Sea of Memories (Page 24)
They rattled up the road, away from the beach, back to Arisaig House. In the light of a glorious west-coast day, the building looked a good deal less forbidding than it had last night, its square-paned windows glinting in the sunshine. ‘Come in,’ said Angus, ‘and I’ll introduce you to the team.’
The house was elegant and welcoming, with the morning sunlight streaming in on to polished oak floors and a grand staircase leading to the upper floors. He led her into the drawing-room, where a group of people were clustered around a mahogany table on which sat piles of papers and a piece of apparatus consisting of a curved metal box, an aerial, several small battery packs held together by canvas straps, a set of headphones and a small microphone. Ella recognised the components as a radio, although it was a good deal more compact than the ones she’d learned to operate at RAF Gulford.
‘Harry, Dougal, Anja, George, Stefan – this is Ella.’ She noted that surnames were not used, presumably a policy of the centre. They were all dressed in casual clothes and she suddenly felt out of place in her WAAF uniform.
In fact, as she discovered over the next few days, after the disciplined, orderly routine of RAF Gulford, here at Arisaig she felt as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and ended up in a wonderland where odd groups of people seemed to be doing bizarre things at strange times of the day and night. No one batted an eyelid when sudden explosions were heard from the other side of the hill behind the house; at lunch, she sat next to a man whose face was blacked out with camouflage as he drank the hearty broth Sergeant McKay had served up. It was not unusual, when they were ensconced in the drawing-room, learning how the components of the S-Phone worked, to glance up and see a group of commandos stealthily creeping towards the window with lethal-looking knives held in their fists; and one day when two local women came to the kitchen door with a basket of herring to sell, Sergeant McKay suddenly guffawed with laughter half-way through their negotiations and said, ‘Very good, Alf! Charlie! You bloody nearly had me there!’
She quickly learned that one never asked questions: there was no point as no one ever gave a straight answer about what they were doing. Perhaps some of them weren’t sure themselves. The situation seemed to be fluid and pretty chaotic at times, with comings and goings day and night. The S-Phone project hit an occasional set-back, but through it all Angus Dalrymple retained his air of amused assurance, so Ella assumed it was all part of some overall plan over which someone, somewhere must have been in control.
Opportunities to socialise were rare and Ella would usually return to her billet in the croft house down by the shore at Back of Keppoch in the evenings to read or write letters to her parents, reassuring them that she was employed in mundane technical training to do with being a wireless operator. But one evening, after a supper of venison steaks (one of the commando training exercises involved stalking and killing a deer armed only with a knife, which meant that the kitchen at Arisaig House was kept well-supplied), Angus pushed back his chair and said, ‘Right then, we made good progress today. I think we’ve all earned a drink at the inn.’
The others agreed with alacrity, and they piled into two Tillys, which bounced along the long, rutted driveway and down the hill to where a cluster of white buildings nestled along the darkened shore. There were no lights showing, so Ella blinked as Angus pushed open the door of the inn and they stepped into the warmth and light concealed within. The hubbub of raised voices – she made out at least three different languages as well as the lilting local accent – and laughter enveloped them.
Sitting at a table in the corner, which a group of khaki-uniformed officers had chivalrously vacated when Ella and Anja appeared, they sipped half-pints of dark, bitter-tasting beer, which was the only drink on offer apart from whisky. It felt good to enjoy normality for once, a welcome break from the surreal wonderland of their daily training and from the constant reminders of the war. As she tilted her glass to take another sip, Ella met Angus’s glance from the other side of the table. When he smiled, his blue eyes and strong, weather-tanned features reminded her of the bracken-clad hills and the crystal-clear sea that surrounded and protected the settlement of Arisaig, as if he were chiselled from the craggy landscape that enfolded them and kept them safe here.
She returned his smile and then turned back to ask Anja about her family back in Poland. Her parents were still there, she said, but she and her brother had fled when the Germans invaded. ‘And now we are trying to fight to get our country back. My brother is with the Air Force. Last time I had contact with him he was stationed in England, in Norfolk. Do you know where it is?’
