Staying Alive Read online

  Staying Alive

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  18

  Copyright

  Staying Alive

  Alexander Fullerton

  For Priscilla – with love and appreciation of what a lot she’s put up with – come to think of it, almost Rosie-fashion, in fifty years and books. Could be that’s where Rosie sprang from?

  1

  I said, facing her across a marble-topped table in the Brasserie des Aviateurs, ‘Still can’t believe it — that I’m sitting here with you. With Rosie – the Rosie…’

  Who allegedly had vanished in Australia quite some while ago, and about whose exploits in German-occupied France during World War II I’d written several novels: which she’d read, she’d told me, and which must more or less have passed muster with her, or she’d hardly have invited me to meet her here in Toulouse to hear from her the story I had not written, that of her first mission, which I’d had no way of researching. I’d kicked off with what had been her second outing, when she’d been put ashore in Brittany from a motor-gunboat, on a moonless night in 1943. But her first had been in November of ’42, not long after her twenty-fourth birthday; on that occasion, by the light of a near-full moon, she’d parachuted into open countryside somewhere near Cahors and made her way down to Toulouse, where she was to join the local SOE network (or réseau) as its radio operator and courier.

  SOE standing for Special Operations Executive. Exceptionally courageous men and women who’d had the nerve for that kind of thing: as well as certain specialist skills and of course fluent French.

  Now, in October of 2002, Rosie had to be eighty-four. Although if one had been guessing one might have said twenty years younger than that. Mid-grey hair with what looked like natural waves in it, lovely eyes, and skin a much younger woman wouldn’t have been ashamed of; trim figure elegant in silvery trousers and a grey silk shirt with a ruby brooch at the throat, studs in her ears that matched it. While a ring on the appropriate finger of her hand resting on the marble prompted me to ask her — needing to know, and not necessarily anticipating a happy answer, her husband had after all been six or seven years older than her – I tried gently, ‘Ben not with you? Left him in Australia, or—’

  ‘Ben’s long dead.’ Small smile, shake of the head, I suppose at my own reaction. Not shock, I’d at least half expected it, but sadness, for her. Sadness anyway: if I’d got Ben Quarry even half right in the novels he’d been a great guy, really tremendous, and the pair of them had been deeply, desperately in love. She was saying, ‘Long, long time ago. More than forty years. So in that sense I’m inured to it, although in quite another I’m very definitely nothing like inured and never will be. The bloody awful truth is he was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered…’

  Meeting her calm but sensitive brown gaze. My own I dare say showing some degree of shock.

  ‘Forty years ago – about 1960, would have been – but where, how, who—’

  ‘In Aussie, is where. Queensland. Nineteen fifty-eight. And it was me they were after. Who — well no, that’s something else.’

  Blinking at her. Repeating what she’d said — ‘You they were after… Whoever they may have been. Sounds like it’s two stories you’ll be giving me?’

  ‘All one, really – 1942, resurfacing 1957.’ A glance beyond me: ‘Here come our martinis.’

  * * *

  She’d written to me three or four weeks earlier, in care of my publishers and writing from an address in Paris – smart address, 16th arrondissement – introducing herself as

  the original of the person you’ve called Rosie in several novels that I’ve read, having been introduced to them by a friend who’d happened to pick one up and found herself astonished by what struck her as similarities to me and to ‘Ben’ and as much as she knew of our earlier lives. And in the last of those books, the Paris one, I must admit that the woman you called ‘Marilyn Stuart’ is an easily recognizable portrait of her as she was, which makes the source of all four stories obvious enough. ‘Marilyn’ was beyond doubt my SOE Conducting Officer, equally plainly she must have given you the facts out of which you built your fiction. I wonder how you came across her. But in that Paris book, where she tells you in the final pages that my darling and I had done a disappearing act into the Outback — basing this on her allegedly not having had Christmas cards from me over a period of a few years — well, to put it plainly I found myself admiring her bloody nerve — I’d gone on sending cards maybe two or three years after hers stopped coming!

