‘Everyone has their theories,’ Major Folkestone replied, clearing his throat. ‘It’s a free country, anyone can have their theories, whatever they might be, but sometimes it is best to keep them to yourself.’
He stopped smiling and, picking up a wooden ruler from the desk, began to walk about the room, tapping the ruler on the palm of one hand.
‘Now listen up, because this is the point, you see,’ he began. ‘Because of his connection with your late aunt, Mr Ward wanted to make sure you would have somewhere safe to live, since my understanding of the matter is that following the death of your aunt you would have been homeless. However. However, I do not believe in carrying passengers, not at a time like this, just as I am sure you want to make some sort of contribution to the war effort, and the work we are doing here in particular. So given then that you are the niece of one of Mr Ward’s top people, and a highly trustworthy young woman – given all that and the fact that I am woefully short of a pair of quick hands, particularly a pair allied to a bright mind – I propose to take you on as my personal assistant, well, dogsbody, if you will. If you want to know what that involves. I have me a first class secretary, but I need an extra pair of reliable hands, so that together with Lily Ormerod, that’s my secretary, I dare say we’ll make a first rate team. First rate. Any questions?’
‘No,’ Marjorie said carefully, her mind turning over rapidly as she tried to understand what exactly being a personal assistant or dogsbody would involve, ‘I don’t think so, sir. I just hope I won’t let you down.’
‘You won’t,’ Major Folkestone told her, as he walked back behind his desk to resume his work. ‘I’ll see to it that you don’t. Dismissed.’
Marjorie left the major’s office, a high-ceilinged room with beautifully painted walls, gold decoration and early eighteenth-century plasterwork, feeling elated. She turned back as she closed the door behind her and saw the major staring out of the window. He looked strangely small in the room, just as his filing cabinets and desk looked strangely incongruous in the elegant, old-fashioned room. It didn’t seem quite possible that soon she would be in and out of that room, helping him with his work in whatever way she was able, helping him to drop agents into France and Belgium, behind enemy lines. She shivered, not because of the war so much, but because of the risks she knew those people would take, unimaginable risks; and when she walked out into the park from the main hall, through the large doors, past the sentries, and stood for a moment on the top step of the flight of shallow stone steps looking across to what were no longer lawns, but fields of long grass, some of which had been divided up into yet more allotments for villagers without gardens to grow their vegetables, she couldn’t help wondering how many of the people she could see walking about the grounds would soon be caught and shot – or worse.
The following weekend Kate was playing tennis with three colleagues from her section. The couple the other side of the net played good country house tennis, capable enough to keep their end up in any ordinary friendly confrontation but way out of their depth against a player of Kate’s talent. Over-aware as always of her gift, Kate soft-pedalled as well as she could without looking as though she was patronising her opponents, but even so she wasn’t able to bottle up her skills, and she and her partner ran out easy winners.
The victory did not pass unremarked. Most of the game was watched by the man on the huge grey horse, who, returning from a leisurely hack, pulled his mount up on the slope above the tennis court to watch, dropping his reins so that his horse might graze while he sat tall in his saddle, arms folded across his chest and a half-smoked cheroot in his mouth, as Kate turned on the tap in the last set, leading her partner and herself to a resounding victory. After the game had finished, Eugene gathered his reins and urged his horse on into a gentle canter, to finally disappear out of sight behind the screen of great beeches that lined the side of the court.
His presence did not go unnoticed, but then a handsome man on an equally handsome horse appearing on the side of a hill on a fine early spring afternoon is not exactly invisible, particularly to four young women playing tennis on a court nearby, and most particularly to Kate Maddox.
If there was a reason for Kate’s sudden determination to conclude the deciding set quickly and imperiously, it was the tall, dark-haired figure on the grey horse.
‘Who was that?’ her partner wondered as they towelled off after the game was over. ‘I didn’t know there was a mounted section.’
‘I am going to demand a transfer straight away,’ one of the other girls stated, laughing. ‘Even though I don’t know one end of a horse from the other.’
