Soldier's Art

TWO

Sullen reverberations of one kind or another — blitz in England, withdrawal in Greece — had been providing the most recent noises-off in rehearsals that never seemed to end, breeding a wish that the billed performance would at last ring up its curtain, whatever form that took. However, the date of the opening night rested in hands other than our own; meanwhile nobody could doubt that more rehearsing, plenty more rehearsing, was going to be needed for a long time to come. Although these might be dispiriting thoughts, an overwhelming sense of content descended as the train reached the outskirts of London. Spring seas had been rough the night before, the railway carriage as usual overcrowded, while we threaded a sluggish passage through blackness towards the south; from time to time entering — pausing in — then vacating — areas where air-raid warnings prevailed. Viewed from the windows of the train, the deserted highways and gutted buildings of outlying districts created to the eye the semblance of an abandoned city. Nevertheless, I felt full of hope.

London contacts had to be sorted out. A letter from Chips Lovell, received only the day before, complicated an arrangement to dine with Moreland that evening. Lovell had heard I was coming on leave, and wanted to talk about “family affairs.” That was a motive reasonable enough in principle; in practice, a disturbing phrase, when considered in relation to rumoured “trouble” with Priscilla. Lovell was a Marine. He had been commissioned into the Corps at the time of its big expansion at the beginning of ^e war, soon after this being posted to a station on the East Coast. Evidently he had moved from there, because he gave a London telephone exchange (with extension) to find him, though no indication of what his new employment might be.

First, I called up the number Greening had consigned from General Liddament. The voice of Major Finn on the line was quiet and deep, persuasive yet firm. I began to tell my story. He cut me short at once, seeming already aware what was coming, another tribute to the General’s powers of transmuting thought to action. Instructions were to report later in the day to an address in Westminster. This offered breathing space. A hundred matters of one sort or another had to be negotiated before going down to the country. After speaking with Major Finn, I rang Lovell.

“Look, Nick, I never thought you’d get in touch so soon,” he said, before there was even time to suggest anything. “Owing to a new development, I’m booked for dinner to-night — first date for months — but that makes it even more important I see you. I’m caught up in work at lunch-time — only knocking off for about twenty minutes — but we can have a drink later. Can’t we meet near wherever you’re dining, as I shan’t get away till seven at the earliest.”

“The Cafe Royal — with Hugh Moreland.”

“I’ll be along as soon as I can.”

“Hugh said he’d turn up about eight.”

It seemed required to emphasise that, if Lovell stayed too long over our drink, he would encounter Moreland. This notification was in Moreland’s interest, rather than Lovell’s. Lovell had never been worried by the former closeness of Priscilla and Moreland. Priscilla might or might not have told her husband the whole affair with Moreland had been fruitless enough, had never taken physical shape; if she had, Lovell might or might not have believed her. It was doubtful whether he greatly minded either way. I myself accepted they had never been to bed, because Moreland had told me that in one of his few rather emotional outbursts. It was because Moreland was sensitive, perhaps even touchy about such matters, that he might not want to meet Lovell. Besides, if Priscilla were now behaving in a manner to cause Lovell concern, he too might well prefer to remain unreminded of a former beau of his wife’s; a man with whom he had in any case not much in common, apart from Priscilla. This turned out to be a wrong guess on my own part. Lovell showed no sign whatever of wanting to avoid Moreland. On the contrary, he was disappointed the three of us were not all dining together that evening.

“What a relief to meet someone like Hugh Moreland again,” he said. “Pity I can’t join the party. I can assure you it would be more fun than what faces me. Anyway, I’ll go into that when we meet.”

Lovell was an odd mixture of realism and romanticism; more specifically, he was, like quite a lot of people, romantic about being a realist. If, for example, the suspicion ever crossed his mind that Priscilla had married him “on the rebound,” any possible pang would have been allayed, in his philosophy, by the thought that he had in the end himself “got the girl.” He might also have argued, of course, that the operation of the rebound is unpredictable, some people thwarted in love, shifting, bodily and totally, on to another person the whole weight of a former strong emotion. Lovell was romantic, especially, in the sense of taking things at their face value — one of the qualities that made him a good journalist. It never struck him anyone could think or do anything but the perfectly obvious. This took the practical form of disinclination to believe in the reality of any matter not of a kind to be ventilated in the press. At the same time, although incapable of seeing life from an unobvious angle, Lovell was prepared, when necessary, to vary the viewpoint — provided obviousness remained unimpeded, one kind of obviousness simply taking the place of another. This relative flexibility was owed partly to his own species of realism — when his realism, so to speak, “worked” — partly forced on him by another of his firm moral convictions: that every change which took place in life — personal — political — social — was both momentous and for ever; a system of opinion also stimulating to the practice of his profession.

Once Lovell’s way of looking at the world was allowed, he could be subtle about ways and means. With the additional advantages of good looks and plenty of push, these methods were bringing fair success in his chosen career by the time war broke out. In marrying Priscilla, he had not, it is true, consummated a formerly voiced design to “find a rich wife”; but then that project had never, in fact, assumed the smallest practical shape. Its verbal expression merely illustrated another facet of Lovell’s romanticism — in this case, romanticism about money. He had, in any case, taken a keen interest in Priscilla even back in the days when he and I had been working on film scripts together (none of which ever appeared on any screen), so there was no surprise when the two of them married. At first he lost jobs and they were hard up. Priscilla, who had some taste for living dangerously, never seemed to mind these lean stretches. Lovell himself used to present an equally unruffled surface to the world where shortage of money was concerned, though underneath he certainly felt guilty regarding lack of it. He looked upon lack of money as a failing in himself; or, for that matter, in anyone else. From time to time, though without any strong force behind it, his romanticism would take moral or intellectual turns too. He would indulge, for instance, in fits of condemning material things and all who pursued them. These moods were sometimes accompanied by reading potted philosophies: the Wisdom of the East in one volume, Marx Without Tears, the Treasury of Great Thought. Like everyone else of his kind he was writing a play, an undertaking that progressed never further than the opening pages of the First Act.

“I never get time to settle down to serious writing,” he used to say, thereby making what almost amounted to a legal declaration in defining his own inclusion within an easily recognisable category of non-starting literary apprenticeship.

These were some of the thoughts about Lovell that passed through my head while I sat on a bench in the hall waiting to see Major Finn. The address in Westminster to which I had been told to report turned out to be a large house converted to the use of military headquarters. After a while a Free French corporal, his arm in a sling, joined me on the bench; then two members of the Free French women’s service. Soon the three of them began an argument together in their own language. I re-read Moreland’s postcard — a portrait of Wagner in a kind of tam-o’-shanter — confirming our dinner that night. Enigmatic in tone, its wording indefinably lacked the liveliness of manner usual in this, Moreland’s habitual mode of communication.

We had not met since the first week of the war, soon after Matilda had left him. Matilda’s subsequent marriage to Sir Magnus Donners had been effected with an avoidance of publicity remarkable even at a time when all sorts of changes, public and private, many of these revolutionary enough, were being quietly brought about. Muting the news of the ceremony was no doubt to some extent attributable to controls Sir Magnus found himself in a position to exercise in certain fields. The wedding of the divorced wife of a musician, well known even if not particularly prosperous, to a member of the Government rated in general more attention, even allowing for the paper shortage, than the few scattered paragraphs that appeared at the time. People said the break-up of Moreland’s marriage had at first so much disturbed him that he seemed likely to go to pieces entirely, giving himself up increasingly to drink, while living as best he could from one day to the next. However, a paradox of that moment in the war was an excess, rather than deficiency, of musical employment; so that, in fact, Moreland found himself immersed in work of one sort or another, which, even if not very inspiring professionally, kept him alive and busy. That, at any rate, was what I had heard. Inevitably we had lost touch with each other since I had been in the army. Friendship, popularly represented as something simple and straightforward — in contrast with love — is perhaps no less complicated, requiring equally mysterious nourishment; like love, too, bearing also within its embryo inherent seeds of dissolution, something more fundamentally destructive, perhaps, than the mere passing of time, the all-obliterating march of events which had, for example, come between Stringham and myself.

These rather sombre speculations were interrupted by a door opening nearby. A Free French officer in a képi appeared. Middle-aged, with spectacles, rather red in the face, he was followed from the room by a youngish, capless captain, wearing Intelligence Corps badges.

“Et maintenant, une dernière chose, mon Capitaine,” said the Frenchman, “maintenant que nous avons terminé avec I’affaire Szymanski. Le Colonel s’est arrangé avec certains membres du Commandement pour que quelques jeunes officiers soient placés dans le Génie. Il espère que vous n’y verrez pas d’inconvenient.”

“Vous n’avez pas utilisé la procédure habituelle, Lieutenant?”

“Mon Capitaine, le Colonel Michelet a pensé que pour une pareille broutille on pouvait se dispenser des voies hierachiques.”

“Nous aurons des ennuis.”

“Le Colonel Michelet est convaincu qu’ils seront négligeables.”

“Ca m’étonnerait.”

“Vous croyez vraiment?”

“J’en suis sûr. II nous jaut immédiatement une liste de ces noms.”

“Très bien, mon Capitaine, vous les aurez.”

The English officer shook his head to express horror at what had been contemplated. They both laughed a lot.

“Au revoir, Lieutenant.”

“Au revoir, mon Capitaine.”

The Frenchman retired. The captain turned to me.

“Jenkins?”

“Yes.”

“Finn told me about you. Come in here, will you.”

I followed into his room, and sat opposite while he turned the pages of a file.

“What have you been doing since you joined the army?”

Reduced to narrative form, my military career up to date did not sound particularly impressive. However, the captain seemed satisfied. He nodded from time to time. His manner was friendly, more like the good-humoured approach of my old Battalion than the unforthcoming demeanour of most of the officers at Div. H.Q. The story came to an end.

“I see — how old are you?”

I revealed my age. He looked surprised that anyone could be so old.

“And what do you do in civilian life?”

I indicated literary activities.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I believe I read one.”

However, he showed none of General Liddament’s keen merest in the art of the novel, made no effort to explore further this aspect of my life.

“What about French?”

It seemed simplest to furnish the same descriptive phrases offered to the General.

“I can read a book as a rule, but get held up with slang or something like the technical descriptions of Balzac.”

The captain laughed.

“Well,” he said, “suppose we come back to that later. Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“One.”

“Prepared to go abroad?”

“Of course.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

He seemed almost surprised at this rather minimal acceptance of military obligation.

“We’re looking for liaison officers with the Free French,” he said. “At battalion level. They’re not entirely easy to find. Speaking another language tolerably well seems so often to go with unsatisfactory habits.”

The captain smiled sadly, a little archly, across the desk at me.

“Whilst our Allies expect nothing less than one hundred per cent service,” he said, “and quite right too.”

He fixed me with his eye.

“Care to take the job on?”

“Yes — but, as I explained, I’m no great master of the language.”

He did not reply. Instead, he opened a drawer of the desk from which he took a document. He handed this to me. Then he rose and went to a door on the other side of the room. It gave on to a smaller room, almost a cupboard surrounded by dark green metal safes. In one corner was a little table on which stood a typewriter in its rubber cover. A chair was beside it.

“Make a French translation of these instructions,” he said. “Subsistence Allowance is frais d’alimentation. Here is paper — and a typewriter, should you use one. Alternatively, here too is la plume de ma tante.”

Smiling not unkindly, he shut me in. I settled down to examine the printed sheet handed to me. It turned out to be an Army Form, one specifying current regulations governing issue, or non-issue, of rations to troops in the field. At first sight the prose did not seem to make much sense in English; I saw at once there was little hope of my own French improving it. Balzac on provincial typesetting was going to be nothing to this. However, I sat down and worked away, because I wanted the job badly.

Outside, on cornices and parapets of government buildings, starlings in thousands chattered and quarrelled. I was aware of that dazed feeling that is part of the impact of coming on leave. I read through the document again, trying to compose my mind to its meaning. This was like being “kept in” at school. “… the items under (i) are obtainable on indent (A.B.55) which is the ordinary requisition of supplies … the items under (iii) and other items required to supplement the ration so as to provide variety and admit of the purchase of seasonable produce, and which are paid for with money provided by the Commuted Ration Allowance and Cash Allowance (iii above) … the officer i/c Supplies renders a return (A. F. B. 179), which shows the quantities and prices of rations actually issued in kind to the unit during the month, from which their total value is calculated …”

The instruction covered a couple of foolscap pages. I remembered being told never to write “and which,” but the mere grammar used by the author was by no means just most formidable side. It was not the words that were difficult. The words, on the whole, were fairly familiar. Giving them some sort of conviction in translation was the problem; conveying that particular tone sounded in official manifestos. Through the backwoods of this bureaucratic jungle, or the like, Widmerpool was hunting down Mr. Diplock, in relentless safari. Such distracting thoughts had to be put from the mind. I chosela plume de ma tante in preference to the typewriter, typescript imparting an awful bareness to language of any kind, even one’s own. For a time I sweated away. Some sort of a version at last appeared. I read it through several times, making corrections. It did not sound ideally idiomatic. French; but then the original did not sound exactly idiomatic English. After embodying a few final improvements, I opened the door a crack.

