Mr. Churchill's Secretary

by Susan Elia MacNeal

“Fabulous—working on the Swan Lake act two pas de deux in case I get tapped for Odile anytime soon.”

  “How are you doing with the rationing? You must get so hungry doing all that dancing.”

  “Actually, it’s the reverse; I feel as if I’m gaining weight. A lot of the dancers are used to doing a performance and then eating a nice steak or something. Well, of course we can’t do that anymore. So we’re eating a lot of bread and expanding a bit.”

  Paige poked at her own waist. “It’s happening to me, too. I can feel it. My poor waistline—yet another casualty of war.” She set a plate with the poached egg and a piece of toast in front of Maggie. The egg yolk was hot and runny, sprinkled liberally with salt and black pepper.

  “And, Annabelle, Clarabelle—how have you two been doing?” Maggie asked.

  “Keeping busy at the Queen’s Theatre, as usual,” Annabelle said. A play of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was running, with Owen Nares and Celia Johnson as the leads. Annabelle was playing the role of the young housemaid, while the shyer Clarabelle was the assistant to the costumer.

  “Curtain’s going up earlier—” Annabelle began.

  “—so we have time to volunteer for the Red Cross—make tea and hand out Bath buns to the Saint Paul’s Watch,” Clarabelle finished. The St. Paul’s Watch was a group of volunteer firemen, dedicated to saving St. Paul’s Cathedral from any air attacks.

  “John volunteers for the Saint Paul’s Watch, you know,” said Annabelle, twisting a lock of hair.

  “Imagine that—with all he must have to do for the P.M.,” Clarabelle added.

  “We both think he’s terribly handsome—” Annabelle began.

  “—if a little serious,” Clarabelle finished.

  Maggie was annoyed. They barely knew John. Who were they to talk about him like that? Especially Annabelle. “The man needs a haircut,” she said finally, biting into a piece of eggy toast.

  “But, Maggie, you’re the one working for the P.M.,” Sarah said. “Tell us everything! It must be so exciting.”

  Maggie was at a loss for where to start. Certainly not with any statistics on coffin production or estimated civilian death tolls. Certainly not with any of the other classified documents she’d typed. “Well …”

  Chuck wandered into the kitchen, yawning widely, pulling her flannel dressing gown around her large frame. Nigel, somewhat sheepishly, followed, buttoning his top button. “Good morning, girls!” Chuck boomed. Her attitude when war had been declared was carpe noctem, and Nigel had become a frequent overnight guest as his departure date loomed.

  “Hello, ladies,” Nigel added, a bit more subdued. Although they were all used to Nigel’s spending the night when he was on leave, he always had a somewhat awkward manner when he ran into any of them, especially in the mornings. Perhaps he realized how thin the walls were, and how Chuck’s … enthusiasm carried.

  “Tea?” Clarabelle offered, her voice a bit chilly. She didn’t approve of Nigel’s overnight visits.

  “Thanks,” Nigel said, pouring mugs for Chuck and himself.

  “So yes,” Maggie continued. “The P.M.’s office. Scary and tedious and frustrating and—wonderful.”

  “So you like it there?” Sarah asked, spreading a tiny drop of strawberry jam thinly over her toast.

  “I do.”

  “And you get to see everything?” Chuck asked, pouring more tea.

  If she only knew. “There’s no time to think when you’re taking dictation. He just goes so fast, you’re lucky just to keep up with him.”

  “But surely there must be something you’ve picked up, some indication of how things are going.… You know, troops, for example,” Chuck asked. “The RAF?” She looked nervously over at Nigel, and he grasped her large-knuckled hand. Nigel had finished basic training and had begun flying missions from a military base not too far from London. He used his leave to get back to London to see Chuck whenever possible.

  “Look, you know I can’t tell you anything, right?” Maggie said, her voice soft.

  “Maggie, I won’t say anything, le do thoil.” Chuck crossed her heart and held up her hand.

  “Well, I can tell you this—”

  “Yes,” Chuck said, leaning closer.

  “It’s top secret.”

  “What? What is it, woman? I’m dying to know!”

  “It’s … that Nelson—the Churchills’ cat—is to play an integral role in breaking German ciphers.”

