A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘No, Miss Goodwin. I’m sorry. I shall do my best to remedy the situation.’

  ‘Good. I don’t expect you to enjoy the job, an intelligent girl like you, but I do expect you to try your best. We all have to do things we’d rather not if we’re to win this war.’

  When Beatrice returned to her desk in the airless room she shared with the other girls, no one raised their eyes to smile at her. She wondered which ones had complained. I don’t belong here, she thought, as she mis-fed a blank form into her typewriter and ripped it out again.

  That evening she began to make plans.

  She spoke to Mrs Popham, said she might be changing her working hours. The woman agreed to look after her son overnight very occasionally, if necessary, for a higher rate. That had to be good enough for all of them at present.

  From a public phone she rang the number Mr Potter had given her, and was put through first to one switchboard, then another and another, before she heard his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him, when he’d greeted her by name. ‘The answer’s yes.’

  ‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ he told her. ‘Now listen carefully to what I have to say. I’m going to give you some instructions. You must remember them, not write them down. It’s important that you learn to do this.’

  The next week was full of purpose. She had a second interview with Mr Potter, after which she resigned from her job at the War Office. ‘A terrible nuisance, frankly, Mrs Marlow, but given your general attitude, perhaps it’s for the best,’ Miss Goodwin sighed. There were forms to sign – the Official Secrets Act – and Mr Potter said her new role required her to be a FANY, so there was a fitting for another uniform.

  At this time, she learned something that strengthened her belief that Michael Wincanton had been involved in her new appointment. It was that the organization she was joining – the Special Operations Executive – had its headquarters in Baker Street. Michael knew someone senior there; she remembered driving the grey-haired soldier with the twinkly eyes. She wasn’t invited to visit these offices – agents were kept away for security reasons – but she remembered they’d had no name or number. She’d met Peter outside that time. That was something else interesting.

  Dinah was intrigued when Beatrice came home with her new uniform, but she was a girl who’d learned at her aristocratic mother’s knee not to ask too many questions, so she accepted Beatrice’s explanation – a new driving job that might occasionally mean she was away – with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer to look after your baby for you, but I just can’t,’ she said. She was filing her nails, which were always getting chipped from messing about with car engines.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask,’ Beatrice said. ‘You couldn’t anyway, with your hours. I just need you to keep the room on for me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Dinah said. ‘As long as the rent gets paid I don’t mind if you’re here or not.’

  Anyone who didn’t know Dinah might think that rather off-hand, but Beatrice was used to the way she avoided ever expressing her feelings.

  Two weeks later she was idling at home when the letter she’d been waiting for arrived. It delivered a shock. She must report for a further interview, it told her, and if she passed this, she should be packed and ready to leave for several weeks’ training, no mention of where. She looked across the table at the child, who was slamming his spoon on the tray of his high-chair and crowing with laughter at the noise. Several weeks. How could she leave him for that long when she’d only left him overnight once before, the time she’d had to visit Angie in hospital? She put the letter back in the envelope and thrust it into the rack. She could not imagine how she was going to be able to do this task. But as the day passed, her confused thoughts grew clearer. She would have to do it. It was her duty. It would not be for ever. But it was important in the meantime that she do her best for her child.

  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that Mrs Popham wasn’t the best person to leave him with. After all, the woman would only reluctantly have him overnight. And she’d thought of a better solution.

  That evening, after he was asleep, she sat down and wrote to Angie. When she read the reply that came two days later she packed a suitcase with her son’s clothes and toys and ration book, and took him down to Sussex. She returned home the next day, alone.

  On the train back, the well-dressed elderly woman sitting opposite leant forward and dropped a clean handkerchief into her lap, for tears were running unchecked down Beatrice’s face.

