Windflower Wedding

‘I do,’ Tatiana whispered. ‘And thanks, Daisy.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

‘For being my friend – and for understanding. And tomorrow, before I leave, we’ll go to see the rooks – okay?’

‘The good old rooks,’ Daisy smiled. ‘You bet we will!’

Keth had not done so much writing since his student days. He put down his pen, rubbing the back of his hand, frowning.

He would be gone for ten days, they told him – certainly no longer than two weeks. So write your letters to the people you usually send them to, they said; address them and date them as if you were still in Washington, and write them as if you were still in Washington too.

‘But my mother and fiancée will carry on writing to that address – I won’t get any letters!’ he had protested.

‘They’ll be redirected to you. You’ll get them – eventually.’

‘But why? And where am I going for ten days?’ Surely not another stupid course trying to make a soldier out of him when all he was good at was mathematics and code-breaking.

And then an awful thought filled his head and he quickly dismissed it because they couldn’t be sending him to make another parachute jump? He shuddered to remember the last, the only, jump he had made; tried to shut out the look of disbelief on his instructor’s face. And far worse than that had been the awful bruising he got on landing and how lucky he was, he’d been told, not to have been badly injured, and to go back to signalling because surely he was better at signalling than parachuting out of a plane!

‘Where you’re going you’ll know when you’ve been kitted out,’ he was told. ‘And you can leave your stuff here because here’s where you’ll be coming back to.’

‘I see,’ he’d said, but he hadn’t understood a word of it because they still weren’t giving straight answers to straight questions. All he knew was that the muscular sergeant major he encountered on his first night at Castle McLeish was a drill instructor who supervised assault courses and who took great delight in putting officers with soft hands through it time and time again. He could also be very insulting – respectfully insulting, that was!

So Keth had written two letters to his mother and four to Daisy and he would have to write at least two more because usually he wrote to Daisy every day.

Two of the letters he had supposedly written from Kentucky where he was having a weekend with Bas and Kitty’s parents, told how delighted they were that Kitty and Drew were engaged and how sad Mrs Amelia was not to be having the time of her life organizing engagement showers and fussing over her daughter’s trousseau. He felt all kinds of a heel as he wrote them.

Trouble was, he had seen no evidence yet of anything in the least familiar to him. As far as he was concerned, Castle McLeish was little better than a drill camp and Keth Purvis was being toughened up for something that this far had nothing to do with Enigma nor bombes nor code-breaking. Something, somewhere, didn’t fit and the more he thought about it, the more apprehensive he became.

If only somebody would say – in answer to his oft-asked question – ‘Yes, Purvis, this is what you are here to do,’ then go on to explain exactly what it was they wanted of him and why he was going away for ten to fourteen days. It was a simple enough request to make but it had not been answered. Nor had anyone looked him straight in the eye and that, he decided, was what made him even more apprehensive.

Well, he’d had enough! He laid down his pen, picked up his cap, in case it became official, and made his way to the mess where he knew he would find the adjutant. And he would have answers to his questions; eyeball-to-eyeball answers, or his name wasn’t Keth Purvis!

He had waited his time in the mess; waited until the adjutant was alone, then walked across the room to face him.

‘A word, if you please – sir!’

The adjutant recognized the narrowed eyes and jutting jaw and asked him if it wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.

No, Keth said, it wouldn’t. Either he got a straight answer now to a couple of questions he wanted to ask or he would put in a request to see the Commanding Officer!

That was why he sat here now, in the outer office. Wait, he had been told. The Commanding Officer would see him in just a minute. The minute had stretched out to fifteen; the customary waiting time for all subordinates intent upon wasting the CO’s time. A heel-cooling period.

Yet Keth did not want to cool down. He wanted to know why he had come from Washington only to do physical jerks and be ignored when he asked the sane and sensible question: what the hell was he doing here?

The phone on the ATS sergeant’s desk rang. Keth wondered why every army girl here was a sergeant. This one was a good-looker; hair like Lyn Carmichael’s. She smiled and told him to go in. He jumped to his feet, hoping his stare hadn’t been too obvious, then knocked on the door she indicated.

‘Enter!’

