Relationship Spotlight: Hester Wallace & Tom Jericho (Enigma)

I recently rewatched this Bletchley Park mystery drama and was reminded how much I enjoy these two.  It’s not a perfect movie – since The Bletchley Circle doesn’t take place until after the war and The Imitation Game takes some glaring dramatic licenses, I’ve yet to find a Bletchley Park story that’s everything I want it to be – but Hester and Tom get pretty close.  Here’s to my favorite code-breaker OTP!

During the Second World War, both Tom and Hester devote their energies to their work at Bletchley.  Of course, while Tom is in the inner circle, tackling the Germans’ Enigma code and operating his “thinking machine” (at times, Tom seems like a fictionalized excuse to have a straight Alan Turing,) Hester is a “glorified file clerk” who puts up with sexual harassment between cataloguing intercepts.  Essentially, he has a seat at the table and she doesn’t.  However, their investment in the same mystery is what pulls their stories together.

The main story kicks off with the revelation that Claire, Hester’s roommate and Tom’s ex-girlfriend, is missing.  Tom is so hung up on Claire that he’s only recently returned to Bletchley after a post-breakup nervous breakdown, and even though Hester isn’t terribly impressed with Claire’s character, they were close somewhat in spite of themselves, and she’s concerned for her friend’s safety.  When Tom finds proof that Claire removed enciphered intercepts from Bletchley and hid them, he realizes that there may be foul play in her disappearance, and Hester, sharing his suspicions, joins him in a mission to get to the bottom of it.

I love a good old-fashioned sleuthing team, and if you throw in a little cryptanalysis?  I’m so there.  Hester and Tom are unstoppable together, taking ever-increasing risks in their search for the truth and pulling out some fantastic intellectual work.  Even though their alliance begins chiefly because Hester happens to walk in on Tom’s discovery of the hidden intercepts and later because she’s positioned to have access to information Tom needs, they quickly become equal partners in the enterprise, both giving their all to find out what Claire knew and why she disappeared.  Both of them work better this way, bouncing ideas off each other and benefiting from each other’s strengths in a sort of analytical tag-team.

It’s neat to see how they both grow under the other’s influence.  Initially, Hester is very (understandably) reticent about helping in the investigation; what Tom is doing is literally treason, and if they were found out, it would be the end of both of them.  However, his dogged pursuit of the answers inspires her to be similarly bold, and she’s soon smuggling restricted documents in her knickers and cleverly talking her way out of perilously hot water.  At the same time, Tom has been wrapped up in his own pain over his tempestuous relationship with Claire, nigh-obsessed to the point of tunnel vision, and Hester helps him to see past himself.  She has plenty of evidence that Claire isn’t worthy of the pedestal Tom puts her on, and more significantly, she has pain of her own to deal with.  She doesn’t let Tom forget that her gender has shut her out of an elite cryptanalyst club in which she’s rightfully earned a place, and she makes it clear that he can’t expect to get information from her without giving anything in return.  After having been bowled over by gorgeous, vivacious Claire, it’s wonderfully gratifying to watch Tom realize just how remarkable the eternally-overlooked Hester really is.