My Mother, the Spy Pt. 02

We kept to the fields as much as possible but the nearer we got, the harder it became. I spoke very little French and no German at all so if I had been questioned I would be in deep trouble. Gordon was fortunately fluent in both.

Our contact left us on the outskirts of the city after telling us the directions and the shop Alice was being sheltered in.

The roads were dimly lit which helped in our task, we dashed from street to street trying to keep to alleyways as much as possible avoiding patrols.

We were within 3-4 minutes of the shop when we were spotted by a small patrol of six soldiers. They shouted a warning to us to stop where we were. Gordon said, "Dump the guns over that hedge quick."

As the soldiers approached he stepped forward and started to speak in German, four held back and two came over to us. When they got to within 10 yards when he whispered "It's not good. When I tell you to, run you go as fast as you can. Do not look back, just go."

He put his hand into his coat pocket, "GO!"

He pulled a pistol and shot the first soldier point blank, before he got off the second shot I ducked into a side-street and ran. I heard machine gun fire and a scream, I kept running. God was with me that day because I almost ran onto the shop that said Lamberts Shoes. I ducked into the entrance to the shop trying the door. I was panicking now shaking at the door and again as luck would have it, it was open. I ran inside locking the door behind me, the shop keeper had just unlocked one minute previously and was shocked at my entry. He held his hands above his head thinking I was there to rob him. I tried my best to make him understand in my broken French but to no avail.

The curtain at the back of the shop moved, and averting my glance to it I saw a hand move it aside and my heart leapt. It was Alice.

She flew from the curtain calling my name, I had so many emotions filling my head as I saw her cross that short distance towards me. She held her arms wide, her smile was my Alice but her stomach was swollen beyond belief. I stood routed to the spot. She hit me and knocked me against the door, it shook me to my senses.

"Hide Alice, we have to hide quick, the soldiers!"

She knew instantly what to do even with all this going on, her training kicked in and she dragged me behind the curtain telling Monsieur Lambert in no uncertain terms what to do. Madam Lambert hurried us thorough into the coal cellar and dumped buckets of coal on top of us telling us to be deathly quiet.

I pulled Alice into my arms under that coal pile, so close that I could feel her heart beating. All thoughts of her infidelity has gone from my head, I had my love, my Alice in my arms. I think we laid there dead still and as quiet as the grave not daring to even talk for nearly an hour before Madam Lambert rescued us. Alice's face was smothered in coal dust but it did not stop me from smothering her in kisses.

I had her back and would die before letting her go again.

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The Lamberts put us up for a couple more days but it was getting too dangerous for them, troops were searching house by house, store by store for the escaped man. It was decided that we would be smuggled out to a nearby farm then on to a convent 15 miles away.

Alice was close to her term now and it was a struggle for her, as much as I resented the fact that she hand been disloyal I still loved her deeply. She told me the father was killed protecting her and was the leader of the local resistance. I didn't tell her I knew who he was and that she had married him. There was too much conflict going on around us and I didn't need it to distract us by me telling her that I knew. I had bigger things to worry about than her indiscretions, I had to get us home alive.

We made it to the farm easy enough, far easier than I thought we would to be honest. There were a few provisions to help us on our trip, it would probably take a couple of days. It was hard enough going over the terrain as it was, but with a heavily pregnant woman it was almost impossible.

We rested when we could, trying our best to avoid all contact with anyone. That first night under the stars laying on our backs in a corn field with my wife back in my arms was lovely apart from that bump that came between us.

We reached the outer walls of the convent early on a bright Tuesday morning, the sun was rising above the convent and it looked like a sign. One of the nuns came to help us inside.

Alice had done amazingly well to make it this far, she had been having contractions for the last half mile of our journey and gave birth to a daughter that afternoon. She named her Heidi.

I cared for both my wife and her baby for the next four days until one of the nuns said it was too dangerous for us to stay. A tank division had camped up two miles further down the road and were busily searching local dwellings for resistance fighters and spies. There was no doubt that we would be shot if they found us there.

She had a terrible choice to make, to take the baby and very likely get caught and shot. Or leave the baby and have a better chance for both us her. The choice was an horrific one to make, but it was the only one we could make. It was to leave the baby with the nuns.

She was distraught and no matter what I thought of her infidelity and my cuckolding, my heart bled for her. I had never witnessed such despair before, I had to drag her from the convent sobbing.

