The most perilous moments of the approach phase were on the first hundred yards or so of the drive. There was no way off it, the hedge grew close and thick on either side; and they were an odd-looking group for anyone to come upon, Benson in grey flannel, the binoculars slung round his neck, Hogan in his business suit – trappings of servitude briefly resumed – Anthea in combat kit, a baggy brown boiler suit and green wellies, Elroy in his fringed jacket with the equipment in a rucksack on his back – he had been persuaded to abandon his red woollen hat and now had his dreadlocks tucked under a black beret. The original idea had been that they should all dress as far as possible like guests, so as to avoid notice, merge into the background if necessary; but Anthea hadn’t been keen on this and Elroy had refused point blank – there was no disguising him anyway. It had been a question of principle really, but a rather unfortunate confusion had resulted. Hogan had turned up in his suit, making him, on this festive summer-afternoon occasion, extremely conspicuous.

  It was the only demur they had made – the rest had been all enthusiasm; the eagerness of his Fictioneers to cooperate in the enterprise had surprised and touched Benson and – increasingly – alarmed him.

  On the drive itself fortune favoured them. They heard a car turn in through the gates but they were at the bend by then and so had time to get in among the trees and conceal themselves till it was past. From here, in single file behind Benson, treading softly, they made their way through the wooded part of the grounds. As he had remembered, the woods on this side extended as far as the lake and some way beyond. When they reached the edge, still under cover, they stopped again. To their right, through the screen of trees, they could see the blue of the marquee. There was another, smaller, white one beyond it now – the refreshment tent, presumably. Benson was dismayed to see people moving about at the front of this – he had hoped everyone would be inside the big marquee. However, by good fortune the white tent was set back a little, no one standing at the entrance to it could actually see the entrance to the other. You would have to walk forward twenty-five yards or so to do that, he thought. Unlikely. He licked dry lips. His nervousness was increasing. The marquee was a hundred and fifty yards away, and quite in the open – he had known there was no getting to it that way. Immediately before them, however, less than ten yards beyond the last of the trees, even nearer than he had remembered, was the tall, rather straggling hedge of thorn trees that marked the limit of Slater’s property on this side. Beyond it there was a field of half-grown wheat, bright in the sunshine.

  Leaving the others where they were, he moved cautiously forward to the outer edge of the trees. He had taken something of a chance on this hedge, not quite sure whether he was relying on last Saturday’s memories or more distant ones. Old hedges of this kind, used to mark land divisions, were usually banked up. That would mean a slope on the other side too, no more than a couple of feet probably, but enough – dead ground, they had called it in his army days. Peering forward through the trees, he saw at once that he had been right; there was a short bank on the near side. Cautiously he rejoined the others. “It is 1454 hours now,” he said. “Would you please check that your watches are synchronised with mine.”

  “We done that already,” Elroy said. As zero hour approached he had shown a tendency to question orders.

  “I’d like you to do it again, please. We are slightly ahead of time. We shall have to stay put here until 1500 hours. I think we’d better run through the O.P. again.”

  “What’s the O.P.?” Since Elroy already knew the answer to this, his gravity held more than a hint of satire.

  “Operation Plan.” In his anxiety, all the inherent superstition of Benson’s nature had come out, the faith in magic formulas, spells, potent phrases. There was dire need of them, he felt. The concept, the grand strategy, was all Alma’s, but the tactical disposition had been left to him; and there were too many unpredictable elements, too much that could go wrong. Left to himself, prey to scruples and misgivings, he would have abandoned the project long before it had reached this operational stage; but with the Fictioneers once enlisted there had been no going back: their enthusiasm, their loyalty, his fear of disappointing them, had driven him on step by remorseless step.

