Enigma (13 page)

One carton was full of books. A couple of Agatha Christies. A
Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, two
volumes, by a fellow named George Shoobridge Garr. Principia
Mathematical, whatever that was. A pamphlet with a suspiciously
Germanic ring to it—On Computable Numbers, with an Application to
the Entscheidungs problem—inscribed “To Tom, with fond respect,
Alan”. More books full of mathematics, one so repeatedly read it
was almost falling to pieces and stuffed full of markers—bus and
tram tickets, a beer mat, even a blade of grass. It fell open at a
heavily underlined passage:

♦

—there is one purpose at any rate which the real mathematics may
serve in war. When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in
mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the
arts and sciences, the most remote.

♦

Well, the last line’s true enough, she thought. She closed the
book, turned it around and squinted at the spine: A Mathematician’s
Apology by G.H. Hardy, Cambridge University Press.

The other box also yielded little of interest. A Victorian
etching of King’s College Chapel. A cheap Waralarm clock, set to go
off at eleven, in a black fibre case. A wireless. An academic
mortarboard and a dusty gown. A bottle of ink. A telescope. A copy
of The Times dated 23 December 1942, folded to the crossword, which
had been filled in by two different hands, one very small and
precise, the other rounder, probably feminine. Written above it was
2712815. And, finally, at the bottom of the carton, a map, which,
when she unfolded it, proved not to be of England, or even (as she
had suspected and secretly hoped) of Germany, but of the night
sky.

She was so put off by this dreary collection that when, at half
past midnight that night, there was a knock on the door and another
two suitcases were delivered by a small man with a northern accent,
she didn’t even bother to open them but dumped them straight in the
empty room.

Their owner arrived at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. She was
sure of the time, she explained later to her next-door neighbour,
Mrs Scratchwood, because the religious service was just ending on
the wireless and the news was about to start. And he was exactly as
she’d suspected he would be. He wasn’t very tall. He was thin.
Bookish. Ill-looking, and nursing his arm, as if he’d just injured
it. He hadn’t shaved, was as white as—well, she was going to say
“as a sheet”, but she hadn’t seen sheets that white since before
the war, certainly not in her house. His clothes were of good
quality, but in a mess: she noticed there was a button missing on
his overcoat. He was pleasant enough, though. Nicely spoken. Very
good manners. A quiet voice. She’d never had any children herself,
never had a son, but if she had, he would have been about the same
age. Well, let’s just say he needed feeding up, anyone could see
that.

She was strict about the rent. She always demanded a month in
advance—the request was made down in the hall, before she took them
up to see the room—and there was usually an argument, at the end of
which she grumpily agreed to settle for two weeks. But he paid up
without a murmur. She asked for seven pounds six shillings and he
gave her eight pounds, and when she pretended she hadn’t any
change, he said: “Fine, give it me later.” When she mentioned his
ration book he looked at her for a moment, very puzzled, and then
he said (and she would remember it for the rest of her life): “Do
you mean this?”

“Do you mean this?” She repeated it in wonderment. As if he’d
never seen one before! He gave her the little brown booklet—the
precious weekly passport to four ounces of butter, eight ounces of
bacon, twelve ounces of sugar—and told her she could do what she
liked with it. “I’ve never had any use for it.”

By this time she was so flustered she hardly knew what she was
doing. She tucked the money and the ration book into her apron
before he could change his mind and led him upstairs.

Now Ethel Armstrong was the first to admit that the fifth
bedroom of the Commercial Guest House was not up to much. It was at
the end of the passage, up a little twist of stairs, and the only
furniture in it was a single bed and a wardrobe. It was so small
the door wouldn’t open properly because the bed got in the way. It
had a tiny window flecked with soot which looked out over the wide
expanse of railway tracks. In two and a half years it must have had
thirty different occupants. None had stayed more than a couple of
months and some had refused to sleep in it at all. But this one
just sat on the edge of the bed, squeezed in between his boxes and
his cases, and said wearily, “Very pleasant, Mrs Armstrong.”

