He turned over again. He was still wearing his clothes and his boots lay beside the bed where he’d kicked them off just hours before. He’d taken to sleeping like this ever since it started again, so he could be up quickly when his father shouted for him from the bottom of the stairs. He was often too tired to get undressed anyway.
Fourteen days. Two weeks. But Atkins had said that four years ago. He was planning for a different invasion altogether then. So perhaps it wouldn’t be the same this time. Things were different now, weren’t they? Perhaps it would be sooner. Or maybe later. After all he hadn’t seen a thing yet, other than some of their own troop movements and the activities of the Home Guard. But there had been lots of messages. For the last four nights in a row he’d been to all three drop points. The loose stone at the church; the plank in the barn door; the split tennis ball in the yew bole. Every night he’d been all over his patch and he knew others had too. The wireless operators had been at their stations day in, day out. So it was close, no doubt about it.
According to one message he’d taken last night the operational patrols had already left. He tried to imagine them slipping from under the covers, their wives’ sleep-breathing, warm and slow in the dark bedrooms. The men creeping down the stairs, pulling on their regulation dungarees and picking up their rucksacks from the hiding places. Then turning their backs on their homes and walking up into the hills, ink black against the stars. So yes, it was close now. They’d be here soon. At last, after four years, it was happening.
For George this had all begun eight months after his seventeenth birthday. Like every boy in the area he’d received a call-up for a services medical in Newport. It was July, the long hot summer of 1940. The beaches were packed with sunbathers. The contrails of dog-fighting planes etched smoke patterns against the blue skies of the southern coast. George’s mother had made him wear a suit to the medical, and when he’d arrived at the building opposite County Hall he was sweating heavily after the walk from the station. He registered at the entrance and then a sergeant led him and seventy other boys into a large room with desks where he told them to take a seat. In front of them, an officer informed them, was a short educational test. “You have twenty minutes, gentlemen. Begin.”
The sun was glaring through the windows high in the wall and at first George found it hard to concentrate in the flat heat of the room. Once he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, however, he’d started to enjoy the test, unlike most of the boys around him who crouched over their papers, frowning into their desks. He finished the test before the twenty minutes were up. After checking over his answers he sat back and looked over the bent heads of his companions, patches of pink sunburnt skin showing through the close-cropped hair on the back of their necks. Seeing them like that, sitting in regimented lines, he couldn’t help wondering what lay ahead for all of them. He thought of the casualty lists he’d seen, the reports from Dunkirk and other news from France. Some of these boys would join the army, some the RAF, others the navy. Some would be sent down the mines, others into the factories. One thing was for sure, by this time next year, if things carried on as they were, some of them would be dead. All of them perhaps, including himself.
After the test had come the medical, a surly army doctor who’d told him to undress and examined him as his father might a ram or a horse he was buying at the market. Then, along with a few other boys, he’d been sent to wait outside a room in a windowless corridor deeper in the building. A fan thrummed on the ceiling and the sound of faraway doors opening and closing echoed along the exposed pipes running the length of the walls. It was much cooler here than in the testing room, and as he waited George leant his head against the painted stone to feel the relief of its touch against his neck. Eventually a clerk called his name and directed him into a small office. An older man with grey hair and heavy eyelids stood from behind a desk, shook George’s hand, and introduced himself as Colonel Hughes. The colonel told him he’d done well in the educational test — very well. He asked him a few basic questions, about his schooling, where he lived. Then, licking his thumb, he looked back down at his papers for a moment, holding the corner of one page off the table, before telling him that was all. Someone would visit him in a few days’ time, but that was all for now. “Thank you, Mr. Bowen,” he said without looking up. It was the first time anyone had ever called him Mr. Bowen, and when George boarded the train for Abergavenny an hour later, he felt significantly older than when he’d stepped off it that morning.
He’d seen the fishing flies first, flashing in the sun. There were so many of them George thought the man was wearing some kind of polished steel helmet. But as he got closer, he saw they were fishing flies pinned tightly together on a flat tweed cap, their bright yellow and red feathers trembling in the breeze.
“Mr. Bowen?” the man called out as he walked across the field.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, good.” He held out his hand as he approached. “Tommy Atkins.” He smiled, raising his eyebrows as if to acknowledge the sobriquet. George leant his scythe against the hedge and, wiping his fingers against his trousers, shook the man’s hand. He was taller than George, in his early forties with a taut angular face. The kind of man who’d look comfortable with a shotgun broken over one arm and a brace of pheasants over the other.
“Hot work,” Atkins said, nodding towards the scythe.
“Yes, sir. All this bracken has to be cleared. And in the next field. We’ll be ploughing it up soon. Ministry orders.”
“Yes, of course, of course. Need every scrap we can get, don’t we?”
He spoke casually but George was unnerved by the way he looked him straight in the eye, as if his voice and his vision were unconnected.
A skylark ascended from the field behind them, drilling its song through the heavy summer air. Atkins broke his stare to watch it rise, shielding his eyes with his hand. George followed his gaze, trying to locate the tiny bird against the sky, but it was already too high.
“You were expecting me, Mr. Bowen, weren’t you?” Atkins said, taking off his jacket and sitting on a tree stump beside the hedge. “Colonel Hughes said someone would come and visit you?”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
“Well, that’s me.” He paused and folded his jacket across his knee. “I’ll get straight to the point, Mr. Bowen. I’m a British Intelligence officer. I’ve come to see you because you scored very highly on your test the other day. You’re a clever lad. We think you could be of great service to your country.”
George opened his mouth to speak, but Atkins held up his hand to stop him.
“What I’m going to propose to you may sound unusual, but I assure you I’m serious. Before I go any further, however, I’ll need a promise of your complete discretion. As I’m sure you understand, everything I tell you is strictly confidential.”
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a small black Bible.
“We can’t have any signing of papers with this business, I’m afraid, so I’m going to have to ask you to swear on this instead.” He held out the Bible. George looked at it, both his hands dug deep in his pockets.