The Military Philosophers

THREE

One day, several weeks after the Allied Forces had landed in Normandy, I was returning over Westminster Bridge on foot from transacting some minor item of Czechoslovak army business with a ministry housed on the south bank of the river in the former Donners-Brebner Building. It was lovely weather. Even the most pessimistic had begun to concede that the war, on the whole, had taken a turn for the better. Some supposed this might mean the end of raids. Others believed the Germans had a trick or two up their sleeve. Although it was London Bridge to which the poem referred, rather than Westminster, the place from which I had just come, the dark waters of the Thames below, the beauty of the day, brought to mind the lines about Stetson and the ships at Mylae, how death had undone so many. Donners-Brebner — where Howard Craggs, recently knighted, now reigned over one of the branches — had been badly knocked about in the early days of the blitz. The full extent of the damage was not visible, because the main entrance, where Barnby’s frescoes had once been, was heaped with sandbags, access by a side door. Barnby was no longer available to repaint his frescoes. Death had undone him. It looked as if death might have undone Stringham too. At Donners-Brebner he had put me off for dinner because he was going to Peggy Stepney’s parents. Peggy’s second husband was another who had been undone. She was married to Jimmy Klein now, said to have always loved her. These musings were interrupted by a tall officer falling into step with me. It was Sunny Farebrother.

‘Hullo, Nicholas. I hope my dear old Finn is not still cross with me about Szymanski?’

‘There may still be some disgruntlement, sir.’ ‘Disgruntlement’, one was told, was a word that could be used of all ranks without loss of discipline. As I heard myself utter it, I became immediately aware of the manner in which Farebrother, by some effort of the will, made those with whom he dealt as devious as himself. It was not the first time I had noticed that characteristic in him. The ply, the term, was in truth hopelessly inadequate to express Finn’s rage about the whole Szymanski affair.

‘Finn’s a hard man,’ said Farebrother. ‘Nobody I admire more. There is not an officer in the entire British army I admire more than Lieutenant-Colonel Lysander Finn, VC.’

‘Lysander?’

‘Certainly.’

‘We never knew.’

‘He keeps it quiet.’

Farebrother smiled, not displeased at finding this piece of information so unexpected.

‘Who shall blame him?’ he said. ‘It’s modesty, not shame. He thinks the name might sound pretentious in the winner of a VC. Finn’s as brave as a lion, as straight as a die, but as hard as nails — especially where he thinks his own honour is concerned.’

Farebrother said the last words in what Pennistone called his religious voice.

‘You weren’t yourself affected by the Szymanski matter, Nicholas?’

‘I’d left the Poles by then.’

‘You’re no longer in Finn’s Section?’

Farebrother made no attempt to conceal his own interest in any change that might take place in employment or status of those known to him, in case these might in some manner, even if unforeseen, react advantageously to himself.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The Belgians and Czechs. I should like to have a talk with you one of these days about those two Allies, but not now. You don’t know how sorry I am that poor old Finn was inconvenienced in that way. I hate it when friends think you’ve let them down. I remember Frenchman in the last war whom I’d promised to put in for a British decoration that never came through. No use regretting these things, I suppose, but I’m made that way. We all have to do our duty as we see it, Nicholas. Each one of us has to learn that and it’s sometimes a hard lesson. In the case of Szymanski, I was made to suffer for being too keen. Disciplined, demoted in rank, shunted off to a bloody awful job. Tell Finn that. Perhaps he will forgive me when he hears I was made to pay for my actions. You know who went out of his way to bring this trouble about — our old friend Kenneth Widmerpool.’

‘But you’ve left that job now?’

‘In Civil Affairs, with my old rank and a good chance of promotion.’

The Civil Affairs branch, formed to deal with administration of areas occupied by our enemies, had sprung into being about a year before. In it were already collected together a rich variety of specimens of army life. Farebrother would ornament the collection. Pennistone compared Civil Affairs with ‘the head to which all the ends of the world are come, and the eyelids are a little weary.’

‘That just describes it,’ Pennistone said. ‘“No crude symbolism disturbs the effect of Civil Affairs’ subdued and graceful mystery”.’

Among others to find his way into this branch was Dicky Umfraville, who had thereby managed to disengage himself from the transit camp he had been commanding. I asked if Farebrother had any deals with Umfraville, whom I had not seen for some little time. Farebrother nodded. He looked over his shoulder, as if he feared agents were tracking us at that very moment and might overhear his words.

‘You know Kenneth pretty well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Umfraville was talking to one of our people who’d been in Cairo when Kenneth flew out there for a day or two, as member of a high-level conference secretariat. Do you know what happened? Something you’d never guess. He managed to make a fool of himself about some girl employed in a secret outfit there.’

‘In what way?’

‘Took her out or something. She was absolutely notorious, it seems.’

‘What happened?’

‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ said Farebrother. ‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a woman who lowers herself in that sort of way. I’m afraid there are quite a few of them about in wartime.’

We had by now turned into Whitehall. Farebrother suddenly raised his arm in a stiff salute. I did the same, taking my time from him, though not immediately conscious of whom we were both saluting. Then I quickly apprehended that Farebrother was paying tribute to the Cenotaph, which we were at that moment passing. The preoccupations of wartime often resulted in this formality — always rather an uncomfortable and precarious one — being allowed to pass unobserved. It was a typical mark of Farebrother’s innate regard for ceremoniousness in all its aspects that he brought out his salute as if on a parade ground march-past. However, at that moment, another — and certainly discordant — circumstance clouded the scene. Just as Farebrother had been the first to see and pay homage to the Cenotaph, he was undoubtedly the first of us also to appreciate the necessity of taking another decision, a quick one, in a similar field. This resolve also had important implications, though of a very different sort. The situation was posed by a couple walking briskly towards us from the direction of Trafalgar Square: a middle-aged civilian — almost certainly a Civil Servant of high standing — wearing a very old hat on the back of his head, beside him an officer in a full colonel’s red capband and tabs. Even at this distance the tabs could be seen to be imposed on one of the new ‘utility’ uniforms, service-dress tunics skimped at the pockets and elsewhere to save cloth. These innovations always gave the wearer, even if a thin man, the air of being too large for his clothes, and this officer, stoutish with spectacles, was bursting from them. I noticed the uniform before appreciating that here was Widmerpool ‘gone red’.

