by Kate Quinn
“I’d like to show this to all those fellows making jabs about ‘the Debutantes’ Den.’” Osla looked at her Vigenère cipher. “Hitler really would pitch an absolute screamer if he knew a lot of girls scratching pencils in Bletchley are turning his war inside out.”
“‘These have knelled your fall and ruin, but your ears were far away,’” Beth quoted one of Dilly’s irreverent verses. “‘English lassies rustling papers through the sodden Bletchley day . . .’”
“Well, these lassies are going to the dance in Bedford,” Mab declared. “We deserve some fun—and so do you, Beth.”
“You know she won’t go.” Osla smiled. “That shot is not on the board, darling!”
To Beth’s surprise, she heard herself speak. “I’ll go.”
WITHIN THE HOUR, she was regretting the decision.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to get my hands on these,” Osla said, going at Beth’s eyebrows with tweezers.
“Ow—”
“Stop kicking up a shindy, Beth, you have to suffer to be beautiful . . .”
Mab, having shooed Boots off the bed and flung every dress Beth owned across it, held up a navy blue crepe. “This one. It’s the only thing you own that isn’t brown, beige, or puce. All colors you should never wear, Beth, because they make you look like a couch. What I wouldn’t give to put you in something bright . . .”
“We’ll loan her my purple satin,” Osla suggested, plucking ruthlessly.
“Too small—”
“Your raspberry crepe?”
“Too big.” Mab shook out the navy blue professionally. “I’ll lend my red scarf, that’ll add punch—”
Beth yelped as another hair was yanked out. All her life she’d hated being looked at, squirmed from being touched, and now here she was being scrutinized and poked like a heifer in a stall. Even so, there was an odd fascination to the whole process. She glanced over Osla’s shoulder at her own reflection in the mirror dubiously. Could even Osla and Mab make a difference in what she saw there?
“Topping complexion, but you need color,” Osla decreed. “Max Factor pancake base, a swipe of my Elizabeth Arden Victory Red—”
“Mother says women who wear lipstick are tarts.”
“And she’s so right about that! You’re going to make a spiffing tart—”
“Right, about this hair.” Mab had already unwoven Beth’s long plait; she ran her fingers through the thin dishwater-blond waves. “If we lop off the bottom six inches—don’t give me that face, I cut my sister’s hair all the time—”
“My mother will kill me!”
“Beth,” Osla said severely, “if you say the words my mother again I will knock you into next week. Poker up here! Grow a spine! Put on lipstick!”
“I’ve changed my mind.” Beth tried to rise. “I don’t want to go.” But it was far, far too late. Her friends had identical slightly mad gleams in their eyes and the bit in their teeth. Her moment of rebellion collapsed back into unwilling fascination as she was stripped and whirled, plucked and pinned; six inches of her hair disappeared in a few snips, and then Osla wrestled Beth’s limp locks into kirby grips as Mab basted a new hem on Beth’s navy blue dress. “Too short,” Beth yelped.
“Nonsense,” Mab scolded, stitching away. “You have legs, Beth! You’re a bit flat up front and you haven’t got much hip, but you have legs, and they are good legs, and tonight they are going to be seen.”
“No!”
“Yes,” her friends said ruthlessly. By the time they were done, the navy blue dress was unrecognizable: hem hitting Beth’s knees, neckline framed by Mab’s red scarf, skirt flared out by Osla’s red silk petticoat (“it’ll swish and flash around those shapely legs when you walk!”) Beth stared at herself cautiously. Not exactly duckling to swan—no amount of plucking and tailoring and silk flounces was going to give her Mab’s figure or Osla’s sparkle—but she didn’t look as ghastly as she’d feared.
“We’ll give you Veronica Lake hair,” Mab decreed, taking out the kirby grips. “You always duck your chin when you meet strangers—with a wave of hair over one eye to hide behind, you’ll look mysterious rather than shy.” She combed and parted and fluffed. “What do you think?”
My mother will hate it, Beth thought. But, well, maybe it wasn’t so bad . . .
