Format: Paperback, 320 pages
Release Date: November 5, 2019
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Mystery / Historical
The start of an exciting new World War II historical mystery series featuring charming, quirky Air Raid Warden Poppy Redfern….
Summer
1942. The world has been at war for three long and desperate years. In
the remote English village of Little Buffenden, the Redfern family’s
house and farmland has been requisitioned by the War Office as a new
airfield for the American Air Force.
The village’s Air Raid
Warden, twenty something Poppy Redfern, spends her nights patrolling the
village and her days writing a novel of passion. It is a far cry from
the experience of the other young women in town: within days, two of the
village’s prettiest girls are dating American airmen and Little
Buffenden considers the “Friendly Invasion” to be a success.
But
less than a week later, Doreen Newcombe, the baker’s daughter; and the
popular Ivy Wantage are both found dead. Poppy realizes that her
community has been divided by murder, and the mistrust and suspicion of
their new American neighbors threatens to tear this town, already
grappling with the horrors of war, apart. Poppy decides to start her own
investigation, but she soon unearths some unfortunate secrets and
long-held grudges. She will have no choice but to lay a trap for a
killer so perilously close to home, she might very well become the next
victim….
Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders is the
first installment in author Tessa Arlen's A Woman Of WWII Mystery
series. Set against the backdrop of Britain at war, in a period when just over
one million Americans were stationed in England, and a weakened police force
struggled to cope with a soaring increase in crime, life on the home front is
almost as uncertain as it is on the frontline. Poppy Redfern is Little
Buffenden's first Air Raid Precautions Warden having finished her training in
London. A peaceful village which hasn’t seen what London has gone through, has
been turned into the home of the American Army Air Force thereby almost
guaranteeing that the Germans will target not only the airfield, but the
village as well.
But the Germans are the least of Poppy's problems. After two local girls are found murdered, and a third barely survives, it appears that Poppy may be the next victim along with her always present Welsh herding dog Bess after Poppy begins her own investigation. The village assumes that the killer must be one of the American flyboys from the new airfield who have enchanted the local girls, including 2 of the dead women, because no one from the village could be so cold blooded and uncaring. When the local’s start pointing the fingers at the Americans, Poppy finds herself working alongside American Lieutenant Griff O’Neal to uncover the real culprit.
Poppy’s community has been divided by murder, and the mistrust and suspicion of their new American neighbors threatens to tear this town apart. Poppy soon unearths some unfortunate secrets and long-held grudges. The culprit was way too obvious as I’ve indicated in my updates, but these books are typically more character driven than mystery driven anyway. Poppy has dreams of becoming a novelist one day which is where her own alter-ego Ilona Linthwaite comes into the story. Ilona is much braver than Poppy which carries over with Poppy’s investigations and her connection to O’Neal. Overall: A pretty good story with reality based events especially when it came to the dangers faced by the English from German Luftwaffe bombing raids.
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Arlen / POPPY REDFERN AND THE MIDNIGHT MURDERS
One
Incoming air raid. Twenty to thirty bombers . . . could be more. You have fifteen . . .” The supervisor’s voice was drowned by the warbling howl of an air-raid siren. Our response was immediate: mugs of tea were abandoned and half-smoked cigarettes plunged into ashtrays as, tightening our helmet straps, we left the fug of our Air Raid Precautions post for the cool night air outside.
I looked up; it’s the first thing you do when the siren sounds. Searchlights crisscrossed the night sky. Half-ruined buildings, casualties of our last air raid four nights ago, cast skeleton shadows on streets made almost impassable with broken brick and rubble.
“If they’re Dorniers we have less than fifteen minutes.” Our ARP instructor looked us over and singled me out to tell me the words I had longed to hear for the two weeks of my training. “Redfern, you can take Clegg and Clave Streets solo. Humphries: Wapping High and Cinnamon, and Duckworth, you take Plumsom. Keep them calm, keep them moving, and check on as many houses as you can for the elderly and sick. Try to get them to safety in ten minutes and you might manage it in fifteen.” His instructions never varied as he rapidly allotted sections of Wapping’s neighborhoods to our care. Percy turned to include a group of new recruits. “The rest of you come with me.”
I started to sprint toward Clegg Street, but he pulled me back by my arm. “No heroics.” A frown underscored his command. “Your job is to get as many of them to safety as you can.”
I turned into Clegg and went down its center at a brisk trot. Doors opened to the left and the right of me. Families spilled out into the narrow street between face-to-face lines of meanly built East End terraced houses that were home to the families of London’s dockworkers. The gray-white glare of searchlights swung overhead, lighting up tired faces raised briefly heavenward, as we raced for the safety of Wapping’s Underground station.
A gaunt young woman, her raincoat flapping open over pajamas, shouted instructions to two children. “Daisy, take Jimmy’s hand, and don’t let go of it.” She was carrying a toddler and a couple of blankets. “Evening, Miss Redfern, you’d better check on number twenty-five, her mum-in-law took bad yesterday. She might need help.”
Two doors down an elderly woman was helping an even older one out of the house. “Course you’ve got to come, lovey,” I heard her say. “She must come, mustn’t she, Warden?”
“Yes, of course. Do you need help with her?”
“No, ’s’orright, I got her. Come on, lovey, you heard what the warden said.”
Ten minutes? I looked at my watch. It was more like eight and I had half the street to go. I picked up the pace.
“Bloomin’ racket.” An old man was shuffling along in his bedroom slippers. “Can’t hear a thing except that ruddy siren.” He stopped and shook his walking stick at the sky.
“No time for that, sir.” I took him by the arm and walked him forward to a young woman with curlers in her hair. “Take him with you, to the Underground, please.”
“ ’Ello there, Mr. Perkins, where’s your daughter?”
“Somewhere ahead with the kiddies.”
“Well, you come along with me, we’ll see you safely there.”
I dodged the corner into Clave Street to urge on the last of the stragglers. “Air raid in five minutes.” I crossed the road to two children: one sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter, crying, and a little girl standing white-faced with panic on the pavement. “Where is your mum?”
“She went to the pub, with my aunty.” An older girl came out of the house, carrying a baby.
“I’ll carry him.” I picked up the little boy, he buried his face in the collar of my jacket, and I held out my hand to the girl. “Let’s go and find your mummy, shall we?” She put her hand in mine. “Come on,” I said to their sister, who was dithering with a key in her hand. “No time to lock up.”
At the bottom of the street a crowd of people were filing down the steps into Wapping Underground station. Babies cried, children wailed, and mothers shouted out to one another as if they were meeting in the queue at the grocer’s.
“Blimey, doll, you had time to get dressed?”
“Got to look nice for Jerry!”
“We only just got back from the pub!”
“Bloody Krauts, second time in four days.”
“At least it isn’t as bad as it was last year—felt as if I was living in the bloomin’ Underground.”
Now that we were near safety there was a determination among the families who inhabited the dock area of East London to pretend that our race for shelter had been a breeze. As if the danger we faced could be obliterated by their collective camaraderie: a determination not to be intimidated by a bunch of cowardly German pilots who rained down hell on us from the lordly safety of their aircraft.
The crowd had slowed to a shuffle as it made its descent to the shelter of the Underground. “You’re going to have to move more quickly!” I put the little boy down next to his sister on the pavement and pushed my way to the head of the queue, knowing exactly what I would find.
“You can’t make me.” An elderly woman who weighed all of two hundred and fifty pounds had stopped at the top of the steps. “You know I don’t go anywhere by Tube. I always catch the bus.”
“Hullo, Mrs. White. Would you do me a favor? These little ones are scared stiff of the bombs. Would you help this little girl down into the Underground?”
I reached out to a small, skinny little scrap of a thing, clutching a grubby doll in her arms, my eyebrows raised to ask her mother’s permission. She prodded her daughter forward. “Go on, Dottie, help the old lady down the steps.”
The line plodded forward down into the warm, stale air eddying up from the station below. I turned to go back up the steps. “Four minutes. Keep moving. Four minutes . . .”
Clave Street was empty. Running as fast as I could, I covered the distance to the back alley that ran behind the two rows of houses. People often hid in the back alley so they could go back to bed when the all clear sounded. There was no one in sight. The sirens had stopped, but the searchlights continued their dance against the sky.
I blew three sharp blasts on my whistle. “Air raid, two minutes.” My voice echoed across the broken intersection, and two figures emerged from the rubble of what had once been a corner shop and ran across the road toward the Underground.
