The Amber Shadows

by Lucy Ribchester

  One of the weirdest facts of the blackout was that it didn’t apply to sound. From anywhere and nowhere, the whine of the trumpets came reaching halfway across the airfield. The mess hall was invisible, but a couple of vehicles were parked one on each side of the door, their dipped lights shining along a concrete step. Flashes came and went as the door opened and slammed. On the field, reaching all the way back from where they had been dropped off, small torch beams scattered the ground in dainty lines. Where they shone they picked up wisps of faintly falling snow; flickering scratches on the night’s celluloid surface.

  Honey and Moira slipped and slid on the ice-grass until they reached the door. Men were smoking; women were clapped to their torsos under their uniform jackets. Moira’s breath was already laced with gin. The soldiers held out hipflasks as they passed.

  ‘Hey, beauty, save the first dance for me.’

  ‘Get him out the way and save the last for me.’

  Moira groaned. The screech of a clarinet lifted in a high wash, drowning everything as the door shut behind them. ‘It’s “American Patrol”,’ she said. ‘I like this one.’ She was already scanning the tops of heads.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, if he said he’d be here, he’ll be here.’

  They left their coats in a pile on a table by the door. Frenzy and sweat were in the air already. The floor was full; skirts and feet were kicking to the music.

  The battle lines had been drawn. On one side were men in full uniform, hot under the wool, pulling handkerchiefs out from their pockets to wipe their brows. On the other side knots of women sat with arms cocked over chair backs, chatting and fiddling, talking with not much subtlety about one chap or the next. In the panting gaps between songs, some of these men would move across the floor, extend their hands and exchange a few words with a woman. If they got the magic words right, they’d end up with a dance partner. If they were lucky she’d stick with them for the whole dance. If not, they might be cut in on, and have to surrender. Sometimes you could see the relief of escape on the women’s faces when this happened. Sometimes they’d look longingly back at their old partner. Either way, they didn’t really get much choice. Once, Honey had seen a woman stride across the battlefloor and ask a soldier to dance. The man was so shocked he refused: her humiliation cost less to him than his own.

  The Hut 6 girls had congregated round a cider barrel on a table in the corner. Whisky was being exchanged in hipflasks underneath to spike the brew. Honey felt Moira’s hand on hers, soft gin breath in her ear.

  ‘Let’s get a cider and make things fun.’ As they walked to the table her anxious eyes still scanned.

  And then Honey felt the hand close to her own behind. ‘Well, smack me down, ladies, I feel like I’ve stepped straight into Hollywood.’ She looked down at their mucky calves; her own patched, faded dress with flowers on it that were fashionable the previous decade. Moira’s panstick shone gaudily under the dim lamplight.

  Reuben had combed his hair back all the way across his head, and he smelled of the same aftershave Honey’s stepfather wore. He clutched carelessly at Moira’s rump. When his hand dropped back it brushed against her own.

  ‘Honey, why don’t you find a nice chap to hop with?’ Moira said tartly. ‘I’m hot, I fancy a stroll.’

  ‘But it’s colder than the sea out there.’

  ‘Didn’t you see the stars?’ Her eyes widened at Reuben. ‘Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Almost as bright as you pair.’

  He was drunk; his gaze lolled on Honey, then back to Moira where it ran down her breasts and along the sweetheart neckline. There was a wilted bow at the dip she’d cut off an old powder puff and stitched on. It still had the brand name, printed very tiny. Looking at him, Honey found it hard to reconcile the man Moira had spoken about in such detail with the hard, steely staring airman, standing with a slight list to his balance. Try as she might she couldn’t see him through Moira’s eyes.

  ‘Fine,’ she sighed. The lovers scurried off, and she heard Moira scream with laughter.

  ‘Want Scotch?’ An airman behind the cider barrel was twinkling his eyes at her.

  ‘No, but do you have bitter shandy?’

  ‘What? A bitter . . .?’

  A man in uniform with his cap skewed came up behind the table and grabbed a metal billy can of water. ‘A Coke. She wants a Coke. We call it a Coke, sweetheart.’

