House of Secrets: A Bletchley Park Novella Read online

  He tamped his pipe, then told me about an Earl’s daughter he met. The Park’s a highly secret installation so the authorities recruit debutantes to staff the typing pool; they’re considered more trustworthy than the working class. “You’re an Honorable, I said to her, and this wench, she replies, ‘It depends. Often, I am very dishonorable.’” He slapped the table in mirth. “Robin, how about joining us next time? She has friends. Us Malborough boys have to stick together, no matter what. Right? Damn right!” He winked, so I laughed dutifully.

  Gordie and I were close in school even though he was two years ahead. As a callow youth, I’d adored him until my feelings matured into a more platonic ideal. I couldn’t help feeling a curdling envy as he spoke. War or no war, love goes on—for some.

  Monday, 12 February 1940

  Woke up with a bang this morning. I was deep in a dream about sweaty soldiers doing star jumps beside the Park’s lagoon-like pond. “Faster! Higher!” a drill instructor shouted, and I flailed along… until I heard a pounding sound. “Come out, Mr. Sommers. Don’t you have work?”

  I’d forgotten to tell Mrs. Crumley today’s my day off.

  Now, I’m writing at the breakfast table. Underneath, Belle is on his hinds, his tiddly claws snagging my cotton pants. He has this most insistent way of twitching his whiskers, demanding I slip him a crumble of egg yolk. Rumor is we’ll be restricted to powdered eggs soon.

  Since I’ve spent a few weeks here, my day has fallen into a semblance of routine. Six days a week, I’m at my desk or teaching in a makeshift classroom, eight a.m. to four p.m. On my way in, I have to cycle pass the manor, the Cottage, and half the huts—that’s the nickname for the barn-like structures being erected to hold the increasing number of people working here. Everyone will shift from the Cottage to one of those eventually, I heard. Hut Two is up already, a place where cheerful debutantes in aprons serve tea amidst posters with limericks like Loose lips sink ships!, and Keep an eye for a spy!—but I digress.

  Dear journal, what else should I tell you about life here?

  As a translator, the German military lexicon represents a challenge. Since I began, I’ve learned the Wehrmacht is composed of the Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, or the army, air force, and navy. Each military arm has its own vocabulary and abbreviations to memorize.

  In my role as teacher though, it’s a different matter. The rote recitation of verbs and nouns and strictest grammar is stick-dry, and the students, gang-pressed into class, get listless, so I try my best to break the tedium.

  Yesterday, a cryptanalyst broke a message, a stroke of luck as the Enigma keys vary by the day, by operator, by military unit. To demonstrate the importance of our lessons, I enquired and received permission to show the message to my class. One of my students, a freckled-face recruit had a go translating the German. “This is about the internment of…Untermensch… Sub-human has to be the closest approximation isn’t it?” he asked before stopping. “You mean it’s true… what they’re doing to the Jews?”

  He was referring to the dark rumors, which have swirled about the Park over the last week, whispered stories of increasingly cruel treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. None of it was in the newspapers, so it was unclear where these rumors were from. In the Park, everyone has been warned not to pass on hearsay or talk about work. Many follow the rules to some degree, but everyone is so desperate for information there is a furtive trade in rumors. Every innuendo, every scrap of news, is shared among small circles of trust, spreading like quiet ripples…and this message seemed to confirm at least one of the rumors.

  “How…how can they?” my student said. “How can such things happen?”

  Convenient and shameful ignorance—my uncle claims that is what has led our country to this pathetic and perilous state.

  I thought of Munich—I’d stayed there several years ago with a mentor, a Professor Kleck. The rise of the Nationalist Socialists was easy to ignore then. In fact, many cheered them on. Everyone I knew made a habit of saying “Heil Hitler.” It was a greeting like the tip of a hat. Even the charwoman, who tidied my bed, greeted me with a palm flung forward. On one occasion, I saw a tailor wearing the Star of David taken away. I’d ducked down a cobbled street and pretended to tie my shoelaces. I had wanted to believe that the tailor had been guilty of something. In hindsight, perhaps I was guilty instead.

