Well. After a timeless time I was flippering myself gently back towards the beach from the outer wall of my underwater harbour when my mask filled with water. That happens to us chaps with beards because you can’t get enough spit on your moustache to make it waterproof. For some reason—I was in about nine inches—I knelt up and tore the thing off with a gesture of impatience. At that, a man who was bending down and adjusting his own mask pushed it up on his forehead and gave a positive squeak.

“It can’t be! Yes it is— Ho, I say, aren’t I the lucky one! You are Lobby Lubb and I claim the News Chronicle Award!”

“Go away, Johnny, go away. You’re mistaken. Damn.”

“I’d know that beard with the kind of incipient fork in it anywhere. Your face is going bald, my dear. You’ll have to wear falsies, a toupée for the lower face. I can see it coming in.”

I sat up, holding my mask and snorkel. It was like the end of the holidays. I clasped my knees to my chest and looked at him glumly.

“Is it any good asking you to keep your mouth shut?”

Johnny wound his considerable length down into the water and sat in front of me.

“Well now, Wilf. That depends, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, I’m far too worried about mun to think of anything else—desperately short in fact. I wonder—”

“Yes, yes. The same as last time.”

“That’s jolly D. I must say, Wilf—”

“Skip it.”

“Well, if you won’t be bothered with thanks— What are you doing here?”

“If it comes to that, what are you?”

“Tit for tat—I’m not telling if you’re not telling. But seriously, Wilf, that latest thing of yours, Horses at the Spring—”

“I don’t want to hear. Damn it, why in hell can one guarantee hearing bad news even in a howling desert?”

“But it’s so moving, dear! Quote, so human, unquote. Those two young things—and comical old Assby. He’s not by any chance remotely founded on the unessential characteristics of yours truly? Otherwise how do you know so much, Wilf? After all, you’ve never thought yourself to be one of us, have you? Mixed, of course, withdrawn and shall we say in earliest days the wee-est bit experimental?”

“I don’t want to hear about the bloody book.”

Johnny straightened out and lay on his tum.

“Well,” he said, quite unable to avoid a tiny infliction, “well, Wilf, I don’t suppose you will after a bit.”

I had my compulsions too.

“How bad was it, then?”

“Now, Wilf! Who said anything about it being bad? Believe me, in all sincerity, when the spring runs over and they silently realize their love, huge tears welled into my eyes. They did!”

He giggled. I waited for a while, then knelt up. Johnny saw he might miss some fun. He cried out.

“You simply can’t go away, Wilf! You couldn’t get a car over from the harbour before tomorrow and that’s the sabbath, let alone the local saint’s day, which you wouldn’t miss on any account! The litany’s gorgeous—‘God bless us and God bless them and to hell with the Turks.’ General reaction wasn’t too bad, I do assure you. Of course, we know the creatures that simply would do a knife job, don’t we? Lilian and both the Henrys. The young creature on the box said it was warm-hearted, a thing he’d never thought to find himself saying of you. There! I’ve made your day, haven’t I?”