“Sheila gave him what for,” Harry said, as if reading her mind.

“Good,” said Beth. “You should have stayed anyway.”

“It’s his birthday.” Harry began to pace. “He wasn’t throwing a tantrum or trying to be cruel. Boys that age, the boys he goes to school with . . . They play war, they brag about whose father is off killing the most Nazis. Christopher’s already a wog and a cripple”—he spat the words out with savage precision—“which puts him at the mercy of any bully who wants some fun. And on top of everything else, he doesn’t even have a father he can be proud of.”

“Yes, he does,” Beth said.

“He has no idea what I do.”

“Sheila doesn’t know either, but she knows it’s important.”

“Christopher’s six. All he knows is that the other boys torment him because his dad’s a coward, and I can’t protect him. And when he asks me why I’m not fighting, I don’t have an answer.” Harry dropped into the chair opposite Beth, face bleak. “The women working at BP—no one gives you dirty looks because you’re not in uniform. Strangers don’t stop you in the street and ask how you can hold up your head every day when other able-bodied young men are dying. Blokes don’t give you a shove and say You don’t belong in this country, and you won’t even fight for it.”

“I’m only allowed this work because there’s a war on,” Beth said, “and I still don’t get paid what you’re paid, Harry. Don’t tell me I’ve got it easy.”

“I’m not,” he snapped, eyes flaring. She held his gaze, not backing down, and he reached across the table, enveloping her hand in his bigger one. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t whine like this.”

She studied him. “It’s not just Christopher, is it?”

Harry looked down at their hands, spreading her fingers like a fan. “If I’d known coming to Bletchley Park meant I could never fight—that none of us BP chaps would ever be allowed to enlist, because they can’t risk us being captured—I’m not sure I’d have come. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

“You wish you’d joined the RAF and died somewhere over Kent in ’Thirty-Nine?” Beth asked, incredulous. “Or been a gunner and got captured at Dunkirk? That would have been a better use of your brain?”

“Being clever shouldn’t exempt me from danger. I’m not saying they aren’t right to keep me from joining up now—the Park’s secrecy is more important. But I wish I could have had the chance to do more than I’ve done.”

“Are you saying you have no impact on this war? Estimate how many transports have crossed the ocean safely because you broke the U-boat traffic.” She paused. “Anyone can be fodder for machine guns, but only a few can break top-level ciphers. This war needs your skull intact. Let someone else get blown up—better them than you.”

“You’re not saying we’re better than the boys who get blown up—”

“A lot of them, yes. You are. We are. Our souls aren’t worth more to God, but our brains are worth more to Britain.”

Harry looked at her a moment. “God knows I love you, Beth,” he said. “But sometimes I find it hard to like you.”

“What?” She felt like she’d been slapped.

“Our brains work a certain way—a way that makes us useful. And yes, we save lives. But it is colossally goddamned arrogant to look down on those lives we save because their brains don’t work like ours.”

“It’s not arrogant to know what we’re worth, Harry. And it’s ridiculous to think that shooting our enemies is a nobler or more effective part of the fight than decrypting their battle plans. We might fight with paper and pencil, but that doesn’t make it less of a fight.”

“I know that. I know the fight is worthwhile. But it’s hollowed me out until I’ve wondered if I’ll end up in a padded cell, and it’s put a target on my son’s back, and I’ll be damned if I pretend I don’t have regrets.” He pulled away, rising and beginning to pace again.

“I wouldn’t have you if not for this job,” Beth said, feeling cold. “Is that something else you regret?”

Harry stopped. She saw the tension in his broad back. “No,” he said quietly.

But . . . ? Beth thought.

“I envy you sometimes.” Harry turned, leaning an elbow against the doorjamb. “How you sail through every day, oblivious to everything but work. I can’t decide if you really don’t care, or you care but you’re so focused it all ceases to exist as soon as you fall down the rabbit hole.”

“Care? About what?”

“The war, as it exists outside a stack of ciphers. Your friends, whom I know you love but you don’t pay much attention to—”

“I do, too—”

“Mab’s drinking herself sick in the Recreation Hut after every shift. She’s hanging by a thread. Haven’t you bloody well noticed?”

“. . . No.” Mab was unhappy, of course she was, but hanging by a thread? Mab who still trimmed Beth’s hair in its Veronica Lake wave every month, who had taken her to London for her contraceptive device. “I didn’t realize,” Beth said in a small voice.

“And I just told you I love you, and you didn’t even blink.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Do you love me, Beth?”

“You also said you found it hard to like me,” Beth rallied. “That might have hit a little harder.”

“When you’re clicking along like a clockwork mechanism completely oblivious to everyone around you, yes, I find that hard to like. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I do. Fairly incurably.”

Beth looked down, fiddling with the earphones on the table, feeling one of her persimmon blushes sweep over her face. “I don’t—know what to say to that,” she said finally. “Or what to do with it. We can’t change anything. I don’t want to change anything. So why do we have to discuss it?”

Harry came over, tilted up her face, and kissed her gently. “Beth,” he said, “you don’t know what to do with it because it doesn’t come in five-letter clusters.”

Chapter 56

* * *

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, FEBRUARY 1944

* * *

Dutch gin,” as served in the Recreation Hut, bears no resemblance to either Holland or gin. It’s drinkable only when you’ve had the worst day in the world. For example, the kind of day BB had, upon coming across the phrase zur Endl?sung in the course of work. It referenced a transportation of Jews, and it means “for the final solution.” BB has never come across that particular expression before, but it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to fill in the possibilities, does it? [Draft destroyed unread by anyone but its author, and replaced with humorous write-up of BP chess tournament]

* * *

Four months? God help us.”

“Preparations are well under way.”

“Better hope so . . .”

The conversation in Commander Travis’s office retreated as Mab picked up the tea tray and a stack of reports, closing the door behind her. It was all anyone had talked about since the year had turned: the Allied invasion of France, which Mab now knew was planned for June or thereabouts. She was also privy to the exact number of Lancaster bombers and Flying Fortresses headed to flatten Germany’s airfields in long-term preparation for the invasion. Mab supposed indifferently that she was better informed about Britain’s war plans than the cabinet.

Ditching the tea tray, she went to lock up the files she’d just collected. Nothing important was ever to be left lying about unlocked, even for a moment—Mab knew one of these cabinets had reports about assassination attempts against Hitler, and reports about the new and improved computing machines here at BP that would supposedly crack Enigma traffic even faster than the bombes. But she didn’t think about any of it. Her brain wasn’t required in this new job. She was in administration now; filing, typing, and organizing records. Pure secretarial work; something to get up for each morning, but requiring no deep thought or focus.

Mab came off shift at last, and ten minutes later had her first drink sitting in front of her at the Recreation Hut. She downed two Dutch gins in quick succession, then ordered a pint of lager and sipped slowly. Two quick, one slow; that was the ticket. Get drunk too quickly and she’d end up weeping into her glass; too slow, and she wouldn’t get as numb as she needed in order to sleep. Two quick, one slow—repeat for four hours, until it came time to sway dizzily toward the transport bus. She was fine. It was all fine.