by Eliza Graham
‘I felt bad at having to dash away like that. We caught Becker with Mary Waites, holding her hostage,’ I said. ‘It was him.’
‘Him?’
‘Becker. Who sabotaged your script. Who . . .’ I looked over my shoulder. We were alone. ‘Who drowned Beattie,’ I whispered.
‘Drowned Beattie?’ William blinked hard. ‘Father Becker? Could he really do something like that?’
‘You’re making the mistake of thinking he’s who he said he was. He’s not a priest at all.’
‘It’s a lot to take in.’ Shadows passed over his face. Then he seemed to shake them away. ‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’
He persuaded the shopkeeper to liberate a packet of Garibaldis from the stock room, pulling out his ration book and insisting on covering the purchase. I remembered my suspicion that he’d sent a telegram. I’d have to remind him to be careful to follow the rules in future. If there were a future for our unit. He opened the door for a woman with a large pram, and helped her toddler climb the step up into the shop.
‘It’s just the two of us this morning,’ he told me as we exited. ‘Sefton Delmer’s secretary telephoned as I was leaving for the shop and asked Micki to interview a prisoner of war with him.’
Our personnel and broadcast schedule would probably be grabbed by other teams now. I supposed it was inevitable but something in me still rebelled. Why should other people benefit from Beattie’s work in building up this team? William and I turned into the drive to Mulberry House.
‘Strange about the bike,’ I said out loud.
William was striding towards the entrance. He rubbed his neck. ‘The bike?’
‘One of them’s missing.’
‘Must be somewhere,’ he said, knocking on the front door.
As we went into our office I told myself to concentrate on the work in hand: tonight’s programme. William would have to write the script for his own broadcast. ‘Can you do it?’ I asked him. ‘I’ll help as much as I can.’
‘Becker and I talked about what he’d be covering over the next week,’ William said. ‘I think he made some notes.’
We searched Becker’s desk and found his notepad, which included an outline for the evening’s script.
‘There are enough old scripts around for me to use as guides as to language and speech patterns,’ William said. ‘I feel I know my radio persona quite well now.’
‘He was a good writer,’ I said grudgingly, as I reread some of the older scripts filed neatly in Becker’s desk. ‘I wonder if he worked in newspapers or something similar in the past?’
‘I’m confident our listeners won’t notice any change,’ William said, picking up Becker’s German typewriter and placing it on his own desk. He wound a sheet of paper into its carriage and typed a few words. ‘Not much wrong with the keys, either. That was all part of his pretence, wasn’t it? Not being able to handle machines.’
I watched William as he typed, occasionally stopping to rub his back while he read Becker’s notes.
‘Are you still in pain?’
‘Pretty much all the time.’ He stopped typing. His face was knotted, the colour of putty. ‘I just can’t seem to manage the pain relief.’ He shook his head. ‘Forgive the moaning. I either feel mentally alert, like I do now, but my back’s on fire, or I’m not in pain but my mind’s clouded.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Constant pain is exhausting.’
‘I know you understand.’ He gave me his old William smile, gentle, kind. ‘But I’m alive and I owe the pilot who dragged me out my life.’ Was he telling me that I too should be grateful I’d survived? That my injury, and all the upheaval we had experienced here, was nothing in comparison to losing your life? The memory of Beattie floating in the pond returned to me. I hugged myself, feeling cold and heavy.
William took his silver pillbox from his inside jacket pocket and took two of the tablets with a sip of water. He closed his eyes briefly. ‘Sometimes it feels as though there’s a kind of partition through my mind. There’s the old me, functioning in the way it always has. And then there’s the new me, which operates differently. I can’t always remember what it’s done.’ The pills seemed to act fast on the pain; he was regaining his colour. ‘Sometimes I’ll go out carrying an object I can’t remember picking up. Yesterday it was the blotter from my desk.’ He gave a mocking half-laugh. ‘When we were in the shop just now I knew I’d been there a few days ago but I couldn’t remember what for. I keep thinking I’ve made a mistake and forgotten about it.’
