The Scarlet Nightingale

by Alan Titchmarsh

Genres: World War II; Historical Romance

Synopsis

The novel from Britain's favourite gardener and TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh is a sweeping story of love, danger, courage and betrayal, set in wartime London and Paris.

As war rages across Europe, one young woman faces an impossible choice. Will she save her country... or the man she loves?

It is the late 1930s. In London, socialite Rosamund Hanbury is determined to give up the parties and social sets of which she is a prominent member to join the war effort, along with scores of other young women.

After a stint at Bletchley Park and as one of the Air Transport Auxiliary's 'Atagirls', Rosamund is recruited by the Special Operations Executive under the code name 'The Scarlet Nightingale', and eventually moved in secret to France. There she falls under the charm of Count Thierry Foustier, a gallant Frenchman with a taste for danger and women.

But in the high-stakes role of secret agent Rosamund can't trust anyone, for if her true identity is revealed, she will be killed. As the peril of her top-secret operation mounts, Rosamund will be drawn into the very heart of the war, where her love and her loyalty will be put to a test more devastating than she could ever imagine.

Set between wartime London and Paris, this is a thrilling story of love, danger and betrayal from bestselling novelist Alan Titchmarsh.

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 288

Sample

Rosamund Hawksmoor (formerly Hanbury) died peacefully in her ninety-third year in the tall-windowed bedroom overlooking the azure sea at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. She was discovered by her butler as he delivered her morning tea, her face set in a gentle smile, and the pure white gauze curtains that framed the open windows were rising and falling in the gentle breeze almost as though they were the wings of an angel, wafting the old lady’s unencumbered soul to heaven.

At the foot of her bed, resting on a chintz-covered ottoman, lay the manuscript of her final novel. It was tied with red ribbon, as was her custom, and it was to become, as had her previous twenty-two works of romantic fiction, an immediate bestseller. Her literary agent would make sure of that.

Her butler, Jonathan Finch, also passed to Rosamund’s executors a large manila envelope that he had discovered in the ormolu-encrusted cabinet at her bedside. It was old and worn and upon it, in stylish italic script, were written the words: ‘Only to be opened in the event of my death.’

Rosamund’s wishes were adhered to, not least because until the old lady’s demise, nobody actually knew it was there. It revealed to her executors – none of whom were blood relations – tantalising clues about her early life. Rosamund – the hospitable old lady who lived a life of luxury in the south of France – had told no one about her childhood, of her experiences as a girl and her exploits as a young woman during the war. The few contemporaries who had managed to survive her had slipped from view, content to live in the past. Rosamund found far more stimulation in the company of younger folk who, like her, found more pleasure and excitement in the present.

It seemed, to those who had entered her orbit within recent times, that Rosamund had always been old and wise, with a zest for life, delighting in the company of anyone with a spark of enthusiasm who could hold their own at the dinner table. She dispensed her worldly wisdom only when it was solicited, and listened with the attention of the genuinely curious when regaled with the convoluted or confusing emotions of the young and inexperienced. She would nod and smile – not the patronising smile of those who have seen it all before and know all the answers, but the understanding smile of those whose experiences of life have taught them that although they may have been there before, nothing is certain when it comes to human nature. Concerned though she would be for the welfare of the young who fluttered around her like moths drawn to a flame, little seemed to worry Rosamund for long; the years had taught her much about the futility of fretting over things that could not be changed.

The contents of the ragged envelope told quite a different story. Assorted fragments, letters and luggage labels gave clues to a path through life that had been anything but smooth. They were all neatly contained in a buff folder, even more frayed at the edges than the envelope itself. Like the manuscript of her novels, the folder was tied around the middle with a length of bright red ribbon. It was of such an age that it should have been faded; the brilliance of its colour bleached by the sun of the Côte d’Azur. But since it had not seen the light of day for many years, it was as vivid as the day it had been woven. At the top of the folder, in black letters, a printed instruction gave an indication of its vintage:

TOP SECRET

EYES ONLY

And below that, in red italic script, were just three words:

THE SCARLET NIGHTINGALE

At first glance the reader might have thought that the contents were snippets of inspiration for yet another love story, popped into a file appropriated after the war by a relation employed in some obscure branch of the Civil Service. They would have been wrong. The folder itself had a more interesting story to tell, and there was nothing fictitious about the fragments it contained. They were the souvenirs and accretions of a life that had most certainly had its share of romance – both on the page and off – but which had also put a young woman in danger. Rosamund might have come from a privileged background, but it was something that she had been quite prepared to sacrifice in the name of love and duty. This is her story.

