Windflower Wedding

‘Snowdrops?’

‘Their military police. They call them that because they wear white gaiters and white helmets.’

‘Hm. Snowdrops is nice little flowers. Pretty and dainty – and welcome. You alus know winter is almost over when the snowdrops flower.’

‘Well, those military police are neither pretty nor dainty. Big bruisers, Bas says they are, and some of them real nasty with it. And he didn’t phone me last night, either!’

‘Last night,’ said Catchpole severely, ‘he was busy thumbing a lift back to camp – or avoiding those Snowdrop lads. On the other hand, he might have got hisself caught …’

‘Oh, Mr Catchpole, you don’t think he has?’

‘He could have, but I hope not.’ He would miss his tins of tobacco.

‘And so do I! Going AWOL is a serious thing.’

‘It is. In the last war they shot ’em for it, but they’re a bit more civilized now. Reckon these days he’d only get three months in prison!’

‘You’re joking, Mr Catchpole!’ It didn’t bear thinking about; three months without seeing Bas!

‘Happen I am, lass. There’ll be a phone call for you tonight, don’t fret. He’s as taken with you as you are with him. He’ll get through.’

‘He can please himself!’ Gracie jammed her hoe deep into the ground so it stood upright between the rows of early chrysanthemums, shivering and swaying. ‘I’m going to make tea,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Not that you deserve any!’

Head high, she made for the potting shed, heels crunching the gravel. Then she filled the little iron kettle at the standtap and set it to boil on the hob, taking deep, calming breaths, chiding herself because she’d let Mr Catchpole get under her skin, because there was more than an element of truth in what he’d said. She was taken with Bas Sutton. She looked forward to his visits, to dancing with him and kissing him. And the way he smiled made delicious little shivers run all the way from her toes to her nose.

Yet shivers apart, she always managed to count to ten; always refused to say she loved him and always said no, very prettily, each time he asked her to marry him. She was losing count of the times he’d said, ‘Marry me?’; losing count of the number of times she had closed her eyes, taken a deep breath and thought, really hard, about Daisy and Keth being so far apart and them not knowing when they would meet again. And Drew, fretting because Kitty could be sent to London to work for ENSA. And as for poor Tatty and Tim …

She tipped the twist of tea and sugar into the pot, determined not to get upset next time Mr Catchpole teased her about Bas or blush furiously or say things she didn’t mean because she was almost sure she could fall in love with him, though not for anything would she admit it to a soul!

She glared at the kettle, willing it to boil and all the time thinking about Bas and the Snowdrops and hoping they hadn’t stopped him and asked him for his leave pass. Because Bas getting caught just didn’t bear thinking about!

6

Daisy removed the On Leave disc from the hook beneath her name, replacing it with one bearing the words In Quarters, Cabin 4A. Then she glanced at the criss-crossed letter board. None there for her, but in all probability Lyn had taken them.

Returning from leave was less traumatic now, she acknowledged, as the cramped familiarity of Cabin 4A reached out to her. This, for most of the year, was home; this small space with room only for a two-tier bunk, a chest of drawers and two wooden chairs she had shared for a year with Lyn who would soon be returning from watch. And shared it amicably, too. They were firm friends, their only cross words caused by Drew who was now engaged to Kitty. His feet-first fall into love with Kitty was sudden and thorough. Exquisite disbelief rocked him on his heels to find that after five years apart, his tomboy Kentucky cousin had grown into a head-turning beauty. The engagement pleasantly shocked everyone who knew him – with the exception of Lyn Carmichael, who was still devastated by it.

Daisy removed her hat, then pulled her fingers through her hair, smiling to see two letters on her pillow just as she expected and a sheet of notepaper on which was written large and red, ‘WELCOME BACK. YOU’VE HAD IT, CHUM!’ Had her leave, that was, until the New Year. Lyn, on the other hand, would start hers next week, which was a crafty move when you considered she would miss her week of night duties.

Daisy smiled, pushed the note into her drawer, determined to leave it on Lyn’s pillow in two weeks’ time, and carefully opened the two envelopes. Then she kicked off her shoes and lay back on her bunk to read them at least twice. The first time to savour their contents; to close her eyes and recall kisses and whispered love words; the second time to read between the lines for small phrases, names deliberately misused; any irregularity, no matter how small, that would hint at something the Censor had not seized upon.

