Mr.Churchill's Secretary(61)

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it

always was,

Let it be spoken without effort,

Without the ghost of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was,

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you, for an interval,

Somewhere very near,

Just around the corner.

All is well.”



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.





EIGHTEEN





BACK 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.