Enigma

it open. To his astonishment he found he had slept through the entire day.
    'That would be very kind, Mrs Armstrong. Thank you.'
    The dream had been disturbingly vivid—more substantial, certainly, than this shadowy room—and as he threw off the blankets and swung his bare feet on to the cold floor, he felt himself to be in a no-man's-land between two worlds. He had a peculiar conviction that Claire had been thinking of him, that his subconscious had somehow acted like a radio receiver and had picked up a message from her. It was an absurd thought for a mathematician, a rationalist, to entertain, but he couldn't rid himself of it. He found his sponge-bag and slipped his overcoat over his pyjamas.
    On the first floor a figure in a blue flannel dressing gown and white paper curlers hurried out of the bathroom. He nodded politely but the woman gave a squeak of embarrassment and scuttled down the passage. Standing at the basin, he laid out his toiletries: a sliver of carbolic soap, a safety razor with a six-month-old blade, a wooden toothbrush worn down to a fuzz of bristles, an almost empty tin of pink tooth powder. The taps clanked. There was no hot water. He scraped at his chin for ten minutes until it was red and pricked with blood. This was where the devil of the war resided, he thought, as he dabbed at his skin with the hard towel: in the details, in the thousand petty humiliations of never having enough toilet paper or soap or matches or baths or clean clothes. Civilians had been pauperised. They smelled, that was the truth of it. Body odour lay over the British Isles like a great sour fog.
    There were two other guests downstairs in the dining room, a Miss Jobey and a Mr Bonnyman, and the three of them made discreet conversation while they waited for their food. Miss Jobey was dressed in black with a cameo brooch at her throat. Bonnyman wore mildew-coloured tweeds with a set of pens in his breast pocket and Jericho guessed he might be an engineer on the bombes. The door to the kitchen swung open as Mrs Armstrong brought in their plates. 'Here we go,' whispered Bonnyman. 'Brace yourself old boy.'
    'Now, don't you go getting her worked up again, Arthur,' said Miss Jobey. She gave his arm a playful pinch, at which Bonnyman's hand slid beneath the table and squeezed her knee. Jericho poured them all a glass of water and pretended not to notice.
    'It's potato pie,' announced Mrs Armstrong, defiantly. 'With gravy. And potatoes.'
    They contemplated their steaming plates. 'How very, ah, substantial,' said Jericho, eventually. The meal passed in silence. Pudding was some kind of stewed apple with powdered custard. Once that had been cleared away Bonnyman lit his pipe and announced that, as it was a Saturday night, he and Miss Jobey would be going to the Eight Bells Inn on the Buckingham Road.
    'Naturally, you're very welcome to join us,' he said, in a tone which implied that Jericho, naturally, wouldn't be welcome at all. 'Do you have any plans?'
    'It's kind of you, but as a matter of fact I do have plans. Or, rather, a plan.'
    After the others had gone, he helped Mrs Armstrong clear away the dishes, then went out into the back yard to check his bicycle. It was almost dark and there was a sharpness in the air that promised frost. The lights still worked. He cleaned the dirt off the regulation white patch on the mudguard and pumped some air into the tyres.
    By eight o'clock he was back up in his room. At half past ten, Mrs Armstrong was on the point of laying aside her knitting to go up to bed when she heard him coming downstairs. She opened the door a crack, just in time to see Jericho hurrying along the passage and out into the night.

2

    The moon defied the blackout, shining a blue torch over the frozen fields, quite bright enough for a man to cycle by. Jericho lifted himself out of the saddle and trod hard on the pedals, rocking from side to side as he toiled up the hill out of Bletchley, pursuing his own shadow, cast sharp on the road before him. From far in the distance came the drone of a returning bomber.
    The road began to level out and he sat back on the saddle. For all his efforts with the pump, the tyres remained half-flat, the wheels and chain were stiff for want of oil. It was hard going, but Jericho didn't mind. He was taking action, that was the point. It was the same as code-breaking. However hopeless the situation, the rule was always to do something. No cryptogram, Alan Turing used to say, was ever