Decoy (6 page)

Ned shook his head, completely confused. ‘Sir, I understand the probable effect of a year’s blackout in the Atlantic, but I still don’t see where I fit in. Nor the chaps with diabolical cunning.’

‘That’s quite simple. Somehow — without the Germans knowing — you have to steal a Mark III Enigma with the extra wheels, and a Triton manual. As soon as possible. More coffee? Perhaps you’d give Joan a call.’

Standing in the line of men and women in front of the King, freshly starched collar biting into his neck, wondering if his tie was straight, cursing because the only shoes which took a good polish were too narrow, so that his feet hurt, and wishing he could raise his left hand, which was beginning to throb painfully, he saw her.

She was at the head of the Royal Air Force recipients. Her white hair still looked like a helmet on her head. She was wearing a severely cut pearl-grey dress and a hat whose designer had been inspired by a Glengarry. Elegant, assured — and alone. To be close to seventy and about to receive from your monarch the medals won by your only sons, who had been killed in battle, was to be alone. She might have two dozen nephews and nieces, but the inheritance — the land, the money, the invisible and indescribable something that passes from parents to children but which becomes stronger with each generation — could not now be passed on directly. Ned had realised when he sat beside her in the train that somehow she had come to terms with it. But he imagined her at first, alone at home and hearing the BBC news bulletins about fighter sweeps and bomber raids…then the first bleak telegram telling her that one son had been killed. She would have realized then that the whole future of her little world depended on the remaining son. All she had to pass on to future generations (she would not use words like ‘posterity’) was vested in this young man… And then the second telegram: a future destroyed by a few capital letters stamped out by a machine.

He shuffled along slowly as someone stepped forward, an equerry moved with a small purple cushion holding the medal, and the King picked it up, hooked it on the man or woman’s breast, said a few words… The Queen was sitting there, and one of the Princesses. It must be the elder one, Elizabeth.

Being in Buckingham Palace, among a hundred or more at the Investiture, was quite unreal. It seemed such a short time since he was on the bridge of the
Marynal
, trying desperately to think of a way to save the ships in the convoy, or standing on the bridge of the
Aztec
wondering how long such a battered destroyer could dodge German bombs and stay afloat, how long he could go on giving helm orders to keep the
Aztec
jinking, to confuse the German pilots as they began their dive. He remembered the signalman who kept calling out the number of bombs fallen and bombers shot down as though announcing football scores. Football at first; then the number of bombs began to sound like a cricket score. Curious, but he could not remember the final score before the last bomb hit the
Aztec
. Was it a hundred and thirty-eight bombs for three hits? It was all so remote from this large and high-ceilinged room which so fitted its purpose — chandeliers, a small dais where the King stood and which meant the recipient stepped up to receive the award…was that ancient Admiral some sort of chamberlain or equerry? He read each name from a list.

The fellow with crutches went up the dais without help: obviously he had made a point of being left alone. The King gave the medal and said something and then smiled as the man departed. What was going through His Majesty’s mind? He was, after all, the chief of the tribe: in front of him were a tiny few of his warriors, men and women, and he and his family stayed on at the Palace despite the bombing.

Douglas! That was the name the Admiral had just added to an RAF rank. Was it ‘squadron leader’? Anyway, the white-haired old lady was now walking up to the dais and she curtsied. The King took a medal from the cushion but spoke to her for two or three minutes. Then the equerry spoke again and Ned heard it quite clearly: ‘Squadron Leader Kevin Douglas’. The cushion was proffered and again the King took a medal.

Douglas? One of the Battle of Britain aces had been called Douglas. Was he nicknamed ‘Black Douglas’ after the Douglas famous (or infamous) in Scottish history? Squadron Leader ‘Black’ Douglas. Didn’t he have a number of Polish pilots in his squadron? It was coming back to Ned now — the cartoonist David Low had designed an eagle emblem that was the Douglas crest and the Air Ministry made a fuss and the Press was furious, so that the Air Ministry had to back down. He could imagine some ingratiating and overpaid civil servant, secure in his reserved occupation, genuflecting and saying: ‘Don’t you feel, Minister that…’ Ned only hoped that Sir Archibald Sinclair remembered which Civil Servant had given him such small-minded and spiteful advice.

