The Code Girls Read online

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Ava’s dad, as he puffed hard on a Woodbine. ‘There’ll be no stopping the buggers now!’

  ‘The Russians are bound to put up a fight, they’re not going to take it lying down,’ Mrs Downham insisted.

  ‘Aye, but what guns and weapons have they got against the Huns?’ Mr Downham pointed out. ‘It could end up a bloodbath for the Bolshies.’

  ‘Thank God it’s the summer ‒ at least they won’t be fighting in five feet of snow,’ Mrs Downham murmured.

  Ava boiled up some milk and made cocoa for them all, then sat as usual by the coal fire, with her parents on either side of her.

  ‘We’ll miss you, our lass,’ her dad said softly.

  Ava took hold of their hands.

  ‘I’ll miss you, too.’

  She would miss them for sure, but ‒ she thought rather guiltily ‒ there was a wonderful new world waiting for her in Norfolk.

  The next morning, Ava settled her suitcase in the netted luggage rack of the compartment she was travelling in, then leant out of the open window to smile at her family, who stood on the platform with heavy, sorrowful faces.

  ‘Write!’ her mum sobbed, dabbing away her tears with a hankie.

  ‘Don’t forget me!’ yelled her little sister.

  ‘Take care of yourself, lass,’ her dad cried, as the heavy steam train pulled out of the station.

  ‘I love you!’ Ava shouted, through a belching cloud of black smoke.

  As the platform receded, Ava sat back in her seat and sighed. The goodbyes were over; her adventure was beginning! Having never travelled further south than Rhyl, Ava was wide-eyed as she peered out of the window at the ever-changing countryside. The wild northern moors gave way to the Peak District, with its tidy grey stone farmhouses nestled neatly between green fields, where sheep grazed.

  ‘What wouldn’t I give for one of them woolly lambs roasted with potatoes, Yorkshire pud, mint sauce and gravy,’ said a young lad in a soldier’s uniform on the opposite side of the carriage.

  ‘That’s never going to happen,’ said an older soldier, who was sitting next to him, puffing hard on a cigarette. ‘Them animals will be made into mince and spread thin across half the county. I can’t remember when I last had a solid piece of meat put in front of me,’ he added, and took a greaseproof parcel out of his overcoat pocket.

  ‘Fancy a beef-paste buttie, sweetheart?’ he asked with a wink.

  ‘In exchange for one of my carrot buns,’ Ava replied, opening a small tin she’d packed with home-made buns.

  ‘That’ll be a rare treat,’ said the soldier. He bit into the bun and nearly swallowed it whole.

  ‘You, too,’ Ava said, proffering the tin to all the soldiers in the carriage.

  By the time it had done the rounds, there was only one bun left, but the soldiers each gave Ava something in return for her kindness: half an orange, a piece of chocolate, a soggy sandwich, a cigarette and cold tea from a bottle.

  The cheery soldiers got off at Peterborough, where Ava changed lines. On the slow train to Norwich, her heart began to pound with excitement. She had to keep reminding herself that this was war work, her sacrifice to save the country from fascism. The only problem was, it felt more like a great adventure rather than a painful sacrifice, and she was having trouble keeping the smile off her face. A third and final train took her to Wells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast. As Ava walked along the platform, she felt the sea air blowing breezily around her and tasted sea salt on her lips. Her stomach flipped with nerves as she joined a few girls standing outside the station.

  ‘Are you going to Walsingham Communication Centre,’ a cheery, red-headed, young woman asked.

  Ava nodded.

  ‘Join the queue, we’re waiting for a lift.’

  The lift turned out to be a rickety old jeep.

  ‘Hop in, ladies. I’m Peter, gamekeeper-cum-gardener from Walsingham Hall.’

  As he piled their luggage on the roof, the new code girls squeezed in tightly beside each other. Instead of sitting side by side, they sat on benches facing each other, and when Peter cranked the gears and the jeep bounced forward they all fell towards each other, almost into each other’s’ laps.

  ‘Hold on tight!’ he warned, too late.

  Though the sun had set, the light lingered in the eastern sky. Peering through the window, Ava could see the townspeople had dutifully pulled down their black-out blinds. Peter drove to the hall without any headlights to guide the way.

  ‘How do you know where you’re going?’ laughed one of the girls.

  ‘Instinct,’ Peter replied, without taking his eyes off the twisting road for a second.

