be warm. Her underwear would be made from silk and the finest cotton and she would be able to buy books whenever she wished. Currently, her budget permitted only one a year. What else? Good white bread every day. A proper dentist, because her teeth were a problem, always had been, and her mouth housed a catalogue of aches, some dull, some excruciating …
There was half an hour to the end of the shift.
Mary and Nancy exchanged looks and, under the bench, Nancy tapped out a Morse rhythm with a foot.
‘Shut it,’ hissed Beryl.
Mary realized that, increasingly, and however tired she might be, she dreaded signing off. It was true. Because in that fizzing,gurgling world to which she listened bubbled a wellspring from which she drank.
Check the clock.
There was one more sked to go. XRT, code name Vinegar.
Along with ZYA, code name Mayonnaise, he was one of her new agents, and therefore to be especially cosseted and nurtured and protected. She was the only one to know that Vinegar had been a bit iffy with his first transmission back to Home Station. In fact, more than iffy. Plain out of control. He had used the wrong sign-off and muddled up a frequency. But he had got the hang of it. Actually, she was surprised at how quickly Vinegar had turned into an excellent keyer. By his fourth transmission Vinegar had got the hang of it and
she
had got the hang of him by then, too – his Cs (pointed, regular mountain peaks), and his Ms (a tiny dunce’s cap).
It had bothered her a bit, that rapid transition. ‘He’s settled down very quickly,’ she confided in Nancy. ‘On those first transmissions he was so nervous. Next thing, he’s as smooth and confident as you could wish.’
Nancy shrugged. ‘Why are you so bothered about it? He just needed a bit of time, that’s all.’
Nancy was right. Even so, Mary brooded over Vinegar. Eventually, she brought up the subject with Signalmaster Noble, who told her that she was being fanciful and over-cautious. ‘Go and do your job, Voss,’ he said.
Get out of my sight
.
Vinegar. How did he manage, out there in the darker areas of the war?
She was sure Vinegar was a ‘he’.
She imagined him dark-haired, tall and perhaps very clever. Brave, anyway. Yes, heroic.
Was he alone?
Where
in the many possible countries was he?
She pictured him keying in from, say, a barn, the wireless transmitter propped on a hay bale and the aerial threaded up into the rafters. Again and again, the signals clerks were warnednot to speculate, and they weren’t supposed to know the ins and outs of clandestine transmitting. But none of them were stupid. They all knew one end of a wireless transmitter from another, and if the powers that be didn’t trust them, that was their look out.
She had never experienced extreme fear, only the dull thud of a vague but persistent anxiety about the future, and of how life would pan out for a forty-one-year-old spinster. Anxiety was trying enough, and sometimes in the past it had made her take to her bed with one of her headaches. But crippling, paralysing fear? She couldn’t, and didn’t, pretend to know about that.
The noise in her ears stuttered and faltered. She adjusted the dial and watched the needle swing.
This ugly, ungainly machine wove a secret network of sound. To use it was to risk death, and, worse, the demolition of body and spirit by torture. Yet maybe … maybe Vinegar knew that Mary was listening out for him, guarding him, pouring her reassurance down the airwaves. Maybe it made him feel better.
Foolish?
BRSTU XOSAR VOPYI …
She took down the message, basketed it and watched it being taken by the dispatch clerk in the direction of the cipher room.
CHAPTER NINE
They had been summoned up from the bowels of Gloom Hall for yet another endless lecture on security.
Did the powers that be never let up?
It was ten a.m. on a winter’s morning and the place was bloody freezing because no one, not even in the nineteen hundred and forty-two years
There was half an hour to the end of the shift.
Mary and Nancy exchanged looks and, under the bench, Nancy tapped out a Morse rhythm with a foot.
‘Shut it,’ hissed Beryl.
Mary realized that, increasingly, and however tired she might be, she dreaded signing off. It was true. Because in that fizzing,gurgling world to which she listened bubbled a wellspring from which she drank.
Check the clock.
There was one more sked to go. XRT, code name Vinegar.
Along with ZYA, code name Mayonnaise, he was one of her new agents, and therefore to be especially cosseted and nurtured and protected. She was the only one to know that Vinegar had been a bit iffy with his first transmission back to Home Station. In fact, more than iffy. Plain out of control. He had used the wrong sign-off and muddled up a frequency. But he had got the hang of it. Actually, she was surprised at how quickly Vinegar had turned into an excellent keyer. By his fourth transmission Vinegar had got the hang of it and
she
had got the hang of him by then, too – his Cs (pointed, regular mountain peaks), and his Ms (a tiny dunce’s cap).
It had bothered her a bit, that rapid transition. ‘He’s settled down very quickly,’ she confided in Nancy. ‘On those first transmissions he was so nervous. Next thing, he’s as smooth and confident as you could wish.’
Nancy shrugged. ‘Why are you so bothered about it? He just needed a bit of time, that’s all.’
Nancy was right. Even so, Mary brooded over Vinegar. Eventually, she brought up the subject with Signalmaster Noble, who told her that she was being fanciful and over-cautious. ‘Go and do your job, Voss,’ he said.
Get out of my sight
.
Vinegar. How did he manage, out there in the darker areas of the war?
She was sure Vinegar was a ‘he’.
She imagined him dark-haired, tall and perhaps very clever. Brave, anyway. Yes, heroic.
Was he alone?
Where
in the many possible countries was he?
She pictured him keying in from, say, a barn, the wireless transmitter propped on a hay bale and the aerial threaded up into the rafters. Again and again, the signals clerks were warnednot to speculate, and they weren’t supposed to know the ins and outs of clandestine transmitting. But none of them were stupid. They all knew one end of a wireless transmitter from another, and if the powers that be didn’t trust them, that was their look out.
She had never experienced extreme fear, only the dull thud of a vague but persistent anxiety about the future, and of how life would pan out for a forty-one-year-old spinster. Anxiety was trying enough, and sometimes in the past it had made her take to her bed with one of her headaches. But crippling, paralysing fear? She couldn’t, and didn’t, pretend to know about that.
The noise in her ears stuttered and faltered. She adjusted the dial and watched the needle swing.
This ugly, ungainly machine wove a secret network of sound. To use it was to risk death, and, worse, the demolition of body and spirit by torture. Yet maybe … maybe Vinegar knew that Mary was listening out for him, guarding him, pouring her reassurance down the airwaves. Maybe it made him feel better.
Foolish?
BRSTU XOSAR VOPYI …
She took down the message, basketed it and watched it being taken by the dispatch clerk in the direction of the cipher room.
CHAPTER NINE
They had been summoned up from the bowels of Gloom Hall for yet another endless lecture on security.
Did the powers that be never let up?
It was ten a.m. on a winter’s morning and the place was bloody freezing because no one, not even in the nineteen hundred and forty-two years
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