Under a Wartime Sky

by Liz Trenow

  ‘It was the ballroom when the family lived here,’ Ma explained as they arranged the plates on a long serving table. Kath wasn’t listening. She could hear the orchestra playing and saw herself reflected in the mirror, lit with twinkling chandeliers, gliding about the polished floor wearing a beautiful silk ball gown in the arms of a dashing young aristocrat in white tie and tails, or perhaps an RAF officer in full dress uniform. He would invite her into the garden to watch the moon rising over the sea, and hold her in his arms for warmth before turning his face to hers . . .

  ‘Come on, girl. We’ve more pots to bring out,’ Ma called.

  Lunch was served cafeteria-style, but Kath wasn’t trusted to dish up, not on her first day. She needed to understand portion sizes first, Ma said, or she’d dole out too much or too little, and either run out or have too much left over. Either way there would be complaints. Her task was to ensure that the pots and plates of food were always replenished, and ‘to watch and learn’.

  Ma warned her that anything she might overhear was subject to something called the Official Secrets Act, which meant that she wasn’t allowed to breathe a word about it to anyone, not even other members of staff. Of course this only intensified her curiosity, and she listened as best she could from the serving table, trying to glean any hint of what all these men were doing here, cloistered in this extraordinary place, and how they all related to each other.

  The RAF officers had slight variations to their uniforms – she made a mental note to ask Mark later what all the insignia meant – but the civilians were harder to distinguish. The men in overalls were the noisiest, joshing each other and generally having a laugh. The quietest and most reserved were the men in suits, about fifteen of them, definitely the least gregarious and curiously mismatched; a real range of ages and types.

  From the way they seated themselves she could sense the level of rivalry, even mistrust, between them. They talked quietly, huddled inward towards each other, so that it was impossible to make out a single word. Which was a pity, Kath thought, because she felt certain that these men were the brains behind the big secret, the masts and the high security.

  Then, returning with a fresh pot of stew, she recognised him: small, dark-skinned and slight-framed, with an untidy shock of thick hair as black as she’d ever seen, keeping company with a much taller, broader older man, slightly balding, with an easy smile.

  ‘Hello again,’ she said. ‘I think we met at the station a while ago? And at the pram race?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Hello.’ Once more, she couldn’t tell whether that expression of slight amusement was shyness or genuine friendliness. She noticed that he refused the stew, taking only vegetables and a slice of cheese.

  ‘I’m Kath,’ she said. ‘Just started work here today.’

  Her mother’s sharp whisper halted the exchange. ‘Stop yakking and get another plate of vegetables, please. We’re running out.’

  As the queue moved forward, the older man nudged his friend in the ribs. ‘You’re a dark horse, Mac,’ she heard him say. ‘Pretty girl like that and you never said a word.’

  The head chef, Mr Brunetti – a man of Italian heritage with charming manners and a rather short fuse, Ma warned – invited her into his office at the end of the shift.

  ‘Ah, Miss Motts, take a seat,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard very good things about your work today.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Clearly he’s noted my remarkable potato-peeling skills, she thought to herself, trying to keep a straight face.

  He reached forward, taking up a sheet of lined yellow paper from his desk. ‘But I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem.’

  She’d seen this type of paper before, and knew at once what he was going to say next. Now that she was about to get the sack, the job suddenly seemed more appealing.

  ‘Now, Miss Motts, you understand this is a top secret establishment and we have to be extremely careful about who we employ?’

  She nodded helplessly. How would she ever explain to Ma and Pa why she’d been rejected?

  ‘It says here that you were discovered spying on the Manor and were questioned and cautioned by our head of security? Is that true?’

  For a moment, Kath considered reprising her birdwatching story, but decided to be honest. ‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ she began. ‘I’ve lived on the other side of the river all my life and when they started building masts and putting up fences and barbed wire, and everything was so hush-hush, I was desperate to find out what was going on over here. I was in the woods looking at the Manor through binoculars when they found me. I pretended I was birdwatching, but they didn’t buy it.’

