Chapter 67

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German intercepts decrypted at Bletchley Park during Normandy invasion

From: 11th U/B Flotilla

Immediate readiness. There are indications that the invasion has begun.

From: GRUPPE WEST

MOST IMMEDIATE. Off LE HAVRE 6 battleships and about 20 destroyers.

From: Seeko NORMANDY

MOST IMMEDIATE. MARCOUF reports: a great many landing craft approaching, protected by battleships and cruisers.

To: KARL

Endeavor to reach CHERBOURG. Attack enemy formations as long as ammunition lasts.

The prime minister’s voice poured through the telephone into Osla’s ear like weary gravel. “News? ” She could imagine him pacing his study, staring at the eastern wall toward Normandy. “Well? ”

“In a jiff, sir. ” Osla had been at her desk for too many hours to feel a thrill at talking to the prime minister. She handed the telephone off to her superior and went back to translating, mind feeling as if it had been sanded. She read nothing she translated; it flowed into her eyes, through her pencil, and out again without leaving a trace. Thirty hours later she staggered home.

And found that Beth’s half of the room had been cleared out. Her blouses and dresses were missing from the wardrobe; her drawers stood empty. There wasn’t so much as a hairpin to indicate Beth Finch had lived here. Even Boots was gone.

Osla sat down on her bed. She had never in her life been so knackered, too tired even to crawl into bed. A familiar clack of heels sounded on the stairs, and Mab came into the room. “Beth’s gone, ” Osla greeted her. “Maybe she went back to her family, or—”

“She’s gone to a sanitarium, ” said Mab. “The gate guards told me—she completely crocked up. ”

Osla stared. “You’re chaffing me. Beth would never break down like. . . ” But right here in this room when they were all last together, Beth had had a fit of hysterics. Laughing and crying on that high-pitched note like a nail gouging slate. Osla rubbed her aching temples. “Did we do this? Land her in the basket—even if she deserved it—when she was exhausted and keyed up for the invasion? ”

“I don’t know. ” Mab sat down on Beth’s stripped bed, looking as wrung out as Osla. “I shouldn’t have shouted at her. Given the invasion, I should have left it till later. ”

“And who told Travis Beth broke her oath? ” The timing of all of this. . .

“London intelligence monitors all of us informally, to make sure no one’s talking. I’ve heard them talking about it at the mansion, ” said Mab. “Someone must have heard something about Beth, that’s all. ”

They sat in silence for a while. Osla’s head ached. “The invasion, ” she said eventually. “Did you hear anything at the mansion? ”

“The Germans swallowed our Pas-de-Calais deception hook, line, and sinker. ”

“Well, isn’t that just topping. ”

Another silence as they sat hoping that far away in the bloody sand and surf of Normandy, the death knell of Hitler’s Reich was sounding across the beachheads.

“I’m leaving Bletchley, ” Mab said. “Not yet, but soon. They’re sending a few ladies to the Admiralty in London. In the middle of all the fuss today, someone remembered to tell me I’d been chosen. Your friend Sally Norton, too. ‘To facilitate cooperation between Bletchley Park and the naval high-ups’. . . I think they want us to flash our legs at the admirals so they won’t fuss about how the naval information from BP is obtained. ”

No Mab at BP. No Beth, either. Harry already gone, Sally going. . . “Take care, Mab, ” Osla said, wondering if maybe they could at least part friends, of a sort anyway. She stretched out a hand.

Mab jerked away, her face hard. “I don’t want your good wishes, Os. ”

“Well, I won’t bother you with them. ” Osla’s anger flared through the exhaustion. “You East End bitch. ”

Mab looked at her, weary and contemptuous. “Crawl back to Mayfair, you stupid deb. ”

Osla had never slapped anyone in her life. She slapped Mab now, and walked out of the room.

“Are you all right, dear? ” Their landlady again, mounting the stairs with an armload of towels.

“Yes, quite. ” Continuing downstairs, insides churning. That contemptuous stupid deb, from Mab of all people. . .

But that’s all you are. Osla halted at the foot of the stairs. She was never going to be anything else, no matter how hard she tried. So why bother trying?

She remembered meeting Mab on the train to Bletchley Park: two bright-eyed girls with their suitcases and questions, wondering what the mysterious Station X had in store. Girls who wanted to serve their country, make friends, read books. . . girls who were, above all, determined. Mab to get a husband, Osla to prove herself.

Be careful what you wish for, Osla wanted to tell those laughing girls in the train compartment. Oh, be careful!

She supposed she’d better choke down some tea, then make up a new post-invasion Bletchley Bletherings and head back on shift. She might be a silly socialite without friends, lover, or home, but she still had work to do: making people laugh, and translating horrors. Plenty of that would be needed, surely, in the months to come.

Another long, slogging year and more, as it turned out. There were some bright points—billeting with the effervescent Glassborow twins after Mab moved out; going to hear Glenn Miller with Giles; getting the news that Hut 6 had broken the message for Germany’s unconditional surrender; sitting on the back of one of the Trafalgar Square lions on V-E Day getting sauced on Bollinger with a couple of American GIs. Writing message-in-the-bottle letters to J. P. E. C. Cornwell, wherever he might be; finally telling the Mad Hatters she’d been writing Bletchley Bletherings all along and relishing their groans and laughter. And oh, the day Valerie Glassborow was on duty to hear the word come in that Japan surrendered, and the news spread—Osla found herself on the lawn flinging rolls of loo paper into the trees with mad abandon, watching the white loops unroll against the sky and crying for happiness.

But that was the epilogue, she thought later. The real Bletchley Park ended for Osla on D-Day. The day three friends last spoke to each other; the day Mab Gray received a transfer to London; the day Beth Finch disappeared into the blue.

Nine Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 11, 1947

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