Dunster [181-066-4.8]

By:  John Mortimer

Category:  Fiction Mystery

Synopsis:

Dunster hero or villain?

This is the gripping story of two men, Dick Dunster and Philip
Progmire, locked in an adversarial friendship from their schooldays, at
Oxford and on into a harsh world and the shifting grounds of marriage.
It brings us the extraordinary figure of Dick Dunster who drives the
story to its climax.

Progmire's thespian longings, nurtured since he was a university actor
and through his liaison with the Ophelia to his Hamlet, are now
submerged in his work as an accountant with Megapolis Television plc.
But at least he sees actresses on the other side of the canteen, and he
pursues his taste for drama with the Muswell Hill Mummers.  Dunster is
also at Megapolis, engaged on a TV expose of war criminals, focusing on
a blown-up church and the massacre of the whole population of a small
town during the Italian campaign.

As Dunster researches his subject, the scene darkens and Progmire tries
to protect the victim of his old school friend's merciless inquisition.
Long after the cessation of hostilities, Dunster and Progmire are at
war.

John Mortimer gives us a remarkable cast of characters: the relentless
and single-minded Dunster; the ambivalent Progmire; Crispin Bellhanger,
the charming one-time war hero and chairman of Megapolis Television,
and his wife, Angie, star of many, forgotten British wartime movies;
the dubious Major Jaunty Blair and his daughter, Bethany, who once
played Ophelia at Oxford.

Culminating in a trial scene that only John Mortimer could write,
Dunster is a contemporary tale of friendship, love, honour and
betrayal.  It is a novel that compels one to take sides.  Should old
men be left with their secrets?  Will we be for Dunster or for
Progmire?

By the same author Charade Rumming Park Answer Yes or No Like Men
Betrayed Three Winters The Narrowing Stream Will Shakespeare (An
Entertainment) Paradise Postponed Summer's Lease Titmuss Regained
Rumpole of the Bailey The Trials of Rumpole Rumpole for the Defence
Rumpole's Return Rumpole and the Golden Thread Rumpole's Last Case
Rumpole and the Age of Miracles Rumpole a la Carte With Love and
Lizards (with Penelope Mortimer) Clinging to the Wreckage In Character
Character Parts A Voyage Round My Father, The Dock Brief, What Shall We
Tell Caroline?

The Wrong Side of the Park Two Stars for Comfort The Judge
Collaborators Edwin, Bermondsey, Marble Arch, Fear of Heaven, Prince of
Darkness The Captain ofKopenick (trans.) Three Boulevard Farces
(trans.) Cat among the Pigeons (trans.) Die Fledermaus (trans.) Famous
Trials (ed.)

JOHN MORTIMER

DUNSTER

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, ij Wrights Lane,
London W8 sTZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc."  375 Hudson Street, New
York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Canada MV4 381 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published 1992 13579 10 8641
Copyright (c) Advanpress Ltd, 1992 The moral right of the author has
been asserted Set in 11/14 pt Sabon Printed in England by Clays Ltd,
St.  Ives plc All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without
the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library ISBN 0-670-84059-9

For Penny

I am greatly indebted to Eric Morris, who told me about the SAS
activities in the Italian mountains during the last war.  He also
traced the probable wartime histories of two old soldiers.  These
characters are, however, entirely fictional, as is the small town of
Pomeriggio and the events that are described as having occurred
there.

WHO IS THIS FELLOW DUNSTER?

So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of
nature in them, As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, Since
nature cannot choose his origin Carrying, I say, the stamp of one
defect, Being nature's livery, or fortune's star, His virtues else, be
they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the
general censure take corruption From that particular fault.  The dram
of evil Doth all the noble substance of a doubt, To his own scandal
Hamlet Shakespeare

Chapter One

I worry a good deal.  That's my nature.  Sometimes I tell myself that I
have nothing to worry about, and then I worry about that too.  At very
rare moments, when I'm not actively worrying about Natasha, my
daughter, or the overdraft, or the VAT man, or the next board meeting,
or whether I'll get the part of Trigorin in the Mummers' production of
The Seagull, or whether, if I did get it, I'd make a proper cock-up of
it and get a filthy notice in the Muswell Hill Advertiser, or the
strange, hysterical whining noise, much like an elderly person in pain,
that the Volvo is making when I decelerate on the rare occasions when
I'm worrying about none of these things I start to worry about global
warming or the future of the Russian economy.  Then I take a poor view
of myself because global warming and Russia are things I can do
absolutely nothing about, so I lose patience with myself for wasting
time worrying about them, and that makes me extremely worried.

I started early that morning because I was going to drop Natasha at her
tutorial college in Highgate on my way to the Isle of Dogs.  I always
feel at my best first thing, as though the day is going to pass by
without any real cause for alarm.  The first cup of tea is drunk in
almost complete calm, but by the time I get out to the car I usually
manage to think of something more or less appalling with which to
become obsessed.

"Put your foot down, Dad," Tash said.

"I told you.  I wanted to be at the Tute really early."

I didn't tell her I'd been waiting for her for a quarter of an hour,
from a now distant moment when the world seemed comparatively
untroubled.  Instead I turned out, as unobtrusively as possible, into
the traffic of Muswell Hill.  My daughter has two expressions, a rare
smile and the more frequent scowl of a particularly stroppy and
put-upon villein about to start the Peasants' Revolt.  At that time of
the day she wasn't smiling.

"How's college?"  I tried asking her brightly.

"All right, I suppose."

"And how's George?"

"Pretty ghastly."

"I thought he was meant to be your boyfriend?"

"So he is.  But honestly, Dad, he's so servile!  He keeps asking what
I'd like or what he can do for me.  I told him he sounds like an
airline hostess.  I do really need someone who's going to represent a
bit of a challenge."

I slowed down in Muswell Road to avoid a swarm of killer cyclists,
wearing dark glasses and those sort of gas masks which make you think
that chemical warfare has broken out.  Their bright yellow,
walnut-shaped crash helmets were pulled down over their foreheads and,
as they crouched low over the handlebars, their bottoms, in black Lycra
shorts, rose into the air like gigantic squash balls.

"I really feel I can do without people who represent a challenge," I
told Tash.

"I've had enough challenges to last a lifetime."

"I know, Dad.  You would say that."

"Why would I?"

"Well, let's face it.  You are a bit of a moral coward, aren't you?"

I looked at her sideways.  She had the strawberry hair, wide eyes and
pale beauty of her mother.  I had changed her nappies and fed her with
tins of spinach which she blew back at me in a soggy, green cloud from
her high chair.  I had been the first to tell her about cavemen and
Queen Elizabeth and Vikings and Malvolio and The Merchant of Venice,
and here she was, at the age of seventeen, passing judgement on me.
Without mercy.

"That's a little bit unfair."  A kamikaze cyclist, a girl in a chintz
blouse and knee-length, green phosphorescent socks to go with her
shorts, was bearing down on me, her gas mask lowered.  I swerved to
avoid her, like a matador in the path of a charging bull.

"Oh, I've got used to you being a moral coward.  It's just you, isn't
it?  Like the side parting, and the Y-fronts, and the Bob Dylan
records.  Anyway, why does this car squeal when it goes round
corners?"

"Tash," I said to change the subject, 'they may be going to offer me
Trigorin.  In The Seagull."

"I know what Tngorin's in."  She thought the matter over and said, "I
don't think you'd be right for the part."

"Why?  Don't you think I'm old enough?"

"You're not a writer.  Trigorin was a writer."

"Natasha.  I hadn't killed my uncle when I did Hamlet all those years
ago.  I wasn't even suffering from hereditary syphilis when I made what
I believe to have been a reasonable shot at Ghosts at Oxford.  I do
have some vague idea of what acting's all about..  ."

"It's not just that you're not a writer.  You're nothing like a writer,
you're an accountant."

My daughter has a remarkable talent for hitting you exactly where it
hurts most.

The offices of Megapolis Television plc occupy what I believe to be an
unnecessarily large area on the Isle of Dogs.  We no longer own
Megapolis Studios near Slough, that grim area which was once the
Hollywood of Britain, as most of our programmes are farmed out to
independent producers.  However, I regard my work as a branch, even
though remote, of show business.  Producers and directors often meet in
our canteen, having called in to ask for Megapolis's money, and I
sometimes catch sight of actresses who are up for a part there.  I
usually recognize them, remember having seen them,

and make some famous remark like "You were absolutely terrific in
Social Workers."  I'm afraid that's the Muswell Hill Mummer coming out
in me.  They look mystified and wonder if I'm someone important on the
production side.  But, as Natasha said, I'm in accounts.  A talent for
mathematics, a certain adroitness with figures, an ability to read a
balance sheet and uncover its hidden meaning, are among the
disadvantages I was born with.  Without my childhood facility for doing
sums I might have been arriving at Megapolis up for the part of some
decent and long-suffering father falsely accused of child abuse in
Social Workers, or even have become a director in an unstructured suit
and Raybans, who would sit romancing his PA and drinking decaff in the
corner of our canteen.

Well, as I say, I was driving through that huge, messy development
which was to be the triumphant creation of the Big Bang of British
prosperity in the last decade, and now looked half-built,
half-abandoned and prematurely depressed.  Many of the office blocks
were unused.  In the apartments with views of the river, designed for
occupation by double income co-mortgagees on a permanent curve of
upward mobility, attractive waxwork dummies, young stockbrokers and
commodity dealers, had been set in the windows to make passers-by
believe that these desirable residences were greatly in demand and
should be snapped up while stocks lasted.  This device appealed to my
sense of theatre.  I admired the artificial tenants each morning as I
drove past them and respected the estate agents for a rare display of
imagination.  All the same, the waxworks were a sure sign of the
financial desperation which infected England during those uncertain
times.  Even in the balance sheets, which had much of the charm of
works of fiction, Megapolis profits were down around 2.5 per cent.

I parked the Volvo in the space with my name on it, a privilege I had
enjoyed ever since I became the personal accountant working directly to
the chairman.  Sir Crispin

Bellhanger, KCB, DSO, MC and so on, despite the handles to his name,
was the most democratic of bosses.  He had his lunch in the canteen
every day with his coat off, exposing his bright blue braces and white
shirt.  He carried his tray and sat wherever there was a space
available, beside a flurried typist, a visiting actress or the sullen
oberfrihrer of the parking lot.  No one, in his presence, remained
tongue-tied for long.  Everyone, for weeks afterwards, started
sentences with "As Cris said to me the other day' or "Cris was only
just telling me up in the canteen."  Everyone called him Cris, not
because he had issued any sort of memo on the subject, that wouldn't
have been his style at all, but because we knew that was what he wanted
and most of us were flattered to oblige him.  From all this, you may
have gathered that working for Cris was one of the pluses, together
with a somewhat remote association with the performing arts, of life at
Megapolis Telly.

Our office block, built when the advertising revenue was at its height,
had the fashionable look of an X-ray.  Its bones, guts and arteries
were on display to the outside world.  Huge conduit pipes decorated the
fafade and the lifts, all glass, crawled up the building like
glow-worms in the dark.  I have no head for heights and as I went up to
the top floor I paid careful attention to my feet.  Anyway, I didn't
have much time to admire the view.  Waiting for Tash and taking her to
college had made me almost half an hour late and I'd have to hurry to
get everything ready for the board meeting.

"If I could waste a minute or two of the Board's valuable time to make
an interjection, which I'm sure you will all find laughably inept ... I
mean, I know you, Chairman, will shoot me down in flames immediately.
But all the same, one does speak, as an inhabitant of the real,
sometimes uncomfortably real, world of men, women and money, with one
eye on the balance sheet and one ear to the ground."

"That must make you a bit of a contortionist, Sydney."  I

was seated next to Cris and his mutter was meant for me alone.

"I'm sorry, Chairman' Sydney Pollitter, head of the firm of City
accountants Pollitter, Michaelson 8c Spratling, was giving his usual
amateurish performance of humility.  He was one of the unhappy few who
refused to call Crispin Bellhanger, Cris and the most endlessly vocal
member of the Board.  He had long-lobed ears, which he tugged
affectionately as he talked, and he wore, on the end of his nose, gold
half-glasses.  With a thatch of greying brown hair and a tendency to
snuffle he looked at times like some cartoon animal, Mr.  Anteater,
perhaps, dressed anthropomorphic ally in a three-piece suit.  Unlike
Cris, he never took off his jacket at meetings but kept it neatly
buttoned.  Often his lengthy, apologetic protests were about Megapolis
programmes which he had found alarmingly erotic.  'Not that I mind for
myself, of course.  After a lifetime spent on the City's golden mile
one becomes used, unhappily, to hear of the sins of the flesh in all
their, to coin a phrase, Chairman, which you may find inappropriately
flippant,..  ."

"Good God.  Is he going to make the joke?"  Cris would mutter, his eyes
fixed on the huge, operating theatre lights which hung over the black
marble slab that formed our boardroom table.

'..  . In all their 57 varieties!"  Sydney Pollitter delivered his
punchline into a silence only broken by the eager laughter of the
managing director, who had heard it all before but who was at pains to
treat Sydney and Cris, who never agreed about anything, with equal
respect.

"It's not I who am distressed, Chairman.  But it's the average
housewife in Bexleyheath I'm concerned about.  Does she really want to
be treated to a view of the naked buttocks of some long-haired actor as
he dives into bed with yet another promiscuous social worker?"

That day, however, it was not sex that was uppermost in the Pollitter
mind.  It was war.  After another endless apology for wasting the time
of the Board on a trifling matter, which we might well, with our
superior knowledge of the technicalities of programming and audience
research, dismiss as of quite exaggerated importance, he suddenly said,
"Isn't it the duty of all of us not to do anything to undermine the
morale of our young men as they go into battle in a distant land?  I
merely ask the question, Chairman, so that you may shoot me down."

"I don't want to shoot you down, Sydney.  I don't want to shoot anybody
down.  I've seen quite enough shooting down to last a lifetime."

"I'm sure you have, Chairman.  We all know your war record is
impeccable.  That goes without saying.  And I'm sure everyone here will
rebuke me for wasting the Board's precious time by repeating it."

"I don't really think a war record' Cris was smiling with more than his
usual charm 'is a thing for anyone to be proud of, exactly."

"You say that, Chairman, of course.  We all hear you say it and we all
have the greatest respect for your modesty.  But if I may just waste a
further moment of your time, and I speak as one who served his country
as a national serviceman, albeit in a clerical capacity."

"Pay Corps' Cris wrote on his doodled-on copy of the minutes and nudged
it in my direction.

"I am just anxious, and you will no doubt tell me at once that I am
unnecessarily anxious, that an intended programme suggesting that our
own record in time of war may not have been, let us say, beyond
criticism is not the sort of thing we should allow to creep into the
schedules at this particular moment in our island story."

"No longer an island.  Since the Channel tunnel," Charles Glasscock,
partner in a firm of solicitors and the latest addition to the Board,
piped up and was immediately ignored.

"I mean, of course, War Crimes.  Now let others speak.  You must all be
heartily sick of the sound of my voice.  No.  I mean that in all
sincerity."  At which Sydney Pollitter closed his eyes and appeared to
compose himself for sleep.

Gary Penrose, for the management, did his best to explain the
situation.

"War Crimes.  We're commissioning it from Streetwise.  We see it as a
late night show.  Around eleven o'clock.  Certainly when the kids have
been put down for the night.  It's going to take the place of something
like Great Hotels of the World:

"It's quite far in the future, as I understand it," Cris said.

"This war, if there is a war, will no doubt be over.  Now, if we could
move on to the financial report.  Philip ..."  He looked hopefully at
me, but his smile faded as Sydney Pollitter stirred, opened his eyes
and started up his engines with another firm pull at his ear lobe.

"May I, at the risk of being howled down by the rest of you, who no
doubt have far more important things to talk about, just say that I
think Great Hotels of the World an absolutely super programme.  I mean,
all sorts of perfectly ordinary, decent people, who could never hope to
go to the Peninsular in Hong Kong, for instance, get a chance to see
what a really luxurious hotel looks like."

"I've been to the Peninsular in Hong Kong' The newest arrival on the
Board was clearly going to be a chatterer.  Cris returned to a close
study of the ceiling as Sydney Pollitter carried on.

"That seems to me to be exactly the sort of thing we should be doing.
Bringing glamour and excitement to the ordinary housewife in, let's say
for the sake of argument, Bexleyheath.  But when I hear talk of a
series apparently designed to show that all sides in a war can behave
equally badly, then I wonder, in my probably quite uninformed and
extremely naive way, if that's exactly the sort of thing we should be
concentrating on.  Particularly in times of National Emergency."

"I think Philip's going to take us through the financial report,
Sydney."

Pollitter threw up both hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender.

"I am rebuked, Chairman.  I am courteously but fairly rebuked.  Of
course the financial report is far more

important.  But can I just leave the thought in your mind.  For you to
dismiss as utter nonsense, of course.  If you decide so to do."

"Bloody marvelous place, that Peninsular Hotel," Glasscock told us.

"Soon as you go into your room a little old Chinese chap turns up with
a trolley and offers you the choice of about thirty varieties of soap:
Guerlain, Roger & Gallet, Chanel.  My lady simply couldn't believe
it."

"Please, Philip' the moment had come for Cris to take over command and
he did with authority 'the financial report.  If you please."

I started to go through the figures which I knew by heart and the board
members of Megapolis did their best to look as if they understood
them.

Up till then the meeting had followed its usual pattern; a boring
formality in the work of the company.  The hint of troubles to come,
the cloud no larger than a man's hand, appeared when Cris asked me to
stay behind for a moment.

"Sid Vicious," he said, 'was especially unbearable this morning."  I
was surprised that Cris, well over seventy and only staying on by
special dispensation of the Board, whose pop musical experience might
have been expected to stop short at Cliff Richard, should have heard of
anything like the Sex Pistols.  But his knowledge of many matters was
unexpected.

"If only he'd stop apologizing," I agreed, 'the board meetings take
half the time."

"Talking about my war record!"  Cris was tall and lanky.  His braces
supported the trousers of a tweed suit of indeterminate age.  He had
clear features, blue eyes and wings of white hair brushed back over his
ears.  But he looked suddenly shy, at a loss, like a young man.

"It was bloody embarrassing!"

Stories of Cris in the war circulated in the company.  He had been
parachuted behind the German lines in Italy with the odes of Horace in
his pocket.  He had fought in the desert wearing a silk scarf and a
pair of old cricket trousers.  He had been dropped into Yugoslavia with
the "Balkan Air Force'.  None of these were incidents I ever heard him
mention.

"My war record!  Three quarters of the time I was bored to death and
the rest I was scared shitless.  We need to do these programmes so
people like Sid Vicious can understand what war's all about."

"I suppose so."  At that time my feelings about War Crimes were
neutral.  I would have been more excited by Great Acting Moments to
Remember.

"Streetwise've come up with rather a bright treatment.  Gary's asked me
to have a look at it.  It seems to ask all the right questions."  He
was looking out of the boardroom windows, down the glittering river
towards the suburbs and patches of green that might still be
countryside.  I was standing by the marble slab of the boardroom table
that was as cold and as uninviting as a tomb.

"The writer's called Richard Dunster."

It was the last name I expected to have thrown at me, in that place, on
that morning.  When I was silent he asked, "Who is this fellow Dunster?
Do you know anything about him?"

"A little."  Of course I knew a great deal about him.  He just wasn't
anyone I wanted to think about, let alone discuss with Cris.

"Is he any good as a screenwriter?"

"I don't really know."  I tried to sound as unapprehensive as
possible.

"I haven't seen Dunster for years."

Chapter Two

"And the ungodly shall be cast out into outer darkness when that day
comes, my friends.  And only those who have given their hearts and
their souls to Jesus shall walk into the light."

"What about the Chinese?"

"Only those who have stepped forward for Our Lord will be received into
His company."

"And the Indians: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists?  Millions of them. Aren't
they going to walk into the light?"

"Come on, Dunster," I said.

"Please.  We'll miss the matinee."

"And how shall we know when the day is at hand?  you ask."

"No," Dunster said.

"I didn't ask that.  I asked about Buddhists."

"The signs will be a mighty rushing wind.  Then shall there be an
outbreak of small fires."  The speaker, standing on a little stepladder
at Marble Arch, was squat and grey-haired with glasses.  He looked like
a bank manager or an insurance salesman and uttered his dire warnings
in a matter-of-fact voice, as though he were discussing the times of
trains from Waterloo.  It was Dunster, supposedly my best friend at
school, who looked a fanatic: bright-eyed with a lock of dark hair
fallen across his forehead, his unbuttoned mac flapping in the wind and
a voice which trembled on the verge of indignation or sarcastic
laughter you could never be quite sure which would emerge.  My idea of
pleasure was to see Othello at the Old Vie, his was to heckle the
orators at Speakers' Corner.  The man on the stepladder should have
been grateful as, apart from a few released secretaries and their
lovers who paused for a moment on their way to a vacant patch of grass
and then walked on, quite uninterested in the end of the world, Dunster
and I were his only audience.

ii

"What's troubling you, young man?"  The speaker, unwisely, decided to
confront Dunster.

"All those Buddhists.  Are they going to be cast out into darkness?"

"Unless they have stood up for Jesus."

"They've probably never even heard of Jesus."

"That is why, young man, I have taken it upon myself to spread the
word."

"Well, you're not spreading it much here, are you?  You're not exactly
surrounded by Buddhists waiting to be converted.  In fact you would
hardly have had anyone here at all if Progmire and I hadn't turned
up."

"Please, Dunster.  Let's go.  We're going to be late."  I wanted to put
an end to this scene.  Not only did I find it embarrassing but I was
sorry for the man on the stepladder.  He seemed to me to have enough on
his plate, what with the rushing wind and the small fires and the Day
of Judgement, without having an argument with Dunster to contend
with.

"Oh, all right.  You never want to do anything interesting."  Dunster
agreed to leave with a good deal of reluctance.  I looked back at the
preacher, who stood in silence on his stepladder for a moment, the wind
disturbing his neat grey hair, before he drew breath and shouted after
us, "Outer darkness, my young friends.  I ask you to beware of the
outer darkness.  Just you mull it over!"

We went to St.  George's, a long-surviving London day school in the
dark alleyways around the Guildhall and the Mansion House.  When it was
felt that we needed fresh air, we were bussed out to a set of rented
playing-fields in Barnes where we stood and shivered and longed for the
warm, dark ride back, the shared crisps and bottles of Coke and the
aimless fights and sudden friendships.  When we arrived, the headmaster
lectured all new boys on the school's history, which stretched back,
more or less uneventfully, to the reign of Henry VIII.

'"What you will all get here," he said, as he looked out on an
assortment which included a good many Indians, Jews and a smattering of
Japanese, 'is a sound Church of England education.  St.  George's has
always been a school at the heart of English life, as the name of our
patron saint will probably have made clear to you."

"Absolute balls!"  the boy beside me had a penetrating whisper "St.
George was a Palestinian pirate and a brothel-owner.  I thought
everyone knew that."  It was my first meeting with Dunster.

I didn't choose to become friends with him.  When I look back on it,
the number of actual choices I've made in my life seem minimal.  As I
have said, I didn't choose to be an accountant.  It was a disability I
was born with.  I didn't choose Natasha's mother.  She chose me for
reasons which I still find hard to explain.  Looking back on my
schooldays, it doesn't seem to me that I chose my friend, any more than
I chose my school, or the uniform of straw hats and red blazers we
wore, or even the part of Rosalind into which I was forced with
considerable terror at the age of thirteen and which I now look upon as
one of my greatest achievements, more successful, in its way, than my
Hamlet at university, which is another story entirely.  So the fact of
the matter is that I didn't pick out Dunster but he did, deliberately
and inexplicably, choose me.  He became, as the years went by,
inescapable.

He always seemed to be closer to me than I really cared for.  I
thought, at times, that I was quite alone and then I would turn my head
and there he would be, pale-faced and bright-eyed, his hair flopping
down from under the ridiculous boater and his blazer buttons hanging by
a thread (Mrs.  Dunster had left home and Dunster's father and his son
cared for, or neglected, each other).  He was eager to tell me some
disgraceful secret he had discovered: that our headmaster, Mr.
Sheldrake, had got a Fourth in History and was only chosen for his
present post because he was a member of the Freemasons, or that the
yapping little cocker spaniel of a man who tried to teach us football
had been dismissed from a job at Borstal for suspected buggery and even
and this was a story which lasted with considerable embellishments
throughout the whole of one long, wet summer term that the angry string
bean of a man who taught us French had been a close friend of Burgess
and Maclean and lived in daily terror of being arrested as an old
Cambridge leftie and still-active Soviet spy.

"That fish they give us," Dunster hissed into my ear as we stood in the
cavernous school canteen in the basement under Threadneedle Street,
'condemned throw-outs from Billingsgate.  They bulk-buy and make a
profit.  I heard the bursar on the telephone."  I didn't believe him,
but I opted for the vegetarian plate.  You never knew, with Dunster,
whether his far-fetched allegations might not have some truth in them.
Anyway, I had long ago given up arguing with him.  If you argued, the
story would be repeated endlessly, with more and more un checkable
evidence called in support.  In time my nods of assent failed to
convince him and he would say, "It's true, but you don't really want to
hear about it, do you?"

"Oh, yes," I said, to keep Dunster quiet.

"Of course I do."

"No, you don't.  You don't really care about anything very much, do
you, old man?"

"I care about acting," I told him.  I, Philip Progmire, who had been
Rosalind.

"Rosalind!"  Dunster said with contempt.

"You were a boy pretending to be a girl who was pretending to be a boy.
I don't call that anything very much to care about."

All of which will make it clear to you that Dunster and I were chalk
and cheese, or creatures from different planets.  And yet, at St.
George's, we were thought of as great friends and inseparable.  '"O,
Wind," the English master, Mr.  Cheesy Cheshire, who fancied himself as
a wit, was fond of saying, 'if Progmire comes, can Dunster be far
behind?"  Dunster needed me, I suppose, as an audience: no one else
would stand and listen so patiently when he started on some long and
incredible

revelation.  He also, perhaps, hoped that some day, with some story, he
would be able to shock me into saying, "Good God, Dunster.  But that's
appalling!  It's a scandal!  Can't you get your dad to write about it
in the Guardian?  He may have been waiting for this satisfactory
outcome to his confidences, but I never said anything like that.  I
could never bring myself to do so.  But did I, in all truth and
honesty, actually like Dunster?

I suppose I needed him.  A boy starting at school, even at St. George's
from which he goes home in the evenings, needs a friend so that he has
the consolation and protection of not standing alone, a target easily
picked off, and Dunster offered his friendship almost too eagerly.  But
did I like him?  Sometimes, as when he showed such a total lack of
interest in my theatrical triumphs, I disliked him very much.  And yet
it was hard not to have some affection for Dunster.  He was brave.  His
continual arguments brought him perpetual trouble. Masters would lose
their tempers with him, fling books at him and turn him out of the
room.  Boys would make fun of him, lie in wait for him and attack him. 
He would put up with all this with a wan and contemptuous smile and he
did not, I have to admit with shame, get much support from me.

"I didn't notice you coming to the rescue much when Porker Plumstead
and his friends cornered me in the bogs."

"No."

"You like to keep out of things, don't you?"

"If I can, I suppose I like to."

"There's nothing much you want to stand up for, is there, old man?"

"Well, not your idea that Whittington's Bank is financing the slave
trade in Madagascar."  Porker's father was on the Board of
Whittington's, which was why Dunster had started the argument.

"You mean you don't care about slaves?"

"Well, yes.  Of course I do.  Everyone does.  But I don't see that
being punched by Porker's friends round the bogs is going to help the
slaves in Madagascar."

"You don't care much about slaves, and you don't care at all about
friendship."

"Oh, come off it, Dunster.  Now you're making me feel a shit."

"Good!"  He smiled at me with sudden, unexpected charm.

"That is exactly how you ought to feel."

I suppose the truth was that I recognized in Dunster all that I wasn't.
Although I had no desire to be in the least like him, he made me feel
timid, compromising, time-serving and, if not envious, in some way
inferior.  Here was I, waiting for Plays and Players each month to
discover who was starring in what, dreaming of being an actor and
settling for being a maths specialist because I found it easy.  And
there was Dunster, enormously concerned about the slave trade and the
Race Relations Act and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, thriving on a
series of head-on collisions with the masters and the boys which would
have left me trembling with nervous exhaustion.  And yet most of the
time, to my amazement and occasional respect, Dunster seemed to
achieve, in the centre of his frenzied universe, an absence of anxiety
which I had never known.  But then, as I have made it clear to you, I
worry.

Dunster and his journalist father occupied, in almost unbelievable
chaos, the top two floors of a house in Camden Town which had been the
Dunster matrimonial home.  After Mrs.  Dunster moved out, the father
let half the place to a man on the Financial Times who had recently
married.  The Dunsters despised this couple, mainly because of their
habit of taking regular meals and the orderliness of their existence.
The Dunster cuisine considered almost entirely of bacon and eggs, eaten
with doorsteps of fried bread and cups of strong tea, so that about
their home the smell of burning fat indicated that a traditional
English breakfast was available at all hours of the day and night.

I went to his house and sometimes I let Dunster visit mine.  My parents
lived, as I do now, in Muswell Hill, a high and windy part of north
London, with pink and white Edwardian villas dominated by the curious
fantasy of Alexandra Palace, from which you can see much of the city
laid out like a map.  When I was at school, it was the old glass palace
with minarets, although the roof had been damaged by a flying bomb
during the war and, during one hard winter, the organ in the Great Hall
was covered with snow.  When I was very small, a steam train from
Highgate stopped at Muswell Hill on its way to the Palace and until I
was twenty there was a racecourse in the suburb.  When it closed, life
there remained quiet until, in a moment of high drama the old Palace
was consumed by fire and has since been rebuilt.  Communications with
the area are difficult and many Muswell Hill inhabitants, like my
parents, seldom left it in the evenings or at weekends, shopping there,
seeing friends or regularly visiting the splendours of the local Odeon.
One Saturday I warned them, "There's a friend called Dunster coming
this afternoon.  As a matter of fact, he's rather a menace."

"So far as I know," my father said, "Dunster's a small town in Somerset
that's never been a menace to anyone."

I dreaded the Saturday afternoon visit.  My parents' house was
disgracefully tidy; souvenirs of their holidays abroad -bronze statues
from Greece, bits of pottery from Morocco were arranged on shelves and
carefully dusted.  My father was a civil servant in the Home Office and
clearly open to attack from Dunster.  My mother was the person from
whom I have inherited my talent for anxiety.  She brought out our best
tea service, the one my grandmother left us in her will, for Dunster,
and gave him chocolate biscuits and small cucumber sandwiches, which he
ate as though he hadn't seen food for a month.

"So you're in the Home Office, sir," Dunster said to my father, with
his mouth half full of cucumber sandwich.  I had never heard Dunster
call anyone 'sir' before, not even our masters, and he managed to make
the title sound especially contemptuous.

"I suppose you do your best not to notice the corruption in Scotland
Yard?"

"I wish to God we could.  To be quite honest with you, Dick' my
father's use of his Christian name seemed to startle Dunster - 'it
worries the hell out of us.  I wish your father'd write a series of his
magnificent articles about it.  We need all the public support we can
get."

It was the first time I'd seen Dunster deflated.  I loved my father
then, and he was always my idea of a reasonable, tolerant human being
who took life with a large pinch of salt and stood in no particular awe
of anyone.  Years later, when I came to work for Cris Bellhanger, I
suppose I was attracted to him because he was the same sort of
character.

"Do your people come from that little town in Somerset?  Sleepy sort of
place."  My father pressed home his advantage.

"We got that milk jug in Dunster' my mother, quite without meaning to,
turned the knife in the wound 'the one that's shaped like a cow.  We
thought it was rather original."

"Wonderful cream teas in Dunster," my father remembered.

"Is your dad going to write about Scotland Yard?"  I asked my guest
when we had gone up to my room to smoke Gaul-oises Bleues, an activity
which I'm sure my parents knew about but never mentioned.

"I shouldn't think so."  And Dunster added mysteriously, 'he's got a
much bigger fish than that to fry."

"Sex," Dunster said more than once, "I don't know how people do it."

I had often wondered, but I said nothing.

"Not it.  Not the actual thing.  That's absolutely vital.  For your
health.  I mean, you can't do without the actual thing.  Any more than
you can do without breathing."

I didn't keep a close watch on all of Dunster's movements, but I had
never known him to miss school, even for a cold.  Was this because of
his ardent and regular sex life?  Was

Dunster, during the hours we didn't spend together, the Casanova of
Camden Town?  I found this hard to believe, but then it was unsafe to
make any assumptions about Dunster, a boy who was full of surprises.

"It's the lies you have to tell people.  Leading up to sex."

"Lies?"

"All that "you're so beautiful", "you're such a marvelous person",
"you're the only one I've ever felt like this about during my whole
life".  It's all the lies you're expected to tell.  I don't know how
people manage to do that, all the time."

I wonder now whether it was not having any lies told to her that caused
Mrs.  Dunster to leave home.

Friendship with Dunster was a full-time occupation, and nobody else
seemed anxious to join our group.  I was an only child and, in the
holidays, if I wanted to go up to the West End it had to be with
Dunster.  He was prepared to compromise by joining me at the theatre
provided I bought the tickets and we did what he wanted for the rest of
the day.  So that's how we found ourselves at Speakers' Corner on our
way to the Old Vie.

Othello came on to the stage in a white robe and dark brown make-up
with a rose between his teeth, walking catlike on the balls of his
feet.  When he said, "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew may rust
them', my senses swam with the nobility of it all.  Dunster said, "This
is ridiculous.  He's not even black."

"Of course not.  He's Laurence Olivier."

"It's all completely false."

"Will you shut up or else go?"  For once I said something decisive to
Dunster.

With the maximum of disturbance he went, stumbling over feet, causing
muttering customers to half rise in their seats, and failing to
apologize.  When he had gone, I decided that once and for all I was
finished with Dunster.  I stared after him angrily, siding with all
those whose toes he'd trodden on and whose knees he'd bumped against.
Then I sat until Othello drew his hidden sword.

"And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban'd
Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state, I took by the throat the
circumcised dog, And smote him thus."

So the actor died in a manner Dunster would have said was false, but
which seemed utterly truthful to me.  So all alone, and thankful to be
so, I set off for Muswell Hill.  Home was boring, uneventful perhaps,
but better than Dunster.  I sat in the Tube re-reading the programme
and then I heard an awful rustling beside me, eager breathing and a mac
flapping like the wings of an ill-omened bird.

"I saw you coming out of the theatre, old man.  I ran to catch up with
you."

"You needn't have bothered."

"Do you want to know where I've been?"

"Not particularly."

"I went back to see that silly sod at Speakers' Corner."

"Whatever for?"  I made the mistake of showing an interest and knew,
with a sinking of the heart, that I would never be rid of him.  He
smiled triumphantly and moved uncomfortably close.

"I took him out to tea.  We had bacon and eggs."

"That must have made a change for you."

"I wanted to prove my point about all the Buddhists in the world.  I
couldn't let him get away with the nonsense he was talking, could I?"

Why not?  I wanted to say.  However do you imagine you're going to stop
all the nonsense being talked in the world, single-handed?

"In the end I think he saw my point."

Or he gave in, as I had given in, for the sake of peace.

zo

Chapter Three

"Hamlet, let's face it, for God's sake, was a complete drip.  I hope
we're all going to agree about that?"  Nan Thorogood ("My mother wanted
to call me Nanette.  What sort of a Godawful name is that?  Did she
expect me to go around in a short black skirt with a feather duster?
Ooh la bloody la!") taught English at St.  Joseph's College.  We all
agreed she was brilliant, bringing the fresh and revolutionary air of
the seventies to blow around the dusty subject of Shakespearian
studies.  I didn't do Shakespearian studies, of course.  I read
economics, which was a fact I tried to keep as quiet as possible, but I
joined the college dramatic society the moment I arrived, and I'd
already done Ghosts in my first term, mainly because the boy slated for
Oswald suffered a nervous crises.  Whether or not this was brought on by
the gloomy nature of the role it provided my great opportunity; I did
an audition at a desperate last moment and got the part.

My Oswald was a modest success and even attracted a perfectly decent
notice in the Cherwell.  But that was before an anonymous hatchet man,
who cowered under the name of Paul Pry, took up reviewing and everyone
went in fear of his passionate abuse.

But about Hamlet.  When the college society decided to do it in St.
Joseph's gardens at the end of the summer term, we asked Nan Thorogood
to direct because of her new approach to Shakespeare.  Now she stood
among us, wearing a trouser suit and a black high-necked jumper, her
hair scraped back and tied with some sort of bootlace, her high, pale
forehead wrinkled with distaste for the wimpish Dane.  I had wanted to
hug her and vow eternal devotion when she selected me for the lead. Now
my confidence ebbed away like tepid bath-water as she explained the
reasons for her choice.  It had nothing whatever to do with my modest
success as Oswald.

"Do you think Shakespeare thought of Hamlet as a hero?  What's heroic
about him?  He can't cope with his relationship with Ophelia.  He can't
face up to the basically erotic nature of his feelings for his mother.
What the hell is this guy?  Is he just the failed central figure of
Shakespeare's least successful play?  Or is he a repressed homosexual?
When he fails to stab his uncle while he's kneeling at prayer, is it
just because he has a secret longing to stab him in some far more
intimate and forbidden manner?  Is that a line of thought we might dare
to pursue during the rehearsal period?"

Oh, please, I thought to myself, let's not.

"Oh, of course.  Sure.  Naturally.  The inverted nature of Hamlet's
psyche has become a cliche of contemporary interpretation.  We all know
that his pathetic inactivity is due to his failure to face the truth of
his own sexuality.  Years ago Jean-Louis Barrault played him as a guy
in love with Horatio."  (This came as a surprise to me and greatly
increased my anxiety about the whole enterprise.) "Balls!"  Nan lit a
Capstan full strength and let us into the secret of Hamlet.

"He was in love with Laertes."

"But they hardly ever met," I dared to remind her.  The other actors
seemed relieved that this novel thought would not affect the
interpretation of their roles.

"Of course they hardly ever met in the play.  Except to kill each
other.  Don't you find that illuminating?"

We thought this over in silence for a while.  Then a plump man called
Benson, playing the first gravedigger, whispered to me, "Are you going
to have to kiss Laertes, Philip?"

"Of course he's not!"  Nan Thorogood's hearing was exceptionally
keen.

"The drip would never do anything as positive as that, thank you very
much.  The point is and this is something I'd like you all to think
about that Laertes is the real star of this clicked revenger's tragedy.  Laertes hears that his father's been killed, so what does he do?  Doesn't hang about.  Doesn't sit around talking to himself.  Doesn't go through a rejection of his
girlfriend which is nothing more nor less than ritual rejection of all women.  Gets on his bike and comes straight home to be revenged!  In fact he behaves like a man and not a mouse in mourning.  Oh, by the way, you won't be wearing black, Philip.  Not in my production."

I wondered, later, what I should be wearing.

"You'll be dressed like you are.  The typical undergraduate, growing up
apologetically.  That old tweed jacket, with leather patches, you've
nearly grown out of will do.  And a college scarf wound round your neck
a few times.  Oh, and don't forget your specs.  Stick a bit of
Elastoplast round them so they look as if you dropped them and forgot
to get them repaired.  You don't imagine you're going to camp about in
doublet and hose, do you?  Speaking the stuff as though it were
poetry?

Laertes, then, was the star part of this production and star parts are
notoriously difficult to cast.  Nan was still looking for the perfect
brother to Ophelia, and in the early stages she read the part herself,
a task she performed with virile intensity.  Then she came up to me
after rehearsal and spoke out of the corner of her mouth while lighting
another Capstan.

"I saw you crossing the quad this morning," she said, 'with a man I've
never even met."

When people say this sort of thing to me I always feel guilty, as
though I were being accused of some serious but unconscious crime.  I
said, "Oh, did you?"  as noncommittally as possible.

"He is Laertes."

"Oh, no."  I was suddenly positive.

"I'm quite sure he isn't."

"Dark.  Rather good-looking, don't you think?"

"It has never occurred to me."

"Chap who looks as though he knows exactly where he's going."

"I think we were going for breakfast."

"I'm damn well going to nobble him for Laertes."

"I honestly don't think you should do that."

"Why ever not?"

"Well, to start with, he thinks that all acting's completely false."

"Wonderful!"  Nan's eyes lit up as she blew out a long plume of
smoke.

"He sounds absolutely right for the part.  Oh, what's his name, by the
way?"

Not many boys from St.  George's got into Oxford in our year only
myself, Dunster and Porker Plumstead.  As I have said, I had never
found sums difficult.  Dunster, in spite of his tendency to mutiny, had
worked, as I always suspected, frenetically in secret.  And Porker?
Well, of course, Dunster told me that Porker's father had put a large
donation from Whittington Bank at the disposal of the college
library.

There had been times when I had secretly hoped that the end of my
schooldays would be the end of my friendship with Dunster.  I had
fantasies of us drifting apart, meeting occasionally in the holidays,
finding nothing much to say to each other and then forgetting to send a
Christmas card.  Although I had often longed for this outcome, I didn't
believe in it and when I got to university Dunster was, as ever, at my
side.  He soon decided he didn't like Oxford.

"Why the hell do we have to spend our youth shut away in medieval
dungeons?  First St.  George's, now this."  Our college was small,
built in stone which went gold in the sunlight, with a quadrangle of
bright green grass and a huge clock of doubtful accuracy.  From my
top-floor room I could see the domes of the Radcliffe Camera and the
Sheldonian.  Dunster's room was on the ground floor, often in shadow.
He managed to get through each short term without entirely unpacking
his suitcase, so he lived in a gloomy chaos which reproduced as
accurately as possible his home in Camden Town.

"Three years in a dungeon," Dunster decided, 'and the Master's an old faggot with a Marcelle wave."

"Dunster!  You don't know that."

"Of course I do.  I looked him up in Who's Who: "Sir Ninian Dobbs.
Military historian.  Hobbies: cooking and collecting miniatures.
Unmarried."  What do you think unmarried means?"

"It probably means he hasn't got a wife."

"Progmire, are you really a sort of Holy Fool?  Or is it just the act
you put on to save yourself the trouble of finding out about things?"

Sir Ninian Dobbs was a tall and distinguished figure whom we sometimes
saw presiding over the high table in hall.  He had an aquiline nose and
admittedly carefully tended white, wavy hair.

"I don't suppose he'll have much to do with us," I tried to reassure
Dunster.

"With any luck.  But if he starts inviting us to dinner, feign
illness."  He often used expressions which were appropriate to the
nineteenth century, which he was studying.

The college dramatic society was my escape route from Dunster.  I began
to behave, like all university actors, in the most actorish way
possible.  We thespians sat at the same table in hall and I was careful
to join in with dialogue like "Did you see that girl from St.  Hilda's
in the Christ Church Duchess of Malfit It was absolutely dire."  Or "I
thought of going up for Bartholomew Fair but now I'm not going to
bother.  They've got a guy from Wadham who couldn't direct traffic." Or
"Marcus Gravely thinks he's Pembroke's answer to Richard Burton.
Someone should give him a paper bag and see if he can act his way out
of it."

Dunster, as I had suspected, couldn't take much of this and soon moved
off to another table where the discussion centred on politics,
economics and such subjects as Solzhenitsyn and the invasion of
Cambodia.  I felt released and happier than I had ever been.  Dunster
and I then met as equals and although he listened to my chatter about the dramatic society with a pale smile of contempt, he realized that I had vanished into a world where he couldn't follow me.  And I became tolerant of his pursuits, complimenting him on the articles he wrote for an assortment of
university magazines denouncing Oxford and all it stood for, although I
often got no further than the first paragraph.

"That weird woman in the trouser suit asked me to join the actors."  He
emphasized the last syllable in what he thought was the way we
talked.

"Nan Thorogood?  She said she was going to ask you to play Laertes."

"Who's he?  Remind me."

"A very positive type of person.  I'm Hamlet.  You'd have to kill me in
the last act."

"You mean pretend to kill you?"  .  "Well.  Yes."

"I told her straight out, old man, that the idea was absolutely
ridiculous."

In the end, Laertes was someone called Adams who read law.  He had
short, ginger hair, pointed teeth and a threatening smile.

"Suitably vulpine," Nan told us triumphantly.  But in spite of his
promising appearance, he was a dull actor and I didn't expect him to
cause me much anxiety.

"Going mad," Ophelia said, 'makes me so bloody hungry."

"I was thinking of eating in that Indian place in the Turl," I lied
casually.

"I mean, why not join me?  We could discuss our scene."

"I haven't got much money .. ."

"Don't give it a thought."  It was far into the term but I could manage
a few curries by flogging my new copy of One World Economics in
Blackwells' secondhand department; this would be particularly
profitable as I hadn't yet paid for it.

When we arrived at the restaurant, although a sensationally thin girl, she seemed prepared to tackle examples of all the Star of Bengal's limited cuisine.

"I don't know what your problem is," she said when I confessed I still
felt far from 'getting' Hamlet.

"You're marvelous in all the indecisive bits.  By the way, why don't
you have your glasses mended?  I mean, the ones you wear in
rehearsal?"

"Nan thinks Hamlet should have broken glasses.  Remember?"

"Funny idea," she said, meaning it wasn't.

"Also she wants me to do it without letting the poetry show.  She wants
me to say, "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I" in a sort of low
moan.  I don't think it's written as a low moan.  You know what?"  I
had seen looks of envy from two men eating in a corner and felt full of
courage.

"I'm going to say the poetry on the night.  When Nan can't do anything
much about it."

"That's the spirit!"  She smiled up at me from her prawn vindaloo.  My
Ophelia's name was Bethany Blair and it would have been very strange if
I hadn't fallen in love with her.

"But what's your problem with our scene?"

"Hamlet rejecting Ophelia.  I can't see why any man in his senses would
reject you."

"He wasn't in his senses, was he?  Anyway, he was pretending not to
be."  There was a pause while she crackled a poppadum.

"Actually you don't need to say things like that."  For an elated
moment I thought this was encouraging, that she meant my compliments
were understood without being spoken.  Then my natural pessimism
returned and I felt that my flattery had displeased her.  It would take
some time and a fair number of oriental dinners before I discovered
what I felt to be the truth.

When I drove Tash to her tutorial college on the morning of the board
meeting, which was the start of all our present troubles, she was only
three years younger than Beth had been when I first met her.  They
could easily have been mistaken for each other.  Drowned Ophelia has
been painted, pale with her red hair floating, looking perfectly at
home in the water, but naturally remote from the problems of everyday
living.  Both Natasha and Beth had this look, so that you felt you
admired their beauty through clear water or plate glass.  The
appearance was largely deceptive.  These withdrawn pre-Raphaelite
beauties could be as uncomfortable as Tash was in the car that morning,
or as crudely unnerving as Ophelia in madness.

I found out all I could about Beth and much of it was surprising.  She
was the only child of an army major who'd retired to a small farm in
the West Country.  She could skin rabbits, strangle chickens, shoot
pheasants, aid the birth of lambs and perform many tasks which would
show me up as hopelessly incompetent, not to say, squeamish.  You might
have thought the fact that she bore such a striking resemblance to the
Ophelia seen through the sentimental eyes of Sir John Millais, RA would
have ruined her chances of getting the part.  Nan could have been
expected to go for a North Country revolutionary Maoist, or for a
butch, overweight Nordic art student with a secret passion for
Gertrude.  Unexpectedly she made the obvious choice, only insisting
that Beth should dress as a hippy in flowing Indian scarves and a
head-band, and carry a sitar.  This was far removed from the character
of the only daughter of Major Jaunty Blair, whose bedroom at home was
decorated with the rosettes she had won at gymkhanas and whose family
freezer contained a fox's brush, wrapped in newspaper, which had been
presented to Beth out hunting and which she had forgotten to have
mounted.

I had no doubt at all what I felt about Beth, and as little idea of
what she felt about me.  We sympathized with each other, praised each
other, did our best to cheer each other up; but this was the way with
all actors as the terror of the opening performance drew near.  In this
she behaved no differently to me than she did to the rest of the cast.
She smiled at

us all and often laid her hand gently on our arms while she was
speaking to us.

When I took her back to her North Oxford college after our dinner, she
gave me her cheek to kiss, offering it with a vague politeness which
made me feel she was thinking of something else.  This good-night
happened in the college entrance.  I thought that undated girls were
peering down from the windows above us and I only wished that we were
putting on a better show.  I wondered who else bought Beth tandoori
chicken and took her home to this public farewell Laertes, Horatio,
King Claudius, or even the gravedigger?  We went out quite often,
although there were always plenty of dates she couldn't manage.  We
talked all the time, about our fears, the other actors and the
awfulness of Nan.  I thought she was less obsessed with acting than I
was.  It was just one of many activities which included riding,
hunting, dancing and a certain amount of rough shooting with her
father, Major Jaunty.  Acting, Beth said once, was something she got
into because a friend asked her 'and you might as well try
everything'.

"Who was the friend?"  I forced myself to ask.

"Oh, just someone I knew.  He's not important."

"How's Hamlet going?"

"I don't know.  It'll probably be a complete disaster."  It was my way
then, as now, to expect the very worst in the faint hope that things
might not turn out to be quite as ghastly as I had predicted.

"Well, so long as you know that," Dunster said cheerfully, 'you won't
be disappointed."

The extraordinary thing was that we had met at the Experimental
Theatre's production of The Ghost Sonata.  I had invited Beth, and
Dunster was there with a girl who looked very young, had large breasts
and seemed scared of him.  He said her name was Prudence and that she
had a taste for 2-9

Strindberg which he found ludicrously masochistic.  When Beth asked him
if he'd be coming to see Hamlet he said, "I'm not sure.  I may have an
essay to write."

"We're on for four nights."

"I suppose that's what you hope."

She took my arm then, something I was very glad Dunster had seen her
do, and we went back to our seats.

"Is that a friend of yours?"  she asked.

"Oh, I've known him forever."

"He didn't sound like much of a friend."

So the long, wet and over-excited summer term continued.  There were no
lazy afternoons on the river for us, no strawberries and Chablis in the
sun.  There were only glistening pavements and rehearsals and grey
clouds.  The heads of the philosophers round the Sheldonian seemed to
dissolve even more rapidly in the rain, and cyclists pedalled even
faster to avoid a soaking but arrived at lecturers with their hair
plastered down and their notebooks soggy.  Not only had we our
unreliable memories, our minor talents, our nervousness to contend with
but we had the added horror of an open-air performance.  Hamlet in St.
Joseph's gardens was even more alarming than Hamlet indoors.  We faced
the doubtful future as courageously as we could and even arranged a
first-night party in punts.  We were not greatly encouraged by a brutal
notice of The Ghost Sonata: "A new terror has been added to death,"
Paul Pry wrote, 'by the fear that we might be compelled to return to
earth in a production as absurd as this.  The Ghost Sonata, as the
Experimental Theatre presents it, is not to be recommended to any
audience, alive or dead."

But we kept our worries to ourselves, hoped for the best and, as we sat
at our table in hall, we told theatrical jokes.  Benson, the
gravedigger, knew most of the old actor-laddie stories and, a week or
so before Hamlet was due to hit the

turf, he told us what I now know to be one of the oldest of all.  It
was about the actor-manager who was asked if, in his opinion, Hamlet
actually slept with Ophelia.

"When I was on tour," he is supposed to have answered, "I invariably
did."  I don't suppose Benson thought for a moment about me and Beth
when he told the story; but it gave me a vision of a new world, more
likely to be fantasy than fact, with an old tradition which I was, I
still thought, unlikely to live up to.

Chapter Four

I wouldn't want you to think that at the time of the run up to Hamlet I
was totally inexperienced.  I mean so far as sex was concerned.  I've
already made it clear that I'd done a certain amount of acting.

I'd met quite a lot of girls at parties, especially at those rather
ostentatious affairs given by Porker Plumstead in his father's mock
Tudor mansion somewhere to the north of Hampstead Heath.  These do's
always led to a good deal of panting activity in the corners of
darkened rooms with girls from various highly priced London schools who
danced invitingly to Joe Cocker records but showed an increasing
reluctance as the new-found friendship developed.  The first time I
made love was to a Mrs.  Oakshott, who lived in a house in Gloucester
Crescent and was a warm supporter of the Labour Party.  My relationship
with her although it turned me from a worried virgin to a slightly more
worried experienced person is not something I am particularly-proud of.
It doesn't show me in a good light, but then if I confined myself to
incidents that did that, I don't suppose this story would ever get
told.  If I'm going to make you understand it properly, I think you
should know that when Beth and I got together I was someone who had
lost his tenuous grasp on virginity in Mrs.  Oakshott's bathroom
"Marguerite Oakshott," Dunster said, 'is a well-known figure of the
Left.  She has evenings."

"Well, so do I. So does everyone.  I have mornings too, as a matter of
fact.  And the occasional afternoon."  It was our final term at school
and I was rehearsing The Importance of Being Earnest, so I had a
tendency to shoot my cuffs, smoke Turkish cigarettes and speak in a
languid drawl.

"I mean," Dunster, unamused, explained as though to a child, 'she has
evenings when all sorts of people get invited.  Politicians.  Famous
journalists.  TUC leaders.  They discuss serious subjects."

"How extremely frivolous of them."

"Old man, when is that Oscar Wilde play over?"

"Next Tuesday."

"Thank God for that.  Mrs.  Oakshott's evening's in exactly two weeks'
time.  My dad was invited and he asked if he could bring me because I'm
interested in politics.  Now's he's going to be away doing a story
about anarchists in Amsterdam.  But she's said I can go and bring a
friend.  So I thought of you, Progmire, immediately.  I'm trying to
give you some idea of what the world's all about.  My ambition is to
educate you."

In this last aim Dunster, I suppose, achieved some success.  He was
obviously extremely impressed with our invitation and had shaved and
plastered down his hair with water.  I wore my suit and a purple shirt,
which I thought went with my Yellow Book period, although I doubt
whether Oscar Wilde would have been seen dead in it.  When I asked
Dunster what he thought the party was going to be like, he had to admit
that his father had never actually been to one of Mrs.  Oakshott's
evenings, although he had been asked quite often.  He thought someone
probably gave a paper, after which there would be a free-ranging
discussion over quiche and vin ordinaire.  It might, he said, be a
thoughtful gesture to bring a bottle.  So Dunster and I arrived at
Gloucester Crescent with a Carafino red from the off-licence.

"Children," Mrs.  Oakshott said vaguely as we made our presentation,
'how terribly touching.  But we do have our own stuff, actually."

