House of Secrets: A Bletchley Park Novella Read online

  Sometimes, I fear my crowd gets a little pretentious and precious for our own good.

  When Gordie called for a break, I asked whether he understood half of what went on. Riceman, overhearing us, lumbered over. “Hoho, Asquith said that Balliol men are effortlessly superior.” He clapped my shoulders under his shaggy paw. “Not so superior now, are we. May I?”

  “Fie, Dark Ages, begone! Enlightenment speaks,” Gordie murmured.

  Riceman straightened his vest good-naturedly. “Enlightenment—that’s appropriate,” he began. “We straddle the Classical and Modern Age. As I asserted, Bertrand Russell, in his Principia Mathematica tried to prove that math is consistent and complete, but Godel battle-axed him at the knees. At the knees!”

  A dramatic person, Riceman.

  “What does that have got to do with anything?” someone hooted.

  “It means we are at a crossroads in civilization. Math, that foundation of reason since the Greeks,”—Riceman’s voice swelled—“wobbles. Our Cartesian world turns out to be unaligned. These are unsettling times. Heisenberg and our Turing are poking holes and turning everyday reality into Swiss cheese.”

  A crowd gathered around Riceman as he explained how the physicists have proven that the orientation and position of electrons cannot both be determined, which means God’s omniscience is now in doubt.

  “Others want to become gods.” His voice dropped. “A few years ago, my friend, Leo Szilard, patented a bomb with the Admiralty. He told me it could atomize a mountain. In a flash! Imagine that, good sirs. Science, religion, and politics are colliding. If we’re not careful, this is just the second of many wars to come. It is time to consider human nature and the face of society. Only the fairness of Communism can ensure a stable polity. Only the fairness of Communism can save us.”

  Gordie looked thoughtful afterward. He whispered to me, “I don’t like how Commies stir people up. Look at Germany. Nazism started as an ideal. Now, it’s genocide… You have heard the rumors?” I nodded. “Is it confirmed? Why don’t the authorities say anything?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “My sources say it’s not just Jews, they’re culling old and sick people too.” Then, he said something that slapped me. “I understand the need to eliminate riff-raff. The insane. The criminals. Buggers, take the whole lot and shoot them. But the rest?”

  It’s not the first time I have heard his opinions about the unnamable. He always seems especially vitriolic on the topic, going out of his way to demonstrate disgust. It shouldn’t hurt by now—yet it does. The world is changing: Edward VIII abdicated for love’s sake. The last war has blurred the class distinctions. Yet some things will forever stay the same.

  I left him the moment I could. I ghosted pass the carousing crowd—what do they care? Or know?—until I found the door.

  Outside, the moon shone like a tarnished penny. The pea soup fog and drizzle made me ache for Balliol and its flickering hearth. It’s a monastery: the only woman is St Catherine of Alexandria, and even her statue has a manly cast. Lost in my memories, I didn’t expect to find someone under the eaves. A red dot flared around Turing’s lips as he kissed his cigarette. He looked at me coolly as if daring me to speak.

  So I asked whether he had a match. After he proffered his matchbox, I searched my pockets for a cigarette.

  He chuckled. “Is this a trick to bum a smoke?”

  “Sorry.” I shrugged, glad that the night hid my embarrassment. “I’m out.”

  “They’re getting pricey, aren’t they?” He peered at his cigarette. “Alas, this is my last.” He looked about to break the stick, then thought better. “Here.” He held it out to me.

  I shouldn’t have taken it, but I did. Perhaps it was rebellion. I felt the butt, slightly damp, on my lips. In the frigid air, the smoke, like the silence, hung still. I thought of the spy. Was he imprisoned? Dead?

  In my head, I heard a ghoulish laugh, so I decided to deflect my thoughts. “Turing,” I said, “have you ever met someone similar, like a double, or… Oh, I’m not sure what I’m saying.”

  He frowned, as if trying to mold my question into something more coherent. “Do you mean a kindred spirit? Or a doppelgänger? Someone identical to me, except he has black eyes instead of blue? Or perhaps he has a habit of stepping left to avoid people instead of going right? Or…Hmm.” He paused. “Let me reframe it in a more interesting way. Is man the product of nature or nurture? Now, that’s a worthy line of questioning. And can science and circumstance conspire to create another me?”

