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By Root 2780 0

Pennistone had told me, too, that Bob Duport had married Peter Templer’s sister, Jean. It was Pennistone, that same evening – when all was confusion owing to Milly Andriadis’s row with Stringham – whom she had pushed into an armchair when he had tried to tell her an anecdote about Prince Theodoric and the Prince of Wales. By then Pennistone was rather tight. It all seemed centuries ago: the Prince of Wales now Duke of Windsor, Prince Theodoric, buttress of pro-Allied sentiment in a country threatened by German invasion, Pennistone and myself second-lieutenants in our middle thirties. I wondered what had happened to Stringham, Mrs Andriadis and the rest. However, there was no time to ponder long about all that. Other matters required attention. I was glad – overjoyed – to be back in England even for a month or so. There would be weekend leaves from the course, when it should be possible to get as far as my sister-in-law Frederica Budd’s house, where Isobel was staying until the child was born. The London streets, empty of traffic, looked incredibly bright and sophisticated, the tarts in Piccadilly dazzling nymphs. This was before the blitz. I knew how Persephone must have felt on the first day of her annual release from the underworld. An RAF officer of unconventional appearance advancing up the street turned out to be Barnby. He recognised me at the same moment.

‘I thought you were a war artist.’

‘I was for a time,’ he said. ‘Then I got sick of it and took a job doing camouflage for this outfit.’

‘Disguising aerodromes as Tudor cottages?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Not bad. If I’m not able to paint in the way I want, I’d as soon do this as anything else.’

‘I thought war artists were allowed to paint whatever they wanted.’

‘They are in a way,’ said Barnby, ‘I don’t know. I prefer this for some reason, while there’s a war on. They let me go on an occasional operational flight.’

I felt a pang. Barnby was a few years older than myself. I had nothing so lively to report. He looked rather odd in his uniform, thick, square, almost as if he were still wearing the blue overalls in which he was accustomed to paint.

‘Where are you, Nick?’ he asked.

I gave him some account of my life.

‘It doesn’t sound very exciting.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘I’ve got a wonderful new girl,’ he said.

I thought how, war or peace, nothing ever really changes in such aspects.

‘How long are you in London?’ he said. ‘I’d like to tell you about her. She’s got one extraordinary trait. It would amuse you to hear about it. Can’t we dine together tonight?’

‘I’ve got to report to Aldershot this afternoon. I’ve been sent there on a course. Are you stationed in London?’

‘Up for the night only. I have to see a man in the Air Ministry about some special camouflage equipment. How’s Isobel?’

‘Having a baby soon.’

‘Give her my love. What happened to the rest of the Tolland family?’

‘George is in France with a Guards battalion. He was on the Regular Reserve, of course, now a captain. Robert always a mysterious figure, is a lance-corporal in Field Security, believed to be on his way to getting a commission. Hugo doesn’t want to be an officer. He prefers to stay where he is as a gunner on the South Coast – bombardier now, I believe. He says you meet such awful types in the Officers’ Mess.’

‘What about those chaps Isobel’s sisters married?’

‘Roddy Cutts – as an MP – had no difficulty about getting into something. His own county Yeomanry, I think. I don’t know his rank, probably colonel by now. Susan is with him. Chips Lovell has joined the Marines.’

‘That’s an unexpected arm. Is Priscilla with him?’

‘So far as I know.’

We spoke of other matters, then parted. Talking to Barnby increased the feeling that I had been released from prison, at the same time inducing a new sensation, that prison life was all I was fit for. Barnby’s conversation, everything round about, seemed hopelessly unreal. There was boundless relief in being free, even briefly free, from the eternal presence of Gwatkin, Kedward, Cadwallader, Gwylt and the rest of them; not to have