectly clear that Harry wasn’t the only officer on the base who rated beautiful WAAF Officer Diana Bishop. She had only to walk into the NAAFI and all heads turned her way.

‘Best-looking girl for miles,’ Harry’s immediate boss and best pal, Flight Commander Derek Robson, remarked. ‘Bright too – doesn’t natter away like most of the other girls and always gets the map locations spot on.’

Seeing the effect Diana had on men in the NAAFI, their smiles and wolf whistles that she assiduously avoided, caused Harry to wonder if she was, in fact, already married or engaged. So convinced was he that Diana was spoken for Harry decided it would be wise not to pursue her. It was only after bumping into her crouched down pumping her bicycle tyre in a dark alleyway outside the Ops Block that his opinion started to change.

‘May I help?’ he asked rather formally.

Even though it was getting dark, Harry could see the gleam of Diana’s perfect white teeth as she smiled up at him.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got a puncture,’ she told him.

After several minutes of trying to inflate the back tyre, Harry agreed with her. ‘It’s as flat as a pancake.’ Seeing her pretty crest fallen face, he quickly added, ‘Come on, I can give you a lift home.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she protested.

‘Where do you live?’ he insisted.

‘In a little village called Shelford – it’s miles away.’

Harry laughed. ‘It’s hardly any distance at all. Wait here while I go and fetch my car.’

On the drive to Shelford, Harry kept peering at Diana out of the corner of his eye. Though he had to pay close attention to the road, particularly as he had his headlights dipped, he could not resist taking sneaky peeks at her perfect profile and glowing blonde hair. She talked easily about her work and enquired after his too; she appeared so cool and relaxed, while Harry felt uncharacteristically nervous. Much later, when he told Diana that he originally thought she hadn’t fancied him, she had burst out laughing. ‘I most certainly did!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you were the cleverest and most handsome officer in Duxford.’

‘Well,’ he had grumbled, ‘you managed to hide it pretty well.’

Diana gave a cheeky shrug. ‘You can blame my posh upbringing for that.’

As Harry drifted into sleep, he smiled as he remembered their first date at the Regal Cinema in Cambridge, where Rebecca was showing. When he had nervously whispered, ‘May I kiss you?’, Diana had replied without a hint of coyness, ‘I would love that.’

There was no going back after that first kiss: beautiful Diana Bishop was all that he had ever dreamt of.

When morning dawned Harry and his fellow escapees embarked on the most dangerous journey of their lives. As they gained height and walked higher and higher into the mountain range, Harry shivered, not with cold but with the memory of his guide’s words before they departed.

‘This is a perilous journey that brave men have died doing,’ he had warned. ‘You all know what will happen if any of you are caught.’

If Harry was to return home he had no choice but to take chances; nevertheless, as he gasped for breath in the high altitude and slithered on the frozen mountain tracks, he prayed with all his heart: ‘Please God, guide me safely home to the woman I love.’