Chapter 33

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, FEBRUARY 1942

What recently wed BP amazon is dashing north as we speak, headed for a romantic weekend in the Lake District with her war-poet husband? Pack your Wordsworth, that’s all BB can say—and does anyone else think all those Lake District poets should have got jobs rather than gassing on about daffodils. . .

Mab Gray. It sounded like a Brontë heroine, a woman who strode fearlessly across hilltops. Someday, Mab thought, she would stride across hilltops; Francis said his house in Coventry wasn’t far from the countryside. Mab imagined walking along a sunny meadow, picnic basket swinging between them, Lucy running ahead, getting hooked up in golden brambles of gorse. What is gorse, anyway? wondered the London-bred Mab. It sounded picturesque, anyway.

The compartment was cold, jammed with soldiers who kept pestering her to get a drink with them. Outside, icy gray rain slashed down the train windows, and Mab wondered if the Lake District was always this wet. She’d proposed meeting in Coventry, but her new husband was politely firm. “I’d rather not take you to our house until we can live there for good, ” he’d said over the telephone last week, when they realized they’d have a whole thirty-six hours together at the end of the month. “What about Keswick? It’s a postage stamp of a place in the Lake District. ”

Mab rotated the gold band around her ring finger, still wishing it was Coventry she was traveling to. If she could walk through the house that was going to be their home someday, maybe she’d feel more. . . married.

It was so strange, this limbo they were living in. That madcap London wedding, and the following day a hasty goodbye at Euston station as Mab caught the train back to Bletchley with Osla and Beth, and Francis headed out on another journey for the Foreign Office. They’d agreed it would be best for her not to relocate to his single boardinghouse room in London—after all, he was at his office or traveling nearly round the clock, and Mab too had important work to do. “I’d rather have you safe in Bucks than in London anyway, ” Francis said. “The bombings have tailed off, but there’s no guarantee the Luftwaffe won’t come crashing in again. ”

Since the wedding night at Claridge’s, they hadn’t had a single night together—only the occasional meet-up for tea or an early supper in a London suburb or railway café. Mab had never anticipated life after marriage proceeding more or less exactly as it had before.

It’s hardly a unique situation, she reminded herself. Husbands and wives all over Britain were in the same pickle: the men off fighting, the women up to their necks in war work; weekends snatched whenever someone had leave. At least Francis wasn’t on the front lines as a younger man would have been; he spent his days in an office and Mab didn’t have to worry like Osla had when her prince was out to sea being targeted by U-boats. We just have to wait out the war, then married life can start. When they would live under the same roof, when Mab would butter her husband’s toast in the morning, make his house welcoming, and ensure she was a wife to be proud of.

How did you do that at long distance?

Write letters, Mab had told herself. Cheerful letters, not too long—men didn’t want to be inundated, just know that they were missed. And she did miss him, so she put the first letter together like a dress pattern, meticulous, affectionate, wifely, not expecting any kind of lengthy answer. Everyone knew men hated writing letters, and Francis barely had two words to say in person. So Mab was startled by the thick packets that started arriving from London.

Darling girl—a quick line on my tea break. The tea here is disgusting: viscid, gelatinous, mouse-colored dishwater through which a tea leaf has perhaps in the last generation or so briefly passed. You would arch your regal eyebrows at it and it would slink wetly out of the cup, never to return. I lack your courage to challenge this gelid mess in my saucer, and drink it down with little more than a mutinous whimper. I miss your regal eyebrows. . .

Or: My dear Faerie Queene—what a day. Can you keep me from dreaming of it? I’m sure you can. Queen Mab is the mistress of dreams if we can believe Shakespeare (and whom else in this world can we believe, if not him? ). Come galloping through my sleeping brain tonight in your squirrel-made chariot, and make me dream of love. Though Shakespeare does call his Mab a hag, which doesn’t seem gallant for a husbandly metaphor. Maybe you are Y Mab Darogan of Welsh legend rather than a faerie Mab—the Destined One who will drive the English from the island. I can certainly see you leading armies, sword lifted high, face streaked blue and fierce. . .

Mab didn’t know what to make of such letters. How could a man who talked like his vocabulary was as rationed as his meat be so verbose in print? Not just verbose, but funny, wry, moody, tender. . . yet she wasn’t sure she understood him any better. Nothing he wrote ever touched on himself, but an envelope still winged from London nearly every other day. What was she supposed to write back? That the new billet was very nice, that the new landlady was very nice, that the weather was very nice? She couldn’t say anything about her work and didn’t have her husband’s knack for spinning pages about daily trifles. Trying to carry on a conversation with Francis seemed destined to be one-sided—but whereas he was the silent one in person, by letter, she felt like the mute.

