bewilderment graceful,
“we should of course get something like a straight line . . . however we’ve data that
suggest the curves for certain—conditions, well they’re actually quite different—schizophrenics
for example tend to run a bit flatter in the upper part then progressively steeper—a
sort of bow shape . . . I think with this chap, this Roland, that we’re on to a classical
paranoiac—”
“Ha.”
That’s
a word she knows. “Thought I saw you brighten up there when he said ‘turned against.’”
“‘Against,’ ‘opposite,’ yes you’d be amazed at the frequency with this one.”
“What’s the
most
frequent word?” asks Jessica. “Your number one.”
“The same as it’s always been at these affairs,” replies the statistician, as if everyone
knew: “death.”
An elderly air-raid warden, starchy and frail as organdy, stands on tiptoe to relight
the sensitive flame.
“Incidentally, ah, where’s your mad young gentleman gone off to?”
“Roger’s with Captain Prentice.” Waving vaguely. “The usual Mysterious Microfilm Drill.”
Being transacted in some distant room, across a crown-and-anchor game with which chance
has very little to do, billows of smoke and chatter, Falkman and His Apache Band subdued
over the BBC, chunky pints and slender sherry glasses, winter rain at the windows.
Time for closeting, gas logs, shawls against the cold night, snug with your young
lady or old dutch or, as here at Snoxall’s, in good company. Here’s a shelter—perhaps
a real node of tranquillity among several scattered throughout this long wartime,
where they’re gathering for purposes not entirely in the martial interest.
Pirate Prentice feels something of this, obliquely, by way of class nervousness really:
he bears his grin among these people here like a phalanx. He learned it at the films—it
is the exact mischievous Irish grin your Dennis Morgan chap goes about cocking down
at the black smoke vomiting from each and every little bucktooth yellow rat he shoots
down.
It’s as useful to him as he is to the Firm—who, it is well known, will use anyone,
traitors, murderers, perverts, Negroes, even women, to get what They want. They may
not’ve been that sure of Pirate’s usefulness at first, but later, as it developed,
They were to grow very sure, indeed.
“Major-General, you can’t actually give your support to this.”
“We’re watching him around the clock. He certainly isn’t leaving the premises physically.”
“Then he has a confederate. Somehow—hypnosis, drugs, I don’t know—they’re getting
to his man and tranquilizing him. For God’s sake, next you’ll be consulting horoscopes.”
“Hitler does.”
“Hitler is an inspired man. But you and I are employees, remember. . . .”
After that first surge of interest, the number of clients assigned to Pirate tapered
off some. At the moment he carries what he feels is a comfortable case load. But it’s
not what he really wants. They will not understand, the gently bred maniacs of S.O.E.
ah very good, Captain
rattling sitreps, shuffling boots, echoes off of Government eyeglasses
jolly good and why not do it actually for us sometime at the Club
. . . .
Pirate wants Their trust, the good-whisky-and-cured-Latakia scent of Their rough love.
He wants understanding from his
own
lot, not these bookish sods and rationalized freaks here at Snoxall’s so dedicated
to Science, so awfully tolerant that this (he regrets it with all his heart) may be
the only place in the reach of war’s empire that he does feel less than a stranger. . . .
“It’s not at all clear,” Roger Mexico’s been saying, “what they have in mind, not
at all, the Witchcraft Act’s more than 200 years old, it’s a relic of an entirely
different age, another way of thinking. Suddenly here we are 1944 being hit with convictions
right and left. Our Mr. Eventyr,” motioning at
“we should of course get something like a straight line . . . however we’ve data that
suggest the curves for certain—conditions, well they’re actually quite different—schizophrenics
for example tend to run a bit flatter in the upper part then progressively steeper—a
sort of bow shape . . . I think with this chap, this Roland, that we’re on to a classical
paranoiac—”
“Ha.”
That’s
a word she knows. “Thought I saw you brighten up there when he said ‘turned against.’”
“‘Against,’ ‘opposite,’ yes you’d be amazed at the frequency with this one.”
“What’s the
most
frequent word?” asks Jessica. “Your number one.”
“The same as it’s always been at these affairs,” replies the statistician, as if everyone
knew: “death.”
An elderly air-raid warden, starchy and frail as organdy, stands on tiptoe to relight
the sensitive flame.
“Incidentally, ah, where’s your mad young gentleman gone off to?”
“Roger’s with Captain Prentice.” Waving vaguely. “The usual Mysterious Microfilm Drill.”
Being transacted in some distant room, across a crown-and-anchor game with which chance
has very little to do, billows of smoke and chatter, Falkman and His Apache Band subdued
over the BBC, chunky pints and slender sherry glasses, winter rain at the windows.
Time for closeting, gas logs, shawls against the cold night, snug with your young
lady or old dutch or, as here at Snoxall’s, in good company. Here’s a shelter—perhaps
a real node of tranquillity among several scattered throughout this long wartime,
where they’re gathering for purposes not entirely in the martial interest.
Pirate Prentice feels something of this, obliquely, by way of class nervousness really:
he bears his grin among these people here like a phalanx. He learned it at the films—it
is the exact mischievous Irish grin your Dennis Morgan chap goes about cocking down
at the black smoke vomiting from each and every little bucktooth yellow rat he shoots
down.
It’s as useful to him as he is to the Firm—who, it is well known, will use anyone,
traitors, murderers, perverts, Negroes, even women, to get what They want. They may
not’ve been that sure of Pirate’s usefulness at first, but later, as it developed,
They were to grow very sure, indeed.
“Major-General, you can’t actually give your support to this.”
“We’re watching him around the clock. He certainly isn’t leaving the premises physically.”
“Then he has a confederate. Somehow—hypnosis, drugs, I don’t know—they’re getting
to his man and tranquilizing him. For God’s sake, next you’ll be consulting horoscopes.”
“Hitler does.”
“Hitler is an inspired man. But you and I are employees, remember. . . .”
After that first surge of interest, the number of clients assigned to Pirate tapered
off some. At the moment he carries what he feels is a comfortable case load. But it’s
not what he really wants. They will not understand, the gently bred maniacs of S.O.E.
ah very good, Captain
rattling sitreps, shuffling boots, echoes off of Government eyeglasses
jolly good and why not do it actually for us sometime at the Club
. . . .
Pirate wants Their trust, the good-whisky-and-cured-Latakia scent of Their rough love.
He wants understanding from his
own
lot, not these bookish sods and rationalized freaks here at Snoxall’s so dedicated
to Science, so awfully tolerant that this (he regrets it with all his heart) may be
the only place in the reach of war’s empire that he does feel less than a stranger. . . .
“It’s not at all clear,” Roger Mexico’s been saying, “what they have in mind, not
at all, the Witchcraft Act’s more than 200 years old, it’s a relic of an entirely
different age, another way of thinking. Suddenly here we are 1944 being hit with convictions
right and left. Our Mr. Eventyr,” motioning at
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