Olive Bright, Pigeoneer

by Stephanie Graves

  OLIVE BRIGHT, PIGEONEER

  Stephanie Graves

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Historical Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 by Stephanie Graves

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2020944009

  The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-3151-7

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: January 2021

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-3157-9 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-3157-3 (ebook)

  For those whose stories have not yet been told.

  Acknowledgments

  A debt of gratitude to the men and women who pulled out all the stops, in the face of incredible odds, in their pursuit of VE Day.

  Heartfelt appreciation for the survivors of World War II and their children, who dutifully recorded experiences and memories for the archives of BBC’s WW2 People’s War. It’s truly a treasure trove of information.

  Thanks to Emma Martin for inspiring Miss Husselbee’s “nothing better to do” line.

  For my editor, John Scognamiglio. Olive couldn’t be in better hands.

  For my agent, Rebecca Strauss. I’m fortunate to have you by my side on this journey.

  For Janice Rossi Schaus, whose cover design is everything I could have hoped for.

  For Rosemary Silva, copyeditor extraordinaire. Thank you for fixing all my little mistakes.

  For Holly Faur, critique partner, cheerleader, Netflix and PBS partier, and general sounding board. Everyone should be so lucky to have such a friend. And for the Family Faur, for making me feel much more mysterious than I really am.

  For Blake Leyers, Carin Thumm, and Deanna Raybourn. Sweet butter crumpets, you girls are the bomb!

  For my boys, Zach and Alex. Twenty years passed in a flash. GG.

  And most of all, for Jason. My inspiration, my love.

  “If it became necessary immediately to discard every line and method of communications used on the front, except one, and it were left to me to select that one method, I should unhesitatingly choose the pigeons.”

  —Major General Fowler, Chief of Signals and Communications, British Army

  Saturday, 9 September 1939

  Peregrine Hall, Pipley

  Hertfordshire

  I admit, my introduction to Mass Observation did little to convince me of the project’s worth or significance. The efforts expended in gauging popular opinion and collecting general observations on the coronation of King George VI likely yielded nothing of much use to anyone. However, the situation has changed. Britain has engaged in a second war with Germany, and as such, I have decided to answer that organization’s appeal to take up our pens and record our experiences of these long, bitter days ahead. Let there be no misapprehension; my intention is not to record the tedious daily minutiae that will fill the pages of other diarists, but to capture the triumphs and hardships that will create the landscape of this war on the home front. Days will be dark, and each of us will be tested, our true natures laid bare. I won’t promise to stay silent when coming face-to-face with treachery, but in these pages, I will endeavour to allow all to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, truth will out, and we will persevere. Rule, Britannia!

  V.A.E. Husselbee

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, 1st May 1941

  Pipley, Hertfordshire

  Olive Bright coasted to a stop beside a familiar figure, turned out respectably in the Wedgwood-blue uniform of the British Royal Air Force, her gaze arrowing to the telltale white flash on his cap, which signified he hadn’t yet completed his training. He was waiting just shy of the St Margarets station platform, away from the bustle of activity, but close enough to hear the boarding call. Waiting to tell her goodbye.

  Swallowing down emotion and schooling her features, she slid off her bicycle, propped it against the brick wall of the station, and unlatched the wicker carrier basket strapped to its handlebars. When she turned back, her face was suffused with mischief.

  “Olive . . .” George was always saying her name that way: a gloss of warning over exasperated finality.

  “For luck,” she insisted.

  George’s blue eyes met the glassy dark one peering at him from a narrow opening in the wicker. Olive considered his dubiousness rather disheartening, but she wasn’t about to let it bother her today. He and his stolid lack of imagination were so dear to her; it was entirely appropriate that he shouldn’t make this easy. “You know I can’t take her,” he said, his Adam’s apple roving uncertainly.

  Even as she smiled at him, she could feel the nervous tension undoing her efforts, threatening to thwart the stiff upper lip that was to have been her last resort. Needing a moment, she rolled her eyes away from him, blinked up into the apricot clouds that crowned a pale lavender sky. It could have been any other spring morning. Except that it wasn’t.

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat, her gaze swinging down again to clap solidly on the tall, dark-haired, square-jawed fellow in front of her. He was a perfect melding of his father’s rough masculinity and his mother’s classical features, but he was like neither of them. It would be a long while before he came home again—she refused to even consider the possibility that he might not.

