"Don't strain," she said. "It's not good to try too hard. There's no hurry."
"Oh, that was neither here nor there. I was a child then. Where did I get to? Medicine. . . Trade. I wouldn't like to remember suddenly that I was the general manager of a chain store. That wouldn't connect either. I never particularly wanted to be rich. I suppose in a way I wanted to lead -- a good life."
Any prolonged effort made his head ache. But there were things he had to remember. He could let old friendships and enmities remain in oblivion, but if he were to make something of what was left of life he had to know of what he was capable. He looked at his hand and flexed the fingers: they didn't feel useful.
"People don't always become what they want to be," Anna said.
"Of course not; a boy always wants to be a hero. A great explorer. A great writer. . . But there's usually a thin disappointing connection. The boy who wants to be rich goes into a bank. The explorer becomes -- oh, well, some underpaid colonial officer marking minutes in the heat. The writer joins the staff of a penny paper. . ." He said, "I'm sorry. I'm not as strong as I thought. I've gone a bit giddy. I'll have to stop -- work -- for the day."
Again she asked with odd anxiety, "They are good to you here?"
"I'm a prize patient," he said. "An interesting case."
"And Dr Forester -- you like Dr Forester?"
"He fills one with awe," he said.
"You've changed so much." She made a remark he couldn't understand. "This is how you should have been." They shook hands like strangers. He said, "And you'll come back often?"
"It's my job," she said, "Arthur." It was only after she had gone that he wondered at the name.
4
In the mornings a servant brought him breakfast in bed: coffee, toast, a boiled egg. The Home was nearly self-supporting; it had its own hens and pigs and a good many acres of rough shooting. The doctor did not shoot himself; he did not approve, Johns said, of taking animal life, but he was not a doctrinaire. His patients needed meat, and therefore shoots were held, though the doctor took no personal part. "It's really the idea of making it a sport," Johns explained, "which is against the grain. I think he'd really rather trap. . ."
On the tray lay always the morning paper. Digby had not been allowed this privilege for some weeks, until the war had been gently broken to him. Now he could lie late in bed, propped comfortably on three pillows, take a look at the news: "Air Raid Casualties this Week are Down to 255", sip his coffee and tap the shell of his boiled egg: then back to the paper -- "The Battle of the Atlantic". The eggs were always done exactly right: the white set and the yoke liquid and thick. Back to the paper: "The Admiralty regret to announce. . . lost with all hands." There was always enough butter to put a little in the egg, for the doctor kept his own cows.
This morning as he was reading Johns came in for a chat, and Digby looking up from the paper asked, "What's a Fifth Column?"
There was nothing Johns liked better than giving information. He talked for quite a while, bringing in Napoleon.
"In other words people in enemy pay?" Digby said. "That's nothing new."
"There's this difference," Johns said. "In the last war -- except for Irishmen like Casement -- the pay was always cash. Only a certain class was attracted. In this war there are all sorts of ideologies. The man who thinks gold is evil. . . He's naturally attracted to the German economic system. And the men who for years have talked against nationalism. . . well, they are seeing all the old national boundaries obliterated. Pan-Europe. Perhaps not quite in the way they meant. Napoleon too appealed to idealists." His glasses twinkled in the morning sun with the joys of instruction. "When you come to think of it, Napoleon was beaten by the little men, the materialists. Shopkeepers and peasants. People who couldn't see beyond their counter or their field. They'd eaten their lunch under that hedge all their life and they meant to go on doing it. So Napoleon went to St Helena."
"You don't sound a convinced patriot yourself," Digby said.
"Oh, but I am," Johns said earnestly. "I'm a little man too. My father's a chemist, and how he hates all these German medicines that were flooding the market. I'm like him. I'd rather stick to Burroughs and Wellcome than all the Bayers. . ." He went on, "All the same, the other does represent a mood. It's we who are the materialists. The scrapping of all the old boundaries, the new economic ideas. . . the hugeness of the dream. It is attractive to men who are not tied to a particular village or town they don't want to see scrapped. People with unhappy childhoods, progressive people who learn Esperanto, vegetarians who don't like shedding blood."
"But Hitler seems to be shedding plenty."
"Yes, but the idealists don't see blood like you and I do. They aren't materialists. It's all statistics to them."
"What about Dr Forester?" Digby asked. "He seems to fit the picture."
"Oh," Johns said enthusiastically, "he's sound as a bell. He's written a pamphlet for the Ministry of Information, 'The Psycho-Analysis of Nazidom'. But there was a time," he added, "when there was -- talk. You can't avoid witch-hunting in wartime, and, of course, there were rivals to hollo on the pack. You see, Dr Forester -- well, he's so alive to everything. He likes to know. For instance, spiritualism -- he's very interested in spiritualism, as an investigator."
"I was just reading the questions in Parliament," Digby said. "They suggest there's another kind of Fifth Column. People who are blackmailed."
"The Germans are wonderfully thorough," Johns said. "They did that in their own country. Card-indexed all the so-called leaders, Socialites, diplomats, politicians, labour leaders, priests -- and then presented the ultimatum. Everything forgiven and forgotten, or the Public Prosecutor. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd done the same thing over here. They formed, you know, a kind of Ministry of Fear -- with the most efficient under-secretaries. It isn't only that they get a hold on certain people. It's the general atmosphere they spread, so that you can't depend on a soul."
"Apparently," Digby said, "this M.P. has got the idea that important plans were stolen from the Ministry of Home Security. They had been brought over from a Service Ministry for a consultation and lodged overnight. He claims that next morning they were found to be missing."
"There must be an explanation," Johns said.
"There is. The Minister says that the honourable member was misinformed. The plans were not required for the morning conference, and at the afternoon conference they were produced, fully discussed and returned to the Service Ministry."
"These M.P.s get hold of odd stories," Johns said.
"Do you think," Digby asked, "that by any chance I was a detective before this happened? That might fit the ambition to be an explorer, mightn't it? Because there seem to me to be so many holes in the statement."
"It seems quite clear to me."