by David Boyle
Her understanding of Bletchley was extremely limited, and she believed that was a situation shared by most of the people who worked there, the crossword puzzle experts and linguists, the prep school German masters and the geographers and mathematicians. She had even met a seaweed expert – and most of them were kept willingly ignorant about anything that happened outside the orbit of their own huts, the rickety structures in the grounds, scaldingly hot in summer, freezing cold at this time of year.
Turing had welcomed her into Hut 8 and introduced her to most of the members, including Peter Twinn and Hugh Alexander.
“Can’t you really tell them anything about why I’m here, Alan?” she asked him one afternoon. “I feel I stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Well, you know…”
“I don’t want them to feel like I’m an interloper.”
“Interloper? We’re all interlopers in one way or another. I stick out like your sore thumb too. Do you hear me complaining?”
They both laughed. They knew he complained rather a lot.
“We’re all attached to a hut for no obvious reason. You’re no exception. Everyone just assumes there’s a highly secret reason why you’re here,” he said. “And there is!”
“Ok, I see. Fair enough.”
“Security is so obsessive here, thanks to Old Man Denniston. Nobody comes here by accident. Everyone knows that.”
“What about that man who’s an expert in seaweed?”
Turing thought for a moment.
“Well, he’s an exception, but he’s still a valued part of the team. Actually, he dries out codebooks which have been thrown into the sea.”
The truth was that Xanthe had serious doubts about whether or not she had the right to be included, despite what she had done or not done in Germany.
“Of course you’re one of us,” said Alan supportively. “You know about the Nazi codes in… um… practice.”
“Well, I’ve killed a Nazi official with an Enigma rotor, if that’s what you mean.”
The relief of having one person she could talk to about her time in Berlin was absolutely invaluable. It was an extraordinary relief, in fact. Turing knew, as nobody else knew, apart, of course, from Fleming, who remained a somewhat aloof figure.
Turing and Xanthe swung through the rickety door of Hut 8.
“Here we are, teatime I think,” he said. “Hold on! Which of you, b… b… buggers has taken my mug…?”
The handful of people in the hut, mostly men with wide trousers and relaxed weekend shirts, collapsed with laughter.
“Come on, Prof,” said one of them. “Are we cryptographers or are we not? If someone padlocks their mug to the radiator, then we are duty bound to crack the code which holds it in place.”
“Ok, where… where is it, then?”
“I’ve got it!”
A girl with dark hair and round glasses popped up from behind one of the screens with maps on, dividing the oceans into arbitrary sectors.
“How do you do,” she said, shaking hands confidently with Xanthe. “I’m Joan. Welcome to our humble hut.”
She smiled engagingly.
“I was just saying to Xanthe that it was, um… her hut, um… too,” said Alan.
“Really, are you a linguist or a mathematician?”
There was a heartbeat of embarrassed silence. Those in Hut 8 or any of the other huts were not supposed to ask questions about each other.
“Oops, sorry!” said Joan, looking embarrassed. “New people are too intriguing!”
“None of those anyway,” said Alan. “She works in the field.”
“But not at the moment,” said Xanthe, indicating her obvious pregnancy.
“Remember, careless talk,” said Alan. “All we need to know from Xanthe is where she’s lodging this time.”
“Pfff. I hate it when you go all official…” said Joan, prodding him.
“I’m lodging in my usual digs in Bletchley, just near the cinema.”
“Not Mrs West?”
“How did you know that?” said Xanthe laughing.
“We’re paid to know things here,” said Joan with a grin, putting her finger to her lips.
*
“You realise you know more about this stuff than the First Lord of the Admiralty,” said Turing as they walked outside.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Really. He’s a big trade unionist. And, after Lancing-Price, I think they make sure they tell their ministers nothing about codes.”
Xanthe’s eyes began to fill with unbidden tears.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” she said, whipping out a hanky. “Sorry, Alan, you’re quite right.”
Turing stood, rooted to the spot in horror.
“I’m sorry, so… so sorry, Xanthe. I didn’t, um, mean to… I mean…”
“Really honestly, Alan, I’m just being silly. I’m more hard-headed than that. I just can’t stop weeping at the moment. I think it’s the pregnancy or the baby, or maybe I was always a bit like that.”
