“No rest when there’s a war on, Mrs. F.” Mab tried to slide past, but Mrs. Finch blocked her way.

“Now why won’t you just give us a hint what you do?” she said with a little laugh. “What do you all get up to behind those gates, my goodness—”

“Really, it’s too boring to talk about.”

“You can trust me!” Mrs. Finch was clearly not giving up. Her voice was cozy, but her eyes had a certain gleam. “Just a hint. I’ll dole you a bit extra from the sugar ration.”

“No, thank you,” Mab said coldly.

“Such a careful one.” Mrs. Finch patted her arm, gleam in the eye hardening, but she moved out of the way. Mab rolled her eyes at the retreating back, not realizing until she heard the nearly inaudible voice that Mrs. Finch’s colorless daughter was sitting in the corner of the kitchen, shelling peas.

“You should just tell Mother something. She won’t be satisfied till she knows.”

Mab looked at the other girl. Hardly a girl; she was twenty-four and she volunteered with the Women’s Voluntary Services when she wasn’t being run off her feet by her mother—but she gave the impression of a girl, with that colorless skin that showed every wash of emotion and those eyes that never rose from the floor. Mab couldn’t help a flash of annoyance. “I’m not here to satisfy your mother’s curiosity, Bess.”

The girl flushed dull red. “Beth,” she said almost inaudibly. She sat shoulders rounded, like a puppy whose cringing practically invited a certain kind of person to give a good kick. As she carried the shelled peas to the counter, Mab could see the outline of a paperback hidden in her skirt pocket.

“Done with Vanity Fair yet?”

Beth flinched, fiddling with her plait’s stringy ends. “You didn’t tell Mother, did you?”

“Oh, for—” Mab swallowed some less than polite words. A woman of twenty-four should not be apologizing to her mother about a library habit. Grow a spine, Mab wanted to say. While you’re at it, put a lemon rinse on that hair and try looking people in the eye. If there was anything Mab couldn’t stand, it was limp women. The women in her own family were hardly perfect—in fact, most of them were flint-hard cows—but at least they weren’t limp.

Beth sat back down at the kitchen table. She’d probably sit here the rest of the night until her mother told her to go to bed.

“Get your coat, Beth,” Mab heard herself saying.

“W-what?”

“Get your coat while I change. You’re coming to the first meeting of the Bletchley Park Literary Society.”

Chapter 8

The Shoulder of Mutton reared its thatched head at Buckingham and Newton roads, the bar cozy and bright, the private sitting room low beamed and inviting. It was everything Beth feared about social gatherings: tight quarters, loud noises, cigarette smoke, fast conversation, strange people, and men. Anxiety choked her throat, and she couldn’t stop fiddling with the end of her plait like it was a lifeline.

“—you billet here, Giles?” someone was asking the lanky red-haired man. “Blimey, you got lucky.”

“Don’t I know it, Mrs. Bowden’s a gem. Not much bothered by rationing; I swear she’s queen of the local black market. We’ve got the private room, get your drinks . . .”

Beth found herself clutching a sherry she didn’t dare sip. What if her mother smelled liquor on her breath?

“Swig that down,” Mab advised.

“W-what?” Beth was eyeing the group piling around the table. Osla, laughing as an army lieutenant lit her cigarette . . . several gangling academic sorts gawping at Mab like puppies . . . red-haired Giles and a truly massive black-haired man who had to duck under the rafter . . . all of them worked at the mysterious Bletchley Park, so what was Beth doing here? She didn’t know what to make of these people—some looked so shabby in their patched tweeds that her mother might have taken them for tramps, but they talked in such overeducated drawls she could hardly understand a word they said.

“Relax,” Mab said. She had a glass of beer, and she’d thrown one leg over the other in casually elegant fashion. “We’re only here to talk books.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Beth whispered.

“It’s a literary society, not a bordello.”

“I can’t stay.” Beth set her sherry down. “My mother will pitch a fit.”

“So?”

