The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

by Penny Edwards

  It was towards the end of the summer of 1945 when I finally left Bletchley. I packed my bags at Fred and Beryl’s and we bade each other farewell, with an unspoken assumption we would probably never meet again. Fred said it had been a real pleasure having me there and Beryl just gave me a big hug, which was quite something as she wasn’t a demonstrative sort of person. I felt very sad leaving them. They were, it has to be said, two of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I walked away from Bletchley with a letter from the Foreign Office tucked in my handbag. It told anybody who wished to employ me that I had been working for them but that my services were no longer required. It said I’d performed my duties satisfactorily but that the Official Secrets Act precluded them from being able to give any information as to what my duties had been. I remember thinking that I would never possess any such letter again.

  I love coming to Dublin, Mr Donovan. It’s such an old city. I love the Georgian architecture, the beautiful doorways with their shell-shaped windows and Robert says if you see the Ha’penny Bridge on a fine day and catch a perfect reflection, an eye watches over you. We’ve come here three times. We fell in love with it. I think what I like is its size. It’s not as endless as other cities. Sometimes I feel paralysed by places where leaving seems almost an impossibility. I believe cities should exude a sense of freedom, don’t you?

  You asked about my friendship with Malcolm. Well, after Bletchley, it was a long time before I saw him again. If I’m being honest, I found it very difficult to adjust to life outside the Park. Living, as I had, amongst such intense secrecy, I found it tricky to just get along with people, I suppose you could say. Sylvia and I kept in touch, which was a lifeline really because, for quite a while, it was only Sylvia with whom I felt truly comfortable. Comrades in arms, I suppose you could say. I wrote to Susan, but I didn’t get a reply and neither Sylvia nor I had an address for Malcolm. So I don’t know what happened to him immediately after the war, Mr Donovan. It was quite a surprise to discover his family came from Dublin. I don’t remember him ever talking about that. But not talking about things was part of our raison d’être and though some people did share their family lives, Malcolm never did. At least, not to my knowledge. And even when we met up again later on, he didn’t talk to me about his personal life. Just fishing. It was always fishing. He was someone who concentrated on his work.

  Shall we order some more drinks? I don’t know about you, but I’m rather parched.

  I’m sixty next year, you know, Mr Donovan. Thank you, that’s most kind of you, but most of it is due to make-up and hair dye.

  I do remember one remark of Malcolm’s at Bletchley. He didn’t say it openly so much as muttered it and I’m not sure he wanted anyone to hear. He’d had a couple of drinks, so the reliability of his words was perhaps questionable. They certainly struck me as quite odd. We were in the main house and it was late in the evening. Sylvia was saying something about how awful it would be if the Germans did win and we did have to live under their rule, like France and pretty much everywhere else. She made some quip about how I would have to teach them all the language and everybody laughed because they knew I’d come to Bletchley in order to avoid teaching anyone anything and they started pretending to be naughty children. Malcolm, though, was quite quiet. He picked up his glass and I caught him almost whisper as the beer reached for his mouth, “It’s not the Germans we should be worried about.” Nobody else heard because I’m sure if they had, they would have asked what he meant and I heard only because I turned to him in an attempt to try to get away from their teasing. As I said, it struck me as terribly odd, but I put it down to him being slightly worse for wear. He didn’t know I’d heard. I’m certain of that because, at that moment, he didn’t seem to be aware of anyone. There was an intensity about him sometimes that left him oblivious of his surroundings. I often thought teaching was quite a strange choice for him. And that, Mr Donovan, was how we met up again. The irony has never been lost on me, I can assure you.

