Biggles (12 page)

She asked him in and made a fuss of him. Her parents were away, and she was living on her own with two servants. Biggles soon telephoned to Maranique for help with his aircraft, and while he waited, Marie offered lunch, which he accepted. Biggles was nineteen, and his experience of women all but non-existent. His mother's original desertion had left him shy and wary of the female sex in general; but beneath the shyness he was uncomfortably romantic, far more so than his closest friends suspected. Just as he had dreamed for years of rediscovering his beautiful lost mother, so he now dreamed of finding his perfect woman. Marie Janis filled the bill, for everything about her seemed romantic — the old farmhouse with its beams and stone floors and delicious smell of cooking, her being totally alone in this peaceful countryside in the midst of war, and also, of course, the element of chance that had brought them so romantically together.

For more than a year now, Biggles had been facing daily death, and this golden-haired young girl was offering a glimpse of happiness beyond the horror and the threat of war. Mahoney would have seen it all in very basic terms, but there was
something touching in the way this fearless veteran of the skies was so vulnerable and trusting when it came to love. Marie spoke English (although Biggles' French was excellently now) and she explained she had an English mother and a Belgian father. Where were her parents? Biggles asked. Her mother, she replied, was dead, and her beloved father had been trapped behind the German Lines and was condemned to live in Belgium, much against his will.

Biggles was sympathetic. Did she ever hear from him? She shook her head. Poor girl! He took her hand. She made it clear that she was grateful for his sympathy, and kissed him tenderly to show her gratitude. They walked through the orchard arm in arm — and by the time the car arrived from Maranique to take him back, Biggles was in love.

His whole life changed abruptly. Previously he lived for flying, but now his Sopwith Camel had a rival — Marie Janis. Instead of having dinner in the Mess and then retiring early after a rubber or two of bridge, Biggles would borrow the uncomplaining Algy's motorcycle, and go roaring off to visit her. The second time they met, he took her out to dinner at the nearby village, but usually he ate at home with her, and before long they were meeting every day. They were undisturbed, the food and wines delicious, and soon the inevitable occurred.

Biggles reproached himself for this. ‘I was a swine, Algy,' he confessed to him years later. ‘I should have had more self-control, and more respect for her.' But as one looks at the photograph of Marie Janis, one rather wonders if either would have saved him. The lovely Marie obviously knew what she was doing when she admitted Biggles to her bed. Whether Biggles did, one doubts.

Nobody knows much about Biggles as a lover. No letters that he wrote survive, and all his friends are too discreet to tell the truth — even if they know it. He was certainly extremely sentimental. He was good-looking and had stamina above the average. Those brief dramatic rages he expended on the enemy when his blood was up show that beneath the Boy Scout manner he was emotional and even passionate. And as he was taught the arts of love by this gifted Belgian girl, several years his senior, it would seem probable that the picture we have of Biggles as the sexless man of action is inaccurate.

All this is supposition. What is undeniable is that for several
weeks Biggles and Marie were lovers. Then the first shadows started to obscure their happiness. To start with they were nothing very much — the vaguest questions and most generalised inquiries. ‘Where did you fly this morning,
mon chéri?
' and ‘Where was the Squadron yesterday that you were twenty minutes late in visiting your Marie?' Biggles was as aware of the demands of strict security as the next man, but in his slightly fuddled state he put these questions down as part of her adorable concern for him. Then even he began to grow suspicious.

By now she had started asking him quite detailed questions in which no ordinary young Belgian girl in her right mind could have been interested — ‘Biggles, darling, what is the operational ceiling of the Sopwith Camel with a supercharged Bentley rotary engine?' or ‘My beloved, when will you be receiving this new combat plane, what is it called, the Sopwith Snipe?' Biggles tried to put the dreadful thought behind him, but soon it could be ignored no longer. Either Marie was preternaturally concerned with aeronautics — or she was a spy.

It shows how deeply Biggles was in love — or at any rate infatuated with her dimpled body — that even then he did his best to dodge the truth. He would give non-committal answers, bring her tender gifts, and hope that this growing nightmare in his private life would go away. Of course it didn't, and when things had reached the point where Marie would actually refuse to make love unless she received the information she required, Biggles decided he must act.