“Come in, come in,” said the captain. “Have you finished? I thought you might have succumbed. It’s dreadfully stuffy in there.”

He was sitting with another officer, also a captain, tall, fair, rather elegant. A blue fore-and-aft cap lay beside him with the lion-and-unicorn General Service badge. I passed my translation across the desk to the I. Corps captain. He took it, and, rising from his chair, turned to the other man.

“I’ll be back in a moment, David,” he said — and to me: “Take a seat while I show this to Finn.”

He went out of the room. The other officer nodded to me and laughed. It was Pennistone. We had met on a train during an earlier leave of mine and had talked of Vigny. We had talked of all sorts of other things, too, that seemed to have passed out of my life for a long time. I remembered now Pennistone had insisted his own military employments were unusual. No doubt the Headquarters in which I now found myself represented the sort of world in which he habitually functioned.

“Splendid,” he said. “Of course we agreed to meet as an exercise of the will. I’m ashamed to say I’d forgotten until now. Your own moral determination does you credit. I congratulate you. Or is it just one of those eternal recurrences of Nietzsche, which one gets so used to? Have you come to work here?”

I explained the reason for my presence in the building,

“So you may be joining the Free Frogs.”

“And you?”

“I look after the Poles.”

“Do they have a place like this too?”

“Oh, no. The Poles are dealt with as a Power. They have an ambassador, a military attaché, all that. The point about France is that we still recognise the Vichy Government. The other Allied Governments are those in exile over here in London. That is why the Free French have their own special mission.”

“You’ve just come to see them?”

“To discuss some odds and ends of Polish affairs that overlap with Free French matters.”

We talked for a while. The other captain returned.

“Finn wants to see you,” he said.

I followed him along the passage into a room where an officer was sitting behind a desk covered with papers. The I. Corps captain announced my name and withdrew, I had left my cap in the other office, so, on entering, could not salute, but, with the formality that prevailed in the area where I was serving, came to attention. The major behind the desk seemed surprised at this. He rose very slowly from his desk, and, keeping his eye on me all the time, came round to the front and shook hands. He was small, cleanshaved, almost square in shape, with immensely broad shoulders, large head, ivory-coloured face, huge nose. His grey eyes were set deep back in their sockets. He looked like an enormous bird, an ornithological specimen very different from Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, kindly but at the same time immensely more powerful. I judged him in his middle fifties. He wore an old leather-buttoned service-dress tunic, with a V.C., Légion d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre avec palmes, and a couple of other foreign decorations I could not identify.

“Sit down, Jenkins,” he said.

He spoke quietly, almost whispered. I sat down. He began to fumble among his papers.

“I had a note from your Divisional Commander,” he said. “Where is it? Draw that chair a bit nearer. I’m rather deaf in this ear. How is General Liddament?”

“Very well, sir.”

“Knocking the Division into shape?”

“That’s it, sir.”

“Territorial Division, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’ll get a Corps soon.”

“You think so, sir?”

Major Finn nodded He seemed a little embarrassed about something. Although he gave out an extraordinary sense of his own physical strength and endurance, there was also something mild, gentle, almost undecided, about his manner.

“You know why you’ve been sent here?” he asked.

“It was explained, sir.”

He lowered his eyes to what I now saw was my translation. He began to read it to himself, his lips moving faintly. After a line or two of doing this, it became clear to We what the answer was going to be. The only question that remained was how long the agony would be drawn out. Major Finn read the whole of my version through to himself: then, rather nobly, read it through again. This was either to give dramatic effect, or to rouse himself t0 the required state of tension for making an unwelcome announcement. Those, at least, were the reasons that occurred to me at the time, because he must almost certainly have gone through the piece when the captain had first brought it to him. I appreciated the gesture, which indicated he was doing the best he could for me, including not sparing himself. When he came to the end for the second time, he looked across the desk, and, shaking his head, sighed and smiled.

“Well…” he said.

I was silent.

“Won’t do, I’m afraid.”

“No, sir?”

“Not as your written French stands.”

He took up a pencil and tapped it on the desk.

“We’d have liked to have you…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Masham agrees.”

“Masham” I took to be the I. Corps captain.

“But this translation …”

He spoke for a second as if I might have intended a deliberate insult to himself and his uniform by the botch I had made of it, but that he was prepared magnanimously to overlook that. Then, as if regretting what might have appeared momentary unkindness, in spite of my behaviour, he rose and shook hands again, gazing into the middle distance of the room. The vision to be seen there was certainly one of total failure.

“… not sufficiently accurate.”

“No, sir.”

“You understand me?”

“Of course, sir.”

“A pity.”

We stared at each other.

“Otherwise I think you would have done us well.”

Major Finn paused. He appeared to consider this hypothesis for a long time. There did not seem much more to be said. I hoped the interview would end as quickly as possible.

“Perfectly suitable …” he repeated.

His voice was far away now. There was another long pause. Then a thought struck him. His face lighted up.

“Perhaps it’s only written French you’re shaky in.”

He wrinkled his broad, ivory-coloured forehead.

“Now let us postulate the 9th Regiment of Colonial Infantry are on the point of mutiny,” he said. “They may be prepared to abandon Vichy and come over to the Allies. How would you harangue them?”

“In French, sir?”

“Yes, in French.”

He spoke eagerly, as if he expected something enjoyably dramatic.

“I’m afraid I should have to fall back on English, sir.”

His face fell again.

“I feared that,” he said.

Failure was certainly total. I had been given a second chance, had equally bogged it. Major Finn stroked the enormous bumpy contours of his nose.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a note of your name.”

“Yes, sir?”

“There may be certain changes taking place in the near future. Not here, elsewhere. But don’t count on it. That’s best I can say. I don’t question anything General Liddament suggests. It’s just the language.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He smiled.

“You’re on leave, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wouldn’t mind some leave myself/’

“No, sir?”

“And my respects to General Liddament.”

“I’ll convey them, sir.”

“A great man.”

I made a suitable face and left the room, disappointed and furious with myself. The fact that such an eventuality was in some degree to be expected made things no better. To have anyone in the army — let alone a general — show interest in your individual career is a rare enough experience. To fall at the language hurdle — just the field in which someone like myself, anyway in the eyes of General Liddament, might be expected to show reasonable proficiency — seemed to let down the General too. There would be little hope of his soliciting further candidatures in my interest. Why should he? I wondered why I had never taken the trouble in the past to learn French properly; as a boy, for instance, staying with the Leroys at La Grenadière, or in the course of innumerable other opportunities. At the same time, I was aware that a liaison officer at battalion level would be required to show considerable fluency. Perhaps it was just Fate. As for having a note made of my name, that was to be regarded as a polite formula on the part of Major Finn — an unusually likeable man — an echo of civilian courtesies from someone who took a pride in possessing good manners as well as a V.C.; a gesture to be totally disregarded for all practical purposes.

I returned to the captain’s room. Pennistone was still there. He was about to leave, standing up, wearing his cap.

“Well then,” he was saying. “On the first of next month Szymanski ceases to serve under the Free French authority, and comes under the command of the Polish Forces in Great Britain. That’s settled at last.”

Masham, the I. Corps captain, turned to me. I explained deal was off. He knew, of course, already.

“Sorry,” he said. “Thanks for looking in. I hear you and David know each other.”

After taking leave of him, Pennistone and I went out together into the street. He asked what had happened. I outlined the interview with Major Finn. Pennistone listened with attention.;

“Finn seems to have been well disposed towards you,” he said.

“I liked him — what’s his story?”

“Some fantastic episode in the first war, when he got his V.C. After coming out of the army, he decided to go into the cosmetics business — scent, face powder, things like that, the last trade you’d connect him with. He talks very accurate French with the most outlandish accent you ever heard. He’s been a great success with the Free French — liked by de Gaulle, which is not everyone’s luck.”

“Surprising he’s not got higher rank.”

“Finn could have become a colonel half-a-dozen times over since rejoining the army,” said Pennistone. “He always says he prefers not to have too much responsibility. He has his V.C., which always entails respect — and which he loves talking about. However, I think he may be tempted at last to accept higher rank.”

“To what?”

“Very much in the air at the moment. All I can say is, you may be more likely to hear from him than you think.”

“Does he make money at his cosmetics?”

“Enough to keep a wife and daughter hidden away somewhere.”

“Why are they hidden away?”

“I don’t know,” said Pennistone, laughing. “They just are. There are all kinds of things about Finn that are not explained. Keeping them hidden away is part of the Finn system. When I knew him in Paris, I soon found he had a secretive side.”

“You knew him before the war?”

“I came across him, oddly enough, when I was in textiles, working over there.”

‘Textiles are your job?”

“I got out in the end.”

“Into what?”

Pennistone laughed again, as if that were an absurd question to ask.

“Oh, nothing much really,” he said. “I travel about a lot — or used to before the war. I think I told you, when we last met, that I’m trying to write something about Descartes.”

All this suggested — as it turned out rightly — that Pennistone, as well as Finn, had his secretive side. When I came to know him better, I found what mattered to Pennistone was what went on in his head. He could rarely tell you what he had done in the past, or proposed to do in the future, beyond giving a bare statement of places he had visited or wanted to visit, books he had read or wanted to read. On the other hand, he was able to describe pretty lucidly what he had thought — philosophically speaking — at any given period of his life. While other people lived for money, power, women, the arts, domesticity, Pennistone liked merely thinking about things, arranging his mind. Nothing else ever seemed to matter to him. It was the aim Stringham had announced now as his own, though Pennistone was a very different sort of person from Stringham, and better equipped for perfecting the process. I only found out these things about him at a later stage.

“Give me the essential details regarding yourself,” Pennistone said. “Unit, army number, that sort of thing — just in case anything should crop up where I myself might be of use.

I wrote it all down. We parted company, agreeing that Nietzschean Eternal Recurrences must bring us together soon again.

Even by the time I reached the Café Royal that evening, I was still feeling humiliated by the failure of the Finn interview. The afternoon had been devoted to odd jobs, on the whole tedious. The tables and banquettes of the large tasteless room looked unfamiliar occupied by figures in uniform. There was no one there I had ever seen before. I sat down and waited. Lovell did not arrive until nearly half-past seven. He wore captain’s pips. It was hard not to labour under a sense of being left behind in the military race. I offered congratulations.

“You don’t get into the really big money until you’re a major,” he said, “That should be one’s aim.”

“Vaulting ambition.”

“Insatiable.”

“Where do you function?*

“Headquarters of Combined Operations,” he said, “that curious toy fort halfway down Whitehall. It’s a great place for Royal Marines. A bit of luck your being on leave, Nick. One or two things I want to talk about First of all, will you agree to be executor of my will?”

“Of course.”

“Perfectly simple. Whatever there is — which isn’t much, I can assure you — goes to Priscilla, then to Caroline.”

“That doesn’t sound too complicated.”

“One never knows what may happen to one.”

“No, indeed.”

The remark echoed Sergeant Harmer’s views. There was a pause. I had the sudden sense that Lovell was going to broach some subject I should not like. This apprehension turned out to be correct,

“Another small matter,” he said.

“Yes?”

“It would interest me to hear more of this fellow Stevens. You seem to be mainly responsible for bringing him into our lives, Nick.”

“If you mean someone called Odo Stevens, he and I were on a course together at Aldershot about a year ago. I didn’t know he was in our lives. He isn’t in mine. I haven’t set eyes on him since then.”

I had scarcely thought of Stevens since he had been expelled from the course. Now the picture of him came back forcibly. Lovell’s tone was not reassuring. It was possible to guess something of what might be happening.

“You introduced him into the family,” said Lovell.

He spoke calmly, not at all accusingly, but I recognised in his eye the intention to stage a dramatic announcement.

“One weekend leave from Aldershot Stevens gave me a lift in his very brokendown car as far as Frederica’s. Then he took me back on Sunday night. Isobel was staying there. It was just before she had her baby. In fact, the birth started that night. Stevens got R.T.U.-ed soon after we got back on the course. I haven’t seen or heard of him since.”

“You haven’t?”

“Not a word.”

“Priscilla was at Frederica’s then.”

“I remember.”

“She met Stevens.”

“She must have done.”

“She’s been with him lately up in a hotel in Scotland,” said Lovell, “living more or less openly, so there’s no point in not mentioning it.”

There was nothing to be said to that. Stevens had certainly struck up some sort of an acquaintance with Priscilla on that occasion at Frederica’s. I could recall more. Some question of getting a piece of jewellery mended for her had arisen. Such additional consequences as Lovell outlined were scarcely to be foreseen when I took Stevens to the house. Nevertheless, it was an unfortunate introduction. However, this merely confirmed stories going round. No doubt Stevens, by now, was a figure with some sort of war career behind him. That could happen in the matter of a few weeks. That Stevens might be the “commando,” or whatever shape Priscilla’s alleged fancy-man took, had never suggested itself to me. Lovell lit a cigarette. He puffed out a cloud of smoke. His evident inclination to adopt a stylised approach — telling the story as we might have tried to work it out together in a film script years before — was some alleviation of immediate embarrassments caused by the disclosure. The dramatic manner he had assumed accorded with his own conception of how life should be lived. I was grateful for it. By this means things were made easier.

