The Daisy Club (40 page)

Chapter Twelve

All Johnny could hear were the voices above him, and sounds as if water was running, and all he could see was an arm sticking out. He stared at the arm. It looked familiar, but since he could hardly see for the dust and the dirt clogging his eyes, he could not be sure. He tried to remember what had happened. His mother pushing him under the stairs, was it? Everything so quick, so sudden. Him playing, and then suddenly, before he could do much more than snatch up his toy, a feeling that the whole world was falling on top of him, and his mother was screaming and pushing him under what was now on top of him. He tried to stand up, but his head hit something. The kitchen table, that was what he had been pushed under, by his mum, or was it his nan?

‘Anyone in there?' a voice called out, a little more clearly. ‘Anyone in there?'

Johnny tried to call back, but his mouth was so full of dust he could hardly make a sound. Eventually he managed ‘Help!', and then ‘Help!' again, and although he was lying down, he knew he had made a sound that had been heard by someone, because a voice said, ‘I think I heard a voice, I think I heard something.'

‘Help! Help!' Johnny called again. ‘I'm here! Johnny Lindsay! It's me!'

After saying that, he lay back against the rubble, exhausted, while above him – or was it around him? – he could hear the sound of bricks being moved and voices coming nearer.

‘It's me!' he called again, eventually. He wondered in a dazed way why he kept calling ‘
It's me!
' Until he remembered Mr Branscombe reading to him at night from that funny book, and the bit about Kanga and Roo, when Roo was covered in dust, and Kanga pretended not to know who he was, and how Roo had kept saying, ‘It's me, Kanga!' Or something like that. That was what he was like now, that was what Johnny was like now: he was like Roo, he was covered in dust, and his mum would never know him. He lay still, toy in hand. Someone would get him out and wash off the dirt, just like in the story. He believed that, he really did.

Aurelia stared into Clive's eyes.

‘I have to go, Clive, you know I have to go. Christmas is over, the war is not.'

‘But you're probably doing something frightfully dangerous, and I won't see you again, just when we have fallen in love, and everything about us is golden.'

Aurelia reached up and touched Clive on the cheek.

‘Love,' she said, a little hopelessly.

‘Is what it's all about!'

‘No, just at this moment it's war that it is all about, and we must win. We must defeat the Nazi devils, put them to the sword.'

‘But, but, you might be pregnant!'

It was his last shot at delaying Aurelia, but he could see from her stubborn expression that it was futile. Aurelia shook her head.

‘No, Clive, I am not pregnant.'

‘How can you be sure?'

‘Because, my dearest, dearest Clive, I am!'

Aurelia remembered the dreadful time when she had thought she was, and felt ashamed. It had been foolish of her – but also terrible. What a thing to happen! And then for all your friends to know, and make preparations in case you were. It didn't seem possible now that she could either have been so naive, or so open about herself in that way.

She paused, looking back with something approaching repulsion at the person she had once been. An hysteric, at the beck and call of her beautiful mother, darling old Hotty, and her father. Always on the verge of tears, always embarrassing everyone, especially girls like Daisy and Freddie who had backbone. Well, now she had backbone too, and she was going to show it. She would be dropped into France as many times as it took. She was determined on it.

She would take messages, and she would come back with messages, and during all that time she would look and look for Laura, until she found her. She would not leave her friend on the other side of the
English
Channel, she would bring her back. Whatever happened she would find her, or find out about her. She had to.

‘Clive, I know now that I am in love with you,' she said, with her usual straightforward candour.

‘And I with you, but then I have been in love with you ever since I first saw you.'

Aurelia was dressing with her back to Clive, but at this she turned to look at him, astonished.

‘I never knew that,' she said, looking around for one of her stockings. ‘That can't be true.'

‘It is true. Ask Guy!'

‘Guy knew that you were in love with me?'

Clive nodded.

‘Of course. We have been friends since time began.'

‘Oh, I see. So he knew, and that is why he asked me down, is it?'

‘Good gracious, no. He asked you down because he trusts you and he likes you. He is not someone who will ever ask anyone anywhere if he does not trust or like them. The only trouble now is that since he was thrown into jug, since the press turned on him, along with everyone else, except people in the theatre – and some of them, too – he trusts and likes so few people that, as he says, he would be hard put to fill the broom-cupboard at Longbridge with his friends, let alone the drawing room!'

Clive laughed shortly, and then swung his legs down to the floor. He had been hoping to make love to Aurelia once again, but he could see now that this was not going to happen. He could see, not just because she was dressing, but from the
way
she was dressing, that Aurelia's thoughts were with the war, that love had been put away on a top shelf. Her expression was very set – not grim, but set – and she slipped her slim feet into her shoes, and pulled on her suit jacket, in such a determined fashion that she might already have been on her way, not just going to her suitcase to pack.

‘You can't tell me what you are doing, but you can promise me to keep away from all those sexy Free Frenchmen at Baker Street, and those passionate Poles and cheeky Czechs, can't you?'

Aurelia turned and smiled, the expression in her eyes one of amusement. Just how many Free French and passionate Poles she would be seeing in Normandy or Brittany was open to question, but nevertheless, given that she would probably only meet Communists – those who made up the now very active underground – Nazi soldiers, and Normandy farmers, it was easy enough to promise that she would keep away from the men that Clive imagined were a danger to him.

‘I promise that whatever happens I will be faithful to you,' she said, putting up a hand to touch his cheek.

Clive took it and kissed it passionately, but even as he did, he knew in his heart of hearts that there was something that Aurelia was not telling him. Something that said that she was not just returning to SOE in Baker Street.

