Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [90]
In other words, despite their efforts to remain unnoticed, Keith and Mavis were fully clocked, but in an apparently wholly benevolent way. Mavis recalls that Dilly Knox jokingly tried to warn her that ‘mathematicians are very unimaginative’. She assured him that hers was just fine. The engagement went ahead and marriage followed not too long after. Mavis Batey continues: ‘It was only when we were married that we were required by the regulations to work in different rooms. But that was plain civil service rules and nothing to do with the Secret Service.’
Sheila and Oliver Lawn not only found a similarly promising and benign atmosphere, but also realised, long before they met, just how conducive to romance the Bletchley Park set-up was. On top of this, they had observed the growing tenderness between Keith Batey and Mavis Lever. Says Oliver Lawn: ‘There was quite a bit of romance. There were several in Hut 6 who married while they were at Bletchley. There were the Bateys, of course. Sheila and I married later, because Sheila had to go off and finish off her qualifications.’
‘Oliver and I met at the Scottish Reels club,’ says Sheila. ‘I had just joined it. I noticed that when Hugh Foss [the Bletchley Park king of reels] was absent, Oliver used to take the class. And I remember this rather nice dancing lad. I suppose we danced together and Oliver thought that I was an adequate partner for him. We also did ballroom dancing, and Latin American.’
It is a treasurable image: the sound, echoing out of the big house, of a gramophone record playing Latin American dances, and the continual rumble of feet on the dance floor. Like the Bateys, Sheila Lawn cannot recall that the authorities had much to say when it became clear that she and Oliver were stepping out: ‘I don’t think the powers that be could take much control over the issue of relationships because you would meet your people when you were off duty.’
Besides which, adds Mr Lawn, there was simply so much of it about: ‘The other couple I recollect was Bob Roseveare and Ione Jay. He was a mathematician, straight from school. He hadn’t even gone to university. Very brilliant chap from Marlborough. He married Ione Jay, who was one of the girls in Hut 6.
‘Then there was Charles Babbage, who was a don similar to [Gordon] Welchman. Same sort of age. Babbage married while he was there.’
It was obviously not always a case of automatic marriage. ‘Some of our old Bletchley Park flames have come out of the woodwork,’ Mr Lawn adds, laughing. ‘I had one and Sheila had one. Mine was a lady who I saw for quite a short time. This was long before I met Sheila. We did quite a lot of dancing, I think ballroom dancing rather than Scottish dancing. And this lady and I got quite friendly, over the period of a few months. And then she was moved abroad and spent the rest of the war in Singapore, I think it was.’
Love crossed many barriers at Bletchley. Codebreaker Jon Cohen recalled: ‘I took up with a girl who I was quite surprised to find was a countess’s daughter. Because with my middle-class Jewish background, that wasn’t the sort of person I would normally mix with. But it was a place where all sorts met and there were dances and parties and we enjoyed ourselves to a certain extent.’2
Another prominent romance – and indeed subsequent marriage – was that of Shaun Wylie and Wren Odette Murray, both of whom worked in the Newmanry. In 1943, their eyes met across a chuntering Heath Robinson machine; in 1944, they married. Given the not especially romantic backdrop of this vast, noisy machinery, it is a heroically sweet tale. And Shaun and Odette had their moments away from the technology. ‘Most of our courting was in Woburn Park,’ Odette Murray said. ‘The Abbey is a huge imposing building and the central part has a large podium on top of it, very high up. I used to go casual climbing so that I could sit on top of this to watch Shaun on his bicycle coming up the drive.’
It seemed also that love could make a leap across the huts. Thinking back to his days in Hut 8, Rolf