Auntie E. and Uncle G. are spending some weekends on the fields back at Claybridge. They tell us everything appears to be normal there and that they have some land girls coming for the harvest at the end of the month. GOOD NEWS, even the siren is sounding less often. I do hope they announce that war is over soon because then Daddy can come back and we can all go home together. I do have a hopeful feeling about the future.
I will write again on Friday. Auntie E. has been saving lots of nice things to celebrate Bert’s birthday and we are going to make a layered party cake. Some of the boys and girls from nearby are coming for tea.
Today we had stewed apples and ginger cream. The whole house was filled with a delicious mix of smells after we finished the cooking.
Until next week, Mummy.
With all my love, Kit xxxxxxxxxx
P.S. Bert says to tell you that he made the ginger cream!Summer 1941
Chapter Twenty Nine Their finest hour?
She swallowed the still night air. It calmed her heart and steadied her head. Slowly, she raised her eyes to see an aircraft passing directly overhead.
‘The Lysander,’ she said.
‘Do you think it’s been on a mission?’ said Charlie-Mouse.
‘Maybe.’
She rested heavily on her crutches as Charlie-Mouse shone his pocket torch around. The bushes and trees cowered, and as the narrow beam reached the Victorian lamplight, it dulled to a faint glow.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s that.’
A triangle of light escaped from the house as the kitchen door opened and closed. Two figures moved onto the lawn – the contours of their bodies and the rounded shapes of their heads accentuated by the plane of moonlight laid over the garden and projecting their shadows to the wall behind.
‘What’s this then?’ said a gruff voice.
Connie pinched her eyes tight shut in the glare of the torchlight.
‘We’re on schedule to leave in ten minutes,’ the woman in the headscarf said, looking anxiously at her wristwatch.
‘It’s OK, I’ll deal with these children. Tomasz has only just flown over – there’s time before the handover.’
The bearded man stood the other side of the kitchen table.
‘Tell me what are you doing here,’ he demanded. ‘On restricted land.’
The colour had all but disappeared from Charlie-Mouse’s cheeks. His face quivered in the wavering of the gas lamp.
‘You won’t believe us,’ Connie said. ‘But we’ve come to find some . . . one.’
‘No one knows anyone here,’ the man replied. ‘Who have you come to find?’
Thoughts pummelled her head. Kit and Bert, the family – for one thing, they must all be at Golden Hill . . .
‘Wait,’ the man said, taking off his flying hat. The static pulled his ash-blonde hair into the air. ‘Are you looking for me?’
Connie stared from his beard up to his small grey eyes. They pinned her with sincerity and concern. But she was unable to reply.
‘Because if you are, there’s not much time. I’m flying to Poland in under the hour. Veronika has a rendezvous at 6am, she has to radio back.’
Veronika put down her small brown case and gave a meagre smile. Her thin painted lips glowed orange in the strange light. ‘Do we trust them, Malcolm?’ she lilted.
Malcolm turned. ‘It’s OK – they know this place,’ he replied.
‘Then you’re Malcolm . . .’ began Charlie-Mouse. ‘And you know who we are?’
‘Time does strange things,’ Malcolm said. ‘But it won’t let us forget where we came from.’
The kitchen door opened.
‘Tomasz. So soon,’ Malcolm said. ‘All set?’
The man nodded.
‘Then we must go,’ Malcolm said.
Veronika lifted her hand mid-air to gesture goodbye and followed Tomasz into the darkness.
Malcolm zipped his heavy jacket and grasped hold of his flying hat and goggles. Instead of following, he threw open the door to the hallway. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
His steps echoed on the stone floor. She strained her eyes to see. Another door grated open . . . then closed. His tall, lean figure came back towards her.
In one of his hands Malcolm held a curled and faded envelope sprinkled over with brown dots, and in the other a blue and gold spotted china cat.
‘These are meant for you,’ he said. ‘Take good care. Our futures depend on it.’ He gave a flicker of a crooked smile and walked out after his companions.
The leaves rustled, and for a moment the sleeping orchard came to life. She sat on the tree swing and swayed side to side. Charlie stood with his back flat to the tree trunk. She barely saw him in the blur of darkness.
From over the top of the church tower came the night-lights of the Lysander. Its drone deadened by the clouding sky – the deep-grey shadow shuddering through the hemisphere.
‘Why would he ever want to come back with us?’ she said.
The night air thinned – pixellating in random sequence, it broke apart and sent her tired head into a semi-sleep. She spun this way and that, through the darkness – mixing with ghostly images of the house, of Charlie-Mouse and of the silhouetted Lysander.
Chapter Thirty Flashes of the past
‘Charlie?’ Connie called. She jumped at the sound of her voice in her head and pressed at the flesh of her ears to unblock them. ‘Charlie, are you here?’ The floor lifted from her feet and rose through her body before she blacked out completely.
