The Night Gate

Chapter Five

The old lady has been silent for a long time, and he has been reluctant to prompt her in case somehow the spell of her story is broken and she draws a line under the telling of it.

‘Shall I make myself a coffee?’ he asks at length.

She looks up suddenly. ‘I can do that.’ She places her hands on the arms of her chair to raise herself to her feet. But he gets quickly to his.

‘No, no, I’m sure I can find everything for myself.’ He was quite familiar now with her kitchen. ‘Can I make you tea while I’m at it?’

She shakes her head, sinking back in her rocker, clearly happy to let him get his coffee for himself. And he notices that she has barely drunk the tea she had made herself earlier. It would be stone cold by now, despite its proximity to the fire. The logs he threw on earlier have reduced themselves to embers, and are radiating a heat that he imagines must be burning her legs. He remembers how his grandmother’s legs had become mottled from sitting too close to the fire. Corned-beef legs, she had called them. ‘Shall I add another log?’

‘Please.’

When he returns with his coffee the wood is well alight and she has not moved a muscle. As he settles once again in his chair she swings her head slowly in his direction. ‘Have you ever been to the Isle of Lewis, monsieur? It’s in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.’

‘I know of it, but I have never been.’

‘A brutal place, by all accounts. It is first in line to welcome the gales that have gathered their strength across five thousand kilometres of Atlantic Ocean. A windbreak for the mainland beyond.’

He wonders where on earth this can be leading, but forces himself to contain his impatience as he waits for her to resume her story. Which, at length, she does...

Poor Georgette was as sick as a dog during her six-hour ferry crossing from Mallaig to the Isle of Lewis. It was the furthest north, and west, she had ever been, and she was not enjoying it. The rail journey from London to Fort William the previous day had been long and tedious. Poor weather had denied her any sight of the magnificent views afforded by the west coastline of the Highlands of Scotland. The remainder of the journey from Fort William to Mallaig had passed almost entirely in cloud, mist descending from the heavens, and she spent an uncomfortable night in a basic lodging house in the town.

The blackout was still in force when the ferry left at first light, cleaving a difficult passage around the Isle of Skye and across a stormy Minch. In spite of the rain and the sea spray she had spent most of the journey on deck, her coat flapping furiously around her legs, back to the wind as she retched into the brine.

The wind died a little as they sailed, finally, into the lee of the island’s east coast, and the fishing port of Stornoway emerged from the mist. Headlands to north and south took dark shape before vanishing into the featureless bog of the hinterland beyond. And it was with shaking legs that Georgette stumbled down the gangplank on to the dock and felt the world still moving. Even though the concrete beneath her feet was sunk in solid bedrock.

Sea-weary fellow passengers pushed past her, greeted by loved ones, friends or family, and were quickly swallowed by the smirr that drifted across the town like a mist. She heard idling engines rev, then accelerate into the gloom of the day, and it seemed that only a few minutes had passed before she was left standing on her own, a wet and forlorn figure clutching a sodden cardboard suitcase. The road that ran off around the southern flank of the town was lined by houses and shops that seemed painted on gauze, insubstantial, almost transparent, and she watched for the lights of the vehicle she had been told would pick her up.

It was nearly fifteen minutes before finally she heard the distant rumble of a heavy motor, then saw the lights of a canvas-covered military truck taking shape as it rumbled on to the quay. A cheery, ruddy-faced young soldier flung open the passenger door and leaned out an arm to give her a hand up.

‘You look a bit wet, love,’ he said.

‘So would you if you’d stood for six hours on the deck of a ferry emptying your stomach into a storm, then waited twenty minutes in the rain for your lift.’ She hauled herself up into the passenger seat and hefted her suitcase into her lap. She glared at the driver. ‘You’re late.’

His grin widened. ‘Feisty one, aren’t you? They can be a bit rough, them crossings. Never know when the ferry’s going to arrive.’

He crunched into first gear, manoeuvred his truck through a three-point turn, and pulled out on to the road, turning hard left and over the narrow spit of land dividing inner and outer harbours. The inner harbour was packed with trawlers and small fishing vessels sitting cheek by jowl on a high tide and towering over the quayside. Beyond water that reflected a pewtery sky, a hill rose darkly into darker trees, and the lights of a forbidding-looking building emerged from the shadow of the hillside, fighting to penetrate the murk.

The driver lowered his head to look up at it. ‘Lews Castle,’ he said. ‘That’s where you’re staying.’

‘Is that where you’re stationed?’

‘No, we’re at the RAF base out towards Point.’ And he flicked his head vaguely to the west. Then he snuck a glance in her direction. ‘I thought you was French. They said you was. And here’s me practising my parlez-vous anglais.’

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

He grinned. ‘Not disappointed at all, love. Whatever nationality you is.’

And in spite of herself she blushed. ‘So what’s at the castle?’ she said quickly to cover her embarrassment.

‘They got wounded soldiers convalescing in one wing of it. Some of them off the beaches at Dunkirk. Nurses live in, apparently. Some RAF brass based up there, too, and a training school of some kind. Though they don’t tell us nothing about that.’

They rumbled through the deserted town, following the curve of the inner harbour, past feebly lit shop windows below a skyline broken by church spires. ‘Where is everybody?’ Georgette asked.

Her driver said, ‘Would you go out on a day like this if you didn’t have to?’ He half turned and responded to her glare with a wink. ‘Mind you, I been here three months and the weather don’t ever get much better than this.’

They left the inner harbour behind them then before turning left, and climbing a narrow road through trees that delivered them eventually to the back of the castle. The driver brought his truck to a shuddering halt and he leaned on his horn for a good three seconds.

‘That’s you, love.’ He reached past her to push open the passenger door. ‘See you around.’

Not if I see you first, Georgette thought.

As he accelerated noisily away, a young soldier who clearly didn’t relish being out in the rain emerged from a back door. Yellow electric light fell feebly from ground-floor windows to be snuffed out by even feebler daylight.

‘Miss Pig Nall?’ he called.

‘Peenyaall,’ she corrected him phonetically.

‘You follow me, miss.’ And he turned abruptly back inside. No formalities, not even an offer to carry her case.

She sighed and hurried after him, through vast kitchens, where white-aproned staff flitted from steaming pot to steaming pot, appetising smells issuing forth to fill the air with delicious condensation that ran down the windows. Georgette’s stomach growled. It had been empty for a long time now but was not, she feared, destined to be satisfied any time soon.

She followed the soldier out into a long hallway that ran the length of the building. She dripped rainwater on to its shiny floor and hurried through elaborately corniced archways, trying to keep up. He turned on to a broad staircase that took them then through several floors to a labyrinthine attic. At the end of a narrow corridor he stopped and opened a door into a tiny room with a sloping ceiling and small dormer window. ‘This is yours. Toilet’s at the other end of the hall. Briefing downstairs in fifteen minutes.’

‘Wait a minute, I’m soaked to the skin. I need to wash and get changed. I can’t possibly do it in fifteen minutes.’

He was unmoved. ‘Fifteen minutes, miss.’ And he brushed past her to head back along the way they had come.

She turned to gaze with sinking heart into the room that was to be hers for who knew how long. Drab, colourless, utilitarian furniture. Cold green linoleum, and a wallpaper whose pattern was so faded and dull it was barely a memory. Her window looked out across a flat roof to crenellations beyond, the inner harbour almost lost in the mist a long way below. She threw her suitcase on to the bed and sat down beside it, hands clutched miserably in her lap. Rusted springs groaned beneath a lumpy mattress and she wondered what the hell she was doing here.

The same private who had taken her to her room showed Georgette into a small salon off the main ballroom which, he told her, was now being used as a dining room. Their evening meal would be served at five.

The salon was arranged with half a dozen chairs grouped around a blackboard on a tripod, two windows along one side giving out on to a view of the town below. Four young women, seated around a burly non-commissioned officer standing at the blackboard, turned curious heads in her direction as the door opened. The women gazed at her with unglazed interest. As the door closed behind her again, the NCO cocked his head to one side, a sarcastic smile playing around pale lips. ‘The late Miss Pig Nall, I take it.’ His sarcasm was very nearly lost in an almost unintelligible Geordie accent.

‘Pignal,’ she corrected him. ‘And if I hadn’t been left standing in the rain for half an hour I wouldn’t have been late.’ Which elicited some stifled giggles from the others.

The NCO silenced them with a look and folded his arms. ‘Is that so? And I suppose you just had to change, and repair your make-up?’