Yet there was nothing, save that he loved her, missed her, wanted her. Nothing about the work he did in Washington nor if there was even the slightest chance he might be sent back to England with the same indecent haste They had sent him away. But They could do anything They wanted and usually did. Without explanation; without giving Keth even a forty-eight-hour leave pass to let them say goodbye. By the time this war was over, They would have a great deal to answer for!

A glance at her watch told her it was time for evening standeasy or, had she been a civilian, a bedtime drink and a snack. She had not eaten since midday and all at once realized she was hungry. She wondered as she spread viciously red jam on her bread what news Lyn would have and thought that in all probability there would be none. These days some of the sparkle had left Lyn’s eyes and a lot of her joie de vivre, which was a pity because she and Drew seemed so good together. Until Kitty, that was …

She balanced her plate on her mug and walked carefully back to Cabin 4A. Eating in cabins was forbidden but rules were there to be broken. Life would be very dull without the occasional tilt at Authority and at the moment the common room was cold and cheerless without the fire which could not be lit until October because of the shortage of coal.

It made her think of the leaping log fire in the black-leaded grate at Keeper’s Cottage and Mam sitting by it alone because Dada would be out with the Home Guard until ten o’clock at least.

A pang of homesickness hit her and she quickly ate her bread and jam, licked her sticky fingers, then fished in the pocket of her belt for three sixpences.

She would book a call home. Trunk calls almost always took ages to come through, but tonight she might be lucky and get through before lights out.

‘Could I have Holdenby 195, please?’ she asked the operator, who answered almost at once. ‘Holdenby, York?’

‘Have one shilling and sixpence ready, please.’

Daisy smiled. Operators never asked you to have your money ready if they didn’t have a line to Trunks. She pushed three sixpenny pieces into the slot, with a ping, ping, ping.

‘Press button A. You’re through now.’

All at once life was not good, exactly, but at least bearable. A phone call home with no bother and Lyn back off watch in less than an hour. If only there were some way to ring Keth or even send a message on the teleprinter at Epsom House, then life would be really good. If only Washington – and Keth – were not so far away!

‘Mam! It’s me! I’m back safe and sound. Thanks for a lovely leave …’

Keth spread the papers on the table in his room, gazing at them with disbelief.

‘Read them,’ he was told in Room 22. ‘Read them over and over. Think yourself into Gaston Martin. Bring them all back here, though, before you go to sleep. They’ll be safer with us.’

Sleep? Would he ever sleep again? He hadn’t felt too bad about what was to come until he was faced with another man’s identity. That was when it really hit him.

An identification card with Keth Purvis’s photograph on it; a card skilfully forged to look as if it had been in his pocket – in Gaston Martin’s pocket – since his discharge from the French Army in the winter of 1940.

Gaston Martin, his work permit said, was a labourer. Keth looked at his hands and shrugged, then looked again at the equally worn discharge certificate, taking in still more of the details of Gaston Martin’s life. He must, he had been told, commit it to his memory; must imagine himself into another man’s ego – into his psyche, his soul. He must, from now on, even try to think in this other man’s language.

Born to Belle Martin in her mother’s apartment at Nancy at three in the afternoon; two months after his father’s death in the trenches. Left in the care of his grandmother when his mother returned to her former occupation of seamstress. A sewing-maid, like Daisy’s mother?

Daisy. He was back home, yet she did not know; just the distance of a phone call away, yet he must not ring her. And of course he could not, because Keth Purvis no longer existed; not until he returned from France, that was. If he returned, he thought distastefully.

Gaston Martin. Born on 3 September 1917. He would remember the date easily because another war, this war, started on 3 September.

He didn’t know his address because as yet no one knew just where he would be put ashore. When they did, an address would be written in in the same faked faded ink, he supposed. They were thorough, he’d grant them that.

Put ashore. Words to start the tingling behind his nose. Somewhere, probably, between La Rochelle and Biarritz, Room 22 said vaguely; somewhere very near, Keth hoped, to the package he was to pick up.

