I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble with the ground crew – they pre-dated Cromwell.
Silver and I met each other’s eyes.
He moved his lips soundlessly. Not a drill?
I shook my head.
‘I’m with you,’ Silver said aloud.
Louisa:
We were still in bed that morning, 4 December, when we heard the Blenheims taking off.
I sat up and counted and got to ten.
‘That doesn’t make the least sense!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought there were only six aeroplanes in B-Flight.’
‘Perhaps they keep spares,’ said Jane.
We heard footsteps running in the passage, and the bathroom and toilet doors slamming. Phyllis and Ellen had both leaped into action.
‘The planes took off in the dark!’ I said. ‘The moon went down hours ago – I thought they couldn’t fly without a moon!’
Jane squinted at my luminous alarm clock.
‘I think they struggle to find targets without a moon. But they can fly, and it will get light in half an hour or so,’ she said. ‘It’s a quarter past eight. You and I are slugabeds. Perhaps they’ve been posted elsewhere.’
Ellen and Phyllis clattered downstairs and the front door banged.
Jane went back to sleep.
I don’t know how she could, except that she had the gift of instant sleep. I couldn’t even make myself lie down again.
Five minutes later I recognised the whomp-whomp of German engines, like the bombers flying over London.
I catapulted out of bed and hauled the blackout curtains from the window facing south-east over the sea. The Kingsleap Light bloomed bright green in the dark, flashing as the lamp swung round. There must be British fishing boats about, or the lighthouse would be dark. I leaped across to the narrow north window that faced the airfield, but I couldn’t see anything there. The terrible throbbing German engines were louder now – they sounded like they were right overhead.
Then the fins whistled as the bombs fell.
I couldn’t see the airfield, but WOW did I see the explosions.
‘Jane, Jane!’ I screeched. ‘The aerodrome’s being bombed – come look!’ The need to look was fiercer in me than the sensible need to dive for cover. If something was going to blow me up, I wanted to see it coming.
Or perhaps, like Jane, I just didn’t want to miss anything. She was as silly as me about the fireworks. We crowded for the view at the narrow window.
‘My word, that is a direct hit – something is on fire!’ Jane exclaimed.
We heard distant sirens. We couldn’t see anything on the ground, only oily black smoke lit by the red glow of flames. A thick column rose in the sky, showing the German pilots exactly where to aim on their next pass.
They came back. We couldn’t tell if they hit anything the second time. Then the Royal Air Force came roaring in to chase them off – not our Blenheims, but a swarm of Spitfires from Deeside. It was like watching the Battle of Britain all over again. I thought I’d never grow tired of it: the soaring dots against a bottle-blue predawn sky, the whine and roar of engines, the twisting loops of vapour trails as it started to get light – and in my stomach a knot of painful envy because I was not up there too, doing something useful, able to fight back.
It didn’t last five minutes before the Luftwaffe planes turned tail. They didn’t have a fighter escort to protect them.
‘Hitler is a madman,’ Jane pronounced. ‘What a waste of fuel and effort, bombing an empty aerodrome! I suppose it is a miracle those boys managed to get all their planes off the ground before the bombs fell. Somebody must have seen the storm coming—’
‘“Seen the storm coming!”’ I cried. ‘Storm front! Windyedge!’
Jane grabbed my arm.
‘Jamie got all the planes out in time,’ I breathed.
‘I hope the girls are all right,’ said Jane.
Jane and I spent the afternoon by the peat fire in the public bar feeling nervous, while Nancy Campbell sullenly served and washed up after the villagers. She glanced at the wishing coins every now and then, muttering under her breath, as if she were praying to them. The Blenheims didn’t come back.
Of course the aerodrome telephone was knocked out again, and they couldn’t spare anyone to bring us news, so we had to wait. We played records on Jane’s gramophone to count off the time. It took ten hours and twenty minutes to get to the bottom of the record pile, she said, but we’d only played three hours’ worth (not counting while the pub was open) when the front door slammed in the vestibule.
Mrs Campbell practically fell over herself with anxiety. She threw open the wooden gate and leaped from behind the bar. ‘Phyllis? Ellen?’