Keth closed the door behind him, came to attention and saluted.

‘At ease, Purvis.’ He was not invited to sit, so he stood feet apart, relaxing his shoulders, hands behind back. ‘Now the way we do things here, Purvis, is not to make a b nuisance of ourselves. We speak only when spoken to and we don’t ask questions – right?’

‘Sir …’ Keth acknowledged cautiously, because he had been speaking out of turn and he had made a nuisance of himself, he supposed.

‘Has the nature of what goes on in this establishment been lost on you, then? Did you never wonder why you had been asked to leave letters behind you?’

‘Yes. And I wondered – with respect, sir – what kind of a course I was going on, for about a fortnight. I thought I would be doing the work I did at Bletchley Park, but I can see no indication of it here.’

‘Enigma, you mean? Well, you’re right. We only know about Enigma here. We know about a lot of things.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Keth’s mouth had gone dry. He was beginning to wish he had left well alone.

If you’d kept your mouth shut for just another day, I could have given you the whole story, but since it seems you can’t,’ the senior officer paused to let his words sink in, ‘since you want to know why you were brought back from Washington, I’ll tell you.

‘We had your card marked, Captain – just in case we wanted something done by someone who had a working knowledge of the Enigma machine. And then we found we did and we want you for a courier’s job. And please let me finish,’ he snapped as Keth opened his mouth to speak. ‘There are any of a dozen other men could do the job and a damned sight more efficiently than you; men who don’t ask questions nor throw their weight about as you have been doing! But none of those men has your knowledge of Enigma, you see.’

‘Courier?’ Keth breathed, running his tongue round his top lip. ‘Deliver something?’ Was that what all the fuss was about, for Pete’s sake?

‘No. We – They – want something picking up. From occupied France.’

‘Ha!’ Keth’s body sagged. Then he straightened his shoulders, stared ahead and asked of the regimental photograph on the wall, ‘And if I don’t want to be parachuted into occupied France, sir?’

‘Then you can start packing your bags now and I’ll guarantee you a seat on the very next plane back to Washington! You asked to return to UK. You knew there would be conditions attached. You were specifically told so! What’s the matter with you, man – got a yellow streak?’

‘No, sir. Only when it comes to parachuting!’

‘Hm. Understandable, I suppose, when your one and only jump was an utter fiasco, according to your records. That’s why you won’t be parachuting in.’

‘Then that’s fine, sir.’ He didn’t like being called yellow.

‘I’m glad, because you’ll be leaving here tonight. SOE will kit you out and brief you. It will be in no way dangerous. All you have to do is pick up something and bring it back. It’s the operators in the field who’ll be taking the risks.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Of course it wasn’t dangerous. He hopped over to France every week of the year! ‘Am I to start packing my kit?’

‘No. Leave it all in your room. Anything personal or private you will place in an envelope, seal it down, and initial the flap. One of your drawers has a lock and key. Lock anything away that you want to and give the key to the adjutant when you leave. Afterwards, you’ll be coming back here so you can pick up your bags before you move on – back to Bletchley. Any questions?’

‘Just how will I be – er – going in, sir?’

‘All depends. On weather conditions. It’ll either be by Lysander – that’s an aircraft,’ he said, as if explaining to an idiot that a Lysander was an extremely efficient, small, light aircraft that could land on a postcard, almost, ‘or by sea – the submarine boys will put you ashore. Like I said, it’ll all depend.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

‘Right, then. Dismissed.’

Keth remembered to salute, to do an efficient about-turn, then left the room, also remembering to smile and nod his thanks to the red-haired sergeant on the desk, as if what he had just been told hadn’t knocked him for six!

Then he opened the door of his room, sat heavily on the bed and gasped, ‘Flaming Norah!’

4

Telegraphist Drew Sutton, having handed over the middle watch to his opposite number, stripped off to his underpants and swung himself into his hammock. Hammocks were very adaptable. On a boat as small as HMS Penrose, you slung them wherever there was a space, be it in the mess or beside the engine-room bulkhead. Hammocks moulded themselves to your body and gently swung you to sleep with every rising and falling of the Penrose’s bows. Double beds, on the other hand; large, sinful double beds with soft shaded lights either side, took a lot of beating.

