Elsie nodded. The war effort—there it was again. Only this time it actually meant something, not having her pretentious neighbours passing hollow compliments on her garden to raise—what would it be? —an absolute pittance, that’s what. A thinly veiled memory of her home and of her old life wafted into her mind like an ill-defined and unwelcome cloud. She dismissed it and all traces vanished, as she stepped into a large room at the front of the house: the nucleus of the activity. She smiled inwardly.
‘This is where you will be based,’ Scott-Farnie proclaimed, standing back and allowing Elsie to take stock of the room. Two bare bulbs poking through the ceiling cast a vanilla glow over four WAAF women. Elsie studied each of them in turn. They were huddled over individual wireless sets on long trestle tables. Headphones clamped to one ear. Strained faces. Dials being turned. Pencils frantically scribing on the paper beside them.
Scott-Farnie leant in and spoke softly. ‘You’ll be operating on the 40-megacycle Very High Frequency band. Non-Morse and radio telephony.’
‘I see,’ Elsie replied, matching his low tone. She didn’t see—not really. The technical parts of her training had been brief and had left her with the distinct impression that the advisor was also not sure what he was doing, or else he had been a very bad teacher; either way, the inner workings of a crystal set were definitely not Elsie’s area of expertise.
‘As you can see, we’ve got a mixture of sets here—old civilian Hallicrafter receivers, plus a set recovered from a German aircraft. Those last two machines over there,’ he whispered, pointing to the end of the room, ‘brand new—top notch.’
The nearest of the women sighed, set down her headphones and stretched.
‘Mike,’ Scott-Farnie called to her. She turned with an inquisitive smile. ‘Can I give you our newest recruit—Sergeant Finch?’
‘Of course, come over.’
‘You’re in safe hands,’ Scott-Farnie said, patting her on the arm before leaving the room.
‘Mike?’ Elsie questioned.
‘A nickname—I’m sure you’ll get one, too. Grab that chair over there and I’ll show you the ropes. What’s your name?’
‘Elsie,’ she answered, pulling the seat to beside Mike, all the while wondering at the silliness of her name. She couldn’t think that it was short for anything remotely feminine. ‘What’s your real name? I can’t bring myself to call you Mike.’
‘It’s Aileen,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But really, I don’t mind. I’ve rather become fond of it now—like a comfy pair of slippers or an old faithful hound.’
Elsie guessed that Aileen was a just a few years older than she—perhaps in her mid-twenties. Her dark hair and eyes gave Elsie the impression of a Mediterranean heritage. ‘No, Aileen is your name and that’s what I shall call you,’ Elsie insisted.
Aileen smiled and faced the machine. ‘Right, I can explain how to do the job, which would take an age and bore the socks off you, or we can just get on with it. Here,’ she said, handing the headset to Elsie and pressing it to her ear. ‘Now, turn that dial on the left infinitesimally. Then listen. Then turn it infinitesimally. Then listen.’
Elsie turned the dial but could only hear a murmuring hiss. Long seconds passed and the hissing continued. It was like she was listening to a slow puncture. ‘What am I listening for?’ she asked.
Aileen held a finger to her lips. ‘Turn and listen.’
Then there was a sound, a fraction above the hissing. Muffled and distant, but it was there. Elsie sat up straight and pushed the headset closer to her ear. Instinctively, she turned the dial a little further and the sound took a firmer shape. Words. They were still unclear, like they were being grated and shredded before they reached her ear. Another twist of the dial and she caught something recognisable.
‘Kirchturm?’ Elsie muttered to Aileen.
‘Quick, write it down!’ Aileen exclaimed, thrusting a notepad and pencil at her. ‘Leave every other line blank,’ she added.
Kirchturm fünfhundertfünfzig. Then, nothing; only more hissing. Moments later, more words. ‘Ich habe Durst.’
‘What does that…?’ Elsie began, but Aileen cut across her.
‘Wait!’
Another voice, different now. ‘Taube zwei—Lucie Anton.’
Elsie hurriedly scribbled what she had heard, then waited.
‘Viktor,’ the original voice said.
Aileen picked up the paper. ‘That’s probably all you’ll get—your chap’s returning home. So, below the German, write the direct translation.’
