Mr. Churchill's Secretary (23 page)

“Come on, Maggie.” She could hear Sarah calling her from the front hall as well as the twins’ subdued murmurings. It was time to go.

“Coming,” she called. Chuck looked in. “Chuck!” Maggie exclaimed, taking in her friend’s changed appearance. “You’re—you’re wearing a
dress
. And
lipstick
.”

“Well,” Chuck said, smoothing down the skirt with gloved hands, “Paige would’ve liked it, now, wouldn’t she?” Paige was always trying to get Chuck to wear skirts and dresses and lipstick and perfume. All of the things she thought were life’s necessities.

“Yes. Yes, she would.” And when Maggie left, she closed the door softly.

The memorial was held in a small, dimly lit church in the neighborhood. The altar was decorated with fall flowers: late-blooming red roses, yellow-and-white chrysanthemums, bittersweet.

In the long, dark pews, they stood with their heads bowed. Maggie bit the inside of her lower lip until it bled, and thought about the possibilities for code in the ad, in a desperate attempt not to scream. Glancing
around, she could see everyone was beaten down by grief.
When did we all start to look so old?

Maggie glanced at John, standing so stiffly upright in his best black suit, wishing she could reach out and take his hand. The fine lines around his eyes were more pronounced, and his face was even more angular, if possible. As the priest led them in prayer, he swayed the slightest bit.

It was time. It took forever for Maggie to reach the podium, her footsteps an endless series of clicks on the hard, unforgiving floor.

“I—I decided to read a poem by Henry Scott Holland.” Her voice was uneven, and she took a breath and tried to steady it. “I think Paige would have liked this. And I think she would want us to think of her in this way.

When Maggie returned to her seat, Sarah put an arm around her and Chuck gave her a hard squeeze. The twins both reached over to pat her hand. She bent her head. Hot tears ran down her cheeks, dripping on the black-marble tiles. Sarah handed Maggie her embroidered handkerchief, and she took it, wiping her face and stifling her sobs, concentrating on picking lint off her skirt.

A thread hung from the bottom, and she pulled at it, finding a grim satisfaction in watching the stitching begin to unravel. She knew her real mourning would be saved for when she was alone, with the door closed, running water in the tub to drown out the noise. She was afraid if she let her emotions go in the polished marble silence, there would be no way to go on, this day or any other.

Afterward, they went for drinks. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

“How are you holding up?” John asked at the Rose and Crown, making room for Maggie to slide in next to him in the booth. He smiled, though he looked as terrible as she felt.

“I’m fine, John, thank you,” she said, sitting down next to him and then making room for Sarah, who put her arm around her. Clarabelle and Annabelle went to the bar to fetch the drinks.

Maggie barely registered anything beyond numbness. She was completely exhausted, and when she looked at Sarah, she looked just as drained. As did Chuck, whose
red lipstick, worn in Paige’s honor, had smeared a bit on her front teeth. Even the twins were uncharacteristically quiet when they returned with the glasses. The girls sat together and held one another up, as everyone told stories about Paige, little things she’d done or said, some poignant, some hilarious.

It was Maggie’s turn. “I remember—” The problem was that she remembered too much. Even looking around the pub brought back too many memories: the first time they’d ventured out to get a drink, the first time Paige introduced her to David and John, how they’d argued politics and mocked her various beaux … Her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak. “Sorry. Maybe later,” she finally got out.

She could feel John’s eyes on her and wanted to meet them but couldn’t quite manage it.

“To Paige,” they toasted. And they drank.

B
ACK IN THE
private secretaries’ office at No. 10, John took a few moments over his chipped mug of lukewarm tea to look at the clipping he’d found in another edition of the paper, the same one Maggie had shown him. Dots and dashes, to be sure. He scanned his shelf and took out another book of Morse code and tried to decode.

Nothing, nothing. Just gibberish
.

John pushed it aside and sighed.

Another dead end.

He was sorry, for it meant he would have to tell Maggie.

John was only twenty-six years old, but he already had deep furrows between his brows. Long ago, or so it seemed, at Oxford and then at No. 10, he’d had a few short-lived love affairs with women, and did so in a way that nothing became messy and no one was hurt. But among the women he’d known, there was no single great love. With Maggie, though, things were different. He was drawn to her—her face and body but also her intellect, her sense of humor.

But now, since the war had started, everything had changed. He went about his work keenly aware that other able-bodied men were serving in the RAF and
army and Royal Navy. What was he doing with a desk job when they were out there, putting their lives on the line? He’d already lost two friends in the RAF, shot down by German Messerschmitts. He pictured them plummeting to their death over the English countryside. He felt in some way that by working in an office, even if it was for the Prime Minister, he was letting them down. Letting their memories down.

