The Athens Assignment

by David Boyle

  “I know this is actually somebody else’s business – how you actually use the darn thing is really down to Hut Six, but we need to think about it too.”

  And then there was the continuous ache in the back of her mind: the treachery of Ralph, and his rejection of her, so public and so cruel, and her father back home. She had heard nothing more from him, though she wrote every week. She knew the Atlantic was treacherous for things like mail, but she had sent so many, and she longed to hear from him – a small note of forgiveness would have transformed her life, but it didn’t arrive.

  At the end of the year, struggling to keep warm, she was given soap for Christmas, like everyone else. Bananas were now a distant memory, along with most imported fruits, like oranges.

  From Hugh Lancing-Price, there was a small gift too, addressed to her room in Shepherd’s Bush, and that turned out to be a bar of soap too. It was the kind of jocularity people appreciated at Christmas: intimate without being rude, personal without being impertinent. Hugh had become something of a friend. She saw him regularly, and he no longer asked her about Berlin, sensing perhaps that there was some constraint that prevented her speaking of it. But she told him about her work at the New Yorker. They laughed about her job, researching toilet paper.

  “There’s this stuff I found called ‘Bronco for the Bigger Wipe’. Can you believe it?”

  “Believe it – I’ve felt it! That’s the stuff we’ve got on the base. ‘Only the biggest wipes for the pilots,’ said the squadron leader.”

  “The thing is, I now can’t find any of it anywhere. There’s stuff called Jeyes on sale, but it’s like wiping your bottom with a piece of cardboard.”

  “Cardboard lined with razor blades! What do people use in your household – my aunt uses the Daily Herald, ‘The Thinking Woman’s Toilet Paper!’”

  “Really, I think Moira’s landlady buys the News Chronicle.”

  It was a few days after Christmas and Hugh had to go back on duty.

  “You know, old thing, I worry about you,” he said. “Who is looking after you these days?”

  Xanthe could not tell him the truth: that she appeared to have been adopted by the academics of Hut 8 and much of the Naval Intelligence Division.”

  “That’s nice of you, Hugh. How is Ralph’s mother, I mean your aunt?”

  “Well, not too good actually. She says she’s always cold. She’s been bombarding Churchill with letters demanding him to supply her with coal. I was wondering, would you like me to ask her if she would give you somewhere to stay outside London, I mean when…”

  He tailed off. It really was extraordinary, the English sensibility, she said to herself. They would happily have a good laugh about toilet paper but then, when things really matter, that involve less everyday bodily functions, like giving birth – they became all tongue-tied.

  Then it struck her. Had Hugh guessed something? Was he really suggesting that she move in with someone he’d guessed was the baby’s grandmother?

  “That’s so kind, Hugh. But I’m fine, really. Keep safe, won’t you?”

  They said goodbye. He took the train down to Biggin Hill to carry on the war. She hurried back to her office to meet Bob and answer more letters addressed to Mollie Panter-Downes.

  She was sad to see Hugh go. She was finding walking more difficult now, but the buses were so cramped. There were few, if any, taxis, even if she could have afforded one. As she slogged up the Embankment, looking at the barrage balloons hanging over the Thames and the anti-aircraft battery opposite parliament, she sent a small and tentative prayer for Hugh. “God keep him safe,” she said and closed her eyes for a moment.

  When she opened them again, she told herself that on no account was she to fall in love with another member of the Lancing-Price family. She just could not. Still, there was something so heroic about Hugh – he had his cousin’s looks, but none of his cynicism.

  God, keep him safe, she prayed again.

  *

  Easter was late in 1941 so it was not until Palm Sunday, in the pale April light, that she packed her few belongings and took the almost empty train from Euston to Bletchley Station. She was met by Turing, who accompanied her on the bus through green lanes, bursting with spring, to Bletchley Park. There was the usual charade on the gates with the security guards.

