Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (8 page)

PT stifled a laugh as Marc explained in a whisper. ‘We did it on the farm where I used to work. The cow gets put in a little pen, then Henri the bull comes in. His penis blows up until it’s about a foot long and he shoves it right inside her.’

‘A bull’s thing is a foot long?’ Paul gasped. ‘But why would Henderson do something like that?’

PT found Paul’s innocence hysterical. He couldn’t control his laughter and had to back off down the corridor.

‘This is private,’ Rosie said. ‘We shouldn’t be watching. Especially you, Paul.’

She gave Paul a tug but he was determined not to look weak in front of the older boys and as he pulled away from her his shoe squealed on the hallway floor. Henderson’s head turned sharply towards the noise.

‘Goddammit,’ he shouted, steaming towards the door with one hand holding up his trousers. ‘What the hell are you playing at out there?’

PT was out of sight and took to the stairs, but the three younger kids didn’t have time to scarper and looked worried as Henderson closed in. He shook his fist as they shrivelled into the hallway.

‘Shoo!’ he yelled furiously. ‘If I catch any of you spying on me again I’ll take a switch and thrash your arses raw.’

The quartet was in fits of giggles as they poured back into the garden.

‘The dirty old sod,’ Rosie said indignantly. ‘He’s got a wife back in England too.’

*

Paul slept for most of the afternoon and was woken by Maxine stroking his face.

‘You OK?’ she asked gently.

Paul’s eyes were gluey and dancing shadows on the wall told him that the sun had dropped behind the tall trees out front. Maxine was beautiful in a rather severe way, while her height and taste for dark clothes gave her the air of a movie star who only got to play baddies.

‘Better for a sleep,’ Paul yawned, before remembering what he’d seen immediately prior to his nap and drawing an anxious breath. ‘I’m sorry we spied on you. I know it was rude.’

Maxine stroked his hair. ‘It’s natural for children to be curious. Charles has made some dinner, so go wash your face and hands.’

PT and Marc sat at a mahogany dining table while Rosie helped Henderson carry plates dished up with an English-style roast: a chicken wrapped in bacon, with roast potatoes and local vegetables. Although food was short in cities and towns this was mainly down to transport problems. Food remained in plentiful supply to a well-connected local like Maxine.

‘Warm up the radio,’ Henderson said, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ll catch the seven o’clock news.’

Paul reached out and switched on an elderly radiogram in a huge wooden cabinet. The valves that amplified the sound took a minute to warm up. Maxine allowed the kids a single glass of wine and there was light conversation and light music until the Radio Paris bugle blasted seven o’clock. The station had fallen under Nazi control and its broadcasts now had an unsubtle pro-German bias.

‘,’ the newsreader said urgently. ‘
Good evening, France
This is Radio Paris. News has reached us this evening of the greatest naval defeat since Trafalgar. Despite a personal guarantee from Adolf Hitler that the French fleet could continue to operate independently in the defence of our colonies, the British Navy today surrounded our Atlantic fleet at Mers-El-Kebir in North Africa and attacked mercilessly. Fifteen-inch guns from the battleships
Hood
and
Valiant
opened fire without warning, slaughtering thousands of innocent French sailors
…’

‘I need to hear the other side of that story,’ Henderson said, shooting backwards in his chair before realising that Paul was much closer. ‘Paul, tune the BBC up, right now.’

Paul moved the dial as quickly as he could, but BBC France was broadcast from London and its signal was always weak. Everyone stepped away from their food and struggled to pick out words between bursts of static.

‘
In a statement to the BBC, Prime Minister Winston Churchill this evening expressed his sadness at the tragic loss of a small number of French sailors who had fought alongside their British allies for the past year. However, he stressed that the French fleet was a risk to British interests in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the French fleet had been amply warned and her ships were given sufficient time for crews to disembark before the Royal Navy opened fire
.’

When the broadcast ended Marc scowled at Henderson. ‘Why are you Brits sinking French ships? What have we ever done to you?’

