The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold; Tactical Exercise; Love Among the Ruins

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of the late Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1927 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in 1928 his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa, and tropical America. In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Anns, which came out in 1952, as the first volume in a trilogy of war memoirs, and won the James Tait Black Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, were published in 1955 and 1961. Evelyn Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930 and his earlier biography of the Elizabethan Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was awarded the Hawthomden Prize in 1936. He is married and has six children. Since 1937 he and his family have lived in Gloucestershire. Cover drawing by Quentin Blake

PEN GUIN

BOOKS

1794 T H E O R D E A L OF G I L B E R T P I N F O L D T A C T I C A L EXERCISE L O V E A M O N G THE R UI NS BVBLYN

WAUGH

EVELYN W A U G H

The Ordeal o f Gilbert Pinfold Tactical Exercise Love Among the Ruins *

PENGUIN BOOKS

Penguin Books Ltd , Harmonds worth, Middlesex A U S T R A L I A : Penguin Books Pty Ltd , 762 Whitehorse Road, Mitcham, Victoria

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold first published by Chapman & Hall 1957 Tactical Exercise first published by Penguin Books 1962 Love Among the Ruins first published by Chapman & Hall 1953 Published in one volume by Penguin Books 1962

Copyright © Evelyn Waugh, 1962

Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox and W yman Ltd, London, Reading, and Fakenham Set in Monotype Bembo

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher’s consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

Contents

THE O R D E A L OF G I L B E R T P I N F O L D T A C T I C A L EXERCISE L O V E A M O N G THE R U I N S

The Ordeal o f Gilbert Pinfold A C O N V E R S A T I O N PIECE

TO DA P HNE I N THE C O N F I D E N C E T H A T HER A B O U N D I N G S Y M P A T H Y WI L L E X T E N D EVEN TO POOR PINFOLD

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P O R T R A I T O F T H E A R T I S T IN M ID D L E -A G E

I t may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists o f the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen o f the late eighteenth century. The originators, the exuberant men, are extinct and in their place subsists and modestly flourishes a generation notable for elegance and variety o f contrivance. It may well happen that there are lean years ahead in which our posterity will look back hungrily to this period, when there was so much will and so much ability to please. Among these novelists Mr Gilbert Pinfold stood quite high. At the time o f his adventure, at the age o f fifty, he had written a dozen books all o f which were still bought and read. They were translated into most languages and in the United States o f America enjoyed intermittent but lucrative seasons o f favour. Foreign students often chose them as the subject for theses, but those who sought to detect cosmic significance in Mr Pinfold’s work, to relate it to fashions in philosophy, social predicaments, or psychological tensions, were baffled by his frank, curt replies to their questionnaires; their fellows in the English Literature School, who chose more egotistical writers, often found their theses more than half composed for them. Mr Pinfold gave nothing away. Not that he was secretive or grudging by nature; he had nothing to give these students. He regarded his books as objects which he had made, things quite external to himself to be used and judged by others. He thought them well made, better than many reputed works o f

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genius, but he was not vain o f his accomplishment, still less o f his reputation. He had no wish to obliterate anything he had written, but he would dearly have liked to revise it, envying painters, who are allowed to return to the same theme time and time again, clarifying and enriching until they have done all they can with it. A novelist is condemned to produce a succession o f novelties, new names for characters, new incidents for his plots, new scenery; but, Mr Pinfold main­ tained, most men harbour the germs o f one or two books only; all else is professional trickery o f which the most daemonic o f the masters - Dickens and Balzac even - were flagrantly guilty. A t the beginning o f this fifty-first year o f his life M r Pinfold presented to the world most o f the attributes o f well-being. Affectionate, high-spirited, and busy in childhood; dissipated and often despairing in youth; sturdy and prosperous in early manhood; he had in middle-age degenerated less than many o f his contemporaries. He attributed this superiority to his long, lonely, tranquil days at Lychpole, a secluded village some hundred miles from London. He was devoted to a wife many years younger than himself, who actively farmed the small property. Their children were numerous, healthy, good-looking, and good-mannered, and his income just sufficed for their education. Once he had travelled widely; now he spent most o f the year in the shabby old house which, over the years, he had filled with pictures and books and furniture o f the kind he relished. As a soldier he had sustained, in good heart, much discomfort and some danger. Since the end o f the war his life had been strictly private. In his own village he took very lightly the duties which he might have thought incumbent on him. He con­ tributed adequate sums to local causes but he had no interest in sport or in local government, no ambition to lead or to

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command. He had never voted in a parliamentary election, maintaining an idiosyncratic toryism which was quite un­ represented in the political parties o f his time and was regarded by his neighbours as being almost as sinister as socialism. These neighbours were typical o f the English countryside o f the period. A few rich men farmed commercially on a large scale; a few had business elsewhere and came home merely to hunt; the majority were elderly and in reduced circumstances; people who, when the Pinfolds settled at Lychpole, lived comfortably with servants and horses, and now lived in much smaller houses and met at the fishmonger’s. Many o f these were related to one another, and formed a compact little clan. Colonel and Mrs Bagnold, Mr and Mrs Graves, Mrs and Miss Fawdle, Colonel and Miss Garbett, Lady Fawdle-Upton, and Miss Clarissa Bagnold all lived in a radius o f ten miles from Lychpole. All were in some w ay related. In the first years o f their marriage Mr and Mrs Pinfold had dined in all these households and had entertained them in return. But after the war the decline o f fortune, less sharp in the Pinfolds’ case than their neighbours’, made their meetings less frequent. The Pin­ folds were, addicted to nicknames and each o f these surround­ ing families had its own private, unsuspected appellation at Lychpole, not malicious but mildly derisive, taking its origin in most cases from some half-forgotten incident in the past. The nearest neighbour whom they saw most often was Regin­ ald Graves-Upton, an uncle o f the Graves-Uptons ten miles distant at Upper M ewling; a gentle, bee-keeping old bachelor who inhabited a thatched cottage up the lane less than a mile from the Manor. It was his habit on Sunday mornings to walk to church across the Pinfolds’ fields and leave his Cairn terrier in the Pinfolds’ stables while he attended Matins. He called for quarter o f an hour when he came to fetch his dog,

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drank a small glass o f sherry, and described the wireless pro­ grammes he had heard during the preceding week. This refined, fastidious old gentleman went by the recondite name o f ‘ the Bruiser’, sometimes varied to ‘ Pug’, ‘ Basher’, and ‘ Old Fisticuffs’, all o f which sobriquets derived from ‘ B oxer’ ; for in recent years he had added to his few interests an object which he reverently referred to as ‘ The B o x ’. This B ox was one o f many operating in various parts o f the country. It was installed under the sceptical noses o f Reginald Graves-Upton’s nephew and niece, at Upper M ew­ ling. Mrs Pinfold, who had been taken to see it, said it looked like a makeshift wireless-set. According to the Bruiser and other devotees The Box exercised diagnostic and therapeutic powers. Some part o f a sick man or animal - a hair, a drop o f blood preferably - was brought to The Box, whose guardian would then ‘ tune in’ to the ‘ life-waves’ o f the patient, discern the origin o f the malady and prescribe treatment. Mr Pinfold was as sceptical as the younger Graves-Uptons. Mrs Pinfold thought there must be something in it, because it had been tried, without her knowledge, on Lady FawdleUpton’s nettle-rash and immediate relief had fallowed. ‘ It’s all suggestion,’ said young Mrs Graves-Upton. ‘ It can’t be suggestion, i f she didn’t know it was being done,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ No. It’s simply a matter o f measuring the Life-Waves,’ said Mrs Pinfold. ‘An extremely dangerous device in the wrong hands,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ No, no. That is the beauty o f it. It can’t do any harm. You see it only transmits Life Forces. Fanny Graves tried it on her spaniel for worms, but they simply grew enormous with all tke Life Force going into them. Like serpents, Fanny said.’ ‘ I should have thought this B ox counted as sorcery,’ Mr

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Pinfold said to his wife when they were alone. ‘ You ought to confess it.’ ‘ D ’you really think so?’ ‘ No, not really. It’s just a lot o f harmless nonsense.’ The Pinfolds* religion made a slight but perceptible barrier between them and these neighbours, a large part o f whose activities centred round their parish churches. The Pinfolds were Roman Catholics, Mrs Pinfold by upbringing, Mr Pin­ fold by a later development. He had been received into the Church - ‘ conversion’ suggests an event more sudden and emotional than his calm acceptance o f the propositions o f his faith - in early manhood, at the time when many Englishmen o f humane education were falling into communism. Unlike them Mr Pinfold remained steadfast. But he was reputed bigoted rather than pious. His trade by its nature is liable to the condemnation o f the clergy as, at the best, frivolous; at the worst, corrupting. Moreover by the narrow standards o f the age his habits o f life were self-indulgent and his uttterances lacked prudence. And at the very time when the leaders o f his Church were exhorting their people to emerge from the catacombs into the forum, to make their influence felt in democratic politics and to regard worship as a corporate rather than a private act, Mr Pinfold burrowed ever deeper into the rock. Aw ay from his parish he sought the least frequented Mass; at home he held aloof from the multifarious organizations which have sprung into being at the summons o f the hierarchy to redeem the times. But Mr Pinfold was far from friendless and he set great store by his friends. They were the men and women who were growing old with him, whom in the nineteen-twenties and thirties he had seen constantly; who in the diaspora o f the forties and fifties kept more tenuous touch with one another,

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the men at Bellamy’s Club, the women at the half-dozen poky, pretty houses o f Westminster and Belgravia to which had descended the larger hospitality o f a happier age. He had made no new friends in late years. Sometimes he thought he detected a slight coldness among his old cronies. It was always he, it seemed to him, who proposed a meeting. It was always they who first rose to leave. In particular there was one, Roger Stillingfleet, who had once been an intimate but now seemed to avoid him. Roger Stillingfleet was a writer, one o f the few Mr Pinfold really liked. He knew o f no reason for their estrangement and, inquiring, was told that Roger had grown very odd lately. He never came to Bellamy’s now, it was said, except to collect his letters or to entertain a visiting American. It sometimes occurred to Mr Pinfold that he must be growing into a bore. His opinions certainly were easily predictable. His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing, and jazz - everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime. The tiny kindling o f charity which came to him through his religion sufficed only to tem­ per his disgust and change it to boredom. There was a phrase in the thirties: ‘ It is later than you think’, which was designed to cause uneasiness. It was never later than Mr Pinfold thought. A t intervals during the day and night he would look at his watch and learn always with disappointment how little o f his life was past, how much there was still ahead o f him. He wished no one ill, but he looked at the world sub specie aeternitatis and he found it flat as a m ap; except when, rather often, personal annoyance intruded. Then he would come tumbling from his exalted point o f observation. Shocked by a bad bottle o f wine, an impertinent stranger, or a fault in syntax, his mind like a cinema camera trucked furiously for­

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ward to confront the offending object close-up with glaring lens; with the eyes o f a drill sergeant inspecting an awkward squad, bulging with wrath that was half-facetious, and with half-simulated incredulity; like a drill sergeant he was absurd to many but to some rather formidable. Once upon a time all this had been thought diverting. People quoted his pungent judgements and invented anecdotes o f his audacity, which were recounted as ‘ typical Pinfolds’. Now , he realized his singularity had lost some o f its attraction for others, but he was too old a dog to learn new tricks. As a boy, at the age o f puberty when most o f his school­ fellows coarsened, he had been as fastidious as the Bruiser and in his early years o f success diffidence had lent him charm. Prolonged prosperity had wrought the change. He had seen sensitive men make themselves a protective disguise against the rebuffs and injustices o f manhood. M r Pinfold had suffered little in these ways; he had been tenderly reared and, as a writer, welcomed and over-rewarded early. It was his modesty which needed protection and for this purpose, but without design, he gradually assumed this character o f burlesque. He was neither a scholar nor a regular soldier; the part for which he cast himself was a combination o f eccentric don and testy colonel and he acted it strenuously, before his children at Lychpole and his cronies in London, until it came to dominate his whole outward personality. W hen he ceased to be alone, when he swung into his club or stumped up the nursery stairs, he left half o f himself behind, and the other half swelled to fill its place. He offered the world a front o f pomposity mitigated by indiscretion, that was as hard, bright, and antiquated as a cuirass. Mr Pinfold’s nanny used to say: ‘ D on’t care went to the gallows’ ; also: ‘ Sticks and stones can break m y bones, but words can never hurt me’. Mr Pinfold did not care what the

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village or his neighbours said o f him. As a little boy he had been acutely sensitive to ridicule. His adult shell seemed impervious. He had long held himself inaccessible to inter­ viewers and the young men and women who were employed to write ‘ profiles’ collected material where they could. Every week his press-cutting agents brought to his breakfast-table two or three rather offensive allusions. He accepted without much resentment the world’s estimate o f himself. It was part o f the price he paid for privacy. There were also letters from strangers, some abusive, some adulatory. Mr Pinfold was unable to discover any particular superiority o f taste or expres­ sion in the writers o f either sort. To both he sent printed acknowledgements. His days passed in writing, reading, and managing his own small affairs. He had never employed a secretary and for the last two years he had been without a manservant. But Mr Pinfold did not repine. He was perfectly competent to answer his own letters, pay his bills, tie his parcels, and fold his clothes. A t night his most frequent recurring dream was o f doing The Times crossword puzzle; his most disagreeable that he was reading a tedious book aloud to his family. Physically, in his late forties, he had become lazy. Time was, he rode to hounds, went for long walks, dug his garden, felled small trees. N ow he spent most o f the day in an armchair. He ate less, drank more, and grew corpulent. He was very seldom so ill as to spend a day in bed. He suffered intermit­ tently from various twinges and brief bouts o f pain in his joints and muscles - arthritis, gout, rheumatism, fibrositis; they were not dignified by any scientific name. Mr Pinfold seldom con­ sulted his doctor. When he did so it was as a ‘ private patient’. His children availed themselves o f the National Health Act but Mr Pinfold was reluctant to disturb a relationship which had been formed in his first years at Lychpole. Dr Drake,

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Mr Pinfold’s medical attendant, had inherited the practice from his father and had been there before the Pinfolds came to Lychpole. Lean, horsy, and weather-beaten in appearance, he had deep roots and wide ramifications in the countryside, being brother o f the local auctioneer, brother-in-law o f the solicitor an
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two events which seemed trivial at the time but grew to importance in his later adventures. The first o f these primarily concerned Mrs Pinfold. During the war Lychpole was let, the house to a convent, the fields to a grazier. This man, Hill, had collected parcels o f grass-land in and around the parish and on them kept a nondescript herd o f ‘ unattested’ dairy-cattle. The pasture was rank, the fences dilapidated.When the Pinfolds came home in 1945 and wanted their fields back, the W ar Agricultural Committee, normally predisposed towards the sitting tenant, were in no doubt o f their decision in Mrs Pinfold’s favour. Had she acted at once, Hill would have been out, with his compensation, at Michael­ mas, but Mrs Pinfold was tender-hearted and Hill was adroit. First he pleaded, then, having established new rights, asserted them. Lady Day succeeded Michaelmas; Michaelmas, Lady Day for four full years. Hill retreated meadow by meadow. The committee, still popularly known as ‘ the W ar A g.’, returned, walked the property anew, again found for Mrs Pinfold. Hill, who now had a lawyer, appealed. So it went on. Mr Pinfold held aloof from it all, merely noting with sorrow the anxiety o f his wife. A t length at Michaelmas 1949 Hill finally moved. He boasted in the village inn o f his clever­ ness, and left for the other side o f the county with a comfort­ able profit. The second event occurred soon after. Mr Pinfold received an invitation from the B .B .C . to record an ‘ interview’. In the previous twenty years there had been many such proposals and he had always refused them. This time the fee was more liberal and the conditions softer. He would not have to go to the offices in London. Electricians would come to him with their apparatus. N o script had to be submitted; no preparation o f any kind was required; the whole thing would take an hour. In an idle moment Mr Pinfold agreed and at once regretted it.

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The day came towards the end o f the summer holidays. Soon after breakfast there arrived a motor-car, and a van o f the sort used in the army by the more important kinds o f signaller, which immediately absorbed the attention o f the younger children. Out o f the car there came three youngish men, thin o f hair, with hom-rimmed elliptical glasses, cord trousers, and tweed coats; exactly what Mr Pinfold was expecting. Their leader was named Angel. He emphasized his primacy by means o f a neat, thick beard. He and his colleagues, he explained, had slept in the district, where he had an aunt. They would have to leave before luncheon. They would get through their business in the morning. The signallers began rapidly uncoiling wires and setting up their microphone in the library, while M r Pinfold drew the attention o f Angel and his party to the more noticeable o f his collection o f works o f art. They did not commit themselves to an opinion, merely remarking that the last house they visited had a gouache by Rouault. ‘ I didn’t know he ever painted in gouache,’ said M r Pinfold. ‘Anyway he’s a dreadful painter.’ ‘A h !’ said Angel. ‘ That’s very nice. Very nice indeed. W e must try and work that into the broadcast.’ W hen the electricians had made their arrangements Mr Pinfold sat at his table with the three strangers, a microphone in their midst. They were attempting to emulate a series that had been cleverly done in Paris with various French celebrities, in which informal, spontaneous discussion had seduced the objects o f inquiry into self-revelation. They questioned M r Pinfold in turn about his tastes and habits. Angel led and it was at him that M r Pinfold looked. The commonplace face above the beard became slightly sinister, the accentless, but insidiously plebeian voice, menac­ ing. The questions were civil enough in form but Mr Pinfold

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thought he could detect an underlying malice. Angel seemed to believe that anyone sufficiently eminent to be interviewed by him iuust have something to hide, must be an impostor whom it was his business to trap and expose, and to direct his questions from some basic, previous knowledge o f some­ thing discreditable. There was the hint o f the under-dog’s snarl which Mr Pinfold recognized from his press-cuttings. He was well equipped to deal with insolence, real or imagined, and answered succinctly and shrewdly, discon­ certing his adversaries, if adversaries they were, point by point. When it was over Mr Pinfold offered his visitors sherry. Tension relaxed. He asked politely who was their next subject. ‘ W e’re going on to Stratford,’ said Angel, ‘ to interview Cedric Thome.’ ‘ You evidently have not seen this morning’s paper,’ said M r Pinfold. ‘ No, we left before it came/ ‘ Cedric Thome has escaped you. He hanged himself yesterday afternoon in his dressing-room.’ ‘ Good heavens, are you sure?’ ‘ It’s in The Times.9 ‘ May I see?’ Angel was shaken from his professional calm. Mr Pinfold brought the paper and he read the paragraph with emotion. ‘ Yes, yes. That’s him. I half expected this. He was a personal friend. I must get on to his wife. M ay I phone?’ Mr Pinfold apologized for the levity with which he had broken the news and led Angel to the business-room. He refilled the sherry glasses and attempted to appear genial. Angel returned shortly to say: ‘ I couldn’t get through. I’ll have to try again later.’ Mr Pinfold repeated his regrets.

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‘ Yes, it is a terrible thing - not wholly unexpected though.* A macabre note had been added to the discords o f the morning. Then hands were shaken; the vehicles turned on the gravel and drove away. When they were out o f sight down the turn o f the drive, one o f the children who had been listening to the conversation in the van said: ‘ You didn’t like those people much, did you, papa?’ He had definitely not liked them and they left an unpleasant memory which grew sharper in the weeks before the record was broadcast. He brooded. It seemed to him that an attempt had been made against his privacy and he was not sure how effectively he had defended it. He strained to remember his precise words and his memory supplied various distorted versions. Finally the evening came when the performance was made public. Mr Pinfold had the cook’s wireless carried into the drawing-room. He and Mrs Pinfold listened together. His voice came to him strangely old and fruity, but what he said gave him no regret. ‘ They tried to make an ass o f me,’ he said. ‘ I don’t believe they succeeded.’ Mr Pinfold for the time forgot Angel. Boredom alone and some stiffness in the joints disturbed that sunny autumn. Despite his age and dangerous trade Mr Pinfold seemed to himself and to others unusually free o f the fashionable agonies o f angst.

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' CO LLAPSE OF ELDERLY PA R TY

M r P i n f o l d ’ s idleness has been remarked. He was half-way through a novel and had stopped work in early summer. The completed chapters had been typed, rewritten, retyped, and lay in a drawer o f his desk. He was entirely satisfied with them. He knew in a general w ay what had to be done t® finish the book and he believed he could at any moment set himself to do it. But he was not pressed for money. The sales o f his earlier works had already earned him that year the modest sufficiency which the laws o f his country allowed. Further effort could only bring him sharply diminishing rewards and he was disinclined to effort. It was as though the characters he had quickened had fallen into a light doze and he left them benevolently to themselves. Hard things were in store for them. Let them sleep while they could. A ll his life he had worked intermittently. In youth his long periods o f leisure had been devoted to amusement. N o w he had aban­ doned that quest. That was the main difference between M r Pinfold at fifty and M r Pinfold at thirty. Winter set in sharp at the end o f October. The centralheating plant at Lychpole was ancient and voracious. It had not been used since the days o f fuel shortage. W ith most o f the children away at school M r and Mrs Pinfold withdrew into two rooms, heaped the fires with such coal as they could procure, and sheltered from draughts behind screens and sand­ bags. M r Pinfold’s spirits sank, he began to talk o f the West Indies and felt the need o f longer periods o f sleep.

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The composition o f his sleeping-draught, as originally prescribed, was largely o f water. He suggested to his chemist that it would save trouble to have the essential ingredients in full strength and to dilute them himself. Their taste was bitter and after various experiments he found they were most pala­ table in creme de menthe. He was not scrupulous in measuring the dose. He splashed into the glass as much as his mood sug­ gested and if he took too little and woke in the small hours he would get out o f bed and make unsteadily for the bottles and a second swig. Thus he passed many hours in welcome un­ consciousness; but all was not well with him. Whether from too much strong medicine or from some other cause, he felt decidedly seedy by the middle o f November. He found him­ self disagreeably flushed, particularly after drinking his normal, not illiberal, quantity o f wine and brandy. Crimson blotches appeared on the backs o f his hands. He called in D r Drake who said: ‘ That sounds like an allergy.’ ‘Allergic to what?’ • ‘Ah, that’s hard to say. Almost anything can cause an allergy nowadays. It might be something you’re wearing or some plant growing near. The only cure really is a change.’ ‘ I might go abroad after Christmas.’ ‘ Yes, that’s the best thing you could do. Anyway don’t worry. N o one ever died o f an allergy. It’s allied to hayfever,’ he added learnedly, ‘ and asthma.’ Another thing which troubled him and which he soon began to attribute to his medicine was the behaviour o f his memory. It began to play him tricks. He did not grow forgetful. He remembered everything in clear detail but he remem­ bered it wrong. He would state a fact, dogmatically, some­ times in print - a date, a name, a quotation - find himself

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challenged, turn to his books for verification and find most disconcertingly that he was at fault. Tw p incidents o f this kind slightly alarmed him. W ith the idea o f cheering him up Mrs Pinfold invited a week-end party to Lychpole. On the Sunday afternoon he proposed a visit to a remarkable tomb in a neighbouring church. He had not been there since the war, but he had a clear image o f it, which he described to them in technical detail; a recumbent figure o f the mid sixteenth century in gilded bronze; some­ thing almost unique in England. They found the place without difficulty; it was unquestionably what they sought; but the figure was o f coloured alabaster. They laughed, he laughed, but he was shocked. The second incident was more humiliating. A friend in London, James Lance, who shared his tastes in furniture, found, and offered him as a present, a most remarkable piece; a wash-hand stand o f the greatest elaboration designed by an English architect o f the 1860s, a man not universally honoured but o f magisterial status to Mr Pinfold and his friends. This massive freak o f fancy was decorated with metal work and mosaic, and with a series o f panels painted in his hot youth by a rather preposterous artist who later became President o f the Royal Academy. It was just such a trophy as Mr Pinfold most valued. He hurried to London, studied the object with exultation, arranged for its delivery, and impatiently awaited its arrival at Lychpole. A fortnight later it came, was borne upstairs and set in the space cleared for it. Then to his horror Mr Pinfold observed that an essential part was missing. There should have been a prominent, highly ornamental, copper tap in the centre, forming the climax o f the design. In its place there was merely a small socket. Mr Pinfold broke into lament­ ation. The carriers asserted that this was the condition o f the piece when they fetched it. Mr Pinfold bade them search their

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van. Nothing was found. Mr Pinfold surcharged the receipt *incomplete9 and immediately wrote to the firm ordering a diligent search o f the ware-house where the wash-hand stand had reposed en route and enclosing a detailed drawing o f the lost member. There was a brisk exchange o f letters, the carriers denying all responsibility. Finally Mr Pinfold, decently reluctant to involve the donor in a dispute about a gift, wrote to James Lance asking for corroboration. James Lance replied: there never had been any tap such as Mr Pinfold described. ‘ Y ou haven’t always been altogether making sense lately,’ said Mrs Pinfold when her husband showed her this letter, ‘ and you’re a very odd colour. Either you’re drinking too much or doping too much, or both.’ ‘ I wonder if you’re right,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Perhaps I ought to go slow after Christmas.’ , The children’s holidays were a time when Mr Pinfold felt a special need for unconsciousness at night and for stimulated geniality by day. Christmas was always the worst season. During that dread week he made copious use o f wine and narcotics and his inflamed face shone like the florid squireens depicted in the cards that littered the house. Once catching sight o f himself in the looking-glass, thus empurpled and wearing a paper crown, he took fright at what he saw. ‘ I must get away,’ said Mr Pinfold later to his wife. ‘ I must go somewhere sunny and finish my book.’ ‘ I wish I could come too. There’s so much to be done getting Hill’s horrible fields back into shape. I’m rather worried about you, you know. Y ou ought to have someone to look after you.’ ‘ I’ll be all right. I w ork better alone.’ The cold grew intense. Mr Pinfold spent the day crouched over the library fire. To leave it for the icy passages made him shudder and stumble, half benumbed, while outside the

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hidden sun glared over a landscape that seemed all turned to metal; lead and iron and steel. O nly in the evenings did Mr Pinfold m&nage a semblance o f jollity, joining his family in charades or Up Jenkins, playing the fool to the loud delight o f the youngest and the tolerant amusement o f the eldest o f his children, until in degrees o f age they went happily to their rooms and he was released into his own darkness and silence. At length the holidays came to an end. Nuns and monks received their returning charges and Lychpole was left in peace save for rare intrusions from the nursery. And now just when Mr Pinfold was gathering himself as it were for a strenuous effort at reformation, he was struck down by the most severe attack o f his ‘ aches’ which he had yet suffered. Every joint, but especially feet, ankles, and knees, agonized him. Dr Drake again advocated a warm climate and pre­ scribed some pills which he said were ‘ something new and pretty powerful’. They were large and drab, reminding Mr Pinfold o f the pellets o f blotting-paper which used to be rolled at his private school. Mr Pinfold added them to his bromide and chloral and creme de menthe, his wine and gin and brandy, and to a new sleeping-draught which his doctor, ignorant o f the existence o f his other bottle, also supplied. And now his mind became much overcast. One great thought excluded all others, the need to escape. He, who even in this extremity eschewed the telephone, telegraphed to the travel-agency with whom he dealt: Kindly arrange immediate passage West Indies, East Indies, Africa, India, anywhere hot, luxury preferred, private bath, outside single cabin essential, and anxiously awaited the reply. W hen it came it comprised a large envelope full o f decorative folders and a note saying they awaited his further instructions. Mr Pinfold became frantic. He knew one o f the directors o f the firm. He thought he had met others. It came to him in

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his daze quite erroneously that he had lately read somewhere that a lady o f his acquaintance had joined the board. To all o f them at their private addresses he dispatched peremptory telegrams: Kindly investigate wanton inefficiency your office. Pinfold.

The director whom he really knew took action. There was little choice at that moment. Mr Pinfold was lucky to secure a passage in the Caliban, a one-class ship sailing in three days for Ceylon. During the time o f waiting Mr Pinfold’s frenzy subsided. He became instead intermittently comatose. When lucid he was in pain. Mrs Pinfold said, as she had often said before: ‘ Y ou ’re doped, darling, up to the eyes.’ ‘ Yes. It’s those rheumatism pills. Drake said they were very strong.’ Mr Pinfold, who was normally rather deft, now became clumsy. He dropped things. He found his buttons and laces intractable, his handwriting in the few letters which his journey necessitated, uncertain, his spelling, never strong, wildly barbaric. In one o f his clearer hours he said to Mrs Pinfold: ‘ I believe you are right. I shall give up the sleeping-draughts as soon as I get to sea. I always sleep better at sea. I shall cut down on drink too. As soon as I get rid o f these damned aches, I shall start work. I can always work at sea. I shall have the book finished before I get home.’ These resolutions persisted; there was a sober, industrious time ahead o f him in a few days’ time. He had to survive somehow until then. Everything would come right very soon. Mrs Pinfold shared these hopes. She was busy with her plans for the farm which the newly liberated territory made more elaborate. She could not get away. N or did she think her

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presence was needed. Once her husband was safely on board, all would be well with him. She helped him pack. Indeed he could do nothing except sit on a bedroom chair and give confused directions. He must take foolscap paper, he said, in large quantities; also ink, foreign ink was never satisfactory. And pens. He had once ex­ perienced great difficulty in N ew York in purchasing pennibs; he had in the end had recourse to a remote law-stationer’s. A ll foreigners, he was now convinced, used some kind o f stylographic instrument. He must take pens and nibs. His clothes were a matter o f indifference. You could always get a Chinaman, anywhere out o f Europe, to make you a suit o f clothes in an afternoon, Mr Pinfold said. That Sunday morning Mr Pinfold did not go to Mass. He lay in bed until midday and, when he came down, hobbled to the drawing-room window and gazed across the bare, icy park thinking o f the welcoming tropics. Then he said: ‘ Oh God, here comes the Bruiser/ ‘ Hide/ ‘ N o fire in the library/ T i l tell him you’re ill/ ‘ No. I like the Bruiser. Besides, i f you say I’m ill, he’ll set his damned B ox to work on me.’ Throughout the short visit M r Pinfold exerted himself to be affable. ‘ You aren’t looking at all well, Gilbert,’ the Bruiser said. ‘ I’m all right really. A twinge o f rheumatism. I’m sailing the day after tomorrow for Ceylon/ ‘ That’s very sudden, isn’t it?’ ‘ The weather. Need a change.’ He sank into his chair and then, when the Bruiser left, got to his feet again with an enormous obvious effort. ‘ Please don’t come out/ said the Bruiser.

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Mrs Pinfold went with him to release his dog and when she returned found Mr Pinfold enraged. ‘ I know what you two have been talking about/ ‘ Do you? I was hearing about the Fawdles’ row with the Parish Council about their right o f way/ ‘ Y ou ’ve been giving him my hair for his Box/ ‘ Nonsense, Gilbert.* ‘ I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was measuring my Life-Waves.’ Mrs Pinfold looked at him sadly. ‘ You really are in rather a bad way, aren’t you, darling?* The Caliban was not a ship so large as to require a special train; carriages were reserved on the regular service from London. Mrs Pinfold accompanied him there the day before his departure. He had to collect his tickets from the travelagency, but when he arrived in London great lassitude came over him and he went straight to bed in his hotel, summoning a messenger from the agency to bring them to him. A young, polite man came at once. He bore a small portfolio o f docu­ ments, tickets for train and ship and for return by air, bag­ gage forms, embarkation cards, carbon copies o f letters o f reservation, and the like. Mr Pinfold had difficulty in under­ standing. He had trouble with his cheque book. The young man looked at him with more than normal curiosity. Perhaps he was a reader o f Mr Pinfold’s works. It was more probable that he found something bizarre in the spectacle o f Mr Pin­ fold, lying there groaning and muttering, propped by pillows, purple in the face, with a bottle o f champagne open beside him. Mr Pinfold offered him a glass. He refused. When he had gone Mr Pinfold said: ‘ I didn’t at all like the look o f that young man.’ ‘ Oh, he was all right,’ said Mrs Pinfold.

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‘ There was something fishy about him,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ He stared at me as though he was measuring my Life-Waves.’ Then he fell into a doze. Mrs Pinfold lunched alone downstairs and rejoined her husband who said: ‘ I must go and say good-bye to my mother. Order a car.’ ‘ Darling, you aren’t well enough.’ ‘ I always say good-bye to her before going abroad. I’ve told her we are coming.’ ‘ I’ll telephone and explain. O r shall I go out there alone?’ ‘ I’m going. It’s true I’m not well enough, but I’m going. Get the hall-porter to have a car here in half an hour.’ Mr Pinfold’s widowed mother lived in a pretty little house at Kew. She was eighty-two years old, sharp o f sight and hearing, but o f recent years very slow o f mind. In childhood Mr Pinfold had loved her extravagantly. There remained now only a firm pittas. He no longer enjoyed her company nor wished to communicate. She had been left rather badly off by his father. Mr Pinfold supplemented her income with payments under a deed o f covenant so that she was now com­ fortably placed with a single, faithful old maid to look after her and all her favourite possessions, preserved from the larger house, set out round her. Young Mrs Pinfold, who would talk happily o f her children, was very much more agreeable company to the old woman than was her son, but Mr Pinfold went to call dutifully several times a year and, as he said, always before an absence o f any length. A funereal limousine bore them to Kew. Mr Pinfold sat huddled in rugs. He hobbled on two sticks, one a blackthorn, the other a malacca cane, through the little gate up the garden path. An hour later he was out again, subsiding with groans into the back o f the car. The visit had not been a success. ‘ It wasn’t a success, was it?’ said M r Pinfold.

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‘ W e ought to have stayed to tea/ ‘ She knows I never have tea/ ‘ But I do, and Mrs Yercombe had it all prepared. I saw it on a trolley - cakes and sandwiches and a muffin-dish/ ‘ The truth is m y mother doesn’t like to see anyone younger than herself iller than herself - except children o f course/ ‘ You were beastly snubbing about the children/ ‘ Yes. I know. Damn. Damn. Damn. I’ll write to her from the ship. I’ll send her a cable. W hy does everyone except me find it so easy to be nice?’ When he reached the hotel he returned to bed and ordered another bottle o f champagne. He dozed again. Mrs Pinfold sat quietly reading a paper-covered detective story. He awoke and ordered a rather elaborate dinner, but by the time it came his appetite was gone. Mrs Pinfold ate well, but sadly. When the table was wheeled out, Mr Pinfold hobbled to the bathroom and took his blue-grey pills. Three a day was the number prescribed. He had a dozen left. He took a big dose o f his sleeping-draught; the bottle was half full. ‘ I’m taking too much/ he said, not for the first time. ‘ Til finish what I’ve got and never order any more/ He looked at himself in the glass. He looked at the backs o f his hands which were again mottled with large crimson patches. ‘ I’m sure it’s not really good for me/ he said, and felt his way to bed, tumbled in, and fell heavily asleep. His train was at ten next day. The funereal limousine was ordered. Mr Pinfold dressed laboriously and, without shaving, went to the station. Mrs Pinfold came with him. He needed help to find a porter and to find his seat. He dropped his ticket and his sticks on the platform. ‘ I don’t believe you ought to be going alone/ said Mrs Pinfold. ‘ W ait for another ship and I’ll come too.’ ‘ No, no. I shall be all right/

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But some hours later when he reached the docks Mr Pinfold did not feel so hopeful. He had slept most o f the way, now an,d then waking to light a cigar and let it fall from his fingers after a few puffs. His aches seemed sharper than ever as he climbed out o f the carriage. Snow was falling. The dis­ tance from the train to the ship seemed enormous. The other passengers stepped out briskly. Mr Pinfold moved slowly. On the quay a telegraph boy was taking messages. Mrs Pinfold would be back at Lychpole by now. Mr Pinfold with great difficulty wrote: Safely embarked. A ll love. Then he moved to the gangway and painfully climbed aboard. A coloured steward led him to his cabin. He gazed round it unseeing, sitting on a bunk. There was something he ought to do; telegraph his mother. On the cabin table was some writing paper bearing the ship’s name and the flag o f the line at its head. M r Pinfold tried to compose and inscribe a message. The task proved to be one o f insuperable difficulty. He threw the spoilt paper into the basket and sat on his bed, still in his hat and overcoat with his sticks beside him. Presently his two suitcases arrived. He gazed at them for some time, then began to unpack. That too proved difficult. He rang his bell and the coloured steward reappeared bowing and smiling. ‘ I’m not very well. I wonder i f you could unpack for me?’ ‘ Dinner seven-thirty o’clock, sir.’ ‘ I said, could you unpack for me?’ ‘ No, sir, bar not open in port, sir.’ The man smiled and bowed and left Mr Pinfold. M r Pinfold sat there, in his hat and coat, holding his cudgel and his cane. Presently an English steward appeared with the passenger list, some forms to fill, and the message: ‘ The Cap­ tain’s compliments, sir, and he would like to have the honour o f your company at his table in the dining-saloon.’ ‘ N o w ?’

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‘ No, sir. Dinner is at 7.30. I don’t expect the Captain will be dining in the saloon tonight.’ ‘ I don’t think I shall either,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Thank the Captain. Very civil o f him. Another night. Someone said something about the bar not being open. Can’t you get me some brandy?’ ‘ Oh yes, sir. I think so, sir. Any particular brand?’ ‘ Brandy,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Large one.’ The chief steward brought it with his own hands. ‘ Good night,’ said Mr Pinfold. He found on the top o f his case the things he needed for the night. Among them his pills and his bottle. The brandy impelled him to action. He must telegraph to his mother. He groped his way out and along the corridor to the purser’s office. A clerk was on duty, very busy with his papers behind a grill. ‘ I want to send a telegram.’ ‘ Yes, sir. There’s a boy at the head o f the gangway/ ‘ I’m not feeling very well. I wonder if you could be very kind and write it for me?’ The purser looked at him hard, observed his unshaven chin, smelled brandy, and drew on his long experience o f travellers. ‘ Sorry about that, sir. Pleased to be any help/ Mr Pinfold dictated, ‘Everyone in ship most helpful. Love, Gilbert,’ fumbled with a handful o f silver, then crept back to his cabin. There he took his large grey pills and a swig o f his sleeping-draught. Then, prayerless, he got himself to bed.

T-

o .g .p . - B

A N U N H A P P Y SH IP

T h e S.S Caliban, Captain Steerforth master, was middleaged and middle-class; clean, trustworthy and comfortable, without pretence to luxury. There were no private baths. Meals were not served in cabins, it was stated, except on the orders o f the medical officer. Her public rooms were panelled in fumed oak in the fashion o f an earlier generation. She plied between Liverpool and Rangoon, stopping at intermediate ports, carrying a mixed cargo and a more or less homo­ geneous company o f passengers, Scotchmen and their wives mostly, travelling on business and on leave. Crew and stewards were Lascars. When M r Pinfold came to himself it was full day and he was rocking gently to and fro in his narrow bed -with the slow roll o f the high seas. He had barely noticed his cabin on the preceding evening. N ow he observed that it was a large one, with two berths. There was a little window made o f slats o f opaque glass, fitted with tight, ornamental muslin curtains, and a sliding shutter. This gave, not on the sea, but on a deck where people from time to time passed, casting a brief shadow but with no sound that was audible above the beat o f the engine, the regular creak o f plates and woodwork, and the continuous insect-hum o f the ventilator. The ceiling, at which Mr Pinfold gazed, was spanned as though by a cottage beam by a white studded air-shaft and by a multiplicity o f pipes and electric cable. Mr Pinfold lay for some time gazing and rocking, not quite sure

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where he was, but rather pleased than not to be there. His watch, unwound the night before, had run down. He had been called. On the shelf at his side a cup o f tea, already quite cold, slopped in its saucer, and beside it, stained with spilt tea, was the ship’s passenger list. He found himself entered as Mr G. P e n fo ld and thought o f Mr Pooter at the Mansion House. The misprint was welcome as an item o f disguise, an uncoven­ anted addition to his privacy. He glanced idly through the other names - ‘Dr Abercrombie, M r Addison, Miss Amory, Mr and Mrs and Miss Margaret Angel, M r and Mrs Benson, Mr Blackadder, Major and Mrs Cockson , no one he knew, no one

likely to annoy him. There were half a dozen Burmese on their way to Rangoon; the rest were solidly British. N o one, he felt confident, would have read his books or would seek to draw him into literary conversation. He would be able to do a quiet three weeks’ w ork in this ship as soon as his health mended. He sat up and put his feet to the floor. He was still crippled but a shade less painfully, he thought, than in the days before. He went to his basin. The looking-glass showed him a face which still looked alarmingly old and ill. He shaved, brushed his hair, took his grey pill, returned to bed with a book, and at once fell into a doze. The ship’s hooter roused him. That must be twelve noon. A knock on his door, barely audible above the other sea noises, and the dark face o f his steward appeared. ‘ N o good today,’ the man said. ‘ Plenty passengers sick.’ He took the cup o f tea and slipped away. Mr Pinfold was a good sailor. Only once in a war which had been largely spent bucketing about in various sorts o f boat, had he ever been seasick, and on that occasion most o f the naval crew had been prostrate also. Mr Pinfold, who was neither beautiful nor athletic, cherished this one gift o f parsi­ monious Nature. He decided to get up.

