Chapter 21

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, MAY 1941

Sound of singing heard from Knox’s section recently—intoxicated singing, if BB is any judge. . .

Not a one of you fillies can carry a tune in a bucket, ” Dilly remarked. “Thank God you can break codes. ” He conducted them with his pipe as they roared on with the next verse of his poem, specially written for the occasion:

When Cunningham won at Matapan

By the grace of God and MARGARET—

It was thanks to that girl, the admiral said,

That our aeroplanes straddled their target!

Peggy Rock shook her head smiling as Beth and the others shouted her name. Every woman in the Cottage had a verse of her own.

When Cunningham won at Matapan

By the grace of God and BETH—

She’s the girl who found the planes

Our ships did then evadeth!

“I didn’t really find the planes, ” Beth objected, “I found the coordinates—”

“Try making coordinates rhyme with anything! ” Peggy replied.

“Estimates, ” Beth said instantly. “Bifurcates. Expectorates—”

Peggy threw a wine cork at her. It was the first real opportunity they’d all had to celebrate their triumph: during those heady days after the victory, there had been new work to do. But today, Dilly had sent Beth and Peggy down to the Eight Bells pub to bring back as much wine as they could carry: Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham himself, hero of Matapan, was coming to Bletchley Park to personally thank Dilly and his team.

When they finished singing, they raised their glasses to their boss. “To Dilly Knox, ” said Peggy. “The reason we’re all here. ”

Dilly took his glasses off, blinking rather hard. “Well, now, ” he said. “Well, now—”

They crowded around him in a rush. Beth pushed down her dislike of being touched so she could hug everyone within reach. Her throat was so choked with feeling she could hardly breathe.

“Oh, lord, ” someone called in sudden panic, “is that the admiral? I swear I heard a staff car—”

They were all lined up outside the Cottage, very serious and well combed (and slightly squiffy on bad Chablis), by the time Admiral Cunningham in his gold-braided uniform came stalking along with a smiling Commander Denniston. Beth could hardly look the great man in the face as he shook hands down the line. “We have had a great victory in the Mediterranean, ” he said at the end, holding the glass someone had managed to find for the nasty wine. “And it is entirely due to Dilly Knox and his girls. ”

A very solemn moment, broken when the admiral turned and Beth saw the back of his immaculate dark uniform was blotched with white. “The Cottage was just whitewashed, ” giggled two of the younger women. “We maneuvered him to brush against the wall. ”

“That’s no way to treat an admiral! ” But Beth found laughter rising in her like golden bubbles, the triumph and the unaccustomed drink going to her head, and when the hero of the Mediterranean realized what had happened and shook his head in rueful amusement, Dilly’s entire team burst into howls of laughter.

Beth was still smiling as she let herself in the door at home. “Not much to smile about from where I’m standing, ” her mother sighed. “It’ll be tripe and liver hot pot for supper if I can’t find an onion at the shop. And an entire basket of socks to darn! ”

“I’ll do it. ” Beth kissed her mother’s cheek. I met an admiral today, Mother. He said his victory was entirely due to me and the people I work with. She wanted to say it, so badly. She wanted her mother to be proud.

All she could do was offer to darn socks.

“Take That Dog outside, ” Mrs. Finch warned, collecting her shopping basket. “I swear it’s waiting for me to turn my back so it can make a mess. . . ”

Beth still couldn’t believe she’d won in the matter of the dog. If it hadn’t been for that strange, exhilarated exhaustion that gripped her after breaking the Italian battle plan. . . her mother hadn’t even quoted Deuteronomy at her the following day. Even Deuteronomy apparently had nothing to say about daughters who stayed out for three nights on shift work. The dog was seemingly just one more straw on the heap.

“You know, a dog keeps burglars away, ” Mab had told Mrs. Finch with a dark look implying hordes of would-be intruders, and Osla had launched a long, drawling anecdote about how “Princess Margaret has a topping little dog like that, did you see in the Tatler. . . ” So the dog stayed, and Beth took him outside with the basket of socks, so she could do her darning on the sunny front stoop.

