That gnawing fear for Philip had been the final straw that tipped Osla into begging for more vital work than copying, binding, and filing. If she was going to hurt this much, be this afraid, she was damned well going to be doing something more important.

“Wasn’t it terrible seeing those Italian prisoners in the newsreel?” she heard herself asking. “The ones our ships fished out of the sea. I keep wondering how many drowned.”

The others looked at her, surprised. “They’re Eyeties,” said a girl with a Veronica Lake wave. “If they didn’t want to get sunk by British destroyers, they shouldn’t have been cheering Mussolini.”

“Maybe not, but . . .” Osla trailed off, frustrated. The Café de Paris explosion seemed to have blasted a layer off her polished surface, left her easy prey not only to fear but to sympathy. Looking at the bleak-faced Italians in the newsreel had nearly brought her to weeping, knowing that for every one plucked from the sea, another two or three had surely burned or drowned. So many across the world dying every day. Osla couldn’t stop thinking of them: English, French, her own fellow Canadians, Australians, Poles . . . yes, even Germans and Italians. They were enemies, but they bled, too. They died. When was it bally well going to stop?

She’d probably know before the newsreels did, when it ran across the table in front of her for translating. There was small, cold comfort in that—that she’d clawed her way to a more vital place in BP’s ladder, and here she might know first that the war was over. Even if only by minutes.

“COME IN.” A worried-looking woman in an old green cardigan answered Osla’s knock. “Sheila Zarb, delighted to meet you . . .” Harry’s wife rushed off again before anyone could thank her for hosting tonight’s Tea Party. Osla smelled stewed tea as she moved into the shabby little house. A child was roaring in the next room.

“Ah, domestic life,” mused Giles, ducking in after Osla. “Why wait for death?”

“Don’t be beastly,” Osla retorted, slightly disgusted with herself for noticing that Harry’s wife didn’t have nearly the educated vowels he did. You don’t be horrid either, Osla scolded herself as she and Giles crowded down the narrow passage. And then Osla really felt like a worm, because Sheila Zarb reappeared carrying her howling son, his sticklike legs hanging against his mother’s side encased in metal braces like torture contraptions. Polio, surely—Osla had gone to boarding school with a girl who had braces like that.

“Welcome to the madhouse.” Harry emerged into the hall behind his wife, scooping the child out of her arms. “Come in, parlor’s that way. Christopher, chap, I know you hate your braces, but you’ve got to wear them.”

Harry’s son narrowed his eyes mutinously, still bawling. “What a darling,” Osla managed to say over the din. “How old?”

“Turned three in January.”

The boy looked far too small for three, thin and wasted when he should have been sturdy and bouncing. He had Harry’s jet-black hair and eyes but was sallow from ill health.

“I know what this sprat needs.” Mab squeezed out of the parlor behind Harry, balancing a glass of sherry and the festooned top hat. She addressed Christopher, completely at ease. “Want to wear the Mad Hatter’s topper? It’s magic, you know.”

Little Christopher stopped yelling to consider. Mab plunked the hat on his head, Harry gave her a grateful look, and they all maneuvered into the parlor, where more Mad Hatters were passing toast and discussing Mired: Battlefield Verses by Francis Gray. “I prefer Siegfried Sassoon,” someone was complaining.

“‘Altar’ is my favorite sonnet of Gray’s, too eerie for words—”

“Who cares about his poetry? I want dirt on the poet.” Giles turned his angelic smile on Mab. “Dish, faerie queene. You had dinner with the chap, and Bletchley Bletherings says he’s taking you out again next week—”

“To a concert, nosy—”

“Sorry!” Beth slipped in, flushed and late. “I had to let the dog out. If he has an accident inside, Mum swears she’ll get rid of him.”

“Beth!” Harry maneuvered his huge frame onto the nearest chair, keeping Christopher and his braces deftly balanced on one knee. “Haven’t seen you since, well, you know.” He grinned, and Beth flushed, looking into her teacup Harry was filling one-handed.

