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‘Change and decay in all around I see,’ sang Uncle Theodore, gazing out of the morning-room window. Thus, with startling loudness, he was accustomed to relieve his infrequent fits of depression; but decay, rather than change, was characteristic of the immediate prospect.

The immense trees which encircled Boot Magna Hall, shaded its drives and rides, and stood (tastefully disposed at the whim of some forgotten, provincial predecessor of Repton), single and in groups about the park, had suffered, some from ivy, some from lightning, some from the various malignant disorders that vegetation is heir to, but all, principally, from old age. Some were supported with trusses and crutches of iron, some were filled with cement; some, even now, in June, could show only a handful of green leaves at their extremities. Sap ran thin and slow; a gusty night always brought down a litter of dead timber.

The lake was moved by strange tides. Sometimes, as at the present moment, it sank to a single, opaque pool in a wilderness of mud and rushes; sometimes it rose and inundated five acres of pasture. There had once been an old man in one of the lodges who understood the workings of the water system; there were sluice gates hidden among the reeds, and manholes, dotted about in places known only to him, furnished with taps and cocks; the man had been able to control an ornamental cascade and draw a lofty jet of water from the mouth of the dolphin on the South terrace. But he had been in his grave fifteen years and the secret had died with him.

The house was large but by no means too large for the Boot family, which at this time numbered eight. There were in the direct line: William who owned the house and estate, William’s sister Priscilla who claimed to own the horses, William’s widowed mother who owned the contents of the house and exercised ill-defined rights over the flower garden, and William’s widowed grandmother who was said to own ‘the money’. No one knew how much she possessed; she had been bed-ridden as long as William’s memory went back. It was from her that such large cheques issued as were from time to time necessary for balancing the estate accounts and paying for Uncle Theodore’s occasional, disastrous visits to London. Uncle Theodore, the oldest of the male collaterals, was by far the gayest. Uncle Roderick was in many ways the least eccentric. He had managed the estates and household throughout William’s minority and continued to do so with a small but regular deficit which was made up annually by one of grandmama’s cheques. The widowed Lady Trilby was William’s Great-Aunt Anne, his father’s elder sister; she owned the motor-car, a vehicle adapted to her own requirements; it had a horn which could be worked from the back seat; her weekly journey to church resounded through the village like the Coming of the Lord. Uncle Bernard devoted himself to a life of scholarship but had received little general recognition, for his researches, though profound, were narrow, being connected solely with his own pedigree. He had traced William’s descent through three different lines from Ethelred the Unready and only lack of funds fortunately prevented him from prosecuting a claim to the abeyant barony of de Butte.

All the Boots, in one way or another, had about a hundred a year each as pocket money. It was therefore convenient for them to live together at Boot Magna, where wages and household expenses were counted in with Uncle Roderick’s annual deficit. The richest member of the household, in ready cash, was Nannie Bloggs, who had been bed-ridden for the last thirty years; she kept her savings in a red flannel bag under the bolster. Uncle Theodore made attempts on them from time to time, but she was a sharp old girl and, since she combined a long standing aversion to Uncle Theodore with a preternatural aptitude for bringing off showy doubles during the flat racing season, her hoard continued to grow. The Bible and the Turf Guide were her only reading. She got great delight from telling each member of the family, severally and secretly, that he or she was her heir.

In other rooms about the house reposed: Nannie Price, ten years the junior of Nannie Bloggs, and bed-ridden from about the same age. She gave her wages to Chinese Missions and had little influence in the house; Sister Watts, old Mrs Boot’s first nurse, and Sister Sampson, her second: Miss Scope, Aunt Anne’s governess, veteran invalid, of some years seniority in bed to old Mrs Boot herself: and Bentinck the butler: James, the first footman, had been confined to his room for some time, but he was able on warm days to sit in an armchair at the window. Nurse Granger was still on her feet, but as her duties included the charge of all eight sick-rooms, it was thought she would not long survive. Ten servants waited upon the household and upon one another, but in a desultory fashion, for they could spare very little time from the five meat meals which tradition daily allowed them. In the circumstances the Boots did not entertain and were indulgently spoken of in the district as being ‘poor as church mice’.

