Читать книгу Windflower Wedding - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 9

Telegraphist Drew Sutton, having handed over the middle watch to his opposite number, stripped off to his underpants and swung himself into his hammock. Hammocks were very adaptable. On a boat as small as HMS Penrose, you slung them wherever there was a space, be it in the mess or beside the engine-room bulkhead. Hammocks moulded themselves to your body and gently swung you to sleep with every rising and falling of the Penrose’s bows. Double beds, on the other hand; large, sinful double beds with soft shaded lights either side, took a lot of beating.

He smiled into the darkness. Kitty Sutton. From Kentucky. His kissing cousin and the woman he would marry just as soon as he could get her down the aisle. At this moment, Kitty was wallowing in being in love. She was in love with love and didn’t want to spoil it, he suspected, by getting married. Yet they were morally married, he supposed. If sharing a bed on every possible occasion constituted a marriage, then they were well and truly wed. And he could understand Kitty’s reasoning. To her, he supposed, sleeping together in delightful sin was more thrilling, more risqué, than the church-blessed union after which you not only could sleep together as much as you wanted, but were expected to do so. The intonations of a priest, the pronouncing of them man and wife was all very well, but his adorable Kitty, he was almost sure, preferred the former and the element of risk it carried with it.

Take Thursday night. He smiled fondly. She had stood demurely beside him as he signed the hotel register Andrew and Kathryn Sutton, Rowangarth, Holdenby, York. She had fluttered her eyelashes coyly, and the new lady receptionist—who didn’t know Drew at all—asked her, if Modom wouldn’t mind, of course, to produce her identity card.

Drew pulled in his breath and hoped she wouldn’t blush furiously. And Kitty had not blushed at all! Having, on her arrival in the United Kingdom, acquired a British ration book and a British identity card which stated she was Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton of Rowangarth, Holdenby, York – her official English address – she placed it on the desk with the sweetest of smiles and said she wouldn’t mind at all!

Then the red-faced receptionist had stammered her apologies, explaining that one couldn’t be too sure these days, and she hoped Mrs Sutton would forgive her.

At which Kitty smiled even more sweetly, pocketed her identity card, and all at once very serious, said, it’s Lady Sutton, if you don’t mind.’

Then she swept to the lift, jammed her finger on the button, leaving the squirming receptionist looking for the smallest crack in the floorboards in which to hide.

‘Kitty Sutton, you really do take the plate of biscuits!’ Drew had collapsed, laughing, on the large, bouncy bed beside her, imploring her never to change; always to be his outrageous, adorable Kitty. She had laughed with him and promised him she never would, then proceeded to undress with indecent haste.

‘Kitty.’ He whispered her name softly. It would be strange, in church, marrying Kathryn Norma Clementina when it was really Kitty he was in love with. His life now could be divided into two phases; before Kitty and since Kitty – and he wondered how he had even remotely existed before the night, barely three months ago, when she came back into his life like a hurricane. He was still breathless from the impact.

The same ATS sergeant drove Keth away from Castle McLeish in the same car in which he had arrived, only this time he sat in the back seat. He sat there because he needed to think and uppermost in his mind was SOE, which any fool knew was Special Operatives Executive and differed from MI5 and MI6 in that it was concerned solely with getting agents into occupied Europe, listening for their W/T call signs and getting them out again when they had completed their operation or when it became imperative to remove them quickly for their own good. The Army, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, Keth knew, all co-operated in the delivery and collection of those agents. You didn’t work with Enigma and not know it.

Now, it seemed, either the Submarine Service or the Royal Air Force was taking him to France – ostensibly as an unimportant messenger, charged only with making a collection. There would be little risk to himself, he’d been told, and he grasped that assurance to him like a warm, comforting blanket.

On hearing his immediate destination he had, after the initial shock subsided, written two more letters to Daisy, then addressed nine envelopes, two to his mother and seven to Daisy. In the last letter, dated ten days ahead, he told her that the course he had been sent on was almost finished and soon he would have a more permanent address to give her.

