8th August 1945, Manchester
"These are your colleagues, Dr. Turing." In the basement of the physics department in the Victoria University, Manchester, Max Newman introduced Alan Turing to his new role.
"Douglas Hartree you know, and this is Arthur Porter." Milo watched as both men extended a hand to Turing.
With the disdain that she had learned he possessed in his company over the last few days, Milo watched Alan Turing ignore the hands, but nod to both men.
He was familiar, that was certain, he was someone in whose company Milo felt safe. And Alan had had no qualms about Milo being in his company, either.
When they had arrived at Manchester, on the doorstep of Professor Rutherford's old home, Constanza Blackett had admitted them to the Bohemian environment of their home, sitting, standing, in various manners of dress, and many different languages filling the air. Her husband was as the university, she told Turing, and their home hosted Central European refugee scientists. "Along with yourselves," she added, and had nodded to Milo, assuming she was Alan's tagalong.
And Milo had become Mary, and was acceptd with Alan into the home of Lyn Newman as had been the arrangement. Now, her husband was showing them his own innovations internal data storage and automatic decision-making. He was not fazed when Turing seemingly rebuffed his imminent colleagues, and instead took him into another room in the basement, much larger than the first, extolling the greatness of his paper.
It was packed full of electrical equipment, wires, cogs, wheels, cylinders, all designed to build a physical engine that would carry out the processes that mathematicians were carrying out each and every day.
"But in a time frame countless orders of magnitude faster than would take someone, even yourself," he added. Milo watched, for it seemed that he was still trying to win Turing to the job, and Alan was giving no indication that this wasn't the case.
"And Mary?" he added, when Newman had come to the end of the sales pitch. "For I could not contemplate working here without her."
Which was strange, because they had known each other only a few days. So it was agreed that she would board with the Newmans as as Turing, on the basis that she would work alongside him.
And this was an arrangement that Milo found suited her. No-one asked her about herself, or her war work - no-one spoke about or wanted to speak about what they did in that conflict. No-one asked where she had come from, or why she was in Turing's company. It was as if she did not exist; she was a person within a person, away from the world, a position that suited Milo as she healed.
Turing was beside her when the voice of Truman came over the airwaves that night, compelling the Japanese to surrender, making her shudder inwardly at the magnitude of the work she had been involved in...
..."The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on more industries. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately and save themselves from destuction. I realise the tragic significance of the atomic bomb. Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us, without warning, at Pearl Harbour. Against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war. Against those who have abandoned all pretence of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans"...
"You've been here before," Turing asked Milo.
"Nearly thirty years ago," Milo confided, when, the next morning, they crossed the square, past the Victoria building, now swathed in ivy, to the door that led to the basement, to where they would work.
And it wasn't just the building that brought back thick, heavy memoties, but the man who met them in the basement that morning.
"I would like to introduce you to the man in charge of all this project," Max Newman told Turing, glancing briefly to Milo.
It was Patrick Blackett.
Aside from a few grey hairs at the sides of his head, the man, tall, louche, wiry, and seemingly no different from the last time Milo had seen him, twenty years before, she estimated, towering over even Douglas Hartree, who had filled the doorway that led to the mechanical analyser, Blackett looked no different.
"This is Newman, the most intelligent person I know," Blackett said to Turing, glancing across to Hartree and Arthur Porter, who had joined his colleague at the door and Milo felt his charismatically commanding manner fill the room.
Yet, it was matched in a heartbeat by Max Newman who turned and gestured beside him, "This is Turing, the most intellient person I know."
And then Blackett's face clouded as he looked at Milo.
"Turing, and you've brought a friend." He looked her up and down, his brown narrowing, his lips pursing.
He hadn't recognised her, Milo realised. Patrick Blackett, who had been like a second brother to her had simply not recognised the wreck of a woman standing beside the mathematicl genius.
"A colleague," Turing replied. "She goes where I go."
And Milo did just that, for nearly months, hiding in plain sight, going wherever Turing went, never questioned, little conversation except for that which existed between the practical physicists as they worked on the engine. It suited her, and all the while, Blackett did not know that she was Milo Ashby, his former colleague, back from the dead.
