Keep Calm and Carry On

Trapped

The guard whisks Violet down a long dark corridor, her face too frozen to cry. She is harshly shoved into a tiny cell. There is hardly any light or air in this cell, it is bleak and lifeless. Violet is left alone, her heart pounding and her lungs burning as she struggles to take in air. Her promise to keep calm seems to belong to a different Violet, the one who lived in an exciting world of spying and bravery, without ever really experiencing anything she had to be truly brave for. She had felt so strong and independent, marching off to do her bit for the war.

Now she is just feeling terrified.

She is trapped in a gestapo cell. Dark thoughts flutter through her racing mind; ones of the people who occupied this cell before her, as her horrified eyes are drawn to the scratches in the wall which look like they have been made by fingernails. She imagines the last occupant, shivering in the corner as she is now. Waiting for...what? That is the worst part. Not knowing what was going to happen next.

Violet shakes her head. This is ridiculous, pull yourself together; you let yourself in for this. You agreed to this when you signed up. There is no avoiding it now. She gathers up her mental energy and employs it in the task of trying to find a way out.

She keeps reaching mental doors, blocking her way, and slowly it begins to sink in that she may never get out.

Through the misery of this, a thought breaks through of all her family at home. She is protecting them by trying to fight these people. Tears finally win the battle and she feels a small sense of relief at allowing herself to cry. She revisits memories of her life before the war, and constructs them so fully that she feels like she is there again.

She is standing in the garden at home with her mother and father, the late-summer sun warming the back of her neck and the smell of roses filling her nose. She hears the occasional buzz of a bee, or twitter of a bird. She can taste the lemonade she is drinking. She can see the worn bench and makeshift swing on the left, and the vegetable patch on the right. She is numb, as are her parents, because they have just heard that the war has begun. It is almost autumn, and the weather is that strange mix of summer and autumn, as though the sky cannot make its mind up. Though the sun is warm and flowers are still in bloom, the tree ahead of Violet has lost its midsummer green and is beginning to go golden brown. As the sun goes behind a cloud, Violet feels that the weather is mirroring what everyone feels at the end of that summer.

She travels forward a year in her mind. She is sitting in a low, grey building with a machine in front of her. She has a page of coded messages which she is racing to work out. She knows that this message is important, but has no idea what it means. She types and retypes on her enigma machine, hoping that it will make sense at some point. The metal keys are cool beneath her warm fingers, and her back aches from sitting there too long. But she is happy. Her mind is engaged in fascinating puzzles and she is living with interesting, amazing people in a wonderful place. A place where sheer intelligence and hard work were making big changes to the war.

That was when she worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park. She wishes she had stayed there, filling her mind with complex work to distract her from her fear.

For the thousandth time that day, her mind flits to the person it is too painful to think of. As she allows herself to think freely for a moment, another memory consumes her.

It is Christmas time, and she is wearing her dark blue dress with a thick jumper, her hair lazily twirled back in a bun. This was another time, a while before the shadow of war crept over them all. Her family are laughing and eating their lunch, just finishing the rich pudding which is full of the wishes they stirred in weeks before. She glances to the young man who sits opposite her, and he smiles back. Together, they clear away the plates and then slip out into the frosty garden, escaping the little house. He holds her hand and leads her to sit on the wall. Still holding her hand, he kneels in front of her, taking a small box from his pocket. With a few simple words, he opens the box and, taking her whispered ‘yes’ as a cue, puts the ring on her finger.

They both giggle at the formality and seriousness of it all, and he sweeps her up into a big hug, kissing her.

When they walk back inside, her mum spots the ring instantly and bursts into happy tears. In the joy of that day, Violet had felt that nothing could spoil their happiness. She had been wrong.

Now he was far away, just a few hastily scribbled letters linking him to her.

Being a spy stopped her from the constant fear- worrying about him, stuck in a derelict farmhouse somewhere in bomb-destroyed France. Each letter was only a small comfort, because every moment was dangerous.

At Bletchley, the work and her friends had helped keep her sane, distracted her. She thought becoming a spy would be the same, but she felt more alone than ever and had far too little to think about. Now, with only four grey walls to look at, Violet can do nothing to stop herself being terrified.

A knock at the door tugs her back to the present time and place, dragging her back across unknown distance separating her from him.

She is given a plate with a piece of dry bread on it, which she eats hungrily, only just registering how starving she is. She finishes it in a few mouthfuls, and then is faced with being hungry for the foreseeable future.

While Violet sits in a tiny cell, the man she should be marrying is eating his meal too, meagre rations from tins split amongst the soldiers.

Arthur flicks wet hair out of his eyes and finishes his inadequate meal. Like Violet, the four walls of crumbling bricks offer no distraction from his own fear, and he wishes he had something interesting to think of instead.

A sound rips through the still, dusty air and cuts into all their lungs and hearts, filling them with panic. It is a siren alerting them to the bombs. Arthur and the men automatically spring to their feet and sprint down into the cellar, which is a makeshift shelter, but they know if a bomb hits they have little chance of surviving…