Then he posted the unsealed envelopes in a box not unlike those used by the general public which was marked, Missives for Censoring but which really meant Stick your love letters in here, chum, to be read by the po-faced adjutant.

He had disliked the adjutant at Castle McLeish on sight, labelling him pompous, upper class and insensitive; wondering when it would be his turn to be deposited into occupied Europe; hoping it would be very soon! Yet Daisy was worth it. Just to think of her mellowed his mood.

He said, ‘I don’t suppose you are allowed to tell me where you are taking me this time, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Just another place Somewhere in Scotland – about an hour away.’

He could hear the smile in her voice so he said, ‘And did they give you those stripes for being button-lipped?’

‘Yes, sir, they did – and I don’t want to lose them.’

‘Well,’ he expanded, ‘I can’t say I’m sorry to be leaving Castle McLeish – for a while, at least. Especially I won’t miss the adjutant. Is he always so snotty?’

‘No, sir. Far from it.’ Keth sensed the sudden edge to her voice.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, Captain. He’s one of us – really one of us. He’s done more drops into you-know-where than I dare tell you. About six weeks ago his wife was killed in an air raid. They haven’t sent him back since. He has children, you see.’

Keth did not speak for the remainder of the journey.

The only train into and out of Holdenby Halt on a Sunday bore Tatiana away to York and thence to King’s Cross. Daisy stood and waved until the little two-carriage train disappeared round the curve in the track, then she cycled back to Keeper’s Cottage, thinking that during the next seven days five of Aunt Julia’s Clan would have been to Rowangarth, though not all at the same time, of course. Drew and Kitty had been and gone, then she, Daisy, arrived on leave and the day after, Tatiana had come home on one of her rare weekend visits.

And then Bas phoned, begging a bed for the night. Kitty’s brother Bas was real sweet, Kitty said, on Rowangarth’s land girl, Gracie. Gracie, on the other hand, was giving Bas a run for his money, though Jack Catchpole reckoned it was only a matter of time before he caught her.

Daisy looked forward to seeing Bas again. She had last seen Sebastian Sutton in the late summer of ’thirty-seven when she stood at the waving place where the railway line ran alongside Brattocks Wood for about thirty yards. Exactly five years ago. She and Bas had grown up since then. She smiled, wishing the Clan could be together again, just once for old times’ sake. But the Clan was incomplete because Keth had been sent back to Washington and only the Lord knew when he would be home again.

She missed Keth desperately. A part of her would have given anything to have him back; the other part – the sensible part – wanted him to stay safely in America and no matter how long the war lasted, she always reasoned, she would at least know he would come home safely and that one day they would be married.

She told herself she was lucky; that Tatty would have given ten years of her life to know that one day, no matter how far away, she would see Tim Thomson again. Tatiana Sutton, the spoiled and cosseted child, had grown into a woman who once loved passionately, then dug in her stubborn English heels and defied her Russian mother and grandmother, taking herself off to London out of their meddling reach. Tatty lived at Aunt Julia’s little white house now, with Sparrow to care for her, to understand and love her without reservations as only Tim had done.

Probably, if Kitty was sent to London to join up with ENSA, she would live at the little white mews house, too. It would be good for Tatty – provided Kitty didn’t talk too much about how happy she was, and about getting married to Drew. But Kitty Sutton never did anything by halves. It wasn’t in her nature. Bubbling, volatile Kitty, whom everyone noticed the minute she stepped into a room; sparkling, notice-me Kitty, whom Drew loved desperately. She would be good for him, Daisy thought as she pedalled down Keeper’s Cottage lane. Drew had always been serious. He’d changed some since joining the Navy, but then you had to adapt. If you didn’t, life in the armed forces could be hell.

‘Hi, there!’ Gracie, carrying cabbage leaves, making for Keeper’s Cottage and the six hens she looked after at the bottom of the garden, beside the dog houses. ‘Just going to see to the hens – are you coming?’

Daisy said she was; she liked Gracie.

‘Did you know Bas will be over at the weekend?’

‘Yes. He told me. Twice. Once in a letter, then again on the phone.’

