‘Oh, let them come,’ he returned, ‘all the better if they know where we are—at least then we can fight the bastards.’
Lottie shook her head and turned to place her order.
‘Hey, Mike,’ one of the other men called, wandering over. ‘Who’s your friend?’ He smiled broadly at Elsie and offered his hand. ‘William Smith, Pilot Officer.’
‘This is Sergeant Elsie Finch,’ Aileen introduced.
He shook her hand vigorously. ‘Nice to meet you, Sergeant Finch.’
Elsie couldn’t help but smile. He was a young man—no older than twenty—trying to impress his friends. He had a boyishly smooth face, with short dark hair, but carried a confidence beyond his years. There was no way, in any set of circumstances, that she would go near a boy like him. Without thinking, she stretched out the fingers on her left hand and glanced down at her wedding band, inadvertently also drawing it to his attention.
‘Lucky guy,’ he muttered. ‘Not that that’s a problem for me.’
Elsie didn’t answer. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth—so complex, protracted and vague—so, instead she held her smile and said, ‘You can still buy me a cup of tea, though, Pilot Officer Smith.’
She sat on the warm grass beside Pat—a petite little thing with fragile bone-china features. Pat grimaced, digging her fingernails under her hat. ‘These bloody pins!’ she scorned, tossing her cap to the ground. She began removing the offending articles from her hair, gripping them in her front teeth, as she delved in for more. ‘You’d do well to keep away from him,’ she managed to say through clenched teeth. ‘He’s tried it on with all of us at one time or another. His hands are a bit adventurous, shall we say.’
Lottie, Aileen and Pat joined them at the moment that Elsie flashed her wedding band, again.
‘You don’t look old enough to be a wife,’ Aileen commented.
‘Married and widowed—all in ten months,’ Elsie stated without emotion.
‘Good golly,’ Pat muttered. ‘What happened?’
And so Elsie found herself relaying the complex, protracted and vague story that she had hoped to avoid. William silently handed her a cup of tea part way through the tale and sat at the edge of the group, listening. Elsie was aware that, as her story progressed, so more and more of the pilots at the tea van were also listening. She ended the story with her letter of appointment and billeting with her mother-in-law at Cliff House. ‘And here I am.’
‘Well, we’re pleased to have you, Elsie,’ Aileen said. ‘We’ll look after you.’
‘By God, do we need you up at Maypole,’ Pat added. ‘When we arrived here there was almost nothing to be heard on the airwaves. Days would go by with only a few scraps of information gleaned. A chance favourable wind here, a pilot off-course there and we might manage to get something, but really, it was next to useless.’
‘Now look at us, rushed off our feet,’ Lottie mumbled.
‘What changed?’ Elsie asked, sipping her tea.
Pat answered, ‘The fall of France in May; it brought the front line a hell of a lot closer—suddenly we were inundated.’
‘What happens to all that paper once we’ve worked out what it all means?’ Elsie asked. ‘Where does it go?’
‘Well,’ Aileen said eventually, ‘If it’s urgent, then we phone Number Eleven Group and they’ll scramble fighters into the air, or launch a sea rescue or whatever they need to do—perhaps pass it to the navy.’
‘Then it goes off with a dispatch rider to God knows where to be analysed by the boffins,’ Lottie added.
‘I hate to spoil the party, but the Maskerade that our German friends were talking about is on its way here,’ Pat said, pointing out towards the sea.
‘Thunderstorm,’ Aileen explained to Elsie with a grin.
A thick plate of black and deep grey cloud sat heavily over the English Channel, inching its way slowly but surely forward. The girls jumped up and moved towards their bicycles.
‘Time we left, too, Smith,’ one of the men called over.
One by one, the girls said their goodbyes and peeled away to their homes. With a touch of envy, Elsie gathered from their parting words that several of them were billeted together. As she watched them cycle away, she imagined the fun and laughter that they must share.
Elsie mounted her bicycle and was about to leave when she was grabbed around the wrist. It was Susie’s blond pilot—crashingly handsome up close.
‘Hi,’ he beamed. ‘Did I hear you say that you were billeted up at Cliff House?’ His smooth, freckled face scrunched into a grimace, his eyes not blinking.
‘Yes, why?’
He nodded mechanically, his eyes searching for something. Finally, he smiled, then spoke. ‘Just be careful up there.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Elsie demanded,
‘Just that—be on your guard,’ he warned enigmatically. He still hadn’t blinked.
The first droplet of water, ridiculously large, fell onto her left hand, spreading out between her knuckles. Then another bounced from the rim of her hat. Then another. And another. Elsie tugged her arm free and the gulf between them was suddenly filled with a deluge of rain.
She pulled tight her greatcoat and mounted the bicycle, wondering at the meaning of his ominous warning. She knew that he was watching her leave—a lone figure in front of the tea van; she could almost feel the weight of his stare on her back as she pedalled away. Don’t look around, Elsie, she told herself. And she didn’t.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ he yelled, his words icy splinters to her ears.
Chapter Seven
19th July 1940, Hawkinge, Kent
The watch-room was stifling; the summer storms had dissipated the previous day, leaving in their wake a clinging humidity. Elsie’s collar, clean on that morning, was soaked through with sweat. She was huddled
