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"Oh no. The only real danger was running aground." "Or being shot up by a naval patrol, or a French plane. Or having your throat cut by the Vietminh." He laughed shyly. "Well, I'm here anyway," he said. "Why?"

"Oh, tHere are two reasons. But I don't want to keep you awake."

"rmnotsleepy.Thegunswillbestartmgsoon." "Do you mind if I move the candle? It's a bit bright here." He seemed, nervous.

"What'sthefirstreason?"

"Well, the other day you made nae think this place was rather interesting. You remember when we were with Granger... and Phuong." "Yes?" - -

"I thought I ought to take a look at it. To tell you the truth, I was a bit ashamed of Granger. " "I see. As simple as all that."

"Well, there wasn't any real difficulty, was there?" He began to play with his bootlaces, and there was a long silence. "I'm not being quite honest," he said at last. "No?" ".

. "I really came to see you." "You came here to see me?" "Yes." . "Why?" He looked up from his bootlaces in an agony of embarrassment. "I had to tell you--I've fallen in love with Phuong." '. I laughed. I couldn't help it. He was so uaexpeeted and so serious. I said, "Couldn't youliave waited till I got back? lsha.llbe.inSaigonnextweek"

lYou might have been killed," he said. "It wouldn't have beerihon"urable. And then I don't know if I could have stayed away from Phuong all that time." "You mean, you have stayed away?" "Of course. You don't think I'll tell her-without you knowing?" "People do," I said. "When did it happen?"

"I guess it was that night at the Chalet, dancing with her."

"I didn't think you ever got close enough." He looked at me in a puzzled way. If his conduct seemed crazy to me, mine was obviously inexplicable to him. He said, "You know, I think it was seeing all those girls in that house. They were so pretty. Why, she might have been one of them. I wanted to protect her."

"I don't think she's in need of protection. Has Miss Hei invited you out?"

"Yes, but I haven't gone. I've kept away." He said gloomily, "It's been terrible. I feel like such a heel, but you do believe me, don't you, that if you'd been married-why, I .wouldn't ever come between a man and his wife."

"You seem pretty sure you can come between," I said. For the first time he had irritated me.

"Fowler," he said, "I don't know your Christian name...?"

"Thomas. Why?"

"I can call you Tom, can't I? I feel in a way this has brought us together. Loving the same woman, I mean." "What's your next move?"

He sat up enthusiastically against the packing-cases. "Everything seems different now that you know," he said. "I shall ask her to marry me, Tom." "I'd rather you called me Thomas." "She'll just have to choose between us, Thomas. That's fair enough." But was it fair? I felt for the first time the premonitory chill of loneliness. It was all fantastic, and yet, and yet . . . He might be a poor lover, but I was the poor man. He had

.in his hand the infinite riches of respectability.

He began to undress and I thought, 'He has youth too.' How sad it was to envy Pyle. I said, "I can't marry her. I have a wife at home. She would never divorce me. She's High Church*-if you know what that means."

"I'm sorry, Thomas. By the way, my name's Alden, if you'd care..."

"I'd rather stick to Pyle," I said. "I think of you as Pyle." He got into his sleeping bag and stretched his hand out for the candle. "Whew," he said, "I'm glad that's over, Thomas. I've been feeling awfully bad about it." It was only too evident that he no longer did.

When the candle was out, I could just see the outline of his crew-cut against the light of the flames outside. "Good-night, Thomas. Sleep well," and immediately at those words like a bad comedy cue the mortars opened up, whirring, shrieking, exploding. "Good God," Pyle said, "is it an attack?" "They are trying to stop an attack." "Well, I suppose, there'll be no sleep for us now?" "No sleep."

"Thomas, I want you to know what I think of the way you've taken all this-1 think you've been swell, swell, there's no other word for it." "Thank you."

"You've seen so much more of the world than I have. You know, in some ways Boston is a bit-cramping. Even if you aren't a Lowell or a Cabot.* I wish you'd advise me, Thomas." "What about?" "Phuong."

"I wouldn't trust my advice if I were you. I'm biased. I want to keep her."