That part of the coast would be safer, wouldn’t it, than the highly fortified northern ports of Calais and Dunkirk? The journey would take longer, though. How many days’ sailing time by submarine and did submarines travel submerged during daylight hours? How many miles an hour could they do? Knots per hour, wasn’t it?

He wondered how it would feel to be submerged. Submariners couldn’t suffer from claustrophobia on the sea bed, could they? So much water around and above them. How much pressure, his mathematical mind demanded, could the hull of a submarine take?

But that was nothing to do with him and he forced his thoughts back to the business of getting to France. A crossing to the north would have taken less time; but the South of France was nearer to unoccupied country – to Vichy France; nearer, too, to neutral Spain – if you could call Franco neutral in his thinking.

Yet why had Room 22 laid such stress on the nearness of Vichy France, and Spain? Was his trip – hell, trip? – to France more dangerous than they wanted him to believe?

He was afraid. He admitted it. Not necessarily of being killed quickly and cleanly. That took seconds and most times you didn’t know it was going to happen, his father once said. But he was really afraid of being taken and interrogated and then killed and worse even would be the knowledge that he would know, just before it happened, that he would never see Daisy again, nor Mum, and that they would probably never know how he had died. That really hurt.

He reached in the pocket of his jacket for his flask, poured a too-large measure of whisky, then tossed it down. It stung his throat and made him gasp for breath, but he felt better for it.

Once, when he worked in the boring safeness of Bletchley Park, Daisy had demanded to know why he was so secretive about what he did, and was he really a spy?

Keth Purvis a spy! His laugh had been genuine, yet now he was a spy. An enemy agent the Germans would call him if they got hold of him. He was to assume another man’s identity, carry false papers, wear specially provided civilian clothes obtained in France. What else could he be called but spy?

He wanted Daisy now, yet who was Daisy? Gaston Martin did not know of her existence. Gaston Martin had been discharged from the Army because his hearing was impaired. His papers said so. He must remember that, always. Not to hear properly might be an advantage if people started demanding answers to questions.

The whisky inside his empty stomach was beginning to relax him and he found he could think of Daisy without feeling sick at the thought of losing her. He wasn’t going to lose her! They were sending him to France as a courier because he knew about Enigma. That was all. He wasn’t an agent. Agents were highly trained and he was an amateur. Even that stupid lot at Whitehall didn’t send amateurs into danger – not real danger. He was to be taken to France by submarine, met, then hidden until it was time for him to bring back the package. They would take good care of him. Not that Keth Purvis was of any importance. What was important was the machine he would bring back. Any boffin with a knowledge of Enigma could have done it, couldn’t they? They had chosen him because he owed them one for his passage back to England, so he had to do it, if only to save lives at sea. Keth Purvis wasn’t at sea, was he? Didn’t cross the Atlantic again and again in a slow-moving convoy, nor go on the Murmansk run – that suicide trip to the north of Russia with tanks and guns for Stalin.

When it was over and done with he would return to Bletchley Park. They had told him that. And when that happened, he would never again complain of the mind-blowing frustration of it. He would even be glad that in some small way, perhaps, what he had done would help decode German U-boat signals more easily. Breaking their code only one day in five wasn’t on. When they could break it as easily as the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe codes, then the Atlantic would be a whole lot safer for Allied seamen.

He looked at the flask, then screwed the top back firmly. Gaston Martin had no need of more.

He picked up the closely typed papers he had been given. Gaston Martin, born to Belle and the late Jules a year before the end of the last war.

His mother was dead too. In hospital, following complications after an operation for appendicitis and no, he had not been with her when she died. It was too sudden, too unexpected. Only Grand-mère was with her. Grand-mère died a year later. Both she and Maman were buried at – Hell! Where?

Frantically he searched through the papers. So much to learn, but learn it he would, because he was going to France and coming back safely. All in one piece.

D-watch, relieved by A-watch, arrived back at Hellas House at twenty minutes past midnight or, in naval time, 00.20 hours.

‘Hi,’ smiled Lyn, carefully pushing open the door, depositing tea and jam and bread on the chest of drawers. ‘I thought you’d be awake still. Brought you up a drink. Good leave, then?’

‘Great. And thanks for leaving the letters – and the welcome-back greeting.’

‘Keth all right?’ Lyn took off her jacket, eased off her shoes.

