The tests were successful, thankfully for them all. Once completed, the pilot swooped low over the beach one final time, saluted them with a tilt of his wings and then soared off above the hills, heading back to base for the night.
Harry packed the kit away and the others trooped back up to the house as Ella scribbled a final point in her notebook before gathering her belongings back into her rucksack. She’d stopped wearing her WAAF uniform after the first day and followed the lead of the others in more casual attire, which offered a greater degree of freedom and practicality when covering the rugged terrain. It felt good to be back in slacks again, which reminded her of the jump suit she’d worn at RAF Gulford.
A faint chill crept into the evening air now as the sun sank low beyond the islands of Eigg and Rum, far out beyond the bay, so she pulled a soft woollen cardigan from her pack. Angus had waited behind when the others left and he took the garment from her without a word and held it for her to slip her arms into the sleeves.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him.
‘My pleasure.’
They both stood, silent for a minute, watching as the setting sun began to paint the western sky in shades of crimson and rose.
‘The tests went well,’ Ella remarked, feeling awkward suddenly in the silence.
‘They did.’ Angus nodded, never taking his eyes off the far horizon.
Ella pulled the edges of her cardigan across her chest and turned back to watch the sunset again, her arms wrapped around herself. The waves shushed softly on to the shore as the fading light turned the hills of Rum purple and then grey, and Ella thought of Caroline on another very different island, far to the south in these same waters. Was she watching this same sunset from the white house with the shutters of sea-mist blue? And where was Marianne? Was there a sunset at all, wherever she was?
‘Penny for them?’ Angus asked gently.
She turned to meet his gaze with a barely perceptible shake of her head. ‘I was thinking of friends in France. Wondering what life is like for them now. It all seems so very far away and so very long ago.’ She looked back out across the water where the reflections were fading, as if in a darkening mirror.
‘You must miss him very much indeed.’ He said it quietly, watching her profile.
Ella was silent for a moment.
He knew.
Of course, he knew: as the officer said on her first night here, they’d done their homework before they’d recruited her. And in a way it was a relief not to have to speak to Angus about Christophe, not to have to try to explain how he’d made her feel and how she felt now that she’d lost him. Not that she could ever have found the words to do so anyway.
She nodded, feeling glad that Angus understood. And feeling, too, that here was someone who was strong enough to be able to handle that knowledge, perhaps even strong enough to be able to help her bear it.
She turned her face away from the last rays of the sun as it slid beyond the far horizon and met his gaze again. It was the first time in more than two years that she’d looked at another man properly, as anything other than a colleague. And the man she saw beside her now was one who was brave enough to stand there alongside her in her grief and her pain, bearing witness to it and keeping her company in the midst of it.
And that, she realised suddenly, was something very great indeed.
His eyes met hers and she felt something stir deep in her heart. It was a sensation she’d thought she’d never feel again. She stood on tiptoes as she reached to bring her lips to his, the toes of her boots making half-moon dents in the damp sand. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him and she let herself lean in to the safe haven of his embrace.
The storms out at sea beyond the dusk-misted islands couldn’t reach her here: she took refuge in his arms and felt, at last, the faint pulse of her heart as it began to beat again.
2014, Edinburgh
‘Grandad was a secret agent? And you too! I can’t believe we never knew! Does Mum know? And Robbie?’
Ella shakes her head. ‘A lot of this remained classified until quite recently. We got into the habit of not mentioning it and so it became easier just to let things lie. Rhona and Robbie knew their father had been in the army in the war, and that I’d been in the WAAF. But, to children, life before they were born is ancient history, so they were never really that interested in knowing more.’
‘Amazing.’ I look at my frail old granny in a whole new light now. She’s up again today, a little stronger than the last time I visited. Sitting in her chair in her pastel-coloured cardigan and tweed skirt, her white hair as light as thistle-down and her hands folded quietly in her lap, you would never imagine that she had once fixed planes and handled top-secret radio technology. ‘And I bet Grandad was very handsome. No wonder you fell for him, even though you were still grieving for Christophe.’