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The main deck, when he reached it, was almost deserted. Tw o wind-blown girls in thick sweaters were tacking along arm-in-arm past the piles o f folded chairs. Mr Pinfold hobbled to the after smoking-room bar. Four or five men sat together in one comer. He nodded to them, found a chair on the fur­ ther side, and ordered brandy and ginger-ale. He was not himself. He knew in a distant way, as he knew, or thought he knew, certain facts o f history, that he was in a ship, travelling for the good o f his health, but, as with much o f his historical knowledge, he was vague about the date. He did not know that twenty-four hours ago he had been in the train from London to Liverpool. His phases o f sleeping and waking in the last few days were not related to night and day. He sat still in the smoking-room gazing blankly ahead. After a time two cheerful women entered. The men greeted them: ‘ Morning, Mrs Cockson. Glad to see you’re on your feet this merry morning.’ ‘ Good morning, good morning, good morning all. You know Mrs Benson?’ ‘ I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure. W ill you join us, Mrs Benson? I’m in the chair,’ and he turned and called to the steward: ‘ B oy.’ Mr Pinfold studied this group with benevolence. N o one among them would be a Pinfold fan. Presently, at one o’clock, a steward appeared with a gong and Mr Pinfold followed him submissively down to the dining-saloon. The Captain’s table was laid for seven. The ‘ fiddles’ were up and the cloth damped; barely a quarter o f the places in the saloon were taken. Only one other o f the Captain’s party came to luncheon, a tall young Englishman who fell into easy conversation with Mr Pinfold, informing him that he was named

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Glover and was manager o f a tea plantation in Ceylon; an idyllic life, as he described it, lived on horseback with frequent long leave at a golf club. Glover was keen on golf. In order to keep himself in condition for the game on board ship he had a weighted club, its head on a spring, which he swung, he said, a hundred times morning and evening. His cabin, it transpired, was next to Mr Pinfold’s. ‘ W e have to share a bathroom. When do you like your bath?’ Glover’s conversation did not demand sharp attention. Mr Pinfold found himself recalled into a world beyond which he had momentarily wandered, to answer: ‘ Well, really, I hardly ever have a bath at sea. One keeps so clean and I don’t like hot salt water. I tried to book a private bathroom. I can’t think w hy.’ ‘ There aren’t any private baths in this ship.’ ‘ So I learned. It seems a very decent sort o f ship,’ said Mr Pinfold, gazing sadly at his curry, at his swaying glass o f wine, at the surrounding deserted table, wishing to be pleasant to Glover. ‘ Yes. Everyone knows everyone else. The same people travel in her every year. People sometimes complain they feel rather out o f things if they aren’t regulars.’ ‘ I shan’t complain,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ I’ve been rather ill. I want a quiet time.’ ‘ Sorry to hear that. Y o u ’ll find it quiet enough. Some find it too quiet.’ ‘ It can’t be too quiet for me,’ said Mr Pinfold. He took rather formal leave o f Glover and at once forgot him until, reaching his cabin, he found added to its other noises the strains o f a jazz band. Mr Pinfold stood puzzled. He was not musical. All he knew was that somewhere quite near him a band was playing. Then he remembered.

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‘ It’s the golfer/ he thought. ‘ That young man next door. He’s got a gramophone. W hat’s more,’ he suddenly observed, ‘ he’s got a dog.9 Quite distinctly on the linoleum outside his door, between his door and Glover’s, he heard the pattering o f a dog’s feet. ‘ I bet he’s not allowed it. I’ve never been in a ship where they allowed dogs in the cabins. I daresay he bribed the steward. Anyway, one can’t reasonably object. I don’t mind. He seemed a very pleasant fellow.’ He noticed his grey pills, took one, lay down, opened his book, and then to the sound o f dance tunes and the snuffling o f the dog he fell asleep once more. Perhaps he dreamed. He forgot on the instant whatever had happened in the hours between. It was dark. He was awake and there was a very curious scene being played near him; under his feet, it seemed. He heard distinctly a clergyman conducting a religious meeting. M r Pinfold had no first-hand acquaintance with evangelical practice. His home and his schools had professed a broad-to-high anglicanism. His ideas o f nonconformity derived from literature, from Mr Chadband and Philip Henry Gosse, from charades and from back numbers o f Punch. The sermon, which was just rising to its peroration, was plainly an expression o f that kind o f faith, scriptural in diction, emotional in appeal. It was addressed presumably to members o f the crew. Male voices sang a hymn which M r Pinfold remembered from his nursery where his nanny, like almost all nannies, had been Calvinist: ‘Pm//for the shore, sailor. Pull for the shore.9 ‘ I want to see Billy alone after you dismiss/ said the clergyman. There followed an extempore, rather perfunctory prayer, then a great shuffling o f feet and pushing about o f chairs; then a hush; then the clergyman, very earnestly: ‘ W ell, Billy, what have you got to say to m e?’ and the un­ mistakable sound o f sobbing.

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Mr Pinfold began to feel uneasy. This was something that was not meant to be overheard. ‘ Billy, you must tell me yourself. I am not accusing you o f anything. I am not putting words into your mouth/ Silence except for sobbing. ‘ Billy, you know what we talked about last time. Have you done it again? Have you been impure, Billy?’ ‘ Yes, sir. I can’t help it, sir/ ‘ God never tempts us beyond our strength, Billy. I’ve told you that, haven’t I? Do you suppose I do not feel these temptations, too, Billy? Very strongly at times. But I resist, don’t I? Y ou know I resist, don’t I, Billy?’ Mr Pinfold was horror-struck. He was being drawn into participation in a scene o f gruesome indecency. His sticks lay by the bunk. He took the blackthorn and beat strongly on the floor. ‘ Did you hear anything then, Billy? A knocking. That is God knocking at the door o f your soul. He can’t come and help you unless you are pure, like me/ This was more than M r Pinfold could bear. He took pain­ fully to his feet, put on his coat, brushed his hair. The voices below him continued: ‘ I can’t help it, sir. I want to be good. I try. I can’t/ ‘ Y ou ’ve got pictures o f girls stuck up by your bunk, haven’t you?’ ‘ Yes, sir/ ‘ Filthy pictures/ ‘ Yes, sir.’ ‘ How can you say you want to be good when you keep temptation deliberately before your eyes. I shall come and destroy those pictures.’ ‘ No, please, sir. I want them.’ Mr Pinfold hobbled out o f his cabin and up to the main

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deck. The sea was calmer now. More passengers were about in the lounge and the bar. It was half past six. A group were throwing dice for drinks. Mr Pinfold sat alone and ordered a cocktail. When the steward brought it, he asked: ‘ Does this ship carry a regular chaplain?’ ‘ Oh no, sir. The Captain reads the prayers on Sundays.’ ‘ There’s a clergyman, then, among the passengers?’ ‘ I haven’t seen one, sir. Here’s the list.’ Mr Pinfold studied the passenger list. N o name bore any prefix indicating Holy Orders. A strange ship, thought Mr Pinfold, in which laymen were allowed to evangelize a pre­ sumably heathen crew; religious mania perhaps on the part o f one o f the officers. W aking and sleeping he had lost count o f time. It seemed he had been many days at sea in this strange ship. When Glover came into the bar, Mr Pinfold said affably: ‘ Nice to see you again.’ Glover looked slightly startled by this greeting. ‘ I’ve been down in my cabin,’ he said. ‘ I had to come up. I was embarrassed by that prayermeeting. Weren’t you?’ ‘ Prayer-meeting?’ said Glover. ‘ N o.’ ‘ Right under our feet. Couldn’t you hear it?’ ‘ I heard nothing,’ said Glover. He began to move away. ‘ Have a drink,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ I won’t thanks. I don’t. Have to be careful in a place like Ceylon.’ ‘ H ow ’s your dog?’ ‘ M y dog?’ ‘ Your crypto-dog. The stowaway. Please don’t think I’m complaining. I don’t mind your dog. Nor your gramophone for that matter.’

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‘ But I haven’t a dog. I haven’t a gramophone.’ ‘ Oh well,’ said Mr Pinfold huffily. ‘ Perhaps I am mistaken.’ If Glover did not wish to confide in him, he would not try to force himself on the young man. ‘ See you at dinner,’ said Glover, making off. He was wearing a dinner jacket, Mr Pinfold noticed, as were several other passengers. Time to change. Mr Pinfold went back to his cabin. N o sound came now from below; the pseudo-priest and the unchaste seaman had left. But the jazz band was going full blast. So it was not Glover’s gramo­ phone. As he changed, Mr Pinfold considered the matter. During the war he had travelled in troopships which were fitted with amplifiers on every deck. Unintelligible alarms and orders had issued from these devices and at certain hours popular music. The Caliban, plainly, was equipped in this way. It would be a great nuisance when he began to write. He would have to inquire whether there was some way o f cutting it off. It took him a long time to dress. His fingers were unusually clumsy with studs and tie, and his face in the glass was still blotched and staring. B y the time he was ready the gong was sounding for dinner. He did not attempt to wear his evening shoes. Instead he slipped into the soft, fur-lined boots in which he had come aboard. W ith one hand firmly on the rail, the other on his cane, he made his way laboriously down to the saloon. On the stairs he noticed a bronze plaque recording that this ship had been manned by the Royal N avy during the war and had served in the landing in North Africa and Normandy. He was first at his table, one o f the earliest diners in the ship. He noticed a small dark man in day clothes sitting at a table alone. Then the place began to fill. He watched his fellow passengers in a slightly dazed way. The purser’s table, as is common in ships o f the kind, had the gayest party, the

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few girls and young women, the more jovial men from the bar. A plate o f soup was set before Mr Pinfold. T w o or three coloured stewards stood together by a service table talking in undertones. Suddenly M r Pinfold was surprised to hear from them three obscene epithets spoken in clear English tones. He looked and glared. One o f the men immediately slid to his side. ‘ Yes, sir; something to drink, sir?’ There was no hint o f mockery in the gentle face, no echo in that soft South Indian accent o f the gross tones he had overheard. Baffled, M r Pinfold said: ‘ W ine/ ‘ W ine, sir?’ ‘ Y ou have some champagne on board, I suppose?’ ‘ O h yes, sir. Three names. I show list.’ ‘ D on’t bother about the name. Just bring half a bottle.’ Glover came and sat opposite. ‘ I owe you an apology,’ said M r Pinfold. ‘ It wasn’t your gramophone. Part o f the naval equipment left over from the war/ ‘ O h,’ said Glover. ‘ That was it, was it?’ ‘ It seems the most likely explanation/ ‘ Perhaps it does/ ‘ Very odd language the servants use.’ ‘ They’re from Travancore/ ‘ N o. I mean the w ay they swear. In front o f us, I mean. I daresay they don’t mean to be insolent but it shows bad discipline/ ‘ I’ve never noticed it,’ said Glover. He was not at his ease with M r Pinfold. Then the table filled up. Captain Steerforth greeted them and took his place at the head. He was an unremarkable man at first sight. A pretty, youngish woman introduced as Mrs Scarfield sat next to Mr Pinfold. He explained that he was

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temporarily a cripple and could not stand up. ‘ M y doctor has given me some awfully strong pills to take. They make me feel rather odd. Y ou must forgive me i f I’m a dull companion/ ‘ W e’re all very dull, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘ Y o u ’re the writer, aren’t you? I’m afraid I never seem to get any time for reading.’ Mr Pinfold was inured to this sort o f conversation but tonight he could not cope. He said: ‘ I wish I didn’t ’, and turned stupidly to his wine. ‘ She probably thinks I’m drunk,’ he thought and made an attempt to explain: ‘ They are big grey pills. I don’t know what’s in them. I don’t believe my doctor does either. Something new.’ ‘ That’s always exciting, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Scarfield. Mr Pinfold despaired and spent the rest o f dinner, at which he ate very little, in silence. The Captain rose, his party with him. M r Pinfold, slow to move, was still in his chair, fumbling for his stick, when they passed behind him. He got to his feet. He would have dearly liked to go to his cabin, but he was held back, partly by the odd fear that he would be suspected o f sea-sickness but more by an odder sentiment, a bond o f duty which he con­ ceived held him to Captain Steerforth. It seemed to him that he was in some way under this man’s command and that it would be a grave default to leave him until he was dismissed. So, laboriously, he followed them to the lounge and lowered himself into an armchair between the Scarfields. They were drinking coffee. He offered them all brandy. They refused and for himself he ordered brandy and creme de menthe mixed. As he did so M r and Mrs Scarfield exchanged a glance, which he intercepted, as though to confirm some previous con­ fidence - ‘ M y dear, that man next to me, the author, was completely tight.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘ Simply plastered.’

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Mrs Scarfield was really extremely pretty, Mr Pinfold thought. She would not keep that skin long in Burma. Mr, Scarfield was in the timber trade, teak. His prospects depended less on his own industry and acumen than on the action o f politicians. He addressed the little circle on this subject. ‘ In a democracy/ said Mr Pinfold with more weight than originality, ‘ men do not seek authority so that they may impose a policy. They seek a policy so that they may achieve authority/ He proceeded to illustrate this theme with examples. A t one time or another he had met most o f the Govern­ ment Front Bench. Some were members o f Bellamy’s whom he knew well. Oblivious o f his audience he began to speak o f them with familiarity, as he would have done among his friends. The Scarfields again exchanged glances and it occurred to him, too late, that he was not among people who thought it on the whole rather discreditable to know politicians. These people thought he was showing off. He stopped in the middle o f a sentence, silent with shame. ‘ It must be very exciting to move behind the scenes,’ said Mrs Scarfield. ‘ W e only know what we see in the papers.’ Was there malice behind her smile? At first meeting she had seemed frank and friendly. Mr Pinfold thought he dis­ covered sly hostility now. ‘ Oh, I hardly ever read the political columns,’ he said. ‘ You don’t have to, do you? getting it all first hand.’ There was no doubt in Mr Pinfold’s mind. He had made an ass o f himself. Reckless now o f his reputation as a good sailor, he attempted a little bow to include the Captain and the Scarfields. ‘ If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to my cabin.’ He had difficulty getting out o f his deep chair, he had difficulty with his stick, he had difficulty keeping his balance.

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They had barely said ‘ Good night’, he was still struggling away from them, when something the Captain said made them laugh. Three distinct laughs, all, in M r Pinfold’s ears, cruelly derisive. On his way out he passed Glover. Moved to explain himself he said: ‘ I don’t know anything about politics.’ ‘ N o?’ said Glover. ‘ Tell them I don’t know anything.’ ‘ Tell w ho?’ ‘ The Captain.’ . ‘ He’s just behind you over there.’ ‘ Oh well, it doesn’t matter.’ He hobbled away and looking back from the doors saw Glover talking to the Scarfields. They were ostensibly arrang­ ing a four for bridge but Mr Pinfold knew they had another darker interest - him. It was not yet nine o’clock. Mr Pinfold undressed. He hung up his clothes, washed, and took his pill. There were three tablespoonfuls left in his bottle o f sleeping-draught. He decided to try and spend the night without it, to delay any­ way until after midnight. The sea was much calmer now; he could lie in bed without rolling. He lay at ease and began to read one o f the novels he had brought on board. Then, before he had turned a page, the band struck up. This was no wireless performance. It was a living group just under his feet, rehearsing. They were in the same place, as inexplicably audible, as the afternoon bible-class; young happy people, the party doubtless from the purser’s table. Their instruments were drums and rattles and some sort o f pipe. The drums and rattles did most o f the work. Mr Pinfold knew nothing o f music. It seemed to him that the rhythms they played derived from some very primitive tribe and were o f anthropological rather than artistic interest. This guess was confirmed.

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‘ Let’s try the Pocoputa Indian one,’ said the young man who acted, without any great air o f authority, as leader. ‘ O h not that. It’s so beastly,’ said a girl. ‘ I know ,’ said the leader. ‘ It’s the three-eight rhythm. The Gestapo discovered it independently, you know. They used to play it in the cells. It drove the prisoners mad.’ ‘ Yes,’ said another girl. ‘ Thirty-six hours did for anyone. Twelve was enough for most. They could stand any torture but that.’ ‘ It drove them absolutely mad.’ ‘ Raving mad.’ ‘ Stark, staring mad.’ ‘ It was the worst torture o f all.’ ‘ The Russians use it now .’ The voices, some male, some female, all young and eager, came tumbling like puppies. ‘ The Hungarians do it best.’ ‘ Good old three-eight.’ ‘ Good old Pocoputa Indians.’ ‘ They were mad.’ ‘ I suppose no one can hear us?’ said a sweet girlish voice. ‘ D on’t be so wet, Mimi. Everyone’s up on the main deck.’ ‘A ll right then,’ said the band leader. ‘ The three-eight rhythm.’ And off they went. The sound throbbed and thrilled in the cabin which had suddenly become a prison cell. Mr Pinfold was not one who thought and talked easily to a musical accompaniment. Even in early youth he had sought the night-clubs where there was a bar out o f hearing o f the band. Friends he had, Roger Stillingfleet among them, to whom jazz was a necessary drug - whether stimulant or narcotic Mr Pinfold did not know. He preferred silence. The three-eight rhythm was indeed torture to him. He could not read. It was not a quarter o f an hour since he had entered the cabin. Unendurable hours lay ahead. He emptied the bottle o f sleeping-draught and, to the strains o f the jo lly young people from the purser’s table, fell into unconsciousness.

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He awoke before dawn. The bright young people below him had dispersed. The three-eight rhythm was hushed. No shadow passed between the deck-light and the cabin-window. But overhead there was turmoil. The crew, or a considerable part o f it, was engaged on an operation o f dragging the deck with what from the sound o f it might have been an enormous chain-harrow, and they were not happy in their work. They were protesting mutinously in their own tongue and the officer in command was roaring back at them in the tones o f an old sea-dog: ‘ Get on with it, you black bastards. Get on with it/ The lascars were not so easily quelled. They shouted back unintelligibly. ‘ Til call out the Master-at-Arms/ shouted the officer. An empty threat, surely? thought Mr Pinfold. It was scarcely conceivable that the Caliban carried a Master-at-Arms. ‘ B y God, I’ll shoot the first man o f you that moves/ said the officer. The hubbub increased. Mr Pinfold could almost see the drama overhead, the half-lighted deck, the dark frenzied faces, the solitary bully with the heavy old-fashioned ship’s pistol. Then there was a crash, not a shot but a huge percus­ sion o f metal as though a hundred pokers and pairs o f tongs had fallen into an enormous fender, followed by a wail o f agony and a moment o f complete silence. ‘ There/ said the officer more in the tones o f a nanny than a sea-dog, ‘just see what you’ve gone and done now/ Whatever its nature this violent occurrence entirely sub­ dued the passions o f the crew. They were docile, ready to do anything to retrieve the disaster. The only sounds now were the officer’s calmer orders and the whimpering o f the injured man. ‘ Steady there. Easy does it. You, cut along to the sick-bay and get the surgeon. You, go up and report to the bridge . . . ’

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For a long time, two hours perhaps, Mr Pinfold lay in his bunk listening. He was able to hear quite distinctly not only what wks said in his immediate vicinity, but elsewhere. He had the light on, now, in his cabin, and as he gazed at the com­ plex o f tubes and wires which ran across his ceiling, he realized that they must form some kind o f general junction in the system o f communication. Through some trick or fault or wartime survival everything spoken in the executive quarters o f the ship was transmitted to him. A survival seemed the most likely explanation. Once during the blitz in London he had been given a hotel bedroom which had been hastily vacated by a visiting allied statesman. W hen he lifted the telephone to order his breakfast, he had found himself talking on a private line direct to the Cabinet Office. Something o f that kind must have happened in the Caliban. When she was a naval vessel this cabin had no doubt been the office o f some operational headquarters and when she was handed back to her owners and re-adapted for passenger service, the engineers had neglected to disconnect it. That alone could explain the voices which now kept him informed o f every stage o f the incident. The wounded man seemed to have got himself entangled in some kind o f web o f metal. Various unsuccessful and agonizing attempts were made to extricate him. Finally the decision was taken to cut him out. The order once given was carried out with surprising speed but the contraption, what­ ever it was, was ruined in the process and was finally dragged across the deck and thrown overboard. The victim continu­ ously sobbed and whimpered. He was taken to the sick-bay and put in charge o f a kind but not, it appeared, very highly qualified nurse. ‘ You must be brave/ she said. ‘ I will say the rosary for you. You must be brave,’ while the wireless tele­ graphist got into touch with a hospital ashore and was given

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instructions in first-aid. The ship’s surgeon never appeared. Details o f treatment were dictated from the shore and passed to the sick-bay. The last words Mr Pinfold heard from the bridge were Captain Steerforth’s ‘ I’m not going to be bothered with a sick man on board. W e’ll have to signal a passing homebound ship and have him transferred.* Part o f the treatment prescribed by the hospital was a sedative injection, and as this spread its relief over the unhappy lascar, Mr Pinfold too grew drowsy until finally he fell asleep to the sound o f the nurse murmuring the Angelic Salutation. He was awakened by the coloured cabin steward bringing him tea. ‘ Very disagreeable business that last night,* said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Yes, sir.’ ‘ How is the poor fellow?’ ‘ Eight o’clock, sir.’ ‘ Have they managed to get into touch with a ship to take him off?’ ‘ Yes, sir. Breakfast eight-thirty, sir.’ Mr Pinfold drank his tea. He felt disinclined to get up. The intercommunication system was silent. He picked up his book and began to read. Then with a click the voices began again. Captain Steerforth seemed to be addressing a deputation o f the crew. ‘ I want you to understand,’ he was saying, ‘ that a great quantity o f valuable metal was sacrificed last night for the welfare o f a single seaman. That metal was pure copper. One o f the most valuable metals in the wo^ld. Mind you I don’t regret the sacrifice and I am sure the Company will approve my action. But I want you all to appreciate that only in a British ship would such a thing be done. In the ship o f any other nationality it would have been the seaman not the metal that was cut up. You know that as well as I do. Don’t forget it.

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And another thing, instead o f taking the man with us to Port Said and the filth o f a W og hospital, I had him carefully trans-shipped and he is now on his way to England. He couldn’t have been treated more handsomely if he’d been a director of the Company. I know the hospital he’s going to ; it’s a sweet, pretty place. It’s the place all seamen long to go to. He’ll have the best attention there and live, if he does live, in the greatest comfort. That’s the kind o f ship this is. Nothing is too good for the men who serve in her.’ The meeting seemed to disperse. There was a shuffling and muttering and presently a woman spoke. It was a voice which was soon to become familiar to Mr Pinfold. To all men and women there is some sound - grating, perhaps, or rustling, or strident, deep or shrill, a note or inflection o f speech - which causes peculiar pain; which literally ‘ makes the hair stand on end’ or metaphorically ‘ sets the teeth on edge’ ; something which Dr Drake would have called an ‘ allergy’ . Such was this woman’s voice. It clearly did not affect the Captain in this way but to Mr Pinfold it was excruciating. ‘ W ell,’ said this voice. ‘ That should teach them not to grumble.’ ‘ Yes,’ said Captain Steerforth. ‘ W e’ve settled that little mutiny, I think. W e shouldn’t have any trouble now.’ ‘ N ot till the next time,’ said the cynical woman. ‘ What a contemptible exhibition that man made o f himself - crying like a child. Thank God w e’ve seen the last o f him. I liked your touch about the sweet, pretty hospital.’ ‘ Yes. They little know the Hell-spot I’ve sent him to. Spoiling m y copper, indeed. He’ll soon wish he were in Port Said.’ And the woman laughed odiously. ‘ Soon wish he was dead,’ she said.

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There was a click (someone seemed to be in control o f the apparatus, Mr Pinfold thought), and two passengers were speaking. They seemed to be elderly, military gentlemen. ‘ I think the passengers should be told,’ one said. ‘ Yes, we ought to call a meeting. It’s the sort o f thing that so often passes without proper recognition. W e ought to pass a vote o f thanks.’ ‘A ton o f copper, you say?’ ‘ Pure copper, cut up and chucked overboard. All for the sake o f a nigger. It makes one proud o f the British service.’ The voices ceased and Mr Pinfold lay wondering about this meeting; was it his duty to attend and report what he knew of the true characters o f the Captain and his female associate? The difficulty, o f course, would be to prove his charges; to explain satisfactorily, how he came to overhear the Captain’s secret. Soft music filled the cabin, an oratorio sung by a great but distant choir. ‘ That must be a gramophone record,’ thought Mr Pinfold. ‘ Or the wireless. They can’t be performing this on board.’ Then he slept for some time, until he was woken by a change o f music. The bright young people were at it again with their Pocoputa Indian three-eight rhythm. Mr Pinfold looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Time to get up. As he laboriously shaved and dressed, he reasoned closely about his situation. N o w that he knew o f the intercom­ munication system, it was plain to him that the room used by this band might be anywhere in the ship. The prayermeeting too. It had seemed odd at the time that the quiet voices had come so clearly through the floor; that they had been audible to him and not to Glover. That was now explained. But he was puzzled by the irregularity, by the changes o f place, the clicking on and off. It was improbable that anyone at a switchboard was directing the annoyances

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into his cabin. It was certain that the Captain would not deliberately broadcast his private and compromising con­ versations. Mr Pinfold wished he knew more o f the mechanics o f the thing. He remembered that in London just after the war, when everything was worn out, telephones used some­ times to behave in this erratic w ay; the line would go dead; then crackle; then, when the tangled wire was given a twist and a jerk, normal conversation was rejoined. He supposed that somewhere over his head, in the ventilation shaft prob­ ably, there were a number o f frayed and partly disconnected wires which every now and then with the movement o f the ship came into contact and so established communication now with one, now with another part o f the ship. * Before leaving his cabin he considered his box o f pills. He was not well. Much was wrong with him, he felt, beside lameness. Dr Drake did not know about the sleeping-draught. It might be that the pills, admittedly new and pretty strong, warred with the bromide and chloral; perhaps with gin and brandy too. W ell, the sleeping-draught was finished. He would try the pills once or twice more. He swallowed one and crept up to the main deck. Here there was light and liveliness, a glitter o f cool sun­ shine and a brisk breeze. The young people had abandoned the concert in the short time it had taken Mr Pinfold to climb the stairs. They were on the after deck playing quoits and shufBe-board and watching one another play; laughing boisterously as the ship rolled and jostled them against one another. Mr Pinfold leant on the rail and looked down, think­ ing it odd that such healthy-seeming, good-natured creatures should rejoice in the music o f the Pocoputa Indians. Glover stood by himself in the stem swinging his golf-club. On the sunny side o f the main deck the older passengers sat wrapped in rugs, some with popular biographies, some with knitting.

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The young Burmese paced together in pairs, uniformly and neatly dressed in blazers and pale fawn trousers, like officers waiting to fall in at a battalion parade. Mr Pinfold sought the military gentlemen whose illinformed eulogies o f the Captain he believed it to be his duty to correct. From the voices, elderly, precise, conventional, he had formed a clear idea o f their appearance. They were majorgenerals, retired now. They had been gallant young regi­ mental officers - line-cavalry probably - in 1914 and had commanded brigades at the end o f that war. They had passed at the Staff College and waited patiently for another battle only to find in 1939 that they were passed over for active command. But they had served loyally in offices, done their turn at fire-watching, gone short o f whisky and razor-blades. N ow they could just afford an inexpensive winter cruise every other year; admirable old men in their way. He did not find them on deck or in any o f the public rooms. As noon was sounded there was a movement towards the bar for the announcement o f the ship’s run and the result o f the sweepstake. Scarfield was the winner o f a modest prize. He ordered drinks for all in sight including Mr Pinfold. Mrs Scarfield stood near him and Mr Pinfold said: ‘ I say, I’m afraid I was an awful bore last night.’ ‘ Were you?’ she said. ‘ Not while you were with us.’ ‘All that nonsense I talked about politics. It’s those pills I have to take. They make me feel rather odd.’ ‘ I’m sorry about that,’ said Mrs Scarfield, ‘ but I assure you, you didn’t bore us in the least. I was fascinated.’ Mr Pinfold looked hard at her but could detect no hint o f irony. ‘Anyway I shan’t hold forth like that again.’ ‘ Please do.’ The ladies who had been identified as Mrs Benson and Mrs Cockson were in the same chairs as on the day before. They

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liked their glass, that pair, thought Mr Pinfold with approval; good sorts. He greeted them. He greeted anyone who caught his eye. He was feeling very much better. One figure alone remained aloof from the general con­ viviality, the dark little man whom Mr Pinfold had noticed dining alone. Presently the steward passed by, tapping his little musical gong, and Mr Pinfold followed the company - down to luncheon. Knowing what he did o f Captain Steerforth’s character, Mr Pinfold found it rather repugnant to sit at the table with him. He gave him a perfunctory nod and addressed himself to Glover. ‘ Noisy night, wasn’t it?’ ^ ‘ Oh,’ said Glover, ‘ I didn’t hear anything/ ‘ You must sleep very sound/ ‘As a matter o f fact, I didn’t. I usually do, but I am not getting the exercise I’m used to. I was awake half the night/ ‘And you didn’t hear the accident?’ ‘ N o.’ ‘Accident?’ said Mrs Scarfield overhearing. ‘ Was there an accident last night, Captain?’ ‘ N o one told me o f one,’ said Captain Steerforth blandly. ‘ The villain,’ thought M r Pinfold. ‘ Remorseless, treacher­ ous, lecherous, kindless villain,’ for though Captain Steer­ forth had shown no other symptoms o f lechery, M r Pinfold knew instinctively that his relations with the harsh-voiced woman - stewardess, secretary, passenger, whatever she might be - were grossly erotic. ‘ W hat accident, M r Pinfold?’ asked Mrs Scarfield. ‘ Perhaps I was mistaken/ said M r Pinfold stiffly. ‘ I often am.’ There was another couple at the Captain’s table. They had been there the night before, had been part o f the group in

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which M r Pinfold had talked so injudiciously, but he had barely noticed them; a pleasant, middle-aged nondescript, rather rich-looking couple, not English, Dutch perhaps or Scandinavian. The woman now leant across and said in thick, rather arch tones: ‘ There are two books o f yours in the ship’s library, I find/ ‘Ah/ ‘ I have taken one. It is named The Last Card.’ ‘ The Lost Chord,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Yes. It is a humorous book, yes?’ ‘ Some people have suggested as much/ ‘ I find it so. It is not your suggestion also? I think you have a peculiar sense o f humour, M r Pinfold/ ‘Ah/ ‘ That is what you are known for, yes, your peculiar sense o f humour?’ ‘ Perhaps/ ‘ M ay I have it after you?’ asked Mrs Scarfield. ‘ Everyone says I have a peculiar sense o f humour too/ ‘ But not so peculiar as M r Pinfold?’ ‘ That remains to be seen/ said Mrs Scarfield. ‘ I think you’re embarrassing the author/ said M r Scarfield. ‘ I expect he’s used to it,’ she said. ‘ He takes it all with his peculiar sense o f humour/ said the foreign lady. ‘ If you’ll excuse me,’ said Mr Pinfold, struggling to rise. ‘ Y ou see he is embarrassed/ ‘ N o/ said the foreign lady. ‘ It is his humour. He is going to make notes o f us. Y ou see, we shall all be in a humorous book.’ As Mr Pinfold rose, he gazed towards the little dark man at his solitary table. That is where he should have been, he

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thought. The last sound he heard as he left the dining-saloon was merry young laughter from the purser’s table. Since he left it, not much more than an hour before, the cabin had been tidied and the bedclothes stretched taut, hospital-like, across the bunk. He took off his coat and his soft boots, lit a cigar, and lay down. He had barely eaten at all that day but he was not hungry. He blew smoke up towards the wires and pipes on the ceiling and wondered how without offence he could escape from the Captain’s table to sit and eat alone, silent and untroubled, like that clever, dark, enviable little fellow, and as though in response to these thoughts the device overhead clicked into life and he heard this very subject being debated by the two old soldiers. ‘ M y dear fellow, I don’t care a damn.’ * ‘ No, o f course you don’t. N or do I. All the same I think it very decent o f him to mention it.’ ‘ Very decent. What did he say exactly?’ ‘ Said he was very sorry he hadn’t room for you and me and my missus. The table only takes six passengers. Well, he had to have the Scarfields.’ ‘ Yes, o f course. He had to have the Scarfields.’ ‘ Yes, he had to have them. Then there’s the Norwegian couple - foreigners you know .’ ‘ Distinguished foreigners.’ ‘ Got to be civil to them. W ell that makes four. Then if you please, he got an order from the Company to take this fellow Pinfold. So he only had one place. Knew he couldn’t separate you and me and the missus, so he asked that decent young fellow - the one with the uncle in Liverpool.’ ‘ Has he got an uncle in Liverpool?’ ‘ Yes, yes. That’s w hy he asked him.’ ‘ But w hy did he ask Pinfold?’ ‘ Company’s orders. He didn’t want him/

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‘N o , no , o f course n o t/ ‘I f y o u ask m e P in fo ld d rin k s/ ‘Yes, so I have alw ays h e a rd / ‘I saw h im com e o n board. H e w as tig h t then. In a beastly sta te / ‘H e ’s been in a beastly state ever since/ ‘H e says it’s p ills/ ‘N o , n o , drink. I’ve seen b etter m en th a n P in fo ld g o th at w ay/ ‘W re tc h e d business. H e sh o u ld n ’t have c o m e / ‘I f y o u ask m e h e ’s been sent o n this ship as a cure/ ‘O u g h t to have som eone to lo o k after h im / ‘H ave y o u n o tic ed th a t little d ark chap w h o sits alo n e? I sh o u ld n ’t be surprised i f he w asn ’t keep in g an eye o n h im / ‘A m ale n u rs e ?’ ‘A w a rd e r m o re lik e ly / ‘P u t o n h im b y his missus w ith o u t his k n o w in g ? ’ ‘T h a t’s m y appreciation o f th e situ a tio n / T h e voices o f the tw o o ld gossips faded an d fell silent. M r P in fo ld lay sm o k in g , w ith o u t resentm ent. It w as th e so rt o f th in g one expected to have said b eh in d o n e’s b ack - th e so rt o f th in g one said a b o u t o th e r people. It w as slightly u n n erv in g to o v erhear it. T h e idea o f his w ife setting a spy o n h im w as am using. H e w o u ld w rite and tell her. T h e question o f his drunkenness interested h im m o re. P erhaps he d id give th a t im pression. P erhaps o n th a t first evening at sea - h o w lo n g ago w as th a t n o w ? - w h e n he h ad talked politics after din n er, perhaps he had d ru n k to o m u ch . H e h ad h ad to o m u c h o f so m eth ing certainly, pills o r sleep in g -d rau g h t o r liq u o r. W e ll, the sleeping-draught w as finished. H e resolved to take n o m o re pills. H e w o u ld stick to w in e and a cocktail o r tw o an d a glass o f b ra n d y after din n er an d soon he w o u ld be w ell an d active once m o re.

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H e h a d reached th e last inch o f his cigar, a large one, an h o u r’s sm o k in g , w h e n his reverie w as in te rru p te d fro m the CaptaiA ’s cabin. T h e d o x y w as there. In h er harsh voice she said: ‘Y o u ’ve g o t to teach h im a lesson.’ ‘I w ill.’ ‘A good lesson.’ ‘Y es.’ ‘O n e h e w o n ’t fo rg e t.’ ‘B rin g h im in .’ T h e re w as a so u n d o f scuffling an d w h im p e rin g , a so u n d ra th e r lik e th a t o f th e w o u n d e d seam an w h o m M r P in fo ld h ad h ea rd th a t m o rn in g ; w h ic h m o rn in g ? O n e n jo rn in g o f this d istu rb in g voy ag e. It seem ed th a t a priso n er w as b ein g d rag g e d in to th e C a p ta in ’s presence. ‘T ie h im to th e ch air,’ said th e lem an, and M r P in fo ld at once th o u g h t o f King Lear : ‘B in d fast his c o rk y arm s.’ W h o said th a t? G o n eril? R e g an ? P erhaps n eith er o f th e m . C o rn ­ w a ll? It w as a m a n ’s voice, surely ? in th e play. B u t it w as th e v oice o f th e w o m a n , o r w h a t passed as a w o m a n , here. A d d ict o f n icknam es as he w as, M r P in fo ld th ere an d th e n d u b b e d h e r ‘G o n e ril’. ‘A ll rig h t,’ said C a p tain S teerforth, ‘y o u can leave h im to m e .’ ‘A n d to m e ,’ said G oneril. M r P in fo ld w as n o t ab n o rm a lly squeam ish n o r h ad his life b een p articu larly sheltered, b u t he h ad n o experience o f personal, physical cru elty an d n o lik in g fo r its p o rtra y al in b o o k s o r film s. N o w , ly in g in his spruce cabin in this B ritish ship, in th e early aftern o o n , a few yards distance fro m G lo v er an d th e Scarfields, M rs B enson an d M rs C ockson, he w as the h o rrifie d w itness o f a scene w h ich m ig h t have com e straight fro m th e k in d o f pseud o -A m erican th riller he m ost ab h o rred .

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T h ere w ere three peo ple in th e C a p ta in ’s cabin, S teerforth, G oneril, and th e ir p risoner, w h o w as o ne o f th e co lo u red stew ards. P roceedings began w ith a fo rm o f trial. G o n eril gave her evidence, v in d ic tiv e ly b u t precisely accusing the m a n o f an attem p ted sexual offence against her. It soun d ed to M r P in fo ld rath er a strong case. K n o w in g the am b ig u o u s p o sitio n w h ic h the accuser h eld in th e ship, rem e m b erin g th e gross lan g u ag e he h ad ov erh e ard in th e dining -salo o n an d th e heavy, u n h ea lth y discourse o f th e preacher, M r P in fo ld considered th e in cid en t he h eard described exactly the sort o f th in g he w o u ld ex p ect to h ap p e n in this beastly ship. G uilty, he th o u g h t. ‘G u ilty ,’ said th e C a p ta in and at th e w o rd G o n eril v en ted a hiss o f satisfaction an d anticipation. S low ly an d deliberately, as th e ship steam ed S o u th w ith its co m m o n p la ce lo ad o f pas­ sengers, the C a p ta in an d his lem an w ith undisguised erotic en jo y m en t settled d o w n to to rtu re th e ir priso n er. M r P in fo ld co u ld n o t surm ise w h a t fo rm the to rtu re to o k . H e co u ld o n ly listen to the m oans an d sobs o f th e v ic tim an d the m o re h o rrific, ecstatic, orgiastic cries o f G o n e ril: ‘M o re. M o re. A gain. A gain. A gain. Y o u h a v e n ’t h a d any­ th in g yet, y o u beast. G ive h im som e m o re, m o re, m o re, m o r e / M r P in fo ld co u ld n o t en d u re it. H e m u st stop this o u trag e at once. H e lu rch e d fro m his b u n k , b u t even as he felt fo r his boots, silence fell in th e C a p ta in ’s cabin an d a suddenly sobered G oneril said: ‘T h a t’s e n o u g h .’ N o t a so u n d cam e fro m th e v ic tim . A fter a lo n g pause C ap tain S tee rfo rth said: ‘I f y o u ask m e, i t ’s to o m u c h .’ ‘H e ’s sh a m m in g ,’ said G o n eril w ith o u t co n v ictio n . ‘H e ’s d ea d ,’ said th e C a p tain . ‘W e ll,’ said G oneril. ‘W h a t are y o u g o in g to do a b o u t i t ? ’ ‘U n tie h im .’ ‘I ’m n o t g o in g to to u c h h im . I n e v e r to u c h e d h im . It w as all you .9

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THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD

M r P in fo ld sto o d in his cabin, ju s t as, n o d o u b t, the C a p ­ tain w as standing in his, u n certain w h a t to do, and as he hesitated, he realized th ro u g h his h o rro r th a t the pains in his legs h ad suddenly en tirely ceased. H e rose o n his toes; he b en t his knees. H e w as cured. It w as the w ay in w h ich these attacks o f his alw ays cam e and w en t, q u ite u n p red ictab ly . In spite o f his ag itatio n he h ad ro o m in his m in d to consider w h e th e r perhaps th e y w ere nerv o u s in o rig in , w h e th e r the shock he h ad ju s t en d u re d m ig h t n o t have succeeded w h ere th e g rey pills h ad failed; w h e th e r he had n o t been healed b y th e ste w ard ’s agony. It w as a hypothesis w h ich m o m e n ta rily d istracted h im fro m the m u rd e re r above. P resently he tu rn e d to listen to them . * ‘As m aster o f th e ship I shall m ake o u t a death-certificate an d h av e h im p u t o v e rb o a rd after d a rk .’ ‘H o w a b o u t the su rg e o n ?’ ‘H e m u st sign to o . T h e first th in g is to g e t the b o d y in to th e sick-bay. W e d o n ’t w a n t an y m o re tro u b le w ith the m en. G et M a rg a re t.’ T h e situation as M r P in fo ld saw it w as appalling b u t it d id n o t call fo r action. W h a te v e r h ad to be do n e n eed n o t be do n e n o w . H e co u ld n o t b u rst alone in to th e C a p ta in ’s cabin an d d enounce h im . W h a t w as th e p ro p e r p ro ce d u re , i f an y existed, fo r p u ttin g a C a p ta in in irons in his o w n ship ? H e w o u ld have to take advice. T h e m ilita ry m en , th a t sage, a u th o ritativ e couple, w ere the o b v io u s people. H e w o u ld fin d th e m and explain th e situation. T h e y w o u ld k n o w w h a t to do. A re p o rt m u st be m ade, he assum ed, depositions taken. W h e re ? A t th e first consulate th e y cam e to , at P o rt Said; o r sh o u ld th e y w a it u n til th ey reached a B ritish p o r t? T hose o ld cam paigners w o u ld k n o w . M e an w h ile M arg aret, the k in d nurse, a sort o f C o rd elia, seem ed to have charge o f the b o d y . ‘P o o r b o y , p o o r b o y ,’ she

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w as saying. ‘L o o k at these ghastly m arks. Y ou can’t say these are “ n atu ral causes” .’ ‘T h a t’s w h a t the C ap tain says,’ said a n e w voice, the ship’s surgeon p resum ably. ‘I take m y orders fro m h im . T h e re ’s a lo t goes o n aboard this ship th a t I d o n ’t like. T h e best y o u can do, y o u n g lady, is to see n o th in g , hear n o th in g , an d say n o th in g .’ ‘B u t th e p o o r b o y . H e m u st have suffered so.’ ‘N a tu ra l causes,’ said the do cto r. A nd then th ere w as silence. M r P in fo ld rem o v e d his soft boots and p u t o n shoes. H e p ro p p ed his tw o sticks in a c o m e r o f the w ard ro b e . ‘I shan’t need those ag ain ,’ he reflected, little k n o w in g w h a t the co m in g days h ad in store, and w alk e d alm ost blith ely to the m ain deck. N o one w as a b o u t except tw o lascars, slung overhead, p ain t­ ing the davits. It w as h a lf past three, a tim e w h e n all th e pas­ sengers w ere in th eir cabins. Like a lark o n a battlefield M r P in fo ld ’s spirits rose, free and singing. H e rejoiced in his p o w er to w alk . H e w alk e d ro u n d the ship, again an d again, up and d o w n . W a s it possible, in this b rig h t and peaceful scene, to believe in the ab o m in atio n th at lu rk e d u p there, ju s t overhead, beh in d th e sparkling p a in t? C o u ld he possibly be m istaken? H e h ad n ev er seen G oneril. H e barely k n e w th e C a p ta in ’s voice. C o u ld he really identify it? W a s it n o t possible th at w h a t he h ad h eard w as a piece o f acting - a charade o f the b rig h t y o u n g peoples? a broadcast fro m L o n d o n ? W ish fu l th in k in g , perhaps, b o m o n the exh ilaratio n o f sun and sea and w in d and his o w n n ew fo u n d h e a lth ? T im e alone w o u ld show .

