Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Novel

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “It was an accident?” John asked.

  “An accident,” Clarabelle said.

  Sarah blew her nose. “The cop said that it looked like she must have hit a fallen tree. Must have hit it and flipped.” She drew in a ragged breath. “The car flipped.” She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Then it caught on fire.”

  Maggie tried not to picture a car engulfed in flames, Paige inside, trying to get out.

  “I know,” Chuck said, as if reading her thoughts. Her usually booming voice was uncharacteristically small and tight.

  They all sat on the steps in silence for a long time. The morning faded in and out as time stopped and started in bursts.

  Paige is dead, Maggie thought over and over again. It just wasn’t sinking in.

  Paige would come walking up the street or waltz through the door at any minute, scolding them for being late, asking about their day, showing off her newly made-over dress. Paige giggling over tea in the kitchen, Paige dancing, Paige in Latin class, at the dining hall at Claflin.

  It was impossible that she was dead.

  “Her mother—”

  “Said we’d call her. We just couldn’t, though,” Annabelle said, looking over at Chuck, who shook her head.

  “Besides, it’s only, what, one in the morning in Virginia?” Clarabelle added.

  “We can call her in a few hours,” Maggie said. “Let her sleep. It’s going to be the last night of rest she’ll have for a while.”

  “Yeah.” Chuck took a long drag on her cigarette. Maggie struggled to piece together practical details.

  “What about her body?” John asked.

  Sarah blinked. Hard. “No body. Nothing recovered.”

  “Oh my God,” Maggie said. “Oh, please, no.”

  “Maggie …” John said, sitting down on the step beside her.

  But it was true: Paige was gone. And there was nothing left of her. And nothing for the three of them to do except wait for dawn in Virginia to make the phone call.

  Just before they left for the service, Maggie stood at the doorway of Paige’s room. They’d packed all of her belongings in a domed wooden steamer trunk to send back to her mother in Virginia. She told the girls they could keep what they wanted. Maggie had decided to keep Paige’s heavy, square glass bottle of Joy with the golden cap, nearly empty. Just a whiff of the sweet rose-and-jasmine fragrance would conjure up memories. Sarah kept one of Paige’s blue-satin hair ribbons.

  “Come on, Maggie.” She could hear Sarah calling her from the front hall as well as the twins’ subdued murmurings. It was time to go.

  “Coming,” she called. Chuck looked in. “Chuck!” Maggie exclaimed, taking in her friend’s changed appearance. “You’re—you’re wearing a dress. And lipstick.”

  “Well,” Chuck said, smoothing down the skirt with gloved hands, “Paige would’ve liked it, now, wouldn’t she?” Paige was always trying to get Chuck to wear skirts and dresses and lipstick and perfume. All of the things she thought were life’s necessities.

  “Yes. Yes, she would.” And when Maggie left, she closed the door softly.

  The memorial was held in a small, dimly lit church in the neighborhood. The altar was decorated with fall flowers: late-blooming red roses, yellow-and-white chrysanthemums, bittersweet.

  In the long, dark pews, they stood with their heads bowed. Maggie bit the inside of her lower lip until it bled, and thought about the possibilities for code in the ad, in a desperate attempt not to scream. Glancing around, she could see everyone was beaten down by grief. When did we all start to look so old?

  Maggie glanced at John, standing so stiffly upright in his best black suit, wishing she could reach out and take his hand. The fine lines around his eyes were more pronounced, and his face was even more angular, if possible. As the priest led them in prayer, he swayed the slightest bit.

  It was time. It took forever for Maggie to reach the podium, her footsteps an endless series of clicks on the hard, unforgiving floor.

  “I—I decided to read a poem by Henry Scott Holland.” Her voice was uneven, and she took a breath and tried to steady it. “I think Paige would have liked this. And I think she would want us to think of her in this way.

  “Death is nothing at all,

  I have only slipped into the next room

  I am I and you are you

  Whatever we were to each other,

  That we are still.

  Call me by my old familiar name,

  Speak to me in the easy way you always used

  Put no difference into your tone,

  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

  Laugh as we always laughed

  At the little jokes we enjoyed together.

  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

  Let my name be ever the household word that it

  always was,

  Let it be spoken without effort,

  Without the ghost of a shadow on it.

  Life means all that it ever meant.

  It is the same as it ever was,

  There is absolute unbroken continuity.

  Why should I be out of mind

  Because I am out of sight?

  I am waiting for you, for an interval,

  Somewhere very near,

  Just around the corner.

  All is well.”

  When Maggie returned to her seat, Sarah put an arm around her and Chuck gave her a hard squeeze. The twins both reached over to pat her hand. She bent her head. Hot tears ran down her cheeks, dripping on the black-marble tiles. Sarah handed Maggie her embroidered handkerchief, and she took it, wiping her face and stifling her sobs, concentrating on picking lint off her skirt.

