‘Certainly, but that is not the way we do things in the army.’

  ‘Then it’s about time you worked out how to use what you’ve got. And you’ve got me. I’m the fastest they’d ever seen at Rouen, sir,’ she said impatiently. This was no time for modesty. ‘Look, I can even attach the cable to the portable machine. Give me a knife, pliers and some cable.’

  Major Galbraith stared at her. Finally he said, ‘Seabrook, find Miss McLain a knife, pliers and some cable.’

  They waited in silence for a few moments. Seabrook returned and handed Jean a pocketknife, crusted with what she hoped was mud and not dried blood, a pair of pliers, and cable, shattered at both ends.

  Jean took them. It had been years since she’d done this, helping her brothers with their crystal radio sets and other home-made gadgets, but her fingers, used to knitting and embroidery, had been more nimble than theirs.

  She took out her hanky — any speck of dirt on the wires inside the cable wrapping might interrupt transmission — spat on it, and cleaned the knife and cable. She quickly peeled back the covering from one end of the cable, exposing the black and red wires, peeled back their covers too, then touched the black end to the knob for the black wire, and the red wire to the other knob.

  She looked back to find Major Galbraith’s expression hard to read. Lieutenant Seabrook though was visibly amazed and admiring. ‘That took her less than two minutes, sir.’

  ‘I presume you don’t want me to disconnect the present cable and attach this temporarily,’ said Jean. She added, ‘Sir.’

  ‘No,’ said Major Galbraith. To Jean’s surprise he looked almost despairing. ‘Can you do that under fire? Hiding in a shell hole with men dying around you? Because that’s what you’ll be facing.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Jean honestly. ‘I won’t know till it happens. But I know how to focus under pressure, and not be distracted. I’ve worked eighteen-hour shifts doing both sending and transmitting, and never made a mistake.’

  She hesitated, unwilling to shock him by saying things no nice young girl would say, but she had no other way to convince him. ‘I’ve helped a midwife deliver a baby that was stuck.’ That had been when Mrs Robinson collapsed at the post office.

  ‘The midwife had to use a knife. I helped when she stitched the mother up again. The baby died. I didn’t scream or have hysterics then. I just did my best. Women face pain and death too, sir. You have to know that most of the ambulance drivers out there are women volunteers, and you know what they face, rescuing men under fire night after night. Don’t ever think I can’t do something because I’m female. No one can offer better communications to support your unit than I can.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re just a girl!’

  ‘I’m twenty-one, am I not?’ She looked at him, daring him to say the army had lied to get her there. And he had not thought she was a kid on the deck of that troopship, though she’d been wrapped in a blanket and life jacket then, in the darkness, so he probably hadn’t realised just how young she was when he’d begun to flirt with her.

  ‘I have been working at headquarters for months, sir. They know I’m good and can work under pressure. They think I can do the job, too.’ She met his eyes defiantly, aware that she had not quite told the truth. If there had been any man at all to send, even if he had only half her skill, they would have sent him instead.

  He glared at her, his jaw set, then slumped. ‘Corporal Geoghegan?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Fetch Miss McLain a pair of overalls.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Major Galbraith turned back to Jean. ‘You may be able to run, but not fast enough in skirts.’

  ‘I don’t have any trousers to wear under them, sir. This is my official uniform. But I can run faster than you may think, and probably as fast as a man carrying a heavy box.’

  ‘You will wear overalls, not a skirt, and I’ll have two men assigned to you to take turns carrying the machine. You understand you will sleep here, with the machine? There’s no one to relieve you. You have to be ready to send or receive at all times.’

  She could doze in between messages. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It seems we need to make the best of this, as there’s no alternative. Lieutenant Seabrook or Lieutenant McEwain will prepare the messages for you, and decode any you receive.’ Major Galbraith hesitated. ‘I carry a copy of the code at all times, if it is necessary for you to have access to it.’