  Chapter 26

  September 1942

  It was as though she entered another world, one in which, after a few days, her son faded into a comfortable place in her memory. He was always there, she always thought of him, but she didn’t worry. Now she wasn’t Beatrice any more, but Simone. In this shabby country house in Surrey with its rambling garden, or running through the fields and woodlands around, she was learning to be a different person, one with no life but the one she was being trained for, surrounded by people she was never to get to know in any proper sense, with whom she must live and work. She spoke to them in French, the complexities of which she’d half-forgotten and which at first came thick on her tongue. They were people with whom she must laugh and play and compete, but about whom she was allowed to ask nothing, and from whom she was not to expect even friendship. She shared a room with the three other women, came to know their individual habits, the position they lay in to sleep, what they muttered in their dreams, but not what their real names were or what they kept hidden in their hearts. It was a little like boarding school, but even more lonely.

  She knew she was being watched, her conversations overheard and noted; she knew she was in some way being judged. And so she guarded herself carefully, as she’d learned to do since she was a child. The Wincantons had taught her well. She’d learned to fit in, to soothe friction where she found it, to be faithful and to demand little, to cheerfully endure. But she’d learned passion and determination, too. Duty for her was mixed with love. The observers couldn’t see the secrets of her heart, but they saw the strength of character, her watchfulness, her powers of judgement. And she thought they were pleased.

  She learned things that thrilled her: how to shoot, how to fall safely, how to set explosives, how to find her way by map and compass, but also, if needs be, by the sun and the stars. How to send coded messages by wireless, how to follow tracks whilst covering her own, how to pass unnoticed, how to answer if picked out for interrogation.

  The first time she was given a revolver, she hefted its chilly weight in her hand with awe, recalling the only other time she’d held a gun: Rafe’s antique pistol at Christmas in the Sussex cottage bedroom, while her babe slept and the snow fell outside. She’d felt repulsion then. Now, in one of life’s ironic twists, she must learn to live with one and to master it.

  The first time she fired it, she was shocked by the kick-back and dismayed at how wide of the target the bullet flew. To her surprise she found she enjoyed the challenge and quickly improved. The rifle was easier to aim, held steady on her shoulder, the sights right against her eye, but the resulting ache up her arm and neck kept her awake at night until she was used to the weight. There were other nights she went to bed covered in bruises after a wrestling bout or a bad fall.

  Her weak point, as she’d feared, was running. She found she had neither the speed nor the stamina for long-distance, possibly because of her past illness, but she determined to do her best. Morning after morning, she joined the others in the cold dawn to run through misty fields or sometimes along a ridge of hills where a plain rolled out beneath. She liked it up there, not least because she fancied she could see right across to Sussex, the only time she ever allowed herself to think of her son. She was not allowed to use the telephone which, perversely, helped – and because any letter she sent out was read by someone in authority, she dared not indicate that the boy to whom she sent her love was her own child, in case they sent her home.
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  ‘It will help if you don’t think about your family,’ one of them had told her, not ungently, at an interview before she came, an elegant straight-backed woman with a strong, handsome face. Her name was Vera Atkins which, as far as anyone could tell, was her real name. ‘We are here to support you,’ Miss Atkins assured her, and somehow, Beatrice trusted her.

  Beatrice strived to please these people with every ounce of her being, to run when she was past exhaustion, to shoot straighter than any of the others, to show cunning when cunning was required, and never, ever to cry out with pain. She tried not to think ahead, about how she might be required to use her training in situations of extreme danger. She’d think about that nearer the time.

  One night she was awoken by the sound of weeping, and was surprised that it came from the bed of a quiet, proud-faced young woman known as Françoise. Bright moonlight illuminated the room. Some instinct told Beatrice to do nothing so she lay still, listening to the soft sobbing, wanting with all her heart to go to her and whisper words of comfort but sensing the girl would not like it. She would never know whether or not she was right. The next day, Françoise packed her case and was gone. Beatrice never saw her again.

