Chapter 6
It was almost the end of term. Pen’s room was in a state. She’d had to sort the laundry she needed done to have clothes next week. Everything was topsy-turvy. She had in fact fled to the Somerville library.
Pen had managed, through some fluke of luck, to get a table near a window looking out on the quad. That, naturally, meant she’d done some of her work for her last tutorial tomorrow, but not all of it. She had yet more studying to do as well.
Pen kept staring out the window. The weather was not horrid. It was the people coming and going on the paths around the quad. They kept catching her eye.
When she’d been at Bletchley Park, she’d found herself watching the range of clothing and how people interacted.
She’d started watching people at Schola.
That was natural; it was the first time she hadn’t known most everyone on sight to start, as she had growing up in the village.
But there, everyone wore uniforms, and even the staff usually wore an academic gown.
They wore a more encompassing one than Pen’s own, not that it was difficult.
In contrast, her own commoners' gown was barely more than a vest, with its hanging strips down the front and the back hanging to the hips.
Scanty, more a gesture at clothing, and the strips kept getting annoyingly in the way.
There were upcoming scholarship exams, and if she did well enough on those, she might end up with a scholars' gown instead. Then she’d have to figure out how to get one, or how to save up clothing coupons for the fabric.
That was a problem she hoped to have, but she did not need to worry about it yet.
Staring out the window, Pen thought again— as she did often— of the differences between Oxford and Bletchley.
The thing about Bletchley had been the mix of people.
Oh, there had been plenty of military uniforms, and also the Wrens, or ATS women— she refused to use ‘girl’— as well.
But there’d also been plenty of women wearing a blouse and skirt or a dress, civilian clothing.
But how they wore it, that gave hints of their class and background.
The same was true here. Some of that had to do with the clothing itself. The women from well-off families had begun the war with full closets, and so had their various relations. Clothing might be handed down and fitted to someone new, but there was fabric to work with.
Pen was somewhere in the middle, with good quality fabric, but everything was rather worn by now, after years of making do.
All her skirts had a few mends, most of them near invisible after she’d applied charmwork over the stitches.
Her blouses were still white and lacking in stains for the same reason.
She’d always been good at that kind of domestic charm, and it had stood her in good stead in the past years.
But those two women there, one of them had something slightly odd.
They were both in their third and final year.
The one she didn’t know was wearing what Pen would expect from someone of modest but stable means.
Tweed skirt, neatly fitted blouse, a scholars' gown over it with the puffed broad sleeves and the folds gathered across the back.
She knew Cecily Styles on sight, but mostly because the other woman was a bit notorious rather than anything of substance, as if no one could pin anything down about her.
The more Pen looked, the more she wondered what her eye was catching in the woman’s clothing or posture.
Perhaps the cloth was better quality than Pen would expect, but it was impossible to tell at this range.
Especially through old glass, and with eyes that complained about that sort of distance.
No, maybe it was the fit of the skirt. Or the way the bow at her throat was tied, or the way her hair was put up.
The hair, yes, that might be part of it.
Pen had long hair, as most magical women still did.
So did Audrey and Vesta. She had thought Miss Styles had shorter hair.
The previous times Pen had seen her, Miss Styles had put it up in dark, firmly pinned waves, the way women with bobs did.
But now, she could see that the woman had long hair.
That was not wrong, but it had caught her eye.
The way Miss Styles was standing, there was something about that, too. Pen could not place it, though, which was why she kept staring. Fortunately, she was a floor up, and neither of them was likely to notice her attention. It made Pen wonder for a moment if Miss Styles might actually be magical.
But if she were, why did no one know about her that way?
She certainly hadn’t gone to Schola, or Pen would have known the name and face at least. No, it must just be a trick of the light and the distortions in the glass.
And perhaps Pen had not had nearly enough sleep the last two nights, worrying about her last problem set and tutorial.
None of this was serious. It was not as if some small thing— or larger one— might give away a German spy, after all.
They were beyond such problems being a concern.
Pen’s fancies weren’t worth mentioning. Not that she had any idea who to mention such things to.
Everyone at Bletchley had melted back into their regular lives, or whatever passed for regularity.
Pen sighed, and bent her head back over her problem set again. She was entirely too busy to spend time on what was almost certainly nothing. And it wasn’t nice to gossip about other people, even in her head. Grandfather had standards about that sort of thing.
She barely packed up her books in time to eat in hall.
After supper there was another stint in the library, and she came back to her room with barely enough energy to tidy further.
It wasn’t kind to leave things a mess for Emily, the scout on their staircase.