The other two were shimmying into their own dresses now, Mab’s a violent blue-purple that nipped around her long figure like a lightning bolt. “It’s an old curtain liner I found in Mum’s rag bag last time I was in London. It’ll last about three washings.”
“Darling, only you and Scarlett O’Hara could dress in a curtain and still look scrummy.” Osla hooked her stockings to her suspender belt. “I can’t be bothered what I wear, just hand me that rose print. Now, Beth—when Mab and I distract your mother, you run out the back while we tell her you’re tucked up in bed with a headache.”
I am going to hell, Beth thought as they all spun through a spritz of Osla’s Soir de Paris. But that didn’t stop her from kissing Boots goodbye and grabbing her coat.
“Right-ho, on our way,” Giles said as they all piled into his car in the pitch-black street. “I say, is that our Beth? Save me a dance, gorgeous!”
“I don’t know how to dance,” Beth said. “Even if I did, I’d probably hate it.” And the dance was every bit as noisy and crowded as she’d feared, a big room packed to the ceiling with servicemen and local girls. Beth could barely see the stage where the band was playing “Tuxedo Junction.” Giles and Mab whizzed off to the floor, and when Beth saw how Osla’s feet tapped in their little diamanté-studded pumps, she urged her, “Go dance.” The thought of sitting alone was alarming, but not as cringe-making as forcing her friends to nanny her all night.
As soon as Osla was whisked away, Beth found herself a chair on the side. A towheaded boy leaned over, breathing gin fumes. “Fancy a spin, Veronica Lake?”
“No, thank you.” Beth couldn’t say she enjoyed being in the middle of a crowd, but she found she could sit with the froth of silk petticoat rustling deliciously around her knees and let her eyes follow the dancers as the music swirled. The skirts of the women opening like flowers, the men with buttons and bars on their uniforms flashing . . . she could almost see patterns in it, like the rose-petal spirals, or the patterns of brick in a wall . . .
“Hullo there.” Harry flopped into the chair beside hers, big and cheerful, black hair disheveled. He didn’t look surprised at her change of appearance or seem to notice it at all. Beth smiled, realizing she rather liked that. Giles’s swoony double take had felt a bit insulting—did she ordinarily look such a fright? Obviously I do. But if so, Harry hadn’t noticed that either, and she was glad. “Didn’t think I’d see you here,” he continued, linking an elbow over the back of his chair.
“Why not? Am I such a wet blanket?”
“No, but you hate crowds.”
“Osla and Mab dragged me out.” Beth peered up at Harry through her new wave of hair and wished she could ask how the Italian naval Enigma compared to the German naval Enigma his hut worked on. But you couldn’t talk codebreaking in a crowd full of outsiders, so Beth rummaged for small talk. “Did your wife come along tonight?”
“Sheila’s at home with Christopher. Last night she was off at a concert with a friend, so tonight she shoved me out the door and told me to enjoy myself.”
He spoke with a complete lack of self-pity, but Beth’s tongue still froze with unexpressed sympathy. Having a child so frail he always needed one of you hovering . . . “Um. Do you think America will join the war?” Beth ventured, for something less personal.
“They’d better.” His expression darkened. “The wolf packs are making mincemeat of us.”
Another conversational dead end. Beth could have talked clicks and lobsters all day, but ordinary small talk felt like swimming upstream. I suppose it’s better than the days when all conversation felt like swimming upstream.
The band swung into “In the Mood,” and
a bass riff growled out across the floor. “They’re good,” Beth said for lack of anything else to say.
“It’s not bad, but I like music a bit more orderly. Patterns, you know.” Harry grinned as she gave him a startled look. “You too? I had a feeling. I don’t know if it’s the way our brains were already wired or if it’s pure habit after what we do all day. Give me Bach, anytime. There are patterns for days in The Well-Tempered Clavier.”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“In Cambridge I had a job at a music shop—between customers I listened with headphones on. Made me very cross if someone came browsing when I was in the middle of a symphony.”