  He beckoned for the cigarette and I passed it to him.

  “What do you think? Is it possible?” I asked. “I suppose if you have a son…”

  “It’s improbable. Even if I have a son, he won’t be me. I like to think I’m pretty unique,” he said with a slight smile. Around others, he always seems awkward. I’ve even heard him stutter—so why does he seem so assured around me?

  It’s because we know each other secret. Those piercing eyes of his see right through my subterfuge.

  “I mean it’s merely improbable,” he continued. “It’s a strange place, this world.”

  “The universe is a mystery of God.”

  “God. Ah. When I was young, I had a bosom friend. We were inseparable—we even had the same dreams, to study in Cambridge. Shortly after he was accepted, he died. Where was God? Either He has a sick sense of humor, in which case He’s irrelevant, or He doesn’t exist. Apply Occam’s Razor and God’s cut out. People are entangled in a web of cause and consequence too complicated for them to comprehend so invent a higher being. That’s all it is. My friend contracted the disease because he got infected. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “There are no coincidences, only His will. Complexity is God’s plan in action.”

  “If that’s what complexity is, then Enigma must be something very sacred,” he retorted. “You’re a person who studies stories, thus you believe everything is conceived by a higher power, that some God is penning our fates in a book of destiny. What happens at the end of the world, I wonder? Personally, I hope he has a gripping denouement,” he said lightly. “No, my friend, God’s existence is quite impossible.”

  His maddening calm aroused me. “What better proof for God than the impossible?” I cried. “As you suggested the last time, everyone’s life is a chain of impossibilities. Yet everything happens. Everything’s real. Isn’t that proof enough?”

  “You’re right,” he suddenly conceded. “We’re here, in the middle of a war, sharing a light, just the two of us. No doubt He planned this.”

  I sensed the kink in the road ahead and made to leave.

  “Stop. Please,” he spoke softly and held out the cigarette. “If you had a double, would he finish this? With me?”

  I hesitated. “I heard your work pokes holes in the foundation of reality. Isn’t that forbidden—Alan?”

  “If reality is illogical, what rules are there—Robin?”

  I don’t know why I stayed. For a moment, the smoldering stick floated slowly between us. A barn owl hooted, as if querying the world’s wisdom. I forgot Gordie, his slurs, how furious he made me. A giant’s hand curled around the moon, stifling its light. What if there are no rules? What if everything’s possible?

  I didn’t know why I pocketed the cigarette stub when it was done, but I did.

  I didn’t know he stayed in the same village as me, but he knew. “Just a few streets away, actually,” he told me. “Shall I lead the way?”

  I didn’t know what to expect when we cycled to the village. I stopped first at Mrs. Crumley’s, and he went on without stopping. Down the street, pass a crossing, his back-view disappeared into the dark. No goodbye, no goodnight—all we shared was a cigarette’s worth of time.

  It’s for the best, I told myself.

  Then, as I walked my bicycle in, the faint ring of his bicycle bell pealed.

  Goodnight.

  When I entered my room, I saw a moth trapped in the kerosene lamp, so I open
ed the glass casing to set it free. It refused to go, daring the flame to burn it, so I flicked a finger at it, until it winged away.

  Now, the cigarette stub is on my desk, rolling from the breeze through my window. What am I to do with it? Nothing. Dear journal, can you hide this like all my other secrets?

  Friday, 26 April 1940

  This morning, Ruth and I broke fast together. She had my copy of Howard’s End propped against a bowl. Mrs. Crumley had frowned at it—she has fixed ideas about how the gentry should behave—until Ruth asked after her aged sister, which made our dour hostess simper. Ruth can be winsome when she wants to be. Initially, I’d protested her habit of entering my room without leave and borrowing my books. Now, we often discuss our readings. “Penny for your thoughts, Robin,” She winked at Mrs. Crumley’s back. “I’ll give you a penny, not charge one.”

