Before the Dawn Page 13

  “Be a dear, Matty, and fetch Miss Lambert’s bags, will you?” Jessica asked. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have asked Matty to haul in bags from the steps. The woman was getting older and had more than enough to do trying to keep the house in order with the other servants now gone to work in the factories. But she could hardly leave Alyssa alone now. “And could you bring us a cup of tea, please, when you have a spare moment?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Townsend.” Matty’s eyes went curiously to Alyssa, then back to Jessica. Jessica answered her housekeeper with a silent shrug, and Matty left the room.

  Jessica sat down on the couch beside Alyssa, and Alyssa gave her a watery, apologetic smile. “Sorry to cry on your shoulder.”

  “Nonsense. Now, what’s all this about? Where have you been? What happened?”

  “I was in Paris. We got out of France only a few days ago—took this bucket from Marseilles to Lisbon. We were probably lucky we didn’t drown.”

  “But why did you stay till the Germans got there? And why were you crying?”

  “I fell in love.”

  Jessica stared. “What! In love? In two months?”

  “Actually, it took about three days, I think.”

  “But what—who—“

  “Philippe Michaude.”

  “A Frenchman?”

  Alyssa had to chuckle at Jessica’s amazed expression. “There are other men in the world besides Englishmen.”

  Jessica smiled. “It isn’t that. It’s just so—startling.” She had never known Alyssa to be truly in love. Besides, Jessica figured when it did happen, the only heart in danger would be the one that Alyssa had stolen.

  “Yes. It took me by surprise, too. It took me even more by surprise when I asked Philippe to come back with me and fight the Nazis from here, as Ky is doing, and he replied that he hadn’t any plans to fight the Germans. He intends to get along with them.”

  Jessica’s eyes widened. “You mean help them like that fellow in Norway? Quisling?”

  Alyssa nodded. “Yes. He’s traveled on business to Germany frequently and has friends there. He has friends in the German Army. He told me that he wants to continue his business, even though the Nazis will use it for their own ends. The only thing he loves is money and his own comfort.” Alyssa’s voice was laced with bitterness.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Matty bustled in with a tray of tea and cups. Alyssa smiled wryly. “The English cure. A cup of tea.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Matty replied stoutly. “You drink up, and you’ll feel better.”

  “I wonder if that will ever happen.”

  “Of course it will.” Jessica poured a cup of tea and dosed it with cream and sugar. “I’ll make sure of it. You’ll stay right here with me, and I shall coddle you.”

  “Sounds heavenly.” Alyssa strove for a light, teasing tone, but Jessica could see the tears glistening in her eyes. Jessica took her friend’s hand, and Alyssa squeezed it tightly. “Thank God for you, Jessica.”

  Jessica set Alyssa up in the guest room and proceeded to mother her. She made sure Alyssa ate all her meals and took a turn around the square every day. She listened when Alyssa wanted to talk and was silent when Alyssa was withdrawn. She talked of ordinary, everyday things, and she talked of the war. She tried to think of things for them to do to take Alyssa’s mind off her troubles.

  Alyssa was grateful for her friend’s care and understanding. She hoped that somewhere inside it was helping her to heal, but she could see no signs of that. She still felt sliced to ribbons. It was an effort to get up each day and go through the motions of living. If Jessica hadn’t been there, she wondered if she would have even tried.

  Jessica and Alyssa went out rarely now, in contrast to the time Alyssa had been here only two months before. Alyssa preferred it that way. But she did attend a dinner party where she knew she would meet Ian so that she could report to him on the information she picked up in Paris.

  She apologized for the small amount she had gleaned, but Ian waved away her words. “Nonsense,” he told her. “You did splendidly. I couldn’t ask for anything better than what you picked up from that diplomatic party.” His eyes gleamed for a moment with a speculative light, then he made a slight negating movement with his head and went on. “I’m simply sorry I placed you in danger by having you in Paris when the Germans attacked.”

  “I chose to stay in Paris,” Alyssa replied shortly and changed the subject.

