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mature and gentle face, brown sensitive eyes, and a tan as if he either suffered with his liver or spent much time out of doors. He wore a grey finely-cut suit, well-polished shoes, collar and tie. Beside his morse-key was a gold fob-watch, and a writing-pad two-thirds covered by pencilled block-capitals. The opposite wall was racked with books, and one by the door was laid with a map of North Africa. Jones noted all this with a trained eye, while Handley explained: ‘You said to me “Do you mind if I go to your John?” Well, this is my brother John, and I admit I was mystified, but I thought you’d been talking to people in the pub last night and knew about him. You were my guest so I couldn’t come the “Am I my brother’s keeper?” lark. John, this is Russell Jones, a journalist who’s come to interview me.’
    John mumbled a greeting, showing a nature basically shy, if at times unpredictably violent. ‘He lives in this room with his radio gear, has in fact ever since he came home from the Jap prison-camp in 1945. He was in the army – signals – had a commission, which I was brother enough never to hold against him.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean to turn on you,’ John said. ‘I feel rather bewildered if I’m disturbed. It doesn’t happen often, I might say, which I suppose makes me react more noticeably than I need to when it does.’ He spoke gently, and now that the shock was wearing off Jones felt that here at least was one member of the Handley household with whom he might have something in common – even if he was a raving lunatic.
    â€˜Mind you, he never does make contact,’ Handley said in a kindly voice. ‘Do you, John?’
    His eyes gleamed, as if his whole life had been a disappointment, yet as if this continual state contained the seeds of hope. ‘Not yet, Albert. I keep on trying, though. Perhaps I just never get on the right wavelength at the right time, or maybe I’m asleep at the moment when I might be making contact. I get lots of false hope, and false messages even – as if somebody else engaged in the same thing is always trying to thwart me from making contact even though it may at the same time stop him doing so. It’s a dog-eat-dog world up in the ether, I suspect, all sorts of imps and birds and atmospherics trying to foil me, so that I’m sure the devil himself has a hand in it. The whole sky, from earth to stars and even beyond, is where my signals criss-cross, so you can imagine the scope I have, the space, the great, grandiloquent marvellous space! Oh, of course, I get plenty of ordinary messages, but they don’t count. I can send messages too, to ships or Moscow, but it’s not the same. I want to make contact with someone I’ve had in mind for a long time.’
    Sweat ran down his leathery face as he felt for a case and took out a cigarette, a normally courteous man who, because he did not offer one, must have forgotten they were in the room. ‘It’s no easy task,’ he smiled, ‘but I feel that someone has to make the attempt, and I seem to have been cut out for it. As I go on trying in my mundane methodical fashion I also dream about the time when I will finally make contact. I can’t tell you how the thought of it thrills and sustains me. It’s as if the whole light of the world will go on, when my signals and those signals meet in the ether, and the great love of the universe illumines every face, when I ask the only question and an answer comes through at last, as it is bound to do. Still, I sometimes have to admit that it’s a lonely life. I hardly ever leave this room, for who knows that in the few minutes I’m away, it wouldn’t have been the time and opportunity for me to make the first contact? My eyes often ache, my hand often falters, and a touch of despair forces me into sleep when I should be awake, but I go on, losing count of