The Code Girls Read online

  Daisy Styles

  * * *

  THE CODE GIRLS

  Contents

  PART ONE: 1941

  1. Ava

  2. Ruby

  3. Walsingham Hall

  4. Maudie

  5. Upstairs

  6. Bella Wells

  7. An Army Marches on Its Stomach

  8. Call the Vet

  9. Holkham Beach

  10. Another Pair of Hands

  11. Made with Love

  12. De-mob Happy

  13. Walsingham Christmas

  PART TWO: 1942

  14. Squadron Leader Kit Halliday

  15. Back to Business

  16. Mumia

  17. Our Lady of Walsingham

  18. Bomb Raid

  19. Lord Edward

  20. Beach Ball

  21. Summertime

  22. Lancasters

  23. Farewell Code Girls

  24. New Year’s Eve

  PART THREE: 1943

  25. Walsingham Shoot

  26. Cracking the Code

  27. The Key

  28. Bomber Moon

  29. Interception

  30. Hostage

  31. Requiem

  32. Knitting Bees

  33. A Quiet Christmas

  34. Diana’s Revenge

  PART FOUR: 1944

  35. The War Office

  36. Ruby’s Baby

  37. New Life

  38. The Baltic Connection

  39. Coming Home

  40. Double Bluff

  41. King’s College, Cambridge

  42. Justice is Done

  43. Autumn Storm

  44. A New Generation

  Epilogue: 8 May 1945, VE Day

  Books and Sources

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE CODE GIRLS

  Daisy Styles grew up in Lancashire, surrounded by family and a community of strong women. She loved to listen to their stories of life in the cotton mill, in the home, at the pub, on the dance floor, in the local church, or just what happened to them on the bus going into town. It was from these women, particularly her vibrant mother and Irish grandmother, that Daisy learnt the art of storytelling.

  The landscape of north Norfolk captivated Daisy’s imagination. With its sweeping skies and vast, empty beaches it is the perfect backdrop for a saga, a space big enough and wild enough to stage a drama about women working in code-breaking during the Second World War.

  By the same author

  The Bomb Girls

  For my sweet boys, Patrick and Oscar Tarling,

  ‘Peeps’ and ‘Cherub’ in Vancouver.

  Love, Dodo!

  Part One

  * * *

  1941

  1. Ava

  ‘Friday dinner time,’ thought Ava, as she tucked her long, dark hair under her cook’s hat and checked her reflection in the small, cracked mirror hanging on the canteen wall. Even smeared with grease, the glass revealed the irrepressible sparkle in Ava’s dark blue eyes. She beamed her characteristic wide-open smile, which revealed her small, white teeth and a charming dimple in her left cheek. She was taller than most of her girlfriends, long-legged and shapely with a full bust, softly curving hips and a willowy, twenty-inch waist. Ava was fortunate; her strong frame and athletic build were down to hard work and plenty of walking in all weathers on the wild Lancashire moors.

  With her voluminous hair neatly tucked under her cotton hat, Ava wrote the day’s menu in white chalk on the canteen noticeboard; two years ago, Friday’s menu would always have been fish, cod and haddock freshly delivered from Fleetwood market. Ava had quickly learnt how to skin and fillet fish, but that was before the outbreak of war and the start of food rationing. Nowadays, it was impossible to buy enough fish to feed a family, never mind two hundred mill workers. As rationing got tougher and tougher, Ava had tried variations: parsnip fritters, corn-beef fritters, fake sausage fritters ‒ mince (very little) mixed with oatmeal and herbs made a tasty fritter. But on a Friday, the workers, predominantly Catholics, didn’t eat meat; it was a day of abstinence. The best and most popular alternative to fish was Ava’s delicious ‘scallops’, fresh local spuds washed, peeled and thickly sliced then dipped in a thick, creamy, yellow batter made from dried eggs combined with milk and water. Deeply fried in a vat of fat, Ava served the golden-brown scallops with mushy peas or butter beans and pickled red cabbage. It made her laugh when customers asked for chips as well.