“When did all this start?”

“Pretty soon after they first met.”

“I see.”

“I was down at that godforsaken place on the East Coast. There was nowhere near for her to live. It wasn’t my fault we weren’t together.”

“Is Stevens stationed in Scotland?”

“So far as I know. He did rather well somewhere — was if the Lofoten raid? That sort of thing. He’s a hero on top of everything else. I suppose if I were to do something where I could get killed, instead of composing lists of signal equipment and suchlike, I might make a more interesting husband.”

“I don’t think so for a moment.”

In giving this answer, I spoke a decided opinion. To assume such a thing was a typical instance of Lovell’s taste, mentioned earlier, for the obvious. It was a supposition bound to lead to a whole host of erroneous conclusions — that was how the conjecture struck me — regarding his own, or anyone else’s, married life.

“You may be right,” he said.

He spoke as if rather relieved.

“Look at it the other way. Think of all the heroes who had trouble with their wives.”

“Who?”

“Agamemnon, for instance.”

“Well, that caused enough dislocation,” said Lovell. “What’s Stevens like, apart from his heroism?.”

“In appearance?”

“Everything about him.”

“Youngish, comes from Birmingham, traveller in costume jewellery, spot of journalism, good at languages, short, thickset, very fair hair, easy to get on with, keen on the girls.”

“Sounds not unlike me,” said Lovell, “except that up to date I’ve never travelled in costume jewellery — and I still rather pride myself on my figure.”

“There is a touch of you about him, Chips. I thought so at Aldershot.”

“You flatter me. Anyway, he seems more of a success than I am with my own wife. If he is keen on the girls, I suppose making for Priscilla would be a matter of routine?”

“So I should imagine.”

“You liked him?”

“We got on pretty well.”

“Why was he Returned-to-Unit?”

“For cutting a lecture.”

Lovell seemed all at once to lose interest in Stevens and his personality. His manner changed. There could be no doubt he was very upset.

“So far as I can see there was nothing particularly wrong with our marriage,” he said. “If I hadn’t been sent to that God-awful spot, it would have gone on all right. At least that’s how things appeared to me. I don’t particularly want a divorce even now.”

“Is there any question of a divorce?”

“It isn’t going to be much fun living with a woman who’s in love with someone else.”

“Lots of people do it, and vice versa.”

“At best, it’s never going to be the same.”

“Nothing ever remains the same. Marriage or anything else.”

“I thought your theory was that everything did always remain the same?”

“Everything alters, yet does remain the same. It might even improve matters.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Not really.”

“Neither do I,” said Lovell, “though I see what you mean. That’s if she’s prepared to come back and live with me. I’m not even sure of that. I think she wants to marry Stevens.”

“She must be mad.”

“Mad she may be, but that’s the way she’s talking.”

“Where’s Caroline?”

“My parents are looking after her.”

“And Priscilla herself?”

“Staying with Molly Jeavons — though I only found out that by chance yesterday. She’s been moving about among various relations, is naturally at times rather vague about her whereabouts, so far as keeping me informed is concerned.”

“You’ve dished all this up with her?”

“On my last leave — making it a charming affair.”

“But lately?”

“Since then, we’ve been out of touch more than once. We are at this moment, until I found, quite by chance, she was at the Jeavonses’. I’m hoping to see her to-night. That’s why I can’t dine with you.”

“You and Priscilla are dining together?”

“Not exactly. You remember Bijou Ardglass, that gorgeous mannequin, one-time girl-friend of Prince Theodoric? I ran into her yesterday on my way to Combined Ops. She’s driving for the Belgians or Poles, one of the Allied contingents — an odd female organisation run by Lady McReith, whom Bijou was full of stories about. Bijou asked me to a small party she is giving for her fortieth birthday, about half-a-dozen old friends at the Madrid.”

“Bijou Ardglass’s fortieth birthday.”

“Makes you think.”

“I only knew her by sight, but even so — and Priscilla will be there?”

“Bijou found her at Aunt Molly’s. Of course Priscilla told Bijou I was on the East Coast. I was when we last exchanged letters. I explained to Bijou I’d just been posted to London at short notice — which was quite true — and hadn’t managed to get together with Priscilla yet.”

“You haven’t called up Priscilla at the Jeavonses’?”

“I thought it would be best if we met at Bijou’s party — without Priscilla knowing I was going to be there. I have a reason for that. The Madrid was the place we celebrated our engagement. The Madrid might also be the place where we straightened things out.”

That was just like Lovell. Everything had to be staged. Perhaps he was right, and everything does have to be staged. That is a system that can at least be argued as the best. At any rate, people must run their lives on their own terms.

“I mean it’s worth making an effort to patch things up,” he said, “don’t you think, Nick?”

He asked the question as if he had no idea what the answer would be, possibly even expecting a negative rather than affirmative one.

“Yes, of course — every possible effort.”

“You can imagine what all this is like going on in one’s head, round and round for ever, while you’re trying to sort out a lot of bloody stuff about radios and landing-craft. For instance, if she goes off with Stevens, think of all the negotiations about Caroline, all that kind of thing.”

“Chips — Hugh Moreland has appeared at the door on the other side of the room. Is there anything else you want to say that’s urgent?”

“Nothing. I’ve got it all off my chest now. That was what I needed. You understand?”

“Of course.”

“The point is, you agree it’s worth taking trouble to get on an even keel again?”

“Can’t say it too strongly.”

Lovell nodded several times.

“And you’ll be my executor?”

“Honoured.”

“I’ll write to the solicitors then. Marvellous to have got that fixed. Hallo, Hugh, how are you? Ages since we met.”

Dressed in his familiar old blue suit, looking more than ever as if he made a practice of sleeping in it, dark grey shirt and crimson tie, Moreland, hatless, seemed an improbable survival from pre-war life. He was flushed and breathing rather hard. This gave the impression of poorish health. His face, his whole person, was thinner. The flush increased when he recognised Lovell, who must at once have recalled thoughts of Priscilla. Even after this redness had died down, a certain discoloration of the skin remained, increasing the suggestion that Moreland was not well. There was a moment of awkwardness, in spite of Lovell’s immediate display of satisfaction that they should have met again. This was chiefly because Moreland seemed unwilling to commit himself by sitting at our table; an old habit of his, one of those characteristic postponements of action for which he was always laughing at himself, like his constitutional inability in all circumstances to decide from a menu what he wanted to eat.

“I shall be taken for a spy if I sit with you both,” he said. “Somehow I never expected you’d really be wearing uniform, Nick, even though I knew you were in the army. I must tell you of rather a menacing thing that happened the other day. Norman Chandler appeared on my doorstep to hear the latest musical gossip. He’s also become an officer, and we went off to get some lunch at Foppa’s, where neither of us had been since the beginning of the war. The downstairs room was shut, because the window had been broken by a bomb, so we went upstairs, where the club used to be. There we found a couple of seedy-looking characters who said the restaurant was closed. We asked where Foppa was to be found. They said they didn’t know. They weren’t at all friendly. Positively disagreeable. Then I suddenly grasped they thought we were after Foppa for being an Italian — wanted to intern him or something. An army type and a member of the Special Branch. It was obvious as soon as one thought of it.”

“The Special Branch must have changed a lot if they now dress like you, Hugh.”

“Not more than army officers, if they now look like Norman.”

“Anyway, take a seat,” said Lovell. “What are you going to drink? How’s your war been going, Hugh? Not drearier than mine, I feel sure, if you’ll excuse the self-pity.”

Moreland laughed, now more at ease after telling the story about Chandler and himself; Foppa’s restaurant, even if closed, providing a kind of frame to unite the three of us.

“I seem to have neutralised the death-wish for the moment,” he said. “Raids are a great help in that. I was also momentarily cheered just now by finding the man with the peg-leg and patch over one eye still going. He was behind the London Pavilion this evening, playing ‘Softly Awakes My Heart’. Rather an individual version. One of the worst features of the war is the dearth of itinerant musicians, indeed of vagrants generally. For example, I haven’t seen the cantatrice on crutches for years. As I seem equally unfitted for warlike duties, I’d thought of filling the gap and becoming a street musician myself. Unfortunately, I’m such a poor executant.”

“There’s a former music critic in our Public Relations branch,” said Lovell. “He says the great thing for musicians now is the R.A.F. band.”

“Doubt if they’d take me,” said Moreland, “though the idea of massed orchestras of drum and fife soaring across the sky is attractive. Which is your P.R. man’s paper?”

Lovell mentioned the name of the critic, who turned out to be an admirer of Moreland’s work. The two of them began to discuss musical matters, of which Lovell possessed a smattering, anyway as far as personalities were concerned, from days of helping to write a column. No one could have guessed from Lovell’s manner that inwardly he was in a state of great disturbance. On the contrary, it was Moreland who, after a preliminary burst of talkativeness, reverted to an earlier uneasiness of manner. Something was on his mind. He kept shifting about in his seat, looking towards the door of the restaurant, as if expecting an arrival that might not be exactly welcome. This apparent nervousness brought to mind the unaccustomed tone of his postcard. It looked as if something had happened, which he lacked the will to explain.

“Are you dining with us?” he suddenly asked Lovell.

There was no reason why that enquiry should not be made. The tone was perfectly friendly. All the same, a touch of abruptness added to this sense of apprehension.

“Chips is going to the Madrid — I didn’t realise places like that still functioned.”

“Not many of them do,” said Lovell. “In any case I’m never asked to them. I’ve no doubt it will be a very sober affair compared with the old days. The only thing to be said is that Max Pilgrim is doing a revival of some of his old songs — ’Tess of Le Touquet,’ ‘Heather, Heather, she’s under the weather,’ all those.”

“Max is our lodger now,” said Moreland unexpectedly. “He may be looking in here later after his act. He’s been with E.N.S.A. entertaining the forces — by his own account enjoying a spot of entertainment himself — and has been released to do this brief season at the Madrid as a kind of rest.”

I was curious to know who was included when Moreland spoke of “our” lodger. A question on this subject might be more tactfully put after Lovell’s withdrawal. It sounded as if someone had taken Matilda’s place. Lovell spoke a word or two about the party ahead of him. He seemed unwilling to leave us.

“I’ve never been to the Madrid as a client,” said Moreland. “I once went there years ago, so to speak to the stage door, to collect Max after his act, because we were having supper together. I remember his talking about your friend Bijou Ardglass then. Wasn’t she mistress of some Balkan royalty?”

“Theodoric,” said Lovell, “but they can’t have met for years. That Scandinavian princess he married keeps Theodoric very much in order. They were both lucky to get away when they did. He’s always been very pro-British and would have been in a bad way had the Germans got him when they overran the country. There’s a small contingent of his own people over here now. They were training in France when the war came, and crossed at the time of Dunkirk. I say, I hope there’ll be something to drink to-night. The wine outlook becomes increasingly desperate since France went. One didn’t expect to have to fight a war on an occasional half-pint of bitter, and lucky if you find that. Well, it’s been nice seeing you both. I’ll keep in touch, Nick, about those various points.”

We said good-bye to him. Lovell left for the Madrid. Moreland showed signs of relief that he was no longer with us. At first I thought this was still, as it were, on account of Priscilla; or, like some people — amongst whom several of his own relations were included — he simply found Lovell’s company tedious. As it turned out, both possibilities were incorrect. Quite another matter was on Moreland’s mind. This was only revealed when I suggested it was time to order dinner. Moreland hesitated,

“Do you mind if we wait a minute or two longer?” he said. “Audrey thought she’d probably get away in time to join us for some food.”

“Audrey who?”

“Audrey Maclintick — you know her.” He spoke sharply, as if the question had been a silly one to ask.

“Maclintick’s wife — the one who went off with the violinist?”

“Yes — Maclintick’s widow, rather. I always assume everyone is familiar with the rough outlines of my own life, such as they are. I suppose, as a gallant soldier, you live rather out of the world of rank and fashion. Audrey and I are running steady now.”

“Under the same roof?”

“In my old flat. I found I could get back there, owing to the blitz and it being left empty, so took the opportunity to move in again.”

“And Max Pilgrim is your lodger?”

“Has been for some months.”

Moreland had been embarrassed by having to explain so specifically that he was now living with Mrs. Maclintick, but seemed glad this fact was made plain. There had been no avoiding a pointblank enquiry about the situation; nor was all surprise possible to conceal. He must certainly have been conscious that, to any friend not already aware he and Mrs. Maclintick had begun to see each other frequently, the news must come as an incalculable reversal of former circumstances and feelings.