  “That’s why my brother says the only good Hun’s a dead one!” a wag finally broke the silence and everyone agreed. I, too, was swept up by the swell of inflamed, indignant rage. I wanted to string up the first German I could lay my hands on, off with his head!

  On that note, we were about to end class, when a harried officer rushed in to retrieve the message. Apparently, someone had made a mistake passing the decode to my class. The officer sternly reminded us of the Official Secrets Act, and we swore not to mention anything.

  Thus, more and more things get buried in this House of Secrets.

  Belle keeps clawing my leg for food. Here’s a macabre anecdote: earlier, I’d asked Mrs. Crumley about Belle’s missing foreleg, and she’d told me Goering bit him.

  The so-called Goering is a piebald rat, part of an infamous trio, which includes Hitler, the runt with an evil squeak, and Himmler, a rat with droopy eyes. The three devils have the run of the neighborhood, I was told.

  “After the bite, ’is leg was all pus so I’d cut it off me-self,” Mrs. Crumley finished, and my hair stood on end. I’d been curious why Belle runs from the kitchen whenever - Crumley is there. Actually, run is the wrong verb. Hobble rapidly is a better description. Now, I know why, and wish I didn’t.

  There are many things better left unsaid.

  Friday, 16 February 1940

  Today, I saw a handsomely bound, hand-tooled copy of Brothers Grimm Folktales going for two pennies at the bookstore. I understood the discount later, when I overheard someone declare he’d burned his collection of Wagner’s vinyl recordings. “A trifling sacrifice!”

  Populism, that implacable fever of the masses. Next up at the stake: Beethoven? Spinoza? Goethe? How will this fire spread? How did the Germans go from producing philosophy and music and beauty to spreading terror and tyranny? It’s a vexing question, the nature of evil. Are Germans born evil? Are they all evil?

  I have been thinking about the incident in class over the last few days, and the memory of my sweeping anger against the Germans vexes me. It doesn’t feel right to hate an entire people. Are we sure they are all evil? Or is it another form of convenience? It seems to me we affix labels on others to reassure ourselves we’re different… yet the cemetery of history proves otherwise. We have our Colonials, the French had the Dreyfuss affair, our brethren across the Atlantic wiped out the Redskins with blankets and the pox. Even before the Nazis rose to power, everyone shunned the Jews and the gypsies. The Bible says we are a people damned by the Fall. Are we all evil?

  Gordie says he is forming a discussion club, similar to those in Oxford, where people can discuss weighty issues and exercise the intellect. I cannot wait.

  Saturday, 24 February 1940

  I’ve never been as disturbed in my life.

  Early in the week, the Colonel summoned me. This time, it was pure business. An Admiralty officer had been caught selling the Germans information about the Park.

  “Good thing we stopped him—he’d have guided the Luftwaffe’s bombs here. He was shot in the chase. However, we may have his handler. John Benson…It’s a common enough name. Too common. That’s grounds for suspicion. Spies evade detection by pretending to be one of us. Admiralty’s worried there might be more moles so we’re handling this. Discreetly.” He handed me a velvet journal bound by an elastic band. “I want it all. His favorite food, drink, women, everything. You’ll be surprised what we can pry free once we have a bit. The Kraut will confess everything, when we’re through.”

  On the list of transgressions, reading someone’s journal ranks high for me, but when the Colonel tapped his cane, I bowed my head, afraid
to defy him.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the book. What I didn’t expect was a grocery list: vegetables, milk, eggs—your typical fare. Other pages had neatly-taped bills with annotations in a stylish cursive: ‘Paid’ or ‘Unsatisfactory’ or ‘Fresh on Tuesdays.’ After thumbing through a few random pages, I flipped the journal to the front and began following the breadcrumb trail laid out by this meticulous man.

  During lunch, I ignored the listless banter in the canteen. As I forked the Welsh rarebit, I kept picturing a man in a tweed jacket and a fashionable silk-banded hat. Was our spy a Lothario? Or did his interests lie…elsewhere? Men like us are good at evasion.

  After lunch, I was midway through the book, when the dots coalesced into a clearer picture that shook me. It was most uncanny feeling I felt, or as Herr Freud would call it, the sense of unheimlich. The man ate at The Savoy on Wheatstone Street; I go there whenever I’m in London. Each time, he had a glass of claret and roast chicken; that is my usual order too. When I saw his order for a pair of correspondent shoes, I felt relieved, because he went to a different cobbler—then, I realized his shoemaker was right across from mine. He’s a size 9. So am I.