As I followed them down, I heard the engines of the first squadron. Against everything I had learned in training, I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and looked up. Silhouetted against the lit sky I saw the first planes approaching from the south: heavy black silhouettes, their wingtips almost touching in formation. They were Luftwaffe Dorniers, all right. Twenty? It looked like there were hundreds.
Ack-ack-ack. The antiaircraft guns mounted in concrete down by the docks sent bright bolts of fire up into the sky, and I heard, and then felt, the percussion of the first bombs as they hit the homes of the people who cowered under the pavement below me.
But where were our boys? Poised to race down the steps to the Underground, I looked up again. As if on cue, the cluttered skies were filled with small, fast aircraft, dropping down from above the German Dornier bombers in a shattering hail of machine-gun fire.
I heard myself cheer. It ripped out of me in a full-throated shout of approval and admiration, loud even against the racket of an air battle. Spitfires and the men who fly them are our country’s heroes: their bravery and courage during London’s Blitz last year had earned our absolute gratitude and respect.
I ran down the steps into the fusty protection of the Underground. My heart was racing as I pulled up short at the bottom of the steps to walk with calm authority out onto Platform One. The dull lights overhead illuminated smooth, oily train tracks as they snaked into the dark ellipse of the tunnel. On the platform Wapping’s families were going about the business of bedding down for the night on gritty concrete.
I watched the garrulous efficiency of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers as they organized their children for sleep: their calm stoicism, born of months of practice, and their determined cheerfulness as they helped one another out and gave comfort to neighbors who had lost everything. “Here, Vi, I brought an extra blanket and a pillow just in case, but it’s a warm night. No, love, ’s’orright—don’t mention it.”
The earth above us shuddered and the pale lights flickered, plunging us into a dark so absolute that our silently held breath seemed to echo our fear. A heartbeat later and we were revealed to one another again. Vi moaned and ducked her head. “The West End has such nice deep Underground stations—miles below the bombs.”
“Come on, love, chin up. Nothing to be afraid of. Here, have a nip of this.” What was it, I wondered, that kept them so unfailingly stalwart night after night?
At the far end of the platform, a group of girls with Veronica Lake hairstyles, wearing their fashionable all-in-one siren suits, sang along to a street musician’s accordion, their eyes on a group of teenage boys whose only thought was to be a part of what was going on upstairs.
“There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see.” Their girlish voices were sweet, their faces perfectly made-up. A couple of boys darted a quick look before returning to swap cigarette trading cards featuring tanks, aircraft, and battleships. I sent the singers silent thanks for their innocent belief that the reality of night bombing could be washed away by the simple melody of a Vera Lynn song.
“Cuppa tea, ducky? Probably need one after all that galloping around.” The woman from number twenty-five held out an enamel mug of milky tea that she had poured from a large green tin thermos.
“Bloody Hitler,” she said without a trace of rancor. “He’ll be laughing on the other side of his face when the Americans get here. When are you going home, dear, back to your village, I mean?”
“Tonight’s the last night of training. I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Glad you made it through, then, ducky.” She pulled a blanket up over a sleeping child lying next to her on the platform. “Not everyone does.”
Below London’s battered streets we could feel the bombs shattering our city. I drank tea and waited for the all clear, when I would leave the sleeping families to go back up those steps to what was left of their neighborhood. Then the night would be full of different sounds: the shrill bells of ambulances and the deeper clang of fire engines. That would be when the digging would begin, and when the tally of who had really won and who had lost would be reckoned.
It was reassuring to walk down Little Buffenden’s quiet, empty High Street the following evening. The soft, country-summer air was exquisitely sweet after London’s thick clinker-dust atmosphere, but the simple stillness of an August evening was not mine to enjoy for long.
“You’re back from your London training, then, are you?” Enid Glossop’s voice, pitched to carry, reached me on the other side of the street. I didn’t quite flinch, but she certainly stopped me mid-stride. “I would have thought the least they could do was have your uniform ready in time for your first patrol.”
“Come on, Bess, let’s get it over with—and remember not to jump up,” I said to the little dog running at my side. We crossed the narrow street to stand before a tiny middle-aged woman wearing a Royal Mail–issue beret pulled down in the front, almost to her eyebrows.
“This is my uniform, Mrs. Glossop,” I said with what I hoped was a face composed to express polite nothingness.
“That’s it?” Disbelieving eyes swept up to my black pudding-basin helmet with W stenciled on it, and down again to heavy lace-up ankle boots. “What does the W stand for?”
“Warden. Air Raid Precautions warden.”
“I see.” She looked like someone who suspected she was being lied to. “I know you say it’s a uniform, but it looks like that outfit Mr. Churchill wears when he’s being photographed on bomb sites.” Her mouth performed a tight imitation of a smile. Mrs. Glossop has a way about her that always manages to convey dissatisfaction.
“Yes, he borrowed the idea from Air Raid Precautions—siren suits are all the rage in London these days!”
“I could have sworn you were on your way to stoke the church boiler.” Pursed lips and regretful eyebrows as she gave my uniform a second chance. “It’s a shame they couldn’t have come up with something really smart like the Auxiliary Territorial Service: the Bradley girls look smashing in theirs.”
The last thing I needed was comparisons to the wonderful Bradley sisters, who were having the time of their lives up in London with their permanent waves and Elizabeth Arden Victory Red lipstick. While they were driving high-ranking officers in and out of the Admiralty, I was clumping about the village in my size nines as Little Buffenden’s first ARP warden.
“Have you secured the blackout in your cottage, Mrs. Glossop? We must be even more careful now with our new American airfield—”
“I most certainly have, Miss Redfern—I do it before I leave the house in the morning.” She turned away to lock the door of her tobacconist and sweet shop, which doubles as Little Buffenden’s post office, and I mentally flipped to the third page of my ARP training manual: “Section 2A: On Dealing with Difficult Members of the Public: Remember an ARP Warden holds a legal position of authority. Speak in a firm tone and engage eye contact!”
I am not naturally assertive, but I had learned a thing or two in my weeks of training in London. I looked directly into Mrs. Glossop’s fierce little eyes and held her gaze.
“I am sure you don’t want me knocking on your door when you are enjoying your evening cocoa,” I said with as much severity as I am capable of, and, summoning a more convincing tone of command: “We can check your blackout right now . . .” I extended my left arm in the direction of her cottage at the bottom of the High Street as if I was directing traffic.
And, to my amazement, all she came up with was a retaliatory, “That dog should be on a lead,” as she put her shop keys into her handbag and snapped it shut before falling into step beside me. “Not one aircraft, ours or theirs, has flown over our village since the start of the war. But I’m sure I don’t want to be the cause of our being bombed.”
I remembered the smoking rubble of East End Clegg Street when I had last seen it in the early hours of this morning. “You wouldn’t believe what one five-hundred-pound German bomb could do to our little village, Mrs. Glossop,” I said as we walked down our High Street, renowned for its pretty Georgian shop fronts and bow windows.
Even with the neglect of wartime, it is the sort of village that looks perfect at Christmas, with a dusting of snow, and carol singers exhaling breathy clouds as they sing “Silent Night” on the church porch.
“All this”—I waved at an ancient stone horse trough and the white verandah of the Edwardian cricket pavilion on the edge of the village green—“would be gone in a flash, reduced to blackened timbers and broken brick, just because a Luftwaffe pilot saw a spark of light on his way home and ditched his last bomb.” I didn’t belabor the point by adding that the new American airfield would increase our chances of an air raid by eighty percent—my job is not to cause panic.
She gave me a quick sideways glance, her face disbelieving. Mrs. Glossop is the one who informs in our village, not girls with a mere two weeks of ARP training. “I am surprised that your grandmother agreed to your taking on this job: walking around the village on your own at night. That little dog will be no protection when the place is swarming with American airmen.” She opened the diminutive white gate into the postage stamp of her front garden.
“I am not sure there will be enough of them to ‘swarm,’ Mrs. Glossop, and my uncle Ambrose still talks about his years in New York as his happiest. I think a change might wake us up a bit!” My suggestion, designed to jolly her along, was instantly shot down by a pitying look.
“Bert Pritchard says he won’t serve them in the Rose and Crown. He says he had more than enough of them in the last war.” I bit the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from smiling. Bert Pritchard, with his ebullient welcome and his lavish mustache, was a particularly good businessman. He would remember the day the American Army Air Force arrived in Little Buffenden as heaven-sent when he balanced his account books a month from now. I followed Mrs. Glossop up the crazy paving path between the rigid lines of vegetables growing in her victory garden.
