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for his mid-morning pills, and some hot whisky and milk to wash them down with!

      Sunday 24 December It occurred to me on Friday, Gershon, that there was One Person in my life of whom you know nothing – namely Duncan. Now all my friends except you know about me and Duncan – and it is not Right that you should be kept in ignorance any longer. (Hamish knows, Victor knows – and of course Joyce & Jean & Sheila know – even the Outer Circle, like Ismay & Joan Pearce know – true Aubrey does not – but that is difficult, as you will readily understand when I tell you All.)

      You see, when I say to any of my friends suddenly in the middle of a conversation, ‘Excuse me, I must see Duncan’, they know that in another idiom this would read ‘Please teacher, may I be excused’, and they smile kindly, for Duncan is beloved of them all – and they also are liable to desert me for him, at any moment of the day – and this is how he came by his name.

As I have often told you, in Drumnadrochit I live next door to the bathroom (and Duncan) and, when we have a house-full of people, there are often battering queues of devotees waiting outside his door (true, we have a Poor Relation established in the garden – but few people care to venture out into the blast on cold mornings to see a mere lateral branch of the family) and one morning, when there were more banging than usual on the bathroom door, I found myself murmuring absently ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking’,13 – and of course from that time forth Duncan it was and is and ever more shall be.

      Merry Christmas (but don’t tell your parents I said so) and Happy New Year, Darling.

      Saturday 30 December What you’ve had to put up with from your grandmother is just nothing at all compared with what I have had to suffer from my brothers. They want vociferously to know which I prefer, you or Aubrey. Lionel is sure I prefer you; Dicky thinks it’s Aubrey. They asked me all sorts of personal questions about you both, to which I replied primly & non-committally. ‘Which of them has nicer teeth?’ Dicky asked. I said you both had mouths full of orient pearls. ‘Which has most teeth?’ Lionel wanted to know. I said that, as far as I could tell, you both had the same number. They obviously felt at this point that a deadlock had been reached – then Lionel brightened. ‘Has either of them any gold fillings?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Gershon has two.’ Lionel positively glowed. ‘My dear,’ he said (he has a paternal way about him). ‘Mind you, I’m not urging you to marry money, but times are hard, and two gold fillings should be looked upon in the nature of an investment.’ With that I left the room but I heard the two of them discussing you & Aubrey’s chances from the next room. ‘When I was in Cambridge at half-term,’ Dicky said lyingly, ‘I went into Aubrey’s rooms and found him kissing Eileen’s photograph.’ Lionel gave a hollow laugh. ‘When I was last in Cambridge,’ he said, ‘I went into Eileen’s room and found Gershon kissing Eileen!’ ‘Good God!’ said Dicky in awe, ‘Did you?’ ‘Certainly I did,’ Lionel answered – and then there was a shuffling outside my door – and Dicky burst in to ask for confirmation!!! I was very cryptic, and he went away uncertainly scratching his head. Do your young brothers behave in this unseemly fashion, darling?

      ***

Tuesday 2 January 1940 Good morning, darling. I’m in Disgrace! It is all very sad – because it’s PA No. 1 I’m in Disgrace with – and it is, as you know, essential that Perfect and Beautiful Concord should prevail among the elaborate hierarchies of Public Adoration. Moreover it’s all because of a Cona,14 and although no-one realizes better than I what a vital spoke a Cona can be in the Wheel of Life, I sorrow at the thought of seeing Miss Sloane forever henceforth through a glass bulb darkly.