“Life became rather impossible after Matilda left me,” he said. He spoke almost apologetically, at the same time seemed to find relief in expressing how the present situation had come about. The statement that life for him had become “impossible” after Matilda’s departure was easy to believe. Without Matilda, the organisation of Moreland’s day was hard to imagine. Formerly she had arranged almost all the routine of those affairs not immediately dictated by his profession. In that respect, unless she had greatly changed, Mrs. Maclintick could hardly be proving an adequate substitute. On the one or two occasions when, in the past, I had myself encountered Mrs. Maclintick, she had appeared to me, without qualification, as one of the least sympathetic of women. So far as that went, in those days she had been in the habit of showing towards Moreland himself sentiments not much short of active dislike. He had been no better disposed to her, though, as an old friend of Maclintick’s, always doing his best to keep the peace between them as husband and wife. When she had left Maclintick for Carolo, Moreland’s sympathies were certainly on Maclintick’s side. In short, this was another of war’s violent readjustments; possibly to be revealed under close investigation as more logical than might appear at first sight. Indeed, as Moreland began to expand the story, as so often happens, the unthinkable took on the authoritative tone of something that had to be.

“After Audrey bolted with Carolo, they kept company till the beginning of the war — surprising in a way, knowing them both, it went on so long. Then he left her for a girl in a repertory company. Audrey remained on her 0wn. She was working in a canteen when we ran across each other — still is. She’s coming on from there to-night.”

“I never heard a word about you and her.”

“We don’t get on too badly,” said Moreland. “I haven’t been specially well lately. That bloody lung. Audrey’s been very good about looking after me.”

He still seemed to feel further explanation, or excuse, was required; at the same time he was equally anxious not to appear dissatisfied with the new alignment.

“Maclintick doing himself in shook me up horribly,” he said. “Of course, there can be no doubt Audrey was partly to blame for that, leaving him flat as she did. All the same, she was fond of Maclintick in her way. She often talks of him. You know you get to a stage, especially in wartime, when it’s a relief to hear familiar things talked about, whatever they are, and whoever’s saying them. You don’t care what line the conversation takes apart from that. For instance, Maclintick’s unreadable book on musical theory he was writing. It was never finished by him, much less published. His last night alive, as a final gesture against the world, Maclintick tore the manuscript into small pieces and stopped up the lavatory with it. That was just before he turned the gas on. You’d be surprised how much Audrey knows about what Maclintick said in that book — on the technical side, I mean, which she’s no training in or taste for. In an odd way, I like knowing about all that. It’s almost as if Maclintick’s still about — though if he were, of course, I shouldn’t be living with Audrey. Here she is, anyway.”

Mrs. Maclintick was moving between the tables, making in our direction. She wore a three-quarter length coat over trousers, a rather notably inelegant form of female dress popular at that moment in circumstances where no formality was required. I remembered that Gypsy Jones — La Passionaria of Hendon Central, as Moreland himself had called her — had heralded in her own person the advent of this mode, when Widmerpool and I had seen her addressing a Communist anti-war meeting from a soapbox at a street corner. The clothes increased Mrs. Maclintick’s own air of being a gipsy, one in fact, rather than just in name. Moreland’s nostalgia for vagrancy was recalled, too, by her appearance, which immediately suggested telling fortunes if her palm was crossed with silver, selling clothes-pegs, or engaging in any other traditional Romany activity. By way of contrast with this physical exterior, she entirely lacked any of the ingratiating manner commonly associated with the gipsy’s role. Small, wiry, aggressive, she looked as ready as ever for a row, her bright black eyes and unsmiling countenance confronting a world from which perpetual hostility was not merely potential, but presumptive. Attack, she made clear, would be met with counter-attack. However, in spite of this embattled appearance, discouraging to anyone who had ever witnessed her having a row with Maclintick, she seemed disposed at this particular moment to make herself agreeable; more agreeable, at any rate, than on earlier occasions when we had run across each other.

“Moreland told me you would be here,” she said. “We don’t get out to this sort of place much nowadays — can’t afford it — but when we do we’re glad to meet friends.”

She spoke as if I had a trifle blatantly imposed myself on a party of their own, rather than herself converged on a meeting specially arranged between Moreland and myself. At the same time her tone was not antagonistic; indeed, by her pre-war standards, in as much as I knew them, it was positively amiable. It occurred to me she perhaps saw her association with Moreland as a kind of revenge on Maclintick, who had so greatly valued him as a friend. Now, Maclintick was underground and Moreland belonged to her. Moreland himself, whose earlier state of nerves had certainly been provoked by the prospect of having to present himself and Mrs, Maclintick as a ménage, now looked relieved, the immediate impact manoeuvred without disaster. Characteristically, he began to embark on one of those dissertations about life in which he was habitually inclined to indulge after some awkwardness had arisen. It had been just the same when he used to feel with Matilda that the ice was thin for conversational skating and would deliberately switch from the particular to the general.

“Since war prevents any serious work,” he said, “I have been trying to think out a few things. Make my lymphatic brain function a little. All part of my retreat from perfectionism. Besides, one really must hold one or two firm opinions on matters before one’s forty — a doom about to descend before any of us know where we are. I find war clears the mind in a few respects. At least that can be said for it.”

I was reminded how Stringham, too, had remarked that he was thinking things out, though it was hard to decide whether “perfectionism” played much part in Stringham’s problems. Perhaps it did. That was one explanation. In Moreland’s case, there could be no doubt Mrs. Maclintick herself was an element in this retreat. In her case, indeed, so far as Moreland was concerned, withdrawal from perfectionism had been so unphased as to constitute an operation reasonably to be designated a rout. Perhaps Mrs. Maclintick herself, even if the awareness remained undefined in her mind, felt she must be regarded as implicit in this advertised new approach — therefore some sort of protest should be made — because, although she spoke without savagery, her next words were undoubtedly a call to order.

“The war doesn’t seem to clear your mind quite enough, Moreland,” she said. “I only wish it stopped you dreaming a bit. Guess where that lost ration card of yours turned up, after I’d looked for it up hill and down dale. In the toilet. Better than nowhere, I suppose. Saved me from standing in a queue at the Town Hall for a couple of hours to get you another one — and when was I going to find time for that, I wonder.”

She might have been addressing a child. Since she herself had never given birth — had, I remembered, expressed active objection to being burdened with offspring — Moreland may to some extent have occupied a child’s role in her eyes; possibly even in her needs, something she had sought in Maclintick and never found. Moreland, so far as it went, seemed to accept this status, receiving the complaint with a laugh, though no denial of its justice.

“I must have dropped it there before fire-watching,” he said. “How bored one gets on those nights. It’s almost worse if there isn’t a raid. I began to plan a work, last time, called The Fire-watcher’s March, drums, you know, perhaps triangle and oboe. I was feeling particularly fed up that night, not just displeased with the war, or certain social or political conditions from which one suffers, but tired of the whole thing. That is one of the conceptions most difficult for stupid people to grasp. They always suppose some ponderable alteration will make the human condition more bearable. The only hope of survival is the realisation that no such thing could possibly happen.”

“Never mind what goes through your head when you’re fire-watching, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You order some dinner. We don’t want to starve to death while you hold forth. It won’t be much when it comes, if I’m any prophet.”

These words were another reminder of going out with Moreland and Matilda, though Matilda’s remonstrance would have been less downright. The plea for food was reasonable enough. We got hold of a waiter. There was the usual business of Moreland being unable to decide, even from the limited choice available, what he wanted to eat. In due course dinner arrived. Moreland, now back on his accustomed form, discoursed about his work and people we knew. Mrs. Maclintick, grumbling about domestic difficulties, showed herself in general amenable. The evening was turning out a success. One change, however, was to be noticed in Moreland’s talk. When he dwelt on the immediate past, it was as if all that had become very distant, no longer the matter of a year or two before. For him, it was clear, a veil, a thick curtain, had fallen between “now” and “before the war.” He would suddenly become quite worked up about people we had known, parties we had been to, subjects for amusement we had experienced together, laughing at moments so violently that tears ran down his cheeks. One felt he was fairly near to other, deeper emotions, that the strength of his feelings was due to something in addition to a taste for mulling over moments in retrospect enjoyable or grotesque.

“You must admit funny things did happen in the old days,” he said. “Maclintick’s story about Dr. Trelawney and the red-haired succubus that could only talk Hebrew.”

“Oh, don’t go on about the old days so,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You make me feel a hundred. Try and live in the present for a change. For instance, it might interest you to know that a one-time girl friend of yours is about to sit down at a table over there.”

We looked in the direction she had indicated by jerking her head. It was perfectly true. Priscilla Lovell and an officer in battle-dress were being shown to a table not far from our own. The officer was Odo Stevens. For a moment they were occupied with a waiter, so that a brief suspension of time was offered to consider how best to deal with this encounter, superlatively embarrassing, certainly soon unavoidable. At first it struck me as a piece of quite undeserved, almost incredible ill chance that they should turn up like this; but, on consideration, especially in the light of what Lovell himself had told me, there was nothing specially odd about it. Probably Stevens was on leave. This was an obvious enough place to dine, though certainly not one to choose if you wanted to be discreet.

“Adulterers are always asking the courts for discretion,” Peter Templer used to say, “when, as a rule, discretion is the last thing they’ve been generous with themselves.”

If Priscilla thought her husband still stationed on the East Coast, she would of course not expect to meet him here. On the face of it, there was no reason why she should not dine with Stevens, if he happened to be passing through London. A second’s thought showed that what seemed a piece of preposterous exhibitionism only presented that appearance on account of special knowledge acquired from Lovell. All the same, if Priscilla were dining here, that meant she had cut the Bijou Ardglass party. So unpredictably do human beings behave, she might even plan to take Stevens on there later.

“Is that her husband with her?” asked Mrs. Maclintick. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him. I suppose you look on him as the man who cut you out, Moreland?”

I was surprised she knew about Moreland’s former entanglement with Priscilla. No doubt Maclintick had spoken of it in the past. As Moreland himself had remarked, she and Maclintick must, at least some of the time, have enjoyed a closer, more amicable existence together than their acquaintances inclined to suppose. The Maclinticks could even have met Moreland and Priscilla at some musical event. Anyway, Mrs. Maclintick had turned out to know Priscilla by sight, had evidently gathered scraps of her story, at least so far as Moreland was concerned. That was all. She could not also be aware of other implications disturbing to myself. So far as Mrs. Maclintick’s knowledge went, therefore, Priscilla’s presence might be regarded as merely personally displeasing, in her capacity as a former love of Moreland’s. However, so developed was Mrs. Maclintick’s taste for malice, like everyone of her kind, that she seemed to know instinctively something inimical to myself, too, was in the air. Moreland, on the other hand, having talked with Lovell only a short time before, could not fail to suspect trouble of one sort or another was on foot. Never very good at concealing his feelings, he went red again. This change of colour was no doubt chiefly caused by Mrs. Maclintick’s not too delicate reference to himself, but probably he guessed something of my own sentiments as well.

“The girl’s Nick’s sister-in-law,” he said. “You seem to have forgotten that. I don’t know who the army type is.”

“Oh, yes, she’s your sister-in-law, isn’t she,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Now I remember. Not bad looking. Got herself up for the occasion too, hasn’t she?”

Mrs. Maclintick did not elaborate why she thought Priscilla’s clothes deserved this comment, though they were certainly less informal than her own outfit. Priscilla’s appearance, at its most striking, made her not far short of a “beauty.” She looked striking enough now, though not in the best of humours. Her fair hair was longer than at Frederica’s, her face thinner. There was about her that taut, at the same time supple air, the yielding movement of body women sometimes display when conducting a love affair, like the physical pose of an athlete observed between contests. She had a high colour. Stevens, apparently in the best of spirits, was talking noisily. No escape was offered, even though they were the last people I wanted to run into at that moment. It seemed wise to prepare the ground with some explanation of why these two might reasonably be out together. This was perhaps instinctive, rather than logical, because Lovell himself had spoken as if the whole world knew about the affair.

“The man’s called Odo Stevens. I was on a course with him.”

