Beowulf

never had been invented! What we ought to do is to get together round the Peace Table and agree to give up machines, all of us, altogether.”
“Nonsense! Somebody would invent a new lot next day. What is wrong with us is that we pigeonholed our foreign information. Thomas had a friend, you know, who went on a very dangerous expedition, and when he came back what do you think he found? All his reports in an official’s drawer, never even opened.”
“There must have been some mistake.”
“Oh, no, there wasn’t. They just knew he was telling them the truth and they didn’t want to read it. He went off to the States, saying he was sorry that he had been such an idiot for twenty years. He warned us, ages ago, there would be a war.”
“It was Mr. Chamberlain’s heart,” Alice protested conscientiously, “he was just too great a man to think about bombs.”
“Then the proper place for him was in a bird sanctuary. After all, I value my life if you don’t value yours.
And a thousand planes at this moment would be worth all the good thoughts in the world. But tell me, what happened about your machine gun, did you actually see it?”
“No. We went on sitting and sitting and I heard a very funny noise, just between us and the little wood. A man in our compartment went and put his head outside the corridor window. Then he came back and said, ‘Do you hear that noise?’ and I said, ‘Oh, yes, it must be a threshing machine.’ You know it was a kind of popping sound. He looked at us and asked, ‘Do you know anything about threshing machines?’ and I said, ‘No, ’and then he sighed and said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke my pipe? ’I said, ‘Please do,’ and then I dropped a stitch and it took me quite a while to pick it up again.”
“And all that time you were just sitting still?”
“Well, dear, what else was there to do? Besides, I was so busy picking up the stitch. I do want to get it finished for Hyacinth’s birthday. It is rather a nice shade.” Alice delved into the knitting bag. “Do you think she will look well in rust?” She was always conscious of her sister-in-law’s appearance, and though she despised concentration upon such worldly things there were wild moments when she hoped that her daughter might grow up into the same neat smartness. “You’re always telling me not to be afraid of colour, but isn’t this a shade too bright?”
“I’m sure Hyacinth will look charming in it,” whatever the child wore it would make no difference, she had a permanently red face and a worried expression that did not match either her rural cheeks or inappropriate name, “but, go on, do tell me, what happened next?”
“After a time the train began to move again, ever so slowly, and we came to a station. The man with the pipe went into the corridor and said, ‘Jerry got the signaller all right; look, they’re taking him away,’ but all I could see was a crowd.”
“How dreadful!”
“Then the guard came along and told us, ‘Got ’im in the ’and, they did, but it don’t amount to much,’ and my old lady fussed and asked if there was a ladies’ waiting room at King’s Cross and did I think her grandson would have to wait long for a train?”
“What a morning!”
“Yes, it really has made me feel quite funny. It is so—well—what you wouldn’t expect. Taking the nine-five and being shot at, it’s so unreal, and I think unnatural things are very unwholesome. Yet I used to feel the Germans were far more moral than the French.”
“Oh, Alice, the danger of preconceived ideas! How often did I tell you not to associate the word ‘discipline’ with morality until you had found out what the Germans meant by it.”
“Perhaps I was wrong, Adelaide,” Alice agreed, doubtfully, “but we are suffering from too much freedom. Don’t you think we are?” she pleaded eagerly with her eyes fixed on Adelaide’s tricolour ribbon.
“The only discipline in the world that is safe,” Mrs. Spenser pronounced, “comes from liberty. Why do you mind it so much?” It was useless arguing with Alice, whose thirst for submission was such that she enjoyed the war unconsciously because of the restrictions it imposed.
“I never have felt that we should be free to follow our own whims,” Alice said, crumbling her roll, “but to finish the story, we arrived two hours late. And then, my dear, there was the poor old lady, looking so forlorn, standing on the platform beside her grandson’s kit bag and naval gas mask. Of course, she couldn’t have been a fifth columnist, but you know what people are like nowadays and I can’t describe how they stared at her. I got her a porter eventually and told him to take her to the waiting room. Do you think the grandson would turn up?”
Ruby banged down two plates of pudding with even more vehemence than usual. Several of the shopgirls were already buttoning their coats. Horatio continued to sip his coffee very slowly, for even an empty Warming Pan was livelier than his own room. He wished he were not so deaf; had he caught the phrase “machine-gunned” in the conversation at the adjoining table? And what had happened now? Even he could hear the shouts. “Oh, how wonderful, Miss Hawkins; where did you discover him, oh, isn’t he sweet?”
“Angelina!” Miss Tippett rose from her desk with her eyes fixed incredulously on her partner’s arms.
At first only two scarlet gloves and the tip of a beret were visible, then Angelina set her burden carefully on the floor and stood up, smiling at her audience. Beside her sat a plaster bulldog, almost life size, with a piratical scowl painted on his black muzzle.
“Don’t scold me,” she appealed to the room, “wouldn’t he be lovely as a stand for bulletins? And I do