The Code Girls

by Daisy Styles

  After Hitler’s revenge attack, the nation needed good news, and the month of August brought it. At the beginning of the month, the Polish army rose against the Nazis. By the middle of the month the Allies had invaded southern France and, on 25 August, Paris was liberated.

  ‘The Nazi generals are so sick of Hitler they tried to bump him off themselves,’ Ruby gloated.

  ‘Pity their conspiracy failed,’ Maudie sighed. ‘As long as megalomaniac Adolf is alive and kicking, there’ll always be suffering.’

  August also brought news of Edward’s trial date; it was set for the beginning of September. Bella begged her mother not to attend the trial, which would take place in the High Court.

  ‘There can’t possibly be a good outcome, Mummy.’

  Lady Caroline shook her head. ‘I have to be there right till the end,’ she said sadly.

  When Bella finally saw her brother, she felt like she’d been knocked sideways. He was no longer overweight, but thin and gaunt; his previously blond hair was heavily streaked with grey, and the bruising around his cheekbones suggested he had suffered some rough treatment while he was in prison. The trial lasted two days, and after it the jury found Edward guilty of murder and treason. When the judge placed the black cap, the ultimate symbol of doom for a condemned man, on his head, Bella’s blood ran cold. After announcing the punishment ‒ death by hanging ‒ the judge closed the proceedings with the words, ‘May the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

  Though pale and trembling, Lady Walsingham sat dignified and erect as her son was taken back down to the cells.

  ‘I think we all need a stiff drink!’ the Brig announced, as he led his wife and mother-in-law from the courtroom.

  A few weeks later, the day before Edward was due to hang, the Brig and Bella drove Lady Caroline to Wandsworth Prison, where she was allowed to see her son.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t come, darling,’ she informed Bella. ‘I’d like our final meeting to be between Edward and myself.’

  Bella didn’t argue. In fact, she was secretly relieved not to go. Rationally, she had no time for her disgraced brother, but in reality, every time she thought of the hideous death awaiting him in less than twenty-four hours she couldn’t help but weep with sorrow.

  ‘God! I’ll be glad when this nightmare is over,’ the Brig murmured, as he and Bella sat in the car waiting for Lady Caroline’s return.

  When she did emerge, after her hour-long visit, she looked like she’d aged a hundred years. The Brig leapt out of the car to help her into the passenger seat, where she sat staring vacantly at the rain falling softly on the windscreen.

  ‘Thank God your father has been spared this,’ she said, as tears rolled down her weary face. ‘I had to know why Edward betrayed his country.’ She paused to take a long, ragged breath. ‘He said he’d always had the greatest admiration for Hitler and the Third Reich, that their vision for a new Aryan world inspired him.’ Her voice dropped. She was worn out. ‘He apologized to me, said he was sorry for the pain he’d put me through, but he was adamant that he had no regrets about his decision to turn his back on his country.’ Straightening her shoulders, Lady Caroline inhaled deeply. ‘Now, Charles, would you be so good as to take me home? The further away I get from this wretched place, the better!’

  After the death of her son, Lady Caroline threw herself body and soul into her war work. Driving the ambulance and helping people in need gave her a reason to live. Something else which made her life worth living was her relationship with Bella. The daughter she’d previously despaired of had become, quite simply, the light of her life. She’d married a splendid man whose child she was carrying, she was an excellent teacher for the code girls, a magnificent cook, but most of all, she was the sweetest daughter a mother could ever hope for.

  Lady Caroline spent more and more time below stairs with Ava and Maudie, sometimes with Ruby and Rose, and Bella, too, when she wasn’t teaching. Laughter and easy conversation with people she trusted eased the pain and guilt that Lady Caroline would carry for the rest of her life.

  43. Autumn Storm

  The Brig arranged with his superiors at the War Office that he would take over teaching the code girls when his wife was no longer able to do so. He took the train down to Norfolk a few days before Bella’s due date, in late October, and found her in blooming health.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be relaxing, darling?’ he enquired after they’d warmly embraced.

  Bella shook her head. ‘I’ve never felt fitter,’ she declared.

