27

It was the one they all hated most, the ‘graveyard shift’: eleven till eight in the morning. Halfway through, around three o’clock, your mind would start to drift off, your eyes longing to close, your shoulders aching from tiredness and tension.

Kath usually went to her room after supper for a few hours’ rest beforehand. It was the wrong time for sleeping, but she found it helped to close her eyes and try to relax. Tonight, she lay awake thinking of Mark. Just after ten o’clock, even before she heard them, she sensed the vibrations. She opened the window and peered out into the night listening to the deafening roar of hundreds of heavy aircraft flying low overhead in the direction of North Germany. The whole building seemed to shake and any further rest was impossible as wave after wave passed over, the noise undiminished for a full half hour until the rear markers passed over the coast and the land went silent again.

The moon was out at the moment, she noticed, but they were flying towards a bank of cloud in the east that would conceal them over enemy territory. The Met Office men had got it right for once. The crews would be more dependent on RDF to find their targets, but at least they would be less vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire from the ground.

She wished Mark hadn’t told her about the mission, but now she knew he was up there she could think of nothing else. She would have to wait at least twenty-four hours before she knew whether or not he had returned safely. Fear lodged in the pit of her stomach, a constant ache as debilitating as any pain of her monthlies, but impervious to the two aspirin she’d taken. She went for supper just before the shift, but had no appetite. Every mouthful tasted like cardboard.

‘Have you seen him yet?’ Marcia whispered, at the shift changeover.

‘Him? Who?’

‘Your Indian prince?’

‘What? Here? Stop teasing.’

‘No, I’m serious. He was here to fix the IFF. His mate’s over there.’ Monty was sitting in the corner, head rested back against the wall, eyes closed, his slightly gaping mouth emitting small, rhythmical snores.

‘Fix the IFF? What’s wrong with it?’

‘Buggered. In a word.’

‘A technical term?’

‘Our engineers were perfectly clueless, so they called in the boffins. Him over there and your prince. The pair of them had to go up the mast in the dark, bless ’em.’

Vic, up a mast in the dark? ‘That’s pretty heroic. Is it working now?’

‘We haven’t had any targets to test it on yet, but the bombers who went out earlier will be back in a few hours, no doubt. Did you hear them?’

‘Hitler would have heard them in his bunker.’

‘Let’s hope they blast him to hell.’

Kath’s head was in a spin. It was enough to worry about Mark without the embarrassment of bumping into Vic again. He still had not replied to any of her letters, and she assumed he’d taken umbrage after seeing her with the wretched Larry at Martlesham. The memory of those kisses still left a sour taste in her mouth. If only she’d taken more notice of Marcia’s warning about the cocktails.

They bid goodnight to the previous shift and immediately settled into their stations. Kath took the first turn on the screen, and for the first hour everything was quiet except for the occasional ship passing by, so they had time to listen in to reports being sent to HQ at Stanmore from other stations. These were usually a staccato blur of acronyms, technical language and map readings that were almost impossible to follow. But every now and again a few terrifying phrases would emerge – ‘taking fire over Bremen’, ‘two down’, ‘identified hostile’ – that could grip you with panic if you listened too hard. It was easier when you were too busy to worry.

She’d taken her turn on the plotting tables and returned to the screen when it began to light up with faint blips. She took plots, range and height, and calculated that there must be thirty of them, perhaps more, still eighty miles out. Probably our own, she thought, returning from the raid. By now Vic’s mate had ceased his snoring, introduced himself as Monty and was on full alert, peering at the screen over her shoulder.

As they came closer, friendly aircraft would transmit a signal that showed up on the screen as a small extra downward spike – but only if they weren’t all bunched together, and only if the receiver was working properly. There was no other way of telling except, sometimes, by the tightness of the formations and the distance between the groups.

The tension, as they waited, was almost unbearable.

At last, they saw it. That extra little spike. ‘Friend,’ they shouted, simultaneously. Everyone in the bunker cheered, clapping Monty on the shoulder. The system was working again. These were RAF bombers returning to base in a group. She prayed Mark was among them. But that was only about thirty planes out of what they’d calculated to be three hundred who’d flown out.

Over the next hour or so they counted them back, reporting to Stanmore and keeping their own score on a blackboard. The numbers crept up but the formations were all over the place, twenty-plus here and thirty-plus there. It was no doubt they’d had a rough time. Aircraft returning from a raid would often arrive in ragged bunches of sometimes only twenty, or fewer. Even in ones or twos. You could read it from the screen, like a picture in the sky, as you worked your way along the length of the trace, plotting every blip, then back to the beginning again. Plot, range, height, plot, range, height. All of them friendly.

A lone aircraft appeared at forty miles out, very low and coming in very slowly. She tracked it carefully: twenty miles, fifteen miles, ten, then just five. The message went to Stanmore, and she imagined telephones ringing at Sutton Heath, calling code red for the fire and ambulance crews. She prayed that it managed to land safely.