‘But you do know one end of a man from another.’
Kate said nothing. She had long since looked away from the horseman, pretending he wasn’t there, a pretence she intended to keep up until Eugene could no longer bear her indifference. For whatever her father thought of her boyish figure and addiction to tennis, Kate Maddox was after all beautiful, and young, and there was a war on.
At the end of May, the Nosy Parkers, as the Eden Park girls had decided to jokingly nickname everyone sequestered in the great house and its parkland, learned about the worsening position in France from the bulletin boards and information circulated in their various sections – days in advance of the rest of their countrymen.
‘The situation is grim,’ Major Folkestone informed his section, which now included Marjorie. ‘The British Expeditionary Force and the 7th and 1st French armies have to all intents and purposes been split in two on what should have been their advance into Belgium and there’s every danger of their being cut off. Only way out is via Dunkirk, with Calais and Boulogne supplementing it.’ He tapped a wall map of Europe with a pointer. ‘But we’re talking about an impossible evacuation here, as well as one that will have to be effected in a matter of days rather than weeks. On top of that, we ourselves, as you know from the board over there’ – he nodded across to a board set about with markers, each one representing an undercover agent – ‘many of our people are behind enemy lines, some of them in extremely precarious positions, and we have to hope we can somehow get word to them so they can also bail out with the troops – if, that is, we manage to organise a successful escape. The PM has let it be known internally that the position in France is grim. General Gort is already worried that Belgium is on the point of surrender as well as expressing grave doubts as to France’s being able to sustain fighting power. So all in all, not a good outlook. Three hundred and fifty thousand of our troops are stranded out there, on top of which our intercepts show that in the last week the enemy appear to have made their codes denser, so that is, alas, a further headache.’
Mrs Alderman was quite quiet, for Mrs Alderman, until Major Folkestone, after a night spent torn between his many wartime duties, appeared suddenly at what Mrs Alderman always thought of as her kitchen door.
‘You look like something Pussikins just brought in,’ she told the major informatively.
The major looked over at the cat who was curled up in front of the old kitchen range.
‘At least he’s able to have a sleep, Mrs Alderman,’ he remarked, looking at the picture of contentment with some envy.
‘I expect you’d like your usual breakfast, would you? A soft-boiled farm egg from one of our hens, some of my home-baked bread, and some farm butter and syrup, wouldn’t you? No sugar, but plenty of syrup. Want some porridge too, I dare say?’
‘I will have everything you set in front of me, Mrs Alderman.’
The major sat down, steadying himself suddenly at the table as he did so. Billy was seated opposite him.
‘Aren’t you meant to be at school, Billy?’ he asked, for want of something better to say, after suppressing a large yawn.
‘It’s half term, Major Folkestone.’
‘It’s always half term with you, Billy Hendry,’ Mrs Alderman scolded him. ‘Mind you, the amount of homework he gets given I’m surprised he’s not feeling as tired as you, Major Folkestone.’
‘What’s up then? Too much set work? Want any help, young man?’ The major squinted down at Billy’s exercise books, which Billy immediately covered with the upper half of his body, laughing.
‘Don’t look, sir. Please!’
‘Come on, Billy. What is it? Don’t say you’ve put something I shouldn’t see in your homework book, because if that’s the case I’ll have to have you thrown into my prison down in the dungeons here.’
‘You wouldn’t really, would you, sir? What a wheeze. I’ve never been in a dungeon, or a prison.’
At that Billy straightened up, and Major Folkestone seized his opportunity, and grabbed his homework. As soon as the major saw what was written out in the exercise book his expression changed and he turned accusing eyes on Billy.
‘Billy. What are you doing here, please? What is this?’
Billy reddened to the point of feeling his face was on fire.
‘It’s only a joke, sir. I saw what Marjorie was helping you with last night, and, you know – I thought I’d have a go.’
