Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (32 page)

Some time later he reached a gap near Nieuport just before General Brooke
'
s II Corps closed it. Now, dressed
as a German despatch rider, he feared that his luck was on the verge of being reversed. Happily he was able to dump the stolen motorcycle, along with his German uniform. Without the motorbike, and dressed once more as a Frenchman, he tied a white handkerchief to a stick, and hoped to God none of the British soldiers he was facing was in the mood for indulging in some free target practice
.

Captured minutes after making himself apparent, he was taken straight to the Commanding Officer who interrogated him for some minutes before becoming sufficiently convinced of his bona fide standing. Which was how he found himself just one of the thousands waiting and hoping to be rescued from the vast sandbanks lining that part of the French coast
.

The next day, having survived devastating bombardment, and witnessed the annihilation of so many of the patient soldiers who waited on the beach beside him, knowing they were sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe, he found himself on board a small fishing smack that had set sail from the little port of Bexham in West Sussex
.

Two hours later he was finally ashore in his homeland, filthy, exhausted and quite unable to believe his good fortune
.

A further six hours later, after another debriefing, a good wash, a change of clothes and his first meal in two days, having been given final clearance, Scott Meynell headed as quickly as he could for Eden Park, where his young life was destined to take a wholly unpredictable turn
.

Chapter Twelve

Following the evacuation of Dunkirk, everyone's thoughts were concentrated on not just the possibility of invasion but the moment it might be due. No longer was it something to be put at the back of people's minds, a dread but a distant one, as in the days before the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force when everyone imagined that while Hitler might wish to invade their homeland, as long as there was an army, a Navy and an air force to protect them the former Austrian housepainter would think twice before launching an all-out assault across the Channel.

But now with so much invaluable military equipment lying abandoned and burned out on the nearby French beaches, and with the Expeditionary Force returned home dispirited and all but defeated in their own minds, a feeling of inevitability settled over the nation as everyone tried to avoid the thought that it was only a matter of time before they heard the crash of jackboots on the streets, the rumble of tanks across the countryside and the sound of blitzing bombers arriving in ferocious numbers.

Every precaution was immediately taken to try
to thwart, hinder and bewilder any invading force. Not a signpost anywhere was left standing in its original position, all being either taken away or falsely aligned. Every town sign was removed and every railway station name was painted out. Travelling became a nightmare, particularly by train where in blacked-out conditions, unless passengers were familiar enough with their route to be able to count their stops, many who were not so fortunate found themselves getting off at wrong stations, and trying vainly to find their way home in pitch darkness.

Yet somehow everyone kept going, supported by Churchill's ever-growing outward pugnacity.

Of course, like everyone else, the Nosy Parkers at Eden Park all lived in dread of an invasion, imagining time and again that every sound they heard in the night might be the enemy at the door.

One night Marjorie, Kate and Billy were all awoken by the sound of steady trampling on the gravel path that ran under their bedroom windows.

‘Shsh!'

Kate turned the light on and stared at Marjorie.

‘My God, they're here, Marjorie. They're at the door.'

Marjorie went to say something in return.

‘Shsh!'

The sound was undeniable. It was most definitely that of tramping soldiers, and it seemed they were now knocking at the back door. The sound rang out loud and clear, and Marjorie lost all colour, knowing as they both did that this must be
it
.

Although their knees were turning to jelly, and
their insides to water, the young women knew just what they had to do. They had to be prepared to kill, or die, or both.

Grabbing the weapons they always left ready by their beds – in Marjorie's case a bread knife and in Kate's an antique policeman's truncheon which she had found only lately in an old outhouse – they found that Billy had beaten them both to it. When they collided with him downstairs they found him standing at the front door with a pitchfork in one hand, a bed-knob in the other and an impish smile on his face.

‘It's only a couple of goats,' he said. ‘They must have got out of their field!'

