Elizabeth Elgin - The Linden Walk

‘Aah. The wedding.’ Polly smiled then closed her eyes and thought about the dress she had worn to Keth’s wedding and the fine hat Daisy had bought her in the swankiest shop in Harrogate. Polly Purvis had plenty of good times for the counting. Oh, my word, yes!

‘So tell me, Keth?’ Daisy slipped her arm into his, snuggling close, knowing she must tread carefully. ‘About France, I mean – if you haven’t changed your mind, that is?’

‘You’ve got to know, darling, then maybe when you do, you’ll understand why I’ve got to go back to Clissy.’

‘To France?’

‘Yes. To Clissy-sur-Mer when I became Gaston Martin and had a codename Hibou .’

‘So I was right all along,’ she whispered. ‘It was cloak-and-dagger stuff! You were in terrible danger, and I never knew.’

‘Not dangerous for me. I wasn’t the one who took risks, not real risks. I was taken there by submarine, rowed ashore then met and handed over to someone who told me her name was Natasha. I remember thinking at the time that it had come to something when a child was the best they could manage. I didn’t think that being out after curfew was a stupid – and dangerous – thing to do. She took me to Madame Piccard’s house. That house was all I saw of Clissy. Never went beyond the back gate; never saw the village.’

‘In what they called a safe house, were you?’

‘That’s it. I took the identity of a French soldier Gaston Martin, officially posted missing at Dunkirk; unofficially taken off the beaches with our lot and was then living in Ireland. He was deaf – caused by explosions. Lucky for me, that, as long as I remembered when a stranger came along, that I couldn’t hear a word they said.’

‘And did they? Come along, I mean.’

‘Once. One of the occupying German soldiers and the local gendarme with him. Routine check. Looking back, knowing what I know now, I think the gendarme was in on it – or at least sympathetic to anyone he suspected to be in the Resistance. I had supposedly gone to Clara Piccard’s house to dig her garden. I had a forged work permit with me and she made no bones about her hired help. Luckily, I knew how to dig.’

‘But Natasha – where did she come into it?’

‘Natasha – her real name Hannah Kominski – was adopted. Her parents were Russian refugees who lived in Paris, next door to Madame Piccard, who worked as a nurse there, before she retired to Clissysur-Mer. The Kominskis – they were Jewish – realized it was only a matter of time before they were arrested, so they made sure Hannah was safe. Madame Piccard had retired to Clissy by then. Her husband was killed in the Great War, so she’d gone back to nursing. They sent Hannah, with forged papers, to her for safe keeping. There were a lot of good forgers around in our war, Daisy. Hannah became Elise Josef and worked as a courier, sometimes, for the Resistance. She took the codename Natasha, because it was all she knew about her birth mother.’

‘And the Kominskis?’ Daisy whispered, all at once sad.

‘There were a few letters from Paris, then nothing. Tante Clara – that was what Natasha called her – said they must have been deported and we all know now that meant to a concentration camp.’

‘But how did Hannah survive? Why wasn’t she picked up, too?’

‘Because she was dark, but not Jewish; didn’t have the Jewish nose. Do you know, darling, that the Nazis had an instrument for measuring noses? Natasha’s real mother had given her a tip-tilted nose. It saved her life, I suppose.’

‘So can you tell me why you went to France? Did you even once consider the risk you were taking?’

‘I did. It was the only way for me to get back home from Washington. I was stuck there and I nagged them until they said okay, that I could go back to the UK as soon as a passage could be found for me. But there were conditions attached, they said.’

‘Conditions like you owed them one, sort of?’

‘That’s it. Because I was a mathematician, I worked in the cipher department at the British Embassy in Washington. They knew I had knowledge about – well – a certain machine. Very secret, really.’

‘Mm. Talk had it where Lyn and I worked in the war, there was a secret machine there, too. So secret, in fact, they had an armed Marine sentry always outside the door. I didn’t see it. Wasn’t even allowed near the door …’

‘Sounds as if it could have been like the one I’d been sent to collect. They called it Enigma, and because I’d worked on a similar one in Washington, they thought I was the best bloke to collect the special one from France. Special, because our lot could only break German Army messages and their Luftwaffe messages. We needed to be able to break their naval code. It was urgent. We were losing too many merchant ships in the Atlantic’

‘I know, Keth. I spent my war in Liverpool, don’t forget, and I know that the underground bunker I worked in looked after ships in the Western Approaches and the Atlantic. Looked after! Half of every convoy was sunk!’

‘So you’ll realize the importance of the naval Enigma I was sent to collect. And don’t ask me how it was come by. All I know is that when I got it back, I was told they’d only recently acquired another. I hit the roof. Asked the fellow there if he wanted a matching pair for his mantelpiece, or something, and did he know that a kid of sixteen had been shot, getting me and his precious bloody machine onto a Lysander to fly it back to England?

‘But he only said that things like that happened when there was a war on and that sailors had been killed, too, getting the other one. A right swine, he was. Hard as nails. I thought I’d blotted my copybook good and proper and that he’d send me back to Washington, out of spite. But he didn’t. I was debriefed, warned to keep my mouth shut, or else’ – he pulled a finger across his throat – ‘then sent back to Bletchley Park.’

‘So you were in England for a time and I never knew it, Keth?’

‘That’s right. I couldn’t even phone you. I was told to write letters as if I were still in Washington and they doctored them to look as if they’d been posted there. That’s why I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s why our little girl is called Mary Natasha and why you must never speak of it to anyone but me.’

‘And it’s why you need to go back to Clissy-sur-Mer?’

‘Yes. To try to find Natasha’s grave – if they gave her a decent burial, that is. And I need to know – or at least my conscience needs to know – what happened to Tante Clara and Denys and Bernadette, too. Bernadette was a wireless operator for the Resistance. I never knew what Denys did, only that he and Natasha took me to a field at the back of the chateau and put down landing lights for the Lysander pilot to see. Two minutes was all that pilot was allowed to land, get me on board, then take off. I try not to think of it …’

‘But you do, Keth, all the time, and it’s why you must go back to France just as soon as restrictions are lifted. You and I have so much, darling, and I want you to go, if only to say a thank you, and a thank you for me, too, to those people who hid you and got you safely back. I owe Natasha, as well. I wish there were some way of letting her know. And I won’t say a word. You know I can keep secrets.’

‘Like your money? I know you won’t talk about it, ever, though one other person knows. Y’see, when it was all over and done with and before I went back to Bletchley Park, I was given leave.’

‘Yes. I got leave, too. We wangled a night together. But who did you tell, Keth? You were taking a risk, weren’t you?’

‘Not really. It was Nathan Sutton I told. I felt so bad about it and that I was safe back in England when a whole lot of people at Clissy were almost certainly arrested and interrogated. Maybe even shot. I couldn’t square it with my conscience until I’d told someone. Nathan was a priest. We went for a walk to the top of the Pike and he got the lot. I felt better for telling him and I knew he would treat it like a confession – sacrosanct. Knowing Nathan, he wouldn’t even tell your Aunt Julia.’