Enigma

bathroom.
    A galvanised metal tub was kept in the shed next to the kitchen. Baths were taken in front of the stove. The whole place was cold and cramped and smelled of mildew. He wondered how Claire stuck it.
    'Oh, but darling, it's so much better than having some ghastly landlady telling one what to do . . .'
    Jericho took a couple of steps across the worn rug and stopped. For the first time he began to feel uneasy. Everywhere he looked he saw evidence of a life being lived quite contentedly without him—the ill-assorted blue-and-white china in the dresser, the vase full of daffodils, the stack of pre-war Vogues, even the arrangement of the furniture (the two armchairs and the sofa drawn up cosily around the hearth). Every tiny domestic detail seemed significant and premeditated. He had no business here.
    He very nearly left at that moment. All that stopped him was the faintly pathetic realisation that he had nowhere else particularly to go. The Park? Albion Street? King's? His life seemed to have become a maze of dead ends.
    Better to make a stand here, he decided, than run away again. She was bound to be back quite soon.
    God, but it was cold! His bones were ice. He walked up and down the cramped room, ducking to avoid the heavy beams. In the hearth was white ash and a few blackened fragments of wood. He sat first in one armchair, then tried the other. Now he was facing the door. To his right was the sofa. Its covers were of frayed pink silk, its cushions hollowed and leaking feathers. The springs had gone and when you sat in it you sank almost to the floor and had to struggle to get out. He remembered that sofa and he stared at it for a long time, as a soldier might stare at a battlefield where a war had been irretrievably lost.
    They leave the train together and walk up the footpath to the Park. To their left is a playing field, ploughed into allotments for the Dig for Victory campaign. To their right, through the perimeter fence, is the familiar huddle of low buildings. People walk briskly to ward off the cold. The December afternoon is raw and misty, the day is leaking into dusk.
    She tells him she's been up to London to celebrate her birthday. How old does he think she is?
    He hasn 't a clue. Eighteen perhaps?
    Twenty, she says triumphantly, ancient. And what was he doing in town?
    He can't tell her, of course. Just business, he says. Just business.
    Sorry she says, she shouldn't have asked. She still can't get the hang of all this 'need to know'. She has been at the Park three months and hates it. Her father works at the Foreign Office and wrangled her the job to keep her out of mischief. How long has he been here?
    Three years says Jerico, she shouldn't worry, it'll get better.
    Ah she says, that's easy for him to say, but surely he does something interesting?
    Not really he says, but then he thinks that makes him sound boring, so he adds: 'Well, quite interesting, I suppose.'
    In truth he's finding it hard to keep up his end of the conversation. It's distracting enough merely to walk alongside her. They lapse into silence.
    There's a noticeboard close to the main gate advertising a performance of Bach's Musikalisches Opfer by the Bletchley Park Music Society. 'Oh, now look at that, 'she says, 'I adore Bach', to which Jericho replies with genuine enthusiasm, that Bach is his favourite composer. Grateful at last to have found something to talk about, he launches into a long dissertation about the Musikalisches Opfer's six-part fugue, which Bach is supposed to have improvised on the spot for King Frederick the Great, a feat equivalent to playing and winning sixty games of blindfold chess simultaneously. Perhaps she knows that Bach's dedication to the King—Regis lussu Cantio et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta—rather interestingly yields the acrostic RICERCAR, meaning'to seek'?
    No, oddly enough, she doesn 't know that.
    This increasingly desperate monologue carries them as far as the huts where they both stop and, after another awkward pause, introduce themselves. She offers him her hand—her grip is warm and firm, but her nails are a shock: painfully bitten back, almost to the quick. Her surname is Romilly. Claire Romilly. It has a pleasant ring. Claire Romilly. He wishes her a merry Christmas and turns away but she calls him back. She hopes he won't think it too fresh of her, but would he like to go with her to the concert?
    He isn 't sure, he doesn't know...
    She writes down the date and time just