Page 11 of Apt to be Suspicious
December 27th at Pen’s family home
There was a tremendous rush between when Pen came down from Oxford and Christmas. There always was, but this year felt more so than most. The downstairs of the vicarage had to be spotless. People would keep coming and going. Even with rationing, sometimes people would bring along a precious jar of jam, or a little honey, or a handful of eggs if the chickens were still laying.
More importantly, there had been getting all the decorations and changing over from the liturgical purples of Advent to the whites and reds and golds of Christmas proper. Along, of course, with as many evergreens as could be had, bits of holly, and even a sprig of mistletoe. It all took a lot of coordination. Even more care and exhaustion were required to make sure that everyone who wanted to help had a chance to, along with easing bruised feelings.
Not that Pen had wanted to be near any mistletoe. Several of the village boys had angled hopefully near it during various gatherings. None of them appealed. They’d get ideas and make assumptions. Her being at university was one thing, but she was absolutely sure none of them would think much of her doing maths. Besides, none of them were magical, not that she could give that as a reason except to Mum and Grandfather and Aunt Agnes.
Grandfather, of course, ruled over all of his domain from his study on the ground floor. Mum spent her time tidying, cleaning, offering mint or nettle tea around, and keeping track of all the many moving pieces. Choir practices were on these nights, bell ringers on that one, the route for the carolling had to be revised six times. And of course there were the lists of who in the parish needed checking on. Gerald Franks, the curate, did most of the actual visits, of course. It didn’t do to send Grandfather out in the chill too often, not now he was over eighty.
Once— back when Pen had been tiny— all the tending had been Grandmother’s domain. But she’d died when Pen was five. Grandfather, for all his virtues and challenges, was a Victorian gentleman, a youngest son who’d gone into the church and found an excellent living. The thing about Grandfather was that he was absolutely sincere in his beliefs. He had been for a long time. And he had a clear, strong voice, even now. He thought hard— and argued harder— for what he thought his congregation needed.
Aunt Agnes had a job teaching at a boarding school for girls. She couldn’t make sure Grandfather stayed fed and sorted. Mum was the oldest daughter, the one with responsibility to see things tended. Otherwise, it would have been a housekeeper of some sort, and Grandfather hadn’t wanted that. A cleaning woman, yes, but not a housekeeper who’d try to manage him.
The vicarage itself wasn’t really the problem. It had plenty of space, even with them keeping all magic on the first or second floor. Well, other than the fact the boiler was vastly better behaved than the usual run of non-magical boilers. There were plenty of bedrooms, everyone had doors to close for privacy, and a family sitting room on the first floor. It left the ground floor for the parish needs, a sitting room and Grandfather’s study and the kitchen and so on.
But they were not very near a portal. That made it tricky for Dad, even more so since the Blitz. Dad was an engineer, and these days he’d be gone for a week or a fortnight or a month, for one project or another. He’d come home for a week, maybe two, and then be gone again. It was sensible; it was practical. Neither Pen nor her Mum liked it very much.
He’d been home for Christmas— well, solstice through Christmas— but he’d gone off again that morning. Something about a bridge. Pen had got a fair bit of her love of maths from Dad, as well as from Aunt Agnes. But he’d admitted that what she was interested in these days was rather beyond him. The house felt too empty again. Worse, Pen would only get a few more days with Dad before she went back up to Oxford in January.
Now, however, the kettle sang, and so she could pour hot water into the teapot and bring the tea upstairs to the sitting room. They even had a few biscuits left. Mum and Aunt Agnes were in their usual chairs, tucked up near the fireplace, and Pen pulled one of the footstools over between them. Mum looked— well. Mum looked more than a bit worn. Pen would have to see about helping out more while she was here. Pen had been a late-born child, relatively speaking, and it took a lot to keep the house as Grandfather wanted it.
“How is himself?” Aunt Agnes waited until Pen set the tray where they could all reach it. “Oh, and some of the biscuits. Bless.”