  ‘It’s not a Coke, it’s lemonade with—’

  The man passed her a small glass bottle of cola with a red label.

  ‘Want Scotch in that?’ The first airman smiled, staring straight through her eyes.

  She tossed him sixpence and scarpered, slipping a little on the wet floor.

  There was a feeling in her stomach that she couldn’t place, and it wasn’t the cramps. As soon as they’d set foot in the hangar building she’d begun looking around. But this wasn’t the sort of place where a chap could bring his greyhound. Heavens, she said to herself, the real Nijinsky would have a heart attack. Come to think of it, so would Dickie. He hated this sort of dance. When they were children she used to put on Henry Deschamps’ records. Henry favoured the art deco era. He had a big appetite for nostalgia, and the twenties were his day. Deschamps Bath Soap clung doggedly to its angular design, even when Martha had taken Henry by the collar and told him it was fey, even when she sent a tea tray smashing to the floor and told him they’d make a hell of a lot more money if he’d put something on his bloody soaps that didn’t resemble the wallpaper in a granny’s toilet. He had records of ragtime and jazz, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton. Honey liked to dance to them. Dickie had come in one day when she was teaching herself the Charleston: foot out, foot in, forward, back, kick, back. There was no malice to it. He’d simply taken the record from the turntable and replaced it with something by Debussy. Then walked out of the room.

  The band were playing a furious little number. Legs were being flung, feet sliding on the mud that had flown off shoes. A woman kicked a lieutenant’s shoulder and hot words were spat. The perfume of bodies, rouge and alcohol breath grew warmer and wetter. Suddenly the noise of the brass was too raucous; it hit a roaring pitch. As the final chorus screamed, the men swung the women harder. Shrieks, fairground high,- carried into the air; cries of ‘let’s go, baby’, and ‘let’s swing this’. Wool uniforms breathed heat through their breasts, and the silk of the skirts soared.

  When it finished there was nothing but a hard, heavy panting. Honey stepped back to the sidelines where the wallflowers lurked, and clapped.

  When they struck up again it was ‘Moonlight Serenade’, slow and swaying, and she turned to look at the girls around her. Some of them were openly staring at the floor. Others looked relieved and made their way to the cider barrel. She watched as one man chased his striding partner to the edge of the hall. ‘I’m sweating, Horace, can’t you see? Have to powder me bleeding nose!’ Horace, left marooned in his cardigan and slacks, the only English man in the place, took off in the direction of the lavatory block.

  She spied Moira and Reuben. Moira’s head was tucked stiffly into his neck. She tried to feel happy for them, tried telling herself she was only jealous, only bruised and sore because Moira had dragged her out to the dance then cast her off. She wondered if she should leave, step outside and see if there was a vehicle heading back to Bletchley. She turned and wandered back to the cider table.

  ‘Boo!’ Moira’s perfume came over her shoulder.

  ‘You mean to say Honey hasn’t trapped a beau? Or even a bee?’ Reuben tapped the ash of his cigarette into an empty beer bottle.

  ‘Bees aren’t trapped by honey, darling, they make it. Lubricates the hive.’

  ‘Very well. I’m off to re-lubricate,’ he winked.

  Honey watched him move up the queue like a fish, flirting and bantering his way to the top. It came on again, the terrible surge in her stomach that she shouldn’t be there. At home lay the amber and it seemed for a swollen minute to have an urgency she was betraying by pu
shing it aside.

  ‘I might go home,’ she said over the music.

  ‘Just wait till the end of this one, we can go ablute together.’ Moira widened her eyes and slipped her arm through Honey’s.

  She looked as if she had something — many things in fact — she wanted to say but was keeping them locked away. There were so many sides to Moira, all of them alluring, all of them hard, like a piece of cut and frosted glass you could turn and turn and turn but couldn’t quite see through.

  But then they all had secrets. They weren’t workers tonight, no one was. Who knew who had seen a death, escaped death, caused a death? Who knew just by looking at any of them, what went on in their planes or tanks or huts? And to them, what was she? Just a typist.

