Survivor (36 page)

All this time, while being crazy about
the man and assuming he felt exactly the same, she had thought that marriage and
children would follow in the fullness of time. But she was now forced to take a step
back and consider that might not be so.

Ever since Sybil had brought up the
subject, Mariette couldn’t get it out of her mind. So she was glad of
Ollenshaw’s proposal, as it would act as a distraction. She told herself that
the next time Edwin had leave, she would suggest he take her to meet his parents,
and then see how he reacted to that request.

It was a week later that Mariette got a
telephone call asking her to present herself at an address on Sidmouth’s
esplanade, that very afternoon. She was surprised that the secret meeting
wasn’t in London, but very glad that she would soon know more about what was
expected of her.

It was a very hot day, and when Mariette
emerged from the requisitioned hotel on the seafront, two hours after entering the
building, she looked longingly at the sea and wished she could go for a swim. But
that wasn’t possible, with mines on the beach and all the barbed wire erected
to keep people off. The next best thing was to sit on a bench and look at the sea,
while she attempted to sort out the events of the afternoon.

The first hour had been spent in French
conversation with a very severe-looking woman with iron-grey hair who was introduced
as Miss Salmon. Mariette had to assume she was French, but the woman didn’t
give anything of herself
away during
their talk. She had fired questions at Mariette, on everything from first aid to
growing vegetables, to films at the cinema and other often very strange topics,
expecting her to respond appropriately and to ask questions back, just as if they
were having an everyday conversation.

Mariette stumbled a bit, at first. But
as she got into the swing of it and gained confidence, she found it was only the odd
French word here and there that she couldn’t remember. But just as she would
do in English, she simply shook her head and admitted in French that she
couldn’t think of the word.

The second hour was with a man called
Fothergill, who was middle-aged, stout and had piercing dark eyes that bored right
into her. He began by asking her questions about growing up in New Zealand, then
moved on to ask about her life in England and specifically about her wartime
experiences.

When he had finished his questions, he
said he felt she was ideal, then called Miss Salmon in to join them. She was all
smiles – until then, Mariette hadn’t believed her capable of such a thing.

‘Your French is first
class,’ she said. ‘I like it that you speak with a Marseille accent, we
can build on that in the cover story we will be giving you. When we send you in, you
will be playing a part, and you need to believe in that character totally or you
might slip up. However helpful or kindly anyone seems, you must never, ever weaken
and admit who you really are or what you are doing in France, as they might well be
an informer. We will give you the name of the person who is your contact, but
don’t give them any personal information either. If anyone in this chain gets
caught, the less they know about their colleagues the better.’

Mariette wondered if she meant the
Germans would use torture to find out what she was up to, and her blood ran
cold at the thought. ‘You do
appreciate that I don’t know France at all,’ she admitted, looking from
one to the other and half hoping they would dismiss her as useless.
‘I’ve never been there.’

‘You don’t need to have
visited France,’ Fothergill replied. ‘You will be in and out very
quickly, and we will give you an appropriate cover story.’

As if she wasn’t feeling scared
enough already, Fothergill dropped a final bombshell. ‘You will need training
in self-defence. Given the kind of situation you may find yourself in, a gun is
impractical. A knife is far better, easier to conceal and silent too. On Monday
afternoon, at two thirty, come here and you will be taken for a training session
nearby. Now, do you have any questions?’

Mariette could feel her heart thumping
as she sat on the bench on the seafront, thinking about what she’d been told.
The sea was really blue today, reflecting the sky above, and as calm as a millpond.
All around her people were enjoying being at the seaside. She could smell candyfloss
and fish and chips, and hear tinny music coming from somewhere nearby; yet
she’d just been told she would be trained to use a knife. How did she make the
leap from barmaid to possible killer in just a couple of hours?

It was easy to forget here, in Sidmouth,
that there was a savage war raging across half the world. If it hadn’t been
for the barbed wire on the beach, and the high proportion of men and women in
uniform, it could be said that the war hadn’t touched Sidmouth at all. As far
as Mariette knew, not one bomb had been dropped here. How odd, then, that in the
hotel behind her they interviewed people for jobs that would be unthinkable in
peacetime.

