Eye of the Needle(5)

This was the problem that taxed Percival Godliman in the summer of 1940, when Hitler’s armies swept across the French cornfields like a scythe and the British poured out of the Dunkirk bottleneck in bloody disarray.

Professor Godliman knew more about the Middle Ages than any man alive. His book on the Black Death had upended every convention of medievalism; it had also been a best-seller and published as a Penguin Book. With that behind him he had turned to a slightly earlier and even more intractable period.

At 12:30 on a splendid June day in London, a secretary found Godliman hunched over an illuminated manuscript, laboriously translating its medieval Latin, making notes in his own even less legible handwriting. The secretary, who was planning to eat her lunch in the garden of Gordon Square, did not like the manuscript room because it smelled dead. You needed so many keys to get in there, it might as well have been a tomb.

Godliman stood at a lectern, perched on one leg like a bird, his face lit bleakly by a spotlight above—he might have been the ghost of the monk who wrote the book, standing a cold vigil over his precious chronicle. The girl cleared her throat and waited for him to notice her. She saw a short man in his fifties, with round shoulders and weak eyesight, wearing a tweed suit. She knew he could be perfectly sensible once you dragged him out of the Middle Ages. She coughed again and said, “Professor Godliman?”

He looked up, and when he saw her he smiled, and then he did not look like a ghost, more like someone’s dotty father. “Hello!” he said, in an astonished tone, as if he had just met his next-door neighbor in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

“You asked me to remind you that you have lunch at the Savoy with Colonel Terry.”

“Oh, yes.” He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and peered at it. “If I’m going to walk it, I’d better leave now.”

She nodded. “I brought your gas mask.”

“You are thoughtful!” He smiled again, and she decided he looked quite nice. He took the mask from her and said, “Do I need my coat?”

“You didn’t wear one this morning. It’s quite warm. Shall I lock up after you?”

“Thank you, thank you.” He jammed his notebook into his jacket pocket and went out.

The secretary looked around, shivered, and followed him.





COLONEL ANDREW TERRY was a red-faced Scot, pauper-thin from a lifetime of heavy smoking, with sparse dark-blond hair thickly brilliantined. Godliman found him at a corner table in the Savoy Grill, wearing civilian clothes. There were three cigarette stubs in the ashtray. He stood up to shake hands.

Godliman said, “Morning, Uncle Andrew.” Terry was his mother’s baby brother.

“How are you, Percy?”

“I’m writing a book about the Plantagenets.” Godliman sat down.

“Are your manuscripts still in London? I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

Terry lit another cigarette. “Move them to the country in case of bombing.”

“Should I?”

“Half the National Gallery has been shoved into a bloody big hole in the ground somewhere up in Wales. Young Kenneth Clark is quicker off the mark than you. Might be sensible to take yourself off out of it too, while you’re about it. I don’t suppose you’ve many students left.”

“That’s true.” Godliman took a menu from a waiter and said, “I don’t want a drink.”

Terry did not look at his menu. “Seriously, Percy, why are you still in town?”

Godliman’s eyes seemed to clear, like the image on a screen when the projector is focused, as if he had to think for the first time since he walked in. “It’s all right for children to leave, and national institutions like Bertrand Russell. But for me—well, it’s a bit like running away and letting other people fight for you. I realize that’s not a strictly logical argument. It’s a matter of sentiment, not logic.”

Terry smiled the smile of one whose expectations have been fulfilled. But he dropped the subject and looked at the menu. After a moment he said, “Good God. Le Lord Woolton Pie.”

Godliman grinned. “I’m sure it’s still just potatoes and vegetables.”

When they had ordered, Terry said, “What do you think of our new Prime Minister?”

“The man’s an ass. But then, Hitler’s a fool, and look how well he’s doing. You?”

“We can live with Winston. At least he’s bellicose.”

Godliman raised his eyebrows. “‘We’? Are you back in the game?”

“I never really left it, you know.”

“But you said—”

“Percy. Can’t you think of a department whose staff all say they don’t work for the Army?”

“Well, I’m damned. All this time…”

Their first course came, and they started a bottle of white Bordeaux. Godliman ate potted salmon and looked pensive.

Eventually Terry said, “Thinking about the last lot?”

Godliman nodded. “Young days, you know. Terrible time.” But his tone was almost wistful.

“This war isn’t the same at all. My chaps don’t go behind enemy lines and count bivouacs like you did. Well, they do, but that side of things is much less important this time. Nowadays we just listen to the wireless.”