  Olive had managed mostly to ignore the sharp nip in the air on her ride to the village, but the chill that swept over her now seeped through her jumper and goosefleshed skin, straight to her bones. She tipped her head down quickly and scuffed her feet over the gravelled road. She’d been fiercely proud when George had joined up, prouder still when he’d graduated from the Elementary Flying Training School. Now he was being shipped off for training in service flying—all the things he’d need to know for piloting an aeroplane in war. It was the last step before he’d earn his sergeant stripes and Royal Air Force wings.

  Olive beamed at him, clenching her jaw to hold the smile in place as her eyes ranged over his face, urgently memorising the deep dimple in his left cheek, the snapping blue of his eyes, and the two tiny pale white scars on his temple, which served as markers of a long-ago cautionary tale. The dutiful Watson to her high-handed Sherlock, George had chivalrously let
her run herd on him for the better part of their still young lives. After today, she’d no longer have a part in his adventures; he was leaving her behind. And that was intolerable.

  Her older brother Lewis had been gone for over a year now, serving as a British liaison officer in Greece. They hadn’t had a letter from him in three months, and Olive couldn’t look at the little framed photograph of him, dashing in cricket whites, posing on the village green, without succumbing to a crushing feeling of helplessness.

  Forcibly tamping down the negative emotions, she lifted her chin, even at the risk of exposing the quiver in her lower lip. There’d be time for a good wallow later. Right now, George needed one last knuckling under before he stepped beyond her reach.

  “Why can’t you take her?” she demanded.

  “This is the real thing, Olive. The War Office, official business. Packing a stowaway”—he eyed the basket with exasperation—“is surely grounds for an unpleasant sort of punishment.”

  Olive’s lips twisted with nostalgia. George could always be depended upon to muster a cautious, sensible objection to every impulsive suggestion. Who would temper her wilder impulses while he was gone?

  She propped the basket under her arm and released the catch. A rounded grey head poked itself curiously into the conversation, as if to say, “Who would dare object?”

  George’s shoulders slumped farther, and Olive grinned encouragingly.

  “It’s not as if the RAF is anti-pigeon,” she reminded him. “Quite the opposite. These birds have been carrying messages since the beginning of the war, selflessly doing their bit. Before that it was the Great War, and before that—”

  “Save it,” he said dryly.

  “Poppins is a racer. She’s trained for this sort of thing,” Olive pressed. “Release her wherever the fancy strikes—the farther away the better—and she’ll fly right home.” She flashed a broad smile. “With no one the wiser.”

  He let his gaze roll away, a hint that he was caving. “But Poppins is a civilian,” he said, his tone no longer quite as adamant.

  “For now,” Olive countered, her brows lifting defiantly. “She is at His Majesty’s service.” She attempted an awkward curtsy. “You know Dad notified the Pigeon Service committee that our lofts are available for the war effort,” she reminded him. “We simply haven’t received our certification. I’m sure it’s an administrative oversight,” she said crisply.

  It was more likely that her father’s imperious manner had raised the committee’s hackles. While he’d jumped at the opportunity to enrol the Bright loft with the Service, envisioning their birds winging top-secret, mission-critical messages across the Channel for Britain, he’d been considerably less enthusiastic about relinquishing control of his loft. He had, in fact, informed the committee of fanciers put in charge of vetting local lofts that if they wanted his racers, then they were going to get him, as well. If he imagined that might sweeten the deal, he was mistaken: it seemed they wanted neither.

  Olive was convinced that if the Bright loft had a file at the National Pigeon Service, it was surely marked LAST RESORT, but she was determined to calm any ruffled feathers, so to speak. The war effort needed excellent pigeons, and if the racing sheets were any indication, the birds she’d trained were some of the best.

  George hoisted his duffel higher on his shoulder and eyed Poppins distrustfully. “And what, may I ask, did Mr Bright have to say about you absconding with the loft’s champion pigeon and entrusting her to my care?”

  Olive’s spine straightened, her chin levelled, and her eyes calmly met his. “He didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  When she didn’t respond, the barest smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He knew her very well indeed.

  And yet, Olive couldn’t help but acknowledge that he was a far cry from the boy who’d tripped along beside her for so many years. His hair, beneath the cap, was slicked back; his jaw shaven smooth; and his eyes were heavy with responsibility. She didn’t want to think about her own eyes and hair; she probably looked a fright, but George didn’t bat an eye.

