by Rafe Posey
“Yes of course, Scotland,” Portia says, her eyes wide, as if it’s as exotic as Rhodesia or the Solomon Islands. “And how old is your daughter? Five?”
“Penny will be seven in January,” June says. The idea jolts her—seven sounds so different from six, perhaps because seven is what she herself had been just before Alec’s arrival.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Portia says, shaking her head. “I would absolutely die if I were away from my children for months.”
Portia’s words sting, although she can’t have meant it quite like that. Sybil goes to the bar at the corner, laughing. “Yes, but you’re a regular Mrs. Miniver. June’s an intellectual.”
Portia waves her off. “Even so. I mean, honestly, my eldest is at Eton now, and when I think about sending the others up after him . . .” She continues, and June listens, trying to see the girl she used to know behind this urbane, matronly face. She can’t imagine what it must be like to have four sons, but Portia was always good at keeping track of a lot of moving pieces, whether puzzles or people. Perhaps this is just how she has translated her skills from Bletchley Park.
Mixing drinks at the bar in the corner, Sybil says, “Oh, don’t let me forget, Mrs. Tisdale left a quiche Lorraine, I’m meant to pop it in the Aga at seven. She promised even I couldn’t cock it up, but I expect we’ll see.”
Portia rolls her eyes. “Darling, you’ll manage. I’m here to help.”
“As if your cook is any more likely than Mrs. Tisdale to let you in the kitchen,” Sybil says with a chuckle. She comes over with their drinks and joins Portia on the sofa. “Gin sours.”
“Marvelous,” Portia says, sniffing her glass with a smile. She turns to June, her face growing more serious. “I’m awfully glad you could join us this year.”
“I am, too,” June says. To Sybil she adds, “Thank you so much for asking me.”
“Nonsense,” Sybil says. “Wouldn’t hear of missing an opportunity to reunite Attwell, de Cler, and Wallace, especially tonight.”
“And anyway, I’ve missed you,” Portia adds.
June nods, moved and a bit surprised by the depth of feeling the reunion has brought her, and is relieved when Sybil clears her throat solemnly and raises her glass.
“To our dead,” she says quietly. “Captain John Fitzwilliam, killed in Rangoon.”
They drink, and June bows her head. The sad, reverent look on Portia’s face . . . Is that what she would have felt like, decades later, if Alec had been lost? For a moment she misses him terribly, staggered by the relief that he is not among the dead. That he is home and alive.
Portia, her face still tight, says, “First Officer Sarah Crossley, sunk off Madagascar.”
June had known Sarah had been killed by a U-boat, but it is different, hearing it like this. As Portia and Sybil offer up other names, June sits quietly with them, realizing how lucky she’s been. She’s known people killed in the war, just as they have, but she hasn’t lost a husband or a close friend to the battlefield. She raises her glass for the sailor who’d been killed at Anderson, and again for Alec’s lost friends, Charlie and Smasher. For valiant Lucy Kent, who had survived the Zero that day at Anderson only to die of a fever on the ship home after the war.
When their glasses are empty, Sybil goes to make a second round, her hand a bit heavier with the gin this time. Speaking of their dead has made June want to speak of the living, so she asks after other people they had known at Bletchley Park, and as their reminiscing grows less somber, so does the mood. Portia and Sybil chatter about their mutual past, time swirling around and through the year that June was with them, too. She doesn’t know everything the others talk about, but she can’t quantify the relief she feels to be able to talk about any of it.
She’s pleased to be reunited with Portia, but watching the two of them together she feels a stirring of envy—they had had more time together during the war than June had had with anyone, and more time since, as well. She should have stayed closer herself to the women she knew at Bletchley Park and elsewhere. And she had, for a time, but it had begun to chafe when so many of her old friends had wanted to talk more about their dinner parties and children than anything else, and the rest had gone off to have adventures that had left June feeling isolated and out of sorts. But imagine the relief, if she had been able to make it work, if she saw some of them more often.