Kate and Marjorie, still trembling with the shock of thinking that they had been about to have to tackle a platoon of Nazi soldiers, followed the line of Billy's hand and saw not two but three goats happily ensconced in front of the kitchen drying rail. At the sound of Billy's voice they had turned their bearded faces towards their night-dressed visitors, to be greeted with a yell of indignation from Kate.

‘Stop that!'

However, the goats busily eating the girls' underwear were most reluctant to give up their prize.

‘Wonderful,' Kate exclaimed, as Marjorie opened the back door to shoo the animals out. ‘They nearly gave me heart failure.'

‘Me too!' Billy laughed. ‘I thought sure as any-thin' it was the Nazis come up the drive to murder us in our beds.'

‘Wonder what we
would
have done if they had
been Germans,' Marjorie said, shoving the last of their unwelcome visitors back into the night as Kate closed the kitchen door.

‘Gone for 'em of course, given them what for,' Billy replied. ‘I'd have run 'em through with me fork before they could say
Heil Hitler
.'

‘Course you would, Billy,' Kate agreed, steering him back to his bedroom. ‘They wouldn't have known what hit them.'

Ten minutes later Billy was back fast asleep dreaming of repelling the Hun from Eden Park single-handed, while along the corridor Kate and Marjorie lay wide awake, finding themselves quite unable to go back to sleep, both their minds full of images of war and invasion, most particularly of what might actually happen to young women like them if they ever found themselves in the hands of enemy troops.

Poppy meanwhile had finished what she thought of as her second coming-out, although this time the end product was altogether different from the shy and reticent debutante of the previous year. In place of the apparently timid and bespectacled wallflower, which was how she saw herself in her previous incarnation, in her looking glass Poppy now saw a haughty, disdainful, beautifully dressed and extremely poised young woman, the sort of female who could and would move easily in the ever critical ranks of Society, most particularly the sophisticated echelons to which she was being directed.

‘You are all those things and more, my dear,' Cissie assured her as they lunched one day in
a private first floor room in a house off Curzon Street. ‘You are also, I am happy to say, extremely beautiful. You'll be turning heads the moment you walk into all their wretched, treacherous little lives, doncher know. How does one feel oneself, eh? Inside out with nerves, or just so far in it doesn't matter?'

‘It still feels odd, and very strange,' Poppy said, in her new, measured and deliberately flattened voice. ‘Because deep down I'm still me – very much so – yet as soon as I concentrate, I become her at once. I mean I even find one
thinks
like her – which is really rather too much.'

‘Delighted to hear, my dear,' Cissie said, lighting up a cigarette between courses as always. ‘Thing you want is to start dreamin' like her. Once you start dreamin' like the wretched creature, you're home and hosed. D'you see? When one's learning a new language, which is what one is doing now, one knows one hasn't conquered it until one dreams in it, and the same with undercover work. When you're dreaming as Diona de Donnet, then you know for sure that the character has taken over your whole being, which is really what is wanted, to my mind. At least that is what I always found when out in the field.'

Cissie's occasional references of this nature served to remind Poppy that her mentor knew exactly what she was going through, and as a result they also made her feel that she was not being called on to do something that the caller hadn't done. It was mildly salutary, and as such it worked.

‘When do I actually start what one might call
the real work, Miss Lavington?' Poppy enquired. ‘And when will I know what it is one's expected to do?'

‘They're sending a chap up from the Park. He's going to be your entrée. He's a very experienced agent, just back from abroad where he's been working for the last couple of years. Soon as he's been dusted down, he'll be directed up here, one gathers, and then you're off and runnin'.'

‘Good. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to get rusty.'

‘You won't, my dear. You won't. I shall see you won't, don't you worry.'

While Major Folkestone was questioning Scott in preparation for his next assignment, Kate was taking advantage of her half day, it being fine and sunny, to get in some tennis practice. Standing down the south end of the court and hitting services into the right hand box, she failed to notice that she was being observed from behind a light screen of trees that ran along the back of the court.

After watching Kate with some interest for a few minutes, Eugene ambled slowly round until he came into her line of vision.