  I met Robert two years after the war ended and we married a year later. He was a lecturer in mathematics – I think Bletchley must have left me with a fascination for mathematicians – at Reading. When we married we bought a house there because Robert didn’t want to commute. I was sad to leave London, prematurely as I saw it, but we’ve always been quite happy, so it was obviously the right decision. The only thing that niggles Robert just ever so slightly about me is my unwillingness to talk about my jobs. I suppose I should celebrate having a husband who’s interested – let’s face it, most husbands aren’t – but I was so highly trained at Bletchley not to discuss anything, it’s a very difficult habit to break. Robert likes talking about his students, his department, that sort of thing, but, I don’t know, I just like to keep things separate and, if that’s his only complaint, it’s hardly one to worry about, is it? But there is quite a lot I don’t tell him, I suppose. I overheard Karen, one of our daughters, saying to a friend once, “Mummy’s a teacher. But you can’t ask her about her job. You can’t ask her what she did in the war, either. I don’t think even Daddy knows.” She’s quite right, of course. Robert doesn’t know. Do you find that strange? You can consider yourself very honoured, Mr Donovan.

  We moved to Birmingham in 1961. Robert was offered a professorship at the university. He was excited about it because Birmingham had a very good reputation and I was excited for him. The girls, Karen and Anne, were still at primary school, so, fortunately, hadn’t yet reached that awkward age when they might have put up a lot of opposition to moving because of friends, so it wasn’t bad timing. At that time I was still more or less a full-time mother, though I did do the odd bit of translating here and there, so I didn’t have any reason not to move.

  We moved to a house near the university and I found I settled better than I’d anticipated. This was not entirely unrelated to the fact that I knew we were able to afford a house we couldn’t possibly have afforded in Reading. It certainly softened the blow of uprooting. Sylvia was sad at the time because I’d often gone up to see her in London. Well, we both were. But, as I said, we’ve managed to keep in touch. And Robert took to the university like a duck to water. I have to say, though, he talks in superlatives about Trinity and if he were that much younger, I’m sure he would be most interested in taking up a place here. Would they take to an English professor, do you think?

  Are you married, Mr Donovan? Do you think your wife would tell you about things that had disturbed her at work?

  I trained to be a teacher when Karen and Anne were teenagers. It’s funny how life teases you, isn’t it, and scratches at what you feel to be your most heartfelt beliefs? The person I’d been twenty-five years beforehand would have thrown up her hands in despair. “Teaching!” she would have exclaimed. I decided to use my German, it seemed a waste not to, and train for secondary-school education. I’d had my fill of messy play and small children with whom you can have only limited conversation.

  After my training I had a horrible two years working in a diabolical school where learning seemed to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, including the teachers, who were really just disciplinarians. But then I managed to get a highly coveted post at King Edward’s High School for Girls. You probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s a very prestigious school and I was chuffed to bits to get the post. I sometimes think my time at Bletchley helped prepare me for what was quite a rigorous interview. And what was pleasurable about it was that it meant I was near the university, so Robert and I met up when our timetables would allow.

  You may very well smile, Mr Donovan, because I’m getting to the part of my story that really interests you. For a detective, you seem a patient man or have I got police work all wrong? I suppose it’s not always in your interests to rush things, is it? Did you say you were going to Australia because of all of this? I hope you like it. I’ve never been. I think the heat would be too much for me.

  It was quite a shock to see Malcolm walk
ing down the corridor of King Edward’s that July afternoon. If I’m being honest, he hadn’t aged well. More lines than I would have thought and hair that had receded more than I’d have expected. But then, over thirty years had passed since we’d last met and, in a way, the shock was recognising in Malcolm my own ageing. He said my name and stopped walking. I was pleased he’d recognised me. He said the usual, “Fancy meeting you here,” and said he was being interviewed for a maths post. I knew the post, of course. A rather nasty woman, something of a bully, was leaving to move to Suffolk and my first thought was that Malcolm would be a very welcome change if he succeeded in getting it. So I was secretly quite tickled when I heard that Malcolm was joining us. Another Bletchleyite, I thought and it was as if thirty years had come to nought.

