Philly #2
As if he’d read my mind again, Dilly Knox continued, ‘So I need a courier. Someone who is entirely trustworthy. Someone who speaks their language. And I don’t just mean Polish.
I mean a mathematician, like them. A cryptanalyst who can talk to them about the progress we’ve made here with our codebreaking and can, in turn, understand anything they may care to share in terms of the techniques they’ve developed there.
’ He peered short-sightedly at me over the top of his round-rimmed glasses, squinting through the smoke-filled atmosphere. ‘You, Miss Buchanan, fit the bill.’
I met his gaze calmly, although my mind was clattering like one of our machines with what he’d divulged, circuits firing and thoughts whirring as I made sense of what was being asked of me.
‘How would I get these materials to them?’ I asked, focusing on the practicalities.
‘We have a method in place for inserting agents into Vichy France,’ he replied. ‘But firstly I have to ask, do you know what’s being asked of you? Do you think you could undertake such a mission? Do you understand the risks involved?’
‘I do.’ My heart drummed out a beat faster and louder in my ears than any teleprinter.
Conflicting emotions surged through me. It wasn’t just fear at the thought of what I was being asked to do.
It was excitement too. I was thrilled to think I might meet the Polish mathematicians, that the materials I’d be bringing them might help them in their work just as they had helped us with ours earlier in the game.
And I was fascinated to find out what they were doing in their French chateau, under the very noses of the Germans.
From newspaper reports I’d read, I knew the Vichy government in the southern third of the country was nominally French, but really operated as a puppet regime, complying with every hateful Nazi edict the Germans issued from Paris.
I realised my hands were shaking, so I clasped them in my lap to steady myself.
I didn’t want Dilly Knox to mistake my excitement for cowardice.
Alan had told me it was Polish intelligence that had given him such a head start in breaking Enigma.
What if the information I brought back could help us take another leap forward, foreshortening the war still more?
It would be worth the risk. There was no doubt in my mind about accepting the challenge.
‘Very well. In that case, I’ll put everything in place.
I’ll have to liaise with our French counterparts, but once we’re ready, I’ll let you know.
’ He got to his feet and reached his hand across the desk to shake mine.
‘The Poles taught me a word: Dzi?kuj? . Thank you. For all you are doing. Even though no one can ever know.’
And with that I was dismissed. I went back to my digs and tried to carry on as usual, chatting to Mrs Webb about safe topics like the weather as I helped her peel potatoes for supper at the kitchen sink.
‘You look a bit peaky, dearie,’ she said.
‘Are you all right?’ She’d been very solicitous ever since I’d come back from Scotland after Teddy’s funeral, looking after me, offering me little extra bits and pieces to eat from the rations and a hot-water bottle for my bed, even though the nights were less chilly now.
‘Not bad news in that letter today, I hope?’
Whenever a letter from Ben arrived, she’d leave it on the shelf in the hall beside the telephone, so it’d be the first thing I’d see when I got home.
I patted the latest letter in my pocket, smiling at her reassuringly. ‘No, all’s well. I’m fine, thanks, just tired.’
Jess was setting the table. Our shifts had synchronised again, which meant we enjoyed each other’s company in the evenings, sitting playing card games and chatting about safely anodyne topics, such as the best places in Edinburgh to buy shoes.
She swivelled round and shot me a searching look, sensing something more perhaps.
I shook my head very slightly, letting her know it wasn’t something I could discuss, like so much of what we did.
Mrs Webb picked up a tea-towel and used it to open the door of the stove, lifting out the casserole she’d prepared. ‘They must work you girls ever so hard over at that place, doing all that filing and typing and whatnot,’ she said.
Jess and I exchanged grins, while our landlady fished in a drawer for a spoon with which to stir the watery stew before popping it back into the oven to finish cooking, in the vain hope that the tough and stringy meat might soften a little.
We were aware that there were various rumours circulating in the local community about what went on at the Manor, as it was known.
These included the theory that it was either a home for knocked-up Wrens or that it really was a lunatic asylum, given the eccentric assortment of staff who came and went on their bicycles and buses every day.
I smiled again and nodded, careful to give nothing away. ‘I think I just need a bit of fresh air,’ I said. ‘I’ll pop out for a walk – be back in time for supper.’
I let myself out, shutting the gate behind me, and walked along the lane a way.
It was May and the hedgerows were alive with wildflowers, bees buzzing busily from bloom to bloom, collecting nectar in the late-afternoon sunshine.
There was something very reassuring about the normality of it all, in the peace of the English countryside.
This is what we’re all fighting for, I thought as I walked.
This freedom. All the simple, beautiful, everyday things became heightened when I set them against the very real risks I’d be facing.
When I thought about the big picture – was I really about to be dropped into enemy France to smuggle materials to a team of Polish spies?
– I felt completely overwhelmed. It was too much to contemplate.
So instead I concentrated on the bees hurrying to make the most of the last of the day’s sunshine, and on the bluebells nodding their heads above constellations of starry white woodruff, on the first green spikes of wheat pushing through the brown earth in the field beside the road, and on the sounds of the birdsong and the scent of new-cut grass.
I walked on, putting one foot in front of the other, telling myself that was all I had to do.
When I reached the end of the lane, I perched on the wooden stile and took Ben’s letter from my pocket.
Darling Philly , he’d written,
I hope you’re keeping all right. I know how heartsore you still must be, missing Teddy, but I know, too, you’ll be throwing yourself into your work and getting on with doing your bit to help end this war.
As you’ll have fathomed, I can’t say much about what I’m doing these days, suffice it to say my friend Lizzie is a reliable old bird and together we’re doing our bit as well.
That’s what keeps me going, the thought that one day it will be over, and you and I can be together at last. We do what we can to fight the good fight, don’t we, my love, hastening the day when there will be nothing to keep us apart, when we can wake each morning in each other’s arms, in a world where we are safe and at peace.
It will be all the sweeter for knowing we played our roles with every ounce of courage we have. The risks may be great. But the rewards are worth it. And never forget:
For the days without number
I’ll always be yours,
By the dark of the moon and
The light of the sun.
Ben
As I folded it and pushed it back into its envelope, a shape at the edge of the field caught my eye.
It was a vixen, slinking along the hedgerow, carrying the limp corpse of a rabbit in her jaws.
She paused, noticing me sitting there watching her, eyeing me with an inscrutable gaze.
Then, from the shelter of the hawthorns, a pair of cubs appeared.
She led them away into the shadows. Time for their supper too, I supposed, as I got to my feet and turned to walk back to the Webbs’, feeling a little calmer than I had done earlier.
Ben’s words brought him closer. He had no idea that they had arrived just when I needed them most. The sight of his letter sitting in the hall had made my resolve waver at first. How could I risk my life when it held the promise of spending my days with him?
Then, when I’d read it, his words had spurred me on.
Without knowing it, he’d said exactly the right thing at the right time again, giving me the courage to face whatever lay ahead.
But that night, as the foxes yipped and chattered somewhere out there in the darkness, I have to confess that I hardly slept a wink.