“Funny-looking dog, ” the next-door neighbor said as the schnauzer trundled crossly around Mrs. Finch’s immaculate victory garden. “What’s his name? ”

“Boots. ” The name had been an accident—Mab had asked, “What’ll you call him? ” and Beth, still exhausted from codebreaking and expecting the question Where did you find him?, had mumbled Boots, since she’d picked him up outside the chemist’s.

Osla and Mab came swinging through the front gate in their blush-pink and smoke-blue coats, passing Mrs. Finch as she departed for the grocer. “Isn’t this sun bliss? ” Mab sat down on the front step beside Beth. “Did you hear there’s a dance in Bedford? An American band, they’ve got all the latest Glenn Miller tunes. ”

“Who? ” Beth asked, rummaging for yarn.

“Told you she wouldn’t know who that was. ” Osla grinned, sitting on Beth’s other side. “Brains like hers are too busy keeping up with brilliant things to get chuffed about the latest tunes! ”

“It doesn’t take brilliance, the sort of thing I do. Just sideways thinking. Here—” Beth hesitated, looking around. No one in earshot. Pushing the darning basket aside, she pulled out a scrap of paper and sketched quickly. “This is a Vigenè re cipher. Dilly has me doing them for practice in my spare time—it’s a historic codebreaking exercise, miles different from what we do now, so it’s nothing you aren’t allowed to know. I’ll have you solving one in twenty minutes. ” Still buoyed up by the Cottage celebration, the wine, and the admiral’s handshake, Beth had an unaccustomed urge to share what she could do. “Here’s how to crack it using a key. Though it can be done without. . . ” She demonstrated. Mab and Osla both had a go, half laughing and half fascinated. It took longer than twenty minutes, but eventually they both cracked it. “See? Not so hard. ”

“I’d like to show this to all those fellows making jabs about ‘the Debutantes’ Den. ’” Osla looked at her Vigenè re cipher. “Hitler really would pitch an absolute screamer if he knew a lot of girls scratching pencils in Bletchley are turning his war inside out. ”

“‘These have knelled your fall and ruin, but your ears were far away, ’” Beth quoted one of Dilly’s irreverent verses. “‘English lassies rustling papers through the sodden Bletchley day. . . ’”

“Well, these lassies are going to the dance in Bedford, ” Mab declared. “We deserve some fun—and so do you, Beth. ”

“You know she won’t go. ” Osla smiled. “That shot is not on the board, darling! ”

To Beth’s surprise, she heard herself speak. “I’ll go. ”

WITHIN THE HOUR, she was regretting the decision.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to get my hands on these, ” Osla said, going at Beth’s eyebrows with tweezers.

“Ow—”

“Stop kicking up a shindy, Beth, you have to suffer to be beautiful. . . ”

Mab, having shooed Boots off the bed and flung every dress Beth owned across it, held up a navy blue crepe. “This one. It’s the only thing you own that isn’t brown, beige, or puce. All colors you should never wear, Beth, because they make you look like a couch. What I wouldn’t give to put you in something bright. . . ”

“We’ll loan her my purple satin, ” Osla suggested, plucking ruthlessly.

“Too small—”

“Your raspberry crepe? ”

“Too big. ” Mab shook out the navy blue professionally. “I’ll lend my red scarf, that’ll add punch—”

Beth yelped as another hair was yanked out. All her life she’d hated being looked at, squirmed from being touched, and now here she was being scrutinized and poked like a heifer in a stall. Even so, there was an odd fascination to the whole process. She glanced over Osla’s shoulder at her own reflection in the mirror dubiously. Could even Osla and Mab make a difference in what she saw there?

