4

‘Cripes, what did you make of those yokels! Grown men in nappies – never seen anything like it,’ Frank Wilkinson chortled as they clambered off the ferry. It would be some years before a proper landing stage was built on either side, so for the moment embarking and disembarking carried the risk of getting your feet wet, especially in rougher weather.

Vic said nothing. He hadn’t really taken to Frank ever since they’d first met at Felixstowe Station. Everyone said he had a brain the size of a planet, but he seemed to have an inflated sense of self-importance to match.

‘You go ahead, I’ll catch up later,’ Vic said. He loved to savour the sights and sounds of the walk up the driveway, the resin smell of the pines as you entered the grounds, the wide green swathe of the cricket pitch. He would usually pause on the humpbacked bridge to listen to the tinkle of the stream they called, for some obscure reason, the River Jordan, watching finches flitting about the bulrushes and keeping an eye out for the kingfisher.

The sight of the Manor coming into view at the top of the slope caught Vic’s breath every time. He’d seen plenty of grand English country houses – his boarding school among them – but this place, a fantastical architectural mix of mock-Tudor, Scottish castle and fairy tale, was the most impressive of the lot.

On the right of the courtyard was the Red Tower, built in brick with green copper-topped turrets and ornate stonework balconies shimmering in the sunlight. To the left, a second vast tower in white stone with four further turrets was linked to the first by a grand frontage of stone-mullioned windows that spanned the full height of the building, reminiscent of Cambridge colleges.

At the main entrance, above an imposing porch, was carved the motto of the family who built the place: Plutot mourir que changer. Vic, with his schoolboy Latin, translated it as ‘rather die than change’, which he thought particularly inappropriate for the work they were doing here, these days: creating change which would, they hoped, save lives.

The afternoon he first arrived, just a month before, had felt positively surreal. The long train journey after a night of little sleep and the meeting with that striking young woman with the flame-red curls; the arthritic old bus that transported them from the station, and the ferryman with a hook where his hand should be. And then his first stunning sight of the Manor. He felt as though he’d entered a world of make-believe, like Alice going down the rabbit hole, and he expected at any moment to wake up and discover that it had all been the oddest dream.

His astonishment had only increased as they’d entered the building through the heavy oak door and into the wood-panelled hallway, passed through the lounge with French doors and views over the estuary into a great hall with, he’d been cheered to see, an upright piano. Frank had introduced him to a man called Johnnie – tall, older, rather avuncular – who led him up a wide staircase leading to a maze of corridors and rooms on the first floor.

‘This’ll be your room, Mr Mackensie. Fifty-four. Not the most luxurious of accommodation but no doubt you’ll be used to it after Cambridge. Make yourself at home. Bathroom’s thataway. Tea’s at four in the Green Lounge. Can you remember how to get there?’

Vic nodded, though he wasn’t at all certain. It would be easy to get lost in this place. He unlocked the door and peered into the cell-like room. This must have been part of the servants’ quarters, and the lowliest servants at that. It was a curious shape, rather dark, with two narrow windows high in the walls, furnished with a cheap plywood chest of drawers and wardrobe, two chairs and two double-tiered metal bunk beds. There was no sign of other belongings, so he assumed – and hoped – that he might actually have the room to himself.

After making up the bed he lay back and tried to gather his thoughts. It had been a whirlwind few weeks: the interview with a couple of stern fellows in an anonymous Whitehall building seemed to go well, and even though he’d barely understood the purpose of their questions he had tried to answer them as honestly as possible. Then, almost by return, came a letter of acceptance with instructions to use his travel warrant on a certain date and a specific train. He looked up Felixstowe on the map and discovered that it was practically the most easterly point of the British Isles, right on the coast and miles from anywhere. Whatever could Watson-Watt and his team be doing in such a remote place?

Now here he was, but still with only the vaguest notion of what it was all about. No doubt he would get a briefing later today, or perhaps tomorrow, and all would become clear.

The clanging of a distant gong roused him from a deep sleep. Then he remembered: he was at Bawdsey Manor and the sound must be the summons for tea. His mouth began to water: he’d eaten nothing since breakfast in Cambridge that morning. Turning the wrong way out of his room, he quickly became lost in a maze of anonymous corridors lined with closed doors that all looked the same.

At last he found a heavy oak door, different from the rest and slightly ajar. Gingerly pushing it open, he found himself on a balcony overlooking the grand panelled hall with the ornate plastered ceiling. He hadn’t noticed the balcony from below, but remembered a similar structure at school, where student string quartets scraped away tunelessly for special events. The musicians’ gallery, that was what they’d called it.