When Mr Fothergill had asked her if she
had any questions, Mariette hadn’t been able to think of a single one. But
they were coming to her now, thick and
fast. Would she be shot if she was caught by the Germans, or would she be sent to
prison? Who would inform her parents, if the worst happened and she was killed or
seriously injured in France? How often would these short trips to France occur? And
how was she supposed to explain to Sybil that she needed time off, without telling
her what she wanted it for?

Not being able to tell anyone felt worse
than the prospect of learning to kill with a knife, or being captured by the
Gestapo. How was she supposed to make a decision about whether to agree to these
secret missions or not, without talking it over with someone who cared about
her?

‘Stick it in as if your life
depended on it, because it will,’ the self-defence instructor, who Mariette
knew only as PJ, yelled at her.

She had met PJ at the hotel on the
esplanade at two thirty, as arranged, and he’d led the way on his bicycle to a
farm about a mile out of Sidmouth.

The weather was hot and sultry, as if a
storm was coming, and she had worked up a sweat keeping up with PJ on her bike. He
was well over fifty, short, bald, wiry and with a fearsome scar down the side of his
neck. She guessed he had got this in the Great War, but all he told her about
himself was that he was a trainer. She spent the first hour with him in a large
barn, running and jumping over obstacles, and climbing a rope. He seemed satisfied
with her agility, but said she should practise running for an hour each day to give
herself more stamina.

Then, just when she thought she was
about to expire with the heat and exhaustion, he began the lessons in self-defence,
showing her how to throw someone who had grabbed her.

At first, she was hopeless – she
couldn’t see how a girl of
eight
stone could possibly defend herself against a man taller and stronger than herself
and several stone heavier – but, after many attempts, she finally got the hang of it
and managed to throw him to the floor.

He lay there for a minute, grinning up
at her. ‘Well done. But what you’ll have to keep in your mind is that
what I’ve taught you is only good for someone who intends to rob or molest you
in some way. It will give him a shock, and the chances are he’ll run for it.
But in France you will be up against a soldier, who will have no compunction about
killing you. Throwing him will give you a few vital seconds in which to draw your
knife, and use it. By that, I mean kill him.’

He laughed at her horrified expression,
and jumped up from the ground. ‘You can’t leave him alive to identify
you, or to raise the alarm. It is you, or him. Kill or be killed. Keep that in your
mind at all times. Your knife will be your best friend, the one thing that can save
your life. You must learn to trust it, rather than fear it.’

PJ had sacks of straw, covered in a
thick tarpaulin and shaped into the size of a human body, for her to practise on. It
made her feel sick when he showed her how to get behind her victim, put her left arm
around his neck to hold him, then cut his throat with her right hand. And he made
her slash her knife across the straw man’s neck several more times, until he
was satisfied she knew how much force was necessary to sever a windpipe.

‘In reality, it’s a very
messy business,’ he said with the authority of someone who had actually cut
many a throat. ‘But very effective, quick and silent. However, you are much
more likely to find yourself coming face to face with the enemy, so keep the knife
hidden from view to make him feel you are no threat. As an attractive woman, you may
be lucky enough to be able to sweet talk your way out of suspicion
and avoid capture. But if you sense that won’t
work, you must get close enough to knee him in the balls to incapacitate him, then
stab him through the heart. Or, as it is often easier to do, stab him in the side,
pushing the knife upwards. Don’t forget to pull the knife out again.
He’ll die faster, and you may need the knife again.’

Mariette wondered how PJ slept at night
after teaching people such things. He made her attack the straw man so many times
that the tarpaulin covers were falling apart by the time he told her that was enough
for one day.

‘We’ll have another session
in two days’ time,’ he informed her. ‘You are showing promise, but
you’ve got a long way to go yet. Don’t forget to do some running.
I’d recommend running up the cliff path; the fitter and faster you are, the
safer you’ll be in France.’