  But it wasn’t long before the penny dropped that getting to know Malcolm again wasn’t going to be half as easy as I’d imagined it would be. He seemed, in many ways, quite changed. But when one is young one perhaps misses the nuances, wouldn’t you say?

  He had the reputation of being very good at his job and, from what I could gather, the headmistress seemed delighted she’d chosen him. I can’t say he was well liked by the girls, he was a bit too quiet for them, but he certainly got results and, in their own way, I think the pupils respected him.

  Sometimes, we would sit next to one another in the staff room and once he whispered that this wasn’t Bletchley, was it, to which I just smiled but actually disagreed because in the classrooms, in the canteen and in the grounds, I felt there was much to remind me. But our conversations were fairly limited and pretty superficial and if I’d wanted a connection with my past, it was not to be found in Malcolm. All I knew really was that he had married but only for a short while. He didn’t have children. He said that he and his wife had disagreed on many fundamental things. He never told me her name.

  Other teachers, who saw us talking, sometimes asked me about him because they found him difficult to get to know, but I didn’t tell them anything. How could I?

  They asked me how I managed to get him to talk for as long as I did. Did I know him from somewhere else? Were we related? But, of course, I couldn’t say anything. I’ve never spoken about Bletchley.

  It’s difficult for me to remember much immediately before the pub bombings, Mr Donovan. That night stole memories of previous ones and I’ve tried, as you suggested, to think about Malcolm’s behaviour around that time, but it was six years ago now, Mr Donovan, and all that really comes to mind was my complete relief that Karen and Anne were no longer living in Birmingham because they may well have been in the city centre that night had they been so. Then I remember the trauma of the girls at school the following morning. Lessons were more or less cancelled as teachers spoke of girls not concentrating and wanting only to talk, quite understandably, about the horrific events of the night before. Three sixth formers were in the city centre that night, not far from the Tavern, and spoke of limbs lying on the pavements. And all the blood. They were out of sorts for some while afterwards. I remember it was the first time I’d ever truly appreciated my parents’ agitation about Joyce and I living in London during the war.

  I don’t really know much about Ireland, Mr Donovan. Just Oliver Cromwell and the Potato Famine. It’s always felt very complicated, something that to understand fully requires a great deal of time and enthusiasm and I can’t profess to have either, I’m afraid, though I do love this city. It’s very lovely. I told Malcolm once I didn’t have the time to learn about the Troubles – I can’t remember how the subject came up – and was met with an uncharacteristically frosty response.

  “Well, you should,” he said quite sternly. “You really should.” I felt a little cross with this reprimand and wondered on what basis he felt he could be so high-minded. But, as I say, I didn’t talk about him with anyone, so I couldn’t discuss possible answers and he seemed too distracted for me to ask him. No, I didn’t talk to anyone about him. He was still my Bletchley friend and I always felt close to him, in a funny sort of way.

  When I thought about it and with the benefit of a certain detachment six years brings, I do remember he seemed to have quite a lot of sick leave that autumn term. And he did say something strange at our staff Christmas meal that year, a subdued affair, coming as it did, only a couple of weeks or so after the bombings. It was a little like Bletchley when we let our hair down. He’d drunk quite a bit and I offered him a lift home. I think he was embarrassed about me seeing where he lived because he said “no” very emphatically, it was a long way and he’d be absolutely fine, but I insisted he let me take him home and that he should come for his car the following morning. He became cross, as many people do when they’ve drunk too much, and told me, in a not very polite way, to mind my own business.

  I’m so glad to be in Dublin again. It was Malcolm who suggested it to me one day when I said once that Robert and I didn’t know where to go on holiday.

  “You should try Dublin,” he said, “and make sure you go to Christchurch Cathedral,” which surprised me because I’d never thought of him as being religious in any way. But he was right. It is very impressive. The interior is exquisite and the link bridge, very unusual. When the foxgloves are out, it’s particularly beautiful.