  The twins giggled. “Oh, we should get a cat!” Annabelle exclaimed.

  “Two!” said Clarabelle. “They could be—”

  “Sisters!” they both exclaimed.

  Chuck ground her teeth in exasperation. “And just who’s going to feed them and clean up their messes? Who’s going to chase them around during an air raid, hmmm?”

  “I loathe cats,” Paige said. “And I’m allergic. By the way, he’s lucky to have you. I hope he appreciates you.”

  “Nelson? Of course. The Churchills’ pets are better fed than most Londoners these days.”

  Paige sniffed. “Mr. Churchill, silly. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll have to come down to Number Ten myself. And it won’t be pretty.”

  Nigel grinned; he and Chuck exchanged a look. “Uh-oh, watch out,” Nigel said.

  “You’re a good friend,” Maggie said, patting Paige’s hand, “but really, it won’t be necessary. Not yet, anyway.”

  When breakfast was over, Chuck walked Nigel to the front door for a prolonged goodbye kiss, then disappeared upstairs. Paige and Sarah set to work on the dishes while the twins busied themselves with the newest Tatler.

  Maggie went back to the front hall to look for her valise; it wasn’t there. “Has anyone seen my suitcase?” she called into the kitchen. “I swear I left it at the door.”

  Her query was met with a resounding chorus of noes.

  Puzzled, Maggie went upstairs. Hearing noises from Chuck’s room, she opened the door. There was Chuck, opening the valise on the bed, rummaging through the contents.

  “Oh, Maggie,” Chuck said, her face reddening. “I just thought I could help out by doing your washing. I know you’ve had a tough time of it lately.…”

  Maggie didn’t have any important papers in her suitcase, but still. She went over and took the case.

  “Thank you, Chuck,” she said, feeling protective of her things and as though her privacy had been violated. “But it’s really not necessary.”

  NINE

  LATER THAT DAY Sarah invited Maggie to the Wells, to watch the company’s class and a rehearsal. One by one, dancers wandered into a large, mirror-filled room with a hardwood floor. Maggie sat on a folding chair to one side. The not-unpleasant scent of fresh sweat and cologne hung in the air.

  Looking at their lithe frames, she felt as clumsy and huge as Alice after she drank from the bottle in Wonderland. An older man sat down behind the battered-looking upright piano and began to play an accompaniment, while the teacher, a heavy-set woman with large, kohl-rimmed eyes and a black turban, surveyed the class and gave the count: “Five, six, seven, and—”

  The girls were all ridiculously gorgeous, dressed in leotards and short skirts, their long legs bare, scuffed pink satin slippers on their feet. Sarah was wearing a darned black leotard and raggedy leg warmers. She’d tied back her hair with a striped grosgrain ribbon. There were just a few men, wearing black shorts, white shirts, and black dance slippers. All of the dancers held on to the barre; the motion of their feet became faster and faster, until Maggie became dizzy just watching them.

  After adagio in the center, they began to cross the floor in diagonals, running and leaping into the air in combinations of complex steps. Sarah ran and jumped with equal amounts of precision and abandon. What joy it was to watch them. Maggie could see how hard they worked, how demanding their art form was, and yet they looked so free.

  When class was over, a tall, dark-eyed man with a long, thin face clapped his hands. “All right, then—who’s staying for rehearsal? Margot and
Michael, of course. The rest of you have the day off, unless you’re in tonight’s performance.” Dancers ran to their dance bags, swinging them over their shoulders and talking and laughing as they left; the ones he’d asked to stay sat down on the floor or wandered to the barre to stretch their muscles.

  Sarah walked over to Maggie; her gait, now that class was done, was more like a boxer’s than a ballerina’s. “So what do you think?” she asked as she opened her dance bag and took out a towel to blot sweat from her face.

  “It was marvelous,” Maggie said, “but I’d be in traction if I tried it.”

  “Nonsense,” Sarah insisted.

  “Miss Sanderson,” the tall man called, looking down his long, aquiline nose. He was dressed in khaki and a white linen shirt, open at the collar. “Did you ask permission to bring a guest to rehearsal?”