Even in the dimly lit sitting-room I noticed that her own stuff
consisted largely of champagne.  I caught a glimpse of the pictures a
couple of Lowrys, a Graham Sutherland, John drawings and something that
looked suspiciously like a Dufy

on the walls.  The room was full of older men and younger women and
they were laughing a good deal and talking in high, excited voices, no
doubt about the Race Relations Act or the reform of the House of
Lords.

"A tragedy your father couldn't come.  I'm such a fan of his column in
the Listener."

"The Guardian."  Dunster was always a stickler for the truth.

"I love it, anyway.  Now .. ."  Mrs.  Oakshott looked around the room.
She was, I noticed, a small, curvaceous, still-pretty woman with dark
hair and bright brown eyes.  She had a way of leaning back her head and
trying to look down at us, which, as both Dunster and I were a good
deal taller than her, was not a complete success.

"Now, shall I find you someone rather beautiful to talk to?"

"Is that Malcolm McCabe?"  Dunster had spotted the one Labour Minister
who still retained the respect of the Left, despite an uneasy
compromise over private education.  He was large, florid and Scots,
with watery blue eyes and a mane of iron-grey hair.  He didn't look, as
he held court in a corner of the room, especially beautiful.

"Well, yes.  But he seems a little occupied at the moment."  McCabe's
audience consisted, I thought, of better-off girls from the Royal
College of Art.  Not to be deterred, Dunster moved purposefully in the
direction of the politician.  Mrs.  Oakshott squeezed my arm, murmured,
"See you later, cherub," and I was left holding the bottle of Carafino.
I saw Dunster work his way through the attendant art students and stand
uncomfortably close to McCabe, who ignored him for as long as possible.
I put our gift down among the superior bottles and no one spoke to me
until a fairly friendly girl in a black dress asked me for a match and
started to chat as I failed to make my lighter work.  I looked terribly
learned, she said, and was I going into politics?  I was still trying
to think of the correct Wildean answer to this line when another girl
said, "Come on, Michelle, the professor wants you," and they went

off towards a learned-looking fellow with a pale, dome like forehead,
standing at the other end of the room.

"It's disgusting!"  Dunster was back with me.

"Not necessarily," I told him, although the distant professor did
appear to be leading Michelle upstairs.

"McCabe.  He was drinking champagne!"

"Quite a lot of them seem to be."

"And so I tackled him about private education."

"Well, you should know all about that.  Seeing we pay fees at St.
George's."

But Dunster was hard to disconcert.  He went on with great intensity.

"I told him I felt thoroughly bad about that.  I also said he ought to
be ashamed of drinking champagne while the class system remains
intact."

"I bet that really got to him."

"No, it didn't.  That's the point.  He said his brand of socialism
meant that champagne would be freely available to all.  But until that
bright day dawned, at least it would be available to socialist Cabinet
Ministers.  That man' - Dunster came to the inevitable conclusion 'is
completely false.  I'm leaving."

I might have gone with him if I hadn't wanted to go to the loo.  I
plucked up courage to ask directions of a lofty person in a dark suit,
but he said, "God knows.  I only came with the catering."  So I started
on a fatal journey up the staircase to the upper reaches of the house.
Doors were open into darkened rooms and I heard, from one of them, the
sound of suppressed laughter.  Then I saw a light on gleaming tiles and
went in.

Mrs.  Oakshott's bathroom, perhaps appropriately, was pale pink.  It
was comfortably furnished with fleecy rugs, book shelves and pots of
dried-out petals.  Either because I was in a hurry or because of some
defect in the lock, the door wasn't fastened and I became conscious, as
I washed my hands in the pink basin, that I was not alone.

"I do love those films where the chap takes the glasses off the
librarian and she ", looks like a real woman, don't you?"  Mrs.
Oakshott said as she removed my specs and put them carefully on a glass
shelf.

"There now, you really look quite pretty."  I saw the world blurred,
like an Impressionist painting, but it was clear to me that her shirt
had become unbuttoned.  She had a sweet, powdery smell which mingled
with the rose petals and the change in my life, such as it was, took
place mid-way between the gold-tapped bidet and the end of the bath.

"So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of
nature in them, As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, Since
nature cannot choose his origin' It was quite early in the play but, in
spite of Nan Thorogood's dire warnings and strict injunctions, the
poetry showed through and I felt there was nothing much I could do
about it.  I heard my voice, nowhere near as incisive as Olivier's and
much less melodic than Gielgud's, untrained, amateurish but still doing
the same job.  The rhythm of the words took me over and for those hours
in St.  Joseph's gardens I forgot myself: Playing a character full of
doubt, I was strangely certain; pretending to be a man beset with
anxiety, I had forgotten my worries.

The day had started with unusual sunshine and we preened ourselves on
our luck.  Summer had begun at last, and especially for us.  As we
dressed, we were trying to cheer each other up, like a party of
criminals waiting to come up for sentence.  I felt short of breath and
went to the loo frequently, unaccompanied.  The play opened in low,
evening sunshine with a cool wind flustering the trees.  I saw my
mother and father sitting together in the front row.  They had brought
a rug and I was grateful that my mother wouldn't have to put on the
plastic pixie hood that I always found embarrassing.  So the ghost, a
pallid figure in a khaki greatcoat, walked in the daylight while we
crowded in the JCR, the girls chattered and I stood in a corner trying
to retch as quietly as possible.  Then

I came on with the court but sat alone, like Dunster, I thought, in
sullen isolation.

"A little more than kin, and less than kind': I heard my first line
with surprise, as though it were spoken by someone a long way off.  In
due course I rejected Ophelia with ruthless determination, firmly
believing that I had, according to tradition, slept with her but
intended to give it up.  As the daylight died and a colder wind stirred
the branches, the pointed arches of the college were lit with the amber
lights wed hired at enormous expense and I welcomed the Players with
what I thought was true princely condescension.  And then, when I
announced that the play was the thing wherein to catch the conscience
of the King, I felt a heavy drop of water on my hand and the rain began
to fall like muted applause.

The second half seemed timeless, like a dream.  The rain stopped for a
while and then set in heavily when Benson did his gravedigger jokes.
The amber beams were full of water and the audience began to thin out.
During "Alas, poor Yorick' I saw my mother in her pixie hood.  I took
off my glasses when I put on the fencing mask and Laertes became an
active blur as we fought, sliding on the wet grass.  I didn't drop on
the King like an avenging angel from a great height in the Olivier
manner.  I skidded towards him, full of purpose, and then let the venom
do its work.  When I died in the arms of Horatio, and as the four
captains were bearing me to the stage, and the soldiers were ordered to
shoot, I felt all my anxieties had been set at rest.  The rattle of
clapping from the wet survivors on the benches, although only just
satisfactory by any theatrical standard, did nothing to diminish my
confidence.  I wasn't even worried about the party to come.  It didn't
occur to me that Beth would wander among the cast, laying a gentle hand
on every arm, kissing most of them and treating us all as equals.  I
was still Prince Hamlet, although deceased, and Ophelia and I would go
as a couple.

"It's stopped raining."  Laertes was looking up at the scudding
clouds.

"To the boats!"  Benson shouted in his gravedigger's voice.

"Women and children last!"

So off we set towards Magdalen Bridge, carrying macs and rugs, red
plonk and an occasional bottle of whisky.  Nan was among us, failing to
dampen our spirits with congratulations like "Well, my children, you
got through it, didn't you?  One day I might persuade you to act the
real Hamlet.  The grown-up version."

"You mean the one where Osric falls for the ghost?"  Benson asked.  We
knew we had done our own play.  Nan, sitting alone in the rain, had
suffered a severe disappointment, but we no longer needed her.

The actors were getting into punts, standing, rocking the boats on
purpose, screaming in simulated terror, throwing in food and wine and
scrambling to be together.  I saw an empty boat and grabbed Beth's arm
with some of the determination I had left over from my assault on King
Claudius.

"Come on," I said, 'that one's empty."  And I added, because we were
still actors, "Darling."  She got in and lay back on damp cushions.  I
looked round and saw that the rest of the cast were all accommodated in
other boats.  I sat beside her and covered her with a rug.  She said,
"Who's going to drive this thing?"  My heart sank as Laertes appeared
from the darkness, stepped lightly on to the end of the boat and poled
us expertly out into midstream, avoiding the punts with their loads of
actors who tried to ram us.  I held Beth's cold hand under the rug, she
turned her face towards me and we kissed, disregarding the silently
navigating Laertes.  We lay still then and seemed to travel for a long
time.  I had no idea what was going to happen next.

Then I saw that the others had landed; there was a party going on and
Laertes steered us towards it.  Well, that, I thought, is the end of
that, but when we were near the bank he jumped off, as quickly and as
quietly as he had joined us.  Neither of us moved and we drifted on,
brushed by overhanging willow branches, into a cave of leaves where the
intermittent moonlight was blotted out.  We were stuck in

mud and sheltered from the rain.  I took off my glasses to kiss her
properly.

"Beth," I told her, "I've been wanting to say this for so long."

"Don't say anything," she said.

"It'll be perfectly all right."

"What do we do now?  Ring the bell for the porter?"

"We climb in."

"There's an easy way, isn't there?"

"Is that what you want?"

"I've always heard there's an easy way.  A sort of formality.  So that
they can keep up appearances."

"All right.  We start up by the bicycle sheds."

I followed him doubtfully.  If there were an easy way of climbing into
college, would it be in Dunster's character to take it?  I didn't want
to be with him on a mountaineering expedition without ropes in the
darkness and persistent rain.  I wanted to be alone, to remember what I
now had to remember.  I wanted a little peace and quiet to think of
Beth making love, her competent hands, her body not altogether
undressed under the blanket, her long hair wet against my face, her
amused smile as we started, and the immense encouragement of her
trembling later, and her small cry.  Acting and making love, I knew
then, were the two things I could do and forget my nature.  And that
night I had gone from one to the other without interruption, from death
in the duel to another sort of obliteration in the boat under the
willow tree.

The everyday Progmire, the one I know only too well, was still absent
when we pushed the punt out of the mud and joined the party.  Beth and
I were careful to talk to other people and, as we separated, I felt we
were even closer because of our shared and aloof performance.  I was
listening to a long complaint from Queen Gertrude about Nan's total
failure to give her any direction whatsoever, devoting all her
attention to Claudius, who, of course, needed it, the poor darling, and
who looked, despite all our producer's efforts, less like a king than
the manager of the local Abbey National.  Then I saw, across the flames
of the camp-fire lit on the edge of Parson's Pleasure, the pale face of
Dunster, who was standing sharing a paper cup of wine with the
large-breasted Prudence and looking at me with amusement.

"What on earth are you doing here?"  I felt, as I had so often, that he
had intruded on my private territory.

"Someone told us there was a party.  So we thought we should come
along.  Do you want me to say, "You were wonderful, dahling"?"

"Only if you thought it."

"Isn't the point of saying "You were wonderful, dahling" that you mean
something entirely different?"

"Then don't say it."

"I won't."

In Dunster's presence feelings of anxiety began to return and I wanted
some sort of reassurance from him.

"But what did you think of it?"

"I think' - Dunster looked more cheerful than I had ever seen him at
Oxford "I need notice of that question."

Beth and I went back in a punt full of people, singing and splashing
with paddles.  Laertes, the expert with the pole, seemed to avoid us
and had gone off in a boat with Gertrude.  I walked Beth to her
college, silently holding hands.  More sensible than me, she had
managed to get a pass to go to the party.  Before she rang the bell I
said, "We're going to do it again tomorrow."

"Are we?  I wouldn't mind."  She had her arms round my neck, smiling.

"Actually I meant Hamlet."

"Oh, that too, I suppose."

So I went back to St.  Joseph's and arrived, twenty minutes later, to
find Dunster in the street without Prudence and the doors locked.

"Is this the easy way?"

"Casanova!"

"What?"  Had Dunster guessed something?  We climbed over the wall by
the bicycle sheds and arrived on the flat roof of a building, some sort
of outhouse.  From there we could have scrambled down a tree into the
small quad but Dunster would have none of it.

"You'd be bound to make the most terrible row.  Breaking branches.  The
porter'd be out flashing his torch in a second.  You may be bloody rich
but I'd like to keep my money in my pocket.  Look up there."  He
pointed, up a steep, tiled roof which looked about as easy to climb as
the west col of the Eiger.

"See that open window?  By my calculations that's the loo on your
staircase.  Anyway, we can just ease ourselves in there and no one's
going to hear us.  Follow me, Progmire."

So he started shinning up the roof, holding on to the bits of
castellated masonry at its edge; and I came blindly after him, on my
knees occasionally, and asking what the hell he meant by Casanova.

"He made a daring escape from prison.  Across the leads of a Venetian
roof."  Dunster was full of unexpected knowledge.

"Isn't he one of your heroes?"

"It isn't the easy way."  I was sure of it.

"Keep quiet, can't you?  We're nearly there."

I was always surprised by Dunster's agility.  He was tall, angular and
apparently uncoordinated, and he walked with loping strides and arms
waving to express his strong opinions.  But now he seemed to run up the
tiles like a cat and stood gripping the top of an open window.  As I
struggled up to join him he slid the window up and whispered, "Jump in.
We're home and dry."  He stood aside to let me go first, like a
sergeant launching parachutists into the unknown.  I stepped out into
darkness and landed more softly than I expected on thick carpeting
rather than on lavatory tiles.  The room felt more spacious than a loo
and from somewhere in the middle distance there came the sound of
regular, heavy breathing.

"Made it," Dunster said as he landed beside me.

And then the bedside light went on and we were staring at the outraged
figure of Sir Ninian Dobbs, sitting bolt upright in bed and wearing a
hair-net.

"You noticed the hair-net, of course?"  Dunster said at breakfast the
next morning as we speculated on the amount of likely fines.

"That proved it, I hope, to your satisfaction."

"What did it prove?"

"That I was absolutely right about him.  Well," Dunster added modestly,
"I usually am right about people."

Chapter Five

"Sid Vicious," Cris said, 'doesn't want us to do the War Crimes
series."

"I'm not all that surprised."  His wife Angie smiled at us from the
other end of the dinner table.

"He has the sentimental affection for war of someone who's never really
taken part in the bloody thing."

It was a couple of weeks after the board meeting and the discussion
which had started me off on the remembrance of Dunster Past.  Cris had
suggested a weekend at Windhammer then, and shortly afterwards the date
was fixed.  In the old days Beth had been puzzled by my fondness for
the Bell-hangers.

"Cris needs you because you're bloody good at figures," she used to
say.

"He's not going to sack you if you don't travel miles to sit drinking
gin with him and that elderly starlet.  I don't know why you want to
go, anyway."

"Because I enjoy it."

"Is that what you tell yourself?  If you're doing that, I'll go and see
Mum and Dad.  I know you don't enjoy them terribly!"  So we would go,
on some weekends, our separate ways.

Windhammer, a ponderous statement of Gothic gloom built by Cris's
ancestor in the 1850s, stood a few miles from the white beaches and
treacherous tides of the North Sea.  Icy blasts, after an uninterrupted
journey from the steppes of Russia, besieged the walls and rattled the
casement windows, but inside logs crackled in Arthurian fireplaces and
the central heating rose comfortingly to the vaulted ceilings of the
bedrooms.

"Great-grandfather made railway engines," Cris used to tell me.

"I don't know why he saw himself as the Lady of Shalott."  There was
still a gunroom where the weapons were kept clean and oiled, and a
stable; but Cris said he never went shooting and only used his horse
for hacking across the flat countryside.

"I gave up killing things after the war," he told me.

"It's made me an object of ridicule to the country set, but I can't say
that breaks my heart.  The great secret of living in the country is not
to get on too well with your neighbours."

The house was also warmed by the lady whom Beth called the 'elderly
starlet'.  Cris's wife Angie was once Angela Downing, star of a couple
of dozen wartime movies.  She still had the wide eyes, high cheekbones
and the impertinent charm which had made her unflappable WRENS and
steadfast heroines of the French Resistance irresistible.  She always
greeted me with a welcome kiss, steered me to the fireside and asked
about my acting career.  If she started on the gin and tonics a long
while before dinner, and drank quite a bit with it, if her voice became
a little thicker and her memory unreliable by the end of the evening,
she was no less charming as she set an unsteady course towards her
bedroom, shedding spectacles and magazines and shawls on her way.

"I suppose my lot enjoy drinking so much," she used to say, 'because it
was so bloody hard to lay your hands on a decent drop during the
war."

War was what we talked about that weekend at Windhammer.  Fighting had
started in the desert, or rather an enormous number of bombing raids
had started, dropping missiles which were said to be capable of
rounding street corners, creeping down stairs and destroying carefully
selected military targets in Baghdad.  Cris, unlike the rest of the
safe civilian population of England, spent no time discussing the
campaign.  He was still thinking of the board meeting we had had before
hostilities started.

"I'll say one thing for the war' Angie held out her glass for a
refill.

"The tide's gone down in this thing, darling.  I mean, if it hadn't
been for the war I might never have met Cris."

"War was jolly good on the movies.". Her husband was

pouring wine, of which he also drank a good deal but with no apparent
effect.

"Especially Angie's movies.  That's where the war ought to have stayed.
In the local Odeons.  Everyone could have gone and watched Sergeant
Johnny Mills being brave and Corporal Dickie Attenborough getting the
screaming hab-dabs in the tail-end of the bomber, Angie making tea
through the Blitz and actors with clenched teeth and monocles playing
Nazis.  Then they could have gone home and felt brave without anyone
having to die."

"He does talk nonsense!"  Angie gave me the smile which had had such a
devastating effect on Wing Commander David Niven in Enemy Targets.

"I was getting quite tired of going out with actors in uniform.  I
doubt if I'd've fallen for Cris if he hadn't been a real soldier.  He
was the only one who never talked about the war."

"Actually," Cris told me, 'she fell for me because I couldn't dance."

"Most of the actors and directors I went out with were terribly keen on
dancing."  Angie sighed.

"Round and round the floor.  Fox-trotting away until all hours of the
night.  It used to leave me fit for nothing except a cup of Ovaltine
and sleep.  But when Cris took me out to dinner .. ."

"I told Angie I was absolutely no dancer," Cris joined in.  He and his
wife enjoyed telling this anecdote as a team.

"He said he was no dancer but it was still early, so what about going
to bed together?"  Angie confided in me, not for the first time.

"I happened to have a room in the Regent Palace."

"Actually he'd booked it before he even asked me out!"

"It only cost something like five quid."

"Quite a lot of money for those days."  Angie was the careful one.

"And you know, the poor chap popped the question at breakfast the next
morning."

"And she said she supposed she liked me a bit better than the
fox-trot."

"Actually, I said I'd have to think about it very carefully and he'd
better go away and ask me again when the war was over."

"Absolute balls!  She jumped at the suggestion.  Couldn't wait.  We got
married before my leave was up.  Special licence.  In the Guards
Chapel.  During an air raid."

"Did I ever tell you how we met?"

"No."  I lied, knowing that Angie would like to tell me again.  Cris
leant back in his chair and looked at his wife with considerable pride
as she described how she hadn't known him from Adam when she went to
some awful party in Kensington in aid of the Red Cross, and he came
pushing past her with a glass of red plonk.

"Black market Communion wine, probably."  Cris filled in the details.

"At some of those parties people used to mix it with spirits and call
it gin and altars!"

"He bumped into me and the stuff went all over my dress."

"A total accident."

"You don't believe that, do you, Philip?"

"No," I reassured her, "I don't believe it."

"It was all done so that he could winkle my address out of me.  He said
he wanted to send me flowers."

"I thought that was rather a gallant gesture?"  Cris asked me to
confirm his gallantry.

"Gallant gesture indeed!  All he had in mind was rogering me.  In the
Regent Palace hotel!"  Her eyes closed then, apparently in happy
recollection of that night half a century ago.  She was still smiling
as Cris helped her to the staircase, picking up her dropped possessions
and promising not to stay up too late talking to me.

After Angie had gone to bed we moved to the library, a long room with a
stained-glass window done by some minor pre-Raphaelite, giving it a
dim, religious appearance.  There were shelves of leather-bound books
"Great-grandfather bought them by the yard.  They're on such
fascinating subjects

as the geology of Tibet' and also Cris's larger, far more interesting,
collection.  There was an elaborate sound system and a grand piano at
which Cris sat and played for a little.  He broke the silence after the
music arrived at its inevitable conclusion.

"A war crime is something that's done by the defeated.  The Germans are
supposed to have committed all the war crimes.  We just liberated
people, even if it meant killing large numbers of them to do it."

"We're not suggesting that the Germans didn't commit war crimes, are
we?"  We were talking about history, a period which would seem as
remote to my daughter as the Norman Conquest or the Napoleonic Wars,
and I didn't know what surprises our proposed programme might
contain.

"Oh, yes.  Of course.  They committed them."  He frowned and moved
uncomfortably in his chair.  Unusually for Cris, words weren't coming
easily to him.

"Let me tell you something.  We got to a little town when we were
fighting our way up Italy.  It doesn't matter where exactly.  Anyway.
Typical Italian town.  Perched on a steep hillside.  An old wall round
it.  Nothing much inside.  A square where they had a market once a
week.  A church.  A bar.  A few narrow streets.  No great paintings in
the church.  A place of no importance to anyone.  Well, when we got
there it was empty.  Nothing.  A ghost town.  No sign of life.  Flies
buzzing over the meat going bad in the butcher's.  Grocer's empty. Cafe
deserted.  And where a church had been, nothing."

"Bombed?"

"Not as respectable as that.  No.  Some German had been killed.  An
officer.  Not even in the town.  Somewhere outside the walls.  Anyway,
that's where they found his body.  Well, everyone in the village went
to church on a saint's day.  Men, women and children.  Babies in their
mothers' arms.  So when everyone was inside, German soldiers locked the
doors.  They'd laid the charges the night before, we imagined.  Their
commanding officer yelled out some sentence of death over a loud
hailer.  That's what they heard instead of the Mass.  Then the soldiers
cleared off and everyone was blown to pieces, old and young everyone in
the village who'd gone there to pray."

He shook himself, as though to escape from a memory.

"A small incident perhaps, but those people didn't start the war.
Probably they had no particular interest in it, except for praying for
it to stop.  So they went to church and were blown to kingdom come.
What the hell can you prove by killing people?"

I said nothing.  War is something of which I have had absolutely no
experience.

"That's why I want to do this series, in spite of anything Sid Vicious
may have to say about it.  I want people to understand.  Look .. ."  He
went over to a desk in the corner and came back with a typescript,
neatly bound.

"I'd like to know what you think of it.  An outline for a series of
six."

As I took it, I saw Dunster's name on the cover and was filled with
unreasonable foreboding.  I read it in bed.  It was clearly set out but
contained no surprises.  Lidice and My Lai, the French in Algeria, the
Germans in Hungary, the Russians in Poland: the tales of horror seemed
far away from the warm, fake castle in the flat countryside where the
elderly couple, still in love lay sleeping, I imagined, in each other's
arms.  I wondered, now a new war had started, why Cris was so anxious
to remember these old atrocities.  As I finished reading and switched
out the light, I realized there was something missing in that simple
account of war crimes.  It was the sound of anger and denunciation
which I had been hearing since I was a schoolboy, the authentic voice
of Dunster.

Chapter Six

The Absent Prince by Paul Pry No one was able to tell us where Prince
Hamlet was last night.  He was, perhaps understandably, staying on in
college in Wittenberg to avoid the embarrassing proceedings which were
going on in the gardens of St.  Joseph's.  He did send an understudy,
perhaps some remote relative of Horatio's who had once been in a school
play.  This unfortunate stand-in, referred to in the programme as one
Philip Progmire, was clearly unable to afford a decent suit of mourning
and came on wearing a well-used tweed jacket and jeans.  He had also
forgotten to have his glasses mended.  Progmire's idea of acting seemed
to be to stand about reciting the lines as though they were poetry or
familiar quotations, a style of Shakespearian performance which you
might think had long gone out of fashion, even in Denmark.  His advice
to the players was fairly well spoken; the only trouble was that he
seemed unable to take any of it himself.  Far from holding the mirror
up to nature, he seemed to be holding it up to some hammy performance
he once saw at the Old Vic.

It can't be said that the supporting cast was much help to the
substitute Hamlet.  Bethany Blair's Ophelia, straight down from
Roedean, played the mad scene as though she'd had one too many glasses
of claret cup at a May Ball.  Her experience of 'country matters' was
clearly confined to hunting', shootin' and fishin'.  King Claudius and
his 'lady wife' seemed a typical suburban couple, only slightly worried
by the mortgage repayments and an outbreak of greenfly on the roses in
the front garden.  This pair of innocents probably thought that incest
was something that Catholics burn in church.

Was there a bright spot in these gloomy goings-on, you may well ask?
Just one.  Paul Adams's Laertes struck exactly the right note of
single-minded determination.  He appeared to be the only passionate
person at Court, although in this Hamlet the duel scene was about as
exciting as a fight between an Olympic fencer and a short-sighted
member of the Campaign for the Abolition of Sword-fighting.

It is worth noting that Nan Thorogood, who knows how Shakespeare should
be acted, sat watching her production and was looking as unhappy as I
felt.  The gods passed their verdict by pissing on this production from
a great height; it rained heavily in the second act.

The little shit!"

We had bought the Cherwell at a newspaper shop in the Turl and were on
our way towards the High Street and coffee.  Beth was reading as she
walked.  The wind lifted her strawberry blonde hair and her forehead
was furrowed.

"Who is?"

"Paul Pry!"

"It's not a good review?"  I was beginning to get the message.

"Not exactly a rave.  You could say that."  She aimed the Cherwell in
my direction.  I caught it and found the page.  I only saw the
headline, knew it would be a stinker about me and decided to spare
myself the unnecessary pain of reading more of Paul Pry on Hamlet, and
skipped to Ophelia.

"It's ridiculous," I said.

"Oh, yes?  I've been laughing ever since I bought the bloody thing."

"You never even went to Roedean."

"Of course I didn't!  You don't think that idiot writes the truth, do
you?  He wouldn't even know what the truth was when he saw it.  He's
only interested in hurting people.  Causing pain.  That's what gives
the little squirt his kicks."

"Don't take it seriously," I advised her.

"Seriously?  Of course I don't take it seriously!  I take it as being
absolutely and entirely beneath contempt."

"That's good then.  We'll go and have a coffee."

"What's the use of coffee!  We'll go to the White Horse."

After a large whisky Beth said, "What're you going to do to him,
Philip?"

"What did you say?"

"I said, what're you going to do to the little creep?  At the very
least punch his nose, I imagine."

"All real pros get bad notices," I told her, 'and they rise above
them."

"To begin with I'm not a real pro.  And, to go on with, I have no
intention of rising above it.  One too many glasses of claret cup,
indeed?  I wouldn't be seen dead drinking claret cup.  Look here.  If
you're not going to punch his nose for him, I will.  I only know one
thing.  He's not going to get away with this."

"Have another whisky."

"All right.  Then we'll plan the assault.  What do you say we go and
lie in wait for him?  Both of us.  May God forgive me if I don't knee
him in the groin!"

I went to the bar and got her another whisky, hoping this would give
her time to cool off.  I made it a small one this time and put in a
good deal of soda water.  However, when I got back to the table where
Beth was still crouched in fury, the cooling-off time had not been
enough.

"We'll do that, won't we?"  she said.

"Jump him in the dark and get a knee in there."

"There's only a slight problem."

"I don't see one."

"We don't have the slightest idea who he is."

"What on earth are you talking about?  He's Paul Pry, isn't he?"

"That's what he writes under.  I don't believe it's his real name."

"You mean' she looked up at me and I could see that her eyes had been
full of tears 'that the creep is hiding under an alias?"

"That's about the size of it."

"Typical!"  There was a pause while she drank.

"This whisky," she said, 'doesn't taste as good as the last one."

"I'm sorry."

"But you'll find out who he really is, won't you?"

"I'll try."

"You'll succeed.  And then you'll do something awful to him.  You
promise me that?"

"Of course," I said.  Anything for a quiet life, but I had never kneed
anyone in the groin before.

I found the office of the Cherivell on a top floor in Holywell.  The
editor was an eager, sharp-nosed, scurrying sort of person who seemed
only to lack the courage to wear a green eye-shield and shout "Hold the
front page!"  down a telephone.  Long, flapping proofs were pinned up
like Christmas decorations and in the background two mournful girls
were pasting up pages in a martyred manner.

"Who is Paul Pry?"  the editor said.

"I bet that fellow who played Hamlet would like to go and punch him on
the nose."

"Oh, I shouldn't think so," I lied.

"It's just wed like his name and college so we can send him an
invitation to our next show."

"Send the tickets here.  That's the proper, professional way of doing
it.  And as for Paul Pry, you know we journalists never disclose our
sources.  Anyway, it's up to us to protect him from physical attack.
Lots of actors threaten it.  Come on, girls.  The deadline's almost on
us.  We've got to get next week's paper to bed."

When I left, the girls were plying their paste-brushes no faster than
when I had arrived.  I could think of only one other source of
information.

"I mean, you write articles for all the magazines.  You must know."

"Must know what?"

"Who the little shit is who reviewed Hamlet."

"I can't remember' - Dunster was looking at me with some amusement 'ever having seen you angry before, old man.  Is this a breakthrough?"

"You think I'm angry.  I'm almost completely calm compared to .. ."  I
hesitated.

"Compared to who?"

"Compared to other members of the cast."

"You mean compared to Bethany Blair?"

"Naturally, she's extremely upset."

"And you're upset because she's your girlfriend."

"Well "Oh, come on.  Don't think it wasn't obvious.

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in
the glassy stream ..."  Don't look so pleased with yourself,
Progmire."

"No one could look pleased with themselves after that notice."

"But you've got to admit, quite honestly, you weren't all that good?"

"Probably not."

"But you wanted praise."

"Of course I did.  Everybody does."

"So everybody expects a critic to lie."

"Well, at least to look for the best things in a performance."

"Why should he?  Why shouldn't he look for the worst things if he wants
to?"

"Because it's brutal.  It causes unnecessary suffering."

"To your girlfriend?"

"And to me, I suppose.  If I've got to be honest."

"Have you?  I thought you didn't believe in honesty.  Isn't honesty
something rather beastly that hurts people's feelings?"  He was sitting
at his desk, among an indescribable mess of books and papers.  There
were at least three mugs of cold, half-drunk Nescafe and a paper plate
smeared with yellow rice, a relic of some hastily snatched take-away,
among the illegible, unfastened pages of an essay which had drifted on
to the chairs around him and then fluttered on to the floor.  He looked
up and favoured me with one of his rare smiles.

"It's because you're my friend," he said, 'that I expected so much more
of you, Progmire.  Because you're my friend I had to apply the highest
possible standards."

"You .. .?"  Of course I should have known it all along.  I had half
guessed when I came into the room, but I put it past him.  I was wrong.
Nothing should be put past Dunster.

"You're bloody Paul Pry!"

"A well-kept secret, don't you think?"

"So you wrote all that poison, about me and Beth?"

"Don't you understand, Progmire?"  Dunster was still smiling as he
explained it, as though to a child.

"I couldn't write something I didn't believe was true, just because
we're friends.  Could I?"

"I really don't see why not.  It wouldn'I've cost you anything."

"It would have cost my integrity."

"I don't give a fart about your integrity," I had to tell him.

He looked at me then, very sadly, and refreshed himself from one of the
cups of cold Nescafe.

"Progmire, you've always lived in a world of make-believe with
absolutely no idea of morality."

"Is it morality to make people miserable?"

"Sometimes it has to be."

"If your precious integrity's so valuable to you, why didn't you get
someone else to review Hamlet'?  Why not send one of those sad-looking
girls from the office?  They might have been glad of a night out."

"They might not have told the truth.  They might have thought I wanted
them to go easy on my friend."

"Oh, really?"  I hope I sounded bitter.

"I'm sure no one could have suspected you of any decent, human,
merciful feeling like that."  I had reached another point in my life
when I was absolutely and entirely through with Dunster.

"I wanted to write the notice myself," he said with maddening
solemnity, 'because it was quite clearly my duty to do so."

'"I was only doing my duty."  That sounds like a sort of hangman's
excuse."

"Honestly, Progmire."  Dunster got up then and came over to me.  He
looked, as always, pale, overworked, untidy, uncombed, his long wrists
and hands dangling from the sleeves of the jacket which had always been
too small for him.

"I know you're a kind of actor, but don't try to dramatize everything.
You haven't been sentenced to death.  You've just got a bad notice.
That's all.  Perhaps acting just isn't your thing.  I haven't written a
word of criticism about your economics."

I suppose I should have taken Beth's advice and struck him then.  But I
wanted to be out of the room, and I didn't want to touch him.

"You said we were friends," I told him.

"Well, we're not any longer."

"Why?"  He was smiling again, maddeningly.

"Because you didn't get what you wanted out of me?"

"Because you've hurt someone I happen to love."

"Nonsense.  No one asked Bethany Blair to act Ophelia.  If she didn't
want to be criticized, she should've stayed at home reading the Horse
and Hound."

"Go and find someone else to be friends with," I said.

"Some unfortunate bugger you can enjoy telling the truth to all the
time.  Give him my heartfelt sympathy, why don't you?"

I left him then.  He was standing in the middle of the room looking, I
was disgusted to see, not at all displeased with himself.

"Did you hit him?"

"Not exactly."

"What does that mean?  Did you knee him in the groin?"

"As a matter of fact I couldn't bring myself to."

"What did you do to him, then?"  Beth asked.

"I insulted him.  I made him feel an absolute worm.  I told him I never
wanted to see or hear from him again and that our friendship was over.
I must say, he looked pretty miserable about it."

"Good."

"Yes."  t "I'm glad your friendship's over.  He was sorry about that,
was he?"

"I think he realized exactly what I thought of him.  Oh, and I told him
he'd hurt the one person in the world I really loved."  f "What did he
say to that?  "Not much.  He had a hangdog expression.  All the
arrogance had gone out of him."

"So' to my great relief Beth looked satisfied with what I'd told her
'you made him suffer."  ,.s "Absolutely.  I made him suffer."

We were in her college room having tea.  She had bought a Swiss roll
and chocolate biscuits, which were spread out on the rug in front of
the electric fire.  It was a treat, apparently meant for a returning
warrior, although the battle had been bloodless.

"And you told him I was the one person in the world you loved?"  she
repeated, interested.

"And I meant it."  I took off my glasses, always, with me, a sign of
sincerity.

"Well, then," she said.

"I suppose we might as well."  She went to the door and locked it.

When we had made love and were lying together on her narrow bed she
said, "I don't think I'm cut out to be an actress."

"Nonsense.  You were brilliant."

"No, I wasn't.  I wasn't very good at all.  I'm certainly not going to
bother about the stage."

"What're you going to be then?"

"Don't ask me that!"  Her face had changed, or I saw it, as I lay beside her, from an entirely different angle.  She looked like a
furious child, much younger and less beautiful.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, for God's sake.  Nothing.  I'll probably be nothing.
Why should we always be thinking about what we're going to be?  What's
it matter?"  And then she was holding me tightly, her nails digging
into my back, renewing our love-making with desperation, as though
together we were galloping away from a black and threatening place she
never wanted to see again.  At last she lay quiet, her hair spread over
the pillow and her beauty, so far as I could see, restored.

In the time that followed the wounds inflicted on us by Paul Pry healed
slowly.

Chapter Seven

There followed a period of freedom from Dunster.  Of course I saw him.
He seemed, as usual, to be everywhere.  He was in hall when I had
dinner with the thespians, he was in the street, in the White Horse, in
the library when I went there to work, waving at me cheerfully from a
distance.  I didn't return his greetings and, in the vacation, when he
rang me up at home I got my mother to tell him I was out.  She hated
lying and blushed like a young girl when she did so.  She only
undertook the task after I had shown her Dunster's notice of Hamlet.

"Pay no attention," she said.

"He was probably jealous."  And she maintained her hostility to Dunster
long after we had become, in some sort of way, reconciled.

My life was now centred entirely on Beth, whom I found a greatly
preferable, but hardly more predictable, companion than my impossible
school friend.  For long periods, and for no apparent reason, Beth was
aloof; she was busy with an essay, or writing home, or washing her
hair.  She wanted an early night or to be left alone for a week.
Sometimes she went missing.  Her room was empty and her friends
confessed to not having seen her for days.  Then, as suddenly, she
would reappear, tell me how much she had missed me, open my jacket and
burrow inside it saying she hoped we would not be apart again.  I'd
take her to the Indian restaurant and she'd stop in mid curry so that
we could rush off to make love in her room, my room, or even in the
battered Renault some friend who lived near her in the West Country had
lent her.  She was so impatient that she would start undoing buttons
and zips as she drove, much too fast.  I was, of course, flattered and
delighted by this, although being a worrier I had visions of us

being found impaled on some tree or lorry, stone dead with our zips
undone.  When we arrived at our destination she would control her
impatience and proceed with the slow and deliberate expertise which
always amazed me.

At the end of my second year I put my name down for a flat in a pink
North Oxford mini chateau with a spire over the upstairs loo.  I spent
unnecessary days wondering how I was going to ask Beth to join me
there, but as soon as she heard of | it she assumed she was coming and
asked Laertes and Gertrude i to join us.  My own acting career had
peaked with Hamlet; it was then downhill all the way and I did pretty
thankless roles, like Antonio in The Merchant of Venice a miserable sod
and not the sort of person you'd ever invite to a party and Oliver de
Boys, brother of the more famous Orlando, in As You Like It.  Beth came
to the thespian parties, gave us considerable encouragement but was no
longer available for casting.  I had hoped that when we moved into the
flat everything would be different.  It wasn't, altogether.  Often she
would go away in her car, saying she was meeting friends from home in
London.

Her departures were sudden and unpredictable, as were the times when
she seemed remote, a strange girl who looked different as she sat,
apparently drained of all energy, peering disconsolately into some
bleak future she felt was inescapable.

She wanted to go to a May Ball, which I thought, with the expense of
the flat and my mounting overdraft, would cost us too much.

"What the hell!"  Beth brightened considerably at the thought of our
poverty.

"We'll climb into Magdalen.  You don't think I want to dance with all
those rich twits, do you?

Climbing in's the best part of the evening."

She proved to be an altogether more reliable guide than Dunster.  We
drank a bottle of wine in the flat and then set off for the base camp
under cover of darkness.  Beth tucked up her long skirt, gave me her
shoes to put in my pockets and we climbed from the roof of her parked
Renault across some low battlements.  I followed her white dress,
climbing unsteadily,

while she seemed to move in substantially as a ghost, a blur of
ectoplasm with long legs in tights.  Then she dropped into the safety
of a shrubbery and held my hand as I scrambled down after her.  We
joined a crowd going into a tent and there we saw my other old school
acquaintance, Porker Plumstead, sitting mournfully in a corner with a
cold collation on his knees.

"Progmire!"  he called in the fruity upper-class voice he had
cultivated since leaving school.

"Why aren't you living with us in the Cowley Road?  We're all OGs
together there."

"Oh Gees .. .?"  I was puzzled.

"Sounds like a lot of rather outdated Americans."  Perhaps it was
evening dress that made me slip into my Noel Coward manner.

"Old Georgics.  Have you entirely forgotten your school?  There's quite
a nest of us.  Self, your friend Dunster and one or two others."

"He's not my friend, actually."

"Glad to hear that.

"He does make an incredible mess everywhere.  You know what?  He left
his bloody pen in the marmalade.  Odd sort of thing to do, wasn't it?
But why aren't you living with us?"

"I suppose I like it better living with Beth."

"Beth?"  He looked worried.

"I don't remember any Beth at St.  George's."

"No.  This is Beth.  She's a girl.  In case you hadn't noticed."

Beth had spotted an open bottle of champagne at Porker's feet and was
busily filling some used glasses she had found on a nearby table.

"I say, Beth," Porker confided in her, "I've had a bloody miserable
evening.  See this dinner jacket.  Hopeless fit.  I had to hire it. And
I'd had a specially beautiful one made at Hall's, with sort of pale
mauve lapels.  My own design, actually.  I say, you two.  Do have a
drink."

"Thanks."  Beth was looking at his upturned, discontented face
decorated with a touch of mayonnaise on the chin.

"We've got one."

"Well.  This rather special DJ arrived and apparently got left in a box
on the hall table.  And what do you think?  Some wretched sneak thief
got in and pinched it.  Bit of a bloody cheek, don't you think?"

Beth gulped champagne and gave me a long and appealing look.

"Thanks for the drink, Porker.  We'd better go and dance."  I was also
anxious to be off.

"Certainly," Beth said.

"After all, we paid all that money to get in."

"But the mystery is Well, you know what sneak thieves are.  They're
pretty poor, and thin, and out of a job, and probably never been to a
ball in their lives.  Well, what the hell would a sneak thief want with
a dinner jacket with mauve facings?"

We left Porker then, unable to think of an answer to his question.  We
danced together for a little, but I'm not much better at it than Cris
Bellhanger.  Beth danced with a lot of other people, including Laertes,
Osric, Horatio and Benson, the gravedigger.  It was very late before
she wanted to go home and I went to sleep quickly.  I dreamed I was
chasing her, a ghostly figure, across all the rooftops in Oxford.  She
was running very fast but her feet never touched the tiles.  At last
she rose high over the Radcliffe Camera and vanished into the night.

Some time after the May Ball we had a thespians' party in the flat, to
which no Oh Gees had been invited.  The next morning, leaving Beth
sleeping, I wandered into the kitchen, put on the kettle and then went
into the sitting-room to find some cups which I guessed would be filled
with one-part cold instant coffee and two-parts cigarette butts.  The
curtains were still drawn, the room was dark and I had a strong feeling
that I was not alone in it.  My instinct was right.  Dunster, looking
pale and wearing his dark overcoat, was asleep on the sofa,

having adopted the attitude of another pre-Raphaelite subject, the
poet-forger Chatterton after poisoning himself.  I kicked over an empty
bottle and he spoke, "Oh, there you are, Progmire.  What time is
it?"

"What do you mean, what time is it?"

"I just want to know the time, old man.  It seems a fairly simple
question."

"And what the hell's the idea of coming in here, without an invitation,
to sleep on our sofa?  And waking up to ask the time, just as if you
owned the place?"

"I just wanted to know' - Dunster was sometimes able to sound
maddeningly reasonable 'whether it's time for breakfast."

"No, it's not time for breakfast.  Anyway, no one here's going to have
breakfast.  They're probably all sick with hangovers.  How did you get
in here, anyway?"

"You left the window open.  Don't you know that it's perfectly easy to
climb up that ridiculous porch arrangement?"

I felt like giving up.  I was surrounded, apparently, by urban
mountaineers.  At which point Beth came in, shivering in her
dressing-gown, and said, "Who're you talking to?"

"It's Dunster," I said.

"You remember.  Otherwise known as Paul Pry."

She looked at him as he struggled to get to his feet and even performed
some sort of bow to her.  He spoke with rare courtesy.

"I hope what I wrote about your acting didn't cause you any sort of
pain?"

"Of course it bloody did!"  I made it clear to him.

"I told you.  We all suffered outrageously."

"Pain?  Why ever should you think that?"  I was amazed to see that Beth
was smiling.

"I never took acting in the least seriously.  In fact, I've given it
up."

"That, if I may say so, Bethany, is a wise decision.  I congratulate
you on your very sound sense."  I wondered why Dunster, that morning,
was talking as though he were a character out of School for Scandal.  I half expected him to say, "Ma'am, your most obedient!"  and bow his way out of the room.

"So, you see, I didn't mind at all about your notice.  I'm afraid you
upset Philip rather."

"Oh, Philip's used to that.  I've been upsetting him since we were
snotty-nosed schoolboys together."

"I wasn't all that upset," I told him.

"As a matter of fact I don't read notices."  It was almost true as I
had only managed a pain-filled glance at Paul Pry's verdict on my
Dane.

"Oh, is that why you came to me in such a rage.  After not having read
it?"

"I was naturally concerned about Beth."

"Well, I must say."  He smiled triumphantly at both of us, all pretence
of humility gone.  Dunster was himself again.

"You two show remarkable concern for each other.  But just so long as I
didn't offend either of you .. ."

"What do you think you're doing here?"  I was determined to put Dunster
back at his unusual disadvantage.

"That idiot Porker threw me out of the house.  What's more, I can't get
back.  He's had the lock changed."

"That doesn't surprise me in the least.  I don't know why you went to
share with him in the first place."

"The poor fool was setting up a house for those he mistakenly believed
to have been his friends at school.  He's so obscenely rich that I
thought at least it'd be comfortable."

"And I suppose he chucked you out because of the appalling mess you
take with you everywhere.  Tell me, Dunster.  Do you carry rubbish
round with you in suitcases?"

"No.  He chucked me out because I stole his dinner jacket."

"You what?

"There's this chap who lives in the basement.  He's a protected tenant,
so Porker can't get him out.  Red Ned, they call him.  He's a
charge-hand up at the Cowley works.  Mind if I have one of these?"
Dunster was helping himself to someone's packet of cigarettes.

"And if you're making coffee .. ."

"Why on earth did you steal Porker's clothes?"

"I'm telling you.  This Red Ned, for whom I have the most enormous
respect, by the way, is involved in an unofficial dispute, so he and
his supporters are getting no strike pay, although their claim is a 100
per cent justified.  Well, he asked me to contribute to his
fighting-fund."

"So you contributed Porker's new tuxedo, with purple facings?"

"Well, not directly.  I went and sold it at that Worn Again clothes
shop in the covered market."

"Dunster!  That's theft."

"Well, the tailor's chap left it in a box on the hall table.  I had a
look.  It was such a ludicrous garment.  People'd've come up to Porker
and asked him to call them a cab.  I mean, he'd've looked like a hall
porter in it.  So you see, I've very kindly spared him a great deal of
humiliation."

"But Porker's found you out."

"Unfortunately.  He spotted the damned thing hanging up in the covered
market."

"Is he going to turn you in to the police?"

"Naturally not.  He'd only look more absurd than he does already:
"Banker's son unwittingly donates ornate dinner jacket to striking
car-workers".  I could write a wonderful paragraph about it for the
Cherwell."

"I must say, he looked pretty sick at the May Ball.  He'd had to hire
one for the evening."  Beth smiled a great deal and often looked
amused, but her laughter was a rare sound, full-blooded and louder than
might be expected.

"Look here' - Dunster was clearly pleased by Beth's reaction 'let me
earn my keep by helping you tidy up.  Some people," he had the nerve to
say as he looked round at the post-party confusion, 'do make the most
ghastly mess of their places, don't they?"

"Earn your keep?  What do you mean?"  I asked him.

"We're not keeping you here, Dunster."

"Of course you're not.  And I wouldn't dream of asking.  Red Ned
promised to let me in the basement when he gets back from the meeting.
Porker's mad if he thinks he's seen the last of me.  Anyway, Prudence
is buying me lunch to cheer me up.  So, I'll just help you wash up and
get the breakfast..  ."

I have to admit that Dunster was on his best behaviour that morning. He
collected cups and glasses, he dried up and didn't break anything. He
asked Beth about her home, her horse and her essay on Jane Austen. He
was reasonably funny about the latent snobbery of his Marxist tutor,
and Porker's increasingly desperate attempts to find a girlfriend.  He
even told me that he thought I made a 'very interesting Antonio' in The
Merchant and if he'd still been doing Paul Pry he'd have come out and
said so.  As he left us he said, "Well, my dear old Progmire.  Thank
God, we're friends again.  I've felt something missing in my life
without you."  And when I heard that, my heart sank.

After he had gone Beth said, "As a matter of fact, your friend Dunster
seems all right."

"What do you mean.  All right?"

"Well, quite entertaining, really.  There doesn't seem to be any real
harm in him."

"Beth, you don't know the man.  He's a disaster area.  He's a
minefield.  He invites every sort of catastrophe.  He's accident prone
and his condition is highly contagious.  My life has only been entirely
happy since we stopped seeing each other."

"Didn't you miss him?"

"Do you miss toothache?"

"Oh, Philip darling."  Beth was sitting at the kitchen table, eating
toast and marmalade.

"I'm sure you're exaggerating."

But, of course, I wasn't.

Chapter Eight

"I think it's about time I submitted you to the ordeal."

"What ordeal?"

"The ordeal by fire and ice ..."

"What's that meant to mean?"

"I think it's time you met my dad."

"What about your mum?"

"Oh, she's not an ordeal at all."

"Does he want to meet me?"  I began to worry about a difficult
confrontation when I might be asked about my intentions, or even about
financial prospects.  My only intention, I should have to say, was to
hold on to Beth for as long as possible, which, at that time, I didn't
expect to be forever.

"I shouldn't think he wants to meet you in the least.  He doesn't often
want to meet people.  Anyway, not unless they've been Masters of
Foxhounds.  You haven't ever been one of those, have you?"

"Not so far as I remember."

"Then he won't want to meet you."

Then why...?"

"I think it's only fair."

"What's only fair?"

"That you should know the worst about me."

So Beth drove me to Exmoor.  The hedges were so high they towered over
the roads which became green tunnels.  We shot through little towns,
full of gift shops and tea-rooms and elderly couples with rucksacks the
women in large flowered cotton dresses and the men wearing socks and
sandals.  Then we crossed the moorland and the wild ponies took fright,
as I often did, at Beth's driving.  We turned up a lane where a

poker-work notice, suspended from a sort of wrought-iron gallows,
announced Blair Cottage.

If this suggested a thatched roof and roses trailing across the porch,
the truth was something quite other.  It was less of a cottage and more
of a house, and a gaunt, uncompromising house at that.  At one time its
plaster might have been bright yellow; now it was the colour of pale
custard, baked and cracked with the passage of time.  There were
stables and a concreted yard but no flowers or flowerbeds, only a tide
of gravel which flowed up to the walls.  Our arrival produced an uproar
of barking, yapping and over-excited squeals, together with feverish
scratching at the other side of the front door.  Beth said, "Do you
mind dogs?"

"I quite like them."

"You're not going to like these."

At which moment the door opened, apparently with some difficulty, and
an uncomfortable number of small animals came plunging out, as excited
as though they had been starved for a considerable period and Beth and
I were two overflowing bowls of Pedigree Chum.  One deafening white
bundle of hair left the ground like a Scud missile and, aiming itself
at my groin, scored a direct hit.  Others stood on their hind legs and
scrabbled with uncut claws at my trouser legs.  It was true, as I had
told Beth, that I have absolutely no objection to dogs per se.  What I
can't understand is why they all have such an irresistible desire to
home in on my genitals.  After the dogs came a tall, thin woman with
reddish hair.  In the shadow of the house I could have taken her for
Beth's sister, even for Beth herself if my late Ophelia hadn't been
standing beside me.  And then, as she stepped out of the square of
shadow, the sun hit her face unkindly and I saw a tracing of lines
round her eyes like cracks on the varnish of an old painting.

"Hullo, darling," she said to Beth, and to me, "I'm Mike Blair."

Michaela, Beth had told me, was her mother's name.  Mike was what her
husband always called her.  She was now lugging one of Beth's bursting
holdalls out of the boot.  Despite my protests, she started to walk up
to the house with it.  She was a woman who seemed used to carrying
things.  Beth walked with her arm round her mother's waist.  Their
heads were very close together, as though they were sharing secrets,
but all I heard was: "How are things?"  from Beth, "Much the same' from
Mike, and "I'm sorry about that' from her daughter as we walked into
the house, the dogs yelping and bounding at our heels.

This was the first of many visits to Blair Cottage and I never crossed
its threshold without being amazed at the high degree of physical
discomfort to which the English sportsman is prepared to submit himself
and his family.  I had always imagined that hunting went with the
blazing log-fires, crumpets for tea and steaming baths after a long
run.  Not at all.  Chez Blair always struck a chill into my bones, even
on the hottest of summer days.  In the winter I felt I needed an
overcoat to go upstairs and in the mornings Beth and I often found ice
on the inside of the bedroom windows.  In the sitting-room, among the
ponderous furniture with its faded chintz covers frayed by the worrying
of generations of terriers, the single bar of an electric fire
illuminated plastic coals without producing a great deal of comfort.
The light was shed by the dimmest of bulbs, often covered in thick
shades on which hunting scenes were depicted.  On my visits to her
parents, I felt that Beth had gone into a cold country where I would
always be a stranger.  She understood this and between the icy sheets
of her bed, surrounded by rosettes and silver cups and the photographs
of her jumping her ponies at local gymkhanas, she was always especially
and actively loving to make up for the Spartan nature of her home.

She was never able to tell me how her father, christened Jonathan, had
acquired his nickname.  Perhaps it was bestowed on him in some long
disbanded mess as a cynical joke.  I never

saw him with his cap at an angle, sauntering along with his hands in
his pockets or whistling gaily my idea of jauntiness.  The Major was
short and square, with the wary and dangerous eye of an unpredictable
horse and an expression of extreme discontent.  He only cheered up
slightly when talking to his daughter.  They had, it seemed to me, a
hidden understanding, although they never used anything like words of
affection to each other.  When he spoke to Mike, the Major's scowl was
especially pronounced.

"When I first met Jaunty he was sitting at the kitchen table, warming
his hands on a cup of instant coffee and reading the local paper.  He
was wearing riding breeches, green socks and carpet slippers.  One
sleeve of his sweater was in an advanced state of disintegration, as
though it had been chewed by rats or horses.  At his feet lay a black
lurcher which was, I was thankful to see, asleep.

"So Mister Progmire.  My daughter got you down here all in one piece,
did she?  Amazing!"  The Major had a curiously high, rasping voice and
he always addressed me with sardonic formality.

"As a matter of fact, sir."  ("For God's sake stop calling him "sir","
Beth said when we were, at last, in bed.

"It makes him even more impossible.") "Beth drives very well."

"She drives as she rides.  Like a maniac.  You want a cup of Nescafe?
It's watery and revolting.  The odd thing is," he confided in Beth, 'in
bloody nearly thirty years of marriage your mother's never managed to
give me a decent cup of Nescafe."

Mike spooned the powder into a mug with a stoic smile and her husband
turned on me with a serious accusation.

"I hear from Beth, Mister Progmire, that your family lives in Muswell
Hill."

"Yes.  We've been there all my life."

"Not much hunting country round Muswell Hill, I don't suppose?"

"Philip doesn't ride," Beth said.

"So, for heaven's sake, don't go on at him."

I was grateful to her.  Some cousins had once persuaded me to go out
with them in Epping forest.  I had spent an anxious hour clinging to
the animal's mane while it demonstrated the highly neurotic nature of
all horses by trembling at the sight of babies in push chairs and
side-stepping nervously at the threat posed to it by scraps of paper.
When my position had been made clear by his & daughter, Jaunty ignored
me and I drank some perfectly adequate "If Nescafe.  He and Beth
discussed the animals, the extraordinary ;?"  love life of the Field
Master of the hunt, and the 'jumped-up pox doctor' (in fact, Beth told
me later, a heart surgeon from Bristol) who was turning the cottage
along the lane into a 'kind of suburban knocking shop' complete with a
'vulgar little conservatory' and other signs of urban decadence.  I do,
as I have made clear already, worry about many things, some of them are
unimportant, but Major Blair was a serious cause for anxiety.  Only the
thought that Beth was always on my side kept me relatively calm during
the time I spent going through an ordeal as daunting as that faced by
any of the great lovers of history.

