I Mr. Whipplestone

The year was at the spring and the day at the morn and God may have been in His Heaven, but as far as Mr. Samuel Whipplestone was concerned the evidence was negligible. He was, in a dull, muddled sort of way, miserable. He had become possessed, with valedictory accompaniments, of two solid silver Georgian gravy-boats. He had taken his leave of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service in the manner to which his colleagues were accustomed. He had even prepared himself for the non-necessity of getting up at seven-thirty, bathing, shaving, breakfasting at eight — but there is no need to prolong the Podsnappian recital. In a word he had fancied himself tuned in to retirement and now realized that he was in no such condition. He was a man without propulsion. He had no object in life. He was finished.

By ten o’clock he found himself unable to endure the complacent familiarity of his “service” flat It was in fact at that hour being “serviced,” a ritual which normally he avoided and now hindered by his presence.

He was astounded to find that for twenty years he had inhabited dull, oppressive, dark and uncomely premises. Deeply shaken by this abrupt discovery he went out into the London spring.

A ten-minute walk across the park hardly raised his spirits. He avoided the great water-shed of traffic under the quadriga, saw some inappropriately attired equestrians, passed a concourse of scarlet and yellow tulips, left the park under the expanded nostrils of Epstein’s liberated elementals, and made his way into Baronsgate.

As he entered that flowing cacophony of changing gears and revving engines, it occurred to him that he himself must now get into bottom gear and stay there until he was parked in some-sub-fusc lay-by to await — and here the simile became insufferable — a final towing-off. His predicament was none the better for being commonplace. He walked for a quarter of an hour.

From Baronsgate the western entry into the Capricorns is by an arched passage too low overhead to admit any but pedestrian traffic. It leads into Capricorn Mews and, further along at right angles to the Mews, Capricorn Place. He had passed by it over and over again and would have done so now if it hadn’t been for a small, thin cat.

This animal flashed out from under the traffic and shot past him into the passageway. It disappeared at the far end. He heard a scream of tyres and of a living creature.

This sort of thing upset Mr. Whipplestone. He disliked this sort of thing intensely. He would have greatly preferred to remove himself as quickly as possible from the scene and put it out of his mind. What he did, however, was to hurry through the passageway into Capricorn Mews.

The vehicle, a delivery van of sorts, was disappearing into Capricorn Place. A group of three youths outside a garage stared at the cat, which lay like a blot of ink on the pavement.

One of them walked over to it. “Had it,” he said.

“Poor pussy!” said one of the others and they laughed objectionably.

The first youth moved his foot as if to turn the cat over. Astonishingly and dreadfully it scrabbled with its hind legs. He exclaimed, stooped down and extended his hand.

It was on its feet. It staggered and then bolted. Towards Mr. Whipplestone, who had come to a halt. He supposed it to be concussed, or driven frantic by pain or fear. In a flash it gave a great spring and was on Mr. Whipplestone’s chest, clinging with its small claws and — incredibly — purring. He had been told that a dying cat will sometimes purr. It had blue eyes. The tip of its tail for about two inches was snow white, but the rest of its person was perfectly black. He had no particular antipathy to cats.

He carried an umbrella in his right hand, but with his left arm he performed a startled reflex gesture. He sheltered the cat. It was shockingly thin, but warm and tremulous.

“One of ’er nine lives gawn for a burton,” said the youth. He and his friends guffawed themselves into the garage.

“Drat,” said Mr. Whipplestone, who long ago had thought it amusing to use spinsterish expletives.

With some difficulty he hooked his umbrella over his left arm and with his right hand inserted his eyeglass and then explored the cat’s person. It increased its purrs, interrupting them with a faint mew when he touched its shoulder. What was to be done with it?

Obviously, nothing in particular. It was not badly injured, presumably it lived in the neighborhood, and one had always understood its species to have a phenomenal homing instinct. It thrust its nut-like head under Mr. Whipplestone’s jacket and into his waistcoat. It palpated his chest with its paws. He had quite a business detaching it.

He set it down on the pavement. “Go home,” he said. It stared up at him and went through the motion of mewing, opening its mouth and showing its pink tongue but giving no sound. “No,” he said, “go home!” It was making little preparatory movements of its haunches as if about to spring again.

He turned his back on it and walked quickly down Capricorn Mews. He almost ran.

It is a quiet little street, cobbled and very secluded. It accommodates three garages, a packing agency, two dozen or so small mid-Victorian houses, a minute bistro and four shops. As he approached one of these, a flower shop, he could see reflected in its side windows Capricorn Mews with himself walking towards him. And behind him, trotting in a determined manner, the little cat. It was mewing.

He was extremely put out and had begun to entertain a confused notion of telephoning the R.S.P.C.A. when a van erupted from a garage immediately behind him. It passed him, and when it had gone the cat had disappeared: frightened, Mr. Whipplestone supposed, by the noise.

Beyond the flower shop and on the opposite side of the Mews was the corner of Capricorn Place, leading off to the left. Mr. Whipplestone, deeply ruffled, turned into it

A pleasing street: narrow, orderly, sunny, with a view, to the left, of tree-tops and the dome of the Baronsgate Basilica. Iron railings and behind them small well-kept Georgian and Victorian houses. Spring flowers in window-boxes. From somewhere or another the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

Cleaning ladies attacked steps and door-knockers. Household ladies were abroad with shopping baskets. A man of Mr. Whipplestone’s own age who reeked of the army and was of an empurpled complexion emerged from one of the houses. A perambulator with a self-important baby and an escort of a pedestrian six-year-old, a female propellant and a large dog headed with a purposeful air towards the park. The postman was going his rounds.

In London there are still, however precarious their state, many little streets of the character of the Capricorns. They are upper-middle-class streets and therefore, Mr. Whipplestone had been given to understand, despicable. Being, of that class himself, he did not take this view. He found the Capricorns uneventful, certainly, but neither tiresomely quaint nor picturesque nor smug; pleasing, rather, and possessed of a quality which he could only think of as “sparkling.” Ahead of him was a pub, the Sun in Splendour. It had an honest untarted look about it and stood at the point where the Place leads into Capricorn Square: the usual railed enclosure of plane trees, grass and a bench or two, well-kept. He turned to the right down one side of it, making for Capricorn Walk.

