Page 21 of Apt to be Suspicious
“Well. Right at the start of the war, there was a request for anyone who’d read maths— especially those of us who were teaching— to suggest people we knew who might have the right sort of minds. It was easiest to ask people who were still engaged with the subject, and they were especially looking for people who had just finished at university, or who would in the near future. That wasn’t you, of course.”
“No.” Pen had begun her fourth year at Schola when the war started. She’d been old enough to know she loved maths and wanted to do more, but not actually much good at anything remotely complex yet. Just getting into the interesting bits, as Professor Acharya had put it. “Did they ask again?” It would make sense, or at least it was one line of logic that did.
“They did. Right around the time you were finishing school. And that time, the inquiry came partly from our Ministry. Yours wasn’t the only name I mentioned. I sent them maybe ten.” Pen could tell her aunt knew exactly how many, and wasn’t saying. That was fine. Everyone in this conversation had secrets. “That time, they were looking for people who could learn a technical process, dealing with maths, and do it reliably.”
The timing there made sense. Pen had left school in 1941, when they were gearing up for even more bombes at Bletchley, the great deciphering machines with the arguably confusing name. Even if those weren’t where she’d ended up, Pen had certainly fit the profile of the girls there. Women, for all they were so often referred to communally as girls. She considered what she could say, then finally settled on, “I felt like I was doing something meaningful there. And something not everyone could do. Not like some tasks, right?”
“Everyone can serve. That’s been a family motto since long before Papa.” Aunt Agnes said it fondly, even though that sort of motto had consequences. Pen’s family had never had a holiday— religious or otherwise— without taking several dozen people’s preferences into account about the timing, or how far they could go, or when.
Then there were the expectations about behaviour. Whatever Pen did behind closed doors, in public she had to behave impeccably. Anywhere the gossip might follow. Schola had been largely a safe haven from that. Bletchley Park had been, because no one talked outside of it. Oxford was anything but. Pen couldn’t go a week without running into someone who knew her parents, or especially Grandfather.
Aunt Agnes had given her a moment, but now she asked, “Frustrations at university? Besides the tutoring, I mean. I assume you’d have told us at some length if you’d had a new option.”
“Some.” Now Pen had to try to figure out how to put things. “I look at a lot of the people there, and they seem so, what’s the word? Juvenile is part of it, but that’s the wrong word. About half the people who are up are my age. The men served; the women served. We’re not fresh out of whatever school, no idea how to handle being an adult.”
“Superficial, perhaps?” Aunt Agnes said. “That’s— well. After the Great War, there was a lot of that. People who’d done and been through awful things, clinging hard to whatever joy they could find, wherever they found it. I don’t think we’ve solved that problem at all, though it’s coming out a bit differently now.” Her shoulder twitched. “The rationing is rather a damper on certain kinds of gatherings. All alcohol, no food.”
“Certainly not the best combination up at Oxford, ugh. I could cheerfully live the rest of my life without drunken staggering just before the gates close. At least Somerville doesn’t have quite the same problem.” She’d overheard far too many stories of awful messes from someone staggering home drunk, mistaking which was their room, and so on. She entirely pitied any man with a ground-floor room and an accessible window.
“Surely there’s some variation. Is the Academy any better? One thing I will say about Schola is that they seem to get better manners into most of you than many schools.”
“Plenty of people have nice manners when it’s teachers watching,” Pen pointed out. “Though I’ve heard your stories, and the things you see people don’t expect.” She considered. “I think it is the superficiality that gets to me. People going along like the most important thing in the world is some bit of translation, when there’s something meaningful that needs doing. I keep thinking about Professor Born and the Waynflete lectures this year, how he was talking at some level about the moral obligations of maths and the sciences.”
Aunt Agnes nodded. “Mind, some people think about those things because of history or Greek or Latin or what have you. That’s why we as humans keep coming back to those stories. They have power. Even if the power they have isn’t entirely visible.” She hesitated. “I’ve an ongoing wrangle with Janet. You remember, she teaches Latin.”