That night we sat together in the Blair Cottage dining-room, which was
decorated with parts of dead animals.  The shrewd faces of decapitated
foxes peered down from the walls and a stag's hoof ("It's a slot," Beth
corrected me later) set in silver was the centrepiece of the table.
Jaunty carved us, with surgical precision, wafer-thin slices from a
very small joint of beef.

"You're not a veggie, are you?"  The Major's small, yellow eye regarded
me with deep suspicion.

"No, Dad.  Philip eats meat."

"Thank God for that!  We get the veggies out in force with the hunt.
Wearing bobble hats.  So bloody fond of animals that they string up
wires for the horses to trip over and stub out cigarettes on the rumps
of children's ponies.  You know, I feel sorry for your generation,
Mister Progmire.  Bad luck, really.  Born without a war to go to."

"Do shut up, Dad," Beth told her father.

"Philip and I aren't in the least interested in wars."

"I pity you.  I saw the last war coming.  All the signs were there.
Joined up.  Lied about my age.  Commissioned when I was twenty.  Best
years of my life, quite honestly.  Soldiering."

There was no reaction from Mike, dishing out the vegetables, to the
fact that the best years of her husband's life hadn't included her.

"You don't know what's in a geezer," Jaunty told us, 'until you've
watched him advancing up a hill towards a few other geezers with
machine-guns.  The great thing about war is that it shows up
character."

"It seems a bit of an expensive way of doing it.  Some people might
rather stay alive than have their characters shown up!"  Beth never
seemed to take her father seriously.

"A lot of them were like that."  The Major was not smiling at me and
yet his nearest eye appeared to wink.

"I'm sure you'd understand that, Mister Progmire.  A lot of them much
preferred to stay alive.  A good many of them turned tail and ran. They
keep quiet about that in the military histories.  Anyway, that's why I
feel sorry for geezers like you, Mister Progmire.  You've never had
your courage tested."

"Don't you believe it.  He's played Hamlet in St.  Joseph's College
gardens.  That's a bit like being under fire."  Beth showed me the
consideration due to a foreigner in a strange land.

"No comparison!"  Jaunty was certain of it.

"There's always been wars.  Wars have been going forever.  And how
long's Hamlet been going?"

"Only about three centuries."  I felt something warm between my thighs,
not Beth's hand but the lean head of the lurcher.  Now awake, it was
carrying out the usual doggish inspection of my private parts.

"I got my education in the barracks at Catterick, followed by a pretty
hairy spell in the desert.  Ever been in a tank,

Mister Progmire?  Little tin oven.  Desert heat.  Geezers got trapped
in those when they were shelled.  The sands were crowded with pranged
tanks and dead geezers still in them."  The Major produced a crumpled
silk handkerchief as though, even in his icy dining-room, he sweated at
the memory.

"After that a rather hairy time in Italy."  He seemed relieved to pass
on to another campaign.

"Kick that bloody dog away if she's troubling you."

"No.  It's perfectly all right."  I pushed away the questing mouth and
crossed my legs.

"If I had my way, this wimpish government wouldn't waste our money on
universities.  What the hell was wrong with National Service?"

Beth said, "Come off it, Dad.  You mean you'd rather I was a lance
corporal for three years?  Square-bashing!"  I often wondered if the
Major were playing an elaborate game, designed to deter his daughter's
lovers.  No one, I thought, could actually hold his opinions.  In the
end I had to admit that he probably could and did.

"What do you learn there, anyway, Mister Progmire?  Apart from
Hamlet?

"Philip does economics," Beth told him.

"Oh, yes?  Are you going to be a banker?"

"I'm not sure.  I'll probably end up as an accountant."

For the first time Jaunty looked at me as though I were not a
bobble-hatted vegetarian and hunt saboteur.

The next day it rained steadily.  Mike and I sat in the kitchen and
watched as Beth and her father put their animals into the lorry to
drive off to the meet.  Jaunty's mount looked enormous to me.  It was a
grey which snorted, tossed its head and backed in panic each time it
approached the horse box  At last Beth led the huge animal round the
yard, patting its nose and apparently speaking to it in a conciliatory
way.  On the last lap it danced up the ramp for her.  The Major slammed
the door shut.  For a moment he and his daughter hugged each other in
triumph and I thought they looked like children after a successful
game.  Then they got into the lorry and drove away.

Mike said, "I'm so glad Beth got to know you.  It's a thoroughly good
thing."  I was feeling a glow of appreciation when she added, "At least
I'll have someone to talk to when they're out hunting."

We sat for a while in silence and then she said, "You seem so calm.
Beth's never been calm.  Neither has Jaunty."  Calm!  I wondered how
Beth's mother could be so easily mistaken as I sat, a bundle of nerves,
in that strange household, disconcerted by the Major, ill at ease with
the dogs, deeply distrustful of the horses and even worried about the
night to come, because it occurred to me that so much pleasure so
easily given might vanish unexpectedly.  As I thought of the future, I
heard Mike's gentle voice telling me her troubles.

"It's not us that's extravagant.  It's the horses.  They eat so much
and they're always ill.  I can't understand it.  Jaunty and I have
hardly had a day's illness since we married.  And Beth was never sick,
not even as a child.  But those great horses hardly draw a well breath.
Their medical bills are quite terrifying.  It's not just the vets. It's
the physio.  It's the injections.  The ultra-sound.  Sometimes I think
it's a whole lot of fuss about nothing.  I think those damn horses are
hypochondriacs.  Jaunty's almost dead with worry about it all."

"But if they're so expensive, couldn't he give them up?"

"You don't understand.  Jaunty wouldn't be Jaunty, not without horses.
Do help him if you can spare the time, Philip.  He seems to have the
most terrible difficulty adding up."

No more was said about help for Jaunty then, or for a long time to
come.  I read in the kitchen, keeping warm by the cooker, and the dogs,
having grown bored, no longer abused me.  Mike ironed a number of
Jaunty's shirts and after tea Beth came back.  Her jacket, waistcoat
and even the white stock at her throat (she told me to call it a hunt
tie) were spattered with mud.

"I fancied you when you went out," I told her, 'but the mud's made it
suddenly more urgent."

"A lot of men say that."  Beth smiled.

"It's really rather disgusting of them."  Later she said, "I think
you've passed the ordeal."

"You don't mean your father likes me?"  I was incredulous.

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as that.  But he seems to think you'll do."

It was not until I had paid Blair Cottage a number of visits that
Jaunty asked me to help him with his accounts.

"I have this bloody man," he said, 'who's meant to be an accountant.
But he's in trouble himself.  Woman trouble."

I told him I was sorry to hear it.

"Two on the side and one at home who's threatening legal action.  That
is when she's not taking the law into her own hands, slashing his tyres
and so forth.  Anyway, he's up to his eyes in the smelly stuff, so he
wants me to do my own VAT, work out my own expenses.  I thought you
paid these fellows to invent the expenses, at the very least."

We were in his office, a small downstairs room which might have been
used as a refrigerator.

"It's no use complaining," Beth said, "Dad simply doesn't feel the
cold."  There was a bulging bureau, its top piled high with yellowing
back numbers of the Field and Horse and Hound and its interior stuffed
with forgotten bills, unopened bank statements and letters of almost
pathetic complaint from the Inland Revenue.  I took the whole lot into
the kitchen, warmed my hands on the cooker and started, for the first
time, a sort of filing system.  Jaunty had decided to put all his faith
in an undergraduate with a head for figures who had come into his home
to make love to his daughter.  After I had gone through his bank
statements and made some sense of the scribbled invoices, I had a more
or less clear idea of his financial situation.

As a matter of fact he was reasonably well off.  The stables,

built on a grander scale than the house, accommodated a number of
horses at livery.  His charges were high and might have brought him in
a reasonable income if he'd had any regular system for sending out the
bills.  Most of the stable work was done by dedicated girls whose wages
he'd forgotten to pay.  Apart from the livery business he had his army
pension, increased by compensation for a wound in his right leg which
didn't seem to prevent him riding regularly to hounds.  In addition to
that his bank accounts showed a regular payment in, which I asked him
to explain.

"Chap I used to soldier with.  He took a shine to me.  He knew I only
had my pension, until I got this place and started the stables working.
So he remembered me."

"You mean, it's money he left you?"

"You could put it that way, I suppose.  I say, aren't you sweating hot,
sitting hunched up by that cooker?"  He threatened to open the window
but I told him I couldn't afford to have the scattered clues to his
income blown away.  In my researches at that time I never learned any
more about Jaunty's useful source of income.  My university economics
course didn't include tax reduction schemes, but I had a bank manager
uncle who told me that if Jaunty's stables became a private company he
would save on his payment of bank interest.  I don't know if he ever
adopted this idea, but when I suggested it he looked at me as though I
were the Delphic Oracle, and after that he often asked my advice on
money matters and treated me with increased respect.

After wed done our finals Beth and I took a punt and tied it up under
the willow tree where I had first made love to Ophelia.

"It's all over," she said.

"What do you mean?"  I was worried.

"I don't mean us.  I mean this part of it.  Oxford and all that.  You
know when you asked me what I was going to be .. ."

"And you didn't want to think about it."

"Well.  I've thought about it lately."

"So what is it then?"

"I suppose .. ."  She was busy eating a greengage and now she spat the
stone into the river.

"A wife and mother.  Some sort of nonsense like that."

"I never thought of anything so permanent."  I honestly hadn't.

"You mean you don't want to get married?"

"Of course I do."

And as we lay on the worn, much-used velvet cushions she said, "It
wasn't to be expected that you'd be such a terrific hit with Dad."

Before we left Oxford I had a letter from Dunster.

Dear Progmire I bumped into Beth Blair the other day.  I mean
literally.  She was crossing Banbury Road and I was coming back from a
boring party on my bicycle.  I managed to brake and it was only a minor
sort of contact.  I promised to pay for her tights.  Anyway, she said
she'd proposed marriage to you and you'd blushed a bit and said yes.
She said that in the pub where I took her for a bit of a stiffener as
she seemed rather shaken after contact with the bike.  I told her that
as your best friend over many years, in fact by my calculation, and
discounting those insufferable actors you chose to associate with, your
only friend, I had no doubt you would be asking me to be your best man.
Now I have very little patience with the idea of dressing up in some
sort of undertaker's suit and taking part in the sanctified sale of
young women into slavery, or at least hard, unpaid labour in the
kitchen as well as in the maternity ward.  All the same, I told Beth,
to whom I felt I owed something after the collision, which may have
been caused because I was greatly preoccupied with the murder of
Allende as I pedalled along, that I would hire the rig-out and make
sure the ring was in my waistcoat pocket, and generally give you the
moral support which you'd need if you weren't going to change your mind
about thirty times on your way to the altar.  She seemed absolutely
chuffed when I agreed to do the

necessary and said of course I could stay with her family and all I
needed was a good deal of tolerance.  It seems her father is a rather
tricky piece of work so we ought to get on like a house on fire.

Don't bother to thank me, old man.  The fact that you've actually made
up your mind about something in your life simply has to be celebrated.
See you in church.

Everlastingly yours Dick Dunster "Don't bother to thank him?  I'll
thank him to keep away from my wedding."

"Don't do that," Beth said.

"He seemed so excited about it all."

"I'm not getting married," I told her, 'for the purpose of exciting
Dunster."

"He's probably made all sorts of plans."

"Of course he hasn't.  He never makes plans at all.  He'll miss the
train and arrive late and he won't have hired the suit."

"I don't suppose the suit really matters."

"And he'll probably quarrel with your father."

"That might be interesting."

"Look.  I don't want to stand up in church, vowing to love and honour
you, or whatever it is, with the shadow of Dunster looming up behind
me."

"Then you decide it, darling."  Beth smiled and kissed me.

"You decide whatever man seems best for you."

I tried to draft a number of letters rejecting Dunster's offer but they
all sounded pompous.  Dunster was right; years ago, when we were
ink-stained schoolboys, we had taken each other for better or for
worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, and there
was nobody else I had known better or for so long.  To ask Laertes or
Benson, the grave-digger, to do the job would seem an insult to our
long past.  Anyway, Beth didn't mind and to accept Dunster would
probably be less trouble than turning him down.

"Nothing goes with Beth.  No land, no cows.  No diamond tiaras.  You do
realize that, don't you, Mister Progmire?"

"Of course I do."

"I can't even give you much for a wedding present.  There's a rather
good saddle I might spare you, if you'd care for it."

"I don't think so."

"Not much use for it in Muswell Hill, eh?"

"No.  Not much use for it there."

"So.  You'll have to keep Beth in the manner to which she's become
accustomed."

I can do better than that.  I might even run to a decent central
heating system I might also have said that, but I didn't.  In fact I
said, "Of course I will."  But with a second in PPE and no immediate
job prospects I wasn't quite sure how.

"Beth needs a good deal of understanding.  She's a lot like me."  I
looked at the crafty, wrinkled face, the bald head and tufts of hair on
the cheek-bones and I thought that nothing was ever less like Ophelia.
We were sitting together after breakfast.  Beth had gone into Tavistock
with her mother to see about the bridesmaids' dresses and I was left at
the mercy of Jaunty and the dogs.

"There is one thing I can do for you.  And I'm pleased to have the
chance of helping the young hopeful."  He leant back in his chair and
looked at me in a manner which seemed vaguely threatening.

"How'd you like to work for a television company, Mister Progmire?"

"Well, of course .. ."  I was more than a little astonished.

"I've been in lots of plays.  I'm sure I'd be able to direct."

"Not that exactly."

"You don't mean acting?"

"God, no.  Forget acting.  You told me yourself you got slated by the
critics.  No.  I mean in the accounts department.  There's a fellow I
know.  He's a Well .. . he's a connection of mine.  I suppose you think
I'm just an old fart who spends his time knee-deep in horse shit. Well,
let me tell you, young

hopeful.  I have connections.  Everyone has, who's knocked about the
world a bit."

So that, strangely enough, was how I got started at Megapolis.  Before
then, I, Philip William Progmire, took Bethany Abigail Blair to be my
lawful wedded wife.  Dunster arrived the afternoon before the ceremony
with his suit neatly packed in a box from Moss Bros.  He was greeted by
Beth's family with what I thought was unjustified respect.  Even the
dogs failed to leap at his crotch and slunk into their baskets, as
though in the presence of a power which they, for some totally unknown
reason, respected.  That night I had a stag party among the oak beams
and horse-brasses of the Jolly Huntsman which Jaunty insisted on
attending.  He sat next to Dunster and listened to him attentively, his
head cocked and an ear occasionally cupped in his hand, as though
fearful of missing any of the pearls of wisdom likely to drop from my
best man's lips.

"I suppose you couldn't miss the stag party because you're so
tremendously fond of stags?"  Dunster suggested to the Major, and I
became exceedingly anxious.

"Of course.  Beautiful creatures.  Everyone on the moor is extremely
fond of them."

"Is that why you keep on killing them?"

"Have to, of course.  They need culling.  For the good of the
species."

"So you're doing them a kindness, really?"

"Certainly we are."

"Keeping down the numbers?"

"That's exactly it."

"So you find one grazing peacefully and chase it for miles.  Then you
kill it when it gets into a stream to cool down."

"Shot first, by the hunt servants.  Then cut up, of course.  That's the
way it's done," Jaunty agreed.  In the pause that followed I hoped
Dunster had done with the subject, but he had only been preparing the
ground for attack.

"Would you agree, sir," he asked the Major politely, 'that there are
too many people in the world?"

"Yes, of course, there are.  Lanes clogged up with little men driving
with their hats on.  Moor covered with trippers in the summer.  Far too
many."

"Particularly old people.  Some of them aren't much use, are they?"

"Dunster!"  I tried an interruption.

"Has that bottle got stuck to the table?"  My best man took absolutely
no notice, but went on cheerfully.

"So, Major Blair.  If you were to spot an old age pensioner on some
lawn or other .. ."

"Say again?"  Jaunty was, perhaps, feigning deafness.

"If you found an old lady sitting in the sun somewhere," Dunster
shouted, quietening the noisy table.

"I heard you the first time."

"I mean, you might decide to cull her.  You might get the dogs to chase
her across the moor for three or four hours.  Then, when she cooled her
feet in a stream somewhere, the hunt servants could shoot her and cut
her up?"

You've done it again, Dunster, I thought.  I can't even get married
without you coming down and starting a violent argument with my
father-in-law.  But then I saw Jaunty looking at me and, for the first
time in our acquaintance, he was smiling.

"Your friend, Mr.  Dunster," he said with apparent delight, 'is
extraordinarily entertaining company.  He must cheer up all you
frightfully serious geezers at Oxford."

"I do my very best," Dunster agreed.

"It's not always appreciated."

I got married in a cloud of pride and apprehension and I spent the
evening in an alcoholic daze.  Blair Cottage was warmed at last by the
presence of innumerable bodies, young and old, beautiful and grotesque,
some dancing, some clasped together in corners, some singing in the
kitchen.  There were hunt

followers and Oxford thespians, Beth's countless cousins and Jaunty's
band of creditors.  Through it all Mike smiled patiently and Jaunty
introduced my best man to all his friends and acquaintances as Mr.
Dunster: "First really bright fellow ever came out of Oxford. Brilliant
raconteur, this one.  Quite brilliant."  I was standing with Beth and
her mother when someone came and told us that the girl groom was taking
a bath with both Polonius and Guildenstern.

"Oh, dear," Mike said, with what I thought was admirable concern, "I'm
afraid there's never very much hot water."

Later, very much later, finding the lavatory occupied by a number of
people, I wandered out on to the gravel.  I was standing there in the
moonlight when I heard voices and saw some lights from the stable
block.  There was a crash and the sound of hoof beats on concrete and
Jaunty's neurotic grey hunter appeared with a dark figure aboard.  At
first I took the rider, who wore a black coat with flapping tails, for
a waiter, but I should have known better.  As the animal trotted, with
increasing speed, from the yard, the moonlight fell on the determined
face of Dunster.  I'm sure that my best man had never ridden a horse
before, but he kicked it with his heels, held the reins with one hand
and the mane with another, and went cantering down the lane.  Then, to
my utter amazement, the horse gathered its wits together, paused for
only a moment and then took the dark, ill-omened figure of Dunster
crashing through the twigs and branches at the top of a hedge and on to
the moor.  As I watched them hurl themselves into the shadows I was
conscious of Jaunty beside me, holding a dark tumbler of whisky, and I
waited for the inevitable explosion.

"My God!"  he said, and I swear he was still smiling.

"You've got to hand it to him.  Your friend Mr.  Dunster has spunk!"

Chapter Nine

All these things happened a long time ago, in and around the period of
Hamlet, a performance, which like the acting out of my own youth, may
not have been entirely satisfactory but which yet gave me a great deal
of pleasure.  Now I was Trigorin, a middle-aged author, 'charming
perhaps but very inferior to Tolstoy'.  By bullying the local
businesses and incessantly begging for money, the Muswell Hill Mummers
had built a small theatre, known to us, somewhat archly, as the
Mummery.  There we rehearsed, quarrelled, started up love affairs, had
attacks of stage-fright and rare moments of triumph, and made most of
our money from the bar and the sale of icecream in the intervals.  We
opened in January and came into immediate competition with the new hit
show on television Operation Dust Storm.  Generals strangely
camouflaged, pointing at maps like schoolteachers, streams of tanks
crossing the desert, spectacular firework displays and bombs with an
unerring sense of direction and endless speculation as to what might or
might not happen when the war really got going -these things provided
the peace-loving citizens of Muswell Hill with a nightly entertainment
far more spectacular and engrossing than The Seagull.  The house on the
first night was so thin that I had no difficulty in spotting Cris
Bellhanger in the third row, next to the aisle.

"I enjoyed it very much.  In all sincerity."  I had found him standing
alone with half a pint of lager in the bar after the show.  The actors
were calling each other darling and pretending to be professionals.

"God, I was really down in the second act!"  and "What about the Bath
chair wheels sticking?  Didn't you notice?  We had to slide Dennis out
in it, and he weighed about a ton."  Standing still among so much fluttering Cris said, "A man who can take a rational view of himself is a rare thing.  I thought you managed that very well.  I'll buy you a beer."

We carried our half pints to a bench by the wall and sat under
caricatures of leading Mummers, remote from the still over-excited
actors.  I said, "This is a surprise."

"You sent me an invitation."

"I never expected you'd come."

"That was a mistake.  If you do something, you should expect the
consequences.  Angie'll be sorry she missed it, stuck in the
country."

"Just as well.  She's a professional."

"She's watching television.  Reminds her of her old war films, I
suppose.  Only thing that's missing is Johnny Mills."  His smile
concealed, I thought a deep feeling of revulsion at the sight of
another army on the move.  As an old soldier he was, in contrast to
Major Jaunty, more of a pacifist than I could be sure of being.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said, 'out of the office.  I wanted to
ask your advice.  You know a good deal about drama."

Around us the actors were getting ready for the first-night party.
Madame Arkadina was taking the cling film off the sandwiches and
sausage rolls.  She was a large and muscular physiotherapist who
approached Chekhov's play as though it were a patient complaining
rather too much about a slightly sprained ankle.  Nina, now wearing
jeans and a Muswell Hill Mummers T-shirt, came staggering in with a box
of wine and smiled at me as she eased it on to the bar.  She was called
Lucy and had just qualified as a solicitor.  We had giggled together a
little during rehearsals about Pam the physio's briskly common sense
approach to the play.

"I don't know nearly as much as the professionals in the drama
department at Metropolis."

"That's rubbish.  The last three instalments of Social Workers have
been complete garbage."  Cris lowered his voice a little, although none
of the actors was paying us the slightest attention.

"What I want to put to you, as a bit of an expert on the subject, is
this.  Drama and real life are totally different things, aren't they?
Poles apart."

"Well, not exactly."

"Don't bother about all that "not exactly"."  Cris was always impatient
of imprecise language at board meetings.

"One is the truth and the other's fiction.  Quite obviously."

"Well, I shouldn't have said it was absolutely obvious."

"You should never have acted Hamlet at Oxford.  You seem incapable of
coming to a clear view."

"Well, there you are, you see."

"Where am I?"

"Drama and life.  They do get mixed up.  From time to time."  And bring
you some good times, I thought, until the curtain comes down and you
discover it was just a play.

I looked over to where Lucy, my Nina, was opening the box of wine.  She
was talking to someone I had seen in the audience a small man with a
pale, bald head and a healthy growth of black beard, so that his face
was like one in those old comic drawings which would make sense which
ever way up it was.  Lucy was smiling modestly at him as he left her
and I thought he must have been saying something complimentary about
her performance.  He nodded a little nervously at me as he went out.

Cris said, "Let's try to keep it simple, shall we?  For the sake of the
average punter who'll see War Crimes in the intervals between making
love, or Nescafe or whatever."

"All right."

"What we're going to be making are documentaries.  We want to tell it
as it happened, don't we?"

"I imagine that's the aim."

"Don't imagine anything.  Plain, hard facts.  That's what we're
after."

"Well..  ."

"None of your gloomy Dane doubts about it.  If it isn't true, it's not
worth doing."

"I suppose not."

"The people we've got working on "War Crimes, I'm afraid, may have a
remarkable talent for invention.  I'm just nervous they might like a
good story better than a real story.  We want reporters, not
artists."

He didn't mention the name Dunster, but I knew who he was talking
about.  The excitement of the first night, the adrenalin generated by
the challenge of performance, the joyful relief at having got through
it, had drained away.  I was left with the certainty that I was about
to hear bad news.  I didn't know then how bad.  In fact I felt there
was one thing Cris needn't worry about; so far as I was concerned
Dunster was no more an artist than I was Laurence Olivier.

"I don't want anyone to start inventing for the sake of dramatic
effect."

"I suppose not."

"It's particularly tricky, you see, when it comes to a war crime
committed by our own people."

"Were there some?"

"Of course."  Our audience was leaving the bar now and the excitement
of the actors was growing.  There was a pop and a cry of delighted
concern as the first sparkling champagne-style bottle was opened and
shed froth.

"They didn't get called crimes because no one was ever tried for them.
Only the defeated commit crimes.  But, oh yes, we did them.  That's why
I want a programme about one.  It's the whole point of the series."

Another bottle exploded.  Konstantin, in love with Nina, played by a
dark and soft-voiced young man in computers, arrived with his new
Indian girlfriend.  It seemed worlds away from the hidden crimes of an
almost-forgotten war.

"They've got hold of a story about the Italian campaign.  It's
something I remember."

"You told me."

"It was an incredibly confused situation.  So many groups involved. The
German Army, of course, and the Allies.  And then you've got German SS
chasing Communist partisans, some of our SAS groups in the mountains,
and the Italian fascists who were the real bastards .. . Well, it's
hard for someone of your age to get that lot sorted out. Hard for
anyone, come to that."

"I can imagine."  I was tired and my mouth was dry.  I didn't want to
hear about Dunster's problems.

"It would be so easy to get the wrong idea.  Perhaps accuse an innocent
person.  We might do a terrible injustice, land ourselves in huge libel
damages."  Cris smiled.

"That should worry the accounts department."

"Is there a particular story?"  I asked him.

"I've got an idea they've got hold of one.  It concerns a Brit, I
believe.  Still alive.  Chap who keeps his head down somewhere in the
depths of the countryside.  I wouldn't want us to trouble his old age
for nothing."

"What about a glass of bubbles?"  Nina, the solicitor, approached us as
we sat with the tide of the party rising around us.

"And wouldn't your friend like to stay for the bash?"

"No, no, thank you very much.  It was a wonderful evening."  Cris lied
convincingly and said to me, with his hand on my shoulder, "You enjoy
yourself."

"What do you want me to do about what you've told me?"

"Nothing for the moment.  I'll have to think about it.  What we really
need is someone completely sensible to keep an eye on it.  We've got to
be so careful.  I mean, for God's sake.  We don't want to commit
another war crime, do we?"

"You think we might?"

"It's just possible.  Is that the time?"  He had taken out the gold
watch he kept on a chain in his waistcoat and looked amazed at what it
told him.

"Angie'll think I've dropped dead.  Have a terrific party.  You deserve
it.  I didn't mean to spoil your evening."

"Good-night, Cris."

He walked away from us and, when he reached the door, didn't look round
but raised his hand in a sort of distant salute.  I thought it a
gesture of sadness at the prospect of going home to another war on the
telly.

"I was terrible tonight."  Nina, otherwise Lucy, had taken Cris's seat
after he had left.

"No, honestly, I thought you were very good."

"You're lying.  I was terrible."

"Not a bit of it.  You've got to remember, Nina was a bad actress.  It
takes a remarkable actress to play a bad actress well."

"You mean, I was just a bad actress playing a bad actress?  I just wish
you could tell me the truth for a change."

"I always do."

"Now you really are lying."  She was right, of course.  She was very
young and had my daughter's uncomfortable knack of getting at the
truth.

"Maurice Zellenek's a client of ours," she went on, and the name meant
nothing to me.

"I helped him over a house and he promised to be in this evening.  He
thought you were terrific."

"You mean the little chap with all his hair under his chin?"

"You're so cool."  She looked at me in a complimentary sort of way,
"That's what I admire so about your Trigorin.  All that suave,
middle-aged charm."

"That really was acting," I told her.

"I'm not in the least cool.  In fact I'm anxious most of the time,
except when I'm playing a part."  What about being middle-aged?  I was
forty-three, perhaps twenty years older than her, probably older than
Chekhov's writer when he seduced Nina in the play.  My anxiety
increased and, as soon as I reasonably could, I got up to dance with
Pam, the physio.  I'd had quite enough of becoming involved with people
because we had met as characters in a play.

Chapter Ten

"There's absolutely no point," Dunster had said that blustery spring
morning was it a few years or a lifetime before?  as we stood by the
ruins of Alexandra Palace looking out over London.

"No point at all, Progmire, in us trying to hide the truth from each
other."

Since that day Dunster and I had hardly spoken.  I had avoided him,
although I don't know if he had taken any trouble to avoid me.
Sometimes I got him on the telephone, but only by mistake.  Sometimes
we met outside his house, or in his hallway, but that was also by
mistake.  I have no great appetite for living through that day again. I
have, you must understand, lived through it often enough on bad nights
and long, empty afternoons in the years between.  But that day, and the
time before and after it, had an effect on the production of War Crimes
and I must do my best to make it all clear to you.  It's a story, I
suppose, which has happened to a great many people.  I just wish to God
that it had never happened to me.

The one thing that everyone knows about memory is that every day of
your childhood and youth remains stuck in your mind forever, while what
happened last week is instantly flushed down the drain of
forgetfulness.  I can see myself, tormented with embarrassment, while
Dunster heckled the little evangelical at Speakers' Corner with
blinding clarity.  So far as I am concerned Mrs.  Oakshott's bathroom
fittings will be with me until the day I die.  Every line and every
moment of that damp and dour Hamlet is still present, for pain and
consolation.  But the time after I got my job at Megapolis, the years
of marriage and living in Muswell Hill, have faded and

slipped away in patches, like a wall painting in a poor state of
repair.  And it's bad luck that those greyish blots, where the damp got
in, would no doubt have shown the best times: when Natasha was very
young, and I started to work closely with Cris, and we bought the house
in Grasmere Road.  But if you were to ask me to remember exactly when
Tash took her first staggering steps, or whose party it was at which
Beth and I made up our first really serious quarrel under a pile of
coats which were gradually removed by drunken guests who paid no
attention to us, I would be hard put to remember.  The brightest parts
of the picture have vanished beyond hope of restoration.

Perhaps what I should do is just give you the facts as far as I
remember them.  I went to work in the accounts department at Megapolis
under Gary Penrose, who was then a youngish middle-aged man with a
moustache and hair just over his ears, a gold metal watch-strap and an
expression of perpetual anxiety.  Every morning he would ask me, "How's
your car going, Philip?"  and look reassured when I told him that
Beth's Renault was quite undependable in rain or frost or hot weather.
Gary advised me on how to survive in the company.

"Don't try to be a high-flier.  High-fliers are due for a crash at
Megapolis.  You know what I've got myself, when it comes to wheels?
Toyota.  Middle-management vehicle.  You'll stick to middle-management
vehicles, if you take my advice, Philip.  And keep your head down." Not
long after I'd started work, to my surprise, Cris Bellhanger, in his
shirtsleeves and braces, banged his tray down beside mine in the
canteen.

"Welcome to the madhouse, Progmire."  He'd smiled at me.

"I hear you starred in Hamlet at university.  You're just the type of
fellow we need in accounts.  Put a bit of poetry into the balance
sheets."  I had no idea how he had got this information, and our
conversation got me into some trouble with my immediate boss.

"Chattering in the canteen to the chairman of the Board is hardly
keeping your head down, Philip.  I say, he didn't mention anything
about me and Andrea, did he?"  Gary was having a flagrantly obvious
affair with his secretary, a brisk, unsmiling person who was older and
a great deal less attractive than Mrs.  Pen-rose, whom he used to bring
to our annual dinner in the Connaught Rooms.  Fear that this romance
might become known to his wife was another cause of Gary's anxiety.

Beth and I had been lucky.  When we found the house, my father lent me
some of the money for the deposit and the rest came, astonishingly
enough, from Jaunty.

"I have a few little goodies lying in various hidey-holes.  No.  I
didn't tell you that when we went through the accounts.  I thought it
might come as a bit of a sweetener for Mister Progmire if he ever took
on a girl who has to be ridden on a particularly tight rein."  When I
asked Beth if she'd any idea that Jaunty had so much loose cash about
him she said, "The only way to get on with Dad is to ask him as few
questions as possible.  I wouldn't wish to know everything that goes on
under that filthy old tweed cap of his."  I didn't inquire further.  We
decided that we could afford the mortgage repayments if we let off the
top room, and our first tenant was Queen Gertrude, who'd come up to
London to work in advertising.  After her, our lodgers were all quiet,
friendly and clean and, when Tash was born, ready to do occasional
baby-sitting.  Beth's black moods departed; she seemed, to my surprise
and gratitude, content with life in Muswell Hill to an extent which I
wouldn't have believed possible when we were at Oxford.

Dunster became a memory, one of the things we laughed about together:
the eccentric, the stealer of Plumstead's dinner jacket, the too honest
friend who gave us terrible notices, the lucky idiot who, totally
unable to ride, jumped a hedge on Jaunty's hunter and didn't break his
neck.  He was writing articles for magazines and I would get an
occasional blast of the Dunster anger and contempt from Africa, or
Washington, or some town hall in the north-east of England.  And then
one evening, when Beth had taken Tash down to Exmoor, he rang up.

"Hullo, old man.  It's about the room."

"What room?"

"Your room, of course.  Benson's wife's left him at last and his
girlfriend's moving in with him.  That's my reliable information."  It
was true that our last lodger had been a quiet girl with tragic eyes
who filled the unlikely role of mistress to Benson, the gravedigger.

"I'm absolutely bloody homeless.  So I'll come round."

"Where are you?"

"In the telephone box at the corner of your street."

"Beth's away with her parents."

"Don't worry, old man.  I'll do us a fry up."

He came with three bottles of Chianti and, for some extraordinary
reason, I was glad to see him.  It was as though I had gone for too
long without the salt in the egg of my existence.  We drank two bottles
and I let him produce the smoking, partially blackened food and the
heavy smell of bacon fat which was my memory of his childhood home.  He
was funny about the editor of the Informer, the left-wing journalist,
who was apparently a closet golfer and a secret member of the local
Rotary Club.  He gave me all the details of the latest Washington sex
scandal and described a helicopter journey with an army major who was
terrified of flying and clutched a miniature teddy bear for comfort. He
had, it seemed, penetrated the Church of England synod to detect some
dirty work in the selection of a new archbishop; and lived with a
gospel singer in Maryland to expose a racketeering faith-healer.  He
sat with his feet on a kitchen chair and said, "I envy you, Progmire.
My God.  I envy your success."

"What success is that?"

"You've got a home.  A family.  You've become a cheerful old Muswell
Hill-billy.  Damn it all, you're happy."

"I suppose I am."  I was worried.  Once you began to talk like that it
might not last.

"And I, old man, haven't even got a roof over my head."

"How did you manage that?"  Not that, in Dunster's case, I thought it
would be difficult.

"Living with this Jo Burton.  Does the women's rights page in the
Informer.  Militant, my dear old Progmire.  I can't tell you how
militant this Jo person is.  She locked me out of the flat because I
wouldn't tell her I loved her."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"It wouldn't have been true."

"So you're out on the street?"

"All my stuff," he said with dignity, 'is in the left-luggage
department at Euston Station."

"Then why couldn't you say it?"

"Say what?"

"Say you loved this Jo Burton.  I mean, at least you wouldn't have had
to move your stuff out.  And she might have liked it."

"Oh, Progmire."  He looked at me sadly.

"You have absolutely no sense of morality.  Does that worry you at
all?"

"As a matter of fact it's one of the few things that doesn't."

"So are you going to let me your room?"

"I'll have to ring Beth."

"That's what I thought.  There's a bottle left."

Later I telephoned and got Jaunty.  He said, "Are you drunk?  I'll get
Beth.  She's talking to her mother."

Beth said, "Dad says you're drunk."

"I miss you."

"Did you ring up to tell me that?"

"Yes.  And Dunster's here.  He wants the room.  I'm sure you think it's
a terrible idea."

"I don't see why.  Provided he's good for the rent."

"Are you good for the rent?"  I asked Dunster.

"Old man' - Dunster looked at me sadly 'have I ever let you down?"

So Dunster got his stuff there was surprisingly little of it -from
Euston Station and moved upstairs, where he lived rather

quietly for about three months.  He only came down in the evenings when
we invited him, paid his rent regularly and seemed, so far as I could
tell, to lead a life of celibacy.  One day I came home from work and
Beth told me he'd left for South America, where he was going to write
some documentaries for television.

"Isn't that a bit sudden?"

"Apparently they'd just got the money together.  He didn't expect it to
happen so soon."

"Have you seen his bedroom?  I bet it's a tip."

"No.  It's remarkably tidy.  And you know what?"

"What?"

"He's actually made his bed."

We got postcards from various parts of the world, and I glanced through
his articles.  Then he wrote to tell us that his father had died and he
had inherited the house in Camden Town which I used to visit as a boy.
He invited us over for dinner some time, but a date was never fixed.  I
didn't see Dunster again until he rang me at Megapolis and said, if I
was driving home from work, could I meet him at Alexandra Palace, as he
had something to tell me which he thought I would want to hear?  As it
turned out, he was entirely wrong about that.

This was where we used to go when we were schoolboys and Dunster came
to tea with me.  We told each other that my parents had bugged my
bedroom so we had to stand in the open air round the old Alexandra
Palace to discuss the secret weaknesses and furtive misconduct of our
friends and masters.  It was there that we used to talk, looking out
over London, near to the clouds, in a position in which we had always
felt godlike, far above the small scurrying subjects of our ridicule
and abuse.

"Down there' - Dunster would wave a schoolboy's hand with ink-stained
fingers 'is the house of ill fame into which old Dankwerts, the stinks
master, is slinking on his way home.  And, somewhere among the mist
around Hampstead, Porker Plumstead is locked in the lavatory with
Health and Beauty."  And we would smile tolerantly down on them, sure,
at least, that we would never be quite as disgusting.

The most worrying sentence in the world to me is "I'd like to have a
word with you about something."  It leaves you in agonizing doubt about
what exactly.  The feeling of anxiety which started with Dunster's
telephone call had increased during the long, slow drive through the
north London traffic.  Obviously he needed help.  What was it?  Money,
shelter?  An alibi, perhaps, for some crime of violence?  By the time I
had parked and was walking up the hill towards him, I had steeled
myself to lock him in the boot of the car and spirit him out of the
country.

The old glass palace of our childhood had been rebuilt in a more solid,
less combustible version and there I found Dunster, standing under the
reconstruction of a winged Victorian angel which was holding out a
laurel wreath, as though to drop it on his head as some quite unmerited
reward.

"For God's sake, Dunster.  What's all this secret business?  What do
you want me to do for you?"

"Nothing for me, Progmire.  I want to help you.  I really mean that."

He was looking at me with the slightly reverent concern of a doctor who
is going to tell a patient that he has about three months to live.  The
'poor old you' expression was mixed with the superior look of a man who
knows that he's still as fit as a fiddle and likely to last forever.

"I'm not sure I need any help.  Not just at the moment."

"I think you do.  In fact I think you always have."

It was then that I got a feeling of doom, at the thought of being
helped by Dunster.  I should have been warned, turned, driven rapidly
away and listened no further.  That is what I ought to have done.

"You hide the truth from yourself, don't you, old man?  You

tell yourself lies or just put off having to think about things.  Well,
what I want to tell you is that you can't put off thinking about it any
longer.  It's not fair to any of us."

"Who's any of us?"  Even then I had no real idea of what he was talking
about.

"You and me, of course.  And Beth."

I knew then, as a matter of fact.  I suppose it was the way he said her
name as though he possessed it.

"What's Beth got to do with it?"

"Only that I'm in love with her.  I told her that."  I felt a small
glimmer of hope.  Was it all an absurd fantasy, a Dunster dream of
unrequited love?

"And what makes you think she's in love with you?"

"I suppose the afternoons we've been having together.  Oh, for quite a
long time now.  And the weekends, when she said she was going down to
Jaunty in the country.  I told her she was absolutely wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Not to tell you, of course.  So far as I'm concerned not telling you
was the only bad thing about it.  But she didn't want to hurt you I
suppose.  I told her wed all be far more hurt by lies."

We had fought when we quarrelled at school, rarely, and so far as I was
concerned, inefficiently, struggling together, filled with impotent
rage, pulling hair and pinching.  I'm not sure how I attacked him then.
I couldn't have punched him neatly on the jaw like John Wayne in a
saloon bar.  I couldn't even, as Beth had once advised me, have kneed
him in the groin.  But the lovers, the mothers with push chairs the
girls sharing crisps and giggling together, the small dog that jumped
up at us, saw two grown men grappling one with his arms flailing, the
other in retreat until he was by an iron railing and lay back against
it, smiling.

"Well done, old man!"  Dunster said, out of breath.

"That's just how I'd hoped you'd react."

Dunster I left him.  I was not in the business of fulfilling any of
Dunster's hopes.

"You'll feel better now," he called after me.

"Now you know the truth.  Of course you will!  You can live life as it
really is.  Not as you hoped it was going to be.  We can all feel
better.  Now we're honest with each other.  Just take the truth out and
look at it.  Cope with it.  You can't kid yourself, old man.  You can't
go on pretending that nothing exists unless you like it .. ."

There was probably more but I didn't listen.  I got into the car,
slammed the door and drove away, down to where I lived.  I wished to
God the last half hour had never happened and that I could have lived
on, even in my ignorance, forever.

Chapter Eleven

When I got home after my fight with Dunster on the parapet of Alexandra
Palace I was astonished by the appearance of normal life continuing. If
I hadn't expected to find the house burnt down, utterly destroyed, I
thought it would be empty, my wife and child gone and a note left on
the kitchen table.  But Beth was cooking the supper and Tash had her
homework spread out and there was no sign of a note anywhere.  The
place was warm and inviting and smelt gently of stew.  Beth said,
"You're late."

"Yes," I said.

"I met Dunster."

She was peeling potatoes, with an apron tied over her jeans, wearing
one of my shirts with the sleeves rolled up.  She seemed as beautiful
as on the first day I met her, perhaps more beautiful after twenty
years, with a few small lines at the corners of her eyes and no sign of
grey in the strawberry hair.  She was thin and straight-backed and
competent, and seemed so uninterested in my meeting that I was able to
hope again, with wild optimism, that the whole confession was a Dunster
fantasy.

"He asked me to meet him at Alexandra Palace.  He had something he
wanted to tell me."

"Damn!"  Beth 'blasted my hopes forever.  Our daughter, said, "Do be
quiet, you two.  I've got yards and yards of history."  She was going
to be as beautiful as her mother and on the whole we got on very well,
although she was inclined to boss me about.  Tash was always keen to
involve me in her homework, which I found hard to cope with after a
long day in the accounts department.

Anyway, I went upstairs, as I always did when I got back from work, and
hung up the accountancy suit and put on a sweater and a pair of cord
trousers.  Back in the kitchen Beth had got the white wine out of the
fridge and poured a glass for each of us.

"I suppose we ought to talk."  It was the last thing I wanted to do.

"Later."  Beth emptied her glass quickly.

"When Madam's gone to bed."

"That won't be for hours!"  Tash assured us.

"Not with all this work I've got to do."

I suppose it was hours.  It seemed like a lifetime.  We ate stew and
mashed potatoes and cabbage and finished the bottle of wine.  Tash
demanded my help on an essay she was writing about a day in the life of
a Norman peasant, but she rejected most of my suggestions with
contempt.  It was strained and pointless, like a game of cards with the
warders to fill in time until the hour of execution.  At last Tash
started to pack up her books very slowly, made herself a mug of
chocolate with enormous deliberation and performed a prolonged,
dramatic exit.  Her mother and I sat down on opposite sides of the
kitchen table.

"I'm sorry."  Beth looked at me and smiled faintly.

"Sorry it happened?"

"Sorry he had to tell you.  I was afraid he would."

"He wanted to boast?"

"Not that.  He's got this terribly awkward thing about telling the
truth."

"Is that what you like about him?"

"Do I like him?"

"Don't you?"

"I'm not sure liking comes into it, exactly."

"Then why .. .?"

She didn't answer but went and got another bottle of wine and started
to open it.

"Do you love Dunster?"  It had never, in my life until then,

occurred to me that I would have to ask her such an extraordinary
question.  She pulled the cork and refilled our glasses.  She pushed
mine towards me.  She was as gentle and solicitous as she had ever been
during all our good times together.

"I can't explain.  It's something in me I don't like particularly.  I'm
rather afraid of it.  It almost horrifies me.  It's what I feel out
hunting, or with my father.  What do you think it is?"

"God knows."  She sat and looked at me as though she really wanted an
answer.  I had none to give her.  Every word was like a barefoot step
across broken glass and I had no wish to stand still discussing the
view.

"Danger?  Is that what it is?  I suppose it might be what makes me feel
close to my father.  I mean, you wouldn't really expect anyone to like
my father, would you?  Not in the normal course of events."

There was no answer to that.  I said, "Is there any chance it might be
over?"

"Not much chance, I'm afraid."  He's infected her, I thought, with his
awful habit of telling the truth.  Then she looked down into her glass
and said, "I don't want to leave you, Philip."

"Then don't."

She shook her head slowly, red-gold hair under the big bright light
that hung over the kitchen table.

"I couldn't stay here.  Not after he's told you."

"You mean, you might've stayed if he hadn't?"

"I don't know.  Yes.  I suppose I might."

"Is that why he told me?"

"How can I tell?  Perhaps he thought you ought to know."

"How bloody considerate of him!"  I wanted to be angry with her also. I
wanted to shout at her, storm, break glasses.  I couldn't.  There crept
over me, like a disease, a fatal understanding of how she felt. I
finished my wine; it tasted of nothing and was useless as an
anaesthetic.

"Now that's happened," she said, "I'll have to go."

"I'm asking you to stay."

"Not now.  Don't ask me that now.  You can't."

"He didn't mind sharing you.  Not for all that time.  He put up with
you being with me, didn't he?  He compromised.  Made you tell lies. Let
you be dishonest.  He's not so bloody pure and truthful, is he?
Dunster!"  I remember that I was standing then, and shouting too,
probably.

"I'll have to leave," she said.

"It can't go on."  Then I felt as if I'd been crying into the wind,
alone on a beach with nobody listening.  I also thought I'd aged at
least ten years since Dunster told me.

"No, I'll leave," I said.

"You'll need the house."

"I don't want to take anything that's yours.  Nothing."  Not yourself?
but I didn't say that.  I said, "Not Natasha?"

"Natasha's ours," Beth said.

"Of course we'll share her.  She needs both of us."

So that was it.  It was over.  What was left were the arrangements,
practical and boring and heartless.  When I went upstairs I pushed open
her bedroom door to look at Tash.  She was asleep on her back, with one
arm over her head and her hair spread out on the pillow as she had
slept as a small child and as her mother slept.  I loved them both as
much as ever and I thought I always would.  That was why I behaved as I
did, in the events which were to come.

When the arrangements had been made, when we had parted and I was
living alone in the house, and I had spent the weekend at the Zoo and
the Natural History Museum and the cinema and the Hard Rock Cafe with
Tash, overfeeding and over-entertaining her but not knowing what else
to do, I was sitting alone in the canteen at Megapolis when the
chairman in shirtsleeves once again put his lunch down beside mine.

"Cheer up, Philip.  It may never happen."

He was unloading his tray when I said, "I'm afraid it has."

There was a silence while he laid out his fish and chips methodically,
his roll and butter, his bottle of beer, and I cursed myself.  Now both
my parents were dead, I had no one to tell, and I hadn't meant to tell
Cris.

"Your marriage?"

"How did you know?"

"Well, I didn't think it could be the share price, or even that bloody
awful series about hairdressers I should never have let them do.  You
know they wanted to call it Who Did You Last?  Well, I stopped that, at
least."  There was a silence.  I could think of nothing to say to
him.

"Is it for good?"  he asked.

"Yes.  For good and all."

"No hope?"

"I'm sure not."

"Sometimes no hope's better.  At least you know where you are.  You
want one of these?"  He was pouring his bottle of beer carefully.

"No thanks."

"It just might not be the end of the world."

I had nothing to say to that either.  I didn't believe it.  Cris took a
long chip in his fingers, dipped it in tomato ketchup and ate it
thoughtfully.

"We've entered those ghastly hairdressers for the Golden Comedy Goblet.
Can you imagine anything worse than the International Small Screen
Festival in Nice?"

"Not much," I had to admit, although there was something- an empty
house in Muswell Hill with its bedrooms full of memories.

"Absolutely ghastly.  I've got to go, of course.  Can't get out of it.
So you'll have to come with me."

"I couldn't."  I didn't want to be given treats, like Natasha, to take
my mind off the truth of the situation.

"You must."  For once Cris sounded like a commanding officer.

"As the representative of the accounts department.  Keep some sort of
check on my expenses."

The Small Screen Festival was all that Cris had expected.  Nice was
full of flags, posters, parties and television executives from all over
the world doing deals in restaurants and on the beach with bored
blondes at their elbows.  Girls in bikinis, peering through square
helmets in the shape of television sets, processed down the Promenade
des Anglais together with the local firemen and police bands and floats
depicting scenes from the Great Soaps of All Time.  Cris and I saw one
show, a Belgo-Argentinian co-production of a musical in which Donna
Quixote was an ex-Miss Argentina and Sancha Panza a fat Flemish
comedienne.  After it, and before the V.I.P champagne supper in the
Negresco that followed, Cris said, "Let's flee to the hills."

He deferred to me elaborately as the Controller of his Privy Purse and
asked if we could afford the Colombe d'Or in St.  Paul de Vence,
provided he promised not to waste any more of the company's time
watching television.  I agreed and we spent the next few days eating on
the terrace as the white doves circled round us, drinking pink wine by
the Leger mural.  I went to bed early and slept late, sinking quickly
into the blank oblivion in which people are said to take refuge from
disasters such as the death of those they love.  I can't say I began to
recover, but there were moments when I sat in the sunshine, listening
to the doves and smelling the wood smoke and the lavender, and almost
forgot to be unhappy.

On our last evening, as we sat outside the Cafe de la Place drinking
coffee and watching the old men play boules, Cris said, "We all change
in time.  We all become somebody different."

"What do you mean?"

"In a while, perhaps only a short while, you'll be a different Philip
Progmire.  Not the one who was married to Bethany.  Another one
altogether.  Made up of quite different experiences."

"I doubt that."

IOZ

"Oh, not that you'll lose those years when you were married.  They'll
be there always.  But it'll be as though they happened to someone
else."

A little flock of girls passed, chattering, with bare arms and sweaters
round their shoulders because it was chilly after dark.  Boys with
rackets played against the old town wall.  Their tennis balls vanished
into the darkness and then bounced back under the street lights.

"Do you want to talk about it?  Your marriage, I mean?"

"No," I said.

"Not really."

"Are you sure it's over?  Is she with someone else?"

"Let's change the subject.  If you don't mind."

So I never told Cris about Dunster and Beth, not even years later, when
he first mentioned War Crimes, and gave me the scripts and told me who
had written them.  Dunster was something I didn't want to mention, like
a shameful disease, until, in the end, I had to.

On the plane back to London, Cris passed me his copy of The Times.

"Another bit of bad news for you," he said.

"Hairdressers won the Golden Cdmedy Goblet at Nice."

THE QUESTION

Chapter Twelve

A few weeks after I opened in The Seagull with the Muswell Hill Mummers
(the notice in the Advertiser was rather like one of Trigorin's own:
"An agreeable and competent performance but not a patch on Jonathan
Pryce'), I got a telephone call while I was trying to put the best
possible face on the year's drop in advertising revenue.

Terry Gryce here.  As I think you know, I'm produce-directing Crimes.
Could we have the smallest possible natter?"

"What about?"

"The powers that be," said Peregrine Gryce mysteriously, 'think we
ought to meet and talk.  I'm in the Malibu Club and I thought it might
interest you to buy us both lunch."

"I don't know.  It'll take me about an hour and a half to get to
Soho."

"Of course.  You're in the Isle of Dogs, aren't you?  I always avoid
the place myself.  But I think you ought to come.  Seems Lord God
Almighty suggested we should meet."

"Really ...?"  I must have sounded dubious.

"Don't worry, luv," he reasoned with me.

"There's nothing born again about Perry.  I was talking about the
chairman of the Board."

As the taxi crawled through Limehouse and we sat staring at the backs
of lorries along the Commercial Road, I couldn't stifle a feeling of
excitement at the thought of entering what I'd been led to believe was
the very heart of show business.  At last we turned into Soho and drove
down past the Boy's boutique and the peep-shows, past the arcade where
displaced children from the North spent their days playing computer
games and their nights in doorways, and the multi-language newspaper
shop, to the discreet entrance of the Malibu Club.

The bar was filled with men swathed in linen, lying back in armchairs
giving interviews.  The little lights of recording machines glowed on
the coffee tables in front of them.  Opposite them eager girls held
notebooks to make sure no word of wisdom was lost.  As I passed, I
caught snatches of deliberately quiet, self-controlled dialogue.

"So we had a deal with Paramount but when we talked story they didn't
see the project in quite our terms, so we went .. ."  I am ashamed to
say that all this excited me, voices from a world of professional drama
I had always yearned for.  Through what I found to be rather beautiful
waitresses in bow-ties and black trousers, a hand waved at me, a wrist
enclosed by a heavy gold chain.  At the zinc counter, lit by a blue
neon strip and perched on a high chromium-legged stool, so that he
looked like a gnome seen by moonlight, sat Peregrine Gryce, producer of
War Crimes, with a bottle of champagne nestling in an ice-bucket beside
him.

"Philip, hi!"  he beamed at me.

"Welcome to the great big world outside the accounts department."

A drink at the bar gave me chance to inspect the Gryce outfit.  His
jacket was also made of floppy white linen, but the trousers had a sort
of buttercup-coloured tartan pattern, while his striped cotton shirt
was set off by a deep-blue waistcoat decorated with white flowers.  He
was a lean, lantern-jawed man with cropped grey hair and small,
gold-framed spectacles.

"I suppose," he said, when we sat down to lunch, 'it's all a bit of a
treat to you, being invited out by the creative side."

"It's something that's always interested me," I admitted.

"Has it really, Philip?"  Peregrine Gryce sounded supremely
uninterested in my career as he studied the menu.

"You don't mind the Philip, do you?  As it seems we've got to work
together?"

"Have we?"

"Well.  In a manner of speaking.  Caviar blinis.  You could

hide them away somewhere, couldn't you, in the budget?"

"No' - I thought it was about time to assert the authority of the
accounts department "I don't think I could."

"My, you are strict!  All right, then.  It'll have to be the warm
monkfish salad and the grilled breast of duck with saffron rice and
lentils.  And Philip .. ."

"Yes?"

"Could I give you a bit of advice?  If you really want to go into
production give that dreadful, grey accountant's suit away to some
hard-up Member of Parliament.  A bottle of Ngatarawa Sauvignon?  Can
Megapolis rise to that, do you think?"