‘In life —’

Farebrother had just begun to speak. He broke off suddenly. The way in which he did this, obviously abandoning giving expression to some basic rule of human conduct, made me sure, reflecting on the incident afterwards, that he had seen Widmerpool first. There can also be no doubt that he was as ignorant as myself of his old enemy’s promotion. That must have been gazetted subsequent to the Cairo tour of duty. For a split second I had time to wonder whether Farebrother would accord Widmerpool as smart an acknowledgment or rank — after all, it was ‘the uniform’, even if only a ‘utility’ one — as he had rendered the Cenotaph. It should be explained perhaps that, although in theory majors and upwards had some claim to a salute from those of junior rank, in practice the only officers saluted by other officers in the street were those who wore red. I was therefore once more preparing to take my time from Farebrother, when he suddenly seized my arm. We were just passing ‘the Fortress’, Combined Operations Headquarters, then more or less underground, after the war covered by a building of many storeys. At first I thought he wanted to draw my attention to something happening on the other side of the road.

‘Nicholas?’

‘Sir?’

‘A moment ago I was telling you I don’t like to see a woman making herself cheap. Women’s lives should be beautiful, an inspiration. I thought of that the other night. I was taken to a film called The Song of Bernadette. Have you seen it?’

‘No, sir.’

He looked at me fixedly. He had put on his holy face, as was to be expected from the subject of the movie, and spoke the words in an equally appropriate tone.

‘It’s about Lourdes.’

I repeated that I had not seen the film.

‘You should, Nicholas. I don’t often get out in the evenings, much too much to do, but I think that night did me good. Made me a better man.’

I could not imagine what all this was leading up to.

‘You really think I ought to make an effort to go, sir?’

Farebrother did not answer. Instead, he gave another of his quick glances over the shoulder. For a moment I remained at a loss to know why The Song of Bernadette had so much impressed him that he felt a sudden need to speak of the film so dramatically. Then all at once I grasped that the menace of saluting Widmerpool no longer hung over us. Farebrother, with all his self-control in such matters, all the years he had schooled himself to accept the ways of those set in authority over him, had for one reason or another been unable to face that bitterness in my presence. Inner disciplines, respect for tradition, taste for formality, had none of them been sufficient. The incident showed Farebrother, too, had human weaknesses. Now, he seemed totally to have forgotten about Bernadette. We walked along in silence. Perhaps he was pondering the saintly life. We reached the gates of the Horse Guards. Farebrother paused. His gay blue eyes became a little sad. ‘Do your best to make your Colonel forgive me, Nicholas. You can tell him — without serious breach of security — that Szymanski’s already done a first-rate job in one quarter and likely to do as good a one in another. Do you ever see Prince Theodoric in these days? In my present job I no longer have grand contacts like that.’

I told him I had not seen Theodoric since The Bartered Bride. We went our separate ways.

That night in bed, reading Remembrance of Things Past, I thought again of Theodoric, on account of a passage describing the Princesse de Guermantes’ party:

‘The Ottoman Ambassadress, now bent on demonstrating to me not only her familiarity with the Royalties present, some of whom I knew our hostess had invited out of sheer kindness of heart and would never have been at home to them if the Prince of Wales or the Queen of Spain were in her drawing-room the afternoon they called, but also her mastery of current appointments under consideration at the Quai d’Orsay or Rue St. Dominique, disregarding my wish to cut short our conversation — additionally so because I saw Professor E— once more bearing down on us and feared the Ambassadress, whose complexion conveyed unmistakable signs of a recent bout of varicella, might be one of his patients — drew my attention to a young man wearing a cypripeden (the flower Bloch liked to call “sandal of foam-borne Aphrodite”) in the buttonhole of his dress coat, whose swarthy appearance required only an astrakhan cap and silver-hilted yataghan to complete evident affinities with the Balkan peninsula. This Apollo of the hospodars was talking vigorously to the Grand Duke Vladimir, who had moved away from the propinquity of the fountain and whose features now showed traces of uneasiness because he thought this distant relative, Prince Odoacer, for that was who I knew the young man of the orchid to be, sought his backing in connexion with a certain secret alliance predicted in Eastern Europe, material to the interests of Prince Odoacer’s country no less than the Muscovite Empire; support which the Grand Duke might be unwilling to afford, either on account of his kinsmen having compromised himself financially, through a childish ignorance of the Bourse, in connexion with a speculation involving Panama Canal shares (making things no better by offering to dispose “on the quiet” of a hunting scene by Wouwerman destined as a birthday present for his mistress), from which he had to be extracted by the good offices of that same Baron Manasch with whom Swann had once fought a duel; or, even more unjustly, because the Grand Duke had heard a rumour of the unfortunate reputation the young Prince had incurred for himself by the innocent employment as valet of a notorious youth whom I had more than once seen visiting Jupien’s shop, and, as I learnt much later, was known among his fellow inverts as La Gioconda. “I’m told Gogo — Prince Odoacer — has Dreyfusard leanings!” said the Ambassadress, assuming my ignorance of the Prince’s nickname as well as his openly expressed political sympathies, the momentary cruelty of her smile hinting at Janissary blood flowing in her veins. “Albeit a matter that does not concern a foreigner like myself,” she went on, “yet, if true that the name of Colonel de Froberville, whom I see standing over there, has been put forward as military attaché designate to the French Legation of Prince Odoacer’s country, the fact of such inclinations in one of its Royal House should be made known as soon as possible to any French officer likely to fill the post.” ’

This description of Prince Odoacer was of special interest because he was a relation — possibly great-uncle — of Theodoric’s. I thought about the party for a time, whether there had really been a Turkish Ambassadress, whom Proust found a great bore; then, like the Narrator himself in his childhood days, fell asleep early. This state, left undisturbed by the Warning, was brought to an end by rising hubbub outside. A very noisy attack had started up. Some residents especially those inhabiting the upper storeys, preferred to descend to the ground floor or basement on these occasions. Rather from lethargy than an indifference to danger, I used in general to remain in my flat during raids, feeling that one’s nerve, certainly less steady than at an earlier stage of the war, was unlikely to be improved by exchanging conversational banalities with neighbours equally on edge.

From first beginnings, this particular raid made an unusually obnoxious din and continued to do so. While bombs and flak exploded at the present rate there was little hope of dropping off to sleep again. I lay in the dark, trying to will them to go home, one way, not often an effective one, of passing the time during raids. My interior counter-attack was not successful. An hour went by; then another; and another. So far from decreasing, the noise grew greater in volume. There was a suggestion of more or less regular bursts of detonation launched from the skies, orchestrated against the familiar rise and fall of gunfire. It must have been about two or three in the morning, when, rather illogically, I decided to go downstairs. A move in that direction at least offered something to do. Besides, I could feel myself growing increasingly jumpy. The ground floor at this hour was at worst likely to provide, if nothing else, a certain anthropological interest. The occasion was one for the merest essentials of uniform, pockets filled with stuff from which one did not want to be separated, should damage occur in the room while away. I took a helmet as a matter of principle.

