Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Novel Read online

  “Easy,” Annabelle said. “No matter what answer either gives you, take the other path.”

  Maggie was surprised.

  “I don’t understand,” Chuck moaned, shaking her head. She’d had too much wine to think clearly.

  “Well, if you ask the truth teller,” Maggie said, “he’ll tell you which path the liar will tell you to take.”

  “And if you ask the liar,” John said, “he’ll know which path the truth-telling soldier will tell you to take. However, since he’s a liar, he’ll point you in the wrong direction. So just take the other path.”

  “Bravo!” Maggie said. All right, so maybe he is smart. But he doesn’t have to be so very condescending at the office about it.

  Chuck looked heavenward. “This is why I became a nurse.”

  John looked over at Nigel. “So when do you push off, old sod?” Nigel was being sent to a secret location and wouldn’t be in contact with anyone, not to mention Chuck, for an indefinite period of time.

  “About a fortnight,” Nigel replied, leaning over and giving Chuck’s thigh a squeeze through her dress. “Can’t say I want to leave my gorgeous girl here alone, but now that I’ve decided, it seems like it’s time to get on with it.”

  “We know you’ll do splendidly,” Sarah said. “You’ll come back a hero, all decorated with medals and—little ribbons.”

  Little ribbons? Maggie mouthed at her. Sarah shrugged.

  “I don’t care what I come back with, it’s what I’m coming back to,” Nigel said, looking at Chuck. They could all tell she was trying hard not to cry.

  “Good Lord, I didn’t mean to do this now, and at the dinner table, of all places, but here goes.” He took a deep sigh and suddenly got down on one knee, taking her hand. “Charlotte, my dearest Chuck, would you do me the incredible honor of—becoming my wife?”

  Chuck looked stunned. Everyone at the table was dumbfounded.

  “Ooooooh!” the twins exclaimed together, eyes wide.

  Chuck blushed furiously. But without hesitating, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard, causing everyone at the table to clap.

  “Yes, yes, yes! I would love to be Mrs. Nigel Ludlow,” she declared, holding his ruddy perspiring face between her hands, laughing and crying at the same time.

  As Nigel and Chuck turned back to each other for another kiss, Maggie led everyone in a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and David refilled everyone’s glass.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a ring yet, sweetheart,” Nigel said as he sat down and pulled Chuck onto his lap.

  “It’s fine,” she murmured, her lips against his collar. “Don’t need any goddamned ring. I’m not some gold-digging debutante.”

  “Good gracious,” Annabelle said, taken aback.

  “No ring?” Clarabelle added.

  “I don’t care about any ring,” Chuck said to Nigel, burying her face in his shoulder. “I just care about you.”

  “Well, you’ll have one by the time I get back from my first leave—and then we’ll start planning the wedding. What do you say, my love?”

  Chuck considered. “Will your parents have to come?”

  “Well, that is traditional, darling.”

  A pause. “Why don’t we just elope?”

  Nigel laughed. “Ah, that’s my girl,” he said as he wiped his red face with his handkerchief.

  Later in the evening, as they left the table to relax in the parlor, Maggie realized why ladies and gentlemen were encouraged to separate after dinner. The men clustered around the fireplace, drinking brandy and engrossed in yet another political argument. At least David didn’t join in; instead, he played “Mad About the Boy” on the piano.

  Maggie wandered over to David. “Sounds wonderful,” she said, suddenly conscious that the piano was out of tune and missing an F string. “Or at least as wonderful as possible on this old thing. You’re very talented.”

  “Thanks, Magster,” David said. He moved over on the bench to make room for her, then launched into a Noël Coward medley. Maggie took the opportunity to study his long and graceful fingers as they moved across the keys. He had a lovely tenor voice and was perfectly at ease at the keyboard as he launched into a sprightly melody:

  “The Stately Homes of England we proudly represent,

  We only keep them up for Americans to rent,

  Though the pipes that supply the bathroom burst

  And the lavatory makes you fear the worst,

  It was used by Charles the First, quite informally,

  And later by George the Fourth on a journey north.

  The State Apartments keep their historical renown,

  It’s wiser not to sleep there in case they tumble down

  But still if they ever catch on fire, which, with any luck, they might

  We’ll fight for the Stately Homes of England!”

  As he segued into “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” he said, “Lovely dinner party.”

  “Thank you. I’m so glad it turned out all right—”

  But Simon and John’s discussion was quickly turning into an argument. John’s voice was getting louder. “Look, it’s like the Old Man said—the way you all wanted it, if Saint George had tried to save the fair maiden from the dragon, he’d have been accompanied by a delegation instead of a horse—and had a secretary, not a lance. Then, after signing some sort of meaningless agreement with said dragon, the maiden’s release would be referred to the League of Nations. Then, finally, Saint George would be photographed with the dragon, and it would have run on the front page of The Times.

  “But when all was said and done, the damned dragon would have kept the damned maiden—and Saint George, his secretary, the Round Table, the agreement, the entire blasted League of blasted Nations—all would have been burned to a crisp.”

