Chapter 37

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, MAY 1942

Everyone likes to think cloistered academics are such sheltered innocents, but the goings-on among BP’s racy set would make a sailor blush. Partner-swapping that would put a Highland reel to shame, enough adultery for a dozen Oscar Wilde plays—you wouldn’t believe what this hothouse of cloistered academics gets up to off shift! If only BB could name names. . .

Excuse me. . . you wouldn’t be Beth by any chance? Beth who works at Bletchley Park? ”

Beth looked up as she settled Boots into the basket of her bicycle. The tired-looking woman in her green cardigan looked a few years older than Beth, holding a shopping basket. “Do you work at BP? ” Beth asked warily, eyeing the sign posted just past the woman’s shoulder: Tittle Tattle Lost the Battle! Beth was rubbery legged from the long bicycle ride back from Courns Wood, where she’d been giving Dilly the news that Peggy was returning to ISK soon; it was nearly nightfall and she’d only stopped to let her grumbling dog relieve himself against a post. She didn’t really want to get stuck talking to some curious stranger.

“I’m not at BP, ” the woman continued, looking Beth over from the wave of hair falling over one eye to the red-sprigged cotton frock she was now able to wear without imagining her mother sniffing Only tarts wear red! “But my husband works there. ”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss the work with anyone. ” Beth could deliver that statement without blushing or breaking eye contact now, even when she had to say it to strangers. Though the woman looked familiar. . .

“Mum! ” A little boy lurched through the shop door, seizing the woman’s skirt. “Can we go home? ” Lurched because he wore bulky leg braces, and that was when Beth knew exactly who his mother was.

“Sheila Zarb, ” she said. “Harry’s wife. You came to the house once, for the literary society. I met so many new people, I couldn’t remember which was Beth. ”

Beth felt a horrendous blush sweep up from the collar of her dress. She stood like a tomato with ears, remembering exactly how it felt when this woman’s husband had kissed her.

“You’re definitely Beth. ” Sheila nodded. “D’you fancy a drink? It’ll make this easier. ”

THE BAR AT the Shoulder of Mutton inn was cozy and bright lit—worth the walk for a little privacy, Sheila Zarb said, carrying her son as Beth wheeled her bicycle. She asked the barmaid if they could borrow the private sitting room, then went behind the bar and deftly drew two pints. “I fill in the odd shift here, ” she told Beth, who stood silently gripping her dog’s lead. She had no idea if she was going to be slapped or shouted at, she had no idea what Harry had told his wife, and everything inside her was cringing. I didn’t do anything, her mind insisted. I didn’t ask him to kiss me.

You certainly enjoyed it though, a second inner voice said unhelpfully.

Harry’s wife carried the pints into the private room, motioning Beth after her and closing the door with one foot. “Oh, stop blushing. I’m not going to eat you. Can Christopher play with your dog? ”

Beth released Boots, who stumped toward the enchanted little boy. Clutching her glass, Beth eased down at the table opposite Harry’s wife, who sat looking at her with clear, curious eyes. Beth examined her back. Harry’s wife was tall, rawboned, with sandy hair and a face that was pleasant rather than pretty.

“Mrs. Zarb—” Beth began.

“If you’re the one my husband’s lost his head over, you can call me Sheila. ”

Beth’s face heated again. She glanced at Harry’s son, but he was playing unconcernedly with Boots on the other side of the long room, and the sound of someone playing the piano in the bar outside gave their voices cover. “What—what did he tell you? ” Beth found herself asking.

“Almost nothing. Harry’s a vault. But he got plastered a few nights ago—which isn’t like him—and he mumbled something about kissing Beth at the last Tea Party. Went on and on about how you’d think he was a rotter now. ”

Beth hadn’t told anyone what happened. Osla would have issued dismayed warnings, and Mab would have hooted, “Of course he’ll tell you he doesn’t have a real marriage. They all say that! ” So Beth pushed the afternoon kiss ruthlessly behind her and focused on the avalanche of work. And during shifts, that was fine. It was after work, staring in grainy-eyed exhaustion at the ceiling over her bed, gradually drifting out of the mental spirals of code, that she wondered what would have happened if she’d let Harry keep kissing her. What would have come next, how it would have felt. One kiss had wakened her curiosity with a vengeance—she wanted to know.

“D’you fancy him? ” Sheila asked bluntly.

Beth dropped her eyes, thinking despite herself of the sheer joy she’d taken in working with Harry—pushing rods and cups of coffee and Italian dictionaries back and forth, waiting in wordless impatience for the dispatch riders to bring in new traffic, the quick grin they’d exchange when the cars rolled in. . .

Ever since I watched you crack Italian Enigma, I can barely breathe around you.

“I’ll take that as a yes, ” Sheila said.