“Oh, you know him, do you?” said Mrs. Maclintick. “He looks a bit…”

She did not finish the sentence. Although her comment was never revealed, one had the impression she grasped pretty well the essential aspects of Odo Stevens, even if only the superficial ones. No great psychological powers were required to make a reasonably accurate guess at these, anyway for immediate practical purposes, whatever might be found deeper down. At that moment Stevens caught sight of us. He waved. Then, at once, he spoke to Priscilla, who herself looked in our direction. She too waved, at the same time began to say something to Stevens. Whatever that was, he disregarded it. Jumping up, he came towards our table. The only hope now was that Mrs. Maclintick’s uncompromising manner might save the situation by causing Stevens to feel himself unwelcome; if not drive him off entirely, at least discourage a long conversation. She could easily make matters more bizarre than embarrassing. I felt suddenly grateful for her presence. However, as things fell out, Mrs. Maclintick was not placed in the position of exercising an active role. This was on account of Stevens himself. I had completely underestimated the change that had taken place in him. Never lacking in self-confidence, at Aldershot he had at the same time been undecided how best to present himself; how, so to speak, to maximum value from his own personality. He held various cards in his hand — as I had tried to explain to Lovell — most of them good ones. At different times he would vary the line he took: rough diamond: ambitious young provincial salesman: journalist on the make: soldier of fortune: professional womaniser. Those were just a few of them, all played with a reasonable lightness of touch. Stevens was certainly aware, too, of possibility to charm by sheer lack of any too exact a definition of personality or background. Some of this vagueness of outline may have had a fascination for Priscilla. Now, however, he had enormously added to the effectiveness of his own social attack, immediately giving the impression, as he approached our table, that he was prepared to take on this, or any other party of people, off his own bat. He himself was going to do the entertaining. No particular co-operation from anyone else was required. He had put up an additional pip since we last met, but, although still only a lieutenant, he wore the mauve and white ribbon of an M.C., something of a rarity in acquisition at this comparatively early stage of the war.

“Well, old cock,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. This is a bit of luck. What are you up to? On leave, or stationed in London?”

Before I could answer, Priscilla herself came up to the table. She had followed Stevens almost at once. There was not much else for her to do. Even if she might have preferred to postpone a meeting, in due course inevitable, or, like myself, hoped to reduce contacts to no more than a nod or brief word at the end of the evening, Stevens had given her no chance to impede his own renewal of acquaintance. His principle was to work on impulse. Nothing could have prevented him from making the move he had. Now that had taken place, she no doubt judged the best tactical course was to ally herself with this explosive greeting; as good a way of handling the situation as any other, if it had to be handled at all. Besides, Priscilla may have felt that, by joining us, she could keep an eye on Stevens; modify, if necessary, whatever he might say.

“Yes, why are you here, Nick?” she asked, speaking challengingly, as if I, rather than her, found myself in doubtful company. “I thought you were miles away across the sea. And Hugh — how marvellous to see you again after so long. I was listening to something of yours in a B.B.C. programme last week.”

She was perfectly self-possessed. If aware of rumours afloat about herself and Stevens — of which she could hardly be ignorant, had she bothered to give a moment’s thought to the matter — Priscilla was perfectly prepared to brazen these out. The two of them could not know, of course, how narrowly they had missed Lovell himself. Perhaps, again, neither cared. Lovell’s taste for drama would certainly have been glutted, had they arrived an hour or so earlier. In the group we now formed, Moreland was the one who seemed most embarrassed. Conventionally speaking, he had not risen to the occasion very successfully. His highly developed intuitive faculties had instantly registered something was amiss; while the mere fact he had himself once been in love with Priscilla was, in any case, enough to agitate him, when unexpectedly confronted with her. No doubt he was also piqued at her coming on him in circumstances which must reveal sooner or later he and Mrs. Maclintick were making a life together. He muttered something or other about whatever composition Priscilla had heard on the radio, but seemed unable to pursue any coherent conversation. Mrs. Maclintick stared at Stevens without friendliness, though a good deal of curiosity, a reception that seemed perfectly to satisfy him.

“Look here,” he said. “Are you all having a very special private party? If not, couldn’t we come and sit with you? This is the chance of a lifetime to make a jolly evening of my last night in London for a long time — who knows, perhaps for ever. I’m on embarkation leave, you know, have to catch a train back to my unit to-night.”

He began addressing this speech to me, but, half-way through, turned towards Mrs. Maclintick, as if to appeal to her good nature. She did not offer much encouragement; at the same time issued no immediate refusal.

“Anything you like,” she said. “I’m too tired to care much what happens. Been on my feet all day doling out shepherd’s pie made of sausage meat and stale swiss roll all minced up together. But don’t expect Moreland to pay. I’ve let him have enough out of the house-keeping money to cover our share of dinner — and an extra round of drinks if we can get that.”

Moreland made some sort of protest at this, half amused, half ashamed. Stevens, obviously assessing Mrs. Maclintick’s measure at a glance (just as Stringham had, at the party years before after Moreland’s symphony), laughed loudly. She glared at him for treating her self-pity so lightly, but, although fierce in expression, her stare was not entirely one of dislike.

“We’ll be absolutely self-supporting, I promise that,” said Stevens. “I’ve only got a quid or two left myself, but Priscilla cashed a cheque earlier in the day, so we’ll have to prise it out of her if necessary.”

“You may not find that so easy,” said Priscilla, laughing too, though perhaps not best pleased at this indication of being permanently in the company of Stevens. “In the end Nick will probably have to fork out, as a relation. Will if really be all right if we join you, Nick?”

Although she said this lightly, in the same sort of vein used by Stevens himself, she spoke now with less assurance than he. Certainly she would, in any case, have preferred no such suggestion to be made. Once put, she was not going to run counter to it. She was determined to support her lover, show nothing was going to intimidate her. No doubt she had hoped to spend the evening tête-à-tête with him, especially if this were his last night in England. Even apart from that, there was, from her own point of view, nothing whatever to be said for deliberately joining a group of people that included a brother-in-law. On the other hand, she had perhaps already learnt the impossibility of dissuading Stevens from doing things the way he wanted them done. Perhaps, again, that was one of the attractions he exercised, in contrast with Lovell, usually amenable in most social matters. Stevens clearly possessed one of those personalities that require constant reinforcement for their egotism and energy by the presence and attention of other people round them, an audience to whom they can “show off.” Such men are attractive to women, at the same time hard for women to keep at heel. For my own part, I would much rather have prevented the two of them from sitting with us, but, short of causing what might almost amount to a “scene,” there seemed no way of avoiding this. Even assuming I made some more or less discouraging gesture, that was likely to prove not only rather absurd, but also useless from Lovell’s point of view; perhaps even undesirable where Lovell’s interests were in question.

“I mean you look a bit uncertain, Nick?” said Priscilla, laughing again.

Obviously the thoughts going through my head were as clear as day to her.

“Don’t be silly.”

“Half a minute,” said Stevens. “I’ll try and find a waiter and get another chair. We can’t all cram together on the banquette.”

He went off. Mrs. Maclintick began some complicated financial computation with Moreland. This was going to hold the attention of the pair of them for a minute or two. Priscilla had sat down, and, perhaps because she felt herself more vulnerable without Stevens, had her head down, fumbling in her bag, as if she wanted to avoid my eye. I felt some statement should be made which might, at least to some small extent, define my own position. It was now or never. Any such “statement” was, I thought, to be conceived of as the term is made use of by the police, for the description of an accident or crime, a brief summary of what happened, how and why it took place or was committed.

“I had a drink with Chips this evening.”

She looked up.

“Chips?”

“Here — just before dinner. He thought he might see you at Bijou Ardglass’s party at the Madrid.”

That information would at least prevent her from taking Stevens to the restaurant, had the thought been in her mind, though, at the same time, could prejudice any faint chance of herself looking in at the Ardglass party after Stevens had left to catch his train. Such a possibility had to be faced. A chance must be taken on that. It was, in any case, unlikely she would go later to the Madrid. Everything would close down by midnight at the latest, probably before that.

“Oh, but is Chips in London?”

She was plainly surprised.

“At Combined Ops.”

“On the Combined Ops staff?”

“Yes.”

“That was only a possibility when I last heard.”

“It’s happened.”

“Chips thought the move wouldn’t be for a week or two, even if it came off. His last letter only reached me this morning. It chased all over the country after me. I’m at Aunt Molly’s.”

“I’ll give you the Combined Ops number and extension.”

“I had to put Bijou off,” she said quite calmly. “I’ll get in touch with Chips to-morrow.”

“He thought you might be at the Jeavonses’.”

“Why didn’t he ring up then?”

“He hoped he was going to see you at the Madrid — make a surprise of it.”

She did not rise to that.

“The Jeavons house is more of a shambles than ever,” she said. “Eleanor Walpole-Wilson is there — Aunt Molly usen’t to like her, but they’re great buddies now — and then there are two Polish officers whose place was bombed and had nowhere to go, and a girl who’s having a baby by a Norwegian sailor.”

“Who’s having a baby by a Norwegian sailor?” asked Stevens. “No one we know, I hope.”

He had come back to the table at that moment. Such as it was, my demonstration had been made, was now, of necessity, over. There was nothing more to be said. The situation could only be accepted, until, in one field or another, further action might be required. That, at least, was so far as I myself was concerned. Recognition of this as a fact seemed unavoidable. The return of Stevens brought about a reshuffle of places, resulting in Mrs. Maclintick finding herself next him on the banquette with me on the other side of her. Priscilla and Moreland were opposite. This seating had been chiefly organised by Stevens himself, possibly with no more aim than a display of power. I congratulated him on his M.C.

“Oh, that?” he said. “Pretty hot stuff to have one of those, isn’t it? I really deserved it — we both did — for putting up with that Aldershot course when we first met. It was far more gruelling than anything expected of me later — those lectures on the German army. Christ, I dream about them. Are you at the War House or somewhere?”

“On leave — going down to the country tomorrow.”

“Hope you have as much fun on it as I’ve had on mine,” he said.

He seemed totally unaware that, among members of Priscilla’s family — myself, for example — conventional reservations might exist regarding the part he was at that moment playing; that at least they might not wish to hear rubbed in what an enjoyable time he had been having as her lover. All the same, shamelessness of any kind, perhaps rightly, always exacts a certain respect. Lovell himself was no poor hand at displaying cheek. As usual, a kind of poetic justice was observable in what was happening.

“I suppose your destination is secret?”

“Don’t quote me, but there’s been a tropical issue.”

“Middle East?”

“That’s my opinion.”

“Might be the Far East.”

“You never know. I think the other myself.”

Until then Moreland had been sitting in silence, apparently unable, or unwilling, to cope with the changed composition of the party at the table. This awkwardness with new arrivals had always been a trait of his, and probably had little or nothing to do with the comparatively unfamiliar note struck by the personality and conversation of Stevens. A couple of middle-aged music critics he had known all his life might have brought about just the same sort of temporary stoppage in Moreland’s conversation. Later, he would recover; talk them off their feet. Now, this change took place, he spoke with sudden animation.

“My God, I wish I could be transplanted to the Far East without further delay,” he said. “I’d be prepared to be like Brahms and play the piano in a brothel — even play Brahms’s own compositions in a brothel, part of the Requiem would be very suitable — if I could only be somewhere like Saigon or Bangkok, leave London and the blackout behind.”

“A naval officer I talked to on a bus the other day, just back from Hong Kong, reported life there as bloody amusing,” said Stevens. “But look, Mr. Moreland, there’s something I must tell you before we go any further. Of course, I wanted to see Nicholas again, that was why I came over, but another pretty considerable item was that I had recognised you. I saw a chance of telling you personally what a fan of yours I am. Hearing your Tone Poem Vieux Port performed at Birmingham was one of the high spots of my early life. I was about sixteen, I suppose. You’ve probably forgotten Birmingham ever had a chance of hearing it, or you yourself ever came there. I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to meet you and say how much it thrilled me.”

This was an unexpected trump card for Stevens to play. Moreland, always modest about his own works, showed permissible signs of pleasure at this sudden hearty praise from such an unexpected source. Music was an entirely new line from Stevens, so far as I knew him, until this moment. Obviously it constituted a weapon in his armoury, perhaps a formidable one. He had certainly opened up operations on an extended front since our weeks together at Aldershot. Mrs. Maclintick broke in at this point.

“Vieux Port’s the one Maclintick always liked,” she said. “He used to go on about that piece of music until I told him never to mention the thing to me again.”

“When it was performed at Birmingham, Maclintick was about the only critic who offered any praise,” said Moreland. “Even that old puss Gossage was barely civil. The rest of the critics buried my music completely and me with it. I feel now like Nero meeting in Hades the unknown mourner who strewed flowers on his grave.”

“You’re not in your grave yet, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick, “nor even in Hades, though you always talk as if you were. I never knew such a morbid man.”

“I meant the grave of my works rather than my own,” said Moreland. “That’s what it looked like that year at Birmingham. Anyway, not being dead’s no argument against feeling like Nero. Quite the reverse.”

“Not much hope of a Roman orgy here,” said Stevens. “Even the food’s hard to wallow in, don’t you agree, Mrs. Maclintick?”

He turned his attention to her, in the manner of his particular brand of narcissism, determined to make a conquest, separate and individual, of everyone sitting at the table.

“From the way you talk,” he said, “you don’t sound as great a Moreland fan as you should be. Fancy saying you got tired of hearing Vieux Port praised. I’m surprised at you.”

“I’m a fan all right,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Not half, I am. You should see him in bed in the morning before he’s shaved. You couldn’t help being a fan then.”

