Meanwhile I’m in the swing of things. Every morning I get on my bicycle – rain or shine – and make my way up to Signal Hill where I let myself in, and the overnighter is usually getting up and putting on a kettle of water for a cup of tea. I get the tea cups ready, and we make sure all the radio equipment is ready, and then we wait. And then the drivers arrive in a Hillman Minx saloon and deliver the boxes with the recording discs at the same time every morning, or thereabouts. They crunch up the gravel path, rain or shine, through the barbed-wire fence, and deliver us huge heavy boxes. One day last week the absolute worst almost happened – Jack, one of the drivers, was passing the box across to Bill, who is in charge of the station, and somehow they made a mistake and almost dropped the lot. The air was absolutely blue that morning, I can tell you. It wasn’t until they’d mopped their brows that Bill and Jack turned to me looking horrified and apologized profusely for their language.
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ I said, feeling more embarrassed for them than anything else.
‘Terribly sorry.’ Jack touched his finger to his cap, ducking his head. ‘But my goodness, can you begin to imagine what would have happened if we’d broken one of these?’
He motioned to the glass recording discs that we played each day, at precise times, without fail. It sounds like gobbledegook to me – a fiercely angry military type shouting in German. But this is serious war work, and there’s no time for dancing. I feel very proud that I’m doing my bit for the war effort, even if I don’t really understand what it is we do.
‘I don’t understand either.’ Lucy looked up, her brow crinkling in confusion. ‘So what was the German stuff? Were you broadcasting recordings, or something?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what we were doing. Have you ever heard of black propaganda? Fake German radio programmes were recorded in a studio not far from Bletchley, and then we would broadcast them from our transmitter over there on Signal Hill –’ she waved an arm towards the window – ‘twelve minutes to the hour, every hour. We had to watch the clock like hawks.’
This was astonishing. Lucy sat back in her chair, putting her hands flat on the table in front of her as if to steady herself. No wonder Bunty had wanted to keep her role in the war to herself.
‘Hir ist Gustav Siegfried Eins,’ said Bunty, in a perfect imitation of a German radio announcer. ‘My goodness, those words still give me a chill.’ She rubbed at her arms. ‘I’ve done some reading over the years and found out what was going on. The fake radio programmes were broadcast – a mixture of news, entertainment and misinformation – and could be heard over short-wave radio across Occupied Europe.’
‘And you thought you were going to be at Bletchley. It must have been a shock. Did your parents know what you were doing?’
‘Goodness, no.’ Bunty looked horrified. ‘I kept my diary hidden away, tucked on a shelf inside the old fireplace in my bedroom. Even writing down what went on was breaking the Official Secrets Act, you know. I was allowed to tell them I’d gone to work near Bletchley, but they didn’t have a clue what that meant – and of course as it turned out I wasn’t there anyway. After the first day I was taken to Whaddon Hall, not far from Bletchley, where they gave me instruction in how to operate the equipment, and a very stern warning that I mustn’t breathe a word.’
‘It sounds incredibly exciting.’
‘I think perhaps more so in retrospect. There was a lot of waiting around, and it was jolly cold. Of course –’ Bunty gave a snort of laughter – ‘my parents would have been appalled if they’d realized the worst of it. The broadcasts were quite rude. Swearing, and even worse. Some of the stories that were told were quite blue, I have gathered.’
‘And full of lies and misinformation.’ Lucy scratched her head. ‘I suppose it was their version of “fake news”, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, quite. There’s nothing new under the sun, after all.’
‘And all this time, you haven’t told anyone what you did?’
She shook her head. ‘One was in the habit of forgetting. It’s such a strange thing – I’d spent so long not thinking about it. And then you came along, and all those old memories just seemed to surface. I can remember it now as clear as day.’
‘Amazing.’ Lucy put a hand on the diary, as if somehow she could soak up the whole experience. ‘So you didn’t really have anything to do with Bletchley at all?’