July faded into August. These were
long, hot days in which Mariette got up early to run up the cliff path. It was very
hard at first, but soon she was finding these early morning runs invigorating.
Rather than tiring her, she found she had more energy. She continued her training
with PJ twice a week. And if Sybil wondered what she was doing in the afternoons and
early mornings that brought her home so hot and sweaty, she didn’t ask.

But Edwin did notice a change in her
when he came down for a weekend in the middle of August.

‘You look different,’ he
said, the moment he saw her. He was looking at her hard, as if trying to work out
what had changed.

Mariette knew she’d built up
muscle during her training; her biceps were hard, her stomach as flat and firm as a
board. She hadn’t thought he’d notice it, though.

‘I’ve just got a
suntan,’ she said. ‘That always makes people look different.’

‘No,
it’s more than that, you’ve lost weight, but you’ve got a glow
about you. Have you been playing tennis?’

Mariette wanted to laugh at that because
she knew he had the idea that it was rather unladylike to take part in any sport
other than tennis.

‘No, I’ve been
running,’ she said. ‘I miss swimming and sailing, and as I was getting a
bit flabby I thought I’d run instead to keep fit.’

‘You aren’t planning to run
from me, are you?’ he joked.

‘Not even if a pack of wolves were
after me,’ she said, winding her arms around his neck and kissing him.

That night, after the bar closed, they
walked along the esplanade in the dark. The sound of the waves breaking on the
pebble beach was soothing after the racket in the bar earlier.

‘That’s the sound I grew up
with,’ Mariette said. ‘I’d lie in bed on stormy nights, listening
to the waves crashing on the beach, but by morning it would be just a faint lapping
sound.’

‘Are you homesick?’ he
asked.

‘In as much as I’d give
anything to see my family and go swimming and sailing, but then I couldn’t see
you.’

‘Does that mean I’m
important to you?’

‘You know you are,’ she
said, and playfully punched him in the side. ‘And, speaking of important
things, isn’t it time I met your parents?’

‘I-I-I d-d-didn’t think
you’d want to do that,’ he stammered out.

‘Well, of course I do,’ she
said. ‘Why would you think otherwise?’

It was too dark to see his expression,
but she sensed by his hesitation that he was searching for an appropriate
answer.

‘They are a bit stuffy,’ he
said eventually. ‘Old-school, dyed-in-the-wool conservative types.’

‘So! You
are saying they won’t approve of me? Why wouldn’t they? There’s
nothing outlandish about me, I eat with a knife and fork, I say please and thank
you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with
you,’ he insisted, just a bit too quickly. ‘Look, forget about them, I
don’t care what they think. I love you, I want to marry you, and I’ll
happily go home with you to New Zealand, if that’s what you want, when the war
is over.’

While it was good to have him declaring
his love for her and his hopes for their future together, she didn’t like the
idea that his family would be looking down their noses at her.

‘Well, say something!’ he
exclaimed. ‘I just said I wanted to marry you.’

‘I love that you said that. But I
couldn’t marry anyone without knowing all about them, so I’ll have to
meet your folks before agreeing,’ she said. ‘But let’s not get
into this now. We should wait till the war ends, and see how we feel
then.’

What she really meant was, if they were
both still alive. But that was a terrible thing to say.

Sybil and Ted went up to bed soon after
they closed the bar and, for once, left Mariette and Edwin in the living room.

‘All alone at last,’ Edwin
said, drawing her into his arms on the sofa. ‘Or does that make you
nervous?’

‘No, why should it?’
Mariette asked.

‘I thought maybe you were afraid
I’d push you into something you didn’t want to do.’

For a second or two, she didn’t
understand what he was getting at. But then she realized that he meant
lovemaking.

‘That’s the silliest thing I
ever heard,’ she said indignantly. ‘Of course I’m not afraid. In
fact, I’d love to make love with you – as long as it was with precautions, so
I didn’t find myself pregnant.’