As usual Allison and Busby have given me a
lovely cover. It is so atmospheric and perfectly reflects the story of danger
and intrigue during World War II when ordinary people found themselves in
extraordinary situations. I like writing about the Second World War and it
amuses me to think that is it now considered history because it happened in my
lifetime. And like everyone who spent their formative years during those six
years, it made an indelible impression on me. It is a fund of good plots.
This is the story
of two girls, Elizabeth de Lacey and Lucy Storey, both from the Norfolk village
of Nayton, the one wealthy and privileged, the other the daughter of the local
stationmaster, poles apart but linked by war.
Elizabeth is
holidaying with her maternal grandparents in Haute Savoie in 1939 when war
breaks out. Along with her aunt, Justine, she becomes involved with the French
Resistance helping allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war over the Swiss
border, which becomes more and more risky as Germany takes over the whole of
France. Lizzie's life is one of secrets, betrayal and danger culminating in a fierce
battle between the resistance fighters hiding in the mountains and the Germans
determined to wipe them out. The death of a cousin, the demise of her
grandparents and falling in love with Roger, an SOE agent, add to her
anxieties. They are in terrible danger and the only way to save them is to
fetch them home to England. But that is not as easy as it sounds.
In England, Lucy
works for her bullying father at the Nayton railway station. She secretly loves
Jack de Lacey, Elizabeth's half brother, but she knows he is way above her
socially and in every other way, but when he saves her from being raped, their
friendship deepens into love. But there is class prejudice and a mystery
surrounding Lucy's past to overcome. It takes Jack's other sister, Amy, an inquisitive
evacuee living with the de Laceys, a German bomb and an explosion on the
railway line to bring everything to a head in Lucy's world.
Elizabeth propped
her bicycle against the barn door and stood a moment to watch a buzzard
circling above the meadows, searching for prey. She saw it plummet to earth and
then rise clutching something in it talons before it flew off towards the line
of trees higher up the slopes. She loved this little farm in the foothills of
the Haute Savoie, home of her maternal grandparents. To her it was a place of
holidays, a place where she was free to wander about the paths and meadows, to
enjoy the shade of the woods, to cycle along its narrow paths, swim in the
lakes, ice-cold though they were, and come back to huge delicious meals, cooked
by Grandmere. In the summer everywhere was lush and green, the meadows where
Grandpere's cattle and goats grazed were dotted with wild flowers. Higher up,
above the forest, the peaks of the alps poked upwards, bare rock in summer, covered
in snow in winter.
The summer would
come to an end soon, though it was taking its time this year, and she would go
home to make up her mind what she was going to do with her life. Would Max ask
her to marry him? Would she say yes? She was not altogether sure. She loved
him, but was she ready to settle down to domestic life as the wife of a regular
soldier? Wouldn't she rather have her own career, do something useful, learn to
live a little first? And if there was a war, what then? Max had said war was
inevitable, even after Chamberlain came back from Munich waving that piece of
paper which he said meant `peace in our time' All it did, according to Max, was
give the country time to step up its armaments, build more ships, aeroplanes
and tanks, and train more troops in readiness. Would there be work for her to
do in that event? After all, in the last war, women had done all sorts of jobs
normally done by men and done them well too.
Scattering the
farmyard chickens, she turned towards the house. It was a squat two storey
building, half brick, half timber, with a steeply pitched, overhanging roof so
the snow would run off it in winter. It was surrounded by a farmyard but there
were a few flowers in a patch of garden on the road side, and pelagoniums tumbled
in profusion from its window boxes. It was not large, but roomy enough for her
grandparents to have brought up three children: Pierre, who lived a few
kilometres to the west of Annecy and had his own small vineyard; Annelise,
Elizabeth's mother; and Justine, who had been born when her mother was in her
forties and was only nine years older than Elizabeth. She taught at a school in
Paris.
The kitchen was
the largest room and the warmest - too warm in summer because the cooking and
heating of water was done on an open range. A large table, flanked by two
benches, stood in the middle of it covered with a red check cloth. It was laid
with cutlery and dishes taken from the dresser that filled almost the whole of
one wall. Grandmere, her face red from the fire, was standing at the range
stirring something in a blackened pot that smelled delicious. She was a roly
poly of a woman, dressed in a long black skirt, a yellow blouse and a big white
apron. Her long grey hair was pulled back into a bun.
`Where's Papie?'
Lizzie asked. Brought up by a French mother who had brought her and her
siblings to visit her parents frequently as they grew up, she was completely
bilingual.
`He went into
Annecy to see the butcher. The old cow is past milking and will have to be
slaughtered. He said he would be back in time for dinner.' To Marie Clavier the
midday meal was always dinner, the evening meal supper.
Elizabeth busied
herself fetching out the big round home-made loaf, glasses and wine in a jug
which she put ready on the table. `I saw a buzzard dive for a mouse just now.
