Enigma

above The Times crossword—27 December at 8.15—and thrusts it into his hands. She'll buy the tickets. She'll see him there. Please don't say no.
    And before he can think of an excuse, she's gone. He's due to be on shift on the evening of the 27th but he doesn 't know where to find her to tell her he can't go. And anyway, he realises, he rather does want to go. So he calls in a favour he's owed by Arthur de Brooke and waits outside the assembly hall, and waits, and waits. Eventually, after everyone else has gone in, and just when he's about to give up, she comes running out of the darkness, smiling her apologies.
    The concert is better than he'd hoped. The quintet all work at the Park and once played professionally. The harpsichordist is particularly fine. The women in the audience are wearing evening frocks, the men are wearing suits. Suddenly, and for the first time he can recall, the war seems a long way away. As the last notes of the third canon ('per Motum contrarium') are dying in the air he risks a glance at Claire only to discover that she is looking at him. She touches his arm and when the fourth canon (*per Augmentationem, contrario Motu'j begins, he is lost.
    Afterwards he has to go straight back to the hut: he's promised he 'd be back before midnight. 'Poor Mr Jericho,' she says, 'just like Cinderella. ..' But at her suggestion they meet again for the following week's concert—Chopin -and when that's over they walk down the hill to the station to have cocoa in the platform bujfet.
    'So, 'she says, as he returns from the counter bearing two cups of brown froth, 'how much am I allowed to know about you?'
    'Me? Oh, I'm very boring.'
    'I don't think you 're boring at all. In fact, I've heard a rumour you're rather brilliant. 'She lights a cigarette and he notices again her distinctive way of inhaling, seeming almost to swallow the smoke, then tilting her head back and breathing it out through her nostrils. Is this some new fashion, he wonders? I suppose you're married?' she says.
    He almost chokes on his cocoa. 'Good God, no. I mean, I would hardly be—'
    'Fiancee? Girlfriend?'
    'Now you 're teasing me.' He pulls out a handkerchief and dabs at his chin.
    'Brothers? Sisters?'
    'No, no.'
    'Parents? Even you must have parents.'
    'Only one still alive.'
    'I'm the same, 'she says. 'My mother's dead.'
    'How awful for you. I'm sorry. My mother, I must say, is very much alive.'
    And so it goes on, this hitherto untasted pleasure of talking about oneself. Her grey eyes never leaving his face. The trains steam past in the darkness, trailing a wash of soot and hot air. Customers come and go. 'Who cares if we're without a light?' sings a crooner on the wireless in the corner, 'they can't blackout the moon . . .' He finds himself telling her things he's never really spoken of before—about his father's death and his mother's remarriage, about his stepfather (a businessman, whom he dislikes), about his discovery of astronomy and then of mathematics . . . '
    'And your work now?' she says. 'Does that make you happy?'
    'Happy?' He warms his hands on his cup and considers the question. 'No. I couldn't say happy. It's too demanding -frightening, even, in a way.'
    'Frightening?' The wide eyes widen further with interest. 'Frightening how?'
    'What might happen...' (You 're showing off, he warns himself, stop it.) 'What might happen if you get it wrong, I suppose.'
    She lights another cigarette. 'You 're in Hut 8, aren 't you? Hut 8's the naval section?'
    This brings him up with a jolt. He looks around quickly. Another couple are holding hands at the next table, whispering. Four airmen are playing cards. A waitress in a greasy apron is polishing the counter. Nobody seems to have heard.
    'Talking of which,' he says, brightly, I think I ought to get back.'
    On the corner of Church Green Road and Wilton Avenue she kisses him, briefly, on the cheek.
    The following week it is Schumann, followed by steak-and-kidney pudding and jam roly-poly at the British Restaurant in Bletchley Road ('two courses for elevenpence') and this time it's her turn to talk. Her mother died when she was six, she says, and her father trailed her from embassy to embassy. Family has been a procession of nannies and governesses. At least she's learned some languages. She 'd wanted to join the Wrens, but the old man wouldn 't let her.
    Jericho asks what London was like in the Blitz. 'Oh, a lot of fun, actually. Loads of places to go. The Milroy, the Four