Code Name Verity(75)

5) COURT MARTIAL.

I’m trying to remember what else I told Julie I was afraid of. Most of those ‘fears’ we talked about that first day, in the canteen, were just so stupid. Getting old! It embarrasses me to think about it. The things I told her on our bicycle adventure were better. Dogs. Hah – that reminds me.

6) Paul. I had to chase him out of here at gunpoint – it was of course his own gun, the one he gave me and taught me to use. Perhaps I was overly dramatic to pull the gun on him. But he had actually come up into my loft, on his own in broad daylight, without any of the family knowing he was here, which is dead alarming of itself. They are so careful about keeping track of who comes and goes, and they need to trust him. I suppose all he wanted was a kiss and a cuddle. He backed off looking deeply injured and left me feeling guilty and dirty and prudish all at once.

It frightened me terribly, more afterwards when I thought about it than at the time. If he – or anyone – tried to force himself on me, I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t call for help. I’d have to endure it without a fight, and in silence, or risk giving myself up to the Nazis.

I lay awake in a funk nearly all night with Paul’s dratted gun in my hand, my ear pressed to the trapdoor listening, expecting him to come back and try again under cover of darkness. As if he hasn’t got better things to do under cover of darkness! Finally I fell asleep and dreamed there was a German soldier battering at the trapdoor. As he broke through I shot him in the face. Woke up gasping in horror – then fell asleep and had the same dream again and again, at least three times in a row. Every single time I thought, That was a dream, earlier, but THIS TIME it’s real.

When Mitraillette turned up to bring me my breakfast ration of bread and onions and their dreadful pretend coffee, I blurted out the whole sordid story. In English of course. I finished by bursting into tears. She was sympathetic but confused, not sure how much she understood and don’t think there’s anything she can do about it anyway.

‘In English of course’ leads me to Fear Number 7 – being English. I think I told Julie I was afraid of getting my uniform wrong and people laughing at my accent, and I suppose in a sense I am still worried about these things – with better reason. My clothes! Mitraillette’s don’t fit me in the waist and hips, have to wear a frock belonging to her mum – outmoded and severe, a thing no self-respecting girl of my generation would be caught dead in. Mitraillette’s pullover does fit and I have a many-times patched-over wool jacket that once belonged to her brother, but the combination of these warm outer garments and the dowdy frock looks dead weird. The outfit is completed with wooden clogs – just like Gran’s gardener wears at home. There is no hope of better equipping me unless we use Julie’s clothing coupons. I don’t mind not being stylish, but I am obviously wearing an odd collection of cast-offs and if I am seen, people will wonder.

And my ‘accent’! Well.

Mitraillette says she can tell by the WAY I WALK that I am not from Ormaie. If I walked to the corner shop dressed in the height of fashion and didn’t breathe a word to anyone, I would still betray myself and everyone around me. I am so afraid of letting them down.

Oh, yes, letting people down. Is this next lot fear or guilt? It feels like a lump of granite stuck in the gears of my brain and stripping them raw. Letting people down. A great circular list of failure and worry. What if I’m caught and give away the location of the RAF Moon Squadron? I’ve already let down every one of those Lysander pilots – who liked and encouraged me so much they were daft enough to let me take one of their planes to France. Special Operations Executive trusted me too, not to mention the refugees I was supposed to pick up here. I’m a colossal failure as far as my own ATA ferry pool is concerned, done a bunk and AWOL indefinitely, and I dread betraying my hosts by accident – by being found on their property – or by being caught and giving them away under pressure. Don’t really believe I could keep anything from the Gestapo if they got to work on me. Oh help – here I am again, back to the location of the Moon Squadron and the Gestapo.

Everything leads to the Ormaie Gestapo. Well, they can be Fear Number 9. The Nazi secret police, something else it makes me sick to think about. I am fairly certain the Ormaie Gestapo HQ will be my first stop on my way to whatever prison I end up in.

Unless the Ormaie Gestapo HQ is blown to bits first. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. It is ten days since we got here. Part of the reason I’ve not written since last week is because I don’t want to put to paper what I am about to write, don’t want to give any kind of reality to this ugly ‘perhaps’. Also, if I’d let myself write this week I’d have just wasted half my paper listing possibilities and wondering. It’s been too long. It is torment, pure torment, waiting for news – for anything.