Moving towards him at a stately pace came a stout, superbly dressed coal-black gentleman leading a white Afghan hound with a scarlet collar and leash.

“My dear Ambassador!” Mr. Whipplestone exclaimed. “How very pleasant!”

“Mr. Whipplestone!” resonated the Ambassador for Ng’ombwana. “I am delighted to see you. You live in these parts?”

“No, no: a morning stroll. I’m — I’m a free man now, Your Excellency.”

“Of course. I had heard. You will be greatly missed.”

“I doubt it. Your Embassy — I had forgotten for the moment — is quite close by, isn’t it?”

“In Palace Park Gardens. I too enjoy a morning stroll with Ahman. We are not, alas, unattended.” He waved his gold-mounted stick in the direction of a large person looking anonymously at a plane tree.

“Alas!” Mr. Whipplestone agreed. “The penalty of distinction,” he added, neatly, and patted the Afghan.

“You are kind enough to say so.”

Mr. Whipplestone’s highly specialized work in the Foreign Service had been advanced by a happy manner with foreign — and particularly with African — plenipotentiaries. “I hope I may congratulate Your Excellency,” he said and broke into his professional style of verbless exclamation.

“The increased rapproachement! The treaty! Masterly achievements!”

“Achievements — entirely — of our great President, Mr. Whipplestone.”

“Indeed, yes. Everyone is delighted about the forthcoming visit. An auspicious occasion.”

“As you say. Immensely significant.” The Ambassador waited for a moment and then slightly reduced the volume of his superb voice. “Not,” he said, “without its anxieties, however. As you know, our great President does not welcome”—he again waved his stick at his bodyguard—“that sort of attention.” A sigh escaped him. “He is to stay with us,” he said.

“Quite.”

“The responsibility!” sighed the Ambassador. He broke off and offered his hand. “You will be at the reception, of course,” he said. “We must meet more often! I shall see that something is arranged. Au revoir, Mr. Whipplestone.”

They parted. Mr. Whipplestone walked on, passing and, tactfully, ignoring the escort.

Facing him at the point where the Walk becomes the northeast border of the Square was a small house between two large ones. It was painted white with a glossy black front door and consisted of an attic, two floors and a basement. The first-floor windows opened on a pair of miniature balconies, the ground-floor ones were bowed. He was struck by the arrangement of the window-boxes. Instead of the predictable daffodil one saw formal green swags that might have enriched a della Robbia relief. They were growing vines of some sort which swung between the pots where they rooted and were cunningly trimmed so that they swelled at the lowest point of the arc and symmetrically tapered to either end.

Some workmen with ladders were putting up a sign.

He had begun to feel less depressed. Persons who do not live there will talk about “the London feeling.” They will tell you that as they walk down a London street they can be abruptly made happy, uplifted in spirit, exhilarated. Mr. Whipplestone had always taken a somewhat incredulous view of these transports but he had to admit that on this occasion he was undoubtedly visited by a liberated sensation. He had a singular notion that the little house had induced this reaction. No. 1, as he now saw, Capricorn Walk.

He approached the house. It was touched on its chimneys and the eastern slope of its roof by sunshine. “Facing the right way,” thought Mr. Whipplestone. “In the winter it’ll get all the sun there is, I daresay.” His own flat faced north.

A postman came whistling down the Walk as Mr. Whipplestone crossed it. He mounted the steps of No. 1, clapped something through the brass flap, and came down so briskly that they nearly collided.

“Woops-a-daisy,” said the postman. “Too eager, that’s my trouble. Lovely morning, though innit?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Whipplestone, judiciously conceding the point. “It is. Are the present occupants—” He hesitated.

“Gawn. Out last week,” said the postman. “But I’m not to know, am I? People ought to make arrangements, din’ they sir?” He went off, whistling.

The workmen came down their ladders and prepared to make off. They had erected a sign.


FOR SALE

ALL ENQUIRIES TO

ABLE, VIRTUE & SONS

17, CAPRICORN STREET, S.W.3


The Street is the most “important” of the Capricorns. It is wider and busier than the rest. It runs parallel to the Walk and in fact Messrs. Able and Virtue’s premises lie exactly back-to-back with the little house at No. 1.

Good morning,” said the roundabout lady at the desk on the left-hand side. “Can I help you?” she pleaded brightly.

Mr. Whipplestone pulled out the most non-committal stop in his F.O. organ and tempered its chill with a touch of whimsy.

“You may satisfy my idle curiosity if you will be so good,” he said. “Ah — concerning No. 1, Capricorn Walk.”

“No. 1, the Walk?” repeated the lady. “Yes. Our notice, ackshally, has only just gone up. For sale with stipulations regarding the basement. I’m not quite sure—” She looked across at the young man with a Pre-Raphaelite hair-do behind the right-hand desk. He was contemplating his fingernails and listening to his telephone. “What is it about the basement, No. 1, the Walk?” she asked.

He clapped a languid hand over the receiver: “Ay’m coping,” he said and unstopped the receiver. “The basement of No. 1,” he rattled into it, “is at present occupied as a pied-à-terre by the owner. He wishes to retain occupancy. The Suggested Arrangement is that total ownership pass to the purchaser and that he, the vendor, become the tenant of the basement at an agreed rent for a specified period.” He listened for a considerable interval. “No,” he said, “ay’m afraid it’s a firm stipulation. Quate. Quate. Yes. Theng you, madam. Good morning.”

“That,” said the lady, offering it to Mr. Whipplestone, “is the situation.”

Mr. Whipplestone, conscious of a lightness in his head, said: “And the price?” He used the voice in which he had been wont to say: “This should have been dealt with at a lower level.”

“Was it thirty-nine?” the lady asked her colleague.

“Thirty-eight”

“Thirty-eight thousand,” she relayed to Mr. Whipplestone, who caught back his breath in a civilized little hiss.

“Indeed?” he said. “You amaze me.”

“It’s a Desirable District,” she replied indifferently. “Properties are at a premium in the Capricorns.” She picked up a document and glanced at it. Mr. Whipplestone was nettled.

“And the rooms?” he asked sharply. “How many? Excluding, for the moment, the basement.”

The lady and the Pre-Raphaelite young gentleman became more attentive. They began to speak in unison and begged each other’s pardon.