Now would be the time to ask him if he’d been sending telegrams. But I looked at the furrows on his brow that seemed to belong to an older man’s face. Had they been there at the time of Beattie’s funeral?
‘If it’s work you’re worried about, you needn’t be. You’re a complete professional,’ I told him.
He raised a hand and rested his head briefly against the palm. ‘The drugs give me strange dreams. They feel so real. Last night I had a nightmare about . . .’ He stopped himself. ‘But nothing more boring than telling people about your dreams.’
I remembered my own dream on the eve of Beattie’s funeral about the pie filled with black crows.
‘I must try to manage on fewer tablets. If I can walk and stretch out occasionally I can manage. It’s when I’m sitting for too long that my back goes into spasm.’
‘There must be something else they can do for you?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll make another appointment. But enough about me. You’re good to listen to me and my problems, Anna. But I don’t matter.’
‘What?’
He leant forward. ‘It’s you who’s important.’
‘You’ve always been such a good friend to me.’ A thought occurred to me – did he want more than friendship? Not with a woman with a face like mine, surely. William wasn’t looking at me like a lover would, anyway.
His face brightened. ‘You just can’t be sure what people are really like. I hope we can stay working together.’
‘So do I.’
‘I dread being sent to a whole new team. You get used to people and then they’re gone.’
Beattie. Father Becker. And this had happened to William before, each time he’d switched Halifax crew, and then when his flying career had finally ended.
‘I have this nightmare of being seconded to write smut for Der Chef,’ he went on, seeming to brighten. ‘What a fate that would be.’
Der Chef – The Chief – was one of Sefton Delmer’s fake broadcasts, ostensibly from a filthy-mouthed disillusioned military officer. Past programmes had described orgies and accounts of women being arrested for urinating in military helmets.
‘What are you like at drawing?’ I asked. ‘They always need people to do those smutty little pictures on the leaflets.’
A team of people designed and created drawings that seemed innocuous until flaps opened to reveal naked blond women welcoming the aroused attention of non-Aryan invaders. The RAF dropped the leaflets anywhere German fighting men might get hold of them.
William laughed and for a moment his expression was his cheerful old one. ‘I’m not sure my artistic efforts would cause the Germans much concern.’
‘I’m probably safe from having my morals compromised, too,’ I said. ‘Pornography might be a step too far for us delicate women.’ Manipulating fears of venereal disease and impotence was all right for us females, but the sexual act itself . . . ?
‘Even Beattie wouldn’t make you do that.’ William flushed and looked away. The atmosphere in the office seemed heavier again. Did he know about the nights Beattie and I had spent together? About that last night in particular?
The telephone in Beattie’s office rang, sparing my embarrassment. I went to answer it. The caller was a wine merchant. ‘No further deliveries will be required for Mr Beattie.’ I put down the receiver, feeling the loss all over again, sitting for a moment at his desk, which was now empty apart from the same pencil I’d fiddled with.
When I
returned to our office, William had his head down over his work. I concentrated on my own script, finding some relief in the task. How much longer could I keep Clara going? The enemy were now close enough to the castle to be visible from the tower. In real life the Allies still weren’t showing much sign of invading Occupied Europe, but Beattie had liked the idea of sending Germans a warning.
Half-twelve came. Mrs Haddon brought us in a tray of corned beef sandwiches. ‘As it’s just the two of you. It’ll save you going back for lunch.’ She appeared subdued.
‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘It must be so strange, not having Mr Beattie here.’
She bit her lip. ‘He had his funny ways, but he was a good lodger. Always finding little presents for me. Kept strange hours and wanted me to cook some very fancy food, mind you.’ I smiled, remembering the live lobster that had arrived one quiet morning.
She left us to eat. I returned the trays to the kitchen when we’d finished, coming back in with cups of tea. The coffee beans seemed to have dried up now that Beattie was gone. I placed a cup on William’s desk and he thanked me, lifting his head to gaze at me with those boyish eyes of his. He said something.