‘Not really. We went now and again, if we could hitch a lift. I’d go to some of the dances, and they had some wonderful performances. I was green with envy for a long old time that they seemed to be having such fun and I was stuck out in the sticks.’
‘I don’t think it was that much fun.’ Lucy thought of the people she’d heard telling their stories of life at Station X, as it had been known in wartime. They told stories of being crammed in freezing cold huts, eyes aching because they were working in dim light, the air thick with cigarette smoke.
‘Perhaps not, no.’
‘You must have been since they opened it up?’
Bunty shook her head. ‘Old habits die hard. We were told never to breathe a word, and many of us didn’t.’
‘They’re still looking for people to tell their stories. We could go.’
Bunty shook her head, harder this time. ‘Absolutely not. My story is of no interest to anyone.’
‘But would you like to go to the Park and see it? They’ve spent millions on renovating it.’
‘Perhaps.’ Bunty stood up suddenly. Her face closed down and somehow, she managed to convey without words a feeling that Lucy that was on the verge of overstaying her welcome.
‘Right.’ Lucy stood up too. ‘I am going to pop into Bletchingham, and then I’m going to come home and type up the last section of this booklet for Susan. And then after that, I’m going to have a look at some of the books we’ve been given for the telephone box.’
It was one of the privileges of age, Lucy thought, as she headed back home to take Hamish for a walk. No need for waffle or politeness – Bunty had reached a point in life where capriciousness was tolerated.
She picked up the lead from the back of the door and in a second Hamish had joined her, panting eagerly. Despite the lowering grey clouds on the far edge of the sky, she left her coat at home – it was a muggy, warm sort of day, and she couldn’t stand the feeling of being baked in a waterproof. It was like being microwaved from the inside out. If it rained, she’d deal with it.
They headed off towards the allotments and up into the woods where she’d first met Mel. The trees were now a glorious palette of oranges and dark reds. Hawthorn berries weighed down branches and the blackthorn hedges were thick with dark blue sloes, misted with a white bloom. Perhaps she could try making sloe gin. She picked one and bit into it, instantly spitting it out and making a face. It was like biting into acid. They looked utterly beautiful but tasted more sour than anything she’d ever tried.
She kept coming back to Bunty and her diary. It was strange – for a moment it had seemed as if she was going to hand over the diary, which would have been amazing as – especially now – Lucy was desperate to learn more about Bunty’s life during the war, and to read more about Signal Hill. But at the same time, it wasn’t just history – it was Bunty’s own story. And she still had a hunch that there was something more to it, some secret from the past that Bunty wasn’t ready to discuss or to confront.
They wandered on through the woods. Hamish leapt through the crackling orange bracken, barking hopefully and sniffing out rabbit trails. Lucy sat on a carved wooden bench in a clearing and looked up at the sky. It was a bruised, threatening purple now. The clouds looked like they were so full of rain that they’d overflow at any second.
‘Hamish!’ She felt in her pocket for treats. Since Mel had been using him as a demonstration dog in some of her classes – which was a perfect opportunity to wear him out – he’d been much better at not disappearing whenever he found a scent.
But not this time. She called again. The first spo
ts of rain landed on her hair – thick, heavy splatters. In a moment it was going to start absolutely tipping it down, and blooming Hamish had chosen this moment to go AWOL.
A rumble in the distance made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She’d hated thunder and lightning since she was a child.
‘Hame!’
‘Lost your dog again?’
Turning around she saw Sam, his two spaniels standing obediently by his feet, a smile on his face. He was wearing a checked shirt and a khaki-coloured coat with a million pockets. He put his hand into one and pulled out a piece of hot dog.
‘No “is that a sausage in your pocket” jokes,’ he said, warningly.
‘I wasn’t going to say a word.’
‘Contrary to her current super-virtuous behaviour, Bee can be a bit of a bugger if she catches a scent. Mel taught me that the secret was always to have something utterly delicious at hand.’
His brown eyes met hers and he gave a turned-down smile. Lucy thought, out of nowhere, that he was quite delicious enough. Then she shook her head, wondering where on earth that had come from.
