Windflower Wedding

He could hear the smile in her voice so he said, ‘And did they give you those stripes for being button-lipped?’

‘Yes, sir, they did – and I don’t want to lose them.’

‘Well,’ he expanded, ‘I can’t say I’m sorry to be leaving Castle McLeish – for a while, at least. Especially I won’t miss the adjutant. Is he always so snotty?’

‘No, sir. Far from it.’ Keth sensed the sudden edge to her voice.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, Captain. He’s one of us – really one of us. He’s done more drops into you-know-where than I dare tell you. About six weeks ago his wife was killed in an air raid. They haven’t sent him back since. He has children, you see.’

Keth did not speak for the remainder of the journey.

The only train into and out of Holdenby Halt on a Sunday bore Tatiana away to York and thence to King’s Cross. Daisy stood and waved until the little two-carriage train disappeared round the curve in the track, then she cycled back to Keeper’s Cottage, thinking that during the next seven days five of Aunt Julia’s Clan would have been to Rowangarth, though not all at the same time, of course. Drew and Kitty had been and gone, then she, Daisy, arrived on leave and the day after, Tatiana had come home on one of her rare weekend visits.

And then Bas phoned, begging a bed for the night. Kitty’s brother Bas was real sweet, Kitty said, on Rowangarth’s land girl, Gracie. Gracie, on the other hand, was giving Bas a run for his money, though Jack Catchpole reckoned it was only a matter of time before he caught her.

Daisy looked forward to seeing Bas again. She had last seen Sebastian Sutton in the late summer of ’thirty-seven when she stood at the waving place where the railway line ran alongside Brattocks Wood for about thirty yards. Exactly five years ago. She and Bas had grown up since then. She smiled, wishing the Clan could be together again, just once for old times’ sake. But the Clan was incomplete because Keth had been sent back to Washington and only the Lord knew when he would be home again.

She missed Keth desperately. A part of her would have given anything to have him back; the other part – the sensible part – wanted him to stay safely in America and no matter how long the war lasted, she always reasoned, she would at least know he would come home safely and that one day they would be married.

She told herself she was lucky; that Tatty would have given ten years of her life to know that one day, no matter how far away, she would see Tim Thomson again. Tatiana Sutton, the spoiled and cosseted child, had grown into a woman who once loved passionately, then dug in her stubborn English heels and defied her Russian mother and grandmother, taking herself off to London out of their meddling reach. Tatty lived at Aunt Julia’s little white house now, with Sparrow to care for her, to understand and love her without reservations as only Tim had done.

Probably, if Kitty was sent to London to join up with ENSA, she would live at the little white mews house, too. It would be good for Tatty – provided Kitty didn’t talk too much about how happy she was, and about getting married to Drew. But Kitty Sutton never did anything by halves. It wasn’t in her nature. Bubbling, volatile Kitty, whom everyone noticed the minute she stepped into a room; sparkling, notice-me Kitty, whom Drew loved desperately. She would be good for him, Daisy thought as she pedalled down Keeper’s Cottage lane. Drew had always been serious. He’d changed some since joining the Navy, but then you had to adapt. If you didn’t, life in the armed forces could be hell.

‘Hi, there!’ Gracie, carrying cabbage leaves, making for Keeper’s Cottage and the six hens she looked after at the bottom of the garden, beside the dog houses. ‘Just going to see to the hens – are you coming?’

Daisy said she was; she liked Gracie.

‘Did you know Bas will be over at the weekend?’

‘Yes. He told me. Twice. Once in a letter, then again on the phone.’

‘My word – letters and phone calls,’ Daisy teased. ‘Where’s it all going to end?’

‘Heaven only knows. Sometimes I think I should finish it all; times like now, I mean, when I can think straight. But when we’re together it’s an altogether different ball game, as Bas would say.’

‘It’s called being in love, Gracie.’

‘Well, I’m not in love! You know I won’t fall in love till the war is over!’

‘Then you should try it. You might even get to like it.’

‘Even though we might be parted, like you and Keth? And I haven’t got all day to stand here talking. Mr Catchpole will be giving me what for for wasting time. Here!’ Carefully she put four brown eggs into Daisy’s hands. ‘Take these to Tilda, will you? And don’t drop them!’ And with that she was off, up the garden path, making for the wild garden, striding out defiantly.

