Thirty-five minutes later, Elsie knocked on Wing Commander Shorter’s office door.
‘Enter.’
Elsie entered the office with a salute. Shorter was slouched behind his desk, reading some paperwork. Elsie placed the report on his desk.
‘What’s this?
‘Our findings, sir,’ Elsie answered.
Shorter chuckled. ‘Your findings. How lovely—I eagerly await to read those. Put them over there,’ he said, gesturing to a mountain of paper stacked precariously on a chest close to the door. He returned to his reading but Elsie didn’t move. He huffed and looked up. ‘Was there something else?’
‘Yes, sir. I’d like to leave the island, as soon as possible, please.’
Shorter set down his papers and sat up with a toothy grin. ‘Would you now? I expected as much. Too harsh for the fairer sex, I said it all along.’
Elsie wanted to object. Her desire to leave the island was nothing to do with being the fairer sex. But what was the point?
‘And the other one? Michael? Is she going too?’
‘No, sir. She would like to continue here for a little longer.’
He raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘There’s a seaplane leaving this afternoon, I’ll see you have a seat on it.’
‘Today?’
‘Well, do you want to go or don’t you? Or did you want a bit of a holiday first?’
‘Today will be fine. Thank you, sir.’ She saluted and left the room. Her time on the island was over.
Stifling back her tears, she hurried to her accommodation and pushed the door shut. ‘I need a cigarette.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he would read it, but I know he won’t,’ Elsie complained, rooting around agitatedly in her suitcase. She pulled out a packet of Piccadilly cigarettes and lit one, flopping down onto her bed.
‘Not about that, about you leaving. What did he say about that?’
‘Oh. I’m going this afternoon—I can’t cope because I’m a woman, you see.’
‘Oh, Elsie! You can’t,’ Aileen protested. ‘At least stay for a few more days.’
Elsie turned to face her friend. ‘Sorry, but I need to go. I just can’t keep seeing Woody about the place; I really can’t. I need to get back to England and far away from all this.’ She sat up and addressed her friend earnestly. ‘You’ll be okay, but you will need to push Shorter to make any changes.’
‘That’s not likely going to happen, is it?’
Elsie drew a long drag on her cigarette and shook her head. ‘No. The island will have been taken over by the Nazis or bombed into oblivion before he takes any action.’
A heavy silence fell between the women. Elsie began to think of all the death and devastation already wrought upon the people here; she couldn’t bear the idea of walking away knowing that their report, which could save lives, would be forever consigned to a stack of meaningless paperwork.
‘Sod it,’ Elsie said, standing abruptly. ‘I’m going today anyway.’
‘Oh, what now?’ Aileen questioned.
‘I’m going to make him read it.’
Aileen laughed. ‘And how are you going to do that, exactly?’
‘Absolutely no idea,’ she grinned, stubbing her cigarette into the glass ashtray at the foot of her bed. ‘But I’m leaving later so I need to try something.’
‘Good luck.’
Elsie strode from the room, through the maze of tunnels until she reached Shorter’s office. There, she hesitated outside and the flurry of confidence that she had just displayed to Aileen vanished. How could she make him read it? And even if she did, he wouldn’t take any action. Shorter reading the report wasn’t the problem, she realised. Shorter himself was. She began to walk slowly away from his door, towards the entrance staircase, a vague notion of an idea forming in her mind; she needed to go above his head, and so she made for the one place where she knew that she would find the island’s military bigwigs.
As she neared the top of the staircase, she was thankful to hear the repetitive plink, plink of heavy rain on the armoured entrance. Rain meant no air raids. No air raids meant no sirens. No sirens meant that the people that she was hoping to locate wouldn’t be hunkered a hundred feet below ground.
The sky above her was an untidy patchwork of black and grey, its seams spilling a deluge of water on the stricken island. She felt great sympathy for the poor islanders whose only respite from heavy bombing occurred in inclement weather.
