Authors: Deborah Burrows
A Time of Secrets
About
A Time of Secrets
1943 is a dangerous time to fall in love.
In wartime Melbourne loose lips sink ships, so when Australian Women’s Army Sergeant Stella Aldridge overhears soldiers whispering about a revenge killing, she follows her instincts to investigate, despite finding herself drawn to one of the soldiers, the enigmatic Staff Sergeant Eric Lund.
But the world is at war and there is little time for romance. Someone in the Australian Intelligence Bureau is trading secrets and it’s up to Stella and her uncompromising superior officer, Lieutenant Nick Ross, to find the traitor.
When Eric’s team is scheduled to be deployed in a dangerous mission to the South-West Pacific, Stella races to uncover the truth or risk not only Eric’s life, but the security of Australia itself. Torn between protecting the ones she loves and her duty to her country, Stella chooses to pursue the truth at all costs.
Even if it means putting herself in the firing line . . .
Contents
As ever, for my husband, Toby.
One
Saturday 26 June 1943
‘Y
ou must admit, Stella, that Melbourne’s the most marvellous city.’ Dolly waved a hand at the scene around us. ‘It’s just like being in Paris – better, in fact, because there are no Nazis.’
Stopping so suddenly on a crowded footpath was a mistake. A woman holding a string bag bulging with the family’s weekly rations barged past and knocked me into a man who was carrying a parcel wrapped in newspaper. I had a whiff of raw fish and ducked away in alarm.
‘Sorry, love,’ he muttered, and went on his way.
Umbrellas snapped open around me. There was a sense of urgency as pedestrians ducked for cover in shops or under awnings.
‘Let’s get out of the rain.’ Although small, Dolly was surprisingly effective at using elbows and hips to carve a path to the relative shelter of a recessed doorway. We had a few interested looks as we huddled there, probably because we were both blonde, fairly young, and sergeants in the Australian Women’s Army Service. As the crowd swept past us I pulled my army satchel more securely onto my shoulder and looked around with the interest of someone still quite new to Melbourne.
Raindrops spattered on a tram as it swung along with a rattle and a squeak, full to overflowing as usual. Men – many in uniform – were clinging to the outside, exposed to the weather. The tram was moving fast, and a gusty wind blew the hat off an American navy man. Without a moment’s hesitation, his buddy nonchalantly leaned out the back, grabbed the rope and pulled the tram’s power supply down off its overhead power line. The tram came to a sudden halt, with the motorman shouting his protests. The navy man trotted back, retrieved the lost hat from the street and jumped back on. In a minute the tram was on its way again. Dolly and I exchanged a smile. The American servicemen were so defiantly unconventional, unwilling to accept restraints that Australians took for granted.
‘Melbourne might not have any Nazis,’ I said, ‘but it does have hordes of Americans.’
To prove the point, a couple of marines in their late teens sauntered along the footpath in front of us with girls on their arms.
‘Hmmm. They’re lovely, aren’t they? Although there aren’t nearly as many here now as there were last year.’ Dolly pushed her blonde hair into place under her khaki hat and smiled at me. She was so pretty that she almost made the AWAS uniform look good. Almost.
I glanced down at my uniform and sighed. Under my green khaki greatcoat was a khaki jacket, belted at the waist, khaki skirt, tan shirt, brown tie, thick brown ribbed woollen stockings and dark brown shoes. On my head was a felt hat, also khaki.
Not
a flattering ensemble. Before the war, before my marriage, I’d been known as a rather flamboyant dresser. Being an artist, I loved colour, so I’d tended to wear embroidered peasant blouses and full skirts. Perhaps my style had been a trifle ostentatious, but I’d been young and it had matched the ‘artistic’ set I’d run with. It had been
much
better than always wearing khaki, as I was now forced to do.
Gripping my arm, Dolly squeezed it affectionately. ‘Stella, you have no idea how happy I am that we completed our mission so successfully.’
I smiled back, acknowledging that it had been an extremely delicate and difficult mission. We’d taken a day’s leave together and had spent our Saturday morning searching for a special outfit for Dolly’s thirtieth birthday party the following week. It hadn’t been easy, braving the superior shop girls in the small, exclusive boutiques at the leafy end of Collins Street. Basic training had been a doddle in comparison.
