the war has given her something. She’s . . . found herself.”
He smiled in spite of not wanting to. “Yes.” It was unarguable. It had confused Hannah, divided her loyalties between the safety of the past and the needs of the present. It had faced Joseph with horror that stretched his faith beyond its limits, it had taken away all the old answers and left him alone to find new ones. It had destroyed Matthew’s safety as well and filled him with suspicion of everyone. There was no trust anymore, he was totally isolated. But to Judith it had given maturity and purpose, something to do that mattered, and, for the first time in her life, people who needed her.
“I wish I could,” Hannah said quietly. “I’m trying to help in the village, the way I know Mother would have. But everything is changing. Women are doing jobs that the men used to. I can understand that.” She was staring into the distance. Clouds were drifting in, bright, silent towers in the sky. “But they like it! Tucky Nunn’s sister Lizzie is working in the bank in Cambridge, and she loves it. She’s found that she’s really clever with figures and managing. She wants to stay on, even after the men come back! She wants to get a lot of us organized to push harder for votes for women. I can’t even think of an argument against it, I just hate everything changing.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned a little toward him, comfortably.
“It frightens me,” she admitted quietly. “I hate everything changing, I mean any more than it has to.”
He considered saying that it would probably all change back, after the war, but he had no idea whether it would or not; or even if they would win the war. Part of him wanted to comfort her at any price. This was Hannah, not Judith. He would never have lied to Judith. But Hannah did not deserve it either. “Let’s get the men back before we decide who’s going to do what,” he said instead. “I have to go and see Shanley Corcoran this evening. I won’t be here for dinner, but I’ll come back for the night. If I’m late, I’ll let myself in.”
“Oh . . .” There was disappointment in her. He felt it as sharply as if she had spoken the words, and he realized again how lonely she was. There must be a million women over Britain that felt the same, and countless more over France, Austria, and Germany, too. He pulled her a little tighter, but there was nothing to say.
“Wonderful to see you,” Shanley Corcoran exclaimed with enthusiasm shining in his eyes. He wrung Matthew’s hands vigorously but with a familiar gentleness that awoke memories of childhood again, safety that seemed like another world, just accidentally placed in the same houses, with the same trees towering above, and the same broad summer skies.
“Sorry it’s been so long,” Matthew apologized, and he meant it. He had had to spend far too much time in London and old, safe friendships had suffered.
Corcoran led the way inside the high-ceilinged house with its spacious Georgian windows, wide wooden floors, and colored walls whose richness had mellowed into warmth.
“I understand,” he said, indicating a chair for Matthew to sit once they were in the drawing room with its French doors onto the terrace. They were open, letting in the evening air and the sound of birdsong and the faint rustle of wind in the trees. Corcoran’s face was grave. He was not handsome in a conventional way, but there was an intelligence and a vitality in him that made him more alive than other men, lit with more passion and more hunger for life. “We’re all too busy for the pleasures we used to have. But what kind of a man grudges any blessing at a time like this?” He looked at Matthew with sudden concentration. “You look tired—worried. Is it bad news?” There was a shadow across his eyes, an anticipation of pain.
Matthew smiled in spite of himself. “Only war news,” he answered. “Judith was home on leave briefly and I saw her the day before yesterday.”
“And Joseph?” Corcoran asked, still watching intently.
“It’s a hard job,” Matthew answered. “I don’t know how I would try to tell men out there that there really is a God who loves them, and in spite of everything to the contrary, He is in control.”
“Nor do I,” Corcoran said frankly. “But then I’ve never been sure what I really believe.” He smiled, a warm, intimate gesture of self-mocking humor. “I couldn’t bear the thought that it is all random and senseless, or that morality is only whatever our society makes it. And yet if I look at it closely, organized religion has so many contradictions in logic, absurdities that are met with ‘Oh, but that’s a holy mystery,’ as if that explained anything, except our own dishonesty to address what contradicts itself.”
