Satisfied now that she was sufficiently prepared for her talk that evening, and looking out of the window and seeing that it wasn’t raining, she decided to go for a walk in the park.
She had only made it to the far side of Chapel Quad when the lodge porter, Roberts, came towards her. ‘I have a message for you, Mrs Devereux-Temple. The Dean wondered if you’d like to join her, and a few others, in the Senior Common Room for coffee.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ she said brightly, despite preferring the idea of going for a walk, followed by an hour of shopping before meeting Annelise for lunch.
The Dean greeted her warmly. She was a stately woman of ample girth with a head of grizzled curls. Her name was Dr Drusilla Spriggs, otherwise known as Spriggsy according to Annelise. While pouring Romily a cup of coffee from an urn on a white-clothed table, she set about introducing her to the college bursar, Dr Daphne Mallow, and a gaggle of Fellows and Tutors, whose names Romily forgot in seconds flat.
Predictably the conversation turned to novel writing.
‘Please do tell us about your excellent mysteries,’ the Dean said. ‘I’m sure we’d all love to hear how you go about writing your Sister Grace novels.’
No sooner had Romily embarked on a brief description of the process, than through the window she saw Annelise hurrying across the quad towards the porter’s lodge. She stopped short when a man carrying a briefcase appeared. Romily had the distinct impression that he had been waiting for Annelise. Was this the man with whom she was having a secret affair?
Summoning to memory the photograph which Annelise had shown her last night, Romily was sure it was. It took all of her willpower to remain where she was and continue talking, and not rush outside to give the man a hefty piece of her mind.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chelstead Preparatory School for Girls, Chelstead
November 1962
Evelyn
Evelyn stood at her office window watching Miss Gillespie, Head of Latin and Classics, chastising Camilla Stewart and Lorna Fairfax for some playtime misdemeanour.
It was a cold blustery day, the sort of day that brought out the worst in the girls. For some reason the gusting winds made them high-spirited and prone to doing silly things, like letting off stink bombs, painting red dots on their skin to feign illness, or flicking ink at each other during lessons. The tomfoolery would escalate as the end of term drew to a close for the Christmas holiday, and by the last week of term the girls would be at the height of giddiness and the teachers at their wits’ end.
Evelyn raised the mug in her hands to her lips and pulled a face. The coffee was stone cold, and the milk had formed a disagreeable skin on the surface. How long had she been standing here lost in thought? Too long was the answer. And it would never do. She had to pull herself together.
Since receiving that first anonymous letter and then Max turning up out of the blue the night of the party just over a week ago, she had been thrown off balance; the equilibrium of each day thoroughly destroyed.
Some mornings she woke with such a weight of dread hanging over her she could hardly drag herself from her bed, the thought of driving to school to tackle the demands of two hundred and fifty lively girls and a staffroom of teachers too much for her. Many a time she found herself struggling to find the necessary patience and tact to deal with what she regarded as petty staffroom politics. Or the unruliness of a wilful child. Or an overly critical parent who could bore for England on the subject of how a school should be run.
In the past none of this would have taxed her in the slightest, but today it all felt too much. Which was why she was keeping a low profile by staying – hiding – in her office. Before setting off for Chelstead this morning, and thankfully after Kit had already left for a day of ground school teaching at the flying club, the postman had made his first delivery of the day. Amongst the mail was another vile letter accusing her of having been unfaithful to Kit.
Who was doing this to her?
Was it Max?
But he’d sworn it wasn’t him. Who then? And why? Was it somebody from their Bletchley days? Somebody who had a score to settle?
The second letter was in her handbag, as was Max’s card. He had been one of the last to leave the party and when he’d been saying goodbye he had given her his card with his telephone number. ‘Come and meet me in London,’ he’d said, ‘let’s have lunch. Or dinner if you’d prefer. For old time’s sake.’
Despite keeping his card, she had no intention of telephoning him. She had promised herself a very long time ago that she would never contact him again and she wasn’t about to break that promise.
Nor was she going to compromise the vows she made the day she stood in front of the altar with Kit and married him. Saying the words I do had banished Max to the past.
Just as those same words had pushed Bletchley Park out of her life, including everything that had happened there.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bletchley Park
January 1942
Evelyn
Max Blythe-Jones made his appearance at Bletchley at the end of January in 1942.
He immediately attracted an above average rate of interest amongst the women at the Park because of his exotically good looks (his mother was half French and half Hungarian), and for being so charming. Within a short space of time, not only was he causing hearts to flutter at a considerable rate, but he had gained a reputation for being one of the best of the elite in Hut 6. It was widely understood that these codebreakers were of a superior breed of intellect and ability. Max was perfectly at home amongst them.
By this time my own ability for spotting patterns amongst the ‘quatsch’ – as we referred to the relentless chatter by enemy operators – had been recognised and I took pleasure in knowing that I was now of genuine use at the Park.
I first met Max in the canteen late one night when our shifts coincided. It was the day after I had found an important message secreted within the apparently innocent stream of chit chat. ‘You’re the girl who discovered that German sub tracking the convoy in the Atlantic yesterday, aren’t you?’ he said to me.
‘I might be,’ I replied in a low voice, conscious that secrecy, even amongst one’s colleagues, was vital to security. I was conscious also that he probably thought, as did quite a lot of men, that I had got above myself and should get back to the more menial work of filing and indexing.
‘That was good work on your part,’ he said. ‘How does it feel to know that you are personally responsible for saving all those lives?’
‘I was just doing my job,’ I said, certain now that he was patronising me. Under no circumstances was I going to admit that I was proud of what I had done, although, of course, I was. Especially as the officer with whom I had shared my discovery later informed me that as a consequence of what I’d spotted, the convoy had been alerted and straightaway changed course with wireless silence. It pleased me to picture the German U-boat arriving at the coordinates where it believed there to be a convoy of merchant shipping and finding nothing.