Mr. Churchill's Secretary Read Online Free PDF

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    Nigel was a barrel-chested young man with ruddy cheeks and thick dark hair that flopped over one eye. He’d gone to Magdalen College at Oxford with John and David. He’d worked as a private secretary, as the others had, but for then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. When Chamberlain had stepped down, Nigel had revised his pacifist ideology, and was now in the process of joining the RAF. He was spending his last days in London with Chuck.
    As David went to the bar for more drinks, Paige offered, “I still have nightmares about typing for Mr. Kennedy.”
    “Did everyone hear about the Euston station bombing?” Maggie asked the table.
    “Dreadful, just dreadful,” Paige said, shaking her head.
    “Terrible,” Chuck said. “I love Ireland and her green, white, and orange flag with all my heart, but the IRA makes me ashamed to be Irish. That’s the point of thegoddamned flag, you know. Green for the Gaels, orange for the Protestants—and white for the peace between them.”
    Nigel leaned in and put his arm around her, giving her a loud smacking kiss on the cheek. Chuck smiled, and when she did, her stern face blossomed into something approaching beauty.
    “Ireland’s still neutral, though,” Maggie said. When England declared war on Germany, Ireland chose neutrality. It was a bitter pill for many English.
    “Most people in Ireland really do support England and the war effort,” Chuck said. “My family does.” Chuck’s parents were originally from Dublin but had immigrated to England when she was four. Her father had a medical practice in Leeds.
    “But what about those who don’t—who support the IRA? Who’s setting off the mailbox bombs in London?” Maggie asked. “Who’s bombing the Tube?”
    “I told you—terrorists, extremists, nutters,” Chuck said. “Like your, what do you call them in the United States? The Ku Klux Klan.”
    “Well, we’ll see what happens if ‘neutral’ Ireland’s used as a base to launch an attack against England,” John said.
    “I’m personally just bloody sick of having people think that just because I’m Irish, I’m some sort of terrorist,” Chuck said. “Even today, I was pulled off a case because some paranoid mummy didn’t want her ‘precious darling’ contaminated by the horrible Irish nurse.” She shook her head. “Stupid bint.”
    John reached down and pulled the
Evening Standard
from his briefcase.
“PREPARE FOR THE WORST!”
screamed the headline. “Well, regardless of Ireland’s neutrality, it’s starting in earnest now,” he said, taking off his jacket to reveal red suspenders. He sat down and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Norway was neutral, and itdidn’t stop the Nazis from invading. And now Belgium’s officially surrendered.”
    Maggie set her lips in a grim line. “France is next.”
    “Thanks for the reminder,” David said, returning with glasses of beer.
    Chuck turned to Maggie, trying to change the subject. “So, your first day—how was it? Tell us everything!”
    “It was fine, really,” Maggie said, smiling once again, trying not to look as tired and frazzled as she felt. “I’m sure it’ll get better. Oh, and I stood up to the odious Mr. Snodgrass. That was a plus.”
    “Dicky Snot-ass,” David said. “That’s how he’s known around the office. Don’t take it personally, Magster.”
    John took a sip from his sweating pint glass. “I still don’t understand why you and Paige stayed. You’re Americans, after all. You could have left months ago. Probably should have.”
    How to explain?
Maggie thought. Yes, she’d originally come to London to sell her late grandmother’s house. Yes, at first she’d felt angry because she’d had to give up a doctoral program in mathematics at M.I.T. to do so—no small achievement for a woman, even a Wellesley woman.
    When she’d first come to England, she’d been full of resentment—of the narrow-minded people, of bad food and weak coffee, of the dilapidated