The next night Max approached me again in the canteen and setting down his tray on the table opposite me, said, ‘I believe we have a mutual friend: Romily Temple.’
‘You mean Romily Devereux-Temple?’ I answered absently, turning the page of a book I was reading, and which was taking my mind off the awful food that was served up to us.
‘Ah yes, I keep forgetting that she married. What was her husband like? Quite the roué in his day, I believe.’
I was clearly not going to get any peace to read, so closed the book with a meaningful gesture and looked him squarely in the face. ‘How did you know that I was familiar with Romily?’ I asked.
He tapped his nose. ‘Careless talk costs lives.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ I promptly opened my book again to make the point that he was disturbing me and that unlike just about every other female at the Park, his looks cut no ice with me. Somewhat arrogantly I wanted him to know that I was above such things, that I was immune to his brand of charm and attractiveness. But the thing was, I wasn’t, which made it imperative that I gave no hint that I did indeed find him extraordinarily handsome. He was the sort of man who would age well, I found myself thinking.
‘What are you reading?’ he asked, my bluntness appearing to have no effect on him.
‘Do you really want to know, or are you simply determined to gain my attention?’
‘Both, I suppose. Is that so awful? By the way, we haven’t been introduced properly. I’m Max.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m well aware of who you are.’
He grinned. ‘My reputation goes before me, does it?’
‘You’re Max Blythe-Jones, a Trinity College classicist from Cambridge with a double first. You’re also fluent in German, French and Hungarian, and you’re a rowing blue, and you’ve been here scarcely a month and have bedded more women than—’
He held up a hand to stop me. ‘You’ve been snooping in the files, Miss Flowerday,’ he said with a wag of his finger. ‘Miss Evelyn Flowerday, that is. She of the first class honours degree in mathematics from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and teacher of privileged girls at St Agatha’s School, Kent. Followed by teaching less privileged boys and girls in Melstead St Mary. Something of a comedown for a person of your calibre, I’d say. Current boyfriend is Christopher Devereux, youngest stepson to our mutual friend Romily Devereux-Temple.’
‘And now that we’re properly introduced,’ I said, ‘you can eat your meal and I can read my book.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is you’re reading.’
I held it up for him, so he could see the dust jacket.
‘Murder at Midnight’ he read aloud, and then laughed. ‘By none other than Romily Temple. Now there’s a coincidence.’
Coincidence after coincidence followed from that evening onwards. Or so Max liked to claim. The truth was he made it his business to know which clubs I had joined at the Park – the chess club, the choral and music societies, the Scrabble club and the Scottish country dancing club. It came to be that I didn’t pass a day without encountering him in one way or another. I made it very clear that I would not be added to his roll call of conquests and in accepting the situation, we became friends.
I enjoyed his company. His erudite and lively mind appealed to me greatly and by the time spring arrived, bringing with it warmer weather, we took regular walks and cycle rides together during our precious time off.
I believed he valued my friendship because it was entirely uncomplicated, free of all ambiguity. With me he didn’t have to resort to his usual tricks, which he still employed with regularity on other women at the Park. In the days before Easter he took up with a pretty and vivacious Wren, one of the many who operated the Bombe machines, but by the time the cherry blossom was being shaken from the trees he was bored of her slavish devotion.
‘It’s the thrill of the chase with you, isn’t it?’ I remarked one day when we were having lunch in a quiet country pub. We had cycled the nineteen miles to the Plough, an old-fashioned watering hole well off the beaten track and which served a decent plate of egg and gammon. Compared to the questionable food served in the canteen at the Park, it was manna from heaven. There was only so much whale meat one could stomach.
The other thing about the pub which I liked was that few others from the Park ventured there. It wasn’t that I felt I had anything to hide in being seen with Max, but such was the hothouse environment in which we worked, tongues had a tendency to wag. I would hate for Kit ever to get wind of some piece of malicious tittle-tattle. For the most part, I was accepted as Max’s friend, as ‘one of the boys’. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the feeling of being within his inner circle and that he considered me his intellectual equal.
‘How shallow you make me feel,’ Max said in response to my observation.
‘Not as shallow as you probably make yourself feel,’ I responded.
‘Ouch. You have such a poor opinion of me, I wonder why you want to spend any time in my company.’
‘I see it as my job to reform you.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you indeed?’
‘By the time I’m finished with you I might have fashioned you into a half decent human being. House-trained even.’
He laughed loudly. Over at the bar the woman serving behind it looked our way and smiled. His laugh had the ability to do that, to attract attention. But then he had only to walk into a room and people noticed him. I often thought that it was like being out with a film star whenever we went somewhere – heads turned and eyes lingered, as though they were working out if he was famous.
Some minutes later, and while we were racing through the crossword together, he said, ‘Is that how you regard your boyfriend, Kit?’
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said, glancing up from the anagram I was focusing on.
‘Do you view Kit in the way you do me; a work in progress, somebody to fix?’
I felt a twitch of unease, recalling something I had once said to Kit, when I had used the exact same words, describing him as a work in progress. It may have been a throwaway comment I had made in a light-hearted moment, but the truth was, this was what I did. I did it instinctively as a teacher.
‘A habitual need to play God and recreate the world,’ Romily called this character trait we had in common. It was one of the reasons we got on so well, we both wanted to bring out the best in those we cared about.
‘Do you think you’re in need of fixing?’ I deflected.
‘Most assuredly. If I weren’t such a brute and a cad I wouldn’t treat women the way I do. But isn’t everyone in need of fixing?’ He smiled and squared his gaze on mine. ‘Apart from you, that is. You’re unique.’