  The party was an agony to sit through, and after that Alyssa stayed at home even on the few occasions when Jessica went out. Claire came to visit often. She was as worried about her husband in the RAF as Jessica was about Alan, and each tried to shore up the other’s courage.

  Alan came home on leave from his RAF station a time or two, but his visits were rare these days, for now the RAF waited daily for the expected attack of the Luftwaffe. There had been a few dogfights over the Channel, brief, sporadic forerunners of the gigantic battle building up. But most of the time the pilots and crews waited, half bored, half on edge, for the German attack.

  They weren’t the only ones who waited for the attack. The whole country was in a feverish rush to defend the island. Factories went on around-the-clock shifts, trying to turn out the steel, rubber, uniforms, and guns that the country so desperately needed. There was no longer unemployment, and servants streamed out of their employers’ houses, all finding work in the factories or in some auxiliary service. Women ran the factories and even the farms. They volunteered for the auxiliaries. Suddenly uniforms were everywhere, worn by both sexes.

  Government officials sent urgent messages to the United States, begging for arms. Along the coast, citizens scattered old cars across the fields as barriers to invasion, and trenches were dug. Signposts were turned around or painted out in order to make it difficult for the German Army to find its way when it landed. Concrete posts were planted in fields the Luftwaffe might try to use for landing strips. Watches were set up for an invasion of German parachutists.

  However, the military activity had started much too late, and everyone knew it. They had wasted all the time given them in the “phony war,” and now they were in grave danger and much too far behind.

  Alyssa knew her family and friends would tell her that she ought to leave England. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She couldn’t leave Jessica to face the terror of the Nazi air raids and invasion by herself. Somehow this war had become her fight, too, and she didn’t want to scuttle off to safety in the United States.

  The precious days slid by. The country seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Then, in August, the Luftwaffe swept over the Channel.

  Chapter 9

  Alan Townsend stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned his head back against the wall of the Rochford operations rooms. He was in gear, ready to fly at a moment’s notice—which was usually all they had. His eyes closed, and, drifting for a few minutes in a dreamy world that was not quite sleep, he thought of Jessica. He was exhausted. The Luftwaffe had come at them full tilt for almost a month now, bombing the coastal towns, airstrips, and factories. The RAF was stretched to its thinnest point. Some days they scrambled as many as four or five times, and there had been moments when almost the entire air force was in the air at one time. Had another wave of Germans come then, they would met no opposition.

  The chair beside him creaked as someone sat down, and Alan opened an eye. It was Geoffrey Raglin, a Canadian. He was chewing gum rapidly, his eyes darting around the room, his face tight. He folded and refolded a gum wrapper. Alan thought the man looked about ready to snap. That wouldn’t be surprising. It was probably more surprising that so few of them did. One thing Alan was certain of was that a man who had flown against the Luftwaffe this past month would never be the same again. It did something strange to one’s insides.

  Either you got so jumpy you cracked, as Raglin was on the verge of doing, or your feelings died inside you. One couldn’t affo
rd to indulge in emotions in this constant flirtation with death, except perhaps to feel the relief at escaping again or the joy of seeing your tracer bullets rip through a Messerschmitt and send it plummeting to the ground. And surely it wasn’t normal, wasn’t right, to feel such fierce pleasure at causing death. He tried to think of Jessica often, clinging to the love that was the only thing alive left in him, but there were times when he could hardly remember her face.

  “You see Holcomb?” Raglin asked, popping his gum.

  Alan shook his head. He had no desire to talk about the gut-shot man who’d flown back to the station earlier this afternoon, dying minutes after he’d landed. Holcomb had known he was dead, of course, but he’d wanted to get the Hurricane back. Every airplane was precious.

  “I did,” Raglin went on, uninvited. “I took his plane back to the hanger. I sat in his blood—never get it out of my uniform.” He would never get the smell or the sight out of his mind either, Alan knew, but he didn’t say it. “Don’t know how Holcomb made it back. Do you?”

  Again Alan shook his head. He wished the man would be quiet.

