The Sea Garden (21 page)

3

Tangmere

Chichester, July 1943

R
ose was going to France.

Midafternoon a car pulled up outside Orchard Court. Rose took a rear seat alongside Iris. Miss Acton, who usually made airfield trips, had important meetings in London. They headed south out of the embattled city, its streets made foreign by jagged grey bomb craters and ruined buildings, and out into the countryside that offered reassurance that life did still exist as it had before.

Cow parsley frothed from the verges of the country roads. Dog roses fluttered in a warm breeze. Birdsong and brightness imitated peacetime, if only for a few hours. Iris and Rose hardly spoke. In the green fields east of Chichester the village of Tangmere was sleepy, marked only by the shingle-clad spire on the church roof. Trees and bushes formed a green screen on either side of the road.

“Here we are,” said Iris as they drove up a short gravel pathway. “The Cottage. The gates over there are the main entrance to the airfield.”

Rose nodded.

She looked terribly young and vulnerable, thought Iris. In the dark gabardine suit chosen to blend in to the crowd, she was so slim as to be childlike. Rose's cheekbones had become more prominent and her eyes huge. It was all too easy to believe that she was making her way in the world as best she could on her own—that part was true, after all, since the loss of her mother—while her fiancé was away. The cheap garnet ring on her finger was noticeably looser than it had been a month earlier.

“All right?” asked Iris.

“Yes.”

Rose was doing a good job covering it, but she was scared. It was only natural. Iris would have to keep a keen watch on her, perhaps make a difficult decision, when the time came.

They got out of the car. Tangmere Cottage was a low redbrick house, about a hundred years old. The brickwork was almost entirely covered with ivy, through which small-paned windows managed to assert themselves. There was one upstairs floor and a thick chimney stack on the end. The property and garden were protected from sight by a Sussex stone wall and dense hedges.

“Come on inside,” said Iris. “They do a lovely cup of tea here.”

That got a smile. Rose gathered her bag and gloves and followed.

Inside, the cottage—a requisition, naturally—was still more domestic than military, extended over the years to produce a useful muddle of rooms, none of them very large.

“Hello, Stephen,” called Iris as they entered the back door to the kitchen.

Her cheery greeting was returned by a tall, thickset man in uniform, one of the two flight sergeants of the RAF police service who governed the Cottage.

“This is Stephen. He's cook and security all in one, which makes this the most comforting guardroom in the country. Nothing and no one gets past Stephen.”

“Hello, Miss,” he said, nodding at Rose. She was not introduced, not even by her new name. “Kettle's on, make yourselves at home.”

“Thanks! Come through to the ops room.”

Keen to keep the mood upbeat, Iris led the way into what had once been a sitting room with a simple brick fireplace, now full of heavy brown furniture. Dark wooden beams made the ceiling seem lower. On the wall hung a large map of France. A table and a selection of unmatched chairs gave the room a relaxed air. The remains of a coal fire were unlit. On a small wooden desk were a black telephone and a green telephone.

A couple of young men stood smoking by the window. Iris grinned. “You two again! Rose, I'm delighted to be able to introduce two of our finest—Jack and Rory. One of these renegades will be taking you up tonight, and you couldn't be in better hands.”

“Unless you get Verity, of course,” said Jack, as they shook hands. He was tall and fair, with an angular frame. “Though I fear you are indeed stuck with one of us. Hey ho.”

He pushed back his floppy mop of blond hair. He reminded Iris of the earnest young men who worked for the BBC after graduating from Cambridge. But there the similarity ended. If he looked will-o'-the-wisp, Jack Wallace was a particularly steady pilot, a meticulous checker of everything from the wind to the instruments in the cockpit to the quality of the fuel to the political situation. He was a careful navigator, with a near-photographic memory for the routes learned from maps, and a tendency to worry masked his methodical approach and fierce determination.

