The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,101

set-up was.

The SOE had been established at the beginning of the war with the sole purpose of working with local resistance movements in Europe and subversively wreaking havoc behind enemy lines – espionage and sabotage were the staples of their work. But the operation at Lanyon was even more than the training and inserting of agents behind enemy lines. Pa Lanyon was also the head of a group of local men trained at Lanyon and known as the ‘Stay Behinds’. The southern coast of the whole of Britain was a siege line – the closest point between the Nazi’s and their ultimately goal, Britain. And although Hitler’s planned invasion had been postponed because of the allied success in the Battle of Britain, plans had been made at home to facilitate a number of men who would act, in the case of invasion, as stay-behind saboteurs. Such stay-behinds would be hidden from the Germans in secret bunkers along the Cornish coast. As the Germans invaded and the siege line moved up the country, they would work behind enemy lines to sabotage the German occupation from within. It seemed odd, imagining German boots on British soil, but this was the reality of the time. The men recruited for such stay-behind tasks knew they had signed up for a suicide mission and Pa Lanyon was no exception.

But Lanyon gave yet more to the war effort. The men under Matthew Wilkins’ command also worked with a secret organisation that ran flotillas from Falmouth and the Helford River. Such flotillas comprised of commandeered fishing boats from France (especially Brittany) and Cornish fishing boats (re-rigged and coloured to act as French boats), requisitioned to operated covertly between Cornwall and France to transport evacuees, escaped POWs and SOE agents, back to Britain. The men who operated these boats – once ordinary, untrained, local men – also dropped and recovered secret messages. With every port along the French coast fortified by the Germans, who shot suspected spies on sight, theirs was a ludicrously dangerous operation, but no more ludicrous and dangerous that the job Matthew Wilkins had in mind for me.

He asked Pa Lanyon to leave the room – a room that had once been Pa’s office – took a dossier out of the desk drawer and placed it in front of me. My ATA photograph was paperclipped to the front. He sat forward in his chair and in a measured, calculated manner, began to speak, glancing towards the file.

‘It’s the way things are, you understand.’

I shrugged. ‘Makes no difference to me. I have nothing to hide.’

‘Perhaps not, but you have built up quite a reputation.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘Oh, very definitely good – superb, in fact. You’re one of the most naturally gifted pilots the ATA have ever seen. It must have been frustrating not to have been allowed to join the RAF.’

‘Not really. I love flying for the ATA.’

‘Yes,’ He picked up my file and flicked through it before landing on one particular page. He looked at me a smiled. ‘I see your father ran a flying circus—’ he raised his brows ‘—amongst other things. Quite the entrepreneur. He left you a considerable fortune, all in all. Did the Lanyons ever ask where his money came from, the bulk of it, at least?’

‘He was a businessman. I never asked how he made his money. After I was born, he was only really interesting in the flying circus – that and his family.’

Wilkins nodded, took a packet of cigarettes out of the top drawer, opened the packet and offered me one across the table. I shook my head. He took out a box of matches, lit his cigarette, took a long, satisfying drag, exhaled and sniffed.

‘I’ll get to the point, Juliet,’ he said, resting his cigarette on an ashtray. ‘You are exactly the calibre of pilot I’ve been desperate to find – a flying ace, a risk taker, but at the same time, a hardworking, level headed operator. Your evasion of the Messerschmitt over Predannack was superb.’ I sat expressionless, waiting for him to finish. ‘I need a small group of pilots exactly like you – skilled, calm under pressure. Your mother was French, I believe?’

I nodded.

‘—and you know France well and are fluent yourself – you even look French.’

‘Mr Wilkins, what is it that you want me to do, exactly? Please don’t sugar coat it. Just tell me.’

He took another draw on his cigarette.

‘I want you to train with a small group of pilots who fly Lysanders out