Dolly had fallen in love with an evening gown of sea-green silk we’d found in La Petite. She’d spent forty pounds on it! I hadn’t seen any clothing coupons change hands, but I’d learned early on that with Dolly it was best to see nothing and say nothing. Her moral compass was set at a slightly different angle to mine. Still, it was a lovely gown, and Dolly’s delight in it was infectious.
‘Melbourne’s definitely the Paris of the South if it has fashion like that,’ I said. ‘I should know.’
Dolly smiled. She was Melbourne-born and loved it when I praised her city.
I was English, but in 1936, when I was eighteen, I’d spent a magical year studying watercolour painting in Paris. It broke my heart to think of the Nazis goosestepping down the Champs-Élysées and imposing their harsh regime onto that shimmering city. Melbourne did resemble Paris to some extent, but on a rainy Saturday afternoon like this one, in winter, in wartime, in the middle of an austerity drive, it seemed more like grey London than ‘gay Paree’.
It wasn’t quite twelve noon, but the day was already gloomy. As usual, it was raining. It had rained almost every day since I’d arrived from Sydney. And it was cold. I’d spent my childhood in Malaya and Ceylon, where my father had worked as an engineer. I craved sunshine and warmth, but there was little of that on this chilly Saturday afternoon.
On the whole, though, I liked Melbourne very much. I liked how its suburbs were little villages, each with its own character. I enjoyed walking along the straight streets in the city centre and looking at its buildings, dark with age and often finely decorated. I loved the trams that took you as far as you wanted to go for a penny, or for no money at all if the conductor was a patriotic sort who refused to take a fare from those in uniform. The tree-lined streets around us were delightful. Melbourne was undeniably a very pretty city, even on a dismal afternoon.
Wartime Melbourne was also a city of contradictions. Although the nightly brownout meant that the streets were dark, the dance halls and ballrooms were bright, loud and full to overflowing. Staid Melbourne had become a party city, a place of rest and relaxation for visiting troops, but it was a city that closed down entirely every Sunday. Then, large groups of servicemen and their girls roamed around, gazing into windows of closed shops, reading the posters outside closed cinemas and mobbing the few cafes that were open. I’d never tell Dolly, but I had some sympathy with the American serviceman who’d been reported as saying last year that Melbourne on a Sunday afternoon reminded him of the New York General Cemetery, ‘only it was half as big and twice as dead’.
And even on elegant Collins Street, it was clear that Melbourne was on a total war footing. We were standing beside sandbags that had been piled up as protection from the air raids that had never come. Most of the shop windows were covered with wire netting or a trellis of white strips, or were boarded up with only small peepholes in the middle. Drab air-raid shelters blocked the footpaths and there was a resigned weariness in the faces of the people walking past. Australia had been at war for nearly four years. We were all weary of rationing and wartime restrictions, but the real strain came with wondering when friends or husbands or brothers or lovers were coming home, and the dread, unspoken fear that they’d never return.
The rain became a soft drizzle. Dolly looked at me. ‘Ready to brave the street again?’
I nodded, but as I turned to follow her I stumbled on a sandbag. I found myself gripped by a firm hand that stopped me from falling.
‘Watch out, there, ma’am – I mean sergeant.’ The voice was deep and had an American twang. Embarrassed, I looked up. A dark-eyed marine had hold of my arm.
‘Thanks.’ I gently disengaged myself.
He gave me a mock salute. ‘You’re most welcome,’ he said, and grinned. ‘I have to say, you’re the prettiest sergeant I’ve ever seen.’ With a wink, he drifted into the crowd and disappeared.
‘See,’ said Dolly. ‘Dreamy. I remember when the US marines arrived here in February, straight from the fighting in Guadalcanal. Poor babies were in a terrible state and Melbourne must have seemed like paradise.’
‘Except when the returning Aussie soldiers had the battle with them.’
‘In Flinders Street,’ said Dolly, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘But things are much better now.’
‘Only because so many Aussie soldiers are away fighting in New Guinea. The diggers we passed back there were set to have a go at those marines – the ones who were cuddling their girls as they walked along.’