Windflower Wedding

He had waited his time in the mess; waited until the adjutant was alone, then walked across the room to face him.

‘A word, if you please – sir!’

The adjutant recognized the narrowed eyes and jutting jaw and asked him if it wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.

No, Keth said, it wouldn’t. Either he got a straight answer now to a couple of questions he wanted to ask or he would put in a request to see the Commanding Officer!

That was why he sat here now, in the outer office. Wait, he had been told. The Commanding Officer would see him in just a minute. The minute had stretched out to fifteen; the customary waiting time for all subordinates intent upon wasting the CO’s time. A heel-cooling period.

Yet Keth did not want to cool down. He wanted to know why he had come from Washington only to do physical jerks and be ignored when he asked the sane and sensible question: what the hell was he doing here?

The phone on the ATS sergeant’s desk rang. Keth wondered why every army girl here was a sergeant. This one was a good-looker; hair like Lyn Carmichael’s. She smiled and told him to go in. He jumped to his feet, hoping his stare hadn’t been too obvious, then knocked on the door she indicated.

‘Enter!’

Keth closed the door behind him, came to attention and saluted.

‘At ease, Purvis.’ He was not invited to sit, so he stood feet apart, relaxing his shoulders, hands behind back. ‘Now the way we do things here, Purvis, is not to make a b nuisance of ourselves. We speak only when spoken to and we don’t ask questions – right?’

‘Sir …’ Keth acknowledged cautiously, because he had been speaking out of turn and he had made a nuisance of himself, he supposed.

‘Has the nature of what goes on in this establishment been lost on you, then? Did you never wonder why you had been asked to leave letters behind you?’

‘Yes. And I wondered – with respect, sir – what kind of a course I was going on, for about a fortnight. I thought I would be doing the work I did at Bletchley Park, but I can see no indication of it here.’

‘Enigma, you mean? Well, you’re right. We only know about Enigma here. We know about a lot of things.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Keth’s mouth had gone dry. He was beginning to wish he had left well alone.

If you’d kept your mouth shut for just another day, I could have given you the whole story, but since it seems you can’t,’ the senior officer paused to let his words sink in, ‘since you want to know why you were brought back from Washington, I’ll tell you.

‘We had your card marked, Captain – just in case we wanted something done by someone who had a working knowledge of the Enigma machine. And then we found we did and we want you for a courier’s job. And please let me finish,’ he snapped as Keth opened his mouth to speak. ‘There are any of a dozen other men could do the job and a damned sight more efficiently than you; men who don’t ask questions nor throw their weight about as you have been doing! But none of those men has your knowledge of Enigma, you see.’

‘Courier?’ Keth breathed, running his tongue round his top lip. ‘Deliver something?’ Was that what all the fuss was about, for Pete’s sake?

‘No. We – They – want something picking up. From occupied France.’

‘Ha!’ Keth’s body sagged. Then he straightened his shoulders, stared ahead and asked of the regimental photograph on the wall, ‘And if I don’t want to be parachuted into occupied France, sir?’

‘Then you can start packing your bags now and I’ll guarantee you a seat on the very next plane back to Washington! You asked to return to UK. You knew there would be conditions attached. You were specifically told so! What’s the matter with you, man – got a yellow streak?’

‘No, sir. Only when it comes to parachuting!’

‘Hm. Understandable, I suppose, when your one and only jump was an utter fiasco, according to your records. That’s why you won’t be parachuting in.’

‘Then that’s fine, sir.’ He didn’t like being called yellow.

‘I’m glad, because you’ll be leaving here tonight. SOE will kit you out and brief you. It will be in no way dangerous. All you have to do is pick up something and bring it back. It’s the operators in the field who’ll be taking the risks.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Of course it wasn’t dangerous. He hopped over to France every week of the year! ‘Am I to start packing my kit?’

‘No. Leave it all in your room. Anything personal or private you will place in an envelope, seal it down, and initial the flap. One of your drawers has a lock and key. Lock anything away that you want to and give the key to the adjutant when you leave. Afterwards, you’ll be coming back here so you can pick up your bags before you move on – back to Bletchley. Any questions?’

‘Just how will I be – er – going in, sir?’

‘All depends. On weather conditions. It’ll either be by Lysander – that’s an aircraft,’ he said, as if explaining to an idiot that a Lysander was an extremely efficient, small, light aircraft that could land on a postcard, almost, ‘or by sea – the submarine boys will put you ashore. Like I said, it’ll all depend.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

‘Right, then. Dismissed.’

Keth remembered to salute, to do an efficient about-turn, then left the room, also remembering to smile and nod his thanks to the red-haired sergeant on the desk, as if what he had just been told hadn’t knocked him for six!