Never going to fall in love? Daisy thought, shaking her head. But Gracie had fallen for Bas the minute they had met, did she but know it. Pity, she thought, about that Lancashire common sense of hers getting in the way.

‘See you!’ she called, but Gracie strode on.

Another isolated, heavily guarded house, Keth thought; about thirty miles west of Castle McLeish if the position of the sinking sun was to be relied upon and the speed at which they had travelled. In this house there was more of an urgency in the air and, for once, the first question he asked had been answered with surprising frankness.

‘How long will you be away, Purvis? Just as long as it takes, I suppose. There’s a submarine flotilla not far from here and that’s how you’ll be going in. You might think things are ponderous slow when you get there, but you’ll only have one contact – two, at the most. You’ll just sit tight. Things get passed down the line, sort of. Better that way. And don’t think that being a courier is paddling ashore, swopping passwords, then paddling back to the submarine. It’s never that straightforward.’

‘No.’ They were sitting on the terrace, drinking an after-dinner coffee and brandy in the most civilized way; so ordinary and normal, Keth thought, that he couldn’t believe that soon he would assume another identity and be sent to –

‘Where exactly am I going – or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Not out here. We’ll go inside. It’s getting cold, anyway.’ The man, dressed in civilian clothes and whose name Keth did not yet know, picked up his glass then murmured, ‘My office, I think it had better be.’

When they were seated either side of a log fire and their glasses topped up, Keth said, ‘France, I gather.’

‘Yes – occupied France.’

‘Good. I speak the language passably well.’ Better than passably. Tatty’s governess, herself French, had seen to that such a long time ago, it seemed. When Keth Purvis had lived at Rowangarth bothy, it was; before the war when Rowangarth garden apprentices lived there and were looked after by his mother – and she glad of the job. ‘I don’t suppose I’d fool the locals, but I could get away with it with a German.’

‘Then let’s hope you don’t meet any. Oh – and you’ll have to see the photographer first thing in the morning. Your papers are ready, except for that. Better see the barber too. Your haircut looks a bit English, I’m afraid. Apart from that, there’s a resemblance to Gaston Martin about you.’

‘That’s whose ID I’ll be taking? A pretty ordinary name, isn’t it?’ The surname Martin was as common in France as Smith was in England.

‘Nevertheless, Gaston Martin does exist. He was invalided out of the French artillery just after Dunkirk. Deaf, in one ear – remember that. But you’ll be given details.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘He’s here, in the UK. He got taken off the beaches with our lot and our lot invalided him out. He’s working in North Wales, so you’re not likely to cross each other’s paths – not where you’ll be going, anyway.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Keth was glad of the brandy because ever since he’d been told about France, his stomach had felt distinctly queasy. He wondered if he would sleep tonight or lie awake turning it over in his mind, telling himself he was a damn fool.

Yet a bargain was a bargain. They had told him when he asked to be sent back to England there would be conditions attached and he accepted without a second thought; anything to get back to Daisy. But not in his craziest dreams had anything embraced cloak-and-dagger stuff, because that’s what this escapade boiled down to; downright bloody stupid, to put not too fine a point on it. Times like now, he could accept it – just. But how would he feel when they dumped him on some dark beach? Not very brave, he knew.

‘When it’s over and done with – well, what I’m trying to say is – when I’m back, what’s going to happen? To me, I mean.’

‘You’ll pick up where you left off – at Bletchley Park. I take it you don’t want to go back to Washington?’

‘I don’t! I’m only in this predicament now because I wanted to get home.’

‘Getting cold feet?’

‘Got! I’m not the stuff heroes are made out of, I’m afraid; but conditions They said, and conditions I accepted.’

‘Good. Only a fool isn’t – well, slightly afraid. And in SOE we don’t ask for heroes. We’d rather our operatives stayed alive. I hate sending women in, you know,’ he said gruffly, picking up the brandy bottle, asking, with a raising of his eyebrows, if Keth wanted another. And Keth, who drank little, nodded and pushed his glass across the table.

‘Good man. Help you to sleep. And don’t worry, we aren’t trying to recruit you.’

‘Then why now?’ Keth tilted his glass.

‘Might as well tell you now as tomorrow or the next day. We knew of your request – to come back to UK, that is – and you wouldn’t have had a hope in hell if we hadn’t needed a specialist, so to speak. You’re familiar with Enigma.’ It was a statement.

‘Yes. It’s still something of a hit-and-miss thing – breaking their codes; well, breaking the naval codes.’