The fashionable John Courteney Boot was a remote cousin, or, as Uncle Bernard preferred, the member of a cadet branch. William had never met him; he had met very few people indeed. It was not true to say, as the Managing Editor of the Beast had said, that he had never been to London, but his visits had been infrequent enough for each to be distinct and perennially horrifying in his memory.

‘Change and decay in all around I see,’ sang Uncle Theodore. It was his habit to sing the same line over and over again. He was waiting for the morning papers. So were William and Uncle Roderick. They were brought by the butcher, often blotched with red, any time between eleven and mid-day, and then, if not intercepted, disappeared among the sick-rooms to return at tea-time hopelessly mutilated, for both Bentinck and old Mrs Boot kept scrap-books, and Sister Sampson had the habit of cutting out coupons and losing them in the bedclothes. This morning they were late. It was a matter of great anxiety to William.

He had never been to the Megalopolitan offices or met anyone connected with the Beast. His job as author of Lush Places had been passed on to him by the widow on the death of its previous holder, the Rector of Boot Magna. He had carefully modelled his style on the late Rector’s, at first painfully, now almost without effort. The work was of the utmost importance to him: he was paid a guinea a time and it gave him the best possible excuse for remaining uninterruptedly in the country.

And now it was in danger. On the previous Thursday a very dreadful thing had happened. Drawing on the observations of a lifetime and after due cross-examination of the head keeper and half an hour with the encyclopaedia, William had composed a lyrical but wholly accurate account of the habits of the badger; one of his more finished essays. Priscilla in a playful mood had found the manuscript, and altered it, substituting for ‘badger’ throughout ‘the great crested grebe’. It was not until Saturday morning when, in this form, it appeared in the Beast, that William was aware of the outrage.

His mail had been prodigious; some correspondents were sceptical, others derisive; one lady wrote to ask whether she read him aright in thinking he condoned the practice of baiting these rare and beautiful birds with terriers and deliberately destroying their earthly homes; how could this be tolerated in the so-called twentieth century? A major in Wales challenged him categorically to produce a single authenticated case of a great crested grebe attacking young rabbits. It had been exceedingly painful. All through the week-end William had awaited his dismissal but Monday and Tuesday passed without a word from the Beast. He composed and despatched a light dissertation on water voles and expected the worst. Perhaps the powers at the Beast were too much enraged even to send back his manuscript; when Wednesday’s paper came he would find another tenant of Lush Places. It came. He hunted frantically for his half-column. It was there, a green oasis between Waffle Scramble and the Bedtime Pets. ‘Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole ...’ It was all right. By some miracle Saturday’s shame had been covered.

His uncles peevishly claimed the paper; he surrendered it readily. He stood at the french window blinking at the summer landscape; the horses at grass beyond the ha-ha skipped and frolicked.

‘Confound the thing,’ said Uncle Roderick behind him. ‘Can’t find the cricket anywhere. Whole page seems to be given up to some damn-fool cycling championship at Cricklewood Stadium.’

William did not care. In the fullness of his gratitude he resolved to give rodents a miss that Saturday (though he was particularly attached to them) and write instead of wild flowers and birdsong. He might even risk something out of the poets.

‘Nay not so much as out of bed?

When all the birds have Matins said,’

he sang, in his heart, to the recumbent figures above him. And then, wheezing heavily, with crumbs on his mouth, ponderously straddling across the morning-room, came Troutbeck, the aged ‘boy’, bearing a telegram. Curiosity and resentment contended for mastery in Troutbeck’s demeanour; curiosity because telegrams were of rare occurrence at Boot Magna; resentment at the interruption of his ‘elevenses’—a lavish and ruminative feast which occupied the servants’ hall from ten-thirty until noon.