“I feel sorry for anyone who has a daughter in this village, because from what I hear, those Americans are girl-mad. That’s what Mrs. Wantage told me. Her sister’s daughter is seeing a Yank, and she has become a right handful: out all hours of the night and talks back something shocking if she’s asked to do the slightest thing around the house.”
Mrs. Glossop pushed open her front door and looked over her shoulder. “Stay,” she commanded, and Bess dropped to the ground and lay arrow straight, her long nose resting on the path well ahead of her front paws. She knew Mrs. Glossop didn’t appreciate dogs and her tabby was an old battle-scarred tom with a short fuse.
It was dark in the narrow hall and I could see, even from where I was standing, the last rays of a subdued sunset through the uncovered front parlor window. “Blackout before electric light,” I quoted from my ARP manual as she lifted her hand to the switch on the wall.
“I could have sworn I closed them before I left this morning.” Mrs. Glossop darted to the window and dragged a heavy curtain across it. “There now, that’s better—fits like a glove!” She gave it a final twitch to cover a chink in the corner.
I was careful not to catch her eye. “I hope you are coming to our talk in the village hall on air-raid preparedness. We are going to organize the best place for everyone to go to for shelter—”
“I was planning on an evening of bingo.”
“Oh good, come half an hour early. Six o’clock, then?” I was given a reluctant but acquiescing nod and heard her sigh as she followed me back to her front door.
“It’s a crying shame your grandfather had to give up his house and all his land for these Americans and their airfield—it’s not as if your family didn’t lose enough in the last one.” She meant of course the death of both my parents: Clive Redfern, in the Great War, and my mother at its end, just two days after my arrival. Mine was not an unusual fate for my generation: I was the only war orphan in our village, but one of many in England. I couldn’t remember my parents of course, but they were very much alive in my heart. My grandparents had made sure of that by sharing their memories of my parents as I was growing up: my father, Clive, was a quiet man with a wicked sense of humor that surprised those who did not know him, and my mother, Olivia, had been described by Granny as a warm, vibrant young woman whom she had loved as if she was her own.
“Grandad didn’t give up all of his land, Mrs. Glossop, just enough for the airfield. And Reaches is on loan for the duration. Please don’t forget the blackout in the rest of the house before you turn on any lights.” I lifted my hand to the front door latch.
“You heard about the Chamberses’ eldest, then, about Brian?” My hand dropped from the handle and Mrs. Glossop nodded—she had me at last. But there was no pleasure in her being the first to break bad news; her deep-set eyes were sorrowful.
“They sent a telegram after you left for London—a week last Tuesday it was.” She pressed her lips together for a moment before she continued. “That’s both their boys lost in this bloomin’ war. Mrs. Chambers went into shock when they told her. She still doesn’t seem right to me.”
I stood there like a stricken fool with a lump filling my throat. One summer when I was a gawky and self-conscious fourteen-year-old, at home for the holidays from school, I had a brief crush on Brian. But then everyone loved Brian Chambers; he was the kindest and brightest boy in our village, with a wholehearted zest for life. I swallowed hard, so I could ask, “Where?”
“North Africa—some terrible place with an unpronounceable name—Allymain, is it?”
“El Alamein—yes, I heard the casualties were pretty bad. Poor Doreen, she must be heartbroken; they only got engaged at Easter, didn’t they?”
“I am quite sure Doreen Newcombe will survive Brian’s passing. His parents are the ones we should pity. I doubt his mother will pull through.” The stuffy corridor felt oppressive. I lifted my hand to the door latch again. “And Mr. Edgar, as runs the Wheatsheaf, got his call-up papers a week ago—he must be all of forty. I dread to imagine . . .”
But what Mrs. Glossop dreaded to imagine would remain unheard, for all I could see of Bess as I stepped out onto the path was her round, feathery bottom. She was head-deep in Mrs. Glossop’s victory garden.
“Oh my goodness.” I turned to face a woman who believes a dog’s place is on a chain attached to its kennel and put my hands on my hips to block her view of flying earth. “Is that the time?” I prayed that the deepening dusk would prevent those sharp eyes from seeing the havoc created in neat rows of carrots and cabbages. “I must run.” But I didn’t move. I stayed there at the bottom of the path to prevent her from following me to the gate.
She gave me a look of disgusted pity and closed her door, leaving me to lift Bess out of a sizable hole. I tucked her under my arm and replanted parsnips as fast as I could with one hand, thumping the earth firm around their wilting tops. Then I made off down the High Street, dusting dirt from Bess’s muzzle as we went. She still had half a carrot clamped between her teeth. “How often do I have to tell you not to dig? No dig-ging!” I kissed her grubby nose. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you might as well have the carrot.” I could feel her stump of a tail stirring in agreement.
One
Incoming air raid. Twenty to thirty bombers . . . could be more. You have fifteen . . .” The supervisor’s voice was drowned by the warbling howl of an air-raid siren. Our response was immediate: mugs of tea were abandoned and half-smoked cigarettes plunged into ashtrays as, tightening our helmet straps, we left the fug of our Air Raid Precautions post for the cool night air outside.
I looked up; it’s the first thing you do when the siren sounds. Searchlights crisscrossed the night sky. Half-ruined buildings, casualties of our last air raid four nights ago, cast skeleton shadows on streets made almost impassable with broken brick and rubble.
“If they’re Dorniers we have less than fifteen minutes.” Our ARP instructor looked us over and singled me out to tell me the words I had longed to hear for the two weeks of my training. “Redfern, you can take Clegg and Clave Streets solo. Humphries: Wapping High and Cinnamon, and Duckworth, you take Plumsom. Keep them calm, keep them moving, and check on as many houses as you can for the elderly and sick. Try to get them to safety in ten minutes and you might manage it in fifteen.” His instructions never varied as he rapidly allotted sections of Wapping’s neighborhoods to our care. Percy turned to include a group of new recruits. “The rest of you come with me.”
I started to sprint toward Clegg Street, but he pulled me back by my arm. “No heroics.” A frown underscored his command. “Your job is to get as many of them to safety as you can.”
I turned into Clegg and went down its center at a brisk trot. Doors opened to the left and the right of me. Families spilled out into the narrow street between face-to-face lines of meanly built East End terraced houses that were home to the families of London’s dockworkers. The gray-white glare of searchlights swung overhead, lighting up tired faces raised briefly heavenward, as we raced for the safety of Wapping’s Underground station.
A gaunt young woman, her raincoat flapping open over pajamas, shouted instructions to two children. “Daisy, take Jimmy’s hand, and don’t let go of it.” She was carrying a toddler and a couple of blankets. “Evening, Miss Redfern, you’d better check on number twenty-five, her mum-in-law took bad yesterday. She might need help.”
Two doors down an elderly woman was helping an even older one out of the house. “Course you’ve got to come, lovey,” I heard her say. “She must come, mustn’t she, Warden?”
“Yes, of course. Do you need help with her?”
“No, ’s’orright, I got her. Come on, lovey, you heard what the warden said.”
Ten minutes? I looked at my watch. It was more like eight and I had half the street to go. I picked up the pace.
“Bloomin’ racket.” An old man was shuffling along in his bedroom slippers. “Can’t hear a thing except that ruddy siren.” He stopped and shook his walking stick at the sky.
“No time for that, sir.” I took him by the arm and walked him forward to a young woman with curlers in her hair. “Take him with you, to the Underground, please.”
“ ’Ello there, Mr. Perkins, where’s your daughter?”
“Somewhere ahead with the kiddies.”
“Well, you come along with me, we’ll see you safely there.”
I dodged the corner into Clave Street to urge on the last of the stragglers. “Air raid in five minutes.” I crossed the road to two children: one sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter, crying, and a little girl standing white-faced with panic on the pavement. “Where is your mum?”
“She went to the pub, with my aunty.” An older girl came out of the house, carrying a baby.
“I’ll carry him.” I picked up the little boy, he buried his face in the collar of my jacket, and I held out my hand to the girl. “Let’s go and find your mummy, shall we?” She put her hand in mine. “Come on,” I said to their sister, who was dithering with a key in her hand. “No time to lock up.”
At the bottom of the street a crowd of people were filing down the steps into Wapping Underground station. Babies cried, children wailed, and mothers shouted out to one another as if they were meeting in the queue at the grocer’s.
“Blimey, doll, you had time to get dressed?”
“Got to look nice for Jerry!”
“We only just got back from the pub!”
