pack up and go home.’ He glanced at her more closely. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘You’re out of breath.’
‘It’s a long walk. I was worried about being late.’
‘Fancy a drink later? The four of us maybe?’ He nodded to the corner where Barbara was sitting smoking a cigarette.
‘That would be nice. I’ll ask her.’ She smiled and moved away. ‘Good morning, Barbara.’
‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’ Barbara squinted up at her through her smoke. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well? You know what I mean.’
‘Let me at least get a cup of tea.’
She went over to the table beneath the window. Tin trays of bacon, scrambled eggs and fried bread were laid out next to the tea urn. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was. That was sex for you, she thought. She resolved at that moment not to say a word about what had happened. If Arnaud was avoiding her, it was probably best forgotten, at least until she found out where she stood. She piled food on her plate. When she returned, Barbara said, ‘Come on, then. Something’s happened, hasn’t it? I can tell. You’ve got that look.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My goodness, I’m famished.’ She started to eat her breakfast. The eggs were too chewy to be anything other than powdered, but it didn’t matter. The effect of the warm food in her stomach was instantaneous. She felt her spirits lift. ‘Anyway, never mind about me. How was your walk home with Jens?’
‘Highly satisfactory.’
Kay stared at her, a forkful of bacon suspended in mid-air. Despite her own behaviour, she was slightly shocked. ‘You didn’t?’
‘It’s wartime, darling.’ Barbara took a drag on her cigarette. ‘One could be killed at any moment.’
‘So you’re going to see him again?’
‘I might.’
‘Where did you go? Not to your old lady’s house, I assume.’
‘No, we went back to his apartment.’
‘My God!’ Kay shook her head and laughed.
‘I’m a tart, darling, what can I say?’ Barbara waved her cigarette dismissively. ‘And you? Tell me he made a pass, at least.’
‘He was a perfect gentleman.’
Barbara gave a knowing look. ‘Ah, so he tried to kiss you.’ Kay held her gaze and sipped her tea. ‘God, you’re so discreet! Old Sitwell would be proud of you.’
‘Now you’re just being rude.’ She was keen to change the subject. She looked at her watch. ‘Speaking of Sitwell, we ought to get over there.’
She took her dirty crockery to the table and scraped off the leftovers. When she came back, Barbara was on her feet, talking to Sandy and Bill. ‘We were just arranging to have a drink tonight at six. What do you think?’
‘Fine.’ Kay forced a smile. And you’ll go off with Sandy, she thought, and I will be stuck with Bill.
The four of them once again walked across the street to the bank and showed their identity cards. It was becoming a routine. The men went off to the radar vans with a cheerful ‘Good luck, girls’, and the women descended to the vault. The atmosphere was stale with cigarette smoke and the odour of too many bodies pressed into too small a space with no ventilation. The WAAF sergeants lolled, bored, behind their desks. Joan and Joyce had the pasty-faced, red-eyed look that always came with the graveyard shift. Kay recognised the symptoms. It was the same at Medmenham.
‘Anything happened?’ She shrugged off her coat.
‘No,’ said Joan, ‘not a peep all night.’ Her normally cheerful expression was crushed and sulky. ‘I expect they’re saving it all for you.’
Flight Officer Sitwell came down the stairs behind them, exuding a strong scent of carbolic soap, followed by the morning shift of WAAF sergeants. She strode to the front of the room and dropped a heavy file on the table. She cleaned the blackboard until it gleamed.
‘So, ladies: a new day, a new start.’
Kay took her seat, sharpened her pencil, blew away the shavings and made a determined effort to put Arnaud out of her mind.
17
GRUPPENFÜHRER KAMMLER WAS AT THAT moment arriving in Scheveningen.
He had left Hellendoorn at four in the morning, travelling the entire distance of some 180 kilometres under cover of darkness to avoid the daylight Allied air patrols. He was never still. He seldom seemed to eat or sleep. ‘The Dust Cloud’, his staff called him. These days he spent half of his life on the road, sitting in the front passenger seat of his armoured Mercedes with his personalised machine gun stowed in the footwell, restlessly driving between the five V2 regiments