The house whispered and she dreamed again. She dreamed of crossing the snow to the house. She opened the French doors to find Malcolm waiting in the study. He turned from the open fire and offered her the cat. As she reached to grasp hold, she dropped it – the spotted pieces smashing again over the parquet floor. He leaned to say something . . . and this time she heard him clearly.
‘You can save it,’ he said.
Opening her eyes, she found herself back in her own bed. The morning sun crept through the crack in her curtains, slashing its trail over her quilt cover and across the two precious objects on her bedside table.
She sat up and stared.
Blue and gold spots jumped out at her from the crazed white glaze. Turquoise sparks from the cat’s eyes flew like fireworks. Nervously, she reached out an arm to lift the fragile creature from its position on top of the envelope. She expected an electric shock – but it didn’t come. She ran a forefinger over its smooth china back and along its tail. Something clinked. She shook gently. The penholder cat separated in her hand and something shiny and about the size of a fifty pence piece dropped onto the sunny patch of her quilt.
Chapter Thirty One The shoot
Veronika’s small silver medal warmed in her hand as the same afternoon she watched members of the local news television crew buzzing like bees over a lavender bush in front of the Friday market in Corberley town square. She gripped tightly, with rebounding thoughts. What had become of her?
What had become of Malcolm?
The producer waved his arm across her line of sight, darting this way and that over the pavement to brief the camera team. The presenter paced up and down rehearsing her lines.
‘Is it someone famous?’ called one lady, with gusto.
Connie didn’t hear the reply – she had her eyes stuck firmly upon a familiar dark-suited figure close by.
‘How can this be?’ rasped Malcolm Mollet’s dad.
A small man with horn-rimmed spectacles nodded back at him politely.
‘We . . .’ mouthed Malcolm Mollet’s dad, directing his finger back and forth, ‘had a deal.’
The man ignored him, continuing to buff up his tiepin with his handkerchief, then walzing off in the opposite direction.
Malcolm Mollet’s dad was left gasping. He sidled up to a window at the Guildhall where he flirted with his own reflection. He relaxed his body and practised a beguiling smile while raising one eyebrow. He tried again, putting his right shoulder forward and raisi
ng both eyebrows. After a few minutes of what Connie could only call powerful posing practice, he grimaced. He smoothed down the lapels of his suit jacket, ran his fingers through his hair and teased at his delicately lined moustache.
As if in response to the vanity, the presenter gave a lightening-quick brush to her hair and flashed her face into her hand mirror. Snapping the mirror shut she got straight down to business. ‘You understand we’ll be going live to camera soon, don’t you,’ she told him. ‘Stewart’s in the studio and he’ll want to ask you some questions.’
‘Ooh,’ called the lady from the crowd. ‘I see ‘im on TV of an evening.’
Connie tucked in a smile.
‘Quiet please,’ called the producer. ‘We’ll go for a take with the planning man.
The small man in horn-rimmed spectacles moved up to the public microphone.
‘At lunchtime today,’ he said. ‘The Council received new information regarding the application for new housing at Claybridge Farm . . . and as a consequence is obliged to defer its decision to allow for consultation with local heritage and the war museum . . .’
Cheers came from the growing crowd.
‘Stewart’s in the studio waiting,’ someone shouted across.
‘Get the property developer!’ said the producer, wiggling his pen at Malcolm Mollet’s dad.
The presenter approached Malcolm Mollet’s dad, with cameraman and soundman in tow. She put an earphone into his ear. ‘Look to camera please. Are you ready? And, Action!’
Snatching a sideways glimpse at the monitor, Connie saw Malcolm Mollet’s dad turning redder, and redder still as he bumbled into a mountain of words that became only mumbles to her ears.
The sound of an aircraft cut across filming. She watched Malcolm Mollet’s dad spin his head angrily to the air and clutch hold of his greased-back hair with both hands. In her mind she saw Malcolm. Her chest fluttered and strength drained from her arms and legs.
‘Cut! And go once more,’ shouted the producer. ‘Be smart and fast about it – I want us at Claybridge by two-thirty.’
Connie fought to bend, rubbing skin and metal through her thin tights – her calipers annoyed her intensely today. She grabbed her mum’s hand and pulled it close. ‘Shall we go back now?’ she whispered.
Her mum nodded and tapped Charlie-Mouse on the shoulder. ‘Tell your father we’re going home,’ she said.
Chapter Thirty Two A place in time
They waited by the open door to the pottery shop – Connie’s senses kicked with the warm essence of the still evening air stirred with the smell of damp clay and blueberry burst perfume. The windows trailed off their latches, pushed wide.