‘Devastating,' he called, clapping enthusiastically. ‘Simply and quite utterly devastating. Wish I could hit 'em like that.'

‘Thank you!' Kate called back formally.

‘Quite a player you are! And that's to be sure! Yes, ma'am – quite an old player you are indeed!'

Eugene was holding on to the side netting, aware as he did so that it must give him the appearance of a monkey in a zoo.

‘You'd never give us a lesson, I suppose?'

Kate stopped, showing every appearance of reluctance, until she saw he was standing swishing a tired-looking tennis racket.

‘I brought me own racket,' he called. ‘See? Me own racket. Just in case.'

‘You knew I was here?'

‘Sure the whole place is a nest of spies, is it not? There's nothing nobody doesn't know about no one here, and that's equally for sure. Of course I knew you were here, Miss Kate Maddox. Why else would I be here?'

Eugene strolled on to the court. He was wearing tennis shoes, a pair of old cricket trousers tied up with a striped tie, and a cricket jumper with a V of red, black and green stripes at the neck.

‘You obviously play,' Kate remarked, immediately becoming aware that it was a pretty stupid remark, but for no reason she could name the tall dark-haired man made her feel strangely shy.

‘A cat may look at a king,' Eugene replied enigmatically. ‘If I carried a crown would that make me royal?'

‘Do you play? Is that a better way to put it?'

‘I play after a fashion. Not after your fashion, madam, but after my own.'

‘Do you really want a lesson, or are you just fooling around?'

‘Me?' Eugene now managed a look of total outrage. ‘Me – fool around? That would hardly be a gentlemanly thing to do at all now, would it?'

‘First we have to establish whether or not you are a gentleman.'

‘The name is Eugene
Hackett
,' he replied, giving
a mock courtly bow. ‘There has never been anyone in our family who was not a gentleman. Except the women, and they were all ladies, to a man.'

Kate did her best not to laugh but found it difficult, so to hide her amusement she turned round and pretended to sort out some tennis balls in the boxes on the umpire's chair.

‘Very well,' she said, once she knew she had won the struggle not to show that he had won. ‘If you really want a lesson—'

‘I really want a lesson, madam,' he interrupted her, essaying an odd stabbing shot with his racket. ‘And as I get better, here's hoping the need for lessons will lessen and lessen. On your marks!' he cried, bounding off like a foolish hare to the baseline.

Kate walked slowly back to her end and looked over the net at her pupil who was swishing away on his line as if being attacked by a horde of giant flies. Every now and then he would leap clumsily into the air as if to swat the largest of the insects attacking him, before resuming his bunny hops at the back of the court. Kate hit a ball gently at him, dropping it at just the right distance in front of him to allow him every chance of an easy return. Lining the shot up with his racket held high over his shoulder, Eugene missed it by yards, nearly toppling over with his effort.

‘Oh, hard luck, Yoogie!' he called. ‘Hard cheese on me, wouldn't you say?'

‘Take it slower,' Kate advised, coming to the net. ‘Look – take your racket back like this, dropping the head so – then come up under the ball and through. See?'

‘Nope.' Eugene frowned back at her. ‘Perhaps if you came round here and showed it me?'

Kate eyed him then walked round to his side of the net. She stood by his side, demonstrating first the perfect forehand and then the perfect backhand. Eugene it seemed could manage neither.

‘Perhaps if you stood behind me and kind of nursed my arm through it, that might help?'

Kate nearly fell into the trap, seeing it just as she was about to wrap her arms round Eugene's waist.

‘I think it's probably just as effective if you watch what I do,' she said primly. ‘And then imitate it.'

‘Very well,' Eugene sighed. ‘You're the teacher, teach.'

Once she thought she had his forehand in some sort of shape, Kate returned to her side of the net to lob some more balls at him. This time he managed to get nearly half of them back, and after about half an hour was managing to hit some backhands as well, although not with any accuracy whatsoever.