“I’m Osgood Protheroe, Caitrin’s fiancé,” a third voice announced to make matters even more confusing. She had no fiancé.
“I’m just the driver and don’t know her at all,” said a fourth voice in a broad Cockney accent. “But I’m not waiting in the car to perish. It’s cold enough out there to freeze the balls off a snooker table.”
She heard arguments between PC Hardy and the men, in which she was declared to have severe claustrophobia that would no doubt be triggered by the tiny room, followed by impassioned pleas for her very life from her “fiancé” guaranteed to thaw the coldest heart. Hardy finally agreed to a visit of a few minutes; the door was unlocked; the men flooded in and filled the room. They all wore heavy RAF overcoats with raised collars, hats, gloves, and tightly wound scarves.
“Dear sister,” the man who purported to be Dafydd said. He looked nothing like her brother. He sported a tremendous handlebar mustache, had an eye patch and a healthy tan. Also very unlike Dafydd, this man had a proud Father Christmas stomach. He wrapped his arms around her and said in an overly loud Yorkshire-accented voice, “There, there now, lass, don’t go fretting. Right as rain soon enough.”
The other men surrounded her, all with grand mustaches and one carrying an extra overcoat, “because the lass must be freezing,” and there were murmurings of sympathy as Hardy watched from outside the room. Not that he could see much with the men crowded in such a small space.
Their concern finally satisfied, they filed out of the room, leaving Caitrin curled up on the bed and wrapped in the spare overcoat.
“Thank you, PC Hardy. The lass is right cold and weary,” “Dafydd” said. “Best leave her alone to sleep ’til morning.”
Hardy nodded in agreement, closed and locked the door, turned out the light, and ushered the men out. Not until the next morning would he discover Caitrin had magically metamorphosed overnight into an RAF student pilot who said he had lost his memory, had no idea where he was, and remembered only his name: Nigel Pendlebury.
* * *
The night bombing raid lasted hours, and while the spire, the tower, and the outer wall remained, the rest of Coventry Cathedral lay in ruins. Churchill and Thompson navigated their way through the still-smoking rubble.
“First built in the fourteenth century, Thompson,” Churchill growled. “The town center is gone too, all medieval buildings.”
“It’s a crying shame, Sir.”
“It is that,” Churchill said and gave a wry, twisted smile. “Of course they’ll blame it all on the Germans, but the city council tore much of it down before the war because they wanted a modern city. Now, for their collective sins, they’ll get one and later, presumably wiser, will lament the loss.”
He stopped, straightened, and turned slowly on his heel to survey the devastated cathedral. “We’ve lost Wren churches in London, almost lost St. Paul’s to incendiaries, and now this. How like the Germans to negotiate by beating you over the head.”
“Negotiate?”
“They still promise to stop if we call an armistice. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet,” he said and stopped, surprised at his own words. “I like that and may use it in the near future. Mr. Hitler, the failed Austrian painter and Charlie Chaplin impersonator, does not understand he is not just attacking us, he is fighting tradition and hundreds of years of stalwart Englishmen. From this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered. What news of Operation Cat?”
Thompson took a sheet of paper from his pocket and offered it to the prime minister.
“Read it to me,” Churchill said as he poked at a piece of charred wood with his cane.
“We have had numerous sightings of the Welsh woman.”
“She has a name, Thompson.”
“Miss Colline.”
“How many sightings?”
“Eighty-three.”
“The Welsh always were fleet of foot, but that’s exceptionally agile, even for her. What places? Examples.”
Thompson stretched out his arm to bring the paper into focus. “Includes Ramsgate, Holyhead, Tooting, Birmingham, the Isle of Wight, and Auchtermuchty.”
“Do you know what Auchtermuchty means?”
“No, Sir, I had enough trouble saying it.”
“It means Field of Boars. First time I heard that I thought they were referring to Parliament.” Churchill puffed on his cigar and allowed himself a chuckle at his wit. “Field of Bores.”
“Oh, and there was another one from a police station in a place called Kinmory in Scotland. But the constable called back and said he was mistaken.”
“An elusive lass.”
They left the cathedral and walked into what was left of the city center. Churchill stopped outside a shop, Suttons Bakery, to watch firemen and air-raid wardens digging out survivors. One of them, a dazed old man, dust-covered gray from head to foot, sat on a low wall. Churchill sat next to him. It took a moment for the old man to recognize him, and he said in a trembling voice, “We’re going to be all right, Sir, aren’t we?”
Thompson saw tears forming in Churchill’s eyes as he patted the man’s knee and answered, “With Englishmen like you, how could we fail? What may I do for you?”
The old man managed a smile. “I think a cuppa tea and one of those big cigars of yours would do the trick.”
Churchill laughed and offered him a cigar. “Here’s one, and I’ll arrange for the cuppa.”
“Thanks ever so much, Sir, and keep smiling.”
“You too. Keep buggering on.”
“Keep buggering on,” the old man repeated. “I’ll do that.”
Thompson helped Churchill to his feet. “We cannot lose, Thompson. That old man would never forgive me.”
25
An early morning autumn sun gave light but no heat, and the Tiger Moth’s propeller blast made it no warmer as a lacerating cold drove Caitrin deeper into her seat. She glanced to her right, where an identical Moth was also preparing for takeoff. In the front seat William Watkins waved to her. A redheaded man with a front row forward’s body and a lunatic chimpanzee smile, William was the Osgood Protheroe who had declared himself Caitrin’s devoted fiancé in the police station. Behind him sat Giles Hyde-Harrington, who was supposedly Archibald, her nonexistent upper-class, other brother. Caitrin thought he could be Oscar Wilde’s doppelgänger, although she would never dare tell him. Scion of an ancient English family, Giles, she imagined, had probably never said Mum or Dad in his life; mater and pater perhaps, but although he was a member of the oppressing upper class, Caitrin could not help but like him. And they had saved her.