They estimated that at least five planes were still missing. She tried to calm herself by calculating the odds: five out of three hundred had failed to return, less than 2 per cent. Or, put another way, there was a 98 per cent chance that Mark had come home safely. She moved from the screen to the plotting table, but there was nothing to plot, so she continued watching over the shoulders of her fellow WAAFs.

‘Stragglers!’ The shout made them all jump. ‘One, perhaps two, coming in low.’ Everyone ran to look. The blip for one of the planes came closer and closer before passing right overhead. One of them at least was probably safe. The other suddenly disappeared about ten miles out. The message went out: someone called air-sea rescue, giving map references of the last sighting. Ten minutes later a blip appeared, most likely the spotter plane. Kath prayed that the men had managed to get out safely before they crash-landed.

Now only three planes were still unaccounted for.

Then, suddenly, a single plane at sixty miles, then thirty, flying low. Another straggler? They tracked it minute by minute. But something was wrong. It began to act strangely, rising, then levelling off before dropping again. It turned and flew away from the coast, then steadied, as though it was moving along the coastline.

‘What the hell’s he playing at? Ruddy thing’s wheeling round like a Catherine wheel,’ the WAAF swore.

Wheeling. The words she’d said to Mark: It soon becomes apparent when they start wheeling about. ‘Is it hostile?’ she called. ‘Strange time for reconnaissance.’

‘Can’t tell. The IFF signal seems to be playing up again. Sometimes I see it, then I don’t.’

Monty groaned. ‘I thought we’d fixed it? It was working okay before.’

The WAAF fiddled with the controls. ‘Nope, can’t see it. Not at all.’

Kath ran back to look over her shoulder. It was definitely a single blip. For a few seconds, she thought she saw the second spike on the screen that would indicate friendly craft, but it disappeared so fast she fancied she must have imagined it. There it was again. Now it had gone.

‘D’you mind if I have a go?’

‘Be my guest,’ the WAAF said, relinquishing her seat.

Kath sat at the controls, her right hand on the goniometer wheel. Nudging it gently clockwise, then anti-clockwise, she took readings: height, range and trajectory. She peered at the screen so hard that her eyes burned. Definitely no double blip. She stood up again and the WAAF resumed her place.

‘Nope, nothing.’

‘Best inform Stanmore, anyway,’ someone said.

Kath’s head whirled. ‘And have them send a fighter to shoot the poor bastard down?’ she said. It would be her responsibility to make the call, but what if the plane was ours? What if it was Mark?

‘That “poor bastard” might be coming to bomb us.’

‘But are we really sure it’s hostile?’

‘We have to leave it to them to decide. They’ll have tracks from other stations, after all. Make the call, Kath,’ someone said.

She hesitated.

‘Do it, Kath.’ More urgently this time. ‘Before they bloody well blow us to kingdom come.’

As the phone operator on rota, it was her duty. She dialled and spoke into the receiver, giving the identification code for the station, followed by the time. ‘Craft acting suspiciously, possibly hostile,’ she said, giving range, height and co-ordinates.

‘Roger that, thank you.’ As she replaced the receiver it felt as heavy as a stone.

Everyone was still gathered around the screen, watching as the plane continued to circle, up and down the coast. It was like nothing they’d observed before and hardly likely to be activity of an enemy aircraft, they all agreed. Kath became more and more convinced that the plane and its crew were in trouble, trying to find their route to the crash ’drome at Sutton Heath.

Ten minutes later they tracked a fighter, heading out towards their latest sighting.

‘If they’re German, they’re toast,’ someone said, and the others cheered.

But what if they’re not? The question repeated itself over and over in Kath’s head. But what if they’re not?

Moments later, just as the other girls arrived to take over the shift, all trace of the mysterious plane disappeared. Even though she felt nauseous with anxiety and fatigue, she waited as they tracked the fighter home, and the screens cleared of all signals.

By the time they emerged from the bunker the sun was already rising and the remnants of dawn lingered to the east, sending darts of pink into the sky reflected in an almost flat sea. Birds were staking noisy claim to territory in the trees to the side of the Manor, and a roe deer slipped across the path in front of them.

‘Going to be a fine day,’ Monty observed cheerfully.

‘Off to bed now?’ someone asked.

‘Nope, I’m going to get the boss. I reckon we’re going up that mast again. Need to double-check the IFF receiver just to make sure. At least it’ll be in daylight this time.’

The boss? Kath realised he must be referring to Vic. After all the stress of the shift and the worry about Mark, she’d almost forgotten. As Monty peeled off in the direction of the Manor, she realised that as civilian visitors he and Vic would be served breakfast in the officers’ mess while she and her fellow WAAFs were heading for the grim fare of the cookhouse. Their paths were unlikely to cross, unless one of them . . .

On impulse, she called to Monty’s disappearing back, ‘Tell him Kath says hello.’

He swivelled round. ‘You mean Vic?’

She nodded, conscious of the others’ questioning looks.

‘Will do, miss,’ he said with smile and a mock salute.