She quickly explained the rules of the house, Breakfast was at
seven in the morning, dinner at six thirty in the evening, “cold
collations” would be left in the kitchen for those working
irregular shifts. There was one bathroom at the far end of the
passage, shared between the five guests. They were permitted one
bath a week each, the depth of water not to exceed five inches (a
line was marked on the enamel) and he would have to arrange his
turn with the others. He would be given four lumps of coal per
evening to heat his room. The fire in the parlour downstairs was
extinguished at 9 p.m., sharp. Anyone caught cooking, drinking
alcohol or entertaining visitors in their room, especially of the
opposite sex—he’d smiled faintly at that—would be evicted, balance
of rent to be paid as a forfeit.

She’d asked if he had any questions, to which he made no reply,
which was a mercy, because at that moment a nonstop express
shrieked past at sixty miles an hour no more than a hundred feet
from the bedroom window, shaking the little room so violently that
Mrs Armstrong had a brief and horrifying vision of the floor giving
way and them both plummeting downwards, down through her own
bedroom, down through the scullery, crashing down to land amid the
waxy legs of ham and tinned peaches so carefully stacked and hidden
in her Aladdin’s cave of a cellar.

“Well, then,” she said, when the noise (if not yet the house)
had finally subsided, “I’ll leave you to get some peace and
quiet.”

♦

Tom Jericho sat on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes
after listening to her footsteps descending the stairs. Then he
took off his jacket and shirt and examined his throbbing forearm.
He had a pair of bruises just below the elbow as neat and black as
damsons, and he remembered now whom Skynner had always reminded him
of: a prefect at school called Fane, the son of a bishop, who liked
to cane the new boys in his study at teatime, and make them all say
“thank you, Fane” afterwards.

It was cold in the room and he started to shiver, his skin
puckering into rashes of gooseflesh. He felt desperately tired. He
opened one of his suitcases and took out a pair of pyjamas and
changed into them quickly. He hung up his jacket and thought about
unpacking the rest of his clothes, but decided against it. He might
be out of Bletchley by the next morning.

That was a point—he passed his hand across his face—he’d just
given away eight pounds, more than a week’s salary, for a room he
might not need. The wardrobe vibrated as he opened it and the wire
coat hangers sounded a melancholy chime. Inside it stank of
mothballs. He quickly shoved the cardboard boxes into it and pushed
the cases under the bed. Then he drew the curtains, lay down on the
lumpy mattress, and pulled the blankets up under his chin.

For three years Jericho had led a nocturnal life, rising with
the darkness, going to bed with the light, but he’d never got used
to it. Lying there listening to the distant sounds of a Saturday
morning made him feel like an invalid. Downstairs someone was
running a bath. The water tank was in the attic directly above his
head, and the noise of it emptying and refilling was deafening. He
closed his eyes and all he could see was the chart of the North
Atlantic. He opened them and the bed shook slightly as a train went
by and that reminded him of Claire. The 15.06 out of London
Euston—calling at Willesden, Watford, Apsley, Berkhamsted, Tring,
Cheddington and Leighton Buzzard, arriving Bletchley
four-nineteen—he could recite the station announcement even now,
and see her now as well. It had been his first glimpse of her.

This must have been—what?—a week after the break into Shark? A
couple of days before Christmas, anyway. He and Logie, Puck and
Atwood had been ordered to present themselves at the office block
in Broadway, near St James’s tube station, from which Bletchley
Park was run. “C” himself had made a little speech about the value
of their work. In recognition of their Vital breakthrough”, and on
the orders of the Prime Minister, they had each received an iron
handshake and an envelope containing a cheque for a hundred pounds,
drawn on an ancient and obscure City bank. Afterwards, slightly
embarrassed, they’d said goodbye to one another on the pavement and
gone their various ways—Logie to lunch at the Admiralty, Puck to
meet a girl, Atwood to a concert at the National Portrait
Gallery—and Jericho back to Euston to catch the train to Bletchley,
“calling at Willesden, Watford, Apsley…

There would be no more cheques now, he thought. Perhaps
Churchill would ask for his money back.

A million tons of shipping. Ten thousand people. Forty-six
U-boats. And that was just the beginning of it.