  “At 1500 hours precisely,” he said, “Anthea and Elroy start off towards the hedge, keeping close to the ground. When you reach the hedge you go straight through to the other side, then you crawl under cover of the bank until you are directly opposite the rear of the blue marquee. Stop at the nearside corner – don’t go right behind it or you won’t see my signal. I have allowed two minutes for you to get into position. The marquee will then be about six yards away, on our side of the hedge of course. There is no cover for those six yards but you are not in any field of view as far as I can determine it. The final phase, once you are at the marquee itself, shouldn’t take more than a minute – in fact it must on no account take more than a minute. Speed and surprise and exact timing are the essence of the plan. Remember for Christ’s sake not to move for one and a half minutes after seeing my signal. You must give Michael time to get across and secure the entrance flap. As soon as you have discharged the smoke bombs and crackers into the marquee, you retrace the route exactly, get back here, make your way to where Anthea has left the motorbike. You remember the signal, don’t you?”

  Benson fumbled in his trouser pockets and brought out two handkerchiefs, one scarlet, the other white. “The red one is the signal to launch the assault,” he said. “The white one is the signal to abandon the operation and adopt the escape procedure immediately. That is clear, isn’t it?”

  He looked from one face to the other. They nodded without speaking. Both showed signs of tension. They were on alien ground here, behind the enemy lines; and they were about to disturb the peace in a very definite manner. Anthea’s face wore already the fixed, staring look of exhilaration he had seen on the night of the riot. Elroy’s lips were compressed and his eyes were glowing in their deep sockets. So might Zircon have looked at the utmost limit of his lethal laughter.

  “Now you, Michael,” Benson said, wondering what his own face looked like, “you stay on here. You keep a watch on the entrance to the marquee. At approximately 1504 hours you’ll see someone crossing over from the house – I don’t know who, perhaps the secretary, someone. You can’t see the house from here but you’ll see her when she comes into your field of view. She’ll go into the marquee and after thirty second or so she’ll come out again with another woman – that will be Mrs Slater. I know this is a complication but, as I have explained to you, Mrs Slater is my friend, I want to get her out. Forty-five seconds after they have left you’ll see my signal. They’ll be out of sight by then, on their way back to the house. As soon as you see the signal you stroll directly across from here to the marquee. When you get to the marquee all you have to do is close the canvas across the entrance. Have you got the pins?”

  Hogan fished in his jacket pocket for a moment, then held them up silently. They were thick steel safety-pins, about three inches long.

  “Good. As soon as you have done it you follow the escape procedure we have agreed on, make yourself scarce. I’ll see you back at the rendezvous with Alma and the car.”

  A sudden loud burst of clapping carried over to them from the marquee. “This will require a bit of nerve on your part, Michael,” Benson said in the silence that followed. He was unhappy about Hogan’s suit.

  “You can count on me.” The voice was quite untroubled.

  “I know it.”

  Benson looked at his watch again: it was a minute to three. “Quick drink?” He took the flask from his hip pocket and passed it round. “Power to the people,” Anthea said.

  “Off you go then. Good luck.” He watched anxiously as Anthea and Elroy crawled out through the trees, covered the few yards of open ground and disappeared behind the hedge.

  “I’ll leave you then,” he said to Hogan, but for some moments still lingered indecisively. He was deeply troubled about Hogan, who had to stroll a hundred and fifty yards across open ground, secure the flap, stroll back, all in that conspicuously inappropriate suit. He would look as if he had strayed from a business convention – a rather shabby one, Benson thought, noting now the slightly frayed look, the shine of use on the lapels. Three years of trying to keep up appearances. It had not been a good-quality suit to begin with. He would stand out like a sore thumb … Suddenly the solution came to him. “Michael,” he said, “we shall have to exchange clothes. You are bigger but not all that much and this suit of mine is fairly loose-fitting. I can’t let you go like that. Hurry up, we’ve only got half a minute.”

  Hogan uttered no word of query or protest. With solemn haste the two of them stripped offjacket and trousers, made the exchange. It took longer than Benson had thought because they had to remove their shoes before they could get their trousers off. Hogan looked a bit cramped about the shoulders and the trousers rode rather high but he was passable.

  “Right then,” Benson said. “Christ, we’ve lost thirty seconds.”

  “My pins.”

  “What? God, yes.” He dug in the jacket pockets, found them. “The handkerchiefs,” he said. “I nearly forgot the handkerchiefs. No, in the trousers – thanks. Now don’t forget, Michael, wait for my signal.”