  ‘You’re in a funk about that silly trinket, aren’t you? If you could see your face. All right, let’s take a look tomorrow. I’m sure I have some notes somewhere on hand ciphers. Come on, let’s go to the lavs. I need to try and smooth this frizz out of my hair. It’s like a hothouse in here. You could grow tomatoes.’

  The cold outside was biting brilliant, the stars in the blackout dense as crushed ice. Honey clutched Moira’s clammy hand and followed her to a tent where a woman in a greatcoat checked their passes before letting them in.

  The lavatories were filthy stalls with half-doors like a saloon. Faces were visible above pissing sounds. The chatter continued as they peed.

  ‘I say, did you see the one behind the cider table? See the teeth on him?’

  ‘That man with the three stripes. He said his name was Frank but I’m sure it was Billy last time.’

  ‘The band leader’s dreamy. Do you know if he flies a plane? I want one who actually flies a plane, not a navigator.’

  They huddled and waited for stalls, peed and shucked their skirts down and reconvened where a metal mirror had been set up on top of a trestle table. Honey rinsed her hands with the cold hose and wiped them on her skirt. In the corner a girl was weeping. She’d hoped to see a black soldier she’d met at the Swan and Ferret but no one had told her about the segregation of American troops. ‘They won’t let them in, love. It’s not that he’s stood you up.’

  ‘How am I supposed to find him?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind . . .’ Moira peered over Honey’s head into her open handbag, spying cigarettes. She shoved her hand in, nicked a couple and lit them together, watching herself and Honey in the bottom crescent of the mirror as she blew out the smoke. She passed one over.

  ‘Has he asked you?’ Honey caught Moira’s eye in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. They haven’t played “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” yet and that’s our tune.’

  She marched out. Honey followed, letting the door slam behind. It was as she was fumbling in her pocket to check she hadn’t dropped her identity card that she saw the shape of the man standing a few paces away. He was static, a black cut-out against the paler surface of the sky, smoking a cigarette. His hand rose and fell from his side. Fleecy puffs ghosted from the level of his mouth.

  She stopped. Moira had melted away into darkness, into the criss-cross of torch beams.

  The man flicked his fingers and a red diamond arced upwards then fell to the dirt. He began to walk away, towards the outbuildings by the gates where the Wrens’ billet huts were.

  She couldn’t be sure. It had been easier when he had the cigarette up by his face. But the shape of his head, the shape of his shoulders was right.

  She took a step towards him. He was walking faster now, still at a wander, not quite a dawdle. He turned past one of the concrete buildings. Honey looked over in the direction of the mess hall where the music roared, then turned and began to follow him. He was humming a little tune, the fast one the band had played second to last.

  He rounded a grey corrugated-iron corner. Now a different sound was in the air, a noise she had heard before but one she couldn’t place. It was a far cry from the music of the mess, but just as persistent. Its rumble surged louder as she drew closer. Vibrations began to filter through the grass and muck.

  There was a concrete base on which the iron hut had been built, but the shadow was the same shape as those at the Park. And that was what triggered the memory. The sound was the same one that came through the walls of Hut 11.

  The man was only a few paces ahead of her now. He had slowed. There was no one around and in the light from the stars she saw the murky shadow of his arm lift and his palm graze alongside the undulations of the metal. He let it scuff the wall, walking as he touched it, strumming and pattering his fingers, dragging his hand behind him so the tips went last. Honey watched the way his feet moved. She tried to fix in her mind Felix’s walk, the way he had stridden up the road. But it had been dark then, and it was darker now. Even if she slowed the pace of the memory down in her head she still wasn’t sure she could make the two match.

  When he reached the door, he hesitated on the handle. The noise was now at a clatter. There could have been a steam engine in there, or a row of knitting machines, or a clockwork menagerie.

  He pulled the door and a crack of light blazed out, gold on black. The noise flared.

  Honey’s toe tripped on the concrete ledge and the world came flying up towards her. She cried out. In a slow, stagnant moment, she anticipated the whack, the graze, the sting. Instead she felt a searing pain in her forearm, as a hot hand shot into vision. The fingers clamped through the fabric of her dress. She swung low, missed the ground, hung, held for a few seconds. ‘Careful.’