  The most eerie moment occurred when I spied the receipt from Meccano, dated last December. Near Christmas, I had visited the toy store. I remember entering just as a man, his face concealed by an oversized Homburg, made his way out. When his shoulder brushed mine, I’d felt a burning sensation. I vividly recall the rush of lukewarm and cold air swirling around, as the door opened. The clockwork dolls on the shelves gazed blindly at me, as their ragged heads tick-tocked side to side. I was seized by an impulse to grab the man’s hat, to unveil his face, but the shopkeeper intercepted me before I could.

  Then, the door slammed shut.

  As I re-read the journal entry, I kept wondering: was that him? Unfortunately, an ink stain covered the day on the receipt. I’ll never know.

  After work, I went to the Dunscombe Arms and met Gordie. I confided in him about the Colonel’s assignment and he didn’t seem surprised; he seems to know everything. “What will happen to him?” I asked, before I decided I didn’t want to know.

  Too late. Gordie circled his neck with his fingers. I must have looked stunned, because he hmmed. “Who’s this? You’re not Robin, you’re his conscience.”

  I thought of a penciled note as I spoke. “The Colonel seems certain of his guilt. If he is guilty…what will happen to his family? They’re innocent.”

  “Everyone’s guilty of something, if you dig hard enough.” Gordie rapped his pipe on the table. “It’s wartime. They’ll round everyone up and incarcerate them. Why?”

  Bespoke doll dress knitting (1s. 2p) with card & msg: To my beloved niece. Happy B’day Bessie! From Uncle Johnny. The note had seemed personal. It seemed so…normal. There had been a delivery address in Suffolk. Should I have mentioned this to the Colonel? I thought of my own niece and a surge of sympathy overwhelmed me. I couldn’t stand the thought of implicating an entire family like this. In the classics, Antigone had chosen her conscience over the law too.

  “I…I was musing,” I told Gordie, firming my resolve to conceal the note.

  “Muse quietly, or you’ll get in trouble. Everyone’s jumpy.” Gordie told me how the different cogs of the British war machine—the Foreign Office, Admiralty, Army, the Secret Service—are at loggerheads. I asked how he knew these things, and he tapped his nose. “Ears and eyes, old boy, ears and eyes. Don’t repeat what I tell you to anyone, you understand?”

  Everyone’s keeping things from each other in the damnable House of Secrets.

  Last night, I dreamt of my niece winding a clockwork doll. When I stepped closer, I noticed the slack-jawed doll had the same face as her. After waking up, I had prayed fervently.

  The word, doppelgänger—have others encountered their doubles before? Why else a word for it?

  I remember the doll’s wooden jaws clicking open, shut, open, as it sang, yet I heard…nothing.

  Thursday, 29 February 1940

  An odd day in a leap year.

  Today, I came back from work to find a new tenant. The Colonel had informed me his daughter, Ruth, would be joining me at Mrs. Crumley’s. He didn’t explain why. “I’m counting on you. The Windermeres never forget our debts.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant he owed me one for this or I was paying him back.

  Ruth took the room above mine. Over a tiresome dinner, she spoke at length, prefacing everything with Papa this or Papa that.

  “Papa says London will be bombed. I hated the mansion. Mother’s always griping, and there were bats in the chimney!” She tittered on and on. “When I told him I couldn’t stay another day, he sent me here. I hear you’re a family friend…”

  After dinner, Ruth circled me while I read in the parlor, her pale hands crossed behind like a drill sergeant. I hate my reading interrupted, yet despite several indelicate harrumphs, she haunted the room. Finally, she bent over to study the cover of my book. I smelled her heart-shaped plaited hair, a mist of tea roses, as she plucked the book from my fingers. “I’m bored. Tell me about Oxford and its Colleges,” she demanded, holding my book hostage behind her.