‘I’m here now,’ she said sullenly.

‘Yes, you are. Though God knows why.’ He cast his gaze over the other women. ‘These young ladies all know why they’re here. And so do I. But I haven’t the first fucking idea who you are, or why you’re at my castle. Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us, mam’selle. If your English is up to it, that is.’

Georgette felt her hackles rise. ‘I think you’ll find...’ She looked pointedly at the three stripes on the arm of his khaki green pullover, assessing him as a man in his forties who had long ago achieved a certain rank and never surpassed it. ‘Sergeant, is it?’

‘Connolley,’ he growled.

‘Well, I think, Sergeant Connolley, you’ll find that I speak English a great deal better than you do. And as to why I’m at your castle, if your superiors haven’t enlightened you, then I’m not about to. Information above your pay grade, I imagine.’

There was an almost collective intake of breath in the room.

The sergeant was fuming. But he kept a lid on it. He would get his revenge in his own good time. ‘Well, Pig Nall,’ he said, ‘we’ll just have to train you up for any eventuality, won’t we? Which means you’re going to have to work twice as hard as anyone else.’ He smiled ominously. ‘That’ll be fun.’ He paused. ‘Sit down.’

Georgette, flushed with anger and humiliation in equal measure, dropped herself into an empty seat, and felt the eyes of the other women upon her. Sergeant Connolley turned towards the blackboard and began to scrawl on it with a piece of chalk.

‘You are all, at some point, going to be dropped behind enemy lines, or in the case of the frog among us, home. And primarily we’ll be working on fitness. But I’ll also be making you familiar with this little beauty.’ He turned around and they saw that he had written Westland Lysander on the board. ‘She’s a single-engined light aircraft capable of short take-off and landing in moonlit conditions. There is a ladder attached to the fuselage below the cockpit behind the pilot. You’re going to learn to get down that ladder faster than you ever thought possible. Speed is the key. The plane simply can’t remain on the ground for more than a few minutes. You have to get off fast.’

Georgette frowned. ‘I thought I was to be parachuted into France.’

Connolley’s face folded itself into a genuine smile. ‘You? Parachute? Who told you that?’

And Georgette realised de Gaulle had been having his little joke with her. But in spite of having made a fool of herself, she was really rather relieved.

The polished wooden floor of the one-time ballroom was crammed with tables filled with men in uniform, nurses, soldiers with arms in slings and legs in plaster, a man with a horribly burned face that drew everyone’s eye. Not out of curiosity, but out of fear. Sometimes, in war, a fate worse than death awaits.

Georgette and the other women in her group sat around a table by one of the tall rain-streaked windows that flooded the room with light. The sky had cleared a little, and although now early evening, the sun was still high in the late summer sky, sprinkling broken light across the hillside and the town and inner harbour below. A spectacular panorama stretched away to the Minch beyond, where burnished patches of sunlight scalded the surface of the sea.

But none of the women was looking at the view. It was the first time they had been alone together, away from the watchful eye of Sergeant Connolley. They were excited to get to know their fellow travellers on this demanding road. Eager to forge friendships and share of themselves in the hope of dispelling inner fears and finding the courage in comradeship they would need to face an uncertain future.

‘Are you really French?’ one of them asked Georgette.

‘Half and half. But I grew up in France.’ She shook everyone’s hand around the table. ‘Georgette. But my English friends just call me George.’

It turned out that all the girls spoke French and were anxious to try it out on Georgette. So introductions were made in her native language. It gave the women an instant and conspiratorial sense of sisterhood. No one else would know what they were saying.

Alice was a pretty girl with blond curls and a Home Counties accent that seemed both alien and intimidating to the others. She told them that she came from London, and that her father held a rank high up in the Admiralty. Though exactly what she couldn’t say. Georgette thought she was possibly twenty-two or twenty-three, and was impressed by her accent when she spoke French.

Joan was a middle-class girl from Manchester who looked to be barely out of her teens. Her straight dark hair was cut in a fringe above a plain face. But she had an attractive smile and an infectious laugh that endeared her to everyone. A plain-speaking Mancunian whose grasp of pejorative French slang had Georgette in fits of laughter. ‘Real bastard that sergeant,’ she said. ‘Bet he’s only like that in front of us women cos he’s got such a tiny tadger.’

‘How would you know?’ Georgette twinkled. She was warming to the company.

‘Tiny feet, George. Didn’t you notice? It’s a sure sign.’ They all laughed and felt a release of tension.

Another of the women, a striking girl with shoulder-length black hair and cobalt blue eyes, raised both of her hands. ‘He’ll love me then,’ she said. ‘My brother says men adore women with small hands.’ Her ruddy-complexioned face broke into a broad grin. ‘For obvious reasons.’

This time the laughter at their table brought looks from around the room, and they instantly drew closer and lowered their voices.

‘I’m Mairi,’ said the girl with the small hands speaking English now, and Georgette was struggling to place her accent. ‘I live just up the road at Ness, the north end of the island. And I love the way that God-almighty Sergeant Connolley seems to think that this is his castle, when it’s my bloody island.’

They stifled their laughter to avoid further frowns from the other tables.

Georgette understood the origins of the accent now and said, ‘Are you a Gaelic speaker?’

‘Didn’t speak English till I went to school, George.’

‘So you live here?’ There was an element of incredulity in Joan’s voice.

‘Born and bred,’ Mairi said. ‘Grew up in Ness. Then my parents sent me to school here in Stornoway. The Nicolson Institute. The worst years of my life. Living away from home in digs.’ A look of unhappy recollection was replaced by a smile. ‘Didn’t stop me being school dux, though.’

The others frowned. ‘What’s that?’ Alice asked.

‘Only the smartest girl in the school.’ Mairi grinned. ‘Amazing how easy it is to fool folk.’

Then they all found themselves turning their heads towards the only member of their group who had not yet introduced herself. She blushed.

‘Rebecca,’ she said. She was older than the others, by a good ten years, and there was a weariness in her face.

‘Where you from, Becky?’ Joan asked.

‘Abergavenny.’ And her face broke into a rare smile when she saw their bewilderment. ‘It’s a couple of hours from Cardiff, at the foot of the Black Mountains.’

‘Oh, Welsh,’ Alice said. ‘I was wondering about that accent.’ She glanced at Rebecca’s left hand. ‘I see you took your wedding ring off.’ There was the faintest band of white around the root of her third finger. ‘Was that to increase your chances with the sergeant?’

The others laughed, but Rebecca’s face grew even paler, and her eyes dipped towards her hands clasped on the table in front of her. She spoke very quietly. ‘I took it off because my husband is dead.’ A cringing hush fell on the table. ‘He went to France with the British Expeditionary Force in September last year.’ She paused momentarily to bite her lip. ‘One of the first killed in the Battle of France three months ago.’

The wind had dropped along the sheltered east coast the next morning, but the rain fell steadily, and the women were quickly soaked as they assembled at the rear of the castle, wearing only khaki T-shirts and canvas shorts, waiting for Sergeant Connolley to appear. Cumbersome leather running shoes quickly absorbed the wet and grew heavy as the girls grew impatient.

‘Where is he?’ Joan growled.

‘Leaving us out here on purpose, I bet,’ Mairi said. They had all taken to jogging on the spot to keep warm.

At length they heard the sound of a vehicle engine, a steady throbbing in the rain, before a canvas-covered jeep emerged from the trees on a muddy track. It drew up beside them and the sergeant jumped out. He was wearing a rain cape with the hood pulled up. It was running with water, so he had been out in the rain himself.

‘Morning, ladies.’ He reached into the jeep and started pulling out army rucksacks to drop on the rain-sodden ground. ‘Put these on.’

Alice was the first to lift one. ‘God, it’s heavy,’ she gasped.

‘You’re breaking my heart, love.’ Connolley’s voice came muffled from inside the jeep.

Rebecca heaved hers on to her back and pulled a face. ‘What’s in them?’

‘Rocks,’ Connolley said, turning to face them. ‘To simulate the kind of load you’ll be expected to carry in the field.’ And he grinned as he took in their expressions. ‘You train to be fit. To survive in any conditions. It’s what’ll keep you alive.’ He looked up at the leaden sky that poured its relentless tears on the poor souls below. ‘I’ve marked out a course around the grounds with flags and arrows. It’s maybe three miles in total.’ He smiled at their groans. ‘There’s a whole network of tracks through the woods, but they’ve not been well maintained, so watch out for potholes. A puddle could be an inch deep, or six. So don’t go breaking any ankles.’

