The FitzOsbornes at War (60 page)

‘So,’ I said to him, ‘at last, I get to find out what it is you do!’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, with his lovely smile. ‘It’s not really a secret any more – not this part of my job, anyway. I think the newspaper reporters will be there this morning.’

‘Really? Where are we going, anyway?’

‘Oh, didn’t Julia tell you? It’s a medal presentation ceremony.’

‘Rupert! Are you being awarded a
medal
?’

‘No, no, not me. I just made the official recommendations. They were so brave and clever – well, you’ll see. Here we are.’

And we walked into a very grand room full of RAF officers and newspaper reporters, as well as a couple of men setting up one of those big cameras they use to film newsreels. Rupert found me a place to sit, then was swallowed up almost at once by a crowd of people wanting to speak with him. The gentleman sitting next to me leaned over.

‘I trained him, you know,’ he said, with evident pride.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well done. Er . . . you mean, Rupert?’

‘No, Gustav,’ said the man. ‘Isn’t the other one named Paddy?’

‘Um . . .’ I said. A stout lady in a fur coat was now being ushered past me.

‘Mrs Alexander, wife of the First Lord of the Admiralty,’ said the man, nodding his approval. ‘They do things properly, don’t they? Ah, they must be starting.’

For the people gathered at the front of the room had moved towards their seats, revealing a long table – upon which sat two cages.

Pigeons
. I should have guessed.

A gentleman introduced as ‘Wing Commander Rayner, Head of the Air Ministry Pigeon Service’ then stood up and spoke about each of the two pigeons in turn. Gustav had delivered the first message from a ship off the Normandy beaches, just after the Allied troops landed on the sixth of June. Paddy had been the fastest pigeon of the whole Normandy Operation, travelling 230 miles in under five hours in his job as an RAF messenger. Each pigeon received a medal and a kiss from Mrs Alexander, to much applause and cheering. When the cameras had finished rolling, Rupert took me to meet all his colleagues, human and avian. Paddy was a bit shy, but Gustav looked rather proud of himself, puffing out his grizzled chest so I could read his little bronze medallion, which said: ‘For Gallantry. WE ALSO SERVE.’

‘I’ve been working with pigeons since the start of the war,’ Rupert explained afterwards. ‘At first, my job was to liaise between the pigeon breeders who donated birds, and the civil servants at the War Office, and all the various military people – smoothing ruffled feathers, so to speak. But then I moved to working mostly with the RAF. All their bombers and reconnaissance aircraft have pigeons on board, so that if they crash in occupied territory, they can send a message back with the plane’s coordinates. A lot of airmen have been rescued that way. I was in charge of the practical details – making sure the birds had comfortable lofts at the air bases, organising corn rations, even arranging for farmers along the coast to shoot down birds of prey, which was awful, but we had to make sure our pigeons wouldn’t get eaten. Then, when the planning started for the Second Front, things became even busier. The generals knew that once troops started moving over the Channel, they wouldn’t be able to send any radio messages; otherwise, the Germans would realise the invasion had started and be able to pick up Allied troop positions. So pigeons would be an ideal means of communication, but that meant training a whole lot of soldiers and sailors to use them. And then, once the invasion began, I had to make sure there weren’t any problems as the pigeons started coming in.’

‘Goodness, what an important job,’ I said, as we walked towards his car. ‘No wonder you’ve been so busy this year! Will your work become a bit less frantic now?’

‘Somewhat,’ he said. ‘But there are thousands of pigeons still in service, so I’ll be needed until the war’s over.’

‘And then?’

‘Well . . . I did want to talk with you about that. Do you need to get back to work straight away?’

I did, but we sat down for a minute on a piece of broken wall, overlooking a bomb crater.

‘The thing is,’ Rupert said, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do when the war ends. Go back to Oxford and finish my degree, or apply to a veterinary school, or else find a job somewhere . . . and I’m not sure what’s going to happen with my family, whether Charlie will ever come home, or what my father plans to do with the estate. It all depends. You see, I was thinking that whatever I do . . . well, I want to do it alongside you, Sophie. I simply can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it.’

‘Oh, Rupert! I feel exactly the same way about
you
,’ I said, beaming at him. ‘Perhaps we ought to get married, then.’

‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ said Rupert, leaning over to kiss me. ‘Very clever of you to think of it,’ he added, after we’d finally come up for air.

‘Wait a minute, did you just get
me
to propose to you?’ I said, both of us starting to laugh.

‘I think so. I could get down on one knee and do it properly, if you like?’

We looked at the muddy, rubble-strewn patch of ground beneath us.

‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘Oh, Rupert, I’m so glad about this!
When
, do you think?’

‘Well, tomorrow, if it were up to me, but it might be more sensible to wait till this job of mine is finished. I’m still not stationed at any one place. So that means when the war’s over.’

‘And I really would
love
to have a peacetime wedding,’ I said. ‘In the church at Milford, with no one having to wear uniform. Is that all right? Or would you prefer Astley? Or London?’

‘Anything you want,’ he said. ‘Oh – but I ought to have warned you before, that I haven’t got much money.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind. I don’t have any either, except for my allowance from Aunt Charlotte.’

‘And I don’t have a house,’ he said, ‘or anywhere to live.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said, looking at the bomb crater. ‘Hardly anyone does, these days.’ Then I rested my head on his shoulder, brimming over with happiness, knowing I was the most fortunate girl in the world.

