LITMIR.BIZ

      Dedication

      To my mother

      June Light Florence

      with love and gratitude

      Prologue

      November 7, 1944

      The control room was warm and cozy in the quiet hour before dawn.

      To relieve the tension while waiting for the bombers to return from their raid on Berlin, two girls played chess and another read aloud society gossip from the Tatler. A teakettle simmered on the hot plate.

      Rose looked up sharply from her knitting needles when the gentle rain against the windowpanes began to make a scrabbling sound. “It’s changing to sleet,” someone said in a low voice.

      The first snow had fallen on Yorkshire’s desolate moors that morning, and all personnel were ordered to shovel the runways and brush off the aircraft. The homesick Canadian boys had frolicked like overgrown children, throwing snowballs and washing each other’s faces.

      Although Rose longed to join the horseplay, it was against orders to fraternize with the aircrews because she outranked them. When nobody was watching, she lifted her face to the skies, opening her mouth to feel the cold kiss of snowflakes on her tongue.

      But this icy sleet was something else altogether.

      “Update on the weather, please.” The control officer spoke to the meteorologist sitting at his wooden desk in the corner, surrounded by his maps and instruments.

      “One moment, sir. I’ll ring and see what’s up.” He picked up the black telephone handset on his desk and spoke briefly, then hung up with a grim expression.

      “It’s a ruddy ice storm, sir, blowing in from Norway.”

      Immediately the room was electrified. Everyone pushed back their chairs and hurried to the long bank of windows overlooking the runway.

      An aircraft could ice up in minutes. Not only did this add tons of weight, but if even the very thinnest layer of ice distorted the upper curve of the wings, the aircraft’s balance was affected and it became impossible for the pilot to control. Iced up, a thirty-ton bomber could tumble from the sky like a falling leaf.

      The station’s forty-eight bombers, now strung out over the cold, black sea, running short of fuel after ten hours in flight, some trying desperately to limp home with flak damage and wounded men, were just beginning their descent.

      “What’s the forecast?” asked the control officer.

      All faces turned toward the meteorologist. “Not so good, sir. The temperature’s dropping like a stone.”

      Nobody needed the official report to see that the sleet was rapidly worsening. A cloud of icy pellets rattled off the windows and a thick white blanket descended. The parallel rows of searchlights lining the runway were no brighter than flickering candles in the ghostly fog. Rose saw the dim shapes of ground crew running and sliding across the icy tarmac, the crash wagons moving into position.

      The young clerk beside Rose made a small agonized sound in her throat. Rose knew she was secretly engaged to a rear gunner. The two girls clasped hands tightly as they stood at the window, straining their eyes into the whirling white darkness.

      Then, over the sound of the storm, the first faint engine was heard.

      Book One

      September 1939–October 1941

      1

      I awoke to the familiar rustling of poplar leaves. My bedroom lacked the view of brilliant grain fields sweeping away to the southern horizon, but I didn’t mind. In summer I preferred the coolness and the dim light, with the sound of the trees that backed up against the north side of the old farmhouse. They always seemed to be whispering secrets.

      Outside my window, the breeze freshened and the whispering swelled as if a new piece of gossip had arrived. I opened my eyes and saw the brass pendulum clock on the wall.

      Instantly I threw back the covers and sprang out of bed, already reaching for the skirt and blouse I had laid out on my chair the night before. Twenty minutes later I was pedalling my bicycle toward the town of Touchwood, four miles away.

      It was a flawless autumn morning, but I didn’t even glance at the vast cobalt sky above me, bigger than half the world, or the great swaths of golden grain lying in the fields. I was too busy composing a front-page headline for this week’s newspaper.

      “Canada Enters Conflict!” That was too long.

      Perhaps “Canada Goes to War!”

      Better yet, perhaps my editor would agree to a giant ninety-six-point banner: “WAR!”

      Probably none of them. The man was not only lazy, but maddeningly unpatriotic. Still, there was always hope.

      When I crested the east hill and saw a snowy pillar of steam rising from the morning train, I knew I was late. It was my job to open the office at eight sharp.

      I stood on the pedals and coasted at frightening speed down the long slope toward town. The edges of the gravel road poured past me like twin grassy streams while I wondered how to convince him that here was real news at last.

      Except that it wasn’t exactly news. Britain had declared war a week ago, after months of anticipation. Then our federal government pretended to deliberate for an entire seven days, just to prove that we were no longer under the royal thumb.

      After practically holding my breath all week, I wasn’t even at work when the decision came. Our parliament had inexplicably chosen Sunday afternoon to proclaim war against the German Reich. I heard the news bulletin, along with the rest of the country, on CBC radio.

      My bicycle whirled around the post office corner. Several seedy young men were sitting on the broad stone steps, wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. One of them whistled as I tore past. I jumped off my bike while the wheels were still spinning in front of The Touchwood Times.

      The newspaper’s name appeared in faded gilt letters on a grimy plate-glass window that hadn’t been cleaned in decades. When I pushed open the heavy front door, I heard the clatter of typewriter keys and saw the top of Jock MacTavish’s scruffy head above the heaps of newspapers stacked on his desk.

      “Well, those morons in Ottawa have done it now!” His voice was always pitched as if I were standing on the far side of the street. “They’re going to deliver us up to the Limeys like lambs to the slaughter!”

      “Sorry I’m late, Mr. MacTavish.”

      He didn’t even glance up. “I’m writing an editorial, urging Mackenzie King to hold his ground! Nobody but the prime minister can stop the Brits from turning our boys into cannon fodder! Maybe, and it’s a thumping big maybe, he can stand up to the muckety-mucks running the show over there!”

      “And what about the front page?” I tried to sound casual as I hung my cardigan on the coat rack.

      MacTavish’s enormous tangled eyebrows bristled like cat’s fur. “I suppose you want a big splash about Canada springing to the defence of the Mother Country and all that malarkey! Well, you can put that idea out of your little head!”

      “Mr. MacTavish, please! Every newspaper in the country will have the war on the front page!”

      “Not this one. And the last time I looked at the masthead, it was still my newspaper!”

      He began typing again, hammering the keys as if pounding nails. “You can run it on page two. The news will be as old as last year’s Christmas hat by Wednesday,

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