4 THE H O O LIG A N S

T h a t evening M r P in fo ld felt th e ren ew al o f health an d cheerfulness and clarity o f m in d g reater, it seem ed to h im , th an he h ad k n o w n fo r w eeks. H e lo o k e d at his hands, w h ich fo r days n o w h ad been b lo tc h ed w ith crim son; n o w th e y w ere clear an d his face in th e glass h ad lost its congested, m o ttle d h ue. H e dressed m o re deftly an d as he dressed th e w ireless in his cabin cam e in to action. ‘T his is the B .B .C . T h ird P ro g ra m m e . H ere is M r C lu tto n C o m fo rth to speak o n A spects o f O rth o d o x y in C o n te m p o r­ ary L etters.’ M r P in fo ld h ad k n o w n C lu tto n - C o m f o rth fo r th irty years. H e w as n o w the ed ito r o f a literary w eekly, an am b itio u s, obsequious fellow . M r P in fo ld h ad n o cu rio sity ab o u t his opinions o n any subject. H e w ished th e re w ere a w a y o f sw itch ­ in g o ff th e fluting, fru ity voice. H e trie d instead to disregard it until, ju s t as he w as leaving, he w as recalled b y th e so u n d o f his o w n nam e. ‘G ilb ert P in fo ld ,’ he h eard, ‘poses a precisely antith etical p ro b lem , o r should w e say? th e sam e p ro b le m in antith etical fo rm . T h e basic qualities o f a P in fo ld n o v el seldom v a ry an d m a y be en u m erate d thus: co n v e n tio n a lity o f p lo t, falseness o f ch aracterization, m o rb id sentim entality, gross an d hack n ey ed farce altern atin g w ith grosser an d m o re hackneyed m e lo ­ dram a; cloying religiosity, w h ic h w ill be fo u n d tedious o r b lasphem ous according as th e read er shares o r repudiates his d o ctrin al p re c o n c e p tio n s; an adventitious an d offensive sensu-

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ality th a t is clearly in tro d u c ed fo r co m m ercial m otiv es. A ll this is p resented in a style w hich, w h e n it varies fro m the trite, lapses in to positive illiteracy .’ Really, th o u g h t M r P infold, this w as n o t like the T h ird P ro g ram m e; it w as n o t at all like A lg ern o n C lu tto n - C o m fo rth . ‘M y w o rd ,’ he th o u g h t, ‘I’ll give th a t b o o b y such a kick o n th e sit-u p o n n e x t tim e I see h im w a d d lin g u p the steps o f th e L o n d o n L ib ra ry .’ ‘In d eed ,’ co n tin u ed C lu tto n -C o m fo rth , ‘i f one is asked an d o ne is often asked - to give one n am e w h ic h typifies all th a t is d ecadent in co n te m p o ra ry literatu re , one can answ er w ith o u t h esitation - G ilb ert P info ld . I n o w tu rn fro m h im to the eq u ally deplo rab le b u t m o re in terestin g case o f a w rite r o ften associated w ith h im - R o g e r Stillingfleet.’ H ere, b y a q u irk o f th e apparatus, C lu tto n -C o rn fo rth was cu t o ff an d succeeded b y a fem ale singer:

7 ’m

Gilbert , the filbert , The knut with the K , The pride o f Piccadilly, The blase roue’

M r P in fo ld left his cabin. H e m e t th e stew ard on his ro u n d s w ith th e d in n e r g o n g an d ascended to th e m ain -d eck . H e stepped o u t in to th e w in d , leaned briefly o n th e rail, lo o k e d d o w n in to th e surge o f lig h ted w ate r. T h e m usic rejo in ed h im th ere, em an a tin g fro m so m ew h ere q u ite n ea r w h ere he stood. ‘For Gilbert, the filbert , The Colonel o f the Knuts .9

O th e r peo p le in th e ship w ere listening to the wireless. O th e r p eople, p ro b a b ly , h ad h eard C lu tto n -C o m fo rth ’s diatrib e. W e ll, he w as accustom ed to criticism (th o u g h n o t

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fro m C lu tto n -C o m fo rth ). H e co u ld take it. H e o n ly h o p ed n o on e b o red h im b y talk in g a b o u t it; particu larly n o t th at N o rw e g ia n w o m a n at the C a p ta in ’s table. M r P in fo ld ’s feelings to w ard s the C a p tain had m o d e ra ted in th e course o f th e aftern o o n . As to w h e th e r the m a n w ere g u ilty o f m u rd e r o r n o , his ju d g e m e n t w as suspended, b u t th e fact o f his h av in g fallen u n d er a cloud, o f M r P in fo ld ’s possession o f secret k n o w led g e w h ich m ig h t o r m ig h t n o t b rin g h im to ru in , severed th e b o n d o f lo y alty w h ic h h ad prev io u sly b o u n d th e m . M r P in fo ld felt disposed to tease the C a p tain a little. A cco rd in g ly at din n er, w h e n th e y w ere all seated, an d he h ad o rd ered h im self a p in t o f cham pagne, he tu rn e d th e con­ v ersatio n rath e r a b ru p tly to th e subject o f m u rd er. ‘H av e y o u ever actually m e t a m u rd e re r?’ he asked G lover. G lo v er had. In his tea g ard en a tru ste d fo re m an h ad h acked his w ife to pieces. ‘I ex pect he sm iled a g o o d deal, d id n ’t h e ? ’ asked M r P infold. ‘Yes, as a m a tte r o f fact he did. A lw ays a m o st cheerful chap. H e w e n t o ff to be h an g e d lau g h in g aAAfay w ith his b ro th ers as th o u g h it w as n o en d o f a jo k e .’ ‘Exactly .’ M r P in fo ld stared full in th e eyes o f th e sm iling C aptain. W as th ere an y sign o f alarm in th a t bro ad , p lain face? ‘H av e you ever k n o w n a m u rd erer, C ap tain S te e rfo rth ?’ Yes, w h e n he first w e n t to sea, C a p tain S teerforth had been in a ship w ith a sto k er w h o killed an o th er w ith a shovel. B u t th e y b ro u g h t it in th a t th e m a n w as insane, affected b y th e heat o f th e stokehold. ‘In m y co u n try in the forests in the lo n g w in te r often th e m e n b eco m e d ru n k en an d fig h t an d som etim es th e y k ill one

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an o th er. Is n o t h an g in g in m y c o u n try fo r such things. Is a case fo r th e d o c to r w e th in k /

‘ If you ask me all murderers are mad/ said Scarfield. ‘A n d alw ays s m ilin g / said M r P in fo ld . ‘T h a t’s the o n ly w ay y o u can tell th e m - b y th e ir in evitable g o o d -h u m o u r/ ‘T his sto k er w asn ’t v ery cheerful. S urly fellow as I re ­ m e m b er h im / ‘A h, b u t he w as m a d / ‘G oodness,’ said M rs Scarfield, ‘w h a t a m o rb id subject. H o w e v e r did w e g et o n to i t ? ’ ‘N o t so m o rb id b y h a lf as C lu tto n - C o m f o rth ,’ said M r P in fo ld ra th e r tru cu len tly . ‘W h o ? ’ asked M rs Scarfield. ‘As w h a t? ’ asked th e N o rw e g ia n w o m a n . M r P in fo ld lo o k e d fro m face to face ro u n d th e table. C learly n o one h ad h ea rd th e broadcast. ‘O h ,’ he said, ‘i f y o u d o n ’t k n o w ab o u t h im , th e less said the b e tte r / ‘D o te ll,’ said M rs Scarfield. ‘N o , really, it’s n o th in g / She gave a little shru g o f d isa p p o in tm en t an d tu rn e d h e r p re tty face to w ard s th e C aptain. L ater M r P in fo ld trie d to raise the to p ic o f b u rial at sea, b u t this w as n o t tak en u p w ith an y enthusiasm . M r P in fo ld h ad d ev o ted som e th o u g h t to th e m a tte r d u rin g th e late aftern o o n . G lo v er h ad said th a t th e stew ards cam e fro m T ra v ancore, in w h ic h case th ere w as a g o o d chance o f th e ir b ein g C hristians o f on e o r o th e r o f th e ancient rites th a t p rev ailed in th a t co m p lex culture. T h e y w o u ld insist o n som e religious observance fo r o n e o f th e ir n u m b e r. I f h e w ished to av ert suspicion, th e C a p ta in co u ld n o t b u n d le th e b o d y o v e rb o a rd secretly. O n ce in a tro o p sh ip M r P in fo ld h a d assisted a t th e c o m m itta l to th e sea o f on e o f his tro o p w h o shot him self. T - o .g . p . - c

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T h e business he rem e m b ere d to o k som e tim e. Last P o st h ad been sounded. M r P in fo ld ra th e r th o u g h t th e ship h ad h o v e to . In th e Caliban th e sports-deck seem ed the m o st likely place fo r th e cerem ony. M r P in fo ld w o u ld keep w atch . I f the n ig h t passed w ith o u t incident, C a p ta in S teerfo rth w o u ld stand acq u itted. T h a t evening, as o n th e even in g before, C a p ta in S teerfo rth p lay ed b rid g e. H e sm iled co n tin u o u sly ru b b e r after ru b b er. E arly h o u rs w ere k e p t in the Caliban . T h e b ar shut at h a lf past ten, lights began to be tu rn e d o ff and ash trays em p tied ; th e passengers w e n t to th e ir cabins. M r P in fo ld saw th e last o f th e m g o b elo w , th e n w e n t aft to a seat o v erlo o k in g th e ^ )o r ts deck. It w as v ery cold. H e w e n t d o w n to his cabin fo r an o v erco at. It w as w a rm th ere an d w elc o m in g . It o cc u rre d to h im h e co u ld keep his v ig il p erfectly w ell b elo w deck. W h e n th e engines stopped, h e w o u ld k n o w th a t th e gam e w as on. T h e last fain t cobw ebs o f his sle ep in g -d rau g h t h a d n o w been sw ep t u p . H e w as w id e aw ake. W ith o u t undressing he lay o n his b u n k w ith a n ovel. T im e passed. N o sound cam e th ro u g h the in te rco m ­ m u n icatio n ; the engines b eat regularly, th e opiates an d pan ellin g creaked; th e lo w h u m o f the v en tila to r filled the cabin. T h ere w e re n o funeral obsequies, n o panegyric; n o d irg e o n b o a rd th e Caliban th a t n ig h t. Instead th e re w as enacted o n th e d eck im m ed iately outside M r P in fo ld ’s w in d o w a d ra­ m atic cycle lasting five h o u r s - s ix ? M r P in fo ld d id n o t n o tic e th e tim e at w h ich th e d isturbance b egan - o f w h ic h he w as th e so litary audience. H a d it appeared b e h in d fo o tlig h ts o n a real stage, M r P in fo ld w o u ld hav e co n d e m n e d it as grossly ov erp layed. T h ere w ere tw o ch ie f actors, ju v e n ile leads, one o f w h o m w as called Fosker; th e o th er, the leader, w as nam eless. T h e y

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w ere d ru n k w h e n th e y first a rriv ed an d p resu m ab ly carried a b o ttle fro m w h ic h th e y o ften sw ig g ed fo r th e lo n g h o u rs o f darkness w e re o f n o avail in soberin g th e m . T h e y rag e d m o re an d m o re fu rio u sly u n til th e ir final lapse in to incoherence. B y th e ir voices th e y seem ed to be g en tlem en o f a sort. Fosker, M r P in fo ld w as p re tty sure, h ad b een in th e ja z z band; he th o u g h t h e h ad n o tic e d h im in th e lo u n g e after d in n er, am u sin g th e girls, tall, v ery y o u n g , shabby, shady, vivacious, b o h em ian , w ith lo n g hair, a m oustache, an d th e b eg in n in g o f side-w hiskers. T h ere w as so m e th in g in h im o f the dissolute la w students an d g o v e rn m e n t clerks o f m id -V icto ria n fiction. S o m eth in g to o o f th e y o u n g m e n w h o h a d n o w an d th e n crossed his p a th d u rin g th e w a r - th e so rt o f subaltern w h o w as disliked in his re g im e n t an d g o t h im self p o sted to S .O .E . W h e n M r P in fo ld cam e to consider the m a tte r at leisure h e co u ld n o t explain to h im self h o w he h ad fo rm e d so fu ll an im p ression d u rin g a b rief, incurious glance, o r w h y Fosker, i f h e w e re w h a t he seem ed, should be trav ellin g to th e East in such in c o n g ru o u s co m p an y . T h e im age o f h im , h o w ev er, rem a in ed sharp cu t as a cam eo. T h e second, d o m in a n t y o u n g m a n w as a voice only; ra th e r a pleasant w e ll-b re d voice fo r all its v ile utterances. ‘H e ’s g o n e to b e d ,’ said Fosker. ‘W e ’ll soon g e t h im o u t,’ said th e pleasant w ell-b red voice. ‘M u sic.’ ‘M u sic / ‘I ’m Gilbert, the filbert , The knut with the K , The pride o f Piccadilly, The blase roue. O h Hades, the ladies

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*

Who leave their wooden huts For Gilbert , the filbert , The Colonel o f the K n u ts 9

‘C o m e on, G ilbert. T im e to leave y o u r w o o d e n hut.* D a m n e d im pudence, th o u g h t M r P in fo ld . O afs, bores. ‘D ’y o u th in k h e ’s en jo y in g th is ? ’ ‘H e ’s g o t a m o st p eculiar sense o f h u m o u r. H e ’s a m o st peculiar m an . Q ueer, are n ’t y o u , G ilb e rt? C o m e o u t o f y o u r w o o d e n h u t, y o u o ld q u ee r.’ M r P in fo ld d re w th e w o o d e n sh u tter across his w in d o w b u t th e noise outside w as undim in ish ed . / ‘H e th in k s th a t’ll keep us o u t. It w o n ’t, G ilbert. W e a re n ’t g o in g to clim b th ro u g h the w in d o w , y o u k n o w . W e shall co m e in at the d o o r an d then, b y G o d , y o u ’re g o in g to co p it. N o w h e ’s locked th e d o o r.’ M r P in fo ld h ad d o n e n o such th in g . ‘N o t v ery b rave, is h e ? L o ck in g h im s e lf in. G ilb e rt doesn’t w a n t to be w h ip p e d .’ ‘B u t h e ’s g o in g to be w h ip p e d .’ ‘O h yes, h e ’s g o in g to be w h ip p e d all r ig h t.’ M r P in fo ld decided o n action. H e p u t o n his d ressin g -g o w n , to o k his b la ck th o rn , an d left his cabin. T h e d o o r 'w h ich led o u t to th e deck w as som e w a y d o w n th e c o rrid o r. T h e voices o f th e tw o hooligans fo llo w ed h im as he w e n t to it. H e th o u g h t he k n e w th e Fosker ty p e, th e aggressive u n d e r-d o g , v ain g lo rious in d rin k , v e ry easily p u t in his place. H e p u sh ed o p en th e h eav y d o o r an d stepped resolutely in to th e w in d . T h e deck w as quite e m p ty . F or th e le n g th o f th e ship th e d am p planks shone in th e la m p -lig h t. F ro m ab o v e cam e shrieks o f lau g h ter. ‘N o , n o , G ilbert, y o u can’t catch us th a t w a y . G o b ack to y o u r little h u t, G ilbert. W e ’ll co m e fo r y o u w h e n w e w a n t y o u . B e tte r lo ck the d o o r.’

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M r P in fo ld re tu rn e d to his cabin. H e d id n o t lo c k the d o o r. H e sat, stick in han d , listening. T h e tw o y o u n g m e n conferred. ‘W e ’d b e tte r w a it till he goes to sleep / ‘T h e n w e ’ll p o u n c e / ‘H e doesn’t seem v e ry sle ep y / ‘L et’s g et th e girls to sing h im to sleep. C o m e on, M arg aret, give G ilb e rt a so n g .’ ‘A re n ’t y o u b ein g rath e r b e a stly ?’ T h e g irl’s voice w as clear and sober. ‘N o , o f course n o t. I t’s all a jo k e . G ilb e rt’s a sport. G ilb e rt’s en jo y in g it as m u c h as w e are. H e o ften d id this so rt o f th in g w h en he w as o u r age - singing ridiculous songs outside m e n ’s ro o m s at O x fo rd . H e m ade a r o w outside th e D ea n ’s room s. T h a t’s w h y he g o t sent d o w n . H e accused th e D ea n o f th e m o st d isgusting practices. It w as all a great j o k e / ‘W e ll, i f y o u ’re sure he doesn’t m in d . . . * T w o girls b egan singing v e ry p rettily . ‘ When first I saw Mable , In her fair Russian sable I knew she was able To satisfy me. Her manners were careless . .

T h e later lines o f th e song - o ne w ell k n o w n to M r P in fo ld - are v erb ally b aw d y , b u t as th e y rose n o w o n th e passionless, tru e voices o f the girls, th e y w ere p u rg e d an d sw eetened; th e y floated o v er th e sea in perfect innocence. T h e girls sang this an d o th e r airs. T h e y sang fo r a lo n g tim e. T h e y sang in te rm itte n tly th ro u g h o u t th e n ig h t’s disturbances, b u t th e y w ere pow erless to soo the M r P infold. H e sat w id e aw ake w ith his stick to deal w ith intru d ers.

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P resently th e father o f th e nam eless y o u n g m a n cam e to jo in th e m . H e w as, it appeared, o ne o f th e generals. ‘G o tp bed, y o u tw o / he said. ‘Y o u ’re m a k in g an infernal nuisance o f yourselves.’ ‘W e ’re o nly m o c k in g P infold. H e ’s a beastly m a n .’ ‘T h a t’s n o reason to w ak e u p th e w h o le ship.’ ‘H e ’s a J e w .’ ‘Is h e ? A re y o u su re? I n ev e r h ea rd th a t.’ ‘O f course he is. H e cam e to L ychpole in 1 9 37 w ith th e G erm an refugees. H e w as called P einfeld th e n .’ ‘W e ’re o u t fo r P einfeld’s b lo o d ,’ said th e pleasant voice. ‘W e w a n t to beat H ell o u t o f h im .’ ‘Y o u d o n ’t really m in d , d o y o u , sir,’ said F oskrf, ‘i f w e beat H ell o u t o f h im .’ ‘W h a t’s w ro n g w ith th e fello w p a rtic u la rly ?’ ‘H e ’s g o t a dozen p a ir o f shoes in his little h u t, all b eau tifu lly po lish ed o n w o o d e n trees.’ ‘H e sits at th e C a p ta in ’s ta b le / ‘H e ’s tak en th e o n ly b a th ro o m n ear o u r cabin. I trie d to use it to n ig h t an d th e stew ard said it w as p riv ate, fo r M r P in fo ld / ‘M r P ein feld .’ ‘I h ate h im . I h ate h im . I h ate h im . I h ate h im . I h ate h im / said Fosker. ‘I ’ve g o t m y o w n score to settle w ith h im fo r w h a t h e d id to H ill.’ ‘T h a t farm er w h o sh ot h im s e lf?’ ‘H ill w as a decent, o ld-fashioned y eo m an . T h e salt o f th e co u n try . T h e n this filth y J e w cam e an d b o u g h t u p th e p ro p e rty . T h e H ills h ad farm ed it fo r generations. T h e y w ere th ro w n o u t. T h a t’s w h y H ill h an g e d h im self/ ‘W e ll,’ said th e general. ‘Y o u w o n ’t d o an y g o o d b y sh o u tin g outside his w in d o w / ‘W e ’re g o in g to d o m o re th a n th a t. W e ’re g o in g to g ive h im the h id in g o f his life /

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‘Yes, y o u co u ld d o th a t, o f co u rse / ‘Y o u leave h im to u s / T m certainly n o t g o in g to stay u p here an d be a w itness. H e ’s ju s t th e sort o f fello w to take legal a c tio n / ‘H e ’d be far to o asham ed. C a n ’t y o u see th e headlines, “ N o v elist w h ip p e d in lin e r ” ?’ ‘I d o n ’t suppose h e’d care a dam n . Fellow s like th a t live o n p u b lic ity / T h e n th e general changed his ton e. ‘A ll the sam e,’ h e ad d ed w istfully, ‘I w ish I w as y o u n g e n o u g h to help, g o o d lu ck to y o u . G ive it to h im g o o d an d strong. O n ly rem em b er: i f th e re’s tro u b le , I k n o w n o th in g ab o u t i t / T h e girls sang. T h e y o u th s dran k . P resently th e m o th e r cam e to plead. She spoke in y ea rn in g tones th a t re m in d e d M r P in fo ld o f his deceased A nglican aunts. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Y o u k n o w I can n ev e r sleep w h e n y o u ’re in this state. M y son, I b eg y o u to g o to bed. M r Fosker, h o w can y o u lead h im in to this escapade? M arg aret, d arlin g , w h a t are y o u d o in g here at this tim e o f n ig h t? Please g o to y o u r cabin, c h ild / ‘It’s o n ly a jo k e , m a m a / ‘I v ery m u c h d o u b t w h e th e r M r P in fo ld thinks it a j o k e / ‘I h ate h im / said h e r son. ‘H a te ? ’ said the m o th e r. ‘H a te ? W h y d o all y o u y o u n g people hate so m u c h . W h a t has com e o v er the w o rld ? Y o u w ere n o t b ro u g h t u p to hate. W h y d o y o u hate M r P in fo ld ?’ ‘I h ave to share a cabin w ith Fosker. T h a t sw ine has a cabin to him self.’ ‘I ex p ect he p aid fo r it.’ ‘Yes, w ith the m o n e y he cheated H ill o u t o f / ‘H e b eh av ed b ad ly to H ill certainly. B u t he isn’t used to c o u n try w ays. I ’ve n o t m e t h im , th o u g h w e h av e lived so n ear all these years. I th in k perhaps he rath e r looks d o w n o n all o f

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us. W e a re n ’t so clever as he, n o r as rich. B u t th a t’s n o reason to hate h im .’ A t th is th e son b ro k e in to a d iatrib e in th e course o f w h ich h e an d Fosker w ere left alone. T h e re h a d been an elem en t o f jo llity in th e p air at th e b e g in n in g o f th e ir d em o n stratio n . N o w th e y w ere possessed b y h a tre d , rep e atin g an d elab o rat­ in g a ferocious, ra m b lin g d en u n c ia tio n full o f obscenities. T h e ev ictio n o f H ill and responsibility fo r his suicide w e re the ch ie f re c u rrin g charges b u t interspersed w ith th e m w e re o th e r accusations. M r P in fo ld , th e y said, h ad let his m o th e r die in destitu tio n . H e w as asham ed o f h e r because she w as an illiter­ ate im m ig ra n t, h ad refused to h elp h e r o r g o n ea r h er^ h ad let h er die alone, un cared fo r, h a d n o t atten d e d h e r p a u p e r’s funeral. M r P in fo ld h ad shirked in th e w a r. H e h ad used it as an o p p o rtu n ity to change his n am e an d pass h im se lf o ff as an E n g lish m an, to m ak e friends w ith peo p le w h o d id n o t k n o w his o rig in , to g et in to B e lla m y ’s C lu b . M r P in fo ld h a d in som e w a y been im p licated in th e th e ft o f a m o o n sto n e. H e h ad p aid a large sum o f m o n e y to sit at th e C a p ta in ’s table. M r P in fo ld typified th e decline o f E ngland, o f ru ra l E n g lan d in p articular. H e w as a rein c arn atio n (M r P in fo ld , n o t th e y , d re w th e analo g y ) o f th e ‘n e w m e n ’ o f th e T u d o r p e rio d w h o h ad despoiled th e C h u rc h an d th e peasantry. H is religious profession w as h u m b u g , assum ed in o rd e r to in g ratiate h im ­ self w ith th e aristocracy. M r P in fo ld w as a sodom ite. M r P in fo ld m u st be chastened an d chastised. T h e n ig h t w o re o n , th e charges becam e w ild e r an d w id er, th e th reats m o re b lo o d y . T h e tw o y o u n g m e n w ere like p ran c­ in g savages w o rk in g them selves in to a fren zy o f b lo o d -lu st. M r P in fo ld aw aited th e ir attack an d p rep a re d fo r it. H e m ad e an o p era tio n al plan. T h e y w o u ld com e th ro u g h th e d o o r singly. T h e cabin w as n o t spacious b u t th e re w as ro o m to sw ing a stick. H e tu rn e d o u t th e lig h t an d sto o d b y th e d o o r.

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The y o u n g m e n co m in g suddenly in to th e d a rk fro m the lighted co rrid o r w o u ld n o t k n o w w h ere to lay hands o n h im . He w o u ld fell the first w ith his b la ck th o rn , th e n change this w eapon fo r the m alacca cane. T h e second y o u n g m a n n o d o u b t w o u ld stum ble o v er his fallen friend. M r P in fo ld w o u ld th e n tu rn o n the lig h t an d carefully th rash h im . T h ey w ere far to o d ru n k to be really dangerous. M r P in fo ld was q u ite co nfident o f th e o u tco m e. H e aw aited th e m calm ly. T h e incantations w ere rising to a clim ax. ‘N o w ’s th e tim e. R eady, F o sk er?’ ‘R eady.’ ‘In w e g o th e n .’ ‘Y o u first, F osker.’ M r P in fo ld sto o d ready. H e w as glad th a t F osker sh o u ld be the m a n to be painlessly stunned; th e in stig ato r, th e m a n to receive full p u n ish m en t. T h ere w as ju stice in th a t o rd er. T h en cam e anticlim ax. ‘I can’t g et in ,’ said Fosker. ‘T h e bastard has lo ck ed the d o o r.’ M r P in fo ld h ad n o t locked the d o o r. M o re o v e r F osker h ad n o t trie d it. T h ere h ad been n o m o v e m e n t o f the handle. Fosker w as afraid. ‘G o on. W h a t are y o u w aitin g f o r ? ’ ‘I tell y o u h e ’s lo ck ed us o u t.’ ‘T h a t’s to m it.’ C restfallen, th e tw o re tu rn e d to th e deck. ‘W e ’ve g o t to g et h im . W e m u st g et h im to n ig h t,’ said the one w h o w as n o t Fosker, b u t the fire h ad go n e o u t o f h im an d he added: ‘I feel aw fu lly sick su d d e n ly .’ ‘B e tte r p u t it o ff fo r to n ig h t.’ ‘I feel frig h tfu l. O h ! ’ T h ere fo llo w ed th e ghastly sounds o f v o m itin g an d th e n a w h im p e r; th e sam e abject so u n d th a t seem ed to re-ech o

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d iro u g h th e Caliban, th e sob o f th e in ju re d seam an, o f th e m u rd e re d stew ard. H is irfother w as th e re n o w to co m fo rt h im . ‘I h a v e n ’t b een to b ed, dear. I c o u ld n ’t leave y o u like th at. I’v e b ee n w aitin g an d p ray in g fo r y o u . Y o u ’re read y to co m e n o w , are n ’t y o u ? ’ ‘Yes, m o th e r. I ’m rea d y .’ ‘I lo v e y o u so. A ll lo v in g is suffering.’ Silence fell. M r P in fo ld p u t his w eapons aw ay an d d re w b ack th e shutter. It w as d aw n. H e lay o n his b ed w id e aw ake, his rage q u ite abated, calm ly considering the events o f the n ig h t. T h e re h ad been n o funeral. So m u c h seem ed certain. In d eed th e w h o le incid en t o f C ap tain S teerforth and G o n eril an d th e m u rd e re d stew ard h ad b ecom e insubstantial u n d e r the im p a ct o f th e n e w assault. M r P in fo ld ’s ord erly , q uesting m in d b eg an to sift th e h u g e v o lu m e o f charges w h ic h had b een m ad e against h im . S om e - th a t he w as Jew ish an d h o m o ­ sexual, th a t he h ad stolen a m o o n sto n e and left his m o th e r to die a p au p e r - w ere to ta lly preposterous. O th ers w ere in ­ consistent. If, fo r exam ple, he w ere a n e w ly arriv ed im m ig ra n t, he co u ld n o t have been a ro w d y u n d erg rad u ate vat O x fo rd ; i f h e w ere so anxious to establish h im self as a c o u n try m an , h e w o u ld n o t have slighted his neigh b o u rs. T h e y o u n g m e n in th e ir d ru n k en rage h ad clearly ro ared o u t any abuse th a t cam e to m in d , b u t th ere em erg ed fro m th e chaotic u p ro a r th e basic facts th a t he w as g enerally disliked o n b o a rd th e Caliban, th a t tw o at least o f his fellow -passengers w ere poss­ essed b y fanatical hate, an d th a t th e y h ad som e so rt o f in d irect p erso n al acquaintance w ith h im . H o w else co u ld th e y have heard, even in its w ild ly g arb led fo rm , o f his w ife’s trans­ actions w ith H ill (w h o w as w ell an d prosperous w h e n M r P in fo ld last heard o f h im ) ? T h e y cam e fro m his p a rt o f the

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co u n try . It w as n o t unlikely th a t H ill, w h ile boasting o f his astuteness am o n g his cronies, h ad to ld a sto ry o f oppression elsew here. I f th a t w as th e sort o f th in g th a t w as bein g said in th e district, M r P in fo ld should co rrect it. M r P in fo ld h ad to consider also his c o m fo rt d u rin g th e c o m in g voyag e. H e req u ired peace o f m in d in w h ich to w o rk . T hese d read fu l y o u n g m e n w ere likely, w h en e v er th ey g o t d ru n k , to co m e caterw auling outside his cabin. O n a later occasion, m o reo v e r, th ey m ig h t atte m p t physical assault, m ig h t even succeed in it. T h e result could o n ly be hu m iliatin g ; it m ig h t be painful. T h e w o rld teem ed w ith journ alists. H e im a g in e d his w ife reading in h er m o rn in g p ap er a cable fro m A d en o r P o rt S oudan describing th e fracas. S o m eth in g m u st be don e. H e co u ld lay th e m a tte r before the C aptain, th e n atu ra l g u ard ia n o f la w in his ship, b u t w ith this th o u g h t th ere em erg ed again fro m o b liv io n the m a tte r o f the C a p ta in ’s o w n cu lpability . M r P in fo ld w as g o in g to have the C a p ta in arrested fo r m u rd e r at the earliest o p p o rtu n ity . N o th in g w o u ld suit th a t black h eart b etter th an to have th e o n ly w itness against h im in v o lv e d in a b raw l - o r silenced in one. A n e w suspicion to o k shape. M r P in fo ld h ad been indiscreet at d in n e r in revealing his p riv ate k n o w led g e. W a s it n o t p ro b ab le th a t C a p ta in S teerfo rth h ad instigated the w h o le attac k ? W h e re h a d th e y o u n g m e n b een d rin k in g after the b ar w as shut, i f n o t in th e C a p ta in ’s cabin? M r P in fo ld beg an to shave. T his prosaic o p e ra tio n recalled h im to strict reason. T h e C a p ta in ’s g u ilt w as n o t p ro v en . First things first. H e m u st deal w ith th e y o u n g m en . H e studied th e passenger-list. T h ere w as n o Fosker o n it. M r P in ­ fo ld him self, w h e n crossing th e A tlantic, av o id ed in terv iew ers b y rem ain in g in c o g n ito . It seem ed unlik ely th a t Fosker w o u ld have th e sam e m o tiv e. P erhaps th e police w e re after h im . T h e o th e r m a n w as ostensibly respectable; fo u r o f a n am e should

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be easy to find. B u t there seem ed to be n o fam ily o f father, m o th e r, son, an d d au g h ter in th a t list. M r P in fo ld la th ered his face for* th e second shave. H e w as puzzled. It w as u n lik ely th a t so large a p a rty w o u ld jo in th e ship at th e last m o m e n t, after th e list h ad b een p rin te d . T h e y d id n o t sound th e k in d o f p eo p le given to im p etu o u s dashes ab ro ad - and an y w ay , such people travelled b y air now adays. A n d there w as th at o th e r general travelling w ith th e m . M r P in fo ld gazed at his puzzled, soapy face. T h e n he saw lig h t. S tepfather, th a t w as it. H e an d th e m o th e r w o u ld bear o ne nam e, th e ch ild ren an­ o th e r. M r P in fo ld w o u ld k eep his eyes an d ears open. It should n o t b e difficult to identify th em . M r P in fo ld dressed carefully. H e chose a B r ^ a d e tie to w ea r th a t m o rn in g an d a cap th a t m a tch ed his tw ee d suit. H e w e n t o n deck, w h ere seam en w ere at w o rk sw abbing. T h e y h a d already cleaned u p all traces o f th e n ig h t’s disgusting clim ax. H e ascended to the m ain, p ro m en a d e deck. It w as a m o rn in g such as at any o th e r tim e w o u ld have elated h im . E ven n o w , w ith so m u c h to harass h im , he w as conscious o f ex h ilaration. H e sto o d alone b rea th in g deeply, m a k in g lig h t o f his annoyances. M a rg a re t, som ew here quite near, said: ‘L ook, h e ’s left his cabin. D o esn ’t he lo o k sm art to d a y ? N o w ’s o u r chance to give h im o u r presents. I t’s m u c h b e tte r th a n g iv in g th e m to his stew ard as w e m e an t to . N o w w e can arran g e th e m ourselves.’ ‘D ’y o u th in k h e ’ll like th e m ? ’ said th e o th e r girl. ‘H e o u g h t to . W e ’ve taken e n o u g h tro u b le. T h e y ’re the best w e co u ld possibly g et.’ ‘B u t M eg , h e ’s so grand.9 ‘I t’s because h e ’s g ra n d h e’ll like th em . G ra n d people are alw ays pleased w ith little things. H e must have his presents this m o rn in g . A fter th e silly w a y th e boys beh av ed last n ig h t it

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w ill sh o w h im we w e re n ’t in it. A t least n o t in it in th e w ay they w ere. H e ’ll see th a t as far as w e ’re co n cern ed it w as all fun and lo v e .’ ‘ Suppose he com es in an d finds u s ? ’ ‘Y o u keep cave. I f he starts g o in g d o w n sing.’ ‘ “ W h e n first I saw M a b e l” ? ’ ‘O f course. Our so n g .’ M r P in fo ld w as te m p te d to trap M a rg aret. H e relished the simple m ale pleasure, rath e r rare to h im in recent years, o f being fo u n d attractive, and w as curious to see this h o n e y to n g u ed g irl. B u t she in ev itab ly w o u ld lead h im to the b ro th e r and to Fosker, and he w as constrained b y h o n o u r. T hese presents, w h ate v er th e y w ere, co n stitu ted a flag o f tru ce. H e could n o t snatch ad vantage fro m th e g irls’ generosity. Presently M a rg a re t rejo in ed h e r friend. ‘H e h asn’t m o v e d .’ ‘N o , h e ’s ju s t sto o d th e re all th e tim e. W h a t d o y o u suppose he’s th in k in g a b o u t? ’ ‘T h o se beastly boys, I ex p ect.’ ‘D o y o u th in k h e ’s v e ry u p se t?’ ‘H e ’s so b ra v e .’ ‘ O fte n brav e p eople are th e m o st sensitive.’ ‘W e ll it w ill be all rig h t w h e n he gets back to his cabin and finds o u r presents.’ M r P in fo ld w alk e d the decks fo r an h o u r. N o passengers w ere ab out. As th e g o n g so unded fo r breakfast, M r P in fo ld w e n t b elo w . He sto p ped first at his cabin to see w h a t M a rg a re t h ad left fo r kim . A ll he fo u n d w as th e cup o f tea, cold n o w , w h ic h the stew ard h ad p u t there. T h e b ed w as m ade. T h e place w as squared up an d shipshape. T h ere w ere n o presents. As he left, he m e t th e cabin-stew ard.

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‘I say, did a y o u n g lady leave an y th in g fo r m e in my c a b in ?’ ‘Yes*' sir, breakfast n o w , sir.’ ‘N o . Listen. I th in k so m eth in g w as left fo r m e here a b o u t an h o u r a g o .’ ‘Yes, sir, g o n g fo r breakfast ju s t n o w .’ ‘O h ,’ said M a rg a re t, ‘he hasn’t fo u n d it.’ ‘H e m u st look.9 ‘Look fo r it, G ilbert, look.9 H e searched th e little w a rd ro b e . H e p eered u n d er th e bunk. H e o p en e d th e c u p b o a rd o v e r th e w ash-hand-basin. T h e re was n o th in g there. ‘T h e re ’s n o th in g th e re ,’ said M a rg a re t. ‘H i can’t fin d it. H e can ’t fin d a n y th in g ,’ she said o n a soft n o te o f despair. ‘T h e sw eet brav e id io t, he can’t find a n y th in g .’ So h e w e n t d o w n alone to breakfast. H e w as th e first o f th e passengers to appear. M r P infold w as h u n g ry . H e o rd e re d coffee an d fish and eggs an d fruit. H e w as ab o u t to eat w h en , P in g ; th e little, rose-shaded electric lam p w h ic h sto o d o n th e table b efore h im cam e in to action as a tran sm itte r. T h e d elin q u en t y o u th s w ere aw ake an d u p on th e air again, th e ir v ita lity u n im p a ire d b y the excesses o f the n ig h t. ‘H a llo o -lo o -lo o -lo o -lo o . H a rk -a rk -a rk -a rk -a rk ,’ th e y hol­ loaed. ‘L oo in there. Fetch h im o u t. Y oicks.’ ‘I fear Fosker is n o t en tirely co nversant w ith sporting p arlan ce,’ said th e general. ‘ H a rk -a rk -a rk -a rk . C o m e o u t, P einfeld. W e k n o w w here y o u are. W e ’ve g o t y o u .’ A w h ip -c rack . ‘O w ,’ fro m Fosker, ‘lo o k o u t w h a t y o u ’re d o in g w ith th a t h u n tin g c ro p .’ ‘R u n , P einfeld, ru n . W e can see y o u . W e ’re c o m in g for y o u .’ T h e stew ard at th a t m o m e n t w as at M r P in fo ld ’s side serving

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h im w ith h addock. H e seem ed unconscious o f the cries em an ating fro m th e lam p; to h im p resu m ab ly th e y w ere all one w ith th e unreasonable v ariety o f knives an d forks an d the superfluity o f inedible foods; all p a rt o f th e co m p lex ity o f this rem o te and rath e r disgusting W e ste rn w a y o f life. M r P in fo ld ate stolidly. T h e y o u n g m en resum ed th e dia­ trib e repeating again in clear, m o rn in g voices th e garb led accusations o f the n ig h t before. Interspersed w ith th e m w as the challenge: ‘C o m e an d m e et us, G ilbert. Y o u ’re afraid, Peinfeld. W e w a n t to talk to y o u , P einfeld. Y o u ’re h id in g , aren ’t y o u ? Y o u ’re afraid to com e an d ta lk .’ M a rg a re t spoke: ‘ O h , G ilbert, w h a t are th e y d o in g to y o u ? W h e re are y o u ? Y o u m u stn ’t let th e m fin d y o u . C o m e to m e. I’ll h id e y o u . Y o u n ev e r fo u n d y o u r presents a n d n o w th e y are after y o u again. L et me lo o k after y o u , G ilbert. I t’s m e, M im i. D o n ’t y o u tru st m e ? ’ M r P in fo ld tu rn e d to his scram bled eggs. H e h a d fo rg o tten , w h e n he o rd ered th e m , th a t th e y w o u ld n o t b e fresh. N o w he b eck o n ed to the stew ard to rem o v e th em . ‘O f f y o u r feed, G ilb e rt? Y o u ’re in a fu n k , are n ’t y o u ? C a n ’t eat w h e n y o u ’re in a fun k , can y o u ? P o o r G ilbert, to o scared to eat.’ T h e y began to give instru ctio n s fo r a place o f m eetin g . ‘. . . D D eck, tu rn rig h t. G o t th a t? Y o u ’ll see som e lockers. T h e n e x t bu lk -h ead . W e ’re w a itin g fo r y o u . B e tter com e n o w an d g et it o v er. Y o u ’ve g o t to m e e t us som e tim e, y o u k n o w . W e ’ve g o t y o u , G ilbert. W e ’ve g o t y o u . T h e re ’s n o escape. B e tte r g et it o v e r . . .’ M r P in fo ld ’s patience w as exhausted. H e m u st p u t a sto p to this nonsense. R ecalling som e v ag u e m em o ries o f signal p ro ce d u re in th e arm y , he d re w th e lam p to w ard s h im an d spoke in to it curtly: ‘P in fo ld to H ooligans. R endezvous M ain L o u n g e 0 9 3 0 hours. O u t.’ T h e lam p w as n o t designed to be m o v e d . H is p u ll dis­

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co n n ected it in som e w ay. T h e b u lb w e n t o u t an d the voices a b ru p tly ceased. A t th e sam e m o m e n t G lo v er cam e in to breakfast*. ‘H u llo , so m e th in g g o n e w ro n g w ith th e lig h t? ’ ‘I trie d to m o v e it. I h o p e y o u slept b etter last n ig h t? ’ ‘L ike a log. N o m o re disturbances, I h o p e ? ’ M r P in fo ld considered w h e th e r o r n o t to confide in G lo v er an d d ecided im m ediately, n o . ‘N o ,’ he said, an d o rd ered som e cold ham . T h e d ining-saloon filled. M r P in fo ld exchanged greetings. H e w e n t o n deck, keep in g alert, h o p in g to spot his persecutors, th in k in g it possible th a t M a rg a re t w o u ld m ake h erself k n o w n to h im . B u t he saw n o hooligans; h a lf a dozen h ealth y girls passed h im , som e in trousers a n d duffle coats, fe m e in tw eed skirts an d sw eaters; o ne m ig h t be M a rg a re t b u t n o n e gave h im a sign. A t h a lf past n in e h e to o k an arm ch air in a c o m e r o f th e lo u n g e an d w aited . H e h a d his b la ck th o rn w ith him ; it w as ju s t conceivable th a t th e y o u th s w ere so frenzied th at th e y m ig h t a tte m p t violence even here, in th e dayligh t. H e b eg an to rehearse th e co m in g in te rv iew . H e w as th e ju d g e . H e h ad su m m o n ed these m e n to appear before h im . S o m eth in g like a reg im en tal o rd e rly ro o m , he th o u g h t, w o u ld b e th e p ro p e r atm osphere. H e w as th e co m m an d in g officer h earin g a charge o f b raw lin g . H is pow ers o f p u n ish m en t w ere m eag re. H e w o u ld ad m o n ish th e m severely, and th reaten th e m w ith civil penalties. H e w o u ld re m in d th e m th a t th e y w ere subject to B ritish law in th e Caliban ju s t as m u c h as o n land; th a t defam atio n o f character an d physical assault w ere g rave crim es w h ich w o u ld prejudice th e ir w h o le fu tu re careers. H e w o u ld ‘th ro w the w h o le b o o k ’ at th e m . H e w o u ld explain icily th a t he was en tirely indifferent to th e ir g o o d o r b ad opinion; th a t he reg ard ed th eir friendship an d th e ir en m ity as equally im ­ p ertin en t. B u t h e w o u ld also h ear w h a t th e y h ad to say fo r

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them selves. A g o o d officer k n o w s th e en o rm o u s ills th a t can arise fro m m e n b ro o d in g o n im a g in a ry g rudges. T hese de­ faulters w ere clearly suffering fro m a n u m b e r o f delusions a b o u t him self. It w as b e tte r th a t th e y sh o u ld g e t it o f f th eir chests, h ear th e tru th , an d th e n sh u t u p fo r th e rest o f th e v o yage. M o re o v e r if, as seem ed certain, these delusions d eriv ed fro m ru m o u rs w h ich w ere in circu latio n a m o n g M r P in fo ld ’s n eig h b o u rs, he m u st plainly investigate an d scotch th em . H e h ad th e lo u n g e to him self. T h e rest o f th e passengers w ere ran g e d alo n g th e deck in th e ir chairs an d rugs. T h e u n v a ry in g h u m o f m arin e m echanical-life w as the o n ly sound. T h e clock o v er the little b andstand read a q u a rte r to ten. M r P in fo ld decided to give th e m till ten; th e n he w o u ld g o to th e w ireless office and in fo rm his w ife o f his reco v ery . It w as ben eath his d ig n ity to a tte n d o n these d readful y o u n g m en. S om e sim ilar p o in t o f p rid e seem ed to influence th e m . A b o v e th e h u m he presently h eard th e m discussing h im . T h e voices cam e fro m th e panelling n ea r his head. First in his cabin, th e n in th e d ining-saloon, n o w here, th e su rv iv in g strands o f w a rtim e in te rco m m u n ica tio n w e re fitfu lly active. T h e w h o le w irin g o f the ship w as in need o f a th o ro u g h overh au l, M r P in fo ld th o u g h t; fo r all he k n e w th ere m ig h t b e a d an g er o f fire. ‘W e ’ll talk to P einfeld w h e n it suits us an d n o t a m o m e n t b efo re.’ ‘W h o ’ll do th e ta lk in g ?’ ‘I w ill, o f course.’ ‘D o y o u k n o w w h a t y o u ’re g o in g to sa y ?’ ‘ O f course.’ ‘N o t really m u c h p o in t in m y c o m in g at all, is th e re ? ’ ‘I m a y n eed y o u as a w itness.’ ‘A ll rig h t, com e o n then . L et’s see h im n o w .’

