Chapter 34 Lilias
Lilias
The small group of men and women stood on the rain-lashed beach and stared up at the three metal ladders attached to the cliff face.
Soon they would be asked to scale them, and Lilias could already sense the blind terror emanating from the young woman at her side, even before she muttered, “I bloody hate heights,” out of the corner of her mouth.
Lilias hadn’t intended to make any friends here, but Babs, a fluent French speaker like herself, had snuck under her skin when she’d been at her most vulnerable, refusing to take no for an answer.
“Then it’s a good thing we’re doing this so you can deal with your fear, isn’t it?” Lilias whispered. “Who knows what we’ll have to face in France.”
“Yes,” Babs quipped right back. “There might be some scary Meccano models waiting to be made up over there.”
Lilias knew Babs was referring to their first challenge, which had taken place on the very first morning after their arrival at the commandeered manor house in the Scottish Highlands.
Lilias and the rest of the Special Operations Executive trainees had been ushered into a room and told to take a seat at small tables, whereupon they had each been issued with an instruction sheet, a box of Meccano, and orders to make three different models as quickly as possible.
Meccano.
Dipping into the box to pull out the metal construction pieces, Lilias had been transported straight back to the warm fug of her kitchen at Marsh House. She and David, making Meccano models on Christmas morning.
“I’ve always wanted some Meccano, Auntie Lilias! How did you know?”
Oh, David.
Torn by grief, Lilias had been unable to prevent a tear from sliding down her cheek, and although the moment of weakness lasted only a matter of seconds, Babs, who was seated at a table to her right, had spotted it.
As, no doubt, had the commanding officer.
Pressing on to successfully make the three models, Lilias had fully expected to be sent straight home at the end of the task—for what use was an overemotional agent in enemy-occupied territory?
But she hadn’t been sent home. And even though she had never revealed why the task was so upsetting to her, she and Babs had been friends from that moment on.
Now Lilias summoned up the smile she knew Babs expected to receive, though, in truth, she had never felt less like smiling. It was still so hard to believe David was dead, and recent events had not allowed her to properly grieve for him, so it was a shock each time she remembered he was gone.
If only Nadine had let him stay in Norfolk instead of returning him to London. If only he’d been in an air-raid shelter. If only Harry had been around to keep him safe.
But thinking of if onlys would change nothing.
It wouldn’t bring David back. And it wouldn’t make Nadine and her baby suddenly appear in the streets she had combed for weeks.
And so, worn down by despair and a sense of helplessness, Lilias had accepted Bill Cartwright’s invitation to try out for the Special Operations Executive.
However, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that she would be accepted into the service, even despite Bill Cartwright’s recommendation.
The training in the Scottish Highlands was part training course, part selection test. Lilias and the rest of the potential recruits were under observation twenty-four hours a day, their suitability for the role under constant scrutiny.
It was only right, since, once in France, they would be working on major sabotage projects with the French Resistance.
If they made a mistake, it wouldn’t only be their own lives at risk, but those of their colleagues and contacts as well.
At first, Lilias had found the physical aspects of their training hard going.
After weeks of walking the streets of London searching for Nadine and her baby, she had been unfit, both mentally and physically.
But now all the obstacle courses and treks had toughened her up.
Her mind, too, had benefitted from the daily challenges, with the result that the prospect of climbing the metal ladders up the cliff face wasn’t quite as onerous as it once would have been.
Just so long as her feet didn’t slip on the wet rungs to send her crashing down onto the rocks below, she ought to be fine.
So far, Lilias had succeeded at almost everything the training course had thrown at her.
She hadn’t done well at learning Morse code, the pattern of dots and dashes used to transmit messages stubbornly refusing to become lodged into her brain.
But, much to her surprise, Lilias had found she was good at moving with stealth across the land, keeping herself hidden during exercises.
And she had always been a good shot, so target practice had come easily.