“It’s her house, her rules, and I—”

“It’s your house, too. And really, it’s your father’s house!”

Beth’s words dried up. Impossible to explain how slight a presence her father really was in the Finch household. He never put his foot down. He wasn’t that kind of husband, that kind of father. The finest of men, Beth’s mother always said smugly when other women in the village complained of overbearing husbands.

“I can’t stay,” Beth repeated.

“‘The greatest tyrants over women are women,’” Mab quoted. “Have you read that far in Vanity Fair?” She arched one brow, then addressed the men across the table. “So, shall we vote on a book every month? How shall we tally up—”

“Popular vote,” one of the skinny academics was saying. “Or the ladies will have us all reading romantic tosh—”

“Romantic tosh?” Osla demanded, squashing in on Beth’s left. “The last thing I read was Vanity Fair!”

“That’s about girls, isn’t it?” Giles objected.

“It’s written by a man, so that’s all right,” Mab said tartly.

“Why do you men get the swithers if you have to read anything written by a female?” Osla wondered. “Aren’t we a century out from poor Charlotte Bront? signing herself Currer Bell to get published?”

Fish and chips arrived, leaking grease. Beth didn’t dare touch hers, any more than the sherry. Nice girls did not eat in public houses; nice girls did not smoke or drink or argue with men . . .

Osla’s a nice girl, Beth thought, marshaling arguments for later. Nothing Mab did was going to find approval with Mrs. Finch, but Osla was another story. She’s been presented at court; you can’t say she isn’t a lady, Mother! And here Osla was crunching up chunks of fried cod, swilling sherry, and arguing with Giles about Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, obviously having a grand time.

Somehow Beth didn’t think that argument was going to weigh much with her mother, either. Mrs. Finch wasn’t going to care about anything except that Beth had gone out, without permission.

“I vote for Conan Doyle,” the huge dark-haired man on Beth’s right was saying. “Who doesn’t like Sherlock Holmes?”

“You’ve already read everything Doyle ever wrote, Harry . . .”

He didn’t look like a Harry, Beth thought, trying not to stare at the man. He wasn’t just enormous—nearly a head taller even than Mab; broad enough he’d nearly turned sideways through the door—but he was black haired and swarthy, almost dark skinned. Beth could imagine the village ladies whispering, “Is he a wog or an Eyetie?” but he didn’t sound like a foreigner. He had exactly the same university drawl as the rest.

“Maltese, Arab, and Egyptian,” he said, catching Beth’s eye.

She flinched. “What?”

“My father’s family is originally from Malta, my mother was born to an Egyptian diplomat and the daughter of a banker from Baghdad.” He grinned. “Don’t be embarrassed; everyone wants to know. I’m Harry Zarb, by the way.”

“You speak English very well,” she managed to reply.

“Well, my branch of the family’s been London based for three generations, I was baptized Church of England, then went through Kings College in Cambridge like my father and grandfather before me, so . . . be rather embarrassing if I didn’t speak English well.”

“I—I’m so sorry,” Beth whispered, mortified.

“Look like me and everyone thinks you were born in a tent on a sand dune.” He shrugged, but Beth was too embarrassed to answer. She let the talk pass over her head, reaching for the newspaper abandoned at the next table and turning for the crossword. It was half obliterated by grease stains but she fell into it gratefully, doing it up with a pencil stub.

“You went through that like a Derby winner,” Osla laughed, but Beth just stared down at her feet. Would this night never be over?

ONE LOOK AT her mother, sitting at the kitchen table with her Bible, two bright spots of color flaring in her cheeks, and Beth shriveled down to her bones. “Now, you mustn’t put yourself in a pucker, Mrs. F,” Osla attempted with her winning smile as they filed into the kitchen. “It’s not Beth’s fault—”

“We dragged her out,” Mab added. “Really—”

“Hadn’t you better get to bed, girls?” Mrs. Finch looked at the kitchen clock. “Lights out in twenty.”