  He meant he could decode the messages if the lieutenants were killed. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Seabrook, prepare a message to say she has arrived. No, better make that the package sent from Rouen has arrived. Then show Miss McLain Alistair’s dug-out. You can change into the overalls there,’ he added to Jean. ‘Use the sandbag as a latrine. It’s the only privacy we can give you, but don’t spend too long away from the headphones. Your duty is to be ready to send or receive at all times.’

  ‘I don’t want to take someone’s dug-out, sir.’

  ‘You’re not. He’s dead.’

  He left them.

  Chapter 17

  SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1917

  The deceased Alistair’s dug-out had hardly room enough to turn round, but it did have several sandbags, one of which she used with the help of her trenching tool. The overalls were far too big; nor did she want to put them on over just her underwear, even though she was wearing two pairs of combinations for warmth. She folded her skirt up around her waist instead, fastening it with a belt, then put the overalls over the top.

  It was still far too large, even over the bulk of her skirt, bloomers and combinations, but she rolled up the sleeves and the trouser legs and hoped she might have a chance to sew them up properly, then put her coat and helmet back on, then hung her trenching tool, pliers, knife and gas mask from the belt. She wished she could add some Anzac trousers, but newspaper would get too wet to be useful here.

  She was about to haul her kitbag with her back to the main dug-out, then realised they might be ordered to leave with little notice and that she’d be moving too quickly to carry it. She quickly partially undressed again and put on her entire stock of underwear, including three pairs of socks, stowed more socks and her extra sanitary rags in her bloomer pockets, then shoved her sewing kit into the coat pockets with the bars of chocolate.

  A sudden shell blast made her jump, and a trickle of dirt came through the planks. But the shots she’d heard today had all been large ones, she realised: the kind that came from a distance. This was ‘the front’ only because it was the nearest point to the enemy, who had retreated.

  Soon the Allies would take the front to them.

  Lieutenant Seabrook stood politely when she came back into the dug-out, even though he was an officer. A folded blanket sat by the Morse code machine, with what she saw with joy was a proper hot cup of tea, with a pannikin of stew next to it.

  ‘The major said to tell you the water was boiled for the tea,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook. ‘The stew is just p-pork and beans, except no one can find the p-pork, but it’s a dashed sight nicer than bully beef, and I don’t think you’d like army biscuits.’

  ‘I’ve already eaten too many of them. Though even one is too many. If you run out of shells you might try using them instead.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d f-fit,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook.

  Right, no sense of humour, thought Jean. She sat, gulped down the tea gratefully, then took the piece of paper Lieutenant Seabrook handed her. The message was so short she could probably have worked out the cipher — she supposed it just said this area was now sending and receiving messages, assuming Major Galbraith hadn’t changed his mind again about sending for a replacement. She put on the headphones, adjusted them, and sent it, handing Lieutenant Seabrook back the paper to shred.

  ‘My, that w-was quick,’ he said as Jean copied down the return letters, which she presumed simply said, Message received, then silence, except for the hiss and splutter from the headphones, slightly more hiss and far more splutter than at Rouen.

  She moved one of the headphones from her ear so she could hear what was happening around her as well as any code that might come through, and began to eat her beans, which did indeed have the faintest hint of pork in the gravy.

  ‘Better than rice,’ she remarked. ‘We seemed to be eating rice all the time at the base at Rouen — that’s where I was before.’

  ‘Rice is very n-nutritious,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook.

  Jean swallowed another mouthful. ‘What were you doing before you joined up?’ She suddenly realised she should have called him ‘sir’, but he seemed so young and so nervous, and he had not objected.

  ‘I was an accounts clerk in a drapery. This is my first p-posting,’ he admitted. ‘I . . . I’m not good for much, so they have me doing the codes, and inspecting the men every day for trench foot, and making sure they have their weapons at the ready, though I’m sure they all know what to do far better than I do.’

  ‘You decoded the message quickly,’ she said, to try to make him feel better.

