Elizabeth Elgin - Windflower Wedding

‘But why ?’ She was too young, too pretty, too vulnerable-looking.

‘For the same reasons as yourself, I suppose.’

‘Hey! Don’t get any ideas about me! I’m here because I made a bargain. I owe them one – and I suppose I’m going because I know more about – well –’ he faltered, ‘I’m going because I know more than most about what this particular trip entails. I’m certainly not going because I like danger, or anything like that. I want to get it over and done with, then settle into my boring routine again. And get married,’ he added, almost as an afterthought. Which was stupid, really, because he had become Gaston Martin only because he so desperately wanted to marry Daisy. ‘And should we be talking like this, Corporal?’ he asked more severely than he intended to. ‘What I mean is – well – will our conversation be reported to Himself in authority?’

‘No, sir,’ she said softly. ‘Not by me it won’t.’

‘Thank you.’ He smiled, relieved. ‘But tell me why someone like you should want to go on active service with SOE? Working here you must surely know what it entails?’

‘Yes, I do. But I love France, you see. All the special things in my life happened there. We went there a lot before the war, on holiday and every year to the same pension. I learned to swim in France when I was four. France was a happy place for me and my brother.

‘Then my parents sent me to school there, to finish me off, as they called it. I went when I was sixteen. When I came home for my seventeenth birthday they wouldn’t let me go back; they thought we’d soon be at war, you see, and home was the safest place to be. I’ve been trying to get back ever since.’

‘A young man?’

‘Partly,’ she said, without even the hint of a blush. ‘There was someone I was fond of, but his letters stopped. I suppose I’d be happy just to know what has happened to him – if he is still alive. But really, I just want to go back to France. Can you understand?’

‘Yes, I can,’ he said softly, knowing they shouldn’t be talking so intimately and that probably the place had hidden microphones. ‘But do you think –?’ His eyes swept the walls and ceiling.

‘They might be listening in?’

‘Nothing would surprise me here.’

‘No. This room is all right.’

‘But not Room 22?’

‘I didn’t say that. And, sir – can you go there now? They said I was to tell you.’

‘I’m on my way. ’Bye, Corporal.’

‘Goodbye, sir.’

He closed the door softly, walking slowly across the bare, echoing hall, turning left towards the staircase. He should have asked her name, he supposed; would have, had he even remotely imagined she would give it to him.

But how could she want to stick her neck out – walk headlong into danger; or be parachuted into it, or flown into it, or go there by submarine?

Because she loved France, she said and because there had once been someone special there. It was, he supposed, why Keth Purvis was about to do something equally stupid. Because he loved Daisy. Love, he supposed, was the most powerful motivator of all – unless it was hate.

He knocked twice on the door of Room 22 and a voice called to him to enter.

Reaching for the ornate iron door handle, he wondered how much more he would know by the time he left.

Keth lolled in the armchair, feet straddled, legs stiffly outstretched, and glowered at the pile of clothes on his bed and the cheap suitcase at the foot of it.

He was annoyed. Damned annoyed. With himself, but most of all with the slab-faced stranger who had made him a laughing stock. Because not only, it seemed, was he an idiot when it came to parachuting; now he had gone one better.

Half an hour ago he had acted – or was it reacted ? – like an absolute fool and all because Slab Face had caught him unawares.

He jumped to his feet and strode to the window, kicking out childishly at the case as he passed it. One lock on it was broken. He would have to tie it round with string, he supposed.

He stared moodily across the grounds to the dense pinewood beyond. The clothes on the bed were all secondhand and he wondered if they had been washed. Did they have jumble sales in France and did SOE send a bod over regularly to buy up old clothes?

But he was being childish, not entirely because of what had happened in Room 22, but because, if he were completely honest, this stupid, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here mood of bewilderment was because he was afraid. He had always been afraid, only now was the first time he’d admitted it.

In Room 22 he’d been greeted with a nod by the civilian with whom he’d drunk brandy last night. The stranger who sat behind the desk – the one with the face like a concrete slab – had not even nodded, indicating with a frugal movement of his hand that Keth should sit in the chair facing.

‘We will conduct this interview in French, Captain. Name?’

That had been the start of it.

‘Gaston Martin.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-five.’ Easy. Just two months younger than himself. ‘Born the third of September.’ That was easy, too. The day war started.

‘Mother?’

‘Belle.’

‘Father?’

‘Jules Martin. Killed 1917.’

The questioning was rapid; his answers without fault. He let himself relax because his French was better in every way than that of his interrogator whose French was too perfect, too correct. Parisian French. Learned at university, no doubt. But Keth Purvis spoke the language with mam’selle’s Normandy accent; used her clichés and her colloquialisms and she had told him his pronunciation was almost perfect.

That was when his complacency was shattered.

‘ Mon capitaine!’

Keth had turned his head sharply in the direction of the voice, his guard completely down, to gaze across the room, eyes questioning. That was when it happened.

The blow to his face caught him unawares. He turned, startled, knocking over his chair as he lunged across the desk.

‘ What the hell!’ He grabbed at the coat lapels with angry hands, heaving the man to his feet. ‘What was that in aid of?’

Slab Face did not reply. Still shaking with anger, Keth hissed ‘Tell me!’ at his brandy-drinking companion, who shrugged without even moving his position.

‘I’ll tell you!’ With a practised move, the interrogator freed himself from Keth’s grasp, then delivered a chopping blow to his shoulder that sent him reeling across the room to fall, legs in air, near the door.

‘Get up, Captain,’ the voice drawled and because apart from being reluctant to continue the conversation from floor level, Keth needed to look his tormentor in the eyes; calmly, and without wavering, and listen to the offered explanation. Slowly he rose, dusting his sleeve, pulling straight his jacket. Then he took three steps to stand in front of the desk, jaws clamped tight.

‘All right! I’m listening!’

‘Sit down, please.’ A command, not an invitation. ‘So, Captain Purvis …’

‘ Why? ’ Keth demanded, all at once realizing his cheek throbbed painfully and wondering how soon it would show bruising.

‘Drink?’

‘Thank you, sir, no.’

Without moving a muscle of his face the man turned to the table behind him and poured from a decanter. Then he sat down, sighed, and said, ‘Why did I hit you? So shall we take it that you, an Englishman in German-occupied France and posing as a native, is asked for his papers by a passing patrol – which often happens, I might add – and something prompted the corporal in charge of that patrol to take you in for – er – questioning. Just a routine arrest to let his superiors know he was doing his job efficiently.