The Code Girls

by Daisy Styles

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said a stern voice from the stairs.

  Surprised, they turned as one to see the Brig standing there.

  ‘I know how hard you’ve worked, and with a good and generous spirit, too. You deserve a rest but, unlike the trainees, who are free to go when their course is finished, you remain part of the Walsingham household.’

  ‘I never signed up to be a servant!’ Maudie protested. ‘It’s unjust! We are, by rights, allowed some time off ‒ it’s not such an unreasonable thing to expect.’

  The Brig repeated what he’d told Bella. ‘Lady Walsingham has rights which she is allowed to exercise in her own home.’

  ‘Without even thinking to consult us?’ Maudie demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ the Brig bluntly replied.

  Bella’s heart sank. It was an agony to see the Brig being yelled at, even though she’d been doing exactly the same thing herself only ten minutes ago! Now she was no longer in a raging temper, she could see it wasn’t his fault; it was her family’s determination to have their damn grand, traditional Walsingham Christmas, to show off to the county, to reclaim their aristocratic status and act as if they were important again. It was all such a mess. Pushing back the chair, she walked over to the Brig.

  ‘If you’re going to blame anybody, blame me. It’s my family who demanded this; it’s they who put pressure on the Brig, and then he’s had to put pressure on us.’ Without thinking, she took hold of the Brig’s hand and stood firmly by his side. ‘Please yell at me, not him,’ she said, tears spilling from her eyes.

  Not daring to look at Bella’s sad, sweet face the Brig added, ‘I’ll work down here with you. I’ll do everything I can to help,’ he promised.

  ‘I, too,’ said Rafal.

  Ruby swiped him playfully with a tea-towel. ‘You daft sod, you might be on duty,’ she giggled.

  ‘My Rubee, I no sod!’ he declared.

  As the tense atmosphere lifted, Maudie sighed. ‘I apologize, too. Jesus knows why I’m fussing about Christmas Day ‒ I’m a Jew!’

  With that remark, everybody started to laugh, and as they laughed they knew that, together, they’d get through the Walsingham Christmas route march!

  It turned out the Brig was planning on staying in one of the estate cottages for most of the Christmas break.

  ‘I wanted a bit of time on my own before I put in a visit to the family,’ the Brig told Bella. ‘And,’ he added as he took her soft, white hand in his and kissed it, ‘to be honest, I hated the thought of being far away from you,’ he said gently.

  Woozy with joy, Bella swayed and gripped the Brig’s firm, warm hand.

  ‘I enjoy your company, Bella Wells,’ he added softly.

  Bella felt tears filling her eyes. ‘Nobody has ever said that to me in my whole life,’ she replied, in an awed whisper. ‘Nobody has ever wanted to hold on to me.’

  ‘Oh, but I do! I do, so very much,’ he said, pulling her into the warmth of his arms and pressing her shapely young body against his own.

  Bella had to stand on her tiptoes to reach up to stroke his happy, smiling face.

  ‘Dearest, dearest girl,’ the Brig murmured, as he bent to kiss her tenderly on the lips.

  Bella had never been kissed before. For the first time in her life, passion blazed through her like a flame. It seemed to melt her bones as it coursed through her body, then it settled somewhere low in her stomach, where she literally ached for the Brig. When they drew apart, she was trembling so much she had to lean against him.

  ‘Wow, young lady,’ he whispered into her soft, blonde hair. ‘It’s definitely the right decision to stay close to you. With kisses like that, you could set the world on fire!’

  After several more kisses Bella asked him to show her where he was staying. It was an estate cottage just behind the Victoria Arms pub, freezing cold and basic. It was the kind of cottage she’d visited dozens of times with her mother when she was acting out her role of Lady Bountiful, bearing a basket of fruit from the greenhouse or freshly baked shortbread for the poor, grateful servants. Bella had hated what she thought were condescending, embarrassing visits, particularly when her mother dragged her along to visit Ruby’s family, who were her friends. Now she found the Brig’s rented cottage charming, like a setting from ‘The Three Bears’ or ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. The Brig, standing before the empty hearth and gazing at her with a mixture of joy and delight, held his arms out wide.

  ‘Come here, sweet thing.’

  Bella rushed towards him, rubbing her face against his rough, tweedy jacket, which smelt of cherry tobacco and lemon soap. She gave a blissful sigh.

  ‘Promise you’ll visit me in my hovel?’ he teased.

