Staverton sucked his teeth. “That’s all we need,” he said. He would have a lot more to tell Churchill and the Cabinet tonight.
“Very well, Robert, we’ll talk about this again in the morning. If you’re right, the next few days are going to get damn busy.”
Fleming saluted and turned for the door. There went the prospect of some leave.
“Oh, Robert…”
Fleming paused with his hand on the door handle. Staverton looked levelly at him.
“Nice work,” he said.
Since he had been working in the Bunker, ‘home’ for Fleming had been a small rented bedsit in Courtfield Gardens.
Once inside, the strain of the trip to Norfolk caught up with him. He felt a sudden, searing pain where the worst ridges of scar tissue criss-crossed his chest and stomach.
He breathed deeply and massaged the point where it seemed worst.
He walked into the kitchen, found a drop of whisky in a bottle at the back of a bare food cupboard and poured himself a last, stiff measure. He decided to call Penny at the cottage the moment the alcohol had got to work enough to loosen his tongue so that at least he could try to explain that he wanted to see her as soon as possible, and why.
He walked back into the sitting room and collapsed in a chair, cursing as he crumpled the smartly pressed tunic that he had thrown over the seat-back. When he pulled it out from behind him the small brown envelope fell from a pocket to the floor. He had not opened it when he had found it in his pigeon-hole on the way out of the Ministry. He always savoured her notes and letters. He realized again that that was something else he had never told her.
He smiled to himself. It was just like her to use their best vellum and seal it in a shabby, official-use-only envelope.
The smile left his face before he had even started to read. The needles of panic, the same ones that had jabbed his flesh through the sweat that had covered his body in the Spitfire’s cockpit the day before, were there again. But this time he managed to fight them.
The writing was bold, rounded, in keeping with the finality of the message. She exhorted him to read the letter through, not scrumple it into a ball and throw it away. In that moment he felt the change in himself more acutely than ever. It was what he would have done, pretended it was not happening.
He read, carried along by the conviction in her words and wondered, in some far away part of his mind, why it was that he already felt jealous. He had never felt that way about her before. She had always been there, he never imagined she wouldn’t. He had seen men looking at her, longing for her even, but it had never concerned him. He cursed his arrogance, and understood a little better why she was doing what she was.
He turned the pages, looking for evidence of self-doubt, or a weakness in her hand to tell him that she didn’t mean it, but there were none. A terrible thing had happened to him, she didn’t shrug it off. Another man would have died, but the price of his survival had been their marriage. It was the frustration of not being able to help, for in everything she had done before she had never known failure. She too had started to become bitter, try as she had to fight it. She saw it starting to twist her in the same way that it had him. She didn’t want it to take them both. She hoped he would try, in the months ahead, to understand. There was no mention of the day he had hit her, no outpouring of emotion, no recrimination at his failure to let her in over the last few difficult months. It was a practical decision.
“You left it just a little too late, didn’t you, old boy,” he told himself.
His hand fumbled for his glass and he brought the whisky to his lips. When the alcohol permeated his stomach wall, he began to feel calm enough to think it through.
It had been almost a fortnight since he had last been at the cottage and, following a pattern that had been pretty much set since his convalescence, things hadn’t exactly been cordial between them. He couldn’t blame her. He had been nothing short of cruel. And with that realization came the knowledge that he not only had the strength to live without her, but the determination not to give her up without a fight.
When he felt steady, he walked into the hall and asked to be connected to Padbury 278.
It rang for two minutes before the operator apologized and told him that she would have to ring off. Wartime rules prevented her from allowing him the line any longer. Perhaps he could try again the following morning? The caring female voice persuaded him that that was the best course of action.
He replaced the handset slowly and walked down the narrow corridor to the bedroom, taking his cigarettes and the dregs of the whisky with him.
Kruze knelt beside the fire. He blew on the glowing logs until the warmth began to spread to the corners of the sitting room.
There was no light on in the small, low-ceilinged room, but when he turned round he could see the slight mist of perspiration on Penny’s brow as she stood watching the flames. She was wearing her blue WAAF skirt and shirt; the jacket had been thrown over the small sofa by the hearthrug.
Her tie was off, the collar open. The glow from the fire played over her face, its soft light making her look even more beautiful. She had let her hair down and the long, gently waving curls fell over her shoulders and down her back.
They had spent the last three hours at the dinner table talking the light-hearted banter of two adolescents discovering each other for the first time. To his surprise, Kruze realized that he was probably falling in love.
She looked at him and smiled.
He moved to her and ran his hand up her back, felt the heat of her skin beneath her shirt. She held him tightly and looked into his eyes.
“I need you,” she whispered. “I hope you don’t think that’s—”
He kissed her before she could finish the sentence.
He explored her mouth. She responded, slowly winding her tongue round his. Then her hands were combing his jacket, undoing the buttons, tugging at his uniform. She managed to get it half off before he helped her. It fell on the ground between them. She ran her hands through his hair, then traced a long nail down his scalp, his neck, across his back. She felt the perspiration that soaked the top of his shirt, smelt the fresh, outdoor smell of him as she twisted and turned in his embrace.
He stopped and held her at arm’s length. She opened her eyes and watched him as he stared, questioning, into her face. She smiled and opened her mouth a little. The flames flickered in the grate and reflected momentarily on her glistening lower lip. He ran his hands down her back and pulled at her shirt. Then his fingers moved over her bra strap, seeking the catch. He tugged and it seemed to give. She had undone her buttons so that when he slipped his hand under the cups of her bra, both it and the shirt fell to the floor.
She stood standing before him in the semi-darkness with only her skirt on. He bent down and put his mouth around her nipple and sucked.
She moaned softly.
“Take me to bed.” Her words were choked. He could hardly hear them.
They took the rest of their clothes off slowly, watching each other all the time, neither wanting to rush in case they broke the spell. Kruze felt as if he were drugged, or dreaming. Suddenly he prayed this was real, that he wasn’t about to wake up and find himself in a strange place, without her.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Focke-Wulf 189 was a curious-looking aircraft. Between its twin engines the cockpit area was covered almost completely with perspex for maximum visibility, designed as it was exclusively for observation and tactical-photo reconnaissance.