As requested, I emptied out my pockets on arrival. Sergeant Nolan, assigned as my special trainer ahead of the next mission, rifled through my meagre accoutrements. Like a magpie choosing shiny objects to enliven its nest.
"Your ration book has been cancelled, Willis" he told me. "This is a hotel, the staff will see to your needs."
He locked everything away in a small safe behind reception - including my identity card. He pocketed the key. Clearly, I was here for the duration of whatever extra training was required ahead of my next mission.
I didn't mention the tatty notebook and contrastingly neat propeller pencil stashed in a deep inside jacket pocket. I'm using them now, hoping the light scratching won't be picked up by any keyhole prowler or new-fangled listening device secreted in my single room. There's a small iron bed, a one-person wardrobe with six hangers, plus a porcelain washstand. The décor is rather chintzy except for the lampshade which, fashioned in painted Bakelite, is like something from the police interrogation room in a Hollywood gangster film.
From the window, I've got a decent view of the heather-covered hills. I might take a local stroll tomorrow if my sensible shoes are up to the vagaries of the Scottish weather and changeable climate. Maybe Nolan will issue me with army boots. Size 9.
*
Nolan had escorted me up from London, hurrying me along at the station tea bar and allowing me only a brief perusal of the offerings from the W. H. Smith concession.
"No newspapers," he insisted. "Buy yourself a Penguin book for the journey if you have to."
I think I surprised him that my tastes tended more towards Stendhal, Zola and Dostoyevsky than the latest repackaging of Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown stories. He sat opposite me in our private compartment aboard "The Flying Scotsman" and barely managed two words throughout the entire journey. But I was used to taciturn companions in my line of work. "Loose lips sink ships" and all that.
From Glasgow Central, we were driven a bone-jarring too many miles in a rickety delivery van commandeered for military use. The very young driver tried to start up a conversation but was shushed by the sergeant. The seat leather had worn away in places and the vehicle stank of expired Woodbines. We were delivered some distance still from our destination, with the bridge and the approach road deemed too muddy for the jalopy's nearly bald tyres. I was pleased to breathe some fresh Highland air, even though the omnipresent damp would doubtless get into my lungs and give me pneumonia in double-quick time.
*
"Go easy on the breakfast, Willis. We've got PT at nine-thirty."
I still treasured my hard-won college track and field medals, safely ensconced in a deposit box at Barclays Bank near Piccadilly. I wanted to say I didn't need to top up my fitness, but orders are orders. I was assigned thin white elasticated shorts, vest, and black plimsolls. The wind tore into me, which at least kept me moving about on the green in front of the large guest house. Nolan put us through a range of calisthenics, star jumps, sprint circuits and leapfrogging. My clothes were soon mud-spattered and the bare areas on my limbs redder than a rooster's crest.
Nobody but Nolan spoke. The other blokes exercising with me were a nondescript bunch but doubtless all had a story to tell. Maybe later I would probe further.
As the session ended, we heard a few distant bangs.
"Is car, how you say, backing fire?" one of my companions asked. French. Moustached. A little scrawny.
The agitated sheep in a nearby field started bleating, too. Welcome to the countryside.
"Nothing to worry about, chaps," Nolan beamed. "The grouse season lasts a bit longer here. They're selecting your Sunday lunch… if you're lucky."
*
Always Nolan is there. Like a hawk, eyeballing the staff so that their chatter never extends beyond, "Any gravy with your meal, sir?" And the rest of the time his eagle-eyed gaze and owl-sharp ears observe this select gaggle in our weather-enforced downtime.
As the rain bounces off the slate roof and the smeared windows, we find time to play a little chess or a few card games. We have exchanged names and pleasantries but the war, and its ingrained habits, wages on and we reveal nothing that could compromise us in any way. I miss "The Times" and Mr Churchill's uplifting speeches on the wireless. One night our French companion - Du Court, he tells us - got the gramophone working and we had half an hour of dance-band numbers by Glenn Miller and Joe Loss. For Nolan, it was less "In the Mood", more "in a mood" - with his face like thunder. He let our moment pass as a necessary evil frivolity.
Du Court used the upbeat sounds to whisper to me, "Mother Hen."
I glanced across at our trainer, stifled a grim smile.
*
A scrap of monogrammed linen caught around the rear leg of the wardrobe has revealed the name of this establishment: "Inverlair Lodge". A map or a local guidebook would be useful. But they've all been pulped. Well, there's a war on, doncha know?
Nolan had us working with Morse code transmitters this morning. It was hard to send and transcribe accurately against the background of Scottish rain pounding the window like bullets. Even closing the blackout curtain against the drear day didn't help much. I think my transcription speed is well up to the mark. My companions, less so. We are being prepared for a top secret mission yet to be properly revealed to us, but I fear that others in the group can't cut the mustard and should have been sent home early. Quite why Greaves, McNish and even Du Court are still here, I don't understand.
The rain relented around 2pm. I determined to take a walk along the lane to the sheep farm whose inhabitants I heard regularly during drill; or else, perambulate along the edge of the wooded area if the mulch permitted.
No permission. I reached the unmarked boundary of the lodge's grounds as unmown grass gave way to a small copse… and there was Nolan, dapper in waistcoat and trilby but blocking my way nonetheless.
"No further, chum. Keep in sight of the house."
I tried to make a joke of it. "I'm hiding in plain sight, sir. It's a trick I learned in Fr-"
"I know all about your valiant service record, Willis. The past is a dead country. Every hero wakes up ordinary the next morning."
An unusual smattering of campfire philosophy from our taciturn Mother Hen. As I turned to head back to the white-painted guest house that was beginning to feel like a pleasant prison, Nolan added, "Do me and yourself a favour, Willis. Keep an eye and an ear out on the rest of the group, there's a good chap. Especially that Du Court. There's a bad apple in every bunch."
