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She looked up at me, suddenly contrite. Then as rapidly, her expression changed. It melted into unfeigned tenderness, ‘James did? Oh, how typically James!’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said bitterly. ‘And it’s not going to please him if he finds I’ve just gone straight from his warning to have lunch with the man.’

‘Lunch?’ Hester stood up indignantly. ‘You had lunch with Don Ramón?’

‘Well, that was the object of the exercise,' I said drily. ‘I was supposed to meet you for lunch. I sat and I waited, and . . .'

‘Then surprise, surprise, Don Ramón came along.'

For a moment we stood glowering at one another. With alarm I thought not only had I antagonised the young Head of Chancery, my immediate boss, but now I was having a quarrel with Mr. Mallenport’s daughter.

What had come over me? With an effort I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

‘And he didn’t walk on?’

‘No, naturally he stopped.’

‘I suppose he was full of gay charm and flattery and buttered you up?’

‘He did nothing of the sort,’ I said. ‘He has a certain extravagant manner of speaking. But he’s kind.’

‘There, you see! Already you’re falling for him, the way all the girls do.’

‘I am not! And even if I were it wouldn’t be any good. He’s deeply in love with a girl who obviously treated him badly.’

‘Did he say that?’

‘Of course he didn’t. He said nothing about her at all except that she was beautiful.’

‘Beautiful, just that?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why didn’t he pursue her with all his charm, eh?’ Hester pressed on.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he say the affair had ended?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why?’

‘He said that they weren’t turned into stone like their ancestors in the park. Just their hearts were turned to stone.’

At first I thought Hester was deeply moved by those words. Then she simply tossed her head and replied trenchantly, ‘Well, I’m glad I wasn’t there, then, to listen to such sentimental rubbish!’ She snatched up her pen and began to write furiously. ‘You’d never get James uttering such nonsense.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ I said coldly.

The necessity would not arise, I thought. His heart was already stone. I doubted if any key in whatever hand would ever be able to open it.

Early that Monday morning after my bath I stood clad in a large gold-crested Embassy towel hesitating between a pink cotton dress with a heart-shaped neckline and a black and white no-nonsense shirtwaister.

I chose the shirtwaister. It had a snowy white collar, and was, I was sure, what James Fitzgerald would expect to see me in. I put the very palest lacquer on my nails, just a touch of lipstick and the merest hint of eyeshadow, a whiff of my lightest flower perfume. Then I went downstairs for a quick and solitary breakfast, and was outside on the sun-filled porch at a quarter to eight.

Ten minutes passed, and I was still there, beginning to feel nervous, anxious not to waste a second of Mr. Fitzgerald’s valuable time. Five minutes to eight, the shuttle service pick-up, he had said. But it was five past before the Land-Rover, driven by an elderly Charaguayan in a peaked cap, came roaring round the oleander bushes and shuddered to a stop. Ashford Aid extended a freckled hand to help me scramble aboard. He gave me a friendly smile, asked me if I minded his pipe, told me I looked like the top of the morning, and then puffed away in contented silence.

The first sight I had of Mr. Fitzgerald was after I had climbed the Embassy stairs to the Ambassador’s office. He was standing by the safe on which was soldered the metal box containing all the security cabinet keys.

Ashford Aid was downstairs sorting through the mail at the reception desk.

James Fitzgerald had worked the knurled knob selector round the current sequence of numbers that made up the code and the lid was open. He made no comment on the fact that I was late. The fact that he also made no comment on my dress I took to be a compliment. If it had been the slightest bit wrong he would undoubtedly have told me so.

‘Eve’s key,’ he said, handing it to me as though it was precious and very much on loan. ‘You can tell it by the green ribbon threaded through it.' Isn’t she efficient? his eyes demanded. No scrabbling around looking at numbers as we did in my department back home, but instant recognition.

‘There’s a whole lot of stuff the Ambassador left to be typed. You’ll find that in your security cabinet. Also thirty files that I suggest you acquaint yourself with during the day. And don’t forget to water Eve’s pot plants.’ As he was turning to go to the door, in came a rotund rosy-faced man wearing heavy horn-rimmed spectacles who immediately said in a booming jovial voice to me, ‘You must be Eve’s replacement.'

