by Manda Scott
Briefly, churlishly, he envies them their closeness, and covers it with a laugh. ‘What makes you think I have a problem?’
‘She means a conundrum,’ Theo says. ‘A task. Something hard but fun with which to engage your sizeable brain.’ His cousin knocks the first tip of ash into the tray. ‘I’ve been watching you for the past hour, but Julie saw it as she walked in through the door. That’s because she’s cleverer than me. Did you know you only smile when there’s something really hard on the table?’
‘That’s not true. I smile at you all the time.’
‘Not like this.’ Julie leans over to look at his worksheet and he stifles an urge to cover it up, like a pupil in an exam.
He says, ‘I’ve been back through Paul Mignon’s messages. I think there’s a pattern to the mis-spellings.’
‘A pattern?’
‘Theo said it: he only ever mis-spells, he never adds letters in or takes them out. I wondered if there was a pattern to the mistakes and— Why is that funny?’
Julie answers, although they are both laughing at him. ‘There are probably six people in the entire country who would think to look for a pattern in that. And you’re the one who found it. What is it?’
‘Forty-eight messages in total since the Sarpedon raid was blown and the Boche took over the radio. Each of them has two spelling mistakes, giving ninety-six characters. I took the letters they should have been, and the letters they actually were. Added together, you have one hundred and ninety-two characters, and if you interlace those, taking one from each group alternately, you get this—’
‘And if you take every third letter of that, you get this—’
Julie is not laughing now. She stares at the page as if it might burst into flames. ‘Is it April the first again and I didn’t notice?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Are you going to reply?’
Theo says, ‘You ought to take it to CD.’ This is true. But CD – even the new, more competent CD – is friends with Six, the home of Claude Dansey, who claims personal ownership over anything that smells of espionage and whose deepest desire is to destroy the Firm. So while the rules are straightforward, Laurence has no intention of actually following them. He says, ‘I was rather thinking I ought to take it directly to Uncle Jeremy.’
Theo tilts her head. ‘You’ll have to verify it first. He won’t thank you for fairy stories.’
‘I know. The question is, how do we do that?’
Julie has been staring at the wall, pretending deafness. Now, she says, ‘You need to check two things before you punt it up the line.’ She counts them off on her fingers. ‘First, is this an artefact of transmission? On statistical terms, we can rule that out: the chances of this happening by accident are millions to one against. So no, not that. Second, we need to be sure that there isn’t someone on the listening posts playing some kind of game with us.’ She tilts her head. ‘You’ll need someone to go down to the coast, to check the Y-stations.’
She’s right, and she is tilting her head the way Theo does when she’s working on her father.
Laurence is happy to oblige. ‘Did I just hear you volunteer?’
Her smile is devastating. Were he one of the dry, dusty chaps from upstairs, he’d spend the rest of his life trying to win her hand.
She says, ‘I think you did. We need to be there when the next message is due from Paul Mignon, actually standing over the telegrapher and watching the Morse as it comes in. Usually, that would be in a week’s time, but if you could reply today in his listening sked, and say that you’re sending supplies and need him to nominate a field, he’ll send again tomorrow or the next day. We can be there by then. Theo has a cousin down near the coast, I think?’
Laurence thinks not, but Theo says, ‘Blythe Chambers lives just west of Plymouth. Mother’s cousin, d’you remember? If we go down tonight, we can stay over with her and then go to the Y-station for tomorrow night; we can be there when the next message from Paul Mignon comes in.’
‘He needs a new name if he’s offering himself as an agent.’
Theo has been quiet up till now. She blows a neat smoke ring past Laurence’s head and says, ‘Icarus. Call him Icarus. He’s already flying too close to the heat.’
And Julie, who is always good on logistics, says, ‘Icarus. Perfect. His next sked is two a.m. so we’d need to stay with Blythe again afterwards. We might not be back until Sunday?’ There’s a hopeful lift to this last remark and Julie is studiously avoiding Theo’s eye. Laurence is remembering Cousin Blythe, whose fiancé was widely regarded as a fiction. He is genuinely amazed that Julie knows more of his family than he does, but this doesn’t stop him from feeling magnanimous.
