Under a Wartime Sky

by Liz Trenow

  ‘Give us a hand, love, would you?’ Nancy asked as she stacked a large tray with scones, pots of jam and cream, cakes and buttered teacakes. ‘It’s just the tea to come, and the hot water, if you wouldn’t mind.’ Kath busied herself at the urn filling the gleaming silver teapots and water jugs, and it was only as she approached the table with three heavy pots threatening to burn her fingers that she recognised them. They were the men from the Manor.

  ‘Hello, darlin’.’ The man with the weasely face smirked suggestively. ‘Seen you before, haven’t we? At that crazy pram race last summer?’

  ‘Shush, Frank,’ said an older man with round glasses. ‘You’re not here to chat up the waitresses.’ Kath put down the pots and enquired whether they would like her to pour. ‘Thank you, miss, but I think we’ll manage.’

  ‘I’ll just bring the hot water then.’ As she turned, she caught the dark-haired man watching her, with a shy smile. She smiled back in silent acknowledgement, sensing that he probably didn’t like Frank much either.

  While serving her own tables nearby she lingered, trying to listen to their conversations, but learned nothing save that the Manor was beastly cold and the food terrible. What a curiously mismatched group they were: a real range of ages, some formally dressed and others in more relaxed garb, none the slightest bit stylish. They were a work team, she thought, rather than friends; people who seemed perfectly familiar with each other and clearly sharing a common purpose, but without much mutual affection.

  ‘I can’t see why you seem to find them so fascinating,’ Pa said, when she recounted the story later.

  ‘Unless you’ve got your eye on one of them, you little hussy?’ Mark sniggered.

  ‘Not at all,’ she bristled. ‘They’re a plain-looking lot if you must know, and too old for me. I’m just so curious about what they’re up to over there. Do you ever hear anything down at the station, Mark?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘All we know is they’re tight as ticks, which means for certain that whatever they’re doing over there is grade one top security.’

  It niggled her, not knowing what was happening right on her doorstep. What exactly was so secret about it that they needed a guard on the gate and barbed wire all over the walls? And what on earth was that enormous mast?

  Pa was sceptical when she asked if she could borrow his binoculars. ‘The marshes are good for migrating birds at this time of year,’ she said, repeating something she’d overheard in the cafe. He raised an eyebrow, but agreed to lend them and showed her how to focus each eyepiece. On her next day off, she packed them into a shoulder bag along with a bird book from the library.

  On the ferry she chatted to Charlie Brinkley about birds. With his mind on the tide, he paid little attention, but at least he’d make a good alibi should anyone question her. On the Bawdsey side she followed the road around towards the marshes and then slipped off to the right, under cover of the area of scrappy woodland that bordered the Manor’s grounds.

  Getting within sight of the buildings turned out to be more difficult than she’d expected. Brambles tore at her legs, branches whipped her face and fallen trees caused her to make several diversions, but she pushed on until she encountered a chain-link fence a full six feet high topped with evil-looking coils of barbed wire. Walking along the perimeter, she eventually discovered a point at which she could see through the undergrowth the back of what looked like a stable block, and beyond that, the base of the tall metal mast.

  She focused the binoculars as Pa had shown her. At first, the place looked deserted. The mast itself appeared much taller and wider at its base than she had imagined. At the top was a platform, and halfway up – hold on a sec – a tiny speck was moving. She focused again and saw that the speck was a man, climbing down a flimsy-looking ladder.

  A heavy hand on her shoulder made her yelp with fright, nearly dropping the binoculars.

  ‘Excuse me, missy. I’m afraid you will have to come with me.’ It was a tall, burly man in uniform with a gun holster slung beneath his arm.

  ‘I was looking for birds,’ she stuttered.

  ‘And just what kind of birds can you see over there?’

  ‘Ermm, blackbirds, and robins, and . . .’ Her mind went blank.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not exactly convincing me, miss. This is a top secret facility, and we take any breaches of security very seriously. Very seriously indeed. Now hand over those binoculars. You’re coming with me.’

