should, I submit, be filling you with sorrow.'
'It does. But it fills me with anger too. Just this one thing is enough to show that we live in a bad world.'
'There are no bad things in the world.' Naidu got up from the bed. 'Even what might seem to us most horrible can be rendered endurable by wisdom.'
'With just as much respect, Moti, I think you're talking about sentimentality and the servile acceptance of a wish-fulfilling tradition. Not wisdom.'
'Perhaps I am. Wisdom is hard for most of us to obtain. If sentimentality and your servile acceptance will render endurable what seems horrible, let us by all means take recourse to them.'
'Yes,' said Ayscue violently. 'And lies too if necessary.'
Churchill rounded on him as violently. 'Well, you ought to know, Willie. That's what you trade in, isn't it?'
'I'm going to bed,' said Ayscue after a short pause. 'Coming, Moti?'
'Yes. Good night, James. Good night, Max. Thank you for the whisky.'
'Well, well, well,' said Hunter when he and Churchill were alone. 'You seem to be getting nasty in your drink these days. It's a stage we all go through. The trick is to drink much faster, especially early in the evening. Then the stuff attacks your brain on a steeper acceleration. You become inarticulate with dignity. That's the state to aim for, dear boy.'
He rose thoughtfully and strolled, hands in pockets, towards the dressing-table. 'I seem to have been expressing myself too vividly for my own good. I've often suffered because of that. Anyway, self-converted or not, this is the moment when I fall off the wagon with a resounding crash.'
He picked up the whisky-bottle. Churchill went over and put his hand on Hunter's shoulder.
'Don't be silly, Max. It's too late for that tonight. You'll get no sleep if you start now. You'll still be at it at breakfast-time.'
'Oh, jolly good, I'll be able to pick up another bottle when the waiters arrive.'
Hunter had poured a third of a tumbler of whisky and added water. He held it close to his body untasted.
'Look, don't do it. Not now. You said you were going to stay off it altogether for a month after leaving that place. Till the end of your probation period. It's only been two days. Give yourself a chance. Take a pill and get into bed. I'll stay and chat to you for a bit.'
'I'd need so many pills I'd be falling about the place all day tomorrow. And I don't want to sleep, I want to be drunk. And it isn't really a sudden decision. When I promised everybody I wouldn't touch it for a month I put a little secret clause in the treaty. A mental reservation. It said that it would be all right for me to get drunk if a certain kind of thing went wrong. It has. So here I go.'
He drained his glass and refilled it, then refilled Churchill's. They went back to their chairs.
'Do you mean the Fawkes thing?' asked Churchill in a puzzled tone.
'Not as such, no. He's all right now. It's a matter of some delicacy, really. To put to someone like you, that is. From my point of view it's quite crude, in the sense that its impact on me is strong and unsubtle. But it does connect with Fawkes. As we heard just now, the Fawkes business is hitting Signalman Pearce hard. For some time, understandably, he won't be able to pay a lot of attention to anything else. And I was beginning to hope quite seriously that I might get him to pay a certain amount of attention to me.'
'You were going to make advances to him, were you?'
'I'd already started. Well, let's call them approaches. Nothing overt. But I feel there's a fair chance he knows the sort of thing he's in for, or knew what he was in for, I suppose it'll turn out to be now this has happened. Which made it slightly encouraging that he agreed to let me take him into town and give him dinner tomorrow night. But, you see, that'll all be off. Hence my alighting from the wagon.'
'He was probably just going to soak you for an expensive meal and lots of champagne and then turn all shocked or nasty when you showed what you were after.'
'There's nothing cynical or mean about Andy. At the very least he was looking forward to an evening out with a kind friend. He's a very nice, open-hearted, unassuming boy. You don't know him.'
'How do you know him? You sound as if you and he were old buddies.'
'We had no fewer than three chats when he came over to see Fawkes at the hospital. We got on absolutely splendidly, Andy and I.'
'I shouldn't have thought he was your type, Max. I ran into him the other day. He's a nice-looking kid, I can see that myself, but not in the least effeminate.'
'Oh, I don't like them when they're effeminate. There's a kind of delicate handsomeness and physical grace that's not the slightest bit pansified, but is only found in young men. It's all gone by the time they're about twenty- five. Andy's got a lot of it. Do you know what I'm talking about?'
'Yes, I think so. But somebody like that would be basically heterosexual, wouldn't he?'
'Basically, yes. But having that type of good looks often means that he'll have been got at a bit in adolescence, when he was going through the phase of being drawn in that direction or at any rate wasn't averse from a bit of experimenting. So he'll have some idea of what fun it can be. On the other hand, he's had girls in the meantime and he knows by now he's attractive to them. So he's not in any doubt about his masculinity. Then I come along and suggest in the nicest possible way that just one more spot of what he used to get up to with his mates at school won't do him any harm. In fact, I tell him, it'll be more of a treat than it was then, because it'll take place in luxurious hotel bedrooms and such instead of behind the gasworks. I make a great point of laying everything on in style. French meals under crystal chandeliers, drinks in exclusive bars, theaters, trips to socially okay sporting events, I thought you'd look nice in these shirts so I got you half a dozen, I'd noticed you'd broken your wrist-watch so please say you'll accept this one. Well then, when his successor appears we've both had a lovely time and he goes back to his girls with a light heart and an intensified awareness of the possibilities of human nature. More whisky?'
'I'm all right with this, thanks.'
