Chapter 30
Margaret looked out through the plexiglass cover as the engine revved and a great cloud of smoke engulfed them, then dissipated.
Her first time in an aeroplane. The pilot had been waiting at the pre-planned location, smoking a cigarette, talking with a French farmer as if making a secret flight across the Channel to pick up an agent was just another day’s work.
The farmer was holding a bottle of Scotch, she’d noticed when she’d arrived, and the pilot wedged a bottle of wine into his cockpit as they’d climbed in.
She wondered how they’d take off in the bumpy meadow, no more than a couple of hundred yards of grass until the looming trees, but the pilot seemed confident enough.
He revved the engine again, until she could feel the small machine straining, held by the brakes presumably.
Then they were off, stumbling across the pasture, impossible to imagine breaking free of gravity.
Then, as if they were picked up by some invisible hand, the bumpy ground became less of an issue, and suddenly they were aloft, the line of trees still a threat, but the ground no longer slowing them down.
The pilot was awfully quiet as he pulled the stick back, and despite the roaring engine all she could hear was his breathing, and the almost inaudible coaxing – come on girl, come on .
. . And then Margaret opened her eyes, not realising she’d closed them, and outside all was blackness, the hum of the engine reassuring her that she was not, in fact, dead, and a disconcerting feeling in her stomach providing something else to worry about.
‘Try not to throw up!’ the pilot shouted back to her. ‘Gets me in a pickle with the ground crew.’
The flight over occupied France took forty minutes that felt to Margaret like two lifetimes.
She was accustomed to dealing with tense situations, but being strapped into the back of a tin can like this was almost more than she could bear.
It was the feeling of powerlessness. Not a feeling she liked.
Not one bit. Then they were over the Channel, the thin sliver of sea all that was holding back Hitler from the successful completion of his grand tour, and Margaret started to think they’d make it.
Now they were over Sussex, and she finally felt she could breathe again.
For a moment, the clouds parted and moonlight illuminated the countryside below. Margaret squinted to see if she recognised anything. But it was impossible. Every tree, every field, every farmhouse, all looked alike from up here. Nevertheless, she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Cook would be out there. Making plans. Getting the job done.
Margaret wasn’t one for dwelling on the past, but her time with Cook had been .
. . What had it been? Love, perhaps. Yes, she allowed.
But love had only been a part of it. Being part of a team.
Pulling together for a common cause, each making the other better.
Margaret was used to being the smartest one in the room.
She saw things others didn’t see. She laughed before anyone else did when watching a revue – her mind joining the dots and predicting the punchline a fraction of a second before the rest of the audience.
She’d become reconciled to being alone, in that respect.
The men she’d known had been companions, amiable for the most part, but tiresome, needing work.
Cook was different. As smart as her, in his own way.
Niceties not required. No work needed. Like coming home to a quiet room.
The pilot shouted to Margaret but she couldn’t hear the words. She realised her ears were ringing from the continual assault of the engine noise. Having got her attention, the pilot pointed out of the right-hand side of the cockpit.
What she saw shocked her.
London was burning. The River Thames snaked away to their right, silver in the moonlight. On both sides of the river, flames rose from fires that looked like they were consuming the whole city. Huge columns of smoke rose, blocking out the stars.
‘Why aren’t the guns firing?’ Margaret shouted to the pilot. Anti-aircraft guns had become part of the background, firing on bombers throughout the summer, their distinctive four-beat rhythm – pom pom pom pom – a reassuring sound against the drone of the enemy attack.
‘Our fighters are up there, trying to get behind the bombers,’ the pilot shouted. Margaret squinted to see if she could see planes in the darkness. Was that tracer fire she could see, like fireflies in the distance?
‘I can’t see them,’ Margaret shouted.
‘That’s the problem,’ the pilot shouted. ‘It’s too dark for the fighters, but the guns can’t fire because they’re up there.’
The Westland Lysander touched down lightly on the tarmac, propellor buzzing. The pilot manoeuvred the plane off the runway and steered towards a quiet part of the airfield. A car waited, barely visible in the dark, raindrops glistening on the windscreen.
The pilot cut the engine and climbed out. He turned to help Margaret but she was already behind him, clambering out of the cockpit, down onto the struts and the curved wheel-covers.
‘Welcome to Croydon,’ the pilot said, with a grin. ‘I’ll be in the pub with some of the boys if you fancy a drink.’
The car door opened.
‘That’s very kind,’ Margaret said. ‘But I rather think I’ve got plans.’
Margaret sat in the back of the car, her ears still ringing, as they cruised through an endless succession of suburban towns.
Purley. Streatham. Brixton. All dark in the blackout, buses looming out of the drizzle at the last minute, pedestrians taking their lives into their own hands with every dash across the road.
In the plane, there’d been the frisson of excitement that they might get shot down by an over-enthusiastic home defence unit, or encounter a lost German fighter, but those odds were, in reality, incredibly low.
Here on the streets, in the blackout, it felt like every mile without deadly incident was a lucky escape.
‘What’s the mood over there?’ Bunny asked. Just like him, Margaret thought. No pleasantries. No hint of concern for her welfare, no recognition of what she’d been through on his behalf.
‘They’re angry,’ Margaret said. ‘When they heard you’d bombed Berlin it was like you’d thrown a rock at a wasp’s nest.’
‘Goering sent everything he had against us,’ Bunny said. ‘Every bomber, every fighter, every pilot on the roster,’ he said, looking out of the window. ‘Killed almost two thousand people.’
‘Is it true we’ve already done worse to Berlin?’
Bunny looked at her, as if trying to decide how much to trust her.