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‘W h e n it suits me, Fosker, n o t b e fo re / ‘W h a t are w e w a itin g f o r ? ’ ‘T o let h im g et in to a th o ro u g h funk. R e m e m b er at school o ne w as alw ays k e p t w aitin g fo r a b e a tin g ? Ju st to m ak e it taste sw eeter? W e ll, P einfeld can w a it fo r his b e a tin g / ‘H e ’s scared stiff/ ‘H e ’s p ractically b lu b b in g n o w / A t te n o ’clock M r P in fo ld to o k o u t his w atch , verified the tim e sh o w n o n the clock, an d rose fro m th e co m er. ‘H e ’s g o in g a w a y .’ ‘H e ’s ru n n in g a w a y / ‘F u n k ’ cam e faintly fro m th e fu m e d o ak panellin g. M r P in fo ld clim bed to the w ireless office o n th e b o at-d eck , co m posed a m essage an d h an d e d it in: Pinfold. Lychpole. Entirely cured. A ll love. Gilbert, f

‘Is th a t address e n o u g h ? ’ asked th e clerk. ‘Yes. T h e re ’s o n ly o ne teleg rap h office called L ych p o le in th e c o u n try / H e w alk e d th e decks, th o u g h t his b la c k th o rn superfluous an d re tu rn e d to his cabin w h e re th e B .B .C . w as lo u d ly in possession. ‘. . . in th e studio J im m y Lance, w h o is w ell k n o w n to all listeners, an d M iss Ju n e C u m b erleig h , w h o is n e w to listeners. J im m y is g o in g to let us see w h a t is p ro b a b ly a u n iq u e collection. H e has k e p t ev ery le tte r h e ever received. T h a t’s so, isn’t it, J im m y ? ’ ‘W e ll, n o t letters fro m th e In co m e T a x C o lle c to r/ ‘H a. H a .’ ‘H a. H a / A g reat b u rst o f unrestrained la u g h ter fro m the unseen audience. ‘N o , n o n e o f us like to be re m in d e d o f th a t k in d o f letter, Jim m y , do w e ? H a ha. B u t I th in k in y o u r tim e y o u have h ad letters fro m a g reat m a n y ce leb rities?’ ‘A n d fro m som e p re tty d im p eo p le, to o .’ ‘H a. H a .’

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‘H a. H a. H a / ‘W e ll, Ju n e is g o in g to take letters at ra n d o m o u t o f y o u r file an d read th e m . R eady, J u n e ? R ig h t. T h e first letter is fro m - ’ M r P in fo ld k n e w Ju n e C u m b erleig h an d lik ed her. She w as a w h o lly respectable, clever, fu n n y -faced g irl w h o h ad g o t d ra w n in to B o h e m ia th ro u g h h er friendship w ith Jam es Lance. It w as n o t h e r n a tu ra l voice th a t she n o w used. T h ro u g h som e m echanical d isto rtio n she spoke in alm ost identical tones to G oneriT s. ‘G ilb e rt P in fo ld / she said. ‘A n d d o y o u co u n t h im a m o n g th e celebrities o r th e d im people, J im m y ? ’ ‘A c e le b rity / ‘D o y o u ? ’ said Ju n e . ‘I th in k h e ’s a dread fu lly d im little m a n .’ ‘W e ll, w h a t’s th e d im little m a n g o t to sa y ?’ ‘It is so b ad ly w ritte n I can’t read i t / E n o rm o u s am usem ent in the audience. ‘T ry a n o th e r/ ‘W h o is it this tim e ? ’ ‘W h y . T his is too m uch. G ilbert P in fo ld ag a in / ‘H a, ha, ha, ha, h a .’ M r P in fo ld left his cabin, slam m ing th e d o o r o n this dep lo rable en tertain m en t. Jam es, he k n e w , d id a lo t o f bro ad casting. H e w as a p o et and artist b y n a tu re w h o h ad let h im se lf beco m e popularized; b u t this e x h ib itio n w as a b it thick, even fo r h im . A n d w h a t w as Ju n e d o in g ? She m u st have lost all sense o f decency. M r P in fo ld w alk e d the decks. H e w as still tro u b le d b y th e u n so lv ed p ro b le m o f the hooligans. S o m eth in g w o u ld have to b e d o n e ab o u t th e m . B u t he felt reassured a b o u t C a p ta in S teerforth. N o w th a t it w as ap p aren t th a t m a n y o f the sounds

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in his cabin em anated fro m B roadcasting H ouse, he becam e certain th a t w h a t he h ad o v erh e ard w as p a rt o f a play . T h e sim ilarity o f J u n e ’s voice an d G o n e ril’s seem ed to co n firm it. H e h ad b een an ass to suppose C a p ta in S teerforth a m u rd erer; it w as p a rt o f th e confusion o f m in d caused b y D r D ra k e ’s pills. A n d i f C a p tain S teerfo rth w ere in n o c en t, th e n he w as a p o te n tia l, a n atu ral ally against his enem ies. T h u s co m fo rted , M r P in fo ld re tu rn e d to his listening p o st in th e c o m e r o f th e lo u n g e. F ather and son w ere in conference. ‘ F o sker’s w e t.’ ‘Y es. I ’ve n ev e r th o u g h t an y th in g o f h im .’ ‘I’m leaving h im o u t o f this business fro m n o w o n .’ ‘V ery w ise. B u t y o u ’ve g o t to g o th ro u g h T^ith it yourself, y o u k n o w . Y o u d id n ’t com e v e ry cred itab ly o u t o f last n ig h t’s affair. I ’ve n o g reat o b jectio n to y o u r k n o c k in g th e fello w a b o u t a b it i f he deserves it. A n y w a y y o u ’ve th rea ten e d h im an d y o u ’ve g o t to d o so m e th in g a b o u t it. Y o u can ’t ju s t d ro p th e m a tte r at this stage. B u t y o u w a n t to g o ab o u t it in the rig h t w ay . Y o u ’re u p against so m e th in g ra th e r m o re d an g er­ ous th a n y o u realize.’ ‘D a n g e ro u s? T h a t co w a rd ly , c o m m o n little co m m u n ist p an sy - ’ ‘Yes, yes. I k n o w h o w y o u feel. B u t I ’ve seen a b it m o re o f th e w o rld th a n y o u have, m y b o y . I th in k I’d b e tte r p u t y o u u p to a few w rinkles. In th e first place P in fo ld is u tte rly u n scru p ulous. H e has n o g en tlem an ly instincts. H e ’s qu ite cap­ able o f ta k in g y o u to th e courts. H av e y o u an y p r o o f o f y o u r ch a rg e s?’ ‘E v ery o n e k n o w s th e y ’re tru e .’ ‘T h a t m a y be b u t it w o n ’t m e an a th in g in a c o u rt o f law unless y o u can p ro v e it. Y o u n e e d evidence so stro n g th a t P in fo ld d are n ’t sue y o u . A n d , so far, y o u h a v e n ’t g o t it. A n ­ o th e r th in g , P in fo ld is ex tre m ely rich . I daresay fo r ex am p le

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h e o w n s a co n tro llin g share in this shipping line. T h e lo n g nosed, curly -h ead ed g entlem en d o n ’t p ay taxes like us p o o r C hristians, y o u k n o w . P in fo ld has m o n e y salted aw ay in h a lf a d o zen countries. H e has friends e v e ry w h e re / ‘Friends? 9 ‘W e ll, n o , n o t friends as we understan d th e m . B u t h e has influence - w ith politicians, w ith the police. Y o u ’ve lived in a sm all w o rld , m y b o y . Y o u have n o co n cep tio n o f the ram i­ fications o f p o w e r o f a m a n like P in fo ld in the m o d e m age. H e ’s attractiv e to w o m e n - hom osexuals alw ays are. M ar­ g aret is distinctly tak en w ith h im . E ven y o u r m o th e r doesn’t really dislike h im . W e ’ve g o t to w o rk cautiously and b u ild u p a p a rty against h im . I’ll send o ff a few radiogram s. T h ere are one o r tw o people I k n o w w h o , I th in k , m a y be able to give us som e facts a b o u t P infold. I t’s facts w e need. W e ’ve g o t to m ak e o u t an absolutely w a te r-tig h t case. T ill then, lie lo w .’ ‘Y o u d o n ’t th in k I o u g h t to b eat h im u p ? ’ ‘W e ll, I w o u ld n ’t g o so far as to say that. I f y o u fin d h im alone, y o u m ig h t have a sm ack at h im . I k n o w w h a t I should have d o n e m y se lf at y o u r age. B u t I’m o ld n o w and w ise an d m y advice is lie lo w , w o rk u n d er cover. T h e n in a d ay o r tw o w e m a y have so m eth in g to surprise o u r celebrated fello w passenger W h e n n o o n w as soun d ed M r P in fo ld w e n t aft and o rd ered h im self a cocktail. T h ere w as th e usual jo llity o v e r th e sw eep­ stake. H e lo o k e d at th e flag o n th e chart. T h e Caliban h ad ro u n d e d C ape St V incent and w as w ell o n the w a y to G ibral­ tar. She should pass th e straits th a t n ig h t in to th e M ed iter­ ranean. W h e n he w e n t d o w n to lu n ch eo n he w as in a h o p efu l m o o d . T h e hooligans h ad fallen o u t and th e ir rage h ad been tem p ered . T h e M editerran ean h ad alw ays w elc o m e d M r

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P in fo ld in th e past. H is annoyance w o u ld be ov er, he believed, once h e w as in those h allo w ed w aters. In thfe d ining-saloon he n o tic ed th a t th e d ark m a n w h o h ad sat alone w as n o w at a table w ith M rs C ockson an d M rs B enson. In a curious w a y th a t to o seem ed a g o o d om en .

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5 THE IN T E R N A T IO N A L IN C ID E N T

I t w as th e conversation o f the tw o generals, overh eard as he lay in his cabin after luncheon, w h ic h first m ad e M r P in fo ld aw are o f th e in tern atio n al crisis w h ic h h ad been develo p in g w h ile he lay ill. T h ere h ad been n o h in t o f it in th e new spapers he h ad listlessly scanned before em barkation; o r, i f th ere h ad been , he h a d n o t, in his confused state, appreciated its im p o rt­ ance. N o w , it appeared, there w as a first-class ro w a b o u t the possession o f G ibraltar. Som e days ago the Spaniards had laid fo rm al, p e re m p to ry claim to th e fortress an d w ere n o w exercising th e v ery dubious rig h t o f sto p p in g an d searching ships passing th ro u g h th e straits in w h a t th e y defined as th eir te rrito ria l w aters. D u rin g luncheon the Caliban h ad h o v e-to an d Spanish officials h a d com e o n b o ard . T h e y w ere dem an d in g th a t th e ship p u t in to A lgeciras fo r an ex a m in a tio n o f cargo an d passengers. T h e tw o generals w ere incensed against G eneral Franco an d m ad e free use o f ‘tin -p o t d ic ta to r’, ‘tw o p en n y -h alfp e n n y H itle r ’, ‘d a g o ’, ‘p riest-rid d en p u p p e t’, an d sim ilar o p p ro ­ b rio u s epithets. T h e y also spoke co n tem p tu o u sly o f the B ritish g o v e rn m e n t w h o w ere p rep a re d to ‘tru c k le ’ to h im . ‘It’s n o th in g sh o rt o f a blockade. I f I w ere in co m m an d I’d call th e ir bluff, g o full steam ahead an d tell th e m to sh o o t an d be d a m n e d .’ ‘T h a t w o u ld be an act o f w ar, o f course.’ ‘Serve ’em rig h t. W e h av en ’t sunk so lo w th a t w e can’t lick th e Spaniards, I h o p e .’

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‘I t’s all this u n o .’ ‘A n d th e A m ericans.’ ‘A n y w ay , this is one th in g th a t can’t be blam ed o n R ussia.’ ‘It m eans th e end o f N A T O .’ ‘G o o d rid d an ce.’ ‘T h e C aptain has to take his orders fro m h o m e , I suppose.’ ‘T h a t’s the tro u b le . H e can’t g et an y o rd ers.’ C a p tain S teerforth w as n o w fully restored to M r P in fo ld ’s confidence. H e saw h im as a sim ple sailor ob lig ed to m ak e a m o m e n to u s decision, n o t o n ly fo r th e safety o f his o w n vessel b u t fo r th e peace o f the w o rld . T h ro u g h o u t th a t lo n g after­ n o o n M r P infold fo llo w ed th e frantic attem p ts o f th e signal­ m e n to get in to to u c h w ith th e shipping co m p an y , t&c F o reig n Office, the G o v ern o r o f G ibraltar, th e M ed iterran ean fleet. A ll w ere w ith o u t avail. C a p tain S teerforth sto o d quite alone as th e representative o f in te rn atio n a l justice and B ritish pres­ tige. M r P in fo ld th o u g h t o f Je n k in s’s ear an d th e P riv a te o f th e Buffs. C ap tain S teerfo rth w as a g o o d m a n forced in to an im p o rta n ce quite b e y o n d his capabilities. M r P in fo ld w ish ed he co u ld stand beside h im o n the b rid g e, e x h o rt h im to defiance, ru n th e ship u n d er th e Spanish guns in to the w id e, free in lan d sea w h e re all the an tiq u e heroes o f h isto ry and legen d h ad sailed to g lo ry . As factions resolve in c o m m o n danger, M r P in fo ld fo rg o t th e e n m ity o f the y o u n g hooligans. A ll o n b o a rd the Caliban w ere co m rades-in-arm s against fo re ig n aggression. T h e Spanish officials w ere p o lite en o u g h . M r P in fo ld co u ld h ear th e m talking in th e C a p ta in ’s cabin. In excellent E nglish th e y ex plained h o w deeply re p u g n a n t they, personally, fo u n d th e o rders th ey h ad to carry o u t. It w as a question o f politics, th e y said. N o d o u b t th e m a tte r w o u ld be adjusted satisfac­ to rily at a congress. M ean w h ile th e y co u ld o n ly obey. T h e y spoke o f som e en o rm o u s in d e m n ity w h ich , i f it w ere fo rth ­

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co m in g fro m L o n d o n , w o u ld im m ed ia te ly ensure the Cali­ bans free passage. A tim e w as m en tio n e d , m id n ig h t, after w h ich , i f n o satisfactory arrangem ents w ere m ade, th e Caliban w o u ld be tak en u n d er escort to A lgeciras. ‘P ira cy ,’ said C a p ta in S teerforth, ‘blackm ail.’ ‘W e can n o t allow such language a b o u t th e H ead o f the S tate.’ ‘T h e n y o u can b lo o d y w ell g et o ff m y b rid g e ,’ said the C aptain. T h e y w ith d re w b u t n o th in g w as settled b y the tiff. T h ey rem ain ed o n b o a rd and th e ship lay m otionless. T o w ard s evening M r P in fo ld w e n t o n deck. T h ere w as n o sign o f land, n o r o f th e Spanish ship w h ich h ad b ro u g h t th e officials and, p resum ably, w as ly in g o ff so m ew h ere b e lo w th e h o rizo n . M r P in fo ld leaned o v er th e rail an d lo o k e d d o w n at th e flo w in g sea. T h e sun w as dead astern o f th e m sinking lo w o v er th e w ate r. H a d he n o t k n o w n b etter, h e w o u ld have supposed th e y w ere still steam ing fo rw a rd , so sw iftly an d steadily ran d ie cu rren t. H e recalled th a t he h ad once been ta u g h t th a t th ro u g h th e Suez C anal th e Indian O cean em p tie d itself in to th e A tlantic. H e th o u g h t o f th e m u ltitu d in o u s w aters th a t supplied th e M ed iterran ean , th e ice-flow s o f the B lack Sea th a t raced past C o n stan tin o p le an d T ro y ; th e g reat rivers o f h isto ry , th e N ile , th e E uphrates, th e D an u b e, the R h o n e. T h e y it w as th a t b ro k e across th e b o w s an d left a fo am in g w ake. T h e passengers seem ed quite u n aw a re o f th e d o o m w h ich th reaten ed th e ship. Fresh fro m th e ir siestas th e y sat ab o u t th a t afte rn o o n ju s t as th e y h a d sat before, read in g a n d ta lk in g an d k n ittin g . T h e re w as th e sam e little g ro u p o n th e sports-deck. M r P in fo ld m e t G lo v er. ‘D id y o u see th e Spaniards co m e o n b o a r d ? ’ h e asked. ‘ S paniards? C o m e o n b o a rd ? H o w co u ld th e y ? W h e n ?* ‘T h e y ’re causing a lo t o f tro u b le .’

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T m aw fu lly s o r ry / said G lover. ‘I sim ply d o n ’t k n o w w h a t y o u ’re ta lk in g a b o u t.’ ‘Y o u 'w ill,’ said M r P infold. ‘S oon en o u g h I fear.’ G lo v er lo o k e d at h im w ith th e keen, p erplexed air w h ich h e o ften assum ed n o w w h e n M r P in fo ld spoke to h im . ‘T h e re aren ’t an y Spaniards o n b o a rd th a t I k n o w o f.’ It w as n o t M r P in fo ld ’s d u ty to spread alarm and despond­ ency o r explain his u n ique sources o f in fo rm atio n . T h e C a p ­ tain p lain ly w an te d th e secret k e p t as lo n g as possible. ‘I d are say I’m m istak en ,’ said M r P in fo ld loyally. ‘T h e re are B urm ese an d th e N o rw e g ia n couple at o u r table. T h e y ’re th e o n ly foreigners I’v e seen.’ ‘Yes. A m isunderstanding n o d o u b t.’ ^ G lo v er w e n t to th e space in th e bow s w h ere he sw u n g his club. H e sw u n g it m ethodically, w ith concentration, w ith o u t a th o u g h t o f Spaniards. M r P in fo ld w ith d re w to his listening p o st in th e co rn e r o f th e lo u n g e b u t n o th in g w as to be h eard there except th e tap­ p in g o f m orse as the signalm en sent o u t th e ir calls fo r help. O n e o f th e m said: ‘N o th in g co m in g in at all. I d o n ’t believe o u r signals are g o in g o u t.’ ‘I t’s th a t n e w device,’ said his m ate. ‘I h eard so m eth in g h ad b een in v e n ted to create w ireless silence. It’s n o t been trie d b efore, as far as I k n o w . It w as d evelped to o late to use in th e w ar. B o th sides w ere at w o rk o n it b u t it w as still in the e x p erim en tal stage in 19 45.’ ‘M o re effective th a n ja m m in g .’ ‘D ifferent p rinciple alto g eth er. T h e y can o n ly do it at sh o rt ran g e so far. In a year o r tw o it ’ll develop so th a t th e y can isolate w h o le cou n tries.’ ‘W h e re w ill o u r jo b s be th e n ? ’ ‘O h , som eo n e’ll fin d a co unter-system . T h e y alw ays d o .’ ‘A n y w a y all w e can do n o w is keep o n try in g .’

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T h e ta p p in g recom m enced. M r P in fo ld w e n t to th e b ar an d o rd ered h im self a glass o f g in an d b itters. T h e English stew ard cam e in fro m th e deck, tra y in h and, a n d w e n t to the serving hatch. ‘T hose Spanish bastards are asking fo r w h isk y ,’ he said. T i l n o t serve th e m ,’ said th e m a n w h o h an d led th e bottles. ‘C a p ta in ’s o rd e r,’ said th e stew ard. ‘W h a t’s com e o v er th e o ld m a n ? It isn’t like h im to take a th in g like this ly in g d o w n .’ ‘H e ’s g o t a plan. T ru st h im . N o w give m e those fo u r w hiskies an d I h o p e it poisons th e m .’ M r P in fo ld finished his d rin k an d re tu rn e d to his listening post. H e w as curious to k n o w m o re o f th e C a p ta in ’s plan. H e h ad n o sooner settled in his chair an d attu n ed his ear to the pan elling th a n h e h ea rd th e C aptain; he w as in his cabin addressing th e officers. ‘. . . all questions o f in te rn atio n a l la w an d c o n v e n tio n ap a rt,’ h e w as saying, ‘th e re is a p articu la r reason w h y w e can n o t allo w this ship to b e searched. Y o u all k n o w w e have an ex tra m a n o n b o ard . H e ’s n o t a passenger. H e ’s n o t one o f th e crew . H e doesn’t appear o n an y list. H e ’s g o t n o tic k et o r papers. I d o n ’t even k n o w his n am e m yself. I daresay y o u ’ve n o ticed h im sitting alone in th e d ining-saloon. A ll I ’v e been to ld is th a t h e ’s v e ry im p o rta n t indeed to H .M .G . H e ’s o n a special m ission. T h a t’s w h y h e ’s travelling w ith us instead o f o n one o f th e routes th a t are w atched. I t’s h im , o f course, th a t th e Spaniards are after. A ll this talk a b o u t te rrito ria l w aters an d rig h t o f search is p u re bluff. W e ’ve g o t to see th a t th a t m an gets th ro u g h .’ ‘H o w are y o u g o in g to m anage that, sk ip p e r?’ ‘I d o n ’t k n o w yet. B u t I’ve g o t an idea. I th in k I shall have to take th e passengers in to m y confidence - n o t all o f th em , o f course, an d n o t fully in to m y confidence. B u t I’m g o in g

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to collect h a lf a dozen o f th e m o re responsible m e n an d p u t th e m in to the p ictu re - in to a b it o f th e p ic tu re an y w ay . I’ll ask th e m u p here, casually, after din n er. W ith th e ir help th e plan may w o r k / T h e generals received th e ir in v ita tio n early an d w ere n o t deceived b y its casual fo rm . T h e y w ere discussing it w h ile M r P in fo ld dressed fo r d inner. ‘It lo oks as th o u g h h e ’s decided to p u t u p a fig h t.’ ‘ W e ’ll all stand b y h im .’ ‘C a n w e tru st those B u rm e se ?’ ‘T h a t’s a question to raise at th e m e etin g to n ig h t.’ ‘W o u ld n ’t tru st ’e m m yself. Y ellow -bellies.’ ‘T h e N o rw e g ia n s ?’ / ‘T h e y seem sou n d en o u g h b u t this is a B ritish affair.’ ‘A lw ays h ap p ier o n o u r o w n , e h ? ’ It d id n o t occu r to M r P in fo ld th a t he m ig h t be o m itte d fro m th e C a p ta in ’s cadre. B u t n o in v itatio n reached h im a lth o u g h in various o th e r parts o f th e ship he h eard confiden­ tial m e s s a g es . . . ‘th e C a p ta in ’s co m p lim en ts an d he w o u ld be g ratefu l i f y o u co u ld fin d it co n v en ien t to com e to his cabin fo r a few m inutes after d in n e r . . . ’ A t table C a p tain S teerfo rth carried his anxieties w ith splen­ d id co m posure. M rs Scarfield actually asked h im :v<W h e n do w e g o th ro u g h the stra its?’ an d he replied w ith o u t an y p ercep tible nuance: ‘E arly to m o r r o w m o rn in g .’ ‘It o u g h t to g et w a rm e r th e n ? ’ ‘N o t a t this tim e o f y ea r,’ he answ ered nonch alan tly . ‘Y o u m u st w a it fo r th e R ed Sea b efore y o u g o in to w h ite s.’ D u rin g th e ir b rie f acquaintance M r P in fo ld h ad reg ard ed this m a n w ith sharply v a ry in g em otions. U nquestio n ab le a d m iratio n filled h im w h en , at th e en d o f din n er, M rs Scar­ field asked: ‘A re y o u jo in in g us fo r a r u b b e r?’ an d he replied: ‘N o t this evening, I’m afraid. I ’v e o ne o r tw o things to see

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to / b u t th o u g h M r P in fo ld h u n g back so th a t he left th e d in in g saloon at th e C a p ta in ’s side, g iv in g h im th e chance to in v ite h im to th e conference, th e y p a rte d at th e h ead o f th e stair w ith o u t the w o rd b ein g said. R a th e r nonplussed M r P in fo ld hesitated, th e n decided to g o to his cabin. It w as essential th at he should be easily fo u n d w h en he w as w an ted . S oon it w as ap p aren t th a t he w as n o t w a n te d at all. C ap tain S teerforth h ad his p a rty p ro m p tly assem bled an d h e beg an b y g iv in g th e m a resu m e o f the situation as M r P in fo ld already un d ersto o d it. H e said n o th in g o f th e secret ag en t. H e m erely explained th a t he h ad b een unable to o b ta in au th o rizatio n fro m his co m p an y to p ay th e p reposterous su m d em an d ed . T h e alternative offered b y the Spaniards w as th a t he should p u t in to A lgeciras u n til th e m a tte r h ad been settled b etw een M a d rid a n d L o n d o n . T h a t, he said, w o u ld be a betray al o f every stan d ard o f B ritish seam anship. T h e Caliban w o u ld n o t strike h e r flag. T h ere w as a b u rst o f restrained, husky , e m o ­ tional, m ale applause. H e explained his plan: at m id n ig h t the Spanish ship w o u ld co m e alongside. T h e officials n o w o n b o a rd w o u ld trans-ship to h er to re p o rt th e results o f th e ir d em an d . T h e y in te n d e d to take w ith th e m u n d e r arrest h im ­ self an d a p a rty o f hostages and to p u t an officer o f th e ir o w n o n his b rid g e to sail h e r in to th e Spanish p o rt. It w as in the d ark , o n th e g an g w a y , th a t th e resistance w o u ld disclose itself. T h e E nglish w o u ld o v e rp o w e r th e Spaniards, th ro w th e m b ack in to th e ir ship - ‘an d i f o ne o r tw o g o in to the d rin k in th e process, so m u c h th e b e tte r ’ - a n d th e Caliban w o u ld th e n m ake full steam ahead. ‘I d o n ’t th in k w h e n it com es to th e p o in t, th e y ’ll o p en fire. A n y w ay th e ir g u n n e ry is p re tty m o d e ra te an d I consider it’s a risk w e have to take. Y o u are all a g re e d ?’ ‘A g reed. A greed. A g re e d / ‘I k n e w I co u ld tru st y o u / said th e C ap tain . ‘Y o u ’re all

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m e n w h o ’ve seen service. I a m p ro u d to have y o u u n d e r m y co m m a n d . T h e yellow -bellies w ill be lo ck ed in th e ir cab in s/ ‘ H o w ab o u t P in fo ld ? ’ asked o n e o f th e generals. ‘ S h o u ld n ’t he be h e re ?’ ‘T h e re is a ro le assigned to C a p ta in P in fo ld . I d o n ’t th in k I n eed to g o in to th a t at th e m o m e n t.’ ‘H as h e received his o rd e rs ?’ * ‘N o t y e t,’ said C a p ta in S teerforth. ‘W e have som e h o u rs b efo re us. I suggest, g en tlem en , th a t y o u g o ab o u t th e ship in th e n o rm a l w ay , tu rn in early, an d rendezvous here at 11.45. M id n ig h t is zero h o u r. P erhaps, general, y o u w ill rem ain b eh in d fo r a few m inutes. F or th e present, g o o d n ig h t, g en tlem en .’ T h e m e etin g b ro k e u p . P resen tly o n ly the gA ieral rem ain ed w ith th e first an d second officers in th e C a p ta in ’s cabin. ‘W e ll,’ said C a p ta in S teerfo rth , ‘h o w d id th a t s o u n d ?’ ‘P re tty th in , skipper, i f y o u ask m e ,’ said th e first officer. ‘I tak e it,’ said th e general, ‘th a t w h a t w e have ju s t h eard w as m e re ly th e c o v e r-p la n ?’ ‘Precisely. I co u ld h ard ly h o p e to deceive an o ld cam p aig n er like y o u . I am so rry n o t to be able to take y o u r co m p an io n s in to m y confidence, b u t in th e in terest o f security I h av e h ad to lim it those in th e k n o w to an absolute m in im u m . T h e ro le o f th e co m m ittee w h o have ju s t left us is to create sufficient d iv ersio n to enable us to ca rry o u t th e real p u rp o se o f th e o p era­ tio n . T h a t, o f course, is to p re v e n t a certain p erson falling in to the h an ds o f the e n e m y .’ ‘P in fo ld ? ’ ‘N o , n o , qu ite th e co n tra ry . C a p ta in P infold, I fear, has to be w ritte n off. T h e Spaniards w ill n o t le t us pass u n til th e y th in k th e y have th e ir m an . It has n o t been an easy decision, I assure y o u . I am responsible fo r th e safety o f all m y passsengers, b u t at a tim e like this sacrifices hav e to be accepted. T h e p lan briefly is this. C a p ta in P in fo ld is to im personate the agen t. H e

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w ill b e p ro v id e d w ith papers id e n tify in g h im . T h e Spaniards w ill take h im ashore a n d the ship w ill sail o n u n m o le ste d / T h ere w as a pause w h ile this p ro p o sitio n w as considered. T h e first officer at le n g th spoke: ‘It m ig h t w o rk , sk ip p e r/ ‘It must w o r k / ‘W h a t do y o u suppose w ill h ap p e n to h im ? ’ ‘C a n ’t say. I suppose th e y ’ll h o ld h im u n d e r arrest w hile th e y investigate. T h e y w o n ’t let h im co m m u n ic ate w ith o u r em bassy, o f course. W h e n th e y fin d o u t th e ir m istake, i f th ey ever do, th e y ’ll be in ra th e r a ja m . T h e y m a y let h im o u t o r th ey m a y fin d it m o re co n v e n ie n t ju s t to let h im disap p ear/ (t ’ I see. It w as th e general w h o v oiced th e th o u g h t u p p erm o st in M r P in fo ld ’s m in d . ‘W h y P in fo ld ?’ he asked. ‘It w as a pain fu l ch o ice ,’ said C a p ta in S teerforth, ‘b u t n o t a difficult one. H e is th e obv io u s m a n , really. N o one else o n b o a rd w o u ld take th e m in fo r a m o m e n t. H e loo k s like a secret agent. I th in k he w as o n e d u rin g th e w ar. H e ’s a sick m a n and th erefo re expendable. A n d , o f course, h e ’s a R o m a n C atholic. T h a t o u g h t to m ak e th in g s a little easier fo r h im in S pain.’ ‘Y es/ said the general, ‘yes. I see all that. B u t all th e sam e I th in k it’s p re tty sp o rtin g o f h im to agree. In his place I m u st o w n I’d th in k tw ice befo re ta k in g it o n / ‘O h , he doesn’t k n o w an y th in g a b o u t i t / ‘T h e devil he doesn’t ? ’ ‘N o , th a t w o u ld be q u ite fatal to security. Besides he m ig h t not agree. H e has a w ife, y o u k n o w , an d a larg e fam ily . Y o u can’t really blam e a m a n w h o thinks o f dom estic responsibili­ ties b efore v o lu n te erin g fo r hazardous service. N o , C ap tain P in fo ld m u st be k e p t q u ite in th e dark . T h a t’s th e reason fo r th e co u n ter-p lan , th e diversion. T h e re ’s g o t to be a schem ozzle o n the g a n g w a y so th a t C a p tain P in fo ld can be p ushed in to the co rv ette. Y o u , n u m b e r one, w ill be responsible fo r h auling

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h im o u t o f his cabin an d p la n tin g th e papers o n h im / ‘A ye, aye, s ir/ ‘T h a t b o y o f m in e w ill la u g h / said th e general. ‘H e to o k against P in fo ld fro m th e start. N o w h e hears h e ’s deserted to the en e m y T h e voices ceased. F or a lo n g tim e M r P in fo ld sat paralysed w ith h o rro r an d rage. W h e n at le n g th he lo o k e d at his w atc h he fo u n d th a t it w as nearly h a lf past nine. T h e n he to o k o ff his ev en in g clothes an d p u t o n his tw eeds. W h a te v e r o u trag e th e n ig h t b ro u g h t fo rth sho u ld fin d h im suitably dressed. H e p o ck eted his passport an d his trav e lle r’s cheques. T h en , black­ th o rn in hand, he sat d o w n again and began p atien tly an d p ain fu lly as he h ad learned in th e arm y , to ‘Ip p re cia te th e situ a tio n ’. H e w as alone, w ith o u t h o p e o f rein fo rcem en t. H is sole advantage w as th a t he k n e w , an d th e y d id n o t k n o w he k n e w th eir plan o f action. H e exam ined the C a p ta in ’s p lan in th e lig h t o f th e q u ite considerable experience he h ad acq u ired in sm all-scale n ig h t o perations an d he fo u n d it deriso ry . T h e result o f a scuffle in the d ark o n a g an g w a y w as quite u n p red ic t­ able b u t he w as co nfident that, fo rew arn ed , he co u ld easily evade o r repulse any a tte m p t to p u t h im in to the co rv ette against his w ill. E v en i f th e y succeeded an d th e Caliban a tte m p te d to sail aw ay, th e corvette, o f course, w o u ld op en fire and; o f course, w o u ld sink o r disable h er lo n g before th e Spaniards beg an ex am in in g th e fo rg e d papers th a t w ere to be p lan ted o n h im . A n d h ere M r P in fo ld experienced scruples. H e w as n o t w h a t is generally m e an t b y th e appellation a ‘p h ila n th ro p ic ’ m an; h e to ta lly lacked w h a t w as n o w called a ‘social con­ science’. B u t ap art fro m his lo v e o f fam ily an d friends he h ad a certain basic kindliness to those w h o refrained fro m active annoyance. A n d in an old-fashioned w a y he w as p atrio tic. T hese sentim ents som etim es d id service fo r w h a t are generally reg a rd e d as th e h ig h e r loyalties an d affections. T his w as such

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an occasion. H e rath e r liked M rs Scarfield, M rs C ockson, M rs B enson, G lo v er, an d all those sim ple, chattin g , k n ittin g , do zin g passengers. F or th e unseen, en ig m atic M a rg a re t he felt ten d er curiosity. It w o u ld be a p ity fo r all these to be p recip itated in to a w ate ry bier b y the in e p titu d e o f C ap tain S teerforth. F or h im se lf h e h ad little concern, b u t he k n e w th a t his disappearance, and possible disgrace, w o u ld grieve his w ife an d fam ily. It w as intolerable th a t this b o o b y C ap tain should han d le so m a n y lives so clum sily. B u t there w as also th e q u estion o f th e secret agent. I f this m an , as seem ed likely, was really o f v ital im p o rta n ce to his c o u n try , he m u st be p ro tected. M r P in fo ld felt responsible fo r his p ro tec tio n . H e h ad b een chosen as v ic tim . T h a t d o o m w as inescapable. B u t he w o u ld g o to the sacrifice a garlanded hero . H e w o u ld n o t be tric k ed in to it. N o precise tactical p lan co u ld be m ade. W h a te v e r his action, it w o u ld b e im provised. B u t th e in te n tio n w as plain. H e w o u ld , i f necessary, consent to im personate th e agent, b u t C ap tain S teerfo rth an d his cronies m u st u n d erstan d th a t he w e n t v o lu n ta rily as a m a n o f h o n o u r and M rs P in fo ld m ust b e fu lly in fo rm ed o f th e circum stances. T h a t established, he w o u ld consent to his arrest. As h e p o n d ere d all this, he w as barely conscious o f the voices th a t cam e to h im . H e w aited. A t a q u arte r to tw elv e there w as a hail fro m the b rid g e an sw ered fro m th e sea in Spanish. T h e co rv ette w as co m in g alongside an d at once th e ship cam e to life w ith a m u ltitu d e o f voices. T his, M r P in fo ld decided, w as his m o m e n t to act. H e m u st deliver his term s to the C ap tain before th e Spaniards cam e o n b o ard . G rip p in g his b la ck th o rn he left the cabin. Im m ed iately his com m unications w ere cut. T h e lig h ted c o rrid o r w as e m p ty an d com pletely silent. H e strode d o w n it to th e stairw ay, m o u n te d to the m ain deck. N o on e w as T -

o .g .p .

-

d

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ab o u t. T h ere w as n o ship n ear o r an y w h e re in sight; n o t a lig h t an y w h e re o n th e d ark h o rizo n ; n o t a sou n d fro m th e bridge; p n ly the ru sh an d slap o f th e w aves along th e ship’s side, an d the k een sea w in d . M r P in fo ld sto o d co nfo u n d ed , the o n ly tro u b le d th in g in a w o rld at peace. H e h ad been dauntless a m in u te b efore in the face o f his enem ies. N o w he w as stru ck w ith real fear, so m eth in g to ta lly different fro m th e superficial alarm s he h a d once o r tw ice k n o w n in m o m e n ts o f danger, so m e th in g he h ad q u ite o ften read ab o u t an d dism issed as o v e r-w ritin g . H e w as possessed fro m outside h im self w ith atavistic panic. ‘O let m e n o t be m ad, n o t m ad , sw eet h ea v en ,’ h e cried. A n d in th a t m o m e n t o f ag o n y th e re b ro k e J o t far fro m h im in th e darkness peal u p o n rising peal o f m o c k in g la u g h ter - G o n eril’s. It w as n o t an e m o llie n t sound. It w as d e v o id o f m irth , an obscene cacophany o f p u re h atred . B u t it fell o n M r P in fo ld ’s ears at th a t m o m e n t like a n u rsery lullaby. ‘A h o a x ,’ he said to him self. It w as all a h o a x o n th e p a rt o f th e hooligans. H e u n d er­ sto o d all. T h e y h ad learned th e secret o f th e defective w irin g in his cabin. S o m eh o w th e y h ad devised a m eans o f c o n tro l­ lin g it, so m e h o w th e y h ad staged this w h o le charade to tease h im . It w as spiteful a n d offensive, n o d o u b t; it m u st ribt h ap p en again. B u t M r P in fo ld felt n o th in g b u t g ratitu d e in his dis­ co v ery . H e m ig h t be u n popular; he m ig h t be ridiculous; b u t he w as n o t m ad. H e re tu rn e d to his cabin. H e h ad been aw ake n o w fo r th irty or fo rty h ours. H e lay d o w n a t once in his clothes and fell in to a deep, n atu ra l sleep. H e lay m otionless an d unconscious fo r six ho u rs. W h e n he n e x t w e n t o n deck th e sun w as up, d irectly o v e r the bow s. Square o n th e p o rt b eam rose th e unm istakable peak o f th e R ock. T h e Caliban w as steam ing in to th e calm M editerran ean .