  Ten minutes later, Peter took a sharp left turn and swung into a drive flanked by elaborate metal gates gilded with an elaborate coat of arms.

  ‘That’s the hall,’ Peter said, dropping down a gear to make his way up the drive, which threaded through a deer park. Even in the half-light, Ava could see fallow deer grazing under ancient oak and horse-chestnut trees. They rattled over a cattle grid, then, with a swoop, Peter came to a halt in front of Walsingham Hall. Ava caught her breath. She’d expected a big place that could accommodate a lot of people, but she hadn’t expected this.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed, as she stepped out of the jeep and gazed up at the majestic building that towered before her.

  ‘One of the finest stately homes in the country,’ Peter said proudly. ‘Just wait till you see it in the daylight. It’s a sight to behold.’

  As the girls tumbled out of the jeep, Peter called out, ‘Make your way indoors. I’ll follow with your luggage.’

  With their feet crunching on the gravel drive, the trainees pushed open the heavy front door and entered the elegant marble hall, which was decorated with ancestral portraits hung in huge, ornate gold frames.

  ‘Nobody mentioned we’d be billeted in Buckingham Palace!’ giggled one of the girls.

  Her laughter faded as a grim-faced woman dressed from head to toe in black approached.

  ‘Your accommodation is in the south wing,’ she said, in a voice that bristled with contempt. ‘Follow me.’ Then she quickly moved off, as if she wanted no association with any of the newcomers.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Ava whispered to Peter, who was staggering along with as many cases as he could carry.

  ‘Timms, the housekeeper,’ he gasped, under the strain of his heavy load. ‘She doesn’t like you,’ he added with a wink.

  ‘She’s made that perfectly obvious,’ Ava replied.

  The makeshift dormitories in the south wing had been built in what must have been a series of connecting drawing rooms, all with high ceilings decorated with swirling stucco plasterwork and floor-to-ceiling windows draped in blackout blinds.

  ‘In there,’ barked Timms, before turning her stiff-as-a-ramrod back on the trainees and walking away, disapproval evident in every step she took.

  ‘She’s a regular bundle of laughs!’ tittered the cheery red-headed girl.

  ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be seeing much of her,’ Peter assured them with a chuckle.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ thought Ava.

  The yawning girls selected their bunk beds, then made their way along the dark, bewildering corridors to the bathroom, which had a line of sinks running along one wall and a line of lavatories running along the opposite wall.

  ‘Oooh!’ exclaimed an impressed trainee as she switched on a tap. ‘Hot and cold water ‒ more than we get at home.’

  ‘Thank goodness!’ joked another trainee, as she dashed into the nearest cubicle. ‘One minute longer and I would have wet myself!’

  Ava cleaned her teeth, washed her face, then dabbed her skin with a few blobs of Ponds Cold Cream, a parting gift from Audrey. As she settled herself in a bottom bunk, Ava pulled a blanket and a scratchy, starched single sheet over her body, then looked nervously up as the woman on the top bunk bounced around, causing the bed springs to sag and twang over Ava’s face.

/>   ‘Will I ever get to sleep?’ she wondered, as a few girls started to snore. A few even sniffed, as if they were crying.

  Ava eventually slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep, and the smile that had been on her face all day remained there through the night. It was the smile of a girl who just couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow would bring.

  2. Ruby

  Ruby didn’t know which was worse, being below stairs with Mrs Timms looming about with a face like concrete, or serving supper to the irritable Walsingham family, who’d been literally kicked upstairs to the first-floor suites in order to free up the whole of the ground floor for the communication trainees and their tutors.

  Small but shapely with a long, jet-black bob and almond-shaped dark brown eyes, twenty-year-old Ruby enhanced her looks by colouring her full, pouty lips with bright red lipstick, a colour much favoured by her favourite film star, Jane Russell. Ruby had grown up on the Walsingham estate. Her family lived and worked there and after leaving school at the age of fourteen she’d followed in their footsteps and been taken on as a maid. There was very little about the Walsinghams that Ruby and her family didn’t know.

  She knew Lady Diana had a drink problem; Ruby removed the empty bottles of sherry and brandy from her ladyship’s sitting room every morning. She knew Edward, heir to the Walsingham title, and who had so far avoided joining up, enjoyed shooting parties and driving round the countryside in an expensive open-top sports car. Ruby knew Lord Walsingham had a mistress in London and Lady Walsingham had a more local admirer, on the Sandringham estate; she also knew that Lady Annabelle, the Walsingham’s youngest daughter and a genuinely nice person, was generally disliked by her family.