“Well, well,” Giles murmured in Osla’s ear, alight with mischief. “Has our wallflower got a crush?”

“Don’t talk slush,” said Osla, who had been wondering exactly the same thing.

“Maybe he’s got one, too.” Giles’s voice dropped even further, inaudible under the buzz of conversation to anyone but Osla. “Our Beth’s a clever girl, and something tells me Harry doesn’t get much brainy conversation from the missus.”

“You infernal snob—”

Sheila reappeared, carrying an apron under one arm. “Sorry to leave you with bath and bedtime,” she said low voiced to her husband as the Mad Hatters passed the teapot. “The canteen manager is insisting I cover—”

“Go on.” Harry passed a hand over his son’s black hair. “I’ve got him.”

Sheila leaned down and pressed her lips to Christopher’s cheek, and Osla found herself pushing back tears, looking at all the tenderness being poured on the scrawny child curled into his father’s arms with complete trust. She’d have given up both legs altogether for a childhood home where there were warm laps to be counted on and kisses on the cheek at night—for any kind of home now. Something else she’d learned, the night after Café de Paris’s destruction—how little of a home she really had.

Well, so what? Osla told herself fiercely. You have so much else. You even finally have a job that matters. In a world at war, surely it was greedy to want both—a job that mattered, and a home to welcome you afterward.

So Osla pinned a smile in place as the discussion got under way, and dug out a scrap of paper to jot ideas for the next Bletchley Bletherings, which she typed up every Wednesday. A lively discussion on Francis Gray’s battlefield verses, though BB wonders if war poetry is quite The Thing for morale. If you finished your shift translating, say, a U-boat casualty list, do you really want to discuss the crushed idealism of a lost generation drowned in Flanders mud as depicted in harrowing iambic pentameter? Or would you rather read some Jeeves & Wooster?

Copies of BB were invariably zinging through every hut in Bletchley Park by Friday, followed by snorts of laughter. Osla couldn’t make herself laugh these days, but by God she could dash off a weekly gossip sheet that had the whole Park fizzing.

Chapter 21

* * *

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, MAY 1941

* * *

Sound of singing heard from Knox’s section recently—intoxicated singing, if BB is any judge . . .

* * *

Not a one of you fillies can carry a tune in a bucket,” Dilly remarked. “Thank God you can break codes.” He conducted them with his pipe as they roared on with the next verse of his poem, specially written for the occasion:

When Cunningham won at Matapan

By the grace of God and MARGARET—

It was thanks to that girl, the admiral said,

That our aeroplanes straddled their target!

Peggy Rock shook her head smiling as Beth and the others shouted her name. Every woman in the Cottage had a verse of her own.

When Cunningham won at Matapan

By the grace of God and BETH—

She’s the girl who found the planes

Our ships did then evadeth!

“I didn’t really find the planes,” Beth objected, “I found the coordinates—”

“Try making coordinates rhyme with anything!” Peggy replied.

“Estimates,” Beth said instantly. “Bifurcates. Expectorates—”

Peggy threw a wine cork at her. It was the first real opportunity they’d all had to celebrate their triumph: during those heady days after the victory, there had been new work to do. But today, Dilly had sent Beth and Peggy down to the Eight Bells pub to bring back as much wine as they could carry: Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham himself, hero of Matapan, was coming to Bletchley Park to personally thank Dilly and his team.

When they finished singing, they raised their glasses to their boss. “To Dilly Knox,” said Peggy. “The reason we’re all here.”

Dilly took his glasses off, blinking rather hard. “Well, now,” he said. “Well, now—”

They crowded around him in a rush. Beth pushed down her dislike of being touched so she could hug everyone within reach. Her throat was so choked with feeling she could hardly breathe.

“Oh, lord,” someone called in sudden panic, “is that the admiral? I swear I heard a staff car—”