* * *
• • •
They’re a few drinks in when June reminds Sybil about the quiche, which leads to the three of them poring over the detailed instructions Sybil’s housekeeper had left. Once the quiche is warming, Sybil opens a bottle of chilled Veuve Clicquot and pours it into tiny crystal glasses etched with translucent snowdrops.
They’re back in the drawing room, waiting on the quiche, when Portia brings up the entertainments that some of their colleagues put on. June had never been clear whether the goal was purely to keep up morale or if in fact the mostly public school men had set out to create an environment more like their university days. When she brings this up, Portia suggests it’s a meaningless distinction.
“Either way,” she says, gesturing with her glass, “it kept us distracted and occupied, didn’t it? Greased the mental wheels, such as they were.”
“All those posh actresses,” Sybil says.
June laughs. For such an urgent, staid place, Bletchley Park had had a finely honed sense of whimsy and endless resources—official and otherwise—for recreation. “I remember you flirting with that Randall fellow in the chess club, Sybil.”
Sybil snorts. “He turned out to be rather dull, in the end.”
“Gosh,” Portia says, “I had forgotten all about him. Do you remember when the chess team came here, to Oxford? Might have been after your time, June. It was the most absurd thing.”
Nodding earnestly, Sybil leans in. “Beat Oxford’s chess club badly, and ever since the boys here have wondered how a tiny village like Bletchley could field a team like that.”
June stares at them. “No, you can’t possibly be serious. What about the OSA?”
“They came to Oxford as if they were from the village,” Portia insists. “Whole article about it in a chess magazine a few months later.”
“And didn’t they get what for,” Sybil says, her tone dreamy. “But they’d won, and not let on who they actually were.”
“Astonishing,” June says. Such foolhardy behavior from men she’d known best for their caution. But they’d all been caught up in it at Bletchley Park, hadn’t they? It had been a world of extremes, the old lines of British society starting to crumble in the service to something grander. What a life it had been.
Across the table, Sybil jumps to her feet. “God, please tell me I haven’t burned the quiche. Mrs. Tisdale will positively murder me.”
But she has not, and so the three of them cluster together at one end of the dining table. Time becomes fluid, the three of them staying up much too late, drinking and playing cards and talking about the past. When it comes time that June is meant to go back to Somerville, Sybil shushes her goodbyes and asks her to stay the night. June ponders the idea for a moment, but why not? Nothing is calling her back there, and it’s cozy by Sybil’s fire. By the time she falls asleep, tucked under a soft blanket on Sybil’s sofa, she feels almost as if all the years since Bletchley Park had never passed. As if they were still the same girls they’d been that spring with their picnics beside the lake.
* * *
• • •
It’s an afternoon in late November when a student June doesn’t know appears at her door, knocking thunderously, and tells her she has a phone call waiting in the porter’s lodge. June’s heart sinks—there is no way this is good news, not with the expense and effort required to make a trunk call with the new direct system. She follows the girl to the office, takes the phone.
“June,” Alec says, his voice scratchy. �
�It’s Ursa.”
“Oh, no,” June says, her heart sinking as Alec explains that Ursa has died in her sleep during a nap on the hearth that morning. “My God, Alec, I’m so sorry.”
He clears his throat. “It was her time, I suppose, and I’m glad she went easily, but it feels awful nonetheless. Penny is beside herself.”
June leans against the wall. Bad enough that she’s not present when Alec needs her, but being gone when Penny is going through something like this feels dreadful. She should be there to help them with their grief.
“I wish . . .” She trails off uncertainly. “She was such a grand dog.”
Alec makes a small sound, as if he’s trying to quash a flood of emotions. Through all the layers of distance she wants to comfort him. After a while she asks if he can put Penny on, and Alec asks her to wait, the phone clunking to the hall table. When he comes back, he sounds even worse. “I’m sorry,” he says raggedly. “She’s not up for it just now.” June closes her eyes against the sting of it. In the background, she hears the wracking sound of her daughter’s sobs, and her guilt expands like a spill of wine across a table.
