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for the behaviour of my graceless friends.”
    “Who was it?”
    “Didn’t you know? That was the Editor of the
Gazette
.”
    Her flag of victory seemed all of a sudden to lose its wind. Her face fell; Chris noticed it, the look of awe.
    The sun in April is an enemy though the weatherman on television reciting mechanically the words of his foreign mentors tells you it will be fine all over the country. Fine! We have been slowly steamed into well-done mutton since February and all the oafs on our public payroll tell us we aredoing just fine! No, my dear countrymen. This is Brigadier Misfortune of the Wilting 202 Brigade telling you you are
not
fine. No my dear countrymen, you will not be fine until you can overthrow the wild Sun of April. Later tonight, fellow countrymen, you will hear the full text from General Mouth himself—I am only a mouthpiece—you will hear the words direct from him after the national anthem shall have been played backwards. Until then, beloved countrymen, roast in peace.
    The half kilometre to the Presidential Palace had already taken an hour and fifteen minutes in the closing-time heat and traffic, and he was not half-way there yet. The irresistible temptation of Abazon had brought him to this pass. As he inched forward and stopped and inched again and jammed his foot on the brakes he remembered: in heavy traffic the car to watch is the one ahead of the one behind you. Stupid cleverness, barren smartness that defeats ordinary, solid, sensible people. Like Elewa. She could never even begin to unravel that traffic conundrum.
    He looked far ahead just before the next big bend in the road and saw another welcome twitch of motion working its way down the line towards him. He awaited it eagerly but when it got to him he saw it amounted to no more than a miserable metre’s progress. So he decided it was not worth the trouble of a gearshift. Save it up and add it to the next incremental move and you will have a nice ride of two metres. Besides, irritating the clutch unnecessarily can lead to… The car behind him blared its horn so loud that he fairly jumped on his seat and out of his heat-haze reverie; he looked and saw through his rearview mirror a man in great anger, his perspiring head thrust out of his yellow taxi-cab, gesticulating wildly to him to move on. Other cars and drivers were joining now in the blaring and shouting protest. He decided to ignore them all and protect the precious little space ahead of him, even if the heavens should fall! The noise increased tenfold now and began to infect some of the cars ahead which could not possibly know what the matter was but were quite gratuitously joining the horn-blowers behind. He stuck to his guns. Rather than yield he would occupy his mind by observing the surroundings… The traffic going in the opposite direction on his left was luckier, as usual, than the one he found himself trapped in. But he gauged that even if, for the sake of moving at all, one should decide to turn around and join these people speeding away from one’s destination the problem of space in which to turn would kill the propositionon the spot… There was nothing else of much interest on that side so he turned to his right and saw for the first time a street decoration of old and dirty flags and bunting lining the route. Some Ministry of Information decorators must have been at work here today putting up these filthy rags saved up and stowed away in mouse-ridden cartons in a Ministry store after last year’s May Day celebrations.
    It was at this point that he caught with the tail of his eye just in time the driver behind him manoeuvring his taxi out of the line; it was now virtually level with him, albeit on the grass kerb. He cranked his ignition which, mercifully, responded to the first attempt, shifted gear and moved forward to obliterate the prize space into which his antagonist had virtually wedged himself obliquely. From then on a war of nerves ensued between the two