The Amber Shadows

by Lucy Ribchester

  ‘I mean, it’s a horrid, horrid place,’ Moira was saying. ‘But you have no idea how much that disappears.’ She was back on Reuben’s skin, where he was brown, where he was pale, her words reaching up over his shoulders, in and out of his body hair, up and down the flesh on his flanks. Men who ride horses, said Moira. Men who can fire a gun. Her mouth and her head were full of him.

  As she spoke Honey watched her own face in the mirror behind Moira’s bed, between daubs of black mould. Her red hair was wild, sticking out like autumn beech. Her cheeks each had a dot of pink, her nose and eyes were swollen as if she had caught a cold, or might weep.

  She detected a brick-by-brick wall being constructed slowly between them, Moira carving out two teams and beginning to align herself with Reuben; against whom? Honey wasn’t quite sure. Then halfway through the story a different thing began to happen. Each time Moira named a part of Reuben’s body, Honey would see someone else instead, some blue eyes, some narrow sinewy waist. Now when she caught sight of her face in the bloom of glass she was blushing.

  Moira was entertained, by herself, by Honey. She sat back, grinning, her lids half down. ‘So that’s it. We’ve done it. Once last week, once tonight, third time lucky — tomorrow maybe. I tell you, I can’t wait to be engaged. It’s nicer than being married I think. It must be. We’ll string it out.’

  How many miles was it to Russia? A thousand? The Nazis were pushing, taking and destroying everything. They had the west, they wanted the east. No wonder Moira looked so jealously over at her silk flower, no wonder she held on like grim death to her new lover.

  Honey picked up the amber. ‘Can I let you know tomorrow about the dance?’

  Moira took the panels back and made a swift rubbing with an eye pencil over the tissue. ‘You need a lie down, petal, and you need to stop thinking about these. He’ll come crawling out of the woodwork sooner or later. Maybe he’s shy.’ There was something in her voice, some new confidence. Her confession seemed to have energised her. Honey remembered the brightness in her cheeks and eyes when she had first arrived. ‘Maybe he’ll make himself known so he can help you crack them himself. Maybe that’s the point.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Honey said, wrapping the pieces away. She stood up abruptly. The world felt as if it had closed in. Moira wouldn’t believe her, she didn’t believe her. She thought she was mad, paranoid. The amber in her pocket wasn’t real. It was a joke, it was a fabrication. Moira had half-said as much. Moira didn’t understand. Moira was only helping to humour her.

  With her hand on the wood frame, she didn’t know why but she paused. She could see Moira’s face in the mirror.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Moira said. ‘Why would the Park single you out?’ Now there was definite scorn in her voice. She raised the lipstick she’d been working on to her mouth, applied it, then rubbed her lips and turned her head to peruse her expression from different angles. After a few seconds she switched her mirror gaze onto Honey.

  It was longer and more wearying, the journey back. The bundle in her pocket seemed to thump against her hip with each step she took. She found her key in her pocket. No apple tree this time, the moment had passed; the scuffs on her stockings felt wretched now. But there was one more thing she wanted to do before giving up hope.

  Next door had hens in their yard. Honey had never had recourse to crime before but for what she had planned she needed a fresh egg. There was no point writing to Dickie with pen and ink. Mrs Steadman didn’t allow trunk calls and neither, it seemed, did the Park, unless you asked, which wasn’t going to be an option. As she had picked her way down the high street she had composed a letter in her head using their favourite code, and then torn it up again. Even the boarding school code, the silly three-level wording they used, was too dangerous. Debussy — green, a low-level call for help, if one of them had been locked in the coal cellar, or was bored in the nursery. Mendelssohn was amber. Fear or upset, a need for cover or to keep an appointment. The final code was red; Stravinsky. They had never used it yet. But pen and paper would not do. She pictured that girl, Betty Somebody, getting hauled in before Tiver. Had he shouted, or was he calm? Which was worse? And where was Betty now, in a government office in London? Logging prisoners of war or serving the wounded for punishment. Had she been forgiven?

  She unlatched the gate, quiet as a cat burglar in her plimsolls, and fumbled down the path towards the stink of the coop.