  “That’s hardly what I was proposing, John, and you know it,” Simon said, his voice turning menacing. “We were all there for the King-and-Country debate. I signed it, you signed it, David and Nigel signed it—”

  “We were young, ignorant,” John exploded. “We didn’t know what was happening in Germany. We didn’t know anything about anything, for that matter.”

  “Look, John,” said Simon, “here’s what is happening—when the government goes to war, it commits mass murder on a huge scale. Our side, their side. It’s all murder.”

  John countered, “In a world with madmen like Hitler, war’s most definitely inevitable. Don’t you think he must have laughed when he heard about King and Country? Realized that without a strong military, England would be ripe for the taking? And look at us now. Germans have invaded Paris, we were beaten at Dunkirk and barely escaped, now they’re poised to invade at any moment.…”

  “No, no, no!” Simon said, slamming a fist down on the mantel. “It’s inevitable because the government knows it has a ready supply of young men, willing to go out and die for their country—and who won’t ask questions. Well, I asked questions! I’m still asking questions! I’m disgusted with past wars for King and Country, disgusted with England’s treatment of Ireland, of India, of Palestine—and in my opinion, the jury’s still out on this war, too.”

  “The IRA’s a bunch of murderers and thugs,” John said through clenched teeth. “And anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor.”

  Maggie stood up. “Stop it!” she cried, unable to take any more. “Stop it! Both of you!” she said, hands on hips. “To fight or not to fight? We’re all in this war. As John says, invasion is imminent. I really don’t see how political parties matter anymore. When we’ve won this war—and I do believe we will—there’ll be time enough for philosophical arguments and debates. Until then, we’re all in England, we’re all in the same boat, we’ve all got a common enemy, and, and—Nigel and Chuck are getting married. Now, please, for King and Country, just shut up!”

  As everyone took a moment to regroup, David selected the record Me and My Girl. He put it on the phonograph, starting the turntable and ca
refully placing the needle in the groove. As it popped and crackled, beginning “The Lambeth Walk,” he said, “I don’t suppose there’s any more cake?”

  THIRTEEN

  AND THEN, FINALLY, after months of anticipation and dread, the Luftwaffe attacked London.

  Maggie was making copies of the P.M.’s letters in the Annexe office with Mrs. Tinsley and Miss Stewart when the air-raid siren began its low wail. This was no drill.

  As they made their way down to the protected underground War Rooms, they could hear the roar of the aircraft engines. Ours? Theirs? Maggie thought. She threw open a window to look. There were hundreds—thousands, it seemed—of planes circling overhead, black insects against the sky, leaving silvery vapor trails against the blood-red clouds, darkening in the setting sun.

  “Air raid, please. Air raid, please,” they heard Mr. Rance, the overseer of the War Rooms, call. It didn’t surprise Maggie that at a time like this he was using the word please. At No. 10, one said please for everything. She could just as easily imagine him saying, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, please. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, please.”

  As they heard the antiaircraft guns rumble and saw the aircraft break formation to dive into dogfights, Miss Stewart placed her hand gently on Maggie’s shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do by watching, my dear.”

  Maggie nodded, yet she was unable to tear her eyes away from the spectacle in the sky, frozen with fear, fascination, admiration, and anger.

  “Come along, Miss Hope,” Mrs. Tinsley said, leading the way downstairs.

  Maggie took a moment to scoop Nelson up from on top of her desk to take him with them. “Coming.”

  Below, an argument was brewing.

  “I shall,” the P.M. stated emphatically. “I shall go up and watch. It’s my city, damn it. And you”—he waggled his finger at General Ismay—“shan’t stop me.”

  “Sir,” General Ismay began, yet again, “as your adviser, I hardly think it prudent—”

  “ ‘Prudent’? ‘Prudent’?” Churchill spluttered. “We’re at war, man. There’s nothing prudent about it.”

  General Ismay sighed. “Then please, sir. Only for a few moments.”

  Mr. Churchill looked around at the gathered staff. “Who’s in?” he said with his cherubic smile, as though inviting them to cocktails.

  Maggie raised her hand. John and David raised theirs. The senior staff—General Ismay, Mr. Attlee, and Mr. Eden—decided to go as well. The P.M.’s ever-present shadow, Detective Inspector Walter Thompson, followed the P.M. with a grim face.

  “Don’t panic—remember, we’re British,” David joked as they went up the stairs in the shadows, but no one laughed. From their vantage point on the roof, it looked as though all of London was burning. The entire horizon of the city glowed orange-red in the dark.

  Sirens wailed and Messerschmitts screamed overhead. They could hear the great thudding boom of bombs ripping buildings apart, and could feel the answering shake from British gunfire. The building rocked and swayed in response; it was all so close. The savagery and destruction happening were almost too much to bear. A terrible tremor went through Maggie, and she involuntarily took a step backward, right into John. He put his hands on her shoulders for a moment to steady her; she was surprised and flustered by his touch. As John dropped his hands, David took her arm to give her a reassuring squeeze.

  But David didn’t turn his eyes from the horizon. None of them could. The very air tasted of death—acrid, bitter, and metallic—and as Maggie looked up into the sky, she could imagine the souls of the newly dead hovering over them.