  ‘You’ll sink like a brick with all them spuds inside you!’ she teased.

  ‘You’ve got to have chips on a Friday, cock,’ one of her customers said with a wink. ‘It’s a bugger we can’t ’ave fish like in’t th’owd days, but your scallops are bloody beltin’! Give us another, wil’t?’

  Ava smiled as she dropped a few more of her scallops on his plate; she loved these people and she loved her strong, tight-knit, hard-working community. Half the people queuing up for their dinner lived within a block of Ava, in identical red-brick terraced houses, stacked back to back, row upon row, and reaching up to the foothills of the moors which dominated the landscape of the mill town. Everybody knew everybody else’s business; it couldn’t be otherwise when outdoor privies were shared and women gathered at the wash house to swap gossip and smoke cigarettes while they did their weekly wash. Then they’d hang it out on washing lines threaded across the network of backstreets, where children played under the wet sheets that flapped like ships’ sails in the breeze. The neighbours’ over-familiar questions about her future had recently become both an irritant and an embarrassment to Ava.

  ‘So when are you going to get yourself conscripted, our Ava? All’t lasses in’t town have gone off to do their bit for’t war, but you’re still here. Can you not stand thowt o’ leaving us, like?’ neighbours and relatives alike teased.

  Ava had self-consciously assured them she was definitely leaving; there was no choice: female conscription was obligatory for women between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Women were being deployed all over the country, and most of Ava’s friends had already gone ‒ some to munitions factories in Yorkshire and Wales; others had signed up to work as land girls in Scotland ‒ but Ava had held back. She felt guilty, of course; would people think she was trying to duck out of war work, that she was unpatriotic? She was, in fact, fiercely patriotic and passionately believed in committing one hundred per cent to the war effort, but she was determined to do something big, something bold, something that would push her to the limit in her sacrifice for king and country. Three months after female conscription had been authorized by the government, Ava was well aware that she had to do something soon, otherwise the Labour Exchange would be on her tail and find war work for her.

  ‘Ava! Check on them apple pies, lovie!’ Audrey, the canteen boss, yelled, as the workers settled down on long wooden benches that ran alongside scrubbed wooden tables to eat their meal.

  Ava dashed over to the huge oven, where her pies were browning nicely. She was looking forward to seeing what the customers’ reactions would be when they tucked into their puddings. She’d added a surprise ingredient. Last night, she’d ridden Shamrock across the moors to her favourite spot, where wild winberries grew in abundance. Leaving the mare to crop clumps of tough grass, Ava had collected a large amount of the small, fruity berries, and she’d mixed them with baking apples, then covered the mix with a thick pastry crust. As she inspected the pies, she could see rich purple juice seeping through the edges. They would taste delicious served with custard, but she’d have to warn Audrey to cut thin slices if every worker was to have their fair share of her pudding.

  Ava loved the Lancashire moors, especially at this time of the year, late sp
ring, when the days were long and the nights were warm. Once work was finished and tea was cleared away at home, she’d change into a pair of baggy tweed trousers and head for the hills. Just a short walk up an old cobbled lane lined with oak and ash trees and Ava was on the moors, where, most evenings, she rode an old cob mare that belonged to a local farmer. He’d asked her if she’d like to take care of his horse Shamrock, who needed exercising now that his daughter had left home. Ava wasn’t an experienced rider, but she was certainly not going to turn down the offer. Luckily, Shamrock was willing and patient with Ava, who took many a tumble as she learnt the hard way how to make the mare walk, trot, canter and how to keep her seat over the bumpy moorland terrain. Ava and Shamrock developed a trusting, companionable relationship, both of them enjoying their rides over the rolling moors, with only the skylarks and curlews for company.

  It was while she’d been up at the farm the previous evening, tacking up Shamrock in readiness for a ride out, that she’d caught sight of the local newspaper, which had been left lying around by the farmer in the tack room.