When I had written off the New Zealand white, Peregrine spoke on the
subject which seemed to interest him most.

"I have a creative job and so I need to dress creatively.  Every
morning I open the wardrobe and what am I searching for?"

"Clothes?"

"I am searching for myself.  I am trying to create some sort of
distinctive harmony.  Also I want to send Perry out into the great
wicked world feeling confident, well loved and full of that particular
joy in living which comes from a really expensive cashmere cardigan."

"What was it exactly you wanted to meet and talk about?"  I didn't know
how long I could sustain this discussion of the dressiness of Peregrine
Gryce.

"Of course, a few years ago, I was an absolute sucker for mid-eighties
monochrome chic," he went on remorselessly.

"It was all unstructured suits, everything from the same place, if you
understand me.  I suppose there was a certain purity about it.  But now
I feel free.  I've taken off.  I mix and match.  I shop around.  I'll
go for separates: Cerruti, Armani or Issey Miyake."  His voice sank to
a confidential whisper.

"You might not believe this, but I got the waistcoat, Philip, from an
Oxfam shop in Godalming!"

"All right," I promised.

"I won't tell anyone."

"The shirt is Romeo Gigli."  Now he obviously felt on safer ground.

"I'll take your word for it.  But how can I help you over War
Crimes?"

"I don't know, Philip.  I don't know, luv, honestly.  Just at the
moment, it seems to me, we're in deep trouble."  His confidence, in
spite of his clothes, seemed to have drained away.  I looked at him and
he seemed even smaller, a shrunken elderly man dressed in a way that
was far too young for him.

"Oh," I said, 'and why is that?"

"Script trouble.  It usually is."

"Who's your writer?"  I asked, as innocently as possible.

"A person who wears a tweed jacket with leather patches."  Contempt
seemed to cheer Peregrine up.

"He must think they're coming back in."

"How did you find him?"

"Unnerving."

"No.  I mean, how did you come to be working with him?"

"Oh, that.  Well, Dick Dunster sent us this idea, written out, in
handwriting.  Of course we didn't read it.  I mean, who reads
handwriting nowadays?  I don't believe they teach it in schools any
more, do they?  Anyway, then he called round.  At my office. Streetwise
Productions.  We're just next door to the Malibu, so convenient.  And
he made a terrible fuss, shouted at everyone.  Shouted at me. 
Explained the idea, war criminals of all nations, and demanded an
immediate answer.  Well, really to get rid of him, I said I'd try it on
a few people.  He said, "All right.  I give you two weeks and then I
sell it to the highest bidder."  I didn't believe he had any bidders,
but at least he went.  Well, then.  About ten days later I was having
lunch with your director of programmes."

Gary Penrose, by dint of keeping his head down, had risen soundlessly
in Megapolis.  He continued, despite his eminence, to avoid trouble and
drive a Toyota.

"Gary said to me, "Perry," he said, "we need a newsworthy no

public affairs programme for late-night viewing to improve our image
and our ratings."  He asked if I could come up with something.  To be
honest with you, my mind was a complete blank.  I looked round the
room.  This very room, as it happens.  There was some exhibition of old
photographs round the walls.  All war scenes, you know.  Faces smeared
with camouflage paint under helmets, rows of corpses, a child crying in
a burnt-out village.  What's his name?  The guy who does these things?
All black and white and grainy.  I hadn't noticed them when we sat down
to lunch, but then I said, off the top of my head, "We've developed six
really brilliant epson war crimes."  A few days later Gary rang me up
to say he's happened to mention it to your chairman, who was
particularly keen on the idea."

"I know," I said.

"Cris wants to do it."

"And for some reason he wants you to join me as associate producer.  He
thinks you'd welcome a chance to get out of accounts."  I was grateful
to Cris for the suggestion, but could I stand any sort of working
association with Dunster?  I wanted to find out more.

"You said you were in trouble.  What sort of trouble exactly?"

"This Dunster's got a final story which he regards as his great scoop.
So far as I can gather, he's only told me this.  Mind you, I haven't
seen a word on paper.  It's about some British bad behaviour in Italy.
You know, up in the mountains.  Peasant town perched over precipices,
place crawling with partisans and Italian fascists.  Runaway prisoners
of war, brave British SAS dropped by parachute, and the wicked Germans.
It could be a fun location."

"All right," I said in my best down-to-earth accountant's voice, 'what
do you need me for?"

"Your artistic in-put, of course.  Goes without saying."  The
expensively dressed gnome opposite me smiled mockingly.

"Balls.  What do you really want?"

in

"Dick Dunster has got all these bright and shocking ideas of what the
Brits in the mountains got up to, but he won't tell us his sources. And
your chairman is dead keen that we check extremely carefully on this
one.  It's obviously a bit of a minefield, politically speaking.

"It probably is."

"But, as I say, Dunster refuses to tell us where he got the story from.
He's quite cagey about what it is, too.  At the moment I've only got
the vaguest idea.  And he said if we don't do the one about the Brits
in the Apennines, we can't do the series."

"I suppose that would be your bad luck."

I looked round the room.  At some of the tables the interviews were
continuing and the red lights of tape-recorders glowed by the side
plates.  On the walls fashion photographs were now being exhibited.
Models, standing with their legs apart and facing a high wind, had
ousted men in combat gear and crying children.  War was something we
didn't want to think about too often or brood about for long.  But we
were being led back on a surprise trip to a long-forgotten battlefield
by a man who seemed prepared to tell us nothing at all about what we
might expect to find when we got there.

"So," Peregrine Gryce said, 'are you for the job?"

"I don't know.  I'll need time to think about it."

"I suppose you're a bit wary of leaving a nice safe desk in accounts.
Is that it?"

"Something like that," I told him.


Chapter Thirteen

Although I had been offered a job as associate producer, I took my
preferred option and did nothing.  That is to say I stayed quiet, kept
my head down and got on with my work.  Tash came for her weekends and
we went to the movies and had lunch at the Indonesian restaurants in
Muswell Hill which she liked, and I willingly put up with Deng Deng
Goreng and bean shoots for the pleasure of her company.  During these
visits Tash was in charge, cooking, on the evenings we stayed in,
elaborate and rather good meals which she never washed up, employing a
process which she called 'leaving it in to soak'.  I asked regularly,
trying to drain my voice of all emotion, about her mother, and she
would answer automatically, "Beth's all right," and pass on to other
subjects.

We hardly ever mentioned Dunster, mainly because I couldn't bring
myself to say "How's your step-father?"  I hadn't seen him since the
wedding.  Beth had remarried in Camden Town register office and invited
most of the old cast of Hamlet.  Dunster had written with an
extraordinary suggestion.

"I don't exactly know whether a best man's called for in the civil
ceremony, but I wouldn't want anybody else but you, Progmire, old man."
I read the letter in the kitchen, dropped it into the tidy-bin and
arranged to take a trip up the Nile at the time of the ceremony.  Most
of the other passengers found that Egypt had an appalling effect on
their stomachs and I sat alone on the deck of a boat which by then bore
a striking resemblance to the Mary Celeste.  I watched the muddy banks,
the villages with their biblical appearance and television aerials,
glide past and tried not to remember the punt under the willows, or the
icy, rosette-hung bedroom in Blair Cottage.

Not long after my lunch with Peregrine Gryce, I got a telephone call
from Major Jaunty Blair.  He regretted the way we had 'drifted apart'
and suggested a meeting: "What about a spot of dinner at my club?"  I
should have declined the treat.  My continued involvement with Beth's
family was like picking at a scab which should have been allowed time
to heal.  I didn't want to talk about her, hear about her, or be made
to remember.  All the same I went.

I had expected to find Jaunty half asleep in a leather armchair under a
painting of the Battle of Inkerman in some dusty retreat for retired
officers of the British Army, but I was mistaken.  Dandini's, when I
managed to find it tucked away behind Shepherd Market, had a white tie,
top hat and silver-knobbed cane over the door, depicted in neon strips
that had failed in patches.  The doorman was a pale young man in a
braided jacket many sizes too large for him, who was leaning against a,
wall playing, what we used to call at St.  George's, pocket billiards.
When I asked if Major Blair was in the club he said, "There's only one
old guy here yet.  You better go and ask him."  Inside there was a lot
of crimson flock wallpaper, stained in patches, pink-shaded lamps,
tables round a minute dance floor and a number of dispirited girls in
white ties, tails and fishnet tights engaged in low-key gossip.  Jaunty
was at the bar.  When he saw me he drew back his lips and gave a low
growl.  I was reminded of the dogs at Blair Cottage that used to leap
for my groin.

"God, this place has gone off.  Everything's gone off.  Tracy!"  This
emerged as a bark at a girl at the far end of the counter who was very
slowly polishing glasses.  She was blonde with a face, I thought, like
that of a very young white mouse.  She was suffering from a severe cold
and in the intervals of polishing dabbed at her nose with a tiny bundle
of pink Kleenex.  A closer view of her seemed to calm Beth's old father
a little.

"Another large G and T for me please, Tracy dear.  And one for my
guest."

I said I'd prefer white wine and the girl was delighted to tell us that
they didn't do white wines, not by the glass and it'd have to be a
bottle.

"Oh, come on, Tracy!"  Jaunty's grin looked savage but it was meant, I
suppose, to be ingratiating.

"I've been a member here long enough, haven't I?  And you always used
to do it by the glass, didn't you, for any guest of mine?"

"Anyway, I'm not Tracy."  As the girl advanced on us I saw, on the
large plastic notice fixed to her lapel, the word, Tina.

"We haven't got no Tracy."

"Tracy gone!"  There was, in the Major's voice, a terrible note of
doom, as though the meaning had also gone out of his life.

"But you look so exactly like Tracy."

"I don't know, do I?"  The girl was pouring gin from an upturned bottle
on the wall.

"I don't know what the girl might have looked like.  Now.  Do I have to
open a bottle of white?"

"No," I reassured her, "I'll have a gin and tonic as well."  I didn't
want to add to her problems.

When the drinks were poured things began to look up for my host.  A
big-breasted and motherly person carrying two huge menus in scarlet
covers with gold tassels came up smiling and said, "As soon as you're
ready, Major dear.  I've kept a nice table for you and chef's put on
the cane ton a I'orange.  Your favourite."

"There you are, you see."  Jaunty shot me a look of triumph from over
the top of the menu.

"They know me here.  You know how to look after me, don't you,
Marion?"

"Marcia."  She smiled tolerantly and looked, I thought, like the nicest
kind of hospital matron.

"And will it be your usual, Major?  It's the Barolo, isn't it?"

"The Barolo Italiano."  Jaunty was now almost cheerful.

"And another couple of generous gins, old girl.  Prawn cocktail to kick
off, Progmire?  We're here to enjoy ourselves!"

"Thank you, young man."  Marcia smiled at my host, took "5

our menus and left us, a kind, top-heavy woman walking unsteadily on
shiny high heels who had managed to remember Jaunty.

Later I was looking round at the Dandini club where we were almost the
only diners.  Three brawny men in suits who looked like plain-clothes
police officers were having dinner with an elderly man similarly
dressed.  They were listening to his stories, laughing at his jokes,
and I thought he might have been a retired superintendent and that it
was some private reunion of a few privileged members of the Vice Squad.
The duck a I'orange had not been hatched out long enough in the
microwave and the Black Forest gateau lingered cloyingly on the
palate.

Jaunty said, "They know me here, of course.  Know me well.  I've only
got to breathe the word and they'll make you a member.  No other
reference needed!"

"I don't really think so."  Why did I feel, obscurely, that I didn't
want to disappoint Jaunty?

"It's a bit off my beaten track.  I mean, it's rather a long way from
Muswell Hill."

"It's a bloody long way from Exmoor but I've been a regular for years.
I come here on leave, you might say, when things get a bit rough on the
front line."  I wasn't sure what he meant by the front line, but I
thought it must be the altogether peaceful presence of Mike.  And then
Jaunty gave me another of his unnerving grins.

"I should think you might find a place like this pretty useful, living
the sort of life you do now."

"What do you mean exactly?"

"A geezer on his own.  Unmarried.  I don't need to spell it out, do I,
Progmire?"

"Is that why you asked me here?"  I felt a wave of depression.  Was
that the way ahead?  Tina with a cold or Marcia leading me gently and
tactfully into the geriatric ward?

"Well, no.  Not exactly."

"Why, then?"  Tina had taken a tray of drinks over to the Vice Squad.
As she set down their glasses, she bent her

knees in a curious bobbing motion and smiled at their greeting.

"It's about my blessed son-in-law.  The new one, that is.  He shouldn't
be doing that job."

"Which job is that?"

"The one he's got on for your people.  I tried to tell Bethany.  It's a
war he knows absolutely nothing about.  Too young for it.  Most people
are.  Only just a few of us left.  Only a very few of us understand
what it was like exactly."  He looked at me in a way he never had
before, as though he was asking me to feel sorry for him.  He filled my
glass.

"Barolo."  He rolled the word round his mouth with a sort of relish.

"Reminds me of Italy.  Not that we got it there in those days.  Horse's
pee mixed with red ink and paint-stripper.  That's what the peasants
gave us if we were very lucky.  That was our tipple in those far-off
days."

"Which far-off days were those?"  I asked the question reluctantly,
feeling that each word was a step further into a plot that no longer
concerned me.  But it apparently concerned Beth and so I asked the
question.

"Winter of 1944.  In the High Apennines.  Bloody bleak and bloody
dangerous.  The King of Italy had surrendered, but Mussolini was still
kicking about in the north.  Allied armies fighting their way all up
the peninsula, which was a complete waste of effort, quite honestly.
Germans fallen back on Florence, and in the hills ... Well, all sorts
of odds and sods."

"Partisans, mainly communists," I told him.

"Italian fascists and some British SAS sections, dropped by parachute.
Oh, and the Germans of course."

He looked at me suspiciously, as though I was trying to trap him.

"You seem to know a lot about it."

"I know something."

"Not how we felt, though, do you?  None of you peace babies know that.
Look, I wasn't much older than you both were when you put on that show
at Oxford.  What was it?"

"Hamlet."

"Not much older than that when I was an army veteran.  We'd fought
across North Africa.  We hadn't been home for -Oh, it seemed as long as
anyone could remember.  We were shagged out, tired of each other, tired
of sleeping in our clothes.  Most of all we were tired of being scared
to death every waking hour from what I remember."  His hand was
unsteady as he raised his brandy glass.  For some reason, in the tacky
surroundings of the Dandini club, wartime terror had returned to him.
This was an entirely different Jaunty from the old man who had told me
the army taught him everything he knew, and that war was the finest
university.

"Italy was the end, as far as I was concerned.  The end of the bloody
line.

"To be absolutely honest with you, Progmire.  I never understood what
we were meant to be doing there.  They dropped us in between the
communists, who were busy getting ready to take over after the war, and
the worst of the fascists, who were a gang of murderers on the way out.
And then there was the German Army.  Bloody good fighting-machine,
you've got to hand it to them.  What were we meant to do with six men
and a boy?  Frighten them out of their wits?  Cut off their retreat?
Best we could do was to keep our heads down, hide in some cave or in
the pigsty of a peasant who'd betray you for the price of a bottle of
grappa."

So this was the setting of one of Dunster's scripts: the High
Apennines, which Peregrine Gryce had said would make a 'fun location'.
This was the drama to be created by actors and extras and cameramen,
which Jaunty Blair had acted out for real a lifetime ago.  He took a
gulp of brandy, coughed as it hit his chest and growled on.

"Do you think everyone fought that scrap entirely according to the
Queensberry Rules?  Or the Geneva Convention, come to that?  Do you? Do
you think if they'd've bagged a group of Musso's cutthroats, they'd've
built a nice comfortable prison for them and arranged for Red Cross
parcels to be sent in?  Do you honestly think they did that?"

By 'they' did he mean 'we'?  I felt I was going to get some

sort of confession and had no idea what I should do with it.  I looked
down and saw Jaunty's gnarled hand on my arm.  He was looking at me
beseechingly and I was reminded of all the animals he had hunted.

"An old geezer has nothing to do with what he was as a youngster,
Progmire.  We all change completely.  We haven't got the same bloody
fingernails.  Our hair falls out.  Our teeth aren't ours any more.  You
can't hold an old man responsible.  Not for what happened when he was a
different mind in a different body and scared shitless.  Do you catch
my drift, Progmire?  Do you see what I mean, old son?"

"I'm not sure I do."  What struck me most about this speech was that he
had called me son, as though Beth and I were still together.  But then
he brought me back to reality.

"Your friend Dunster," he said, 'can charm the birds out of the
trees."

"He's not my friend exactly."

"No.  No, of course not.  Not under the circumstances."  Jaunty seemed
cheered up for a moment, and then his gloom returned.

"He got me talking one night, over a jar at Blair Cottage.  Got me
talking about the old days."

"When you were someone else?"

"When we all were.  Perhaps I had a jar too much, I don't know.  We got
out some old maps and started talking about that time in the mountains.
He seemed so bloody interested.  Led me on, I suppose.  Not that I told
him anything, not anything sensational, believe me.  But perhaps I set
him off, inventing.  And I want to tell you this, Progmire.  He's got
nothing to go on.  No evidence at all, you understand?  No use him
poking about and trying to find a story."

"Is that what he's doing?"

"Something he can sell for your geezers to put on the box.  That's what
he's after.  You've got to tell your lot.  There's nothing in it.  No
truth at all."

"I'm an accountant.  Not the programme controller."

"I know but you have the ear of the bloody management.  And you can
tell' Jaunty was gripping my arm now.  I could feel the surprising
strength of his old fingers.

"You can tell my present son-in-law, tell your successor ..."

"I haven't got his ear.  I haven't got any part of him."

"He'll listen to you.  No bloody good my talking to him.  Tell him he's
just asking for it, that's all."

"Asking for what?"

"Disaster.  For himself.  For the whole family.  You'll put a stop to
it, won't you?"

"I can't promise anything."

"You'll do it, won't you?  You'll do it for Beth?"  He leant back in
his chair then, less rattled, sure of his ground.

"After all, you owe me something."

"Do I?"

"Have you forgotten?  Who found you your job?  All those years agp.  I
had this connection at Megapolis."

"Yes, of course.  So you did.  I was very grateful."

The Major finished his brandy and his eyes seemed to film over, as
though he'd lost interest in the entire subject.  The
ex-superintendent, or whoever he might have been, had left his table
and was at the bar chatting to Tina.  He had an impressive head, like
the damaged bust of a Roman emperor, with a nose that had been broken
at some time in his career and iron-grey hair as a fringe to his naked
scalp.  He looked in our direction, as though curious about what we
were doing together.  A few other couples had arrived and music for
dancing came unsteadily out of a speaker in a corner of the room, like
warm water dripping from a rusty tap.

"Look here," the Major said.

"If you've got something else on, I really don't want to keep you."

"I must get back."  I wanted to go to sleep and try, for a night at
least, to forget everything he had told me.

"Sure you don't want to stay?  That young Tracy behind the bar looks as
though she might be friendly."

"No, really.  Got to work tomorrow."

As I left the Dandini club, a middle-aged couple, looking at each other
hungrily, were bopping to a crackling tape playing, "In the jungle, the
mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight."  I saw the Major get up and
leave our table, and I thought he was about to join the man who had
been eyeing us from the bar.

Chapter Fourteen

After this meal certain conclusions were, I'm sure you would agree,
obvious.  Jaunty, in his cups, had hinted at some discreditable
incident in the Apennines.  Dunster had received this information
eagerly, researched it further, touched it up a little and was about to
produce a story in which Beth's father a man who, for reasons best
known to herself, she loved -was to be accused of a war crime, heaven
knew how serious, during the Italian campaign in 1944.  Cris wanted me
to join that sartorial enthusiast Peregrine Gryce in an effort to
control Dunster, an activity which required the hopeless optimism of
King Canute giving orders to the tide.

I had woken early and lay waiting for the grey start of the day.  Then
I decided to drive to work before the traffic, but at half past six the
container lorries were already rattling down to the Angel and queuing
where the road was up.  From the car radio I learnt that the oil wells
were flaming in Kuwait and that half-starved Iraqi conscripts were
surrendering.  Soon the war would be over and quite soon forgotten.
Nothing would be left but the choking clouds, the burnt-out and twisted
buildings and the uncomfortable revelation that those we fought for
hadn't been much better than the enemy.  When Natasha was my age it
would be a part of history, the names of generals and places and
participants buried, as were the details of the Italian campaign, in a
few books which not many people read.  There would be other fears,
different sufferings, to fill the Today programme.  As I was driving, I
was thinking about Beth, wondering whether she knew about Dunster's
script and if there were any way of preventing the Jaunty story being
beamed into ten million homes.

I got to Megapolis far too early and had breakfast in the canteen among
the security men and a few people who'd come in for the early chat
show.  And then I waited for Cris to come in and tell me, I hoped,
exactly what I ought to do.

"Jaunty Blair!"

I was sitting in the conversational part of Cris's office and he was
standing looking out over the river, showing me his back in its white
shirt and crossed braces.

"As a matter of fact he used to be my father-in-law."

"I know," was what I thought Cris said, and I was puzzled because I'd
never told him.  And then he turned slowly with the sun behind him
making a silvery halo on his head, his face in shadow.

"He told me when you and Beth got married."

"How long have you known him?"

"Since 1942.  He arrived in Egypt with the yeomanry.  One of the new
boys.  I was sent back from my regiment to give them some basic
training in tank warfare.  That's when I first met young Second
Lieutenant Jonathan, usually known as Jaunty, Blair."

"Young?"

"Four years younger than me."  It was hard to believe.  Cris was
straight-backed, hardly lined.  Jaunty's face was etched like a map of
Spaghetti Junction, his hands peppered with those brown marks which are
said to be signs of approaching death.

"Of course, I didn't really get to know him then.  I was a desert rat
who went over to the Special Air Service regiment.  Jaunty had the best
of the war in Egypt.  We were actually winning in his time there.  But
he got trapped in a burning tank.  Lucky to get out alive.  After that
he said he had a sort of horror of closed spaces.  So he was keen to
get into the SAS.  Fresh mountain air, that's what he said he was
after.  No more being cooked in a tin oven in the desert."

"You were up there, in the Apennines together?"

"Some of the time.  Only some of the time.  The situation was pretty
fluid, if you understand me.  But, yes.  I suppose that's where we got
to know each other a little better."

I had got up early and the sofa was too comfortable.  My eyelids were
heavy during his account of an ancient campaign, but now I was awake to
a situation that seemed inexplicable.

"You met Beth.  Often.  We came to stay with you.  When we were
together."

"Which is why I understand, I think, exactly what you felt about her."
His smile was gentle, as always.  He moved then, to sit near me.

"She never said you knew her father."

"Perhaps' Cris carefully straightened the trade magazines and the heavy
marble ashtray on the glass-topped table between us 'her father never
told her about me."

"And you never told her you knew Jaunty."

Cris was still smiling, which encouraged me in my unusual role as a
cross-examiner.

"No point in opening up old wounds.  The truth of the matter is, Jaunty
and I never got on particularly well together."

"I can understand that."

"We parted on pretty bad terms, as it happens.  Let's say we didn't see
eye to eye on the way wars should be fought.  That is, if you have to
fight them.  Then he wrote to me.  Out of the blue.  It was rather a
pleasant letter.  He said wed been through some hard times together and
had our differences in the past.  Well.  That was putting it mildly. 
But his daughter was marrying a young economist, a man with a terrific
head for figures who'd played the part of Hamlet at Oxford."

"Jaunty wrote toyo  I mean, I know he wrote to someone at Megapolis. I
imagined it was someone in accounts.  But when I asked Gary Penrose
about it he was a bit vague.  Said whoever it was must have left."

"I suppose it was such a curious idea."  Cris looked up at me again.

"The Hamlet of the balance sheets!  I found it irresistible.

Or did I admire Jaunty's cheek, asking me for a favour?  I told Gary to
get you in for an interview."

So I had been Cris's choice from the start, because of what I'd done
before he met me.  I said, "There's something I should have told you,
long ago.  I suppose it's just that, well, since Beth and I broke up I
don't like talking about him."

"Just as I don't like discussing Major Jaunty Blair."  He gave the
military rank a mocking emphasis.

"I suppose," I said, 'something like that."

Cris lay back in his chair, his legs crossed, his hands clasped across
his stomach.

"You're talking about Dunster, of course."

"You know?"

"Naturally.  When he was doing this job, I made a few inquiries."

I suppose I should have expected Cris to know everything.

"I really can't explain why I didn't tell you that Beth left me for
Dunster.  I should've told you as soon as you said he'd written the
scripts."

"Don't worry.  I can understand exactly why you didn't."

"And now," I said, "Dunster's found out what Jaunty got up to in the
war."

"Is that what you think?"

"That's what I know."

Tell me."

Cris moved again and sat in a more official position behind his desk
and I gave him a condensed account of dinner with my ex-father-in-law
at Dandini's.  This was followed by a silence.  Then he asked me, "Do
you think Jaunty's frightened of being exposed?"

"Don't you?"

"I suppose it's likely."

"And you must know what it's all about."

"I've got an idea or two.  I'm not sure until I know what Dunster's
written."

"But it could be very bad for Jaunty?"

"What I can't understand is, now Dunster's married your Beth' Cris
frowned 'why the hell should he want to call her father a criminal?"

"If you knew Dunster, you wouldn't wonder about that.  He has a habit
of telling unpleasant truths about his nearest and dearest.  It makes
him feel heroic."

"An odd sort of character."

"Unusual.  Yes.  I think you might say that.  Peregrine Gryce asked me
to be an associate producer on War Crimes.  He wanted me to check
Dunster's sources.  That was your idea, wasn't it?"

"I can see we should never have asked you."

"Why?"

"It was too much to expect."

"I might want to stop him doing any more harm.  To the company.  And to
Beth."

"Do you think you'd have any sort of influence over him?"

"I might do something.  If I spoke to both of them."

He looked up at me.

"You're still concerned about Beth, aren't you?"

"And always will be."

So I moved from accounts on to the production side.  I was now in the
world of make-believe or drama that was telling the truth.  I would
have to discover which when I became associate producer on the War
Crimes series.

Chapter Fifteen

"I'm afraid Perry's not here."

"Shopping?"

"On a recce for a new series of Neighbourhood Watch.  Crimes isn't the
only thing we're doing at Streetwise, you know."  The tall and
determined woman was Pippa Marching, Peregrine Gryce's PA, who looked
as though she'd been the captain of cricket at Cheltenham Ladies
College and no doubt served Peregrine with undying loyalty.  She had
been trying to put me in my place ever since I told her I was the new
associate producer.

"You mean, you're the chap Megapolis put in to keep an eye on us? We're
just don't know what they're in such a panic about.  Perry's last six
productions came in way under budget."

"It's not the money I'm concerned with," I said.

"It's the artistic quality."  At which she gave me the sort of look the
man who comes to read the meter might get if he'd suddenly offered to
do an audition for Musician of the Year.

"I'd like to start by going through the files."

"I suppose you can," she conceded, after a long moment of doubt.

"But don't get them in a muddle, will you?  Perry's very particular
about his files."

The offices of Streetwise Productions looked like an extension of the
Malibu Club next door; the same white walls and chromium, the same
cream sofas and blown-up stills and prints by American photo-realists.
Peregrine Gryce's certificates of nomination for various awards were
framed in gold.  Pippa Marching banged me up in a small room with an
interesting view of the dustbins outside the Malibu kitchens.  Then she
left me alone to discover exactly what Dunster was planning to do to
Jaunty Blair.

The files had been divided into various countries.  Some of them
contained scripts I had read in Cris's country house, their second or
third drafts, long research notes and treatments.  The slimmest was THE
BRITISH IN ITALY, with most of the work apparently still to be done.  I
sat looking at the cover of it for a while, listening to the traffic
and the kitchen noises, breathing in a faint smell of left-over
monkfish and decaying vegetables.  But the telephone didn't ring, no
one brought me a coffee, and so I had nothing to do but open the brown
folder.

The first thing I found was a large-scale map of the territory between
Florence and Bologna, with a place called Pomeriggio ringed in
felt-tipped pen somewhere in the brown-shaded part of a mountain range.
Then there were photographs: the main street and square of a small
town, and a rough path leading precipitously up to what seemed to be a
pile of rubble on a promontory perched high over a valley.  There were
also five pages of the chronology of the Italian campaign from 1943 to
1945, and no more than a page of somewhat inaccurate and much corrected
typing.  BRITISH WAR CRIMINALS?  was the heading, and I felt grateful,
at least, for the question mark which didn't seem entirely
characteristic of Dunster.

"Victorious armies never commit war crimes, because if they're
victorious no one dare call them criminals."  The thought had been
Cris's, but the words were Dunster's:

But what exactly happened in the town of Pomeriggio in the High
Apennines on that long-ago Sunday in the autumn of 1944?  It was the
Feast of Santa Magdalena in Lachrimae, the village's patron saint,
traditionally celebrated in the Chiesa Nuova, which was, strange as it
may seem, the older of the two churches, built in the fourteenth
century on the edge of a precipice just above the village and only used
on one day a year.  Certain facts can be established.  A German SS
officer had been found gar rotted in a field outside the village walls
just before the massacre of Pomeriggio.  On the saint's day, the whole
village processed, in the evening, up to the Chiesa Nuova carrying banners, candles, the saint's statue and her Holy Relic a fragment of her little finger in the Reliquary.  Half-way through the service the church was dynamited, presumably with a timing device.  The building was reduced to rubble and Pomeriggio to a ghost town, the incident has passed into history as yet another German outrage, a savage reprisal for the murder of one SS officer.

I remembered what Cris had seen in Italy, a town deserted and a mined
church.  Could it have been the same town, in the same campaign?  Cris
had certainly blamed the Germans; Dunster had a different solution.

"Fact' he went on:

Two escaped British prisoners of war were shot by the Italian fascists
in Pomeriggio's square only a week before the massacre.  Had someone in
the town betrayed their hiding-place a cave high up above the Chiesa
Nuova?  There was certainly one British SAS (Special Air Service
regiment) team in the area and probably more at the time of the
massacre.

"Those commandos didn't fight' one veteran campaigner told me land here
I recognized a quotation from Major Jaunty Blair] 'by the Queensberry
Rules or the Geneva Convention."  Such teams contained a demolition
specailist, used to blowing up munition dumps or supply centres.  An
ancient, little-used church would present no problems to such an
expert.

I have researched this incident thoroughly [Where's the research?
someone, presumably Peregrine, had scrawled in red biro] and I have
been fortunate enough to meet an ex-officer who was serving in the SAS
in the area around Pomeriggio at the time.  [Who?from Peregrine] For
very understandable reasons he wishes to remain anonymous.  [We'll need
an affidavit from him if we're to go on with this Peregrine] I am also
on the track of at least one witness still living in Italy whom I
intend to visit.  [Bring back statements, certified by a local notary]
From these and other reliable sources [What sources?] I have been able
to piece together the truth.  [Here the red biro had merely placed a
large question mark] The SAS team knew that some villagers had betrayed
our escaped prisoners.  They may also have known that the fascists used
the deserted Chiesa Nuova as their headquarters and for occasional

meetings.  They undoubtedly knew that everyone would be in the church
on the Feast of Santa Magdalena [Can you prove this?  Peregrine asked]
and on no other day in the year.

Are we simple-minded enough to believe that taking reprisals was a form
of warfare only practised by the Germans?  Revenge fulfils a basic
human need.  The town was responsible for the deaths of two Britons,
and so the town must pay the penalty.  That is exactly what we did to
Pomeriggio in the High Apennines.

It might be argued that there's no point in punishing a town unless you
let everyone know who's done the punishing.  [What about that?
Peregrine] The answer is that the town was extremely isolated and the
SAS team responsible was moved back to Mal-traverso immediately after
the incident.

Historians of the campaign, and many people at the time, were misled by
the murder of the German officer, which seemed to give the SS a motive.
I think I know who strangled the German.  [You know everything, don't
you?  Then why don't you tell us?  Peregrine] It was no one from the
town.

I read all this through twice and then sat for a long time, postponing
my involvement in a massacre that had happened so long ago, the
repercussions of which seemed likely to last forever.  Then I lifted
the phone and asked Miss Pippa Marching to get me a line.

"Dial 9 and do it yourself," she rebuked me smartly, and so I called
the number I usually avoided and heard Beth, sounding, as she always
had, surprised and slightly out of breath.

"Hullo."

"Oh, hullo.  Is Dunster there?"  Not Dick, not your husband, never
anything but Dunster.

"He's abroad."

"Not by any chance in the High Apennines, somewhere to the north of
Florence?"

"He might be.  It's not the sort of thing he tells me much about."  I
had a sudden hope that this was a criticism, but she sounded perfectly
satisfied with the situation.

"I suppose he

may ring me, or just turn up.  Why do you want to know?  Is it about
Natasha?"

"No.  Tash is the least of my worries."

"So why did you ring up?  You don't usually."

"I've been thinking.  We might have lunch."  In fact I had only just
thought of it.

"Because he's away?"  I could imagine her smiling as she said it, but I
knew it was no real encouragement.

"Because I have something very important to tell you."

There was a silence, so long that I thought she had left my voice on
the hall table and abandoned me to go about her business.  At last she
said, "Where are you?"

"Soho.  We could go to Sophia's.  Could you make it at one?"

"All right then."  She rang off and I put down the telephone.  It had
seemed, when I came to do it, almost too easy.

Sophia is the small, grey-haired, soft-voiced Italian who makes Piero's
in Greek Street such a pleasure to visit.  Beth and I used to go there
when we came up to the West End to a theatre or cinema, and because of
that I hardly ever go there now.  Sophia greeted me warmly when I
arrived at ten to one and there I sat, crumbling bread and drinking too
much white wine, until Beth arrived on the dot of half past.  I rose to
greet her, feeling just as I had when she walked into the Indian
restaurant in the Turl when our love affair had just started no
different at all.

"I'm sorry."  She smoothed the back of her skirt and sat down.

"I don't know what happened to the time."

"That's all right' I found myself lying "I haven't been here long,
really.  I had a busy morning."

Sophia brought another bottle of Orvieto and said, "It's wonderful to
see you together again."  She went away smiling and neither of us said
anything to disillusion her.  We were silent because I couldn't think
of how to begin, and then Beth said, "You've got something to tell me?
I'm very glad."

"Why are you glad?"

"Aren't you going to marry one of those Mummers of yours?  I thought
that was what you had to tell me."

"Would you like it to be?"

"Of course.  It'd be better all round.  I'm sure Tash would like to see
you settled."

It was as though this beautiful, red-headed woman I loved so much had
become a kindly aunt, hoping that I would put the dangerous days of my
youth behind me and get married and start a family.  Settled indeed!
For a moment I was almost pleased to have news to disturb her.

"I have to talk to you," I said, 'about Dunster."

"What about him?"

"He may be about to write something that's going to cause a lot of pain
and suffering."

"Well," Beth said, 'he usually does."  She caught sight of herself in
the tarnished mirror by our table.  Her long, pale fingers pushed back
her hair.  It wasn't so much that she sounded as though she had lost
interest, but she was retreating behind that wall of vagueness which I
knew so well.

"It's a bit more serious than the notice he wrote about our Hamlet."  I
tried to imagine that we were back at Oxford, discussing another
Dunster outrage.

Beth said, "You were upset about that, weren't you?"

"And you," I said, 'wanted me to knee him in the groin."

She was still looking at her reflection, smiling at herself as though
she didn't believe me.

"This isn't just a bad notice," I told her.

"He's going to write about something your father did, or what Dunster
thinks he did."

"What Jaunty did?"

"Something terrible.  In the war."

"Well, most people did terrible things then, didn't they?  That's what
they got called up for."

"But not to massacre an entire town.  In a church!"  If I had wanted to
shock her, I failed.  She had abandoned her reflection and was looking round the restaurant as though for ways of escape.

"Jaunty didn't do that."  Her voice was a sort of a shrug, less a
denial than a deliberate retreat.

"I don't know.  I told you, Dunster thinks he knows."

"I suppose none of us knows what happens.  In wars."

That year's war had finished quickly.  The short burst of desert
fighting was over.  An almost bloodless victory, one of the newspapers
had said; most of the people dying being assorted Arabs killed in air
raids, or retreating, or slaughtering each other.  If we cared so
little about them, why should we concern ourselves with what happened
in a scarcely used Italian church almost half a century ago?  Perhaps I
shouldn't have cared if Beth's father hadn't been attacked, or if
Dunster hadn't been the attacker.  I said, "Do you imagine Jaunty wants
a film made about him, suggesting he's a mass murderer?"

"No," she agreed, "I don't think he wants a film about him at all."

"Then, can't you stop Dunster?"

"If I could stop him," she said, "I don't suppose I'd be with him
now."

And that, as far as I was concerned, was the bleak and honest truth of
the matter.

"I'll have to see Dunster when he gets back," I told her.

"I'll have to talk to him."

"I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."  And then we went on to discuss
other things: Tash and her A-levels, her chances of getting into
Manchester University which she thought was going to suit her much
better than Oxford a place she was sure would be too 'false' for her
tastes.  This was an expression I was afraid she had learnt from her
step-father.  We kissed in the street when we parted, a small, polite
tribute to the past, and then she was gone, walking quickly towards the
Tube.  Whatever drama was going to be put on, Beth, it was clear,
wasn't up for a part in it.

Chapter Sixteen

It was Wednesday when I had met Beth and for the rest of that week
Peregrine was away somewhere in the north of England, and Dunster
didn't come back from Italy.  Pippa Marching treated me with unyielding
suspicion and I had nothing to do but sit in my cell and worry about
how I was going to deal with Dunster.  The more I thought about it, the
more slender and unsubstantiated the story of the massacre seemed.  At
the best moments I felt sure that I could make him see reason and drop
it, and then I had to remind myself that reason was something Dunster
found invisible.  On Friday I gave up and told Pippa I was going home
early, news which she received with no interest whatever.  Sunday was
going to be my birthday and I had invited a selection of Mummers to
lunch.  On Saturday I went shopping for this occasion.  I was going to
give them smoked salmon, roast pork with apple sauce, and an open tart
that I bought at Pierre's Patisserie in Muswell Hill.  I meant to think
about anything but Pomeriggio and the Feast of Santa Magdalena in
Lachrimae.

The party consisted of Pam, the physio, who had played Madame Arkadina,
and her husband, Dennis, the dentist.  There was Martin, the bank
manager, who had directed The Seagull, and his wife, Muriel, who did
our publicity.  Ken, who had played Konstantin, came with his
girlfriend Ranee; and finally there was Lucy, the solicitor.  I had not
meant to ask her, afraid that my dramatic seduction and abandonment of
her in the play might start a friendship at a level for which I was not
prepared.  However, she came into the Mummery bar when I was asking Pam
and Dennis and it became impossible to leave her out.  When not excited
by the aftermath of a

performance, she was a quiet, methodical girl with short, dark hair and
attentive, watchful eyes.  I thought she would do well in her chosen
profession.

Martin and Muriel brought champagne and the others parcels.  Lucy's was
wrapped up in pink and green paper with a matching card.  I opened it
and found a bright yellow silk shirt of the sort which might have
decked out Peregrine Gryce.  I stood holding it, wondering exactly what
idea she had of me and how much it must have cost her, when there was a
ring at the door bell and there was Natasha, wearing an old pair of
jeans with a carefully cultivated hole in the knee, accompanied by a
stocky boy who she said was George.  She looked disappointed to find
the place full of Mummers, as though I should have been celebrating my
birthday alone with the Sunday papers.  All the same, she gave me her
presents: a single rose, a packet of incense, a piece of soap in the
shape of a woman's bottom and a small model aeroplane.  George had
brought a bottle of Spanish wine, for which my thanks were effusive.

"Mum remembered it was your birthday," Tash said.

"So she suggested we came over."

"That was nice of her."

"Anyway, George wants to get into television.  I told him you could be
a big help.  Now you're an associate producer.  George thinks that all
television's crap and he wants to do something about it."

George said, "Television's the language of the future.  No one can
write a novel after George Eliot and poetry's completely finished.  So
are the movies, except for Roger Corman.  So it's over to you, Mr.
Progmire.  You should be speaking for now, but all you're doing is
making crappy costume dramas about maids in Edwardian country
houses."

I tried to explain that it was a long time since Upstairs, Downstairs
and that hadn't been made by Megapolis -anyway.  And that up to now I'd
been in accounts and hadn't had much of a chance to speak the language
of the future.  At which George looked at me with considerable pity.

"Associate producer."  Dennis, the dentist, who had a perpetual and
artificial suntan, and glasses hanging on a chain round his neck, spoke
with the quiet, concerned voice which he used to ask which tooth was
giving the trouble.

"Isn't that something of a departure?"

"Philip's gone creative," Pam, the physio, explained.

"It's what he's always wanted."

"Producers and directors' as Muriel spoke, she blew out a little cloud
of cocktail biscuit "I can never remember the difference.  Isn't the
producer the chap that looks through the camera and says "cut"?"

"No, darling.  That's the director."

"Really?"  Dennis, the dentist, looked astonished.

"Is it really?  What does the producer do then?"

"I suppose," I told him, 'he worries about things."

"Oh, well."  Dennis raised his glass to me.

"Congratulations and happy birthday."

They all drank.  George looked at me and said, "At your age, Mr.
Progmire, you mtfst spend a lot of your time thinking about death."

"It's a theory George has," Tash explained.

"People over forty think about death a lot."

I said, "I don't think about it much more than when I was seventeen."
That had been true before we started to do the War Crimes series.

"Who gave you this, Dad?"  Tash was holding up the yellow shirt.

"Isn't it a bit of a positive statement?"

"Nina brought it."  The Mummers laughed and I corrected myself.

"Not Nina, of course!  Lucy, it was incredibly kind of you."

"You can always change it."  Lucy was calm and practical, unfazed by my
daughter.

"I wouldn't dream of changing it.  It's extraordinarily ... elegant."

"I thought it was right for an associate producer.  Bit showy for a
Trigorin, perhaps.  You dad was a wonderful Trigorin," Lucy told
Natasha.

"Are you an actress too?"

"She did Hermia in the Dream at school," I told them, if only to get
these disparate elements of the party together.

"She was remarkable."

"Don't boast about me, Dad.  It's so embarrassing."

"I never really got Arkadina."  Pam was peering anxiously about the
room, as though still searching for this elusive character.

"There was something wistful about her that I could never quite
catch."

"I would call it wet."  The dentist had the same view of Chekhov that
Nan Thorogood had of Hamlet.

"What a hopeless collection of wallies!  That's what you couldn't get,
Pam.  The wimpishness.  We're a couple of medics, you and I. Practical
people.  You have to have a bit of energy to be a physio."

I wanted to tell them that Chekhov was a medic also, but I was too
concerned with Natasha's look of terminal boredom.  This turned to
contempt as Lucy said, "Nina had enough energy to run away with a man
who didn't really love her.  That was a pretty positive thing to do."

I saw Tash look inquiringly at Lucy when she said this, and so to
change the subject I asked, "You're sure Mum didn't mind you coming
over?  Leaving her alone, I mean."

"Oh, she's not alone.  Dick's back.  He flew in from Bologna early this
morning.  He's terribly excited."

"Is he?"  The one thing I didn't want to hear about was Dunster's
excitement.

"He woke us up to tell us he'd got the entire story for his latest
script.  And he says he's absolutely thrilled to be working with
you."

And as she said that, they were all there, uninvited, at my birthday
party: the SAS and the Germans, the Italian fascists, the singing
procession carrying the Saint, Beth, Jaunty, Dunster.  The lot.

The phone rang very early on Monday morning, the second day of a new
year in my life.

"Progmire, my dear old man.  Great news!  We're going to be working
together again."

"I hear you had a successful trip."  I hadn't remembered us working
together before.

"You've no idea just how successful.  We've got something absolutely
stunning on our hands."  I should have known that it couldn't be good
news.

"You'd better come into the office."  As associate producer I was,
after all, meant to be in charge of Dunster.

"You can tell me all about it."

"This is a bit too sensitive for the office, Progmire.  Besides, I
don't want to run into that swinging little sixty-year-old in the funny
clothes.  Have you seen his wife?  She's a little old lady in a tweed
skirt and a twin set.  Funny, isn't it?  Look, I've got a bit of
serious research to do.  Just to dot the i's, you understand.  Why
don't you meet me there?  Shall we say eleven o'clock?"

"Meet you where?"

"The Imperial War Museum.  Where else?"  He was laughing as he put down
the phone, no doubt at my extraordinary inability to guess where he was
going to be.

I decided that I wouldn't go, that I would wait until he came into the
office in a normal and businesslike way.  There was something
ridiculously theatrical in our meeting among a collection of old
weaponry and relics of forgotten wars, but 'theatrical' was a word of
powerful attraction to me.  Having first rejected the idea of going at
all, I started out far too early and reached the river by ten o'clock.
By a quarter past I was crossing Lambeth Bridge in sunshine, with light
shining up from the water.  I drove up Lambeth Road and parked on a
meter in front of an imposing domed building exactly forty minutes
early for my appointment with Dunster.

I had no alternative but to sample the entertainment offered.

The engines of death and destruction were set out in the sort of chic
surroundings usually associated with modern American art.  Small
fighter planes dangled from the ceiling like mobiles.  Battle-scarred
tanks were mounted and shown as though they were abstract sculptures.
The air was filled with discreet officer-class voices, recorded on
tape, whispering the virtues of the Churchill tank or the Focke-Wulf
bomber.  I stood before an ancient, beautifully polished, double-decker
bus which had rattled up to Ypres and the Somme on a free ride to the
slaughter.  Enticing notices pointed to the World War I trench
'complete with sounds, smells and other special effects'.  Somewhere
Neville Chamberlain was telling the nation we were at war, somewhere
else soldiers were singing "Roll out the Barrel'.  In a hidden corner,
no doubt, Dunster was dotting the i's of history.  I went and sat in
the canteen and had a coffee among parties of uncontrollable
schoolchildren for whom war was a welcome day out.  Then, still having
time on my hands.  I bought a ticket for the Blitz experience.

So I sat in the darkness of a mock-up air-raid shelter, listening to
the excited whispers of German tourists.

"My name's Charlie," said a recorded Cockney accent, 'and I've been an
air raid warden down this street for the last couple of years.  And I
wouldn't be surprised if they don't come over tonight."  The sirens
started whining and another voice in the darkness said, "Enjoying the
war games, are you, Progmire?"  Dunster sounded young, eager and
fatally enthusiastic.

"I saw you bolting in here for safety."

We left together before the All Clear.

"Don't you like it?"  The attendant looked disappointed.  Dunster told
her it was hugely pleasurable but we had business to attend to.

"What I suggest," he said as we walked under the fighter aircraft, 'is
that we go outside to talk."

Two mammoth naval guns protruded over the circular flowerbeds in the
museum's garden.  As we walked down the gravel path towards a seat we
were back to our boyhood when we had pretended my parents' house was
bugged and we had to talk in the grounds of Alexandra Palace.  And the
strange thing was that, now we were together, I was almost pleased to
see Dunster.  Years had vanished for a moment and it was as if I had
seen that familiar figure in a flapping coat, with long, uncovered
wrists, running towards me with some secret of the prefects' room to
tell, or a scandal among the staff to reveal.  Today, however, Dunster
was dressed differently.  The jeans were familiar but they were topped
by a black leather jacket, decorated with zips, which gave him a
military appearance, perhaps adopted for the work in hand.

"We're going to make the most sensational programme together!"  he
promised me, as we found a bench to sit on.

"Are we?"

"The snappy little dresser ..."

"Peregrine?"

"When he's not deeply concerned about spilling coffee on his cashmere,
Perry worries about how we're going to make the last war interesting to
"nowadays".  I suppose he means to the ordinary, down-to-earth chap in
the male boutique."

"How do you want to make it interesting?"

"It's not the war we're on about."  Dunster's eyes were bright with
enthusiasm, his forehead pale and a lock of dark hair, untouched with
grey, still fell across it.  He clutched at his knees, as though to
prevent himself from jumping up in his excitement.

"It is about nowadays.  It's about the old men that run our lives. It's
about them being murderers."

"Isn't that a bit exaggerated?"

"You wait, Progmire.  You wait until I tell you what I've found out."

"I've read the story," I assured him, 'of the church blown up."

"Of the massacre?"

"If you want to call it that."

"Oh, I do.  I certainly do.  A reprisal for two British prisoners,
betrayed to the fascists."

"That's your theory."

"It's a lot more than a theory, old man.  I've got the evidence.  Do
you want to know who put me on the scent?"  He was hugging himself now,
his hands nursing his elbows, rocking with delight.

"Our mutual father-in-law."

The March sunshine was thinner than I had thought and I felt cold.  A
middle-aged man came jogging by, music from a Walkman plugged into his
ears.  He wore a T-shirt with Madonna's pout stretched across his
pigeon chest and bright-green shorts.  His thin legs ended in purple
trainers.  I wanted to get up and go, away from Dunster and this
absurdly peaceful garden with two great guns mounted over it.

"Oh, yes," Dunster said.

"Major Blair is a great source of information."

"Jaunty took me to dinner," I told him.

"He said the war crime was done by a young man, and he's not that young
any more.  Everyone changes, he said, over the years.  For once I
thought I understood him."

"I don't think you did, quite."  Dunster seemed amused.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Jaunty didn't have anything to do with it.  He was in the SAS
section, that's true.  But he was left behind, back in the caves above
Pomeriggio.  Jaunty wasn't in that select little group of hand-picked
murderers.  Only four of them did in the church."

"Thank God for that!"  I had never thought that I would feel grateful
to Dunster.

"You're relieved for Jaunty?"

"No.  For Beth."

"Why?"

"She wouldn't like a scandal involving her father."

"Don't worry your head about Beth, Progmire.  Jaunty didn't do it but,
of course, he knows who did.  You want to know how I got him to tell
me?"

"Go on."  Now I didn't mind what I discovered.

"I was talking to him one night, quite late, actually.  We'd gone down
to stay.  I'd brought a bottle of brandy and we were drinking the
stuff.  Well, I knew we were doing this series and I wanted to know if
Jaunty had any stories about the Italian campaign and if he'd ever
heard of Pomeriggio.  I think he rather likes me, in a sort of way."

I thought of Dunster in a tailed coat, jumping a hedge when he couldn't
ride.  I remembered Jaunty's look of admiration.

"He started to talk about what happened.  He also began to look very
important.  You know, the way people do when they know something that
nobody else does?  And then he said, "Bloody bad luck for the poor
buggers that went to church that day, but it's been a wonderful little
nest egg for Jaunty."

"What on earth did he mean?"

"Didn't you ever notice?  Jaunty's tight as hell, of course.  But if it
comes to it, he always seems able to produce a bit more cash than you'd
expect from an army pension and looking after a few horses.  He helped
Beth and me out of a bit of a hole once."

And contributed to the down payment on my house.  I also remembered
ill-kept cashbooks and chaotic accounts in Jaunty's office, and bank
statements that seemed healthier than could reasonably have been
anticipated.

"I asked him what he meant' - Dunster was smiling 'and sloshed the
four-star Remy about a bit.  He said two things that I remember.  One
was "Silence is golden, old boy.  Silence is the equivalent of a golden
handshake."  The other was "The fellow who commanded that church parade
has always been good enough to look after Jaunty.  And Jaunty's always
been suitably grateful."

So blackmail wasn't a young man's crime, something done in a vanished
age, but a source of continuing profit.  Would Beth have to discover
that about her father?

"So who was paying him?  Did he tell you?"

"Not directly, no.  I couldn't get that out of him.  I've found

I4Z

out now, though.  That's what's going to make our programme so
sensational.  Forget Megapolis.  Any company would take it on."

"What do you mean, forget Megapolis?"

"The party that did for the church was very small."  Dunster was now
sitting with his legs stuck out, his arms crossed comfortably, staring
at the ground between his feet.  I can still see him and hear his
quiet, careful, dangerous voice.

"Only a young captain, a sergeant, the demolitions specialist and a
Lance Corporal Sweeting, who helped hump the gear.  Sweeting went
missing some time after the incident.  He was a deserter who took up
with an Italian girl and her family hid him.  He never came back and
he's still there an old man who speaks Italian, calls himself Andreini
and owns a small cafe in a back street in Maltraverso.  That's who I
went to see."

"What did he tell you?"

"Only what I'd already figured out, long ago."

"What?"

"The captain in charge is now one of the great and good, of course.  A
pillar of the establishment.  A chap who controls what we see, and
suggests what we should think, on so many questions of political
morality."

I wanted to shout at him, Keep quiet, Dunster!  For God's sake don't
say any more!  But I waited.

"He's your boss, Progmire.  Sir Crispin Bellhanger.  The Santa
Magdalena's Day murderer."  He was looking at me then, smiling in what
appeared to be perfect happiness.

"Balls!"  was what I said, after a long silence.

' Congratulations."

"That is complete and utter rubbish!"

"At last!  I've found something you feel strongly about."

"Is that why you made it up?"

"Don't lie to yourself, old man.  And don't let him lie to you.  I
happen to know it's the truth."

"And I know it's not."

"Have you been out and found that old soldier in the High Apennines?
Perhaps you've spoken to the sergeant?"

"I don't need to."

"It might be difficult, anyway, seeing that Sergeant Blaker was killed
later in the war.  I'd like to know if you've found the demolitions
specialist.  I think I've got a lead to him.  But we're supposed to be
working on this project.  Perhaps we could investigate it together."

"There's nothing to investigate.  I know Cris."

"Such touching loyalty.  You've always been such a simple soul, old
man!"

"He's not a murderer."

"Oh, I don't suppose he's ever called himself that.  He was just doing
his patriotic duty.  Avenging the deaths of those two thoroughly good
chaps, Troopers Ashley and Pickering, who'd been handed over to the
fascists."

"He couldn't have killed women and children.  In a church.  Forget it,
Dunster."

"How do you know what people are capable of?  In a war?  You've never
been in a war, have you?"

"Neither have you."

"But I haven't got your simple faith in the morality of the chairmen of
television companies.  I can imagine exactly how it happened."

"Your fatal imagination."

"We'll get the facts.  Find the man who planted the explosives.  He'll
confirm who gave the orders."

I thought of an irresistible argument.

"If Cris had been guilty of anything like that, would he have been so
dead keen to do a series about war crimes?"

"Yes."  No argument seemed likely to stop Dunster.

"Of course he would."

"Why on earth?"

"Have you never heard of the need for confession?  Murderers

have it.  They hang around police stations.  They offer to help the
police with their inquiries.  They make witness statements.  In the end
they have to give themselves away.  Don't you know that's what
happened?  Sir Crispin Bellhanger's been longing to tell the world
about this for years."

"For almost half a century!"