  ‘Not really. I recognised it,’ he said, confirming her guess at its contents. ‘Um, why don’t you get some sleep? There may not be another message tonight.’

  ‘The whole night?’ She was used to sending or receiving almost constantly for twelve hours or more at a stretch. But she could sleep, she realised. She would love to sleep. She put the headphones back on more firmly, not just so she’d wake if a message came through, but because it also shut out the noise of explosions, which were distant, certainly, but still close enough to feel their vibrations. She put her head down on the table and slept.

  She woke once, for a longish message, wrote it down then dozed again while Lieutenant Seabrook decoded it. She woke as he cautiously touched her shoulder. ‘Major Galbraith dictated a reply,’ he said.

  She transmitted it, half asleep, her hands on automatic, copied down a response that was exactly like the first message received, and put her head down again.

  The next time she woke it was to find a rat almost nose to nose with her. She started back as the rat looked shocked too, then vanished. Jean sat and realised a large pannikin of tea sat next to her, with another pannikin holding a big hunk of bread, a smaller hunk of cheese, and a piece of cold bacon probably too small for the rat to bother with.

  ‘Breakfast is served,’ said a voice behind her. She turned to find Major Galbraith watching her with some amusement. ‘I thought you’d scream at the rat.’

  ‘A gentleman would have shot it with his pistol,’ she said, blinking, and trying not to scratch at things crawling over her back and down her front. Lice, she thought, remembering gossip at Rouen, and nothing she could do about them until there was a place to wash herself thoroughly, and wash her clothes too, every single layer of them.

  ‘A gentleman decided you wouldn’t want pieces of rat all over your breakfast.’

  ‘The gentleman was right,’ she said with feeling. ‘Sir,’ she added quickly.

  ‘No need to say “sir” when we’re alone.’ He sat in the chair Lieutenant Seabrook had used. ‘I don’t suppose you want the morning’s rum ration?’

  She smiled and shook her head, then took a long gulp of tea, wonderfully hot and tasting only slightly of petrol.

  ‘Cigarettes? We get the fortnight’s ration today.’ Major Galbraith was joking — no respectable young woman smoked.

  She relaxed a little, and shook her head. ‘Congratulations on your promotions.’

  He shrugged. ‘Promotions on the field. An officer died, I acted in his position, and each time it was confirmed. At this rate I might make general by Christmas, except no general would put himself in danger. I told Seabrook to take a couple of hours off. He’s not doing too well out here.’

  ‘He seems . . . uncertain . . .’

  ‘He’s only just keeping his panic under control.’ The amusement had gone. ‘I need to make sure it stays under control.’

  ‘Because you need every man you have?’

  ‘That too. But mostly because if he panics and tries to run away or refuses to advance I’d have to shoot him, or at the least refer him to a firing squad. I haven’t had to do that to any man yet,’ he added. ‘I’ve been lucky.’

  She stared. ‘You’d really shoot him if he was too scared to keep going?’

  ‘That’s what’s done. If one man runs away, others will follow. If one man cowers and screams, others panic too. He has nightmares,’ Major Galbraith added.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it’s my job to know.’

  ‘Send him away from the front then!’

  ‘I wish I could,’ he said wearily. ‘There’re half a dozen men here who are close to breaking point, shell-shock cases. But the army doesn’t recognise shell shock any more, and that gives me nightmares, too.’

  He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. ‘I’m doing what I can to keep him safe, to keep them all safe. Decoding messages with you made him a bit calmer. But I have to follow orders too. Once I’m ordered to advance I have to order the men to advance, no matter what the odds. I gather you know what’s going to happen when we move out?’

  ‘They told you what I knew in the message?’

  ‘Just that you had been briefed. No one else here knows what the plan is,’ Major Galbraith added. ‘But there are rumours. They all know something is up.’

  ‘I know . . . what’s planned,’ she said cautiously. ‘I don’t know when.’

  ‘Neither do I. Just that it will be soon — in the next few days. I’m praying the plan works, and it’s not just another slaughter. I’m sorry I gave you such a poor welcome. You have enormous courage to have volunteered for this.’

