Code Name Verity(89)

It wasn’t so long ago. What is happening to us?

Maman Thibaut has been dosing Amélie with café au lait at the big kitchen table, Mitraillette and I taking turns holding her tight and exchanging horrified glances over her head. She won’t stop talking. I only get every third word or so. Mitraillette whispers a rough translation –

‘Il y en avait une autre – there was another. Il y avaient deux filles – there were two girls – La Cadette et ses amies n’ont rien vu quand on a tué l’autre –’

They didn’t see the second girl executed. It was torment for all of us, dragging this information out of La Cadette. There were two girls brought there together, tied to each other. The second had to stand and watch as they butchered the first – so close, they made her stand so close that Amélie said the blood spattered on her face. Then they closed the gates. Over the courtyard wall Amélie and her friends saw them raising the blade again and that was when they left.

The second girl was Julie. Certain of it. There can’t be another petite blonde in a pullover the colour of autumn leaves being held prisoner in the Ormaie Gestapo HQ. Amélie saw her.

But I don’t believe they killed her either. I just don’t believe it. I keep thinking of those pictures of the pilot. They must have shown Julie those pictures by now, and perhaps she thinks I’m dead. But I’m not. And it’s the same for her, I’m sure of it. It might look like she’s dead, but she’s not. They’ve got a reason to fake her death now, since Georgia Penn talked to her this week and they need to re-establish their – supremacy or whatever, their control over what everybody knows or doesn’t know. That captain/commander must be in trouble – he went behind his superior’s back to let Penn in. Perhaps he’s been told to kill Julie. But I think he’s just as likely been told to stage her death, so she disappears again. Sharing cognac with her and sending her to the guillotine in the same week? I just don’t believe it.

I WANT TO BLOW THAT PLACE APART.

Planes go over almost every night – there are some munitions factories working for the Germans and launch sites here in France that they are desperate to put out of action. They won’t drop a bomb in the middle of Ormaie, not on purpose, for fear of hitting civilians. They have hit the railway junction here and had a go at the factories to the north of the city though I don’t think Ormaie carries on any significant manufacture apart from umbrellas. But the RAF won’t bomb the middle of the city. It’s why Julie was sent here, so we could get at it from the ground. Not many people here know the RAF is trying to avoid hitting them – no one feels safe. The Americans dropped some bombs on Rouen in broad daylight. People panic when they hear the air-raid sirens and dive for shelter just like we did back in the Manchester Blitz. But nothing ever hits the centre of Ormaie.

Sometimes I wish it would – just one great big blast to wipe out the Castle of Butchers. I want that evil place to go up in flames. I want it so badly it hurts. Then I remember that Julie is still inside.

I don’t believe she’s dead, I don’t believe any of their bluff and lies and bullying threats. I don’t believe she’s dead and I WON’T believe she’s dead until I hear the shots MYSELF and see her fall.





Another Nazi Sunday dinner at the Thibauts’, 28 Nov. Had to make myself scarce. Can just imagine La Cadette feeding them our line – ‘K?the has got an older man! You would not believe how fast she works. It is a friend of Papa’s driver, she met him when we were loading hens a couple of weeks ago. They go out together every Sunday. And some evenings too!’

And Maman, rolling her eyes, ‘It’s not right, not right for such a young girl, he’s twice her age. But what can I do to stop her? She’s not my own – we work her hard and she gets no wages, so I have to give her Sunday afternoons – and she’s of age. I just hope she’s careful, doesn’t get herself in trouble . . .’

‘In trouble’ with Paul, yeccchhh.

He and I bicycled off together to someone else’s house to refine my bomb-making and gun-firing skills. It is such a relief to focus on some neutral thing – how much plastic explosive you need to blow up a car, how to wire up the switches, how to use a magnet to attach a detonator, how to hit a moving target with a pocket pistol – a borrowed one, as K?the doesn’t normally carry a gun since she would get arrested if she was caught with it. Thank you, Jamie and Julie Beaufort-Stuart, for the first few shooting lessons. Today’s moving target was not an Me-109 or a pheasant, but an empty tin on a stick, waved about by a very brave soul at the other end of the garden. The noise is hidden by the sound of a sawmill adjacent to the house. I don’t know if they normally work on a Sunday afternoon or if the noise was laid on specially for us.