Single to Paris Read online

  Single to Paris

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Postscript

  Factual Note

  Copyright

  Single to Paris

  Alexander Fullerton

  Chapter 1

  Head down, pedalling, pumping hard, a lot of the time getting along faster than the nose-to-tail mass of Wehrmacht trucks, transports and cars pounding towards the Seine. Maybe they’d get over it, maybe not – depending on bridges, whether any were still standing. She’d heard bombing, and aircraft had passed over high; the RAF and the USAF had the skies to themselves, apparently, whatever was left of the Luftwaffe wasn’t getting a look in anywhere. Rosie was keeping her head down as much as anything so as not to meet the eyes of the same truckloads of German soldiery alternately passing her or being passed by her every few minutes. This was a defeated rabble, even though some of them didn’t seem to know it. An astonishing amount of the heavy stuff had been abandoned on the grass verges for lack of fuel, vehicles’ former occupants in files and straggling groups, some despondently trying to hitch lifts but mostly resigned to the futility of that – plodding northward, following the greenish khaki flow and not now singing bloody Deutschland Uber Alles. Although a lot of the diehards still apparently thought they’d win – or had been told to think so: that they’d make a stand and be heavily reinforced between the Seine and the Rhine, hold on there while Hitler’s indiscriminately murderous ‘secret weapons’ turned the tide back for them. They did look beaten, though. Tended to perk up when their eyes fastened on her – if she happened to be looking up at that moment: French girl, pretty one at that, on her own and pedalling their way, apparently escaping just as they were. It was what she’d told the Feldgendarmes, Boche military police, who’d stopped her a few miles back when she’d been finding her way through the outskirts of Evreux and demanded to know where she’d come from and was going; she’d panted, ‘Escaping, is what!’

  Out of breath, leaning on her bike, fumbling one-handed for her papers – good papers, for a change, ones they wouldn’t fault, at any rate not quickly or easily; it was almost a let-down when after she’d got them out that the bastard didn’t want to see them. He’d asked her, ‘Escaping to where, exactly?’ Quite friendly, easy-going, as if she might have been one of them – which was a concept to make one retch. She’d told him, ‘Rouen. To find my child and mother-in-law. I have other friends there too.’ Indicative of having no friends anywhere behind her, where the Allied armies were advancing and where she’d been landed from a Wellington at dawn and then been brought on by an advanced detachment – patrol – of the 51st Highland Division, part of Montgomery’s 1st British Corps. They’d dropped her with her bicycle in the Forêt d’Evreux, this very young-looking lieutenant warning her that whatever military personnel or vehicles she might encounter from there on northward were sure to be Hun. Rouen was due north from there, distance roughly 65 kilometres. She had the map clearly enough in mind. The lieutenant had proposed – ostensibly joking, but sounding hopeful too – ‘See you in town, perhaps?’

  ‘In Rouen? When d’you think you’ll get there?’

  ‘Week or so. Depending of course on—’

  ‘I’ll be gone long before that. But – thanks, and good luck.’

  ‘Oh, good luck to you!’ There’d been a growl of support for that, from his sergeant and the other two. He’d added – begun to – ‘In whatever it is you’re—’

  ‘Bye.’ On her way then, with a quick glance back; echoing in her mind that word whatever, and answering it with Saving that kid’s life, please God. Two lives actually, and a lot of others which in the longer term might be dependent on them. She was thinking on and off about that all the way to Louviers, which was about half-way – at least would have been if all had gone as she’d foreseen, if there hadn’t been a traffic snarl-up of immense proportions around a very slow-moving re-direction of traffic to the right. The first sign of it had been a sudden reduction to snail’s pace – for all of them, not for her; she’d been passing them when they were crawling, and pretty soon they weren’t even doing that, had stopped, while she’d penetrated far enough up the congested road to get some idea of what was happening. There was a stink of burning, a choking, eye-watering haze of it; it wasn’t only a matter of traffic being diverted, but also a road-clearance operation, vehicles that must have been hit earlier in the day by Allied aircraft still being dragged away into nearby fields, mainly by half-tracks. Many of the wrecks were still smouldering, while of these others some were being diverted and some weren’t. In any case she decided to make her own diversion – westward, pedalling away into the back streets of Louviers, finding herself among other cyclists and a drift of pedestrians thronging down the streets she’d come by, she guessed heading that way for a close-up view of stalled, retreating Germans. A fine sight for them, after four years of occupation, but maybe not all that wise – such a concentration and no way of escape from the blocked major roads: if the RAF should happen to pay another visit now they’d have an absolute field day of it – as they had been doing all over Normandy for weeks now, so one had been told in London. It was a noisy, happy French crowd though, with no Germans anywhere in these backstreets: there would have been Louviers-based ones, but they must already have evacuated. A blockage of farm-carts was developing on the western edge: people from outlying villages and farms flocking to see the rout. But the traffic they’d been diverting eastward, she realised, visualising the map, wouldn’t have far to go before it hit that southern loop of the Seine – at or near St Pierre-du-Vauvray for instance. There’d be an intact bridge there, she supposed – otherwise they wouldn’t be sending them that way at all. The diversion would also turn them well away to the east of Rouen itself, where with bridges down – again, courtesy of the RAF – there must be a degree of chaos. This process would take some of it away in any case: thinking back to the view she’d seen of it, it could be that they were diverting every second or third truck, or just those of certain weights – trucks for bridges like horses for courses. For her anyway, the best thing from here on would be to stay on minor roads and country lanes; one might get along better and certainly more comfortably – as well as more safely, in the event of further straffing from the air. In any case there was no practical alternative to heading north-west, eventually getting around that southward loop – the one in the vicinity of Orival.