  WOMEN WORKING IN COMMUNICATION CENTRES

  Ava laid down Shamrock’s reins and hurried over to read the article.

  As the war rolls on, more and more women are required to fill the spaces left by men who have gone to fight on the front line. Conscripted women are needed for training in communications, decoding, Morse, tracking, signalling, administration, interception and mapping intelligence in military-command control centres. Training Centres offering intense six-month training are opening across the country to provide women, potential code girls, with the necessary skills for this vital war work.

  Ava’s deep blue eyes blazed with excitement. With her heart beating double time and her pulse pounding, she let the paper drop into her lap and gazed out over the open stable door at the arching blue sky.

  ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for,’ she said out loud. ‘I could be a code girl!’

  The first spare moment she had, she dashed into the Labour Exchange in the high street and marched boldly up to the desk.

  ‘I want to be a code girl!’ she had announced, with a proud ring in her voice.

  The woman behind the desk raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Code girl?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to work in communications,’ Ava explained. ‘Please can I sign up?’

  ‘What’s your present employment?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Canteen cook.’

  There was no doubting the shock on the woman’s face.

  ‘Canteen cook!’ she exclaimed.

  Ava nodded.

  ‘At Dove Mill. I’m second in charge,’ she added with a proud smile.

  ‘Cooking isn’t exactly the right kind of background for a communications trainee,’ the woman retorted. ‘They’ll be looking for more academic lasses, them with a bit of schooling behind them.’

  Ava’s eyes flashed with indignation.

  ‘Women are doing jobs nobody ever expected them to be doing all over England right now – why shouldn’t I?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘I’m not going to argue with that,’ she replied, handing Ava an application form and a pen. ‘Fill this in. When it comes to “present employment”, you must state your current job.’

  ‘But –’ Ava protested.

  ‘You can add that you want to train in communications because you feel you have an aptitude for it,’ the woman quickly explained.

  Smiling happily, Ava filled in the form, writing ‘Canteen Cook’ as her profession but adding in big bold capitals that she wanted to switch to communications:

  ‘I want to be a code girl, as I believe it’s far more beneficial to my king and country than me cooking in the Dove Mill canteen in Bolton.’

  ‘That should do it,’ she said, as she returned the completed form to the woman at the desk.

  ‘Don’t build your hopes up, lovie,’ the woman advised. ‘Be prepared to knuckle down and do anything that’s required.’

  ‘I’ll knuckle down to anything,” Ava said with a winning smile.

  The woman watched Ava walk away. She was a stunning girl, but good looks didn’t always pay dividends. With a war on, people got what they were given and did as they were told.

  ‘I’ve enlisted as a code girl,’ Ava proudly told her boss the next day.

  Audrey looked up from the mound of pastry she was mixing and burst out laughing.

  ‘And what’s a code girl when she’s at home?’

  Standing by the massive industrial oven, stirring a mince-and-onion stew bulked up with root vegetables such as swede, parsnips and turnips, Ava reiterated what she’d read in the paper.

  ‘It could be anything from operations, tracking, signals, administration, interception, decoding, Morse ‒ even working in military-command control centres,’ she said with a bit of a swagger.

  ‘Sounds too much like bloody spying to me!’ Audrey joked. ‘Here, roll that lot out,’ she added, pushing half the pastry across the table to Ava. ‘Roll it thin, mind. We’ve two hundred hungry mouths to feed; a little must go a long way.’

  As the two women at either end of the table rolled and cut pastry to fit into huge tin trays, Audrey continued, ‘How are you going to cope with all that brainy stuff?’

  ‘I’ll learn,’ Ava said with conviction. ‘I really want to improve myself.’

  ‘Well, good luck to you, lass, but I bet they turn you down,’ Audrey said, as she poured the cooled mince-and-onion mix into the trays, now lined with pastry. ‘It’s not like you went to grammar school and got a good education.’ Audrey slapped a pastry crust on top of the filling and neatly nipped in the edges. ‘Them stuck-up communications toffs will be looking for brains, certificates and qualifications – none of which you’ve got, Ava, love!’

