The Code Girls Read online

  ‘A girl like you could be a lawyer, a doctor even,’ her father often said.

  ‘Oh, Papa, stop it!’ Maudie would laugh at the tragic expression on his face. ‘I don’t care about university; I’m free to learn what I want. There are books in the library. I can educate myself while I help you and Mumia in the shop.’

  Mr Fazakerley nodded and chuckled.

  ‘The shop would close down without you. They used to come for our food but now they come to admire your looks, liebling.’

  Mrs Fazakerley tutted loudly. ‘Stop turning the girl’s head, she knows how beautiful she is,’ she said, and threw Maudie a look of pure love.

  ‘My legs are too long, my mouth’s too big and my eyes are the colour of lime leaves ‒ I don’t call that beautiful.’

  Seeing the hurt look in her mother’s eyes, Maudie put her arms around her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘But I’m glad you think so, Mumia.’

  Mr Fazakerley was right; Maudie attracted customers because of her looks, her wit and her astonishing talent for baking. Since she was a child, she had loved working in the bakery alongside her parents, but it was as she grew up and started experimenting with new recipes that her creativity really took off. Maudie’s cinnamon swirls, soft teacakes, German fruit tarts, seeded Polish bread and Jewish flatbread, as well as the more traditional English cakes, pies and pastries she made, were never on the shop shelves long. Rationing certainly limited the variety of goods they could produce in the bakery, but that didn’t stop Maudie trying out new recipes, which, though frugal in ingredients, were rich with inspired additions like spices, herbs, nuts and dried fruits.

  The value of hard work had been instilled into Maudie by her parents, who remained grateful to Britain for opening its doors to them when they were in need. Like her parents, Maudie loved England with a passion; when female conscription was announced, she willingly volunteered, thrilled that her small effort might be part of a much bigger effort to defeat Hitler, the man who had driven her parents out of their homeland.

  She knew her parents were dreading her going, she knew that leaving them and the family business would be a big wrench, but she also knew her parents wanted more for their prodigiously clever only child. It was time for Maudie to stretch her wings and fly. As she tapped the underside of a batch of fennel buns to see if they were cooked through, she realized she was nervous about telling her parents her latest news.

  ‘Mrs Stein was saying her Lucy isn’t settling down to work as well as she had hoped,’ her mother said, as she laid rows of iced buns underneath the glass-topped counter.

  ‘Not surprising, moving up to Yorkshire to build planes ‒ the girl’s always been timid,’ her father replied from the bakery, where he was stacking hot cheese rolls.

  Maudie took a deep breath; this was an appropriate moment to break her news. Without looking up from the tray of cinnamon rolls she was now glazing, she said brightly, ‘You know the course I told you about?’

  ‘In Norfolk?’ her parents said in chorus.

  ‘That’s the one – they’ve accepted me.’

  Maudie’s mother stopped what she was doing. ‘Liebling!’ she gasped.

  Mr Fazakerley abandoned the cheese rolls. Maudie could see he was upset, but he kept a brave face as he asked, ‘When do you go, my dear?’

  ‘I’ve got to report right away, Papa.’

  A slow, proud smile spread across his face as he replied, ‘Then we must prepare you for your journey, Schätzle!’

  Over the next few days, Maudie’s parents went into overdrive. In between baking and serving customers, they helped their daughter sort out all the things they thought she would need. In the end, there was so much stuff laid out on Maudie’s bed that her father had to go out and borrow a bigger suitcase from one of his customers.

  ‘I’m sure I won’t need so much,’ Maudie protested. ‘I’m studying communications, not going on holiday.’

  ‘It will be cold in Norfolk, and foggy, too, it’s damp so close to the sea ‒ you will need warm clothes and boots!’ her mother cried.

  After hours of washing, ironing, polishing and starching, Maudie’s case was finally packed. She’d even managed to squeeze her favourite books, written by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, in among her clothes.

  ‘There’ll be no time for reading, not with all the studying you’ll be doing,’ her mother said, removing the books. Maudie promptly put them back in the case.

  ‘I’m going nowhere without my bibles,’ she joked.

  The customers were keen to hear Maudie’s plans.