He smiled into the darkness. Kitty Sutton. From Kentucky. His kissing cousin and the woman he would marry just as soon as he could get her down the aisle. At this moment, Kitty was wallowing in being in love. She was in love with love and didn’t want to spoil it, he suspected, by getting married. Yet they were morally married, he supposed. If sharing a bed on every possible occasion constituted a marriage, then they were well and truly wed. And he could understand Kitty’s reasoning. To her, he supposed, sleeping together in delightful sin was more thrilling, more risqué, than the church-blessed union after which you not only could sleep together as much as you wanted, but were expected to do so. The intonations of a priest, the pronouncing of them man and wife was all very well, but his adorable Kitty, he was almost sure, preferred the former and the element of risk it carried with it.

Take Thursday night. He smiled fondly. She had stood demurely beside him as he signed the hotel register Andrew and Kathryn Sutton, Rowangarth, Holdenby, York. She had fluttered her eyelashes coyly, and the new lady receptionist—who didn’t know Drew at all—asked her, if Modom wouldn’t mind, of course, to produce her identity card.

Drew pulled in his breath and hoped she wouldn’t blush furiously. And Kitty had not blushed at all! Having, on her arrival in the United Kingdom, acquired a British ration book and a British identity card which stated she was Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton of Rowangarth, Holdenby, York – her official English address – she placed it on the desk with the sweetest of smiles and said she wouldn’t mind at all!

Then the red-faced receptionist had stammered her apologies, explaining that one couldn’t be too sure these days, and she hoped Mrs Sutton would forgive her.

At which Kitty smiled even more sweetly, pocketed her identity card, and all at once very serious, said, it’s Lady Sutton, if you don’t mind.’

Then she swept to the lift, jammed her finger on the button, leaving the squirming receptionist looking for the smallest crack in the floorboards in which to hide.

‘Kitty Sutton, you really do take the plate of biscuits!’ Drew had collapsed, laughing, on the large, bouncy bed beside her, imploring her never to change; always to be his outrageous, adorable Kitty. She had laughed with him and promised him she never would, then proceeded to undress with indecent haste.

‘Kitty.’ He whispered her name softly. It would be strange, in church, marrying Kathryn Norma Clementina when it was really Kitty he was in love with. His life now could be divided into two phases; before Kitty and since Kitty – and he wondered how he had even remotely existed before the night, barely three months ago, when she came back into his life like a hurricane. He was still breathless from the impact.

The same ATS sergeant drove Keth away from Castle McLeish in the same car in which he had arrived, only this time he sat in the back seat. He sat there because he needed to think and uppermost in his mind was SOE, which any fool knew was Special Operatives Executive and differed from MI5 and MI6 in that it was concerned solely with getting agents into occupied Europe, listening for their W/T call signs and getting them out again when they had completed their operation or when it became imperative to remove them quickly for their own good. The Army, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, Keth knew, all co-operated in the delivery and collection of those agents. You didn’t work with Enigma and not know it.

Now, it seemed, either the Submarine Service or the Royal Air Force was taking him to France – ostensibly as an unimportant messenger, charged only with making a collection. There would be little risk to himself, he’d been told, and he grasped that assurance to him like a warm, comforting blanket.

On hearing his immediate destination he had, after the initial shock subsided, written two more letters to Daisy, then addressed nine envelopes, two to his mother and seven to Daisy. In the last letter, dated ten days ahead, he told her that the course he had been sent on was almost finished and soon he would have a more permanent address to give her.

Then he posted the unsealed envelopes in a box not unlike those used by the general public which was marked, Missives for Censoring but which really meant Stick your love letters in here, chum, to be read by the po-faced adjutant.

He had disliked the adjutant at Castle McLeish on sight, labelling him pompous, upper class and insensitive; wondering when it would be his turn to be deposited into occupied Europe; hoping it would be very soon! Yet Daisy was worth it. Just to think of her mellowed his mood.

He said, ‘I don’t suppose you are allowed to tell me where you are taking me this time, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Just another place Somewhere in Scotland – about an hour away.’