"It's a long time to keep a secret.  Too long for your friend Cris.
Your hero."

"I don't have heroes."

"I forgot.  You don't, do you?  Nothing so positive as that."

There was a silence and I could only repeat, "It's just something he
wouldn't do."

"You weren't sure Jaunty wouldn't."

The answer was no, I wasn't sure.  But I didn't give Dunster the
pleasure of hearing me say it.

"Beth told me.  You got terribly steamed up, for you, Prog-mire.  You
thought I was on the verge of exposing the galloping Major.  You
thought she'd mind dreadfully.  Do you think he's a more likely killer
than your boss in the office?  That doesn't say much for your opinion
of your ex-wife's family."

Was Jaunty so entirely different from Cris Bellhanger?  The answer was
yes, but, again, I didn't want to say it.  I didn't want to argue with
Dunster.  I wanted to be rid of him and his awful, smiling certainty. I
said, "I've got to get back to the office.  I'll have to talk to
Cris."

"You mean warn him?"

"Tell him what's happened."

"I'm sure he'll be interested."

"And I expect it'll be the end of the series."

"You're going to kill the story?"  Dunster was laughing now.

"Don't you think it's gone far enough?"

"Oh, no, not nearly."  The joke, for Dunster, seemed to be getting
better all the time.

"Not nearly far enough."  And then he was serious again.

"You can't stop it now.  There's no way you can stop it."

"I can try."

Then I got up and left him, sitting on the bench under the guns and
enjoying the situation.  I walked quickly to the gate and got into my
car, but Dunster wasn't far behind me and as I started the engine,
which responded with a complaining whine, I saw him unfasten a crash
helmet from a motor bike as formidable as Jaunty's horse.  This was a
new interest in his life, which I supposed he had bought with his
earnings from Cris Bellhanger.

I had told Dunster I'd try to stop him.  At that time I thought I
could.

Chapter Seventeen

"Good news!  You've got Sir Percy Blakeney."  Dennis, the dentist,
picked up the spectacles that hung round his neck, elevated them to his
nose and looked at me closely, as though doubting whether I was an
appropriate choice for the Scarlet Pimpernel in the light-hearted romp
that was to be the Mummers' big autumn production.

"And we'll be playing opposite each other again," Lucy said in her
quiet and businesslike manner.

"I've got Marguerite.  Martin was trying to get hold of you to tell you
all about Pimpernel."

"I'm sorry.  I've been out of London."  I had been down to Windhammer
and had called in at the Mummery for a drink, hoping to find something
to talk about other than long-ago deaths in the High Apennines.  So I
discovered that I was to play, for the first time, a positive hero
engaged, despite his languid and flippant manner, in springing
aristocrats from the guillotine.  I would be raising a weary eye-glass
and saying lines like, "Odds my life, Lady Blakeney!  I have spent the
entire morning in the perfection of me demned cravat."  Dunster would
have found that entirely ridiculous, but then I no longer cared what
Dunster thought about anything.  I was now at war with Dunster.  I had
talked to Cris and made up my mind that, at whatever cost, Dunster had
to be defeated.

When I had paid my first visit and I hoped to God it was my last to the
Imperial War Museum and got back to the Streetwise office, I had found
Peregrine Gryce agitating because on his return from the North of
England I wasn't waiting in my cell, staring at the back wall of the
Malibu Club, breathing in the smells of last night's dinner and eager
For instructions.

"Pippa tells me you've been looking through the files.  I hope you've
come up with some ideas?"

"Yes, I have.  I've also been talking to our writer."

"And did you manage to get any sense out of him?"

"I don't think so.  I hope not."

"Tell me."

"I'll tell you what I can, after I've spoken to Cris.  Pippa, get me
Megapolis, will you?  The chairman's secretary."  Miss Pippa Marching
looked at Peregrine for confirmation and then made the telephone call.
You have seen from this passage that I was, in some ways, a different
associate producer.  It was as though Dunster, riding away on his huge
black motor bike, had left me some of his determination to act,
whatever the consequences.  I felt frustrated when Pippa got me through
to Megapolis and I discovered that the chairman was spending a couple
of days at Windhammer, when once I should have been relieved at the
postponement of an almost impossible meeting.  I left Peregrine Gryce
protesting at my going to Cris over his plaintive little head and I
took a taxi to Liverpool Street Station.

I sat in the corner of a dusty railway carriage, looking out at the
trailing farewell of London, the back gardens full of weeds and broken
toys and grimy, lean-to greenhouses, and the new but already shabby
suburban stations.  Then came the flat countryside on the way to that
sham Gothic castle which Cris treated, as he did so many things in his
life, as some sort of a modest joke.  I wondered exactly how I was
going to ask the man who had given me my job, and taken me away to
forget my pain over Beth and Dunster, and who had always been more like
an exceptionally companionable father than an employer to me, whether
he happened to recall having taken part in a massacre.

My life, as you will have understood by now, has been much concerned
with the performing arts, not to mention make-believe.  Only Dunster,
my former friend and long-time enemy, has shunned pretence and
invention and shown an unreasonable addiction to what he felt to be the
truth.  My own

happiest moments, at Oxford, at Megapolis and with the Mummers, have
been theatrical.  Drama surrounded me, so it wasn't a surprise to
discover that what had kept Cris at home was a touring opera company's
performance of Cost fan tutte in the baronial hall of Windhammer for
the benefit of Angie's favourite charity, the local branch of the War
Widows' Association.

When I arrived she greeted me even more warmly than usual.  She kissed
my cheek and made the small noise of 'mmmnyah' as her lips departed.
She was clearly as excited by the preparations going on around her as
she had been when she first came on to the set in Pinewood Studios to
act the part of an intrepid ATS girl in the war her husband had been
fighting in bitter reality.  She stood in the hall and watched curtains
being hung, lights set up, props assembled.  She organized cups of tea
and sandwiches with the efficiency of a film unit caterer as the
singers went through their exercises and the small orchestra tried out
the more difficult moments in the overture.  Cris was with her working,
as always, in his snow-white shirtsleeves and blue braces, and he was
still smiling when I told him we had to have a serious discussion on
the subject of war crimes.

"We'll go outside and talk," he said.  When he told Angie we were going
to look at the garden, she said she wouldn't come with us because of
early clouds of midges.

There were sheets of butter-yellow daffodils and white narcissi in the
rough grass under the beech trees.  The first azaleas were coming out
in the borders and there was the start of blossom and fresh green
leaves on the tall Japanese cherries.  As we walked away from the house
we heard the faintest sound of the quartet "May the Wind be Gentle'. As
you can see, the setting couldn't have been more inappropriate for the
business in hand.

Down the broad, grass walk between the long beds of flowers preparing
for their annual display, I started on my story and Cris listened.  I
tried to tell him all I felt about ' Dunster, how our lives together
had seemed a long, comicalin a grassy circle, surrounded by a tall yew
hedge, with a moss-covered sundial in the centre a place as quiet and
private as a room.  There I told him about Dunster's account of a late
night brandy-inspired conversation with Jaunty.  I said Jaunty had
spoken about a dynamited church packed on a saint's day.  Jaunty had
nothing to do with this atrocity.

"Of course not," Cris said, 'the Germans did it, after one of their
officers was found strangled."  So it was the same church, the same
ghost town, that he had told me about after dinner as we sat together
and he had played the piano.  I was troubled by that for a moment but
then relieved.  Cris's simple sentence sounded a hundred times more
convincing than Dunster's over-excited account of Jaunty's drunken
confidence, or his , contact with an unnamed deserter gone native in
the Apen nines.

"You said my ex-father-in-law fought the war in a way you didn't
approve of?"  I asked Cris, postponing the final question.

"I couldn't be sure but I had my suspicions.  That gar rotted officer
had the mark of Jaunty about him.  We shouldn't have held that against
him, only it had such terrible consequences."

"So Jaunty's section was there when the incident happened."  I knew it
was ridiculous to try to protect ourselves by calling it an incident.

"Oh, yes.  He was well established over and above Pomeriggio at the
time."

"And you?"  I had to ask.

"We'd had a job to do, further south, towards Monte di Speranza.  We
only joined up with the support group, Jaunty's lot, after the church
business was over."

Relief again, a tide sufficiently strong to allow me to launch the
great attack.

"Dunster says Jaunty told him you were there, before it happened."

"Does he?"  Cris's eyes were blue and clear, their corners wrinkled by
his customary smile.  He seemed not in the least perturbed.

"And that Jaunty said you commanded the church parade."

"Me and who else?"  Cris asked, without a pause.

"I'm not quite clear.  Three or four others.  A sergeant who was killed
later."

"Blaker."

"And someone who deserted and married an Italian girl.  Dunster's been
to see him in Italy."

"Lance Corporal Nathaniel Sweeting.

"Natty Suiting" I used to call him because he was always such a bloody
mess.  He must have a defective memory after all those years on the
run.  Or one that can be altered if the price is right."

It hadn't occurred to me that Dunster might have paid for his
information.  I might once have thought that for him to do so would
have been out of character; now I was prepared to believe him entirely
ruthless.  But I still had to say, "There's even a suggestion that
you've been paying Jaunty all these years I suppose to keep him quiet
about what happened.  I went through his accounts once, and he does
seem to have some mysterious source of income."

"Me pay Jaunty Blair?"  Cris seemed to find the idea entirely comic.

"I'd rather contribute to the Pit Bull Terriers' fighting-fund.  Please
don't ask me to explain Jaunty's finances."

"No.  I wouldn't."  By now I felt able to smile.  I had been worrying
about Cris's pay-off to Jaunty going into my down payment on Muswell
Hill.

"There might be a hundred explanations.  Good, bad or indifferent."

"Of course there might."

"Well, then."  Cris was standing with his hands in his pockets, his
face turned up gratefully towards the sun.

"The whole thing's the most complete and utter balls, then, isn't
it?"

"That's exactly what I told D.unster."

"I'm sure you did."

"As a matter of fact," I assured him, "I didn't believe it for a
moment."

"Your friend's just looking for a sensational story."

"He's not my friend.  He's my enemy.  And I'm sure that's what he's
after."

"Yes."  Cris looked down at the grass now, at the carefully shined
brogues planted firmly apart on the short grass.

"We'll have to think what we ought to do about it."

"I'll do anything," I told him.

"Anything I can to kill this absurd story."

"We'll talk about it when we're back in the office.  Meanwhile, you
will stay tonight, won't you?  You wouldn't want to miss the Mozart."

So, that evening I sat next to Cris and Angela Bellhanger and listened
to the opera which informs us that our personalities are irrelevant,
and indeed interchangeable, that one lover is really quite as good as
another, that all women do it and it all comes to the same thing in the
end.  And this hard lesson is set to music of such perfection that war
crimes slipped out of my mind for a little while.  I even forgot to
worry about Cris letting it all wait until we met again in London,
which seemed a rather too laid-back way of dealing with the problem.

After lunch the next day, and after no further discussion, Cris drove
me into Norwich to catch the train.  When he'd stopped the car he said,
"What do you think we ought to do?"

"I think you ought to ditch the series."

I had made the proposal and Cris agreed.  He said, "Not because of me,
you understand.  I can cope with whatever anyone cares to throw at me.
But I don't want Angie upset.  Not in any way."

"Of course not."

"Do you think we might offer Dunster some other sort of work?"

"We might try."

"You sound doubtful."

"Once he's set on something he's hard to shift.  But I'll certainly
try."

"You do that.  Let me know how you get on, will you?"

And as I opened the car door he said, "That Cosi.  Bloody marvelous,
wasn't it?"

"I thought they did it very well."

"I mean what they did, not how they did it.  It was saying, what's it
all matter in the end?  Isn't that it?  What's it all matter,
anyway?"

Then we said goodbye and I caught the train back to London.  I rang
Dunster's number from Liverpool Street and Beth answered.  She told me
he was out and I wondered whose memory he was ransacking now.

"I've been with Cris," I told her.

"I wanted to let Dunster know as soon as possible.  Our series has been
cancelled."

"That's a pity."  She sounded only moderately disappointed.

"He's just bought himself this ghastly great motor bike."

"I know.  I've seen it.  And the jacket to go with it.  He must be
celebrating his perpetual adolescence.  Oh, and could you tell him,
we're going to try to find something else for him to work on.  Will you
tell him that?"

So I took the long journey back to Muswell Hill and called in at the
Mummery to have a drink.  That night, for the first time ever, I slept
with Lucy, my ex-Nina, my coming Lady Blakeney.  It seemed that the
crisis caused by Dunster had awoken me from a long reverie into a burst
of activity on all fronts.  But I'd better explain exactly how it
happened.

We sat drinking in the bar and one by one other Mummers turned up.
Martin, the bank manager whom I had to thank for Sir Percy and his
wife, Muriel, came in with Pam, the physio, who said I looked
'tremendously tense' and began to knead the back of my neck in .a way
which made me feel I

would settle for the tension.  Her dentist husband was not altogether
pleased by this attention and he asked Pam, rather sharply, if she
couldn't leave her work behind when she visited the Mummery bar.
Finally, Ken, who had played Konstantin, came in with his girlfriend
Ranee.  They wore identical gold bracelets on their slim wrists and
looked at each other with melting eyes.  They were so obviously in love
that they seemed like creatures from another world, one of which I had
inhabited so long ago that I had almost forgotten it, and I found
myself looking at them with a kind of envy.

We talked about putting on the French Revolution with the small cast at
our disposal and the problems of guillotining people.  I let the
familiar, safe conversation lap over me like bathwater after a hard
day.

"What you need, young man' - I knew Pam called even her most geriatric
patients 'young man', so I wasn't flattered by this, although I was
relieved that she had stopped digging her fingernails into my neck 'is
a square meal.  What about us all going to the Swinging Bamboo?"

"Do you know the story about the two girls who went for a Chinese?"
Dennis, who had been drinking pink gins, spoke a little indistinctly.

"The poor fellow died."  Nobody laughed and he explained how it had
sounded quite funny when a patient told it to him.

"You probably had your fingers half-way down his throat."  Pam was in
an unsympathetic mood.

"You didn't hear it properly."  Ranee turned large, sad eyes on the
dentist and said, "That is a most terrible story!"

I sat opposite Lucy and watched her eating rice.  She lifted very small
morsels to her lips and ate with her head on one side like a bird,
perhaps the seagull I had fatally wounded in a play.  I felt that sharp
moment of lust which Trigorin must have known to be irresistible and
finally unimportant.  I remembered promising myself that I would never
again become involved with anyone who had been my lover in a play, but
that night the declaration of war with Dunster had separated

me further from the memory of Beth.  It was as absurd to imagine that
we were Trigorin and Nina, as that we should become that melodramic
couple, Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney.  I was an associate producer in
television and she was a solicitor.  The evening could start from
there.  Lucy said, "You look tired.  Overworked?"

"Not too much work.  But it's got a little difficult."

"More difficult now you've gone over to the artistic side?"

"The trouble's not artistic.  More, well, perhaps more legal, actually.
I may be needing your advice."

"Oh, you can have that any time.  It might help to talk it through. You
might be able to see it in proportion, whatever it is."  She looked at
me with all the wisdom of her youth, not a bad actress, not a wounded
seagull, but the commonsense lawyer she was.

I had walked from my house to the Mummery, which was only a few streets
away.  Lucy had driven me to the Chinese restaurant and eventually she
drove me home, as though I were her date and she were seeing me safely
back to my front door.  I asked her in for a drink.  As I poured white
wine I felt ashamed of my sitting-room, not because it was a tip but
because it was too neat, the home of someone who had lived alone too
long, who was too fussy about putting books and records back in their
places and was too set in his ways.

"Well," Lucy said, 'aren't you going to tell me the problem?"  She
sounded very judicial, like a schoolgirl playing Portia.  She sat in an
armchair, her legs crossed; her fingertips even seemed in danger of
coming together like a lawyer's at the start of a conference.

"No," I decided.

"I'd think wed better go to bed together."

"Really?"  She still had her young lawyer look.

"I thought you'd never get around to asking.  Can I finish my wine
first?"

"Of course you can.  There's no special hurry."

"No."  She was smiling now.

"There doesn't seem to be."  While she was finishing her glass, the
phone rang.  I picked it up knowing what to expect.

"So you've chickened out of War Crimes?"  Dunster said.

"We've decided to cancel the series.  I told Beth, the chairman's going
to suggest another subject for you."

"No thanks!  I don't want to be another recipient of Bell-hanger
bribes.  You can tell your chairman to save his money.  He'll probably
need it, by the time I've finished with him."

"What're you planning to do?"  I did my best to sound unconcerned.

"Don't bother your pretty little head, old man.  I'll be working by
myself from now on."

He put dowp the phone then.  A minute later it rang again.  It was
Cris's secretary to say that the chairman was organizing a special
meeting of the Board for tomorrow afternoon.  He particularly wanted me
to be there.

"You're very busy," Lucy said.

"A little.  Just at the moment."

"Was that the difficult business you started to talk about?"

"Yes.  But it can wait until tomorrow."

Upstairs Lucy undressed methodically and put her clothes, neatly
folded, on a chair.  She joined me in the bed where I had spent the
years with Beth, but there was none of my ex-wife's faintly musky,
red-headed smell, nor her scarcely controlled frenzy.  Lucy was
sensible, patient, considerate, generous, and yet, in spite of her cool
and casual acceptance of my invitation, still a little formal.  In
complete silence, only breathing lightly, I felt she was giving me the
advice she had promised, in a way that was far more valuable than any
lecture on the law of libel.  When we had come to rest and I had her
head pillowed on me she said, "Of course you don't love me, do you?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Exactly what you feel."

"It's because of Beth.  I'm not sure if I can ever be in love again."

I had told her the truth, just as Dunster would have done.

Chapter Eighteen

There we were again, around that great, black marble sarcophagus, the
Megapolis boardroom table, high up over the river with views of cranes
and long-untenanted office blocks, and warehouses tar ted up into
flats. Floating restaurants for business lunches gently chugged up
towards the Thames barrier.  The directors, having rushed their lunches
and spent an hour in the traffic, looked as though they wished they
hadn't come to an extraordinary meeting for which they weren't prepared
and hadn't got written down in their diaries.

They sat, stony-faced and silent, from Charles Glasscock, the youngest
member, a solicitor by profession, through to Lady Helena Mendip, a
retired headmistress, who often talked a good deal of gruff
commonsense, and Barnum, known as Barney, Fawcett, a wealthy old
manager of touring companies, pantomimes and summer shows, who was
meant to be a fountain of wisdom on the entertainment industry, and
Sydney Pollitter, with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes turned
up to heaven in the attitude of an ancient cardinal about to embark on
a peculiarly unpleasant process of excommunication.  Only Gary Penrose,
who had risen without trace to become managing director, did his best
to smile as he shuffled through his papers.  I sat beside Cris and
tried to settle my nerves by thinking, with gratitude, of the night
that was past.

"I thought we should meet' the chairman was his usual brisk and
cheerful self, although he hadn't on this occasion, stripped down to
his braces 'so that I can explain the position we have reached on War
Crimes.  Simply this.  I have decided to cancel the project.  My reason
for doing so is something I

shall have to go into in a little detail.  Then I hope you'll all agree
that I have taken the only possible course."

"Chairman' Sydney Pollitter coughed, tugged at his ear lobe and started
up his engines "I know that with your usual fairness and courtesy you
will forgive what many of my colleagues, perhaps all of my colleagues'
here he gave a slightly wolfish grin around the table 'may well think
to be a trivial, perhaps uncalled-for, and it may even be stigmatized
by some as an impertinent, observation, but I had some considerable
doubts about that particular programme when you first laid it before
us."

"Yes, Sydney."  I was, as ever, astonished by Cris's patience and
self-control.

"I do remember."

"I knew you would, Chairman.  I knew that with your amazing grasp of
every tiny detail of whatever concerns us at Megapolis you wouldn't
fail to recall that supremely unimportant moment of my, perhaps
ill-phrased, interjection.  But I must say this in all fairness and
honesty to my colleagues, and to you, Chairman, of course.  Please, all
of you, do laugh me to scorn if you so desire, but the very first time
I heard the words War Crimes I scented danger."

"Then you'll be very glad, Sydney, that the programme's been
ditched."

"That, Chairman, is a matter of profound relief to myself.  Of course,
I do not speak for colleagues.  Colleagues are perfectly capable of
speaking for themselves.  They will undoubtedly do so far more lucidly
and effectively than I can pretend to.  They have the eloquence.  So.
War Crimes has been ditched, to use our chairman's terse and pithy
expression.

"All well and good", that may be said when it comes to the turn of
others.  What arises is what, if any, public explanation should be
given?"

"I wasn't intending to give a public explanation."  Cris was now
ignoring Sydney and turning his full charm on the ex-headmistress, who
appeared to soften a little.

"I am intending

to outline the course of events to the members of the Board, in
confidence."

"I am rebuked by the chairman."  Sydney Pollitter looked round at the
colleagues with a smile of considerable satisfaction.

"The chairman rebukes me and he is perfectly right to do so.  I do most
respectfully suggest that the chairman be allowed to address us without
further interruption."  Whereupon the colleagues who had been silent
throughout looked somewhat bewildered.  Cris said, "Thank you, Sydney,"
and embarked on his statement.

He spoke clearly, crisply and without notes.  He told them he had
wanted to do the War Crimes series to show the senseless cruelties that
all sides might commit in a war.  He had wanted to include a British
atrocity, if such an event could be proved to have occurred.  He was
familiar with the massacre at Pomeriggio because of his service with
the SAS in the Apennines.  He had no doubt that the church was blown up
as a reprisal for the death of a German officer.  He had been concerned
when he discovered that the scriptwriter might suggest that this
outrage was in fact a British reprisal because two of our escaped
prisoners had been handed over to the fascists.  He had then asked
Philip Progmire, who knew the writer personally, to take over as
associate producer.  He wanted to be kept informed of the script's
progress so that he could prevent potentially dangerous inaccuracies.

Only yesterday Progmire told him that he had seen the writer, Richard
Dunster, and it was clear that this man thought he had discovered who
had given the orders to blow up the church on a saint's day when almost
the whole town had gone there for a service.  The suggestion was that
it was he, then a young captain in the SAS, who was responsible for
this ghastly event.  He hoped that the Board would accept his word that
there was not the slightest truth in that allegation.  He believed that
war was always tragic but he had never overstepped what are generally
called the 'rules of combat'.  In the interests of truth and to
maintain the high standards of our documentary output, and in no way to
protect his own reputation, he had cancelled the series.  Other than
that, he intended to take no further action.

I thought that the headmistress was about to open her mouth in warm
agreement but there were sinister signs from the other side of the
table.  During his chairman's speech, Sid Vicious had produced a letter
from an inside pocket, unfolded it carefully and adjusted his
spectacles to read again what I suspected he knew by heart.  He now
pulled his ear and thanked the chairman for his statement, which was as
full and frank as they had all known it would be.

"However, I have had a letter, and from the word or two I have been
able to have with colleagues over the telephone I think we have all had
this same communication."

There was a murmur of assent round the table.  And then the long-winded
interrupter said the few short words which made my heart sink.

"It was delivered to each of us this morning.  Personally.  By motor
bicycle."

"Well, what's it say?"  Cris asked.

"This precious letter?"

"The chairman didn't receive a copy?"

"Not so far as I know."

"And you would know, Chairman, had you received it.  Undoubtedly.  That
is indeed strange.  Then perhaps colleagues would like me to read it
out, so that it may be incorporated in the minutes.  I promise to do so
quite without comment or digressions, whether tedious or no.  Chairman,
may I proceed?"

"In your own time, Sydney."  Cris was calm again, even smiling.  I
couldn't join him.

"The heading is Streetwise Productions and the date today.  It is
signed Richard Dunster."  Sid Vicious gave a further jerk to his ear to
speed him on his way:

Dear Member of the Megapolis Board Today you will be told that my War
Crimes series is to be cancelled.

This is because I have obtained incontrovertible proof that your
chairman is himself a war criminal who, up till now, has managed to
avoid arrest.  You will have been told of the destruction of the church
at Pomeriggio.  Captain Bellhanger thought up, planned and commanded
that operation.  Its sole intent was the murder of almost the entire
population as a punishment for betraying escaped prisoners.  There can
be no doubt that this is the truth.  I have interviewed a Major Blair,
who served in the SAS with Bellhanger, and Lance Corporal Sweeting, who
now lives in Italy.  One of the other members of the squad who
performed this atrocity, Sergeant Blaker, lost his life later in the
war.  I have not yet interviewed the explosives expert.  When I do so,
I have no reason to think that his evidence will not bear out all that
the other witnesses have told me.

I am determined that this information shall be made public, if not by
television then through some other medium.  You, as members of the
Board, may agree that the truth cannot be suppressed and may decide
that the series should proceed as planned.  Whether or not you do so, I
am completely dedicated to the cause of justice for the innocent
inhabitants of a small Italian town.  Perhaps, in his heart, your
chairman will agree and intends that my work shall be his public
confession.  Yours sincerely [etc.] The style was appallingly familiar.
These were the sort of words I had been hearing throughout my life, but
those days were a rehearsal for this final blast of moral outrage, the
explosion calculated to do the maximum possible damage.  That they were
read out in Sydney Polluter's high snuffle made them no less the voice
of Dunster.  And as he sat listening to them, I had never admired Cris
so much.  He looked as detached as if someone were reporting on the
sale of videos and T-shirts in the Megapolis gift shop.  When the
letter had been read, even Sydney was silent for a moment, impressed by
the enormity of the charges.

Then Cris said, "Very interesting.  But pure fiction."

"Speaking for myself and I hope for the rest of us' Lady Mendip spoke
as one accustomed to take a hard line with unsubstantiated allegations
of snogging in the music room "I am prepared to accept our chairman's
word entirely.  If he tells us that it's fiction, then that's the end
of the matter."

There were sounds of approval led, unexpectedly, by the ever vocal
Sydney.

"I will second Lady Mendip's excellent motion, if I may.  We
unhesitatingly accept the chairman's complete denial of these shocking
allegations."  Was that it?  Could we gather up our papers and leave
the black marble?  Could I ring Lucy and suggest the Muswell Hill
Odeon?  Apparently not.  Sydney still had another trick up his
sleeve.

"However, that can't be quite the end of the matter, can it?  The
chairman said this letter was interesting.  He said so, of course, with
that complete fairness we have come to expect of him.  Now, I am no
lawyer.  I am a man of figures and accounts, tedious matters, perhaps,
in the view of some around this table.  Here I speak purely as a layman
but is this letter not also a flagrant libel?  Through the Chair, of
course.  I turn to Charles Glasscock for legal advice."

"Clearly libellous."  The youngest member enjoyed his moment of
glory.

"I have no doubt that would be the advice of any reputable counsel."

"I will be shot down in flames by Charles if I am in error on this
point, Chairman, but does not the sending of this letter, this very
morning by motor-bicycle rider, amount to publication of the libel?"
Sid Vicious, who denied all knowledge of the law, looked extremely
knowing.

"Publication has occurred," Glasscock the solicitor told us, 'and
further publication is apparently threatened."

"There now, Chairman."  Sid leant back and looked at Cris as though
congratulating him on having won a much-coveted award.

"You have an unanswerable case.  You will also have the full support of
colleagues, many of whom are far more learned in these matters than I
could ever pretend to be, in issuing a writ immediately."

For the first time in that long meeting I thought Cris

looked troubled.  He stared down at the table, took in a deep breath
and then began to collect up his papers.

"Thank you, Sydney.  Thank you all for your support.  I will, of
course, have to consider my position carefully, very carefully indeed.
No doubt I'll take legal advice.  Well, thank you all for coming in at
short notice.  Let's hope I shan't have to trouble you again."

"A final word, Chairman, while you are considering the matter, as
indeed you must.  And this is spoken, I do hasten to assure you, in the
spirit of true friendship and lasting respect.  If no action is taken
on this wretched letter' at which Sydney liberated his ear lobe and
brought a large hand down smack on the offending document 'a terrible
slur will remain on the reputation of our chairman and of course' and
here a note of almost religious awe came into the Pollitter voice 'on
the good name of this great company, Megapolis Television plc."

"That's right!"  Barney Fawcett, a stout and elderly man, had the
cheeky schoolboy face and unsettled hair of the hero of the William
books I used to read as a child.

"This business has got to be put a stop to.  Who is this fellow
Dunster?  Some sort of leftie agitator?  Let's see how he'll stand up
in court.  Not too well, if you want to know my opinion."

"One doesn't like to resort to the courts, of course.  But it may be
that the threat of proceedings will be enough to force an apology." The
trouble was that Lady Mendip had never met Dunster.

"I would like to see a writ issued and served tomorrow," young Charlie
Glasscock said, and I thought he would also like his firm to be
instructed to do it.

"Why tomorrow?"  Sydney Pollitter began a little, snuffling giggle at
his own final joke.

"Why not deliver it this afternoon?  By motor-bicycle rider!"

"The spirit of true friendship!"  Cris had taken his jacket off when we
got back to his office and was pouring two large whiskies.

"When Sid Vicious starts to talk to me about true friendship I can feel
the knife tickling my shoulder blades.  You understand what he was
doing?"

"It was fairly obvious."

"He thinks he's got me in a corner.  Sue for libel or give up your
job."

"You think he wants it?"

"Of course.  And he wants the golden handcuff the company give him. A
big lump of money to induce him to take on the job he's been angling
for this last ten years."  He put his legs up on the sofa as though he
were intending to sleep off his troubles, clutching the chunky glass of
dark liquid for comfort.

"I've a good mind to make him a present of it.  Our precious directors
would probably have him, or he'd go on talking until they gave in.
Board meetings mean being bored by Sydney Pollitter."  Something was
happening I had never bargained for.  It seemed I was seeing Crispin
Bellhanger, who took to command so easily, in a rare and unexpected
moment of defeat.

"You're not going to resign?"

"What's the alternative?  Days in court.  Headlines in the papers.  The
hopeless business of trying to prove things that all the witnesses have
forgotten, even if they're still alive and talking.  What's that going
to be like for Angie?  No.  I've got a good mind to jack it in. Perhaps
they'll let me run that little touring opera.  Now that's a nice,
peaceful job for an old soldier."

"It wouldn't stop him, you know."

"What did you say?"  Cris seemed far away in the world of whisky and
Mozart.

"If you give up, it's not going to stop Dunster.  He'll be cock-a-hoop.
He'll say your resignation proved him right.  He might even get the
newspapers to agree with him."

He turned his head slowly to look at me and seemed amused.

"What's your advice?  What are you telling me to do?"

"He's got to be fought," I told him.

"He's got to lose."

Cris swung his long legs down from the sofa, put his glass on the
coffee table and looked at me with an entirely new interest.

"Something's changed you, Philip."

"Perhaps this has."  This, or too much of Dunster.  Perhaps it was also
the fact of Beth receding in last night's lovemaking in the bed that
hadn't been hers for so long.  Or was it seeing Cris cornered and taken
off his guard?

"You seem to have become quite ruthless."

"I've had enough of him."

He stood up and went to his usual position, looking down at the water
with his back towards me.  He emptied his glass slowly and said, "All
right.  I'll go and see the lawyers.  You know so much about it now.
Would you be good enough to come with me?"

"Anything," I told him.

"Absolutely anything I can do to help."

Chapter Nineteen

I started this account by telling you about my chronic anxiety and that
I could always find something to worry about, even if it were the way I
seemed to worry about nothing at all.  This feeling was a perpetual
handicap, a pain I grew used to and lived with but which was always
there, like an unloved companion I couldn't ignore.  The morning after
the board meeting I woke up and felt that something had gone seriously
wrong because I was not really worried any longer.  And the worrying
thing was that this had happened at a time of great anxiety, when I had
started to fight against an enemy I now knew to be implacable for the
honour and reputation of a man I knew to be innocent.  Perhaps these
uncharacteristic decisions had suppressed my worries like some strong
pain-killer, or at least a placebo.  I really don't know how else to
explain it.

I had been to the Muswell Hill Odeon after the meeting at which Sydney
Pollitter had performed his delicate manoeuvre, and I woke up with a
dark head beside me on the pillow, which may have helped to explain my
alarming absence of doubt.  As I went downstairs to make the tea, the
phone was ringing.  It was Cris who said the top libel QC, Robin, or
Robbie, Skeffington, was finishing a case in Hong Kong and couldn't see
us until Monday.  He hoped I'd be able to fit that into my diary.  He
sounded cheerful when we said goodbye and, as I spooned the Earl Grey
into the teapot, I wondered why I wasn't particularly worried by the
extraordinary fact that Sir Crispin Bellhanger had taken my advice.

For the rest of that week events were suspended.  I called in at
Streetwise and told Peregrine Gryce that, although the series had been
cancelled, all the work he had done would be paid

for and I was taking possession of the files as Cris's lawyers had
asked for them.

"I must say, Philip' he was looking extremely sulky 'nothing's gone
right since you came on to the artistic side.  Why did you want to get
us mixed up with lawyers?  Lawyers simply don't understand the creative
imperative.  Also they dress so terribly badly.  Rather like you,
actually."

"I didn't get us mixed up with lawyers.  Dunster did.  Have you spoken
to him at all?"

"I keep leaving messages but he doesn't return my calls."

"He's probably busy trying other forms of expression.  He seems to have
lost his faith in television."

"This mess with Megapolis has shaken mine, rather."

"Goodbye then, Perry.  We may meet again some time."

"Oh, I don't expect so.  I imagine you'll sink back into accounts.  You
do look just a tiny bit out of place in Wardour Street."

Miss Pippa Marching didn't look up from her copy of TV Quick to return
my parting salute.

Tash came for her weekend.  On Sunday night she cooked me a
surprisingly good dinner a cheese souffle and roast lamb and left the
kitchen looking as though we had been entertaining a group of some
forty-five drunk and starving teenagers.  As we sat over our coffee,
getting on, I thought, rather better than usual, she said, "What's the
matter, Dad?  Have you become a hippy or something?"

"Have I changed as much as that?"

"I mean, have you taken to wearing these?"  She put her hand in her
jeans pocket and pulled out a pair of green earrings which I had last
seen decorating Lucy.

"Where did you find those?"

"Top shelf in the bathroom.  Didn't you notice?"

"I should have done but I've had a lot to think about."

"It wasn't the pallid job who gave you the inappropriate shirt, was
it?"  "You mean Lucy?  She was my Nina."  I don't know why I felt I had
to add that as some sort of an excuse.

"I don't care what she was of yours.  I'm just not going to make
friends with her."

"It'd be nice if you could."

"Horrible!  So many people at school have to do it.  Go to awful chatty
lunches with their father's girlfriends.  So they can discuss Dad as
though he were a difficult child they were both crazy about, really.
And so the girlfriends can be told his marriage was breaking up anyway
and it's not their fault."

"It had broken up long ago.  And it certainly wasn't Lucy's fault."

"No.  I know."  She looked thoughtful and then she said, "I don't think
I'll be coming to stay with you again, Dad.  Not for some time,
anyway."

"Why ever not?"

"It's about Dick.  He says you sacked him.  You and that boss you seem
so terribly fond of."

"I think he sacked himself."

"He wants to tell people about your boss being a war criminal."

"He's got that idea into his head.  It's not true."

"He says there's people to prove it."

"Let's see how they stand up in court."

"Grandpa Jaunty's one of them."  Her use of that familiar childhood
name made me feel how closely, and how uncomfortably, I was related to
the Major, who was now a hostile witness.

"We'll have to see what he says too."

"Dad."

"Yes?"

"What're you up to?  Are you really just protecting your job?  Or the
establishment?  Or something?"

"Is that what Dunster says?"

"Well, yes."

"And what does Mum say?"

"She says I can make up my own mind about what I want to do."

"So you want to stay away from me?"

Tash, like her mother, was vaguely retreating to a prepared position.

"Dick believes things so passionately.  You know, there's a sort of
purity about him.  I don't want to be disloyal to him."

"Only to me."

"It won't be forever, Dad.  Anyway, you don't care about things like
loyalty, do you?"

"And I don't believe in things passionately?"

"Well, do you?"

"As a matter of fact, yes.  I believe quite passionately in not
charging around the world causing people unnecessary pain."

"Dick would say that the pain's very necessary."  I hadn't convinced
her.

"Justice has to be done."

"That's what's going to be decided."

When she went to bed she asked me to come and say goodnight to her. She
put her arms up and fastened them round my neck, reluctant to let me
go.  It was how she had behaved when she was a child, but I didn't
build too many hopes on it.  I knew she would keep away from me and
that I should be presumed guilty, at least until the case was over.

"By the way," I said, as I drove her to college early on Monday
morning, 'how's George?"

"Oh, I sent him away to stay with his mother for the weekend.  It'll do
him good.  He can get rid of some of that embarrassing affection he
seems to feel for everybody."

"Robbie Skeffington.  Done all the right things.  Scholarship at Eton
or somewhere.  Next year's chairman of the Bar Council.  Bound to get
his bum on the High Court Bench in the next year or two.  Terrific
track record in libel.  Managed to screw half a million from the Daily
Planet for that Tory Minister in the gay wedding case.  You couldn't do
better than Robbie."  Sitting naked in bed beside me and sipping tea,
Lucy had talked like an old lawyer, seasoned in the courts, weighing up
barristers' reputations over port and walnuts.  When she was discussing
the law, she adopted a tone of infallibility and became condescending
to outsiders like me.  This, I discovered, was a characteristic of
lawyers in general and of Robin Skef-fington, QC in particular.

From what Lucy had told me I had expected to meet some tall,
smooth-haired operator with a voice like a coasting Rolls and
well-tailored charm, a man who would purr at juries and deal tactfully
with the judge.  Robbie Skeffington had none of these so-called
civilized qualities; he seemed to be a creature, when you first met
him, who had only been house-trained with difficulty.  He was small and
hirsute and his eyebrows met in a single black line across eyes which
would glint, as I later discovered, with such ferocious cunning that I
wondered why the highest tribunals in the land placed so much faith in
him.  I never saw him woo the jury; what he could do was jostle them
into accepting his most caustic comments and his most contemptuous
treatment of opposing witnesses.

He was a most untidy man.  He sat at a desk on which briefs and books
were balanced to form insecure towers and he had Dunster's habit of
keeping a half-drunk cup of tea cooling at his elbow.  His fingernails,
on some occasions, almost matched his black brows and he was a great
biter of pencils.  During all our meetings and throughout the trial
itself, he either ignored me or treated me as though I were incapable
of understanding what was going on.  I soon came to the view that the
only thing worse than having Robbie Skeffington on your side was having
him against you.

On our way up to the dizzy heights of the legal profession, on which
Robbie sat like a gargoyle perched on top of a cathedral spire, Cris
had not gone to young Charlie Glasscock, the solicitor on the Board who
had looked longingly at the

case, nor to Megapolis's regular lawyers.  He had consulted his family
firm of Fanshawe, Glover, Mandelow & Singleton, who had advised the
Bellhangers since their ancestor made his fortune out of steam engines
and built Windhammer.  Our case was in the care of Justin Glover, whom
even the telephone girls called young Mr.  Justin.  He was in his late
thirties, prematurely balding and he looked at life through strong,
gold-framed glasses.  His apparently cheerful, even flippant manner
covered a deep anxiety which I was able to recognize and often share. I
was later to discover that his frequently haunted expression was caused
not by the demands of his legal practice but by a distracted wife and
four talented but temperamental children, all under the age of ten.  He
had introduced us to our leading counsel rather as a nervous keeper
might approach the cage of some rare but dangerous animal, inviting us
to look and marvel but not to get our fingers too near the bars of the
cage.

"This is a most wicked libel and the damages will be immense."  Like
the early saints Robbie Skeffington seemed to have been born without
any talent for doubt.  In that respect, I thought, he was fairly
matched with Dunster.

"There's some suggestion in the letter to the Board," Justin Glover
dared to remind our leader, 'that there may be an attempt to justify
the charges."

"Is there any truth in them, Sir Christopher?"  Robbie used the tone of
respectful commiseration with which he would always speak of his client
to the jury.

"It's Crispin, actually."  Cris hated being called Sir.

"No truth whatever."

"Then let them try it, that's all.  If they attempt to justify they'll
inflame the award enormously."

"Damages," Cris said, 'aren't really the point."

"They are always the point.  In any libel action.  You must really
allow your legal advisers to advise you."  Robbie made a gesture,
almost knocking over a pile of papers, which embraced not only Justin
Glover but Marcus Beazeley, his junior barrister.  He really was tall
and elegant and no doubt had a Rolls-Royce voice to use if Robbie had
ever allowed him to open his mouth, and was to sit through our case
with an air of complete detachment.

"Immense damages will be the measure of your high reputation.  What is
a man but his reputation?  What are the words Crispin Bellhanger?
Without reputation they are a meaningless jumble of syllables.  They
might mean a man of straw, a fraudster, a layabout, a nobody.  Add
reputation and those syllables mean a much-decorated ex-officer, a
gentleman who fought heroically for his country, a patron of the arts,
a chairman of a great public company, a tireless worker for a number of
charities, a force for good in the community.  That's your, reputation,
Sir Crispin, and if the jury values it at less than half a million I
shall consider I've cocked it up!"

At this,-Robbie retired behind his papers.

"What a prize ass that scruffy Stuffington is!"  Cris, who made a point
of getting our QC's name wrong from then on, said afterwards.

"Perhaps that's what you need when you get involved in a libel action?"
Now he said, "This fellow Dunster hasn't got a penny.  Philip Progmire
can tell you that."

"Progmire?"  Robbie looked straight at me and I felt invisible.

"Which one is Progmire?"

I owned up.

"And you're from Mr.  Glover's office?"

"From my office," Cris said.

"He's worked on the project.  What's more, he knows Dunster and the
whole history of this case."

"My name's not Progmire," Robbie told us, I thought unnecessarily.

"I don't know Mr.  Dunster, although I may make that gentleman's
acquaintance if he's rash enough to enter the witness-box.  I may not
know the whole history of this case.  Yet.  But I imagine it's my
opinion you're paying for and not Progmire's and I have to tell you
that as soon as I opened

the papers I smelled a winner.  I got a sniff of very substantial
damages indeed.  I form a view when I first get my nose near the papers
and I'm not often wrong.  Is that your experience too, Mr.  Glover?"

Cris said, "What's the point of immense damages if we can't recover
them?"

"Recovering them is Mr.  Glover's business.  It's a purely mechanical
matter.  Summonses, judgements, possession orders.  The bargain
basement of the profession.  No need for you to concern yourself with
that, Sir Crispin.  You are shopping at Harrods.  I fully expect you to
top my record damages from the Planet, when the Junior Minister for
Communications was alleged to have gone through a ceremony of marriage
with a man from the Department of Trade and Industry.  God send us a
respectful judge and a more than half-witted jury and I am confident,
sir, that we shall do it.  Would you agree with that, Mr.  Glover?  We
shall overcome!"

Cris, Justin Glover and I left the Temple and walked down Fleet Street,
a place that seems dead now all the newspapers have packed up and
departed for glass towers on the wharves round Megapolis.  In time
those papers would be full of the case of Bellhanger v. Dunster, but
then they had only reported that a writ had been issued because of a
letter to board members concerning the chairman's war record.  Cris led
us into El Vino's.  The journalists had left there long ago to sit by
their computer terminals down a traffic-clogged road far from the
centre of government, the theatres and cinemas, the clubs and the
sources of scandal.  Now the lawyers were in sole possession of the
wine bar: large, sombrely dressed figures who laughed loudly at the
memory of things that had only seemed funny because they had happened
in the hushed and oppressively serious courts of law.  As we found a
table among the mahogany and legal caricatures of the back room, some
of the barristers smiled and raised their hands in greeting to

Justin Glover, hoping that he would send them work.  There was a
pretty, dark-haired waitress who reminded me, for a moment, of better
things, like Lucy.  Cris ordered a bottle of the house champagne.

"Not to celebrate the half million we'll never see but because we're
out of that legal badger's set.  I thought that if he called me Sir
Crispin again, I'd plead guilty just for the pleasure of depriving him
of a brief."

"Robbie has an extraordinary effect on juries."  Justin Glover did his
best to sound reassuring.

"And a pretty devastating one on clients."

"Robbie's a fighter.  You've got to allow him that."

"Now you're reminding me of all I didn't like about the army."

The girl came back and started to tussle with the champagne cork.  Cris
helped her and as he filled our glasses, I said, "About the damages ..
."

"I won't ever try and get them out of him.  However much they give
us."

"I'm glad about that."

"Because of Beth?"

"Yes," I said.

"Because of that."

"No costs, no damages."  Cris raised his glass to me.

"They're not worth the trouble of enforcing."

So it was agreed, as I'd felt sure that it would be, given Cris's good
sense and generosity.  And I said I'd give Justin Glover a full account
of all that I knew about Dunster and the story which had apparently
started with my ex-father-in-law.  He wanted to know if the Major would
give evidence and, if he did so, what he was likely to say.  I told him
that Jaunty's behaviour was quite incalculable but that Dunster was now
part of his family and that he'd been impressed by our opponent's first
ride on a horse.

A week later a privately printed pamphlet, setting out Dunster's
version of the events at Pomeriggio, was distributed, free of charge,
to all the employees of Megapolis, other television

companies and most newspapers.  Justin Glover told us that Robbie had
been delighted at this development; it now being certain that the
amount of damages would break all previous records.

In due course Dunster's solicitors filed their defence.  It alleged
justification and accused Cris of having commanded the party that blew
up the church full of praying civilians.  It also said that 'shortly
after this incident, the plaintiff said to a fellow officer, Lieutenant
Jonathan Blair, "We will have to say that the Germans did it."" So the
field of battle was defined, and the opponents prepared for war.

THE TRIAL

Chapter Twenty

"He's upstairs," Beth said when she opened the door of the house in
Camden Town.

"You'd better come up."  The square looked peaceful in the sunlight;
the traffic boomed in a familiar way from Kentish Town Road.  Beth's
greeting was not hostile, and yet I felt I had crossed into enemy
territory.  As the door shut behind me and she led me up the staircase,
I wondered if I should ever have undertaken this twelve o'clock mission
to Dunster.

When his father died, Beth's husband that was how I had to think of him
for the purpose of this visit had come in for the whole house,
including the lower floors which used to be let out to the couple from
the Financial Times.  The place looked reasonably tidy and the heavy
and perpetual smell of burning bacon and fried bread had been banished.
I tried to concentrate on something other than Beth, in jeans and a
white shirt, her hair pulled back and tied with a small scarf, her face
pale and free of make-up, walking in front of me.  I might once have
embraced her, put my hands on her breasts, kissed her pale face as she
arched back towards me.  Such conduct was now out of the question and
quite inappropriate to my mission.

The top room with windows looking out over the rooftops and back
gardens, where Dunster's father had written his articles and Dunster
worked now, was far less of a tip than I had expected.  There were
relics of the past: signed caricatures of Michael Foot and Nye Bevan;
photographs of John Dunster, younger than his son was now, shaking
hands with Castro and Tito and Mendes-France; shelves of Fabian
pamphlets and Left Book Club publications in battered yellow jackets;
a

Tribune poster with the headline THE END OF THE ESTABLISHMENT by John
Dunster; and the old upright typewriter on which such forgotten
diatribes were written.  His son had added his own trophies: a fax
machine and a word processor, books piled up against the wall and,
blocking out the light from the windows, a bulging filing cabinet and a
few hundred copies of what I could recognize as the pamphlet which he
had entitled SIR CRISPIN,

WAR CRIMINAL: FROM A MASSACRE TO MEGAPOLIS."

Dunster was sitting behind the big writing-table as we came in.  He
rose to greet me, smiling in the way a head of state might have
welcomed a journalist who, after prolonged negotiations, had been
granted an interview.

"A herald' Beth's husband was clearly on top of his form' come with a
white flag and an offer of surrender!  Is the distinguished old fart
you work for prepared to admit the game's up?"

Beth sard, "I'll go and put the coffee on."

"No, you'd better stay."  I stopped her.

"This is important for both of you.  It's about the damages."

"Please, old man.  Have a seat."  Dunster waved me to an upright chair
in the middle of the room.  Beth moved some books, sank on to the
cushions of a disintegrating wickerwork armchair and began a close
study of her fingernails.  Dunster sprawled behind his table and hit a
thin paper knife on it, as though it were a tuning fork.  I saw a map
on the wall with a red-headed pin marking Pomeriggio.  He seemed to be
enjoying the whole thing like a military operation.

"There aren't going to be any damages," he said, 'because your lot
aren't going to win."

"Robbie Skeffington's forecast is half a million plus costs.  You've
got no way of paying that either of you."

"There's no way we're going to have to."

"That's what I came to tell you.  It's just possible that Crispin
Bellhanger won't enforce the damages.  He's not really interested in
money."

Dunster looked at me with considerable amusement and said nothing.

"I don't want to see you lose Beth's home, Tash's home.  Your home,
come to that.  I don't want to see you bankrupt and put out on the
street and I don't think Cris does either."

"Yippee!  He's cracking up!"  When the words finally came from Dunster
they did so with a whoop of delight.

"He's prepared to behave extremely generously.  I wish you could
understand that."

"Generously?  Not bloody likely!  He's on the run!  Of course he is. He
knows he can't win and he wants to buy me off.  Just like he bought off
Jaunty, and you too, Progmire.  He's promoted you to be the chairman's
yes man and spokesperson on delicate missions."

"It's not a bribe.  It's what I think he'll do whether you go on with
the case or not."

"Then why did you come here to tell me about it?"

"In the faint hope that you could understand what sort of a man Cris
is.  And when you understand that, you might wonder whether you ought
to go on hounding him."

"You mean, let him get away with murder?  Just in case I lose an old
house in Camden Town, which is a damn sight too big for us, anyway.  Is
that the honourable way you want me to behave?"

"It's not a case of honour."

"Oh.  What is it, then?"

"Just..  ."-I looked at Beth, appealing to her-'commonsense."

"You mean it's sensible to give up fighting, at the moment when the
enemy's starting to retreat?"

"Can't you see?"  I asked Beth directly now.

"You're both running the most ghastly risk!"

She had found a fingernail which wasn't to her liking and had been
chewing it without embarrassment.  Now she stretched out her hand,
looked critically at the back of it, and considered the result.

"It's his case," she said.

"He'll make up his mind about what to do with it.  From what you say,
it does sound as though we're winning."  I had come to offer them a way
to avoid annihilation, and found them united and poised for victory.  I
stood up, out of patience with Dunster's limitless self-assurance.

"A word before you go, old man.  You tell your boss to stuff his
damages.  He'll never get them, anyway.  And you know why?  Because
we're going to win.  We've been told that by Ken Prinsep and he doesn't
act for clients he doesn't believe in.

"This is a truth that has to be told."  That's what he said.  And the
jury're going to have to accept it."

Later Lucy told me there's no such thing as a barrister who believes in
all his clients.  He'd go off his head if he tried to generate so much
faith.

"You'll have heard of Ken?"

"I don't believe so."

"Oh, Progmire!  You do live in a world of your own, don't you?  He's
the leading radical barrister and he's prepared to take on my case for
200 an hour, which is nothing.  Juries love him.  And they can't stand
being patronized by that awful little old-public-school creep,
Skeffington.  Ken says he spends his time hanging round the Sheridan
club and brown-nosing the judges.  Old man, that's the lot you've got
in with.  Trust you to join the establishment just as it's on the way
out."

I couldn't resist glancing at the Tribune poster on the wall and
saying, "Your father thought that's what it was doing quite a long time
ago now."

Dunster gave me a look full of pity and said, "You know, for a moment,
I thought you'd read our manifesto and come over to join us.  You see
I'm constantly trying to think better of you, Progmire."

Despite my protests, Beth came down the stairs to see me out.  I said,
"Tash says she's not coming for any more weekends."

"Yes.  She told me that."

"What did you say?"

"That it's her life.  She must make her own mind up about what she
does.  I think she was pretty annoyed about your girlfriend too."

"What do you think about that?"

"I'm really glad."  After all those years I still felt a faint pang of
disappointment as she said, "I told you.  It'll be a great relief to
see you settled."

"Are you settled?"

"Of course we are."

Don't be quite so sure about that, was what I restrained myself from
saying.  We got down to the front door and Beth opened it.

"You know I only came here to help."

"You shouldn't bother.  He doesn't need that."

"What does he need?"

"I suppose for people to believe in him."

"And this Ken Prinsep's prepared to do that for 200 an hour."

"You weren't always like that, Philip."  Beth also looked at me
regretfully.

"You weren't always thinking about money."

The landslide that started when Dunster threw the first stone was slow,
ponderous and inescapable.  It moved, however, at varying speeds.
Sometimes it would take a great lurch forward and the earth would
tremble.  Sometimes it hung suspended, scarcely moving, with only small
fissures to betray the underlying upheaval.  Then we could travel on,
avoiding the potholes and cracks in the roadway, as though the disaster
area didn't really exist.  I drove to the Isle of Dogs, moved back to
my old desk in the accounts department and supervised the budget of a
new and quite uncontroversial series about the world's great art
collections.  Cris and I hardly discussed the libel action and the
subject never came up on the agenda at board meetings.  I

did notice, however, that Sydney Pollitter became more flattering than
ever to Cris and treated him with the sort of reverent concern usually
reserved for those whose days are numbered.  His colleagues on the
Board went through our business with only the smallest hint of
embarrassment.

Natasha no longer visited and I spent the weekends with Lucy.  We
cooked and shopped together, went out to the Odeon or drank in the
Mummery bar but our relationship was a curious one.  It seemed, like
the long-awaited battle between Cris and Dunster, to hang suspended in
time.  Most affairs are restless; like history they can't stand still.
They must be forever moving, upwards towards some deeper understanding
or down to a final crash from which you can hope to escape with only
minor injuries.  Lucy and I stayed at the point we had reached when she
first took off and neatly folded her clothes.  I didn't tell her I
loved her and she didn't refer to the subject again.  Whatever she may
have felt for me was curiously undemanding and I hadn't reached the
point of worrying about that either.  We made love.  We didn't quarrel.
We didn't seem to find much to argue about.  It was as though all my
emotions, hopes and fears were fixed on the trial that was bound to
happen, and that my time with Lucy was a safe haven of ordinary life.

Nor did our friendship excite much comment among the Mummers, who were
used to a changing of partners in an elaborate formation dance as one
production gave way to another.  Sex, indeed, was one of the main
reasons why new arrivals in Muswell Hill, which otherwise offered few
opportunities for romantic meetings, wanted to join our group.  Martin,
the bank manager, used to take great trouble at auditions to weed out
those candidates who, he said, were more interested in the parts of
fellow actors than those created by any dramatist.  Once accepted into
the company, however, your life was your own, and indeed a certain
cheerful promiscuity was felt to be the mark of a professional, like
using Leichner

numbers 5 and 9 and buying the Stage every week at the Tube station.
When I turned up in the bar of the Mummery with Lucy there were few
comments, although Pam did draw me aside to ask, "Are you sure she has
a sense of humour?"  and said, "If she'd been a mature, experienced and
really physical type of woman I might have felt just the tiniest bit
jealous.  But as it's only Lucy, I honestly don't mind at all." Dennis,
the dentist, said, "You seem to be pretty well rooted in that girl,
Philip."  So at least I felt like a healthy tooth.