Maxine was more sympathetic to the British cause. ‘It’s not that simple, Marc. Hitler isn’t trustworthy. He’s reneged on every agreement he’s ever made and the only thing the British can count on right now is their dominance of the sea.’

Paul couldn’t resist taunting Marc. ‘French army got creamed by the Germans. Now your navy gets blasted out of the sea by us Brits. Face it, France is rubbish at everything.’

Marc was no great patriot, except when a foreigner taunted him. ‘You wanna see what this piece of French rubbish does when his fist encounters your front teeth?’

‘We’re half-French, Paul,’ Rosie noted diplomatically.

‘You lot, down!’ Maxine ordered. ‘Otherwise I’ll take your plates and send you up to bed.’
calm

Henderson sat himself back at the head of the table, ignoring his food and drumming his fork on the mahogany. It was several minutes before he spoke decisively.

‘Maxine, how badly damaged was the radio transmitter you rescued from the consulate?’

‘It fell from a tabletop when the bomb hit the jeweller’s shop,’ she explained. ‘Several valves shattered and the metal casing took a dent, but I’d say it’s fixable with some new valves and a bit of soldering.’

Henderson nodded. ‘I need to re-evaluate my strategy. After France fell so easily I thought Churchill was posturing: trying to make the best of things before making a diplomatic settlement with Germany. But destroying the French fleet like that shows that they’re really in for the long haul.’

Maxine didn’t look convinced. ‘But the Germans have swept everyone aside. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Denmark and now France. What chance does Britain have?’

PT butted in. ‘It’s not just Britain though. There’s the whole British Empire: Canada, Australia, India, half of Africa. Britain has eight times as many battleships as the Germans.’

‘But the Germans rule the skies,’ Marc said. ‘I travelled from Beauvais all the way down to here. The Germans were bombing the hell out of everything and I didn’t see one British plane. Not
one
.’

Henderson looked at Maxine. ‘Are you taking food into the shelter tomorrow?’

Maxine nodded. ‘I’ll take your van if that’s OK. Do you need a ride?’

‘I’ll take a look at the radio tonight,’ Henderson said. ‘If it looks fixable I’ll go into Bordeaux tomorrow morning and try finding some tools and parts. Any radio communication that I make is a risk: it could give our location away to the Germans. But I’m quite possibly the only British agent operating in France right now and the government may need me.’

‘What about us though?’ Rosie asked nervously. ‘I thought you said we were lying low until Paul was well enough and then we’d try crossing over the mountains into Spain.’

‘I know what I said,’ Henderson said irritably. ‘I’ve no plans to abandon you, but you’re perfectly safe here and the British Government may need a job doing before we leave the country.’

Maxine’s Jaguar was a thirsty beast and with fuel hard to come by they drove into Bordeaux in the small truck Henderson had stolen in the south of Paris a few weeks earlier. Maxine and Rosie sat up front and Henderson rattled around with Marc in a cargo compartment that also contained two wicker hampers stuffed with eggs and vegetables.

The British had ordered Maxine to destroy any sensitive documents and close the consulate. She obeyed the first part of this order, but ignored the second and on her own initiative reopened the offices as an unofficial refuge and missing children’s bureau.

The rooms upstairs, including the consul’s wood-panelled banqueting suite, now housed children who were mostly aged five and under, while the kitchen that once prepared food for local dignitaries specialised in warm milk and toddler-sized meals.

The chaotic exodus south had split thousands of children from their families. Thirty kids lived on the consulate’s first and second floors, while two hundred others, ranging from babies to young teens, were divided amongst local church halls, private homes and classrooms. Some had got lost amidst the chaos, while others had seen mothers and siblings killed or horrifically injured in bomb blasts.

There was a shortage of everything from food and clothes to bedding and medical supplies. After carrying the food hampers in from the truck, Rosie hurried upstairs to be greeted by a bunch of surprisingly cheerful youngsters, who hugged her legs and begged her to play games.

Maxine had recruited several women refugees, who looked after the children in return for regular food and a safe place to sleep. Caring for so many youngsters in a space not designed for them was hard work, but Rosie mucked in with the washing, feeding and laundering.

