‘Funk ist kaputt, maybe?’ I guessed. ‘I think that means radio is broken.’
‘You speak Kraut, Cap’n?’ Tex sounded more shocked than outraged.
‘I don’t speak it,’ I protested. ‘I understand a little. My wee sister went to finishing school in Switzerland, and she’s always wittering away in German. Reads German novels and all. O mein liebster Bruder! Thinks it’s cute. Does my head in.’
I couldn’t fly the plane, keep an eye on the new pilots just off my wingtips, and interpret German radio messages all at once. Silver helped me think. Chip was good at Morse, but not a brilliant detective.
‘“Radio is broken”,’ Silver mused. ‘It’s two planes communicating. Reconnaissance, maybe. The first message has the word Morse in it – I think one plane can’t give or receive radio calls, and he’s telling the other to transmit in code.’
The last flurry of messages Chip intercepted seemed to be someone in a second plane trying, more and more frantically, to contact the first.
There didn’t seem to be any reply.
‘What do you think these Germans are flying?’ I asked uneasily. ‘Clapped-out old Blenheims?’
‘Ha-ha,’ said Silver.
‘We don’t want to tangle with a Luftwaffe fighter. We’re close enough to Norway they could be Messerschmitt 109s.’
‘Let’s find the guy sending the messages and call a Spitfire from Deeside to put him out of his misery,’ said Chip.
There was no question of tackling him ourselves – that would be suicidal, and we knew it. Our guns only fired half the distance of a Messerschmitt’s.
But we could figure out where he was. With the Jerry’s wireless making so much noise, we might get lucky. It would be good practice for the new Pimms Section.
One of the crews in formation with me was completely wet behind the ears, a trio of fresh-faced Australian classmates who’d come straight here from some posh school in Sydney. They were even younger than me. In our third plane were two survivors of 7 November: Ignacy Mazur, the Polish pilot who’d walked across Eastern Europe so he could get to Britain, and Derfel Cledwyn, his Welsh navigator. They’d moved to Pimms from A-Flight. I wasn’t used to flying with Ignacy. He was hell-bent on shooting down Nazis and had a habit of tearing out ahead of everybody; I had to keep yelling at him to watch for the rest of us. After the shake-up, like me and Silver, Ignacy and Derfel had a new wireless op: Bill Yorke had transferred from another squadron, and we didn’t know how good he was.
So getting a position fix on a German plane would test our new wireless operators, Bill Yorke and the Australian lad, Dougie Kerr. And if it worked it would give Ignacy Mazur the satisfaction of sending someone to chase down a Nazi fighter without putting my youthful Aussie lads in too much danger – the perfect practice op. Although it was real enough, even if we were practising.
Funny how it’s easier to remember who was alive and flying with you on a hop than to count the ones who died in the air around you.
So we hatched a plan to snare this German plane.
Ignacy and Derfel raced off towards Norway to try to receive the transmission from a different place. I told Harry Morrow, the new pilot, to stay with me – the Australians had not a whiff of combat experience between them, and if it came to an air battle I meant to get them out alive or die trying. Our two planes circled beneath the pearly sky until we’d had three more German radio transmissions, stronger and stronger each time.
Bill Yorke, in Ignacy’s plane, heard it too. When his navigator, Derfel, told us where they were and where the noise was coming from, clever old David Silvermont plotted a web of lines and gave us coordinates for where he thought the Luftwaffe plane might be.
But bloody Ignacy wasn’t satisfied with calling up Spitfires from Aberdeen to finish off the German.
‘Pimms Leader, hello, I am going to meet him,’ said Ignacy’s voice over my headset.
‘You damn well won’t!’ I told him. ‘Get back here with the rest of us.’
‘He’ll be surprised,’ said Ignacy.
This was mutiny and suicide rolled into one, and of course I couldn’t let him go alone.
So with my wet-behind-the-ears Australian sprogs on my port wing, we set off after Ignacy.