  Nervously, as if he was accompanying her to her own execution, Turing led her up to the big front door, where she had not ventured before, and up the stairs. On the first floor, there was a welcoming “halloo”, and a large lady of uncertain age, dressed as a nurse, bounded down the corridor towards her like a starched Labrador.

  “Hello, hello! You must be Mrs Schneider, our patient. So good to see you, my dear. Let me show you to your room. It’s on the sunny side of the house; I do hope that’s all right, and you won’t get too hot. I know what it’s like, well, when you’re in that condition…”

  “I don’t really think of myself as a patient,” said Xanthe, smiling. “I’m just having a baby.”

  “Well, of course you are. Such a silly phrase. That is to say, Mrs Schneider…”

  “Oh. please call me, Xanthe.”

  “Of course – Nancy, so much better!”

  *

  Xanthe sat on the iron bed frame and the counterpane and looked out at the lawn, where the first games of rounders of the year were taking place. She felt enormous and nervous too about what was coming out of her, and how it was going to get out. She felt very alone. If only her dad could be there or some of her friends from home. Yet again, she wondered a little how she had become mixed up with the affairs of nations that were not her own. Still, that was what had happened and, assuming all went well in the next week or so, that was it. She was going to be a mom…

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in!”

  “Could I, um, that is to say, would you…?”

  “Alan! Lovely to see you. Where have you been for the last few days?”

  “Well, the truth is Xanthe, that we have had something of a coup. I’m not allowed to say much about it, but we have been able to get hold of a codebook and it is yielding fruit. In fact, here it is…”

  He produced a crumpled document. “I thought you would like to see it.”

  It said: “Schlüsseltaeln M-Allgemein ‘Heimische Gewässer’ Kennwort HAU. Prufnummer 1566.”

  “So there we are,” he said, with the air of a man who had finished his Cambridge tripos. “It’s the home waters settings for naval Enigma for February. Can’t tell you where we got it. I want to be as honest as I, um, can. We mightn’t have got here without your help in Berlin, but we are not hopeless. We are getting there, what with my bombes and all.”

  She racked her brains.

  “Oh you know, Xanthe, the machine I showed you that time?”

  Xanthe racked her brains again. “Does this mean you can read naval Enigma signals now?”

  “Oh no,” he said dismissively. “Long way to go, even with the bombes doing most of the heavy lifting. No. Long way still, but we have been able to decrypt a few from earlier in the month!”

  He perked up a little.

  “We’ve also got a plan. Again, can’t say much about it but it involves using the codes we can crack to take a shot at the naval codes. It’s worth a try, and one day, I’ll tell all.”

  Xanthe was fascinated but knew better than to ask.

  “And I’ve got more news too,” said Turing, turning a little red. “I’m engaged!”

  “You’re what? Alan, that’s amazing – wonderful. I’d just been thinking what a good father you would be…”

  There was just a hint of irritation that Xanthe was suddenly aware of. Was it jealousy? Surely not. She really liked Alan, yet somehow there was a spark missing. Yet, also – well, she didn’t know.

  “To Joan.”

  “That’s wonderful news. She’s absolutely lovely. So why,” said Xanthe, realising that this was no conventional conversation, “do you look so miserable about i
t? Have you changed your mind?”

  “No, um, that is to say, I was to ask, er, Xanthe. I know this isn’t a good moment and you’ve only just arrived and all that, but I need your advice. You see, you and Joan, and my mother, of course – but I can hardly talk to her about this – are the only women I know at all. I don’t really know what to do.”

  “Well,” said Xanthe, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know if I can help with this. Despite appearances, I’m not really the woman of the world I seem.”

  She gestured towards her huge bump, which seemed to swell further moment by moment. Alan guffawed.

  “I don’t mean that. I mean something else.”

  “Then, sit down, Alan, and tell me. You’re making me nervous. Of course, I’ll help if I can.”

  Alan sat on the end of the bed.

