Authors: June Gadsby
As she folded over with the pain of the blow, more heavy blows rained down on her, then they lifted her and carried her away and she prayed for death to come quickly.
The journey had taken longer than anticipated because they travelled at night. As they made their way cautiously through the foothills of the Pyrenees looking for a possible route where the frontier wasn’t guarded by the enemy, they almost fell foul of a group of French partisans
mistaking
them for Germans.
The danger, however, soon passed. From that moment on, the German staff cars were discarded and the partisans guided them to an isolated house on the outskirts of the town of Saint-Girons. The woman who lived there welcomed them warmly, giving them the traditional hearty
garbure
soup and wild rabbit that she cooked on a spit over the open fire. She did not seem at all surprised to see them and explained that there had been many refugees before them, and would no doubt be many more to follow.
‘My house is small,’ she told them as they sat elbow to elbow at her kitchen table, passing the wine and the bread and thinking they had not tasted anything so good for a long time. ‘If the Germans come, you must hide in the roof space. Eat now, then I have clothes for you.’
‘Clothes, madame?’ Mary looked at their hostess quizzically.
‘
Oui, mademoiselle
. It is winter and there is much snow on the
mountain
. If you are to walk over the passes into Spain you will need more than those things you stand up in now.’
‘But you couldn’t possibly have enough spare clothing for all of us,’ Mary said with a quick, anxious glance at Alex, who was following the conversation closely.
‘Not all, that is true. Some must go. The others must stay, until the next passage.’
‘That lets me out,’ said the airman with the broken leg. ‘I suppose I’ll be holidaying here until the spring.’
There were murmurs of sympathy, but the man simply shrugged and got on with the business of eating. When there was no choice, he seemed to say, what was the good of arguing? Best go with the flow of things.
‘How will we find our way across the mountains, madame?’ Mary asked.
‘My son will take you. He knows these mountains, every rock and stone. Every blade of grass. He grew up here. You will be safe with him.’
After the meal, when the men were bedding down for the night in every available space, arguing good-naturedly over who should guard the fire and who should keep a look-out for Germans, Alex touched Mary on the shoulder and jerked his chin towards the door.
‘Mary and I will take first watch,’ he told the others. ‘We will take it in turn, two by two in one hour stretches.’
Outside, wrapped in blankets against the cold December air, they sat side by side, pressing as close together as they could get. It was the first time they had been alone since leaving the chateau, though they had not stopped touching, even when it could be no more than their arms and shoulders pressed together as they drove. Their raw emotions were palpable even through the layers of clothes.
Mary could feel Alex breathing deeply beside her. There was so much she wanted to say, so much to tell him, yet she couldn’t bring herself to put it all into words. Not just yet awhile. She stared mutely at the purple sky, its clouds reflecting the pale snow that covered the ground and rose in breathtaking peaks for miles beyond the valley.
After a minute or two, she felt him move, felt his hands on her, felt him pulling her so close that they might be one entity.
‘My dear, sweet Mary,’ he whispered, his breath comfortingly warm against her forehead. ‘I thought I would never see you again.’
‘I thought for a long time that you were dead,’ she told him. ‘I still can’t believe that we’re here together. I can’t believe what’s happening.’
She slid her arms around him, hugging him tightly. Nothing mattered any more but this moment. Even if they only had this night, it was worth everything she had been through.
‘You know I love you, don’t you, Mary?’ He looked deeply into her eyes and she nodded. ‘I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you. There’s a wonderful sense of peace about you. It shines out of you like some incredible inner beauty. It’s quite, quite magical.’
‘Well, you weaved your own magic spell around me, Alex, the night of the talent contest when you danced with me, then later, when we kissed.’
‘I was wrong to do that, but I couldn’t stop myself. A married man shouldn’t be carrying on like that … like this, but …’ He lowered his head and found her lips and she surrendered herself selfishly to his kiss before pushing him gently away. ‘What is it? What’s wrong, Mary?’
‘Alex … don’t you know … about your wife?’
‘Fiona?’ He blinked at her, the muscles in his cheeks tensing. ‘What about her? What’s happened? I’ve had no news from home since Dunkirk.’
No, she thought. It had probably been withheld. They couldn’t afford to have Alex affected by personal matters. His work was too valuable.
‘Oh, Alex.’ There was no easy way to tell him what she knew to be true. ‘Fiona … she was pregnant and … and …’
‘Pregnant? No, she couldn’t have been …’ She saw him gulp as he guessed the truth of the situation. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose it was always possible, seeing the company she was keeping.’
Mary bit down on her lips. ‘The thing is, Alex, something went wrong … very wrong. They died … Fiona and the child.’
He was immobile for a long moment, then his face contorted and he dropped his head in his hands. ‘Oh, God!’
‘I’m sorry, Alex.’ What else could she say? He must have loved Fiona once, had some happy times with her.