And this is the story. The prelude goes back to the Friday on which I had lunch with you – (oh! that there were more such Fridays in the vacation calendar, but that is beside the point). On that day in the afternoon my mother telephoned me in a state of extreme agitation (at about 3.30) not, as you might suppose, to find out whether I had got back from lunch or not, but to cluck about our Cona, which had inconsiderately fallen to pieces in her hand – funnel and bulb – at one fell swoop. Could I please ring up Fortnum & Mason and ask them to send me the requisite spare parts which I could then bring back to Middleton in the evening. I said I could and would. I duly telephoned that ’igh-class emporium, and asked them to send the Cona round to Miss Alexander at the War Office before 5 o’clock. They didn’t – so I arrived home without it. My mother greeted me more in sorrow than in anger and suggested that I might collect the parcel on my way to the theatre with Lionel the next day. I said I would – but owing to the temperamental tendencies of the South Down motor-bus service, we missed the train we intended to catch, lunched on the next one & reached Victoria just in time to seize a taxi and get to HM’s theatre as the curtain was going up. We came out of the theatre into an impenetrable fog, bleated impotently for a taxi, took refuge in the Carlton – and were only able to get a taxi in time to catch the 6.18 train back to Middleton (we had intended to get the 5.30). My mother observed the absence of Cona much more in Anger than in Sorrow this time – but I promised faithfully to bring it back on Thursday (which was to be my first day at the office after Christmas) if I died in the attempt. Figures-toi donc mon chagrin when I got to the office, to find, No Cona awaiting me. I immediately set Wheels in Motion (not to say such wheels as were within wheels and therefore hardly worth mentioning), and telephones buzzing – and it finally transpired that F and M had delivered the parcel to the War Office – but that nobody seemed to know anything about it. It took me the whole day to get as far as this, (case histories got somewhat neglected in the process) and I left the office in the flappiest cluck of the century – and got back to Middleton – without the Cona. When my mother had recovered from her Swoon and decided not to cut me off with a jade cigarette holder, I explained the situation, and she was appeased. On Friday, as you already know, I did not go to the office – and yesterday was New Year’s Day, with the result that the train was in a Holiday Humour and I got to work an hour late. However, I tripped happily up the marble steps at 11.15 and burst into Miss Sloane’s room with ‘Mikado’ on my lips. ‘A Happy New Year’, I said convivially to Miss Sloane taking her hand warmly, and failing to notice the lack of response in her clasp. ‘A Happy New Year’, I added affectionately to Miss Fox – and I was just making my way to the Inner Doors to say the same thing to Leslie when a Frosty Silence hit me between the eyes, and trickled moistly down my nose. ‘Oh! er – yes?’ I said, retreating a step in acknowledgment and then my eye lighted upon a huge wooden crate addressed to ‘Miss Alexander – The War Office’. This, I thought, misguidedly, was better. ‘Aha,’ I said. ‘My Cona.’ ‘Yes,’ said Miss Sloane. ‘Your Cona,’ and her words froze into sharp icicles in the air before her. Something was wrong. There was a significant pause. ‘I was nearly court-marshalled15 during the weekend on account of your Cona,’ she added, and the vitriol dropped steaming and sizzling on to the desk. ‘Oh! were you?’ I muttered ineffectually. ‘I am sorry’ – and then the whole story poured out like wine out of the mouth of a narrow-necked bottle, which, as Rosalind knew, comes out not at all or all at once.16 It transpired that there was only one Miss Alexander on the permanent staff of the War Office and she (fate is unkind at times), works in MI5, which is the most Secret and Sinister branch of the Intelligence, and has a notice on the door of its department saying ‘No Admission except by Special Pass’. (I have often quailed, in passing, before this notice.) She was sure it was a bomb, and sent it off to Wormwood Scrubs to be opened (this is True, darling, though I shouldn’t blame you if you don’t believe it – it sounds too fantastic even to happen to me). When they found (at Wormwood Scrubs) that it was only a Cona, they sent it back – and enquiries were set on foot to locate the owner. The entire War Office by this time knew about it and Miss Sloane happened to overhear it talked of in a corridor and said (poor soul, she knew not what she did!) that there was a Miss Alexander working in the S of S’s department, thereby bringing the August and Collective wrath of MI5 on her innocent head for allowing Strange Parcels (which might easily be bombs) to be delivered at a Government Office. Furthermore, to add to her general sense of ill-being, F and M had spent the whole of Friday ringing me up about the Cona – thereby blocking the Official Line.

And that is the story of the Cona. It was the first that ever burst into that silent sea,17 and I think – & Miss Sloane hopes, that it

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