Chapter 9

June rolled into July, and Osla was dying for a project. Work in German naval section might have carried on at a frenetic pace, but it was about as intellectually taxing as noughts and crosses. I need a challenge, Osla thought, yawning as she helped Miss Senyard notate unknown German codes to be passed up the ladder for identification. Or at least I will when I’m back on days. . . The nine-to-four shift wasn’t bad, but when the shift change rolled around to the four-to-midnight, Osla had to fight to keep herself from falling in the dismals. It was one thing to trip home after midnight because you’d splashed out at the Café de Paris. It was quite another to fall into bed at one in the morning after a night spent making preparations for when the enemy invaded.

“There are plans to organize a mobile section of GC & CS, ” Miss Senyard told her girls, quite matter-of-factly. “Those members of German naval section chosen will be supplied with special passports in preparation for hasty departure. ”

So they can bunk off into the hills and keep up the fight once the Germans have taken over here, Osla thought with a sick twist of her stomach. Until now she’d been able to contemplate her country’s takeover in the abstract, a black cloud on the horizon—but to see practical preparations being made for the day German tanks came rolling through Bletchley village. . .

If Miss Senyard’s announcement had come during day shift, Osla might have been able to toss her head in defiance: We will never need a mobile GC & CS to flee into the hills, because you’ll never pull this invasion off, Herr Hitler. You’ll have to run your tanks over my dead body and the dead bodies of everyone else in Britain first.

But in the eerie, stuffy blackness of night, Miss Senyard’s announcement and its implications seeped into Osla’s bones like poison. If documents were being issued and orders passed down, it was fairly obvious Germany would be invading very soon.

Dear Philip: If you stop getting my letters. . .

“At least we’re not on night shifts yet, ” one of her fellow indexers yawned, noting Osla’s long silence. “The brainy boys work a midnight-to-nine shift too, because the Jerries change all the cipher settings at midnight. ”

“I wonder how they do it—break the ciphers. ” Osla wondered if she could learn to do it herself, get a transfer from filing and binding to something more taxing. Something to keep her mind from the invasion. “Not that one would ever ask; you just know Commander Denniston would have you dragged out behind the mansion and shot. But one can’t help wondering. They must be fearfully clever fellows. ”

“Not only fellows. ” The answer surprised Osla. “There’s a whole clutch of girls in Knox’s section, that little outbuilding by the stable block? The harem, they call it, because Knox only recruits women. ”

“Let me guess—they’re all slap-up lookers, and none over twenty. ” Osla wasn’t eager for that kind of transfer, much as she wanted more useful work.

“No, it’s not like that. Hinsley was raving a month ago how Knox poached a German-speaking girl he wanted for our section, a girl named Jane—well, I’ve seen Jane and she’s got a bill like a duck. No one trying to stack his office with lookers would pick her. She’s brainy, though. The brainy girls go to Dilly Knox. No idea what they do. ”

That was the thing about the Park; gossip ran fluid as a river, but no one knew anything for certain.

Midnight had descended black and cloudless as Osla yawned her way out of Hut 4. Codebreakers and linguists were fleeing for home and bed, as another stream of rumpled academics and girls in crepe frocks trudged in on the dreaded night shift already looking absolutely knackered. “If Mrs. F knocks on our door at six in the morning again, I’ll pitch a fit, ” Mab grumbled, sauntering to join Osla. “I need my beauty sleep tonight. I’m going for lunch with Andrew Kempton before tomorrow’s shift. ”

“Is that the third man asking for a date, Queen Mab? ”

“Fourth. ” Mab didn’t sound smug, just matter-of-fact. “He was born in Whitstable, read German philosophy at Cambridge, no parents—”

“Feel his withers and examine his teeth while you’re at it. Are you taking a dead set at the delicious Harry Zarb, too? ”

“He’s married, ” Mab said, regretful. “At least he dropped that in right away. Most men only tell you they’re married after trying to get a bit of the old you-know. ”

“Married, what a shame. You two would have had the world’s tallest children. ” All the marriage talk made Osla think of the perennial spinster in the Finch household, and the lurking desire for a project reappeared after the night’s horrified preoccupation with the German invasion. “We need to do something about Beth. The Dread Mrs. Finch has her thoroughly nobbled. ”

“You can’t help people if they won’t help themselves. She won’t even look us in the eye since the literary society meeting. ”

Osla was quite certain, after that night two weeks ago, that she’d seen bruises all over the inside of Beth’s arm. The kind made by strong, pinching fingers targeting the sensitive skin inside the elbow, like a bird pecking at the tenderest part of a plum. Introducing a little fizz and fun into Beth’s life without putting her mother in a pucker—now, that was a project worth tackling.

Osla and Mab were rounding the corner through Bletchley village, walking down the center of the road to avoid the muddy ruts on the verge, when a set of headlights reared behind them. Osla shrieked and leaped into a bush, and Mab staggered and fell into a deep rut. The car ground to a halt, the driver’s door flying open. “Are you all right? ” A man came round the bonnet, his shadowed shape hatless and stocky. By the flare of the car’s headlights, he lifted Osla easily out of the bush. “I didn’t see you till I rounded the bend. ”

“Partly our fault, ” Osla said, getting her breath back. “Mab—”

Stiffly, her friend picked herself up. Osla winced. Even in the indirect glare of the masked headlights, she could see that Mab’s crisp cotton print was mud from collar to hem. Reaching down, Mab slipped her left shoe off and examined the snapped heel, and Osla saw her face crumple in the shadows. Every night she watched Mab polish those cheap shoes before bed, no matter how tired she was, to give them a Bond Street shine.

