Chapter 22

Inside the Clock

One of the orderlies had red hair like Giles. Beth watched him go about his evening rounds, restocking closets, collecting dirty linen, laughing with a friend. Beth remembered Giles’s voice: Keep your secrets. . .

Were you the one with secrets? she wondered for the thousandth time. Giles the ever friendly, the eternal gossip. Giles, who had eventually been transferred from Hut 6 to Knox’s section. Giles, drollest of the Mad Hatters.

She didn’t want it to be him. But she didn’t want it to be any of her friends.

The red-haired orderly left the common room, and Beth slipped after him. “What do you want, Liddell? ” he said, low voiced. “Cigarettes? Scent? It’ll cost you. ”

Something else Beth had learned in her years here: which of the orderlies and nurses would trade covertly with the patients. Hoarded medicines could buy you drink, cosmetics. . . or knowledge.

“I need information. ” Beth swallowed hard, damp palms rubbing down her smock. “What is a lobotomy? ”

His brows rose. “Why? ”

I’m scheduled for one, and I don’t know what it is. The unease had lingered all evening, since she’d heard that whispered fragment from the matrons. None of the women in the ward had any facts, only speculation. “Tell me. ”

“That’s big information. ” He leaned in; Beth smelled sweat and Lysol. “What have you got for me? ”

She swallowed again, bile this time, as she tugged him toward the nearest linen closet. “Come in here and I’ll show you. ”

That was something else she’d learned. Which of the orderlies would grope under your smock if no one was looking; how to avoid them and their grabbing hands; how to bite and kick if they maneuvered you alone. . . and which of the orderlies wouldn’t force you, but wouldn’t say no if you offered. Sometimes, if it got you something you needed, you offered. It wasn’t the first time Beth had gone to her knees in a linen closet, but her stomach roiled with just as much helpless, viscous rage as it had the first time. “What is a lobotomy? ” she asked before she got started, voice rasping like a rusty knife.

“A head surgery, ” the orderly said, closing his eyes and slipping his hand into her hair. “Just a little tap to the skull, I’ve heard. It’s done all the time in America. . . yes, keep going. . . ”

Beth stopped, withdrawing. “What is this surgery for? ”

“Just finish me off—”

“No. Not until you tell me what this surgery does. ”

“What does anything do here? It’ll make you better, fix you. I wouldn’t worry, Liddell, ” he added, sounding sincere. “It’s not too invasive, they say. Nowhere near as bad as them electric treatments you hear about. ”

Beth pressed, asking more questions, but he clearly didn’t know anything more. She closed her eyes and finished things, thinking of her Go-playing companion drawing a finger like a scalpel over her skull.

“Good girl. ” He fastened up his trousers, ruffling her hair. “Get back to your cell, now. ”

Beth sat back on her heels as he slipped out of the closet, red hair a winking gleam in the brief light flash from the door. She tried not to gag, smelling bleach from the folded sheets all around, lungs full of sudden fear. A surgery and a traitor to contend with, and she had no idea what or who they were, or if she would have any help in dealing with either.

Osla, Mab, where are you?

York

Bettys tea shop, Osla had said over the telephone. Tomorrow, two o’clock. We’ll talk.

Bugger that, Mab had told her, ringing off with a bang, and gone to check on the children.

Eddie was a warm, soft weight against Mab’s breast as she lifted him from his bed. He was fretful, fussing from his nap, but he settled quickly against her. She inhaled the smell of talcum and little boy, wondering if he was heavier than he’d been just last night—he was growing so fast, eighteen months and already bigger than most two-year-olds. He’d be a six-footer for sure. Mab tiptoed out of the nursery, passing a hand over Lucy’s dark head. Luce was a restless sleeper, kicking her sheets off and muttering, but she stilled at Mab’s hand on her hair.

Mab fed Eddie downstairs, avoiding the peas he tried to spit out onto her cream linen blouse, but afterward as she set him down to play with the toy train his father had made for him, she couldn’t settle. She stood turning an unlit cigarette between her fingers—she was trying to quit—stomach churning as Beth’s cipher message echoed through her mind.

There couldn’t have been a traitor at Bletchley Park. Candidates were vetted before they were even invited to interview; when she transferred from the bombe machines to the mansion, Mab had heard about the boxes and boxes of MI-5 files in Hut 9. And if there was a traitor, who were they selling to? BP had remained safe, secret, and successful throughout the war, which argued against the Germans’ ever having found out.

No. The cipher message’s accusation was either a madwoman’s paranoid fantasies or the lies of a desperate woman willing to say anything to get free. Either way, what happens to me if I help her? Mab thought. Beth was locked up on the government’s orders; communicating with her could be a violation of Mab’s oath. “Receiving and encouraging insecure communications of privileged information” or however they might phrase it—but it could mean prison.

Mab looked around her quiet sitting room. This home, this family, this life, was everything young Mabel Churt from Shoreditch had ever dreamed of. Her house with its three stories of mellowed Yorkshire stone and its surrounding garden of bramble roses. Her marble-tiled bathroom crowded with perfume vials and cosmetics, rather than a shared toilet down the hall. Her own bank account, with a balance she no longer compulsively checked to make absolutely certain there was enough for the electric bill, for Eddie’s new shoes, for Lucy’s future education. Her husband.

Risk all of this, risk her family, risk a cell—for Beth, who had betrayed her during the war?

What did she risk to ask for your help? the thought whispered. What is she risking now?

Six Years Ago

May 1941

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