Code Name Verity(106)

This was the third time the Thibauts all hugged and kissed me goodbye – Amélie creating a fuss, Maman trying to make a present of a dozen silver spoons – I just couldn’t! And Mitraillette with tears in her eyes, first I’ve ever seen her choked up like that over something that didn’t involve blood.

She didn’t come with us this time. I hope –

I wish I knew how to pray for them all. I just wish I knew.

—

The Rosalie was waiting for us in the driveway of the big house on the Poitou riverbank. It was still light when we got there, so as not to get the chauffeur in trouble, and while they were putting the other car away the old woman with the white hair like Julie’s took me by the hand, just as she’d done that first terrible day after, and led me without a word through her cold garden.

Down along the river was a pile of roses, a huge pile of Damask roses, the autumn-flowering ones. She’d cut every single rose left in her garden and piled them there.

‘They let us bury everyone at last,’ she told me. ‘Most are up there by the bridge. But I was so angry about those poor girls, those two lovely young girls left lying there in the dirt for four days with the rats and the crows at them! It’s not right. It is not natural. So when we buried the others I had the men bring the girls here –’

Julie is buried in her great-aunt’s rose garden, wrapped in her grandmother’s first communion veil and covered in a mound of Damask roses.

Of course that is the name of her circuit too – Damask.

I still don’t know her great-aunt’s name. How is that possible? I knew it was her quite suddenly, it just came to me in a flash – when she said that she’d used the veils that she and her sister had worn at their first communion I remembered that Julie’s grandmother was from Ormaie, and then I remembered the great-aunt story, and what she’d said to me about sharing a terrible burden, and it all clicked and I knew who she was.

But I didn’t tell her – I didn’t have the heart to tell her. She didn’t seem to know it was Julie – of course Katharina Habicht would have kept her real identity hidden to avoid compromising anyone. I suppose I should have said something. But I just couldn’t do it.

Now I am in tears again.

—

Have heard a car pull up so they may be sending for me soon, but I want to finish telling about getting out of France – which will probably also make me cry – what’s new.

Even started off blubbing just listening to the radio message that let us know they were going to pick me up that night: ‘After a while, all children tell the truth’ – in French it’s ‘Assez bient?t, tousles enfants disent la vérité.’ I am sure they stuck the word ‘vérité’ in there on purpose, but they couldn’t have known it would make me think of the last page Julie wrote – I have told the truth, over and over.

The whole routine is so familiar now, like a recurring dream. Dark field, flashing lights, Lysander wings against the moon. Except it gets colder each time. No mud this time, despite last week’s rain – ground’s all frozen solid. Dead smooth landing, the plane didn’t go round even once – I like to think this is partly down to my excellent field selection – made the trade-off of goods and passengers in just under 15 minutes. That’s how it should be done.

My Jamaican rear gunner had already climbed on board and I had one hand on the ladder to follow him up when the pilot yelled down at me, ‘OI, KITTYHAWK! YOU GOING TO FLY US OUT OF HERE?’

Who else but Jamie Beaufort-Stuart – just – who else?

‘Come on, swap seats with me,’ he shouted. ‘You flew yourself here, you can fly yourself home.’

Can’t believe he made the offer and I can’t believe I took him up on it – all so wrong. Should have been retested after the crash-landing, at least.

‘But you didn’t want me to fly OUT in the first place!’ I bawled.

‘I was worried about you being in France, not worried about your flying! Bad enough one of you was going without losing you BOTH. Anyway if we get fired on you’re better at crash-landings than I am –’

‘COURT MARTIAL, they’ll court-martial both of us –’

‘What TOSH, you’re a CIVILIAN! You’ve not been in danger of court martial since you left the WAAFs in 1941. The worst the ATA can do is dismiss you, and they’ll do that anyway if they’re going to do it. COME UP!’