British Bulldog Read Online Free PDF Page B

a postage stamp from her wallet. She stuck it to the envelope, admiring Her Majesty’s glowing complexion as she did so. She hoped Mrs Bradley might be able to help, although asking a recently bereaved widow for assistance was an unreliable strategy. In the weeks after Jack died she herself had barely eaten, unsure what day it was or even what time. She had sat, shocked, in an armchair in her living room and his memory had been everywhere – laughing beside the window, throwing apillow at her in derision during an imagined discussion, holding her naked as they lay on the floor. The sunshine outside had seemed a betrayal as she willed the ceiling to fall in and end the pain of Jack’s being gone. Once, she had walked outside and, blinkered in grief after three sleepless days and nights, had frantically crossed the busy road repeatedly, hoping to be run down. She had ended up weeping on the pebble beach. A widow’s instinct was not to dive in with helpful information – that much she knew. Not that she and Jack had married.
    Outside, considering a walk might help her to think, she turned left along Eaton Gate. A man in a threadbare coat loitered outside the public lavatory. Mirabelle had noticed him there when she arrived at the hotel. He must have nowhere to go, she thought as she lengthened her stride and slipped Mrs Bradley’s letter into the postbox – a sole flash of colour on the corner. In summer this road was leafy but the trees were bare skeletons at this time of year and the grass only intermittent between patches of frozen mud. The railings made the gardens look like prison yards.
    A chill wind whipped around her slim ankles as she ran through Bradley’s story again to see if she could deduce anything further. He was a sapper – a Royal Engineer – she suddenly recalled as she held him in her mind’s eye and deciphered the badges on his uniform. Like many men who had been taken prisoner after Dunkirk, he had been sent to a Stalag – a prisoner of war camp. After trying to escape so many times, he must have been on the Germans’ list for a transfer to Posen or even Colditz, where they housed their most troublesome inmates: VIPs and serial escapers. Bradley probably undertook his successful attempt just in time, and having managed to get away with Caine in tow, had made the sensible decision to head into occupied territory. France was their best chance of getting home. There were established exit routes and solid resistance against German forces. The Maquis were adept atsmuggling out information, spies and soldiers. It wouldn’t be easy, of course, but elsewhere the odds would have been stacked even higher against them.
    Bradley was probably about as ideal an escapee as there could be. The Royal Engineers were practical men, well respected in military circles – there was one, she recalled, who had won a Victoria Cross at Saint-Nazaire. Mirabelle wondered what Major Bradley’s field of expertise had been before he became Bulldog Bradley the famous escaper. His regiment built bridges and dockyards, surveyed enemy territory and specialised in bomb disposal. Many of the troops who got out brought back important military information about supply routes, airfields and defensive structures they had seen on their way. Sappers remembered twice as much as anyone else, simply because they understood how installations were built and what it might take to destroy them. Men like Bradley contributed a great deal to the war effort when they got home.
    Mirabelle turned her attention to Philip Caine. Bradley was such a huge figure that she found herself assuming Caine was the second man – as if he was only a shadow. It had almost surprised her to learn that the major had escaped as part of a duo. When he got back Bradley’s story had been told repeatedly in the press, with no mention of a partner – a man left behind. Escaping in such an arrangement was common enough. In many ways small groups stood a better chance