“I’m sure we can fix it, ” Osla began, but Mab’s crumpled expression vanished. She drew back and hurled the broken shoe straight into the chest of the man who’d nearly run them off the road.

“What are you doing taking a turn at that speed, you bloody bastard! ” she bellowed. “Are you blind, you stupid bugger? ”

“Clearly, ” the man said, barely catching the shoe. He stood half a head shorter than Mab, a shock of russet hair falling over his forehead as he shaded his eyes to look at her. “My apologies. ”

“We were walking in the middle of the road, ” Osla pointed out, but Mab stood on her one shod foot in the mud and let the stranger have it. He let it rain down, expression more admiring than horrified.

“Blew your tire, ” Mab finished with a withering look. “Guess you’ll have to get down in the mud and change it out. ”

“Would if I could, ” he replied. “I’ll just leave the car and head for the station. Are there any trains this late? ”

Mab folded her arms, cheeks still scarlet with indignation. “Easier to put the spare on, if you’ve got a kit. ”

“Haven’t a clue how. ”

Mab slipped out of her other shoe, whizzed it into his hands, marched in her stocking feet through the mud to the car’s boot, and hurled it open. “Have my shoes properly mended, and I’ll change your ruddy tire. ”

“Deal. ” He looked on, grinning, as Mab began yanking out tools.

“How do you know how to change a blinking tire? ” Osla wondered. “I haven’t the foggiest. ”

“A brother who works in a garage. ” Mab rolled up her skirt at the waist to keep it out of the mud. Her flat stare promised the stranger slow, painful death if he ogled her legs. “Have you got a torch? Shine it over so I can see what I’m doing. ”

He deposited Mab’s ruined shoes on the bonnet and switched on his torch, still grinning. “You two are BP workers? ”

Osla smiled politely, not answering that question on an open road. “Are you, Mr. . . . ? ”

“Gray. And no. I’m in one of the London offices. ” Intelligence, Osla thought, approving of his vagueness. Or Foreign Office. “I was running some information to Commander Denniston personally, from my own boss. He was late getting me a reply, hence the midnight drive. ”

Osla offered a hand; he shook it over the beam of the torch. “Osla Kendall. That’s Mab Churt, cursing at your tire. ”

“I’ll need help winching up the car. ” Mab’s irate voice floated up. “Not you, Os—no sense both of us ruining our stockings. ” Osla watched as Mr. Gray lent a hand. He stayed to lug the spare through the dark and pass a few more tools, until Mab snapped, “You’re in my way, now; just hold the torch. ”

“Pity you don’t work at BP instead of London, Mr. Gray, ” Osla said as he straightened. Hard to tell in the dark, but he looked thirty-six or thirty-seven, his face broad and calm and creased with smile lines. “We need more fellows in our literary society. ”

“Literary society? ” He had a country voice, soft midland vowels. He spoke to Osla, but he was watching Mab do something incredibly capable to the spare tire. “I thought you BP girls were all maths-and-crosswords types. ”

Something niggled at the back of Osla’s mind. Something about crosswords. . .

“There. ” Mab straightened, pushing her hair off her muddy cheek. “That should get you to London, Mr. Gray, then you can get the other patched. ” Her eyebrows lifted. “I’ll expect my shoes back good as new. ”

“You have my word, Miss Churt. ” He shouldered his blown tire so he could sling it into the boot. “I don’t want to be found dead in a gutter. ”

Mab nodded grudgingly, turning to look at Osla. “Coming, Os? ”

“You go, ” Osla said as Mr. Gray nodded farewell in the dark and slipped back into his car. The bit about crosswords had dropped in her head with a click. “I’ve had an absolutely topping idea. ”

She hadn’t been back inside the mansion since her first day; even at midnight, it hummed like a beehive with exhausted men in their shirtsleeves. Osla couldn’t get in to see Commander Denniston, but red-haired Giles was in the conservatory flirting with a typist, and Osla nipped her hand through his arm. “Giles, d’you know if Denniston’s still recruiting? ”

“Crikey, yes. The rate traffic’s mounting, they can’t vet people fast enough. ”

“I remember hearing something about crosswords. . . ”

“There’s a theory that crossword types, maths types, and chess-playing types are good at our sort of work. Personally I think it’s bollocks. I certainly can’t tell a rook from a bishop—”

Osla cut him off. “My landlady’s daughter is an absolute whiz at crosswords. ”

“That mousy little thing you brought to the Shoulder of Mutton? Are you mad, you dim-witted deb? ”

“Her name is Beth Finch. And don’t call me that. ” Osla remembered how fast Beth had finished the newspaper crossword at the pub. Osla Kendall, not only are you not a dim-witted deb, you are a genius. Because maybe what Beth needed was a peroxide rinse, a new dress in the latest go, and a date with an airman or two, but she wasn’t going to get any of those things if she never got out of the house. Even sitting behind a typewriter or binding signals on night shift had to be better than toiling for the Dread Mrs. Finch until the Nazis came goose-stepping into Bletchley. “Take a puck, Giles, and put in a word with Denniston. Beth’s going to fit right in at Bletchley Park. ”

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