‘I’ve got to get ready for work,’ Elsie responded, standing and making for the door.
‘But you haven’t, though,’ Rosemary argued. ‘You’re not supposed to be on shift today.’
Elsie stopped and turned around. ‘You know full well what’s going on at the moment. Tonight’s going to be a big night.’
Rosemary shook her head dismissively. ‘Honestly, it’s not good for you,’ she said. ‘You take one set of pills to keep you awake and another to knock you out. It’s not healthy.’
‘There’s important work to be done,’ Elsie said with a shrug, leaving the room. It was the kind of wishy-washy answer that she had been giving lately when people started to ask too many searching questions. It was true, she had been spending a lot more time in the operations room. It was the one place where she was left alone and where she didn’t have the capacity to think of anything other than the job in hand. Besides which, she was needed in the operations room—now more than ever.
The unsettling music and thorny comments from the sitting-room dissolved when Elsie pushed shut her bedroom door. She breathed out sharply, then began to strip down to her underwear. She stood beside her bed, vulnerable, and spread her hands out on either side of her belly; the swelling seeming to be becoming more obvious each day, yet still nobody but Violet had any inkling of her condition. Her eyes instinctively moved to the pot of quinine pills on her bedside table that Violet had procured for her the moment that Elsie had told her that she was pregnant. She had suggested a raft of other horrific ideas, from crochet hooks, or falling down the stairs, to even putting leeches inside herself. But it was all so medieval and awful that she couldn’t bear to think about it. Violet had reassured her that the quinine pills were safe—she had used them more than once herself.
She fumbled in her handbag for a cigarette. She despised herself for her feelings. She wasn’t a woman like Violet, with not a single maternal bone in her body; she had always wanted children and being a teacher had only solidified and strengthened that desire. But she had suppressed that feeling a long time hence—soon after her marriage, in fact, despite Laurie’s keenness to immortalise their marriage almost as soon as their vows had been exchanged.
Elsie cursed herself for allowing those old invasive thoughts back in. It never ceased to amaze her how, with no effort whatsoever on her part, her mind could retrieve painful memories and replay them with such stark clarity. The image was horribly vivid. She was there, back in Bramley Cottage, trying to retrieve something from a marriage that she had never wanted in the first place. She recalled with irony her desperate wish never to have a child by him, her husband. She saw herself sitting on the cold toilet outside, her stomach feeling like it was full of razor blades, watching the small bloody mass tumbling out between her legs. And Laurie’s sweaty dumbstruck face, peering around the toilet door. Guilt-ridden.
She closed her eyes, trying to resist and suppress back the memory.
The final flickers of the burning tobacco brought with it the end of the worries. She threw the stub from the window and took her WAAF uniform from the wardrobe. As she pulled on the blue-grey outfit, so her attention shifted to her duties in the operation room.
Calmly, she left the bedroom and went downstairs. She called goodbye to the other girls and ventured out into the chilly early afternoon.
She collected her bicycle from the side of the cottage and pushed it down the garden path until she reached the lane. Her journey to the toy factory completed her mental transformation; by the time she had dismounted and added her bicycle to the multitude of others propped beside the building, she had entirely settled her mind to work.
As she entered the operations room, she was instantly aware that something important was underway. At first she couldn’t put her finger on what was different, exactly—then she realised that, despite there being extra operators on duty, the room was ominously quiet.
‘Ah, Elsie,’ RKB called from the open door to the Intelligence Office. ‘Find Mike, would you—we need you to take a lead on the R/T today. I think she’s next-door taking a quick break.’
‘Rightio, sir,’ Elsie answered, removing her coat and hurrying over to the Unintelligent Office. She pushed open the door and found Aileen clutching at a mug of cocoa. She looked pale and drawn with large dark circles under her eyes.
‘You look exhausted,’ Elsie commented.
‘Thanks,’ Aileen answered. ‘I’m not sure when I last slept. You don’t look so great yourself.’