“I tell you what? Let’s go to the cinema this evening. I’m coming to the end of my watch in about twenty minutes, then we can have a drink in the Eight Belles. They’ve got Snow White on again in town.”
Xanthe breathed a deep sigh of relief that she was foreign and was therefore allowed the occasional emotional outburst. She wiped her eyes and suppressed the sad thoughts about the baby she was carrying, and what might have been. At least she no longer felt like she wanted to vomit all the time.
*
“It’s just that we need to talk about your future,” said Commander Fleming, looking sophisticated in his uniform with its gold, wavy stripes. That’s why I’ve asked you to come in.”
This was only the third time in her life that she had been in the ever more untidy, disorganised and crowded office in the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall, the anteroom to the hub of naval intelligence, and from there to the small office with the bath again. Exactly the same, except that this time, Xanthe knew – because Alan had told her – that the bath had been used by Dilly Knox, now Alan’s legendary boss, during the First World War to help him decipher the new ciphers used by the German navy. They were launched each day at midnight and, after hours in the hot water, Knox had more often than not thought through some kind of breakthrough. It was an extremely productive bath.
Xanthe had even met Knox, though he had been a somewhat aloof figure. She would have liked to have told him that, on this visit, there had been a spider in his bath, but she knew she wouldn’t dare.
What a strange mixture I am, she said to herself. Brave enough to go stupidly to Berlin during a war, but not brave enough to banter with Dilly Knox.
But now, clearly, Fleming was waiting for some kind of response.
“I was trying not to make any decisions until the baby’s been born,” she said.
“I know, I know. Only there is a war going on and we do need to plan ahead a little.”
Xanthe detected more than an edge of sarcasm.
“Listen, Xanthe. You have unique knowledge and some expertise, and I really don’t want to waste you. Turing has, I gather, integrated you into the Station X set-up – though I had advised him not to. He’s not a great one for obeying orders.”
Xanthe felt a little weak. Why was he addressing her so? It wasn’t as if she had really done a good job in Berlin.
Fleming stared unrelentingly at her. Then he reached a decision.
“All right. Let me just say this. I know you’re working at some American magazine or other.”
“The New Yorker.”
“Good, good. And you’re learning something about the way Enigma works. And if you’re not, I’ve asked Turing if he can find someone to instruct you. That’s all I want. Just to be ready. Because of the… after the… um… birth – is it possible we may ask you if you can help us again?”
“That’s fine, Commander. Just as long as you understand I’m making no decisions now.”
Fleming
ignored her.
“Right, last thing I wanted to talk about. Where are you giving birth?”
“Well, I’m registered with a maternity clinic in Shepherd’s Bush, but they’ve made it pretty plain that they don’t think I should be in London. At least, not with the Blitz going on – and it shows little sign of letting up, does it?”
“No, and I agree. That’s why I have what I think is a somewhat unconventional solution. Not yet, but when the time comes, I’ve asked Dr Bush who is the senior medical officer at Station X whether he can accommodate you there. There are many medical staff there with training in obstetrics, I’ve made sure. There are so many unused bedrooms upstairs in the big house. I’ve asked Deniston’s permission, and, well, actually he’s not that pleased. But I anticipated no great opposition if Admiral Godfrey is behind it. And he is.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s my boss, the DNI. Director of Naval Intelligence. He was so keen that we accommodate you, I thought he was about to offer up his own flat in Curzon Street…”
“God, no!”
They both laughed, but Xanthe wondered what on earth he was talking about.
“I just thought you’d be more comfortable in the countryside and where the action is too. I know it sounds a bit odd. I’m not sure anyone has given birth there, but there’s always a first time for everything!”
*
The days of sickness had given way as winter came, to a more elysian period of happiness for Xanthe. Having felt so guilty about feeling sad before, given what everyone else seemed to be going though, she now felt guilty about feeling a twinge of happiness – and for exactly the same reason.
She loved coming and going in Hut 8 and learning about the Enigma machine with a small working model that some of the Bletchley technicians had provided for her. She still felt something of a fraud – as if maybe she had been chosen for the role because of some misunderstanding about her crossword skills in her teens. But she felt at home there and sat for hours with Peter or Alan, thinking about the practicalities of using an Enigma machine, and what slivers of information they could glean from it.
“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.