It was Ellen on her own. She stood in the doorway.
‘I won’t come through just now,’ she called across the room hoarsely. ‘I’m all over soot. I had to help with the firefighting, and then I had to drive to Aberdeen and back twice.’
She was not joking – soot covered her from head to toe. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hand on the doorknob was covered with blisters.
I gasped, ‘Oh, Ellen, your poor hands!’
Mrs Campbell looked her up and down and said grudgingly, ‘I’ll light the boiler for the hot water before six p.m., just this once. Mind you don’t fill the bath beyond the five-inch mark. There’s a war on.’
‘Aye, Nan Campbell, I might have some idea about there being a war on,’ Ellen rasped.
Mrs Campbell dared to ask, ‘Where’s Phyllis?’
‘She’s still at the aerodrome, filling out forms. We lost a big supply of tinned food, and she’s trying to order more. She’s all right. Everyone’s all right. The Jerries missed the operations hut. But the hangar is burned to the ground.’ Ellen sucked in a deep breath, and coughed. ‘The lads are all right, too, Mrs C. They had to land at Deeside, because the surface at Windyedge is all over holes. Cromwell was there last night so I had to collect him and bring him here to look at the damage, and then I had to take him back to Deeside again.’
Nan Campbell clutched the brass counter of the bar and gasped with relief. She gave a quick glance at the wishing coins.
‘The ground crew’s filling in the holes, but we won’t be able to bring the Blenheims back till next week at least.’ Ellen coughed again. ‘Phyllis will want a bath, too, when she gets here.’
‘Och, no bother, I’ll light the boiler the now and you get yourself cleaned up,’ Nan said. ‘And when you go back to the airfield, tell the lads working there that if they get hungry they can come here. I’ll see if Morag can put in extra time behind the bar.’
Morag Torrie was the timid village girl who helped Mrs Campbell when it was busy.
‘Ta for the hot water,’ Ellen said, and turned around to stalk upstairs.
‘Take her a cup of tea, will you, Louisa,’ Mrs Campbell uttered. ‘Oh, and there’s some Germolene in the kitchen on the shelf above the sink. For the burns.’
It was as close as I had seen her come to anything like sympathy.
Ellen:
It took me a long time to get my uniform off, for my hands were so sore. Cromwell already had a go at me for wearing mittens knitted by one of my cousins, instead of my gauntlets, which would have protected them. No one to blame but yourself, McEwen. But how am I supposed to drive in those bloody great things? Like wearing wellington boots on your hands.
When I was quaking with chill in my underthings I realised the water in the boiler wouldn’t be warm for another wee while. I’d been dreaming of that bath for the past half a day, I must be going soft, living under a roof with hot water out of a tap!
I hung up my clothes on the back of the bathroom door and wrapped myself in the shawl that Nan disliked because it wasn’t a proper dressing gown. I ran cold water in the basin while I waited for the hot, pulling the stool up so I could sit and soak my hands.
A tap came at the door.
‘Ellen? Shall I leave this outside?’
Th
at was Louisa with a tea tray.
‘Come along through,’ I said, and she edged through the door. ‘All right, Louisa?’
‘I’m all right.’ She gave me a smile and jerked her chin at my hands. ‘What about you?’
‘Aye, no bother. Ta very much for the tea, just set it on the floor there.’
‘Mrs Campbell sent you up some burn ointment, too,’ Louisa said.
‘Och, she didn’t! She’s got a soft heart under that hard shell, hasn’t she? Like an old pearl mussel stuck on a stone in a river bed.’ A corner of the shawl was trailing in the basin and getting a good soak too. I sighed, and watched Louisa put down the tray and stand up again.
She didn’t leave, though.
I gave a jerk of my own chin towards the bathtub, telling her to stay. She sat down on the edge, dark eyes eager, waiting for my news.
I wiggled my sore fingers, splashing water about in the basin. If Nan had a fit of kindness and decided to bring me some sticking plasters as an afterthought, I didn’t want her to hear about our amateur codebreaking.
