THREE
PINCH
PINCH: (1) vb., to steal enemy cryptographic material; (2) n., any object stolen from the enemy that enhances the chances of breaking his codes or ciphers.
A Lexicon of Cryptography
(‘Most Secret’, Bletchley Park, 1943)
1
BLETCHLEY WAS A railway town. The great main line from London to Scotland split it down the middle, and then the smaller branch line from Oxford to Cambridge sliced it into quarters, so that wherever you stood there was no escaping the trains: the noise of them, the smell of their soot, the sight of their brown smoke rising above the clustered roofs. Even the terraced houses were mostly railway-built, cut from the same red brick as the station and the engine sheds, constructed in the same dour, industrial style.
The Commercial Guesthouse, Albion Street, was about five minutes’ walk from Bletchley Park and backed on to the main line. Its owner, Mrs Ethel Armstrong, was, like her establishment, a little over fifty years old, solidly built, with a forbidding, late-Victorian aspect. Her husband had died of a heart attack a month after the outbreak of war, whereupon she had converted their four-storey property into a small hotel. Like the other townspeople – and there were about seven thousand of them – she had no idea of what went on in the grounds of the mansion up the road, and even less interest. It was profitable, that was all that mattered to her. She charged thirty-eight shillings a week and expected her five residents, in return for meals, to hand over all their food-rationing coupons. As a result, by the spring of 1943, she had a thousand pounds in War Savings Bonds and enough edible goods hoarded in her cellar to open a medium-sized grocery store.
It was on the Wednesday that one of her rooms had become vacant, and on the Friday that she had been served a billeting notice requiring her to provide accommodation to a Mr Thomas Jericho. His possessions from his previous address had been delivered to her door that same morning: two boxes of personal effects and an ancient iron bicycle. The bicycle she wheeled into the back yard. The boxes she carried upstairs.
One carton was full of books. A couple of Agatha Christies. A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, two volumes, by a fellow named George Shoobridge Garr. Principia Mathematica, whatever that was. A pamphlet with a suspiciously Germanic ring to it – On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem – inscribed ‘To Tom, with fond respect, Alan’. More books full of mathematics, one so repeatedly read it was almost falling to pieces and stuffed full of markers – bus and tram tickets, a beer mat, even a blade of grass. It fell open at a heavily underlined passage:
there is one purpose at any rate which the real mathematics may serve in war. When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most remote.
Well, the last line’s true enough, she thought. She closed the book, turned it around and squinted at the spine: A Mathematician’s Apology by G. H. Hardy, Cambridge University Press.
The other box also yielded little of interest. A Victorian etching of King’s College Chapel. A cheap Waralarm clock, set to go off at eleven, in a black fibre case. A wireless. An academic mortarboard and a dusty gown. A bottle of ink. A telescope. A copy of The Times dated 23 December 1942, folded to the crossword, which had been filled in by two different hands, one very small and precise, the other rounder, probably feminine. Written above it was 2712815. And, finally, at the bottom of the carton, a map, which, when she unfolded it, proved not to be of England, or even (as she had suspected and secretly hoped) of Germany, but of the night sky.
She was so put off by this dreary collection that when, at half past midnight that night, there was a knock on the door and another two suitcases were delivered by a small man with a northern accent, she didn’t even bother to open them but dumped them straight in the empty room.
Their owner arrived at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. She was sure of the time, she explained later to her next-door neighbour, Mrs Scratchwood, because the religious service was just ending on the wireless and the news was about to start. And he was exactly as she’d suspected he would be. He wasn’t very tall. He was thin. Bookish. Ill-looking, and nursing his arm, as if he’d just injured it. He hadn’t shaved, was as white as – well, she was going to say ‘as a sheet’, but she hadn’t seen sheets that white since before the war, certainly not in her house. His clothes were of good quality, but in a mess: she noticed there was a button missing on his overcoat. He was pleasant enough, though. Nicely spoken. Very good manners. A quiet voice. She’d never had any children herself, never had a son, but if she had, he would have been about the same age. Well, let’s just say he needed feeding up, anyone could see that.