A few years ago, when war still seemed an impossibility, he would have charmed Maggie, made her smile and then laugh, taken her to dinner. There would have been no awkwardness, no fiasco at LSE, no hesitation. But that was then, and this, alas, was now. They worked together. This was wartime. And everything was different.

It’s not to be
, John thought.
And next time I see her, I’ll tell her that sometimes an advert is just an advert
.

David walked into their spartan War Rooms office. “Mooning again, old boy?” he said, sitting down to a pile of paperwork.

“Hmph,” John said, looking up from the tight glow of light from the lamp, embarrassed at being caught at just that.

“Well, don’t wait too long,” David said, pulling out a manila folder and flipping through the pages inside. “She’s smart and pretty—and far too good for the likes of you.”

“No time for that sort of nonsense,” John said. “If you haven’t noticed—”

David rolled his eyes.

“—there’s a war on.”

David grinned. “My point exactly.”

After work, back at home, Maggie rang David, who was still working late at the office.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said.

“Your wish is my command,” David replied, sitting down at his desk chair.

“Feel like getting out of the city?”

David pushed aside a pile of papers. “And get away from the bombing? Always.”

“Road trip to Cambridge?”

“Cambridge? What’s there?”

Maggie was silent for a moment. What did she actually expect to find? “I don’t know, really. Ghosts, maybe? With luck, an answer or two.” She nervously twisted the coiled black telephone cord. “Interested?”

“An answer or two about what, Maggie?”

“It’s about my father,” she said. “I think—well, I think there’s a possibility that he might be alive.”

“Alive?” David said.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I at least want to investigate the possibility. Ask some questions. And Trinity College at Cambridge seems like a logical next place to go.”

David looked up at the clock. “Give me a couple of hours to finish,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at your place.”

“You’re a wonderful,
wonderful
man,” Maggie exclaimed. “You really are.”

“I know. See you soon.”

When David replaced the black receiver, John looked over. “Was that Maggie?”

“You know it was, old boy.” David leaned toward him and smirked. “Jealous?”

John snorted. “Hardly. So”—he stood up from his desk chair and came around to sit on the edge of David’s desk—“you’re going to Cambridge, then?”

“Indeed, old boy,” David said. “Why she doesn’t want to go to Oxford is beyond me, but—”

“What’s in Cambridge?”

“Why, what do you care?” David said. “It’s not like you’re
mooning
, is it?”

“David—this is important. Why does Maggie want to go to Cambridge?”

David sighed. “It’s something about her father. Probably nothing. But if it helps her feel better …”

John jumped to his feet and walked quickly to the door.

“Where are you off to?” David called after him.

“Just remembered something,” John called back. “Go on.”

“Great bloody Odin, is everyone losing his bleeding mind?” David muttered, turning back to his notes. Men and women. He’d
never
understand them.

John burst into Snodgrass’s office.

“She knows!”

Looking up from the files on his large oak desk, Mr. Snodgrass said mildly, “Mr. Sterling, would you kindly remember to knock first, please?”

John shut the door behind him and then said, in a lower tone, “She knows.”

“Who knows?” Snodgrass said. “Who knows what?”

“Maggie. She knows.”

“What exactly
does
she know?”

“I’m not sure. But she’s on her way to Cambridge.”

“All right, then.” Snodgrass lowered his pen, smoothed his comb-over, and picked up the green telephone receiver. “Then we have work to do.”

“Nice car,” Maggie said, settling into the smooth leather seat of David’s Citroën as the car purred through blacked-out London.

“My poor baby,” David said. “The rubbish that passes for petrol these days will be the death of her.” He was dressed casually in a white open-neck shirt, navy jacket, and gray-flannel trousers.

There was a comfortable silence as they drove in the
silky black—only the moon and the dim light peeking through the slotted headlight covers provided illumination.

“It really was good of you to drive me to Cambridge tonight. By staying over, you’re using one of your only days off.”

David patted Maggie’s hand. “As you are, Magster. Glad to do it. Besides, it’s raising my profile at the office, you know—escorting a pretty girl …”

She punched his arm.

“Ouch!”

“Love tap,” she said. “Now, we need a plan for when we get to Cambridge. Settle into the rooms at the University Arms hotel, then head for Trinity.”

“If your father’s still in the area, he’ll at least have shown his face at the High Table once in a while.”

“Sounds like a good place to start.”

Maggie must have found him by now, Edith realized. And if she hadn’t, she would soon; she was too smart not to. The game was over. Now all Edith could do was explain herself and hope—pray—that Margaret would understand. After all, Edmund had gone insane, undoubtedly still was. Surely what she’d done was forgivable.