William’s face quickly reassured him that he had not been called from the table on any frivolous pretext. ‘Bad news,’ he was able to report. ‘Shocking bad news for Master William.’

‘It couldn’t hardly be a death,’ said the third housemaid, ‘All the family’s here.’

‘Whatever it was we shall soon know,’ said Troutbeck. ‘It struck Master William all of a heap. Might I thank you to pass the chutney.’

Bad news indeed! Oblivious of the sunshine and the grazing horses and the stertorous breathing of his Uncle Theodore, William re-read the frightful doom that had fallen on him.

REQUEST YOUR IMMEDIATE PRESENCE HERE URGENT LORD COPPERS PERSONAL DESIRE SALTER BEAST.

‘Nothing serious, I hope!’ said Uncle Theodore, to whom telegrams, in the past, had from time to time brought news as disquieting as to any man living.

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘I have been called to London.’

‘Have you, my boy? That’s interesting. I was thinking of running up for a night myself ...’

But Uncle Theodore was speaking to the air. William was already at work, setting into motion the elaborate household machinery which would, too soon, effect his departure.

After an early luncheon, William went to say goodbye to his grandmother. She looked at him with doleful, mad eyes. ‘Going to London, eh? Well I hardly suppose I shall be alive when you return. Wrap up warm, dear.’ It was eternal winter in Mrs Boot’s sunny bedroom.

All the family who had the use of their legs attended on the steps to see William off; Priscilla bathed in tears of penitence. Nannie Bloggs sent him down three golden sovereigns. Aunt Anne’s motor-car was there to take him away. At the last moment Uncle Theodore attempted to get in at the off side, but was detected and deterred. ‘Just wanted to see a chap in Jermyn Street about some business,’ he said wistfully.

It was always a solemn thing for a Boot to go to London; solemn as a funeral for William on this afternoon. Once or twice on the way to the station, once or twice as the train stopped on the route to Paddington, William was tempted to give up the expedition in despair. Why should he commit himself to this abominable city merely to be railed at and, for all he knew of Lord Copper’s temperament, physically assaulted? But sterner counsels prevailed. He might bluff it out. Lord Copper was a townsman, a provincial townsman at that, and certainly did not know the difference between a badger and a great crested grebe. It was William’s word against a few cantankerous correspondents and people who wrote to the newspapers were proverbially unbalanced. By the time he reached Westbury he had sketched out a little scene for himself, in which he stood resolutely in the boardroom defying the doctrinaire zoology of Fleet Street; every inch a Boot, thrice descended from Ethelred the Unready, rightful 15th Baron de Butte, haughty as a chieftain, honest as a peasant. ‘Lord Copper,’ he was saying. ‘No man shall call me a liar unchastised. The great crested grebe does hibernate.’

He went to the dining-car and ordered some whisky. The steward said ‘We’re serving teas. Whisky after Reading.’ After Reading he tried again. ‘We’re serving dinners. I’ll bring you one to your carriage.’ When it came, William spilled it down his tie. He gave the steward one of Nannie Bloggs’s sovereigns in mistake for a shilling. It was contemptuously refused and everyone in the carriage stared at him. A man in a bowler hat said, ‘May I look? Don’t often see one of them nowadays. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll toss you for it. Call.’

William said ‘Heads.’

‘Tails it is,’ said the man in the bowler hat, putting it in his waistcoat pocket. He then went on reading his paper and everyone stared harder at William. His spirits began to sink; the mood of defiance passed. It was always the way; the moment he left the confines of Boot Magna he found himself in a foreign and hostile world. There was a train back at ten o’clock that night. Wild horses would not keep him from it. He would see Lord Copper, explain the situation fully and frankly, throw himself upon his mercy and, successful or defeated, catch the train at ten. By Reading he had worked out this new and humble policy. He would tell Lord Copper about Priscilla’s tears; great men were proverbially vulnerable in appeals of that kind. The man opposite him looked over the top of his paper. ‘Got any more quids?’

‘No,’ said William.

‘Pity.’

