Chapter Twenty-One

The cushion hit Doris square on the forehead, jolting the American awake.

“Hey!” she yelled, jerking her head from Walter’s shoulder, where she’d been asleep since supper.

“Do try and stay awake,” Jane asked, licking the tip of her pencil. “If we’re going to sort out your wedding, it’s a great help if the bride herself is compos mentis.”

“Compos whatsit?” the lady in question asked as she ruffled her hair, stretched and yawned.

“It means, awake,” Mary explained. “Generally.”

Doris narrowed her eyes at where Mary sat on the edge of her seat. “Answer me this, Mary Whitworth-Baines. Just how are you so compost mentis? I don’t remember you getting much sleep on the train last night.”

Mary raised an eyebrow at her friend’s slip of the tongue, yet shrugged and took a sip of her perennial cup of tea. “What can I say? I don’t need much beauty sleep.”

Doris began to bristle. Indeed, she opened her mouth—before Walter placed his hand upon hers and simply shook his head. Immediately, she nodded and leant her head against his shoulder again, but doing her best to appear wide awake and attentive.

“You’re going to have to teach us that trick,” Betty said with a small laugh.

“Teach you what?” Walter asked, earning himself an affectionate squeeze of his arm from his fiancée.

Betty rapped her knuckles against the table beside her. “That’s enough,” she said. “The sooner we get this sorted, the sooner you can go back to sleep, Doris.”

“Good…plan!” Doris managed to say.

Mary held up a hand, exactly at the same time a knock on the door sounded. Putting her hand down, she got to her feet. “I’ll get it!”

A few moments later, she came back into the room, towing Lawrence by the hand, closely followed by Ruth, who complained, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll take my own coat off. Plus,” she added, grumbling, “you nearly took Bobby’s nose off when you shut the door.”

Obviously far from traumatized, the cocker spaniel trotted in behind her and wagged his tail at one and all before flopping down in front of the roaring fire in the grate. Ten seconds later, he was asleep.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that’s a helluva trick,” Doris stated.

Ruth lowered herself so she could sit beside her now comatose dog. Ruffling a fluffy ear fondly, she looked back up at her friends. “True. If I could bottle whatever he’s got, I’d make a fortune!”

“I would have brought around some food, only the chip shop’s closed,” Lawrence announced.

With this statement, Doris’s eyes snapped back open, and she was alert as anything. “Thanks for the reminder, Herbert!” she said, using his hated first name, which instantly got everyone’s attention. “I knew something was on my mind. What did you do? Now, where am I going to get my fish ’n’ chips from?”

Ignoring the jibe, Lawrence allowed a small smile to grace his lips before replying, “I’m sorry this is the result, Doris, but from the reaction I caused, the men I saw have to be the ones behind Betty’s problem.”

“You’re sure?” Walter asked. “I’m not a believer in coincidences, and for the ones causing all this trouble to be so close to home is, well…a coincidence.”

“And don’t forget who put Lawrence onto them,” Mary pointed out, directing her comment toward Doris.

Doris flopped back once more, pouting. “I suppose that’s fair enough. Me and my big mouth.”

“Look at it this way,” Lawrence told her. “From what Terry and I have found out about the man you got suspicious about, your instincts are spot on.”

“So who is this person?” Jane asked, leaning forward.

Lawrence consulted his notebook before addressing his friends. “It goes without saying that anything we discuss tonight goes no further. Are we clear?” He waited until everyone had either said yes or nodded at him. “Good. Any other answers, and I’d have made this official straight away. Now, there were two chaps in the shop. The one Doris has dealt with is called Harold Verdon. Bit of a nob—that’s short for nobility, Doris—but don’t let that fool you. He’s quite a big supporter of Moseley, back in the day, one of his blackshirts. From what we’ve found out, he lost everything when he went inside. We figure he’s trying to claw back some of what he once had.”

“But why me?” Betty asked, voicing the question on everyone’s mind.

Lawrence half-shrugged. “So far, Terry and I haven’t found out the answer to that.”

Betty replied, after a few moments, “Be sure that you do tell us, as soon as you find out.”

“And this other chap you mentioned?” Penny asked.

Lawrence shook his head. “That one’s a bit of a puzzle. So far, we’ve not found out anything, though we both figure he has to be a known companion of Verdon. Terry’s working on it.” From talking to the room, Lawrence now turned to Betty. “I need a favor.”

“Go on,” Betty told him, perusing him with a shrewd eye.

“I want to take up residence in your loft for the next few days, just in case something happens.”

“Do you think something’s likely to happen?” Jane asked, reaching for and squeezing Betty’s hand in support.

To be fair to him, Lawrence didn’t try to pull the wool over Betty’s eyes. “Quite possibly. By himself, Verdon’s not especially dangerous, but this other fellow? Well, he’s this huge scar down one side of his face, and you don’t get those by playing nicely.”

“So why don’t you pull him in for questioning?” Jane quite reasonably asked.

Shaking his head, Lawrence said, “Unfortunately, I have to play by the rules. So far, I’ve no proof he’s done anything, so I can’t do that, and—” Here he stopped and pointedly looked around the room. All the girls were in a dangerous line of work, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see them get hurt. Already, in the time he’d known them, Betty had been stabbed, Jane and Penny had been shot down, breaking Jane’s arm and leaving Penny with a gunshot wound to hers. Being brave was one thing, but erring on the side of caution was the sensible line. “By being here, I hope to lessen the risk of anyone else getting hurt.”

“I guess,” Betty said, getting to her feet, “we’d better see what the state of the loft space is. Mary’s room takes up half, but I forget what the other half looks like.”