  Lengthening the journey somewhat. And getting into Rouen on the city’s left bank, which would be OK, there was bound to be some way of getting across – for a cyclist or pedestrian, anyway. Navigating meanwhile by the sun, which was currently behind her right shoulder and burning hot through the light summer raincoat she was wearing over a blouse and cotton skirt. She could have done without the coat, but she’d have had to stop and cram it under the string that was holding her scuffed cardboard suitcase on the rear carrier: could have, but it was protective colouring, this garment, shapeless enough and drab-coloured and French-made – at least had a Marseille supplier’s label in it – and about right
for August temperatures when nights cooled and there was a likelihood of showers. It was also useful on account of the large inside pocket that held all her papers in buttoned-up security, so that her handbag, slung with its long strap slantwise from a shoulder, didn’t need to be opened, drawn attention to – containing as it did a Beretta .32 automatic pistol, possession of which would earn one an automatic death sentence. Its spare clips were in the suitcase. Shifting the bag now – change of shoulder, bag on the other side… This lane was straight and tail-hedged with very flat green fields visible through gateways, higher ground beyond, and the only other moving object at this moment was a stack of hay a couple of hundred metres ahead of her and moving steadily north-west. There’d be a tractor the other side of it, of course: a gazo, burning green wood or charcoal in a 20-gallon steel cylinder glowing at its tail-end. Head down again, legs pumping, muscles burning. It was a long time since she’d hiked any great distance – and in the intervening months she’d been knocked about rather a lot. It was a shock to be doing it now in any case – to be back in France at all, when only last Thursday, August 10th – this was Thursday the 17th – just a week ago she’d radio’d her last message from a place called St Valéry-sur-Vanne, reporting completion of that task (including the death of an individual whom she’d gone there to kill) and asking to be picked up the next night from a field code-named Parnassus: which should have been her last job for Special Operations Executive, so that all her thinking from there on could be concentrated on a man called Ben: Australian, lieutenant-commander in Coastal Forces – meaning motor torpedo boats and gunboats – who loved her and whom she loved – well, loved fit to bust, couldn’t wait to be back with and this time stay with. Even though he did at this moment think she was dead: that wasn’t his fault. But consequent to all that, and in contrast to expectations which she’d been living on for quite a while now, she really hadn’t believed the soft-voiced Chris Brierly’s warning: ‘Intention is to turn you round and send you straight back in, Rosie. All right to call you Rosie?’ She hadn’t believed it, hadn’t wanted to believe it; she’d met this Brierly before but only once and very briefly; he’d been an agent but had been pulled out of the field and stayed out, on SOE staff in Baker Street, for some reason – loss of nerve maybe, you wouldn’t blame him if that was it, some stuck it and some didn’t. Telling her this last Sunday/Monday as the Hudson roared up into moonlit sky over the surrounding Forêt d’Othe and set course for Tempsford. ‘Actually all I know – you may be able to guess at what’s behind it, but for me the sum total is it concerns two agents, the chef de réseau and his pianist, from Nancy. You were there with them recently – in Nancy?’

  Organiser – or chef de réseau, meaning head of group – Guillaume Rouquet, and pianist Léonie Garnier. ‘Pianist’ meaning radio operator, which happened also to be Rosie’s own specialist function. Rouquet and Garnier were only their field names of course. She could see them in her mind’s eye: Rouquet – real name Derek something – English, tallish, brown-haired, with a narrow, bony face; and Léonie petite – tiny, really – with dark hair, blue eyes, ivory-pale skin, neat little pianist’s hands. She was a few years younger than Rosie, maybe 22 or 23, and she’d said her mother – French – had a dress business in London.

  Rosie had asked Brierly, ‘They in trouble somehow?’

  ‘I’m afraid they are.’ Long intake of breath, close to her ear in the cabin’s lurching darkness. ‘Fact is, the Gestapo have them.’

  Silence. If you could call the steel-decked interior of a Hudson battering its way through the night sky ‘silent’. In Rosie’s mind, unuttered, a groan of, ‘Oh, God, no…’ and the immediate reactive question, also unspoken, whether they might have been caught through having been involved with her. Aware incidentally that her hand was resting on the worn leather handbag which Léonie had given her only a couple of weeks ago in the flat in Nancy; and a second question pushing through: how could sending her back into France help them? Wordless, gazing at the dim close-up shape of this virtual stranger through the surrounding thumping, howling darkness: accepting that there’d be no point pressing for further information which he didn’t have – and knowing a great deal more than he did about being in Gestapo hands, having been in them herself on more than one occasion.