The notes which were the foundation of these recollections were penned somewhat erratically during and just after the war when I started to keep a journal. Some are exactly as they were written; others I have adjusted with the benefit of hindsight. I have not written an in-depth chronicle. My jottings are fragmentary and far from comprehensive. As a writer I have come to appreciate the value – and wisdom – of editing. I have simply touched on one or two matters that might interest, and I have left others to the imagination of those who come after. There are some moments I cannot bear to recall, still, and on occasion I may have skipped episodes which I would prefer to forget, but there are no real untruths here – perhaps just one or two ‘economies’. As Dame Edith Sitwell famously said: ‘There is no truth; only points of view.’ Through these few pages, perhaps my godson Archie will come to know a little more of my earlier life and, I hope, not judge me too harshly.

My earliest recollection is that of sand between my toes. But is that really my first memory or simply the one I choose to cling to? A comfort blanket of sorts? Whatever the case, the feeling of those fine grains, smooth as silk against my infant skin, and the change in feeling when hardened into glistening ribs by waves at the water’s edge, nurtured within me a fascination for the sea and a love of coastal life which I have never lost.

Despite this secure and cosy image, it is not a wholly comforting memory, for there is a rawness about the seashore. At any given moment it may be calm and serene, bathed in golden sunlight, the sky as pale as a forget-me-not. Then, when one’s back is turned for a moment – making a sandcastle or digging for a razor shell – lumbering clouds as purple as a ripe damson will push up on the horizon. In the space of minutes, the scene will be transformed from that Dorothea Sharp idyll into something redolent of John Piper on a bad day. The thunder cracks, the once-calm sea becomes a turbulent cauldron, and the sudden and violent wind whips up those grains of sand and hurls them into your eyes, blinding you as you stumble for shelter.

To make one’s life on the coast is a constant reminder that we are all, quite literally, living on the edge – not just at the mercy of the elements, but also at the mercy of the whims and temperament of others. Somehow the sea is predictable in its capriciousness. Whatever may happen, and however violent the storm or tempest, one knows in one’s heart that eventually it will pass; that the tide will go out and the sky will clear. Calm will invariably follow storm. Alas, one cannot say the same of people …

But I am racing ahead. When one is young the summers seem to last forever and the memory of dark clouds passes more rapidly than they do when old age causes us to brood upon them. As a young person of my acquaintance sagely remarked: ‘When you are seven, a year is a seventh of your life; when you are eighty it is an eightieth, and an eightieth of anything is so much smaller than a seventh.’ It is a trite analogy, but I have come to realise that it is a universal truth. As you age, the years fly past with ever-increasing speed. When I was young it seemed as though the halcyon days would never end …

‘Kindness bestowed upon children is a long-term investment.’

Alicia de Bournanville, The Waves of Time, 1919

The water felt cold. Very cold. At first Rosamund thought that her toes might actually fall off, but gradually they became accustomed to the temperature of the sea and the wavelets as they lapped about her feet. The skirt of her floral-patterned dress was tucked into her knickers, the better to preserve it from a soaking. Her governess would not be best pleased if she returned from her excursion with a dress soaked in seawater and peppered with salt and sand. She did quite like ‘Semolina’ – the name she called her even if Celine de Rossignol did get cross and threaten to wallop her playfully whenever she heard her charge utter the nickname. But Celine de Rossignol was such a devil of a name for a seven-year-old girl to get her tongue around – and for her pen to master, come to that. Her lessons in the nursery, gazing up at the blackboard at Semolina’s italic script and endeavouring to copy it, almost always ended in disaster, with the white-aproned nanny-cum-tutor standing over Rosamund at the vast porcelain sink under the nursery window and trying, with the aid of a stiff-bristled brush and a bar of stinking carbolic soap, to remove the stubborn black Stephens’ ink from her fingers. It was usually to no avail and resulted only in stray wisps of raven hair escaping one after the other from the hairgrips that fastened it close to Celine’s head. When Celine could no longer see Rosamund’s hands for her own wayward locks she would abandon the job as a bad one, throw the brush into the sink with a muttered ‘Zut!’ and toss a rough-textured hand towel in Rosamund’s direction. It was, the child knew, only a matter of time during one of these personal hygiene sessions before her governess’s patience ran out. Released from Semolina’s grip, Rosamund would look up at her pleadingly, knowing that she, too, would prefer to be out in the sunshine, heading towards the beach on the sandy path that snaked down between the dunes. One smile and a raised eyebrow would, she knew, be all that was necessary for Celine to say ‘Go on then; but walk quietly downstairs, go out of the back door and do not run!’ Very occasionally the instruction was delivered in English, but more frequently it came in French.