  Mr Brunetti’s smile returned as he picked up the yellow paper once more and began to read from it out loud: ‘We concluded that Miss Motts was just a naive local girl whose curiosity got the better of her, and sent her away with a flea in her ear.’

  Her whole body seemed to burn with the shame of it. ‘But if they didn’t think I was any threat, why did you . . .?’

  ‘I just wanted to reassure myself, Miss Motts. To check whether you would be honest with me. You passed the test.’ He crumpled up the piece of paper and aimed it towards an overflowing waste-paper basket in the corner of the room. It missed. ‘So now I sincerely hope you will take up my offer of a post.’

  Kath sighed with relief. At least she wouldn’t have to confess anything to Ma. The job was dull and without tips the money was worse than she had been getting at the cafe, but for the moment she had no other choice. The official secrets document he made her read was terrifying – the penalty for breaking the rules was arrest, or even imprisonment – but she took a deep breath and signed it anyway.

  Ma was delighted with her news, and offered to stump up the money for waterproofs and rubber boots so Kath didn’t get soaked on the ferry. She soon acclimatised to the rigours of the journey and even began to enjoy it, especially when the milder weather arrived. ‘Blows the cobwebs away,’ Ma said, and she was right.

  Joan said she was mad. ‘Going on that boat in all weathers, just to get to work? And slaving away as a kitchen maid,’ she said scornfully. ‘You’re worth more than that.’ Kath tended to agree, but for the moment there was little alternative, and she’d promised herself to save for a new summer frock and sandals when the weather improved.

  She liked getting to know the ‘customers’. The clientele of the Alex had been mostly tourists whom you rarely saw more than once. At the Manor they served the same people every day and although any kind of socialising was strictly discouraged, they would exchange a smile or a few friendly words. She grew to know their preferences; Mac – who also went by the name of Vic – didn’t eat any meat or fish, Johnnie was especially fond of ham and bacon, the smiley ‘big boss’ Mr Watson-Watt liked his portions on the generous side, and serious Dr Rowe never ate desserts, preferring cheese and biscuits.

  The magic of arriving by ferry never seemed to fade, and walking between the sighing pines and up the drive as the Manor rose into view always raised her spirits. Although the kitchen and dining room were her usual domain, she was sometimes called to set or clear the table in what they called the Green Room, a large dining room with a fine marble fireplace at one end and French windows opening onto the terrace with views across the river.

  Getting there entailed going through the Great Hall, a vast oak-panelled space where they held concerts and dances on Saturday nights. One day towards the end of her shift she overheard someone playing the piano and slipped her head round the door to see who it was. It was the man they called Mac, so completely absorbed in the music that he barely looked up. The tune was a jolly ragtime number, and she found her feet tapping quietly to the jazzy rhythms.

  It came to an end all too soon but she stayed hidden, willing him to play some more. The next piece was slow and classical, the kind of music that seemed to grab her heart and root her feet to the ground. The mood built up, louder and louder, until it reached some kind of climax and then slowly, gently, faded to an
ending of such soft sadness that, as she crept away, her eyes were prickling with tears.

  Slowly, she earned greater responsibilities. Catering for forty or more was a very different matter from cooking at home, and Ma helped her to calculate the right quantities and the best saucepans to use. One day she made the perfect egg custard – never an easy task – which even earned praise from Mr Brunetti: ‘I am no great fan of your English puddings,’ he said. ‘But that was a particularly fine confection.’ Another time she baked three large Victoria sponges for teatime and learned later that they’d earned many compliments. She was soon promoted to ‘assistant cook’, much to the annoyance of Mary, who was left to deal with the mounds of vegetables on her own.

  She felt sorry for Mr Mackensie, who didn’t eat fish or meat and seemed to survive on vegetables alone, and one day she made him a special cheese and potato pie. It didn’t take more than twenty minutes, but with the cheese browned on the top it looked delicious, and when she offered it to Mac his smile was worth every second of the extra effort.

  ‘Really, no meat?’ he said. ‘What a very kind thought, miss.’