‘He’s fine. He still loves me, which isn’t a lot of use, him over there and me here. Any news? Scandal?’

‘News – yes. You know the buzz about the hats? Well, it’s official. New caps in clothing stores soon and we’re to swap the old ones for the new type. Not before time, either. Just like school hats, these things. The new ones will be a sort of cross between a matelot’s cap and a beret, I heard. Cheeky. Worn low on the forehead, an inch above the eyebrows. At least I’ll be able to wear my hair in a pleat and not have to screw it into a roll.’ Lyn Carmichael refused, unlike most other Wrens, to have her hair cut short. ‘Oh, and we needn’t carry our respirators everywhere now. Seems Hitler isn’t going to gas us! We’re only to take them when we go on leave. They’re going to let us carry shoulder bags. I’ve actually seen one, though we have to buy them ourselves. Fifteen bob, I think they’ll be. Quite smart. It’s all been happening whilst you were away.’

‘Things are looking up,’ Daisy smiled. ‘No more news?’

‘We-e-ll, yes.’ Lyn took a steadying gulp of tea. ‘I had a letter from Kenya. From my father. It took me ages to open it because for some stupid reason I hadn’t expected to hear from him again – well, not until the war was over. It seems, though, that he and Auntie Blod have written to each other regularly since my mother died.’

‘The lady you thought was your mother,’ Daisy corrected.

‘Thought. I never really liked her; that was why she had me sent to school in England, I suppose.’

‘But you like your Auntie Blod, don’t you?’

‘If you mean am I glad she’s my real mother and not my aunt, yes, I am. My father should have married her, though, knowing he’d got her pregnant.’

‘I think he might have done, Carmichael, if your Auntie Blod had told him.’

‘Then she should have and they could have married and I’d have had a proper mother and father!’

‘You’re still annoyed about it, aren’t you – annoyed with your father, I mean?’

‘Yes, I am. The randy old goat!’

‘Lyn! That isn’t kind! It must have been awful for your Auntie Blod, giving you up to her sister and thinking she would never see you again. And I think she still loves your father, else why did she never marry and why are they writing to each other all of a sudden?’

‘Why indeed, and me not being told about it! But I suppose it’ll all come out in the wash. Auntie Blod will tell me about it when I go on leave. And if she still loves him, well, what the heck!’

Blodwen Meredith, her real mother, if she wanted to be picky, must truly have loved her father, just as Lyn loved – would always love – Drew Sutton. It was like Auntie Blod once said: you couldn’t turn love off to order.

‘It’s their life,’ Daisy said softly.

‘Yes, it is. Want some bread and jam?’

‘Just tea, thanks. And, Lyn – about your father. You once said you liked him better than your mother; that he was quite decent to you, when she wasn’t there.’

‘I should think so, too! After all, I was his natural daughter. My mother must have hated it really, having me around. The one I thought was my mother,’ she amended, sighing.

‘Well, it’s all coming right for them now, and you should be glad about it if they want to get together after all those years.’

‘I suppose I should. I’ll try to be, if only for Auntie Blod’s sake. I love her a lot. Always did.’

‘Probably because some part of you knew she was your real mother.’

‘Probably. Sure you don’t want this bread and jam, Dwerryhouse?’

‘Sure. Eat it yourself, then get into bed. I’ve put a hot-water bottle in for you. Chop chop! Some of us want to get to sleep! And by the way – I missed you. I’m sort of glad to be back in the old routine.’

She pushed the empty mug beneath her bunk, then wriggled down into her blankets. Come to think of it, Liverpool wasn’t a bad old place to see out the war in, for all its faults – provided the Luftwaffe didn’t come back and blitz it again!

But anywhere would do really. Without Keth, one port was much the same as another. And Lyn was smashing to be with – when she wasn’t all quiet, thinking about Drew marrying someone else, that was. Poor Lyn …

‘Where are they, then?’ Tatiana Sutton smiled a greeting at Sparrow’s Joannie, who was quite high up, really, in the Women’s Voluntary Service.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind – taking on another one?’

‘Not at all. They aren’t a bit of trouble. It’s the one or two civilians who look at them as if they’ve got no right to be out in public that bother me!’

‘The air gunner is blind. Did Aunt Emily tell you?’