‘Hamish!’ she called again, her voice slightly squeaky.
‘Which way did he go?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, feeling guilty. ‘I wasn’t looking.’
‘He can’t have gone far.’
A crack of lightning in the distance made Lucy jump.
‘He’ll be okay, don’t worry.’ Sam reached out, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Why don’t we set off down here? It’ll get us out of the worst of the rain, if nothing else.’
They headed down the soft path, the dogs circling and sniffing as they went. Occasional heavy drops of rain splashed through the canopy of trees, but they were sheltered from the downpour by the branches. They walked, regularly calling Hamish’s name, not talking. Lucy bit her lip. What if he’d been snared in a trap, or got caught down a rabbit hole?
Sam looked over at her. ‘Don’t worry. I promise, we’ll find him.’
‘I should have been looking.’ Her head was pounding, too. Maybe it was something to do with the atmospheric pressure. She rubbed her temples.
‘You okay?’
‘Just a bit of a headache.’ She needed to get a grip. Getting stressed out was exactly what she had to avoid. That’s why she was here, in the middle of a wood, trying to find a disappearing terrier in a thunderstorm. For a second she found herself wondering what life would have been like if she’d stayed in Brighton, cut down her teaching hours, but otherwise carried on the way she was.
‘Aha!’ Sam, who’d been scanning the clearing ahead of them, put his hands on her shoulders and spun her round. ‘Look who it is.’
Hurtling towards them, his entire face black with mud and his body not much cleaner, came Hamish. He looked absolutely delighted. Sam’s spaniels bounded towards him and they tussled in a mad heap of excitement, rolling over and galloping into a thicket of brambles and dried-up rosebay willowherb. Lucy felt the weight of Sam’s hands on her shoulders and stood very still. Her head felt fine now, but her heart was thudding irregularly. She took a sharp intake of breath, which somehow broke the spell. He took his hands away, leaving only a sensation of warmth.
They turned, heading back through the trees towards the path that led back down to the allotments and on to the village.
‘He’d have been fine, you know.’
‘He might have disappeared forever.’
‘I bet he wouldn’t. With you to come home to?’ Sam cocked an eyebrow at her and smiled. His gaze held hers for a moment. She felt her cheeks turning pink and looked across at the dogs, checking they were still in sight.
Was he flirting? She couldn’t tell – it had been so long, and she was so out of practice at that sort of thing. School life had left her no time for real life, and now here she was, without a clue. And of course she was only here for the short term. No, they were good friends. That was all. If anything was going to happen, surely it would have happened after she kissed his cheek last night – and it hadn’t. He probably didn’t look at her that way . . .
Bunty stood at the back door of her cottage, looking out at the garden. Margaret and Gordon had picked her up that morning and taken her to their place for the day, which was always a trial. She missed her own things, and Margaret’s house was so painfully tidy that she always felt as if she was getting in the way, even if she just sat down in an armchair and did the crossword. When they’d finally dropped her back at home, Gordon had crossed the road in the rain to look at the now-empty telephone box. The shelves would be going in soon. Margaret, who had thought that a nice tidy bench was a far better idea (‘much more practical than all those rejected books – and who is going to police it?’) had tutted from the front doorstep, waiting to get into the BMW and out of the rain.
Now the sky had cleared, but everything was still dripping. The hanging baskets needed to be taken down and put away for winter, but everything else could wait for spring. Bunty had always subscribed to the view that gardens should be left to overwinter, the dying foliage providing a home for beetles and bugs and wildlife. And in return, her garden was always full in summer of ladybirds, butterflies gathering around the buddleia and bees humming contentedly around the various species of lavender bush she had growing there. She’d learned it all from Mrs Brown. When she’d arrived at her billet here in the village, she hadn’t had a clue about – well, about much at all, really. Her mother had been a bit of a stickler for doing things herself, mainly because it gave her the opportunity to grumble about how hard done by she’d been. She turned to go back inside, pausing to look at the cracked black-and-white photograph of her parents that stood in a frame on the kitchen windowsill. It was one of the only ones she had – not many people had photographs taken in those days, and everything they’d owned had been obliterated by the bombs that dropped on their street that dark night in 1941. They’d never known their grandson, Gordon, or – Bunty gave a wry laugh – known the story behind his birth. Perhaps it was as well, in a way, that she’d never had to lie to them. They would have died of shock when they’d heard, in any case.