  He had never borne up well against tears, and if she’d chosen to manipulate him with their sudden appearance, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. But they both knew she wouldn’t stoop to such a deceit. Her heart was being ravaged, and tears were coming whether he liked it or not. In what was surely a last-ditch effort to stave them off, he extended his hand for the basket. Sighing with relief, she offered it, then quickly turned her face to the wind, in the hope that it would dry her eyes and cool the achy flush in her face.

  “No promises,” he said as she turned back. “It’s entirely possible she’ll get released from the train window as soon as we pull away from the station.”

  “Don’t be such a spoilsport,” she admonished, peering in at the bird in the basket. The pale, opalescent colours at her throat shimmered in the darkened space like a sprinkle of fairy dust. In fairness, Olive was willing to concede that this probably wasn’t her most auspicious idea, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone, either. George wasn’t going off to war—not yet. He was headed to an RAF airbase outside of London. If anyone suspected he was harbouring a stowaway, he need only get rid of the evidence. Poppins would handle herself just fine. She was Olive’s best bird, and their last chance to thwart the censors, their last bit of mischief for a very long time.

  She bobbed her head, feeling no compunction about sending her along. “Watch over him, Mary Poppins,” she murmured, “and fly home safe.” Olive fastened the basket closed and shifted her attention to George. “She has enough feed and water for a couple days, and there’s paper and a bit of lead in the canister attached to her leg. Send me a joke, preferably inappropriate. A limerick would be even better.” She managed a watery smile as all around them, teary mothers and sweethearts were clinging to their young men in uniform, dreading the moment when they’d have to say their final goodbyes.

  George nodded, looking as if he could see right through her brave front. “I’ll miss you, Olive.” His voice was reassuringly steady as he engulfed her in a tight hug, careful to hold the basket clear. Too soon, he pulled away but stood still, staring down at her. Grinning, he made a fist and clipped her lightly on the jaw. “If anything has prepared me for this, it was tagging along in your wake. You’re as domineering as any commanding officer.”

  “You’re already a hero, George,” she said crisply before planting a hard kiss high on his cheekbone. “Remember that and don’t go daredeviling about.” Her eyes burned against the tears.

  “What’s it to be, then?” he asked with amusement. “Am I a spoilsport or a daredevil?”

  “Obviously, it depends on the situation.” She pursed her lips primly, patiently, the way she’d always done when hoping to get her way. “Don’t get cocky,” she added as he hoisted his duffel one final time, the precursor to goodbye. “It affects your aim,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll remember that.” He nodded, then shot her a grin as the porter called the all aboard. “You know we would have made a great team,” he said, walking backwards, away from her. “Me at the controls, you as the gunner.”

  “The best,” she agreed, a new lump in her throat. If it weren’t for that pesky royal proclamation that forbade women from operating deadly weapons during wartime, they would have been inseparable. The king was evidently inclined to turn a blind eye to everyday life in the country—she’d been firing a rifle since her tenth birthday. She’d shot down her share of falcons, the natural enemy of pigeons, but the Nazis, a much more dangerous predator, had been deemed off-limits for women. No matter if they were crack shots. “Make sure you find someone almost as good,” she instructed, swallowing with difficulty. There wasn’t time to tell him she intended to get as close to manning a gun against the Germans as she possibly could.

  “Will do,” he said, putting a hand up in one final goodbye. “Keep an eye on Mom and Dad and Gillian for me, would you?”

  Olive n
odded solemnly—she could picture them, sitting around the breakfast table, having already said their goodbyes. They were the sort to get on with things. She wasn’t nearly as self-possessed, a fact her mother had considered a particular shortcoming. As he turned and walked the remaining steps to the corner, she kept her gaze riveted on the vulnerable strip of exposed skin at the back of his neck, just above his collar, until he disappeared from view. She locked her knees to resist running after him and turned away, abruptly taking hold of her handlebars.

  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Poppins would likely be back that very afternoon, but Olive had no way of knowing when she’d set eyes on George again. A fist of worry lodged in the centre of her chest.

  As she stood, disheartened, her eye caught on a tall, lithe woman exiting the station, her luggage gripped tightly in hand. She moved with a sinuous grace, clad in wide-legged grey trousers and a trim jacket the colour of eggplant, a curlicue pattern of embroidery adorning the shoulders. Her red-gold hair was cut short and stylish under a dark blue beret cap with a rakishly turned brim and a fanciful ribbon flower of cream and gold. Olive’s eyes followed distractedly. There was something familiar about her, but it wasn’t until she’d angled her head at a passing gentleman, revealing the coquettish slant of her eyes and the mischievous pout of her lips, that the mystery was solved.