When the raids on the southeast coast began in July, Morton made notes and took photos of articles that might pertain to Capel-le-Ferne, Hawkinge or the aerodrome, but, in reality, it was nigh on impossible to correctly identify the ambiguous geographical locations referred to, since the newspapers were prohibited from revealing anything of importance to the enemy.
Morton shifted the page on, stretched and closed his eyes for a moment. The tablets had yet to work, and staring at the screen was only making his headache worse. He opened his eyes and did a double-take at the microfilm reader. Below a dark scratchy image was the caption RAF Swing Quintet visits Hawkinge. Morton leant in closer, tightened the zoom ring and read the full story. A large number were present at Hawkinge Village Hall on Friday night last week, when the attraction was the appearance of the RAF Swing Quintet. A classic display of ‘jitterbugging’ caused a flurry of arm-wagging amongst the gay people who packed the crowded floor, many of them local RAF and WAAF personnel, enjoying a well-earned break from serving their country.
Morton rotated the zoom lens further, the photograph now filling the page. It wasn’t a great image by anyone’s standards and a tricky one for him to apply his expertise in photo analysis. It was evidently taken mid-dance and not staged, for many faces and limbs were blurred. The dance floor was, as the story suggested, crowded with couples. Most of the men wore their RAF uniforms but all of the women were dolled up in fancy evening dresses. Morton intended to take a high-resolution photograph of the image and then take a closer look later, but, as he zoomed back out, he caught sight of someone familiar. Could it be her? He zoomed back in and sharpened the focus. He was sure that it was: Elsie Finch.
Morton hurriedly removed Barbara’s yellow file from his bag, flicking quickly through the pages until he came to Elsie’s 1939 wedding photograph. Holding the picture beside the microfilm reader, Morton compared the two faces. It required no skill whatsoever to verify that they were one and the same woman. The hair, the facial shape, the eyes—all the same. Then he realised what had been bothering him about Elsie and Lawrence’s wedding picture—her eyes—they reminded him of some of the images that he had studied in the not-uncommon Victorian practice of post-mortem photography. In the dance photograph, however, there was a light there—a sparkle. Life, perhaps. It struck Morton as curiously back-to-front that a photograph taken just one month after the death of her husband should show a zest curiously absent from her wedding picture.
He looked back at the photograph. Elsie’s dance partner was evidently mid-jitterbug, for his left hand was obscuring the lower half of his face. Morton pulled the image tighter and, despite the distortion, thought that he recognised him. He scrolled through the pictures on his mobile phone and found the ones taken at the National Memorial to the Few at Capel-le-Ferne. William Smith, he was sure, was dancing with Elsie.
Morton took a series of photographs of the screen, intending further detailed analysis later on. He sat back and smiled. His headache was at last lifting and he had just found clear evidence linking Elsie to William. He thought of Barbara’s reaction when he showed her what would probably end up being the only photograph in existence of her biological mother and father together, dancing and enjoying each other’s company. His mind drifted back to last year, to standing outside the pair of houses in which his own biological parents had met. Had anyone photographed them together? It was possible. Then his thoughts turned back to the unopened letters and a sharp nettling entwined around his heart, branching out and stinging the muscles in his limbs. He took a deep breath and shook off the thoughts. Concentrate, he told himself.
He returned to the newspaper story, focussing on one section: …many of them local RAF and WAAF personnel… Was Elsie in the WAAF? It would go some way to explaining why she was so far from her home in Nutley and why she had met William at a dance in Hawkinge. He took his computer from his bag, perched it on his lap and opened up a web browser.
His searches baffled him. Each result pertained to the aerodrome becoming a training ground for WAAF personnel after its closure in September 1945. He clicked on each suggested link and read the content. Not one result related to WAAF personnel working on the aerodrome during the war. Perhaps she had simply lived in Hawkinge, but not worked at the aerodrome, he thought, removing the word aerodrome from the search. Google presented him with a shiny new set of unclicked results. At the top were the personal recollections of Mrs Susan Stubbs on the BBC People’s War website. It was a very brief account of her time working at Maypole Cottage, monitoring German radio transmissions. Her story made no reference to any of her colleagues but did mention that she had been employed because of her ability to speak German. Morton’s attention left the page in front of him, as he recalled that Elsie’s mother was named Christina Neugebauer. Was it making too much of a leap to suggest that Elsie, too, had a Germanic background and that she had served in the WAAF at Hawkinge?
Morton stared for a moment at his laptop screen, recalling a previous case that he had worked on, involving a soldier in the Second World War. His promotion, like all other military advancements, had been mentioned in the London Gazette. Morton accessed their website,