As she reached out to comfort him, there was a sound that carried like an eerie echo across the valley. A dog howling, long and low, then rising in a sharp, ear-splitting crescendo. Alex looked up, his eyes full of pain. They got to their feet simultaneously just as the door behind them creaked open and the old French woman appeared.
‘
Ah! C’est Le Loup! Enfin
!’
‘What did she say?’ Alex asked.
‘She says it’s the wolf, but …’ She turned to the woman who was still in the doorway, nodding her head and smiling. ‘Madame, what is it? That sound. Is it really a wolf?’
‘No,
mademoiselle
. That is my son letting us know that he is coming. All will be well now. You will see. By this time tomorrow you will be across the frontier into Spain.’
A few minutes later there was the rattle of stones as someone left the shadow of the sparse scrubland and sprinted, bent double, to the house. Beneath the overhanging porch roof he straightened up and a shaft of moonlight shone on his face. A pair of dark eyes twinkled at Mary and although she could hardly see his mouth for the large black moustache that covered his upper lip, she knew he was smiling.
‘Gaston Frébus!’ she gasped, delightedly giving herself up to his brief hug and the customary
bisous
on both cheeks. ‘Oh, Iris will be pleased to know that you are safe.’
‘Iris is here?’ His eyes lit up with anticipation.
‘No, Gaston. She’s still looking after the Poles in Scotland. This is Alex, by the way … I mean—’
‘Captain Craig and I are old friends,’ Gaston told her and laughed at her look of surprise. ‘I travel around a lot in my job. We have shared the same safe house on more than one occasion.’
Alex gave an enigmatic smile. ‘I don’t know whether you’re good news or bad, Gaston,’ he said. ‘Every time you turn up I have to decamp.’
Gaston frowned, then gave a short nod. ‘I have been giving this some thought,’ he said slowly, fingering his moustache and staring at the ground at their feet. ‘For the moment, I will keep my ideas to myself. Come inside, my friends. You must rest if you are to be strong enough for the journey ahead.’
‘F
IRST
of all,’ announced Gaston as they got ready to leave the
farmhouse
, ‘we go to the last safe house on our route, where there are more refugees waiting. Not all will make it over the mountains. We can take only the fittest.
Le Chemin de la Liberté
is high and we must make the ascent in darkness.’
No one liked the idea of splitting up, but they all knew that the Frenchman was right. For one, the airman with the broken leg was
burning
up with fever from an infection in his wound. Another was still too weak after a bout of dysentery.
‘Where is this safe house, Gaston?’ Alex queried.
‘Not far from here. In the ruins of an old monastery. There is a fully equipped hospital there in the old cloisters. It’s small but effective.’
The monastery he had described was well hidden and could only be reached by a steep climb up a rocky path. They did it in easy stages,
resting
when necessary, forever on the look-out for German patrols. At first glance, the buildings looked no more than piles of rubble, but this acted as an efficient camouflage. Beyond the innocent-looking rocks and stones, a whole world thrived.
Mary was amazed at what she found inside the dilapidated stone edifice. How they had managed to get beds and equipment up there without detection was a miracle. And there were nurses, English and French, bustling about cheerfully under the direction of a rather pretty but severe ward sister.
‘Gaston!’ The sister-in-charge came forward as Gaston led his weary group into the main building. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.’
Mary heard a small gasp from Alex, though it was unclear why he should look so perplexed.
‘I’ve brought you some more house guests,’ Gaston said with a laugh. ‘A few are going over the frontier with me, but the others, I’m afraid, will
have to stay with you for a while.’
‘Yes, I see …’ The woman’s eyes wandered over Gaston’s shoulder and came to rest briefly on Mary before flickering away and widening as she recognized Alex. ‘Captain Craig!’
‘I didn’t think we would ever meet again, Grace,’ Alex said, remaining stiffly by Mary’s side.
Mary felt a curious pang of jealousy that seared her heart. How long, she wondered, had Sister Forsyth and Alex been colleagues, sharing the dangers that had possibly thrown them together, physically and
emotionally
. The woman seemed to be doing her best to hide feelings that drained her face and made her breathe unevenly.
Alex was regarding her through half-closed eyes, and it was
impossible
to read his thoughts.
‘This brave woman saved my life, Mary,’ he explained softly. ‘She stayed behind at Dunkirk when she could have escaped. She was the one who dragged me out of the sea and got me to Chateau Grovignac. I still don’t know how she did it, but I owe her more than I can possibly repay.’
Sister Forsyth looked embarrassed. Her eyes avoided contact as she fussed over the little band of servicemen, ordering her staff to change dressings and find clean clothes for the new inmates of
La Citadelle
, which was what the hospital was fondly known as.
