Voices on the Wind Read Online Free PDF

passed. She was a woman, with another woman, who was a loved friend and companion as well as a mother. Denise Fitzgerald saw the change in her daughter, and thought it was sad and wonderful how quickly that change had come about. Still so very young, but with a confidence that hadn’t been there when she left for Portsmouth, only a few months before, red-eyed and uncertain of what was waiting for her.
    â€˜Kate,’ she said, ‘is there a young man?’
    Kate was surprised. ‘Good Lord, no. What makes you ask that?’
    Denise Fitzgerald shrugged. ‘Nothing. You seem so grown up. I wondered if you had fallen in love. I’m being silly, take no notice.’
    â€˜I haven’t even met a man, Maman,’ Kate said. ‘I told you, I’ve been marching up and down the parade ground and scrubbing floors as a punishment, and putting on weight because all we do is eat and scrounge off each other. I haven’t been off with a sailor, I promise you!’ She laughed and kissed her mother. ‘Maybe I’ve had to grow up in a hurry,’ she said. ‘What are we going to have for dinner? I’m starving.’
    The week went by too quickly; she avoided telling more lies by busying herself and refusing to think about it. Every night she helped her father check the blackout when he came off the smelly, stuffy train from Victoria. Three times the sirens wailed and they went down to the Anderson shelter in the garden, but no bombs fell. They went for walks with the terrier, Mimi; she started making herself a blouse with a remnant her mother had saved up, and refused to wonder when she’d finish it. Already, the crisp east wind was stinging her in the face, warning that winter was coming, and the leaves were deep on the ground. It was comforting to be with them, but by the end of the week she was ready to go. She said goodbye to them at the local station early on Saturday afternoon. She had a travel warrant to get her to London and from London overnight to Scotland. She would be met, her instructions said, at Lossiemouth.
    The loch was like a sheet of dirty steel on that October day. Massed clouds overhead gave it their own sombre colour. There was no shift of wind to move them. They lowered over the water and the house close by the edge of it like God the Father’s frown. It was a place built to withstand the weather, with thick walls and deep-set windows. A high hedge separated it from a second house, humbler in origin, built of the same heavy stone, with a low sloping roof. There was room for twelve students to be housed in both buildings, four instructors, two senior officers and a commandant, apart from domestic staff.
    It was an isolated place, part of a group of similar centres in the Highlands, chosen for their locations in bleak countryside. In the depth of winter they were cut off by snow. A Major in the Scots Guards and a Captain in the Royal Corps of Signals were walking by the side of the loch. The house, with its big domestic annexe, belonged to the Major’s grandfather.
    â€˜Bloody shame about Harris,’ the Major said. ‘He was shaping up well.’
    The Captain shrugged. ‘Too cocky, that was his trouble. He’s the “I’m out for a gong” type and we don’t want those. I’m not sorry he’s out.’
    Major McKay didn’t answer. Arthur Taft took dislikes to people and there was nothing to be done about it. The trainee they were discussing had antagonized him from the start. Personally McKay regretted losing him. He had courage and an aggressive spirit, and even Taft had to admit that if he had got through the physical training, he would have made an excellent pupil for the sabotage section. He had tried an over-ambitious descent in the rope-climbing two days before, hit an outcrop and cracked his shin bone in three places.
    McKay and Taft had been senior selection officers at Loch Gary for eighteen months. They had a