When she hangs up the phone, June lets herself cry. Ursa had been such a good dog for so long, part of their family in ways June had not expected in the beginning. And as the afternoon stretches on after the call, and she can’t stop thinking about Alec and Penny sitting in the house in Edinburgh mourning their grand old dog, June feels worse. It was not her fault that she couldn’t be there to help him in the war; even in the worst of her guilty feelings, she knows that. But this time? This time the fault is hers, and whatever her absence has meant for them during this sorrowful time can be laid square at her feet. And, to her shame, there is part of her that understands that this will serve to bond Alec and Penny closer still, and in some way she envies them. But she had loved that dog too, ever since she’d first laid eyes upon the litter of tiny brown pups, and she’d been grateful to Ursa for everything she’d done to bring Alec back. When she thinks about how Shakespeare Close will be without Ursa, it’s almost impossible to comprehend. Ursa has never not been there.
She stares morosely out the window, hoping for the comforting appearance of Potiphar from beneath the bushes, but the world is quiet of cats. She can’t help but think of Alec’s unhappy, somewhat resigned response to her news last summer that she wanted to take a leave from the University of Edinburgh and accept this post, however temporary, in Oxford.
Edinburgh seems like another life, in many ways. But unless something happens with that hint Sybil floated weeks ago, June can’t stay here. Staying here would mean another wound to Alec and Penny as well, although there would be good schools for Penny, and places Alec might find work he likes as well as Livingstone & Gray. But wondering about how her life will be in the spring is too complicated—there are too many unknowns.
* * *
• • •
The rest of the month passes too quickly, and suddenly it’s December, and time for her to speak before the undergraduates. It’s funny, at Edinburgh she had never been nervous, lecturing. But here, wearing the black gown of a don, it’s different. She stands at the lectern and looks around the hall, conscious of all the bright young faces of girls who were only children during the war, and behind them, lounging in seats at the rear of the hall, Sybil and Floss. She’s known Floss was coming—they’ll have dinner after the lecture—but it’s been long enough since they’ve seen each other that he seems more out of place than she’s used to. And it’s jarring to see Floss and Sybil together; obviously they’ve known each other for years, but seeing them rubbing shoulders feels new. They’ve been in different strands of June’s world, however connected, and now the warp and weft have brought them together. She has never been more grateful for the peculiar song of algebraic varieties in which she can immerse herself.
After, a cluster of students approaches June. They’re bursting with questions about the Calabi conjecture, and June warms to their enthusiasm and confidence. One, to June’s bemusement, has brought with her a copy of June’s most recent article for the Journal of Algebraic Inequalities, and asks, shaking, if June can sign it.
When the girls disperse, Floss makes his way forward, Sybil at his side.
“Hullo, darling,” he says, smiling warmly. “Marvelous lecture, that. Love what you’re doing with cohomology and all that.”
“Thank you,” June says. “I’m awfully glad you were able to come up for it.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” he says.
“Brilliant talk,” Sybil says. “Wish I could stay and join you, but I’m already late for a prior engagement.”
“Another time, then, and thank you, Sybil,” June says. “This term . . . I’ve had a wonderful time. And I’ll see you Tuesday at the faculty luncheon, yes?”
“Quite,” Sybil says. “Perhaps they’ll break out the good sherry this time.” They laugh and say their goodbyes, and June walks with Floss to his car, waiting with its driver in the mews behind the building.
* * *
• • •
At dinner, she tells Floss about her term at Oxford. It’s gratifying to be able to share with him again, and to let herself warm to his careful listening. It feels right, sitting with him in the controlled chaos of a restaurant, their conversation cloaked by the low racket of people dining, the scent of his gigot of lamb rising between them. When she slows and asks him what he’s been up to, he talks about his work in Vienna, in terms more vague than June would like. She doesn’t need further reminding that her own tenure in the secret world Floss inhabits has run its course, that most of his life is stamped top secret, while hers is not. Still, he draws her in, the old city of Floss’s half stories coming together in a pointillist haze across the maps of Vienna that June carries in her head.
