THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

students who've seen through their dons. Anybody who feels he can't make enough of himself, who's frustrated by the political and social system.'

'Exactly the people in Germany who got the Nazis going,' I said.

Archie made a grimace. 'I know what you mean. Steam escaping from a faulty boiler by one crack rather than another. Of course, the Left Book Club's pretty Communist. It flatters a lot of people, rather dangerously, that they're more intelligent and better educated than they actually are. But I wish I'd had the idea. It would have been more useful than going to Spain, and made a lot of money.'

Archie spoke with a Bloomsbury publisher's combination of idealism and salesmanship. He had written a novel while recovering from his duodenal ulcer-_Scrannel Pipes,_ criticized by James Agate as 'the minutes of a rather decorous meeting of a committee comprising Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Ronald Firbank.' As nobody had leapt to publish it, Archie founded the Urn Press in a basement. At the time of our dinner party, he was losing a thousand or two a year in the business, as comfortably as any other moneyed and cultured young gentleman down from the University. He rose abruptly from the table, saying he had some telephone calls to make. 'I hope I didn't upset Elizabeth,' he apologized in my direction.

'Lord Meddish is in his self-analytical mood tonight,' I observed, smiling after our departed host. 'He wants to stop Hitler, but he doesn't want conscription.'

'Oh, Archie's mind is always as confused as an old woman's sewing-basket.' David sat sipping his brandy, the yellow-jacketed book on his knees. 'Do you suppose Elizabeth's having a good cry?'

'Elizabeth? Don't be silly.'

'You're pretty thick with her, aren't you?'

'On the contrary, she only lets me take her to occasions like this, when there are other people about. We never enjoy what Norman Douglas called 'a friendly teat-a-teat'. I don't see very much of her at all, really, as she spends most of the winter on the Riviera with her mother. She maintains a relationship of steely flippancy.'

'I don't know how you put up with it. I certainly wouldn't take that sort of selfishness from any woman. Even a stunner like her.

'I'd take even worse from Elizabeth,' I told him soberly. 'Surely you can understand my feelings? For years she was the untouchable embodiment of everything I wanted. Not just in the feminine way, but everything in life- money, home, _savoir faire,_ friends, parents. I was happy if she threw me a word, like a fish bone to one of Sir Edward's damn cats. Lady Tip hated me, of course, and still does. She always treated me with the utmost contempt, and I didn't see any reason why Elizabeth shouldn't do likewise.'

'Why didn't she?' asked David bluntly.

'She's much more civilized than her mother. Ever since Lady Tip was once horrible to me in her presence, she's felt guilty, perhaps. And of course my elevation to work with her father must have helped. Besides, things are changing, aren't they? Our Hitler makes class warfare look a silly game.'

'Didn't you once say she wasn't his daughter?'

'That was the gossip below stairs.'

'Personally, I think she's just a high-class prick teaser.'

Elizabeth came in, recovered from her pique and smiling. Noticing the book on David's lap, she exclaimed, 'Don't say you've taken to Mr Victor Gollancz's high-minded publications? Is he supporting this thing in Parliament to abolish flogging? You know that he doesn't eat the day when anybody's hanged, don't you? Not a thing. Daddy's seen him in the Savoy. Only a glass of champagne and a cigar.'

David knocked back his brandy and stood up. 'I must go, if I want to slip into Mary's and see Margaret before catching my train. Why is the last one to Oxford so bloody early? The dons like early nights, I suppose.'

David had been a doctor about three years. He was then working as an assistant to one of the consultant physicians at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. I was to be best man at Easter when he married a staff nurse he had met while doing his house jobs at St Mary's. She had been denied the feast that evening through night duty.

'What's Archie up to?' David asked Elizabeth.

'Talking to Watson about the Test Match in Durban. Apparently it rained just as England were winning. That seems to sum up our national destiny in general, doesn't it?'

'Can I take you home in a taxi?' I asked her.

'Of course, darling.'

It was a cold, windy, showery night, handfuls of rain rattling against the cab window. 'Must you go in yet?' I pleaded. 'It's dreadfully early. I whisked you off because I saw how Archie wanted to get rid of us all.'

'I promised Daddy I shouldn't be late.'

'You mean, you don't want to be alone with me longer than it is strictly polite to allow?'

In reply, she said, 'It must be a dreadful strain living with Archie. I wonder you're not a nervous wreck.

'I don't see a lot of him. He's always out in the evenings organizing committees, speaking at meetings, engineering interviews or buying drinks for journalists. He's a crusader with many banners.'

'Archie seems to think there's going to be a war.'

'It'll be a relief, really, won't it? After having to run our lives from one of Hitler's speeches to the next.'

'If there's a war I shall do something useful.'_

'Cut your hair and make munitions. Lots of girls did last time.'

'I'd be a nurse. I'd be one now, you know, honestly. But of course you have to be twenty-one before they let you start.'

'Can I kiss you?'

She formally closed her eyes and pursed her lips. I said, _Ich Liebe dich, and du schlдfst.'_

'What's that mean?' I translated. 'Please, Jim, don't start getting pompous,' she protested, much as Gerda had.

'But you're quite aware that I do love you.'

'Don't be serious, darling. You know how being serious spoils everything.'

We lay back in our separate corners of the taxi. 'You're lucky that I'm-well, not frightened of women, but frightened of making a fool of myself over them. That happened once.'

After a moment's puzzlement, she said, 'Oh, Rosie,' rather bleakly.

'And of course, as far as you're concerned, Elizabeth, I'm still the butler's boy.'

'Why must you keep bringing that up?' she asked crossly. 'It's awfully unfair. You're like Archie, trying to make us all feel utterly ashamed of ourselves because people in Bermondsey have got less to eat for dinner than we have. Wasn't that chicken ghastly?'_

'How long are you staying with your father?'

'I don't know. Mummy may remain in Monte Carlo, though of course it's dreadfully unfashionable after Easter.'

We arrived at the newly-built block of flats in Mayfair, where Sir Edward Tiplady now lived alone. Lady Tip had walked out about the same time as King Edward the Eighth abdicated. As I reached to open the cab door, she adopted again the ceremonial expression indicating that she would allow herself to be kissed.

'Come and see _Design for Living_ tomorrow,' I asked temptingly. 'Diana Wynyard and Rex Harrison.'

'Darling, there's simply no time for going to the theatre. Tomorrow I absolutely must go to a party with Hugo Mottram.'

'Who's Hugo Mottram?'

'He's frightfully rich on the Stock Exchange. I'm having an utterly passionate affair with him. Daddy's so pleased.'

'Good night.'

'Good night, darling. You're really the most wonderfully saint-like man, and of course I completely adore you.'

The taxi drove back to Archie's. Unrequited love is painful enough, love shrivelled by frivolity can be suicidal.

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