Windflower Wedding

‘We’re nothing of the kind! You and I are living, breathing people. We have minds of our own and we’re going to be married,’ Drew said firmly. ‘And one day, all this will be behind us. Last time, Mother said, when they thought their war would never end, it was suddenly all over.’

‘Sure, and they had to pick up the pieces and wonder if it had all been worth it, just as our generation will wonder.’ She turned her back on the stark outlines that were already being dimmed and softened around the edges by the blocking out of a scarlet sun behind a tall, distant building. ‘And I know we have minds of our own, darling, but sometimes there’s no choice but to do things we don’t want to.’

‘Like?’ He pulled sharply on his breath.

‘Like me coming over here to work with ENSA and being willing to go anywhere, kind of …’

‘So you are leaving Liverpool! Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I didn’t want to spoil tonight, I guess. Because in a few hours you’ve got to be back on board and next time you dock I’ll be gone. To London.’

The river ferry came broadside on to the landing stage and they looked down, not speaking, to watch the gangway fall with a clatter and people hurrying across it.

‘Let’s not go dancing.’ It was Drew who broke the uneasy silence.

‘No. Let’s go back to the digs.’ To Ma MacTaggart’s cheap theatrical lodgings; to Ma, who never thought to remark that the bed in the room Drew took for the night was never slept in.

‘Mm. You can tell me about it, then.’ It wouldn’t seem so awful when they lay close, and warm from loving, Kitty telling him she was to be based in London as they feared she might be; would not seem so bad when they were so relaxed they could imagine London to be only a sixpenny tram ride away. ‘And London will be good for your career – all the theatres.’

And the bombing, his mind supplied, because it would start again, nothing was more certain. When Hitler was done with Russia the full force of the Luftwaffe would be hurled at Britain once more. Not that Hitler was getting all his own way there now. The German armies had been halted and held, and in some places thrown back. And Moscow was no longer threatened, though Leningrad’s siege had yet to be broken.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Kitty whispered. ‘You sure were scowling.’

‘I was thinking about the war in general and Russia in particular and how it might not always be very safe when you get to London.’

‘I’ll be just fine, darling.’ There was a churning of water between the landing stage and the ferry as it made its way back towards the Cheshire side. ‘For one thing, I’ll be with Sparrow and Tatty, and for another I’ll be out of London on tour a lot of the time.

‘On tour,’ she giggled. ‘Sounds like I’ll be doing the provincial theatres before the show opens in the West End, when really we’ll be playing gun sites and aerodromes and village halls; any place there are men and women in need of cheering up. You’ve no idea, Drew, what a wonderful audience they are. They stamp and whistle like crazy. It makes me feel real good, like I’m a star and they’ve all paid pounds and pounds just to see me.’

‘You always did like an audience, Kitty Sutton. You knew even when you were little how to play to the gallery. Do you know what a precocious brat you were?’ Smiling, he tweaked her nose.

‘Guess I must’ve been pretty awful,’ she laughed.

‘You still are. You come into a room like a force-eight gale, demanding to be noticed – just like you slammed into my life that night on the dockside. Suddenly I knew what it was like to be hit amidships by a torpedo.’

‘And I love you too.’ She reached on tiptoe to kiss his lips lingeringly which was something nice girls shouldn’t do in public, then they began to walk towards Bold Street and the little street off it, where Ma MacTaggart lived. Now, Drew thought, he had another picture of Kitty to store in his memory and take out and live again when they were apart.

Kitty, silhouetted against a red evening sky and the stark, bombed buildings on the far bank of the river; Kitty so beautiful that it made him wonder why it was him she loved and not someone as good to look at as herself; Kitty’s English half that loved the Mersey and to stand at the Pierhead watching the river ferries that churned across it. Kitty, warm and flamboyant, whose lips silently begged him to make love to her each time they kissed.

He had been so ordinary before the night he saw her behaving so badly in the too-small, too-cheap red costume. That night he fell in love with his Kentucky cousin; deeply, desperately, in love. What Gracie would call, he supposed, a hook, line and sinker job. Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton, his raison d’être.

He quickened his step, the sooner to get to Ma’s and the bed he would share with her. They would love, then she would fall asleep in his arms, her ridiculous baby-soft curls tickling his nose. And in the morning when she opened her eyes and smiled and said, throatily, ‘Hullo, you,’ they would make love again because it would be the last time for only God knew how long.

