by Kate Quinn
“Verse can be handy in our line of work. I’ve broken more than one key that was picked out of a line of Goethe. Operators are supposed to choose random letters, but they don’t. It’s not in human nature to be random.” He sounded affectionate at this universal failing. “So sometimes they pick fragments of poetry as keys instead.”
“Or dirty words,” Beth replied. “I’ve decrypted a lot more traffic keyed to dirty words than lines of Schiller.”
“Dear me. My well-bred gels are being subjected to Germanic cursing?”
“Scheisse,” said Beth, and Dilly laughed until he choked. “How’s that new cipher you’re working on?” she asked. Dilly had told her about it on her very last visit: Tricky, tricky stuff. Reminds me of a rose, petals overlapping downward toward the core. His hands had made vague blooming motions over the bed—a bed he was too weak to leave by then. Travis didn’t mind if I took it home to pick at, not that I’ve made much headway . . .
Beth wished he were here, to tell her more about it. “I miss you,” she whispered aloud.
Nothing felt the same. Her billet-mates were still avoiding each other, leaving Beth stranded in the middle, very determinedly not thinking about what had caused the breach and if part of that might be her fault. Bletchley Park, with all the new blocks and new recruits, wasn’t quite the haven it had once been; Beth felt waves of her old crippling shyness every time she stepped into the streaming mass of strangers at shift change. Yet things were going better now than they had during the old Cottage days, Beth had to admit—with U-boat operations suspended in the Atlantic, American soldiers and supplies were flowing steadily; German and Italian troops were surrendering in North Africa; the massive invasion of Sicily had kicked down the door for the move to mainland Italy and now the Allies were celebrating in Naples. An Allied return to French shores was being discussed in pubs and over tea tables as something that would happen, not something everyone hoped might happen. Things were better.
But . . .
“I miss my ladies,” the imagined Dilly said wistfully. Wherever he was now, Beth was sure he missed them. “I wish I’d been there when you took those Yanks down a peg.”
“Catching sight of your CMG set them straight.” It had been January when word came down that Dilly Knox, in recognition of his wartime achievements, was to be awarded the CMG. Dilly had been far too ill to travel to London for the ceremony, but he’d received the palace emissary at Courns Wood, accepted the award . . . which he’d kept for all of ten minutes before dispatching it by car to ISK with a note:
Awards of this sort depend entirely on the support of colleagues and associates. May I, before proceeding, refer them back!
It is, I fear, incumbent upon me at the same time to bid farewell.
Everyone, Dilly’s whole section, had wept.
He died not long after.
Beth realized she was crying, tears dripping off her chin. She collected Boots’s lead and without another word trailed back toward the house. She didn’t need to look back to see him sitting there, in his university scarf, thinking of inward-folding ciphers and A. E. Housman verse.
Mrs. Knox came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. “Beth, could you take a stack of papers back to Bletchley for me? Commander Travis gave permission for Dilly to keep them in his library when he was working, but now . . .”
Her voice trailed off. Her eyes were reddened, and Beth couldn’t meet them straight on. Too much grief.
Mrs. Knox rallied to complete the thought. “They should be back under proper security. I should have thought of it months ago, but no one came asking, and I’ve been in such a state. I can’t think it was anything terribly important if they didn’t send for it before now, but one still shouldn’t leave these things lying about.”
“Of course I’ll take them.” Beth followed her into the library, waiting as Dilly’s small safe behind the wall panel was unlocked and a folder of messages extracted. Beth was tempted to peek, see if this was the cipher Dilly had compared to a rose, but tucked it unopened inside her coat. She’d ask if she could work on it in her spare time, if she had any. There was going to be another jumbo rush as soon as plans firmed up for the invasion, which would surely be this coming year. More work for Knox’s section, feeding false information through double agents, then cracking the Abwehr traffic to make sure Berlin swallowed it . . .