  ‘I didn’t volunteer,’ she admitted. ‘I was asked. It would have taken more courage to turn it down.’

  ‘But you could have.’

  ‘And lived with the knowledge I was needed and failed to do my duty? No, I don’t think I could.’

  Major Galbraith simply nodded. She suspected he felt exactly the same. ‘I’m glad you survived the shipwreck. I’d have come to find you afterwards, but the ship that picked us up went directly to France.’

  ‘A troopship rescued you, not a fishing boat?’

  He nodded. ‘After you dived overboard I helped launch a lifeboat — they did get one down, though half the people in it were crushed when it swung against the ship. I ended up diving off too, but the lifeboat picked me up once they got it down and launched, and then a troopship arrived — it had responded to our distress signal — and took us to France. You must have been swimming in the other direction — we were closer to England than France when the U-boat got us.’

  ‘The man who sent the signal, did he survive?’

  ‘No,’ said Major Galbraith quietly. ‘I was told he kept transmitting till the ship sank.’

  He had been Major Galbraith’s friend. She would ask his name, when this was all over, if they survived it, and where they’d erected his memorial. There would be one, even if his body hadn’t been recovered for a grave. It had been his duty, inescapable, to keep transmitting right until the end, so the survivors would have the best possible chance of rescue as other ships came into range.

  ‘Your brothers?’ he asked.

  ‘William was temporarily blinded by gas, but he’s back with his unit. Arthur is . . .’ She grinned. ‘I know exactly where Arthur is, but the censor will never know how.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Secret.’

  ‘Ah, good girl. And are you sending secret messages to your parents and brothers with pin-holes in the paper, or dots and dashes over the letter i?’

  He’d guessed she sent code, but not how: you couldn’t send much more than a word or two with dots and dashes only over every i. ‘There’s been nothing much to send,’ she equivocated. ‘I’ve been at Rouen the whole time till I came here. The censor left in my description of the Seine at twilight, so my parents probably guessed where I was from that.’ William would have described their meeting when he saw Mama and Papa in England, so she hadn’t had to hide that in a letter too.

  ‘You know how this advance is going to proceed?’ Major Galbraith said slowly.

  She supposed he meant the tanks. She nodded.

  ‘No one else does. None of us here knows when. It might even be today. They wouldn’t send you here unless it was imminent.’ Major Galbraith hesitated, as outside shells throbbed and broke the earth and men. ‘Miss McLain, I probably shouldn’t say this. In fact I know I shouldn’t say it. It is against all regulations and not the conduct of an officer and a gentleman . . .’

  What on earth is he going to tell me? she wondered.

  ‘You are also much younger than I thought you were on the ship. But even so . . .’ He hesitated again, then continued. ‘I admire what you are doing here more than I can say, although that is not why I hope one day we will meet again, under very different circumstances. Somewhere. . . somewhere where we have time, and can talk freely . . .’

  And when we have a better chance of surviving the next week, she thought.

  He met her eyes. ‘I hope it is a place and time where I can ask you out to afternoon tea, with scones and teacakes and a pianist in the corner perhaps, instead of bringing you a pannikin of cold bacon.’

  ‘There’s not a pannikin’s worth of bacon in there.’

  He gave a faint smile. ‘I gave you my share, and so did Lieutenant Seabrook. Don’t complain. If I ask you to afternoon tea, would you say yes? You can even bring a chaperone if you like. No, don’t answer that,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s why officers and WAACs aren’t supposed to fraternise, so you don’t feel pressured into saying you’ll go out with your commanding officer.’

  ‘I’m not pressured. I would like to go to afternoon tea. I would especially love to go to afternoon tea if it doesn’t have any rice, beans or bully beef, and has enormous numbers of scones with lots of butter.’ She looked at him shyly over her pannikin. ‘But I would like to simply go for a walk with you, even if no scones are possible.’