The Enigma Game

by Elizabeth Wein

  After Mrs Warner translated this, Cromwell pushed back his chair and stood.

  ‘Every person here, subject to the King of England, is bound in the strictest confidence to anything witnessed here today.’ He singled out the civilians. ‘Mrs Campbell and Miss Adair – do you understand how weighty this matter is? If you ever speak of anything you have heard here, under the Official Secrets Act you will be considered accountable for treason.’

  Louisa nodded seriously and whispered, ‘Yes, sir.’

  Nancy Campbell just nodded.

  Even I knew that wasn’t going to be good enough for Cromwell.

  ‘Pennyworth!’ he bawled. ‘Get back in here. I want you to make a list of all those present and get them to sign it.’

  While Phyllis got to work, the Old Roundhead allowed Nancy to tiptoe about the room serving cups of tea, which we all very much needed. She wouldn’t go near the Germans, though.

  ‘Louisa,’ she whispered, ‘would you offer this to them, please.’

  Their navigator, Althammer, stubbornly waved the tea aside. The gunner, Moritz, stared at Louisa curiously – the first Jamaican girl he’d ever seen? – and accepted his with a nod.

  But that girl stood one second too long in front of Felix Baer as she held out the tea tray, and he stood one second too long searching her face before he picked up his cup.

  Not staring, like Moritz. Communicating. Looking for the answer to a wordless question in a mutual language.

  Louisa:

  It was a crazy thing to do. But I wanted him to know we had the Enigma machine.

  Face to face with him, I thought of a way to do it.

  I lowered my head over the teapot and cup as I held out the tray. He could see my eyes, but I wasn’t looking straight at him, so maybe no one else would notice. While his hand trembled faintly over the cup, I blinked my eyelids in Morse code.

  I spelled out the only German word I knew: danke. Thank you.

  I wasn’t even sure he noticed.

  Jamie:

  ‘Danke,’ he said to her, lifting the teacup, and she turned away quickly.

  For such a quiet wee thing she seemed to have nerves of steel. She didn’t spill a drop.

  Louisa:

  Jane created a distraction of her own.

  She stood up. She never stood as dramatically as she sat, so long as she had something to push against, and just now she leaned on the table. ‘Sticks, Louisa,’ she demanded. I gathered them up and gave them to her, and she toddled over to the piano.

  Wing Commander Cromwell watched her, gaping a little comically – he hadn’t told her she might stand, but he couldn’t scold her the way he would have scolded Jamie.

  ‘Louisa!’ Jane called. ‘Wind the gramophone, please. There’s something I’d like us all to hear. An Italian version of a German composer recorded in London by a Polish pianist—’

  She held up the record sleeve so everyone could see. It was a blocky modern painting of a dove and candle floating among blue musical notes.

  Wing Commander Cromwell recognised it.

  ‘Johanna von Arnim’s first record!’ he exclaimed. ‘Great Scott, that goes back a bit! I heard her sing in the flesh, Béatrice in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict. She must have been over fifty then. But still a sensational performer!’

  Jane blessed him with a saintly smile.

  ‘You’re a fellow opera lover!’

  ‘It’s my opinion that Von Arnim must have been the greatest mezzo-soprano of the last century. I greatly regret I was too young to hear her Carmen.’

  Jane stood for a moment staring down at the record balanced in her hands, glowing.

  But she didn’t say anything else. She just placed the record on the turntable and moved the needle into the outer groove.

  The record spun, and the room flooded with the waterfall ripple of Bach’s Prelude in C, which I know perfectly well because it is the easiest thing he ever wrote for the keyboard and the only Bach that I can play; and over the top of it, in slow, ringing tones of strength and beauty, came a woman’s voice like a bell, singing Ave Maria, gratia plena.

  Everyone turned towards the sound – all the young British airmen and soldiers and the German prisoners too.

  *

  I have lived with music all my life. I grew up with it – an ordinary thing, a way to earn a living, always there to be shared. Granny Adair plaiting my hair and carolling hymns on a Sunday morning. Hearing Daddy’s strong, deep voice coming up the dusty road singing ‘Good Evening Caroline’ – Mummy and I both giving a scream of excitement, then racing to meet him. Falling asleep in a strange garden under coloured paper lanterns in the dark, listening to Mummy playing the harp at some navy officer’s wedding party. Turning pages for her at school-hall concerts, in Kingston and in London. Christmas songs at the piano and playing records for 648 Squadron’s B-Flight on sunny afternoons and stormy nights.

