A flight home. Home at last...but is it really home?
Chapter 18
She was driven to an airfield outside Lisbon that afternoon. It was a beautiful day and she should have been able to relax, but she found she was expected to sit in the footwell in the back of the car covered by a blanket, in case she was recognized. She wondered if posters of the missing English woman were already circulating, and felt a little like a mouse smelling a cat.
During the uncomfortable drive, she pondered on the new life which was about to begin for her. Perhaps she would be able to return to Elgin permanently, to help her mother run the hotel, after a delay while she was debriefed in London. Or was she getting ahead of herself? The car approached the airport and the blanket was removed. She gulped in some fresh air, and caught sight of a fixed-wing propeller-driven Breda Ba.65 parked in the sunshine on the forecourt. A sudden fear caught at her throat; if they had to fly through a war zone, would they be safe?
The pilot descended from his plane and swaggered towards her, swinging his helmet by its chinstrap. His hair was brown and curly, his face tanned and his smile revealed brilliant white teeth.
‘Good morning, I am Marco Matti, your pilot. I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Hilda Campbell,’ she said, shaking his outstretched hand.
‘My orders are to take you to England. I have the right passenger?’
‘You have indeed. Your accent seems more German than Portuguese.’ This concerned her a little, understandably, she thought, under present circumstances.
His response was to laugh. ‘Yes,' he said, 'my German is very good, as is my French, but my first language is Italian.’
Her heart missed a beat. Italy had sided with Germany on the outbreak of war.
‘I can see you're a little worried. Let me put your nerves to rest. I am Swiss, as Swiss as the pure water falling from the Matterhorn. I am well prepared for our flight with a supply of our famous Emmental cheese. You will enjoy it.’
It was hard not to be at ease with this sunny-natured man. His rotund body shape gave him a slightly comical look, and she rather thought he would be the life and soul of any party.
‘I look forward to it,’ she said, returning his smile.
He pointed at her bag. ‘Is that all your luggage?’
For a moment she thought of her abandoned shoes, clothes and possessions back in Peniche. ‘Yes. There's not much, just the essentials for travelling home.’
He lifted the bag and led the way towards the plane.
‘This is heavier than it looks. Have you brought a picnic box?’
‘It’s my oboe. I’d never go anywhere without it.’
‘If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it.’
They both laughed. ‘Twelfth Night,’ she said.
‘Lovesick Orsino, yes, in Twelfth Night.’
‘Lovesick?’
‘Me, I just love my flying,’ he said with a flamboyant bow.
She climbed the steps into the plane and eased herself into the seat behind Marco. He handed her a flying cap, and she put it on her head with the microphone in front of her mouth, then strapped herself securely into her seat.
‘Testing 1, 2, 3. Over.’
‘Receiving loud and clear, 3, 2, 1,’ she replied.
He turned round, grinning, and gave her a thumbs-up. He had probably expected her to be a rookie at telecommunications. She wondered what he’d think if she told him she was German-trained.
She glanced out of the window and saw the driver who had brought her from Lisbon running towards the plane, waving frantically. Marco drew back the cockpit hood and peered down.
‘Miss Campbell, Miss Campbell, I have just heard from the embassy. Police are making enquiries in Peniche about an English woman they believe to have drowned. Nobody has yet found her body but they have a great deal of circumstantial evidence. They are searching the coastline at present, and of course her cottage. The whole town is involved. They are very concerned. They say she was a lovely woman. English, they said.’
'Thank you for passing that on,' Hilda called. 'It's very interesting.'
Marco turned to look at her. ‘Is this a ghost I have behind me?’ he said teasingly.
‘Oh, they couldn't possibly mean me. I’m Scottish, not English,’ she said with a contented smile. Her ruse had worked, and she was free; the Germans would not come in search of her. There would be pressure on the German Embassy to recover the radio, but it looked as if enquiries were in progress which would satisfy them as to why their agent was no longer receiving messages from America.
The driver had more to tell her. ‘The police have been asked to trace another English woman who may have known the missing Miss Campbell. She might even be a suspect if Miss Campbell’s body is found.’
‘Really?’ Hilda said suddenly cold. If they linked the two women, they might conclude that she had not drowned after all.
‘I can’t say that will lead to anything.’
‘Well, you might want to tell Mr Sloan back at the embassy that there was a Miss Brackenridge who was in Lisbon, but nobody is sure where she is now.’
‘I'll certainly pass that on. Of course, they probably never knew each other. There are still a few English women around the city.’
‘Anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not English.’
‘I know. I’ve just been asked to give you this news,’ said the driver.
‘Thanks,’ she replied.
The driver gave a smart salute and turned back towards the small airport building.
‘I think it’s time to take off,' she said to Marco. 'Vamos, I think they say in this country.’
Hilda's thoughts tumbled as the engines started. Perhaps she should have gone directly to the embassy. Had she been too cautious? There were now two missing English women, though nobody would be able to identify the mysterious Miss Brackenridge. She felt she had covered her tracks sufficiently well. Only time would tell.
They taxied to the end of the runway and she saw Marco give his instruments a final check. Then a force pinned her to her seat, and moments later the nose of the plane rose and they were flying. Lisbon’s red pantiled roofs shone in the afternoon sun. The contrast with the white house walls and the speckled azure of the Atlantic was an artist’s dream.
She held the microphone close to her mouth. ‘Tell me, Marco, why is a Swiss pilot living in Lisbon and flying me to Britain?’
