So it would be all right now, the ones who were going to get up would have already had breakfast and the others would sleep on through till lunch; he could even take his shaving kit on to the mess without going to the hut at alclass="underline" and stopped, he could not even remember when he had heard it last, that alien and divorced-that thick dense mute furious murmur to the north and east; he knew exactly where it would be because he had flown over the spot yesterday afternoon, thinking peacefully I came home too soon. If I had only sat up there all night instead I could have seen it start again-listening, motionless in midstride, hearing it mur-mur toward and into its crescendo and sustain a time, a while and then cut short off, murmuring in his ears for a little time still un-til he discovered that what he was actually listening to was a lark: and he had been right, the Sidcott had served even better than it knew even or even perhaps intended, carrying him still intact across lunch too, since it was after ten now. Provided he could eat enough of course, the food-the eggs and bacon and the marmalade-having no taste to speak of, so that only in that had he been wrong; then presently he was wrong there too, eating steadily on in the empty mess until at last the orderly told him there was simply no more toast.
Much better than the Sidcott could have known to plan or even dream because during lunch the hut itself would be empty and for that while he could use his cot to do some of the reading he had imagined himself doing between patrols-the hero living by proxy the lives of heroes between the monotonous peaks of his own heroic derring: which he was doing for another moment or two while Bridesman stood in the door, until he looked up. 'Lunch?' Bridesman said.
'Late breakfast, thanks,' he said.
'Drink?' Bridesman said.
'Later, thanks,' he said: and moved in time, taking the book with him; there was a tree, he had discovered it in the first week-an old tree with two big roots like the arms of a chair on the bank Thursday above the cut through which the road ran past the aerodrome to Villeneuve Blanche so that you could sit as in a chair with the roots to prop the elbows which propped in turn the book, secure from war yet still of it, not that remote, in those days when they had called it war: who apparently were not decided yet what to call this now. And so now there would have been time enough; Bridesman would know by now what that had been this morning: thinking peacefully, the open book still propped before he began to move: Yes, he will know by now. He will have to make the decision to tell me or not, but he will make it.
Nor was there any reason to take the book to the hut because he might even read some more, entering and then leaving Brides-man's hut with the book still closed on one finger to mark his place, still strolling; he had never been walking fast anyway and finally stopping, empty and peaceful, only blinking a little, looking out across the empty field, the line of closed hangars, the mess and the office where a few people came and went. Not too many though; apparently Collyer had lifted the ban on Villeneuve Blanche; soon he would be looking at evening too and suddenly he thought of Conventicle but for an instant only and then no more because what could he say to Conventicle or they to each other? 'Well, Flight Captain Bridesman tells me one of our bat-talions put their guns down this morning and climbed out of the trench and through the wire and met a similar unarmed German one until both sides could get a barrage down on them. So all we need now is just to stand by until time to take that Jerry general home,' And then Conventicle: 'Yes sir. So I heard,'
And now he was looking at evening, the aftermath of sun, treading no shadow at all now to the petrol tin. Though almost at once he began to hurry a little, remembering not the Sidcott but the burning; it had been more than twelve hours now since he left it in the tin and there might not be anything left of it. But he was in time: just the tin itself too hot to touch so that he kicked it over and tumbled the Sidcott out, which would have to cool a little too. Which it did: not evening incrementing now but actual night itself, almost summer night this time at home in May; and in the latrine the tree once more was no longer green; only the stink of the Sidcott which had lasted, he had wasted that concern, dropping it into the sink where it unfolded as of its own accord into visibility, into one last repudiation-the slow thick smell of the burning itself visible now in creeping overlaps, almost gone now-only a beggar's crumb but perhaps there had been an instant in the beginning when only a crumb of fire lay on the face of dark-ness and the falling waters, and he moved again; one of the cubi-cles had a wooden latch inside the door if you were there first and he was and latched the invisible door and drew the invisible pistol from his tunic pocket and thumbed the safety off.
Again the room was lighted, candelabrum, sconce and girandole, curtain and casement once more closed against the swarm-dense city's unsleeping and anguished murmur; again the old general looked like a gaudy toy in his blanched and glittering solitude, just beginning to crumble the heel of bread into the waiting bowl as the smaller door opened and the youthful aide stood in it. 'He is here?' the old general said.
'yes sir,' the aide said.
'Let him come in,' the old general said. 'Then let nobody else/ 'yes sir,' the aide said and went out and closed the door and in a time opened it again; the old general had not moved except to put quietly down beside the bowl the uncrumbled bread; the aide entering and turning stiffly to attention beside the door as the Quartermaster General entered and came on a pace or two and then stopped, paused, the aide going back out the door and drawing it to behind him, the Quartermaster General standing for a moment longer-the gaunt gigantic peasant with his sick face and his hungry and stricken eyes, the two old men looking at each other for another moment, then the Quartermaster General partly Thursday Night raised one hand and dropped it and came on until he faced the table.
'Have you dined?' the old general said.
The other didn't even answer. 'I know what happened,' he said. 'I authorised it, permitted it, otherwise it couldn't have. But I want you to tell me. Not admit, confess: affirm it, tell me to my face that we did this. Yesterday afternoon a German general was brought across the lines and here, to this house, into this house,'
'yes es,' the old general said. But the other still waited, inexorable. 'We did it then,' the old general said.
'Then this morning an unarmed British battalion met an un-armed German force between the lines until artillery from both sides was able to destroy them both,'
'We did it then,' the old general said.
'We did it,' the Quartermaster General said. 'We. Not British and American and French we against German them nor German they against American and British and French us, but We against all because we no longer belong to us. A subterfuge not of ours to confuse and mislead the enemy nor of the enemy to mislead and confuse us, but of We to betray all, since all has had to repudiate us in simple defensive horror; no barrage by us or vice versa to prevent an enemy running over us with bayonets and hand gre-nades or vice versa, but a barrage by both of We to prevent naked and weaponless hand touching opposite naked and weaponless hand. We, you and I and our whole unregenerate and unregener-able kind; not only you and I and our tight close jealous unchal-lengeable hierarchy behind this wire and our opposite German one behind that one, but more, worse: our whole small repudiated and homeless species about the earth who not only no longer belong to man, but even to earth itself, since wehave had to make this last base desperate cast in order to hold our last desperate and precarious place on it,'