  Unlike Timms, Ruby did not believe that the Walsinghams were related to God; they were simply her employers. She would serve and feed them, empty their chamber pots and light their fires, but she didn’t revere them like the old servants, most of whom had recently been packed off by Brigadier Charles Rydal when Walsingham Hall was requisitioned by the government for vital war work.

  ‘The house is full of common girls,’ raged Lady Diana, lifting her glass in order for Ruby to top it up.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’ her elegant mother, Lady Caroline, remarked. ‘You’ve been drinking since lunch time.’

  ‘I need it after what I’ve just witnessed,’ Diana said, as she poured half a glass of claret down her throat. ‘They’re wandering around the house like they own the place.’

  ‘They do!’ her brother, Edward, snapped. ‘Since the government have taken it upon themselves to steal our home, those commoners have more ownership of it than we do.’

  ‘I can’t believe you let them do it, Papa!’ Diana cried, and turned to her father, who was glaring at the soup that Ruby had placed before him.

  ‘What in God’s name is this, Ruby?’ he asked.

  Ruby sighed inwardly; she had known when she saw the tureen of grey soup that it would not go down well.

  ‘Potato and parsnip, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you feed pigs?’ Edward sneered, letting the soup on his spoon plop messily back into his bowl.

  Ruby felt like saying, Haven’t you heard of rationing? Half the nation is hungry! You should consider yourself bloody lucky to have something to eat – and somebody to serve it to you, too! Instead, out of force of habit, she muttered apologetically, ‘Sorry, sir.’

  As she removed the untouched soup and replaced it with some stringy lamb, sprouts and roast potatoes, Diana, now well on the way to being drunk, grumbled on.

  ‘When can we reclaim our home, Papa?’

  ‘When the war is over,’ he replied, as he set to on his meat, which was mercifully improved by Ruby’s rich gravy.

  ‘But the house will be in ruins by then,’ his daughter moaned.

  ‘If we lose the war, it won’t even belong to us. Hitler might relieve the king of his Sandringham estate and hand Walsingham over to some “deserving” Gestapo general. We could be out on the street,’ Edward spitefully pointed out.

  Diana’s pretty but sulky face paled.

  ‘Just when I thought things couldn’t get much worse,’ she fumed.

  ‘Things will get much worse, darling,’ her father boomed from the head of the table. ‘We’re losing this war. For two years we’ve made no real progress, unlike the Germans, who are successfully claiming most of Europe. The Luftwaffe are far superior to our RAF, their naval fleet is stronger, their army better prepared. We Brits are failing badly.’

  ‘You do surprise me,’ Edward sniggered.

  Lady Caroline looked at her son with cool disdain,

  ‘It’s a pity you studied at Cambridge and not Sandringham; you should be fighting on the front line like all the Walsingham sons before you.’

  ‘Oh, God! Not that again,’ Edward groaned, as he pushed back his chair and lit up a cigarette.

  ‘Mummy’s quite right,’ Diana chipped in. ‘Your Cambridge chums are a bunch of intellectual snobs who spend their time just talking about the war. I simply don’t know how you all get away with it.’

  ‘There are alternative ways of fighting a war other than running at the enemy with a bayonet,’ Edward retorted, and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

  His lordship slammed down his silver knife and fork with a resounding clatter.

  ‘Oh, pray do tell me what these “alternative ways” might be?’ he demanded.

  Ruby shifted slightly on her feet. Although she was used to being an ‘invisible’ servant, she nevertheless wondered, as she had many times before, why the aristocracy assumed that servants had no ears, and no feelings. Their lord and ladyships could say whatever they liked in front of Ruby, or any other servant, for that matter, but if she so much as breathed a word of tonight’s conversation she would be fired on the spot.

  Edward turned to his father.

  ‘Alternatives such as translating, planning, communication, subterfuge, radar mapping, to mention a few,’ snapped Edward.

  ‘That’s not what real men do,’ Diana scoffed. ‘Anyway,’ she added with a nasty smile. ‘Half of your Cambridge chums are queers!’ She rocked unsteadily, with drunken laughter.