The two women laughed. Aileen had recently been promoted to Intelligence Officer—the first woman, as far as they knew, in British history to have ever received the commission. The job, apparently, did not come with any expectation of being able to sleep.
‘RKB has just asked me to liaise with you,’ Elsie stated.
‘Take a seat.’
Elsie sat beside her on the hard wooden bench—some rejected church pew by the look and feel of it, and Aileen thought for a moment. ‘RKB has just got back from Air Ministry and it looks as though we’re in for a bit of a stint. From information gleaned ‘from a reliable source’ we’ve had word that the Luftwaffe are making a five-night window around the full moon in which to launch a large-scale attack on an English city, code-named Moonlight Sonata. It’s believed that every bomber in the Luftwaffe will be used in the raid, as will the new X-Gerät night navigational beams.’ She glanced up at the large clock on the wall—almost two-thirty in the afternoon. ‘For the last hour, we’ve been picking up radio beam activity but the final direction of the beam seems yet to have been set.’
‘So we don’t know the target?’ Elsie asked.
‘Not yet, no,’ Aileen confirmed, drinking some cocoa before continuing. ‘We’ve launched Operation Cold Water—both offensive and defensive measures against the attack. We’re going to target the airfields in France, Holland and Belgium, attack the X-Gerät stations at Cherbourg and Calais, interfere with the frequency of the navigational beams and have maximum night-fighters and anti-aircraft guns ready for when they reach our coast. But… all of this relies upon getting as much information as possible, fast. So, we need our best operator to oversee proceedings today—you.’
‘Me?’ Elsie parroted.
‘Yes, you,’ Aileen said. She looked perplexed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re surprised. Nothing gets past you. Nothing. And anything that gets past anyone else, you set about it like a dog with a bone.’
Elsie laughed, flattered. Unlike Violet, this had become her life and she couldn’t imagine it any other way. ‘Right, I’d better get on with it, then.’
She left the Unintelligent Office and began a slow meaningful circuit of all dozen wireless operators, taking time to examine their log books for the past few hours. Worryingly, however, there was little to read in each book. She stepped back, taking in the room as a whole. None of the operators were transcribing; all had a hand to their headsets, slowly edging the dials on their receivers, in search of the first signal. This in itself was significant: seldom were the airwaves entirely silent. Tonight’s full moon looked to be bringing with it a night of unprecedented destruction.
‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ a voice that she recognised as belonging to Jean Conan Doyle whispered from behind her.
Without turning, Elsie shook her head. ‘No, ma’am, it doesn’t.’
‘How are you holding up?’ Jean asked, standing beside Elsie and looking her up and down. ‘You look different.’
Elsie flushed and sucked in her tummy, as she met Jean’s gaze. ‘Just the usual story—tiredness.’
Jean nodded in agreement and went to speak but stopped herself when the telephone sounded from inside the Intelligence Office. Both women spun around to see RKB reach for the phone.
He muttered something, frowned, then nudged the door shut with his foot.
Jean darted into the office and, as she opened the door, Elsie caught a snatch of RKB’s conversation. Just one word from the three or four, that she had heard
before the door had once again closed, had plunged a hot spear of fear through her core, searing her heart and flipping her stomach. Coventry.
Her thoughts went into turmoil, leaping from one horror scenario to another. She stared through the pane of glass in the door, trying to catch anything of the conversation taking place between RKB and the caller. But it was impossible. She clenched her fists; the pain of her nails digging into her palm being the only guard against storming into the Intelligence Office and demanding to know what was going on.
Finally, RKB set down the phone receiver. He swept his hair over and perched down on the edge of his desk, informing Jean about whatever he had just learned.
Elsie imagined the X-Gerät beam as a physical entity, shining like a gigantic yellow torch over the city. She pictured her parents cowering under the light of the beam in the backyard of her grandparents’ tiny terraced house. They didn’t even have an Anderson shelter, for goodness’ sake. And the last letter from her mother had said that they rarely went to the public shelters because of her father’s disapproval of their lack of sanitation.
