Contents

EPILOGUE

THE sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon; everywhere the searchlights clustered and hovered, then swept apart; here and there pitchy clouds drifted and billowed; now and then a huge flash momentarily froze the serene fireside glow. Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.

‘Pure Turner,’ said Guy Crouchback, enthusiastically; he came fresh to these delights.

‘No,’ said Guy firmly. He would not accept correction on matters of art from this former sporting-journalist. ‘Not Martin. The sky-line is too low. The scale is less than Babylonian.’

They stood at the top of St James’s Street. Half-way down Turtle’s Club was burning briskly. From Piccadilly to the Palace the whole jumble of incongruous façades was caricatured by the blaze.

Guns were banging away in the neighbouring parks. A stick of bombs fell thunderously somewhere in the direction of Victoria Station.

On the pavement opposite Turtle’s a group of progressive novelists in firemen’s uniform were squirting a little jet of water into the morning-room.

Guy was momentarily reminded of Holy Saturday at Downside; early gusty March mornings of boyhood; the doors wide open in the unfinished butt of the Abbey; half the school coughing; fluttering linen; the glowing brazier and the priest with his hyssop, paradoxically blessing fire with water.

He relit his cigar and immediately a voice near their knees exclaimed: ‘Put that light out.’

They looked over the railings beside them and descried in the depths of the area a helmet, lettered ARP.

A crescent scream immediately, it seemed, over their heads; a thud which raised the paving-stones under their feet; a tremendous incandescence just north of Piccadilly; a pentecostal wind; the remaining panes of glass above them scattered in lethal splinters about the street.

‘You know, I think he’s right. We had better leave this to the civilians.’

Soldier and airman trotted briskly to the steps of Bellamy’s. As they reached the doors, the engines overhead faded and fell silent and only the crackling flames at Turtle’s disturbed the midnight hush.

‘Ah, you’re new to it. The bore is that it goes on night after night. It can be pretty dangerous too with these fire-engines and ambulances driving all over the place. I wish I could have an African holiday. My awful Air Marshal won’t let me go. He seems to have taken a fancy to me.’

In the front hall Job, the night-porter, greeted them with unnatural unction. He had had recourse to the bottle. His was a lonely and precarious post, hemmed in with plate glass. No one at that season grudged him his relaxation. Tonight he was acting – grossly over-acting – the part of a stage butler.

‘Good evening, sir. Permit me to welcome you to England, home and safety. Good evening, my lord. Air Marshal Beech is in the billiard-room.’

‘So I was informed, sir, by Colonel Blackhouse. All the spirit store of Turtle’s, gentlemen, running to waste in the streets.’

Guy and Ian entered the back-hall. ‘So your Air Marshal got into the club after all.’

‘Yes, it was a shocking business. They held an election during what the papers call “the Battle of Britain”, when the Air Force was for a moment almost respectable.’

‘My dear fellow, it’s a nightmare for everyone., The windows of the card-room had been blown out and bridge-players, clutching their score sheets, filled the hall. Brandy and whisky were flowing here, if not in the gutters outside.

‘In the last war we used to send fellows to Africa when they were under a cloud. What will you drink?’

‘They come here sometimes when they’re cleaning. Timid little fellows. Don’t give any trouble.’

‘Heard about Guy’s balls-up at Dakar? Tell him, Guy. It’s a good story.’

Presently his brother-in-law, Arthur Box-Bender, appeared in shirt-sleeves from the billiard-room, accompanied by another Member of Parliament, a rather gruesome crony of his named Elderbury.

‘D’you know what put me off that lost shot?’ said Elderbury. ‘I trod on someone.’

‘I haven’t been out myself, sir. A lot of the members have been talking about it.’

‘Tommy, what’s all this you told Job about the streets running with wine?’

Guy accompanied Tommy Blackhouse. The billiard-room was full but no one was playing. In the shadows under the table lurked a human shape.

‘Are you all right down there?’ Tommy asked kindly. ‘Want a drink or anything?’

‘I am perfectly all right, thank you. I am merely obeying the regulations. In an air raid it is the duty of every officer and man not on duty to take the nearest and safest cover wherever he may be. As the senior officer present I thought I should set an example.’

The figure now revealed itself as Air Marshal Beech. Tommy was a professional soldier with a career ahead. It was his instinct to be agreeable to the senior officers of all services.

‘I want my car. You might just call Air Headquarters, Crouchback, and have it sent round.’

The Air Marshal’s small eyes looked suspicious. He began to say one thing, thought better of it, said ‘Thanks,’ and left.

‘Oh, he’s not such a bad fellow. He’s putting in a lot of useful work at the moment.’

‘It’s going to be a long war, Guy. One may need all the friends one can get before it’s over. Sorry about your trouble at Dakar. I happened to see the file yesterday. But I don’t think it will come to much. There were some damn silly minutes on it, though. You ought to see it gets to the top level at once before too many people commit themselves.’

‘As far as I know. She’s left Claridge’s. Someone told me she’d moved out of London somewhere. Didn’t care for the blitz.’

From the way Tommy spoke, Guy thought that, perhaps, Virginia was not entirely all right.

‘Oh, I’m just messing round with HOO. As a matter of fact there’s something rather attractive in the air I can’t talk about. I’ll know for certain in a day or two. I might be able to fit you in. Have you reported to your regiment yet?’

‘Well, be careful or you’ll find yourself part of the general parcel-post. I should stick around Bellamy’s as much as you can. This is where one gets the amusing jobs nowadays. That is, if you want an amusing job.’

They returned to the hall. It was thinning out since the All Clear. Air Marshal Beech was on the fender talking to the two Members of Parliament.

‘… You back-benchers, Elderbury, can do quite a lot if you set yourselves at it. Push the Ministries. Keep pushing…’

As in a stage farce Ian Kilbannock’s head emerged cautiously from the wash-room, where he had taken refuge from his chief. He withdrew hastily but too late.

‘Ian. Just the man I want. Tool off to Headquarters and get the gen about tonight’s do and ring through to me at home.’

‘No, no. You must know what I mean. The subject I discussed yesterday with Air Marshal Dime.’

But the rebuke never took full shape; the strip, as he would have preferred it, was not torn off, for at that moment there appeared from the outer hall the figure of Job, strangely illuminated. In some strictly private mood of his high drama Job had possessed himself of one of the six-branched silver candelabra from the dining-room; this he bore aloft, rigid but out of the straight so that six little dribbles of wax bespattered his livery. All in the back-hall fell silent and watched fascinated as this fantastic figure advanced upon the Air Marshal. A pace distant he bowed; wax splashed on the carpet before him.

‘Sir,’ he announced sonorously, ‘your carriage awaits you.’ Then he turned, and, moving with the confidence of a sleep-walker, retreated whence he had come.

The silence endured for a moment. Then: ‘Really,’ began the Air Marshal, ‘that man –’ but his voice was lost in the laughter. Elderbury was constitutionally a serious man, but when he did see a joke he enjoyed it extravagantly. He had felt resentful of Air Marshal Beech since missing an easy cannon through stepping on him. Elderbury chortled.

The Air Marshal looked from face to happy face. Even Box-Bender’s was gleeful. Ian Kilbannock was laughing more uproariously than anyone. The Air Marshal rose.

As the doors, which in the past two centuries had welcomed grandee and card sharper, duellist and statesman, closed behind Air Marshal Beech, he wondered, not for the first time in his brief membership, whether Bellamy’s was all it was cracked up to be.

BOMBS were falling again by the time that Guy reached his hotel, but far away now, somewhere to the east among the docks. He slept fitfully and when the All Clear finally woke him the rising sun was disputing the sky with the sinking fires of the raid.

He was due in barracks that morning and he set out as uncertainly as on the day he first joined.

At Charing Cross trains were running almost to time. Every seat was taken. He jammed his valise across the corridor with his suitcase a few yards from him, making for himself a seat and a defence.

There were Halberdier badges in most of the carriages and the traffic at his destination was all for the barracks. The men hoisted their kit bags and climbed on board a waiting lorry. The handful of young officers squeezed together into two taxis. Guy took the third alone. As he passed the guard-room he had a brief, vague impression that there was something rather odd about the sentry. He drove to the Officers’ House. No one was about. The preceding taxis disappeared in the direction of New Quarters. Guy left his luggage in the ante-room hall and crossed the square to the offices. A squad approached bearing buckets, their faces transformed as though by the hand of Circe from those of men to something less than the beasts. A muffled voice articulated: ‘Eyes right.’

Ten pig-faces, visions of Jerome Bosch, swung towards him. Unnerved, automatically, Guy said: ‘Eyes front, please, Corporal.’

He entered the adjutant’s office, stood to attention and saluted. Two obscene fronts of canvas and rubber and talc were raised from the table. As though from beneath layers of bedclothes a voice said: ‘Where’s your gas-mask?’

Guy saluted, turned about and marched off. He put on his gas-mask and straightened his cap before the looking-glass, which just a year ago had so often reflected his dress cap and high blue collar and a face full of hope and purpose. He gazed at the gross snout, then returned to the Adjutant. A company had fallen-in on the square; normal, pink young faces. In the orderly-room the Adjutant and Sergeant-Major sat undisguised.

‘Well, remember in future that every Wednesday from 1000 to 1100 hours all ranks take anti-gas precautions. That’s a Command Standing Order.’

And then slowly, after all the masquerade with the gas-masks, old memories revived.

It was the nameless major, reduced now to captain, who had appeared at Penkirk and vanished three days later at Brookwood.

‘Of course. I say, I’m awfully sorry for not recognizing you. There have been so many flaps since. So many chaps through my hands. How did you get here? Oughtn’t you to be in Freetown?’

‘Not a word. I dare say your papers have gone to the Training Depot. Or up to Penkirk to the Fifth Battalion. Or down to Brook Park to the Sixth. Or to HOO. We’ve been expanding like the devil in the last two months. Records can’t keep up. Well, I’ve about finished here. Carry on, Sergeant-Major. I shall be at the Officers’ House if you want me. Come along, Crouchback.’

He and Guy went to the ante-room. It was not the room Guy had known, where he had sprained his knee on Guest Night. A dark rectangle over the fireplace marked the spot where ‘The Unbroken Square’ had hung; the bell from the Dutch frigate, the Afridi banner, the gilt idol from Burma, the Napoleonic cuirasses, the Ashanti drum, the loving-cup from Barbados, Tipu Sultan’s musket, all were gone.

‘Pretty bloody, isn’t it? Everything has been stored away underground since the blitz.’ Then from the bleakest spot in the universal desolation: ‘I’ve lost a pip, too.’

‘I expected it,’ said the Adjutant. ‘I wasn’t due for promotion for another two years in the regular way. I thought the war might hurry things along a bit. It has for most chaps. It did for me for a month or two. But it didn’t last.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said the Adjutant crossly. ‘Other regiments still manage to live quite decently. The Captain-Commandant is a changed character. Austerity is the order now. Trust the Corps to do it in a big way. We’re sleeping four in a room and the mess subscription has been halved. We practically live on rations – like wild beasts,’ he specified woefully but inaptly. ‘I wouldn’t stay here long if I were you. By the way, why are you here?’

‘I came home with the Brigadier.’ That seemed at the moment the most convenient explanation. ‘You know he’s back, of course?’

‘No. Nothing ever seems to come to us here. Perhaps they’ve lost our address. The Corps got on very nicely the size it was. All this expansion has been the devil. They’ve taken my servant away – a man I’d had eight years. I have to share an old sweat with the Regimental Surgeon. That’s what we’ve come to. They’ve even taken the band.’

‘There’s a stove in my office but the telephone keeps ringing. Take your choice.’

‘My dear chap, as far as I’m concerned you’re still in Africa. I’d send you on leave but you aren’t on our strength. D’you want to see the Captain-Commandant? That could be arranged.’

‘No. I was just packed off like a parcel. The Brigadier left me at the aerodrome saying I’d be hearing from him.’

Guy observed that this unknown soldier was collecting all his resolution for a desperate decision; at length: ‘All right, I’ll take a chance on it. You can use some leave, I suppose?’

‘Yes, I do. Very well.’ Exhilarated to find at last a firm mental foothold: ‘Apthorpe. Temporary officer who somehow got made second-in-command of the Battalion. I thought him a bit mad.’

‘He’s dead now. I promised I’d collect his possessions and hand them over to his heir. I could do that in the next few days.’

‘Excellent. If there’s any bloodiness, that catches them two ways. We can call it compassionate or disembarkation leave, just as the cat jumps. Staying to lunch in the mess? I shouldn’t.’

‘If you hang about, there may be some transport going to the station. Two months ago I could have laid it on. That’s all been stopped.’

‘You know where to find the telephone? Don’t forget to leave twopence in the box. I think I’ll get back to my office. As you say, it’s too cold here.’

Guy lingered. He entered the mess under the gallery which had lately resounded with ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’. The portraits were gone from the walls, the silver from the side tables. There was little now to distinguish it from the dining-hall of Kut-al-Imara House. An AT came in from the serving door whistling; she saw Guy and continued to whistle as she rubbed a cloth over the bare boards of a table.

There was a click of balls from the billiard-room. Guy looked in and saw chiefly a large khaki behind. The player struck and widely missed an easy cannon. He stood up and turned.

‘Wait for the shot,’ he said with a stern but paternal air which purged the rebuke of all offence.

He was in his shirt-sleeves, revealing braces striped with the Halberdier colours. A red-tabbed tunic hung on the wall. Guy recognized him as an elderly colonel who had pottered about the mess a year ago. ‘Care for a hundred up?’ and’ Not much news in the papers today,’ had been his constant refrain.

‘Puts a fellow off, you see,’ said the Colonel. ‘Care for a hundred up?’

He padded round to his ball and studied the position. It seemed hopeless to Guy.

The Colonel struck with great force. All three balls sped and clicked and rebounded and clicked until finally the red trickled slower and slower towards a corner, seemed to come to a dead stop at the edge of the pocket, mysteriously regained momentum and fell in.

Guy slipped away and gently closed the door. Glancing back through the glazed aperture he observed the next stroke. The Colonel put the red on its spot, studied the uncongenial arrangement and then with plump finger and thumb nonchalantly moved his ball three inches to the left. Guy left him to his solitary delinquency. What used the regulars to call him? Ox? Tiny? Hippo? The nickname escaped him.

So Guy set out on the second stage of his pilgrimage, which had begun at the tomb of Sir Roger. Now, as then, an act of pietas was required of him; a spirit was to be placated. Apthorpe’s gear must be retrieved and delivered before Guy was free to follow his fortunes in the King’s service. His road lay backward for the next few days, to Southsand and Cornwall. ‘Chatty’ Corner, man of the trees, must be found, somewhere in the trackless forests of wartime England.

He paused in the ante-room and turned back the pages of the Visitors’ Book to the record of that Guest Night last December. There, immediately below Tony Box-Bender’s name, he found ‘James Pendennis Corner’. But the column where his address or regiment should have stood, lay empty.

THE last hour of the day at Our Lady of Victory’s Preparatory School, temporarily accommodated at Matchet. Selections from Livy in Mr Crouchback’s form-room. Black-out curtains drawn. Gas fire hissing. The customary smell of chalk and ink. The Fifth Form drowsy from the football field, hungry for high tea. Twenty minutes to go and the construe approaching unprepared passages.

‘Please, sir, it is true, isn’t it, that the Blessed Gervase Crouchback was an ancestor of yours?’

‘Hardly an ancestor, Greswold. He was a priest. His brother, from whom I am descended, didn’t behave quite so bravely, I’m sorry to say.’

‘A lot of us were absent that day, sir, and I’ve never quite understood what happened. The steward gave him away, didn’t he?’

‘Certainly not. Challoner misread a transcript from the St Omers records and the mistake has been copied from book to book. All our own people were true. It was a spy from Exeter who came to Broome asking for shelter, pretending to be a Catholic.’

‘Father Gervase was lodged in the North turret of the forecourt. You have to know Broome to understand how it happened. There is only the forecourt, you see, between the house and the main road. Every good house stands on a road or a river or a rock. Always remember that. Only hunting-lodges belong in a park. It was after the Reformation that the new rich men began hiding away from the people….’

It was not difficult to get old Crouchers talking. Greswold major, whose grandfather he had known, was adept at it. Twenty minutes passed.

‘… When he was examined by the Council the second time he was so weak that they gave him a stool to sit on.’

‘Time? Oh, dear, I’m afraid I’ve let myself run on, wasting your time. You ought to stop me, Greswold. Well, we’ll start tomorrow where we left off. I shall expect a long, thorough construe.’

‘Thank you, sir; good night. It was jolly interesting about the Blessed Gervase.’

The boys clattered away. Mr Crouchback buttoned his greatcoat, slung his gas-mask across his shoulder and, torch in hand, walked downhill towards the lightless sea.

The Marine Hotel which had been Mr Crouchback’s home for nine years was as full now as though in the height of summer. Every chair in the Residents’ Lounge was held prescriptively. Novels and knitting were left to mark the squatters’ rights when they ventured out into the mist.

Mr Crouchback made straight for his own rooms, but, encountering Miss Vavasour at the turn of the stairs, he paused, pressing himself into the corner to let her pass.

‘Oh, Mr Crouchback, I have been waiting for you. May I speak to you for a moment?’

‘It’s about something that happened today.’ She spoke in a whisper. ‘I don’t want Mr Cuthbert to overhear me.’

‘They have from you. There is a plot, Mr Crouchback, which you should know about.’

Miss Vavasour had turned about and was now making for Mr Crouchback’s sitting-room. He opened the door and stood back to admit her. A strong smell of dog met their nostrils.

Felix, his golden retriever, rose to meet Mr Crouchback, stood on his hind legs and pawed Mr Crouchback’s chest.

Mr Crouchback went into his bedroom, hung up his coat and haversack, peered at his old face in the looking-glass and returned to Miss Vavasour.

Mr Crouchback looked round the shabby little room, full of his furniture and books and photographs. ‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ he said; ‘the Cuthberts would never do a thing like that – after all these years. You must have misunderstood them. Anyway, they can’t.’

‘They can, Mr Crouchback. It’s one of these new laws. There was an officer here today – at least he was dressed as an officer – a dreadful sort of person. He was counting all the rooms and looking at the register. He talked of taking over the whole place. Mr Cuthbert explained that several of us were permanent residents and that the others had come from bombed areas and were the wives of men at the front. Then the so-called officer said: “Who’s this man occupying two rooms?” and do you know what Mr Cuthbert said? He said, “He works in the town. He’s a school-teacher.” You, Mr Crouchback, to be described like that!’

‘I very nearly interrupted them then and there, to tell them who you are, but of course I wasn’t really part of the conversation. In fact I don’t think they realized I was within hearing. But I boiled. Then this officer asked: “Secondary or Primary?” and Mr Cuthbert said: “Private” and then the officer laughed and said: “Priority nil.” And after that I simply could not restrain myself any more so I simply got up and looked at them and left the room without a word.’

‘I’m sure nothing will come of it. There are all sorts of people all over the place nowadays making inquiries. I suppose it’s necessary. Depend upon it, it was just routine. The Cuthberts would never do a thing like that. Never. After all these years.’

‘You are too trustful, Mr Crouchback. You treat everyone as if he were a gentleman. That officer definitely was not.’’

When Miss Vavasour had gone Mr Crouchback took off his boots and socks, his collar and his shirt and standing before the wash-hand-stand in trousers and vest washed thoroughly in cold water. He donned a clean shirt, collar and socks, shabby pumps and a slightly shabby suit made of the same cloth as he had worn throughout the day. He brushed his hair. And all the time he thought of other things than Miss Vavasour’s disclosure. She had cherished a chivalrous devotion for him since she first settled at Matchet. His daughter Angela joked of it rather indelicately. For the six years of their acquaintance he had paid little heed to anything Miss Vavasour said. Now he dismissed the Cuthbert plot and considered two problems that had come to him with the morning’s post. He was a man of regular habit and settled opinion. Doubt was a stranger to him. That morning, in the hour between Mass and school, he had been confronted with two intrusions from an unfamiliar world.

The more prominent was the parcel; bulky and ragged from the investigations of numberless clumsy departmental hands. It was covered with American stamps, customs declarations, and certificates of censorship.

‘American parcel’ was just beginning to find a place in the English vocabulary. This was plainly one of these novelties. His three Box-Bender granddaughters had been sent to a place of refuge in New England. Doubtless it came from them. ‘How kind. How very extravagant,’ he had thought and had borne it to his room for later study.

Now he cut the string with his nail scissors and spread the contents in order on his table.

First came six tins of ‘Pullitzer’s Soup’. They were variously, lusciously named but soup was one of the few articles of diet in which the Marine Hotel abounded. Moreover, he had an ancient conviction that all tinned foods were made of something nasty. ‘Silly girls. Well, I daresay we shall be glad of it one day.’ Next there was a transparent packet of prunes. Next a very heavy little tin labelled ‘Brisko. A Must in every home.’ There was no indication of its function. Soap? Concentrated fuel? Rat poison? Boot polish? He would have to consult Mrs Tickeridge. Next a very light larger tin named ‘Yumcrunch’. This must be edible for it bore the portrait of an obese and badly brought-up little girl waving a spoon and fairly bawling for the stuff. Last and oddest of all a bottle filled with what seemed to be damp artificial pearls, labelled ‘Cocktail Onions’. Could it be that this remote and resourceful people who had so generously (and, he thought, so unnecessarily) sheltered his grandchildren; this people whose chief concern seemed to be the frustration of the processes of nature – could they have contrived an alcoholic onion?

Mr Crouchback’s elation palled; he studied his gift rather fretfully. Where in all this exotic banquet was there anything for Felix? The choice seemed to lie between Brisko and Yumcrunch.

He shook Yumcrunch. It rattled. Broken biscuits? Felix stood and pointed his soft muzzle.

‘Yumcrunch?’ said Mr Crouchback seductively. Felix’s tail thumped the carpet.

And then suspicion darkened Mr Crouchback’s contentment: suppose this were one of those new patent foods he had heard described, something ‘dehydrated’ which, eaten without due preparation, swelled enormously and fatally in the stomach.

‘No, Felix,’ he said. ‘No Yumcrunch. Not until I have asked Mrs Tickeridge,’ and at the same time he resolved to consult that lady about his other problem: the matter of Tony Box-Bender’s odd postcard and Angela Box-Bender’s odd letter.

The postcard had been enclosed in the letter. He had taken both to school with him and reread them often during the day. The letter read:

News at last from Tony. Nothing very personal poor boy but such a joy to know he is safe. Until this morning I didn’t realize how anxious I have been. After all the man who got away and wrote to us that he had seen Tony in the POW column might have been mistaken. Now we know.

He seems to think we can send him anything he needs but Arthur has been into it and says no, that isn’t the arrangement. Arthur says he can’t approach neutral embassies and I mustn’t write to America either. Only regular Red Cross parcels may be sent and they get those anyhow apparently whether we pay for them or not. Arthur says the parcels are scientifically chosen so as to have all the right calories and that there can’t be one law for the rich and one for the poor when it comes to prison. I see he’s quite right in a way.

Was not allowed to write before. Now in permanent camp. A lot of our chaps here. Can daddy arrange parcels through neutral embassies? This is most important and everyone says safest and quickest way. Please send cigarettes, chocolates, golden syrup, cocoa, tinned meat and fish (all kinds). Glucose ‘D’. Hard biscuits (ships) cheese, toffee, condensed milk, camel hair sleeping bag, air-cushion, gloves, hair brush. Could girls in US help? Also Boulestin’s Conduct of Kitchen. Trumper’s Eucris. Woolly slippers.

There had been one other letter in Mr Crouchback’s post, which saddened him though it presented no problem. His wine merchants wrote to say that their cellars had been partly destroyed by enemy action. They hoped to maintain diminished supplies to their regular customers but could no longer fulfil specific orders. Monthly parcels would be made up from whatever stock was available. Pilfering and breakages were becoming frequent on the railways. Customers were requested to report all losses immediately.

Parcels, thought Mr Crouchback. Everything that day seemed to be connected with parcels.

After dinner, according to the custom of more than a year, Mr Crouchback joined Mrs Tickeridge in the Residents’ Lounge.

Their conversation began, as always, with the subject of Felix’s afternoon exercise. Then:

‘Guy’s home. I hope we shall see him here soon. I don’t know what he’s up to. Something rather secret, I expect. He came back with his Brigadier – the man you call “Ben”.’

Mrs Tickeridge had that day received a letter from her husband in which certain plain hints informed her that Brigadier Ritchie-Hook had got into another of his scrapes. Well trained in service propriety she changed the subject.