“It doesn’t matter. ” Beth made herself say it, looking up. “I wouldn’t do—anything. Because he’s your husband. ”

“Is that what’s holding you back? ” Sheila took a long swallow of her pint. “Look. I’ve got someone. Harry knows; doesn’t mind a bit. We stay married for that little fellow there. ” She nodded at her son, lying nose to nose with Boots at the other end of the room, and her face softened. “He’s a ruddy miracle, and I’d die for him. We both would. Our son’s the only thing we have in common. Henry Omar Darius Zarb with his university education and his fancy family full of diplomats and London bankers, and Sheila Jean McGee the former barmaid at the Eagle in Cambridge, where he used to study over a pint. It wasn’t ever any grand romance. He liked me because I didn’t call him a wog or a dago, I liked him because I thought he looked like a sheikh in a film. He did the right thing by me when I found out Christopher was coming, and he’s a grand dad, but he drives me round the bend sometimes. Him and his equations and the fact he can’t pick up his ruddy socks to save his life. ” Her voice was fondly irritated; she sounded like an older sister rather than a wife. “We bump along well enough, but if he wants a fling with someone like you—well, if you want it too, have at it. ”

Beth stared at her. She picked up her glass and swallowed about half the beer. “That would be immoral, ” she couldn’t help saying, hearing her mother’s voice.

“Why is it immoral if it isn’t hurting anybody? ” Sheila shrugged. “We keep things quiet, so nothing comes back on Christopher, and otherwise we let each other be. I’d like to see Harry happy. He’s the best friend I’ve got, and he lets me be happy—my fellow and me. Not a lot of men would do that. You’re a brainy sort, like Harry. I don’t know what you people do at BP, but it’s clearly important. He’d like a woman he could talk equations to, or whatever pillow talk is for you Cambridge sorts. ”

“I didn’t go to university. ”

“You’re still just like him. There’s a sort of staring-into-space thing you were doing when I saw you outside the grocer’s—Harry does it too. ” Sheila shook her head. “I don’t know if you’re mixed up in the same thing he is at BP, but it’s got him wound tighter than a clock lately. . . ”

It’ll be more than eighty days locked out of the U-boat traffic now, Beth thought. She knew just from passing Harry in the new-built canteen, seeing his slumped shoulders and drawn face over his supper tray, that they hadn’t cracked it.

“. . . When I caught sight of you today and wondered if you were the one he liked, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to tell you how things stood. ”

“I’m not a fling, ” Beth burst out. “If he wants one of those, he can pick up some tart at the cinema. ”

“He probably does, now and then. I wouldn’t know. ” Beth wondered how Sheila could sound that unruffled. The thought of Harry with some other woman made Beth want to spit. “Men like a bit of the old you-know, ” Sheila went on, “and Harry and I don’t anymore, not since I met my Jack. So maybe he’s had a fling or two to let off tension, or maybe he hasn’t, but I can tell you this—he hasn’t fallen head over heels for anyone but you. It’s your name he’s mumbling when he’s sozzled, not anyone else’s. ”

Beth sat tongue-tied all over again.

“Look. ” Sheila finished her pint, pushing the glass aside. “I’m not matchmaking. If you’d rather keep your distance from married blokes, that’s fine. Probably the smarter thing, because Harry won’t ever leave Christopher and me. He broke with his posh family over us, when his dad wanted to pay me off to get it taken care of. Harry wouldn’t hear of it, and his father cut him off without a bean, and that’s why a chap named Henry Omar Darius Zarb with a First from Cambridge lives in rented digs and has holes in his jacket elbows. There was a time we were planning to separate and get a quiet divorce, once we realized it wasn’t ever going to be love between us—but then our boy got sick, and that was that. Christopher needs us both, always will, and that means Harry and I are in it to stay. I’m not ever going to have my Jack past the occasional evening he’s on leave from the RAF, and Harry won’t put you or any woman above Christopher. ” A pause. “But somewhere around the edges of that, if he can find happiness, he deserves it. And if you feel like being that woman and you’re willing to keep things quiet, you’ve got my blessing. ”

She rose then, holding her arms out to Christopher. “Come here and give me a hug, lad. What do you say we take some fish and chips home for supper? Your dad’ll like that. ” She helped him with his braces, collected her basket, and was gone before Beth could utter more than a dazed goodbye.

Beth sat looking at her half-drunk beer. What do you want? a thought whispered.

No answer. She sighed, collected Boots, and left the pub. Walking straight out without looking, she ran smack into a statuesque bulk of flowered housedress. Before she even heard the outraged exhalation, Beth knew who it was. “Hello, Mother. ”

“Bethan! ” Mrs. Finch’s eyes darted over Beth’s red-sprigged dress, her shoulder-waved hair, the red T-strap pumps borrowed from Osla. “What are you doing in a pub? ”

“Having a pint. ” And discussing the finer points of adultery, Beth added with a certain inner smile.

“Bethan—” Mrs. Finch composed herself visibly, gripping her handbag. “You really must give up this disgraceful gadding about. Why, just yesterday. . . ” Beth let her get it out of her system, leaning down to give Boots a rub. He was eyeing Mrs. Finch coldly through his shaggy brows. “. . . do you know what people at chapel are saying about you? ” Beth’s mother finally finished.

“Not much, ” Beth said. “Everyone smiles at me just the same. I enjoy chapel so much more now that I don’t have to go home and hold the Bible over my head for fifteen minutes because I got distracted during the sermon. ” These days, Beth sat in chapel letting the hymns wash over her and thinking about the Abwehr Enigma, and she didn’t think God minded at all. Beth didn’t think God was nearly as severe as her mother made Him out to be.

Mrs. Finch took a hitching breath. “If you will come home, all will be forgiven. The prodigal daughter will be welcomed, I promise. You may even keep the dog. Isn’t that what you want? ”

“I want quite a lot more than that, actually, ” Beth said. One hand drifted up to her lips, and she smiled. “Goodbye, Mother. ”

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