6 THE H U M A N T O U C H

W h i l e M r P in fo ld w as shaving, he h ea rd M a rg a re t say: ‘It w as an absolutely beastly jo k e an d I ’m g lad it fell fla t/ ‘It cam e o ff v e ry n ic e ly / said h er b ro th er. ‘ O ld P einfeld was jib b e rin g w ith f u n k / ‘H e w asn ’t - an d h e isn’t called Peinfeld. H e w as a hero. W h e n I saw h im standing th ere alone o n deck I th o u g h t o f N e ls o n / ‘H e w as d r u n k / ‘H e says it’s n o t d rin k , d ea r,’ said th e ir m o th e r, g en tly u n c o m m itte d to eith er side. ‘H e says it’s som e m edicine he has to ta k e / ‘M ed icine fro m a b ra n d y b o ttle / ‘I k n o w y o u ’re w ro n g ,’ said M a rg a re t. ‘Y o u see it ju s t happens I know w h a t h e ’s th in k in g , an d y o u d o n ’t / T h e n G o n eril’s steely voice cu t in: I can tell y o u w h a t h e w as d o in g o n deck. H e w as screw ing u p his courag e to ju m p o v erb o a rd . H e lon g s to k ill him self, d o n ’t y o u , G ilbert. A ll rig h t, I k n o w y o u ’re listening d o w n there. Y o u can hear m e, can’t y o u , G ilb e rt? Y o u w ish y o u w ere dead, d o n ’t y o u , G ilb e rt? A n d a v e ry g o o d idea, to o . W h y d o n ’t y o u d o it, G ilb e rt? W h y n o t? P erfectly easy. I t w o u ld save us all - y o u to o , G ilb e rt - a g rea t deal o f tro u b le / ‘B e a st/ said M a rg a re t an d b ro k e in to w eep in g . ‘O h , G o d / said h e r b ro th e r, ‘n o w y o u ’v e tu rn e d o n the w a te r-w o rk s a g a in / M r P in fo ld w as fo rtified b y his six h o u rs’ sleep. H e w e n t

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above, leaving the n ag g in g voices o f th e cabin fo r th e silent a n d e m p ty decks fo r an h o u r. T h e R ock had d ro p p ed b elo w the h o rizo n and there w as n o land in sight. T h e sea m ig h t have b een any sea b y the lo o k o f it, b u t he k n e w it w as the M ed iter­ ranean, th a t splendid enclosure w h ich held all the w o rld ’s h isto ry and h a lf th e happiest m em ories o f his o w n life; o f w o rk an d rest and battle, o f aesthetic adventure, and o f y o u n g love. A fter breakfast he to o k a b o o k to the lounge, n o t to his listening post in the panelled corner, b u t to an isolated chair in the centre, and read, undisturbed. H e m ust get o u t o f th at h au n ted cabin, he th o u g h t; b u t n o t yet; later, in his o w n tim e. P resently he rose and began once m o re to w alk the decks. T h ey w ere th ro n g ed n o w . A ll the passengers slem ed to be there, occupied as before in reading, k n ittin g , dozing, o r strolling like him self, b u t th at m o rn in g he fo u n d a k in d o f paschal n o v elty in the scene and rejoiced in it until he was ru d ely disturbed in his benevolence. T h e passengers, too, seem ed aw are o f change. T h ey m ust all at one tim e o r an o th er in the last few days have caught sight o f M r P infold. N o w , h o w ev er, it w as as th o u g h he w ere a n o te w o rth y , unaccom panied fem ale, n ew ly appearing in the evening pro m en ad e o f som e stagnant S outh A m erican to w n . H e had been w itness o f such an ev en t on m an y a dristy plaza; he had seen the sickly faces o f the m en b rig h ten , th e ir las­ situde take sudden life; he had observed the little flourishes o f seedy dandyism ; he had heard the ju n g le w histles and, w ith o u t fully understanding them , the frank, anatom ical appraisals; had seen the sly fo llo w in g and p inching o f the u n w a ry tourist. In ju s t th a t w ay M r P infold, w h erev er he w e n t th a t day, fo u n d h im self to be such a cy n o su re; everyone was talk ing ab o u t him , lo u d ly and unasham edly, b u t n o t in his praise. ‘T h a t’s G ilbert P infold, the w rite r.’

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‘T h a t co m m o n little m a n ? It ca n ’t b e .’ ‘H ave y o u read his b o o k s? H e has a v e ry peculiar sense o f h u m o u r, y o u k n o w .’ ‘H e is v ery peculiar altogether. H is hair is v e ry lo n g .’ ‘H e ’s w ea rin g lipstick.* ‘H e ’s pain ted up to the eyes.’ ‘B u t h e ’s so shabby. I th o u g h t people like th a t w ere alw ays sm a rt.’ ‘T h ere are different types o f h om osexual, y o u k n o w . W h a t are called “ p o u fs” and “ nancies” - th a t is th e dressy k in d . T h en th ere are th e others they call “ b u tc h ” . I read a b o o k a b o u t it. P in fo ld is a “ b u tc h ” .’ T h a t w as the first conversation M r P in fo ld o verheard . H e stopped, tu rn ed , and trie d to stare o u t o f counten an ce the little g ro u p o f m id d le-ag ed w o m e n w h o w ere speaking. O n e o f th e m sm iled at h im an d then, tu rn in g , said: ‘I believe h e ’s try in g to g et to k n o w us.’ ‘H o w disgusting.’ M r P in fo ld w alk ed on b u t w h erev e r he w e n t he w as th e topic. \ . . L o rd o f the M a n o r o f L ych p o le.’ ‘A n y o n e can be th at. I t’s often a title th a t goes w ith som e tu m b le d o w n farm house these days.’ ‘ O h , P in fo ld lives in g reat style I can tell y o u . F o o tm en in liv e ry .’ ‘I can guess w h a t he does w ith th e fo o tm e n .’ ‘N o t any m o re. H e ’s been im p o te n t fo r years, y o u k n o w . T h a t’s w h y h e ’s alw ays th in k in g o f d ea th .’ ‘Is h e alw ays th in k in g o f d e a th ?’ ‘Yes. H e ’ll c o m m it suicide on e o f these days, y o u ’ll see.’ ‘I th o u g h t he w as a C atholic. T h ey a re n ’t allo w ed to c o m m it suicide, are th e y ? ’ ‘T h a t w o u ld n ’t stop P infold. H e doesn’t really believe in

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his relig io n , y o u k n o w . H e ju s t p retends to because he thinks it aristocratic. It goes w ith b ein g L o rd o f the M a n o r/ ‘T h e re ’s o n ly o n e L y chpole in th e w o rld , he to ld th e w ire­ less m a n / ‘O n ly o n e L ychpole an d P in fo ld is its L o rd . . T h e re he is, d ru n k a g a in / ‘H e looks g h a stly / ‘A d y in g m an, i f ever I saw o n e / ‘W h y doesn’t he k ill h im s e lf?’ ‘G ive h im tim e. H e ’s d o in g his best. D rin k and drugs. H e d aren ’t g o to a d o cto r, o f course, fo r fear h e ’d tb e p u t in a hom e/ ‘B est place fo r h im , I should h av e th o u g h t.’ ‘B est place fo r h im w o u ld be o v e r th e side.’ ‘R a th e r a nuisance fo r p o o r C a p ta in S tee rfo rth .’ ‘It’s a great nuisance fo r C a p ta in S teerfo rth h av in g h im o n b o a rd / ‘A n d at his o w n ta b le.’ ‘T h a t’s bein g tak en care of. H a v e n ’t y o u h e a rd ? T h e re ’s g o in g to be a p e titio n / ‘. . . Y es, I’ve signed. E very o n e has, I believe.’ ' ‘E x cept those actually at th e table. T h e Scarfields w o u ld n ’t, o r G lo v e r/ ‘I see it m ig h t be a little a w k w a rd fo r th e m / ‘I t’s a v e ry w e ll-w o rd e d p e titio n .’ ‘Yes. T h e general d id th a t. It m akes n o specific accusation, y o u see, th a t m ig h t be libellous. S im ply: “ W e the undersigned, for reasons which we are prepared to state in confidence, consider it to he an insult to us, as passengers in the C aliban, that M r Gilbert Pinfold should sit at the Captains table, a position o f honour for which he is notoriously u n s u it a b le T h a t’s v e ry neatly p u t /

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\ . . th e C ap tain o u g h t to lo c k h im up. H e has full a u th o rity / ‘B u t he hasn’t actually done an y th in g y et, o n b o a r d / T his w as a p air o f genial business m e n w ith w h o m an d th e Scarfields M r P in fo ld h ad spent h a lf an h o u r one evening. ‘ F or his o w n p ro tec tio n . It w as a v ery n ea r th in g th e o th e r n ig h t th a t those b oys d id n ’t b eat h im u p .’ ‘T h ey w ere d ru n k .’ ‘T h e y m a y get d ru n k again. It w o u ld b e m o st unpleasant fo r ev eryone i f th ere w as a police c o u rt case.’ ‘C o u ld n ’t so m e th in g be p u t in o u r p e titio n a b o u t th a t? ’ ‘It w as discussed. T h e generals th o u g h t it co u ld best b e left to th e in te rv iew . T h e C a p ta in is b o u n d to ask th e m to give th eir reaso n s/ ‘N o t in w r itin g / ‘E xactly. T h e y d o n ’t suggest p u ttin g h im in th e cell. Sim ply co nfining h im to his cabin.’ ‘H e p ro b a b ly has certain legal rights, h a v in g p aid his fare, to his cabin an d his m e als/ ‘B u t not to his m eals at the C a p ta in ’s ta b le / ‘T h ere y o u have th e c r u x / ‘__ N o ,’ th e N o rw e g ia n w as saying, ‘I d id n o t sign any­ th in g . It is a B ritish m a tte r. A ll I k n o w is th a t h e is a fascist. I have h eard h im speak ill o f dem ocracy. W e h a d a few such m en in th e tim e o f Q uisling. W e k n e w w h a t to do w ith them . B u t I w ill n o t m ix in these B ritish affairs/ ‘I’ve g o t a p h o to g ra p h o f h im in a black shirt taken at one o f those A lb ert H all m eetings before th e w a r / ‘T h a t m ig h t be u se fu l/ ‘H e w as u p to his eyes in it. H e ’d have been lo ck ed u p u n d er i 8 b b u t he escaped b y jo in in g th e a r m y / ‘H e did p re tty bad ly there, I su p p o se?’

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4Very badly. T h ere w as a scandal in C airo th a t h a d to be h ush ed u p w h en his b rig ad e -m a jo r shot h im self/ ‘B la c k m a il?’ ‘T h e n e x t best th in g / ‘I see h e ’s w ea rin g th e G uards tie .’ ‘H e w ears any k in d o f tie - old E tonian usually.’ ‘ Was he ever at E to n ? ’ ‘H e says he w as,’ said G lover. ‘D o n ’t y o u believe it. B oard-school th ro u g h and th ro u g h .’ ‘O r at O x f o r d ? ’ ‘N o , no. H is w h o le account o f his early life js a lie. N o one h ad ev er h eard o f h im u n til a year o r tw o ago. H e ’s one o f a lo t o f nasty people w h o crept in to p ro m in e n ce d u rin g th e w ar . . . ’

‘. . . I d o n ’t say h e ’s an actual card -carry in g m e m b er o f the co m m u n ist p arty , b u t h e ’s certainly m ix ed up w ith th e m .’ ‘M o st Jew s are.’ ‘E xactly. A n d those “ m issing d ip lo m ats” . T h e y w ere friends o f his.’ ‘H e doesn’t k n o w en o u g h to m ake it w o rth the Russians’ w h ile to take h im to M o sc o w .’ ‘E ven the Russians w o u ld n ’t w a n t P in fo ld / T h e m o st curious encounter o f th a t m o rn in g w as w ith M rs C o ck so n and M rs B enson. T h ey w ere sitting as usual o n th e v eran d a o f the deck-bar, each w ith h er glass, and th ey w ere talk in g French w ith w h a t seem ed to M r Pinfold, w h o spoke th e language clum sily, p u re accent and id io m . M rs C ockson said: *Ce Monsieur Pinfold essaye toujours de penetrer chez moi, et il a essaye de se faire presenter a moi par plusieurs de mes amis. Naturellement f a i refuse.1

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‘Connaissez-vous un seul de ses amis? Il me semble q u it a des relations tres ordinaires.’ ‘ O n peut toujours se tromper dans le premier temps sur une relation etrangere. O n a Jini par s' apercevoir cl Paris q u il nest pas de notre society It w as a p u t-u p jo b , M r P in fo ld decided. P eople d id n o t n o rm a lly behave in this w ay. W h e n M r P in fo ld first jo in e d B ellam y ’s th e re w as an old earl w h o h ad sat alone all day and every day in the co rn er o f the stairs w ea rin g an o dd, h ard h at and talk in g lo u d ly to h im ­ self. H e h ad one th em e, the passing procession o f his fellow m em b ers. S om etim es he dozed, b u t in his lo n g w ak in g h o u rs he m ain tain ed a ru n n in g c o m m en tary - ‘T h a t fello w ’s chin is to o big; d rea d fu l-lo o k in g fellow . N e v e r saw h im before. W h o let h im in ? . . . P ick y o u r feet up, y o u . W e a rin g the carpets o u t . . . D read fu lly fat y o u n g C ra m b o ’s g ettin g . D o n ’t eat, d o n ’t d rin k , it’s ju s t h e ’s h ard up. N o th in g fattens a m a n like g ettin g h a rd u p . . . P o o r o ld N ailsw o rth , his m o th e r w as a w h o re , so’s his w ife. T h ey say his d a u g h te r’s g o in g the sam e w ay . . / and so on. In the b ro a d tolerance o f B ellam y ’s this eccentric h ad been accepted quite fondly. H e w as dead m a n y years n o w . It w as n o t conceivable, M r P in fo ld th o u g h t, th a t all the passengers in th e Caliban should suddenly have b ecom e sim ilarly afflicted. T his ch atter w as designed to be o verheard. It w as a p u t-u p jo b . It w as in fact th e generals’ subtle plan, substituted fo r the adolescent violence o f th eir y o u n g . T w en ty -fiv e years ago o r m o re M r P info ld , w h o w as in lo v e w ith one o f th em , used to fre q u en t a house full o f b rig h t, cruel girls w h o spoke th eir o w n thieves’ slang and p layed th eir o w n gam es. O n e o f these gam es w as a trick fro m th e school­ ro o m polished fo r d ra w in g -ro o m use. W h e n a stran g er cam e

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am o n g th e m , th e y w o u ld all - i f th e m o o d to o k th e m - p u t o u t th e ir tongues at h im o r her; all, th a t is to say, excep t those in his in p ie d ia te line o f sight. A s h e tu rn e d his h ead, o n e g ro u p o f to n g u es p o p p e d in, a n o th e r p o p p e d o u t. T hose girls w ere ad ep t in dialogue. T h e y h ad rig id self-control. T h e y n ev er g iggled. T hose w h o spoke to d ie stran g er assum ed an u n ­ n atu ra l sweetness. T h e aim w as to m a k e h im catch an o th e r w ith h e r to n g u e o u t. It w as a com ic p erfo rm an ce - th e tu rn in g h ead, th e flickering, crim son stabs, th e te n d er smiles tu rn in g to sudden grim aces, th e artificiality o f th e co nversation w h ich soon engen d ered an unidentifiable d is c o n ^ o rt in th e m o st insensitive v isitor, m ad e h im feel th a t so m e n o w he w as m a k ­ in g a fo o l o f him self, m ad e h im lo o k a t his tro u ser b u tto n s, at his face in th e glass to see w h e th e r th e re w as so m eth in g rid icu l­ ous in his appearance. S om e so rt o f g am e as this, en o rm o u sly coarsened, m u st, M r P in fo ld supposed, hav e been devised b y th e passengers in th e Caliban fo r th e ir am u sem en t a n d ^his d iscom fort. W e ll, he w as n o t g o in g to give th e m th e satisfaction o f ta k in g n o tice o f it. H e n o lo n g e r glanced to see w h o w as speaking. \ . . H is m o th e r sold h e r few little pieces o f je w e lle ry , y o u k n o w , to p a y his debts . . / \ . . W e re his b o o k s ever an y g o o d ? ’ ‘N e v e r good. H is earlier ones w e re n ’t q u ite as b ad as his latest. H e ’s w ritte n o u t / ‘H e ’s trie d ev ery literary trick . H e ’s finished n o w an d he k n o w s it.’ ‘I suppose h e ’s m a d e a lo t o f m o n e y ? ’ ‘N o t as m u c h as h e pretends. A n d h e’s spent every p en n y . H is d ebts are e n o rm o u s.’ ‘A n d o f course th e y ’ll catch h im fo r in c o m e-ta x so o n .’ ‘O h , yes. H e ’s b een p u ttin g in false retu rn s fo r years.

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T h e y ’re in v estig atin g h im n o w . T h e y d o n ’t h u rry . T h ey alw ays g et th e ir m a n in th e e n d .’ ‘I l i e y ’ll g et P in fo ld .’ ‘H e ’ll h av e to sell L ych p o le.’ ‘H is ch ild ren w ill g o to th e b o ard -sch o o l.’ ‘Ju st as h e d id h im self.’ ‘N o m o re ch am p ag n e fo r P in fo ld .’ ‘N o m o re cigars.’ ‘I suppose his w ife w ill leave h im ? ’ ‘N a tu ra lly . N o h o m e fo r her. H e r fam ily w ill take h er 9 in. ‘B u t n o t P in fo ld .’ ‘N o . N o t P in fo ld M r P in fo ld w o u ld n o t give g ro u n d . T h ere m u st b e n o appearance o f defeat. B u t in his o w n tim e, w h e n he had sau n tered lo n g e n o u g h , h e re tire d to his cabin. ‘G ilb e rt,’ said M a rg a re t. ‘G ilbert. W h y d o n ’t y o u speak to m e ? Y o u passed q u ite close to m e o n d eck an d y o u n ev er lo o k e d at m e. I h a v e n ’t offended y o u , have I? Y o u k n o w it isn’t m e w h o ’s saying all these beastly things, d o n ’t y o u ? A n sw er m e, G ilb ert. I can h ea r y o u .’ So M r P info ld , n o t u tte rin g th e w o rd s b u t p ro n o u n cin g th e m in his m in d , said: ‘W h e re are y o u ? I d o n ’t even k n o w y o u b y sight. W h y d o n ’t w e m eet, n o w ? C o m e an d have a cocktail w ith m e .’ ‘O h , G ilbert, d arlin g , y o u k n o w th a t’s n o t possible. T h e Rules .9 ‘W h a t rules? W h o s e ? D o y o u m ean y o u r fath er w o n ’t let y o u ? ’ ‘N o , G ilbert, n o t his rules, the Rules. D o n ’t y o u understan d ? I t’s against the Rules fo r us to m eet. I can talk to y o u n o w and th e n b u t w e m u st n ev e r m e et.’

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‘W h a t do y o u lo o k lik e ? ’ ‘I m u stn ’t tell y o u that. Y o u m u st fin d o u t fo r yourself. T h a t’s one o f the R ules.’ ‘Y o u talk as th o u g h w e w ere play in g som e k in d o f g am e.’ ‘T h a t’s all w e are d o in g - play in g a k in d o f gam e. I m ust g o n o w . B u t th e re ’s one th in g I’d like to say.’ ‘W e ll? ’ ‘Y o u w o n ’t be o ffe n d ed ?’ ‘I d o n ’t expect so.’ ‘A re y o u sure, d a rlin g ?’ ‘W h a t is i t ? ’ * ‘Shall I tell y o u ? D are I? Y o u w o n ’t be offended? W e l l . . M a rg a re t paused an d th en in a th rillin g w hisper said: ‘ Get your hair cut.9 ‘W e ll, I’ll be d a m n e d ,’ said M r P infold; b u t M a rg a re t w as g o n e an d did n o t hear him . H e lo o k e d in th e glass. Yes, his h air w as rath e r lo n g . H e w o u ld g et it cut. T h e n he p o n d e re d th e n e w pro b lem : h o w h ad M a rg a re t heard his soundless w o rd s ? T h a t co u ld n o t be exp lain ed o n any th e o ry o f fray ed an d crossed w ires. As he considered th e m a tte r M a rg a re t briefly re tu rn e d to say: ‘N o t wires, d arling. Wireless,’ an d th e n w as g o n e again. T h a t perhaps should have g iv en h im th e clue he sou g h t; sh o u ld have dispelled th e m y stery th a t en veloped h im . H e w o u ld learn in g o o d tim e; at th a t m o m e n t M r P in fo ld w as baffled, alm ost stupefied, b y the occurrences o f the m o rn in g an d h e w e n t d o w n to lu n c h eo n at th e sum m ons o f th e g o n g th in k in g v aguely in term s o f telepathy, a subject o n w h ic h he w as ill-in fo rm ed . A t th e table he tackled G lo v er at once o n a question th at v ex ed h im . ‘I w as n o t at E to n ,’ he said suddenly, w ith a challenge in his tone. ‘N o r w as I,’ said G lover. ‘M a rlb o ro u g h .’

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‘I n ev e r said I w as at E to n / M r P in fo ld insisted. ‘N o . W h y sho u ld y o u , I m ean, i f y o u w e r e n 't? ’ ‘It is a school fo r w h ich I have ev ery respect, b u t I w as n o t there m y se lf/ T h e n he tu rn e d across to the table to the N o rw e g ian . ‘I n ev er w o re a black shirt in the A lbert H all/ ‘ N o ? ’ said th e N o rw e g ia n , interested b u t u n co m p reh en d in g . ‘I h ad ev ery sy m p a th y w ith F ranco d u rin g th e C iv il W a r / ‘Y es? It is so lo n g ago I have ra th e r fo rg o tte n w h a t it was all ab o u t. In m y c o u n try w e d id n o t p ay so m u c h atten tio n as the F rench an d som e o th e r n a tio n s/ ‘I n ev e r h ad the sm allest sy m p ath y w ith H itle r / ‘N o , I suppose n o t / ‘ O n ce I h ad hopes o f M ussolini. B u t I w as n ev e r con n ected w ith M o sle y / ‘M o sley ? W h a t is th a t? ’ ‘Please, p lease/ cried p re tty M rs Scarfield, ‘d o n ’t le t’s g et o n to p o litic s/ F or the rest o f the m eal M r P in fo ld sat silent. L ater he w e n t to th e b a rb e r’s shop and fro m there to his listening post in th e e m p ty lounge. H e saw th e ship’s surgeon pass the w in d o w s. H e w as o n his w ay , evidently, to the C ap ­ ta in ’s cabin fo r alm ost im m ed iately M r P in fo ld heard h im say: \ . . I th o u g h t I o u g h t to re p o rt it to y o u , skipper.’ ‘W h e re w as he last se en ?’ ‘In th e b a rb e r’s shop. A fter th a t he com pletely disappeared. H e ’s n o t in his cabin.’ ‘W h y sho u ld he have go n e o v e rb o a rd ?’ ‘I’ve h ad m y eye o n h im ever since w e sailed. H av e n ’t y o u n o ticed an y th in g o d d a b o u t h im ? ’ ‘I’ve n o tic ed he d rin k s/ ‘Yes, h e ’s a typical alcoholic. Several o f th e passengers asked m e to lo o k h im ov er, b u t I can’t y o u k n o w , unless he

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calls m e in o r unless he does so m eth in g v io len t. N o w th e y ’re all saying h e’s ju m p e d o v e rb o a rd .’ ‘I’m n o t g o in g to stop the ship and p u t o u t a b o a t sim ply because a passenger isn’t in his cabin. H e ’s p ro b a b ly in som e­ one else’s cabin w ith one o f m y fem ale passengers d o in g y o u k n o w w h a t.’ ‘Y es, th a t’s the m o st likely ex p lan a tio n .’ ‘Is th ere an y th in g th e m a tte r w ith h im ap art fro m the b o ttle ? ’ ‘N o th in g a d ay ’s h ard w o rk w o u ld n ’t cure. T h e best th in g fo r h im w o u ld be to be p u t sw abt&ng decks fo r a w e e k .. A n d after th a t th e ship, like an aviary, w as noisy w ith calls a n d ch atter. ‘. . . H e can’t b e fo u n d .’ ‘. . . O v e rb o a rd .’ \ . . N o o n e’s seen h im since he left th e b arb e r . . . ’ ‘. . . T h e C ap tain thinks h e ’s g o t a w o m a n som ew here V ery w earily M r P in fo ld trie d to shut his m in d to these distractions and to read his b o o k . P resently th e n o te changed. ‘I t’s all rig h t, h e ’s fo u n d .’ \ . . False alarm .’ ‘. . . P in fo ld ’s fo u n d .’ ‘I’m glad o f th a t,’ said th e general gravely. ‘I w as afraid w e m ig h t have g o n e to o far.’ A n d th e rest w as silence. T h e cu ttin g o f M r P in fo ld ’s h air fo m en ted relations w ith M arg aret. She p ra ttle d o ff an d o n all th a t afte rn o o n and evening, g lo a tin g fo n d ly o v er th e change in M r P in fo ld ’s appearance; he lo o k e d y o u n g er, she said, sm arter, alto g eth er m o re lovable. G azing lo n g an d earnestly in to his lo o k in g glass, tu rn in g his h ead this w a y an d th at, M r P in fo ld saw

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n o th in g v ery different fro m w h a t he w as used to , n o th in g to ju stify this enthusiasm . M a rg a re t’s gratification, he surm ised, sprang less fro m his enhanced b ea u ty th a n fro m the evidence he h ad g iven o f his tru st in her. Interspersed w ith h e r praises th ere w as an occasional h in t o f som e deeper significance: \ . . T h in k , G ilbert. Barber9s shop. D o esn ’t th a t tell y o u a n y th in g ?’ ‘N o . S hould it? ’ ‘I t’s th e clue, G ilbert. It’s w h a t y o u m o st w a n t to k n o w , w h a t y o u must k n o w .’ ‘W e ll, tell m e .’ ‘I can’t d o that, darling. I t’s against th e Rules . B u t I can h in t. Barber's shop, G ilbert. W h a t d o barbers d o beside cu ttin g h a ir ? ’ ‘T h e y tr y an d sell o ne h airw ash.’ ‘N o . N o .’ ‘T h e y m ak e conversation. T h e y m assage th e scalp. T h ey iro n m oustaches. T h e y som etim es, I believe, cu t people's corns.’ ‘O h , G ilbert, som eth in g m u c h sim pler. T h in k , darling. Sh . . . Sh . . . ’ ‘S h a v e ?’ ‘G o t it.’ ‘B u t I shaved this m o rn in g . Y o u ’re n o t asking m e to shave a g a in ?’ ‘O h , G ilbert, I th in k y o u ’re sw eet. Is y o u r chin a little b it ro u g h , d arlin g ? H o w lo n g after y o u shave does it get ro u g h ag ain ? I think I should like it r o u g h . . . ’ A n d she w as o ff again o n h e r g allo p in g declaration o f love. M o re th a n once M r P infold - o r rath e r a fanciful im age o f h im d eriv ed fro m his books - h ad been the object o f adolescent in fatu ation. M argaret's fervent, naive tones rem in d ed h im o f th e letters w h ich used to com e tw o a day usually fo r periods

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o f a w eek o r ten days, w ritte n in bed p ro b ab ly . T h e y w ere confidences and avow als o f love, b earing n o address; asking n o reciprocation o r sign o f recognition; th e series en d in g as ab ru p tly as it h ad begun. As a rule, he read n o n e after the first, b u t here o n th e hostile Caliban, these guileless w o rd s u tte red in M a rg e rt’s sw eet, breathless tones fell softly o n M r P in fo ld ’s ear an d he listened com placently. Indeed he began to relish these m o m en ts o f u n ctio n w h ich co m pensated fo r m u ch o f th e ig n o ran t abuse. T h a t m o rn in g he h ad d eterm in ed to change his cabin. T h a t evening he w as lo th to cu t h im self o ff fro m this w a rm spring. I B u t n ig h t b ro u g h t a change. M r P in fo ld d id n o t dress o r dine. H e w as v ery w e a ry and he sat alone o n deck u n til the passengers b egan to com e u p fro m d in n er. T h en he w e n t to his cabin an d fo r the first tim e fo r th ree days p u t o n pyjam as, said his prayers, g o t in to bed, tu rn e d o ff th e lig h t, co m posed h im self fo r sleep, an d slept. H e w as aw akened b y M a rg a re t’s m o th e r. ‘M r P infold. M r P infold. S urely y o u h a v e n ’t gone to sleep? E v ery o ne is in b ed n o w . S urely y o u h a v e n ’t fo rg o tte n y o u r p ro m ise to M a rg a re t?’ ‘M o th e r, he d id n ’t m ak e any p ro m ise .’ M a rg a re t’s voice w as tearful and strained, alm ost hysterical. ‘N o t really. N o t really w h a t y o u co u ld call a promise. D o n ’t y o u see h o w aw fu l it is fo r me, i f y o u upset h im n o w ? H e n ev e r promised.’ ‘W h e n I w as y o u n g , dear, an y m an w o u ld be p ro u d o f a p re tty g irl taking n o tice o f h im . H e w o u ld n ’t try and g et o u t o f it b y p rete n d in g to be asleep.’ ‘I asked fo r it. I expect I b o re h im . H e ’s a m a n o f th e w o rld . H e ’s h ad h u ndreds o f o th e r girls, all sorts o f ho rrib le, fashionable, vicious o ld hags in L o n d o n an d Paris an d R o m e an d N e w Y o rk , W h y should h e lo o k a t me? B u t I do lo v e

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h im so ,’ an d in h e r anguish she u tte re d th e w h im p e r w h ich M r P in fo ld h ad h ea rd before in this ship o n o th e r lips. ‘D o n ’t cry, m y dear. M o th e r w ill ta lk to h im / ‘Please, please n o t, M o th e r. I fo rb id y o u to in te rfe re / F o rb id ” isn’t a v e ry nice w o rd , is it, d e a r? Y o u leave it to m e. I’ll talk to h im . M r P in fo ld . Gilbert. W a k e up . M ar­ g are t’s g o t so m eth in g to say to y o u . H e ’s aw ak e n o w , dear, I k n o w . Ju st tell h e r y o u ’re aw ake an d listening, G ilb e rt/ ‘I’m aw ake and listen in g ,’ said M r P in fo ld . ‘A ll rig h t th en , h o ld o n ’ - she w as like a telep h o n e o p era­ to r, M r P in fo ld th o u g h t - ‘M a rg a re t’s g o in g to speak to y o u . C o m e along, M a rg a re t, speak u p / ‘I can’t, M o th e r, I ca n ’t.’ ‘Y o u see, G ilbert, y o u ’ve upset her. T ell h e r y o u lo v e h er. Y o u do lo v e her, d o n ’t y o u ? ’ ‘B u t I’ve n ev er m e t h e r,’ said M r P in fo ld desperately. ‘I’m sure she’s a delig h tfu l g irl, b u t I’v e n ev e r set eyes o n h e r.’ ‘ O h , G ilbert, G ilb ert, th a t’s n o t a v ery g allan t th in g to say, is it? N o t really like y o u , n o t like th e real y o u . Y o u ju s t p rete n d to be h a rd an d w o rld ly , d o n ’t y o u ? and y o u can’t blam e p eople i f th e y take y o u at y o u r o w n estim ate. E v ery ­ o ne in th e ship y o u k n o w , has been saying th e m o st o dious things a b o u t y o u . B u t I k n o w b etter. M a rg a re t w an ts to co m e and say g o o d n ig h t to y o u , G ilbert, b u t she’s n o t sure y o u really lo v e her. Ju st tell M im i y o u lo v e h er, G ilb e rt/ ‘I can’t, I d o n ’t / said M r P in fo ld . ‘I ’m sure y o u r d au g h ter is a m o st ch a rm in g girl. It so happens I h av e n ev e r m e t h er. It also happens th a t I have a w ife. I lo v e her.9 ‘O h , G ilbert, w h a t a v e ry m iddle-class th in g to s a y !’ ‘H e doesn’t lo v e m e ,’ w ailed M a rg a re t. ‘H e doesn’t lo v e m e an y m o r e / ‘G ilb ert, G ilbert, y o u ’re b rea k in g m y little g irl’s h e a r t/

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M r Pinfold was exasperated. T m going to sleep now/ he said. ‘ Good night.’ ‘ Margaret’s coming to see you/ ‘ Oh, shut up, you old bitch/ said Mr Pinfold. He should not have said it. The moment the words crossed his lips - or, rather, his mind - he knew it was not the right thing to say. The whole sturdy ship seemed to tremble with shock. There was a single piteous wail from Margaret, from her mother an inarticulate but plainly audible hiss o f outrage, an attempt at bluster from the son: ‘ M y Go^, Peinfeld, you’ll pay for that. If you think you can talk to m y mother like . . . ’ And then, most unexpectedly came a hearty chuckle from the general. ‘ Upon m y soul, m y dear, he called you an old bitch. Good for Peinfeld. That’s something I’ve been longing to say to you for thirty years. You are an old bitch, you know, a thorough old bitch. N o w perhaps you’ll allow me to handle the situation. Clear out, the lot o f you. I want to talk to my daughter. Come here, Meg, Peg o’ m y heart, m y little Mimi/ The voices became thick, the diction strangely Celtic as sentiment overpowered the military man. ‘ Y o u ’ll not be m y little Mimi ever again, any more after tonight and I’ll not forget it. Y o u ’re a woman now and you’ve set your heart on a man as a woman should. The choice is yours, not mine. He’s old for you, but there’s good in that. Many a young couple spend a wretched fortnight together through not knowing how to set about what has to be done. And an old man can show you better than a young one. He’ll be gentler and kinder and cleaner; and then, when the right time comes you in your turn can teach a younger man - and that’s how the art o f love is learned and the breed survives. I’d like dearly to be the one myself to teach you, but you’ve made your own choice and w ho’s to grudge it you?’

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‘But, Father, he doesn’t love me. He said not.’ ‘ Fiddlesticks. Y o u ’re as pretty a girl as he’ll meet in a twelvemonth. There’s certainly no one in this ship to touch you and i f he’s the man I think, he’ll be feeling the need o f an armful by now. Go in and get him, lass. H ow do you think your mother got me? N ot by waiting to be asked, I can tell you. She was a soldier’s daughter. She always rode straight at her fences. She rode straight at me, I can tell you. Don’t forget you’re a soldier’s daughter too. If you want this fellow Pinfold, go in and take him. But for God’s sake come on parade looking like a soldier. Get yourself cleaned up. Wash your face, brush your hair, take your clothes off.’ Margaret went obediently to her cabin. There she was joined by her friend, several friends, it seemed, a whole choir o f bridesmaids who chanted an epithalamium as they disrobed her and tired her hair. Mr Pinfold listened with conflicting resentment and fascina­ tion. He was a man accustomed to his own preferences and decisions. It seemed to him that Margaret’s parents were being officious and presumptuous, were making altogether too free with his passions. He had never, even in his bachelor days, been a strenuous philanderer. Abroad, especially in remote places, he used to patronize brothels with the curiosity o f a traveller who sought to taste all flavours o f the exotic. In England he was rather constant and rather romantic in his affections. Since marriage he had been faithful to his wife. He had, since his acceptance o f the laws o f the Church, developed what approxi­ mated to a virtuous disposition; a reluctance to commit deliberate grave sins, which was independent o f the fear o f Hell; he had assumed a personality to which such specifically forbidden actions were inappropriate. And yet amorous expectations began to stir in Mr Pinfold. That acquired restraint and dignity o f his had suffered some hard knocking-

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about during the last few days. Margaret’s visit was exciting. He started to plan her reception. The cabin with its two narrow bunks was ill-designed for such purposes. He began by tidying it, putting away his clothes and straightening the bed. He succeeded only in making it look unoccupied. She would enter by that door. She must not find him reclining like a pasha. He must be on his feet. There was one chair only. Should he offer it to her? Somehow he must dispose her, supine, on the bunk. But how to get her there silently and gracefully. H ow to snift her? Was she portable? He wished that he knew her dimensions. He took off his pyjamas and hung them in his cupboard, put on his dressing-gown, and sat in the chair facing the door, waiting, while the folk-ritual o f Margaret’s preparations filled the cabin with music. As he waited his mood changed. Doubt and dismay intruded on his loving fancies. W hat on earth was he up to? What was he letting himself in for? He thought with disgust o f Clutton-Comforth and his tedious succession o f joyless, purposeful seductions. He thought o f his own en­ feebled condition. ‘ Feeling the need o f an armful’ indeed! W ould he be able to sustain his interest during all the patient exploration required o f him? Then, as he gazed at the tidy bunk, he filled it with delicate, shrinking, yielding, yearning nudity, with a nymph by Boucher or Fragonard, and his mood changed again. Let her come. Let her come speedily. He was strongly armed for the encounter. But Margaret did not hurry. The attendant virgins completed their services. She was inspected by both parents. ‘ Oh my darling, m y own. Y o u ’re so young. Are you sure? Are you quite sure you love him. You can always turn back. It’s not too late. I shall never see you again as I am seeing you now, my innocent daughter.’

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‘ Yes, mother, I love him/ ‘ Be kind to her, Gilbert. You have not been kind to me. You used an expression to me that I never expected to hear on a man’s lips. I meant never to speak to you again. But this is no moment for pride. M y daughter’s happiness is in your hands. Treat her husbandly. I’m entrusting something very precious to you And the general: ‘ That’s my beauty. Go and take what’s coming to you. Listen, my Peg, you know what you’re in for, don’t you?’ ‘ Yes, father, I think so.’ ‘ It’s always a surprise. You may think you know it all on paper, but like everything else in life it’s never quite what you expect when it comes to action. There’s no going back now. Come and see me when it’s all over. I’ll be waiting up to hear the report. In you go, bless you.’ But still the girl delayed. ‘ Gilbert. Gilbert. Do you want me?’ she asked. ‘ Really and truly?’ ‘ Yes, o f course, come along/ ‘ Say something sweet to me.’ ‘ I’ll be sweet enough when you get here/ ‘ Come and fetch me.’ ‘ Where are you?’ ‘ Here. Just outside your cabin/ ‘ W ell, come along in. I’ve left the door open/ ‘ I can’t. I can’t. Y o u ’ve got to come and fetch me/ ‘ Oh, don’t be such a little ass. I’ve been sitting here for goodness knows how long. Come in if you’re coming. If you’re not, I want to go back to bed.’ At this Margaret broke into weeping and her mother said: ‘ Gilbert, that wasn’t kind. It wasn’t like you. You love her. She loves you. Can’t you understand? A young girl; the first

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time; w oo her, Gilbert, coax her. She’s a little wild, woodland thing.’ ‘ W hat the hell’s going on?’ asked the general. ‘ You ought to be in position by now. Haven’t had a Sitrep. Isn’t the girl over the Start Line?’ ‘ Oh, Father, I can’t. I cant. I thought I could, but I ». y

can t.

#

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‘ Something’s gone wrong, Pinfold. Find out. Send out patrols.’ ‘ Go and find her, Gilbert. Lure her in, tenderly, husbandly. She’s just there waiting for you.’ Rather crossly M r Pinfold strode into the empty corridor. He could hear Glover snoring. He could hear Margaret weep­ ing quite close to him. He looked in the bathroom; not there. He looked round each comer, up and down the stairs; not there. He even looked in the lavatories, men’s and women’s; not there. Still the sobbing continued piteously. He returned to his cabin, fixed the door open on its hook and drew the curtain. He was overcome by weariness and boredom. ‘ I’m sorry, Margaret,’ he said, ‘ I’m too old to start playing hide and seek with schoolgirls. If you want to qome to bed with me, you’ll have to come and join me there.’ He put on his pyjamas and lay down, pulling the blankets up to his chin. Presently he stretched out his arm and turned off the light. Then the passage light was disturbing. He shut the door.jHe rolled over on his side and lay between sleep and waking. Just as he was falling into unconsciousness he heard his door open and quickly shut. He opened his eyes too late to see the momentary gleam o f light from the corridor. He heard slippered feet scurrying away and Margaret’s despairing wail. ‘ I did go to him. I did. I did. I did. And when I got there he was lying in the dark snoring.’

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‘ Oh, m y Margaret, m y daughter. Y ou should never have gone. It was all your father’s fault.’ ‘ Sorry about that, Peg,’ said the general. ‘ False appreciation.’ The last voice M r Pinfold heard before he fell asleep was Goneril’s: ‘ Snoring? Shamming. Gilbert knew he wasn’t up to it. He’s impotent, aren’t you, Gilbert? Aren’t you?’ ‘ It was Glover snoring,’ said Mr Pinfold, but nobody seemed to hear him.

7 ‘t h e v il l a in s u n m a s k e d B U T N O T F O IL E D

M r P i n f o l d did not sleep for very long. He awoke as usual when the men began washing the deck overhead and he woke with the firm resolution o f changing his cabin that day. His bond with Margaret was severed. He wished to be rid o f the whole set o f them and to sleep in peace in a cabin free o f electrical freaks. He resolved, too, to move from the Captain’s table. He had never wished to sit there. Anyone who coveted the place was welcome to it. Mr Pinfold was going to be strictly private for the rest o f the voyage. This resolution was confirmed by the last o f the many communications that had come to him in that cabin. Shortly before the breakfast hour, the device brought him into contact with what he might have supposed would be its most natural source, the wireless office; he found himself listening not as before to the normal traffic o f the ship, but to the conversation o f the wireless operator, and this man was entertaining a party o f early-risers, the bright young people, by reading to them the text o f M r Pinfold’s own messages. Everyone in ship most helpful. Love . Gilbert.” ’ ‘ That’s a good one.’ ‘ Everyone?’ ‘ I wonder if poor Gilbert thinks that now ?’ ‘Love. Love from Gilbert. That’s funny.’ ‘ Show us some more.’ ‘ Strictly speaking, you know, I oughtn’t to. They’re supposed to be confidential.’

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‘ Oh, come off it, Sparks/ ‘ W ell, this is rather rich. “ Entirely cured. A ll love” 9 ‘ Cured? Ha. Ha/ ‘Entirely cured/ ‘ Our Gilbert entirely cured! Yes, that’s delicious. Oh, Sparks, read us some more/ T v e hever known a chap spend so much on radiograms. They’re mostly just about money and often he was so drunk I couldn’t read what he’d written. There are an awful lot just refusing invitations. Oh, here’s a good series. “ Kindly arrange immediate luxury private bath. Kindly investigate wanton in­ efficiency your office.” He sent out dozens o f those.’

