Afterwards, the Lennox family sat around the dining table and tried to apply themselves to their Sunday meal, although Ella could scarcely choke down the lunch her mother had made.
‘The newspapers say our Allied troops in the north of France have been cut off. The panzer divisions managed to smash right through the defences on the Somme. Thousands are stranded there, backed up against the Channel,’ Mr Lennox remarked, setting down his knife and fork and giving up the struggle with the gristly piece of boiled beef on his plate.
‘Those poor souls. Surely there’s something more that can be done to save them?’ Ella’s mother folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate with a sigh.
‘They’re doing their best, Mother. But the fighting goes on day and night, and we’ve lost so many aircraft that it’s hard to know where to send the ones that are left.’
Her mother hugged her tight as Ella left to catch the bus back to Gulford later that afternoon. ‘Here,’ she handed her a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. ‘It’s a tea loaf for you to share with Vicky and Jeanie. Make sure you eat properly, won’t you? Keeping your strength up so that you can do your job well is your patriotic duty these days.’
When Ella and Vicky arrived at the base next morning, Squadron Officer Macpherson met them at the office door. ‘It’s some good news at last, girls!’ Their commanding officer was positively beaming. ‘Mr Churchill announced last night that Operation Dynamo is underway. Every seaworthy vessel along the south coast has gone to help. They’ve begun evacuating troops from Dunkirk. Thousands are out already. They’re bringing our boys home.’
As the news broke of the ships that went to help snatch back British, French and Belgian troops on those desperate days at the end of May, Ella thought often of Bijou, picturing tiny boats just like her sailing to the rescue, and she hoped, against hope, that somehow Christophe had made it to the Pas de Calais and been saved. She prayed for a miracle, feeling guilty that she couldn’t be more pleased for the hundreds of thousands of men who were rescued that week, when all she wanted was news of just one. But still no news came.
And then, two weeks later, there came another bulletin that made her heart stand still. Paris had fallen: France was now in German hands.
‘Come on, Ella. Come with us.’ Vicky was pinning up her hair in front of the mirror in their bedroom. ‘You don’t have to dance if you don’t want to – although goodness knows there are more pilots queuing up to ask you than any of the rest of us. Just come along for one evening for some fun and some company of your own age, instead of sitting here with Jeanie and Dougie listening to the news and fretting.’
Vicky sat down on the bed beside Ella, brushing out her unruly curls. ‘Look, I know it’s hard being apart from Christophe and you miss him terribly. But he wouldn’t expect you to sit at home letting life pass you by. After all, it’s your patriotic duty to keep up the spirits of our own boys – that’s how I look at it. Go on. Come to the dance. You’ll enjoy it. And, Lord only knows, you need to have a bit of fun sometimes.’
‘Sorry, Vicky, I just can’t.’
‘Well, I’m very disappointed in you Miss Lennox’ – Vicky could do a mean impersonation of Squadron Officer Macpherson’s strident tones – ‘I expect my gels to show a bit more fighting spirit.’
‘My fighting spirit is all reserved for the job these days,’ Ella sighed. ‘I know I’m being a bit pathetic. I just feel so flat. I saw a glimpse of what my life really could be when I was in France. There was so much promise; it was all just beginning. And now the war has slammed the door shut in my face. I know that sounds awfully selfish when people are suffering so. But I’m terrified that, when all of this is over, it’ll be gone. I can’t imagine what my life will be like if I can’t go back to be with Christophe.’
Vicky patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Ella. Life goes on – come what may. Even if this bloody awful war changes everything, we’ll win through in the end. The world might be different when it’s all over, but you’ll be alright. Christophe too, I’m sure.’ She stood up, pulling down her pencil skirt where it had rucked up a little around her hips. ‘Now, are my seams straight?’ She turned so that Ella could check the backs of her stockings. ‘Last chance to change your mind and come with us. No? Alright then, have fun mouldering beside the wireless!’
Ella smiled and shook her head. ‘Actually, I’ve got another contact at the Red Cross to write to, so I think I’ll get the letter done tonight.’
As the months had gone by with no word of the Martets, she had continued to pursue every means she could think of to try to find out what had happened to them all. She listened obsessively to the official news bulletins on the wireless and in the cinema, desperate for any mention of Paris or the Free French, the depleted remnants of France’s army who were now fighting for their country where they could under the direction of General de Gaulle from his headquarters in England. She pestered Vicky and the other radio operators on the base for any snippets of news that they could glean over the air waves; and she wrote letters to anyone she could think of who might be able to get word through to France or back from France.
Mostly, though, her petitioning was met with annoyed impatience. ‘Miss Lennox, our priority is to communicate – where we are able to do so – with the families of British servicemen. I’m sorry, we simply do not have the resources, let alone the capabilities, to track down missing French soldiers too.’
She knew she was searching for a needle in a very large and very chaotic haystack, but since there was nothing else she could do except carry on searching that was what she did.
Yet, all around her the war swept onwards, gathering momentum as the Germans focused their fearsome firepower on Britain. On the first day of July, the Luftwaffe announced their presence over British skies by bombing Wick, one of the most northerly airbases in Scotland. Lives were lost that day, despite the brave defence put up by the Hurricane pilots who Ella saw off from their East Lothian base.
All through that summer, and into the autumn, the Battle of Britain raged. All leave was cancelled, and the crews at RAF Gulford were busier than ever. Each time she waved the squadron off on another sortie, the bone-shaking roar of the Hurricanes’ engines seemed to Ella to represent the desperation she felt, her longing for an end to the war. It was unbearable to count the aircraft back in and realise some of their number were missing.
Ella tried to stay focused on the job, methodically ticking off each task on her check-lists. They all knew that the Hawker Hurricanes were workhorses, less glamorous than the Spitfires which were gaining a reputation as the thoroughbred racehorses of the skies. But, as Sandy told Ella, ‘Our ’uns are getting the job done too. When it comes to downing a German bomber, give me a Hurricane any day. They’re a damn sight more sturdy and just look how many we’ve managed to get back down safely even when they’ve been shot to buggery.’
But they all knew, as well, that the aircraft’s Achilles heel was fire: the pilot sat just behind the aircraft’s gravity fuel tank and more than a few of the boys they’d sent off from Gulford had been horrifically badly burned by a jet of flame shooting through the instrument panel in front of them. This war was a random, casually cruel lucky dip. Young lives curtailed so abruptly: ‘Assumed missing’ written on the reports. Families left in a harrowing limbo of loss and grief, without the closure of a body to bury, a coffin to mourn over; husbands, sons and brothers disappearing into thin air.
Ella immersed herself in her job, working such long hours that summer that she scarcely had time to notice that autumn had arrived. Then, all of a sudden, it was time to harvest the potatoes in the fields surrounding the base and the wind from the sea regained its bitter edge, numbing her fingers as she tightened engine bolts and mended worn tyres. And she realised that the nights were drawing in as September rolled into October. At last, the bombing raids on British cities began to tail off thanks, in part, to the Luftwaffe’s Stukas being savaged in the skies by the Hurricane pilots sent up from RAF Gulford and a hundred other airfields across the country. But, whilst she gave thanks that fewer pilots were being lost, Ella longed to stay busy, to be kept running from plane to plane from dawn to dusk so that she wouldn’t have a minute to think. Because when she did think, images of Christophe, injured or dead, flooded, unbidden, into her mind, and the terror that the Martets’ must surely be feeling, living their lives in occupied France, tormented her dreams through the long, dark winter nights.