“Six,” gabbled the lady, “in all. Excluding kitchen and Usual Offices. Wall-to-wall carpets and drapes included in purchase price. And the Usual Fitments: fridge, range et cetera. Large recep’ with adjacent dining-room, ground floor. Master bedroom and bathroom with toilet, first floor. Two rooms with shower and toilet, second floor. Late tenant used these as flat for married couple.”

“Oh?” said Mr. Whipplestone, concealing the emotional disturbance that seemed to be lodged under his diaphragm. “A married couple? You mean?”

“Did for him,” said the lady.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Serviced him. Cook and houseman. There was an Arrangement by which they also cleaned the basement flat.”

The young man threw in: “Which it is hoped will continue. They are Strongly Recommended to purchaser with Arrangement to be arrived at for continued weekly servicing of basement. No obligation, of course.”

“Of course not.” Mr. Whipplestone gave a small dry cough. “I should like to see it,” he said.

“Certainly,” said the lady crisply. “When would you—?”

“Now, if you please.”

“I think that would suit. If you’ll just wait while I—”

She used her telephone. Mr. Whipplestone bumped into a sudden qualm of near-panic. “I am beside myself,” he thought. “It’s that wretched cat.” He pulled himself together. After all, he was committed to nothing. An impulse, a mere whim, induced he dared say by unaccustomed idleness. What of it?

The lady was looking at him. Perhaps she had spoken to him.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

She decided he was hard-of-hearing. “The house,” she articulated pedantically, “is open to view. The late tenants have vacated the premises. The married couple leave at the end of the week. The owner is at home in the basement flat. Mr. Sheridan,” she shouted. “That’s the vendor’s name: Sheridan.”

“Thank you.”

“Mervyn!” cried the lady, summoning up a wan and uncertain youth from the back office. “No. 1, the Walk. Gentleman to view.” She produced keys and smiled definitively upon Mr. Whipplestone. “It’s a Quality Residence,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll think so.”

The youth attended him with a defeated air round the corner to No. 1, Capricorn Walk.

“Thirty-eight thousand pounds!” Mr. Whipplestone inwardly expostulated. “Good God, it’s outrageous!”

The Walk had turned further into the sun, which now sparkled on No. l’s brass door-knocker and letter-box. Mr. Whipplestone, waiting on the recently scrubbed steps, looked down into the area. It had been really very ingeniously converted, he was obliged to concede, into a ridiculous little garden with everything on a modest scale.

“Pseudo-Japanese,” he thought in a panic-stricken attempt to discredit it.

“Who looks after that?” he tossed at the youth. “The basement?”

“Yar,” said the youth.

(“He hasn’t the faintest idea,” thought Mr. Whipplestone.)

The youth had opened the front door and now stood back for Mr. Whipplestone to enter.

The little hall and stairway were carpeted in cherry red, the glossy walls were an agreeable oyster white. This scheme was continued in a quite sizable drawing-room. The two bow windows curtained in red and white stripes were large and the whole interior remarkably light for a London room. For some twenty years he had vaguely regretted the murkiness of his service flat.

Without warning he was overtaken by an experience that a less sophisticated man might have been tempted to call hallucinatory. He saw, with the utmost clarity, his own possessions occupying this lighthearted room. The Chippendale wall-desk, the crimson sofa with its companion table, the big red glass goblet, the Agatha Troy landscape, the late Georgian bookcase: all were harmoniously accommodated. When the youth opened double doors into a small dining-room, Mr. Whipplestone saw at a glance that his chairs were of precisely the right size and character.

He dismissed these visions. “The partition folds back,” he said with a brave show of indifference, “to form one room, I suppose?”

“Yar,” said the youth and folded it back. He opened red and white striped curtains in the rear wall and revealed a courtyard and tub garden.

“Lose the sun,” Mr. Whipplestone sneered, keeping his head. “Get none in the winter.”

It was, however, receiving its full quota now.

“Damp,” persisted Mr. Whipplestone defiantly. “Extra expense. Have to be kept up.” And he thought: “I’d do better to hold my tongue.”

The kitchen was on the left of the dining-room. It was a modernized affair with a service hatch. “Cramped!” Mr. Whipplestone thought of saying, but his heart was not in it.

The stairs were steep, which ought to have been a comfort. Awkward for trays and luggage and suppose one died how would they get one out of it? He said nothing.

The view from the master bedroom through the French windows embraced in its middle distance the Square with the Sun in Splendour on the left and — more distantly on the right — the dome of the Basilica. In the foreground was the Walk with foreshortened views of pedestrians, parked cars and an intermittent passage of traffic. He opened a French window. They were ringing the bells in the Basilica. Twelve o’clock. Some service or another, he supposed. But you couldn’t say the house was noisy.

The bells stopped. Somewhere, out of sight, a voice was raised in a reiterated, rhythmical shout. He couldn’t distinguish the sense of it but it came nearer. He went out on one of the two little balconies.

“Air-eye-awf,” shouted the voice, and round the far corner of the Square came a horse-drawn cart, nodding with tulips and led by a red-faced man. He passed No. 1 and looked up.

“Any time. All fresh,” he bawled directly at Mr. Whipplestone, who hastily withdrew.

(His big red glass goblet in the bow window, filled with tulips.)

Mr. Whipplestone was a man who did not indulge in histrionics, but under the last of whatever madness now possessed him he did, as he made to leave the window, flap the air with two dismissive palms. The gesture brought him face-to-face with a couple, man and woman.

“I beg your pardon,” they all said and the small man added: “Sorry, sir. We just head the window open and thought we’d better see.” He glanced at the youth. “Order to view?” he asked.

“Yar.”

“You,” said Mr. Whipplestone, dead against his will, “must be the — the upstairs — ah — the—”

“That’s right, sir,” said the man. His wife smiled and made a slight bob. They were rather alike, being round-faced, apple-cheeked and blue-eyed, and were aged, he thought, about fifty-five.

“You are — I understand — ah — still — ah—”

“We’ve stayed on to set things to rights, sir. Mr. Sheridan’s kindly letting us remain until the end of the week. Gives us a chance to find another place, sir, if we’re not wanted here.”

“I understand you would be — ah—”

“Available, sir?” they both said quickly and the man added, “We’d be glad to stay on if the conditions suited. We’ve been here with the outgoing tenant six years, sir, and very happy with it. Name of Chubb, sir, references on request and the owner, Mr. Sheridan, below, would speak for us.”

