Читать книгу Code Name Verity онлайн | страница 34

I couldn’t have done what she just did, Maddie thought. We’d not have made this catch without her. Never mind speaking German; I couldn’t have faked it like that, just off the top of my head, no training or anything. Not sure I could manage what she’s going to have to do next either. Thank goodness I don’t speak German.

—

That night Maidsend was raided again. It wasn’t anything to do with the captured Heinkel bomber, it was just an ordinary air raid, the Luftwaffe doing their worst to try to destroy British defences. The RAF officers’ quarters were blown up (no officers in it at the time), and great big holes gouged out of the runways. The WAAF officers were quartered in the gatehouse lodge at the edge of the estate grounds that the airfield had been built on, and Maddie and her bunkmates were so dead asleep they didn’t hear the sirens. They only woke up after the first explosion. They ran through scrub woodland to the nearest shelter in their pyjamas and tin hats, clutching gas masks and ID cards. There was no light to see by except the gunfire and the exploding flames – no street lamps, no cracks of light in any doors or windows, not even the glow of a cigarette end. It was like being in hell, nothing but shadows and jumping flames and fire and stars overhead.

Maddie had grabbed an umbrella. Gas mask, tin hat, ration coupons and an umbrella. Hellfire raining down on her out of the sky and she held it off with a brolly. No one realised she had it of course, until she was struggling to get it in the door of the air-raid shelter.

‘Shut it – shut the damned thing – leave it!’

‘I’m not leaving it!’ Maddie cried, and managed to wrestle the umbrella inside. The girl behind her pushed and one of the girls ahead of her grabbed her by the arm and pulled, and then they were all trembling in the dark underground with the door shut.

A couple of them had had the sense to grab their cigarettes. They passed them around, parsimoniously sharing. There was not a single lad about – the men were quartered half a mile away on the other side of the airfield and used a different shelter – those that weren’t scrambling into aircraft to fight back. The girl with the matches found a candle, and they all settled down for the duration.