‘Stand-in,’ corrected the Head of Chancery.

‘And your name is Madeleine Bradley, because I decoded the signal.’ He held out his hand ‘I’m Bill Green.’

‘Second Secretary,' said the Head of Chancery over his shoulder as he left the office.

Mr. Green smiled at me. ‘So you’ve got your orders?'

I nodded. ‘Marching orders, more like’, I thought— but not aloud. I went into the adjoining office and opened up the cabinet. There were thirty files exactly, a number of letters and the Ambassador’s monthly report, all neatly hand-written. For the next five hours I was hammer and tongs at the typewriter, hardly aware of my surroundings.

I was so absorbed that I almost jumped out of my chair when the door from the corridor opened.

‘It’s all right,’ Ashford Aid in his shirt sleeves held up a large freckled hand. ‘It’s only me.’ He came across and sat on the edge of my desk. ‘Mind this?’ He waved his pipe, then leaned over and picked up the last letter I’d typed. ‘Not bad. In fact, very good . . .’

Something in the way he left the sentence suspended made me ask, ‘But not as good as Eve’s?’

‘Not quite
like
Eve’s,’ he said slowly. ‘There is about Eve’s typing some special
something.
Somehow you always know Eve’s done it. There’s no need for her to sign
e.t
. so modestly in small letters after the dash and the H.E. in capitals. It’s her handiwork all right.’

As he was talking Mr. Green came in and now added, ‘Eve’s stamp. Her mark on everything she does.’

‘No doubt so will Madeleine,’ Ashford said kindly. ‘And now how about a bite of lunch with us two? Safety in numbers. And Bill here is married anyway.'

‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘but I really can’t.’ Out of my bag I picked up the packet of sandwiches I had asked Chico at the Residence to make up for me, and put them
On
the table. ‘I’ve got a lot still to do.’

‘You’re not actually chained to your desk, you know,' pointed out Ashford gently. ‘Come on!’

‘Even the incomparable Eve stopped for lunch,’ Mr. Green said.

I smiled and shook my head. ‘No, really . . . thanks a
lot, but I’d rather catch up.’

‘Tomorrow then,’ said Ashford. ‘No heel-tapping tomorrow. Don’t work too hard. They won’t pay you any more.’

When they had gone I looked round the office. At least now I felt I had made a start. I read through some of the files, which were not very different from the ones I had worked with at the Foreign Office, and when a tiny carillon of bells from a church clock chimed two, I pushed back the desk and relaxed.

The one window looked out on to the street. Just below were spread red and white ponchos for sale like washing on a line and the' Indians in their grey trilby hats leaning on the wall, calling to passers-by in Mateza. The sunshine blazed on red-flowered flame trees by the Embassy gate and the hibiscus and poinsettias in the forecourt of the luxury American-type hotel on the other side of the road, while ancient taxis and brightly coloured buses, emitting dense clouds of black smoke, dodged each other at speed in between.

I ate my sandwiches. They were of freshly baked bread, filled with sliced chicken in a spicy, peppery garnish. It was odd, I thought, sitting here in another girl’s domain. The famous pot plants, all bright yellow blossoms bursting through very green foliage, stood on the white-painted windowsill. Three lithographs on the wall of half-timbered houses in English villages, and a calendar with the dates neatly scored through until eight days ago, the Sunday she had her accident. Though I was beginning to build up my own picture of Eve, there was little here to help me except an immaculate neatness and clearly a precise and efficient mind.

By four o’clock I had finished the typing and had read through twenty-six of the files. By the amount of correspondence I could gauge the daily workload. I considered that with a bit of luck and not too many interruptions, I could cope with it. I had now gained a working knowledge—sketchy perhaps, but at least I would know what people were talking about—of the Embassy daily routine. I had learned something about the social conditions and economics of Charaguay, read about British trade, and the prospects of mutual advantage in imports and exports, found out a little about the British Aid projects which were Mr. Ashford’s pigeon—help with banana cultivation, the seismograph and warning devices for the earthquake station at Belanga, and even a few lines about the sociology student V.S.O. Morag Cameron and her work amongst the shoeshine boys.