  ‘A communications training centre in Norfolk,’ her mother said, with a proud ring in her voice. ‘No more cooking and baking for my liebling.’

  ‘We shall miss you very much.’

  ‘You’ve always been a clever girl.’

  ‘Time to use that brain of yours.’

  ‘Oh, but the tragedy of having no more cinnamon custard tarts and fennel bread,’ one old lady sighed.

  ‘I’ll be back to visit and bake for you soon, I promise,’ Maudie said, hugging the old woman, who she’d known since she was a child

  ‘God bless and take care of you, child,’ the woman replied, wiping a tear from her rheumy eyes.

  The worse thing of all was saying goodbye to her parents. They insisted on accompanying her across war-torn London. Rubble, sewage and shattered timber were strewn across their paths.

  ‘God help us all,’ Mrs Fazakerly murmured, as she stepped over a table that had been blasted out of a bombed block of flats.

  They all tried to keep a lid on their emotions, talking about the weather, the price of the train ticket, asking Maudie if she had enough food for the journey.

  ‘I could feed the entire train,’ Maudie laughed, holding up the food hamper that her mother and father had sacrificed their food rations to pack with their daughter’s favourite treats, including gingerbread biscuits in the shape of little cottages, the first things Maudie had ever made in the bakery. She’d been so small she’d had to stand on a stool to reach the table.

  When the train thundered into King’s Cross station, her father set about finding an empty carriage with no men in it who might trouble her. He tucked her up in her seat as if she was still the precious child they’d brought out of Germany, terrified at every step of the way that they’d be stopped and separated. When Maudie saw her father’s hands trembling, she took hold of them and kissed them gently.

  ‘Papa, I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry about me.’

  A great plume of black smoke belched out of the engine and the train lurched forward.

  ‘Get out quickly,’ Maudie laughed. ‘Or you’ll be coming to Norfolk with me!’

  Back on the platform, her father put a hand around his wife’s shaking shoulders.

  ‘I love you, my liebling,’ sobbed heartbroken Mrs Fazakerly.

  ‘Take care, my dear,’ her father called, as the train pulled away.

  Black smoke obliterated them from Maudie’s view. She wiped tears from her eyes, reached into her hamper and drew out a nutty gingerbread biscuit; how fortunate she was to have such loving and devoted parents.

  ‘I’ll never let them down,’ she murmured, as the train gathered speed and headed east towards the sea and King’s Lynn.

  Luckily for Maudie, she had no idea how her destiny was being decided; otherwise, she might have alighted from the train at the first stop. As the train bearing Maudie headed out of King’s Cross station, overworked Ava was begging the brigadier for extra help.

  ‘Ruby and I work an eighteen-hour day, sir, ordering, preparing, cooking food for everybody in this house – and you know we get no help from either Timms or Dobbs.’

  The brigadier would have liked nothing more than to escort the resentful Timms from the building, but his hands were tied by the fact that she had permanent tenure at the hall. He couldn’t share his thoughts with the overworked girl standing before him, her dark hair tumbling around her pale, tired face. Feeling
guilty, he said, ‘I promise I will do my utmost to find you another cook.’

  Ava swallowed hard; if this was her war effort, she had to grin and bear it. At least she wasn’t on the front line, being bombed by German artillery. Raising a weak smile, she answered, politely enough, ‘Thank you, sir, we’re at breaking point below stairs.’

  When she arrived back in the kitchen, Ruby informed her that Timms had ‘accidentally’ dropped salt into the rice pudding, which Ava had used the whole day’s quota of milk in making.

  Ava tasted the salty rice and grimaced. ‘We’d better knock up stewed apples and dried-milk custard to replace this muck,’ she said.

  Ruby heaved the vast pan off the Aga. ‘Shall I give it to Peter to feed to the pigs?’

  Ava vehemently shook her head. ‘Drain it. We’ll mix the rice with some mince and onions and make meatballs tomorrow,’ she said.

  Ruby leant forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Thanks for not letting Timms grind you down,’ she said with a grin.

  ‘She does grind me down,’ Ava confessed, ‘but I’ll be damned if I’ll show it!’