‘What was that?’ I turned to him.
‘Patrick.’ He said the name quietly and at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.
My mouth moved. No words came out.
A moment passed. ‘Patrick?’ I asked. It couldn’t be the person I was thinking of. I’d never mentioned Patrick’s name to William. Nor to anyone in Aspley Guise, not even Micki. Beattie had guessed there’d been a pilot in my life before the fire, but I’d never referred to him by name. Beattie had his sources; he might have found out Patrick’s identity. But would he have talked about him to William? Somehow I didn’t think so. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Patrick Matthews,’ he said. ‘I knew him.’
My skin tingled. I reached inside my pocket for my cigarette case. ‘I didn’t know you’d come across Patrick.’ Saying his name out loud made me blink. My hand shook as I pulled out a cigarette.
He nodded. ‘He was our captain. Captain Matthews, sometimes Mat when we were off duty together. He called me Nat – for Nathanson. Mat and Nat, we were.’
‘Patrick was in Fighters, not Bombers.’ There’d been a mistake. There were two pilots with the same name, in different commands. I stared at the cigarette lighter on my desk. I still held the cigarette, unlit, in my hand.
‘He retrained for Bomber Command.’
Because of me? Because, not knowing I’d made the switch myself, he was worried our paths might cross? No. Patrick was a fighting man, he wouldn’t have given up his job for a love affair gone wrong. He must have believed that switching from combat to bombing raids over Germany was the best way to take the fight to the enemy.
The burnt side of my face hurt. I rubbed it distractedly.
‘How did you know I . . . knew Patrick?’
William stared down at his hands. ‘You fly in crews with people, you become close.’ He seemed to be saying it as much to himself as to me. ‘Even people like me are eventually accepted. I wasn’t a bad navigator. I tried to do my bit, to look after everyone.’
‘People like you?’
‘Not entirely British.’
‘You always sound so English,’ I said. He looked pleased.
‘I worked on it. I always just wanted to be part of the team. We were all only together for months, until we crashed.’ I could hear the despondency in his voice.
‘Did he . . . ? Is he . . . ?’
‘Oh yes, Patrick’s alive.’
I felt the perspiration forming on my forehead. The air around me seemed to be crushing me.
‘Patrick talked about me?’ Airmen weren’t inclined to discuss their girls, unless it was in light, often crude, terms. Sometimes they’d open up to WAAFs about a serious relationship, but not often to another male.
‘He told me his girl had finished with him after she’d had a serious bomb injury. That was all he said, but I could see he’d taken it hard.’ He looked up at me. ‘It was when you and I talked after my first broadcast that I was sure.’ He tapped the side of his head lightly. ‘Sergeant Anna Hall. WAAF. Badly hurt in a fire.’
The coldness running down my spine felt like a stalactite. I put the cigarette into the ashtray. Patrick was alive. A thousand questions swarmed my mind, but I couldn’t articulate any of them.
‘Does Patrick know you and I work together?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t at first.’
‘But now?’
‘He was in a bad way after we crashed, Anna. He—’ He stopped. ‘You still care about him, though, don’t you?’
‘It’s been two years.’
‘You still wear the scent he gave you. I asked him if he’d given it to you.’
My mouth opened and closed. ‘I can’t talk, William. Not now.’ I managed to light the cigarette.
‘But—’
‘Please, let’s just get on with our work.’ But the words on the page I was typing seemed to jump across the sheet as I looked at them.
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Anna,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe here. It looks like such a peaceful place, but it’s not really.’
Keeping an eye on me? Following me? Had it been William, not Father Becker, following me that day in the bluebell wood? And before, after our night out, when I’d walked from Shaftesbury Avenue to Leicester Square tube station? I’d heard those uneven footsteps of his. Had William also watched me from the copse at Waites Farm as I cycled away? He might have taken the missing bicycle.
A cold fury pulsed through my head. Why on earth would William follow me? Was he adopting the role of my protector? Saving me for Patrick, keeping at bay any men who might supplant him?
