Code Name Verity(74)



There had been talk of trying to get me out of here on that plane. They were going to try to squeeze me in with the two people I was supposed to have airlifted back to England in the first place – I’d have had to sit on the floor, but SOE and ATA are rather frantic about me at home and want me out of here. It hasn’t happened. Any number of things need to be arranged, then rearranged, then go wrong at the last minute. Every message to London has to be laboriously encoded and delivered on a bicycle to a hidden wireless set ten miles from here. The message perhaps doesn’t get sent straight away because someone has disturbed the leaf in the keyhole or the eyelash folded in the note left for the courier, and then they have to wait three days to make sure they are not being watched. The rain has been dreadful, with cloud at 1000 feet and visibility next to nothing in the river valleys where the mist hangs – no one could land here anyway. No field closer than Tours, 50 miles away, to replace the one I ruined.

They call a ruined field ‘br?lé’, burnt. Which mine is.

They will have to send a Hudson to collect us all, as there just isn’t the room in a Lysander. And that will mean waiting for the mud to dry out.

Ugh! I have never been so damp and miserable for such a long time – it is like living in a tent, no light, no heat. They pile the goosefeather quilts and sheepskin in with me, but the rain is constant – grey, heavy, autumnal rain that stops you doing anything, even if you weren’t trapped in a crawl space under the eaves. I have been down a few times – they try to give me a meal in the farmhouse each day to warm me up and break the monotony. Haven’t written anything here for a week, as my fingers are starting to get chilblained – so dead cold always. I need those mittens I made out of the pattern book Gran gave me, with the flaps that flip back so you can use your fingers. Essentials for the Forces that book was called. If I’d known how essential those mittens would be now I’d never have taken them out of my flight bag – except to wear them. Not like the flipping gas mask.

I wish I was a writer – I wish I had the words to describe the rich mixture of fear and boredom that I have lived with for the past ten days, and which putters on indefinitely ahead of me. It must be a little like being in prison. Waiting to be sentenced – not waiting for execution, as I’m not without hope. But the possibility that it will end in death is there. And real.

In the mean time my days are duller than a lifetime as a mill girl endlessly loading shuttles – nothing to do but suck on my cold fingers, like Jamie in the North Sea, and worry. I am not used to it. I am always doing, always at work on something. I don’t know how to occupy my mind without my whole self being busy. The other girls at Maidsend all lay snoring or knitting or doing their nails when the rain was tipping it down in such grotty visibility no one could fly. Knitting was never enough, got so bored with it, can’t concentrate on anything bigger than socks or gloves. I always ended up scrounging bicycles to go exploring.

Remember the Bicycle Adventure when I told Julie all my fears – they seem so trivial now. The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn’t ever any relief, never the possibility of an ‘All Clear’ siren. You always feel a little bit sick inside, knowing the worst might happen at any moment.

I said I was afraid of cold. It’s true cold is uncomfortable, but . . . not really something to be afraid of, is it? What are ten things I am afraid of now?

1) FIRE.

Not cold or dark. There is still a great pile of Explosive 808 hidden under the hay bales on the floor of this barn. The smell is overwhelming sometimes. It’s like marzipan. Just can’t forget it’s there. If a German sentry poked his nose in here I don’t know how he’d not notice it.

It makes me dream I’m eternally rolling icing for fruit cakes, believe it or not.

2) Bombs dropping on my gran and granddad. That hasn’t changed.

3) Bombs dropping on Jamie. In fact I worry about Jamie a good deal more now that I’ve experienced a little of what he’s up against.

4) New to this list: the Nazi concentration camps. Don’t know any of their names, don’t know where they are – I suppose I haven’t been paying attention. They were never very real. Granddad roaring about ominous stories in the Guardian didn’t make them real. But knowing I may very likely end up in one is more frightening than any news story could ever be. If they catch me and they do not shoot me straight away, they will slap a yellow star on me and ship me out to one of these dreadful places and no one will ever know what happened to me.

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