  Upstairs, the brigadier was genuinely concerned.

  ‘What in God’s name can we do?’ he said to Miss Cox. ‘The staff below stairs are falling apart.’

  Miss Cox raised her heavily made-up eyebrows to the elaborately carved plaster ceiling, where intertwined cherubs kissed each other.

  ‘I’d like to do something about it,’ the brigadier continued, ‘but where are we going to find a trained cook out here in the wilds of north Norfolk?’

  Miss Cox cast an eye down the list of trainees due to arrive that day.

  ‘I think help might be at hand, sir,’ she said with a slow smile.

  Maudie, alighting from the jeep wasn’t quite sure how she felt about being billeted in a stately home with a drive the length of Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Bit over the top,’ she muttered, as she and the newcomers followed Peter, who was hauling their luggage into the south wing.

  ‘Bloody gorgeous,’ said the ecstatic girl beside her. ‘Really posh!’

  Maudie rolled her eyes. This wasn’t a great start; she would honestly have preferred to stay in a Nissen hut rather than be surrounded by the baroque gilded statues standing on plinths in gloomy alcoves.

  ‘Is that a naked woman next to a man showing his willie?’ the same giggling girl tittered, as she pointed to a series of classical paintings depicting the Rape of Lucretia that ran along the length of the main hall.

  ‘Well, it’s not a banana!’ her friend said, and the two of them broke out into shrieks of raucous laughter.

  Desperate to get her companions’ eyes off the classical rape scene on the walls high over their heads, Maudie quickened her pace.

  ‘Better get a move on,’ she said. ‘We need to bag our beds.’

  ‘You’re right there; I’m Sheila, by the way. In’tit exciting?’ she gushed.

  ‘I hope so,’ Maudie answered flatly.

  The six new code girls were welcomed by Miss Cox, who swiftly ticked their names on her clip chart.

  ‘All present and correct,’ she said.

  As the girls turned to go, Miss Cox drew Maudie aside. ‘Could I have a word, please?’

  Surprised, Maudie asked anxiously, ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘We have a slight problem on our hands,’ Miss Cox started.

  One minute later, Maudie was reeling with shock.

  ‘A cook!’ she gasped.

  Miss Cox’s tone took on a sharper note. ‘Those are your orders, young lady.’

  ‘There’s been a mistake!’ Maudie cried. ‘May I please see the officer in charge?’

  Miss Cox turned away quickly.

  ‘Very well, follow me,’ she snapped.

  Some moments later, the brigadier sighed as he listened to Maudie; no matter how strong her argument was, she would get exactly the same answer he had only recently given to Ava.

  ‘I quite understand your disappointment, Miss Fazarkerley, but the best way you could help your country right now is to join the staff below stairs, because if the cook doesn’t get help very soon she might well blow Walsingham Hall and everybody in it to kingdom come.’

  Maudie’s green eyes opened wide and she replied with a hint of a smile, ‘This is a woman I have got to meet!’

  5. Upstairs

  Lady Diana, who could hardly stand up straight, on account of the bottle of black-market Bollinger she’d downed only an hour ago, was making her rather unsteady way to the hammock strung between two old elm trees on the family’s private lawn, where, in previous summers, they’d held fetes, garden parties and high teas. She blamed her bore of a brother, Edward, for her excesses; he and his loathsome Cambridge friend had made lunch unbearable with their talk of war and government policies. Christ! She had felt a migraine coming on as their long-winded conversation drifted from Rommel and Goebbels to Churchill and Attlee. Would they ever return to the joy of trivial conversation? Famed for her style and beauty rather than her brainpower, Lady Diana withered in the company of intellectuals, and on this particular occasion she’d buried her boredom in an excess of alcohol.

  Hiccupping slightly, she wound her wobbly way through the rose garden, around the ornamental lake, past the tennis courts and the outdoor swimming pool, to the private lawn, where she all but collapsed into the hammock. It didn’t have quite the desired effect. For a start, it made her feel sick as it swung back and forth in the baking heat. and the nearby racket of a cranking engine simply wouldn’t go away. Heaving herself up, she scowled and peered over the hedge to see what was making the noise. Her bad mood heightened when she saw it was an army truck with over a dozen excited young women on board.