Beth telephoned the transport pool. She’d be early for her shift, but carrying a folder of Enigma meant getting a BP transport back to the Park, and immediately. Drawing up to the Park gates the better part of an hour later, Beth was surprised to see a familiar figure arguing with one of the guards.
“Drop me here,” Beth told the driver, and swung out. “Dad?”
He turned round, red faced, frustrated. “These fellows wouldn’t let me in.”
“They won’t let anyone in without a pass.” She pulled him aside from the gate. “What is it?”
“Your mother is in a state. The things she’s been hearing about you . . .”
The last time Beth had paid a dutiful call home, Mother had called her a tart and a serpent’s tooth, and Beth had turned and walked right back out. She hadn’t been privy to much family news after that. “What’s she raging about now?”
“There is talk, Bethan. That you’re mixed up with some dark fellow. The pastor’s wife saw you in Cambridge walking with some chap she insisted was at least half black—”
“He’s not black,” Beth said.
“Well, I’m glad to hear—”
“He’s Maltese, Egyptian, and Arabic. Shall I bring him round for tea?” Beth couldn’t resist.
“You’re joking, surely. A heathen?”
“He was raised Church of England like his entire family.” Though Beth thought Harry’s faith lay more in mathematics than God; they’d had some spirited theological discussions along those lines. “His name’s Harry Zarb. He speaks Arabic as well as English; it’s a lovely language. Oh, and he’s married! But he’s absolutely wonderful, Dad.”
“Bethan”—plaintively—“just come home.”
“No.” Beth spoke mildly but firmly, bringing Boots to heel. “I’m happy to visit if Mother can manage not to pitch a fit, but I’m never moving back.”
“I’m your father. I have the right—”
“No, you don’t.” Beth looked him in the eye. “You didn’t stop her throwing me out. You never defended me. You never told me I was clever, even though I can do the Sunday crossword ten times faster than you. You never told me I was anything.” She thought of Dilly Knox, frail and bright burning, telling her she was the best of his Fillies. “I have to go to work now.”
“Bethan—”
“Don’t call me that,” she said without turning. “It’s not who I am anymore.”
She made sure the folder of Dilly’s work was properly registered, then took it to ISK (now moved over to one of the new blocks) when no one seemed sure where it should be filed. “What’s this?” said Peggy as Beth opened the file. “And what’s that?” Looking at Boots.
“That’s a schnauzer. This is something Dilly was working on.”
“Why does ISK need a schnauzer? The Yanks already think we’re potty because of Jumbo.”
Beth arranged her coat into a nest under her desk for Boots. “He’ll be quiet as a mouse. I couldn’t go all the way back to my billet to drop him off, not when I was carrying those. Do you recognize the cipher? Dilly was working on it.”
“It’s an odd one . . .” Peggy frowned. “He told me he was working on Soviet ciphers.”
“But the Russians don’t use Enigma machines, and this is definitely Enigma traffic.”
“That doesn’t mean they haven’t captured the odd machine or two from the Germans, in the back-and-forth on the eastern front.” Peggy flipped through the stack. “Perhaps they’re experimenting with a machine.”
“Even if they are, why are we flagging it? The Russians are our allies. We aren’t reading their post.”
Beth put it aside, reached for the day’s Abwehr traffic, and immediately forgot about Dilly’s Russian project.
Later she looked back at that moment, screaming in the ear of her past self. Don’t forget about that file. Pick it up right now, Beth Finch. Pick it up!
Chapter 53
* * *
FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, NOVEMBER 1943
* * *
Addressing the lovers who left a set of frilly knickers on the lakeshore after what one presumes was a tryst—for heaven’s sake, fake a marriage certificate and go to a hotel!
* * *
Again,” Mab coached Beth.
“My fiancé is an airman stationed in Kent,” Beth recited, standing in the icy street before the narrow front of the gynecologist’s office. All around them people pushed and hurried. “He has forty-eight hours’ leave to get married before Christmas. I’m not looking to have children until after the war—”
“Say it’s your fiancé who wants that,” Mab corrected. Most doctors would only fit married women for a contraceptive device, but given the war, some would fit affianced women. Mab had come here herself almost exactly two years ago, before her wedding. Don’t think about that. “If you say you’re the one who doesn’t want babies yet, you’ll get a lecture.”