‘Cooee! Elsie!’ It was Jean, waving her hand at her.
‘Sorry,’ Elsie said, trying to draw up a smile.
‘Come in here a moment, would you.’ Jean stepped back, allowed Elsie inside, then closed the door behind her.
RKB swept his hair over again and sighed. His eyes locked with Elsie’s. ‘Listen, Elsie, we’ve just heard from Number Eighty Wing with the probable location for tonight’s raids: I’m afraid it’s Coventry.’
Elsie took the news with a fresh stab to her insides. She nodded, unable to speak. She knew the protocol, knew that she wouldn’t be allowed to warn her parents.
‘Your family are there, aren’t they?’ Jean asked softly, touching Elsie’s arm.
‘Yes,’ Elsie muttered. ‘My mother and father are there, looking after my grandmother. Can I try and get word to them…’
RKB shook his head. ‘You know we can’t allow it,’ he said firmly.
Tears welled in Elsie’s eyes. She knew that it was hopeless. ‘Please—they’re my parents,’ she sobbed. Then an idea came to her. She wiped her tears with her handkerchief. ‘What if I contacted the local ARP warden and told him to get a message to them urgently—I wouldn’t say what—’
‘No, Elsie,’ Jean interrupted. ‘We simply can’t. It would create hysteria and mass panic and we simply cannot allow it to be known by the Luftwaffe that we knew about the—’
‘—But I would tell them not to tell anyone else,’ Elsie pleaded.
‘It wouldn’t happen—they’d whisper it to their neighbour, who’d tell their son or daughter, who’d tell their best friends and so on,’ Jean answered. ‘They’ll share the same feeling that you are now feeling—that you must try and help others. It would spread like wild fire.’
‘The best thing you can do to help your parents is to assist with Operation Coldwater,’ RKB added solemnly.
‘Would you just sit back and do nothing if it were your parents?’ Elsie demanded, facing them each in turn, aware that she was looming dangerously close to insubordination.
‘Yes,’ they answered simultaneously.
‘It’s for the good of the country,’ RKB said.
‘I’ve had to stand by with the advance knowledge of several London raids, knowing that some of my dearest friends are there,’ Jean added. ‘It’s jolly hard. The first time I was literally holding the telephone, crying my eyes out. But I just knew I couldn’t do it.’
RKB stood and addressed Elsie. ‘Look, take a few minutes. Go and get a coffee, have a cigarette. Try and clear your head while it’s quiet here. The people of Coventry—all of them—need us to be on top form tonight. Okay?’ He turned to Jean. ‘Billy, go and make her a drink, would you?’
Elsie raised a hand. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be okay.’ She left the office and bee-lined for the lavatories, rushing through the operations room.
‘You okay, Elsie?’ Betty called from her machine.
‘Fine, thanks,’ Elsie called back without turning around.
Inside the toilet, she locked the cubicle door and cried. She had known the moment that she heard confirmation that Coventry was the target that she had no chance of warning her parents. Their fate now rested in the hands of Operation Coldwater. She thought of the last time that she had seen them—when she had told them of her plans to join the WAAF—and her father’s reaction. Since then, her mother’s letters had been cheerful and filled with news, but there had been no direct communication whatsoever from her father. Given what Elsie had just learnt, her parting with him tore at her emotions.
She placed her hand on her tummy, sending probing fingers into her flesh. The baby was marinating in the juices of dread and absolute fear, she realised dispassionately.
After several minutes of unstoppable tears, Elsie wiped her face with her handkerchief and tried to regain her composure. RKB was right, she needed to be on top form. Her parents and the people of Coventry were relying on them. She took long deep breaths then smoked a cigarette sitting on the toilet.
At last, she left the cubicle and checked herself in the mirror. A horrid wretch of a woman stared back. ‘Come on, Elsie,’ she muttered. ‘You can do this.’