Rosie had grown to know the kids over the past two weeks, but looking after them was exhausting and at times she hated it. Several of the children were ill and after all they’d been through it was only natural that several sets of pee-stained sheets had to be washed each morning. But Rosie continued to grieve for her own father and the work gave her life some purpose.

Other parts of the job were more pleasant. On bright afternoons she’d take a group of five kids to chase around the grounds of a nearby church and once in a while she’d witness a minor miracle: an auntie or mother turning up and taking one of the children away.

Maxine worked downstairs in the offices. She kept records on every missing child in the Bordeaux area and published a list of children and adults who’d lost track of someone. Each day the long list was typed on to stencils, then duplicated on a hand-cranked Mimeograph machine.

After lunch she’d walk around town putting up copies in a dozen prominent locations such as the main railway station, police stations and churches. In many spots Maxine’s list was met by a crowd, anxious to check if the names of missing relatives had been added.

Her final stop was the local newspaper, which printed new additions to the list and occasionally found space for a story with a happy ending.

*

There were several radio repair shops in Bordeaux, but Henderson judged that the one situated in the docks would be used to repairing maritime transmitters and more likely to stock the items he’d need to repair the consul’s radio transmitter.

The situation around the port was even grimmer than three weeks earlier. Several coal barges had arrived enabling the backlog of ships to sail, but there was still a shortage of fuel for trucks, and the railways had been crippled in the final phase of German bombing. This left mountains of goods rotting on the dockside with no route to market.

The Germans wanted France to return to normality and asked refugees to go back home, but people faced the same transport problems as the produce and German military needs were given priority on the few trains that ran.

The presence of food in the docks also attracted thousands more hungry refugees. They were short of fresh water and without shelter or toilet facilities, so the streets stank in the summer heat and it was only a matter of time before typhoid or cholera broke out.

As Marc stepped down from Henderson’s stolen truck, the refugees sprawled out in doorways seemed barely human. Some kept clean by washing in the sea, but many had given up all pretence of decency. If you were healthy you could head out into the country and steal from farms, or start making your way home on foot. Those who stayed around the docks tended to be old, sick or burdened with several children.

Radio Maritime had a conspicuously modern shopfront in a street of seedy bars and hostels. The front door had been boarded over following one of the many bomb blasts around the docks, but a sign pointed to a side entrance down an alleyway and Henderson was pleased to discover a large workshop and storage shed.

‘Should stock plenty of spares in a joint like this,’ he noted.

Henderson knocked on the steel door, but had already begun sizing it up for a break-in when a bolt finally thunked across the inside. A young man opened it and as he let Henderson and Marc inside it became clear that a club foot had kept him out of the army.

‘I was down in the basement,’ the young assistant said apologetically. ‘I keep the door locked because you get people wandering in, wanting food or begging to use the toilet. Not that the toilet even works now. There’s so many refugees out there that all the sewers are backed up.’

Henderson pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his jacket. ‘I need to replace a couple of valves. Got the part numbers written down here.’

The assistant sucked air between his teeth. ‘Not a valve on the shelf, I’m afraid. Valves are fragile beasts and when the bombing started we had more repair work than we could handle. Once the Boche
⁴
arrived they came and took what little stock we had left to repair military equipment.’

‘Figures,’ Henderson said sourly. ‘I suppose that means nobody else in town will have any either?’

‘You suppose right, sir. I can’t even sell you one of the new sets in the window because they’ve all been stripped out. With no parts, the only work I can do right now is cannibalising: making one good set if you bring in a pair of damaged ones.’

‘And I don’t suppose you’ve kept any stock back for a customer who can pay a good price?’ Henderson asked.

The assistant shrugged. ‘You know, my father owns this shop. He said I should have tried to keep a couple back from the Boche. But when two big uniforms with guns came through the door and started ripping stuff off the shelves I didn’t fancy playing the hero for the sake of a few glass tubes.’

Henderson looked deeply disappointed. ‘Supposing a man to have a valve, is there anywhere he might get one?’
had