On one of the walls of the lift, incised with a sharp instrument (similar to that used years before to outline the caricature of Widmerpool in the cabinet at La Grenadière), someone quite recently — perhaps that very night — had etched at eye-level, in lower case letters suggesting an E. E. Cummings poem, a brief cogent observation about the manageress, one likely to prove ineradicable as long as the life itself remained in existence, for no paint could have obscured it:

old bitch wartstone

Quite a few people were below, strolling about talking, or sitting on the benches of the hall. No doubt others were in the basement, a region into which I had never penetrated, where there was said to be some sort of ‘shelter’. This crowd was in a perpetual state of change: some, like myself, deciding they needed a spell out of bed; others, too tired or bored to stay longer chatting in the hall, retiring to the basement or simply returning to their own flats. Clanwaert, smoking a cigarette, his hands in the pockets of a rather smart green silk dressing-gown, was present. Living on the ground floor anyway, he had not bothered to dress.

‘This raid seems to be going on a long time.’

‘Of course it is, my friend. We are getting the famous Secret Weapon we have heard so much about.’

‘You think so?’

‘Not a doubt of it. We knew it was coming in Eaton Square. Had you not been informed in Whitehall? The interesting thing will be to see how this fine Secret Weapon really turns out.’

It looked as if Clanwaert were right. He began to talk of the Congo army and the difficulties they had encountered in the Sudanese desert. After a while the subject exhausted itself.

‘Is there any point in not going back to bed?’

‘Hard to say. It may quiet down. I am in any case a bad sleeper. One becomes accustomed to doing without sleep, if one lives a long time in the tropics.’

He put out his cigarette and went to the front door to see how things were looking in the street. A girl with a helmet set sideways on her head, this headdress assumed for decorative effect rather than as a safety measure, came past. She wore an overcoat over trousers in the manner of Gypsy Jones and Audrey Maclintick. It was Pamela Flitton.

‘Hullo.’

She looked angry, as if suspecting an attempted pickup, then recognized me.

‘Hullo.’

She did not smile.

‘What a row.’

‘Isn’t it.’

‘Seen anything of Norah?’

‘Norah and I haven’t been speaking for ages. She’s too touchy. That’s one of the things wrong with Norah.’

‘Still doing your secret job?’

‘I’ve just come back from Cairo.’

‘By boat?’

‘I got flown back.’

‘You were lucky to get an air passage.*

‘I travelled on a general’s luggage.’

A youngish officer, in uniform but with unbuttoned tunic, came into the hall from the passage leading to the ground floor flats. He was small, powerfully built, with hair growing in regular waves of curls, like Jeavons’s, though fair in colour.

‘We seem to be out of fags,’ he said to Pamela.

‘Oh, Christ.’

He turned to me. I registered a crown on his shoulder, MC and bar above the pocket.

‘Haven’t got a cigarette by any chance, pal?’ he said. ‘We’ve smoked our last — why, Nicholas? I’ll be buggered. Caught you trying to pick up Pam. What cheek. How are you, old boy. Marvellous to meet again.’

‘Pamela and I know each other already. She used to drive me in her ATS days, not to mention my practically attending her christening.'

'So you live in this dump, too, and suffer from old Wartstone? If I wasn't leaving the place at any moment, I'd carve up that woman with a Commando knife in a way that would make Jack the Ripper look like the vicar cutting sandwiches for a school treat.'

I was not specially pleased to see Odo Stevens, whose conduct, personal and official, could not be approved for a variety of reasons, whatever distinction he might have earned in the field. At the same time, there was small point in attempting to take a high moral line, either about his affair with Priscilla or the part he had played over Szymanski. Priscilla and Chips Lovell were dead: Szymanski too, for all one knew by this time. Besides, to be pompous about such matters was even in a sense to play into the hands of Stevens, to give opportunity for him to justify himself in one of those emotional displays that are always part of the stock-in-trade of persons of his particular sort. With characteristic perspicuity, he guessed at once what was going through my mind. His look changed. It was immediately clear he was going to bring up the subject of Priscilla.

'It was simply awful,' he said. 'What happened after we last met. That bomb on the Madrid killing her husband- then the other where she was staying. I even thought of writing to you. Then I got mixed up with a lot of special duties.'

He had quite changed his tone of voice from the moment before, at the same time assuming an expression reminiscent of Farebrother's 'religious face', the same serious pained contraction of the features. I was determined to endure for as short a time as possible only what was absolutely unavoidable in the exhibition of self-confessed remorse Stevens was obviously proposing to mount for my benefit. He had been, I recalled, unnecessarily public in his carryings-on with Priscilla, had corroded what turned out to be Chips’ last year alive. That might be no very particular business of mine, but I had liked Chips, therefore preferred the circumstances should remain unresurrected. That was the long and the short of it.

‘Don’t let’s talk about it. What’s the good?’

Stevens was not to be silenced so easily.

‘She meant so much to me,’ he said.

‘Who did?’ asked Pamela.

‘Someone who was killed in an air-raid.’

He put considerable emotion into his voice when he said that. Perhaps Priscilla had, indeed, ‘meant a lot’ to him. I did not care. I saw no reason to be dragged in as a kind of prop to his self-esteem, or masochistic pleasure in lacking it. Besides, I wanted to get on to the Szymanski story.

‘You’re always telling me I mean more to you than any other girl has,’ said Pamela. ‘At least you do after a couple of drinks. You’ve the weakest head of any man I’ve ever met.’

She spoke in that low almost inaudible mutter employed by her most of the time. There was certainly a touch of Audrey Maclintick about her, at least enough to explain why Stevens and Mrs Maclintick had got on so comparatively well together that night in the Café Royal. On the other hand, this girl was not only much better looking, but also much tougher even than Mrs Maclintick. Pamela Flitton gave the impression of being thoroughly vicious, using the word not so much in the moral sense, but as one might speak of a horse — more specifically, a mare.

‘I don’t claim the capacity for liquor of some of your Slav friends,’ said Stevens laughing.

He sounded fairly well able to stand up to her. This seemed a suitable moment to change the subject.

‘You were in the news locally not so long ago — where I work, I mean — about one Szymanski.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re with the Poles, Nicholas?’

‘I’d left them by the time you got up to your tricks.’

Pamela showed interest at the name Szymanski.

‘I sent you a message,’ she said. ‘Did you get it?’

When she smiled and spoke directly like that, it was possible to guess at some of her powers should she decide to make a victim of a man.

‘I got it.’

‘Then you were in on the party?’ asked Stevens.

‘I saw some of the repercussions.’

‘God,’ he said. ‘That was a lark.’

‘Not for those engaged in normal liaison duties.’

One’s loyalties vary. At that moment I felt wholly on the side of law and order, if only to get some of my own back for his line of talk about the Lovells.

