Stunned, Ella lowered the hand holding the pill to her side. And then someone picked up the Germans’ torch and stepped out into the clearing, calling her name.
‘Angus,’ she sobbed, and stumbled into the open, sinking to her knees as he reached out an arm and caught her.
He knelt, holding her, calming her, speaking words of reassurance. ‘You’re alright, Ella. You’re alright.’
She wept then, clinging to him, this man who’d snatched her back from the edge of the precipice, sobbing, ‘You came to find me. I was lost and you came to find me.’
He half carried her back into the shadows next to the trees and took both her hands in his. ‘Ella, stay here. Just sit tight.’ He uncurled the fingers of her right hand and found the suicide pill that was clutched there. He took it and put it in his pocket. ‘You won’t be needing this now.’
Then he sprinted back to where the second Nazi’s body lay huddled beside the runway and dragged it into the trees, where he’d ended the life of the first with a silent swipe of his knife. He covered them with branches and leaves and then stepped back into the clearing. As Ella watched, he stood and faced the direction from which the plane had left and opened his coat. He fitted an aerial into the S-Phone strapped to his chest and called the pilot back in.
‘I’ve got her. The area is secured. Safe to return. I repeat, safe to return.’
2014, Edinburgh
The honeysuckle has been cleared away from Ella’s bedside cabinet, but I busy myself arranging the bunch of white lilies that I’ve brought her, hoping they’ll remind her of the night she danced with Christophe back when they were together, happily oblivious to the horrors that were gathering just beyond the horizon.
She glances at me sharply, her eyes bright and clear today, as I set the vase down. Despite a layer of carefully applied concealer, I sense her taking in the dark half-moons beneath my eyes and am conscious, suddenly, that my hair could do with a wash. My hands are shaking slightly, as they do on the days when the exhaustion and anxiety are overwhelming, and a little water slops on to the bedside cabinet. She continues to watch me closely as I reach for a handful of tissues to mop up the spill.
Self-conscious all of a sudden, I reach into my bag, grateful for the distraction. ‘Look, Granny, I’ve brought one of the photo albums with me today.’
It’s dated 1945. Afterwards.
Apart from the snaps of her at RAF Gulford in her mechanic’s overalls, grinning towards Vicky’s camera as she wields a large oil can beside a Hurricane, and a more formal one of her in her WAAF uniform, there are no photos of Ella during the war.
‘What did you do afterwards, Granny? After the S-Phone operation in France? Did you learn how to do a parachute jump? And did you go back again on any more missions?’
She laughs, shaking her head. ‘No, my dear. I’m afraid the remainder of my Air Force career was far more mundane. I wanted to do more, but it was decided by the powers-that-be that I was still “not suitable for Field Operations” and that my French-speaking skills were needed elsewhere. I was sent back to East Lothian, to a prep school which had been commandeered as a specialist training centre for SOE wireless operators. I spent the rest of the war intercepting the Nazis’ French propaganda broadcasts and translating them. We used to transmit rude songs by Spike Jones in return sometimes, to get our own back, and other times we’d broadcast nonsense to make the Germans think it was coded information – I always used to enjoy thinking of them wasting precious resources trying to decode it – as cover for the real messages we were transmitting to French Résistance cells. And then I became one of the trainers at Belhaven Hill, teaching other SOE operatives how to use some of the specialist wireless equipment. I came across many women far more courageous than I. But, no, I never went back on any other missions.’
‘And Grandad?’
‘Oh yes, he carried on his work. I didn’t know what he was up to a lot of the time; it was too highly classified. He stayed on at Arisaig, but he’d come through to Edinburgh whenever he could and we’d meet up for tea dances at the North British Hotel. When I introduced him to my parents, of course they thought he was just marvellous too. We courted. We had fun. Life went on, despite the war. In some ways it was more concentrated, more intensely lived because of the risks and the threats that were always there in the background. I loved him very much. And not just because he’d saved my life. I loved him for the handsome, brave, funny man he was.’ She pats my hand. ‘And a jolly good thing it was too. Your mother and Robbie wouldn’t be here otherwise, nor you, nor Finn. A very good thing all round.’
I open the pages of the photo album on my lap, to their wedding photo. Ella turns to stroke the leaves of the lilies in the vase beside her. ‘I had these in my bouquet on that day too, see? Oh, how the scent takes me back . . .’
1945, Edinburgh
Angus and Ella were married in the church that her family had always attended, at Holy Corner, on a bright Saturday morning in late May, just a couple of weeks after VE Day. It still felt as if the whole country were celebrating, as if their wedding were part of the joy that continued to resonate around the world at Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender. They emerged from the church into a cloud of confetti thrown by friends and family, which settled like wind-blown petals on the folds of Ella’s lace dress and veil.
In the car that was taking them to the wedding breakfast, she brushed a leaf of confetti from Angus’s khaki uniform and kissed him on the lips. He took her hand in his.
‘Alright, Mrs Dalrymple?’
‘Very alright.’ She smiled, giving his hand a squeeze.
‘You look so beautiful, my Ella. Thank you for making me the happiest man alive. The proudest one too.’
The car pulled up in front of the North British Hotel and he stepped out, then offered her his hand. There was a smattering of applause from the small group of passers-by who’d paused to enjoy the happy spectacle of a couple of newly-weds in the May sunshine.
She took his arm and the hotel doorman stood to attention as they crossed the threshold.
‘So, here we are again, Mr Brown. Little did you imagine on that day when you interviewed me that you’d end up saving my life and then marrying me,’ she teased him.
‘Actually, I did,’ he smiled down at her. ‘The marrying you bit, at least. I have to admit, it crossed my mind.’
‘Well that’s very impressive forward planning! But then that always has been one of your strengths.’
‘Ready?’ he asked her, inclining his head towards the Palm Court, where the wedding party awaited them.
‘Ready,’ she replied. And together they stepped into the room full of cheering friends.
They honeymooned at Arisaig, staying in one of the croft houses that was empty, temporarily, now that the commando training unit was being disbanded.
Those two weeks were some of the happiest days of Ella’s life. They walked along white-sand beaches with the sweeping backdrop of Hebridean islands; they took a boat out to explore quiet bays beneath Rum’s soaring peaks, watching stags roam across the hillside and eagles glide against a cerulean sky, sailing back with the setting sun behind them, accompanied once by a school of porpoises. Angus caught mackerel, which Ella cooked on the peat-fired range in the cottage, and they sat together, late into the evenings, talking and reading. And at night, they lay in each other’s arms, luxuriating in the miracle of a future filled with love and hope now that the war in Europe was over at last.
‘I think I’d like us to have two children,’ Ella whispered to him in the darkness, her head nestled into the perfect dip between his shoulder and his chest. ‘A boy and a girl.’
She felt him nod. ‘And they’ll both be as intelligent and as beautiful as their mother,’ he whispered back, turning to her again.
On the final day, they wandered down to the shore, stopping at the red postbox by the side of the road so that Ella could post the card she was sending to Caroline on the Île de Ré. It was a postcard showing the beach at Arisaig, and she’d scrawled on the back of it ‘On honeymoon! Here’s our new address . . . Hoping to hear from you soon. Much love, Ella (Dalrymple!)’