‘How is our new patient, Sister?’ Gaston asked and she looked somewhat confused until he reminded her. ‘The woman I brought in two days ago.’
‘Not very well, though it’s nothing physical that I can find. I’ve had to sedate her heavily. Perhaps, Captain Craig would examine her while he is here … Alex?’
Alex nodded and followed a young nurse down a long, dark corridor, leaving Sister Forsyth to organize accommodation and food for the newcomers.
‘Have you been here long?’ Mary asked the woman, who ignored the question.
‘I’m afraid you will have to share the nurses’ accommodation,’ Sister Forsyth said stiffly. ‘But still, if it’s only for one night …’
‘I’m sure it will be fine.’ Mary smiled, but the gesture wasn’t
reciprocated
.
‘For the moment, if you would like to wait here, I’ll have some tea brought to you.’
But Mary did not get her tea. A few minutes later, as she waited in a communal sitting area for the tea to arrive, Alex reappeared and headed straight for her.
‘I think you are better suited to deal with the patient I’ve just seen, Mary,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’
He led her to a small square cell where there were four beds, but only one occupant. At first, Mary took it to be a young man lying flat on the hard, uncomfortable pallet bed, but as she approached, the head, with unruly tufts of hair sprouting from a roughly shorn skull, turned in her direction. Two large, pale blue eyes, flat and lifeless, stared up at her.
‘Anne! Oh, my God, Anne, what have they done to you?’ Mary knelt down by the bedside and took Anne Beasley’s limp hand in hers. She pressed the cold fingers to her cheek and couldn’t prevent her eyes from growing moist.
‘Mary?’ Anne’s voice was a feeble croak and suddenly her face was flooded with tears. ‘Oh, Mary! You got away! You’re safe!’
Mary couldn’t believe that in so short a period of time any person could look so tortured. She sat there for a long time, holding Anne’s hand, listening to her drugged ravings, piecing together the fragmented story of how she had been turned over to the villagers at Grovignac. How they had beaten her and shaved off her hair. Whether they would have done worse was debatable.
‘But how did you escape?’ Mary asked gently and Anne shook her head.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ she said, her voice only just audible. ‘I was prepared to die, Mary … but someone came … a Frenchman …’
‘That was Gaston Frébus,’ Mary said.
‘He yelled at them … carried me out of the village …’ Anne licked her dry, cracked lips. ‘I don’t remember anything after that. They keep giving me tablets … I can’t seem to think straight … can’t remember anything …’
‘Don’t worry about it, Anne. We’ll soon get you out of here and back home.’
Anne’s head was thrashing about from left to right. ‘There’s something … something I have to tell you,’ she kept muttering over and over, but she didn’t seem capable of recalling what that something was.
Mary waited until Anne drifted into a peaceful sleep before she rejoined the rest of the group. As she sank down in a sagging old armchair, Chiffon jumped up on to her lap and licked the salty tears from her cheeks. She cuddled the little dog to her and looked across at Alex.
‘It was Anne who saved our lives at the chateau,’ she said. ‘She thought she had failed in everything she did … and she lost the man she loved because she wasn’t a German. When he found out he was supposed to …
to kill her, he couldn’t do it. Instead, he left her to the mercies of the French villagers. Oh, this damned war! What it’s doing to people…!’
‘Sssh, Mary, ssh, my love.’ Alex came to sit on the arm of her chair. He stroked her head gently, soothingly. ‘Don’t let it get to you. You’re going to need all your strength to get over these mountains.’
As she had sat with Anne, so Alex sat with her. She must have fallen asleep where she was and they left her there, covering her with a blanket. When she awoke in the early hours, she still had the little dog curled up on her stomach like a hot water bottle, snoring gently like a baby.
The place was not entirely in darkness. There were candles in iron brackets all along the rough-hewn stone walls. They cast long, eerie
shadows
as the draughts of air caught them and played with the dancing flames. At first, Mary didn’t know what had awakened her, then she heard a noise. The scuff of a soft leather slipper on the slate floor. At the far end of the hall she saw a figure creep stealthily across from one side of the corridor to the other and disappear through a narrow doorway that creaked stiffly.
Why she felt the need to go and quietly investigate, she did not know, but there was something about Sister Grace Forsyth – for that was who it was – that bothered her. She had saved Alex’s life and for that she was to be commended, but who was she, really? Why was she creeping about her own hospital like a thief in the night? Like a vague echo somewhere in her heart, she could hear the voice of Smith, the MI6 man, giving her the coded message she had been unable to deliver.
‘… the nightingale who sings the loudest …’
Mary gave a small gasp. Perhaps, after all, it was nothing to do with a bird. It was hardly a code at all, if her thoughts were correct. The
nightingale
could also mean a nurse. And the one who sings the loudest? That would be the matron, or sister in charge. Not Florence Nightingale, but Sister Grace Forsyth!