Pen fell into bed too tired to care about anything, with numbers swimming behind her eyelids.
The next day, she made a point of taking a break mid-morning, standing and stretching, before walking to look at the day’s paper.
She had her own copy of the Times, of course, back in her room.
The crossword was in her satchel. But Grandfather had trained her in the importance of reading the local paper, too.
Now she glanced through the stories, none of which seemed terribly exciting.
While she was waiting for one of the librarians to be free for a question about a book, she thumbed through the advertisements and notices.
The format had limitations and oddities, but her eye was caught by one that seemed rather shorter than the average.
When she looked at it again, the wording also struck her as odd.
‘Driver, Oxford. Ideal terms. Need ongoing work. Write care of post office, Islip, #A54.’ As a post for a situation wanted, it was lacking rather a lot of detail and using words sloppily.
Then she glanced at the date, and frowned.
The section she was holding was from four days ago.
At that moment, the librarian was free, and Pen stepped forward. “I’d like to get a book, please, it wasn’t on the shelf? And then the papers— this section was out. It's four days old. Do you know if the ones in between are still out, please?”
“Oh, yes. The book first?” Pen handed over the slip with the title and author.
She’d learned already this was far kinder when the titles had any sort of maths in them.
The librarian turned away, went to check a few carts, and came back with it.
“Waiting to be shelved again, you have excellent timing. Shall I check this out for you?”
“Yes, please. I’m taking prelims. Can I bring it back after that?
” She could, though with specific instructions about how to return it, since the term would have ended by then.
Then the librarian went and did a circuit of the spaces nearby, coming back with three sections of the paper.
“Is this what you wanted? Just bring them back to that table when you’re done. ”
“Thank you so much.” Pen smiled at her. She’d wondered if asking would be overstepping, that was something Pen hated to do. She’d started with an aversion to it, and that had just got stronger at Bletchley. Now, she took her papers off to her table again and looked at them.
There was nothing that caught her eye the same in the next two, but today’s paper had another message.
“Driver, Oxford. Well-trained, handy, and tidy. In service, available in December.” and then that same wording, about writing care of the post office, and that same number, #A54.
A look at the other messages suggested that that was unusual.
Logic— and Pen would bring logic in now, to support her initial reaction— suggested that was to be expected.
If someone needed a position quickly, they might not want messages coming to their current employer.
But Islip was not a large village. It had a coaching inn or two, if Pen remembered correctly from people planning a ramble in that direction.
It was maybe forty-five minutes from Oxford by bike.
Faster with an automobile, of course, but she couldn’t imagine anyone could get around the petrol rationing to check on employment.
So, presumably, whoever was expecting a contact either lived in Islip or knew someone who could collect a letter.
That still meant some delay in response.
And who on earth would write an advertisement like that?
The first one, on November 30th, barely had any information at all, except for an exceptionally bad bit of negotiation that strongly suggested desperation.
The second one referenced being available in December, but it was already the 3rd. Giving whatever notice was needed would surely take a fortnight, then there were the holidays when a driver might not be needed. Or at least she thought so, not coming from the sort of household that had a driver.
It was entirely baffling. There was something wrong with those advertisements, and she could not figure out what.
It almost made her want to lurk near the Islip post office, like some character in a novel yearning for a glimpse of a mysterious figure.
She was not at all certain if Islip had a suitable tea shop, and certainly she was likely to stand out.
Also, she had maths to do and study. She couldn’t be spending her time wondering if someone would collect the post.
It was going to bother her, though. There was something odd about the notices.
Worse, she was going to be away from the university from Wednesday next until the start of Hilary term on January 18th.
She could scarcely get hold of the Oxford papers at home.
Frustrated, she pushed them aside, then pulled them back, so she could properly copy out all the relevant information.
Bringing them back to the table she’d been shown, she stopped by the desk to ask the librarian one more question. “If I wanted to look at papers while I was on hols, when I get back, do you keep those? Is it a bother to request them?”
The librarian blinked at her for a moment, not upset, but perhaps not expecting that sort of question.
Then she explained they kept the most recent month readily available, and before that went into storage.
Anything within the past academic year was easy enough to fetch.
Pen thanked her again and determined to sit down and do her necessary preparation without further distraction.
Surely she was seeing things out of the corner of her eye because she’d spent so long looking for patterns in what seemed like entirely random collections of letters.
Men who’d fought had trouble putting down the war, this was the same sort of thing.
Or so Pen could only suppose, since she couldn’t really ask anyone.
No matter. Even if there was a puzzle there, it wasn’t like it was hers to solve. Or hers to worry about, even.