I heard the little carillon of bells again, then a knock on the door. I looked up smiling expecting to see Ashford Aid.

‘Well, Miss Bradley,’ said Mr. Fitzgerald, ‘how have you been getting along?’

The way he said it was just as I imagined whoever had Griselda shut up at the top of that tower would speak. Now he had come to see if the straw I had spun had really turned into gold. His eye caught the pile of typing beside me. Just as Mr. Ashford had done, he picked up a page and looked at it. But if he was comparing it to Eve’s he made no comment. He simply asked, ‘And what about the files?’

‘I’ve read them, all but four. Rather quickly. I’m afraid.’

‘But you’ve got the general picture?'

‘I think so.’

He nodded. ‘And where did you have lunch?’

‘Here.’

‘What do you mean
here?'

‘I brought sandwiches from the Residence.’

At last, apparently, I had pleased him. He actually smiled, not just approvingly, but nicely. ‘You mustn’t make a habit of it, though,’ he said as if my wellbeing actually mattered. ‘There’s a good coffee bar in the hotel across the road. Some time you must. . .’

He looked at me thoughtfully. He seemed for the first time at a loss for the right words to finish off his sentence.

‘Must?’ I heard myself repeat questioningly.

The Head of Chancery appeared to mentally shake himself. ‘Must go there, of course,’ he said sharply. ‘And now that you’ve finished H.E.’s work, if you’d come into my office for a while I’d like you to take some dictation.’ Under his curiously nerve-tingling stare, I put away all the files and the typing in the cupboard and locked it. And then with my notebook and pencil in my hand I followed him down the corridor through the open brass-barred gate into Chancery.

I could hear the clack of the teleprinter as I walked past the Code Room. Mr. Fitzgerald stepped aside to let me go into his office first, and pulled a chair up to his desk so that I could sit beside him.

‘I expect it’s all a trifle strange at first, Miss Bradley?’ he said with his peculiarly sweet smile.

‘A little.’

‘And this is a somewhat overpowering first day with all the backlog. Still, you’ve managed to get through it very fast.'

I suppose that would be the nearest that this young Head of Chancery ever got to a compliment. To anyone except Eve Trent, that is, and I felt myself go quite limp with pleasure.

‘And now if you wouldn’t mind –'

He dictated fast, but I managed to keep up with him. After four quick letters, he went even faster. I had the idea that he was testing me, seeing if my speed was anywhere near Eve’s. Then he looked at me suddenly and asked,
'Mas despacio
?’

‘Por favor,’
I replied breathlessly. And we both laughed.

The smile lingered, crinkling up his eyes as he went on dictating more slowly. After finishing the letter he said, ‘So you know some Spanish?’

‘Only a little.’

‘Practise it whenever you can. Get Hester to speak to you—be good for the pair of you.' He put his papers neatly together. ‘Happy at the Residence, are you?’

‘Very, thank you. It’s good of them to put me up.'

‘Oh, it helps us to have you on the spot.’ He smiled. ‘What you call a mutually satisfactory arrangement. We try not to call you out at night too often, but it is on the cards—once in a blue moon.’ The smile broadened disarmingly. I felt that if only he remained in such a mood, I wouldn’t mind if the blue moon came round with the inevitable regularity of our ordinary terrestrial one. I wouldn’t mind if I was dragged out at night to type important dispatches, if only he was pleased with the end product.

‘Now as regards your work, I can see that you got straight away into it, but Eve did leave the usual handing over notes just to help you find your feet.’ He opened a drawer in his desk, took out a large envelope and handed it across to me. ‘You’d better read them.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

I took out two sheets of paper marked Highly Confidential from the envelope. As I had expected, the typing was immaculate. But for handing over notes they were short. Some details of where certain files were kept, how the Ambassador liked layout, and some routine returns and checks that had to be made. A little on Security and the number (like safe combination) to open the box for Security keys attached to the safe in the Ambassador’s office, 3652531.

I screwed my eyes up memorising it. 365 . . . that was easy. The number of days in the year. 25 was my age. Only 31 was the difficult one to which I could attach no mnemonic. But I have a good visual memory, and when I looked away, I could actually see the numbers 3652531 and where they stood on the page.