‘Oh, bugger normal liaison duties. Even you must admit the operation was beautifully executed. Look here …’

He took my arm, and, leaving Pamela sitting sullenly by herself on a bench, walked me away to a deserted corner of the hall. When we reached there, he lowered his voice.

‘I’m due for a job in the near future not entirely unconnected with Szymanski himself.’

‘Housebreaking?’

Stevens yelled with laughter.

‘That’ll be the least of our crimes, I’d imagine,’ he said. ‘That is, the least of his — which might easily not stop at manslaughter, I should guess. Actually, we’re doing quite different jobs, but more or less in the same place.’

‘Presumably it’s a secret where you’re conducting these activities.’

‘My present situation is being on twenty-four call to Cairo. I’ll release something to you, as an old pal, in addition to that. The plot’s not unconnected with one of Pam’s conquests. Rather a grand one.’

‘You remind me of the man who used to introduce his wife as ancienne maîtresse de Lord Byron.’’

‘This is classier than a lord — besides Pam and I aren’t married yet.’

‘You don’t have to spell the name out.’

I was not impressed by Stevens’s regard for ‘security,’ always a risk in the hands of the vain. All the same, not much damage would be done by my knowing that at last some sort of assistance was to be given to the Resistance in Prince Theodoric’s country; and that Stevens and Szymanski were involved. That was certainly interesting.

‘I’ll be playing for the village boys,’ he said. ‘Rather than the team the squire is fielding.’

‘A tricky situation, I should imagine.’

‘You bet.’

‘I saw Sunny Farebrother yesterday, who took the rap in the Szymanski business.’

‘Cunning old bugger. They pushed him off to a training centre for a bit, but I bet he’s back on something good.’

‘He thinks so. Was Szymanski a boy-friend of Pamela’s?’

I thought I had a right to ask that question after the way Stevens had talked. For once he seemed a shade put out.

‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘Even if there’s still a Szymanski. They may have infiltrated him already and he may have been picked up. I hope not. The great thing is he knows the country like the back of his hand. What are you doing yourself, old boy?’

The change of mood, sudden fear for Szymanski — and by implication for himself — was characteristic. I told him about my job, also explaining how I knew Pamela.

‘Won’t she be cross if we leave her much longer?’

‘She’s cross all the time. Bloody cross. Chronic state, thrives on it. Her chief charm. Makes her wonderful in bed. That is, if you like temper.’

Emphasis expressed as to the high degree of sexual pleasure to be derived from a given person is, for one reason or another, always to be accepted with a certain amount of suspicion, so far as the speaker is concerned, especially if referring to a current situation. Stevens sounded as if he might be bolstering himself up in making the last statement.

‘She’s the hell of a girl,’ he said.

I wondered whether he had run across Pamela with Szymanski in the first instance. In any case, people like that gravitate towards each other at all times, almost more in war than in peace, since war — though perhaps in a more limited sense than might be supposed — offers obvious opportunities for certain sorts of adventure. Stevens, whose self- satisfaction had if anything increased, seemed to have no illusions about Pamela’s temperament. He accepted that she was a woman whose sexual disposition was vested in rage and perversity. In fact, if he were to be believed, those were the very qualities he had set out to find. We returned to where she was sitting.

‘Where the hell have you two been?’

She spoke through her teeth. There was still a lot of noise going on outside. We all three sat on the bench together. Clanwaert strolled past. He glanced in our direction, slightly inclining his head towards Pamela, who took no perceptible notice of him. He had evidently decided to return to bed and said goodnight to me.

‘That was the Belgian officer who gave me your message about Szymanski.’

‘Ask him if he’s got a cigarette.’

I called after Clanwaert. He turned back and came towards us. I enquired if he had a cigarette for Pamela, saying I believed they had met. He took a case from his dressing-gown pocket and handed it round. Pamela took one, looking away as she did so. Clanwaert showed himself perfectly at ease under this chilly treatment.

‘We could have met at the Belgian Institute,’ he said. ‘Was it with one of our artillery officers — Wauthier or perhaps Ruys?’

‘Perhaps it was,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the smoke.’

Clanwaert smiled and retired.

‘One of your braves Belges?’ asked Stevens. ‘Since you’ve lived here some time, you’ve probably come across the old girl standing by the door. She’s called Mrs Erdleigh. The other evening, I saw her burning something on the roof. I thought she was sending up smoke signals to the enemy — it wasn’t yet dark — but it turned out to be just incense, which seems to play some part in her daily life, as she’s a witch. We got on rather well. In the end she told my fortune and said I was going to have all sorts of adventures and get a lot of nice presents from women.’

‘Not me,’ said Pamela. ‘You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to be kept.’

Mrs Erdleigh was, indeed, looking out into the street through the glass doors at the other end of the hall. Her age as indeterminate as ever from her outward appearance, she was smiling slightly to herself. This was the first time I had seen her since living in the flats. A helmet was set very squarely on her head and she wore a long coat or robe, a pushteen or similar garment, woolly inside, skin without, the exterior ornamented with scrolls and patterns of Oriental design in bright colours. She was carrying a small black box under one arm. Now she set this on the ground and removed the helmet, revealing a coiffure of grey-blue curls that had been pressed down by the weight of the tin hat. These she ruffled with her fingers. Then she took the helmet between her hands, and, as if in deep thought, raised it like a basin or sacrificial vessel, a piece of temple equipment for sacred rites. Her quiet smile suggested she was rather enjoying the raid than otherwise. Nothing much seemed to be happening outside, though the row continued unabated.

‘She was mixed up with an uncle of mine — in fact he left her his money, such as it was.’

The bequest had caused great annoyance in the family, almost as much on account of Uncle Giles turning out to own a few thousands, as because of the alienation of the capital sum.

‘Must have made it quite lately as the result of some very risky speculation,’ my father had said at the time. ‘Never thought Giles had a penny to bless himself with.’

‘Let’s go over and talk to her,’ said Stevens. ‘She’s good value.’

He had that taste, peculiar to certain egotists, to collect together close round him everyone he might happen to know in any given area.

‘Oh, God,’ said Pamela. ‘Need we? I suppose she flattered you.’

‘Go on, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘Ask Mrs Erdleigh to join us, if you know her as well.’

I agreed to do this, more from liking the idea of meeting Mrs Erdleigh again than to please Stevens. As I approached, she herself turned towards me.

‘I wondered when you would speak,’ she said gently.

‘You’d already seen me in the hall?’

‘Often in this building. But we must not anticipate our destinies. The meeting had to wait until tonight.’

From the way she spoke, it was to be assumed that she was so far above material contacts that the impetus of our reunion must necessarily come from myself. The magical course of events would no doubt have been damaged had she taken the initiative and addressed me first.

‘What a night.’