I was sure he would get there before us. But I flew full throttles anyway. Chip was up in his gun turret now; no point in sitting in the belly of the plane at the radio where he couldn’t see anything, listening to dah-dit beeping in German, when he could be firing guns. The Luftwaffe plane wasn’t saying anything new anyway. Silver showed me the last sequence Chip had taken down:
WOBIS
TDUKA
NNSTD
UMICH
HOERE
N
Wobis, wobist? Wo bist … Wo bist du, like Old English, like Chaucer. Where beest thou?
Wo bist du, kannst du mich hoeren?
I gnawed at it as I flew, trying not to think about Ignacy and his underpowered guns.
Where are you … canst thou me hear?
Can you hear me?
Ich hoere nichts.
I hear nothing.
It sort of got me in the stomach. I wondered what had happened to the other plane. Poor lonely Jerry, losing his wingman. I knew how that felt.
We found the pilot who was transmitting, though. We even got there before Ignacy.
The Luftwaffe pilot was alone, as we’d guessed, flying a Messerschmitt 109 fighter dangerously low over the sea, skimming the whitecaps. He circled and climbed and descended again, which was why his messages faded in and out. He was looking for something, a wreck, or a trace of his companion’s crash, maybe.
It wasn’t even a fortnight since 7 November. And here in front of me, getting nearer, were iron-grey wings like knife blades, emblazoned with black Luftwaffe crosses, and with the ugly whirl of a black swastika on the tail.
He saw us and began to climb to meet us.
Silver and I both spotted him – but I was the one with the guns in front.
There wasn’t enough cloud to hide in. The only thing we could do was get down, but you can’t hedge-hop over waves and expect the sea to camouflage you the way valleys and woodland and riverbanks do.
Well, this was probably it, then …
I rammed the controls forward under full power, turning and diving. I’d out-turned a Messerschmitt 109 once before, even if I couldn’t outfly or outshoot them – the Jerry probably didn’t know that, and if he went after me he might leave the Australian lads alone …
The blasted Australians thought this was a game, their first dogfight. I could hear their pilot, tall Harry Morrow, whooping with excitement as they fired away at the German pilot. They didn’t hit him, though. He swooped up over us, made a wide turn, and came back in over the Australians from behind. I could see tracers flaming from the Luftwaffe cannons and from Dougie Kerr’s gun turret. I threw the Blenheim around and leaned into my own guns.
It sometimes doesn’t feel real when you’re there. You’re so focused on flying and firing. Afterwards, you feel choked up or frightened – especially if it’s gone badly, and you have miles of empty sea to cross in a broken plane, and your mates are dead. But in battle, there’s nothing else to think about.
Suddenly the Messer just stopped playing. He shot off east as if he couldn’t be bothered to waste time with us. I don’t think he was out of ammunition; he must have been low on fuel. He’d probably already been pushing his luck, with all that haring about after his missing wingman, and now he couldn’t risk the toll an air battle would take on whatever was left in his tanks.
Thank God – thank God. Thank God I hadn’t lost these kids on their first operational mission.
By the time Ignacy found us we were alone and heading home under the pearly grey sheet of sky.
‘You blooming great fool, Mazur, you’re on report,’ I snarled at Ignacy over the radio.
‘Save it, Scotty,’ said Silver gently through the intercom, which Ignacy couldn’t hear. �
�Wait till we’re on the ground.’
I was seething. I took a deep breath.
‘Get back in formation, Pimms Section.’
That was the only order they paid attention to all afternoon.
I wondered briefly if the lost Messerschmitt pilot had been disobeying orders too. But only briefly; that was someone else’s problem, and Pimms was mine.
Louisa:
Look at that lion kill. That’s what I thought Daddy said to me, pointing out the bus window along the road to Granny Adair’s, on the edge of St Andrew Parish back in Jamaica. I was only little, sitting on one of his knees and wedged against the window by his canvas duffel bag on the other. Around us were people with luggage and groceries and chickens, and the smell of sweat and tobacco. Daddy pointed to the limekiln every time we passed it and I always thought he said, That’s an old lion kill. I thought that abandoned stone-and-brick building, half-buried in ferns, was a place where brave and terrible people took lions to be slaughtered. Whenever we went to Granny Adair’s and passed that place it gave me a queer, nervous thrill of fear and mystery.