“I’ve never been to Cambridge.” I’ve never been anywhere.
“In the Mood” ended, and the dancers broke up. Some flooded to the side, some grabbed new partners as “Moonlight Serenade” rippled over the floor. Harry cocked his head. “Care to take a whirl?”
“I don’t really want to dance,” Beth confessed. “I want to be back at work.”
“Me too. People like you and me, we’re more hooked than opium fiends.” They traded rueful, frustrated smiles. She could tell they were both itching to talk about things they shouldn’t. “Come on,” Harry said in a sudden burst.
Tugging Beth out to the dance floor, Harry snugged her in briskly with an arm about her waist, took her hand in his big one, and began to revolve to the slow, dreamy tune. “No one will hear if we talk like this.” He lowered his head to hers, voice mischievous and friendly in her ear. “I’ve got some new tricks for working cribs, nothing too specific to naval section. Want to hear?”
Beth hesitated, but every other couple around them swayed with eyes closed, and he was murmuring right into her ear—even the most dedicated eavesdropper wasn’t going to hear a thing over the music. “Yes, please,” she whispered back with a smile of her own, relaxing into the arm around her waist.
“So, I’ve been working a four-wheel machine . . .”
Beth listened, the music a bright brassy pattern over the pattern Harry’s words were weaving. She could almost see it if she closed her eyes. “Dilly has me working Vigenère squares.”
“I’ve done those. Can you break them without a key?”
“Easy as pie.”
“Christ, you’re good. What about—”
“Look at you two, whispering away.” Giles tapped Harry on the arm. “May I cut in?”
“No, thank you,” Beth said firmly. She leaned back into Harry’s shoulder, wanting to dissect Vigenère squares and four-wheel Enigmas, barely hearing Giles retreat with a laughing, “All right, keep your secrets . . .”
Eleven Days Until the Royal Wedding
November 9, 1947
Chapter 22
Inside the Clock
One of the orderlies had red hair like Giles. Beth watched him go about his evening rounds, restocking closets, collecting dirty linen, laughing with a friend. Beth remembered Giles’s voice: Keep your secrets . . .
Were you the one with secrets? she wondered for the thousandth time. Giles the ever friendly, the eternal gossip. Giles, who had eventually been transferred from Hut 6 to Knox’s section. Giles, drollest of the Mad Hatters.
She didn’t want it to be him. But she didn’t want it to be any of her friends.
The red-haired orderly left the common room, and Beth slipped after him. “What do you want, Liddell?” he said, low voiced. “Cigarettes? Scent? It’ll cost you.”
Something else Beth had learned in her years here: which of the orderlies and nurses would trade covertly with the patients. Hoarded medicines could buy you drink, cosmetics . . . or knowledge.
“I need information.” Beth swallowed hard, damp palms rubbing down her smock. “What is a lobotomy?”
His brows rose. “Why?”
I’m scheduled for one, and I don’t know what it is. The unease had lingered all evening, since she’d heard that whispered fragment from the matrons. None of the women in the ward had any facts, only speculation. “Tell me.”
“That’s big information.” He leaned in; Beth smelled sweat and Lysol. “What have you got for me?”
She swallowed again, bile this time, as she tugged him toward the nearest linen closet. “Come in here and I’ll show you.”
That was something else she’d learned. Which of the orderlies would grope under your smock if no one was looking; how to avoid them and their grabbing hands; how to bite and kick if they maneuvered you alone . . . and which of the orderlies wouldn’t force you, but wouldn’t say no if you offered. Sometimes, if it got you something you needed, you offered. It wasn’t the first time Beth had gone to her knees in a linen closet, but her stomach roiled with just as much helpless, viscous rage as it had the first time. “What is a lobotomy?” she asked before she got started, voice rasping like a rusty knife.
“A head surgery,” the orderly said, closing his eyes and slipping his hand into her hair. “Just a little tap to the skull, I’ve heard. It’s done all the time in America . . . yes, keep going . . .”
Beth stopped, withdrawing. “What is this surgery for?”