“Topping complexion, but you need color, ” Osla decreed. “Max Factor pancake base, a swipe of my Elizabeth Arden Victory Red—”

“Mother says women who wear lipstick are tarts. ”

“And she’s so right about that! You’re going to make a spiffing tart—”

“Right, about this hair. ” Mab had already unwoven Beth’s long plait; she ran her fingers through the thin dishwater-blond waves. “If we lop off the bottom six inches—don’t give me that face, I cut my sister’s hair all the time—”

“My mother will kill me! ”

“Beth, ” Osla said severely, “if you say the words my mother again I will knock you into next week. Poker up here! Grow a spine! Put on lipstick! ”

“I’ve changed my mind. ” Beth tried to rise. “I don’t want to go. ” But it was far, far too late. Her friends had identical slightly mad gleams in their eyes and the bit in their teeth. Her moment of rebellion collapsed back into unwilling fascination as she was stripped and whirled, plucked and pinned; six inches of her hair disappeared in a few snips, and then Osla wrestled Beth’s limp locks into kirby grips as Mab basted a new hem on Beth’s navy blue dress. “Too short, ” Beth yelped.

“Nonsense, ” Mab scolded, stitching away. “You have legs, Beth! You’re a bit flat up front and you haven’t got much hip, but you have legs, and they are good legs, and tonight they are going to be seen. ”

“No! ”

“Yes, ” her friends said ruthlessly. By the time they were done, the navy blue dress was unrecognizable: hem hitting Beth’s knees, neckline framed by Mab’s red scarf, skirt flared out by Osla’s red silk petticoat (“it’ll swish and flash around those shapely legs when you walk! ”) Beth stared at herself cautiously. Not exactly duckling to swan—no amount of plucking and tailoring and silk flounces was going to give her Mab’s figure or Osla’s sparkle—but she didn’t look as ghastly as she’d feared.

“We’ll give you Veronica Lake hair, ” Mab decreed, taking out the kirby grips. “You always duck your chin when you meet strangers—with a wave of hair over one eye to hide behind, you’ll look mysterious rather than shy. ” She combed and parted and fluffed. “What do you think? ”

My mother will hate it, Beth thought. But, well, maybe it wasn’t so bad. . .

The other two were shimmying into their own dresses now, Mab’s a violent blue-purple that nipped around her long figure like a lightning bolt. “It’s an old curtain liner I found in Mum’s rag bag last time I was in London. It’ll last about three washings. ”

“Darling, only you and Scarlett O’Hara could dress in a curtain and still look scrummy. ” Osla hooked her stockings to her suspender belt. “I can’t be bothered what I wear, just hand me that rose print. Now, Beth—when Mab and I distract your mother, you run out the back while we tell her you’re tucked up in bed with a headache. ”

I am going to hell, Beth thought as they all spun through a spritz of Osla’s Soir de Paris. But that didn’t stop her from kissing Boots goodbye and grabbing her coat.

“Right-ho, on our way, ” Giles said as they all piled into his car in the pitch-black street. “I say, is that our Beth? Save me a dance, gorgeous! ”

“I don’t know how to dance, ” Beth said. “Even if I did, I’d probably hate it. ” And the dance was every bit as noisy and crowded as she’d feared, a big room packed to the ceiling with servicemen and local girls. Beth could barely see the stage where the band was playing “Tuxedo Junction. ” Giles and Mab whizzed off to the floor, and when Beth saw how Osla’s feet tapped in their little diamanté -studded pumps, she urged her, “Go dance. ” The thought of sitting alone was alarming, but not as cringe-making as forcing her friends to nanny her all night.

As soon as Osla was whisked away, Beth found herself a chair on the side. A towheaded boy leaned over, breathing gin fumes. “Fancy a spin, Veronica Lake? ”

“No, thank you. ” Beth couldn’t say she enjoyed being in the middle of a crowd, but she found she could sit with the froth of silk petticoat rustling deliciously around her knees and let her eyes follow the dancers as the music swirled. The skirts of the women opening like flowers, the men with buttons and bars on their uniforms flashing. . . she could almost see patterns in it, like the rose-petal spirals, or the patterns of brick in a wall. . .

