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‘And you’d best not say it in front of me again either! Do I make myself plain?’
‘Yes, Sparrow, you do. And I won’t say it again if you’ll promise not to go on about it and try to convert me.’
‘Convert you? Now would I do that, and you so bitter inside that you can’t see the wood for the trees? Come here and let’s you and me have a cuddle because Sparrow understands. She really does.’
‘I know you do, and I’m sorry if I upset you,’ Tatiana whispered, hugging her close. ‘And I ought to be ashamed, shouldn’t I? At least I’m not injured, nor blind.’
‘No, girl, you aren’t.’ Sparrow shuddered even to think of that beautiful face burned and blistered and those big, brown eyes never to see again. ‘And that’s something to be thankful to God for, ’cos it’s all in His hands, and by the time you’re as old as I am you’ll have come to realize it, I hope.’
‘And how old are you, Sparrow?’ She didn’t want to talk about God.
‘As old as my tongue and a bit older than my teeth! So are you going to pour that tea before it’s stewed to ruination, and give me the news from Yorkshire?’ She had never been to Holdenby; probably never would, but that didn’t prevent her feeling a part of Rowangarth.
And Tatiana said she was, then whispered again that she was sorry, because not for anything would she upset Sparrow, who must be at least seventy-five.
Keth shook the hand of a colonel from Army Intelligence, who did not offer his name but asked him, pleasantly enough, to sit down and make himself comfortable.
‘So! The MO and the dental officer have given you the all clear; have you made a will?’
‘Yes.’ Talk of such things made him uneasy. Wills were for old people, he had always thought. ‘When I was first commissioned, I took care of that.’
‘And your next of kin is your mother?’
‘Yes.’ Mention of next of kin gave him the same feeling.
‘Just a precaution. Nothing sinister, but in view of the fact you’ll be under some slight risk …’
‘Slight!’ Keth jerked.
‘You’re having second thoughts? Because now’s the time to say so …’
‘No second thoughts. I was told there would be conditions and I accepted them. But don’t think I shall enjoy going, because I won’t! So does that make me a coward?’
‘No. I wouldn’t give much chance for the safety of any of our operatives who had no fear. Nor would I believe them if they said as much. And a man who admits fear, but still goes ahead with the job is far from being a coward.’
‘I’m a mathematician, sir. There’s not one iota of derring-do in my entire body.’
‘Then be glad of it. It’s the careful ones who make it home every time. But you aren’t a trained operator, as such. We’ve given you only enough knowledge to help you survive. The less you know, the better. We’ll put you ashore, you’ll be met and taken to a safe house. You’ll wait there until you hear that what you have gone to collect will be delivered to you.
‘Then you’ll hang on to it – study it all you can within the bounds of safety – and keep your head down until we can have you picked up. It will depend on weather conditions, and suchlike. Either the submarine that will take you out will bring you back, or we’ll send a Lysander in.’
‘And I’m definitely going in by submarine. No jumps?’
‘No parachuting. According to your records, you wouldn’t survive another jump!’
‘You could be right, sir.’ Keth managed a smile; one of relief rather than pleasure. ‘It’s an experience I’d rather not dwell on. The sea route sounds a lot safer.’
‘It is safe. There’s a submarine flotilla not five miles from here – the fifteenth. They’ve done a fair bit of toing and froing for us in the past. We’ve been in touch with their navigating officer about tides and things. We want a flowing tide; one that will wash away any evidence like footsteps – allow the dinghy to get as far inshore as possible. Provided the Met boys give us the okay weatherwise, you’ll be on your way within hours and back within a couple of weeks. Then you’ll completely forget your little errand to France.’
Little errand? Typical, that was, when just to think of it made his teeth water, Keth brooded.
‘I’ll be happy to – forget it, I mean.’
‘You’ll be in all sorts of trouble if you don’t! Anyway, good luck, Purvis. Get yourself over to Room 22. Your papers are ready – and all you need to know about Gaston Martin. Read them over and over. Think yourself into his identity. He was born in a little place near Lyons, which is in unoccupied France. You won’t be going anywhere near there, so you’re unlikely to run into anyone who might have known him. His family probably have been told that he’s missing, believed killed in action.
‘If anything happens, though, make for the unoccupied sector. You’ll be safe enough there. This far, the Krauts have respected their boundaries and left them alone.’
‘Vichy France, you mean, sir? And what constitutes anything?’
‘Anything going wrong. You can get to the Pyrenees from unoccupied territory, and over into Spain. Or you’ll be told by Room 22 where you can get help. In one of the Marseilles brothels, for instance, the madam can be relied upon.’
‘Brothel?’
‘Yes. Places where men can come and go without being noticed over much. Don’t look so holier-than-thou, man. There is a war on, don’t forget, but you can ask all the questions you want of the Room 22 people. They’ll be rigging you out with clothes and all you need. Ask a lot of questions. What may seem trivial might just stand you in good stead if anything were to go a bit wrong – which it shouldn’t.’
‘No, sir. A straightforward pick-up.’
‘Absolutely.’ The colonel rose to his feet, holding out his hand, wishing Keth good luck, assuring him that if he kept his ears open and his eyes down, the entire operation should go like clockwork.
Keth pushed back his chair, put on his cap, then saluted and left the room, hoping with all his thudding heart that the colonel knew what he was talking about.
Clockwork. He would say it over and over again. It would be his good-luck word. The submarine boys would get him there and someone would get him out. With the package. And he would want to know more about that package and about what he would do when he stood up to the ankles in sea water and the submarine lads were getting the hell out of it!
He thought about the last war and men who were given no choice but to crawl over the tops of trenches into No Man’s Land through barbed wire and uncharted minefields, to face the machine gunners. His thoughts went back to a churchyard in Hampshire; to the grave of the man who had gone over the top many times. And in that moment he felt a strange, fatalistic calm and very near to Dickon Purvis, his father, who, if there really was a hereafter, would be looking down tonight on his son. And understanding.
‘Well, that’s everybody been and gone – well, almost everybody,’ Gracie sighed. ‘Drew and Kitty, and Tatty. And Daisy goes tomorrow.’
‘You’ve forgotten young Keth. He hasn’t been. And what about Bas, then?’ Catchpole demanded.
‘The idiot!’ Bas had decided not to take the one Sunday train to York, saying he would rather stay a few hours longer, then hitch a lift back to his billet at the Army Air Corps base at Burtonwood. ‘He was absent without leave, you know. Someone was covering for him, but I hope he made it back all right. Stupid!’ Gracie fretted, pushing her hoe angrily into a very small weed. ‘One of these days he’ll run into the Snowdrops and his feet won’t touch the ground!’
‘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 (#ulink_f242ed54-e194-5232-8815-6267b5965fd1)
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.