  When she hesitated, he grabbed them from her.

  ‘Now, do as I say or I’ll have to handcuff you.’

  His hand was at the small of her back, propelling her forward.

  ‘Am I being arrested for birdwatching?’

  ‘We’ll decide whether we think you were spying once we get you back to the guardhouse.’

  ‘Spying? Why on earth would I . . .?’

  ‘That’s exactly what you’re going to tell us. And at that point it may be a matter for the police.’

  The police? This was serious. Pa and Ma knew most of the coppers based in the town, and would be bound to find out. ‘Look, please, just let me go and I’ll head over to the marshes, which is where I’d originally intended to go.’

  ‘Just be quiet and walk, miss. You’ll have your say once I’ve got the boss down here.’

  At the guardhouse she was taken to a dismal, dimly lit room with metal bars at the window, furnished only with a small table and four hard chairs. As he left, the key turned in the door from the outside. She was actually locked in. In the silence, she could hear her heart pounding in her chest. How could they possibly think she was a spy?

  After what seemed like an hour, the guard returned with another man, tall and moustachioed, wearing a suit and tie. ‘Well now, what have we here?’ His smooth demeanour and unsettlingly quiet, assured voice was somehow even more terrifying than the threats of the burly man with the gun. ‘Now I want you to take a seat and listen to me, miss. Tell me your name, age and address, the names of your parents, if any, what school you go to and where you were born.’ As she tried to gather her thoughts and answer calmly, the guard painstakingly recorded everything in a yellow lined notebook, his chubby fingers struggling to manipulate a blunt stub of pencil.

  ‘Honestly, I promise. Hand on heart. I was birdwatching. There’s a book in my backpack. Ask Charlie Brinkley.’

  The man sighed. ‘I’m afraid Jenkins here doesn’t believe the birdwatching story on account of the fact that you were clearly looking through your binoculars to observe our mast, which led him to conclude that you were probably spying. You can hardly be unaware that this is a top secret facility, miss?’

  She nodded.

  ‘So perhaps you would like to explain precisely what it was you were looking at, and why.’

  ‘I wasn’t spying. All I wanted was to find out a bit more . . .’

  ‘What is the difference between “finding out more” and spying, would you say, miss?’

  ‘Look, I know it was stupid, but I wasn’t doing it for anyone else, I promise. It was just to satisfy my own curiosity. I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.’

  For a few long moments he said nothing. Then, at last, he sat back in his chair. ‘Well, Miss Motts, I am inclined to conclude that you are just a silly young girl who is completely unaware of the seriousness of her actions. But I’m afraid we will have to record the details of this incident in our security log and we will also, as a matter of course, pass them to the local constabulary.’

  ‘Do you really have to tell the police? I mean, if you believe I’m not a spy?’

  ‘They won’t take any action, not this time. They will just hold it for their own records.’

  ‘You mean, just because . . .’

  He silenced her with an upheld palm. ‘Enough, Miss Motts. You have shown a serious lack of judgement and are fortunate that, for now, I have decided not to take it any further. So off you go before I change my mind, and don’t let us ever catch you “birdwatching” around here aga
in.’

  ‘Honestly, Kath, what an idiot,’ Joan said, when she’d stopped laughing. ‘You could have got yourself properly arrested for spying.’

  ‘I was properly arrested. They locked me in. Cripes, they really mean business over there.’

  Joan didn’t seem to be taking her seriously. ‘Do you remember what Charlie said?’ She mimicked his Suffolk lilt. ‘Curiosity killed the cat, in’t that what they say?’

  ‘Do you really think they’ll tell the police? I could lose my job.’

  ‘Nah, I think they were just trying to scare you,’ Joan said. ‘Look on the bright side. They didn’t shoot you at dawn, or whatever it is they do with spies.’

  6

  Vic could hardly believe he’d been at the Research Station for nearly nine months.