  Maggie immediately stood up, prepared to leave, but Sarah just laughed. “Oh, come on, Fred. This is my flatmate Maggie Hope. She’s just curious as to what we dancers do all day.”

  The man walked over, and Maggie held out her hand to shake his. Instead, he drew it to his lips and kissed it. “Enchanté, Miss Hope. Frederick Ashton. Perhaps Sarah’s mentioned me.”

  Had she? “Yes, well, of course.”

  He cleared his throat and glared at Sarah for her faux pas. “I am a choreographer,” he said with a deep bow. “Choreography is my raison d’être.”

  “Too bad you can’t make a living from it,” one of the men called from the barre, and the rest of the dancers giggled.

  “Silence!” Ashton shouted. The dancers all went back to stretching. “Today, Miss Hope, you will see art as it unfurls. What I do is first familiarize myself with the music—in this case, our own Constant Lambert’s score. Then I break down the dramatic incidents and dances in relation to the music; I call it scaffolding.”

  “We like to call it Chinese water torture,” Sarah muttered.

  Ashton turned to her with just a hint of a smile. “Well, Miss Sanderson, since you have so much energy, why don’t you demonstrate the choreographic process for your friend?” Sarah shrugged and walked back to the center of the room. The rest of the dancers put on leg warmers and sweaters, draping themselves languidly over the barre. “What I usually do is play the music for the dancer and then ask her to show me something.”

  As the pianist played a melody, Sarah began to move, trying out different steps. “I may indicate something, an image perhaps, such as a fountain, or a bird in flight.” Sarah’s steps took on a new dimension as she incorporated his words into her movements. He walked over to her and adjusted her arms, molding the dance on her in time to the music, as if he were a sculptor.

  Although Sarah had begun the demonstration with an amused expression on her face, Maggie could tell she was now completely immersed. When the music was done, the dance might not have been finished, but something had definitely happened, something Ashton could draw from and refine. “It’s not what you put into the dance, it’s what you take out,” he said, and called over a few of the other girls and had them repeat the steps with Sarah, editing as they went. The next thing she knew, not only had a dance been created but an entire hour had passed. Ashton clapped his hands. “All right, that’s enough for today, girls. I’ll work with Michael and Margot now.”

  Maggie had brought a camera with her, wanting to take some shots of Sarah during rehearsal. But as she observed Ashton work, she was too self-conscious to use it.

  Sarah came over to Maggie when they were through, looking exhausted but happy. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and went to change. Maggie walked to the lobby and looked around, admiring captioned photographs of the dancers in costume—Alicia Markova partnered with a younger-looking Ashton, Margot Fonteyn dressed in a beautiful tutu and held aloft by Michael Somes.

  Sarah emerged from the changing room looking like Katharine Hepburn in her gray flannel trousers and red cashmere sweater, dance bag thrown over her shoulder. “Want to walk through the park instead of taking the Tube home?”

  “Sure.” They made their way past King’s Cross and St. Pancras to Regent’s Park. The day was hot and clear, and the air smelled of fresh clover and rich earth. A slight breeze whispered its way through the green oak and elm leaves, causing them to flutter, showing their delicate silvery undersides.

  There were a few people out strolling, an older couple with clasped hands, a man in a black bowler hat. As most of the dogs in London had been sent to the country or chloroformed—the barking of the dogs was considered too great a risk in case of invasion—even the usual walkers weren’t around. The London Zoo’s snakes and reptiles had also been killed, while the elephants and lions had been moved to a safer location. Now, with war declared, the park felt so open, so exposed.

  “Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Sarah said, as they made their way over the bright green-and-gold fields. “It’s such a gorgeous day. It should be raining, with a howling wind and thunderstorms, but no—it’s the most ravishing summer on record. It’s just too much to take in.”

  Maggie pulled out the camera to take some photos. “Pathetic fallacy,” she said, trying to focus the camera on a silvery weeping willow alone in the field, holding back her hair to keep any stray strands from blowing into the shot.

  “Sorry?”

  “According to John Ruskin, pathetic fallacy describes when the weather corresponds to the emotions of the characters. You know, ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ ” Maggie snapped the picture, then walked closer to try for a better angle.