She was strict about the rent. She always demanded a month in advance – the request was made down in the hall, before she took them up to see the room – and there was usually an argument, at the end of which she grumpily agreed to settle for two weeks. But he paid up without a murmur. She asked for seven pounds six shillings and he gave her eight pounds, and when she pretended she hadn’t any change, he said: ‘Fine, give it me later.’ When she mentioned his ration book he looked at her for a moment, very puzzled, and then he said (and she would remember it for the rest of her life): ‘Do you mean this?’
‘Do you mean this?’ She repeated it in wonderment. As if he’d never seen one before! He gave her the little brown booklet – the precious weekly passport to four ounces of butter, eight ounces of bacon, twelve ounces of sugar – and told her she could do what she liked with it. ‘I’ve never had any use for it.’
By this time she was so flustered she hardly knew what she was doing. She tucked the money and the ration book into her apron before he could change his mind and led him upstairs.
Now Ethel Armstrong was the first to admit that the fifth bedroom of the Commercial Guest House was not up to much. It was at the end of the passage, up a little twist of stairs, and the only furniture in it was a single bed and a wardrobe. It was so small the door wouldn’t open properly because the bed got in the way. It had a tiny window flecked with soot which looked out over the wide expanse of railway tracks. In two and a half years it must have had thirty different occupants. None had stayed more than a couple of months and some had refused to sleep in it at all. But this one just sat on the edge of the bed, squeezed in between his boxes and his cases, and said wearily, ‘Very pleasant, Mrs Armstrong.’
She quickly explained the rules of the house. Breakfast was at seven in the morning, dinner at six thirty in the evening, ‘cold collations’ would be left in the kitchen for those working irregular shifts. There was one bathroom at the far end of the passage, shared between the five guests. They were permitted one bath a week each, the depth of water not to exceed five inches (a line was marked on the enamel) and he would have to arrange his turn with the others. He would be given four lumps of coal per evening to heat his room. The fire in the parlour downstairs was extinguished at 9 p.m., sharp. Anyone caught cooking, drinking alcohol or entertaining visitors in their room, especially of the opposite sex – he’d smiled faintly at that – would be evicted, balance of rent to be paid as a forfeit.
She’d asked if he had any questions, to which he made no reply, which was a mercy, because at that moment a nonstop express shrieked past at sixty miles an hour no more than a hundred feet from the bedroom window, shaking the little room so violently that Mrs Armstrong had a brief and horrifying vision of the floor giving way and them both plummeting downwards, down through her own bedroom, down through the scullery, crashing down to land amid the waxy legs of ham and tinned peaches so carefully stacked and hidden in her Aladdin’s cave of a cellar.
‘Well, then,’ she said, when the noise (if not yet the house) had finally subsided, ‘I’ll leave you to get some peace and quiet.’
Tom Jericho sat on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes after listening to her footsteps descending the stairs. Then he
took off his jacket and shirt and examined his throbbing forearm. He had a pair of bruises just below the elbow as neat and black as damsons, and he remembered now whom Skynner had always reminded him of: a prefect at school called Fane, the son of a bishop, who liked to cane the new boys in his study at teatime, and make them all say ‘thank you, Fane’ afterwards.
It was cold in the room and he started to shiver, his skin puckering into rashes of gooseflesh. He felt desperately tired. He opened one of his suitcases and took out a pair of pyjamas and changed into them quickly. He hung up his jacket and thought about unpacking the rest of his clothes, but decided against it. He might be out of Bletchley by the next morning. That was a point – he passed his hand across his face – he’d just given away eight pounds, more than a week’s salary, for a room he might not need. The wardrobe vibrated as he opened it and the wire coat hangers sounded a melancholy chime. Inside it stank of mothballs. He quickly shoved the cardboard boxes into it and pushed the cases under the bed. Then he drew the curtains, lay down on the lumpy mattress, and pulled the blankets up under his chin.