At seven he reached Paddington and the atrocious city was all around him.

The Megalopolitan building, numbers 700-853 Fleet Street, was disconcerting. At first William thought that the taxi driver, spotting a bumpkin, had driven him to the wrong address.

His acquaintance with offices was very small. At the time of his coming of age he had spent several mornings with the family solicitor in King’s Bench Walk. At home he knew the local Estate Agents and Auctioneers, the bank and the Town Hall. He had once seen in Taunton a barely intelligible film about newspaper life in New York where neurotic men in shirt sleeves and eye-shades had rushed from telephone to tape machine, insulting and betraying one another in surroundings of unredeemed squalor. From these memories he had a confused expectation that was rudely shocked by the Byzantine vestibule and Sassanian lounge of Copper House. He thought at first that he must have arrived at some new and less exclusive rival of the R.A.C. Six lifts seemed to be in perpetual motion; with dazzling frequency their doors flew open to reveal now left, now right, now two or three at a time, like driven game, a series of girls in Caucasian uniform. ‘Going up,’ they cried in Punch-and-Judy accents and before anyone could enter, snapped their doors and disappeared from view. A hundred or so men and women of all ranks and ages passed before William’s eyes. The sole stationary objects were a chryselephantine effigy of Lord Copper in coronation robes, rising above the throng, on a polygonal malachite pedestal, and a concierge, also more than life size, who sat in a plate glass enclosure, like a fish in an aquarium, and gazed at the agitated multitude with fishy, supercilious eyes. Under his immediate care were a dozen page boys in sky blue uniforms, who between errands pinched one another furtively on a long bench. Medals of more battles than were ever fought by human arms or on earthly fields glittered on the porter’s chest. William discovered a small vent in this tank and addressed him diffidently. ‘Is his Lordship at home?’

‘We have sixteen peers on the staff. Which was you referring to?’

‘I wish to see Lord Copper.’

‘Ho. Cyril, show this gentleman to a chair and give him a form.’

A minute blue figure led William to a desk and gave him a piece of paper. William filled it in. ‘Mr Boot wishes to see Lord Copper. Subject: great crested grebes.’

Cyril took the paper to the concierge, who read it, looked searchingly at William and mouthed, ‘Fetch the gentleman.’

William was led forward.

‘You wish to see Lord Copper?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Ho, no you don’t. Not about great crested grebes.’

‘And badgers too,’ said William. ‘It is rather a long story.’

‘I’ll be bound it is. Tell you what, you go across the street and tell it to Lord Zinc at the Daily Brute office. That’ll do just as well, now won’t it?’

‘I’ve got an appointment,’ said William, and produced his telegram.

The concierge read it thoughtfully, held it up to the light, and said ‘Ah’; read it again and said: ‘What you want to see is Mr Salter. Cyril, give the gentleman another form.’

Five minutes later William found himself in the office of the foreign editor.

It was an encounter of great embarrassment for both of them. For William it was the hour of retribution; he advanced, heavy with guilt, to meet whatever doom had been decreed for him. Mr Salter had the more active part. He was under orders to be cordial and spring Lord Copper’s proposal on the poor hick when he had won his confidence by light conversation and heavy hospitality.

His knowledge of rural life was meagre. He had been born in West Kensington and educated at a large London day-school. When not engaged in one or other capacity in the vast Megalopolitan organization he led a life of blameless domesticity in Welwyn Garden City. His annual holiday was, more often than not, spent at home; once or twice when Mrs Salter complained of being run down, they had visited prosperous resorts on the East Coast. ‘The country’, for him, meant what you saw in the train between Liverpool Street and Frinton. If a psycho-analyst, testing his associations, had suddenly said to Mr Salter the word ‘farm’, the surprising response would have been ‘Bang’, for he had once been blown up and buried while sheltering in a farm in Flanders. It was his single intimate association with the soil. It had left him with the obstinate though admittedly irrational belief that agriculture was something alien and highly dangerous. Normal life, as he saw it, consisted in regular journeys by electric train, monthly cheques, communal amusements and a cosy horizon of slates and chimneys; there was something unEnglish and not quite right about ‘the country’, with its solitude and self sufficiency, its bloody recreations, its darkness and silence and sudden, inexplicable noises; the kind of place where you never know from one minute to the next that you might not be tossed by a bull or pitch-forked by a yokel or rolled over and broken up by a pack of hounds.

