been left to me, but fortunately I was relieved of the onus of thought by the existence of your standing order about always letting you know at once of anything with any conceivable Security connection. I've a feeling you should redraft that, by the way. I spent several minutes after I talked to you trying to think of something of which it could validly be said that a Security connection was beyond the power of the human mind to conceive, and failed to come up with a single one. I got pretty close after a bit when I started wondering how an orderly reporting sick with toothache could have a Security bearing, but then I realized he might have a microfilm in his mouth for the dentist to take out and send to Peking. That rather discouraged me, getting as warm as that and then ignominiously failing. Of course, empirical semantics teaches us what ‘conceivable' is intended to convey, but we should always strive for intensified precision. I won't ask you to work out a synonym now, however. Come in.'
A corporal entered, saluted, and handed over two more copies of the notice.
'Where did you find these?'
'One in the OR's latrine, sir. The other pinned to a tree by the sleeping-huts.'
'Right. Have you covered the whole area yet?'
'No, sir, we're still working on it.'
'Do that. If one more of these comes to light after you've completed your search, I'll have you and all the other NCOs in the party up in front of the Colonel and I promise you I'll do my best to see you lose your stripes. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Off you go.'
The corporal saluted and left with enough of a clatter to bring Leonard halfway out of his daze.
'You were a bit hard on him, weren't you?' he said. 'Why all the flap? One copy of this thing is all we need.'
Ross-Donaldson had spoken to the corporal in his customary level tone. Now he stood up, his plump face flushed.
'It may be all you need,' he said very sharply. 'As far as I as Adjutant of this unit am concerned, need doesn't come into it. If it's possible to catch this man, which I doubt, I'm going to do it. And I'll make sure he goes to military prison. You can talk to him there if you want to.'
'There's no point in getting hot under the collar about it.'
'There's every point. This is an abnormal happening and there's no knowing where it may lead. A secret project like ours has got to keep all parts of its environment under control at all times. We can't afford to have fanatics or lunatics or jokers round the place.'
'I realize that, of course.'
'I hope you do. It's our job to be pro-death, Leonard, and don't you forget it.'
'Sixteen and nine, seventeen, seventeen and six, one pound. Thank you, sir.'
'Thank you, my dear.'
The man pocketed his change and went away with the drinks he had bought. Churchill, perched on a stool at the bar with a large gin and ginger beer before him, looked carefully at Catharine.
'Are you sure you'd rather do it like this?' he asked.
'Quite sure.'
'All right, then. Why did he marry you?'
'I think it must just have been that he wanted to be married. All his friends were, you see, the people he'd been in the Army with and so on. He never liked the idea of looking different.'
'When did you find that out?'
'I suppose I started realizing it after about two years. But it took a long time to dawn on me properly. I was very ignorant in those days. I was only nineteen, but I'd had so much sex already then that I thought I knew all about it. I thought I couldn't not know all about it. What I didn't know was what it was for. I was like someone who knows exactly how a railway engine's put together, and who can put his finger immediately on any part you care to name with his eyes shut, but who it's never occurred to that the point of the bloody thing is that it pulls trains. You do see what I mean, don't you? So I wasn't getting a great deal out of it at that stage, early on. That didn't worry me much, though. I thought that perhaps the people who said they got a lot out of it were natural exaggerators, or else that I was somebody it didn't happen to appeal to an awful lot. I thought that getting married and being with someone all the time would make it better. So you see I was to blame too for things going wrong.'
She was speaking quietly and calmly, but Churchill felt she should not go too far with her story too fast. 'Have a drink,' he said. 'You'll be wanting to wet your whistle with all this chattering you're doing.'
'Very kind of you, sir, just a half of bitter if I may.'
While she drew the beer, Churchill glanced round the bar. At this hour, shortly before closing-time in the middle of a week-day, the place was almost empty. Neither the red-faced man who had bought drinks a little earlier, nor his closely similar friend, nor the three younger men who might have been students on vacation, showed any interest in Catharine or himself. Eames, the landlord, had explained that it was a point of etiquette with many drinkers to leave a barmaid and her steady escort undisturbed as far as possible. 'If she's on her own she's likely to be considered fair game,' he had added, 'which is where you may get trouble. So I'm most happy that Mrs. Casement should have taken a fancy to someone nice and quiet like yourself, Mr. Churchill.'
At times like this, and even more when he was in bed with Catharine, it often seemed to Churchill that the whole thing would go on forever. He knew that, through no fault of either of them, it could not. But he was getting very good at paying no attention to this a lot of the time. He smiled at her when she stared at him as she