  ‘What makes you so special?’ Johnnie teased his friend.

  ‘You are welcome to try some, sir,’ Kath said, trying to ignore the hotness rising up her neck. Both men returned after their meal to compliment her cooking skills, making her blush all over again. That weekend, she and Ma went to the library to research more vegetarian recipes – vegetable pie, pumpkin soup, stuffed marrows, cheese turnovers – and the presentation of each new dish was rewarded with Mac’s sweet, shy smile.

  New people arrived – even some women, whom she assumed to be secretaries – and others left, but each day she looked forward to serving her favourites: Mac, Johnnie and a couple of others who always greeted her with cheery smiles. On the other hand, she came to dread the appearance of Frank, the weasel-faced man with ginger hair whose flirty remarks seemed designed to make her blush. ‘Morning, gorgeous,’ he’d say, or ‘What are you doing this weekend, sweetheart?’ It was innocuous enough, but it left her feeling uncomfortable. She longed to respond with a sharp remark, but knew that was not her place.

  What she disliked even more was the way Frank made disrespectful and sometimes disparaging comments about the others, referring to Robert Watson-Watt, who was portly but by no means overweight and always acted the perfect gentleman, as ‘our chubby friend’, and to Johnnie as ‘the old man’ or ‘greybeard’, even though he wasn’t that old and was always clean-shaven.

  But his most vicious remarks were saved for Mac, to whom he referred as ‘brown boy’, ‘smarty-pants’ and ‘too big for his boots’, even suggesting he should ‘go back where he came from’. Whatever had that mild-mannered man done to deserve such unpleasantness? Kath longed to report Weasel-face, but wasn’t sure what for, or to whom. Anyway, it wasn’t the place of an ‘assistant cook’ to comment.

  As the weeks went by, she could sense the growing tensions between them. Only Johnnie remained his normal cheerful self. But Vic, normally so sweet and shy, seemed uncharacteristically taciturn and Frank more than usually snappy. Some days, she thought, you could cut the atmosphere in the dining room with a knife.

  12

  It was one of those days by the English seaside that arrive like a gift, all the more special for being so rare. The bluest of skies was only softened by the slightest of sea hazes, the sunshine only disturbed by the fluffiest of clouds. The wind that had for months punished the coastline had folded away its flail, and the sea was flat and glassy. For once the Met Office had got it right. It was the perfect day for a test flight.

  As he walked the Cliff Path before breakfast, Vic felt sick with apprehension. There was no need, he told himself. Everything was arranged, down to the finest detail. Johnnie would be on board the plane and Vic would be in the receiver room, tuning the RDF frequencies and praying they could prove, once and for all, that their system would reliably identify the plane as a ‘friend’ and thus not a ‘foe’.

  Scott would be with him in the receiver room as comms man, liaising on the telephone to his opposite number at the flying boat station. Dr Rowe would be there, too, breathing down their necks. The engineers would act as spotters, one at Bawdsey and the other at the station. Their system would have to be refined in due course. But if this first test failed, they might never get the go-ahead to pursue stage two.

  Vic had not slept well, his mind churning over the possible glitches they might encounter, but now all was set. They walked to the ferry with Johnnie, Dr Rowe and the others who would be observing from the seaplane base. As they waited to embark, he found himself pulled into an awkward embrace. ‘Good luck, old man,’ Johnnie said in his ear. ‘It’ll be fine. I’m certain we’ve got this thing right.’

  ‘You’re the one who needs the luck, going up in that contraption.’

  ‘It’ll be a first for me, going up in a seaplane. Shame you won’t be able to wave.’

  The ferry powered out into the tide and was then drawn back by the current onto the opposite shore. Johnnie turned with a final wave and thumbs up before climbing onto the navy jeep waiting for them on the Felixstowe side.

