they had seen earlier came out. Churchill felt a shock, as if the aircraft had again passed between him and the sun. He realized that he had thought of the girl every couple of minutes since his first sight of her. He caught her glance now and held it until they passed. Immediately he was filled with shame at his own foolishness and lack of forethought in not having looked at the girl properly. She was thin and tall and perhaps had a slight stoop and her hair was neither light nor dark. Instead of noticing more he had just stared into her eyes, and after five seconds he could not even remember their color. But he had a feeling he would know her again anywhere.
With no more said they rounded the corner and made for their car, one of the passe jeeps wished on the unit as a result of some turn of Captain Leonard's thought. Yellow lettering on its body said 6 HQ Adm Bn, shorthand for the unit's cover name. Ayscue got into the driver's seat and they moved off.
'It's an exceedingly pleasant situation, you can say that much.' Naidu looked out at the grassy slopes, dotted with rhododendrons and azaleas, between which they were riding. 'Doesn't the whole place remind you of an English country house of the traditional sort?'
'It used to be just that,' said Ayscue. 'I was reading their pamphlet. Apparently the fellow who was squire here in Victorian times was a sort of pioneer in mental illness. Set up what amounted to a clinic, one of the first in the world. Then one of his successors handed it over to a trust, and there we are.'
'I can see there's been a lot of building since those days, but it still keeps its very charming historical appearance.'
Sitting behind them, Churchill heard little of this. He was trying to satisfy himself that there was nothing he could have done about the girl. Even if he had had the resource to give his two friends the slip and follow her back to her ward, he would probably not have been able to find out so much as her name. And her name alone would not have been much use-just a lot better than nothing at all. Why had he not been able to run after her, pretend he thought he knew her or something? Oh well, it was done now, or rather not done.
At the lodge, a thickset man in a blue suit peered at them through a sort of guichet, then waved them past impatiently.
'Rather lax security measures here,' said Naidu. 'How does that worthy fellow know we aren't three raving maniacs who have overpowered three unsuspecting Army types? He'd get short shrift from our gallant Captain Leonard.'
Churchill roused himself; he would think about the girl again later. 'Apart from the violent chaps, who never leave the ward, it's all open here, apparently. Max was telling me last week. The problem is keeping chaps who've been chucked out from worming their way back in.'
The traffic across their front was heavy. While they waited for a gap, a motorcyclist in Army uniform drew over to the curb near them, stopped his machine and pulled it onto its rest. As he approached, pushing his goggles up, they saw that he was a dispatch-rider of the Royal Corps of Signals. He crossed to Ayscue's side of the jeep, saluted with something of a flourish, and said,
'Excuse me, sir, but you seem to be part of the unit I'm trying to find, Sixth HQ Admin Battalion. Can you tell me where your place is? This is the second time I've been along this bit of road.'
'We're going there now, Corporal,' said Ayscue. 'Perhaps we can deliver your packet for you.'
'Not unless one of you gentlemen happens to be…'-the man referred to a typewritten instruction-'Captain P. B. Leonard, 17th Dragoons? I've got to deliver to him personally and get his signature, you see. Thank you all the same, sir. Now if you could just give me an idea…'
Churchill half listened while Ayscue furnished directions. The dispatch-rider's head and shoulders were out of sight from the back seat of the jeep, and his voice was unremarkable. He was quite young: nothing more.
'You'll be there long before we are,' Ayscue was saying. 'By the way, I thought you fellows were all on four wheels these days.'
'We keep up a few of the bikes for special runs like this where there isn't a lot to carry. Better in traffic, too. And this weather, well, it's a treat to be in the saddle. Well, thanks again, sir. I'll probably pass you on my way back.'
In a few seconds he was off. Churchill fancied he waved as he went, but was not sure. By the time there was a gap in the stream of vehicles long enough to take the jeep, the dispatch-rider was out of sight ahead of them.
Naidu started a conversation with Ayscue about discipline, inspired, he said, by their brief exchange with Corporal Fawkes an hour earlier. Was that admittedly very pleasant young NCO not perhaps a trifle… free and easy? He, Naidu, ought not to have encouraged this spirit by offering even that very minor jest of his at the expense of Security and, by implication, of a brother officer. Or was he being over-scrupulous, too much the son of a subadar-major father whose views on such matters were probably indistinguishable from those current in Victoria's Indian Army?
As Churchill had expected, Ayscue said more or less that everything was all right really. Saying that everything was all right really, however different it sometimes looked, earned Ayscue his living, of course, but at the moment none of his masters was in earshot. Surely he must forget himself sometimes? Never to do so would verge on the inhuman. Well: he was decent enough in other respects for it to be regrettable that he was a parson.
Churchill soon got tired of regretting this. Although he would not be able to think about the girl properly until after dark and when he was alone, he was encouraged to do so now by the stretch of country they were passing through, sunlit meadows on one side, shade over the road and on the other side, where there was also a stream splashing down among rocks with ash and birch trees on the slopes and drifts of dead leaves seemingly undisturbed since autumn.
It was not that Churchill visualized himself walking among the trees with the girl, nor so much that he would have liked to be doing so. Instead, by a process familiar since childhood but never analyzed, he used the thought of her to focus his attention on the scene, finding much more in it physically than he would otherwise have cared to, and taking its and her joint existence as a signal, almost a guarantee, that the real joyful life existed somewhere. Churchill was not an unhappy person, either by nature or by experience, but since leaving school five years ago he had several times been disconcerted by doubts about whether the joy of which he knew his heart was capable would ever find its occasion or its setting. Only sad or frightening things, like this afternoon's visit to Max Hunter, seemed to have the power that joy ought to have, and the necessity for getting through the ordinary day sometimes felt, late at night, as if it were detuning his heart, screening and muffling its capacities.
He could admit to himself now that it had been a relief to have been prevented by circumstances from
