House of Secrets: A Bletchley Park Novella Read online

  House of Secrets

  A Bletchley Park Novella

  By W. Len

  House of Secrets: A Bletchley Park Novella is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  House of Secrets: A Bletchley Park Novella

  Copyright @ 2014 by W. Len

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  V3.0

  Dedicated to Lynn.

  You helped me believe in the impossible.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Friday, 2 February 1940

  Sunday, 4 February 1940

  Wednesday, 7 February 1940

  Monday, 12 February 1940

  Friday, 16 February 1940

  Saturday, 24 February 1940

  Thursday, 29 February 1940

  Sunday, 3 March 1940

  Monday, 11 March 1940

  Monday, 18 March 1940

  Saturday, 30 March 1940

  Monday, 1 April 1940

  Tuesday, 9 April 1940

  Friday, 12 April 1940

  Thursday, 25 April 1940

  Friday, 26 April 1940

  Monday, 6 May 1940

  Saturday, 11 May 1940

  Thursday, 16 May 1940

  Sunday, 26 May 1940

  Thursday, 30 May 1940

  Wednesday, 5 June 1940

  Friday, 7 June 1940

  Saturday, 8 June 1940

  Monday, 17 June 1940

  Friday, 21 June 1940

  Friday, 28 June 1940

  Wednesday, 11 July 1940

  Tuesday, 23 July 1940

  Thursday, 1 August 1940

  ?—1940

  ?—1940

  Friday, 4 November 1940

  Monday, 14 November 1940

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Friday, 2 February 1940

  There’s nothing like writing in a fresh diary. A new adventure deserves a virgin journal, and as I spread the pages, the clanging of rolling stocks massages my hinds. My seat faces the rear and affords an odd perspective: as my train moves, I feel like I am looking back in time while being hustled into the future. Adventure? Earlier, at a rural station surrounded by grassy pasture, I had a staring contest with a cow.

  Yes, dear journal, I’m leaving the hallowed halls of Balliol College, an idea that sprung from a talk with Uncle. I was there for one of my monthly visits, during which I soaked in his disapproval, while he drowned himself in port—rich stuff, thick as dragon’s blood. A glass made him dour, three glasses rendered him beetroot, half a flagon turned him into Saint George himself. “It’s 1912 all over again!” he roared, when I brought up Germany. “Hitler won’t stop even if Chamberlain licked his toes.” In Oxford, the last round of conscription saw the youngest marched off. The town was hollowed. Silence haunted the stone halls, no cheer to the hearth. Rumor was, Fellows like me would be spared.

  It turned out to be vain hope. “Tripe and balls!” Uncle had sneered when I told him what the others were saying. “Everyone will be conscripted. Everyone.”

  I fell silent. Then, I asked him what a man should do in such perilous times.

  “A man? A man should fight for his country. But a mouse? Aye, what should a mouse do?” He swirled his chalice with one hand, while I, meek supplicant, flushed. He chewed his moustache balefully but gradually yielded. “You’re the only son my brother had, bless his soul. Can’t have you tripping over your boots and shooting yourself in the gonads. Here’s what—” He set out my choices plainly. If I were conscripted, it’d be off to the European frontlines, helmet, gun, and kit. Or I could volunteer. Given my Oxford pedigree and his pull with the War Office, I could get a safer assignment.

  Once more unto the breach or seal up our walls with the English dead, sounds heroic but Shakespeare never fought a single battle. War’s not a pretty poem or play, it’s a multi-part tragedy.

  Outside, to my right, the countryside rises and falls like history. So far, my journey to Bletchley Park has consisted of a chat with the ticket inspector, a ruddy-faced man who waddles, his natural gait after long years on the rolling carriage. He had sized me up as he punched my ticket. “Not heading for the front, Sir?” A bayonet stab of sarcasm.

  It’s almost my stop. I already miss the cobbled serenity of Balliol. Dean Acton has promised to let me back once everything’s over. A month ago, all of us were toasting each other during New Year’s Eve. Now, the pages of the year have flipped, and I’m a refugee of war. Fate and its fickle favor.

