Not for the first time I am posting a new story with some trepidation, probably more than any story so far, as I am venturing into the world of Georgie and Elvis or Georgina (George) and Emile (sorry about the name changes but they are necessary to suit the era in which the story is set). I know there is a tremendous lot of love out there for Molly and CJ, and you can include me in that, but in honour of the new series I wanted to give two new characters the timeshift treatment and add them to the 'Another' family. This isn't a sequel to the other stories but more of a side-step. I know this version isn't for everyone but I hope you will forgive and humour me. Thanks for reading.
Chapter One
"Would you be prepared to serve your country overseas?"
Georgina Lane gazed back at the young army officer sitting behind the desk. She could read nothing in his expression: no enthusiasm, no patriotic fervour, just a steadfast, serious look that gave nothing away. She wasn't sure how to answer.
"In North Africa or something?"
There was no change in his expression.
"A little nearer to home. Your language skills could be very useful."
Her eyes widened at this remark as the penny finally dropped.
"In France?"
The young man glanced down at his notes appearing to be weighing up his response before raising his eyes to meet hers again. He noticed that she was watching him intently no doubt wondering if she had guessed right. She was a very pretty girl, he thought, too pretty for this line of work and yet there was something more about her, resoluteness and an unexpected steeliness in her eyes that others seeing only her attractiveness might miss. It was a face that would get her noticed but it also had the power to distract. It was distracting him right now and he forced his mind to focus on the question she had asked. When he replied he gave no hint of his thoughts and he was deliberately non-committal.
"Perhaps."
X-X-X-X
The hum of the Lysander's engine had almost lulled George to sleep by the time the RAF pilot turned his head to shout back to his passengers that they would be approaching the landing site in about five minutes. It shook her from her stupor and brought her back sharply to the realisation that she was almost there and the difficult and dangerous work was about to begin. She glanced over at her fellow passenger. Louis looked nervous. He was holding the leather briefcase on his lap a little too tightly and staring ahead of him, barely blinking behind the small, round glasses he wore. In his early thirties, slightly built, quietly spoken and unassuming, George could imagine he might have been a librarian in Civvy Street. He really hadn't seemed the type to volunteer for this, she thought, but then they had all come from different walks of life and how many would have expected a girl like her to embark on such a mission, certainly not her own family.
It was the lying about her activities she had found most difficult. It had felt wrong to lie to her parents. All their well-meaning enquiries about her new posting had been fielded with a recently acquired arsenal of lies. She had however, learned to walk the tricky path between lies and half-truths at what was misleadingly called the 'Finishing School', not that the lessons she had learned there were concerned with deportment, table manners or how to make polite conversation with young men. The skill of evading capture was seldom required by debutantes apart from the occasional unwelcome admirer. There was no doubt in George's mind after listening to the lecture from a recently returned agent that there were potential dangers on every street corner in occupied France and any attention of the kind the earnest young man had outlined was distinctly unwelcome and potentially disastrous.
George's parents had been disappointed that she had been posted to Scotland. This was yet another lie as the 'Finishing School' was actually in the grounds of a stately home in Hampshire, however, she had needed to put a significant distance between herself and the family home and a fictitious posting in Scotland was a good reason to limit visits. She had no idea how long she might be away. It worried her but she tried to push such thoughts to the back of her mind. Her family would cope, just like everyone else's family had to cope at times like these. They had, of course, been used to her living away from home during the past two years since joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service although she had gone home on leave as much as she could.
When she had joined the ATS at the start of 1941 George's mother had been worried that her daughter's choice wasn't entirely respectable and her father had heard tales of the nickname given to some young women in the service; "Officer's groundsheets" he had whispered under his breath to his wife, Genevieve. The shock on her face had convinced Max to try, unsuccessfully, to talk George out of her decision.
"Do you think I'm some sort of dimwit or something, Dad?"
The incredulous expression on his daughter's lovely face at the suggestion that she might fall prey to the advances of some arduous solider caused him to waver for a moment. As much as he had no doubt she would attract attention he also knew her well enough to know she was no pushover. It would take more than a bit of flattery to steal her heart. She could stand on her own two feet and was a match for any young man, with her quick wits, her strength of mind and determination, not to mention a physique that had allowed her out-run any boy at school. Catch her if you can Max thought to himself and tried not to smile as he wondered if the ATS was ready for the young woman who would shortly to be heading their way.
