Mr. Churchill's Secretary (10 page)

She remembered about the classified paperwork she’d seen, the civilian casualties predicted, the hundreds of thousands of cardboard coffins the government had on standby that no one except the highest-ranking officials knew about. What would happen if the Germans invaded—would there be hand-to-hand combat in the streets? Would there be a secret police set up with tribunals and hangings? Would the prettier Englishwomen become the concubines of the conquerors, trading in their self-respect for better rations and safety?

She thought about the P.M.’s conversation with Frain. Would the war be lost because of a spy who’d managed to infiltrate some government office and obtain that one crucial piece of information that would change the course of history?

Maggie thought about numbers. Numbers weren’t evil. Numbers, points, curves, fractions—they all existed independent of human thought and action.

She missed math. She loved the order, the cool logic, the joy of solving its inevitable steps. Now the numbers she saw were of the dead and wounded, of planes, ships, and U-boats downed. The black numbers against the white paper, once the source of so much pleasure for her, were now like tiny insects, signifying death. Sometimes she dreamed of numbers at night—dark, swarming digits flying with iridescent ebony wings. They’d swarm around her, nesting in her hair, crawling up her nose, into her eyes. She’d wake up in a cold, metallic sweat with the bedclothes in a pile at her feet.

The idea that this kind of violence and horror existed shook Maggie to her core. It was one thing to study war—it was another to live it.
What have I been thinking of my whole life?
Columns of equations had always made sense—that was what Maggie had always loved about them. Now that it was abundantly clear that there was no order, she felt empty. Cheated. Robbed.

The latest reports she’d read had turned her stomach. After invading a particular French town, Nazis had ordered the Jewish men to line up in front of their wives and children, then made them strip down and shave their private parts. A delousing program, or so it was called—really an exercise in power and humiliation. And they submitted. Because the alternative was being shipped off to one of the camps or being shot in the streets.

Learning all the sick and twisted details of the war, Maggie was starting to hate, hate with a ferocity she never knew she had within her.
Could I kill a Nazi?
she thought. Before, she would have said no. Or maybe—but only if she was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. But now she felt she could do it easily, with a song in her heart if it meant getting even. She could even picture drawing it out, adding to the suffering until they begged for it to stop, before she caught herself.
What’s happening to me? Am I turning into a monster? One of
them?

Earlier that evening, David had taken her out to dinner, one of the government-sponsored British restaurants redolent with the odors of fried onions and oily fish. After the waiter brought their plates to the table, Maggie asked him what he thought. She was desperate for someone to pull her back to civilization. David seemed to be the best prospect.

“The nature of evil?” He’d laughed as he tucked into his corned beef hash. “Now,
that’s
a festive topic of conversation!”

“I’m serious, David. You must have thought about it.” Maggie played with her cutlery as her dry and tasteless bangers and mash became cold. She knew she needed some kind of rational perspective.

“My grandparents were German Jews and left for England in the late 1880s. But I have relatives who got out as late as ’thirty-seven—and they could only escape to somewhere like Shanghai. That’s where they are now.”

Maggie had no idea. “David. I’m so sorry—”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “At least they’re out of there and relatively safe.”

She tried to imagine Aunt Edith, stripped of her life’s work, wearing an armband with a pink triangle, confined to a ghetto. It was too much to envision. She
reached over and took David’s hand. “I’m glad they’re safe. And I’m sorry it happened.”

“Me, too,” he said, his face inscrutable. “On both counts.” The fate of his relatives must be weighing on David in a way that Maggie could never really know.

“But going back to your original question, no, I
don’t
think Germans are inherently evil. However, I do think Hitler is, and he’s surrounded himself with any number of madmen who probably grew up pulling wings off flies and drowning kittens for jollies. Like the Boss, I don’t believe in so-called pariah nations. I see this as a war against Hitler and Nazism, not against the German people.”

“But why?” Maggie insisted, images of the bombing—and now David’s family—impossible to clear from her mind.

“The Germans must be made to feel they’re not pariahs. They own and have produced much that’s admired, and their former enemies must be willing to trust them and the new government they’ll choose to elect. If this can be done, then I believe they’ll respond in kind.”

He finished his hash and put down his fork and knife. “Germany’s given us Goethe’s
Faust
, Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy,’ Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, and, and”—he paused to think—“
sauerbraten
and Sacher torte … or is that Austrian?” He shook his head. “Regardless. It’s just lost its way. For now.”

Maggie considered what he said and wondered if he could be right. Maybe it was the only way to stop the cycle of violence and hatred. But it wouldn’t be easy. “You
do
realize convincing other people—the French and the English, especially—this is the best way to go after the war will be difficult, if not downright impossible?”

“Oh, I do,” he said, snagging one of the untouched, cold bangers from her plate.

“And you sincerely feel what you’ve described is the only way to spare future generations endlessly recurring wars?”

He grinned. “Have I convinced you?”

“I can see where you’re going with it, but it requires a superhuman amount of compassion, don’t you think?” Maggie looked at him. “I might just have to start calling you Saint David, if you keep this up.”

“Still Jewish,” he said sweetly. “Why does no one
ever
remember?”

The board outside read
Church of the Holy Apostles—Repent Ye, for Judgment Day May Be Close at Hand
, with the times of the Masses and confession in chipped gold-painted Roman lettering. Claire climbed the steep stone steps and pulled open the imposing iron-hinged doors.

The interior was silent, cavernous, and dimly lit, with banks of votives flickering, making shadows dance along the walls. A statue of the Virgin with a halo of gold and robes of forget-me-not blue presided over a side altar.

