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By Root 2880 0

of grass and flower beds long untended. From here the ground sloped away towards a little redbrick seaside town, flanked by green downs along which villas were spreading. The cars, on parade early, were all ‘correct’. Finn was not due to appear for some minutes. Wondering what the place was like in peacetime at the height of the season, I strolled to the side of the hotel facing the ‘front’. On this façade, a section of the building – evidently the hotel’s dining-room, with half-a-dozen or more high arched windows – had been constructed so that it jutted out on to the esplanade. This promenade, running some feet above the beach, was no doubt closed to wheeled traffic in normal times. Now, it was completely deserted. The hotel, in café-au-lait stucco, with turrets and balconies, was about fifty or sixty years old, built at a time when the seaside was coming seriously into fashion. This small resort had a pleasantly out-of-date air. One pictured the visitors as well-to-do, though not at all smart, only insistent on good food and bourgeois comforts; the whole effect rather smug, though at the same time possessing for some reason or other an indefinable, even haunting attraction. Perhaps that was just because one was abroad again; and, for once, away from people. In the early morning light, the paint on the side walls of the hotel had taken on a pinkish tone, very subtle and delicate, blending gently with that marine aporousness of atmosphere so enthusiastically endorsed by the Impressionists when they painted this luminous northern shore. It was time to find Finn. I returned to the steps of the main entrance. The large hall within was in semi-darkness, because all the windows had been boarded up. Some of the military attachés were already about, polishing their boots in a kind of cloakroom, where the greatcoats had been left the night before. They seemed to be doing no harm, so I went back to the hall. Finn, carrying his valise on his shoulder, was descending the stairs.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning, Nicholas. Couldn’t use the lift over there. No lift boys in wartime. Didn’t sleep too well. Kept awake by the noise of the sea. Not used to it’

I reported the matter of the bath. Finn looked grave. ‘Awkward situation, damned awkward. I’ve always tried to keep out of religious controversy. You handled it well, Nicholas. I’ll have a word with Asbjornsen and thank him. Any of them down yet?’

‘Some are cleaning their boots in the lobby through there.’

‘Cleaning their boots? My God, I believe they must have found my polish. Which way? I must stop this at once. It will be all used up.’

He rushed off. The fleet of cars got under way soon after this. That day I found myself with Cobb, Lebedev and Marinko, the Jugoslav. The seating was altered as a matter of principle from time to time. I was beside the driver. Lebedev – the name always reminded one of the character in The Idiot who was good at explaining the Apocalypse, though otherwise unreliable – rarely spoke; nor did he usually attend more than very briefly – so our Mission working with the Russians reported – the occasional parties given by their Soviet opposite numbers, where drinking bouts attained classical proportions, it was alleged. He was, indeed, commonly held to derive his appointment from civil, rather than military, eminence at home, his bearing and methods – despite the top boots and spurs – lacking, the last resort, the essential stigmata of the officier de carrière.

‘I tried to talk to Lebedev the other day about Dostoievski’s Grand Inquisitor,’ Pennistone said. ‘He changed the subject at once to Nekrassov, of whom I’ve never read a line.’

Cobb was making notes in a little book. Marinko gazed out of the window, overcome with Slav melancholy, or, more specifically – being of the party that supported the Resistance groups of Mihailovich – dejection at the course British policy appeared to be taking in that connexion.

‘Just spell out the name of that place we stopped over last night, Major Jenkins,’ said Cobb.

‘C-A-B-O-U-R-G, sir.’

As I uttered the last