“What I really need,” he says after a while, pushing away his plate, “is someone who can go do actual work in mathematics and education at the British Council, our outreach group. Third secretary of education under the deputy minister of international outreach, or what have you.” He laughs. “Obviously I can neither confirm nor deny any stories you may have seen in the press or popular fiction about the clever lads and the messages they bring over from Prague and Budapest, but if they did exist, I would be on the lookout for someone to turn those messages, however imaginary and unconfirmed, into new messages to be sent back to Whitehall.”
June nods uncertainly, trying to ignore the frisson between her shoulders. There is no reason on Earth for him to be telling her this. Unless.
“Someone who won’t cock it up, or turn traitor, like that piker Burgess.”
“No,” June says, “I should think not.” If Floss is concerned about a new round of treachery on the scale of Guy Burgess and his circle, who had betrayed England for the Russians time and again, no wonder he’s talking about needing help. She folds her hands together, the nervous electricity still coursing through her, trying to sort through her questions to find the right one to ask first.
“Just between us,” Floss says, leaning close, “I’ve been eyeing Sybil for the post. Awfully keen, knows her codes . . . Fluent in German, even, but I expect you remember that from before.”
June nods, but she’s gone cold. Sybil had been one of the smart set at Bletchley Park, educated in Switzerland, vacations in Biarritz and Gstaad, fluent in German and French, which had made her invaluable to the translation work. But Floss can’t be telling her she’s effectively been replaced, can he?
As if he can read her thoughts, Floss says, “Ideally, of course it would be you. You’re bloody June Attwell.” He shrugs. “But you’ve made it clear over the years that your family must come first.”
June looks down at her plate, noting every detail of the crest in the silverware, the infinitesimal traces of sauce and parsley left from her fish. What he’s talking about, if she can get past this new wrinkle of Sybil, is a return
to the meaningful work that had meant so much. Not to mention codes upon codes. Layers upon layers. She can almost see them laid out before her. She does not wish in the slightest to wound Sybil, but her own timer is running out, in more ways than she can count. She is almost through her term at Oxford, and in a few weeks she will go back to Edinburgh, where the chair will continue to take her work for granted. The idea of being passed over again is galling, to say the least. Sybil had suggested she might be leaving her post—is this what she’d meant?
God, the idea of building those messages, working for England again . . . It doesn’t matter that Sybil speaks German; June is nearly fluent as well, and in any case the codes will be in Russian, which June has a vague grounding in already. And it certainly isn’t harder than the Japanese characters and syntactic puzzles she had had to learn for the Y service. She thinks of Alec and Penny, tries to push away the knot of new guilt already budding in her stomach although she has said nothing, done nothing. There is nothing about this idea Alec will like, but she is already thinking ahead, as if this is a real possibility, starting to structure her argument about the opportunities for Penny, a fresh start for them all.
“Don’t count me out,” she says softly. Floss looks puzzled, and she continues. “I need to think about it, but . . . I’m not out of it.”
His face clears into a delighted grin. “You take the time you need.”
* * *
• • •
That night, lying awake in her rooms as the stars and moon shift across the firmament, June hears Potiphar meowing in the corridor. When she goes to let him in, he jumps up on the foot of her bed, washes himself, and gradually curls into a sleek tawny block against her hip. She lays her fingers against his shoulders, pets him gently. The future is terrifying still, but in a way she understands—there is a threshold before her, a liminal moment in which she could change her entire world. She can save herself, do her duty for Queen and Country. She doesn’t let herself think about the new layer of secrets or wonder what the cover might be for where she goes to work or what she does there. As exciting as this future seems, she is not quite ready yet to face those particular consequences, inevitable though she knows them to be.