‘I could not sleep,’ she said, as if that were a matter for surprise. ‘The omens have not been good for some days past, though in general better than for many months. I can see at once from your face that you are well situated. The Centaur is friend to strangers and exiles. His arrow defends them.’

‘Come and talk to us. There’s a young man called Odo Stevens, who has done rather well as a soldier — been very brave, I mean — and a girl called Pamela Flitton. He says he knows you already.’

‘I met your young army friend on the roof when I was engaged in certain required exsufflations. He is under Aries, like your poor uncle, but this young man has the Ram in far, far better aspect, the powerful rays of Mars favouring him rather than the reverse, as they might some — your uncle, for example.’

I told her I had seen the Ufford — where we had first met — now in such changed circumstances. She was not at all interested, continuing to speak of Stevens, who had evidently made an impression on her.

‘It is the planet Mars that connects him with that very beautiful young woman,’ she said. ‘The girl herself is under Scorpio — like that unhappy Miss Wartstone, so persecuted by Saturn — and possesses many of the scorpion’s cruellest traits. He told me much about her when we talked on the roof. I fear she loves disaster and death — but he will escape her, although not without an appetite for death himself.’

Mrs Erdleigh smiled again, as if she appreciated, even to some extent approved, this taste for death in both of them.

‘Lead me to your friends,’ she said. ‘I am particularly interested in the girl, whom I have not yet met.’

She picked up the black box, which presumably contained spells and jewellery, carrying the helmet in her other band. We returned to Stevens and Pamela. They were having words about a bar of chocolate, produced from somewhere and alleged to have been unfairly divided. Stevens jumped up and seized Mrs Erdleigh by the hand. It looked as if he were going to kiss her, but he stopped short of that. Pamela put on the helmet that had been lying beside her on the seat. This was evidently a conscious gesture of hostility.

‘This is Miss Flitton,’ said Stevens.

Pamela made one of her characteristically discouraging acknowledgments of this introduction. I was curious to see whether Mrs Erdleigh would exercise over her the same calming influence she had once exerted on Mona, Peter Templer’s first wife, when they had met. Mona, certainly a far less formidable personality than Pamela, had been in a thoroughly bad mood that day — without the excuse of an air-raid being in progress — yet she had been almost immediately tranquillized by Mrs Erdleigh’s restorative mixture of flattery, firmness and occultism. For all one knew, air-raids might positively increase Mrs Erdleigh’s powers. She took Pamela’s hand. Pamela withdrew it at once.

‘I’m going to have a walk outside,’ she said. ‘See what’s happening.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Stevens. ‘You’re not allowed to wander about during raids, especially one like this.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Erdleigh, ‘I well discern in your heart that need for bitter things that knows no assuagement, those yearnings for secrecy and tears that pursue without end, wherever you seek to fly them. No harm will come to you, even on this demonic night, that I can tell you. Nevertheless stay for a minute and talk with me. Death, it is true, surrounds your nativity, even though you yourself are not personally threatened — none of us is tonight. There are things I would like to ask you. The dark unfathomable lake over which you glide — you are under a watery sign and yet a fixed one — is sometimes dull and stagnant, sometimes, as now, angry and disturbed.’

Pamela was certainly taken aback by this confident approach, so practised, so self-assured, the tone at once sinister and adulatory, but she did not immediately capitulate, as Mona had done. Instead, she temporized.

‘How do you know about me?’ she asked. ‘Know when I was born, I mean.’

She spoke in a voice of great discontent and truculence. Mrs Erdleigh indicated that Stevens had been her informant. Pamela looked more furious than ever.

‘What does he know about me?’

‘What do most people know about any of their fellows?’ said Mrs Erdleigh quietly. ‘Little enough. Only those know, who are aware what is to be revealed. He may have betrayed the day of your birth. I do not remember. The rest I can tell from your beautiful face, my dear. You will not mind if I say that your eyes have something in them of the divine serpent that tempted Eve herself.’

It was impossible not to admire the method of attack. Stevens spoiled its delicacy by blundering in.

‘Tell Pam’s fortune,’ he said. ‘She’d love it — and you were wonderful with me.’

‘Why should I want my fortune told? Haven’t I just said I’m going to have a look round outside?’

‘Wiser not, my dear,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘As I said before, my calculations tell me that we are perfectly safe if we remain here, but one cannot always foresee what may happen to those who ride in the face of destiny. Why not let me look at your hand? It will pass the time.’

‘If you really want to. I don’t expect it’s very interesting.’

I think Mrs Erdleigh was not used to being treated in such an ungracious manner. She did not show this in the smallest degree, but what she went on to say later could be attributed to a well controlled sense of pique. Perhaps that was why she insisted that Pamela’s hand should be read by her.

‘No human life is uninteresting.’

‘Have a look then — but there’s not much light here.*

‘I have my torch.’

Pamela held out her palm. She was perhaps, in fact, more satisfied than the reverse at finding opposition to her objections overruled. It was likely she would derive at least some gratification in the anodyne process. However farouche, she could scarcely be so entirely different from the rest of the world. On the other hand, some instinct may have warned her against Mrs Erdleigh, capable of operating at as disturbing a level as herself. Mrs Erdleigh examined the lines.

‘I would prefer the cards,’ she said. ‘I have them with me in my box, of course, but this place is really too inconvenient … As I guessed, the Mount of Venus highly developed … and her Girdle … You must be careful, my dear … There are things here that surprise even me … les tentations lubriques sont bien prononcées … You have found plenty of people to love you … but no marriage at present … no… but perhaps in about a year…’

‘Who’s it going to be?’ asked Stevens. ‘What sort of chap?’

‘Mind your own business,’ said Pamela.

‘Perhaps it is my business.’

‘Why should it be?’

‘A man a little older than yourself,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘A man in a good position.’

‘Pamela’s mad about the aged,’ said Stevens. ‘The balder the better.’

‘I see this man as a jealous husband,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘This older man I spoke of … but … as I said before, my dear, you must take good care … You are not always well governed in yourself … your palm makes me think of that passage in Desbarrolles, the terrible words of which always haunt my mind when I see their marks in a hand shown to me … la débauche, l’effronterie, la licence, le dévergondage, la coquetterie, la vanité, l’esprit léger, l’inconstance, la paresse … those are some of the things in your nature you must guard against, my dear.’

Whether or not this catalogue of human frailties was produced mainly in revenge for Pamela’s earlier petulance was hard to know. Perhaps not at all. Mrs Erdleigh was probably speaking no more than the truth, voicing an analysis that did not require much occult skill to arrive at. In any case, she never minded what she said to anyone. Whatever her intention, the words had an immediate effect on Pamela herself, who snatched her hand away with a burst of furious laughter. It was the first time I had heard her laugh.