  New waves of planes flew over them in two-minute intervals. Their motors ground and growled in vicious anticipation of dropping their cargo. Batches of incendiary bombs, clusters of lights called chandeliers, fell into the blackness, flashing with brilliance before burning down to pinpoints of dazzling white. They watched most of them go out, one by one, as firemen extinguished the blazes before they could rage out of control. But some burned on, and soon a yellow flame leapt up from the white center. Yet another building was engulfed in flames.

  Above the fires, the sky seethed red. Overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, was a cloud of pink smoke. Up in that shrouding were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing light—antiaircraft shells bursting. The barrage balloons stood in clear relief against the burning horizon, glowing crimson. Maggie was suddenly glad Aunt Edith wasn’t there to witness such an event.

  They were silent in the face of such savagery, except for David, who let out a soft whistle as one particularly gorgeous chandelier exploded. It was the most beautiful and horrific sight Maggie had ever witnessed. She could feel the wetness of her sweat seeping from her armpits, pooling between her breasts, and running down her back, even in the cold.

  As her thoughts went to her flatmates, out there, vulnerable, in that vast expanse of darkness, she could feel her shell of denial begin to crack. Fear had become a real person standing too close and pressing against her, hard and crude, daring her to cry out in panic.

  “You all right?” John whispered.

  She pulled herself up and stood straight. “Yes, I’m all right.” She was. She would get through this. They would all get through this. “And you?”

  His voice was steely. “I’m getting back to work.”

  Yes, work. Work was the only thing they could do.

  The next morning, Maggie walked around bombed-out London. According to the BBC, the raids had been perpetrated by three hundred bombers, escorted by six hundred fighters. In just one night, more than four hundred people had been killed. Not to mention the bomb damage and resulting fires, including a huge one on the London docks. And the bombers were going to keep coming—night after night after night.

  She walked past cats peering out from boarded-up windows, past houses with balconies, turrets, and Palladian windows. Past chimneys and church towers pointing accusing fingers up to heaven. Many of the once-proud houses were next to mountains of rubble or the skeletons of buildings. Maggie felt shock, disbelief, and overwhelming sadness at the violence and ruin and waste of it all.

  As night after night of bombing went by, Maggie was beginning to feel, even amid the grief and loss, a sense of defiance emerging, a fierce solidarity that overrode the fear, and a wicked sense of black humor that outsiders might not understand. Bombed-out shops were open for business, regardless of damage sustained.

  “More open than usual?” Maggie joked with one grocer whose front windows had shattered in the raids.

  The man grinned back at her. “Right you are, miss, right you are.”

  Another open store displayed the sign: They can smash our windows but they can’t beat our furnishing values. Even the police station posted: Be good—we’re still cops.

  As the days turned to weeks, everyone in London learned to live with it. They learned to live with the dread and the fear, the sleepless nights and their churning, sour stomachs. They learned to get up and run to the flimsy corrugated-steel Anderson shelter in the dark without tripping and falling. They learned to live with the glow from fires burning in the East End and to live with the smell—the stench of thick, black smoke and an underlying scent of things best not discussed. Many people, more than 170,000 by some accounts, learned to live underground in at least eighty different Tube stations, sleeping on the floor, cooking over small grills, and using buckets for toilets.

  They became used to seeing the endless processions of people dressed in black, coming to or from the constant funerals and memorial services.

  They learned to read the morning papers without weeping.

  But there were some things they couldn’t get used to. Didn’t want to. When yet another bomb dropped on their block, Maggie, Paige, and Sarah saw bodies—bodies of their friends and neighbors—pulled out from the rubble. Those weren’t the kinds of things they could forget.

  But they could go on. They had to. They all went to work, ate their meals, spoke to one another in th
e shops, went on as though they were people in one of those classic British plays—always polite, terribly formal, occasionally stiff. It was almost comical sometimes.

  There was really nothing else to do.

  * * *

  The ad ran in The Times as planned, an innocuous line drawing advertising the latest in women’s fashion: day dresses with skirts ending just below the knee, wrist-covering gloves, straw boater hats, and spectator pumps.

  But crosshatched into the drawing where the stitching was were hundreds upon hundreds of minuscule dots and dashes. Put together, they spelled out a message for anyone who knew where to look.

  Pierce was pleased to see its placement—some pages in, bottom left-hand corner, beneath the cricket scores, next to the crossword puzzle—easily glanced over and dismissed.

  Except for those who were waiting for it.

  At his desk, he clipped it carefully from the paper with small, sharp scissors and put it away for Claire to include in her next letter to Norway. “Bloody idiots,” he muttered to himself as he stirred his tea with satisfaction. “They’ll never see it coming.”

  There was a knock at the door. He rose to his feet and opened it. There was Claire.

  He smiled, and their eyes locked. “I was hoping you’d come,” he said.

  She pressed herself against him and circled his neck with her hands. “I know,” she said. “I thought we should celebrate.”

  His body began to respond. “What about Michael?” he managed finally, his voice thick with desire.

  Her hand started at his shirtfront and found its way to his belt. “Let’s not talk about him right now.”

  Despite the bombing, which barraged London night after night, Maggie decided to return her attention to finding out more information about her father.