In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II Page 3

  The next one was equally routine. ABSTI MMSPR UCHYY RESTX OHNEX SINN. A test sending from a German command to make sure the day’s codes were working. “Thank you, Hamburg, they are working very nicely,” she said with a smile, as she dropped this one into the basket. The next one had come through badly corrupted. Half the letters were missing. Messages were often received like this and required the skill used to solve a crossword puzzle as well as a good knowledge of the German terminology of war. Pamela managed to deduce that the subject of the message was the twenty-first Panzer Division, part of Rommel’s desert force. But the following letters—FF-I—G had her flummoxed. Was it two words or even three? If it was more than one word, then the first one might be auf, meaning “on.” She stared harder until the letters danced in the poor light. She longed to remove the blackout curtains, but only the warden was allowed to do that at his appointed hour. Her eyes hurt. Rest, she thought. I need to rest.

  Then she was alert again, a hopeful smile on her face. She tried the letters. Auffrischung. The twenty-first Panzer Division needed to rest and refit!

  She jumped up and almost ran through to the watch room. Wilson, the older man who was watch chief, looked up with a frown. He didn’t approve of women on his night shift and ignored Pamela as much as possible.

  “I think I’ve got something interesting, sir,” she said. She put the Typex in front of him with her translation underneath. He stared at it, frowning for a long time before he looked up. “Rather a stretch of the imagination, wouldn’t you say, Lady Pamela?” He alone always insisted on addressing her with her title. To the rest of them she was P.

  “But it could mean that the twenty-first Panzers might be withdrawn. That’s important, isn’t it?”

  Two other men at the table leaned over to see what the fuss was about.

  “She may be right, Wilson,” one of them said. “Auffrischung. Good word.” He gave Pamela an encouraging smile.

  “See if you can come up with something else that makes sense, then, Wilson,” the other said. “We all know her German is better than ours.”

  “You should pass it along to army HQ anyway, just in case,” the first said. “Well done, P.”

  Pamela allowed herself a grin as she returned to her seat. She had just emptied her in-basket when voices at the other end of the hut signalled the arrival of the early day shift. Pamela took her coat from its peg.

  “Lovely day out there,” one of the young men said as he came toward her. He was tall and gangly, peering at the world through thick glasses. His name was Rodney, and he was the epitome of the studious young Oxford or Cambridge men who had been lured to work at Bletchley Park. “Lucky you get time to enjoy it. Rounders match this afternoon, I gather. If you happen to like rounders. I’m a complete duffer at it myself, I regret. And country dancing tonight, but then you’ll be working, won’t you.” He paused and ran a nervous hand through unruly hair. “I don’t suppose you care to come to the cinema with me on your night off?”

  “Kind of you, Rodney,” she said, “But frankly, on my night off, I’d rather catch up on sleep.”

  “You are looking a little hollow around the eyes,” he agreed, never having shown himself to be tactful. “These night shifts do get to one after a while, don’t they? Still, all in a good cause, so they say.”

  “So they say,” she repeated. “I wish we could see that we’re making progress. The country, I mean. All the news seems to be bad, doesn’t it? And the poor people in London being bombed night after night. How long can we take it, do you think?”

  “As long as we have to,” Rodney said. “Simple as that.”

  Pamela looked at his retreating back with admiration. He represented the backbone of Britain at this moment. A skinny, awkward bookworm, yet determined to keep going for as long as it took to defeat Hitler. She felt ashamed of her own depression and lack of faith as she went to retrieve her bicycle and rode into town.

  Her digs at Mrs. Adams’s boarding-house were close to the station, and a train whistled as it approached the platform. If my parents could see where I’m living now, Pamela thought, with a grim smile. But then they had no idea where she was working or what she was doing. Under the Official Secrets Act, she was not allowed to divulge anything to anybody. It hadn’t been easy to persuade her father to let her leave home, but she had turned twenty-one and come out into society, so he could hardly forbid her. And when she had said, “I want to do my bit, Pah. You said it’s up to us to set an example, and I’m setting one,” he had reluctantly agreed.

  She dismounted from her bike and wheeled it along the pavement. She felt sick with hunger and tiredness, but she sighed as she wondered what breakfast would await her today: the lumpy porridge made with water? Bread fried in the drippings from last Sunday’s scrag end of mutton? Toast with a scrape of margarine and watery marmalade if they were lucky. And her mind drifted to the spread on the sideboard back at Farleigh: the kidneys and bacon and kedgeree and scrambled eggs. How long before she could go home? But if she went home, how would she force herself to come back?

  There was a newsstand outside the station, and a headline read “Hero Comes Home.” Pamela glanced at the front page on the pile of newspapers. Since the war began and paper was scarce, the print had become smaller and more crowded and the pictures tiny. But there, halfway down the front page of the Daily Express, she spotted a grainy photograph of a man in RAF uniform and recognised the jaunty grin. She fished in her pocket for tuppence and took the newspaper. “Ace pilot Flight Lieutenant Jeremy Prescott escapes against all odds from German prisoner-of-war camp. Only survivor of a breakout.” Before she could read any more, her legs buckled under her, and she sank to the ground.

