Enigma

feet. There's too much detail for the eye to register, so many hat boxes, shoe boxes, bits of jewellery, cosmetic bottles . . . She slips off her coat and lets it fall to the floor and flings herself flat out on the bed, then props herself up on her elbows and kicks off her shoes. She seems amused by something.
    'And what's this?'Jericho, in a turmoil, has retreated to the landing and is staring at the only other door.
    'Oh, that's Hester's room, 'she calls.
    'Hester?'
    'Some bureaucratic beast found out where I was and said if I had a second bedroom I had to share. So in came Hester. She works in Hut 6. She's a sweetie, really. Got a bit of a crush on me. Take a look. She won't mind.'
    He knocks, there's no reply, he opens the door. Another tiny room, but this one spartan, like a cell: a brass bedstead, a jug and bowl on a washstand, some books piled on a chair. Ableman's German Primer. He opens it. 'Der Rhein ist etwas langer als die Elbe,' he reads. The Rhine is somewhat longer than the Elbe. He hears the gunshot of the floorboard behind him and Claire lifts the book from his hands.
    'Don't snoop, darling. It's rude. Come on, let's make a fire and have a drink.'
    Downstairs, he kneels by the hearth and rolls a copy of The Times into a ball. He piles on kindling and a couple of small logs, and lights the paper. The chimney draws voraciously, sucking up the smoke with a roar.
    'Look at you, you haven't even taken off your coat.'
    He stands, brushing the dust away, and turns to face her. Grey skirt, navy cashmere sweater, a single loop of milk-white pearls at her creamy throat—the ubiquitous, unchanging uniform of the upper-class Englishwoman. She somehow contrives to look both very young and very mature at the same time.
    'Come here. Let me do it.'
    She sets down the drinks and begins to unbutton his overcoat.
    'Don't tell me, Tom,' she whispers, 'don't tell me you didn't know what they were doing behind that cinema?'
    Even barefoot she is as tall as he is.
    'Of course I knew ...'
    'In London nowadays the girls all call it a “wall job ”. What do you think? They say you can't get pregnant this way..."
    Instinctively, he draws his coat around her. She wraps her arms about his back.
    Damn it, damn it, damn it.
    He pitched himself forwards and out of the chair, sending the images scattering and smashing on the cold stone floor. He prowled around the tiny sitting room a couple of times, then went into the kitchen. Everything was clean and swept and put away. That would be Hester's handiwork, he guessed, not Claire's. The stove had burned down very low and was lukewarm to the touch, but he resisted the temptation to shovel in some coal. It was quarter to one. Where was she? He wandered back into the sitting room, hesitated at the foot of the stairs, and began to climb. The plaster on the walls was damp and flaking beneath his fingers. He decided to try Hester's room first. It was exactly as it had been six weeks earlier. A pair of sensible shoes beside the bed. A cupboard full of dark clothes. The same German primer. 'An seinen Ufern sind Berge, Felsen und malerische Schlosser aus den dltesten Zeiten.' On its shores are mountains, rocks and picturesque castles from the oldest times. He closed it and went back out on the landing.
    And so, at last, to Claire's room. He was quite clear now about what he was going to do, even though conscience told him it was wrong and logic told him it was stupid. And, in principle, he agreed. Like any good boy he had learned his Aesop, knew that 'listeners never hear good of themselves' -but since when, he thought, as he began opening drawers, since when has that pious wisdom stopped anybody? A letter, a diary, a message—anything that might tell him why—he had to see it, he had to, even though the chances of its yielding any comfort were nil. Where was she? Was she with another man? Was she doing what all the girls in London, darling, call a wall job?
    He was suddenly in a rage and he went through her room like a housebreaker, pulling out drawers and upending them, sweeping jewellery and trinkets off the shelves, pulling her clothes down on to the floor, throwing off her sheets and blankets and wrenching up her mattress, raising clouds of dust and scent and ostrich feathers.
    After ten minutes he crawled into the corner and laid his head on a pile of silks and furs.
    'You 're a wreck,' Skynner had said. 'You 're ruined.
    You 've lost it. Find someone more suitable than the person