There was some laughter at that, in which Moreland himself joined loudly, though he would probably have preferred his relationship with Mrs. Maclintick to have been expressed less explicitly in the presence of Priscilla. At the same time, Mrs. Maclintick’s tone had been not without affection of a kind. The reply she had made, whether or not with that intention, hindered Stevens from continuing to discuss Moreland’s music more or less seriously, an object he seemed to have in view. However, this did not prevent him from increasing, if only in a routine manner, his own air of finding Mrs. Maclintick attractive, a policy that was beginning to make a good impression on her. This behaviour, however light-hearted, was perhaps displeasing to Priscilla, no doubt unwilling to admit to herself that, for Stevens, one woman was, at least up to a point, as good as another; anyway when sitting in a restaurant. She may reasonably have felt that no competition should be required of her to keep him to herself. There was, of course, no question of Stevens showing any real interest in Mrs. Maclintick, but, in circumstances prevailing, Priscilla probably regarded all his attention as belonging to herself alone. Whether or not this was the reason, she had become quite silent. Now she interrupted the conversation.

“Listen …”

“What?”

“I believe there’s a blitz on.”

We all stopped talking for a moment. A faint suggestion of distant gunfire merged into the noise of traffic from the street, the revving up of a lorry’s engine somewhere just outside the back of the building. No one else at the other tables round about showed any sign of noticing indications of a raid.

“I don’t think so,” said Moreland. “Living in London all the time, one gets rather a good ear for the real thing.”

“Raids when I’m on leave make me bloody jumpy,” said Stevens. “Going into action you’ve got a whole lot of minor responsibilities to keep your mind off the danger. A gun, too. In an air-raid I feel they’re after me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I asked how much hand-to-hand fighting he had been engaged in.

“The merest trifle.”

“What was it like?”

“Not too bad.”

“Hard on the nerves?”

“Difficult to describe,” he said. “You feel worked up just before, of course, rather like going to school for the first time or the morning of your first job. Those prickly sensations, but exciting too.”

“Going back to school?” said Moreland. “You make warfare sound most disturbing. I shouldn’t like that at all. In London, it’s the sheer lack of sleep gets one down. However, there’s been quite a let-up the last day or two. Do you have raids where you are, Nick?”

“We do.”

“I thought it was all very peaceful there.”

“Not always.”

“I have an impression of acute embarrassment when bombed,” said Moreland. “That rather than gross physical fear — at present anyway. It’s like an appalling display of bad manners one has been forced to witness. The utter failure of a party you are giving — a friend’s total insensitiveness about some delicate matter — suddenly realising you’ve lost your note-case, your passport, your job, your girl. All those things combined and greatly multiplied.”

“You didn’t like it the other night when the glass shattered in the bathroom window,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You were trembling like a leaf, Moreland.”

“I don’t pretend to be specially brave,” said Moreland, put out by this comment. “Anyway, I’d just run up three flights of stairs and nearly caught it in the face. I was just trying to define the sensation one feels — don’t you agree, Nick, it’s a kind of embarrassment?”

“Absolutely.”

“Depends on such a lot of different things,” said Stevens. “People you’re with, sleep, food, drink, and so on. This show I was in —”

He did not finish the sentence, because Priscilla interrupted. She had gone rather white. For a second one saw what she would be like when she was old.

“For God’s sake don’t talk about the war all the time,” she said. “Can’t we sometimes get away from it for a few seconds?”

This was quite different from her earlier detached tone. She seemed all at once in complete despair. Stevens, not best pleased at having his story wrecked, mistook the reason, whatever it was, for Priscilla’s sudden agitation. He thought she was afraid, altogether a misjudgment.

“But it isn’t a blitz, sweetie,” he said. “There’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Although, in the light of his usual manner of addressing people, he might easily have called Mrs. Maclintick “sweetie,” this was, in fact, the first time he had spoken to Priscilla with that mixture of sharpness and affection that can suddenly reveal an intimate relationship.

“I know it isn’t a blitz,” she said. “We long ago decided that. I was just finding the conversation boring.”

“All right. Let’s talk of something else,” he said.

He spoke indulgently, but without grasping that something had gone badly wrong.

“I’ve got rather a headache.”

“Oh, sorry, darling. I thought you had the wind up.”

“Not in the least.”

“Why didn’t you say you had a head?”

“It’s only just started.”

She was looking furious now, furious and upset. I knew her well enough to be fairly used to Priscilla’s quickly changing moods, but her behaviour was now inexplicable to me, as it obviously was to Stevens. I imagined that, having decided a mistake had been made in allowing him to join our table, she had now settled on a display of bad temper as the best means of getting him away.

“Well, what would you like to do?” he said. “We’ve got nearly an hour still. Shall I take you somewhere quieter? It is rather airless and noisy in here.”

He seemed anxious to do anything he could to please her. Up till now they might have been any couple having dinner together, no suggestion of a particularly close bond, Stevens’s ease of manner concealing rather than emphasising what was happening. Now, however, his voice showed a mixture of concern and annoyance that gave more away about the pair of them. This change of tone was certainly due to incomprehension on his part, rather than any exhibitionistic desire to advertise that Priscilla was his mistress; although he might well have been capable of proclaiming that fact in other company.

“Where?” she said.

This was not a question. It was a statement to express the truth that no place existed in this neighbourhood where they could go, and be likely to find peace and quiet.

“We’ll look for somewhere.”

She fixed her eyes on him. There was silence for a moment.

“I think I’ll make for home.”

‘But aren’t you coming to see me off — you said you were.”

“I’ve got a splitting headache,” she said. “I’ve suddenly begun to feel perfectly awful, too, for some reason. Simply dreadful.”

“Not up to coming to the station?”

“Sorry.”

She was nearly in tears. Stevens plainly had no idea what had gone wrong. I could not guess either, unless the comparative indifference of his mood — after what had no doubt been a passionate interlude of several days — had upset her. However, although young, and, until recently, probably not much accustomed to girls of Priscilla’s type, he was sufficiently experienced with women in general to have certain settled principles in dealing with situations of this kind. At any rate, he was now quite decisive.

“I’ll take you back then.”

Faced with the prospect of abandoning a party where he had begun to be enjoyably the centre of attention, Stevens spoke without a great deal of enthusiasm, at the same time with complete sincerity. The offer was a genuine one, not a polite fiction to be brushed aside on the grounds he had a train to catch. He intended to go through with the proposal. Certainly it was the least he could do, but, at the same time, considering Priscilla’s demeanour and what I knew of his own character, even this minimum was to display magnanimity of a sort. He accepted her sudden decision with scarcely any demur. Priscilla seemed to appreciate that

“No.”

She spoke quite firmly.

“Of course I will.”

“You’ve got all your stuff here. You can’t lug it back to Kensington.”

“I’ll pick it up here again after I’ve dropped you.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Of course I can.”

“No …” she said. “I’d much rather you didn’t… I don’t quite know … I just feel suddenly rather odd … I can’t think what it is … I mean I’d rather be alone … Must be alone…”

The situation had become definitely very painful. Even Mrs. Maclintick was silenced, awed by this interchange. Moreland kept on lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out. It all seemed to take hours of time.

“I’m going to take you back.”

“No, really no.”

“But —”

“I can take you back, Priscilla,” I said. “Nothing easier.”

That settled things finally.

“I don’t want anybody to take me back,” she said. “I’ll say good-bye now.”

She waved her hand in the direction of Stevens.

“I’ll write,” she said.

He muttered something about getting a taxi for her, began to try and move out from where he was sitting, people leaving or arriving at the next table penned him in. Priscilla turned and made quickly for the glass doors. Just before she went through them, she turned and blew a kiss. Then she disappeared from sight. By the time Stevens had extracted himself, she was gone. All the same, he set off across the room to follow her.

“What a to-do all of a sudden,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Did she behave like this when you knew her, Moreland?”

I thought it possible, though not very likely, that Priscilla had gone to look for Lovell at the Madrid. That surmise belonged to a way of life more dramatic than probable, the sort of development that would have greatly appealed to Lovell himself; in principle, I mean, even had he been in no way personally concerned. However, for better or worse, things like that do not often happen. At the same time, even though sudden desire to make it up with her husband might run contrary to expectation, I was no nearer conjecturing why Priscilla had gone off in this manner, leaving Stevens cold. The fact she might be in love with him was no reason to prevent a sudden display of capricious temper, brought on, likely as not, by the many stresses of the situation. Stevens himself was no doubt cynical enough in the way he was taking the affair, although even that was uncertain, since Lovell had supposed marriage could be in question. Lovell might be right. Stevens’s false step, so far as Priscilla was concerned, seemed to be marked by the moment he had suggested her fear about the supposititious air-raid warning. That had certainly made her angry. Even allowing for unexpected nervous reactions in wartime, it was much more likely she heard an air-raid warning — where none existed — because of her highly strung state, rather than from physical fear. Stevens had shown less than his usual grasp in suggesting such a thing. Possibly this nervous state stemmed from some minor row; possibly Priscilla’s poorish form earlier in the evening suggested that she was beginning to tire of Stevens, or feared he might be tiring of her. On the other hand, the headache, the thought of her lover’s departure, could equally have upset her; while the presence of the rest of the party at the table, the news that her husband was in London, all helped to discompose her. Reasons for her behaviour were as hard to estimate as that for giving herself to Stevens in the first instance. If she merely wanted amusement, while Lovell’s physical presence was removed by forces over which he had no control, why make all this trouble about it, why not keep things quiet? Lovell, at worst, appeared a husband preferable to many. Even if less indefatigably lively than Stevens, he was not without his own brand of energy. Was “trouble,” in fact, what Priscilla required? Was her need — the need of certain women — to make men unhappy? There was something of the kind in her face. Perhaps she was simply tormenting Stevens now for a change; so to speak, varying the treatment. If so, she might have her work cut out to disturb him in the way she was disturbing Lovell; had formerly disturbed Moreland. The fact that he was able to look after himself pretty well in that particular sphere was implicit in the manner Stevens made his way back across the room. He looked politely worried, not at all shattered.

“Did she get a taxi?”

“She must have done. She’d disappeared into the blackout by the time I got to the door on the street. There were several cabs driving away at that moment.”

“She did take on,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

“It’s an awful business,” said Stevens. “The point is I’m so immobile myself at this moment. There’s a lot of junk in the cloakroom here, a valise, God knows what else — odds and ends they wanted me to get for the Mess — all of which I’ve got to hump to the station before long.”

He looked at his watch; then sat down again at the table.

“Let’s have some more to drink,” he said, “that’s if we can get it.”

For a short time he continued to show some appearance of being worried about Priscilla, expressing anxiety, asserting she had seemed perfectly all right earlier that evening. He reproached himself for not being able to do more to help her get home, wanting our agreement that there was anyway little or nothing he could have done. After repeating these things several times, he showed himself finally prepared to accept the fact that what had happened was all in the day’s work where women were concerned.

“I’ll ring up when I get to the station,” he said.

Priscilla’s behaviour had positively stimulated Mrs. Maclintick, greatly cheered her up.

“Whatever’s wrong with the girl?” she said. “Why does she want to go off like that? I believe she didn’t approve of me wearing these filthy old clothes. Got to, doing the job I do. No good dressing up as if you were going to a wedding. You know her, Moreland. What was it all about?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said Moreland sharply.

He showed no wish to discuss Priscilla’s behaviour further. If, once or twice that evening, he had already brought a reminder of his behaviour when out with Matilda, now, by the tone he used, he recalled Maclintick out with Mrs. Maclintick. She may have recognised that herself, because she pursed her lips.

“Wonder what’s happened to Max,” she said. “He should have been along by now. That turn must be over. It’s a short one anyway, and he comes on early at the Madrid.”

“Probably gone to bed,” said Moreland.

Mrs. Maclintick agreed that must have happened.

“More sense than sitting about in a place like this,” she added, “especially if you’ve got to get up early in the morning like I have.”

“That’s not Max Pilgrim you’re talking about?” asked Stevens.

“He’s our lodger,” said Moreland.

Stevens showed interest. Moreland explained he had known Pilgrim for years.

“I’ve always hoped to see him do his stuff,” said Stevens. “There was a chance at this revival of his old songs at the Madrid — I suppose that’s what he was coming on here from. I read about it in the paper and wanted to go, but Priscilla wouldn’t hear of it. I can see now she hasn’t been herself all day. I ought to have guessed she might be boiling up for a scene. You should know how girls are going to behave after you’ve been with them for a bit. I see I was largely to blame. She said she’d seen Pilgrim before and he bored her to hell. I told her I thought his songs marvellous. In fact I used to try and write stuff like that myself.”

I asked if he had ever sold anything of that sort to magazines.

“Only produced it for private consumption,” he said, laughing. “The sole verses I ever placed was sentimental stuff in the local press. They wouldn’t have liked my Max Pilgrim line, if it could be called that.”

“Let’s hear some of it,” said Moreland.

He had evidently taken a fancy to Stevens, who possessed in his dealings that energetic, uninhibited impact which makes its possessor master of the immediate social situation; though this mastery always requires strong consolidating forces to keep up the initial success. Mr. Deacon used to say nothing spread more ultimate gloom at a party than an exuberant manner which has roused false hopes. Stevens did not do that. He could summon more than adequate powers of consolidation after his preliminary attack. The good impression he had made on Moreland was no doubt helped, as things stood, by Priscilla’s departure. Moreland wanted to forget about her, start off on a new subject. Stevens was just the man for that. Mention of his verse offered the channel. There were immediate indications that Stevens would not need much pressing about giving an example of his own compositions.