  “Well, the thing is. I don’t want to shock you or anything, but… well, I like men. I know I’ve sort of said this to you before. I prefer men, I mean, you understand. You do understand?”

  Xanthe stared. Did she understand? What was he trying to tell her?

  “You mean you’re a – you mean you’re homosexual? Or do you mean you don’t like women? There’s a big difference, isn’t there?”

  “Right, right. Here’s the thing, Xanthe. I like men. I like their bodies. I feel excited by them. I’ve hardly told anyone this, and I know I’m supposed to be ashamed of it and that it’s illegal – and especially in the armed forces. Did I tell you I joined the Home Guard, by the way? But I’m not. I’m not at all ashamed. It’s just the way I am. Some people like beans on toast, I like sleeping with men. It’s that simple really. But it isn’t easy; it means I have to be very careful what I say to people, and if I want to sleep with them. I sometimes need to find a kind of code so that they’ll only understand me if they already see things my way. Then sometimes they get cross, but sometimes, well, it’s the start of a wonderful night. Not very often though. I told Joan, well, some of this, and she says she doesn’t mind. But what do you think? Can a man who likes men marry a woman? What do you think?”

  It was a longer speech than she had ever heard from Turing before. It was heartfelt and she noticed that his distinctive stammer disappeared completely when he was speaking from the heart.

  “Listen, Alan. Do you love her? Do you love Joan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean have you, I mean, have you have kissed her and stuff?”

  “Of course.”

  “And what did that feel like?”

  “Good.”

  “Well, what I think is this. If liking men gets in the way of liking women, then you can’t marry her. But if you love her and you want to sleep with her, then there’s no reason why you can’t be together. And you do, don’t you?”

  Turing smiled nervously, Xanthe thought.

  “Well, I think so…”

  “Are you sure?” she said coaxingly. “Well, I can’t think of anyone better you could make a life with. I mean, everyone, or nearly everyone, has feelings for their own sex at some point. I certainly have – though I never actually… well, you know…”

  She found her mind drifting back some years to a night after a dance back home, holding hands with her friend Pearl, and the powerful feelings of longing, which horrified her at the time.

  “Thank you, Xanthe. For your advice.”

  “I don’t seem to have cheered you up much.”

  “It’s just that – I’ve got a bit of thinking to do, haven’t I…”

  3

  Bletchley Park, April 1941

  “I’m so sorry, Commander, but that’s what I’ve decided. I have responsibilities now. I simply can’t leave my baby after all we’ve been through together. He’s got no father, and I just can’t contemplate the idea that he would also have no mother – even for a little while. I can’t go abroad again. How can I?”

  Commander Fleming looked irritated at this first interview since the birth of Indigo Schneider. She had toyed with the idea of calling him Ralph, after his father. But she imagined that Fleming might say it was a security risk.

  “I don’t mean you’d have to go now,” said Fleming with a tetchy edge to his voice. “I mean when you’ve recovered. In a few months’ time perhaps.”

  “I’ve got nothing to recover from,” said Xanthe, suddenly irritated herself. “For God’s sake, I’ve just had a baby. It’s perfectly natural. Yes, I was one of your operational people, and wasn’t very good at it, and now I’m a mother. I know there’s a war on and all that. But I just can’t.”

  Fleming pursed his lips as if about to say something.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Pity. Well, I can understand what you’re saying. Turing and Twinn and the others tell me you’re an invaluable member of their team. You could just stay.”

  Xanthe began to feel tired. It sapped her energy to resist Fleming’s will.

  “I’m afraid they’re being kind. I don’t think I’m being any help at all. I would go back to London, but I don’t have anywhere to go and I don’t have any money. But the New Yorker says I can come back as soon as I’m able.”

  “Ok fine,” said Fleming with deliberate resolution. “It’s just that I have a scheme that might just appeal to you and would certainly suit your skills. Let me just leave that idea with you, ok?”

