Enigma

Hundred. A kind of desperate gaiety. We've all had to learn to live for the moment, don't you think?'
    When they say goodbye she kisses him again, her lips to one cheek, her cool hand to the other.
    In retrospect, it is around this time, in the middle of January, that he should have started keeping a record of his symptoms, for it is now that he begins to lose his equilibrium. He wakes with a feeling of mild euphoria. He bounces into the hut, whistling. He goes for long walks around the lake between shifts, taking bread to feed the ducks—just for the exercise, he tells himself, but really he is scanning the crowds for her, and twice he sees her, and once she sees him and waves.
    For their fourth date (the fifth, if you count their meeting on the train) she insists they do something different, so they go to the County Cinema on the High Street to see the new Noel Coward picture, In Which We Serve.
    'And you really mean to tell me you 've never once been here?'
    They're queuing for tickets. The film's only been showing for a day and the line extends round the corner into Aylesbury Street.
    'I haven't, actually, to be honest, no.'
    'God, Tom, you are a funny old darling. I think I'd die stuck in Bletchley without the flicks to go to.'
    They sit near the back and she laces her arm through bis. The light from the projector high up behind them makes a kaleidoscope of blues and greys in the dust and cigarette smoke. The couple next to them are kissing. A woman giggles. A fanfare of trumpets announces a newsreel and there, on the screen, long columns of German prisoners, an impossible number, are shown trekking through snow, while the announcer talks excitedly about Red Army breakthroughs on the eastern front. Stalin appears, presenting medals, to loud applause. Someone shouts: 'Three cheers for Uncle Joe!' The lights come up, then dim again, and Claire squeezes his arm. The main film begins—'This is the story of a ship'—with Coward as an improbably suave Royal Navy captain. There's a lot of clipped excitement. 'Vessel on fire bearing green three-oh . . . Torpedo track, starboard, sir ... Carry on firing . . .' At the climax of the sea battle, Jericho looks around at the flickering of the celluloid explosions on the rapt faces, and it strikes him that he is a part of all this—a distant, vital part—and that nobody knows, nobody will ever know . . . After the final credits the loudspeakers play 'God Save the King and they all stand, many of the audience so moved by the film they begin to sing.
    They've left their bicycles near the end of an alley running beside the cinema. A few paces further on a shape rubs itself against the wall. As they come closer they can see it is a soldier with his greatcoat wrapped around a girl. Her back is to the bricks. Her white face stares at them from the shadows like an animal in its hide. The movement stops for the time it takes Claire and Jericho to collect their bicycles, then it starts again.
    'What very peculiar behaviour.'
    He says it without thinking. To his surprise, Claire bursts out laughing.
    'What's the matter?'
    'Nothing, 'she says.
    They stand on the pavement holding their bicycles, waiting for an Army lorry with dimmed headlights to pass, its gearbox grinding as it heads north along Watling Street. Her laughter stops.
    'Do come and see my cottage, Tom.' She says it almost plaintively. 'It's not that late. I'd love to show it you.'
    He can't think of an excuse, doesn 't want to think of one.
    She leads the way through the town and out past the Park. They don't speak for fifteen minutes and he begins to wonder how far she's taking him. At last, when they're rattling down the path that leads to the cottage, she calls over her shoulder, Isn't it a perfect sweetheart?'
    'It's, ah, off the beaten track.'
    'Now don't be horrible, 'she says, pretending to be hurt.
    She tells him how she found it standing derelict, how she charmed the farmer who owns it into letting her rent it. Inside, the furniture is shabby-grand, rescued from an aunt's house in Kensington that was shut up for the Blitz and never reopened.
    The staircase creaks so alarmingly, Jericho wonders if their combined weight might pull it away from the wall. The place is a ruin, freezing cold. 'And this is where I sleep, 'she says, and he follows her into a room of pinks and creams, crammed full of pre-war silks and furs and feathers, like a large dressing-up box. A loose floorboard goes off like a gunshot beneath his