“Bloody Krauts, second time in four days.”
“At least it isn’t as bad as it was last year—felt as if I was living in the bloomin’ Underground.”
Now that we were near safety there was a determination among the families who inhabited the dock area of East London to pretend that our race for shelter had been a breeze. As if the danger we faced could be obliterated by their collective camaraderie: a determination not to be intimidated by a bunch of cowardly German pilots who rained down hell on us from the lordly safety of their aircraft.
The crowd had slowed to a shuffle as it made its descent to the shelter of the Underground. “You’re going to have to move more quickly!” I put the little boy down next to his sister on the pavement and pushed my way to the head of the queue, knowing exactly what I would find.
“You can’t make me.” An elderly woman who weighed all of two hundred and fifty pounds had stopped at the top of the steps. “You know I don’t go anywhere by Tube. I always catch the bus.”
“Hullo, Mrs. White. Would you do me a favor? These little ones are scared stiff of the bombs. Would you help this little girl down into the Underground?”
I reached out to a small, skinny little scrap of a thing, clutching a grubby doll in her arms, my eyebrows raised to ask her mother’s permission. She prodded her daughter forward. “Go on, Dottie, help the old lady down the steps.”
The line plodded forward down into the warm, stale air eddying up from the station below. I turned to go back up the steps. “Four minutes. Keep moving. Four minutes . . .”
Clave Street was empty. Running as fast as I could, I covered the distance to the back alley that ran behind the two rows of houses. People often hid in the back alley so they could go back to bed when the all clear sounded. There was no one in sight. The sirens had stopped, but the searchlights continued their dance against the sky.
I blew three sharp blasts on my whistle. “Air raid, two minutes.” My voice echoed across the broken intersection, and two figures emerged from the rubble of what had once been a corner shop and ran across the road toward the Underground.
As I followed them down, I heard the engines of the first squadron. Against everything I had learned in training, I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and looked up. Silhouetted against the lit sky I saw the first planes approaching from the south: heavy black silhouettes, their wingtips almost touching in formation. They were Luftwaffe Dorniers, all right. Twenty? It looked like there were hundreds.
Ack-ack-ack. The antiaircraft guns mounted in concrete down by the docks sent bright bolts of fire up into the sky, and I heard, and then felt, the percussion of the first bombs as they hit the homes of the people who cowered under the pavement below me.
But where were our boys? Poised to race down the steps to the Underground, I looked up again. As if on cue, the cluttered skies were filled with small, fast aircraft, dropping down from above the German Dornier bombers in a shattering hail of machine-gun fire.
I heard myself cheer. It ripped out of me in a full-throated shout of approval and admiration, loud even against the racket of an air battle. Spitfires and the men who fly them are our country’s heroes: their bravery and courage during London’s Blitz last year had earned our absolute gratitude and respect.
I ran down the steps into the fusty protection of the Underground. My heart was racing as I pulled up short at the bottom of the steps to walk with calm authority out onto Platform One. The dull lights overhead illuminated smooth, oily train tracks as they snaked into the dark ellipse of the tunnel. On the platform Wapping’s families were going about the business of bedding down for the night on gritty concrete.
I watched the garrulous efficiency of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers as they organized their children for sleep: their calm stoicism, born of months of practice, and their determined cheerfulness as they helped one another out and gave comfort to neighbors who had lost everything. “Here, Vi, I brought an extra blanket and a pillow just in case, but it’s a warm night. No, love, ’s’orright—don’t mention it.”
The earth above us shuddered and the pale lights flickered, plunging us into a dark so absolute that our silently held breath seemed to echo our fear. A heartbeat later and we were revealed to one another again. Vi moaned and ducked her head. “The West End has such nice deep Underground stations—miles below the bombs.”
“Come on, love, chin up. Nothing to be afraid of. Here, have a nip of this.” What was it, I wondered, that kept them so unfailingly stalwart night after night?
At the far end of the platform, a group of girls with Veronica Lake hairstyles, wearing their fashionable all-in-one siren suits, sang along to a street musician’s accordion, their eyes on a group of teenage boys whose only thought was to be a part of what was going on upstairs.
“There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see.” Their girlish voices were sweet, their faces perfectly made-up. A couple of boys darted a quick look before returning to swap cigarette trading cards featuring tanks, aircraft, and battleships. I sent the singers silent thanks for their innocent belief that the reality of night bombing could be washed away by the simple melody of a Vera Lynn song.
“Cuppa tea, ducky? Probably need one after all that galloping around.” The woman from number twenty-five held out an enamel mug of milky tea that she had poured from a large green tin thermos.
“Bloody Hitler,” she said without a trace of rancor. “He’ll be laughing on the other side of his face when the Americans get here. When are you going home, dear, back to your village, I mean?”
“Tonight’s the last night of training. I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Glad you made it through, then, ducky.” She pulled a blanket up over a sleeping child lying next to her on the platform. “Not everyone does.”
Below London’s battered streets we could feel the bombs shattering our city. I drank tea and waited for the all clear, when I would leave the sleeping families to go back up those steps to what was left of their neighborhood. Then the night would be full of different sounds: the shrill bells of ambulances and the deeper clang of fire engines. That would be when the digging would begin, and when the tally of who had really won and who had lost would be reckoned.
It was reassuring to walk down Little Buffenden’s quiet, empty High Street the following evening. The soft, country-summer air was exquisitely sweet after London’s thick clinker-dust atmosphere, but the simple stillness of an August evening was not mine to enjoy for long.
“You’re back from your London training, then, are you?” Enid Glossop’s voice, pitched to carry, reached me on the other side of the street. I didn’t quite flinch, but she certainly stopped me mid-stride. “I would have thought the least they could do was have your uniform ready in time for your first patrol.”
“Come on, Bess, let’s get it over with—and remember not to jump up,” I said to the little dog running at my side. We crossed the narrow street to stand before a tiny middle-aged woman wearing a Royal Mail–issue beret pulled down in the front, almost to her eyebrows.
“This is my uniform, Mrs. Glossop,” I said with what I hoped was a face composed to express polite nothingness.
“That’s it?” Disbelieving eyes swept up to my black pudding-basin helmet with W stenciled on it, and down again to heavy lace-up ankle boots. “What does the W stand for?”
“Warden. Air Raid Precautions warden.”
“I see.” She looked like someone who suspected she was being lied to. “I know you say it’s a uniform, but it looks like that outfit Mr. Churchill wears when he’s being photographed on bomb sites.” Her mouth performed a tight imitation of a smile. Mrs. Glossop has a way about her that always manages to convey dissatisfaction.
“Yes, he borrowed the idea from Air Raid Precautions—siren suits are all the rage in London these days!”
“I could have sworn you were on your way to stoke the church boiler.” Pursed lips and regretful eyebrows as she gave my uniform a second chance. “It’s a shame they couldn’t have come up with something really smart like the Auxiliary Territorial Service: the Bradley girls look smashing in theirs.”
The last thing I needed was comparisons to the wonderful Bradley sisters, who were having the time of their lives up in London with their permanent waves and Elizabeth Arden Victory Red lipstick. While they were driving high-ranking officers in and out of the Admiralty, I was clumping about the village in my size nines as Little Buffenden’s first ARP warden.
“Have you secured the blackout in your cottage, Mrs. Glossop? We must be even more careful now with our new American airfield—”
“I most certainly have, Miss Redfern—I do it before I leave the house in the morning.” She turned away to lock the door of her tobacconist and sweet shop, which doubles as Little Buffenden’s post office, and I mentally flipped to the third page of my ARP training manual: “Section 2A: On Dealing with Difficult Members of the Public: Remember an ARP Warden holds a legal position of authority. Speak in a firm tone and engage eye contact!”
I am not naturally assertive, but I had learned a thing or two in my weeks of training in London. I looked directly into Mrs. Glossop’s fierce little eyes and held her gaze.
“I am sure you don’t want me knocking on your door when you are enjoying your evening cocoa,” I said with as much severity as I am capable of, and, summoning a more convincing tone of command: “We can check your blackout right now . . .” I extended my left arm in the direction of her cottage at the bottom of the High Street as if I was directing traffic.
And, to my amazement, all she came up with was a retaliatory, “That dog should be on a lead,” as she put her shop keys into her handbag and snapped it shut before falling into step beside me. “Not one aircraft, ours or theirs, has flown over our village since the start of the war. But I’m sure I don’t want to be the cause of our being bombed.”