‘That’s enough to get on with,’ she said. ‘Now I’m going for my walk.’

She made a move towards the door. Stevens caught her arm.

‘I say you’re not going.’

She pulled herself away. There was an instant’s pause while they faced each other. Then she brought up her arm and gave him a backhand slap in the face, quite a hard one, using the knuckles.

‘You don’t think I’m going to take orders from a heel like you, do you?’ she said. ‘You’re pathetic as a lover. No good at all. You ought to see a doctor.’

She walked quickly through the glass door of the entrance hall, and, making the concession of putting on her helmet once more, disappeared into the street. Stevens, knocked out for a second or two by the strength of the blow, made no effort to follow. He rubbed his face, but did not seem particularly surprised nor put out by this violence of treatment. Probably he was used to assaults from Pamela. Possibly such incidents were even fairly normal in his relationships with women. There was, indeed, some slight parallel to the moment when Priscilla had suddenly left him in the Cafe Royal, though events of that night, in some manner telepathically connecting those concerned, had been enough to upset the nerves of everyone present. We might be in the middle of a raid that never seemed to end, but at least personal contacts were less uncomfortable than on the earlier occasion. Mrs Erdleigh, too, accepted with remarkable composure the scene that had just taken place.

‘Little bitch,’ said Stevens. ‘Not the first time she has done that. Nothing I like less than being socked on the jaw. I thought she’d like to have her fortune told.’

He rubbed his face. Mrs Erdleigh smiled one of her slow, sweet, mysterious smiles.

‘You do not understand enough her type’s love of secrecy, her own unwillingness to give herself.’

‘I understand her unwillingness to give herself,’ said Stevens. ‘I’ve got hold of that one OK. In fact I’m quite an expert on the subject.’

‘To allow me to look longer at her palm would have been to betray too much,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I offered to make a reading only because you pressed me. I was not surprised by this result. All the same, you are right not to be unduly disturbed by her behaviour. In that way you show your own candour and courage. She will come to no harm. In any case, I do not see the two of you much longer together.’

‘Neither do I, if there are many more of these straight lefts.’

‘Besides, you are going overseas.’

‘Soon?’

‘Very soon.’

‘Shall I see things through?’

‘There will be danger, but you will survive.’

‘What about her. Will she start up with any more Royalties? Perhaps a king this time.’

He said this so seriously that I laughed. Mrs Erdleigh, on the other hand, accepted the question gravely.

‘I saw a crown not far away,’ she said. ‘Her fate lies along a strange road but not a royal one — whatever incident the crown revealed was very brief — but still it is the road of power.’

She picked up her black box again.

‘You’re going back to your room?’

‘As I said before, no danger threatens tonight, but I thoughtlessly allowed myself to run out of a little remedy I have long used against sleeplessness.’

She held out her hand. I took it. Mention of ‘little remedies’ called to mind Dr Trelawney. I asked if she ever saw him. She made a mysterious sign with her hand.

‘He passed over not long after your uncle. Being well instructed in such enlightenments, he knew his own time was appointed — in war conditions some of his innermost needs had become hard to satisfy — so he was ready. Quite ready.’

‘Where did he die?’

‘There is no death in Nature’ — she looked at me with her great misty eyes and I remembered Dr Trelawney himself using much the same words — ‘only transition, blending, synthesis, mutation. He has re-entered the Vortex of Becoming.’

‘I see.’

‘But to answer your question in merely terrestrial terms, he re-embarked on his new journey from the little hotel where we last met.’

‘And Albert — does he still manage the Bellevue?’

‘He too has gone forth in his cerements. His wife, so I bear, married again — a Pole invalided from the army. They keep a boarding-house together in Weston-super-Mare.’

‘Any last words of advice, Mrs Erdleigh?’ asked Stevens.

He treated her as if he were consulting the Oracle at Delphi.

‘Let the palimpsest of your mind absorb the words of Eliphas Levi — to know, to will, to dare, to be silent.’

‘Me, too?’ I asked.

‘Everyone.’

‘The last most of all?’

‘Some think so.’

She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.

‘I’m going to kip too,’ said Stevens. ‘No good wandering all over London on a night like this looking for Pam. She might be anywhere. She usually comes back all right after a tiff like this. Cheers her up. Well, I may or may not see you again, Nicholas. Never know when one may croak at this game.’

‘Good luck — and to Szymanski too, if you see him.’

The raid went on, but I managed to get some sleep before morning. When I woke up, it still continued, though in a more desultory manner. This was, indeed, the advent of the Secret Weapon, the inauguration of the V.1’s — the so-called ‘flying bombs’. They came over at intervals of about twenty minutes or half an hour, all that day and the following night. This attack continued until Monday, a weekend that happened to be my fortnightly leave; spent, as it turned out, on their direct line of route across the Channel on the way to London.

‘You see, my friend, I was right,’ said Clanwaert.

One of the consequences of the Normandy landings was that the Free French forces became, in due course, merged into their nation’s regular army. The British mission formerly in liaison with them was disbanded, a French military attaché in direct contact with Finn’s Section coming into being. Accordingly, an additional major was allotted to our establishment, a rank to which I was now promoted, sustaining (with a couple of captains to help) French, Belgians, Czechs and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. As the course of the war improved, work on the whole increased rather than diminished, so much so that I was unwillingly forced to refuse the offer of two Italian officers, sent over to make certain arrangements, whose problems, among others, included one set of regulations that forbade them in Great Britain to wear uniform; another that forbade them to wear civilian clothes. All routine work with the French was transacted with Kernével, first seen laughing with Masham about les votes hiérarchiques, just before my initial interview with Finn.

‘They’re sending a général de brigade from North Africa to take charge,’ said Finn. ‘A cavalryman called Philidor.’

Since time immemorial, Kernével, a Breton, like so many of the Free French, had worked at the military attaché’s office in London as chief clerk. By now he was a captain. At the moment of the fall of France, faced with the alternative of returning to his country or joining the Free French, he had at once decided to remain, his serial number in that organization — if not, like Abou Ben Adhem’s, leading all the rest — being very respectably high in order of acceptance. It was tempting to look for characteristics of my old Regiment in these specimens of Romano-Celtic stock emigrated to Gaul under pressure from Teutons, Scandinavians and non-Roman Celts.

‘I don’t think my mother could speak a word of French,’ said Kernével. ‘My father could — he spoke very good french — but I myself learnt the language as I learnt English.’