He had been round the office canvassing opinions about the subjects of conversation proper to countrymen. ‘Mangelwurzels are a safe topic,’ he had been told, ‘only you mustn’t call them that. It’s a subject on which farmers are very touchy. Call them roots ...’

He greeted William with cordiality. ‘Ah, Boot, how are you? Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure before. Know your work well of course. Sit down. Have a cigarette or’—had he made a floater?—‘or do you prefer your churchwarden?’

William took a cigarette. He and Mr Salter sat opposite one another. Between them, on the desk, lay an open atlas in which Mr Salter had been vainly trying to find Reykjavik.

There was a pause, during which Mr Salter planned a frank and disarming opening. ‘How are your roots, Boot?’ It came out wrong.

‘How are your boots, root?’ he asked.

William, glumly awaiting some fulminating rebuke, started and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I mean brute,’ said Mr Salter.

William gave it up. Mr Salter gave it up. They sat staring at one another, fascinated, hopeless. Then:

‘How’s hunting?’ asked Mr Salter, trying a new line. ‘Foxes pretty plentiful?’

‘Well we stop in the summer, you know.’

‘Do you? Everyone away, I suppose?’

Another pause: ‘Lot of foot and mouth, I expect,’ said Mr Salter hopefully.

‘None, I’m thankful to say.’

‘Oh.’

Their eyes fell. They both looked at the atlas before them.

‘You don’t happen to know where Reykjavik is?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. I hoped you might. No one in the office does.’

‘Was that what you wanted to see me about?’

‘Oh no, not at all. Quite the contrary.’

Another pause.

William saw what was up. This decent little man had been deputed to sack him and could not get it out. He came to the rescue. ‘I expect you want to talk about the great crested grebe.’

‘Good God, no,’ said Mr Salter, with instinctive horror, adding politely, ‘At least not unless you do.’

‘No, not at all,’ said William, ‘I thought you might want to.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mr Salter.

‘That’s all right then.’

‘Yes, that’s all right ...’ Desperately: ‘I say, how about some zider?’

‘Zider?’

‘Yes. I expect you feel like a drop of zider about this time, don’t you? We’ll go out and have some.’

The journalists in the film had been addicted to straight rye. Silent but wondering William followed the foreign editor. They shared the lift with a very extraordinary man, bald, young, fleshless as a mummy, dressed in brown and white checks, smoking a cheroot. ‘He does the Sports page now,’ said Mr Salter apologetically, when he was out of hearing.

In the public house at the corner, where the Beast reporters congregated, the barmaid took their order with surprise. ‘Cider? I’ll see.’ Then she produced two bottles of sweet and fizzy liquid. William and Mr Salter sipped suspiciously.

‘Not quite what you’re used to down on the farm, I’m afraid.’

‘Well to tell you the truth I don’t often drink it. We give it to the haymakers of course and I sometimes have some of theirs.’ Then, fearing that this might sound snobbish, he added, ‘My Uncle Bernard drinks it for his rheumatism.’

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t sooner have something else?’

‘No.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t?’

‘I mean I would.’

‘Really?’

‘Really; much sooner.’

‘Good for you, Garge,’ said Mr Salter, and from, that moment a new, more human note was apparent in their relationship; conversation was still far from easy but they had this bond in common, that neither of them liked cider.

Mr Salter clung to it strenuously. ‘Interesting you don’t like cider,’ he said. ‘Neither do I.’

‘No,’ said William. ‘I never have since I was sick as a small boy, in the hay field.’

‘It upsets me inside.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Now whisky never did anyone any harm.’

