Enigma

was it?—having a fit of the giggles. A door slammed. The cistern above his head emptied and refilled. Then silence again.
    When he did move, after about a quarter of an hour, his actions had a frantic, fumbling haste. He carried the chair over from the bedside to the door and tilted it against the flimsy panelling. He took the print and laid it face down on the threadbare carpet, pulled out the tacks, lifted off the back, rolled the intercepts into a tube, and took them over to the grate. On top of the little bucket of coal beside the hearth was a matchbox containing two matches. The first was damp and wouldn't strike but the second did, just, and Jericho twisted it round to make sure the yellow flame caught and grew, then he applied it to the bottom of the intercepts. He held on to them as they writhed and blackened until the very last moment, until the pain obliged him to drop them in the grate, where they disintegrated into tiny flakes of ash.

Enigma
    FIVE

    CRIB
    CRIB: a piece of evidence (usually a captured code book or a length of plaintext) which provides clues for the breaking of a cryptogram; 'without question, the crib . . . is the single most essential tool of any cryptanalyst' (Knox et al., op. cit., page 27).
    A Lexicon of Cryptography ('Most Secret', Bletchley Park, 1943)

1

    THE WARTIME LIPSTICK was hard and waxy—it was like trying to colour your lips with a Christmas candle. When, after several minutes of hard rubbing, Hester Wallace replaced her glasses, she peered into the mirror with distaste. Make-up had never featured much in her life, not even before the war, when there had been plenty in the shops. But now, when there was nothing to be had, the lengths one was expected to go to were quite absurd. She knew of girls in the hut who made lipstick out of beetroot and sealed it in place with Vaseline, who used shoe polish and burnt cork for mascara and margarine wrappers as a skin softener, who dusted bicarbonate of soda into their armpits to disguise their sweat . . . She formed her lips into a cupid's bow, which she immediately drew back into a grimace. Really, it was quite, quite absurd.
    The shortage of cosmetics seemed to have caught up at last even with Claire. Although there was a profusion of pots and bottles all over her little dressing table -Max Factor, Coty, Elizabeth Arden: each name redolent of pre-war glamour—most of them turned out on closer inspection to be empty. Nothing was left except a trace of scent. Hester sniffed at each in turn and her mind was filled with images of luxury—of satin cocktail dresses by Worth of London and gowns with daring decolletage, of fireworks at Versailles and the Duchess of Westminster's summer ball, and a dozen other wonderful nonsenses that Claire had prattled on about. Eventually she found a half-full pot of mascara and a glass-stoppered jar with an inch of rather lumpy face powder and set to work with those.
    She had no qualms about helping herself. Hadn't Claire always told her she should? Making-up was fun, that was Claire's philosophy, it made one feel good about oneself, it turned one into someone else, and, besides, 'if this is what it takes, then, darling heart, this is simply what one does. Very well. Hester dabbed grimly at her pallid cheeks. If this was what it bloody well took to help persuade Miles Mermagen to approve a transfer, this was what he'd bloody well get.
    She regarded her reflection without enthusiasm, then carefully replaced everything in its proper place and went downstairs. The sitting room was freshly swept. Daffodils above the hearth. A fire laid. The kitchen, too, was spotless. She had made a carrot flan earlier in the evening, enough for two, with ingredients she had grown herself in the little vegetable patch outside the kitchen door, and now she laid a place for Claire, and left a note telling her where to find the flan and instructions on how to heat it. She hesitated, then added at the end: 'Welcome back—from wherever you've been!—much love, H.' She hoped it didn't sound too fussy and inquisitive; she hoped she wasn't turning into her mother.
    'ADU, Miss Wallace. . .'
    Of course Claire would come back. It was all a stupid panic, too absurd for words.
    She sat in one of the armchairs and waited for her until a quarter to midnight, when she dared leave it no longer.
    As her bicycle bounced along the track towards the lane she startled a white owl which rose silently like a ghost in the moonlight.
    In a