  He grasped her and hoisted her back to her feet. She was so shaken that for a second she wanted to weep. Cold muck had soaked into her dress and she tried to brush it off. The gravy browning on her legs was already streaky from the moisture in the dance hall. She felt like an embarrassing mess. Timidly, she looked up, expecting his reprimand.

  It wasn’t Felix.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you lost?’ The man still had hold of her arm. She couldn’t see his face fully, for the door had slammed shut again, muffling the noise, but the voice was completely different. He had an accent, a European one, though she would need to hear him speak again to try to place it.

  ‘Could ask you the same question,’ she said. Then, ‘Thank you for catching me. Nasty stuff, that concrete.’

  He didn’t say anything for a second. She saw the shadow of his neck turn over his shoulder towards the hut’s door. ‘Were you seeking the hall?’ he finally asked.

  Where was he from? He sounded German to her. Was he Dutch?

  ‘I was trying to get away from it to be honest. What’s in there?’

  ‘I’m not sure myself. I was just exploring.’ He looked at his shoes.

  For some reason she didn’t believe him. His face was still invisible in the dark. She could see only his outline picked out by the stars. Her skirt had become twisted round her icy calves and she straightened it out. When he saw she was on flat ground he loosened his grip and took a step back.

  ‘I haven’t seen you before,’ she said. ‘Do you work at—’

  ‘I work in here. In Wavendon.’ He cut her off.

  ‘Here at the airbase?’

  ‘Just. Around here.’

  She looked up and down his chest to see any reflection of stripes, epaulettes, metal badges, but only murk came back. He was wearing dark wool or linen or serge.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better leave you to it. Suppose I’d better go back to the sweating throng.’ She thought of Reuben and his shiny grey hair and his eyes on Moira’s bosoms. She had felt so close just there, so close to having a nice time.

  ‘Do you like the dancing?’ the man asked.

  ‘Not particularly,’ she murmured. Why did she linger? Why did she feel struck to keep talking to him? The noise rattled on, but it seemed quieter now. It was easier to talk, in the dark. The dark was what had made it easy to talk to

  Felix. She opened her mouth, not quite sure what was going to come out.

  ‘There you are! Mother of
God, Honey, you know how to make yourself scarce. What are you up to, creeping off around here? I thought you were behind me.’ The slap of Moira’s pace came seconds before the smell of her. How like animals the blackout makes us, Honey thought. That you smell a person and feel their shape before your eyes find them.

  ‘Oh.’ Moira stopped short when she saw the shadow of the man. ‘Hello.’

  ‘He helped me up. I fell.’

  ‘Has she introduced herself yet? Probably not. For all the fame of her family she’s got manners like a charwoman.’

  The man put his hand gingerly forward. ‘My name is Peter.’

  ‘Peter?’ Honey hesitated. It sounded such an English name.

  ‘Peter Górecki. It’s not Peter spelled the English way. PIOTR.’

  ‘Piotr Góre . . .’ Moira’s voice trailed off. She took a small step away.

  Honey reached for his hand. ‘I’m Honey Deschamps. Also not spelled the English way. This is Moira . . . Moira?’ Moira was looking over her shoulder as if someone might come tearing out of the dark. ‘Moira?’

  When Moira spoke again her voice was smaller. ‘I need to get back to the hall. Reuben’s in there.’

  ‘Wait for me. Hold on. Sorry.’ She turned her head back to Piotr. He was taking a cigarette from a case. No sooner had he sparked his lighter than she saw the shape take hold behind him. This time she did see a flash of chevrons, spiked white, followed by the strong beam of a military torch.

  ‘Oi, what’s going on here? Out of bounds, show me your identity cards, on the double.’

  ‘Honey, run. Now.’ Moira grabbed her wrist and they belted across the sliding mud back in the direction of the headlights that framed the dance mess. She turned and looked back once and saw the glow of Piotr’s cigarette disappearing into the bushes. The man with the torch beat the ground with his boots but gave up after a few strides. She thought she heard a dog bark, but it could have just been his voice crying out ‘stop’.