  The month raced past and the band of recruits were told they should go home and wait to hear if they were wanted. Beatrice imagined she’d stay with Angie, so she gave them the address. First, though, she returned to her flat to repack. There she found Dinah, who greeted her with unexpected warmth. She slept for fourteen hours, exhausted beyond all measure. Then she boarded a train down to Sussex.

  Nanny was standing in the doorway of the cottage with the boy in her arms. When he saw his mother he gave a shout of anguish. Beatrice dropped her bags and tried to take him, but he kicked and fought and howled, and this cut her to the bone.

  ‘He’s such a good quiet boy normally, I can’t think what’s the matter,’ Nanny cried. ‘Shh, shh, little man.’

  Beatrice knew. He was angry at her for leaving him.

  After a while, his rage abated; he reached towards Beatrice with outstretched arms and, when she took him, buried his face in her neck. Nor would he let her go. They clung to each other as though they wanted to be one.

  When she looked up it was to see Angie, leaning against the doorway to the living room, her arms folded, a curious expression on her face. She came forward and they embraced.

  ‘Bea, you do look marvellous. Oh, sweetheart, what a silly fuss. Come here, my love.’ But the child burrowed tighter into his mother.

  ‘Darling, don’t be like that,’ Angie said, stroking his soft dark hair.

  ‘He’ll be all right, the love,’ Nanny cooed to him. ‘Such a good boy he’s been whilst Mother’s been away. You’d hardly know he was here most of the time. He never cries, you know. Now I remember Peter, when he was a baby. Just the same. Whilst you, missy . . .’ she told Angie, with a benevolent look, ‘you always made your feelings felt.’

  ‘Oh, Nanny. What else should I have done when Ed and Pete got all the attention? Well, Ed did, anyway,’ she said, moulding her lips into a soft, downward curve as she spoke his name. She looked quite thin – thin and elegant, Beatrice thought, following her into the living room.

  A fire crackled in the grate, for October had brought cold winds. A clothes-horse full of little clothes and nappies stood next to the fireguard. There were toys strewn about the floor, toys Beatrice had never seen before. She sat the child down and tried to interest him in some wooden bricks, but he batted them away and crawled quickly into her lap. He’d changed so much, she saw, now he was calmer. His movements were sturdier, his expression more purposeful. ‘No,’ he kept saying.

  ‘No what, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, he says “no” to everything,’ Angie laughed. ‘Even when he means yes.’

  Beatrice could hardly keep her eyes off him the whole day. The things he could do. Walk his way round the room, if he held onto the furniture, try to put a spoon to his mouth. She’d missed seeing him learn all these things. It was painful, too, submitting to his new routine.

  ‘He’s used to sleeping by himself now,’ Nanny said sternly, when Beatrice saw she was expected to have Hetty’s room, Hetty still being with her mother in Cornwall. Nanny, it was, who knew the times of her child’s naps, who ordered the afternoon walk with the pram and who said that he was to have no milk during the night and forbade her to pick him up when he woke briefly during the evening.

  ‘Oh, Gerald loves him to bits,’ Angie told her when she asked if he minded having him. ‘He’ll be home in a few days, he says, if he can get away.’

  Beatrice slept like the dead again that night without remembering her dreams. Woke early, as she’d got used to doing, and let herself out in the morning darkness to run. Otherwise, she tried to lose herself in being a mother again, but all the time a part of her mind was still with the group in Surrey. She felt alert to what might happen next, restless. When she was supposed to be building a tower for her son to knock down for the twentieth time, her thoughts drifted. If they didn’t want her back, then her old life could resume. But she felt disappointment at that idea, too. Her boy was all right, she told herself. He’d be all right if she left again.

  Angie noticed her distraction. ‘Let me have him,’ she said. Now that he was used to his mother being there again, he was content to go to Angie. And Beatrice was disturbed to find that her jealousy at this was tempered with relief. She felt sorry for Angie, too. She’d noticed the girl was thin, but as she put out her hands to take the child, she saw quite how loosely her clothes hung on her. How unhappy she must be after the loss of her babies.

