by the way. Quite his old self.'
'Thank you, Corporal Fawkes,' said Naidu. 'I take it I shan't be required to furnish a photostat of my commission to the Minister of Defence?'
'No, sir. Captain Leonard didn't say anything about that.'
The three officers entered a long airy room with sunlight beating through the windows. More light was reflected from the glossy walls and from the glass of the many pictures hanging on these. Down the middle ran a trestle table that bore dozens of vases of flowers and plants in pots. Thick streamers of greenery curled down from wire baskets attached to the ceiling.
A figure sitting up in bed at the far end of the room raised an arm and the visitors approached. On either side, also in bed, were men reading, men apparently asleep, men lying down but not asleep. One man was looking carefully round the room, as if for the first time, while another man in white trousers and T shirt watched him as carefully from a nearby chair. Yet another man, with irregular patches of grey hair on a grey scalp, got up from a bench by the window and moved away, keeping track of the arrivals out of the corner of his eye.
The man who was putting the Army to so much trouble seemed very much at home. He was lying back against advantageously arranged pillows within reach of various comforts: non-glossy illustrated magazines, paperback novels on the covers of which well-developed girls cringed or sneered, a comparatively hard-back work on how to win at poker, a couple of newspapers folded so as to reveal half-completed crossword puzzles, a tin jug containing a cloudy greyish fluid, packets of French cigarettes and an open box of chocolates. Captain Hunter, a thin pale man of twenty-eight with a thin black mustache, smiled and extended his hand.
'Hullo, boys,' he said, and offered cigarettes which Ayscue and Churchill accepted. 'I'm afraid I can't give you a light. You're not allowed to have matches and stuff in here because you might start burning the place down. Almost certainly would, in fact. Oh, thank you, James. Is that parcel for me? What's in it?'
'A cake,' said Ayscue. 'But don't go cutting it now.'
'My dear Willie, I couldn't if I wanted to. No knives, like no matches. But the nice nurse comes on at six and he might see his way to lending me one.'
'Well, mind he isn't about when you start slicing.'
'What…? I suppose there's a file and a rope-ladder in it.'
'Not exactly.' Naidu spoke with some disapproval. 'A different mode of escape.'
'You don't mean…'
'Yes,' said Churchill. 'Three quarter-bottles of White Horse. Corporal Beavis baked the thing up in the Mess kitchen. Sorry we couldn't get any more in.'
'Quite enough for a man in my condition. Thank you all most awfully.'
'How is your condition, Max?' asked Ayscue.
'Oh, splendid. Dr. Best is very pleased with me. He says he's been able to explain to me just why I got myself into the state I did and so I shouldn't have any more trouble. He's letting me out on proba-tion next Wednesday.'
Churchill said diffidently, 'What was the explanation he gave you? If you want to talk about it, of course.'
'I haven't the remotest notion, dear boy. I'm only telling you what he says he's done. He likes doing all the talking himself. It must come from being supposed to ask so many questions. I just let him get on with it.'
'It's bound to be a difficult task, giving it up,' said Naidu. 'But you can rely on us three to give you all the support and encouragement in the world.'
'Whatever is possessing you, Moti? Nobody said anything about giving it up. Any fool can give it up. I'm going to do something much more worthwhile than that-ditching alcoholism and taking up very heavy drinking. Talking of drinking, I'll have to watch that Scotch. Too much at one go and I'll start acting sober, and that'd be suspicious. You see, these pills they give you, when they really get hold of you you start acting pissed all the time. That's how they know when you're taking a turn for the better.'
'You're not acting pissed,' said Churchill.
'I'd like to think I've always known how to hold my liquor.'
'You weren't holding it too well the night we brought you here.'
'No gentleman can or should be always a gentleman. Some get more ungentlemanly than others, though. You see that white-haired old buffer down by the door? Last Saturday he was let out on a week's probation. Very early indeed on Tuesday morning they carted him back in, pissed. The ‘they' included a small detachment of police as well as a crying wife. There was no end of a to-do, I can assure you. I haven't heard such language since that last Sergeants' Mess party. At lunchtime today he fell out of bed. What do you think of that? Just try to imagine how he must have attacked the stuff to be still pissed after four and a half days. And he only had two days and a bit to fill his tanks. You know, I can't help finding that rather disturbing? It seems to flout some basic law. Oh, if you can't manage another cake by say Monday, do you think you could send me a book about drinks, cocktail recipes or what-not? There's a lot to be said for pornography in the absence of the real thing. Ask anybody.'
'You'd better be careful with those empties,' said Ayscue.
'Oh, no problem. I shall just heave them out of the loo window. There's a sort of cairn of broken bottles in the bushes by that corner. I found it on one of my rambles through the extensive grounds when, disinclined to trudge all the way back indoors for the purpose, I was looking for a place to pee. That wasn't all I found, either. In a brief circuit of fifty yards or so I came across no fewer than three very amorous couples, and that was without trying to come across them. Quite the contrary. I was virtually threading my way. I get the impression everybody's at it all the time. It's no more than you'd expect in an environment like this.'
Churchill ground out his cigarette. 'Not everybody, surely.'
'I was speaking figuratively. Not everybody, no. I question whether the catatonics do much in that way, and no doubt the senility wards have a stainless record. Dr. Best took me round them the other afternoon.
