In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II

Jeremy turned back to him. “This is the ticket all right, isn’t it? I can’t wait for the big show to start. This is my idea of how war should be—a gentleman’s sort of war. Warrior against warrior, and the better man wins. You have to get your own licence, old chap, then we can join up together.”

Ben thought there was little point in mentioning that he couldn’t afford to take flying lessons. Jeremy had never understood that money might be a problem. At Oxford, he was always inviting Ben on expensive jaunts to London shows or nightclubs or even weekend trips to Paris. Jeremy would happily have paid for both of them, but Ben had too much pride to accept and had invented essays that had to be finished. Consequently, he had earned the reputation of a swot, which he wasn’t. And brilliant, which he wasn’t either. He had acquired a perfectly good second-class degree. Jeremy had scraped through with a third, but in his case, it didn’t matter. He was an only son and would inherit the title and all that went with it someday.

“So what do you think?” Jeremy yelled.

“Absolutely smashing.”

“I know. Isn’t it? Let’s fly to France.”

“Have you got enough petrol?”

“How should I know? I just bought the thing,” Jeremy said, laughing. But he banked the plane, swinging it back in a broad circle toward the village. There it was below them, the one main street of cottages leading to the green, surrounded by fields of hops and apple trees. So neat and green and typically English. Jeremy leaned over the side and pointed. “Look. There’s Farleigh. Doesn’t it look orderly from up here? Capability Brown did a splendid job laying out those gardens.” He pushed on the joystick, and the plane dropped as Farleigh Place, Pamela’s ancestral home since 1600 and something, came into view ahead of them, a vast, square grey-stone building set amid acres of parkland with a curved driveway leading past ornamental flower beds, the lake on one side, the kitchen gardens beyond.

Jeremy let out a whoop of delight. “Look, Ben, they’ve got guests for tea. Let’s give them a surprise, shall we?”

The plane banked sharply. Ben hung on and closed his eyes as land became sky. His stomach did a bank of its own. The plane circled lower and lower until it was flying over the lake with its island folly, then over the ride lined with horse chestnut trees, from which they’d collected conkers as boys. A tennis court had been marked out on the back lawn, with tables beside it and several figures in white seated while Soames the butler was serving tea.

“I reckon there’s enough room to land right beside them,” Jeremy shouted. “Too bad they’re not wearing the sort of hats that will sail well when they blow off.”

They made their approach along the south ride, with chestnut trees on either side of the wing tips. Ben was still too exhilarated to be scared. The flying instructor was right, Ben decided. Jeremy did fly as if he were born to it. The tea guests had risen to their feet when the plane burst from the trees; they backed up in alarm as the tablecloths flapped and napkins flew. The plane was now only feet from the ground, then only inches.

Jeremy noticed the sundial at the same moment as Ben. It was standing, weathered and forgotten, in the middle of the east lawn. Ben opened his mouth to say, “Watch out, there’s a s—” at the same moment as Jeremy yanked the joystick over hard to the right. The wing dipped, dug into the grass, and the plane flipped over.





PART ONE



PAMELA





CHAPTER ONE


Bletchley Park


May 1941



Lady Pamela Sutton stared at the dreary government-issued posters on the wall of her small cubicle in Hut 3. Some of them cheerful exhortations to do one’s best, to soldier on with a stiff upper lip, and others dire warnings about letting the side down. Beyond the blackout curtains that covered the windows, dawn would be breaking. She could hear the chorus of birds in the woods behind the hut, still chirping madly and joyfully as they had done before the war began and would keep doing after it ended—whenever that would be. It had already gone on too long, and there was no end in sight. Pamela rubbed her eyes. It had been a long night, and her eyes were stinging with tiredness. According to civil-service regulations, women were not supposed to work on the night shift with men, in case their morals were compromised. She had found this amusing when the shortage of male translators meant that one of the girls had to do night-shift work. “Frankly, I don’t think my honour is in danger from any of the chaps here,” she had said. “They are more interested in maths problems than girls.”

But she had come to regret her bravado many times since. Night work was brutal. Thank God her shift was soon coming to an end and she could go to bed. Not that she could ever sleep properly during the day with trains rattling past her window.

“Bloody war,” she muttered and breathed onto her hands, trying to induce some warmth into her fingers. Although it was May, the huts were cold and damp overnight. The coke ration had been stopped on May first. But that wasn’t entirely bad; the cast-iron stove smoked badly and spewed out noxious fumes. Everything was so horrible these days. No decent food to eat. Meals consisting of powdered eggs, canned corned beef, sausages that were more sawdust than meat. Her landlady obviously hadn’t been much of a cook before the war, but what she cooked now was quite inedible. Pamela envied those on the day shift. At least they could take their main meal in the dining room, which was supposed to be quite good. She could go across and get some breakfast before she went off duty, but she was always too tired to eat by the end of a long night.

At the outbreak of the war she had been anxious to do something useful. Jeremy had joined up on the first day, welcomed into the RAF with open arms. He’d been one of the most decorated pilots at the Battle of Britain, but then in typical Jeremy fashion, he’d strayed too far into France chasing a returning German plane and been shot down. Now he was in the Stalag Luft, a camp for captured airmen, somewhere in Germany, and nobody had heard from him in months. She didn’t even know whether he was alive or dead. She squeezed her eyes shut so that a tear couldn’t form. Stiff upper lip at all times, she repeated to herself—that was what was expected these days. “We must set an example,” her father had said in his normal thundering manner, pounding on the table for better effect. “Never let anyone see you are upset or afraid. People look up to us, and we have an obligation to show them how it’s done.”

It was for that very reason that she had been selected for this job. Her friend Trixie Radcliffe, fellow deb in the spring of 1939, had invited her for tea in London, back in the early days of the war when civilised things like tea at Brown’s Hotel still existed.

“I say, Pamma, this chap I know introduced me to another chap who might want to give us a job,” Trixie had said in that enthusiastic way of hers. “He’s looking for girls like us. From good families. No nonsense. Nor prone to hysterics.”