Whatever the language, the instruction was always in vain. How could one not run when one knew where the sandy path led? Especially when the tide was half in or half out and there was a decent strip of beach to run along and razor shells and whelks and dogfish eggs to prise out of its wave-flattened surface. They would be brought back, cradled in the front of her dress, and arranged on the table that stood outside the back porch of Daneway, its pale paint peeling away like old skin to reveal timbers bleached by years of sun and rain and sand-laden winds. It bore a glittering array of smooth buttons of glass, turned from broken bottle shards into jewels by the sea, along with shells of every shape and pastel shade. They were Rosamund’s treasures, though passed unnoticed by every other member of the household.

While Rosamund chased the waves and scoured the sand for its hidden riches, Celine sat above the tide line on a tuft of marram grass, examining in detail a letter that had been sent to her by her beau. That was what she called him; not boyfriend or man friend or anything quite so straightforward, but ‘beau’, which sounded so much more romantic. So very French. Celine’s father – born and raised in Dijon – had made sure that his daughter was brought up to be bilingual, for although he had married an Englishwoman and lived for the greater part of his adult life in her country, he was determined that his daughter would reflect her joint parentage. Celine was eighteen now – just over ten years older than Rosamund. For much of the time they were more like sisters than a governess and her charge, though Celine knew her responsibilities and did her best to let Rosamund know them, too.

It seemed odd to Rosamund that her governess should have a man friend. She had never seen him. She wondered how Celine managed to find time to have what she would call a ‘tryst’, when all she had off was one afternoon a week and one Sunday a month. But she always knew when Celine had met him. Nothing could be clearer. She would return with a pink face and an unusual air of dreaminess about her. Rosamund would ask questions: ‘Who is he, Semolina? What is a “beau”? Why do you like him? Is he tall? Does he have a moustache? Is he as handsome as … the grocer?’ None of which would receive a proper answer, just a hum and an absentminded instruction to get ready for bed, or wash her face and hands or some other vague instruction that was seldom followed through. Only when Rosamund asked ‘Has he kissed you?’ would Celine chase her around the bedroom wielding a slipper, threatening to ‘wallop her’ again. Though she never did. Rosamund liked it when Celine had been with her beau, for it produced in her an altogether different demeanour to the usual matter-of-fact and no-nonsense approach which brooked no argument. She knew that on such days she could get away, if not with murder, then with more than was the norm in the Hanbury household.

Daneway was a large, solid, stone-built house, not especially grand and more accurately described as handsome rather than beautiful. A series of hipped roofs leaned together in a complex undulation of slate and granite that had withstood many an autumn gale and winter storm and would, with any luck, stand a few more yet. It sat – almost crouched – in a sheltered Devon combe; a grassy valley, fringed by thorn and sycamore trees that had been blown into lop-sided clouds by centuries of salt-laden winds. It was a house of many windows, with one particular dormer that faced southwards towards the sea. This was the one that Rosamund gazed out of most, for it was in her bedroom, right at the top of the house, and had a window seat on which were arranged a doll and two boats – a small wooden rowing boat, a three-master with cotton sails, and ‘Raggedy Ann’, a yarn-headed doll whose voyages were many and various on the deep blue chintz-covered cushion that passed as their sea.

It was a quiet house as a rule, and she the only child, as had been the case since she was born. There had once been a brother, but she had never known him. Her parents seldom spoke of Robert, a nineteen-year-old who had died in the Great War before she was born. To Rosamund he was a shadowy figure – a ghost almost – and she had learned not to ask too many questions, for whenever she did, her father changed the subject and her mother left the room. Just occasionally she heard mention of the Battle of Arras, and it conjured up in her mind a medieval scene of knights in shining armour and heroic battles with lances and longbows, for to a child’s ear Arras sounded very much like arrows.