Then he opened the door of his room, sat heavily on the bed and gasped, ‘Flaming Norah!’

4 (#ulink_887c2dc4-c656-5f9e-8c81-9a9e8bc6f0a1)

Telegraphist Drew Sutton, having handed over the middle watch to his opposite number, stripped off to his underpants and swung himself into his hammock. Hammocks were very adaptable. On a boat as small as HMS Penrose, you slung them wherever there was a space, be it in the mess or beside the engine-room bulkhead. Hammocks moulded themselves to your body and gently swung you to sleep with every rising and falling of the Penrose’s bows. Double beds, on the other hand; large, sinful double beds with soft shaded lights either side, took a lot of beating.

He smiled into the darkness. Kitty Sutton. From Kentucky. His kissing cousin and the woman he would marry just as soon as he could get her down the aisle. At this moment, Kitty was wallowing in being in love. She was in love with love and didn’t want to spoil it, he suspected, by getting married. Yet they were morally married, he supposed. If sharing a bed on every possible occasion constituted a marriage, then they were well and truly wed. And he could understand Kitty’s reasoning. To her, he supposed, sleeping together in delightful sin was more thrilling, more risqué, than the church-blessed union after which you not only could sleep together as much as you wanted, but were expected to do so. The intonations of a priest, the pronouncing of them man and wife was all very well, but his adorable Kitty, he was almost sure, preferred the former and the element of risk it carried with it.

Take Thursday night. He smiled fondly. She had stood demurely beside him as he signed the hotel register Andrew and Kathryn Sutton, Rowangarth, Holdenby, York. She had fluttered her eyelashes coyly, and the new lady receptionist—who didn’t know Drew at all—asked her, if Modom wouldn’t mind, of course, to produce her identity card.

Drew pulled in his breath and hoped she wouldn’t blush furiously. And Kitty had not blushed at all! Having, on her arrival in the United Kingdom, acquired a British ration book and a British identity card which stated she was Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton of Rowangarth, Holdenby, York – her official English address – she placed it on the desk with the sweetest of smiles and said she wouldn’t mind at all!

Then the red-faced receptionist had stammered her apologies, explaining that one couldn’t be too sure these days, and she hoped Mrs Sutton would forgive her.

At which Kitty smiled even more sweetly, pocketed her identity card, and all at once very serious, said, it’s Lady Sutton, if you don’t mind.’

Then she swept to the lift, jammed her finger on the button, leaving the squirming receptionist looking for the smallest crack in the floorboards in which to hide.

‘Kitty Sutton, you really do take the plate of biscuits!’ Drew had collapsed, laughing, on the large, bouncy bed beside her, imploring her never to change; always to be his outrageous, adorable Kitty. She had laughed with him and promised him she never would, then proceeded to undress with indecent haste.

‘Kitty.’ He whispered her name softly. It would be strange, in church, marrying Kathryn Norma Clementina when it was really Kitty he was in love with. His life now could be divided into two phases; before Kitty and since Kitty – and he wondered how he had even remotely existed before the night, barely three months ago, when she came back into his life like a hurricane. He was still breathless from the impact.

The same ATS sergeant drove Keth away from Castle McLeish in the same car in which he had arrived, only this time he sat in the back seat. He sat there because he needed to think and uppermost in his mind was SOE, which any fool knew was Special Operatives Executive and differed from MI5 and MI6 in that it was concerned solely with getting agents into occupied Europe, listening for their W/T call signs and getting them out again when they had completed their operation or when it became imperative to remove them quickly for their own good. The Army, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, Keth knew, all co-operated in the delivery and collection of those agents. You didn’t work with Enigma and not know it.

Now, it seemed, either the Submarine Service or the Royal Air Force was taking him to France – ostensibly as an unimportant messenger, charged only with making a collection. There would be little risk to himself, he’d been told, and he grasped that assurance to him like a warm, comforting blanket.

On hearing his immediate destination he had, after the initial shock subsided, written two more letters to Daisy, then addressed nine envelopes, two to his mother and seven to Daisy. In the last letter, dated ten days ahead, he told her that the course he had been sent on was almost finished and soon he would have a more permanent address to give her.

Then he posted the unsealed envelopes in a box not unlike those used by the general public which was marked, Missives for Censoring but which really meant Stick your love letters in here, chum, to be read by the po-faced adjutant.

He had disliked the adjutant at Castle McLeish on sight, labelling him pompous, upper class and insensitive; wondering when it would be his turn to be deposited into occupied Europe; hoping it would be very soon! Yet Daisy was worth it. Just to think of her mellowed his mood.

He said, ‘I don’t suppose you are allowed to tell me where you are taking me this time, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Just another place Somewhere in Scotland – about an hour away.’