Code Name Verity(48)
We weren’t allowed to talk to the pilots either. I made three jumps that week – the women do one less training jump than the men, AND they make us jump first. I don’t know if that’s because we’re considered cannier than men, or braver, or bouncier, or just less likely to survive and therefore aren’t worth the extra petrol and parachute packing. At any rate Maddie saw me twice in the air and never got to say hello.
I got to watch her fly though.
You know, I envied her. I envied her the simplicity of her work, its straightforward nature, the spiritual cleanness of it – Fly the plane, Maddie. That was all she had to do. There was no guilt, no moral dilemma, no argument or anguish – danger, yes, but she always knew what she was facing. And I envied that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don’t suppose I had any idea what I ‘wanted’ and so I was chosen, not choosing. There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
Thirteen days’ flying and two days off. Never knowing where she’d get her next meal or spend the night. No social life to speak of – but moments, now and then, unexpected and unlooked for, of solitary joy – alone in the sky in the cruise, straight and level at 4000 feet over the Cheviots or the Fens or the Marches, or dipping her wings in salute to a passing vic of Spitfires.
With Tom as her co-pilot (she was his senior by 100 hours’ flight time) she delivered a Hudson to RAF Special Duties. You have to take a pilot assistant with you when you ferry a Hudson. The Moon Squadron use them for night-time parachute drops, the Hudsons being bigger than the Lizzies, not so suitable for short-field landings. They sometimes land them if they have a lot of passengers to pick up. Maddie had flown a few other twin-engined bombers before (like the Whitley), but not a Hudson, and she slammed the tail a bit when she landed. Afterwards she spent a long time examining the tailwheel looking for prangs with three of the local ground crew (who decided there was nothing wrong with it). When she and Tom finally went into Operations to get their ferry chits signed, the radio chap told Maddie politely, ‘You’re to step into the debriefing room in The Cottage for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. They’re sending a driver. Your second pilot had better wait here.’
That was because The Cottage is fairly out-of-bounds, even to people landing at the big airfield on legitimate business. But of course Maddie herself had been there before.
She swallowed an anguished sigh. Court martial? No, it was just a heavy landing. Tom had supported her loyally when they were talking about it with the ground crew and the Air Ministry would laugh if she tried to file an Accident Report. She’d be court-martialled for wasting their time. Oh – she thought – what have I done now?
The smart and charming First Aid Nursing Yeomanry girl who does the driving for the Moon Squadron didn’t ask Maddie any questions. She is trained not to ask her passengers any questions.
No room in The Cottage is so severe and forbidding as the debriefing room (I do know). It was formerly a laundry (about 200 years ago), I think, all limewashed stone walls and a big drain in the middle of the floor, and only an electric fire to heat it. Waiting in this tiger’s lair for Maddie was our dear friend the English intelligence officer with the pseudonym. I suppose you may want to dig his pseudonym out of me, but it’s rather pointless – could be anything now. He wasn’t using it any more when he interviewed Jamie early in 1942 and he certainly wasn’t using it when he cornered Maddie in the laundry.
The spectacles are unmistakable, and Maddie recognised him straight away and was so immediately suspicious she didn’t step through the door. He was leaning casually against the shabby deal desk which is all the permanent furniture in that room, flexing his bony hands in front of the electric fire.
‘Second Officer Brodatt!’
The man is charming.
‘Beastly rotten to surprise you like this. But one isn’t able to arrange such meetings ahead of time, you know.’
Maddie’s eyes widened. She felt like Red Riding Hood staring at the wolf in Grandma’s bed. What big eyes you have!
‘Come in,’ he invited. ‘Do sit down.’ There was a chair, there were two chairs, pulled up in front of the heater. Maddie could see that it was all set up as informally and cosily as it was possible to make this bleak little room. She swallowed again and sat down, and found the presence of mind to say something at last.
‘Am I in trouble?’
He did not laugh. He sat down next to her, leaning over his knees with concern drawing a line down his forehead. He said sharply, ‘No. No, not at all. I’ve a job for you.’
Elizabeth Wein's Books
- Archenemies (Renegades #2)
- A Ladder to the Sky
- Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire #1)
- Daughters of the Lake
- Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
- House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)
- Our Kind of Cruelty
- Princess: A Private Novel
- Shattered Mirror (Eve Duncan #23)
- The Hellfire Club