“Quite, quite, quite!” said Mr. Whipplestone in a tearing hurry. “I — ah — I’ve come to no conclusion. On the contrary. Idle curiosity, really. However. In the event — the remote event of my — be very glad — but so far — nothing decided.”

“Yes, sir, of course. If you’d care to see upstairs, sir!”

“What!” shouted Mr. Whipplestone as if they’d fired a gun at him. “Oh. Thank you. Might as well, perhaps. Yes.”

“Excuse me, sir. I’ll just close the window.”

Mr. Whipplestone stood aside. The man laid his hand on the French window. It was a brisk movement, but it stopped as abruptly as if a moving film had turned into a still. The hand was motionless, the gaze was fixed, the mouth shut like a trap.

Mr. Whipplestone was startled. He looked down into the street and there, returning from his constitutional and attended by his dog and his bodyguard, was the Ambassador for Ng’ombwana. It was at him that the man Chubb stared. Something impelled Mr. Whipplestone to look at the woman. She had come close and she too, over her husband’s shoulder, stared at the Ambassador.

The next moment the figures animated. The window was shut and fastened and Chubb turned to Mr. Whipplestone with a serviceable smile.

“Shall I show the way, sir?” asked Chubb.

The upstairs flat was neat, clean and decent. The little parlour was a perfectly respectable and rather colourless room except perhaps for an enlarged photograph of a round-faced girl of about sixteen which attracted attention through being festooned in black ribbon and flanked on the table beneath it by two vases of dyed immortelles. Some kind of china medallion hung from the bottom edge of the frame. Another enlarged photograph, of Chubb in uniform and Mrs. Chubb in bridal array, hung on the wall.

All the appointments on this floor, it transpired, were the property of the Chubbs. Mr. Whipplestone was conscious that they watched him anxiously. Mrs. Chubb said: “It’s home to us. We’re settled like. It’s such a nice part, the Capricorns.” For an unnerving moment he thought she was going to cry.

He left the Chubbs precipitately, followed by the youth. It was a struggle not to re-enter the drawing-room but he triumphed, and shot out of the front door to be immediately involved in another confrontation.

“Good morning,” said a man on the area steps. “You’ve been looking at my house, I think? My name is Sheridan.”

There was nothing remarkable about him at first sight unless it was his almost total baldness and his extreme pallor. He was of middle height, unexceptionably dressed and well-spoken. His hair, when he had it, must have been dark, since his eyes and brows and the wires on the backs of his pale hands were black. Mr. Whipplestone had a faint, fleeting and oddly uneasy impression of having seen him before. He came up the area steps and through the gate and faced Mr. Whipplestone, who in politeness couldn’t do anything but stop where he was.

“Good morning,” Mr. Whipplestone said. “I just happened to be passing. An impulse.”

“One gets them,” said Mr. Sheridan, “in the spring.” He spoke with a slight lisp.

“So I understand,” said Mr. Whipplestone, not stuffily but in a definitive tone. He made a slight move.

“Did you approve?” asked Mr. Sheridan casually.

“Oh charming, charming,” Mr. Whipplestone said, lightly dismissing it.

“Good. So glad. Good morning, Chubb, can I have a word with you?” said Mr. Sheridan.

“Certainly, sir,” said Chubb.

Mr. Whipplestone escaped. The wan youth followed him to the corner. Mr. Whipplestone was about to dismiss him and continue alone towards Baronsgate. He turned back to thank the youth and there was the house, in full sunlight now with its evergreen swags and its absurd garden. Without a word he wheeled left and left again and reached Able, Virtue & Sons three yards in advance of his escort. He walked straight in and laid his card before the plump lady.

“I should like the first refusal,” he said.

From that moment it was a foregone conclusion. He didn’t lose his head. He made sensible enquiries and took proper steps about the lease and the plumbing and the state of repair. He consulted his man of business, his bank manager and his solicitor. It is questionable whether if any of these experts had advised against the move he would have paid the smallest attention, but they did not, and to his own continuing astonishment, at the end of a fortnight Mr. Whipplestone moved in.

He wrote cosily to his married sister in Devonshire: “—you may be surprised, to hear of the change. Don’t expect anything spectacular, it’s a quiet little backwater full of old fogies like me. Nothing in the way of excitement or ‘happenings’ or violence or beastly demonstrations. It suits me. At my age one prefers the uneventful life and that,” he ended, “is what I expect to enjoy at No. 1, Capricorn Walk.” Prophecy was not Mr. Whipplestone’s strong point

“That’s all jolly fine,” said Chief Superintendent Alleyn. “What’s the Special Branch think it’s doing? Sitting on its fat bottom waving Ng’ombwanan flags?”

“What did he say, exactly?” asked Mr. Fox. He referred to their Assistant Commissioner.

“Oh, you know!” said Alleyn. “Charm and sweet reason were the wastewords of his ween.”

“What’s a ween, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I’ve not the remotest idea. It’s a quotation. And don’t ask me from where.”

“I only wondered,” said Mr. Fox mildly.

“I don’t even know,” Alleyn continued moodily, “how it’s spelt. Or what it means, if it comes to that.”

“If it’s Scotch it’ll be with an h, won’t it? Meaning: ‘few.’ Wheen.”

“Which doesn’t make sense. Or does it? Perhaps it should be ‘weird,’ but that’s something one drees. Now you’re upsetting me, Br’er Fox.”

“To get back to the A.C., then?”

“However reluctantly: to get back to him. It’s all about this visit, of course.”

“The Ng’ombwanan President?”

“He. The thing is, Br’er Fox, I know him. And the A.C. knows I know him. We were at school together in the same house: Davidson’s. Same study, for a year. Nice creature, he was. Not everybody’s cup of tea but I liked him. We got on like houses-on-fire.”

“Don’t tell me,” Said Fox. “The A.C. wants you to recall old times?”

“I do tell you precisely that. He’s dreamed up the idea of a meeting — casual-cum-official. He wants me to put it to the President that unless he conforms to whatever procedure the Special Branch sees fit to lay on, he may very well get himself bumped off and in any case will cause acute anxiety, embarrassment and trouble at all levels from the Monarch down. And I’m to put this, if you please, tactfully. They don’t want umbrage to be taken, followed by a highly publicized flounce-out. He’s as touchy as a sea-anemone.”