‘That’s just what I wanted to ask about. My daughter has had this postcard. May I show it to you – and her letter? Aren’t they puzzling?’

Mrs Tickeridge took the documents and perused them. At length she said: ‘I don’t think I ever read Trumper’s Eucris.’

‘No, no. It’s not that I’m puzzled by. That’s hair-stuff. Used to use it myself when I could afford it. But don’t you think it very peculiar that in his first postcard home he should only be asking for things for himself? It’s most unlike him.’

‘Surely not? Prisoners of war have full army rations. There’s an international agreement about it, I know. You don’t suppose it’s a code. “Glucose D” – whoever heard of “Glucose D”? I’m sure Tony has never seen the stuff. Someone put him up to it. You would think that a boy writing to his mother for the first time, when he must know how anxious she has been, would have something better to say than “Glucose D”.’

‘Even so, he ought to consider his mother’s feelings. You’ve read her letter?’

‘I’m sure she’s got quite the wrong end of the stick. My son-in-law is in the House of Commons and of course he picks up some rather peculiar ideas there.’

‘The wireless,’ said Mr Crouchback in a tone as near bitterness as he possessed. ‘The wireless. Just the sort of thing they would put about. It seems to me the most improper idea. Why should we not send what we want to those we love – even “Glucose D”?’

‘Why? Less in wartime than ever I should have thought. As you say, the boy may be really hungry. If he wants “Glucose D” why can’t I send it to him? Why can’t my son-in-law get foreigners to help? There’s a man in Switzerland who used to come and stay at Broome year after year. I know he’d like to help Tony. Why shouldn’t he? I don’t understand.’

Mrs Tickeridge saw the gentle, bewildered old man gaze earnestly at her, seeking an answer she could not give. He continued:

‘After all, any present means that you want someone to have something someone else hasn’t got. I mean even if it’s only a cream jug at a wedding. I shouldn’t wonder if the Government didn’t try and stop us praying for people next.’ Mr Crouchback sadly considered this possibility and then added: ‘Not that anyone really needs a cream-jug and apparently Tony needs these things he asks for. It’s all wrong. I’m not much of a dab at explaining things, but I know it’s all wrong.’

Mrs Tickeridge was mending Jenifer’s jersey. She darned silently. She was not much of a dab herself at explaining things. Presently Mr Crouchback spoke again, from the tangle of his perplexities.

‘And Yumcrunch? Both these things are in my room at the moment and I don’t for the life of me know what to do with them. They’re American.’

‘I know just what you mean. I’ve seen them advertised in a magazine. Yumcrunch is what they eat for breakfast instead of porridge.’

‘I’m afraid so. I expect Mrs Cuthbert will be very grateful for it in the kitchen.’

Presently Mr Crouchback took his leave, fetched Felix and let him out into the darkness. He brought down with him the tin of Brisko and carried it to the proprietress of the hotel in her ‘Private Parlour’.

‘Mrs Cuthbert, I have been sent this from America. It is lard. Mrs Tickeridge seems to think you might find it useful in the kitchen.’

‘Everything is getting so difficult,’ she said; ‘I’ll fetch Mr Cuthbert.’

Mr Crouchback stood in the Private Parlour and waited. Presently Mrs Cuthbert returned alone.

‘He says, will I speak to you. I don’t know quite how to begin. It’s all because of the war and the regulations and the officer who came today. He was the Quartering Commandant. You know it’s nothing personal, don’t you, Mr Crouchback? I’m sure we’ve always done all we can to oblige, making all sorts of exceptions for you, not charging for the dog’s meals and your having your own wine sent in. Some of the guests have mentioned it more than once how you were specially favoured.’

‘I have never made any complaint,’ said Mr Crouchback. ‘I am satisfied that you do everything you can in the circumstances.’

‘I think I know what you wish to say to me, Mrs Cuthbert. It is really quite unnecessary. If you fear I’ll desert you now when you are going through difficult times, after I have been so comfortable for so many years, you may put your mind quite at rest. I know you are both doing your best and I am sincerely grateful.’

‘Thank you, sir. It wasn’t quite that… I think Mr Cuthbert had better speak to you.’

‘He may come to me whenever he likes. Not now. I am just going to take Felix off to bed. Good night, I hope that tin will be of help.’

‘Oh, Mr Crouchback, I couldn’t help seeing you go into the Private Parlour. Is everything all right?’

‘The Cuthberts seemed to be worried about the falling off of the service. I think I was able to reassure them. It is a difficult time for both of them – for all of us. Good night, Miss Vavasour.’

MEANWHILE the talk in Bellamy’s had drifted irresistibly upward. That very morning in a deep bed in a deep shelter a buoyant busy personage had lain, apportioning the day’s work of an embattled Empire in a series of minutes.

‘Pray inform me today on one half sheet of paper why Brig. Ritchie-Hook has been relieved of the command of his Brigade.’

And twenty-four hours later, almost to the minute, while Mr Crouchback’s form was beginning to construe the neglected passage of Livy, from the same heap of pillows the ukase went out:

I have directed that no commander be penalized for errors in discretion towards the enemy. This directive has been flouted in a grievous and vexatious manner in the case of Col. late Brig. Ritchie-Hook, Royal Corps of Halberdiers. Pray assure me that suitable employment has been found for this gallant and resourceful officer as soon as he is passed fit for active service.

Telephones and typewriters relayed the trumpet note. Great men called to lesser men, and they to men of no consequence at all. Somewhere on the downward official slope Guy’s name too appeared, for Ritchie-Hook, in his room at Millbank Hospital, had not forgotten his companion in guilt. Papers marked ‘Passed to you for immediate action’ went from ‘In’ tray to ‘Out’ tray, until at length they found sea level with the Adjutant of the Halberdier Barracks.

Ten minutes later the Adjutant remarked: ‘Sergeant-Major, if we withhold the address, how will Mr Crouchback know where to report?’

‘I take it, sir, the correct procedure would be to send it by hand of officer?’

‘Jumbo’ Trotter, as his nickname suggested, was both ponderous and popular; he retired with the rank of full colonel in 1936. Within an hour of the declaration of war he was back in barracks and there he had sat ever since. No one had summoned him. No one cared to question his presence. His age and rank rendered him valueless for barrack duties. He dozed over the newspapers, lumbered round the billiard-table, beamed on his juniors’ scrimmages on Guest Nights, and regularly attended Church Parade. Now and then he expressed a wish to ‘have a go at the Jerries’. Mostly he slept. It was he whom Guy had disturbed in the billiard-room on his last visit to the barracks.

Once or twice a week the Captain-Commandant, in his new role of martinet, resolved to have a word with Jumbo, but the word was never spoken. He had served under Jumbo in Flanders and there learned to revere him for his sublime imperturbability in many dangerous and disgusting circumstances. He readily gave his approval to the old boy’s outing and left him to make his own arrangements.

It was a hundred and fifty miles to Matchet. Jumbo’s few indispensable possessions could be contained in one japanned-tin uniform case and a pig-skin Gladstone. But there was his bedding. Never move without your bed and your next meal; that was a rule, said Jumbo. Altogether his luggage comprised rather a handful for Halberdier Burns, his aged servant; too much to take by train, he explained to the Barrack Transport Officer. Besides, it was the duty of everyone to keep off the railways. The wireless had said so. Trains were needed for troop movements. The Transport Officer was a callow, amenable, regular subaltern. Jumbo got a car.

Early next day, in that epoch of mounting oppression, it stood at the steps of the Officers’ House. The luggage was strapped behind. Driver and servant stood beside it. Presently Jumbo emerged, well buttoned up against the morning chill, smoking his after-breakfast pipe, carrying under his arm the ante-room’s only copy of The Times. The men jumped to the salute. Jumbo beamed benignantly on them and raised a fur-lined glove to the peak of his red hat. He conferred briefly with the driver over the map, ordering a detour which would bring him at lunch-time to a friendly mess, then settled himself in the rear-seat. Burns tucked in the rug and leapt to his place beside the driver. Jumbo glanced at the Deaths in the paper before giving the order to move.

The Adjutant, watching these sedate proceedings from his office window, suddenly said: ‘Sergeant-Major, couldn’t we have recalled Mr Crouchback here and given him the address ourselves?’

The car moved across the gravel towards the guard-house. It might have been carrying an elderly magnate from a London square to a long week-end in the Home Counties, in years before the Total War.

Mrs Tickeridge knew Colonel Trotter of old. She found him dozing in the hall of the Marine Hotel when she and Jenifer returned from their walk with Felix. He opened his pouchy eyes and accepted their presence without surprise.

‘Waiting for my tea. Everyone seems half asleep here; said tea was “off”. Ridiculous expression. Had to send my man Burns into the kitchen to brew up. Met opposition from some civilian cook, I gather. Soon settled that. Had some opposition about quarters, too, from the woman in the office. Said she was full up. Soon settled that. Had my bed made up and my things laid out in a bathroom. Woman didn’t seem too pleased about that either. Poor type. Had to remind her there was a war on.’

‘Shan’t be here long. All have to rough it a bit these days. Burns and the driver fixing themselves up in the town. Trust an old Halberdier to make himself comfortable. No camp-bed in a bathroom for Burns.’

‘Jumbo, what a tea! We never get anything like that. Hot buttered toast, sandwiches, an egg, cherry cake.’

‘I’m looking for a fellow called Crouchback. Woman in the office said he was out. Know him?’

‘That’s his son, Guy. What d’you want with him? You’re not taking him under arrest?’

A look of elephantine cunning came into his eyes. He had no idea of the contents of the sealed envelope buttoned up below his medals.

Felix sat with his muzzle on Jumbo’s knee gazing at him with devotion. Jumbo cut a corner of toast, dipped it in jam and placed it in the gentle mouth.

‘Take him away, Jenifer, there’s a good girl, or he’ll have all my tea off me.’

He woke to the sound of voices near him. The woman from the office, the poor type, was in converse with a stout, upright Major wearing RASC badges.

‘I’ve hinted,’ the woman was saying. ‘Mr Cuthbert as good as told him outright. He won’t seem to understand.’

‘He’ll understand all right when he finds his furniture on the doorstep. If you can’t move him quietly, I shall use my powers.’

‘You should be grateful, Mrs Cuthbert. I could have taken the whole hotel if I’d cared, and I would have but for Mr Cuthbert being on the square. I’ve taken over the Monte Rosa boarding house instead. The people from there have to sleep somewhere, don’t they?’

‘Well, it’s your responsibility. He’ll be very upset, poor old gentleman.’

The effect was immediate. The Major swung round, stamped, stood to attention and roared back: ‘Sir.’

‘Bless my soul, Grigshawe, it is you. Wasn’t sure. I’m very pleased to see you. Shake hands.’

‘We missed you when you put in for a commission. You shouldn’t have left the Halberdiers, you know.’

‘I’ve about finished, sir.’ He stood to attention, nodded to Mrs Cuthbert and left, but there was no peace for Jumbo that afternoon. The room was hardly empty of Mrs Cuthbert before an elderly lady raised her head from a neighbouring chair and coughed. Jumbo regarded her sadly.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. You know that officer?’

‘What, Grigshawe? One of the best drill-sergeants we had in the Corps. Extraordinary system taking first-rate NCOs and making second-rate officers of them.’

‘That’s dreadful. I had quite made up my mind he must be some sort of criminal, dressed up – a blackmailer or burglar or something. It was our last hope.’

Jumbo had little curiosity about the affairs of others. It seemed to him vaguely odd that this pleasant-looking lady should so ardently desire Grigshawe to be an impostor. From time to time in his slow passage through life Jumbo had come up against things that puzzled him and had learned to ignore them. Now he merely remarked: ‘Known him twenty years’ and was preparing to leave his seat for a sniff of fresh air, when Miss Vavasour said: ‘You see, he is trying to take Mr Crouchback’s sitting-room.’

The name gave Jumbo pause and before he could disengage himself Miss Vavasour had begun her recital.

She spoke vehemently but furtively. In the Marine Hotel, scorn of the Quartering Commandant had quickly given place to dread. He came none knew whence, armed with unknown powers, malevolent, unpredictable, implacable. Miss Vavasour would with relish have thrown herself on any German paratrooper and made short work of him with poker or bread-knife. Grigshawe was a projection of the Gestapo. For two weeks now the permanent residents had lived in a state of whispering agitation. Mr Crouchback followed his routine, calmly refusing to share their alarm. He was the symbol of their security. If he fell, what hope was there for them? And his fall, it seemed, was now encompassed.

Jumbo listened restively. It was not for this he had driven all day with his Most Secret missive. He was out for a treat. There had been a number of jokes lately in the papers about selfish old women in safe hotels. He had chuckled over them often. He was on the point of reminding Miss Vavasour that there was a war on, when Mr Crouchback himself appeared before them, back from school with a pile of uncorrected exercise books, and suddenly the whole evening was changed and became a treat again.

Miss Vavasour introduced them. Jumbo, slow in some of his perceptions, was quick to recognize ‘a good type’; not only the father of a Halberdier but a man fit to be a Halberdier himself.

Mr Crouchback explained that Guy was at Southsand, many miles away, collecting the possessions of a brother-officer who had died on active service. These were unexpectedly good tidings. Jumbo saw days, perhaps weeks, of pleasant adventure ahead. He had no objection to prolonging his tour of the seaside resorts indefinitely.

Then Mr Crouchback showed immediate solicitude for Jumbo’s comfort. He must not think of sleeping in a bathroom. Mr Crouchback’s sitting-room was at his disposal. Then Mr Crouchback gave him some excellent sherry and later, at dinner, burgundy and port. He did not mention that this was the last bottle of a little store which he could never hope to replenish.

They touched lightly on public affairs and found themselves in close agreement. Jumbo mentioned that in his latter years he had made a modest collection of old silver. Mr Crouchback knew a lot about that. They talked of fishing and pheasant-shooting, not competitively but in placid accord.

Mrs Tickeridge joined them later and gossiped about the Halberdiers. They did two-thirds of the crossword together. It was exactly Jumbo’s idea of a pleasant evening. Nothing was said of Grigshawe and grievances, and in the end it was he who brought the matter up.

‘Oh, no trouble really. I’ve never even seen this Major Grigshawe they all talk about. I think he must rather have muddled the Cuthberts, and you know how rumours spread and get exaggerated jn a little place like this. Poor Miss Vavasour seems to think we shall all be put into the street. I don’t believe a word of it myself.’

‘I’ve known Grigshawe for twenty years. Dare say he’s got a bit too big for his boots. I’ll have a word with him in the morning.’

‘Not on my account, please. But it would be kind to put Miss Vavasour’s mind at rest.’

‘Perfectly simple matter if he handles it in the proper service way. All he has to do is put in a report that on the relevant date the room was occupied by a senior officer. You won’t have any more trouble with Grigshawe, I can promise.’

‘He’s been no trouble to me, I assure you. He seems to have been a little brusque with the Cuthberts. I expect he thought he was only doing his duty.’

Mr Crouchback had already left the hotel when Jumbo came down next morning, but Jumbo did not forget. Before his leisurely departure he had a few words with Major Grigshawe.

Two days later Mr and Mrs Cuthbert sat in their Private Parlour. Major Grigshawe had just left them with the assurance that their pensionnaires would be left undisturbed. The news was not welcome.

‘We could have let that room of old Crouchback’s for eight guineas a week,’ said Mr Cuthbert.

‘Permanent residents were all very well before the war. They kept us going nicely in the winter months.’

‘We ought to make a clean sweep and take people only by the week. That’s where the money comes. Keep people moving. Keep them anxious where they’re going next. Some of these people with their houses blitzed are grateful for anything. Grigshawe’s let us down, that’s the truth of the matter.’

‘It was old Crouchback did it. I don’t know how, but he did. He’s an artful old bird if you ask me. Talks so that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “I do appreciate your difficulties, Mrs Cuthbert.” “So grateful for all your trouble, Mrs Cuthbert.”’

‘He’s seen better days. We all know that. There’s something about people like him. They were brought up to expect things to be easy for them and somehow or other things always are easy. Damned if I know how they manage it.’

There was a knock at the door and Mr Crouchback entered. His hair was rough from the wind and his eyes watery, for he had been sitting outside in the dark.

‘Good evening. Good evening. Please don’t get up, Mr Cuthbert. I just wanted to tell you something I’ve just decided. A week or so ago you said there was someone in need of a room here. I dare say you’ve forgotten, but I hadn’t. Well, you know, thinking it over it seems to me that it’s rather selfish keeping on both my rooms at a time like this. There’s my grandson in a prison camp, people homeless from the towns, all those residents from Monte Rosa turned out with nowhere to go. It’s all wrong for one old man like myself to take up so much space. I asked at the school and they’re able to store my few sticks of furniture. So I came to give a week’s notice that I shan’t need the sitting-room in future, not in the immediate future, that is. After the war I shall be very pleased to take it on again, you know. I hope this isn’t inconvenient. I’ll stay, of course, until you find a suitable tenant.’

‘Talk of the devil,’ said Mrs Cuthbert, when Mr Crouchback had left. ‘What d’you make of that?’

‘Not him. He’s worth much more than you’d think. Why, he gives it away, right and left. I know because I’ve done his room sometimes. Letters of thanks from all over the shop.’

‘He’s a deep one and no mistake. I never have understood him, not properly. Somehow his mind seems to work different than yours and mine.’

In the breakfast room of the Grand Hotel, Southsand, Guy sought his advertisement in the Agony Column, and at length found it.

CORNER, James Pendennis, popularly known as ‘chatty’, late of Bechuanaland or similar territory, please communicate with Box 108 when he will learn something to his advantage.

The grammar, he noted with chagrin, was defective but the call was as unambiguous as the Last Trump. It sounded a despairing note, as though from the gorge of Roncesvalles, for he had done his utmost in the matter of Apthorpe’s gear and could now merely wait.

It was the sixteenth day since he had left barracks, his eleventh at Southsand. The early stages of his quest had been easy. Brook Park, where Apthorpe had jettisoned all that final residuum of the possessions which he regarded as the bare necessaries of life, was still in Halberdier hands. The stores left there were intact and accessible. An amiable Quartermaster was ready to part with anything that was ‘signed for’ in triplicate. Guy signed. He was received at the strange mess with fraternal warmth; with curiosity also for he was the first Halberdier to bring news from Dakar. They induced him to lecture the battalion on ‘the lessons of an opposed landing’. He stayed mum on the subject of Ritchie-Hook’s wound. They gave him transport and he was sent on his way with honour.

At Southsand he found the Commodore of the Yacht Club eager to disencumber himself. In his small spare bedroom Apthorpe had left what, at a pinch, might be regarded as superfluities. Three journeys by taxi were required to move them. The Commodore helped with his own hands to carry them downstairs and load them. When it was accomplished and the hotel porter had wheeled everything into the vaults, the Commodore asked: ‘Staying here long?’ and Guy had been obliged to answer: ‘I really don’t know.’

And still he did not know. Suddenly he found himself alone. The energizing wire between him and the army was cut. He was as immobile as Apthorpe’s gear. Various cryptic prohibitions had lately been proclaimed on the movement of goods. Guy sought aid of the RTO and was rebuffed.

‘No can do, old boy. Read the regulations. Officers proceeding on, or returning from, leave may take only a haversack and one suitcase. You’ll have to get a special move order for that stuff.’

Guy telegraphed to the Adjutant in barracks and after two days received in reply, merely: Extension of leave granted.

Here he was still, all animation suspended, while autumn turned sharply to winter, and gales shook the double windows of the hotel and great waves broke over the pill-boxes and barbed wire on the promenade.

Here it seemed he was doomed to remain forever, standing guard over a heap of tropical gadgets, like the Russian sentry he had once been told of, the Guardsman who was posted daily year in, year out, until the revolution, in the grounds of Tsarskoe Selo on the spot where Catherine the Great had once wished to preserve a wild-flower.

Southsand, though unbombed, was thought to be dangerous and had attracted no refugees of the kind who filled other resorts. It was just as he had known it nine months earlier, spacious and desolate and windy and shabby. One change only was apparent; the Ristorante Garibaldi was closed. Mr Pelecci, he learned, had been ‘taken away’ on the day Italy declared war, consigned in a ship to Canada and drowned in mid-Atlantic, sole spy among a host of innocents. Guy visited Mr Goodall and found him elated by the belief that a great rising was imminent throughout Christian Europe; led by the priests and squires, with blessed banners, and the relics of the saints borne ahead, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Bavarians, Italians and plucky little contingents from the Catholic cantons of Switzerland would soon be on the march to redeem the times. Even a few Frenchmen, Mr Goodall conceded, might join this Pilgrimage of Grace but he could promise no part in it for Guy.

The days passed. Ever prone to despond, Guy became sure that his brief adventure was over. He had his pistol. Perhaps, finally, he would get a shot at an invading Storm Trooper and die unrecognized, but sweetly and decorously. More probably he would still be sitting years hence in the Yacht Club and hear on the wireless that the war was won. Ever prone to elaborate his predicament rather fancifully, Guy saw himself make a hermitage of Apthorpe’s tent and end his days encamped on the hills above Southsand, painfully acquiring the skills of ‘Chatty’ Corner, charitably visited once a week by Mr Goodall, a gentler version of poor mad Ivo, who had starved to death in the slums of North-West London.

So Guy mused while even at that moment, in the fullness of his time, ‘Jumbo’ Trotter was on the move to draw him back into the life of action.

It was All Souls’ Day. Guy walked to church to pray for his brothers’ souls – for Ivo especially; Gervase seemed far off that year, in Paradise perhaps, in the company of other good soldiers. Mr Goodall was there, popping in and down and up and out and in again assiduously, releasing toties quoties soul after soul from Purgatory.

The wings of the ransomed beat all about Mr Goodall, but as Guy left church he was alone in the comfortless wind.

‘Jumbo’ arrived after luncheon and found Guy rereading Vice Versa in the winter garden. Guy recognized him at once and jumped to his feet.

‘Sit down, my dear boy. I’ve just been making friends with your father.’ He unbuttoned himself and took the letter from his breast pocket.

‘Something important for you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to and I won’t ask. I am a mere messenger. Better take it up to your room and read it there. Then burn it. Crumple the ash. Well, I expect in your job, whatever it is, you know more than I do about that sort of thing.’

Guy did as he was told. There was an outer envelope marked in red By hand of officer and an inner one marked Most Secret. He drew out a simple orderly-room chit on which was typed:

T/y Lt Crouchback, G. Royal Corps of Halberdiers
The above named officer will report forthwith to Flat 211 Marchmain House, St James’s, sw1.
Capt. for Captain-Commandant Royal Corps of Halberdiers.

An undecipherable trail of ink preceded the last line. Even in the innermost depths of military secrecy the Adjutant continued to maintain his anonymity.

‘We couldn’t get there before dark. Everyone packs up when the sirens go. I can run you up to London tomorrow morning.’

‘It’s a pleasure. I like to look in at “the Senior” every so often to hear how the war’s going. Plenty of room for you. Have you much luggage?’

Together they visited the baggage store and stood in silence before the heap of steel trunks, leather cases, brass-bound chests, shapeless canvas sacks, buffalo-hide bags. Jumbo was visibly awed. He himself believed in ample provision for the emergencies of travel. Here was something quite beyond his ambition.

‘Nearer two tons than one,’ he said at length. ‘I say, you must be up to something? This needs organization. Where are Area Headquarters?’

Such an admission would have earned any other subaltern a rebuke from ‘Jumbo’, but Guy was now enveloped in an aura of secrecy and importance.

By this expression Jumbo and many others meant the telephone. He telephoned and presently reported that a lorry would call for them next morning.

‘It’s a small world,’ he said.’ I found the fellow I was talking to at Area was a fellow I used to know well. Junior to me, of course. On old Hamilton-Brand’s staff at Gib. Said I’d go along and look him up. Probably dine there. See you in the morning. No point in getting away too early. I told them to have our lorry loaded by ten. All right?’

‘Lucky I knew the fellow at Area. Didn’t have to tell him anything about you and your affairs. I just said “Mum’s the word” and he twigged.’

All went smoothly next day; they drove to London with the lorry behind them and reached the Duke of York’s Steps at one o’clock.

‘No use your going to see your fellow now,’ said Jumbo. ‘Bound to be out. We can lunch here. Must see the men fed too. Problem is to find a place for your gear.’

At this moment a Major-General appeared up the steps, clearly bound for the club. Guy saluted him. Jumbo embraced him by both elbows.

