Chapter 15
I was not a na?ve young girl. I had been working for Section D for more than a decade.
I’d lived a bit. But I was unsettled by what Parrish had done; he’d made me feel helpless.
And he’d made me question everything I’d done up until the point he’d forced his hand up my skirt.
Had I made him think I wanted that? I knew I hadn’t, but it was still a horrible feeling.
Plus I actually felt a bit silly, because I’d assumed what he was doing was one thing, only to discover it was something else. Something so banal.
I was annoyed with him. And annoyed with myself.
To my delight, I found Hughes in the office with Digby. Valentine wasn’t there.
‘Cassandra,’ said Digby. ‘I hear you’ve had a marvellous idea.’
‘Well,’ I said modestly. ‘It’s a bit early to call it marvellous, but with any luck it should help.’
‘Valentine wants you on the team.’
‘I don’t have to wait three days, do I?’
Digby shook his head. ‘I’m happy to let you do your thing. I’ll clear it with London.’
I imagined myself flinging my arms around him and squeezing him tightly. But instead, I just nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Welcome back, Cassandra. They’re lucky to have you.’
Digby gave me a little mock salute and headed out of the office.
‘Brilliant stuff,’ said Hughes. ‘Now we can get cracking.’
He opened a folder on his desk. ‘I’ve written a timeline of how we’re going to put this into action and I’ve colour-coded tasks according to who should take them on, and according to priority. Why are you staring at me like that?’
I opened my bag and pulled out my own folder.
‘Because I’ve done the same thing,’ I said. ‘Hughes, I think we’re kindred spirits.’
‘Call me Henry for heaven’s sake,’ he said.
‘Cassie.’
I pulled my chair over to his and we studied our lists which were remarkably similar.
‘I can get in touch with Peacock Books and make the orders,’ I said. ‘I can speak to my friend Katie to find out who’s in charge and who we need to make arrangements with.’
Henry ticked that off his list.
‘I’ll source the stamps,’ he said.
‘Will we be stamping the books?’ I frowned, thinking stamping books could be just as dull as filing.
But luckily Henry shook his head. ‘There’s no point in sending the books here, just for us to send them back to Britain. They’ll get the girls at the War Office to do that. They’ll probably pull a new team together.’
‘Excellent.’
‘But we will need to come up with the names and addresses,’ Henry said. ‘A sort of code, but not quite.’
I nodded. ‘A disguise,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
There was a short beat of silence.
‘Do we have the addresses of the safe houses?’
‘No.’
‘Ah.’
‘But Valentine’s getting them. He’s got contacts all over France.’
‘I heard you say he’s been involved in setting up these escape routes.’
Henry’s eyes widened behind his specs.
‘Not just involved,’ he said. ‘They only exist because of Val. He made the contacts. He’s been all over occupied France and Belgium setting things up. He’s managed to get communications with the POW camps. He’s done the whole thing. They call the route through France the Valentine Line.’
‘Good lord,’ I said. ‘There was I thinking he was just driving that ridiculous car all over Lisbon and having lunch with pretty girls.’
‘That’s what he wants you to think,’ said Henry with a knowing smile. ‘But if I know Val …’
‘You call him Val now, do you?’
Henry flushed. ‘He said it was all right to call him that.’
I nudged him. ‘Just teasing,’ I said. ‘Do you think there’s more to him than the sports car and the lunches?’
‘There’s no doubt.’
I was intrigued, but as I was about to ask more questions, Valentine arrived. He strolled into the office, looking delighted to see me, which pleased me more than it should have.
‘Walker,’ he said. ‘Digby gave you the nod, then.’
‘Watkins. Yes, I’m all official.’
‘Excellent.’
He put his briefcase down on the other desk, sat himself down, and looked at Henry and me.
‘Where are we?’
Henry and I glanced at each other and then held up our lists. Valentine groaned. ‘I never thought there could be two of you.’
I was briefly outraged, then I noticed his smile.
‘This is going to make my life much easier,’ he added, with a chuckle. He leaned towards me as though he was sharing a secret.