He walked around the jeep as they all pulled the rucksacks on to unwilling backs and felt the weight of them dragging at their shoulders.

‘Start over there.’ He pointed towards a break in the trees, beyond which the woods seemed very dark. ‘Follow the arrows. I expect to see you back here in well under an hour.’

Georgette said, ‘Not coming with us?’

‘No.’ That sarcastic smile again. ‘Scared you’ll miss me?’

She shook her head. ‘Just wondered if maybe you weren’t up to it.’

His smile vanished. ‘We’ll see who’s not up to it,’ he said.

The smell of damp, rotting vegetation filled the air, along with the stertorous breathing of the girls, as they pounded off into the woods, straps chaffing at soft skin through wet cotton. They agreed quickly among themselves to pace each other and not run too fast, moving together in a close single line along narrow paths, taking turns at leading the pack and then falling to the back.

It was hard going, and Georgette found herself reciting fragments of a poem in her head from a book her mother had given her for her thirteenth birthday. She couldn’t recall it exactly and improvised a couple of lines that kept repeating, like a mantra carrying her through the pain.

Georgette’s promise — a promise she could share with no one — was to keep the Mona Lisa safe. And she wondered when, if ever, that promise might be fulfilled and she could sleep without fear of failure.

She tried not to think about it, focusing instead on the rain as it fell on her face, the beat of her feet on soft, wet ground, the inordinately loud rasping of her own breath, the cawing of rooks somewhere far above them in the canopy.

Then a cry of pain broke through her concentration, and she almost collided with Mairi directly in front of her as the group came to a muddy halt. Alice was on the ground at the head of the pack, half covered in mud, tears streaming down her face as she clutched her ankle. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ she whispered, and they were all shocked to hear the language of the barracks room escape such cultured lips.

‘Is it broken?’ Rebecca asked.

But Alice shook her head. ‘Don’t think so. Just went over on it. So stupid!’

Georgette stepped forward to help her to her feet. She knew she was fitter than the others. ‘Can’t be much further to go,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘You girls go on, I’ll help Alice back to the castle.’

The girls exchanged glances, reluctant to leave Alice and Georgette behind. But Georgette waved them on. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Don’t give that sarcastic bastard any excuses to come down harder on us than he already has.’

When the girls had gone, and the pounding of their feet in the wet had receded to a muffled reverberation among the trees, Alice wiped the tears from her face and turned it towards Georgette. ‘I’m sorry, George. I really am.’

‘Hey,’ Georgette said, ‘if we can’t look after one another, who else will?’ She slung Alice’s rucksack over her left shoulder and supported Alice with her right arm as they set off through the woods at a painfully slow pace.

They arrived back at the castle a good twenty minutes after the others. The girls were crowded together for warmth and shelter in the doorway to the kitchens, their rucksacks in a pile on the ground beside the jeep. Connolley sat behind the wheel with the engine idling, smoking a cigarette.

The girls rushed forward to help Georgette and Alice as soon as they emerged from the woods, but Connolley was quickly out of the jeep. ‘Stay where you are!’ he barked, and stood with his hands on his hips until the two stragglers arrived at the vehicle. Georgette released Alice’s rucksack on to the pile, but Connolley stopped her from removing her own. ‘Just keep that on your back, Pig Nall. Seems you make a habit of being late for everything.’

‘She was helping me,’ Alice said.

But Connolley ignored her protests. ‘I bloody well told you to be careful, didn’t I?’ He hissed breath through clenched teeth and shook his head. ‘You’d better go see the doc and get that strapped up.’ He jerked his thumb towards the castle, and Rebecca stepped forward to help her to the door.

There was a long stand-off, then, in the rain, Connolley gazing at Georgette with ominous reflection, and she wondered when he was finally going to let her remove this aching weight from her back. He scratched his chin.

‘Since I have no idea what I’m training you for, we’re going to have to make sure you’re doubly fit.’ He tilted his head towards the start of the circuit. ‘Do it again.’

There was an audible gasp from the others. ‘That’s not fair,’ Joan protested.

Connolley turned his head dangerously in her direction. ‘You want to join her?’ When his question was greeted by silence, the sarcasm returned to his smile. ‘Didn’t think so.’

Georgette said, ‘Why don’t you? Scared I might beat you?’

He laughed. ‘Darling, I could do two circuits in the time it would take you to do one.’

‘Let’s put that to the test, then.’

As if someone had flicked a switch, he suddenly became serious. ‘Okay.’ He pulled off his rain cape and the pullover beneath it, stripping down to a white singlet and camouflaged military trousers. ‘Gimme your rucksack.’

Georgette freed herself of it with relief. There was just a chance she could avoid complete humiliation if she wasn’t burdened with the extra weight. He took it from her, laid it on the ground to open it and start filling it with more stones from one of the others. ‘What are you doing?’

He turned his rain-streaked face towards her. ‘Evening things up, Pig Nall. I’m a good deal heavier than you. We wouldn’t want you to have an unfair advantage now, would we?’

Georgette stood in the rain staring at him with hatred in her heart, and wanted to scream. She risked a glance at the others and saw the horror on their faces. But she said nothing.

When Connolley had finished loading her rucksack with more stones she took it without a word and slung it on to her shoulders. She felt the weight of it pulling her backwards and had to lean forward to maintain her balance. Still she held her peace, and kept her eyes fixed on Connolley’s. For a moment she thought he was almost disconcerted by her defiance, but then he smiled and said simply, ‘And we’re off.’ He jogged past her and headed for the trees.

Georgette gritted her teeth and started after him. She could see the muscles of his back through the wet of his singlet, and the easy lope of his strong stride. And she was pretty sure he could run six miles faster than she could run three with this weight on her back. But she was determined not to show weakness. She would finish the course, no matter what. That would be a victory in itself, albeit pyrrhic.

He very quickly disappeared from view, and she heard him crashing off through the woods, the sound of him becoming more and more distant, until finally she could hear nothing but her own breath and the sound of the rain, her feet splashing through mud, and a murder of crows laughing hysterically somewhere high above.

She found a rhythm and rediscovered her mantra of the first time round. My promise to keep, my promise to keep, so far to go before I sleep, before I sleep. It stopped her thinking about the pain, inducing a numbness both physical and spiritual that consumed her consciousness.

She had no sense of passing time, was barely aware that the rain had stopped. Somewhere high above the trees, a rising wind was tearing gaping holes in the clouds, and a determined sun fought to make itself seen in fleeting glimpses. Light caught droplets hanging from leaves and branches, like fairy lights in the forest, and the occasional ray of sunlight fell between trunks as a fine mist rose from the forest floor to hang suspended in bright golden shafts.

Now she could see the dark, towering shape of the castle through the trees ahead, and like the long-distance runner on seeing the finish line, almost stumbled and fell. She was nearly there. And suddenly Connolley drifted past her, long, comfortable strides, still light of foot. She hadn’t even heard him coming. ‘My second time round,’ he called back at her. ‘We can do it again tomorrow, if you like.’

The mood around the table at lunch was sombre, a sad little oasis of silence in the midst of the vocal animation that filled the dining room. Alice’s foot had been strapped up by a medic, and she would be unable to take part in training for some days. She kept glancing guiltily at Georgette, burdened by the thought that somehow what had happened was all her fault.

For her part, Georgette was keeping her thoughts to herself, a simmering silence that masked the anger that burned inside her. Connolley was sitting at a table of other NCOs on the far side of the room, and each time his voice was raised in laughter there was an exchange of resentful looks among the girls. Was he relating the story of how he had managed to humiliate the insolent Frenchie and prove his athletic prowess, all at the same time? Whatever the conversation, Connolley and his friends were enjoying it.

Finally Joan said, ‘It’s just not fair.’

There was a murmur of agreement around the table, but no one could think of anything else to say. They were all washed and changed now, in military fatigues and army boots, faces scrubbed clean and shiny red from the cold of the rain and the heat of their anger.

A dapper man in his fifties approached the table, dressed casually in army-green pullover and slacks. His thinning grey air was oiled back over a narrow skull, and a neatly clipped silver moustache seemed attached to the underside of his nose. Georgette saw two stars beneath a crown on his epaulettes.