It will be different, she told herself, after the war. When they weren’t trying to conduct a marriage almost entirely by post.

He was waiting on the platform when Mab stepped down, hatless under an umbrella streaming rain off its edge. “Not the weather I hoped for, ” he said, kissing her gloved knuckles.

“No walks around the lake, no picnics by the water? Whatever shall we do? ” He smiled, eyes going over her with slow care. Mab laughed, touching her hair. “Do I look a fright? ”

“No. ” He picked up her overnight case. “I forget you a little, every time, and then the sight of you shocks me all over again. ”

“It’s—lovely to see you too, ” Mab said inadequately. “I, um. I got your letters. ”

“I blather. It’s a bad habit. ”

“No, I like them. . . mine are very dull. ”

The hotel was narrow, Edwardian, looking out over the rain-lashed expanse of Derwentwater. Their room would have been cheerful in sunlight but it looked gray and rippled, as though it were all underwater. “We can take tea downstairs if you’re hungry, ” Francis began as the door shut, but the words disappeared half-spoken as the overnight case clattered to the floor and they gripped at each other, pulling together like magnets.

On the night of their wedding in the borrowed suite in Claridge’s, Mab’s oh-so-new husband had been opening a half bottle of champagne when she came out in her negligee, and he’d gone so still he could have been a waxwork. Something flickered across his features, an expression too fast to catch, but something about it made his broad, calm, unremarkable face almost handsome. “Come here. . . , ” he’d whispered as the champagne crashed over unopened. Mab had fallen into him wholeheartedly, focused on being warm and welcoming under the rumpled sheets. Let me make you happy.

“I take it you realize—I’ve done that before? ” she ventured hesitantly afterward. She’d devoted many sleepless nights planning exactly how to broach the fact that she wasn’t any schoolgirl innocent. She felt guilty for not saying it before the wedding, but she’d been too afraid it would ruin everything. Maybe it still would—if he rounded on her now and said anything about spoiled goods, she was going to shrivel up and die. “I’m no tart, Francis. It was only one—”

“Oh, darling girl. Not important, ” he said drowsily, and Mab fell asleep nearly limp with relief. The last hurdle cleared. . . only later that same night, Mab had wakened to see Francis sitting at the window in his half-buttoned shirt, sash hauled open to the icy winter night, cigarette drifting smoke between his still fingers. His face as he gazed out over the dark London streets had looked so shuttered Mab sat up in bed, half asleep and half alarmed.

“Francis? ”

Slowly his eyes turned to her; he half smiled in that opaque, polite way. “Go back to sleep, lovely Mab. ”

Her drowsy ears listened for air-raid sirens, even as she slid back toward dreamland. “Nothing’s wrong? ”

“Only the world, ” she thought she heard him say.

Did you say that? Mab wondered now, even as her arms twined about his neck. Do I know you at all?

Well, this was surely a way to know him better. She began drawing him toward the bed, as she had in Claridge’s, but Francis stopped her this time, taking her hands and turning them over in his as if he’d never seen anything so lovely before. He lifted them upward, lowering his head to press his lips against each palm, and then he took her face in his hands and gave her one of those long looks that nearly scarred her bones. Mab couldn’t hold that gaze; she shied away from it, pressing her mouth to his so he’d have to close his eyes. He kissed her with his hands in her hair and at her shoulders, fingers sliding to feather her spine in unhurried strokes, not just using her mouth as a place to rest his while they pushed clothes out of the way. Not self-conscious at all that she was the one to bend her head to kiss him.

“You’re the perfect height, ” he murmured against her breasts, and the room’s underwater light filtered over his stocky shoulders as his shirt dropped atop her dress on the floor, followed by her slip and stockings, his braces and trousers.

“If you’ll give me a moment—” Mab remembered with a jolt, stepping back and reaching for her handbag. “I have to do something first. ” She wordlessly showed him the little bag with her rubber device to prevent conception, feeling herself flush. On their wedding night she had taken care of matters when she changed out of her wedding dress; later, as he searched his wallet for a packet of French letters, she’d simply murmured, No need, I saw a doctor and was fitted for, you know. . . He’d grinned, put his wallet aside, and that had been that. But now she had to disentangle from him, take her bag awkwardly into the loo, fumble about in there while the clock outside ticked. Oh, this was awkward! She came out again, naked and self-conscious, aware she was blushing.

“Lovely Mab. ” Her husband didn’t seem embarrassed at all, taking her back into his arms without any haste. He was solid, brown, stocky—he looked like he should have been walking a farm, not the corridors of the Foreign Office. He smiled, running a hand down Mab’s long, pale-skinned leg. “How did a hill-bred cob like me land such a long-boned thoroughbred? ” he said, kissing each of her shoulders.