“Right.” Beth looked determined. She’d barely even blushed when Mab collared her, shortly after leaving sick bay, and said bluntly, I know what you and Harry are up to. I think you’re an idiot, but please tell me you’re taking precautions. Beth had mumbled something about using French letters, and Mab had sighed, There are safer options. Whoever would have guessed shy Beth would end up part of BP’s fast set, the ones who unabashedly worked off codebreaking stress in dark corners with any partner they could find? Though Beth didn’t seem to be sneaking off to dark corners with anyone but Harry. Mab had Beth go through her story again, then pulled off her left glove. “You’d—better borrow this. The doctor won’t believe you without a ring.”
It hurt, taking Francis’s ruby off. Beth slipped it on, seeming to know what it cost Mab. “Thank you. I know you don’t approve—”
“It’s not my business,” Mab said shortly. “You want to get mixed up with a married man, well, you already know what I think about that.”
“I’m not ashamed.” Beth’s chin went up. “And I’m not hurting anyone.”
“Just yourself, if you think it’s going to end in wedding bells.”
“I don’t want wedding bells.”
Beth really had to be the oddest duck Mab had ever befriended. And now she’s about the only female friend I’ve got left. No Osla, no Wrens . . . most of the other women at BP didn’t seem to know how to talk to Mab anymore. Those like herself who had lost husbands, fiancés, boyfriends, were so raw in their own grief that Mab avoided them, and the women who hadn’t suffered such a loss either were awkward in the face of the pain Mab couldn’t conceal, or flinched from her mourning black because they were afraid for their own loved ones. Whether they thought Mab was bad luck or bad company, they tended to avoid her now. All except Beth, who was looking up at the doors of the doctor’s office.
“Does it really work, this cap thing? Better than, you know.” She blushed.
“It works.” Mab bit the words off. Lately she’d been having dreams about children—never girls, all little girls were Lucy, but boys. Baby boys with Francis’s russet hair; boys of ten with Francis’s stocky build, running about with cricket bats . . . boys so real she could almost reach out and touch them before they dissolved into the dream’s mist. She’d wake up retching with longing.
Beth disappeared into the office, and Mab went on to her own meeting in Trafalgar Square. Even on a cold winter’s day it was thronged: lovers meeting under Nelson’s Column, children throwing crumbs to the pigeons.
“Tell me about your husband, Mrs. Gray.” The journalist met her beside the great bronze lion on the south side of Nelson’s Column, as arranged. An exchange of names and pleasantries, and he was already pulling out his notepad. He’s rather a well-known correspondent, Francis’s publisher had said when he telephoned Mab. Doing a piece on Francis. Perhaps you might answer a few questions when you’re next in London? Mab would rather have chewed glass than rake over her memories for a stranger, but since she hadn’t given Francis a russet-haired son for a legacy, she’d force herself to talk about his poetry.
“What do you want to know, Mr. . . .” His name had already slipped her memory. She couldn’t seem to keep anything fixed in her mind nowadays.
“Graham. Ian Graham.” He had a beautiful baritone and public school vowels: a tall man, wire-lean in rumpled overcoat and battered fedora. “I’m writing a series on the role of art in wartime. First a piece on Dame Myra Hess and the National Gallery lunchtime concerts—what?”
“My husband took me to one of those concerts.” Mab huddled deeper into her black coat. “Our second date.” She’d spent the performance scrutinizing the clothes of the women in the audience, while Francis sat transfixed by the music. Such a marvelous thing, he’d said afterward. You know how these concerts came about? The art was taken out of the gallery for safekeeping, then Dame Myra organized the most famous musicians in Britain to come play for the public among all the empty picture frames, just so blacked-out London has something beautiful to listen to.