‘Hello, girls,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m Colonel Smith. More or less in charge of this operation. Welcome to sunny Stornoway.’ He paused, allowing time for them to laugh, and when none of them did, pressed hurriedly on. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve bedded in. We run a tight ship here, and you’re all going to benefit from the training you’ll get from Sergeant Connolley. A good man, one of the best.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘I see things have brightened up a little for this afternoon. Makes a change, eh?’

He could hardly have been unaware of the mood around the table, but if he was, he chose to ignore it.

‘Well.’ He thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘My office is right upstairs. Any problems, you just come and let me know. Enjoy the rest of your stay.’

And with that he was off, quite probably relieved to escape the atmosphere among the newly arrived trainees. Rebecca leaned across the table to Georgette and said in French, ‘Why didn’t you say anything, George?’

Mairi put her hand over Georgette’s. ‘You should have said something. If you don’t, I will.’

But Georgette just shook her head. ‘I fight my own battles,’ she said.

Sunlight washed across the gentle slope of the lawn as it fell away towards the trees below, and the footpath that followed the line of the inner harbour.

The girls were assembled on a flat stretch of grass immediately in front of the castle, still in army fatigues, hair pinned beneath green berets pulled down on scowling faces. On Sergeant Connolley’s command they had been standing to attention for close on five minutes, feeling the wind freshening around them. He had gone back into the castle and left them standing stiffly in line, and they were aware of curious faces watching from the other side of the glass behind them.

Glancing to her right, Georgette saw, adjoining the castle, a length of white-painted greenhouse and wondered if they grew their own food here. Her body ached from this morning’s exertions. All she wanted was to flop on to her bed and sleep. This was far worse than anything the Armée de Terre had put her through in France, but the air she breathed was so pure it was almost intoxicating. Late August, and there was already a chill in the air. Although it was lighter for longer this far north, there was a watery weakness about the sun, and a pallor about the people who lived here. In the bay beyond Stornoway, she saw the water grow choppy as the wind got up, and the sun reflected in coruscating diamonds all the way out into the Minch.

‘At ease!’ Connolley’s bellow carried to them on the breeze and he strode out on to the lawn in front of them. ‘We’re going to start learning some basic self-defence. A few simple moves that might one day save your lives.’ He chuckled. ‘After all, no man expects a girl to be able to upend him. Which gives you an advantage in the element of surprise.’ He placed his hands on his hips and surveyed them speculatively. ‘I’m going to need a volunteer.’

When no one stepped forward, he laughed and pointed at Georgette.

‘Pig Nall, you’re it.’

Georgette was aware of the others glancing in her direction. They all had a sense of what was coming. And she wondered how much more of this she could take. She drew a deep breath. ‘Sir!’ She had no idea where she found the strength in her voice. She took one step forward.

He waved his hand to bring her closer and she moved warily out on to the grass. He addressed the others. ‘Things to remember. First off, stance and balance. Stand in a crouch, dominant leg behind the other.’ He demonstrated. ‘Keep your elbows at a little less than ninety degrees and always keep your hands in front of your face. Keep your stomach tense, because you never know when you’re going to be hit. You can predict when an opponent is going to strike by keeping your eyes on his chest. Keep his shoulders and hips in peripheral view.’ He straightened up. ‘Do not bunch your fists. That’ll make your whole arm tense, and you slower to react. Clench your jaw and keep your chin low. That’ll minimise any damage to your mouth and teeth. When you’re moving you need to be aware of constantly keeping your balance. And that means taking short steps, never crossing your feet, and maintaining a low centre of gravity.’

He turned towards Georgette and grinned.

‘Got that?’

She stared sullenly back at him.

‘Good. Let’s see how you do.’ He immediately adopted the crouching position, open hands raised in front of his face. Georgette did the same, and they began a slow-motion dance that took them one around the other. She stared her hatred into his face, and for a moment thought she might have unsettled him. ‘Look at my chest, not my eyes,’ he bawled. And as she lowered her eyes he moved in so quickly she had no time to react. One hand grabbed her tunic at the neck, the other slipped behind to grab her at the waist. He turned side-on and she found herself swivelling over his hip before crashing to the ground, landing on her back, every last drop of air expelled from her lungs. The full weight of him seemed to drop on top of her, and she saw his grinning face leering into hers, hot breath bursting in her face. If she’d had the strength, she’d have spat in it.

Then he was up and on to his feet again, and addressing the watching girls. ‘Divide yourselves into pairs, and I’ll show you just how I did that so you can try it on each other.’

Georgette was still on the ground trying to catch her breath. He leaned down, offering a hand to pull her to her feet. But she rolled away from him and regained her feet for herself, standing tense and ready for him to come again.

‘Stand easy, Pig Nall. We’re going to do this in half time.’

He stepped in to grab her collar again with his left hand.

‘The secret is to turn side-on as you step in, presenting your hip for your opponent to roll over. You give them a helping hand by grabbing on to anything at their back. If they have a belt all the better.’ He slipped his right arm around her to grab on to the pleats of her tunic. And suddenly she was pivoting over his hip again and crashing to the grass. This time he stayed on his feet and held out a hand to help her up. Again she refused it. He shook his head and smiled. ‘You don’t learn easy, do you, Pig Nall?’

She scrambled to her feet and stood gasping, fighting back tears of sheer frustration. Beyond him, she saw several of the NCOs who’d been sitting at his lunch table watching from inside, clearly enjoying her humiliation.

It was more than anger she felt. More than frustration. More than humiliation. But she could no more find a word for it than a voice to express it. All she could do was close her eyes, grit her teeth, and turn to face him once again.

She buried her face deep in the pillow to smother her sobs. Humiliation at the hands of Sergeant Connolley was bad enough, but she didn’t want the other girls to know just how much he’d got to her. She had no idea how long she’d lain crying in the dark. But the moon had risen in a clearing sky, and was now casting half of her room into deep shadow.

Their evening meal had been conducted in silence, and Georgette had retired to her room almost immediately afterwards. She felt bruised and broken and couldn’t face the company of her fellow trainees. If she could, she would have made the night last forever, to avoid the indignities that almost certainly awaited her tomorrow. Staying awake might make it appear to last longer, but lack of sleep would also drain her of the physical and mental reserves she was going to need. Swollen eyes were already growing heavy, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she drifted away.

A soft knocking at the door startled her, and seemed absurdly loud in the muffled silence of the castle. She sat up and quickly wiped the tears from her wet face, then crossed to the door and whispered, ‘Who is it?’

‘Mairi,’ came the tiny whispered response from the other side. ‘Let me in, George.’

Georgette sighed and unlocked the door. Mairi slipped quickly into the room. Like Georgette she wore plain flannel pyjamas, and her bare feet slapped softly on the linoleum. Georgette kept her back to the window to hide her face as Mairi sat on the bed. The islander supported herself with a hand on the pillow and must have felt the dampness there. For she immediately withdrew it and peered through the moonlight at her new French friend. It was clear she knew that Georgette had been crying, but she said nothing. She patted the bed on her left. ‘Come and sit beside me.’

Reluctantly Georgette dropped on to the bed next to her and crossed her arms. The warmth she felt emanating from Mairi made her realise just how cold she’d become. Mairi must have felt it, too, for she moved a little closer.

She said, ‘My brother has a word for people like Connolley. It’s an English word. Begins with a C. We don’t have words like that in Gaelic. We have far too much respect for a woman’s private parts.’

In spite of everything, Georgette found herself smiling.

‘Listen, it turns out we’ve got this coming weekend off, so we were thinking we might go to Uig Beach on Saturday.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Uig’s down in the south-west corner of the island. When the tide’s out, the sands just stretch for miles. We’re going to fly kites if it’s dry, and have lunch at my granny’s.’

Georgette felt her tears of earlier receding. ‘Who’s we?’

‘All of us.’ Mairi’s face was shining in the moonlight. ‘My brother’s home on leave just now, and he’s managed to get access to a jeep. So we’re all going to squeeze in and drive down together. You’ll like Alasdair. He’s fun. And a good-looking boy. Spent his entire teen years fighting off the girls.’ She grinned. ‘Not very hard, mind you.’ She lowered her voice to little more than a breath. ‘He’s attached to some kind of special forces unit that’s being trained to operate behind enemy lines. So he’s not someone to mess with.’

Georgette raised a self-mocking eyebrow in the dark. ‘As if I would mess with anyone,’ she said.

The only thing that got Georgette through the next few days was the thought of that outing to Uig on Saturday. Like release from a prison sentence, albeit temporary. Conditional parole awarded for good behaviour.