  That’s going off the track a bit, but it was when I was reading the end of the Paris story that I had the idea of getting in touch with you, or trying to. I haven’t done so until now because — well, laziness is one factor, but another is doubting whether you’d want yet more ‘Rosie’ history, whether it wasn’t only vanity making me think you might be interested. I admit I’ve enjoyed reading about myself — or your version of myself, at times a somewhat glorified version of me as I see me. How’s that for syntax? I should in fairness add that all the stories as you tell them come close enough to the truth, despite the odd embellishment or wild fancy here and there, what I suppose might be called novelist’s licence; and of course one might have expected as much, since ‘Marilyn’ was supplying you with the details. She really did get to know it all, and obviously her memory was unimpaired at any rate at that stage! It’s equally a fact that she wouldn’t have known anything much about my first trip, because although she saw me off from the airfield at Tempsford, she was then despatched on some SOE business which kept her out of London — one assumes, in France — until quite some while after I got back. In-house gossip had it that she’d nagged them into giving her a trial in the field, and they eventually pulled her out of it on account of her dangerously English accent. I know she’d had a theory that she’d get away with it by claiming to be Belgian: I guess that in practice this didn’t work out, and as she didn’t actually come to grief it would have been the Organiser of her réseau who had her shipped home. And the file on my Toulouse adventures wouldn’t have come her way at all; whereas after each of the other excursions, as my Conducting Officer she sat in on the routinely lengthy and detailed debriefings, she’d have had no business in that one.

  However — circumstances have now arisen which I think justify my throwing caution to the winds and offering to bend your ear. There’s to be a three-day reunion, on the face of it BCRA but with SOE section ‘F’ and ‘RF’ also invited — although it seems unlikely there’ll be many other takers, from our side – and it’s to be in Toulouse, of all places, where on that first jaunt I worked as pianist/courier with the Countryman réseau. The last BCRA/SOE get-together was in Paris ten years ago, and what’s special about this one, apart from its location, is that it’s almost certain to be the last, as survivors who are both mobile and in their right minds are getting to be rather thin on the ground. The organisers are the French Federation Nationale Libre Résistance, the invitation came to me through the Special Forces Club in London — and I’ve accepted.

  A break here for some interpretations, since not all readers of this will have read the earlier Rosie books, and even those who have may not remember a lot of detail.

  BCRA, standing for Bureau Central de Renseignments et d’Action, was General de Gaulle’s London-based equivalent of SOE, employing only Frenc
hmen — Gaullists, naturally. He — characteristically — resented SOE’s existence, taking the view that any secret army in France should belong to him. This view was in fact held and implemented more stringently at Free French command levels than in the field, where agents whose lives were at constant risk tended to help each other out when necessary. And BCRA had to rely on SOE in any case for such essentials as transport and radio communications, which in itself must have irritated Monsieur le Général no end. But that’s BCRA. ‘F’ Section SOE was simply the department of SOE that dealt with France, British through and through although employing some French agents, while Section ‘RF’ was still part of SOE but had its own management and employed only French agents, French nationals who for instance weren’t keen on working for de Gaulle. And a ‘pianist’ – Rosie mentioned having served as such – was SOE/Resistance slang for a radio operator. This had been her occupation even before ‘F’ Section took her on as a field agent. Part of the set-up was a signals establishment in a large country house near Sevenoaks in Kent; signals received from agents in the field were received there and rushed up to Baker Street (or in ‘RF’s case, to Dorset Square) by despatch riders on motorcycles. And it was at this Sevenoaks establishment that Rosie worked. She and her first husband, Squadron Leader Johnny Ewing, had a flat nearby, and he was based at RAF Biggin Hill, until his Spitfire with him inside it was shot down in flames, within a day or two of which she’d got herself on to the agents’ training course. Actually her first application was turned down, the interviewer deciding that as a brand-new widow she had to be suicidally inclined, whereas the truth was that by this time she hadn’t even liked her husband, for various reasons including the fact he’d frequently cheated on her. And being already a skilled radio operator as well as speaking fluent French – her father had been French — she was an ideal recruit; had only needed to be taught to parachute, live rough in the open, shoot with all types of handgun, fight with knives, handle explosives, blow safes, resist interrogation, and so on.

  Back to her letter, though.