“It's quite all right. We've been practicing,” said Rory to Rose, who tried to smile. Rory was shorter, with a mop of dark curly hair and wide brown eyes that always reminded Iris of her childhood teddy bear. “In fact, I'm beginning to wonder whether I wouldn't find it a shock to the system to fly in daylight now.”

“And we've been eating our carrots,” said Jack cheerfully. “I've got the night vision of a rabbit!”

“How many of these trips have you made?” Rose asked.

“This will be my tenth sortie for Special Ops.”

Rory took a final deep drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out. “Eight for me.”

Iris rubbed goose bumps from her bare arms, and hoped the girl hadn't noticed. All summer, agents from both F Section and the other intelligence services had been dropped into France by Lysanders, planes that were short-winged and light, able to land in restricted spaces like small fields. With so much activity, there had been many times when Miss Acton could not make the trip, and it had fallen to Iris to accompany the agents from London to the airfield during the full moon. It still seemed incredible that men like Jack Wallace and Rory Fitzgerald brought down planes deep inside enemy territory, flying by moonlight, navigating across France by picking out silvered strips of river and other memorized landmarks; when they landed it was in darkness, guided only by hand torches.

“How long do you stay on the ground?” asked Rose.

“As little time as possible. If we can turn around in less than ten minutes, that's all right. Any longer, and we risk being rumbled.”

“Well, I am very grateful indeed not to have to drop out on a parachute.”

“Any bloody fool can drop joes over France and come back without touching down, but it takes skill to land a Lizzie and take off again,” said Jack.

Rory stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. “All part of the service. Ah, tea—jolly good.”

Over tea and more cigarettes they swapped off-duty gossip: Iris telling them who had been in the crowd at the Dorchester and the 400 Club, the pilots giving the latest updates on their twin passions. In Jack's case this was an old black motorcycle he called the Beauty, which he would strip down and tend with oil cadged from the mechanics at the airfield; Rory had Sam, a collie dog he had rescued in his native Yorkshire after the death of an old hill farmer.

“We had a soppy Airedale at home, so sweet-natured,” said Rose. “I miss her dreadfully.”

The house that was bombed out, thought Iris. It took the dog as well as her mother. She was struck yet again by the girl's composure, her ability to master her emotions. Rose would be fine, quietly resourceful and reliable.

“I was desperate to keep Sam at camp, but they wouldn't let me,” said Rory. “It was thanks to Jack, and one of the Beauty's not infrequent breakdowns, that we found a farmer close to Tempsford who would look after her.”

“Is that near here?” Rose asked.

“Not really. But closer than Yorkshire.”

“And he writes Sam lovely letters when he's away,” teased Iris.

She did not explain that 161 Squadron (Special Ops) was based at RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire. During the full moon they came down to Tangmere because it made for a shorter journey into the heart of France, when the range of the aircraft was crucial. From the Sussex coast they could penetrate as far as central France and return. The pilots were normally at Tangmere cottage for a week before the full moon and a week after.

“You couldn't bring him here? Why, there's even a garden!” said Rose.

“And conditions like a cheap Turkish hotel upstairs,” said Jack. “So many camp beds up there . . . sometimes you can't even see the landing floor. The idea of that hound howling outside all night . . . no, thank you.”

“And what about your noisy lump of metal, eh?”

“You wouldn't know it, but these two really are great friends,” said Iris. “Except where dogs, motorcycles, and women are concerned.”

“Where women are concerned, that's good-natured competition,” said Jack, sitting up straight and pretending to adjust his collar. “Go on, Iris, you've had long enough to decide—which one of us is it to be?”

“Oh, you know I could never come between you boys. That would be treachery.”

 

D
usk was falling. Cooking smells drifted from the kitchen, where the mess sergeants were busy bringing a game pie to perfection: assorted meat (mainly rabbit) and vegetables (mostly carrots) under a crust of mashed potato. They had become used to rationing, but were still obsessed with food. Two trestle tables were laid for supper in the plain whitewashed dining room next door.