‘Better hurry. Everything decent is off the table by one. Awful greedy lot, the young members.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Beano after a pause for thought. “There’s a parking place at the War House, CIGS only. He’s away today. I should put your stuff there. No one will touch it. Say it’s the CIGS’s personal baggage. I’ll give your driver a chit. Then he and your other fellow can use the canteen.’

Guy accompanied these two senior officers into the club and found himself swept into the dining-room in a surge of naval and military might. Bellamy’s had its sprinkling of distinguished officers but here everyone in sight was aflame with red tabs, gold braid, medal ribbons, and undisguised hunger. Guy diffidently stood back from the central table round which, as though at a hunt ball, they were struggling for food.

Guy got the last leg of chicken but a Rear-Admiral deftly whisked it off his plate. Presently he emerged victualled in accordance with his rank with bully beef and beetroot.

‘Sure that’s all you want?’ asked Jumbo hospitably. ‘Doesn’t look much to me.’

Throughout the meal Beano talked of a bomb which had narrowly missed him an evening or two earlier.

‘I went down flat on my face, old boy, and got up covered in plaster. A narrow squeak, I can tell you.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Jumbo. ‘I shan’t desert you till I’ve seen my mission safely accomplished.’

On the steps of the club Guy turned aside from the main stream of members who were making for Whitehall, and walked the quarter-mile to Marchmain House, a block of flats in St James’s, where his appointment lay.

Hazardous Offensive Operations Headquarters, that bizarre product of total war which later was to proliferate through five acres of valuable London property, engrossing the simple high staff officers of all the Services with experts, charlatans, plain lunatics and every unemployed member of the British Communist Party – HOO HQ, at this stage of its history, occupied three flats in a supposedly luxurious modern block.

Guy, reporting there, found a Major of about his own age, with the D.S.O., M.C. and a slight stammer. The interview lasted a bare five minutes.

‘Crouchback, Crouchback, Crouchback, Crouchback,’ he said, turning over a sheaf of papers on his table. ‘Sergeant, what do we know of Mr Crouchback?’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. I remember all about it now. You’ve been wished on us with your former Brigadier for “special duties”. What are your “special duties”?’

‘Nor does anyone. You’ve come whistling down from a very high level. Do you know all about Commandos?’

‘You shouldn’t know anything. They’re supposed to be a secret, though from the security reports we get from Mugg, they’ve made themselves pretty conspicuous there. I’ve had a letter from someone whose signature I can’t read, complaining in strong terms that they’ve been shooting his deer with tommy-guns. Don’t see how they get near enough. Remarkably fine stalking if true. Anyway that’s where you’re going – temporary attachment for training purposes X Commando, Isle of Mugg. All right?’

‘Sergeant Trenchard here will make out your travel warrant. Have you got a batman with you?’

‘At the moment,’ said Guy, ‘I have a service car, a three-ton lorry, an RASC driver, a Halberdier servant and a full Colonel.’

‘Ah,’ said the Major who was fast founding the HOO HQ tradition of being surprised at nothing. ‘You ought to be all right, then. Report to Colonel Blackhouse at Mugg.’

‘Yes, I thought so. I was at the Staff College with him. Good chap; got some good chaps in his Commando too. Glad he’s a friend of yours.’

Guy saluted, turned about and departed only very slightly disconcerted. This was the classic pattern of army life as he had learned it, the vacuum, the spasm, the precipitation, and with it all the peculiar, impersonal, barely human geniality.

‘To horse, to horse,’ he said, when fully awake and aware of the long road ahead. ‘We ought to get clear of London before those bombs begin. Anything that puts the wind up Beano is better avoided. Besides, we’ve got your stores to think of.’

Their lorry when they reached it bore marks of promotion. An efficient guard had plastered it with printed notices: CIGS.

Jumbo paused. He was rather light-headed from his outing, breathing once more the bracing air of his youth when as an irresponsible subaltern he had participated in many wild extravagancies.

But he thought again. Reason regained its sway. He drew from the deep source of his military experience and knew to a finger’s breadth how far one could go.

They drove away from the stricken city. At St Albans they turned on the dim little headlights and almost immediately the first sirens wailed around them.

‘No point in going much farther tonight,’ said Jumbo. ‘I know a place where we can put up about thirty miles north.’

THE Isle of Mugg has no fame in song or story. Perhaps because whenever they sought a rhyme for the place, they struck absurdity, it was neglected by those romantic early-Victorian English ladies who so prodigally enriched the balladry, folk-lore and costume of the Scottish Highlands. It has a laird, a fishing fleet, an hotel (erected just before the First World War in the unfulfilled hope of attracting tourists) and nothing more. It lies among other monosyllabic protuberances. There is seldom clear weather in those waters, but on certain rare occasions Mugg has been descried from the island of Rum in the form of two cones. The crofters of Muck know it as a single misty lump on their horizon. It has never been seen from Eigg.

It is served twice weekly by steamer from the mainland of Inverness. The passenger rash enough to stay on deck may watch it gradually take shape, first as two steep hills; later he can recognize the castle – granite 1860, indestructible and uninhabitable by anyone but a Scottish laird, the quay, cottages and cliffs, all of granite, and the unmellowed brick of the hotel.

Guy and his entourage arrived at the little port a few hours before this steamer was due to sail. The sky was dark and the wind blowing hard. Jumbo made a snap decision.

‘I shall remain here,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t on any account hazard our stores. You go ahead and make your number with your CO. I will follow when the weather clears.’

When the exotic name, ‘Commando’, was at length made free to the press it rapidly extended its meaning to include curates on motor bicycles. In 1940 a Commando was a military unit, about the size of a battalion, composed of volunteers for special service. They kept the badges of their regiments; no flashes or green berets then, nothing to display in inns. They were a secret force whose only privilege was to find their own billets and victuals. Each unit took its character from its commander.

Tommy Blackhouse declared: ‘It’s going to be a long war. The great thing is to spend it among friends.’

Tommy’s friends inhabited his own ample world. Some were regular soldiers; others had spent a year or two of adolescence in the Brigade of Guards, to satisfy the whim of parents and trustees, before taking to other activities or to inactivity. To these he turned when at last his patiently awaited appointment was confirmed. Bellamy’s rallied to him. He sent his troop leaders on a recruiting tour of their regiments. Too soon for some the Commando came into existence and was dispatched to train at Mugg. There Guy found them. He was directed from the quay to the hotel.

At three o’clock he found it empty except for a Captain of the Blues who reclined upon a sofa, his head enveloped in a turban of lint, his feet shod in narrow velvet slippers embroidered in gold thread with his monogram. He was nursing a white pekinese; beside him stood a glass of white liqueur.

The sofa was upholstered in Turkey carpet. The table which held the glass and bottle was octagonal, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The pictorial effect was of a young prince of the Near East in his grand divan in the early years of the century.

Guy recognized Ivor Claire, a young show-jumper of repute, the owner of a clever and beautiful horse named Thimble. Guy had seen them in Rome at the Concorso Ippico; Claire leaning slightly forward in the saddle with the intent face of a pianist, the horse precisely placing his feet in the tan, leaping easily, without scuffle or hesitation, completing a swift, faultless round, in dead silence which broke at last into a tumult of appreciation. Guy knew him, too, as a member of Bellamy’s. He should have known Guy for they had often sat opposite one another in the listless days of the preceding year and had stood together in the same group at the bar.

Claire looked up, said, ‘Good afternoon,’ and wiped his dog’s face with a silk handkerchief. ‘The snow is very bad for Freda’s eyes. Perhaps you want Colonel Tommy. He’s out climbing.’ Then, after a pause, politely: ‘Have you seen last week’s paper?’

Guy gazed about him at the heads of deer, the fumed oak staircase, the vast extent of carpet woven in the local hunting tartan.

‘Ah.’ Claire had the air of having very shrewdly elicited this piece of information, of having made a move, early in a game of chess, which would later develop into mate. ‘I should have some Kümmel if I were you. We’ve unearthed a cache of Wolfschmidt. You just score it up on that piece of paper over there.’

There were glasses on the central table and bottles and a list of names, marked with their potations.

‘Colonel Tommy lives here. So do most of us. But it’s full up now. Recent arrivals are at the coastguard station, I believe. I looked in once. It smells awfully of fish. I say, do you mind much if we don’t talk? I fell fifty feet on the ice the other morning.’

Guy studied last week’s Rum, Muck, Mugg and Eigg Times. Claire plucked Freda’s eyebrows.

Soon, as in an old-fashioned, well-constructed comedy, other characters began to enter Left: first a medical officer.

‘I must telephone the harbour-master and have her held. Anstruther-Kerr has had a fall. They’re bringing him down as fast as they can.’

“That is your opportunity,’ Claire said to Guy. ‘Angus had a room here.’

The manageress said: ‘Poor Sir Angus, and he a Scot too. He should know better than to go scrambling about the rocks at his age.’

As Guy returned, an enormous Grenadier Captain in the tradition of comedy hustled into the hall. He was dressed in damp dungarees and panting heavily.

“Thank God,’ he said. ‘Just made it. Angus’s fall has started a stampede. I was half-way up the cliff when we got the news and slid down fast.’

‘They’ll hold the steamer another fifteen minutes. They say they can’t make port in the dark.’

‘Well,’ said the breathless Captain, ‘I’ll cut along and get his room.’

The stretcher party arrived and a comatose figure, covered in great-coats, was gently laid on the tartan floor while the stretcher-bearers went up to pack his belongings.

‘Oh, God, Bertie,’ he said, seeing the Grenadier, ‘have you got his room?’

‘Don’t make such a noise,’ said the doctor.’ Can’t you see there’s a sick man here?’

As though to resolve the argument, a muffled voice from the stretcher said: ‘Itching, Eddie. Itching all over like hell.’

‘How very odd,’ said Claire, showing real interest for the first time. ‘I’ve an aunt who takes quantities of it. I wonder if she itches.’

‘Well, if you haven’t got it, Bertie,’ said Eddie, ‘I think I’ll just cut along and get that room fixed up for myself.’

Eddie looked incredulously around the hall, saw Guy for the first time and like Bertie said: ‘Damn.’

It occurred to Guy that he had better make sure of his claim. He carried his valise and suitcase upstairs and before Anstruther-Kerr’s hair brushes were off the dressing-table, his were on it. He unpacked fully, waited until the stretcher-bearers had finished their work, then followed them, locking the door behind him.

More damp and snowy officers were gathered below, among them Tommy Blackhouse. No one took any notice of Guy, except Tommy, who said:

There was a very slight difference between the Tommy whom he had known for twelve years and Tommy the commanding officer, which made Guy say: ‘I’ve orders to report to you, Colonel.’

‘Well, it’s the first I’ve heard about it. I looked for you when we were forming, but that ass Job said you’d gone to Cornwall or somewhere. Anyway, we’re losing chaps so fast that there’s room for anyone. Bertie, have we had any bumf about this Applejack – Guy Crouchback?’

‘Thank God for that. The last little contribution from HOO HQ came to train us. And that reminds me, Bertie, Kong must go.’

‘Everything always seems to be too late in this bloody island. Keep him away from my men anyhow, until we find somewhere to hide him. I’ll see you later, Guy, and sort you out. Very pleased you’re here. Come on, Bertie. We’ve got to open that bag and get some signals off.’

‘Difficult to say. He looks like a gorilla. They caught him somewhere in HOO HQ and sent him here to teach us to climb. We call him King Kong.’

Everyone except Guy, who felt that his acquaintance was too small to justify solicitude, asked news of Angus.

‘He’s as comfortable as possible. I’ve arranged for his reception the other end.’

‘Well, in that case, doc, will you come and have a look at that chap of mine, Cramp, who took a toss today?’

‘And I wish you’d see Corporal Blake, the fellow you patched up yesterday.’

‘Blake doesn’t look fit to walk. No, come on, doc, and I’ll stand you a drink. I don’t like the look of him.’

‘And Trooper Eyre,’ said another officer. ‘He’s either tight or delirius. He landed on his head yesterday.’

The doctor looked at him with loathing. ‘Rightho. You’ll have to show me their billets.’

‘I’m glad you beat Bertie and the rest to that room,’ said Claire. ‘Of course you can’t expect it to make you popular. But perhaps you won’t be here very long.’ He shut his eyes and for some minutes there was silence.

The final entry was a man in the kilt and uniform of a highland regiment. He carried a tall shepherd’s staff and said in a voice that had more of the Great West Road in it than of the Pass of Glencoe, ‘Sorry to hear about Angus.’

Claire looked at him. ‘Angus who?’ he asked with distaste that was near malevolence.

‘He is said to be comfortable. If so, it must be the first occasion for weeks.’

During this conversation Guy had been studying the newcomer with growing wonder. At length he said:

‘So I supposed. I won’t ask you what “Trimmer” is short for. “Trimlestown” hardly seems probable. Well, I will leave you two old friends together. Good-bye, Trimmer.’’

‘You musn’t mind old Ivor. He and I are great pals and chaff each other a bit. Did you spot his M.C.? Do you know how he got it? At Dunkirk, for shooting three territorials who were trying to swamp his boat. Great chap old Ivor. Care to give me a drink, uncle? That was the object of the exercise.’

‘That’s rather a long story. My mother is a McTavish. Chaps often sign on under assumed names, you know. After I left the Halberdiers I didn’t want to hang about waiting to be called up. My firm had been bombed out and I was rather at a loose end. So I went to Glasgow and joined up, no questions asked. McTavish seemed the right sort of name. I fairly whizzed through OCTU. None of that pomp and ceremony of the Halberdiers. I get a good laugh when I remember those guest nights and the snuff and all that rot. So here I am with the Jocks.’ He had already helped himself to whisky. ‘One for you? I’ll sign Angus’s name for both. It is a good system they have here. I often drop in and if there isn’t a pal about, I sign another bloke’s name. Only chaps I know would give me a drink if they were in, of course. Chaps like Angus, who’s a Scot too.’

‘Good for you, uncle. Cheers. I’ve sometimes thought of joining the Commando myself, but I am sitting pretty snug at the moment. The rest of my battalion went off to Iceland. We had a roughish farewell party and I got a wrist sprained, so they left me behind with the other odds and sods and then we got sent here on defence duties.’

‘I don’t imagine I’m missing much fun in Iceland. I say, talking of roughish parties, do you remember how you sprained a knee at that guest night with the Halberdiers?’

‘No accounting for tastes. He’s got himself quite a reputation in these parts as a killer. He lives round the point near our gun. A mean sort of billet. Never been inside. I’ll take you there now if you like.’

It was deadly cold out of doors and the light fading. Beyond the quays lay a stone track, iced over now, in the shadows of the cliff. Guy envied Trimmer his shepherd’s staff. They made slow time towards the point.

They paused, then made slowly forward until, rounding the cape, they met the biting wind.

‘Salvage, off an armed trawler that got sunk near shore. We’ve got twenty rounds with her too.’

‘At the moment one of the twenty rounds is stuck half in and half out of the breech. Can’t move it one way or the other. Tried everything. My men aren’t used to artillery. Why should they be?’

‘That’s where the natives hang out. One can’t make them understand black-out. Got Mugg to lecture them. No good.’

‘That’s what he calls himself. Stuffy old goat but he seems to be God almighty in these parts. Lives in the Castle.’

At last they reached a high, solitary building. What few and small windows it had were deep shadows. Not a chink showed.

‘They call that the Old Castle. The factor lives there and Kong with him. I’ll leave you here, if you don’t mind. Kong and I don’t hit it off and the factor’s always making dirty cracks about my being Scotch.’

They parted with words of friendliness which froze like their breath in the wind and Guy approached the unfriendly place alone – Child Roland to the dark tower, he thought.

Whatever the age of the building – its outline seemed medieval – the entrance was Victorian and prosaic; a small granite porch, with brass on the door, which was embellished with small stained-glass panels. Guy, in obedience to the instructions dimly legible by torch light on the brass plate, knocked and rang. Soon there was a glimmer of light, footsteps, the turning of a lock and the door stood three inches open on its chain. A female voice challenged him, as plain in meaning and as obscure in vocabulary as the bark of a dog. Guy answered firmly: ‘Captain James Pendennis Corner.’

The door shut and firm feet in loose slippers wandered away and the light in the glass panels with them.

Guy huddled in the lee of the little granite column. The wind blew harder, deafening him to the sounds of lock and chain within, so that when the door suddenly opened, he stumbled and nearly fell into the lightless hall. He was aware of the door being banged to and of the presence of another human being, first quite near him, then retreating and mounting. He stood where he was until a door above him opened and cast a golden light over the hall and a stone spiral staircase which rose immediately in front of him. A female figure stood black in the doorway. The structure no doubt was medieval but the scene might have been a set by Gordon Craig for a play of Maeterlinck’s.

Guy climbed as cautiously as he had walked the track. The granite steps were smoother and harder than the ice outside. The female withdrew upwards into the shadows as he approached.

It had been a day of diverse happenings; the warm breakfast with Jumbo, the long drive over the frozen moorland, the sea-crossing during which Guy had sat below, gripping the corner of the teak table – receiving whenever he relaxed his hold a tremendous buffet backward and forward into one corner or other of the little saloon; the Kümmel at tea time, the drugged, sheeted figure of Anstruther-Kerr, whisky with Trimmer, the agonizing stumbling march against the wind, the villa door which opened into the dark tower – it had been an unnerving day and its climax found Guy so confounded between truth and fantasy that he was prepared, as he entered the room, to find a tableau from some ethno-graphic museum, some shaggy, prognathous hypothetical ancestor, sharpening a flint spear-head among a heap of gnawed bones between walls scrawled with imitation Picassos. Instead he found a man, bulky and hirsute indeed, but a man made in the same image as himself, and plainly far from well, wrapped in army blankets, seated before a peat fire on a commonplace upright chair, with his feet in a steaming bucket of mustard and water. At his hand stood a whisky bottle and on the hob a kettle of water.

‘Chatty,’ said Guy; tears of emotion filled his eyes (the lachrymatory glands being already over-stimulated by the cold wind). ‘Chatty, is it really you?’

Chatty stared under his lowering brow, sneezed and drank hot whisky. Plainly his memories of the night with the Halberdiers were less vivid than Guy’s.

‘They called me that in Africa,’ he said at last. ‘Here they call me “Kong”. Can’t think why.’

He stared and sipped and sneezed. ‘Can’t think why they called me “Chatty” in Africa. My names are James Pendennis.’

‘Well, that wouldn’t be much good, would it? Not,’ he added in fairness, ‘that I often read the Rum, Muck, Mugg and Eigg Times, either. I’m not much of a reading man.’

‘Yes,’ said Chatty. ‘He’s one for reading papers. Reads anything he picks up. He’s a very well-informed man, Apthorpe. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about. He’s told me a lot of things you’d never believe, Apthorpe has. Do you know him?’

‘No, no. I dined with him less than a year ago in his mess. I’m afraid I got a bit tight that evening. Apthorpe used to hit the bottle a bit, you know.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’ He sneezed, drank and silently pondered the news. ‘A man who knew everything. No age either. Years younger than me. What did he die of?’

‘Beastly complaint. Never heard of anyone dying of it before. Very well off, too.’

‘Private means. Everyone with any private means is well off. That’s what has always held me back. Parson’s son. No private means.’

It was like the game Guy used to play when he was an undergraduate and stayed at country houses – the game in which two contestants strove to introduce a particular sentence into their conversation in a natural manner. This was Guy’s opening.

‘But,’ said Guy inexorably, ‘he left all his tropical gear to you. I’ve got it here – on the mainland, at least – to hand over.’

Chatty refilled his glass. ‘Decent of him,’ said Chatty. ‘Decent of you.’

‘Yes. He was always collecting more and more. He used to show it to me whenever I dropped in. He was the soul of hospitality, Apthorpe. He used to put me up, you know, when I was in from the bush. We used to drink a lot at the club and then he’d show me his latest purchases. It was quite a routine.’

‘Apthorpe! No, he had his job to look after in town. I took him for a day or two’s shooting now and then – repaying hospitality, you know. But he was such an awful bad shot and got in the way, poor chap, and he never had long enough leave to travel any distance. They work them jolly hard in the tobacco company.’

‘This is the hell of a place to send a man like me,’ he continued. ‘I offered my services as a tropical expert when the war began. They put me in charge of a jungle warfare school. Then, after Dunkirk, that was abolished and they somehow got my name on a list of mountaineers. Never been out of the bush in my life. I don’t know a thing about rocks, still less ice. No wonder we get casualties.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. There’s nothing I should need here, I don’t suppose. I’ll look it over some time. There’s a perfectly awful fellow called McTavish lives next door. He goes across to the mainland now and then. I’ll go with him, one of these days.’

‘Chatty, you don’t understand. I’ve legal obligations. I must hand over your legacy to you.’

‘There are moral obligations, too. Please. I can’t explain, but it’s most important to me.’

‘Queer old place this. Used to be the laird’s castle before they built the present edifice. His agent lives here now.’

‘Chatty, I think I can get your stuff over. I have connexions on the mainland.’

‘They say it’s haunted. I suppose it is in a way, but I tell them if they’d seen a few of the things I’ve seen in Africa…’

‘Plenty of storage here. I expect there’s a cellar. All the gear will fit in without being in the way of anyone…’

Guy folded the carbon paper in his field notebook and wrote: Received 7 November 1940 Apthorpe’s gear.

Chatty took the book and studied it with his head first on one side and then on the other. Till the final moment Guy feared he would refuse. Then Chatty wrote, large and irregularly, J. P. Corner.

Suddenly the wind dropped. It was a holy moment. Guy rose in silence and ritually received the book.

‘Come back when you’ve time for a pow-wow,’ said Chatty. ‘I’d like to tell you about that village near Tambago.’

Guy descended and let himself out. It was cold but the wind had lost all its hostility. The sky was clear. There was even a moon. He calmly made his way back to the hotel which was full of the Commando.

‘Guy, I’ve bad news. You’ve got to dine out tonight at the Castle. The old boy had been making a lot of complaints so I sent Angus round to make peace. He couldn’t see the laird but it turned out he was some kind of cousin, so next day I got a formal invitation to dine there with Angus. I can’t chuck now. No one else wants to come. You’re the last to join, so go and change quick. We’re off in five minutes.’

In his room Guy superstitiously deposited each copy of Chatty’s acquittal in a separate hiding-place.

THE seat of Colonel Hector Campbell of Mugg was known locally as ‘the New Castle’, to distinguish it from the ancient and more picturesque edifice occupied by the factor and Chatty Corner. The Campbells of Mugg had never been rich but at some moment in the middle of the nineteenth century a marriage, or the sale of property on the mainland which was being transformed from moorland to town, or a legacy from emigrant kinsmen in Canada or Australia – by an accession of fortune of some kind common among lairds, the Mugg of the time got money in his hands and proceeded to build. The fortune melted, but the new castle stood. The exterior was German in character, Bismarckian rather than Wagnerian, of moderate size but designed to withstand assault from all but the most modern weapons. The interior was pitch-pine throughout and owed its decoration more to the taxidermist than to sculptor or painter.

Before Guy and Tommy had left their car, the double doors of the New Castle were thrown open. A large young butler, kilted and heavily bearded, seemed to speak some words of welcome but they were lost in a gale of music. A piper stood beside him, more ornately clothed, older and shorter; a square man, red bearded. If it had come to a fight between them the money would have been on the piper. He was in fact the butler’s father. The four of them marched forward and upward to the great hall.

A candelabrum, consisting of concentric and diminishing circles of tarnished brass, hung from the rafters. A dozen or so of the numberless cluster of electric bulbs were alight, disclosing the dim presence of a large circular dinner table. Round the chimney-piece, whose armorial decorations were obscured by smoke, the baronial severity of the rest of the furniture was mitigated by a group of chairs clothed in stained and faded chintz. Everywhere else were granite, pitch-pine, tartan and objects of furniture constructed of antlers. Six dogs, ranging in size from a couple of deer-hounds to an almost hairless pomeranian, gave tongue in inverse proportion to their size. Above all from the depths of the smoke cloud a voice roared.

There were shadowy, violent actions and sounds of whacking, kicking, snarling and whining. Then the piper had it all to himself again. It was intensely cold in the hall and Guy’s eyes wept anew in the peat fumes. Presently the piper, too, was hushed and in the stunning silence an aged lady and gentleman emerged through the smoke. Colonel Campbell was much bedizened with horn and cairngorms. He wore a velvet doublet above his kilt, high stiff collar and a black bow tie. Mrs Campbell wore nothing memorable.

