Kelly Xu
had had her own table ??? She’d known a WREN at Bletchley Park – Barbara Thoms – down-to-earth type, one of the cogs in the wheel. The many wheels. Nancy had been a bigger wheel, a decoder, one of the boys. Normally she wouldn’t have had much to do with a lowly cog but they had both been county netball players, had tried, and failed, to get a team going at Bletchley. (Nancy had been a Half Blue at Cambridge.) Nancy had had her own table by the end of the war, was deputy head of the hut. She had known them all – Turing, Tony Kendrick, Peter Twinn. She had loved that world, occluded, secretive, self-sufficient, but she had always understood that it was temporary, that ‘normal service would be resumed’. Would have to be resumed. For "one of the boys", does it mean Nancy is an important person ? For "get a team going ", does it mean winning a game? For "had had her own table ", i would like to know what does it mean here. Thanks.
May 29, 2015 1:50 PM
Answers · 2
1
"One of the boys" means she fit in with the male persons and behave like them. "To get a team going" is to start a team, to establish one. "Had had her own table." is using the past perfect (the first "had") of "to have" as used for possession (the second "had"). It fits with the tense of the rest of the passage ("had been", "had tried", etc.). It basically means she had her own table, but in context with the rest of the narrative.
May 29, 2015
Just to add to Sam's answer: 'She had had her own table by the end of the war' is an indication of her status. While the more lowly employees had to share tables, Nancy had become important enough to have a table all to herself. By the way, have you seen the film 'The Imitation Game'? That's what this section is about. Nancy is like the Keira Knightley/Joan Clarke character in the story.
May 29, 2015
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