  Raglin started to speak again, and Alan had to set his teeth to keep from shouting at him to shut up. Then the red warning light flashed on, and the woop-woop began.

  “Scramble!” A voice came over the loudspeaker.

  Alan was on his feet and out the door on the run, moving by instinct long before his mind began to operate on a conscious level. He ran for his Hurri and clambered into it, cramming on the headset, his hands automatically running through the routine. Routine. That’s what you concentrated on. Never think about what you are really doing.

  Instructions crackled over the radio as they taxied and took off: “Seventy Bandits approaching Calais, Yorker red leader. Twenty plus at Angel 6, remainder Angel 12, over.”

  They settled into formation. One section would dive to a lower level to attack the German bombers, and Alan’s section would take on the higher-flying fighter escort of Messerschmitts. He wiped his hand against his pants leg; it was slippery on the stick. One of the most important regulations was to wear one’s gloves and googles at all times. Alan and most of the other pilots disregarded the regulation. A glove slowed down the fingers on the gun buttons and the controls; goggles hampered peripheral vision. But the lack of them left a man more vulnerable if fire broke out in the cockpit, the horror of every pilot.

  They were over the Channel in minutes, and the German escort came into sight, heavily outnumbering the British Hurricanes and Spitfires. The other section dived to intercept the bombers, and the Messerschmitts started after them. Alan took aim on a Messerschmitt and flew in, tracer bullets spitting out red fire. The German rolled, and he followed. The German banked, returning fire. The bullets shooting out looked like little red blinking lights. Alan banked to escape them.

  They turned and dived and rolled in a deadly dance. Another Messer streaked in on him, and Alan fell away. He pulled back up, firing, and hit the Messerschmitt’s cockpit. It exploded into fire, and for an instant he saw the terrified face of its pilot. Then it plunged, spiraling, to the sea. A ghastly grin spread across Alan’s lips, but he hadn’t time to watch the plane hit, for the other plane was still dogging him.

  Alan peeled away, heading out across the Channel. His pursuer followed, and another German broke away to join him. Alan’s Hurricane climbed steeply, then dived, firing. A Hurri moved to intercept the second Messerschmitt. The RAF airplane was hit, and as Alan dodged and ran, from the corner of his eye he saw the pilot parachute out. The second Messer shot the dangling pilot on his slow descent.

  Alan zipped away from his pursuer and engaged the second plane, catching him by surprise. But the first Messer was not to be denied. He came after the two, who were now dogfighting. Bullets ripped one of Alan’s wings. They were already low, the gray water of the Channel clearly visible below them, but Alan dived lower still to escape. He pulled back up. The aircraft wouldn’t respond. He jerked back with all his might, grimacing from the effort. His engine sputtered and stalled, and suddenly the choppy gray water came rushing up to meet him.

  *****

  Jessica trotted lightly down the stairs to answer the thudding of the door knocker. She opened the door, and the messenger on the doorstep held out a cable to her. Jessica stopped dead and stared at the small envelope. Everything around her went perfectly still, perfectly silent. She wanted to step back inside and close the door. Instead she stretched out a hand, moving as woodenly as if it didn’t belong to her, and took the cable. The boy pulled at his cap and turned away. Jessica turned back to the hall. Her fingers were numb on the envelope. She moved away from the door, leaving it open behind her.

  Alyssa appeared at the top of the stairs and started down. She stopped when she saw the open front door and her friend’s expression. “Jessica?” She focused on the paper in Jessica’s hand. “Jessica!”

  Alyssa ran down the remaining steps and shoved the door closed, turning back to squeeze her friend’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  Jessica finally looked at her. Her face was drained of color, her eyes huge. She wet her lips. “Cable.”

  “Do you want me to open it?” Alyssa asked gently, and Jessica shook her head. She tore at the envelope with shaking fingers. It slipped from her hand and hit the floor. She stared down at it. Alyssa reached over quickly and picked it up, ripping it open and pulling out the paper. She handed it to Jessica without reading it.