‘She did.’ Tatiana drew in her breath sharply. Tim had been an air gunner. ‘But he’ll like the music, even though he won’t be able to …’ Her voice trailed off, because it was awful enough having your face burned beyond recognition; to lose your sight as well must make you want to rage against the injustice of it.

‘The music will be an extra bonus,’ Joannie said. ‘Just going out on the town will be really something. It’s his first time out since – since it happened. You’ll have to play it by ear. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘I do. What’s his name?’

‘Bill Benson. How’s Aunt Emily, by the way?’

‘She’s fine. Sent her love. Joannie – just how old is she? I’ve asked, but she won’t tell.’

‘So have I and got one of her looks for it. But it’s my guess she’s nearer eighty than seventy.’

‘She’s a love. She bullies me, you know.’

‘I do know, but it’s really affection. She’s got to have someone to love. Here are the tickets.’ She handed over a re-used envelope, stuck down with an economy label. ‘They’re good seats. You’re to meet the chaps outside the theatre.’

‘The Adelphi, isn’t it? I’m looking forward to it. How are they to get back afterwards?’

‘There’ll be transport provided. There are quite a few lads out on the town tonight so wait with yours, can you, till a driver comes to pick them up?’

She said of course she would and that she knew which line to use on the Underground and where to get off. She was getting to be quite a Londoner.

‘One last thing, Tatiana. If there’s an alert, I think it would be best if you got them to the nearest Underground – then stay with them, till the all clear.’

‘I’ll look after them.’ There were fewer air raids on London since Hitler had invaded Russia. Very few people left a cinema when ‘Air-Raid Warning’ was flashed on the screen now. Usually it was only air-raid wardens, ambulance drivers and fire fighters who left to report to their nearest centre; just as Uncle Igor did. It was the same in the theatres. Someone – usually a pretty girl – stood at the side of the stage holding up a notice to the same effect.

But Londoners were getting blasé about the Luftwaffe. They had paid their money and were staying to see a show! It was as simple as that. And London was a big place, they usually reasoned; the bombs would probably drop miles away!

‘I’ll take them if they want to go,’ Tatiana smiled. ‘But best be off. Don’t want to keep the RAF waiting!’

She wouldn’t, she was to think afterwards, have been so eager had she known what would be there outside the Adelphi Theatre to greet her.

‘This is Bill,’ Sam said. ‘Sergeant Bill Benson.’ Which would have been all right, Tatiana thought when she had got the better of the cold, cruel pain that sliced through her, had he not turned, his hand searching for hers, and spoken to her with Tim’s soft way of speaking; had he not had a shock of fair hair like Tim’s, nor the wing of an air-gunner above his left tunic pocket.

Tim come back to her, his beautiful face burned beyond recognition; Tim, wearing dark glasses over sightless eyes. Not smiling, because to smile she knew to be difficult. But the hand she grasped was Tim Thomson’s hand and the voice that said, ‘Tatiana. Nice to meet you,’ was Tim’s voice. Even his height belonged to a sergeant air-gunner she had not seen for a few days short of a year.

She clasped the hand in hers, said, ‘Nice to meet you, too, Bill,’ then covered that hand with her free one and closed her eyes and whispered silently inside her, ‘God! How could you do this to me? How could you?’

‘We’re in good time.’ Sam speaking. ‘What say we find the bar and sink a crafty half?’

‘A crafty half it is!’ said a voice not a bit like Tatiana Sutton’s. Then she pulled Bill Benson’s arm into the crook of her own. ‘That okay with you, Bill?’

And he said it was and asked her to tell him – quietly, if she wouldn’t mind – when there was a step up or down; otherwise he could manage just fine.

And Tatiana thought it was just as well one of them could manage just fine, because she couldn’t. She was light-headed and hot and cold, both at the same time. And it hurt, almost, to breathe.

‘Give me your stick,’ she heard herself saying, ‘and you, Sam, walk on the other side. Relax, Bill. We’ve got you.’

Yet all the time she was shaking inside her. And her mouth had gone dry and it was hard, even, to think; think about getting Bill Benson up and down steps and stairs, that was, and fixing him up with a beer; finding a corner of the noisy, heaving bar where he could manage to drink it without being pushed or elbowed.