More young men arrived through the kitchen as the comforting aroma grew stronger. One of them cranked up a gramophone in the corner. The room grew misty with cigarette smoke, pierced by notes of exquisite pain from a saxophone. “Give it a rest, Richie,” someone grumbled. “Leave the torture to the Gestapo.”

The atmosphere was lively as they sat down to eat. Nervous energy was countered by banter. A young man in civilian clothes was ushered in late. He was not introduced by name, so he must have been an agent from one of the other special services. Rose remained quiet at Iris's side. She was outwardly calm, but Iris wondered how she really felt, now it was almost time to go. They were joined by squadron leader Hugh Verity, the genial, unassuming, and much-respected head of Special Duties operations. Like all the pilots he wore a mixture of uniform and civilian clothes; if he was shot down and managed to survive bailing out, he would lose or burn his battle blouse and pass for any other slightly scruffy young man.

“We had a dreadful night. The flak came at us for miles over northern France on the way back. Two joes in the back, we're well off track . . . but everyone's keeping their cool magnificently . . . then the underside takes a hit just before we cross the Channel. Somehow or other we splutter over the finishing line in low cloud and on the last gasp of fuel. We all stagger out, and the only event that provokes a reaction from the French is getting in the car on arrival and being driven off on the wrong side of the road!”

“. . . it's not stunt aerobatics, you know. Though some of them seem to think we can land on a franc coin on the edge of a cliff, some of the places they've been finding for us . . .”

“. . . remember Stamper landing in thick fog on the stumps of the Lizzie's legs? He'd taken the wheels off on a cliff, and there was telegraph wire wrapped around the tail wheel, and a hole in the undercarriage, and the supplementary fuel tank only hanging on by a couple of twisted screws . . .”

Iris felt dizzy with the effort of trying to follow as many stories as she could, but Rose was emotionless, as composed as she had been the first time Iris had met her.

 

A
fter they had eaten, Hugh Verity led them back into the ops room and gave the briefing. It was a double Lysander operation. Standing in front of the map of France, he pointed out the two flight paths and shared reconnaissance photos of the landing fields. The weather forecast came in from the Met Office: mainly clear with scattered cloud. On the green telephone, fitted with a scrambler for confidential conversation, he took a call from air ops on London confirming that the BBC message had gone out, and the reception groups would be assembling on the ground in France.

Final checks were being made on the airfield. The pilots went outside to accustom their eyes to the dark. At the cottage Iris handed over the wireless set disguised as a small leather suitcase and went through Rose's pockets one last time to make sure no bus tickets remained, no receipts or stray coins to give away where they had been recently.

“Let me see the labels in your coat and jacket. Blouse? You've checked any labels on your underclothing—nothing British at all?”

“I've gone over everything a hundred times.”

The only sign of nerves was a slight tremble.

“Right . . . French identity card, money, food cards, and bread coupons?”

They went through her handbag together.

“Photograph of the fiancé?”

“In the side pocket.”

“It's always the smallest things that give us away.”

Everything the agents took back to France with them had to be authentic. English soap, for example, lathered too well, so the poor dry stuff most widely available on the continent had to be made specially. Imitation Gauloises cigarettes had been given up as a bad idea—the British gum used on the packets was too strong and would not disintegrate in the same way as the real ones. All the everyday items like string and matches, safety pins and hairpins, scissors, razors, pencils, had to be unmarked, with no “Made in England” cut into them to give the game away. Best of all was to use those items that had been recently brought back by other agents.

One of Miss Acton's rules was that she would always give the agents a chance to see her alone before they went out to the plane. “If they have any doubts, best let them confess,” she said. Iris touched Rose on the arm. “I'm popping upstairs to the bathroom, if you want to come too,” she said.

On the landing Iris turned and asked, “All set? Speak now or forever hold your peace?”

“I'm all right.”

“Completely?”

Rose took an audible breath and composed herself. “That's a very pretty pin you have in your hair, Iris. Such a clever design.”

Iris clicked it open and took out the silver and paste clip in the shape of a rosebud. She checked it under the landing light and handed it over.