Two to go. The white-haired lady had gone; three men had received their awards since then. One to go. And now step forward, avoid catching a foot on the steps of the dais without looking down.

The King looked tired, but his face was far stronger than it appeared in photographs. Naval uniform, Admiral of the Fleet. Smiling. One cushion. Incline the head, as instructed, so the King can place the ribbon of the Order round the neck.

‘The Aztecs are an interesting people, and it seems they get warlike when serving in destroyers!’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ No sign of the stammer which the King was said to have to control.

‘And your hand?’

He remembered not to move it. This was polite conversation; a metaphorical ‘How do you do,’ and not to be answered with a medical history.

‘It aches just before it’s going to rain, sir!’

‘A useful weathercock, eh? Now — ’ The King reached for the medal, ‘you’ve been busy, even if you left our neutral friends with red faces.’

Ned found himself walking away from the dais and seeing his mother’s upraised hand. She sat next to Clare, with a vacant chair beside them. Lt Cdr Edward Yorke, DSO, DSC, RN. It was official now, even though both the Order and the actual Cross would probably spend the rest of his life in their velvet lined boxes, except for the rare invitation or order which said, ‘Decorations will be worn.’

Unreal…unreal… Because of the
Aztec
’s sinking and his wound, he had been taken to St Stephen’s Hospital to save his arm from what was known in Nelson’s day as gangrene but today was called septicaemia, and he had met Clare. Then to the ASIU and briefly to sea again. Now, with Clare and his mother, they were all at a Buckingham Palace Investiture and he had an Order slung round his neck and a Cross pinned to his chest.

Clare tapped his knee and leaned over so she could whisper in his ear. ‘I saw an old friend collect medals for two airmen. Why would she be doing that?’

She? There had been several women receiving decorations which they had won, but only one received posthumous awards. ‘Do you mean the white-haired woman in a grey dress?’

‘Yes, Lady Kelso.’

‘She was receiving medals for her two sons. Both have been killed.’

When he saw Clare’s face go white he knew he had not been paying enough attention.

‘Boldro and Kevin? Dead?’

Ned nodded miserably as he saw tears forming in Clare’s eyes. ‘Poor Jeannie,’ she murmured, ‘now she’s all alone.’

It took twenty minutes to complete the Investiture and then recipients and relatives slowly filed out of the great room, and Ned realized that they were a cross-section of Britain at war. An aircraftman pink with shyness marched stiffly with either his wife or fiancée; a jaunty leading seaman with the DCM led out his mother and father. A Navy captain with a DSO was alone — victim of distance and divorce? A turbaned Sikh with a medal Ned did not recognize stopped and gazed round the room, as if soaking up enough memories to last him a lifetime. An ATS girl had a BEM and led proud parents, the mother wearing a flowered dress more appropriate to a summer garden party than a winter Investiture. RAF pilots, a Fleet Air Arm pilot, and the man on crutches, who now had a very beautiful Asiatic woman with him. Balinese, Javanese, Indochinese? Ned was far from sure, but both were proud of each other.

As they walked towards the door and through into the long corridor they began to lose their shyness and started talking. Ned detected dozens of accents — a WAAF from Wales, another from the Midlands and another, judging by her father’s proud booming voice, from Yorkshire. An RAFVR pilot officer with a DFC tried to quieten his mother, whose penetrating tone bore a close resemblance to a Hampshire vicar’s overbearing wife.

Then he heard a briefly familiar soft voice behind them. ‘It’s Clare isn’t it? And looking bonnie.’

Boldro or Kevin? Did they know Clare’s husband, the homosexual pilot killed before finishing his training course? She had not loved him, but after his death had she loved Boldro or Kevin? Had his meeting with the white-haired old trout on the train been a ghastly coincidence? Doubt, jealousy, anger, each chased through him as Clare stopped and clasped the woman to her with a stifled: ‘Jeannie, oh Jeannie!’ How the devil did she come to know the woman, if not through a son?

Ned and his mother waited, and then Clare, holding the woman’s hand, turned to introduce her. ‘Mrs Yorke… Commander Yorke, my fiancé… I want you to meet the Countess of Kelso, Jeannie Douglas.’

