Читать книгу Code Name Verity онлайн | страница 39

‘Number 8, Getting Caught Stealing Grapes From the Glasshouse in the Kitchen Garden. That’s another birching. Course we’re all too old now for birchings and for grape-stealing. Number 9, Killing Someone. By accident or on purpose. Did I save that German laddie’s life yesterday, or destroy it? You do it too – you tell the fighters where to find them. You’re responsible. Do you think about it?’

Maddie didn’t answer. She did think about it.

‘Perhaps it gets easier after the first time. Number 10, Getting Lost.’

Queenie glanced up from dipping Getting Lost in her tea and looked Maddie in the eye. ‘Now, I can see that you are sceptical and disinclined to believe anything I tell you. And perhaps I’m not really worried about ghosts. But I am afraid of getting lost. I hate trying to find my way around this airfield. Every Nissen hut looks the same. My God, there are forty of them! And all the taxiways and aprons seem to change every day. I keep trying to use planes for landmarks and they keep moving them around.’

Maddie laughed. ‘I felt sorry for that lost Jerry pilot yesterday,’ she said. ‘I know I shouldn’t. But I’ve seen so many of our own lads get confused, their first flight over the Pennines. Seems it shouldn’t be possible to confuse England and France. But who knows what you’re thinking when all your mates have been blown to smithereens and you’re flying a broken plane. Perhaps it was his first flight to England. I felt dead sorry for him.’

‘Yes, I did too,’ said Queenie softly, and swallowed the last of her tea as if she were throwing back a dram of whisky.

‘Was it beastly awful, questioning him?’

Queenie gave her an enigmatic little squint. ‘“Careless talk costs lives.” I’ve taken an oath not to tell about it.’

‘Oh!’ Maddie went red. ‘Of course not. Sorry.’

The wireless operator sat up straight. She looked at her ruined nails and shrugged, and patted her hair to make sure it was still in place. Then she stood up and stretched and yawned. ‘Thanks for sharing your bun,’ she said, smiling.