She pulled her hand back, but not before I saw her fingers trembling. “Alan Anderson. Cannon fire from a German warship. They think. At any rate he didn’t come back either.”

She pointed to the coin nearest the bar, by itself at the edge of the mantel. “Mr. Campbell,” she said softly. “My Duncan. His dad ran the place before I took over. I worked behind the bar for them.”

Jane gave a soft little sigh. “Oh, Nancy!”

Then an unearthly shriek tore that moment apart. The hair on my spine stood on end—but of course it was just the kettle coming to a boil.

“Tea?” Jane added. “You are kind!”

Mrs. Campbell wiped her hands on her pinny and took the kettle off the hob. “I was going to have a cup anyway,” she said grudgingly. “But I’ll make enough for three.”

She clattered about with a teapot and china behind the bar. As she left the tea to stew she turned to me and demanded, “Ration coupons.”

She made it feel as if she wouldn’t give us the tea without them, though I knew she just needed our tickets to get extra supplies for our meals when she did her shopping. I had to run upstairs to get them. Over the coconut matting, down the dark passage—strange to think this was my home now.

Back downstairs again, out of breath as I handed over our booklets, I looked up at the modern coins shining in the beam over the bar.

“Those belong to the 648 Squadron lads,” said Mrs. Campbell, following my eyes. “From when they were based at Windyedge.” Her hard face softened, as it had when she’d talked about the airmen from the last war. “They always prepaid their drinks. Their squadron is up in Shetland now.”

“Will they come back?” I asked.

“Let’s hope so,” said Nancy Campbell. “RAF Windyedge doesn’t feel right without a squadron at the aerodrome. Those lads at the antiaircraft guns on the perimeter haven’t a thing to do other than smoke and play bridge and read the papers all day. Coastal Command is just asking for trouble, in my opinion.”

Ellen:

When he pressed the gun against my head, I moaned with fear, and everybody in the radio room clapped eyes on me. They all gasped together. How could one German pilot so handily get the better of a dozen Royal Air Force ground crewmen?

“What’s he doing here?” I cried out. He hadn’t told me to keep quiet. “Why did you let him land?”

The radio operator, whom we called Old Flash because he was about ten years older than everybody else, was the only one who seemed to ken what was going on.

“We had to,” he told me. “Orders. He has a code name on our list. He transmitted it correctly. Someone in Intelligence expected him.”

“What are you all doing in here, then?” I gasped.