The dogs fanned out beside them and advanced at the same slow pace, silent but menacing. His probable destiny seemed manifest to Guy, to be blinded by smoke among the armchairs, to be frozen to death in the wider spaces, or to be devoured by the dogs where he stood. Tommy, the perfect soldier, appreciated the situation and acted promptly. He advanced on the nearest deerhound, grasped its muzzle and proceeded to rotate its head in a manner which the animal appeared to find reassuring. The great tail began to wave in the fumes. The hushed dogs covered their fangs and advanced to sniff first at his trousers, then at Guy’s. Meanwhile Tommy said:

‘I’m awfully sorry we couldn’t let you know in time. Angus Anstruther-Kerr had an accident today on the rocks. I didn’t want to leave you a man short, so I’ve brought Mr Crouchback instead.’

Guy had already observed the vast distances that separated the few places at table and thought this explanation of his presence less than adequate to the laird’s style of living. Mrs Campbell took his hand gently.

‘Mugg will be disappointed. We make more of kinship here than you do in the south, you know. He’s a little deaf, by the way.’

‘I never met your father,’ he said. ‘But I knew his uncle, Kerr of Gellioch, before his father married Jean Anstruther of Glenaldy. You resemble neither the one nor the other. Glenaldy was a fine man, though he was old when I knew him, and it was a sorrow having no son, to pass the place of Gellioch to.’

‘You know she is, dear. We discussed it. Katie is Mugg’s great-niece from Edinburgh, who’s paying us a visit.’

As they sat at the round table the gulf that should have been filled by Katie, lay between Guy and his host. Tommy had at once begun a brisk conversation about local tides and beaches with Mrs Campbell. The laird looked at Guy, decided the distance between them was insurmountable and contentedly splashed about in his soup.

‘Argyll myself, of course. No mixture there. They tried cross-posting at the end of the last war. Never worked.’

Fish appeared. Colonel Campbell was silent while he ate, got into trouble with some bones, buried his head in his napkin, took out his teeth and at last got himself to rights.

‘Mugg finds fish very difficult nowadays,’ said Mrs Campbell during this process.

‘Don’t you think it would have been a more honest answer to admit it in the first place?’

‘When I asked you if you had gun-cotton, do you suppose I imagined you were carrying it on your person now? I meant, have you brought any gun-cotton on to my island?’

Here Tommy intervened. ‘I hope you’ve no complaint about it being misused, sir?’

‘Or dynamite?’ continued the laird disregarding. ‘Any explosive would do.’

At this moment the piper put an end to the conversation. He was followed by the butler bearing a huge joint which he set before the host. Round and round went the skirl. Colonel Campbell hacked away at the haunch of venison. The butler followed his own devious course with a tray of red-currant jelly and unpeeled potatoes. Not before the din was over and a full plate before him did Guy realize that a young lady had unobtrusively slipped into the chair beside him. He bowed as best he could from the intricate framework of antlers which constituted his chair. She returned his smile of greeting liberally.

She was, he judged, ten or twelve years younger than himself. Either she was freckled, which seemed unlikely at this place and season, or else she had been splashed with peaty water and had neglected to wash, which seemed still less likely in view of the obvious care she had taken with the rest of her toilet. An hereditary stain perhaps, Guy thought, suddenly appearing in Mugg to bear evidence of an ancestral seafaring adventure long ago among the Spice Islands. Over the brown blotches she was richly rouged, her short black curls were bound with a tartan ribbon, held together by a brooch of the kind Guy had supposed were made only for tourists, and she wore a dress which in that hall must have exposed her to an extremity of frigeration. Her features were regular as marble and her eyes wide and splendid and mad.

‘You aren’t doing very well, are you?’ she remarked suddenly on a note of triumph.

‘This is Mr Crouchback, dear,’ said Mrs Campbell, frowning fiercely at her husband’s great-niece.’ Miss Carmichael. She comes from Edinburgh.’

‘Her grandmother was a Campbell,’ said the laird, in a tone of deepest melancholy, ‘my own mother’s sister.’

‘No one is questioning your being a true Scot, Katie,’ said the great-aunt; ‘eat your dinner.’

During this exchange of genealogical information, Guy had pondered on Miss Carmichael’s strange preliminary challenge. He had not distinguished himself, he fully realized, in the preceding conversation, though it would have taken a master, he thought, to go right. And, anyway, how did this beastly girl know? Had she been hiding her freckles in the smoke, or, more likely, was she that phenomenon, quite common, he believed, in these parts – the seventh child of a seventh child? He had had a hard day. He was numb and choked and under-nourished. An endless procession marched across his mind, Carmichaels, Campbells, Meiklejohns, Dundases, in columns of seven, some kilted and bonneted, others in the sober, durable garb of the Edinburgh professions, all dead.

He steadied himself with wine, which in contrast to soup or fish was excellent. ‘Doing well’, of course, was an expression of the nursery. It meant eating heavily. Hitherto instinct and experience alike had held him back from the venison. Now, openly rebuked, he put a fibrous, rank lump of the stuff into his mouth and began desperately chewing. Miss Carmichael turned back to him.

‘Six ships last week,’ she said. ‘We can’t get Berlin, so we have to go by your wireless. I expect it’s a lot more really, ten, twenty, thirty, forty…’

The laird cut across this speculation by saying to Tommy, ‘That’s what sappers are for, aren’t they? – blowing things up.’

‘They built the Anglican Cathedral in Gibraltar,’ said Guy, in a stern effort to ‘do better’ but rather indistinctly, for the venison seemed totally unassimilable.

‘No,’ said the laird. ‘I went to a wedding there. They didn’t blow that up. Not at the time of the wedding anyhow. But rocks, now.’ (He looked craftily at Tommy.) ‘They could blow rocks up, I dare say, just as easily as you and I would blow up a wasps’ nest.’

‘I always told my men that the nearer you are to the point of an explosion, the safer you are.’

Miss Carmichael had stopped counting and said: ‘We have quite grown out of the Bonnie Prince Charlie phase, you know. Edinburgh is the heart of Scotland now.’

‘Absolutely seething. It is time I went back there. But I’m not allowed to talk about it, of course.’

She produced from her bag a gold pencil and wrote on the tablecloth, guarding her message with her forearm.

She began vigorously rubbing the cloth with breadcrumbs and suddenly, disconcertingly, assumed party manners saying:

‘I miss the music so. All the greatest masters come to Edinburgh, you know.’

While she wrote, Guy had managed to remove the venison from his mouth to his plate. He took a draft of claret and said clearly:

‘I wonder if you came across a friend of mine at the University. Peter Ellis – he teaches Egyptology or something like that. He used to seethe awfully when I knew him.’

The laird had finished his plateful and was ready to resume the subject of explosives.

‘They need practice,’ he roared, interrupting his wife and Tommy who were discussing submarines.

‘I will show them just the place. I own the hotel, of course,’ he added without apparent relevance.

‘It doesn’t pay. And d’you know why not? No bathing beach. Send those sappers of yours up to me and I can show them the very place for their explosion. Shift a few tons of rock and what do you find? Sand. There was sand there in my father’s time. It’s marked as sand on the Survey and the Admiralty chart. Bit of the cliff came down; all it needs is just lifting up again.’

With the pudding came the nine-o’clock news. A wireless-set was carried to the centre of the table, and the butler tried to adjust it.

There was a brief knock-about turn such as Scots often provide for their English guests, between the laird and his butler, each displaying feudal loyalty, independence, pure uncontrolled crossness and ignorance of the workings of modern science.

‘There was something I never liked about the fellow. Something fishy, if you know what I mean.’

‘It is a terrible thing,’ said Miss Carmichael, ‘to see the best of our lads marched off, generation after generation, to fight the battles of the English for them. But the end is upon them. When the Germans land in Scotland, the glens will be full of marching men come to greet them, and the professors themselves at the universities will seize the towns. Mark my words, don’t be caught on Scottish soil on that day.’

‘It was those exams,’ said Mrs Campbell. ‘Far too advanced for a girl. I will leave you to your port,’ and she followed Miss Carmichael out, perhaps to chide her, perhaps to calm her with a glass of whisky.

Colonel Campbell was not by habit a drinker of port. The glasses were very small indeed and it did not need the seventh child of a seventh child to detect that the wine had been decanted for some time. Two wasps floated there. The laird, filling his own glass first, neatly caught one of them. He held it up to his eye and studied it with pride.

‘It was there when the war began,’ he said solemnly. ‘And I was hoping it could lie there until we pledged our victory. Port, you understand, being more a matter of ceremony here than of enjoyment. Gentlemen, the King.’

Heavy cut-glass goblets were set before the three men; a trumpery little china jug of water and a noble decanter of almost colourless, slightly clouded liquid.

‘Whisky,’ said Mugg with satisfaction. ‘Let me propose a toast. The Coldstream, the Halberdiers and the Sappers.’

They sat round the table for an hour or more. They talked of military matters with as much accord as was possible between a veteran of Spion Cop and tyros of 1940. They reverted in their talk, every few minutes, to the subject of high explosive. Then Mrs Campbell returned to them. They stood up. She said:

‘Oh dear, how quickly the evening goes. I’ve barely seen anything of you. But I suppose you have to get up so early in the mornings.’

Before Tommy or Guy could speak, the piper was among them. They mouthed their farewells and followed him to the front door. As they got into their car they saw a storm-lantern waving wildly from an upper window. Tommy made the gesture of taking a salute, the piper turned about and blew away up the corridor. The great doors shut. The lantern continued to wave and in the silence came the full and friendly challenge: ‘Heil Hitler.’

Tommy and Guy did not exchange a word on the road home. Instead they laughed, silently at first, then loud and louder. Their driver later reported that he had never seen the Colonel like it, and as for the new Copper Heel, he was ‘well away’. He added that his own entertainment below stairs had been ‘quite all right too’.

Tommy and Guy were indeed inebriated, not solely, nor in the main, by what they had drunk. They were caught up and bowled over together by that sacred wind which once blew freely over the young world. Cymbals and flutes rang in their ears. The grim isle of Mugg was full of scented breezes, momentarily uplifted, swept away and set down under the stars of the Aegean.

Men who have endured danger and privation together often separate and forget one another when their ordeal is ended. Men who have loved the same woman are blood brothers even in enmity; if they laugh together, as Tommy and Guy laughed that night, orgiastically, they seal their friendship on a plane rarer and loftier than normal human intercourse.

They moved from the heights of fantasy into an unusual but essentially prosaic scene.

The hall had become a gaming-house. On the second day of the Commando’s arrival Ivor Claire had ordered the local carpenter, a grim Calvinist with an abhorrence of cards, to make a baccarat shoe on the pretext that it was an implement of war. He now sat at the central table, which was now neatly chalked into sections, paying out a bank. At other tables there was a game of poker and two couples of backgammon. Tommy and Guy made for the table of drinks.

Without turning round Tommy called ‘Banco’, filled his glass and joined the large table.

But the cymbals and flutes were still sounding faintly in Guy’s ears. He shook his head and wandered dreamily upstairs to a dreamless sleep.

Next morning at breakfast Guy was told: ‘Ivor cleaned up more than £150 last night.’

It was still dark outside at breakfast-time. The heating apparatus was not working yet; the newly rekindled peat fire sent a trickle of smoke into the dining-room. It was intensely cold.

Guy went to the door and found the driver from last night. There was something indefinably cheeky about the man’s greeting.

‘I found these in the car, sir. I don’t know whether they are the Colonel’s or yours.’

He handed Guy a bundle of printed papers. Guy examined the top sheet and read, in large letters:

The driver saluted. Guy turned about and his feet slipped on the frozen surface of the steps. He dropped the papers, breaking the frail bond of knitting-wool which held them together and saved himself from falling only by clutching at the departing driver. A great gust of wind came as they stood embracing and bore away the treasonable documents, scattering them high in the darkness.

The Regimental orderly room was upstairs, two communicating bedrooms. Grey dawn had broken when Guy went to report officially to his Commanding Officer.

Bertie, the large Grenadier whom Eddie had described as being ‘in a sort of way’ the Adjutant, was in the outer room smoking a pipe. Guy saluted. Bertie said:

He put down his pipe on an ash tray which advertised a sort of soda-water and went next door. Presently his head appeared.

Guy saluted at the door, as he had been taught in the Halberdiers, marched to the centre of Tommy’s table and stood to attention until Tommy said: ‘Good morning, Guy.’

‘That was a surprisingly funny evening we had last night,’ Tommy said, and then to Bertie: ‘Have you found out anything about this officer, Bertie?’

Tommy read the letter carefully. ‘See the reference CP oblique RX? That’s the same reference as they used when they sent Kong here if I’m not mistaken. It looks as though HOO HQ have got into a muddle with their filing system. We at least leave our bumf handy on the table.’ He flicked the paper into a wire tray.

‘Well, Guy, you aren’t to be one of us, I’m afraid. You’re the personal property of Colonel Ritchie-Hook, Royal Halberdiers, sent here until he’s passed fit. I’m sorry. I could have used you to take over Ian’s section. But it’s not fair on the men to keep switching officers about. We’ll have to get a proper replacement for Ian. The question now is, what’s to be done with you?’

In all his military service Guy never ceased to marvel at the effortless transitions of intercourse between equality and superiority. It was a figure which no temporary officer ever learned to cut. Some of them were better than the regulars with their men. None ever achieved the art of displaying authority over junior officers without self-consciousness and consequent offence. Regular soldiers were survivals of a happy civilization where differences of rank were exactly defined and frankly accepted.

In the thirteen years of Guy’s acquaintance with Tommy he had spent few hours in his company, yet their relationship was peculiar. He had known him first as an agreeable friend of his wife’s; then, when momentarily she took him as her lover, as some kind of elemental which had mindlessly sent all Guy’s world spinning in fragments; later, without bitterness, as an odd uncomfortable memory, someone to be avoided for fear of embarrassment; Tommy had lost as much as he by his adventure.

Then the war came, collecting, as it seemed, the scattered jigsaw of the past and setting each piece back into its proper place. At Bellamy’s he and Tommy were amiable acquaintances, as they had been years before. Last night they had been close friends. Today they were Colonel and Subaltern.

‘None by the look of this letter. Besides, you’re getting a bit long in the tooth for the kind of job we’re going to do. Do you think you could climb those cliffs?’

‘Any damn fool can try. That’s why I’m five officers short. Do you think you could handle the office bumf better than Bertie?’

Tommy looked at them both sadly. ‘What I want is an administrative officer. An elderly fellow who knows all the ropes and can get round the staff. Bertie doesn’t fit; I’m afraid you don’t either.’

‘I think I’ve got the very thing for you, Colonel,’ he said, and described Jumbo in detail.

When he finished Tommy said: ‘Bertie, go and get him. People like that are joining the Home Guard in hundreds. Catch him before they do. He’ll have to come down in rank, of course. If he’s all you say he is, he’ll know how to do it. He can transfer to the navy or something and come here as an RNVR Lieutenant. For Christ’s sake, Bertie, why are you standing there?’

‘All right, go out to C troop and take over Ian’s section. Guy, you’re assistant adjutant. Go and get your man. Don’t stand there like Bertie. See the harbour-master, get a lifeboat, get moving.’

Guy recognized the look of the professional soldier, as he had seen it in Jumbo, overclouding Tommy’s face. The daemon of caution by which the successful are led, was whispering: ‘Don’t go too far. You won’t get away with a lorry.’

NEITHER character nor custom had fitted Trimmer to the life of a recluse. For a long time now he had been lying low doing nothing to call himself to the notice of his superiors. He had not reported the condition of his piece of artillery. So far there had been no complaints. His little detachment were well content; Trimmer alone repined as every day his need for feminine society became keener. He was in funds, for he was not admitted to the gambling sessions at the hotel. He was due for leave and at last he took it, seeking what he called ‘the lights’.

Glasgow in November 1940 was not literally a ville lumière. Fog and crowds gave the black-out a peculiar density. Trimmer, on the afternoon of his arrival, went straight from the train to the station hotel. Here too were fog and crowds. All its lofty halls and corridors were heaped with luggage and thronged by transitory soldiers and sailors. There was a thick, shifting mob at the reception office. To everybody the girl at the counter replied: ‘Reserved rooms only. If you come back after eight there may be some cancellations.’

Trimmer struggled to the front, leered and asked: ‘Have ye no a wee room for a Scottish laddie?’

Trimmer gave her a wink and she seemed just perceptibly responsive, but the thrust of other desperate and homeless men made further flirtation impossible.

With his bonnet on the side of his head, his shepherd’s crook in his hand and a pair of major’s crowns on his shoulders (he had changed them for his lieutenant’s stars in the train lavatory), Trimmer began to saunter through the ground floor. There were men everywhere. Of the few women each was the centre of a noisy little circle of festivity, or else huddled with her man in a gloom of leave-taking. Waiters were few. Everywhere he saw heads turned and faces of anxious entreaty. Here and there a more hopeful party banged the table and impolitely shouted: ‘We want service.’

But Trimmer was undismayed. He found it all very jolly after his billet on Mugg and experience had taught him that anyone who really wants a woman, finds one in the end.

He passed on with all the panache of a mongrel among the dustbins, tail waving, ears cocked, nose a-quiver. Here and there in his passage he attempted to insinuate himself into one or other of the heartier groups, but without success. At length he came to some steps and the notice: CHATEAU de MADRID. Restaurant de grand luxe.

Trimmer had been to this hotel once or twice before but he had never penetrated into what he knew was the expensive quarter. He took his fun where he found it, preferably in crowded places. Tonight would be different. He strolled down rubber-lined carpet and was at once greeted at the foot of the stairs by a head waiter.

‘Pardon, monsieur. It is not allowed to serve drinks here except to those who are dining. Upstairs…’

The two men looked at one another, fraud to fraud. They had both knocked about a little. Neither was taken in by the other. For a moment Trimmer was tempted to say: ‘Come off it. Where did you get that French accent? The Mile End Road or the Gorbals?’

The waiter was tempted to say: ‘This isn’t your sort of place, chum. Hop it.’

In the event Trimmer said: ‘I shall certainly dine here if my friend turns up. You might give me a look at the menu while I have my cocktail.’

He sat at the cocktail bar. The decoration here was more trumpery than in the marble and mahogany halls above. It should have been repainted and re-upholstered that summer, but war had intervened. It wore the air of a fashion magazine, once stiff and shiny, which too many people had handled. But Trimmer did not mind. His acquaintance with fashion magazines had mostly been in tattered copies.

Trimmer looked about and saw that one chair only was occupied. Here in the corner was what he sought, a lonely woman. She did not look up and Trimmer examined her boldly. He saw a woman equipped with all the requisites for attention, who was not trying to attract. She was sitting still and looking at the half-empty glass on her table and she was quite unaware of Trimmer’s brave bare knees and swinging sporran. She was, Trimmer judged, it her early thirties; her clothes – and Trimmer was something of a judge – were unlike anything worn by the ladies of Glasgow. Less than two years ago they had come from a grand couturier. She was not exactly Trimmer’s type but he was ready to try anything that evening. He was inured to rebuffs.

A sharper eye might have noted that she fitted a little too well into her surroundings – the empty tank which had lately been lit up and brilliant with angel fish; the white cordings on the crimson draperies, now a little grimy, the white plaster sea-horses, less gay than heretofore – the lonely woman did not stand out distinct from these. She sat, as it were, in a faint corroding mist – the exhalation perhaps of unhappiness or ill health, or of mere weariness. She drained her glass and looked past Trimmer to the barman who said: ‘Coming up right away, madam,’ and began splashing gin of a previously unknown brand into his shaker.

When Trimmer saw her face he was struck by a sense of familiarity; somewhere, perhaps in those shabby fashion-magazines, he had seen it before.

‘I’ll take it over,’ he said to the barman, quickly lifting the tray with the new cocktail on it.

Trimmer retained his hold. The barman let go. Trimmer carried the tray to the corner.

‘Your cocktail, madam,’ he said jauntily. The woman took the glass, said ‘Thank you’ and looked beyond him. Trimmer then remembered her name.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.’ I’m afraid I don’t remember. One meets so many people.’

‘You could do with a rinse and set,’ said Trimmer, adding in the tones of the maître d’hôtel, ‘Madam’s hair is un peu fatigué, n’est ce-pas? It is the sea-air.’

‘Remember how I used to come to your cabin in the mornings? As soon as I saw your name on the passenger list I’d draw a line through all my eleven-thirty appointments. The old trouts used to come and offer ten-dollar tips but I always kept eleven-thirty free in case you wanted me.’

‘Gustave, how awful of me! How could I have forgotten? Sit down. You must admit you’ve changed a lot.’

‘You haven’t,’ said Trimmer. ‘Remember that little bit of massage I used to give you at the back of the neck. You said it cured your hangovers.’

‘No great secret. He’s a sailor. I haven’t known him long but I liked him. He went off quite suddenly. People are always going off suddenly nowadays, not saying where.’

‘My dear boy, I couldn’t possibly let you spend your money on me. I was just wondering whether I could afford to stand you dinner. I don’t think I can.’

‘Very. I don’t quite know why. Something to do with Mr Troy and the war and foreign investments and exchange control. Anyway, my London bank manager has suddenly become very shifty.’

The barrier between hairdresser and first-class passenger was down. It was important to start the new relationship on the proper level – a low one. He did not fancy the idea of often acting as host at the Chateau de Madrid.

Virginia lived among people who used Christian names indiscriminately. It was Trimmer’s self-consciousness which called attention to his familiarity.

‘And I, by the way, am Major McTavish. My friends call me “Ali” or “Trimmer”.’

‘As a matter of fact they don’t. The name Trimmer has nothing to do with that. Not that I’m ashamed of it. I got plenty of fun on the Aquitania, I can tell you – with the passengers. You’d be surprised, if I told you some of the names. Lots of your own set.’

For half an hour he kept her enthralled by his revelations, some of which had a basis of truth. The restaurant and foyer began to fill up with stout, elderly civilians, airmen with showy local girls, an admiral with his wife and daughter. The head waiter approached Trimmer for the third time with the menu.

Virginia raised her eyebrows at the word ‘tomorrow’, but said nothing. Instead she took the menu card and without consultation ordered a nourishing but economical meal.

‘I am, but we’re not having any tonight. Always read the menu from right to left.’

‘Never mind. I expect there are all sorts of things we don’t “get” about one another.’

Virginia was looking her old self when she entered the restaurant; ‘class written all over her’ as Trimmer inwardly expressed it, and, besides, she gleamed with happy mischief.

‘There are some other troops there in training,’ he conceded, ‘but I don’t have much to do with them. I command the defence.’

‘Oh, damn the war,’ said Virginia. ‘Tell me more about the Aquitania.’’

She was not a woman who indulged much in reminiscence or speculation. Weeks passed without her giving thought to the past fifteen years of her life – her seduction by a friend of her father’s, who had looked her up, looked her over, taken her out, taken her in, from her finishing-school in Paris; her marriage to Guy, the Castello Crouchback and the endless cloudy terraces of the Rift Valley; her marriage to Tommy, London hotels, fast cars, regimental point-to-points, the looming horror of an Indian cantonment; fat Augustus with his cheque book always handy; Mr Troy and his taste for ‘significant people’ – none of this, as Mr Troy would say, ‘added up’ to anything. Nor did age or death. It was the present moment and the next five minutes which counted with Virginia. But just now in this shuttered fog-bound place, surrounded by strangers in the bright little room, surrounded by strangers in the blackness outside, miles of them, millions of them, all blind and deaf, not ‘significant people’; now while the sirens sounded and bombs began to fall and guns to fire far away among the dockyards – now, briefly, Virginia was happy to relive, to see again from the farther side of the looking-glass, the ordered airy life aboard the great liner. And faithful Gustave who always kept his crowded hour for her, with his false French and his soothing thumb on the neck and shoulders and the top of the spine, suddenly metamorphosed beside her into a bare-kneed major with a cockney accent, preposterously renamed – Gustave was the guide providentially sent on a gloomy evening to lead her back to the days of sun and sea-spray and wallowing dolphins.

At that moment in London Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole, lately promoted head of his most secret department, was filing the latest counter-intelligence:

Crouchback, Guy, temporary Lieutenant Royal Corps of Halberdiers, now stationed with undefined duties at Mugg at HQ X Commando. This suspect has been distributing subversive matter at night. Copy attached.

‘Yes, we’ve seen this before. Ten copies have been found in the Edinburgh area. This is the first from the islands. Very interesting. It links up the Box case with the Scottish Nationalists – a direct connexion from Salzburg to Mugg. What we need now is to connect Cardiff University with Santa Dulcina. We shall do it in time, I’ve no doubt.’

Colonel Marchpole’s department was so secret that it communicated only with the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Marchpole kept his information until it was asked for. To date that had not occurred and he rejoiced under neglect. Premature examination of his files might ruin his private, undefined Plan. Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war.

