Mr. Churchill's Secretary (14 page)

C
LAIRE AND
M
URPHY
lay in his narrow bed, only a candle flickering in the darkness. The room was spartan, with yellowing wallpaper ripped and curling at the edge of the water-stained ceiling. The smell of that night’s supper, turnip stew, seeped up from the kitchen.

“Father Murphy, where did you learn to do that?” Claire asked, her hand trailing down his smooth chest under the thin, worn sheet and scratchy gray blanket.

“Ah, the Lord works in mysterious ways, my love,” he answered, stroking her hair.

They lay in silence for a moment, listening to a drunken couple make their way down the corridor outside.

When the couple had passed, Claire whispered in his ear, “You know, a lot of women would be scandalized, even by the thought of being with a man in a boardinghouse room.”

“I’m not just any man, I hope,” Murphy said, pushing silky hair out of her eyes.

“No, of course not,” Claire answered. “You’re my sweet Mike.”

“Glad to hear it,” Murphy said. “It gets easier, doesn’t it? Leading a double life, I mean.”

Claire rolled onto her back and stretched. “I don’t
know about that. When I’m with you, I feel alive. The cause, you, thinking of Ireland—it’s so real. My other life is just going through the motions, really. That girl is a simpering fool.”

“She’s part of you.”

Claire said, “Of course. I deliberately kept a lot of the basic facts of my life and hers the same. But I leave out the important details. My father, who spoke Gaelic. Witnessing countless atrocities against us. Hearing Jim O’Donovan speak and getting involved with the Óglaigh na héireann. Meeting you. Falling in love.”

“But surely you must like being her.”

Claire reached over him to the bedside table, where there was a pack of cigarettes. She took one out, lit it with a mother-of-pearl-inlaid lighter, inhaled, and then blew out the smoke slowly. “I did. I mean, at first it was easy.” She took another drag. “But then things changed. Chamberlain declared war. And that awful, awful man became Prime Minister.”

“In some ways it’s been a godsend.”

“Yes,” Claire agreed, lazily stretching the hand with the cigarette over to the ashtray, where she tapped off the ashes. “Churchill’s dead set on leading England into this foolish war. But foolish for them, not for us. Ireland’s still neutral, and we have a fantastic opportunity to help England’s enemies.”

Murphy sighed and took the cigarette from her, taking his own slow drag. “It’s too bad you couldn’t have gotten the typist’s job in Churchill’s office. Would have made all this a bit easier.”

“I know, darling. But look, our plan is good—great, even. It will succeed. And we
will
bring down this corrupt government.”

“Amen, my child,” he said, grinding the cigarette into the ashtray. Then he leaned in and kissed her deeply. “And now, where were we?”

*  *  *

“I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the French High Command failed to withdraw the northern Armies from Belgium at the moment when they knew that the French front was decisively broken at Sedan and on the Meuse,” the P.M. intoned, pacing back and forth on the Persian carpet in front of his desk in his office at No. 10. He was squinting, as though picturing the phrases in his mind’s eye, as Maggie struggled to type them.

“… The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could to the House that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”

As he dictated, he paced the length of his office. Words were rolling off his tongue, and Maggie kept up as best she could.

“… There remains, of course, the danger of bombing attacks, which will certainly be made very soon upon us by the bomber forces of the enemy. It is true that the German bomber force is superior in numbers to ours; but we have a very large bomber force also, which we shall use to strike at military targets in Germany without intermission. I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona, and will be able to stand up to it, and carry on in spite of it, at least as well as any other people in the world. Much will depend upon this; every man and every woman will have the chance to show the finest qualities of their race, and render
the highest service to their cause. For all of us, at this time, whatever our sphere, our station, our occupation or our duties, it will be a help to remember the famous lines:

The Prime Minister stopped at the window. “… We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war on the 3rd September it was always possible for Germany to turn all her Air Force upon this country, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that France could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have, therefore, lived under this danger, in principle and in a slightly modified form, during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defense, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely, that the individual aircraft and the individual British pilot have a sure and definite superiority.

“Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.”

At that, Maggie looked up. Did he really believe that? Or was truth just another casualty of war—the war of rhetoric he was waging for the British spirit?

And at this point, did it even matter?

“… What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our
Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

He turned back to face the room and stabbed each word with his cigar for emphasis. “ ‘
This
was their finest hour.’ ”

After these words, he slumped down at his desk, head in hand.

“Go and type for your life,” he said, without glancing in her direction.

“Yes, sir.” Tears stinging her eyes, she ran to get copies of the speech ready.

Later, much later, Maggie looked up from the papers and folders covering her wooden desk as Nelson wound his way around her ankles. “Your calculations are off,” she said to John as he dropped off a memo in the underground typists’ office. It was not without satisfaction. It helped her forget all of the thoughts she’d been having. Thoughts about bombs. About war. About her parents.

John had been working in the War Rooms for days without respite. His dark suit was looking rumpled and wrinkled, as though he’d slept in it—which he probably had. His face was pale, and his thick, curly hair stood out at odd angles from his head. His eyes were sunken and haunted.