‘My word – letters and phone calls,’ Daisy teased. ‘Where’s it all going to end?’

‘Heaven only knows. Sometimes I think I should finish it all; times like now, I mean, when I can think straight. But when we’re together it’s an altogether different ball game, as Bas would say.’

‘It’s called being in love, Gracie.’

‘Well, I’m not in love! You know I won’t fall in love till the war is over!’

‘Then you should try it. You might even get to like it.’

‘Even though we might be parted, like you and Keth? And I haven’t got all day to stand here talking. Mr Catchpole will be giving me what for for wasting time. Here!’ Carefully she put four brown eggs into Daisy’s hands. ‘Take these to Tilda, will you? And don’t drop them!’ And with that she was off, up the garden path, making for the wild garden, striding out defiantly.

Never going to fall in love? Daisy thought, shaking her head. But Gracie had fallen for Bas the minute they had met, did she but know it. Pity, she thought, about that Lancashire common sense of hers getting in the way.

‘See you!’ she called, but Gracie strode on.

Another isolated, heavily guarded house, Keth thought; about thirty miles west of Castle McLeish if the position of the sinking sun was to be relied upon and the speed at which they had travelled. In this house there was more of an urgency in the air and, for once, the first question he asked had been answered with surprising frankness.

‘How long will you be away, Purvis? Just as long as it takes, I suppose. There’s a submarine flotilla not far from here and that’s how you’ll be going in. You might think things are ponderous slow when you get there, but you’ll only have one contact – two, at the most. You’ll just sit tight. Things get passed down the line, sort of. Better that way. And don’t think that being a courier is paddling ashore, swopping passwords, then paddling back to the submarine. It’s never that straightforward.’

‘No.’ They were sitting on the terrace, drinking an after-dinner coffee and brandy in the most civilized way; so ordinary and normal, Keth thought, that he couldn’t believe that soon he would assume another identity and be sent to –

‘Where exactly am I going – or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Not out here. We’ll go inside. It’s getting cold, anyway.’ The man, dressed in civilian clothes and whose name Keth did not yet know, picked up his glass then murmured, ‘My office, I think it had better be.’

When they were seated either side of a log fire and their glasses topped up, Keth said, ‘France, I gather.’

‘Yes – occupied France.’

‘Good. I speak the language passably well.’ Better than passably. Tatty’s governess, herself French, had seen to that such a long time ago, it seemed. When Keth Purvis had lived at Rowangarth bothy, it was; before the war when Rowangarth garden apprentices lived there and were looked after by his mother – and she glad of the job. ‘I don’t suppose I’d fool the locals, but I could get away with it with a German.’

‘Then let’s hope you don’t meet any. Oh – and you’ll have to see the photographer first thing in the morning. Your papers are ready, except for that. Better see the barber too. Your haircut looks a bit English, I’m afraid. Apart from that, there’s a resemblance to Gaston Martin about you.’

‘That’s whose ID I’ll be taking? A pretty ordinary name, isn’t it?’ The surname Martin was as common in France as Smith was in England.

‘Nevertheless, Gaston Martin does exist. He was invalided out of the French artillery just after Dunkirk. Deaf, in one ear – remember that. But you’ll be given details.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘He’s here, in the UK. He got taken off the beaches with our lot and our lot invalided him out. He’s working in North Wales, so you’re not likely to cross each other’s paths – not where you’ll be going, anyway.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Keth was glad of the brandy because ever since he’d been told about France, his stomach had felt distinctly queasy. He wondered if he would sleep tonight or lie awake turning it over in his mind, telling himself he was a damn fool.

Yet a bargain was a bargain. They had told him when he asked to be sent back to England there would be conditions attached and he accepted without a second thought; anything to get back to Daisy. But not in his craziest dreams had anything embraced cloak-and-dagger stuff, because that’s what this escapade boiled down to; downright bloody stupid, to put not too fine a point on it. Times like now, he could accept it – just. But how would he feel when they dumped him on some dark beach? Not very brave, he knew.

‘When it’s over and done with – well, what I’m trying to say is – when I’m back, what’s going to happen? To me, I mean.’