‘No.’

Interest seemed to flag. Mr Salter tried once more. ‘Make much parsnip wine down your way?’

‘Not much ...’ It was clearly his turn now. He sipped and thought and finally said: ‘Pretty busy at the office I expect?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘Tell me—I’ve often wondered—do you keep a machine of your own or send out to the printers.’

‘We have machines of our own.’

‘Do you? They must work jolly fast.’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean, you have to get it written and printed and corrected and everything, all on the same day, otherwise the news would become stale. People would have heard it on the wireless, I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘D’you do much of the printing yourself?’

‘No. You see I’m the foreign editor.’

‘I suppose that’s why you wanted to find Reyjkavik.’

‘Yes.’

‘Jolly difficult knowing where all these places are.’

‘Yes.’

‘So many of them I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘Never been abroad myself.’

This seemed too good an opening to be missed. ‘Would you like to go to Ishmaelia?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘Not at all. For one thing I couldn’t afford the fare.’

‘Oh, we would pay the fare,’ said Mr Salter, laughing indulgently.

So that was it. Transportation. The sense of persecution which had haunted William for the last three hours took palpable and grotesque shape before him. It was too much. Conscious of a just cause and a free soul he rose and defied the nightmare. ‘Really,’ he said, in ringing tones, ‘I call that a bit thick. I admit I slipped up on the great crested grebe, slipped up badly. As it happened it was not my fault. I came here prepared to explain, apologize and, if need be, make reparation. You refused to listen to me. “Good God, no” you said, when I offered to explain. And now you calmly propose to ship me out of the country because of a trifling and, in my opinion, justifiable error. Who does Lord Copper think he is? The mind boggles at the vanity of the man. If he chooses to forget my eighteen months’ devoted and unremitting labour in his service, he is, I admit, entitled to dismiss me ...’

‘Boot, Boot old man,’ cried Mr Salter. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. With the possible exception of the Prime Minister, you have no more ardent admirer than Lord Copper. He wants you to work for him in Ishmaelia.’

‘Would he pay my fare back?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh, that’s rather different.... Even so it seems a silly sort of scheme. I mean, how will it look in Lush Places when I start writing about sandstorms and lions and whatever they have in Ishmaelia? Not lush, I mean.’

‘Let me tell you about it at dinner.’

They took a taxicab down Fleet Street and the Strand to the grill room where the Beast staff always entertained when they were doing so at the paper’s expense.

‘Do you really want tinned salmon?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

Mr Salter regarded his guest with renewed approval and handed him the menu.

The esteem William had won by his distaste for cider and tinned salmon, survived the ordering of dinner. William did not, as had seemed only too likely, demand pickled walnuts and Cornish pasties; nor did he, like the Buda-Pest correspondent whom Mr Salter had last entertained in his room, draw attention to himself by calling for exotic Magyar dishes and, on finding no one qualified to make them, insist on preparing for himself, with chafing dish and spirit lamp, before a congregation of puzzled waiters, a nauseous sauce of sweet peppers, honey and almonds. He ordered a mixed grill and while he was eating Mr Salter attempted, artfully, to kindle his enthusiasm for the new project.

‘See that man there, that’s Pappenhacker.’

William looked and saw.

‘Yes?’

‘The cleverest man in Fleet Street.’

William looked again. Pappenhacker was young and swarthy, with great horn goggles and a receding stubbly chin. He was having an altercation with some waiters.

‘Yes?’

‘He’s going to Ishmaelia for The Twopence.’

‘He seems to be in a very bad temper.’

‘Not really. He’s always like that to waiters. You see he’s a communist. Most of the staff of The Twopence are—they’re University men, you see. Pappenhacker says that every time you are polite to a proletarian you are helping to bolster up the capitalist system. He’s very clever of course, but he gets rather unpopular.’

‘He looks as if he were going to hit them.’

‘Yes, he does sometimes. Quite a lot of restaurants won’t have him in. You see, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people when you go to Ishmaelia.’

