'About not going to bed with those chaps? Of course I do.'
'Well, in that case…'
'There doesn't seem to be anything for either of us to mind, does there?'
'No.'
Catharine was not afraid when he put one arm round her shoulders and the other hand on her breast and kissed her. It is now, she thought. It is you.
'I love you,' said Churchill.
'I'm going to love you too, probably by tomorrow. But I'll have to have just a little time. I thought I'd stopped, you see. Loving people. So it'll take me just a little time to start again. Is that all right?'
'Yes.'
He kissed her another once and then started the engine.
Churchill parked Ross-Donaldson's jeep in its space and made towards the front door of the Mess. One of the D4 sentries, grateful perhaps for the smallest novelty, turned towards him and came to attention. Acknowledging, Churchill wished him good night and went indoors.
Hunter's room was on the first floor. It had one very comfortable chair in it, the seat of most of the drinking- bout which had ended in his admission to hospital. He had adopted it after becoming dissatisfied with the more usual procedure of drinking in the ante-room downstairs. It had seemed to him uneconomic to keep a Mess waiter up until four A.M. serving him with whisky, and twice running he had found himself, a couple of hours after that time, lying in the grass somewhere near the house and resisting the efforts of a member of the camp patrol to pull him to his feet. Even the chair had finally proved inadequate by being too easy to fall out of, and he had had to take to his bed, where, after a twenty-four-hour absence from the general scene, he had been found by Churchill.
When Churchill entered, Hunter was sitting in his chair drinking a glass of soda-water. Naidu was sitting opposite him, on the edge of the bed, a heavily diluted whisky in his hand.
'Willie not back yet?' asked Churchill.
'No,' said Naidu.
'Pour yourself a whisky,' said Hunter. 'On the dressing-table. You'll notice the cap is off. Don't put it back. In fact throw it away. Having no cap saves time, the loss by evaporation is trifling, and there are probably figures to show that a bottle's more vulnerable to being spilled or dropped when the cap's being removed and replaced. Like aircraft when taking off and landing. I must get Ross-Donaldson to give me the statistical breakdown. Look, you need more whisky than you've got there if you're going to be a satisfactory drinking companion to a man who isn't drinking. Moti's hopeless at that. He only drinks to be sociable, which is no use to anybody.'
'It's the taste of the beastly stuff which is such a snag,' said Naidu.
'No, it's a blessing. We'd all be dead if it were palatable. At least James and I would be. And Willie. Well, you're back early. It's only twenty to one. What didn't keep you?'
Churchill had taken his place on a heavy wooden chair with a high back, moving a pile of motoring magazines to do so. He lit a cigarette. 'It was quite late,' he said. 'And she was tired.'
'So you cut short the final embraces. Very considerate of you.'
'There weren't any embraces to speak of.'
'I'm sorry to hear that. How hard did you try?'
'I didn't try at all. She's not the sort of girl you want to rush things with.'
'Every girl is that sort of girl.'
Naidu took a quick pull at his drink.
'You don't know anything about it, Max,' said Churchill.
'Oh yes I do, my dear boy. I could see the way you were looking at her in the pub, and the way you weren't looking at anything in particular for the rest of the evening, except at your watch every ten minutes or so. She's very beautiful and that's a danger in itself to somebody like you. Before you know where you are you'll be falling in love with her. If indeed you haven't already.'
'I can't see anything against that.'
'You will, James, you will. All emotional attachments are bad. Get what there is to be got out of somebody without undue effort and then pass on to the next. It's better for everyone that way.'
'If I may come butting in here,' said Naidu, 'I dislike hearing James's romantic sentiments trampled underfoot in this manner. It's right and proper that a young man should hold these views and be respectful towards womankind and so on. He should not be laughed at, Max.'
'I'm not laughing at him. I'm trying to warn him. It won't do any good, I suppose. Well, who is she, James? I haven't seen her behind the bar there before. Where does she come from?'
'You'd seen her before, Moti. That day at the hospital when we went to visit Max.'
'Of course. Standing on the path. I remember your being… struck by her then. But what a remarkable coincidence.'
'That's not good,' said Hunter. 'He'll start thinking it's fate and all the rest of the rigmarole. So she's another of Dr. Best's clients. Did she say anything about him? What was his diagnosis of her?'
Churchill grinned. 'I'll give you one guess.'
'Oh, no. Not suppressed lesbianism? You know, there must have been something in that man's childhood that gave him a morbid dread of the obvious. Anyway, come on. You still haven't told us about her.'
'I don't know what you want to know. She's got a husband but he isn't around. She's staying with this Lady
