Chapter 17

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, MARCH 1941

BB doesn’t dare say a word about recent rumblings of upcoming action in the Mediterranean, therefore the biggest news of the week is the roach found in the night-shift pudding served at the dining hall. . .

Mother, I’m going to be late—”

“If you could wring out another cloth for my forehead. . . It feels like a spike is going through my temples. ” Mrs. Finch’s eyes were shut tight in the darkened bedroom.

Beth flew for a cloth. “I really do have to go now—”

“You do your best, Bethan. ” Feebly. “I understand you don’t have time for your mother—it’s just so hard being left all alone. . . ”

Beth was nearly crying in frustration by the time she managed to get free. Her father shook his head as she struggled into her cardigan. “Who is going to make your mother a nice cuppa, with you off at work? ”

You could put a teakettle on yourself, Dad, Beth couldn’t help thinking, even as she slipped out. But by the time she burst into the Cottage with a “Sorry I’m late, sorry—” the frustration and anger were gone, her brain wiped clean as a slate. It happened so fast now: in the time it took to run out her own front door and through the Cottage door, Beth’s mind shut an entirely different door on everything at home and simply locked it away for later.

“We’re shorthanded till midnight, ” Peggy said from the next desk. “Jean’s home with ’flu, Dilly’s having another row with Denniston, so have at it. ”

Beth pulled out her crib chart and her pocket Italian dictionary, fiddling with the end of her plait. Something going on in the Mediterranean, maybe something big. If only the Italian naval stuff weren’t so quirky—and there was so little of it; hardly enough to work with. . . Lining up her rods, Beth got a set of easy breaks, then groaned when the next message came out of the basket. A short one—the short ones were always nasty. Ten in the evening before it clicked into place. Normally the messages meant nothing, just Italian she couldn’t read, but she could make this one out. “Peggy, ” Beth whispered, suddenly cold.

Peggy came over. She froze when she read the words in Beth’s pencil scrawl, translating the Italian.

“‘Today 25 March 1941 is the day minus three. ’” The words stung Beth’s lips. She looked up at Peggy. “What’s happening in three days? ”

“WE’RE SWAMPED WITH urgent traffic. ” Beth forced herself to look the head of Hut 8 in the eye. “We need anyone you can spare. ” Peggy was on the Cottage telephone ringing Dilly, calling in Jean ’flu or no ’flu, summoning the whole team, and she’d sent Beth across to Hut 8 to beg reinforcements. They borrow our people; now it’s time to return the favor. Normally Beth would have stood hunched in an agony of shyness getting the words out, but the code still had her in its spiral grip, the one that took her outside her own awkward self. “Please? ”

“Oh, for—” The hut head strangled some impolite words. “You can have Harry Zarb. I can’t spare more. ”

Beth nodded, arms wrapped around herself in the chilly spring night, waiting until Harry came shouldering out in his shirtsleeves. “Hallo, ” he said cheerfully. “Need a hand with the dago traffic? I can say dago, ” he said, noticing Beth’s wince. “I get called a dago often enough, if not a wog. It’s your inevitable fate if you’re any darker than paste in Merry Olde England. Here—” He’d been about to shrug into his disreputable jacket but dropped it over Beth’s shoulders instead. She started to demur, but he brushed that aside. “What’s the rush in Dilly’s section? ”

Beth filled him in as they crossed the dark grounds. She was used to seeing Harry among the Mad Hatters, where he was wry and relaxed, leaning on his elbows in damp grass by the lake or scattering toast crumbs on his book, but he was a different man on the BP shift clock, alert and focused, brows mobile as he listened. He let out a low whistle at Today is the day minus three, stride lengthening until Beth had to trot to keep up. As Harry ducked into the Cottage, Peggy was on the telephone snapping, “—don’t care if your nose is running like the Thames, get back here. . . ”

“So this is the famous harem? ” Harry glanced around, looking enormous and disheveled in the cramped clutter of desks. “Hugh Alexander owes me tuppence; he made a bet you’d have mirrors and powder rooms. Where can I work? It sounds like it’ll be a full house. ”

“Share my desk. ” Thank goodness Hut 8 had given her someone familiar, Beth thought, not a stranger who would take over her space and freeze her solid with nerves.

He pulled up a stool on the other side of Beth’s desk, black hair flopping, reaching for pencils that looked like twigs in his huge hands. “Cribs? ”

Beth pushed a crib chart over. “Italian for English, cruiser, submarine. Here are the rods—”

“Inglese, incrociatore, sommergibili, ” he read off the slip. “Christ, listen to us butcher the poor Italian. . . ”

They reached simultaneously for the stack of messages and fell headlong into the spiral.

“TODAY IS THE day minus three. ” Every time someone got up from their desk, they chanted it aloud. And then it became “Today is the day minus two” because none of Dilly’s team left the Cottage, not for so much as a cup of Ovaltine.