  Jessica read it. She swallowed. Her eyes moved over it again. “Missing,” she murmured. Her breath caught, and she glanced up at Alyssa, a flicker of hope warring with dread. “What does that mean? ‘Missing in action over the Channel?’ What does that mean?”

  Jessica held out the piece of paper to Alyssa, and she read it. “Probably that his plane went down. But he might have lived. Maybe he parachuted out. They must not know exactly what happened.”

  Alyssa took a firm grip on her friend’s arm. Jessica looked as if she was about to faint. Alyssa led her to the first chair inside the sitting room. Jessica sat down mechanically, shivering.

  “Oh, God, Alyssa, what am I to do? I’ve never been without Alan.” She looked up at her friend pleadingly. She was beginning to shake. “What if he’s dead? What if he’s dead?”

  “We’ll find out more,” Alyssa promised, kneeling down beside Jessica’s chair and taking her cold hands between her own. “We’ll talk to somebody—his commanding officer. I’ll call him.”

  “I must tell his parents.”

  “Later. Right now, you just sit there. I’m going to get you a blanket.” Jessica looked in shock. Her face was paper white, and her skin was freezing. Alyssa hurried back upstairs and came running down again with a comforter from her bed. She wrapped it around Jessica and called to Matty to bring tea quickly.

  Alyssa sat on the sofa with Jessica, holding her hand and watching her as she drank the tea. Gradually color began to come back to Jessica’s face, and she returned the pressure of Alyssa’s hand. Her eyes were big and full of turmoil. “I’m so scared,” Jessica whispered, and her voice broke. “I’m just so scared.” She burst into tears.

  Alyssa put her arms around her friend and held her. It felt strange to hold a woman for anything longer than a greeting embrace. She could smell the faint scent of Jessica’s face powder mingling with talcum and a gentle, flowery perfume; she could feel Jessica’s hair against her cheek. Jessica’s bones felt fragile, like those of a child or an old woman. Her fingers dug into Alyssa’s dress in the back. The world Alyssa had lived in all her life seemed suddenly very far away and as unreal as characters in a play. Tears filled her own eyes. What a sad, sad place the world had become.

  *****

  Discovering what “missing in action” meant turned out to be more difficult than Alyssa had imagined. She placed several calls to Alan’s commanding officer at Rochford Field, but she was unable to reach him. She pulled every string Jessica knew of in an attempt to speak to
someone who would know the facts of Alan’s disappearance, but to no avail.

  Jessica’s tragedy pulled Alyssa from her own sorrowing lethargy. She took up the shopping and most of the house-cleaning that Matty was unable to do. She talked to Jessica’s friends and family, shielding her from everything she could. In comforting her friend, she was able to forget, at least for the moment, the pain which had festered within her for over two months.

  The acid of anger replaced her pain. She hated Philippe. She hated the Nazis. Jessica’s loss fueled that anger. Every evening they listened to the radio, hearing the news of the war, the details of English losses in the dogfights over the south of England and the Channel, and that stoked her anger, too. The Nazis were destroying everything and everyone, and Alyssa couldn’t remember ever before feeling such hatred.

  About a week and a half after they learned that Alan was missing over the Channel, Jessica received a letter. With shaking fingers, she tore it open and scanned it. “It’s from Alan’s squadron leader.”

  Alyssa, who had been trying rather clumsily to mend a small rip in one of her slips, dropped her work and looked up. “What does he say?”

  Jessica’s hands fell back into her lap, still holding the letter, and she looked at Alyssa bleakly. “He’s dead.”

  “What? Is that what he says?”

  “As good as.” Jessica’s voice trembled. “One of the other pilots saw him go down. Alan was flying low and dived and apparently couldn’t pull out of it. He crashed into the channel. The other pilot said he didn’t parachute out. Didn’t have time to. He says it might just be possible that he could have gotten out after the crash and swum to shore. They weren’t too many miles off the coast of France, and Alan was a good swimmer. If his name shows up on the roll of prisoners the Germans send, they’ll notify me. But it’s obvious that he doesn’t think it will.”

  “Oh, Jessica.” Alyssa went to her friend and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”