Unseen below, he could hear voices and laughter. The sound of cups clinking and the tinkle of teaspoons only served to intensify his hunger and thirst. But how to get down there? He followed a short corridor that led to another door, also ajar, through which he was astonished to discover the most sumptuous billiards room he’d ever seen: oak-panelled and lined with raised benches upholstered in green-buttoned leather. On the walls were racks of cues and scoreboards in brass and gilded lettering, and in the centre of the room was the baize table, over which green glass lampshades hung from the ceiling. It was the sort of place where gentlemen of a certain class would retire after dinner, clutching their glasses of port and expensive cigars; the sort of place that made Vic feel even more acutely like an outsider.

The only other door out of this room opened into a small snug with an oversized stone fireplace, where no doubt the gentlemen would retire when they wearied of the game. Apart from that the only exit was a wide French window leading out onto a few steps and a lawn, beyond which Vic could see nothing but grey sky melting into an equally grey sea.

He’d thought he was on the first-floor level, so this was obviously a raised part of the garden. Sure enough, he discovered a set of steps leading downwards and through a stonework grotto onto a further lawn. At last, he turned a corner onto a terrace with the most spectacular view southwards over the mouth of the river, towards the distant town of Felixstowe. A group of men were sitting at a table in the sunshine, taking tea.

As he approached they looked up with the double-take expressions he’d come to expect from strangers. But at least they all managed to smile.

‘Mr Mackensie! Made it at last, old boy. Best view in town, ain’t it? Come and join us. We might be able to squeeze the pot,’ Johnnie said, leading Vic into an enormous room carpeted and furnished in various gloomy shades of green. On an oval table, several crumb-spotted plates attested to the feast he’d missed. A single piece of fruit cake remained. From the teapot emerged a dribble of molasses-black liquid glistening with scum.

‘Sorry about the cake. Shall I call for more hot water?’

‘It’ll be fine with milk and sugar,’ Vic lied. ‘I could drink anything right now.’

As they returned outside, Johnnie announced: ‘Listen up, chaps: this is Mr Mackensie, who has just joined us from Cambridge University, no less.’ A murmur of approval.

They seemed to fall into two types. Some looked like standard academics, dressed in scruffy suits or tweed jackets over shirts and ties, and wearing spectacles. At least he looked the part well enough, he thought. Others were more practical-looking chaps in khaki overalls or jumpers over plain trousers. But no one gave any hint of what they were doing or why they were here, and although he was burning to ask, Vic remembered the fearsome declaration of confidentiality he’d been required to sign, in triplicate. Any breach might result in a prison sentence of up to seven years.

After a flurry of introductions the conversation turned to everyday matters: the weather forecast, the temperature of the sea – he gathered with some alarm that some of them enjoyed immersing themselves in it when the tides were right – and what the cooks were boiling up for supper.

‘Saw some veggies and a side of lamb going in the kitchen door this afternoon,’ one said.

‘Sounds promising.’

‘Don’t matter what they start with, they’ll destroy it. We’ll end up with the same bland mush as usual,’ Frank muttered.

‘Don’t listen to Eeyore here. The food’s not that bad.’

‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast,’ Vic admitted. ‘I’m so hungry I could probably eat a donkey.’

‘You might have to.’

‘Where do you come from, Mackensie?’ Frank asked.

‘I’ve just travelled from Cambridge today.’

‘I mean, where do you really come from?’

‘I was born in India, but my father is British, and I have been here since I was eight.’ It was his usual answer, and he steeled himself for what usually came next. Answering would be painful, but at least it usually stopped the interrogation.

‘Is your mother Indian, then?’

‘Was. She died four years ago.’

There was a murmur of sympathy around the table. ‘So sorry to hear that, old chap,’ Johnnie said.

He was saved from further questions by the arrival of Robert Watson-Watt. All, to a man, pushed back their chairs and stood in deference. Vic was struck once more by his powerful presence: the genial air, the breezy smile and apparent informality of his bearing clearly concealing a strong sense of purpose. An impatient man, certainly, and nothing about him would happen by chance.

‘Sit down, for heaven’s sake, there’s no need for all that, chaps. Good cake?’

Frank – who seemed to be the leader in most things – offered to go for more.

‘Och, don’t be bothering them. They brought some to my office earlier,’ he said. ‘Now, where’s my new fellow?’ He glanced around. ‘Ah, there you are, Mr Mackensie. Found us all right?’

‘Yes, I did, sir, with Frank’s help.’

‘None of this sir business, please. I’m Robert, remember?’

‘Yes, s . . .’ He found it impossible to envisage ever being comfortable enough to call this man by his first name.

‘If you’ve finished your tea, perhaps you would like to come to my office so that I can fill you in on our work here?’

‘Good luck, old boy. See you on the other side,’ someone whispered.

Robert Watson-Watt’s office was perhaps the most opulent Vic had ever seen, thickly carpeted with walls lined in gold-embossed leather above panels of oak carved in an ornate linen-fold pattern. Through stone-mullioned windows was the same astonishing view he’d admired from the terrace. On the table between two leather sofas sat a tray with the remains of tea, including a large slice of fruit cake and a couple of Garibaldi biscuits.