I remembered the smoking rubble of East End Clegg Street when I had last seen it in the early hours of this morning. “You wouldn’t believe what one five-hundred-pound German bomb could do to our little village, Mrs. Glossop,” I said as we walked down our High Street, renowned for its pretty Georgian shop fronts and bow windows.
Even with the neglect of wartime, it is the sort of village that looks perfect at Christmas, with a dusting of snow, and carol singers exhaling breathy clouds as they sing “Silent Night” on the church porch.
“All this”—I waved at an ancient stone horse trough and the white verandah of the Edwardian cricket pavilion on the edge of the village green—“would be gone in a flash, reduced to blackened timbers and broken brick, just because a Luftwaffe pilot saw a spark of light on his way home and ditched his last bomb.” I didn’t belabor the point by adding that the new American airfield would increase our chances of an air raid by eighty percent—my job is not to cause panic.
She gave me a quick sideways glance, her face disbelieving. Mrs. Glossop is the one who informs in our village, not girls with a mere two weeks of ARP training. “I am surprised that your grandmother agreed to your taking on this job: walking around the village on your own at night. That little dog will be no protection when the place is swarming with American airmen.” She opened the diminutive white gate into the postage stamp of her front garden.
“I am not sure there will be enough of them to ‘swarm,’ Mrs. Glossop, and my uncle Ambrose still talks about his years in New York as his happiest. I think a change might wake us up a bit!” My suggestion, designed to jolly her along, was instantly shot down by a pitying look.
“Bert Pritchard says he won’t serve them in the Rose and Crown. He says he had more than enough of them in the last war.” I bit the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from smiling. Bert Pritchard, with his ebullient welcome and his lavish mustache, was a particularly good businessman. He would remember the day the American Army Air Force arrived in Little Buffenden as heaven-sent when he balanced his account books a month from now. I followed Mrs. Glossop up the crazy paving path between the rigid lines of vegetables growing in her victory garden.
“I feel sorry for anyone who has a daughter in this village, because from what I hear, those Americans are girl-mad. That’s what Mrs. Wantage told me. Her sister’s daughter is seeing a Yank, and she has become a right handful: out all hours of the night and talks back something shocking if she’s asked to do the slightest thing around the house.”
Mrs. Glossop pushed open her front door and looked over her shoulder. “Stay,” she commanded, and Bess dropped to the ground and lay arrow straight, her long nose resting on the path well ahead of her front paws. She knew Mrs. Glossop didn’t appreciate dogs and her tabby was an old battle-scarred tom with a short fuse.
It was dark in the narrow hall and I could see, even from where I was standing, the last rays of a subdued sunset through the uncovered front parlor window. “Blackout before electric light,” I quoted from my ARP manual as she lifted her hand to the switch on the wall.
“I could have sworn I closed them before I left this morning.” Mrs. Glossop darted to the window and dragged a heavy curtain across it. “There now, that’s better—fits like a glove!” She gave it a final twitch to cover a chink in the corner.
I was careful not to catch her eye. “I hope you are coming to our talk in the village hall on air-raid preparedness. We are going to organize the best place for everyone to go to for shelter—”
“I was planning on an evening of bingo.”
“Oh good, come half an hour early. Six o’clock, then?” I was given a reluctant but acquiescing nod and heard her sigh as she followed me back to her front door.
“It’s a crying shame your grandfather had to give up his house and all his land for these Americans and their airfield—it’s not as if your family didn’t lose enough in the last one.” She meant of course the death of both my parents: Clive Redfern, in the Great War, and my mother at its end, just two days after my arrival. Mine was not an unusual fate for my generation: I was the only war orphan in our village, but one of many in England. I couldn’t remember my parents of course, but they were very much alive in my heart. My grandparents had made sure of that by sharing their memories of my parents as I was growing up: my father, Clive, was a quiet man with a wicked sense of humor that surprised those who did not know him, and my mother, Olivia, had been described by Granny as a warm, vibrant young woman whom she had loved as if she was her own.
“Grandad didn’t give up all of his land, Mrs. Glossop, just enough for the airfield. And Reaches is on loan for the duration. Please don’t forget the blackout in the rest of the house before you turn on any lights.” I lifted my hand to the front door latch.
“You heard about the Chamberses’ eldest, then, about Brian?” My hand dropped from the handle and Mrs. Glossop nodded—she had me at last. But there was no pleasure in her being the first to break bad news; her deep-set eyes were sorrowful.
“They sent a telegram after you left for London—a week last Tuesday it was.” She pressed her lips together for a moment before she continued. “That’s both their boys lost in this bloomin’ war. Mrs. Chambers went into shock when they told her. She still doesn’t seem right to me.”
I stood there like a stricken fool with a lump filling my throat. One summer when I was a gawky and self-conscious fourteen-year-old, at home for the holidays from school, I had a brief crush on Brian. But then everyone loved Brian Chambers; he was the kindest and brightest boy in our village, with a wholehearted zest for life. I swallowed hard, so I could ask, “Where?”
“North Africa—some terrible place with an unpronounceable name—Allymain, is it?”
“El Alamein—yes, I heard the casualties were pretty bad. Poor Doreen, she must be heartbroken; they only got engaged at Easter, didn’t they?”
“I am quite sure Doreen Newcombe will survive Brian’s passing. His parents are the ones we should pity. I doubt his mother will pull through.” The stuffy corridor felt oppressive. I lifted my hand to the door latch again. “And Mr. Edgar, as runs the Wheatsheaf, got his call-up papers a week ago—he must be all of forty. I dread to imagine . . .”
But what Mrs. Glossop dreaded to imagine would remain unheard, for all I could see of Bess as I stepped out onto the path was her round, feathery bottom. She was head-deep in Mrs. Glossop’s victory garden.
“Oh my goodness.” I turned to face a woman who believes a dog’s place is on a chain attached to its kennel and put my hands on my hips to block her view of flying earth. “Is that the time?” I prayed that the deepening dusk would prevent those sharp eyes from seeing the havoc created in neat rows of carrots and cabbages. “I must run.” But I didn’t move. I stayed there at the bottom of the path to prevent her from following me to the gate.
She gave me a look of disgusted pity and closed her door, leaving me to lift Bess out of a sizable hole. I tucked her under my arm and replanted parsnips as fast as I could with one hand, thumping the earth firm around their wilting tops. Then I made off down the High Street, dusting dirt from Bess’s muzzle as we went. She still had half a carrot clamped between her teeth. “How often do I have to tell you not to dig? No dig-ging!” I kissed her grubby nose. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you might as well have the carrot.” I could feel her stump of a tail stirring in agreement.
Release Date: December 1, 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Mystery / Historical
Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers is the second installment in author Tessa Arlen's A Woman of WWII Mystery series. This story picks up 4 weeks after the ending of Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders. As the story opens, Poppy has taken the job of assistant scriptwriter for the London Crown Film Unit. The Crown Film Unit produces short films featuring British civilians who perform acts of valor and heroism in wartime to keep up the morale of the country which has been at war for 3 long years.
Poppy is thrilled to receive her first solo script project: a fifteen-minute film about the Didcote Air Transport Auxiliary at White Waltham Airfield, known as Attagirls, a group of female civilians who have been trained to pilot planes from factories to military airfields all over Britain. The story is based on The Women's Section of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) which was established on January 1, 1940, to help ferry new, repaired, and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units (MUs), scrap yards, and active service squadrons and airfields, but not to naval aircraft carriers.
Poppy could not be more excited to spend time with these amazing ladies, but she never expects to see one of the best pilots die in what is being labeled an accident. When another Attagirl meets a similar fate, Poppy and her American fighter-pilot boyfriend, Captain Griff O’Neal, believe foul play may be at work. I would love for Poppy to actually admit that Griff is her lover and boyfriend instead of playing coy everything someone asks her a question about their relationship. The mystery was well done. The author played her cards close this time, and there was so many possible suspects who could have done it.
Well played Tessa. Will there be another story in this series? I certainly hope so! I adore these historical mysteries. I like how Poppy has gotten stronger as a character as series goes forward. She’s brave, intelligent, and resourceful. She continues to use her Ilona persona to be more than her own personality has allowed her to be. This series is set against the backdrop of Britain at war, in a period when just over one million Americans were stationed in England, and a weakened police force struggled to cope with a soaring increase in crime, life on the home front is almost as uncertain as it is on the frontline.