  The reunion’s scheduled for October 4th, 5th, and 6th, Friday to Sunday, and the venue is the Hôtel l’Ambassade on Boulevard d’Arcole. I’ve been offered a bed-and-breakfast reservation, which I’m now accepting, but although it’s a biggish place I’m told it’s going to be very full, with our bunch of superannuated thugs occupying a whole floor, apparently. So I’d suggest that if you did feel inclined to come, and could make those dates, you might book yourself – or yourselves – into some other hotel in that vicinity or at any rate not too far away. Could be wet in October, couldn’t it. Although I know you spent your war in submarines, and a submariner shouldn’t mind getting wet? Sorry. One thing your stuff about me does not reveal is that I have a rather childish sense of humour. Bring an umbrella, anyway. I’d say the reunion itself will consist of speeches and discussions between sessions of food and booze; I’d introduce you to the committee as the writer you are, with special interest in SOE and the Resistance generally, and I’m sure they’d be only too pleased to let you sit in on whichever events may appeal to you. Much of it’s likely to be fairly boring, I dare say – and a lot of it will be simply old friends meeting again and swapping memories, so forth. In fact a lot of the people who attended last time, ten years ago, were only relatives of former agents. Odd, but there it is. Spreads the cost of such junkets, I suppose. Anyway, the great thing would be for you and I to get together in peace and quiet in our own free time – don’t you agree? Suppose we were to get there the day before it starts – Thursday the 3rd, spend that evening together and then play it by ear – if you’re on, that is?

  * * *

  By the time I’d read her letter I had no doubt that this truly was Rosie, the one and only, and I felt real excitement at the prospect of just meeting her, let alone getting the story of that 1942 deployment straight from her own mouth and memory. All I remembered Marilyn Stuart telling me about it – all she herself would have known, according to Rosie – was that the Toulouse réseau was penetrated by the Gestapo, and Rosie escaped over the Pyrenees ‘by the skin of her back teeth’. In Into the Fire I’d written that this happened about seven months after Rosie had joined the réseau; whether this had been misinformation from Marilyn or simply my own wild guess, the truth is that Rosie had been there only a few weeks before everything went up in smoke. I’d guess it would have been simply Marilyn’s assumption: if she’d been away that length of time, and Rosie might have been on what one might have called survivor’s leave, returned to Baker Street only a week or two ahead of her. Something like that. Anyway, I’d be hearing all about it now, and was thrilled at the prospect. As I say, even just to meet and speak with Rosie Quarry… So I telephoned, and the ball was rolling – to the extent that I’d flown into Toulouse around noon on this Thursday 3rd October 2002, transferred by taxi to the Hôtel Mermoz on Rue Matabiau, called Rosie at her conference hotel, l’Ambassade, at five-thirty, met her there at six and settled down with her in the Brasserie des Aviateurs, which was situated at the hotel entrance, all plate glass and marble.

  2

  Rosie admitted, ‘It was scary, all right. I suppose setting out on trips always was, but that first time – oh, crikey… And the parachuting itself- the prospect of it, mostly, the waiting around and thinking about it. When the moment came it all happened so fast you barely knew it had – you were on the ground suddenly, maybe a few bruises here and there but mainly thanking God you hadn’t broken a leg or your neck, whatever. But I’ll tell you – our para training was at Ringwood, near Manchester, and the first thing that happened when we got there was they took us out to the airfield for a demonstration to show us how easy and safe it was, some old aircraft flying over dropping dummies – sandbags – and believe it or not half the chutes didn’t open. I mean literally half: sandbags just hurtling down and bursting. And this was to give us confidence.’

  ‘And when you did it?’

  ‘Oddly enough, there were no casualties, in training. Were some in action. Oh, there had been one earlier that summer, a Section “RF” pianist – male. I was only the second female to be sent in, did you know that?’