  The train is shuddering into the station now. People are stirring, putting down their newspapers and reaching for the bags. Pencil down.

  Night

  A moth is circling the dim kerosene lamp screwed into the wall, its wings casting a fluttering shadow. I might as well write my first impression of the Park since I can’t sleep.

  After I alighted, the stationmaster directed me. “Right by the church, can’t miss the Park, you can’t. It’s the place all fenced up.” Three fellow travellers trudged up the sandy lane leading to a ramshackle guard post. There, a sour-faced Corporal checked our names against a list before escorting us towards a striking manor. The crenelated parapets were Gothic Victorian, while other aspects—big potted chimneys, crass gables, and an unsightly copper dome—were not. I half-expected the Mad Hatter to waltz out from the open doors with tea. “You’ve got ballrooms, dining rooms, billiard rooms, eh, what rooms ye’ll find,” our Corporal said, sounding disgusted, yet eager to impress.

  In a makeshift office on the ground floor, a moon-faced man was valleyed between two mounds of paper. “Sommers, Sommers…”—his pencil-darkened fingers tiptoed down a list—“…not a cryptanalyst, are you? Ah, here we go. Robin Sommers, Linguist Grade Two. You’re with Mr. Turing in the Cottage.” He scratched his ear. “He’s a bit of an odd bird, I heard, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  Afterward, a series of kind, if harried, souls directed me to the Cottage—out the trade entrance, around the horseless stable, pass the forlorn currying brushes on the wall, and across a rustic yard.

  The Cottage is a stumpy side house with a thick sloped roof. When I opened the door, I saw chaos. Half a dozen men argued around a chalkboard, jotting down obscure glyphs and numbers. People walked quickly, kicking reams of wastepaper on the floor. Tables and chairs arranged willy-nilly. In one corner, three girls hammered on typewriters. I stood very still, wondering whether I’d opened the wrong door, when someone waved. A foxlike face, gimlet eyes—Gordon Flint! Gordie! “Robin. I heard you were coming.” His teak pipe couldn’t conceal his grin. Rumor had him joining the government after Cambridge.

  We caught up as he guided me around the warren that’s the Cottage. He helps with the Augean stables of administration. “A Herculean effort to keep things neat, you think? Oh no, this is worse than that,” he told me with an elegant twirl of his pipe. When he heard I was to teach German and do translation work, he sighed. “What’s there to translate? The cryptanalysts haven’t had a lick of success breaking the German codes. Forgive me. You have no idea what I’m nattering about. You’ll pick it up, old boy…”

  By the time I got to my lodgings, a homely
cinnamon-bricked terrace house in one of the nearby villages, it was late. “Three crowns a week, Mr. Sommers. Upfront, if you please,” Mrs. Crumley, the landlady greeted me—picture Lady Macbeth with a greasy apron and protruding teeth. “I’ll also be taking your ration coupons.” My room is on the second of three floors. Inside, there was a tiny bed, which barely fitted me, and an oversized writing table. Nonetheless, it is spacious compared to my monkish cell at Balliol. The garden view is particularly pleasant: a careful mix of marigold, azaleas, and forsythia. Calla lilies form a vivid trim around a herb patch. I noticed an empty coop in the backyard. Had the chickens escaped, or were they eaten? Questions…

  The clock on the ground floor just sounded, ten dour gongs.

  Tomorrow, work begins. To sleep.

  Sunday, 4 February 1940

  I’m at St Mary’s for Evensong. The good Vicar Haggerty, a sincere man with a raspy voice, leads the flock. The bell has rung, the choir has chorused, and I’m writing this during an excruciatingly long sermon about charity and sacrifice, which I believe is linked to a roof leak that needs repair. I keep hoping someone will stand up and shout, “Alright, alright, I’ll fix it!” But no.

  I’m still getting used to the environs and the people. Yesterday, I finally spoke to Alan Turing.

