Elizabeth Elgin - Windflower Wedding

Daisy removed her hat, then pulled her fingers through her hair, smiling to see two letters on her pillow just as she expected and a sheet of notepaper on which was written large and red, ‘WELCOME BACK. YOU’VE HAD IT, CHUM!’ Had her leave, that was, until the New Year. Lyn, on the other hand, would start hers next week, which was a crafty move when you considered she would miss her week of night duties.

Daisy smiled, pushed the note into her drawer, determined to leave it on Lyn’s pillow in two weeks’ time, and carefully opened the two envelopes. Then she kicked off her shoes and lay back on her bunk to read them at least twice. The first time to savour their contents; to close her eyes and recall kisses and whispered love words; the second time to read between the lines for small phrases, names deliberately misused; any irregularity, no matter how small, that would hint at something the Censor had not seized upon.

Yet there was nothing, save that he loved her, missed her, wanted her. Nothing about the work he did in Washington nor if there was even the slightest chance he might be sent back to England with the same indecent haste They had sent him away. But They could do anything They wanted and usually did. Without explanation; without giving Keth even a forty-eight-hour leave pass to let them say goodbye. By the time this war was over, They would have a great deal to answer for!

A glance at her watch told her it was time for evening standeasy or, had she been a civilian, a bedtime drink and a snack. She had not eaten since midday and all at once realized she was hungry. She wondered as she spread viciously red jam on her bread what news Lyn would have and thought that in all probability there would be none. These days some of the sparkle had left Lyn’s eyes and a lot of her joie de vivre , which was a pity because she and Drew seemed so good together. Until Kitty, that was …

She balanced her plate on her mug and walked carefully back to Cabin 4A. Eating in cabins was forbidden but rules were there to be broken. Life would be very dull without the occasional tilt at Authority and at the moment the common room was cold and cheerless without the fire which could not be lit until October because of the shortage of coal.

It made her think of the leaping log fire in the black-leaded grate at Keeper’s Cottage and Mam sitting by it alone because Dada would be out with the Home Guard until ten o’clock at least.

A pang of homesickness hit her and she quickly ate her bread and jam, licked her sticky fingers, then fished in the pocket of her belt for three sixpences.

She would book a call home. Trunk calls almost always took ages to come through, but tonight she might be lucky and get through before lights out.

‘Could I have Holdenby 195, please?’ she asked the operator, who answered almost at once. ‘Holdenby, York?’

‘Have one shilling and sixpence ready, please.’

Daisy smiled. Operators never asked you to have your money ready if they didn’t have a line to Trunks. She pushed three sixpenny pieces into the slot, with a ping, ping, ping.

‘Press button A. You’re through now.’

All at once life was not good, exactly, but at least bearable. A phone call home with no bother and Lyn back off watch in less than an hour. If only there were some way to ring Keth or even send a message on the teleprinter at Epsom House, then life would be really good. If only Washington – and Keth – were not so far away!

‘Mam! It’s me! I’m back safe and sound. Thanks for a lovely leave …’

Keth spread the papers on the table in his room, gazing at them with disbelief.

‘Read them,’ he was told in Room 22. ‘Read them over and over. Think yourself into Gaston Martin. Bring them all back here, though, before you go to sleep. They’ll be safer with us.’

Sleep? Would he ever sleep again? He hadn’t felt too bad about what was to come until he was faced with another man’s identity. That was when it really hit him.

An identification card with Keth Purvis’s photograph on it; a card skilfully forged to look as if it had been in his pocket – in Gaston Martin’s pocket – since his discharge from the French Army in the winter of 1940.

Gaston Martin, his work permit said, was a labourer. Keth looked at his hands and shrugged, then looked again at the equally worn discharge certificate, taking in still more of the details of Gaston Martin’s life. He must, he had been told, commit it to his memory; must imagine himself into another man’s ego – into his psyche, his soul. He must, from now on, even try to think in this other man’s language.

Born to Belle Martin in her mother’s apartment at Nancy at three in the afternoon; two months after his father’s death in the trenches. Left in the care of his grandmother when his mother returned to her former occupation of seamstress. A sewing-maid, like Daisy’s mother?

Daisy. He was back home, yet she did not know; just the distance of a phone call away, yet he must not ring her. And of course he could not, because Keth Purvis no longer existed; not until he returned from France, that was. If he returned, he thought distastefully.

Gaston Martin. Born on 3 September 1917. He would remember the date easily because another war, this war, started on 3 September.

He didn’t know his address because as yet no one knew just where he would be put ashore. When they did, an address would be written in in the same faked faded ink, he supposed. They were thorough, he’d grant them that.

Put ashore. Words to start the tingling behind his nose. Somewhere, probably, between La Rochelle and Biarritz, Room 22 said vaguely; somewhere very near, Keth hoped, to the package he was to pick up.

That part of the coast would be safer, wouldn’t it, than the highly fortified northern ports of Calais and Dunkirk? The journey would take longer, though. How many days’ sailing time by submarine and did submarines travel submerged during daylight hours? How many miles an hour could they do? Knots per hour, wasn’t it?

He wondered how it would feel to be submerged. Submariners couldn’t suffer from claustrophobia on the sea bed, could they? So much water around and above them. How much pressure, his mathematical mind demanded, could the hull of a submarine take?

But that was nothing to do with him and he forced his thoughts back to the business of getting to France. A crossing to the north would have taken less time; but the South of France was nearer to unoccupied country – to Vichy France; nearer, too, to neutral Spain – if you could call Franco neutral in his thinking.

Yet why had Room 22 laid such stress on the nearness of Vichy France, and Spain? Was his trip – hell, trip ? – to France more dangerous than they wanted him to believe?

He was afraid. He admitted it. Not necessarily of being killed quickly and cleanly. That took seconds and most times you didn’t know it was going to happen, his father once said. But he was really afraid of being taken and interrogated and then killed and worse even would be the knowledge that he would know, just before it happened, that he would never see Daisy again, nor Mum, and that they would probably never know how he had died. That really hurt.

He reached in the pocket of his jacket for his flask, poured a too-large measure of whisky, then tossed it down. It stung his throat and made him gasp for breath, but he felt better for it.

Once, when he worked in the boring safeness of Bletchley Park, Daisy had demanded to know why he was so secretive about what he did, and was he really a spy?

Keth Purvis a spy! His laugh had been genuine, yet now he was a spy. An enemy agent the Germans would call him if they got hold of him. He was to assume another man’s identity, carry false papers, wear specially provided civilian clothes obtained in France. What else could he be called but spy?