‘Is the old woman behaving herself?’ I asked. ‘Mrs Warner – do you like working for her?’
‘I love it,’ Louisa said, and I saw that what she meant was that she loved Jane. But she wore a worried frown as she said it.
‘Is it difficult?’
‘It’s the easiest work in the world. I do up her buttons and help with her stockings, and keep our room tidy. And I play my flute or piano duets with her, and we listen to records or the radio, and I read novels out loud. She’s always interested and lets me read what I like. And with Mrs Campbell giving me room and board, I can save most of what she pays me. But—’
‘But there’s bombs,’ I said.
Louisa shook her head. ‘That’s not it. There were more bombs in London. It’s that I worry about Jane. She leaves the gas tap on without lighting the fire. She tries to go out on her own and she says it’s because she doesn’t want to wake me, but the cobbles are always black with ice first thing in the morning and you know how steep the lane is past the limekilns. If she falls or gets hurt or … or worse … well, even if it isn’t my fault, the more I like her, the more I couldn’t ever forgive myself if something happened and I wasn’t there to help.’
She looked away. She gave a quick sniff, then turned about again.
‘She’s teaching me Morse code!’ Louisa said shakily, as if she wanted to talk of something else. ‘She could teach me to sing opera. I bet she’d teach me German if I really wanted to learn something useful.’
I stared at her. ‘Useful! German!’
‘I want to do something to help with the war. I could translate for prisoners, perhaps, when I’m older. I don’t know. Be a spy, like Mata Hari.’ Louisa frowned again. ‘Your poor hands! Do you need help?’
It was most unlikely anyone was listening.
But Louisa rabbiting on about bloody Mata Hari and learning to speak in Morse code like a Jerry made me not want to take any chances.
‘I don’t need help. I’m going to have a bath.’ I stood up, shook my wet hands, and turned on the bath taps. The water roared, covering the sound of our voices beyond the bathroom door.
‘I had a word with our Jamie, over at Aberdeen,’ I told her. ‘He worked out that message this morning, and ordered the planes away from Windyedge. In the dark – most of the lads took off in their vests and braces! Must have been perishing up there without flight suits.’
‘But what did he tell the commander?’ Louisa asked, wide-eyed. ‘Where did he say he got the tip?’
‘He put it back to the first message – remember that one about “Deeside south green light”? Jamie worked out it means us. We’re south of Deeside, just off the green light at the Kingsleap Rocks. They tried to hit us in daylight last week and got the railway by accident, but when the light was lit for the fishing boats this morning, they tried again. They’d have surely got most of our planes on the ground if it hadn’t been for Jamie. Even Old Cromwell saw that. And what do you think he said?’
I pulled Cromwellian eyebrows and put on my best posh English accent. ‘“Good thinking, Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart, but insubordination nonetheless. You didn’t ask permission. Confined to barracks for a week except for operational flying.”’
‘Poor Jamie!’ Louisa exclaimed.
‘Bloody Cromwell,’ I muttered.
The water was nearly to the five-inch line Nan had painted in the bathtub. I’d have to turn off the taps in a moment. I spoke in a rush.
‘Old Cromwell thinks the Luftwaffe is using Windyedge for bombing practice,’ I told Louisa. ‘It’s the shortest hop from Norway to Scotland. But you and I know there’s a Jerry coding machine hidden in the wardrobe down the passage. And I think some Jerry knows it, too – not the one who brought it, but someone else, someone who doesn’t want it here. And they’re trying to destroy it. They’ll keep at it until they think they’ve hit it, and as long as we keep using it they’ll know they haven’t got it.’
That angry little frown split Louisa’s forehead again.
‘No, that isn’t at all sensible,’ she said. ‘The machine could be anywhere. We could have taken it to London by now, or Wales, and still be using it to decode messages for Windyedge. Perhaps they’re trying to punish us because Felix Baer landed here.’
The bath was five inches deep.
‘Or perhaps,’ she added, ‘they’re trying to destroy the airfield so he can’t come back.’
We couldn’t talk any longer because I had to turn off the taps.
