Page 30 of The Island Girls

‘Morning, Peggy,’ said Charlie cheerily when he met her at the launch. ‘You’re looking very well today. Have you had a nice time with that young airman of yours?’ he asked, and she started a little at this question – too personal for Charlie to ask his new superior. Suddenly, everything in Peggy’s world had changed. Was Charlie who he seemed to be? Was anyone she knew in Poole to be trusted? She had to question everything. Report everything. Trust no one.

‘Yes, thank you, Charlie. And what have you been up to?’ she asked, just a little more curtly than usual.

‘Nothing much. Just pottering about,’ he replied absently.

‘We’ve a busy day ahead today. We’re taking the crew and passengers from theClareinto Salterns Marina and then running back to the quay where we will be picking up some VIPs from Major Carter at the pottery. They’ll have come in direct from the night train, apparently, and we are needed to drivethem up to the Harbour Heights Hotel. There are three people and each needs to be in a separate car, for some strange reason,’ Peggy told Charlie as they set off towards the main runway.

After the launch trip was complete, they walked down to the pottery where Rose Stevens stood waiting for them beside two cars.

‘You and Charlie are to take one car, Peggy, and I’ll take the other. Major Carter has gone ahead to the train station in his private car. We will meet him there, then we’ll take the three passengers separately to the Harbour Heights Hotel,’ Rose explained.

‘Who are they, Rose? This all seems like a lot of trouble.’

‘You’ll see,’ Rose replied with a face that told Peggy she was in for a surprise.

She thought again about her mission, and wondered if Charlie should even be here, as new as he was to the team, though she was determined to prove Fletcher wrong about him.

‘Do we need Charlie too? I’m sure there’s plenty of work for him to handle on the boat and I can drive quite well on my own,’ she offered.

‘It will be good for Charlie to see some more of what we do, Peggy. No problem to have him along with you,’ said Rose lightly.

Peggy sighed deeply, feeling the weight of her new knowledge.

When they arrived at the train station, Major Carter was talking with a very recognisable figure. Peggy couldn’t believe her eyes.

‘Is that…? It can’t be,’ she said in awe as a familiarly stooped figure in a long coat, a bowler hat and smoking a cigar shuffled from the platform and into the back of Major Carter’s car. Another vaguely familiar gentleman was directed to Rose’s vehicle and a third, whom Peggy did not recognise at all, was ledtowards the back seat of the car she would be driving. Peggy sat in the driver’s seat and Rose ducked her head into the window and spoke in a hushed tone, giving Peggy the only information she was going to get.

‘You’ll recognise the prime minister, who is going with Major Carter, Peggy, and I’ll be taking General de Gaulle. Your passenger is Mr Menzies, the visiting Australian prime minister, but it is enough to call him “sir”,’ she said, then disappeared back to her own vehicle. Peggy was so stunned, she wondered if she would remember how to drive.

‘Women drivers, hey?’ Mr Menzies asked in a tone and accent that was instantly recognisable to Peggy, having spent so much time with Darrell.

‘Yes, Mr Menzies, sir, I’m afraid so. They’ve issued us with all the right moving parts to operate a clutch successfully,’ she said, biting her tongue the moment the words had left her mouth. But she had nothing to fear, and her passenger laughed heartily, understanding her sense of humour perfectly as she set off. Charlie remained silent in the front seat, seeming even more stunned than Peggy by the presence of international dignitaries.

As the motorcade drove away from the station, and everyone’s eyes had been on the VIPs and the cars, nobody noticed the lone man who stood leaning against the wall of the train station, his hat pulled low and his face hidden as he held his cigarette close. He watched them leave, then checked his watch and walked off into town quickly.

When they arrived at the Harbour Heights, and she and Charlie stepped out to help with the doors, she heard the unmistakably French accent of the leader of the Free French, General de Gaulle.

‘Goodness gracious, Rose, whatever is going on?’ Peggy whispered when the gentlemen had been ushered inside the hotel. Peggy was stunned to think that she, a simple fisherman’sdaughter from Poole, had just been in the presence of the prime ministers of England and Australia and the man who ought to be prime minister of France.

‘We have no idea, Peggy – ours is not to wonder, just to do our bit with the passenger services, be they by land, sea, or sky. Now remember, both of you: you’ve seen nothing and no one of any interest, rightio?’ Rose asked them, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Loose lips and all that.’

‘No problem at all, Rose. Passengers is all they are, just like the others,’ said Charlie confidently. Peggy simply nodded, with an expression that showed exactly how stunned she was, and why she could not speak, and now she wondered how on earth she was ever going to keep this quiet from Molly and her parents. And Darrell.

Later that night, after the day that Peggy knew had changed her life forever, she poured herself a cup of tea and took it upstairs to her room where she sat at her dressing table and stared out of her small bedroom window, which looked over Poole Harbour and towards Brownsea. She thought about the danger there was to each one of them all the time that Hitler was at large. Her brother Samuel, Molly’s husband Bill, Darrell – all of them. If there was a risk that there might be a spy in Poole, she had to do everything in her power to stop them. And she knew, then, that she had the strength to do it.

16

BROWNSEA ISLAND – JULY 1998

Rebekah would never forget her first kiss with Paul. She had reached up to his lips on pure instinct, and with no thought process whatsoever. She had no expectations. But what happened next would explode sensations and desires she hadn’t even imagined could still linger within her, after the hell she’d been through with Andy.

Paul stood perfectly still, allowing her to hold the kiss for as long as she wanted. But when she pulled away, after what seemed a lifetime of connection, and looked into his soul for his response, he kissed her back. He dropped the satchel on the ground beside him, gently rested his hands on her shoulders, and bent down to touch his lips against hers, lightly at first.

But when she sighed, there was a hint of a groan in her voice, a sound that opened the floodgates for Paul. She had stepped back and found herself leaning on the wall and he’d pushed forward, kissing her with an urgency and strength of passion that spoke of nearly lost chances, and hope found again. And when he finally pulled back and they eased apart, Rebekah felt as though the last five days had simply melted away.

‘Welcome to my island,’ she said with a cheeky smile, and led him by the hand through reception to where he could collect his keys to the cottage for the weekend.

‘You’ve chosen the cutest little cottage to stay in,’ she said, after explaining to the accommodation manager that Paul was a friend of hers. ‘It was only an office and a couple of storerooms back in the day when it operated as a Custom House, but now it’s a tiny studio cottage with a little kitchen and bathroom. It’s perfect for one or two people for a few nights,’ she explained.

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