‘Make it Monday,’ he says, expansively. ‘There’s no big flap on just now. You deserve a holiday by the sea.’ He finds a chit for the car pool, scribbles out instructions. ‘This should get you the Daimler. Treat it well. I heard a rumour that Uncle Charles is away. If you want to go up to Cambridge for a day or two when you get back, it wouldn’t hurt—’
His words remain ever unfinished. Two exceptionally cheerful women kiss him, one on either cheek, and he sits in silence afterwards, feeling the gap of their absence.
27 July 1942
It is Monday morning and Laurence’s world is quiet. Outside, the sun is hot and the sky is a pale and delicate blue. Inside, in the quiet of his basement office, Laurence notices the grime, the lack of light, the stale air. Not a single mutilated message has come through for his attention. He has had a telegram from Theo to say that the Y-stations are clear, but he wants to test his theory one more time before he takes it to his uncle. The Brigadier is moving in exalted circles: bothering him with an unproved theory would be unwise.
There are always things Laurence could do to occupy his time, but none of them is pressing. He sends Theo a telegram and, on receiving her answer an hour later, packs up and heads out.
The Daimler being unavailable, the commissar of the car pool gives him an early thirties Hillman Minx with a gear box like a cement mixer and windows that don’t quite fit. He heads breezily north and west into Oxfordshire, to another of the Firm’s hidden mansions, where he spends a tedious half-hour negotiating his way through a security cordon of middle-aged men, each more desperate than the last to prove that his greatest contribution to the war effort is here, in the English countryside, and not anywhere further afield.
‘With respect, sir, you are not on my list.’
‘Sergeant, I have no interest in your list. I have clearance from the Director.’
‘Sir, I have to confirm his identity.’
‘You have to confirm the identity of the Director? You do know he employs you?’
‘To be honest, sir, if you came with a chit signed by Jesus Christ, I’d have to find the good Lord Himself to confirm that it was authentic.’
‘Sergeant, neither the Director nor I claims divine providence.’
‘Have to do our best, sir. If you’ll wait here?’
‘Be my guest.’
Some time later, the good Lord having presumably vouched for Laurence’s credentials, the sergeant returns. Two hundred yards behind him, and gaining fast, strides Patrick Sutherland.
‘Thomas! You have no idea how good it is to see you. Are you all right?’
‘Perfectly. Just blowing away the cobwebs. Thought I could take you away from all this, for a ride in the country, perhaps?’
Oh, God. The sudden spark in Sutherland’s eyes … Laurence forgets how desperate he is to be gone from here, back to where people are dying. Back to where his chances of living more than a week are too small to contemplate. As if he would be the one to bring the news.
He says nothing and watches while Sutherland regains control; nothing leaks out but a brief, bleak smile and a question. ‘What car did you get? Please tell me it’s not the Hillman …’
They drive in silence for the first ten minutes.
Laurence feels uniquely wretched. Maybe he won
’t go back. Maybe he won’t be caught, won’t be tortured, won’t die slowly, hanging from piano wire with his toes brushing the ground. Maybe none of it matters. He heads east, on quiet lanes.
‘Thomas, are you all right?’
‘Fine, thank you.’ He searches for a safe vein of thought. ‘Theo and Julie are taking some R&R. They went up to Cambridge from Plymouth last night. Uncle Charles is away, the house on Devonshire Road is empty: we thought we could stay out of London for a night, just the four of us.’
They’ve gone out together a dozen times over the past few weeks, two couples in a charming foursome. Bryan at the Queen’s Head loves them and the Strand holds their table in one corner on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays unless they call to say they can’t come.
It’s as good a way of spending an evening as— Well, no, actually, it isn’t. Generally speaking, Laurence spends the evening watching Patrick watching Theodora. And because he knows this is not wise, he inevitably ends up watching his cipher prodigy, Julie Hetherington, who is perfectly delightful and intelligent, and if he were to have a sister, he would like her to be Julie. She, of course, is watching Theodora, so the evening ends in perfect circularity. It’s an amicable arrangement, but hardly his preferred choice of an evening’s entertainment.