‘Mightn’t it be rather dangerous?’

Mr Salter smiled; to him, it was as though an Arctic explorer had expressed a fear that the weather might turn cold. ‘Nothing to what you are used to in the country,’ he said. ‘You’ll be surprised to find how far the war correspondents keep from the fighting. Why Hitchcock reported the whole Abyssinia campaign from Asmara and gave us some of the most colourful, eyewitness stuff we ever printed. In any case your life will be insured by the paper for five thousand pounds. No, no, Boot, I don’t think you need to worry about risk.’

‘And you’d go on paying me my wages?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And my fare there and back, and my expenses?’

‘Yes.’

William thought the matter over carefully. At length he said: ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No. It’s very kind of you but I think I would sooner not go. I don’t like the idea at all.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must be going to Paddington soon to catch my train.’

‘Listen,’ said Mr Salter. ‘I don’t think you have fully understood the situation. Lord Copper is particularly interested in your work and, to be frank, he insists on your going. We are willing to pay a very fair salary. Fifty pounds a week was the sum suggested.’

‘Gosh,’ said William.

‘And think what you can make on your expenses,’ urged Mr Salter. ‘At least another twenty. I happened to see Hitchcock’s expense sheet when he was working for us in Shanghai. He charged three hundred pounds for camels alone.’

‘But I don’t think I shall know what to do with a camel.’

Mr Salter saw he was not making his point clear. ‘Take a single example,’ he said. ‘Supposing you want to have dinner. Well, you go to a restaurant and do yourself proud, best of everything. Bill perhaps may be two pounds. Well, you put down five pounds for entertainment on your expenses. You’ve had a slap-up dinner, you’re three pounds to the good, and everyone is satisfied.’

‘But you see I don’t like restaurants and no one pays for dinner at home anyway. The servants just bring it in.’

‘Or supposing you want to send flowers to your girl. You just go to a shop, send a great spray of orchids and put them down as “Information”.’

‘But I haven’t got a girl and there are heaps of flowers at home.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Well, I’m afraid I must be going. You see I have a day-return ticket. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll consult my family and let you know in a week or two.’

‘Lord Copper wants you to leave tomorrow.’

‘Oh. I couldn’t do that anyway, you know. I haven’t packed or anything. And I daresay I should need some new clothes. Oh, no, that’s out of the question.’

‘We might offer a larger salary.’

‘Oh, no thank you. It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t want to go.’

‘Is there nothing you want?’

‘D’you know, I don’t believe there is. Except to keep my job in Lush Places and go on living at home.’

It was a familiar cry; during his fifteen years of service with the Megalopolitan Company Mr Salter had heard it upon the lips of countless distressed colleagues; upon his own. In a moment of compassion he remembered the morning when he had been called from his desk in Clean Fun, never to return to it. The post had been his delight and pride; one for which he believed he had a particular aptitude.... First he would open the morning mail and sort the jokes sent him by the private contributors (one man sent him thirty or forty a week) into those that were familiar, those that were indecent, and those that deserved the half-crown postal order payable upon publication. Then he would spend an hour or two with the bound Punches noting whatever seemed topical. Then the ingenious game began of fitting these legends to the funny illustrations previously chosen for him by the Art Editor. Serene and delicate sunrise on a day of tempest! From this task of ordered discrimination he had been thrown into the ruthless, cut-throat, rough and tumble of the Beast Woman’s Page. From there, crushed and bedraggled, he had been tossed into the editorial chair of the Imperial and Foreign News.... His heart bled for William but he was true to the austere traditions of his service. He made the reply that had silenced so many resentful novices in the past.

‘Oh, but Lord Copper expects his staff to work wherever the best interests of the paper call them. I don’t think he would employ anyone of whose loyalty he was doubtful, in any capacity.’

‘You mean if I don’t go to Ishmaelia I get the sack?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Salter. ‘In so many words that is exactly what I—what Lord Copper means.... Won’t you have a glass of port before we return to the office?’