She arrived at the Westminster Hotel soaked through to the skin. She placed her hand on the handle and pushed it open.
‘Elsie,’ a voice called from down the street. She turned to see Woody jogging towards her. ‘Can we talk, please?’
Her mind was calm, clear and set on returning to England; she didn’t want to talk, no. Why did the past persist on holding her captive so? She looked up at him as he drew up in front of her. A lock of his hair had loosened itself and had fallen in front of his pitiful eyes; inside her, the rush of a warm feeling that she had experienced last night made a creeping return. ‘Okay. We can talk over breakfast.’
Woody’s eyes lit up as he pulled open the door, ushering her inside.
‘You’re saturated,’ he commented, placing his hand in the small of her back, as they took the short flight of steps up to the restaurant.
Elsie simultaneously flinched and welcomed his gentle touch, as he guided her into the crowded restaurant. She looked down at the droplets of water falling from various points of her sodden skirt hem. ‘It’ll dry.’
A waitress approached them. ‘Hello, would you like a table?’
‘Yes please,’ Elsie replied, quickly scanning the flashes of all the assembled dignitaries. ‘That one over there, please.’ She pointed to an empty table sandwiched between various high-ranking officials from the three military strands, drinking coffee, smoking pipes and mulling over some aspect or other of the war.
Woody reached for her arm. ‘What about that one by the window,’ he whispered. ‘It’s a little more private.’
The waitress faltered, her eyes jumping between them for a decision.
‘That table, please,’ Elsie insisted.
The waitress waited for them to be seated. ‘No menus, I’m afraid,’ she said, her face scrunching apologetically. ‘We’ve got sargu marinat—local marinated fish, stuffat tal-fenek—local rabbit or pastizzi.’
‘Just a pastizzi and sweet tea, please,’ Elsie ordered.
‘Same for me,’ Woody added, waiting until the waitress was out of sight before leaning across the table and whispered, ‘Don’t you trust me or something?’
‘Of course I trust you,’ Elsie answered.
‘Why are we practically sitting with the old gold braids, then?’
Elsie turned her head surreptitiously and took in the table beside them. Quickly scanning their flashes, she spotted the man that she had hoped to see. Air Vice-Marshall Lloyd—the air commander of the entire island. She held him in her peripheral vision. Now what? Was she just going to interrupt his conversation? Tell him all the things that he was doing wrong?
She turned back to face Woody and realised that he had asked her a question. ‘There’s something I need to do later. Someone I need to talk to.’
Woody eyed her curiously, but said nothing. He was still leaning over to her and now he reached and took her left hand. ‘Listen, Elsie, there’s something that I need to tell you. Something I need to say if we’re—’
‘—Don’t say it,’ Elsie said. ‘We’ve both done things—let’s just not bring them out into the open. What’s the point? Nothing can happen right now. There’s a war on. I’m married.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Why don’t you divorce him, Elsie? You said you didn’t love him, so why stay with him?’
The question knocked her thoughts off-balance, even though it was one that she had been considering since the day that she had signed the marriage register. Why hadn’t she divorced him? More and more people were doing it.
The couple running the pub in Nutley had done it; the gossip, scandal and side-taking had rippled through the entire village for months on end, but now it was all but forgotten. She caught herself wondering what her family would think, but then the blunt truth hit her: she had no family. Her train of thinking stabilised once more. ‘Once this is all over,’ she said, ‘I’ll sort it out. Get out of the marriage.’
Woody smiled, took her hand and gently kissed her fingers. ‘If I wasn’t doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world in one of the most dangerous places in the world, I would have asked you to marry me.’
Those same heart-stopping feelings that she had felt for him last night pulsated around her body, rising through her and flushing her cheeks. She smiled coyly but said nothing, allowing herself to become lost in him once more.
‘Here you are,’ the waitress said, placing down the food and drink before moving to the next table.
‘Well, if you won’t marry me—’ Woody began.
‘—I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry you—I just can’t.’