George had certainly been no dimwit when it came to military training. She had sailed through basic training and excelled at drill and PT whilst also showing considerable aptitude for all the practical aspects of military life. After passing out she found herself assigned to Anti-Aircraft Command and posted to a training station where she and her fellow recruits learned how to man an ack-ack gun. There had been a month long theory course on which they had been taught the fundamentals of optics, magnetism, wind thrust and geometry as well as aircraft recognition. They had then received another month's posting to a coastal training site to practise and perfect their skills on targets before being handed their first operational posting to man a gun battery on the south coast.
George enjoyed her work and the camaraderie of service life and felt that she was doing something worthwhile defending the local port during air raids. She had made good friends amongst her ATS colleagues and they had all made the most of the situation, doing their best to inject some fun into their lives, taking advantage of any social opportunities and, being based so near to a naval town, there had been plenty when they could get a pass into town to go dancing or visit the pictures.
George soon found that there were plenty of young men eager to take her out. She enjoyed their company but she had no intention of getting serious about any of them and that was what she told herself and them. She was good at maintaining the good-natured, cheerful veneer that those around her wanted to see. Times were bad for everyone and young men and women just wanted to be happy for a while and forget their troubles. Only one man had ever managed to peel away any of the layers and glimpsed the woman below the surface but it hadn't ended well and George had decided it was a lesson to her not to take a chance like that again with anyone. The unsettling disappointment had coincided with the sudden posting of her unit to the north east coast in late 1941. It had marked a distinct change not only in her life but in her attitude to the future.
A long cold winter on an exposed site, with only draughty wooden barracks for shelter and limited opportunities to travel into the nearest town had put a different perspective on the situation and by the summer of 1942, George was beginning to wonder if there was something else she could do for the war effort.
When Sergeant Morley had summoned her from the Mess one lunchtime in August stating that Captain Harris needed to see her George had immediately wondered whether she was in trouble. She couldn't remember having consciously done anything wrong but there were so many rules and regulations to be observed that she supposed it wouldn't be difficult to somehow fall foul of one and land yourself in hot water.
"I understand from your records that you speak French, Lane?"
George was taken by surprise. The question from her commanding officer was totally unexpected.
"Yes ma'am."
The Captain raised her eyebrows. She obviously hadn't expected that a fairly ordinary girl, the daughter of a high street butcher from Manchester, would have language skills.
"You speak it fluently?"
George nodded. "Yes, ma'am, my grandmother is…I mean, was French. She passed away last year."
"I see. And you learned French from her?"
"Yes, ma'am. She lived with us and she didn't speak English. My mother prefers to speak English all the time, so we always spoke French with her."
Memories of her Grandmother flooded her mind. A widow, she had moved from France to live with Genevieve and Max when they had married at the end of the Great War. Max had been billeted with the Moreau family for a few months after the armistice of 1918 and he and Genevieve had fallen in love. Genevieve hadn't wanted to leave her mother alone and so she had come with them to make her home in Manchester. She had always been there as long as George could remember, sitting peacefully in the armchair by the fire, knitting, waiting for the Lane girls to come home from school, pleased to hear their chatter about the day, reading to them when they were small and teaching them old folk songs . The French accent of her Grandmother was as natural to George as the mancunian twang of her father and she grew up able to swap from one to the other with ease.
The Lanes were considered to be relatively wealthy amongst their peers as Max had progressed in his trade, taken the entrepreneurial step of establishing his own butcher's shop in the high street and as a result they had been fortunate to travel to France to visit Genevieve's family on several occasions during the long summer holidays, even spending the last long hot summer before the war there. The invasion of France however, had brought an end to such luxuries but worse it had left them with no news of their family's fate under German occupation.
"I've been asked to put forward the names of any personnel with language skills. I was wondering whether to submit your name, Lane." Captain Harris paused and George realised she was waiting for a response.
"What sort of work would it be ma'am?"
Captain Harris shook her head slightly, "I'm not sure, Lane, but I expect it's vital to the war effort. Would you be agreeable?"
George, remembered her father's advice to her as she had left for basic training on that cold January morning almost two years ago, "Don't volunteer for anything," and wondered if she ought to decline but thinking about life here at this remote coastal site, seeing dark clouds gathering in the distance and hearing the wind battering the windows with the prospect of another winter looming, couldn't help thinking that she might be better employed elsewhere. The thought of somehow using something as unexpected as her ability to speak French to help win the war was appealing even if she couldn't imagine what she might do apart from possibly translate documents. Her decision was made.
"Please put forward my name. Thank you, ma'am."