The limekilns at Windyedge village made it all come back. Just when Ellen said that – Those are limekilns. And again when she left us, as I looked up at the pub sign with its painted limekilns. The back of my neck prickled chilly, even beneath Jane Warner’s warm fur coat.
I wasn’t a fool-fool country gal and I knew they were just limekilns. But maybe it was the German plane that gave me the shivers.
The Limehouse had a small porch made of black-painted tree trunks framing the front door. Through that was a vestibule with a coat rack and two more doors leading into the hotel hall if you turned right, or into the public bar if you turned left. Nancy Campbell stood inside the left-hand door, waiting for us to arrive.
She was a thin woman in a drably flowered pinny apron over a brown dress; her grey-streaked black hair was pulled back with diamante clips, except for a few wisps escaping in frizzled curls around her face. When I opened the door for Jane, Mrs Campbell held out her arms stiffly and put them around her old auntie in a quick, awkward hug.
‘Aunt Jane!’
Jane planted frosty kisses on her niece’s cheeks, and Mrs Campbell looked as if she were trying to dodge them.
‘Welcome to Windyedge, Aunt Jane,’ Mrs Campbell said, with that same grim determination I’d heard on the phone. ‘And to the Limehouse. Was the journey all right? How is your hip? Can you manage stairs?’ The landlady frowned. ‘I’m not sure where to put you if you can’t manage stairs. There aren’t any ground-floor bedrooms. I suppose I could convert the dining room, as I haven’t served there since the war started …’
‘I can manage perfectly, Nancy. I just need someone to carry my things.’
I was doing that now, bringing in suitcases. I struggled through the vestibule and realised Mrs Campbell was staring with her mouth open. I felt the blood rise flaming in my cheeks. I wasn’t going to pretend it was all right for her to stare. I was used to being stared at, but she was going to be my employer.
I put down the cases with a thump, straightened, and held out my open hand to the landlady.
For another moment the thin woman’s face looked baffled. Then her mouth tightened as she realised who I was. ‘Oh!’
She took my hand, though. She gave it one light shake and let go. She looked me up and down with her thin lips pressed shut, assessing me. I was wearing one of Mummy’s neat tailored suits beneath Jane’s mink coat, my hair was rolled tight against my head, and I knew I looked all right.
‘Where have you come from?’ she asked me.
‘London,’ I answered again without thinking.
Her thin mouth tightened even more.
‘I mean – that’s where I’ve been living,’ I added hastily. It’s true I was annoyed about the staring, but I hadn’t meant to be cheeky. ‘I’ve been in London for three years. That’s where I saw your advertisement. I grew up in the West Indies.’
The prickly woman’s voice was cold. ‘You might have said. On the telephone.’
‘My father is from Jamaica,’ I confessed now, as if it weren’t ruddy obvious.
‘Ah, that explains it,’ said that miserable landlady. ‘I don’t like surprises.’
‘I can go, if you like,’ I told her. ‘Now that I’ve brought your aunt here.’
I did not want to be rude or have a fight. I did not want to go back to London and start looking for work all over again. But I was tired of the messing about. We might as well be clear.
‘You can find someone else to help you if I won’t do,’ I added.
Jane put a stop to this conversation.
‘Of course you will do.’ She laid her hand on my arm, as if she were hanging on to me for support. ‘Louisa and I understand each other. I shouldn’t want a new companion after we’ve had such a nice time travelling together.’
A nice time travelling together! I nearly smiled.
Mrs Campbell did laugh, a dry snort that told me she wasn’t fooled about what kind of a journey we’d had. But she didn’t ask me to leave.
So I brought in the rest of the luggage. Then I got to look at the inside of the Limehouse. I’d never set foot in a pub before. Even Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t have gone into a pub together, and certainly not with me tagging along.
