The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish by Noreen Riols

Author:Noreen Riols
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780230771703
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2013-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

We three women were used as decoys so, for obvious reasons, we never met or had any contact with the students who came to Group B before we linked up on exercises. Had they known us, the whole operation would have been futile. Jean worked in Southampton; my pitch was Bournemouth. Like the other occupants of the block of flats at Orchard Court, the inhabitants of both those large coastal towns hadn’t the remotest idea, I don’t think they even suspected, what was going on under their very noses.

A student would be let loose in Bournemouth and told that a young girl wearing a headscarf and a dirty mac and carrying a shopping bag would probably be walking along the sea front opposite the pier pavilion at a given time. He was told to detect her and, once he had found her, to follow her and discover where she was going and whom she might be meeting, without her suspecting anything. This also worked in reverse when they were taught how to detect if someone was shadowing them and then to shake them off without any suspicions being aroused.

My job was much easier than theirs. A young man, in or out of uniform, wandering around a seaside resort in the middle of the day was much more conspicuous than a young woman with a shopping basket. They were everywhere. We always carried shopping bags wherever we went in case we came across a queue which we could join and, hopefully, buy something ‘off the ration’. It didn’t matter what it was: if it was ‘off the ration’ it was worth having . . . and worth queuing for!

Once decanted in Bournemouth, I used to head for the appointed spot, then walk along a street facing the sea, which was lined with shops, and stop to look at the window displays – not that there was a great deal to display in those lean wartime years! This way, from the reflection in the plate-glass window, I could see anyone passing me or more importantly lingering behind me. Sure enough, my victim would sooner or later saunter into view and, if he spotted me, would stop and gaze into the window of the shop next door. But I outgazed him, and eventually he moved on. If my judgement had been right and he was my ‘victim’, he usually halted after a few yards to tie a shoelace which wasn’t undone. This was my cue. I knew I had spotted my man. So I would head for a large department store called Plummers, the only department store in Bournemouth at the time, and make straight for the ladies’ lingerie section.

I don’t know whether modern men like wandering alone around a ladies’ lingerie department, but in the early 1940s they most certainly didn’t. They were usually highly embarrassed. I knew that and, when I saw him slink furtively in, I invariably held up to the light a few ‘unmentionables’ in order to embarrass him even further.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.