Enigma
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, 'callingat 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
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