Code Name Verity(42)

‘Speak slowly,’ Jamie commanded.

Jock spoke loudly instead. Maddie got the gist of it. ‘There’s a ghost that sits at the top of the tower stairs. You go all cold if you walk through him by accident.’

‘I’ve seen him,’ said Angus proudly.

‘Aw, ye hav’nae,’ mocked Wullie with deep scorn. ‘An’ ye sleep wi’ a teddy, ae. There’s nae ghostie.’

They broke into an incomprehensible argument about the ghost. Jamie sat down across from Maddie and they beamed at each other.

‘I feel dead outnumbered,’ Maddie said.

‘Me too,’ Jamie agreed.

—

He was more or less living in the kitchen and the smaller of the two libraries. The Craig Castle Irregulars mostly lived outside. They slept three to a bed in our ancestral four posters. The laddies were happy to crowd in together as that’s what they were used to at home, and it saved on sheets, leaving Ross and Jock to share on their own (Ross being Jock’s wee brother). Jamie had them all wash up and brush their teeth military-style (or school-style) at the four kitchen sinks, 2 boys per sink, very efficient. Then he literally marched them all up to bed, installed Maddie in his fox’s den of a library on the way, and came back to her 20 minutes later carrying a steaming silver coffee pot.

‘It’s real coffee,’ he said. ‘From Jamaica. Mother hoards it for special occasions, but it’s starting to lose its flavour now.’ He sank into one of the cracked leather armchairs in front of the fire grate with a sigh. ‘How did you ever get here, Maddie Brodatt?’

‘Second to the right, and then straight on till morning,’ she answered promptly – it did feel like Neverland.

‘Crikey, am I so obviously Peter Pan?’

Maddie laughed. ‘The Lost Boys give it away.’

Jamie studied his hands. ‘Mother keeps the windows open in all our bedrooms while we’re gone, like Mrs Darling, just in case we come flying home when she’s not expecting us.’ He poured Maddie a cup of coffee. ‘My window’s closed just now. I’m not flying at the minute.’

He spoke without bitterness.

Maddie asked a question she’d wanted to ask him when she’d first met him, only she hadn’t had the courage.

‘How did you ever manage to save your hands?’

‘Popped my fingers in my mouth,’ Jamie answered readily. ‘I swapped hands over every thirty seconds or so. Couldn’t fit any more than three fingers at a time and thought I’d better concentrate on the ones I’d miss the most. My big brothers and little sister have all started to call me The Pobble Who Has No Toes, which is a very silly poem by Edward Lear.’ He sipped his own coffee. ‘Having something to concentrate on probably saved more than just my hands. My navigator, who came down with me, just gave up, only about an hour after we’d been in the water. Just let go. Didn’t want to think about it.’

‘You going back?’

He hesitated a little, but when he spoke it was with determination, as though he had a puzzle to solve. ‘My doctor says they might not want me in a bomber crew. But – you’ve got a chap with one arm flying in the ATA, don’t you? I thought they might take me. Ancient and Tattered Airmen, isn’t that what they call you?’

‘Not me,’ Maddie said. ‘I’m one of the Always Terrified Airwomen.’

Jamie laughed. ‘You, terrified! My eye.’

‘I don’t like guns,’ Maddie said. ‘Someday I’ll be fired on in the air, and I’ll go down in flames just because I’m too blooming scared to fly the plane.’

Jamie didn’t laugh.

‘Must be awful,’ Maddie said quietly. ‘Have you flown at all – since?’

He shook his head. ‘I can though.’

From what she’d seen of him that night, she thought he probably could.

‘How many hours have you got?’

‘Hundreds,’ he said. ‘Over half of them at night. Mostly on Blenheims – that’s what I was flying all the time I was operational.’

‘What did you train on?’ Maddie asked.

‘Ansons. Lysanders at first.’

He was watching her intently over his coffee, as though she were conducting an interview and he were waiting to hear if he’d got the job. Of course it was none of her business, and she had no authority. But she’d landed Lysanders herself too many times at that odd RAF Special Duties airfield, you see, even spent a night in the Moon Squadron’s private ivy-covered cottage hidden in a small wood at the edge of the normal airfield (there hadn’t been any other place to put her and she’d been very carefully segregated from the other visitors). She had some idea of the difficulties that peculiar squadron had in finding and keeping pilots. Hundreds of hours’ night flying required, and fluent French, and though they could only take volunteers, they were such a secret operation that they weren’t allowed to actively recruit anyone.