Full, Dickensian fog enveloped the city. Day and night the streets were full of slow-moving, lighted trams and lorries and hustling coughing people. Sea-gulls emerged and suddenly vanished overhead. The rattle and shuffle and the hooting of motor-horns drowned the warnings of distant ships. Now and then the air-raid sirens rose above all. The hotel was always crowded. Between drinking hours soldiers and sailors slept in the lounges. When the bars opened they awoke to call plaintively for a drink. The melée at the reception counter never diminished. Upstairs the yellow lights burned by day against the whitish-yellow lace which shut out half the yellow-brown obscurity beyond; by night against a frame of black. This was the scene in which Trimmer’s idyll was laid.

Trimmer had ventured down about midday into the murky hall to engage tickets for the theatre that evening. One of the suppliant figures at the reception-counter disengaged himself and jostled him.

It was the second-in-command of his battalion, a man Trimmer believed to be far away in Iceland.

‘Well, it’s lucky running into you. I’m looking for bodies to take up north. Just landed at Greenock this morning.’

The Major looked at him more closely and fixed his attention on the badges of rank.

‘I was promoted the other day, sir. I’m not with the regiment any more. I’m on special service.’

‘Isle of Mugg, too, sir. But I’m nothing to do with the men now. I think they are expecting an officer to take over any day. I am under Colonel Blackhouse.’

‘It’s all very rum,’ said the Major. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.’

Trimmer pushed his way forward to the hall porter. Instead of theatre tickets, it was train and ship he wanted now.

Virginia was sitting at the dressing-table. Trimmer seized his hair-brushes from under her hands and began filling his sponge-bag at the wash-hand-stand.

‘Recalled for immediate service, my dear. I can’t explain. War on, you know.’

So Trimmer returned to Mugg. He had enjoyed his leave beyond all expectation, but it had left him with a problem of which he could see only one solution, and that a most unwelcome one.

While Trimmer was in Glasgow Tommy Blackhouse had been called to London. In his absence a lassitude fell on the Commando. In the brief hours of daylight the troops marched out to uninhabited areas and blazed away their ammunition into the snowy hillside and the dark sea. One of them killed a seal. Card playing languished and in the evenings the hotel lounge was full of silent figures reading novels – No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Don’t, Mr Disraeli, the Chartreuse de Parme and other oddly assorted works of fiction passed from hand to hand.

Jumbo Trotter completed his work of filing and indexing the waste paper in the orderly-room. He had transformed himself for the time being into a Captain of the Home Guard, pending ‘posting’ to RNVR.

He and Guy sat in the orderly-room on the morning after Trimmer’s return. They both wore their greatcoats and gloves. Jumbo was further muffled in a balaclava helmet. He had Don’t, Mr Disraeli that morning and was visibly puzzled by it.

‘He seems to think the Colonel promised to give him some explosives. Doesn’t sound likely.’

‘Other fellows seemed to enjoy it. Claire recommended this book. Can’t make it out at all. Is it a sort of skit on something?’

‘What about Dr Glendening-Rees?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think Colonel Tommy is going to be much interested in him.’

‘Can’t do anything until he comes back. Can’t do very much then. This reads like an order to me. HOO HQ seem to send us every crank in the country. First Chatty Corner, now Dr Glendening-Rees. “Eminent authority on dietetics” … “original and possibly valuable proposal concerning emergency food supplies in the field” … “afford every facility for research under active service conditions”. Can’t we put him off?’

A letter had lain on the table all the morning addressed in sprawling unofficial writing. The envelope was pale violet in colour and flimsy in texture.

‘It’s addressed “OCX Commando”, not to the Colonel by name. Better open it.’

‘Of course,’ said Jumbo tolerantly, ‘there are lots of fellows who aren’t quite up to the mark for us, who are quite decent fellows all the same. If you ask me, there are several fellows here already who wouldn’t quite do in the Corps. Decent fellows, mind you, but not up to the mark.’ Jumbo gazed before him, sadly, tolerantly, considering the inadequacy of No. X Commando.

‘I call that unnecessary. And I’ll tell you something. There’s one of them – Claire’s CSM – queer looking fellow with pink eyes – they call him a “Corporal-Major” I believe. I overheard him the other day refer to these binoculars of his as his “opera glasses”. Well, I mean to say –’ He paused for effect and continued on the original topic.

‘I gather McTavish wasn’t a great success in his own regiment. Sergeant Bane got it from his Sergeant that they threw him out of a window the day before embarking for Iceland.’

‘I heard it was a horse-trough. Anyway, they knocked him about a bit. There was a lot of that sort of thing when I joined. Ink baths and so forth. No sense in it. Only made bad fellows worse.’

Tommy Blackhouse returned as expected. He immediately called for the troop-leaders and said:

‘Things are beginning to move. There’s a ship coming for us tomorrow or the day after. Be ready to embark at once. She’s fitted with ALCs. What are they, Eddie?’

‘Assault landing craft. These are the first lot made. You may have seen some of them on your Dakar jaunt, Guy. We start full-scale landing exercises at once. HOO HQ are sending observers so they had better be good. Issue maps to everyone down to Corporals. I’ll give details of the scheme tomorrow.

‘I haven’t been so lucky with replacements. OCs don’t seem as ready to play now as they were six weeks ago, but HOO have promised to bring us up to strength somehow. That’s all. Guy, I shall want you.’

‘I dare say nobody has. This place wasn’t chosen simply for its bloodiness. You’ll all know in good time. If you’d ever studied Admiralty Sailing Directions it might occur to you that there is another island with two hills, steep shingle beaches and cliffs. Somewhere rather warmer than this. The name doesn’t matter now. The point is that these exercises aren’t just a staff college scheme for Northland against Southland. They’re the dress rehearsal for an operation. It won’t do any harm if you pass that on. We’ve been playing about too long. Anything happen while I was away?’

Ivor Claire occupied himself during the ‘flap’ in making elaborate arrangements for the safe-conduct of his pekinese, Freda, to his mother’s care.

THE promised ship did not come next day or the day after or for many days, while the nights lengthened until they seemed continuous. Often the sun never appeared and drab twilight covered the island. The fishermen sat at home over the peat and the streets of the little town were as empty at noon as at midnight. Once or twice the mist lifted, the two hills appeared and a cold glare on the horizon cast long shadows across the snow. No one looked for the ship. Officers and men began to wish themselves back with their regiments.

There should be a drug for soldiers, Guy thought, to put them to sleep until they were needed. They should repose among the briar like the knights of the Sleeping Beauty; they should be laid away in their boxes in the nursery cupboard. This unvarying cycle of excitement and disappointment rubbed them bare of paint and exposed the lead beneath.

Now that Jumbo was installed in the orderly-room, Guy’s position became that of an ADC. Tommy kept him busy. He acquired a certain status in the unit as someone likely to be in the know about Christmas leave, as a mediator for the troop-leaders in their troubles and squabbles. His age was unremarkable here. Jumbo set a high standard of antiquity. Half a dozen of the troop-leaders were also in their middle thirties. No one called him ‘Uncle’. Indeed, he was not one of the family at all, merely a passing guest. He knew, now, the name of the Mediterranean island they were planning to take, but he would not be with them on the night. There was here none of the exhilaration of a year ago, of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook’s: ‘These are the men you will lead in battle.’ His work was solely among the officers; notoriously a deleterious form of soldiering. For relaxation he collected the poorest men in the mess and played poker with them for low stakes. He was slightly better off than they and he played a reasonably good game. Whenever one of his party showed too much confidence, Guy advised him to join the big game. After a night with the rich, he invariably returned crestfallen and cautious. Thus Guy made a regular five or six pounds a week.

The assault of the island was rehearsed, first by day, the troops marching to their beaches and from there scrambling inland to objectives which in Mugg was merely map-references, but, in the Mediterranean, were gun-emplacements and signal-posts. Guy acted as intelligence officer and observer and umpire. All went well.

They tried it again on a night of absolute blackness. Tommy and Guy stood by their car on the road near the old Castle. The RSM sent up the rocket which announced the start of the exercise. Bertie’s troop stumbled through the glow of the dimmed motor lamps and disappeared noisily into the blackness beyond. A civilian bus passed them. All was silent. Tommy and Guy sat in the car waiting while the headquarters signallers huddled in blankets at the road-side like a group of Bedouin. Wireless silence was being observed until the objectives were gained.

‘We might as well be in bed,’ said Tommy. ‘Nothing can happen for two hours or more and then we can’t do anything about it.’

‘Dammit, they’ve got the farthest to go of anyone. I specially gave it to them to make Ivor do some work for a change.’

‘Headquarters to D Troop. Where are you? Over … I can’t hear you. Speak up. Over … Colonel Blackhouse here. Give me Captain Claire. Over … Ivor, where are you? … You can’t be … Damn. Out.’ He turned to Guy. ‘All I can get is a request to return. Go and see them, Guy.’

On the island of Mugg there were two routes to the site of D Troop’s objective. Their orders sent them across four miles of moorland to a spot twelve miles distant by the main coast-road and just off it. In the future operation this road led through a populous and heavily garrisoned village. Guy, in the car, now took this route. He followed the track on foot where it diverged.

‘You’re very welcome, we’re getting frozen. Position occupied and defence consolidated. That I think was the object of the exercise.’

The troop were established in the comparative comfort of a sheep-pen. There was a perceptible smell of rum all about them. Claire held a mug.

‘I hired a bus. You might call it “captured transport”. Can I take the troop back and dismiss? They’re getting cold.’

‘Congratulations, Ivor, from myself. I don’t know what anyone else is going to say about it.’

Every other troop lost itself that night. After three hours Tommy ordered rockets to be fired, ending the exercise, and sections appeared out of the darkness until dawn, shuffling, soaked and spiritless as stragglers on the road from Moscow.

‘I’ll see Ivor first thing tomorrow,’ said Tommy grimly as he and Guy finally separated.

But Claire’s case was unanswerable. The Commandos were expressly raised for irregular action, for seizing tactical advantages 0n their own initiative. In the operation, Claire explained, there would probably be a bus lying about somewhere.

Tommy sat silent for some time. At last he said: ‘All right, Ivor, you win.’

The episode greatly endeared Claire to his own troop. The rest of the Commando were very angry about it indeed. Among the men it led to a feud; among the officers to marked coldness. And thus unexpectedly it drew Claire and Guy closer together. Claire required someone to talk to, and was limited in his choice by his sudden unpopularity. Moreover, he had observed with respect Guy’s conduct of his poker table. As for Guy, he had recognized from the first a certain remote kinship with this most dissimilar man, a common aloofness, differently manifested – a common melancholy sense of humour; each in his way saw life sub specie aeternitatis; thus with numberless reservations they became friends, as had Guy and Apthorpe.

One man who remained in nervous expectation of the ship’s arrival was Trimmer. Nemesis, in the shape of a spot of awkwardness seemed very near. Once on the high seas, bound for a secret destination; better still torpedoed and cast up on a neutral shore, Trimmer would be all right. Meanwhile there was the danger that the second-in-command of his battalion had made inquiries about his rank and posting and that somewhere between the Headquarters of Scottish Command and the Adjutant-General’s Office in London papers were slowly passing from tray to tray which might at any moment bring his doom.

There was also the danger that his detachment might become restive, but this he solved by sending them all on fourteen days’ leave. The men looked doubtful. Trimmer looked confident. He emptied his book of travel-vouchers, giving each man of his plenty. In the case of his Sergeant-Major he added five one-pound notes.

‘Climate a great change from Mugg. I leave the detachment in your charge, Sergeant-Major. Enjoy your leave. Then report to Sea Transport. They’ll find you a ship.’

‘But you see I am no longer in command. I’ve been seconded. I can’t sign a move order in any case.’

‘Perhaps that might be more strictly correct. But I should mess about at the docks first a bit. We must try and cut red-tape where we can.’

‘I’ve just explained to you, I’m not in a position to give any orders. All I know is that the Fourth Battalion want you in India. I saw our battalion second-in-command in Glasgow and he gave me the order verbally.’ He looked in his note-case and reluctantly produced another two pounds. ‘That’s all I have,’ he said.

He was not the best of soldiers nor the brightest but there was a look in his eyes which made Trimmer fear that seven pounds had been wasted. That man would make for the depot like a homing pigeon, the day his leave expired.

It fell to Guy to find employment for Trimmer himself. It was easy for Tommy in the exhilarating prospect of immediate embarkation to take Trimmer on; it was a different matter to impose him on a disillusioned troop-leader.

The trouble was that three of the four troops who were short of officers, were volunteers from the Household Brigade. Their commanders protested that it was impossible for guardsmen to serve under an officer from a line regiment, and Tommy, a Coldstreamer, agreed. There was a Scottish Troop to which Trimmer should properly go, but that was up to strength. The composite troop of Rifle Brigade and 60th needed an officer, but here the huge hostility that had subsisted underground between them and the Foot Guards came at once to the surface. Why should a rifleman accept Trimmer, when a guardsman would not? It had not occurred to Tommy that he could be suspected of personal bias in the matter; he had merely followed what seemed to him the natural order of things. His own brief service in a line regiment he regarded as a period of detention, seldom remembered. For the first and last time in his career he had made a minute military gaffe.

‘If they don’t want McTavish, I can give them Duncan. He’s H.L.I. Dammit, all light infantry drill is much the same, isn’t it?’

But Duncan would not do, nor would the leader of the Scottish troop surrender him. Generations of military history, the smoke of a hundred battlefields darkened the issue.

Guy and Jumbo, Halberdiers, serenely superior to such squabbles, solved the problem.

There existed in a somewhat shadowy form a sixth troop, named ‘Specialists’. It comprised a section of Marines skilled with boats and ropes and beaches, two interpreters, a field-security policeman, heavy machine gunners, and a demolition squad. The commander was an Indian cavalryman chosen for his experience in mountain warfare. This officer, Major Graves, had been playing Achilles from days before Guy landed on Mugg. He had taken Chatty Corner’s arrival as a deliberate slight on his own hardily-acquired skills. He made no protest but he brooded. The dark mood was only lighted by the tale of Chatty’s casualties, one of the first of whom was his sapper Subaltern who commanded the demolition squad.

Guy had warmed to this disgruntled, sandy little man whose heart was in the North-West Frontier and he had more than once cajoled him to the poker table. He found him, now, at the time of crisis, playing patience in his troop office.

‘He seems a fairly adaptable chap. He might make himself generally helpful, Colonel Tommy thought.’

‘I think it’s a bloody silly thing. I had a perfectly good chap. Then the CO sent a sort of human ape with orders to break his neck. Since then I’ve barely seen the sappers. I don’t know what they do. I’m sick of them. McTavish can have them.’

Thus, Trimmer first set foot upon the path to glory, little knowing his destination.

‘It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you went up to the Castle. Colonel Campbell has been writing again. Always keep in with the civilian population if you can.’

Guy found the laird at home, indeed in carpet slippers, and in a genial mood. They sat in a circular turret room full of maps and the weapons of sport. He maundered pleasantly for some minutes’ about ‘a ranker fellow!… Not a Scot at all… Nothing against rankers except they will stick by the book … Nothing against English regiments. A bit slow to get moving, that was all… Have to give commissions to all sorts now of course… Same in the last war… Met him when he first came to the island…. Didn’t think much of him … Didn’t know he was one of yours. Not a bad fellow when you got to know him …’ Until gradually Guy realized that the laird was talking of Trimmer.

To bring matters to the point Guy said: ‘McTavish now commands the demolition squad.’

Mugg rose and began fumbling under his writing-table. At length he produced a pair of boots.

‘You know what we were talking about the other evening. I’d like you to come and see.’

He donned his boots and an inverness cape and selected a tall stick from the clutter of rods, gaffs and other tall sticks. Together he and Guy walked into the wind until they stood on the cliff half a mile from the house, overlooking a rough shore of rocks and breakers.

‘There,’ Mugg said. ‘The bathing beach. McTavish says it may be a long job.’

An odd look, a Mona Lisa smirk under the moustache, came into the laird’s weather-beaten face.

‘I used to do a lot of blowing,’ said the laird, ‘up and down. Come over here.’

They walked back a quarter of a mile along the headland in the direction of the castle and looked inland.

‘Over there,’ said the laird. ‘It’s hard to see in the snow. Where there’s that hollow. You can see thistle tops round the edge. You’d not think there had been a stable there, would you?’

‘There was. Place wasn’t safe, woodwork all rotten, half the tiles gone. Couldn’t afford to repair it and no reason to. I hadn’t any horses. So up it went. They heard the bang at Muck. It was a wonderful sight. Great lumps of granite pitching into the sea and all the cattle and sheep on the island stampeding in every direction. That was on 15 June 1923. I don’t suppose anyone on the island has forgotten that day. I certainly haven’t.’ The laird sighed. ‘And now I haven’t a stick of gelignite on the place. I’ll show you what I have got.’

He led Guy into the crater to a little hut, hitherto invisible. It was massively built of granite.

‘We made that from part of the stable which didn’t go up for some reason or other. The rest of the stone went on the roads. I sold it to the government. It’s my only explosion so far that has shown a profit. Something very near £18 after everything was paid, including the labour on the magazine. This is the magazine.’

The snow, which had drifted high round the hut, had been dug clear to make a narrow passage to the door.

‘Must have ready access. You never know when you’ll need a bit of gun-cotton, do you? But I don’t bring many people here. There was a sort of inspector from the mainland came last summer. Said there had been a report that I was storing explosives. I showed him a few boxes of cartridges. Told him to look anywhere. He never found the magazine. You know how reports get about in a small place like this. Everyone knows everyone and then you get grudges. My factor has grudges with almost everyone on the island, so they try and take it out of him by making reports. Let me lead the way.’

The laird took a key from his pocket and opened the door on a single, lightless chamber. He lit an end of candle and held it high with the air of an oenophilist revealing his most recondite treasure. There was in fact a strong resemblance to a wine-cellar in the series of stone bins which lined the walls – a cellar sadly depleted.

‘My gelignite once,’ said the laird, ‘from here to here… Now this is gun-cotton. I’m still fairly well-off for that, as you can see. That’s all that’s left of the nitro-glycerine. I haven’t used any for fifteen years. It may have deteriorated. I’ll get some up soon and try it out. … This is all empty, you see. In fact, you might say there’s nothing much worth having now. You have to keep filling up, you know, or you soon find yourself with nothing. My main shortages are fuses and detonators…. Hullo, here’s a bit of luck.’ He put his candle down so that huge shadows filled the magazine. ‘Catch.’

He tossed something out of the farther darkness into the darkness where Guy stood. It passed for a moment through the candle light, hit Guy on the chest and fell to the ground.

‘Butter fingers,’ said the laird. ‘That’s dynamite. Didn’t know I had any left. Throw it back, there’s a good fellow.’

Guy groped and at last found the damp paper-wrapped cylinder, he held it out cautiously.

‘That won’t hurt you. Thousand-to-one chance of trouble with dynamite. Not like some things I’ve had in my time.’

They turned to the door. Guy was sweating in the bitter cold. At last they were in the open air, between the walls of snow. The door was locked.

‘Well,’ said the laird, ‘I’ve let you spy out the poverty of the land. You understand now why I’m appealing for help. Now let me show you some of the things that need doing.’

They walked for two hours, examining falls of rock, derelict buildings, blocked drains, tree stumps and streams which needed damming.

‘I couldn’t get the ranker fellow really interested. I don’t suppose he ever caught a fish in his life.’

For every problem the laird had a specific, drawn from a simple range of high or slow explosive.

When they parted the laird seemed to wait for thanks, as might an uncle who has been round Madame Tussaud’s with a nephew and put himself out to make the tour amusing.

‘By the way,’ said the laird.’ My niece, whom you met the other evening. She doesn’t know about the magazine. It’s not really any business of hers. She’s just here on a visit.’ He paused and regarded Guy with his fine old blue, blank eyes and then added, ‘Besides, she might waste it, you know.’

As Guy returned to the hotel, he paused to observe a man with a heavy load on his back who stood on the edge of the sea, bent double among the rocks and clawing at them, it appeared, with both hands. He rose when he saw Guy, and advanced towards him carrying a dripping mass of weed; a tall wild man, hatless and clothed in a suit of roughly dressed leather; his grey beard spread in the wind like a baroque prophet’s; the few exposed portions of skin were as worn and leathery as his trousers; he wore gold-rimmed pince-nez and spoke not in the accents of Mugg but in precise academic tones.

‘He is expecting me. I arrived this morning. The journey took me longer than I expected. I came North on my bicycle and ran into some very rough weather. I was just getting my lunch before making myself known. Can I offer you some?’

‘Thank you,’ said Guy. ‘No, I am just going to the hotel. You must be Dr Glendening-Rees!’

‘Of course.’ He filled his mouth with weed and chewed happily, regarding Guy with fatherly interest. ‘Lunch at the hotel?’ he said. ‘You won’t find hotels on the battle-field, you know.’

‘Bully beef,’ said the doctor. ‘Biscuit, stewed tea. Poison. I was in the first war. I know. Nearly ruined my digestion for life. That’s why I’ve devoted myself to my subject.’ He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of large limpets. ‘Try these. Just picked them. Every bit as agreeable as oysters and much safer. There’s everything a man can want here,’ he said, gazing fondly at the desolate fore-shore. ‘A rare banquet. I can warrant your men will miss it when they get inland. Things aren’t made quite so easy for them there, particularly at this time of year. Not much showing above ground. You have to grub for it and know what you’re looking for. It’s all a matter of having a flair. The young roots of the heather, for instance, are excellent with a little oil and salt, but get a bit of bog myrtle mixed with them and you’re done. I don’t doubt we can train them.’

‘I’m attached to headquarters. We heard you were coming. The Colonel will be very sorry to miss you.’

‘Oh, I can start without him. I have a schedule prepared. Now don’t let me keep you. Go along to your hotel lunch. I shall be a little time here. One of the lessons you will have to learn is to eat slowly in the natural, rational way. Where shall I find someone in authority?’

‘At the hotel’ – it was not a word to placate Dr Glendening-Rees – ‘I’m afraid.’

Some two hours later, when he had completed his natural and rational luncheon, Dr Glendening-Rees sat opposite Jumbo and Guy in the regimental office, explaining his plan of action.

‘I shall want a demonstration squad from you. Half a dozen men will be enough at this stage. Pick them at random. I don’t want the strongest or the youngest or the fittest – just a cross-section. We will be out five days. The essential thing is to make a thorough inspection first. My last experiment was ruined by bad discipline. The men were loaded with concealed food. Their officer even had a bottle of whisky. As a result their whole diet was unbalanced and instead of slowly learning to enjoy natural foods, they broke camp at night, killed a sheep and made themselves thoroughly sick. The only supplement they can possibly need is a little olive oil and barley sugar. I shall keep that and dole it out if I detect any deficiency in the roots. At the end of five days I suggest we hold a little tug-of-war between my squad and six men who have been normally victualled and I’ll guarantee my men give a good account of themselves.’

‘Yes,’ said Jumbo. ‘Yes. That should be most interesting. A pity the CO isn’t here.’

‘No doubt he will be here to see the tug-of-war. I’ve been studying the map of Mugg. It is ideal for our purpose. On the west coast there is a large tract that seems quite uninhabited. There will be no temptation for them to pilfer from farms. Eggs, for instance, would be fatal to the whole conception. I have a full training routine worked out for them – marching, PT, digging. They will get invaluable experience in making a snow bivouac. Nothing more snug if you go the right way about it.’

‘Well,’ said Jumbo. ‘The thing to do is just to stand by, eh? The CO will be back tomorrow or the next day.’

‘Oh, but I’ve got my orders, direct from HOO HQ. I’m to start “forthwith”. Didn’t they notify you?’

‘This, was it not?’ The doctor produced from his fleecy bosom a carbon copy of the letter that lay in the pending tray. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I read that as a direct order to give me every facility for my research.’

‘Yes,’ conceded Jumbo.’ It could be read in that sense. Why not go out and make a recce on your own? I’ve never been across to the west coast. Map may be out of date, you know. Often are. I daresay the whole place has been built over now. Why not take a few days off and make sure?’

Jumbo was replete with unnatural and irrational foods; he was drowsy and no match for an opponent exhilarated with rare marine salts and essences.

Jumbo looked anxiously at Guy. ‘I can’t see any of the troop leaders playing on this one.’

‘From tomorrow you cease to be under my command. Your section will report in full marching order to a civilian medico, under whose orders you will remain until further notice. You will live in the open on heather and seaweed. I can tell you no more than that. HOO HQ has spoken.’

