stamp and scribbled in a set of initials.
‘You can drive to your farm,’ the officer said. ‘Tomorrow morning you must arrive in Calais before ten a.m. Find the German headquarters and report to the Office of Translation for a skills assessment.’
Henderson realised that this was an order rather than a request. A translation post would bring him into close proximity with German operations and was a stroke of luck, but no farmer would be happy at being taken off his land, so he made a fuss.
‘I’ve been away for five weeks,’ Henderson said. ‘My land will be in a poor state. We need to rescue as many crops as we can before winter.’
The German’s lips thinned. ‘You have a wife and three boys,’ he said impatiently. ‘They can work the land. You’re lucky to be getting into the military zone at all!’
‘Of course, sir,’ Henderson said. ‘I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful.’
‘And now I’ve phoned Calais. The office will be expecting you, so make sure you arrive – or you’ll be arrested and punished.’
Henderson offered his hand.
‘Soft hands, for a farmer,’ the officer noted, as he shook.
* * *
6Luftwaffe – the German Air Force.
7Grenadier – the lowest rank of German soldier, equivalent to a private in the British Army.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was possible to walk around Bordeaux for half a day without sighting a German patrol. By contrast, the countryside between the ports of Calais and Boulogne bristled with German trucks and Kübelwagens8 . At one point a curve in the road unveiled an entire hillside with hungry French soldiers dotted over it like grazing sheep. Less than a dozen bored-looking Germans kept them in place, but the prisoners didn’t bother escaping because they expected to be sent home within weeks.
The truck and Jaguar’s destination was a rural spot near the coast a few kilometres south-west of Calais. This last stretch of a seven-hundred-kilometre journey dragged, with a break to top up Maxine’s Jag from the last can of petrol and a second security stop.
Lucien and Holly Boyle grew hugely excited when they recognised their home village, then turned through the gates of a small country house with an eccentric brick turret at one end.
‘Nanny, Granddad!’ Holly squealed, as an old man lifted her off the back of the truck.
Marc and Rosie basked in the emotional reunion as they dropped on to the driveway and walked off the stiffness from a day cooped up.
‘Mummy died in a bomb,’ Holly explained anxiously, as she nuzzled her grandfather’s neck.
Luc Boyle welled up as he hugged his granddaughter. His wife Vivien squeezed Lucien and kissed his grubby face. The couple were in their late fifties and wore typical peasant clothing, but small touches such as Luc’s Swiss watch and his wife’s soft shoes betrayed the fact that they owned land, rather than working it themselves.
‘I thought I might never see you two again,’ Vivien sniffed. ‘We had a card in the post yesterday. Your daddy is being held prisoner in Lille, but he’s safe at least.’finally
As they ran into the house, Lucien hugged a fat servant before roughhousing with the Boyles’ youngest son, a sixteen-year-old named Dumont.
The party from Bordeaux took turns bathing in the house’s impressively large tub while one of the Boyles’ servants scrubbed their filthy clothes. Vivien pulled a half lamb from her oven and served up a meal extraordinary in both quantity and quality. Wine flowed and the adults turned a blind eye as Marc, PT and Dumont competed to drink as much as possible.
When everyone was stuffed the kids went into the back garden to enjoy the last of the sun. Lucien and Holly chased around, Paul and Rosie pushed them on a rope swing, while the three older boys crashed out on the lawn.
While the kids mucked around, Henderson and Maxine went into the drawing room and discussed more serious matters with Vivien and Luc over brandy.
Luc puffed on a small cigar as he quizzed Henderson about his life and his family. Henderson was the worse for half a bottle of wine, but still had to remember details of a complicated back story that tangled fact and fiction.
The truth was that after identifying a list of lost children from the Pas-de-Calais region using Maxine’s missing-person records, Henderson selected Lucien and Holly because documents found on their mother’s body showed that they came from a village situated between the ports of Calais and Boulogne that would be ideal for spying on a German invasion of England.
He’d also found a