THE SCARLET NIGHTINGALE - Book review

 

The Scarlet Nightingale (published 2018) is another excellent novel from the talented Alan Titchmarsh. His output is varied, to say the least. This outing begins along similar lines to Shute’s Requiem for a Wren – in other words, the female protagonist Rosamund is dead. The post-war Rosamund was a successful novelist and she had left behind a buff folder: ‘souvenirs and accretions of a life that had mostly had its share of romance... but which had also put a young woman in danger. Rosamund might have come from a privileged background, but it was something that she had been quite prepared to sacrifice in the name of love and duty. This is her story’ (p3).

The narrative is mostly in the third person, however interspersed are small insertions from Rosamund’s notes in first person (a good writer’s ploy which brings the character to life at a deeper level).

As ever, Titchmarsh reveals his gift for short telling character descriptions: Dr Armstrong ‘wore a wing collar and his eyebrows were long and upturned, giving him the look of a rather frightening owl’ (p31). Rosamund’s French governess Celine has to break the sad news to her charge: the girl had become an orphan and was to stay with her aunt Venetia in London (in 1938).

Venetia, the sister of Rosamund’s father, had married well and was now Lady Reeves and lived in Eaton Square. When war came, her aunt was loath to hide in the nearby air-raid shelter, preferring the basement in her house. Quite a character: ‘her aunt, in a floral Hartnell creation, half reclined on a sofa so generously furnished with brocade-covered cushions that she seemed in serious danger of suffocation’ (p125). ‘She might give the impression of being unworldly and ethereal, but the razor-sharp mind was clearly in no need of a whetstone’ (p125).

Venetia’s cook, Mrs Heffer, had a helpful brother who did odd jobs: ‘He was not exactly a liveried footman, but he did wear his three-piece Sunday suit and employed a liberal amount of brilliantine to tame his unruly thatch, which, on a bad day resembled an exploded Brillo pad’ (p220).

Rosamund meets and falls in love with Harry Napier who seems to be involved in secret war work. Before long, like many socialites of the period, Rosamund joins the SOE and is dubbed the Scarlet Nightingale; she is landed in France with others to sabotage a factory...

There are details about her training and the actual mission. Naturally, the reader is aware that she will survive, even if captured, because she died at the ripe old age of ninety-three (p1); however, there is still plenty of tension concerning the other operatives involved.

Titchmarsh has a gift for creating sympathetic characters. As Aunt Venetia says, ‘If we do not approach life positively, if we succumb to the naysayers and the defeatists, then we might just as well throw in the towel now, because such negativity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy... I cannot and will not be bowed down by a bunch of thugs who want to rule the world by bully-boy tactics. The only way to beat bullies is to stand up to them, and that – as you have discovered – is often painful and can have tragic consequences’ (p317). [That applies to any period, even today... – Ed]

A bitter-sweet tale, well told.

SOE AGENT - book review

 

The subtitle of the Osprey book SOE Agent is Churchill’s Secret Warriors; text by Terry Crowdy, colour illustrations by Steve Noon. This is number 133 in the Warrior series of Osprey books. There are 62 information-packed pages with many contemporary photographs.

‘Nazi control on the continent was like a virus, intent on infiltrating every level of human existence and perverting it for its own satisfaction’ (p5).  Britain's Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton was convinced a new organisation should be created to infiltrate Europe and the ‘new weapons of war would be agitation, strikes, random acts of terror, propaganda and assassination’ – effectively, ‘no holds barred’ (p5).

As early as September 1938 MI6 set up D Section (Sabotage) and the British General Staff formed a research section GS(R) to investigate the possibilities of guerrilla warfare; in May the following year this became Military Intelligence (Research). September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler invaded Poland.

The book covers the recruitment of SOE agents, their training, and some of their missions, Lysander pickup, coding of messages, and their weapons and types of radio. It is a little treasure-trove for students and writers of that period. Certainly, having recently read Ken Follett’s Jackdaws, I could recognise many salient facts that he used in his narrative.

Related titles in the series are French Resistance Fighter and Resistance Warfare 1940-45; and in the Elite series: Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 1942-45.