**These women who served during WWII were real, remarkable and beyond brave. Some literally flew without weapons or radios. If a pilot landed behind enemy lines, she could be considered to be a spy and shot. The women literally flew every sort of plane imaginable to various bases across England and elsewhere. But, when the war was over, so was their flying careers. Esther McGowin Blake was the first woman in the United States Air Force. She enlisted on the first minute of the first hour of the first day regular U.S. Air Force duty was authorized for women on 8 July 1948. Joanna Mary Salter was England’s first fighter pilot. Kara Spears Hultgreen was a lieutenant and naval aviator in the United States Navy and the first female carrier-based fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy who later died when her plane crashed.
One
Miss Redfern? For heaven’s sake, where is she?” A tall gray-haired woman was standing in the doorway to the Script Department of the Crown Film Unit. She lifted her voice over the clatter of a room full of typewriters. “Miss Redfern? Oh, there you are. Yes, well, will you join us for a meeting, please? Room four.” She lifted an impatient hand and waved me to her.
I picked up my notepad and leapt to my feet. A desk away in the tightly packed room my new friend, Clary, fed four sheets of foolscap, layered with carbon paper, into the platen of her typewriter. Her face was set with concentration. “Only production meetings are held in room four—you’re on your way, Poppy.” She didn’t lift her head as I squeezed past her desk. “I bet Fanny has an assignment for you!”
“Do you really think so?” I had waited for this moment for weeks, and now that it was here a feeling of dread had started in my stomach and was working its way upward, making it hard to breathe. I fumbled my notepad and dropped my pencil on the floor, breaking its magnificently sharp point. “Where’s room four?”
Clary carefully typed as she said the words, “Fifth Octo-ber nine-teen-for-ty-two,” and looked up at me. “Turn right out of here and go along the corridor to the back stairs all the way down to the basement. It’s on the left.” She waved her hand in dismissal of first-project nerves. “You’ll be fine—isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for? You’re going to have a film with your name on it in tiny print at the end.” I set off for the door. “And don’t be intimidated by Fanny—he’s always tetchy after lunch,” she shouted after me.
I was intimidated by everyone in this shabby rambling brick building that housed the Crown Film Unit—even if our task is to keep British morale high. My mouth was chalk dry as I made my way along the cracked linoleum of the long basement corridor to a closed door with a crooked four painted on it. I wiped the palm of my hand down the side of my skirt and tapped so lightly on its dull gray wood that no one could have possibly heard me.
How long I stood there, uncertain and unsure, could only have been a matter of seconds, but I was simply paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of attending a production meeting.
I was rescued by the patrician voice of the main character of the book I had written: the heroine of my love story and murder mystery, who had helped me to win this wonderful new job as a scriptwriter. Her calm tones floated into my consciousness like a cooling breeze. The voice belonged to Ilona Linthwaite, girl-reporter extraordinaire and everything I was not: confident, worldly, and, sometimes, wise. Come on, ducky, pull yourself together. Remember that you have a lot to offer these wretched people.
I took a deep breath as I opened the door and peeked round it. The room was packed with the people I had seen racing past me, in corridors and hallways, all week. They looked up for the briefest moment and then carried on lighting up cigarettes and arguing. One of them waved a large pink hand.
“Yes, yes, come on in and find somewhere to sit.” The hand belonged to a big man with a round bald head sitting at the head of the table. He looked like an overgrown baby in a pin-striped suit. There appeared to be no empty chair, so I edged into the room and stood with my back against the wall.
“This week in postproduction,” the large pink man continued. “Nigel and Brian are working on a ten-minute short about the woman who trains dogs to search for unexploded bombs—for release next Tuesday. Who will edit this piece now that Cliff’s been transferred?” This had to be Mr. Fanshaw, the Crown Film Unit’s head of production. I tried not to catch his eye as he looked around the table at the faces of writers whose names I did not know; production managers I had heard terrifying stories about; unit directors who thought they were God; and a crew of round-shouldered film editors gathered at the far end of the cheap pine table.
Room four was large enough to hold ten at a pinch, and there were at least twenty puffing clouds of cigarette smoke at one another. My breath caught in my throat and I swallowed hard.
“Come on, come on, I need an editor. What about you, Roy?”
A groan from under a mop of fair hair.
“Good, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“But I’ve already got . . .” said the overworked Roy.
Fanny waved a dismissive hand and sat forward in his chair. “Right then, what’s on the books for new and exciting projects?” His laugh was high-pitched as he looked around the table at lifted faces. “Ah yes, we all love something new.” His fixed his eye at the far end of the table. “Jim and Derek, I want you to go to Eastbourne to do a piece about the teenage girl who rescued three sailors from drowning using a boat she made herself. Shades of Grace Darling, what?” There was a ripple of obliging laughter. “That leaves Annabelle to write up a quick five minutes about the old-age pensioner who knitted a hundred and twenty pairs of socks in one month for soldiers. She runs a grocery shop in Cardiff when she’s not up to her eyes in yarn.”
An attractive girl in a yellow beret put out her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.
“Sorry about that, Annabelle, but we are stretching staff as it is.” However fat and pink he was, Mr. Fanshaw’s voice was quiet and there was enough finality in his tone to silence any dissenters in his group.
“Which leaves us with—” He looked at his agenda and smiled. “Ah yes, the Air Transport Auxiliary pilots. Huntley, I’m giving this one to you. I want a fifteen-minute short on these ATA women flyers. Take Keith; he’s getting quite handy with a camera.” He sat back in his chair. “Should be fun—they are a pretty glamorous bunch apparently. We’ll send Miss Redmayne down ahead, so she can draft up a script for you—don’t want any of you boys getting into trouble.”
“Redmayne?” Huntley looked around the table. “Who’s he?”
Fanny lifted his arm and waved across at me. “Miss er . . . Redmayne, isn’t it?”
Somehow, I managed to get my tongue off the roof of my mouth. “Actually, it’s Redfern, sir.”
“So it is. Meet our new assistant scriptwriter, Miss Redfern, everyone. The ATA will be a good piece for her to cut her teeth on.” I could feel the color in my cheeks building to a full-strength blush as heads turned to look at me. “Pop along to Miss Murgatroyd’s office after the meeting and she’ll give you your brief, Miss Red . . . and get down to Didcote Airfield as soon as possible.”
I turned for the door.
“No need to run.” Fanny’s laugh was loud and inclusive, and I turned back to face him. His tongue was a startling raspberry pink. “Tomorrow morning will do.”
Alone in the safety of the empty corridor, I exhaled in triumph as I leaned my hot forehead against its wall.
He seems nice enough, Ilona said. Almost human, really, and he has a sense of humor. I think you are going to enjoy this job.
I didn’t care if Fanny ate assistant scriptwriters for breakfast. I was going on location—I was part of Crown Films’ production team.
Miss Murgatroyd was round and deceptively maternal-looking with fluffy white hair. “Didcote ATA, did you say?” She picked up a wire basket and took out a sheaf of papers. “Your room has been paid for at the Fisherman’s Lodge at Didcote for two nights, which includes a cooked breakfast. Don’t forget to take your ration book. You will not be reimbursed for any meals on either of your travel days, so there is no need to save any receipts. Neither will you be reimbursed for any lost personal items, and if your portable typewriter is damaged, stolen, or mislaid you will be liable for the cost of its replacement: one pound, ten shillings, and sixpence. Please sign here . . . and here . . . and initial here.” I obediently complied. “Rail passes—second class. Please don’t travel in third and try to recoup the price difference.” Three rapid applications with a smudgy blue rubber stamp and the passes were mine. “And someone rang this office at half past four. I did not take a message. This is not your personal telephone”—she tapped the instrument—“and I am not your secretary. Please remember that, Miss Redfern.” I started to stumble out an apology, but she wasn’t having it.
“He was an American.” Disdain for our allies and their friendly invasion was not disguised.
“I’m so terribly sorry, it won’t happen again,” I managed to get out.
“It had better not.” She sighed and pressed her lips together. A pause and another sigh. “He said he would pick you up outside your digs, I forget what time, and he mentioned someone called Bess.”
The last rays of the sun shone on a bright red Alvis drophead coupe parked outside 122 Elms Road. Leaning up against its long glossy bonnet was a man in American Army Air Force uniform. Sitting demurely at his feet was my little dog, Bess. Her bob of a tail stirred apologetically as she looked down her nose at me as if going for a walk on Clapham Common with Lieutenant Griff O’Neal was the event of the year. Then, remembering who fed her every day, she got to her feet and danced between us, yodeling with delight as I crossed the road to join them.