“Is he jibbing, then? About routine precautions?”

“He was always a pig-headed ass. We used to say that if you wanted the old Boomer to do anything you only had to tell him not to. And he’s one of those sickening people without fear. And hellish haughty with it. Yes, he’s jibbing. He doesn’t want protection. He wants to do a Haroun-al-Raschid and bum around London on his own, looking about as inconspicuous as a coal box in paradise.”

“Well,” said Mr. Fox judiciously, “that’s a very silly way to go on. He’s a number one assassination risk, that gentleman.”

“He’s a bloody nuisance. You’re right, of course. Ever since he pushed his new industrial legislation through he’s been a sitting target for the lunatic right fringe. Damn it all, Br’er Fox, only the other day, when he elected to make a highly publicized call at Martinique, somebody took a pot-shot at him. Missed and shot himself. No arrest. And off goes the Boomer on his merry way, six foot five of him, standing on the seat of his car, all eyes and teeth, with his escort having kittens every inch of the route.”

“He sounds a right daisy.”

“I believe you.”

“I get muddled,” Mr. Fox confessed, “over these emergent nations.”

“You’re not alone, there.”

“I mean to say — this Ng’ombwana. What is it? A republic, obviously, but is it a member of the Commonwealth, and if it is why does it have an ambassador instead of a high commissioner?”

“You may well ask. Largely through the manoeuvrings of my old chum the Boomer. They’re still a Commonwealth country. More or less. They’re having it both ways. All the trappings and complete independence. All the ha’pence and none of the kicks. That’s why they insist on calling their man in London an ambassador and setting him up in premises that wouldn’t disgrace one of the great powers. Basically it’s the Boomer’s doing.”

“What about his own people? Here? At this Embassy? His Ambassador and all?”

“They’re as worried as hell but say that what the President lays down is it: the general idea being that they might as well speak to the wind. He’s got this notion in his head — it derives from his schooldays and his practising as a barrister in London — that because Great Britain, relatively, has had a non-history of political assassination there won’t be any in the present or future. In its maddening way it’s rather touching.”

“He can’t stop the S.B. doing its stuff, though. Not outside the Embassy.”

“He can make it hellish awkward for them.”

“What’s the procedure, then? Do you wait till he comes, Mr. Alleyn, and plead with him at the airport?”

“I do not. I fly to his blasted republic at the crack of dawn tomorrow and you carry on with the Dagenham job on your own.”

“Thanks very much. What a treat,” said Fox.

“So I’d better go and pack.”

“Don’t forget the old school tie.”

“I do not deign,” said Alleyn, “to reply to that silly crack.”

He got as far as the door and stopped. “I meant to ask you,” he said. “Did you ever come across a man called Samuel Whipplestone? At the F.O.?”

“I don’t move in those circles. Why?”

“He was a bit of a specialist on Ng’ombwana. I see he’s lately retired. Nice chap. When I get back I might ask him to dinner.”

“Are you wondering if he’d have any influence?”

“We can hardly expect him to crash down on his knees and plead with the old Boomer to use his loaf if he wants to keep it. But I did vaguely wonder. ’Bye, Br’er Fox.”

Forty-eight hours later Alleyn, in a tropical suit, got out of a Presidential Rolls that had met him at the main Ng’ombwanan airport. He passed in sweltering heat up a grandiose flight of steps through a lavishly uniformed guard and into the air-conditioned reception hall of the Presidential Palace.

Communication at the top level had taken place and he got the full, instant V.I.P. treatment.

“Mr. Alleyn?” said a young Ng’ombwanan wearing an A.D.C.’s gold knot and tassel. “The President is so happy at your visit. He will see you at once. You had a pleasant flight?”

Alleyn followed the sky-blue tunic down a splendid corridor that gave on an exotic garden.

“Tell me,” he asked on the way, “what form of address is the correct one for the President?”

“His Excellency the President,” the A.D.C. rolled out, “prefers that form of address.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn and followed his guide into an anteroom of impressive proportions. An extremely personable and widely smiling secretary said something in Ng’ombwanan. The A.D.C. translated: “We are to go straight in, if you please.” Two dashingly uniformed guards opened double doors and Alleyn was ushered into an enormous room at the far end of which, behind a vast desk, sat his old school chum Bartholomew Opala.

“Superintendent Alleyn, Your Excellency, Mr. President, sir,” said the A.D.C. redundantly and withdrew.

The enormous presence was already on its feet and coming, light-footed as a prizefighter, at Alleyn. The huge voice was bellowing: “Rory Alleyn by all that’s glorious!” Alleyn’s hand was engulfed and his shoulder-blade rhythmically beaten. It was impossible to stand to attention and bow from the neck in what he had supposed to be the required form.

“Mr. President—” he began.

“What? Oh, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! Balls, my dear man, as we used to say at Davidson’s.” Davidson’s had been their house at the illustrious school they both attended. The Boomer was being too establishment for words. Alleyn noticed that he wore the old school tie and that behind him on the wall hung a framed photograph of Davidson’s with the Boomer and himself standing together in the back row. He found this oddly, even painfully touching.

“Come and sit down,” the Boomer fussed. “Where, now? Over here! Sit! sit! I couldn’t be more delighted.”

The steel-wool mat of hair was grey now and stood up high on his head like a toque. The huge frame was richly endowed with flesh and the eyes were very slightly bloodshot, but as if in double exposure Alleyn saw beyond this figure that of one ebony youth eating anchovy toast by a coal fire and saying: “You are my friend: I have had none, here, until now.”

“How well you look,” the President was saying. “And how little you have changed! You smoke? No? A cigar? A pipe? Yes? Presently, then. You are lunching with us of course. They have told you?”

“This is overwhelming,” Alleyn said when he could get a word in. “In a minute I shall be forgetting my protocol.”

“Now! Forget it now. We are alone. There is no need.”

“My dear—”

“Boomer. Say it. How many years since I heard it!”

“I’m afraid I very nearly said it when I came in. My dear Boomer.”

The sudden brilliance of a prodigal smile made its old impression. “That’s nice,” said the President quietly, and after rather a long silence: “I suppose I must ask you if this is a visit with an object. They were very non-committal at your end, you know. Just a message that you were arriving and would like to see me. Of course I was overjoyed.”

