Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(14)

You can’t even fly directly into France without being shot at, and you certainly can’t unload a cargo ship. Le Havre is under siege. It is being pounded. We are doing it ourselves. The harbour there is taking such a beating that it will have to be rebuilt before it’s any use to us.

I had my lunch with Aunt Edie in the Palm Court at the Ritz yesterday. Wow. It makes the Hotel Hershey look pretty minor league, which isn’t exactly fair. Thank goodness for my uniform. I wore the same clothes I wore to Maddie’s wedding (although I wore my other tunic, because the one I wore to Maddie’s wedding is not as sharp-looking as it used to be, due to flying bombs and bus floors). But you never feel out of place or underdressed in uniform.

Edie, of course, was very elegant. I don’t think she’s had any new clothes for a while either, but she gets everything remade by her own tailor and is always so stylish – she kissed me on both cheeks to greet me, and looked sort of slant-eyed at my hands because I wasn’t wearing gloves (they did not survive the doodlebug wedding adventure).

We didn’t talk about French cities being liberated – Edie will not discuss bloodshed and bombing while she is presiding over white linen and silver in the Palm Court at the Ritz! I told her about my last date with Nick.

‘I like your Nick,’ she commented when I’d finished. ‘So terribly earnest.’

I laughed. ‘That’s exactly the word I think of too. Did I tell you he proposed to me? He wanted to get married before he got sent off to wherever he is now. I know everyone is doing it and I hated to disappoint him, but –’

‘But it’s not a charm. He won’t be any better protected if you’re married to him, and if you’re really going to choose a boy yourself and you’re being sensible about what you do together, there’s no good reason to rush into marriage. You did the right thing, Rose darling.’

‘But I do worry about him,’ I said. ‘And if we were married, they would tell me right away if anything happened to him. They won’t do that for just friends.’

‘There’s something to be said for not being told right away,’ Aunt Edie mused. ‘But I prefer simply not to worry. I never worry about Roger. Do you worry about General Montgomery – or General Eisenhower? They’re just as likely to be killed as anybody, but you don’t think about it. Imagine Nick’s a general!’

And we both laughed this time.

‘Of course, Roger’s just as likely to perish of a heart attack, or flu. Or some nasty disease he picks up in the field. Oh – that reminds me, Rose. He wanted to know if your jabs are up to date.’

That drew a blank with me.

‘My jabs?’

‘Your inoculations. Tetanus and typhoid principally.’

‘Oh! We call them shots. Yes, I had boosters this spring, before I came to England. Why?’

‘Can’t say,’ Aunt Edie said coyly, folding her napkin in her lap. ‘Shall we have coffee instead of tea? I hear they have a supply of the real thing from the Americans this week.’

‘Oh wonderful Aunt Edie!’

My fingers are crossed because I know they are inoculating other ferry pilots so they will be ready to fly to Europe. But I’m not holding my breath because so far none of them have been girls. And to tell the truth, I am less enthusiastic about the idea of doing ferry work in Europe than I was. Because it all looks so horribly, horribly ruined. The pictures in the papers are unbelievably awful – it looks like earthquake damage. Whole streets are knocked down and the soldiers have to pick their way over rubble to get through the towns – I think I said before that it’s we who are doing the bombing. Allied planes are dropping thousands of tons of TNT day and night on our own cities. And on German cities too, of course.

I am going to confess something here that I can’t quite bring myself to confess to anyone aloud, and this is what it is. I am scared of the way the Germans are refusing to let go of anything. I am scared of the way they are clinging to the French and Belgian ports, even though they’ve been pushed out of most of the rest of France. There is something about it that spooks me. They’ve lost. They must know they’ve lost – that they’re on the run. It’s all so pointless. It shouldn’t take another year. But I bet it will.

It’s not desperation – there is something inhuman in it. That is what I find so creepy. Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing – and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.





September 7, 1944

Hamble





Now Brussels is free, but more important, Antwerp too – a port in Allied hands at last! But actually the best news as far as I’m concerned was in the Manchester Guardian yesterday, read aloud by our Guardian addict the Honourable Mrs Maddie Beaufort-Stuart while we were waiting for our delivery chits. Here’s the news: RAF pilots are reporting that they can now fly the whole way across France without running into enemy aircraft!

It has been quieter here too. As we’ve been gaining ground in France and Belgium, the launch sites for the V-1 flying bombs are being taken out of action or pushed back – the doodlebugs can’t reach as far into England now, and also there aren’t as many of them. You really notice it here in Southampton because there just hasn’t been anything for about ten days. It’s quieter in Kent and London too. THANK GOD.