“I brought you some clothes. ” Osla passed Beth a package at the door, peering over at Peggy, who was coming downstairs from the attic yawning. “Are you all sleeping here? ”

We take turns on the attic cot, when we sleep at all. Beth had done ten hours straight in her chair, fifteen hours, eighteen—she could barely even see Osla, pretty and worried looking. Beth muttered her thanks, going to the loo to tug on a new blouse and underclothes, then staggered right back to her desk, where Harry passed her a cup of chicory coffee and her rods.

Something big. They all knew it, and nine of the Cottage’s eighteen women had been seconded to it, working like madwomen. Dilly had disappeared so far down into his rods he was barely even present—Beth saw him try to stuff half a cheese sandwich into his pipe instead of his tobacco as he muttered his way through a new message. She merely removed the pipe from his hand, pulled the mangled sandwich out, placed the tobacco in his palm instead, and returned to her desk. Jean was running a fever by now, honking through pile after pile of handkerchiefs as she rodded and rodded and rodded. Sometimes someone would doze off at her desk, and then someone else would chuck a blanket over her shoulders and let her doze ten minutes, before giving a nudge and a reminder of “Today’s the day minus one. ”

“Who’s our CIC in the Mediterranean? ” one of the girls asked.

“Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, ” Peggy said. “Dilly said he’s been notified something will be coming down. ”

If we can find out what. Beth reached for her next stack, only to touch the bottom of the wire basket. Dilly’s Fillies paced like racehorses in their stalls then, waiting for the sound of wheels in the stable yard, which meant the dispatch riders had arrived with saddlebags full of new Morse code messages to decrypt.

“Beth? ” Harry touched her arm, and she blinked—she’d got so used to his taking up the other side of her desk, she barely noticed he was there. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go—my son’s peaky and I’ve got to help my wife. Just a few hours—”

Beth nodded, chewing a thumbnail, her mind still tumbling among the blocks of Enigma. Was there ever anything more aptly named. . .

“You’re good at this. ” Harry shrugged into his jacket. “Very good. I’m working at a gallop, keeping up with you. ”

She blinked again. Ever since realizing she wasn’t so terrible she was going to be sacked, she hadn’t stopped to wonder if she was good. She’d never been good at anything in her life. “I like it, ” she heard herself saying, voice hoarse from going hours without saying a word. “I—I understand it. ”

“Me too. ” Harry had circles under his eyes and a distant, absorbed expression. Beth guessed he wasn’t seeing her much more clearly than she was seeing him. “I could do this all day and be fresh at the end. It’s just the old mortal frame that gets in the way. Pity we aren’t machines like the ones they say are in Hut 11. ”

Beth nodded. The physical needs that got in the way of work had annoyed her these last two days—the need to bolt a cup of tea, the need to stretch her aching back. Irritably, she realized she was starving. “I could do this all day, too, ” she found herself confessing. “All day and all night. ”

“And it’s a good thing we can. It’s the most important commodity of all, isn’t it? ”

“What, codes? ”

“What the codes protect: information. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re fighting a war with swords, with bombers, or with sticks and stones—weapons are no good unless you know when and where to aim them. ”

Hence, us. Beth smiled.

Harry glanced at his watch, looking torn. “I’ll be back in a few hours, but my hut head wants me back at my usual work, not here. I hate not seeing this through. . . ”

Beth pulled herself out of the mental teleprint with an effort. “We’ll send word if we need to borrow you again. For now, go home. ”

“Just long enough to take Christopher’s temperature, give him a bath, and explain again why he can’t have a puppy. ” Harry grimaced. “Poor sprat, I hate disappointing him. What father doesn’t want to give his son a puppy? But with me on night shifts and his mum at the WVS canteen, it’s just not on. ”

“I always wished for—”

The sound of motors came rumbling from the stable yard car park then, and Beth broke off. She and the other girls were on their feet in a flash, logjamming in the doorway, exhaustion-lidded eyes suddenly sprung wide. They nearly clawed at the saddlebags to get at the new messages, even as the dispatch riders laughed, “It’s got to be registered, ladies. . . ” By the time they trooped back to their desks, Harry had gone and the wire baskets were filling up again.

A very long message came among the new arrivals, so long they all stood staring as it unrolled over Dilly’s desk. “Battle orders, ” he said quietly. “Stake my pipe on it. ”

They looked at each other, nine worn-out women with ink-stained fingers and no nails left to gnaw. Everyone took a section back to her desk, and then, Beth thought, they all went a little bit mad. She didn’t remember the following day and night, none of it. Only the rods sliding back and forth and her mind clicking away, looking up and realizing the sun had moved halfway down the sky or gone down altogether, then back to the rods and the clicks. It was nearly eleven at night before Dilly called a halt. “Show me what you’ve got, ladies. We’re out of time. ”

Beth looked at Peggy, haunted. Peggy looked back, equally stricken. Out of time?

In dreadful silence, they collected around Dilly’s desk again, putting their bits of message together. A frizzy-haired girl named Phyllida was sobbing. “There was a whole block I couldn’t get into, not a single click—” Peggy put an arm round her.