  Bella nuzzled her face against his. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  The Brig faithfully joined the team below stairs, who worked like slaves in the run-up to Christmas, and Ruby’s predictions were spot on; it was candle-lit dinners for twenty, lunch for at least a dozen house guests, and teatime was re-established as well as the cocktail hour. House guests expected spotless linen sheets, fresh flowers and a fire in their room and breakfast (on request) to be served on a tray. Their former routine of feeding thirty people four meals a day seemed a breeze compared to the constant demands of the pampered Walsingham guests. There was always one bell or another dinging for attention behind the servant’s baize door.

  Maudie, who was ready to shoot the lot of them, threw up her hands and cried, ‘God! Do they ever stop making demands?’

  Dodds and Timms willingly took charge of the linen, the silver, the flowers, wine and glassware.

  ‘I’ll suggest wines to accompany the Christmas Day meal,’ Bella firmly said to Dodds, who looked distinctly put out.

  When he’d gone, she told her friends, ‘I’m sick and tired of being told what Dodds recommends. He must have served the same wine since the Crimean War! Time for a change.’

  Everybody pitched in. Ruby’s mum and her auntie, and Rafal, when he was off duty, helped wash up.

  ‘Well,’ giggled Ruby. ‘I suppose that’s one way of getting to know my young man, though it’s not quite what I’d planned!’ she said, rolling her eyes at Raf, her mother and auntie, all chatting non-stop in pidgin English in the back scullery.

  ‘How are you coping with the language?’ Ruby’s mum said loudly and slowly, as if Raf was deaf.

  ‘’Scuse me, Rubee’s mama, what is “copping”?’ Raf asked in baffled ignorance.

  Ruby’s mum frowned as she tried to find an alternative.

  ‘Managing,’ she tried. ‘Is speaking our English a bugger for you, lovie? Hard work, like?’

  ‘Ah, Engleeesh is hard; I stand on the ceiling, I sit on the floor.’ Rafal laughed. ‘But is the language of my Rubee, so I learn,’ he ended, with a bright smile.

  Tom helped, too, when he wasn’t on call; he delivered calves all over the county. The Brig, too, wearing a pinafore and occasionally a Christmas paper hat, was kept busy, clearing away, making a toast, stirring soup, pouring drinks, rolling pastry or making a ‘brew’. The male volunteers didn’t put in a public appearance in the dining room; they left that to Ava, Maudie, Ruby and Dodds. Bella stayed below stairs, too, as most of the guests knew her ‒ and the sight of her dressed as a servant might possibly kill her father stone dead! There were, however, several occasions which Bella simply couldn’t get out of, Christmas dinner being one of them.

  ‘Come with me ‒ be my shield,’ she begged the Brig. ‘If you’re beside me, they won’t pick on me.’

  ‘It’s about time they stopped picking on you altogether,’ he growled angrily.

  It was bizarre to sit in the candle-lit dining room, where the fire of seasoned logs that Raf had laid earlier crackled in the huge grate. The food that Bella and her friends had produced tasted like sawdust in her mouth; all she could think of was the hours they’d spent working on a feast that everybody seemed to take totally for granted.

  For this occasion, Peter had managed to find a goose. H
e had been under strict instructions from his lordship to scour the county for one. The bird, which had been well hung in the pantry, had been marinaded with dried prunes and port, and was accompanied by Norfolk duckling ‒ Ruby’s neighbours’ ducklings, to be exact ‒ stuffed with sage, lemon and onion. The foul were then roasted in the slow oven for most of the day, lovingly basted by Ava. The brandy-soaked Christmas puddings, which contained more breadcrumbs and grated apple than usual this year, to make up for the lack of dried fruit, were simmering on top of the Aga in bowls tightly secured with stout linen cloths. Local Walsingham cheeses were accompanied by port and Madeira from the Walsingham cellars.

  ‘Not a bad spread for wartime, eh?’ said Ava, as they surveyed their splendid efforts.

  ‘I’d call it a bit more than “making do”,’ Ruby remarked. ‘I wonder if the toffs upstairs will appreciate just how lucky they are!’