Even hand-to-hand combat hadn’t proved as difficult as she had expected it to be, requiring, as it did, quick reactions rather than extreme physical strength.
Ruth would have been both amazed and proud of her.
Though, of course, Lilias had been unable to tell her sister anything about her training, or even that she was doing it.
The catalogue of things she had been forced to withhold from Ruth had grown and grown, but Lilias could fully understand the reason for secrecy.
All the trainees had been issued new identities, and Lilias was now Jacquelyn Durand, a dressmaker and the daughter of Thomas and Raquel Durand from Paris.
Lilias had spent many long evenings learning about Jacquelyn; memorising her addresses and the details of her life until she knew them all by heart.
The task went some way to blocking out dark thoughts about Harry and their baby.
But no matter how tired she was, no matter how physical a day she’d endured, the thoughts were always waiting for her at night, after lights out.
With Babs breathing softly in the neighbouring bed in the dark dormitory, Lilias tried to recall her baby’s features, tears sliding down her face to soak the pillow because she could no longer recall exactly what her little girl looked like.
She had only seen her for such a very brief time before Nadine had spirited her away.
Nadine.
How she wanted to be able to hate Nadine for what she’d done.
Lilias had no doubt that Nadine hated her.
For stealing her husband. For becoming pregnant by him.
But Lilias didn’t believe Nadine had taken her baby out of hatred, or any desire for revenge.
She’d taken her out of need. Because her husband had gone missing, and this baby of his, this girl baby that she had always wanted, was the only way she was likely to have a baby of his again.
“Durand,” the commanding officer said to her now. “Your turn.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lilias approached the ladder, taking hold of the cold metal with both hands and hauling herself up onto the first rung.
The second. The third. As she climbed ever higher, gusts of wind buffeted her body and tugged at her hair, seeking to loosen it from its fastenings.
The rain flung itself at her from the side, needling into her eyes and trickling down inside her collar.
A seagull suddenly squawked as she invaded its territory, causing her heart to pound in her chest. But Lilias kept on, taking step after difficult step upwards, her fingers clinging to the metal until she reached the top of the first ladder.
The three ladders had not been fixed to the cliff face in one continuous line.
The second ladder was slightly to the left of the first, with a gap of at least a foot between the top of the first ladder and the bottom of the second.
She would need to find a foothold on the cliff before she could pull herself up, and it was raining very hard now, making it difficult to see.
Very carefully taking one hand from the ladder to push her hair out of her eyes, Lilias moved her left foot sideways, off the ladder, searching for a secure foothold.
The movement dislodged a large stone, and she paused, somehow managing to cling on as a particularly strong gust of wind battered into her from the side, and she listened to the stone bounce down the cliff to the rocks below.
Why did it matter so much to her that she succeed in this task?
In any of the tasks? After all that had happened, all that she’d lost, why did she still have this stubborn instinct for survival?
It would be so easy just to let go of the ladder.
To allow herself to go tumbling down the cliff face like the stone.
And yet she could not do it. Her parents had taught her to be strong. Geoffrey hadn’t given his life for his country only for her to turn her back on his sacrifice.
She could do this. She could. Determinedly, Lilias thought of all that she had ever loved during her lifetime.
Not just the people, but Compass, her beloved dog.
Marsh House. The purple haze of the sea lavender in bloom.
Then, she put her weight down on her left foot and reached up to hold the second ladder, grunting with effort as she hauled herself up until she could shift her knee onto the bottom rung.
Another pull, and she was able to move her foot across from the cliff face.
To stand up, her arm sockets burning with the effort.
A faint cheer reached her from the huddled group on the beach below, and it spurred her on. Up, up. Even when the cliff face bulged out so that it almost felt like she was climbing leaning back, defying gravity.
Another tricky ladder transfer. Blisters on her fingers from holding the metal so tightly. Her legs feeling heavier after each painful step upwards. And then suddenly the wind was whistling across open land, and she was at the top, her fingers grasping the heather.