  ‘You haven’t got long to go,’ he reminded her. ‘I was hoping to find you knitting, with your feet up.’

  Again, Bella shook her head. ‘I’ll rest after I’ve finised work this week,’ she promised.

  When she wasn’t teaching the trainees, Bella could be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

  ‘You’ve got the nesting instinct, all right,’ Ruby teased, when she arrived with baby Rose to find Bella rolling pastry out on the kitchen table while soup simmered on the Aga and bread rolls baked in the oven.

  ‘I’m doing as much as I can before I give birth.’ Bella laughed happily.

  Lady Caroline kept an anxious eye on the amount of petrol in her ambulance.

  ‘With petrol rationed, I need to make sure there’s enough in the tank to get Bella to the hospital when she goes into labour,’ she told the Brig.

  He rolled his eyes as he replied, ‘She’s nearly a week overdue, and bursting with energy.’

  ‘First babies,’ Lady Caroline said knowingly. ‘Don’t worry – it’ll happen soon enough.’

  She was right. The next day, just after lunch, Bella felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the small of her back.

  ‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ she told the Brig.

  In the upstairs bedroom she now shared with the Brig, Bella sat on the bed, and waited to see what would happen next. When her waters broke all over her pretty pink silk eiderdown, Bella immediately phoned her mother at Wells Cottage Hospital.

  ‘Mummy, I might need a lift soon,’ she said nervously.

  She heard her mother suppress a little gasp of excitement. ‘Hold on tight, darling, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  Hand in hand, Bella and the Brig stood in the magnificent marble hall, waiting for the ambulance. As they did, so the sky darkened and rain began to fall. Lightning zigzagged across the horizon and thunder rolled ominously overhead.

  ‘Just my luck to go into labour in a thunderstorm,’ Bella joked, then let out a loud cry as another contraction kicked in.

  By the time the ambulance arrived, Bella’s contractions were coming every ten minutes. Lady Caroline jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran through the belting rain towards her daughter. ‘All right, darling?’ she asked.

  Bella nodded and smiled bravely.

  ‘Righty ho, let’s get you into the ambulance,’ her mother said, as she and the Brig helped Bella into the cab. As Lady Caroline started up the engine, she said cheerily, ‘Shouldn’t take long.’

  She couldn’t have been more wrong. Five minutes down the road, the ambulance dragged to a shuddering halt.

  ‘Damnation! What on earth …?’

  When she jumped out of the cab, Lady Caroline discovered that one of the back tyres was as flat as a pancake.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she cried.

  Hearing his mother-in-law’s cry, the Brig joined her in the pouring rain and stared in disbelief at the jagged hole in the tyre.

  ‘What’re we going to do?’

  Lady Caroline made a snap decision. ‘You’re going to have to walk to the Cottage Hospital for help, while I get Bella into the back of the ambulance and make her more comfortable.’

  Giving Bella a quick kiss, the Brig ran off in the direction of Wells, with only flashes of lightning to guide him on his way.

  ‘Darling, I think you’ll be more comfortable lying down in the back,’ said Lady Caroline calmly.

  Oblivious to anything but the growing pain, Bell
a allowed her mother to guide her on to the stretcher bed in the back of the ambulance.

  ‘Oh, that’s better …’ she sighed, as she eased her aching body down. ‘Argh!’ she cried. ‘There’s another one coming.’

  Lady Caroline helped her daughter breathe through the pain of the contraction, then carefully counted the minutes till the next one. Four minutes! They were speeding up fast. As a mother, Lady Caroline began to panic, but then her recent experience helping in medical emergencies kicked in and she went into professional mode.

  ‘You’re doing well, darling. Take a few minutes to relax, and breathe normally till the next contraction starts.’

  Though frightened by the speed things were going, Bella gazed into her mother’s dark eyes and nodded.

  ‘You can take care of me, Mummy,’ she said trustingly.

  Tears stung the back of Lady Caroline’s eyes. ‘I most certainly can, my darling!’