  And with that he picked up his white cap, and, with a formal bow, he left though the door in one deft move and returned to Whitehall. Xanthe was left alone in Bletchley.

  *

  Except, of course, that however isolated she might have felt, she was certainly not alone. And it was really rather peculiar, that wartime, youthful, unofficial spirit of Bletchley, now that hundreds of staff had converged there from all different walks of life: the dusty geographers, dustier mathematicians, who together were busily shaping a culture that combined obsessive secrecy with fun. Even Xanthe enjoyed the occasional game of rounders, in the early summer sunshine on the front lawn, and the endless amateur dramatics at Christmas. They knew not to ask each other what they actually did behind the rickety walls of their huts. So the appearance of a young woman, with blonde hair and her blonde baby, on the lawn on the sunny end of April 1941 – as battle raged in Greece and Yugoslavia – may have raised eyebrows but no questions.

  Nor was it true that she was as decided as she had told Fleming. The truth was that she was still in constant pain, from stitches after the birth and in her breasts, which seemed to be coming to terms – rather agonisingly – with the idea that they would not be used for the purpose they were designed for, as the nurses had decided that Indigo would be fed by bottle. She was seeping from top and bottom and kept up so much in the night, that she had moments when she feared she hated the baby, though she recovered as soon as it was light. She dreaded the little air-raid siren she had given birth to and was aware that there was no relief of an “all clear”, except a blessed silence, which she filled with her fears about herself and her future.

  Despite the staff taking both mother and baby to their hearts, Xanthe was still teetering on the edge of loneliness and misery. But as Indigo grew stronger in the weeks after his birth, she began to take him out in an old-fashioned perambulator, lent by Sister Agnes, the nurse Xanthe knew originally as The Labrador, down the country lanes and to the various pubs to meet Alan and Joan, and whoever else happened to be around.

  Both were busy a great deal. It was an exciting time, though they did not say – and were not asked – the reason was that there were now six of Turing’s bombe machines chuntering through the clues, until they turned up a possible match. At any moment a missed convoy, or a botched capture, or leak might lead to the Nazis developing new systems which would be beyond the limited capabilities of the bombes. Thanks to the capture of codebooks for March, they were now very close to a solution to naval Enigma. They could also now read much of the Italian naval signalling and the Luftwaffe version.

  Indy’s first outing, wearing a little hat to keep out the sunshine, happened to coincide with
the visit of Admiral Cunningham to thank the girls of Hut 6 for their help in his defeat of the Italian fleet at Matapan, back in March.

  “Who is that guy?” asked Xanthe.

  “He’s the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet,” said Alan. “We just won his battle for him.”

  “So why are they bullying him?”

  She watched as the Wrens mobbed the admiral slightly, until he edged back with his beautiful blue uniform onto a newly whitewashed fence. It caused a great deal of secretive laughter at this jape.

  She had ventured out because the week before, she had exchanged letters with Hugh, and they had agreed to meet for a drink, when he came on leave, at the Eight Belles pub, which was an easy walk but still sufficiently far from Bletchley Park. She had, and would, tell him nothing about why she was so far from London. Giving birth seemed to be explanation enough.

  Then, suddenly, there he was. He stood and waved at her as she came into the garden, wheeling the pram awkwardly round the garden furniture.

  “Xanthe and – what’s his name?” said Hugh with triumph. “I’ve got a little present.”

  He reached into his knapsack and produced a small toy dog.

  “It’s off ration, you know…”

  “Oh Hugh, you’re a darling. He’ll love it. Thank you so much, and thank you for coming…”

  Hugh was peering nervously into the pram.

  “He’s absolutely beautiful, like his mother. Xanthe, you’ve never told me about your – his father. Might I have known him in the RAF, do you think?”

  An overwhelming feeling of guilt passed through her.

  “I’m sorry, Hugh. I will tell you all about it one day, but not now. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. It’s lovely to see you.”

  An elderly lady went past, beaming at them.