“I beg your pardon?” He sat down and rubbed his temples, his face beginning to turn crimson. In his opinion,
Maggie was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. And she was different—so very different—from any other woman he’d known. She was smart—brilliant, really—and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Especially to him. From the moment he’d met her, she had unknowingly broken down most of the defenses he’d long held in place, and when she was present, no one else seemed to matter.

John didn’t think war was the time for romance, and the office was certainly not the place. And then there was the fact that he knew more about Maggie and her place in the scheme of things than he was allowed to let on.

So all he could do was watch in mute appreciation as Maggie slowly made herself at home at No. 10 and the War Rooms over the summer, her red hair glinting gold in the fluorescent light, leaving a trail of violet perfume everywhere she went.

But Maggie had other things on her mind. She’d noted and studied all the mentions of Radio Direction Finding in Mr. Churchill’s memos intently. From what she could glean, RDF—radio direction finder—was a warning system, using radio waves to detect enemy aircraft, also known as radar. This way the RAF knew exactly when the German fighters would arrive and exactly where they would be.

The mathematician in Maggie was drawn to the descriptions of how the device worked. Using the transmission of radio waves, it was possible to measure the length of the interval between the emission of a radio pulse and the return of its “echo,” as charted by an oscillograph. When aircraft were in the sky, the radio emissions would bounce off them, showing their positions. RAF planes had special identifying signals on them, allowing air force commanders to differentiate between friendly and enemy aircraft.

“
You
know about RDF?” John said.

“I type all of Mr. Churchill’s memos and letters—I’d have to be insensible not to. I also know queuing theory, differential equations, and cryptography,” she said with a smile.

She was gratified to see John’s eyes widen.

John sat looking at Maggie for some time, head cocked to one side. “Do Mrs. Tinsley and Miss Stewart know?”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Tinsley and Miss Stewart don’t have degrees in mathematics.”

John was silent. Then, “Really? My calculations are off?”

“Look, it’s simple, really,” Maggie said in her best Aunt Edith lecture tone, pulling out a piece of scrap paper to illustrate the point. “If you’re using the radar equation, all the variables must be in place before solving for the position of the German planes.”

“Yes, yes, I
know
that,” he said, getting up and beginning to pace. Maggie could tell he was reworking the problem in his head. “So then why are the numbers off?”

“There’s an additional step. You’ve assumed that
F
equals 1, which means that you’re calculating in a vacuum. You see, it’s not just an abstract problem, you’re also dealing with the real world, where things get a little more complicated.”

“Is that a fact?”

Maggie ignored him. “You need to figure in a few additional variables to calculate
F:
the bend of the earth’s surface and the density of the refraction due to air layers at different altitudes. You also need to know the plane’s ground speed—which is different from airspeed, or what appears on a pilot’s gauge—as well as the wind speed and direction, the relative humidity, and altitude at sea level.”

“Oh,” he said, stopping his pacing. He scratched his head. “Ah.”

“You can just compensate for the additional factors. For example, if you assumed that density decreased linearly with height, and used the arc of a circle from London to Berlin …” Maggie went back to the scratch paper, pulling out her beloved Faber-Castell slide rule from the desk drawer, and made a few calculations.

“You’ve got one of those?” John whistled between his teeth. “That’s a beauty.”

What did he think I used? My fingers?
“Graduation present.” Of course, Maggie never thought when Aunt Edith gave it to her at commencement that she’d be using it to figure out enemy plane trajectories.

“That’s quite impressive.” He pulled up a wooden chair, the legs scraping over the linoleum floor, and sat down again. He leaned in to look at it, giving off the faint scent of shaving soap and wool.

“Thank you.” It took her a few minutes to look up various numbers and make calculations. “And voilà! A corrected answer.”

He put his finger to the side of his forehead and started to massage his temple. It was clear that he was out of his depth. “I’ve got to get this in by the end of the day. I’m hopelessly behind.” He looked at Maggie with trepidation. “I studied classics at university—don’t actually remember much maths. I—I don’t suppose you’d, ah—”

“I’d be delighted.” Maggie picked up his memo. “Look, everything else in the report is fine; I’ll just redo the calculations, and you’ll be set.”

“Thank you, Maggie.”

You’d
better
thank me
, she thought, inordinately pleased, as he went out the door. But she was soon absorbed in the sheer joy of math again as she worked through the problems. How she’d missed it.

An hour or so later, Maggie was outside John’s office, about to drop off his corrected memo as well as a data table for him to use in the future, when she heard voices. “Says she knows about RDF?” It was Snodgrass.

“She
does
know about RDF, sir. And about queuing, cryptography, you name it.”

“She does, does she?”

Maggie strode into the office, chin high. “Mr. Sterling. I wanted to drop this off for you. The numbers we discussed,” Maggie said, looking directly at Snodgrass. He sat in the chair across from John’s desk, a cigarette in one hand and legs crossed at the knees.

John stood up and reached out for the papers she offered. “Thank you, Miss Hope.” He looked at the calculations. “Mr. Snodgrass, this is what I was talking about,” he said, handing the papers over.

“Good, good,” Snodgrass said without looking at them. “Better get some of your maths books out and refresh that memory of yours, old boy!”

John looked at Maggie, then back at Snodgrass. “I believe Miss Hope would be able to assist Mr. Greene in these calculations far better than I.”