‘This isn’t a joke, Billy. This is Top Secret, and you could get into terrible trouble. Don’t you ever do this again, do you hear? I can’t allow you to play about in my office with Marjorie working there on the files, if this is the kind of thing you get up to – snooping.’
‘I – I – I’m awful sorry, sir. I just thought it was some fun.’
Mrs Alderman immediately felt for Billy, who was looking as if he wished he could drop dead in front of his hero, so she quickly placed a plate of delicious-looking porridge down in front of Major Folkestone, and handed him a small jug of fresh cream.
‘Let the poor lad off, sir. He doesn’t mean it, really he doesn’t. The truth is he is more than good at them codes, see if he isn’t. He’s like our father with the crosswords; he’s cracking, even if he is eighty-five. No trouble for him whatsoever. The same for the young lad here. You should see some of the conclusions young Billy comes to, my dear; it fair turns your head to see him once he’s off with one of those. And he invents his own and all, he does.’
Mrs Alderman ruffled Billy’s hair for no better reason than to show that she was on his side, while Billy ducked away from her and continued to stare at the major, who had at least begun to wolf his porridge.
‘Ridiculous!’ he barked before filling his mouth once more. ‘Quite ridiculous!’
Mrs Alderman sighed and shook her head.
‘It’s not ridiculous, Major Folkestone, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s Billy. Some people, now …’ She searched around for another example of extraordinary powers. ‘Some people, take my uncle, well, he was like that, he could tell you the result of a horse race before it finished, some people they’re like that, quick as a flash. Billy here, he can do numbers and codes and all that. I never have to time his egg of a morning, and that’s the truth. Four minutes to the second he will put his hand up, and by George and by jingo, Major Folkestone, four minutes it is. Instead of telling him off, my dear, why don’t you let him off? You should let him have a go, my dear. You’d be surprised.’
Major Folkestone gave Mrs Alderman a brief look. She had never called him ‘my dear’ before, and he wasn’t quite sure that he liked it. On the other hand, he wasn’t such a fool as to think that he could tell off a cook in her own kitchen, and her food being of the kind that would melt the hearts of kings and emperors he settled for ignoring the innovation.
‘Ridiculous,’ he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. ‘Ridiculous.’
‘It was just a thought, sir,’ Mrs Alderman said. ‘But in case you think I’m daft as a Somerset cider drinker, look at that, then.’
She held up another of Billy’s exercise books.
‘I won’t look at it,’ the major told her, taking it from her. ‘But I will appropriate it, thank you. And don’t you ever do this again, young man.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And where are you going now?’
‘To school, sir.’
‘I should think so too.’
Nearly a week later, on his return from school, Billy found Major Folkestone waiting for him in the kitchens of the main house. It was hardly a surprise for the major, since he knew Billy invariably headed straight there to scrounge what he could from Mrs Alderman – usually a glass of home-made ginger beer and a slice of equally home-made fruit cake – but it came as a shock to Billy to discover that on this particular afternoon Major Folkestone was there before him, enjoying a slice of newly baked sponge cake as well as a welcome cup of tea.
‘Good afternoon, Billy. And there’s no need to back out of the kitchen just because I’m here,’ the major announced, patting his mouth in his usual precise way with his napkin.
‘Afternoon, sir.’
The major finished his cake and his cup of tea, watched by a silent, subdued Billy, and then, taking a sheet of paper out of an envelope, he put it on the kitchen table in front of him.
‘What do you make of that then, Billy? Something? Anything? Or nothing?’
Billy hesitated, looking nervously at the major, suspecting some trick.
‘Go ahead, Billy, go ahead.’
Billy picked up the piece of paper. ‘It’s not in English, sir, so that’s easy enough.’ He frowned at the paper and traced the words with one finger.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I dunno, sir. I just do. It ain’t in English, that’s all I know.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Give us a mo, sir. I mean I’ve hardly had a dekko,’ Billy told him with the sudden authority of someone who is really concentrating on the matter in hand.