A couple of months had passed and she had almost forgotten about the exchange before she received orders to report to an address in Baker Street, London. When she arrived, after taking the overnight train from York, feeling tired from sleeping propped up in the corner seat of a carriage, hungry after nothing but some bread and margarine with a weak cup of tea purchased from the station buffet and feeling less than bright and breezy, she thought for a moment that there must be a terrible mistake. The address she had been given was just an ordinary looking block of flats but checking the letter again she was certain that she must be in the right place and pushed open the main door with a great deal of trepidation.
The commissionaire at the ground floor desk, however, seemed to be expecting her and after taking her name she was asked to sit in the hall and wait for some time until he received a phone call and told her to make her way up to the fourth floor. She knocked at the door of flat number eight and was surprised that it was answered by a young army captain. He invited her into one of the rooms. She assumed that it must once have been a bedroom but it was now devoid of any carpets or soft furnishings and contained nothing but a table and two chairs. She had the distinct impression that she could hear the quiet hum of other voices in the background and wondered if she was not the only person being interviewed here in such an odd manner.
The officer had begun by making general enquiries about her military service and background and then quite suddenly launched into French asking her many detailed questions about her family, her knowledge of France and her views on the political situation both before the war and since the occupation. George had been surprised at this change but had replied freely, fluently and without reserve and was honest about not holding any political beliefs both before or after the war had started. Although when asked how she felt about the current occupation of France she was very clear.
"I hate to think of my family there now in such a dreadful situation. I wish there was something that I could do to help them"
The officer leaned towards her. "What sort of thing would you be prepared to do?"
George had shrugged. "Well, I can't fight or fly an aeroplane but I'd do anything else that would help."
The realisation that there was a potential role for her working in secret in occupied France had initially neither thrilled nor terrified her. She had viewed it rather dispassionately as another option to be considered. It was only much later as her training progressed that she began to appreciate the dangers of the job and to think seriously of how she might cope if the worst happened. She knew, however, she was under no obligation to continue. At any point during the months that followed her acceptance onto the agents training course, she knew she could have changed her mind and walked away without any blame. Every agent was a volunteer. A motley bunch of men and women of differing ages and all with differing motivations for being there but seeing them day in day out, putting their heart and soul into their training, knowing that each believed that they could help to bring the war to an end, spurred George on, even when the going was tough and it was tough in ways she had not expected.
George had always being physically fit and the fitness sessions, regular cross-country runs, weapons handling and self-defence instruction had come easily to her but she had not expected the mental challenges that came with covert work. From the moment she arrived at the secret training location French had been spoken the entire time and everyone used codenames. At first it had seemed strange not to introduce yourself properly and talk about your real life but she soon adapted. Training in covert activities included learning to move around undetected at night and knowing how to shake off someone following you and to check that you were not under surveillance. There were initiative tests aimed to make you think on your feet and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, tasks that almost seemed like dares but soon became matters of pride to pass as they demonstrated the ability of potential agents to plan and carry through actions. There were also a whole range of briefings and sessions to attend on identifying the uniforms and ranks of German military personnel, the current political situation in France, social habits or the correct of way of ordering drinks in a café. The agents had to learn how to think, speak and behave in a way that would not arouse suspicion.
George often felt as if her head were spinning with so much information to remember and yet she felt challenged in a way that her previous work in the ack-ack unit had not challenged her. She felt as if she had something to give that only she could do and despite the difficulties her resolve remained unchanged. The only time she had faltered slightly and wondered if she was doing the right thing was when she had been subjected to a mock interrogation, having been dragged from her bed at two in the morning by men shouting at her in German. She had remembered to speak French, after so many weeks of speaking nothing else it had seemed natural to her, and had held out under a barrage of questions. It was then that she had learned the importance of telling a believable lie. The best lies were those that contained some truth. The more truthful the lie the easier it was to continue lying and George found to her surprise that she almost believed the stories herself. Her course instructors had been impressed not only with this ability to withstand interrogation but her performance across the board and reported her to be both resourceful and determined. It was with a sense of pride that George learned at the end of her time that she had passed the course and was being considered for an operational role as a courier in France.
When the call finally came advising her that she was to be deployed in the next two weeks George was granted a short period of leave to spend with her family. It had been a tricky few days. Naturally, her parents and sisters were full of questions about her new job in Scotland and her father in particular had thought it strange that she should be manning a gun site so far north when there were more obvious targets in the south but she had avoided answering as much as possible and had used 'careless talk' as an excuse.