Under a severe, even priestly exterior, Kernével concealed a persuasive taste for conviviality — on the rare occasions when anything of the sort was to be enjoyed. From their earliest beginnings, the Free French possessed an advantage over the other Allies — and ourselves — of an issue of Algerian wine retailed at their canteens at a shilling a bottle. Everyone else, if lucky enough to find a bottle of Algerian, or any other wine, in a shop, had to pay nearly ten times that amount. So rare was wine, they were glad to give that, when available. This benefaction to the Free French, most acceptable to those in liaison with them, who sometimes lunched or dined at their messes, was no doubt owed to some figure in the higher echelons of our own army administration — almost certainly learned in an adventure story about the Foreign Legion — that French troops could only function on wine. In point of fact, so far as alcohol went, the Free French did not at all mind functioning on spirits, or drinks like Cap Corse, relatively exotic in England, of which they consumed a good deal. Their Headquarter mess in Pimlico was decorated with an enormous fresco, the subject of which I always forgot to enquire. Perhaps it was a Free French version of Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, brought up to date and depicting themselves as survivors from the wreck of German invasion.

They did not reject, as we sometimes did ourselves, Marshal Lyautey’s doctrine, quoted by Dicky Umfraville, that gaiety was the first essential in an officer, that some sort of light relief was required to get an army through a war. Perhaps, indeed, they too liberally interpreted that doctrine. If so, the red-tape they had to endure must have driven them to it; those terrible bordereaux — the very name recalling the Dreyfus case whenever they arrived — labyrinthine and ambiguous enough to extort admiration from a Diplock or even a Blackhead.

‘All is fixed for General Philidor’s interview?’ asked Kernével.

‘I shall be on duty myself.’

General Philidor, soon after his arrival in London, had to see a personage of very considerable importance, only a degree or so below the CIGS himself. It had taken a lot of arranging. Philidor was a lively little man with a permanently extinguished cigarette-end attached to his lower lip, which, under the peak of his general’s khaki kepi, gave his face the fierce intensity of a Paris taxi-driver. His rank was that, in practice, held by the commander of a Division. As a former Giraud officer, he was not necessarily an enthusiastic ‘Gaullist’. At our first meeting he had asked me how I liked being in liaison with the French, and, after speaking of the purely military aspects of the work, I had mentioned Algerian wine.

‘Believe me, mon commandant, before the ’14-’18 war many Frenchmen had never tasted wine.’

‘You surprise me, sir.’

‘It was conscription, serving in the army, that gave them the habit.’

‘It is a good one, sir.’

‘My father was a vigneron.’

‘Burgundy or Bordeaux, sir?’

‘At Chinon. You have heard of Rabelais, mon commandant?’

‘And drunk Chinon, sir — a faint taste of raspberries and to be served cold.’

‘The vineyard was not far from our cavalry school at Saumur, convenient when I was on, as you say, a course there.’

I told him about staying at La Grenadière, how the Leroys had a son instructing at Saumur in those days, but General Philidor did not remember him. It would have been a long shot had he done so. All the same, contacts had been satisfactory, so that by the time he turned up for his interview with the important officer already mentioned, there was no sense of undue formality.

Philidor started in Finn’s room, from where I conducted him to a general of highish status — to be regarded, for example, as distinctly pre-eminent to the one in charge of our own Directorate — who was to act as it were as mediator between Philidor and the all but supreme figure. This mediating general was a brusque officer, quickly mounting the rungs of a successful military career and rather given to snapping at his subordinates. After he and Philidor had exchanged conventional army courtesies, all three of us set off down the passage to the great man’s room. In the antechamber, the Personal Assistant indicated that his master was momentarily engaged. The British general, lacking small talk, drummed his heels awaiting the summons. I myself should remain in the ante-chamber during the interview. There was a few seconds delay. Then a most unfortunate thing happened. The general acting as midwife to the birth of the parley, misinterpreting a too welcoming gesture or change of facial expression on the part of the PA, guardian of the door, who had up to now been holding us in check, motioned General Philidor to follow him, and advanced boldly into the sanctuary. This reckless incursion produced a really alarming result. Somebody — if it were, indeed, a human being — let out a frightful roar. Whoever it was seemed to have lost all control of himself.

‘I thought I told you to wait outside — get out…’

From where our little group stood, it was not possible to peep within, but the volume of sound almost made one doubt human agency. Even the CIGS saying good-morning was nothing to it. This was the howl of an angry animal, consumed with rage or pain, probably a mixture of both. Considered merely as a rebuke, it would have struck an exceptionally peremptory note addressed to a lance-corporal.

‘Sorry, sir …’

Diminished greatness is always a painful spectacle. The humility expressed in those muttered words, uttered by so relatively exalted an officer, was disturbing to me. General Philidor, on the other hand, seemed to feel more detachment. Appreciative, like most Frenchmen, of situations to be associated with light comedy — not to say farce — he fixed me with his sharp little eyes, allowing them to glint slightly, though neither of us prejudiced the frontiers of discipline and rank by the smallest modification of expression. Nevertheless, entirely to avoid all danger of doing any such thing, I was forced to look away.

This incident provoked reflections later on the whole question of senior officers, their relations with each other and with those of subordinate rank. There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought. This was particularly applicable if one were out in the open with a general.

‘Come on, sir, you have the last sandwich,’ one would say, or ‘Sit on my mackintosh, sir, the grass is quite wet.’

Perhaps the cumulative effect of such treatment helped to account for the highly strung temperament so many generals developed. They needed constant looking after. I remembered despising Cocksidge, a horrible little captain at the Division Headquarters on which I had served, for behaving so obsequiously to his superiors in rank. In the end, it had to be admitted one was almost equally deferential, though one hoped less slavish.

‘They’re like a lot of ballerinas,’ agreed Pennistone. ‘Ballerinas in Borneo, because their behaviour, even as ballerinas, is quite remote from everyday life.’

Meanwhile the V.1’s continued to arrive sporadically, their launchers making a habit of sending three of them across Chelsea between seven and eight in the morning, usually a few minutes before one had decided to get up. They would roar towards the flats — so it always sounded — then switch off a second or two before you expected them to pass the window. One would roll over in bed and face the wall, in case the window came in at the explosion. In point of fact it never did. This would happen perhaps two or three times a week. Kucherman described himself as taking cover in just the same way.

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I must insist that things are taking a very interesting turn from the news in this morning’s papers.’

‘Insist’ was a favourite word of Kucherman’s. He used it without the absolute imperative the verb usually implied in English. He was referring to what afterwards became known as the Officers’ Plot, the action of the group of German generals and others who had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Hitler. They had failed, but even the fact that they had tried was encouraging.

‘Colonel von Stauffenberg sounds a brave man.’

‘I have met him several times,’ said Kucherman.

‘The right ideas?’

‘I should insist, certainly. We last talked at a shooting party in the Pripet marshes. Prince Theodoric was also staying in the house, as it happened. Our Polish host is now buried in a communal grave not so many miles north of our sport. The Prince is an exile whose chance of getting back to his own country looks very remote. I sit in Eaton Square wondering what is happening to my business affairs.’