  When Mrs Thompson, the headmistress, asked me to come into her room because a Chief Inspector from the Irish Police wanted to talk to me on the phone I was extremely taken aback and couldn’t imagine what any policeman would want with me. It’s fortuitous, isn’t it, that when you rang Robert and I were soon due to visit Dublin? I find face-to-face conversations so much more satisfactory, don’t you?

  That night? Yes, well, I was undeterred by his behaviour, which reminded me of a boy in one of my classes, except that Malcolm had liquor inside him. I kept saying he wasn’t safe to get himself home in any way, shape or form and eventually he agreed but wanted to come back to our house. I thought, well, if this was the compromise needed to ensure his safety, then so be it, though I was unclear as to why this should be the case and also concerned that, in his state, he might be indiscreet about Bletchley. As I said, never to that day and never, indeed, to this have I told my family about my time there and I was as determined as was earthly possible for that to remain unchanged. But nor did I want the fact that something horrible had happened to Malcolm on my conscience. On the way home I started talking about Bletchley, the main house, the huts, the pub at Stony Stratford. I thought if we got it out of our systems on the journey home, the subject would be done and dusted by the time we got to the house. He said he’d personally had a very successful time there and was proud of what he’d done, which was true to a large degree and I didn’t think it fair to remind him in the state he was in that one or two things hadn’t quite gone to plan under his watchful eye.

  When we got home I set up the sofa in the living room. Both of our girls were home that weekend, you see, and the guestroom was full of Robert’s research for a book he was working on. He kept thanking me over and over again. You know the way people are when they’ve had too much to drink, overly sorry, overly grateful. I said it was quite all right, told him where everything was and that I was very tired so I really must go to bed.

  As I walked away, his hand grasped my wrist, which would have shaken me a great deal more had he not been drunk. Malcolm was not a tactile person.

  “Please sit down, Isabel,” he said quite insistently. We sat on the sofa.

  “We were both in the huts?”

  I nodded, thinking he was far drunker than I’d thought. He put his finger to his lips.

  “So we don’t talk?”

  Again I nodded but was obviously wondering what this was all about. To be honest, I felt a little frightened. I’m not sure he even knew I was there. I didn’t feel he was really talking to me.

  “The bombings,” he almost whispered. “Those six guys. It wasn’t them. They’re innocent. Completely.”


  I answered, and when I look back it was perhaps foolish to try to argue, that there was divided opinion about the six of them, but maybe this wasn’t the time to get into it, but he wasn’t listening and he just kept repeating their innocence. I couldn’t stop him. It was almost like a mantra.

  Are you saying you think he’s in Australia, Mr Donovan?

  The last I saw of him was the end of the summer term the following year. No, I didn’t think it was important to tell the police the confused rantings of a drunken man, Mr Donovan. What exactly had he told me? Just that he thought these people were innocent. So did a lot of people. I would have been wasting police time if I’d gone to them with this story. Surely you can see that and in answer to your question, no, I don’t believe Malcolm has anything to do with the Irish Republican Army, Mr Donovan.

  Have I told you everything? Absolutely, Mr Donovan. Absolutely.

  A TOAST

  1

  Thank you everyone. It’s wonderful to be here today in these beautiful surroundings with their truly splendid gardens, which were originally designed by that well-known eighteenth-century landscape artist… (LOOK THAT UP) I have never eaten such a delicious meal in such affluent surroundings and if my earnings remain at their current level, I doubt very much if I’ll ever eat this way again. (PAUSE, HOPEFULLY A LITTLE RIPPLE) Thank you, Sally and Ian, for such generosity. (PAUSE)

  I’m very honoured that Emily asked me to speak at her wedding. I’ve always thought of that “unaccustomed as I am” nonsense as being the domain of the other sex, even though I’m only thirty and live in a world where women do pretty much anything. I guess weddings in my mind still belong to that bastion of conservative thinking in which men and women have very clearly defined roles. (PAUSE)