‘ Thank God for our Gilbert, W hat should we do without him?’ ‘ Was his luxury private bath inefficient?’ ‘ “ W anton” is good coming from Gilbert. Does he wanton in his bath?’ T o Mr Pinfold this little scene was different in kind from the earlier annoyances. The bright young people had gone too far. It was one thing to play practical jokes on him; it was something quite else to read confidential messages. They had put themselves outside the law. Mr Pinfold left his cabin for the dining-saloon with set purpose. He would put them on a charge. He met the Captain making his morning round. ‘ Captain Steerforth, may I speak to you for a moment?’ ‘ Surely/ The Captain paused. ‘ In your cabin?’ ‘ Yes, if you want to. I shall be through in ten minutes. Come up then. Or is it very urgent?’ ‘ It can wait ten minutes.’ M r Pinfold climbed to the cabin behind the bridge. Few

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personal additions embellished the solid ship’s furniture. There were family photographs in leather frames; an etching o f an English Cathedral on the panelled wall which might have been the Captain’s property or the company’s; some pipes in a rack. M r Pinfold could not imagine this place the scene o f orgy, outrage, or plot. Presently the Captain returned. ‘ W ell, sir, and what can I do for you?’ ‘ First, I want to know whether radiograms sent from your ship are confidential documents?’ ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t understand you.’ ‘ Captain Steerforth, since I came on board I have sent out a large number o f messages o f an entirely private character. This morning, early, there were a group o f passengers reading them aloud in the wireless-room.’ ‘ W ell, we can easily get the facts about that. H ow many o f these radiograms were there?’ ‘ I don’t know exactly. About a dozen.’ v ‘And when did you send them?’ ‘A t various times during the early days o f the voyage/ Captain Steerforth looked perplexed. ‘ This is only our fifth day out, you know,’ he said. ‘ Oh,’ said M r Pinfold, disconcerted, ‘ are you quite sure?’ ‘ Yes, o f course I’m sure.’ ‘ It seems longer.’ ‘ W ell, come along to the office and w e’ll look into the matter.’ The wireless-room was only two doors from the Captain’s cabin. ‘ This is M r Pinfold, a passenger.’ ‘ Yes, sir. W e’ve seen him before.’ ‘ He wants to inquire about some radiograms he sent.’ ‘ W e can easily check on that, sir. W e’ve had practically no

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private traffic!* He opened a file at his side and said: ‘ Yes. Here we are. The day before yesterday. It went out within an hour o f being handed in.* He showed Mr Pinfold’s holograph: Entirely cured. A ll love. ‘ But the others?’ said Mr Pinfold, bewildered. ‘ There were no others, sir.’ ‘A dozen or more.’ ‘ Only this one. I should know, I can assure you.’ ‘ There was one I sent at Liverpool, the evening I came on board/ ‘ That would have gone by Post Office Telegraph, sir.’ ‘ And you wouldn’t have a copy here?* ‘ No, sir.’ ‘ Then how,’ said Mr Pinfold, ‘ was it possible for a group o f passengers to read it aloud in this office at eight o’clock this morning?’ ‘ Quite impossible,’ said the wireless operator. ‘ I was on duty myself at that time. There were no passengers here/ He and the Captain exchanged glances. ‘ Does that satisfy all your questions, Mr Pinfold?’ asked the Captain. ‘ N ot quite. M ay I come back to your cabin?’ ‘ If you wish it/ W hen they were seated Mr Pinfold said: ‘ Captain Steer­ forth, I am the victim o f a practical joke/ ‘ Something o f the sort, it seems,’ said the Captain. ‘ N ot for the first time. Ever since I came on board this ship - you say it has only been five days?’ ‘ Four actually.’ ‘ Ever since I came on board, I have been the victim o f hoaxes and threats. Mind you I am not making any accusation. I don’t know the names o f these people. I don’t even know what they look like. I am not asking for an official investigation

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- yet. W hat I do know is that the leaders comprise a family o f four.’ ‘ I don’t believe we have any families on board,’ said the Captain, taking the passenger list o ff his desk, ‘ except the Angels. I hardly think they’re the sort o f people to play practical jokes on anyone. A very quiet family.’ ‘ There are several people travelling who aren’t on that list.’ ‘ N o one, I assure you.’ ‘ Fosker for one.’ Captain Steerforth turned the pages. ‘ N o,’ he said. ‘ No Fosker.’ ‘And that little dark man who used to sit alone in the dining-saloon.’ ‘ Him? I know him well. He often travels with us. Mr Mur­ doch - here he is on the list.’ Baffled, Mr Pinfold turned to another course suggested by Mr Murdoch’s solitary meals. ‘Another thing, Captain. I greatly appreciate the honour o f being invited to sit at your table in the dining-saloon. But the truth is I’m not fit for human society, just at the moment. I’ve been taking some grey pills - pretty strong stuff, for rheumatism, you know. I’m really better alone. So if you won’t think it rude ‘ Sit where you like, M r Pinfold. Just tell the chief steward.’ ‘ Please understand I am not going because o f any pressure from outside. It is simply that I am not well.’ ‘ I quite understand, Mr Pinfold.’ ‘ I reserve the right to return if I feel better.’ ‘ Please sit exactly where you like, M r Pinfold. Is that all you wanted to say?’ ‘ No. There’s another thing. The cabin I’m in. You ought to get the wiring seen to. I don’t know whether you know it,

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but I can often hear anything that’s being said up here, on the bridge and in other parts o f the ship.’ ‘ I didn’t know,’ said Captain Steerforth. ‘ That is most unusual.’ ‘ They’ve used this defect in their practical jokes. It’s most disturbing. I should like to change cabins.’ ‘ That should be easy. W e have two or three vacant. If you’ll tell the purser . . . Is that everything, Mr Pinfold?’ ‘ Yes,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ Thank you very much. I am most grateful to you. And you do understand about my changing tables? You don’t think it rude?’ ‘ No offence whatever, Mr Pinfold. Good morning.’ Mr Pinfold left the cabin far from content with his inter­ view. It seemed to him that he had said too much or too little. But he had achieved certain limited objectives and he set about his business with the purser and chief steward with alacrity. He was given the very table where Mr Murdoch had sat. O f several cabins he chose a small one near the veranda-bar which gave immediate access to the promenadedeck. Here, he was sure, he would be safe from physical attack. He returned to his old cabin to direct the removal o f his possessions. The voices began at once but he was very busy with the English-speaking steward and did not listen until he had seen his clothes and belongings packed and carried away. Then briefly he surveyed the scene o f his suffering and lent them his ears. He was gratified to find that, however incom­ plete it looked to him, his morning’s work had dismayed his enemies. ‘ Dirty little sneak’ - there was a note o f fear in Goneril’s hatred that morning - ‘ what have you been saying to the Captain? W e’ll get even with you. Have you forgotten the three-eight rhythm? Did you tell him our names? Did you? Did you?’

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Margaret’s brother was positively conciliatory: ‘ Look here, Gilbert, old boy, we don’t want to bring other people into our business, do we? W e can settle it between ourselves, can’t we, Gilbert?’ Margaret was reproachful; not because o f the drama o f the night; all that storm o f emotion seemed to have passed leaving no more trace than thunder clouds in the blue o f summer. Indeed in all their subsequent acquaintance she never men­ tioned that fiasco; she chid him instead gently for his visit to the Captain. ‘ It’s against the Rules, darling, don’t you see? W e must all play by the Rules.’ ‘ I’m not playing at all.’ ‘ Oh yes, darling, you are. W e all are. W e can’t help our­ selves. And it’s a Rule that no one else must be told. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask me.’ Poor waif, Mr Pinfold thought, she has kept bad company and been corrupted. After the embarrassments o f the night Margaret had forfeited his trust, but he loved her a little and felt it unmannerly to be leaving her flat, as he planned to do. It had proved easy to move out o f their reach. They had confided too much, these aggressive young people, in their mechanical toy. And now he was breaking it. ‘ Margaret,’ he said, ‘ I don’t know anything about your rules and I am not playing any game with any o f you. But I should like to see you. Come and join me on deck any time you like.’ ‘ Darling, you know I long to. But I can’t, can I? Y ou do see, don’t you?’ ‘ N o,’ said Mr Pinfold, ‘ frankly I don’t see. I leave it to you. I’m o ff now,’ and he left the haunted cabin for the last time. It was the social hour o f noon when the sweepstake was paid, the cocktails ordered. From his new cabin, where his new

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steward was unpacking, he could hear the chatter from the bar. He stood alone thinking how smoothly he had made the transition. He repeated to himself all that had been said in the Captain’s cabin: \ . . no families on board except the Angels?9 Angel. And suddenly M r Pinfold understood, not everything, but the heart o f the mystery. Angel, the quizzical man from the B.B.C. ‘ - not wires, darling. Wireless9 - Angel, the man with the technical skill to use the defects o f the Calibans communica­ tions, perhaps to cause them. Angel, the man with the beard 4What do barbers do besides cut hair?9 - Angel, who had an aunt near Lychpole and could have heard from her the garbled gossip o f the countryside. Angel who had ‘ half expected’ Cedric Thome to kill himself; Angel who bore a grudge for the poor figure he had cut at Lychpole and had found Mr Pinfold by chance alone and ill and defenceless, ripe for revenge. Angel was the villain, he and his sinister associate mistress? colleague? - whom M r Pinfold had dubbed ‘ Goneril\ And Angel had gone too far. He was afraid now that his superiors in London might get wind o f his escapade. And they would, too; Mr Pinfold would see to that, when he returned to England. He might even write from the ship. If, as seemed probable, he was travelling on duty, the B .B .C . would have something to say to young Angel, bearded or shaven. There were many passages in the story o f the last few days that remained obscure under this new, bright light. Mr Pin­ fold felt as though he had come to the end o f an ingenious, old-fashioned detective novel which he had read rather inat­ tentively. He knew the villain now and began turning back the pages to observe the clues he had missed. It was not the first time in the Caliban that noon had brought an illusion o f shadowless commonplace.

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The change o f cabin was not the tactical triumph Mr Pinfold briefly supposed. He was like a commander whose attack ‘ hit air’ . Thp post he had captured, which had seemed the key of the enemy’s position, proved to be empty, a mere piece o f deception masking an elaborate and strongly held system; the force he supposed routed was reinforced and ready for the counter-attack. Mr Pinfold discovered, before he went down to his first lonely luncheon, that Angel’s range o f action was not limited to the original cabin and the comer o f the lounge. From some mobile point o f control he could speak, and listen in every part o f the ship and in the following days Mr Pinfold, wherever he stood, could hear, could not keep himself from hearing, everything that was said in Angel’s headquarters. Living and moving and eating now quite alone, barely nodding to Glover or Mrs Scarfield, M r Pinfold listened and spoke only to his enemies and hour by hour, day by day, night by night, carefully assembled the intricate pieces o f a plot altogether more modern and horrific than anything in the classic fictions o f murder. Mr Pinfold’s change o f cabin had momentarily discon­ certed Angel and his staff (there were about half a dozen o f them, male and female, all young, basically identical with the three-eight orchestra); moreover it seemed likely that the scare o f the day before, when it was put about the ship that he had gone overboard, was genuine enough. A t any rate Angel’s first concern was that M r Pinfold should be kept under continual observation. Immediate reports were made to headquarters o f his every move. These reports were concise and factual. ‘ Gilbert has sat down at his table . . . He’s reading the menu . . . He’s ordering wine . . . He’s ordered a plate o f cold ham/ W hen he moved he was passed on to relays o f observers.

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‘ Gilbert coming up to main deck. Take over, B/ ‘ O .K., A . Gilbert now approaching door on port side, going out on to deck. Take over, C / ‘ O.K., B. Gilbert walking the deck anti-clockwise. He’s approaching the main door, starboard side. Over to you B .# ‘ He’s sitting down with a book/ ‘ O.K., B. Stay on duty in the lounge. Report any move. I’ll have you relieved at three/ Mr Pinfold, looking from one to another o f the occupants o f the lounge, wondered which was B. Later it transpired that about half the passengers had been recruited by Angel for observation duties. They considered it an innocuous parlour game. O f the rest some knew nothing o f what was afoot - this group included Glover and the Scarfields - others thought the whole thing silly. The inner circle manned the staff office where reports were collated and inquiries instigated. Every few hours a conference was held at which Angel col­ lected and discussed the notes o f his observers, drafted them into a coherent report and gave them to a girl to be typed. He maintained a rollicking good humour and zest. 'Great stuff. Splendid . . . M y word, Gilbert’s given himself away here . . . Most valuable . . . W e could do with a litde more detail on these points__* Anything Mr Pinfold had said or done or thought, that day or in his past life, seemed significant. Angel was mocking, but appreciative. A t intervals two older m en-not the generals, but men more akin to them than to the boisterous youngsters - subjected M r Pinfold to direct questioning. This inquisition, it appeared, was the essence o f the enterprise. It was prosecuted whenever M r Pinfold sat in the lounge or lay in his cabin, and so curious was he about the motives and mechanics o f the thing that for the first twenty-four hours he, to some extent, collaborated. The inquisitors, it seemed, possessed a huge but T - o .g . p . - e

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incomplete and wildly inaccurate dossier covering the whole o f Mr Pinfold’s private life. It was their task to fill the gaps. In manper they were part barristers, part bureaucrats. ‘ Where were you in January 1929, Pinfold?’ ‘ I really don’t know.’ ‘ Perhaps I can refresh your memory. I have here a letter from you written at Mena House Hotel, Cairo. Were you in Egypt in 1929?’ ‘ Yes, I believe I was.’ ‘And what were you doing there?’ ‘ Nothing.’ ' ‘ Nothing? That w on’t do, Pinfold. I want a better answer than that.’ ‘ I was just travelling.’ ‘ O f course you were travelling. You could hardly get to Egypt without travelling, could you? I want the truth, Pinfold. What were you doing in Egypt in 1929?’ On another occasion: ‘ H ow many pairs o f shoes do you possess?’ ‘ I really don’t know.’ ‘ You must know. W ould you say a dozen?’ ‘ Yes, I dare say.’ ‘ W e have you down here as possessing ten.’ ‘ Perhaps.’ ‘ Then w hy did you tell me a dozen, Pinfold? He did say a dozen, didn’t he?* ‘ Quite distinctly.’ ‘ I don’t like this, Pinfold. You have to be truthful. Only the truth can help you.’ Sometimes they turned to more immediate topics. ‘ On more than one occasion you have complained o f suffering from the effects o f some grey pills. Where did they come from?’

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‘ M y doctor/ ‘ Do you suppose he manufactured them himself?’ ‘ No, I suppose not/ ‘ W ell then, answer m y question properly. Where did those pills come from?’ ‘ I really don’t know. Some chemist, I suppose/ ‘ Exactly. W ould it surprise you to hear they came from W ilcox and Bredworth?’ ‘ Not particularly.’ ‘Not particularly, Pinfold? I must warn you to be careful. Don’t you know that W ilcox and Bredworth are one o f the most respected firms in the country?’ ‘ Yes.’ ‘And you accuse them o f purveying dangerous drugs?’ ‘ I expect they manufacture great quantities o f poison.’ ‘ You mean you accuse W ilcox and Bredworth o f conspiring with your doctor to poison you?’ ‘ O f course I don’t/ ‘ Then what Jo you mean?’ Sometimes they made in their stem, precise voices accusa­ tions as fantastic as those o f the hooligans and the gossips. They pressed him for information about the suicide o f a staffofficer in the Middle East - a man who to the best o f Mr Pinfold’s knowledge had ended the war healthily and prosper­ ously - which they attributed to M r Pinfold’s malice. They brought up the old charges o f the eviction o f Hill and o f Mrs Pinfold senior’s pauper’s funeral. They examined him about a claim he had never made, to be the nephew o f an Anglican bishop. Once or twice during these days Angel organized a rag, but since Mr Pinfold could hear the preparations, he was not dismayed as he had been by the previous exercises. Early one morning he heard Angel announce: ‘ W e will

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mount Operation Storm today/ and as soon as the ship came to life and the passengers began their day, all conversation, when tfiey passed Mr Pinfold, or he them, was about a gale warning. . . The Captain says w e’re coming right into it.* ‘ One o f the worst storms he’s ever known in the Mediter­ ranean The day was bright and calm. Mr Pinfold had no fear - if anything he had rather a relish - for rough weather. After an hour o f this charade Angel called it off. ‘ N o good,’ he said, ‘ operation cancelled. Gilbert isn’t scared.’ ‘ He’s a good sailor,’ said Margaret. ‘ He doesn’t mind missing his lunch,’ said Goneril. ‘ The food isn’t good enough for him.’ ‘ Operation Stock Exchange,’ said Angel. This performance was even more fatuous than its pre­ decessor. The method was the same, a series o f conversations designed for him to hear. The subject was a financial slump which had suddenly thrown the stock-markets o f the world into chaos. As they sauntered past or sat over their knitting the passengers dutifully recounted huge falls in the prices o f stocks and shares in the world capital cities, the suicide o f financiers, the closing o f banks and corporations. They quoted figures. They named the companies which had failed. All this, even had he believed it, would have been o f very remote interest to M r Pinfold. ‘ They say M r Pinfold’s fortune is entirely wiped out,’ said Mrs Benson to Mrs Cockson (these ladies had now resumed their mother tongue). Mr Pinfold had no fortune. He owned a few fields, a few pictures, a few valuable books, his own copyrights. A t the bank he had a small overdraft. He had never in his life put out a penny at interest. The rudimentary technicalities o f finance were Greek to him. It was very odd, he thought, that these

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people could go to so much trouble to investigate his affairs and know so little about them. ‘ Operation cancelled/ announced Angel at length. ‘ What went wrong?’ ‘ I wish I knew. Gilbert is no longer responding to treat­ ment. W e had him on the run in the early days. N ow he seems punch-drunk/ ‘ He’s in a sort o f daze/ ‘ He’s not sleeping enough/ This was indeed true. Since he had finished his sleepingdraught M r Pinfold had seldom had more than an hour at a time o f uneasy dozing. The nights were a bad time for him. He would sit in the lounge, alone in his dinner jacket, observ­ ing his fellow passengers, distracted a little by their activities from the voice o f his enemies, trying to decide which were his friends, which were neutral, until the last o f them had gone below and the lights were turned down. Then, knowing what to expect, he would go to his cabin and undress. He had given up any attempt at saying his prayers; the familiar, hallowed words provoked a storm o f blasphemous parody from Goneril. He lay down expecting little rest. Angel had in his head­ quarters an electric instrument which showed Mr Pinfold’s precise state o f consciousness. It consisted, M r Pinfold sur­ mised, o f a glass tube containing two parallel lines o f red light which continually drew together or moved apart like telegraph wires seen from a train. They approached one another as he grew drowsy and, when he fell asleep, crossed. A duty officer followed their fluctuations. . . W ide awake — now he’s getting sleepy . . . they’re almost touching . . . a single line . . . they’re going to cross . . . no, wide awake again . . . ’ And when he awoke after his brief spells o f insensibility, his first sensation was always

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the voice o f the observer: ‘ Gilbert’s awake again. Fifty-one minutes.’ ‘ That’s better than the time before/ ‘ But it isn’t enough/ One night they tried to soothe him by playing a record specially made by Swiss scientists for the purpose. These savants had decided from experiments made in a sanatorium for neurotic industrial workers that the most soporific noises were those o f a factory. Mr Pinfold’s cabin resounded to the roar and clang o f machinery. ‘ You bloody fools/ he cried in exasperation, 7’m not a factory worker. Y ou ’re driving me mad.’ ‘ No, no, Gilbert, you are mad already/ said the dutyofficer. ‘ W e ’re driving you insane.’ The hubbub continued until Angel came on his round o f inspection. ‘ Gilbert not asleep yet? Let me see the log. “ 0312 hours. You bloody fools, Ym not a factory worker.” W ell nor he is. “ You re driving me mad/ ’ I believe we are. Turn off that record. Give him something rural.’ From then for a long time nightingales sang to Mr Pinfold but still he did not sleep. He stepped out on deck and leaned on the rail. ‘ Go on, Gilbert. Jump. In you go/ said Goneril. Mr Pinfold did not feel the smallest temptation to obey. ‘ Water-funk/ ‘ I know all about that actor, you know,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ The one who was a friend o f Angel’s and hanged himself in his dressing-room/ This was the first time that he disclosed his knowledge o f Angel’s identity. The effect was immediate. All Angel’s as­ sumed good humour was dispelled. ‘ W hy do you call me Angel?’ he asked fiercely. ‘ What the devil do you mean by it?’

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‘ It’s your name. I know exactly what you are doing for the B .B .C .’ - this was bluff - ‘ I know exactly what you did to Cedric Thome. I know exactly what you are trying to do to me.’ ‘ Liar. You don’t know anything.’ ‘ Liar,’ said Goneril. ‘ I told you,’ said Margaret, ‘ Gilbert’s no fool.’ Silence fell on the headquarters. Mr Pinfold returned to his bunk, lay down, and slept until the steward came in with his tea. Angel spoke to him at once. He was in a chastened mood. ‘ Look here, Gilbert, you’ve got us all wrong. What w e’re doing is nothing to do with the B .B .C . It’s a private enterprise entirely. And as for Cedric - that wasn’t our fault. He came to us too late. W e did everything we could for him. He was a hopeless case. W hy don’t you answer? Can’t you hear me, Gilbert? W h y don’t you answer?’ Mr Pinfold held his peace. He was getting near to a full explanation. Mr Pinfold was never able to give a completely coherent account either to himself or to anyone else o f how he finally unravelled the mystery. He heard so much, directly and in­ directly; he reasoned so closely; he followed so many false clues and reached so many absurd conclusions; but at length he was satisfied that he knew the truth. He then sat down and wrote about it at length to his wife. Darling, A s I said in my telegram I am quite cured o f my aches and pains. In that way the trip has been a success but this has not proved a happy ship and I have decided to get off at Port Said and go on by aeroplane. Do you remember the tick with a beard who came to Lychpole

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from the B .B.C. He is on board with a team boundfor Aden. They are going to make recordings o f Arab dance music. The tick is called Angel. He has shaved his beard. That is why I didn't spot him at first. He has some o f his family with him - rather a nice sister travelling I suppose for pleasure. They seem to be cousins o f a lot o f our neighbours. You might inquire. These B .B .C . people have made themselves a great nuisance to me on board. They have got a lot o f apparatus with them, most o f it new and experimental. They have something which is really a glorified form o f Reggie Upton s Box. I shall never laugh at the poor Bruiser again. There is a great deal in it. More in fact than he imagines. Angel's Box is able to speak and to hear. In fact I spend most o f my days and nights carrying on conversations with people I never see. They are trying to psycho-analyse me. I know this sounds absurd. The Germans at the end o f the war were developing this Box for the examination o f prisoners. The Russians have perfected it. They don't need any o f the old physical means o f persuasion. They can see into the minds o f the most obdurate. The Existentialists in Paris first started using it for psycho-analysing people who would not voluntarily submit to treatment. They first break the patient’s nerve by acting all sorts o f violent scenes which he thinks are really happening. They confuse him until he doesn't distinguish between natural sounds and those they induce. They make all kinds o f preposterous accusations against him. Then when they get him in a receptive mood they start on their psycho-analysis. A s you can imagine it's a hellish invention in the wrong hands. Angel's are very much the wrong hands. He's an amateur and a conceited ass. That young man who came to the hotel with my tickets was there to measure my ‘ life-waves'. I should have thought they could equally well have got them on board. Perhaps there is some particular gadget they have to get in London for each person. I don't know. There is still a good deal about the whole business I don't know. When I get back I will make inquiries. I'm not the first person they've tried it on. They

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drove an actor to suicide. I rather suspect they've been at work on poor Roger Stillingfleet. In fact I think we shall find a number of ourfriends who have behaved oddly lately have sufferedfrom Angel. Anyway thay have had no success with me. I've seen through them. A ll they have done is to stop my working. So I am leaving them. I shall go straight to the Galleface in Colombo and look round from there for a quiet place in the hills. I 9U telegraph when I arrive which should be about the time you get this letter. A ll love G m

‘ Gilbert,’ said Angel, ‘ you can’t send that letter.’ ‘ I am certainly going to - by air mail from Port Said.’ ‘ It’s going to make trouble.’ ‘ I hope so.’ ‘ Y ou don’t understand the importatce o f the work we’re doing. Did you see the Cocktail Party? Do you remember the second act? W e are like the people in that, a little band doing good, sworn to secrecy, working behind the scenes every­ where - ’ ‘ Y ou ’re a pretentious busy-body.’ ‘ Look here, Gilbert - ’ ‘And who the devil said you might use my Christian name?’ ‘ Gilbert.’ ‘ M r Pinfold to you.’ ‘ Mr Pinfold, I admit w e’ve not handled your case properly. W e’ll leave you in peace i f you’ll destroy that letter.’ 7 am leaving you, m y good Angel. The question does not arise.’ Goneril cut i n : 4W e ’ll give you hell for this, Gilbert. W e’ll get you and you know it. W e’ll never let you go. W e’ve got you.’ ‘ Oh, shut up,’ said M r Pinfold.

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He felt himself master o f the field: caught unawares, with unfamiliar barbarous weapons, treacherously ambushed when, as it wei;e, he was under the cover o f the Red Cross, he had rallied and routed the enemy. Their grand strategy had been utterly frustrated. All they could do now was snipe. This they did continuously during the last twenty-four hours o f the voyage. Mr Pinfold went about his business in a babble o f jeering, threatening, cajoling voices. He gave notice to the purser o f his intention o f leaving the ship and sent a message by wireless engaging an air passage to Colombo. ‘ You can’t go, Gilbert. They won’t let you o ff the ship. The doctor has you under observation. He’ll keep you in a home because you’re mad, Gilbert. . . You haven’t the money. You can’t hire a car . . . Your passport expired last week . . . They w on’t take traveller’s cheques in Egypt . . . ’ ‘ He’s got dollars the beast.’ ‘ Well, that’s criminal. He ought to have declared them. They’ll get him for that.’ ‘ They won’t let you through the military zone, Gilbert’ (this was in 1954). ‘ The army will turn you back. Egyptian terrorists are bombing private cars on the canal road.’ Mr Pinfold fought back with the enemy’s weapons. He was obliged to hear all they said. They were obliged to hear him. They could not measure his emotions, but every thought which took verbal shape in his mind was audible in Angel’s headquarters and they were unable, it seemed, to disconnect their box. Mr Pinfold set out to wear them down with sheer boredom. He took a copy o f Westward Ho! from the ship’s library and read it very slowly hour by hour. At first Goneril attempted to correct his pronunciation. At first Angel pretended to find psychological significance in the varying emphasis he gave to different words. But after an hour or so they gave up these pretences and cried in frank despair: ‘ Gilbert, for God’s sake stop/

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Then Mr Pinfold tormented them in his turn by making gibberish o f the text, reading alternate lines, alternate words, reading backwards, until they pleaded for a respite. Hour after hour Mr Pinfold remorselessly read on. On his last evening he felt magnanimous towards all except Angel and Goneril. W ord had got round the passengers that he was leaving them and as he sauntered among them he noted genuine regret in the scraps o f talk he overheard. ‘ Is it really because o f that game o f Mr Angers?’ he heard Mrs Benson ask. ‘ He’s very much annoyed with all o f us.’ ‘ You can hardly blame him. I’m sorry now I took any pare in it.’ ‘ It wasn’t really very funny. I never saw the point really.’ ‘ W hat’s more w e’ve cost him a lot o f money. He may be able to afford it, but it’s unfair, all the same.’ ‘ I never believed half they said about him.’ ‘ I wish I’d got to know him. I believe he’s really very nice.’ ‘ He’s a very distinguished man and w e’ve behaved like a lot o f badly brought up children.’ There was no hatred or ridicule now in any o f their con­ versations. That evening before dinner, hejoined the Scarfields. ‘ In a couple o f days it will be getting hot,’ she said. ‘ I shan’t be here.’ ‘ N ot here? I thought you were going to Colom bo?’ He explained the change o f plan. ‘ Oh, what a pity,’ she said with an unmistakable innocence. ‘ It’s only after Port Said that one ever really gets to know people.’ ‘ I think I’ll dine at your table tonight.’ ‘ Do. W e ’ve missed you.’ So M r Pinfold returned to the Captain’s table and ordered champagne for them all. None except the Captain’s table knew

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o f his imminent departure. Throughout all the tumult o f the journey this little group had remained isolated and unaware o f what Was afoot. M r Pinfold was still not sure o f the Cap­ tain. That quiet sea-dog had turned a Nelson eye on proceed­ ings far beyond the scope o f his imagination. T m sorry we shan’t have you with us, particularly now you are feeling so much better,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘ I hope you have a comfortable flight.’ ‘ Urgent business, I suppose?’ said Glover. ‘Just impatience,’ said Mr Pinfold. He remained with the group. Glover gave him advice about tailors in Colombo and cool hotels in the hills suitable for literary work. When they broke up, Mr Pinfold said good-bye, for the Caliban was due in harbour early and all would be busy next morning. On his way to his cabin he met the dark figure o f Mr Murdoch, who stopped and spoke to him. His manner was genial and his voice richly redolent o f the industrial North. ‘ Purser tells me you’re landing tomorrow,’ he said. ‘ So am I. How do you reckon to get to Cairo?’ ‘ I haven’t really thought. Train, I suppose.’ ‘ Ever been in a W o g train? Filthy dirty and slow. I tell you what, m y firm’s sending a car for me. I’d be glad o f your company.’ So it was arranged they should travel together. The night still belonged to Angel and Goneril. ‘ Don’t trust Murdoch,’ they whispered. ‘ Murdoch is your enemy.’ There was no peace in the cabin and Mr Pinfold remained on deck watching for the poor little pharos o f Port Said, recognized its beam, saw the pilot come aboard with a launchful o f officials in tarbooshes, saw the waterfront come clear in view, populous even at that hour with touts and scarab-sellers. In the hubbub o f early morning and the successive inter­

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views with port officials Mr Pinfold was intermittently aware that Goneril and Angel were still jabbering, still impotently trying to obstruct. O nly when at last he went down the gang­ way did they fall silent. Mr Pinfold had been to Port Said often before. He had never expected to feel affection for the place. That day he did. He watched patiently while unshaven, smoking officials examined him, his passport, and his baggage. He cheerfully paid a number o f absurd impositions. An English agent o f Mr Murdoch’s company warned them: \ . . Pretty tricky drive at the moment. O nly last week there was a chap hired a car to go to Cairo. The W o g drove off the road just after Ismailia into a village. He was set on, all his luggage pinched. They even took his clothes. N ot a stitch on when the police picked him up. And all they said was he ought to consider himself lucky they hadn’t cut his throat.’ M r Pinfold did not care. He posted his letter to his wife. He and Murdoch drank a bottle o f beer at a cafe and suffered their boots to be cleaned two or three times. The funnels o f the Caliban were plainly to be seen from where he sat, but no voices came from her. Then he and Murdoch drove away out o f sight o f the unhappy ship. The road to Cairo was more warlike than he had known it ten years back when Rommel was at the gates. They passed through lanes o f barbed wire, halted and showed passports at numerous barriers, crept in dust behind convoys o f army trucks, each with a sentry crouched on the tailboard with a tommy-gun at the ready. There came a longer halt and closer scrutiny at the turning out o f the Canal Zone, where swarthy, sullen English soldiers gave place to swarthy, sullen Egyptians in almost identical uniforms. Murdoch was a man o f few words and M r Pinfold sat enveloped in his own impervious peace.

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Once during the war he had gone on a parachute course which had ended ignominiously with his breaking a leg in his first drop, but he treasured as the most serene and exalted experience* o f his life the moment o f liberation when he regained consciousness after the shock o f the slipstream. A quarter o f a minute before he had crouched over the open man­ hole in the floor o f the machine, in dusk and deafening noise, trussed in harness, crowded by apprehensive fellow-tyros. Then the dispatching officer had signalled; down he had plunged into a moment o f night, to come to himself in a silent, sunlit heaven, gently supported by what had seemed irksome bonds, absolutely isolated. There were other parachutes all round him holding other swaying bodies; there was an instructor on the ground bawling advice through a loud­ speaker; but Mr Pinfold felt himself free o f all human com­ munication, the sole inhabitant o f a private, delicious universe. The rapture was brief. Almost at once he knew he was not floating but falling; the field leaped up at him; a few seconds later he was lying on grass, entangled in cords, being shouted at, breathless, bruised, with a sharp pain in the shin. But in that moment o f solitude prosaic, earthbound M r Pinfold had been one with hashish-eaters and Corybantes and Californian gurus, high on the back-stairs o f mysticism. His mood on the road to Cairo was barely less ecstatic. Cairo was still pocked and gutted by the recent riots. It was thronged with stamp-dealers who had come for the sale o f the royal collection. Mr Pinfold had difficulty in finding a room. Murdoch obtained one for him. There was difficulty with his air passage and there too Murdoch helped. Finally on the second day when Mr Pinfold was provided by the concierge o f his hotel with all the requisite documents - including a medical certificate and a sworn statement, necessary for a halt in Arabia, that he was a Christian - and his departure was

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fixed for midnight, Murdoch invited him to dine with his business associates in Ghezira. ‘ They’ll be delighted. They don’t see many people from home these days. And to tell you the truth I’m glad to have a companion myself. I don’t much like driving about alone after dark.’ So they went to dinner in a block o f expensive modem flats. The lift was out o f order. As they climbed the stairs they passed an Egyptian soldier squatting in a flat doorway, chewing nuts, with his rifle propped behind him. ‘ One o f the old princesses,’ said Murdoch, ‘ under housearrest.’ Host and hostess greeted them kindly. Mr Pinfold looked about him. The drawing-room was furnished with the trophies o f long residence in the East. On the chimney-piece was the framed photograph o f a peer in coronation-robes. Mr Pinfold studied it. ‘ Surely that’s Simon Dumbleton?’ ‘ Yes, he’s a great friend o f ours. D o you know him?’ Before he could answer another voice broke in on that cosy scene. ‘ No, you don’t, Gilbert,’ said Goneril. ‘ Liar. Snob. You only pretend to know him because he’s a lord.’

PINFOLD REGAINED

M r P i n f o l d landed at Colombo three days later. He had spent one almost sleepless night in the aeroplane where a pallid Parsee sprawled and grunted and heaved beside him; and a second equally wakeful alone in a huge, teetotal hotel in Bombay. Night and day Angel, Goneril, and Margaret chattered to him in their several idioms. He was becoming like the mother o f fractious children who has learned to go about her business with a mind closed to their utterances; except that he had no business. He could only sit hour after hour waiting in one place or another for meals he did not want. Sometimes from sheer boredom he spoke to Margaret and learned from her further details o f the conspiracy. ‘Are you still in the ship?’ ‘ No. W e got o ff at Aden.* ‘All o f you?* ‘All three/ ‘ But the others?* ‘ There never were any others, Gilbert. Just m y brother and sister-in-law and me. Y ou saw our names in the passenger list, Mr and Mrs and Miss Angel. I thought you understood all that/ ‘ But your mother and father?’ ‘ They’re in England, at home - quite near Lychpole/ ‘ Never in the ship?’ ‘ Darling, you are slow in the uptake. W hat you heard was

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my brother. He’s really awfully good at imitations. That’s how he first got taken on by the B .B .C .’ ‘And Goneril is married to your brother? There was never anything between her and the Captain?’ ‘ No, o f course not. She’s beastly but not like that. All that was part o f the Plan.’ ‘ I think I’m beginning to understand. Y ou must see it’s all rather confusing.’ M r Pinfold puzzled his weary head over the matter; then gave it up and asked: ‘ What are you doing in Aden?’ ‘ Me? Nothing. The others have their work. It’s awfully dull for me. May I talk to you sometimes? I know I’m not a bit clever but I’ll try not to be a bore. I do so want company.’ ‘ W hy don’t you go and see the mermaid?’ ‘ I don’t understand.’ ‘ There used to be a mermaid at Aden in a box in one o f the hotels - stuffed.’ ‘ Don’t tease, Gilbert.’ ‘ I’m not teasing. And anyway that comes pretty badly from a member o f your family. Tease indeed.’ ‘ Oh, Gilbert, you don’t understand. W e were only trying to help you.’ ‘ W ho the devil said I needed help?’ ‘ Don’t be cross, Gilbert; not with me anyway. And you did need help you know. Often their plans work beautifully.’ ‘ Well, you must realize by now that it hasn’t worked with me.’ ‘ Oh, no,’ said Margaret sadly. ‘ It hasn’t worked at all.’ ‘ Then w hy not leave me alone?’ ‘ They never will now, because they hate you. And I never will, never. Y ou see I love you so. Try not to hate me, darling.’ From Cairo to Colombo he talked intermittently to Mar­ garet. To the Angels, husband and wife, he made no answer.

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Ceylon was a new country to Mr Pinfold but he had no sense o f exhilaration on arrival. He was tired and sweaty. He was tvearing the wrong clothes. His first act after leaving his luggage at the hotel was to seek the tailor Glover had recommended. The man promised to work all night and have three suits ready for him to try on next morning. ‘ Y ou ’re too fat. Y o u ’ll look ridiculous in them. They won’t f i t . . . Y ou can’t afford them . . . The tailor’s lying. He won’t make clothes for you,’ Goneril monotonously interpolated. Mr Pinfold returned to his hotel and wrote to his wife:

7 have arrived safe and w ell There does not seem to be much to see or do in Colombo. I will move as soon as I have some clothes. I rather doubt whether I shall get any work done. I had a disappoint­ ment leaving the ship. I thought I should get out o f range o f those psycho-analysts and their infernal Box. But not at all. They still annoy me with the whole length o f India between us. A s I write this letter they keep interrupting. It will be quite impossible to do any o f my book. There must be some way o f cutting the Civital waves” . I think it might be worth consulting Father Westmacott when I get back. He knows all about existentialism and psychology and ghosts and diabolic possession. Sometimes I wonder whether it is not literally the Devil who is molesting me.9 He posted this by air mail. Then he sat on the terrace watching the new cheap cars drive up and away. Here, unlike Bombay, one could drink. He drank bottled English beer. The sky darkened. A thunderstorm broke. He moved from the terrace into the lofty hall. To a man at Mr Pinfold’s time o f life few throngs comprise only strangers. In the busy hall he was greeted by an acquaintance from N ew York, a collector for one o f the art galleries, on his way to visit a ruined city on the other side o f the island. He asked Mr Pinfold to join him. A t that moment a gentle servant appeared at his side: ‘ Mr Peenfold, sir, cable.’

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It came from his wife and read: ‘Implore you return immediately9

It was not like Mrs Pinfold to issue a summons o f this kind. Could she be ill? O r one o f the children? Had the house burned down? She would surely have given some explana­ tion? It occurred to Mr Pinfold that she must be concerned on his account. That letter he had sent from Port Said, had it said anything to cause alarm? He answered: 'A ll weti Return­ ing soon. Have written today. O ff to the ruins,9 and rejoined his new companion. They dined together cheerfully, having many tastes and friends and memories in common. All that evening, though there was an undertone in his ears, M r Pin­ fold was oblivious o f the Angels. N ot till late, when he was alone in his room, did the voices break through. ‘ W e heard you, Gilbert. Y ou were lying to that American. Y o u ’ve never stayed at Rhinebeck. Y o u ’ve never heard o f Magnasco. You don’t know Osbert Sitwell.’ ‘ Oh God,’ said Mr Pinfold, ‘ how you bore m e!’ It was cooler among the ruins. There was refreshment in the leafy roads, in the spectacle o f grey elephants and orangerobed, shaven-pated monks ambling meditatively in the dust. They stopped at rest-houses where they were greeted and zealously served by old servants o f the British Raj. Mr Pinfold enjoyed himself. On the way back they stopped at the shrine o f Kandy and saw the Buddha’s tooth ceremoniously exposed. This seemed to exhaust the artistic resources o f the island. The American was on his way farther east. They parted company four days later at the hotel in Colombo where they had met. M r Pinfold was alone once more and at a loose end. He found waiting for him a pile o f clothes from the tailor and another cable from his wife: ‘Both your letters received. Am coming to join y ou 9

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It had been handed in at Lychpole that morning. ‘ He hates his wife/ said Goneril. ‘ She bores you, doesn’t she, Gilbert? You don’t want to go home, do you? You dread seeing her again.’ That decided him. He cabled: Returning at once9 and set about his preparations. The three suits were pale pinkish buff (‘ H ow smart you look,’ cried Margaret); they were not entirely useless. He wore them on successive days; first in Colombo. It was Sunday and he went to Mass for the first time since he had been struck ill. The voices followed him. The taxi took him first to the Anglican church. \ . . W hat’s the differ­ ence, Gilbert? It’s all nonsense anyway. You don’t believe in God. There’s no one here to show o ff to. N o one will listen to your prayers - except us. We shall hear them. Y ou ’re going to pray to be left alone, aren’t you, Gilbert? Aren’t you? But only we will hear and we w on’t let you alone. Never, Gilbert, never . . . ’ But when he reached the little Catholic church, which ironically enough, he found to be dedicated to St Michael and the Angels, only Margaret followed him into the dusky, crowded interior. She knew the Mass and made the Latin responses in clear, gentle tones. Epistle and Gospel were read in the vernacular. There was a short sermon, during which M r Pinfold asked: ‘ Margaret, are you a Catholic?’ ‘ In a w ay/ ‘ In what w ay?’ ‘ That’s something you mustn’t ask/ Then she rose with him to recite the creed and later, at the sacring-bell, she urged: ‘ Pray for them, Gilbert. They need prayers/ But M r Pinfold could not pray for Angel and Goneril. O n Monday he arranged his passage. O n Tuesday he spent another ineffably tedious night at Bombay. O n Wednesday

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night at Karachi he changed back into winter clothes. Some­ where on the sea they may have passed the Caliban. They steered far clear o f Aden. Across the Moslem world the voices o f hate pursued M r Pinfold. It was when they reached Christendom that Angel changed his tune. At breakfast at Rome Mr Pinfold addressed the waiter, who spoke rather good English, in rather bad Italian. It was an affectation which Goneril was quick to exploit. ‘ N o spikka da Eenglish,’ she jeered. ‘ Kissa da monk. Dolce far niente/ ‘ Shut up,’ said Angel sharply. ‘ W e’ve had enough o f that. I’ve got to talk to Gilbert seriously. Listen, Gilbert, I’ve got a proposition to make.’ But Mr Pinfold would not answer. Intermittently throughout the flight to Paris Angel at­ tempted to open a discussion. ‘ Gilbert, do listen to me. W e’ve got to come to some arrangement. Time’s getting short. Gilbert, old boy, do be reasonable.’ His tone changed from friendliness to cajolery, at length to a whine; the voice which had been so well-bred was now the underdog’s voice which M r Pinfold remembered from their brief meeting at Lychpole. ‘ Do speak to him, Gilbert,’ Margaret pleaded. ‘ He’s really very worried.’ ‘ So he should be. If your miserable brother wants me to reply he can address me properly, as “ M r Pinfold” , or “ Sir” / ‘ Very well, M r Pinfold, sir,’ said Angel. ‘ That’s better. N o w what have you to say?’ ‘ I want to apologize. I’ve made a mess o f the whole Plan/ ‘ You certainly have/ ‘ It was a serious scientific experiment. Then I let personal malice interfere. I’m sorry, Mr Pinfold/

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‘ W ell, keep quiet then/ ‘ That’s just what I was going to suggest. Look here, Gil— Mr Pinfold, sir - let’s do a deal. I’ll switch o ff the apparatus. I promise on m y honour w e’ll none o f us ever worry you again. A ll we ask in return is that you don’t say anything to anyone in England about us. It could ruin our whole work if it got talked about. Just say nothing, and you’ll never hear from us again. Tell your wife you had noises in the head through taking those grey pills. Tell her anything you like but tell her it’s all over. She’ll believe you. She’ll be delighted to hear it/ ‘ I’ll think it over,’ said Mr Pinfold. He thought it over. There were strong attractions in the bargain. Could Angel be trusted? He was in a panic now at the prospect o f getting into trouble with the B .B .C . ‘ N ot the B .B .C., darling,’ said Margaret. ‘ It isn’t them that worry him. They know all about his experiments. It’s Reggie Graves-Upton. He must never know. He’s a sort o f cousin, you see, and he would tell our aunt and father and mother and everyone. It would cause the most frightful complications. Gilbert, you must never tell anyone, promise, especially not cousin Reggie.’ ‘And you, M eg/ said Mr Pinfold in bantering but fond tones, ‘ are you going to leave me alone too?’ ‘ Oh, Gilbert, dearest, it’s not a thing to joke about. I’ve so loved being with you. I shall miss you more than anyone I’ve ever known in m y life. I shall never forget you. If m y brother switches o ff it will be a kind o f death for me. But I know I have to suffer. I’ll be brave. You must accept the offer, Gilbert/ ‘ I’ll let you know before I reach London,’ said M r Pinfold. Presently they were over England. ‘ W ell,’ said Angel, ‘ what’s your answer?’