Elsie obeyed. She re-read the paper several times but it made no sense. ‘Church tower five hundred and fifty,’ she read. ‘I’m thirsty. Dove two…’ Elsie shrugged. ‘Lucie Anton. Roger.’ Another shrug.
Aileen smiled patiently. ‘Most of the time the Luftwaffe pilots speak in code. Some of it is obvious—I’m thirsty means I’m low on fuel. Some of it’s less obvious—church tower means the pilot’s altitude. Dove two is the pilot’s name.’
‘Lucie Anton?’
‘It’s short for Landeanflug—return to base and land. You’ll pick them up pretty quickly. But, over there,’ Aileen said, turning and pointing to the wall behind them, ‘is a codebook that we’ve been putting together since we started.’
‘Oh, right,’ Elsie answered, glancing down the line at the other three WAAF women, all diligently turning, listening, scribing and translating. She felt a light sag of disappointment inside. Yes, it was a thousand times better than the suffocating stagnation that she had faced at Bramley Cottage, but it wasn’t quite what she had envisaged when she had signed the Official Secrets Act. Really, she was just going to be a bilingual secretary.
‘It does get more exciting,’ Aileen added. She drew up closer to Elsie, as if she were about to confide a terrific wartime secret. ‘It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle, but one that’s constantly changing and adapting—it can get very exhilarating at times, especially when you know you’ve saved an airman’s life.’
Elsie nodded. ‘Shall I continue?’
‘Yes, do. I’ll sit with you this stint and we’ll see how you get on.’
The day continued in much the same way: listening, turning, scribing and translating until four fresh-faced WAAF girls arrived for the next shift. Once they were safely ensconced at the wireless sets, Elsie was formally introduced to the other women alongside whom she had been working. Snippets, questions and short exchanges had occurred throughout the day, but they had all been work-related and brief. ‘Blast, my pencil’s snapped—pass me another, would you?’ ‘Anyone have any inkling what this might mean?’ ‘I’ve just picked up your lovely Amsel eins—he’s headed home for the day.’
‘Girls, this is Elsie Finch,’ Aileen finally announced, as they packed up to leave. ‘This is Lottie, Pat and Susie.’ The girls, who were all around Elsie’s age, each smiled and greeted her in turn, then the five of them piled downstairs and out through the front door.
‘Do they always keep the blacks up in there?’ Elsie asked, shielding her eyes from the shockingly bright sun, following the dimness inside Maypole Cottage. She bent down with her eyes covered and fumbled for her bicycle.
‘Always,’ Aileen responded. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
It wasn’t even a particularly bright day and, if the weather that the Luftwaffe pilots had been reporting was heading this way, then it was soon going to get very much worse.
‘We usually go over to Annie’s tea van,’ Susie said to Elsie. ‘Do you fancy joining us?’
‘Susie meets her sweetheart there,’ Lottie chirped. ‘But Annie does do a nice cuppa and sandwich, too.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Elsie answered, following the line of girls as they mounted their bicycles and began riding down the street.
Annie’s tea van was parked up just outside the aerodrome gates. Loitering around it were a handful of airmen, smoking and laughing in a deep guffawing way that Elsie recognised from the evenings when Laurie’s acquaintances from the office had called around. I
t was a strange, showy kind of laughter. Not real, somehow.
The line of girls dismounted, one after the other, their bicycles falling haphazardly on the grass in front of the tea van. The dropping of the bicycles coincided with the petering out of the men’s laughter and conversation. Susie rushed over to a handsome blond pilot and kissed him on the lips.
‘Afternoon, ladies,’ another of the pilots admired, as the girls formed a queue at the open side of the tea van, from where a middle-aged woman—presumably Annie—was protruding.
‘Sergeant Hartwell,’ Lottie scorned, ‘I heard you up there today—you really need to keep this shut.’ She leaned over and placed her finger on his lips, receiving a whoop of delight from the other men. ‘Just as we’re listening to their every word, so they’re listening to yours.’
‘Oh, let them come,’ he returned, ‘all the better if they know where we are—at least then we can fight the bastards.’
Lottie shook her head and turned to place her order.
‘Hey, Mike,’ one of the other men called, wandering over. ‘Who’s your friend?’ He smiled broadly at Elsie and offered his hand. ‘William Smith, Pilot Officer.’