He could hear the smile in her voice so he said, ‘And did they give you those stripes for being button-lipped?’

‘Yes, sir, they did – and I don’t want to lose them.’

‘Well,’ he expanded, ‘I can’t say I’m sorry to be leaving Castle McLeish – for a while, at least. Especially I won’t miss the adjutant. Is he always so snotty?’

‘No, sir. Far from it.’ Keth sensed the sudden edge to her voice.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, Captain. He’s one of us – really one of us. He’s done more drops into you-know-where than I dare tell you. About six weeks ago his wife was killed in an air raid. They haven’t sent him back since. He has children, you see.’

Keth did not speak for the remainder of the journey.

The only train into and out of Holdenby Halt on a Sunday bore Tatiana away to York and thence to King’s Cross. Daisy stood and waved until the little two-carriage train disappeared round the curve in the track, then she cycled back to Keeper’s Cottage, thinking that during the next seven days five of Aunt Julia’s Clan would have been to Rowangarth, though not all at the same time, of course. Drew and Kitty had been and gone, then she, Daisy, arrived on leave and the day after, Tatiana had come home on one of her rare weekend visits.

And then Bas phoned, begging a bed for the night. Kitty’s brother Bas was real sweet, Kitty said, on Rowangarth’s land girl, Gracie. Gracie, on the other hand, was giving Bas a run for his money, though Jack Catchpole reckoned it was only a matter of time before he caught her.

Daisy looked forward to seeing Bas again. She had last seen Sebastian Sutton in the late summer of ’thirty-seven when she stood at the waving place where the railway line ran alongside Brattocks Wood for about thirty yards. Exactly five years ago. She and Bas had grown up since then. She smiled, wishing the Clan could be together again, just once for old times’ sake. But the Clan was incomplete because Keth had been sent back to Washington and only the Lord knew when he would be home again.

She missed Keth desperately. A part of her would have given anything to have him back; the other part – the sensible part – wanted him to stay safely in America and no matter how long the war lasted, she always reasoned, she would at least know he would come home safely and that one day they would be married.

She told herself she was lucky; that Tatty would have given ten years of her life to know that one day, no matter how far away, she would see Tim Thomson again. Tatiana Sutton, the spoiled and cosseted child, had grown into a woman who once loved passionately, then dug in her stubborn English heels and defied her Russian mother and grandmother, taking herself off to London out of their meddling reach. Tatty lived at Aunt Julia’s little white house now, with Sparrow to care for her, to understand and love her without reservations as only Tim had done.

Probably, if Kitty was sent to London to join up with ENSA, she would live at the little white mews house, too. It would be good for Tatty – provided Kitty didn’t talk too much about how happy she was, and about getting married to Drew. But Kitty Sutton never did anything by halves. It wasn’t in her nature. Bubbling, volatile Kitty, whom everyone noticed the minute she stepped into a room; sparkling, notice-me Kitty, whom Drew loved desperately. She would be good for him, Daisy thought as she pedalled down Keeper’s Cottage lane. Drew had always been serious. He’d changed some since joining the Navy, but then you had to adapt. If you didn’t, life in the armed forces could be hell.

‘Hi, there!’ Gracie, carrying cabbage leaves, making for Keeper’s Cottage and the six hens she looked after at the bottom of the garden, beside the dog houses. ‘Just going to see to the hens – are you coming?’

Daisy said she was; she liked Gracie.

‘Did you know Bas will be over at the weekend?’

‘Yes. He told me. Twice. Once in a letter, then again on the phone.’

‘My word – letters and phone calls,’ Daisy teased. ‘Where’s it all going to end?’

‘Heaven only knows. Sometimes I think I should finish it all; times like now, I mean, when I can think straight. But when we’re together it’s an altogether different ball game, as Bas would say.’

‘It’s called being in love, Gracie.’

‘Well, I’m not in love! You know I won’t fall in love till the war is over!’

‘Then you should try it. You might even get to like it.’

‘Even though we might be parted, like you and Keth? And I haven’t got all day to stand here talking. Mr Catchpole will be giving me what for for wasting time. Here!’ Carefully she put four brown eggs into Daisy’s hands. ‘Take these to Tilda, will you? And don’t drop them!’ And with that she was off, up the garden path, making for the wild garden, striding out defiantly.