  With the small sliver of moonlight her eyes picked out the plumping feathers behind a wall of wire. There were foxes about in the fields. The Martins were careful with their treasure. She unlatched the coop, feeling a cloying horror at what the night was making her do. She reached into rank moisture, tamped her hand around the straw at the entrance.

  She’d foraged eggs like this before, at school. It was a foul task, thieving them from under the mother, but needs must. She nudged the hot warm breast nearest to her, heard the awful cluck, and felt a startling flutter on her fingers.

  The bird’s terrible reptilian feet lay clutching warm smoothness. Her hand closed around it, stealing its heat. Then quickly, the booty in her palm, she darted out of the coop and prised the wire back onto its clasp before the hard peck came. A few of the hens were beginning to fuss now.

  Fearful the cock might crow she hurried away, latching the garden gate quickly. There was no use taking it into Yew Tree Cottage now. She might see Steadman in the hall with his bullseye lamps. It would have to wait for the next morning, the chance to use the scullery. She hovered for a few seconds, hoping a place to hide it would present itself. There was an empty flower pot tossed beside the Yew Tree garden gate. She lifted its cool clay. No sooner had she done so, than she heard the footsteps; two sets of them. ‘Sneaking into other people’s gardens at nights then, are we?’

  Chapter 8

  ‘I tell you, Honey Deschamps, I never would have put you for a food thief Eggs, of all things.’

  She looked at him first, of the two. He was smiling. Cold shadows travelled up his face, drawn by the thin residue of a torch he had pointed at the ground, the beam covered over with white tissue. She saw his shoes now for the first time and all she could think of was how muddy and scuffed they were. Scruffball indeed. He seemed to sense her judgement and mind it, for he moved his feet backwards out of the light. But then, if a man did insist on walking his greyhound up and down the Bletchley fields in the dead of night what could he expect?

  ‘Mr Plaidstow.’

  ‘Felix.’

  She nodded. She willed her heart to still but stubbornly it thumped on. Nijinsky’s nose was working her up and down, from ankles to knees, sniffing at her stockings, tickling her with fluttering breaths. He had a crotched blanket sagging along his wiry silver back. His pupils were big black cherry stones in the torch’s glare.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you again. I hope you don’t think it rude of me. But it happened again. We had another package come to the hut with your name on it. I wonder if they have a record wrong.’

  He stepped forward and she caught the shape of his nose, the strong black eyelashes. His hand was extended. This parcel was bulkier, double the thickness, with something making an abrasive sound at one end of it, metal. She touched the paper with bare fingertips, and noticed in the torchlight her nails were grubby from the chicken coop. He spent a little longer than he could have looking at her hand, then nodded at her to take the parcel, and waited until she’d crammed it into the crook under her arm.

  ‘That bloody messenger girl,’ she said. ‘Mind on last night’s revue.’

  Felix Plaidstow hung back. His face was in the dark so she couldn’t see whether or not he smiled. ‘Is it your birthday or something? We should make sure there’s a cake.’

  ‘Cake would be something,’ Honey laughed. ‘Only no icing, remember. No marzipan, no icing. But I hear there is a celebratory day coming up, happens every year so they tell me.’

  At this she did see the flash of his teeth, the lips curling into a smile. ‘Ar
e you going home for Christmas?’

  The package was awfully heavy, weightier than the last ones. And that metal thing in it rattled as she shifted her arm. Why did he make her think this way, in little darting thoughts that couldn’t stay in one place? She thought now of her face. Could he see her properly? Was she blushing? Was it the discomfort of the night – cold, dark and shadowy — or was it him making her nervous?

  ‘I was planning on it,’ she said. ‘Back on Boxing Day, mind. We’re all working then, that’s what you get being in a family of musicians. Nutcrackers and whatnots.’

  ‘You must tell me about them one day.’

  She waited. The greyhound shook itself out, rattling its silver collar tag, and she jumped as the flash caught the torch’s beam. When it had settled, the night was so quiet she could hear it breathing, in and out. Her voice was timid. ‘And you?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘I’m rota’d on shift. In my hut . . . I mean we can’t really very well say what’s what from one day until the next. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘Of course,’ she shot, too quickly. The dog was beginning to tug towards the garden, smelling the chickens.

