The Spy by Marc Eden Page B

To the south, where the coast curved, waves of heat billowed from the tar sealed road. She stared out the window.
    The bus passed the Gloucester.
    She glanced back, but the cause of her uneasiness wasn’t there.
    Valerie closed her eyes, remembering the Royal. She heard the orchestra playing, the assertive baritones of the officers, asking her to dance. As she moved about the floor, her reverie was interrupted by the shrill and irritable voices of two small children, across the aisle, struggling with their nanny burdened with bags of white-papered packages, reeking of offal and fish. To calm them, the nanny was getting them to chant “Humpty Dumpty.”
    ABBOTSBURY , the sign said....
    Famous for its swannery. Round and round went the royal swans, in endless circles of stillness, like the women, having nothing else to do, who came to watch them. Could one cook them, like a goose? Weren’t their feathers coated with grease? She wondered if swans were good to eat.
    Maybe the necks...
    There was no telling what she might have to eat in France. Her thoughts returning to the Royal, she wished for a cigarette. Clementine Churchill had sent her a nice letter, on paper that smelled of jasmine, remarking she would see what she could do in recommending her for a better job. It had been some time, she still hadn’t heard.
    She scratched her nose.
    As the country flew behind her, photos of the Dorset Coast, called locally “Golden Cap,” filled her mind; and she thought of the vicarage: the sheer and dangerous slope of grass that ran down to the cliff. Blocked by a hedge, roots crawled over the edge to a straight drop of five hundred feet. Once, when she was ten, she had fought her way through, emerging on the lip of the precipice. She took pictures of it. After, she had stared at the slow-moving waters far below, white-topped breakers smashing into the rocky channel coast.
    Children do that.
    Climbing down fifty feet, she had climbed back up.
    Actually, nothing had been too daring for her to try: if the boys could do it, she could. If they called her bluff, she would leave them standing. Later, fierce fights ensued, after they stole two of her mother’s chickens. Her mother, Alma, had got them as chicks through a mail-order advert, appointing her daughter their guardian. Valerie felt honored, but after studying the mental processes of the birds for a few weeks, she had concluded that their brains were still waiting to arrive in the mail.
    When she walked into the vicarage, Newton Swyre, her parents—Vicar Edward Crewe and his wife, Alma—were having afternoon tea. Surprised to see her, she could sense their irritation. Strangers, friends of her mother’s, were on hand: a plethora of voices. Hurried introductions...names lost in the air. “Mama!” Brian, her little boy, fighting his way through a sea of legs, ran towards her shouting, “Are you going to take me back, Mama?”
    She could see her father, standing darkly in the doorway.
    â€œYes, love.”
    But the boy would be safe, here at the vicarage, away from the rockets and explosions in the cities: the children must be protected. Besides, Lieutenant Carrington had insisted—oh yes! her mother made that clear—which got her guests talking about the navy again. A woman Valerie didn’t know asked her where they’d be sending her next. Word for word, the girl parroted Hamilton’s line. Weren’t the bombs still falling at Southampton? No, Valerie assured them, they were falling on London.
    Fans fluttered in the heat.
    Brian, heavy with ice cream, was put to bed for a nap. The grownups prepared to play cards. Annoyed that she had not called first, her parents attended to their invited guests.
    Valerie walked alone over to the church.
    Bushes of yellow gorse pushed in upon the road, heavy with the smell of summer’s heat. Old oak trees, gnarled from centuries of British history, stood massive sentinels