‘Very well. Take as long as you like. Just because we need to know by tomorrow morning doesn’t mean that I am going to rush you.’
Billy looked up.
‘Can I keep this, sir?’
‘Afraid not. Top Secret, old chap.’
‘Is this German?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Dunno what German looks like. But it certainly ain’t English.’
Billy leaned on the table, his chin on his two fists while he stared at the sheet of paper.
‘This could take days, sir,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Then I still might not be able to crack it. Are you sure I can’t have it for a bit, sir? I could take it over to the cottage, and—’
‘I can’t do that, Billy,’ the major interrupted. ‘Sorry. But there it is.’
Billy looked at him sideways with sudden cunning. ‘You could if you made me swear to the Act, sir.’
Major Folkestone eyed him back, and then straightened himself up.
‘Give me that, lad,’ he said, holding out his hand for the paper. ‘And come with me.’
Billy hopped after him, bursting with excitement.
‘You’re too young to sign anything, but I shall read this to you, and you may read, mark and inwardly digest this, young man, and remember if you let down your country you let me down, and if you let me down, you let down Marjorie.’
The major read him the relevant clauses of the Act. Billy swallowed hard and hopped from one leg to the other in his agitation before taking the proffered envelope and legging it back to the cottage where he immediately locked himself in his bedroom and wouldn’t even come out for his dinner when Marjorie and Kate called him.
‘You can’t come in!’ he yelled. ‘I’m engaged in government business!’
Marjorie pulled an amazed face to Kate, who shook her head and laughed.
‘Something tells me we’re sharing quarters with one of England’s secret weapons.’
As it turned out Kate Maddox wasn’t that far off the mark, and England’s secret weapon, based securely at Eden Park in Kent, was about to make quite an auspicious debut.
* * *
The following morning, long before breakfast, Billy staggered out of his bedroom, clutching the all-important piece of paper and one of his exercise books full of hieroglyphics.
With both the girls still sleeping h
e cut himself a piece of bread. Quickly spreading it with home farm butter, and some of Mrs Alderman’s home-made raspberry jam, he rammed his still socked feet into his shoes and stumbled off to find Major Folkestone without even bothering to do up his laces. He tripped over them twice as he hurried across the courtyard, scuffing both his knees and the palm of one hand, but despite this he hardly seemed to find the need to pause, so set was he on finding the major and telling him what he had discovered.
When he finally arrived in the great hall of the main house he realised he hadn’t an idea of where to look for the Major at such an early hour of the morning. Fortunately the soldier on sentry duty at the front door knew where his CO slept, and in answer to Billy’s urgent pleading directed the boy upstairs to the major’s sleeping quarters.
Major Folkestone was shaving at a hand-basin in the corner of the room, in his short-sleeved vest with his braces hanging down from his army trousers, half his face still covered with a layer of thick white shaving soap.
‘Got some news, have you, lad?’ the major wondered, watching Billy in his shaving mirror. ‘Find anything out?’
‘I found out what sort of code this is, sir,’ he said, waving the envelope. ‘It’s a double substitution and a – I don’t know what you’d call it.’
‘Don’t follow you, young Billy.’
The major shaved the area just under his nose carefully then rinsed off the last of the soap.
‘Care to explain?’ he went on, as he towelled off his face and wandered over to sit at a flimsy card table under the window that held a bowl of shrivelling fruit and a nearly empty bottle of whisky. ‘Park yourself down, and tell me what you know, Billy.’
‘The double substitution thing’s easy. You take a letter, see? Such as G.’ Billy had his exercise book open and was tapping a line of letters and figures he had written in one margin. ‘But instead of making G equal I dunno – let’s say you use T. Then working the alphabet from there – which would be dead easy – you takes G to equal T but then you makes T equal something else. You got to find that, course – and I mean, I think I have. I think their G equals T, then far as I can see – ’cos I don’t speak the lingo which is a bit of bish – T equals E. It’s a double code, see? Each letter having two equals, I’d say, see?’
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 23