  A thread hung from the bottom, and she pulled at it, finding a grim satisfaction in watching the stitching begin to unravel. She knew her real mourning would be saved for when she was alone, with the door closed, running water in the tub to drown out the noise. She was afraid if she let her emotions go in the polished marble silence, there would be no way to go on, this day or any other.

  Afterward, they went for drinks. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

  “How are you holding up?” John asked at the Rose and Crown, making room for Maggie to slide in next to him in the booth. He smiled, though he looked as terrible as she felt.

  “I’m fine, John, thank you,” she said, sitting down next to him and then making room for Sarah, who put her arm around her. Clarabelle and Annabelle went to the bar to fetch the drinks.

  Maggie barely registered anything beyond numbness. She was completely exhausted, and when she looked at Sarah, she looked just as drained. As did Chuck, whose red lipstick, worn in Paige’s honor, had smeared a bit on her front teeth. Even the twins were uncharacteristically quiet when they returned with the glasses. The girls sat together and held one another up, as everyone told stories about Paige, little things she’d done or said, some poignant, some hilarious.

  It was Maggie’s turn. “I remember—” The problem was that she remembered too much. Even looking around the pub brought back too many memories: the first time they’d ventured out to get a drink, the first time Paige introduced her to David and John, how they’d argued politics and mocked her various beaux … Her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak. “Sorry. Maybe later,” she finally got out.

  She could feel John’s eyes on her and wanted to meet them but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “To Paige,” they toasted. And they drank.

  EIGHTEEN

  BACK IN THE private secretaries’ office at No. 10, John took a few moments over his chipped mug of lukewarm tea to look at the clipping he’d found in another edition of the paper, the same one Maggie had shown him. Dots and dashes, to be sure. He scanned his shelf and took out another book of Morse code and tried to decode.

  Nothing, nothing. Just gibberish.

  John pushed it aside and sighed.

  Another dead end.

  He was sorry, for it meant he would have to tel
l Maggie.

  John was only twenty-six years old, but he already had deep furrows between his brows. Long ago, or so it seemed, at Oxford and then at No. 10, he’d had a few short-lived love affairs with women, and did so in a way that nothing became messy and no one was hurt. But among the women he’d known, there was no single great love. With Maggie, though, things were different. He was drawn to her—her face and body but also her intellect, her sense of humor.

  But now, since the war had started, everything had changed. He went about his work keenly aware that other able-bodied men were serving in the RAF and army and Royal Navy. What was he doing with a desk job when they were out there, putting their lives on the line? He’d already lost two friends in the RAF, shot down by German Messerschmitts. He pictured them plummeting to their death over the English countryside. He felt in some way that by working in an office, even if it was for the Prime Minister, he was letting them down. Letting their memories down.

  A few years ago, when war still seemed an impossibility, he would have charmed Maggie, made her smile and then laugh, taken her to dinner. There would have been no awkwardness, no fiasco at LSE, no hesitation. But that was then, and this, alas, was now. They worked together. This was wartime. And everything was different.

  It’s not to be, John thought. And next time I see her, I’ll tell her that sometimes an advert is just an advert.

  David walked into their spartan War Rooms office. “Mooning again, old boy?” he said, sitting down to a pile of paperwork.

  “Hmph,” John said, looking up from the tight glow of light from the lamp, embarrassed at being caught at just that.

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” David said, pulling out a manila folder and flipping through the pages inside. “She’s smart and pretty—and far too good for the likes of you.”

  “No time for that sort of nonsense,” John said. “If you haven’t noticed—”

  David rolled his eyes.

  “—there’s a war on.”

  David grinned. “My point exactly.”

  After work, back at home, Maggie rang David, who was still working late at the office.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she said.

  “Your wish is my command,” David replied, sitting down at his desk chair.

  “Feel like getting out of the city?”

  David pushed aside a pile of papers. “And get away from the bombing? Always.”

  “Road trip to Cambridge?”

  “Cambridge? What’s there?”

  Maggie was silent for a moment. What did she actually expect to find? “I don’t know, really. Ghosts, maybe? With luck, an answer or two.” She nervously twisted the coiled black telephone cord. “Interested?”

  “An answer or two about what, Maggie?”

  “It’s about my father,” she said. “I think—well, I think there’s a possibility that he might be alive.”

  “Alive?” David said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I at least want to investigate the possibility. Ask some questions. And Trinity College at Cambridge seems like a logical next place to go.”

  David looked up at the clock. “Give me a couple of hours to finish,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at your place.”

  “You’re a wonderful, wonderful man,” Maggie exclaimed. “You really are.”

  “I know. See you soon.”

  When David replaced the black receiver, John looked over. “Was that Maggie?”

  “You know it was, old boy.” David leaned toward him and smirked. “Jealous?”

  John snorted. “Hardly. So”—he stood up from his desk chair and came around to sit on the edge of David’s desk—“you’re going to Cambridge, then?”

  “Indeed, old boy,” David said. “Why she doesn’t want to go to Oxford is beyond me, but—”

  “What’s in Cambridge?”

  “Why, what do you care?” David said. “It’s not like you’re mooning, is it?”