It always amazes me that they can see such a tiny creature from so high up.'
Her grandmother
laughed. `What is it they say, "eyes like a hawk"?'
They heard the
noisy splutter of the ancient van her grandfather used to drive into town and
two minutes later he came into the kitchen, followed by his black and white
mongrel. `It's all arranged,' he said, sitting in his rocking chair by the
hearth to remove his boots. He wasn't a big man, but had a wiry strength that years
of working a farm single-handed had bred in him. He had thin gingery hair and
an untidy beard streaked with grey. `Alphonse Montbaun will come for the cow at
the end of the week. He'll cut it up and keep it in his deep freeze for us.'
`Will you buy another?'
Elizabeth asked him. She had become inured to the idea of eating cattle she had
seen munching grass on the slopes. Grandpere had called her soft when, as a
small girl on her first visit, she had recoiled at the idea.
`I think I'll get
a couple of heifers and introduce them to Alphonse's bull.' He came to the
table and sat in an armchair at its head while his wife ladled the soup into
bowls. `When are you going home, young lady?' he asked.
Elizabeth laughed.
`Do you want to be rid of me, Papie?'
`You know I don't,
but the rumours are flying. The German army is gathering on the Polish border
and this time it won't be like Czechoslovakia; there'll be no appeasement.
You'll be safer, at home.'
`Sacre Dieu!' the
old lady said, crossing herself. `You are never suggesting we are not safe
here?'
`I don't know, do
I? But we haven't got an English Channel between us and the Boche.'
`We've got the
Maginot Line.'
`A fat lot of good
that will do against aeroplanes and bombs.'
`Albert, you are
frightening me. It was bad enough last time, I don't want to go through that
again.'
`Perhaps you won't
have to. If they come, our armies will drive them back again. That nice young
man who came to stay earlier in the summer will see to that.' The `nice young
man' was Captain Max Coburn who had come to share a few days of his leave with
Elizabeth. He had charmed her grandparents with his old-fashioned manners, his
smart uniform, his blue eyes, golden hair and neatly clipped moustache. It had
been a glorious few days, the weather had been perfect and she had taken him
all round her favourite haunts: the glittering ice-cold lakes, the little
hamlets with their agile goats and the canyon at the Devil's Bridge Gorge, not
to mention the breathtaking scenery with Mont Blanc crowning it all. Not until
his last day had either of them mentioned war.
`It's going to
come, Liz,' he had said. `Hitler will not be satisfied with Czechoslovakia; he
wants the Danzig corridor and he'll go for Poland next. Britain and France will
have to honour their commitment to help. Don't stay here too long.'
`Oh, Max, you
can't think the Germans will come here surely?'
`I don't know, but
I would rather you were safe at home in England.'
`And you?'
`I'll go where I'm
sent.'
`I hope you're
wrong. I couldn't bear to think of you in the middle of the fighting and Papie
and Mamie put in fear of their lives. They remember the last war so vividly.
Perhaps I should try and persuade them to come home with me.'
`Yes, do that. I'm
sure your parents would approve.'
`Mama has tried to
get them to come to Nayton many times over the years but Papie would never
leave the farm. He always said he wouldn't trust anyone else to look after his
livestock: cows, goats, chickens and his beloved dog. And I think he is a
little in awe of Papa, though he would never admit it.'
`Surely not? Lord
de Lacey is the mildest of men and he adores your mother.' Her paternal
grandfather had died when she was small and her father had inherited the
baronetcy and Nayton Manor, her Norfolk home.
`I know.'
Everyone in the
family knew how her father had met her mother; it was a tale Papa loved to
tell. Already a widower, though childless, he had been a major in the British
army in the Great War and had been taken prisoner and shipped off to Germany.
He had jumped from the train on the way and made his escape. Annelise, who was
working in the hospital at Chalons at the time to be near Jacques, her soldier
fiancé, had found him wounded, hungry and thirsty in a ditch, too weak to move.
She had fetched help and he had been carried on a stretcher to the hospital
where she continued to look after him until he was strong enough to return to
duty. He had not forgotten her and when the war ended in November 1918, went to
see her at her home in Dransville before going back to England. By then she had
a small son, Jacques, whose father had been killed in the fighting.
They had fallen in
love and, defying the conventions of the aristocracy and the ill-concealed
disapproval of Papa's friends, were married in March 1919. He had adopted
Jacques. Nine months later Elizabeth had been born, then Amy in August 1921,
and finally young Edmund in 1927.
`I hope you are
wrong. I hope you are all wrong,' she had told Max. `I can't bear the thought
of people being killed and maimed. Why can't governments settle their
differences without going to war?'
He had no answer
to that and the following day had left to rejoin his regiment, but he left her
wondering about her grandparents. Would they come to England with her? `My
Channel crossing is booked for the ninth of September,' she told them as they
ate their soup. `I don't see any need to go before that.'
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