Bletchley Bletherings has it on good authority that some unknown prankster smeared Commander Denniston’s office chair with strawberry jam during night shift. Waste of good jam, says BB!

This month’s Mad Hatters Tea Party is discussing The Great Gatsby. It is officially Giles Talbot’s turn to bring the topper—for all you gigglemugs who have not clapped eyes on this monstrosity, picture a Dickensian stovepipe festooned with false flowers, ancient Boer War medals, Ascot plumes, etc. The topper is worn in dunce cap fashion by any Mad Hatter to propose the Principia Mathematica for the monthly read (that’s you, Harry Zarb), preface every statement with “I’m sorry” (ahem, Beth Finch), or otherwise wet-blanket the proceedings. BB doesn’t see stovepipe toppers catching on any time soon in Vogue . . .

Speaking of fashion trends, London continues to sport 1941’s enduring, classic combination of shattered buildings and bomb craters, topped with eau de Messerschmitt and a dashing plume of smoke. Bomb away, Krauts—the boffins and debs of BP will still flood into London every night off and dance defiant in the rubble. There’s a war on, after all, and tomorrow we might be dead!

—Anonymous

* * *

Chapter 15

Osla crawled along the floor, blinded by blood.

“Daisy Buchanan is one of those girls who goes about pretending they’re ever so fragile,” Mab proclaimed, “and really they’re as tough as old boots.”

“I thought she was a bit sad,” Beth ventured. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Beth said I’m sorry again!” A chorus of laughter from the Mad Hatters, and the ancient festooned hat was lobbed toward Beth . . .

That wasn’t right, Osla thought dimly, feeling blood run into her hair. She wasn’t at the Mad Hatters Tea Party anymore. That had been this afternoon, everyone wrapped in their coats against the March chill but determined to discuss The Great Gatsby in the spring sunshine on the lake’s shore. Mab with her legs elegantly crossed, Harry stretched full-length leaning on an elbow in the grass, Beth primly upright with her tea mug.

“You’re very smart today, Os.” That had been Harry, packing away the hat and the books post–Tea Party. “Night off?”

“I’m catching the evening train to London.” Osla patted her bag, which she’d crammed that morning with her favorite Hartnell evening dress: emerald green satin that sluiced over her skin like water. “I’ve got an old friend on leave from his ship; we’re going to splash out at the Café de Paris.”

The Café de Paris . . . Osla looked around, blinking blood out of her lashes, but couldn’t see anything through the splintered darkness but rubble and overturned tables. Humped forms lay along the floor. Her eye refused to recognize them, what they were. There—the famous nightclub staircase, taking you from the street to the intimate underground splendor of cocktail tables and champagne dreams. Osla tried to seize the bannister and haul herself upright, but she tripped over something. Looking down, she saw a girl’s arm, its dainty wrist still looped with a diamond bracelet.

The girl’s corpse sat slumped and armless in a blue chiffon gown at the nearest table.

“Oh,” Osla whispered, and threw up into the rubble. Her mind was full of broken glass, her ears rang with sirens, and it was all coming back. She looked around at the carnage that had, minutes ago, been London’s most glamorous nightclub—the safest in the city, its manager boasted. The Blitz couldn’t touch you here, twenty feet belowground, so dance the night away.

“Philip,” she heard herself whispering, “Philip . . .”

Ken “Snakehips” Johnson and his band had packed the floor, the Café de Paris jammed with dancers as the trumpets blared. Even when the area between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square was being strafed by German bombers aboveground, here you could forget the air raids. Here you were safe. Perhaps it seemed heartless or foolhardy to dance when the world above was pounded by fire, but there were times you had to either dance or weep—and Osla chose to dance, her hand in her partner’s strong tanned one, his arm in its naval uniform snug about her waist.

“Marry me, Os,” he said into her ear, spinning her through the tango. “Before my leave’s up.”