  ‘Bugger!’ she groaned. ‘More trainees!’

  Diana watched the truck pull up at the front door of the hall and saw the giggling girls disembark, calling goodbyes to the soldiers in the cab. These commoners were treating her beautiful home as if it was Butlins holiday camp! They ate in her ancestral dining room, slept in rooms designed for lords and ladies, walked barefoot across their deer park, all the while lowering the tone with their common ways, loud laughter and endless chatter. The worst thing of all was the thought that this wretched lot of trainees would be replaced by another wretched lot in six months’ time; women in cheap shoes carrying cheap suitcases would come and go like a bad smell twice a year until the bloody war was over.

  ‘I want to die!’ Diana wailed, as she flung herself out of the hammock and staggered through the grounds and back indoors, up the sweeping staircase to the first-floor suites which the ghastly brigadier had deemed suitable for the Walsingham family.

  In the ornate drawing room, a third of the size of the one they’d previously occupied on the ground floor, she found her younger sister, Lady Annabelle, curled up on the rose-coloured sofa, reading a book.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she sneered in disgust.

  Well used to her sister, Annabelle had no problem ignoring Diana, who in any case lit into her straight away. Weaving her way unsteadily across the room to the drinks tray, where she poured herself a stiff brandy, Diana drawled, ‘S’pose you like those common little tarts downstairs?’

  Annabelle sighed. She knew exactly what was coming, but out of habit she prevaricated. ‘I’ve not actually met any of them yet.’

  Diana threw herself into a large plush armchair and surveyed her sister as if she was a piece of meat in a butcher’s shop.

  ‘Some might say you’re pretty in a dull, English rose sort of way,’ she started. ‘Blonde hair, blue eyes ‒ ruined by those god-awful spectacles you wear ‒ overweight, too: you need to drop at least a stone.’

  Annabelle closed her book and got up. She’d been here too many times not to know that this conversation was going nowhere good. Doling out humiliation was Diana’s forte; she’d spent years lacerating her younger sister with cruel, barbed comments, but as the years rolled by Annabelle had learnt how to deal with it.
She just walked away.

  ‘Yes, off you go,’ Diana scoffed as Annabelle headed for the drawing-room door. ‘No doubt the bores downstairs will relish an earnest chat about the bloody worthiness of female conscription.’

  Annabelle paused in the doorway. ‘Even you can’t dodge conscription, Diana.’

  Diana’s cheeks flushed with anger. ‘Don’t kid yourself! I can pull rank just like that,’ she said, snapping her perfectly manicured fingers. ‘You won’t catch me filling shells or dragging bloody cart horses over muddy fields.’

  ‘You might have no choice,’ Annabelle said, and slammed the door hard behind her. Annabelle smiled to herself as she skipped downstairs. ‘I think I won that round!’ she said gleefully to herself.

  Sometimes, Annabelle genuinely wondered if she’d been swapped in the Portland maternity hospital where she was born for somebody else’s child. Lady Caroline often referred to her youngest child as ‘a mistake’; in truth, Annabelle knew she was an unmitigated disaster. She didn’t look like any of her family. As a child, desperate to find somebody to relate to, Annabelle had examined all of her ancestors’ portraits hanging in the Great Hall and had come to the conclusion that she vaguely resembled a grand but slightly dumpy Lady Walsingham who had lived in the eighteenth century. It was cold comfort to think she was a throwback to the time of Queen Anne.

  For a naturally gregarious girl, Annabelle had had a lonely childhood, with few friends to play with, except when she was at school, where she had been popular. At home, though, there was little to do apart from ride her pony along the beach or cycle through the woods to the family’s summer house, set in the sand dunes facing the North Sea. Here, one happy summer, she had set up a little library and a desk, where she sat, gazing out to sea as she wrote her secret diary, which she hid under a floorboard. She cooked sausages and eggs on a Primus stove and made hot chocolate and tea. Alone, but perfectly content and relaxed, she would happily have holed up there all through the summer, but her brother, Edward, discovered her hideaway and kicked her and her belongings on to the beach, then padlocked the summer house so she couldn’t use it again.