  Ordinary.

  But this was something else.

  This music – this music was outside time.

  It was just a recording, a sound coaxed from shellac through a thorn needle. But while the music played, we were not doing anything but listening. We were not at war. We were not enemies. We weren’t anybody special or different from each other – just people listening.

  People listening to music together.

  Jamie:

  When the record ended I could hear the needle scratching in circles. We stood hushed.

  The war had to begin again; the Germans were led to their prison, and the rest of us got ferried back to the airfield in the Tilly. Sitting on the floor in the back of the van, leaning against Silver’s shoulder, the Bach was still with me like a lullaby, and I was asleep in the five minutes it took to ride to our barracks.

  I dreamed I was leading Pimms Section over a shining sunlit sea hunting for U-boats. But there were no ships and no submarines, nothing but the shadows of coral reefs below clear turquoise waves all the way to the horizon, and dolphins leaping. When I tried to make a radio call to the other planes nobody answered. The only thing I could hear on my headset was the high, haunting trill of a flute. It wasn’t Bach, though. I didn’t recognise the music, but I knew it was Mendelssohn.

  Ellen:

  Och, it didn’t fash me I missed the interview with the German prisoners. I had my own fun. I drove Phyllis to Stonehaven to collect the German translator who came on the train the next day.

  We’d been told her name, Sergeant Elisabeth Lind. She’d been told to look for the Tilly, I suppose. At the rail station I got out of the van first, and the translator made straight for me as she came through the barriers.

  She wore a smart grey Parisian suit – though it must have been a mite outdated – beneath a sealskin coat as sleek as slate and soft as silk. Her hair the colour of ripe straw was done in a tight plait around her head, like a picture postcard of a German milkmaid, if milkmaids went about in fur coats and matching pillbox hats. Her face was made up like a film star’s, with long thick eyelashes and red lips.

  I didn’t recognise her straightaway because of the hair and make-up, but the moment I saw her eyes, clear bright hazel in her bonny vixen’s face, I knew who she was – Jamie Stuart’s wee German-speaking sister. The pair of them at Windyedge together!

  I must have gawped, because she gave her lips a quick tap with a finger gloved in soft grey chinchilla, telling me to hush, and I remembered that she was using someone else’s name.

  A cloud of soldiers and railwaymen buzzed about her like eager bees. She’d shared out her things amongst them – a small case, an even smaller overnight case, a handbag, and a gas mask. God pity us, I thought, swallowing a laugh and thinking of the 648 Squadron lads.

  She minced up to me like a fairy in furs. I felt tall and awkward as she held out her small hand for me to shake as if we’d never met. She said, ‘Volunteer McEwen? I’m Sergeant Elisabeth Lind.’

  ‘Whisht, Elisabeth?’ I repeated. ‘Just like the Queen!’

  Tha
t was the name I’d given her myself – Queenie.

  ‘Sergeant Lind, if you don’t mind,’ she said quietly.

  I’d seen her play-acting a thousand times before, and I wasn’t going to give away her secrets any more than she’d give away mine. I didn’t know what her game was, but if she’d found a way to play-act and win the war – well, I was glad to see her having a good time. I liked my job, too, or at least as long as Cromwell wasn’t poking his neb in.

  I said, ‘Sergeant Lind it is, then.’

  She took her overnight case from the lad at her shoulder and unlatched it and tipped every single thing in it over the kerb next to the Tilly. She made it look like an accident.

  Shaness! I didn’t know whether to laugh or to howl.

  It was all lipsticks and face creams and kohl pots and unmentionable other female items, and the young men all scooted back in horror as if they’d tumbled into a snake pit.

  ‘Don’t worry, Volunteer McEwen will help me,’ she called over her shoulder to the lads, and most of them slunk away whilst only a couple of the hardiest, the ones holding her things, kept an eye on the queen bee from a safe distance.