  As the Brig flagged down a lift to the hospital in the torrential rain, Lady Caroline was anxiously preparing for Bella’s delivery in her ambulance. From her training, she knew in theory what to do but, nevertheless, she had to keep steadying her nerves. This was her precious daughter and her grandchild! She had to take the greatest care of them both.

  When Bella started to push, her loud cries drowned out the sound of an approaching ambulance siren. Leaving the driver in the cab, the Brig and a local midwife ran through the rain.

  ‘This way!’ the Brig cried urgently.

  As the need to push engulfed Bella’s body, the Brig and the midwife stepped into the ambulance. The experienced midwife swiftly assessed Bella’s progress.

  ‘You sit up top, alongside your wife,’ she said quietly to the Brig.

  As Bella gripped her husband’s hand, the midwife and Lady Caroline exchanged a brief, knowing nod.

  ‘I can see everything’s under control our end,’ the midwife said with a confident smile.

  Urged on by her excited husband, Bella gave one last almighty push and, seconds, later Lady Caroline brought her grandchild into the world.

  Flopping back exhausted on to the stretcher, Bella closed her eyes and wept with happiness.

  ‘Well done! I couldn’t have done better myself!’ the midwife said to a smiling Lady Caroline, who tenderly cleaned the baby, then, after wrapping it in a sheet and a warm blanket, she handed the mewling bundle to her daughter.

  ‘A boy!’ the Brig whispered, as he embraced his wife and baby tenderly. ‘We have a son, darling.’

  ‘A son …’ murmured Bella, as she stroked her baby’s soft, downy hair. She looked up and smiled at her mother, who was weeping with joy, and added, ‘A grandson, Mummy. A boy!’

  44. A New Generation

  Two months later, on New Year’s Day 1945, William Charles Walsingham Rydal, heir to the ancient Walsingham estate, was christened in the same chapel where his ancestors were laid to rest. The service was attended by William’s proud parents, his adoring grandmother, even his Aunt Diana (who kept a safe distance from Ava), as well as Ruby and Rose, Kit and Maudie, Ava, Tom and Oliver, who was staying with his father for part of the Christmas holidays. Little Rose, who was crawling everywhere, stole the show. Cooing and gurgling all through the service, she latched on to Oliver, who proudly lifted the adorable little girl into his arms so she could watch baby William being blessed with oil and water.

  ‘Splash!’ chortled Rose, as the startled baby, dressed in his mother’s silk-and-lace christening robe, cried in protest, before sinking back to sleep.

  ‘Ollie will make a sweet big brother when we have our children,’ Tom whispered to Ava, who blushed with pleasure. The thought of bearing Tom’s children and bringing them up with Oliver made her stomach lurch with excitement. Squeezing his hand, she whispered back, ‘I just can’t wait!’

  The christening party laughed and chatted as they walked back to the hall, Oliver helping Ruby to push a giggling Rose in her pram, and the Brig proudly pushing his baby son in Bella’s old pram. Back at the hall, they sat down to a delicious lunch which only Bella and Peter could have put together. Rationing, by the end of 1944, five years into the war, was more stringent than ever before, so Bella had turned to Peter to solve the problem. In the middle of the shooting season, Peter was able to find several pheasants from local gamekeepers, and Bella casseroled them with root vegetables, carrots, swedes, parsnips and turnips, enriched with Oxo and Lea and Perrins sauce. At the end of the celebration meal, the Brig charged everybody to refill their glasses with the wine supplied by Lady Caroline.

  ‘A toast to my beautiful son and my wonderful wife,’ he said, with an emotional catch in his voice. ‘My dearest wish for William is that he will grow up in a country at peace.’

  ‘Cheers to that!’ cried the guests.

  ‘Here’s to 1945,’ the Brig continued. ‘May it bring us all peace at last.’

  ‘To 1945!’ cheered the guests, as they toasted the new Walsingham son, who was sleeping peacefully, cradled in his mother’s arms.

  Epilogue: 8 May 1945, VE Day

  As the Soviets and the Allies raced towards Berlin, the nation seemed to be holding its breath. On tenterhooks, everybody listened to the radio news bulletins, desperate to hear that the war was finally over, Bella and her trainee code girls upstairs, and Maudie, Ruby and Ava downstairs. Ruby was kept busy minding both babies, William when Bella was teaching and his doting grandmother was busy driving her hospital ambulance, and her own little Rose who, at fifteen months old, was now walking and gabbling non-stop.