‘Oh yes, McTavish. There’s a job of work for you, quite a job. You have to see that your men get nothing to eat, and of course set them an example yourself.’

‘Why, McTavish? Because we aren’t the Guards or the Green Jackets, that’s why. Because we’re a troop of odds and sods, McTavish. That’s why you are here.’

Thus with no kind word to speed him Trimmer led his detachment into the unknown.

Guy also remembered the ship. She had put into Santa Dulcina not many summers ago. It was a tradition of the Castello, which Guy rather reluctantly observed, to call on English yachts. He dined on board. Next day the yacht-party, six of them, had climbed up to lunch with him, lightly, hyperbolically, praising everything.

A large dish of spaghetti had been fomented. A number of fleshless fowls had been dismembered and charred; some limp lettuces drenched in oil and sprinkled with chopped garlic. It was a depressing luncheon which even Mrs Stitch’s beauty and gaiety could barely enliven. Guy told the story of the romantic origin of the ‘Castello Crauccibac’. The vino scelto began its soporific work. Conversation lapsed. Then as they sat rather gloomily in the loggia, while Josepina and Bianca were removing the meat-plates, there rose from above them the wild tocsin: ‘C’e scappata la mucca.’ (‘The cow has got out.’) It was the recurring drama of Santa Dulcinese life, the escape of the cow, more pit-pony than minotaur, from her cellar under the farm-house.

Josepina and Bianca took up the cry: ‘Accidente!’ ‘Porca miseria. C’e scappata la mucca,’ dropped everything and bounded over the parapet.

The dazed animal tumbled from low terrace to terrace among the vines. Mrs Stitch was up with her first. Mrs Stitch was the one to grasp the halter and lead her back with soothing words to her subterranean stall.

‘I sailed in her. Three weeks of excruciating discomfort. The things one did in peace-time!’

‘Not the bachelors’ cabins, Guy. Julia was brought up in the old tradition of giving hell to bachelors. There was mutiny brewing all the time. She used to drag one out of the casino like a naval picket rounding up a red-light quarter. But there’s no one, no one in the world I’d sooner see at the moment.’ In the weeks of their acquaintance Guy had never seen Claire so moved with enthusiasm. ‘Let’s go down to the quay.’

Half a dozen male figures stood at the rail. Tommy Blackhouse was there beside a sailor deeply laced with gold; General Whale was there; Brigadier Ritchie-Hook was there. Even, preposterously, Ian Kilbannock was there. But not Mrs Stitch.

The newcomers, even the Admiral, looked unwell. Guy and Claire stood to attention and saluted. The Admiral raised a feeble hand. Ritchie-Hook bared his teeth. Then, as if by previous arrangement, the senior officers went below to seek the repose which had been denied them on their voyage. The Cleopatra rudely commandeered, had taken her revenge; she had been built for more friendly waters.

Tommy Blackhouse and Ian Kilbannock came ashore. Tommy’s servant, grey ghost of a guardsman, followed with luggage.

‘This is where we part company, Guy. Your Brigadier is taking you over now. Our Brigadier. For your information we are now part of “Hookforce”, Brigadier Ritchie-Hook commanding, why the hell aren’t you with your troop, Ivor?’

Ian said: ‘I think Tommy might have done something about my suitcase. The RAF does not understand about servants.’

‘I got him down,’ said Ian. ‘I got him right down in the end. All the preliminary symptoms of persecution mania. He had to let me go – like Pharaoh and Moses if you appreciate the allusion. I didn’t actually have to slay his first-born, but I made him break out in boils and blains from social inferiority – literally. A dreadful sight. So now I’m at Hostile Offensive Operations, appropriately enough. Have you got a man you can send for my luggage?’

‘But surely you can count? I don’t expect people to know the names of RAF ranks, but you must notice there is one more of these things. It looks newer than the others. I rather think I equal a Major. It’s monstrous I should have to carry my own bag.’

‘You won’t need your bag. There’s nowhere to sleep on the island. What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘There was to have been a conference on board – most secret operational planning. Sea-sickness intervened. Like a lunatic,’ said Ian, ‘I came for the trip. I thought it would be a nice change from the blitz, God help me. I’ve had no sleep or food. An awful inside cabin over the screw.’

‘Slave quarters, I should think. I had to share with Tommy. He was disgustingly sick. As a matter of fact I think I might be able to eat something now.’

Guy took him to the hotel. Food was found, and while Ian ate he explained his new appointment.

‘It might have been made for me. In fact, I rather think it was made for me, on Air Marshal Beech’s entreaty. I liaise with the Press.’

‘Good God, no. You’re a deadly secret still. That’s the beauty of my job. Everything at HOO is secret, so all I have to do is drink with the American journalists at the Savoy from time to time and refuse information. I tell them I’m a newspaper-man myself and know how they feel. They say I’m a regular guy. And so I am dammit.

‘You’ve never seen me with my fellow journalists. I show then the democratic side of my character – not what Air Marshal Beech saw.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’ He paused, drank deeply and added: ‘I’ve been pretty red ever since the Spanish war.’

Guy had nothing to do that morning. He watched Ian eat and drink and smoke. As an illusion of well-being returned, Ian became confidential.

‘My dear fellow, I know. Hookforce sails in the next convoy. The three other Commandos are on board their ships already. You’ll be quite an army if you aren’t sunk on the way out.’ He progressed from confidence to indiscretion. ‘This exercise is all a blind. Tommy doesn’t know, of course, but the moment you’re all safely below the hatches, you up stick and away.’

‘Operation Bottleneck? That was off weeks ago. Since then there’s been Operation Quicksand and Operation Mousetrap, They’re both off. It’s Operation Badger now, of course.’

That afternoon, as on every preceding afternoon, the troopship failed. Tommy devised his orders for the exercise and issued them to the troop-leaders; troop-leaders relayed them to section commanders. The Cleopatra held her own secrets of recuperation and planning. At evening the hotel filled. X Commando was always the gayer for Tommy's presence. Most of the mess were old acquaintances of Ian’s. They welcomed him with profusion until at length after midnight he sought assistance in finding his way back to the yacht. Guy led him.

‘Delightful evening,’ he said. ‘Delightful fellows.’ His voice was always slower and higher when he was in liquor. ‘Just like Bellamy’s without the bombing. How right you were, Guy, to fix yourself up with this racket – I’ve been round the other Commandos. Not at all the same sort of fellows. I should like to write a piece about you all. But it wouldn’t do.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ – the night air was taxing his residue of self-command – ‘I don’t refer to security. There’s an agitation now from the Mystery of Information to take you off the secret list. Heroes are in strong demand. Heroes are urgently required to boost civilian morale. You’ll see pages about the Commandos in the papers soon. But not about your racket, Guy. They just won’t do, you know. Delightful fellows, heroes too, I dare say, but the Wrong Period. Last-war stuff, Guy. Went out with Rupert Brooke.’

‘No,’ said Ian, stopping in his path and turning to face Guy in the darkness. ‘Perhaps not poetic, exactly, but Upper Class. Hopelessly upper class. You’re the “Fine Flower of the Nation”. You can’t deny it and it won’t do.’

In the various stages of inebriation, facetiously itemized for centuries, the category, ‘prophetically drunk’, deserves a place.

‘This is a People’s War,’ said Ian prophetically, ‘and the People won’t have poetry and they won’t have flowers. Flowers stink. The upper classes are on the secret list. We want heroes of the people, to or for the people, by, with and from the people.’

‘When wilt thou save the people?
Oh, God of Mercy! When?
The People, Lord, the People!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!’

He broke into a trot and breathlessly repeating the lines in a loud tuneless chant, reached the gangway.

Out of the night the voice of Ritchie-Hook rang terribly. ‘Stop making that infernal noise, whoever you are, and go to bed.’

Guy left Ian cowering among the quayside litter, waiting a suitable moment to slip on board.

Next morning at first light to Guy’s surprise the troopship at last emerged from the haze of myth and was seen to be solidly at anchor beyond the mouth of the harbour.

‘Guy, if the Brigadier doesn’t want you, you can make yourself useful to me. Jumbo and I have got to get our embarkation orders. You might go on board and fix up accommodation with the navy. It’ll be the hell of a business getting everything on board. I hope to God they’ll give us another day before the exercise.’

‘There’s that section of McTavish’s I mentioned,’ said Jumbo, ‘out in the wilds.’

This was not Guy’s first embarkation. He had been through it all before at Liverpool with the Halberdiers. This ship was not ‘hired transport’. She was manned by a new naval crew. Guy conscientiously inspected mess decks and cabins. After two hours he said: ‘There simply isn’t room, sir.’

‘There must be,’ said the First Officer. ‘We’re fitted out to army specifications to carry one infantry battalion. That’s all I know about it.’

‘Well, you and the Brigadier and whatever other headquarters he’staking had better go in another ship,’ said Jumbo. ‘I think everyone would have a happier voyage without the Brigadier.’

‘That doesn’t solve the problem of the Sergeants. Can’t they muck in with the men for once?’

‘Impossible. Trouble’s begun already with the Sergeants. The grenadiers formed up to Colonel Tommy. All their NCOs carry three stripes and claim to mess apart. Then the Green Jackets formed up to say that in that case their Corporals must too. By the way, I hope you’ve got me a decent cabin?’

‘You’ve got to realize,’ said Bertie with unusual severity, ‘that my men are big men. They need space.’

‘My servant must have quarters next door to me,’ said Eddie.’ I can’t go shouting down to the troop deck every time I want anything.’

‘I won’t be responsible for the heavy machine-guns, Crouchback, unless I have a lock-up,’ said Major Graves. ‘And what’s this about doubling up with the MO? I mean to say, that’s a bit thick.’

‘I can’t possibly share the sick-bay with the ship’s surgeon,’ said the doctor.’ I’m entitled to a cabin of my own.’

‘What they need is Julia Stitch to keep them in order,’ said Claire sympathetically.

Tommy Blackhouse meanwhile was preparing himself for a disagreeable interview, which he could no longer postpone. Tommy, like most soldiers, sought when possible to delegate unkindness. He now realized that he and only he must break bad news to Jumbo.

Jumbo,’ he said when they were alone in the office, ‘I shouldn’t bother to come on board tonight. We don’t really need you for the exercise and there’s a lot of stuff here to clear up.’

‘It isn’t only that, I’m afraid. I want to take you, of course. I don’t know what I shall do without you. But the Brigadier’s orders are that we only take combatant soldiers.’

‘That’s the trouble. The Brigadier thinks you’re a bit senior for our sort of show.’

‘I’m afraid so. Of course I dare say if we set up a permanent headquarters in the Middle East you could come out and join us later. Meanwhile they want you at HOO HQ.’

Jumbo was a Halberdier, trained from first manhood in the giving and taking of orders. He was hard hit, but he excluded all personal feelings.

‘I shall have to adjust my posting,’ he said. ‘It will be rather complicated. Back to barracks.’

‘They must apply in the proper quarter, in the proper form. My place is in barracks.’ He sat among his files before his empty trays his old heart empty of hope. ‘You don’t think it might help if I saw Ben Ritchie-Hook?’

‘Yes,’ said Tommy, rather eagerly. ‘I should do that. You’ll have plenty of time. He’ll be in London for at least three weeks. They’re flying him out to join us in Egypt. I dare say you can get him to take you with him.’

‘Not if he doesn’t want me. I’ve never known Ben do anything he doesn’t want to do. You’re taking Crouchback?’

‘I’m glad you’ll have at least one Halberdier. He’ll make a useful officer. A lot to learn, of course, but the right stuff in him.’

It was a relief to both of them when Major Graves came to complain about the sappers’ stores. None of his troop could be trusted to handle explosives. Was there a suitable magazine on board?

When Major Graves left, Tommy communed further with his orders for the exercise. The secret of their futility was kept from him until all were embarked. Then the party from the Cleopatra came aboard and it was announced that there was to be no exercise. Major-General Whale from HOO HQ had intended to address a full parade of all ranks but deck-space was lacking. Instead he told the officers. No embarkation leave. No last letters. The ship would join others carrying other Commandos under escort at a rendezvous on the high seas.

Jumbo could not know that Tommy had been kept in the dark too. To his sad old sense of honour it was the final betrayal. He watched from the icy fore-shore as the troopship and the yacht sailed away; then heavily returned to the empty hotel. His jaunt was over.

On his desert island Mugg crept out to pilfer the sapper stores, and the sappers themselves, emaciated and unshaven, presently lurched in carrying Dr Glendening-Rees on a wattle hurdle.

‘I must say,’ said Ivor Claire, ‘the local inhabitants are uncommonly civil.’

He and Guy sat at sundown in the bar of the hotel. Light shone out into the dusk unscreened to join the headlamps of the cars, passing, turning and stopping on the gravel, and the bright shop windows in the streets beyond. Cape Town at the extremity of two dark continents was a ville lumière such as Trimmer had sought in vain.

‘Three ships in and a reception committee for each. Something laid on for everybody.’

‘It’s partly to tease the Dutch, partly to keep the soldiery out of mischief. I gather they had trouble with the last Trooper.’

‘It didn’t do B Commando much good. They’ve been taken on a route march, poor devils.’

An upright elderly man came across the room. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Forgive my butting in. I’m secretary of the club here. I don’t know whether you’ve been there yet.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Guy, ‘thank you very much. I was taken to luncheon there today.’

‘Ah, good. Do use it as your own if you want a game of billiards or bridge or anything. Remember the way? Next door to the post office.’

‘There’s usually a small gathering about this time. I’ll look out for you if you drop in, and introduce you to some fellows.’

‘You’ve set us wondering, you know – the different regimental badges. Are you all replacements?’

‘Well, I know we mustn’t ask questions. Are you both fixed up for dinner?’

‘Uncommonly civil fellows,’ said Claire when they were again alone. ‘Anyway, I’ve had the most satisfactory day.’

‘I took my time going ashore but there were still friendly natives hanging about. A nice ass of a woman came up and said: “Is there anything special you’d like to do or see?” and I said: “Horses.” I haven’t thought of anything much except horses – and of course Freda – for the last six weeks, as you may imagine. “That may be a bit difficult,” she said. “Are you safe on one?” So I pointed out I was in a cavalry regiment. “But aren’t you all mechanized now?” I said I thought I could still keep up and she said: “There’s Mr Somebody, but he’s rather special. I’ll see.” So she got hold of Mr Somebody and as luck would have it, he’d seen Thimble win at Dublin and was all over me. He had a very decent stable indeed somewhere down the coast and let me pick my horse and we spent the morning hacking. After luncheon I took a jumper he’s schooling over the fences. I feel a different and a better man. What happened to you?’

‘Eddie and Bertie and I went to the Zoo. We persecuted the ostriches, tried to make them put their heads in the sand, but they wouldn’t. Eddie got into the cage and chased them all over the place with a black keeper pleading through the wire. Bertie said one kick of an ostrich can kill three horses. Then we got picked up by a sugar-daddy who took us to the club. Excellent food and you know there’s nothing really much the matter with South African wine.’

‘The sugar-daddy explained they only send their bad vintages abroad and keep all the good to drink themselves. Bertie and Eddie went off with him afterwards to see vineyards. I went to the Art Gallery. They’ve two remarkable Noel Patons.’

‘Exactly what I thought. That’s why I brought Eddie here – to have a bath.’

‘Charming girls,’ said Bertie. ‘Husbands away at the war. Must sober up.’

‘It’s odd,’ said Ivor Claire, ‘I feel absolutely no urge to get tight now I’m allowed to. In that ship I hardly drew a sober breath.’

‘I suppose one or more of those absurd stars is called the Southern Cross,’ said Claire, gazing up into the warm and brilliant night.

‘It’s the kind of thing one ought to know, I suppose, for finding one’s way in the dark.’

‘The dark,’ said Claire, ‘the black-out. That’s the worst thing about the ship. It’s the worst thing about the whole war.’

Here everything was ablaze. Merchandise quite devoid of use or beauty shone alluringly in the shop windows. The streets were full of Hookforce. Car-loads of soldiers drove slowly past laden with the spoils of farms and gardens, baskets of oranges and biblical bunches of grapes.

Then there was a sterner sound. The soldiers on the pavement, reluctant to lose their holiday mood, edged into doorways and slipped down side turnings. A column of threes in full marching order, arms swinging high, eyes grimly fixed to the front, tramped down the main street towards the docks. Guy and Claire saluted the leading officer, a glaring, fleshless figure.

‘I was told that he always wears the stockings his great-great-grandfather had at Inkermann. Can that be true?’

‘No doubt he’s enjoying himself in his own fashion. One way and another, Guy, Cape Town seems to have provided each of us with whatever we wanted.’

There was. Guy and Claire sat on a wicker seat looking across an empty illumined tennis lawn. Claire lit a cigarette. He smoked rather seldom. When he did so, it was with an air of conscious luxury.

‘What a voyage,’ he said. ‘Nearly over now. How one longed for a torpedo at times. I used to stand on deck at night and imagine one, a beautiful streak of foam, a bang, and then the heads all round bobbing up for the third time and myself, the sole survivor, floating gently away to some nearby island.’

‘Wishful thinking. They cram you into open boats, you go mad from drinking sea-water.’

‘What a voyage,’ said Claire again. ‘We’re told, and we tell our men, that we have to hold Egypt so as to protect the Suez Canal. And to reach Suez we go half-way to Canada and Trinidad. And when we do get there we shall find the war’s over. According to the chap I had lunch with, they can’t build cages quick enough to hold the Italian prisoners coming in. I dare say we shall be turned on to guard duties.’

This was February 1941. English tanks were cruising far west of Benghazi; bankers, labelled’AMGOT’, were dining nightly at the Mohamed Ali Club in Cairo, and Rommel, all unknown, was even then setting up his first headquarters in Africa.

Of the nine weeks which had passed since X Commando sailed from Mugg, five only had been spent on the high seas. In the war of attrition which raged ceaselessly against the human spirit, anticlimax was a heavy weapon. The Commando, for all the rude haste and trickery of departure, sailed exultingly. By noon on the second day rumour had it that the rendezvous with the navy was off. Rumour was right. At the second dawn they sailed into Scapa Flow and lay-to beside the sister ships which carried their fellow Commandos. There had been sinkings and diversions and counter-orders; a German capital ship was haunting the Western Approaches. Brigadier Ritchie-Hook appeared and for a month his force relentlessly ‘biffed’ the encircling hills, night after long night. He brought with him a Halberdier Brigade Major who instructed Guy in the otiose duties of Intelligence Officer. Guy chalked the nightly wanderings of the Commandos on the talc face of his map and recorded them next day in the War Diary. On these exercises the Brigadier seldom spent long at his ‘battle headquarters’. Guy and the Brigade Major shivered alone on the beaches, while Ritchie-Hook roamed the moors alone with a haversack full of ‘thunder-flashes’.

Guy was sorrowfully conscious that his old hero cut a slightly absurd figure in the eyes of X Commando. They were quick with injurious nicknames in that group. Someone dubbed Ritchie-Hook ‘the Widow Twankey’ and the preposterous name stuck.

Trimmer and his section were absent. They had momentarily slipped through one of the cracks in the military floor.

Hookforce remained at twelve hours’ notice for service overseas. There was no leave; no private communication with the shore. Christmas and New Year passed in dire gloom. The RN officers stood aloof from the RNVR, touchy young men in beards. The bar, which might have been a place of sympathy, proved the centre of contention, for the navy were limited by rank in their wine bills, while the army were not. Below decks there was no wet canteen and gross rumours circulated there of orgies among the officers. It was not a happy ship. At length they sailed on their huge detour. Brigadier and Brigade Major returned for further conferences in London, to join them by air in the Middle East. Trimmer and his sappers arrived at Hoy two days later.

‘They are such awful pip-squeaks,’ said Claire without animosity. ‘The little ones with beards particularly.’

‘It didn’t help when Bertie referred to the Captain as “that booby on the roof”.’

‘The name stuck. It didn’t help, of course, when the Pay-Master took Eddie’s place in the ward-room and Eddie told him he didn’t expect to find a ticket collector in a restaurant car.’

‘Colonel Tommy messing with the Booby-on-the-Roof had no idea what we had to suffer.’

‘Well, naturally. We are his chaps. The pip-squeaks complained altogether too much.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if Corporal-Major Ludovic turned out to be a communist.’

‘Yes, perhaps he was that too. He hung about Knightsbridge Barracks and no one knew what to make of him. He just reported at the beginning of the war as a reservist and claimed the rank of Corporal of Horse. His name was on the roll all right, but no one seemed to know anything about him, so naturally they wished him on me when the troop formed.’

‘He was the éminence grise behind the complaint that “Captain’s rounds” violated the sanctity of the sergeants’ mess.’

‘So they do. I wonder,’ said Claire, changing the subject delicately, ‘how the other Commandos got on with their sailors?’

‘Quite well, I believe. Prentice makes his officers keep to the same drink ration as the navy.’

‘I bet that’s against King’s Regulations.’ Then he added: ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t get rid of Ludovic when we reach Egypt.’

‘It’s getting cold. Let’s go inside and forget the ship for one evening.’

‘So we’re just having one drink before joining the girls. Good evening, Colonel.’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve had the hell of a day at Simonstown and I’ve got some rather disturbing news.’

‘I suppose,’ said Claire,’ we’re going to turn round now and sail back.’

‘He and the Brigade Major. Their aeroplane left Brazzaville last week and hasn’t been heard of since. It seems Hookforce may have to change its name.’

Later that night Guy and Tommy and Claire returned to the ship. Eddie and Bertie were walking the decks; ‘walking ourselves sober,’ they explained. They carried a bottle and refreshed themselves every second circuit.

‘It’s brandy,’ said Bertie. ‘Rather horrible. Do you think, Colonel, we might send it up to the Booby?’

‘The only other thing I can think of is to throw it overboard before it makes us sick.’

Later, in the tiny cabin he shared with the two deeply sleeping companions, Guy lay awake. He could not yet mourn Ritchie-Hook. That ferocious Halberdier, he was sure, was even then biffing his way through the jungle on a line dead straight for the enemy. Guy thought instead with deep affection of X Commando. ‘The Flower of the Nation’, Ian Kilbannock had ironically called them. He was not far wrong. There was heroic simplicity in Eddie and Bertie. Ivor Claire was another pair of boots entirely, salty, withdrawn, incorrigible. Guy remembered Claire as he first saw him in the Roman spring in the afternoon sunlight amid the embosoming cypresses of the Borghese Gardens, putting his horse faultlessly over the jumps, concentrated as a man in prayer. Ivor Claire, Guy thought, was the fine flower of them all. He was quintessential England, the man Hitler had not taken into account, Guy thought.

MAJOR-GENERAL Whale held the appointment of Director of Land Forces in Hazardous Offensive Operations. He was known in countless minutes as the DLFHOO and to a few old friends as ‘Sprat’. On Holy Saturday 1941 he was summoned to attend the ACIG’s weekly meeting at the War Office. He went with foreboding. He was not fully informed of the recent disasters in the Middle East but he knew things were going badly. Benghazi had fallen the week before. It did not seem clear where the retreating army intended to make its stand. On Maundy Thursday the Australians in Greece had been attacked on their open flank. It was not clear where they would stand. Belgrade had been bombed on Palm Sunday. But these tidings were not Sprat’s first concern that morning. The matter on the ACIG’s agenda which accounted for Sprat’s presence was ‘Future of Special Service Forces in UK’.

The men round the table represented a galaxy of potent initials, DSD, AG, QMG, DPS, and more besides. These were no snowy-headed, muddled veterans of English tradition but lean, middle-aged men who kept themselves fit; men on the make; a hanging jury, thought Sprat, greeting them heartily.

‘Just remind us – will you, Sprat? – what precisely is your present strength?’

‘Yes, Hookforce. What’s the latest from them?’ He turned to a Major-General who sat in a cloud of pipe-smoke on his left.

‘No one seems to have found any use for them in ME. “Badger”, of course, was cancelled.’

‘That is hardly their fault, sir,’ said Sprat. ‘First they lost their commander. Then they lost their assault ships. The canal was closed when they reached Suez, you remember. They were put into temporary camps in Canal Area. Then when the canal was cleared the ships were needed to take the Australians to Greece. They moved by train to Alex.’

‘Yes, Sprat, we know. Of course it’s not their fault. All I mean is, they don’t seem to be exactly pulling their weight.’

‘I rather think, sir,’ said a foxy Brigadier, ‘that we shall soon hear they’ve been broken up and used as replacements.’

‘Exactly. Anyway, they are MEF now. What I want to get at is what land forces do you command at this moment in UK?’

