She zips up her windproof. The club is ten minutes away, and as she walks, she thinks of that cold front coming in from the east. It seems to promise not just ice and snow, but menace.
It’s a tournament night at the West Hampstead Bridge Club, and the place is filling fast. The game room is laid out with folding baize-topped tables and stackable plastic chairs. It’s warm after the chill of the streets, and there’s an animated buzz of conversation round the bar.
Eve spots Niko Polastri, her husband, straight away. He’s playing a practice hand with three beginners, his gaze attentive, his movements economical. Even at a distance Eve can see from their body language how anxious the novices are to impress him. A woman with teased blonde hair leads a card, and Niko regards it for a moment before picking it up and returning it to her with a grave smile. She looks confused for a moment, then her hand flies to her mouth and everyone at the table laughs.
Niko has the gift of imparting knowledge with grace and humour. In the North London school where he teaches maths he’s popular with the pupils, who are generally acknowledged to be a tough bunch. At the club, where he is one of four senior instructors, the members compete openly for his approval, with even the flintiest veterans melting at a word of praise for a stylishly executed finesse, or a contract made against the odds.
Eve met Niko four years ago, when she first joined the club. At the time she was less interested in improving her bridge-playing than in finding a social life disconnected from the intense, inward-looking hive of Thames House. A social life that would hopefully feature an attractive, intelligent man. In her mind’s eye she saw a suave figure, his features not quite discernible, leading her up a broad flight of steps to a smart West End restaurant.
The bridge club, whose members had an average age somewhere north of fifty, did not deliver such a man. Had she wished to meet retired accountants and widowed dentists, it would have been just the place, but attractive single men under forty were thin on the ground. Niko wasn’t there when she first presented herself; she and a couple of other prospective members were attended to by Mrs. Shapiro, the blue-haired club secretary.
Dispirited by the experience, she was in two minds about going back the next week. But she went, and this time Niko was there. A tall man with patient brown eyes and the moustache of a nineteenth-century cavalry officer, he took charge of Eve from the moment she arrived, squiring her to a table, summoning two more players, and partnering her without comment for half-a-dozen hands. Then, dismissing the others, he faced her over the green baize table.
“So, Eve. Good news, or not-so-good news?”
“Not-so-good news first, I think.”
“OK. Well, you understand the basics of the game. You learnt as a child?”
“My parents both played, yes.”
“And you like, very much, to win.”
Eve meets his gaze. “Is it that obvious?”
“To others, maybe not. You like to play the myszka, the mouse. But I see the fox.”
“Is that good?”
“It could be. But you have faults.”
“A faulty fox?”
“Exactly. If you’re going to play a strategic game, you need to know very early on where all the cards are. To do this, you need to concentrate harder on your opponents’ play. You need to remember the bidding, and count every suit.”
“Right.” She digested this for a moment. “So what’s the good news?”
“The good news is that there’s a very nice pub just five minutes away.”
She laughed. They were married later that year.
Eve’s bridge partner tonight is a young guy, perhaps nineteen, one of a trio of students from Imperial College who joined the club in the autumn. He’s got a slightly mad-scientist look about him, but he’s a ferociously good player, and at the West Hampstead that’s what counts.
After her initial uncertainty, Eve has come to look forward to her evenings here. Some of the members are her parents’ age and even, in one or two cases, her grandparents’. But the standard of play is fierce, and after a rigorous day at Thames House she appreciates the idea of intellectual challenge for its own sake.
At the end of the evening she thanks her partner. They’ve finished fourth overall, a good result, and he grins a little awkwardly and shuffles off. At the entrance Niko helps her into her zip-up waterproof jacket as if it was a Chanel coat, a tiny act of chivalry that does not go unnoticed by other female members, who glance at Eve enviously.
“So how was your day?” she asks him, linking her arm tightly through his as they make their way back towards the flat. It’s just started to snow, and she blinks as the flakes touch her face.
“The Year 11 boys would have a better understanding of differential calculus if they didn’t all stay up until two in the morning playing Final Attrition 2. Or maybe not. How about you?”
She hesitates. “I’ve got a problem for you. I’ve been trying to figure it out all day.”
Niko knows what she does, and while he never presses her for information Eve often thinks how useful a mind like his would be to her employers. At the same time the thought of him walking the featureless corridors of Thames House fills her with horror. It’s her world, but she wouldn’t want it to be his.
After leaving Cracow University with a Master’s degree in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Niko took off round Europe in a battered van with a friend named Maciek. Living and sleeping in the van, the pair travelled from tournament to tournament—bridge, chess, poker, anything offering a cash