“For instance, I wrote something about my first unit when I was with them,” he said.

“Recite it to us.”

Stevens laughed, a merely formal gesture of modesty. He turned to me*

“Nicholas,” he said, “were you ever junior subaltern in your battalion?”

“For what seemed a lifetime.”

“And proposed the King’s health in the Mess on guest nights?”

“Certainly.”

“Mr. Vice, the Loyal Toast — then you rose to your feet and said: Gentlemen, the King.”

“Followed by The Allied Regiments — such-and-such a regiment of Canada and such-and-such a regiment of Australia.”

“Do you mean to say this actually happened to you yourself, Nick?” asked Moreland. “You stood up and said Gentlemen, the King?”

He showed total incredulity.

“I used to love it,” said Stevens. “Put everything I had into the words. It was the only thing I liked about the dump. I only asked all this because I wrote some lines called Guest Night.”

Stevens cleared his throat, then, without the least self-consciousness, began his recitation in a low, dramatic voice:

“On Thursday it’s a parade to dine,

The Allied Regiments and the King

Are pledged in dregs of tawny wine,

But now the Colonel’s taken wing.

Yet subalterns still talk and tease

(Wide float the clouds of Craven A

Stubbed out in orange peel and cheese)

Of girls and Other Ranks and pay.

If — on last night-scheme — B Coy, broke

The bipod of the borrowed bren:

The Sergeants’ Mess is out of coke:

And Gordon nearly made that Wren.

Along the tables of the Mess

The artificial tulips blow,

Tired as a prostitute’s caress

Their crimson casts no gladdening glow.

Why do those phallic petals fret

The heart, till coils — like Dannert wire –

Concentrically expand regret

For lost true love and found desire?

While Haw-Haw, from the radio,

Aggrieved, insistent, down the stair,

With distant bugles, sweet and low,

Commingles on the winter air.”

Stevens ceased to declaim. He smiled and sat back in his seat. He was certainly unaware of the entirely new conception of himself his own spoken verses had opened up for me. Their melancholy revealed quite another side of his nature, one concealed as a rule by aggressive cheerfulness. This melancholy was no doubt a logical counterpart, the reverse surface of the coin, one to be expected from high spirits of his own particular sort, bound up as they were with a perpetual discharge of personality. All the same, one never learns to expect the obvious. This contrast of feeling in him might have been an element that attracted Priscilla, something she recognised when they first met at Frederica’s; something more fundamentally melodramatic, even, than Lovell himself could achieve. We all expressed appreciation. Moreland was, I think, almost as surprised as myself.

“Not much like Max’s stuff though,” he said.

“All the same, Max Pilgrim was the source.”

“Nor very cheerful,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “I do believe you’re as morbid as Moreland is himself.”

Although she spoke in her accustomed spirit of depreciation, Stevens must have achieved his aim in making more or less of a conquest, because she smiled quite kindly at him after saying that. Moved by her complaisance, or, more likely, by the repetition of his own lines, his face registered self-pity.

“I wasn’t feeling very cheerful at the time,” he said. “That unit I went to as a one-pipper fairly got me down.”

Then, immediately, one of those instantaneous changes of mood, that were so much a part of him, took place.

“Would you like to hear one of the bawdy ones?” he asked.

Before anyone could reply, another officer, a big captain with a red face and cropped hair, like Stevens also wearing battle-dress, passed our table. Catching sight of Stevens, this man began to roar with laughter and point.

“Odo, my son,” he yelled. “Fancy seeing your ugly mug here.”

“God, Brian, you old swine.”

“I suppose you’ve been painting the town red, and, like me, have got to catch the night train back to the bloody grind again. I’ve been having a pretty wet weekend, I can tell you.”

“Come and have a drink, Brian. There’s lots of time.”

“Not going to risk being cashiered for W.O.A.S.A.W.L.”

“What on earth’s that he said?” asked Mrs. Maclintick.

“While-On-Active-Service-Absent-Without-Leave,” said Stevens, characteristically not allowing her even for a second out of his power by disregarding the question. “Oh, come on, Brian, no hurry yet.”

The red-faced captain was firm.

“Got to find a taxi, for one thing. Besides, I’ve baggage to pick up.”

Stevens looked at his watch.

“I’ve got baggage too,” he said, “a valise and a kit bag and some other junk. Perhaps you’re right, Brian, and I’d do well to accompany you. Anyway it would halve the taxi fare.”

He rose from the table.

“Then I’ll be bidding you all good-bye,” he said.

“Do you really have to go?” said Mrs. Maclintick. “We’re just beginning to get to know you. Are you annoyed about something, like the girl you were with?”

In the course of her life she could rarely have gone further towards making an effort to show herself agreeable. It was a triumph for Stevens. He laughed, conscious of this, pleased at his success.

“Duty calls,” he said. “I only wish I could stay till four in the morning, but they’re beginning to shut down here as it is, even if I hadn’t a train to catch.”

We said good-bye to him.

“Wonderful to have met you, Mr. Moreland,” said Stevens. “Here’s to the next performance of Vieux Port on the same programme as your newest work — and may I be there to hear. Good-bye, Nicholas.”

He held out his hand. From being very sure of himself, he had now reverted a little to that less absolute confidence of the days when I had first known him. He was probably undecided as to the most effective note to strike in taking leave of us. It may at last have dawned on him that all the business of Priscilla could include embarrassments of a kind to which he had hitherto given little or no thought. The hesitation he showed possibly indicated indecision as to whether or not he should make further reference to her sudden withdrawal from the party. If, for a second, he had contemplated speaking of that, he must have changed his mind.

“We’ll be meeting again,” he said.

“Good-bye.”

“And Happy Landings.”

“Come on, Odo, you oaf,” said the red-faced captain, “cut out the fond farewells, or there won’t be a cab left on the street. We’ve got to get cracking. Don’t forget there’ll be all that waffle with the R.T.O.”

They went off together, slapping each other on the back.

“He’s a funny boy,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

Stevens had made an impression on her. There could be no doubt of that. The way she spoke showed it. Although his presence that night had been unwelcome to myself — and the other two at first had also displayed no great wish to have him at the table — a distinct sense of flatness was discernible now Stevens was gone. Even Moreland, who had fidgeted when Mrs. Maclintick had expressed regrets at this departure, seemed aware that the conviviality of the party was reduced by his removal. I said I should have to be making for bed.

“Oh, God, don’t let’s break it all up at once,” Moreland said. “We’ve only just met. Those others prevented our talking of any of the things we really want to discuss — like the meaning of art, or how to get biscuits on the black market.”

“They won’t serve any more drink here.”

“Come back to our place for a minute or two. There might be some beer left. We’ll get old Max out of bed. He loves a gossip.”

“All right — but not for long.”

We paid the bill, went out into Regent Street. In the utter blackness, the tarts, strange luminous form of nocturnal animal life, flickered the bulbs of their electric torches. From time to time one of them would play the light against her own face in self-advertisement, giving the effect of candles illuminating a holy picture in the shadows of a church.

“Ingenious,” said Moreland.

“Don’t doubt Maclintick would have found it so,” said Mrs. Maclintick, not without bitterness.

A taxi set down its passengers nearby. We secured it. Moreland gave the address of the flat where he used to live with Matilda.

“I’ve come to the conclusion the characteristic women most detest in a man is unselfishness,” he said.

This remark had not particular bearing on anything that had gone before, evidently giving expression only to one of his long interior trains of thought.

“They don’t have to put up with much of it,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “It’s passed me by these forty years, but perhaps I’m lucky.”

“How their wives must have hated those saintly kings in the Middle Ages,” Moreland said. “Still, as you truly remark, Audrey, one’s speaking rather academically.”

The taxi had already driven off, and Moreland was putting the key in the lock of the front-door of the house, when the Air-raid Warnings began to sound.

“Just timed it nicely,” Moreland said. “That’s the genuine article, not like the faint row when we were at dinner. No doubt at all allowed to remain in the mind. Are the flat’s curtains drawn? I was the last to leave and it’s the sort of thing I always forget to do.”

“Max will have fixed them,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

We climbed the stairs, of which there were a great number, as they occupied the top floor flat.

“I hope Max is all right,” she said. “I never like the idea of him being out in a raid. There’s bound to be trouble if he spends the night in a shelter. He’s always talking about giving the Underground a try-out, but I tell him I won’t have him doing any such thing.”

If Moreland was one of Mrs. Maclintick’s children, clearly Max Pilgrim was another. We entered the flat behind her. Moreland did not turn on the switch until it was confirmed all windows were obscured. In the light, the apartment was revealed as untidier than in Matilda’s day, otherwise much the same in outward appearance and decoration.

“Max …” shouted Mrs. Maclintick.

She uttered this call from the bedroom. A faint answering cry came from another room further up the short passage. Its message was indeterminate, the tone, high and tremulous, bringing back echoes of a voice that had twittered through myriad forgotten night-clubs in the small hours.

“We’ve got a visitor, Max,” shouted Mrs. Maclintick again.

“I hope there’ll turn out to be some beer left,” said Moreland. “I don’t feel all that sure.”

He went into the kitchen. I remained in the passage. A door slowly opened at the far end. Max Pilgrim appeared, a tall willowy figure in horn-rimmed spectacles and a green brocade dressing gown. It was years since I had last seen him, where, I could not even remember, whether in the distance at a party, or, less likely, watching his act at some cabaret show. For a time he had shared a flat with Isobel’s brother, Hugo, but we had not been in close touch with Hugo at that period, and had, as it happened, never visited the place. There had been talk of Pilgrim giving up his performances in those days and joining Hugo in the decorating business. Even at that time, Pilgrim’s songs had begun to “date”, professionally speaking. However, that project had never come off, and, whatever people might say about being old-fashioned, Pilgrim continued to find himself in demand right up to the outbreak of war. Now, of course, he expressed to audiences all that was most nostalgic. Although his hair was dishevelled — perhaps because of that — he looked at this very moment as if about to break into one of his songs. He moved a little way up the passage, then paused.

“Here you are at last, my dears,” he said. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. You must forgive what I’m looking like, which must be a perfect sight. I took off my slap before going to bed and am presenting you with a countenance natural and unadorned, something I’m always most unwilling to do.”

He certainly appeared pale as death. I had thought at first he was merely looking much older than I remembered. Now I accepted as explanation what he had said about lack of make-up. I noticed, too, that his right hand was bandaged. The voice was fainter than usual. He looked uncertainly at me, disguised in uniform. I explained I was Hugo’s brother-in-law; that we had met once or twice the past. Pilgrim took my right hand in his left.

“My dear …”

“How are you?”

“I’ve been having a most unenjoyable evening,” he said.

He did not at once release my hand. For some reason I felt a sudden lack of ease, an odd embarrassment, even apprehension, although absolutely accustomed to the rather unduly fervent social manner he was employing. I tried to withdraw from his grasp, but he held on tenaciously, almost as if he were himself requiring actual physical support.

“We hoped you were coming on from the Madrid to join us at dinner,” I said. “Hugh tells me you were doing some of the real old favourites there.”

“I was.”

“Did you leave the Madrid too late?”

Then Max Pilgrim let go my hand. He folded his arms. His eyes were fixed on me. Although no longer linked to him by his own grasp, I continued to feel indefinably uncomfortable.

“You knew the Madrid?” he asked.

“I’ve been there — not often.”

“But enjoyed yourself there?”

“Always.”

“You’ll never do that again.”

“Why not?”

‘The Madrid is no more,” he said.

“Finished?”

“Finished.”

The season or just your act?”

The place — the building — the tables and chairs — the dance-floor — the walls — the ceiling — all those gold pillars. A bomb hit the Madrid full pitch this evening.”

“Max …”

Mrs. Maclintick let out a cry. It was a reasonable moment to give expression to a sense of horror. Moreland had come into the passage from the kitchen, carrying a bottle of beer and three glasses. He stood for a moment, saying nothing; then we all went into the sitting-room. Pilgrim at once took the arm-chair. He nursed his bound hand, rocking himself slowly forward and back.

“In the middle of my act,” he said. “It was getting the bird in a big way. Never experienced the like before, even on tour.”

“So there was a blitz earlier in the evening,” said Moreland.

“There was,” said Pilgrim. “There certainly was.”

No one spoke for some seconds. Pilgrim continued to sit in the chair, looking straight in front of him, holding his wounded hand with the other. I knew there was a question I ought to ask, but felt almost physically inhibited from forming the words. In the end, Mrs. Maclintick, not myself, put the enquiry.

“Anybody killed?”

Pilgrim nodded.

“Many?”

Pilgrim nodded again.

“Helped to get some of them out,” he said.

“There were a lot?”