Several times their conversation had got round to the question of her father — how much she missed him, how sad it was he couldn't cross the Lines, and where he was living now. Finally, Marie explained that as far as she knew he was still in his old family home, the Château Boreau, near a small village called Vinard.

‘A pity that you can't communicate with him,' said Biggles. Tears filled her lovely eyes.

‘Perhaps I could help,' he said. ‘We often fly that way. It shouldn't be too difficult to drop him a message.'

‘But wouldn't it be dangerous, dearest one?'

‘A little — but if it made my darling happy, it would be worth it.'

‘You would do that for me?' she whispered.

‘Anything at all,' he answered with a sigh.

And so it was all arranged. Marie would write a letter to her father, and Biggles on his next patrol would drop it on the Château Boreau. He could have been forgiven even now if he had dropped the letter without telling anyone and made the most of Marie's gentle gratitude when he returned.

But when it was a choice between his country and the woman he loved, Biggles was not a man to take the easy way. His duty was self-evident. That same night Marie gave him a letter for her father, written in her forward-sloping hand on purple paper, Biggles returned to Maranique, then telephoned Colonel Raymond at Wing Headquarters.

It was late, well past one o'clock, but the Colonel rarely slept, and within the hour had driven all the way to Maranique. Biggles explained the situation — not without embarrassment — but the Colonel was an understanding man at heart, and something of a man of the world himself.

‘Dashed tricky situation for you, Bigglesworth,' he said. ‘But you have acted as I hope that I would myself. Let's see the letter.'

As Biggles took it from his pocket his heart was beating. Colonel Raymond deftly steamed it open, then studied it for several minutes with his magnifying glass. Finally he nodded.

‘As I thought,' he said. ‘The bitch has used invisible ink — the oldest trick in the business.'

‘Sir,' said Biggles, ‘I would rather that you didn't speak of her like that.'

The Colonel was about to mutter something, but thought better of it.

“Sorry Bigglesworth,' he said. ‘Shouldn't have said that to a brother officer. All the same, this Mademoiselle Janis is obviously a spy. To tell the truth, we've had our eye on her for quite some time, but never have been able to prove a thing. You realise of course what this Château Boreau is?'

Biggles shook his head.

‘Headquarters of German Field Intelligence. Now listen carefully. I think our backroom boys should do a little work on this letter to the so-called Monsieur Janis. Change things around a bit, and then you can deliver it exactly as arranged.'

‘And what about Marie?' said Biggles, suddenly concerned. ‘You'd not do anything to her?'

‘Course not, Bigglesworth. We're not like the Huns. We don't shoot women spies – at least, not if we can help it.'

But even as he spoke, there was something steely in the Colonel's glance that made Biggles realise the dreadful danger that was threatening Marie. For whatever she had done, whatever she had planned to do, he loved her still.

Next morning Biggles was off extra early on his dawn patrol. Algy flew with him for a while, but at a signal the two fliers parted, and Biggles turned north, towards the frontier and the little village of Vinard. He had no difficulty locating the Château Boreau. It was a red-brick building with a pointed, high slate roof. Biggles flew round it once at little more than 200 feet. At first there was no sign of life, then an old man tottered out across the lawn and waved. Biggles zoomed down towards him, then took the letter from his pocket, kissed it tenderly, and threw it from the cockpit with a weight attached to bring it down to earth. He saw it flutter down and the old man picked it up.

All the way back to Base Biggles was in a state of turmoil. What on earth should he do?

As a stern patriot, he should clearly let the woman that he loved go off to face the punishment she had richly earned. But, even as he thought of this, he pictured the grim smile on Colonel Raymond's face — and a firing squad at dawn. It was unthinkable, and yet he knew for certain now that this would happen to Marie unless he acted. He also knew that if she died he would be responsible, and that he could never live with such remorse.

