The Secrets of Latimer House

by Jules Wake

  He gave her a solemn smile. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it should,’ she hissed.

  ‘And how would that help anything?’ His voice was gentle and his gaze calm.

  Staring back at him, she hunched into her chair, her emotions too churned up to articulate.

  ‘Why don’t you come for a walk with me? It’s a beautiful day and we have half an hour before we have to go back.’

  Judith was about to refuse but she saw something in his face that made her quietly acquiesce and she stood up.

  He led the way out of the house through the front door and round to the front façade of the house, skirting the balustraded terrace and guiding her to the flight of steps leading down into the extensive gardens which went as far as the river several hundred yards away.

  ‘This is a beautiful part of the world. I love the British countryside. One day I’d like to visit Scotland. Have you ever been?’

  Judith shook her head.

  ‘Where were you before?’

  ‘I was in Hull. By the sea. It wasn’t like this.’ She waved a hand and had to admit to herself that after the cold grey of the barracks near the dockyard, this was a significant improvement.

  Walther didn’t say anything, instead he tipped his head slightly to one side, his eyes half-closed, as if he were listening intently, and a faint smile on his face.

  She waited for him to move but he seemed quite content to stand perfectly still, so she took the time to look around her. Now as she took in the sights, the smells and the sounds, she realised, it was indeed beautiful and a little peace stole into her heart as she tipped her face up to the warm spring sunshine, aware of the bird song in the trees and the rush of the river.

  Walther straightened. ‘Come,’ he said and began to walk. She fell into step beside him but now her gaze darted about, looking this way and that, with an eagerness that was new to her, spotting the primroses peeping through the grass, the ripples over the river dancing in the sunshine and the flock of starlings wheeling overhead against a backdrop of blue sky and shape-shifting white clouds. From the woods on the other side of the house, she could hear the distant coo of birds in the trees and the baa of plump leggy lambs from the fields on the opposite bank of the river.

  They walked in silence, following the path of the river, and the tension in her neck and shoulders started to dissipate. After ten minutes without looking at her, Walther asked, ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, feeling rather embarrassed. It was unlike her to let her anger and grief spill over. Normally it was kept tightly bound. It was easier that way, tucked out of reach so that she couldn’t give in to it. She often thought of it as a physical burden dogging her that had to be strictly controlled, otherwise it would overwhelm her. It was why she shunned the overtures of people like Betty. If she let her guard down and they found a way in, she might feel again. Feel the pain of all that had gone. Could she afford to do that? Was friendship worth the risk?

  ‘I understand. I found it difficult when I first came here.’

  She looked at his face and saw he understood the emotions warring inside her. For the first time since she’d come to England, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

  ‘You’re angry at the injustice of it.’

  With relief she nodded. ‘It seems so wrong. These prisoners of war, their war is over, they are being fed and looked after. Playing games. Where is the hardship? The suffering?’ She wrung her hands.

  ‘They are fellow men. Would you have them suffer?’

  She winced and said in a small voice, ‘Yes,’ and risked a guilty look at Walther’s face to gauge his reaction. To her relief his gentle smile was understanding.

  ‘But would you be the one to inflict the suffering?’ The question took her by surprise. ‘Would you be the one to twist the knife? By your own hand.’

  She swallowed, remembering the commandments. Although she was no longer particularly religious, it was hard to forget the principles that had been bred into her from birth. She wasn’t a violent person.

  ‘Would you become what our persecutors are?’

  Remembering the brutality and violence of the Gestapo and the SS, she flinched. Do not commit murder.

  ‘Would you allow what they have done to change you?’

  Shame flooded her. This wasn’t her way at all. Honour your mother and father. Her father had been a gentle, forgiving man who believed in the good of others.

  ‘God will be our judge.’ Walther’s dark eyes bored into hers, there were lines around his eyes that spoke of his own suffering. ‘He will be their judge too.’

  The words held quiet resonance, their meaning seeping into her like balm. It had been a while since she’d been to a synagogue or heard such wise words. Her soul had been left untended since her father had died. She’d allowed bitterness to twist her spirit, grief to dull her senses and loneliness to disconnect her from others.

  Tears began to run down her face. There was an ache in her heart, she missed him so much.

  Walther took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, wiping at her face, trying to stem her tears, but now they’d been released they seemed to be overflowing like an unruly river that had burst its banks.

  ‘Don’t be. Grief is a heavy burden to bear. You are not alone here. I know what it is like to be dispossessed, to be stateless, to lose everything.’

  ‘Where did you live?’

  ‘In Munich. My family lost their business. It was taken over.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Just like that. My mother was beaten in the street. She died a few weeks later and my father died not long after that. My sisters were able to obtain permits to go to Palestine. I was able to gain a work permit to come here. What about you?’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss. That’s…’ It was hard to speak but it was a reminder that others had lost as much, if not more, than her. How did you measure such things? ‘My father had a heart attack after his shop in Berlin was ransacked during Kristallnacht. They destroyed his life’s work. He died a week later. It was always just the two of us. My mother died when I was a baby. My aunt died, thankfully, before Hitler came to power. I’m glad of that, she was a character, a forceful woman who wouldn’t have been quiet. Not like me and my father. My father had made plans for me to get away.’ She swallowed. ‘On my own. He knew he would never leave and then it was too late. And now I have nothing. My family is all gone. Friends vanished in the night. I don’t know where they went. I can’t even visit their graves.’

