Mr. Churchill's Secretary (22 page)

“No. I mean …” John took a deep breath. “Maggie, I—” There was an odd gesture, a stiffened shoulder and then the rolling of one hand into the other.

Oh, dear Lord
. She found herself blushing furiously. “Is this your idea of a
date
?”

John looked down into his coffee.

“I don’t even see why you’d want to go on a date with someone like me, anyway,” she said. “You don’t even take me seriously when I bring up the possibility of there being—” She lowered her voice. “You don’t take me seriously about anything.”

“I do too take you seriously. I said I’d look into it and pass it on to Snodgrass. I lent you the codebook, for God’s sake. You’re the one who didn’t leave the clipping with me.”

“You thought I was getting carried away because I’m sitting in on meetings with Frain. Just because you’re not in on it …”

Maggie rose as majestically as she could manage, shrugged on her coat, grabbed her pocketbook, and started for the door.

“That’s not it at all,” he said, getting up. He gave a few coins to the waitress and followed.

Maggie would have walked faster, but her skirt was too tight around the knees.
Stupid skirt
. “And if you followed your seriously misguided logic to its inevitable conclusion,” she snapped, tromping through mud puddles to the bus stop, shrouded in the growing darkness of the London blackout, “you’d see anyone with eyes and a brain can break codes. Not just spoiled, rich Oxford graduates who’ve never actually had to work for anything a day in their lives!”

“Is that how you see me?” John said, keeping pace with her easily with his long legs. The evening traffic
gave them just enough light to navigate. “Spoiled and rich?” He shook his head. “Typical.”

Having reached the bus stop, Maggie turned to face him, hands on her hips. “Well, aren’t you? You and David. And Snodgrass. And Frain, for that matter. You’re all upper-class men who’ve had every advantage, every door opened for you. It’s no wonder you want to preserve the system that created you.”

In the dim light from the traffic, John’s face looked flushed. The evening was now a complete and utter disaster. To top it off, it was beginning to rain again. Big, cold drops splashed on them, but it didn’t stop them from glaring at each other.

Just then, the red bus pulled up beside them, its shuttered headlights cutting through the gloom, windshield wipers whispering softly.

“This has been the most disagreeable evening ever,” Maggie said in her best Aunt Edith tone, as she waited in line behind an older man to board. She knew she was being petulant and childish, and she didn’t care.

John was silent.

Without warning, the air-raid siren began its keening wail. Maggie’s stomach lurched into a fast descent, and instinctively John grasped her arm. They looked at each other, argument forgotten. Around them, people scrambled for shelter.

“Let’s go back to the café,” she said. “There’s bound to be a basement.”

“Lead the way.”

They made their way through the thick darkness as quickly as they could as the drone of planes grew louder. There must have been hundreds of them circling overhead in formation. Finally, finally, they made it back to the café.

“Come on, ducks—in you go,” said the waitress, recognizing them from earlier, even with wet hair. “Door in
the back on the right goes down to the basement.” They ran through the shop to the door and then down the tiny, narrow stairs.

Then the bombs began to drop.

They could hear the screams of the bombs as they came down and feel the vibrations as each one hit nearby. Maggie worried that the building above would collapse, falling in on the basement.
Is there a bomb up there with our names on it?

Down in the damp-smelling cellar, people had brought their cups and saucers with them, and the staff was moving the furniture. Thin yellow beams of light from various people’s flashlights lent the proceedings a spooky, haunted air.

John and Maggie sat down on a bench against the wall. An elegant older man in a cravat and monocle took out a small silver flask from his coat pocket and held it out to Maggie. “Want some, darling? Gin. In case of emergencies.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, and the man passed her the bottle. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig. It didn’t help. John shook his head no, so she gave it back to the man. “Thanks,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.

“You’re welcome, luv,” he said, taking a long pull. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”

The sounds of the bombs and their jolts on impact were getting stronger. They could now smell the smoke from above seeping in through the closed doors and windows, harsh and pungent, as the bombs continued their death drops.

“They’re getting closer,” she whispered, and John put his arm around her. Their thighs and knees were pressed together so tightly that Maggie could feel his bones and muscles beneath his wool trousers. She could feel his warmth and smell his neck.

Bombs pounded down. They could only imagine the horror and the damage. Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and wondered what it felt like to be dying on this damp night.
Would it be quick? Oh, please, God, just let it be quick
.

For what felt like days they sat there, pressed together, the impact from the bombs bruising their bones.
We’re going to be stiff and sore tomorrow
, Maggie thought, then caught herself.
If there even is a tomorrow
. For distraction, she tried making patterns with numbers, starting with the Fibonacci series, as far as she could go.

Far more comforting was John’s arm around her shoulders.

There was a wild crash, as if the sun itself had exploded. Maggie clapped her hands over her ears as her heart threatened to escape her chest. John must have sensed what was happening, for he threw her down on the floor, covering her body with his.

As the blast hit the building above with a deafening roar, the room filled with thick clouds of dust. All of the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Maggie choked and heard people around her coughing and retching.

She suddenly realized that John was lying on top of her, his cheek against hers, his breath ragged in her ear, their hearts pounding together.

John struggled to speak. “Are you all right?” he said, his body pressing against hers.

“I’m fine,” she said, voice shaking. Then, realizing the incongruity of their position and their conversation, she broke into a smile. “And you?”

“Fine,” he said, stroking her hair and looking down at her. “Just fine.”

