ROUEN AND ELSEWHERE IN FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1917
She had thought he would immediately hand her written orders to memorise, then tear up into little pieces to be burned, as they did with the outgoing messages in the Signals hut. Instead, he rang the little bell on his desk and ordered more coffee.
‘Please, have another tart, Miss McLain. Will you try a brioche?’
‘Thank you, sir. Where will I be going?’
He smiled. ‘I’m sure you realise why I can’t tell you that.’
Of course, she thought. If she accidentally mentioned the place she was headed — a girl in uniform — a spy might add that to other information, and the Germans could guess an attack was planned.
She sipped her second cup of coffee, sweet with sugar, mild with frothy warmed milk, and ate another tart and then a brioche.
‘Tell me about your home, Miss McLain. Your father has a house on the school grounds?’
‘No, sir, just down the lane, on the edge of the grounds. My mother wished to have a home of her own.’ Papa had bought the house and its two acres with an inheritance from an uncle, but it was Not Done to talk about money. ‘It’s two hundred years old and has a secret passage from the library out into the wall around the sunken garden below the orchard, except it isn’t secret at all, because Arthur and William and I told all our friends and spent half the holidays running back and forth in it.’
‘When you weren’t learning Morse code?’
‘That was for Arthur’s crystal radio set, sir, then William began to make one too, and they let me help.’
He blinked. ‘You can wire up a crystal radio set?’
She smiled over her cup. ‘Not really. I was only nine — Arthur and William did all the fiddly work, but they let me help.’
‘They sound like excellent brothers.’
Jean nodded. ‘Some brothers shut their sisters out of everything. Arthur and William let me play cricket with them and their friends, and even go riding with them.’
‘You hunt, Miss McLain?’ He sounded surprised again.
‘No, sir. One of William’s friends keeps a good stable . . .’ Or had. The horses had all been taken for the war. ‘We jumped a few gates, that’s all.’ And Mama had sighed when she’d fallen off and come home muddy yet again.
‘Do you hear from your brothers often?’
‘They write to our parents, and Mama copies their letters to send to me. The letters are really to me too, just as mine back home are to them.’ She wasn’t sure that last sentence made sense, but the major seemed to understand.
Why is he asking all this? she wondered as she took the last apple tart. He had already decided she was suitable, and she had agreed to go. She blinked at the empty plate, her empty coffee cup.
He was giving her a final treat, she realised, as he stood up politely to see her out. A farewell to a girl whose gift to her country might be her life.