‘Well, let’s have it,’ said Molly, very brisk, to Anna, who had stood silent for some time now.

‘Yes. You don’t want to hear about the comrades, I take it?’

‘In France and Italy the intellectuals talk day and night about the Twentieth Congress and Hungary, the perspectives of and the lessons of and mistakes to be learned from.’

‘In that case, since it’s the same here, though thank God people are getting bored with it, I’ll skip it.’

‘Good.’

‘But I think I’ll mention three of the comrades — oh, only in passing,’ said Anna hastily, as Molly grimaced. ‘Three fine sons of the working class and trade union officials.’

‘Who?’

‘Tom Winters, Len Colhoun, Bob Fowler.’

‘I knew them, of course,’ said Molly quickly. She always knew, or had known, everyone. ‘Well?’

‘Just before the Congress, when there was all that disquiet in our circles, what with this plot and that, and Yugoslavia, etc., it so happened that I met them, in connection with what they naturally referred to as cultural matters. With condescension. At that time I and similar types were spending a lot of time fighting inside the Party — a naïve lot we were, trying to persuade people it was much better to admit that things stank in Russia than to deny it. Well. I suddenly got letters from all three of them — independently, of course, they didn’t know, any of them, the others had written. Very stern, they were. Any rumours to the effect that there was any dirty work in Moscow or ever had been or that Father Stalin had ever put a foot wrong were spread by enemies of the working class.’

Molly laughed, but from politeness; the nerve had been touched too often.

‘No, that isn’t the point. The point is, these letters were interchangeable. Discounting handwriting of course.’

‘Quite a lot to discount.’

‘To amuse myself, I typed out all three letters — long ones at that, and put them side by side. In phraseology, style, tone, they were identical. You couldn’t possibly have said, this letter was written by Tom, or that one by Len.’

Molly said resentfully: ‘For that notebook or whatever it is you and Tommy have a secret about?’

‘No. To find out something. But I haven’t finished.’

‘Oh all right, I won’t press you.’

‘Then came the Congress and almost instantly I got three more letters. All hysterical, self-accusatory, full of guilt, self-abasement.’