Under a Wartime Sky

LIZ TRENOW

Under a Wartime Sky

Contents

PROLOGUE: December 1973

PART ONE: THE MAGIC EYE

1: July 1936

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

PART TWO: WAR

18: May 1940

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

EPILOGUE: December 1973

A note on the history that inspired Under A Wartime Sky

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In Love and War

1: RUBY: July 1919

This book is dedicated to our

great friends Niels and Ann Toettcher,

without whom I would never have come

to know and love Bawdsey Manor.

‘The bomb may have ended

the war but radar won it.’

Louis Brown,

A Radar History of World War II

PROLOGUE

December 1973

The town seems to hunch its back against the bitter easterlies; the beach and pleasure gardens are deserted. But the shopping streets are decked in full Christmas plumage and throngs of shoppers flutter like moths towards the glitter of the lights. Children in colourful bobble hats and scarves are gathered around the memorial cross, defiantly shouting out their carols into the biting wind.

He recalls the place in wartime, grey and brown, the streets down at heel and fearful, the beach barricaded with barbed wire, tank traps and pillboxes. In his current mood, he would have preferred it that way. Fleeing from the festivities, he steers his old Volvo to the left, not wanting to risk driving past the station, where he first set eyes on her. His heart recoils. He cannot bring himself even to think her name.

At last, having managed to navigate without mishap the dimly recalled grid of residential streets, he finds himself driving along the familiar undulations of the Ferry Road. It is so misty he can see nothing on either side of the road, although he knows that on a good day he would be able to see the river meandering, snake-like and sparkling, through the marshes to his left, and to his right would be the golf course leading to dunes and beyond to the North Sea.

Half a mile further on, just before the road runs into the river, he pulls up beside the Martello tower and climbs stiffly out of the car, gasping as the chill, sharp wind slices like a scalpel through the loose weave of his old tweed jacket. Curtains of salt spray slap his face. He’d forgotten how wild and unprotected this lonely spit of land could feel; how the weather seems to come at you from all directions.

But he is here for a purpose. He returns to the car, grabs his small case and walks briskly along the rutted road, ignoring the inviting twinkle of Christmas lights in the windows of the Ferry Boat Inn and the tea room. The mouth of the estuary looks as treacherous as ever, a maw of rushing tides meeting the oncoming North Sea in a maelstrom of eddies that have been known to cast even experienced sailors onto the sandbanks.