She tried hard to be on her very best behaviour. But if she brought out the worst in Sergeant Connolley, he did exactly the same for her, and they ended up barely acknowledging each other. The days passed in an endless cycle of running through the castle grounds with weighted rucksacks, and throwing each other to the ground on the lawn in front of the castle. Connolley continued using Georgette as his demonstrator. She offered no resistance to his moves and that helped her each time to break her fall.

They’d had two evening sessions indoors when he took them on a pictorial tour of the Westland Lysander that would fly each of them to France at different times. A light, single-engined aircraft that was deemed too fast for artillery spotting, and too slow and cumbersome to avoid fighters, but perfect for clandestine short take-off and landing.

None of the girls had ever flown before. ‘How safe is it?’ Joan had asked.

Connolley just smiled. ‘Put it this way, love: there were 175 of them deployed over France and Belgium in the spring; only 57 of them made it back.’ Which had filled none of them with confidence, and left each contemplating her own mortality in the dark of their attic rooms that night.

Georgette woke up on the Saturday morning to find her room filled with the reflected glow of sunlight that seemed to paint the entire island gold. The sky was cloudless, and she was not sure she had ever seen such a deep, clear blue. It reflected in the gentle swell of the Minch, transforming slate grey to crystal cerulean. And her spirits soared.

The girls chattered excitedly around the breakfast table before heading off on the narrow road towards the town to meet Alasdair on the way up. They were halfway down the hill when he rounded the bend in his green and grey camouflaged jeep and screeched to a halt. He jumped out and gave Mairi a big bear hug, before spinning her round once to then plant her on her feet again and gaze with unabashed love at his little sister.

‘Alasdair, meet the gang,’ she said, and made all the introductions.

Alasdair shook each of their hands solemnly, until he came to Georgette and Mairi told him that she was French. He turned to his sister. ‘How do you say ciamar a tha thu in French?’

But Georgette pre-empted Mairi’s response. ‘Comment allez-vous,’ she said. ‘Or if you want to be less formal, simply ça va.’

‘You speak Gaelic?’ he said in Gaelic.

Mairi laughed. ‘No! I’ve been teaching them some basic phrases.’

Alasdair turned towards Georgette again. He had Mairi’s cobalt blue eyes but unlike her, a shock of unruly fair hair. The army had clearly tried to tame it with a razor, but it was growing back in extravagant curls. His smile was irresistible. ‘So how does a gentleman greet a lady in France? I should really know in case I end up there.’

Georgette contained her smile. ‘With a kiss on each cheek, of course.’

‘Well, then, I’d better start practising.’ And he leaned forward to kiss her once on each cheek. She smelled his aftershave, and felt the smoothness of his skin. He was probably three or four years younger than her, but she was aware of the first butterflies fluttering in her tummy.

She said, ‘In some places it’s three.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and kissed her a third time. She heard the other girls giggling.

‘And in other places, four.’

‘Enough!’ Mairi glared at her. ‘Time we were off.’

Alasdair leapt back into the jeep, jerked his head towards Georgette and patted the seat beside him. ‘In we get, ladies. It’ll be a tight squeeze.’

Georgette got next to Alasdair before Mairi could insinuate herself between them. It was clear that she was very possessive when it came to her big brother. The other three shoehorned themselves into the back. A quick three-point turn and they were off, shrieking in delight at the sunshine in their faces and the wind in their hair.

They were quickly out of the town, and heading south down the east coast on a single-track road towards a place called Leurbost. Endless acres of featureless peat bog stretched away on either side of them, broken only by tiny scraps of water, miniature lochans reflecting the blue of the sky. Sheep that grazed among the purple heather wandered with unerring regularity on to the road.

Alasdair drove, it seemed to Georgette, far too fast, but she found it exhilarating and leaned in close to him.

At Leurbost they turned off on to what seemed an even narrower stretch of road that took them through the village of Achmore, a collection of houses that looked as if they had been threaded on a string and stretched out along a mile of single track. To their left the land dipped away across a shimmering plain that was as much water as land. On the far side of it a line of dark mountains pushed up into a clear sky.

‘That’s Uig down there,’ Mairi shouted above the roar of the wind. ‘And the Isle of Harris beyond that.’

Georgette felt that the others probably shared her sense of intrepid adventure in a strange land. Her first impressions of the island had not been particularly auspicious. But this was magical. She wanted to shout out, to release all of the pent-up anger and frustration of the last week. And restrained herself only with difficulty.

At a place with an unpronounceably long name comprising strings of consecutive consonants, they turned south again. And now the Atlantic Ocean lay shimmering in sunshine off to the west. The road wound endlessly among hills and lochs and inlets from the sea. And Georgette realised that in all this time they had not seen a single tree. Nor another vehicle.

At a hairpin bend in the road blue water sparkled away to their right, an abandoned croft house set in the bog above the rocks.

‘Little Loch Roag,’ Mairi told them. ‘It’s a sea loch. I suppose they’d call it a fjord in Norway.’

It seemed to stretch endlessly off to the north, before they left it behind and cut through bleak, deserted bogland to descend, at last, to a tiny fishing village and church at Miavaig, at what Mairi said was an offshoot of West Loch Roag.

Off, then, through a long, curving valley following a rock-

littered riverbed, hills rising steeply on either side, until they emerged finally at the settlement known as Timsgarry. The huge, yellow-painted Uig Lodge stood proud on a rock promontory overlooking the biggest expanse of beach Georgette had ever seen. In the distance, between rocky headlands, they could see waves breaking blue and white at its extremity.

‘Tide’s out,’ Alasdair shouted. ‘Perfect for kite-flying.’

He manoeuvred his jeep around a tiny winding road that took them to the far side of the bay, and then on a sandy track through the dunes to a stretch of flat machair land above the beach. They all piled out of the vehicle and Georgette felt the power of the wind tugging at her hair and her slacks and her blouse. It was fresh in her face, but softened by the sun. She had not felt this good since leaving France.

From under the back seat Alasdair pulled out short lengths of bamboo cane that he quickly assembled into braced kite shapes. He turned to look up at the watching girls. ‘You know what a kite is?’

Georgette said quickly, ‘It’s a quadrilateral whose four sides can be grouped into two pairs of equal-length sides adjacent to each other.’

Everyone turned to look at her in astonishment. For a moment Alasdair seemed perplexed, then his face broke into a broad grin. ‘No, I mean, do you know what it’s for?’

Georgette shrugged coquettishly. ‘Flying, of course.’

And they laughed now, and helped Alasdair stretch different-coloured cotton shapes across the frames of the kites, and attach long rolls of string.

Mairi said, ‘We used to come kite-flying every Saturday when the weather was good, and stay over with our granny and go to the church over there on the hill.’ The grey presbyterian stone of a stubborn religion stood foursquare against the wind on the far side of the bay. Closer to the shore a big white house sat among the rocks, and Georgette thought she saw headstones almost lost in the grass.

It was not easy to get the kites airborne because of the strength of the wind, but once they were up they soared, scraps of colour dipping and diving against the blue. They ran across the sands, the wind and the sea at their backs, following the erratic path of the kites, string unravelling, tugging at reddened hands, and they whooped and hollered at the sky.

The morning vanished far too quickly, and was gone almost before they noticed. Alasdair nodded towards the far headlands. ‘Tide’s turned. Time to go and eat. We might get some more flying in after lunch.’

They threw their kites into the back of the jeep and set off across the machair, tall grasses eddying like water in the wind, towards where a long, squat stone dwelling with a thatched roof sat on the rise. There was a broken-down drystone wall around it, and sheep clambered over the shambles of spilled stones searching for grasses growing tall among them. The toasty smell of peat smoke laced the air, but the smoke itself was lost in the wind and not visible where it left the house from a hole in the thatch. The thatch was weighted down with stones on ropes, and several sheep stood grazing on a line of turf that ran around the top of the exterior wall.

Joan stopped and looked at it in amazement. ‘Your granny lives here?’

Alasdair laughed. ‘Everyone on the island used to live in one of these. It’s called a blackhouse.’

‘I don’t see any windows,’ Alice said.

‘That’s because there are none.’ Mairi grinned at her. ‘The cows live at one end, and Granny at the other, and she still lights the place with oil lamps.’

Rebecca said, ‘And do you and Alasdair live in a blackhouse?’