  Ava smiled confidently.

  ‘Don’t worry, Audrey – I’ll be a good code girl; it’s exactly the war work I’ve been looking for.’

  A fortnight later, Ava was packing her small, cheap suitcase, helped by her mother, who was carefully folding her few dresses before laying them on top of Ava’s freshly ironed blouses and new tweed skirt.

  ‘Do you think you’ve got enough frocks?’ Mrs Downham asked.

  ‘They’ll do for now,’ Ava replied, wrapping her two pairs of battered shoes, which her mother had polished till they shone, in the newspaper.

  ‘I wish I could have bought you a warm twin set,’ her mother said wistfully.

  ‘Mam!’ Ava cried. ‘Stop worrying; it’s a communications centre, not a fashion school.’

  Seeing the tears welling up in her mother’s eyes, Ava took hold of her hands.

  ‘I’ll write every week,’ she promised.

  Her mother nodded sadly.

  ‘I wish you weren’t going so far away. Norfolk’s the other side of the country, miles away from here.’

  ‘I have to go where the government sends me,’ Ava pointed out. ‘You should be thrilled it’s only Norfolk; I could be in Scotland felling trees like Marjorie Todd from round the corner!’

  Her mother gave a bleak smile.

  ‘I always knew this town wasn’t big enough for you,’ she said, as she stroked her daughter’s long, dark hair. ‘You were made for better things.’

  ‘Mam, this isn’t about daydreams, this is my contribution to beating Hitler,’ Ava said with a laugh, and kissed her mother’s cheek.

  Before leaving, Ava had to say goodbye to Shamrock, something she’d been dreading doing since the moment she’d signed up. The old mare’s excited whinny did nothing to lift Ava’s spirits.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ she said softly.

  Shamrock nudged her softly in the chest.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Ava murmured, as she produced the mandatory carrot, expected on every visit.

  As Shamrock contentedly crunched on it, Ava gulped back the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this, sweetheart,’ she said. �
��You see, I’ve got to leave you.’

  Oblivious to the changes that were about to unfold, Shamrock snickered, then nuzzled Ava’s arm. Even though Ava had found a nice, local lass to replace her, she still felt guilty about leaving Shamrock. How could you explain to a dumb animal that your life was about to change for ever. Ava thought about the thousands upon thousands of young men who had joined up in September 1939, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had announced that England was at war with Germany. How many lives had been shattered by their departure? How many homes had been broken, and families wrecked, by the loss of a loved one who never came home?

  Sighing, Ava bent to kiss Shamrock’s soft, velvety muzzle. Her sacrifice amounted to nothing compared to that of the soldiers, sailors and pilots who were risking their lives fighting the enemy in planes, ships and on land, in armoured tanks. Two years in, and the war was not going well; Britain was ill-prepared and ill-equipped when compared to the organized might of the Third Reich. The evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940 had shown the true grit of the British. They’d launched thousands of boats into the North Sea on the hazardous mission to rescue soldiers from the Normandy beaches, but the losses on that fateful day had cut deep, as did the continual bombing of Britain’s major cities. The nation, no longer gripped with the irrefutable belief that it would win the war, began to fear the worst: an invasion.

  ‘Which is why we all have to do our bit,’ Ava said, swiping away sentimental tears with the back of her hand. ‘I’ll miss you, sweetheart,’ she whispered, and kissed Shamrock for the last time. Turning, she briskly walked away, leaving the old mare neighing shrilly behind her.

  Ava’s last day at home was fraught with emotion. Her little sister kept bursting into tears, and if her mum packed her case once, she packed it twenty times. Their last meal together was eaten in an awkward silence, with none of the usual family banter and easy teasing. It was a relief when tea was over and Ava could busy herself with washing-up while her parents gathered round the big Bakelite radio, where the news reader announced in a grim voice that Operation Barbarossa was underway, the Germans were marching on Russia.