  ‘I can’t keep up with her!’ Ruby laughed, as, holding William in her arms, she chased after Rose, who had become fixated by the dead hares and the pigeons hanging upside down in the cold larder.

  ‘She’s got nerves of steel, just like her mum!’ Ava chuckled, as Ruby tugged her reluctant daughter back into the kitchen, where Maudie diverted her attention with some tiny tarts filled with Walsingham cherry jam.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll keep on cooking right till the bitter end,’ Maudie sighed, as she set a large panful of water on the Aga and started peeling potatoes and onions for the beginnings of a soup. ‘Can you imagine the day dawning when we don’t have to cook four meals a day for thirty people?’

  ‘Can you imagine cooking without rationing?’ Ava said dreamily. ‘Butter, cheese, meat, fish, white bread, bananas!’ She laughed out loud. ‘One day, that surely has to come.’ she said, with yearning in her voice.

  On 30 April they heard on the radio the best news imaginable, the news they never thought would come.

  ‘Bloody Hitler’s committed suicide!’ Ruby cried, as she came tearing into the kitchen with Rose, after virtually running the three miles from Burnham Thorpe.

  ‘We heard it, too,’ Ava laughed. ‘The end’s in sight, girls!’

  Bella came rushing down the stairs. ‘Have you heard the –’

  Ava, Maudie and Ruby all chorused back. ‘Hitler’s dead!’

  Unable to contain their joy, the girls rushed towards each other and, grasping hands, spontaneously danced around in an excited circle.

  ‘Me, too, dance, mama,’ Rose gurgled, as she grabbed the hem of her mother’s skirt and jumped up and down.

  Ruby bent down and lifted her rosy-cheeked, pale-haired daughter into her arms.

  ‘We can all dance a happy dance today, sweetheart.’

  After the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies, everybody knew it was just a question of hours until there would be an announcement. It came at one minute after midnight on Tuesday, 8 May – Victory in Europe was officially confirmed. Nobody could quite believe it: after six long, long years of poverty, rationing, hardship, heartache and grief, the war was finally over. Stunned into silence, the girls stared at each other.

  ‘What will we do now?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Go back to normal … whatever that is,’ Ava answered, gazing fondly at the ring which, barely a month ago, Tom had slipped on to her finger at their wedding in Wells, w
ith Oliver taking pride of place as her cheeky, giggling page-boy.

  ‘We can never go back to what we were,’ Maudie pointed out. ‘You won’t be going back home to Lancashire, Ava, not now that you’re married – and I won’t be working in my parents’ East End bakery. After all we’ve been through, I never want to parted from Kit again! Our lives have been radically changed by this long war – nothing will ever be the same again.’

  ‘Maudie’s right,’ Bella said. ‘None of us is the same girl who walked into Walsingham Hall four years ago.’ She smiled as she recalled their first tumultuous days together. ‘But, my God, I wouldn’t change a thing,’ she added passionately. ‘Well, of course there are a few things I’d change,’ she added, glancing anxiously at Ruby. ‘We’d all want Raf back.’

  Ruby blinked back tears and nodded. ‘I’d do anything to have my Raf back, even if it was only for five minutes, just to see his face and feel him close one more time.’

  As Ruby brushed away her tears, her friends clustered around to comfort her, but Rose, more and more the living image of her Polish father, got there first and clutched her mother’s hand.

  ‘Mama, Mama,’ she said sweetly, bringing the smile back to her mother’s face.

  Ava fell silent and lit up a Woodbine. What would they do, the millions of women who’d formed Churchill’s Secret Army? They couldn’t just resume a life of drab domesticity, washing and cleaning, shopping and cooking, not after they’d been a vital part of the drive to destroy Hitler. They’d forged new lives of their own – how could that be simply reversed? The war had, without doubt, turned the world upside down. Surely the customs and traditions of society would be changed for ever?