by David Boyle
“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 it? 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 solutio
n 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.
“May I just have a little peek?” she asked. She looked up at Hugh and back down at Indigo. “The baby looks so like his father,” she said, patting him on the arm of his grey uniform. He burst out laughing.
*
“That’s it. The Bismarck.”
Xanthe had been surprised by the unexpected arrival in her room of Commander Fleming, one Sunday afternoon. He was carrying a file which turned out to contain some aerial photographs.
“What? That long, cigar-shaped thing? Where is it?”
“You should recognise it, Xanthe. You told me you’d been there. That’s Kiel Harbour. This was taken by a reconnaissance plane a couple of weeks ago, but it shows just how big she is.”
She felt good being the object of attention, despite her very obvious retirement. It made her feel useful.
“I see what you mean. I was on a battlecruiser called Gneisenau, which seemed huge. Is it as big as that?”
Fleming sniggered a little, like a man in the know.
“Bigger by a long way, Gneisenau is thirty thousand tons, Bismarck is forty thousand tons plus. A third as much again.”
“Ok. I understand,” said Xanthe, cutting to the chase. “I’m not sure why you’re showing me this. I’ve told you I’m not available for one of your escapades. Not while I’ve got Indigo to bring up.”
“Right, right, message received and understood. I thought you’d be interested. I’ve already earmarked this for somebody else.”
“Really? Who?” she said, feeling a little defensive that she was so easily replaced.
Fleming picked up the shift in tone and laughed.
“Come on now, Xanthe You can’t expect me to shut up shop just because my star operative is otherwise engaged in being a mother.”
“Hardly a star… But still, I don’t see why you’re telling me that.”
Fleming thought for a moment.
“I suppose because I can, and just in case. You never know. Now, listen – here’s the problem. Bismarck, when she sails, which is going to be sometime in the early summer or late spring, is going to play absolute havoc among the convoys. It means we’ll have to provide at least two capital ships for each convoy in the Atlantic and that means – even if we had enough, which we don’t – no more Home Fleet. It is an absolute crisis. Of course, we need to know where she’s going, and that’s unlikely to be forthcoming, but, above everything, we need to know when she’s planning to sail. And we still can’t read more than an occasional naval signal, as you know.”
Fleming opened his file and brought out an artist’s impression of what Hitler’s fearsome surface raider looked like, with eight fifteen-inch guns and bristling with other weapons.
“See what I mean? If we could read naval Enigma signals, we would know, and we could be ready before she reaches the Atlantic shipping lanes. But we can’t and we don’t.”
Despite herself, Xanthe could not resist the question.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Well, here’s the point, and this is where you come in – I mean me, of course.”
Xanthe decided to grin knowingly.
“We can read Luftwaffe Enigma signals, and there are some remarkably garrulous Luftwaffe generals who seem to ask questions which they really shouldn’t. So, here’s the plan. You know how to operate Enigma, and there are only a handful of people who can – nearly all of them are here at Bletchley. We will use the Luftwaffe code to send a message in the name of a particularly pushy general and ask the basic question – when does Bismarck sail? Clever huh…”
Xanthe was staggered.
“You’re insane. This could put everything at risk. If it fails, and they work out what’s happened, they’ll change the Luftwaffe code and then where would you be?”
Fleming walked around the room and stared out of the window, down at the lawn.
“I know, I know – though it’s a good deal less insane than some of our recent capers. You’re right that there are a couple of important complications.”
Xanthe was now sitting on the edge of her bed. She put the baby down, now that he was sleeping.
“I can’t believe you’ve had permission to tell me this. Why are you telling me if you don’t expect me to go?”
Once again, Fleming dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. They both stared together towards Indy’s cot for a moment, like proud parents. Then Fleming moved back to gaze at the view of the trees, bushes and huts higgledy-piggledy across what had once been formal gardens.
Xanthe felt aware of the outside world again, and fearful of leaving it behind – of withdrawing into seclusion, to be a single mother, alone while the war was fought on without her. Something about the arrival of the impatient Fleming had made her regard the world of nappies, drying on the line, as even more of a threat – drawing her in inexorably until, well, when? Until she was past it and thirty or obese, or all three? And stuck in a room like this one, on the edge of things and events.
She pulled herself together. No. The answer was still no. She knew where her duty lay.
“There are two complications to this plan,” Fleming was saying. “The first is that we have to send the message near where the general actually is, otherwise their direction-finding equipment will pick up that it has come from somewhere else – and that would be that.”
“You mean, someone has to go to Germany…?”
“Maybe, and the second issue is that we have to use the right Enigma settings for the day.”
“Wowsie,” said Xanthe. “How would you do that? Well, I can’t go to Germany again. That’s for certain.”
“Ah well,” said Fleming, clearly sensing a sort of victory, and making a deft twist out of the room. “Perhaps Greece? My lips are sealed.”
And with that, he was gone again.
*
She thought about the Bismarck a great deal in the week that followed. At night, she felt she could hear its horn hooting deep beyond deep, in th
e darkness. This great lowering beast, awaiting the moment when it was to be loosed on the world. Fleming had certainly had an impact. He knew something of psychology, that man, and he also seemed to be prepared to use it – which Xanthe supposed made him a good intelligence officer. Except, of course, that Fleming hardly seemed to leave his desk, apart from the occasional jaunt to Bletchley or Lisbon.
But it sounded as if this uniquely dangerous ship would be leaving soon anyway, and she would miss out on the excitement. And then there was Indigo, whom she loved with an absolutely fierce determination. Nothing was going to get in the way of that. Indy needed her, and although the world might explode in her absence, she knew what came first. What worried her more than the voyage of the Bismarck, or naval intelligence, or her career at the New Yorker and certainly more than her correspondence for Mollie Panter-Downes, was Indy’s paternity.
She felt deeply responsible for her failure to provide him with a father. It was always possible that Ralph would return, chastened and defeated. It was also possible that he would come back to England as a conquering gauleiter. But both possibilities seemed increasingly unlikely, and Hitler had so far failed to organise any kind of credible invasion.
She had begun to wonder at what point she might be able to confide in Hugh about Indigo’s father. She knew she was bound by the most ferocious oath of secrecy, which all those around her at Bletchley took extremely seriously, but there would come a time when she might be able to tell – at least about Ralph.
She had also begun to long for her own father, so far away in Cincinnati and glued to the wireless and the newspaper for news from London, engrossed in a way that Londoners quite failed to be themselves. Alan and Hugh and her other new friends were lovely and supportive, but they were not family. She had produced a child, she had become a family herself, but that just heightened her sense of isolation and her need for emotional support. She felt alone and vulnerable. The Blitz was heating up again on London, but she needed somewhere to belong.
Camping out at Bletchley Park was hardly a permanent solution, despite the kindness of Sister Agnes. She would have to go somewhere quiet, maybe in the north – but who would talk to her and who would pay? The Bletchley canteen would not be open to her forever and, once she had definitely stepped back from whatever role she had been assigned in Commander Fleming’s strange world – when she was in no sense part of the Naval Intelligence Division – that source of pay and sustenance would be closed to her too.