  In the Cottage, everyone keeps wide berth around the cryptanalysts. Alan Turing is supposedly the brainiest. At work, I’ve spied him from afar: boyish features, a distant manner, and a shovel-like jaw. Gordie had informed me about the scholar from King’s College at Cambridge. “Do you know the difference between someone smart and a genius? You chat with someone smart and come away thinking you can achieve the insight he had, if only you have enough time and focus. With Turing...” He shook his head. “At Cambridge, he published a paper envisioning a machine, one which can solve math problems. Truly remarkable…He’s broken five cryptograms himself. Boggles the mind why his head doesn’t explode in a rainbow of numbers.” Gordie sounded mirthful, but I saw jealousy shade his expression.

  I’d thought Turing was a mathematician, not an engineer, but genius transcends, lifting itself clear of categories, and—mayhap—common sense. Our genius has a habitual disheveled look. The other day, the girls in the typing pool giggled when he came to work with a tie around his pants instead of a belt. He was quite insistent it worked better.

  With that as foreground, our paths crossed in mud.

  Last evening, I was on my way home, when my bicycle—a secondhand boneshaker Mrs. Crumley lent me—suddenly spun in frenzy, the chains tangling into a clump. I had no choice but to walk the bicycle home.

  The clouds had been wrung out, and some of the puddles were so deep they reflected the sky in its azure glory. A lesser man would have tired, but I’ve been blessed with a trim physique. As I marched the two miles, I wondered how I had transformed from the bicycle’s master into its slave.

  Lost in thought, I didn’t notice the cyclist coming from behind. It whizzed past, splattering mud on me, then went ahead, swallowed by a fold in the land. There was nothing I could do except flick the worst of the mud off me. Minutes later, the offending bicycle returned. I saw Turing pumping on the pedals, going uphill, his eyes frowning. He hopped off beside me, and his Wellington boots anointed me with more mud. “Sorry. You were hogging,” were his first words—he blamed me.

  I responded with an affronted look, and he missed it because he was too busy examining my bicycle. “Bit of a problem, there.”

  Next I knew, he was knee-deep in the muck, and prying at the bicycle chains. I was about to tell him that it’s impossible, I already tried untangling the knots, when he declared, “Done.” And they were.

  Before I could thank him, he hopped on his bicycle and shot off like a greyhound at the Belle Vue race. An imperious man.

  That’s my filthy run-in with greatness. Even now, I can still see his hair, flopped to one side revealing a rosy scalp as he knelt before me. I’d been tempted to run a finger down the furrow, just a little.

  The House of Secrets, that’s what some here nickname the Park. Haus der Geheimnisse. It sounds ominous—but everything German does nowadays.

  The sermon is over. Mrs. Crumley is seated two pews away, and I spy her pretending to fumble inside her velvet bag, then passing the offering bag without putting anything in it. Sly, very sly. Now, the bag is about to head this way, so I better stop writing. Amen for now.

  Wednesday, 7 February 1940

  This morning, a messenger barged into the middle of a German class that was going surprisingly well, considering the lack of primers and any teaching experience on my part.

  “Sommers?” the Scottish man-at-arms barked, before handing me a memo marked “Urgent.”

  The “urgent” summons ended up with me having a cosy tea session with Colonel Patrick Windermere, the family friend, who got me into Bletchley Park.

  The good Colonel had commandeered one of the libraries in the manor, and that was where I found him, swinging his walking cane like a conductor’s baton at a pair of soldiers struggling to hang a large map of Europe.

  I took the chance to look around. I had expected books galore in the library: gilded leather tomes, vellum-bound pamphlets, towering stacks. Instead, the shelves were bare. Lavish wallpaper with floral motifs, left by previous owners, lined the walls. An oversized rug, which had aspirations to fit a grander room, dominated the floor. On the wall, in pride of place, above a series of regiment pennants, was a colossal Bengal tiger head, some souvenir of the British Raj. It looked majestic, graceful, and very dead.

  Like my uncle, the Colonel has the swarthy hide of those who’ve spent many years in the colonies. When he noticed me, he dismissed the others and sat on an ornate armchair. “Settling in, Sommers?” He twitched his cane for me to join him.