I felt just as enthralled about seeing him as she obviously did, but I managed to greet him with the cool reserve we English practice at the best, and worst, of times. Unlike my prancing little dog, I kept my feet firmly planted on the ground.
“What on earth are you doing here—are you on leave?” No one could tell from my polite welcome that my heart was thumping like mad, and to my immense relief the old awkward schoolgirl shyness that always threatened when we first met only revealed itself in a slight blush.
He leaned down to spank dog hair off his immaculate trousers. “We’ve been a bit busy lately.” It was his term for flying missions. When he lifted his head, I saw that his face was thinner, the skin more tightly drawn around the eyes. I saw something else as well. There were two silver flashes on his shoulder.
“Captain? Oh, Griff, congratulations!”
“Yes, I told you we’d been busy.” He shrugged off his promotion from lieutenant to captain as if it might be more of a burden than an acknowledgment of skill and experience. “Our commanding officer has packed me off for seven days of what he describes as long-overdue rest and recreation. He sends his regards to you, by the way.” Like Griff, Colonel Duchovny had become a good friend of my family when the American Army Air Force had arrived to take possession of their new airfield earlier this year. It had been built for them on my grandfather’s farmland outside the village of Little Buffenden: a village our family have lived in for generations. “And your grandparents send their love too, of course. I had dinner with them yesterday evening.”
“Did you cook?” I laughed. “Or did Granny?” I could see Griff in our tiny kitchen contentedly sautéing mushrooms in half a pound of American military-issue butter. My grandmother is an authority on toast and jam. Griff is . . . well, let’s just say he is a man who takes pains with the things he likes to eat.
“They were our guests at the mess. Or I should say, they were our guests in their old dining room.” When the War Office had requisitioned our farmland for the airfield, our lovely old farmhouse had been turned into the headquarters and officers’ mess for the AAAF. My grandparents now lived in the lodge at the bottom of the drive to what was now known as Reaches Airfield.
“Your grandparents told me you had managed a visit, to pick up Bess. They miss you—but wouldn’t dream of saying so, of course. Your grandad talked about your new job, nonstop—you could have only topped it by joining the navy. But your grandmother is quite sure that after a couple of months of life in London, you will be desperate for the peace of the country.”
I laughed. My visit to my grandparents had been heaven: there is nothing like spending a weekend with those you love and allowing yourself to settle back into comfortable old habits, especially in these uncertain times, but the quiet village streets of Little Buffenden and the repetitive gossip of its inmates had palled after a day. I had adjusted to a faster pace of life since my arrival in London four weeks ago. The city with its bustling, crowded streets was gloriously anonymous; no one cared what you said or did or discussed it avidly with their next-door neighbor. I didn’t say that the one person I missed most from life in Little Buffenden was now standing in front of me.
Bess, fed up with being ignored, stood up on her hind legs and put her paws on my knees.
“Yes, I know, Bessie, I’m with you: I’m famished.” Griff folded his arms in a cloud of dog hair. “Why don’t you go and put on your hat, Poppy? I have reservations for dinner at the Savoy.”
“But I can’t! I’m leaving town tomorrow morning, early. I have to pack, and I have heaps to read.” The excitement of writing my first script was momentarily eclipsed at the thought of Griff here in London and me . . . where? On an airfield in Hampshire.
“I hope it’s somewhere exciting.”
I stopped behaving like my spinster aunt. “Oh, it is, Griff, it really is. It’s my first assignment—a fifteen-minute film about the Didcote Air Transport Auxiliary.”
The sun slipped below the horizon and he became a dark shadow by his car.
“Blimey!” It was clear that Griff’s infatuation with cockney slang was still with us. “That’s what I call good news. Now we have something to really celebrate!” The slightest pause. “Did you say the Didcote Attagirls?”
I nodded. How on earth had Griff heard about these astonishing women when I had only discovered them this afternoon? “The Attagirls? Is that what they are called?”
“Not sure if that’s what your guys in the Royal Air Force call them, but we do. They’ve delivered a couple of aircraft to us at Reaches.”
I might have known that American pilots would have a catchy name for a group of Englishwomen who thought nothing of taking off in a fighter plane and flying it to an airfield in far-flung Yorkshire or Scotland.
“Can I invite myself along? I’ll pick you both up after breakfast and we can have lunch on the way down to Didcote.”
I bent down to ruffle Bess’s ears as I considered what was turning out to be a splendid end to a perfect day. “You can come on one condition,” I said as I stood up. “That I drive to Didcote.”
He laughed. “Then we had better plan on having dinner on the road too.”
Miss Redfern? For heaven’s sake, where is she?” A tall gray-haired woman was standing in the doorway to the Script Department of the Crown Film Unit. She lifted her voice over the clatter of a room full of typewriters. “Miss Redfern? Oh, there you are. Yes, well, will you join us for a meeting, please? Room four.” She lifted an impatient hand and waved me to her.
I picked up my notepad and leapt to my feet. A desk away in the tightly packed room my new friend, Clary, fed four sheets of foolscap, layered with carbon paper, into the platen of her typewriter. Her face was set with concentration. “Only production meetings are held in room four—you’re on your way, Poppy.” She didn’t lift her head as I squeezed past her desk. “I bet Fanny has an assignment for you!”
“Do you really think so?” I had waited for this moment for weeks, and now that it was here a feeling of dread had started in my stomach and was working its way upward, making it hard to breathe. I fumbled my notepad and dropped my pencil on the floor, breaking its magnificently sharp point. “Where’s room four?”
Clary carefully typed as she said the words, “Fifth Octo-ber nine-teen-for-ty-two,” and looked up at me. “Turn right out of here and go along the corridor to the back stairs all the way down to the basement. It’s on the left.” She waved her hand in dismissal of first-project nerves. “You’ll be fine—isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for? You’re going to have a film with your name on it in tiny print at the end.” I set off for the door. “And don’t be intimidated by Fanny—he’s always tetchy after lunch,” she shouted after me.
I was intimidated by everyone in this shabby rambling brick building that housed the Crown Film Unit—even if our task is to keep British morale high. My mouth was chalk dry as I made my way along the cracked linoleum of the long basement corridor to a closed door with a crooked four painted on it. I wiped the palm of my hand down the side of my skirt and tapped so lightly on its dull gray wood that no one could have possibly heard me.
How long I stood there, uncertain and unsure, could only have been a matter of seconds, but I was simply paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of attending a production meeting.
I was rescued by the patrician voice of the main character of the book I had written: the heroine of my love story and murder mystery, who had helped me to win this wonderful new job as a scriptwriter. Her calm tones floated into my consciousness like a cooling breeze. The voice belonged to Ilona Linthwaite, girl-reporter extraordinaire and everything I was not: confident, worldly, and, sometimes, wise. Come on, ducky, pull yourself together. Remember that you have a lot to offer these wretched people.
I took a deep breath as I opened the door and peeked round it. The room was packed with the people I had seen racing past me, in corridors and hallways, all week. They looked up for the briefest moment and then carried on lighting up cigarettes and arguing. One of them waved a large pink hand.
“Yes, yes, come on in and find somewhere to sit.” The hand belonged to a big man with a round bald head sitting at the head of the table. He looked like an overgrown baby in a pin-striped suit. There appeared to be no empty chair, so I edged into the room and stood with my back against the wall.
“This week in postproduction,” the large pink man continued. “Nigel and Brian are working on a ten-minute short about the woman who trains dogs to search for unexploded bombs—for release next Tuesday. Who will edit this piece now that Cliff’s been transferred?” This had to be Mr. Fanshaw, the Crown Film Unit’s head of production. I tried not to catch his eye as he looked around the table at the faces of writers whose names I did not know; production managers I had heard terrifying stories about; unit directors who thought they were God; and a crew of round-shouldered film editors gathered at the far end of the cheap pine table.
Room four was large enough to hold ten at a pinch, and there were at least twenty puffing clouds of cigarette smoke at one another. My breath caught in my throat and I swallowed hard.
“Come on, come on, I need an editor. What about you, Roy?”
A groan from under a mop of fair hair.
“Good, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“But I’ve already got . . .” said the overworked Roy.
Fanny waved a dismissive hand and sat forward in his chair. “Right then, what’s on the books for new and exciting projects?” His laugh was high-pitched as he looked around the table at lifted faces. “Ah yes, we all love something new.” His fixed his eye at the far end of the table. “Jim and Derek, I want you to go to Eastbourne to do a piece about the teenage girl who rescued three sailors from drowning using a boat she made herself. Shades of Grace Darling, what?” There was a ripple of obliging laughter. “That leaves Annabelle to write up a quick five minutes about the old-age pensioner who knitted a hundred and twenty pairs of socks in one month for soldiers. She runs a grocery shop in Cardiff when she’s not up to her eyes in yarn.”