Daisy had returned to ops with a heavy heart, for the truth was that being back at the Hall had weakened her dreadfully, in that way that people being kind to you so often did. If she did not know just how desperately people like her were needed, if she did not hate Hitler so much, she might have been inclined to throw in the towel, and take Jean's place on the farm.

Laura, on the other hand, had not returned from France for a very good reason. She was having an affair, and not only was she having an affair – her second, she realised just a little ruefully – but she was having an affair with a Communist, for goodness' sake, although, really, goodness had very little to do with it.

The fact was that the lines being run by the British through France would not have been possible if it had not been for the Communists. Without their single-minded hatred of the Nazi invader, without their grudge against the bourgeois middle classes, most of whom had thrown in their lot, all too willingly, with the Nazis – running agents would have been quite impossible.

The next, and undeniable, fact was that the Communists were as brave as anything. They were just what you wanted, the kind of fighters that most generals would give not just their eye teeth for, but most of their stripes. They were the
sanspareils
of the underground movement. They gleefully blew up bridges even as the Boche crossed them, and set booby traps with hair's-breadth timing for motorcades. They were also adept at running messages through the lines so carefully laid by people like Laura. Ice-cold in their daring, intent on thinking that in winning this battle, they were not just winning France back, they were winning back a
new
France.

Laura had been picked up by John François – always known as Friquet, for reasons she had never bothered to ask him – hardly a moment after Aurelia had left her in the restaurant.

Of course Laura had been told to expect someone, but not someone like Friquet! Tall, handsome, insouciant, with a look in his eyes which told everyone that not only did he like women, but he knew that women liked him.

He was posing as a newspaper reporter working for a pro-Vichy rag, our man on the spot, as it were, which he seemed to find hilarious. Laura had been told that this was the type who would be her contact, but not exactly what he would be like. Even as he sat down on the bar stool so recently vacated by Aurelia, Laura knew that whatever happened now, whatever battle was ahead, being instantly attracted to Friquet was one fight she would willingly lose.

As it turned out, after they had made love several times, Laura found out that Friquet was not just a Communist, but an aristocrat, too. He came of an ancient French line, steeped in history, and his ancestors had somehow escaped the guillotine thanks to being rescued by English cousins.

‘Although it is always possible that, as the last of the line, I may not have the same happy fate!' he joked. ‘My family went to England, where they lived until it was safe to return, by which time our chateau was a little the worse for wear, but we managed to restore it, over the next hundred and fifty years – these things take time in France, as you know – and thereafter we have lived in it, deep in the heart of Normandy, unlike some, eschewing Paris, which was very sensible of us. But now, alas, the chateau is shut up once more, a desolate house, deserted by everyone except the mice. So, I the Communist son must once again fight for what is right, and, indeed, what is mine, or should be mine.' He shook his head, and as he did so, and turned to light a cigarette, Laura realised that his profile, with its head of dark curly hair, was reminiscent of the Michelangelo sculpture of David. And not just his profile either, like the statue of David there was no doubt that Friquet was very well made in every way.

‘We must go back to the fight.'

He stood up, and they both quickly dressed.

‘You must not be seen too much with me, because of retaliation,' he told her, taking both her hands and kissing them in a particularly Gallic manner.

‘Hang on, no need to kiss my hand, I'm not a married woman!' Laura joked.

‘It is time to be serious,
mon ange
.' As much as they both disliked being serious, Friquet most particularly, it was very important that Laura knew the dangers into which she could run. ‘Listen, please. If you are seen about with me too much, it is not the Boche that will get you, it is the Maquis. They are very badly organised, or else, ask yourself, why would they be using me? No, you must not be seen with me too often. Now I think of it, we must not be seen together in the towns at all. We can meet here in this little seaside inn, because the landlord downstairs is a cousin of my married uncle, and he would rather take his own life than give us away, but nowhere else. You understand? As I am posing as a pro-Vichy newspaperman I, too, am in danger of what you English call ‘friendly fire', but it is easier for me, because I speak the same language, whereas you, my dearest little Englishwoman, while speaking impeccable French, nevertheless do not speak the language of the Communists, or the Maquis.'

‘I could learn, you could teach me.'

Friquet laughed heartily at this.

‘No, Laura, you could not even begin to learn it.'

‘Why is that?'

‘Because, prettiest of creatures, because there are too many bad words!'

He left her, and Laura watched him go down the path that led to the coast with feelings of both delight and regret. Delight that they had made love so beautifully, more beautifully than she thought could have been possible, and regret that he had to go.

She lay back on the bed in the little whitewashed bedroom, and thought of what lay ahead. She knew she must stay in France for the moment, that she was more useful here than she had been driving about London with a canteen, or down the Underground. Very well, she had come to France not just to set up lines of communication across the vast French countryside, but also to find her father and Dora. Where were they?

She had wondered that so often that it had become painful. Wondered it over and over again. Where were they? Why had they not come back? Why had they not fled to Portugal as so many caught in France had done? Why had they not taken a boat from the South of France as, again, so many of the English had done, packing their few jewels into a small suitcase, leaving the Nazis to take over their villas, their paintings, their silver and gold?

And yet, if she knew that she could find out what had happened to them. If she had already found them, too, would she really have volunteered when she had heard that a few French-speaking FANYs were needed to go to France? She doubted it. No, she knew she would not. She had come to France to find her father in order to prove to him that, little though he might love her, she loved him, and was willing to risk her life to find him. That was how deeply she felt about him, and her country, too.

She looked at her watch. She was due to meet a Madame Bonnet at a certain point in a village some few miles away.

She rolled the name around her tongue, saying it out aloud, as she did so, ‘
Madame Bonnet?
'