‘Well, if you can’t marry me, then at least let’s spend some time together on the island.’
Elsie sipped her drink. ‘I’m leaving today.’
She received his look of horror and acute disappointment like a lance to her heart. Maybe she had been too hasty in her request to leave…No, she quickly reasoned. She had to go.
‘Why today?’ he begged.
‘I’ve done what I came here to do,’ she said simply, glancing to one side and seeing that Air Vice-Marshall Lloyd was still in the depths of conversation. She had almost done what she had come here to do.
‘Where will you go from here?’
Elsie shrugged. ‘Wherever the Air Ministry decides to send me.’
‘So this is it?’ Woody asked. ‘We just leave it to the God of war to decide our fate?’
Elsie laughed. ‘Something like that, yes.’
The sounds that came from the adjacent table suggested that the RAF bigwigs were preparing to leave. Now was her chance. Her one opportunity. She released her hand from Woody’s warm grip and stood to face the group of five men.
‘Sir,’ she said confidently, with a self-assured salute. ‘May I speak with you, briefly?’
Air Vice-Marshall Lloyd, a clean-shaven bulldog of a man in his late forties frowned at her. ‘Are you one of the two WAAF ladies I had drafted in to help with the islands Y-Service?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Elsie replied. ‘That’s right.’
He smiled. Thank God, he smiled. ‘How’s it going?’
‘If you don’t mind my saying, sir,’ Elsie said, ‘there are a lot of problems that need urgent attention.’
‘Go on,’ he encouraged.
‘Well, sir. Between eight o’clock in the evening and eight o’clock in the morning we have no operators listening in, so the Luftwaffe and the Règio Aeronautica can say whatever they like over the airwaves and nobody hears. And believe me, sir, they say a lot during those night-time hours. Second of all, we’re missing a great deal of R/T because of the lack of skilled operators. We need to at least double the number of operators in each station, who can maintain a twenty-four-hour watch. We also need telephone lines to be installed in all field units with a direct line to the Lascaris War Rooms. So much vital operational intelligence is taking an unacceptable amount of time to reach the plotting board. Last of all, much of the R/T traffic that I’ve amassed whilst on the island can only have been gathered from enemy Y-stations based on Sicily, meaning that we have very poor radio security. There are other points, too, which I have detailed in my report, sir.’
Lloyd raised his eyebrows and looked in consternation at the other men stood around the table. ‘And where is this report, exactly?’
‘In a giant tower of useless paperwork in Wing Commander Shorter’s office,’ Elsie answered audaciously.
‘Like that is it?’ Lloyd said. He turned back to the men. ‘McGhie, go and fetch me that report.’ He paused and eyed Elsie. ‘Thank you for your efforts, Assistant Section Officer…?’
‘Finch.’
‘Assistant Section Officer Finch. I shall be commending you to the Air Ministry. Thank you,’ he said, extending his hand towards her. He shook her hand rigorously and then paced from the restaurant with giant purposeful strides.
‘Christ, that was brave,’ Woody murmured with admiration, as Elsie sat back down. ‘You could have got put up on a charge for that.’
Elsie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘It needed saying. If he even puts half of our recommendations into practice the island will be a safer place.’
‘Maybe then I will live to see the war out and come and find you and marry you,’ he said with a grin.
She slid her hands out, finding his fingers and locking them into hers. The hopeless desperation of stepping outside of their doomed reality and being in Woody’s arms forever began to simmer inside of her. It was time to leave. ‘I must go,’ she said quietly. Her words caused his fingers to twitch, to grasp onto her for just that one moment longer.
A swollen chasm in their conversation continued until they were standing in the pouring rain outside the hotel. Elsie guessed that, like her, he was struggling to match his feelings to the trite worn-out phrases that were coming to mind. Was there even a point in trying to express her feelings to a man that she would likely never see again? She didn’t even know his real name and he was on the verge of proposing to her.