Alleyn thought: “This is going to be tricky. One word in the wrong place and I not only boob my mission but very likely destroy a friendship and even set up a politically damaging mistrust.”

He said: “I’ve come to ask you for something and I wish I hadn’t got to bother you with it. I won’t pretend that my chief didn’t know of our past friendship — to me a most valued one. I won’t pretend that he didn’t imagine this friendship might have some influence. Of course he did. But it’s because I think his request is reasonable and because I am very greatly concerned for your safety that I didn’t jib at coming.”

He had to wait a long time for the reaction. It was as if a blind had been pulled down. For the first time, seeing the slackened jaw and now the hooded, lacklustre eyes, he thought specifically: “I am speaking to a Negro.”

“Ah!” said the President at last. “I had forgotten. You are a policeman.”

“They say, don’t they, if you want to keep a friend, never lend him money. I don’t believe a word of it, but if you change the last four words into ‘never use your friendship to further your business’ I wouldn’t quarrel with it. But I’m not doing exactly that. This is more complicated. My end object, believe it or not, sir, is the preservation of your most valuable life.”

Another hazardous wait. Alleyn thought: “Yes, and that’s exactly how you used to look when you thought somebody had been rude to you. Glazed.”

But the glaze melted and the Boomer’s nicest look, one of quiet amusement, supervened.

“Now, I understand,” he said. “It is your watch-dogs, your Special Branch. ‘Please make him see reason, this black man. Please ask him to let us disguise ourselves as waiters and pressmen and men-in-the-street and unimportant guests and be indistinguishable all over the shop.’ I am right? That is the big request?”

“I’m afraid, you know, they’ll do their thing in that respect as well as they can, however difficult it’s made for them.”

“Then why all this fuss-pottery? How stupid!”

“They would all be much happier if you didn’t do what you did, for instance, in Martinique.”

“And what did I do in Martinique?”

“With the deepest respect: insisted on an extensive reduction of the safety precautions and escaped assassination by the skin of your teeth.”

“I am a fatalist,” the Boomer suddenly announced, and when Alleyn didn’t answer: “My dear Rory, I see I must make myself understood. Myself. What I am. My philosophy. My code. You will listen?”

“Here we go,” Alleyn thought. “He’s changed less than one would have thought possible.” And with profound misgivings he said: “But of course, sir. With all my ears.”

As the exposition got under way it turned out to be an extension of the Boomer’s schoolboy bloodymindedness seasoned with, and in part justified by, his undoubted genius for winning the trust and understanding of his own people. He enlarged, with intermittent gusts of Homeric laughter, upon the machinations of the Ng’ombwanan extreme right and left who had upon several occasions made determined efforts to secure his death and were, through some mysterious process of reason, thwarted by the Boomer’s practice of exposing himself as an easy target. “They see,” he explained, “that I am not, as we used to say at Davidson’s, standing for their tedious codswallop.”

Did we say that at Davidson’s?”

“Of course. You must remember. Constantly.”

“So be it.”

“It was a favorite expression of your own. Yes,” shouted the Boomer as Alleyn seemed inclined to demur, “always. We all picked it up from you.”

“To return, if we may, to the matter in hand.”

All of us,” the Boomer continued nostalgically. “You set the tone at Davidson’s,” and noticing perhaps a fleeting expression of horror on Alleyn’s face, he leant forward and patted his knee. “But I digress,” he said accurately. “Shall we return to our muttons?”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed with heartfelt relief. “Yes. Let’s.

“Your turn,” the Boomer generously conceded. “You were saying?”

“Have you thought — but of course you have — what would follow if you were knocked off?”

“As you say: of course I have. To quote your favourite dramatist (you see, I remember), ‘the filthy clouds of heady murder, spoil and villainy’ would follow,” said the Boomer with relish. “To say the least of it,” he added.

“Yes. Well now: the threat doesn’t lie, as the Martinique show must have told you, solely within the boundaries of Ng’ombwana. In the Special Branch they know, and I mean they really do know, that there are lunatic fringes in London ready to go to all lengths. Some of them are composed of hangovers from certain disreputable backwaters of colonialism, others have a devouring hatred of your colour. Occasionally they are people with a real and bitter grievance that has grown monstrous in stagnation. You name it. But they’re there, in considerable numbers, organized and ready to go.”

“I am not alarmed,” said the Boomer with maddening complacency. “No, but I mean it. In all truth I do not experience the least sensation of physical fear.”

“I don’t share your sense of immunity,” Alleyn said. “In your boots I’d be a muck sweat.” It occurred to him that he had indeed abandoned the slightest nod in the direction of protocol. “But, all right. Accepting your fearlessness, may we return to the disastrous effect your death would have upon your country? ‘The filthy clouds of heady murder’ bit. Doesn’t that thought at all predispose you to precaution?”

“But my dear fellow, you don’t understand. I shall not be killed. I know it. Within myself, I know it. Assassination is not my destiny: it is as simple as that.”

Alleyn opened his mouth and shut it again.

“As simple as that,” the Boomer repeated. He opened his arms. “You see!” he cried triumphantly.

“Do you mean,” Alleyn said very carefully, “that the bullet in Martinique and the spear in a remote village in Ng’ombwana and the one or two other pot-shots that have been loosed off at you from time to time were all predestined to miss?”

“Not only do I believe it but my people—my people know it in their souls. It is one of the reasons why I am re-elected unanimously to lead my country.”

Alleyn did not ask if it was also one of the reasons why nobody, so far, had had the temerity to oppose him.

The Boomer reached out his great shapely hand and laid it on Alleyn’s knee. “You were and you are my good friend,” he said. “We were close at Davidson’s. We remained close while I read my law and ate my dinners at the Temple. And we are close still. But this thing we discuss now belongs to my colour and my race. My Blackness. Please, do not try to understand: try only, my dear Rory, to accept.”

To this large demand Alleyn could only reply: “It’s not as simple as that.”

“No? But why?”

“If I talk about my personal anxiety for you I’ll be saying in effect that I don’t understand and can’t accept, which is precisely what you do not want me to say. So I must fall back on my argument as an unwilling policeman with a difficult job. I’m not a member of the Special Branch but my colleagues in that department have asked me to do what I can, which looks a bit like damn-all. I do put it to you that their job, a highly specialized and immensely difficult one, is going to be a hundred percent more tricky if you decline to cooperate. If, for instance, on an impulse you change your route to some reception or walk out of your Embassy without telling anybody and take a constitutional in Kensington Gardens all by yourself. To put it baldly and brutally, if you are killed somebody in the Special Branch is going to be axed, the department’s going to fall into general disrepute at the highest and lowest levels, and a centuries-old reputation of immunity from political assassination in England is gone for good. You see, I’m speaking not only for the police.”