JACKDAWS - book review

 

The prolific Ken Follett’s Jackdaws was published in 2001. His output is varied and broad in theme and place and time. Here, he returns to the Second World War and spies – some twenty-three years after his WWII debut novel Eye of the Needle.

The story covers the nine days before D-Day, June 6, 1944. Twenty-eight-year-old Felicity 'Flick' Clairet, an SOE agent is leading a Resistance assault on a French chateau in the village of Sainte-Cecile, the German communications hub for the area. But it goes wrong and she and her French husband barely manage to escape. Some of their team are killed and others are captured.

The German interrogator is Colonel Dieter Franck who, while not enjoying inflicting pain on his victims, is good at it. The Germans are aware that an invasion is about to occur soon and that will entail the rising up of many Resistance cells. He is certain that if he can break the will of his captives, he can learn details about the various groups.

Flick returns to England and is given permission to try again to crack the chateau communications hub. She recruits the Jackdaws, a ‘dirty half-dozen’ – all-female team to infiltrate in place of the regular cleaners. Not all of them will survive...

This is a typical Follett page-turner with characters you soon come to know and care about. Even Franck evokes a measure of sympathy. The interrogators, the invaders, considered the SOE agents as terrorists. Both sides were ruthless. In these sensitive times perhaps some readers will find certain aspects of the violence depicted as distressing; yet this kind of thing – and worse – happened. I’ve read a number of nonfiction and fiction books about the SOE and Follett’s research seems very accurate – and never slows the pace.

If you want an involving fast read, this suspenseful thriller will fit the bill.

Editorial comment:

Blame the editor. On p312 a coded message mentions Friday 1 June. Yet on p315 we’re told that Friday is 2 June. Oops. [Hopefully it has been amended since my 2002 edition].

Saturday Story - 'Codename Gaby'

 

Fresnes prison - Wikipedia commons

 

 

CODENAME GABY

 

Nik Morton

Missed it! Elaine saw the train moving out just as she reached the station. She was only a few seconds too late, but they were going to be the most important seconds of her life. A life she must now end.

            Her mouth was dry, so dry, as her fingers fumbled in the lining of her jacket. A sickening sinking feeling swamped her as she realised the cyanide pill wasn’t there. The fabric had been neatly cut, the pill removed. She felt the blood drain from her face as she grasped that she’d been betrayed. Tears of frustration and exhaustion blinded her. She pulled the Luger from her pocket and raised its snout to her pulsing throat.

Abruptly, her hand was jerked away and the weapon fired harmlessly. A leather-gloved hand clasped her jacket’s padded shoulder. “Fraulein, come with us now. My friends in Paris await you.”

            His face was a blur, as was the forbidding black uniform with the armband’s hated symbol. Black predominated.

Cursing herself for being so weak and slow, she attempted to maintain her balance as the surging sounds in her head became louder, like wind-rush under a parachute. She tried to turn away, but the man’s steely grip tightened. Pain lanced up her arm and the gun clattered to stone at her feet. She cried out something about Let me go with him, please! A distant part of her curled inwardly in disgust, not believing she would beg anything of these people.

He was speaking, but the blood-rushing sounds in her mind blacked out meaning. Her knees buckled. The dam of consciousness was breached and absolving darkness flooded in.

#

Even after all the hours of F Section training and the constant worrying preparation for this moment, the elation Elaine felt when the parachute’s canopy opened was overwhelming. Eyes accustomed to night since their Lysander crossed the coast of Occupied France, she now scanned the cloud-filled sky, the occluded gibbous moon bathing the land in a calming purple hue.

Yes, Claude was over there, to the right, his ’chute billowing. Then she had needed all her concentration to prepare for the landing.

            Exhilaration changed to annoyance with herself as she limped to the edge of the field, through the tall ears of wheat, careful not to break a noticeable trail. She had buried the silk and lines in the middle of the field, using the shovel from her backpack, whose weight threatened to topple her. God knows how Claude was going to manage with the radio suitcase.

            The evening was so still: a mist seemed to be rising, enveloping their activities, covering the fields. Night and fog treatment: she shuddered, brushing her auburn fringe back. – Nacht und Nebel, Ruckkehr Unerwunscht. Their damnable euphemisms! Night and fog, return not required. She wiped tears from her cheeks. Labelled thus, the last of the Prosper network had been taken away to Buchenwald.