‘Their strategy of bombing our airfields was working,’ he said. ‘Another day or two and they’d have broken the RAF. Then they’d have had free rein.’
‘Was it you?’ Margaret asked. ‘Throwing the rock at the wasp’s nest?’
Bunny didn’t respond.
‘Two thousand people killed in one night,’ Margaret said. ‘How long do you need to rebuild the RAF?’
‘Couple of months,’ Bunny replied.
‘What if the people of London decide they don’t like being used as a diversionary tactic?’
‘We’re rather hoping they don’t,’ Bunny said, a typical understatement. ‘We’ve modelled it all out. We think there’s a fifty-five per cent chance it brings everyone together. Blitz spirit, we’re calling it. All the press are on board.’
Margaret thought he was being optimistic.
Easy to play with public opinion when the public don’t have any power, the poor down in the docks for instance.
Give it a few nights of bombing over Knightsbridge – that would be a different matter.
But she kept quiet. She’d learnt that about Bunny.
When he was lecturing, you let him carry on. Same for most men, in her experience.
‘The French gave up France to save Paris,’ he said. ‘We’re taking the alternative view. We think it’s rather easier to rebuild a city than it is to retake your country.’
‘It sounds like you’ve thought it all through,’ Margaret said.
‘We’re going to put you up in one of our receiving facilities,’ Bunny said. ‘There’ll be lots of recent arrivals from the continent. We thought you might be able to make yourself useful helping us sort them out – let us know which of them have swastika armbands in their sock drawer.’
It was what she’d expected. They wouldn’t just set her free. She was suspect, now. Tainted. Impossible for anyone to know which side she was on. ‘Make yourself useful’ sounded like code for ‘stay where we can keep an eye on you until we decide how much we can trust you’.
‘Facility?’ she asked. It had an unpleasant ring to it. A prison. Or a remote island. The sort of place meant to wear down a person’s sense of self. Show them that everything they once had, once were, could be taken away.
‘Bit of a zoo, I’m afraid,’ Bunny said, ‘with all the comings and goings. Shouldn’t be any real danger.’
‘I can handle danger,’ Margaret said. She could even handle discomfort, but given the choice, she’d rather not. She’d heard they were using Holloway. God knows what they’d done with the regular inmates – volunteered them all into the army perhaps.
The car took a sharp right turn and suddenly they were crossing the river, the blazing docks casting an orange glow on the interior of the car, casting Bunny into the shadows. Where he belonged.
‘We can debrief tomorrow,’ Bunny said. ‘I’ll meet you for breakfast.’
Margaret didn’t want to imagine what breakfast would be like at a prison, even a prison repurposed for ‘recent arrivals from the continent’.
The car pulled up. Margaret hadn’t been paying attention to the route.
Besides, she’d never got to know London particularly well.
Even though she was a member of the country’s ruling class, most of her upbringing had been at a remove – in Switzerland and India.
London had always been seen through the lens of a storybook, or a flickering newsreel.
The driver hopped out and opened the door on Bunny’s side. Bunny climbed out, making an effort of it. He looked older than when she’d first met him, even though it had only been a year since he’d first approached her and asked if she’d be interested in ‘doing her bit’.
Margaret climbed out of the car, expecting the worst – some kind of impenetrable fortress, high brick walls and barbed wire. She realised she knew the street. She’d been here before.
Margaret had come to the Empire for tea with her aunt, the very first time she’d come up to London.
At the time she’d barely glanced at the surroundings.
Apart from anything, it was far less opulent than many of the grand buildings on the Bombay waterfront she’d grown up in.
Even so, she found herself remembering her aunt – a kind woman who’d done her best, all things considered.
‘No bag,’ Margaret snapped at the hovering bellboy. He clicked his heels and made himself scarce, as Bunny escorted Margaret through the revolving door, the bomb-proof tape marring the effect.
They stood in the lobby. Bunny put his hands on Margaret’s shoulders, gave her a grimace. Like being dropped off, your first day at boarding school. Don’t get into trouble. Don’t embarrass us.
‘You’ll want to explore, of course,’ Bunny said. ‘But don’t go too far.’
‘Am I allowed out?’
‘Of course!’ Bunny pretended to laugh. ‘You’re not a prisoner. Far from it. You’re a returning hero. We don’t want to lose you. You’re one of our most valuable assets.’
For a man whose business was lying, Bunny was shockingly bad at it.
‘Do you want to give me any parameters?’
‘I don’t know if we need to go that far.’
‘So I could take a train to the country?’
‘Nobody’s going to raise any eyebrows if you want to go shopping in Mayfair, or up to Oxford Street. Go to a show at the Café de Paris. That kind of thing.’
‘I’m not a Londoner,’ she said. ‘You’re describing the monopoly board, but I don’t know where those places are.’
Bunny squirmed. It seemed he was determined not to be the strict headmaster. Not quite his modus operandi. More the kindly uncle.
‘Call it a quarter-of-a-mile radius,’ he said. ‘Nothing worth seeing beyond that anyway.’
‘Expenses?’ she asked.
‘We’ve set you up with an account. Don’t go wild, it all goes through my budget and there’s hell to pay if we have to explain to the PM why our people are having champagne sent to their rooms.’
‘Anyone you want me to keep an eye on? While you’re keeping an eye on me?’
‘Keep your eyes and ears open. The more you can prove your worth, the quicker this whole thing is apt to go.’
Bunny caught the eye of the man on the desk, who passed him a room key. Bunny, in turn, handed it to Margaret.
‘Try and keep out of trouble,’ he said.
‘I always do.’