‘No, thank God,’ Alasdair said. ‘Our old blackhouse is now an agricultural shed. We grew up in a whitehouse. Which is more like the kind of house you would recognise.’ He looked at his granny’s blackhouse. ‘A few hardy folk still live in these, though.’

He ducked to enter by the only door in the side of the building, and called to his granny in Gaelic. He waved the others to follow him in.

A dark little entrance hall gave off to the cattle shed on the right, and the living quarters on the left. The place was full of choking peat smoke, and Georgette quickly found her eyes watering. Alasdair led them into what he called the fire room. It was a large, stone-flagged living room, with chunky items of old furniture lined up along each wall. A peat fire smouldered in the middle of the floor, a large blackened pot hanging above it on a chain that fell from the rafters. Sunshine slanted through the smoke-hole in the thatch, smoke from the fire hanging blue in its angled light. Beyond the fire a square wooden table was set for seven, and beyond that a door stood open in a wooden partition, affording a glimpse into what looked like it might have been a bedroom.

Granny was a tiny skelf of a woman in a dark skirt and quilted jacket. She wore a long white apron and a grey headscarf, a bird’s nest of pure white hair pulled back beneath it. She had a weathered brown face and a smile that took years off her. ‘Fàilte,’ she said. ‘Welcome. You’re just in time. The pot’s as good as ready.’

Georgette glanced at the pot above the fire and wondered what on earth they were going to be served. But it smelled good. At least, what she could smell of it above the reek of the smoke.

It turned out to be lamb stew, served with potatoes. ‘From the lazy beds,’ Granny told them, without explaining. They quickly got used to the smoke, and the stew tasted wonderful, and they all discovered just how hungry they were.

When they had eaten, and Granny poured them hot milky tea into big china mugs, Joan said, ‘What’s that place on the far side of the bay? The big white house. From the beach it looked like there was a graveyard there.’

‘Baile-na-cille,’ the old lady said. ‘And, aye, there’s a graveyard there. Not in use any more. But they say that Coinneach Odhar was born in that house in the seventeenth century.’

Mairi frowned. ‘Dark Kenneth?’ This was not a story she had heard before.

‘Aye, they also called him the Brahan Seer because he could see the future through the hole in an adder-stone. They say that he predicted the Battle of Culloden, and the Highland Clearances, and many things still to come.’

Alasdair grinned. ‘You’re making it up, Granny.’

She turned a scowl in his direction. ‘I am not! He was a Mackenzie. Same as us. You can follow the line of descent right down through the centuries.’

Mairi laughed then. ‘Oh, Granny, you’re not telling us you can see the future, too?’

The old lady shook her head. ‘No, I can’t see the future, a ghràidh. But sometimes I can see light around people. A little like a halo. Or darkness. Like cloud or mist. The light augers well, the darkness does not.’

‘You’ve never told us this before,’ Mairi said.

‘I didn’t want to scare you when you were children. But ask your folks. They know.’

Alice said, ‘Do you see light, or darkness, around any of us?’

Alasdair stood up. ‘Not a good idea,’ he said. ‘If we want to get kite-flying again, we’d better get out before the tide’s in.’

But no one stirred from their seats. Granny said, ‘There’s only one among you who has the darkness.’ Her eyes flickered unmistakably towards Georgette, and Georgette felt a creeping coldness envelop her, like the mist rising from a river at dawn.

Mairi was on her feet in an instant. ‘Alasdair’s right,’ she said, ‘the tide’ll be in soon. Come on, before we lose the day.’

They all tumbled out, blinking, into the afternoon sunshine, the wind, if anything stiffer now, blowing away the smoke and the old lady’s words. But Georgette still felt the chill of them, and had lost her appetite for kite-flying. As the others retrieved their kites from the jeep, she said, ‘I’m going for a walk. See you later.’ And she set off among the dunes. The girls stopped and exchanged glances, aware of the sobering effect on Georgette of what the old lady had told them. Mairi looked at Alasdair and in a barely discernible flick of her head indicated that he should go after her.

Georgette strode through the spiky long grass, feet sinking in soft sand, hugging her arms around herself for comfort, and was not aware for the first few strides of Alasdair falling in step beside her. She looked around in surprise, and the sheer openness of his smile lifted her spirits. He said, ‘Pay no attention to Granny. She’s been scaring folk all her life.’

She shrugged it off unconvincingly. ‘I don’t believe in that stuff anyway.’

‘Of course not. Why would you? None of us knows what’s going to happen. Especially with the world in the state it’s in now. We’ve all got a cloud hanging over us. It’s called war.’ They walked some way before he spoke again. ‘When my training’s over and I get deployed on some mission, I don’t expect to come back. I hope I do. But I’m not going to be thinking about that. I’m going to be focused on getting the job done. And if I come back in one piece, they’ll send me off on another. Like those brave young men dying in the skies over the south of England right now, the only reward for staying alive is getting sent out to risk being killed all over again.’ He shook his head. ‘In wartime, we can only live in the moment, George. But it’s not a bad way to live your life at any time.’

She nodded mutely, and they walked in silence for some minutes. Beyond the dunes they could see the ocean rushing in across the wide, naked expanse of golden sand. It was no more than a foot deep, frothing and gleaming turquoise in the afternoon sun.

‘What are they training you for?’ she asked at length.

‘No idea. And I couldn’t tell you even if I knew.’

‘What kind of training is it?’

‘Same as you girls, I imagine, but tougher probably. Armed and unarmed combat. How to stay alive. To kill your enemy before he can kill you.’

Suddenly she stumbled and fell in the sand, and he stooped quickly to help her to her feet.

‘Silly!’ She laughed and brushed the sand from her slacks, and found that he was still holding her arm. Straightening up, her face was very close to his, and she searched the depths of those blue, blue eyes in search of the soul that lay behind them. He returned her gaze, unblinking, and his intensity frightened her. Had they held the look a moment longer, she was sure they would have kissed. But she forced herself to break eye contact and turned to wade off again through the dunes. In a handful of strides he was at her side again.

There was a tension between them now that almost crackled in the wind. She was frightened to look at him.

‘Are you scared?’ she said finally.

‘God, yes.’

She looked at him quickly and saw that he meant it. She was surprised. Big boys didn’t admit to being scared. ‘Me, too,’ she said.

‘But I’m good,’ he added. ‘At what I do, I mean. So the other fella should feel a lot more scared than me.’

The tide was fully in now, and in the far west there were clouds gathering along the horizon. The girls had long ago packed in the kite-flying, and they were lying on the machair in the lee of the jeep, soaking up the sun. Joan and Rebecca were smoking, watching how the wind made the ends of their cigarettes glow, and whipped the smoke from their mouths.

Georgette and Alasdair had been gone for over an hour and Mairi was becoming agitated. She kept glancing at her watch and scouring the dunes for any sight of them. ‘Where are they?’

‘Relax,’ Alice said. ‘They’ve probably found a sheltered spot somewhere and are having wild sex.’

The others laughed, but Mairi didn’t smile. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

Joan dunted her. ‘Hey. Calm down, Mairi. It’s what boys and girls do.’

‘He’s my brother,’ she said through clenched teeth.

Rebecca said, ‘He’s a big boy, Mairi. I’m sure it wouldn’t be his first time.’ But Mairi just scowled.

It was fully fifteen minutes or more before they saw the diminutive figures of Georgette and Alasdair making their way back through the dunes. They were arm in arm and laughing, and chatting away like they’d known one another all their lives.

Mairi scrambled to her feet. ‘Where have you been?’ She ran suspicious eyes over them both. ‘You’re covered in sand.’

Georgette began brushing the golden grains self-consciously from her clothes and shaking them from her hair. ‘We found a sheltered spot on the far side of the headland and just lay in the sand talking.’ She looked at Alasdair. ‘Didn’t we?’

Alasdair said, ‘Didn’t realise it had got so late.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’d better get back.’

Joan and Alice and Rebecca exchanged looks and cast envious glances at Georgette as they all piled into the jeep. But Mairi managed somehow to squeeze herself between Alasdair and Georgette in the front, scowling at her French friend as her brother swung the jeep around and accelerated along the track towards the road.

The drive back seemed to take longer than the journey there, and spirits which had so soared earlier in the day were dampened now. There was very little conversation, and each of them was aware of the cloud bank moving in from the west. What had once seemed like innocent white clouds bubbling along the horizon had darkened and assumed a portentous air, laden with the promise of rain.

