Eleven
Hari looked up as Colonel Edwards stopped at her desk. He smiled down at her, a lined man big and bluff who had served valorously in the war of 1914–18. He walked with a stick now but she’d found that his brain was strong and active, and his eyes gleamed with intelligence.
He sat opposite her, his injured leg jutting out awkwardly before him. ‘You like your work Miss Jones, you have no desire to join the armed forces?’
She looked at him in surprise. I think I’m happy to serve my country in any way I’m needed, sir.’ She wondered if it was a rebuke.
‘So you are happy to do your war work here in Bridgend?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. ‘You are quick to learn, articulate and clever. You are a well-educated young lady I understand?’
‘I did well at my school.’
‘No need of false humility,’ he said almost abruptly. ‘As you already know, the work you do is secret, I don’t want to be mysterious but signals are passed all over the country, bomber pilot to bomber pilot, among other things. Most reach Bletchley Park but it’s also my job to pick them up and decipher them, yours too if you have an aptitude for it.’
He handed her a page of writing. ‘It’s given to some intelligent civilians like you to do this work. Now this is the fairly easy code I use, it’s a peculiar shorthand of my own. I make notes of what comes my way, it’s all above board, government work, you understand? In the event of systems failing somewhere along the line, at least we here have some of the, possibly vital, pieces of information.’
Hari wondered what he was getting at. He read her mind. ‘As I said, I want to teach you to share my job. Anything could happen to me; I’m getting older and slower. Two heads, I feel, are better than one and your head is a young eager one.’
Hari was doubtful. ‘I’m honoured at your confidence, sir, but am I up to this sort of work?’
‘Well, before we go on to the difficult work,’ he said, smiling, ‘I want you to do a spot of work on this machine here. It’s a new listening radio I bought, or rather the government bought it. It’s almost like a regular wireless but you listen out for Morse messages. You understand Morse, don’t you? Learned it in girl guides like most other kiddies I expect.’
Hari nodded doubtfully. ‘Only the basics, sir.’
‘Well, you’ll soon get the hang of it. We’ve found that some of the German operators get careless and make it easier for us to work out the message.’
‘You think I’ll be any good at this sir?’
He stood up, ignoring her question. ‘The messages will be in Morse but they will be coded, as I said. Just play with the damn thing, I’ll come back and see you later.’
Oh, there’s a kettle over there on the stove and tea stuff. You can’t get up and go for lunch if there’s an important message coming through, you understand?’
‘Yes sir.’
He left her then and Hari began to panic. However much she tried to concentrate, she could make little sense of the machine. Life had been easier handling simple calls in the bigger office. She couldn’t do this, she just didn’t have the ability. She rubbed her eyes and then stared at the piece of paper the colonel had given her. She would just have to try her best, but first she would make herself a much-needed cup of tea.
Hari persevered throughout the day not even stopping to eat the sandwiches she’d brought with her. She drank a lot of tea and stared at the strange codes until at last they began to make something resembling sense.
The radio buzzed into life and Hari panicked. She listened to the tapping sounds that rose and fell as if coming from a distance. She hastily scribbled the letters represented by the long and short signals; she would try to work out their pattern later.
‘How are you doing, Miss Jones?’ Colonel Edwards’ voice startled her. She looked up and put her arms over the papers she was attempting to work on and then realized how foolish she must seem. This man, this intelligent man, was well used to deciphering messages from the wireless.
He smiled. ‘Well done, I see you’ll be discretion itself. Now, how are you getting along?’
‘I don’t think I’m getting very far, sir,’ she said, ‘though some of the words are beginning to make sense.’
‘Anything important come through?’
She was taken aback. ‘I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry, I wasn’t taking notes I was so busy trying to understand how it works.’
He held up his hand. ‘No problem, just keep trying. I’ll give you a few lessons tomorrow. Go home now, I don’t want you to miss your bus to the station.’
Hari felt weariness drape over her like a fog; going home on the bus, then on to the train, darkness pressed against the windows, drowning her. She closed her eyes for a moment. Kate sitting beside her, touched her arm. ‘You all right?’
‘Just tired. You?’ Kate nodded.
‘Right as I’ll ever be.’ She took Hari’s arm and leaned against her. ‘Last night, I went out, only for an ice cream and the men there, they were horrible, taunting me, telling anyone who’d listen what I’d been up to with them. I was shamed so I was and furious at their cheek. I put them in their place so I did, telling on them crying, begging me to cuddle them before they went out to face the Hun. The cat got their tongues then and I left the ice cream parlour head in the air.’
Hari felt pity tug at her. Poor, misguided Kate, she thought she was helping the young men who were about to die and gave them everything but some of them lived to tell a spiteful tale. As the train shuddered to a halt at Swansea station, she pressed her cheek against Kate’s. ‘See you in the morning and try not to let them get you down.’
The busyness of the station gave way to silent streets and Hari breathed a sigh of relief as she turned into her road where their old, big family house was little more than a hole in the ground. A few doors down was her house.
A few weeks ago, Mr Paster, one of the neighbours, had approached her to buy the house; it was small, terraced, but it was a home of her own.
She had grown tired of the public house, the noise, the smell of beer. She had been saving for months now and she had raised enough for the small deposit and so now she was a property owner—well, she and the local bank.
As she approached the house she looked at it with pride; small it might be but it was hers, hers and Meryl’s and Father’s if he came home from the war safely.
It was dark in the house, so dark with the blackout curtains and the fire unlit in the grate. Hari sighed and sat on one of the chairs in the parlour feeling too tired to do anything but go to bed. Still, she had chores, some washing and cleaning up.
She made sure the blackout curtains were in place and switched on the lights. She was lucky the house had been modernized; she had electric while some of the houses in the area still had gas lighting.
She turned on the gas stove. She would heat a tin of soup, have some of the stale sandwich from morning and as soon as she washed out her stockings and underwear she could go up to bed.
She ate the soup with little interest but it was hot and warmed her stomach. The heat from the stove had taken the chill from the air and she began to doze. Suddenly, before her eyes were the long and short symbols of the Morse code. They untangled, became clear as the normal written word and she sat up with a start as her memories from childhood came back, the days she’d struggled to send messages by tapping on an old tin to the other girl guides. Quickly, she took the paper out of her bag and unfolded it. She was beginning to see the pattern; letters were transposed in complicated forms but, slowly, she would make sense of it all.
She did her chores mechanically and stumbled upstairs. Once in bed she tucked the blankets up to her chin as the bedroom was freezing. She was so excited she wanted to go back to work at once, turn on her machine and