88888888
The doctor, John Connell, had been let in by the hall boy to tend to the half-drowned form of Johnny Bates. He attended the lad, while his mother, Anna, stood beside her son, scolding and soothing in turn.
The whole house was in turmoil for the drama, and Thomas felt he had to attend his duties, lest he went in there himself to give the lad what for. It would not have been a good move at that time - it would keep, for the young man was in for a roasting for the way he had treated Ernst.
Where was Ernst, come to think of it, Thomas thought, as the afternoon wore on to the evening, and the next day had begun. He had been coy about his enquiry, as anxiety grew in the pit of his stomach. Ernst had come back, surely? He had been with them.
"I am grateful to the boy," Master George had told Thomas, when he took a call upstairs and had subsequently brought a light luncheon to the dining room for all of the guests. "If it hadn't been for Ernst, young Bates would have drowned."
And there was the story, being knitted in front of Thomas's eyes, the change of story, of emphasis.
But it was still on its needles, and Thomas decided to pull it right off.
"Bates would not have been there had we not been looking for Ernst, your Lordship," he pointed out, laconically, "Had he not decided to attack the boy in the first place."
Master George gave Thomas a sharp look, but could not keep it up: Thomas was right, factually, morally. It was just that, after years of pandering to Johnny Bates, doing anything else was difficult.
"And Ernst has not been seen since," Thomas added, admitting his worry. "We carried Johnny Bates back here. I believe," he added, and Master George let him speak, ignoring the indignation in Lady Mary's expression, "He may have gone back with Davies."
The unspoken worry was between them now, like a metaphorical black cloud, whose contents needed to be unleashed before order could be restored.
"May he have?" George Crawley asked. "Well, Andrew and Larry can manage the tea; you shall go to Davies and find out."
It was an instruction, an order from his master, and Thomas, beside the back door wearing his oilskin coat and walking boots within minutes, sent grateful thanks above, not to God, but to Master George's compassionate intuition.
"I'll come with yer," Thomas heard, as he stepped into the yard. Crossing it, in his own outdoor clothing was Tom Branson. More gratitude in his chest, Thomas felt, for he was coming to regard Branson as well, if not a friend, an ally, his socialist, anarchist traits having ebbed with the years, and his ambition to claim his line, though blocked through Prew, cast aside. He liked Downton; his family were here, his new family. He was living proof that men could change.
"He went to, by home," Daives told Thomas, when the old Welsh sheep farmer had come to the door of his cottage. It had not been flooded, although there had been damage to he roof and the man, who must have been in his seventies if he were a day, was halfway up a ladder repairing it.
"Home?" Thomas asked, for no-one had seen him in Downton.
"He was good to me, and my sheep, came more often than that big clot of a ruffian. And then that big twp of a fool even had the nerve to throw rocks at him!" Davies turned to Thomas raising his fist. "And then goes and saves the life of that big lummock? If I ever see 'im up here again, I'll give him a thrashing, so I will!"
"Ernst has gone home?" Thomas repeated. But Davies was in no mood for benevolance.
"Is what I tell yer, is it not?" he snapped back. Thomas exchanged a look with Tom Branson.
"But he was here?"
"Stopped with me all night, dried out."
"And gone home," Thomas repeated. Then, an awful thought struck him.
"Which way was he going?" Tom Branson asked, clearly thinking the same. Davies stopped, and turned on the ladder, surveying the land.
"Don't rightly know, but he's gone east, sure enough,"He's a good boy, he is, I'll miss his help."
"Oh, you will get all the help you need," Master George told him. Thomas turned in shock to hear his lordship's voice. George Crawley smiled, unapologetically.
"I came as soon as I could," he told Thomas. "I figured you might need help."
And with a goodbye from the current Lord Grantham, the three men strode away.
"And don't send me that lummockin great boy!" Davies called after them, before turning back to the task of re-securing his roof tiles.
"Come on, Barrow, can you drive?" George Crawley asked, as they approached Downton at speed.
"Not too badly," Thomas admitted. But it was not his best skill. And besides, he was too wrought up over Ernst's disappearance. If he should be lucky enough to see the boy again, he would offer, offer what he and Master George had discussed.
"Come on!" called Branson, skidding into the yard before the chauffeur's cottage, and across to the garages. "I'll tek yer!"