He was back in Maranique in time for a late and somewhat dismal breakfast. Algy had landed ahead of him, and Mahoney was already telling him about his previous night's exploits with some girl he had picked up in town. By an uncomfortable coincidence, she too was called Marie. It was a very common name, but it was enough to make Biggles' mind up for him, and without waiting for his toast and marmalade he dashed back to his quarters, and five minutes later was once more in the air, and flying north. He had not far to go, and within ten minutes he was flying over the all too painfully familiar roof of Marie's house. There was the orchard where he had kissed her, the white front door, the bedroom window which had witnessed the happiest moments of his life. He circled low around the house, and
suddenly the front door opened. Marie appeared. She was wearing the dress he loved — a blue and white creation that showed of her splendid bosom to perfection. Recognising Biggles' aircraft, she waved happily, but instead of waving back, he dropped a note. An hour later, when two men from Colonel Raymond's secretariat arrived to pick her up for questioning, Marie Janis had already left.

If Colonel Raymond had his own suspicions over what had happened, he kept them to himself. ‘First rate, Bigglesworth,' he said, ‘I realise how difficult it was for you, but the spy ring's broken up, and a lot of useless information has been fed to German Field Intelligence in that letter you delivered to the Château Boreau. Rather a pity that the bird herself had flown by the time we went to pick her up. Still, possibly it was just as well. Always a nasty business, having to deal with women.' And Biggles, who could still imagine that beloved face, eyes bandaged, facing twelve British rifles in a prison yard at dawn, silently agreed.

A few days later, Biggles received a letter. There was no address, and the postmark was obscure. Inside was a sheet of purple paper, and he recognised the writing instantly.

‘Thank you my darling Biggles. What a pity that this beastly war has come between us, but we will meet again, never fear. All my love, Marie.'

Biggles' decisiveness, his self-control and his ability to think clearly in a crisis, were not lost on Colonel Raymond, and it was shortly after the Marie Janis business that Biggles finally threw in his lot with the British Secret Service. It was something that he was always reticent about. This was partly habit — no secret agent worth his salt feels happy throwing off the veil of secrecy. But in Biggles' case, I feel that there was something more than this, a real contradiction that ran through his character and troubled him.

For the fact was that Biggles, thanks to heredity and the strange traumas and training of his childhood, was ideally suited to being a spy. Even as a child he had learned to mask his feelings from his father. His adventures in the jungles and bazaars of India had taught him to blend into any background and had
given him a taste for secrecy and personal adventure. Then, as he had to accommodate himself to life at Malton Hall, Biggles the loner was again disguising all his fantasies and feelings in his desperate attempts to conform in a minor English public school.

This was what Colonel Raymond — with uncanny insight — must have realised. What he failed to see was the other side of Biggles, the side of him Algy Lacey called ‘the good Boy Scout' — the fearless, incorruptible, straight-talking character who pretended to be far simpler than he was. This side of Biggles was at its best in the middle of a dogfight, for as he once said, ‘A Camel, blue skies and plenty of Huns are the height of my ambition, and I hope to find them all in France.'

Generally he did, but early in the spring of 1918 he became crucially involved in the strange adventure with the British Secret Service which took him away from 266 for several months, months during which he found himself playing the distasteful part of a double agent against the background of the Middle East. He played it brilliantly, as one can see from Captain Johns' account of the mission which he entitled — somewhat to Biggles' chagrin it appears —
Biggles Flies East.
Indeed, Biggles became enrolled in that exclusive band of British agents who have actually been awarded an Iron Cross by the Germans. But Biggles would always shy away from telling us about the affair. ‘Messy business,' he would say, and light a cigarette as if the whole adventure were discreditable. For him perhaps it was, but in fact it probably did more to help the Allied war effort than any of his battles in the skies. That might have worried him as well.

Biggles' part in the affair rested originally on his close resemblance to an Englishman called Brunow, who not long before was cashiered from the R.F.C., and had made contact with the enemy to work as a German spy. Colonel Raymond, who had been observing Brunow closely since his disgrace, finally convinced the members of the British Air Staff Intelligence of the possibilities of substituting one of his own men for Brunow — and selected Biggles for the task.