“Of course it’s a ghastly muddle on these occasions,” he said. “Frenzied. Like Dante’s Inferno. All in the black-out too. The wardens and I carried out six or seven at least. Must have. They’d all had it. I knew some of them personally. Nasty business, I can assure you. I suppose a few got away with it — like myself. They tried to persuade me to go with them and have some treatment, but after I’d had my hand bound up, all I wanted was home, sweet home. It’s only a scratch, so I came back and tucked up. But I’m glad you’re all here. Very glad.”

There was no escape now. So far as possible, certainty had to be established. An effort must be made.

“Bijou Ardglass was there with a party.”

Pilgrim looked at me with surprise.

“You knew that?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Were you asked? If so, you were lucky to have another engagement.”

“They were —”

“Bijou’s table was just where it came through the ceiling.”

“So —”

“I’m afraid it was Bijou’s last party.”

Pilgrim glanced away, quickly passing the bandaged hand across his eyes. It was an instinctive, not in the least dramatised, gesture.

“But the rest of them?”

“No one survived from that corner. That was where the worst of the damage was done. My end of the room wasn’t so bad. That’s why I’m here now.”

“You’re sure all the Ardglass party —”

“They were the ones I helped carry out,” said Pilgrim.

He spoke quite simply.

“Chips Lovell —”

“He’d been at the table.”

Moreland looked across at me. Mrs. Maclintick took Pilgrim’s arm.

“How did you get back yourself, Max?” she asked.

“I got a lift on one of the fire-engines. Can you imagine?”

“Here,” said Moreland. “Have some beer.”

Pilgrim took the glass.

“I’d known Bijou for years,” he said. “Known her when she was a little girl with a plait trying to get a job in the chorus. Wasn’t any good for some reason. Can’t think why, because she had the Theatre in her blood both sides. Do you know, Bijou’s father played Abanazar in Aladdin when my mother was Principal Boy in the same show? Anyway, it all turned out best for Bijou in the end. Did much better as a mannequin than she’d ever have done on the boards. Met richer men, for one thing.”

There was a pause. Moreland cleared his throat uncomfortably. Mrs. Maclintick sniffed. In the far distance, unexpectedly soon, the All Clear droned. It was followed, an instant later, by a more local siren.

“That one didn’t take long,” Moreland said.

“Another tip-and-run raider,” said Pilgrim. “The fashion of the moment.”

“It was a single plane caught the Madrid?”

“That’s it.”

“I’ll make some tea,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Do us good.”

“Just what I need, Audrey, my dear,” said Pilgrim, sighing. “I couldn’t think what it was. Now I know it’s tea — not beer at all.”

He drank the beer all the same. Mrs. Maclintick went off to the kitchen. It became clear that an unpleasant duty must be performed. There was no avoiding it. Priscilla would have to be told about the Madrid as soon as possible. If I called up the Jeavonses’ house right away, the telephone, with any luck, would be answered by Molly Jeavons herself. I could tell her what had happened. She could break the news. So far as that went, even to make the announcement to Molly would be bad enough. It might be hard on her to have to tell Priscilla, but at least Molly was, by universal consent, a person adapted by nature to such harrowing tasks; warm-hearted, not over sensitive, grasping immediately the needs of the bereaved, saying just what was required, emotional yet never incapacitated by emotion. Molly, if I were lucky, would do the job. There was always the chance Priscilla herself flight be at the other end of the line. That was a risk that had to be taken into consideration. In a cowardly way, I delayed action until Mrs. Maclintick had returned with the tea. After finishing a cup, I asked if I might use the telephone.

“By the bed,” said Moreland.

Pilgrim began to muse aloud.

“Strange those young Germans up there trying to kill me,” he murmured to himself. “Ungrateful too. I’ve always had such good times in Berlin.”

The bedroom was more untidy than would ever have been allowed in Matilda’s day. I sat on the edge of the bed and dialled the Jeavons number. There was no buzz. I tried again. After several unsuccessful attempts, none of which even achieved the “number obtainable” sound, I rang the Exchange. There were further delays. Then the operator tried the Jeavons number. That, too, was unproductive. No sound of ringing came. The line was out of order. I gave it up and returned to the sitting-room.

“I can’t get through. I’ll have to go.”

“Stay the night, if you like,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You can sleep on the sofa. Maclintick often did in our Pimlico place. Spent almost more time there than he did in bed.”

The offer was unexpected, rather touching in the circumstances. I saw she was probably able to look after Moreland better than I thought.

“No — thanks all the same. As I failed on the telephone, I’ll have to go in person.”

“Priscilla?” said Moreland.

“Yes.”

He nodded.

“What a job,” he said.

Max Pilgrim gathered his dressing gown round him. He yawned and stretched.

“I wonder when the next one will arrive,” he said. “Worse than waiting for the curtain to go up.”

I said good night to them. Moreland came to the door.

“I suppose you’ve really got to do this?” he said.

“Not much avoiding it.”

“Glad it’s not me,” he said.

“You’re right to be.”

There seemed no more taxis left in London. I walked for a time, then, totally unlooked for at that hour, a bus stopped by the place I was passing. Without any very clear idea of doing more than move in a south-westerly direction, I boarded it, in this way travelled as far as a stop in the neighbourhood of Gloucester Road. Here the journey had to be resumed on foot. The pavements were endless, threading a way down them like those interminable rovings pursued in dreams. Cutting through several side turnings, I at last found myself among a conjunction of dark red brick Renaissance-type houses. In one of these the Jeavonses had lived for twenty years or more, an odd centre of miscellaneous hospitality to which Chips Lovell himself had first taken me. In the lower reaches of their street, two fire-engines were drawn up. By the light of electric torches, firemen and air-raid wardens were passing in and out of one of the front-doors. This particular house turned out to be the Jeavonses’. In the dark, little was to be seen of what was happening. Apart from these dim figures going to and fro, like the trolls in Peer Gynt, nothing seemed abnormal about the façade. There was no sign of damage to the structure. One of the wardens, in helmet and overalls, stopped by the steps and lit a cigarette.

“Did this house get it?”

“About an hour ago,” he said, “that last tip-and-run raider.”

“Anybody hurt?”

He took the cigarette from his mouth and nodded.

“I know the people — are they about?”

“You know Mr. Jeavons and Lady Molly?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve only just arrived here?”

“That’s it.”

“Mr. Jeavons and me are on the same warden-post,” he said. “They’ve taken him down there. Giving him a cup of tea.”

“Was he injured?”

“It was her.”

“Badly?”

The warden looked at me as if I should not have asked that question.

“You hadn’t heard?” he said.

“No.”

“Didn’t survive.”

He went on speaking at once, as if from a kind of embarrassment at having to announce such a thing.

“She and the young lady,” he said. “It was all at the back of the house. You wouldn’t think there was a jot of damage out here in front, but there’s plenty inside, I can tell you. Dreadful thing. Used to see a lot of them. Always very friendly people. Got their newspapers from me, matter of fact. If you know them, there’s a lady inside can tell you all about it.”

“I’ll go in.”

He threw away the stub of his cigarette and trod on it

“So long,” he said.

“So long.”

He was right about there being a mess inside. A woman m some sort of uniform was giving instructions to the People clearing up. She turned out to be Eleanor Walpole-Wilson.

“Eleanor.”

She looked round.

“Hallo, Nick,” she said. “Thank goodness you’ve come.”

She did not seem at all surprised to see me. She came across the hall. Now in her middle thirties, Eleanor was less unusual in appearance than as a girl. No doubt uniform suited her. Though her size and shape had also become more conventional, she retained an air of having been never properly assimilated to either sex. At the same time, big and broad-shouldered, she was not exactly a “mannish” woman. Her existence might have been more viable had that been so.

“You’ve heard what’s happened?” she said abruptly.

Her manner, too, so out of place in ordinary social relations, had equally come into its own.

“Molly’s …”

“And Priscilla.”

“God.”

“One of the Polish officers too — the nice one. The other’s pretty well all right, just a bang over the head. That wretched girl who got into trouble with the Norwegian has been taken to hospital. She’ll be all right, too, when she’s recovered from the shock, I don’t know whether she’ll keep the baby.”

It was clear all this briskness was specifically designed to carry Eleanor through. She must have been having a very bad time indeed.

“A man at the door — one of the wardens — said Ted was down at the post.”

“He was there when it happened. They may have taken him on to the hospital by now. How did you hear about it? I didn’t know you were in London.”

“I’m passing through on leave.”

“Is Isobel all right?”

“She’s all right. She’s in the country.”

Just for the moment I felt unable to explain anything very lucidly, to break through the barricade of immediate action and rapid talk with which Eleanor was protecting herself. It was like trying to tackle her in the old days, when she had been training one of her dogs with a whistle, and would not listen to other people round her. She must have developed early in life this effective method of shutting herself off from the rest of the world; a weapon, no doubt, against parents and early attempts to make her live a conventional sort of life. Now, while she talked, she continued to move about the hall, clearing up some of the debris. She was wearing a pair of green rubber gloves that made me think of the long white ones she used to draw on at dances.

“We shall have to have a talk as to who must be told about all this — and in what order. Are you in touch with Chips?”

“Eleanor — Chips has been killed too.”

Eleanor stopped her tidying up. I told her what had happened at the Madrid. She began to take off the green gloves. People were passing through the passage all the time. Eleanor put the rubber gloves on the top of the marquetry cabinet Molly’s sister had left her when she died, the one Ted Jeavons had never managed to move out of the hall.

“Let’s go upstairs and sit down for a bit,” she said. “I’ve had just about as much as I can take. We can sit in the drawing-room. That was one of the rooms that came off least badly.”

We went up to the first floor. The drawing-room, thick in dust and fallen plaster, had a long jagged fissure down one wall. There were two rectangular discoloured spaces where the Wilson and the Greuze had hung. These pictures had presumably been removed to some safer place at the outbreak of war. So, too, had a great many of the oriental bowls and jars that had formerly played such a part in the decoration. They might have been valuable or absolute rubbish; Lovell had always insisted the latter. The pastels, by some unknown hand, of Moroccan types remained. They were hanging at all angles, the glass splintered of one bearing the caption Rainy Day at Marrakesh. Eleanor and I sat on the sofa. She began to cry.

“It’s all too awful,” she said, “and I was so fond of Molly. You know, she usen’t to like me. When Norah and I first shared a flat together, Molly didn’t approve. She put out a story I wore a green pork-pie hat and a bow tie. It wasn’t true. I never did. Anyway, why shouldn’t I, if I wanted to? There I was in the country breeding labradors and bored to death, and all my parents wanted was for me to get married, which I hadn’t the least wish to do. Norah came to stay and suggested I should join her in taking a flat. There it was. Norah was always quite good at getting jobs in shops and that sort of thing, and I found all the stuff I knew about dogs could be put to some use too when it came to the point. Besides, I’d always adored Norah.”

I had sometimes wondered how Eleanor’s ménage with Norah Tolland had begun. No one ever seemed to know. Now it was explained.

“Where’s Norah now?”

“In Scotland, driving for the Poles.”

She dried her eyes.

“Come on,” she said. “We must get out some sort of plan. No good just sitting about. I’ll find a pencil and paper.”

She began to rummage in one of the drawers.

“Here we are.”

We made lists of names, notes of things that would have to be done. One of the wardens came up to say that for the time being the house was safe to stay in, they were going home.

“Where are you spending the night, Nick?”

“A club.”

“There might be someone who could take you part of the way. The chief warden’s got a car.”

“What about you?”

“I shall be all right. There’s a room fitted up with a bed in the basement. Ted used it sometimes, if he had to come in very late.”

“Will you really be all right?”

She dismissed the question of herself rather angrily. The A.R.P. official with the car was found.

“Good-bye, Eleanor.”

I kissed her, which I had never done before,

“Good-bye, Nick. Love to Isobel. It was lucky I was staying here really, because there’ll be a lot that will have to be done.”

The fire-engines had driven away. The street was empty. I thought how good Eleanor was in a situation like this. Molly had been good, too, when it came to disaster. I wondered what would happen to Ted. The extraordinary thing about the outside of the house was that everything looked absolutely normal. Some sort of a notice about bomb damage had been stuck on the front-door by the wardens; otherwise there was nothing to indicate the place had been subjected to an attack from the air, which had killed several persons. This lack of outward display was comparable with the Madrid’s fate earlier that evening, when a lot of talking in a restaurant had been sufficient to drown the sound of the Warning, the noise of the guns. This must be what Dr. Trelawney called “the slayer of Osiris and his grievous tribute of blood.” I wondered if Dr. Trelawney himself had survived: when Odo Stevens would receive the news: whether the Lovells’ daughter, Caroline, would be brought up by her grandparents. Reflecting on these things, it did not seem all that long time ago that Lovell, driving back from the film studios in that extraordinary car of his, had suggested we should look in on the Jeavonses’, because “the chief reason I want to visit Aunt Molly is to take another look at Priscilla Tolland, who is quite often there.”