It was Lucy who told me all about Ken Prinsep.

"Bit of an odd background," she said.

"Born in Canada.  Rich family of biscuit manufacturers.  Went to Yale
Law School in the flower-power era.  Took part in protests in the
South.  Did some human rights cases after he joined a law firm in
Chicago.  Then decided that England was the only place where justice
was incorruptible and went to Cambridge to read Law.  Got a First but
had some difficulty finding chambers.  The English legal hacks probably
felt he took it all a bit too seriously.  Finally got into a radical
set we brief sometimes they specialize in things like terrorism and
porn. The litigation partner says he can be brilliant, but he was
behind the door when tact was handed out.  Also that he can't quite get
on the same wavelength as some of the judges."

"It sounds as though he'd suit Dunster."

"Perhaps.  But he might get too involved in the case.  He might be too
much on Dunster's side, if you know what I mean."

"Not exactly.  Can you be too much on the side of someone you're
defending?"  Was I too much on Cris's side, for instance?

"Oh, yes.  Our litigation partner says that can be very dangerous."

A few days later I was sitting in my office, staring out of the window
and wondering if Cris had heard any more from our lawyers, when the
telephone rang and a surprisingly deep and resonant voice said, "Is
that Mr.  Progmire?  Maurice Zellenek here."  He pronounced it Morreece
in the American manner, although he didn't have an American accent.

"I had the pleasure and privilege of seeing your Trigorin, Mr.
Progmire.  A young lady in my lawyer's office was kind enough to obtain
a ticket for me."

I vaguely remembered a man who had been talking to Lucy after the first
night, a stranger to the Mummers with all his hair at the wrong end of
his face.

"Mr.  Progmire.  Your Trigorin was quite something."

"Well.  I suppose it was.  Something or other."

"I was led to believe that you are a modest sort of person.  That's a
mistake, let me tell you.  In our business modesty gets you nowhere
very much."

I wondered what I was meant to say.  That I was the greatest Trigorin
since Stanislavsky?  And what did he mean by 'our business' Sitting in
front of a pile of accounts and awaiting a difficult libel action, I
was still ridiculously pleased to be told that I was a part of the
world of entertainment, for that must have been what it was.  Grocers
and dentists don't talk about 'our business'.

"I'm not sure I was a wonderful Trigorin, but it was very kind of you
to telephone and tell me so."

"The purpose of this call is not just to congratulate.  The purpose is
to suggest we meet and talk.  Talent is a kind of rarity these days,
especially among men in middle life.  I shall be away in Hungary for
several months.  May I look forward to calling you on my return?  Shall
we do lunch?"

"It would be a pleasure."

"No, sir, Mr.  Progmire.  The pleasure is entirely mine.

"A subject for a short story."  Unforgettable, the way you handled that
great line."

Mr.  Zellenek then left my ear and I sat looking at the river and
wondering if the call were not a practical joke organized by Dunster as
some obscure form of revenge.  However, when

I told Lucy what had happened, she said that her client Zel-lenek had
been greatly impressed in my acting, was surprised to find I was an
accountant and had asked for my telephone number.

"I didn't want to tell you that," she said, 'in case he didn't ring and
you'd've been disappointed."  I thought that this was very
considerate.

"He's got some big project for next year," Lucy said.

"I think it's a series for Channel Four."  Was he really going to ask
me to go into 'the business'?  Would Mr.  Zellenek finally release me
from the world of budgets and balance sheets and set me up forever on
the creative side?  I allowed myself to toy with this idea for a little
while until there was a distant murmur of thunder and the case of Cris
v. Dunster took another lurch forward.

Chapter Twenty-one

I drove down to Exmoor, as we had so many years before when Beth
decided that it was time I went through 'the ordeal by fire and ice'.
My destination was, once more, Blair Cottage; other than that I had no
more idea of what I should find, or how I should be greeted, than when
Beth first drove me, far too fast, along the seaside road and then
inland, between the tall hedges and through the little towns with their
gift shops and boarding-houses and cream teas, towards the moor and the
parents I had never met.

Dear Progmire In the past you have appealed to me as a geezer who could
see further through a brick wall than most other geezers.  You sorted
out my personal and business affairs in double-quick time, if you
remember, and I thought, there goes an old head on a pair of youngish
shoulders.  I have never had much luck with so-called professional
advisers.  Solicitors and accountants seem only interested in drink or
women (or both) and in sending exorbitant bills.  So I thought I'd ask
your advice as I have done in the past.

My problem is legal and business mixed, so it should be up your street.
Mike's away, getting her mother into a home at the moment, so if you
could motor down here tooty sweet, say Thursday morning, we could go up
to the Old Huntsman for a ploughman's after our chin wag

I would be much obliged if you'd say nothing about this to my daughter,
Beth, her husband or anyone else, come to that.  I'll keep an eye
skinned for you around midday.

Sincerely Jonathan Blair (Major, Retired) This unexpected letter, in
spiky, unpractised handwriting,

much crossed-out and clearly the result of considerable thought, had
arrived in an envelope marked PERSONAL AND EXTREMELY PRIVATE.  In spite
of Jaunty's instructions, I took it to Justin Glover, whom I had seen a
number of times since our first conference, feeling in need of a
certain amount of advice myself.

Robbie Skeffington had plunged us into such a hot certainty at the
start of the case that the time was bound to come for cooler feelings
and I found our solicitor in a state of increasing apprehension.

"The key witness," Justin told me, 'is obviously going to be Major
Blair.  If he goes into the witness-box and says Sir Crispin commanded
the operation, we can only attack him on the grounds that he's trying
to save his son-in-law's pocket.  Robbie'll do that with wonderful
brutality, of course.  But it may not be enough to destroy the old
boy's evidence.  It's something we ought to be worrying about."  Then I
showed Justin Glover the letter and he said I'd better go and find out
what it was all about, as it might do some good and he didn't see why
it should do any harm.

So I left Muswell Hill and Lucy around dawn and at exactly a quarter to
twelve I passed the gallows on which the notice Blair Cottage swung and
drove down the rutted path to the stable yard and the house sitting
uncomfortably among the gravel.  I parked and got out of the car as the
baying started and the task force of assorted dogs leapt for my
genitals.  It was like old times.

The back door was open.  I stood on the step and rang the bell, which
made a loud, high-pitched buzz and produced no Major.  I waited and
then crossed the threshold into the kitchen, setting off a hysterical
reaction in the dogs who leapt, yelped, barked and bounded as though I
were an escaped axe man who had called to murder Jaunty.  I did my best
not to give these animals the satisfaction of seeing how nervous their
welcome made me.  I had come a long way on an important mission and I
was determined to complete it.

The house was as cold as I always remembered it, as though the dark
furniture, the shiny lino and the dun-coloured wallpaper gave off their
own particular chill.  The kitchen floor was well stocked with boots,
slippers, dog bowls and the small mess of a half-trained puppy who had
been over-excited by my arrival.  There was a plate on the table which
had held bacon and eggs, a half-full packet of Mother's Pride and an
almost finished mug of Nescafe.  The number of dirty dishes in the sink
testified to the time it had taken Mike to get her mother into a
home.

I went through the kitchen into the hall.  Most of the interior doors
were open.  I saw Jaunty's office, with the bureau bulging as ever with
papers, some of which had floated to the floor.  On the carpet, handy
for the sitting-room sofa, there was a whisky bottle, a glass and a
saucer full of the butts of small cigars.  I went to the foot of the
stairs and, having no desire to inspect Jaunty's bedroom, I called into
the shadows, "It's Progmire!"  which seemed, in that empty house,
rather a foolish thing to say.

There was no answer and I went out towards the stable yard.  The dogs
were delighted to see me leave the house and their clamour sank to
sullen growls as they returned to the kitchen.  Only the old black
lurcher, who had slept throughout the excitement on a patch of blanket
beside the cooker, trotted out after me.

The long, mournful faces of silent horses peered over half doors,
looking as though they had been waiting a long time for some attention
and had become resigned to the lack of it.  But there were some signs
of activity around the stable yard: a bucket filled, a hose pipe pulled
out and the door of the tack room swinging open.  The big lorry stood
with the ramp ready for a nervous horse to be induced to step inside.
It was then that I first heard a faint and distant sound, a weak hint
of thunder but more metallic and not so far away.  One of the lorry
doors left open was banging, I thought, and not shutting properly.  And
then it came again, closer and more insistent.  But what attracted my
attention was the lurcher whining.

It had left me to go up the ramp and it was standing looking into the
shadows, making sounds of distress.  There was straw on the floor of
the lorry and the darkness smelt of horse piss.  I was about to turn
away, drive down to the pub and try phoning later, when there was a
fainter boom and a weaker rattle.  It seemed to come from in front of
me.  I could see more clearly now and there was a short ladder propped
up against what looked like a pair of large cupboard doors over the
back of the driver's cabin.  There was no mistaking it now, the rattle
of the bolted metal, and over the lurcher's concerned whining the faint
sound of a human voice in panic.

I have never I don't suppose many people have rescued from a coffin
someone who has narrowly escaped being buried alive.  All I can say is,
the experience can hardly have left its victim in worse shape than that
in which, on that quiet morning, I found Major Jaunty Blair.  He
emerged from his tomb, where saddles and horse blankets and other bits
of equipment were stored, wild-eyed and grey with terror.  His forehead
was shiny, his wispy hair soaked with sweat and plastered to his head,
his hand, as he grabbed my arm, strengthened by an accumulated frenzy
of terror.  It took him a long time to summon up the will to be helped
down the ladder.  Then he stumbled into the open air, coughing and
spluttering as though he had forgotten how to breathe.

"Thank God you came, Progmire!  Thank God for you!  Always a friend."
The Major looked up at me, trembling with gratitude, rather like one of
his dogs, I thought, who had been cruelly treated.

"Always had this horror.  Rat in trap.  Locked in.  Bloody tank.  Hot
as hell.  Tank on fire.  Locked bloody in!  Saw them everywhere.  Tanks
full of dead geezers."  He was nursing his arms and his elbows, as
though they were bruised as he had thrown himself against the door,
struggling for freedom.  He talked breathlessly, in bursts like random
gunfire.  As he got to the end of the ramp he vomited.

I did a great deal for Jaunty that day.  I cleaned him up.  I helped
him to the sofa where he stretched out.  I soothed him with whisky and
hot tea.  I made him baked beans on toast, which he said was all he
could face for lunch.  I was there to find things out for Cris.  The
incident itself remained a mystery.  Jaunty said he had been going to
take his horse Montgomery to a local show where he would be ridden by a
whipper-in to parade the pack of hounds.  He had collected the saddle
and various accoutrements and was putting them in the space over the
driver's cabin, which he mysteriously called the luton.  As he was
doing this, some bloody fool must have come into the lorry, shut the
luton's door and bolted it from the outside.  Perhaps they thought that
was funny.  They might have thought the war in the desert bloody funny,
and being trapped in a tank a real hoot, being suffocated in a red-hot
box fucking entertaining.  At this point Jaunty became incomprehensible
and had to be brought back to a serious consideration of the problem
with whisky.

Who could have done it?  Fiona was the girl groom, he told me.  She was
meant to come over and help with the transport of Montgomery.  She was
a sensible girl most of the time.  Worked long hours for the love of
horses and didn't keep bothering him for more money like some of the
more mercenary little bitches.  God only knew who was rogering Fiona at
the moment.  Could be one of the hunt servants.  Could be some mad
joker with a bloody warped sense of humour who'd never seen the inside
of a tank or gone soldiering.  Could be .. . Yes.  He had Fiona's
telephone number.  It was on a bit of paper pinned to the wall of the
office.

So I went off to ring Fiona, who sounded sensible, shocked and totally
puzzled.  She was going to come with someone called Charlie Riggs and
drive Montgomery over to the show in the lorry, but that wasn't planned
to happen until two o'clock because Jaunty was having lunch with a
visitor from London.  That was me, wasn't it?  She didn't really know
why

Jaunty should have been putting things in the luton around midday.
She'd been with Charlie Riggs all the morning, riding across the moor.
She'd never known him to be capable of a practical joke, let alone the
cruel one which had terrorized Jaunty.  There is only one other thing
worth recording about this conversation.  During it, I was looking out
of the office window and I saw a red Cortina come bumping down the lane
and into the stable yard, where the lorry was still standing with its
back down.  The car stopped, turned round slowly and then drove back
past the house towards the main road.  For a moment I had a clear view
of the driver, an old man with broad shoulders and the look of a bald
emperor.  It was a face I knew I had seen before but, on that
extraordinary afternoon, I couldn't remember where.

After I had spoken to Fiona I went back to my patient and told him what
she'd said.  He shook his head and lay in silence, staring up at the
ceiling, until I reminded him that I had come not to rescue him but
because he had sent for me.

"Don't know what to do.  That bloody geezer of Beth's.  Must have got
the wrong idea.  Something I said to him.  Got hold of the wrong end of
the stick."

I said I was glad to hear it.  I was careful not to sound hopeful too
soon.

Toured brandy into me.  Got me talking.  About the old days.  About the
war and so on.  Up there among the Eyeties."

I said I knew he'd done something like that.

"Now I hear he's causing trouble for your boss.  For old Cris
Bellhanger.  A bloody good geezer I went soldiering with.  Is he
causing trouble?"

The old man lay in riding breeches with his boots off, the sleeve of
his sweater disintegrating and his shirt open to display the white
hairs on his chest, his face a slowly relaxing mask of fear.

I said yes, and that Dunster was causing trouble.

"So many bloody fools about nowadays.  Is he still on about that
business of the church?"

Yes, I told him, that was what he was on about still.  It was the
understatement of the year.

"Did you tell Dunster that Cris had said to you, "We must say the
Germans did it"?"

"Can't remember all I told him exactly."  Jaunty shook his head.

"But the Germans did do it.  We all knew that.  German captain in
charge gave the order."  The cold house suddenly seemed warmer, the
dark sitting-room filled with sunshine: He held out his empty glass but
I didn't refill it, not being sure of him yet.

"How do you know that?"

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Never."

"I ended up in Austria.  Major Blair, Allied Administration.  Stamping
out the black market bits of it, anyway.  Sorting out war criminals.
That's where I found out who did for those poor devils who went to
church.  Bad idea, going to church."  He gave a ghastly sort of a
smile.

"Can be extremely dangerous."

It all sounded so simple.  Too simple perhaps, but I didn't want to ask
questions that might throw doubt on what was Cris's clear defence. What
Jaunty had said was already enough for me to fill his glass again, but
I still wanted to know something.

"So was the German officer put on trial?"

"We never quite caught him.  Slippery bugger.  Got away with it.  Well,
all it needed was a promise to fight communism, plus a big slosh of
money.  In the proper quarters.  None of it came my way, I have to tell
you.  Not a dollar for Jaunty.  Not that I'd've taken it.  I'd have had
the geezer tried and shot.  Might feel differently now.  Much water
under the bridge.  Gallons of bloody water!"

Some of it still didn't fit, particularly the bit that had once led me
to suspect the Major himself.

"When you took me out to dinner, that night at Dan-dini's .. ."

"Super place, isn't it?  Go there a lot, do you?  Now you're a

bachelor again?"  The whisky had done a remarkable job: there was a
flush on his cheek-bones and the small, yellowish eyes he turned on me
were glinting.

"Is that smashing girl still there?  That little Tracy?"

"You told me that an old man isn't responsible for what he did when he
was young.  You said he was quite different then, different fingernails
and teeth and so on."

"I remember," the Major nodded.

"Yes, I remember saying that.  Too bloody true."

"So no one should be blamed for what they did years before."

"Right!  That's what I said."

"Who were you thinking of when you said that?"

There was silence.  He looked back at the ceiling.  For the first time
since I had rescued him from the tomb he seemed almost relaxed.

"Was it the German captain?"  I suggested.

"That's right, Progmire.  You've got it.  Spot on!"

"Why were you worried about him?"

"I keep my ear pretty close to the ground or I did in those days after
the war.  When I was in the Allied Administration.  And after."

"What did you hear?"

"Rumours."

"What sort of rumours?"

"About our Kraut friend who did the job at Pomeriggio.  Finally got
away to England.  We've given him hospitality, that's my belief, for
all these years."

There was a question I felt it dangerous to ask, all the same I asked
it.

"What else did you hear about him?"

"Well.  He changed his name, of course.  Arrived here as Lewenstein.
Now goes under the name of Llewellyn and runs a large garage somewhere
in the Cardiff area."

"And his fingernails have changed?"

"You've got it, Progmire.  Spot on.  After all these long years, let
him rest in peace."

"But you did say ..."  - I took my final risk 'that if Dunster
unearthed the true story it would be a disaster for all the family?"

Another car had driven up and the dogs were barking in a muted sort of
way, as though it were a formality they had to go through even for
friends.  The Major was still examining the ceiling carefully.

"Of course," he said at last.

"It would have been extremely awkward for me if Dunster had told that
story.  After all, I knew where the German was and I never told
anybody.  I want your advice, Progmire.  That's why I asked you here.
Should I... Should I tell them now?"

"Of course.  You must tell Crispin Bellhanger's lawyers."  And then
Fiona called out from the kitchen.  The girl groom came in with Charlie
Riggs and after that I got little further information from Major Jaunty
Blair.

I am an accountant and not a lawyer.  If I had had any proper legal
training, or perhaps if I had not been so elated by a story which
exculpated Cris, I should not have left Blair Cottage without a signed
statement from Jaunty.  Instead of getting that, I wasted the rest of
my time there in looking after the old rascal and allowed the most
precious evidence for this is what it seemed to be at the time to slip
through my fingers.

"Don't blame yourself for a moment," Cris said afterwards.

"You did absolutely all you could and I shall be forever grateful."  Of
course he would say that, out of pure kindness, but I went on blaming
myself even after the trial was over.

I did ring Justin Glover.  I drove into Dulverton as I'd offered to
replenish the stock of whisky, and I telephoned from the post office. I
recounted the whole story and Justin said he was a little disorganized
at the moment as Theodora, the six-year-old, was having 'the old ear
trouble, only worse' and his wife, Jenny, was getting into a bit of a
lather about it and he'd probably have to slip off home early.  He'd
fix up for someone to come down in the next day or two and he hoped

to get Jaunty to swear an affidavit, or at least sign a proof of
evidence.  He congratulated me and then asked who the hell I thought
had banged Jaunty up in the luton.

"God knows."

"I suppose someone might've played a practical joke?"

"I don't think it was the girl groom.  Or her boyfriend.  They seemed
genuinely upset.  I don't know about Jaunty's other acquaintances. Some
of them might be rather dubious."

There was a silence and then Justin Glover said, "I hope it isn't going
to be one of those sort of cases."

"Which sort of cases?"

"Witnesses being got at.  Anyway, thanks, Philip.  I'll get someone
down to him as soon as possible."  As it turned out, as soon as
possible was far too late.

When I got back to Blair Cottage, Fiona and Charlie Riggs went off with
Montgomery to the show and I managed to call Mike at her mother's house
in Chester.  Jaunty, I told her, had had an accident, the lorry door
had jammed and he's been shut in, which upset him rather.  He was a
good deal better now.

"Don't want to speak to her."  Jaunty waved a dismissive hand from the
sofa and said in a harsh and penetrating whisper.

"The woman'll only fuss.  Just tell her to get herself back down here
tooty sweet.  Plenty for her to do, what with the mess she's allowed
the place to get into."  As a result of constant recourse to the
medicinal whisky bottle Jaunty was not in a very good condition to
receive Mike, so I told her there was no desperate hurry.  She said
she'd get up to London that evening and stay the night with Beth, which
of course meant spending the evening with Dunster.  She could get to
Taunton quite early the next morning and Fiona would drive over and
meet her train.

"Bloody women!"  Jaunty said.

"There're never anywhere when you need them.  You're not going to leave
me alone here tonight, are you, Progmire?"

"Well, I had thought of driving back quite soon."

"I'd honestly rather you didn't.  For God's sake, wait until Mike gets
herself down here."  He looked up at me and once more I thought of an
animal at bay, which he had hunted.

"Do that for me, won't you, Progmire?  After all, you can't say I
haven't done my bit for your boss."  That was true, so I agreed with
reluctance.

Around six o'clock Fiona and Charlie came back with Montgomery in the
lorry.  She told Jaunty that his horse had performed magnificently with
the hounds.  Later she helped me get his supper.  He ordered baked
beans on toast, now with two eggs and two rashers of bacon.  This meal
was over-ambitious.  He pushed it away half-eaten and told us, "Get me
up to bloody Bedfordshire!"  Charlie Riggs and I supported him up the
stairs and into a room where the bed hadn't been made during Mike's
absence, clothes were on the floor and the ashtray on the bedside table
was overflowing with small cigar butts.  We got him undressed with
difficulty and left him with relief.

So I slept that night, as I had once done so happily, in Beth's small
bedroom, among the rosettes and books on the care of ponies, and the
photographs of the child and teenage Bethany clearing jumps or
receiving cups at gymkhanas.  I felt tired and slept well, confident
that Dunster was defeated and Cris out of trouble.  In the morning I
took Jaunty a cup of tea.  He lay awkwardly in bed, one arm thrown up
across his forehead as though to ward off a blow.  When I put the tea
beside him, he opened one suspicious eye and said, "The bloody woman
not back yet, I suppose?"

"The train gets in at eleven.  Fiona's going to meet her."

"I think I'll stay in bed.  Tell you the truth.  Don't feel quite the
ticket."

"Rest," I said, and sat down beside him.

"You probably need it."  I also thought he'd got the most prodigious
hangover.

"Only I just meant to ask you.  When you wrote to me .. ."

"Got you down because you can see a bit far through a bloody brick
wall."

"Well, were you going to ask my advice about whether you should tell
our solicitor about the German captain?"

"Course I was.  I was going to give them the whole story.  If you
advised me to do so, Progmire.  I honestly wanted to help old Cris.  No
need for that.  Bloody uncalled for and out of order."

"No need for what, Jaunty?"  His voice had become faint.  I sat nearer
to him, eager to learn the truth.

"No need for what happened.  No need for that at all.  I wasn't about
to let down Captain Cris."  Then his one open eye closed and he told me
no more about his imprisonment in the luton.

I went downstairs and read back numbers of Country Life and was bored
to death with stately homes and Stubbs paintings, Royal Worcester and
breeding Palominos, when Fiona drove up with Mike.

"It came as an awful shock to him," I told her.

"It would do.  Jaunty wouldn't like to be shut up in anything.  It was
the tanks, you know."

"Yes."

"The tanks in the desert.  That war!  It's amazing how long it takes
some people to get over it."

"Amazing."

"How on earth did it happen?  Has he told you?"

"No," I said truthfully.

"He hasn't told me that at all."

"Beth and I were wondering why on earth did he ask you down?"

"He wanted to ask my advice about something."

"About this wretched law case?"

"Yes.  About that."  Mike was growing old.  She was vague and probably
quite innocent of all knowledge of Jaunty's affairs.  But she had been
with Dunster and I thought it better not to tell her anything more. So,
for the last time in my life, I said goodbye to Blair Cottage.

Justin Glover's representative didn't go down for two days.

When he telephoned from the station, Mike told him that the doctor was
with them.  Jaunty had had a stroke in the night.  He couldn't move his
right arm and had totally lost the power of speech.

I wrote a long letter to Beth saying how sorry I was and explaining
most of what had happened and how I had done my best to look after her
father.  I got no answer; the lines of communication between us had
virtually broken down.

Chapter Twenty-two

The Informer is a weekly magazine which was started long before the
last war and even before people like Cris and Jaunty were born.  Its
circulation has been falling steadily over the last decade and its
brand of earnest, puritanical and self-righteous socialism has made it
acceptable only to a dwindling number of lecturers, social workers and
school teachers.  The book reviews are still pretty good, however, and
the theatre criticism excellent.  For that reason a copy was usually to
be found in the Mummery bar and I was on my way through a lot of
statistics on glue-sniffing, and a lengthy denunciation of the
government's policy on food additives, towards an assessment of the
latest Hamlet at Stratford, when I came upon a piece headed THE
BATTLE

OF POMERIGGIO: THE ESTABLISHMENT CLOSES RANKS.

The facts of the libel were set out and the progress of the action
reported.  Cris was depicted as one of the much-favoured 'great and
good', a liberal millionaire who had a large country house, belonged to
the best clubs and knew all the 'best' people.  Dick Dunster, 'no
stranger to Informer readers', was the first investigative journalist
to expose this hollow man who, 'through his sway over Megapolis TV,
exercises considerably more power over the nation than his close friend
the Prime Minister'.  "Sir Crispin Bellhanger," the article continued,
'is nothing more nor less than a war criminal who, after half a century
on the run, has at last had his collar fingered.

"The vital witnesses in the forthcoming trial," the writer went on, are
old soldiers and no doubt the powers that be will try every possible
means of silencing them or persuading them not to grass on such a
prominent member of the old boy net.  The pressure on witnesses, so the word goes in legal circles, is being applied by Sir Crispin's confidential assistant, a shadowy accountant named Philip Progmire, who, although an enthusiastic amateur actor in his spare time, shuns the limelight in his professional life.
His personality is said to be so negative that one Megapolis executive mentioned that his colleagues often start confidential conversations before they have noticed that Progmire has, in his unobtrusive fashion, "slithered into the room".  He recently visited a retired army officer who was to be an important witness for Dunster's defence, travelling all the way down to the West Country to do so.  Speculation is rife as to what was said on this occasion, but the hard fact is that this tough old campaigner, ex-desert rat and hero of the SAS, was so alarmed by what the devious Progmire had to tell him that he suffered a stroke and may now be incapable of giving evidence for either party.  All of which only goes to show that when it comes to behind-the-scenes manipulation,
the "great and good" have fewer holds barred than any of us."

Lucy, sitting beside me and holding a pint of beer that seemed too
heavy for her thin arm, said, "You're jolly lucky."

"Why?"

"You've been libelled too.  You ought to be able to collect some
wonderful tax-free damages from the Informer.  Who wrote it?  Laurence
Anderson Ertes.  What an extraordinary name.  Do you know him?"

"Well, I think I might."

"Who is he?"

"Usually known by his first two initials.  L. A. Ertes."

She shook her head slowly, not understanding, and took a gulp of
beer.

"Laertes," I told her.

"Although he never played the part.  There was talk of offering it to
him."

"A friend of yours?"

"Of course.  It takes a close friend to write stuff like that about a
person."

zoz

Curiously enough I didn't feel hurt or worried or even particularly
angry.  Being angry with Dunster, in any event, seemed as futile as
raging at the rain that fell each day when it was meant to be summer,
or yelling curses at the traffic in the Commercial Road all the way to
work, or railing at the fact of death.  In a way I was proud of being
identified with Cris, and coming in for this attack made me feel that I
had atoned, to some extent, for my negligence in not taking a signed
statement from Jaunty Blair before the great silence descended on
him.

We had a calm conference in Justin Glover's office.  Robbie Skeffington
had written an opinion saying that we should issue another writ against
the Informer.  Cris, of course, was all for moderation.  He said the
Informer had a very small circulation and was hardly worth powder and
shot.  I had absolutely no desire to sue anyone or be involved
personally in what seemed to me the horrors of litigation.  In the end
we decided that Justin would write a letter to the Informer denying any
interference with witnesses and threatening immediate proceedings if
any repetition of such a suggestion were to take place.  I left the
conference glad that Cris felt in a strong enough position to exercise
such restraint.  It was true that our principal witness, the one who
might well have won the case, was now lost to us, such was the
unsuccessful result of my so-called interference.  But as Theodora's
ear had cleared up nicely, Justin promised to devote all his energy and
resources to the search for an Austrian refugee who was now a Mr.
Llewellyn, running a garage outside Cardiff.  This was the war criminal
who, as I now knew, had ordered the massacre at Pomeriggio.  As for
Dunster, it seemed that he had fired yet another random volley into the
air and had wounded no one.

Then I got a handsomely embossed card telling me that Marguerite
Oakshott would be At Home from 6.30 p.m. onwards on Thursday week.  On
the back was scrawled in green ink: "Do try to come, and bring a
friend.  It's been centuries.."

I don't know how most men feel about their first experience of sex.  I
can imagine one of those articles in the Mr.  Chatterbox column of the
Sunday Fortress in which various famous persons are rung up and asked
to describe this particular incident in their lives.  There would be
little photographs of foot ballers novelists and, probably by now,
cabinet ministers (it'll soon be bishops) who would say: "How can I
ever forget that time in the bicycle sheds, or in the long grass, or
when we ,. broke into the cricket pavilion, or in the front room by the
Christmas tree when her parents were asleep upstairs when I felt
terrified, or liberated, or completely inadequate, and when Red Annie
from the check-out, or whoever it might have been, was so wonderfully
understanding?"  Such people would no doubt leave us to think that so
modest and wryly described an initiation had led to a long line of
successes which had helped them in their ambition to become stars of
the Mr.  Chatterbox column.  One thing I'm sure about is that none of
these famous persons, however distinguished, thinks of the first woman
who ever made him completely welcome without some degree of gratitude
and she will never be forgotten.

I have already made it clear that I am not particularly proud of my
seduction by Mrs.  Oakshott in her pale pink Gloucester Crescent
bathroom, but, looking back on it after so many years, I feel that, on
the whole, it was kind of her to take the trouble especially on a busy
night when she had a house full of guests.

Lucy said, "Who is this Marguerite Oakshott?"

"A strange sort of woman.  Rich and supposed to be left-wing.  She's
got an original Dufy.  Her parties were quite interesting, I seem to
remember.  It might be fun to go."

"I suppose it could take your mind off this great libel action."

But, as it so happened, it didn't take my mind off that at all.

The house was familiar, but not so Mrs.  Oakshott.  Who was this
charming, totally respectable, grey-haired lady in her sixties who greeted me as though she were a devoted auntie, welcoming her favourite nephew home from a long spell in the tropics?  She had fought no battle against time, surrendering her neck to loose skin and her eyes to wrinkles, but she still smelt of sweet powder, her breasts were still plump and her ankles slender.  She still leant back on her heels and tried to look down on us an exercise which her shortness made impossible but now she was peering through thick-rimmed spectacles.  I
thought her acceptance of old age creditable, although it made me feel as though I had lost my virginity an alarmingly long time ago.

She kissed me and said, "Great to have you back at one of my parties.
And who's this you've got hold of?"

"Lucy Cattermole," I told her.

"Sweet.  Really very sweet and, I should have thought, rather suitable.
It's time you settled down.  I want to get all the dirt from you about
this great war crimes trial, now you've become so famous!  Are you
really the eminence grise of Crispin Bell-hanger?  And don't you think
he must have done something?"

"I'm quite sure he didn't," I said.

"And I'm not in the least famous."

"He was always so modest, even when he was a child," Mrs.  Oakshott,
who sounded as though she had kept in close touch with me all my life,
told Lucy.

"Didn't you read all about him in the Informer?"

"Yes, I did," Lucy said.

"He's thinking of suing them."

"How tremendously exciting!  You must tell me everything that's been
happening to you.  Now we've found you again."

"I was wondering how you managed that?"  I was a long way from buying
the house in Muswell Hill on the night that Mrs.  Oakshott and I met on
the bathroom floor.

"That friend of yours .. ."  she said, peering vaguely past me at some
new arrivals.

"Oh, my God!  Did I invite them?"

When she had left us Lucy said, "Is she related to you?"

"I'll tell you about it some time.  Let's go and find a drink, for
God's sake.  We needn't stay long."

The place was full of those people that any girl journalist working on
the Mr.  Chatterbox column would have rung up to ask not only about
their first sexual experience but about their ten best books, their
favourite films, the way they spent Sundays, what they thought of a
common European currency, where they took their holidays and what they
customarily had for breakfast.  Their faces were either well known from
newspapers or television, or vaguely and maddeningly familiar, like the
people who come and greet you and know all about you but whose names
you have forgotten.  They looked, these well-nourished, smiling men and
younger but not quite so young as they would like to be women, as if
they were all closely related.  They were like a family, all the
members of which were bored with each other, had grown to hate each
other and yet had to go on meeting, on and on, because every evening
was yet another family reunion at the opera, or some embassy or other
or at Mrs.  Oakshott's because she was rich and knew them all, even
though they might not have recognized her husband who was quite
uninteresting and worked for a bank.  And I thought how desperately
they hoped to meet someone new, anybody who would tell them things they
hadn't heard before, even someone like me, whose claim to fame was
having played a few leading roles with the Muswell Hill Mummers and
having been mentioned, in an extremely unfavorable manner, in that
week's Informer.

I also knew that Cris's reputation would be totally unsafe in their
hands.  The story of the Pomeriggio massacre had come to them like an
extra treat in a dull season, a promise of something more dramatic than
federal Europe, or a Cabinet reshuffle, to speculate about and get to
know its inside story.  But just as unsuccessful plays and bad books
and disastrous marriages provided more pleasurable conversation and
were easier to make jokes about than hits, or masterpieces, or people
who lived happily together, so the great libel action would only be
interesting if Cris were guilty.  For that reason he already was guilty for them, because there was never any smoke without a fire, and because once something terrible had been suggested, or written about in a newspaper, it had better be true as life would become so very dull if it weren't.  I felt a stab of pity for Cris, who was going about his business and home to Windhammer, caring for Angie and listening to Schubert, in the belief that the case in court would decide things one way or another, when this laughing, champagne-drinking, canape-eating tribunal had decided that he was already guilty as rumoured.

As we stood holding our glasses, Lucy looked round and whispered the
names of the faces she recognized.  She then covered her mouth with a
flat hand, like a child suppressing a giggle, as she recognized an
extremely distinguished-looking elderly gentleman whom her firm had
defended on a serious fraud charge at the Old Bailey.

"I sat in court for three weeks with him, but he won't recognize me.
Our litigation partner says clients never do."  Then a penetrating
girl's voice squealed, "Lucy Cattermole!  I can't believe it!"  and
there was someone called Amanda with whom Lucy had been at school and
who had come with her dad.  As they went on a brief trip down memory
lane I started on the familiar journey to Mrs.  Oak-shott's bathroom.

There were couples sitting on the stairs and the front door kept
opening to admit more guests.  I had obviously been invited to one of
the Oakshotts' more all-embracing parties.  Of course I had more than
half expected, almost known, that Dunster would be there.  Perhaps I
thought he would be there with Beth and I wanted to prove something to
both of them.  I wanted to show her that Lucy and I were now a couple,
an item, and getting on perfectly well, thank you.  And I wanted to
show Dunster that he had drawn no blood at all, that his most vicious
lunge, designed as a rapier to the heart, hadn't even grazed the skin.
The suggestions in his article were so absurd they could only produce
laughter, not pain.  Perhaps it was childish of me to wish for this demonstration but it was at least part of the reason for accepting Mrs.  Oakshott's invitation.

The pink bathroom revisited produced no sort of drama.  As I left it
there had been another intake of new arrivals and an all-too-familiar
voice called up from the hall, "There you are, old man!  I thought you
might be here."  He came bounding eagerly upstairs towards me.  I
waited for him on the landing, not wanting to talk to Dunster in the
middle of the party.

I told him his latest article was the most ludicrous in a long line of
absurdities.

"My article?  Bright of you, old man.  You saw through my little
joke."

"It wasn't hard.  And it wasn't tremendously funny either."

"You spotted me as Laertes."

"Don't flatter yourself.  You're nothing like Laertes."

"Don't you think so?  I, with wings as swift As meditation or the
thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge."

Dunster didn't often quote poetry.

"Laertes didn't say that.  Hamlet said it."

Two women, lookalikes red glossy lips and white breasts crammed into
black cocktail dresses, came towards us arm in arm and one said, "Are
you two guarding the door or something?"

We moved aside to let them into the bathroom to gossip or whatever they
had to do.  Dunster was leaning against the wall of the landing,
looking at me with his most intolerably amused expression.

"You remember when they wanted me for Laertes to your terrible Hamlet?"
He now seemed proud of this fact.

"That was what I was thinking of when I wrote the piece for the
Informer."

"You do surprise me.  It read as though you thought I was a person who
went around terrorizing witnesses."

"Well, Beth is extremely upset about what you did to poor old Jaunty.
You must have scared the wits out of the old devil."

"Where is Beth?"

"Not coming."  He looked at me.

"She didn't want to meet you" 

The noise of the party rose several
decibels.  A girl sitting on the stairs started to laugh helplessly, no
doubt at a wonderfully new piece of gossip.  A man came up to try the
bathroom door and went away frustrated.  I tried to convince Dunster of
the absurdity of his ideas.

"Jaunty Blair was about to make a statement which would have cleared Cris completely.  Do you honestly think I wanted to stop him doing that?"

He still looked back at me with that infuriating amusement, as though
he knew everything and I were a child who couldn't understand.

"I don't think there's any end to the dirty tricks Bellhanger's lot
would get up to.  He was trained to that sort of thing in the war.
Bloody well trained too.  You're just his newest recruit, old man.
Perhaps you're not fully involved yet.  He may not tell you
everything."

"What's that mean?"

"I expect Cris's lot had it in for Jaunty, for some reason or another.
Maybe they scared him into making that very favour able statement
you're talking about and went a bit too far.

But Jaunty's not their number one target."

"Who is then?"

"Who do you think?"

"I've no idea."

"Me."

I looked at him and tried my own superior smile.  Dunster, I thought,
you never cease to overestimate your own importance.

"I'm not kidding myself.  I'm a thorn in Cris Bellhanger's flesh.  I'm out to get him.  Of course, he wants to get me first.  It's perfectly natural."

"You're joking!"

"It's not really funny, old man.  I live in a rather quiet sort of
square."

"I know exactly where you live."

"I came out of the house.  Yesterday morning.  Quite early.  I was
crossing the road to get to my car.  Some maniac in a red Cortina came
round the corner and drove straight at me.  I just managed to jump
between the parked cars, but it was a bloody near thing.  Luckily the
milkman came pottering round and he scarpered."

The party and the party noise now seemed a long way away.  I think the
girls in black dresses came out of the bathroom and pushed past us.
Down in the hall an early leaver was shouting goodbye.  I said, "Did
you get a look at the driver?"

Dunster was smiling now, more confidently than ever.

"Why, old man?"  he asked me.

"Is he a friend of yours?"

Chapter Twenty-three

That night I couldn't sleep.  I usually find that people who tell you
that end up by also giving you detailed accounts of their dreams, or
they have lain beside you dead to the world while you were careful not
to breathe too loudly in case they woke up.  I'm sure I did, in fact,
sleep for a bit on the night of Mrs.  Oakshott's party, but I also
spent quite a lot of time downstairs, listening to the World Service on
the kitchen radio and worrying.

It was the red Cortina that started it all off.  I saw a red Cortina
turning round in Jaunty's yard.  Could it have been to liberate him, or
to discover if he'd learnt whatever lesson his incarceration in the
luton was meant to have taught him?  A red Cortina was driven at
Dunster in Camden Town, if Dunster were to be believed.  It was not
that he told deliberate lies -he might have seemed more human and
fallible if he did he merely made huge assumptions which then became
Holy Writ, part of the un challengeable Gospel according to Dunster.
And yet I had never mentioned the red Cortina at Blair Cottage to him.
Was its presence in both places too much of a coincidence?

I made tea in the cold kitchen.  Some listener to the World Service in
Africa was requesting "Spread a Little Happiness' with a dedication 'to
my cousin Joseph Okimbo in the Department of Justice'.  There must be
millions of red Cortinas, one of the most common cars in the country.
One belonged to a tourist who'd lost his way and turned round at Blair
Cottage.  Another to a careless, or even dangerous, driver in a hurry,
going round a square in Camden Town.  And then I had a memory of
something I hadn't thought of in connection with either of these two
incidents.  When Jaunty had taken me to dinner at his appalling club,
when he was troubled and wanted me to help him avoid trouble, there had
been a man dominating one of the other tables.  I began to remember a
large, elderly man with a bald head fringed with grey hair and a broken
nose who had been at the bar when we left and who had, perhaps or was I
imagining it from a great distance -exchanged looks with Jaunty as I
was leaving.  The car turning in Jaunty's yard had been driven by a
bulky, elderly man, who looked like a Roman emperor.

If this was the same character, who was he?  I had thought in Dandini's
that he might have been an ex-superintendent of police, out with
members of the Vice Squad.  Then I remembered that Lucy said that she
had noticed that policemen, and those who committed serious crimes,
looked, when young, like professional foot ballers and as they grew
older they acquired the same bulky respectability, so that in the court
canteen it was often difficult to tell them apart.  Had a professional
killer been hired in the case of Bellhanger v. Dunster?

"What had he been hired to do and who the hell did I suppose had hired
him?

Lucy and I were pa trials of Muswell Hill.  My parents lived there, as
did hers, in Coniston Road.  When she passed her solicitors' exam and
got her job as an assistant in a firm which did a good deal of crime,
she went on living in her mother's house (her parents had long been
separated) and when we slept together she often walked over, or took a
short bus ride, from her place to mine with a bag slung over her
shoulder.  By now my wardrobe contained some of the sombre and
businesslike clothes appropriate to her profession, as well as the
jeans, sweaters and T-shirts she changed into in the evenings.  We
weren't really living together.  There was an unspoken agreement
between us that we were not committed to each other in that way, and
perhaps never would be.  Lucy came to me on visits, and her mother,
whom I met quite often in the Mummery bar and who helped out in the ticket office, would often speak wistfully of the time when Lucy would be leaving home and starting a family, like her brother Seb, to which Lucy would say, "Not
yet, Mum.  You'll have to put up with me for a few years yet!"  On the nights when she did stay with me, I often drove her early to the City on my way to work, just as I used to drive Tash to her tutorial college.  On that morning, when I was stopping and starting down the Farringdon Road, I asked her a question about something which might have arisen from time to time in the legal profession.

"I suppose there must be contract killers about?"

"Plenty."  Lucy yawned.

"How much do you think they charge?"

"Oh, I believe you can get a pretty decent job done for about two
grand.  Were you thinking of bumping off Dunster?"

"Not Dunster."  I was squeezing my way past a lorry the size of a
building, which was bringing us yoghurt from Dieppe.

"I wouldn't pay him the compliment."

"Stop!  You're going through a red."

I braked hard and the man behind me tooted an indignant protest.

"You are tired, aren't you?"

"Exhausted."

"Still the case?"

"Yes."

"It'll be over.  That's the thing about law cases.  They finish and
then you get a result.  It's always a relief, whatever it is.  It's the
waiting that does for people."

It would all be over.  By then, perhaps, it wouldn't seem to matter
very much.  But it wasn't over yet.  Not by a long chalk.

Cris had gone into the viewing-theatre early to see an episode of
Social Workers that had a scene in it in which Sue O'Don-nell, a
central character, who had just recorded her first single, has it away with Peter, one of her clients who is on probation after a conviction for thieving motor cars.  The incident takes place on a deserted Cornish beach during an illicit and un professional weekend. As a result of it, Sue O'Donnell's career is put in jeopardy over several episodes for who should be out birdwatching on the cliff top than old "Meanface' Maguire, JP.  But I expect you'd rather I spared you further details.

Gary Penrose, scared almost equally of his wife and the Broad casting
Standards Council, had wanted Cris to see the episode.

He sat through it patiently and I, who had come in late, sat behind
him.  When the lights went on he said, "Old Meanface can't have been on
the lookout for waxwings.  They don't have waxwings on the Cornish
coast.  You could make it guillemots.  It'll mean re-dubbing the line
and playing it off his face.  You could use another few feet of that
rather boring sex scene."

"You don't think the fuck scene goes too far?"  The director, a
sprightly old man who always wore jeans and trainers and had been doing
Social Workers longer than most people could remember, had received so
much advice on the subject that he was now totally confused.

"Gary thought we might get complaints."

"We probably will but we're not in the business of censorship.  Anyone
who is reduced to getting his pleasure by watching two actors who
probably can't stand each other having make-believe sex on a draughty
beach in long-shot deserves our sympathetic consideration.  All right.
Is that all you wanted me to see?"  Cris was uncharacteristically
abrupt and seemed depressed.  I said I had something else to discuss
with him so we let Gary and the producer and director of Social Workers
file out, no doubt pleased to have got away with their scene intact.
Then Cris said, "Awful, isn't it?"

"You mean the case?"

"No.  The stuff we have to churn out.  We'd just got our hands on a
half-way decent subject and we had to cancel it."

"But about the case .. ."

"Don't you lose sleep over it, Philip.  It's not your case, after all.
I'm grateful for all you've done."

"Dunster's been on to me again."  To accuse you of hiring a man to kill
him was what I should have said.  But I couldn't come out with his
latest extraordinary suggestion, not as Cris and I sat close together
in the small, stuffy viewing-theatre, having watched a copulation as
remote and unreal as the idea of the chairman involved in a plot to
murder the boy I had been to school with, the man who had removed from
me the wife I continued to love.  I had to find a more oblique way of
disproving the charge and setting my doubts to rest.  I went back to
something that Dunster had told me in the garden of the War Museum.

"He's narrowed down the party he says blew up the church.  You and
three others.  That's going to be his case.  We ought to be prepared to
deal with it."

"That Rottweiler of a QC we've hired, that Roger Stuf-fington, or
whatever he calls himself, he'll deal with that."

"But I'd just like to get the facts clear in my own mind, in case
Dunster gets on to me again.  You said you'd gone somewhere to the
south of Pomeriggio when it happened."  I had never thought the day
would come when I should be cross examining Cris like a barrister, even
though I was avoiding the direct question.

"That's right.  Just north of Monte di Speranza."  Cris looked amused
at my new role.

"What did you go down there to do?  I mean, was it anything to do with
explosives?"

"Yes.  Now you come to mention it."

"What?  But if you can't remember .. ."

"I can remember exactly.  A German supply store.  Quite a successful
mission."

"Who did you take with you?"

"Those three chaps."

I felt a surge of excitement, as though I were getting near some truth, although I didn't know what it was or even if it would be the truth I wanted.

"That was the sergeant who died and the lance corporal who deserted.
Natty Suiting?"

"Suiting was what we called him.  He was so untidy.  Remember?"

"Yes."  I remembered everything that anybody told me about the case,
perhaps too much.

"Who was the third?"

"The fireworks man himself.  The big bang expert."

"The demolition specialist."  It was the man Dunster was trying to
find, the one he said he had a lead to.

"What was he called?"

"Lester Maddocks."  The name meant nothing.

"I'm not sure where any of this gets us."  Cris got up then, out of the
soft stall where I had often snoozed during Megapolis productions.  He
stretched, an old man whose limbs grew stiff if he sat for too long in
one position, and took a little confined exercise, like a prisoner
pacing his cell.  I looked up at him as he stood in front of the white
screen that had no picture on it, and asked if he could describe the
dynamiter.

"I watched him carefully enough, laying his charges and setting his
fuses.  He was young.  Of course we all were."

"Big?"

"Yes.  The burly sort.  Big chest and lots of muscles.  Light on his
feet, though, for such a heavy chap.  I believe he'd done a certain
amount of boxing, amateur nights round the East End where he came from.
He was hoping to get into the profession when we all got back from the
war."

"Justin Glover's going to have to try to find him.  He'll be an
important witness."

"I suppose so."  Cris sounded uncertain.  Then we fell silent.  Cris
was right, it wasn't my case.  All the same I asked my last question.

"Do you remember if he had a broken nose?"

"Not when I knew him.  I don't think so."  And when you knew him, I
don't suppose he had a red Cortina either, I thought in an irreverent
moment.

I did something that I thought I'd never do in my whole life.  I went
back to Dandini's club.

It hadn't changed, or improved, in any way.  The pale doorman was still
leaning against the wall with his hands sunk deep into his trouser
pockets.  Once more he asked me to sign the book, which seemed to be
the only formality needed to confer immediate membership.  There was a
girl behind the bar, neither Tracy nor Tina but a pretty and
panic-stricken brunette whose label introduced her to the empty room as
Nerys.  She was only too anxious to pour me a dry white wine, but
searched for the bottle, the glass and the corkscrew with trembling
hands, knocking things over and whispering "Sugar!"  to herself, as
though the bar were packed with important customers, all waiting to be
served.  She said she was new there, very new, and had never heard of a
member called Lester Maddocks.

That day I had called Justin Glover, not to tell him what Dunster had
said to me outside Mrs.  Oakshott's bathroom but to see how he was
doing in his hunt for witnesses.  He said he had spoken to Cris, who
had given him the names of the men he was with 'doing the other job
when the Germans blasted Pomeriggio'.  He knew Sergeant Blaker was dead
and they were doing their best to find Maddocks, the demolitions
expert.  The deserter in the Apennines wasn't going to present too much
of a problem.  They had traced an old man, born in England, running a
bar in Maltraverso, who now called himself Andreini.  There was only
one slightly worrying thing.  They were having absolutely no luck in
finding a former Austrian refugee who used the name Llewellyn.  An
inquiry agent had been round numberless garages in and around Cardiff.
Llewellyns were extremely thick on the ground but none of them seemed
to have any connection with Austria, let alone Pomeriggio.  They were
checking voters' lists and trying to get something from the immigration
authorities.  They were also going through the Public Record Office. If
that failed they would look up the old intelligence files in the
Ministry of Defence.

"Cris knows someone in the MOD."  I thought how that sentence would
enrage Dunster if he ever heard it spoken.  Justin Glover said he hoped
to have some good news for us soon and rang off.

I could have left it all to him.  I could have said, "Dunster's got an
idea that Cris is trying to kill him."  I could have asked him to find
Lester Maddocks because I had a terrible suspicion that he was a hitr
man employed by Justin Glover's distinguished client.  I didn't say any
of that.  I wanted to find out the truth for myself and decide what to
do about it.  It was the sort of positive decision which I didn't, up
till then, believe it was in my nature to take.

"I remember you, don't I, dear?  Didn't you come here with the old
Major?  We don't see a lot of him nowadays.  All right, is he?"

"As a matter of fact he's been ill."

"Has he, the naughty old darling?  Nothing serious?"

"Yes, it is rather."

"Let's hope he gets better soon."  Marcia, known to Jaunty as Marion,
had arrived at work, got into her black fishnet stockings and, after
these preliminary greetings, asked me if I'd like to order.  In return
I asked her if she often saw the group of men who had been drinking
together the night I was there with Jaunty, in particular a large man
with a bald head and a broken nose at which description Marcia
laughed.

"Why, dear?  You getting married or something?"

For some extraordinary reason I thought of Lucy with a pang of guilt.
What did this Marcia know about me?

"No.  Why ever do you ask?"

"Weddings.  Funerals.  Taking out some new young bird you want to impress.  That old chap's got limos for all occasions.  He's always trying to get us to recommend them to our customers.  But they're not all the limo type, to be honest.  Not those that we get in here."

"Do you have his address?  I suppose I might need a limo some time."
Need one for what?  Marriage, death or just to impress a young bird and
lead her to believe I was the sort that owned a Roller with a chauffeur
in a cap?  The kindly Marcia was now hunting behind the bar, clicking
her tongue and accusing Nerys of having moved everything around, and
then telling her to just keep calm dear when Nerys broke a small, pink
glass giraffe.  They searched through cards from members and staff on
holiday, from a Day and Night Visit-U massage service, afternoon
hotels, adult cinemas and suppliers of exotic underwear.  Lodged
between a bottle of blue Bols and a china donkey wearing a sombrero
they found the well-thumbed card of Cupid Cars: LUXURY LIMOS OUR
SPECIALITY.  DINE, WINE OR WED IN STYLE.  The address was Allenby Mews
off Inverness Terrace in Bayswater, and you could no doubt die in style
with them also.

So I went in search of Cupid Cars, only a short taxi ride from the
Dandini club in Mayfair, on a quest which seemed to be proving almost
too easy.  The next stage, assuming I was able to meet Mr.  Maddocks,
was likely to be more difficult and, as the taxi drove up between the
darkness of the Park and the glitter of lights in the trees in front of
the Dorchester, I rehearsed various conversational openings, ranging
from "Have you got a small and unostentatious Rolls in which I might
get married to a young solicitor with criminal connections?"  to "Who
paid you to shut up Jaunty and try to knock off Dunster?"

Lucy had told me about the allegedly legal operations which criminals
use as a cover.  With the small thieves and petty burglars it's
window-cleaning; minor East End gangs run mini-cab businesses; and it's
only those who earn the attention of the Serious Crimes Squad who go
into limos.  I thought of all this as the cab turned down Queensway,
past the bright lights of Greek restaurants, Asian grocers' shops, news
agents who sold newspapers in all the languages produced by the Tower
of Babel and soft porn which could do without words altogether and we
were in striking distance of Allenby Mews.  Looking down it I could
see, in the shadows, two or three Rolls-Royces parked close to the
wall, but no red Cortina.  I paid 'off my driver and walked down the
cobbles towards a light shining from the office window of Cupid Cars.

I knocked and, getting no encouragement, pushed open the door of a room
in which three elderly men in dark suits were playing cards under a
glaring strip-light.  On a side table their chauffeur's caps stood
among a mess of used take-away boxes, sandwiches packaged in plastic
triangles, paper cups, beer cans and Coke bottles.  Their faces bore
the sullen expression of men who would tell you that the recession is
worse than any bloody politician is going to admit, that the Americans
aren't coming this year and most of their regular clients have gone
bankrupt, anyway.  They would probably say this as they drove you with
your bride away from the wedding.  Hanging on the wall was a large,
pink, naked doll, equipped with a silver cardboard bow and a quiver of
arrows.  I wondered who, in this melancholy firm, had spent time
decorating Cupid.

I said, "Is Mr.  Maddocks about?"

"Who's he?"  The eldest card-player might just have been old enough to
have fought in the war.  He was a thin, old man with the long face and
tragic eyes of the Middle East, an Arab or an Israeli.

"Isn't he your boss?  I've got a complaint to make."

"What complaint?"

"One of your cars broke down at my wedding.  I've written four times
and got absolutely no satisfaction."  My powers of invention amazed
me.


"Mr.  Loughborough's our boss," a fat driver said.  It wasn't a warm
evening but he was sweating and had a bunch of Kleenex on the table
beside him.

"You must have wrote to the wrong bloke, Mister."

There was a door with a frosted-glass pane at the end of the room.
Behind it there was a light and the sound of a telephone ringing.  A
deep, indistinct voice could be heard answering it.