            In her mid-twenties, Elaine was familiar with Marseilles and had some trusted childhood friends there, particularly Jean Bousquet who maintained contact between Skepper’s headquarters in Rue Morentie and Steele’s radio post at Mme Goutte’s villa. Though in her sixties, Clotilde Goutte carried coded signals on many dangerous journeys.

Now, in the run-up to D-Day, Elaine, codename Gaby, was tasked with organising many receptions of arms and ammunition in the Vaucluse and Gard.

            A surge of relief filled her as friendly hands clasped hers at the field’s edge. She bravely dismissed the slight sprain in her ankle, and hobbled to the waiting cart. They quietly left as it started to rain, soaking them all.

#

Her head was immersed in foul-smelling water for long periods till she almost choked. She’d already expunged any remnants of food from her stomach. Now, she gagged and gasped for air.

The rubber hoses that beat her neck and bare shoulders made wet slapping sounds, but she was too intent on grabbing her breath to heed the pain.

            “Answer my questions and all this will stop, I promise you!” the seductive voice intoned.

She stilled her tongue. She wasn’t sure if this was the Gestapo HQ in Rue des Saussaies or the SD HQ in Avenue Foch. It didn’t matter. Both harboured interrogation rooms with men who enjoyed their inhuman work.

She mustn’t divulge Paul’s hideout. For all she knew, he might be dead. Elaine considered herself dead already, so nothing they could do to the husk that was her body would change that.

#

“You’ve changed so much!” It was a moving reunion, Clotilde seeing no longer a child but an attractive young woman. Clotilde embraced her and tears ran freely; at least tears were free, and, sadly, there were plenty of them these days. But soon, Elaine told herself, soon all Europe would be free. She – and Clotilde, and all the others who listened to the illegal broadcasts – believed that. The veiled messages sang of hope.

            Businesslike, over the next six weeks, Elaine built up the new Abbey network. Acting as courier, she passed her information to Claude who ran probably the greatest risk of all, transmitting from a nearby barn. To be caught in possession of a transmitter meant certain death. A risk he knew and laughed at.

            Paul Steele and Elaine were encoding a particularly long message in the attic when Clotilde called up from the hallway. “There’s been a raid at Rue Morentie!”

            Oh, God – Skepper’s HQ! Elaine’s heart hammered faster and louder. She eyed Paul. “Safety first,” she said. He nodded. Stomach churning with a terrible foreboding, Elaine carefully clambered on the chair, on to Steele’s broad shoulders and concealed the transcription coded silk in a dark crevice of crossing joists.

He helped her down and seemed reluctant to release his hold. His dark brown eyes could not hide the sombre hammering of fear, like a palpable thing between them. “Gaby, if Skepper’s been taken, we must get out on the next train. Every minute counts. They’ll be watching the roads and stations…”

            She gently placed fingertips on his lips. “No, Paul,” she said, despite the tremors of rising anxiety in her body. “We mustn’t cut-and-run while our network has a chance.” Yet common sense told her to get out now. She wanted Paul to go on holding her. Then she thought of Skepper, Julien and the two resistance leaders at Rue Morentie.

Elaine broke the embrace and they climbed down from the attic.

            Streetlights slanted through the lace curtains into the dark hallway and made the place seem claustrophobic.

Clotilde cupped trembling bony fingers over the black telephone mouthpiece: “Marie – she’s in the quincaillerie across the road. She was going to visit, hoping to get word of her English pilot... They’d just returned from the Vaucluse with the parachuted guns. She saw the Gestapo burst in...”

“At least they haven’t got the weapons,” Paul said.

            Elaine shrugged into her raincoat. “Clotilde, where will they take them?” She checked her Luger’s magazine and looked up.

Paul blanched and there was horror in Clotilde’s eyes.

            “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he said.

            “To – the – the prison,” Clotilde broke in, and lowered the handset. “Les Baumettes...”

            Thrusting the Luger into her coat’s deep pocket, Elaine smiled. She placed her red beret aslant on her auburn hair. “Then we must intercept them, don’t you think?”

#

Paul had broken all the streetlights along this stretch. The only illumination came from the vehicles’ headlights: an armoured carrier followed by a sinister black sedan.