“Hullo there. ” Harry flopped into the chair beside hers, big and cheerful, black hair disheveled. He didn’t look surprised at her change of appearance or seem to notice it at all. Beth smiled, realizing she rather liked that. Giles’s swoony double take had felt a bit insulting—did she ordinarily look such a fright? Obviously I do. But if so, Harry hadn’t noticed that either, and she was glad. “Didn’t think I’d see you here, ” he continued, linking an elbow over the back of his chair.

“Why not? Am I such a wet blanket? ”

“No, but you hate crowds. ”

“Osla and Mab dragged me out. ” Beth peered up at Harry through her new wave of hair and wished she could ask how the Italian naval Enigma compared to the German naval Enigma his hut worked on. But you couldn’t talk codebreaking in a crowd full of outsiders, so Beth rummaged for small talk. “Did your wife come along tonight? ”

“Sheila’s at home with Christopher. Last night she was off at a concert with a friend, so tonight she shoved me out the door and told me to enjoy myself. ”

He spoke with a complete lack of self-pity, but Beth’s tongue still froze with unexpressed sympathy. Having a child so frail he always needed one of you hovering. . . “Um. Do you think America will join the war? ” Beth ventured, for something less personal.

“They’d better. ” His expression darkened. “The wolf packs are making mincemeat of us. ”

Another conversational dead end. Beth could have talked clicks and lobsters all day, but ordinary small talk felt like swimming upstream. I suppose it’s better than the days when all conversation felt like swimming upstream.

The band swung into “In the Mood, ” and a bass riff growled out across the floor. “They’re good, ” Beth said for lack of anything else to say.

“It’s not bad, but I like music a bit more orderly. Patterns, you know. ” Harry grinned as she gave him a startled look. “You too? I had a feeling. I don’t know if it’s the way our brains were already wired or if it’s pure habit after what we do all day. Give me Bach, anytime. There are patterns for days in The Well-Tempered Clavier. ”

“I’ve never heard it. ”

“In Cambridge I had a job at a music shop—between customers I listened with headphones on. Made me very cross if someone came browsing when I was in the middle of a symphony. ”

“I’ve never been to Cambridge. ” I’ve never been anywhere.

“In the Mood” ended, and the dancers broke up. Some flooded to the side, some grabbed new partners as “Moonlight Serenade” rippled over the floor. Harry cocked his head. “Care to take a whirl? ”

“I don’t really want to dance, ” Beth confessed. “I want to be back at work. ”

“Me too. People like you and me, we’re more hooked than opium fiends. ” They traded rueful, frustrated smiles. She could tell they were both itching to talk about things they shouldn’t. “Come on, ” Harry said in a sudden burst.

Tugging Beth out to the dance floor, Harry snugged her in briskly with an arm about her waist, took her hand in his big one, and began to revolve to the slow, dreamy tune. “No one will hear if we talk like this. ” He lowered his head to hers, voice mischievous and friendly in her ear. “I’ve got some new tricks for working cribs, nothing too specific to naval section. Want to hear? ”

Beth hesitated, but every other couple around them swayed with eyes closed, and he was murmuring right into her ear—even the most dedicated eavesdropper wasn’t going to hear a thing over the music. “Yes, please, ” she whispered back with a smile of her own, relaxing into the arm around her waist.

“So, I’ve been working a four-wheel machine. . . ”

Beth listened, the music a bright brassy pattern over the pattern Harry’s words were weaving. She could almost see it if she closed her eyes. “Dilly has me working Vigenè re squares. ”

“I’ve done those. Can you break them without a key? ”

“Easy as pie. ”

“Christ, you’re good. What about—”

“Look at you two, whispering away. ” Giles tapped Harry on the arm. “May I cut in? ”

“No, thank you, ” Beth said firmly. She leaned back into Harry’s shoulder, wanting to dissect Vigenè re squares and four-wheel Enigmas, barely hearing Giles retreat with a laughing, “All right, keep your secrets. . . ”

Eleven Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 9, 1947

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