It would be several years before she learned the full story from Celine, who had picked up snippets from the locals and pieced them together, turning them into a romance of sorts.

‘Have you never asked them yourself?’ asked Celine one winter evening as she brushed out Rosamund’s hair by the nursery fire.

‘No. I couldn’t possibly.’

Celine shook her head and another hairpin somersaulted on to the nursery floor. ‘Well, your father, Valentine Hanbury …’ she used the full names of her employers as though she were relating a work of fiction, ‘was about thirty, I suppose. He was the only son of a Devon landowner and he was rather taken with this beautiful eighteen-year-old called Edith Tempest.’

‘The same age as you are?’

‘Don’t interrupt.’ Celine carried on with her brushing. ‘He swept her off her feet and married her in spite of the discouragement of his family.

‘Did they all hate her?’

‘They didn’t hate her – disapproving isn’t the same as hating, you know. And his sister – your Aunt Venetia – was the only one to encourage him.’

‘I like Aunt Venetia.’

‘Yes, me too,’ murmured Celine, lapsing into reverie for a moment before clearing her throat, putting on her teaching voice and taking up the story once more.

‘Valentine and Edith moved into Daneway almost immediately. The master’s mother and father were in their seventies and they soon came round, once they realised that Edith, who was the daughter of a local shipping agent, might be just what their son needed to moderate his impulsive nature.’

‘What is “impulsive”?’

‘It is what you are – doing things on the spur of the moment without thinking of the consequences.’ Celine tugged at a particularly stubborn knot in Rosamund’s blonde curls.

‘Ow.’

‘Sit still and stop squirming and it will soon be over.’

‘Were you here then?’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m eighteen, not eighty. With the house, they inherited a cook-housekeeper, a general maid and a chauffeur-gardener, as well as an estate manager and enough agricultural workers to manage 800 acres devoted to arable crops and livestock.’

‘You sound like a book.’

‘Do you want to hear this story or not?’

‘Yes. I like stories. Especially when I know the people in them.’

Celine continued with the tale of how Valentine had taken to the role of gentleman farmer like a duck to water. How the Hanburys were a happy couple and became an established part of the country set – riding to hounds, wining and dining their landed neighbours and treating their staff with a respect born of local tradition. She explained how Robert was born a year after their marriage and that as his father settled into running the estate, there grew in the son a sense of adventure counter to the now more conservative ways of his father. Valentine took his new-found responsibilities seriously – both to the land and to his family. It was not long before the 800-acre estate – tired and unproductive on his inheritance – began to thrive under his stewardship.

But as the father became more conscientious, so the son’s impetuous nature grew ever more pronounced. Robert was possessed of an eagerness and a lust for life that his father found inspiring – a reflection of his former self, perhaps – and his mother exhausting.

‘He was a human whirlwind, you see,’ explained Celine, ‘following first one passion and then another – learning to sail, learning to ride – and if you ever met him, he was passionate and enthusiastic; everybody said so. A bit like you,’ she added under her breath. ‘Then when he was sixteen the war came. And like a lot of his friends, he longed to join up and fight to save the land he loved. “Your Country Needs You” – that’s what General Kitchener said on the recruiting poster – and Robert was determined not to let his country down. But he had to wait until he was eighteen before he could join up, and then it was another year before he could serve on the front line.’

‘Did Mother and Father try to stop him?’

‘Oh yes. They did their best to put him off, and explained as much as they dared about the other members of the family who had fought in the Crimea and the first Boer War. But it was the eyes, you see.’

‘The eyes?’

‘Blue eyes just like yours. They shone out at his mother and father under the mop of fair hair and had a way of pleading that was impossible to resist. He’d been away just three months – twelve weeks – when he was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917. His body never came home.’

Celine stopped brushing and gazed wistfully at the flickering embers of the fire.

Rosamund sat silently for a few moments before asking, ‘Were Mother and Father very sad?’

‘Of course they were.’