At least the cache from the last airdrop was still intact, Elaine thought. Clotilde was now marshalling helpers to transfer those weapons elsewhere.

            Heart thumping, Elaine stepped from the shadowy shop doorway as the carrier began to pass. She lobbed a grenade and smoke canister into the midst of the troopers.

            The explosion was deafening.

Paul emerged from the other side of the street and ran up to the Mercedes, firing his revolver into the windscreen, killer the driver.

Elaine withdrew her Luger and ran to the other side.

The whole street seemed to light up like a Roman candle. 

She froze as Bousquet scrambled out of the car with Skepper held in front of him as a shield: the traitor turned, seeing the advancing Paul. Elaine fired once, accurately, surprised at her steady aim, her cold detachment. Bousquet toppled to the ground.

            “Split up,” Paul said. He took Skepper and Julien, while she shepherded two very scared young resistance leaders, Alfonse and Marianne. Darting down side streets, along back alleys, over disused land and rubble.

The next fifteen minutes were exhilarating, frightening and exhausting. Her lungs threatened to burst. The two resistance leaders hardly uttered a word, apart from repeating Merci, ma cherie, merci...

            Despite the inevitability of awful repercussions for tonight’s action, Elaine found a friendly house. She telephoned Clotilde. The arms movement was confirmed, and Elaine breathed a sigh of relief. “Jean Bousquet is an infiltrator,” she said. “I’ll get Claude. You warn the others and move out.” She hung up.

She gathered her two escapees and they ran on. Next stop, the train.

#

Elaine clamped her lips together. A young man gripped a pair of pliers and pulled out her toenails, one by one. Her head swam. The pain was excruciating.

The Gestapo officer said, “Your Colonel Buckmaster at 64 Baker Street probably told you to hold out for 48 hours, to give your friends time to get away.”

She was sure her heart missed a beat.

            “You might like to know, you’ve been in this interrogation room just one hour.”

            An hour? It seemed like days…

#

“It will be here in two minutes,” Elaine told them. The pair shivered with delayed fright in the dank gloom of the tunnel. “Board as it slows to negotiate the bend in the tunnel.” She briefly flicked on her torch. “There.”

            “Right,” Alfonse grunted.

Marianne whispered, “What about you?”

            “I have to get our codes, inform our friends.” Baker Street must be told about the infiltrator, one of how many more? And told of the demise of the Abbey network.

            Elaine was almost deafened as the freight train rumbled past, air blasting her clothes, the tunnel wall vibrating against her back. She flashed on her torch: Alfonse and Marianne leapt for the handholds. She thought she heard a hastily shouted “Adieu!”

As the sound of the carriages thinned into the distance, the rails growing silent again, she turned and trudged back along the cindered track, towards Clotilde’s house.

            No lights showed. Stealthily, she crept over the back garden wall, across the vegetable patch. The back door wasn’t locked.

Luger ready, she edged the door open and heard the familiar night sounds of the house settling. Nothing unusual. Thank God, Clotilde had made a run for it. The traitor Bousquet knew of her involvement, so the warning might have been in time.

Each stair tread creaked ominously loud as she walked up, keeping to the edges where there was less give.

Finally, she reached the landing and lowered the attic ladder. She climbed up.

It took quite a balancing act on three chairs to retrieve the silk codes, and then the pyramid toppled.

She landed on her hip, bruised but intact, and wryly recalled a bare two months ago when she’d twisted her ankle beneath the parachute. She could shrug off these little pains; they were nothing compared to the monthly curse, anyway.

            Limping a little, Elaine left the villa.

Her stamina was flagging, yet there was still so much to do. A chest-constricting dash across a field, and then the barn loomed up, silent, huge, a dubious but welcome haven.

Tiredly, she pushed through the huge creaking door. “Claude!” she called in a harsh whisper.

            Hay rustled above. “Up here, Gaby!” Of course, he was still waiting for the report Paul and she were compiling an age ago.

She clambered up the ladder, rungs digging into the instep of her shoes. “This is our last message, Claude – make it quick!”

            His face reflected resignation more than surprise, as if it had only been a matter of time...