Dilly’s hand moved at speed as he translated the decrypted lines from Italian to English—Beth could see the linguist and professor he’d once been, in the days before when he’d translated ancient Greek texts rather than military secrets. At long last, he looked up. “Not that you’re usually told details, ” he said matter-of-factly, “but given the work you gels put in. . . the Italian fleet is planning a major hit on the British troop convoys in the Mediterranean. ”

The stillness was absolute. Beth looked at her pencil-smudged fingers. They were trembling.

“Cruisers, submarines, planned locations, times of attack. . . ” Dilly flung down his pen, shaking his head. “It’s nearly the whole battle plan. You’ve done it, ladies. You’ve done it. ”

Peggy pressed a hand over her eyes. Phyllida kept crying, but in a kind of exhausted relief. Beth blinked, her mouth dry, not certain at all how to react. You’ve done it. She couldn’t take that in.

Our Beth’s not too bright. . . Pity that Finch girl is so slow. . .

“I’ll take this over. ” Dilly staggered as he rose, and they all reached out to steady him. He looked exhausted, Beth realized, unshaven and unsteady after so many hours at work. More than exhausted—ill.

“I’ll take it, ” Beth said.

“This needs to be transmitted on the Admiralty teleprinter straightaway, ” Dilly called. “Dear God, let Cunningham not muck it up. . . ”

Beth went out into the dark, not realizing until she felt water on her face that it was pouring rain. She didn’t feel the cold or the raindrops; her feet flew as she ran under the clock tower along the path, battle plans in hand. She didn’t know where the Admiralty teleprinter was, so she sprinted to the mansion and with both hands heaved the double doors open. The night shift looked up as Beth Finch blew into the hall on a black gust of rain, hair plastered to her face, grim as death, holding the Cottage’s precious work. Her work.

“Get the watchkeeper, ” said Beth, giving the first direct order of her life. “Get the watchkeeper now. ”

SHE DIDN’T GO back to the Cottage for her coat and handbag. She had her BP pass in her pocket, and she stumbled straight from the mansion to the Park gate and out, down the pitch-dark road through the rain. Exhaustion crashed through her in waves, battering ocean swells like those long Mediterranean rollers pushing all those Italian subs and cruisers through the night as they aimed for those precious British ships. . . but it was someone else’s job to think about them. Admiral Whoever. She couldn’t remember his name. She couldn’t remember anything that didn’t come in five-letter blocks.

The sound of a whimper came quietly through the dark. Beth barely heard it, but her feet paused. She felt her way forward in the rain, toward the chemist’s shop—long shut up of course; it had to be near midnight. The whimper sounded again from the shop steps. She crouched down, peering through her soaked hair, and realized the small huddled bundle was a dog.

Beth stared at it, exhausted. It glared back, shivering, showing its teeth feebly.

It tried to bite when she lurched forward and picked it up. Beth ignored that, feeling the animal’s shuddering bony ribs against her arm. The rain was coming down harder, and she turned to trudge the last dark quarter mile to her house.

A light burned in the Finch kitchen. Beth’s mother was sitting at the table in her dressing gown, hands folded round a cup of Ovaltine, Bible at her side. When Beth squelched through the kitchen door, Mrs. Finch burst into tears. “There you are—three days with no word! I—” She brought herself up short, seeing the bundle in Beth’s arms. “What’s that? ”

Beth, still numb, tugged a pristine stack of towels from the drawer and began rubbing the dog down. A schnauzer, she saw as the gray fur began to stand out in drying tufts.

“My good towels—that thing is sure to have fleas—” Mrs. Finch floundered. “Get it out of here! ”

Beth opened the icebox. Inside was a plate with a slice of Woolton pie, probably her supper. She put it on the floor and, in a remote stupor, watched the half-starved schnauzer attack it. He had a little square head and a wiry beard like a tiny kaiser, and he kept glaring around him even as he wolfed down the pie.

“That animal is not eating off the second-best china! ” Mrs. Finch looked more shocked than Beth had ever seen her in her life. She reached for her Bible as if it were a lifeline. “This lack of respect, Bethan—‘The eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother. . . ’”

Proverbs, Beth thought. Mrs. Finch held the book out, but for the first time in her life Beth didn’t take it. She was too tired to hold the Bible in front of her until her arms trembled and her mother’s rage was mollified. She just could not do it. With one indifferent hand she pushed the book away and stood watching the dog clean the plate. Mrs. Finch’s mouth opened and closed, saying something, but Beth couldn’t listen. Her mother’s dutiful little helpmeet wasn’t here, wasn’t back yet from three days sunk in Enigma. Tomorrow, she’d apologize.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.

“—and that dog is not staying! ” her mother concluded in a stifled shriek. “You put it out right now! ”

“No, ” said Beth.

She picked up the not-noticeably-grateful schnauzer and lugged him up the stairs past Osla and Mab, who were eavesdropping wide-eyed on the landing, and into her bedroom. She made a nest of blankets for him, observing without much interest that he did, in fact, have fleas. Then Beth and her new dog slept like the dead.

Eleven Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 9, 1947

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