‘You think Prince Theodoric’s situation is hopeless?’

‘Your people will have to make a decision soon between his Resistance elements and the Partisans.’

‘And we’ll come down on the side of the Partisans?’

‘That’s what it looks increasingly like.’

‘Not too pleasant an affair.’

‘There’s going to be a lot of unpleasantness before we’ve finished,’ said Kucherman. ‘Perhaps in my own country too.’

When we had done our business Kucherman came to the top of the stairs. The news had made him restless. Although quiet in manner, he gave the impression at the same time of having bottled up inside him immense reserves of nervous energy. It was, in any case, impossible not to feel excitement about the way events were moving.

‘This caving in of the German military caste — that is the significant thing. An attempt to assassinate the Head of the State on the part of a military group is a serious matter in any country — but in Germany how unthinkable. After all, the German army, its officer corps, is almost a family affair.’

Kucherman listened to this conventional enough summary of the situation, then suddenly became very serious.

‘That’s something you always exaggerate over here,’ he said.

‘What, Germans and the army? Surely there must be four or five hundred families, the members of which, whatever their individual potentialities, can only adopt the army as a career? Anyway that was true before the Treaty of Versailles. Where they might be successful, say at the Law or in business, they became soldiers. There was no question of the German army not getting the pick. At least that is what one was always told.’

Kucherman remained grave.

‘I don’t mean what you say isn’t true of the Germans,’ he said. ‘Of course it is — anyway up to a point, even in the last twenty years. What you underestimate is the same element in your own country.’

‘Not to any comparable degree.’

Kucherman remained obdurate.

‘I speak of something I have thought about and noticed,’ he said. ‘Your fathers were in the War Office too.’

For the moment — such are the pitfalls of an alien language and alien typifications, however familiar, for Kucherman spoke English and knew England well — it seemed he could only be facetious. I laughed, assuming he was teasing. He had not done so before, but so much optimism in the air may have made him feel a joke was required. He could scarcely be ignorant that nowhere — least of all within the professional army — was the phrase ‘War Office’ one for anything but raillery. Perhaps he had indeed known that and disregarded the fact, because a joke was certainly not intended. Kucherman was a man to make up his own mind. He did not take his ideas second-hand. Possibly, thinking it over that night on Fire Duty, there was even something to be said for his theory; only our incurable national levity made the remark at that moment sound satirical. A grain of truth, not necessarily derogatory, was to be traced in the opinion.

Fire Duty was something that came round at regular intervals. It meant hanging about the building all night, fully dressed, prepared to go on the roof, if the Warning sounded, with the object of extinguishing incendiary bombs that might fall there. These were said to be easily dealt with by use of sand and an instrument like a garden hoe, both of which were provided as equipment. On previous occasions, up to now, no raid had occurred, the hours passing not too unpleasantly with a book. Feeling I needed a change from the seventeenth century and Proust, I had brought Saltykov-Schredin’s The Golovlyov Family to read. A more trivial choice would have been humiliating, because Corporal Curtis turned out to be the accompanying NCO that night, and had Adam Bede under his arm. We made whatever mutual arrangements were required, then retired to our respective off-duty locations.

Towards midnight I was examining a collection of photographs taken on D-Day, which had not long before this replaced the two Isbister-like oil paintings. Why the pictures had been removed after being allowed to hang throughout the earlier years of the blitz was not apparent. Mime, now a captain, had just hurried past with his telegrams, when the Warning sounded. I found my way to the roof at the same moment as Corporal Curtis.

‘I understand, sir, that we ascend into one of the cupolas as an action station.’

‘We do.’

‘I thought I had better await your arrival and instructions, sir.’

‘Tell me the plot of Adam Bede as far as you’ve got. I’ve never read it.’

Like the muezzin going on duty, we climbed up a steep gangway of iron leading into one of the pepperpot domes constructed at each corner of the building. The particular dome allotted to us, the one nearest the river, was on the far side from that above our own room. The inside was on two floors, rather like an eccentric writer’s den for undisturbed work. Curtis and I proceeded to the upper level. These Edwardian belvederes, elaborately pillared and corniced like Temples of Love in a rococo garden, were not in themselves of exceptional beauty, and, when first erected, must have seemed obscure in functional purpose. Now, however, the architect’s design showed prophetic aptitude. The exigencies of war had transformed them into true gazebos, not, as it turned out, frequented to observe the ‘pleasing prospects’ with which such rotundas and follies were commonly associated, but at least to view their antithesis, ‘horridly gothick’ aspects of the heavens, lit up by fire and rent with thunder.

This extension of purpose was given effect a minute or two later. The moonlit night, now the melancholy strain of the sirens had died away, was surprisingly quiet. All Ack-Ack guns had been sent to the coast, for there was no point in shooting down V.1’s over built-up areas. They would come down anyway. Around lay the darkened city, a few solid masses, like the Donners-Brebner Building, recognisable on the far side of the twisting strip of water. Then three rapidly moving lights appeared in the southern sky, two more or less side by side, the third following a short way behind, as if lacking acceleration or will power to keep up. They travelled with that curious shuddering jerky movement characteristic of such bodies, a style of locomotion that seemed to suggest the engine was not working properly, might break down at any moment, which indeed it would. This impression that something was badly wrong with the internal machinery was increased by a shower of sparks emitted from the tail. A more exciting possibility was that dragons were flying through the air in a fabulous tale, and climbing into the turret with Curtis had been done in a dream. The raucous buzz could now be plainly heard. In imagination one smelt brimstone.

‘They appear to be heading a few degrees to our right, sir,’ said Curtis.

The first two cut-out. It was almost simultaneous. The noisy ticking of the third continued briefly, then also stopped abruptly. This interval between cutting-out and exploding always seemed interminable. At last it came; again two almost at once, the third a few seconds later. All three swooped to the ground, their flaming tails pointing upwards, certainly dragons now, darting earthward to consume their prey of maidens chained to rocks.

‘Southwark, do you think?’

‘Lambeth, sir — having regard to the incurvations of the river.’

‘Sweet Thames run softly …’

‘I was thinking the same, sir.’

‘I’m afraid they’ve caught it, whichever it was.’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

The All Clear sounded. We climbed down the iron gang, way.

‘Do you think that will be all for tonight?’

‘I hope so, sir. Just to carry the story on from where we were when we were interrupted: Hetty is then convicted of the murder of her child and transported.’

The rest of the tour of duty was quiet. I read The Golovlyov Family and thought what a pity Judushka had not lived at a more recent period and become a commissar. A month later the Allies entered Paris. George Tolland remained too ill to be moved from Cairo.