  Instantly there were people around her, arms lifting her up.

  “Steady on, love. I’ve got yer,” one voice said.

  “Bring her over to the bench, Bert, and someone go in the station café for a cup of tea. She’s as white as a sheet.”

  It was the kindness more than anything that produced a great heaving sob from deep within Pamela. All the tension, the long nights, the hard work, the depressing news escaped from her in that one sob, and following it, the tears started streaming down her cheeks.

  She felt herself carried and placed gently on a seat. She found she was still clutching the newspaper.

  “What was it, love—bad news?” the woman at the newspaper stand asked.

  Pamela’s body was still shaking with sobs. “No, it’s good news,” she managed to gasp at last. “He’s alive. He’s safe. He’s coming home.”

  That afternoon she received a message to report to Commander Travis. Her heart skipped a beat. What could she have done wrong? Had someone reported the incident at the station? She was heartily ashamed and embarrassed about her complete lack of control. Pah would have been mortified, would’ve told her she had let the side down. And now she worried: Had she said anything she shouldn’t? She had heard rumours about people who had said too much, breached security. They disappeared and were never seen again. There were nervous jokes about where they had gone, but nobody laughed too much. The jokes might have been true.

  But then one was not summoned to the deputy director for everyday matters. She jumped on her bike and pedalled back to the campus. Commander Travis looked up from his paperwork as she came in. He motioned to the chair beside his desk. She perched on the edge of it.

  “I hear you had a little trouble earlier today, Lady Pamela?” he said. The formality of her title in itself was worrying.

  “Trouble, sir?”

  “I hear you collapsed on the street outside the station. Are you not eating enough? I know the food is not exactly always appetising.”

  “I’m eating enough, sir.”

  “The night shifts? They take their toll on the body, I know.”

  “But we all have to rotate and do our share. I don’t enjoy them. I never seem to get enough sleep when I’m on night shift, but it must be the same for everyone else.”

&nb
sp; “You are quite well?” he asked, giving her a knowing stare. He waited a second or two before he added, “Do you have a particular attachment to one of our young men?”

  She actually laughed then. “I’m not pregnant if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “You don’t look like the fainting type to me.” He leaned closer to her across his desk. “So what’s up?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I feel so foolish. And you’re right. I don’t make a habit of doing that sort of thing.”

  He thumbed through her file. “How long since you’ve taken leave?”

  “I went home for a couple of days at Christmas, sir.”

  “Then you’re overdue.”

  “But we’re understaffed in Hut Three. It wouldn’t be right to . . .”

  “Lady Pamela. I expect our people to do first-class work. I can’t have them cracking up on us. Take a week off.”

  “But there would be nobody to take my place, and we can’t have . . .”

  “When does your current rotation finish?”

  “At the end of the week.”

  “Then work your rotation and go home then.”

  “Oh, but sir . . .”

  “That’s an order, Lady Pamela. Go home. Have a good time and come back refreshed.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  It was only when she came down the steps of the big house that the full implication of this struck her. She would be going home, and Jeremy was safely back in Britain. He might already be at Nethercote. Suddenly everything was right with the world.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Farleigh Place

  Near Sevenoaks, Kent

  May 1941

  It was the gamekeeper’s boy who spotted it first. He had been out at dawn checking the traps (since wartime rationing had meant that rabbit was on the menu, even at the big house). It was a chore he had taken on willingly, loving the freedom and solitude of the countryside, still in awe of the wideness and greenness of it all, of the immense arc of sky like pale-blue glass overhead. After the flat in Stepney and the alleyway with its small strip of grubby sky, Farleigh still seemed too improbable to be real.

  This particular morning he was returning empty-handed. The gamekeeper suspected some village lads were helping themselves to the odd rabbit or partridge, and he talked of putting down mantraps. The thought of mantraps brought an added spice of excitement to the daily chore for the boy. He wondered how it would feel to see one of the bigger village boys caught in a trap—the boys who took delight in bullying him and pushing him around because he was a runt and an outsider. He quickened his stride for the cottage, his stomach growling for porridge and eggs, real eggs, not the powdered stuff that tasted like cardboard. It was going to be a warm and perfect early summer’s day. Strands of mist lingered over the meadows, and a cuckoo was calling loudly, drowning out the dawn chorus of birds.

  The boy came out of the woods and into the parkland that surrounded the big house, looking out carefully for the herd of deer because he was still rather scared of them. Smooth green grass was dotted with spreading oaks, chestnuts, and copper beeches, and beyond he caught a glimpse of the big house itself rising like a fairy-tale castle above the trees. He was about to take the path that led to the cottage when he saw something lying in the grass—something brown, and beside it, something long and light and flapping a little, like a large wounded bird. He couldn’t imagine what it could be, and he went toward it cautiously, still conscious that the country was full of unexpected dangers. When he got closer, he saw that it was a man lying there. Or had been a man. He was wearing an army uniform and lying facedown, his limbs at improbable angles. From a pack on his back came strings, and the strings were attached to what looked like long strands of whitish fabric. It took him a while to realise that it was a parachute, or the remains of a parachute, because it lay there, limp and lifeless, torn and flapping pathetically in the breeze. The boy understood then that the man had literally fallen from the sky.

