to make the rendezvous on time.
The track switched from side to side of the ridge, offering intermittent views of the valleys to north and south, and as the evening wore on the pinpoints of light in the distant villages flickered out and the glow of a waning half-moon flooded the winter fields. There was little traffic on the road – only a few solitary locals who gave them uncertain smiles and hurried on by – and not much more on the main roads which followed the valley bottoms. The railway line which paralleled the road to the north was definitely out of use, which at least offered some satisfaction to the four men.
Soon after midnight, with almost two-thirds of the journey behind them, they stopped in a convenient wood for food and a fifteen-minute rest. There had not been much conversation on the march and there wasn’t much now. When not focused on the task in hand, each of the four men was prone to find himself wondering about the vagaries of fate.
It could so easily have been two of them who had been blown to pieces under the bridges, two of them who had been executed by the Germans in the town square. This war in Europe was not going to be like the war in North Africa, Rafferty thought to himself, and he supposed he’d been a fool to ever think it would. Armies fighting each other in deserts could afford to be chivalrous – in such circumstances war was a man’s game in which only men got hurt. But Europe this time round…well, there were already enough rumours about what the Germans had done and were still doing to innocent civilians on the continent they had conquered, and now the RAF and USAF were doing to German civilians what the Luftwaffe had done to London and other English cities. The rules had broken down, and no one was safe.
In his mind’s eye Rafferty could see Enzio’s face as the Italian turned to see the smoke rising from his village.
Shortly after half past four they slipped across the empty coastal road and railway and walked the last half a mile across the empty dunes to the river’s mouth. The moon was down, the sea dark and apparently empty, but at precisely five o’clock the hump of the submarine broke surface some three hundred yards from shore, and within minutes two dinghies was being lowered into the water.
Farnham flashed the light again to assist the vessel with its navigation, but there was no way of telling it that now only one dinghy was required.
United Kingdom, April 1944
The spring sunshine lay across the Dumfries railway yard. Staring through the grimy carriage window at the arched façade of the engine shed, Farnham found himself momentarily back in Italy, and almost expected a wave of Germans to materialize across the tracks.
Ten weeks had passed since Operation Jacaranda, the first four of them spent waiting in Salerno for new orders. Anzio had been a failure, the frontal assault on the Gustav Line had bogged down around Monte Cassino, and no one seemed to know what to do with those elements of the SAS still in Italy. At the end of February they had been shipped home to a cold and damp England, then sent north to the colder and damper Ayrshire hills, where the rest of the Regiment was already in training for the invasion of France. By now Farnham and his companions in the crowded compartment thought they knew every muddy trail in the Glentool Forest.
Neil Rafferty had the same ready smile as always, but Farnham was certain that the newly promoted sergeant had been more affected by the experience than any of them. He was more serious, less inclined to scoff at others’ cynicism, and occasionally seemed remarkably on edge for someone previously inclined to sail through life so blithely.
The change in Mickie McCaigh was not so noticeable. He had always been cynical in a witty sort of a way, but nowadays an edge of bitterness sometimes showed through.
Ian Tobin seemed the least affected. Maybe there was a lack of depth to the Welsh lad, but Farnham felt fond of him nevertheless. He had that sort of dogged desire to do the right thing which some found intensely irritating, but which Farnham’s own family history had taught him to value.
As for himself, he had spent most of the past few weeks with the feeling that he was sleepwalking through the war. The days and nights in Italy had been intense, and the sense of anticlimax had been correspondingly profound. He couldn’t wait for France. Though at this rate, he thought, as the train reluctantly dragged itself free of Dumfries station, they would be lucky to reach London this year. These days there were many stories of soldiers spending their entire leave on the seriously overcrowded trains, arriving home just in time to set off again.
Still, Farnham thought, if it wasn’t for his sister he would just as soon spend the time on a train. He certainly had no wish to spend it with his father and stepmother.
A game of pontoon occupied the four of them until they reached Carlisle, where they had to change trains. The relevant platform was thronged with people waiting for the next London express, which was apparently already running half an hour late. This at least gave the SAS men a chance to stock up on food for the night ahead – the chances of a restaurant car were thin indeed – so, while Farnham and Tobin guarded their bags and a spot dangerously close to the platform edge, the other two purchased a mound of dubious-looking sandwiches from the station buffet. Chewing on an unidentifiable selection from the pile, Farnham gazed thoughtfully at the line of clapped-out locomotives stabled alongside a disused platform. Everything was wearing out, he thought. Germans or no Germans, this war was going to be around for a long time.
The train eventually arrived, and for the first two hours they had to make do with a crowded section of corridor, but at Preston a group of Engineers in the adjoining compartment got off. Night had now fallen on the outside world, and they had to read the names of the passing stations through the small diamond cut in the blackout screen. Inside the carriage visibility wasn’t much better, thanks to the ever-thickening fug of cigarette smoke.
It was midnight when they reached Crewe. Tobin left them there, hoping his connection to Swansea was also running late. The others watched as he was swallowed by the unlit station, feeling more than a little envious. He might not find a train but at least the buffet would be open.
Their train continued south, stopping more and more frequently, or so it seemed to Farnham, who alone in the compartment seemed unable to sleep. He woke the snoring Rafferty at Bletchley, and watched him stumble off in search of a Cambridge train, hoping that a week with his wife and baby son would restore him to his old carefree self.
An hour or so later the train finally rolled into Euston, leaving him and McCaigh to emerge, somewhat bleary-eyed, into the pale grey light of a London dawn. They breakfasted together in a crowded greasy-spoon in Eversholt Street, and then went their separate ways, McCaigh heading down into the Underground while Farnham, suffering from too many claustrophobic hours on the train, waited for a bus.
From the upper deck of the bus which carried him to Hyde Park Corner it didn’t look as if much had changed since his last brief sojourn in the capital, a couple of months before. The so-called ‘Little Blitz’ had tailed off during the past few weeks, and there were no startling new gaps in either the familiar terraces of Gower Street or the shops in Oxford Street.
He decided on impulse to walk from Hyde Park Corner, telling himself he was fed up with crowds of cheek-by-jowl humanity, but knowing in his heart that he simply wanted to delay his arrival at the house in Beaufort Gardens. Stepping through his father’s front door meant stepping out of the war, and that meant having to confront the life and family he’d left behind when he joined the Army. It meant remembering that he loathed his father.
Randolph Farnham was a sixty-two-year-old insurance tycoon who worshipped wealth, power and breeding. He’d been an admirer of the Nazis before the war, and the outbreak of hostilities had not so much changed his mind as persuaded him that it wouldn’t be wise to publicize such views. Over the past year Farnham Insurance had been more successful than most at using the small print to wriggle out of claims made by bomb-damage victims.
His wife Margaret – Farnham’s stepmother – was just as selfish and not much more likeable, but her wanton disregard of convention