“Napping in his study. It’s that time of day.” There was a good stretch of afternoon until someone had to get supper. Gerald was in the ground floor sitting room, if anyone came by. It was not terribly likely, but there could always be an unexpected need for clergy.
The world did not take holidays from births or deaths or accidents. Etty Donaldson was expecting her first any day now, and Harry Winters had looked awfully frail at Christmas. Pen didn’t borrow trouble and just added, “I cut up the veg for supper tonight already, so it’s only the cooking.”
“It’s lovely to have you home.” Mum took her mug, then leaned back with a sigh. “Not only because you chop vegetables, I hurry to add. Though I don’t know how we’d have got through the last fortnight without your help.”
“You did it for years, Mum.” It hadn’t been like she’d been able to get leave at the right time from Bletchley. Oh, they’d had leave, they’d been expected to take it. But everyone wanted Christmas time, and Pen didn’t find it restful to be home then, so she hadn’t.
“And I am older and sufficiently wise to realise I like having help.” Mum shrugged. “Anyway. I want to catch up properly. How has your term been?”
Pen had known the question would come, and she still did not have an answer. Mum would see right through prevarication. That was part of the problem. Finally, she let out a breath. “Overall, it’s good. But it feels, I don’t know. Disconnected from what I want to do. Going through the formalities. My tutor’s fine, but she’s not focused on the things I’m interested in.”
The problem was in part that if Pen spelled out what she really wanted— cryptography, a particular line of it— it would give too much away. And her oath on the Official Secrets Act was magically enforced. It wasn’t even like she could go against it if she wanted to, not that she did. It wouldn’t help even if she did.
Now, it was just barely possible Aunt Agnes knew more about what had been going on. She’d been the one to suggest Pen to someone at Bletchley. But Pen did not know how long that chain was. Just that Aunt Agnes had mentioned Pen was excellent at maths. With apparently some examples.
Aunt Agnes considered. “I’m not asking what you want to do. I am not entirely sure I’d understand it.” That gave Pen a way out. “But can you explain the scope of the problem? We might have some ideas.”
“My tutor is good— but there’s only a handful of tutors in a subject for Somerville,” Pen said. “She can give me the grounding for later, but she can’t give me the rest of it. Not her part of the field. And when I asked about tutors at the Academy— well, no one was taking on new people in anything like the right subjects. Maybe next year, but I’m not very hopeful about that.”
Aunt Agnes pursed her lips. “How does that normally work?”
“Oh, I go to lectures at the Academy, just like I go to lectures in the other colleges. That’s ordinary. But tutoring— honestly, most of them are set up like apprenticeships. Only there isn’t entirely a method of doing magical apprenticeships in maths, the same way. I asked Professor Acharya, and she asked around, but...” Pen shrugged.
“We tried.” Mum looked a bit abashed. “But with the war, and not being able to say what you’d been doing, it was hard. Not that it’s terribly odd. Are you sure there aren’t any connections from there?”
“A few people at Oxford, but men, and not magical.” At least she was almost certain none of them were magical. “And of the women, none that I know at Oxford. A couple are at Cambridge or elsewhere, but that doesn’t help much with the magical studies.”
The Academy was unusual in having spaces set aside for magical tutoring as well as the rest of it. People who went to Cambridge or another university either set up something privately or left the magical apprenticeship until after their degree.
Aunt Agnes opened her mouth, then closed it, then tried, “What do you think of the general standard at Oxford?”
“Oh, we talked about that a bit.” At Bletchley, in fact. Most places, as far as people had said, treated maths like a tool, what it could do in someone’s hands. Certainly, that had come up a lot at Bletchley. Cambridge, she’d heard one of the younger men say, saw it in relationship to physics and also to philosophy.
Oxford— perhaps because of the long influence of the Academy, now she thought about it— looked at it as an art in itself. One of the Quadrivium, as Schola taught it, maths was numbers and time in an intricate series of dances. “It’s excellent, but in particular, mostly the mathematicians look at it as an art. Even if they don’t quite use those words. That part suits well. Better than other places.”