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‘ I said “ London” / Later they were over London airport. ‘ Fasten your belts please. N o smoking/ ‘ Here we are/ said Angel. ‘ Speak up. Is it a deal?’ ‘ I don’t call this London/ said M r Pinfold. He had cabled to his wife from Rome that he would go straight to the hotel they always used. He did not wait for the other passengers to board the bus. Instead he hired a car. Not until they were in the borough o f Acton did he reply to Angel. Then he said: ‘ The answer is: no/ ‘ Y ou can’t mean it.’ Angel was unaffectedly aghast. ‘ W hy, Mr Pinfold, sir? W h y ?’ ‘ First, because I don’t accept your word o f honour. You don’t know what honour is. Secondly, I thoroughly dislike you and your revolting wife. Y ou have been extremely offensive to me and I intend to make you suffer for it. Thirdly, I think your plans, your work as you call it, highly dangerous. Y ou ’ve driven one man to suicide, perhaps others too, that I don’t know about. You tried to drive me. Heaven knows what you’ve done to Roger Stillingfleet. Heaven knows who you may attack next. Apart from any private resentment I feel, I regard you as a public menace that has got to be silenced/ ‘All right, Gilbert, if that’s the way you want it - ’ ‘ Don’t call me “ Gilbert” and don’t talk like a film gangster.’ ‘All right, Gilbert. Y o u ’ll pay for this.’ But there was no confidence to his threats. Angel was a beaten man and knew it. ‘ Mrs Pinfold arrived an hour ago/ the concierge told him. ‘ She is waiting for you in your room.’ Mr Pinfold took the lift, walked down the corridor, and

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opened the door, with Goneril and Angel raucous on either side. He was shy o f his wife, when they met. ‘ You hok all right/ she said. ‘ I am all right. I have this trouble I wrote to you about, but I hope I can get it cleared up. I’m sorry not to be more affectionate, but it’s a little embarasssing having three people listening to everything one says/ ‘ Yes/ said Mrs Pinfold. ‘ It must be. I can see that. Have you had luncheon?’ ‘ Hours ago, in Paris. O f course there’s the difference o f an hour/ T v e had none. I’ll order something now/ ‘ H ow you hate her, Gilbert! How she bores y o u !’ said Goneril. ‘ Don’t believe a word she says/ said Angel. ‘ She’s very pretty,’ Margaret conceded, ‘ and very kind. But she is not good enough for you. I suppose you think f m jealous. W ell, I am/ *Vm sorry to be so uncommunicative,’ said M r Pinfold. ‘ You see these abominable people keep talking to me/ ‘ Most distracting/ said Mrs Pinfold. 'M ost/ The waiter brought a tray. W hen he had gone Mrs Pinfold said: ‘ Y ou know you’ve got it all wrong about this Mr Angel. As soon as I got your letter I telephoned to Arthur at the B .B .C . and inquired. Angel has been in England all the time.’ ‘Don't listen to her. She's lying/ M r Pinfold was dumbfounded. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ ‘Ask them yourself/ M r Pinfold went to the telephone. He had a friend named Arthur high in the talks department. ‘Arthur that fellow who came down to interview me last

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summer, Angel - haven’t you sent him to Aden . . . you haven’t? He’s in England now? . . . No, I don’t want to speak to him . . . It’s just that I ran across someone rather like him on board ship . . . Good-bye . . . W ell,’ he said to his wife, *1 simply don’t know what to make o f this.’ ‘ I may as well tell you the truth,’ said Angel. ‘ W e never were in that ship. W e worked the whole thing from the studio in England.’ ‘ They must be working the whole thing from a studio in England,’ said Mr Pinfold. ‘ M y poor darling,’ said Mrs Pinfold, ‘ no one’s “ worked” anything. Y ou ’re imagining it all. Just to make sure I asked Father Westmacott as you suggested. He says the whole thing’s utterly impossible. There just isn’t any sort o f invention by the Gestapo or the B .B .C . or the Existentialists or the psycho­ analysts - nothing at all, the least like what you think.’ ‘ N o B o x?’ ‘ N o B ox.’ ‘ D on’t believe her. She’s lying. She’s lying,’ said Goneril but with every word her voice dwindled as though a great distance was being put between them. Her last word was little more than the thin grating o f a slate-pencil. ‘ Y ou mean that everything I’ve heard said, I’ve been saying to myself? It’s hardly conceivable.’ ‘ It’s perfectly true, darling,’ said Margaret. ‘ I never had a brother or a sister-in-law, no father, no mother, nothing . . . I don’t exist, Gilbert. There isn’t any me, anywhere at all . . . but I do love you, Gilbert. I don’t exist but I do love . . . Good-bye . . . Love . . . ’ and her voice too trailed away, sank to a whisper, a sigh, the rustle o f a pillow; then was silent. M r Pinfold sat in the silence. There had been other occasions o f seeming release which had proved illusory. This he knew was the final truth. He was alone with his wife.

T HE O R D E A L OF G I L B E R T P I N F O L D

‘ They’ve gone/ he said at length. ‘ In that minute. Gone for good.’ ‘ I hope fhat’s true. W hat are we going to do now? I couldn’t make any plans till I knew what sort o f state I’d find you in. Father Westmacott gave me the name o f a man he says we can trust.’ ‘A looney doctor?’ ‘A psychologist - but a Catholic so he must be all right.’ ‘ N o,’ said Mr Pinfold. T v e had enough o f psychology. How about taking the tea train home?’ Mrs Pinfold hesitated. She had come to London prepared to see her husband into a nursing-home. She said: ‘Are you sure you oughtn’t to see somebody.’ ‘ I might see Drake,’ said Mr Pinfold. So they went to Paddington and took their seats in the restaurant car. It was full o f neighbours returning from a day’s shopping. They ate toasted buns and the familiar landscape rolled past invisible in the dark and misted window-panes. ‘ W e heard you’d gone to the tropics, Gilbert.’ ‘Just back.’ ‘ You didn’t stay long. Was it boring?’ ‘ N o,’ said M r Pinfold, ‘not the least boring. It was most exciting. But I had enough.’ Their neighbours always had thought Mr Pinfold rather odd. ‘ But it was exciting,’ said Mr Pinfold when he and his wife were alone in the car driving home. ‘ It was the most exciting thing, really, that ever happened to me,’ and during the days which followed he recounted every detail o f his long ordeal. The hard frost had given place to fog and intermittent sleet. The house was as cold as ever but M r Pinfold was con­ tent to sit over the fire and, like a warrior returned from a

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hard fought victory, relive his trials, endurances and achieve­ ments. N o sound troubled him from that other half-world into which he had stumbled but there was nothing dreamlike about his memories. They remained undiminished and un­ obscured, as sharp and hard as any event o f his waking life. ‘ W hat I can’t understand is this/ he said: ‘ If I was supplying all the information to the Angels, w hy did I tell them such a lot o f rot? I mean to say, i f I wanted to draw up an indictment o f myself I could make a far blacker and more plausible case than they did. I can’t understand/ Mr Pinfold never has understood this; nor has anyone been able to suggest a satisfactory explanation. ‘ You know/ he said, some evenings later, ‘ I was very near accepting Angel’s offer. Supposing I had, and the voices had stopped just as they have done now, I should have believed that that infernal B ox existed. A ll m y life I should have lived in the fear that at any moment the whole thing might start up again. O r for all I knew they might just have been listening all the time and not saying anything. It would have been an awful situation.’ ‘ It was very brave o f you to turn down the offer/ said Mrs Pinfold. ‘ It was sheer bad temper/ said Mr Pinfold quite truthfully. ‘All the same, I think you ought to see a doctor. There must have been something the matter with you.’ ‘Just those pills/ said M r Pinfold. They were his last illusion. W hen finally D r Drake came M r Pinfold said: ‘ Those grey pills you gave me. They were pretty strong/ ‘ They seem to have worked/ said D r Drake. ‘ Could they have made me hear voices?’ ‘ Good heavens, no.’ ‘ Not if they were mixed with bromide and chloral?’

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‘ There wasn’t any chloral in the mixture I gave you/ ‘ No. But to tell you the truth I had a bottle o f m y own/ Dr Drake did not seem shocked by the revelation. ‘ That is always the trouble with patients/ he said. ‘ One never knows what else they’re taking on the quiet. I’ve known people make themselves thoroughly ill/ ‘ I was thoroughly ill. I heard voices for nearly a fortnight/ ‘And they’ve stopped now ?’ ‘ Yes/ ‘And you’ve stopped the bromide and chloral?’ ‘ Yes.’ ‘ Then I don’t think we have far to look. I should keep off that mixture i f I were you. It can’t be the right thing for you. I’ll send something else. Those voices were pretty offensive, I suppose?’ ‘Abominable. H ow did you know ?’ ‘ They always are. Lots o f people hear voices from time to time - nearly always offensive.’ ‘ You don’t think he ought to see a psychologist?’ asked Mrs Pinfold. ‘ He can i f he likes, o f course, but it sounds like a perfectly simple case o f poisoning to me/ ‘ That’s a relief,’ said Mrs Pinfold, but M r Pinfold accepted this diagnosis less eagerly. He knew, and the others did not know - not even his wife, least o f all his medical adviser that he had endured a great ordeal, and unaided, had emerged the victor. There was a triumph to be celebrated, even i f a mocking slave stood always beside him in his chariot remind­ ing him o f mortality. Next day was Sunday. After Mass Mr Pinfold said: ‘ You know I can’t face the Bruiser. It’s going to be several weeks before I can talk to him about his Box. Have a fire lighted in the library. I’m going to do some writing/

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As the wood crackled and a barely perceptible warmth began to spread among the chilly shelves, Mr Pinfold sat down to work for the first time since his fiftieth birthday. He took the pile o f manuscript, his unfinished novel, from the drawer and glanced through it. The story was still clear in his mind. He knew what had to be done. But there was more urgent business first, a hamper to be unpacked o f fresh, rich experience - perishable goods. He returned the manuscript to the drawer, spread a new quire o f foolscap before him, and wrote in his neat, steady hand: The Ordeal o f Gilbert Pinfold A Conversation Piece Chapter One Portrait o f the Artist in Middle-age

Tactical Exercise

o h n V e r n e y married Elizabeth in 1938, but it was not until the winter o f 1945 that he came to hate her steadily and fiercely. There had been countless brief gusts o f hate before this, for it was a thing which came easily to him. He was not what is normally described as a bad-tempered man, rather the reverse; a look o f fatigue and abstraction was the only visible sign o f the passion which possessed him, as others are possessed by laughter or desire, several times a day. During the war he passed among those he served with as a phlegmatic fellow. He did not have his good or his bad days; they were all uniformly good or bad; good in that he did what had to be done, expeditiously without ever ‘ getting in a flap* or ‘ going off the deep end’ ; bad from the intermittent, invisible sheet-lightning o f hate which flashed and flickered deep inside him at every obstruction or reverse. In his orderly room when, as a company commander, he faced the morning procession o f defaulters and malingerers; in the mess when the subalterns disturbed his reading by playing the wireless; at the Staff College when the ‘ syndicate* disagreed with his solution; at Brigade h .q . when the staff-sergeant mislaid a file or the telephone orderly muddled a call; when the driver o f his car missed a turning; later, in hospital, when the doctor seemed to look cursorily at his wound and the nurses stood gossiping jauntily at the beds o f more likeable patients instead o f doing their duty to him - in all the annoyances o f army life which others dismissed with an oath and a shrug, John

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Verney’s eyelids drooped wearily, a tiny grenade o f hate exploded, and the fragments rang and ricocheted round the steel walls o f his mind. There had been less to annoy him before the war. He had some money and the hope o f a career in politics. Before marriage he served his apprenticeship to the Liberal party in two hopeless by-elections. The Central Office then rewarded him with a constituency in outer London which offered a fair chance in the next general election. In the eighteen months before the war he nursed this constituency from his flat in Belgravia and travelled frequently on the Continent to study political conditions. These studies convinced him that war was inevitable; he denounced the Munich agreement pungently and secured a commission in the Territorial Army. Into the peacetime life Elizabeth fitted unobtrusively. She was his cousin. In 193 8 she had reached the age o f twenty-six, four years his junior, without falling in love. She was a calm, handsome young woman, an only child, with some money o f her own and more to come. As a girl, in her first season, an injudicious remark, let slip and overheard, got her the reputation o f cleverness. Those who knew her best ruthlessly called her ‘ deep’ . Thus condemned to social failure, she languished in the ballrooms o f Pont Street for another year and then settled down to a life o f concert-going and shopping with her mother, until she surprised her small circle o f friends by marrying John Verney. Courtship and consummation were tepid, cousinly, harmonious. They agreed, in face o f coming war, to remain childless. N o one knew what Elizabeth felt or thought about anything. Her judgements were mainly negative, deep or dull as you cared to take them. She had none o f the appearance o f a woman likely to inflame great hate.

T A C T I C A L EXERCISE

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John Verney was discharged from the Arm y early in 1945 with a m . c . and one leg, for the future, two inches shorter than the other. He found Elizabeth living in Hampstead with her parents, his uncle and aunt. She had kept him informed c f the changes in her condition, but, preoccupied, he had not clearly imagined them. Their flat had been requisitioned by a government office; their furniture and books sent to a reposi­ tory and totally lost, partly burned by a bomb, partly pillaged by firemen. Elizabeth, who was a linguist, had gone to work in a clandestine branch o f the Foreign Office. Her parents’ house had once been a substantial Georgian villa overlooking the Heath. John Verney arrived there early in the morning after a crowded night’s journey from Liver­ pool. The wrought-iron railings and gates had been rudely tom away by the salvage collectors, and in the front garden, once so neat, weeds and shrubs grew in a rank jungle trampled at night by courting soldiers. The back garden was a single, small bomb-crater; heaped clay, statuary, and the bricks and glass o f ruined greenhouses; dry stalks o f willow-herb stood breast high over the mounds. All the windows were gone from the back o f the house, replaced by shutters o f card and board, which put the main rooms in perpetual darkness. ‘ Welcome to Chaos and Old N ight,’ said his uncle genially. There were no servants; the old had fled, the young had been conscribed for service. Elizabeth made him some tea before leaving for her office. Here he lived, lucky, Elizabeth told him, to have a home. Furniture was unprocurable, furnished flats commanded a price beyond their income, which was now taxed to a bare wage. They might have found something in the country, but Elizabeth, being childless, could not get release from her work. Moreover, he had his constituency. This, too, was transformed. A factory wired round like a

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prisoner-of-war camp stood in the public gardens. The streets surrounding it, once the trim houses o f potential Liberals, had been Ipombed, patched, confiscated, and filled with an immigrant proletarian population. Every day he received a heap o f complaining letters from constituents exiled in provincial boarding-houses. He had hoped that his decoration and his limp might earn him sympathy, but he found the new inhabitants indifferent to the fortunes o f war. Instead they showed a sceptical curiosity about Social Security. ‘ They’re nothing but a lot o f reds,’ said the Liberal agent. ‘ You mean I shan’t get in?’ ‘ Well, w e’ll give them a good fight. The Tories are putting up a Battle-of-Britain pilot. I’m afraid he’ll get most o f what’s left o f the middle-class vote.’ In the event John Verney came bottom o f the poll, badly. A rancorous Jewish schoolteacher was elected. The Central Office paid his deposit, but the election had cost him dear. And when it was over there was absolutely nothing for John Verney to do. He remained in Hampstead, helped his aunt make the beds after Elizabeth had gone to her office, limped to the green­ grocer and fishmonger, and stood, full o f hate, in the queues; helped Elizabeth wash up at night. They ate in the kitchen, where his aunt cooked deliciously the scanty rations. His uncle went three days a week to help pack parcels for Java. Elizabeth, the deep one, never spoke o f her work, which, in fact, was concerned with setting up hostile and oppressive governments in Eastern Europe. One evening at a restaurant, a man came and spoke to her, a tall young man whose sallow aquiline face was full o f intellect and humour. ‘ That’s the head o f my department,’ she said. ‘ He’s so amusing.’ ‘ Looks like a Jew.’ ‘ I believe he is. He’s a strong Conservative and hates the

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work,’ she added hastily, for since his defeat in the election John had become fiercely anti-Semitic. ‘ There is absolutely no need to work for the State now/ he said. ‘ The war’s over.* ‘ Our work is just beginning. They won’t let any o f us go. You must understand what conditions are in this country/ It often fell to Elizabeth to explain ‘ conditions’ to him. Strand by strand, knot by knot, through the coalless winter, she exposed the vast net o f governmental control which had been woven in his absence. He had been reared in traditional Liberalism and the system revolted him. More than this, it had him caught, personally, tripped up, tied, tangled; wherever he wanted to go, whatever he wanted to do or have done, he found himself baffled and frustrated. And as Elizabeth ex­ plained she found herself defending. This regulation was necessary to avoid that ill; such a country was suffering, as Britain was not, for having neglected such a precaution; and so on, calmly and reasonably. ‘ I know it’s maddening, John, but you must realize it’s the same for everyone.’ ‘ That’s what all you bureaucrats want,’ he said. ‘ Equality through slavery. The two-class state - proletarians and officials.’ Elizabeth was part and parcel o f it. She worked for the State and the Jews. She was a collaborator with the new, alien, occupying power. And as the winter wore on and the gas burned feebly in the stove, and the rain blew in through the patched windows, as at length spring came and buds broke in the obscene wilderness round the house, Elizabeth in his mind became something more important. She became a symbol. For just as soldiers in far-distant camps think o f their wives, with a tenderness they seldom felt at home, as the embodi­ ment o f all the good things they have left behind, wives who

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perhaps were scolds and drabs, but in the desert and jungle become transfigured until their trite air-letters become texts o f hope, so Elizabeth grew in John Verney’s despairing mind to more than human malevolence as the archpriestess and maenad o f the century o f the common man. ‘ Y ou aren’t looking well, John,’ said his aunt. ‘ You and Elizabeth ought to get away for a bit. She is due for leave at Easter/ ‘ The State is granting her a supplementary ration o f her husband’s company, you mean. Are we sure she has filled in all the correct forms? O r are commissars o f her rank above such things? ’ Uncle and aunt laughed uneasily. John made his little jokes with such an air o f weariness, with such a droop o f the eyelids that they sometimes struck chill in that family circle. Elizabeth regarded him gravely and silently. John was far from well. His leg was in constant pain so that he no longer stood in queues. He slept badly; as also, for the first time in her life, did Elizabeth. They shared a room now, for the winter rains had brought down ceilings in many parts o f the shaken house and the upper rooms were thought to be unsafe. They had twin beds on the ground floor in what had once been her father’s library. In the first days o f his homecoming John had been amorous. N o w he never approached her. They lay night after night six feet apart in the darkness. Once when John had been awake for two hours he turned on the lamp that stood on the table between them. Elizabeth was lying with her eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. ‘ I’m sorry. Did I wake you?’ ‘ I haven’t been asleep/ ‘ I thought I’d read for a bit. W ill it disturb you?’ ‘ N ot at all.’

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She turned away. John read for an hour. He did not know whether she was awake or asleep when he turned o ff the light. Often after that he longed to put on the light, but was afraid to find her awake and staring. Instead, he lay, as others lie in a luxurious rapture o f love, hating her. It did not occur to him to leave her; or, rather, it did occur from time to time, but he hopelessly dismissed the thought. Her life was bound tight to his; her family was his family; their finances were intertangled and their expectations lay together in the same quarters. To leave her would be to start fresh, alone and naked in a strange world; and lame and weary at the age o f thirty-eight, John Verney had not the heart to move. He loved no one else. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Moreover he suspected, o f late, that it would not hurt her if he went. And, above all, the single steadfast desire left to him was to do her ill. ‘ I wish she were dead/ he said to himself as he lay awake at night. ‘ I wish she were dead/ Sometimes they went out together. As the winter passed, John took to dining once or twice a week at his club. He assumed that on these occasions she stayed at home, but one morning it transpired that she too had dined out the evening before. He did not ask with whom, but his aunt did, and Elizabeth replied, ‘Just someone from the office/ ‘ The Jew?’ John asked. ‘As a matter o f fact, it was/ ‘ I hope you enjoyed it/ ‘ Quite. A beastly dinner, o f course, but he’s very amusing/ One night when he returned from his club, after a dismal little dinner and two crowded Tube journeys, he found Elizabeth in bed and deeply asleep. She did not stir when he entered. Unlike her normal habit, she was snoring. He stood for a minute, fascinated by this new and unlovely aspect o f her,

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her head thrown back, her mouth open and slightly dribbling at the comer. Then he shook her. She muttered something, turned over, and slept heavily and soundlessly. Half an hour later, as he was striving to compose himself for sleep, she began to snore again. He turned on the light, and looked at her more closely and noticed with surprise, which suddenly changed to joyous hope, that there was a tube o f unfamiliar pills, half empty, beside her on the bed table. He examined it. ‘24 Comprimes narcotiques, hypnotiques,’ he read, and then in large scarlet letters, ‘ n e p a s d e p a s s e r d e u x / He counted those which were left. Eleven. W ith tremulous butterfly wings hope began to flutter in his heart, became a certainty. He felt a fire kindle and spread inside him until he was deliciously suffused in every limb and organ. He lay, listening to the snores, with the pure excite­ ment o f a child on Christmas Eve. ‘ I shall wake up tomorrow and find her dead/ he told himself, as once he had felt the flaccid stocking at the foot o f his bed and told himself, ‘ Tomorrow I shall wake up and find it full/ Like a child, he longed to sleep to hasten the morning and, like a child, he was wildly ecstatically sleepless. Presently he swallowed two o f the pills himself and almost at once was unconscious. Elizabeth always rose first to make breakfast for the family. She was at the dressing-table when sharply, without drow­ siness, his memory stereoscopically clear about the incidents o f the night before, John awoke. ‘ Y ou ’ve been snoring/ she said. Disappointment was so intense that at first he could not speak. Then he said, ‘ You snored, too, last night/ ‘ It must be the sleeping-tablet I took. I must say it gave me a good night/ ‘ Only one?’ ‘ Yes, two’s the most that’s safe/

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‘ Where did you get them?’ ‘A friend at the office - the one you called the Jew. He has them prescribed by a doctor for when he’s working too hard. I told him I wasn’t sleeping, so he gave me half a bottle.’ ‘ Could he get me some?’ ‘ I expect so. He can do most things like that.’ So he and Elizabeth began to drug themselves regularly and passed long, vacuous nights. But often John delayed, letting the beatific pill lie beside his glass o f water, while knowing the vigil was terminable at will, he postponed the jo y o f un­ consciousness, heard Elizabeth’s snores, and hated her sumptuously. One evening while the plans for the holiday were still under discussion, John and Elizabeth went to the cinema. The film was a murder story o f no great ingenuity but with showy scenery. A bride murdered her husband by throwing him out o f a window, down a cliff. Things were made easy for her by his taking a lonely lighthouse for their honeymoon. He was very rich and she wanted his money. A ll she had to do was to confide in the local doctor and a few neighbours that her husband frightened her by walking in his sleep; she doped his coffee, dragged him from the bed to the balcony - a feat o f some strength - where she had already broken away a yard o f balustrade, and rolled him over. Then she went back to bed, gave the alarm the next morning, and wept over the mangled body which was presently discovered half awash on the rocks. Retribution overtook her later, but at the time the thing was a complete success. ‘ I wish it were as easy as that,’ thought John, and in a few hours the whole tale had floated away in those lightless attics o f the mind where films and dreams and funny stories lie spider-shrouded for a lifetime unless, as sometimes happens, an intruder brings them to light.

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Such a thing happened a few weeks later when John and Elizabeth went for their holiday. Elizabeth found the place. It belonged to someone in her office. It was named Good Hope Fort, and stood on the Cornish coast. ‘ It’s only just been derequisitioned,’ she said; ‘ I expect w e shall find it in pretty bad condition.’ ‘ W e’re used to that,’ said John. It did not occur to him that she should spend her leave anywhere but with him. She was as much part o f him as his maimed and aching leg. They arrived on a gusty April afternoon after a train journey o f normal discomfort. A taxi drove them eight miles from the station, through deep Cornish lanes, past granite cottages and disused, archaic tin-workings. They reached the village which gave the houses its postal address, passed through it and out along a track which suddenly emerged from its high banks into open grazing land on the cliff’s edge, high, swift clouds and sea-birds wheeling overhead, the turf at their feet alive with fluttering wild flowers, salt in the air, below them the roar o f the Atlantic breaking on the rocks, a middledistance o f indigo and white tumbled waters and beyond it the serene arc o f the horizon. Here was the house. ‘ Your father,’ said John, ‘ would now say, “ Your castle hath a pleasant seat” .’ ‘ W ell, it has rather, hasn’t it?’ It was a small stone building on the very edge o f the cliff, built a century or so ago for defensive purposes, converted to a private house in the years o f peace, taken again by the N avy during the war as a signal station, now once more reverting to gentler uses. Some coils o f rusty wire, a mast, the concrete foundations o f a hut, gave evidence o f its former masters. They carried their things into the house and paid the taxi.

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‘A woman comes up every morning from the village. I said we shouldn’t want her this evening. I see she’s left us some oil for the lamps. She’s got a fire going too, bless her, and plenty o f wood. Oh, and look what I’ve got as a present from father. I promised not to tell you until we arrived. A bottle o f whisky. Wasn’t it sweet o f him. He’s been hoarding his ration for three months. . . . ’ Elizabeth talked brightly as she began to arrange the luggage. ‘ There’s a room for each o f us. This is the only proper living-room, but there’s a study in case you feel like doing any work. I believe we shall be quite comfortable. The living-room was built with two stout bays, each with a French window opening on a balcony which over-hung the sea. John opened one and the sea-wind filled the room. He stepped out, breathed deeply, and then said suddenly: ‘ Hullo, this is dangerous.’ A t one place, between the windows, the cast-iron balustrade had broken away and the stone ledge lay open over the cliff. He looked at the gap and at the foaming rocks below, momentarily puzzled. The irregular polyhedron o f memory rolled uncertainly and came to rest. He had been here before, a few weeks ago, on the gallery o f the lighthouse in that swiftly forgotten film. He stood there looking down. It was exactly thus that the waves had come swirling over the rocks, had broken and dropped back with the spray falling about them. This was the sound they had made; this was the broken ironwork and the sheer edge. Elizabeth was still talking in the room, her voice drowned by wind and sea. John returned to the room, shut and fastened the door. In the quiet she was saying \ .. only got the furniture out o f store last week. He left the woman from the village to arrange it. She’s got some queer ideas, I must say. Just look where she p u t . . . ’

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‘ W hat did you say this house was called?’ ‘ Good Hope/ ‘A good name.’ That evening John drank a glass o f his father-in-law’s whisky, smoked a pipe, and planned. He had been a good tactician. He made a leisurely, mental ‘ appreciation o f the situation’ . Object: murder. W hen they rose to go to bed he asked: ‘ You packed the tablets?’ ‘ Yes, a new tube. But I am sure I shan’t want any tonight.’ ‘ Neither shall I,’ said John, ‘ the air is wonderful.’ During the following days he considered the tactical prob­ lem. It was entirely simple. He had the ‘ staff-solution’ already. He considered it in the words and form he had used in the Army. ‘. . . Courses open to the enem y. . . achievement o f surprise . . . consolidation o f success.’ The staff-solution was exemplary. A t the beginning o f the first week, he began to put it into execution. Already, by easy stages, he had made himself known in the village. Elizabeth was a friend o f the owner; he the returned hero, still a little strange in civvy street. ‘ The first holiday my wife and I have had together for six years,’ he told them in the g olf club and, growing more confidential at the bar, hinted that they were thinking o f making up for lost time and starting a family. On another evening he spoke o f war-strain, o f how in this war the civilians had had a worse time o f it than the services. His wife, for instance; stuck it all through the blitz; office work all day, bombs at night. She ought to get right away, alone somewhere for a long stretch; her nerves had suffered; nothing serious, but to tell the truth he wasn’t quite happy about it. As a matter o f fact he had found her walking in her sleep once or twice in London.

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His companions knew o f similar cases; nothing to worry about, but it wanted watching; didn’t want it to develop into anything worse. Had she seen a doctor? Not yet, John said. In fact she didn’t know she had been sleep-walking. He had got her back to bed without waking her. He hoped the sea air would do her good. In fact, she seemed much better already. If she showed any more signs o f the trouble when they got home, he knew a very good man to take her to. The go lf club was full o f sympathy. John asked if there were a good doctor in the neighbourhood. Yes, they said, old Mackenzie in the village, a first-class man, wasted in a little place like this; not at all stick-in-the-mud. Read the latest books, psychology and all that. They couldn’t think why Old Mack had never specialized and made a name for himself. ‘ I think I might go and talk to Old Mack about it,’ said John. ‘ Do. You couldn’t find a better fellow.’ Elizabeth had a fortnight’s leave. There were still three days to go when John went off to the village to consult Dr Mack­ enzie. He found a grey-haired, genial bachelor in a consulting room that was more like a lawyer’s office than a physician’s, book-lined, dark, permeated by tobacco smoke. Seated in the shabby leather armchair he developed in more precise language the story he had told in the golf club. Dr Mackenzie listened without comment. ‘ It’s the first time I’ve run against anything like this,’ he concluded. At length Dr Mackenzie said: ‘ You got pretty badly knocked about in the war, Mr Verney?’ ‘ M y knee. It still gives me trouble.’ ‘ Bad time in hospital?’ ‘ Three months. A beastly place outside Rome.’

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‘ There’s always a good deal o f nervous shock in an injury o f that kind. It often persists when the wound is healed.’ ‘ Yes, buf I don’t quite understand ‘ M y dear M r Verney, your wife asked me to say nothing about it, but I think I must tell you that she has already been here to consult me on this matter.’ ‘About her sleep-walking? But she can’t . . . ’ Then John stopped. ‘ M y dear fellow, I quite understand. She thought you didn’t know. Twice lately you’ve been out o f bed and she had to lead you back. She knows all about it.’ John could find nothing to say. ‘ It’s not the first time,’ Dr Mackenzie continued, ‘ that I’ve been consulted by patients who have told me their symptoms and said they had come on behalf o f friends or relations. Usually it’s girls who think they’re in a family way. It’s an interesting feature o f your case that you should want to ascribe the trouble to someone else, probably the decisive feature. I’ve given your wife the name o f a man in London who I think will be able to help you. Meanwhile I can advise plenty o f exercise, light meals at night John Verney limped back to Good Hope Fort in a state o f consternation. Security had been compromised; the opera­ tion must be cancelled; initiative had been lost . . . all the phrases o f the tactical school came to his mind, but he was still numb after this unexpected reverse. A vast and naked horror peeped at him and was thrust aside. W hen he got back Elizabeth was laying the supper table. He stood on the balcony and stared at the gaping rails with eyes smarting with disappointment. It was dead calm that evening. The rising tide lapped and fell and mounted again silently among the rocks below. He stood gazing down, then he turned back into the room.

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There was one large drink left in the whisky bottle. He poured it out and swallowed it. Elizabeth brought in the supper and they sat down. Gradually his mind grew a little calmer. They usually ate in silence. At last he said: ‘ Elizabeth, w hy did you tell the doctor I had been walking in my sleep?’ She quietly put down the plate she had been holding and looked at him curiously. ‘ W h y?’ she said gently. ‘ Because I was worried, o f course. I didn’t think you knew about it.’ ‘ But have I been?’ ‘ Oh yes, several times - in London and here. I didn’t think it mattered at first, but the night before last I found you on the balcony, quite near that dreadful hole in the rails. I was really frightened. But it’s going to be all right now. Dr Mackenzie has given me the name It was possible, thought John Verney; nothing was more likely. He had lived night and day for ten days thinking o f that opening, o f the sea and rock below, the ragged ironwork and the sharp edge o f stone. He suddenly felt defeated, sick and stupid, as he had as he lay on the Italian hillside with his smashed knee. Then as now he had felt weariness even more than pain. ‘ Coffee, darling.’ Suddenly he roused himself. ‘ N o,’ he almost shouted. ‘ No, no, no.’ ‘ Darling, what is the matter? Don’t get excited. Are you feeling ill? Lie down on the sofa near the window.’ He did as he was told. He felt so weary that he could barely move from his chair. ‘ Do you think coffee would keep you awake, love? You look quite fit to drop already. There, lie down.’ He lay down, like the tide slowly mounting among the

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rocks below, sleep rose and spread in his mind. He nodded and woke with a start. ‘ Shall I open the window, darling, and give you some air?’ ‘Elizabeth/ he said, ‘ I feel as i f I have been drugged/ Like the rocks below the window - now awash, now emerging clear from falling water; now awash again deeper; now barely visible, mere patches on the face o f gentle eddying foam - his brain was softly drowning. He roused himself, as children do in nightmare, still scared, still half asleep. ‘ I can’t be drugged/ he said loudly, ‘ I never touched the coffee/ ‘ Drugs in the coffee?’ said Elizabeth gently, like a nurse soothing a fractious child. ‘ Drugs in the coffee? W hat an absurd idea. That’s the kind o f thing that only happens on the films, darling.’ He did not hear her. He was fast asleep, snoring stertorously by the open window.

Love Among the Ruins A R O M A N C E OF TH E NEAR FUTURE W ITH D E C O R A T IO N S BY VAR IO U S EMINENT HANDS I N C L U D I N G THE a u t h o r

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JOH ANNIM CDOUGALL A M I C O Q U I N O S T R I SED ET IN LOCO PARENTIS

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their promises at the last Election, the politicians had not changed the climate. The State Meteorological Institute had so far produced only an unseasonable fall o f snow and two little thunderbolts no larger than apricots. The weather varied from day to day and from county to county as it had done o f old, most anomalously. This 'vfras a rich, old-fashioned Tennysonian night. Strains o f a string quartet floated out from the drawing­ room windows and were lost amid the splash and murmur o f the gardens. In the basin the folded lilies had left a brooding sweetness over the water. N o gold fin winked in the porphyry font and any peacock which seemed to be milkily drooping in the moon-shadows was indeed a ghost, for the whole flock o f them had been found mysteriously and rudely slaughtered a day or two ago in the first disturbing flush o f this sudden summer. Miles, sauntering among the sleeping flowers, was suffused with melancholy. He did not much care for music and this was his last evening at Mountjoy. Never again, perhaps, would he be free to roam these walks. Mountjoy had been planned and planted in the years o f which he knew nothing; generations o f skilled and patient husbandmen had weeded and dunged and pruned; genera­ tions o f dilettanti had watered it with cascades and jets; generations o f collectors had lugged statuary here; all, it seemed, for his enjoyment this very night under this huge

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moon. Miles knew nothing o f such periods and processes, but he felt an incomprehensible tidal pull towards the circum­ jacent splendours. Eleven struck from the stables. The music ceased. Miles turned back and, as he reached the terrace, the shutters began to close and the great chandeliers were one by one extin­ guished. B y the light o f the sconces which still shone on their panels o f faded satin and clouded gold, he joined the company dispersing to bed through the islands o f old furniture. His room was not one o f the grand succession which lay along the garden front. Those were reserved for murderers. Nor was it on the floor above, tenanted mostly by sexual offenders. His was a humbler wing. Indeed he overlobked the luggage porch and the coal bunker. Only professional men visiting Mountjoy on professional business and very poor relations had been put here in the old days. But Miles was attached to this room, which was the first he had ever called his own in all his twenty years o f Progress. His next-door neighbour, a Mr Sweat, paused at his door to say good night. It was only now after twenty months’ proximity, when Miles’s time was up, that this veteran had begun to unbend. He and a man named Soapy, survivals o f another age, had kept themselves to themselves, talking wistfully o f cribs they had cracked, o f sparklers, o f snug barparlours where they had met their favourite fences, o f strenu­ ous penal days at the Scrubs and on the Moor. They had small use for the younger generation; crime, Calvinism, and classical music were their interest. But at last Mr Sweat had taken to nodding, to grunting, and finally, too late for friendship, to speaking to Miles. ‘ What price the old strings tonight, chum?’ he asked. ‘ I wasn’t there, Mr Sweat.’

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‘ You missed a treat. O f course nothing’s ever good enough for old Soapy. Made me fair sick to hear Soapy going on all the time. The viola was scratchy, Soapy says. They played the Mozart just like it was Haydn. N o feeling in the Debussy pizzicato, says Soapy.’ ‘ Soapy knows too much.’ ‘ Soapy knows a lot more than some I could mention, schooling or no schooling. Next time they’re going to do the Grosse Fugue as the last movement o f the B flat. That’s some­ thing to look forward to, that is, though Soapy says no late Beethoven comes off. W e ’ll see. Leastways, me and Soapy w ill; you won’t. Y o u ’re off tomorrow. Pleased?’ ‘ Not particularly.’ ‘ No, no more wouldn’t I be. It’s a funny thing but I’ve settled down here wonderful. Never thought I should. It all seemed a bit too posh at first. Not like the old Scrubs. But it’s a real pretty place once you’re used to it. W ouldn’t mind settling here for a lifer if they’d let me. The trouble is there’s no security in crime these days. Time was, you knew just what a job was worth, six months, three years; whatever it was, you knew where you were. N ow what with prison commissioners and Preventive Custody and Corrective Treat­ ment they can keep you in or push you #ut just as it suits them. It’s not right. ‘ I’ll tell you what it is, chum,’ continued Mr Sweat. ‘ There’s no understanding o f crime these days like what there was. I remember when I was a nipper, the first time I came up before the beak, he spoke up straight: “ M y lad,” he says, “ you are embarking upon a course o f life that can only lead to disaster and degradation in this world and everlasting damnation in the next.” N ow that’s talking. It’s plain sense and it shows a personal interest. But last time I was up, when they sent me here, they called me an “ antisocial phenomenon ” ;

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said I was “ maladjusted” . That’s no way to speak o f a man what was doing time before they was in long trousers, now is it?’ ■ * ‘ They said something o f the same kind to me.’ ‘ Yes and now they’re giving you the push, just like you hadn’t no Rights. I tell you it’s made a lot o f the boys un­ comfortable your going out all o f a sudden like this. W ho’ll it be next time, that’s what w e’re wondering? ‘ I tell you where you went wrong, chum. You didn’t give enough trouble. You made it too easy for them to say you was cured. Soapy and me got wise to that. You remember them birds as got done in? That was Soapy and me. They took a lot o f killing too; powerful great bastards. But we got the evidence all hid away tidy and if there’s ever any talk o f me and Soapy being “ rehabilitated” w e’ll lay it out con­ spicuous. ‘ W ell, so long chum. Tom orrow’s my morning for Remedial Repose so I daresay you’ll be off before I get down. Come back soon.’ ‘ I hope so,’ said Miles and turned alone into his own room. He stood briefly at the window and gazed his last on the cobbled yard. He made a good figure o f a man, for he came o f handsome parents and all his life had been carefully fed and doctored and exercised; well clothed too. He wore the drab serge dress that was the normal garb o f the period - only certified homosexuals wore colours - but there were differ­ ences o f fit and condition among these uniforms. Miles dis­ played the handiwork o f tailor and valet. He belonged to a privileged class. The State had made him. N o clean-living, God-fearing Victorian gentleman, he; no complete man o f the renaissance; no gentil knight nor dutiful pagan nor, even, noble savage. A ll that succession o f past

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worthies had gone its way, content to play a prelude to Miles. He was the Modem Man. His history, as it appeared in multuplet in the filing cabinets o f numberless State departments, was typical o f a thousand others. Before his birth the politicians had succeeded in bring­ ing down his father and mother to penury; they, destitute, had thrown themselves into the simple diversions o f the very poor and thus, between one war and the next, set in motion a chain-reaction o f divorces which scattered them and their various associates in forlorn couples all over the Free World. The aunt on whom the infant Miles had been quartered was conscribed for w ork in a factory and shortly afterwards died o f boredom at the conveyer-belt. The child was put to safety in an Orphanage. Huge sums were thenceforward spent upon him; sums which, fifty years earlier, would have sent whole quiversful o f boys to Winchester and N ew College and established them in the learned professions. In halls adorned with Picassos and Legers he yawned through long periods o f Constructive Play. He never lacked the requisite cubic feet o f air. His diet was balanced and on the first Friday o f every month he was psycho-analysed. Every detail o f his adolescence was recorded and microfilmed and filed, until at the appropriate age he was transferred to the A ir Force. There were no aeroplanes at the station to which he was posted. It was an institution to train instructors to train instructors to train instructors in Personal Recreation. There for some weeks he tended a dish-washing machine and tended it, as his adjutant testified at his trial, in an exemp­ lary fashion. The w ork in itself lacked glory, but it was the normal novitiate. Men from the Orphanages provided the hard core o f the Forces, a caste apart which united the formidable qualities o f Janissary and Junker. Miles had been picked early

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for high command. Dish-washing was only the beginning. The adjutant, an orphan too, had himself washed both dishes and officers’ underclothes, he testified, before rising to his present position. Courts Martial had been abolished some years before this. The Forces handed their defaulters over to the civil arm for treatment. Miles came up at quarter sessions. It was plain from the start, when Arson, W ilful Damage, Manslaughter, Pre­ judicial Conduct, and Treason were struck out o f the Indict­ ment and the whole reduced to a simple charge o f Antisocial Activity, that the sympathies o f the Court were with the prisoner. The Station Psychologist gave his opinion that an element o f incendiarism was inseparable from adolescence. Indeed, if checked, it might produce morbid neuroses. For his part he thought the prisoner had performed a perfectly normal act and, moreover, had shown more than normal intelligence in its execution. At this point some widows, mothers, and orphans o f the incinerated airmen set up an outcry from the public gallery and were sharply reminded from the Bench that this was a Court o f Welfare and not a meeting o f the Housewives’ Union. The case developed into a concerted eulogy o f the accused. An attempt by the prosecution to emphasize the extent o f the damage was rebuked from the Bench. ‘ The Jury,’ he said, ‘ will expunge from their memories these sentimental details which have been most improperly introduced.’ ‘ May be a detail to you,’ said a voice from the gallery. ‘ He was a good husband to me.’ ‘Arrest that woman,’ said the Judge. Order was restored and the panegyrics continued.