  After half a dozen stumbling paces through the trees he had to stop to roll up his trouser bottoms. He made his way to the observation post he had selected, midway between Hogan’s position and the point where the drive began to curve towards the house. From here, armed with his binoculars, concealed among the rhododendrons, he could survey the whole field of operations, the marquee and the refreshment tent with the lake beyond, the red and gold roof of the summerhouse effulgent among the birches. By moving the binoculars through an angle of forty-five degrees he could command the final few yards of the drive and the level area immediately below the house, where ranks of cars were gleaming.

  It was a brilliantly sunny day with no breath of wind. Benson swept the glasses slowly through a world that was arbitrary and intense, disconnected, vivid green of the lawn, deep blue glow of the canvas, glittering sections of the lake, woods a depthless tangle of sunlight and leaf. Slater had been lucky in the weather: he found himself hoping fervently that it would be the limit of Slater’s luck that day.

  Another burst of clapping came from the marquee. He glanced at his watch: 1503 hours. Anthea and Elroy should be in position by now. They would have to wait there for six minutes, but if they kept their heads down they would be safe enough, between the hedgebank and the half-grown wheat. He was more worried about Hogan. He raised the binoculars again: there was nobody outside the white tent now, but he could make out the forms of people moving within it. They would be busy with the refreshments for the interval at half past three, not much to worry about there …

  Nevertheless his nervousness mounted. As he slowly moved the binoculars once again across the field of view, he could feel the palms of his hands getting moist. He felt strange, loose, in his borrowed jacket. The sweet smell of Hogan’s erstwhile hair-oil rose to him from the collar, troubling him further. A spot of Scotch would be in order. But his hand encountered nothing in the hip pocket but some loose change: in the haste of the moment he had forgotten to claim his flask …

  From the marquee, quite clearly and distinctly he heard the children’s choir break into the opening verse of ‘The New Jerusalem’. Dead on time. The next item was Athelstan’s Dream – scheduled for a rude awakening … His eye caught a flicker of movement near the summerhouse, flashes of white among the trees. He trained the glasses carefully on the spot. For a moment there was nothing. Then with terrible clarity a bearded man in a white robe sprang into focus among the sharp silver of the trunks. It was St Columba. A moment later, at the side of the summerhouse itself, he saw two men in horned helmets and leather jerkins standing together. Then he understood: they were using the summerhouse as a changing room. Of course, the house itself was too far away … This was something he had completely failed to take into account. He tried desperately to calculate the route they would take. Between the lake and the rear of the white tent almost certainly – that was the nearest way. Anyone approaching from that angle during the sixty seconds that Anthea and Elroy were at the back of the marquee could not fail to see them, catch them red-handed with the canisters and the crackers. Benson was swept with terrible remorse at having exposed his Fictioneers to this risk. They had trusted him with their literary work, they had committed their bodies to his selfish and vindictive purposes. Should he signal the retreat? They would despise him … He strained to listen to the choir.

  “Shine forth upon our clouded hills

  And was Jerusalem …”

  Second verse: forty seconds a verse then, roughly, then the applause – say thirty seconds. They should finish by 1506 hours. That would leave three minutes for the changeover. Time enough, surely. Athelstan’s Dream would be well on the way before Anthea and Elroy came out of cover. It was four minutes past now. Alma should be at this moment making the phone call, purporting to come from a hospital spokesperson, urgently demanding that Mrs Slater be fetched to the phone without delay. This complication of sentiment broke all the known rules of tactics – Napoleon wouldn’t have done it, he knew. His eyes were burning and his mouth and throat were completely dry. Why wasn’t the secretary or someone beginning the trek to the marquee? Could Alma have failed somehow? They had checked the phone, she had occupied it well in advance …

  A middle-aged woman in a black dress and a white apron appeared below the terrace. It was not the secretary, it was the woman who had served at table the previous Saturday. She was walking very quickly indeed – in fact, she was almost running. Another miscalculation. He had forgotten she would be possessed by haste; he had allowed two minutes for her to get there; she would do it in half of the time.