  After a moment of inner struggle, I conceded. Preux chevalier—that’s the code of the Sommers. As rude as she was, I indulged her by reminiscing about the courtyards, the threnody of the chapel bells, the pleasant tea-and-biscuit breaks with batty old Professor Tolkien and his crackpot theories about eugenics. I was just starting to enjoy the recollections, when she yawned. “I’m tired,” she announced, and bade me goodnight. Well!

  I fear our Ruth is a budding narcissist. I can’t shake the feeling she means trouble.

  Sunday, 3 March 1940

  A most trying few days. There has been a flurry of new students in the last few days. While many learned German before, most have not conversed in years. It falls on me to re-educate them, and the teaching has gotten frenetic. Thank goodness for Sunday.

  After church and a long stroll with Gordie today, I’d gone to Bletchley Town to find a pay phone. It was dark as the streetlights had blackout hoods to dim their lights from enemy bombers, and I nearly stumbled several times on my way to call my sister. Inside the booth, the Bakelite phone felt cold and heavy, as a tired operator put me through to Ravenloch.

  I’ve never visited my brother-in-law’s highland fort before; I can only assume it’s guarded by battalions of sheep. My sister thinks it’s the safest place, because only the Scots think the whiskey stills are of strategic importance.

  “What’s your area like? Do tell. Any girls?” she asked after a few pleasantries. She’s of the Austen school: penury, prison, war, it didn’t matter, everyone must marry, and she harped on, until I went Wilde. “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence,” I quoted, which peeved her. “Dear brother, Oscar Wilde liked men. He’s hardly an authority on this matter.”

  They say George V recommended suicide to a close friend of his for his tendencies. What good can confession bring?

  Monday, 11 March 1940

  At the beginning of the week, Gordie had told me the discussion club was set to meet at the Dunscombe Arms. Today, we finally met up, all thirteen of us. When I got there, Gordie was cajoling the dour Scottish pub-keeper to shift the tables in the backroom. “Ye’ll din want nae trouble from me, ye’ll be keeping it down,” the man said gruffly after he was done heaving things around.

  Turing was there too. For some reason, he had a gas mask slung around his neck. It reminded me of a shriveled head relic in the British Museum, one purloined from some aboriginal tribe. “Hullo, hullo, as you say to the two-headed man.” Gordie greeted him. We’d all been issued a gas mask in case of a chemical attack, but why did Turing wear his? A few of the men pointed at him and sniggered softly, to which Turing paid little heed.

  When he saw me, he nodded. I had been so distracted by his open-shirt neck and the bulging eyes of his gas mask, his gesture caught me by surprise. I froze. Befo
re I could gather my wits to respond, someone else hailed him away. Poorly done, Robin, I thought, score none for élan.

  “That Alan,” Gordie said as he sidled up to me, rolling his eyes, “He says the mask is good for his hay fever. Hah. No surprise that one’s never found a girlfriend.” Somewhere distant, a timorous campanile rang. “Everyone says he’s a boffin. And that way he stutters sometimes! His friends claims he’s socially inept—but I know his secret, oh yes, I’ve been watching him closely.”

  “What’s that?” I bent close, trying not to appear too eager.

  “Arrogance. He thinks people should excuse his manners because he’s a genius.” Then, we noticed Ian Fleming, a junior naval intelligence officer, approaching us. Gordie thought him a dolt, I knew, but he was all smiles as he shook hands with the puppy-eyed man.

  In the backroom, Gordie held court at a long slab table. People swirled about. The scene reminded me of the Last Supper: Jesus with open arms, Thomas fraught with doubt, everyone gesticulating. I was musing who Judas was among our lot, when Gordie murmured for me to take minutes. I licked my pencil as he tossed a topic into the air like a tennis ball: where did we go wrong with the Germans?

  It was a contentious debate right from the start.

  John Hughes, a dour cryptanalyst, started by citing the lax attitude towards the Germans after the Great War, arguing we should have been harsher. Peter Moran, a meek archivist from the National Gallery, surprised everyone when he argued that ruinous reparations and oppressions imposed on Germany led to the Nazis rising. People nodded as the arguments bounced around. Hughes rebutted by pointing out the German disposition bent towards evil. Someone reminded all that the British royal family had Teutonic roots.

  Halfway, the person beside me left. Turing replaced him, beer mug in hand.