His mouth pulled tight. “But far worse than that is the insistence on petty, enforceable rules to the exclusion of the kindness that is supposed to be the heart of all of them. If there is a God as the Christians conceive Him, there can be little room for blindness, hypocrisy, self-righteous judgment, cruelty, or anything that causes unnecessary pain, and there can be no place at all for hatred. And religion seems to nurture so much of it.”
“Joseph would tell you it’s human weakness,” Matthew replied. “People use religion as a justification for what they wanted to do anyway. It isn’t the cause, it’s only the excuse.”
Corcoran’s eyes were bright. “Would he indeed?”
“For certain—it’s exactly what he told Father, to the same argument.” Matthew could remember it as vividly as if it had been last week, although actually when he counted, it was over seven years ago. Joseph had been newly ordained to the ministry, not medicine as John Reavley had wanted him to be. But he had still been proud of Joseph’s honesty, and his dedication to serve others, even in a different path. They had sat in the study by firelight, rain beating on the windows, and talked half the night. He could see their faces in his mind, Joseph’s so earnest, so eager to explain, John’s calmer, with deep, slow growing satisfaction that the argument had logic as well as passion, that right or wrong, it was not blind.
Corcoran was looking into the past as well, at a long friendship stretching back to their own university days when he and John Reavley had studied together, walked the Backs along the river in the sun, or sat up all night sharing philosophy, dreams, and long, rambling jokes. “Are you worried about him?” he asked, bringing himself back to the present.
“Joseph?” Matthew asked. “No more than about anyone.” It was not the truth, but he did not want to admit to Corcoran, or to himself, the weight of the burden he feared Joseph carried. “Tell me about yourself. You look . . .” He thought for a moment. “Full of energy.”
Corcoran smiled broadly, lighting his uniquely vibrant face. “If I could tell you about the Establishment here, you’d understand.” His voice had a sudden lift of urgency. He leaned forward in his chair. “We have excellent men, brilliant, and I use the term as your father would, the best minds in England within their fields. I think much of this war is going to be won or lost in the laboratory, with ideas, inventions that will change warfare, perhaps even stop some of this terrible slaughter of men. Matthew, if we can create a weapon more powerful, more destructive than anything the Germans have, once we prove it to them, they won’t throw more and more men into the battlefield where they cannot win. At first the cost would be high, but for a short time, very short. In the end it would save hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Matthew felt a sudden leap of hope. “Could you work on something to help in the war at sea?” he asked. “Our losses are mounting, men and ships, supplies we need desperately if we are to survive.”
Corcoran did not rush into speech; he studied Matthew’s face, the intensity in him, the measure of his words. “Is that why you’re here?” he said softly. “You didn’t come just because you’re in Cambridge, did you?”
“No. I’ve been sent by my chief in SIS,” Matthew answered. “The matter is so secret nothing is to be put on paper. He doesn’t want you to come to London, and he won’t be seen here. You are to trust no one. All the work you do is to be divided up among your men in such a way that no one person can deduce what the whole project will be.”
Corcoran nodded very slowly. “I see,” he said at last. “What is it? I assume you can tell me that much?”
“Something to improve the accuracy of depth charges or torpedoes,” Matthew told him. “At the moment it’s a case of dropping a cluster and hoping you’ve outguessed the U-boat commander. If you’re lucky one of them will go off in the right place, at the right depth, and damage him.” He leaned forward. “But if we could invent something that would attach the depth charge to the U-boat, or perhaps even detonate it at a certain distance, then we’d have so much advantage they’d lose too many U-boats to make it worth their while anymore.” He did not add how vital it was to keep some control of the sea-lanes. Like every Englishman, Corcoran knew that, never more so than now.
He sat in silence so long Matthew grew impatient, wondering if his request was somehow foolish, or out of place in a way he had not considered.
“Magnetism,” Corcoran said finally. “Somehow the answer will lie in that. Of course the Germans will work that out, too, and we will have to think of a way to foil any guards against it that they use, but it must be able to be done. We must find the way, before they do! If they think of something first and can attach it to torpedoes before
