Unconditional surrender Read Free Page A

by a couple who had just come in; Kerstie Kilbannock and an American soldier. As though playing musical chairs, she was in Jumbo’s warm place before he had taken his cap from the peg above him.
    ‘Guy, how are you?’
    ‘Forty.’
    ‘We’ve been lunching with Ruby at the Dorchester and are so hungry we had to pop in here and fill up. You know the Lootenant?’
    ‘Yes, indeed. How are you, Loot?’
    Everyone knew Lieutenant Padfield; even Guy who knew so few people. He was a portent of the Grand Alliance. London was full of American soldiers, tall, slouching, friendly, woefully homesick young men who seemed always in search of somewhere to sit down. In the summer they had filled the parks and sat on the pavements round the once august mansions which had been assigned to them. For their comfort there swarmed out of the slums and across the bridges multitudes of drab, ill-favoured adolescent girls and their aunts and mothers, never before seen in the squares of Mayfair and Belgravia. These they passionately and publicly embraced, in the blackout and at high noon, and rewarded with chewing-gum, razor-blades, and other rare trade-goods from their PX stores. Lieutenant Padfield was a horse of a different colour; not precisely, for his face, too, was the colour of putty; he too slouched; he, too, was a sedentary by habit. But he was not at all homesick; when not in a chair he must have been in rapid motion, for he was ubiquitous. He was twenty-five years old and in England for the first time. He had been one in the advanced party of the American army and there was no corner of the still intricate social world where he was not familiar.
    Guy first met him when on leave he went reluctantly to call on his uncle Peregrine. This was during the Loot’s first days in England.
    ‘…Brought a letter from a fellow who used to come to Cowes. Wants to see my miniatures…’
    Then during the same week Guy was asked to dinner at the House of Commons by his brother-in-law Arthur Box-Bender.
    ‘…Told we ought to do something about some of these Americans. They’re interested in the House, naturally. Do come along and give a hand….’ There were six young American officers, the Loot among them.
    Very soon he had ceased to be a mere member of the occupying forces to whom kindness should be shown. Two or three widows survived from the years of hospitality and still tried meagrely to entertain. The Lieutenant was at all their little parties. Two or three young married women were staking claims to replace them as hostesses. The Loot knew them all. He was in every picture gallery, every bookshop, every club, every hotel. He was also in every inaccessible castle in Scotland, at the sick bed of every veteran artist and politician, in the dressing-room of every leading actress and in every university common-room, and he expressed his thanks to his hosts and hostesses not with the products of the PX stores but with the publications of Sylvia Beach and sketches by Fuseli.
    When Guy went to have his hair cut the Loot seemed always to be in the next chair. One of the few places where he was never seen was HOO HQ. He had no apparent military function. In the years of peace he had been the junior member of an important firm of Boston lawyers. It was said that the Loot’s duties were still legal. Either the American army was exceptionally law-abiding or they had a glut of advocates. The Loot was never known to serve on a court-martial.
    Now he said: ‘I was at Broome yesterday.’
    ‘Broome? You mean our Broome? What on earth took you there, Loot?’
    ‘Sally Sackville-Strutt has a daughter at the school. We went to see her play hockey. She’s captain of “Crouchback”. You knew the school was divided into two houses called “Crouchback” and the “Holy Family”?’
    ‘The invidious distinction has been remarked on.’
    ‘“Crouchback” won.’ He began beckoning to Ruben. ‘Do we meet tonight at the Glenobans?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did