            Time passed, time during which they sent the message, warned about Bousquet, destroyed the transmitter and burned the coded silk.

They hurried from the barn, in the railway station’s direction.

            Aching and breathless, she needed to rest. Yet the fear that coursed through her veins kept her going. He faltered in the marshalling yard, waiting for her to catch up. “Run on!” she called

Claude ran ahead.

As she reached the station, the train pulled out.

Missed it!

Claude ran, grabbed a handrail and leapt, hung on. He looked back, his face pale.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Her heart sank. Menacing dark uniforms converged.

            As she heaved in great gulps of air, her chest burning, the dark snake of the train blurred. This, she knew, was the end for her. But at least Claude, Alfonse and Marianne might get away, carry on the fight against the Nazi darkness. She reached for the suicide pill...

#

Elaine didn’t talk. She was escorted back to Fresnes prison, hobbling on her heels, and lay in solitary confinement, hugging her bloody toes. After a while, she was able to walk again.

The torture sessions diminished in frequency. She assumed they had fresh captives to question.

She had no idea how long she was kept in Fresnes but eventually she was taken with a group of other women prisoners to a crowded railway carriage destined for Ravensbrück.

They left Paris in the morning. The journey was long and tedious, filled with the stink of women denied basic sanitation. Some cried, others whimpered, but most maintained an eerie stoic silence. The train stopped at Alsace-Lorraine – the clock said 4pm. Here, they changed trains, but were too well guarded to risk escape.

Later, another stop occurred, but this time Red Cross representatives boarded with special passes and parcels.

            “For you,” said a nurse, thrusting a package at Elaine. “Open it,” she added.

            Inside was a folded Red Cross nurse’s uniform. She glanced fearfully around her at the other women prisoners. A few watched, envy in their eyes; others didn’t seem to care; most didn’t notice.

            Hastily, yet taking care not to blemish or bloody the fresh clothes and shoes, she donned the uniform. She buttoned up the blouse while the nurse’s hands rake through her hair, straightening and tidying it. Sensing this concern and tenderness for another human being, Elaine almost broke down.

            Steeling herself, however, she clambered down from the carriage and showed her pass to a soldier. He gestured her away.

She strode towards the waiting vehicles. She felt eyes on her and waited for some voice to betray her and bullets to pound into her back.

Legs shaking, Elaine climbed up into the Red Cross truck and sat on a hard wooden bench.

“Gaby,” whispered the nurse, “Paul and the others are safe.”

            The truck drove off. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. 

 

* * *

 

This story won a writing award in 2010 and was published in When the Flowers are in Bloom (2012) - an anthology that is now out of print. Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

 

My other French Resistance story can be found here

 



 

‘I Was The Cat’

During the Second World War there were many brave individuals fighting with the French resistance to combat the invading forces of Nazism. Perhaps one of the most complex characters to emerge was Mathilde Carré, known by friends and enemies alike as ‘The Cat’.

Mathilde-Lucie Belard was born in June 30 (my birthday) in 1908. Dainty, with dark hair and staring green eyes and a broad sensual mouth, she had a succession of boyfriends at the Sorbonne, but, according to her own story, remained a virgin until twenty-three.

She secretly married a schoolteacher, Maurice Carré, and they went to North Africa and taught. Here, at Ain Sefra, she embarked on an affair with an aristocratic Muslim, a friend of her husband. In 1939 Maurice was posted on active service in Syria and left her behind, their marriage over.

She made her way back to France and trained as a nurse. During the French retreat from the invading Germans, she met, nursed and fell in love with a tank corps captain, Jean. She became pregnant, Jean was transferred away and she miscarried, then contemplating suicide in the River Garonne. Instead, she determined to join de Gaulle and fight for France; however, the British consul in Toulouse advised her to remain in France. She met an escaped POW, Polish airman Roman and agreed to join him in German-occupied Paris. This was what her restless and passionate spirit had craved – glamour, adventure and danger.