Chiffon stirred with a small whimper when Mary left her, still curled up, on the chair she had just vacated.
‘Ssh!’ she told the dog in a whisper, tucking the blanket around it. ‘Stay, Chiffon! Good girl!’
The door had been left slightly ajar. Mary squeezed through the gap. Immediately inside, a steep stairway led up to another floor with ancient beams through which slivers of light filtered. The beams creaked as someone paced, disturbing the light with its dark, moving shadow. There was a woman’s voice, low and guarded. It was Grace Forsyth, but she was speaking in fluent German, although she appeared to be alone.
It didn’t take Mary long to work out that she had stumbled on the spy in the network. No wonder they hadn’t been able to catch the person who had caused the Allies such grief. Who would suspect a dedicated nursing sister of such treason?
Treading cautiously, Mary mounted the last few stairs and peered through the crack of a half-open door. It was an ancient oak door, grey with age and rotting around the edges, so there was a good view into the room beyond. There were more candles and a rickety table with a chair. On the table there was what appeared to be a radio set. Mary was
familiar
enough with communications to know that this was no British radio. Almost certainly, it was German. And what Sister Forsyth was saying proved without a shadow of a doubt that she had been responsible for exposing a string of safe houses including this one.
Mary leaned forward, holding her breath, wanting to see more of the room and Sister Forsyth herself, but as she shifted her weight the
floor-board
beneath her gave a loud creak and the door was pulled back with such force that she almost fell into the room.
Grace Forsyth blinked at the interruption. Her face remained bland, but her eyes swivelled to the side and that was when a pair of strong hands grabbed Mary by the shoulders. Before she could make any sound, a hand clamped itself over her mouth and she was dragged bodily into the room.
As the door slammed shut behind them, her attacker loosened his grip on her. Mary bit down on the suffocating hand and managed to open her mouth to scream, but found that she was looking down the long barrel of a German Luger pistol. She could smell the oil on it, taste it almost.
‘So! We have a little English mouse in our midst.’
He was not the prettiest of men, but thickset with a pudgy face and soft pink lips. He wore no uniform and his clothes were that of a
country
person, but he looked dangerous enough to Mary.
‘Tie her up!’ he ordered. ‘Gag her. We do not need her getting in the way of things at this stage.’
‘What are you going to do with her?’ Sister Forsyth looked on the edge of hysteria. ‘You can’t kill her. They’ll hear the shot.’
As she spoke, Grace tied Mary’s wrists together and, with shaking hands, pulled a knitted scarf tightly around her mouth. Mary felt her teeth grind on the wool, smelled the sweat of the German who had unwound it from his thick bull-neck.
When he was sure she was secured, the man pocketed his revolver and, with a greasy, wet-lipped smile, he pulled out an evil-looking knife.
‘There are many ways to silence people,’ he said, savouring every word.
Mary tried to cry out, but the wool in her mouth was too thick. The scream turned into a cough and she thought she would choke if she couldn’t get some air into her lungs soon. But the German was not going to take pity on her. He placed a foot in the centre of her chest and pushed her flat to the floor.
As she felt unconsciousness beckoning, Mary heard the frantic
scratching
at the base of the door and an anxious whimper. Oh, no, she thought. It was Chiffon. The dog had followed her.
‘What have we here?’ Distracted by the commotion, the German pulled open the door and Chiffon bounded in. No sooner had she entered than she let out a squeal of pain as the man’s foot caught her a hefty kick, sending her flying back out of the room.
‘Little rat!’
However, Chiffon wasn’t going to give up. With courage that outstripped her six pounds in weight, she came back and tried to get past him in order to reach Mary. Silently, Mary prayed that the poor creature would get the message and run off and hide, but Chiffon danced all round the room, barking and yipping and whining pathetically.
The German once more had his pistol in his hand and Mary saw that he was fixing a long silencer to it. He aimed it at the dog, fired and missed. But it had the required effect of sending Chiffon racing back down the stone stairs. And then the gun was once more pointing directly at Mary, aimed between her eyes.
‘No!’ Grace Forsyth cried out and took a step forward, putting herself between Mary and the German. ‘No more!’
Mary felt consciousness beginning to slip away from her. There was a dull thunk and Grace fell heavily to her knees, grasping at her midriff where a bloodstain was spreading and oozing out through her fingers. At that moment, Alex and the two big Canadians erupted into the room, followed by Private Jenkins and the brawny Scot, Jock McCulloch.
Within seconds the German was overcome and locked securely in a cell. Mary followed Alex back into the infirmary. He carried the limp body of Sister Forsyth in his arms and his face was stricken with the horror of what had just passed. He laid the woman gently on a bunk with the other shocked nurses and patients looking on.
‘Hold on, Grace!’ Alex said, taking the dying woman’s hand,
squeezing
it, and stroking her forehead.