The floor of the public bar was grey flagstones and the walls were whitewashed, with deep-set windows like the ones in the Windyedge village cottages. The bar had a brass countertop. Oak beams, black with age, held up the low ceiling above the bar. There was a scatter of tables, wooden benches and stools, and one or two proper chairs with armrests and cushions on the seats. On one side of the room, between two windows, was a battered upright piano; across from it, beside the bar, rose a chimney over a big fireplace. There was no fire burning in the grate.
The place wasn’t welcoming just now. But it wasn’t unfriendly. It was empty and waiting. It might be nice, if there were people drinking at the bar, and the fire were lit, and there were music.
I wondered where a girl like me would fit into that picture.
Mrs Campbell’s eyes widened again when she saw Jane’s luggage.
‘I thought you were only allowed one case at – at that place. There’s no surface for the gramophone in Room Number Five, and anyway I’ve put the wireless in there for you.’
‘Oh, surely the gramophone can stay down here?’ Jane suggested winningly. ‘And the records? I understand the lads from the aerodrome spend time here – perhaps they’d enjoy hearing some music.’
Jane put down her sticks and dropped herself quite suddenly on to a chair.
‘You said there were stairs,’ she said. ‘I’m just having a rest before I tackle them. Louisa, open that smaller case. I’ve brought a gift for Nancy.’
Inside it, wrapped in silk underwear like a pass-the-parcel, were five cheeses and six blocks of butter. Jane had smuggled dairy products off the Isle of Man in her knickers! I definitely did not see her packing them.
‘There wasn’t any rationing in That Place, darling, and I know you struggle because of the blockades, so I brought some contraband.’
Mrs Campbell let out another burst of dry laughter. ‘My word. All that butter! You haven’t changed a bit, Aunt Jane.’
She hadn’t exactly said thank you.
‘Nor have you, Nancy,’ said Jane gently, as if it couldn’t be helped.
Room Number Five was at the end of the upstairs passage. Mrs Campbell called it the ‘second-best double room’.
‘I’ve put my own wireless radio in there,’ she told us again grudgingly, ‘but you’ll both have to share the bathroom with the lasses. There’s only Volunteer Ellen McEwen just now, the driver for RAF Windyedge. When there’s a squadron based at the aerodrome there are sometimes others. You’ll have to take a torch or a candle when you use the stairs at night, as it’s impossible to fix blackout over that tall window in the hall. I’ve taken out the bulbs from the electric fittings to stop anyone swit
ching on the lights by accident.’
It was all cold. The stair was covered with faded coconut matting. This brown dull stuff underfoot had been green and alive once, palm trees blowing in a tropical sky. Far from home like me. Except that nobody stared at coconut matting. It was ordinary.
But Room Number Five was all right. It had three of the deep-set windows, one small one like an arrow slit facing north-east towards the airfield, and two facing south-east. With great relief I set down the case of Jane’s that I was carrying. I didn’t think it would be too bad being here, even if it was cold and dark, because I liked Jane despite her being German, and there was a piano downstairs, and the gramophone. I leaned across one of the bigger window sills in the room, and I could see the North Sea like a strip of Christmas tinsel on the horizon. Far off in the distance, somewhere on the way to Norway, the sun was shining.
If the aerodrome gets busy, I thought, perhaps there will be other young people about.
There was already Ellen McEwen. She couldn’t be much older than me. But she seemed it, in her crisp khaki uniform and tie, driving the Royal Air Force van so casually. It made me quite envious, remembering. Also, she was a tall and rather striking beauty, with shining coppery hair coiled beneath her uniform cap. She could have been on a recruitment poster. She’d made me feel mousy and shy, which wasn’t helped by her being a bit stiff.
Or was she shy as well, and the uniform let her hide? She’d been perfectly welcoming. I’d have to make an effort to be friendly. I could ask what happened to the German plane after it landed. Perhaps she could take me to see the airfield sometime.
Mrs Campbell waved towards the armchair, and Jane sat with one of her thunderous backwards plunges, letting gravity drop her.
The Enigma Game Page 5