Tonight, therefore, is his gift to Sutherland, who is not showing quite the requisite enthusiasm. Tetchily, Laurence says, ‘Do you want to go, or not?’
Sutherland sighs. ‘Laurence, the girls come out with us because you ask them to. I come out because you ask me to. Has it occurred to you that we’d all be just as happy sitting at home with a hot mug of something that pretends to be cocoa?’
‘Are you telling me you’re not in love with Theodora?’
By every measure, this is entirely the wrong thing to say. Sutherland twists round in the Hillman’s passenger seat to stare at him. ‘Would you prefer it if I were?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I thought—’ He has no clear idea what he thinks except that the world should not be as it is. He rubs his eyes with the heel of one hand. ‘If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to. I just thought that Cambridge would be a good change from London. We might enjoy ourselves.’ He looks ahead for somewhere to turn. ‘If you want to go back home—’
Patrick’s hand is on his arm. He’s smiling, after a fashion; not like he used to, but like the new, taut, strung-out Patrick. He says, ‘Laurence, let it be. We’ll have a night out and enjoy ourselves. Such things are not impossible.’
The girls are waiting for them in Uncle Charles’s double-fronted Georgian town house on Devonshire Road. Both look younger, fresher, happier, by far. Theo has splashed out on a silk coat in a shimmering green that spills from emerald through to deep jade as it bends and flows with her movement. Julie, he thinks, has a new necklace of pearls, and a new camera, which she insists on using: ‘Look, we can all line up and then I can join you and the flash will come in five … four … three … two … smile!’
They can’t take women into college to eat, obviously, and so default to the Eagle on Bene’t Street, where the food seems to be a dozen different variants on swede, but the claret is of college standard, and the whisky is perfect. Patrick Sutherland has reverted almost to his former self. He is funny, charming, erudite – and mildly drunk. They all are. Theo smiles at Laurence, who says, ‘Let’s walk, shall we? I want to hear all about the trip south and we can’t talk in here.’
Laurence pays the bill. Patrick doesn’t try to share it. Outside, the late evening air smells of mown grass and river water. A gibbous moon casts crisp, hard shadows. Theo says, ‘Let’s go the long way,’ and they walk north along the backs of the colleges, with the river a silver slug to their right and Queens’, King’s, Clare, Trinity in dusky sequence on its far side. They cross at Trinity Bridge and stroll the cobbled lanes between the colleges.
Patrick hangs back. ‘You need to talk about things I need not to hear. If you can get through the business now, we can get the keys to the boatshed and take a punt out on the river. I’ve always wanted to fish for the moon on the Cam.’ And so they head left towards Bridge Street and, finding nobody there who could conceivably hear them, Laurence says, ‘So: the Y-stations. Anything else I should know?’
‘Nothing.’ Julie turns and walks backwards away from him. Her raven hair shines under the moon. The new pearls lie like frozen tears along her neck. ‘Whoever your secret sender might be, he isn’t an artefact of some addled clerkette’s poor fist-work. Or a deliberate plant.’
Theo is watching him. ‘What have you got?’
He laughs. Wine thins his blood and leaves his head light. He has never been so easily read. ‘In the last transmission after you left, I changed Paul Mignon’s sked to something less antisocial than midnight. And then I sent a message via the BBC: “Icare vole haut.” He sent back this morning: “Beware Baedeker cities: attacks not over yet.”’
‘Baedeker?’ Theo asks.
‘The travel guides,’ Julie says. ‘“Visit Cambridge for the almost-dreaming spires and feed the ducks.”’
‘Seems so. The Boche would appear to be picking the four-star targets. We bombed Lübeck, they bombed Exeter. We bombed Rostock, they bombed Bath, Norwich, Canterbury; a few nights ago, Hull. Each of these has three stars or more.’
‘Dear God: we can destroy more of your ancient architecture than you can ours. That’s insane.’
‘At least it’s taken the focus off London.’
They are evidently no longer talking of secrets. Patrick catches up with them. ‘What has?’
‘The new Luftwaffe tactic of destroying architecture rather than actual military or industrial sites.’