We slept rough anywhere we could for the rest of the week, scrounging food and water wherever we could steal it from. The border to France was a lot easier than we would have imagined, no guards but we still went around it to be safe. Two more days without incident and we should hit the French coast.

I had to coax Alice along the whole way because she was still sore from the birth and her head was all over the place. We were nearly caught a few times because she seemed to just want to give up. I kept pumping into her that she needed to survive for Heidi, we needed to get home and think how to get Heidi back to England. This seemed to help settle her a little.

Alice knew of a little cove east of Calais and up the coast where illegal fishing boats still tried to ply their trade. The Germans knew about it but the local governors took kickbacks to turn a blind eye. She managed to persuade one of the skippers to smuggle us to the other side of the channel on the promise of a big reward of £1000 from the government. This was a fortune to him and he agreed after taking my watch and whatever cash I still had on me.

He hid us under a ton of fishing nets, they stunk but it was only until we were out to sea a few miles. It was him and his two sons, their mother had died when the Germans invaded. £1000 would get the family through the war.

Later that day we saw the old light house at Dungeness shining brightly like a beacon guiding us home. He and his sons had been arguing about something for the second half of our trip over, it became apparent that the two sons wished to go with us. In the end the skipper took us in as far as he could onto Greatstone beach and all five of us jumped overboard.

We scrambled up the beach and into a local pub. The landlord let me use the phone and I rang home. My dad told me later that my mother nearly collapsed at the sound of my voice, he made arrangements to take care of our fishing crew. We hitched on a hay wagon to Lydd airfield and from there flew on to Biggin hill.

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It took Alice months to come to terms with losing Heidi, she stayed at her parents while I stayed at mine at her preference. We still saw each other regularly but we didn't move in together for nearly a year. I felt she needed time and space even though it was breaking my heart not to be with her. We talked every day on the phone and her mum kept me informed on her wellbeing.

It seemed to me that my feelings were being put aside and I became a bit resentful. Did she even want me anymore? My flying days were now over too and I was discharged from active duty once Mr. Clarke had put my paperwork through.

I did small jobs to begin with, more like errands for him. I was seeing more of Alice now as the year went on and her mother let me know that Alice really did love me, she spoke of me often to her and wished things had been different. She was just finding it hard to cope.

A few weeks later to show their gratitude for what Alice did for her country, one day Tommy Clarke turned up in a bright red Morgan sports car. He told me to jump in and we would go and get Alice.

When we got there she was ready and waiting, he gave me the keys saying "It is yours but only room for two I am afraid. Alice's mum will take care of me."

He gave me another set of keys, house keys this time with an address in East Grinstead attached.

"This is yours too, with His Majesties gratitude to you both."

The house was a three bedroom cottage in a leafy lane near to the hospital I had been in a few years ago. It was beautiful with white picket fences and a garage for the car surrounded by green fields. We moved in as man and wife the next day, Alice was happy but she needed to get her daughter.

Unfortunately no matter how we begged, the ministry would not sanction it, not until war was over.

It was nearly two more years of war before it was finally over, in those two years we did our best to get back what we had before. Although the lingering doubt was always in my mind and I found it hard to shake that feeling, would she have come back to me if Harry had not died that day. I had that horrible doubt for many years to come.

She did her very best to allay those fears, and many times told me that she loved me with every fiber of her being saying that she was mine and only mine. She was truthful to me about her time at war, she did have the courage to say that she loved Harry in the time they spent together. He protected her and ultimately died for her to live, how could she not have loved him. I hated hearing that but I had to respect it.

From that day forward we told each other every day, until the day she died that we loved each other and I learned to live with being the other man she truly loved.

I didn't truly understand the damage done to her until we lived together. The real and total grief of losing Heidi, the cold sweats and nightmares. The hardest thing for me was hearing her call out in her sleep for Harry, I am ashamed to say I was jealous of a ghost.

I spoke to her mother and she told me of the long, terrible nights cuddling her daughter to sleep. I knew she had had it bad in Belgium, but Alice had not shared with me of the gang rapes and extent of the torture at the hands of the Gestapo. Alice was trying in her own way to protect me from her horrors, she never did understand that I was more than willing to share those horrors with her.

I was more upset that I thought possible I when I heard all this, I blamed myself for not being there to protect her. Someone else had taken my role and won her love because of it.

Through those talks with her mum I did begin to understand why she needed companionship and comfort in those dark days though. It had been easier for me because I had my friends and family all around me throughout the war, she didn't.

