Edward Wilson: Portrait of the Spy as a Young Man

‘This car’s a lot faster than their TUB van. Step on it.’

The next ten minutes were as exhilarating as they were frightening. They finally shook off the van somewhere around Les Conces, but their cover was blown. Catesby drove as fast as he could. He wanted to get to a farm near Cussac where he hoped they could stash the car. He eventually found the rough track that rose steeply up a wooded ravine. He stopped to remove a pile of brush which concealed the track leading to the abandoned farm. The woman helped. As soon as the brush was back in position, Catesby laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I’d better take this off. I don’t want to be shot by a Maquisard.’ Catesby removed the Wehrmacht tunic and draped it over the dead German.

They drove another four hundred yards to a ramshackle stone building which looked as if it had been long abandoned. Catesby got out of the car and walked over to the barn door. He tried the latch, but it wouldn’t budge. The door was locked.

‘Get a tool from the car,’ said the woman, ‘and break it open. Once we’ve hidden the car, we can find the Maquis on foot.’

Just then someone whistled from the wood line.

‘They’ve followed us,’ said Catesby. ‘The gendarmes must have radioed for help.’

‘Let’s go.’ The woman took off her shoes and started running across the damp grass. But it was too late. A figure in uniform carrying a submachine gun emerged from the trees – followed by another also carrying a gun.

Catesby realised they were well and truly fucked. But if they were lucky, the body of the dead German might provoke a summary execution without torture. As Catesby raised his hands he realised that the uniforms – leather jackets, green trousers and boots – were not those of any Vichy militia, but those of Georges Guingouin’s Limousin Maquis . They were carrying British Stens.

‘Don’t move,’ shouted the Maquisard in front, ‘or you die.’

‘I’m on your side,’ said Catesby. ‘I was with Lo Grand in Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts.’

There was a silence as the two Maquisards conferred in whispers.

‘If you want more proof,’ said Catesby, ‘you can find a dead German in the car.’

The two fighters came forward. The lead one said, ‘What’s your name?’

Catesby answered with his codename, ‘Jacques Dubois.’

The other Maquisard said to his mate, ‘He’s one of the Englishmen who parachuted in just before we blew up the viaduct.’

The first one glanced at the woman and turned to Catesby, ‘And who’s your friend?’

‘I have my own tongue,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Marie and I am a wireless operator. You can find my radio in the car with a German soldier I killed earlier today.’

The second Maquisard went over to the car and opened the front passenger door. ‘Look. They really have brought a dead boche with them.’

The other Maquis shouldered his Sten and said, ‘There isn’t any room in the barn to hide the car. It’s packed with explosives and food. There have been a lot of parachute drops recently.’

The two Maquisards conferred in Lemosin dialect. Catesby only picked up a few words.

The first Maquisard shifted back into standard French. ‘We’ll take over now and my comrade will do the driving.’

Three of them crammed into the back seat. There was little conversation as they set off. The convention was to be tight-lipped, not out of unfriendliness, but for security reasons. They addressed each other by codenames and never provided clues about places or operations. If someone was captured and broke under torture, they could only provide codenames and nothing that would connect to other people or places. No one wanted to know Catesby’s job or where the woman was from or how she ended up killing a German and stealing a Sicherheitsdienst car – but there was a body that needed to be disposed of. The car finally stopped near a steep gully. They dragged the young German out of the car and heaved him to his final resting place where he would be food for carrion, flies, beetles and mites. The Maquisards drove on and dropped Catesby and Marie off at a safe house in Sussac.

The safe house was a grocery shop. The owners were part of a vast army of légaux , legals. The légaux helped the Resistance, but lived openly in the community and didn’t take a direct part in fighting or sabotage. Being a ‘legal’ could be more dangerous than being a guerrilla fighter. You hadn’t a place to hide; you were out in the open waiting to be rounded up.

After a late supper of bread, cheese and wine, Catesby wrapped himself in a blanket and curled up in a storeroom amid tins of beans, tomatoes and fish paste as there was only one spare bed. Just as he began to doze off, he felt a hand on his thigh. Catesby would never know her exact age or much else about her. She normally kept herself a mystery, but there were no secrets about what she wanted in the bedroom. For decades afterwards Catesby would remember that evening as the most erotic experience he had ever had. The image of the woman’s bloodstained slip – as she peeled it off and revealed her legs – haunted and excited him for the rest of his days.

Suffolk: November 2014

Catesby picked up the cat, who preferred lying on his keyboard to the softest and warmest cushion, and put him on the floor. The cat then jumped on to Catesby’s lap. The purring translated as: We’re playing a game, aren’t we? And isn’t it fun? The cat leapt back on to the keyboard, churning the opening paragraph of Catesby’s war memoir into chaos. Fair enough. War was chaos.

Catesby didn’t want to write about his war experiences. He was only trying to do so because his granddaughter, a history lecturer at a London university, had asked him to – but it was a story so full of contradictions, stupid risk-taking and unbelievable situations that no one would understand it. Except those who had been there – and only a few were left. Catesby was vain enough to be flattered by attention, but hated it when anyone called him a hero. He had known real heroes – and he wasn’t one of them. The bravest, of course, had been the women. The faces of the dead ones had never withered and were still alive and young in his mind’s eye. F Section SOE had sent thirty-nine women into occupied France. Fourteen of them had died. Twelve had been tortured and executed.

The cat finally tired of the keyboard game. He jumped on to the floor and a second later Catesby heard the noise of the cat flap. ‘Leave the birds alone, you murdering bastard.’ Catesby shoved the keyboard aside and picked up a copy of a French magazine that he had delivered once a week. After reading less than a page, he went back to his favourite daytime activity: drinking tea and staring out of the studio window at the garden. No birds, just dappled sunlight and mole hills, for the cat was walking hunch-shouldered across the lawn like an enforcer thug on the docks of Marseille. Then, suddenly, he took off running towards the hedge. Basic fieldcraft – like pigeons leaving their roosts or cows mooing – a stranger was approaching. And silently too, for lawns always muffle footfall. He heard the door opening and then her voice: ‘Hello, Granddad.’

It was Leanna, the only daughter of his stepson Peter and his late African wife. Leanna was six feet tall and had given up a career as a professional athlete to become an academic. She had also turned down offers to be a model.

‘The best thing,’ said Catesby without turning around, ‘was the ambush.’

‘You began to mention it before, but then you stopped.’

‘Killing them is always better than them killing us. Does that sound harsh?’

‘Not at all.’