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At last the Bench summed up. He reminded the jury that it was a first principle o f the N ew Law that no man could be held responsible for the consequences o f his own acts. The jury must dismiss from their minds the consideration that much valuable property and many valuable lives had been lost and the cause o f Personal Recreation gravely retarded. They had merely to decide whether in fact the prisoner had arranged inflammable material at various judiciously selected points in the Institution and had ignited them. If he had done so, and the evidence plainly indicated that he had, he con­ travened the Standing Orders o f the Institution and was thereby liable to the appropriate penalties. Thus directed the jury brought in a verdict o f guilty coupled with a recommendation o f mercy towards the various bereaved persons who from time to time in the course o f the hearing had been committed for contempt. The Bench reprimanded the jury for presumption and impertinence in the matter o f the prisoners held in contempt, and sentenced Miles to residence during the State’s pleasure at Mountjoy Castle (the ancestral seat o f a maimed v.c. o f the Second W orld War, who had been sent to a Home for the Handi­ capped when the place was converted into a gaol). The State was capricious in her pleasures. For nearly two years Miles enjoyed her particular favours. Every agreeable remedial device was applied to him and applied, it was now proclaimed, successfully. Then without warning a few days back, while he lay dozing under a mulberry tree, the un­ expected blow had fallen; they had come to him, the Deputy Chief Guide and the sub-Deputy, and told him bluntly and brutally that he was rehabilitated. N ow on this last night he knew he was to wake tomorrow on a harsh world. Nevertheless he slept and was gently

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awoken for the last time to the familiar scent o f china tea on his bed table, the thin bread and butter, the curtains drawn above the luggage porch, the sunlit kitchen-yard and the stable clock just visible behind the cut-leaf copper beech. He breakfasted late and alone. The rest o f the household were already engaged in the first community-songs o f the day. Presently he was called to the Guidance Office. Since his first day at Mountjoy, when with the other entrants Miles had been addressed at length by the C hief Guide on the Aims and Achievements o f the N ew Penology, they had sel­ dom met. The Chief Guide was almost always away addressing penological conferences. The Guidance Office was the former house-keeper’s room stripped now o f its plush and patriotic pictures; sadly tricked out instead with standard civil-service equipment, class A. It was full o f people. ‘ This is Miles Plastic,’ said the C hief Guide. ‘ Sit down, Miles. Y ou can see from the presence o f our visitors this morning what an important occasion this is.’ Miles took a chair and looked and saw seated beside the Chief Guide two elderly men whose faces were familiar from the television screen as prominent colleagues in the Coalition Government. They wore open flannel shirts, blazers with numerous pens and pencils protruding from the breast pocket, and baggy trousers. This was the dress o f very high politicians. ‘ The Minister o f Welfare and the Minister o f Rest and Culture,’ continued the C hief Guide. ‘ The stars to which we have hitched our waggon. Have the press got the handout?’ ‘ Yes, Chief.’ ‘And the photographers are all ready?’ ‘ Yes, Chief.’ ‘ Then I can proceed.’ He proceeded as he had done at countless congresses, at

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countless spas and university cities. He concluded, as he always did: ‘ In the New Britain which we are building, there are no criminals. There are only the victims o f inadequate social services.’ The Minister o f Welfare, who had not reached his present eminence without the help o f a certain sharpness in debate, remarked: ‘ But I understood that Plastic is from one o f our own Orphanages ‘ Plastic is recognized as a Special Case,’ said the Chief Guide. The Minister o f Rest and Culture, who in the old days had more than once done time himself, said: ‘ Well, Plastic, lad, from all they do say I reckon you’ve been uncommon smart.’ ‘ Exactly,’ said the Chief Guide. ‘ Miles is our first success, the vindication o f the Method.’ ‘ O f all the new prisons established in the first glorious wave o f Reform, Mountjoy alone has produced a complete case o f rehabilitation,’ the Minister o f Welfare said. ‘ You may or may not be aware that the Method has come in for a good deal o f criticism both in Parliament and outside. There are a lot o f young hot-heads who take their inspiration from our Great Neighbour in the East. You can quote the authorities to them till you’re black in the face but they are always pressing for all the latest gadgets o f capital and corporal punishment, for chain gangs and solitary confinement, bread and water, the cat-o’nine-tails, the rope and the block, and all manner o f new­ fangled nonsense. They think w e’re a lot o f old fogeys. Thank goodness w e’ve still got the solid sense o f the people behind us, but w e’re on the defensive now. W e have to show results. That’s w hy w e’re here this morning. To show them results. You are our Result.’ These were solemn words and Miles in some measure responded to the occasion. He gazed before him blankly with an expression that might seem to be awe.

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‘ Y ou ’d best watch your step now, lad,’ said Minister o f Rest and Culture. ‘ Photographs,’ said the Minister o f Welfare. ‘ Yes, shake my hand. Turn towards the cameras. Try to smile.’ Bulbs flashed all over the dreary little room. ‘ State be with you,’ said the Minister o f Welfare. ‘ Give us a paw, lad,’ said the Minister o f Rest and Culture, taking Miles’s hand in his turn. ‘And no funny business, mind.’ Then the politicians departed. ‘ The Deputy-Chief will attend to all the practical matters,’ said the Chief wearily. ‘ Go and see him now .’ Miles went. ‘ Well, Miles, from now on I must call you Mr Plastic,’ said the Deputy-Chief. ‘ In less than a minute you become a Citizen. This little pile o f papers is You. When I stamp them, Miles the Problem ceases to exist and Mr Plastic the Citizen is born. W e are sending you to Satellite City, the nearest Population Centre, where you will be attached to the Ministry o f Welfare as a sub-official. In view o f your special training you are not being classified as a Worker. The immediate material rewards, o f course, are not as great. But you are definitely in the Service. W e have set your foot on the bottom rung o f the non-competitive ladder.’ The Deputy Chief Guide picked up the rubber stamp and proceeded to his work o f creation. Flip-thump, flip-thump, the papers were turned and stained. ‘ There you are, Mr Plastic,’ said the Deputy-Chief handing Miles, as it were, the baby. At last Miles spoke: ‘ What must I do to get back here?’ he asked. ‘ Come, come, you’re rehabilitated now, remember. It is your turn to give back to the State some o f the service the

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State has given you. You will report this morning to the Area Progressive. Transport has been laid on. State be with you, Mr Plastic. 'Be careful, that’s your Certificate o f Human Personality you’ve dropped - a vital document.’

2 S a t e l l i t e C i t y , one o f a hundred such grand conceptions, was not yet in its teens, but already the Dome o f Security showed signs o f wear. This was the name o f the great muni­ cipal edifice about which the city was planned. The epon­ ymous dome had looked well enough in the architect’s model, shallow certainly but amply making up in girth what it lacked in height, the daring exercise o f some new trick o f construc­ tion. But to the surprise o f all, when the building arose and was seen from the ground, the dome blandly vanished. It was hidden for ever among the roofs and butting shoulders o f the ancillary wings and was never seen again from the outside except by airmen and steeplejacks. Only the name remained. On the day o f its dedication, among massed politicians and People’s Choirs the great lump o f building materials had shone fine as a factory in all its brilliance o f glass and new concrete. Since then, during one o f the rather frequent week­ ends o f international panic, it had been camouflaged and its windows blackened. Cleaners were few and usually on strike. So the Dome o f Security remained blotched and dingy, the sole permanent building o f Satellite City. There were no workers’ flats, no officials’ garden suburb, no parks, no play­ grounds yet. These were all on the drawing-boards in the surveyor’s office, tattered at the edges, ringed by tea cups; their designer long since cremated and his ashes scattered among the docks and nettles. Thus the Dome o f Security

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comprised, even more than had been intended, all the aspira­ tions and amenities o f the city. The officials subsisted in perpetual twilight. Great sheets o f glass, planned to ‘ trap’ the sun, admitted few gleams from scratches in their coat o f tar. A t evening when the electric light came on, there was a faint glow, here and there. When, as often, the power-station was ‘ shedding its load’ the officials stopped work early and groped their way back to their dark­ ened huts where in the useless refrigerators their tiny rations were quietly putrefying. On working days the officials, male and female, trudged through cigarette ends round and round, up and down what had once been lift-shafts, in a silent, shabby, shadowy procession. Among these pilgrims o f the dusk, in the weeks that fol­ lowed his discharge from Mountjoy, moved the exiled Miles Plastic. He was in a key department. Euthanasia had not been part o f the original 1945 Health Service; it was a Tory measure designed to attract votes from the aged and the mortally sick. Under the Bevan-Eden Coalition the Service came into general use and won instant popularity. The Union o f Teachers was pressing for its applica­ tion to difficult children. Foreigners came in such numbers to take advantage o f the service that immigration authorities now turned back the bearers o f single tickets. Miles recognized the importance o f his appointment even before he began work. On his first evening in the hostel his fellow sub-officials gathered round to question him. ‘ Euthanasia? I say, you’re in luck. They work you jolly hard, o f course, but it’s the one department that’s expanding.’ ‘ Y ou ’ll get promoted before you know your way about.’ ‘ Great State! Y ou must have pull. Only the very bright boys get posted to Euthanasia.’

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T v e been in Contraception for five years. It’s a blind alley/ ‘ They say that in a year or two Euthanasia will have taken over Pensions/ ‘ You must be an orphan/ ‘ Yes, I am/ ‘ That accounts for it. Orphans get all the plums. I had a Full Family Life, State help me/ It was gratifying, o f course, this respect and envy. It was well to have fine prospects; but for the time being Miles’s duties were humble enough. He was junior sub-official in a staff o f half a dozen. The Director was an elderly man called Dr Beamish, a man whose character had been formed in the nervous thirties, now much embittered, like many o f his contemporaries, by the fulfilment o f his early hopes. He had signed manifestos in his hot youth, had raised his fist in Barcelona, and had painted abstractedly for Horizon; he had stood beside Spender at great concourses o f Youth, and written ‘ publicity’ for the Last Viceroy. N ow his reward had come to him. He held the most envied post in Satellite C ity and, sardonically, he was making the worst o f it. Dr Beamish rejoiced in every attenuation o f official difficulties. Satellite C ity was said to be the worst-served Euthanasia Centre in the State. Dr Beamish’s patients were kept waiting so long that often they died natural deaths before he found it convenient to poison them. His small staff respected Dr Beamish. They were all o f the official class, for it was part o f the grim little game which Dr Beamish played with the higher authorities to economize extravagantly. His department, he maintained, could not, on its present allotment, afford workers. Even the fumace-man and the girl who dispatched unwanted false teeth to the Dental Redistribution Centre were sub-officials.

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Sub-officials were cheap and plentiful. The Universities turned thenv out in thousands every year. Indeed, ever since the Incitement to Industry Act o f 1955, which exempted workers from taxation - that great and popular measure o f reform which had consolidated the now permanent Coalition Government - there had been a nefarious one-way traffic o f expensively State-educated officials ‘ passing’, as it was called, into the ranks o f the workers. Miles’s duties required no special skill. Daily at ten the Service opened its doors to welfare-weary citizens. Miles was the man who opened them, stemmed the too eager rush, and admitted the first half dozen; then he closed the doors on the waiting multitude until a Higher Official gave the signal for the admission o f another batch. Once inside they came briefly under his charge; he set them in order, saw that they did not press ahead o f their turn, and adjusted the television-set for their amusement. A Higher Official interviewed them, checked their papers, and arranged for the confiscation o f their property. Miles never passed the door through which they were finally one by one conducted. A faint w hiff o f cyanide sometimes gave a hint o f the mysteries beyond. Meanwhile he swept the waiting-room, emptied the waste-paper basket, and brewed tea - a worker’s job, for which the refinements o f Mountjoy proved a too rich apprenticeship. In his hostel the same reproductions o f Leger and Picasso as had haunted his childhood still stared down on him. A t the cinema, to which he could afford, at the best, a weekly visit, the same films as he had seen free at Orphanage, Air Force station, and prison flickered and drawled before him. He was a child o f Welfare, strictly schooled to a life o f boredom, but he had known better than this. He had known the tranquil melancholy o f the gardens at Mountjoy. He had known

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ecstasy when the Air Force Training School had whirled to the stars in a typhoon o f flame. And as he moved sluggishly between Dome and hostel there rang in his ears the words o f die old lag: ‘ You didn’t give enough trouble.* Then one day, in the least expected quarter, in his own drab department, hope appeared. Miles later remembered every detail o f that morning. It had started in the normal w ay; rather below normal indeed, for they were reopening after a week’s enforced idleness. There had been a strike among the coal-miners and Euthanasia had been at a standstill. N o w the necessary capitulations had been signed, the ovens glowed again, and the queue at the patients’ entrance stretched half-way round the dome. Dr Beamish squinted at the waiting crowd through the periscope and said with some satisfaction. ‘ It will take months to catch up on the waiting list now. W e shall have to start making a charge for the service. It’s the only way to keep down the demand.’ ‘ The Ministry w ill never agree to that, surely, sir?’ ‘ Damned sentimentalists. M y father and mother hanged themselves in their own back-yard with their own clothes­ line. N o w no one w ill lift a finger to help himself. There’s something wrong in the system, Plastic. There are still rivers to drown in, trains - every now and then - to put your head under; gas-fires in some o f the huts. The country is full o f the natural resources o f death, but everyone has to come to us.’ It was not often he spoke so frankly before his subordinates. He had overspent during the week’s holiday, drunk too much at his hostel with other unemployed colleagues. Always after a strike the senior officials returned to work in low spirits. ‘ Shall I let the first batch in, sir?’ ‘ N ot for the moment,’ said Dr Beamish. ‘ There’s a priority case to see first, sent over with a pink chit from Drama. She’s in the private waiting-room now. Fetch her in.’

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Miles went to the room reserved for patients o f importance. A ll one wall* was o f glass. Pressed to it a girl was standing, turned away from him, looking out at the glum queue below. Miles stood, the light in his eyes, conscious only o f a shadow which stirred at the sound o f the latch and turned, still a shadow merely but o f exquisite grace, to meet him. He stood at the door, momentarily struck silent at this blind glance o f beauty. Then he said: ‘ W e’re quite ready for you now, miss.’ The girl came nearer. Miles’s eyes adjusted themselves to the light. The shadow took form. The full vision was all that the first glance had hinted; more than all, for every slight movement revealed perfection. One feature only broke the canon o f pure beauty; a long, silken, corn-gold beard. She said, with a deep, sweet tone, all unlike the flat con­ ventional accent o f the age: ‘ Let it be quite understood that I don’t want anything done to me. I consented to come here. The Director o f Drama and the Director o f Health were so pathetic about it all that I thought it was the least I could do. I said I was quite willing to hear about your service, but I do not want anything done.9 ‘ Better tell him inside,’ said Miles. He led her to Dr Beamish’s room. ‘ Great State!’ said Dr Beamish, with eyes for the beard alone. ‘ Yes,’ she said. ‘ It is a shock, isn’t it? I’ve got used to it by now but I can understand how people feel seeing it for the first time.’ ‘ Is it real?’ ‘ Pull.’ ‘ It is strong. Can’t they do anything about it?’ ‘ Oh they’ve tried everything.’ Dr Beamish was so deeply interested that he forgot Miles’s presence. ‘ Klugmann’s Operation, I suppose?’

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‘ Yes.* ‘ It does go wrong like that every now and then. They had two or three cases at Cambridge/ ‘ I never wanted it done. I never want anything done. It was the Head o f the Ballet. He insists on all the girls being sterilized. Apparently you can never dance really well again after you’ve had a baby. And I did want to dance really well. N ow this is what’s happened.’ ‘ Yes/ said Dr Beamish. ‘ Yes. They’re far too slapdash. They had to put down those girls at Cambridge, too. There was no cure. W ell, w e’ll attend to you, young lady. Have you any arrangements to make or shall I take you straight away?’ ‘ But I don’t want to be put down. I told your assistant here, I’ve simply consented to come at all because the Director o f Drama cried so, and he’s rather a darling. I’ve not the smallest intention o f letting you kill me.’ W hile she spoke, Dr Beamish’s geniality froze. He looked at her with hatred, not speaking. Then he picked up the pink form. ‘ Then this no longer applies?’ ‘ N o.’ ‘ Then for State’s sake,’ said Dr Beamish, very angry, ‘ what are you wasting my time for? I’ve got more than a hundred urgent cases waiting outside and you come in here to tell me that the Director o f Drama is a darling. I know the Director o f Drama. W e live side by side in the same ghastly hostel. He’s a pest. And I’m going to write a report to the Ministry about this tomfoolery which will make him and the lunatic who thinks he can perform a Klugmann come round to be begging for extermination. And then I’ll put them at the bot­ tom o f the queue. Get her out o f here, Plastic, and let some sane people in.’ Miles led her into the public waiting-room. ‘ W hat an old

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beast,’ she said. ‘ What a perfect beast. I’ve never been spoken to like that before even in the ballet-school. He seemed so nice at first.’ ‘ It’s his professional feeling,’ said Miles. ‘ He was naturally put out at losing such an attractive patient.’ She smiled. Her beard was not so thick as quite to obscure her delicate ovoid o f cheek and chin. She might have been peeping at him over ripe heads o f barley. Her smile started in her wide grey eyes. Her lips under her golden moustachios were unpainted, tactile. A line o f pale down sprang below them and ran through the centre o f the chin, spreading and thickening and growing richer in colour till it met the full flow o f the whiskers, but leaving on either side, clear and tender, two symmetrical zones, naked and provocative. So might have smiled some carefree deacon in the colonnaded schools o f fifth-century Alexandria and struck dumb the heresiarchs. ‘ I think your beard is beautiful.’ ‘ Do you really? I can’t help liking it too. I can’t help liking anything about myself, can you?’ ‘ Yes. Oh, yes.’ ‘ That’s not natural.’ Clamour at the outer door interrupted the talk. Like gulls round a lighthouse the impatient victims kept up an irregular flap and slap on the panels. ‘ W e’re all ready, Plastic,’ said a senior official. ‘ W hat’s going on this morning?’ W hat was going on? Miles could not answer. Turbulent sea birds seemed to be dashing themselves against the light in his own heart. ‘ Don’t go,’ he said to the girl. ‘ Please, I shan’t be a minute.’ ‘ Oh, I’ve nothing to take me away. M y department all think I’m half dead by now.’

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Miles opened the door and admitted an indignant halfdozen. He directed them to their chairs, to the registry. Then he went back to the girl who had turned away slightly from the crowd and drawn a scarf peasantwise round her head, hiding her beard. ‘ I still don’t quite like people staring/ she said. ‘ Our patients are far too busy with their own affairs to notice anyone else/ said Miles. ‘ Besides you’d have been stared at all right if you’d stayed on in ballet.’ Miles adjusted the television but few eyes in the waitingroom glanced towards it; all were fixed on the registrar’s table and the doors beyond. ‘ Think o f all them coming here/ said the bearded girl. ‘ W e give them the best service we can/ said Miles. ‘ Yes, o f course, I know you do. Please don’t think I was finding fault. I only meant, fancy wanting to die.’ ‘ One or two have good reasons.’ ‘ I suppose you would say that I had. Everyone has been trying to persuade me, since my operation. The medical officials were the worst. They’re afraid they may get into trouble for doing it wrong. And then the ballet people were almost as bad. They are so keen on Art that they say: “ You were the best o f your class. You can never dance again. How can life be worth living?” What I try to explain is that it’s just because I could dance that I know life is worth living. That’s what Art means to me. Does that sound very silly?’ ‘ It sounds unorthodox/ ‘Ah, but you’re not an artist.’ ‘ Oh, I’ve danced all right. Twice a week through m y time at the Orphanage.’ ‘ Therapeutic dancing?’ ‘ That’s what they called it/

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‘ But you see, that’s quite different from Art.’ ‘ W h y ?’ i ‘ Oh,’ she said with a sudden full intimacy, with fondness. ‘ Oh what a lot you don’t know .’ The dancer’s name was Clara.

3 o w r t s h i p was free and easy in this epoch but Miles was Clara’s first lover. The strenuous exercises o f her training, the austere standards o f the corps-de-ballet, and her devotion to her art had kept her body and soul unencumbered. For Miles, child o f the State, Sex had been part o f the cur­ riculum at every stage o f his education; first in diagrams, then in demonstrations, then in application, he had mastered all the antics o f procreation. Love was a word seldom used except by politicians and by them only in moments o f pure fatuity. Nothing that he had been taught prepared him for Clara. Once in drama, always in drama. Clara now spent her days mending ballet shoes and helping neophytes on the wall bars. She had a cubicle in a Nissen hut and it was there that she and Miles spent most o f their evenings. It was unlike anyone else’s quarters in Satellite City. T w o little paintings hung on the walls, unlike any paintings Miles had seen before, unlike anything approved by the Ministry o f Art. One represented a goddess o f antiquity, naked and rosy, fondling a peacock on a bank o f flowers; the other a vast, tree-fringed lake and a party in spreading silken clothes embarking in a pleasure boat under a broken arch. The gilt frames were much chipped but what remained o f them was elaborately foliated. ‘ They’re French,’ said Clara. ‘ More than two hundred years old. M y mother left them to me.’

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All her possessions had come from her mother, nearly enough o f them to furnish the little room - a looking glass framed in porcelain flowers, a gilt irregular clock. She and Miles drank their sad, officially compounded coffee out o f brilliant, riveted cups. ‘ It reminds me o f prison/ said Miles when he was first admitted there. It was the highest praise he knew. On the first evening among this delicate bric-a-brac his lips found the bare twin spaces o f her chin. ‘ I knew it would be a mistake to let the beastly doctor poison me/ said Clara complacently. Full summer came. Another moon waxed over these rare lovers. Once they sought coolness and secrecy among the high cow-parsley and willow-herb o f the waste building sites. Clara’s beard was all silvered like a patriarch’s in the midnight radiance. ‘ On such a night as this/ said Miles, supine, gazing into the face o f the moon, ‘ on such a night as this I burned an Air Force Station and half its occupants.’ Clara sat up and began lazily smoothing her whiskers, then more vigorously tugged the comb through the thicker, tangled growth o f her head, dragging it from her forehead; re-ordered the clothing which their embraces had loosed. She was full o f womanly content and ready to go home. But Miles, all male, post coitum tristis, was struck by a chill sense o f loss. N o demonstration or exercise had prepared him for this strange new experience o f the sudden loneliness that follows requited love. W alking home they talked casually and rather crossly. ‘ You never go to the ballet now/ ‘ N o/ ‘ W on’t they give you seats?’

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‘ I suppose they would.’ ‘ Then w h y tdon’t you go?’ ‘ I don’t think I should like it. I see them often rehearsing. I don’t like it.’ ‘ But you lived for it.’ ‘ Other interests now .’ ‘ M e?’ ‘ O f course.’ ‘ You love me more than the ballet?* ‘ I am very happy.’ ‘ Happier than i f you were dancing?’ ‘ I can’t tell, can I? Y o u ’re all I’ve got now / ‘ But if you could change?’ ‘ I can’t.’ ‘ If?’ ‘ There’s no “ i f ” .’ ‘ Damn.’ ‘ Don’t fret, darling. It’s only the moon.’ And they parted in silence. November came, a season o f strikes; leisure for Miles, un­ sought and unvalued; lonely periods when the ballet school worked on and the death house stood cold and empty. Clara began to complain o f ill health. She was growing stout. ‘Just contentment,’ she said at first, but the change worried her. ‘ Can it be that beastly operation?’ she asked. ‘ I heard the reason they put down one o f the Cambridge girls was that she kept growing fatter and fatter.’ ‘ She weighed nineteen stone,’ said Miles. ‘ I know because Dr Beamish mentioned it. He has strong professional objec­ tions to the Klugmann operation.’ ‘ I’m going to see the Director o f Medicine. There’s a new one now .’

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W hen she returned from her appointment, Miles, still left: idle by the strikers, was waiting for her among her pictures and china. She sat beside him on the bed. ‘ Let’s have a drink,’ she said. They had taken to drinking wine together, very rarely because o f the expense. The State chose and named the vintage. This month the issue was ‘ Progress Port’. Clara kept it in a crimson, white-cut, Bohemian flagon. The glasses were modem, unbreakable, and unsightly. ‘ W hat did the doctor say?’ ‘ He’s very sweet.’ ‘ W ell?’ ‘ Much cleverer than the one before.’ ‘ Did he say it was anything to do with your operation?’ ‘ Oh, yes. Everything to do with it.’ ‘ Can he put you right?’ ‘ Yes, he thinks so.’ ‘ Good.’ They drank their wine. ‘ That first doctor did make a mess o f the operation, didn’t he?’ ‘ Such a mess. The new doctor says I’m a unique case. You see, I’m pregnant.’ 'Clara.'

‘ Yes, it is a surprise, isn’t it?’ ‘ This needs thinking about,’ said Miles. He thought. He refilled their glasses. He said: ‘ It’s hard luck on the poor little beast not being an Orphan. N ot much opportunity for it. If he’s a boy we must try and get him registered as a worker. O f course it might be a girl. Then,’ brightly, ‘ we could make her a dancer.’

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‘ Oh, don’t mention dancing/ cried Clara, and suddenly began weeping. ‘ Don’t speak to me o f dancing/ Her tears fell fast. N o tantrum this, but deep uncontrolled inconsolable sorrow. And next day she disappeared.

4 S a n t a - c l a u s - t i d e was near. Shops were full o f shoddy little dolls. Children in the schools sang old ditties about peace and goodwill. Strikers went back to work in order to qualify for their seasonal bonus. Electric bulbs were hung in the coni­ fers and the furnaces in the Dome o f Security roared again. Miles had been promoted. He now sat beside the assistant registrar and helped stamp and file the documents o f the dead. It was harder work than he was used to and Miles was hungry for Clara’s company. The lights were going out in the Dome and on the Goodwill Tree in the car park. He walked the half-mile o f hutments to Clara’s quarters. Other girls were waiting for their consorts or setting out to find them in the Recreatorium, but Clara’s door was locked. A note, pinned to it, read: Miles, Going away for a bit. C. Angry and puzzled he returned to his hostel. Clara, unlike himself, had uncles and cousins scattered about the country. Since her operation she had been shy o f visiting them. N ow , Miles supposed, she was taking cover among them. It was the manner o f her flight, so unlike her gentle ways, that tortured him. For a busy week he thought o f noth­ ing else. His reproaches sang in his head as the undertone to all the activities o f the day and at night he lay sleepless repeating in his mind every word spoken between them and every act o f intimacy. After a week the thought o f her became spasmodic and regular. The subject bored him unendurably. He strove to

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keep it out o f his mind as a man might strive to control an attack o f hiccups, and as impotently. Spasmodically, mechanic­ ally, the thought o f Clara returned. He timed it and found that it came every minutes. He went to sleep thinking o f her, he woke up thinking o f her. But between times he slept. He consulted the departmental psychiatrist who told him that he was burdened by the responsibility o f parentage. But it was not Clara the mother who haunted him, but Clara the betrayer. Next week he thought o f her every twenty minutes. The week after that he thought o f her irregularly, though often; only when something outside himself reminded him o f her. He began to look at other girls and considered himself cured. He looked hard at other girls as he passed them in the dim corridors o f the Dome and they looked boldly back at him. Then one o f them stopped him and said: T v e seen you before with Clara’, and at the mention o f her name all interest in the other girl ceased in pain. ‘ I went to visit her yesterday/ ‘ W here?’ ‘ In hospital, o f course. Didn’t you know ?’ ‘ W hat’s the matter with her?’ ‘ She won’t say. N or w ill anyone else at the hospital. She’s top secret. If you ask me she’s been in an accident and there’s some politician involved. I can’t think o f any other reason for all the fuss. She’s covered in bandages and gay as a lark/ N ext day, 25 December, was Santa Claus D a y ; no holiday in the department o f Euthanasia, which was an essential service. A t dusk Miles walked to the hospital, one o f the unfinished edifices, all concrete and steel and glass in front and a jumble o f huts behind. The hall porter was engrossed in the television, which was performing an old obscure folk play which past generations had performed on Santa Claus Day, and was now revived and revised as a matter o f historical interest. It was o f professional interest to the porter for it dealt with

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maternity services before the days o f Welfare. He gave the number o f Clara’s room without glancing up from the strange spectacle o f in ox and an ass, an old man with a lantern, and a young mother. ‘ People here are always complaining,* he said. ‘ They ought to realize what things were like before Progress.’ The corridors were loud with relayed music. Miles found the hut he sought. It was marked ‘ Experimental Surgery. Health Officers only.’ He found the cubicle. He found Clara sleeping, the sheet pulled up to her eyes, her hair loose on the pillow. She had brought some o f her property with her. An old shawl lay across the bed-table. A painted fan stood against the television set. She awoke, her eyes full o f frank welcome and pulled the sheet higher, speaking through it. ‘ Darling, you shouldn’t have come. I was keeping it for a surprise.’ Miles sat by the bed and thought o f nothing to say except: ‘ H ow are you?’ ‘ Wonderful. They’ve taken the bandages off today. They w on’t let me have a looking glass yet but they say everything has been a tremendous success. I’m something very special, Miles - a new chapter in surgical progress.’ ‘ But what has happened to you. Is it something to do with the baby?’ ‘ O h no. A t least, it was. That was the first operation. But that’s all over now .’ ‘ You mean our child?’ ‘ Yes, that had to go. I should never have been able to dance afterwards. I told you all about it. That was w hy I had the Klugmann operation, don’t you remember?’ ‘ But you gave up dancing.’ ‘ That’s where they’ve been so clever. Didn’t I tell you about the sweet, clever new medical director? He’s cured all that.’

EXPERIM ENTAL SURGERY

‘ Your dear beard/ ‘ Quite gone. An operation the new director invented him­ self. It’s going to be named after him or even perhaps after me. He’s so unselfish he wants to call it the Clara Operation. He’s taken o ff all the skin and put on a wonderful new sub­ stance, a sort o f synthetic rubber that takes grease-paint perfectly. He says the colour isn’t perfect, but that it will never show on the stage. Look, feel it.’ She sat up in bed, joyful and proud. Her eyes and brow were all that was left o f the loved face.

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Below it something quite inhuman, a tight, slippery mask, salmon pink. Miles stared. In the television screen by the bed further characters had appeared - Food Production Workers. They seemed to declare a sudden strike, left their sheep, and ran off at the bidding o f some kind o f shop-steward in fantastic dress. The machine by the bedside broke into song, an old, forgotten ditty: ‘ O tidings o f comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings o f comfort and jo y .’ Miles retched unobtrusively. The ghastly face regarded him with fondness and pride. A t length the right words came to him; the trite, the traditional sentence uttered by countless lips o f generations o f baffled and impassioned Englishmen: ‘ I think I shall go for a short walk/ But first he walked only as far as his hostel. There he lay down until the moon moved to his window and fell across his sleepless face. Then he set out, walking far into the fields, out o f sight o f the Dome o f Security, for two hours until the moon was near setting. He had travelled at random but now the white rays fell on a signpost and he read: ‘ Mountjoy §/ He strode on with only the stars to light his w ay till he came to the Castle gates. They stood open as always, gracious symbol o f the new penology. He followed the drive. The whole lightless face o f the old house stared at him silently, without rebuke. He knew now what was needed. He carried in his pocket a cigarette lighter which often worked. It worked for him now. N o need for oil here. The dry old silk o f the drawing-room curtains lit like paper. Paint and panelling, plaster and tapestry and gilding bowed to the embrace o f the leaping flames. He stepped outside. Soon it was too hot on the terrace and he retreated further, to the marble temple at the end o f the long walk. The murderers were leaping from the first-storey win­

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dows but the sexual offenders, trapped above, set up a wail o f terror. He heard the chandeliers fall and saw the boiling lead cascading from the roof. This was something altogether finer than the strangulation o f a few peacocks. He watched exultant as minute by minute the scene disclosed fresh wonders. Great timbers crashed within; outside the lily-pond hissed with falling brands; a vast ceiling o f smoke shut out the stars and under it tongues o f flame floated away into the tree tops. Tw o hours later when the first engine arrived, the force o f the fiery storm was already spent. Miles rose from his marble throne and began the long walk home. But he was no longer at all fatigued. He strode out cheerfully with his shadow, cast by the dying blaze, stretching before him along the lane. On the main road a motorist stopped him and asked: ‘ W hat’s that over there? A house on fire?’ ‘ It was,’ said Miles. ‘ It’s almost out now.’ ‘ Looks like a big place. Only Government property, I suppose?’ ‘ That’s all,’ said Miles. ‘ W ell hop in i f you want a lift.’ ‘ Thanks,’ said Miles. ‘ I’m walking for pleasure.’

I

5 A 4 i le s rose after two hours in bed. The hostel was alive with all the normal activity o f morning. The wireless was playing; the sub-officials were coughing over their wash­ basins; the reek o f State sausages frying in State grease filled the asbestos cubicle. He was slightly stiff after his long walk and slightly footsore, but his mind was as calm and empty as the sleep from which he had awoken. The scorched-earth policy had succeeded. He had made a desert in his imagination which he might call peace. Once before, he had burned his childhood. N ow his brief adult life lay in ashes; the enchantments that surrounded Clara were one with the splendours o f Mountjoy; her great golden beard, one with the tongues o f flame that had leaped and expired among the stars; her fans and pictures and scraps o f old embroidery, one with the gilded cornices and silk hangings, black, cold, and sodden. He ate his sausage with keen appetite and went to work. All was quiet too at the Department o f Euthanasia. The first announcement o f the Mountjoy disaster had been on the early news. Its proximity to Satellite City gave it a special poignancy there. ‘ It is a significant phenomenon/ said Dr Beamish, ‘ that any bad news has an immediate effect on our service. You see it whenever there is an international crisis. Sometimes I think people only come to us when they have nothing to talk about. Have you looked at our queue today?’ Miles turned to the periscope. Only one man waited out-

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side, old Parsnip, a poet o f the thirties who came daily but was usually jostled to the back o f the crowd. He was a comic character in the department, this veteran poet. Twice in Miles’s short term he had succeeded in gaining admission but on both occasions had suddenly taken fright and bolted. ‘ It’s a lucky day for Parsnip,’ said Miles. ‘ Yes. He deserves some luck. I knew him well once, him and his friend Pimpemell. New Writing, the Left Book Club, they were all the rage. Pimpemell was one o f my first patients. Hand Parsnip in and w e’ll finish him off.’ So old Parsnip was summoned and that day his nerve stood firm. He passed fairly calmly through the gas chamber on his way to rejoin Pimpemell. ‘ W e might as well knock off for the day,’ said Dr Beamish. ‘ W e shall be busy again soon when die excitement dies down.’ But the politicians determined to keep the excitement up. A ll the normal features o f television were interrupted and curtailed to give place to Mountjoy. Survivors appeared on the screen, among them Soapy, who described how long practice as a cat burglar had enabled him to escape. M r Sweat, he remarked with respect, had got clear away. The ruins were surveyed by the apparatus. A sexual maniac with broken legs gave audience from his hospital bed. The Minister o f Welfare, it was announced, would make a special appearance that evening to comment on the disaster. Miles dozed intermittently beside the hostel set and at dusk rose, still calm and free; so purged o f emotion that he made his w ay once more to the hospital and called on Clara. She had spent the afternoon with looking-glass and make­ up box. The new substance o f her face fulfilled all the surgeon’s promises. It took paint to perfection. Clara had given herself a full mask as though for the lights o f the stage; an even

PARSNIP AD PORTUS

creamy white with sudden high spots o f crimson on the cheek bones, huge hard crimson lips, eye brows extended and turned up catwise, the eyes shaded all round with ultramarine and dotted at the comers with crimson. ‘ Y ou ’re the first to see me,’ she said. ‘ I was half-afraid you wouldn’t come. You seemed cross yesterday.’ ‘ I wanted to see the television,’ said Miles. ‘ It’s so crowded at the hostel.’

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‘ So dull today. Nothing except this prison that has been burned down/ ‘ I was there myself. Don’t you remember? I often talked o f it/ ‘ Did you, Miles? Perhaps so. I’ve such a bad memory for things that don’t concern me. Do you really want to hear the Minister? It would be much cosier to talk.’ ‘ It’s him I’ve come for.’ And presently the Minister appeared, open-necked as always but without his usual smile; grave to the verge o f tears. He spoke for twenty minutes. . . The great experiment must go on . . . the martyrs o f maladjustment shall not have died in vain . . . A greater, new Mountjoy shall rise from the ashes o f the old . . . ’ Eventually tears came - real tears for he held an invisible onion - and trickled down his cheeks. So the speech ended. ‘ That’s all I came for/ said Miles, and left Clara to her cocoa-butter and face-towel. Next day all the organs o f public information were still piping the theme o f Mountjoy. T w o or three patients, already bored with the entertainment, presented themselves for ex­ termination and were happily dispatched. Then a message came from the Regional Director, official-in-chief o f Satellite City. He required the immediate presence o f Miles in his office. ‘ I have a move order for you, M r Plastic. Y o u are to report to the Ministers o f Welfare and Rest and Culture. Y ou w ill be issued with a Grade A hat, umbrella, and brief case for the journey. M y congratulations/ Equipped with these insignia o f sudden, dizzy promotion, Miles travelled to the capital leaving behind a domeful o f sub-officials chattering with envy. A t the terminus an official met him. Together in an official car they drove to Whitehall.

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‘ Let me carry your brief-case, M r Plastic/ ‘ There’s nothing in it/ Miles’s escort1laughed obsequiously at this risque joke. A t the Ministry the lifts were in working order. It was a new and alarming experience to enter the little cage and rise to the top o f the great building. ‘ D o they always work here?’ ‘ N ot always, but very very often.’ Miles realized that he was indeed at the heart o f things. ‘ W ait here. I will call you when the Ministers are ready/ Miles looked from the waiting-room window at the slow streams o f traffic. Just below him stood a strange, purposeless obstruction o f stone. A very old man, walking by, removed his hat to it as though saluting an acquaintance. W hy? Miles wondered. Then he was summoned to the politicians. They were alone in their office save for a gruesome young woman. The Minister o f Rest and Culture said: ‘ Ease your feet, lad’ and indicated a large leatherette armchair. ‘ N ot such a happy occasion, alas, as our last meeting,’ said the Minister o f Welfare. ‘ Oh, I don’t know / said Miles. He was enjoying the outing. ‘ The tragedy at Mountjoy Castle was a grievous loss to the cause o f penology.’ ‘ But the great work o f Rehabilitation will continue/ said the gruesome young woman. ‘A greater Mountjoy w ill arise from the ashes/ said the Minister. ‘ Those noble criminal lives have not been lost in vain/ ‘ Their memory will inspire us.’ ‘ Yes/ said Miles. ‘ I heard the broadcast/ ‘ Exactly/ said the Minister. ‘ Precisely. Then you appreciate, perhaps, what a change the occurrence makes in your own position. From being, as we hoped, the first o f a continuous

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series o f successes, you are our only one. It would not be too much to say that the whole future o f penology is in your hands. The destruction o f Mountjoy Castle by itself was merely a setback. A sad one, o f course, but something which might be described as the growing pains o f a great movement. But there is a darker side. I told you, I think, that our great experi­ ment had been made only against considerable opposition. N ow - I speak confidentially - that opposition has become vocal and unscrupulous. There is, in fact, a whispering cam­ paign that the fire was no accident but the act o f one o f the very men whom we were seeking to serve. That campaign must be scotched/ ‘ They can’t do us down as easy as they think/ said the Minister o f Rest and Culture. ‘ Us old dogs know a trick or two/ ‘ Exactly. Counter-propaganda. Y ou are our Exhibit A. The irrefutable evidence o f the triumph o f our system. W e are going to send you up and down the country to lecture. M y colleagues have already written your speech. You w ill be accompanied by Miss Flower here, who will show and explain the model o f the new Mountjoy. Perhaps you will care to see it yourself. Miss Flower, the model please/ A ll the time they had been speaking Miles had been aware o f a bulky sheeted object on a table in the window. Miss Flower now unveiled it. Miles gazed in awe. The object displayed was a familiar, standard packing-case, set on end. ‘A rush-job/ said the Minister o f Welfare. ‘ Y ou will be provided with something more elaborate for your tour/ Miles gazed at the box. It fitted. It fell into place precisely in the void o f his mind, satisfying all the needs for which his education had prepared him. The conditioned personality recognized its proper

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preordained environment. All else was insubstantial; the gardens o f Mountjoy, Clara’s cracked Crow n Derby and her enveloping beard Were trophies o f a fading dream. The Modem Man was home. ‘ There is one further point,’ continued the Minister o f Welfare. ‘A domestic one but not as irrelevant as it may seem. Have you by any chance formed an attachment in Satellite City? Your dossier suggests that you have.’ ‘A ny woman trouble?’ explained the Minister o f Rest and Culture. ‘ Oh, yes,’ said Miles. ‘ Great trouble. But that is over.’ ‘ You see, perfect rehabilitation, complete citizenship should include marriage.’ ‘ It has not,’ said Miles. ‘ That should be rectified.’ ‘ Folks like a bloke to be spliced,’ said the Minister o f Rest and Culture. ‘ W ith a couple o f kids.’ ‘ There is hardly time for them/ said the Minister o f Welfare. ‘ But we think that psychologically you will have more appeal i f you have a wife by your side. Miss Flower here has every qualification.’ ‘ Looks are only skin deep, lad,’ said the Minister o f Rest and Culture. ‘ So i f you have no preferable alternative to offer . . . ? ’ ‘ None,’ said Miles. ‘ Spoken like an Orphan. I see a splendid career ahead o f the pair o f you.’ ‘ When can we get divorced?’ ‘ Come, come, Plastic. Y ou mustn’t look too far ahead. First things first. Y ou have already obtained the necessary leave from your Director, Miss Flower?’ ‘ Yes, Minister.’ ‘ Then off you both go. And State be with you.’

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In perfect peace o f heart Miles followed Miss Flower to the Registrar’s office. Then the mood veered. Miles felt ill at ease during the ceremony and fidgeted with something small and hard which he found in his pocket. It proved to be his cigarette-lighter, a most uncertain apparatus. He pressed the catch and instantly, surprisingly, there burst out a tiny flame - gemlike, hymeneal, auspicious.

EV ELYN W AUG H Considered an enfant terrible o f English letters in the 1930s, he became a best seller w ith the publication in 1928 o f his first novel, Decline and Fall. M any o f the characters in this masterpiece o f derision reappear in the subsequent novels, w hich, culminating in Put Out More Flags, present a satirical and entertaining picture o f English leisured society between the wars. Evelyn W augh books available in Penguins are: B L A C K MISCHIEF - 1 7 9 * BRI DESHEAD REVISITED - 8 2 1 * DECLI NE A ND FALL - 7 5 A HA NDF U L OF DUS T - 8 2 2 * THE L OVED ONE - 8 2 3 * PUT O UT MORE FLAGS - 4 2 3 * scoop

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