“Just finish me off—”
“No. Not until you tell me what this surgery does.”
“What does anything do here? It’ll make you better, fix you. I wouldn’t worry, Liddell,” he added, sounding sincere. “It’s not too invasive, they say. Nowhere near as bad as them electric treatments you hear about.”
Beth pressed, asking more questions, but he clearly didn’t know anything more. She closed her eyes and finished things, thinking of her Go-playing companion drawing a finger like a scalpel over her skull.
“Good girl.” He fastened up his trousers, ruffling her hair. “Get back to your cell, now.”
Beth sat back on her heels as he slipped out of the closet, red hair a winking gleam in the brief light flash from the door. She tried not to gag, smelling bleach from the folded sheets all around, lungs full of sudden fear. A surgery and a traitor to contend with, and she had no idea what or who they were, or if she would have any help in dealing with either.
Osla, Mab, where are you?
York
Bettys tea shop, Osla had said over the telephone. Tomorrow, two o’clock. We’ll talk.
Bugger that, Mab had told her, ringing off with a bang, and gone to check on the children.
Eddie was a warm, soft weight against Mab’s breast as she lifted him from his bed. He was fretful, fussing from his nap, but he settled quickly against her. She inhaled the smell of talcum and little boy, wondering if he was heavier than he’d been just last night—he was growing so fast, eighteen months and already bigger than most two-year-olds. He’d be a six-footer for sure. Mab tiptoed out of the nursery, passing a hand over Lucy’s dark head. Luce was a restless sleeper, kicking her sheets off and muttering, but she stilled at Mab’s hand on her hair.
Mab fed Eddie downstairs, avoiding the peas he tried to spit out onto her cream linen blouse, but afterward as she set him down to play with the toy train his father had made for him, she couldn’t settle. She stood turning an unlit cigarette between her fingers—she was trying to quit—stomach churning as Beth’s cipher message echoed through her mind.
There couldn’t have been a traitor at Bletchley Park. Candidates were vetted before they were even invited to interview; when she transferred from the bombe machines to the mansion, Mab had heard about the boxes and boxes of MI-5 files in Hut 9. And if there was a traitor, who were they selling to? BP had remained safe, secret, and successful throughout the war, which argued against the Germans’ ever having found out.
No. The cipher message’s accusation was either a madwoman’s paranoid fantasies or the lies of a desperate woman willing to say anything to get free. Either way, what happens to me if I help her? Mab thought. Beth was locked up on the government’s orders; communicating with her could be a violation of Mab’s oath. “Receiving and encouraging insecure communications of privileged information” or however they might phrase it�
�but it could mean prison.
Mab looked around her quiet sitting room. This home, this family, this life, was everything young Mabel Churt from Shoreditch had ever dreamed of. Her house with its three stories of mellowed Yorkshire stone and its surrounding garden of bramble roses. Her marble-tiled bathroom crowded with perfume vials and cosmetics, rather than a shared toilet down the hall. Her own bank account, with a balance she no longer compulsively checked to make absolutely certain there was enough for the electric bill, for Eddie’s new shoes, for Lucy’s future education. Her husband.
Risk all of this, risk her family, risk a cell—for Beth, who had betrayed her during the war?
What did she risk to ask for your help? the thought whispered. What is she risking now?
Six Years Ago
May 1941
Chapter 23
Out with it, Beth,” said Mab.
Beth blinked, holding the red silk petticoat she’d tiptoed into the room to return, and so did Osla, who sat buffing her nails by the light of a candle stub. The three of them had only just sneaked back in from the dance, absolutely knackered, long past Mrs. Finch’s lights-out, and mentally Osla was already totting up the next Bletchley Bletherings: What shy filly splashed out at the Bedford dance this weekend? Even the most brilliant brain needs a little Glenn Miller to invigorate the old gray matter, and BP’s boffins certainly sat up and took notice . . .
“You danced five times with Harry, Beth.” Mab turned away from the glass where she’d been brushing her hair and fixed Beth with a stern eye. “All slow swoony tunes, too.”