  Vic waved back, putting on a cheerful smile. They had become so close in the past few months, living and working together, being in each other’s company twenty-four hours a day, getting to know each other’s ways, even anticipating what the other would say next. They knew each other’s bedtime routine, the way they folded their clothes, cleaned their teeth, the little sounds they made in sleep. At work they found themselves having the same thoughts, and would finish the other’s sentences. He trusted Johnnie completely and felt they’d become almost two parts of a whole. It was the closest he’d been, as an adult, to having a best friend.

  He shook himself. It was hardly a dangerous mission – these planes flew every day. It was just nerves. ‘C’mon, Scotty, let’s get back to work,’ he said, turning back to the gatehouse.

  The Radio Receiver Room had been set up temporarily in a wooden hut in the courtyard of the stable block, in the shadow of the receiver mast. It was newly painted, and on that hot day the fumes were fierce enough to give anyone a headache, but they had to keep the door closed to prevent any interference from the transmitting masts just a few hundred yards away. Later, new reinforced concrete bunkers would be camouflaged under great mounds of earth, always damp and musty-smelling.

  He seated himself at the desk with its small rectangular screen, next to the tracking table, and turned on the power. The A-Scope slowly came to life, blinking at him with its usual assortment of blurry grey and off-white blobs and lines. Scott stood to his right, next to the brown Bakelite telephone receiver fixed to the wall. Dr Rowe and two others squeezed into the space behind them.

  The white-faced clock above their heads ticked loudly into a thick, heavy silence as Vic tinkered with the dials, making the final adjustments. Someone cleared their throat. More silence, more ticking. The clock hand reached the appointed hour. Eleven o’clock. There was no radio connection to the cockpit, so an engineer was tasked with reporting what he could see from the window of an office in one of the hangars. Even though it was expected, the harsh ring of the phone made everyone jump. Scott picked it up.

  ‘They’re ready for the off.’

  Captain Burrows had calculated with naval precision that it would take seven minutes and thirty-five seconds to taxi out to sea, gather enough power for the lumbering Supermarine Scapa to take off, reach the agreed height and then fly to the starting position to the south, over Harwich. They would pass Bawdsey heading north over the sea precisely three miles from the coast and would then circle and return, repeating the pattern once more so that the system could be tested twice in both directions at three, ten and then twenty miles out.

  ‘Transmitter power on?’

  A voice squawked down the phone. ‘Roger that.’

  Vic visualised the arcs of radio waves fanning out around the coast, floodlighting the air wit
h invisible radio pulse energy, like the three-dimensional spider’s web Watson-Watt had described at his very first briefing. Was it a friendly bee or an enemy wasp about to fly into the lair? In the next few minutes, if their calculations were right, they would, for the very first time, be able to tell. If their system worked, it would provide the perfect defence against an enemy: a magic eye, secret, invisible and brilliantly effective.

  Slowly, a line emerged, a white squiggle worming its way horizontally across the black screen, left to right. He twiddled the left-hand knob, which identified range, looking for the spike that would indicate the presence of an aircraft or other object reflecting the beams being transmitted from another building half a mile away. Three miles, ten, twenty, thirty . . . nothing. A good sign. They didn’t want other planes in the air confusing their picture, not today.

  Forcing himself to work slowly and patiently, he turned the dial the other way, scanning the empty air. The first time he’d been trained to use this screen, back in the first months of his attachment, Vic had found it utterly confusing. How could anyone distinguish anything sensible from the apparently random streaks and quivering smears that appeared and disappeared in an instant? But he’d learned, in time, to understand the subtleties and to interpret them with accuracy. It was like reading sheet music, or Greek, or a child learning language for the very first time.

  ‘They’re up,’ Scott said, and then, a few moments later. ‘At height . . . turning . . . approaching now.’

  Vic’s heart began to thud in his chest. He twiddled the range dial. No sign. Seconds passed, and then, at six miles, he located a deep V cutting through the wriggly line.

  ‘I’ve got her,’ he shouted.

  He turned the right-hand dial, the one that would indicate bearing, the direction in which the plane was travelling. Yes, it was heading north, parallel to the coast. He twiddled both knobs now, trying to detect the modified signal.