“Don’t talk drip, Charlie.” She executed a flashy turn, smiling. “You only propose to me when you’re half-sauced.” Osla couldn’t help but wish she were doing the tango with Philip tonight, but he was still out to sea. Charlie was an old chum from her deb days, a young officer heading out into the teeth of the Atlantic. “No more marriage proposals, I mean it!”

“That Canadian heart of yours is frozen solid—”

Snakehips and the band swung into “Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!” and Osla threw her head back to sing along. Winter was over and warmth starting to creep back over Britain; the government might still have been on alert for a German invasion, but Osla hadn’t heard a peep in BP about any such operation moving forward. Maybe the headlines were still bleak, and maybe Osla was still bored to tears filing and binding in Hut 4—all right, not just bored but smarting from some drawling comment she’d overheard about Miss Senyard’s flock of dim-witted debs in pearls—but there was, overall, a great deal more to sing about in this dawning spring of 1941 then there had been in the autumn of ’40.

Snakehips sang away, dark skinned and slender in his white jacket, dancing with all the fluid grace that had won him his nickname. “He warbles it better than the Andrews Sisters,” Osla half shouted over the music, jitterbugging away in her green satin pleats, and she never heard the two bombs that hit the building aboveground, then rattled down the ventilation. She only saw the blue flash exploding before the bandstand, and in the instant before everything went away, saw Snakehips Johnson’s head blown from his shoulders.

And now here she was, rocking back and forth on the floor, evening dress covered in blood.

There was more light now, torches blinking on as survivors picked themselves up. A man in RAF uniform, trying to stand when one leg had been blown off at the knee . . . a boy who barely looked old enough to shave, trying to lift his moaning dance partner off the floor . . . a woman in a sequined gown crawling through the rubble . . . Charlie, Osla thought—there he was, faceup on the dance floor. The blast had exploded his lungs out onto the front of his naval uniform. Why had the bombs killed him and flung her clear? It made no sense. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t move.

Someone buffeted down the stairs, shouting, and suddenly there seemed to be a rush of feet and bouncing torch beams. “Please,” she tried to ask the man who had run past, who was now moving from body to body. “Can you help—” But the man wasn’t here to help; he was yanking bracelets off a woman’s bloodied arm, then moving to a disembodied torso by the stage and rummaging for a wallet.

It took her a long moment to see it for what it was. Looting, he was looting the bodies—a man had come into a room full of dead and wounded, and he was looting their jewelry—

“You—” Osla struggled upright, fury like glass shards in her mouth. “You—stop—”

“Gimme that—” A young man with sandy hair reached out, and pain bolted down Osla’s spine as she felt her earring torn away. “Gimme that too,” he said, fingers fastening around Philip’s jeweled insignia.

“You can’t—have it,” Osla heard herself scream, but her limbs were moving with jerky uncertainty, and she heard the strap of her dress tear.

Then a voice snarled, “Get the hell off her—” and a champagne bottle swung in a short arc through the flickering dark. There was a sound like a china plate hitting a brick floor, and Osla’s attacker dropped where he stood. She felt a gentle hand on her arm. “You all right, miss?”

“Philip,” she whispered. She still had the naval insignia, clenched so tight in her palm she could feel its edges cut.

“I’m not Philip, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Os—” she began, and her teeth chattered so violently she couldn’t finish her own name.

“Like Ozma of Oz?” The man’s voice was light, soothing. “Sit down, Ozma, and let me see if you’re hurt. Then we’ll get you back to the Emerald City, right as rain.” He had a torch; he guided her to the nearest chair. Her eyes were blurring so badly she couldn’t see what he looked like. She had a vague impression of lean height, dark hair, an army uniform under a greatcoat. Who’s Ozma of Oz?

The man who had attacked her lay limp among the rubble. “Is—he dead?” Osla jerked.

“I don’t care if he is. Christ, the blood in your hair . . . I can’t see if you’ve got a wound under there.” He picked up the champagne bottle he’d swung against the looter’s skull, popped the cork, and poured gently over Osla’s hair. Pinkened bubbles streamed down her neck, still cold from the ice bucket.

She shivered, starting to weep. “Philip . . .”