"Could I speak to Mr.  Loughborough, then?"  An outraged and
inconvenienced bridegroom wouldn't have left without seeing the top
man.

"You can't speak to him, no," the fat driver said, and the third man,
of whom I have no clear recollection except that he had a dodgy eye
which might have made his left turns erratic, added, "On duty."  At
which moment the door opened and the big, bald man with the broken nose
came in.  He was wearing a white shirt and the trousers of a suit held
up by braces, which was Cris's working outfit.

"There's a job for you, Jack," the man whose name might just as well
have been Loughborough said to the sad Middle-Easterner.  Tick up 9.30
Launceston Place, W8, over to the Savoy Grill and wait as long as
you're needed.  Who's this?"

"Bloke that's come to complain about one of our bridals."  The fat
driver spoke before I could introduce myself.

"Was it the white Roller or the Bentley?"  the boss asked.

"It was the white one."

"All right, then.  You'd better come in here."  He stood aside and let
me go past him into the room, then he shut the door.

"I'll just take a few details.  Do have a seat, Mr?"

Trogmire.  Philip Progmire.  I work for Sir Crispin Bell-hanger."

He sat at a desk in front of a row of telephones which didn't ring very
often.  On it was a framed photograph of a couple with three children,
standing under a blue sky in some sunny spot.  The man in the
photograph also had the features of a younger, less battered Roman
emperor, but his nose was unbroken.

"Am I right in thinking," I said, 'that you're Lester Mad-docks?  An
old soldier from the SAS?"

"The name's Loughborough," he said and sat back in his chair looking at
me.  His voice was very soft, with only a trace of the Cockney accent
he must have taken to the war with him.  His statuesque looks gave him
a noble appearance and his broken nose might have been caused by the
weather on the stone over the centuries since the birth of Christ.

"I hire out Rollers and quality cars."

"And during the war, you fought in Italy?"

"What's it matter where I fought?  It's a long time ago.  Now, what's
this about a breakdown in one of our wedding vehicles?"

"You were with Cris, weren't you?  Sir Crispin Bellhanger?"

In the silence that followed, the man I had called Lester Maddocks
opened a drawer and got out a tube of mints.  His hands were enormous,
but he used them delicately, first to peel off the silver paper and
then to put one in his mouth.  Then he said, "Who are you?  And don't
give me a lot of shit about a wedding that never happened!"

"I'm someone who works for Cris."

"How do I know that?"

"You do know who Cris is, then?"

"Don't try to be clever.  You'll find you've made a mistake if you came
here trying to be bloody clever."  He spoke quietly, but his hand on
the table closed into a fist.

I wanted to convince him that we were on the same side, so I offered
him a lie.

"Cris asked me to speak to you," I said.

"Oh, yes?"

"He's told me about it."

"About what?"

"Your team in the Italian mountains.  You and Captain Bellhanger and
Sergeant Blaker, now dead.  Oh, and Lance Corporal Sweeting."

"What you know about Sweeting?"  The big man behind the desk looked
unconvinced.

"Everyone called him Natty Suiting.  Because he was always in a mess.
Didn't he stay in Italy?"

There was a small, muffled report.  Tired of sucking, he had cracked
the mint between his teeth.

"Someone's putting about a lot of lies."

"Cris asked me to have a word with you about that."

One big hand came towards me, with a mint squeezed in the offering
position.

"Do you care for a curiously strong?"  he said, an offer which I didn't
like to refuse.

"And Blaker?"  he asked me.

"Killed later, so Cris told me."

"He wasn't a brave man, Blaker."  Maddocks leant back in his chair. For
the moment he seemed at ease, no longer threatening.

"Always scared of it.  Perhaps that's why he got it.  And as for old
Natty .. . Took up with a nice bit of local crumpet, old Natty.  Gone
to live in sunnier climes.  Like my son and my grandchildren."  He
looked at the photograph on his desk with pride and then at me.  We'd
all've done anything for Captain Cris.  If you work for him, I expect
you know the feeling."

"Yes.  I know the feeling.  And you're still working for him?"  I asked
the question and sat, dreading his answers.

"Freelance," was what he said, after a long silence.

"What's that mean?"

"It means ... I want you to tell Cris I'm doing my very best for him.
I'm doing what I can, in his interests.  You tell him that."

Did that mean Cris hadn't given any instructions, issued any orders and
knew nothing whatever about the movements of the red Cortina?  I was
more than ready to believe it.

I asked, "What exactly should I tell Cris you've done for him?"

"There was Jaunty."  He had put the silver paper back neatly and was
rolling the tube of mints backwards and forwards along the desk, making
the only small sound in the room.

"Jaunty?"  I prompted him.

"He was putting about some funny things.  I think I got him to
straighten out his story.  We all know as it was the Germans done it.
We know that, don't we?"

"That's what Jaunty told me."

"Will he stand up in court?"

"I'm afraid not.  He's had a stroke since then.  He can't speak."

"I'm sorry for Captain Cris.  Personally I never could stand the Major.
Cocky little bastard.  That's all you could say about the man.  Well,
then, if Jaunty won't stand up in court..  ."

"He won't."

"Best thing is, make sure that mad Dunster bloke can't stand up
either."  He gave me a small, friendly smile and before I could answer
the telephone rang again.  He picked it up, cradled it like a violin
and went on rolling the mint packet as he spoke reassuringly to the
phone.

"Yes, sir.  Yes, Mr.  God-stowe.  Pick up at Launceston Place.  And
after the Savoy Grill, down to the country.  The Bellavista Hotel in
Haywards Heath.  I'll tell the driver, Mr.  Godstowe.  Of course he'll
be glad to do it, sir."  He scribbled a note in pencil.

"Any time, Mr.  Godstowe.  Cupid Cars is here to serve the customer."
He put down the phone carefully and looked at me.

"Is that what Captain Cris wants, that bloody madman not able to stand
up in court?  Is that what he sent you down to tell me?"  He was as
willing to do a violent crime for Cris as he was to see that Mr.
Godstowe was able to impress his bird by taking her to Haywards Heath
in a Roller."

"No," I told him.

"That's not what Cris wants at all."

"It's not?"  The big man's face clouded over.  He looked puzzled and,
once again, dangerous.

"What's he want then?  His Lordship?"

"Not for you to mess things up."  My moment of courage seemed entirely
out of character.

"Thanks to what you did to him, Jaunty can't give evidence."

"What I did?  I meant to help out Cris."

"All the same, you haven't, you haven't helped him at all.  And he
doesn't want anything to happen to Dunster."

"Not to that madman?"

"Of course not.  If it did, by any terrible chance, who do you think'd
get blamed?  It'd be Cris, wouldn't it?"  For some reason I wasn't
afraid then.  There seemed no risk in it.

"Who else do you think they'd blame?"

He thought it over and gave himself another curiously strong
peppermint, but this time he didn't offer me one.

"What's the Captain want me to do then?"

"He wants you to come to court and tell them that you were all away
doing that other job when the church was blown up.  Just tell the
truth.  That's all the Captain wants done."

Loughborough, or Lester Maddocks, or whatever his name might be, or was
going to be, made a small, thoughtful sound sucking his peppermint.  At
last he spoke.

"Can't be done."

"Why not?"

"Me?  Come to court?"

"Yes.  It won't be particularly difficult."  Much easier, I felt like
saying, than trying to knock one of the parties off with a red
Cortina.

"Be questioned, like.  About all I've ever done?"

"I don't know.  I suppose they might ask you about your record.  That
is, if you have one."

"Not that.  I'm not talking about that.  There's things that happened
so long ago.  When we was all young lads.  That's all over now.  Well,
no one ought to hold you responsible for that."  What Jaunty had said
in Dandini's his assailant was repeating in the office of Cupid Cars.

"What do you want me to tell Cris?"

"Tell him I've tried to help all I can, in my own way.  Freelance.  But
I can't undertake to come to court and answer questions about it.  Not
at my age.  I can't answer questions about all that we did so long
ago."

"I'll tell Cris, and I'll see what he has to say about it."  I stood
up.  He was looking at the photographs on his desk.

"You do that.  And say at my time of life a bloke feels like joining
his family for the chance of a bit of sunshine.  The more so, tell the
Captain, since my wife passed away and there's nothing to keep me in
the old country."

"I'll tell him that," I said.

"And I'm sorry about Mrs.  Mad-docks."

He stood up then.  I had suddenly gone too far and I remembered a
picture I'd had in a childhood history book: a chained bear, baited
past endurance, rearing on its hind legs and striking out with a huge,
fatal paw.

"Don't you use that name now' he spoke in a scraping whisper, more
dangerous than any shout 'not here.  Understand me, sonny?  Not
anywhere.  Tell Cris I always got respect for him.  Not for whoever
does his errands."

I felt him watching me as I turned and went out through the door.  I
knew he was still standing behind his desk as I closed it behind me.  I
crossed the room with the card-players in it, trying not to break into
a run.

"Governor sort you out all right, did he?"  the fat one asked.

"Yes, thank you."

I walked as quickly as I could across the dark cobbles and up to find
the glare and double-parking of Queensway and the welcoming light of an
empty taxi.  When I got home I half expected to find a red Cortina
waiting outside my front door.  It wasn't.  I went into the kitchen and
took off my jacket.  My shirt was cold with sweat and my hand was
unsteady.  I made myself a cup of tea and poured in the brandy
Megapolis had given me for Christmas.  When I had taken off my clothes
and put on pyjamas and a dressing-gown, I rang Lucy's number.

"She's here, Philip.  I'll just go and call her.  I think she tried to
ring you earlier.  She was worried about you," her mother said.

Not half as worried as I've been about me, Mrs.  Cattermole, was what I
didn't say.

Lucy said, "You were going to ring me at eight or something," and then,
realizing that she sounded too much like a long-suffering wife, 'not
that it mattered at all.  I'd've had to stay in working, anyway.  Did
you do anything exciting?"

"I think I discovered how it must have felt to be in the war."

"He's probably got a string of convictions, and for some reason or
other he's scared to death of coming anywhere near a law court," I told
Cris when we met in our solicitor's office.

Justin said, "It doesn't sound as though he'd make a particularly good
witness.  All the same, I do think I'll have to see Maddocks.  Let's
hope he hasn't gone the way of Major Blair."

I don't suppose that the old Cockney ex-pugilist Roman emperor went
Jaunty's way, but we never discovered exactly which way he went.  When
Justin Glover called Cupid Cars he was told that a Mr.  Jamir had
already taken over the business.  Mr.  Loughborough had gone abroad and
no one had any idea of his destination.  He might now be playing with
his grandchildren on some golden beach, or setting up another little
business anywhere from Cape Town to California.

So we were left with Lance Corporal Nathaniel Sweeting, known as Natty
Suiting, known as Signer Andreini, who was waiting for us at the Bar
della Luna in a small town in the Apennines.

Chapter Twenty-four

"It's absolutely terrific," Justin Glover said, 'to be going abroad
without Jenny and the children.  This really feels like a holiday."

We were sitting side by side on a flight to Bologna, business class,
and I thought of the bloody awful string of events which had combined
to produce this rare feeling of happiness.  The inhabitants of
Pomeriggio had died, a person called Dunster had been born to bring
about unmitigated disaster, Jaunty had lost the power of speech, a hit
man had been compelled to off-load his Rollers and flee the country,
and Lance Corporal Sweeting had deserted all so that Justin Glover
could fly to Italy, unencumbered by his nearest and dearest.

"The moment we leave home," he said, 'they start asking how long it'll
be before we get there.  Mind you it was touch and go whether I could
make it."

"Was it?"

"Deirdre, that's our mother's help, didn't get back till two in the
morning and she'd had a terrible row with her boyfriend, so she
overslept.  And the baby Augustus is in trouble with his gnashers and
the twins were quarrelling over a broken Walkman and Theodora did
mention her ear again but she does that every morning when it's PE,
which she hates.  Understandable, really.  It was touch and go, as you
can imagine."

"How did you manage it?"

"Well, Jenny was shouting at me from the top of the stairs and asking
if I thought that Sir Crispin Bellhanger was more important than her
and the children.  You know what I said?"

He had started on the complimentary champagne as we crossed the Channel
and was now in a confiding mood.

zzS

"No.  Tell me."

"I said, "At the moment, I'm afraid, yes."  He was smiling at the
memory of his moment of daring.

"You see, I was careful to put that in, "at the moment".  I mean, this
case will soon be over and naturally Jenny and the children are more
important to me in the long run.  Over the years.  She'll understand
that, won't she, when she has time to think about it?"

"Let's hope so."

"All the same' Justin had now got himself worried "I think I'd better
ring her this evening.  If we can find a phone."  We might have been
going into the depths of the jungle where communications were by
tom-tom only.

"How many nights do you think we'll be away?"

"Didn't we say two?"

"Oh, I told Jenny three.  I thought we might pop along to Florence on
the way back."  Then his face cleared and the holiday spirit
returned.

"Imagine the pure joy of seeing the Uffizi without having the children
in tow!"

We booked in to the Hotel Internazionale in Bologna and met Dr.
Picchioni, a notary employed by Justin Glover's firm to take any sworn
statement the former lance corporal might care to make.  We had dinner
in a restaurant not far from the Neptune fountain, and Justin Glover
telephoned before he left the hotel.  During our tortellini he was sunk
in gloom.

"Things all right at home?"  I asked.

"Actually, no."  And then he brightened up and said, "I don't suppose
we'll be able to ring from Maltraverso, will we?"

Dr.  Picchioni was small, neat and unexpectedly young, wearing a dark
suit and tie despite the stifling Italian summer.  He spoke impeccable
English and treated us with a sort of amused suspicion, as though he
knew exactly what game we were playing.  He had already been in touch
with Natty Suiting.

"He is frightened to death," he said, 'that he'll be arrested as a
deserter."

I drove the car we hired at the airport out of Bologna and on to the
motorway to Florence.  The road was built high over great gorges and
kept plunging into the blackness of tunnels and emerging into dazzling
sunshine.  The mountains towered above us, stony slopes which the snow
had covered for much of the time that Cris and his men fought their
secret battles behind the Gothic Line held by the Germans.  I got the
bit about the Gothic Line from the guidebook Justin had bought for the
occasion.  It also told us that the Apennines bred wolves, so that the
sheep were guarded, on the lower slopes, by very large and savage dogs.
Some wolves, it seems, might still be about, but bears, present in
Roman times, were to be found no more, nor were wild goats. Maltraverso
is a small town used as a winter resort by those with a taste for
mountains.  The Hotel Gandolfo, one star, was closed during the month
of August.  Otherwise the town seemed to be of no special historical or
architectural interest.  The Bar della Luna received no stars
whatever.

When we had taken the Maltraverso turn-off and the road was climbing
steadily towards the grey peaks, we passed a collection of small signs
pointing up a steeper, narrower road and there I saw the word I had
learnt to dread Pomeriggio.

"The scene of the crime," Justin said, and added, apparently in case I
didn't understand English, 'the locus in quo.  Do you want to go and
take a view?"

I didn't but I said, "Do you think we ought to?"

"Might as well."

So I started to climb towards the sky, along the edge of a precipice
which led down to the service stations and the motorway, which were, as
we drove up higher, shrouded in a mist which might have been a cloud.
The road was lined with dramatic warnings of danger, hairpin bends,
steep ascents, uneven surfaces and there were no white lines.  We were
also warned of rocks falling on us from the cliffs above.

"CADUTA MAS si' Justin, still in holiday mood, was laughing at his
little joke 'wonderful name for an opera-singer!"

What was Pomeriggio?  A village or a town?  The guidebook, once again,
was silent on the subject.  It had an old and crumbling wall but inside
its arches only a small square, a church, a post office and one steep
main street.  There was some sort of municipal building, so perhaps it
was the capital of a small area of the rocky and precipitous
countryside.  Cris's description was forever stuck in my mind and I
expected a ghost town, with a street only prowled by un cared-for dogs
and cats, doors banging in the wind.  Whatever toll the massacre had
taken of the small population, life had returned to Pomeriggio.  Women
were crowding the few shops and men, perhaps not as old as in other
towns but old enough to have stopped working, sat on chairs outside the
cafe ordering nothing.  Across the street a banner hung advertising a
forthcoming Festa di L'Unita; no doubt there would be coloured lights
and stalls in the street and young men and girls dancing.  I doubted
whether anyone in Pomeriggio knew that an English court was about to
decide who had blown up their church and murdered their relatives
almost half a century before and I wondered how much any of them would
care.

We drove round the walls and found the unmade road leading to the place
in the photograph I had seen, it seemed years ago, in the office of
Streetwise Productions.  On a rocky promontory, once the site of the
Chiesa Nuova, there was an iron cross over a plaque.  Dr.  Picchioni
translated: In honour of the people of Pomeriggio, murdered by the
German Army of occupation in the Church of Saint Magdalena in Tears, 23
October 1944.  They had not been entirely forgotten because there were
fresh flowers at the foot of the cross.  Justin Glover took a
photograph of the inscription 'for whatever evidential value it might
have'.  Then we drove away from Pomeriggio and I have never been there
since, although the sight of that bleak spot where a church full of
people was once blown into eternity is impossible to forget.

"They can't hold it against me now.  Not what happened all those years
ago.  That wouldn't be fair, would it?  Not that the army was fair to
me, not always."

I had heard it said so often that it seemed to have become a sort of
theme song, the introductory music instantly recognizable whenever
Pomeriggio was mentioned.  Jaunty had said it, and Lester Maddocks, and
now Signor Andreini disowning all responsibility for the actions of
Lance Corporal Sweeting -was taking up the all too familiar melody.

He had a face like a puzzled sheep, a turned-down nose and bewildered
eyes, crowned with a woolly mat of grey hair.  He was shapeless and
clumsy and he had cut himself shaving.  There was blood on his collar,
although his white shirt was otherwise carefully laundered and ironed.
What surprised me most was his voice; it was a middle-class bleat,
rising at times to a high note of complaint, at others inviting us to
join him in laughing at his own misfortunes.

We sat round a table near the "Toilette' in the shadowy recesses of the
Bar della Luna, away from the sunlight and the zinc bar, the hissing
coffee-machine and the big glass doors letting in the sunlight.  We
were shut away behind a white coffin full of ice-cream and a glass
cabinet in which the cakes and paninis were ranged like geological
specimens.  On the wall a glossy print "Christ, the Light of the World'
looked gravely down on us, the Pope smiled in a knowing fashion and the
Maltraverso football team looked grimly determined.

"I was a hopeless sort of a soldier, anyway.  My father was terribly
disappointed when I didn't get a commission.  Dropped my rifle on the
parade-ground.  I was always doing things like that so I had to go in
through the ranks.

"Rank outsider", that's what my father called me.  I don't think he was
joking.  What I'm trying to tell you is this."  Words came pouring out
of him; it was as though he had spent years in solitary confinement.

"I was always hopeless.  I never managed to please them, even when we
were in the mountains when you wouldn't think they'd have been bothered
about all the rules and regulations.  And I was always losing things.  Or not keeping up when we started to run.  You see, I'm sure they were glad to see the back of me.  So they wouldn't hold it against me now, that I wandered off, as
you might say.  I don't think I could stand prison.  Not at my age. Prison must be very much like the army.  Don't you think it must be like that?"

Natty Suiting was not talking about the deaths of the churchgoers but
about the fact that he had abandoned his previous existence in favour
of the calm, grey-haired woman who sat watching us, unable to
understand a single word we were saying.  She must once have been as
urgently desirable as their youngest daughter, a girl with long, naked
arms, shiny black hair and brown eyes, who was laughing as she served a
group of admiring young men.  The choice between her and carrying on a
terrifying war with Cris and Sergeant Blaker, now dead, and Jaunty
Blair must have been a clear one.  He was right; it would have been
hard to punish this elderly Italian for what he might have done when he
was someone else entirely.

"We haven't come about your desertion," Justin Glover said.

"No one wants to see you in prison, Mr.  Sweeting."

"Signor Andreini."  He smiled round at us apologetically but insisted
on his new identity.

"I beg your pardon.  Mr.  Andreini," Justin corrected himself.

"You have absolutely nothing to fear from us.

Natty seemed reassured and was silent for a moment.  Then he looked at
me and I thought I detected, behind the sheep-like innocence, a sort of
cunning, which he might have picked up during long years of running the
Bar della Luna.

"Well, then," he said, 'what are you interested in exactly?"

"My firm acts for Sir Crispin Bellhanger."  Justin Glover took charge
of the meeting.

"It's been suggested that he was in command when you and Sergeant
Blaker and another man called Lester Maddocks blew up the church."

"There ought to be a pardon issued.  A free pardon.  From the Queen or
someone like that."

"You mean a pardon for blowing up a church?"  Justin Glover's voice had
acquired a note of professional irritation.

"I think," I said, "Signor Andreini is still worried about the
desertion."

"Desertion?  You couldn't call it that.  I was no good to them.  No
good at all.  I was just' Natty invited me to join in the joke 'just
relieving them of my company.  I did that one night.  I ran then.  You
can't believe how I ran.  I got here and the first person I met was
Constanzia."  He looked across at the old woman and stopped smiling.

"She was outside her house.  It was very early in the morning and she
was filling a bucket from a tap.  I made all sorts of signs to her.  I
was hungry and tired and she took me in.  Her and her family.  I
couldn't understand it.  He'd never had much success with girls in
Dorking.  That was where we lived.  My father was a headmaster.  Very
keen on the army, my father.  I remember he gave me toy soldiers at
Christmas and I never played with them.  They always got broken though.
Now I think Constanzia and her family knew the war was ending and they
wanted me to marry her and take her to England.  But I couldn't go
back, could I, because I'd broken the law?  You understand.  Constanzia
never picked up English.  Other people taught me Italian.  I took to it
quite easily.  Well, I didn't have much choice.

"My father's dead, of course.  But I've got a married sister in
Dorking.  I'd like to go back.  I'd really like to.  I'm getting tired
of all this Andreini business.  I'd like to be myself again.  Not pick
up where I left off.  I could never do that.  You mentioned Captain
Bellhanger.  He could help in my case, if anyone could."

"I think he wants you to help in his," I told him.

"Let's hope we can help each other.  The man who was here before you,
he promised he'd look into my case.  Let on he'd get questions asked in
Parliament.  I had high hopes, but he's done nothing whatever about it.
Just my luck."

So Dunster had sat there, in the shadows at the back of the Bar della
Luna, by the paninis and the ice-cream and "Christ, the Light of the
World', and offered the one bribe that meant anything to its owner.
Knowing Dunster, I didn't believe that he'd offered it deliberately or
with intent to deceive, but he was enthusiastic and had promised too
much, over-excited by being told the story that, above all others, he
wanted to hear.

"Would Captain Bellhanger help with the free pardon side of things?
Would he?  He was always kind to me.  You know he called me Natty
Suiting, because I was so hopeless with the spit and polish."

"I don't think we can promise anything."

"But?"

"What?"

"There's always a "but", isn't there?  You can't promise me but..  ."

"I feel we can go so far as to say this' Justin Glover, who didn't, it
seemed, intend to come all this way just for a trip round the Uffizi,
offered his sweetener in the most judicial language possible.

"My firm would represent you in any application you wish to make to the
proper authorities.  And I've no doubt Sir Crispin would be prepared to
give you a good character and speak highly of your war service.  That
is, until you saw fit to leave the army."

"I told you I promised to take Constanzia to England.  I've
disappointed her and I'm not sure she's ever forgiven me, to be quite
honest with you."  Signora Andreini sat with her hands folded in her
lap, gazing into the middle distance without expression.

"That's the trouble with me, I'm afraid I disappoint people.  I suppose
I disappointed Captain Bellhanger too, that night I ran away.  It's
very decent of him.  He wants to help me, do you say?"

"Our client Sir Crispin Bellhanger tells us' the lawyers' phrases
sounded more than usually ridiculous in the back of the bar where the
proprietor was lost in dreams of Dorking, 'that on the night the church was blown up he and you and the others
were destroying an enemy ammunition shed some miles to the south of
Pomeriggio."

"Let me get you chaps a proper drink."  The cheerful Natty now became
an expansive host.  Business was suspended while the smiling girl from
the bar brought us a bottle of grappa.  Justin Glover didn't take a sip
until he had asked the half-a-million-pounds' worth of damages
question.

"What we have come all this long way to ask, Signor An-dreini, is
whether you can confirm Sir Crispin's account of the events?"

"Of course I can.  I remember that ammunition dump.  I left one of the
bags behind there.  Well, it was only an empty bag.  We'd brought the
charges in it.  Sergeant Blaker was absolutely unreasonable about
it."

"So you had nothing to do with the affair at Pomeriggio?"

Natty poured himself another grappa, knocked it back and looked round
at us, his sheep's eyes full of innocence.

"Do I look," he asked plaintively, 'like a chap who goes around blowing
up churches?"

"So it follows that Sir Crispin had nothing to do with it either?"

"Of course it does."  At last he said the words we had come to hear:
"Everyone knew the Germans did it."

So Justin Glover and I, unencumbered with children, stopped off at
Florence to look at the pictures.  Walking past the "Prima-vera' I
remembered, as other pictures had made me remember, Beth's face and was
filled with a sudden bitterness at the thing that had parted us, which
was the same, irrational, irresistible force that had taken us to
Italy.  Soured by this unwelcome moment of recognition I said to
Justin, "You don't think old Natty Suiting's going to do us the
slightest bit of good, do you?"

"Why not?  He's made a statement, signed and certified by the
notary."

"You know perfectly well why he did that.  He thinks we can get him
some sort of amnesty."

Justin Glover stood still, surrounded by virgins and nymphs dancing in
paradise.

"Let's face it' he was giving his best dry, old family solicitor
performance, which was fairly absurd, I thought, in someone younger
than I was "Andreini isn't going to come to England to give evidence
until he knows he's absolutely safe from the possibility of arrest.
It's an obvious precaution for us to make sure his position is cleared
up before the trial starts."

"You mean, it's an obvious inducement to him to say what we want him to
say?"

"Robbie was right when he told you to trust your legal advisers.
Lawyers have to live in the world as it is, Philip.  Not as we might
like it to be.  You'd be much better off leaving the practical side of
things to us."

Which coming from a man whose family life was in such chaos that he
could only escape from his house with difficulty, struck me as a bit
rich.


Chapter Twenty-five

"We like Lucy."

"So do I."

"We wouldn't dream of interfering.  Not in any way.  But Angie was
saying how glad she was to see you settled."

"I don't think I'm that exactly.  Perhaps I won't ever be.  Not
again."

"You're living in the past."  Cris was the man who had, that autumn,
the best reason for visiting that unhappy region.

"You've got to put all that behind you.  My God, she's young though,
isn't she?  Just imagine anyone having all that future!  The thought of
it makes me feel quite dizzy."

It would have made me dizzy too if I'd thought about it.  Everyone, it
seemed, wanted to see me settled: Lucy's mother and Angie, Mrs.
Oakshott and Beth, especially Beth.  I was glad that I had brought Lucy
for the weekend at Windhammer, glad that everyone seemed to like each
other, but being settled wasn't a subject I felt able to pursue.  So I
asked if there was any more news about the case.

"Nothing much.  We found out who was the German captain in the
Pomeriggio district.  Got it out of the MOD information files.  Well,
the Minister will do almost anything to get his face on television."

"Does the ex-captain own a garage?"

"I'm afraid not."  Cris smiled, as though the evidence were completely
unimportant.

"His name was Kreutzer.  Captain Ernst Kreutzer.  No relation to the
sonata."

"He went to Wales?"

"Not as far as we know.  He went back to Hamburg and became a
headmaster.  He retired and died there ten years ago."

"So Jaunty was telling us a load of rubbish?"

"Jaunty was never going to be a reliable witness."  That was the
verdict on the man who couldn't lie any more, for better or for
worse.

It was near the end of September, with low, welcome sunshine and air
touched with freshness and the smell of bonfires.  We were walking the
long way round through the woods while Lucy and Angie sat by the logs
in the mock baronial grate and waited for us to join them for tea.  As
the trees ended at the edge of a field, a pheasant rose with a great
fuss and chatter from a tangle of brambles and bracken and flapped off
into a clear sky.

"I sometimes wonder," Cris said, 'whether to take up shooting again."

"I thought you'd decided against it."

"Such a contradiction!  People who know about animals, understand them,
really get to love them in a way, are those who kill them.  Foxes
aren't specially likeable little brutes, but huntsmen get a sort of
respect for them.  My old father was that sort.  Always noticed the
leaves or the water moving and he'd sniff at the wind and know which
way the birds'd fly -and he killed things a lot.  I suppose the truth
of it is, with a gun in your hand you become one of them.  Red in tooth
and claw.  I don't know whether I'll ever do it again.  I suppose I
might."

So we started the walk back, across the flat countryside, and Cris
asked me about Natasha.  I told him what I knew, except for her
decision not to visit me again.

"She's got a boyfriend who knows everything."

"Everything about what?"

"How to run a television company.  Oh, and about death."

"What's he know about that?"  Cris was smiling.

"That when people get to my age they practically think of nothing else.
As a matter of fact, I don't think about it at all."

"Neither do I. No point in it.  You know what I believe?  We're born
with a clock inside us.  It's set for the time we're going to pop off, and it can't be altered.  Absolutely nothing we can do about it, so why worry?"

And when we came in sight of Windhammer among the trees of an open
stretch of parkland he said, "Rotten luck on Angie we could never make
children.  Perhaps that's why we're enjoying having you here.  You and
your Lucy.  You must bring Natasha down some time too, if she'd ever
agree to it."

I said yes, although I didn't think she ever would.

Nothing could have been so unperturbed, so apparently imperturbable, as
Cris that weekend.  He made my anxiety ridiculous, and I worried about
having worried so much about a possible Dunster victory.  And yet, when
I thought about it on that calm walk through the woods in the autumn
sunshine, there seemed no real danger of Dunster leaving the
battlefield crowing with victorious delight and Cris being convicted of
an atrocity.  Natty Suiting was no longer, for whatever reason, a
witness for the defence.  Jaunty would never enter a witness-box again
and whatever he'd heard would be forever locked inside him.  And there
was something else.  When Dunster lost (I no longer said, even to
myself, if Dunster lost), would Beth's eyes be open at last?  Would she
see what she had taken on, an addict who gets his highs by causing
wanton suffering to the innocent in the heady name of public morality?
Was that the hope that kept me going, as well as my concern for Cris,
during the long months of waiting for the trial?  And was it that faint
possibility, that result which nothing she had said or done gave me any
particular reason to hope for, which still made me reluctant to settle
which meant, I suppose, settling for Lucy?

"Did you take her there?"  Lucy asked when I said we might go down to
Windhammer for the weekend.

"Who?"

"Your wife, of course."

"Sometimes.  Beth didn't like it very much.  She used to go off and see
her parents."

"Why didn't she like it?"

"She couldn't understand why I was so fond of Cris and Angie."

"Was she jealous?"

"I don't think so.  She just thought it was a bit creepy, for anyone to
be fond of his boss.  I tried to tell her I'd've liked him whoever he
was."

"Will they compare us?  Her and me, I mean."

"Of course not."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely.  That's not the sort of thing they do.  I know they'll
like you very much."

"I suppose it'll be interesting' Lucy was still hesitant 'to meet
someone who's going to be in a really important case."  So Cris was a
sort of star to her.  To the up-and-coming young solicitor, big
criminals, bank robbers and murderers were stars, as were those cool
gamblers who played for enormous stakes in libel actions.  I said,
"Forget the case.  He may not want to talk about it at all."

"What on earth am I going to wear?"

"Don't worry.  There's absolutely nothing smart about Cris and
Angie."

When Cris and I got back from our walk they were sitting on the sofa,
looking at old photograph albums.  Their heads were close together, one
dark and smooth-haired, the other blonde going grey; a woman at the
start of her life and another getting to the end of hers, laughing
together over some story of Angie's about her life in the old days of
British movies.

"Not a casting couch in sight when we were doing Sound the Alert, not
when we were playing girls in the ack-ack emplacements.  As my friend
Cissie Watts said, "You'd be lucky if you got a casting sandbag."  I'm
joking, of course.  The director was Ronnie Deering and he had no
interest in any starlet without a beard or a moustache and a dirty
great pint .. ."  The word floated across the room as we came in and
then Angle twisted round on the sofa to greet her husband, while Lucy went
on turning the pages of the album, smiling in amazement at a world that
was so unlike anything she had ever known.

"It was a war, wasn't it?  I mean, bombs were dropping on London.
Knocking down houses.  Killing people.  She lived there and Cris was
away fighting.  Listening to her you'd think all they did was to make
jokes about it."  Lucy was lying in the bath, the steam rising round
her; long white legs and a triangle of black hair.  Her eyebrows were
arched upwards but she spoke in admiration rather than criticism of
Angie.

"She's like that.  Cris took it more seriously.  He hates it now."

"And we won't ever know how wed've behaved.  In a war."

"Aren't you glad about that?"

"I suppose so."  Cris had sent us upstairs with a bottle of champagne
to drink while we got ready for dinner.  She put out her hand for a
glass blurred with steam and icy wine.

"It's funny, though.  When I was looking at all those photographs I
couldn't help envying her.  It can't have been dull, can it?  I'm sure
she wasn't afraid of anything.  Except insects."

"Insects?"

"Didn't you know?  It seems they really upset her.  That's why she
wouldn't come out for a walk with you.

"Awful buzzing things, hurling themselves at your face the whole time.
I think you and I can do without that, can't we, Lucy?"  That's what
she said.  All those stories about the things they got up to out
watching for fire-bombs on the roof of Pinewood Studios and she's
scared to death of horseflies!"

After dinner Cris sat down at the piano under the big stained-glass
window in which a pre-Raphaelite girl stood palely loitering while a
young knight knelt at her feet.  The girl was dark and not red-headed,
Jane Morris and not Elizabeth Siddal, and I felt no pang of regret on
that untroubled weekend.

He was playing I don't know what Schubert, Chopin, something he knew by
heart and could do without the music, with an apologetic but insistent
melody.  Suddenly he struck a different chord, grinned and pounded the
Steinway as though it were a pub piano.  The tune was familiar; my
father used to sing it in the car on family outings, and then, in a
clear, unexpectedly young voice, Angie began to sing as I had never
heard her sing before:

"There'll be bluebirds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow when the
world is free .. ."

She got up and stood leaning against the piano and gave us a
performance at the end of which we clapped.  Then her husband called
out, "Come along, everyone.  Sing along with Angie."  So we took our
drinks and stood by the piano too and did our best to join in songs I
only half knew and Lucy didn't know at all.  I realized exactly where
we were, in a London pub during the war, with Cris on leave and Angie
back from a hard day on the set.  We went through all the tunes of the
time: "Run, Rabbit', "We're Going to Hang Out the Washing on the
Siegfried Line', "Somewhere in France with You', "You are My Sunshine',
"Lili Marlene' and "Wish me Luck as You Wave me Goodbye', which Angie
ended with a high operatic trill.

"Well done," Cris told her.

"Almost as good as Gracie Fields!"  At which Lucy delighted him by
saying, "Who's Gracie Fields?"  He played another great crashing chord
and went into "Yesterday', to the strains of which, I suppose, Lucy
might just about have been born.

"One thing I'm sure about," she said as I turned out our bedside light,
'he couldn't possibly have done what they say he did."

"I know," I said.

"The idea's ridiculous.  So we're going to win, aren't we?"

"Of course."  She gave me her considered legal opinion.  But at that time neither of us knew of the existence of a Mr.  Derek Midgeley, who was, during the days we had been singing about, a trooper in the Special Air Services regiment.

Chapter Twenty-six

I had never been in a court of law before Cris's trial opened, not even
to contest a parking ticket, and I don't know if you ever have.
Although no one escapes a visit to the doctor or the dentist, or a
punishment session with some such beefy physio as Pam from the Mummers,
not everyone has seen the Great British Legal System at work.  I must
say it came as something of an eye-opener to me.

I expected a solemn, ecclesiastical atmosphere, a silence in which the
slightest cough would be greeted as blasphemy and everyone would sit in
reverent awe as the judge and the barristers held forth.  In fact
Queen's Bench Court Number Five, in the Law Courts in the Strand, was
packed to bursting point by a constantly changing body of spectators,
and it reminded me of nothing more awe-inspiring than a section of
Victoria Station during the rush hour.  The wigged official seated
under the judge was making telephone calls; there was constant
whispering, coming and going and the passing of notes; Justin Glover's
articled clerk didn't bother to disguise the fact that he was reading a
novel; Marcus Beazeley, our junior counsel, was finishing off The Times
crossword; and Mr.  Justice Sop-with, a small, impatient man, was
furiously polishing his glasses and looked like a frustrated commuter
waiting for his train.  Most of his interjections were made in the tone
of someone who is dictating a letter of complaint to the management.
Robbie Skeffington, our learned leader, always referred to the judge as
Hugo Sopwith, reassuring us by making it clear that they had known each
other for years and were probably at school together.

The jury sat like passengers resigned to the fact that they wouldn't get home that night, or indeed for a considerable time to come.  Only one gaunt young man, wearing a grey cotton jacket, a thin leather tie and carrying the Guardian, had the look of a Dunster supporter.  Otherwise they seemed a middle-of-the-road lot, though none of them looked quite old enough to have fought in the war.

Robbie, on his feet and opening our case, had none of that cool
authority that might have been expected from the next chairman of the
Bar Council.  He stood, a small, hunched figure, whose gown was
constantly slipping off his shoulders, pausing to yank it back, or to
blow his nose, or slide up his wig and scratch his forehead, or lift
his glasses to hold a document as close as possible to his unaided
eyes.  His opening speech was like a knock-up before a tennis match. He
only really got going when the scoring started and the
cross-examinations and the arguments began.  His opponent Ken Prinsep,
not being a QC, sat in a bench behind Robbie.  He was making notes
industriously throughout the opening speech and he seemed the only one
of the lawyers to be taking the case entirely seriously.  He was tall,
broad-shouldered and with regular, handsome features which made him
look more like a comic-strip hero, Superman with glasses, than a civil
rights lawyer.  He spoke with a barely detectable Canadian accent,
something the judge found irritating; but then Ken, who would rush in
where even Robbie might fear to tread, irritated Mr.  Justice Sopwith
for most of the trial.

"This Richard Dunster, members of the jury' towards the end of his
speech Robbie enlivened the knock-up with a foretaste of some of his
meaner strokes, skimming low over the net 'this small-time scribbler,
journalist and television scriptwriter, of whom you may never have
heard, took it into his head to publish a sensational story for fame
and money.  It was money he took from the very man whose reputation he
was to slur.  Not even Judas, members of the jury, stooped to collect
his thirty pieces of silver from the Master he betrayed."

Looking down the long bench in front of the barristers I could see
Dunster in profile at the far end.  Beth was next to him, then came his
solicitor, then Cris, then Justin Glover and then me, at the furthest
extreme from my one-time school friend and enemy.  His lock of hair was
flopping over his forehead, the collar of his seldom-worn dark suit was
turned up at the back, his tie was loose and exposed his shirt button,
but on his face was the look of triumphant joy which I had seen when
some despised master finally lost his temper with him in class.  To be
compared with Judas by Robbie Skeffington, QC was a huge compliment to
Dunster.  He took it, I'm sure, as a sign of the weakness of our case.
Cris, who might have been thought to have come out best in the
Skeffington comparison, seemed, by contrast, miserably embarrassed.

"No doubt the defendant Dunster thought he'd further his career by
publishing these lies.  Perhaps he'd be seen, in his unappealing trade,
as a fearless journalist.  He might have tried to enhance his
reputation by destroying someone else's.  Members of the jury, it will
be for you to decide, at the end of this extremely painful trial," said
Robbie, who looked likely to enjoy every minute of it, 'whose
reputation has survived intact and whose lies in tatters.  The life or
death of a great public figure, members of the jury, that is the issue
you have to try.  I will now, with the assistance of my learned friend,
call our evidence.  The first witness will be Sir Crispin
Bellhanger."

Cris stood in the witness-box, tall and unworried, and took the oath in
a voice that was quiet enough to make everyone in court stop whispering
and listen.  He added the first touch of dignity to the proceedings and
the jury looked more confident once he had arrived on the scene.  Yes,
he was Crispin Henry Bellhanger.  He had fought in the last war and had
been awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross and
was three times mentioned in dispatches.  He had served during the
North Africa campaign in the yeomanry and then in the Special Air
Services regiment.  He had been parachuted into Italy in the autumn of 1943.  Robbie's manner in eliciting this evidence was that of an old family retainer who smiled and gave a little bow of delight every time his master came out with
some impressive item in his history.  I knew that this was annoying Cris almost beyond endurance but he managed to control his irritation.

He told the story I knew by heart and he told it well.  He blamed no
one openly, not the villagers who had betrayed our prisoners, nor even
the German captain who may have been under the intolerable pressure of
battle fatigue.  He seemed anxious to remove the unfortunate impression
of a Judas Dunster.  Perhaps the defendant was an inexperienced
scriptwriter who had been misled by some wild rumour, or had not
entirely understood a story he had been told.  At this, Dunster looked,
for the first time, wounded.  Cris thought he might, himself, have been
partly responsible by commissioning a series designed to show that
everyone might be capable of atrocities in time of war.  He had, of
course, been hurt by the circulation of the libel among his colleagues
on the Board, and this had made his position as chairman difficult.  He
had no doubt, however, that he would survive; after all he had survived
the battles in the desert and the stealthy operations behind the German
lines in the mountains of central Italy.

"Thank you very much, Sir Crispin."  The old retainer bowed and added,
as though apologizing for the unpleasant and ill-mannered visitor who
would be the next to arrive, "Just wait there a moment, would you?  If
you'd be so good."  Then Robbie sat down and fell to cleaning his nails
with the sharpened point of a pencil, and Justin Glover on my right
whispered, "My God, if all witnesses were as good as that wed win every
case.  No doubt about it."

"Sir Bellhanger .. ."  I don't think Ken Prinsep meant to say it.  It
may well have been a slip of the tongue, brought about by the strain of
having to launch an attack on an almost perfect performer in a court
crammed full of journalists and expectant lawyers.  He was probably over-eager, overworked and over-prepared, but the judge's rebuke rose to a high pitch of
intolerance, after he had ostentatiously checked the name of the offending barrister on the list in front of him.

"Mr.  Prinsep .. ."

"My Lord?"

"You will be so good as to use his proper style and title when
addressing this witness."

"I'm sorry, my Lord."

"I am prepared to make some allowance for your ignorance in these
matters.  I understand you did not receive your education in this
country."

"I received a good deal of it here, my Lord."

"Call him Sir Crispin Bellhanger," Robbie hissed audibly.  He grinned
like a merciless old tom-cat offering a momentary respite to a bird of
whom he fully intends to make a good meal later.

"Sir Crispin' Ken turned, his intensity undiminished "I didn't mean to
offend you.  Anyway, not quite so early in my cross-examination."

"I'm not offended in the least.  I've always felt the title a little
ridiculous.  Anyway, most people call me Cris."

"We will keep to the correct style and title, please, in my court." The
judge looked startled and somewhat betrayed.

"Now let's get on with it, Mr.  Prinsep.  Do you have some questions
for this witness?"

"Just a few, my Lord."  Ken shuffled his notes, page after page, I
imagined, of carefully prepared interrogation, the work of several
all-night sittings.

"You know the name of the German captain in the Pomeriggio area at the
time of the massacre?"

"I do.  He was a Captain Kreutzer."

"You were able to find that out?"

"I thought it might be helpful to the court to do so."

"Not helpful to your case?"

"Not particularly."

"You see, I'm going to suggest to you that you have all sorts of
information made available to you, as a member of the establishment."

"My Lord.  Perhaps my learned friend can help me."  Robbie was on his
feet behind me, clearly not in need of any help at all.

"What exactly is it that my client is alleged to be a member of?"

"I am not at all clear, Mr.  Skeffington."  The judge managed a faint
smile in our direction which changed to a pained frown as he turned his
attention to Ken Prinsep.

"What do you say the witness belongs to?"

"The establishment, my Lord."

"But which establishment do you mean?  You must make yourself clear,
you know.  You might be talking about anything from a gentleman's club
in St.  James's to ordinary licensed premises."

Justin Glover and Marcus Beazeley led the sycophantic laughter. Robbie,
who had subsided into his seat, shook with silent mirth.  Some members
of the jury smiled, others looked solemnly puzzled.

"I am suggesting, my Lord," Ken Prinsep replied with a self-control I
couldn't help admiring, 'that this witness moves in the corridors of
power.  He has many friends and supporters in government departments,
including the Ministry of Defence.  So it's easy for him to find out
all the facts about Pomeriggio."

"Perhaps my learned friend could help me just once again."  Robbie was
on his feet and hitching up his gown.

"Did his client not know the name of the German captain?"

This led to a whispered conversation between Ken Prinsep and Dunster,
which caused the judge to close his eyes and lean back as though
suffering from terminal boredom.  At last he could bear it no longer
and asked, "Well, Mr.  Prinsep.  What's the answer?"

A few more whispers and Ken straightened up to say, "My Lord.  My
client is a very experienced journalist."

"What on earth's that go to do with it?"

"He has been able to find out the name of the German officer, my
Lord."

Robbie stared triumphantly at the jury and the judge said, "Very well,
then.  Your client and the witness are in the same sort of
establishment, whatever that may be.  Now, may we please move to some
issue of importance in this case."  I looked at Dunster then: his jaw
was clenched, his pale face set and, at having been called a member of
the establishment which included Cris, he looked more deeply wounded
than he did at any other stage of the trial.

It was, I thought, to Ken Prinsep's credit that he recovered from a
disastrous opening and put his case carefully and energetically to
Cris.  The witness was patient, courteous, didn't either seek the help
the judge was prepared to give him or seem grateful for it, and kept to
the account he had always given me.  He was nowhere near Pomeriggio on
the night when the church was blown up.  He and three other men
destroyed a German store in an old farm-building at least six
kilometres away on the road to Monte di Speranza.

"Did you get back some time after midnight?"  Ken Prinsep asked; he was
clearly getting towards the high point of his case, the part of the
evidence on which Dunster's hopes were centred, and he found it hard to
keep a note of excitement out of his voice.

"I think it was quite late, yes.  I can't remember the exact time."

"You joined the rest of the section?"

"Yes."

"They were camped in the caves up above Pomeriggio?"

That's right."

"Did you return in the company of Sergeant Blaker, Mad-docks, the
demolition expert, and Lance Corporal Sweeting?"

"I did."

"Did you have an Italian guide with you?"

"No.  The Italian partisans had given us the information about the dump
and we found our own way there.  It was relatively easy."

"When you got to the caves, did you find Lieutenant Blair awake?"

"He was awake, yes."

"Were there sentries posted to guard the position?"

"There would have been, naturally."

"Did your companions, that is to say Sergeant Blaker, Mad-docks and
Sweeting, go off to another cave to sleep?"

"So far as I can recollect, they did."

"Did you then have a conversation with Lieutenant Blair?"

"I can remember that.  Yes."

"Sir Crispin.  Before you spoke to Lieutenant Blair, did you know that
the church had been blown up in Pomeriggio?"

The official under the judge stopped telephoning, the whispers ceased;
Robbie looked deliberately unconcerned, like a gambler with a high
stake at risk waiting for the roulette wheel to stop spinning; and
Dunster, a few yards below the witness-box, stared intensely up at
Cris, as though willing him to give the answer he wanted.  There was a
pause, only slightly longer than usual, and Cris said, "No.  I knew
nothing about it until Lieutenant Blair told me.  Apparently he'd heard
about it from a partisan scout who'd come up from near the town."

"Just a moment."  The judge was writing laboriously and when he'd
finished Ken also summoned up all his powers of suggestion to ask what
was by then a pretty hopeless question.

"I have to put it to you, Sir Crispin, that you knew perfectly well
who'd blown up the church and you told Lieutenant Blair that you and
your party had done it."

"No."  Cris was smiling now, perfectly at his ease.

"There is absolutely no truth in that suggestion."

"Absolutely no truth .. ."  The judge was writing with evident
satisfaction.

"Do you remember if Trooper Midgeley was one of the sentries on duty
outside the cave that night?"

"I'm afraid I can't remember that."

"Really, Mr.  Prinsep."  The judge was clearly bored as a spectator and
came trotting briskly on to the field of play.

"We're talking about a night almost half a century ago.  A no doubt
confused and dangerous night in wartime.  Is Sir Crispin really to be
expected to remember the name of every soldier and exactly where he was
posted?"

"Then perhaps this will remind him."  Ken Prinsep spoke like an excited
conjuror about to astonish us all.

"May Mr.  Derek Midgeley come into court?"

"You have no objection to this, Mr.  Skeffmgton?"  the judge asked
hopefully.

"No, my Lord."  Robbie was careful to look unconcerned by any trick his
opponent might be capable of playing.

"I have no idea what this is all about.  But if my learned friend
thinks that it might possibly help his case, then I have no objection."
He shrugged his gown back on to his shoulders and sat.

The sepulchral voice of the usher was calling outside the court, "Mr.
Derek Midgeley!  Derek Midgeley, please!"  Then the courtroom door
swung open and Mr.  Midgeley marched in under the usher's orders and
came to attention in the well of the court.  I suppose he was old; he
looked ageless: a lean, cadaverous man with receding hair, a high, bony
forehead and an expression of gloomy severity.  His face was pale as
plaster, in which two deep cracks ran from his nostrils to his mouth.
In another existence he might have been a militant Puritan, retired
long ago from Cromwell's Ironsides, one who had marched with sword and
Bible against the frivolous Cavaliers.  He had on a dark-blue business
suit, shiny with age, and some sort of badge in his buttonhole.  He was
the only one of all the witnesses who looked like an old soldier and
when he said the word Midgeley I expected him to add his rank and
number.

"Just stand there, Mr.  Midgeley, would you, where the witness can see you?"  And Ken Prinsep told him, "You won't be called
on to speak until later."

So Midgeley stood and looked up at Cris.  It was a long, hard stare
with very little warmth or forgiveness in it.

"Is that Trooper Midgeley?"  Ken Prinsep asked Cris.

"It's rather a long time ago.  He's changed a good deal since we last
met."

"I expect we all have, in the last forty-odd years."  The judge got
some obedient laughter.

"But I believe that's Midgeley, yes."  Cris smiled down at the silent
witness and got no reaction.

"If he says he was near enough to you and Lieutenant Blair to hear
these words from you "We must say the Germans did it" how would you
feel about that, Sir Crispin Bell-hanger?"

"I should wonder how he came to give evidence that was so far from the
truth.  I should be prepared to believe that he was mistaken and not
telling a deliberate lie."

The judge wrote that down carefully and Derek Midgeley was about-turned
by the usher and marched out of court, but not before Robbie had
subjected him to a minute inspection.

"See that, Glover?"  our leader whispered to Justin.

"CND badge in the buttonhole.  Get hold of their membership lists. Find
out all you can about him.  Clearly a nutter who doesn't like war."

The day in court was over.  We struggled out into the mosaic-floored
corridors and I headed, with some urgency, through the door marked
Gentlemen in Gothic lettering.  As I stood facing the porcelain, the
door was pushed open and Dunster looked in.  Anyone else, me included,
would have beaten a hasty retreat.  Not so Dunster.  He stood beside me
as though we had never had a quarrel in our lives and seemed, all
things considered quite extraordinarily cheerful.

"Brilliant, wasn't he?"

"I don't think we should discuss the case."

"Oh, come on, Progmire.  At least have the guts to admit he was
brilliant."

"Cris gave his evidence very well.  Yes.  Probably because he was
telling the truth."

"Not your boss.  Your boss was hypocrisy on oiled wheels.  That's how
I'd describe his evidence.  No, I mean Ken.  Totally fearless.
Absolutely dominated the proceedings."

"The judge doesn't seem to like him much."

"Tactics, old man.  Brilliant tactics.  Ken's got the judge to expose
himself as a boring and entirely prejudiced old fart.  I think the jury
have got the message."

"Do you, really?"  I moved away from him to wash my hands.  It was a
ridiculous scene; we might have been back at school, hanging about in
the bogs.

"Tell you one thing, old man' - Dunster was zipping himself up with a
look of complete satisfaction 'we're going to make a far bigger impact
with this story in court than wed ever have done on television."

Chapter Twenty-seven

Queen's Bench Court Five became a way of life; I went there instead of
to the office and in the evenings I discussed the day's work with Lucy.
I sat, each day, helpless to alter the course of events.  I kept
looking at the jury and worrying if they didn't think that the very
enormity of the charge against Cris meant that it had some truth in it,
and how impressive the surprise witness, Derek Midgeley, might be when
he came to give evidence.

The odd thing about those days in court was that they seemed to have
nothing much to do with the facts of the case.  Pomeriggio the
procession of men, women and children, singing, carrying candles,
walking slowly to their death had never seemed further away and more
lost in the pages of history.  What we were concerned about were the
judge's questions, Robbie's cunning re-examination, or the futile and
counter-productive attack Ken made on a general, long retired, whom we
had called as a witness to Cris's character.  Looking back to those
long mornings and sleepy afternoons I seem, in all the time taken by
the laborious and highly expensive investigation, to have learnt
nothing new about that night in the Apennines.  No question was finally
answered and no new layer of truth revealed.

Trying to remember the so-called courtroom drama, much of it has
vanished, as unmemorable as lessons at school.  Pictures come back to
me.  I can see Dunster staring at every witness with ferocious or
friendly intent, trying to exercise some sort of remote control over
their evidence; Beth looking beautiful, calm and detached; Robbie
hitching up his gown; the judge's furious little puffs at his glasses
before he polished them; Justin Glover arriving gloomy and exhausted after another family crisis, gradually cheering up as he listened to other people's
troubles.  These things come back to me most clearly, but the important moments of the trial are harder to remember.  I have to think hard before I can hear the questions and answers that seemed so dangerous or conclusive at the time.

"Mr.  Sweeting.  You were visited in Italy by my client, Mr.  Dunster."
Someone, no doubt Justin, had tricked out the ex-trooper in a genuine
natty suiting which made him look ill at ease.  He had told his story
to Robbie, much as he had to us in the back of the Bar della Luna,
grinning at the jury with a mixture of bravura and guilt, like an
elderly, awkward schoolboy who has been caught doing something
moderately disgusting and is doing his best to brave it out.  And then
Ken Prinsep had risen to the attack.

"Yes, of course."  Natty seemed to notice Dunster for the first time.

"Thanks for reminding me."  He was the most cooperative of witnesses.

"He was the other one who came out from England to visit me.  I seem to
have got quite popular lately.  I can't believe that they just came for
the grappa at the Bar della Luna!"  He looked hopefully round the
court, waiting for the laugh that never came.

