with him into the college garden. I remembered summer evenings when I was a little boy overhearing, from in bed upstairs, the mumble of voices down in the drawing-room, where Aunt Evelyn was having an after-dinner chat with Mr. Farrell and Captain Huxtable, who had walked across the fields from Butley in the twilight. Sometimes I tiptoed down the stairs and listened at the door (rather hoping to hear them saying something complimentary about myself) but they were nearly always gassing about politics, or India. Mr. Farrell had been in India for ages, and Captain Huxtable had been out there too; and Aunt Evelyn loved to hear about it. When we went to see Mr. Farrell he used to show us delightful old books with coloured plates of Indian scenes. What queer old codgers they were, sipping tea and puffing their cigars (which smelt quite nice) and talking all that rot about Lord Salisbury and his Government. “ Her-her-her ,” laughed Mr. Farrell whenever he finished another of his funny stories which always ended with what someone had said to someone else or how he’d scored off someone at his club. They’d go on talking just the same, whatever happened; even if a Death’s Head Hawk Moth flew into the room they wouldn’t be a bit excited about it. It would be rather fun, I thought, if I were to fire my percussion-cap pistol outside the drawing-room door, just to give them a surprise. As I crept upstairs again in my nightgown, I wondered if I should ever be like that myself. … Mr. Farrell was fond of playing tennis; he used to serve underhand, holding the ball a few inches above the ground as he struck it. …
Emerging from my retrospective reverie, I felt that this war had made the past seem very peculiar. People weren’t the same as they used to be, or else I had changed. Was it because I had experienced something that they couldn’t share or imagine? Mr. Farrell had seemed diffident that afternoon, almost as if he were talking to a survivor from an incomprehensible disaster. Looking round me I began to feel that I wanted to be in some place where I needn’t be reminded of the War all the time. For instance, there was that tall well-preserved man pushing his