He took her arm and she demanded to know what the hurry was and he told her she knew damn well.

‘And, Kitty, hear this! Next time I get long leave we’re getting married and no messing – even if it’s a special licence job!’

She said that was fine by her, because maybe being deliciously unconventional and doing what nicely-brought-up girls shouldn’t do every time they found themselves within spitting distance of a double bed was wearing a bit thin now.

‘You’re right, Drew. Reckon we’ve come as far as we can and I guess you should make an honest woman of me. Come to think of it, it might be nice to be Lady Sutton.’

She stopped walking and gazed up at him with eyes so blue and serious and appealing that he took her in his arms, right there in the middle of Bold Street, and kissed her hard and long.

And didn’t give a damn who saw them!

8 (#ulink_4524168f-413a-5c13-bfb3-c9fe45cb2fc5)

Keth stood unmoving in front of the mirror and, unmoving, Gaston Martin stared back. Those who kitted him out had done a good job, he grudgingly admitted. The clothes fitted; even the shoes and the socks, of which one pair was neatly darned, could have been worn by himself – times past, that was, when Keth Purvis wore darned socks and cheap, well-worn shoes.

Yet he must forget his other self. He was Gaston Martin now. In the pocket of his belt was five hundred francs in notes; in his trouser pockets a knife, a handful of small coins and a packet of Gauloises, even though he did not smoke. Inside one of the three very ordinary buttons on his jacket was a compass, though why a compass was necessary if he was to be taken to a safe house, hidden away, then returned to his point of departure, he had no idea.

In a brown paper carrier bag which he was told to get rid of at once if there was even the slightest risk of being picked up, were carefully packed valves and a small, heavy packet. Valves for wireless operators to replace broken ones – valves were notorious for their fragility, it seemed – and spares for the firing mechanisms of two automatic revolvers. Just to be carrying such things gave reality to his journey; a shivering awareness that began when he was checked and checked again for incriminating evidence by a man who could once have been a police detective.

No English brand names on any of his clothing; no London Tube tickets or bus tickets in his pockets or evidence that his underwear and handkerchiefs had been laundered in England. Laundrymarks were a big giveaway, the man said as he left, satisfied.

Keth dug a hand into his trouser pocket, bringing out the coins, placing them on the window-ledge to familiarize himself with their values. The coins made sense to his mathematical mind; tens were easier to calculate than twelves; you just stuck in a decimal point. Twelve pence to the shilling was all wrong, really.

He turned as the door opened to admit his inquisitor of yesterday; the man Keth had dubbed Slab Face and against whom he still felt resentment, even though his cheek had not bruised.

‘You’ve had your final check?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Feeling all right?’

‘No, but I’m working on it.’ Why did the man irritate him so?

‘You’ll be leaving in the morning about ten; arrive at the naval base about eleven. When you sail will be up to the submarine people. Their ops room will work out your expected time of arrival and tell us so we can alert our people at the other end.’

‘Seems all very straightforward, sir.’

‘We like to think we know what we are doing, Captain. Good luck.’ He held out a hand and Keth was surprised its grasp was firm and warm. It comforted him until the man turned, hand on the door knob and said, ‘You’ll be given your D-pill in the morning, by the way.’

‘My …?’

‘Dammit, man – do I have to spell it out?’

‘But I hadn’t thought –’ Keth stopped, all at once feeling real fear.

‘What hadn’t you thought?’

‘That I was all that important. No one told me about anything like – well, that …’

‘Then you should have been told. And we do not consider any of our operatives unimportant, Captain. You are being sent to France because you have special knowledge of the machine you are to bring back with you and not because of your prowess as an SOE operative – nor your ability to survive under questioning.’

‘No, sir.’ He was doing it again: putting him down.

‘You have more knowledge than you think. Under duress not only would you tell them why you were in France, but before they’d finished with you you’d have told them about Bletchley and how much we know already about their Enigma machine. They think their signalling system is safe because they change the code every day, but with persuasion you would tell them that we are breaking their army and air force codes whenever we want to, and that soon we hope to be breaking their U-boat signals, too.’