‘You’ll pick up where you left off – at Bletchley Park. I take it you don’t want to go back to Washington?’

‘I don’t! I’m only in this predicament now because I wanted to get home.’

‘Getting cold feet?’

‘Got! I’m not the stuff heroes are made out of, I’m afraid; but conditions They said, and conditions I accepted.’

‘Good. Only a fool isn’t – well, slightly afraid. And in SOE we don’t ask for heroes. We’d rather our operatives stayed alive. I hate sending women in, you know,’ he said gruffly, picking up the brandy bottle, asking, with a raising of his eyebrows, if Keth wanted another. And Keth, who drank little, nodded and pushed his glass across the table.

‘Good man. Help you to sleep. And don’t worry, we aren’t trying to recruit you.’

‘Then why now?’ Keth tilted his glass.

‘Might as well tell you now as tomorrow or the next day. We knew of your request – to come back to UK, that is – and you wouldn’t have had a hope in hell if we hadn’t needed a specialist, so to speak. You’re familiar with Enigma.’ It was a statement.

‘Yes. It’s still something of a hit-and-miss thing – breaking their codes; well, breaking the naval codes.’

‘Exactly. That’s the whole crux of the matter. Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht codes are little problem, or so I understand.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But the naval codes – well, we can gather in their signals with no trouble at all. What is so annoying is that they chatter all over the Atlantic airwaves – especially the U-boats – and there’s damn-all we can do about it. Can’t break ’em.’

‘We can, sir, but most often it’s too late.’

‘Far too late for our convoys, yes. We’re losing one merchant ship in every four that crosses the Atlantic and it’s got to stop. It’s immoral!’

‘So I’m to be part of an operation that’s going to get hold of an Enigma machine the German Navy uses?’

‘Yes. But don’t get butterflies, Purvis.’

‘I’ve already got them and they’re wearing clogs!’

‘Then don’t worry – at least not too much – because we think we’ve managed to get hold of one. Don’t ask me how or where. One thing we don’t do is expect our radio operators over there to transmit long-winded messages. But the information this far is that one is ready for collecting. That’s why we need someone like you to check it over and bring it back. I take it you’d know what you were looking for?’

‘No. But I’m familiar with the ones their Army and Air Force use, so I reckon I’d spot anything different.’

‘Then that’s all we ask. Churchill would give a lot to break the U-boats’ codes. We can’t go on losing ships the way we are, nor the men who crew them.’

Keth agreed, then asked, ‘So you don’t know the exact location of the machine?’

‘Only approximately. Like I said, our wireless ops in the field don’t waste time on claptrap. They set up their sets, hook up their aerials and make their transmissions as fast as they can. The Krauts have got special detector units and they like getting hold of one of our men – or women. That’s why our lot don’t go round like Robin Hood and his Merry Men. They’re mostly loners. The fewer operators they know, the better. You’ll rely on your contact and trust him, or her. Your contact will tell you only as much as you need to know, so don’t ask questions, or names, because you won’t be told. I understand,’ the older man chuckled, ‘that you asked a lot of questions at Castle McLeish.’

‘I suppose I did, but I’m learning.’ Keth tilted his glass again. ‘Can I ask when I’ll be going?’

‘In about forty-eight hours.’

It was, Keth supposed, like going to have a tooth filled, only worse. He drained his glass then got to his feet. ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I think I’m ready for bed now.’

‘Yes. Off with you. By the way, you don’t usually hit the bottle, do you?’

‘Hardly ever. But on this occasion, it has helped calm the butterflies. Good night, sir.’

‘’Night, Purvis.’ The elderly man watched him walk carefully to the door, relieved to find himself thinking that the young officer, inexperienced though he was, would fit the bill nicely. Strangely dark, he brooded. Black hair, black eyes. Gypsy blood, perhaps?

‘Purvis!’ he called.

‘Sir?’ Keth’s face reappeared round the door.

‘Any didicoy blood in you?’

‘No,’ Keth grinned. ‘My mother was a Pendennis. Cornish. They’re a dark people.’