Never going to fall in love? Daisy thought, shaking her head. But Gracie had fallen for Bas the minute they had met, did she but know it. Pity, she thought, about that Lancashire common sense of hers getting in the way.

‘See you!’ she called, but Gracie strode on.

Another isolated, heavily guarded house, Keth thought; about thirty miles west of Castle McLeish if the position of the sinking sun was to be relied upon and the speed at which they had travelled. In this house there was more of an urgency in the air and, for once, the first question he asked had been answered with surprising frankness.

‘How long will you be away, Purvis? Just as long as it takes, I suppose. There’s a submarine flotilla not far from here and that’s how you’ll be going in. You might think things are ponderous slow when you get there, but you’ll only have one contact – two, at the most. You’ll just sit tight. Things get passed down the line, sort of. Better that way. And don’t think that being a courier is paddling ashore, swopping passwords, then paddling back to the submarine. It’s never that straightforward.’

‘No.’ They were sitting on the terrace, drinking an after-dinner coffee and brandy in the most civilized way; so ordinary and normal, Keth thought, that he couldn’t believe that soon he would assume another identity and be sent to –

‘Where exactly am I going – or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Not out here. We’ll go inside. It’s getting cold, anyway.’ The man, dressed in civilian clothes and whose name Keth did not yet know, picked up his glass then murmured, ‘My office, I think it had better be.’

When they were seated either side of a log fire and their glasses topped up, Keth said, ‘France, I gather.’

‘Yes – occupied France.’

‘Good. I speak the language passably well.’ Better than passably. Tatty’s governess, herself French, had seen to that such a long time ago, it seemed. When Keth Purvis had lived at Rowangarth bothy, it was; before the war when Rowangarth garden apprentices lived there and were looked after by his mother – and she glad of the job. ‘I don’t suppose I’d fool the locals, but I could get away with it with a German.’

‘Then let’s hope you don’t meet any. Oh – and you’ll have to see the photographer first thing in the morning. Your papers are ready, except for that. Better see the barber too. Your haircut looks a bit English, I’m afraid. Apart from that, there’s a resemblance to Gaston Martin about you.’

‘That’s whose ID I’ll be taking? A pretty ordinary name, isn’t it?’ The surname Martin was as common in France as Smith was in England.

‘Nevertheless, Gaston Martin does exist. He was invalided out of the French artillery just after Dunkirk. Deaf, in one ear – remember that. But you’ll be given details.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘He’s here, in the UK. He got taken off the beaches with our lot and our lot invalided him out. He’s working in North Wales, so you’re not likely to cross each other’s paths – not where you’ll be going, anyway.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Keth was glad of the brandy because ever since he’d been told about France, his stomach had felt distinctly queasy. He wondered if he would sleep tonight or lie awake turning it over in his mind, telling himself he was a damn fool.

Yet a bargain was a bargain. They had told him when he asked to be sent back to England there would be conditions attached and he accepted without a second thought; anything to get back to Daisy. But not in his craziest dreams had anything embraced cloak-and-dagger stuff, because that’s what this escapade boiled down to; downright bloody stupid, to put not too fine a point on it. Times like now, he could accept it – just. But how would he feel when they dumped him on some dark beach? Not very brave, he knew.

‘When it’s over and done with – well, what I’m trying to say is – when I’m back, what’s going to happen? To me, I mean.’

‘You’ll pick up where you left off – at Bletchley Park. I take it you don’t want to go back to Washington?’

‘I don’t! I’m only in this predicament now because I wanted to get home.’

‘Getting cold feet?’

‘Got! I’m not the stuff heroes are made out of, I’m afraid; but conditions They said, and conditions I accepted.’

‘Good. Only a fool isn’t – well, slightly afraid. And in SOE we don’t ask for heroes. We’d rather our operatives stayed alive. I hate sending women in, you know,’ he said gruffly, picking up the brandy bottle, asking, with a raising of his eyebrows, if Keth wanted another. And Keth, who drank little, nodded and pushed his glass across the table.