Mab had always thought husbands would want things proper—done in the dark, under the covers; she could remember the rhythmic nighttime grunts coming through the thin wall when her father had still been at home. The wedding-night suite at Claridge’s had been all shadows in the candlelight, and Francis had made no objection when Mab slid under the sheets; he’d come under them as well, and pulled her silently against him. Now he reached over and flicked the light on, and when Mab climbed under the covers, he turned them back. “Let me see you, ” he said quietly.

No, Mab almost said. She didn’t know why it made her uneasy to be looked at; she wanted to prickle and hide; she wanted to pull him over her and get on with it. She didn’t really like being naked, being seen. She didn’t know if any of that flashed through her gaze, but he came on his side instead of moving over her, pulling her back snugly into the curve of his chest. “. . . Like this? ” Mab blurted, startled. It occurred to her that for someone who had instructed both her billet-mates in the facts of life, there were a good many things she didn’t know.

Francis kissed the space between her shoulder blades. “Like this. ” He rubbed the length of her back, up and down, probably feeling the tension Mab couldn’t stop from coiling through her, having someone at her back where she couldn’t see them. “Trust me, ” he said against her spine.

I don’t really trust anyone, Mab couldn’t stop herself from thinking. Such a cold, hateful thought to have in bed with your own husband who had never given you any reason for wariness, but she couldn’t help it. She could feel herself going rigid in his arms, and she couldn’t stop it, but he just slowed, lips resting in the hollow behind her ear, one broad arm cradling her against his chest, one hand stroking unhurriedly up and down the length of her body. He stroked until her wary muscles loosened, and then he stroked even more slowly until they began to wind taut again for another reason entirely. Mab bit her lip as his hand traced over her belly. “Trust me, ” he said again against her ear, and Mab saw the outline of the rain sliding down the windowpane outside, making rippling shadows over his arm as his hand slid lower, agonizingly. Lower. “Relax. . . ” He stroked her so slowly, unfolding her a touch at a time. Her back arched hard against him as she squeezed her eyes shut, and he only held her tighter against his chest, tethering her to the bed, tethering her to the world.

“I have you, ” he whispered as the shudders racked through her, and she felt his lips at the nape of her neck. Mab opened her eyes, limp and dizzy, trying to turn and pull him over her, but he only wrapped her more firmly in his arms, his knees behind hers, his shoulders behind hers, every inch of her already cradled inside his body before he moved into hers. Dimly Mab could hear the rain beating as they rocked together, nested like a pair of spoons. She gripped at his hands where he held her, hanging on for dear life, feeling the answering squeeze of his fingers as they fell into each other.

Francis didn’t pull away afterward, only unwound one arm enough to pull up the covers over them, tucking the warm edge around her shoulders. Mab opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what—Do you think we’ve missed tea downstairs? Goodness, it’s raining hard! —but to her horror, she burst into tears. She didn’t know why.

Francis moved a hand through her hair, tipping her head back against his shoulder. He kissed each of her wet eyelids. “You can trust me, Mab, ” he said very quietly.

She lay silent, her body limp and boneless, her eyelids still leaking, and she thought, Maybe I can.

But when she woke in the soundless blackness of three in the morning, his half of the bed was empty and she saw him sitting at the open window again in his half-buttoned shirt, staring into the night.

THERE WAS A note on her pillow when she woke in the morning.

Darling Mab, Francis had written. I went for a walk at dawn. Yes, in the rain—I can see your eyebrows shooting up. They were. I always need a walk after night is done, weather regardless, and you were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You snore, by the way. It’s delightful. Have a leisurely bath and I’ll bring you up some toast. —F

There was a postscript: I shan’t ask you his name, if you don’t wish to share it, but I am rather assuming he hurt you in some way.

Mab hesitated, fighting her immediate, spiky prickle of reaction, the urge to slam the door on that entire subject. She had never spoken about Geoff Irving or his horrible friends or that horrible night to anyone, ever. Had it been so obvious that someone. . .

Yes, maybe it was. If a man cared to look.

She still didn’t think she could force the words through her lips.

Maybe I don’t have to, she thought, eyeing the pile of hotel stationery.

Dear Francis—she couldn’t quite bring herself to say darling; it didn’t feel natural. She hesitated a long time, then wrote the words:

Yes, he did.

And I do not snore. —M

She was scrubbing her hair in the bath when she heard him come in on the other side of the door. She heard the crackle of paper unfolding, and she sat there in the tub, hugging her knees, water sliding down her naked back.