  His first few weeks had been a blur of information about the various aspects of what they’d been instructed to refer to, even among themselves, as Radio Direction Finding. As the months went by and others arrived, he had begun to feel less like a raw newcomer, growing increasingly confident of his place and often finding himself in demand to help solve the knottiest problems.

  Never before had he felt filled with such sense of purpose. No longer was he researching dry academic theory behind laboratory doors, or devising complex theorems inside workbooks. Now, he discovered, his ideas were often pressed into practical application, almost at once. Engineers would beaver away on adjustments to existing equipment or developing additional bits of kit, reporting back within days on whether the trials had been successful or not, and whether more refinements were needed. It was hugely satisfying.

  Most mornings, Watson-Watt would drop into their team meetings to check on progress. More often than not they would have to admit they were ‘still working on it’. Vic longed to be able to reply, ‘Well, yes, we might be onto something.’

  Sometimes, after days of wrestling with a particularly complex problem and frustrated by others who would insist on leading their calculations down what he considered to be blind alleys, Vic would take long, solitary walks to clear his mind. Conscious only of his breathing, of taking one step in front of the next, distracted from time to time by the nature around him – a low-flying owl quartering the marshes for prey, or a badger snuffling in the hedgerow – he found tranquillity and clarity. Somehow, although he was never conscious of this happening, it allowed the thoughts in his head to disentangle and reorder themselves.

  After supper he would return to his room and start work. He’d unearthed some roll-ends of wallpaper in a cupboard and pinned them back-side outwards to the wardrobe door. Using the thickest of pencils he could beg from the draughtsmen’s workshop, he would scribble equations till well past midnight.

  The solution would arrive; not on the first evening, perhaps, nor even the second, but usually within the week. The euphoria of discovery was better than any drug, better than wine or whisky, but afterwards sleep was usually impossible.

  ‘I think I’ve got it, chaps,’ he would announce the following morning, rushing to the blackboard to share his results. It was Watson-Watt’s management style to take a back seat in such discussions, allowing others to take the lead, but no one could mistake the beam on his face as from the tip of Vic’s squeaking chalk would emerge complex equations and diagrams, revealing solutions of elegant simplicity.

  Clouds of white powder dusted his shoes as the explanations tumbled from his lips, although he was always careful to claim that they were not ‘his’ solutions. All he desired was that they might be taken forward as the basis for further refinements of the radio detection equipment, which might in turn help to neutralise any future air attacks, safeguarding the country and its populace. It was an exhilarating feeling.

  Not everyone seemed to share this enthusiasm. Glances would be passed, leaving a cold sourness in his stomach. Although at first he thought the nit-picking, churlish and sometimes even childish queries were just trying to catch him out, he began to realise they were really signs of something more sinister: jealousy.

  At school he’d become accustomed to being the outsider, the brown boy, the bright boy, lousy at games but good at maths and music, and there were always others like himself to pal up with. At university he’d found companionship with other students working alongside him on their own projects, although never in direct competition. Here, among this small group of brilliant minds closeted away in this beautiful place, none of his old strategies seemed to work. Each of the teams had been personally selected by a man many regarded as a god, but instead of working towards a common purpose they seemed to be competing for his approval.

  Vic found refuge in the Manor’s gardens, which had been sadly neglected since the Air Ministry took over. The beds in the Round Garden, said to have been the foundations of a long-demolished Martello tower from Napoleonic times, were smothered with couch grass; the roses in the Italian Garden had grown rampant over their pergola, the lily pond was choked with waterweed and the vast walled kitchen garden was cultivating a fine crop of nettles.

  What he most loved was the Cliff Walk, a switchback of paths created out of artificial rocks by the former lady of the manor along the sandy crags overhanging the pebbly beach below. Although entirely unprotected from onshore winds, it was often strangely sheltered, even warm. Niches and seating areas created out of the ‘rock’ provided perfect hideaways. From here there was nothing but the vast vista of the North Sea to interrupt his thoughts.

