Code Name Verity(8)

Heil Hitler!

SS-Scharführer Etienne Thibaut

—

You ignorant Quisling bastard, SS-Scharführer Etienne Thibaut, I AM SCOTTISH.

The comedians Laurel and Hardy, I mean Underling-Sergeant Thibaut and On-Duty-Female-Guard Engel, have been very jolly at my expense over the inferior ink Thibaut found for me to write with. He ruddy well had to thin it with kerosene, didn’t he. He was annoyed when I made a fuss over the ink and he didn’t seem to believe me about the clogged pen, so I became rather upset when he went away and came back with a litre of kerosene. When he brought in the tin, I knew straight away what it was, and Miss E. had to throw a jug of water in my face to stop my hysterics. Now she is sitting across the table from me lighting and relighting her cigarette and flicking the matches in my direction to make me jump, but she is laughing as she does it.

She was anxious last night because she didn’t think I’d coughed up enough facts to count as a proper little Judas yesterday. Again I think that she was worrying about von Linden’s reaction, as she is the one who has to translate what I write for him. As it turned out he said it was an ‘interesting overview of the situation in Britain over the long term’ and a ‘curious individual perspective’ (he was testing my German a bit while we talked about it). Also I think he hopes I will do some ratting on Monsieur Laurel and Mademoiselle Hardy. He does not trust Thibaut because Thibaut is French and he does not trust Engel because Engel is a woman. I am to be given water throughout the day while I write (to drink, as well as to prevent hysterics) and a blanket. For a blanket in my cold little room, SS-Hauptsturmführer Amadeus von Linden, I would without remorse or hesitation rat on my heroic ancestor William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland.

I know your other prisoners despise me. Thibaut took me to . . . I don’t know what you call it when you make me watch, is it instruction? To remind me how fortunate I am, perhaps? After my tantrum yesterday, when I had stopped writing and before I was allowed to eat, on the way back to my cell Scharführer Thibaut made me stop and watch while Jacques was being questioned again. (I don’t know what his real name is; Jacques is what the French citizens all call each other in A Tale of Two Cities, and it seems appropriate.) That boy hates me. It makes no difference that I too am strapped securely to my own chair with piano wire or something and gasp with sobs on his account and look away the whole time except when Thibaut holds my head in place. Jacques knows, they all know, that I am the collaborator, the only coward among them. No one else has given out a single scrap of code – let alone ELEVEN SETS – not to mention a written confession. He spits at me as they drag him out.

‘Little Scottish piece of shit.’

It sounds so pretty in French, p’tit morceau de merde écossaise. Single-handedly I have brought down the 700-year-strong Auld Alliance between France and Scotland.

There is another Jacques, a girl, who whistles ‘Scotland the Brave’ if we are taken past each other (my prison is an antechamber to the suite they use for interrogations), or some other battle hymn associated with my heritage, and she spits too. They all detest me. It is not the same as their hatred for Thibaut, the Quisling turncoat, who is their countryman and is working for the enemy. I am your enemy too, I should be one of them. But I am beyond contempt. A wee Scots piece o’ shite.

Don’t you think it makes them stronger when you give them someone to despise? They look at me snivelling in the corner and think, ‘Mon Dieu. Don’t ever let me be like her.’

The Civil Air Guard (Some Figures)

That heading looks terrifically official. I feel better already. Like a proper little Judas.

Suppose you were a girl in Stockport in 1938, raised by loving and indulgent grandparents and rather obsessed with engines. Suppose you decided you wanted to learn to fly: really fly. You wanted to fly aeroplanes.

A three-year course with Air Service Training would have cost you over a thousand pounds. I don’t know what Maddie’s granddad would have earned in a year back then. He did fairly well with his motorbike business, as I have said, not so well during the Depression, but still, by our standards then, anyone would have considered his a good living. At any rate it would have cost him most of his year’s earnings to buy Maddie one year of flying lessons. She got her first flight free, an hour’s excursion in Dympna’s restored Puss Moth on a glorious clear summer evening of crisp wind and long light, and saw the Pennines from above for the first time. Beryl got to come along for the ride, since she had been as much involved in Dympna’s rescue as Maddie had, but Beryl had to sit in the very back and couldn’t see so well and was sick into her handbag. She thanked Dympna but never went for another flight.