Code Name Verity(110)

‘Another wretched girl,’ I corrected.

—

Those ripples in the pond again – it just doesn’t stop in one place. All those lives that have touched mine so briefly – most of them I don’t even know their real names, like Julie’s great-aunt and the driver of the Rosalie. And some of them I don’t know anything other than their names, like Benjamin Zylberberg, the Jewish doctor, and Esther Lévi, whose flute music Julie was given to write on. And some of them I met briefly and liked and won’t ever see again, like the vicar’s son who flew Spitfires and Anna Engel and the Jamaican gunner.

And then there is Isolde von Linden, at school in Switzerland, who doesn’t know yet that her father has just shot himself.

—

Isolde still in the realm of the sun, in the shimmering daylight still, Isolde –

I have still got the matchbook that her father gave Amélie.

—

I’ve had a bath and borrowed a pair of pyjamas from the pretty First Aid Nursing Yeomanry driver who never says anything. Goodness knows what she thinks of me. I am not locked in or guarded any more. Someone is going to fly me back to Manchester tomorrow. Tonight – tonight I will sleep in this room one more time, in this bed where Julie cried herself to sleep in my arms eight months ago.

I’m going to keep her grey silk scarf. But I want Jamie to take this notebook, and my Pilot’s Notes, and Julie’s confession, and give them all to Esmé Beaufort-Stuart because it is only right that Julie’s lady mother should be told. If she wants to know, I think it is her right to know. Absolutely Every Last Detail.

I am back in England. I can go back to work. I haven’t got the words to say how stunned and grateful I am that I have been allowed to keep my licence.

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France – a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

Lady Beaufort-Stuart

Craig Castle

Castle Craig

Aberdeenshire

26 Dec. 1943

My darling Maddie,

Jamie has delivered your ‘letters’ – both yours and Julie’s, and I have read them. They will stay here, and be safe – the Official Secrets Act is of little consequence in a house which absorbs secrets like damp. A few more recipe cards and prescription forms tossed in amongst the teeming contents of our two libraries will surely go unnoticed.

I want to tell you what Jamie said to me as he gave me these pages:

‘Maddie did the right thing.’

I say so too.

Please come to see me, Maddie darling, as soon as they let you. The wee lads are all distraught with the news and you will do them good. Perhaps they will do you good as well. They are my only consolation at the moment and I have been fearfully busy trying to make it a ‘happy’ Christmas for them. Ross and Jock have now lost both parents in the bombing so perhaps I shall keep them when the war is over.

I should like to ‘keep’ you too, if you will let me – I mean, in my heart and as my only daughter’s best friend. It would be like losing two daughters if you were to leave us now.

Please come back soon. The window is always open.

Fly safely.

Yr. loving,

Esmé

P.S. Thank you for the Eterpen. It is most extraordinary – Not a single word of this letter has blotted. No one will ever know how many tears I shed whilst writing it!

I do mean fly safely. And I do mean come back.





Author’s Debriefing

As someone has already said, ‘My reports are so rubbish.’ I am legally bound to write this Afterword, as I am legally bound to ensure this book is not in breach of the Official Secrets Acts. This is meant to be a Historical Note and it pains me to admit that Code Name Verity is fiction – that Julia Beaufort-Stuart and Maddie Brodatt are not actually real people, merely products of my adventure-obsessed brain.

But I’ll try. This book started off rather simply as a portrait of an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot. Being a woman and a pilot myself, I wanted to explore the possibilities that would have been open to me during the Second World War. I’d already written a war story about a girl pilot (‘Something Worth Doing’ in Firebirds Soaring, edited by Sharyn November), but now I wanted to write something longer and more accurately detailed and, above all, more plausible.

I started with research, hoping to get plot ideas, and read The Forgotten Pilots by Lettice Curtis. This is the definitive history of the Air Transport Auxiliary, and it’s written by a woman, so it felt right and natural for my ATA pilot to be a girl. But the ATA story careened out of control when (by accident, while making dinner) I stumbled on the framework for Code Name Verity and added in a Special Operations Executive agent. More reading ensued – OK, I could have a pilot AND a spy and they’d both be girls. And it would still be plausible. Because there were women doing these jobs. There weren’t many of them. But they were real. They worked and suffered and fought just as hard as any man. Many of them died.