Ella nodded, enjoying listening to Anja’s rich, rolling accent. ‘And your parents?’
‘My mother is a teacher; my father an engineer. He is foreman in a factory which the Germans have commandeered. They are making specialist equipment for the war effort. Every chance he gets, my father ensures that the machinery breaks down. I recently learned your British expression – to put a spanner in the works.’ She grinned. ‘There are many different ways to fight, as we know.’ Then her expression grew serious again. ‘I heard news from a friend of my brother’s, who is in an underground group back home. My father has to manage the workers who are sent from prison camps each day to work in the factory. They say they are like living skeletons. Conditions in the camps are rumoured to be terrible. All the more reason to finish my training here and get back so that I can put some spanners in the works too.’
Ella clinked her glass against Anja’s. ‘Here’s luck to you. To all of your family. And to spanners in the works.’
When the evening drew to a close, they stepped out into the quiet darkness and Angus pulled the door shut behind them, shutting in the light and noise of the inn. ‘Jump in, Ella, I’ll run you over the hill.’
‘I can easily walk. There’s enough light to see the road.’ The moon was almost full, hanging in a black silk sky besequinned with a thousand stars.
‘It’s no bother,’ he insisted. ‘It’s only a few minutes’ drive.’
Outside the croft house, he switched off the engine and they sat for a moment, listening to the hush of the waves on the beach beyond the cropped grass of the machair. The water was calm in the bay and the moon lit a path to the islands beyond.
Ella sensed Angus turning to watch her profile as she gazed towards the sea, lost in her thoughts. A single tear painted a fine thread of silver on her cheek before she brushed it away. He reached across, his strong, capable fingers enfolding hers. And as he held her hand, she felt his vital warmth and strength permeate her skin, like the first rays of spring sunshine thawing the frozen ground of winter.
She leant towards him and brushed her lips, fleetingly, against his cheek. And then, without a word, she opened the door and got out of the car. He sat there, watching as she paused in the doorway of the white cottage and turned to smile back at him. His eyes were unfathomable in the shadows as he raised a hand in salute. Only after she had stepped into the kitchen, where the range muttered quietly to itself, and closed the door behind her, did she hear the ignition turn over and the car drive away, the sound of the engine fading as she climbed the stairs to bed.
Finally, the day came when they were ready to test the S-Phone in the field. The entire group assembled down on the shore. It was approaching midsummer’s day and, that far north, the daylight lasted long into the evening, the sun only setting well after ten o’clock. Anja wore the apparatus, the battery packs cinched around her waist and the transceiver itself strapped on to her chest. She fitted the headphones in position and slotted the aerial into the front of the S-Phone, then glanced at her wrist-watch. It was approaching eight thirty, the time they’d been given by the RAF who’d allocated a plane to fly over the area so that they could take it in turns to practise talking the pilot in to various selected drop zones.
‘Okay.’ Angus gave Anja the thumbs-up. ‘Start transmitting.’
They knew the plane would be approaching from the west, out over the sea, so she turned to face the evening sun which bathed them all in its clear golden light. She turned the knob on top of the transceiver and spoke the call sign into her microphone. There was a crackle of static and then the pilot’s response, from the air transceiver, came through her headphones loud and clear. Using the coded coordinates she’d been given, Anja directed the pilot and then, suddenly, the plane swooped in low over Eilan Bàn and Loch nan Ceall to buzz the group assembled on the beach. They cheered and waved, then Anja handed the set over to Stefan so that he could take his turn.
Angus insisted that Ella have a go with the kit as well. ‘It’ll help you understand exactly how it works in practice so that you can make sure your translated instructions are absolutely accurate.’ Ella had already drawn up a first draft of the French version of the instruction manual, but she jotted down a couple of additional notes, based on the experience of using the S-Phone in earnest. Once the details had been finalised, she would be responsible for coding the French instructions using an SOE cipher system. Angus had explained that the final version would be printed on silk as it was a material that was easier to conceal within the lining of an item of clothing, one which wouldn’t give itself away with the telltale rustle of paper if the courier was stopped and subjected to a search.