Without warning, the bombing let up, like a storm that had passed. They heard the noise from the planes become more distant and then, finally, disappear. They
waited, and waited, and waited—and then came the all-clear siren. Awkwardly, John rolled off Maggie, and they edged away from each other, getting to their feet and shaking off the dust and debris.

They stumbled from the café into the darkness of the street. There was thick, black, bitter-smelling smoke everywhere. Their eyes watered and stung. As they made their way down the street, they could hear the drone of fire-engine sirens wailing and the tinkle of broken glass being swept from the street by the ARP workers. The café seemed all right, although many of the windows had broken and there was broken glass scattered over the front walkway. In the crimson glow of the fire, the shards sparkled like crushed diamonds. Maggie mused how pretty they looked, even as she realized the inanity of the thought.
Broken glass. Pretty
.

The brick house across from them had been hit; an orange-and-blue fire was tearing through it. Papers, books, pillows, and children’s toys littered the street, blown from the house by the impact of the blast. A pink-satin dancing shoe, somehow still pale and pristine, had landed right in the middle of the road. At least the family was all right. The five of them—mother, father, a gangly teenage girl, and small twin boys—huddled together in their nightclothes, watching their home burn.

John approached them. “What can I do?” he said.

The father shrugged. “Not much to do right now. Fire department should be here soon.”

“If you need a place to stay—”

“Thank you,” the father said. “But Mother and Father live nearby. They’ll be happy to take us in.”

The wife rolled her eyes in mock horror and gave a wan smile. “Don’t know what’s worse—the Blitz or the prospect of living with my in-laws.”

The man gave her a kiss on the cheek. “It’ll be fine, darling.”

John turned back to Maggie. “Look, about earlier—”

“Don’t even think about it. I was awful.”

“Not at all.” Then, “May I at least walk you home?”

Maggie looked around, at the fires and the bombed-out buildings. “Thank you,” she said, taking his offered arm and holding it tightly. “I’d appreciate that.”

As they made their way up Regent Street in the grayish early-morning gloom, the air was pungent with smoke. It had been a heavy night of bombing, to be sure; the street was full of broken glass and debris. A dead sparrow, wings spread, lay in the middle of the road. As they walked up Portland Place, Maggie slowly began to realize that while she’d been at LSE, her own neighborhood had been hard-hit.

She began to walk faster, breaking away from John. Her hands became icy, and she could hear the blood rush in her head. She was nearly running now, heart in her throat.
All right, just calm down. It’s fine, it’s fine, there’s no reason to—

Sarah and Chuck were sitting on the front steps of the house, still as statues. The twins were a stair beneath, their arms around each other, faces hidden. At the sound of footsteps, they all lifted their heads. As soon as Maggie saw their tearstained faces, she knew.

Paige was dead.

“S
HE WAS DRIVING
back to the base when the car must have overturned in the raid,” Chuck said.

They sat together on the steps, numbly watching the sky turn a milky gray at the horizon, John sitting on a stair below. “The gas tank must have ignited—” Sarah’s eyes overflowed again. “Oh, hell.”

With shaking fingers, Chuck rummaged through her handbag and pulled out her battered cigarette case. She pulled one out and tried to light it, but her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t. John took the lighter and cigarette gently from her hands. He rolled the wheel slowly down on the flint. A blue-and-orange flame erupted, and he held the cigarette tip in it and inhaled. When it was lit, he returned it, and the lighter, to Chuck.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a deep drag.

“When?” Maggie asked.

“Early tonight,” Annabelle said. “Police came by around midnight.”

“It was an accident?” John asked.

“An accident,” Clarabelle said.

Sarah blew her nose. “The cop said that it looked like she must have hit a fallen tree. Must have hit it and flipped.” She drew in a ragged breath. “The car
flipped.” She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Then it caught on fire.”

Maggie tried not to picture a car engulfed in flames, Paige inside, trying to get out.

“I know,” Chuck said, as if reading her thoughts. Her usually booming voice was uncharacteristically small and tight.

They all sat on the steps in silence for a long time. The morning faded in and out as time stopped and started in bursts.

Paige is dead
, Maggie thought over and over again. It just wasn’t sinking in.

Paige would come walking up the street or waltz through the door at any minute, scolding them for being late, asking about their day, showing off her newly made-over dress. Paige giggling over tea in the kitchen, Paige dancing, Paige in Latin class, at the dining hall at Claflin.

It was impossible that she was dead.

“Her mother—”

“Said we’d call her. We just couldn’t, though,” Annabelle said, looking over at Chuck, who shook her head.

“Besides, it’s only, what, one in the morning in Virginia?” Clarabelle added.

“We can call her in a few hours,” Maggie said. “Let her sleep. It’s going to be the last night of rest she’ll have for a while.”

“Yeah.” Chuck took a long drag on her cigarette. Maggie struggled to piece together practical details.

“What about her body?” John asked.

Sarah blinked. Hard. “No body. Nothing recovered.”

“Oh my God,” Maggie said. “Oh, please, no.”

“Maggie …” John said, sitting down on the step beside her.

But it was true: Paige was gone. And there was nothing
left of her. And nothing for the three of them to do except wait for dawn in Virginia to make the phone call.

Just before they left for the service, Maggie stood at the doorway of Paige’s room. They’d packed all of her belongings in a domed wooden steamer trunk to send back to her mother in Virginia. She told the girls they could keep what they wanted. Maggie had decided to keep Paige’s heavy, square glass bottle of Joy with the golden cap, nearly empty. Just a whiff of the sweet rose-and-jasmine fragrance would conjure up memories. Sarah kept one of Paige’s blue-satin hair ribbons.