29th October, 1944

W
ELL.
W
E HAVE
FINALLY
DISCOVERED
what Toby’s been plotting. This afternoon, he convened a meeting of all the Montmaravian Privy Councillors currently in London – that is, Veronica and me.

‘And you, too,’ he said to Julia. ‘After all, you’re the Queen of Montmaray.’

‘Oh, all right, darling,’ she said, handing me the plate of scones. ‘Just let me finish pouring the tea.’

‘Better turn the wireless on, too,’ he said. ‘In case of hidden listening devices. And Sophie, could you draw the curtains?’

He’d
definitely
been spending too much time with the Colonel. Veronica raised an eyebrow at me as she reached for the wireless.

‘Right,’ Toby said, after the security arrangements had been judged satisfactory and we each had a cup of tea. ‘As you know, Churchill has shown absolutely no interest in ousting the Nazis from Montmaray – even though we’ve all dedicated ourselves to the war effort for years and years, and Henry sacrificed her
life
for this stupid, ungrateful country. Sorry, Julia, but it is. Anyway, as the Allied commanders are pretending we don’t exist, I’ve decided we must liberate Montmaray ourselves. I have therefore devised a brilliant plan, which I am now going to explain to you in –’

‘Why?’ Veronica asked. ‘I mean, why do we need to do anything, if Germany’s on the verge of defeat and unconditional surrender? Why can’t we just wait for that?’

‘Because firstly, they’re
not
on the verge of defeat,’ said Toby. ‘They’re still sinking Allied ships, they’re still putting up a ferocious fight in Italy and the Netherlands – and just wait till the main battle moves to their homeland. If that assassination attempt against Hitler had actually succeeded, it might be over now. But unfortunately, he’s still around, so the Nazis could go on fighting for months and months. And secondly, I don’t
want
to wait. I don’t see why we should sit around doing nothing when everyone else is fighting. Look at the Spanish Republicans, rising up against Franco now! After all they’ve been through, forced into exile in France for all those years – and
they
haven’t given up!
They’re
not sitting about waiting for the Americans to rescue them!’

Veronica opened her mouth, no doubt to point out that the Republicans were currently being forced back across the Pyrenees by Franco’s army. But Toby cut her off before she could speak.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I want to go home.’

Veronica closed her mouth.

‘Now, here’s my plan,’ said Toby. He produced a large manila envelope and shook some photographs out onto the table. We leaned in.

‘Is that . . .?’ I said, and he nodded.

‘Aerial photographs of Montmaray, taken a few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘I needed up-to-date information. You can see they’ve rebuilt most of the castle – that’s where the soldiers seem to be quartered. The village looks much the same, except for a new wharf, but there aren’t any ships around at the moment, and there’s only one plane on the airstrip. In fact, it all looks pretty quiet. I don’t think they’ve ever had more than a dozen servicemen stationed on the island at any one time, and there’s probably far fewer than that now. It won’t be too difficult to land a plane there and overwhelm them.’

‘What’s that?’ said Veronica, pointing to a silver blob on the main part of the island, not far from the reconstructed drawbridge.

‘Oh, probably some sort of ground-based radar.’

‘What’s “radar”?’ I asked.

‘A way of detecting distant objects. It sends radio waves into the air and if they bounce back, it means a plane’s out there. It can tell where the plane is, how fast it’s travelling, whether it’s friend or foe. That’s one of the main reasons the RAF was able to fight off the Luftwaffe so successfully from the start, because we could tell when they were coming. And of course, radar’s the
only
reason we pilots ever managed to shoot down anything at night.’

‘You mean,’ I said indignantly, ‘that all those reports about that night fighter pilot, Cat’s Eyes Cunningham, eating lots of carrots – they weren’t
true
? He actually shot down all those bombers in the dark because he used this radar thing?’

‘Imagine, the government lying to its own people,’ said Toby. ‘Shocking.’

‘If this radar is so effective,’ said Veronica, frowning at the photographs, ‘then surely the Nazis will detect any British planes approaching Montmaray. The soldiers there will have plenty of warning, and plenty of time to prepare themselves for a fight.’

‘Oh, but that’s the brilliant part of my plan,’ said Toby. ‘You see, it won’t
be
a British plane. The RAF has quite a few Luftwaffe aircraft in its possession by now. You know, from aircrew who’ve surrendered. And then there are planes that have crash landed, that the RAF mechanics have fixed up to see how they work. They’re the planes that I’ve been learning to fly these past few months.’

‘And I suppose in that time you’ve also managed to become fluent in German,’ Veronica said, sarcasm dripping from her voice, ‘so that if they challenge you over their radio system, you’ll be able to reassure them. Oh, and when you land, you’ll no doubt be wearing a Nazi officer’s uniform, so they’ll do whatever you say and you’ll be able to talk them into surrendering!’

‘You must be using your super mind-reading powers,’ said Toby, ‘because you’re entirely correct, except for one small detail. It won’t be me speaking German –’

But he was interrupted by Julia, who’d been studying the writing along the border of the photographs. ‘Who took these photographs?’ she demanded.

‘I did,’ Toby said. ‘I went down to Cornwall and borrowed a reconnaissance plane from Coastal Command.’