‘I don't live in Lisbon – my home is in Switzerland. I used to fly all over Europe with light cargo. When war was declared, I was no longer free to continue, and I was struggling to find work. I had delivered some cosmetics to Lisbon, and one of your embassy staff approached me at the airport. He told me they had a top secret mission which required a woman to be flown to Britain. I guess that’s you. So why did I do it? They paid me well. You seem to be a very precious cargo. Any more questions?’
‘Just one. How long will the flight be?’
‘We head straight north to the coast of southern Ireland, then sharp right to England. We don’t want to get too near the English Channel or the French coast. I make it a three-and-a-half-hour flight, if the wind is in our favour.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘It could delay us by as much as three-quarters of an hour. That is of course if we are not shot down.’
His tone was matter-of-fact, but the thought was a sobering one. The hair on the back of Hilda's head seemed to lift from her scalp. ‘And the likelihood of that?’
‘I’m not a betting man. But then again, I won’t fly if I don’t think I’ll make it. One thing in our favour is the Swiss flag on our tailpiece. That should give any enemies pause for thought.’
‘So the money is good and you fly under a flag of convenience. I think you have the world at your fingertips,’ she said a little mischievously
‘The flag of Switzerland is not for convenience. I have a wife and two daughters at home in Cevio. After this flight, I’ll fly back there, and I’ll work there till the war is over. We will not be partisan. It would tear our country apart. We will not fight.’
He spoke stiffly, and she was afraid she had offended him. She fell quiet for a minute or two, then asked, ‘Cevio, near Lake Como isn’t it?’ She had a vague recollection of a school geography lesson many years ago.
‘No, Cevio is north of Lake Lugano.’
She did not know Switzerland as well as Germany.
The sandwich of Swiss cheese which Marco produced an hour or so later was enough to fill her after her substantial embassy breakfast. He passed a bottle of water over his shoulder and she thanked him.
There was more. He passed her a brown paper bag, and to her amazement, she found it contained three chocolate bars.
‘These are huge. I doubt if I could eat even one of them,' she said.’
‘Then keep them in your bag. A present from Switzerland,’ he replied, his cheerful grin back in place. She was glad to see he had forgiven her earlier faux pas.
She caught a glimpse of land, but it vanished quickly under the thickening cloud. She asked Marco where they were, and he told her they had just skirted the south coast of Ireland. By the time they had crossed the Irish Sea it was dark. There seemed to be a night blackout in force; there was not a single light visible in any direction.
‘How long now?’ she asked. Surely it couldn't be far. She began to wonder where she would sleep tonight.
‘Not long. You can relax – we’re over friendly land at last. We’ll be at Northolt in less than an hour.’
‘Northolt? Where’s that?’
‘Not far from London, to the north,’ he replied.
That hour crept by at snail's pace. Hilda began to consider the possible repercussions of her year under the control of the Nazi secret services. What if no one believed her version of events? What if she was imprisoned? She was starting to wish she had never boarded this flight, never left Peniche, in fact. She could have happily lived on the cliff with Inka, sending occasional wrong co-ordinates to Berlin and claiming a faulty line. At least then she would have been acting in no one’s interest, taking no one's side. But that might have had consequences as well...
‘Ready for landing in two minutes,’ Marco announced all of a sudden, cutting into her tortuous thoughts.
She looked out of the side window. All she could see was darkness. The descent made her slightly dizzy, but at least there had been no flak or attack on their journey. And now she was home; she felt its pull, like a magnet and suddenly she was ready to face the music in whichever key it came.
The landing was jumpy. She felt the plane bounce a couple of times before the brakes slowed their progress, and she was pulled forward, restrained by the harness digging into her shoulders.
‘Well done,’ she said to Marco.
‘Not one of my finest. But we made it.’
A surge of relief shot through her. ‘So where will you go now?’ she inquired. ‘Back home to Switzerland?’
‘To Switzerland, yes, as I said. I’ll leave tomorrow night.’
‘Flying directly across Europe might be dangerous.’
‘I think so too. I’ll fly to Portugal, then east along the Mediterranean and then north to Switzerland. That should be safe.’ He turned to look at her. ‘And I have a parachute. I’ll refuel in Lisbon and see if I can find some more deliveries. None as interesting as you, I imagine,’ he laughed. ‘I don't often carry passengers, and you have been the perfect one.’
She had much to thank him for. ‘I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow, flying home,’ she said. 'Good luck.'
He responded with a nod and a thumbs-up.
‘You did not tell me about the parachutes,’ she reminded him.
‘Parachutes? You mean parachute. I only have one. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
The plane came to a halt. She unclipped her leather helmet and safety harness. The hood drew back and she took a deep breath of cool British autumn air. It felt wonderful. The tension fell away from her shoulders and she felt a warm glow of something she couldn't quite identify. Perhaps it was a sense of familiarity, of being at home, even in a town she had never visited before. Marco climbed out, and came to help her descend backwards down the short ladder. She looked over her shoulder and saw a car approach from the terminal building. She picked up her bag as it pulled up beside her. The rear window was down.
‘Hilda, welcome home,’ shouted a familiar voice.
She was very pleased indeed to see both Dynes and Thornton. They jumped out of the car and hurried forward, hands outstretched to shake hers. Their welcoming smiles reassured her: they knew which side she was really on, and that was all that mattered.
‘It’s getting late. We’ll return tomorrow at nine a.m. and we can debrief then. There is RAF accommodation here for you. Is that all right?’
‘Perfect. I have a lot to tell you, but better to do it after a good night’s sleep, I think.’
‘I’ve left a wee dram, as you might say, by your bed,’ said Dynes. 'To make sure you sleep soundly.'
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