  He squeezed her hand again. ‘I’m sure your father would not want you to lose yourself in bitterness. That allows them to win. Being human, living again, it is the proof that we cannot be defeated.’

  ‘I like that thought,’ she said. It sparked a kernel of hope inside her.

  ‘We must look forward now and our work here will help. I truly believe that. Whatever we can do to bring the war to an end must be of value. And I’m afraid we must go back to our little dungeon.’

  ‘Thank you, Walther. You’ve made me feel much better.’

  ‘It’s not so hard to talk to a beautiful girl.’ Suddenly his face was transformed and he gave her a cheeky wink.

  She laughed, feeling a rare sense of freedom. ‘I haven’t been a girl for a long time.’ And no one had ever called her beautiful, and even though she was sure he’d said it to cheer her up, it had done the trick and her spirits lifted.

  They turned and retraced their steps. Judith smiled and looked towards the house up at the battlement roof where her room was. Walther was right, their work here would help and she would try to make sure she did her absolute best. She would work hard and get to know her fellow workers. Like Walther said, many of them had experienced what she’d been through. She might even make some friends here.

  Chapter Eleven

  May 1943

  Betty

  ‘Connors.’

  Betty lifted her head from her work where she was trying to deciph
er the crabbed handwriting that crawled across the page like a delinquent spider. It was her third week in the office and she knew this particular sergeant was one to be wary of.

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’

  ‘No, Ma’am.’ Betty tried to smile and look confident, even though she knew her typing wasn’t anywhere near as quick as the other girls in the room.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the sergeant, looking at the stack of paper in her hand. ‘You need to get a move on. This lot needs to be done before you finish your shift.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ She was proud of her acting skills, managing to sound perky even while her heart sank as the sergeant handed over the stack of paper.

  Addressing the typewriter, which had become her mortal enemy, she began to type again, concentrating hard. Not that it made an awful lot of difference. By the time the others left at the end of the shift, she still had a good pile of transcripts to type up. Her wrists ached as she looked longingly at the clock, but the urgency and the rate at which everyone else worked had infected her. She knew this was important work, so she carried on even though it was nearing dinner time in the Mess. She’d asked one of the other ATS privates to ask Elsie to keep something for her.

  An hour later she was on her penultimate transcript, her eyes gritty and sore with strain. Grimly she tapped at the keys. Part of the problem was that she ended up reading the reports and thinking about the contents rather than simply copying and letting her fingers do the work. Knowing if she broke the Official Secrets Act she could go to prison, she hadn’t dared ask any of the other ATS girls for more information about what went on here. Betty wasn’t stupid though. From what she could piece together, the transcripts she was typing up were from conversations between German military personnel who had to be secreted somewhere in or near the house. From the volume of the transcripts, there must be quite a few men here and they had to be prisoners of war, which meant that this was a secret facility. Certainly no one in the village had any idea what was really going on. She watched the activity outside her window like a hawk and had quickly realised there had to be more blocks somewhere in the substantial grounds that led right up to the Cassels Farm boundary. It was known in the village that a lot of building work had been going on here. Had they built a whole prison camp? Did Mr Cassels have any idea what was going on right on his doorstep?

  ‘Still here?’ A deep voice interrupted her thoughts and she guiltily snatched up the final transcript.

  ‘Just finishing,’ she said and deliberately turned away from Major Carl Wendermeyer, focusing on winding a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter.

  ‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ he said as he perched himself with his usual casual ease on the edge of her desk, reaching for one of the sheets she’d already typed. She winced, knowing that it contained plenty of mistakes. She was neither fast nor accurate despite recent constant practice.

  With what she knew was her prissiest face, she carried on typing and did her best to ignore him. Major Wendermeyer was too darned good-looking for his own good and he knew it.

  Unfortunately, despite her best intentions, she was fascinated by him and found her gaze drawn to him constantly and on quite a few occasions he’d caught her and smiled. Direct, confident smiles, as if he knew what she was thinking. They made her blush. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. Tall and broad, he had a lithe energy about him that made her aware of him the minute he walked in the room. Despite his superior status he was friendly to all and treated every member of staff with equal respect. She’d never come across an officer like him. Perhaps it had something to do with him being American.

  She sneaked a peep his way and found that he was watching her.

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Look at me. You’re putting me off.’

  He laughed and looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. ‘Really?’

  ‘I need to concentrate,’ she said primly. He raised an insufferable eyebrow.

  ‘Will it make much difference?’

  She gasped and then laughed. ‘Are you always this rude?’

