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Don’t you think it makes them stronger when you give them someone to despise?
I have not got scurvy yet, anyway, thanks to France’s infinite supply of prison cabbage. Heigh-ho—
People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school every day, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette or a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night’s air raid. But you don’t talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were thirteen, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.
“the older I’ll get.” Queenie let out a giddy, tickled laugh. “Getting old!” she cried. “I’m horribly afraid of being old.” Maddie smiled and handed her half the bun. “Me too. Bit like being afraid of dying, though. Not much you can do about it.”
It is much easier writing about me in the third person than it would be if I tried to tell the story from my own point of view. I can avoid all my old thoughts and feelings.
The evil Engel always snatches everything away from me and raises an alarm if she sees me trying to retract anything. Yesterday I tried ripping off the bottom of the page and eating it, but she got to it first. (It was when I realized I had thoughtlessly mentioned the factory at Swinley. It is refreshing sometimes to fight with her. She has the advantage of freedom, but I am a lot more imaginative. Also, I am willing to use my teeth, which she is squeamish about.)
Maddie waited. Queenie was right: doing something, focusing, took away the fear.
It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.
Maddie snorted. Queenie was devoted to careless name-dropping, scattering the details of her privileged upbringing without the faintest hint of modesty or embarrassment (though, after a while Maddie began to realize she only did it with people she liked or people she detested—those who didn’t mind and those she didn’t care about—anyone in between, or who might have been offended, she was more cautious with).
“You’ve only one more fear to go—make it good.” Maddie dug deep. She came up honestly, hesitating a little at the simplicity and nakedness of the confession, then admitted: “Letting people down.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I am agog at your initiative.” The man glanced at the silent Creighton. “I do believe your earlier suggestion is spot on,” he said, and rather randomly quoted what Maddie reckoned was probably a line from Kipling. “‘Only once in a thousand years is a horse born so well fitted for the game as this our colt.’” “Bear in mind,” said Creighton soberly, holding the other man’s magnified eyes with his own over the top of his steepled fingers, “these two work well together.” clk/sd & w/op Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God.
Oh Maddie. I am lost. I have lost the thread. I was indulging myself in details as if they were wool blankets or alcohol, escaping wholly back into the fire-and-water-filled early days of our friendship. We made a sensational team.
Like an opium addict, I’ll do almost anything for more paper.
The anticipation of what they will do to you is every bit as sickening in a dream as when it is really going to happen.
I had managed to drag myself and my chair over to the door and prepared an ambush that sent two guards sailing head over heels as they tripped on me when they came in. Von Linden really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.
I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.
She walked to the branch line station at Deeside. There were no route maps posted on the walls, but a Wonderland-style sign commanding, “If you know where you are, then please tell others.” There were no lights in the waiting room because they’d show when you opened the door. The ticket seller had a dim banker’s lamp burning behind his wee cage.
Maddie took the top off her egg with her spoon. The hot, bright yolk was like a summer sun breaking through cloud, the first daffodil in the snow, a gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it.
I would have written about it anyway but BUCKETS OF BLOOD, WHEN DO I GET TO FINISH MY GREAT DISSERTATION OF TREASON?
It was decided (not by me) that my beloved pullover makes me look too thin and pale, and is also getting a wee bit ragged, so they washed and pressed my blouse and temporarily gave me back my gray silk scarf. I was flabbergasted to find they still had it—I suppose it must be part of my file and they are still hunting for unrevealed code in the paisley.
“‘Truth is the daughter of time, not authority.’” And: “‘This above all, to thine own self be true.’” I gibbered a bit, I confess. “Verity! I am the soul of verity.” I laughed so wildly, then, that the Hauptsturmführer had to clear his throat to remind me to control myself. “I am the soul of verity,” I repeated. “Je suis l’ésprit de vérité.”
It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it—both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code—just feminine code.
Starvation and sleep deprivation do leave visible marks, YOU IDIOTS.
We weren’t allowed to talk to the pilots, either. I made three jumps that week—the women do one less training jump than the men, AND they make us jump first. I don’t know if that’s because we’re considered cannier than men, or braver, or bouncier, or just less likely to survive and therefore aren’t worth the extra petrol and parachute packing. At any rate, Maddie saw me twice in the air and never got to say hello. I got to watch her fly, though.
do. I don’t suppose I had any idea what I “wanted” and so I was chosen, not choosing. There’s glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
was a bit like sleeping in the engine room of Ladderal Mill—noisy beyond belief but stupefyingly rhythmic.
“You’ve advice for your fellow prisoner? I’m not sure she realizes you are addressing her. Tell her again.” I shook my head, not really understanding what the hell he was playing at this time. “Go to her side, look in her face, speak to her. Speak clearly so we can all hear you.” I played along. I always play along. It is my weakness, the flaw in my armor.
Haven’t written anything here for a week, as my fingers are starting to get chilblained—so dead cold always. I need those mittens I made out of the pattern book Gran gave me, with the flaps that flip back so you can use your fingers. Essentials for the Forces, that book was called. If I’d known how essential those mittens would be now, I’d never have taken them out of my flight bag—except to wear them. Not like the flipping gas mask.
I wish I was a writer—I wish I had the words to describe the rich mixture of fear and boredom that I have lived with for the past 10 days, and which putters on indefinitely ahead of me. It must be a little like being in prison. Waiting to be sentenced—not waiting for execution, as I’m not without hope. But the possibility that it will end in death is there. And real.
Oh, yes, letting people down. Is this next lot fear or guilt? It feels like a lump of granite stuck in the gears of my brain and stripping them raw. Letting people down. A great circular list of failure and worry.
I understand now why her mother plays Mrs. Darling and leaves the windows open in her children’s bedrooms when they’re away. As long as you can pretend they might come back, there’s hope. I don’t think there can be anything worse in the world than not knowing what’s happened to your child—not ever knowing.
Penn has let us know she plans to ignore his refusal and try again by going straight to the captain—she’ll backdate her application, tie them up in their own red tape, right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. An amazing woman but totally crackers, if you ask me—hope her own right hand knows what her left hand is doing.
A raid is actually quite a lot like a battle. It is war. It’s war in miniature, but it’s still WAR.
“So fierce, so beautiful, it was like breaking a hawk’s wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks—digging up roses to make a space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly. She was just—blazing with life and defiance one moment, then the next moment nothing but a senseless shell lying on her face in the gutter—”
The story I gave him isn’t like a pullover full of holes, dropped stitches that will easily unravel when you start to poke at them. More like—slip one, knit one, pass slipped stitch over.