For the first time since she had left her old life behind at Bramley Cottage, time had dug its claws into the ground, refusing to budge like an obstinate dog. Since being told that Coventry was the destination of the X-Gerät beam, Elsie had paced the operations room, constantly checking the clock and peeling back the blackouts, waiting for time to finally release the evening and release her from her stewing torment. All afternoon, the operators’ pencils had remained resolutely on the desks beside them, as the women fruitlessly searched the airwaves for any hint of what might be about to happen.
It was just gone six o’clock when Elsie left the building for some fresh air. She pulled her greatcoat tight and leant against a small oak tree that stood in front of the old toy factory. It was, she thought, quite possibly the brightest night that she had ever seen. The moon had rebelled against the blackout, painting the building behind her with an eerie pale blue. As Elsie lit a cigarette, her eyes followed the illuminated chalky road into the village, where she could clearly make out the moon-kissed roofs that the Luftwaffe would also be able to see so very clearly. But still the skies were ominously empty.
It was the stillness that bothered her the most. She could cope with the frantic copying down and translations of R/T intelligence. She could cope with interpreting the communications and prioritising what should be sent off by dispatch riders to the analysts at the Air Ministry. She could cope with organising the other WAAF girls. But, what she couldn’t cope with was the quietness.
Elsie took the final drag on her cigarette and stared up into the skies. Nothing. Not even a night bird or an insect. Not even any bloody wind, for goodness’ sake. The Luftwaffe high command had certainly picked a perfect night for their attack: they were about to dominate the skies above England.
She shuddered, tossed down the stub, and re-entered the operations room.
‘Quick, over here,’ Betty called to her.
From Betty’s animated expression and pencil poised in her hand, Elsie guessed that she had heard something of significance on the R/T. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s KGr 100—they’ve just left their base in Vannes.’
Elsie nodded and blew out a puff of air. KGr 100—Kampfgruppe—were the most highly skilled, precision bombing unit in the Luftwaffe. In recent raids, the aircraft—specially modified Heinkel He 111s—had been used to drop incendiary bombs on the targets, giving following bombers a precise location to hit.
‘It looks like there are around fifteen of them,’ Betty added.
Elsie took the headset and listened. A few moments later she heard, ‘Wurden die Leitstrahlsender richtig ausgerichtet?’ She carefully scribed the question—Have the beams been adjusted correctly? The answer, from the Luftwaffe control was a simp
le confirmation that yes, the beams had been set.
She handed the headset back to Betty, picked up the log book and headed over to the Intelligence Office. The door was closed, with RKB, Aileen and Jean conversing over a large map of England. Elsie knocked on the door and RKB looked up and nodded for her to enter.
‘Sir, we’ve just had reports that KGr 100 have left their base in Vannes and are heading over the channel. It looks like there are around fifteen of them. I’ve just heard one of the pilots asking if the beams have been adjusted correctly.’
‘And the reply?’ Jean asked, pulling her glasses from her nose.
‘Yes, the beams are set.’
The phone rang again and Elsie stood and waited as RKB answered it. It was a brief, one-sided conversation in which RKB only said, ‘Very good. Thank you,’ then hung up. He looked at the three women. ‘Thirteen raiders have just crossed the coast at Dorset.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘They’ll be over the target in approximately fifty minutes. Get us anything you can, ladies.’
Elsie followed Aileen from the office, back into the operations room.
‘Anything else?’ Aileen asked Betty.
‘Not much,’ she answered. ‘They’re keeping pretty tight-lipped at the moment.’
Elsie and Aileen continually looped the room, checking with each operator and, on occasion, taking the headsets over for themselves.
The hands on the large operations room clock reluctantly moved on. At one stage, Elsie wondered if it had broken, confirming the time with one of the operator’s watches. At seven-fifteen one of the women raised her hand and began waving frantically, as she transcribed what she was hearing.
Elsie dashed over to her. ‘What is it?’
‘The lead pilot of KGr 100 has just confirmed that the incendiary bombs have been dropped accurately on their target,’ the operator relayed. ‘They’re heading back to base.’
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 5) Page 18