  She had an urge to slice the paper with her nail and open the thing right in front of him. To watch his face. Coincidences could happen – God knew they happened all the time in war: the girl who left the shelter minutes before the direct hit; the man who accepted a place in boat thirteen to protect his superstitious colleague, and boat thirteen was the only one to make it back. Tales, so many tales of coincidence. It could happen. Three packages delivered wrongly, to the wrong hut, the same wrong hut each time. It could happen. And yet there was still something about Felix Plaidstow that made her shiver a little, the way his words seemed soft and slick, very different to his shabby clothing and his strange little dog on a ribbon, with the ballet dancer’s name — ballet, another coincidence. And what was that shiver for? Was it fear? Or was it that she’d just been thinking of him when Moira told her about Reuben, about the tough flesh inside Reuben’s hip-bones.

  Pull yourself together. The silence had lasted longer than was comfortable. Felix was still there, his blue eyes in shadow.

  ‘I wish I could invite you in.’ As soon as the words fell out she realised how they sounded. ‘I mean, you look so cold.’

  He cackled gently and tugged his lapels. ‘It’s more efficient than it looks.’

  ‘What is that? Boucle wool?’

  ‘Blackout fabric.’

  ‘Ingenious. Who made it for you?’

  ‘I did,’ he said, a little too quickly. He withdrew a step.

  ‘Nifty with your fingers. You shall have to keep that quiet or all the ladies in your hut will want you to darn their stockings. Not to mention Katie Brewster and the dramatic club.’

  She laughed. But the damage was done, and her chittering had made him retreat a step further still, pulling the dog back with him. She shifted the package and put one hand on the gate.

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Deschamps.’

  The way he said her surname pushed her heart down a little. She wished now that the dark would make her careless. She could invite him for afternoon tea, or to the Ritzy. Instead she said, ‘We should go to the British Restaurant one of these days. They do reasonable meals.’ Reasonable meals? Was she listening to herself? Provocative and dull, it was quite an accomplishment. Her mother would be appalled. Martha Deschamps had a way with men, strange men especially. She was silvery and shape-shifting. Honey had watched her at soirees growing up, but hadn’t learned a thing.

  Felix paused. He had turned towards the mouth of the street and now let out a large cold sigh. Honey scented the breath on the edge of it; bread and vinegar, no alcohol. ‘I would love to, don’t mistake me, Birthday Girl. One day. But this war’s got me tangled round its little finger.’

  Birthday Girl. He couldn’t see her lips open, her eyes freeze.

  ‘I’ll drink a sherry for you though, midway through the night shift.’

  ‘It’s not my birthday, by the way.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ There was something in his voice, incurious or mocking. Was he flirting with her? Was this what flirting was for men like him? There was some note in it that said that maybe, maybe, if you were a suspicious type — like Joan Fontaine should have been — he knew that fact already. But how could he? And why would he have called her Birthday Girl if he knew it wasn’t her birthday? The shiver came again. She tried to shake it off. It was the war. It was creeping into her blood, into her bones, into her thoughts.

  Felix took off up the road at a long stride. She heard his hard wide footsteps; beside him the pattering of the dog, as if the dog were a snare drum ticking to his bass.

  With the parcel still under her arm, she unlatched the gate.

  ‘You’ve never been to an American airmen’s dance, have you, Honey?’

  It was all they would talk about in the Decoding Room. Sylvia, and the new girl, and a girl called Penelope who was back after three days’ leave.

  ‘I’m going to blag me some Scotch, stockings and a kiss.’

  ‘Chocolate, if there’s chocolate.’

  ‘Why would they have chocolate? It’s ices those boys have. Christ knows where they keep them cold.’

  ‘In their hearts,’ Beatrix said.

  ‘Well, jolly good, I couldn’t stand that accent a second more than I need it to get an ice.’

  ‘They have tough skin, you know, on their faces.’

  ‘Compared to who, Rupert Findlay?’

  ‘It’s true. I’ve seen one up close.’

  ‘I heard they won’t use French letters.’

  ‘Rot. That’s the sort of silly story you get when you talk to the ATS girls.’

  ‘Don’t smoke their cigarettes, they’re putrid, there’s my tip.’ ‘Don’t let them grab your arse, there’s mine.’