Meeting with the undercover Deuxieme Bureau agents, she was given elementary training – codes, recognition of German Army and Air Force formations and the use of invisible ink. She spent her evenings in the bar of the luxurious Hotel Ambassadeurs where the American newspapermen made their HQ. She curled up in a big armchair, her black hair bobbing and her long talon-like fingernails nervously scratching the leather side of the chair, just like a cat. Some wit called her ‘The Little Black Cat’, and it stuck, and in the network she was thereafter known as ‘The Cat’. Their espionage network was known as Inter-allie, and at this period it was successful, providing much-needed information to the British. She began wearing her trademark clothing, a black fur coat and a little red hat. Roman’s mistress was recruited into Inter-Allie and her presence seemed to cause tension, though Mathilde vowed she’d never had an affair with Roman.

Two days after the first anniversary of the network’s birth, Mathilde was on her way to her studio when she was picked up by the Abwehr; she was identified by Roman’s mistress. Apparently, the German Command in Paris had suspected a major Allied spy ring operating in the area, due to the precise timing of the RAF attacks.

She spent a night in a cold dank cell and seemed to suffer a complete moral collapse due to the sudden reversal of her fortunes. She was taken to a warm room fed breakfast and informed by Hugo Bleicher, an NCO who later penetrated several clandestine British networks, and arrested Odette. Bleicher told her she was too intelligent and interesting a woman to remain in prison; if she co-operated, he would set free that evening…

 
Over the next few days she systematically betrayed the remaining members of the Inter-allie network. With Bleicher’s aid, she used a captured British radio to get in contact with London, advising them that though she had escaped the network members in Paris were all captured; and she was believed.

Her relationship with Bleicher was not always smooth; on one occasion he teased by asking her what requests she would make if they decided to shoot her. ‘To have a good dinner, to spend the night in bed with a lover, to listen to Mozart’s Requiem, and to be shot while it was being played.’

While she worked with Lucas, one of the first SOE agents dropped into the area, London discovered that she was a double agent. When Lucas suggested that Mathilde go back to London with him, the Abwehr and Bleicher went along with the idea, believing she would be useful to them in the heart of the SOE.

 
An MTB picked up the pair in February 1942. When they docked at Dartmouth, she was taken to a luxury flat in Bayswater Road, where she was to make herself comfortable; the place was ‘lousy with microphones’. She was de-briefed (interrogated), but also escorted to well-known tourist sights, restaurants and even night-clubs!
 
Lucas returned to France, was captured and questioned by Bleicher; as a result, Bleicher was convinced that the Cat still functioned as an Abwehr spy in London. After some harsh mistreatment, Lucas was eventually sent to Colditz POW camp.
 
Mathilde was sent to Aylesbury Prison and Holloway and then in 1945 she was repatriated. In 1949 she was tried in France. Two of her former chiefs in the Deuxieme Bureau spoke up for her, but she was sentenced to death; it was later commuted to life imprisonment. Late in 1954, she was released. In 1959 she published her own account, I Was the Cat (revised 1975). She died in Paris in 1970, aged 62
 
- Some of the above was gleaned from The Real World of Spies by Charles Wighton (1962).
 
Also of interest:
Mathilde Carré, Double Agent by Lauran Paine (1976)
Gordon Young, The Cat With Two Faces (1957)
 
In the late 1950s I saw a French film The Face of the Cat which was a chilling movie of the French Resistance starring Francoise Anoul; I often wondered if the film was inspired by the above Cat.

It’s interesting that David Cornwell chose the penname John le Carré. He was probably aware of Mathilde Carré’s story. Le Carré is French for ‘the square’.

 
Of course my Cat heroine is not a double agent; she’s simply someone obsessed with destroying a company and its CEO: it begins with Catalyst.

 
The first in ‘The Avenging Cat’ series
 
Catalyst, a person that precipitates events.
 
That’s Catherine Vibrissae. Orphan. Chemist. Model. Avenging Cat.
 
She seeks revenge against Loup Malefice, the man responsible for the takeover of her father’s company. An accomplished climber, Cat is not averse to breaking and entering to confound her enemies. During her investigations, she crosses the path of Rick Barnes, a company lawyer, who seems to have his own agenda.
 
Ranging from south of England to the north-east, Wales and Barcelona, Cat’s quest for vengeance is implacable. But with the NCA hot on her tail, can she escape the clutches of sinister Zabala and whip-wielding Profesora Quesada?
 
… and continues with Catacomb (due for release Autumn 2015).