  We knelt on the cobbles with our heads together, and in a flash she muttered at my ear, ‘Please warn Jamie – I’m sorry about the surprise! My commanding officer feels that German prisoners are more at ease with a native speaker translating, and as he isn’t here and I am good at being Swiss, they simply wouldn’t send anyone else—’

  ‘You do it very well and all,’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t speak as if you know me,’ she warned.

  Phyllis got herself out of the Tilly and now came bounding over to help pick things up.

  ‘I’m Flight Officer Pennyworth,’ she said breathlessly, sweeping bits and pieces back into the case. ‘Or Phyllis, when we’re off duty. Hello and welcome! How very embarrassing – we’ll have this tidied in no time—’

  Phyllis shooed away the last of the admirers. ‘Is this her handbag? Follow Volunteer McEwen with the other case, thank you – Ellen, open the back, I’ll finish here.’

  In no time the show was over and I’d not said anything I shouldn’t have.

  ‘Sergeant Lind’ sat herself in the passenger seat of the Tilly. Phyllis climbed in back so that we shouldn’t have to squeeze up together in the front. But as I headed out to the Aberdeen road, even from the back Phyllis managed to keep the chit-chat going.

  ‘We’ll let you settle in at the Limehouse, Sergeant Lind, and then Ellen can drive us to the aerodrome for three o’clock. I’ve got a pile of gen to prep you on – information, I mean, background and such. I do apologise, you’re not English, are you? I’ll try to simplify the lingo. We’ve arranged a bicycle for you, as it’s not far and it saves on petrol – oh dear, you are able to ride a bicycle?’

  Sergeant Lind laughed. ‘I’m pretty fluent in English and I do know how to ride a bicycle. Don’t worry, it will be easier in uniform than in this coat.’

  She was play-acting even with her own posh accent, speaking English like royalty, as if she had a mouth full of river pebbles and could neither swallow them nor spit them out. I thought I’d strangle with laughter – I wished I had a smoke, just to think about something else.

  ‘Thank goodness it isn’t snowing,’ Phyllis said anxiously. ‘They have been walloped with it west of here. Perhaps we can arrange for boots if you haven’t brought any.’

  ‘Thank you, I should love for boots to be arranged!’

  I am not ashamed to say I gave thanks to God that I didn’t have to speak to her myself. I didn’t trust myself to speak a word.

  As Sergeant Elisabeth Lind swept into the Limehouse, Phyllis was too busy trying to make her feel at home to notice my face doing acrobatics. Mrs Warner was in her chair by the fire and Louisa on the piano stool where she often perched, and they both watched the queen bee with interest.

  ‘Mrs Campbell?’ called Phyllis. ‘Mrs Campbell, could you come through? Sergeant Elisabeth Lind is here – the German translator.’

  Nan planted herself behind the bar with her hands on her hips. ‘Not another one!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You already have a translator?’ asked Sergeant Lind.

  ‘I meant—’ Poor Nan went red.

  ‘Not another German?’ guessed Elisabeth Lind. ‘No. I am Swiss. I am from Bienne, and my first language is French, but I speak German, too.’ She laughed. ‘And English, of course!’

  She unpinned her sealskin hat and laid it on the brass counter, and unbuttoned her soft gloves. She was no taller than Louisa and had to stand on her toes to lean across the bar. She said, ‘I am at the disposal of Wing Commander Cromwell. I am to stay here at the Limehouse, and Flight Officer Pennyworth will brief me on what’s happened at the aerodrome.’

  Nan gave a wabble of her head with her mouth open as if she had forgotten how to speak.

  Elisabeth Lind filled in the gap. ‘You needn’t call me Sergeant unless I’m in uniform – as your guest, Miss Lind will do nicely. I would like to go to my room now, if I may, and freshen up before I visit the aerodrome. I never do sleep on the train …’

  She leaned in closer to Nan and added in a low voice, ‘And if you could make me a cup of coffee it would be the best present I have ever been given.’

  ‘There’s only ersatz coffee,’ Nan said sulkily. ‘Chicory syrup. I daresay it’s not what you’re used to.’

  ‘Indeed I am,’ the translator said triumphantly. ‘It’s the same in every RAF canteen since the war started. I would be delighted to receive a cup of ersatz coffee.’