Even Celine was at a loss to conjure up the true depth of grief that pervaded Daneway after Robert’s death. The sadness was of a scale that few outside the household could comprehend. The father became introspective and taciturn, the mother tearful and prone to bouts of hysteria. The estate ticked along under the stewardship of those men of the land too old or too young to fight, but the atmosphere in the house was of impenetrable gloom. It was as if Valentine and Edith were both marooned in separate worlds with little hope of reconciling themselves to their circumstances and to each other. Whenever Valentine would steel himself and make an approach to Edith, attempting to talk about their loss and rekindle any kind of mutual affection or empathy, she would wring her hands and dissolve into tears before turning from him and shutting herself away. Since Robert’s death, they had slept in separate rooms, and their joint encounters at meals were for the main part silent and introspective.

It was many months before the dark clouds lifted and the Devon landscape gradually began to work its magic. They would never get over the loss of their only son, but the intensity of their grief gradually eased sufficiently for them to become companionable and to share a bed once more. Four years after Robert’s death, their daughter Rosamund was born.

The event came as a surprise to them both, for Valentine was now fifty-four and Edith forty-two. There was no question of Edith being a hands-on mother. Her own parents had engaged a governess to look after her when she was small, and being an older mother, she would do the same. Valentine could not argue; the prospect of being a father to a daughter made him uneasy. He was glad, of course, for the child would ease the mother’s pain, but when it came to girls, their upbringing would remain a puzzle to him. And so, within a few days of Rosamund’s arrival, Celine was engaged – recommended by Valentine’s sister Venetia as having done a good job for friends in Belgravia whose daughters were now of an age to look after themselves – with guidance from their mothers, of course. And it would also mean that Rosamund would be brought up to be bi-lingual, which, as Venetia pointed out, was always a good thing in ‘a lady’.

‘Do you think I made them less sad?’ asked Rosamund as Celine tucked her into bed.

‘Of course you did. Most of the time. Though you can be a trial on occasion.’

‘Will you stay?’

‘That depends.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If anything better turns up.’

The look on Rosamund’s face told Celine that she had gone too far. ‘Of course I will stay. Who else will brush your hair and sort out your clothes and take you to the beach and teach you French and keep you out of trouble?’

‘Do you … do you love me?’

‘What a ridiculous question.’

‘But I want to know.’

‘I look after you, don’t I?’

‘That’s not the same.’

‘Too many questions …’

‘No. Just one.’

Celine frowned and shook her head. ‘I suppose I must do.’ Then she smiled. ‘That or something like. Now go to sleep or the angels will decide you are not worth a centime.’

By rights Celine should have been moved on to other, more junior charges, but she had become so much a part of the household they didn’t even consider it. The prospect of change appealed to neither Valentine nor Edith, who had come to rely on her ministrations as unofficial arbiter in the home – soothing the cook when a tantrum seemed imminent, or gently persuading the chauffeur-gardener that his clothes really did need cleaning with greater regularity than he seemed to believe. And so Celine remained, becoming something of a part-time companion to Edith and a confidante of Rosamund, somehow managing to juggle her two loyalties with tact and grace.

From Rosamund’s point of view, learning French seemed pretty pointless. She could not imagine ever wanting to leave ‘Devonshire’, as she called it. But the lessons never seemed like lessons, and when you have been speaking French since you learned to talk (in the same way that Celine had done), there was little effort involved. Indeed, Edith would occasionally ask them to speak in English when they prattled on rapidly and gaily in the Gallic tongue which, to her, forever remained a mystery.

As she grew into her teens, Rosamund’s relationship with her father grew, if anything, more distant. He was puzzled by his daughter’s character and found her impossible to fathom. She veered, it seemed, from being a headstrong tomboy to a flighty flibbertigibbet. She and Celine would for the most part behave as though they were sisters; the ten-year age gap seemed to shrink with the passing of the years. On ever more frequent occasions he had to have words with Celine, explaining that perhaps she had gone too far in acceding to the will of his daughter, whether it was being complicit in some activity involving a gallop along the sands on a horse known to be uncontrollable, or in turning a blind eye to an assignation with a local youth.

While Valentine was exasperated and bemused by his daughter’s capricious nature, to Edith she was a total mystery: a curiosity deposited on them from another planet. While the mother was down to earth and steady, the daughter had something of her late brother Robert’s passionate nature about her. How Edith would have loved her daughter to be calm and biddable, steady and reliable, but it was not to be. Rosamund was headstrong, passionate, enthusiastic. Edith felt s. . .