“The police, as servants of the people,” the Boomer began, and then, Alleyn thought, very probably blushed.

“Were you going to say we ought to be kept in our place?” he mildly asked.

The Boomer began to walk about the room. Alleyn stood up.

“You have a talent,” the Boomer suddenly complained, “for putting one in the wrong. I remember it of old. At Davidson’s.”

“What an insufferable boy I must have been,” Alleyn remarked. He was getting very bored with Davidson’s and really there seemed to be nothing more to say. “I have taken up too much of Your Excellency’s time,” he said. “Forgive me,” and waited to be dismissed.

The Boomer looked mournfully upon him. “But you are lunching,” he said. “We have agreed. It is arranged that you shall lunch.”

“That’s very kind, Your Excellency, but it’s only eleven o’clock. Should I make myself scarce in the meantime?”

To his intense dismay he saw that the bloodshot eyes had filled with tears. The Boomer said, with immense dignity: “You have distressed me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was overjoyed at your coming. And now it is all spoilt and you call me Excellency.”

Alleyn felt the corner of his mouth twitch and at the same time was moved by a contradictory sense of compassion. This emotion, he realized, was entirely inappropriate. He reminded himself that the President of Ng’ombwana was far from being a sort of inspired innocent. He was an astute, devoted and at times ruthless dictator with, it had to be added, a warm capacity for friendship. He was also extremely observant. “And funny,” Alleyn thought, controlling himself. “It’s quite maddening of him to be funny as well.”

“Ah!” the President suddenly roared out. “You are laughing! My dear Rory, you are laughing,” and himself broke into that Homeric gale of mirth. “No, it is too much! Admit! It is too ridiculous! What is it all about? Nothing! Listen, I will be a good boy. I will behave. Tell your solemn friends in your Special Branch that I will not run away when they hide themselves behind inadequate floral decorations and dress themselves up as nonentities with enormous boots. There now! You are pleased? Yes?”

“I’m enchanted,” Alleyn said, “if you really mean it.”

“But I do. I do. You shall see. I will be decorum itself. Within,” he added, “the field of their naïve responsibilities. Within the U.K. in fact. O.K.? Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And no more Excellencies. No? Not,” the Boomer added without turning a hair, “when we are tête-à-tête. As at present.”

“As at present,” Alleyn agreed, and was instantly reinvolved in an exuberance of hand-shaking.

It was arranged that he would be driven around the city for an hour before joining the President for luncheon. The elegant A.D.C. reappeared. When they walked back along the corridor, Alleyn looked through its French windows into the acid-green garden. It was daubed superbly with flamboyants and veiled by a concourse of fountains. Through the iridescent rise and fall of water there could be perceived, at intervals, motionless figures in uniform.

Alleyn paused. “What a lovely garden,” he said.

“Oh, yes?” said the A.D.C., smiling. Reflected colour and reflected lights from the garden glanced across his polished charcoal jaw and cheekbones. “You like it? The President likes it very much.”

He made as if to move. “Shall we?” he suggested.

A file of soldiers, armed and splendidly uniformed crossed the garden left, right, left, right, on the far side of the fountains. Distorted by prismatic cascades, they could dimly be seen to perform a correct routine with the men they had come to replace.

“The changing of the guard,” Alleyn said lightly.

“Exactly. They are purely ceremonial troops.”

“Yes?”

“As at your Buckingham Palace,” explained the A.D.C.

“Quite,” said Alleyn.

They passed through the grandiloquent hall and the picturesque guard at the entrance.

“Again,” Alleyn ventured, “purely ceremonial?”

“Of course,” said the A.D.C.

They were armed, Alleyn noticed, if not to the teeth, at least to the hips, with a useful-looking issue of sophisticated weapons. “Very smartly turned out,” he said politely.

“The President will be pleased to know you think so,” said the A.D.C., and they walked into a standing bath of heat and dazzlement.

The Presidential Rolls, heavily garnished with the Ng’ombwanan arms, waited at the foot of thé steps. Alleyn was ushered into the back seat while the A.D.C. sat in front. The car was air-conditioned and the windows shut and, thought Alleyn, “if ever I rode in a bullet-proof job, and today wouldn’t be the first time, this is it.” He wondered if, somewhere in Ng’ombwana security circles there was an influence a great deal more potent than that engendered by the industrious evocation of Davidson’s.

They drove under the escort of two ultra-smart, lavishly accoutred motor-cyclists. “Skinheads, bikies, traffic cops, armed escorts,” he speculated, “wherever they belch and rev and bound, what gives the species its peculiar air of menacing vulgarity.”

The car swept through crowded, mercilessly glaring streets. Alleyn found something to say about huge white monstrosities — a Palace of Culture, a Palace of Justice, a Hall of Civic Authority, a Free Library. The A.D.C. received his civilities with perfect complacency.

“Yes,” he agreed. “They are very fine. All new. All since the Presidency. It is very remarkable.”

The traffic was heavy, but it was noticeable that it opened before their escort as the Red Sea before Moses. They were stared at, but from a distance. Once, as they made a right-hand turn and were momentarily checked by an oncoming car, the A.D.C., without turning his head, said something to their chauffeur, that made him wince.

When Alleyn, who was married to a painter, looked at the current scene, wherever it might be, he did so with double vision. As a stringently trained policeman, he watched automatically for idiosyncrasies. As a man very sensitively tuned to his wife’s way of seeing, he searched for consonancies. As now, when confronted by a concourse of black heads that bobbed, shifted, clustered and dispersed against that inexorable glare, he saw this scene as his wife might like to paint it. He noticed that, in common with many of the older buildings, one in particular was in process of being newly painted. The ghost of a former legend showed faintly through the mask — SANS RIT IMPO T NG TR DI G CO. He saw a shifting, colourful group on the steps of this building and thought how, with simplification, rearrangement and selection, Troy would endow them with rhythmic significance. She would find, he thought, a focal point, some figure to which the others were subservient, a figure of the first importance.