‘I’m a lot more haphazard than Hughes,’ he said. ‘But it seems to work.’
Now I knew this man had an entire escape route through occupied France named after him, I very much doubted he was ‘haphazard’ but I nodded anyway.
‘Henry’s in charge of the stamps,’ I said. ‘I’m going to contact Peacock to talk about ordering the books. And also, my friend Bea runs the Tram Stop Bookshop in town – do you know it?’
‘I do,’ Valentine said, surprising me. ‘They sell a good range of newspapers.’
‘Bea was a journalist. During the last war.’
‘Was she?’ He sounded impressed. ‘That explains it.’
‘Anyway, when I told her about the Forces Book Club editions a while ago – just in conversation – she said she was interested so she was going to order a couple. She loves the Peacock books with the different colours.’
‘Oh, me too,’ said Valentine, surprising me all over again. It was entirely possible that I’d misjudged this man. ‘I think it’s an excellent example of the simplest ideas being the best.’
‘It really is,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I thought perhaps I could ask if they’ve arrived so we could see them.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Henry. ‘It’s nice to have something physical to focus the mind.’
I looked at Valentine. ‘So now we just need the most important bit,’ I said. ‘We need the addresses of the safe houses.’
He stood up. ‘Let me give you an idea of how it works. In theory.’
I sat back in my chair, eager to know more.
‘Imagine an airman crash-lands in France,’ said Valentine. ‘He could be alone, or with others. His first job is to find somewhere to hide.’
He walked to the front of the room, and I looked at him. Once I’d thought him to be just a pretty face. A spoiled, good-looking chap with good contacts, who’d avoided being called up by landing himself a desk job. Now, thanks to Henry, I saw him differently.
‘That’s where we’d expect the escape-mindedness training to kick in,’ Valentine went on. ‘They’re taught to stake out isolated villages, farmhouses, that sort of thing.’
‘What are they looking for?’
Valentine gave me a wink. ‘Women,’ he said, making me immediately regret all the nice things I’d been thinking about him.
‘I hardly think …’ I began, but he interrupted me.
‘We teach them to look for farms without men. Where the men are away fighting. Women are a vital part of the Resistance and often more willing to take risks without their men present. And they’re less likely to attract attention. The Resistance often use women to accompany men to safe houses.’
‘That makes sense,’ I murmured, making a note on my pad, but really trying to cover up my embarrassment at falling for Valentine’s attempt to annoy me. He was infuriating.
‘Every safe house only knows the next link in the chain – the next stop on the route,’ Valentine went on. ‘They do not know our names, nor do they know MI9 exists. There is no – and this is non-negotiable – no writing down of names or addresses.’
‘Except in our books,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Valentine went back to his desk, opened his briefcase and took out some papers. ‘And here.’
I stared at him. ‘Is that a list of safe houses?’
He looked quite pleased with himself.
‘All from memory. From Calais to the Pyrenees. I wrote it this morning – that’s why I was late. And once we’ve come up with codes …’
‘Disguises,’ I said. ‘We said they’re more disguises than codes.’
‘Disguises?’ Valentine said with a chuckle. ‘Yes, I like that. Once we’ve got those, I’ll burn these papers. I’d rather they didn’t leave this room, so if we can get all that done today, I’d feel happier.’
I clapped my hands together once. ‘Then let’s get on.’
‘Most of these places are extremely rural,’ said Valentine. ‘Where did you grow up, Wilson?’
‘Watkins,’ I said. ‘Tetbury. It’s in Gloucestershire.’
‘Then I assume you had an address – house number? Name?’
‘Just the vicarage,’ I said. ‘And then, yes, a number and a street.’
Valentine nodded. ‘These French villages are so tiny there’s none of that. Which actually makes it a bit easier for us. We can include as many names as we can in each address, and pass on as much information.’
‘All right,’ I said, turning to a fresh page in my notebook. ‘Give us the first couple and we’ll see what we can come up with.’
‘Going north to south,’ Valentine began. ‘We have Beaulieu.’
‘There’s a town with that name near Southampton,’ I said.
‘Brilliant,’ said Henry. ‘We can use that. What’s next, Val?’