‘Hello?’
Freya’s voice carried through the hall. Bunty turned to look at her.
‘I had some cabbage leaves. I thought I’d bring them over for the guinea pigs.’
‘Oh, that’s kind of you, dear.’
Freya passed her in the hall, and slipped out into the garden. Bunty stood at the window and watched her unfastening the hutch and pausing to say hello to both of them before popping in some leaves and closing their doors.
‘Thank you, Freya. Now, shall I have a look in my cake tin and see what we’ve got hidden in there? I seem to remember there was some ginger cake left from yesterday . . .’
‘Yes please.’ Freya beamed. ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’
They sat together in a peaceable silence for a while, drinking tea. Freya smoothed the leathery skin of Stanley’s head and he basked in the attention, his eyes half closed.
‘Lucy really doesn’t understand Stanley, does she?’
‘She thinks he’s going to eat me in my sleep,’ Bunty laughed.
‘She’s nice, though, Lucy.’ Freya scooped up some crumbs with a finger.
‘Have some more. It’ll only go stale, otherwise.’ She cut another slice and watched as Freya took a huge bite. The girl was as thin as a lathe; goodness knows where she put it all. She’d been the same at that age, mind you.
‘I think Dad likes her, you know.’
‘Lucy?’ Bunty looked at her for a moment, sizing her up before she replied. ‘I think you might be right.’
‘But he’s completely obsessed with the idea that he has to stay single to look after me. Like I’m some sort of precious object he can’t let out of his sight.’
‘That’s because your –’ Bunty stopped mid-sentence.
‘Because my mother left.’ Freya finished it for her. ‘I know. But that doesn’t mean he has to live l
ike a monk forever. Unless he’s waiting for her to come back.’
‘I don’t think it’s that.’ Bunty had a recollection of the normally even-tempered Sam arguing with Stella over the top of a motorbike. They’d always sparked, and not in a particularly good way. They were a terrible match. If it hadn’t been for Stella getting pregnant with Freya, Bunty suspected she’d have been gone long since. But she’d stuck around, trying in her own way to do the right thing. It had been like trying to catch smoke. She was the direct opposite of Sam’s steady easy-going nature: impetuous and careless, wild and always looking for trouble.
‘I wonder if he secretly still loves her.’
‘Your mother?’
Freya nodded. ‘Maybe that’s why he’s not interested in Lucy like that.’
‘I don’t think so, dear. I think what he wants is for you to be happy. That’s always been his priority. You come before everything, in his book.’
Chapter Twenty
Walking back along the lane, Sam barely noticed the rain that was still falling in a light, misty drizzle. He was listening to Lucy talking about her teaching job.
Her eyes lit up when she talked about the pupils, and her hands were gesturing in the air as she described what it felt like to work with a class of the most difficult pupils and feel like you were making progress.
‘You must miss it like mad.’
She nodded. ‘I do. But actually, being here – and going back to Brighton – made me realize I don’t miss the stress, or the headaches, or being rushed into hospital for that matter.’ She made a face. She’d told him and Mel a while ago about the incident that led to her coming to the village.
‘Maybe if you weren’t working in such a high-pressure school?’
‘Possibly. I’ve thought about it.’ Her mouth curved into a secretive smile, and she looked beautiful as she spoke – lit up from inside, confessing. ‘I’ve looked at the local paper. They’ve been advertising for cover staff at Freya’s school.’
‘Oh, she would love that,’ Sam said, laughing. ‘She’d enjoy showing you off. And she’d be hoping for good grades, too.’
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