Elsie stepped up and kissed him. Their lips locked together and they kissed with a fervency that she had previously never known.
It was the coldness that eventually forced her away from him. She shivered. Time had elapsed but she had no idea exactly how much.
‘I still don’t know your first name,’ Elsie commented.
‘Keep guessing…’
Elsie smiled. ‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Elsie.’
Her tears melded with the rain, becoming lost, washed down the road in the muddy streams and out into the sea.
She turned away from him and began to walk back towards the War Rooms.
By late afternoon, the weather had improved, the rain clouds having been buffeted northwards towards Italy.
Elsie had said goodbye to Aileen, then had had a very brief conversation with Shorter, in which he expressed his displeasure at her having gone above his head.
She stood now beside a low stone wall overlooking Kalafrana Bay. The Sunderland flying boat on which she would leave the island bobbed gently on the still waters beside a narrow wooden jetty.
She stared out to sea, wondering what the next phase of her life would bring. She recalled her conversations with Woody that morning and regarded her left hand. Did she have the courage to divorce Laurie? Really? She gently slid the ring from her finger, encircling it in the fingers and thumb of her right hand. Placing the ring down on the wall in front of her, she examined her left hand. It felt odd yet strangely liberated. She picked the ring up again, a surge of adrenalin urging her to launch it into the sea, bringing her marriage to an end. But she couldn’t do it.
She looked at it again, then turned around. The streets were bustling with locals snatching the rare opportunity for something resembling normality. Elsie searched the crowds then spotted her: an old lady, bent over with tattered clothes. She darted across the street and reached out to touch the old lady’s arm and received a suspicious glare from her dirty toothless face. Elsie smiled, pressed her wedding ring into her hands then crossed back over, collected her suitcase and headed down the jetty towards the seaplane.
‘Elsie Finch?’ the pilot asked from beside the open rear door.
‘That’s me.’
‘Climb in and we’ll get going.’
She smiled and stepped inside. As she did so, she thought that she heard her name being called. She turned to see Woody waving from the place that she had just stood moments before. ‘I love you,’ he shouted. ‘My name’s…’
The door slammed. The four engines fire
d into life. Elsie took an empty seat by a window. Tears began to stream down her face, as she waved him goodbye and the Sunderland began to float along the water’s surface.
She stared at Woody, craning her neck to keep him in her vision. Then he was gone.
The plane sped jauntily over the bay, picking up speed until the nose began to lift into the air.
Through the glaze of moisture in her eyes, Elsie watched the island growing smaller, quickly being dwarfed by the vast Mediterranean Sea. She was going back to England, leaving behind the only man with whom she had ever truly been in love.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Morton had arrived at the Eventide Rest Home early. He was sitting in his Mini in the car park outside the home, waiting for an attachment from Folkestone Library to open on his laptop. He glanced up at the time: still another ten minutes before his scheduled meeting with Rose.
The scanned image began to load in horizontal blocks until the whole picture was in front of him. It was a report from the Town Clerk’s Department about the bombing raid that had killed Daniel Winter. Morton skim-read the document. It was, as he had been expecting, a list of properties and the extent of the damage inflicted by a particular raid. He located the entry for Heron’s Brook and read across the page. It stated that the property was owned by Mr Wren, had a rateable value of thirty-eight pounds and the damage was to roof slates, ceilings and windows. At the end of the row was typed ‘Interior not examined’. It struck Morton as curiously odd that a building suffering sufficient enough damage to kill a man should only warrant external inspection. Other properties listed in the document had garnered such comments as ‘Fit for demolition,’ ‘Majority of windows smashed, ceilings down,’ or ‘Generally very extensively damaged.’
The document had done little to dismiss his hunch that Daniel had visited Cliff House on the night of his death. But what had happened after that? Morton mused.
A silver Astra drew into the car park and Morton saw Rose behind the wheel. He closed his laptop, slid it inside his bag and stepped from the car. She parked opposite him and greeted him with a wave.
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 5) Page 28