‘Saint-Pierre.’
‘Saint Peter.’
‘Thanks for the translation,’ I said sarcastically, though I was teasing because actually this was rather fun. ‘So we could say St Peter’s Road, or something?’
‘What’s next?’ Henry asked again.
‘Colembert,’ said Valentine, screwing up his nose. ‘That’s not as easy to translate.’
‘No,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But could we write it phonetically? My parents have a friend named Colm. Irish, obviously. Could we make it Colm O’Bert Books or something? I know it’s not exact but hopefully it’s close enough.’
Valentine’s eyes gleamed. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at me with his piece of paper, ‘are an excellent addition to the team.’
I tucked my hair behind my ears and tried to pretend I didn’t care about his praise.
‘So, Colm O’Bert Books, 99 St Peter’s Road, Beaulieu.’
‘Hampshire,’ said Henry, who was looking at a map of Britain that he’d spread out on his desk.
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Should we do north to south in numerical order of the series, too? So number one is the most northerly village, and number twelve the farthest south?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘This is excellent.’
‘We need to make sure the men know what all this means,’ I said. ‘Tell them the addresses will be stamped in the books, that they might need to translate them or think phonetically. It would be good if they can swap books among themselves, too.’
‘Perhaps we can get them distributed according to where they’re going?’ said Valentine. ‘If they’re going to mid-France then they should take books five or six in the series.’
‘That works,’ said Henry, writing quickly.
‘Right, so book number one is done,’ said Valentine. ‘Did you write that down, Hughes?’
‘It’s all here.’ Henry tapped his notepad with the end of his pen.
‘Do we have a map of France?’ I asked. ‘Can we stick it up on the wall?’
‘There’s one here somewhere,’ said Henry.
There were a few minutes while everyone got up and hunted for the map, then Valentine stuck it up on the wall, while Henry found another of Iberia, and the Pyrenees and put that up, too, along with the one of Britain.
‘If this works, we can expand into Belgium,’ said Valentine, looking at the maps. ‘But let’s get France up and running first, shall we?’
I stood back and looked at northern France on the map. ‘Book two, then,’ I said. ‘What’s the next address?’
It took us hours but eventually we had twelve fictional addresses, each containing the names of two or three – and in one case, four – villages where there were safe houses.
‘I think we’re done,’ Henry said, looking satisfied.
‘Sure?’ said Valentine.
‘I believe so,’ I said, nodding.
Valentine took his list of the safe houses over to the windowsill, where there was an ashtray. He took out a lighter and lit the corner of the pages, watching them frazzle until he dropped them into the ashtray and they collapsed into embers.
‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Well done, everyone.’
‘I can’t believe we did all that in one day,’ I said.
‘There’s still a lot to do,’ warned Valentine. ‘We need to speak to London about the stamps, and get on to Peacock Books about supplies – we’ll need a lot, but we’ll need to work out how many exactly …’
‘I can do that,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve got the figures.’
I saw him subtly tick off another item on his list and smiled to myself. We seemed to make a good team, the three of us. A little odd, perhaps, and definitely mismatched, but we’d raced through those addresses.
‘And most of all we could really do with coming up with another way to get the books to as many servicemen as we can,’ said Valentine. ‘There are so many out there already.’
‘I’ll have a think overnight,’ I said.
‘What are you up to now?’ Valentine asked. ‘Fancy a drink to celebrate our success?’
‘I can’t,’ I said, genuinely regretful. ‘I’ve got a thing to do. Work stuff.’
‘Are you moonlighting with another department?’ joked Valentine. ‘Section E?’
‘Is there a Section E?’ Henry asked. ‘Actually, are there Sections A to C?’
I laughed, glad Henry had stopped Valentine asking questions and I wouldn’t have to lie about doing the visas. ‘I assume so, but not here.’ I picked up my bag and put my notebook inside. ‘I’ll see you all tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Valentine. ‘And Walton?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Watkins.’
‘You did a good job today.’
I didn’t reply but there was definitely a spring in my step as I headed down the corridor towards clerical.