  “I shall not cease from Mental Strife

  Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand …”

  They were coming to the end. The woman was halfway there. Hogan would have seen her by now. There was a prolonged burst of clapping from the marquee. He waited. Why didn’t the choir come out? Then a terrible thought struck him: what if Slater had changed his mind, allowed the children to stay inside during the intervals between their songs? The little girl with hair escaping from her headband, the boy with wrinkled stockings …

  The dryness of his throat had become painful, like an inflamation. It wasn’t only the children. He felt like a man awakening from a trance. He had done it again, the same thing, exactly the same, in forty years he had learned nothing: he had tried to make the ground conform to his conception, wrench the reality of things to a metaphor. Not vindictiveness or any real desire to hurt Slater, not Alma’s eyes, not the zest of his Fictioneers – it was the beauty of the ending that had led him on. But they were people down there, not elements of narrative pattern. A high proportion of nasties the marquee would doubtless contain; but some there must be whose only offence was to be on Slater’s invitation list. Some old buffer with high blood pressure, a dowager with a weak heart …

  He must signal the retreat. Which pocket was the white one in? He thrust hands into both trouser pockets, found a handkerchief in the left one and in the other nothing but a gaping hole – Hogan’s right-hand trouser pocket had no bottom to it. With a sense of foreboding he pulled the handkerchief out: it was the red one. Frantically he searched through the other pockets. The white handkerchief was nowhere on him, it was nowhere on the ground near him. It must have slipped down, fallen somewhere between Hogan’s position and his own – there was no time now to look for it. Shirt? It was dark pink. Underpants, he couldn’t remember. He checked quickly: they were blue. He had no means of signalling the retreat. The Fictioneers had no instructions about what to do in the event of no signal at all; they might embark on a death or glory attempt. He couldn’t risk it. Benson raised his face to the hot sky above him. At least let the children come out …

  The choir in their grey and white and blue emerged from the entrance with Mr Pringle at their head and trooped sedately towards the summerhouse. At the same moment he saw Erika, dressed in a long red gown and with a sort of diadem on her head, come out from among the birch trees into the open, followed by St Columba, bearded and bareheaded in his white robe, and then by lanky Athelstan, sober in a black skullcap and a dark-coloured kaftan. They met the children at the lakeside and went on past them towards the marquee. The woman was at the entrance now; he saw her go inside.

  They would have to go through with it now, come what may. He kept the entrance in steady view through the binoculars. Thirty seconds to find Mrs Slater, explain, extricate her. Forty-five seconds more would take the pair of them far enough away. Then he could give the signal, set Hogan in motion. Ninety seconds after that, zero hour.

  The woman emerged. To his utter consternation she was accompanied, not by Mrs Slater, but by Slater himself, in a fawn suit with a pink carnation in his buttonhole and on his face a look of strong displeasure. The two of them started off towards the house, side by side at first, but soon Slater was several yards ahead.

  Benson lowered the glasses. He felt breathless, as if he had just received a physical blow in the region of the chest. How long would Alma be able to hold him on the phone? If he gave the attack signal now and Slater started back within the next three minutes, he would see the smoke, he might go round to the rear of the marquee to investigate or he might catch Hogan strolling back towards the cover of the trees. Slater was a big man, still strong and active. He might be too much for Hogan. They couldn’t wait till he was back in place, the time was impossible to calculate, the interval was approaching. Slater would have to be delayed somehow. There was only one way …

  A certain calm descended on Benson. Slowly he got to his feet, slowly he waved the red handkerchief back and forth three times. He waited until he saw the figure of Hogan emerge from the trees and begin to walk at a moderate pace towards the marquee. Through the glasses he scanned Hogan’s face for a second. It was quite untroubled. Then, without further pause, he turned and began to make his way rapidly through the grounds towards the drive. He would have to keep Slater talking while the Fictioneers pressed home the attack and made good their escape. Three minutes was all that was needed. He would say he had come to apologise, he would humble himself, anything to save his troops. Once they were clear there would be nothing to connect him with the devastated marquee. I can say the binoculars are for bird-watching, he thought.