Ella’s eyes mist over, and she seems far away suddenly, perhaps seeing people and places that beckon her back to a time long gone. But I take her hand, as if drawing her back to the present, and her gaze focuses on my face again.
‘Angus had a good heart. I saw that straight away. And he offered strength and solidity; someone I could trust at a time when the world seemed such a treacherous place to be. He was so alive too. That was another thing we had in common, that energy, the drive to get on with life. But he had something else as well: a quietly assured determination to fight for what was right in that war, to put an end to the darkness and destruction, to save lives.’ She pauses. ‘And he saved my life too, in many different ways. He brought back the light. He gave me so much to live for.’
She lets go of my hand and reaches for the hand-held tape recorder which sits on her bedside cabinet. ‘But more of that anon . . . here’s the next tape. I do hope you’re not bored yet?’
I laugh. ‘Bored is the last thing I am, Granny! I can’t wait to hear the next instalment.’ I slip the tape into my bag and begin to pull on my coat.
‘Give my love to Dan and Finn. And please tell Finn that his honeysuckle has lasted well.’ The sprig is in a bud vase beside her bed, where she can smell its faint perfume. But the last delicate flower filament hangs from the stem now and the leaves are beginning to drop, scattering themselves beside the blue bowl of shells, shot through with its lightning bolt of gold.
1942, Scotland
It was the only time she’d seen Angus rattled. They were in a briefing session, running through the final instructions with the group of SOE agents who were about to deliver the first S-Phone transceivers to Resistance groups in occupied territories, when an officer in army fatigues knocked on the door. He handed Angus a note. As he read it, the colour drained from his face and he turned away, momentarily, from the others who were watching him expectantly. When he turned back, he’d regained his composure, although the expression in his eyes was one of deep pain and sadness.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that the French drop into the Loire valley will have to be postponed. There’s been an incident. We’ve lost our key agent there and she was the one who was going to receive the first transceiver and pass it on to her contacts in a Resistance cell in that area.’
They all knew that this part of France was an especially important drop zone. The plan had been to land a plane in Vichy France, the unoccupied part of the country, and rendezvous with the female SOE agent so that she could cross back into occupied territory with the transceiver. The French Résistance was playing a key role in the Allies’ struggle to regain a foothold in France and the S-Phones were a vital part of the plan to ensure landings of agents and supplies of munitions could be coordinated without the Nazis intercepting the communications.
‘How was she lost?’ asked Anja.
‘Someone denounced members of the Resistance cell to the Gestapo. She was with them when they were raided. They executed everyone who was there.’ Angus’s response was terse and matter-of-fact, although the strain in his expression belied his anguish.
‘It’s a total bloody tragedy.’ Harry pressed his fingertips against his eyes, saddened by the loss of one of their colleagues, but frustrated too, at this major set-back to all their meticulous planning.
‘I’ll do it instead.’ There was no hesitation in Ella’s voice. She spoke calmly, with absolute determination.
‘No, Ella. That’s impossible. We’ll have to liaise with other agents in France, see if there’s anyone else we can deploy. Or perhaps I should go myself?’ said Angus, turning to Harry.
‘You know that’s not going to work,’ Harry said. ‘It has to be a female, otherwise the crossing guards will smell a rat.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ella repeated. ‘I know the kit. I speak French fluently. I can go in, hand over the phone and be out again before anyone knows what’s happened. It makes sense. If they think they’ve wiped out a Resistance cell in that area then they won’t be looking for anyone else so soon afterwards. We need to stick to the original timescale; you know how vital our support is in France.’
‘Ella, it takes months to train an agent,’ said Angus. ‘What you’ve learnt in your few weeks here is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn’t be safe. The last thing we want is for the S-Phone to fall into enemy hands before we’ve even begun to use it.’