Sunday blew a hoolie, as Mairi described it to the others, black clouds rolling off the moor from the west, lashing Stornoway with relentless rain that darkened the stone of the castle. By Monday morning the wind had died down, but the rain still fell in a steady, monotonous tattoo.

The girls stood in a knot at the rear of the castle. They were all soaked through and depressed to be back, even before Sergeant Connolley sent them off on their three-mile run through the woods, laden once more with weighted rucksacks. When they returned he took Georgette’s rucksack and loaded it with more stones and told her to do it again.

‘I did warn you we’d need to double up on your training, Pig Nall,’ he said. ‘And who knows what two days off will have done to your fitness.’

Mairi and Rebecca, and Joan and Alice, glowered at him in the rain, but Georgette hefted the rucksack on to her back and set off without a word.

At lunch they sat once again in silence, a shadow having fallen somehow over their sense of togetherness. And they couldn’t help but be aware of the animated conversation going on at Connolley’s table on the far side of the dining room.

‘I’m sick of it,’ Alice said suddenly. ‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’ She had been recruited, she’d told them, by an uncle who wasn’t really an uncle, but a good friend of her father’s, because of her language skills and physical fitness. She was a member of a local harriers club, and had won a steeplechase somewhere. Connolley had let her off lightly last week because of her ankle, but she was back now on full training.

‘I suppose,’ Joan said, ‘that any of us could quit any time we wanted.’

Alice shook her head. ‘I couldn’t let my dad down. He’d be mortified.’

And Georgette knew that even if she wanted to, there was no way she could quit.

After lunch they assembled as usual on the lawn in front of the castle. It had stopped raining finally, but a bruised and battered sky hovered low over Stornoway and held the threat of more to come. The Minch lay brooding darkly beyond the town, the colour of polished pewter.

‘Pig Nall, step out!’ Connolley barked, and Georgette moved sullenly forward to join him. He turned towards the others. ‘The fastest way to end an unarmed fight is to disable your opponent. Any way you can. None of you girls is likely to be able to knock anyone out. But you want to aim for your opponent’s face, hit him as often and as hard as you can. That serves three purposes. First, a good head shot will stun anyone. Second, it’ll put him on the defensive. Third, it’ll knock him off balance. But here’s the thing to remember. A skull is hard as hell, and will do as much damage to your hand as your hand can do to it. So aim for the softest spot. Anyone know what that is?’

‘The nose,’ Mairi said.

‘Right. A good blow to the nose will bloody him and bring tears to his eyes so that he can’t see you properly. So we’re going to take a look at how to cut through your opponent’s defences to achieve a face strike.’

He half turned towards Georgette and was completely unprepared as she leapt from his blind side on to his back, legs locking around his midriff. Her right arm crooked itself instantly around his neck, her right hand locking on to her left bicep, her left hand pressing hard against the back of his head. By pulling her elbows together she was able to bring huge lateral pressure to bear on both sides of his neck.

Caught on the turn, Connolley was off balance, and the unexpected weight of her on his back caused him to stumble and fall. Fortunately for Georgette they landed side-on, before he managed to roll on to his back, trapping her beneath him. But her legs were still firmly crossed around his middle, and no matter how he bucked and kicked, he couldn’t break the lock she had on his neck.

His weight on top of her was crippling, but she knew she only had to hold on for a few seconds more. Ten at most and he would start to lose consciousness, the blood supply to his brain from the carotid arteries cut off by her chokehold.

She heard the girls screaming, uncertain whether they were cheering her on, or shouting at her to stop. She felt the fight going out of the sergeant, and knew that a black cloud was descending on him. A second or two more and he would be gone. A second or two more than that and he would be dead.

She released her hold and tried to push him away. For a moment he was like a dead weight. Then he coughed and sputtered, gasping for breath, and rolled over to pull himself to his knees, leaning forward on clenched fists. Georgette staggered to her feet, standing over him, breathing hard, exultant. ‘You’re right, sergeant,’ she shouted at him. ‘No man expects a girl to be able to upend him. And maybe that’s his weakness.’

He turned a murderous face towards her. ‘You damn near killed me, you fucking bitch.’

Georgette looked towards the castle and saw Connolley’s fellow NCOs at one of the tall windows. They weren’t laughing now. She looked back at the sergeant. ‘You’re fucking lucky I didn’t.’

Beer bubbled in the necks of short brown bottles as the girls chinked the glass and tipped back their heads to suck down the cold frothing liquid. Nothing had tasted quite so good to Georgette in a very long time. They were huddled together in her attic room, the rest of the castle asleep now. Somehow Mairi had managed to smuggle in five bottles that Alasdair had acquired for them, and this was the first chance they’d had to be all together to drink them since the incident that afternoon.

Training had been abandoned for the rest of the day, and Georgette summoned to the colonel’s office on the first floor. He had delivered what he imagined was a dressing-down as she stood to attention. But she’d barely heard a word. Wasn’t listening. In retrospect the only things she could remember were his whining voice telling her that she was only here as a favour for the French, and that she was an ungrateful little minx. She didn’t care any more. Making her run six miles a day with stones on her back and throwing her repeatedly on to wet grass in front of the castle was not going to make her any more capable of performing the task de Gaulle had set her. She was glad to have humiliated the bully Connolley in front of his peers, and in front of the girls. He had so richly deserved it.

But she had learned something, too. Something about herself that scared her more than she would admit. That she was capable of killing another human being. A few seconds longer and the sergeant would have been dead, and she knew that she had actually wanted to do it.

In the end, though, she was happy that she hadn’t. To him, the humiliation was probably worse than death, and it would live with him for the rest of his days.

‘Where the hell did you learn to do that?’ Joan whispered, full of admiration.

Georgette grinned and glanced at Mairi. ‘Your brother,’ she said.

Mairi frowned. ‘Alasdair?’ She was incredulous. ‘When?’

‘Saturday. On the beach beyond the dunes.’

Rebecca’s jaw was gaping. She said, ‘We thought you and he were... you know...?’

Georgette laughed. ‘I’m sure that was what Alasdair was hoping for, too. But I made him spend the whole hour teaching me that chokehold. It’s called a figure-four variation, apparently. One of the things he was taught in training. We did get up close and personal. I mean, I spent half the time with my legs wrapped around him. But maybe not in quite the way he’d imagined.’

Mairi burst out laughing, to a chorus of shooshes from the others, and her hand shot to her mouth to mute her mirth. She was clearly relieved. When she got herself under control again she said, ‘George, where did you learn to swear like that?’

‘My mother,’ Georgette said. ‘She was Scottish.’

Georgette lay awake in the dark, tired and strangely fulfilled, but unable to sleep. The events of the day were going round and round in her head, and she couldn’t help but speculate on what tomorrow would hold for her.

As so often happens when you think you can’t sleep, it creeps up on you unawares. A banging on her door startled her awake, and she wondered how long she’d been out. It was still pitch-dark, and she blinked the grit from her eyes as the banging came again. ‘Pig Nall,’ a man’s voice came from the other side of the door.

She slipped from the warmth of her bed, shocked by the cold linoleum beneath her feet, and opened the door. The young private who had first shown her to her room stood in the corridor. He wore a thick camouflage jacket over his fatigues, and a beret pulled down over an unsmiling face.

‘Pack your bags, Pig Nall, you’re leaving.’

‘What? Now?’

‘Now.’

It took Georgette less than ten minutes to dress and pack her few belongings in the battered old cardboard suitcase she had arrived with just a week before. There was no time for more than a splash of water on a face drawn by lack of sleep, and pale with the cold.

She hurried along the gloomy attic corridor after the private, and struggled to keep up with him on the stairs as he took them two at a time down to the ground floor.

‘Where am I going?’ she called breathlessly at his back.

‘Ferry leaves in half an hour.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

All along the hall, night lights reflected off its polished surface, and darkened kitchens smelled of stale cabbage. A truck was waiting for her behind the castle, its engine idling loudly in the dark, belching clouds of toxic carbon monoxide into cold night air to be whipped away by the wind.

A light shone in the cab, and the same driver who had picked her up at the quayside leaned down to give her a hand up into the passenger seat. His skin was yellow by the light of the cab, and his eyes puffy from lack of sleep. He grinned, though. ‘Hello again, mam’selle. Been a naughty girl, I hear.’

Georgette settled her case on her knees as the private slammed the door shut behind her. ‘Have I?’

‘Gave some sergeant’s arse a good kicking, so they say.’