  She dropped back down on her heels and took a keek at her surroundings: wishing coins, piano, gramophone, stone floor, fireplace, white-haired old woman, brown-skinned Louisa.

  ‘Hello.’ She gave Louisa that crooked smile of hers, friendly.

  ‘Miss Lind,’ Louisa answered politely like a good wee Colonial. ‘I’m Louisa Adair. I look after Mrs Campbell’s aunt Jane.’

  Mrs Warner waved hello from her chair by the fire.

  ‘Oh.’ Elisabeth Lind laughed again. ‘A house full of women! I am glad. I was worried they would make me stay at the air base.’

  I did not dare catch anyone’s eye. I could not imagine the fireworks when she came up against Wing Commander Cromwell.

  But I knew she was a canny and a clever lass, good at getting her own way, and perhaps she’d be better able to manage him than Jamie or I.

  ‘I’ll show Miss Lind to her room,’ said Nan. ‘She can have Number Four. The best double. Louisa, bring her up a cup of coffee, would you?’

  ‘Please don’t be long,’ Phyllis said anxiously. ‘Wing Commander Cromwell is expecting us.’

  ‘I won’t be two ticks,’ said Sergeant Lind. ‘Just the time it takes to finish my coffee and change!’

  I felt limp with relief when she left the room.

  Jamie:

  Cromwell brought her into the officers’ lounge to introduce her.

  ‘Sergeant Elisabeth Lind will be with us for a week or so as a German translator.’

  Elisabeth Lind? Well, it wasn’t the first time she’d made me call her by some made-up name.

  Every young man in that room catapulted to his feet. Ignacy bowed. She was wearing an air-force blue WAAF uniform exactly like Phyllis’s, but we didn’t meet many new girls, and this one, as I knew well, lapped up attention. People leaped to pull out a chair for her, light her cigarette, get her a tea. Gavin Hamilton and Dougie Kerr squabbled over who’d hold her gas-mask bag. When Dougie lost, she made it up to him by listening attentively to his life’s story.

  I had enough trouble with my lads. I didn’t need this.

  She met my eyes briefly, and I could tell she was very worried I was going to blow her cover.

  She tried carefully to stay away from me. Fair enough. She’d gone to a lot of trouble with her make-up so the Stuart family resemblance wouldn’t be obvious.

  Derfel and Ignacy were the only ones who sat down again besides me. We let th
e others get on with it.

  ‘Scotty, you look like you have got a headache,’ Ignacy said.

  I was leaning on one elbow, shading my eyes with my hand. I lifted my face in an effort to appear more sociable.

  ‘I was expecting a Teutonic battleaxe, not a flipping Rhine maiden,’ I said.

  ‘What do you not like about Rhine maidens?’ he joked.

  ‘God, look at Yorkie,’ I complained. ‘He’s got his arm around her waist already. In the officers’ lounge! I’d better break it up.’

  I heaved myself out of my chair again. I wasn’t sure if I was protecting my baby sister from my squadron or protecting my squadron from my baby sister.

  But by the time I’d crossed the room she’d managed perfectly well to protect herself, skilfully extracting her slender waist from Bill Yorke’s grip all on her own. She cosied up to Phyllis, making it harder for the lads to get near her. Now she was chatting to Chip, and didn’t look at me until Phyllis tugged her arm and said, ‘This is Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart. He’s in charge of B-Flight and flies with Pimms. They’re the ones who picked up all the German messages.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard about you from your wireless operators.’ She still didn’t look at me as she spoke. ‘You’re on the list to be interviewed.’

  ‘Whenever you like,’ I said, trying not to provoke her.

  ‘I hope there’s not much more opening ceremony,’ she added. ‘I’m here to talk to the prisoners, and I would quite like to get on with it.’

  Once the shock began to wear off, I realised how hard it was going to be to ever get to talk to her alone – even harder than trying to talk to Ellen. ‘Happy to have a chat with you now in the debriefing room, Flight Officer Lind,’ I said through my teeth.

  She pealed with laughter. ‘Whatever would the rest of your squadron think if we two had a private tête-à-tête? Your interview is with your wing commander, not with me. And it’s Sergeant Lind.’ She turned aside to show me her stripes. ‘I’m a translator – not in charge of anything!’