  “David—this is important. Why does Maggie want to go to Cambridge?”

  David sighed. “It’s something about her father. Probably nothing. But if it helps her feel better …”

  John jumped to his feet and walked quickly to the door.

  “Where are you off to?” David called after him.

  “Just remembered something,” John called back. “Go on.”

  “Great bloody Odin, is everyone losing his bleeding mind?” David muttered, turning back to his notes. Men and women. He’d never understand them.

  John burst into Snodgrass’s office.

  “She knows!”

  Looking up from the files on his large oak desk, Mr. Snodgrass said mildly, “Mr. Sterling, would you kindly remember to knock first, please?”

  John shut the door behind him and then said, in a lower tone, “She knows.”

  “Who knows?” Snodgrass said. “Who knows what?”

  “Maggie. She knows.”

  “What exactly does she know?”

  “I’m not sure. But she’s on her way to Cambridge.”

  “All right, then.” Snodgrass lowered his pen, smoothed his comb-over, and picked up the green telephone receiver. “Then we have work to do.”

  “Nice car,” Maggie said, settling into the smooth leather seat of David’s Citroën as the car purred through blacked-out London.

  “My poor baby,” David said. “The rubbish that passes for petrol these days will be the death of her.” He was dressed casually in a white open-neck shirt, navy jacket, and gray-flannel trousers.

  There was a comfortable silence as they drove in the silky black—only the moon and the dim light peeking through the slotted headlight covers provided illumination.

  “It really was good of you to drive me to Cambridge tonight. By staying over, you’re using one of your only days off.”

  David patted Maggie’s hand. “As you are, Magster. Glad to do it. Besides, it’s raising my profile at the office, you know—escorting a pretty girl …”

  She punched his arm.

  “Ouch!”

  “Love tap,” she said. “Now, we need a plan for when we get to Cambridge. Settle into the rooms at the University Arms hotel, then head for Trinity.”

  “If your father’s still in the area, he’ll at least have shown his face at the High Table once in a while.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  Maggie must have found him by now, Edith realized. And if she hadn’t, she would soon; she was too smart not to. The game was over. Now all Edith could do was explain herself and hope—pray—that Margaret would understand. After all, Edmund had gone insane, undoubtedly still was. Surely what she’d done was forgivable.

  Wellesley, Massachusetts

  Dear Margaret,

  I write this letter with a heavy heart.

  As you may have ascertained, I had quite an unusual childhood. Not only did I show an aptitude for the sciences, believed to be quite rare for a young girl, but I also went to university, one of the few young women who did in the late 1800s. Being such a fish out of water at Cambridge, especially in graduate school, it seemed as though no one understood me and my place in the world.

  Except one other graduate student. She was doing advanced work in economics, and soon we became best friends. As time passed, I fell in love with her, and she with me. I asked her back to London with me for Christmas holiday and, well, your grandmother must have guessed the true nature of our feelings for each other. She called me “unnatural” and worse. My friend never spoke to me again; the experience had somehow tainted what we had. What was pure and loving and tender had become twisted and perverted when exposed to the outside world.

  It became impossible for me to continue on, either denying who I was or living a life I couldn’t share with the rest of my family. It was impossible to reconcile what I felt—who I was—with what was expected of me. I had to leave. Otherwise, it would have destroyed me.

  When Clara died and Edmund, well, had what we referred to as “the incident,” of cou
rse I took care of you. Edmund and I had discussed it when he’d drawn up his will—that I would be the one to look after you, should anything happen to him and your mother—your grandmother would be too old to look after a young child. Although we planned for the eventuality, it was always in the abstract; we never thought it would ever happen, let alone while you were a baby.

  The circumstances were just so unusual—to say the least. Edmund had just lost his wife.

  At first I thought he was entitled to go a bit mad.

  But as time went on, he didn’t seem to be getting any better.

  And despite the fact that I’d never even liked babies or children—well, I fell in love. With you. You weren’t just any baby. You were Margaret—with your serious eyes and shocking red hair that indicated an inner fire. As you contemplated your chubby little fingers and toes with such wonder, I knew that I could never let you go. And even though he was your father, I realized Edmund wasn’t up to the task.

  When I came to collect you, your grandmother had to mention my “lack of moral rectitude,” intimating my home would not be a proper environment for a child, and so on. I was once again cast out by my own mother, and suddenly the brave new world that I had created for myself was falling apart. And yet I had to pull myself together and take responsibility for this little life that had come into mine.

  When I finally got my Ph.D. from Cambridge, I sent my c.v. to various women’s colleges in the States that were hiring women faculty. When Wellesley made me an offer, I jumped at the opportunity. It was a chance to start over, as myself, in a place where I had no family, no roots, no responsibilities to anyone but myself. America seemed not just the new world but a place for new beginnings. My new beginning. At Wellesley, I was able to live the life of the mind I so desired, while I was still able to be the person I was in my private life. With an ocean between us, there was no way your grandmother could sully my feelings or make me feel any less of a human being for having them.