The Wendlewitch reached for more water. Splashing her fingers in the bowl, she began to slip shape into a bulging brown-grey pot spinning round and round on her wheel. She used her thumbs to draw the clay upwards and outwards, and her bowl grew into a useful form. She brought the wheel to a stop, and choosing a modelling tool, began to turn it by hand. She pressed the tool firmly, and worked until she met with the start of the pattern. With a satisfied ‘Hmmm’ she drew a thin wire underneath and drifted to the fireplace to place her pot into the one remaining space on the mantelpiece. ‘Come right in,’ she called, half hidden by one of the embroidered fire screens.
‘They’ve gone,’ Connie said. ‘Everything’s quiet.’
‘As it should be,’ returned the Wendlewitch.
Connie uncurled her fingers. ‘But we have to wait.’
‘Ah, the medal. Intelligence Corps.’
‘I’ve been thinking about her,’ Connie said.
‘Veronika has a story in both wars,’ said the Wendlewitch. ‘For certain.’
‘And Malcolm’s story?’
The Wendlewitch dropped her glasses to her nose. ‘That will be a question of timing.’
Connie picked up the hesitancy in the Wendlewitch’s voice.
‘Hey, he’s got to come back – hasn’t he?’ said Charlie-Mouse.
The Wendlewitch waggled her clay-covered gemstones over the top of her potter’s wheel – a flash contacted the two, and her purple-glittered eyelids juddered until she took her hand away.
He carried on undeterred. ‘His dad’s gonna notice.’
The Wendlewitch wiped at the surface of her wheel. ‘Either you can leave that to me, or . . . ’
‘Or what?’
The Wendlewitch did not answer him. Instead she collected the pieces of blue and gold china cat from her workbench and began to join them.
‘Some finely ground bone china and good glue – she’ll be as good as new,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll put her back where she belongs.’
Connie looked up at the top shelf.
‘Oh no,’ the Wendlewitch said. ‘Not there.’ She opened out her large stepladder. ‘They deserve a place on your study desk.’
‘But—’ Connie said, searching deep within the Wendlewitch’s purple eyes.
‘No buts,’ the Wendlewitch replied. She climbed up, then down, and laid the china cat with the small inkwell next to its companion. ‘Call them a thank you.’ Her smile brimmed and spilled. ‘Mother loved the cats,’ she said. ‘As she loved Claybridge – the very first time she clapped eyes on it.’
Connie returned the smile. ‘I think I know that.’
‘You do?’
‘Yesterday . . . the photocard of Malcolm and the children at Claybridge. I thought you were going to say something.’
The Wendlewitch rinsed and dried her hands, reaching for the mantelpiece. ‘It's the only picture I have of my grandmother as a young girl,’ she said. ‘She looks so much like dear Kit at the very same age, don't you think.’
‘Kit's your mother, isn't she,’ said Connie.
As the Wendlewitch lifted a fingertip to the smile on her lips, the floor shook, pots rattled and Charlie-Mouse fell hard on the lion stool.
‘Goodness me, seven-fifteen, and about time!’ the Wendlewitch exclaimed. Drawing a remote control from her pocket, she zapped her buzzing kiln into silence. Without further word of explanation, she tucked the photocard in her pocket, settled a floppy purple hat on top of her wild, chestnut hair, and wended her way to the front of her pottery shop. The door banged shut leaving an echo of emptiness and anticipation, and a whirl of whispers.
The thrill lay siege to her. Connie cast an eye to the potter’s wheel and pushed at the lion stool with one of her crutches. ‘Dare you, Charlie,’ she said.
* * *
Epilogue
Summer 1941 Malcolm’s deliverance
So close to the ships on the clear night horizon, even at eighteen thousand feet Malcolm believed he could almost touch. Soon the stray lights of East Brandenburg would be flickering like the last sparks from a bed of embers.
He didn’t hear a thing. The flames caught hold, curling up to his window. He judged from the ochre in Veronika’s eyes, it had to be now.
His stomach jolted with the rapid downward motion of the Lysander. Letting slip the controls, ‘Jump,’ he shouted. ‘Jump!’
‘Malcolm!’
He pitched after her into the black.
Black turned to grey, then to purple. Swirling round and round, his head cushioned in air.
It seemed like forever.
* * *
The sequel to Whirl of the Wheel will be published in 2011
About the author
Born in Cambridge, UK, Catherine Condie trained as a business linguist. Her first job was in corporate communications and public relations, where she progressed as an in-house writer and magazine editor in the science community. She is also a singer/songwriter and guitarist with a catalogue of ballads and folk-pop, which she first performed in the Club Tent at the Cambridge Folk Festival at the age of 19. Catherine has been writing and publishing her children's fiction books since 2009.
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