‘Well, sir, as you know, recruiting was suspended after Hookforce sailed. That left us rather thin on the ground.’

‘At the moment, sir, I have one officer and twelve men, four of whom are in hospital with frost-bite and unlikely to be passed fit for active service.’

Outside, in the cathedral, whose tower could be seen from the War Office windows; far beyond in the lands of enemy and ally, the Easter fire was freshly burning. Here for Sprat all was cold and dark. The gangmen of the departments closed in for the kill. The representative of the DPS drew a series of little gallows on his agenda.

‘Frankly, sir, I don’t think the DPS has even quite understood what function the Commandos have which could not be performed by ordinary regimental soldiers or the Royal Marines. The DPS does not like the volunteer system. Every fighting man shall be prepared to undertake any task assigned him, however hazardous.’

‘… I can only say, sir, that the special postings have put a considerable extra strain on our department….’

‘… As we see it, sir, either the Commandos become a corps d’élite, in which case they seriously weaken the other arms of the service, or they become a sort of Foreign Legion of throw-outs, in which case we can hardly see them making very much contribution to the war effort…’

‘I don’t want to say anything against your chaps, Sprat. Excellent raw material, no doubt. But I think you must agree that the experiment of relaxing barrack discipline hasn’t quite worked out. That explosion at Mugg…’

‘Yes, yes, no doubt. It’s really quite beside the point. I’m sorry it was brought up.’

‘The Ministry of Information …’ began Sprat desperately, most infelicitously. The doodling hands were still. Breaths were momentarily caught, then sharply, with clouds of smoke, expelled. ‘The Ministry of Information,’ said Sprat defiantly, ‘have shown great interest. They are only waiting for a successful operation to release the whole story to the press. Civil morale,’ he faltered, ‘… American opinion…’

‘That, of course,’ said the chairman, ‘does not concern this committee.’

In the end a minute was drafted to the CIGS recommending that no steps were desirable with regard to Special Service Forces.

Sprat returned to his own office. All over the world, unheard by Sprat, the Exultet had been sung that morning. It found no echo in Sprat’s hollow heart. He called his planners to him and his liaison officer.

‘They’re out to do us down,’ he reported succinctly. He need not name the enemy. No one thought he meant the Germans. ‘There’s only one thing for it. We must mount an operation at once and call in the press. What have we got that’s suitable for one rather moderate officer and eight men?’

The planners at HOO HQ were fertile. In their steel cupboards lay in various stages of elaboration and under a variety of sobriquets projects for the assault of almost every feature of the enemy’s immense coast line.

‘Popgun’ was the least ambitious of all the plans. It concerned a tiny, uninhabited island near Jersey on which stood, or was believed to stand, a disused light-house. Someone on the naval side, idly scanning a chart, had suggested that supposing the enemy had tumbled to the tricks of RDF this island and this ruin might be a possible choice of station. Charles reminded Sprat of these particulars.

‘Yes. Lay on “Popgun”. Ian, you’ll be up to the neck in this. You’d better get into touch with McTavish at once. You’ll be going with him.’

‘He must be somewhere. Someone must know. You and Charles find him while I collect a submarine.’

While the first bells of Easter rang throughout Christendom, the muezzin called his faithful to prayer from the shapeless white minaret beyond the barbed wire; South, West and North the faithful prostrated themselves towards the rising sun. His voice fell unheeded among the populous dunes of Sidi Bishr.

Already awake, Guy rose from his camp-bed and shouted for shaving-water. He was brigade duty-officer, nearing the end of his tour of duty beside the office telephone. During the night there had been one air-raid warning. GHQ Cairo had been silent.

The brigade, still named ‘Hookforce’, occupied a group of huts in the centre of the tented camp. Tommy Blackhouse was Deputy Commander with the acting rank of full colonel. He had returned from Cairo on the third day of their sojourn in Egypt with red tabs and a number of staff officers, chief among them a small, bald, youngish man named Hound. He was the Brigade Major. Neither the Halberdiers nor in the Commandos had Guy met a soldier quite like Major Hound, nor had Major Hound met a force like Hookforce.

He had chosen a military career because he was not clever enough to pass into the civil service. At Sandhurst in 1925 the universal assumption was that the British army would never again be obliged to fight a European war. Young Hound had shown an aptitude for administration and his failures in the riding-school were compensated by prizes at Bisley. Later in the drift of war he was found in the pool of unattached staff officers in Cairo when Hookforce arrived leaderless at Suez. To them he came and he did not disguise his distaste for their anomalies. They had no transport, they had no cooks, they had far too many officers and sergeants, they wore a variety of uniforms and followed a multitude of conflicting regimental customs, they bore strange arms, daggers and toggle-ropes and tommy-guns. B Commando was ruled by a draconic private law and a code of punishment unauthorized by King’s Regulations. X Commando might have seemed lawless but for the presence of fifty Free Spaniards who had drifted in from Syria and been inexplicably put under command; beside their anarchy all minor irregularities became unremarkable. The camp police were constantly flushing women in the Spanish lines. One morning they dug up the body of an Egyptian cab-driver, just beyond the perimeter, lightly buried in sand with his throat cut.

‘There’s no place here for private armies. We’ve got to get these fellows, whoever they are, reorganized as a standard infantry brigade.’

Later a recommendation was made that Hookforce should be disbanded and distributed as replacements. An order followed from London to hold fast pending a decision at the highest level as to the whole future of Special Service Forces. Major Hound kept his own counsel about these matters. They were not communicated to him officially. He learned them in Cairo on his frequent trips to the Turf Club and to Shepheard’s Hotel in conversation with cronies from GHQ. He mentioned the state of discipline in camp, also unofficially. And Hookforce remained at Sidi Bishr declining from boredom to disorder and daily growing more and more to justify the suspicions of GHQ.

Guy remained Intelligence Officer. Five spectacled men, throw-outs from the Commandos, were attached to him as his section. In the employment of these men he waged a deadly private war with the Brigade Major. Lately he had shed them, attaching them to the Signals Officer for instruction in procedure.

Breakfast was brought him at the office table; a kind of rissole of bully beef gritty with sand, tea that tasted of chlorine. At eight the office clerks appeared; at a quarter past Corporal-Major Ludovic, whom Ivor Claire had succeeded in promoting to headquarters. He gazed about the hut with his pale eyes, observed Guy, saluted him in a style that was ecclesiastical rather than military, and began ponderously moving papers from tray to tray; not thus the Brigade Major, who arrived very briskly at twenty past.

‘Morning, Crouchback,’ said Major Hound. ‘Nothing from GHQ? Then we can take it that the last cancellation stands. The units can get out into the country. How about your section? They’ve finished their signalling course, I think. How do you propose to exercise them today?’

‘You needn’t stay in the office while Major Graves is here,’ said the Brigade Major to Guy. ‘Better get on with that drill parade.’

Guy went in search of his section. Sergeant Smiley called them hastily to their feet on his approach. Six cigarettes smouldered in the sand at their feet.

‘Fall them in in a quarter of an hour with rifles and drill order, outside the brigade office,’ he ordered.

For an hour he drilled them in the powdery sand. It all came back to him from the barrack square. He stood by the Brigade-Major’s window, opened his mouth wide and roared like a Halberdier. Inside the hut Major Graves was telling his tale of injustice and neglect. Corporal-Major Ludovic was typing his journal.

‘Man is what he hates’ he wrote.’ Yesterday I was Blackhouse. Today I am Crouchback. Tomorrow, merciful heaven, shall I be Hound?’

‘… The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank with the left hand crossing the muzzles, magazines turned outward, at the same time raising the piling swivels with the fore-finger and thumb of both hands…’

‘In the present instance,’ he continued, falling into a parody of his old drill-sergeant, ‘number two being a blank file, there are no even numbers in the rear rank. Number three will therefore for the purpose of this exercise regard himself as even….’

‘Squad, pile arms. As you were. Listen to the detail. The odd numbers of the front rank – that’s you, number one – will seize the rifles of even numbers of the rear rank – that’s you, number three..

‘Squad will retire. About turn. Quick march. Halt. About turn. As you were. About turn. As you were. About turn.’ They were now fifty yards from him but his voice carried.

‘I will give you the detail once more. The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank …’

Behind their steamy goggles the men glimpsed that this performance was being played not solely for their own discomfort. Sergeant Smiley began to join his powerful tones to Guy’s.

‘Most impressive, Guy,’ he said. ‘First rate. But I must ask you to dismiss now. I’ve got a job for you. Go into town and see Ivor and find out when he’s coming back.’

For a fortnight Ivor Claire had been absent from duty. He had led a party armed with tent mallets in pursuit of Arab marauders, had tripped on a guy-rope and twisted his knee. Eschewing the services of the RAMC he had installed himself in a private nursing-home.

Guy went to the car-park and found a lorry going in for rations. The road ran along the edge of the sea. The breeze was full of flying sand. On the beaches young civilians exposed hairy bodies and played ball with loud, excited cries. Army lorries passed in close procession, broken here and there by new, tight-shut limousines bearing purple-lipped ladies in black satin.

‘Drop me at the Cecil,’ said Guy, for he had other business in Alexandria besides Ivor Claire. He wished to make his Easter duties and preferred to do so in a city church, rather than in camp. Already, without deliberation, he had begun to dissociate himself from the army in matters of real concern.

Alexandria, ancient asparagus bed of theological absurdity, is now somewhat shabbily furnished with churches. Guy found what he sought in a side street, a large unobtrusive building attached to a school, it seemed, or a hospital. He entered into deep gloom.

A fat youth in shorts and vest was lethargically sweeping the aisle. Guy approached and addressed him in French. He seemed not to hear. A bearded, skirted figure scudded past in the darkness. Guy pursued and said awkwardly:

‘Je veux me confesser, en français si c’est nécessaire. Mais je prèfere beaucoup anglais ou italien, si c’est possible.’

He turned abruptly into the sacristy pointing as he went towards a still darker chapel. Khaki stockings and army boots protruded from the penitents’ side of the confessional. Guy knelt and waited, he knew what he had to say. The mutter of voices in the shadows seemed to be prolonged inordinately. At length a young soldier emerged and Guy took his place. A bearded face was just visible through the grille; a guttural voice blessed him. He made his confession and paused. The dark figure seemed to shrug off the triviality of what he had heard.

‘Thank you, father, and pray for me.’ Guy made to go but the priest continued:

Suddenly Guy was suspicious. He was shriven. The priest was no longer bound by the seal of confession. The grille still stood between them. Guy still knelt, but the business between them was over. They were man and man now in a country at war.

‘To help you. There are special dispensations. If you are going at once into action I can give you communion.’

Guy rose and left the church. Beggars thronged him. He walked a few steps towards the main street where the trams ran, then turned back. The boy with the broom had gone. The confessional was empty. He knocked on the open door of the sacristy. No one came. He entered and found a clean tiled floor, cupboards, a sink, no priest. He left the church and stood once more among the beggars, undecided. The transition from the role of penitent to that of investigating officer was radical. He could not now remember verbatim what had occurred. The questions had been impertinent; were they necessarily sinister? Could he identify the priest? Could he, if called to find a witness, identify the young soldier?

Two palm trees in a yard separated the church from the clergy, house. Guy rang the bell and presently the fat boy opened the door disclosing a vista of high white corridor.

‘The fathers have this moment gone to rest. They have had very long ceremonies this morning.’

‘I don’t want to disturb him – merely to know his name. He speaks English and was hearing confessions in the church two minutes ago.’

‘I have been to confession to this father. I want to know his name. He speaks English.’

Guy turned away. The beggars settled on him. He strode into the busy street and the darkness of Egypt closed on him in the dazzling sunlight. Perhaps he had imagined the whole incident, and if he had not, what profit was there in pursuit? There were priests in France working for the allies. Why not a priest in Egypt, in exile, doing his humble bit for his own side? Egypt teemed with spies. Every troop movement was open to the scrutiny of a million ophthalmic eyes. The British order of battle must be known in minute detail from countless sources. What could that priest accomplish except perhaps gain kinder treatment for his community if Rommel reached Alexandria? Probably the only result, if Guy made a report, would be an order forbidding HM forces to frequent civilian churches.

Ivor Claire’s nursing-home overlooked the Municipal Gardens. Guy walked there through the crowded streets so despondently that the touts looking at him despaired and let him pass unsolicited.

‘Much better,’ he said in answer to Guy’s inquiry. ‘They are all very pleased with me. I may be able to get up to Cairo next week for the races.’

‘Who wouldn’t be at Sidi Bishr? Well, he knows where to find me when he wants me.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’d be much use to him until I’m fit, you know. My troop is in good hands. When Tommy kindly relieved me of Corporal-Major Ludovic my anxieties came to an end. But we must keep touch. I can’t have you doing a McTavish on me.’

‘Two flaps since you went away. Once we were at two hours’ notice for three days.’

‘I know. Greek nonsense. When there’s anything really up I shall hear from Julia Stitch before Tommy does. She is a mine of indiscretion. You know she’s here?’

‘My dear Guy, she remembers everyone. Algie has some sort of job keeping his eye on the King. They’re very well installed. I thought of moving in on them but one can’t be sure that Julia will give an invalid quite all he needs. There’s rather too much coming and going, too – generals and people. Julia pops in most mornings and brings me the gossip.’

‘Ask Tommy. It might prove a great bore, you know. Everyone is a spy in this country.’

‘I’m sure the nurses here are. They walk out with the Vichy French from that ship in the harbour. What’s the news from Sidi Bishr?’

‘Worse. A little worse every day. B Commando are on the verge of mutiny. Prentice has confined them to camp until every man has swum a hundred yards in boots and equipment. They’ll shoot him when they go into action. Major Graves still thinks he ought to command X Commando.’

‘Yes. Tony is having a bad time. The Grenadiers are all down with Gyppy tummy. Five Coldstreamers put in to be returned to their regiment. Corporal-Major Ludovic is suspected of writing poetry.’

‘Our Catalan refugees have even got Tommy worried. An Arab mess waiter went off with A Commando’s medical stores. We’ve got four courts-martial pending and ten men adrift. God knows how many arms stolen. The NAAFI till has been burgled twice. Someone tried to set the camp cinema on fire. Nothing has been heard of the Brigadier.’

A minute later Mrs Algernon Stitch was with them. She wore linen and a Mexican sombrero; a laden shopping basket hung over one white arm. She inclined the huge straw disc of her hat over Claire and kissed his forehead.

She turned her eyes, her true blue, portable and compendious oceans upon Guy, absorbed him and then very loudly, in rich Genoese accents, proclaimed:

‘You see,’ said Ivor, as though displaying a clever trick of Freda’s, ‘I told you she would remember.’

‘Forster says they ought to be “thoroughly explored”,’ she said. ‘Something for another day.’ To Guy. ‘You’ve got his Guide?’

‘I didn’t know. In that case I can get one for myself. Thanks awfully, though.’

‘Here you are. I haven’t finished shopping yet. In fact, I must go now.’ To Guy. ‘Come on.’

She led Guy down and out. He tried to circumvent her at the door of her little open car but was peremptorily ordered away.

Off she drove, darting between camels and trams and cabs and tanks, down the Rue Sultan, spinning left at the Nebi Daniel, stopping abruptly in the centre of the crossing and saying: ‘Just look. The Soma. In the days of Cleopatra the streets ran from the Gate of the Moon to the Gate of the Sun and from the lake harbour to the sea harbour with colonnades all the way. White marble and green silk awnings. Perhaps you knew.’

She stood up in the car and pointed. ‘Alexander’s tomb,’ she said. ‘Somewhere under that monstrosity.’

Motor-horns competed with police whistles and loud human voices in half a dozen tongues. A uniformed Egyptian armed with a little trumpet performed a ritual dance of rage before her. A gallant RASC driver drew up beside her.

‘Forster says the marble was so bright that you could thread a needle at midnight. Why are they making such a fuss? There is all the time in the world. No one here ever lunches before two.’

Mrs Stitch, Guy reflected, did not seem to require much conversation from him. He sat silent, quite soaked up by her.

‘I’d never set foot in Egypt until now. It’s been a great disappointment. I can’t get to like the people,’ she said sadly, drenching the rabble in her great eyes. ‘Except the King – and it’s not policy to like him much. Well, we must get on. I’ve got to find some shoes.’

Soon she turned off into a side street marked OUT OF BOUNDS TO ALL RANKS OF H.M. FORCES.

‘Two Australians were picked up dead here the other morning,’ Guy explained.

Mrs Stitch had many interests but only one interest at a time. That morning it was Alexandrian history.

‘Hypatia,’ she said, turning into an alley. ‘I’ll tell you an odd thing about Hypatia. I was brought up to believe she was murdered with oyster shells, weren’t you? Forster says tiles.’

‘Not sure. I’ve never been here before. Someone told me about a little man.’

‘We’ll have to walk the last bit,’ said Mrs Stitch, climbing over the windscreen and sliding down the hot bonnet.

Contrary to Guy’s expectation they found the shop. The ‘little man’ was enormous, bulging over a small stool at his doorway, smoking a hubble-bubble. He rose affably and Mrs Stitch immediately sat in the place he vacated.

Shoes of various shapes and colours hung on strings all about them. When Mrs Stitch did not see what she wanted, she took a pad and pencil from her basket and drew, while the shoemaker teamed and breathed down her neck. He bowed and nodded and produced a pair of crimson slippers which were both fine and funny, with high curling toes.

She removed her white leather shoes and put them in her basket, her toe nails were pale pink and brilliantly polished. She donned the slippers, paid and made off. Guy followed at her side. After three steps she stopped and leaned on him, light and balmy, while she again changed shoes.

When they reached the car they found it covered with children who greeted them by sounding the horn.

‘Neither can I. We’ll have to send someone to collect it. Algie doesn’t like my driving myself anyhow. What’s the time?’

‘Damn. We’ll have to take a taxi. A tram might have been fun. Something for another day.’

The villa provided for the Stitches lay beyond Ramleh, beyond Sidi Bishr, among stone-pine and bougainvillaea. The white-robed, red-sashed Berber servants alone were African. All else smacked of the Alpes Maritimes. The party assembled on the veranda was small but heterogeneous. Algernon Stitch lurked in the background; in front were two little local millionairesses, sisters, who darted towards Mrs Stitch a-tiptoe with adulation.

‘Lady Steetch, Lady Steetch, your hat. Je crois bien que vous n’avez pas trouvé cela en Egypte.’

‘Five piastres in the bazaar,’ said Mrs Stitch (she had changed again in the taxi), leading Guy on.

Algernon Stitch looked at Guy with blank benevolence. His wife’s introductions were more often allusive than definitive, ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Very glad to see you again. You know the Commander-in-Chief, I expect.’

The rich sisters looked at one another, on the spot yet all at sea. Who was this officer of such undistinguished rank? Son amant, sans doute. How had their hostess described him? La vache souterraiue? Ou la vache au Métro? This, then, was the new chic euphemism. They would remember and employ it with effect else-where. ‘… My dear, I believe her chauffeur is her underground cow…’ It had the tang of the great world.

Besides the Commander-in-Chief there were in the party a young Maharaja in the uniform of the Red Cross, a roving English cabinet minister, and an urbane pasha. Mrs Stitch, never the slave of etiquette, put Guy on her right at table, but thereafter talked beyond him at large. She started a topic.

Mahmoud Pasha, a sad exile from Monte Carlo and Biarritz, replied with complete composure:

‘Who is Cavafy? What is he?’ passed from dark eye to dark eye of the sisters as they sat on either side of their host, but they held their little scarlet tongues.

The roving minister, it appeared, had read the complete works in the Greek. He expounded. The lady on Guy’s right said:

‘Do they perhaps speak of Constantine Cavafis?’ pronouncing the name quite differently from Mrs Stitch. ‘We are not greatly admiring him nowadays in Alexandria. He is of the past, you understand.’

The Commander-in-Chief was despondent as he had good reason to be. Everything was out of his control and everything was going wrong. He ate in silence. At length he said:

‘I find it so sympathetic,’ said the Greek lady. ‘How all your men of affairs are poetic. And they are not socialist, I believe?’

‘To be Greek, at this moment,’ said the lady next to Guy, ‘is to live in mourning. My country is being murdered. I come here because I love our hostess. I do not love parties now. My heart is with my people in my own country. My son is there, my two brothers, my nephew. My husband is too old. He has given up cards. I have given up cigarettes. It is not much. It is all we can do. It is – would you say emblematic?’

‘It is symbolic. It does not help my country. It helps us a little here.’ She laid her jewelled hand upon her heart.

The Commander-in-Chief listened in silence. His heart, too, was in the passes of Thessaly.

Presently they all left the table. The Commander-in-Chief moved across the veranda to Guy.

‘Oh, yes. Bad business about your Brigadier. I’m afraid you fellows have got rather left out of things. Shipping is the trouble. Always is. Well, I’m supposed to be on my way to Cairo. Where are you going?’

The ADC was put in front with the driver. Guy sat in the back with the Commander-in-Chief. They very quickly reached the gates of the camp. Guy made to get out.

The Catalan refugees were duty-troop that day. They crowded round the Commander-in-Chief’s great car with furious, unshaven faces. They poked tommy-guns through the open windows. Then, satisfied that these were temporary allies, they fell back, opened the gates and raised their clenched fists in salutation.

The Brigade Major was smoking in a deck-chair at the flap of his tent when he recognized the flag on the passing car. He leaped to his looking-glass, buckled himself up, pulled himself together crowned himself with a sun helmet, armed himself with a cane and broke into a double as he approached the sandy space where Guy had that morning drilled his section. The big car was driving away, Guy strolled towards him holding his guide-book.

‘Oh, it’s you back at last, Crouchback. Thought for a moment that was the C-in-C’s car?’

‘The driver had no business to fly the C-in-C’s flag without the C-in-C being inside. You should know that.’

‘I should never dare. The C-in-C asked me to apologize to the Colonel. He would have liked to stop but he had to get on to Cairo.’

Hound stood suspended, anguished by conflicting pride and curiosity. Curiosity won.

‘We spoke of the problems of shipping,’ said Guy. ‘They plague him.’ The Brigade Major turned away. ‘By the way,’ Guy added, ‘I think I detected an enemy agent in church today.’

Holy Saturday in Matchet; Mr Crouchback broke his Lenten fast. He had given up, as he always did, wine and tobacco. During the preceding weeks two parcels had come from his wine merchant, badly pilfered on the railway, but still with a few bottles intact. At luncheon Mr Crouchback drank a pint of burgundy. It was what his merchant cared to send him, not what he would have ordered, but he took it gratefully. After luncheon he filled his pipe. Now that he had no sitting-room, he was obliged to smoke downstairs. That afternoon seemed warm enough for sitting out. In a sheltered seat above the beaches, he lit the first pipe of Easter, thinking of that morning’s new fire.

NO. 6 Transit Camp, London District, was a camp in name only. It had been a large, unfashionable, entirely respectable hotel. The air was one of easy well-being. No bomb had yet broken a window-pane. Here Movement Control sent lost detachments. Here occasionally was brought a chaplain under close arrest. In this green pasture Trimmer and his section for a time lay down. Here Kerstie Kilbannock elected to do her war-work.

Kerstie was a good wife to Ian, personable, faithful, even-tempered and economical. All the pretty objects in their house had been bargains. Her clothes were cleverly contrived. She was sometimes suspected of fabricating the luncheon vin rosé by mixing the red and white wines left over from dinner; no more damaging charge was ever brought against her. There were nuances in her way with men which suggested she had once worked with them and competed on equal terms. Point by point she was the antithesis of her friend Virginia Troy.

On his going into uniform Ian’s income fell by £1,500. Kerstie did not complain. She packed her sons off to their grandmother in Ayrshire and took two friends named Brenda and Zita into her house as paying guests. She took them also, unpaid, into her canteen at No. 6 Transit Camp, London District. Kerstie was paid, not much but enough. The remuneration was negative; wearing overalls, eating free, working all day, weary at night, she spent nothing. When Virginia Troy, casually met during an air-raid at the Dorchester Hotel, confided that she was hard up and homeless – though still trailing clouds of former wealth and male subservience – Kerstie took her into Eaton Terrace – ‘Darling, don’t breathe to Brenda and Zita that you aren’t paying’, and into her canteen – ‘Not a word, darling, that you’re being paid.’

Working as waitresses these ladies, so well brought up, giggled and gossiped about their customers like real waitresses. Before she began work Virginia was initiated into some of their many jokes. Chief of these, by reason of his long stay, was the officer they called ‘Scottie’. Scottie’s diverse forms of utter awfulness filled them with delight.