Marvelous, Mab had said, eyeing an ivy-print silk frock in the next row.
“It won’t be a puff piece, Mrs. Gray.” Ian Graham evidently took her silence for mistrust. “Francis Gray’s poetry helped define trench warfare to an oblivious generation. In war, art is a balm.”
“Then ask what you’d like,” Mab said brusquely.
“More about you first . . . I understand you’re billeted up in Buckinghamshire, doing war work.”
“Yes, office work. Too boring for words.” It really was, no fibbing required. Giles had got her a post filing and typing in the mansion; it was quiet and monotonous and Mab thought she could do it forever.
“Where in Buckinghamshire exactly?” The pencil jotted.
“A little town hardly more than a railway depot.”
“Really . . . You’re not the first person I’ve met who does something terribly boring and vague up in Bucks, in a little town with nothing but a railway depot.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Most of the others were—how shall I put it? Whitehall sorts, Foreign Office sorts. They’ll talk about their own work readily enough, especially with a scotch or two down the hatch, but they all clammed when it came to anything about Buckinghamshire.”
Mab gave him a blank look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ian Graham grinned, a quick sunlight shaft of a smile. “Right,” he said, and changed the subject. Routine questions: how long she and Francis had been married, where they had met. Mab’s nails bit into her palms as she made herself recount their dates, the hasty wedding . . .
“Your husband enjoyed music—what about art? Paintings, sculpture?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Did he ever say anything about his war, Mrs. Gray?”
“No.”
“He took a rather well-known tour in 1919, collecting earth from battlefields for the families who hadn’t been able to bury their boys. His letter about it was published in the Times. Did he—”
“I—he didn’t tell me about that,” Mab jerked.
Mr. Graham changed tack. “I don’t mean to pry, Mrs. Gray. It’s merely that you were Francis Gray’s wife—his publishers and readers can tell me about the poetry, but you can tell me about the man. A personal anecdote, perhaps?”
Personal. Suddenly Mab couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t like the hysteria that had gripped her during her bombe demonstration. This was rage and despair, two emotions flaming up in red and black. Turning, sh
e seized the surprised journalist by the sleeve. “I need a drink.”
He bought her a gin at the nearest pub, not batting an eye as she slammed it back. The perfect place, dark and grimy, full of drinkers who didn’t want to be bothered. No one glanced over as the choked words began pouring out of Mab.
“You want a personal anecdote, Mr. Graham?” She took her second drink, turning to the journalist. “The truth is, I don’t have any. Francis Gray was the best man I have ever known, and I was his wife less than one year. You know how many times we saw each other? Fourteen. He was always traveling, and I had a job we agreed was important, so we did our best. We had a forty-eight-hour wedding-and-honeymoon. We had two weekends in the Lake District. We had the odd meal in a railway café. We made love a total of fifteen times.” She didn’t care if she was being indecent. She didn’t care she was saying it to a journalist. She had to say it to someone, after thinking it for so many nights, or she would burst. Ian Graham listened without interrupting, and that was all that mattered. “We loved each other by proxy, Mr. Graham. He loved me through a girl he saw once in Paris in 1918, and I loved him through his letters, but we hardly spent any time together. I don’t have any personal anecdotes about my husband. We didn’t have time to create any.”
Her voice cracked. She bolted half the gin.
“I know he liked curry and dawn walks. I know he hated his own poetry and never slept the night through, because of the things he saw in the trenches. But I didn’t know him. You have to live with someone to know them. I’ve lived with my billet-mates for three and a half years; I know them inside and out. I loved Francis Gray, and to me he was perfect, and that’s proof I didn’t know him very well at all. I never got to realize all the ways he wasn’t perfect. I didn’t get to reach the point where the song he whistled while shaving drove me mad or learn how rainy days made him short tempered. He never got to realize that I’m not some great wartime love, just a shallow cow who lives for pretty shoes and library novels. We never got to quarrel over the milk bill or whether to buy strawberry jam or marmalade . . .”