Free Weaver by Stephen Baxter

Hurricane. I hear they are planning to send women to the front line.’
    ‘So they are, but I’ve no training. I’m working at an observation station on the coast.’ She had picked up the habit of not using the word ‘radar’ unless it was necessary.
    He looked at her. ‘It’s coming, isn’t it?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The invasion.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Just looking around. Piecing bits together. I mean, the work we’ve been doing, you can see the logic.’ He mimed an enclosure with his hands. ‘You have this crust around the coast - tank blocks, barbed wire, ditches, mines. Then further back we’ve been building what they call the stop lines. Natural barriers like rivers and canals and forests, but reinforced with tank traps and pillboxes. Defence in depth. You can see it taking shape.’
    ‘I don’t think they’ll come,’ Hilda said. ‘For one thing they haven’t been able to knock out the RAF. Those Me109s of theirs are too short-range. The Hurricanes and Spits can always retreat to fields in the north of England. The Luftwaffe can’t win.’ That was the official line. But, Hilda had heard it said at work, all the Germans actually needed to do was to beat the RAF back from the skies of southern England, and achieve ‘local air superiority’. And Hilda knew from her own experience that if they kept battering at the airfields and radar stations and sector stations of the south-east, the delicate system of command and control behind the RAF’s operations could soon crumble. It would actually be better for Britain’s prospects in the war if the Luftwaffe turned on London again. But she said firmly: ‘No, they won’t come. And all your digging will be for nothing!’
    ‘So where’s Gary now?’
    ‘Well, he’s recovered. He’s been reposted, a lot of the BEF veterans have. Now he’s to be with an international unit in the Twenty-ninth Brigade. He’s due to join it on Friday.’ She hesitated. ‘They’re stationed north of Eastbourne. I was hoping he’d be sent to the Twenty-first. A lot of the veterans are with them, north of London.’
    ‘They’re reserves up there, the Twenty-first?’
    ‘Yes. But they’re short of front-line troops.’ Hilda had heard rumours about the troops in the field - eight divisions, something like a hundred and fifty thousand men, with another forty thousand north of the Thames. It might have been twice that if not for the loss of the BEF. It was thought the Germans could muster a force outnumbering the British by at least two to one. ‘We shouldn’t talk like this,’ Hilda said. ‘Spreading rumours.’

    ‘But don’t you feel the need to talk?’ Ben said, and he laughed nervously. ‘I’m cursed with an active brain, Hilda. I’m an academic, for pity’s sake, I worked with Gödel himself. Now they’ve got me digging a hole in the ground.’ He made a spinning motion by his temple. ‘I can’t help thinking, thinking, working it all out.’
    ‘Yes, and you yak and yak about it,’ Tom said sensibly. ‘My advice to you is to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.’ He stuck his spade into the earth again.
    Ben said, ‘I think that was a hint. You said you had messages for me?’
    ‘Can you come into town on Friday, in the morning? Meet us at the house. Gary’s got something to say to you before he gets posted - we both have.’
    Ben nodded. After the way he had helped Gary after the return from Dunkirk, the two of them had stayed close.
    Hilda went on, ‘And I know Mary Wooler has some material for you. History stuff.’
    Ben’s eyes gleamed. ‘I expect the war effort can spare me for a couple of hours. I’ll see you then, Hilda.’
    ‘Good. All right—’
    ‘Holy Mother of God.’ Tom had stopped digging, and was staring south.
    Over Hastings, one of the barrage balloons had been set alight. Subsiding gently, deforming, it was drifting down the sky, a brilliant teardrop.

IX
    20 September
    So they gathered, on a dull Friday