Weaver

XII

Ben and Hilda had driven off in Mary's car, her rented Austin Seven. Hilda had to get to her radar station, and Ben to his Home Guard assignment at Pevensey.

With Hilda at the wheel they barrelled along the coast road, heading west through Bexhill and onwards. They drove past the long fortified beaches with their huge coils of barbed wire and emplacements of superannuated Navy guns. The traffic was heavy, as the men of the Home Guard and the army detachments struggled to get to their pillboxes and machine-gun nests, and WAAFs and Wrens hurried to their naval gun emplacements. But the road was clogged with civilians, fleeing from the towns. There were a few cars, and carts drawn by horses and donkeys, amid files of pedestrians pushing prams and wheelbarrows heaped up with luggage and furniture. All of this got in the way of the military vehicles, and of the ambulances straining to get through.

Overhead, a war was being fought out in the air, Messerschmitts and Spitfires and Hurricanes tearing into each other over fleets of German bombers. Nobody looked up to watch.

Hilda grunted and swore as she rammed the car through the clogged traffic. Ben could see the ring on her finger, her mother's ring, just a little too big for her; Hilda, focused, seemed to have forgotten it was there.

'So, Pevensey,' she said. 'We'll reach my radar station first.'

'I can drive on from there. I'm a lousy driver, but I know the way.'

'It's an observation post, yes?'

'And a defensive point, and a headquarters… There are a bunch of Canadians there. They fortified the old castle. I'm surprised your radar station is still operational.'

She glanced at him. 'I suppose it doesn't matter if I tell you now. The RAF is withdrawing, moving the fighters back from the forward bases. They'll operate from deeper inland now. Before sunset we'll have to decommission my station. Scrap the gear if we can't bring it back out of the threatened zone. Well, here we are.'

She lurched off the road, throwing Ben sideways.

An unprepossessing station lay ahead, locked behind a fence of barbed wire. Ben glimpsed masts, seven or eight of them, hundreds of feet high, and blocky buildings. The station had already taken damage, Ben saw; part of the fence had blown down.

'This is it. Good luck.' Leaving the engine running, Hilda leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and hurried out of the car. Then she was gone, off at a run to her station.

'You too,' Ben murmured. He slid across to the driver's seat. He gave himself thirty seconds to familiarise himself with the strange controls of this English car. Then he turned the car around with a squeal of tyres and rejoined the traffic stream, heading west towards Pevensey.