Gurney was right, had set foot here, had trodden where Stephen now trod! Yet these were the ancient glories he must somehow bring to life: with Councillor Noakes the literary man dressed up as Shakespeare, with a foxhunting squire in armour as Prince Edward of Wales.

He knew that he could not do it. In a moment of self-revelation he saw himself as he was, well-meaning and timid and ineffectual, a faint-hearted dabbler alike in books and living. He had only been brave and competent once, and that was when he had Polly beside him—Polly laughing at the sizzle of bullets from the hidden ambush even as he cried “Get your head down!” and then suddenly toppling forward with a grunt. Stephen had lobbed three grenades one after another into the blackness of the wood, dragged Polly into the truck, and driven away. It had not occurred to him even that he had done well until Polly, returned from hospital, had thanked him for saving his life; and they had got rather drunk together on some wine that tasted like resin.

Three days later the news of Germany’s capitulation came through on the wireless, and they got drunk again. It was a particularly exhilarating experience to drink with Polly, who when he was at the top of the world somehow managed to carry his companions there with him. He and Stephen danced down the village street with the whole population of sixty at their heels, and Polly kissed all the women, including an old crone who was said to be a hundred and hadn’t been kissed, she croaked, for seventy years. Then Polly climbed a chimney, the tallest in the place, and unfurled a Stars and Stripes at the top of it; for although his father had been a carpet dealer from Salonika he was an American citizen, whose home was in New Orleans. He made a long speech in Greek, and another in English, and sang some scandalous songs in both languages, and danced a hornpipe on the top of the chimney before he could be persuaded to come down. Then they went back to the Headquarters and drank some more wine; and Polly, swaying in the doorway, took a grenade out of his pocket and very slowly, almost thoughtfully, pulled out the pin. “Must have a bang, Stevie. …” In a world of bangs he always wanted another. But the baseball player’s pitch for once in a way failed to come off; the grenade hit the telephone wire in front of the Headquarters, and fell to earth within ten yards of Stephen. He was lucky indeed to lose no more than his knee-cap and half his shin.

Yet oddly enough he bore Polly no ill-will; indeed it was impossible to feel resentment against such a man. Somehow it cheered him up, now, simply to remember Polly, to remember his hip-swinging walk, his slow wide grin, his laughing dark eyes which spoke of the Mediterranean even while his mouth drawled of New Orleans. And the extraordinary hats he wore, a match for Mr. Churchill’s—once he had gone out on patrol in a ridiculous little baseball cap, perched with the peak pointing skyward on top of the big prognathous head which had caused Stephen to nickname him the Piltdown Man; and the five Bulgarian prisoners he brought back in the morning had seemed more alarmed by his cap than by his tommy-gun.

Indeed there was nobody in the world like Polly! Nobody, surely, who could do so many things so well— from driving a truck at fifty along the side of a precipice to handling a boat in a rough sea; from climbing a mountain to riding a half-wild horse; from singing songs to making love! And in this latter respect he was indeed unique, for he had not only made love to all the eligible young women in a valley forty miles long (the population, though small, was widely scattered), but he had done so in spite of an embarrassing idiosyncrasy at the memory of which Stephen nearly laughed aloud. Whenever Polly experienced the least premonitory stirrings of passion he sneezed; sometimes indeed the sneeze came first, and gave him early warning that yet another affair of the heart was on the way. “I bin to a psychiatrist about it, Stevie,” he confessed gravely; “but the guy said there was nothing to be done. I reckon it’s something like hay-fever; but you can’t get inoculated against dames.” And after all, it didn’t really matter, he added with a grin; for when the dames got wise to it they’d naturally take a violent fit of sneezing as an exceptional compliment.

Nevertheless, this singularity of Polly’s had once nearly cost him his life. During the time of the troubles with Elas he happened to be courting a Communist schoolmistress who lived in a village held by bandits. At considerable risk he visited her under cover of darkness, entering her parents’ house by means of an open window. At a tender moment he was assailed by such a paroxysm of sneezing that, according to him, the whole house was shaken by it, her father woke up, the guards were aroused, and he found himself in the same awkward predicament as Samson at Gaza. He went one better than Samson, however, for instead of carrying away the doors of the gate he fought his way out with the protesting girl slung over his shoulder; and taking her to a place of safety he was able as he put it to unconvert her from Communism in no time.

Stephen was still chuckling to himself at Polly’s adventures when he arrived at his shop; and the boisterous memories had dispelled most of his gloom. But when he thought again of Odo and Dodo and W. G. and the chinchillas, he wished, oh, he wished, that he had Polly’s company in this desperate affair, for then surely all would be well. On the spur of the moment he pulled out his notecase and hunted through it for Polly’s address; and when he found it he went into the back shop where Miss Pargetter was sitting very prim and still at her typewriter and told her:

“Put one of those Festival folders in an envelope, please, and send it by airmail to this address. I’ll write a letter to go with it.” Then he spelt out the address to her very slowly: Mr. Polycarpos Gabrielides, 1256 Esplanade Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

He went back into the front shop to write his letter.