‘Take a seat, old chap, and do help yourself. Never could stand the biscuits, not since someone told me the raisins were squashed flies, but I’m told they’re perfectly edible. And the cake is pretty good.’

Vic demurred, then weakened. ‘It’s been a long time since breakfast, s . . .’

Robert Watson-Watt arranged himself comfortably on the opposite sofa, stretching out his legs and leaning back, hands linked behind his head and elbows akimbo. It was a pose that conveyed ultimate confidence without any need for assertion, and Vic wondered whether he would ever achieve such a state of self-assuredness.

‘Go for it, lad. Keep the wolf from the door till supper. Now, I suppose you’ll be wanting to know what you’ve let yourself in for?’

With his mouth full of cake, Vic could only nod.

‘Well, it all started when the Air Ministry asked us to develop a death ray. Something that would kill a sheep at a hundred yards, that was their criterion.’

Vic swallowed. ‘Surely that would require so much power . . .?’

‘Just so. We managed to persuade them the idea was completely bonkers, because you’d need to cart around a ruddy great power station just to stun the poor animal. But a colleague suggested that radio waves might prove useful in other ways.’

He paused again, peering over his spectacles, his eyebrows raised. Vic was familiar with the expression, the very same that his physics teachers used to adopt.

‘For shipping, sir?’

‘Of course, of course,’ Watson-Watt jumped in with a hint of impatience. Failed that test, then, Vic thought to himself. ‘They’ve been doing that to detect icebergs ever since the Titanic went down. But what we’re doing is different, you see, which is why we have to keep it so ruddy secret. If we can perfect this thing, we’ll get Hitler on the back foot.’

He leapt up and began to pace, as though unable to contain his energy.

‘This thing, sir?’ Vic prompted, after a few moments.

‘The thing is, Mackensie – is it okay if I call you that?’

‘Of course, everyone does.’

Watson-Watt stopped and turned to face him. ‘The thing is that it’s not just icebergs or shipping we’ll need to detect, it’s aeroplanes. Of course there will be tanks and artillery on the ground, but any future war will be won or lost in the air. There are already reports of Mr Hitler amassing hundreds of them, and that can only mean one thing: he’s planning to drop all kinds of hell – high explosive, incendiaries, poison gas – onto our cities and factories. And our people. It will be an altogether different kind of warfare, more terrifying and just as deadly. We have to find a way to stop them.’

He took his seat again, leaning forward with his legs crossed beneath him like a coiled spring, and lowered his voice confidentially. ‘What we’re doing here has never been done before anywhere in the world, Mackensie. Imagine a vast spider’s web suspended in the sky between us and Europe.’ He drew a wide circle with his arms. ‘Now, think of that web as being made of pulsating radio waves. It’ll be completely invisible, and undetectable – but as soon as anything tries to penetrate it, we will know, in time to send up our own fighters to shoot them down.’

Vic found that he’d been holding his breath. He could see it all too clearly. Over the past few weeks he’d tried again and again to speculate what it was he’d been recruited for, and although he’d assumed it would be something to do with defence, he’d never for a moment imagined it might be anything as astonishing and ambitious as this. And he was going to be part of the team developing it.

‘It sounds bloody brilliant, sir,’ he breathed. ‘’Scuse my French.’

‘But does it work, you’re going to ask?’

Vic nodded.

‘The answer is yes, and no. Our first experiment was a near disaster, but we did actually manage to track a plane at around eight miles, which was enough for them to stump up some funding. We started in Orford, which is a desolate strip of sand just north of here; then, thank goodness, this place came up. Here we are, in paradise, I think you’ll agree.’

‘It certainly is the most beautiful place, s . . . Mr . . .’

‘Robert. But there are many problems, and that’s where you come in.’

For the next hour they exchanged ideas about how to solve the innumerable difficulties in developing such a system. Apart from the practical matters of finding the right places to set up transmitter masts and receiving stations and training staff to use the screens and interpret the blurry blips and squeaks they emitted, there were many knotty scientific problems: how to compress transmitters currently weighing several tons so they could fit inside a plane, how to make the equipment mobile, how to improve low-level coverage, avoiding confusion with church towers and the like – and, perhaps most importantly of all, how to identify aircraft as ‘friend or foe’.

‘What we have so far is a very basic system. An old horse and cart, if you like,’ Watson-Watt said. ‘But it is slow and unreliable, and the wheels keep falling off. What you lot are going to do is turn it into a Rolls-Royce fit to win a war. And we don’t have long. Political insiders suggest two years, maximum. So I’ll see you at tomorrow morning, eight o’clock sharp in the Stable Block.’

‘Yes, s . . .’

His audience with the big man was over.

Watson-Watt stood and opened the door. ‘And bring that big brain of yours with you, Mackensie. You’re going to need it.’