been contrived over pints of small beer in the White Hart by a group of clowns suffering from underwork.'
Hunter had been ordering drinks from a Mess waiter. He now said, 'In that case, part of the joke would be to see how many people fell for it and who they were. He, or they, would have to be frightfully aesthetic about things to stay away. I'm going along, anyhow. I scent fun of some kind.'
'You have curious notions of fun,' said Venables. 'And not you alone. At the last Mess night I witnessed five grown men, three of them of SI rating and thus bearing a certain load of responsibility, climbing about this room on the furniture in an attempt, so it was represented to me, to make a complete circuit without putting foot to ground. It was strenuous, it was ungraceful, it was noisy, it was distracting, it was pointless.'
'No harm in that,' said the Colonel. 'In its being pointless. It's a tradition.'
'And then last night I endured part of a sort of collective recitation, or chant, involving words of infantile near-obscenity delivered with great emphasis and killing slowness. Sister's… my sister's… up my sister's… pudding up my sister's… black pudding up my sister's… strong black pudding… And so on. The proceeding seemed to me to be indefensible.'
Ayscue laughed. 'That's rather heavy, isn't it? I'd have thought it was a very innocent way for young men to let off steam.'
'The steam you refer to is accumulated largely in the process of becoming drunk,' said Venables in his groaning way. 'Which process has evidently become as much a part of unit routine as guard-mounting or vehicle maintenance. The whole situation in this place is beginning to disquiet me. Boredom is giving place to group hysteria.'
'You're exaggerating,' said Ayscue firmly. 'The people here are working under a considerable strain. In the circumstances they like to forget themselves when they're off duty. I think everybody's bearing up wonderfully.'
'Well spoken, Willie,' said the Colonel.
With an emphatic, reinforcing nod at Venables, Ayscue picked up the glass of whisky that had just arrived for him. There was pink gin for the Colonel, sherry for Leonard, bitters and soda for Hunter. Venables picked up the remaining glass.
'Wait a moment,' Hunter said to him, 'didn't you ask for French vermouth?'
'I did. What of it?'
'Well, what you've got'-Hunter bent and sniffed-'is Italian vermouth. I'll tell-'
'Indeed? It will do very well, thank you.'
'But they're utterly different drinks.' Hunter sounded rather shocked.
'Without doubt. I take no note of such matters.'
'Well, you ought to. Don't you agree, chaps? Oughtn't he to take note of such matters as the difference between French and Italian vermouth?'
Ayscue nodded again, hardly less emphatically than before.. Leonard looked blank. 'Up to him,' said the Colonel.
'Je n'en vois pas la necessite,' groaned Venables. 'What, to resume, is this considerable strain you refer to? I feel myself under none, yet I bear the greater part of the responsibility for the success or failure of Operation Apollo in its entirety. The officers under instruction are each partly responsible for the success or failure of one-twelfth part of that Operation. Yet they, together with others who are not privy to anything of much importance, are held to be showing the effects of considerable strain. How can they be?'
'It was you who were saying a moment ago that we were all on the verge of mass hysteria,' said Leonard.
'Hysteria of this sort need not be, and in the present case demonstrably is not, the result of strain. Unless, which you well may, you count as a strain the experience of depending on the conversational and other social resources of one's fellows when none has any to speak of, as here.'
'How do you manage, then?' persisted Leonard.
Hunter and Ayscue exchanged a grin.
'I depend on nobody.'
'Well, that clears that up,' said the Colonel. 'I think, chaps, if we're going to this do we'd better knock these back and be getting along. Did you arrange about dinner, Max?'
'Yes, sir, I've put it back to eight o'clock. That ought to allow time for a full-dress meeting with election of officials and proposals for additions to the library. The people who aren't coming will just have to put in an extra half-hour's drinking, I'm afraid.'
'Right, then. I take it you won't be accompanying us, my dear fellow?' asked the Colonel, using his usual vocative for Venables, whose lack of Christian name, like other things about him, made standard Mess informality a little more difficult.
Venables removed and looked at his cigar before answering. 'I will,' he said. 'I have just sufficient curiosity to satisfy myself that, in accordance with my prediction, the authors of this tomfoolery will not show themselves.'
'Wouldn't you be prepared to take our word for that, if that's the conclusion we all come to?' asked Leonard.
'No.'
Colonel White, Leonard and Venables left together. Hunter and Ayscue followed. Out in the evening sunshine they took the cinder path that led round and up towards the camp theater.
'How did your evening with young Pearce go?'