"Mr.  Dunster rang me from Bologna and then came over.  It was a
Friday.  No.  I tell a lie .. ."

"Please, Mr.  Sweeting, be careful."  Ken Prinsep gave a strong
warning.

"It was a Saturday."  Natty looked contrite and this time did get the
ghost of a smile from the jury.

"Don't bother about whether it was a Friday or a Saturday.  Did you
give him an account of what happened, that night when the church was
blown up?"

"Oh, we chatted away about a lot of things.  He was my first visitor
from England, oh, for a long time.  That's how I remember it."

"Did you make a statement to him, about the church?"

"Mr.  Prinsep!"  The judge, who had been silent during Robbie's
examination, could contain himself no longer.

"Am I to understand that your client has been around collecting
statements from witnesses?"

"He visited Mr.  Sweeting in Italy, yes, my Lord."

"For the purpose of discussing the question the jury has to try?"

"Is your Lordship suggesting there was any harm in that?"

"Harm, Mr.  Prinsep?  I don't know about harm.  We shall have to see
how the matter develops.  I don't know what the situation is under
other jurisdictions, with which you may be more familiar, but litigants
in this country leave it to their solicitors to go round collecting
evidence."  He made it sound an eccentric and revolting occupation,
like someone pulling out their own teeth.

"My Lord, Mr.  Dunster's visit was some time before these proceedings
started."

"So he wasn't collecting evidence?"

"He said he wanted a good story," Natty volunteered to help the judge,
who was acting, in a way which even the Mummers would have found over
the top, the part of a man completely mystified.

"It was for a film he was making."

"For a film, Mr.  Prinsep?"  Mr.  Justice Sopwith tried to do for the
noun what Dame Edith Evans had done for the handbag.

"Your Lordship will remember' there was, in the soft Canadian voice,
only the slightest tremor of desperation' that Mr.  Dunster discovered
the truth about Pomeriggio when he was researching a television film he
was writing."

"Of course," said the judge, who did seem to have forgotten.

"I remember that perfectly well."

"He wanted a good story for his film, sir.  He was interested in
finding out if our side hadn't done things as bad as the Germans did.
That's what interested him, as a film maker, from what I remember."

"If our side hadn't done what sort of things?"  The judge looked
puzzled.

"Well, breaking the rules of the game if you know what I mean."  Natty
looked embarrassed.

"The rules of war, I think they call them."

"Did he ask you to tell him if the British committed a war crime?"  the
judge asked and Natty agreed, while Ken leant over for one of his
whispered conversations with Dunster.  Then he surfaced again and
turned his horn-rimmed spectacles on Natty.

"That's not entirely correct, is it?  He just asked you to tell him all
you knew about the incident."

"Did he?"  Natty did his best to look interested, an attempt which
wasn't wholly successful.

"And you told him clearly that you had helped Captain Bellhanger and
the other men blow up the church."

"Is that what he says?"

"Exactly.  Did you tell him that?"

Now Natty looked across to me and Justin.  No doubt he was trying to
tell us he was sorry for the answer he was about to give.  He knew he
was a bit unreliable, the one who always made a mess of things, but he
hoped wed go on liking him all the same.

"I suppose I might have done."

"You might have done!"  Ken was staring at the jury as he repeated the
words; it was his first wholly successful moment in the trial.  And it
was the point at which he should have sat down and shut up, but he had
to go on to ever-diminishing effect.

"Where were you when you might have told Mr.  Dunster that?"

"We were in the back of the bar.  I suppose we were enjoying ourselves.
As I say, I don't often get anyone from England to talk to.  He bought
a bottle of grappa."  Jaunty Blair, I remembered, had recalled the
facts as Dunster wanted them with the aid of a bottle of Remy Martin.

"And you said that Captain Bellhanger had ordered you to do it?"

"Mr.  Dunster said that was the story he was after, yes.  For the film
he was doing.  I thought it was just like those ones we had in the war:
Night Fighters, Girls on the Square and London Defiant .. . Things like
that.  What was the one they had on at the Odeon, Leicester Square?"

Ken tried another smile on the jury.

"I don't think most of us were around then."

"Pity.  That was a good one."

"Never mind about that."  Ken did his best to reassemble his scattered
winnings.

"The fact is that you may well have told Mr.  Dunster that Captain
Bellhanger was guilty."

"He might have, Mr.  Prinsep."  The judge was displeased.

"Yes, my Lord."

"You said he may well have.  We must be careful here, mustn't we, to be
entirely accurate about the evidence?"  At which Ken Prinsep sat down,
no doubt unwilling to risk further questions.

"How many did you have?"  Robbie hitched himself and his gown up to
re-examine.

"How many what, sir?"

"Grappas!"  Robbie boomed like a cannon, making the jury blink.

"Maybe we saw off half a bottle."

"Just the two of you?  You and Mr.  Dunster?"

"The two of us, yes."

"Grappa's pretty strong, isn't it?  Stronger than whisky?"

"It was a bit of pretty good stuff, yes.  Local grown."

"And you thought he was making a cinema film like those you saw at some
picture palace?  A work of fiction.  With an invented story?"

"That's what I thought, sir.  Yes."  Natty had obligingly answered the
question before Ken Prinsep could get to his feet to object.

"No doubt you were feeling a bit cheerful and you thought you'd give
this nice gentleman who'd come all the way from England exactly what he
wanted?"

"My Lord.  I object.  My learned friend is cross-examining his own
witness."

"He's simply asking him to repeat what he told you.  Yes.  Carry on,
Mr.  Skeffington."

"But was there a word of truth' Robbie glared at the jury, inviting
them to share his outrage 'in this fictional story?"

"Oh no, sir.  Not a word of truth, sir."  Natty looked round as though
amazed that anyone should have taken him seriously.

"It was just he thought he could make a better film out of it.  If he
put it that way round, you see.  I'm sure he really knew that it was
the Germans, all the time."

"My Lord.  Might this witness be released?"  Robbie was no doubt
anxious to get Natty as far away from the court as possible, in case he
gave us any more surprises.  He went, but not back to Maltraverso.
Apparently the Ministry of Defence had lost all interest in his past
desertion.  His wife Constanzia was waiting for him outside the court
and he was free to keep his promise and take her, after so many years'
delay, to visit Dorking for the first time in her life.

"Mr.  Dunster.  You wrote a letter containing this libel to every
member of the Board of Megapolis?"

"I wrote a letter containing the truth about the chairman's past."

"What you thought was the truth?"

"What I know was the truth."

"This letter was calculated to cause Sir Crispin the maximum possible
embarrassment."

"I imagine all criminals are extremely embarrassed, when they get found
out."

No one except Dunster smiled.  Robbie let that one go for the moment
and went on with his cross-examination.

"When you wrote that letter, your allegations were already known to Sir
Crispin?"

"I expect Progmire told him."

"Mr.  Progmire did.  So you thought it likely he'd cancel the
series?"

"I knew that he would.  He'd hope for a cover-up."

"And when the series was cancelled you'd be out of a job."

"What do you mean?"  Dunster looked genuinely puzzled.

"I mean, you wouldn't get any further payments from Mega-polis."

"Oh, I see what you're getting at.  That hadn't occurred to me."

"So it was because you were angry with the chairman that you wrote to
the Board, and then sent this wicked pamphlet round to everyone working
at Megapolis?"

"I wanted them to know the truth."

Throughout this cross-examination I could only marvel at how little
Robbie Skeffington, QC understood the witness he was attacking.  The
immense harm done by Dunster didn't come from the fact that he was a
liar, or a cheat, or a crook -like the other shady litigants Robbie was
used to showing up in their true and unattractive colours.  He had to
deal with a witness who believed all he said.  Our leader should have
opened fire with, Mr.  Dunster, are you not a man who is passionately
and selflessly devoted to the truth?  That was the most damaging
indictment that the ingenious old QC could have possibly thought of.

"You are a journalist, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

"With ambitions to be a successful journalist."

"No.  I distrust success in any profession.  It usually goes with
compromise and dishonesty."

The QC and the High Court judge looked at him with displeasure.  Only
Ken Prinsep gave a brisk nod of agreement.

"Come along now, Mr.  Dunster.  Be honest with us."

"I have every intention of being honest.  With or without you."

"You know perfectly well that every journalist is after a sensational story."  Robbie ploughed on like a tank, ignoring all insults.

"Sometimes, I suppose, the truth is sensational."

"So that is what you were after, a sensation?"

"That is not what I was after."

"And in the unlikely event of your winning this case you hope, don't
you, Mr.  Dunster, to become famous as the journalist who exposed a
British war crime?  Just tell us, have you already signed a contract
with your publishers?  Or is that a question you'd prefer not to
answer?"

"You're right," Dunster said calmly, and the judge, who had closed his
eyes during the last few questions, opened them with newly awakened
interest.

"I prefer not to answer."

"Because you have signed a contract?"  Robbie asked with considerable
satisfaction.

"No.  Because I find your question utterly contemptible."

I don't know how the jury reacted and it may be a fatal flaw in my
character that, in spite of a lifetime which should have taught me to
know better, I felt an uncomfortable stab of admiration for Dunster.
Robbie was like the executioner, as he lit the fire, asking St.  Joan
if it wasn't true that she was only doing it all for the money, a
possible new scene in the play we had done at the Mummery with
considerable lack of success.

The cross-examination then droned on, all one long afternoon and up to
lunchtime the next day.  It became a prolonged exercise in mutual
misunderstanding, which left Dunster unaffected and Robbie worse
tempered than usual.  No one seemed to understand the witness any
better at the end of it, but then they hadn't had a lifetime's study of
Dunster forced upon them.

"Are you Sir Ninian Dobbs?"

"I am."

"One-time Professor of Military History and Master of St.  Joseph's
College, Oxford?"

"That is right."

"Author of From Sicily to Surrender: The Italian Campaign 1943-1945?

The former Head of our college, long since retired, was a wasted,
stooping figure, his hands trembling but his white hair, yellowing like
old paintwork, was still luxuriant and carefully brushed.  It seemed
that all our lives, mine and Dunster's, were a journey towards this
trial, including the night we had arrived, uninvited, on this old man's
bedroom floor.  Ken Prinsep, examining him, asked him, "Have you ever
heard of the massacre at Pomeriggio?"

"Oh, yes.  There were, unfortunately, a number of such outrages, when
reprisals were taken against a civilian population."

"Do you know who the German commanding officer in that area was at the
time?"

"Oh, yes.  It was a Captain Kreutzer."

"After the war there were a number of trials of war criminals?"

"Yes, there were."

"Have you been able to discover whether Captain Kreutzer was ever
prosecuted for a war crime?"

"I have made sure, my Lord, that he never was."

Robbie's cross-examination was short.

"And have you ever heard it suggested before, in any document not
prepared by Mr.  Dunster, that this crime was the work of anyone
connected with the British Army?"

"No, my Lord.  I have not."

"Thank you, Sir Ninian Dobbs," Robbie said in a voice which meant
"That's seen you off, I think'.  As the witness shuffled cautiously
from the box, with a tentative foot searching for the step, a trembling
hand feeling for the rail, the usher brought me a note scribbled by
Dunster.

"How do you imagine I got the old fart to come here?  Do you think I
threatened to tell the world about the hair-net?"

At two o'clock in the afternoon on the tenth day of the trial Ken
Prinsep called his last witness.  When he entered the box, Mr. Midgeley
declined to take the oath, to Robbie's obvious delight.

"Is that because you have no religious beliefs?"  The judge was
disapproving.

"No, indeed.  My religious beliefs are too profound to be used for such
a purpose as this."

Mr.  Justice Sopwith, although not best pleased at the suggestion that
God would not care to take part in the proceedings in Queen's Bench
Court Five, said, "Very well, then you may affirm," and ex-Trooper
Midgeley told his story.  He did so in flat, nasal tones which betrayed
no shadow of doubt on any subject.  When he had finished, Robbie
Skeffington rose to cross-examine.

"Mr.  Midgeley.  You are a member of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament?"

"Indeed I am."

"And have been for many years?"

"Yes."

"And also of the Peace Pledge Union?"

"Yes."

"Does that mean you're against all forms of war?"  Robbie was a great
one for spelling things out; he didn't have much respect for the
intelligence of juries.

"I am completely and utterly opposed to war in any shape or form."

"When did you become a pacifist?"

"I think I became sure of my beliefs when we were fighting in Italy.
After I was demobilized I decided to do all I could to stop anything
like that ever happening again.  I have devoted my life to the
cause."

"By "anything like that", you mean war?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Any sort of war?"

"Any sort.  Whatsoever."

"Even ordinary, legitimate fighting ...?"

"I don't believe there is any such thing as legitimate fighting.  The
conception of a just war is denied in the Ten Commandments."

"Mr.  Midgeley.  I don't think we need you to come here and give us
Bible lessons."  Robbie had, in fact, been the first to introduce the
Scriptures into the case.

"I thought you needed exactly that, Mr.  Skeffington: "Thou shall not
kill."  Had that one slipped your memory?"

The jury smiled and the judge told the witness he mustn't ask learned
counsel questions, whereupon Derek Midgeley looked disapproving, as
though he was now convinced that the proceedings were profoundly
irreligious.

"So even the heroic actions of soldiers in defence of their country
would be called a war crime by you?"  Robbie deftly steered clear of
the Ten Commandments.

'"All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword."  Matthew
verse 52."

"So, in your view, all warlike acts are criminal acts?"

"It is not my view.  It is the view of the Holy Bible, as I am trying
my best to remind you, Mr.  Skeffington."

"So, ever since you joined this Peace Pledge Party ..."  Robbie,
delighted at having persuaded the witness to be at least moderately
rude to him, carried on cheerfully.

"Union."

"What?"

"It's called the Peace Pledge Union.  That's its correct title."

"Mr.  Midgeley.  Let's not trouble the jury with unnecessary detail."
Robbie gave us his patient and long-suffering look.

"Let's get down to the vital issues in this case.  Ever since you
joined this pacifist pressure group, you have done your best to
persuade us all that war is a horrible and brutal business."

"I should have thought that was obvious."

"That it turns ordinary people into criminals."

"It leads them to do terrible things.  Yes, indeed."

"Then this case must have come to you as a heaven-sent opportunity."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, come, come, Mr.  Midgeley.  You're an intelligent man."  As Robbie
said it, intelligence sounded like a serious character defect.

"Here was your great chance to tell the world that even such a decent,
honourable character as Sir Crispin Bellhanger might commit a terrible
atrocity in time of war.  Now, wouldn't that be a wonderful bit of
pacifist propaganda?"

"That thought never occurred to me."

"Oh, come on, Mr.  Midgeley.  Don't you write a regular column for
World Peace?  Robbie picked up a magazine with well-acted distaste.

"I won't bore the jury with this, my Lord, but Mr.  Midgeley is the
author of a monthly diatribe against war.  If Sir Crispin is guilty,
that will really give you something to write about, won't it?"

"I only came here' Mr.  Midgeley was not going to fight back, no doubt
on principle 'to tell the truth as I remember it."

"As you remember it!  And can you swear that you remember Sir Crispin's
exact words, spoken in the middle of the night, nearly half a century
ago?"

"He and Lieutenant Blair were talking about something that had happened
in the town.  Bombs had been planted in the church.  Captain Bellhanger
said, "We must say the Germans did it."

"So you believed he was responsible for a terrible crime."

"I'm afraid I did."

"So did you accuse him to his face or just denounce him to his superior
officers?"

The answer, when it came in the flat, gloomy tone, was strangely
chilling.

"I was prepared to leave Sir Crispin Bellhanger to his conscience and
to the final judgement.  I didn't think any man-made punishment could
be more severe than that."

"Isn't the truth of the matter' Robbie clearly had no interest in any
law courts other than in the solid and earth-bound building we were
occupying 'that you did nothing because you weren't sure of what you
heard?"

"Not sure?"  The witness seemed puzzled by the suggestion.

"Oh, I've no doubt you've persuaded yourself now.  You're sure you
heard something which comes in very useful for your peacenik
propaganda.  But might his words on that night have been "The Germans
must have done it"?"

'"The Germans must have done it"," Mr.  Midgeley repeated the
suggestion; his thoughts were, no doubt, a long way away, in a cave on
the cold mountainside.  And then he said, as though he were quoting
Holy Writ, "No.  Indeed not.

"We must say the Germans did it."  I feel sure of that."

"But you weren't prepared to swear to it on that Holy Bible you set
such store by, were you, Mr.  Midgeley?"  Robbie grinned triumphantly
at the jury and sat down.

When I think back to those days, the sight of Mr.  Midgeley in the
witness-box is the last thing I can clearly remember.  The closing
speeches, Ken's attack on the establishment, frequently interrupted
from the Bench, and Robbie's diatribe against Dunster, listened to in
respectful silence, were predictable.  More unexpected was the judge's
summing up, which was perfectly fair, perhaps, as Robbie suggested,
because the old friend whom he now called "Soppy' Sopwith, revealing
another layer of intimacy, kept a wary eye on the Court of Appeal.  The
jury must give what emphasis they thought right to the evidence of Mr.
Midgeley, his Lordship told them.  He had seemed very certain but it
was all a long time ago.  They must also remember that the German
captain had never been prosecuted and that Lance Corporal Sweeting had
clearly told two contradictory stories.  If the plea of justification
failed, the amount of damages was a matter entirely for them.  They
shouldn't go wild with someone else's money, but could they imagine a more serious libel on a man of the highest possible reputation?  They should go to their room now and take all the time they needed.  No one was going to hurry them in any way.

Cris and I spent the next hours drinking too many cups of coffee in the
canteen under the Gothic arches.  During that time he seemed unworried.
He was entertaining, talking about everything except the case and he
treated our long wait as a minor irritation, like a delayed flight from
Heathrow.

At last the jury came back.  To my surprise the young man in the cotton
jacket and the leather tie had been elected foreman.  He announced that
they had found in favour of the plaintiff, Sir Crispin Bellhanger, and
awarded him 500,000 worth of damages.  It was a sum no doubt far in
excess of the worldly goods of all those who had died at Pomeriggio.

When we came out of court we had to push our way through a crowd of
reporters.  Dunster was addressing them as though he had emerged
victorious.  Beth was standing on the edge of the group, silent,
expressionless and remote.  I went up to her and said, "I'm sorry," but
she turned away from me and didn't speak.  When I last saw her she was
managing a smile for the journalists, as she stood by her husband's
side, her arm linked in his.

Cris said, "No celebrations.  Absolutely no celebrations of any sort."
He nodded a brief goodbye to Robbie and then we walked with Justin to
the back entrance of the Law Courts, the one that leads into Carey
Street.

"I'm going down to Windhammer now," he said.

"I promised Angie I'd bring her a full report.  Then I might take a bit
of time off.  That'd be all right, wouldn't it, Philip?"

I couldn't imagine why he was asking my permission, but I said that was
exactly what I thought he should do.  All the cheerfulness with which
he entertained us while the jury was out had drained away.  Since the
verdict he had been looking pale and now he seemed almost like the
ghost of his old,

upright, military self.  When we got to the Carey Street entrance he
said, "Don't bother about me.  I'll find myself a taxi.  Thanks for
everything."

As he walked down the steps, one of the photographers spotted him and
several of them ran forwards, their cameras flashing.  He walked on,
stopping for no one, and, as he went, raised his hand to us in a sort
of salute.  I never saw him again.

zyo

THE ANSWER

Chapter Twenty-eight

There are certain productions in which everything goes wrong, mainly
ambitious ones in which the Mummers try to do something spectacular and
create a vivid theatrical moment.  For these we call on the services of
Mr.  Webber who runs the Handyman shop in Muswell Hill.  Greeting every
challenge with a cheerful "No probs!"  Mr.  Webber, with all the tools
at his command, made us a revolving bed for Feydeau, the end of a
swimming-pool for Alan Ayckbourn and an indoor menagerie for The Wild
Duck.  These devices, as temperamental as the most nervous actors, all
performed admirably at the dress rehearsals and were subject to
alarming attacks of stage-fright when in front of an audience.  The
water, I remember, once mysteriously gurgled away from the
swimming-pool; the bed spun round long before its cue or remained
sullenly immobile; and the rabbits, on a special Senior Citizens'
matinee, escaped from captivity and bounded into the stalls.

Mr.  Webber's guillotine looked magnificent when erected.  Its hardwood
blade was painted to imitate steel and it slid down to decapitate the
small band of aristos in the spectacular opening that Martin, the bank
manager, had produced.  The victims were to kneel with their backs to
the audience, the blade would fall and a dummy head drop into a basket
which would then be held up in a dim light by Harry Smithson from the
Aurora Garage.  On our opening night Mark, a stylist from Crowning
Glory, playing the First Aristocrat, knelt in position and the blade
resolutely refused to descend, in spite of pulls, jerks and whispered
imprecations from Harry the executioner, and his sans-culotte
assistant, Colin from the fishmongers.  After all his efforts had
failed, they were moved to improvise.

"Sacrebleu, Citizen!"  Harry said.

"Madame Guillotine is a tired old whore.  She's not coming down for
anyone else this evening."

"All right, Citizen Executioner' Colin was not to be upstaged 'we'll
get the rest of them aristos done over tomorrow."  This exchange got a
bigger laugh than any of the subsequent proceedings.

After this the Mummers never quite recovered their nerve.  Chauvelin
(Dennis, the dentist) cut a whole page of dialogue in his scene with
Marguerite and, when he had realized his mistake, went back on it, an
unnerving situation which Lucy dealt with admirably by adding the line,
"pon my little life, Citizen, how you oft times do repeat yourself!"  I
had managed to cope with Sir Percy without forgetting the words or
falling over the furniture, but had been early alarmed, while in my
disguise as an old hag, by the sight of the bald-headed Mr.  Zellenek,
the film producer, in the front row.  My future as an actor, my first
chance to do something as a professional, hung in the balance, at the
mercy of Mr.  Webber from the Handyman shop.  I found myself thinking
about various subjects unconnected with the French Revolution, such as
whether Mr.  Zellenek, if he wanted me badly enough, could help me to
an Equity card, so my poem about the 'demned elusive Pimpernel' went
off at half-cock.  I tried to make up for this by plenty of play with
the eye-glass and inane upper-class laughter, but I could see Zellenek
leaning forward, staring closely up at the stage, his brow furrowed
with anxiety.

In Act Two things began to settle down; that is until I had to make an
entrance into the Lion d'Or tavern near Calais, where, unknown to me,
the villainous Chauvelin is eating soup.  Sir Percy's arrival is
signalled to the audience by his whistling "God Save the King' outside
the tavern door.  Chauvelin utters the line, "The Pimpernel!"  and I
enter, or I should have done if the door hadn't stuck, and I was
pushing desperately, whistling a longer, fainter and even more
out-of-tune

version of the national anthem.  Once again the invention of the
Mummers was called upon.  Chauvelin called for Brogard, the ghoulish
hunchbacked landlord (someone called Pete Per-shaw in life insurance),
and said, "Citizen Landlord, there is a passing wayfarer demanding
entrance," something the audience had been aware of for quite a while.
Brogard said, "Mon dieu, my wife has left the key in the cellar!"  and
went off to fetch it.  As soon as he was gone, the door gave up all
resistance and I made a precipitate entrance before Chauvelin could
pull his hat over his eyes in case I recognized him.

Instead of a party in the Mummery bar I had invited the cast back to my
house.  I wanted to be occupied, to forget those long days in court and
everything to do with Dunster, even that defeat which I had every
reason to believe he would come to think of as a triumph.  The case had
died out of the newspapers, Cris was still in retreat at Windhammer and
I had taken the afternoon off to run through my words and prepare for
the party.  Despite the disasters the Mummers were cheerful, relieved
that wed got through it somehow, their glands still bubbling with
adrenalin.

"I think we got over the reluctant guillotine bloody well!"  Harry, the
executioner, was satisfied.

"All that about the old whore not going down on anyone else.  I mean, I
don't think Baroness Orczy would write a line like that."

'"Coming down", that's what I said."

"We haven't all got filthy minds, Mark."

"Sorry about our scene, darling."  Dennis, the dentist, let his glasses
swing round his neck and put a hairy and short-sleeved arm round Lucy's
shoulders.

"It was fascinating' Lucy liberated herself when it was polite to do so
'like an action replay on television."

Mr.  Zellenek had left as soon as the play ended.  Lucy said, "I'm sure
he'll call you.  I know how interested he is."

"Not after tonight."

"You were perfectly fine, in the circumstances."

"Oh?  Thank you very much."  I suppose I am a natural Mummer.  Anything
but exaggerated praise sounds like an insult.

"Cheer up, anyway.  They loved it, didn't they?"

"Oh, yes.  They had a marvelous evening.  Particularly when the door
stuck."

"Let's have a drink."

I began to enjoy the party.  After all, when I came to think about it,
a stuck door in the last act of The Scarlet Pimpernel was nothing much
compared to what I'd lived through.  I was, I thought, amazingly lucky
to have that as the present number-one worry.  Even if you added Mr.
Zellenek's rapid departure to it, you couldn't describe it as a
grand-scale cause for anxiety.  Anyway, it was probably insane to think
of going into the profession at my age.

Mark, the stylist, had brought his Madonna tapes and the Mummers were
dancing with varying degrees of skill and enthusiasm.  Dennis, the
dentist was singing along with "Like a Virgin', and then the telephone
rang and Pam, the physio, picked it up.

"It's for you," she said.

"Justin someone or other."

I went to the phone in the kitchen, away from the noise of Mummers
celebrating.

"Where've you been?"  Justin sounded disapproving, as though I had been
wasting my time in some frivolous occupation.  He was probably right.

"We had a first night.  And now we're having a party."

"Oh, you were acting?

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Well.  I didn't want to leave a message.  It's something I felt I had
to break to you.  Before you hear it on the news or read about it in
the papers."

"What is it, for God's sake?"

And then he told me.

When I put the phone back on the kitchen wall, I was shivering.  The
room seemed to have become darker and the music loud, strident and
unendurable.  I had no idea exactly what Justin's news meant, and I was
afraid to guess.

"It was an accident."

Yes, my dear, darling Angie, yes.  I'm sure it was.  Of course it was.
What else could it have been?  Even to say that, to agree as fervently
as that, might have seemed to cast doubt on her statement of a simple
certainty.

"A horrible, stupid, unnecessary accident."

We were sitting side by side on the sofa in the library at Windhammer,
under the pre-Raphaelite stained-glass window, by the silent piano and
elaborate sound system.  I held her hand, as it seemed a natural thing
to do.  Angie looked like a young woman who had stumbled at long last
into old age.

"The doctor said it was an accident.  And they said it was an accident
on the television news, and in The Times.  Did you see The Times?

"Yes.  I saw all the papers."

"He should never have taken up that wretched shooting business
again."

"He told me he was thinking of it."

"He told you that?"  Was she grateful for a small piece of evidence to
back up everyone's interpretation of that terrible event?

"He told me that before the trial," I assured her.

"Dr.  Megarry said that when people kill themselves with a shotgun they
put the muzzle in their mouths, then they reach down to pull the
trigger.  They're usually standing up or sitting when they do it.  With
Cris it wasn't like that at all."

"In the papers it just said it was an accident.  That's all it said."

"He'd gone down on his hands and knees.  He'd got under a hedge and
pulled the gun after him.  Some sorts of guns can go off, apparently, if you do that.  Dr.  Megarry shoots a lot round here. He knows all about it."

"Yes," I said.

"I'm sure he does."

"A bloody stupid accident."

"No one's suggested anything else."  No one had, but I could think of
someone who very well might, someone who could say that this event
justified him and proved that all he'd said in the case he had lost had
been the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"Of course it was an accident," Angie repeated.  She looked at me,
wide-eyed and innocent.

"What else could it be?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Nothing at all."

"Such a terrible waste," she said.

"Such a waste of Cris."

"Cris wasn't wasted."  It's so much easier to console than be
consoled.

"He had a long, marvelous life.  We all had so much from him, you more
than any of us.  This can't take that away.  Not all the years you've
had together.  Not all the years I've known him either."

"He wanted me to stay young, you see.  He'd fallen for me when I was
young and that's how he wanted me to be always.  Young and rather
helplessly heroic.  But, as a matter of fact, I'm old and frightened of
insects.  They even get indoors."  Her hand flapped at the air round
the sofa which, so it seemed to me, was completely insect-free.

"We're battling against nature in here."

I had arrived by the earliest train and I said yes, of course, I'd stay
for lunch and for the night if that was what she wanted.  I poured her
a large gin and tonic and she became braver, less prone to slap at
imaginary insects.  When we went into the dining-room I took her arm;
she needed help and she walked stiffly, much more slowly than usual.

"You remember that evening when you and your girl Lucy were here and we
all sang silly old wartime numbers?"

"Of course I remember."

"Cris was so happy that night.  I don't think I've ever seen him
happier than that."

Before I left Windhammer I said Lucy and I would come down and stay
with Angie again, as often as we could.  I'm sure I meant it, but I
knew that our visits would diminish and she would be left, like so many
people who are old and unhappy, for most of the time alone.

I went back to London and took a taxi to Megapolis from Liverpool
Street Station.  There was a gloomy excitement about the place, which
seems to be the usual reaction to news of death.  I tried to avoid most
of my colleagues and the pitying looks they gave me.  I sat at my desk,
doing nothing, lost and lonely, staring straight in front of me.  Then
I got three phone calls: good, bad and extraordinary.

The first was from Mr.  Zellenek, who said he was sorry he'd had to
rush away 'to call LA', but he'd had a fantastic evening, my
performance had triumphed over all technical difficulties and would I
lightly pencil in a Tuesday in three weeks' time for a lunch at the
Malibu Club?  My mind was on other things but I saw no particular
reason not to accept.

The second was from Sydney Pollitter.

"I want to say this in all sincerity, without any desire to flatter
you, Progmire, or bullshit in any way, that you were the closest to
him.  You sat on the steps of the throne, as it were, and I was far
away in the ante-chamber.  What a terrible loss to Megapolis plc and to
England!  Words cannot express the sense of utter deprivation one
feels, at such a moment."

Then shut up and leave me alone was what I wanted to say.  But Sid
Vicious gave me some Shakespeare.

'..  . and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And
say to all the world, "This was a man for all seasons!"

'"This was a man!"

"What?"

"Mark Antony about Brutus.  He simply says, "This was a man!"  Nothing
at all about "for all seasons"."

"Of course.  How well you put it.

"This was a man!"  By the way, Progmire ..."

"Yes, Mr.  Pollitter?"

"Have you heard any whispers, any sort of buzz going around, about a
possible new chairman of the Board?"

"Nothing at all.  It's very quiet around here."

"Of course, Cris Bellhanger would be a pretty hard act to follow."

"Impossible.  Must rush now.  Goodbye."  I put down the phone, feeling
it would take a long, hot bath before I was thoroughly clean again.

Then Justin Glover rang and said something extraordinary.

"I've got a letter here for you from Cris Bellhanger."

"What do you mean?"  For a wild moment I thought Cris might be alive,
but Justin explained.

"I'd sent him a packet of things to sign.  Documents about his
property.  He must have posted them back on the day of the accident.
The post's ghastly and they've only just arrived.  One of them's an
envelope for you.  It's marked PRIVATE.  TO BE OPENED BY NO ONE EXCEPT
PHILIP PROGMIRE.  I'm to hand it to you personally."

"What on earth can it be?"

"I can't imagine.  Why don't you call in on your way home and find
out?"

So I left Megapolis and drove to Justin's office in Lincoln's Inn.  He
told me that Cris had given him final, written instructions not to
enforce the damages.  Then he gave me my envelope.  I saw Cris's
handwriting and I signed for it.  I took it back to Muswell Hill with a
message, so it seemed to me then, from beyond the grave.

Lucy had gone out to a legal dinner with one of the partners in her
firm and I was glad to be alone.  I sat in the kitchen

with Cris's envelope on the table and looked at it.  Then I made myself
a cup of tea.  Quite a while after that, I poured myself a drink.  I
felt as I had when exam results arrived, or the letter telling me
whether or not I'd got into Oxford; I wanted to postpone the
possibility of bad news as long as possible.  At last, despising myself
for such a prolonged hesitation, I picked up the envelope and tore it
open.  I pulled out a wad of Windhammer notepaper covered with Cris's
handwriting, clear and bold like everything about him.

When I first read the letter I think I was just listening to Cris's
voice.  I could hear him as clearly as though he were with me, having
come into the room in a mysterious and miraculous fashion.  Then I read
it again, and again.  At last I knew everything, the simple explanation
of all that had happened.  I didn't yet know what I thought about it.
The front-door bell rang.  I pushed the letter into the table drawer,
among knives and corkscrews, and went to answer it.

It was an autumn evening, and already dark.  He stood in a long black
coat, his collar turned up, his hands deep in his pockets.  He looked,
to my surprise, far from triumphant.

"All right," I said to Dunster.

"He's dead.  What the hell do you want now?"

"I'd like to talk to you, old man.  I did try and phone you but you
were out somewhere.  Spare me a bit of your time.  The fact is, I'm
worried."

Chapter Twenty-nine

I could have slammed the door in his face.  I could have assaulted him,
taken him by the throat, perhaps more effectively than I had in the
garden of Alexandra Palace when he told me about Beth.  There was a
moment when I felt I could have killed him.  But to attack Dunster then
would have been to support a conclusion about Cris's death which I was
sure he'd come to already.  I needed to know what he thought and what
further plans he had for destruction.  So I stood aside and I let him
into my house.

"So long since I've been here."

"Yes."

The light was on in the kitchen and the door open.  He walked in and
sat at the table.  I was standing.

"You're comfortable here, are you, Progmire?  Natasha says you've found
a girlfriend."

"For God's sake.  Is that what you came here to talk about?"

"No.  I heard what happened to Bellhanger."

"I expect everyone did."

"They said it was an accident.  Is that what it was?"

"Yes.  It was an accident.  No question about it.  Is that what's
worrying you?"

"Not exactly."  I should have known that.  I should have known that any
idea of his having driven a man to such desperate lengths would only
have satisfied his appalling sense of justice, but he asked no more
questions.  Instead he surprised me by saying, "It's that bugger
Midgeley."

"Midgeley?"

"Yes.  He's changed his mind.  Changed it completely.  I'm not sure what I ought to do about it.  I say, old man.  I couldn't have a drink or something?"

It was the first time, I swear it was the very first time, in my life
that I had heard Dunster say he wasn't sure about anything.  I was so
surprised that I poured him a drink from the bottle on the table.

"He's going to write an article about it in that bloody Peace magazine
of his.  He's written to the judge.  He's written to the Home
Secretary.  God knows what they're meant to do about it.  Aren't you
having one yourself?"

"Not now."  I didn't want to drink with him and I had to give my full
attention to the conversion of Midgeley.

"When that ghastly little barrister of yours suggested that what he
heard was Bellhanger saying, "The Germans must have done it," he began
to have his doubts."

"He seemed absolutely sure in court."

"In court he was.  Now he says he didn't have time to think, or pray
about it.  Apparently he's done a lot of thinking since.  And praying
too, come to that."

"And he's not so sure?"

"It started like that.  Now he says he's positive that your man's
version was right."

"I don't see that it matters much.  The jury didn't believe him,
anyway.  If they had, you wouldn't have lost the case."  I was
delighted to be able to remind him of that, at least.

"It matters to him.  He says it matters to his conscience.  And, of
course, the point is, old man, it matters to me."

I sat down then, opposite Dunster at my kitchen table.  I felt
exceptionally calm.  He was hunched over his drink.  The light fell on
his face, which seemed, at that moment, a mask of anxiety.

"Why are you so bothered?  The case is over.  I saw the solicitor
today.  Cris had instructed him not to enforce the claim for damages,
or costs.  It's exactly what I told you."

"I'm not worried about that.  I'm worried about the truth."

I said nothing.  I sat waiting to hear more.

"What did he think the truth was, exactly?"

"You never talked to Midgeley, did you?  No one from your side got at
him?"

"We never set eyes on him.  Not till he turned up in court."

"Yes.  That's what he said.  And you haven't seen him since?"

"Of course not."

"He said that too.  He said no one persuaded him to change his
story."

"Why should we bother?  After all, we won."

"I was so bloody sure it was true."  Dunster was holding his glass
tightly.  He lifted it to his mouth and seemed to force himself to
drink.

"I had all the evidence.  I had what Jaunty told me and what Sweeting
told me.  And I had Midgeley."

"And Jaunty changed his mind and so did Sweeting.  And now Midgeley has
too."

"Yes.  He's the worst.  He was rock hard, and now he's gone back on it
all."

"Perhaps it just doesn't do to be too certain.  You know I found Lester
Maddocks, the explosives man?"

"You never told me."  Dunster seemed hurt that I hadn't taken him into
my confidence.

"Why the hell should I?  You were against us."

"What did he say?"

"He confirmed Cris's story.  He said the Germans did it."

"Then why didn't you call him as a witness?"  Dunster sounded
hopeful.

"That was all explained in court.  He'd gone missing, out of the
country."  I looked at Dunster and summed up against him.

"So now no one says Cris was guilty.  Not one single witness anyone's
found.  That fact is, old man, you never had a bloody case at all!"

There was a long silence.  I could hear the kitchen clock ticking and a
police siren somewhere quite far away.  I felt I had scored a hit but I
never expected the astonishing result.

"Do you think," Dunster asked me, 'that I may possibly have been wrong
about it?"

"Completely wrong.  Utterly wrong.  I always knew that.  I always told
you so.  You wouldn't listen.  You wouldn't be put off.  You had this
idea about Cris.  This fantasy."

"Fantasy?"  He said the word as though he loathed it.

"Total fantasy."

Another long silence.  Dunster had something to ask and I wasn't about
to help him to ask it.

"And it really was an accident?  What happened to Bell-hanger?"

"I've told you that.  The doctor says it was an accident.  Everyone
says so.  Cris had won the case, hadn't he?  He'd got everything to
live for.  At least your stupid mistake didn't kill anybody."

"A stupid mistake?  Do you honestly think that's what it was?"

"Of course.  I've got no doubt about it."

"Then what can I do?"

"You said you were worried."

"I am, old man.  I am, quite honestly."

"I think you should be.  What can you do?  You can't do anything.
Except worry about it.  Worry about it for the rest of your life.  I'm
sorry.  That's all I can say.  Good-night, Dunster."

He'd finished his drink.  He stood up and went to the door.  Before he
left, he turned round and looked at me reproachfully.

"Old man, we've known each other for a long time."

"Too long."

"I came in good faith.  I expected a bit more of you."

"You made another mistake.  You had no right to expect anything."

When he had gone, when I heard the front door bang after him, I opened
the table drawer.  The letter was there, among the cutlery.  I took it
out carefully and read it for the last time.

Dear Philip You are the only person in the world to whom I can write
this and I feel, after all these years, that I have to tell someone.
When you have read it I know I can trust you to destroy this letter,
and never to say a word about it to anyone.  Angie, of course, must
never get to hear about it.

I don't know how I can explain the way we felt during the Italian
campaign.  We were all tired, past the point of exhaustion.  The war
was four years old then.  Most of us had fought across the desert.  I'd
done a bit in Yugoslavia.  Now we were fighting a battle we didn't
really understand.  After all, the Italians had surrendered.  Why
couldn't we forget Italy and get on with the French invasion?  What was
the point of all that bloodshed?  A lot of the men were disenchanted,
some near the point of mutiny.

But that's not the whole story.  You don't know what it's like to be
fighting in a war.  I pray to God you never learn.  There's fear and
boredom and anger and an awful sense of unreality.  What've you done
that anyone should be trying to kill you?  Why should you, aged twenty
something, be dragged off to kill people who never did you any
particular harm?  Then it becomes unreal.  They aren't people you're
killing but a sort of abstraction called 'the enemy'.  The enemy are
nothing like you, of course.  They're brutal, without feelings, and the
best thing is for them to die in large numbers.  At least, that's what
you're meant to think.

I want to tell you what happened at Pomeriggio.  We knew that the local
fascists, a collection of brutes who made the German Army seem like the
Peace Corps, met in the old, disused church, the place they called the
Chiesa Nuova.  We'd kept a watch and we saw them go in there at the
same time every night.  They kept a few supplies there and they'd get
together and plan some new bit of devilment.

So our plan was to mine the church and blow up the fascists.  Strangely
enough, they didn't take the trouble to guard the place properly when
they weren't using it.  They didn't have much stowed there anyway, so I
suppose they didn't bother.  We got all the explosives packed as soon
as it got dark.  Maddocks, our explosives man, revealed a not
unexpected talent for picking locks and, as I say, the church was deserted until the fascists showed up, which was regularly at 9.30, after they'd enjoyed a good black-market dinner.

We got a timing device fixed for 9.45 and then we retreated up to a
high point where we could watch the fireworks.  You may think it
strange that we should want to see a number of people blown to
smithereens, even if they were fascists, but strange things happen in a
war.  To us it was a job, a technical challenge and we wanted to see it
succeed.  So what happened?  I'm trying to get back to that moment, so
I can tell you exactly how it felt at the time.

Around 9.30 we saw lights coming up the unmade road from the town to
the old church.  It was a dark night but very still.  Then we heard the
sound of singing.  Someone, I think it might have been Maddocks, said,
"Christ, the bloody fascists are singing hymns!"  I believe we laughed;
as I say, we were exhausted and not quite sane.  Then we saw white
figures boys in surplices or something like it, some were carrying
candles; there was a tall banner with the Saint's picture on it and the
priest giving out benedictions.  We could see all that in the
candlelight when they passed immediately below us.  Then came the
fascists, the thugs in bits and pieces of uniform, all armed as they
always were when they met at the church.  And then and that was the
sight that gave me a dry mouth and a rising panic - a long procession,
it seemed never-ending, of men, women, children, young girls and
grandmothers, old men walking with sticks and boys not yet out of
school.  A lot of them had candles, most of them were singing.  They
were on their way to church, to meet their death on a saint's day no
one had told us about.

"What the hell do we do?"  I was Captain Cris, and meant to be in
command.  But there I was asking my sergeant for orders.  He said,
"Bastards!  They all gave our boys to the fascists.  Got them shot,
didn't they?  Don't lift a finger for them."  That's exactly what he
said, so far as I can remember.  You see, Philip, I'm not trying to
excuse anything, but at least I can tell you the truth now.  Blaker's
dead, so he hasn't got anything to worry about and he always did
worry.

I don't know what you'd have done, and I hope you never have to make a
decision like that.  I don't know what Dunster would have done, would he have rushed down that mountain to tell the people, and been shot by the fascists?  Perhaps we could have shouted something from where we were.  Perhaps we could have fired warning shots, but that would have given away our position.  I knew what the others wanted to do, and I suppose I felt a rising anger at that pious procession, people who could betray our men and see them executed and then go off to pray.  What we did, I suppose, was the worst thing we could have done.  We did nothing.  We turned our backs and climbed away up and across the mountain towards our camp.  We were too far away to see what we had done but, of course, we heard the explosion.

Jaunty Blair got to know about it.  He got to know about everything. We
talked about it that night and I told him we must say the Germans did
it.  Well, I couldn't have the people in the village against us.
Anyway, we weren't meant to be fighting that kind of war.  It was only
later that Jaunty began to suggest that the whole incident would look
pretty bad if it got known.  He told me he was afraid the men might
start talking.  He also hinted, when he was searching for war criminals
in Austria, that he wouldn't like to have to add my name to the list.
Money solves a good many problems and I had it.  I always met Jaunty's
demands; he was sensible enough not to make them excessive.  I helped
Maddocks start up various businesses and, even though he'd deserted, I
bought Natty Suiting a bar in Maltraverso.  Sergeant Blaker was beyond
help.

Of course I thought about it a lot after the war.  I used all the
arguments.  I told myself that bomber pilots over Dresden and Hamburg
killed men, women and children in their thousands.  Civilians had been
blown up nightly in London and Coventry and Berlin.  My first duty,
after all, was to my men and I couldn't risk their lives.  I used all
those arguments, but I couldn't help but find myself guilty.

I suppose that's why I wanted to do the War Crimes series.  I didn't
have any desperate urge to expose myself; I didn't want to make a
public confession.  But I wanted to say that ordinary people, quite
decent people as a matter of fact, could do extraordinarily brutal and
merciless things if a war gave them permission.  I wanted that to be
understood.  So I started something that our friend Dunster finished.
Does that serve me right?  Perhaps you'll think so.

Why didn't I admit the truth of his attacks and explain it all, as I
have tried to explain it to you?  To start with I had Angie to
consider.  She could only be protected, I thought, she could only be
kept safe and happy if I won the case.  Imagine the headlines if I had
admitted blowing up a church full of worshippers.  After that, Dunster
would have been at my throat forever.  He might have gone on to find
out more about the money I'd paid, settling blackmail he'd call it, and
I could never stop him.  So I had to win, and to do that I had to
lie.

Winning has been the hardest part to bear.  Now it's over, I think I
might have been able to cope with losing.  You see, I've twice run away
from the truth.  Once in the night in Pomeriggio and once in broad
daylight in that dreary law court.  It's time I stopped running away.

Luckily my father had an old hammer shotgun.  When I was a boy we had a
neighbour who had to get through a hedge to collect a pheasant he'd
shot.  He went down on his knees to crawl through and pulled the gun
after him.  By the barrel.  The hammer caught on a low branch and the
gun went off and shot him through the head.  It's an accident that can
happen with that type of weapon.

You don't have to feel sorry for me.  Apart from this one thing, so
unexpected and so long ago, I've had a very happy life.  Angle's been
marvelous, and I think you and I have always hit it off, haven't we?
I've always felt we understood each other in those terrible board
meetings, and I was pleased to make friends with someone too young to
give a damn about the war.  I would like you to be happy and have no
regrets on my account.  You were always on my side and supported me,
even when I shouldn't have been supported.

I'm sorry to burden you with this knowledge, but there is no one else
in the world I can tell.  Forget it all now and burn this letter.  The
past is over and done with.

Hope Sid Vicious doesn't bore you to extinction when he's chairman.
Tell him not to make a speech at my memorial service.  If he does I
won't listen.

Ever, Cris That was the last time I read the letter.  I got a
baking-tin and put the pages in it, then I found the kitchen matches.
The flames shot up high over the table for a minute and then died down.
When only ashes remained I put them in the bin and went to bed.  There
was nothing more I could do.  The past, as Cris had said, was over.

Chapter Thirty

I grieved for Cris but grief is never a full-time occupation.  Three
weeks later I was back in the Malibu Club with a distinct stirring of
excitement at the prospect before me.  Things were already changing at
Megapolis.  Sydney Pollitter had been appointed chairman more or less
automatically.  He was an unknown figure to most of the staff because
he never appeared in the canteen with or without his jacket.  I had
been told by Gary Penrose that he 'didn't feel the need to work closely
with any particular member of the staff and I no longer visited the
chairman's office.  All in all, it seemed a good time to think of ways
of escape from Megapolis.

Mr.  Zellenek arrived exactly a quarter of an hour late, accompanied by
an unnaturally tall woman whom he introduced as his "Girl Friday, Posie
Mendelssohn.  When they entered together, she looked like a tall grass,
waving over some small and hairy insect.  Like Peregrine Gryce, Maurice
Zellenek seemed to favour the larger personal assistant.

"I told Posie here all about you, Mr.  Progmire.  She's been longing to
meet you, sir."

"Zelly's never been so enthusiastic about a project."  Posie's big,
dark eyes were full of adoration.  I was flattered by this until I
discovered that she bestowed the same melting glances at the waiter who
took our order, and even at complete strangers at adjoining tables.

"To play roles as far apart as Trigorin and the Scarlet Pimpernel. What
range, Mr.  Progmire!  Larry might have done it.  Say what you like
about Larry Olivier, he sure had range."

"Range," Posie told me, 'is what Zelly admires most of all."

"Range," Zelly repeated, 'is the name of the game.  Have you ever
considered taking a crack at Hamlet?

"I did it once.  It was a long time ago."

"You did it once!  What a track record, and you're so cool about it.
You're still a young man, Mr.  Progmire.  You have all sorts of career
opportunities opening before you.  You know how old I am?  I want you
to guess."

He offered me his small, smiling face to examine, unnervingly bald
above and fringed with hair below.

"Zelly is sixty-nine," Posie let me into the secret.

"But he keeps in shape."

"I work out, Mr.  Progmire.  With the stationary bicycle.  Five miles
every morning and I never leave my bathroom.  You know who the
archetypal figure of today is, naturally?"

"I'm not sure."

"Tell him, Posie."

The Girl Friday looked at me adoringly and whispered sexily, "The
chartered accountant!"

"You see," Mr.  Zellenek looked at his assistant with enormous pride,
as though she had just revealed the secret of the universe "Posie's got
the message.  Who is the guru of our days, the power behind the throne,
the priest in the confessional?  Nobody but you, Mr.  Progmire."

"Me?"  I had never thought of myself as a priest before.

"Forget doctors.  Doctors went out with Dr.  Kildare.  Forget lawyers.
Perry Mason put paid to lawyers.  Social workers?  Out of date, with
all due respect to your great company.  No, Mr.  Progmire.  We are
planning a new series.  Open-ended and with international appeal.  And
you know what we shall call it?"

"I couldn't guess."

"We shall call it Accountants' "As simple as that," Posie whispered.

"Posie's right.  That says it all.  One principal character is a guy
about your age, I'd say.  Overworked, marriage breaking up, schemed against by the younger accountants from the floor below. Involved with some girl accountant, most probably.  And he's the one who gets to know the client's secrets.  You would have a natural understanding of such a character, Mr.  Progmire."

"Oh yes," I said, "I believe I would."

"Then will you come on board?"

"Zelly hopes tremendously that it will be a yes."

"It's very tempting, of course."

"Tempting," Mr.  Zellenek admitted, 'is exactly what it is."

"The trouble is' - I didn't want to make difficulties "I haven't got an
Equity card."

"Quite unnecessary."

"What?"

"Zelly's right."  Posie confirmed it.

"Absolutely no Equity card required.  Not for a technical adviser."

I suppose I must have looked crestfallen, as the door slammed on my
entry into show business.

"We want you to technically advise, Mr.  Progmire.  We're going to rely
on your experience and expertise to get every detail of an accountant's
life true and convincing."

"He wanted you for that?"

I had got home, tired and a little dispirited after my meeting with Mr.
Zellenek and Posie Mendelssohn.  A hard day at the office, I had
discovered, isn't nearly so exhausting as lunch at the Malibu Club.

"That was all he wanted."

"He didn't want you to act at all?"

"Not in the least."

"Not even an extra in board meetings?"

"Not even that."

We were in the kitchen.  Lucy was pouring tea.  Her hand was unsteady
so she missed the mug and splashed the table.  Her sudden affliction
was uncontrollable laughter.

"So you're not going to become a star!"  She only just managed to get
it out.

"Not this week, anyway."

"Did you really think you might be?"

"Everything's possible."

"Of course.  Everything."

It was a sound I hadn't heard much lately, the sound of laughter.  I
could do nothing but join in.  I don't know if that was the moment when
I fell in love, or if I suddenly recognized what I should have known
for a long time.

It was in that dead week between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve when
hardly anyone goes to work and a curiously eerie silence, as well as a
powdering of snow, had fallen on Muswell Hill.  An elderly Volkswagen
car drew up in front of our house at midday and out got Natasha and a
tall, dark young man with a plum-coloured velvet waistcoat and a black
cap.  She introduced him as Jasper Wren.  Once again she brought me
presents, including a bunch of flowers, only a little wilted, for Lucy.
All that had happened at our last meeting seemed to have been
forgotten.  She thanked me for the money I had sent her and gave me
some green candles, an Edwardian biscuit tin and an interesting
shoehorn she had picked up in the Porto-hello Road.  Throughout the
presentation Jasper Wren preserved a discreet silence and sat staring
out of the window.  When I went to get them drinks Tash followed me out
into the kitchen.

"What happened to George?"  I asked her.

"I gave him the boot."

"But he seemed so fond of you."

"I know.  That was his trouble.  Too horribly devoted.  George didn't
represent any sort of a challenge at all."

"Is Jasper a challenge then?"

"I'll say."

"He doesn't talk much."

"No.  He's impenetrable."  She said it with considerable pride.

"One of the silent sort?"

"I've got absolutely no idea what's going on inside him."

"That's what you like?"

"Well, it is interesting.  Dad, I wanted to tell you about Dunster."

"What about him?"

"Well, it's very odd.  He's sort of changed."

"Has he?"  I uncorked a bottle and tried one of Jasper Wren's looks of
detachment.

"He seems to have rather lost his pip."

"Tash, what on earth do you mean?"

"Well, he hangs around the house, worrying if he was right about that
case.  It's not like him at all.  He seems full of doubts."

"I'm not surprised.  He made a lot of mistakes."

"But it is not like him to worry about mistakes.  To be honest, I think
Mum's getting just a bit fed up with him.  More than a bit,
actually."

"Perhaps he's not a challenge any more."

"No."

I found a tray and put the glasses and the bottle on it.  I put out
cheese biscuits which Tash began to eat thoughtfully.

"Whatever's happened," I said, 'it's bloody marvelous to see you here
again."

"Oh, do shut up, Dad.  You're beginning to sound like George!"

When we got back into the sitting-room Jasper Wren had taken off his
cap.  A black lock of hair had fallen across his pale forehead, and he
never said a word.

Lucy and I were married in the Muswell Hill register office.  Natasha
came and the ever-silent Jasper Wren.  Nothing could keep the Mummers
away and a reception was held in the Mummery bar.  At one happy moment
I saw Lucy and Tash talking together in a corner and I realized that
something new and entirely different was beginning.  Cris had gone,
with a wave of his hand and without turning round as he left us on the steps
of the Law Courts.  The truth had been told and the dead at Pomeriggio
had been avenged at last.  But above all, Dunster had gone; my Dunster,
the great challenge, the perpetual opponent, had vanished as completely
as those dead spirits, to be replaced by a new and doubting stranger
with whom even Beth was apparently dissatisfied.

Life was going to seem very odd without Dunster.

PfW

John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist and former practising
barrister.  During the war he worked with the Crown Film Unit and
published a number of novels before turning to the theatre.  He has
written many film scripts as well as stage, radio and television plays,
including A Voyage Round My Father, the Rumpole plays, which won him
the British Academy Writer of the Year award, and the adaptation of
Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.  Penguin publish his collections
of Rumpole stories, two volumes of his plays, his acclaimed
autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage, and In Character and Character
Parts, which are collections of his interviews.  His best selling
novels Summer's Lease, Paradise Postponed and its sequel Titmuss
Regained have been successful television series.

John Mortimer lives with his wife and their two daughters in what was
once his father's house in the Chilterns.

Jacket illustration by Cathie Felstead

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