Jamie:
B-Flight flew out of Deeside along with A-Flight, on fishing-fleet and battleship escort duties for the whole December moon, getting in the way of the Spitfire fighter squadron based there. Meanwhile the holes in the runway at Windyedge were mended and a new hangar got thrown up next to the crater where the old one used to be.
ABERDEEN SECTOR CLEAR START XII UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Normally I’d have had my heart in my mouth worrying that we might run into Messerschmitt 110 night fighters on these ops. That message in Louisa’s notebook reassured me. Aberdeen had been bombed pretty fiercely right through October; now the Luftwaffe seemed to be holding back.
Phyllis came to Deeside with us, but I only saw Ellen twice while we were there, taking Cromwell on some inspection errand. The second time I didn’t even get to talk to her. She just gave me a look and shook her head ever so slightly.
I shrugged in reply, and went off whistling, to let her know everything was all right.
Actually, everything was fine.
I’d wanted an edge over the Germans and now that I had one, I felt like our luck had changed. Finding that coding machine, getting unexpected tip-offs that helped us sink four U-boats, saving all our planes from being turned into scrap metal on the ground when the aerodrome was bombed – being one step ahead of the enemy for a week or two – made us lucky.
We hadn’t lost a man since 7 November. That was six weeks ago, and that was a record for 648 Squadron. It is true that one night on warship escort with A-Flight we got caught in the crossfire of a naval battle. One of my propellers was blown away by anti-aircraft fire from a German battleship, and they also smashed Dougie Kerr’s gun turret. But the Royal Navy took care of the German battleship, and although it was no fun limping home on one prop, I managed to land upright. Dougie, whose head stuck up in the shattered turret of the Aussies’ plane, came home with a bloody ear – he’d been clipped by a shard of flying Perspex. Not by a bullet. He’d ducked out of the way just in time.
Lucky!
The mechanics got to work on my plane and we were back in the air two nights later. The turret was harder to fix than the propeller, but a ferry pilot brought in another new Blenheim and took the old one away. Dougie walked around with a plaster over his left ear for a few days.
Six weeks and nobody even had an injury, apart from my lucky bullet on the Bell Rock Light run, and Dougie’s lucky clip on the ear. Dougie’s
grazed ear didn’t qualify for a wound stripe any more than my grazed leg did, but in Aberdeen we all chipped in and bought him a gold hoop earring like a pirate.
Windyedge was ready for B-Flight to come back just in time for Christmas.
The moon was old on Christmas Eve when we walked to Nancy’s place from the airfield, crunching ice in half-frozen puddles, howling our way through ‘Deck the Halls’. Nobody knew all of it so there was a lot of fa-la-la-la-la-ing. The sixpences we’d left there the night before the aerodrome was bombed were waiting in the oak beam above the bar. And that Django Reinhardt record album was waiting also, waiting for me to leave Louisa another mysterious message, so she and Mrs Warner could magically translate German code into sensible King’s English.
The war turned Christmas into hard work – London, Manchester and Liverpool were pummelled by the Luftwaffe bombers. The food rationing seemed endless; we were told to buy war bonds as presents. But Louisa looped paper chains made of old issues of the Scotsman from the ceiling of the Limehouse, and heaped pine branches twined with ivy over the mantel, and wound ivy around the tree trunk posts holding up the bar. There was a candle in a jam jar on every window ledge, even though you couldn’t see them from outside because of the blackout curtains.
As we came marching in, Louisa started to pound out ‘Deck the Halls’ on the piano, picking up our song, and Mrs Warner’s wonderful old contralto pulled our ‘fa-la-las’ into line.
Between carols, I pulled up a chair next to Louisa’s piano stool.
‘There’s a sort of unofficial “no bombs” ban over Christmas,’ I told her. ‘Both sides do it. But of course Old Cromwell’s being a Scrooge about making us fly on Christmas Day, since the ships don’t get a holiday either, and we thought we’d have some fun behind his back. We’re going to take Ellen and Phyllis along for the ride. What about it, Louisa?’
The Enigma Game Page 17