And then, even as this notion visited him, the arrangement occurred. The figures re-formed like fragments in a kaleidoscope and there was the focal point, a solitary man, inescapable because quite still, a grotesquely fat man, with long blond hair, wearing white clothes. A white man.

The white man stared into the car. He was at least fifty yards away, but for Alleyn it might have been so many feet. They looked into each other’s faces and the policeman said to himself: “That chap’s worth watching. That chap’s a villain.”

Click, went the kaleidoscope. The fragments slid apart and together. A stream of figures erupted from the interior, poured down the steps and dispersed. When the gap was uncovered the white man had gone.

“It’s like this, sir,” Chubb had said rapidly. “Seeing that No. 1 isn’t a full-time place, being there’s the two of us, we been in the habit of helping out on a part-time basis elsewhere in the vicinity. Like, Mrs. Chubb does an hour every other day for Mr. Sheridan in the basement and I go in to the Colonel’s — that’s Colonel and Mrs. Montfort in the place — for two hours of a Friday afternoon and every other Sunday evening we baby-sit at 17, the Walk. And—”

“Yes. I see,” said Mr. Whipplestone, stemming the tide.

“You won’t find anything scamped or overlooked, sir, Mrs. Chubb intervened. “We give satisfaction in all quarters, really we do. It’s just An Arrangement, like.”

“And naturally, sir, the wages are adjusted according. We wouldn’t expect anything else, sir, would we?”

They had stood side by side with round anxious faces, wide-open eyes and gabbling mouths. Mr. Whipplestone had listened with his built-in air of attentive detachment and had finally agreed to the proposal that the Chubbs were all his for six mornings, breakfast, luncheon and dinner: that provided the house was well kept up they might attend upon Mr. Sheridan or anybody else at their own and his convenience, that on Fridays Mr. Whipplestone would lunch and dine at his club or elsewhere, and that, as the Chubbs put it, the wages were “adjusted according.”

“Most of the residents,” explained Chubb when they had completed these arrangements and got down to details, “has accounts at the Napoli, sir. You may prefer to deal elsewhere.”

“And for butchery,” said Mrs. Chubb, “there’s—”

They expounded upon the amenities in the Capricorns.

Mr. Whipplestone said: “That all sounds quite satisfactory. Do you know, I think I’ll make a tour of inspection.” And he did so.

The Napoli is one of the four little shops in Capricorn Mews. It is “shop” reduced to its absolute minimum: a slit of a place where the customers stand in single file and then only eight at a squeeze. The proprietors are an Italian couple, he dark and anxious, she dark and buxom and jolly. Their assistant is a large and facetious Cockney.

It is a nice shop. They cure their own bacon and hams. Mr. Pirelli makes his own pâté and a particularly good terrine. The cheeses are excellent. Bottles of dry Orvieto are slung overhead and other Italian wines crowd together inside the door. There are numerous exotics in line on the shelves. The Capricornians like to tell each other that the Napoli is “a pocket Fortnum’s.” Dogs are not allowed, but a row of hooks has been thoughtfully provided in the outside wall and on most mornings there is a convocation of mixed dogs attached to them.

Mr. Whipplestone skirted the dogs, entered the shop and bought a promising piece of Camembert. The empurpled army man, always immaculately dressed and gloved, whom he had seen in the street, was in the shop and was addressed by Mr. Pirelli as “Colonel.” (Montfort? wondered Mr. Whipplestone.) The Colonel’s lady was with him. An alarming lady, the fastidious Mr. Whipplestone thought, with the face of a dissolute clown and wildly overdressed. They both wore an air of overdone circumspection that Mr. Whipplestone associated with the hazards of a formidable hangover. The lady stood stock-still and bolt upright behind her husband, but as Mr. Whipplestone approached the counter she sidestepped and barged into him, driving her pin heel into his instep.

“I beg your pardon,” he cried in pain and lifted his hat.

“Not a bit,” she said thickly and gave him what could only be described as a half-awakened leer.

Her husband turned and seemed to sense a need for conversation. “Not much room for manoeuvrin’,” he shouted. “What.”

“Quite,” said Mr. Whipplestone.

He opened an account, left the shop, and continued his explorations.

He arrived at the scene of his encounter with the little black cat. A large van was backing into the garage. Out of the tail of his eye he thought he saw briefly a darting shadow, and when the van stopped he could have fancied, almost, that he heard a faint, plaintive cry. But there was nothing to support these impressions and he hurried on, oddly perturbed.

At the far end of the Mews, by the entrance to the passageway, is a strange little cavern, once a stable, which has been converted into a shop. Here at this period a baleful fat lady made images of pigs either as doorstops or with roses and daisies on their sides and a hole in their backs for cream or flowers as the fancy might take you. They varied in size but never in design. The kiln was at the back of the cavern, and as Mr. Whipplestone looked in the fat lady stared at him out of her shadows. Across the window was the legend The Piggie Potterie, and above the entrance a notice: X. & K. Sanskrit.

“Commercial candour!” thought Mr. Whipplestone, cracking a little joke for himself. To what nationality, he wondered, could someone called Sanskrit possibly belong? Indian, he supposed. And X? Xavier perhaps. “To make a living,” he wondered, “out of the endless reduplication of pottery pigs? And why on earth does this extraordinary name seem to ring a bell?”

Conscious that the fat lady in the shadows still looked at him, he moved on into Capricorn Place and made his way to a rosy brick wall at the far end. Through an opening in this wall one leaves the Capricorns and arrives at a narrow lane passing behind the Basilica precincts and an alleyway ending in the full grandeur of Palace Park Gardens. Here the Ng’ombwana Embassy rears its important front.

Mr. Whipplestone contemplated the pink flag with its insignia of green spear and sun and mentally apostrophized it. “Yes,” he thought, “there you are, and for my part, long may you stay there.” And he remembered that at some as yet unspecified time but, unless something awful intervened, in the near future, the Ambassador and all his minions would be in no end of a tig getting ready for the state visit of their dynamic President and spotting assassins behind every plane tree. The Special Branch would be raising their punctual plaint and at the F.O., he thought, they’ll be dusting down their imperturbability. “I’m out of it all and (I’d better make up my mind to it) delighted to be so. I suppose,” he added. Conscious of a slight pang, he made his way home.

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