Colonel Plum accepted this somewhat surprising statement with apparent understanding. “Yes,” he said. “There’s a lot to be said for a uniform. For one thing you’ll have to call me ‘sir’ and if there’s any funny stuff with the female staff I can take disciplinary action. For another thing it’s the best possible disguise for a man of intelligence. No one ever suspects a soldier of taking a serious interest in the war. I think I can fix that.”
“What’ll my rank be?”
“Second Lieutenant, Crosse and Blackwell’s regiment”
“Crosse and Blackwell?”
“General Service List.”
“I say, can’t you do anything better than that?”
“Not for watching Communists. Catch a fascist for me and I’ll think about making you a Captain of Marines.” At this moment the telephone bell rang. “Yes, ADDIS speaking…oh, yes, the bomb…yes, we know all about that…the Chaplain General? I say, that’s bad…oh, only the Deputy Assistant Chaplain General and you think he’ll recover. Well what’s all the fuss about?…Yes, we know all about the man in this branch. We’ve had him indexed a long time. He’s nuts ? yes, N for nuts, U for uncle, nuts, you’ve got it. No I don’t want to see him. Lock him up. There must be plenty of padded cells in this building, I should imagine.”
News of the attempt to assassinate the Chaplain General reached the Religious Department of the Ministry of Information late in the afternoon, just when they were preparing to pack up for the day. It threw them into a fever of activity.
“Really,” said Ambrose pettishly. “You fellows get all the fun. I shall be most embarrassed when I have to explain this to the editor of the Godless Sunday at Home.”
Lady Seal was greatly shocked.
“Poor man,” she said, “I understand that his eyebrows have completely gone. It must have been Russians.”
For the third time since his return to London, Basil tried to put a call through to Angela Lyne. He listened to the repeated buzz, five, six, seven times, then hung up the receiver. Still away, he thought; I should have liked to show her my uniform.
Angela counted the rings: five, six, seven; then there was silence in the flat; silence except for the radio which said “…dastardly attempt which has shocked the conscience of the civilized world. Messages of sympathy continue to pour into the Chaplain General’s office from the religious leaders of four continents…”
She switched over to Germany, where a rasping, contemptuous voice spoke of “Churchill’s attempt to make a second Athenia by bombing the military bishop.”
She switched on to France where a man of letters gave his impressions of a visit to the Maginot Line. Angela filled her glass from the bottle at her elbow. Her distrust of France was becoming an obsession with her now. It kept her awake at night and haunted her dreams by day ?long, tedious dreams born of barbituric; dreams which had no element of fantasy or surprise; utterly real, drab dreams which, like waking life, held no promise of delight. She often spoke aloud to herself nowadays ? living, as she did, so much alone; it was thus that lonely old women spoke, passing in the street with bags of rubbish in their hands, squatting, telling their rubbish. Angela was like an old woman squatting in a doorway picking over her day’s gleaning of rubbish, talking to herself while she sorted the scraps of garbage. She had seen and heard old women like that, often, at the end of the day, in the side streets near the theatres.
Now she said to herself as loudly as though to someone sitting opposite on the white Empire day-bed: “Maginot Line ?Angela Lyne ?both lines of least resistance,” and laughed at her joke until the tears came and suddenly she found herself weeping in earnest.
Then she took a pull at herself. This wouldn’t do at all. She had better go out to the cinema.
Peter Pastmaster was taking a girl out that evening. He looked very elegant and old-fashioned in his blue patrol jacket and tight overall trousers. He and the girl dined at a new restaurant in Jermyn Street.
She was Lady Mary Meadowes, Lord Granchester’s second daughter. In his quest for a wife Peter had narrowed the field to three ?Molly Meadowes; Sarah, Lord Flintshire’s daughter; and Betty, daughter of the Duchess of Stayle. Since he was marrying for old-fashioned, dynastic reasons, he proposed to make an old-fashioned, dynastic choice from among the survivors of Whig oligarchy. He really could see very little difference between the three girls; in fact he sometimes caused offence by addressing them absent-mindedly by the wrong names. None of them carried a pound of superfluous flesh; they all had an enthusiasm for the works of Mr. Ernest Hemingway; all had pet dogs of rather similar peculiarities. They had all found that the way to keep Peter amused was to get him to brag about his past iniquities.
During dinner he told Molly about the time when Basil Seal had stood for Parliament and he and Sonia and Alastair had done him dirt in his constituency. She laughed dutifully at the incident of Sonia throwing a potato at the mayor.
“Some of the papers got it wrong and said it was a bun,” he explained.
“What a lovely time you all seem to have had,” said Lady Mary wistfully.
“All past and done with,” said Peter primly.
“Is it? I do hope not.”
Peter looked at her with a new interest. Sarah and Betty had taken this tale as though it were one of highwaymen ? something infinitely old-fashioned and picturesque.
Afterwards they walked to the cinema next door.
The vestibule was in darkness except for a faint blue light in the box office. Out of the darkness the voice of the commissionaire announced: “No three and sixes. Plenty of room in the five and nines. Five and nines this way. Don’t block up the gangway, please.”
There was some kind of disturbance going on at the guichet. A woman was peering stupidly at the blue light and saying “I don’t want five and nines. I want one three and sixpenny.”
“No three and sixes. Only five and nines.”
“But you don’t understand. It isn’t the price. The five and nines are too far away. I want to be near, in the three and sixpennies.”
“No three and sixes. Five and nines,” said the girl in the blue light.
“Come on, lady, make up your mind,” said a soldier, waiting.
