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cordiality. But
there was no sign, not even a dirty ashtray, of the last or any occupants. The swept house emphasised his loneliness. Nothing belonged to him but the two suitcases which the houseman had just
placed in his bedroom. If only one of the cases had been a woman’s, she’d have made enough mess in five minutes to create the appearance of a home.
    ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said to Gateson. ‘Stick around while I change if you’re not too thirsty!’
    ‘Pepe can deal with that,’ the Field Manager replied. ‘We put enough stores in the cellar to carry you through for a week or two.’
    Who were ‘we’ he wondered with a sudden collapse of self-confidence, and what had been the anxious, half patronising gossip before his arrival? But Pepe, white-jacketed, was already
hovering over the cocktail cabinet. Luxury in this loneliness at any rate. The energy of the General Manager was not to be expended in the handling of drinks himself.
    ‘A long whisky please, Pepe.’ Gateson said.
    ‘I’ll have a quick shower and then join you.’
    When he had returned to the living-room and downed the first tall glass of the tropical evening he felt the Darlow of ten years earlier. It was absurd to blame his temporary home for emptiness
when from a window you could see or think you saw the curve of the globe.
    ‘My wife and I hoped you would dine with us. We’ll just have a few people in afterwards and an early night. You must be tired.’
    Nothing for it but to accept gratefully. Well-spaced alcohol would see him through.
    ‘And one other thing—I’ve arranged a police guard after what happened.’
    Mat was not going to admit that there was something the Board had not chosen to tell him. He had put down the sudden resignation of his predecessor to nervous exhaustion and had never asked any
direct question about his private reasons.
    ‘I know the facts, of course,’ he said cautiously, ‘but not the details.’
    There aren’t any. He was shot at twice sitting in the window where I am now.’
    ‘Kind of you.’
    ‘Oh, they wouldn’t risk it again. There’s a machine gun covering the gate.’
    ‘Will it fire?’
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘Then I’ll have it removed. Machine guns demoralise me when I can’t see where they are pointing. What happened after they missed him?’
    It was a fair bet that they had. Henry and Sir Dave would have been in honour bound to mention it if the General Manager had been wounded. But if there had merely been some irresponsible
shooting—or what they could reasonably consider as such—why be alarmist?
    ‘His wife, I am afraid, insisted that he should go.’
    ‘Anything in particular which upset the field?’
    ‘It’s said it was because he offered compensation to the men who had lost their families.’
    ‘Sorry your missus was such a damn fool as to get killed. Here’s fifty quid to buy yourself another.’
    ‘While emphasising that the Company accepted no legal obligation,’ added Gateson, staring at him.
    ‘Now, tell me—I see domestic staff is not on strike. What’s the position?’
    ‘The men refuse us any oil except to the power station. Otherwise life is normal.’
    ‘And who knows everybody’s names and faces?’
    ‘Ray Thorpe, the Superintendent.’
    Mat asked what sort of man he was, remembering that he had led the rescue party.
    ‘Inclined to have a foot in both camps—not what one would expect from a chap who won a Military Cross in the D day landings. Had the luck to be seen, I suppose.’
    Yes, and probably the first person to admit it. Evidently Thorpe was the man whose confidence must be won, on whose view of the situation a temporary opinion might be based until he had one of
his own.
    Mat went off to Gateson’s damned dinner—unfair, that! Kind and very correct dinner—looking forward to Thorpe who wasn’t there. He sensed that the guests had been chosen
from the Gatesons’ intimate friends of their own upper middle class background, not