  When she asked Angie how she was, the reaction was brittle, defensive, though she admitted that yes, the doctor said they could try again. There was no reason not to hope.

  After a week, Beatrice received a letter asking her to report for another training session in a further week’s time. Part of her felt a dragging reluctance, but something pulled her onwards: she knew she had to do it. She was needed. She might make a difference.

  ‘Could you bear to keep looking after him?’ she asked Angie.

  ‘We’d be desolate if you took him away,’ was Angie’s reply. ‘But where on earth are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. It’s just training,’ Beatrice said simply.

  October 1942

  This time Beatrice and some other agents were sent on a long and tedious train journey to Scotland. At Glasgow they changed onto a small local line, finally being told to alight at a tiny country station where a lorry waited for them. From there they were driven over unmade roads to a handsome granite house overlooking a freezing, pewter-coloured sea. In this desolate but beautiful landscape she was to spend a month undergoing a physical training that would test her stamina beyond endurance.

  There was only one other woman in the group, a sturdy, plain-faced girl known as Geneviève, a year or two older than herself, with whom Beatrice shared a room – not that they were to spend much time in it.

  ‘You girls, you’re the same as the men,’ was the clipped instruction of the officer in charge. ‘No whining to me for favours.’

  ‘He’ll have you peeing standing up,’ joked his NCO, a small dark Welshman who clearly relished his job of goading on the freshers. The women made an unspoken pact to ignore his comments, which proved the best possible course. They knew they had to be as good as the men, if not better, and not to make a fuss about it. How they peed would be the least of their problems.

  It was full commando training. Twenty-five-mile treks across mountains in the dark, scaling the most impossible cliff-faces whilst weighed down with great coils of wire and weaponry, sleeping out on hilltops without blankets in the pouring rain, dragging equipment through icy rivers. In addition, they learned how to shoot a wide variety of guns, handle grenades, make bombs. Geneviève had reserves of energy and endurance that drew open admiration, even from the Welshman. Beatrice stumbled through, never quite as fast as the others in the mo
st exhausting expeditions. It was sheer determination that got her through and it was that that they noticed.

  Rarely did she have the opportunity for reflection. If there was ever the time to sit down to write a letter to Angie, or her parents, which was practically never, she could think of nothing she was allowed to say. What was more, the distance between her world and theirs was so great, she could hardly visualize them and ended up merely sending her love. More often than not she simply gave up and went to sleep. Sleep was what they lacked, and became the thing they most desired. She was amazed by the circumstances under which she found she could catnap, in the freezing cold or leaning against a tree. Even twenty minutes would restore her.

  There was no time, no reason to think of her child, but there was to think of Rafe.

  Once, when she battled to launch a canoe in choppy seas to lay a depth charge, a picture of that awful stormy Cornish sea flew hard-edged into her mind.

  Another occasion was the climactic event of her training, the parachute jump. For this they were transported to a Parachute School in the north of England. Exercises in falling – hands in pockets, legs together, on impact rolling to the left or right – were followed by jumps in a hangar from platforms of increasing height, whilst attached to a cable. Finally, she and the others were taken up in a plane and made to do what every nerve in her body screamed against doing: dropping into empty air. The initial sensation was every bit as bad as she had feared, but she managed to jerk open the parachute and euphoria followed as she floated quietly down to a peaceful English landscape spread beneath her. Then the ground was rushing up and she hit it, rolling over into a patch of nettles, a humbling end to all the hubris.

  Still, as she rolled up her silken cradle and queued to return her equipment, a sense of satisfaction swelled in her.

  ‘Well done, girls,’ the young airman said, taking her harness. ‘Here’s your prize.’ He pushed an embroidered badge into her hand. When she looked at it she was shocked. It was an identical badge to the one that had dropped out of Rafe’s pocket.