“It’s everything. It’s the whole war.”

He turned his face to the wall.

Another train went by, and then another. Someone else began to
run a bath. In the back yard, directly beneath his window, Mrs
Armstrong hung the parlour carpet over the washing line and began
to beat it, hard and rhythmically, as if it were a tenant behind
with his rent or some prying inspector from the Ministry of
Food.

Darkness closed around him.

♦

The dream is a memory, the memory a dream.

A teeming station platform—iron girders and pigeons fluttering
against a filthy glass cupola. Tinny carols playing over the public
address system. Steel light and splashes of khaki.

A line of soldiers bent sideways by the weight of kitbags runs
towards the guard’s van. A sailor kisses a pregnant woman in a red
hat and pats her bottom. School children going home for Christmas,
salesmen in threadbare overcoats, a pair of thin and anxious
mothers in tatty furs, a tall, blonde woman in a well-cut,
ankle-length grey coat, trimmed with black velvet at the collar and
cuffs. A prewar coat, he thinks, nothing so fine is made
nowadays…

She walks past the window and he realises with a jolt that she’s
noticed he is staring at her. He glances at his watch, snaps the
lid shut with his thumb and when he looks up again she’s actually
stepping into his compartment. Every seat is taken. She hesitates.
He stands to offer her his place. She smiles her thanks and
gestures to show there’s just sufficient room for her to squeeze
between him and the window. He nods and sits again with
difficulty.

Doors slam along the length of the train, a whistle blows, they
shudder forwards. The platform is a blur of waving people.

He’s wedged so tightly he can barely move. Such intimacy would
never have been tolerated before the war, but nowadays, on these
endless uncomfortable journeys, men and women are always being
thrown together, often literally so. Her thigh is pressed to his,
so hard he can feel the firmness of muscle and bone beneath the
padding of her flesh. Her shoulder is to his. Their legs touch. Her
stocking rustles against his calf. He can feel the warmth of her,
and smell her scent.

He looks past her and pretends to stare out of the window at the
ugly houses sliding by. She’s much younger than he thought at
first. Her face in profile is not conventionally pretty, but
striking—angular, strong—he supposes “handsome” is the word for it.
She has very blonde hair, tied back. When he tries to move, his
elbow brushes the side of her breast and he thinks he might die of
embarrassment. He apologies profusely but she doesn’t seem to
notice. She has a copy of The Times, folded up very small so that
she can hold it in one hand.

The compartment is packed. Servicemen lie on the floor and jam
the corridor outside. An RAF corporal has fallen asleep in the
luggage rack and cradles his kit bag like a lover. Someone begins
to snore. The air smells strongly of cheap cigarettes and unwashed
bodies. But gradually, for Jericho, all this begins to disappear.
There are just the two of them, rocking with the train. Where they
touch his skin is burning. His calf muscles ache with the strain of
neither moving too close nor drawing apart.

He wonders how far she’s going. Each time they stop at one of
the little stations he fears she might get off. But no: she
continues to stare down at her square of newsprint. The dreary
hinterland of northern London gives way to a dreary countryside,
monochrome in the darkening December afternoon—frosted fields
barren of livestock, bare trees and the straggling dark lines of
hedgerows, empty lanes, little villages with smoking chimneys that
stand out like smudges of soot in the white landscape.

An hour passes. They’re clear of Leighton Buzzard and within
five minutes of Bletchley when she suddenly says: “German town
partly in French disagreement with Hamelin.”

He isn’t sure he’s heard her properly, or even if the remark is
addressed to him.

“I’m sorry?”

“German town partly in French disagreement with Hamelin.” She
repeats it, as if he’s stupid. “Seven down. Eight letters.”

“Ah yes,” he says. “Ratisbon.”

“How do you get that? I don’t think I’ve even heard of it.” She
turns her face to him. He has an impression of large features—a
sharp nose, a wide mouth—but it is the eyes that hold him. Grey
eyes—a cold grey, with no hint of blue. They’re not dove-grey, he
decides later, or pearl-grey. They’re the grey of snow clouds
waiting to break.