I never really asked much about Harry, even in later years I didn't want to know. II hated him and resented the fact that he had taken advantage of her situation. Even though he had saved her life I still hated him.

The year after the war was over in late November 1946, we went back to Belgium and to the convent. Alas it was gone, the shell was still standing but it was ruin. She sobbed into the crook of my neck, it was all I could do to hold her from falling to the ground.

Locals told us that the nuns had been there until a fire earlier that summer, they remembered a small beautiful blond girl that came to the village to get groceries with mother superior. It must have been Heidi, but no-one knew where she had gone. Alice was again heartbroken.

I did my best to make Alice happy throughout our long marriage and she tried her best to push what had happened to her into a box in her mind, but it was always a dark specter waiting to emerge.

We both stayed with British Intelligence for the next 20 years or so and was even invited to Checkers once in 1954 to meet Mr. Churchill. He gave Alice a medal and a telegram from the new Queen thanking Alice for the work she had done in the war. Mr. Churchill joked about the girl he had met years ago in Whitehall, Alice was shocked that he had remembered her after all this time. We sat talking with him and taking tea for over an hour, Alice used this time to ask if he could help with the search for her daughter. He said he would try but we never heard anything back. Alice had used every contact she had to find her daughter, alas it was all in vain.

It took us a long time because of the careers we had chosen but we had our own child in the spring of 1963, Alice was in her early forties so was old in those days to be a mother again. It changed her, it completely changed her. She became softer and her work came to an abrupt end. I guess she wanted to give the love to our child that she could never give to Heidi. Mary and Billy came along 18 months later, twins.

We were complete and very happy. It was midnight 3rd of January 78 that turned our world upside down again. We received a call from a doctor in Cornwall, Alice's only sister Lizzy and her husband had been killed in a car crash. Their two year old baby had survived them, we were her only next of kin.

We used my contacts and Alice was flown down to the government base just outside of Bude the next morning. Three days later she came home with baby Alice, her sister had named her after her hero older sister. We adopted her and brought her into our loving family. Our eldest Sally took an instant shine to her new sister, she mothered her like she was her very own child. They grew a strong bond that they shared all their lives.

Alice had given up ever finding Heidi when our home phone rang one sunny Sunday afternoon a few years later just after lunch. I knew something was wrong because she closed the door of the den two minutes after the call started.

I poked my head in some twenty minutes later to check on her but she waved me to leave and shut the door.

She came out nearly an hour later, tears rolling down her cheeks. I feared the worst but she had a joyful look on her face, I rushed to her to ask what it was. She said one word.

"Heidi."

I pushed her back into the den and closed the door behind us.

"It was Heidi." She whispered in pure happiness, but it was clear Alice was in shock. I helped her into an armchair and sat beside her.

She told me Heidi was living in France and that she had her own family now. She wanted to go and meet her, she was excited beyond belief. For me it brought back all those memories of her life with Harry, I put on a front but inside I was sad. This might destroy my family.

Alice wanted to go to Paris to see her daughter, to my eternal shame I tried to discourage it and we had arguments for the next few days. It was agreed that we keep the children in the dark over this but they saw us arguing and it caused tensions. We had never discussed our times in the war with our kids, there was never any reason to. This might bring it all up and I did not want that.

Over the next few months Alice talked to Heidi over the phone at least 2-3 times a week and a meeting was agreed on.

Alice spent a couple of days in Paris, she met her daughter in a small café off the Champs-Elysees. They exchanged stories how Heidi's life had been growing up in Belgium and France.

I did not know the full extent of her meeting but Alice came home a changed woman, she seemed to have reverted to the same 19 year old carefree girl I met so long ago. She was full of the fruits of life again, it was wonderful.

We still had major disagreements over telling our children about their extended family. I was too insecure to let them know their mother had loved someone else, I regret that choice now but have had to live with it.

Alice died last year, she only got to meet her daughter that one time. That was down to my stubbornness and jealousy, I was so wrong to have forced that on her and it caused resentment in our last years together. She wrote diaries of her time in Europe, I only found them after her death. I wished with all my heart I had never found them, they spoke of her love for Harry. I couldn't bring myself to burn them so I boxed it all up and hid it in the loft.

I feel so alone now and wished I could have acted differently. But I have four wonderful children with grandchildren that keep me going, I love them dearly.

I have had a good and productive life but want it over now, I don't want to go on without my Alice. She was the best thing that ever happened to me and I'll love her until I take my dying breath.

The End.