‘I’ve already met your fiancé,’ the woman said. ‘In fact, young man, I think we can shock them by admitting we spent the night together only a few days ago!’

The plump mother of a soldier who was passing at that moment, and heard only the last dozen words, stopped with popping eyes and exclaimed, ‘’Ere, jew ’ear that?’ as her husband pulled her away. ‘Ayemeentersay, at ’
er
age, it’s…’ By now Ned and the three women were listening to her outraged comments and all of them were smiling at the determined husband’s back.

‘It’s no compliment that you accept my announcement so calmly, Clare,’ the woman said.

‘If you were thirty years younger I’d know I was beaten,’ a smiling Clare admitted, ‘but now I can give you a run for your money. Come on, we are in the way,’ and she led them along the corridor. Olive-green suits her, Ned thought. He had not seen that dress before.

There was a pause as medals were put away in velvet-lined boxes, and his mother insisted Clare carried both of his, while the Countess put her three into her worn, alligator skin handbag, saying simply: ‘The newspapers,’ by way of explanation.

As they left the Palace building and walked across the wide courtyard at the front to where the Guardsmen stood at the gates and here and there a policeman looked round at the small waiting crowd of sightseers, they saw occasional sudden spurts of white light from the flash bulbs of the newspaper photographers.

‘I’m dreading this,’ the Countess said, pulling down her hat more firmly. ‘Let me be in the middle, and behind you, Commander Yorke, then perhaps they won’t notice me.’

For a few moments Ned was irritated. The old woman seemed to be making a meal out of it: the loudest cries for anonymity usually came from those who resented having it thrust upon them. After all, she was not the only Countess in the land, or the first mother to collect posthumous awards.

As they passed through the gates a photographer swung round.

‘The Countess of Kelso? Hold it, ma’am!’ The flash blinded them and they involuntarily stopped, and the photographer feverishly turned the plate at the back of the camera and fitted another flash bulb, calling: ‘Just one more, ma’am!’

By now four other photographers were crouching or squatting, cameras clicking and flash bulbs exploding, and Ned heard one say urgently to another: ‘This is ’er, isn’t it?’

The photographers were grouped in front of them and there was no chance of moving so Ned, with an apologetic: ‘You’re trapped,’ moved to one side to give the photographers a clear view.

As soon as they had finished, half a dozen waiting reporters crowded round and began calling questions.

‘Lady Kelso, did you ask for Spitfires because your sons –?’

‘ — cost of them? We understand the bill will be — ’

‘ — name them? After each son, perhaps?’

‘ —
Glasgow Herald
, ma’am, so perhaps you would care — ’

She held up a hand firmly. ‘Gentleman, you’re all asking questions at once and I can’t understand a word you’re saying. We’ve got all day and if my friend Commander Yorke will be kind enough to act as a master of ceremonies — ’

With his back to the newspapermen, Ned whispered urgently: ‘What’s happened? They’re not interested in just the medals.’

‘I’ve just paid for two Spitfires,’ she said quietly. ‘The Douglases haven’t finished with Hitler yet. The wretched Air Ministry had to announce it to coincide with the Investiture.’

Ned turned to the newspapermen. ‘Very well, gentlemen, ask your questions. You — ’ he pointed to a stocky, grey-haired man on the left. ‘Why don’t you start?’

‘Aye.
Aberdeen Free Press
, m’Lady. Will the Spitfires be named after your sons?’

Ned turned and she looked at him. ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ she murmured.

‘I think it would be a very good idea. Will you tell the men yourself?’ He stood to one side and the Countess stepped forward, a tiny but resolute figure. By now there were passers-by standing two or three deep behind the newspapermen, and a policeman was among them.

‘Yes… I want to call the aeroplanes…’ Ned guessed she was trying to think of a phrase, and leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

‘I want to call the aeroplanes “The Kelso Reply”. I hope the Royal Air Force men can paint that on each aeroplane…with the name “Boldro Douglas” under one, and “Kevin Douglas” under the other.’

‘With the crest, ma’am?’

‘That would mean a lot of work for the artist.’

‘I doubt they’ll mind,’ said the reporter in his calm Aberdonian accent.

Ned pointed to the next man. ‘The
Telegraph
. My Lady, are there any other Douglases to carry on the fight?’