Elizabeth Elgin - Windflower Wedding

He wanted Daisy now , yet who was Daisy? Gaston Martin did not know of her existence. Gaston Martin had been discharged from the Army because his hearing was impaired. His papers said so. He must remember that, always. Not to hear properly might be an advantage if people started demanding answers to questions.

The whisky inside his empty stomach was beginning to relax him and he found he could think of Daisy without feeling sick at the thought of losing her. He wasn’t going to lose her! They were sending him to France as a courier because he knew about Enigma. That was all. He wasn’t an agent. Agents were highly trained and he was an amateur. Even that stupid lot at Whitehall didn’t send amateurs into danger – not real danger. He was to be taken to France by submarine, met, then hidden until it was time for him to bring back the package. They would take good care of him. Not that Keth Purvis was of any importance. What was important was the machine he would bring back. Any boffin with a knowledge of Enigma could have done it, couldn’t they? They had chosen him because he owed them one for his passage back to England, so he had to do it, if only to save lives at sea. Keth Purvis wasn’t at sea, was he? Didn’t cross the Atlantic again and again in a slow-moving convoy, nor go on the Murmansk run – that suicide trip to the north of Russia with tanks and guns for Stalin.

When it was over and done with he would return to Bletchley Park. They had told him that. And when that happened, he would never again complain of the mind-blowing frustration of it. He would even be glad that in some small way, perhaps, what he had done would help decode German U-boat signals more easily. Breaking their code only one day in five wasn’t on. When they could break it as easily as the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe codes, then the Atlantic would be a whole lot safer for Allied seamen.

He looked at the flask, then screwed the top back firmly. Gaston Martin had no need of more.

He picked up the closely typed papers he had been given. Gaston Martin, born to Belle and the late Jules a year before the end of the last war.

His mother was dead too. In hospital, following complications after an operation for appendicitis and no, he had not been with her when she died. It was too sudden, too unexpected. Only Grand-mère was with her. Grand-mère died a year later. Both she and Maman were buried at – Hell! Where?

Frantically he searched through the papers. So much to learn, but learn it he would, because he was going to France and coming back safely. All in one piece.

D-watch, relieved by A-watch, arrived back at Hellas House at twenty minutes past midnight or, in naval time, 00.20 hours.

‘Hi,’ smiled Lyn, carefully pushing open the door, depositing tea and jam and bread on the chest of drawers. ‘I thought you’d be awake still. Brought you up a drink. Good leave, then?’

‘Great. And thanks for leaving the letters – and the welcome-back greeting.’

‘Keth all right?’ Lyn took off her jacket, eased off her shoes.

‘He’s fine. He still loves me, which isn’t a lot of use, him over there and me here. Any news? Scandal?’

‘News – yes. You know the buzz about the hats? Well, it’s official. New caps in clothing stores soon and we’re to swap the old ones for the new type. Not before time, either. Just like school hats, these things. The new ones will be a sort of cross between a matelot’s cap and a beret, I heard. Cheeky. Worn low on the forehead, an inch above the eyebrows. At least I’ll be able to wear my hair in a pleat and not have to screw it into a roll.’ Lyn Carmichael refused, unlike most other Wrens, to have her hair cut short. ‘Oh, and we needn’t carry our respirators everywhere now. Seems Hitler isn’t going to gas us! We’re only to take them when we go on leave. They’re going to let us carry shoulder bags. I’ve actually seen one, though we have to buy them ourselves. Fifteen bob, I think they’ll be. Quite smart. It’s all been happening whilst you were away.’

‘Things are looking up,’ Daisy smiled. ‘No more news?’

‘We-e-ll, yes.’ Lyn took a steadying gulp of tea. ‘I had a letter from Kenya. From my father. It took me ages to open it because for some stupid reason I hadn’t expected to hear from him again – well, not until the war was over. It seems, though, that he and Auntie Blod have written to each other regularly since my mother died.’

‘The lady you thought was your mother,’ Daisy corrected.

‘ Thought . I never really liked her; that was why she had me sent to school in England, I suppose.’

‘But you like your Auntie Blod, don’t you?’

‘If you mean am I glad she’s my real mother and not my aunt, yes, I am. My father should have married her, though, knowing he’d got her pregnant.’

‘I think he might have done, Carmichael, if your Auntie Blod had told him.’

‘Then she should have and they could have married and I’d have had a proper mother and father!’

‘You’re still annoyed about it, aren’t you – annoyed with your father, I mean?’

‘Yes, I am. The randy old goat!’

‘Lyn! That isn’t kind! It must have been awful for your Auntie Blod, giving you up to her sister and thinking she would never see you again. And I think she still loves your father, else why did she never marry and why are they writing to each other all of a sudden?’

‘Why indeed, and me not being told about it! But I suppose it’ll all come out in the wash. Auntie Blod will tell me about it when I go on leave. And if she still loves him, well, what the heck!’

Blodwen Meredith, her real mother, if she wanted to be picky, must truly have loved her father, just as Lyn loved – would always love – Drew Sutton. It was like Auntie Blod once said: you couldn’t turn love off to order.

‘It’s their life,’ Daisy said softly.

‘Yes, it is. Want some bread and jam?’

‘Just tea, thanks. And, Lyn – about your father. You once said you liked him better than your mother; that he was quite decent to you, when she wasn’t there.’

‘I should think so, too! After all, I was his natural daughter. My mother must have hated it really, having me around. The one I thought was my mother,’ she amended, sighing.

‘Well, it’s all coming right for them now, and you should be glad about it if they want to get together after all those years.’

‘I suppose I should. I’ll try to be, if only for Auntie Blod’s sake. I love her a lot. Always did.’

‘Probably because some part of you knew she was your real mother.’

‘Probably. Sure you don’t want this bread and jam, Dwerryhouse?’

‘Sure. Eat it yourself, then get into bed. I’ve put a hot-water bottle in for you. Chop chop! Some of us want to get to sleep! And by the way – I missed you. I’m sort of glad to be back in the old routine.’

She pushed the empty mug beneath her bunk, then wriggled down into her blankets. Come to think of it, Liverpool wasn’t a bad old place to see out the war in, for all its faults – provided the Luftwaffe didn’t come back and blitz it again!

But anywhere would do really. Without Keth, one port was much the same as another. And Lyn was smashing to be with – when she wasn’t all quiet, thinking about Drew marrying someone else, that was. Poor Lyn …

‘Where are they, then?’ Tatiana Sutton smiled a greeting at Sparrow’s Joannie, who was quite high up, really, in the Women’s Voluntary Service.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind – taking on another one?’

‘Not at all. They aren’t a bit of trouble. It’s the one or two civilians who look at them as if they’ve got no right to be out in public that bother me!’