Chapter 58

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, APRIL 1944

A thought, boffins and debs, and BB is aware it’s a radical one: can we all perhaps retire the word wog from our vocabularies? Such an amusing term, such a joke, such an affectionate bit of slang to toss about in a moment of high-spirited fun. . . yet BB does not find the term particularly entertaining, and neither do those who hear it aimed at them, judging from their expressions.

Get off—” Beth waded into the scrum of children, grabbing a towheaded boy and a redheaded boy. They had Christopher Zarb on the ground in his own front yard and were pelting him with mud.

“He won’t fight, ” the redhead jeered. “Just like his dad—”

Beth hauled off and smacked him on the back of the head. “Get out of here. ”

The boys ran. “My mum says you don’t deserve to live in England if you won’t fight for it, ” one yelled over his shoulder. “Stupid wogs. . . ”

Christopher sat in the dirt, trying not to cry, brushing mud off his braces. Beth’s heart squeezed. “Don’t listen to them. ” She held out a hand, rather awkwardly, to her lover’s son. “Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up. ”

Sheila was inside laying out bread and marg for this month’s Tea Party, but she swooped down on her muddied son. “Was it that Robbie Blaine again? The little bugger. . . ”

“You take care of Christopher, ” Beth said, “I’ll finish up here. ” She was early, the first one arrived. Harry came in as she was putting the kettle on, and he looked grim as Beth told him what had happened.

“Those little bastards have been after him for months. When I bang their heads together, their fathers come at me. ” Harry passed her a tea towel. “With luck, it’ll slack off by next week. ”

“What happens then? ”

A long pause. “I leave. ” He looked her in the eye. “I’ve enlisted, Beth. ”

A frozen, crystallized moment as they stood there in the cramped kitchen. Then Beth let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You aren’t allowed. ”

“It is if you go for the Fleet Air Arm, ” Harry said quietly. “The naval air service. Anyone shot down in the Fleet Air Arm goes down at sea—no risk of capture, no risk to BP. ”

“Commander Travis wouldn’t—”

“Travis gave permission to Keith Batey in Hut 6, back in June ’Forty-Two. Now me. I was going to tell you after the Tea Party, but—” Harry took a breath. “It’s done, Beth. ”

“No. ” It came out reflexively, rushing through her throat in something very close to a whimper. She stood clutching the tea towel, suddenly terrified.

“I see you told her. ” Sheila stalked into the kitchen, pushing a strand of hair back into its string snood. “You talk to him, Beth. I’ve already worn my voice out. Maybe if he won’t listen to his bloody wife, he’ll listen to his bloody mistress. ” Glaring at Harry.

“Be fair, ” he said, attempting levity. “Mistress implies a kept woman, and nobody’s keeping Beth anywhere she doesn’t want to be. ”

The joke fell flat. Sheila turned around and began slamming cups about, leaving Beth to the attack. She crossed her arms, swallowing her fear. “How long have you been planning this? ”

“January. ”

When she and Harry had quarreled over which was the worthier fight—the fight with a gun or the fight with a pencil. Neither of them had mentioned that quarrel since. Harry had been tender, pulling her into the cradle of his big body every time they came together, and she’d fallen into him gratefully, glad not to rehash the argument. She’d been grateful, and he’d been planning this all along. Beth gulped in a long breath, and with the air came rage.

“You idiot, ” she told Harry. “Your section needs you. ”

“Quite honestly, they don’t. This isn’t ’Forty-One, not enough people and everyone scrambling. It’s not even ’Forty-Two, with the terrible shutout. You know how big my section is now? BP’s turned into a well-oiled machine, thousands of cogs all doing their jobs. One cog won’t matter. ”

“You aren’t a cog. They can find more chess players and maths students, but they can’t find another Harry Zarb. ” Her words scrambled, tumbled, pleaded. “They can’t replace you. ”

“Yes, they can. ” His voice was gentle, and she hated it. “I’m not special, Beth. You could do my job better than me. So can women like Joan Clarke, who’s one of the best brains in my section. That was the argument that clinched Travis—the ladies here have proved they are perfectly capable of handling the work. So let them do it, and let the men who want to join up go to the front while they can. ” Pause. “There’s a big push soon. You know there is. ”

The Allied invasion. Everyone knew it was coming.

“You can’t say one more body in that fight won’t make a difference, ” Harry continued in that gentle voice. “Every one will count. Any number of qualified women can do my job. But those women can’t join the Fleet Air Arm, which I can. And the Fleet Air Arm needs men. ”

“They don’t need you. ” But that argument wasn’t working, so Beth switched tack. “What about your son? He needs both of you—”

“Sheila’s parents have agreed to take up the slack. ”

“That will be a joy, ” Sheila muttered at the sink, banging cups. “You get to slag Krauts over the Atlantic, and I get to listen to my mother tell me I’m doing Christopher’s braces up wrong—”

“If you go down in the middle of the ocean, he will be fatherless. She will be widowed. ” Beth waved at Sheila. “Are you that selfish, Harry? ”

“No. ” A glint entered his voice like a gleam off metal. “What’s selfish is keeping myself bunked up in a safe, cushy job here in Bucks while every other able-bodied man in this country is expected to put his life on the line. They have children and wives, too—it doesn’t exempt them from the danger. I have no right to keep myself safe for my family when they can’t do the same, simply because they don’t have my university degree and my easy out. ”

“Oh, don’t be so everlastingly noble, ” Beth snarled as Sheila snapped, “Christ, you’re an ass. ”

Harry just looked at them both steadily, immovable as a granite pillar in the cramped kitchen. “I’m going, ” he said when they were finished. “I love that boy upstairs more than the world, and I love both of you, but I’m going. ”

To her own horror, Beth flew at him and began hitting him wherever she could reach. She couldn’t stop. The panic was clawing its way out of her like a trapped bird. “Bastard, ” she jerked, realizing she was on the edge of tears, slamming at him with her fists. “You bastard—” Harry stood quietly, taking the blows. Sheila was the one who yanked her back.

“Stop that. People are looking. ”

At the door, Beth saw a cluster of newly arrived Mad Hatters hesitating uncertainly—Giles and Mab, the wide-eyed Glassborow twins. Beth turned away to hide her face as Harry awkwardly welcomed everyone inside. She wanted to keep pounding at him till he was bloody. She wrapped her arms around herself, hunching her shoulders, humiliated to have lost control so completely.

“Why were they arguing? ” she heard Valerie Glassborow whisper to her twin as they went into the parlor.

“Does someone have to tell you what a mé nage à trois is, child? ” Giles asked, overhearing. “It’s not going to be me. . . ”

Beth seized her coat. “I’m not staying. ”

Harry followed her out into the spring twilight. “Beth—”

“You’re a bloody mathematician, not a flier. ” She wrenched away before he could touch her arm. “You can do so much more here at BP, and you’re still going to leave out of some—misplaced sense of nobility. And you’re going to die in the middle of the Atlantic—” Beth felt tears rising up her throat at the thought of Harry’s sinking under a glinting sea in a plane riddled by Luftwaffe fire. His complicated, questing brain turned to gray pudding, never to work out U-boat settings or theorize mathematical proofs again. The war had made a waste of so many men; why did it have to waste her beautiful, brilliant Harry?

Do you love me? Harry had asked her in January, and she hadn’t known how to answer. Was this his way of finding out?

“I hate you, ” she whispered, aware she sounded like a child, too devastated to care. “Don’t you dare write to me when you leave, you walking-dead fool. Don’t you dare. ”

Nine Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 11, 1947

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