"Oh, but I know you're straight, absolutely straight, and we both have her interests at heart." Suddenly I couldn't bear his boyishness any more. I said, I don't care that for her interests. You can have her inte-rests. I only want her body. I want her in bed with me. I'd rather ruin her and sleep with her than, than . . . look after her damned interests." He said,

"Oh," in a weak voice, in the dark.

I went on, "If it's only her interests you care about, for God's sake leave Phuong alone. Like any other woman she'd rather have a good . . ." the crash of a mortar saved Boston ears from. the Anglo-Saxon word.

But there was a quality of the implacable in Pyle. He had determined I was behaving well and I had to behave well. He said, "I know what you are suffering, Thomas." "I'm not suffering." "Oh yes, you are. I know what I'd suffer if I had to give up Phuong"

"But I haven't given her up."

"I'm pretty physical too, Thomas, but I'd give up all hope of that if I could see Phuong happy." "She is happy."

"She can't be-not in her situation. She needs children." "Do you really believe all that nonsense her sister. . ." "A sister sometimes knows better. . ." "She was just trying to sell the notion* to you, Pyle, be-cause'she thinks you have more money. And, my God, she has sold it all right." "I've only got my salary." "Well, you've got a favourable rate of exchange any-way."

"Don't be bitter, Thomas. These things happen. I wish it had happened to anybody else but you. Are those our mortars?"

"Yes, 'our' mortars. You talk as though she was leaving me, Pyle"

"Of course," he said without conviction, "she may choose to stay with you." "What would you do then?" "I'd apply for a transfer."

"Why don't you just go away, Pyle, without causing trouble?"

"It wouldn't be fair to her, Thomas," he said quite seriously. I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused. He added, "I don't think you quite understand Phuong."

And waking that morning months later with Phuong beside me, I thought, "And did you understand her either? Could you have anticipated this situation? Phuong so happily asleep beside me and you dead?" Time has its revenges, but revenges seem so often sour. Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God-a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bamboozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers.

"Are you sure there's anything much to understand?" I asked Pyle. "Oh, for God's sake, let's have a whisky. It's too noisy to argue." "It's a bit early," Pyle said. "It's damned late." I poured out two glasses and Pyle raised his and stared through the whisky at the light of the candle. His hand shook whenever a shell burst, any yet he had made that senseless trip from Nam Dinh.

Pyle said, "It's a strange thing that neither of us can say 'Good luck'." So we drank saying nothing.

CHAPTER V

(1)

I had thought I would be only one week away from Saigon, but it was nearly three weeks before I returned. In the first place it proved more difficult to get out of the Phat Diem area than it had been to get in. The road was cut be-tween Nam Dinh and Hanoi and aerial transport could not be spared Tor one reporter who shouldn't have been there anyway. Then when I reached Hanoi the correspondents had been flown up for briefing on the latest victory and the plane that took them back had no seat left for me. Pyle got away from Phat Diem the morning he arrived: he had ful-fitted his mission-to speak to me about Phuong, and there was nothing to keep him. I left him asleep when the mortarfire stopped at five-thirty and when I returned from a cup of coffee and some biscuits in the mess he wasn't there. I assumed that he had gone for a stroll-after punting all the way down the river from Nam Dinh a few snipers would not have worried him; he was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he might cause others. On one occasion-but that was months later--I lost control and thrust his foot into it, into the pain* I mean, and I remember how he turned away and looked at his stained shoe in perplexity and said, "I must get a shine before I see the Minister." I knew then he was already forming his phrases in the style he had learnt from York Harding. Yet he was sincere in his way: it was coincidence that the sacrifices were all paid by others, until that final night under the bridge to Dakow. It was only when I returned to Saigon that I learnt how Pyle, while I drank my coffee, had persuaded a young naval officer to take him on a landing-craft which after a routine patrol dropped him surreptitiously at Nam Dinh. Luck was with him and he got back to Hanoi with his trachoma team twenty-four hours before the road was officially regarded as cut. When I reached Hanoi he had already left for the south, leaving me a note with the barman at the Press Camp.