We looked at Willi. There was a meeting that night, run by the Left Club, than at its zenith. We were all expected to be there. We had never, not once, defected from duty. But Willi agreed, casually, as if there were nothing remarkable in it: ‘That’s something we could very well do. Mrs James’ pumpkin can be eaten by someone else for this one night.’

Willi ran a cheap fifth-hand car. We all five of us got into it and drove down to Mashopi, about sixty miles away. I remember it was a clear but oppressive night — the stars thick and low, with the heavy glitter of approaching thunder. We drove between kopjes that were piles of granite boulders, characteristic of that part of the country. The boulders were charged with heat and electricity, so that blasts of hot air, like soft fists, came on to our faces as we passed the kopjes.

We reached the Mashopi hotel about eight-thirty, and found the bar blazing with light and packed with the local farmers. It was a small bright place, shining from polished wood, and the polished black cement floor. As Paul had said, there was a well-used darts board and a shove-halfpenny. And behind the bar stood Mr Boothby, six feet tall, portly, his stomach protruding, his back straight as a wall, his heavy face with its network of liquor-swollen veins dominated by a pair of cool, shrewd prominent eyes. He remembered Paul from midday and enquired how the repairs to the aircraft were progressing. It had not been damaged; but Paul began on a long story how a wing had been struck by lightning and he had descended to the tree-tops by parachute, his instructor clutched under his arm — so manifestly untrue, that Mr Boothby looked uneasy from the first word. And yet Paul told it with such earnest, deferential grace that it wasn’t until he concluded, ‘Mine is not to reason why; mine is but to fly and die’ — wiping away a mock-gallant tear, that Mr Boothby let out a small reluctant grunt of laughter and suggested a drink. Paul had expected the drink to be on the house — a reward for a hero, so to speak; but Mr Boothby held out his hand for the money with a long narrowed stare, as if to say: ‘Yes, I know it’s not a joke, and you’d have made a fool of me if you could.’ Paul paid, with good grace and continued the conversation. He came over to us, beaming, a few minutes later to say that Mr Boothby had been a sergeant in the BSA Police; that he had married his wife on leave in England, and she had worked behind the bar in a pub; that they had a daughter aged eighteen, and they had been running this hotel for eleven years. ‘And very admirably too, if I may say so,’ we had heard Paul say. ‘I very much enjoyed my lunch today.’