For three years Jericho had led a nocturnal life, rising with the darkness, going to bed with the light, but he’d never got used to it. Lying there listening to the distant sounds of a Saturday morning made him feel like an invalid. Downstairs someone was running a bath. The water tank was in the attic directly above his head, and the noise of it emptying and refilling was deafening. He closed his eyes and all he could see was the chart of the North Atlantic. He opened them and the bed shook slightly as a train went by and that reminded him of Claire. The 15.06 out of London Euston – ‘calling at Willesden, Watford, Apsley, Berkhamsted, Tring, Cheddington and Leighton Buzzard, arriving Bletchley four-nineteen’ – he could recite the station announcement even now, and see her now as well. It had been his first glimpse of her.
This must have been – what? – a week after the break into Shark? A couple of days before Christmas, anyway. He and Logie, Puck and Atwood had been ordered to present themselves at the office block in Broadway, near St James’s tube station, from which Bletchley Park was run. ‘C’ himself had made a little speech about the value of their work. In recognition of their ‘vital breakthrough’, and on the orders of the Prime Minister, they had each received an iron handshake and an envelope containing a cheque for a hundred pounds, drawn on an ancient and obscure City bank. Afterwards, slightly embarrassed, they’d said goodbye to one another on the pavement and gone their various ways – Logie to lunch at the Admiralty, Puck to meet a girl, Atwood to a concert at the National Portrait Gallery – and Jericho back to Euston to catch the train to Bletchley, ‘calling at Willesden, Watford, Apsley …’
There would be no more cheques now, he thought. Perhaps Churchill would ask for his money back.
A million tons of shipping. Ten thousand people. Forty-six U-boats. And that was just the beginning of it.
‘It’s everything. It’s the whole war.’
He turned his face to the wall.
Another train went by, and then another. Someone else began to run a bath. In the back yard, directly beneath his window, Mrs Armstrong hung the parlour carpet over the washing line and began to beat it, hard and rhythmically, as if it were a tenant behind with his rent or some prying inspector from the Ministry of Food.
Darkness closed around him.
The dream is a memory, the memory a dream.
A teeming station platform – iron girders and pigeons fluttering against a filthy glass cupola. Tinny carols playing over the public address system. Steel light and splashes of khaki.
A line of soldiers bent sideways by the weight of kitbags runs towards the guard’s van. A sailor kisses a pregnant woman in a red hat and pats her bottom. School children going home for Christmas, salesmen in threadbare overcoats, a pair of thin and anxious mothers in tatty furs, a tall, blonde woman in a well-cut, ankle-length grey coat, trimmed with black velvet at the collar and cuffs. A pre-war coat, he thinks, nothing so fine is made nowadays …
She walks past the window and he realises with a jolt that she’s noticed he is staring at her. He glances at his watch, snaps the lid shut with his thumb and when he looks up again she’s actually stepping into his compartment. Every seat is taken. She hesitates. He stands to offer her his place. She smiles her thanks and gestures to show there’s just sufficient room for her to squeeze between him and the window. He nods and sits again with difficulty.
Doors slam along the length of the train, a whistle blows, they shudder forwards. The platform is a blur of waving people.
He’s wedged so tightly he can barely move. Such intimacy would never have been tolerated before the war, but nowadays, on these endless uncomfortable journeys, men and women are always being thrown together, often literally so. Her thigh is pressed to his, so hard he can feel the firmness of muscle and bone beneath the padding of her flesh. Her shoulder is to his. Their legs touch. Her stocking rustles against his calf. He can feel the warmth of her, and smell her scent.
He looks past her and pretends to stare out of the window at the ugly houses sliding by. She’s much younger than he thought at first. Her face in profile is not conventionally pretty, but striking – angular, strong – he supposes ‘handsome’ is the word for it. She has very blonde hair, tied back. When he tries to move, his elbow brushes the side of her breast and he thinks he might die of embarrassment. He apologies profusely but she doesn’t seem to notice. She has a copy of The Times, folded up very small so that she can hold it in one hand.
The compartment is packed. Servicemen lie on the floor and jam the corridor outside. An RAF corporal has fallen asleep in the luggage rack and cradles his kit bag like a lover. Someone begins to snore. The air smells strongly of cheap cigarettes and unwashed bodies. But gradually, for Jericho, all this begins to disappear. There are just the two of them, rocking with the train. Where they touch his skin is burning. His calf muscles ache with the strain of neither moving too close nor drawing apart.