  Over the last week, I had gleaned much from Gordie. The Park is the headquarters for G.C.C.S.: the Government Cypher and Code School. The Germans have a military cipher called Enigma, and the G.C.C.S. is an assembly of diverse talents to work on it and other encryption protocols. Dilly Knox, a senior cryptanalyst and World War One veteran, doubles as a scholar in ancient languages. Others are chess champions, crossword experts—I even met an anthropologist and a distinguished oceanologist over tea and crumpets the other day.

  As for soldiers, there were few. Before I arrived, I’d hoped for a camp filled with trim, uniformed men with mustaches. The ones I’ve seen so far are less impressive than I expected. Disappointing—yet I felt relieved. Most likely, it is better this way. Safer.

  The Colonel poured tea from a bone china service as he spoke. “I don’t get half of what those chaps are doing. They look at their sheets—these cryptograms—and slide their measuring rods and twelve kinds of foolishness. War is won on the field. By courage. By blood.” He spoke with some heat. “If I were the Park’s Commander, I’d pack these men off to the front. We could use more bodies there.” Then, he sipped his tea and calmed down. “How is your uncle?” From a saucer, he picked up an aromatic clove cigarette and waved it at me. “Picked this habit up in Singapore. He was my officer in the 6th Signals Battalion. Did he tell you about 1915? A cursed year. A native unit heard we were shipping them to Europe to fight and mutinied. Doesn’t matter how you try, darkies will never be civilized. I once witnessed one of them gnawing a man’s finger off for his ring, for God’s sake. When I was stabbed in the knee, your uncle was the one who fended them off me. A solo bayonet versus a ring of machetes. I’ll never forget it. The Windermeres pay our debts.”

  My uncle a hero? I’d never imagined that. Sommers the Original was at the Battle of Bosworth. While Richard the Third sallied to his death, family lore has my ancestor charging to safety behind a hillock.

  “I hear you’re the brains of the family, Sommers. What were you studying?” Over the years, my uncle has given me much grief about picking Oxford over the family trade of looting the colonies. The Colonel struck me as a man from the same cast, so I deflected his question and enquired afte
r his family. His face lit up; turns out our Colonel is a family man. His son is an attaché to some Admiral, and his daughter is engaged to a certain Tom Blightley, a naval gunnery officer from Yorkshire—“He didn’t have a chance once she trained her sights,” he guffawed.

  Before I left, he trumpeted how we’d “spank Germany six ways to Sunday,” and I left thinking it would be weeks, a month maybe, before I was back at Balliol College in Oxford, ensconced in the library.

  However, Gordie gunned my hope down at a drinking session afterward.

  The Dunscombe Arms is our drinking hole of choice. Mahogany-paneled walls; a plank floor streaked by dried tar caulking the seams; windows hooded by blackout curtains—one can blend easily into the dark woodwork. Gordie spends most of his evenings here because his landlady doesn’t have a wireless.

  Since Britain declared war, everyone has been eager for news. On many a night, Mrs. Crumley and I listen to the wireless while Belle, her cat, roosts atop the set. There’s a sense of solidarity—millions in their homes or pubs, listening to the same radio broadcasts, which speak of our naval triumphs. However, Gordie was dismissive of these broadcasts and the Colonel’s prognostications.

  “My dear man, we’ve barely started. How can we be close to victory?” He sniffed. “When you read your books, do they go from beginning to end in a flip? War’s the same, except numbers do the talking. Who has more guns? Who has more planes or tanks? Who has more bodies on the ground? There’s a beginning, a middle, an end, and trust me, we are far from that.”

  “But…the Colonel, the BBC, even Churchill said it wouldn’t be long.” I brought up the recent broadcast where Winston Churchill, Admiralty Lord, announced half the German U-boats were already sunk.

  “I’ll be the last one to say he’s lying, except that’s codswallop. Hitler’s waiting for winter’s thaw before he begins the ground assault. It’ll be a painful, brutish grind if we don’t break Enigma. Let’s change the topic. This is too depressing.”