‘Saves them for when you invade: you don’t want to have to rebuild all the factories.’
‘Then why did we bomb Lübeck?’
‘To get to the submarine ports?’
‘We did it because it was small enough,’ Theo says. ‘It was easy to get to, and there wasn’t much by way of defence, and the structures were mostly wood so the incendiaries made a big impact. The high-ups wanted to destroy an entire town. To show they could. So they did.’ She’s angry, and the wine is letting it show. ‘It’s amazing what the uncles will discuss when they think there’s nobody important listening. Harris came to dinner last time I was home. I think they forgot we were there.’
‘It’s war,’ Laurence says, and feels he has just taken responsibility for the entire bloody mess. ‘We have to do something. We’d be speaking German by now if it wasn’t for Harris and men like him.’
‘Larry, don’t be so affronted. We’re not cross with you.’ Julie catches his arm and kisses his cheek. ‘Your cousin Blythe is a pacifist and we picked up her thinking. We’ll be back to normal by tomorrow, all gung ho and ready to man the battlements.’
‘In the meantime,’ Theo says, neatly trapping his other arm, ‘we made a new poem for your hapless agents.’
‘You mean you wrote doggerel.’ Theo and Julie’s poetry is famously scurrilous. It’s also particularly memorable for those heading into the field and has the advantage that the German cryptographers won’t already know it.
‘Doggerel, doggerel, my favourite mong-er-el!’ Stripped of her inhibitions, Theo can sing remarkably well. She and Julie abandon him, clasp arms and twirl across Midsummer Common. ‘It’s unbreakable. It’s majestic. It’s—’
‘Gloriouuuuus!’ sings Julie.
‘Then we must hear it,’ Patrick says, grinning, and Laurence lets go of the last vestiges of sobriety and stands with his back to the river, raises both hands, conductor style, and says, ‘Sing! I command you, sing!’ in his best and deepest baritone.
The tune is a music hall stalwart, easy on the ear and unforgettable. The words are … highly memorable.
Oh! Did your granny
Use her fanny
Ere your granddad came along?
Did she drop it
On the dance floor
Did she sell it for a song?
Did she share it with her girlfriends?
Did they —— the whole night long?
Oh! Did your granny use her fanny ere your granddad came along?!
They sing it twice through, choking with laughter on the last line. Patrick joins them, spins them round. ‘Again! Again! It needs a baritone, though. Laurence, come on!’
He can. He does. He can sing a bass line that works. Julie takes risks on a descant and pulls it off and by the second run through, they can do it all while dancing an eightsome reel, and Laurence throws his head back, howling the words in an abandon of joy and alcohol—
Did she drop it
On the dance floor
Did she sell it for a song?
Did she share it with her girlfriends?
Did they —— the whole night—
‘Dear God, is that a Heinkel?’
It’s high and fast and it’s only one, but yes, it’s an He 111.
Patrick says, ‘Why are there no sirens?’
‘Maybe it’s not an enemy. Maybe some enterprising chap has stolen it, and they’re nursing it back in so the clever chaps with engineering degrees can take it apart and—’ In the clear night, Laurence sees the shadow slide across the moon’s face, a duck for the shooting, and in the sly space after, the dribble that falls behind it. ‘No, it’s not. Run! Bloody run!’
Where?
Air raid shelters? There must be some. Don’t know where, no time to ask.
The bridge! ‘Back under the bridge!’ Julie is next to him. He grabs her arm, pulls, hauls her along. Footsteps behind: Patrick and Theo – they are made for each other. ‘Sutherland! Run!’
Too late. The first blast rips somewhere over by Sidney Street. ‘Julie!’ She trips; falls. He skids. The bridge is close, within reach. ‘Julie!’
Down. He is flung. Or he flings himself. He has lost the ability to tell one from the other, but there is nowhere else to go, and the gutter here is not like the great guttered ditches of Hobson Street that a man could hide in and be safe; here are vague indentations in the roadway, smattered with horse manure, and he is breathing in hot-summer-dry horse shit and here is the whistle-glide and he is braced and braced and dear God, don’t let us die. Dear God, don’t let us die. Dear God …