The hardest part had been taking leave of them almost with a sense of guilt knowing that she could tell them nothing. She knew that she was travelling into a dangerous situation and yet she had to smile and joke with her parents and make excuses about not being able to get home on leave for quite some time because of the distance and the trains. There would, of course, be letters and postcards from time to time to allay their suspicions. She had already written them, struggling to find new fictitious activities to describe and sometimes pausing to wonder what she would really be doing when her family received them. They would be posted from Scotland by personnel from F Section at regular intervals whilst she was away but she was almost thankful when the train arrived and she was able to embark and depart without having to tell any more lies.
There had been a couple of false starts before it had finally been confirmed that the mission was on and she had been driven to RAF Tempsford from where the light, single-engine Lysander would depart. There she was joined by a fellow agent who was to be sent with her. Louis, a wireless operator, would be joining her as part of the Maverick circuit in northern France. They had met at the 'Finishing School' but she knew that once they set foot in France their contact would be very limited. She would act as the go-between, relay messages back and forth between the circuit commander and other members but they would seldom meet in person or for very long if they did. It was as well that Louis seemed such a quiet unassuming man as the life of a wireless operator was the loneliest of all.
Before leaving they changed into authentic tailored French clothes and were issued with a suitcase of belongings, their false identity papers and ration cards and French currency, given a final check to remove any incriminating evidence of their non-French origins before being treated to a final dinner in the company of one of their F Section officers. Within little more than an hour they were climbing into the Lysander and it was taxiing away from the hangar.
The flight had been uneventful and within an hour and a half the pilot instructed them to prepare for landing. Below, George could see the small flashes of hand held torches indicating the landing strip and knew there would be a local welcoming committee anxiously awaiting them. She felt the nervous flutter of butterflies in her stomach but it was too late now to change her mind. The months of training were over and it was now that she had a job to do, a serious and very dangerous job.
The light aircraft floated down into the darkness landing with a gentle bump onto the grass field, rolling along for only a short distance before it slowed and started to taxi towards a waiting party. No sooner had it come to a stop then someone was there pulling open the door and hands reached out to help George down. Louis passed out her suitcase before handing out his own bags and climbing down to join her. As they hurried away from the aircraft they were passed by someone moving in the opposite direction, heading towards the Lysander, a man carrying a bag. He didn't look in their direction or say a word before he climbed into the aircraft and in no more than a minute it was taxing away from them preparing to take off and return to England.
They hurried away from the landing strip as quickly and quietly as possible accompanied by a burly, middle-aged man with a moustache who introduced himself as Jacques.
"We'll take you to the farmhouse to meet Phillipe. It's about half a kilometre from here. Stay close to me."
George followed behind him suddenly acutely aware of everything around her, all her senses heightened to the invisible danger. They crept through the woods that had bordered the landing site for what seemed far longer than the ten minutes or so it had taken before reaching a clearing. Buildings loomed up out of the darkness and Jacques told them to wait whilst he ventured forward. George looked nervously towards Louis, wondering if his thoughts matched her own. She couldn't help fearing that it might be trap. She had no idea whether they were about to be lured into an ambush. Louis said nothing but she could hear him breathing unsteadily next to her and felt sure he was feeling just as nervous.
A few minutes later Jacques reappeared and beckoned to George and Louis to move forward. They followed him across to the buildings and were let into the farmhouse. It was dimly lit within. There was just one bare bulb overhead and the room was filled with the aroma of cooking, something distinctly French which made George feel strangely nostalgic, remembering other happier times in France. She stood behind Jacques and Louis and was aware that there were a couple of other men at the far end of the room talking quietly together with their backs to her. One, a tall, slim, dark-haired man was listening to another man who was shorter, older and from the few words she could catch, appeared to be arguing with him over some point. Jacques stepped forward and Louis followed him but George decided to stay by the door. She was still being cautious and wanted to be able move quickly and get out of the room without hindrance if necessary.
As Jacques and Louis approached she saw the tall man turn slightly, reach out to shake Louis by the hand. Jacques said something and then he turned back to look at her. The light was poor and she couldn't make him out with any clarity. He moved quickly towards her and placed himself in front of the harsh light of the bare bulb. She looked up and squinted slightly to make him out. His hand reached out to grasp hers and then as he leaned towards her and his lips brushed her left cheek in the traditional French greeting she heard the fierce whisper of a very familiar voice as his mouth moved close to her ear.
"What the hell are you doing here?"