‘Ah, yes.’

Didn’t take offence easily, either. And no matter what they’d said about him at Castle McLeish, he liked him. Purvis should do all right – as well as the next man, that was …

Grace Fielding was picking the last of the late-fruiting raspberries when a tall shadow fell down the rows. Without turning she said, ‘Hullo, Bas Sutton.’

‘Hi, Gracie. Marry me?’

She put down her basket and turned impatiently.

‘No, I won’t – thank you. And you always say that!’

‘Can you blame me when you always say no?’ He tilted her chin, then kissed her mouth.

‘And you can stop that in working hours!’ He always did it and in public, too! ‘Mr Catchpole’s going to catch you one day and you’ll be in trouble!’

‘No I won’t. I’ve just seen him – given him some tobacco. I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t sitting on his apple box right now, puffing away without a care in the world.’

‘You’re devious, Bas Sutton, and shameless.’ She clasped her arms round his neck, offering her mouth because even if Mr Catchpole were not sitting on his box, smoking contentedly, the raspberry canes hid them. And she did like it when he kissed her, and she wanted nothing more than to say yes, she would marry him; would have said it, except for just one thing. Her sort and Bas Sutton’s sort didn’t mix. Not that she was ashamed of her ordinariness. She was what she was because of it and she loved her parents and her grandfather. She even loved Rochdale, though not quite as much as Rowangarth.

Rowangarth. Bas was sprung from the Rowangarth Suttons – the Garth Suttons, Mr Catchpole called them. His grandfather Edward Sutton had been born at Rowangarth, even though he married into Pendenys. And the Pendenys Suttons had the brass, she had learned, and one day Bas would inherit that great house – or was it a castle? – simply because his Uncle Nathan, who owned it now, had no children and in the natural order of things, the buck would stop at Sebastian Sutton – or so Bas once said.

But even if Bas refused Pendenys, he’d be rich in his own right because one day he would inherit one of the most prosperous and prestigious studs in Kentucky, while Gracie Fielding lived in a red-brick council house and would inherit nothing except her mother’s engagement ring. And the silver-plated teapot that had come to her from a maiden aunt.

‘What are you thinking about? You were staring at that weather cock as if you expected it to take off.’

‘I – oh, I was thinking it’s time for Mr Catchpole’s tea so you’d better kiss me just once more, then you can stay here and finish picking this row till I call you. And don’t squash them. They’re for the house, for dessert tonight, and Tilda Tewk doesn’t like squashy fruit!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He kissed her gently, then whispered, ‘I love you, Gracie.’

He always told her he loved her because one day she would let slip her guard and say she loved him too. One day. And when it happened, he would throw his cap in the air, climb to the top of Holdenby Pike and shout it out to the whole Riding!

‘I’m sure you do, Bas Sutton,’ she said primly. ‘But in the meantime get on with picking those rasps!’

‘You’re not interested in the candies I’ve brought you, or the silk stockings or the lipstick, then?’

‘Pick!’ she ordered, then laughing she left him to find Jack Catchpole, who was puffing contentedly on a well-filled pipe.

‘I’ve come to make the tea,’ she said. ‘Bas is carrying on with the picking.’

‘Ar. He’s a right grand lad, tha’ knows.’

‘I’m sure he is, but that’s between me and Bas, isn’t it, and nobody else!’

She stopped, horrified at her cheek, her daring, but Mr Catchpole continued with his contented puffing and his wheezy chuckling and didn’t take offence at all. Because he knew what the outcome of it all would be, despite the lass’s protestations. He’d said as much to Lily.

‘Mark my words, missus, young Bas isn’t going to take no for an answer. Things alus happens in threes and there’ll be three weddings round these parts, mark my words if there isn’t.’

And in the meantime, may heaven bless and protect GIs who brought tins of tobacco every time they came courting his land girl!

‘Make sure it runs to three mugs, Gracie lass,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘And make sure I get the strongest!’

Life on an mid-September afternoon could be very pleasant, be danged if it couldn’t – even if there was a war on!