Page 57

Today I couldn’t be late. Every minute was needed to review the most recent intelligence photographs before the Combined Forces meeting at five this afternoon.

Old Mr Lloyd from next door waved as he collected his bottle of milk from his doorstep.

‘Love seeing a pretty girl run,’ he called out.

I laughed for I was hardly a girl but to his seventy-year-old eyes I could be.

‘They’ll wait for you.’

‘I doubt it,’ I replied. He knew everyone and everything about our little street just off the King’s Road. This, of course, had its advantages as well as disadvantages.

Despite my sprint, the bus was pulling away from the stop and I chased it, managing to hop on.

‘Morning, miss,’ the conductor said with a wink. ‘Overslept?’ I smiled. ‘I wish.’

‘Whitehall?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Have a good one, love,’ he said, handing me my ticket.

I found a seat and opened my novel to escape from the bomb-damaged streets of London to the dreaming spires of Oxford. London looked like it had been fighting the war by itself, and, as I looked out on the destruction around Victoria Station, the war felt endless.

This morning was bright, yet rain was threatening from the west, which was why I had grabbed my umbrella instead of my book when I’d left the house the first time.

Of all Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels, it was Gaudy Night that I’d reread most since my arrival in London.

It captured a life that was, for the moment, lost. I hoped it wasn’t now set in amber.

Forever to be trapped like some poor insect and only to be studied on the pages of academic books and in old photographs.

Lord Peter Wimsey and his detective work had captivated my imagination since I was given a copy of Whose Body?

for my thirteenth birthday. My fascination with him began then and grew with each book.

I adored his clever mind, but I especially loved his appreciation of Harriet Vane.

He could let a woman be as clever as he was, and continue to work.

The only other man who had been like that was my late Cambridge-educated father.

Just thinking about him caused both a smile and a wave of sadness.

He had died a year ago on the first of May and I missed him more than I could express.

I’d spoken with Maman a few nights ago. The three-minute telephone call was never enough time to catch up on everything.

She had assured me all was well with the farm in Cornwall and that she was painting again.

As the bus stopped, I recalled her unexpected question about my plans going forward after the war.

I’d been dumbstruck, then said there was no change.

She’d been surprised at my response, saying she’d thought the war had altered everyone. Not me, I’d said.

I opened my book again. The traffic ahead was slow despite the early hour. A few pages lost in the world of Wimsey would pass the time.

‘Aren’t you meant to be getting off here?’ the conductor asked. I looked up, unaware of where I was.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Head always in a book.’ He laughed and I leapt off straight into a naval lieutenant who was walking along the pavement. He was tall. I wasn’t short at five eleven but he towered over me as his hands steadied me.

‘Sorry,’ I said, stepping back.

He tilted his head and studied me. His eyes were the blue of a shallow sea on a sunny day. Something inside me woke up.

‘No need to apologise,’ he said in an American accent as he bent to pick up my book, which had fallen in the collision. He turned it over. ‘Interesting choice.’ He handed it to me.

I almost enquired why but stopped. Instead I asked, ‘Have you read it?’

‘I have but I prefer Murder Must Advertise .’

I blinked. ‘Were you in advertising?’

He smiled and his eyes creased at the corners. ‘No.’

I was suddenly aware of the strong attraction I was feeling to a man who read Sayers. ‘Sorry for bumping into you,’ I said to cover my thoughts.

‘You can do it again any time.’ He grinned.

‘You never know, I might.’ I smiled and turned away as I flushed, not sure why I’d said that. I didn’t even care for Americans; they had taken too long to join the war.

Still, he was attractive and definitely my type. At the archway to Horse Guards, I risked a glance over my shoulder but the American was gone. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if he’d still been there. Ask him for a drink? I smiled at the thought.

Pushing that aside, I picked up my pace as I headed towards the Citadel, a bombproof subterranean fortress.

The entrance, an ugly concrete carbuncle, was tacked onto the end of the Admiralty building.

Constructed last year, the Citadel’s entrance was disguised from above by a grass-covered roof.

In aerial photographs it appeared as nothing more than a lawn next to the Admiralty on Horse Guards and not the beating heart of naval intelligence working around the clock.

Appearances could be deceptive; I knew this well.

As I approached the threshold, I prepared to head underground and lose all sense of day or night.

I was lucky that I didn’t work the rotating shifts that many did.

I wasn’t nine to five either. It was now six forty-five and I wasn’t sure when the day would be finished but I hoped to be done in time to join my housemates at the cinema tonight.

‘Morning, miss,’ said the sailor who checked my pass at the entrance.

‘Morning,’ I replied, joining the flow of people descending. On the stairs I met up with one of the typists coming down from the offices above.

‘All OK in The Zoo?’ I asked.