  In Rouen, as it happened, the first time. First and worst time. A year ago, almost exactly. More recent experiences had been bad enough and lasted longer, but what had happened in Rouen was still the theme of recurring nightmares.

  * * *

  At Elboef – from her mental photography of the map she thought that was the name of it – she was amongst the Gadarene swine again, one stream of the stinking heavy transports lumbering from the right and another infiltrating on a major road from the south-west. Ordinary Boche soldiers were being used as MPs to sort it out, merging the two columns, and it looked as if they had yet another losing battle on their hands. Rosie with her head down, weaving through, actually not scared of being stopped and questioned, having to show papers, a hazard which at some stages in her previous missions had been a source of fairly acute anxiety – definitely frightening, when she’d been conscious of having really rotten papers. Her fear this time was of being stopped and turned back, prevented from getting to Rouen or even just delayed. It was on her own insistence that she was coming this way, and it meant losing at least one day – real destination being Paris; her reasoning had been that going straight there – Paris, where reportedly they were being held… at least, had been a few days ago – might well achieve precisely nothing. If you didn’t know where to start – which she would not have; whereas in Rouen there was an old trail which, touch wood, one should be able to pick up.

  Get through this lot and on to the river-bank, track or pavement or dirt road running along it – if there is one…

  A shout behind her. Feldgendarmerie… She yelled back, ‘Oui, d’accord!’ Flap of the hand – to whatever that one had yelled after her. Noting en passant that in side-roads and open spaces here and there many more trucks and transports had been abandoned. She was bumping and rattling over railway lines: couldn’t be far from the river now. Should have stopped in open country though and had a snack, she told herself – having a loaf of bread, some cheese and a bottle of water in the basket here. She’d taken a few swigs of water but hadn’t mustered the resolution actually to stop. Nerves – the imperative to keep going: knowing what an extra minute – let alone a day – could mean to those two. Aware too of how much time had already been wasted – having called for the pick-up on Thursday night, and Special Duties Squadron not having had an aircraft available in that sector until the Sunday. Her frustration then had had nothing to do with this business, had been solely at the delay in getting home to Ben.

  A glimpse of water ahead, as she turned a corner. Bike jolting over cobbles. Down at the end there, turn left; with luck might find oneself passing the Roches d’Orival and Saint Aubin. Then – what, 15, 16 kilometres? Less than 20, anyway. St Etienne, then into the southern approaches – Rouen’s Rive Gauche. Might stop at Ursule’s – and if she was there and said it was all right, hadn’t filled quite all her rooms with prostitutes… Worth a try anyway. From Ursule – who was a nice enough woman, with friends in the Resistance, happened to have inherited a large house and to make ends meet took her customers where she found them – only insisting they didn’t pursue their profession on her premises – from her one might discover which bridges, if any, were still standing, what were the hours of curfew now, locations of checkpoints and any new Boche regulations or places or areas to avoid. Thank heavens she’d paid Ursule all she’d owed her: might well not have, in the throes of that very sudden, panicky departure a year ago. It might also be as well that she was using the same alias she’d been using then – Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre. She’d opted for this not with any thought of Ursule in mind, but for a more vital reason; although in other ways it had been a difficult decision, mainly in that it would still be the name on her Gestapo
file. One of the names on it, at least, she’d used others since. It had been her preference, anyway, and her briefing officers had had to go along with it. Monday afternoon to Wednesday evening had been all she and they had had, and that sort of detail had had to be settled right at the start so that SOE’s master forgers in their house on the Kingston bypass could get to work on the really excellent papers which she now carried, identifying her as Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre, date of birth 10th September 1916, husband killed in the French army in 1940 leaving her with a daughter – Juliette, now four and a half, whom allegedly she’d left in the care of the child’s paternal grandmother on a farm near St Saven, district of Nantes. Whereas in reality she was Rosie Ewing, née Rosalie de Bosque, born in Nice in 1918 of a French father (deceased) and English mother (extant, in Buckinghamshire) and since February 1941 she’d been the widow of Squadron Leader Johnny Ewing who’d been shot down into the English Channel in that month, only a few days before she’d gone into training as an agent of Special Operations Executive. The passport-sized photo pasted to Jeanne-Marie’s identity documents was undoubtedly of Rosie Ewing, and shown on the documents in black ink over Nazi rubber stamps on the documents were the relevant facts and figures: hair brown, eyes hazel – noisette – height (in centimetres) 5 feet 4½ inches and weight (in kilos) 112 lbs. The child was a complete fiction, she’d never had one.

  Besides the excellence of her papers, another factor in her feeling of comparative security this time was that she was not carrying a radio-transceiver. On each of her deployments before this she’d had one, latterly an ‘A’ Mark III in its specially fitted attaché case, and that had always been a hazard. Essential, until now, because it had been her job, she was a pianist – and her briefing officers in the SOE-run country house this last weekend had assumed she’d take a set with her on this jaunt too, but she’d dug her heels in, pointing out that it was unnecessary since she was to be on her own with a single purpose, little time in which to accomplish it, and effectively beyond anyone else’s help. She’d told them, ‘If I make a mess of it, you’ll have no time to send anyone else. Who would you send, in any case?’