Nancy Wake Biography Revised Edition by Peter FitzSimons

Author:Peter FitzSimons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2001-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

I Spy, With My Little Eye …

‘Freedom is the only thing worth living for.

While I was doing that work I used to think

that it didn’t matter if I died, because without

freedom there was no point in living.’

NANCY WAKE,

Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 1968

Both Nancy and London itself had changed dramatically since the last time the two had been together. The once majestic city had since endured tons of bombs dropped on it, and Nancy was staggered as she walked around and saw just how much ruin had been visited upon it. Whole streets and buildings were reduced to rubble, while others remained standing but were boarded up and abandoned. A blackout still applied at night, and at the first shrill call of an air-raid siren everyone scurried to bomb shelters, though this was thankfully a much rarer occurrence than it had been during the Battle of Britain.

As for Nancy herself, when she was last living in London her frivolous lifestyle saw her spending her time at bars and clubs, picnics and pub-crawls. Now she had only minimal interest in such things, though she did at least go and see all the theatrical shows that were on, of which there were many, thriving as they were on the people’s need for entertainment during such hard times. The first film she sought out was Gone with the Wind, as she had caught a glimpse of Vivien Leigh in a smoky nightclub in Gibraltar and been struck by her extraordinary beauty. Nancy also socialised with the many Allied servicemen and French whom she’d previously known in France. And after the word had spread that ‘Nancy’s back’ there were a lot of them, starting with Garrow who on the night of her arrival took her to dinner at Qaglino’s, one of London’s best restaurants of the time.

‘After that, at least fifty of them invited me to their homes and I met their wives, or mothers or fathers or friends,’ she says. ‘The ones with money took me out to nightclubs, restaurants and generally entertained me, which was very nice indeed.’

Nancy also busied herself with renting and decorating the apartment in Piccadilly she’d decided to rent — one of three she’d looked at seriously, and the only one that wasn’t subsequently bombed into ruins. (Once again, her luck held.) She was decorating the apartment and making it as stylishly comfortable as her Marseille home against the day when Henri might soon be arriving. It was for the same reason that she spent a lot of time buying such things as clothes, linen and the like — for she felt sure that he would arrive with only what he had been able to carry over the Pyrenees. He had, after all, faithfully promised that he would try to reach her soon. Finally, she bought French champagne and Henri’s favourite liqueur brandy in Soho with which she intended they would celebrate his arrival.

‘I had had no contact with him of course,’ Nancy says, ‘but just assumed that he would be keeping to our original plan, for him to follow me to England.

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