The Rose Code

In February 1942, Osla complains to Commander Travis, BP’s new warden, that BP’s security is lacking; he and his staff brush her off. Leaving the office, she sees Giles, whose section head put him on break after he backed up Harry’s assertion that the English intelligence should be sharing more of their findings with their Russian allies.

Disturbed by reports of the systematic murdering of Jews and jealous of Mab’s happy marriage, Osla calls Philip, who happens to be writing a letter to his distant cousin, Princess Elizabeth. Unable to voice her concerns, she merely returns Philip’s declaration of love.

Giles helps Osla, Mab, and Beth find a new room in the village of Aspley Guise. Back at work, Beth receives a new cipher to break, and she cracks it within two weeks. Immersed in her work, Beth failed to realize that Dilly withdrew from leading the section, due to advancing cancer. Beth visits him in his home, where he continues to decode messages, locking them in a safe when he’s not working on them.

On Francis and Mab’s wedding night, after they have sex, Mab hesitantly reveals that she had sex before. Francis is unconcerned.

Following their marriage, Mab and Francis live separately to enable them to continue their work. They write to each other frequently, and Mab is startled by his lengthy, literary letters. After a few weeks, they meet in the Lake District for a brief honeymoon. As they make love, Francis asks Mab to trust him, but she remains tense and cries afterwards. Over the next day, as they exchange a series of notes, Francis opens up to Mab about his post-traumatic stress that haunts him from World War I, and Mab opens up to him about Geoffrey.

In March 1942, Lord Mountbatten, an admiral, makes a surprise visit to BP. Following the disruption of his visit, Osla is the first to return to Hut 4. As she enters, she thinks she sees someone else sneaking out.

During the April 1942 meeting of the Mad Hatters, Harry and Giles argue and nearly fight during a discussion of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, which Harry finds racially problematic. When Harry leaves, Beth follows him. He confides his frustration at failing to decode German submarine traffic, leaving Allied ships vulnerable. When Beth expresses her confidence in him, he kisses her suddenly, then apologizes. Before leaving, he confesses that he’s in love with Beth.

Over the next few months, Mab and Francis struggle to find time to see each other. When Francis must work through a planned reunion, Mab visits Lucy and promises her that she can live with her and Francis after the war. Alone at Francis’s apartment, Mab examines his things, including critical comments written over his own poetry and a description of Mab as “the girl in the hat” (319). Before leaving for BP, she leaves him a note. In his next letter, Francis explains that during his demoralizing service in World War I, a chance encounter in Paris with a girl in a hat gave him hope, and that, on the day he proposed, Mab symbolically became the girl in the hat when she talked about how much she loved her hat.

In May 1942, Sheila runs into Beth and invites her for a drink. Sheila explains that she and Harry married after a youthful fling led to pregnancy and that they remain married for Christopher’s sake, but their relationship is now just a friendly one. Sheila carries on an extramarital relationship with Harry’s permission, and Harry is welcome to do the same. Leaving the bar, Beth runs into her mother, who invites her to come back home. Beth declines, saying she wants “a lot more” than to return to her old life (330).

In June 1942, Commander Travis questions Osla regarding her movements through various huts; Osla infers that some files are missing. An MI-5 agent suggests that Osla is passing on information to Philip, who has Nazi relatives. She denies any wrongdoing but agrees to turn over his letters and stop writing to him. She talks to Philip, who passed his exams, one more time before he travels to his next assignment.

In November 1947, a nurse puts Beth in a straitjacket for vomiting her medicine. Beth wonders if Peggy, who returned from a nervous breakdown around the time Osla was questioned, was the traitor.

In the teashop, Osla invites Mab to join her in visiting Beth.

In June 1942, on a particularly hot day, Mab and her associates strip down to their underwear while operating the bombes. After her shift, she meets Francis for another stay in the Lake District, wearing a hat just like the one from Francis’s memory. The next morning, she joins Francis for his morning walk, and he leads her to the top of a hill. She tells him about a Wren (a member of the Women’s Royal Navy Service) who was discharged after her relationship with an American officer resulted in a miscarriage. Francis gently reveals that he recognized Lucy as Mab’s daughter the first time he saw them together. They plan to show Lucy Francis’s home in Coventry, their future home, after he returns from an upcoming assignment in Scotland.

Two weeks after meeting with Sheila, Beth takes two condoms from Giles’s wallet. Giles is upset to see her touch his wallet but becomes amused when he realizes what she took. Beth approaches Harry after his shift ends and accepts his invitation to spend the afternoon with him in Cambridge.

They hold hands as Harry shows Beth around Cambridge. Harry tells her that he has no intention of leaving Sheila and Christopher, but he can offer Beth “an occasional afternoon” if she agrees (359). He takes her to a music shop where he used to work, then empty on Sunday morning, and they listen to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, which has patterns that remind them of breaking codes. Harry initiates foreplay, then draws back until Beth offers him the condoms. They have sex in the back of the shop.

Osla writes occasional letters to the man who helped her after the Café de Paris bombing, even though she receives no response. She leads an effort to check for missing files but finds nothing amiss. One evening in October, Osla receives a letter from Philip, who wonders why Osla stopped writing. Mab receives a letter announcing Francis’s return. Osla agrees to join her and Francis for a few days in Coventry the following month to help look after Lucy.

Beth continues to meet Harry during mid-shift breaks a­­­nd days off. Though Dilly rarely visits BP, his section expands, eventually including Giles and a few other men. The night before Mab and Osla are scheduled to leave for Coventry, Beth decodes a message suggesting that the town will be the target of an upcoming air raid.