  Edward rose and pushed back his chair so violently it fell to the floor.

  ‘I’ve had enough!’ he said, and walked out of the room, leaving Ruby to pick up the chair and set it back in its correct place.

  ‘Shall I serve dessert, madam?’ she asked Lady Walsingham, who wearily shook her head.

  ‘Leave it, Ruby, we’ll serve ourselves.’

  Ruby lifted a large tray piled high with plates and cutlery. ‘Will that be all, Your Ladyship?’

  Lady Caroline nodded, but Diana called out, ‘Bring coffee soon.’

  As Ruby negotiated the winding, dark back staircase that led to the kitchen, she considered what an enormous amount of hard work this new arrangement was going to entail. Previously, the family had been served meals in the magnificent dining room overlooking the formal gardens, which at this time of the year were fragrant with standard roses, lilies and carnations. Now transformed to a utilitarian canteen for the code girls, the dining room was only a flight of stairs up from the kitchen, but with the family relegated to the first floor, their meals had to be carried up and down the precipitous back stairway three times a day.

  ‘Mostly by soddin’ me!’ Ruby grumbled to herself, staggering under the weight of the wobbling tray.

  The brigadier in charge of the new communications centre was on a tight budget, sacrifices had to be made; he had told the staff this on his arrival. Within days, he had fired the old servants, retainers who’d worked below stairs under the iron rule of Timms, the housekeeper, and Dodds, the family butler, for decades. He had ruthlessly streamlined the kitchen staff down to leave only Ruby, Dodds and Timms. If he’d had his own way, he would have fired Timms and Dodds, too, but both had lifetime tenure at the hall, a privileged position they blatantly exploited.

  The housekeeper was sitting in the scu
llery when Ruby came in with the heavy tray.

  ‘You’d better set to and wash those things up,’ she snapped.

  ‘You could help. I’ve got to take coffee up,’ Ruby snapped back.

  ‘I won’t lift a hand to help,’ Timms seethed. ‘Not after what that brigadier did to me and my staff.’

  ‘He couldn’t afford to keep on servants who weren’t up to the job,’ Ruby reminded her.

  Timms’s eyes flashed in anger.

  ‘How dare you say my staff were inadequate.’

  ‘They were sitting it out to their retirement, I knew it, you knew it and the brigadier knew it, too,’ Ruby pointed out.

  ‘He’s made his cuts,’ Timms retorted, a twist of a smile on her thin face. ‘Now all he’s left with is you!’

  Ruby couldn’t argue with that. As she set an old coffee pot to bubble on the Aga, she recalled the brigadier’s words.

  ‘I appreciate you can’t single-handedly produce food for all of us, Ruby, and I realize that you’ll get no or little help from Dodds and Timms,’ he’d added, with a knowing smile, ‘but I promise I’ll recruit new staff just as soon as I can.’

  Ruby had stared at him in surprise. He was a stern-looking man in his late thirties with a military bearing and a clipped voice, but when he smiled his whole face softened and his large brown eyes lit up. Unfortunately, the smile came and went as quickly as a light going on and off.

  ‘Until then,’ the brigadier continued brusquely, ‘we’ll just have to grin and bear it.’

  Knowing that there would have been discontent upstairs, Timms slyly asked, ‘Did his lordship enjoy his supper?’

  Ruby shrugged and turned away; she wasn’t going to give the housekeeper anything to gloat about. Behind Ruby’s back, Timms smiled; she was proud of her links with the Walsingham family, whom she’d provided with delicious cuisine for decades. She’d employed the best cook in the county, supervising the menus herself, buying in top-quality goods and using the finest produce, a lot of it from the estate. Cheese, cream, milk, locally reared meat, game shot on the estate: venison, duck, pheasant, wood pigeon, hare; vegetables plucked straight from the earth, fresh fish daily and exotic fruits grown in the greenhouse. It had been a time of plenty, and the Walsinghams’ table had vied with that of the king’s at Sandringham. Now all that largesse was a thing of the past, the Great Hall was in ruins, trashed by commoners and usurpers. Unable to accept the radical changes and deal with the demands of food rationing, Timms’s cook had upped and left. Ruby wished with all her heart that Timms had moved with her, but the old bat, well aware of her rights of tenure, stayed on; it gave her a sadistic pleasure to not lift a finger while poor Ruby ran herself ragged.