  A tea pip floated in my cup. What happened last night? Nothing and everything, the Scylla and Charybdis that crushes lives. Would she understand? “Ruth, have you read Oscar Wilde?”

  “A man with deplorable morals.” She made a face. “Papa detests him.”

  The pip sank to its watery grave. No help there.

  That afternoon, I read the messages we’d decoded and indexed the text against public communiqués. Part of my job is to create a library of references: where did this message originate from, when that particular military unit was last mentioned, how often is a particular word used? The movement of the German army is built on a pile of messages. My job is to create meaning out of the fragments we intercept, to seek patterns, and today, I found something.

  While reading a pile of messages, it struck me how the Germans ended every message with ‘Heil Hitler’ or ‘HH.’ A telling repetition—surely someone else had noticed? I had to tell someone. I saw Alan in his office, an intense expression on his face, as if he grappled with something abstract. After a moment of indecision, I went to John Hughes instead. At first, he was irate at my disturbing his afternoon nap. Before I could finish though, he was quivering like a tuning fork.

  Throughout the day, the cryptanalysts engaged in feverish discussion, while I became a forgotten contributor. It suited me well, the anonymity.

  Sitzfleisch—there’s no precise translation but it means the ability to sit and work quietly. For hours, I edited a simplified dictionary for the Wrens. The next time I stood up, I felt dizzy. I had missed dinner, and alien faces from the night shift surrounded me. Where am I, I wondered. Who are they? Who am I? I’d been tasked with finding meaning, but I felt broken inside, devoid of purpose.

  Kierkegaard says there are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. The Enigma machine cannot match the complexity of a person’s feelings, wound up, and locked.

  In the back page of my journal, the cigarette has bloomed. The burnt end has smudged the paper, tracing charcoal-brown petals. Nothing can recreate its beauty, not in a million years. Quite impossible.

  Monday, 6 May 1940

  When I got back yesterday, Ruth suggested dinner in town. She’s been reticent about her relationship with her fiancé recently. Distance will take its toll. It can help too. Whenever I pass Alan at work, I steer clear. I give him a perfunctory nod. Very professional, impeccably proper.

  At the fish fry, Ruth browsed the newspapers lining her chips, reading the heady headlines. “Heinkel Bombers Driven Off—Another RAF Success. Papa says we’re winning,” she exclaimed, just as the door opened, causing a stir in the greasy air.

  It was Alan. He stood there, framed by the doorway, eyes searching for a spot. Then, he saw me and with a slight smile, walked over.

  “Robin,” he said, then turned to Ruth “Who’s this?”

  There was no escape from it. I introduced him to Ruth. After they greeted each other, he unceremoniously took the empty seat at our table. As he ordered from a passing waiter, Ruth frowned at me as if I’d offended her.

  After that, silence.

  To fill the vacuum, I brought up Professor Kleck, my acquaintance from Munich. He’d supported Hitler, but his last letters to me before the war were full of alarm. “Part of me says he deserves whatever’s happened to him, yet I worry for him.”

  “That’s normal,” Alan said. “Sir Darwin says humans have bigger brains. Animals are single-minded, while people are capable of holding contradictory thoughts.”

  “You believe in Darwin, Mr. Turing?” Ruth’s tone was arch. I’d heard her views on the man before. A godless charlatan, she called him.

  “Of course. What do you believe in, Miss Windermere? Feminine intuition?”

  “A good guess, Mr. Turing. However, I was thinking of God.”

  I had lost all appetite by then. Knowing Ruth’s piousness, that topic was a land mine. “You can’t out-argue him, Ruth, he’s a scientist—” I started.

  That’s when I felt it: a hand on my knee. Whose was it? Ruth and Alan were glaring at each other. Both had hands beneath the table. I’m more than that, the hand could be saying. Or was it telling me to keep quiet?

  The hand shifted, drifted, then lifted.

  “Miss Windermere, may I suggest you read Shaw’s Back to Methuselah? It will broaden your mind on the subject of evolution.”

  “You may suggest it,” Ruth said tightly, then stood up. “Why, look at the crowd!” She made a show of glancing around. “We must go, Robin. Others need our seats. I hope they enjoy Mr. Turing’s company as much as I did.”