Virginia waited a week. All the ladies preferred the ‘other ranks’ canteen by reason of the superior manners which prevailed there. It was Easter Monday, after Virginia had been there a week, that she took her turn beside Kerstie at the officers’ bar.

‘Here comes our Scottie,’ said Kerstie and, nosy and knowing, Trimmer sauntered across the room towards them. He was aware that his approach always created tension and barely suppressed risibility and took this as a tribute to his charm.

‘Good evening, beautiful,’ he said in his fine, free manner.’ How about a packet of Players from under the counter?’ and then, seeing Virginia, he fell suddenly silent, out of it, not up to it, on this evening of all evenings.

Fine and free, nosy and knowing, Trimmer had seemed, but it was all a brave show, for that afternoon the tortoise of total war had at last overtaken him. A telephone message bade him report next day at HOO HQ at a certain time, to a certain room. It boded only ill. He had come to the bar for stimulus, for a spot of pleasantry with ‘les girls’ and here, at his grand climacteric, in this most improbable of places, stood a portent, something beyond daily calculation. For in his empty days he had given much thought to his escapade with Virginia in Glasgow. So far as such a conception was feasible to Trimmer, she was a hallowed memory. He wished now Virginia were alone. He wished he were wearing his kilt. This was not the lovers’ meeting he had sometimes adumbrated at his journey’s end.

On this moment of silence and uncertainty Virginia struck swiftly with a long, cool and cautionary glance.

Virginia, as near as is humanly possible, was incapable of shame, but she had a firm residual sense of the appropriate. Alone, far away, curtained in fog – certain things had been natural in Glasgow in November which had no existence in London, in spring, amongst Kerstie and Brenda and Zita.

‘That puts you in your place, Kerstie,’ said Virginia. ‘He was always an angel to me. He used to call himself Gustave then. His real name’s Trimmer.’

Without another glance he sauntered off, disconcerted, perplexed but carrying himself with an air. He wished he had been wearing his kilt.

‘You know,’ said Kerstie, ‘I think that rather spoils our joke. I mean there’s nothing very funny about his being what he is when one knows what he is – is there? – if you see what I mean.’

‘I must tell Brenda and Zita. He won’t mind, will he? I mean he won’t disappear from our lives now we know his secret?’

‘All right, Charles,’ interposed General Whale, ‘I don’t think we need go into that. McTavish, I’ve some good news for you. Keep it under your hat. I’m sending you on a little operation.’

‘Just as soon as it takes the navy to lay on a submarine. They won’t keep you hanging about long, I hope. Move to Portsmouth tonight. Make out your own list of demolition stores and check it with Ordnance there. Tell your men it’s routine training. All right?’

‘Good. Well, go with Major Albright to the planning-room and he’ll put you in the picture. Kilbannock will be with you, but purely as an observer, you understand. You are in command of the operation. Right?’

When Trimmer had followed GSO II (Planning) and Ian Kilbannock from the room, General Whale said to his ADC, ‘Well, he took that quite quietly.’

Trimmer remained quiet while he was ‘put in the picture’. It was significant, Ian Kilbannock reflected while he listened to the exposition of GSO II (Planning) that this metaphoric use of ‘picture’ had come into vogue at the time when all the painters of the world had finally abandoned lucidity. GSO II (Planning) had a little plastic model of the objective of ‘Popgun’. He had air photographs and transcripts of pilots’ instructions. He spoke of tides, currents, the phases of the moon, charges of gun-cotton, fuses and detonators. He drafted a move order. He designated with his correct initials the naval authority to whom Popgun Force should report. He gave the time of the train to Portsmouth and the place of accommodation there. He delivered a stern warning about the need for ‘security’. Trimmer listened agape but not aghast, in dreamland. It was as though he were being invited to sing in Grand Opera or to ride the favourite in the Derby. Any change from No. 6 Transit Camp, London District, was a change for the worse, but he had come that morning with the certainty that those paradisal days were over. He had expected, at the best, to be sent out to rejoin Hookforce in the Middle East, at the worst to rejoin his regiment in Iceland. Popgun sounded rather a lark.

When the conference was over Ian said: ‘The Press will want to know something of your background when this story is released. Can you think up anything colourful?’

‘Well, let’s get together this evening. Come to my house for a drink before the train. I expect you’ve got a lot to do now.’

This was the day when the ladies in Eaton Terrace kept their weekly holiday. Kerstie had arranged substitutes so that all four could be at liberty together. They slept late, lunched in hotels, did their shopping, went out with men in the evenings. At half past six all were at home. The black-out was up; the fire lighted. The first sirens had not yet sounded. Brenda and Zita were in dressing-gowns. Zita’s hair was in curling-pins and a towel. Brenda was painting Kerstie’s toe-nails. Virginia was still in her room. Ian intruded on the scene.

‘Have we anything to eat?’ he asked. ‘I’ve brought a chap I’ve got to talk to and he’s catching a train at half past eight.’

‘Well, well, well,’ said Trimmer, entering behind him. ‘This is a surprise for all concerned.’

‘Behold a hero,’ said Trimmer. ‘Just off to death or glory. Do I understand one of you lovelies is married to this peer of the realm?’

‘There’s nothing to eat,’ said Kerstie, ‘except some particularly nasty-looking fish. Brenda and Zita are going out and Virginia says she doesn’t want anything. There’s some gin.’

‘Oh yes. All of us. I’ll call her.’ Kerstie went to the door and shouted: ‘Virginia, look what’s turned up.’

‘I think perhaps I won’t stay,’ said Trimmer, all the bounce in him punctured suddenly at the thought of Virginia’s proximity.

‘Oh rot,’ said Ian. ‘There’s a lot I want to ask you. We may not have time at Portsmouth.’

‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘Guests? Oh, you again? You do get around, don’t you?’

‘Virginia, you must be nicer to him. He’s off to death or glory, he says.’

‘I can get something to eat at the canteen,’ said Trimmer. ‘I ought to go and make sure that none of my fellows has given me the slip, anyway.’

Ian concluded that he was in the presence of a mystery which like so many others, come war, come peace, was beyond his comprehension.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you must. We’ll meet at the sea-side tomorrow. I’m afraid you’ll never get a taxi here.’

‘Well, I must say,’ said Ian, returning to them. ‘That was all very awkward. What was the matter with you all?’

‘He’s a friend of ours. We somehow didn’t expect him here, that’s all.’

‘… and what’s more,’ she concluded, ‘if you ask me, there’s something rum between him and Virginia.’

They carried their sheets and blankets into the area kitchen where iron bedsteads stood along the walls. Brenda and Zita and Virginia were already there, asleep.

‘It’s important about his having been a hairdresser. A first-class story.’

‘I’ve a highly confidential report here from Security. They have a suspect, an Alsatian priest, they’ve been watching. They’ve identified you as one of his contacts.’

‘It’s true I went to confession in Alexandria on Saturday. It’s one of the things we have to do now and then.’

‘So I’ve always understood. But this report says that you went round to the house where he lives and tried to get hold of him out of school.’

‘Look here, Guy, this may be a serious matter. Why the devil didn’t you report it?’

Major Hound, who was sitting at a neighbouring table relishing what he took to be Guy’s discomfiture, started sharply.

‘If you had, there would be a note of it in my files. I checked them this morning before you came in, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh,’ said Hound, disconcerted. ‘That? I thought that you were trying to pull my leg.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Tommy. ‘Did Guy make a report to you or didn’t he?’

‘I think he did say something,’ said Major Hound, ‘in the most irregular fashion.’

‘Well, you’d better draft an official report to these jokers, letting Guy out.’

So Major Hound wrote in the finest Staff College language that Captain Crouchback had been investigated and the Deputy-Commander of Hookforce was satisfied that there had been no breach of security on the part of that officer. And this letter, together with the original report, was photographed and multiplied and distributed and deposited in countless tin boxes. In time a copy reached Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole in London.

‘Yes, and under “Box-Bender” too, and “Mugg”. It all ties in,’ he said gently, sweetly rejoicing at the underlying harmony of a world in which duller minds discerned mere chaos.

Trimmer and his section lay long at Portsmouth. The navy were hospitable, incurious, not to be hurried. Ian travelled up and down to London as the whim took him. The ladies in his house were full of questions. Trimmer had become a leading topic among them.

Trimmer’s Sergeant knew something about demolition. He made a successful trial explosion in an enclosed fold of the hills. The experiment was repeated a day or two later in the presence of GSO II (Planning) HOO HQ and one of the men was incapacitated. One day Popgun Force was embarked in a submarine and Trimmer explained the projected operation. An hour later they were put ashore again, on a report of new minelaying in the Channel. From that time they were placed virtually under close arrest in the naval barracks. Trimmer’s batman, a man long manifestly mutinous, took the occasion to desert. This information was badly received at HOO HQ.

‘Strictly speaking of course, sir,’ said GSO II (Planning) ‘Popgun should be cancelled. Security has been compromised.’

‘Quite, sir. I only meant McTavish will look pretty silly if he finds the enemy waiting for him.’

So eventually Popgun Force re-embarked, comprising Trimmer, his Sergeant, five men, and Ian. Even thus depleted they seemed too many.

They sailed at midday. The ship submerged and immediately all sense of motion, all sense of being at sea, utterly ceased. It was like being in a tube train, Ian thought, stuck in the tunnel.

He and Trimmer were invited to make themselves comfortable in the comfortless little cell that was called the ward-room. The Sergeant was in the Petty Officers’ mess. The men disposed among the torpedoes.

‘We shan’t be able to surface until after dark,’ said the Captain. ‘You may find it a bit close by then.’

After luncheon the Third Hand distributed a specific against carbon dioxide poisoning.

After dinner the sailors went back to the control-room and the engines. Ian drank. Trimmer composed a letter.

I am leaving this to be sent to you in case I do not come back. When I said death or glory it wasn’t just a joke you see. I want you to know that I thought of you at the last. Ever since we met I’ve known I had found the real thing. It was good while it lasted.

He filled three pages of his message pad. He signed it, after cogitation, ‘Gustave’. He read it through. As he did so he conjured up the image of Virginia, as he had seen her on the afternoon of his flight from Glasgow, as he had met her again in London; of Virginia not so much as he had seen her, but rather as she had seemed to see him. He re-read the letter under the imagined wide stare of those contemptuous eyes and that infinitesimal particle of wisdom that lay in Trimmer’s depths asserted itself. It just would not do, not for Virginia. He folded it small, tore it across and let the pieces fall to the steel deck.

Time passed slowly. At last there came a sudden exhilaration. ‘What’s this?’

Presently the Captain came in and said: ‘Well, this is the time we ought to be coming in.’

‘What the hell’s he up to?’ said Trimmer. ‘We can’t go back now. They’ll all desert if they try and lock us up in those barracks again.’

The ship was on the surface and the trap open. The night had been chosen with the best meteorological advice. The little empty island should have shone out under a gibbous moon. But there was no moon visible that night, no stars, only mist curling into the flats.

Half an hour passed. The ship seemed to be nosing about very slowly in the calm waters. The Captain returned to the wardroom.

‘Sorry. It looks as though we’ve got to pack it up. Can’t see anything. It may lift of course as quick as it came down. We’ve got some time in hand.’

Ian filled his glass. Soon he began to yawn. Then to doze. The next thing he knew the Captain was with them again.

‘O.K.’, he said. ‘We’re in luck. Everything is clear as day and here’s your island straight ahead. I reckon you’ve an hour and a half for the job.’

Sailors dragged four rubber dinghies into the open night and inflated them on deck from cylinders of compressed air. The demolition stores were lowered. Popgun Force sat two and two, bobbing gently at the ship’s side. Low cliffs were clear before them, a hundred yards distant. Popgun Force paddled inshore.

Orders were detailed and lucid, drafted at HOO HQ. Two men, the beach-party, were to remain with the boats. The Sergeant was to land the explosives and wait while Trimmer and Ian reconnoitred for the tower which, in the model, stood on the summit of the island half a mile inland. They would all be in sight of one another’s signalling-lamps all the time.

As Ian climbed awkwardly over the rubber gunwale and stood knee deep in the water, which gently lapped the deep fringe of bladder-wrack, he felt the whisky benevolently stirring within him. He was not a man of strong affections. Hitherto he had not greatly liked Trimmer. He had been annoyed at the factitious importance which seemed to surround him in Eaton Terrace. But now he felt a comradeship in arms.

‘Hold up, old boy,’ he said loudly and genially, for Trimmer had fallen flat.

He gave a heave. Hand in hand he and Trimmer landed on enemy territory. Popgun Force stood on the beach.

‘I suppose so,’ said Trimmer. ‘I don’t see why not. I could do with a fag myself.’

The cliffs presented no problem. They had fallen in half a dozen places and grassy slopes led up between them. Trimmer and Ian walked briskly forward and up.

‘We ought to be able to see the place on the skyline,’ said Trimmer rather plaintively. ‘It all seems much flatter than the model.’

‘Not yet. I daresay I shall be before the evening’s out. I thought it a wise precaution to bring a bottle ashore.’

He stood in the delusive moonlight and swigged. Trimmer stared anxiously about him. The gentle sound-effects of operation Popgun, the susurrus of the beach, the low mutter of the demolition party, the heavy breathing of the two officers as they resumed their ascent, were suddenly horrifically interrupted by an alien voice, piercing and not far distant. The two officers stopped dead.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Trimmer. ‘What’s that? It sounds like a dog.’

‘Ah. I see what you mean. Come to think of it I believe I read somewhere that the Gestapo use bloodhounds.’

‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

‘Push on, old boy. All quiet now. The whole thing may have been a hallucination.’

Trimmer drew his pistol and continued the advance. They reached the top of a grassy ridge, and saw half a mile to their flank a dark feature that stood out black against the silver landscape.

‘“Moonlight can be cruelly deceptive, Amanda,”’ said Ian in his Noel Coward voice. ‘Push on.’

They moved forward cautiously. Suddenly the dog barked again and Trimmer as suddenly fired his pistol. The bullet struck the turf a few yards ahead but the sound was appalling. Both officers fell on their faces.

A light appeared in the building ahead. Ian and Trimmer lay flat. A light appeared downstairs. A door opened and a broad woman stood there, clearly visible, holding a lamp in one hand, a shotgun under her arm. The dog barked with frenzy. A chain rattled.

‘Sales Boches!’ roared the woman and fired both barrels in their direction. Trimmer dropped.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Ian, coming up with him where he lay groaning. ‘She can’t have hit you.’

Ian stood and panted. The dog seemed not to be in pursuit. Ian looked about him.

‘Shall I tell you something else? There aren’t any railways where we ought to be.’

‘I rather think we’re on the mainland of France. Somewhere in the Cherbourg area, I daresay.’

‘Steady on, old boy. One of us ought to be sober and it’s not going to be me.’

The rhythm of approaching wheels swelled along the line. Ian gave Trimmer a hand. He groaned, hobbled and sank to the ground. Very soon the glow and spark of the engine came into view and presently a goods-train rolled slowly past. Ian and Trimmer buried their faces in the sooty verge. Not until it was out of sight and almost out of hearing did either speak. Then Ian said: ‘D’you know it’s only sixteen minutes since we landed?’

‘We’ve got plenty of time to get back to the beach. Take it easy. I think we ought to make a slight detour. I didn’t like the look of that old girl with the gun.’

‘Why “of course”. It might easily have been. I came the hell of a cropper.’

‘Listen, Trimmer, this is no time for argument. I am greatly relieved to hear that you are uninjured. Now step out and perhaps we shall get home.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you do. Step out. Soon over. Damn it, one might think it was you that was drunk, instead of me.’

It took them twenty-five minutes to reach the boats. Trimmer’s shaken body seemed to heal with use. Towards the end of the march he was moving fast and strongly but he suffered from cold. His teeth chattered and only a stern sense of duty prevented Ian from offering him whisky. They passed the place where they had left the demolition party but found it deserted.

‘I suppose they did a bunk when they heard that shot,’ said Trimmer. ‘Can’t blame them really.’

But when they came to the beach all four dinghies were there with their guards. There was no sign of the rest of the force.

At length Trimmer said: ‘Zero plus fifty-two. I’m frozen. What the hell does the Sergeant mean by going off on his own like this? His orders were to wait for orders. It’s his own look-out if he’s left behind.’

‘I bet that woman’s given the alarm. They’ve probably been captured. There’s probably a howling mob of Gestapo looking for us at the moment – with bloodhounds … zero plus fifty-nine.’

‘Here, my dear Watson,’ he said, ‘if I am not mistaken, come our clients – one side or the other.’

‘Gun-cotton, sir. When we saw the train go by, not having heard anything from the Captain, I went up myself and laid a charge. Hop in quiet, lads.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir. I just thought we might as well show the Jerries we’d been here.’

‘In a day or two’s time,’ said Ian, ‘you and Captain McTavish and your men are going to wake up and find yourselves heroes. Can you do with some whisky?’

‘I’m coming. Be of good comfort, Master Trimmer, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.’

A signal was made just before dawn briefly announcing the success of the expedition. The submarine dived and the Captain in his cabin began to draft his account of the naval operation. In the wardroom Ian coached Trimmer in the military version. High spirits do not come easily under water. All were content.

Major Albright, GSO II (Planning), HOO HQ, was at Portsmouth to meet them when they came ashore that afternoon. He was effusive, almost deferential.

‘Well,’ said Trimmer,’ how about a spot of leave? The chaps are pretty browned off with Portsmouth.’

‘General Whale wants to see you. He’ll want to hear your own story, of course.’

And later that night he told the DLF HOO all that he had decided the General should know.

‘Jolly good show. Just what was needed. Jolly good,’ said the General. ‘We must get an M.M. for the Sergeant. McTavish ought to have something. Not quite a D.S.O. perhaps but certainly an M.C.

‘No. All I want from you is a citation for McTavish. Go and write it now. Tomorrow you can see about a release to the Press.’

In his life in Fleet Street Ian had undertaken many hard tasks for harder masters. This was jam. He returned to General Whale in ten minutes with a typewritten sheet.

‘I’ve pitched it pretty low, sir, for the official citation. Confined myself strictly to the facts.’

Captain McTavish trained and led a small raiding force which landed on the coast of occupied France. On landing he showed a complete disregard of personal safety which communicated itself to his men. While carrying out his personal reconnaissance he came under small-arms fire. Fire was returned and the enemy post silenced. Captain McTavish pushed farther inland and identified the line of the railway. Observation was kept and heavy traffic in strategic materials was noted. A section of the permanent way was successfully demolished, thereby gravely impeding the enemy’s war effort. Captain McTavish, in spite of having sustained injuries in the course of the action, successfully re-embarked his whole force, without casualties, in accordance with the time-table. Throughout the latter phases of the operation he showed exemplary coolness.

‘Oh, no, sir. That’s all over now. Hitler needs all he’s got for the Russians.’

‘I say, Guy, weren’t you with Tommy? Awful business about Eddie and Bertie.’

‘Ah, there you are, Guy,’ said Box-Bender. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. We’ll go straight up and start dinner, if you don’t mind. I’ve got to get back to the House. Besides, everything gets eaten these days if you don’t look sharp.’

Guy and his brother-in-law struggled through and up to the coffee-room. Under the chandeliers waitresses distributed the meagre dinner. It was barely half past seven, but already most of the tables were taken. Guy and Box-Bender had to sit in the middle of the room.

‘I hope we keep this to ourselves. There’s something I particularly want to talk to you about. Better have the soup. The other thing is made of dried eggs. Good trip home?’

‘Oh. Don’t look. Elderbury’s trying to find somewhere to sit… Hullo, Elderbury, you joining us?’

‘I should like to have seen Harold Macmillan standing to attention while they sang the Red Flag.’

‘I saw it on the news-reel. And Mrs Maisky unveiling the picture of Stalin.’

‘Well, it’s worked,’ said Box-Bender. ‘Production was up twenty per cent. Twenty per cent – and they were supposed to be working all-out before.’

‘Tanks for Russia?’ asked Guy. ‘I’m afraid all this is new to me. They want tanks pretty badly in the desert.’

‘They’ll get them, too, don’t you worry,’ said Box-Bender. ‘Naturally the workers are keen to help Russia. It’s how they’ve been educated. It doesn’t do any harm to let them have a pot of red paint and splash round with hammers and sickles and “Good old Uncle Joe”. It’ll wash off. The tanks will get to the place they’re most needed. You can be sure of that.’

‘Mind you, I’m all for the Russians,’ said Elderbury. ‘We’ve had to do a lot of readjustment in the last few weeks. They’re putting up a wonderful fight.’

‘Look,’ said Box-Bender briskly, when he and Guy were alone in a corner of the billiard-room. ‘I haven’t much time. This is what I wanted to show you.’ He took a typewritten paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Guy. ‘What d’you make of that?’

The Spiritual Combat by Francis de Sales.
Christ the Ideal of the Monk by Abbot Marmion.
Spiritual Letters of Don John Chapman.
The Practice of the Presence of God by Lawrence.

‘Yes, yes, very likely. My secretary copied them. But what d’you make of it?’

‘Most edifying. I can’t say I’ve read them much myself. Are you thinking of becoming a monk, Arthur?’

‘Exactly,’ said Box-Bender. ‘That’s exactly what I expected you to say. It’s what other people have said when I showed them.’

‘They’re the books Tony has sent for from prison. Now. What d’you say to that?’

‘Shall I tell you what I think? Religious mania. It’s as plain as a pikestaff the poor boy’s going off his head.’

There it was, out in the open for a moment’s airing, the skeleton from Box-Bender’s cupboard. Box-Bender remembered Ivo every day of his busy prosperous life.

‘Mind if I join you again?’ said Elderbury, carrying a cup of coffee. ‘Nowhere else to sit.’ And shortly afterwards Guy saw Ian Kilbannock and made his escape.

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve been at sea for eight weeks. The last I heard of him, he’d gone to India.’

‘They keep coming. I’ve got a staff of my own – including Virginia, incidentally. She’ll be delighted to hear you’re back. She’s always talking of you. She’s away with Trimmer at the moment.’

‘You remember him. McTavish. He’s officially named Trimmer now. They couldn’t decide for weeks. In the end it went to the Minister. He decided there were too many Scots heroes. Also, of course, Trimmer’s so tremendously not Scottish. But he’s doing a great job. We’ve had our noses out of joint a bit this last week. There’s a female Soviet sniper going the rounds and getting all the applause. That’s why I sent poor Virginia to put some ginger into our boy. He was pining rather. Now things are humming again – except for Virginia, of course. She was sick as mud at having to go – Scunthorpe, Hull, Huddersfield, Halifax…’

Next day Guy reported at the Halberdier barracks. His old acquaintance was still in the office, promoted Major once more.

‘Back again,’ he said. ‘Quite an annual event. You come with the fall of the leaf, ha ha.’ He was much jollier now he was a Major. ‘Everything in order, too, this time. We’ve been expecting you for weeks. I expect you’d like a spot of leave?’

‘Really,’ said Guy,’ I don’t think I would. I’ve been sitting about in a ship since the end of June. I might as well get to work.’

‘The Captain-Commandant said something about putting you on the square for a fortnight to smarten up.’

‘Sure? It seemed a bit rough to me. Returned hero and all that. But the Captain-Commandant says people forget everything on active service. I’d better take you to him this morning. Haven’t you any gloves?’

He spoke with gentle, genial reproof. It was not the business of a Halberdier officer to get his name in the papers, but Guy’s exploit had been wholly creditable.

At noon, gloved, Guy was marched in to the Captain-Commandant. Colonel Green had aged. ‘Mr Crouchback reporting from Middle East, sir,’ said the Adjutant.

‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘One of the first batch of young temporary officers. I remember you very well. Apthorpe, isn’t it?’

‘Crouchback,’ said the Adjutant more loudly, putting the relevant papers into the hands of the Captain-Commandant.

‘Yes, yes, of course …’ He reviewed the papers. He remembered the good things he knew of Guy … ‘Crouchback. Middle East… Bad luck you couldn’t stay out there and join to second battalion. They wanted you, I know. So did your Brigadier. Old women, these medicos. Still, one has to go by what they say. I’ve got their report here. They as good as say you’re lucky to be alive … change of climate essential… well, you look fit enough now.’

That afternoon Guy paraded on the square with a mixed squad of recruits and officers in training under Halberdier Colour-Sergeant Oldenshaw.

‘… I’ll just run through the detail. The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank with the left hand crossing the muzzles – all right? – magazines turned outward – all right? – at the same time raising the piling swivels with the forefinger and thumb of both hands – all right?…’