  Dodds and Timms had done a great job of setting the long dining-room table. It obviously gave them huge pleasure to return, however briefly, to the impeccably high standards of pre-war days. The spotless, white damask cloth ran the length of the table, which easily seated twenty; it fell in snowy-white folds to the floor and was laid with the Walsinghams’ finest silver and cut glass. In the centre of the table was a three-tiered, solid-silver Victorian dish holding grapes from the hothouse which dripped in delicate clusters over the fluted edges. At its base were this year’s walnuts, picked on the estate and kept in the cellar especially for Christmas. Sweet-smelling lilies from the greenhouse were arranged in vases on the tables and around the room were festive bouquets of holly and mistletoe. Bella smiled as she admired the impressive preparations: her parents would be the talk of the county and, for a short time, before they were kicked back upstairs, they would feel grand again. Not for a minute did she want to return to her Lady Annabelle days; she had spent too many miserable Christmases around this very table, sad and lonely, alienated from her family. But not any more; not now that she had her friends downstairs and her beloved Brig at her side.

  As the courses were brought in by Maudie, Ava and Ruby, Bella smiled gratefully at her friends, who looked red in the face after running up and down stairs with trays of boiling-hot food. When they set down the roast goose, Bella couldn’t believe that the guests didn’t thank the cooks or even seem to notice their efforts.

  ‘I feel like standing up and saying, “Hey, there’s a war on, you know!” ’ she seethed. ‘ “Savour the fine food and thank the hard-working cooks below stairs.” ’

  The Brig gripped her hand under the table. ‘Forget it, darling. This lot take it all in their stride. By the way,’ he said, leaning in closer, ‘you look amazing tonight.’

  Bella blushed with pleasure. For six months, she’d worn a cook’s pinafore in the kitchen or tweed skirts and woolly jumpers for classes. Now, for the first time in her life, she wanted to wear something that made her feel like a woman. She’d gone into the small market town of Holt to buy a new egg whisk but instead she’d bought a full-length, pale pink crêpe evening gown. When she saw her reflection in the shop mirror, she couldn’t believe the lusciously feminine woman she was looking at really was her.

  ‘You’ve gone to quite an effort,’ Diana had said, as she tottered past her sister in a silver, sequinned, backless gown that revealed her slender, elegant body. She’d stopped in her tracks when she saw the brigadier sitting beside Bella.

  ‘Oh, you’re here!’ she’d said rudely. ‘I thought you’d left with those dreary girls you teach.’

  ‘I invited him,’ Bella had said, as she took a sip of champagne.

  ‘Talking shop, are we? Morse code, tip-tap-tap,’ Diana mocked as she swanned off back to her place at the far end of the table.

  Later, over port and cheese, Lord Edward searched out the Brig. As he topped up his glass, he said, rather pompously, ‘I’m sure you’ve been briefed about my recent appointment at the War Office?’

  ‘I’m aware you’re working for MI5,’ the Brig replied.

  ‘None of my family, including Annabelle, is aware of my new role. They think I’m translating German memos,’ said Edward, a little too self-importantly. ‘For obvious reasons,’ he added, his gaze landing on Diana, who was laughing over-loudly at something said by the handsomest young man in the room.

  The Brig held his gaze but didn’t respond.

  ‘Maybe we could discuss some issues connected with my operations?’ Edward suggested.

  ‘I think those issues are best dealt with by your contacts at the War Office, sir,’ the Brig replied. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me …’

  Leaving Edward looking a little put out, the Brig rejoined Bella.

  ‘What did he want?’ she asked.

  ‘He wants us to be friends,’ the Brig told her.

  Bella’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Friends! You and my brother?’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling, it’s never going to happen,’ the Brig replied.

  The Brig and Bella slipped below stairs just as soon as they could. Bella ate some Christmas cake, then covered her pink dress with a big black pinafore and helped with the washing-up.

  ‘It’s so much happier down here than up there,’ she said, smiling at the Brig, now also wearing a pinafore and drying the dishes she’d washed.

  ‘I was hoping a couple of those obnoxious upper-class twits might choke to death on the goose’s wishbone,’ Maudie giggled as she poured out glasses of sloe gin, which she’d made in the autumn.

  ‘It was a wonderful feast,’ Bella said.

  ‘You cooked most of it,’ laughed Ava.

  Then Ruby made them all jump by clapping her hands. ‘Listen,’ she called. ‘We’ve got something to tell you.’ She turned to Rafal, who was blushing and smiling self-consciously.

  ‘I ask Rubee to become wife!’ he said.

  A roar of approval from everybody in the kitchen went up.

  ‘Yeaahhhh! Well done!’