  Ruth stormed away, while Alan swirled a fried chip from her leftovers in vinegar. “Well?” he asked me.

  I heard the door slam, so I rushed out after Ruth.

  As the playwright Congreve observed, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned—or who thinks she’s scorned. “Who does he think he is? What a horrid man!” Ruth stamped her foot once we were out. Around us, a crowd swarmed out from the Odeon across the street, fresh from a screening of the Royal Air Force’s The Lion Has Wings. She clutched my arm. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

  As we rode back, I kept wondering who was the one who touched my knee. I glanced at Ruth. Her hair was undone, and it flowed behind as she pedaled. It could have been her. A misplacing of her hand, perhaps. Or maybe…

  We got back late. At the bottom of the dim stairwell, I asked her to show me her palm. It was impulsive, I know, but curiosity overwhelmed me.

  She unfurled her hand. “Why? Did you learn to read palms?” She closed her eyes, while I examined the sleek oval, squinting in the dark, trying to match her hand to the imprint I had felt on my knee.

  I didn’t realize I had touched her hand until she quivered. “What are you doing?” She snatched her hand back, then bolted to her room. I don’t blame her; it was boorish of me.

  Now, I’m at my table, one hand on my knee. Had I imagined it? My thoughts snap at me like a mouse trap these days. If questions help unravel our feelings, where are my answers?

  I’ll have to apologize to her tomorrow.

  Saturday, 11 May 1940

  The river tent’s broken; the last fingers of leaf,

  Clutch and sink into the wet bank.

  Disillusionment is the land of despair. “Hitler Strikes At The Low Countries,” a headline read this morning. “Air Raids on France—44 Enemy Machines Shot down,” the London Times screamed. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands—the Germans are spreading like pestilence. Norway has fallen and West Europe burns. The Wren who helps me with filing, Miss Tingle, was sent from the typing pool to the medical bay for hysterics: her sister was n Paris. The only grace is that Churchill has assumed the Prime Minister’s seat. The man has the spirit of a noble bulldog.

  When I left the hut today, I saw Gordie arguing with a coterie of officers I didn’t recognize. I waited for him in the bicycle shed. When he came, he kicked a bicycle with such fury the row toppled in a clash of spinning wheels. Then he noticed me. His frustration boiled over. He stamped the bicycle next to him and dented its fender.

  �
��People from H.Q. came,” he cried. “They heard of people like Riceman going around raving about Communism. Now, they don’t trust us. The Colonel was right—we should have put him away as well! Damn it!”

  “What do you mean?” Moran’s disappearance loomed in my mind. Was he in any way responsible for that?

  It was as if I’d flung oil on a blazing house. Gordie grabbed my collar. “Even you. You don’t trust me.” For a split second, I had the strangest impression he was going to press his lips to mine, that, or punch me.

  He shoved me so hard I slammed into a pillar. The suddenness of it all! “You!” he cried, then he grabbed his bicycle. He rode straight without turning back once.

  That look! It was the strangest jigsaw: anger, frustration, torment. War abroad, strife at home—I can’t sleep. Everything burns yet the world seems darker than ever.

  Thursday, 16 May 1940

  The last few nights, I keep dreaming I’m inside a U-boat’s cramped radio room. My partner and I are working on the Enigma, the encrypted message handwritten on curled onionskin paper. He recites to me, a tide of alphabets, and I keep pressing the keys of the machine. Nothing lights up.

  During dinner, I told Ruth about my dream. I share much with her these days. How the newspapers trombone our successes, yet the German are inflicting massive losses. Messages from the front may be secret, but everyone can read faces. I shared how my niece caught pneumonia, how the Germans have soldiers that dive from planes, swopping like eagles with silk for wings and guns for talons. She has an unshakable faith in her father. Nothing disturbs her. As I confided my fears, she picked up the copy of De Profundis I was re-reading. “Most people are other people,” she read a line, then asked about the book’s title.

  It’s Latin for ‘from the depths’, I explained, and her eyebrow arched. “What depths do your dreams plumb? Was that radio operator a sweetheart?”