  “See, you’re just so smart, Maggie. I could never be as smart as you and Paige are; you went to university, after all. Here I am complaining about the weather, and you’re quoting dead writers. It’s positively intimidating sometimes.”

  A smart woman, yes. So useful. Like a pretty gorilla. “Are you joking? You’re a dancer with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet—an artist. And you’re gorgeous! Believe me, I’d love to spin on my toes the way you do.”

  “It’s overrated, but you’re sweet to say. I started dancing when I was just a little thing, on doctor’s orders. My mum didn’t have the money for it, really, but I had weak knees and flat feet, and the doctor said I might have to wear leg irons. But he’d just been to the ballet and thought the exercises might do me some good.”

  Leg irons. Little Sarah in leg irons. “My goodness.”

  She smiled ruefully. “All I know is I heard the words leg irons and not only did my one class a week but practiced almost every waking hour. Pretty soon there was no more talk about leg irons, and the school took me on as a scholarship student. When the Vic-Wells Ballet played in Liverpool, my teacher wrote a note to Madame Ninette de Valois, who came to watch class. She said I could come to London and study at the Sadler’s Wells School, on scholarship. I was fourteen, and became a member of the company at seventeen. So I just never had time for much school, or even family. Just ballet, really—all the time.”

  “But it must have been such an amazing experience, to find what you love and then have the opportunity to pursue it. The tutus, the roses, all those handsome men …”

  “The tutus are sweat-stained and mended, the roses have thorns, and most of the men are big poofs, so there you go. It’s the theater, it’s illusion. None of it is real.” They walked along in silence for a while. A bird on a high tree branch warbled and then fell silent. “There are a lot of sacrifices.”

  “Well, of course,” Maggie said. “All that time you put in, the rehearsal schedule, the pressure of performing.”

  “And it’s especially hard now, with everything that’s happening,” Sarah said, dropping down onto the soft, sweet-smelling grass under the boughs of the willow. “I mean, we’re at war. The Nazis have taken Paris. Bombs could fall from the sky and we could be invaded at any moment. What does it matter if we’re all dancing around, pretending to be swans or sylphs or whatever? It’s all quite ridiculous, really.”

  At the edge of the park, they sat down near a particularly sp
lendid old oak. They could see men removing the stately black fencing to be taken away and melted down for the war effort. Watching them, Sarah, with her long neck, looked particularly photogenic. When Maggie pointed the camera at her, she nodded, giving permission to shoot away.

  “Look, Sarah, I understand how you feel,” Maggie said, camera clicking. “And if you decide you want to make bullets or planes—or whatever—you know Paige and I will be right behind you. But what you do is important. You have a real gift, and unlike some people, you have the opportunity to use it. I mean, it’s going to get ugly soon. And what you do—it’s beautiful. Yes, it’s an illusion, but there are going to be a lot of people who’ll need to see that, to have a few hours where they can just get away. Me included.”

  “You think so?” Sarah said. “The things I’ve given up—sometimes I just don’t know if they’re worth it.”

  Maggie put down the camera and looked straight at her. “I do.”

  “What about you?” Sarah asked suddenly. “We live together, but I don’t know the first thing about you, really—other than that you prefer coffee to tea and hog all the hot water. Are you a southern belle like Paige?”

  “Goodness, no! Perish the thought,” Maggie said, doing her best Paige impression. Sarah chortled. “I’m from New England, actually.”

  “Well, I’m glad you ended up in London, however it came about. Paige, too.” Sarah rose and brushed off the bottom of her trousers. “And I like Chuck quite a bit. But those twins—”

  “—can really get on your nerves?”

  “Ha! Absolutely.”

  Then, “You know, today when I came in, I left my suitcase near the front door. After breakfast, Chuck had it in her room and was going through it. She said she wanted to do my washing.” Maggie looked at Sarah. “Do you think I’m being paranoid?”

  Sarah laughed. “Chuck? A spy? Hardly. She probably just knew you’d been working hard and wanted to help out.”

  “It just seems very … personal. You know, going through my things.”

  “Maggie, you’re an only child. People who grew up with siblings, well, we’re not as precious about our belongings. If you don’t mind my saying.”