‘This is Sergeant Elsie Finch,’ Aileen introduced.
He shook her hand vigorously. ‘Nice to meet you, Sergeant Finch.’
Elsie couldn’t help but smile. He was a young man—no older than twenty—trying to impress his friends. He had a boyishly smooth face, with short dark hair, but carried a confidence beyond his years. There was no way, in any set of circumstances, that she would go near a boy like him. Without thinking, she stretched out the fingers on her left hand and glanced down at her wedding band, inadvertently also drawing it to his attention.
‘Lucky guy,’ he muttered. ‘Not that that’s a problem for me.’
Elsie didn’t answer. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth—so complex, protracted and vague—so, instead she held her smile and said, ‘You can still buy me a cup of tea, though, Pilot Officer Smith.’
She sat on the warm grass beside Pat—a petite little thing with fragile bone-china features. Pat grimaced, digging her fingernails under her hat. ‘These bloody pins!’ she scorned, tossing her cap to the ground. She began removing the offending articles from her hair, gripping them in her front teeth, as she delved in for more. ‘You’d do well to keep away from him,’ she managed to say through clenched teeth. ‘He’s tried it on with all of us at one time or another. His hands are a bit adventurous, shall we say.’
Lottie, Aileen and Pat joined them at the moment that Elsie flashed her wedding band, again.
‘You don’t look old enough to be a wife,’ Aileen commented.
‘Married and widowed—all in ten months,’ Elsie stated without emotion.
‘Good golly,’ Pat muttered. ‘What happened?’
And so Elsie found herself relaying the complex, protracted and vague story that she had hoped to avoid. William silently handed her a cup of tea part way through the tale and sat at the edge of the group, listening. Elsie was aware that, as her story progressed, so more and more of the pilots at the tea van were also listening. She ended the story with her letter of appointment and billeting with her mother-in-law at Cliff House. ‘And here I am.’
‘Well, we’re pleased to have you, Elsie,’ Aileen said. ‘We’ll look after you.’
‘By God, do we need you up at Maypole,’ Pat added. ‘When we arrived here there was almost nothing to be heard on the airwaves. Days would go by with only a few scraps of information gleaned. A chance favourable wind here, a pilot off-course there and we might manage to get something, but really, it was next to useless.’
‘Now look at us, rushed off our feet,’ Lottie mumbled.
‘What changed?’ Elsie asked, sipping her tea.
Pat answered, ‘The fall of France in May; it brought the front line a hell of a lot closer—suddenly we were inundated.’
‘What happens to all that paper once we’ve worked out what it all means?’ Elsie asked. ‘Where does it go?’
‘Well,’ Aileen said eventually, ‘If it’s urgent, then we phone Number Eleven Group and they’ll scramble fighters into the air, or launch a sea rescue or whatever they need to do—perhaps pass it to the navy.’
‘Then it goes off with a dispatch rider to God knows where to be analysed by the boffins,’ Lottie added.
‘I hate to spoil the party, but the Maskerade that our German friends were talking about is on its way here,’ Pat said, pointing out towards the sea.
‘Thunderstorm,’ Aileen explained to Elsie with a grin.
A thick plate of black and deep grey cloud sat heavily over the English Channel, inching its way slowly but surely forward. The girls jumped up and moved towards their bicycles.
‘Time we left, too, Smith,’ one of the men called over.
One by one, the girls said their goodbyes and peeled away to their homes. With a touch of envy, Elsie gathered from their parting words that several of them were billeted together. As she watched them cycle away, she imagined the fun and laughter that they must share.
Elsie mounted her bicycle and was about to leave when she was grabbed around the wrist. It was Susie’s blond pilot—crashingly handsome up close.
‘Hi,’ he beamed. ‘Did I hear you say that you were billeted up at Cliff House?’ His smooth, freckled face scrunched into a grimace, his eyes not blinking.
‘Yes, why?’
He nodded mechanically, his eyes searching for something. Finally, he smiled, then spoke. ‘Just be careful up there.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Elsie demanded,
‘Just that—be on your guard,’ he warned enigmatically. He still hadn’t blinked.