He wonders how far she’s going. Each time they stop at one of the little stations he fears she might get off. But no: she continues to stare down at her square of newsprint. The dreary hinterland of northern London gives way to a dreary countryside, monochrome in the darkening December afternoon – frosted fields barren of livestock, bare trees and the straggling dark lines of hedgerows, empty lanes, little villages with smoking chimneys that stand out like smudges of soot in the white landscape.
An hour passes. They’re clear of Leighton Buzzard and within five minutes of Bletchley when she suddenly says: ‘German town partly in French disagreement with Hamelin.’
He isn’t sure he’s heard her properly, or even if the remark is addressed to him.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘German town partly in French disagreement with Hamelin.’ She repeats it, as if he’s stupid. ‘Seven down. Eight letters.’
‘Ah yes,’ he says. ‘Ratisbon.’
‘How do you get that? I don’t think I’ve even heard of it.’ She turns her face to him. He has an impression of large features – a sharp nose, a wide mouth – but it is the eyes that hold him. Grey eyes – a cold grey, with no hint of blue. They’re not dove-grey, he decides later, or pearl-grey. They’re the grey of snow clouds waiting to break.
‘It’s a cathedral city. On the Danube, I believe. Partly in French – well, bon, obviously. Disagreement with Hamelin. That’s easy. Hamelin – Pied Piper – rats. Rat is bon. Rat is good. Not the view in Hamelin.’
He starts to laugh then stops himself. Just hark at yourself, he thinks, you’re babbling like an idiot.
‘Fill up ten. Nine letters.’
‘That’s an anagram,’ he says immediately. ‘Plentiful.’
‘Morning snack as far as it goes. Five letters.’
‘Ambit.’
She shakes her heard, filling in the answers. ‘How do you get it so quickly?’
‘It’s not hard. You learn to know the way they think. Morning – that’s a.m
., obviously. Snack as far as it goes – bit with the e missing. As far as it goes – well, within one’s ambit. One’s limit. May I?’
He reaches over and takes the paper and pencil. Half his brain studies the puzzle, the other half studies her – how she takes a cigarette from her handbag and lights it, how she watches him, her head resting slightly to one side. Aster, tasso, loveage, landau … It’s the first and only time in their relationship he’s ever fully in control, and by the time he’s completed the thirty clues and given her back the paper they’re pulling through the outskirts of a small town, crawling past narrow gardens and tall chimneys. Behind her head he sees the familiar lines of washing, the air raid shelters, the vegetable plots, the little red-brick houses coated black by the passing trains. The compartment darkens as they pass beneath the iron canopy of the station. ‘Bletchley,’ calls the guard. ‘Bletchley station!’
He says, ‘I’m afraid this is my stop.’
‘Yes.’ She looks thoughtfully at the finished crossword, then turns and smiles at him. ‘Yes. D’you know, I rather guessed it might be.’
‘Mr Jericho!’ someone calls. ‘Mr Jericho!’
‘Mr Jericho!’
He opened his eyes. For a moment he was disoriented. The wardrobe loomed over him like a thief in the dim light.
‘Yes.’ He sat up in the strange bed. ‘I’m sorry. Mrs Armstrong?’
‘It’s a quarter past six, Mr Jericho.’ She was shouting to him from halfway up the stairs. ‘Will you be wanting supper?’
A quarter past six? The room was almost dark. He pulled his watch out from beneath his pillow and flicked it open. To his astonishment he found he had slept through the entire day.
‘That would be very kind, Mrs Armstrong. Thank you.’
The dream had been disturbingly vivid – more substantial, certainly, than this shadowy room – and as he threw off the blankets and swung his bare feet on to the cold floor, he felt himself to be in a no-man’s-land between two worlds. He had a peculiar conviction that Claire had been thinking of him, that his subconscious had somehow acted like a radio receiver and had picked up a message from her. It was an absurd thought for a mathematician, a rationalist, to entertain, but he couldn’t rid himself of it. He found his sponge-bag and slipped his overcoat over his pyjamas.
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