  Unlike the clear blue sea off the coast of Kent, or the wide rivers of opaque green that he remembered from India, the Suffolk seas were usually grey-brown, the colour of milky tea, bulging with the swell or stippled with breaking waves the locals called ‘white horses’. But on a few rare occasions, particularly at the height of summer, the sea lay flat as glass, almost pearlescent with blues and whites reflected from sky and cloud, shimmering and shifting like a mirage before your eyes.

  It had been such a day during the sudden heatwave that arrived late the previous September – an ‘Indian Summer’, they called it – when he had been resting in his favourite niche contemplating the latest mathematical conundrum and heard voices below him on the beach, out of sight. Even though they were some twenty yards below him, every sound seemed to be amplified off the sea.

  Some of the other chaps were partial to sea bathing. He listened with amusement as they urged each other on, and the howls of shock as they plunged into the water. However calm and beautiful, it was always bitterly cold. The shouts continued – some kind of game: he imagined piggy-back battles, trying to topple each other. A decade in male-only institutions had shown him that if there was no ball to kick around or throw, play-fights always ensued.

  The splashing and laughter abated; they must now be out of the water, drying off.

  He could identify some voices, including those of Frank Wilkinson and Johnnie Palmer, the older man who’d welcomed him that first day. Although not a fast mind, he had the ability to think deeply and rationally. He might say little during discussions but then, towards the very end, would come out with really sensible, considered suggestions, in a quiet voice that sometimes got lost in the hubbub of competing views. Vic’s respect for the man had grown over the months and he was irritated by the way some of the others teased him, mimicking his flat Midlands accent.

  ‘Christ, that was bloody freezing.’ That was Johnnie. ‘Good, though. Sharpens the mind.’

  ‘Could do with a bit of sharpening, Johnnie-boy, after yesterday,’ Frank said.

  ‘What happened yesterday?’

  ‘What the boss said.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That we don’t have much time and we need to hone our problem-solving; to focus more and think tangentially, those were his very words.’

  ‘Sounds like a contradiction in terms.’

  Laughter from the others.

  ‘Apparently we need to do both at the same time.’

  ‘Like magicians?’

  ‘Like teacher�
�s pet.’

  ‘Pet? Who’s that?’

  ‘Mackensie.’

  Vic’s stomach knotted painfully.

  ‘Whatever do you mean, pet?’

  ‘’Cos he always seems to have the answer. Haven’t you noticed? The boss adores him.’

  ‘He’s a bright lad. Sharp as a knife.’

  ‘Yeah, but can he be trusted?’

  Vic found that he was holding his breath.

  ‘Are you saying you don’t trust him?’

  ‘Well,’ Frank’s voice lowered, but was still audible. ‘He’s not exactly one of us, if you get my gist?’

  Beads of sweat broke out on Vic’s forehead.

  ‘Because he’s got a dark skin? Honestly, Frank, whatever difference does that make?’

  ‘He’s only half British,’ Frank said. ‘So you have to wonder, is he only half-loyal?’

  ‘The boss has picked each of us for different reasons, and if you want to challenge his choices that’s up to you, Frank. But me, I’m just happy trying to do my best at the tasks we’ve been set.’ At last, the voice of reason. At least Johnnie was on his side.

  Another man, unidentifiable: ‘If we don’t pull together we’ll never get anywhere.’

  ‘Well said.’ This was Johnnie again. The pebbles rattled as someone stood up. ‘I’m going back. It’s nearly time for tea.’

  Vic felt unable to move, weighed down by a heavy sense of foreboding. Why was Frank casting seeds of mistrust? Had he done something to annoy him, or was it really just the colour of his skin? Vic wondered. Frank was prickly and rather annoying, but Vic had never imagined that he could be quite so jealous and manipulative. He hoped it wouldn’t become a problem.

  At Christmas they’d been given a week’s leave and Vic endured the journey on slow, crowded trains to London, then onwards to Tunbridge Wells. It took nearly a whole day, but the look on his father’s face was reward enough.

  He broke out a new bottle of Scotch whisky. ‘Special occasions and all that, my boy.’