An attractive girl in a yellow beret put out her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.
“Sorry about that, Annabelle, but we are stretching staff as it is.” However fat and pink he was, Mr. Fanshaw’s voice was quiet and there was enough finality in his tone to silence any dissenters in his group.
“Which leaves us with—” He looked at his agenda and smiled. “Ah yes, the Air Transport Auxiliary pilots. Huntley, I’m giving this one to you. I want a fifteen-minute short on these ATA women flyers. Take Keith; he’s getting quite handy with a camera.” He sat back in his chair. “Should be fun—they are a pretty glamorous bunch apparently. We’ll send Miss Redmayne down ahead, so she can draft up a script for you—don’t want any of you boys getting into trouble.”
“Redmayne?” Huntley looked around the table. “Who’s he?”
Fanny lifted his arm and waved across at me. “Miss er . . . Redmayne, isn’t it?”
Somehow, I managed to get my tongue off the roof of my mouth. “Actually, it’s Redfern, sir.”
“So it is. Meet our new assistant scriptwriter, Miss Redfern, everyone. The ATA will be a good piece for her to cut her teeth on.” I could feel the color in my cheeks building to a full-strength blush as heads turned to look at me. “Pop along to Miss Murgatroyd’s office after the meeting and she’ll give you your brief, Miss Red . . . and get down to Didcote Airfield as soon as possible.”
I turned for the door.
“No need to run.” Fanny’s laugh was loud and inclusive, and I turned back to face him. His tongue was a startling raspberry pink. “Tomorrow morning will do.”
Alone in the safety of the empty corridor, I exhaled in triumph as I leaned my hot forehead against its wall.
He seems nice enough, Ilona said. Almost human, really, and he has a sense of humor. I think you are going to enjoy this job.
I didn’t care if Fanny ate assistant scriptwriters for breakfast. I was going on location—I was part of Crown Films’ production team.
Miss Murgatroyd was round and deceptively maternal-looking with fluffy white hair. “Didcote ATA, did you say?” She picked up a wire basket and took out a sheaf of papers. “Your room has been paid for at the Fisherman’s Lodge at Didcote for two nights, which includes a cooked breakfast. Don’t forget to take your ration book. You will not be reimbursed for any meals on either of your travel days, so there is no need to save any receipts. Neither will you be reimbursed for any lost personal items, and if your portable typewriter is damaged, stolen, or mislaid you will be liable for the cost of its replacement: one pound, ten shillings, and sixpence. Please sign here . . . and here . . . and initial here.” I obediently complied. “Rail passes—second class. Please don’t travel in third and try to recoup the price difference.” Three rapid applications with a smudgy blue rubber stamp and the passes were mine. “And someone rang this office at half past four. I did not take a message. This is not your personal telephone”—she tapped the instrument—“and I am not your secretary. Please remember that, Miss Redfern.” I started to stumble out an apology, but she wasn’t having it.
“He was an American.” Disdain for our allies and their friendly invasion was not disguised.
“I’m so terribly sorry, it won’t happen again,” I managed to get out.
“It had better not.” She sighed and pressed her lips together. A pause and another sigh. “He said he would pick you up outside your digs, I forget what time, and he mentioned someone called Bess.”
The last rays of the sun shone on a bright red Alvis drophead coupe parked outside 122 Elms Road. Leaning up against its long glossy bonnet was a man in American Army Air Force uniform. Sitting demurely at his feet was my little dog, Bess. Her bob of a tail stirred apologetically as she looked down her nose at me as if going for a walk on Clapham Common with Lieutenant Griff O’Neal was the event of the year. Then, remembering who fed her every day, she got to her feet and danced between us, yodeling with delight as I crossed the road to join them.
I felt just as enthralled about seeing him as she obviously did, but I managed to greet him with the cool reserve we English practice at the best, and worst, of times. Unlike my prancing little dog, I kept my feet firmly planted on the ground.
“What on earth are you doing here—are you on leave?” No one could tell from my polite welcome that my heart was thumping like mad, and to my immense relief the old awkward schoolgirl shyness that always threatened when we first met only revealed itself in a slight blush.
He leaned down to spank dog hair off his immaculate trousers. “We’ve been a bit busy lately.” It was his term for flying missions. When he lifted his head, I saw that his face was thinner, the skin more tightly drawn around the eyes. I saw something else as well. There were two silver flashes on his shoulder.
“Captain? Oh, Griff, congratulations!”
“Yes, I told you we’d been busy.” He shrugged off his promotion from lieutenant to captain as if it might be more of a burden than an acknowledgment of skill and experience. “Our commanding officer has packed me off for seven days of what he describes as long-overdue rest and recreation. He sends his regards to you, by the way.” Like Griff, Colonel Duchovny had become a good friend of my family when the American Army Air Force had arrived to take possession of their new airfield earlier this year. It had been built for them on my grandfather’s farmland outside the village of Little Buffenden: a village our family have lived in for generations. “And your grandparents send their love too, of course. I had dinner with them yesterday evening.”
“Did you cook?” I laughed. “Or did Granny?” I could see Griff in our tiny kitchen contentedly sautéing mushrooms in half a pound of American military-issue butter. My grandmother is an authority on toast and jam. Griff is . . . well, let’s just say he is a man who takes pains with the things he likes to eat.
“They were our guests at the mess. Or I should say, they were our guests in their old dining room.” When the War Office had requisitioned our farmland for the airfield, our lovely old farmhouse had been turned into the headquarters and officers’ mess for the AAAF. My grandparents now lived in the lodge at the bottom of the drive to what was now known as Reaches Airfield.
“Your grandparents told me you had managed a visit, to pick up Bess. They miss you—but wouldn’t dream of saying so, of course. Your grandad talked about your new job, nonstop—you could have only topped it by joining the navy. But your grandmother is quite sure that after a couple of months of life in London, you will be desperate for the peace of the country.”
I laughed. My visit to my grandparents had been heaven: there is nothing like spending a weekend with those you love and allowing yourself to settle back into comfortable old habits, especially in these uncertain times, but the quiet village streets of Little Buffenden and the repetitive gossip of its inmates had palled after a day. I had adjusted to a faster pace of life since my arrival in London four weeks ago. The city with its bustling, crowded streets was gloriously anonymous; no one cared what you said or did or discussed it avidly with their next-door neighbor. I didn’t say that the one person I missed most from life in Little Buffenden was now standing in front of me.
Bess, fed up with being ignored, stood up on her hind legs and put her paws on my knees.
“Yes, I know, Bessie, I’m with you: I’m famished.” Griff folded his arms in a cloud of dog hair. “Why don’t you go and put on your hat, Poppy? I have reservations for dinner at the Savoy.”
“But I can’t! I’m leaving town tomorrow morning, early. I have to pack, and I have heaps to read.” The excitement of writing my first script was momentarily eclipsed at the thought of Griff here in London and me . . . where? On an airfield in Hampshire.
“I hope it’s somewhere exciting.”
I stopped behaving like my spinster aunt. “Oh, it is, Griff, it really is. It’s my first assignment—a fifteen-minute film about the Didcote Air Transport Auxiliary.”
The sun slipped below the horizon and he became a dark shadow by his car.
“Blimey!” It was clear that Griff’s infatuation with cockney slang was still with us. “That’s what I call good news. Now we have something to really celebrate!” The slightest pause. “Did you say the Didcote Attagirls?”
I nodded. How on earth had Griff heard about these astonishing women when I had only discovered them this afternoon? “The Attagirls? Is that what they are called?”
“Not sure if that’s what your guys in the Royal Air Force call them, but we do. They’ve delivered a couple of aircraft to us at Reaches.”
I might have known that American pilots would have a catchy name for a group of Englishwomen who thought nothing of taking off in a fighter plane and flying it to an airfield in far-flung Yorkshire or Scotland.
“Can I invite myself along? I’ll pick you both up after breakfast and we can have lunch on the way down to Didcote.”
I bent down to ruffle Bess’s ears as I considered what was turning out to be a splendid end to a perfect day. “You can come on one condition,” I said as I stood up. “That I drive to Didcote.”
He laughed. “Then we had better plan on having dinner on the road too.”
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