  ‘Wonderful!’

  ‘Congratulations!’

  As more sloe gin was poured, Ava, who was standing with her arm around Tom, asked, ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘This morning, at Mass,’ Rafal answered.

  Smiling, radiant Ruby burst out laughing. ‘It’s true! Rafal took me to Mass at the Walsingham shrine. It’s sooooo beautiful! We sang carols and said prayers, in Latin ‒ no idea what they were on about,’ she joked. ‘We stayed on to light candles and, as they burnt, Rafal asked me to marry him and I said yes – definitely tak!’

  Maudie raised her glass high. ‘Do długiego i szczęśliwego życia. Powodzenia, Bóg błogosławi!’ she cried, then added in English: ‘To a long and happy life. Good luck and God bless!’

  ‘God bless!’ came the resounding reply.

  It was a happy time, despite the hard work, with all of the girls working together, laughing at their mistakes, getting up in the middle of the night to check the bread was rising on the hot plate, going out in the icy-cold mornings to pick up the milk, stealing kisses in the kitchen, hiding Christmas presents, drinking Maudie’s sweet sloe gin, making cocoa around the Aga, and discussing politics till late in the night. Above all, the girls enjoyed the laughter and camaraderie brought about by their situation.

  Ruby summed it up: ‘It’s a Christmas I’ll never forget!’

  When it was finally over and the last guests had driven away, Dodds and Timms retreated into their bolt-holes, the Walsinghams went to London for New Year, the Brig, reluctantly, left Bella to visit his family in Lincoln, Maudie took Bella to her home in the East End, Ruby stayed, happily planning her wedding with Rafal and her family, while Ava and Tom rode out daily on a snowy Holkham beach.

  The new year opened with the signing of the Declaration of the United Nations by twenty-six Allied nations on 1 January 1942, shortly after which the first American forces arrived in Britain. The people prayed that the involvement of the US would radically alter the course of the war that had raged in the Germans’ favour for well over two y
ears.

  Part Two

  * * *

  1942

  14. Squadron Leader Kit Halliday

  Squadron Leader Kit Halliday had fallen asleep on the job – again! His long, lean, muscular frame was stretched out the length of the rickety old office chair that creaked and threatened to fall apart as he was roused from an uncomfortable sleep by Air Mechanic 1st Class Rafal Boskow arriving early with a brimming, pint-pot mug of strong tea.

  ‘Here, sir,’ said the eager young lad, setting the tea down without slopping it over the paper-strewn desk.

  ‘Cheers, Raf,’ Kit replied, smothering a yawn.

  ‘Why you keep to sleep here, sir?’ Rafal enquired. ‘I take you with other officers to Walzing Hall?’

  Kit nodded. It would be a lot more sensible to head off to the officers’ billets at Walzing Hall, as Raf always called the requisitioned stately home, but he’d been so busy over the last few months he’d had no choice but to work through the night, every night, even when he was supposedly on leave.

  ‘Want bacon buttee, sir?’ Rafal asked.

  Kit nodded again.

  ‘Two please, Raf!’ Kit said hungrily and held two fingers in the air to make his point.

  As Rafal hurried off, Kit smiled to himself and rubbed some life back into his cold, numb arms; the young Pole’s English had come on in leaps and bounds since he’d been courting the maid at Walsingham Hall – and Rafal had proudly told Kit she was now his fiancée. The pale-haired, blue-eyed and earnest young man clearly didn’t hang about when it came to women: rumour had it that he’d snapped up one of the best-looking local girls almost as soon as he had arrived at the airfield.

  Kit had a lot of time for the Polish servicemen stationed at Holkham. Reliable, hard-working and loyal, Raf, along with some of his fellow countrymen, had joined the RAF to fight alongside the British after they entered the war following Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Rafal was one of the talented mechanics who worked with the ground crew, diligent guys who knew the workings of a Spitfire, a Hurricane and a Wellington like the back of their hands. They scrupulously prepared the planes for take-off and could literally reassemble them when they came limping back after a brutal night raid over Berlin, Cologne or Leipzig. They could weld the bodywork of any shattered plane, seal holes made by a battery of bullets in the fuselage, replace broken glass in the rear gunner’s tower and reload ammunition at lightning speed, ready for the next take-off. For every pilot in any plane, there were ten men and women working on the ground to keep that plane flying; when there was a fatality and the pilot went down, the ground crew took the loss deeply and personally.