  ‘It’s not rude, Betty, just honest. You’re not much of a typist, are you? You can’t spend every night in here catching up.’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she said, becoming serious again, regretting her lapse. ‘I’ll stay for as long as it takes.’ While she wasn’t a very good typist, she did find the work interesting. The transcripts she typed up were fascinating.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to do this. It’s interesting work. I mean, it’s obvious that these men can tell us a lot about the positions of the wolf packs and the way they operate. And last week I typed up the transcript of a telegrapher from a U-boat; what he said backs up what they said. That’s got to be good information, hasn’t it?’

  He frowned and she realised that she shouldn’t be discussing this sort of thing.

  ‘Sorry, Sir.’

  ‘Have you talked to anyone else about this?’

  Her eyes widened and her mouth went dry. ‘No, Sir. Absolutely not, Sir.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He studied her face again, his eyes sharpening. She met his gaze, her heart pounding. Now she was for it. She’d probably get the sack or be moved on to do filing or even… No, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t send her to prison. Not for this.

  Without warning he swung off the desk, put back the sheet of paper. ‘Goodnight, Miss Connors.’

  ‘Goodnight, Sir,’ she said, holding her breath until he’d gone.

  ‘Darn it.’ She put both hands over her eyes. She’d really gone and done it now. Why couldn’t she hold her blessed tongue? Heaving a heavy sigh, she finished the final sheet and bundled up all the paper and pushed open the door to the office next door which was where all the typewritten sheets had to be lodged before anyone left. The sergeant in there took them without comment, checked the numbers on them and then locked them in one of the tall filing cabinets, a bank of which lined one wall on either side of an ornate fireplace.

  Feeling very weary, she switched out the light in the office and tramped down the two flights of the wide staircase to find out what Elsie had saved her for dinner, although she wasn’t sure she could eat a thing.

  Although the Mess was still busy, with people nursing their Ovaltine, Betty wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of the new friends she’d made in the last few weeks. Keeping herself to herself, she ate the supper of corned-beef fritters Elsie had kept by. They weren’t bad at all although she could have done without the additional cabbage and yet more carrots. At this rate she’d be able to see in the dark. Maybe that was the government’s plan so that everyone would be able to cope during blackout. Pondering this, she ate as quickly as she could, desperate for the haven of her own room.

  Each step up to the very top floor seemed an effort and when she reached the room, she threw herself on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. At least it was quiet and peaceful up here. She lifted a hand to her temple to try to soothe her headache but she could still hear the constant clatter of typewriter keys. Each night it took ages for her to wind down and then she dreamt of rising piles of paper that she could never get through.

  It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the office hadn’t been characterised by an air of frantic activity and urgency. It exacerbated the knot of anxiety riding low in her belly. She didn’t want to let anyone down but at the same time she didn’t like failing. Even at the village school, she’d always been the smart one. Among the other ATS girls in London, she was the bright, clever one that the sergeant relied on. Unfamiliar tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes and she dashed them away angrily. She wasn’t up to the job; her typing wasn’t as fast or as accurate as any of the other girls’.

  Until her dad had died, she had felt invincible. At school she was the clever one, asked to help teach the younger ones. Her dad had been proud of her ability. There was hope she might become a teacher. Her ma h
ad been bright and gay, and theirs had been a happy home. She’d been the apple of her dad’s eye. When he died, everything had changed. She’d left school and gone to work at the big house, the extra income vital to supplement her mother’s widow’s pension. Then life had become more of a struggle and she’d had to grow up fast. Her looks rather than her brains were the useful commodity; she’d caught Bert’s eye and her mother had pinned all her hopes on that. Marrying Bert Davenport wouldn’t make them rich but it would rescue her mother from perennial poverty.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked a soft voice.

  Betty started and sat up, looking straight into Judith’s sympathetic eyes. The other girl must have been out on the roof; she hadn’t noticed the open window.

  She blinked furiously, hoping that it didn’t look as if she were crying, but there was something in Judith’s lost, slightly defeated expression that made her shake her head and mutter, ‘Not really.’

  To her surprise Judith came and sat down next to her and they sat side by side for a minute. Her quiet presence was rather soothing. There was something undemanding about her and guilt pricked at Betty for not making more effort to get to know her, although, to be honest, usually the three of them in the room got up early and were gone all day. Their paths crossed only when they were going to bed.

  ‘Sorry. I’m being silly. Compared to you, I have no problems,’ said Betty, remembering Elsie’s rebuke on the first morning.

  Judith shrugged. ‘My problems, as you call them’ – Betty winced, there was a definite bite to her tone – ‘are behind me now. I have a job I like, accommodation, food. The future is impossible to even think about at the moment. I live for each day because I can’t change the past.’

  Betty’s guilt increased. She couldn’t begin to imagine what Judith’s life was like and she hadn’t even bothered to ask her. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about that first morning. Over breakfast. You must think I’m an empty-headed idiot after what I said about travelling being romantic. I tend to talk a lot of nonsense when I’m nervous.’