She smiled palely. ‘Maybe he deserved it.’

‘Bet he did.’ He ground into gear and swung his truck through a semi-circle and headed off between the trees on the strip of potholed tarmac that wound through them down to the town. Leaves fell like snow in his headlights. September was stating its case for an early winter.

Blackout Stornoway huddled in darkness, and moonlight made the rippled surface of the inner harbour seem almost alive. By the time they reached the outer harbour, the first light was discernible in the east, and by the time she was aboard, the whole eastern sky was ablaze. Banks of cloud close to the horizon lay in long dark baubles of blue and grey, set against a wash of red that reflected itself like fire on the water. Almost as if the island were putting on its best show to bid her farewell.

The crossing was rough, but not as bad as the outward journey, and she sat inside, squeezed into a corner trying to keep warm and catch some sleep.

It was mid-morning and fully light by the time they reached Mallaig, and she had to wait until the afternoon for the connection to Fort William. Several hours spent in the station buffet there gave her time to think about the future. Where she was going and when. No one had given her the least idea of what the next days might hold. Just onward instructions at each stop, to be followed to the letter.

Depression settled on her like dust in a still room. There was nowhere she could go to seek comfort. No one in whom she could confide, or share her fears. The impossible task that de Gaulle had set her. The dangers that awaited when finally they dropped her into occupied France. With her father, and now her mother, both dead, she was a twenty-eight-year-old orphan. There was no such place as home. No family into whose bosom she could escape. She had only herself to rely upon. She wondered if she had ever felt so small and so alone. A cork bobbing in an ocean of uncertainty, being carried along by forces over which she had absolutely no control. And it occurred to her with a stab of sadness that she would never see Mairi, or Joan, or Alice or Rebecca again. Or Alasdair. Fate had brought them together for one short week in this first year of the war and would deliver them in different ways, and different times, into uncertain futures. Who knew which, if any of them, would survive. But Georgette was the only one whose future had been seen clouded by darkness in the eyes of the old lady in the blackhouse at Uig, and she shivered with disquiet, pushing the thought to the very back of her mind.

The night train to London delivered her early into Euston Station. She thanked God that there was, at least, time for her to get back to her mother’s house in South Kensington, to take a bath and change and pack fresh clothes, before being picked up early that evening and taken to some unrevealed destination.

The soldier who came to her door this time was French. But he was sullen and untalkative as he drove her out of the city and almost due south towards the coast. They frequently passed military vehicles on the road and Georgette sat beside him in the passenger seat of the black Citroën stealing occasional glances in his direction. He looked no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, stranded in a strange land, while his mother country had been occupied by a barbaric foreign invader. He could have been no happier about it than she.

‘Where are we going?’ she said eventually. She had seen several road signs for Chichester.

Her voice had evidently interrupted some inner dialogue, for he looked at her as if surprised to find he had a passenger. ‘RAF Tangmere,’ he said.

‘What’s there?’

‘It’s one of the airfields the British are using to fight off the Luftwaffe. If they can’t stop the Germans in the air, it won’t be long before the land invasion will come across the Channel.’

Georgette had never seriously considered the possibility of Britain falling to the Nazis. It seemed unthinkable, somehow. But neither could she imagine her precious Paris under the heel of the invader. It made her feel sick.

It was dark by the time they reached the tiny village of Tangmere, driving through its blacked-out main street, to pull up finally outside an ivy-covered cottage opposite the gates to the airfield.

‘This is us,’ said her driver.

‘This is us where?’

‘Where I’ve been told to drop you.’ He nodded towards the cottage. ‘You’re expected.’

When she stepped out of the Citroën, she felt the air much softer than it had been on the Isle of Lewis, as if autumn had not yet reached the southern extremes of the British Isles. On the airfield opposite, she could see rows of planes in dark silhouette on the tarmac, the constant roar of engines as fighters came and went, the huddled shapes of hangars against a clear sky. She turned as her car drove off — her driver had not even said goodbye — and looked at this quintessentially English cottage, its ivy already turning rust red. The windows on both ground and upper floors were blacked out, and it wasn’t until she knocked on the door that any light at all spilled out into the night. A young man in a leather flying jacket pulled her quickly inside to shut the door behind her. ‘This way. Miss Pignal, is it?’ For once someone had pronounced her name correctly.

‘That’s right.’

He steered her into a brightly lit sitting room. Comfortable, well-worn leather armchairs lined the walls, angled towards a large fireplace where the embers of a coal fire glowed in the hearth. Beer bottles stood along the mantelpiece, two placed on the top of a large wooden clock that was chiming as she entered. Tattered paperback and hardback books lined bookshelves along the fireplace wall. A model airplane stood on the top one, next to a framed headshot of Churchill. It was warm and welcoming here.

The young man turned and she saw him clearly for the first time. Sandy brown hair swept back from a high brow. Well-defined eyebrows and sad eyes. He reached out a hand to shake hers. ‘Squadron Leader Hugh Verity,’ he said. ‘You can get a cup of tea in the kitchen, and change upstairs if you like. I’ll be flying you later.’

This was all happening so quickly. ‘Flying me where?’

‘To France, of course. We’ll be taking off a little after midnight. We had a full moon about three nights ago, and the forecast’s good, so conditions should be perfect.’

The black-painted Lysander banked against a sky so clear Georgette felt as if she could reach out and touch the stars. She had never seen the Milky Way so well defined before, like smoke and a shower of silver sparks rising from a galaxy on fire. Moonlight had reflected itself on the dark waters of la Manche all the way across, and washed now over the plains of northern France which lay below in random patterns of farmers’ fields and dark Loire Valley forest.

The flight had been exhilarating, but it was time now to set herself in preparation for landing. Space in the rear cockpit was tight, with the bulkiness of her coat, and barely enough room for her case. The same battered suitcase that had accompanied her all the way north to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. There was a short ladder attached to the fuselage below her cockpit, and she knew that once they had touched down she had to get out and down it fast. She had no idea what awaited her on the ground, and as they banked again to swoop low over a freshly shorn hayfield to land, exhilaration turned to fear, and she found it almost choking her.

The landing was even bumpier than she had expected, and the Lysander seemed to bounce several times before settling its wheels to rattle over rutted ground. As it came, finally, to a stop, Verity turned, and all she saw was the palest of smiles as he said, ‘Good luck.’ And she was out and down the ladder, throwing her case ahead of her, and jumping the last metre. Almost before she hit the ground, she heard the squadron leader gunning the Lysander’s engine and setting off to trundle it to the far end of the field where he swung it through a tight turn in preparation for taking off again.

A single dark figure emerged from the woods away to her left, and she picked up her case and hurried towards it, aware of the Lysander gathering speed behind her. She looked back momentarily as it soared off once more into the magnificence of the night sky.

She met her contact halfway towards the trees. He was a short, unshaven man in his mid-thirties, dressed in shabby country clothes and wearing a sweat-stained flat cap. He grabbed her case. ‘Follow me.’ And they set off as quickly as they could for the cover and safety of the woods.

It took some moments for Georgette’s eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. The man was jogging through the undergrowth just ahead of her, following some kind of well-beaten animal track. They kept going until she thought her lungs would burst, before suddenly he jumped down into the bed of a dry stream and crouched among the rocks gathered along one bank. She climbed down beside him, her coat trailing among the boulders, and he put a finger to his lips.

They remained there in silence for several minutes, until their breathing had subsided. The distant drone of the Lysander’s engine was gone now, and a silence so thick you could almost touch it settled on the forest.

Moonlight fell in dappled patches on the boulders all around them, and the man turned to Georgette, his face strained with tension. ‘Welcome to the Free French Zone,’ he said in a voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Only it’s not like any France you might ever have known, and it’s certainly not free. I’m Lucien.’

He shook her hand, and it felt coarse and cold.

‘We’ve not received your papers yet, so you can’t go to Paris.’

‘Paris? I thought the artworks had all come here, to the Loire.’

He shook his head. ‘I know nothing about that. You’ve to go to Paris. But not yet.’

The disappointment of his words hit her hard. ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’

‘We’ve prepared a bed for you in the attic of a farmhouse about five kilometres from here. You’ll have to stay there, hidden, until your papers come.’

‘How long will that be?’

‘Mademoiselle, your guess is as good as mine. It could be days. It could be weeks. Even months. Who knows?’

And she felt a crushing sense of despair descend on her from the heavens.