As the two went to the door, Jane said, “If you two don’t mind, we’ll stay here. We got a little off the subject just now.” As soon as Betty and Lawrence, closely followed by Ruth, left the room, Jane turned her attention upon the engaged couple. “Right, you two, it’s been a long day, I’m hungry, and you need to make some solid decisions…now.”

Both Doris and Walter raised their eyebrows at Jane’s tone but then nodded, knowing she was right. “Well,” Doris began, managing to string out the last letter for a few more seconds than necessary and subconsciously taking the ring from her first marriage out from around her neck and rubbing it between two fingers.

The motion didn’t go unnoticed.

“You’re still,” Mary said whilst pointing out to Doris what she was doing, “wearing that, then?”

It took a while before Doris glanced down at her fingers. She let the ring drop, and it hung on its chain before she tucked it back down her blouse, noticing that Walter’s eyes were still fixed upon the chain.

“You know,” Penny mused, “there aren’t many fiancés who’d be okay with their girl still wearing their dead husband’s ring, albeit on a chain.”

Doris’s head snapped up, and she turned her full attention to Walter. “You know, I’ve never thought twice about taking it off,” she mumbled, once again fiddling with the chain, though looking at Walter this time.

Walter shrugged before saying, “And I wouldn’t ask her to.”

Doris took one of Walter’s hands in hers and, looking deep into the eyes of the one she wanted to spend her life with, told him, “And that’s one of the many reasons I love you.” After kissing Walter on the cheek, she sat back, reached behind her neck and unclasped the chain. “But it’s only right that I should take it off.”

Sitting with the ring nestled in her hand, Doris felt Walter clasp his hand over hers. “Keep it safe,” he told her, returning the kiss.

“Oh, hell! Pack it in, you two, or I’m going to burst out crying. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life!” Mary declared, launching herself at the pair, being rapidly joined by Penny.

“Nor me. Don’t let this one go, you hear me?”

Doris’s muffled voice said, “I won’t.”

****

Tom kicked the hatch open. Bitingly cold air spilled into the Mosquito, replacing the stale air which had built up over the long sortie. Dumping his parachute down the hole, he wearily exited the aircraft and immediately placed his hands on his hips and leant backward and to the sides, trying to work the kinks from his back. A groan above and behind caused him to shuffle a little away from the hatch, allowing Stan to follow him down to the safe surface of the hard standing.

“Tough one,” his navigator commented as he mirrored his friend.

“Uh-huh,” Tom said when he found his voice. “Good call,” he added, bending down to pick up his chute pack, “spotting that One-Ten. Cheeky bugger, trying to sneak up on us out of the cloud like that.”

Stan shook his head. “Only chance he had, trying to bounce us. Pity we don’t have guns. Would be nice to get some payback for once, instead of just showing a clean pair of heels.”

On half-dead feet, the two made their way to a waiting truck which had already picked up the other crews from that night’s operation. The six men exchanged weary nods, more than a little relief showing on each face as they all recognized that everyone had made it back alive and unharmed from the sortie. Everyone’s head either slumped back against the canvas of the truck’s body or down onto folded arms on their knees, and not a word was said as they were driven back to the squadron offices to file their post-operation reports and talk with the intelligence officer. Though the operation to mine the waters around Heligoland, a small archipelago in the North Sea, had been routine, the fog and cloud had come down earlier than expected, giving Stan some trouble with his navigation and nearly allowing the German night fighter the chance to catch them unawares.

Tom nudged Stan with his boot.

“Boss?” he answered, not troubling to open his eyes.

“Remind me to buy you a packet of carrots later.”

Stan cracked open one eye. “Leave that bumf for the newspapers. Make it a brandy, and you’re on.”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Tom replied, shaking hands with his friend.

With a squeal of worn brakes, the truck deposited them outside their hangar, and the pilots and their navigators trudged inside, shading their eyes against the glare of the harsh lights. About an hour later, Stan followed Tom as he entered his office, shutting the door behind them and flopping into one of his old, comfy seats, his arms draping either side of the arms.

Leaning over his desk, Tom pulled a drawer open, extracted a half empty bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. Dangling it beneath his armpit, he said, “Sorry, no brandy.”

Stan leant forward and pushed one of the tumblers back toward Tom. “Fill her up.”

Neither knocked the drink back, knowing from long experience that their stomachs wouldn’t react too well to alcohol so soon after a flight. Some got lucky, but neither Tom nor Stan fell into that lucky category, so both sat in the quiet of the office, savoring the company and the warmth the whiskey sent through their tired bones.

“That hits the spot,” Stan stated, and when Tom didn’t reply, he looked up to find his pilot staring at the framed photo of his wife he kept on his desk. Taking a quick sip, Stan cradled his tumbler. “Mind my asking…have you heard from Penny since?”

It took a moment before Tom seemed ready to reply. When he did, he appeared more fatigued than what normally resulted from the stress of flying an operational sortie over enemy territory. His eyes were hooded, dark, and seemed—though Stan would never think of himself as remotely poetic—empty. Stan knew Penny well and hated the estrangement the couple were going through and the effect upon his friend. So far, it hadn’t affected his flying abilities, but allowing for that possibility, anything he could do to bring the two back together would also benefit and improve his chances of surviving the war.

“No,” Tom replied, pushing the frame to one side, causing it to topple, picture first, onto the desk.

“Look, I’m no Casanova, but don’t give up on her.”

Tom mustered a weak smile and swept a hand through his hair. “I won’t.”