Claire dipped her fingers in holy water, made the sign of the cross, and genuflected to the carved wooden altar, then walked down the aisle, her heels clicking on the black marble tiles. She made her way past ruby, sapphire, amber, and emerald stained-glass windows to the dark wood confessional boxes that stood to one side. The sweet smell of smoky incense lingered in the air.

Besides Claire, the church was empty—not surprising, since confession was listed as hours away.

She resolutely made her way to the confessional farthest from the altar, went inside, and took a seat in the shadows.

Then waited in silence until she heard the grille slide open.

“Yes, my child?” she heard a low voice say.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

There was a long pause. Even though she had done this many, many times before, Claire held her breath.

Then she heard his voice.

“I’ll say you have.” The light switched on in the box.

“Michael!” she exclaimed, her face beaming.

“In the flesh, me love,” the man replied.

Claire put her hand up to the grille, and Murphy covered it with his. They stared at each other a moment, and then she laughed.

“What?” he said, his dark eyes now stern.

“It’s just—I can’t get over the sight of you like that.”

Murphy was dressed in a priest’s black robes and white collar, with the traditional purple stole draped over his wiry shoulders. “What? Don’t you like it?”

“It’s just—don’t you feel bad? Wearing the collar and not really being one?”

“I’ve done a lot worse in the name of our cause. And besides,” he continued, “it makes the old birds happy—handsome priest listening to their petty little sins. I swear, some of the nuns stretch out their confessions just to sit in the dark and—”

“Michael!”

“That’s Father Murphy to you, my child.” His eyes became serious. “So, what news?”

Claire took a breath. “Well, I’m in. They had me write and address a letter. Oh, it was innocuous enough—the weather and the horrible food and all, but there was code in it. Code about troops moving into Norway.”

“And, of course, you have a copy for me?”

“I memorized it and wrote it down as soon as I could after.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her handbag and slipped it under the grille. “Here it is.”

Murphy studied the paper intently. “Ah, I see it now. Good work. Devlin’ll be pleased.”

“Thank you,” Claire said. “They’re idiots, of course. Spoiled, pampered little Brits who think that glomming onto Fascism makes them more powerful. But after all …”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” they said in unison.

Murphy added, “Any friend of the Óglaigh na héireann is a friend indeed.”

Claire smiled. “I always love hearing that. It sounds so much better than IRA.”

“And we’ll need the Nazis’ help if we’re going to achieve our ultimate goal,” Murphy said. “The destruction of England.”

M
AGGIE WALKED BACK
up Regent Street, passing Oxford Street with all of the shops and the tall buildings with their uniform beaux arts façades, up to the less-fashionable Portland Place, just off Regent’s Park. But she couldn’t enjoy the scenery in the pearly morning light. She couldn’t get the word
war
out of her mind.

She went over it again. FDR and Mrs. Roosevelt were in the White House. The Golden Gate Bridge was finally finished. The syncopated sounds of Glenn Miller were playing on the wireless, Picasso’s cubism and Dalí’s surrealism were causing a sensation worldwide, and most of the girls she knew back in Boston had a crush on Errol Flynn. How did war figure into that scenario? It didn’t—and yet it was a reality.
The
reality. Any day now, the German Luftwaffe might turn its attentions from military to civilian targets. Meaning, of course, London.

Maggie tried to distract herself by noticing the contrast of the gray, almost monolithic buildings with their baroque architectural touches and the brilliant scarlet of the telephone booths and double-decker buses. She admired the easy elegance of the large black taxis and the colorful corner pubs. More than anything, though,
she loved London’s layers upon layers of history—a rich background of poetry and plays, politics and palaces.

She remembered, with a prickle of shame, how originally she’d never even considered the possibility of England’s going to war. She was only dimly aware of Germany’s annexing Austria and then Sudetenland. Instead, she’d been thinking of herself, absolutely panicked about changing her carefully made plans for graduate school.

It had felt absolutely wrong to be in London when she’d arrived in the summer of ’37, instead of starting classes at M.I.T. It defied the very order of things, one of the reasons she was drawn to mathematics. “What is truth? What is beauty?” they were asked in English class—slippery, dangerous concepts. But in math, there was always an answer, and one could always be sure it was right. Truth was the correct answer, which could be proved. Beauty was in the elegance of the proof. As she worked through problem sets, numbers would arrange and rearrange themselves, unpacking their complexities, revealing their mysteries, until the final answer fell into place with the satisfying click of inevitability.

Math was elegant, logical, predictable—and preferable to the messy calculations of life. Through mathematics one could find harmony, stability, and order. And she desperately wanted that order. After all, her whole life had been forever changed when one car just happened to hit another on a random sunny afternoon, killing her parents instantly; it didn’t take a Freudian to understand why she so loved math.

As Maggie approached the house, she was struck by its faded grandeur. She tried to imagine her father and Aunt Edith walking home on this same street. She tried to imagine her grandmother—who she was, what her life was like. She had sudden pictures of Christmases in London, of long letters with British stamps, of stories of
her father and mother—all that was lost when Aunt Edith made her decision to cut off contact with Grandmother Hope. Then the image came of her dying alone, and Maggie felt angry, angry with Aunt Edith for all she’d inadvertently denied her.
Why had she?
Maggie thought, and not for the first time.

She recognized that it must have been strange for Aunt Edith—overwhelming, even—to suddenly find herself sharing her cramped faculty housing with a small infant; yet somehow she managed. As Maggie grew older, they became genuinely fond of each other, perhaps not in a mother-daughter way but as two kindred spirits, captivated by the quiet pursuit of knowledge. Aunt Edith encouraged Maggie in her studies, saying that with a degree and a career she’d be “free.”