A moment later, a folded sheet of paper pushed under the bathroom door. She maneuvered an arm across the chipped black and white tiles and retrieved it.

I thought so. I shan’t mention it again if you don’t wish.

You do snore. But a very ladylike snore. Jane Eyre would snore like you. —F

Mab smiled, climbing out and wrapping herself in a towel. Wiping her hands dry, she fetched about and found a stub of eyebrow pencil from her cosmetics case. Cosmetics were too precious to waste, but she couldn’t resist scrawling an answer and pushing it back under the door, heart jumping absurdly.

Now you’re trying to impress me with books you haven’t read. I have never met a man in my life who read a Brontë novel. You wouldn’t believe how the fellows in the Mad Hatters griped about Jane Eyre. —M

She heard an answering snort from the other side, and took her time toweling her hair and fixing her little contraceptive device again. Her heart leaped when the sheet of paper came back.

I have too read Jane Eyre. Do you want a dog named Pilot someday, like Mr. Rochester? —F

Yes. —M

Mab came out, wrapped in a towel. Francis was bent over the desk, scribbling something next to a cooling rack of toast. His collar stood open; drops of rain sparkled on his hair. He looked up, smiled, dropped the pen at the same time Mab dropped the towel, and they collided in another rush. They were still kissing as he lifted her to the edge of the table—Mab made a noise, feeling high and insecure away from the bed. She had to cling hard against him, her arms about his neck, her legs about his waist.

“I’ve got you. ” He put his lips to her ear, murmuring, “Thrash all you like, I won’t let you fall. ” Mab clung, limbs coiling through his like a vine, his hands under her hips holding her steady, and by the end she trembled so she could hardly stand. Francis looked wry, touching a red mark on her breast and then rubbing his day’s worth of stubble. “I didn’t shave this morning, ” he said. “Bachelor habit—I’ll have to do better. ”

He was lathering up over the washbasin in the bathroom, all bare feet and trousers and braces, as Mab closed the door just for the purpose of sliding the note under it. She heard him unfold it.

Lunch?

For the first time since meeting Francis Gray, she heard him laugh.

SHE WAS ON the train the next day. It had rained the entire weekend, and Mab hadn’t set foot out of the room. She ate meals Francis brought up on trays from the coy landlady, plowed through half of For Whom the Bell Tolls (next week’s Tea Party pick, since all men save her husband appeared unwilling to read Jane Eyre) when Francis left on his morning walks, made love to him when he came back, passed notes back and forth in a strange competition to see who could say the fewest words and write the most, made love again. He said nothing on the train platform, only picked up her hands, turned them over, dropped a kiss into each palm.

“You’re not returning to London? ” Mab asked finally.

“Some business in Leeds first. ” A half smile. “I’ll see you when the stars align for another weekend, lovely girl. ” Who knew when that would be. Mab kissed him fiercely, not at all sure if she was relieved or upset. She had never felt so turned upside down and inside out—part of her welcomed the thought of BP’s frenetic routine and midnight cups of Ovaltine; nothing unexpected to leave her unsettled. But part of her wanted to stay with her silent husband, and see where he led her next.

It wasn’t until Mab settled into the compartment that she found the letter Francis had slipped into her coat pocket.

Darling girl—you’re asleep as I’m writing this. You wonder why I sit up every night smoking and looking out the window, don’t you? The truth is, I haven’t slept more than four hours at a time since coming home from the trenches in ’19. There used to be thrashing and shouting, hallucinations, dreams—but I found over the years that a cigarette and an open window does the most good, and then a walk at dawn to clear the cobwebs away. It doesn’t leave me entirely settled, I’m too much a patched-together pot for that, but at least the pot is fit to hold water through the day to come.

There—now you know. It was troubling you, wasn’t it? —F

Mab put her head back on the seat and blinked rapidly, wondering if she knew another man anywhere who would simply admit something like that in black and white. In her experience men either denied such things altogether or, if forced to acknowledge them, did so with crude jokes and rough shrugs.

She looked at the sheeting rain, buffeting down on the curve of the railroad track ahead. She still had the sensation that she was naked, even armored in her coat and gloves. Even though he was no longer here. Before the feeling faded and the armor was back, she took a pen from her handbag.

His name isn’t important, she wrote on a scrap of notepaper, her mouth utterly dry, but I thought I loved him. She wrote out the whole story of Geoffrey Irving and his friends, factual and ugly; stuffed the page into an envelope; addressed it to Francis’s London boardinghouse; and sealed it before she could change her mind.

You can trust me, Mab.

I hope so. She dropped it in the nearest postbox when she changed trains, heart thudding. Don’t ask for any more of my secrets, Francis.

Because I can’t give you the last one.

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