“I do. You talk about her quite a bit in your letters.” Pen had met her, too, more than once. Janet was a trim, tidy woman about the same age as Aunt Agnes. She came from the Scottish borders and looked like she’d take on any Greek or Roman warrior, grab him by the ear, and lecture him into submission.
“She was rereading the Iliad, and she was talking— this is over a month or so, at suppers, you know how it is— about the experience of war there, and the experience of war of young men. Both twenty years ago and now, and how that’s changed. We asked people— mostly men— to go off and do horrible things, in ways that I don’t think any of us were made to do without breaking. Some people hide the cracks better than others. And we don’t know what someone else’s experience was. Unless we ask.”
“If we can ask and get an answer.” Pen let out a huff of breath. “I suppose. But I can’t talk about what I was doing. It’s rude to ask someone else. Even if there were someone I might ask where it wouldn’t be rude. Most of the annoying ones, I can’t imagine being in a conversation where asking would make sense.”
“Mmm.” Aunt Agnes considered. “You might think about whether there’s some group you could lend a hand to. An hour or two a week. It might open up some conversation. If you want.”
“Not this year. Maybe next,” Pen said immediately, instinctively. “Trinity Term’s sports, all over the place. That’s enough to be dodging around.”
Aunt Agnes laughed. “You've got a point. Shall we go have a walk, at least? I wanted to do a sketch from the top of the hill. I want to try a painting later, and I can’t remember where the oak came down over the winter properly.”
“Sure.” Pen pushed herself off the wall. “I like being out in the open.”
Chapter 15
Tuesday, March 30th at Ytene in the New Forest
“How much of a ride are you up for?” Edmund looked up from where he was checking the mare’s girth before patting her shoulder and swinging up into the saddle. Slate was a new mount for him, one of the up-and-coming horses in pavo training. Papa, of course, was already up on Nox. She was the most recent in a line of black mares, the second generation of his own breeding.
Edmund got himself settled in the saddle. “Two or three? Last week went well enough on shorter rides. Four might be a bit much.”
The problem with not riding while he was up at Oxford had little to do with skill, but a great deal to do with muscle strength and tone. Riding somehow used muscles that nothing else did. And of course, during Hilary term he’d spent far more time inside, between the grey weather and his studies. He’d gone riding with Ros several times while she was home last week, the only week their hols overlapped. But that had been training in the enclosed ring or much shorter rides near the house.
Ros was on the pavo team and determined to be successful. Edmund could at least give her a good run at practising with someone she didn’t train with all the time. He had not, it turned out, lost all his skill at the various mounted challenges of a pavo match, but his magic had been shakier than he’d wanted to admit. And of course, Ros was riding a mare she knew well, and he had been swapping around.
Now, he was beginning to settle on considering Slate for a long-term mount. She was still a bit green. He’d need much more work with her to consider her as a pavo mount. But he enjoyed her gait, and of course she was impeccably trained.
“How about the Rufus Stone? I’ve not gone down that way in a few weeks. We could stop at the Green Dragon on the way back.” Papa sounded entirely casual about it, which made Edmund sure that he had at least three things he’d find useful to do in the area. Papa did not visibly grow plots as frequently or quickly as Ursula did, but he certainly had plenty in mind.
Papa nodded, waited for Edmund to get his mare to take a few steps, and then set off. They kept at an easy pace until they were past True Eyeworth and the distractions of a village. The next stretch of road was in decent shape— Papa and Master Benton made certain of that. Once they were on a clear stretch, Papa picked up a trot, letting the horses stretch their legs, then a canter for a little.
It was a pleasant day. Misty rather than clear, but the sort of mist that made the New Forest look as magical as it was in truth. Not so much fog as to startle the horses, either, and it was warm enough Edmund was comfortable in just a jacket, no charms needed, nor an extra layer. Once they came closer to the more central roads, Papa slowed to a walk again, until they turned off onto one of the paths, and they could ride side by side without being a bother.