*
The heroes of the Great War, including my late father, never spoke about what they'd seen or experienced. Assuming we eventually defeat Hitler, will we be the same? I like to think I would be more open and honest with any potential offspring.
Not that marriage and fatherhood are especially on the cards right now. I had been courting Edith Yaxley and I suppose I saw my future being with her. Until the invasion of Poland, the Blitz, the Battle of Britain… She left her steady job at Boots the chemist and went off to be a Land Girl in the verdant fields of Kent. We hadn't spoken in over a year. She's probably affianced to some clodhopping, spade-wielding Kentish farmhand by now.
I have a correspondence address for Edith, but no letters are allowed into or out of Inverlair Lodge. No newspapers, telegrams, newsreels, or wireless broadcasts, either. I am itching to do my bit - again - for king and country but there seems no end to this extra training for a special mission.
How goes the war, pal? Who knows?
*
I'd been stationed undercover in France. I have a natural facility with foreign languages. I made myself useful to the government. Then I got wind of the Dunkirk evacuation and it was time to withdraw for a while. And if I could help smuggle out a noted French physicist at the same time… well, there'd be a commendation waiting for me on my return to London.
That was my heroic moment. One bright spark to hold onto against a myriad damp squibs or abject failures.
*
I still have nightmares about the gunfire and the bombardment. Some nights my stomach and my brain seem to be back on that rickety boat that rescued me and I can't shake off the stench of fish guts and oil.
The guilt of the survivor, I've heard it called. Tonight, I'd had the strangest dream that the lampshade had become some sort of Luftwaffe craft swooping down at me over and over again. Blearily awake and feeling rather queasy, I had then made my way by touch along the corridor towards the WC. As I re-emerged and let my eyes accustom to the gloom, I noticed that McNish's door was open. I chanced a peep inside.
The blinds hung loosely at the edge of his window, letting in a strong beam of moonlight. Totally against regulations. But more than that, suspended from a large wooden hook in one corner, was an uncovered bird cage. The occupant - maybe a budgerigar, probably a canary - tweeted a couple of times and I feared McNish would stir from his slumber.
Back in my bunk, I pondered this revelation. Clearly, at least one of my companions had been granted greater privileges than came my way. For why? Unless he was headed down a gassy coalmine, he wouldn't be taking Chicko with him on his next mission. So what exactly was going on?
*
Every morning, Du Court made us chuckle by asking our rotund cook and wizened waiter for "un peu croissant ou brioche".
The regular porridge sat heavily in my stomach and I was glad to be given an indoors job cleaning weapons. Nolan had taken most of the others outside to set up an assault course plus rifle range.
Greaves leaned over and whispered, "That Frenchie has got a radio stashed in his blankets."
"Bully for him. Maybe he's got a crush on Vera Lynn."
"Marlene Dietrich, more like." It took me the next hour to decipher the full implications of his terse statement. "Anyways," Greaves ploughed on, "I think he's a spy."
"That hardly makes him the cuckoo in the nest. We're all pawns in the espionage game here, Greaves."
"Is that what you think?"
"It's what I've come to know."
*
Even Nolan's sergeant major bawl was struggling to penetrate the thickening air and the strengthening wind. I tried my best to concentrate. But my mind was full of conundrums. What special privileges did Greaves have? Or Davis? And why not me?
Then the thought struck me that maybe this was the mission. To sniff out the rotten eggs Some sort of final role play about trust, teamwork and treachery. A reminder that, once in the field, we were all essentially alone and could trust no-one else.
Nolan professed dissatisfaction with our performance. Mine, particularly. He managed a few pull your socks up and get your finger out clichés before the heavens opened and we all bravely fled inside to the delights of a log fire, a chess board and some off-ration hot cocoa.
*
Nolan was back on my case, chivvying me along to be his star pupil, top dog of the class. I held off asking pressing questions. For now.
Our shooting had spooked the sheep in the neighbouring fields and some of them were now running loose in the locality. A gaggle of angry farmers would likely soon be at the Lodge demanding answers. They wouldn't be shy of requesting compensation for their trouble. Or else they'd be thinking that this dank and drear half-forgotten corner of the British Isles had somehow become the focus for the long-feared Nazi invasion.
I was always all right shooting from a distance. At range, a target was just that - a target. My hawk eyes and my steady hands kept me precise and accurate.
But afterwards I had to pelt across the sodden landscape with bayonet raised and barbarism in my heart and voice. Nolan had set up a couple of straw-stuffed figures close to the sheep enclosure. These hastily costumed straw men were no more threatening than the Guy Fawkes effigy I'd made one Autumn with some school chums, and yet… And yet…
I couldn't deliver the coup de grace. Up close, even with a dummy, I was unable to stab with my blade or blast the stuffing to smithereens with my trigger finger.
I was freezing - frozen - in action yet again.
I might have cried out or shed tears or come down with the shakes. There's a certain dreaminess or blankness around these infrequent episodes. There's also a distancing that was a little like being drunk, but with none of the attached pleasurable warmth or fellow feeling.
I'd let myself down. I'd let my country down. I would let my country down.
Nolan was quiet for once, looping an arm around my shoulder and leading me back to Inverlair.
*
I'm not going to talk to Nolan. What would be the point? He's under orders to keep spinning out the line that we're all here doing a bit of extra training ahead of the next vital mission.
There is no next vital mission. We have served in the past but now we have become maverick or untrustworthy. Or downright useless. Despite all our special and secret knowledge.
We are being held here on a pretence. But it's for our own good. There are worse places to see out the rest of the war.
On the face of it, I am a prisoner of war held captive by my own side.
Not all prisons have bars or security fences. Some - perhaps the majority - are just in our minds.