  I’d asked her about her departure from Tempsford that first trip, how nerve-racking it must have been. As in fact I knew already, there was an SOE hut on the airfield, where her Conducting Officer, my latter-day friend Marilyn Stuart, had put her through what she, Marilyn, had referred to as ‘the last rites’. Checking on clothing and contents of pockets, ensuring there were no give-aways of British origin – even laundry-marks for instance – that every item had originated in France, and that her papers – identity documents, authorities to travel, ration cards and so forth – matched her cover story. They’d have been checked and treble-checked before, of course – and forged by a team of geniuses or ex-criminals in a villa on the Kingston bypass in Surrey; Rosie’s cover on this outing being that she was Suzette Treniard, born in Paris in September 1918 and now widowed, her husband Paul, a young lieutenant de vaisseau, having been killed in the British attack on the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir on 3rd July 1940. He’d been serving in the battleship Bretagne, which had capsized; she’d had a letter about it from a friend of his, Arnaud Dupré, who’d been in the battleship Provence, which although damaged had managed to get itself to Toulon. She’d had this letter in her bag, crumpled, even tear-smudged, along with other items including a snapshot of Paul in a swimsuit at a picnic on a beach near Le Palais on Belle Ile where they’d spent their honeymoon just before the war; background features were easily identifiable, by anyone wanting to check on it. She also had a bitter hatred of the British, especially of their Navy. SOE interrogators had rehearsed her in all this, and Marilyn had her run over it again in the Tempsford hut; it was essential of course to have it all off absolutely pat, believe in it, be Suzette Treniard, not for instance to have to think twice when asked what were her late husband’s parents’ names or where they lived – they came from Nantes – not all that far fro
m Belle Ile – or in the case of her own parents the de Gavres (with whom she didn’t get on well), St Briac-sur-Mer, near Dinard and St Malo.

  She’d had her radio transceiver with her, of course, a B Mark II supposedly boosted for long-distance transmissions – as would be essential from the Languedoc – in a suitcase sixty centimetres long and weighing about fifteen kilos, with its battery and twenty metres of thin, dark-coloured aerial wire. Rosie’s individual, easily-breakable crystals were packaged separately, inside her clothes. The set’s heaviest item was the battery; and a priority she’d had in mind when starting out was to have a couple of spare sets and several batteries either dropped or shipped in to her, for the purpose of setting up alternative transmission sites. She’d been assured that this would be treated as urgent. Pianists had been having a rough time of it lately: there was a nasty rumour that their operational life in the field had been averaging out at only about six weeks.

  Wouldn’t apply to her, of course. She’d simply see to it that it didn’t – she thought – and one basic precaution was never to transmit from the same place twice. Use of batteries, as distinct from plugging in to the mains, allowed one to tap out one’s messages from open countryside – or from ruins, farm buildings, church towers and the like.

  Marilyn had asked her, ‘Got your one-time pads?’

  For cyphering and decyphering purposes. She’d nodded, touched the small of her back. ‘Along with the cash.’

  Half a million francs: to be handed over to her boss, the réseau’s Organiser, as soon as she established contact with him.

  She told me – looking across the now crowded brasserie at three elderly men who’d just come in and were goofing around for an unoccupied table, Rosie frowning slightly as if unsure whether or not she might know or have known one of them – and then giving up, starting again… ‘Felt as if one had everything except the wash-house mangle. Really stuffed with bits and pieces. Including a battered cardboard suitcase with one’s personal gear in it. That was hooked on externally, same as the transceiver. I was wearing an overcoat as well as the jumpsuit, mark you. Skirt, blouse, coat, and a scarf covering my hair. Which, as I think you mention here and there in the books, used to be brown with coppery lights in it.’ She’d smiled; was a little vain, I realised for the first time. And had a right to be, must have been startlingly attractive, at that time. In fact still was attractive. Shaking her head: ‘Imagine it. Jumpsuit trousers pulled up over the skirts of the topcoat, parachute harness over that — the two cases slung on it, and my handbag on a cord round my neck, hanging inside the suit. Could barely stagger, and looked like God knows what, and when one landed – intact, please God – and hid or ideally buried the parachute, harness and jumpsuit, one had to reorganise the rest so as to look as near-normal as possible. Catch a train for instance without attracting any particular attention, especially that of gendarmes. Oh, I say gendarmes, as distinct from more sinister elements such as Gestapo, because this was the non-occupied zone I’d be landing in. Pétain’s police and snoopers – the DST, Vichy security police, Direction de Surveillance du Territoire, as well as the gendarmerie – well, those had comprised the main opposition, up to this time there’d been no Boche soldiery or overt Gestapo presence; but now, at this precise moment they were flooding in. In response to Operation Torch, you see, our invasion of northwest Africa. On 8th November, Torch was launched, Boches began their move on the 11th, and I was flying in on the night of the 12th/13th. From that point of view you might say I couldn’t have timed it worse.’ A shrug and a movement of the head that was entirely French. ‘On the other hand, looking on the brighter side, in the Western Desert our Eighth Army had smashed through the Africa Korps at El Alamein, and Rommel and his boys had their tails between their legs. It was a relief to know something somewhere was looking good at last. Don’t you want to make notes at all?’