‘I’m going to check something in the encyclopaedia in Beattie’s office.’ I needed to be alone.
I sat with my cigarette at Beattie’s desk, wishing Micki was back. I wanted those sharp eyes of hers to look at William for me.
The tapping of William’s typewriter reached me through the wall between the offices. I was certain he didn’t know what was going through my mind. Mrs Haddon was in the kitchen; I was not alone with this man I’d liked so much, had regarded almost as a brother as well as a colleague and friend.
I heard the front door open. Mrs Haddon called the terrier. His paws tapped over the tiles as he raced after her. The door closed behind them. I could join them, walk round to the call box and telephone Grey-suit Man.
William stopped typing. Was he reading through his script? I heard his footsteps creak across to the door. He was coming in here. I sprang up and grabbed at random at the books on Beattie’s bookshelf, pulling out a world atlas. I rushed to sit down again with it as William knocked on the door. He came into the room without waiting for a response.
‘Found what you’re looking for?’
I looked down and saw I’d opened the atlas at a map of the West Indies. ‘Got a bit distracted.’ I managed a smile.
He looked at the opened page. ‘Are you sending Clara to the Caribbean?’ He said it in the same old bantering tone that he and I had fallen into from the earliest days of his arrival here.
‘Clara would like that. I know I would.’ The last words came out with more force than I’d intended. I would have given anything to transport myself to some warm, secluded beach.
‘I wish you could go to a tropical island, Anna. You’d be safe. The cities are full of dangerous types these days. It’s not good for women to be in those places.’
I remembered the brawl on Wardour Street.
He moved in closer. ‘You didn’t mind me talking to you about Patrick, did you?’
‘Just a bit of a surprise.’ I breathed out slowly, doing my best not to show alarm.
‘You and I always find it so easy to talk to one another.’ He was perspiring, swaying slightly. ‘You don’t know how much that means to me when everything else seems so . . . confused.’
�
��You’re not well.’ I said it softly. ‘If you’re happy with the script, why don’t you go home now and rest until it’s time to go to the studio?’ I could telephone Grey-suit Man and tell him what I’d found out, say he couldn’t do anything until after William had broadcast.
‘Oh, I’ll stay and keep you company,’ William said.
A sense of isolation overcame me. Micki was out. I couldn’t risk making a telephone call with William in the house. The programme comes first. Always. When he’d finished, I’d find a way to pass on what I knew. Until then I had to put on a mask with William, pretend I had no suspicions, that I was happy to talk about Patrick.
‘I’ll take one of my tablets,’ he said.
Should he take another one so soon? I smiled at William, trying to appear unflustered. ‘I’ll make some more tea, shall I? Perhaps you’ll feel better for a cup.’
He followed me through to the kitchen, finding cups and saucers for me while I filled the kettle and put it on to boil. The script I’d been working on wasn’t quite finished. It was for tomorrow, but I’d promised to hand it over to the actors at the studio tonight when they were there recording another broadcast. In addition, I still had the news bulletin to complete. Memos had arrived during the day, telling me what I needed to include and the weight to be given to each piece. Fortunately nothing urgent seemed to have cropped up this afternoon.
The kettle was refusing to boil. ‘Do the drugs take long to work?’ I asked.
‘Ten or fifteen minutes.’ He took the cup of tea I gave him. ‘I must write down what time it is and the dose. I’ve accidentally taken too many in the past. It can make me feel a bit peculiar.’
‘Peculiar?’
He frowned. ‘As though I’m not really present. I see myself doing things, taking the blotter off my desk, like I told you, but it’s as though it’s someone else doing it. Then I come to again.’
I repressed a shiver. ‘Must be hard carrying on when you feel so rough.’
‘Work helps.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It’s the rest of life that’s harder. I can walk through the bluebells and know intellectually that they’re beautiful, but when I look at them, they’re just plants that will eventually wither, rot and die.’ I stiffened at the mention of the bluebells.