The first droplet of water, ridiculously large, fell onto her left hand, spreading out between her knuckles. Then another bounced from the rim of her hat. Then another. And another. Elsie tugged her arm free and the gulf between them was suddenly filled with a deluge of rain.
She pulled tight her greatcoat and mounted the bicycle, wondering at the meaning of his ominous warning. She knew that he was watching her leave—a lone figure in front of the tea van; she could almost feel the weight of his stare on her back as she pedalled away. Don’t look around, Elsie, she told herself. And she didn’t.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ he yelled, his words icy splinters to her ears.
Chapter Seven
19th July 1940, Hawkinge, Kent
The watch-room was stifling; the summer storms had dissipated the previous day, leaving in their wake a clinging humidity. Elsie’s collar, clean on that morning, was soaked through with sweat. She was huddled over the warm Bakelite-grey receiver, listening closely. Beside her sat Susie, then Aileen, then another WAAF girl, Rosemary, whom she had first met yesterday. The four women were tuned into the same Luftwaffe group, who were right now headed across the channel towards England. Behind the women, in a hot haze of pipe smoke, stood an anxious-looking Scott-Farnie.
‘I think it’s Folkestone they’re headed for, sir,’ Rosemary declared.
Scott-Farnie nodded sagely. ‘I’ll get onto Group.’
‘Wait,’ Elsie said, holding up her hand. ‘I think it’s Dover, not Folkestone.’
‘Either way, we’ve got at least twenty Messerschmitts heading towards us,’ Scott-Farnie said, hurrying to the telephone at the back of the room.
‘What makes you think it’s Dover?’ Rosemary demanded, unable to hide her consternation at being questioned in front of the boss.
‘Ich kann beinahe, meinen Lieblingsmarktplatz sehen,’ Elsie answered. ‘I can almost see my favourite market place. It was Sparrow Four who said it—he used that phrase the last time they hit Dover.’
Rosemary seemed unconvinced and turned back to her receiver. ‘We’ll see.’
Then the air raid siren began its deafening wail, each screaming crescendo draining the power from the house and pulling the light from the room. It was something that had taken Elsie by surprise
the first time that it had occurred, but now she was used to writing by the soft vanilla glow of the receiver dials.
Elsie pushed the headset tighter to her ear, seeking sense in the audible chaos. Out of the metallic muddle she managed to locate Sparrow Four’s bawdy Bavarian accent. She scribbled down his words exactly as he said them. Das Kino ist schön. Trompeten. Below that she wrote the direct translation: The cinema is good. Trumpets. Then she wrote the operational meaning: Good visibility. Target identified. They were closing in. From their current position, there was no way they were about to attack Folkestone. ‘It is—it’s Dover!’ Elsie shrieked. ‘Where are our fighters, for goodness’ sake?’
Scott-Farnie paced the floor behind her. ‘I told Group to get our boys up…we’ve just got to be patient.’
At 12.18pm, eight minutes after the sirens had first begun, the raid on Dover commenced. Elsie flinched as the first explosion rang through her headset, echoing a millisecond later in the room. The cottage trembled slightly, rattling the machines at which the women worked.
‘Come on!’ Elsie called, willing the planes up from the nearby aerodrome, as another bomb struck. She continued to listen, undaunted, as all the while the room was being sucked in and out of darkness with the rhythmical moan of the air raid siren.
Joining the brutal and savage cacophony was the opening up of the chain of anti-aircraft batteries stationed along the coast; the low thudding of their return-fire pumped into the hot summer sky.
More explosions shook the cottage. One after another.
Elsie closed her eyes for a moment, praying that each bomb had fallen harmlessly in open countryside or had only destroyed empty, evacuated homes. Then came the two words that signalled that it was all over: Sieg Heil. Hail victory. She opened her eyes, took a deep breath and added those definitive words to the log sheet.
Radio silence.
The Bofor guns stopped.
Elsie threw down her headset.
Then, finally, at twelve-thirty pm, she heard the sound that she had longed to hear: British aircraft roaring up from the aerodrome. She realised then that she had been holding her breath, as she counted the aircraft into the air. Nine, she made it, exhaling at length. The planes flew low, seeming to make their turn out to sea directly above the cottage. Then the grumbling of their engines began to fade.
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 4) Page 7