Enigma

her. It is only the second time they have slept together—a week after the first—and at her insistence they have done it not in her cottage but in his room, creeping through the darkened bar of the White Hart Inn and up the creaking stair. Jericho's bedroom is well away from the rest of the household so there is no danger of them being overheard. His books are lined up on the top of the chest of drawers and she picks up each in turn, holds it upside down and flicks through the pages.
    Does he see anything odd in all this? No, he does not. It merely seems amusing, flattering, even—one further intimacy, a continuation of all the rest, a part of the waking dream his life has become, governed by dream rules. Besides, he has no secrets from her—or, at least, he thinks he hasn't. She finds Turing's paper and studies it closely.
    'And what are computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, when they're at home?'
    Her pronunciation of the German, he registers with surprise, is immaculate.
    'It's a theoretical machine, capable of an infinite number of numerical operations. It supports the assumptions of Hilbert and challenges those of Godel. Come back to bed, darling.'
    'But it's only a theory?'
    He sighs and pats the mattress next to him. They're sleeping in a single bed. 'Turing believes there's no inherent reason why a machine shouldn't be capable of doing everything a human brain can do. Calculate. Communicate. Write a sonnet.'
    'Fall in love?'
    'If love is logical.'
    'Is it?'
    'Come to bed.'
    'This Turing, does he work at the Park?'
    He makes no reply. She leafs through the paper, squinting with disgust at the mathematics, then replaces it with the books and opens one of the drawers. As she leans forwards the shirt rides higher. The lower part of her back gleams white in the shadows. He stares, mesmerised, at the soft triangle of flesh at the base of her vertebrae as she rummages among his clothes.
    'Ah, 'she says, 'now here is something. 'She withdraws a slip of paper. 'A cheque for a hundred pounds, drawn on the Foreign Office Contingency Fund, made out to you -'
    'Give me that.'
    'Why?'
    'Put it back.'
    He is across the room and standing beside her within a couple of seconds, but she is quicker than he is. She is on her feet, on tiptoe, holding the cheque aloft, and she -absurdly—is just that half-inch taller than him. The money flutters like a pennant beyond his reach.
    I knew there would be something. Come on, darling, what's it for?'
    He should have banked the damn thing weeks ago. He'd quite forgotten it. 'Claire, please
    'You must have done something frightfully clever in that naval hut of yours. A new code? Is that it? You broke some new important code, my clever, clever darling?' She may be taller than he is, she may even be stronger, but he has the advantage of desperation. He seizes the firm muscle of her bicep and pulls her arm down and twists her round. They struggle for a moment and then he throws her back on the narrow bed. He prises the cheque out of her bitten-down fingers and retreats with it across the room.
    'Notf unny, Claire. Some things just aren't that funny.'
    He stands there on the rough matting—naked, slender, panting with exertion. He folds the cheque and slips it into his wallet, puts the wallet into his jacket, and turns to hang the jacket in the wardrobe. As he does so, he is aware of a peculiar noise coming from behind him—a frightening, animal noise, something between a rasping breath and a sob. She has curled herself up tight on the bed, her knees drawn up to her stomach, her forearms pressed to her face.
    My God, what has he done?
    He starts to gabble his apologies. He hadn 't meant to frighten her, let alone to hurt her. He goes across to the bed and sits beside her. Tentatively, he touches her shoulder. She doesn 't seem to notice. He tries to pull her towards him, to roll her over on her back, but she has become as rigid as a corpse. The sobs are shaking the bed. It is like a fit, a seizure. She is somewhere beyond grief, somewhere far away, beyond him.
    'It's all right,' he says. 'It's all right.'
    He can't tug the bedclothes out from under her, so he fetches his overcoat and lays that across her, and then he lies beside her, shivering in the January night, stroking her hair.
    They stay like that for half an hour until, at last, when she is calm again, she gets up off the bed and begins to dress. He cannot bring himself to look at her and he knows