  He stood for a moment, wondering what to do, feeling slightly sick because the corpse was horribly damaged and the grass around it stained with blood. Before he could make up his mind, he heard the thud of hoofbeats on grass and the jingle of a bridle. He looked up to see a girl on a fat white pony galloping toward him. The girl was well turned out in a velvet crash cap, jodhpurs, and hacking jacket, and as she came closer, he recognised her as Lady Phoebe, the youngest of the daughters from the big house. He realised with horror that she’d ride right into the corpse if he didn’t stop her. He ran forward waving his arms.

  “Stop!” he cried.

  The pony skidded to a halt, whinnied, danced, and bucked nervously, but the girl kept her seat well.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Are you mad? You could have had me off. Snowball could have trampled you.”

  “You mustn’t go that way, miss,” he said. “There’s been an accident. You wouldn’t want to see it.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  He glanced back. “A man fell from the sky. He’s all smashed up. It’s horrible.”

  “Fell from the sky?” She was straining to see past him. “Like an angel, you mean?”

  “A soldier,” he said. “I don’t think his parachute opened.”

  “Golly. How horrid. Let me see.” She tried to urge the pony forward, but it was still snorting and dancing nervously.

  The boy stepped between her and the corpse again. “Don’t look, miss. You don’t want to see things like that.”

  “Of course I do. I’m not squeamish, you know. I’ve watched the men butchering a hog. Now, that really was rather horrid. The way it screamed. I decided never to eat bacon again. But I happen to adore bacon, so that didn’t last long.”

  She nudged the pony forward, making the boy step aside. The pony took a few nervous steps, then stopped, sensing that it didn’t want to go any closer. Phoebe stood up in the saddle and peered.

  “Crikey,” she said. “We must tell somebody.”

  “We should tell the army blokes. He’s one of them, ain’t he?”

  “Isn’t he,” she corrected. “Really, your grammar is awful.”

  “Bugger my grammar, miss, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I do mind. And it’s not ‘miss.’ I’m Lady Phoebe Sutton, and you should address me as ‘my lady.’”

  “Sorry,” he said, swallowing back the word miss that was about to come out.

  “We must tell my father,” she said firmly. “It is still his land, after all, even though the army is using it at the moment. It still belongs to Farleigh. Come on. You’d better come with me.”

  “To the big house, miss? I mean, my lady?”

  “Of course. Pah is always up early. The rest of them will still be asleep.”

  He started to walk beside the pony.

  “You’re the boy who is staying with our gamekeeper, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Alfie’s me name. I came down from the Smoke last winter.”

  “Smoke? What sort of smoke?”

  He chuckled then. “It’s what us Cockneys call London.”

  She stared down at him critically. “I haven’t seen much of you on the estate.”

  “I’m at school in the village all day.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s all right. The village kids pick on me ’cos I’m little for my age, and I ain’t got no one to stick up for me.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  He looked up at her haughty little face, a face that looked so content with itself, so secure. “In case you haven’t noticed, people aren’t nice,” he said. “There’s a war on. Blokes are flying over London every night dropping bombs and not caring who they kill—women, children, old people . . . it don’t matter to them. I saw a baby after a bomb had gone off. Lying there in the street, looking as if there wasn’t a mark on it. And I went to pick it up, and it was stone-cold dead. And another time a woman ran down the street scre
aming, and all her clothes had been blown off in the blast, and do you know what she was screaming? She was screaming, ‘My little boy. He’s buried under all that rubble. Someone save my little boy.’”

  Phoebe’s expression softened. “You were sensible to come here, away from the Smoke,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “Eleven, almost twelve.”

  “I just turned twelve,” she said proudly. “I was hoping they’d send me to school when I was thirteen, but I don’t think it will happen now. Not with a war on. My sisters went to school, lucky ducks.”

  “You mean you haven’t been to school yet?”

  “No. I’ve always had a governess. It’s so boring doing lessons alone. It was different for my sisters because they had each other, and they were naughty and played tricks on the governess. But I was an afterthought. Dido says I was an accident.”

  “Who’s Dido?”

  “My sister Diana. She’s nineteen. She’s furious about the war because she was supposed to come out last year.”

  “Come out of what?”

  Phoebe laughed, a rather fake and superior sort of ha-ha. “You don’t know anything, do you? Girls like us have a season and are presented at court. We go to dances and are supposed to find a husband. But Dido’s been stuck here instead, dying of boredom. The older ones all had their season.”

  “And got married?”

  “Livvy did. But she was always the good child, Dido says. She married boring Edmund Carrington and she’s already produced the heir.”

  “Air?” Alfie asked, making her laugh again.

  “Not that sort of air. I mean she’s had the required son to inherit the title one day. Our parents couldn’t manage a son, which means Farleigh will go to some remote cousin when Pah dies, and we’ll all be turned out into the snow, Dido says. But I think she was teasing. Things like that don’t happen these days, do they? Especially with a war on.”