  ‘Would you stop with this horridness?’ Moira’s voice rang out and they all fell silent, even Mooden at the pasting table. ‘They this, they that. They’re not one big lump. How would you like it if they spoke about us that way? Look at her arse, bit big but it’ll do for a tumble? Would grab her tits for a bet but you’d have to stick a rag in her mouth because that accent . . . How would you feel, if they spoke like that about us?’

  Mooden winced at the word ‘tits’. Honey looked at her keyboard. Beatrix leaned across the desk and took Moira’s wrist in her cool fingers. ‘My dear, I believe they do.’

  Work moved at a steady pace. The Red army and Yellow Luftwaffe keys were open before breakfast, there was no backlog. It felt to Honey as average a day as could be had in Hut 6. They typed, they cut, they pasted, they chatted in between, sometimes in tight, hysterical voices that couldn’t contain the excitement. Moira had a secret calm on her face that broke into a smile when she thought no one was looking.

  At half past three exactly Honey’s period arrived and she cramped over in the draughty toilet hut, weathering the waves of pain, knowing that it still wouldn’t stand as an excuse with Moira not to go to the dance.

  Last night she had torn open the latest parcel as soon as she was back in her freezing room, with a torch, under the covers to blot the noise. This one had no wax — she had scraped it over to check – but two things about it were curious. The first was a little dip in the centre, a niche for something to stand in. It was circular, carved in steps, as if to hold some other missing piece. The second oddity was the mechanics. That metal abrasive rattle she had heard came from a small mechanical box attached to the amber with glue, about an inch behind the circular dip. A tiny little spectacles screw at the base held it fast. It was exactly like a clockwork mechanism, silver, with cogs of different sizes and shapes. But there was no way to make the cogs move. It had no quartz or battery. It was completely mechanical and needed to be powered by hand. It slotted into the base of the other three sides of the box, fitting the whole thing together like four sides of a cube, without a front or a lid.

  Someone pummelled on the bathr
oom door.

  She winced, gathered the gnawing in her guts like it was a bundle, pulled up her knickers with the rough wadding towel looped in place, and went back to work.

  When the time came for the shift change, smug jibes were fired at the incoming girls, those who were scheduled for four to midnight and destined to miss the dance.

  ‘I’ll eat an ice for you.’

  ‘I’ll knock back a Scotch and soda.’

  ‘Will you get the clap for me too?’

  ‘Can I have some? I’m sure there’s plenty to go round.’

  ‘Have fun with your Big Band.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with good old Florrie Forde myself.’

  And the final, cruel instruction before the slam of the door: ‘Don’t be a wallflower.’

  The wallflower. Piteous figure of the dance hall; Our Lady of Abandonment. The heinous sin of womanhood, to be the unasked. The warning bounced round Honey’s head as she caught her corkboard heels in sinking quick-mud, clinging hold of Moira’s coat. She pulled her foot free with an inelegant suck and slime splashed up onto both their legs.

  ‘Watch it, you’ll smear my lines.’

  Moira twisted her head round to look at the backs of her legs. She had decided against the siren suit after all, for it would be too hot to dance. Instead she wore a patterned dress cut from one of her landlady’s old cotton housecoats, printed with enormous mushrooms that looked spectral in the weak moonglow. She had trimmed a sweetheart neckline and puffed sleeves and a fishtail flare at the skirt. They had both rubbed gravy browning up their calves seconds before the army bus arrived. For Moira there was time to draw eye-pencil lines for seams. With a compact mirror on the bus she had insisted on painting Honey’s mouth in bold vermilion. Finnigans brand. Colour: Home Front Ammunition. ‘The moral effect of the possession of a superb lipstick,’ said the box, ‘is to a woman as essential as a shell to a gun.’ Boiled with the cramps, all Honey could think about was that it looked like the colour of menstrual blood. Moira had beaded both their eyelashes with melted wax, bending carefully over a spoon and a cigarette lighter, sticking the black globs onto the ends of the lashes as best she could while the bus careered over stones in the road. Now the cold was making the stubble on Honey’s legs prick in goosebumps through the gravy browning, and she felt about as ugly and unprepared for a dance as it was possible to be.